October 14th thru 17th I attended the Intensive at Heartland Healing Center outside of Theodosia Missouri. It was every bit as powerful, challenging and rewarding as it was two years ago when I went there for a nine day Intensive. I strongly recommend doing an Intensive program at Heartland to help you reach deeper levels of understanding about what is keeping you from staying consciously aware of your essence and your source – Love.

Thank you Michael, Jeanie, the entire Heartland staff and all of you who attended this Intensive as participants!

Visit www.whyagain.com and sign up now for one of next year’s Intensives to secure a space and receive a special bonus for early registration.

Just before I left for the Intensive I received a blog entry from the gentleman who “channeled” The Way of Mastery. He was responding to questions he receives about the differences and perceived conflicts between The Way of Mastery and A Course In Miracles. I thoroughly enjoyed the article and wanted to share some of it with you and provide the link for the blog in case you are interested in reading the entire article.

Here is the beginning of the blog entry:

A student recently asked: “What is the difference between ACIM (A Course in Miracles) and Way of Mastery and where do they conflict?”

First, perceived conflict – when looking upon teachings that come from the very highest levels of Wisdom – is not in the teachings themselves, but reveals the current limit of our own limit of awareness. Having said that, let me begin by sharing a critical, universal truth that all seeking awakening must begin with. This is the way Jeshua put it to me many years ago:

Teaching is an art, not a science, and all forms of teaching but serve to sever the mind or soul from its infatuation with the illusions it has generated, and then entered into.

The wise teacher speaks the language of the student first, then leads them beyond the very limits they do not know imprisons them.

Both ACIM and The Way of Mastery (WOM) are expressions of this teaching art aimed at reaching downward into the labyrinth of where the student is, and providing ways and means to enter and – depending on the devotion, desire, and commitment of the student – to move through the process of enlightenment.

I am not an ACIM student. I am a disciple of Jeshua, who is the Master Teacher ‘in charge of the Atonement.’ He has selectively led me to small segments of ACIM, and – as far as I can tell – there is no conflict at all if one goes far enough in the enlightenment process. I have had many, many Course students come to me – and to WOM – who, frankly, seem to be suffering in a ‘stuckness’. It appears that they get stuck in a purely mental approach to waking, and this is a very common malaise that can occur if one doesn’t have access to teachers who have themselves gone beyond the level of purely mental/intellectual understanding, for they will be limited to meeting the student’s deeper obstructions with little more than recourse to ideas and statements about Reality, but don’t necessarily have the skillful art that can operate at subtle/deep levels of soul itself, nor even know how to “seduce” the mind out of its ruts of thinking/perceiving.

In a nutshell, SOME students, following the lead of some ACIM teachers, say the body and world are simply unreal (there is a sense in which this is true) and thus tend to discount feeling, breath, and any need to participate in growing one’s capacity to serve others.

Personally, I know that phase of the waking process. It’s actually found in many forms of spirituality around the world. Unfortunately, it can be a clever way to avoid any really ownership of egoic patterns, as well as submission to real transformation. Seeing the unreality of world, self, and purpose of Creation is actually a first step; as extraordinary as it may seem. What is often missed is the overall context of ACIM and a lack of understanding of where it fits along the spectrum of awakening, and the audience it relates to. There are certainly passages in it that reveal what comes once the radical correction in what I call the ‘seat of the soul’ is truly completed.

To Read the entire blog go to: http://www.wayofmastery.com/jayem/blog/3328.html

Enjoy, and remember –

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false!

Please pass this along to anyone you feel may benefit!

Dr. Michael Ryce is holding an Fall Colors four day workshop at his Heartland Healing Center in Theodosia, MO. It begins on October 14th and runs through the 17th, with the option for extending your time at the center, up to a nine day workshop.

I will be attending at the least the first four days of this event from the 14th through the 17th and I highly recommend Heartland and the work that is done there. I attended a nine day workshop at Heartland two years ago and I have repeatedly told people that it was the most beneficial workshop for personal growth and rejuvenation that I have attended in my 35 years of attending trainings, workshops and retreats, as a therapist/psychologist.

To visit Dr. Ryce’s website click here: www.whyagain.com

To view a flier for the Fall Colors Intensive Workshop click here: Fall Colors Intensive

Please pass this along to anyone you feel may benefit!

Last night the Mindshifters group watched the first half of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled, Healing Through Relationships. Dr. Ryce begins by telling how the lecture used to be titled, Healing Your Relationships, until he discovered that there is no such thing as a broken relationship, since each relationship and interaction can be seen as a tool for uncovering anything that is less than Love within ourselves. Once we discover that we have hidden something less than Love inside of ourselves then we can use the tools we have learned to dismantle that false and negative reality and restore our awareness to the fact that we are Love.

This process is made even easier by the fact that once we recognize that we are the ones creating whatever negative emotion or reaction we experience, we stop blaming others, and then we are free to ask them for support as we explore and heal our negative realities. Approaching relationship in this way is completely foreign to most people, but results in a collaborative approach to communication and relationship, rather than a competitive approach to communication and relationship. When there is a competitive approach to relationship I find myself thinking, “I am much more balanced and emotionally stable than you are.” “I am right about this and you are sadly mistaken.”

When there is a collaborative approach to relationship and “Responsibility Communication”, I take responsibility for everything I am feeling and I stay focused on my ability to create what I am experiencing. So that when I am uncomfortable, or sad, or angry, or hurt, or confused, I realize that I need to focus on how I am creating that experience if I am to change it. Then I can ask for the Love and support of my friend or family member as I take the time to change and heal the false negative reality within my mind.

I can tell you from personal experience that it is much less stressful to explore my hurt with a collaborative partner, than it is to confront my hurt by attacking and blaming the person I feel caused it!

This lecture tied beautifully into the lecture by Guy Finley which we listened to last week. One of the key points in Guy Finley’s talk was that because we have become so focused on acquiring what it is we think will give us peace and freedom from fear, we have come to the point where we view everyone else as either a suspect or a prospect. We either want to blame others for causing our emotional pain and frustration, or we see them as someone who can take away our emotional pain and frustration. This leaves us with the following summary statement; “All attempts at acquisition are the bitter fruit of an imitative life”. When one realizes that there is nothing missing within the Self, there is no desire for acquisition.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

This powerful video documents the story of veterans suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and how they are being helped by learning to use EFT to eliminate the symptoms of nightmares, flashbacks, rage, confusion, paranoid thoughts, alcohol and drug abuse, broken relationships and more. This movie began in 2008 with veterans volunteering to try this approach. These veterans and their families thought there was no help for the life threatening symptoms they had as a result of being in combat situations. The movie documents the results they got in five days of treatment and the benefits which lasted a full year later when they were interviewed for followup.

Please help spread the word about this low cost, highly effective, self-empowering tool for resolving the effects of a past trauma, whether the trauma was combat related or from any other situation. This tool and its powerful healing benefits are simply too important to be kept secret, or to be ignored.

You can also go to the EFT website, www.eftuniverse.com to learn more about the actual procedure and download a free manual which shows you how to perform EFT for yourself or a loved one. Please note that if someone has been in a combat situation, or any other severely traumatic situation, they may need to support of a therapist who is trained in EFT or other Energy Psychology, or Mind/Body energy techniques in order to benefit from this process.

Please help those who have served our country and sacrificed more than any of us can truly know, by helping to spread the word about this powerful tool which is transforming lives and healing the effects of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, (PTSD).

Last week and this week, the Mindshifters group watched a lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled A New Beginning: A lesson from A Course In Miracles, www.whyagain.com, and we listened to a story by Guy Finley about a woman who lived in “Happy Valley” and was trying to leave and “move on” with her life, www.guyfinley.com.

One of the essential messages from Dr. Ryce’s talk was the idea that if I want things to be different in my life, I have to find a way to do things differently. Therefore, if I rely on the same processes of my thinking and logical mind which produced the situation I am in, I am not likely to find a result that is any different than what I have already produced. My unhappiness or discomfort in any moment is the result of what I have chosen to focus my awareness upon. If I keep focusing my awareness on the outside events and what others are saying and doing, and assume that these things are causing what I am feeling, then I am doomed to continue feeling the same kind of pain and discomfort.

Dr. Ryce relates that A Course In Miracles suggests that I decide “Today I will make no decisions by myself. I will make decisions with my life today, instead of my past.” Then throughout the day I should tell myself the kind of day I want to have, and keep reminding myself of the kind of experience I want to have. Then when things begin to happen that don’t seem to produce in me the kind of experience I want to have, it is suggested that I say to myself, “I have no question. I forgot what to decide.” This will keep me from the pattern of automatic response based on my past experiences, which has produced discomfort and unhappiness within me, every time something like this has happened in my past.

It is also suggest that when I am unhappy or uncomfortable in any way that I say, “I hope I have been wrong.” Because the Truth is that happiness does not depend on being right. Happiness depends on being Love! If I can get myself to realize that no matter how hard I have worked at proving that “I am right!”, it has not led me to being happy, then I can begin to suspect that there may be another way to look at my situation.

Guy Finley tells the story of the woman who lives in Happy Valley and is no longer satisfied with her life. She decides to “move on”. She tells her friends that she is going to leave Happy Valley and they tell her she can’t because there are guards. She thinks this is silly because she has never seen any guards. She then realizes that she has never tried to leave before and so maybe that is why she never noticed any guards. She decides to think about this for a while and gives up the idea of leaving Happy Valley. But eventually she gets tired of all the tension, frustration, gossip, competition, anger, pride, and sadness which define her life in Happy Valley and once again decides she needs to leave and “move on”.

When she finally tries to walk out of the valley, she is confronted by someone walking towards her from a distance. This scares her her and she decides to go back to her house and think it over. Eventually a number of years have passed and she has gone through several attempts to leave the valley and each time she did, the person confronted her sooner and sooner, until she finally saw that the person was actually someone who looked just like her. Finally she decided to confront the person face to face and when she did she realized it was just a mirror. She was relieved at first, but then scared again when she tried to walk around the mirror and it moved to be in front of her. Eventually she gave up trying to go around the mirror and went home.

After many attempts to sneak out of the valley and finding that the mirror was confronting her sooner and sooner each time she tried, she opened her door one day to leave and the mirror was in her doorway. She got so angry she threw a stone at the mirror and the mirror was not harmed at all. In fact, the stone bounced off and hit the woman. With great fear and frustration, she reached out to touch the mirror and when she did her finger passed right through the mirror. She instantly felt all manor of strange sensations – many of them were not comfortable. She wanted to run away again but there was nowhere left to run. So she pushed her finger further into the mirror, fighting back the fear and “pain” and realized that this mirror was a passageway to some other place.

With great fear and doubt she pushed forward and walked right into the mirror. Instantly she was transported to another place, outside of Happy Valley.

Guy Finley then talks about how the resistance we feel is greatest just before the moment of transformation. He discusses how we have been tricked into thinking that emotional pain is the same as physical pain and that the proper thing to do is avoid it, rather than sit with it and explore it. This simply leaves us in the same cycle as the woman who wanted to leave Happy Valley, repeating the same useless escape mechanisms over and over again. In truth, the resistance, emotional pain and discomfort we feel is the signal that something has come along to reveal to us something about ourselves which is keeping us from moving forward and knowing Life more completely. The Truth is that we can release those things within us which keep us from knowing Life more completely, only by accepting them as simply self-caused, by the process of avoiding and denying resistance.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

This week we watched the first half of Dr. Ryce’s lecture on the healing power of relationships. The lecture makes the point that relationships are not bad, broken, or diseased. Relationships are sacred tools which reveal to us what it is, inside each of us, that we have denied and suppressed. We deny and suppress things because they are painful or scary, and these are the things which will keep creating pain and fear in our lives until we own them, and dismantle them from our thought. Dr. Ryce suggests that the traditional purpose for relationships in our world has been to see how much stuff we can accumulate, and who can be proven to be “right”. He offers that the way to begin using the healing power of relationships begins with adopting a new purpose for relationships; “I want to heal.” This changes everything about how we approach relationships, and what we can learn from them.

Guy Finley states in his Seven Steps to Oneness program that: “Before we can change our experience of life, we must change our purpose for living.”

This is a fundamental truth which arises from the awareness that we each create our own realities from the selective attention we place on the actuality of life which happens around us. When we choose a focus for our attention and we decide to set a goal or a purpose, that goal or purpose filters what we see, hear, and feel, and motivates our behavior in an attempt to accomplish that goal or purpose. Once we set a goal or purpose, it stays active in us until we achieve it or consciously cancel it. Therefore a goal or purpose can be driving our behavior, and experience, long after we have shifted our conscious awareness away from it and onto something else.

This makes it very important to consciously choose the purpose/goal we have for being in a relationship, and to frequently remind ourselves of that purpose/goal. When we do this with the understanding that we are creating our own experiences and our internal realities, and that no one else is causing any of our emotions, or thoughts, whether positive or negative, we can begin to make good use of the tool of relationship for healing those thoughts and emotions that “come up” within us that are less than Love. Dr. Ryce offers a tool for using relationships to heal at www.whyagain.com/commitment.php

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

Last night the Mindshifters group listened to the one hour audio lecture by Guy Finley, (www.guyfinley.com), before working on Reality Management worksheets. The purpose for this departure from our normal routine was that Dr. Ryce himself talks about how beneficial it is to hear the same message from a variety of different perspectives. If you hear about a new concept from several different sources and perspectives, it shortens the amount of time it takes you to integrate the material. It tends to produce more neural connections and can lead to more flashes of insight.

So with this in mind, we listened to Guy Finley discuss the ways in which everything that stimulates a disturbance in me is truly a gift. Every person, interaction, and situation which produces a disturbance in me is Revealing to me something about myself which I was unaware of, prior to the disturbance. He talks about the situation in which I am just having a wonderful day until someone gives me the wrong look, or criticizes me in some way. Then suddenly there is an irritable little person who erupts from me. I wasn’t an irritable little person until that situation occurred. My immediate thought is that someone just put an irritable little person into me. I then blame the other person for what I am feeling, saying and doing.

The fact of the matter is that I had those irritable feelings and thoughts within me, long before the other person gave me the look, or criticized me. I was simply not aware of that irritation, because I had chosen to focus my awareness on other things. Just because I don’t choose to focus my awareness on my frustration, irritation, anger, blame, guilt and shame, does not mean I don’t have any of those thoughts, feelings and energies hiding in my mind/body energy system. And as Dr. Ryce so often points out, every dis-integrative energy in my energy system is wearing me down and will eventually cause physical dis-ease and eventually death, if it is not seen, acknowledged, and removed.

Guy Finley closed his talk with a description of how a disturbing event produces resistance within me, which could Reveal to me something about myself, which is keeping me from being in direct contact with all that I am. The key to this process is that I accept the Revelation and integrate the realization that I had this energy within me. The problem is that in our current culture and system, we are conditioned to reject the Revelation and lose the realization, but insisting that someone else or something else is responsible for the resistance we feel when we come into contact with a disturbance.

This is the heart of Dr. Ryce’s Reality Management Worksheet, (www.whyagain.com) which steps a person through the process of identifying exactly how they are blaming someone or something else for the Reality they are creating in response to a disturbance in their lives. The worksheet helps a person reclaim their power, by taking responsibility for all that they are thinking and feeling, and by helping to uncover the hidden, deeper, projected parts of the mind, which are truly creating the discomfort.

Guy Finley states that with each disturbance we feel, the world is asking us, “Would you like to see what is keeping you from being closer to me?”

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

The Mindshifters group spent the last two weeks watching the video lecture by Dr. Ryce about Response-Ability Communication. This lecture outlines a process of communicating which is built around Dr. Ryce’s observations that we each create our own internal reality and that if we are in pain, we are in error. So this model for communicating is designed to allow me to let others know what reality I have created for myself, in a way which makes it clear that I know I have created this reality for myself. This means that I clearly transmit the message that I understand that no one else has done anything which created any discomfort in me.

This model of communication blends Dr. Ryce’s awareness of how each of us creates our own pain and then projects that pain onto the image we create in our minds about the other people and situations around us, with solid communication skills which have been promoted by experts for centuries. The value of using a system like this is that it keeps me focused on the things I truly have control over, and this leaves me with the power to create change in my life.

The reason most of Dr. Ryce’s lectures have such power is because, at some point in the process, they run counter to the way our traditional culture, or “common sense” would have us think or react. This lecture is no different. Most people think that effective communication is getting other people to agree with them, or believe what they believe, or to accept that what they did was wrong or somehow harmed us. The definition of communication which is given in this lecture is, “To accurately re-create the “reality” in my mind, in the mind of the person I am trying to communicate with.” This can only be accomplished if it is known and agreed upon that I am completely responsible for everything that I think, feel, see and hear!

In this model of communication, when I tell the other person, “what I want”, it is not about what I want from them or what I want them to change or do differently. In this model of communication when I tell someone “what I want”, it is a statement of how I want things to change within me, which only I can do. It is followed by a request for support from the other person in my own process of changing the reality I am creating which is causing me pain.

When I realize that I am the only one who can cause my emotions and that any sense within me that another person has caused my emotions is simply a distraction driven by my fear about what I would have to look at within myself, I am opening a new door to limitless possibilities.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

This lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce focuses on the use of a tool which amounts to a map of the choices we can make when we respond to events in our lives. Dr. Ryce described two possible paths, “The Upper Path” and “The Lower Path. “The Lower Path” leads eventually to pain, loneliness and dis-ease. “The Upper Path” leads to comfort, healthy loving relationships and health. A key idea in this lecture is that in order to get where we want to go in life we must know to things; we must know the destination, and we must be willing to honestly accept, and accurately define, where we are.

So, Dr. Ryce describes two separate patterns of responses to whatever events occur in life. One is focused on the knowledge that each of us creates our own internal realities and the other is focused on blaming others and the world around us for our internal realities.

People on “The Lower Path” deny and suppress their feelings and thereby block any useful information from coming into their awareness. These people fall into the cycle of being the victim and the hero in their interactions with others, and they are always blaming others for what they don’t like in their lives.

The people who choose “The Lower Path” are focused on Right vs. Wrong thinking and they are always willing to tell people how they are right and everyone else is wrong. When these people bump into the truth, it causes them stress and they blame the truth or the one who showed them the truth for causing their discomfort. Their adaptive mechanisms are all about denial, suppression, drug and alcohol use, and holding their breath.

For these people their personal code is “If I am in pain, you did it to me!” Therefore these people feel dis-empowered and they live in a state of destructive dissatisfaction. They throw tantrums and the adults on this path get depressed or full of rage. For these people things are important and they are takers who don’t care about how their “taking” influences others.

People who “Take The Upper Path” work to stay open to their feelings and don’t deny and suppress them. The are therefore able to use information from a variety of sources to learn how to respond differently. These people take response-ability for what they are feeling and how they choose to respond to what happens in their lives and they refuse to see themselves as either victim or hero.

The people who choose “The Upper Path” are focused on “Right”(for me), vs. “Not Right” (for me), thinking and they refuse to judge others as being wrong because they don’t want that energy in their system. When these people bump into the truth, it causes them stress and they welcome the truth, or the one who showed them the truth, for helpful the information it provides, so that they can make corrections within themselves. Their adaptive mechanisms are all about acceptance of Truth, self-correction, the energy of Love, forgiveness work, and breathing.

For these people their personal code is “If I am in pain, I am in error!” Therefore these people feel empowered and they live in a state of Constructive dissatisfaction. They accept response-ability for what they are feeling, and work to use their tools to dismantle and cancel the false realities, they have constructed, which have caused their pain. For these people, relationships are more important than things. These people know that giving and receiving are two sides of the same coin and that neither is truly possible without the other.

The people on “The Upper Path” are working to realize the actuality in their lives that:

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

The following is being supplied because of a request from several group members this week.

The mental short form for The Reality Management Worksheet:
1. My mind convinces me that my trigger _____ causes my feelings ______.
2. My reality is my responsibility, strictly internal, unique to me, and is created by my personal and genetic mind energy.
3. I locate and CANCEL my goal ______ (clear my mind).
4. Rookha d’ Koodsha /Holy Spirit – please assist me to reset Rakhma & Khooba, change my reality, its effects; and learn the TRUTH.
5. I reconnect with my source, ask for restoration to Love, and send Love to, ______ (trigger). I offer you, (trigger) ____(a loving goal).

Rakhma – is a filter in the mind over intentions, which allows only intentions keyed to Love to be available as raw material for use in setting my goals, which are drivers for my realities.

Khooba – is a filter in the mind over perceptions that allows only units of perceptual memory keyed to Love to be available for structuring my personal Reality, my guidance.

Rookha d’ Koodsha – The active force from God in the human mind that breaks off the effect of errors and teaches us the truth. The force for that which is proper for humans, the denial of which leaves us in un-forgiveness! The “SuperProcessor.”

More information is available at www.whyagain.com

This week the Mindshifters group watched the second half of the Dr. Michael Ryce lecture titled: The Laws of Living. What struck me most this time was a comment that Dr. Ryce made about how the Love of Truth produces a tension in the mind which focuses the mind on input and shows the mind the errors of its ways.

I remember from another lecture where Dr. Ryce explained his interpretation of the bible passage that says something like, “The eye is the lamp of the soul, if your lamp goes dark, how deep will your darkness be”. Dr. Ryce explains that the ancient Aramaic when translated directly into English says something more like, Your perception is the light for your earthly life, and if your perception is distorted by anything, you will create and experience false realities.

These false realities will always cause you pain and discomfort, and disrupt your relationships. Dr. Ryce explains, the mind is an evidential device, it shows you whatever it is you tell it to show you. So if you believe someone else is wrong or has “wronged you”, your mind will show you the evidence that they are wrong. You will literally perceive things that never happened, or twist things that did happen so that they have the meaning you have instructed your mind to give you.

Dr. Ryce repeatedly reminds us that the only way to perceive things accurately is to first hold the condition of Love in the mind. If I hold the condition of Love in my mind, I will Love Truth and desire only to see the Truth of what is. If I hold a desire for anything other than Truth, or if I hold any energy other than Love in my mind, my mind will distort the data that it shows me so that I construct a reality which is based on some form of hostility or fear, and is false! If I desire to be right, the first casualty of that desire will be the Truth. My mind will arrange the data it shows me to prove to me that I am right, and others are wrong. The Truth of the situation is not changed, I am just not able to use it to construct my reality.

If I desire to be right, my mind will show me how I am right, and it will shut down my ability to perceive anything which would conflict with that conclusion. When I desire to be right, I am not able to accept help, insight or input from friends, family or mentors. It is only when I accept that what I perceive may be inaccurate or incomplete that I am willing to accept input.

The Love of Truth literally produces tension and attention in the mind which focuses the mind on input from actuality, and allows the mind to see the errors of its ways. I desire to Love Truth. I frequently forget that desire and replace it with the desire of the Ego which longs to be right.

One important way for me to know when I am in error, and have lost my focus on The Love of Truth, is that I begin to feel tension, contraction and discomfort in my body. Whenever I become aware of this I know that I am in error. I know instantly that I am focusing my energy on something other than Love of Truth. I know instantly that I have shifted my awareness away from the fact that:

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.