Driving Principles

Lessons Learned on the Road of Life

Archive for the month “June, 2008”

Las Vegas Sights

 “It certainly seems as if all of life is a conversation, doesn’t it?”

            John didn’t have to think much before responding. He even noticed that this was something so typical about his relationship with this person – there was no need to think before speaking – she never took offense, never seemed to judge what he was saying – instead listening intently in the moment. He found that he did the same.

            “I’m either talking with myself or with somebody!”         They both laughed at that. “But seriously, or as serious as I can be in any given moment” – laughter, again – “even my thoughts seem to be a conversation that I am having – as if one part of me is talking to another part of me!”

            “Exactly what I was saying!”

            “Of course it is! Doesn’t it even seem as if when you are talking to me that you are really talking to yourself?”

            “Yes! That’s it! I guess you really are me!

            “And you are me!” John gestured with his index finger as he spoke, pointing to her heart and then to his own. “It is the same with all perception, really. How we see the person in front of us is a reflection of how we see ourselves. There is no separation.”

            “So anytime I am aggravated by someone in front of me, I need to step back and see what it is that I don’t particularly like about myself?”

            John nodded in agreement.

            “That’s a bit scary, isn’t it? What if I am watching CSI Las Vegas and I am seeing dead bodies and evil perpetrators?”

            John paused to allow words to bubble up through his awareness. He didn’t shape the words, except with his lips, and spoke them to himself as much as to her.

            “We’d like to believe that there is no murderer within our mind, wouldn’t we – that there was no way that we could ever be so callous or intentionally cruel – but if we dared to look deep within – to that place from which our greatest irritation arises – we might not like what we see there.” John paused to consider the words that he had spoken into the space. “I can easily see that when I am truly angry with someone – even the guy who cuts me off in traffic – I ‘wish’ the worst for them! I know that I have even imagined the person getting in a wreck, and feeling rather self-satisfied with the idea that justice will be perpetrated.”

            “You sure do have a thing about traffic, don’t you? You seem to attract just that sort of situation into your life all the time.”

            “You’ve noticed, eh?” They laughed together, the cadence of their laughter almost perfectly aligned. “You bet I doo doo!” When their laughter subsided, more words arose. “There is definitely some deep intention that I have to release judgment of what is in front of me. Every time someone pulls in front of me and isn’t doing the speed limit, or whatever I seem to perceive as “wronging” me, I am giving myself the choice, once again, to release my perception from its continual habit of judging. Notice that I have to first take responsibility for what appears to be occurring. From this perspective, then, I am able to be at choice. The world isn’t happening to me, it is happening for me.”

            “Wow. So whether I am irritated by a mosquito or perceiving a war, the “wrongness” of it is something that I made up?”

            “Yes and no. You are not responsible for the war in Iraq, obviously, nor for Hitler having killed a million POW’s – these ideas, which are thoughts in our minds, arise from the One Mind which our ‘thinkers’ are all a part of. That is why it is so important to watch what we think – what we hold in our minds either diffuses or strengthens the ideas in the One Mind. Like John Lennon said: “Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do; nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too…” She joined him in singing the rest of the lyric – “Imagine all the people, living life in peace… You may say I’m a dreamer…”

            “But it’s a great dream, isn’t it? It’s like in the Sixties – ‘Make peace, not war” – the characters held onto a dream of peace and love, and although it didn’t seem to manifest immediately, the consciousness of the planet did seem to shift. And it is the same no matter what ‘time’ it is – what we hold in our minds as ‘true’ is what we will experience.”

            “That is so true! It’s like being afraid that I don’t have enough money – then I don’t! It seems to be especially true about anything that I fear. It’s like fear attracts exactly what I am fearing into my life!”

            “Even spiders!” They laughed at this ‘private joke’ that the spiders that seemed to be in the house, which definitely bothered her, weren’t about to leave the premises until she released her fear of them.

            “Oooooh, even spiders? Can’t I make an exception there, at least?”

            “There are no degrees of ‘upset’ in the Mind. Judgment is judgment. And you can forget the whole ‘jury of my peers’ concept – it is always us judging ourselves by judging the world. The beauty of it is that if we can hold onto thoughts of love and peace and joy and come from that place all the time, then the world does shift! And all we really have to do is to change our mind about what it seems to perceive. The Berlin Wall seemed to suddenly fall, didn’t it? I can make up a story of why it fell, and add all sorts of characters to the story, but in the end it fell because it was no longer useful in the dream.”

            “I like the way you think!”

            “I made you up that way!”

            They laughed loudly at that, until tears of joy rolled down their cheeks.

            “And I attracted you into my life to say all of the things that I already knew but seemed to need someone else to say so that I could release my own ideas about the world!”

            “You may say I’m a dreamer….”

            “But I’m not the only one….”

 

“My heart expands every time I look at you, for my perfect sight looks only upon what is real. This is the only true gift I can give myself because it is the only gift I can truly receive. Do you understand what I mean by this? Your ego believed that it could receive things that do not belong to it. What I AM saying is that the only thing you can truly receive is what belongs to you now and always – that which could never be taken away. Accept this and it’s yours. Your acceptance is the only thing I’ve been waiting for.” ~ I Am (JamesTwymanAdmin@BelovedCommunity.org)

 

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