OVERVIEW
According to Michael Mirdad in The Heart of A Course In Miracles, the fear-based ego voice believes we are separate, hijacks the voice of Divine Guidance, and translates it into something less miraculous. The message of the Divine is always a message of Love inviting us “Home”. Which voice are you listening to? Explore the ACIM concept of Content (the voice of love) versus Form (the voice of fear).
TRANSCRIPTION
Thank you. So I’m not who, uh, sure who originally said this, but whatever the question, love is always the answer. And it is one of the big ideas in a course in Miracles. Everything you experience is either love or a call to love. And when we’re operating out of personality, it’s a little tricky, right? And you know, you’re in personality. When you’re in guilt, shame, right? Wrong thinking, judgment. I even have my own little judgment going on here. Like, I know there are people in this community who really know this teaching and I’m just sort of grasping the, of course, in miracles work. So it’s e really easy to, to start to question ourselves.
Underneath it all is when we believe we’re separate. We forget that we are one with God, with one, one with all. There is. We believe that we are our personality. And in of course in miracles, God is love. And the absence of God, which is impossible, is fear. And fear is kind of my go-to emotion. Not sure why it just is. Although I heard recently that anger is just the bodyguard of fear. <laugh>, interesting thought. So we’re in our three month series cuz this teaching, of course, in miracles is so dense. We didn’t just take one month, we took three months and we’re working with the book, uh, um, the Heart of A Course in Miracles by Michael Murad. And um, it’s really just a guide to understanding the course in miracles, which I really appreciate. I’m appreciating this guide. It’s, it’s really helping kind of cu those key concepts because it is a dense teaching and it draws on the, uh, various spiritual teachings and it’s very much in, in, in alignment with science of mind.
But there are some differences, and I always like to call that out because we are, uh, centers for spiritual living. And our primary, the foundational teaching is science of mind. But we remain open and we bring in other teachings. And, uh, a course in miracles, like science of mind draws on the, uh, foundational belief that there is a, a fundamental unity and interconnectedness to all things. And according to of course, in miracles, this fundamental unity, it’s kind of obscured by the ego, mind, by personality. We get a little clouded and that creates this sense of separation and fear. So ego, mind, personality believes it is separate from the divine, separate from God and from others. And, and then our, uh, personality creates fear. And we’re being invited to transcend ego, to transcend personality. And they’re by transcending fear. And for me that sounds like a really great idea, <laugh>.
And so what, what we are being called to do is to simply align with spirit, to remember God as our source, to remember that we are inherently one with God and with all things. It sounds so simple, but yet as personalities, we make up all this other stuff, right? And in a course in miracles, they say the Holy Spirit. And if that triggers you because of a traditional view, uh, think of it as the voice of God or divine guidance. The Holy Spirit is our thread back to God. And this is how we remember our divine nature, connecting through spiritual practice, through meditation. And according to a miad, the, the ego believes we are separate, then hijacks the voice of divine guidance and translates it into something less miraculous. I love that idea. And it hijacks, you know, we think we’re getting these, these divine insights and guidance, but then the personality takes over, hijacks it and something goes wonky, right?
The personality gets in the way. And I was thinking back to earlier in my spiritual studies and I was really, um, feeling empowered by the teaching. I had felt big shifts in my life, big changes. And really sort of feeling that high vibration of like, wow, this is really awesome. <laugh>, I had manifested a car, I had created change in the way my work was feeling and I was ready to call in a significant relationship or so I thought <laugh> and I again, you know, ego gets in the way, hijacked the voice of the divine. And I created this relationship from personality.
I forgot about staying rooted in my spiritual principles as I moved into that relationship. And I really think relationships of all kinds are where we get to practice our, our spiritual, uh, well, our faith, our beliefs, right? This is where we come up against ourselves. So anyway, um, I got in a relationship mess. <laugh>, I think I’ve talked about this more than one time. So, you know, I have had other experiences in my life, but I was creating the relationship through the filter of my personality and my ego beliefs. And then when it didn’t work, I judged myself for my mistakes, which creates more fear and separation and then it leads to more guilt. And then we’re in that sort of spiral, uh, the guilt and shame cycle, right? And it perpetuates that sense of separation. Anybody, anybody, anybody with me on this? All right. But the beauty is we can change our perception. We can change our thoughts and our beliefs and we can remember and practice cultivating that experience of our oneness. Recognizing that we’re not separate really on a simple level. We’re just, um, understanding that our actions and our thoughts affect the world around us. When we remember our oneness, we act from love, from compassion rather than from fear and judgment. And then we can offer that love and compassion to ourselves so we can offer it to others.
And you know, when we say that this out here is not reality, that reality is the spiritual nature and back of our being, I just wanna acknowledge that that can feel a little confusing sometimes, especially for those of us who have some dissociative tendencies. And I’m just gonna speak to it, it’s a common coping mechanism for trauma survivors. When you’re dissociated, things don’t feel real. There’s even a term for it. Derealization and I, this is a tendency that I have. I mean, you wouldn’t know it. I’m really good at not showing it and I just, I’m being called to share this because I’m, I’m guessing there’s someone out here who needs to hear this, right? Because this teaching when we talk about this isn’t real when you’re already someone who’s kind of grappling with what’s real anyway, it can feel a little unsettling. So, you know, I’m still amazed by seeing airplanes flying.
I kind of get like, how’s that even happening? You know, by telephones functioning and, and, uh, pictures traveling through TVs and phone. And I understand that there are scientific explanations for how this works, but then I can go, well, where did the science come from? <laugh>, right? So we can spiral into like an existential crisis, especially when everyone else is walking around acting like everything makes sense and like they think they have it figured out. Am I the only one <laugh> when we come into this teaching where we say this entire existence is an illusion, it can add to that, that dissociative experience. And, and I again, just, just felt the need to share that because it’s something that I’ve been experiencing. And the feeling of awakening can feel unsettling to the fear-based ego to the personality. We get back in that pattern again. It’s like, ooh, I start to have an awakened experience and then all of a sudden my personality is going, oh no. Oh no, you don’t. The ego keeps us in fear. And the journey back is through love, through connecting with God as love.
So what we mean when we say this is not reality out here we’re seeing reality with a capital R God is reality. Of course, this is our human reality, but this is a, a small R reality. God is the capital R reality that helps me sort of untangle that confusion. And since we are human beings having a spiritual experience, we have to honor the human experience. Murad says, the ego’s function is to help us navigate the human experience, the world of form. So as long as we’re alive, we’re gonna experience our personality. And we’re not making the personality wrong. We just wanna know when the personality is running away with itself, when it’s keeping us in fear, when it’s doing its thing, right? Living in, I, I like to think of it as persona as opposed to personality.
Unless you have an awakening like Byron Katie who just suddenly woke up one day and actually forgot who she was and she had to completely reintegrate. And I don’t think that’s happens to most of us, most of us around a slow journey of awakening. And we mentioned this last week in the after talk that we really have to work on this balance between being human and spiritual because we are both. And how do we find that balance? Well, this teaching is a system for spiritual transformation. It’s about achieving inner peace. Isn’t that what we want? I mean, when we come to spiritual teaching, we’re usually in a place where things aren’t working or we need upliftment, right? The ego and the belief in separation, according to my mead, and I think according to a course in miracles in general, the ego and belief and separation is the root of all suffering.
But the good news, we can transcend this. We can experience God’s love and presence in our lives. The path to path to transcending the illusion of separation is the path back to oneness. It is simply practicing the presence and practicing forgiveness. And there’s a whole bunch to say about forgiveness. You can go back and listen to rev rod’s talk on forgiveness. It’s another foundation of the course and miracles. But all forgiveness is self-forgiveness. That’s a key that we have to remember. So when we get in that spiral of guilt and shame, it’s forgiving ourselves for thinking we were separate in the first place. And the invitation is to remember our oneness, to remember God as the love essence in back of our being. And that path is through forgiveness and communing with God.
And to be clear, I don’t stand up here because I have the answers. I stand up here because I have the questions. I keep doing the inquiry, I keep asking the questions. So when I look at jets flying through the air and I feel mystified, or when I see a new life coming into existence or when I feel the empty place where my mother was there one moment and gone the next, sometimes things just don’t make sense, folks, sometimes it feels confusing. And this work invites us into an inquiry to question our thoughts, to be become an observer of ourself, to get related to my fear, to my pain, and to get out of ego where we think things have to make sense and allow ourselves to just be in the mystery, be in the mystery of life. It’s okay to be in the discomfort of uncertainty.
And when we can just sit in that uncertainty and be in the mystery of life, something new opens up, something new is possible. So beginning to understand that this body is not my true nature, it serves me and I’m grateful for it, I need to take care of it, but it’s not all of me. My true nature is the loving nature of God. I am one with God. Each one of you is one with God. It’s kind of mind blowing actually. But our egos, our personalities believe we are separate. That lie of separation causes us to fight to defend what is mine, what I believe is right, that I see through the filter of my personality, the the filter of my past experience. And through my fear, I perpetuate that separation. But we get to choose again. We get to forgive ourselves. And the more I remember the truth about myself, the more I hold myself in that compassion and forgive myself for thinking I was separate and for making up all the other stories about what I’ve done wrong, the more easily I remember this truth about you, the more easily I hold you in compassion and forgive whatever it is I think that you might have done.
We’re each having our own experience of God knowing itself as us. Our work is to find our way back home, back home to God. And for me, when I notice any contraction, when I notice that fear, when I notice I feel separate, when I feel afraid or just, um, edgy or whatever sensation I’m feeling in my body, I use that as a reminder to go within. I let that contraction be the first thing that reminds me back to God, back to self, back to to these, the inquiry. So this week I’m supposed to be covering content and form and I’ve just did sort of a, a little review because it helped me to kind of understand where I was in this conversation. And the, the concept of content versus form is in some ways an extension of the idea of love and fear. Form refers to the physical world that we see in experience. And our attachment to that form creates the sep sense of separation and fear. And we might feel dependent on the external factors for our sense of identity and happiness. Where content is our inner beliefs, our values, our thoughts that guide and shape our experience. Content is not dependent on form. Form is dependent on content.
Content is present regardless of our outer circumstances. And our content is what truly defines us. It reflects our true nature and our connection to God and all things. But it gets a little tricky here. Murad says, content can either be ego-driven or spirit driven. So when it’s ego-driven, it gets confusing. We start to confuse this content, our values and beliefs with form. It’s where content and form gets sort of woven together. Ego-driven content is focused on form like possessions, status, relationships, and it’s rooted in that fear and separation. Our spirit driven content is focused on love, compassion, it reflects our true nature, our connection, our oneness. So we can cultivate spirit driven content through mindfulness and spiritual practice. We transcend the ego, the illusion of separation and fear. When we align ourselves with our inner values and beliefs, when we loosen our attachment to form, we open ourselves to that expanded idea of the world. We can sit in the mystery of life in a new way.
So it’s a call to listen to the voice of the divine. The voice of love, rather than listening to that ego voice of fear. By cultivating spirit driven content and practicing mindfulness and awareness, we can transcend the personality, transcend the limitations of the ego mind, and then just enjoy our personality instead of being driven by our personality. So we shift the focus from stuff out here to an emphasis on what’s in here on spirit. We move from this reactive approach to a mindful and aware approach, remembering our connection to God and all around us. And there’s this interesting intersection between taking responsibility and letting go between taking action and surrendering. I’m in a mastermind group, I’ve been in it for six years, and every week we read these eight steps. If you’re not familiar with it, it might be something similar to the 12 steps.
If you’re familiar with that, there are eight steps. And this week, step four really stood out for me. And it is I decide to be changed. I make a decision to surrender my will in my life to the mastermind, to the divine. And I ask to be changed at depth. And what was really standing out for me was that I first have to decide to be changed, but then I surrender. So the only action is the decision to be changed and then I surrender. And in that surrender is where we hear the voice of God or our divine guidance. It’s where we receive our insight. It’s not I decide to be transformed and then let me jump into trying to figure out how to do it. I decide to be changed and I allow spirit to show me how. So we can move from inspired action. When we do take action, we’re being inspired to do certain things, not from that ego clenching thinking, I have to do it a certain way, or what are they gonna think if I don’t do it that way? We’re trusting the universe is for me that all my relationships are holy here for my growth. That my nature is innocent and based in love.
My dad says God’s voice speaks to all of us throughout the day, and all it ever says to us is, I love you. Come home. It’s always speaking, but sometimes we’re not listening. Sometimes it’s that we don’t like what we’re hearing. But he says more often it’s that we’re speaking a different language. We’re in the language of ego. So how do you know if the voice you’re hearing is spirit driven or ego-driven? I’m gonna take it into some practice. He says, spirit driven content is open and conceptual. It sometimes comes through symbols and metaphors. It encourages us to remain balanced and centered. Where ego-driven content is closed based on analysis details, excessive specificity, and it pushes us to be imbalanced and excessive. Just feel into that for a moment. Where in your life are you? I’m gonna use the word clenched with analysis, details, excessive specificity, feeling imbalanced. So take a few deep breaths, see what’s there for you. What’s been rising up for you during this service? Is there a particular area in your life where you seek change, an area where you are in the details in specificity. Let go of the external meaning that you’ve made about this
And trust that you will receive the spirit driven content, the divine guidance that you will receive. A deeper meaning how this is for you. It may come to you in symbols or metaphors. He encourages us to think of it like a dream interpretation. Whatever you experience out here in form as a metaphor for something going on in you. So a fight or a struggle might represent an internal battle, a death might represent that part of you is changing. Don’t count on my words. Trust your own guidance. Feel into this. Open your heart. Let go of making something right or wrong, good or bad. Just choose to gain the deepest meaning possible. As you seek the deeper essence, you begin to see and understand things spiritually. You align with the Holy Spirit. You align with that part of you that always knows the truth of itself, that you are one with God, that you are one with all beings. And simply do the inquiry. How is this for me? How is this for my growth? How is this person or situation perfectly appointed for me? Is there anything I need to forgive? Ask Spirit to have its way with you to bring forgiveness through you.
Spirit.
Lay down your ego voice. Align with the voice of spirit. Say yes, say yes to spirit. Open your heart. Open your mind to be transformed. Decide to be changed and allow a spirit to have its way with you. Anything that needs to be transformed is transformed. It is already done in God. We are just saying yes and lining up with it. I just affirmed that whatever needs to occur within the mind and heart of each one listening to this practice, that there is a transformation occurring, that they are being called home to God. They are being called home to themself, to the high idea of peace and freedom and love in every aspect of their life. And I’m so grateful. I’m grateful for the fulfillment of this prayer, and I let it go. I call it good. And so it is.