Doug gave this talk at the Rocky Mountain Miracle Center in Denver, Colorado on May 20, 2012.
“It’s often quite helpful to use magical means to dissipate fear so that you can open yourself up to the miracle or the change of mind that is necessary.”
Blog
Asking for the Answer
“A question is meant as a limit on love – whatever the question.”
D: Doug;
N: Nieca;
D: We are wanting to solve at the level of form, even while remembering there is no solution there. Solving through form reflects the wrong teacher (because it’s us trying to figure out what to do, instead of asking “which teacher am I choosing?”) Ego can only offer us the problem and a pseudo solution – ego can never offer us peace. Pleasure and pain have the same purpose – whether we like ‘it’ or not is irrelevant … what is relevant is which teacher we look with (at what we like or don’t like.)
We think the body is the problem (it’s getting old, it’s too fat, it’s going to die.) This is what we want to work with – to take that problem to Jesus, and say “I’m giving this over as a problem. I’m not looking for a magical solution.” I’m just listening… not asking how to feel better in my body. I’m just listening with an open mind – not with a question. A question is meant as a limit on love – whatever the question. Asking how to lose weight is telling Jesus what my problem is and what needs to be solved.
N: It’s a statement, a demand.
D: It’s often a statement or a demand posing as a question.
Regarding your ‘to do’ list … you don’t have to fight against the list. You give that up if you’re ready. Give that list to Jesus as a sign that you won’t put that ‘to do’ list between him and you; that you’d rather listen to him than have help with your list. His Answer is the experience of God’s love that informs the answers to all of our specific questions. If your mind is comfortable and at peace, what difference does it make how far you get along your to-do list?
When you and I problem-solve, we join at the level of mind – and we teach ourselves to do this by seeing shared interests rather than separate interests. We do this with each other first (in this special relationship), and then extend it out to others (generalizing it) – both being forms of practice for us.
The love we share is a symbol of the reflection of God’s Love if we are right-minded. How readily we confuse symbol with source! You symbolize love for me in a form that’s perfectly acceptable for me. The fear of losing you, our special relationship – is sticky for me. I want to cling to the form and experience, rather than recognize that the form and experience are just reflections of the love that’s always available. I don’t have to hold onto you to hold onto Love! How I interfere with love is by deciding it has to be in a particular form – it’s how I place a limit on Love because it’s now embodied in you (as if it could be embodied!)
I know that the loss of my mother’s body was not the loss of my mother’s love. You and my mom are intertwined in my mind – because I make that transference so readily in terms of how you come through my filters. The fear is that I could lose love … which makes loss real for me. By holding that fear, I keep fear alive. The ego likes this – because it’s all about form and specialness bargains.
N: We attach ourselves to a form. We become attached to avoiding it or acquiring it.
D: Yes. That is why Jesus spares no ink in his course helping us make a clear distinction between form and content. Form always refers to the level of illusion. This is the world our body’s senses report and includes the body and it’s brain. Content, conversely, always refers to what transpires at the level of mind. Jesus makes it very clear that the mind is where all the power is.
You Know What…?
You know what…?
You’re not what you think
You are the mind – it’s your missing link
You stand in the midst
Of your insane world
You dreamt it yourself and ordained it your pearl
You are the dreamer
The dreamer of dreams
And nothing you see
Is as it seems
Thinking you’re thinking
Time passes you by
You search for the truth in the midst of your lie
All of your feelings
Come only from you
You claim you’re the victim but it just is not true
You are the dreamer
The dreamer of dreams
And nothing you see
Is as it seems
You made up this world
A long time ago
In a make-believe moment that hides all you know
And you make it up now
As you stay asleep
You dream of such sorrow you make yourself weep
You are the dreamer
The dreamer of dreams
And nothing you see
Is as it seems
When you’ve had enough
Of the sorrow and pain
Forgiving another the mind becomes sane
You are the dreamer
Of whatever you see
In this recognition you set yourself free
When you choose to remember
What you chose to forget
You’ll recall the real world that holds no regret
As a lucid dreamer
Of your world of dreams
The nightmare is over
And peace shall be seen
Now life is love
Receiving and sharing
No pain or sorrow that requires bearing
The joy of sharing
Is now what you’re living
And you are receiving all that you’re giving
Your sisters and brothers
Take hold of your hands
As all walk together through the promised land
Happiness or Hopelessness
“Our happiness comes from changing our minds about the world.”
How hopeless it is to place your hope of happiness in the world. How cruelly history repeats itself. It is our wish that the world would work that makes it so difficult for us to see that the world has never brought us lasting joy. We have a vested interest in trying to get it to work because we chose it. We, the separated, special, unique, individuals that we think we are, think this is what we want – and that what we want will someday make us feel complete and whole. Undaunted by the fact that this has never been accomplished by anyone, ‘hope springs eternal’. All the while we remain clueless – that wanting the world to work is really an expression of our selfishness.
From the theology of ACIM it is perfectly clear that God did not create the world.
If God didn’t do it, guess who is left? Yeah, it’s us. As Possum famously stated in the Pogo cartoon strip: “We have met the enemy and he is us’n”. Within the metaphysics of the course, this is metaphorically expressed as the part of the mind that took ‘the tiny mad Idea’ of separation from God and His Creation seriously. It is a metaphor – because, in fact, the separation from God never really happened. The separation could not have happened because it is not God’s Will that His Creation be separate and sinful. What is not God’s will can not happen.
This begs the question then: Where is our hope of happiness if it is not from the world we see? Answer: Our happiness comes from changing our minds about the world. In practical terms, this means changing our purpose for the world… from trying to get the world to meet our ego needs, to using the world to learn the happy lessons of love. This is accomplished by our deliberate choice not to see our interest as apart from someone else’s. We can teach ourselves the joys of shared interest as opposed to experiencing the inevitable disappointments of indulging the ego’s desire for separate, selfish interest.
God didn’t do it!
by Doug Sparks
God didn’t do it!
I know they say He did.
But God didn’t do it,
He hasn’t flipped His lid.
Why would He do it –
make a world like this;
ordaining loss and death
to take the place of bliss?
No, I don’t think so.
It really makes no sense.
A Love that kills or causes pain –
flesh that needs defense?
We are talking God here –
the Almighty – Lord of All.
If He is Love and nothing else
He could not let us fall!
Well, if God didn’t do it
how did we end up here –
in this world of time and space,
physicality and fear?
You’d never guess what did this…
a mad idea so small
the Creator never saw it…
knows naught of it at all.
And if He never saw it
then of course it is not real –
just a dream of madness
filled with false appeal.
