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Filed under: Forgiveness, Non-duality | Tags: ACIM, ego, releasing, Sedona Method, spirituality
In my training as a financial analyst, a key component is valuation analysis. This is the discipline of figuring what a stock, bond, company, or other asset is worth. As you might imagine, there are many nuances, and different analysts will often come up with wildly divergent answers. The same thing seems true in other areas of garbage, as exemplified by the old saying, “One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.”
This occurred to me when I was doing A Course In Miracles lesson #133, “I will not value what is valueless.” If people disagree over the value of something, its value can’t be eternal. That’s a good reminder not to become too caught up in the material world.
As the day progressed, I realized that I was valuing some of my memories as much as anything material. I’m not talking about cherished memories here: the awful boss I had in 1996, the high school P.E. class I took, and similar slights. I hadn’t realized before how much such memories pop unbidden into my mind, so I can relive the experience and feel superior, victimized, or angry.
What is the value of a bedwetting memory from when I was five? From the way I clutch at them, you would think it provided some bedrock to my character. It certainly provides grist for the ego, which is arguably a liability rather than an asset. Are these memories compatible with inner peace? If not, they are truly valueless.
This lesson was a big wake-up call. After a year and a half of doing the Sedona Method, I thought I had let go of much of my garbage. Now, I see how much I’m still holding on to garbage. I’m pretty sure that, in this case, my garbage is not another man’s treasure.
Filed under: Forgiveness, Non-duality, spirituality | Tags: ACIM, Happiness, Judging, love, Sedona Method
When I use the Sedona Method to work on a goal, I invariably have the thought “I don’t deserve it.” Why not? The answer goes back to the guilt and shame I feel over my past – as if punishing myself for past deeds will somehow help.
I had some new insight into this, thanks to A Course in Miracles. I wrote a few weeks ago about the lesson, “To give and to receive are one in truth.” I realized that giving peace and joy to others created it in me. I found it much easier than just trying to create self-love out of nowhere, something I still find very hard.
Today I’m on ACIM lesson 119, which reviews that same topic, “To give and to receive are one in truth.” As I meditated on it, it occurred to me that the same applies to being deserving.
I’ve long felt that most people don’t deserve happiness. I’ve been very judgmental – everyone is too dumb, greedy, lazy, or (ironically) too worldly and not focused enough on spirituality. If we’re all one, what does that make me?
This has been a major unexplored flaw in my thinking. I try to love people, and see their perfection. However, I judge myself against them. I used to make comparisons on worldly possessions and needs; now, I’m more “spiritual” in that I make comparisons based on happiness. (“Sure, she’s rich, but she’s obviously miserable…”)
It’s time for me to acknowledge that everyone deserves happiness. Even if I don’t get it myself, everyone else should still have it. The more I think about others deserving it, the more I feel that I do too.
Filed under: Forgiveness, God, spirituality, World | Tags: ACIM, ego, God, love, releasing, World
A few months ago I wrote a post about self-love. I had realized that forgiving myself was easier than loving myself.
I had an insight yesterday into why loving myself is so difficult. I was doing A Course In Miracles lesson 110, “I am as God created me.” The core of this lesson, that there’s a core of divine perfection within, is something that the Workbook has covered many times – I guess it just took a lot of repetition to get through to me.
Loving myself, in the sense of true, unconditional love, effectively requires me to let go of my ego and separateness, revealing the divine inside. My existence in the (illusory) world has been full of problems, guilt, blame, and judgment. How could I possibly love myself in that context? My actions in this world don’t merit love.
Therefore, to love myself, I have to put aside what I’ve done in the world (and what the world has done to me). Loving myself, in effect, requires dropping my whole story, my sense of separation, my being special and unique. Isn’t that the end goal of the path to enlightenment? It’s a difficult place to start.
Maybe some people have an easy time jumping into self-love. As I wrote earlier, though, it’s easy to instead fall into the trap of searching for worldly deeds to pat ourselves on the back about, thus reinforcing the ego.
As I let go of my story, I have more moments of love towards myself and others. For me, it seems to be a consequence, not a catalyst, of letting go.
Filed under: Forgiveness, God, Suffering | Tags: ACIM, ego, God, Guilt, Happiness, Sedona Method, Suffering
Over the past few days, I’ve come to an important realization: we have an obligation to be happy.
I credit this insight mostly to A Course In Miracles. I recently did Lesson 100, which states, “My part is essential to God’s plan for salvation.” The lesson goes on to explain that my part is to be happy. I can then spread joy to everyone else. Seen this way, wallowing in misery is a downright selfish choice.
It’s been hard for me to be happy. Between my chronic Crohn’s Disease, the stresses of my job, and the continual drumbeat of terrible national and world news (which I must follow thanks to my job), it’s been much easier to be sad and depressed.
One of my recurring self-destructive ego thoughts has been that I don’t deserve to be happy. A Course In Miracles addresses this very directly. Sin is not real, and anything undeserving I think I’ve done is merely illusion. In fact, the workbook covers this in the context of happiness in Lesson 101. However, knowing that intellectually hasn’t made it much easier.
However, seeing happiness as an obligation changes the equation. Regardless of whether I deserve to be happy, I owe it to everyone else to be happy! It’s not selfish to be happy, it’s the ultimate charitable act.
Much of the earlier Course material made sense on an intellectual level, but I had trouble applying it on an emotional level. I understood that feeling guilt was pointless, but my ego kept piling it on. Now, I have a very rational counter to the ego: even if there were some value in the guilt hurting me, it’s wrong to let my guilt hurt the world.
Yesterday and today, I’ve been using the Sedona Method to work on the goal statement, “I allow myself to be happy.” I’ve tried to do that before, but my ego got in my way. Now, I’m rapidly feeling happier than I have in a long time.
I finally understand that we can simply choose to let ourselves be happy. I had heard this before and not believed it. Now, I see that I simply never allowed myself to make the choice!
Filed under: Forgiveness, Non-duality | Tags: ACIM, Byron Katie, Judging, The Work, Zen
Today, I’m on lesson 64 of A Course in Miracles. This lesson mentions that the decisions I’ll make today “are all really very simple. Each one will lead to happiness or unhappiness.” That’s great to know, but how do I tell the difference? I’ve spent a fair chunk of time reflecting on that this morning. (My Crohn’s Disease woke me up around 3:00 AM, which gave me several hours to think.)
As I’ve mentioned in several recent posts, I’ve realized that judgment is the key. Passing judgment can’t create happiness. This meshes well with what Byron Katie teaches in The Work. It’s clear from her writings that she never passes judgment on what’s happening. She gives her books names like “Loving What Is” and “Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are” for a reason.
To date, I’ve focused my efforts to be less judgmental at people. However, I see now that I’m still passing judgment on everything that happens throughout the day. My illness is causing me pain – that’s bad. The stock market is up – that’s good. My daughter’s meeting was rescheduled, making me change my plans for the day – that’s bad.
I think that the real decisions throughout the day are whether we’ll judge what’s happening. There’s a Zen story about a boy who gets a horse as a gift. A series of events ensue that everyone judges as a good or bad, but the alternating nature of the events makes clear that the judgments are worse than pointless. That story never really struck me before as it does now.
Not judging people is an important goal for me. However, it’s simply a part of the larger goal: not judging life. Everything that happens to me forces a decision: to judge or not? As I think it through, the answer is obvious.
Filed under: Forgiveness, Non-duality | Tags: ACIM, affirmations, ego, Forgiveness, love, Sedona Method
There’s a Sedona Method exercise in which you sit and simply give yourself love. I’ve always had a hard time with this exercise. For me, it all too often became an ego-reinforcing self-justification: “I’m not so bad. I’m actually a pretty good person. Yeah, I love myself.” It felt a little too much like something from Affirmation Girl.
I’ve long known that this wasn’t the point. The exercise is supposed to be about divine love, feeling the perfection of our underlying Beingness. That is, the point is to transcend our ego, not reinforce it. I still found the exercise very hard to do in that sense.
(As I get better at detecting my ego’s tricks, I understand my difficulty better. After all, it’s like an ego-dream come true: an opportunity to distort an exercise into something that will directly justify and reinforce the ego! It’s a great chance for an ego-preservation exercise.)
I recently realized, largely due to my work with A Course in Miracles, that my guilt keeps me from diving self-love. My self-love efforts have been a type of egocentric self-love, an exact parallel to the egocentric forgiving I discussed last week. Trying to make my ego feel better about my ego is just like trying to make my ego feel better about someone else’s ego: a pointless exercise, even if I succeed.
Thus, a simple change in the exercise helped me a lot. If I sit and give myself forgiveness, there’s much less opportunity for ego distortion. My ego can’t truly forgive, because it can’t let go of judging. So, sitting and forgiving myself, in the sense of realizing that there’s perfection underneath the ego, gets me much more in touch with that divine love.
Egocentric love, whether loving myself or someone else, is just another form of judging. I find giving myself forgiveness to be much more effective at helping me lay down the burden of judgment.
Filed under: Forgiveness | Tags: ACIM, Byron Katie, ego, Forgiveness, Guilt
I’ve been working hard to become a more forgiving person. As I wrote on the day after Yom Kippur, I can see a perfect symmetry between guilt and blame. Once I realized that there’s no difference between forgiving others and forgiving myself, I redoubled my efforts.
However, today I read something in A Course in Miracles that makes me wonder if I’ve been going about forgiving the wrong way. The text seems to say that the way to forgive is not to perceive others’ errors in the first place. In contrast, perceiving the error, and then decided to overlook it, is an egocentric way to forgive.
I have to admit that I’ve tended towards the egocentric approach. I’m not even sure how to not perceive others’ errors. Perhaps I should retract everything I wrote yesterday; maybe I do need some breakthrough in perception.
At least this gives me some new clarity on Byron Katie’s approach. In her book Loving What Is, she makes the non-dualistic point that everything we blame others for is a projection of ourselves. Her “four questions” are a way to illustrate this. Until now, I’ve missed the full significance of this: her technique doesn’t help us forgive, but makes us see that there’s nothing to forgive.
At some level, I think I’ve understood this for some time. However, my ego didn’t (and still doesn’t) want to understand. And why should it? Having my ego nobly overlook someone else’s misdeed is pretty satisfying. (“Look ma! No blame! Aren’t you proud?”) My ego has tricked me again, leading me into the kind of forgiving that gives me the illusion of forward progress, while actually reinforcing the ego instead.
I had a brief flurry of activity with Byron Katie’s “Judge Your Neighbor Worksheet” a couple of months ago. (It’s simply a worksheet with her four questions on it, which you can download here if you don’t have her book.) While the process seemed very productive, I moved on to other things. I’m now sure that was because the process deeply threatened my ego. That’s a good sign it’s worth my time to revisit it!
Filed under: Forgiveness, Suffering | Tags: anger, ego, Forgiveness, Suffering
The end goal of all non-dualistic practices is to destroy (or at least overcome) the ego in order to end the suffering of separation. I see myself as far from reaching that goal. At least I can see areas where I’ve stopped creating so much suffering for myself. Seeing others’ reactions to the financial crisis has given me one clear example.
The crisis seems to have brought declamations of righteous anger. I’m no stranger to righteous anger myself. One particularly petty personal case will illustrate the point.
Several years ago, my long-distance phone company started offering local phone service. I tried three times to accept their offer. Each time, they failed to transfer my service, canceled my old billing account, and set me up with a new long-distance account at (very high) basic rates. After finally sorting out all of the mess, one of the accounts contained a credit balance of $5.
I tried repeatedly over the course of months to get them to give me back my $5. I spent literally 10 hours on the phone, plus many more hours brooding with anger. After all their mistakes, they owed that $5 to me! I diverted time I could have been spending with my baby or my wife, doing productive work, or just relaxing to haranguing the phone company. I at least took smug satisfaction that it was costing them much more than $5 to handle my calls. The righteous anger I experienced felt good to my ego. I knew I was in the right. In the end, though, I received neither satisfaction nor the $5. Even had a received the $5, it wouldn’t have come close to being worth the emotional distress I heaped on myself, nor the time I wasted.
Clearly, my righteous anger didn’t serve me well. Now, I hear people, ranging from neighbors to politicians to columnists, dishing up righteous anger about the financial crisis. I’ve actually heard people say that it’s better to let Wall Street firms fail, even if that would hurt everyone else, because “those bastards deserve it.” Others make similar comments about measures to help struggling homeowners, because it’s not right to help those who made bad decisions when most of us have to meet our obligations. Again, they’ll often say that it’s worth “teaching them a lesson” even if that deepens or prolongs the crisis.
What amazes me is that, a mere couple of years ago, I would have been among those getting upset and calling for blood. Now, such attitudes seem like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. These ideas, just like my pursuit of $5, are predicated on a dangerously fallacious idea: it’s worth hurting myself in order to hurt someone else in the name of righteousness.
I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve responded to a situation by laying blame. And for what? The irony is that, like all endeavors of the ego, it accomplishes nothing. Only forgiveness allows for improvement.
The financial crisis has put this issue into such sharp relief because it’s the first time in my life that I’ve seen so much vitriol couched in explicitly self-destructive terms. Now I see that it’s self-destructive even when it’s not made explicit. I hope the clarity will help me eliminate righteous anger from my life.
Yesterday was Yom Kippur. As a result, I spent a lot of time thinking about guilt.
I realized, even more deeply than when I wrote yesterday’s post, that an absence of guilt is essential for forgiving others. I thought of the story from John 7:53 of the adulteress. Jesus said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” I previously thought this was a misguided message that nobody’s perfect, and only someone who is perfect could dispense justice. But now I have a much more profound understanding of the text.
Jesus could say this with confidence, because a person without sin wouldn’t cast the first stone. We judge and blame to justify or minimize our own guilt. When we are free from guilt, we no longer have any reason to judge others. Thus, the story tells us not that nobody’s perfect, but rather that by shedding our guilt we can become perfectly forgiving.
The fact that the story is missing from many first millennium bibles reinforces my conviction that the story has this non-dualistic meaning. Many branches of Christianity would find anathematic the suggestion that people should stop feeling guilt.
This understanding has also given me new insight into Byron Katie’s The Work. I see now a perfect symmetry between guilt and blame. To cure the one, we need to forgive ourselves, to cure the other, we need to forgive others. The missing piece of the puzzle for me is that the forgiveness is all the same. We can’t stop judging others without being willing to stop judging ourselves, and vice versa.
Up until now, I’ve been working on forgiving others and forgiving myself as if they were two different things. In a way, it’s a huge relief to realize that they’re the same, and I have one less thing to work on.
Last night was the start of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. I haven’t celebrated Yom Kippur since I moved out of my parents’ house many years ago. Normally, I let it pass without much thought. However, this year is different.
In a bit of synchronicity, yesterday I was on Lesson 39 of Workbook of A Course in Miracles. A major theme of the lesson is “If guilt is hell, what is its opposite?” This thought made me look at Yom Kippur in a new light.
As a child, I found the most memorable part of the Yom Kippur service to be the scapegoat. The idea is that you touch the goat, and pass your sins of the past year to the goat. The goat is then sacrificed or released into the wild to meet its doom. (Traditionally, that is – I assume my synagogue simply returned the goat to wherever they borrowed it from.)
To my cynical mind, this seemed much like a Monopoly “get out jail free” card. But the ACIM lesson gave me new insight. The tradition is not to enable bad behavior, but rather to free us to take right action in the future. Whoever started the scapegoat tradition realized that guilt forms a barrier between God and us.
It was a particularly timely lesson for me. My job is to manage people’s investment portfolios. Despite my prudence and care, the worldwide financial panic has hit my clients’ investments along with most people’s. I have felt tremendous guilt over the outcome, even though my actions were well-considered.
I realized yesterday that my guilt serves no purpose. It won’t improve my actions in the future; on the contrary, it could paralyze me. Most importantly, it keeps me from doing the real work of spreading love and joy.
I wish I could say that this realization suddenly transformed me. Alas, I’ve tried to let go of guilt before, with only sporadic success. I think being raised Jewish implanted in my ego the stereotypical “Jewish guilt.” Guilt seems to be a favorite technique of my ego for reasserting itself.
The good news is that I understand better than ever before the importance of moving past guilt. Right now, my clients need love and peace of mind, and as Lesson 39 says, “You cannot give what you do not have.” It’s obvious to me now where I should focus my efforts.
The Seeker of Peace 