Buy Bill book

Right now Carol has a holiday sale on her book about Bill Thetford (recommended), Never Forget To Laugh. A good and fun bio, as well as a good book for learning about the Course and how to Let Go.

Thandie on the Self

Thandie Newton shows that she's more than a gorgeous face, an interesting TED talk about Self and Otherness.

Doing a Total Restoration

I think the most universal advice that I know of is that no matter what you do, live your life with deliberation and consideration.

And occasionally, take a breather and do a "Total Restoration", meaning reconsider *everything*. Your whole role and direction in Everything. And do it from the biggest perspective you can which seems real to you. Probably this will be expanding as time goes.

Personal upheaval

    "Between 1930 and 1990,  a convenient and superficial brand of spirituality has been circulating and pretending to be the real thing.  This form of spirituality has been most sharply characterized by a pervasive ego-gratifying and materialistic series of assumptions.  The marketing of spiritual approaches to life during the 1970's and 1980's became highly sophisticated in conveying to consumers that a spiritual path or dimension is the icing on the cake of life,  and does not require any deep soul searching or inward changes.

    In the late 1980's and early 1990's,  a counter-movement has been emerging which is much more Earth-real and  oriented toward core spiritual values.  As this counter-movement gathers momentum, the truth that every spiritual aspirant must move through major and extended upheavals will become basic to our evolutionary planetary shift into the 21st century.

    [Our aim]  is to give support and encouragement to those who find themselves faced with a call to die to their old selves and to come alive in a vibrant new way. We wish to affirm with glad hearts that each individual is equipped with  all that is needed to move through the planetary identity crisis and their own personal struggle and change.  In no way can we float along with the comfortable insinuation that these radical transformations will be easy,  or simply a matter of changing the paradigm of the way we look at things.  Now is the time to set to work and serve [Mankind] with a whole heart."

... from the book Inside Planets by Elias Lonsdale. Thanks to Laurie.

Note the expression "major and extended upheavals"... I can attest to that, as can many of my friends and many of the teachers who I have studied. We're not talking kindergarten problems when we approach the real spiritual center. It counters the popular belief that as you make spiritual progress, your life will become better and better, easier and easier. It may do so for a while, and then one day the express bus smacks you as you cross the street. The Self's resistance to Truth is very, very strong.

"Live in the Now"?

In the wonderful show Dead Like Me, Georgia complains: "Everybody says Live In The Now."

And I too feel that it is pretty useless advice. For one thing, the Now is no more real than the past or the future. There is no Now. Time is imaginary like space and energy.

For another thing, if you can live in the Now, I'm sure you're already doing it. It's like saying: "just be happy".

Stupid as that sounds, thinking about it I realize that there are actually people who do give that advice. "What do you look so sour about, smile!" So you're supposed to look happy so they don't feel bad?

And people who insist that others should be happy are always at best white-washing their own unhappiness. Why else would they care? And white-washing don't hold out in the rain, sorry.

Weekend quotes

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

           -- Bertrand Russell

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

           -- Mark Twain

Backwards blind

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.

           -- Marie Curie

Yes, I noticed this many years ago. It is frustrating, it makes it feel continually like all the work is in front of one, even if one has made enormous strides in the past. 

And at this point in time, I think anybody has made enormous strides. J says in The Course that we have crossed a great desert, now we merely need to wash the dust from our eyes to see it. 

And I do believe it. Many years ago I had a vision of a great crystal arrow sitting in the bulls-eye of a great target. The arrow had been fired from the other end of the universe, at the beginning of time, and now is sitting dead true in the target, the job is done, we're just too confused to know it. 

I was interested to read that writer Bernadette Roberts had virtually the same vision, only the "crystal" bit missing.