Love & Relationships

I have been reading C. S. Lewis, who wrote many things, including 'Alice in Wonderland,' and other children's stories which were deep and profound. He was also a spiritual writer, though his later thought was based in Christianity -- though I think, not what Christianity has become to so many people, but a more pure form. So many 'religions' have become politicized, warped, made into something dark and ugly, which gives people reason to hate and even kill. But there is a pure form of religion, which is more spiritual. People's actual 'beliefs' may differ -- one person may 'believe' in Jesus, another in Allah -- those are not really important -- but there can be a deep inner core, where all spiritual paths meet. We have that deep inner core here -- just find the thread that leads to it and follow it. You will end up in your Heart.

Here is some writing by C.S. Lewis that I find very deep and helpful. Perhaps you will to, especially if you are in, or considering being in, a relationship:

"The idea that ‘being in love’ is the only reason for remaining married really leaves no room for marriage as a contract or promise at all. If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made. The curious thing is that lovers themselves, while they remain really in love, know this better than those who talk about love. As Chesterton pointed out, those who are in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves by promises. Love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal constancy. The Christian law is not forcing upon the passion of love something which is foreign to that passion’s own nature: it is demanding that lovers should take seriously something which their passion of itself impels them to do.

And, of course, the promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise never to have a headache or always to feel hungry."
From Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

Gratitude

Just a cheery Good Morning, Classmates! And to let you know I am glad to be sharing this journey with you. I do feel connected to and a part of something greater than myself, knowing there are angels, knowing there are all of you. I don't see angels anymore than I see any of you, but that does not make you any less real, as it does not make angels any less real. I am deeply touched when I visit this classroom, by all that is available to me here, by knowing I share this with others who are also deeply committed to their path. So Thank You. Cheers, Kevin

Your Open Classroom

This is a different kind of classroom. This is where you learn from yourself. You are the teacher and you are the student. You are both.

"Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?"
-some people think Buddha said this, and maybe he did, since Truth is said in many ways, by many people. But as far as I can tell, it came from Socrates. Who also said...

"It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one."

A practical path

I like today's daily message, thank you, Indira. "A truly spiritual path ought to be a practical path. If your path does not help you have better relationships and function better in the world, of what use is it? Because this is where you live your life. At the same time you must recognize that you are in the world and you are not of the world."

Yes, it is so important to recognize that a spiritual path is not some airy fairy blissful thing. It is hard work. It is applying the teachings in day to day life. It is practicing awareness exercises. It is practicing being present. It is being actually kind to other people. It is going against so many of the ways we have learned to be, which have not taken us to happiness.

It is following the teachings, not just reading them, to see what happens, what changes. It is staying open and committed to the lessons of our school as well as the lessons of daily life. It is not hiding from the pain, but allowing myself to see how much pain there really is inside of me. And remembering that all negativity is pain. I am grateful for our school and all I am receiving.

Forgiveness

When it comes to a question of our forgiving other people, it is partly the same and partly different. It is the same because, here also, forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or no bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. They keep on replying, “But I tell you the man broke a most solemn promise.” Exactly: that is precisely what you have to forgive. (This doesn’t mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart—every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.) The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God’s forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough.
From The Weight of Glory
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

Welcome New Students

Welcome to Beth, Amy, and Debra! 

EUROPEAN TOUR 2017 INFORMATION

Oberwiler Kurse Webpage

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European Tour November 2017

Shared Joy is Double Joy

https://judyparsonsineurope.blogspot.com/

FEAR NOT!

You do not exist.

Your flesh is no evidence 

of your existence

past or future

You only think you are real.

What you think is only what you think.

What you think is a thought.

A passing thought, passing through time,

without constant thoughts you do not exist

your name is just a name 

your body is just a body

it all passes away with time

what you are is beyond time

timeless, beginningless, without end

You cannot die because you were never born

a body was born and given a name

given an identity that you believed in

a believe is a strong thought

you are not a thought

you are eternity in a body

a great treasure lies within you

when all thoughts come to an end

then what remains is what you are

a treasure without end

your greatest friend

the only true friend

the body dies

Spirit does not

So never fear

your true nature 

IS 

ETERNAL

Love, Indira 

Already Gone

When we are open and receptive, we can find words of truth and inspiration everywhere, for example, in the song Already Gone by The Eagles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM6ibXV20Dk

"Just remember when you look up in the sky, you can see the stars, but still not see the light."

"Well, I know it wasn't you who held me down. Heaven knows it wasn't you who set me free. So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key."

The point of this message is to encourage you to stay open and receptive to messages of Truth. Life can be an exciting journey of discovery when you let it be. Resolve to live your life alert and aware. See the stars with something more than just your physical eyes. Resolve to see with your heart. Resolve to see without fear. 

When we look at life through eyes of fear, we have no choice but to shut down to protect ourselves. When we shut down in an attempt to stay safe, we are less safe .  . . because we are living life with less intuition, less open to the Truth in every moment. We are focused on the fear in the mind, instead of the love in the heart. 

Truth is always speaking to us. When you know this, when you stay open to discovery, then your life has meaning because you see the meaning of life, which is self-discovery . .  . discovering your true nature, the nature of everything. You allow yourself to be guided by light . . . and there is no need to fear the darkness when you are guided by light.

So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains and we never even know we have the key.

*Written by Jack Tempchin & Robert Arnold Strandlund for The Eagles 1974 On the Border.

 

Happiness

You might like to read this...

This is how to be happier, according to brain science: be_happier

nature

acceptance of what IS

In this moment, I deeply and profoundly accept myself. All my faults, problems, and the greatness of my life.

problem:
 1. a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.

• a thing that is difficult to achieve or accomplish.
• [ as modifier ] denoting or relating to people whose behavior causes difficulties to themselves and others (such as a problematic person).

2. Physics & Mathematics: an inquiry starting from given conditions to investigate or demonstrate a fact, result, or law.

live love laugh

MOTHER GOD

For this moment, let us experience God in the Feminine Form, as Divine Mother

Give every moment to Mother God. Entrust your heart to the keeping of Mother God. It sounds so simple, perhaps too simple. Angels love what is simple. Life is simple when you lovingly accept yourself as you are and life as it is.

Melt into softness. Each moment is new. Accept what is and what is not. In the newness of the moment you are alive! You are here! You are present! Life in a human body is brief, too brief to spend time being absent, unaware, trapped in thoughts that come like a wall between you and life.

Know that you are loved more than you could ever dream, because you are God's dream, and in God's dream there is only love, no matter what the outer appearance seems to be.

Rilke

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure,
and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.
-Rilke

...angels are terrible only to the ego. Angels seek not to destroy ... but to reveal ... to reveal your true nature ... what is "destroyed" -- your false self of lack, loss, fear, and limitation -- is revealed never to have existed at all -- what Remains is ... what Remains ... LIGHT.

C.S. Lewis

Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted. He demands our worship, our obedience, our prostration. Do we suppose that they can do Him any good, or fear, like the chorus in Milton, that human irreverence can bring about ‘His glory’s diminution’?

A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.

But God wills our good, and our good is to love Him (with that responsive love proper to creatures) and to love Him we must know Him: and if we know Him, we shall in fact fall on our faces. If we do not, that only shows that what we are trying to love is not yet God— though it may be the nearest approximation to God which our thought and fantasy can attain.

Yet the call is not only to prostration and awe; it is to a reflection of the Divine life, a creaturely participation in the Divine attributes which is far beyond our present desires. We are bidden to . . . become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little.

The Problem of Pain. Copyright © 1940, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd.

AWARENESS

AWARENESS  If only we knew how much others are secretly suffering, we would be very consciously tender to them.  If you could only feel this secret feeling, you would treat them differently than you now do. Human beings cannot feel others because they are asleep.

On the present moment

Wise words from the man who wrote Alice in Wonderland and many other wonderful books:

"Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment “as to the Lord.” It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received."

From: The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. Copyright © 1949, C. S. Lewis

MOVING ART

https://www.youtube.com/user/LouieSchwartzberg

Gratitude HD - Moving Art™

A Moving Art original short. Flmmaker Louie Schwartzberg motivates those around him as happiness is revealed. Spoken word and music montage created and composed by Gary Malkin -- narration written and spoken by Brother David Steindl-Rast.

"So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures." - James 1:17-18The Message (MSG)

Seeing with your Heart

Helen Keller, who had eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear, said, “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart.”

What might it be like to really see—with the heart? Perhaps the sense of separation would vanish. Perhaps you would be completely safe and serene in the Oneness of things. Perhaps you would be wiser and saner. Perhaps you would see better than ever before!

Even if you were without judgment, you would not be without discrimination. Discrimination is necessary so you do not try to tie a snake around a box. Seeing things as they are, not as you think they are, allows for more acute discrimination.