The purpose of sickness

Saturday February 9^th 2013: The Happy Learner, Workshop 6. 

Sickness is a defence against the truth (W136)

It is a fact of the world we live in that our bodies repeatedly fail us, and eventually will stop working altogether. Few people are as well as they might be, and 'health' and 'sickness' represent opposite ends of the same scale, with most of us swinging somewhere between the two. But we like to perceive average health as normal and sickness as a collapse from the condition our bodies should be in. In other words, we take sickness personally.

Sickness can feel like a failure, a punishment, or an attack. We want to know why, or why me, how to stop it, how to fix it. It is a time when we want - even more than usual - comfort, kindness and some kind of outside help that will do for us what we are frightened or ashamed or angry to find we cannot do for ourselves. And yet it is when we are sick that often others cannot or will not understand, when they become frightened or ashamed or angry themselves. In a world which glorifies a healthy body, sickness is an embarrassment, a nuisance, a burden, a cause for pity at best, and at worst actual hostility: like animals who turn on the weak and wounded of their own species.

In this workshop we will consider the many disorders and forms of distress that make us sick. We will be looking at what the course says about suffering, healing, helping ourselves and others, and what it calls magic: the many means we use to make ourselves better. To understand healing, the course teaches, we must recognize that sickness - and health too - are purposeful. Well or unwell, the question is, who does the body serve?

10.30 am to 2.30 pm. If you would like to come and join us, I look forward to seeing you.

I am not I

Yo no soy yo.
Soy este
que va a mi lado sin yo verlo;
que, a veces, voy a ver,
y que, a veces, olvido.
El que calla, sereno, cuando hablo,
el que perdona, dulce, cuando odio,
el que pasea por donde no estoy,
el que quedara en pie cuando yo muero.

(Juan Ramón Jiménez)

[approximate translation:

I am not I.
I am the one
Who walks invisibly by my side;
Whom sometimes I make an effort to see,
And whom sometimes I forget.
One who stays silent while I talk,
One who is forgiving, gentle, while I hate,
One who can get to where I am not,
One who will still be standing when I die.]

 

The course teaches that we are not what we think we are. We live according to an internal image of ourselves, acting and reacting, liking and disliking, succeeding and failing in accordance with a self concept that is learned, constructed and reshaped minute by minute, year by year. The body we inhabit - which we believe we are - embodies the unique personality, the story-so-far, the sense of a separate self that we believe is the hub of our reality.

 

As long as we think this physical, emotional, intellectual, multifaceted self is really who we are, we must suffer from its frailties and frustrations. Its understanding of reality is selective, variable, relative to what seems to be so at any one minute: this little self can never be entirely sure of anything. The cost of being an individual is that you can only see through a minutely limited point of view. The cost of believing you are a body is that you feel constantly vulnerable to attack from both within and without, motivated by need and by fear of loss.

 

All this is no more than a construct in the mind, the course reminds us. It is like the character or avatar that you assume when you play a computer game. You choose it, adopt its special characteristics and goals, and thereafter see through its eyes, advance as if in its body through an external environment, deal with the situations in which it finds itself, negotiate or fight with the other figures it perceives. And for the duration of the game, you really may imagine that this is who you are.

 

But it is not who you are. Like the player of the game, you can pretend for a while, knowing you are pretending, and free to stop at any moment; or you can become so enthralled - in thrall, enslaved - that you no longer remember who you really are, and neglect real life for the sake of a virtual one. But even then, the real you does not disappear. It is only temporarily forgotten.

 

This is analogous to what the course teaches about our real nature. It would have us first only be willing to suspend disbelief long enough to consider what it says as a theoretical possibility. Then it shows us how to try out the idea as if it were true. For we can only be convinced by discovering for ourselves that it is true. But long before we are convinced, most of us have already experienced some feeling of unreality, or some sense that we are faking it, putting on an act; or the fearful insecurity of not knowing who we are or what we are doing, or why, or whom we can trust. No wonder, the course tells us, and quite right: we are fooling ourselves, and nothing and no one in the game is real.

 

But beyond this fluctuating idea of the self there is also an unchanging part in each of us that knows what is true and who we really are. There are always two of us, one imaginary self and one real. The problem - any problem - is that we are convinced that the fabricated version is who we really are, while the real Self barely impinges on our awareness at all. As the poem puts it, I am not myself, yet I am always with me.

 

Knowledge, as the course uses the word, is nothing to do with information, or with anything the body’s senses can perceive or brain can rationalize. This part-that-knows does not know about something: it is what it knows. It is like consciousness, but not the consciousness of being anything or anyone in particular, not the consciousness of ‘self’ as distinct from ‘other’. It is a state of mind such as Krishnamurti meant when he said ‘the observer and the observed are one;’ or what the course calls a oneness joined as one (T25 I 7). From the perspective of the true Self, there is no inner and outer, no here and there, no you and me. There is only what is.

 

There is a part of our mind, then, that remains for ever in touch with infinite reality, while the part that perceives and lives in the world of form is entirely preoccupied with what only seems real. They are mutually exclusive. The moment you give your mind over to one or the other and experience its effects, the other vanishes from your awareness. While you are busily identifying with your physical and psychological self and its apparent needs and interests, you think you or someone else is the one who knows, and the deeper part of your mind is switched off: your Self seems to sleep, while the part of your mind that weaves illusions in its sleep appears to be awake (W68). But when we let the ego and its elaborate fantasies fade away, what remains is our reality: selflessness is Self (S1 V 2).

 

This emphasis on a mind that is divided, not between good and evil, but between reality and illusions, helps us to move on from the idea of supernatural beings in an endless tussle for our souls between Hell and Heaven, like the little angel and devil we picture in cartoons. It also frees us from the limiting concept of ourselves as merely physical bodies, or brain-directed organisms. You are responsible for what you think (T2 VI 2), and what you think makes up the reality you see. There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level (T2 VI 13).

 

There is a technique in psychotherapy which helps you to better understand aspects of your personality or your problems by imagining them as ‘sub-personalities’ or ‘parts’ of yourself. In much the same way, the course personifies the ego as if it were an obstructive or undermining force, and the Self as if it were a loving presence that reliably heals even as the ego harms, and knits back whatever the ego unravels. But the ego and the Self, or Christ, or Holy Spirit, or whatever words you prefer, are only symbols that express how we choose to use our minds: to dream, or to wake up. To believe in a false concept of the self, or know yourself as mind, not body; one, not separate. The Self or 'One Who knows', by any name or symbol is not an entity but a choice that we make.

 

You know not where you go. But One Who knows goes with you (W155 10)

 

…there is a Child in you Who… knows that He is alien here (W182 4

 

…there is One Who knows all that is best for me (W242)

 

…let the darkness be dispelled by Him Who knows the light (T22 VI 9)

 

It does not matter what name or form or symbol you give this ‘One Who knows’, this Self in you that is not your physical or psychological self. But it stands for love that is not of this world (M23 4). It walks with us, whether we acknowledge it or not. As Jung put it: 'Called or not called, the god is present.'

Happy New Year!

 May 2013 be all harmony, happiness and prosperity for you

...but just in case anything should happen during the next 365 days (or minutes) to disturb your peace of mind, to irritate, upset or offend you, with this next workshop you will be well prepared to meet whatever comes with equanimity, and whoever comes with compassion...or at least if not, to know why not.

Saturday January 12^th 2013

10.30 am to 2.30 pm

31 Harrow Way SP10 3RQ

The Happy Learner Workshop 5: Anger is never justified (T30 VI)

This is another of those Course in Miracles statements that only seems to put us more in the wrong than we already feel we are, and when the fault is someone else's, too. But as with all these irksome course principles, when you put aside your assumptions of what you suppose it might mean and pay attention to what the idea can offer you personally, the truth is only comforting and liberating.

This workshop looks at provocation and attack, the ancient war of good against evil and what we mean by justice. Why do you get angry? Why do you try not to get angry? How do you deal with violent emotion in yourself or in others? We will explore what the course teaches about correcting error, and how we can find peace even among the endless succession of outrages that people commit against each other.

I look forward to seeing you!

Thank you for being there this past year, and may the next one be full of delights.

Happy Christmas!

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was fill’d with such delight
As prison’d birds must find in freedom
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted,
And beauty came like the setting sun;
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but every one
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

Siegfried Sassoon

A Course in Miracles describes our true nature as like a forgotten song. From time to time, in a moment of peace or reconciliation, we may suddenly experience the sweetness of complete happiness. This is when we come closest to remembering what we are, the course tells us. Truth is always in us, around us, everywhere unchanging and joyous, but it is only in rare instants that we consciously become aware of it. We are not much used to listening for this unceasing song, and even when we do catch a few notes of it we have learned to dismiss it, forget it again, focus on the 'more important' noises of fear and distraction. Even what we do hear is no more than an echo, just a 'wisp' of a reality that seems unreal as we measure reality in this world, but at the same time we know is more true than any of the incomplete satisfactions we pursue here. 

When the world talks of 'being true to yourself' or encourages you to 'take care of yourself' or recommends you allow yourself some 'me-time', it is helpful to ask yourself which self are you being true to? If you think happiness depends on singing from your own songsheet, you will not hear the wordless song that all of us everywhere is singing in harmony, for the most part unknowingly. Listen to everyone you meet or think of today and hear the bird in them that is singing the same song as the bird in you. 

Listen,–perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a song whose name is long forgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered. Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of melody, attached not to a person or a place or anything particular. But you remember, from just this little part, how lovely was the song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and listened with you (T21 I 6)

To have, give all to all

It’s the time of year when people begin to say “Ready for Christmas, are you?” like the five-minute call before an actor is due on stage; and the Citizen’s Advice Bureau publishes anxious letters saying “I’m starting to worry about how we’re going to pay for Christmas this year. I don’t want to disappoint the kids…”

But the course (of course) has the solution to any harassment you may be feeling about the pressure to give (and to receive).  At some risk of a frosty winter, try announcing these glad tidings to your loved ones: Forgiveness is the only gift I give (W297)…

On a more universal and timeless note, the theme of the upcoming workshop on Saturday week is To have, give all to all (T6 V A). Here is your first decisive step towards freedom from the frustrations, fears and futility of life in this world:This fundamental and very practical lesson begins the shift in how we see ourselves, from apart to united, from impoverished to abundant…

But it is clearly not very practical to ‘give all to all’ in any way that makes sense in the world. The course does not teach any kind of ‘prosperity consciousness’. It is not about attracting abundance from the universe, or tithing, or positive thinking. Nor is it talking about charity, and certainly not self-sacrifice.

So what does the course mean by having, and giving, and how is this relevant to you personally, at any time of year?

Looking forward to seeing you round a warm fire, and even in December we will still end before it gets dark.

Happy Learner Workshop 4

Saturday 15th December

10.30 am to 2.30 pm

 

 

Take me as your model for learning

Saturday November 17^th

Next workshop coming up!

Another major source of discomfort for students of A Course in Miracles can be its uncompromisingly Christian language. ‘This course comes to you in a language you know and love,’ it tells us, but these days in our secular European society few people love this talk of God and all those references to Holy Spirit, Atonement and so on. If the sheer size of the book and the depth of its psychology do not put you off, the embarrassment of studying a mind-training course with Jesus as your personal tutor is too much for most of us would-be sophisticates to know how to deal with.

But ‘words are but symbols of symbols’, and it is their meaning, not the names that matter. The course is for people of all religions or no religion. Although it uses the word more often than any other, you need not believe in God to learn the peace of mind and the altered viewpoint that the course offers.

In this workshop we will explore what this kind of language means to us, and look at how the course frees us from the emotional inheritance of two thousand years of Christianity. It teaches us to use whatever symbols we need until we can see beyond all symbols. It only asks us to question every value that we hold, to set judgement aside, and learn to trust our own inner teacher.

Where? 31 Harrow Way Andover SP10 3RQ

When? Saturday 17th November, 10 am to 2.30 pm

How much? £15

Enquiries and booking: 01264 395579 or email anna@unlearningschool.com

Symbol and Reality

A talk for the Woking Astrology Group

Friday 2nd November 2012, 8-10 pm

The Maybury Centre, Board School Road, Woking GU21 5HD

Enquiries and bookings: b.mcauliffe@ntlworld.com 

or telephone 07954384023

Symbol and Reality: an introduction to A Course in Miracles

We like to know what is unique about us, not what we have in common with the universe. But just as every combination lock is based on only ten digits from 0 to 9, all birth charts consist of the same symbols in different arrangements. All meaning, we think, lies in the differences. But symbols point away from what is separate and particular, to what is universal.

As Maya Angelou said, "Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere." When I am most true to myself and you are most true to yourself, we are the same.

Symbols help us see connections instead of differences, and to communicate what words cannot express. Symbols are only gestures, intimations, approximations, but they serve to remind us of a reality beyond all symbols.

Use all the little names and symbols which delineate the world of darkness. Yet accept them not as your reality (W184 11)

Are We Nearly There Yet?

A one-day workshop for students of A Course in Miracles

Saturday 10^th November 2012

Ruskin Hall, Dunstan Road, Oxford OX3 9BZ

10 am – 5 pm

If you feel different, if you feel lost, or even if you don't, you are an alien here, the Course tells us: This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And a very juvenile alien, too, afraid, homesick, and with its head under the blanket – until we learn otherwise.

The cure for alienation is not a journey home through space but an awakening in time. To wake up is to grow up, pack up the game of fear, put away the toys of guilt; to see not through a glass darkly, but face to face. But it can seem a long process, for children believe in magic and in make-believe, and are afraid that growing up will be the end of fun and games. We do not want to come home yet when we are called. So the Course gives us all the time we want, and introduces a game that happy children play in which everyone who plays must win; in which even while we keep turning backwards and downwards, the escalator is still carrying us forward and up. 

In this workshop we will explore what the themes of childhood, growing up and alienation mean to us personally, and what difference the Course’s unique perspective can make to our lives and relationships. By means of group discussion and individual meditative exercises the aim is to further our understanding of the Course, so as to travel the journey without distance more swiftly and light of heart.

 

A Miracle Network Event

£60

Booking: 0844 567 0209 or admin@miracles.org.uk

Enquiries: 0207 262 0209 or info@miracles.org.uk

No Thorns, No Strangers

 The new Oxford Miracle Café opens with its first meeting on Wednesday. The evening begins with a vegetarian meal and live music, and then Anna will talk about the vision of the Course as an invitation to further discussion and questions.

No Thorns, No Strangers, No Obstacles to Peace:

the radical vision of A Course in Miracles

A talk by Anna Powell

Wednesday 12th September 2012

What does the Course mean by ‘seeing differently’? How do you see the invisible, and how do you not see the thorns and strangers and obstacles that are only too obvious? There is always a better way, the Course reminds us, a better way of relating, of dealing with problems. And it begins with seeing everything with a clearer eye.

Price: £8 on door, plus £5 for food

Time: 7 to 9pm (doors open 6.45pm)

Place: The Magic Cafe, 110 Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RQ Location map 

(Buses: 5 from station, 1, 3, 5 from city centre. Get off at Magdalen Road stop. Street parking is likely to be difficult.)

Let us know if you plan to come so we can make sure there is sufficient food, or for more information, call Steve Clarke on 07970 789259 or email spc@steve-clarke.co.uk

The Happy Learner...and other upcoming events

A new series of Saturday workshops on A Course in Miracles begins Saturday 15th September.

The Happy Learner workshops offer an introduction to and exploration of some of the ‘quite startling’ ideas of A Course in Miracles. What do they mean, what do they not mean, and how do they apply to the specific situations and relationships that concern us? What does the course mean by the ‘real’ or ‘forgiven’ world - and how can we get there from here?

Saturday 15th September

Forgiveness offers everything I want (W122)

Forgiveness sounds magnanimous and we would expect it to figure in a course in spiritual philosophy; but who would go so far as to say that to forgive and to be forgiven offers everything I want? Would you rather forgive the person who has caused you some grievance, than have anything else you might really, really want? We need to completely rethink the meaning of the word before we can discover for ourselves that forgiveness really is the key to (our own) happiness.

For details of the complete series see Workshops: www.unlearningschool.com/p/workshops.html

Saturday 29th September

Illusions: How to live in a world that is not there

Day workshop hosted by Miracles Southwest
Breathing space Centre, Exmouth, Devon

10.30am - 4.30pm

£35

Enquiries and Bookings: Susan Gibson suegibson33@gmail.com

Friday 2nd November

Talk hosted by Woking Astrology Group
The Maybury Centre, Board school Road, Woking GU21 5HD

8 - 10pm

Symbol and Reality: an introduction to A Course in Miracles

'Use all the little names and symbols which delineate the world of darkness. Yet accept them not as your reality' (A Course in Miracles, Workbook 184 11)

We want to know what is particular about us, not what we have in common with the universe. But all birth charts consist of the same symbols in different arrangements, just as every combination lock is based on only ten digits from 0 to 9. All meaning, we think, lies in the differences. But as Maya Angelou said, "Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere."

In 1976 a unique manuscript was brought out of hiding, and quietly became a worldwide bestseller. Whatever your spiritual beliefs or disbeliefs may be, A Course in Miracles speaks to you personally of what is true always and everywhere, and offers you a leap forward in your journey towards revelation and inner peace.

Enquiries and bookings: Beryl McAuliffe b.mcauliffe@ntlworld.com

Saturday 10th November

Day workshop hosted by the Miracle Network 

http://www.miracles.org.uk/events/event_page.php?event=343

Are We Nearly There Yet?

If you feel different, if you feel lost, or even if you don't, you are an alien here, the Course tells us: "This world you seem to live in is not home to you." ( W 339) And a very juvenile alien, too, afraid, homesick, and with its head under the blanket; and so are we all.

The cure for alienation is not a journey home through space but an awakening in time. To wake up is to grow up, pack up the game of fear, put away the toys of guilt; to see not through a glass darkly, but face to face. But it can seem a long process, for "children believe in magic" (T 104) and in make-believe, and think growing up will be the end of fun and games, and we do not want to come home yet when we are called. So the Course gives us all the time we want, and introduces "a game that happy children play" (W 286) in which "everyone who plays must win" (W 286); in which even while we keep turning backwards and downwards, the escalator is still carrying us forward and up.

In this workshop we will explore what the themes of childhood, growing up and alienation mean to us personally, and what difference the Course’s unique perspective can make to our lives and relationships. With group discussion and meditative exercises we will work individually and co-operatively to further our understanding of the Course, so as to travel the journey without distance more swiftly and light of heart.