Last night in the Mindshifters group we listened to the second half-hour of the four hour audio lecture titled Why Is This Happening To Me Again? The thing that struck me about the material this time through was the statement that, “My mind can only show me the past, until I cancel and dismantle all the old false realities which I have stored in my mind, and my body’s energy system by the process of denial and suppression.”
The definition for “the devil” was once again covered and the point was clarified that “the devil” is the past and it lives in the mind of man. “The devil” in this definition is the process of living in the past which keeps us from living in the mind of God. The mind of God is the mind of Love. The only way for me to get an accurate picture of the world around me is for me to be viewing the world through the filter of Love.
Anytime I am feeling anything other than Love, I am getting distorted data about what is really going on in the world around me. Anytime I am feeling any form of hostility or fear, this is a gift which is telling me that I am making an error, and that I have moved out of the mind of Love.
Since the mind of Love is the only thing which can show me an accurate picture of the world around me, I need to stop what I am doing and restore the energy of Love to my mind.
We would not think of walking around blindfolded, or driving a car while blindfolded, because of the dangers to ourselves and others. In just the same way, we should make the commitment to stop whatever we are doing when we feel fear or hostility, and use whatever tools we have to dismantle that false reality before doing anything else! For we are just as surely blinded from the truth whenever we are feeling hostility or fear, as we would be if we were wearing a physical blindfold!
Several members discussed their new understanding of the difference between the trigger for an event, and the actual mechanism which causes the event. In the lecture Dr. Ryce gives the example of the person who comes from a primitive area, with no idea about motors or machinery of any kind. If you put this person on the side of a river near a bridge, and ask him to figure out what makes the bridge go up, he will watch as a boat comes by and the bridge goes up. Then the boat goes away and the bridge goes down. Then another boat comes by and the bridge goes up – the boat goes away and the bridge goes down. Before long the person concludes that boats make the bridge go up.
This is a classic example of mistaking the trigger for the actual mechanism. Those of us who know about mechanics and draw bridges know that there is a person inside the bridge house who sees the boat, and then switches on a motor which drives a series of gears and cables which make the bridge go up. We also know that nothing about the boat being next to the bridge causes the bridge to go up. A boat can sit next to the bridge for days without the bridge ever going up, either because there is no one in the bridge house, or because the boat does not have authorization to travel through that part of the river, etc.
Imagine though, that the person who was unaware of any kind of mechanical workings or automation has decided that boats make the bridge go up. Then you tell that person that you will give them a very large prize or salary if they will keep the bridge from going up, ever again. That person will probably conclude that they need to change the course of every boat that comes onto that river, to keep it away from the bridge in order to win the prize, or be paid the salary you promised. Now before you go thinking that this person is silly, or stupid, think about how many times in our lives we have talked about, wished, or tried to make someone else change their behavior so that we won’t have to be angry, sad, hurt, or frustrated!
If indeed we are truly aware of what causes our emotions, we will not be looking at the actions of others for the cause and the cure of our negative experiences. We will be able to recognize that we create our realities and that we cause the emotions we are feeling at any time, and in every way.
The members of the group worked through two rounds of doing Reality Management Worksheets last night and the process was productive and emotional as it usually is. The process last night highlighted the difficulty some of us have of defining what the trigger is for a particular worksheet and the difficulty we have at times in clarifying which thoughts cause which emotions.
We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.