Seeking On Purpose

Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you SEE.”

This quote reminds me of someone I went to museums with who didn’t really enjoy our trips there. This person often remarked that they’d already seem all the works and there was  just nothing new to see.

And you know this is often how we see life. There’s nothing new! Too routine and just the same old same old. Nothing in my life ever seems to change.

I want to offer that I think this is because we too often just look at life happening around us. It’s like a movie that we are watching without being actively involved. As I have thought about this I see a big difference between looking at life (or anything else for that matter) and really seeing it!

To look at life you just watch the movie going on around you. Watching it happen and unfold without any input on your part. In this way, life seems separate from you and as something happening to you. You look at a piece of art. You eat a meal. You take a breath. All of these things happening automatically with little conscious thought on your part.

But then one day you decide to read the little card beside the painting which draws your attention to some specific items in the picture that you might never have consciously noticed before. Now as you are seeing the painting from this new awareness the items just pops out at you.

Now the painting begins to be more for you have more fully entered into the painting.

Or you might have this experience with a meal.

Maybe there is a meal you have eaten many times in your life. Each time you just cut a piece and shovel it into your mouth never really taking the time to either savor or really taste it.

But then this time you decide to slow down and you begin to experience the various textures and tastes. They begin to come alive in your mouth. Your mind begins to connect the dots between your meal and where it came from — the various people and places involved in making it happen. And now this common meal becomes more — a communion joining together instead of separating apart!

My last example involves breathing, a very common every moment experience.

Even though we all do this countless times during the day yet most of us do it completely unconsciously. We rarely take notice of the air as it enters or leaves our nose and lungs, except those times when we are congested or experiencing other breathing problems or the air around contains unpleasant odors.

But then one day, you decide to take a deep breath — you breathe in deeply feeling the air entering your nose and you feel your abdomen rise. You experience a deep sense of peace come over you. Your racing heart slows and you become conscious, if only for a few moments, of a sense of stillness and calm within.

In each of these instances you go from just looking, eating, breathing and being a part from the experience to a deeper one of seeing and becoming more aware and a part of the experience.

All of these experiences happen to me from time to time but unfortunately I too don’t fully enter into the experiences often enough. But when I do, then all of life becomes different.

I hope the next time you are at a museum or enjoying a meal or just taking a breath you will stop and really enter into the experience. And as you so, see what a difference it makes even for just a moment.

Too often people seem to believe that the best is yet to come. Just not right now.

Maybe one day my ship will come in.

Maybe one day there will be peace.

Maybe one day gas will be cheap again.

Just not today.

But I ask, why not today?

Why does everything good have wait to arrive sometime in the future while everything bad (or that does not work or make life better) happens right now?

The 2 disciples of Jesus were alot like us. They were always looking for a better life sometime in the future. They knew the kingdom of God would come but sometime in the future. But Jesus tried to help them (and us) to realize that the kingdom had come.

They, like many of us, thought the realm of God would come with show and fanfare but Jesus told them, and us, that it had already arrives and was within and among them.

He tried to help them see that they just needed to realize it and then to allow themselves to become aware of it. They needed to become aware of that lay right inside and then to draw from that well of spiritual energy that is within.

I am mentioning all of this because along with Charles Fillmore’s book The Twelve Powers I have also been reading a book by Pam Grout — E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality.

Reading Fillmore, I notices that he used the 12 disciples to represent the 12 powers that lie within each of us just waiting to be recognized, awakened and called forth for use. But I will get to this thought later.

Grout, in her book, talks about how things are right before our eyes but we still don’t see them. She also says that this is also true with things that lie right inside of us that we have been taught to cover over, hide and never to use or share such as love, creativity and wisdom.

We are carefully taught that life is scary and scarce. Everything is limited such as food, money and love. People are to be feared and judged and not loved and accepted.

These were all messages that the disciples of Jesus knew so well and that controlled their lives. And they also control ours.

You would probably be amazed if you could step back and listen to yourself talk and be aware of the thoughts you unconsciously think. It might cause some alarm.

But Jesus (for Fillmore) and the Field of Potentiality (for Grout) each tell us a different story than our words and thoughts. They see a world of endless possibilities and potentials foe each and every one of us!!!

In her book Grout uses the example of shopping for a different item at Wal-Mart. She found it located on an aisle that she always shopped on but she had never noticed this item there before even though it had always been there. This is how she explains the FP (Field of Potentiality).

I want to share with you two ways that I understand the FP (Field of Potentiality).

The first is that the Field is like a video game. When the programmer is preparing the game, they have to think of all the potential actions and all the potential results of these actions and then program these all onto the disk. If I then do Action A what are all the possible results that could occur? All of these are on the disk as a potential but only occur when I choose a particular one. I choose Action A and am presented with all the results of Action A until I choose one and then all the other results that would lead to Action B fall away unless some action on this path leads me back to Action B. And so on — you get the idea.

Now if this example doesn’t work for you maybe this one will. It comes from my days as a librarian. We had a series of books called “Choose your Own Adventure.” In these books you would be reading alone and something would occur. Then you would be told that if you choose Action A to turn to Page 4 or if you choose Action B to turn to page 20. Depending on the choices you make thing happen. But also because of the choices made there are thing you never know about that could have also happened if you had made a different choice.

Both Fillmore and grout tell us that this is how life is. We made choices from an infinite field of potential possibilities. And depending on the choice, there are lots of potential outcomes that fall away.

But that is not the end of the story.

You see with the video game and the “Choose Your Own Adventure” book as will life. You get the opportunity to play and read and live a whole new adventure anytime you want. All you need to do is start again and decide to make different choices. Every time you do, a whole new adventure is created.

This was also the hope that Jesus offered to the disciples. And this is the same hope that is offered to humanity.

If you have not read Pam Grout’s book E-Squared be sure and get a copy. And you might also want the book The 12 Powers by Charles Fillmore.

I just want to share a few thoughts today with you about God and our connection with God.

I grew up in a Christian family that went to church regularly. While we never really talked about being cut off from God and never really mentioned going to hell, I got this message from other sources. But the idea of hell never really made sense to me.

I was told that God is omnipresent. This is just a big word that means that God is present everywhere. So that means that if hell exists as a place, then God is also there. And if this is so, then how bad of a place could it possibly be?

Also I read in the Bible that God’s mercy and loving kindness never failed. How could this be true if even one person was outside the protection of God’s love and mercy? Mercy that would erase any offense!

God’s love is also said to be unconditional. That means that God still loves you whether or not you meet the conditions because there are no conditions. No “I love you because you love me” or “I love you because you do everything I want” or “I love you because you play the game by the rules I set up.” 

And another thing that always bothered me about hell was that people in countries where Christian missionaries (of the correct persuasion, whatever that is) had not visited, were condemned to hell out of no fault of their own. It always seemed to me that the Christians who did not do their job of evangelizing should be the ones punished as they had the light and a commission to do which they failed to fulfill.

The idea of hell and how anyone could be cut off from love, which is unconditional is just unimaginable to me. 

A god that acts like this is just a bigger version of us, god made in our image and likeness. And a God like this is not one I want to love or offer my allegiance to.

I’m going to begin discussing the lessons from The Workbook section of A Course In Miracles (ACIM) again beginning with Lesson 1. But before I do, I want to share a bit about how Jesus, who is the author, says we should practice these lessons and how they can change and rearrange our thinking and then our lives.

It is said that the first 3 lessons should be practiced no more than twice a day, preferably morning and evening and for no more than a minute.

The statement of the day should be applied to whatever your eye lights upon but not everything. But most importantly, nothing is to be specifically excluded. The exercise should be “practiced with great specificity” and you shouldn’t “decide for yourself that there are some people, situations or things to which the ideas are inapplicable.”

The purpose of the workbook lessons is “to train your mind in a systematic way to a different perception of everyone and everything in the world.”

Pam Grout, in one of her blog posts on The Course says that “everything we see is just a cardboard cutout — a picture of the past frozen in time.” She says that “we decided long ago that life is this certain way and that’s all we can see.” That’s the reason we practice the Workbook lessons, in order to break free from our past perceptions and gain a new way of perceiving ourselves and the world around us.

There are two sections in the workbook, the first “deals with the undoing of the way you see things now” and the second part deals with the “acquisition of true perception.” This is the way The Course will change your thinking and ultimately your life.

There is a very interesting statement in the Introduction to The Workbook: “Remember only this; you need not believe the ideas, you need not accept them, and you need not welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist. None of this will matter, or decrease their efficacy. But do not allow yourself to make exceptions in applying the ideas the workbook contains, and whatever your reactions to the ideas may be, use them. Nothing more than that is required.”

Please feel free to leave any thoughts or questions you might have about A Course In Miracles in the comment section and together we’ll discuss these matters.

I hope you try practicing each lesson before deciding that it doesn’t work. You might find a whole new world opening up for you.