Becoming and Empty Shell with our Experiences and Feelings Pt.1

                       Becoming and Empty Shell with our Experiences and Feelings
                       Pt.1


Whenever we encounter resistance and confusion it is usually a sign that we are bumping up against an important lesson. There is no right or wrong here, just the awareness that fear can take many forms, resistance and confusion being among them.


Mk 9 (2-13) “Peace is a gift from our Lord,” Jesus explained. Fear is our resistance to this gift. Both acceptance and resistance are in your mind now, so you experience both peace and fear. But know this won’t continue forever, for only peace is forever. Fear must pass away. Continue the work the Father has given you. When fear seems to come upon you, fall to your knees and join in counsel with the Voice for our Lord. Give Him your fears and your willingness to continue in service of our Lord. Your fear will fade away. Then rise and continue your work. In this way, you find yourself on the path of healing with a mighty companion by your side.”


Bear with me, as I am walking through this myself. This is truly a case of teaching what I want to learn; I simply want to be open to what the Holy Spirit has to teach me.


Let us keep our focus on what it is we are after, the healing of the One Mind and with it Peace, Joy, Oneness with God. (I was going to say the experience of Peace, Joy, and Oneness, but when we truly embrace who we are we do not experience these qualities, we are these qualities.) 


1 Cor 12(21-26) 2-6 "For everything works for the healing of one mind. There is no error, and there is no mistake. There isn’t one single flaw. There is only a mind listening to itself and recognizing which self is true. It is an awakening, a growing recognition, and it is perfect in every way."




I believe we all entered this study with a knowing that we live with a sense of separateness with God and one another, and that we deeply desire to heal that sense of separateness. So let us also focus on our intention, and know the Spirit is holding our hand and walking us home.
(Mt. 13(33)”it is through your choice, but not through your effort, that the kingdom of Heaven is given, for the kingdom of Heaven must be a gift given by the Father to you.”
Acts 10(9-23)14-18 “He will reach out to you through His Holy Spirit, which is His appointed Messenger sent to you within your dreams. This Messenger, knowing who you think you are, will meet you there in your dreams and talk to you as if you are the one you think you are. But this one comes to you for only one purpose and with only one goal. His purpose is to awaken you by leading you from where you think you are to the remembrance of what you must be. This is a holy purpose, and He comes to you in gratitude, grateful to meet you in your dreams and grateful to bring you Home.”


Let us start with the beginning (which I do not claim to fully understand). “A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the One Son of God had a tiny mad idea.”
That idea can be expressed in many ways: “I wonder what would be like to experience separateness?” or “I wonder what it would be like to experience what cannot be?” or “I wonder what it would be like to experience everything different from what it is?”


Now as the story goes, we became so captured  by our question that we immediately began to think of it as real. Because we thought that this “creation of separateness” was real, we began to experience guilt and fear. We then began to “think” that the guilt and fear were real and began to create a huge stage to play out that “reality.” (Have you ever witnessed a movie scene where a child is reading a book and all of a sudden they get sucked into it and become part of the story?)


Here we are today knowing that, “there is something wrong with this picture.” We begin to be aware of the desire of our heart, as mentioned above---Peace, Joy, Oneness with God.
We live with the faith that this yearning will be fulfilled. We also grow in awareness that this desire of our heart--peace, joy, oneness, has never gone away. The Truth has never not existed. We have just forgotten or have been lost in the dream of separateness.


Here we are today, knowing that all the stuff we have learned earlier about separateness, unworthiness, guilt, etc. has all been untrue and needs to be let go of, but that does not happen just by “wishing” it were so.


There is work to be done. The Course refers to the work as unlearning.
NTI refers to the work as becoming an empty shell.
We have been fairly clear about emptying the shell so far, but I think we got a little tangled in the working through experience part of things.


Let’s explore this one, remember resistance and confusion are usually the face of fear, and what we are working on doing (not alone, but with the Holy Spirit) is releasing all that is getting in the way of our knowing and embracing Truth.


We asked to experience separateness, we wanted to be able to explore what that would be like. There are infinite ways we can experience separateness, and they might all appear very different (incidents of anger, fear, depression, sickness, death, hurt, war, outrage, scarcity)*, but if we observe them closely and honestly they will all say the same thing: “you are separate."


*be aware of the cleverness of the mind in creating these experiences of separateness. The mind creates all sorts of props or stage setting to enhance the experience or make it seem “more real.” We can easily become lost in the props or the stage settings and lose touch with the experience we wished to have.


It seems obvious to me that any experience of separateness will interfere with my experience of Truth (peace, joy, oneness). I am being asked to let go of these distracting experiences as I become more of an empty shell, BUT the experiences of separateness that I wished for don’t go away simply because I want them to. I created these experiences to experience them, and therefore that is what needs to happen. I need to experience them.
Now--I do NOT need to experience them as the truth.
As I become more clear my experience might simply be a reflection of my awareness of a negative or separate thought and with the power of the Spirit within me, I might simply decide I do not wish to hold onto or enhance it any and allow it to pass “upward.”