Thanksgiving and Giving Thanks

The Mindshifters group has been meeting for five years now. I realized today as I ran "last minute" errands to prepare for the Thanksgiving meal tomorrow, that I am very grateful for many things in my life and that the Mindshifters group is near the top of that list.

There are no adequate words for the gratitude I feel for the people who have given of themselves as teachers. People like Dr. Michael Ryce, Guy Finley, Yahem, Meher Baba, Krishnamurti, Gary Craig, Dr. Scott Walker, and many others who have dedicated their lives to learning what it takes to become a different order of human being, and then shared that knowledge so that others may find their own paths.

When I look back at the past ten years of my life, I cannot imagine how I would have gotten through the changes, challenges, losses, injuries, successes, new relationships and "re-directions" I have experienced, if I had not had these teachers and their lessons to help me. I know only that I would not be where I am today, and I would not be able to be as grateful as I am today, if it had not been for people who have dedicated their lives to learning, growing and teaching.

I am also very grateful for the many people over the past five years who have taken the time to attend the group. I am especially grateful to those who attend the group on a regular basis and give of their time and emotional energy to help make the discussions so productive and helpful. I am grateful for the many people who have shared testimonials about how the group has contributed to them making significant, positive changes in the way they experience their lives.

I am grateful for the loving and supportive attitude which is expressed by almost everyone who attends the group, and by ALL who attend on an regular basis. The expressions of Love, support, respect, tolerance and compassion are truly powerful. It is these qualities, expressed by those who attend the group on a regular basis, which facilitate the healing that is referred to in the testimonials.

Thank you one and all for making me a better person and supporting each other in being more of what human beings can be. Thank you for learning to be more response-able, more aware of your nature as Love, and for being willing to extend that Love to others rather than insist that others "make you feel loved".

I wish to take this time to honor each of you for the work you are doing to make this world a better place, by being a different order of "human - being" in the world.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

An Interpretation of The Beatitudes from the Ancient Aramaic

This Tuesday the Mindshifters group watched a video of a new set of interpretations for The Beatitudes, by Yahem from www.wayofmastery.com

Our Tuesday night Mindshifters group is dedicated to the work of Dr. Michael Ryce because he offers practical tools for improving one's life in terms of emotional states and relationships. I continue to work to keep the focus of the material presented in this group to Dr. Ryce's work, and any other practical tools for understanding how the mind/body energy system works and how to improve our experience of life. It is from this perspective that I would like to share some of the quotes and highlights from this video about The Beatitudes.

Yahem begins by stating in the Ancient Aramaic, a phrase which Yeshua would have often used as a greeting. He stated that it translates as an invitation to open one's self to the Divine and to being penetrated by the Divine.

He then talked about how words in the Ancient Aramaic were more important for their vibrational quality than for the specific meaning that each word carried. This is important because the meaning of the word was determined as much by the mental state and level of understanding of the person who received the vibration, as it was determined by the word itself. So that if thirty people heard the same phrase or paragraph being spoken, there could easily be thirty different meanings taken from that same phrase or paragraph.

Yahem talked extensively about how The Beatitudes are more like a practical form of yoga than just a set of ideas or instructions or religious beliefs. He highlights the idea that "Beliefs don't work. What works is staying open to the moment."

He repeatedly talked about how disturbance is a blessing. This is so because when I am disturbed by anything, I am being given a chance to bring a new presence to energies which once defeated me. The way to do this is "to make a home in the breathing Unity" and to soften the places within me which want to go tight and become rigid and defensive.

"All suffering is rooted in my contraction into the illusion of separation. All healing is but a correction and a remembrance." (that there is no separation)

The first Beatitude encourages us to make our home in the breathing Unity, and let the fertile soil of the Queendom birth our clear guidance.

The second Beatitude encourages us to allow our inner pain to surface and to soften what has been rigid within us.

All grasping outwardly is driven by a lack of embracing and integrating what is already within us.

The whole of creation has been arising and falling away within you. Your heart is breathed by the presence of the Divine and through you the Divine is made manifest.

Restored are they who have been planting peace with every breath.

You need to dig deep to find the primordial oneness that is breathing you now.

It is a blessing when beings push you out of your comfort zone and you become disturbed, because you then become aware of a tightness and contraction within you which was hidden from you before the disturbance. This is an opportunity to return to the breathing and soften what is tense or rigid within you and integrate that part of you that has been newly discovered, with Love and acceptance for all parts of yourself.

This ties into the directive to Love your enemy. This is important because they have given you the gift of disturbing something within you that needs to be Healed. It is also important because, only by generating the feeling of Love within you, and extending it to the other can you Heal that within you which gave rise to the disturbance.

When you withhold your Love from anyone, you must automatically withhold it from yourself first. You are the one who suffers and is denied Healing when you extend anything less than Love to anyone or anything in your awareness.

I highly recommend this DVD for its power and beauty. Available through www.wayofmastery.com

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is False!

Fabulous Time at Heartland & The Way of Mastery VS ACIM

October 14th thru 17th I attended the Intensive at Heartland Healing Center outside of Theodosia Missouri. It was every bit as powerful, challenging and rewarding as it was two years ago when I went there for a nine day Intensive. I strongly recommend doing an Intensive program at Heartland to help you reach deeper levels of understanding about what is keeping you from staying consciously aware of your essence and your source - Love.

Thank you Michael, Jeanie, the entire Heartland staff and all of you who attended this Intensive as participants!

Visit www.whyagain.com and sign up now for one of next year's Intensives to secure a space and receive a special bonus for early registration.



Just before I left for the Intensive I received a blog entry from the gentleman who "channeled" The Way of Mastery. He was responding to questions he receives about the differences and perceived conflicts between The Way of Mastery and A Course In Miracles. I thoroughly enjoyed the article and wanted to share some of it with you and provide the link for the blog in case you are interested in reading the entire article.

Here is the beginning of the blog entry:

A student recently asked: "What is the difference between ACIM (A Course in Miracles) and Way of Mastery and where do they conflict?"

First, perceived conflict - when looking upon teachings that come from the very highest levels of Wisdom - is not in the teachings themselves, but reveals the current limit of our own limit of awareness. Having said that, let me begin by sharing a critical, universal truth that all seeking awakening must begin with. This is the way Jeshua put it to me many years ago:

Teaching is an art, not a science, and all forms of teaching but serve to sever the mind or soul from its infatuation with the illusions it has generated, and then entered into.

The wise teacher speaks the language of the student first, then leads them beyond the very limits they do not know imprisons them.

Both ACIM and The Way of Mastery (WOM) are expressions of this teaching art aimed at reaching downward into the labyrinth of where the student is, and providing ways and means to enter and – depending on the devotion, desire, and commitment of the student – to move through the process of enlightenment.

I am not an ACIM student. I am a disciple of Jeshua, who is the Master Teacher ‘in charge of the Atonement.’ He has selectively led me to small segments of ACIM, and – as far as I can tell – there is no conflict at all if one goes far enough in the enlightenment process. I have had many, many Course students come to me – and to WOM – who, frankly, seem to be suffering in a ‘stuckness’. It appears that they get stuck in a purely mental approach to waking, and this is a very common malaise that can occur if one doesn’t have access to teachers who have themselves gone beyond the level of purely mental/intellectual understanding, for they will be limited to meeting the student’s deeper obstructions with little more than recourse to ideas and statements about Reality, but don’t necessarily have the skillful art that can operate at subtle/deep levels of soul itself, nor even know how to “seduce” the mind out of its ruts of thinking/perceiving.

In a nutshell, SOME students, following the lead of some ACIM teachers, say the body and world are simply unreal (there is a sense in which this is true) and thus tend to discount feeling, breath, and any need to participate in growing one’s capacity to serve others.

Personally, I know that phase of the waking process. It’s actually found in many forms of spirituality around the world. Unfortunately, it can be a clever way to avoid any really ownership of egoic patterns, as well as submission to real transformation. Seeing the unreality of world, self, and purpose of Creation is actually a first step; as extraordinary as it may seem. What is often missed is the overall context of ACIM and a lack of understanding of where it fits along the spectrum of awakening, and the audience it relates to. There are certainly passages in it that reveal what comes once the radical correction in what I call the ‘seat of the soul’ is truly completed.

To Read the entire blog go to: http://www.wayofmastery.com/jayem/blog/3328.html

Enjoy, and remember -

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false!

Fall Colors Intensive at Heartland Healing Center

Please pass this along to anyone you feel may benefit!

Dr. Michael Ryce is holding an Fall Colors four day workshop at his Heartland Healing Center in Theodosia, MO. It begins on October 14th and runs through the 17th, with the option for extending your time at the center, up to a nine day workshop.

I will be attending at the least the first four days of this event from the 14th through the 17th and I highly recommend Heartland and the work that is done there. I attended a nine day workshop at Heartland two years ago and I have repeatedly told people that it was the most beneficial workshop for personal growth and rejuvenation that I have attended in my 35 years of attending trainings, workshops and retreats, as a therapist/psychologist.

To visit Dr. Ryce's website click here: www.whyagain.com

To view a flier for the Fall Colors Intensive Workshop click here: Fall Colors Intensive

Please pass this along to anyone you feel may benefit!

Healing Through Relationships Part 1

Last night the Mindshifters group watched the first half of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled, Healing Through Relationships. Dr. Ryce begins by telling how the lecture used to be titled, Healing Your Relationships, until he discovered that there is no such thing as a broken relationship, since each relationship and interaction can be seen as a tool for uncovering anything that is less than Love within ourselves. Once we discover that we have hidden something less than Love inside of ourselves then we can use the tools we have learned to dismantle that false and negative reality and restore our awareness to the fact that we are Love.

This process is made even easier by the fact that once we recognize that we are the ones creating whatever negative emotion or reaction we experience, we stop blaming others, and then we are free to ask them for support as we explore and heal our negative realities. Approaching relationship in this way is completely foreign to most people, but results in a collaborative approach to communication and relationship, rather than a competitive approach to communication and relationship. When there is a competitive approach to relationship I find myself thinking, "I am much more balanced and emotionally stable than you are." "I am right about this and you are sadly mistaken."

When there is a collaborative approach to relationship and "Responsibility Communication", I take responsibility for everything I am feeling and I stay focused on my ability to create what I am experiencing. So that when I am uncomfortable, or sad, or angry, or hurt, or confused, I realize that I need to focus on how I am creating that experience if I am to change it. Then I can ask for the Love and support of my friend or family member as I take the time to change and heal the false negative reality within my mind.

I can tell you from personal experience that it is much less stressful to explore my hurt with a collaborative partner, than it is to confront my hurt by attacking and blaming the person I feel caused it!

This lecture tied beautifully into the lecture by Guy Finley which we listened to last week. One of the key points in Guy Finley's talk was that because we have become so focused on acquiring what it is we think will give us peace and freedom from fear, we have come to the point where we view everyone else as either a suspect or a prospect. We either want to blame others for causing our emotional pain and frustration, or we see them as someone who can take away our emotional pain and frustration. This leaves us with the following summary statement; "All attempts at acquisition are the bitter fruit of an imitative life". When one realizes that there is nothing missing within the Self, there is no desire for acquisition.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.