August 20, 2006

Aug. 20, 2006

SET YOUR SAILS:
MAKING WAVES

By Rev. Debra Emmanuelle

As Tom so poignantly says in his song, “Lord, it’s not me, cuz I’m just doin’ my job!”  We all tend to want to think ”It’s just gotta  be all those other people out there – Not Me!”  When it comes to what we perceive to be “wrong” with our societies, it is always easier to blame someone else than to take responsibility ourselves, or as James Baldwin says, “People can cry much easier than they can change.”
 
How many of you have seen Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth? For those of you who have not seen it, he brings together a plethora of information, of seemingly unrelated and seemingly inconsequential occurrences that when, all shown under the same light, show an undeniable connection to the cause and effect of Global Warming---the cause ultimately being our ignorance and lack of connection to the Earth and the effect being in complete imbalance, utter chaos, and confusion on a global scale.   We each live many Inconvenient Truths every day.  What do we do when we get a headache and our body is telling us to stop or at least to slow down?  With our busy schedules, it is not convenient to stop or slow down, so we ignore the pain or take drugs to mask the message (in the form of pain) that tells us that we are out of balance.  The longer we go on believing that it is “inconvenient” to return to a state of balance, the more out of balance we will become.

It is interesting that we have come far enough in our technology to be able to predict our own destruction, yet this Truth is so inconvenient that we are doing nothing to save ourselves!

For those of you who have seen it, what emotions did it evoke in you?  Just say them out loud . . .

What do we do with all of these emotions???  How do we move forward in recognition of the Truth in a world that would rather just bring home a paycheck and buy a new car???

The reading from A Course in Miracles earlier said, “You must emerge from the conflict if you are to bring peace to other minds.”  What does this mean, “. . . to emerge from the conflict”?  This is definitely easier said than done!  How do you emerge from the conflict in Peace when your beloved sister or brother is dying a little more every day and you do not want that to happen?  How do you emerge from the conflict in Peace when our beloved Earth is dying a little more every day and we do not want that to happen?  Can we even make a difference?  Al Gore gives us concrete examples of ways that we can have a positive impact, so if you haven’t seen the documentary, I highly recommend it.  My intention today is to offer some less obvious and more subtle but powerful ways to initiate change.

A Course in Miracles says “The choice to judge rather than to know is the cause of the loss of peace.”  What I have learned since my sister Linda’s death just under three weeks ago now is that it was not possible for me to bring her peace or even to be in Peace myself, as long as I was resisting her Truth and judging it as wrong.  What is true is that she needed love in its purest sense, and I was too busy saying NO!  to Death, to be able to fully say YES! to Love.  Of course I never stopped loving her, but my love for her was polluted with my fear of losing her and she not only could not drink it in, but why would she want to?  There is no difference when we go out in Nature to walk along a river and become angry because we see pollution everywhere.  In anger, we are as polluted as the river and we add to pollution everywhere.  This does not mean that it is “wrong” to be angry, but that we must first acknowledge it and then learn to use the momentum of the energy of anger to fuel ourselves forward in ways that not only support US, but the greater whole.  It is when we “get stuck” in anger that we are adding to its polluting effects in the greater whole (not to mention our own experiences!)

We cannot afford to allow the pervasive polluting effects of fear and greed to also pollute US with fear and anger and resistance.  If we sit by and do nothing, “just doin’ our jobs,” we contribute to the problem – not the solution, because we have separated ourselves from the greater whole.  If we get angry and react and try to force people to change and wake up, or even just complain all of the time, we are also contributing to the problem, because we are adding to the fear and anger that caused the problem in the first place.

So, do we make waves or do we patiently sit by and watch our own destruction?  “Patience is a virtue,” after all.  “Good things come to those who wait” has become one of our staple beliefs.  But we must ALWAYS be willing to question every belief we have ever had . . .  WAIT FOR WHAT???  Our own destruction???   As we stand on the precipice of time looking out over eternity and finding only darkness, do you really think this belief still serves us?

“So then what?”, you may say.  “It seems like no matter what I do, I lose.  What do you want from me???”

I would turn that question back to you and ask, “What do YOU want from you?    Do you want what you’ve got, or do you want more unconditional love, acceptance, ease and peace in your life and in your world?  One of the wisest sayings I have ever heard is, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.”  So if we want a different result, we must DO something differently.  That means change, and change cannot help but make waves.

Change means movement.  Movement means friction.  Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.
    Alinsky, Saul

Questioning is a form of making waves in its own right.  When we question old beliefs, we cannot help but make waves in our own minds, at the very least, and I believe that this is not a luxury that happens to be a good idea, it is a responsibility of all conscious beings.  A Course in Miracles also says that “Discomfort is aroused only to bring the need for correction into awareness.” (p.26)
  
If we know that making waves within ourselves causes discomfort, just how uncomfortable are we willing to be to assist our transformation to a Higher Good?  If we also know, however, that the reason we are feeling discomfort is because a “correction” of some sort is needed and we are willing to be “patient” with ourselves for the purpose of learning what that correction is, do we then have the motivation to do our work?

How do we know the fine balance and Divine Timing between Patience and making waves?  How will it contribute to the Greater Whole to make waves, which inherently, because of the nature of change, cause conflict, when all we really want to do is to expand Peace?  This is quite a dilemma we have gotten ourselves into, don’t you think? 

It is clear that Albert Einstein was correct when he said, “No problem can be solved by the same level of thinking that created it.”  We need do nothing but change our minds.  Consciously choosing to think only loving thoughts, we can only make waves of Love!

If the Last Judgment is really about finally remembering that we are Perfect Divine Beings of Love and about our willingness to fully embrace that Truth as nothing but the Truth, then doesn’t it make sense to “Just do it” NOW?  What if we just simply accept that we are Love now?  What if we suddenly remember that our bodies are simply sacred learning devices and can create nothing in and of themselves, that matters because they are simply matter.  Matter does not create – only Mind is creative.  What if we begin using our Minds not for intellectual gain, which only feeds the ego, but for the purpose of creating that which is likened to ourselves – the REAL Self that is pure Love?  After all, did not Our Own Creator do this?  Is it possible that we were “created in His image” only for the purpose of learning to do likewise???

Can you imagine if we all claimed our Divinity, seeing each other as sacred no matter what our physical eyes think they see?  Can you imagine what it would be like if we each resonated with the vibration of Divine Love and could heal each other instantly?  Can you also imagine on the one hand how that would totally rock in an absolutely awesomely glorious way and on the other hand, how that would totally rock our world???  At the point when the recognition of who we really are reaches Mass Consciousness, and all of the above is True and Normal, we will need no doctors, no hospitals, no insurance or pharmaceuticals.  We won’t even need schools, colleges or universities because we will be tapped into the Universal Wisdom with Divine Access to all that we need to know, whenever we need to know it.  We won’t even need a postal service because we will communicate telepathically with each other instantly whenever we have a need to communicate.  And you thought IM’ing was cool!  Everything that now drives our economy will become as obsolete as last year’s computers, and at that point, all computers will be obsolete!   When the ultimate wave of Love washes over us, it will rock our world, all right, and it will never be the same again.

The more of us who choose to do this now, the easier the ultimate transition will be.  After a caterpillar has formed its chrysalis and is in hibernation waiting for its big Transformation into a butterfly, some interesting things begin to happen.  Foreign cells called imaginelles (little imaginations???) are introduced, one by one into the caterpillars system.  At first the immune system is alerted and because it does not recognize these cells that are ultimately a higher version of the caterpillar itself, the caterpillar’s immune system actually attacks and kills these imaginelles.  Eventually and inevitably, the drive toward transformation is greater than the fear of it and so many imaginelles show up that the immune system becomes overwhelmed and the transformation happens in spite of the instinctive need to kill off that which we do not recognize as self.  (Does this sound familiar?)  If the chrysalis were to be opened prematurely, the butterfly would not survive, but in its own time, Perfect Divine Timing, it miraculously sheds its safe cocoon and emerges as a beautiful, graceful (filled with Grace), transformed being of total freedom.

In the form that we have always known ourselves to be, we do not recognize our own Higher Selves.  We must re-define Patience as taking the time to Be with ourSelves in LOVE rather than waiting for something outside ourselves to “bestowe” something upon us, when we are not even willing to Become the vibration of that which we are seeking.  Universal Law says that we can only attract to us like vibration, so if we are vibrating fear or lack or even anger and confusion, it is utterly impossible for us to attract to us anything different, let alone as high a vibration as unconditional Love.

So if we are to make waves that serve us, they must have Patience at their core (a willingness to sit with ourselves in LOVE and ask the right questions) Asking the wrong questions has never given us the “right” answers!  We must move from Faith and Trust to Certainty that In Love, we will know the right questions to ask.  We must also be in Certainty that when the right answers come, we will Recognize them, Embrace them, Become them and Emanate them so that others may benefit from our willingness to open to Divine Wisdom and Love.

I love the symbolism of the imaginelles in its suggestion that when enough “little imaginations” come together (show up!), transformation happens effortlessly, painlessly and naturally.  All change is only difficult when we resist it, so it is time that we all stop resisting this very natural tendency to move into a higher order of being, and simply accept and allow ourselves to be more than any single “little imagination” could have imagined. 

It is my sense that enough imaginelles have been sacrificed at this point in time.  That if we ban together IN LOVE, AS LOVE in an asserted, intentional effort, we can overwhelm the immune system of our world that does not recognize itSelf.  Using the momentum of our natural, inborn proclivity toward transformation, like the butterfly, we can emerge from within ourSelves as the beautiful, Gracefilled, Free Spirits that we have always been and will always be.

I would like to close with two inspirational quotations from fellow, faithful imaginelles, Confucius and Gandhi, respectively.  The latter quotation was taken from the Indigo Children by Lee Carroll and Jan Tober and includes commentary from them as well.  I honor their willingness to share wisdom that we have known at least on some level for lifetimes, but seem to have a hard time remembering:

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.
    Confucius

“Gandhi said ‘our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and test of our civilization.'  The end of this millennium signals the higher consciousness of love and acceptance of all people - something that we could have learned centuries ago from the native cultures if only we hadn't perceived them as inferior."
The Indigo Children, Lee Carroll and Jan Tober
AND SO IT IS!!!