Meditation

I often have to say "I'm meditating", despite never have had a minute's study in formal meditation, I have no clue what it is.
But then when I look up the word:

meditation - 3 dictionary results
med·i·ta·tion   
[med-i-tey-shuhn]
–noun
1.
the act of meditating.
2.
continued or extended thought; reflection; contemplation.
3.
transcendental meditation.
4.
devout religious contemplation or spiritual introspection.

It really is a very, very wide field indeed. Especially definition two, which I find very useful indeed. Contemplation. Look at things. Observe things.

ACIM lesson 325

Lesson 325

All things I think I see reflect ideas.

This is salvation's keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one's own. From insane wishes comes an insane world. From judgment comes a world condemned. And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world comes forth, with mercy for the holy Son of God, to offer him a kindly home where he can rest a while before he journeys on, and help his brothers walk ahead with him, and find the way to Heaven and to God.

(In audio by Gene Bogart.)

About patience

I never quite understood why A Course In Miracles and The Disappearance Of The Universe stress the need for Patience. Sometimes I have trouble being patient, and I realize I'd feel better if I had more, but I didn't see how it helped the process of waking up.

But today I realized that for many people, if they don't have the patience for a long task, they give up. Go and do something else.
Since I am driven, and driven hard, this was never an option for me, so I didn't see it.
But I really want want awakening, a trillion times more than I want anything else. It's so intense that it's normally suppressed for me.

---

"When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere." -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The end of logic

Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of it. 
 - Spock, Star Trek 6


I think it's cool to put this line in the mouth of a character who is famous for basing everything on Logic. If one is a big believer in logic, it's not an easy thing to learn otherwise.

What is the last judgment?

Part of A Course In Miracles Workbook Instruction 10, What is the Last Judgment?

Christ's Second Coming gives the Son of God this gift: to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgment is in which perception ends. At first you see a world that has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.

The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless.

You who believed that God's Last Judgment would condemn the world to hell along with you, accept this holy truth: God's Judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have.

A tourist in your world

The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.
           -- Susan Sontag

Interesting.
I think she means this is a bad thing. But I don't think so.

Be passersby.
Or:
Be a tourist in your own reality. 

... I think those say just the same.

I've always loved photographing, and I suspect that one of the effects of it is just that it makes you an observer instead of a participant. Again, most people would feel this is bad, but this is just the ego and the dream protecting itself. You stay trapped in the dream so long as you're participating in the drama. When you start observing instead, you're on the way out.