Spiritual Psychotherapy

Spiritual Translation

Posted on August 29, 2012

in Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles

~ 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 [email protected]

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

The Temple Within

Posted on May 2, 2012

in Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles, Undoing the Ego

by Amy Torres

Darling Beloved,

It has been three months since I have written here, and though I thought of you often, those three months were much needed and well spent. I have been settling into my new home in Florida and working on some health issues that needed to be addressed. I am feeling much better now! I have organized my home and provided myself with a meditation hall/yoga studio. The house is uncluttered, spacious, and filled with the face of Christ.

For a long time I have wanted to maintain better eating habits and in April something called Cleanse America appeared in my email box. Because of how easy and inspiring they made this 10-day raw food cleanse for all of us who participated, and because Scott joined with me for the 10 days, I finally kickstarted a way of eating that has me feeling healthier and freer in my body than ever before. It’s not just the good eating habits. It’s my spiritual practice increasing in me day by day. String together over 20 years of undoing one day at a time and 20 years feels like a holy instant of priceless transformation.

As a result, I would like to share a beautiful vision I keep having with you. The inside of my body keeps appearing to me as levels of an inner temple. It reminds me of Damanhur in Northern Italy. A spiritual center built underground filled with the most beautiful mosaics, meditation alcoves, stained glass and sacred nooks and crannies filled with color, light and sound. Within me, the experience is of one room stacked above another–just as if my chakras were rooms of gorgeous reflective light in jeweled tones of ruby, citrine, emerald, sapphire and diamonds. Rooms revealed through a practice of spring cleaning my internal physiology by using food as medicine.

As the documentary, Forks Over Knives demonstrates, food can be more powerfully healing than medication. Used well, food cleanses the colon, helps the liver and kidneys do their job of detoxification, nourishes us, builds strong bones and muscles, sharpens brain function and removes the sludge and blockages that the ego relies on to keep us in a state of forgetfulness of our God nature.

The vivid clarity with which I’m experiencing my insides being gorgeous rooms filled with kaleidoscopic Light led me to design a new Course in Miracles workshop called, “How to Use the Body While You Think It’s You.” I’ll be presenting this material for the first time at the Who Are You Really? ACIM Conference coming up in June.

Song of Vajra by Nicholas Roerich

The difference between intellectual comprehension and personal experience is the difference between gazing at the beauty of the ocean from the shore and immersing your body in the water. As the Course says, “The prayer of the heart does not really ask for concrete things.” As we learn to use the body for the Holy Spirit’s purpose we experience a Godly state of Mind–we uncover the Love, Peace and Joy within us: The Temple Within. If you would like to go there with me, I would love to share with you in person at the upcoming ACIM conference. Cleveland never looked so good 😉 It should be a lot of fun!

Namaste~
Amy