12 Dec 2012 Comments Off on A Spiritual Approach to Fear on 12.12.12

A Spiritual Approach to Fear on 12.12.12

One of my favorite spiritual teachers is Hazrat Inayat Khan.  His words of wisdom are timeless, poetic and healing.  Below is a piece he wrote that corresponds well to the teachings of A Course in Miracles.  I like to say, “different teacher, same Message.”  This Message is a beautiful reminder to us on 12/12/12 that, despite all our human fears, our inner truth is Loving Light.

According to metaphysics fear is caused by the lack of light. Therefore the more light there is in the heart the more fearless the heart becomes. … When a person is afraid of a dog, he gives the dog a tendency to bite him. This can be noticed so plainly in the lower creation, that every animal is afraid of another animal, and the expectation of harm makes it fear more than does the idea of the hugeness of the form or the bodily strength of another animal. Many things in life can be brought about, not only by wanting them and thinking about them, but also by fearing them, both objects and conditions.

To clear one’s mind of fear is like bringing light into a dark room, and as light is needed to illuminate a dark room so the light of the soul is necessary to clear away the thought of fear. … When one fears, this world frightens one, but when one clears one’s heart of all fear, the whole world of illusion turns into one single vision of the sublime immanence of God.

One need not say that one should fear nothing, though one may say that fear is a bad thing. There is a story of a Brahmin, a young man who was very much impressed by what his guru told him: that the whole of manifestation is the immanence of God and that, therefore, there is nothing to fear, nothing to distrust. This thought made the young man feel quite at home in the world, quite comfortable.

Then one day a mad elephant came along the road on which the young man was walking.

The men running before the elephant yelled, ‘Away, away! The elephant is coming!’ But the young man would not get out of the way. With palms joined he stood as fearlessly before the elephant as one stands before God, as his guru had told him. The consequence was that the elephant gave him a shove and he fell down. He was brought to the guru who asked him what had happened.

The young man said, ‘Guruji, you said that all is the immanence of God, and therefore, in all reverence, I stood before the elephant with joined hands.’ The guru said, ‘Did anyone tell you to get out of the way?’ He replied, ‘Yes.’ ‘Why then,’ said the guru, ‘did you not stand before that man with joined hands and listen to him?’ Not to be deeply impressed by distrust does not mean that we should be over-ready to bestow our trust upon anyone, nor does giving up fear mean that we can stand in front of a moving motorcar thinking, ‘I trust it will be all right.’

What closes the doors of the heart is fear, confusion, depression, spite, discouragement, disappointment, and a troubled conscience. When that is cleared away, the doors of the heart open. … It is the open heart which receives the reflection of all impressions coming from outside. It is the open heart, which can receive reflections from the divine Spirit within.

The best practice one can make is to speak with oneself, with one’s own fear; to dispute with it, and to root out the reasons on whose foundations it rests. What generally happens is that all things one fears, one fears even to think of them. But the solution of getting above fear lies in analyzing the cause of the fear and so making it non-existent. Man by nature possesses a tremendous power hidden in his heart, the power which waits constantly to become manifest. This power is hidden by fear. The day when fear disappears, this latent power will manifest to view.

The essay you just read comes from Bowl of Saki under the title, “Do not do anything with fear; and fear not whatever you do.”  If you want more words of wisdom from Hazrat Inayat Khan, look under ACIM Resources on the right side of this page and click on “Wahiduddin’s Web.”

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

24 Nov 2012 Comments Off on A Place with No Name …

A Place with No Name …

Many years ago, when I was a copywriter at an advertising agency, I wrote an ad for a print campaign for Crown Royal.  I don’t even remember what kind of alcohol Crown Royal is … something for fancy occasions, I think.  I couldn’t have been more unsuited to do this work, ha ha.  I didn’t drink and was uninterested in sales.  I had been an English major in college and thought copywriting might be a career path for me.

What I actually received was an education in human nature (which led me to psychology, which eventually led me to the spiritual psychology of A Course in Miracles).  All that said, I want to share a poem which came through me as the first ad of that ad campaign over 20 years ago:

A place with no name
Where time stands still
No questions asked

I was quite amazed when that inspirational haiku flowed through me!  More amazed when my creative department accepted it.  Astonished when the client bought it.  The ads were shot on beautiful balconies in Toronto and New Orleans … the color scheme was purple and gold … and the copy was supposed to evoke a mood … Some uplifting mood all right–Spirit smoothly infiltrated the worlds of alcohol and advertising!  Run that on the next episode of Mad Men.

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

07 Nov 2012 Comments Off on Congratulations, President Obama! An Auspicious Beginning …

Congratulations, President Obama! An Auspicious Beginning …

Four years ago today,* I was sitting on a high wall in Egypt with about 40 other people, the Temple of Isis at our backs.  We were concluding an initiation ceremony which had begun in the sanctuary of the temple.  Forty pairs of feet dangled over the goddess river, the Nile, sensual with power, nurturing, abundant and kind, as we sat in silence, awaiting the dawn sun to activate our third eye.

We were on a spiritual sojourn with shamaness, Nicki Scully. We had risen at 4:30 am to arrive here by dawn.  The silence was alive with nature sounds and rich with Spirit.  We sat in the stillness and breathed, our legs dangling high above the river.

There was an unexpected call in the distance behind us, then brief whispering.  The whisper took a shape, and flowed in gentle waves to our ears:  “Obama won!”

I had mailed in my ballot before I left, and forgotten all about it.  Politics didn’t interest me.  It is not my calling to be a social or political activist.  My work is helping individuals to awaken one by one.  A Course in Miracles says, “Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world.”  But, sometimes, that takes the form of voting 🙂

I had voted for Obama.  I didn’t see him as a savior, but he was multiracial and broke the American political mold.  Yes, he was a truer representative of the American people–and that, I felt, was better for the whole world.  I also felt his integrity, his honest desire to do good for the people.  A psychic healer I worked with in 1988 had told me that we would have a Black president in about 20 years.  And so it was!

A beautiful emotion moved through me, blossoming upwards, and tears of quiet joy seeped out of my eyes.  Without looking at each other, all 40 of us reached out and linked hands.  We quietly laughed and cried together.  Our sacred silence pulsed with happy relief and a great sense of promise as we sat in the timelessness of the island of Philae.

And now, here it is, 2012!  This time I submitted an early ballot in the state of Florida.**    I wept again this morning, listening to the results of this presidential election and Obama’s speech.  For me, Obama deserved to see through what he started in 2008.  My heart is glad that he is America’s leader at the start of the Aquarian Age.

*Technically, it was tomorrow, due to the time difference between Egypt and the USA 🙂

**What a surprise that I live in Florida now, and not in New York  City.  How strange that I moved to a hurricane state only a year before my hometown was struck hard by a hurricane!

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

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