17 Oct 2012 Comments Off on Remembering to Laugh

Remembering to Laugh

Laughing is the application of ACIM principles.  It’s right there in Chapter 27:  “Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time.” T-27.VIII.6:2-5

Dr. Bernie Siegel, the author of Love, Medicine and Miracles, has many stories to tell about the power of laughter.  There’s a whole school of yoga devoted to laughter.  Comedian John Cleese says, “Laughter is a force for democracy.” Cancer thriver, as Kris Carr calls herself, has laughed in the face of terminal disease.  Vice president Joe Biden shines light when he shares the tragic death of his wife and child.  How do we laugh when we’re least likely to feel like laughing?

Biden considered suicide but came to find, “There will come a day, I promise you, and your parents, as well, when the thought of your son or daughter or your husband or wife brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye.”  He was speaking to the families of military veterans, but it goes for the rest of us as well.  It applies to anyone who has contemplated suicide or hurt inside in any way, for any reason.

“This is the great wake-up call, this is the great spiritual practice.  What am I going to do now?  Am I going to fold?,” asked Carr, author of Crazy, Sexy Cancer, who was given a death sentence but instead chose to keep smiling and become a peace revolutionary through a plant-based diet.

There is a saying, “Time heals all wounds.”  A Course in Miracles promises to save us time.  It teaches that miracles literally collapse time.  The miracle of laughter uses time for healing rather than brooding, simmering, panicking, collapsing, or seeking vengeance.

“The Holy Spirit uses time as He thinks best, and He is never wrong.  Psychotherapy under His direction is one of the means He uses to save time …” P-1.5:5-6

Laughter is psychotherapy.  Laughter is good medicine.  And when we just can’t bring ourselves to laugh, a wry comment, some dry humor, a small smile are better than nothing.  They are the equivalent of raising our eyes up from the ground and looking out towards the horizon.  There is some scientific evidence which shows that laughter, even when we force it, or fake it, stimulates chemical changes in the brain and body which are powerfully healing.

Of course, ACIM students learn that the only illness is mental illness and when we’re willing to change our minds, we find an inner peace that removes the wrinkles from our brow and puts a smile on our lips.  Remembering to laugh is choosing to forgive.  Lesson 121 is, “Forgiveness is the key to happiness,” and Lesson 122 follows with, “[Forgiveness] sparkles on your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day.”

At the root of physical and emotional pain is always psychological pain.  Whether our situation is dramatic or mundane, we deserve to exercise our option to choose light and laughter.  Remembering to laugh is an undoing process that takes us from our personal problems all the way back to the one problem the Course says is the only real problem: believing the tiny, mad idea that we are separate from God.  All we have to do to establish inner peace is choose again, choose to recognize the cosmic joke is on us, and forgive, forgive, forgive!

TIP:  Paradoxically, sometimes the only way to laugh is to stop laughing.  When I was going through a “dark night of the soul,” it was healing for me to stop laughing and smiling, because I blocked people from helping me with my constant good cheer.  They just assumed I was okay.  So if it seems to you that your smile is a defense, relax into your pain and allow that energy to move through you.  This is easier said than done, because becoming vulnerable when we’re frozen with self-protection takes time.  And certain emotions feel dangerous.  But if you sincerely want to heal, the Holy Spirit will show you how, and will help you find a healer with whom to do release work.  You will laugh again.  And each time you do, time will melt into timelessness until you remember Who you already are.

Read previous, related issues of The Unlearning Classroom:

God Is In My Smile
Forgiveness is Fear-Removal
What Is Forgiveness?
Forgiveness is Understanding

 

by Amy Torres in Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles

11 Oct 2012 Comments Off on How to Take Yourself Less Personally

How to Take Yourself Less Personally

It was wonderful seeing those of you who made it to the Five Keys to Forgiveness workshop in New York City. We looked at forgiveness from many different perspectives, deepened our understanding of what forgiveness means, how it works, and used exercises to practice and experience forgiveness.

Today, let’s continue our forgiveness work by looking at how the ego thinks. The ego is a fear-based thought system which relies on us taking everything personally. The ego loves for us to feel insulted, outraged, taken advantage of, walked all over, judgmental and self-righteous.  These attitudes are automatic and we have to bring them into awareness in order to become free of them.

One way of looking at forgiveness is that it teaches us detachment. Unlike dissociation or denial, detachment is a healthy way of observing the ego, free of emotional involvement.  Detachment helps us take ourself and others less personally.  It takes practice to allow detachment, and can only be done with the help of the Holy Spirit, because it is a process of dis-identifying with the ego (personal sense of self) and re-identifying with God.

All the ego boils down to is a thought of separation, a “tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh” ~T-27.VIII.6:2.  We get to “choose again” in any given moment whether we want to take this idea of separation seriously, or find it humorous.  This is a potent turning point.  When we are willing to stop taking ourselves personally, we are willing to undo the projection that there is a self.  This is the moment when we choose to laugh!  And this willingness to laugh reveals that all tragedy is really tragicomedy (tragedy with a happy ending).

So how do we take ourselves less personally?

One, be willing to ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

Two, give your thoughts to the Holy Spirit all day long.  Good ones, bad ones, just give everything to Spirit as often as you can remember.  This willingness to develop a relationship with God’s Holy Spirit naturally leads to Love.  This is the forgiveness practice ACIM offers us to help us recognize that what we thought our brother did to us has not occurred.

And three, choose again–allow a shift in perception to take place in your mind that permits any circumstance to be transformed into something laugh-worthy.  Then you will know that you are not the person you thought you were–you really are God’s beautiful child.  “How beautiful indeed are the Thoughts of God who live in His Light.” ~T-3.V.10:5

The undoing process will seem to take time and effort while we use this dream as an unlearning classroom, but in the moment of awakening all sense of suffering will simply evaporate.  Everybody is defending and attacking all the time, even if they don’t realize it (and especially if they don’t realize it) until that holy instant when we choose to “Be still and know that I am God.” ~T-4.Intro.2:2.

Tip:  Sometimes the way to take ourselves less personally is to allow ourselves to take whatever is bothering us very personally.  Paradoxically, it can really help to fully embrace and even exaggerate the upset feelings and thoughts we have, in order to bring them into consciousness.  This permits a full release.  Remember, you have to do this with the Holy Spirit as your guide, because the ego will never help free you from its thought system.  Next time, we’ll look more deeply into how to remember to laugh, especially if you’re in pain.

Can you think of an event in your life that seemed terribly important and/or  incredibly painful at the time it occurred, that you see differently now?  Take a few minutes to appreciate this shift in your perception.  If you would like to share your miracle, please email me at miracles@amytorresacim.com

If you liked “How to Take Yourself Less Personally,” you may enjoy other essays in my ongoing series, How to Use the Body While You Think It’s You, including, “The Purpose of the Body,” “Body Health Is Not a Measurement of Spiritual Unfolding,” “Death Is Just a Belief,” “Flossing and Feldenkrais” and “Coming Apart at the ‘Seems’.”  Be sure to watch Webinar #10: The Purpose of the Body on YouTube 🙂  And check out my Facebook page devoted to body issues: http://facebook.com/acimbodyimage

Copyright © 2012 Amy Torres.  All rights reserved worldwide.

by Amy Torres in Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles

29 Aug 2012 Comments Off on Spiritual Translation

Spiritual Translation

~ Amy’s Unlearning Classroom Blog ~

SPIRITUAL TRANSLATION

When I first started studying A Course in Miracles in 1997, I grappled with the new definition of “forgiveness”* that Jesus offers us.  One day, the old English usage of “for to give” popped into my head.

For to give fear to Love
For to give guilt to Innocence
For to give pain to Peace
Then I remembered a lyric from the song, A Horse with No Name  by America (not Neil Young :)):

In the desert you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain
This pop song, which I had mindlessly sung countless times when it was a hit in 1972, was suddenly offering me a spiritual solution to the riddle of forgiveness.

Didn’t Jesus spent forty days in the desert remembering his Name, that is, his true identity?  And once his true identity was remembered, so was his Oneness with all his brothers and every living thing, be it animal, vegetable or mineral.  In fact, there ain’t no one for to give you no pain once you awaken to the Truth that we are all One.

The lyric from A Horse with No Name was biblical, mystical–an ancient nomadic sojourn of a twentieth century cowboy using an awkward yet mesmerizing grammatical construction, for to give, that spontaneously inspired me to translate everything.

For to give dreams to Reality
For to give illusions to Truth
For to give separation to Unity
One of the nicknames ACIM uses for the Holy Spirit is the Translator.  Once the Holy Spirit became my Spiritual Psychotherapist and Guide, I embarked on a whole new level of translation!  Up until then, as a psychotherapist, one potent tool in my healing kit was the idea of translating emotional language from its surface meaning down into the underlying messages.

Psychotherapy is an art, because it is customized to each person’s deep psychological needs and beliefs.  I already loved the creativity involved in unraveling dysfunctional behavior through a process of emotional translation.  How exciting to discover that A Course in Miracles offered a translation process that frees us from the ego entirely!

For to give my Amy-identity to the Holy Spirit, Who,
in turn, gives me Love and reveals my God-Identity
This internal translation process kept working inside my head all day, every day, to this very day.  And my inner conviction about the Course’s Message keeps growing.

For to give sleep to Awakening
For to give ignorance to Knowledge
For to give nightmares to Happy Dreams
For to give time to Eternity
For to give space to Infinity
For to give fragmentation to Wholeness
For to give death to Life
Homework
Make your own “for to give” list.  Feel free to borrow from mine.  Let me know if you come up with some good ones.  And if this “technique” illuminates the ACIM forgiveness practice for you in a new way, please share.  Email me at miracles@amytorresacim.com

*  Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred.  ~ACIM Workbook, 1. What Is Forgiveness?

by Amy Torres in Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles