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5/31/2008 2 Real Power P.50.hurting and wouldn't mind getting away if you could, but you don't know how. So the ego says," If you come with me, you'll be free of this terrible pain you're feeling." That's exactly what you want to get away from, but you're still not sure about giving up on what the Holy Spirit is saying. so the ego has to throw in a bonus. It says," Look, if you come with me, then you can be God. You can make up your own life. You'll have your own personal identity. You can all the shots. You can be special." this's the icing on the cake. Now, not only are you going to get away from this terrible feeling you have, but on top of it, you get to be God!
Gary: I thought I was doing the review.
Pursah: Is that why you were just talking to yourself a little during Arten's presentaion.
Gary: Hey, if I can't talk to me, then who can?
Arten: Let's briefly explain why all of this seems so real you today. the ego has an ingenious plan. When you choose the ego on the metaphysical level we've been talking about, it's the same as joining with it. There is then a massive denial of everything that is in the mind that we discussed. However, when you deny something, it has to go somewhere. You think you're escaping from it by denying it, but you're not. You're really just pushing it underneath the surface and out of your anwareness. This causes it to be unconscious. So all of the new ideas that couldn't exist in wholeness--ideas like sin, guilt, fear, scarcity, death, attack, that whole can of worms--are denied and then projected outward. Even on the level of the world, a psychologist will tell you that projection always follows denial. But here we're talking about something on an incredible scale. As J puts it in the Course," You do not realize the magnitude of that one error." He also says, " Listening to the ego's voice means that you believe it is possible to attack God, and that a part of Him has been torn away by you. Fear of retaliation from without follows, because the severity of the guilt is so acute that it must be projected." Do you get the stunning implications of all this?
Gary: I can't believe I'm going to Australia
Arten: Moving along, we see that everything you wanted to escape from, all the terrible things you thought were true about 2 Real Power P.49.way, which we'll call the Holy Spirit's interpretation, and the wrong, which we'll call the ego's interpretation. God did not send the Holy spirit to rescue you. The holy Spirit could be said to ne your memory of your true home with God, which is the right part of your mind. The ego is the wrong part of your mind. At first people think that the Course is talking to them as a person, because that's what they think they are. But the "you" that the Course is addressing is actually your seemingly separated mind that need to choose to listen to the right teacher instead of the wrong one.
That's not easy, because you feel terrible, and the ego is going to paly on your fears. In this new experience of consciousness, you think you've lost everything, and the ego is more than happy to make you think you've done something wrong. " You're in for it,man, God's very angry at what you've done." Now, if you've done something wrong, what's that but the idea of sin? And if you've sinned, then that means you're guilty. And if you're guilty, that means that you're going to be punished. But on this level, you think you're going to be published by God Himself! That results in the fear of God, which you still have, even though it's unconscious to you. The terrible guilt in your mind over this is still buried there, but with the mind being holographic, the experience of the truth is still burried there as well.
Pursah: Yes, and that truth, given to you by the Holy Spirit, is a completely different story. The Holy Spirit's message is:" What's your problem? You know God. You've been with Him forever. He gives you everything. What's He ever done except love you? All you have to do is forget about this silly idea and go home. Problem sloved."
Arten: The ego has to come up with something fact. It likes the idea of having a sperate identity. So it says, " Look, you've got to get away, and I have a place we can go." The ego knows you're 2 Real Power P.48.perceive as broken off and separate. And it is this that overcomes the fear of death. For separation fragments must decay and die, but wholness is immortal.
Gary: Immortal. I don't recall the Course using that world very much.
Arten: You'd be surprised. Please continue.
Gary: All right. As a response to the false condition of separation, real forgiveness denies what isn't true and accepts what's true/ As J puts it in this Course, " It denies the ability of anything not of God to affect you."
Arten: That reflects the Course's knowledge that "what is immortal cannot be attacked; what is but temporal has no effect."
Gary: Okay, immortal guy. for most of us, our experience that we are here seems very real, but to understand why that's the case, we have to go back to the metaphysical level, which is now unconscious to us. We'll see why in a minute. But on that metaphysical level, before the universe of time and space was made, we feel an absolutely terrible loss, and we experience it on a scale that we can't even begin to imagine now.
Pursah: Every good. You need to understand that before that, everything was pefect in your experience. You were totally taken care of, totally provided for, with on problems ad nothing but ecstasy. The perfect joy of this cannot be translated into words. But now, with this idea of separtion, it's as though you've made a major blunder. It's like you've lost God, which means it's like you've lost everything! The only experience in this world that could come close to matching how you felt at that time of the original seperation from God would be if the person you love most in this world died. What happens when that person die? You're separate. You think you can never get them back. of course that's not true. because on one ever dies, but it feels and looks that way to you. It's really a symnol of the first separation, which was from God on that metaphysical level, has you feeling terrible.
Arten: Because opposites follow was a resulte of division, there are now two possible ways of thinking about all of this: 2 Real Power P.47.This different experience that appears to happen to us is occuring on a massive metaphysical level. We'll call this experience consciousness. As far as I know, A course in Miracles is the only spiritual teaching in the world that exposes consciousness for what it really is. The Course says:" Consciousness, the level of perception, was the first split introduced into the mind after the separation, making the mind a perceiver rather than a creator. Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego."
So from twoness springs forth multiplicity, but it's all symbolic of the original idea of sepration. Multiplicity breeds chaos. But underneath it all there are basic ideas, and these ideas can only seem to be real when you experience yourself as being apart from oneness--for example, the dieas of scarcity and death. There can be no scarcity in fullness, but onece you have ideas like seperation and opposites, then you have the possibility of all kinds of weird things showing up. that's why it says in the Book of Genesis, " You shall not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat of it you shall die." well, good and evil are opposites, and once you have opposites then you have death. There can be no death in Heaven, where there is only eternal life, but once you have opposites, then you have a seeming opposite to life, which is death. It doesn't really exist. That's why the Course says, right in its Introduction that "the opposite of love is fear, but what is allencompassing can have no opposite." What is all--encompassing is ture, and what's not all-encompassing, or perfectly whole, doesn't really exist.
Arten: The Course also says, about your salvation, that "it restores to your awareness the wholeness of the fragments you
2 Real Power P.46.it. However, a computer program only knows how to give a literal translation, and simply provides the words that are the closest to those being translated. The computer can't translate the meaning, which is what a real traslator does. In describing how I said at the beginning of the book that I felt as though I had a relationship with Jsus, the translation came out, " The writer bathed with Jesus."
Pursah: That bathing-with-Jeus idea might go over in Holland.
Gary: I'd rather bathe with you.
Pursah: I'll be kind and overlook that. You're still freaked out from seeing all those bodies.
Gary: Yeah, and you know, some of them weren't bad.
Arten: How about if we move on and save people a few lifetimes here? We haven't finished our review of the teachings. For example, we've talked about the unconscious guilt that's in the mind and how it has to be removied by the Holy Spirit. Why? How did it get there? Would you like to share some more of your learning with us?
Gary: Sure, as long as you correct me, if necessary. Let's say you have God, and God is perfect oneness. There isn't anything else. God creates, but what He creates is exactly the same as He is. It's a sharing of perfect love that's beyond anything we can understand with a mind that isn't whole. Yet the experience of it is so great that it's totally awesome. Anyway, there's this thought that seems to occur. It's a meaningless thought that's over in just an instant. It's totally insignificant. It;s a separation thought like, What would it be like for me to go off and creat on my own? that idea implies an individual existence.
As you mentioned, God doesn't repond to it. He's no fool and keeps reality perfect and one, but that thought of speration makes something different appear to happen in our experience. Now here's the hard part: It doesn't really happy. It only appears to. Just like it's possible for a dream I have at night to seem totally real, this dream may also seem totally real, but it's not. In fact, other parts of the dream are made to seem less real so we'll think that the most clear part of the dream is real. That's a function of levels, which can't even exist in perfect oneness. 5/30/2008 2 Real Power P.45.Incidentally, as well as not spending too much time describing us, I'd like to point out that you made the right decision in not taking pictures of us the first time around and also getting rid of those tapes, which you should also do this time.
Gary: It was very tempting for me to hold on to them, you know.
Pursah: We know. But if they got out, then people would have been distracted. Insteand of focusing on the teachings, now the conversation would become about whether or not the tapes are authentic. Who's really on the tapes? there are already too many distractions out there. Use the tapes for your own purpose of accuracy, and then get rid of them agian. If somebody doesn't like it or doesn't think you're explaining your actions adequately, then so be it. The bigger picture is more important. Let's kep people's focus where it belongs, bro.
Gary: Bro? You're reminding me of Hawaii. I've still only been there twice, you know.
Arten: Take heart, bro. You'll be there two more times within the next year or so, once on the way back from Australia.
Gary: Austrilia! Are you serious?
Arten: Not too serious, but you are going to those places to share the teachings.
Gary: I don't believe it! When I was a kid, a place like Australia may as well have been Mars, it seemed so unreachable.
Arten: Well, it's not unreachable anymore. just remember when you get there that it's all a mind trip. Also, people are basically the same everywhere. They may speak differently, but they think pretty much the same. Eventually you'll be going to places where you'll need a translator.
Gary: Let's hope they do a better job of translation than that computer gizmo we tried.
Note: After the publication of The Disappearance of the Universe, may first publisher, D. Patrick Miller, and I heard that there was some talk about the book on th eInternet from other countries. One of them was Holland. We found a Web page where someone was talking about the book and troed to have a computer program translate 2 Real Power P.44.forgive, you may feel you are being guided in some way by the Holy Spirit as to what you should do or not do. It doesn't have to happen that often. You don't have to be bombarded with inspired ideas. Just one inspiried idea can make a huge difference in your life. That's inspiration, which comes as an aftereffect of forgiveness in much the same way as it comes as an aftereffect of true prayer.
Gary: These bodies you showed me, which were all me...what about the ones that looked like aliens? What's that all about?
Pursah: You'll be told all you need to know, brother, Sometimes an incarnation doesn't take place as a human being, even though those who are human spent most, but not all, of their lifetimes as humans. It has to do with the way the universe is set up.What's important is that you realize what your lifetime is for, which is to use it to get home.
Gary:It's not goona be easy for me to describe what I just saw.
Arten: Don't worry about it, just do it. Anyway, I could repeat a piece of advice we gave to you before. Don't spend a lot of time trying to describe us, and that would include the way we looked as Thomas and Thaddaeus. The purpose here is not to dwell on bodies. What we do is use bodies to teach you of the unreality of all bodies, and to stress that ultimately no body is more important or more real than any other body. That's what the Holy Spirit does, He uses the illusion to lead you out of the illusion. True forgiveness is an illusion, too, but it gets you home. without it, you'd be stuck here in unhappy dreamland forever.
Gary: It's not always unhappy.
Arten: Just another trick, brother. I'm not saying it isn't good sometimes. But even then, without wholeness, it feels like there's something missing. What's missing is your perfect oneness with God. the universe of time and space is meant to cover over the one and only problem,which is the seeming separation from God, and especially the one and only solution, which is to go home through forgiveness. As the Course says, and this is very important: " A sense of seperation from God is the only lack you really need correct." If that's the only lack, then all the others are simply symbolic of the first and only lack. 2 Real Power P.43.condition of separation from God. Yet there can be no separation from God. Only God exists, and all else is fa. The Course is completely uncompromising on that, for those who care to see it.
Arten: Remember what I told you before about the idea of separation from God. Because your idea is not of God, He does not respons to it. To respond to it would be to give it reality. If God Himself were to acknowledge anything except the idea of perfect oneness, then there would no longer be perfect oneness. There would no longer be a pefect state of Heaven for you to return to. As you will see, you never rally left anyway. You're still there, but you have entered into a nightmare state of illusion.
Gary: Is that why Bill Theford referred to the Course as the Christian Vedanta?
Arten: Yes! Bill understood what the Course was saying. Only the perfect, nondualistic oneness of God is real, and nothing else is real, which is exactly what that ancient Hindu text, the Vedanta , was saying, although of course, people then took it and misinterpreted it in much the same way they're doing today with the course.
It's imperative that you stick to the message. Don't compromise on it. A course in Miracles is purely nondualistic. We don't want the same thing to happen to the message of the Course that happened to J's message 2,000 yeas ago. that's one of the main reasons we're back: to help keep peope focused, including you. Want you to tell it straight, and if someone criticizes you or your message, then after you forgive them, tell them that you are in error. You have the right to not remain silent.
Gary: What about taht Course Workbook lesson, If I defend myself I am attacked?
Pursah: Remember that the teachings of the Course are always applied at the level of the mind, and never at the level of form or the physica;. That's why it's it's a course in cause and not effect. In your mind, you use right-minded ideas. Then sometimes after you Lesson 122 forgiveness offers everything I want.1. What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safely , and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?
2. All this forgiveness offers you, and more. It sparkles on your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. It smoothes your forhead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack And when you wake again, if offers you another day of happiness and peace. All this forgiveness offers you, and more.
3. Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiveness eyes upon the world. It lets you recognize the Son of God, and clears your memory of all dead thoughts so that remembrance of your Father can arise across the threshold of yoru mind. What would you want forgiveness cannot give? What gifts but these are worthy to be sought? What fancied value, trivial effect or transient promise, never to be kept, can hold more hope than what forgiveness brings?
4. Why would you seek an answer other than the answer that will answer everything? Here is the perfect answer, given to imperfect questions, meaningless requests, halfhearted willingness to hear, and less than halfway diligence and partial trust. Here is the answer! Seek for it no more. You will not find another one instead.
5. God's plan for your salvation cannot change, nor can it fail. Be thankful it remains exactly as He planned it. Changelessly it stands before you like an open door, with warmth and welcome calling from beyong the doorway, bidding you to enter in and make yourself at home, where you belong.
6. Here is the answer! Would you stand outside while all of Heaven waits for you within? Forgive and be forgiven. As you give you will receive. There is no plan but this for the salvation of Son of God. Let us today rejoice that this is so, for here we have an answer, clear and plain,beyond deceit in its simplicity. All the complexities the world has spun of fragile cobwebs dissappear before the power and the majesty of the extremely simple statement of the truth.
7. Here is the answer! Do not turn away in aimless wandering again. Accept salvation now. It is the gift of God, and not the world. The world can give no gifts of any value to a mind that has received what God has given as its own. God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hid their nothingness from you.
8. Open your eyes today and look upon a happy world of safety and of peace. forgiveess is the means by which it comes to take the palce of hell. In quietness it rises up to greet your open eyes, and fill your heart with deep tranquility as ancient truths, forever newly born, arise in your awareness. What you will remember then can never be described. Yet your forgiveness offers it to you.
9. Remembering the gifts forgiveness gives, we undertake our practicing today with hope and faith that this will be the day salvation will be ours. Earnestly and gladly will we seek for it today, aware we hold the key within our hands, accepting Heaven's answer to the hell we made, but where we would remain no more.
10. Morning and evening do we gladly give a quarter of an hour to the search in which the end of hell is guaranteed. Begin in hopefulness, for we have reached the turning point at which the road becomes far easier. And now the way is short that yet we travel. We are close indeed to the appointed ending of the dream.
11. Sink into happiness as you begin these practice periods, for they hold out the sure rewards of questions answered and what your acceptance of the answer brings. Today it will be given you to feel the peace forgiveness offers, and the joy the lifting of the veil holds out to you.
12. Before the light you will receive today the world will fade until it disappears, and you will see another world arise you have no words to picture. Now we walk directly into light, and we receive the gifts that have been held in store for us since time began, kept waiting for today.
13. Forgiveness offers everything you want. Today all things you want are given you. Let not your gifts recede throughout the day, as you return again to meet a world of shifting change and bleak appearance. Retain your gifts in clear awareness as you see the changeless in the heart of change; the light of the truth behind appearances.
14. Be tempted not to let your gifts slip by and drift into forgetfulness, but hold them firmly in your mind by your attempts to think of them at least a minute as each quarter of an hour passes by, Remind yourself how precious are these gifts with this reminder, which has power to hold your gifts in your awareness through the day:
Forgiveness offers everything I want
Today I have accepted this as true.
Today I have received the gifts of God. 5/27/2008 2 Real Power P.42.Gary: All right, all right. Can you go back one more?
Note: Now Pursah changed again and appeared as a ma approximately 30 year old, and another man appeared where Arten had been sitting. Because of memories I had after Arten and Pursah's final visit of the first series, I realized that I was looking at Thomas and Thaddaeus, who were later called saints. The most impressive feature of the two, aside from their very kind demeanor, was the fact that they looked much shorter than the people of today. I was not given much time to gaze at them, as Arten and Pursah returned very quickly to the form of the bodies they occupied in their final lifetimes, which occurred in our future. A part of understanding this would be that time is holographic: Past, present, and future all occur simultaneously,and, according to the Course, it's really already over. But we have to complete our lessons to make that real in our experience.
Pursah: There. So now you've seen yourself as you appeared in the past as Thomas, as you look in the presnt, and as me in the future. You've also seen Thaddaeus as he appeared in the past, and as Arten in the future. I think it would be appropriate to let you relax for a minute.
Note: After sitting there for another minute or so with my mouth open in stunned contemplation, trying to absorb the astounding visual trip of the previous hour, I started to focus a little, and Pursah began speaking again.
Pursah: The bodies you occupy in your various dream incarnations are symbols of duality. Thus, you have just as many lifetimes where you are rich as you are poor, good as you are evil, good-looking as you are unattactive to the eye, famous as you are obscure, health as you are sick; and every polarity, duality, and opposite you could possibly think of. None of them are true. It's all a trick. You are your own counterpart. Ultimately, the bodies that are not your own incarnations are also you. Like your own bodies, they relfect the opposites of duality because they symbolize the 2 Real Power P.41.Suddenly they started to change even faster. Within a minute, there were two steams of bodies flowing in front of me, showing countless incarnations of different forms and dressed from different time periods. I often remembered that Arten had asked me, " Would you like to see them?" That's when it hit home. All of these bodies were me! They were showing me all of my different incarnations, thousands of them
The rapid parade of bodies was hypnotizing. I felt almost drawn into the stream of forms, as though I could join with Arten and Pursah and change bodies myself. Then I realized that I had already been changing bodies as long as there had been time, which was why I appeared to be here now in the first place. suddenly the idea of being "Gary" felt much less significant. If I appeared to incarnate as all of these bodies, then how special was the one I appeared to be in now? Arten and Pursah kept changing. there seemed to be a swirling energy thoughout the room that peaked at the area of the couch where they were sitting. As the bodies went by, one would occasionally appear that didn't really know humman, although they were definitely humanoid. I intuited that these were perhaps alien life-forms, but they were going by so quickly I couldn't get a very clear look, only a brief glimpse. Most of the bodies were a variety of men and women ( and others not recognizable) of varying shapes, sizes, and colors: young and old, babies and the elderly, well dressed and practically naked. For what seemed like an hour, it kept flowing--this rapid, holographic shows of apparently real bodily images-- and then it all stopped instantly, with Arten and Pursah appearing once again in the same places where they started.
Gary: Hey, wait! Go back one!
Note: Pursah then became a perfect mirror image of my body as it appears now, but Arten disappeared.
Gary: Where's Arten?
Pursah appearing as Gary: Nice try, but it's not time yet for you to see Who Arten is in this lifetime. We'll talk about that subject later on. 2 Real Power P.40. Gary: It's easy to forgive your special love relationship--your family, friends, and loves--just because you love them. On the other hand, your special hate relationships, the people you don't like, well, you're never goona forgive those bastards because they don't deserve it. But you think the people you love deserve only good. so even if a member of your family killed somebody, you'd be right there in the courtroom, rooting for them to get off. Yet real love and forgiveness wouldn't exclude anyone. They apply to everyone. They're not special, but universal. The wholeness of them is what makes them real.
Pursah: Yes. Now, part of what makes the unral seem possible is that you make some bodies more special than others, and it's a trick so you'll find some of those bodies guilty in your mind and project your own unconscious guilt onto them, which is the reason you made then up in the first place. But, what if you really understood that those bodies aren't so special, if anything, just by the sheer number of them that you and those close to you have occupied?
Gary: How many bodies have I occupied?
Arten: Thoughts of them.
Gary: You mentioned something about thousands of lifetimes during your last visit of the first series, but that seems like an aweful lot.
Arten:Really? would you like to see them?
Gary: What do you mean?
Arten: Hold on to your seat, brother, You're in for a mindblower.
Gary: Uh-oh. I don't know if I like the sound of that.
Note: What happened next made me gasp. Arten and Pursah began rapidly changing into different bodies before my eyes. Pursah became a black man, and Arten became an elderly woman. They stayed that way for two or three seconds so I could see them and then changed again. This time Pursah was a tennage girl, perhaps 16 or 1, and Arten was a boy of the same general age, reflecting the duality of male and female. All of these bodies looked perfectly real, just like Arten and Pursah's other bodies.
2 Real Power P.39.of them who play fast and loose with the Course's message. If you point out to them that what they're teaching isn't the same as what the Course is saying, then they'll call you a "Course fundamentalist"! Apparently a Course fundamentalist is anyone who thinks you should go by what the Course actually teaches. You'll go a long way toward ending all that silliness. Your message is so clear that other teachers won't be able to get away from it, and they'll have to adapt or else look like they don't know the Course very well.
I've got another compliment for you, also. I believe that in the last couple of years you've become a genuinely spiritual man.
Gary: That's right, baby.
Pursah: So we can see how silly it is to deal with the effect and how important it is to deal with the cause, which is the mind. That's where the real power is. Before we do a little bit more of our review, we want to make sure you understand that all of your difficult relationships were set up ahead of time and that you wanted them.
Gary: Yeath, so someon comes along whom I did wrong in a previous life, which I've forgotten, and they give me a hard time, or worse, and I just think it's their fault. The truth is that in a previous lifetime I gave them a hard time, or worse, and they're just in the payback phase. Usually neither one of us knows why we're haveing such a hard time getting along with the other person. But the whole thing was really set up ahead of time in an ego-ridden script of time and space, where we talk turns being the victim and the victimizer. Would you say that's accurate?
Pursah: As true as a dream can be. The reason some of your forgiveness lessons are so hard is because your unconscious mind remembers the bad relationship you had with the other person in a previous lifetime, so you've been set up to have tremendous unconscious resistance to forgiving them in this lifetime. Plus, there's the resistance to giving up your personal identity that is already there, because the ego senses that if you practice forgiveness, then this is its end. Everyone has these past-life relathionships, and the memories are unconscious. That's why it's so much harder to forgive your special hate relationships than your special love relationships. 2 Real Power P.38.We're watching our own projection, which is actually coming from our own unconscious mind. It's like when I go to the movies. I want to forget that it's not real. I want it to be real, and and my attention is diverted to the screen. Maybe I'll start reacting to the screen as I get into the story, but there's nothing happening there. The screen is just an effect. and the images I'm seeing are actually coming from someplace else. If I tried to fix the screen in order to change what's on it, it wouldn't do any good. But there's a projector. It's hidden in the back. I'm not supposed to think about that. Yet that's the cause. That's where what I'm seeing is really coming from.
If I want to have real power, then I'd be a lot better off dealing with the cause rathere than the effect. If I can change what's in the projector, namely the film, then that would change everything. But in life, or what passes for life, most people spend their entire lives trying to fix what's on the screen, which is just the effect, instead of changing the projector and what's in it, which is the mind and whatever through system it adheres to.
The thoughts come first. I remember reading about doctors doing a studyof depressed people and their thoughts. The doctors assumed the patients were having all these bad thoughts because they were depressed. But what they found out was pretty startling. It turned out that the patients were depressed because they had been having all these bad thoughts!
Arten: very good. You know, you're almost coherent at times.
Gary: That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me
Arten: Don't tell anyone.
Pursah: BTW, you'll use that cause-and-effect movie analogy in your workshops. Your public teachings, along with your first book, will force other Course teachers to get more accurate about what the Course is teaching. Right now there are a lot
2 Real Power P.37.Gary: I'm trying. Hell, I even succeed a lot. I used to get irritated when a certain politician, I'll let you guess which one, came on the TV screen. I'd react and get upset at how I perceived he was screwing up the country and the world. Then one day he came on the screen and started to react to him, and I remembered the truth and started to forgive him. Like you taught me, that's the heardest part... Remembering the truth when the stuff hits the fan. So I started to forgive him and then I thought, you know, he doesn't even know I'm watching! So who's the one who's suffering here? He's probably having a good time. He doesn't know it's an illusion/ He thinks he's really the President.
Pursah: Yes, forgiveness is always a gift you're giving to urself, not the person you think you're forgiving. You're the one who receives the benefits, in both practical and metaphysical terms. True, you're acting as a reminder of the truth to the other person. All though has effects on some level, and it's good for the other person, too. Not that the other person is really there. I'm talking about a seemingly split-off aspect of your own mind.
Gary: Yeah, I think that's really cool. I'm actually rejoining with myself at the level of the mind when I forgive. I'm becoming whole again. Plus, if I forgive, I don't suffer. And I forgive after just 1 minute instead of 30 minutes, then that's 29 minutes of my life that I didn't spend suffering.
Arten: Yes. Do you remember how your father-in-law used to get so upset when Bill Clinton came on the TV?
Gary: I sure do. He used to actually get red sometimes. He'd even have to change the channel once in a while or leave the room. He suffered for eight years, and then he died. And I can almost guarantee you that Bill Clinton was having a good time.
Getting back to our "reincarnation instant breadfast" here, you seemed to be hinting that the reason I have a harder time forgiving some people more than others is because I've known the person who's hard to forgive in another lifetime, and I've got something going on with him or her that I'm not consciously aware of right now. And I understand what you're saying about how it looks like we're reincarnating, but we're really not; it;s really just one big gigantic freakin's mind trip. We don't really go anywhere. It;s like the Course says... We're reviewing mentally what has gone by."
2 Real Power P.36.gotten me. But I also knew that they were doing more than just playing a joke. They had managed to bring the point home to me even more.
Arten: YEs we were watching you at the beginning of the movie to see your reaction
Gary: You mean the quotation at the beginning, " By his wounds we are healed." I guess if we're healed by them, then that would explain why Mel showed so many of them
Arten: That's the ego thought system, brother. We'll talk more about that and the movie later. There's a section in A Course in Miracles called " The Hero of the Dream". When we get into taht, we'll also discuss Passion and how the world's beliefs are so heavily rooted in the body.
Pursah: And speaking of bodies, you know that" love-holds-no-grievances idea" you've pondered so much can be thought of as the antidote to the body. As that lesson in the Course says: " To hold a grievance is to forget who you are. To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body." You've been having a tough time with certain forgiveness lessons lately.
Gary: You know it, Why is it that some people seem so easy to forgive,and some so hard?
Pursah: You've got to remember that the unconscious mind knows everything. It knows every relationship you've ever had, in any lifetime. You should also consider that the lifetimes you appear to go thourgh like a dance in which you play the role of victim in one liftime and victimizer in the next. So a murderer in this lifetime gets murdered in the next one, sometimes by the sane person whom they killed in the other lifetime.That's true with actions as well as occupations. A minister in this lifetime may be a prostitute in the next, and vice versa. In fact, the prostitute J saved from being stoned to death, who was not Mary Magdalene, had helped J in a lifetime previous to that. You're always switching roles. You may be a police officer in one of your dream lifetimes and then a criminal in the next.
Gary: Or worse, a politician.
Pursah: Politicians have issues. Be kind to them. Then you're being kind to yourself. 2 Real Power P.35.He was oppressed , and he was afflicted, yet he opened not this mounth;
Like a lamb that is lead to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb,
So he opened not his month.
And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death,
Although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mounth,
Yet it was the will of the Lord to wound him; he has put him to grief;
When he makes himself an offering for sin...
Many centuries later, Saul of Tarsus, better known as the Apostle Paul, who was in deep guit over his killing of numerous Christians, had a conflicted (part-ego) experience on the road to Damascus that caused him to take up what he thought was the cause of Jesus. Being a Jewish man who believed in the old scripure, it was not surprising or difficult for Paul to incorporate the beliefs from the above verses into his developing theology about J. This led to a religion that lost most of J's true message and substituted it with a though system of their own.
My experience with Passion wasn't the first time my teachers had told me something while being aware that I would later see or hear it at the movies, which they knew was my favorite hobby. They had pulled a similar thing on me by saying, " People are like ghosts, except on a seemingly different level. They think their bodies are alive, but they're not. They just see what they want to see."
A couple of years later, I saw the excellent film, The Sixth Sense, written and directed by M.Night Shyamalan. When the boy in the movie decided that it was time to tell the psychologist his secret, two of the lines he said about the ghosts he was seeing were:" They think they;re alive. They just see what they want to see." I almost came up out of my chair when I heard those lines during this somewhat scary and very fascinating film, knowing that my friends had 2 Real Power P.34.Pursah: There's a subject we want to cover later that can best incorporate Mel's take on the Crucifixion, but you did notice the little trick we palyed on you regarding the movie, didn't you?
Note: Pursah had told me during the first series of visits that if I wanted to see Christianity in a nutshell, all I had to do was go back to the old scripture ( they never called it the Old Testament) and read The Book of Isaiah, Chapter 53, verses 5 through 10. Their statement was published a year before Passion was released. That part of the Bible talks about a lamb being lead to the slaughter, and says: " By his wounds we are healed." It's the old idea that somehow you can atone for other people's sins through the sacrifice of an innocentf. The problem is that it was written 700 years before J, and had nothing to do with him. It was about another prophet. Later, people would try to make a prophecy out it and apply it to J, but it wasn't about him at all. They then took this belief, although it had nothing to do with what K was teaching, and superimposed it onto him, assuming that like them, he believed in a thougt system of sin, guilt, fear, suffering, sacrifice, and death.
The "trick" Pursah is referring to is that they told me to read that section, Isaiah, Chapter 53, verses 5 through 10, knowing that the statement would be published before the movie came out. Then when I went to see The Passion of the Christ, they very first thing that Mel Gibson put up on the screen was a quotation. It was from The Book of Isaiah, Chapter 53, verses 5 through 1o! What follows is a sample of those verses from the Bible, from which Mel also used an excerpt. It sisplays a thought system that was already in the unconsciousness mind, and was being expressed through the writer:
But He was woulder for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities.
Upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and by his wounds we are healed
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
2 Real Power P.33.playing my guitar, which I had done for 2o years, in order to bring in some money. I took my Les Paul Custom out of the closet, stood in my living room with it on my shoulder, and started to practice. Both of my hands and arms were occupied playing the instrument. Suddenly, and to may astonishment, I felt another hand pushing the end of the nedk of the guitar slowly but steadily toward the ground, and me along with it. It was as if an invisble entity was stopping me from playing, interfering in a firm but gentle way, and giving me a message I couldn't escape: No, this isn't what you're supposed to do anymore. I got the message. I didn't know yet exactly what I was supposed to do, but after this experience, I had a feeling it would show up. Two months later I saw Arten and Pursah for the first time, and eventually found out that I was being given a chance to dedicate the rest of my life to nothing less than a way to return home to God.
On my very first trip to California, at the end of February, I went to see Mel Gibson's just-released movie, The Passion of the Christ. I was taken aback by the suffering, brooding depiction of J and the horrific viloence of the film. I looked forward to talking with my acended visitors about it. I didn't have to wait long. Two months later their previous appearance, while sitting in my living room, Arten and Pursah were there with me once again. As always, their appearance was instantaneous, as if I were watching a television channel and ten flicked the remote control, causing the picture to change instantly. My friend's entries and exists were very similar. It was as if they were changing frequencies or even dimensions, although I certainly didn't want to limit them.
Arten: You have a lot on your mind, hotshot. Where would you like to begin?
Gary: As I'm sure you know, I went to see Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ. I'd like to talk a little about it.
Arten: Maybe a little, brother, but I think today would be best served by discussing other things.
Gary: Really? You usually talk about what I want to talk about! 2 Real Power P.32.to try to attack the book and me, the forum was turing into one of the most loving and supportive group on the Interent.
Successs didn't always fit my pictures. Even with the book starting to do very well, there always seemed to be obstacles to overcome. This included attacks, which were sometimes subtle and sometimes outrageous. When things didn't appear to be going my way, I did the best I could to practice forgiveness, knowing that the habit of application would result in spiritual experience, whether in the form of inner peace or in the kind of unpredictable mystical experiences I had grouwn accustomed to. The Course taught me that I couldn't really be attacked on the level of my mind, althought it could certainly appear that someone was attacking me. Still, at times the practice was very difficult, and I woyld delay my decision to choose the Holy Spirit as my teacher instead of the ego. This made me wonder why I couldn't always live the Course directive I was so fond of, which says," Love holds no grievances." Why was it possible to forgive some people and so difficult to forgive others?
I knew that the Course also taught," As you see him you will see yourself." Whatever way I looked at and thought about another person would surely create how I experienced myself and ultimately determine my own indentity as either spirit or a body. I wanted to know why it was sometimes so hard to make the right choice.
Aten and Pursah said I was going to be traveling a lot. It was increasingly obvious that writing and speaking, and my forgiveness of what I had to do in connection with them, was going to be my owrk. Omly six months before, I had never spoken in public. But now, after just a handful of talks and workshops, I was about to hit the road and engage regularly in a new vocation.
I couldn't help but hink back to October of 1992, two months before my friends had first appeared to me. Things weren't going well for me finanacially, and I strongly considered going back |
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