Fear

At the moment, the area in which I'm experiencing the greatest challenges is the Money Game. Most of the other games in my Earth Amusement Park are bringing me joy.

One of the things that I find difficult to do is to maintain a boundary between the catastrophic thinking of the Phase 1 players around me and myself.

My choice in the handling of "my" money is:

(1) to do what I would love to do even if it looks risky from a conventional point of view; or

(2) hold myself back from doing what I would love to do in order to follow what most people would consider a safer strategy.

I find it requires discipline to avoid succumbing to fear. I am doing Robert Scheinfeld's suggested "Process" over and over.

I also find it helpful to remind myself of Robert's Transformative Vocabulary Tool. For example, when I'm in a situation in which, in the past, I would have "paid" for something, I now think in terms of "expressing appreciation" for it.

A Return to Love

A friend recently lent me his copy of A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson. Half way into it, I can say this book is a gem.

The subtitle is, "Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles." I read part of A Course in Miracles about five years ago. It had what I thought were good ideas, but I found it long winded and boring. Part way through, I stopped reading thoroughly and started skimming.

I don't know if A Course in Miracles really was all that poorly written or if I didn't want to listen to what it had to say.

In any event, here I am today, getting the succinct version from Marianne Williamson. My reaction this time around is, "Wow! This is dynamite."

I once heard someone asking Robert Scheinfeld if his body of work was similar to A Course in Miracles. He responded that it was not.

Interestingly enough, I find the opposite to be true for me. I see many parallels between Scheinfeld's Busting Loose Model and Williamson's message. Both of them invite you to drop Judgement and Fear. What Scheinfeld refers to as True Joy seems identical to what Williamson calls Love.

Williamson says:

Love is real. It's an eternal creation and nothing can destroy it.

Anything that isn't love is an illusion.

Remember this, and you'll be at peace.

It is the simplest of concepts and the most challenging of accomplishments.

Bad Behaviour

Ah yes, this happens from time to time. It happened again yesterday. People around me behaved badly.

Although I was not one of the main players in the argument, I felt upset when I saw one person's behaviour "hurting" another person. Then I felt even more upset when the "victim" included me in the group of people who, she implied, had failed to protect her.

It was an ideal opportunity to tell the Truth, as it's understood in the Busting Loose model.

There are no other people. They are all illusions. My Expanded Self has created everything that shows up in my hologram. So called other people have no independent decision making authority in my hologram. They do exactly what my Expanded Self tells them to do.

There is no good or bad. Whether it's so called good or so called bad, it's an illusion. What makes it seem good or bad to me is my judgement about it. Judgement is the glue that holds the illusion together.

I cannot be hurt, and neither can anyone else. Although I experience the illusion of being a Player in the illusion, I am an infinite being. As an infinite being, it is impossible for me to experience anything but profound joy. When I experience a so called negative emotion, it is True Joy in disguise.

When I first encountered these ideas, it took quite a while for me to wrap my mind around them. I still don't understand them or fully accept them. But they are coming to make more and more sense to me. I believe them enough to be able to say that I am a committed Phase 2 Player.

The more I accept the explanation embodied in the Busting Loose model, the more I appreciate the Oscar-worthy performances of the actors who play out the scripts that my Expanded Self has handed them. They are providing me with opportunities to use the tools that will bust me loose from Phase 1 limitations.

Then I will be able to continue living in the illusion, but without being bound by the limitations of the illusion. According to my understanding, once I'm living in the hologram in an expanded state in which I have escaped the limitations of the illusion, I'll be living in Heaven on Earth.

After my Expanded Self feels she and I (the Player) have had enough fun in the Earth Amusement Park, I will stop playing the Human Game, and I'll return to Infiniteland.

Although I believe that such a phenonmenon as the Busting Loose point exists, I have not yet experienced it. I still find myself being sucked in by the illusion. When I witnessed the bad behaviour to which I referred above, I defaulted to the emotions that I historically have experienced in situations like that.

I felt sorry for the victim, I felt ashamed and trapped when the victim implied I'd failed to intervene, and I wanted to escape from the situation. I didn't just want to run away from the immediate scene. Moving away from the city was something that momentarily crossed my mind.

But I didn't run. I stayed where I was and told myself the Truth as I understood it. As I told myself the Truth, I experienced a shift in my emotions. I felt myself starting to appreciate the actors in my hologram. People have different words for that level of appreciation. I call it love.