Readings for each day of the week
Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 86 to 88; Step Eleven, morning
Friday
On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.
Saturday
In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.
Sunday
We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn’t work. You can easily see why.
Monday
If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation. If we belong to a religious denomination which requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also. If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing.
Tuesday
There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.
Wednesday
As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.
Thursday
We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.
It works—it really does.
We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.
Calendar readings
01 July 2022
There may be times when what is most needed is … a different ‘slant’; I mean a comparatively slight readjustment in our way of looking at the things and ideas on which attention is already fixed.
Owen Barfield: Saving the Appearances
02 July 2022
Just because there is change, it does not mean that there is anything wrong.
Anonymous
03 July 2022
A very important feature of our cognitive system is that it has evolved in a very noisy environment where information is often ambiguous, incomplete, vague, and imprecise. And at the same time we needed (and still need) to react very rapidly to changes in the environment, such as needing to run without hesitation upon seeing a shadow that might be a predator, or to strike when seeing a pattern in the forest that might hide a prey. One might be incorrect in making these rapid decisions, but being able to detect those patterns and to associate potential causes to their most likely effects, even in the absence of clear and complete information, was surely an adaptive strategy that conferred our ancestors a survival advantage (Haselton and Nettle, 2006). As a consequence, we see figures in the clouds, and causal patterns in mere coincidences.
Pseudoscience (p. 46). MIT Press
04 July 2022
FOG
Fear
Obligation
Guilt
Anonymous
05 July 2022
Certain addicts see everything as a crisis. The broken shoelace. The house on fire. Not everything is a crisis.
Anonymous
06 July 2022
Leslie, for God’s sake, you’re the adult here, when your kid screams, ‘I hate you!’ you don’t sink to his level and yell, ‘I hate you!’ back. You have to be the grown up.
Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation
07 July 2022
Both you and the new man must walk day by day in the path of spiritual progress. If you persist, remarkable things will happen. When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God’s hands were better than anything we could have planned. Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstances!
Page 100, Alcoholics Anonymous
08 July 2022
It’s fine to use the serenity prayer as a mantra. It gives you something to do that is often more useful than anything else you could come up with.
Anonymous
09 July 2022
Leslie: But it’s so hard. God. Nobody ever thanks you.
Ron: You choose a thankless job; you can’t be upset when no one thanks you.
Parks and Recreation
10 July 2022
Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realise there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
Lao Tzu, quoted in The Spiritual Philosophy of the Tao Te Ching
11 July 2022
If you can maintain awareness in the states of agitation and meditative equipoise, the pollution of disturbing thoughts will clear automatically, just like a pond that is left undisturbed. Do not consider certain mental experiences as good and worth cultivating and other experiences as hindrances that need to be abandoned. If you can develop this attitude, your mind will gradually be emptied of its unconscious contents: The karmic traces and dispositions and all the obscurations.
Tilopa, quoted in The Ninth Karmapa, Wangchuk Dorje’s Ocean of Certainty
12 July 2022
Don’t start chasing applause and acclaim. That way lies madness.
Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation
13 July 2022
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Philippians, 4:8
14 July 2022
They’re not the way they are because you haven’t explained quite carefully enough why they should change. Preaching, whining, lecturing, nagging do not work. Repetition is not a virtue. If you’re doing it, you’re probably trapped. You need God.
Anonymous
15 July 2022
There is no length to which He will not go, no depth to which He will not descend, to win the love of your heart and mine. God is always searching for us through that sense of separation that we may be experiencing. Even though God seems absent, God is never absent and is trying hard to reach us through what I like to call our sense of lostness.
Father Leo Clifford
16 July 2022
You can trust me because I don’t care about you enough to lie.
Election strategy consultant on Parks and Recreation
17 July 2022
Accept the very real possibility that the people and events in our lives are part of a bigger picture. Somehow, God knows what He is doing.
Anonymous
18 July 2022
God has to work in the soul in secret and in darkness, because if we fully knew what was happening, and what God will eventually ask of us, we would either try to take charge or stop the whole process. No one oversees his or her own demise willingly, even when it is the false self that is dying. God has to undo our illusions secretly, as it were, when we are not watching and not in perfect control, say the mystics. We move forward in ways that we do not even understand and through the quiet workings of time and grace, as ‘Deep calls unto deep’. (Psalm 42:8)
Adapted from St John of the Cross, Richard Rohr, and other sources
19 July 2022
Rest knowing all is so safe in God’s Hands. Rest is Trust. Ceaseless activity is distrust. Without the knowledge that God is working for you, you do not rest. Inaction then would be the outcome of despair. God’s Hand is not shortened such that it cannot save. Know that, repeat it, rely on it, welcome the knowledge, delight in it. Such a truth is a hope flung to a drowning man. Every repetition of it is one pull nearer shore and safety. Let that illustration teach you a great truth. Lay hold of the truth, pray it, affirm it, hold on to the rope. How foolish are our attempts to save ourselves, one hand on the rope, and one making efforts to swim ashore! We may relinquish our hold of the rope and hinder the rescuer—who has to act with the greater caution lest he lose us. The storms and tempests are not all of life. The Psalmist who said ‘All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me’ wrote also ‘He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.’
Adapted from A. J. Russell
20 July 2022
Carry a white handkerchief. Next time you take charge and are exquisitely miserable, wave the white handkerchief and stop trying to control and manage everything.
Anonymous
21 July 2022
(1) ‘He brought me up also out of an horrible pit’—Safety.
(2) ‘He set my feet upon a rock’—Security.
(3) ‘He established my goings’—Guidance.
No. 3 is the final stage when the saved soul trusts God so entirely it seeks no more its own way but leaves all future plans to God, its Rescuer.
The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. Deuteronomy 33:27.
Adapted from A. J. Russell
22 July 2022
Outlining is setting out to buy a $60 pair of silk-lined, leather gloves and going home disappointed because you can’t find them. And you’re so busy looking for those gloves, you miss the $300 pair of cashmere, mink-lined gloves reduced to $29.99, because they don’t fit the outline of God’s will you had in your mind.
Anonymous
23 July 2022
Stop trying. Stop trying to stop trying. Stop trying to stop. Stop. Surrender. Turn things over to the care of a Power greater than yourself.
Anonymous
24 July 2022
Nothing is too good to be true. Nothing is too wonderful to happen. Nothing is too good to last—I have unshakable faith in the perfect outworking of every situation in my life, for God is in absolute control, and all things are working together for my highest good.
Anonymous
25 July 2022
Can’t seem to meet the right person? Might be because you have never introduced the people you’re meeting to the right person! Try being the right person, instead. If you want someone who is great, you have to be great yourself.
Anonymous
26 July 2022
God is big. Bigger than we think. Resourceful. Skilful. Intelligent. Compassionate. So when we turn things over to the care of a Power greater than ourselves, that is what we are turning things over to.
Anonymous
27 July 2022
One characteristic of a dharmic person, someone who practises meditation and the teachings of the Buddha, is to prevent too many activities, or you could say, reduce too many activities. According to tradition, that actually boils down to cutting nonfunctional talking, cutting the baby-sitter mentality, the entertainment mentality. You can get yourself into all kinds of projects, all kinds of engagements. You can become chummy with the world so that you don’t have to hold your discipline or your mindfulness properly. ... If you don’t like tea, you can have coffee. If you don’t like coffee, you could switch to Coca-Cola. If you don’t like Coca-Cola, you can drink scotch or vodka. You involve yourself in constant, constant activity. Sometimes you don’t even know what you are doing; you just come up with the idea that you need to be occupied with something, but you can’t put your finger on anything: “Do I need sex or do I need money or do I need clothes? What do I need?”....You could think about anything; the possibilities are infinite. Getting chummy with the situation involves lots of activity. According to the basic principles of Buddhism, you have to cut that down. When you become too chummy with your world, too familiar with your world, it becomes endless.
Chögyam Trungpa
28 July 2022
Rejoicing in the success of others means letting go of competitiveness, jealousy, and envy, and nurturing the capacity to celebrate the virtuous activities and merit of others, which at the same time generates merit for ourselves.
Mingyur Rinpoche
29 July 2022
There are plenty of situations in which we can change things for the better. Go and attend to those.
Anonymous
30 July 2022
Most of our confusion is caused by our assumption that the causes of liberation must come from somewhere or something outside of ourselves. We assume that only by accumulating this or that, or only through associating with someone or something else, can we gain the cause of happiness. Our preoccupation with external concerns causes a tremendous sense of impoverishment, as though we were devoid of the slightest possibility of enlightened intelligence. Our bewilderment derives from our failure to turn inward and really examine the workings of our own minds. It is only when we begin working with our minds through meditation practice that we become practical as far as the search for enlightenment is concerned.
Gyaltsab Rinpoche
31 July 2022
Our capacity to be conscious subjects of experience is the root of our sense of being. After all, if we weren’t conscious, what could we know of ourselves? How could we even assert our own existence? Being conscious is what it means to be us. In an important sense—even the only important sense—we are first and foremost consciousness itself, the rest of our self-image arising afterwards, as thoughts and images constructed in consciousness.
Bernardo Kastrup
01 August 2022
If people are stepping on your toes, get smaller feet.
Anonymous
02 August 2022
Live life how you want, but don’t confuse drama with happiness.
Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation
03 August 2022
Blueprints for the future are a fool’s errand. They’re like blueprints for a house. They’re nice to have, but any foreman with a brain doesn’t need to look at them.
Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation
04 August 2022
In ‘A Bright Shining Lie’ by Neil Sheehan, on one of the desks of the top military officers in Vietnam, he describes how they had three trays for events coming in. They were labelled ‘necessary’, ‘critical’, ‘absolutely critical’. If you’re choosing between these, you cannot win. You may need to re-label your boxes. Ask: How important is it, really? I’m willing to go the extra mile, but I’m not willing to go the extra mile over everything. And it is I, not the crazy person, who gets to choose what is important and what is not.
Anonymous
05 August 2022
When thoughts come while you are meditating, let them come; there’s no need to regard them as your enemies. When they arise, relax in their arising. On the other hand, if they don’t arise, don’t be nervously wondering whether or not they will. Just rest in their absence. If big, well-defined thoughts suddenly appear during your meditation, it is easy to recognize them. But when slight, subtle movements occur, it is hard to realize that they are there until much later. This is what we call namtok wogyu, the undercurrent of mental wandering. This is the thief of your meditation, so it is important for you to keep a close watch. If you can be constantly mindful, both in meditation and afterward, when you are eating, sleeping, walking, or sitting, that’s it—you’ve got it right!
Dudjom Rinpoche
06 August 2022
Like anyone else, I too have the potential for violence; I too have anger in me. However, I try to recall that anger is a destructive emotion. I remind myself that scientists now say that anger is bad for our health; it eats into our immune system. So, anger destroys our peace of mind and our physical health. We shouldn’t welcome it or think of it as natural or as a friend.
14th Dalai Lama
07 August 2022
Children blame. Teenagers explain. Adults act.
Anonymous
08 August 2022
‘If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps’. God is the What and the It.
Anonymous
09 August 2022
‘Resentment is the number one offender.’ What is the number two offender? Holding onto old ideas.
Anonymous
10 August 2022
A mirror reflects the thought of the thinker. As without, within. In a piano showroom, if you strike a key, and the string vibrates, the equivalent strings on the other pianos also vibrate. We resonate on the frequency we’re set to. We attract that and trigger that in others. How we see others depends on where we are ourselves.
Anonymous
11 August 2022
The ego is all about the ‘to me’: what have they done ‘to me’. It is that personalisation that is the barb on the fish hook that causes it to rip the flesh when you go to pull the fish hook out. ‘To me’: therein lie all problems. Remove the ‘to me’. If someone does something, not to me, just does something, do I tolerate and accept? Or do I boundary?
Anonymous
12 August 2022
Guilt is anger directed at ourselves, at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others, at what they did or did not do. You need a position of neutrality. Only think of others the way you want them to think of you. You’re to get into their shoes and look at the world through their eyes. That doesn’t mean you love everyone. It just means that, given the phases of development we’re at and they’re at, we can sidestep them for now. Then 90% of our problems just dissipate.
Anonymous
13 August 2022
Where did those problems from the past go? So with your problems of today, where are they going?
Anonymous
14 August 2022
Do not be driven by lack, limitation, or fear. Treat the problem as though God has already healed it.
Anonymous
15 August 2022
I’m afraid, however, I detect two much less attractive reasons for the ease of my own intercessory prayers. One is that I am often, I believe, praying for others when I should be doing things for them. It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see him.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm
16 August 2022
God has to work in the soul in secret and in darkness, because if we fully knew what was happening, and what mystery or transformation God or grace will eventually ask of us, we would either try to take charge or stop the whole process. No one oversees his or her own demise willingly, even when it is the false self that is dying. God has to undo our illusions secretly, as it were, when we are not watching and not in perfect control, say the mystics. We move forward in ways that we do not even understand and through the quiet workings of time and grace, as ‘Deep calls unto deep’ (Psalm 42:8)’
Anonymous
17 August 2022
A human being is part of the whole called by us ‘the universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.
Einstein, letter of 12 February 1950
18 August 2022
Suppose I pray that you may be given grace to withstand your besetting sin (short list of candidates for this post will be forwarded on demand). Well, all the work has to be done by God and you. If I pray against my own besetting sin there will be work for me. One sometimes fights shy of admitting an act to be a sin for this very reason.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm
19 August 2022
You see someone throwing up over the side of a ship. Sympathy is standing next to them and vomiting with them. Empathy is understanding how it feels and giving them a seasickness pill.
Anonymous
20 August 2022
They tell me, Lord, that when I seem to be in speech with You, since but one voice is heard, it’s all a dream, one talker aping two. Sometimes it is, yet not as they conceive it. Rather, I seek in myself the things I hoped to say, but lo! My wells are dry. Then, seeing me empty, You forsake the listener’s role and through my dumb lips breathe and into utterance wake the thoughts I never knew. And thus You neither need reply nor can; thus, while we seem two talkers, Thou are one forever, and I no dreamer, but Thy dream.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm
21 August 2022
Spiritual principles will solve all our problems.
Unspiritual principles will cause all our problems.
Anonymous
22 August 2022
Why don’t we learn? Because we’ve got to live in illusions. It feels good. It gives us a kick, doesn’t it? It certainly gives me a kick. We want kicks; we don’t want happiness. We want thrills. And wherever you’ve got a thrill, you’ve got an anxiety, because you might lose that thrill, or you may not get it. And then you’ve got depression following that, you’ve got a hangover.
Anthony de Mello, Rediscovering Life
23 August 2022
Trust, trust, trust. I went to see this old man, and I would tell him: ‘The sky is falling; the bogeyman is real.’ He would sigh and say: ‘Everything is already alright.’ So listen to everything, step back, watch the river flow, tap the top of that little boy’s head and say: ‘Everything is already alright.’ That’s how you respond to having an alcoholic head.
Anonymous
24 August 2022
And indeed the only way in which I can make real to myself what theology teaches about the heinousness of sin is to remember that every sin is the distortion of an energy breathed into us—an energy which, if not thus distorted, would have blossomed into one of those holy acts whereof “God did it” and “I did it” are both true descriptions. We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument. We caricature the self-portrait He would paint. Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm
25 August 2022
We’ve been pulled from the scrapheap alive, so we say to God: ‘Put me in, Coach, I’m ready to play.’
Anonymous
26 August 2022
Attachment to the happiness of this life is the cause of all our problems. It is the cause of every individual person’s problems, every family’s problems, every country’s problems; it’s the cause of all the global problems. The basic problems facing young people, teenagers, middle-aged people, elderly people—every problem we can think of—can be traced to this root, attachment to the happiness of this life. If we could read our own life story and remember all the pain we have gone through so many times in this life alone, it would be like a commentary on the shortcomings of desire, our attachment to sense pleasure.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
27 August 2022
“How does the AA programme work?”
“It works just fine.”
Anonymous
28 August 2022
Statio is the practice of stopping one thing before we begin another. It is the time between times. It is a cure for the revolving door mentality that is common in a culture that runs on wheels. ... It requires you to get ready for one of these central moments of your spiritual life, to concentrate on the things of God, to leave behind for a while the distractions of the day. It enables us to separate ourselves from one thing entirely before we start another one with half ourselves still concentrated on the thing we just left behind.
Joan Chittister, The Monastic Heart
29 August 2022
In retreat, after reading Opening the Door of Dharma, I saw that, like molding dough in our hands, we can definitely turn our mind whichever way we want; we can train it to turn this way or that. By habituating our mind to the Dharma we can definitely gain realizations. Even the immediate small change of mind that happened during my retreat was logical proof that it’s possible to achieve enlightenment.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
30 August 2022
We’re crazier than we think we are. We should never underestimate the level of the insanity of the thinking of the world and what we have learned. You only get hurt when you fool yourself. Pain comes from deception. So, whatever area in your life that you’re hurting in, that’s some area you’re deceiving yourself about something in. And that’s so cool to remember.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
31 August 2022
Whether we are a Dharma practitioner or not, every problem in life comes from our own mind, as does every happiness. The cause of suffering is not external; the cause of happiness is not external. The cause of what we experience is within us, in our mind.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
01 September 2022
You can’t heal yourself. The you that thinks you’re a body and you’re separate is not the part of you that really knows anything. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t know anything at all. It’s always evaluating and judging. The Course says, once you have absolute certainty, there’s no need for you to judge anything. So the mere fact that you’re judging, and evaluating, and listing, and organising, that’s not the real you.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
02 September 2022
If you want to know what you believe in, look at your actions.
Mark Houston
03 September 2022
And what is that particular thing that creates every problem we experience in life? It is the dissatisfied mind of desire, the mind clinging to this life. We try to obtain the immediate happiness of this life through what are called the eight worldly dharmas: desire for comfort, material things (such as gifts, friends and so forth), a good reputation and praise, and aversion to lack of comfort and material things, a bad reputation and criticism, or blame.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
04 September 2022
I’m not here to make you understand A Course In Miracles. That’s a different class with a different teacher. OK, because I’m not gonna transfer forty years of study into you in an hour, so it’s not gonna happen. What’s gonna happen is that if you do what you’re directed to do and you remember what you’re being told to do, the results that you get will convince you that it’s true. That’s how you get it. You are asked only to use the ideas. It’s their use that will give them meaning to you.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
05 September 2022
In the current general cultural milieu of the Western world, expression of desire allows emotions to be actively encouraged, actively stimulated, and over-blown, all within the contextual appreciation of this as something healthy. If one has a desire, one is encouraged to fulfill it. If one has an emotion, one is encouraged to stimulate it, to bring it to development by expressing it. Generally, this is seen as a healthy thing to do, while actually, in terms of karmic development, this approach tends to create a disproportionate exaggeration of desire and attachment.
Kalu Rinpoche, Gently Whispered: Oral Teachings by the Very Venerable Kalu Rinpoche
06 September 2022
Wealth is not a problem; the problem is having desire for wealth. Friends are not a problem; attachment to our friends is. Objects become a problem for us because of the emotional mind of desire. When desire, the thought of the eight worldly dharmas, is there, not only does a lack of wealth cause us problems but so too does having wealth. When we are controlled by the thought of the eight worldly dharmas, we’re miserable and lonely without friends but having friends does not give us complete satisfaction either. When our mind is controlled by desire, neither having nor not having an object can bring anything but dissatisfaction.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
07 September 2022
This is how the average person deals with the truth. You’re in a burning building. OK. And the fireman is here to rescue you. OK. But you won’t come out. ‘Well, I won’t come out of the burning building until you tell me how the fire got started.’ That’s the approach that the average person uses. That’s kinda dumb. You need to let me get you out of the burning building, and then after you get out of the burning building, if you want to find out how it got started, then that’s fine, because you’re no longer in danger. But right now your house is a burning building. And you’re in a relationship that’s a burning building. And you’re in a mental state that’s a burning building. Then please let the programme get you out of the building before you try to analyse where the programme came from, what it’s saying, what it’s about. I personally believe, if you’ve got time to analyse the fire, then you must not really be in danger.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
08 September 2022
There is pleasure when a sore is scratched,
But to be without sores is more pleasurable still.
Just so, there are pleasures in worldly desires,
But to be without desires is more pleasurable still.
Nagarjuna
09 September 2022
Because of our attachment, we feel elated when we meet the four desirable objects and mistake this excitation for happiness. We fail to see that meeting these objects brings no calmness or peace in our heart. Instead, because we have not eradicated the dissatisfied mind of desire, we subject ourselves to constant mood swings and instability. Clinging is an uptight mind where we’re painfully stuck to an object, unable to separate ourselves from it.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
10 September 2022
The truth applies to everything and everyone equally. The one mistake you can make is: I need to forgive everybody but this one person. Everyone deserves love but this person. I’ve created my perception of my experience except in this situation over here, this situation over here, I had nothing to do with that. If it’s the truth, don’t make any exceptions in applying the idea the course or the workbook contains. Whatever your reaction to the ideas may be, use them. In other words, whether you like it or not, no matter what mood you’re in today, use the idea. That’s all that’s required.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
11 September 2022
What do pray when you feel just terrible:
Try this … ready … close your eyes, deep slow breath, drop your shoulders, and say, “thank you for this lesson; please accept these emotions and this burden from me; I just don’t know what to do with them; the Divine will eat these like candy out of joy to take them from me, so I can be happy, joyous, and free.”
12 September 2022
When we first see our friend in the distance we see the body alone. Only after that do we recognize and then label that body “my friend.” First we see the base; then we apply the label “friend” to that base; then we see the friend. But this is not how it appears. To us, the “friend” and the body walking toward us are inseparable, but in fact, “friend” is just a projection of our mind. Although it was our own mind that imputed the label “friend” onto the object, we believe what’s merely a label to be reality and see the object as being more than an imputed friend; it seems to us to be a real friend. Then we say, “This is my friend.”
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
13 September 2022
How many relationships have you been stuck in for a ridiculously long time because you were trying to make something that really wasn’t making either one of you happy last? That’s called the typical relationship. In case you’re looking at me, thinking, ‘Well, does that actually happen?’ You know that happens. You know sometimes the relationship you put the most energy in was the relationship that was giving the greatest amount of pain and misery. We all are not as different as we think. So, what is it that love wants to teach you? That only what is loving is true.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
14 September 2022
Suppose someone says something that angers you. Your old pathway wants to say something to punish him. But that makes us victims of our habit energy. Instead, you can breathe in and say, “Unhappiness is in me, suffering is in me, anger is in me, irritation is in me.” That is already helpful, recognizing your feelings and helping you not to respond right away. So you accept that anger and irritation in you, and smile to it. With mindfulness, you look at the other person and become aware of the suffering in him or in her. He may have spoken like that to try to get relief from his suffering. He may think that speaking out like that will help him suffer less, but in fact he will suffer more.
Thich Nhat Hanh
15 September 2022
Confused about the nature of reality, we see impermanent things as permanent and so we suffer. Nobody gives us trouble but ourselves.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
16 September 2022
LESSON 284.
I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.
1. Loss is not loss when properly perceived. 2 Pain is impossible. 3 There is no grief with any cause at all. 4 And suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream. 5 This is the truth, at first to be but said and then repeated many times; and next to be accepted as but partly true, with many reservations. 6 Then to be considered seriously more and more, and finally accepted as the truth. 7 I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt. 8 And I would go beyond these words today, and past all reservations, and arrive at full acceptance of the truth in them.
2. Father, what You have given cannot hurt, so grief and pain must be impossible. 2 Let me not fail to trust in You today, accepting but the joyous as Your gifts; accepting but the joyous as the truth.
A Course In Miracles
17 September 2022
I greet The Indwelling True Believer.
Today’s “Pay Forward” gift is—Faith Coming Alive. I ask for more of our Father, more of AA, and more of myself. I now realize I have not been asking for it directly WITH the faith of our Father, not just faith IN Him. Until I lost my Spiritual innocence, I was asking and receiving FROM You, Father, all I needed to serve in my mission, my trust and faith of Yours, Father. I was at best asking and waiting in an abiding faith in Your mercy and grace, Father, and not claiming it. In other words I was asking within my personal “reality” faith, not of Your Faith, Father. Your faith, Father, is an intuitive knowing, as a Spiritual principle that Your Love and Will are being done through each of us. In truth, it is the Father within us doing the works called life. Our Father is love, which means we are love. I need to share my love now, by offering some service. I am praying that my love and service are not on the endangered species list. I will not delay any longer. The crisis of faith is the time to ask for help and surrender. I am asking for help at each beginning, when I say His sacred name, FATHER. I prepare the ground, and plant the seed, and nourish the plants I am given. As I harvest the vine-ripe fruit, I will share it, with whomever You Will, Father. Thy Love, Thy Will be done.
Al Kohallek
18 September 2022
When we’re told that we have to give up desire, we feel as if we’re being asked to sacrifice our happiness, that without desire there’s no possibility of happiness and we’re left with nothing, just ourselves, completely empty, like a deflated balloon. We feel as if we no longer have a heart in our body, as if we’ve lost our life. This is because we have not realized the shortcomings of desire. We have not recognized that the nature of desire is suffering. Desire itself is a suffering, unhealthy mind. Because of desire, our mind hallucinates and we’re unable to see that there is another kind of happiness, a real happiness.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
19 September 2022
Teaching and Healing
1. What fear has hidden still is part of you. 2 Joining the Atonement is the way out of fear. 3 The Holy Spirit will help you reinterpret everything that you perceive as fearful, and teach you that only what is loving is true. 4 Truth is beyond your ability to destroy, but entirely within your ability to accept. 5 It belongs to you because, as an extension of God, you created it with Him. 6 It is yours because it is part of you, just as you are part of God because He created you. 7 Nothing that is good can be lost because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the Voice for creation. 8 Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore cannot be protected.
A Course In Miracles
20 September 2022
My mind is my main problem almost all of the time. I wish I could leave it in the fridge when I go out, but it likes to come with me. I have tried to get it to take up a nice hobby, like macramé, but it prefers to think about things, and jot down what annoys it.
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott
21 September 2022
If obtaining an object of desire were real happiness, the more we had of it the happier we’d be, whereas in fact the opposite happens. Our pleasure in the object decreases until it becomes discernible suffering, such when we eat something: at first we enjoy it but if we just keep on eating, it soon turns to discomfort and then outright suffering.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
22 September 2022
Every thought that you have never leaves your mind. Why? Because it’s your mind that created the thought. Every thought you have is connected to your mind. Ideas of the spirit don’t leave the mind. No idea that’s coming from your real self, God, or the Holy Spirit creates conflict. So any thought in your mind causing conflict does not come from there. Why do we have ideas that conflict? Because we have ideas from different levels; ideas that are opposite to each other. We have conflicts because we have two ways of thinking: love and fear. We’re always choosing between the two.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
23 September 2022
Deliver me, O God...
...from the desire of being loved
...from the desire of being extolled
...from the desire of being praised
...from the desire of being preferred
...from the desire of being consulted
...from the desire of being approved
...from the desire of being popular
Adapted (slightly) from a prayer by St John of the Cross
24 September 2022
The conditions come together and we encounter favorable objects, so we call it happiness, but under the surface there’s a pain in our heart, a tightness in our chest. This mind is bound up tight, like a prisoner with his hands and legs tied with rope. There’s no real peace even when we manage to meet an object of desire—our mind is still in the nature of suffering.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
25 September 2022
When you wake up, you realise you have two ways of thinking: one based on self and fear, and one based on love and the notion that we are one. The second one is the real one. There are two worlds, dependent on the way of thinking you are listening to and using. It’s impossible to share opposite and opposing thoughts. What you can do is share only the thoughts that are of God. So I’m going to decide to share only loving and freeing thoughts.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
26 September 2022
It’s a simple programme for simple people who think they’re complex.
Anonymous
Why would anyone need more than three lines? I am describing a person, not something complicated like a wooden sailing ship or proper dovetail technique.
Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation
27 September 2022
We might achieve all the things that people commonly regard as signs of a successful life. We might have hundreds of thousands, millions, or billions of dollars, which we consider success. We might receive praise, which we consider success. We might have comfort, food, clothing, shelter and so forth, which we consider success. We may have everything that people commonly call success. However, even achieving all these things is still suffering because we’re clinging to them.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
28 September 2022
Sometimes I don’t want to call people children of God. I want to call people all sorts of other names. I have to realise that the war outside is a reflection of something in my own ego. So I ask myself: Do I ever want to have my own way? Do I ever want to take a tank and drive it through other people’s houses? My Higher Self now speaks in a voice I can hear, because I have studied this for years. Having studied the Course, I can tell the difference between my Higher Self and my lower self, the Holy Spirit and the ego, because it can be hard to tell the difference without study, as the ego speaks in my own voice, and so does the Higher Self.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
29 September 2022
Death is not extinguishing the light
It is simply putting out the lamp
Because the dawn has come.
Rabindranath Tagore
30 September 2022
God, we do not know the way to You. But we have called, and You have answered us. We will not interfere. Salvation’s ways are not our own, for they belong to You. And it is unto You we look for them. Our hands are open to receive Your gifts. We have no thoughts we think apart from You, and cherish no beliefs of what we are, or Who created us. Yours is the way that we would find and follow. And we ask but that Your Will, which is our own as well, be done in us and in the world, that it become a part of Heaven now. Amen.
A Course In Miracles, Lesson 189
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