Can't push Love

"All you need is Love, duh-dah-duh-du-dahh..."

That's a theme that universal in pop songs, films, and literature. And even many spiritual and self-help books, it's there, you just have to Love and everything will sort itself out.

But while it's literally true that Love is All, I don't think you can push it or enhance it. The real love, the only Love, belongs to Source, and it's far, far beyond the control of the Self.

A Course In Miracles says it very simply: "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."

It's good news if you think about it. You don't have to worry about being deficient in Love or about how to enhance it. Love is infinite, in you and everybody. All you need is to remove the blocks to your awareness that Love is there.
That this is much easier said that done is another story.       :-)

ACIM in Chinese

Congratulations and Well Done to Judith Skutch Whitson and her team, they are coming out now with a Chinese edition of A Course In Miracles. [update, see below] I don't think it needs to be said how important an event this is, politically, religiously, philosophically, spiritually, and just in terms of sheer numbers!
Chinese is a profoundly alien language to English, in form and in thought, and it must have been a colossal challenge and job to do this right. (Not that it's ever easy, they say that they target any translation of ACIM to take five years.)

They are also doing amazing work in the digital sphere, they now have The Course out in ebook format on many platforms, Kindle, Nook, Sony, Mobi, iPhone/iPad (via Kindle and BN, not iBooks), Android, and soon Google. I am into those things (ereaderJoy.com), and I can tell you it is not a trivial thing to develop an ebook, even though by rights it should be these days. Just for one thing there are apparently no tools which does a really good job of translating a regular wordprocessor file into any of the ebook formats, it has to at least be carefully edited and corrected manually.
I have the Course in Kindle format (reading mostly on iPad), and it's beautifully done.

Update:
I contacted Judith Whitson to see if I had it all correct. It turns out there are two different Chinese versions of the Course, one in the "Traditional Font" and one in the "Simplified Font".
Judith told me:
The first edition of the Chinese translation of A Course in Miracles was first published by the Foundation for Inner Peace in 1997.  It was printed in the the Traditional Font and disseminated in all countries where Chinese was spoken except for the Peoples' Republic of China, where the Simplified Font is used. You are correct in assuming that there was also the timing factor in that a decade ago there was indeed resistance to the themes introduced by the Course on Mainland China.
 The first edition was widely distributed through the efforts of a remarkable translator, Chiao lin Cabanne who then spent years in public presentations, teaching and traveling throughout Asia. Because of her efforts, the Course is now studied through dozens of groups in Taiwain, Malaysia and Hong Kong.  Groups also started to spring up on the Mainland.  Finally, this past year, Course was set into Simplified Font, approved by a publisher in Beijing and was printed last week for distribution in the Peoples' Republic of China. 
So you see, Eolake, it has been a double phased effort. 
It warms my heart that you understand the great commitment of love, time, resources and effort that are given these translations. 
As best as we can estimate, this means that approximately 93% of the world's population is able to read the Course in languages of their choice.
Also, by the way, the Translation Program of the Foundation for Inner Peace is an equal effort of Dr. Kenneth Wapnick, who teaches the translators and Dr. William Whitson who manages the process.  :>)
I hope this is helpful to you, and again, I am so appreciative that you let me clarify the process.
And you made me smile by recognizing in your excellent blog the size of the Course's electronic outreach through the ebooks we design and make available just as fast as we can!  We are coming out with two more this year and I'll let you know when they are being launched.
"Love is the way I walk in gratitude".
Judy 

Georges Duhamel

I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.

           -- Georges Duhamel

---

Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.

           -- Rabbi Julius Gordon

Axioms

ax·i·om 

noun

1.

a self-evident truth that requires no proof.

2.

a universally accepted principle or rule.

3.

Logic, Mathematics . a proposition that is assumed without proof for the sake of studying the consequences that follow from it.

I find it interesting that we as humans even has a word for "a self-evident truth that requires no proof." 

The best teachers, for instance Jed McKenna, stress that we cannot be certain of anything. Everything is based on belief, and a belief that you can't change is a trap. 

Intelligence and faces

I find it very interesting how intelligence is reflected in a person's face. Intelligent people have a very specific tension in the face, particularly around the eyes. You can almost literally see the focus of their mind.

Y's beautiful dream

My artist friend Y wrote this awesome dream to me. I’m almost envious of it. 

Eolake

===

Y wrote:

I had a really strange and interesting dream.

I was back at a house where I grew up... except it was quite different.. and there were a lot of people there who I did not know or recognise, but it didn`t seem strange to me, as I was the age I am now, and I seemed to take it forgranted that they were living there in the present tense outside of my dream.

Anyway, it was night time, and dark outside, and we all were outside the kitchen door at the back garden.

I saw a faint glimmer of light in the sky, and began to look for it again.. no-one else had noticed it.. as I stood looking, I saw the most beautiful sight.. ( in my dream, I had decided that it was an alien space ship )... it was transparent with areas of flickering almost neon light, like a deep sea jelly fish, but it was in the shape of a Giant Manta Ray, and gracefully and slowly moving through the dark sky just as a Manta would move under water, with it`s long tail extended behind it. 

I kept telling other people to look, but they didn`t seem to be able to see it.. and they made jokes about me seeing things... But I felt so happy at being able to see this beautiful thing of wonder... this organic spaceship / creature... in all of its beauty.

Anyway, that's how the dream ended... with me just standing staring at this wonderous thing in the night sky, and feeling so privileged and happy.

- Y

Clumsy forceps

The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.
- H. G. Wells

====

... And that's just human truth. I feel that Universal Truth may be as far beyond a human mind as the galaxy is to an ant.