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ACFIP
Newsletter
Issue 14 -
September 2007
Quarterly Newsletter of the Australian Centre for Inner
Peace
Michael Dawson
PO Box 125, Point Lookout
North Stradbroke Island,
Queensland 4183,
Australia
Email: mdawson@acfip.org
Web site: http://www.acfip.org
CONTENTS:
*Who Am I?
*What is Our Task?
*Story: The Rabbi's Gift
*Workshops
*Books and Audio Materials for Sale
*Links
*Inspirational Quotations
___________________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Fourteenth issue of the Australian Centre for
Inner Peace Newsletter.
If you wish to read previous issues please go to
http://www.acfip.org/newsletterarchive.html.
If your email address ends with .au I put your address on my
Australian list for advance warning of workshops I am giving in
Australia. If you do not want to be on this list please let me
know. If you reside in Australia and want to be on this list,
but you address does not end in .au, please email me and I will
include it.
If you are new to the Course you might find my summaries of
help.
You can find them at http://www.acfip.org/sum.html and
http://www.acfip.org/art4.html
Regards
Michael Dawson
http://www.acfip.org
___________________________________________________________________________
WHO AM I?
I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know
what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or
on myself.
Yet in this learning is salvation born. And What you are will
tell you of Itself.
A Course in
Miracles T-31.V.17.
When we close our eyes and meditate we are immediately
confronted with the thoughts of our ego mind. They declare
themselves important and ask for our attention. A procession of
desires and fears appear before our awareness and there is a
strong attraction to identify with them. Its easy to become the
desires and fears and get lost in them. These thoughts seem
important, the contents of our consciousness - the very fabric
of our life. What does the Course say of these thoughts we seem
to cherish so much?
These thoughts do not mean anything...None of them ("good"
and "bad" thoughts) represents your real thoughts, which are
covered up by them. The "good" ones are but shadows of what
lies beyond, and shadows make sight difficult. The "bad" ones
are blocks to sight, and make seeing impossible. You do not
want either. Lesson 4
Its easy to forget the ego mind is just another sense organ
having thoughts as its object and identify with its contents.
When we smell a rose we don't say we are that smell. The sound
of a bird does not make us believe we are one. But the thoughts
about ourselves we do believe. We say "I am a body", "I am old",
"I am alive", "I am a parent" and hardly stop to question these
"I am" thoughts. The Course reminds us that the thoughts we
think we think are not real and obscure the real thoughts we
think with God. Our real thoughts are located in our right mind,
the mind of the Holy Spirit. These are the thoughts of
love,peace,joy etc. Ego thoughts are based around the concept of
a separate "I" which thinks good and bad thoughts. However, the
Course informs us that both good and bad thoughts obscure
spiritual vision. These incessant thoughts of our ego mind are a
very effective block to the awareness of the Holy Spirit in our
right mind, which requires us to be quiet to hear Him.
The Holy Spirit will, of Himself, fill every mind that so
makes room for him.
A Course in Miracles T-14.XI.13:6
We are not who we think we are. Our constant belief in a
separate "I" with all its special attributes is the source of
all our pain. To escape this pain we pursue pleasure which only
leads to further pain. Until we start to question and
investigate who we really are we are trapped in the vicious
circle of avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. The ego thoughts
of "I am this or that" keep us routed in our false sense of
individuality. All our thinking is based on the past (see lesson
7 in the Workbook) and our sense of self depends on nothing
else. We are literally a collection of memories, habits,
patterns and conditionings. Without the illusion of time our
personalities would dissolve. Memory keeps the illusion of
personal identity alive. Whilst our mind is preoccupied with the
past, or its projection into the future the Course tells us that
our mind is actually blank!
My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts....The one wholly
true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not
here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about
illusions. Very few have realised what is actually entailed in
picturing the past or in anticipating the future. The mind is
actually blank when it does this, because it is not really
thinking about anything. Lesson 8
Nothing is actually happening although it does not seem that way
to us. The ego mind has made up the thought of "I" but it is
just another thought amongst its collection of mind objects. In
Heaven there are no "Is". Our self concepts cannot exist "there"
and this is what frightens us. The ultimate goal of the Course
is to show us we are not bodies, parents, children, teachers,
students etc. but the formless, limitless, eternal, perfect
thought of God. Preferring to be "right than happy" we cling to
the concept of a separate self, or "I", which identifies with
the body as its home. In the Workbook we are encouraged in many
places to try and go beyond, or beneath, these obscuring ego
thoughts of "I am this or that" to the thoughts we think with
God. To touch these thoughts is to open up to a new world
utterly unlike the one we are familiar with. We will discover
there a love and wisdom that will guide us on our journey to the
real world. When this is reached our only identification will be
"I am the Holy Son of God Himself" (Lesson 191) for every other
identification will now be meaningless.
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
A Course in Miracles Lesson 191
___________________________________________________________________________
WHAT IS OUR TASK?
To give love or remove the blocks to its presence?
It is an easy and popular thing to say we must love those around
us. That the solution to the problems of the world is to love
more and therefore we should make more effort to love. Can we
make an effort to love? Is love to be forced out or does it
simply shine on its own with no effort? If we were created in
the image of God, who is all love, why are we not radiating it
all the time? We must have a good reason not to. A Course In
Miracles states that the presence of love in our mind will
shine away our ego, our sense of separation, which we dearly
love to maintain. Love is deadly to our egos and must be guarded
against at all costs.
We can pretend to love but this will always be dualistic. We
will choose a particular object or person to "love" and exclude
all others. A Course In Miracles refers to this as
special love and this is simply a mask for special hate for we
must always hate what we depend on. Our ego teaches us to use
others as substitutes for our true relationship with God. If
love is exclusive it is not love and as the Course teaches, what
is not love is hate. This does not mean we abandon relationships
for they can be made to serve the important function of mirrors
to our denied ego's thought system. We can start to learn that
what annoys us in others is always in ourselves.
If we are not loving its because we choose to be that way.
Special love seems preferable to unconditional love which has no
object. To encourage others to give out love will only increase
their level of guilt for they must consistently fail. Rather we
should honestly look at how much we judge, compare, criticise
and hate others for here we will find the blocks to love.
Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for
freedom lies in looking at it.
It would be impossible not to know the meaning of love,
except for this. T-16.IV.1-2
While we cover this awareness with false ideas of love we can
never discover the blocks we have erected to loves presence.
Until we learn to look without judgement at the full extent of
the ego's murderous thought system we will fool ourselves that
we can offer love to others. This is not an easy task. Here
effort, vigilance and a sense of humour are needed. To see how
we really think, to view the extent of our guilt and hatred is
painful and embarrassing. We need to invite the non-judgmental
presence of the Holy Spirit or Jesus to be with us as we uncover
the many layers of the ego.
Jesus encourages us to smile at our egos, and not take them
seriously. This is not to foster denial of the ego, for denial
is a major defense mechanism of the ego. We need to learn not to
feel guilty that we do not love, otherwise we will try and
compensate by false displays of love. Instead we can try to be
aware in our day to day life how many times we want to attack
others and gradually learn to smile at these thoughts. Kenneth
Wapnick has often made this point stating that we need to see
these ego thoughts as "no big deal" and that we should not try
and change the ego - ours or others. To try and improve the ego
is an example of "making the error real". In this way we can
slowly undo the grip of the ego's thought system of attack and
listen more to the Voice of love in our mind. As the sun's rays
must be experienced when the clouds have gone so will we,
without effort, extend the love of God into this world when we
have learnt to forgive ourselves.
The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for
that is beyond what can be taught.
It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness
of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance.
Intro, Text. A Course In Miracles
___________________________________________________________________________
PLEASE
NOTE: The Australian Centre for Inner Peace is not a
counselling or psychotherapy centre; therefore, we do not offer
telephone or email service or counselling, therapy, or crisis
intervention for personal problems related to the Course. Please
see the Contacts section at the end of this newsletter.
___________________________________________________________________________
The
Rabbi's Gift
The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times.
Once a great order, as a result of waves of antimonastic
persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the
rise of secularism in the nineteenth, all its branch houses were
lost and it had become decimated to the extent that there were
only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and
four others, all over seventy in age. Clearly it was a dying
order.
In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little
hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a
hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation
the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always
sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. "The rabbi is in the
woods, the rabbi is in the woods again," they would whisper to
each other. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order,
it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage
and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any
advice that might save the monastery.
The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot
explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only
commiserate with him. "I know how it is," he exclaimed. "The
spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town.
Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore." So the old abbot
and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the
Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the
abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. "It has been a
wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years," the
abbot said, "but I have still failed in my purpose for coming
here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you
can give me that would help me save my dying order?"
"No, I am sorry," the rabbi responded. "I have no advice to
give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one
of you."
When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks
gathered around him to ask, "Well, what did the rabbi say?" "He
couldn't help," the abbot answered. "We just wept and read the
Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving
--- it was something cryptic --- was that the Messiah is one of
us. I don't know what he meant."
In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks
pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible
significance to the rabbi's words. The Messiah is one of us?
Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the
monastery? If that's the case, which one? Do you suppose he
meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant
Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation.
On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly
Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a
man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred!
Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even
though he is a thorn in people's sides, when you look back on
it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the
rabbi did mean Brother Elred. But surely not Brother Phillip.
Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost
mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when
you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe
Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn't mean me. He
couldn't possibly have meant me. I'm just an ordinary person.
Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I
couldn't be that much for You, could I?
As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to
treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance
that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off, off
chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began
to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.
Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so
happened that people still occasionally came to visit the
monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of
its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel
to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it,
they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to
surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them
and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something
strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing
why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to
picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to
show them this special place. And their friends brought their
friends.
Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit
the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks.
After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And
another. So within a few years the monastery had once again
become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi's gift, a
vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.
from:
'The Different Drum'
by M. Scott Peck
___________________________________________________________________________
A
Course in Miracles Workshops in Australia
by Michael Dawson
Clare - Sat 15 and Sun 16, September 2007
(2hrs drive north of Adelaide)
A Full Heart and an Empty Mind
- A Course in Miracles workshop
Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or
false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and
all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do
not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one
belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this
world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands
unto your God.
LESSON 189
The deepest but forgotten truth about ourselves is that we are
one with the love and mind of God.
To let this memory return to our awareness we need to question
everything we think is true, to realise we know nothing about
how to awaken to peace and joy, and learn to extend kindness and
goodwill to others. Insight of the mind must be balanced with
compassion of the heart.
This workshop will explore how we can awaken to our spiritual
reality through the healing power of insight, kindness,
gentleness, awareness and forgiveness.
No previous knowledge of A Course in Miracles is required.
VENUE:
Clare
SA 5453
(2hrs drive north of Adelaide)
DATE:
Sat 15 and Sun 16, September 2007
TIME:
Sat 28 - 9.30 TO 5.30
Sun 29 - 9.30 TO 4.30
BOOKINGS:
Tel: 08 8842 3114
PO Box 614
Clare, SA 5453
Cost
Deposit: $60 to cover basic costs
plus a donation for the workshop.
Food provided.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Hillier (Gawler) SA - Sat 22 and Sun 23 September 2007
(40 minutes drive from the centre of Adelaide)
HEALING OURSELVES and OTHERS
from the perspective of A Course in Miracles
Health Is Inner Peace....Health is the result of
relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly.
A Course in Miracles
Using the spiritual path of A Course in Miracles we will explore
what true healing is - the return to our awareness of our
spiritual identity. Identification with our body as our home is
the origin of all our physical and psychological suffering.
The basis of this workshop is that the cause of all disease lies
in the mind and not the body. Disease is a shadow on the body,
of the guilt in our minds.
During the workshop we will focus on undoing the blocks we have
built to the presence of God's love and joy within us through
the understanding and practising of forgiveness. Only this love
heals.
We will investigate what the Course means by healing ourselves
and others and contrast the differences between the healed and
the unhealed healer. Practical exercises will be used to help
understand the ego and to practice forgiveness and turning
within for guidance.
An overview of the Course's metaphysical, psychological and
spiritual teachings especially in regard to healing will be
covered.
No previous knowledge of the book A Course in Miracles is
required.
VENUE
"Riverdell"
Clifford Road
Hillier
South Australia
(40 minutes drive from the centre of Adelaide)
TIME:
Sat and Sun - 9.30 TO 5.00
COST
Booking Fee - $30 (non refundable)
Workshop - By Donation
Some accommodation on site - $40
Bring food to share for lunch both days
For Details Contact:
Pamela St Claire
(08) 8322 0444
email: pstclaire@chariot.net.au
People should send their Booking Fee to:
Pamela St Claire
36 The Causeway
O'Halloran Hill SA 5158
and include a cheque made payable to P. St Claire
---------------------------------------------------------------
GERMANY
2008 WORKSHOPS
Bonn - weekend w/s Sat 14 June and Sun 15
Awakening to Our Spiritual Reality.
A Course in Miracles workshop
You do not have to seek reality.
It will seek you and find you when you meet its conditions.
A Course in Miracles T-8.IX.2:4-5
The deepest but forgotten truth about ourselves is that we are
one with the love and mind of God. Identification with our
bodies and personalities blinds us to our spiritual reality. The
Course teaches us how to awaken from this dream of separation
from God and to experience joy and peace. If our intention to
awake is sincere and we have the humility to realise we know
nothing and are willing to be taught by spirit we will meet the
conditions of awakening.
Topics will include:
•What is enlightenment?
•Why we fear to awaken.
•Traps on the spiritual path.
•The need for a full heart and an empty mind.
•Not knowing.
•Obstacles to peace
•Development of trust
•Forgiveness and guidance
Exercises will be used to help remove the obstacles to peace.
No previous knowledge of A Course in Miracles is required.
Introductory talk on A Course in Miracles - evening Fri
13 June
Contact:
Albert-Schweitzer-Haus
Beethovenallee 16
Bonn 53173
tel: 0228 - 36 47 37
http://www.albert-schweitzer-haus-bonn.de
---------------------------------------------------------------
FREIBURG - Weekend w/s Sat 7 and Sun 8 June 2008
Awakening to Our Spiritual Reality.
A Course in Miracles workshop
10am to 6pm
You do not have to seek reality.
It will seek you and find you when you meet its conditions.
A Course in Miracles T-8.IX.2:4-5
The deepest but forgotten truth about ourselves is that we are
one with the love and mind of God. Identification with our
bodies and personalities blinds us to our spiritual reality. The
Course teaches us how to awaken from this dream of separation
from God and to experience joy and peace. If our intention to
awake is sincere and we have the humility to realise we know
nothing and are willing to be taught by spirit we will meet the
conditions of awakening.
Topics will include:
•What is enlightenment?
•Why we fear to awaken.
•Traps on the spiritual path.
•The need for a full heart and an empty mind.
•Not knowing.
•Obstacles to peace
•Development of trust
•Forgiveness and guidance
Exercises will be used to help remove the obstacles to peace.
No previous knowledge of A Course in Miracles is required.
Introductory talk on A Course in Miracles - evening Fri 6 June
at 8pm.
Location of workshop:
Center Margarete Sennekamp
Schauinslandstr. 39
79100 Freiburg-Günterstal
Tram 4, Klosterplatz
Contact:
Sophia-Institut
Margarete Sennekamp
Adalbert-Stifter-Str. 16
79102 Freiburg
Tel/Fax : 0761-73930
www.Sophia-Institut.de
Biography
Michael discovered A Course in Miracles whilst visiting
the Findhorn Foundation in 1982. He subsequently became a member
of the Foundation for about six years and involved himself with
healing and teaching. In 1994 he published Healing the Cause
- A Path of Forgiveness which serves as an introduction to
the Course. His second book, The Findhorn Book of Forgiveness
(Findhorn Press) uses exercises, stories and case histories to
guide the reader to inner peace through forgiveness. Michael now
lives in Australia and gives workshops on the Course world-wide.
_______________________________________
BOOKS AND AUDIO MATERIALS FOR SALE - by Michael Dawson
Books:
Healing the Cause - A Path of Forgiveness. Findhorn
Press. 1994
The Findhorn Book of Forgiveness. Findhorn Press. 2003
For more details and how to purchase please visit:
http://www.acfip.org/books_tapes.html
Audio Tapes and CDs
Since 1986 I have been conducting healing workshops in the
UK and abroad, and have continually experimented to find healing
and forgiveness exercises that are effective. I have found that
a particular exercise can be effective for one person but not
another. Accordingly, I was led to develop a series of
exercises. Over the years workshop participants asked if these
exercises could be put onto audio cassettes and CDs so they
could repeat them. This has resulted in the Healing the
Cause - Exercise series - Tapes 1 to 4 (2 exercises on each
tape) and CD1 and 2 (4 exercises on each CD)
For more details and how to purchase please visit:
http://www.acfip.org/audio.html
___________________________________________________________________________
CONTACTS
Resources
Foundation for A Course In Miracles
41397
Buecking Drive, Temecula, CA 92590
Tel: 909 296 6261 Fax: 909296 9117
Books, videos, CDs and audio tapes by Kenneth and Gloria Wapnick
are available from their web site http://www.facim.org
Question and Answer Service:
Their electronic outreach section has a question and answer
service http://www.facimoutreach.org/ on the theory and practice
of the Course. Their database of hundreds of questions and
answers is searchable and you can ask your own questions.
Their publications can also be ordered in Australia at:
Adyar
Bookshop
230 Clarence Street
Sydney, NSW 2000
Foundation
for
Inner Peace - the publishers of A Course in Miracles
http://www.acim.org/
ACIM study groups.
Go to The Miracle Distribution Center
http://www.miraclecenter.org/ for the largest and most
frequently updated list of A Course in Miracles study
groups available anywhere.
Miracles
Studies Australia http://www.miracle-studies.net.au
lists study groups for Australia and new Zealand
A Course In Miracles Pen Pals
The Miracle Network http://www.miracles.org.uk hosts a
A Course in Miracles pen pals group:
To
join this e-mail discussion group, send your e-mail address to
e.pals@miracles.org.uk. They will send you updated lists
of other e.pals and inform them of your e-mail address.
A Course In Miracles Chat Groups
The aim of this board is to provide a place for people to chat
about ACIM.
Any related discussions are more than welcome and I believe
helpful! - moderated by Glyn Milhench
http://glynbo.proboards84.com/index.cgi?board=acim
---------------------------------------------------------------
INSPIRATIONAL QUOTATIONS
About three or four times a week I send a short quotation
from some spiritual teacher or poet to people who have requested
some uplifting thoughts. I have included some below. If you wish
I can add your name to the email list.
Do understand that you are destined for enlightenment.
Co-operate with your destiny, don't go against it, don't thwart
it.
Allow it to fulfil itself.
All you have to do is to give attention to the obstacles created
by the foolish mind.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
---------------------------------------------------------------
When you listen to the voice in
your head, that
is to say, do not judge. You'll soon realize: there
is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching
it. This I am realization, this sense of your own
presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond
the mind.
- Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now
---------------------------------------------------------------
In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do, and that
sign becomes this art.
- Rumi
---------------------------------------------------------------
One is more likely to awaken through surrender than through
seeking to waken. The effort to awaken is the effort of ego,
whereas to surrender is to give up all efforts and to place
oneself in the hands of a vast force that is more powerful than
any realization of non duality.
When one finally gives up one's futile attempts to make reality
conform to one's own wishes, and allows it to unfold on its own
terms, all the energy that was tied up in foolish attempts to
manipulate the universe is freed up.
Mariana Caplan
Halfway Up the Mountain - The Error of Premature Claims to
Enlightenment
---------------------------------------------------------------
Yet searching is inevitable here. For this you came, and you
will surely do the thing you came for. But the world can not
dictate the goal for which you search, unless you give it power
to do so. Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that
lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one that
comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet
new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you
really want.
A Course in Miracles Lesson 131
---------------------------------------------------------------
There's one great delusion that lies at the core
of all of our suffering: the false belief in the reality
of the separation of life and in the subsequent
true existence of an individual ego.
All fervent attempts to control or to mortify this
illusory ego through penance, rituals and sacrifice,
however, will only serve to intensify the delusion
that this ego is actually very real and that it only
needs to be, somehow, subdued, conquered or
destroyed.
- Chuck Hillig
Seeds for the Soul
Chuck Hillig
Black Dot Publications, 2003