- Dharma Ocean Denver Sangha: Every Wednesday evening 7:00-8:30 p.m. in the Event Hall. $5 donation is appreciated. For information, go to the com page at Meetup.com/Dharma-Ocean-Denver-Sangha.
- Lauren Skye Metaphysical Service: Sunday, May 1; 1-4 p.m. In the Event Donation suggested. Contact Lauren at: innerconnection.org for more information.
- Zen Center of Denver: Sunday mornings – Formal sitting with chanting and teisho; 8 to 10:30 a.m. Wednesday mornings: 6 to 7 a.m. Formal Sittings. Thursday evenings: 7 to 8:30 p.m.: Formal sittings. All programs in the Event Hall. For information call: 303-455-1500.
- Crystal Bowls with Teresa Helgeson: Friday, May 6 and Friday, May 20; 7-9 p.m. in the Library. For information contact Teresa at: Teresa@reikimiraclesabound.com.
- Sufi Practice of Remembrance: Saturday, May 21; 6:30-9:30 p.m. in the Event Hall. For information, contact Sara Rain at: rain@trigoddess.org.
- Peter Hughes Workshop: Monday evenings, May 2nd, 9th, 16th and 23rd: “What is the Soul of Money?” 7-9 p.m. in the library. For workshop fees and program details, visit: PeterJHughes.com. To register for the workshop contact Peter at 303-831-9471 or by email at peter@peterjhughes.com.
- Denver Vegans Pot Luck: Saturday, May 28; 6-8 p.m. in the Library. For information contact Vilma Reynoso at: vilms@live.com.
Archives for April 2016
Doug Sparks: “Our Special Relationship with Death” May 1, 2016
Popular ACIM teacher, Doug Sparks will give the morning gathering presentation on May 1, 2016
Time: Gathering 11 AM – 12 PM
Gathering topic: “Our Special Relationship with Death”
About Doug Sparks
Soon after it’s publication in 1976, Doug Sparks discovered A Course in Miracles and in the mid 1980’s, Doug identified the late Dr. Kenneth Wapnick as his teacher. Through Ken’s gentle tutelage, Doug embraced the Course as his path on this “journey without distance”, from “mindlessness to mindfulness”. After facilitating weekly study groups for 25 years, he now teaches monthly workshops and offers private tutoring. His workshops are always lighthearted and un-sanctimonious. He emphasizes not to take ourselves too seriously!
Here are some audio recordings made of Doug’s prior talks at RMMC.
Navigating with the “Lighthouse Group” Sunday, May 1, 2016 1-3 PM
Sunday, May 1, 2016 at RMMC
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
The Lighthouse Group studies and meets quarterly to talk about a selected newsletter written by Dr. Kenneth Wapnick. This quarter’s topic is a 1996 newsletter called “The World as the Royal Road to Heaven.” (Volume 7, Number 2.)
Note: This is the rescheduled date; the prior date was cancelled due to snow.
Sunday at RMMC – May 1, 2016
Join us this Sunday, May 1, 2016
9:00 AM to 10:30 AM
The Spontaneous Discussion Group
Group Leadership of The Way of Mastery
Topic: T.B.A.
Facilitated by T.B.A.
11:00 AM to Noon
Sunday Gathering
Topic: “Our Special Relationship with Death”
Facilitated by Doug Sparks
1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Navigating with the “Lighthouse Group”
Topic: “The World as the Royal Road to Heaven.”
Facilitated by Chris Dixon-Bubick
Knowing or Perceiving
Ch. 8. VIII. 1 & 2. Jesus: “Attitudes toward the body are attitudes toward attack! This is because the body is the ego’s symbol for its attack upon the wholeness of Creation!
The ego’s definitions of things are always childish, and are always based on what it believes something is ‘for.’ The ego of course, is for separation, itself being the belief system of separation. It denies the wholeness of Creation in favor of its imagined separation, hence it cannot know the whole and is incapable of true generalizations. The ego equates what it sees only with the use it has for it, or what it can ‘get from it,’ given its purpose of separation. Thus the ego does not see anything as what it truly is!
To the ego, the function of the body is something to ‘attack with,’ definitely not a means of communication, which would undo separation! Since the ego would have you equate yourself with the body, it then teaches you that you are to attack with, making yourself an instrument of separation!
The body, then, is certainly not the source of its own health! Its condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function, reflecting either conflict or communication! Functions are part of being since they arise from it, but the relationship is not reciprocal! It is the whole, the mind, that defines the part. But the part, the ‘function’ here referred to, certainly does not define the whole!
Yet to know, even partly know, is to know wholly! This is because of the fundamental difference between true knowledge and mere perception, a difference difficult for the worldly mind to understand. Perception of course, is always of something by something, a demonstration of separation. In perception, then, what is thought of as ‘whole’ is merely built up of parts that can separate and reassemble in different ‘constellations’ when subjected to different attitudes and desires. But knowledge never ceases or changes, so its constellation is permanent. The idea of part-to-whole relationships has meaning only at the level of perception, where change is possible. Otherwise, there is no difference between what is perceived as ‘the part’ and what is truly the whole.
The body exists in a world that seems to contain two voices fighting for its possession. In this perceived constellation, the body is seen as capable of shifting its allegiance from one voice to the other, making the concepts of both health and sickness meaningful. Here, the ego makes a fundamental confusion between means and end, just as it always does. Regarding the body as an end in itself, the ego has no real use for it. This is because the body, a mere appearance, cannot be an end!“
Sunday at RMMC – April 24, 2016
Join us this Sunday, Apr. 24, 2016
9:00 AM to 10:30 AM
The Spontaneous Discussion Group
Group Leadership of The Way of Mastery
Topic: T.B.A.
Facilitated by T.B.A.
11:00 AM to Noon
Sunday Gathering
Topic: Chapter 7 XI. The State of Grace
Facilitated by Joy Schultz
Sunday at RMMC – April 17, 2016
Join us this Sunday, Apr. 17, 2016
9:00 AM to 10:30 AM
The Spontaneous Discussion Group
Group Leadership of The Way of Mastery
Topic: T.B.A.
Facilitated by T.B.A.
11:00 AM to Noon
Sunday Gathering
Topic: Lesson 154 “I am among the ministers of God.”
Bud Ham
Facilitated by Bud Ham
1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Navigating with the “Lighthouse Group”
Topic: Part 2 of “From Separation back to Unity”; details here.
Facilitated by Chris Dixon-Bubick
The Light Has Come – by Susan Dugan
As a child, my family returned to the home of my father’s older sister (who had raised him) for every long weekend and holiday, despite a six-hour drive on often treacherous North Country roads. The old clapboard house’s bones creaked and groaned in the night as I lay awake facing the door on the living room couch in the semi-darkness created by a nearby streetlight. Watching the brass knob for signs of a telltale turn that might signal the entry of another malevolent force I feared lurked just outside the puny plaster façade.
Inevitably the shadows also danced across three porcelain monkeys that sat on a shelf as if held aloft by the rabbit ears on the TV below, one with paws cupped over its eyes, the next over its ears, the last over its mouth. “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” the monkeys gestured, a kind of family anthem, from atop their hand-crocheted doilies. Straight out of casting from a Stephen King flick, as I pulled the blanket taut under my chin, simultaneously studying the knob on the door for evidence of security breached.
But it was not the horrors of the night that most haunted my imagination in these otherwise rather Norman Rockwell-like interludes literally and liberally sweetened by my aunt’s extraordinary culinary talents, but the two subterranean beings that lived and breathed in a place I feared I might never muster the courage to go. The first was a pony, a golden Shetland, the kind I’d been coveting since first glimpsing its caramel blur through a car window while passing a stable near our home to the south. The kind I knew better than to beg for out loud, but nonetheless dared to pray. The second? A big, black, vicious, dentally endowed dog, dedicated to guarding the stairs to the cellar where the Shetland reputedly lived.
This is the story my father and uncle apparently concocted to keep my brother and I from exploring the root cellar that fascinated me where my aunt feared we would break our necks on the steep, uneven, narrow, poorly lit stairs descending through a tunnel of shelves lined with cans of Campbell Soup, Green Giant corn and peas, and various homemade jams and pickles. Stocked in from the Depression Days, no doubt, ballast against the inevitable return of hungry times or a-bomb droppings.
I wanted that pony more than a piano, straight hair, pretty feet, or, you know, an end to the Cold War. And although the adults’ answers to my continual questions about why they had banished the pony in the first place did not add up and, already intimately acquainted with my relatives’ proclivity for bending the truth, I wasn’t completely sure about the dog either, the possible stakes nonetheless loomed.
At times, I am sorry to report, I tried to convince my brother (a year younger) to come with me to find out, cajoling him to walk ahead–hungry-dog bait—but he was no fool. Inevitably I would have to venture first, dragging him behind toward the bray of the pony we swore we heard. Although we never made it more than three or four steps before we caught the gleaming red-hot eyes of that dog, illuminated by the single dangling light bulb, turned, and ran for our lives back up the stairs and out into the yard, screaming our heads off.
I mention this because this memory recently came back to me in all its dubious Technicolor splendor as I found myself standing outside the threshold of my imaginary inner teacher’s sanctum in freeze-frame, as if paralyzed for seeming minutes, hours, days, decades, lifetimes, without a single brother beside me to possibly wheedle into serving as human shield. Desire for the buttery light of our uninterrupted, eternally innocent Wholeness he holds seeping out from under that apparently closed door reverberating through every fiber of my seeming being, along with palpable horror of the monster I apparently must vanquish to reach it.
For minutes, hours, days, decades, lifetimes in my waking dream, every time I caught myself feeling victimized by the cold, the snow, the ice, my bodily issues, the larger world’s ever spiraling downward trajectory, the failure of other dream figures and situations to deliver on their promises, I reminded myself, as A Course in Miracles inner teacher gently urges us to, that nothing outside my mind has the power to take my peace away. But every time I attempted to follow our right mind’s light, that eternal pony that would carry me and every seeming child wandering this earth frightened and alone home, I caught the smoldering eyes of that dog.
Those punishing, threatening, warning eyes seemed so real, those teeth so sharp, that mighty jaw so crushing and salivating, I dared not step closer. And yet, unlike the child I had been at five and six years old, I knew now the real object of my desire at the root of every false idol here in dreamland, really existed. Not in the pretty package of a pony, but in its abstract, shining, ever-expanding, all-encompassing, loving light. And I knew that my aversion had nothing to do with these imaginary “hungry dogs of fear” the Course talks about in the Obstacles to Peace, Chapter 19, but with the secret guilt I had buried in my mind over believing the “tiny, mad, idea” (emphasis on the word mad) that I could throw my real (our real) and only innocent Self away and flee our Father’s love, creating a “shabby substitute” of a world wherein the objects of our desire can only be purchased at the price of our very seeming lives.
I knew my paralysis had nothing to do with any real adversary threatening me. But with the unreal, unspoken vow I had made to the ego never to return to the decision-making mind and look at that false belief with the part of our mind that never took that childish fantasy seriously and continues to patiently wait for me to join him beyond that door.
And still I stood, eyes riveted on that light streaming beneath my teacher’s door, aware that a part of me still clings to those childish fantasies, has not quite grown into our inner teacher’s certainty that stepping fully, completely into that enveloping light will heal all wounds, sate all appetites, and satisfy all desire. Nonetheless I stood, suddenly OK with exactly where I was. Stripped of this exhausting conflict, endowed with my teacher’s (our teacher’s) assurance that maybe I was just where I needed to be right now; that pushing myself to reach for that doorknob while I could still smell that dog would never work. But waiting for my mistaken, childish belief to subside, eyes firmly fixed on the light of all I wanted, remembering our teacher’s gentleness, infinite patience, and unwavering assurance that I (we) cannot possibly in a million seeming lifetimes fail to find it, will.
“Realize that your forgiveness entitles you to vision. Understand that the Holy Spirit never fails to give the gift of sight to the forgiving. Believe He will not fail you now. You have forgiven the world. He will be with you as you watch and wait. He will show you what true vision sees. It is His Will, and you have joined with Him. Wait patiently for Hm. He will be there. The light has come. You have forgiven the world.
Tell him you know you cannot fail because you trust in Him. And tell yourself you wait in certainty to look upon the world He promised you. From this time forth you will see differently. Today the light has come. And you will see the world that has been promised you since time began, and in which is the end of time ensured.”
–(A Course in Miracles workbook lesson 75, “The light has come.”)
Susan Dugan’s books Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, Forgiveness Offers
Everything I Want, and Forgiveness: The Key to Happiness are available at RMMC and on Amazon. She writes about ACIM based on Ken Wapnick’s teachings at ForaysInForgiveness.com and teaches Tuesday nights at RMMC.
Denying the denial of Truth – by Bruce Rawles
However,” he pointed out, “there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.”
The peace that the pure non-dual metaphysics of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) inspires in us – and we’re inexorably drawn to – becomes attainable when we practice our forgiveness lessons, requiring ever-increasing mindful diligence in watching our thoughts and feelings of specialness, victimhood, condemnation, annoyance, discouragement, envy, anxiety, hopelessness, doubt, expectations, exasperations, and exhilarations … the list of fleeting, ephemeral states is seemingly endless. It also can seem ever more daunting when we dedicate ourselves to looking at the contents of our minds and discover what seems to be expanding desolation as we drain our oceanic ego identity of importance, revealing these maladaptive monsters with greater clarity, to our horror! But what if they have been there all along, and in our state of (egoic) denial, we white-washed the problems with ‘invisible paint’? What if that’s our way out of the ego’s maze… By rising above the metaphoric maze – with the help of our Inner Kindness Teacher (a.k.a. Holy Spirit or ACIM’s Jesus a.k.a. J) – we get glimpses of the peace that awaits us beyond the insane battlefield of ego’s terrorizing turf of sin, guilt and fear.
Those glimpses – afforded us by even short bursts of honest assessment of ego’s madness, followed by a sincere willingness (however seemingly slight) to relinquish ‘our way’ – which is actually just ego’s denial of sanity … as J reminds us, have both immediate and long-term benefits for genuine peace. The short-term advantages include, but are not limited to: instant relief from our (fraudulent) self-inflicted misery, reinforcement of the habit of ‘seeing peace instead of this’ and realizing that we’re ‘never upset for the reason we think’ which has the side-benefit of expanding the scope of our dream-world choices to the vastly greater realm of possibilities that include considering what benefits All, not just some, even if we don’t have a clue what the full implications of these choices might lead to. That can actually be rather fun! 🙂 What a true relief to ponder statements such as this that let us all ‘off the hook’ for feeling like we must bear the unbearable burden of trying to figure everything out – as dream figures in a game designed for everyone to lose by fighting against each other!
In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things, past, present, and to come. One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way. And one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception, so that his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests, now and in the future. Who is in a position to do this? Who except in grandiose fantasies would claim this for himself? – M.10.3:3-7
The ultimate cumulative benefit of our forgiveness practice is that – as ego’s shenanigans are exposed … and we become less and less enamored and seduced by its lies – the ‘tractor beam’ pull of our eternally shared Identity has ever greater appeal, we become less and less willing to submit ourselves to ego’s masochistic and insatiable need machine agenda, and eventually we kick that dysfunctional habit altogether as the ‘final step’ is taken for us. The unchanging peace that this represents we can only dimly imagine at this point, yet each of us, no matter how profoundly suppressed, has heard the call to return to the Home we never left, and where we All abide in Truth.
Ego’s grandiosity ironically narrows our range of vision to the blindness of it’s ‘dark star’ (black hole) singularity illusion, where no light can be found, nor can it escape. There IS no hope in a world conceived and dedicated to guilt; that guilt, born of the mistaken belief that we trashed perfect Oneness, is completely unfounded, but we will never know that liberating idea from within ego’s realm. We have to call for help! Meanwhile, J waits patiently, tapping us gently on our proverbial shoulder, reminding that Limitless Light – our common, shared inheritance – merely awaits our decision to choose against the darkness of self-at-the-expense-of-others interest. We just have to choose against the insane thought system that denies light … and then the light that has been there all along is revealed, with a gentle sigh of relief! Ego is the original denial of truth, seemingly staining our identity with the tainted stench of unresolvable guilt caused by the undoable sin of fragmenting Truth into warring aspects, and to further it’s insanity, it immediately made up a projected cosmos of unbelievable sophistication to keep us entranced in the space-time dream drama, as we dreamt deeper into a realm of nightmarish predicaments, each tailored to alleged separate selves.
We all have enormous resistance to our forgiveness practice, of course, and the author of ACIM has built into the curriculum generous reminders that we can afford to relax about any need to compulsively ‘fight ourselves’. Who would be the one fighting, anyway, and against whom? 🙂 Whenever we detect an inner struggle, we can easily guess which thought system (the denial of Truth) has been given the reins again. Why not just practice looking at our mind-on-ego without condemnation? … And remember, whenever we can, to not to beat ourselves up for those lapses when we choose that maladaptive masochism. If we’re already ‘safe at home, dreaming of exile’ then there’s nothing to worry about in Truth. Practiced glimpses of this ease can loosen our identity ‘grip’ on the imposter trying to get away with Identity theft, an echo of the original mistake, the initial authority problem where we thought we usurped the throne of God. God (silently) thinks otherwise. 🙂
The crucial distinction between sin and error is at the heart of our ability to deny ego’s denial of our inherent sanity. Sin would proclaim that we’re stuck forever in a nightmare, and then insanely try to foist the problem onto anything, everything, anyone and everyone (including our own bodies) in order to avoid bringing the unfounded guilt into the light. Conversely, the acknowledgment of error is like backing up out of a cul-de-sac, rather than taking up residence there, having merely made a temporary wrong turn! 🙂 Once the simple solution (forgiveness) is glimpsed, why would sanity hang out in despair’s diverting dungeon; the jail door is unlocked… Welded wide open, actually, when we look closely with help from Holy Spirit.
What a tremendous relief! There IS a way out of ego’s labyrinthine quagmire… Not by traversing its endless dark corridors, but by gratefully allowing ourselves the gift of our Inner Kindness Teacher’s vantage point above ego’s foolproof (proven irresistible only to foolish ego) incarcerating battleground where we are metaphorically lifted up – even if just for a moment – to see that our true Identity (which we ALL share) is beyond the tiny, mad dream of space, time, separation and individual selves: crazed, ineffective dramatizations of an insane script to keep the guilt propaganda machine working, but fiendishly out of of sight.
Sin (according to ego) is unpardonable, irredeemable, inescapable … a bleak denial that makes a big deal out of nothing, although it hardly seems to be nothing from within ego’s mesmerizing, denying dirges. Seeing – with J’s help – error as easily forgivable and amusing as a parent would dismiss a child’s game is the relief we’ve been looking for, and it is simply a choice to forget to condemn ourselves (or others) as the Psychotherapy pamphlet advises. All we need ‘do’ is to deny the denial of truth: to say no to ego’s negation of the perfect Innocence we never abandoned, except in flimsy dreams. Here are some relevant quotes that will likely be familiar, echoing the simplicity of our our Inner Kindness Teacher’s curriculum of gradually removing our investment in the separate identity that fantasizes a silly ‘alone against the world’ tragic dream:
“Forgiveness is still and quietly does nothing. It merely looks, and waits and judges not.”
– W-pII.1.4:1The miracle “merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false.”
– W-pII.13.1:3
Bruce Rawles will be sharing favorite ACIM insights at the Weekend of Freedom Retreat (WOFR) in Estes Park, Colorado, June 16-18, 2016.
NOTE: On May 16, 2016 – note the new date… again! – the Estes Park YMCA (where WOFR is being held) will release the block of rooms it is holding for WOFR attendees to the general public, and due to the popularity of this destination resort, they tend to go very fast, so here’s the link if you want to reserve your lodging and meals through the venue where WOFR 2016 is being held.
Sunday at RMMC – April 10, 2016
Join us this Sunday, Apr. 10, 2016
9:00 AM to 10:30 AM
The Spontaneous Discussion Group
Group Leadership of The Way of Mastery
Topic: “Choose to View Time Differently” WOM, Lesson 23, Pgs. 278-281.
Facilitated by Robert Bennett
11:00 AM to Noon
Sunday Gathering
Topic: “A Reminder of Our True Home” based on Lesson 182 ( I will be still an instant and go home) and related sections in the course.
Facilitated by Rudi Florian