Sunday morning we continued our exploration of 1 Corinthians and its major theme, “Becoming an Empty Shell.”
Simply put, becoming an empty shell means letting go of all that you think you are so that you can know and embrace who you truly are.
Ram Dass put it beautifully when he explained, “The moment we are born everyone starts telling us who we are. The problem is none of them know who they are!"
So we have taken in all these messages from parents, teachers, ministers, even our peers. From all this mis-information, we have formed an identity of who we think we are.
Now, unless you were raised and taught by a wonderful bunch of enlightened beings, you probably never got the message that “You are the Beloved Son of God; there is only One Son and you are It. Nothing ever happened, nor can ever happen that could separate you from God’s unconditional love. You are not your body, your emotions or your mind. You are so much more than all that. There is not truth to nay of the blame, shame, guilt, unworthiness, or anything else you learned. If you learned anything that is not love, then it is not true because all is love.” (Those are simply words. In truth you don’t really know all that is listed above, you are It.)
As ACIM points out, we are not learning something new, we are unlearning all that is not true.
From Chapter 6(p.293) (12-20) An empty shell has let go of everything that seemed to be, but wasn’t. An empty shell has let go of false desires, untrue beliefs, concepts in support of the world and fear. All that an empty shell holds onto is the casing, which will hold onto Me within the world.
As we become aware of thoughts that do not bring peace and therefore are not true, we begin to release them and let them go. We do not deny them, fear them, or run away from them. We accept responsibility for them, but instead of trying to correct them ourselves, we release them upward to the Spirit so that they may be healed and transformed. See p. 294 (1-7) 10-11
Just in case you get stuck on this empty shell image, NTI goes not explain that the empty shell does not really exist either. It is simply a metaphor to help us with the process of letting go.
The piece we focused in on Sunday was what NTI calls “points of experience.” As suggested above we did not simply inherit false ideas about ourselves, we also had experiences of unworthiness, fear, anger, not-enoughness, and other kinds of negative things.
Now, we are asked in faith and trust to become aware of those experiences and even thought they seem to be painful, to feel them so that they might be released.
We are reminded to know that only the experience of love is real, and to go even deeper than that, to know that YOU ARE LOVE.
Suggested reading: Chapter 7 again and Chapter 8 bring any questions. We love questions.
For those of you who would like to dig deeper into the work of releasing experiences, you might want to check out 2 Timothy.
Remember who you are!
Peace,
