Lesson 122 – How to get everything you want

Posted on May 3, 2012 by predencia

‘Forgiveness offers everything I want.’

What could you want that forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that can never be hurt, a deep abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

All this forgiveness offers you, and more. It sparkles on your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. And when you wake again it offers you another day of happiness and peace. All this forgiveness offers you and more.

Remembering the gifts that forgiveness gives, we undertake our practice today with hope and faith that this will be the day salvation will be ours. Morning and evening we will gladly give a quarter of an hour to the search in which the end of hell is guaranteed. Begin in hopefulness, for we have reached the turning point at which the road becomes far easier.

Sink into happiness as you begin these practice periods, Forgiveness gives you everything you want. Today all things you want are given to you. Remind yourself how precious are these gifts with this reminder, which has the power to hold your gifts in your awareness through the day:

 Forgiveness offers everything I want.
Today I have accepted this as true.
Today I have received the gifts of God.

I read this lesson and marvelled at the sheer poetry of it. Forgiveness is like a lover that puts zing in your heart and a spring in your step. This one small thing could offer me all this… and more? So why is it so hard to forgive? I know in my case when I’m finding it hard to forgive it’s because I think I’m losing something (usually face) instead of gaining such a vast array of gifts.

If I could remember this at all time, forgiveness would be my second nature. I would not hesitate, would leap at every opportunity to forgive, but it’s not yet second nature, although I am getting better. It was heartening to note that from this point the course gets easier.

I did feel that calm today even when I discovered that (a) the SATNAV I bought yesterday to get me to fit bootcamp this morning didn’t work and we had a run around with Tesco trying to return it, and  (b) someone had hacked into my email and was sending out viral messages to all my contacts. Not knowing exactly how to deal with it I switched my laptop off and went Ceroc dancing. Whenever my mind drifted to the hacking I would remind myself of two things:

1. Forgiveness offers me everything I want and
2. I was out to have a good stress free time, to learn some new skills and to have a good time. All of which I achieved.

I tried to find the lesson behind the experience and when I couldn’t I went to sleep with the assurance that it would be revealed in due course.

I’m asking myself if this is a massive distraction from writing the parenting material

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Lesson 121 – The F word again

Posted on May 1, 2012 by predencia

‘Forgiveness is the key to happiness.’

Here is your answer to your search for peace. Here is the key to meaning in a world that seems to make no sense. Here is the way to safety in apparent dangers that appear to threaten you at every turn, and bring uncertainty to all your hopes of ever finding quietness and peace. Here are all your questions answered; here the end of all uncertainty ensured at last.

Today we practice learning to forgive. Begin the longer practice periods by thinking of someone you do not like, who seems to irritate you, or to cause regret in you if you should meet him (or her), one you actively despise, or merely try to overlook. It does not matter what form your anger takes. You probably have chosen him (or her) already. He will do.

Now close your eyes and see him in your mind, and look at him a while. Try to perceive some light in him somewhere; a little gleam which you had never noticed. Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture that you hold of him. Look at this picture till you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers him, and makes the picture beautiful and good.

Look at this changed perception for a while, and turn your mind to one you call a friend. Try to transfer the light you learned to see around your former ‘enemy’ to him. Perceive him now as more than a friend to you, for in that light his holiness shows you your saviour, saved and saving, healed and whole.

Then let him offer you the light you see in him, and let your ‘enemy’ and friend unite in blessing you with what you gave. Now you are one with them, and they with you. Now you have been forgiven by yourself. Do not forget, throughout the day, the role that forgiveness plays in bringing happiness to every unforgiving mind, with yours among them. Every hour tell yourself:

Forgiveness is the key to happiness. I will awaken from the dream that I am mortal, fallible and full of sin, and know I am the perfect Son of God.

THIS IS A POWERFUL LESSON. When I turned the page and saw Forgiveness in the title of the lesson my heart sank. Not this again. How much more forgiving can there be for me to do?

As I read through the kind of person I was supposed to imagine I was stunned to find that the person I find most irritating is the one I was about to spend the day with. Then I understood the significance of the timing of the lesson. I’m sure everyone, when they come to this stage of the course, will also have at least one person in mind.

I couldn’t remember the full quote for the day, but my shortened version of ‘forgiveness is everything’ got me through the day. Whenever I felt the niggles of irritation building I repeated quietly, ‘forgiveness is everything,’ and felt the irritation ebb away, to be replaced with the reminder that ‘giving and receiving are the same’. What I was giving I was also receiving – because at the end of the day forgiveness is about letting go of grievances and its grievances that generate illness, malcontent and despair.

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Lesson 120 – Review 30

Posted on April 30, 2012 by predencia

‘I rest in God.’

I rest in God today, and let Him work with me and through me, while I rest in Him in quiet and in perfect certainty.

‘I am as God created me.’

I am God’s Son. Today I lay aside all sick illusions of myself, and let my father tell me Who I really am.

On the hour: I rest in God

On the half hour: I am as God created me

When we rest in God we can deal with the unexpected without panic or resentment. I had to completely change my plans today to help a friend who could have been more efficient with planning.

I had to make the decision very quickly as time was of the essence. It made me think about how lives can be changed in a split second by the decisions we make, but if we can remember to rest in God when we make our decisions there will be no worry about whether it was the right one.

It was only toward the latter part of the day that I had time to focus on the lessons, but weirdly enough I had been living the ideas all day… must have stuck from the previous lessons.

And to my friend – love does not require sacrifice, that is just a trick of the ego to perpetuate guilt.

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Lesson 119 – Review 29

Posted on April 30, 2012 by predencia

‘Truth will correct all errors in my mind.’

I am mistaken when I think I can be hurt in any way. I am God’s Son, whose Self rests safely in the Mind of God.

‘To give and to receive are one in truth.’

I will give all things today, that I may learn how to accept the truth in me, and come to recognise my sinlessness.

On the hour: Truth will correct all errors in my mind.
On the half hour: To give and to receive are one in truth.

Today was spent with friends, browsing through ZEN in Digbeth at the mini mind, body, spirit fair and later at the MAC in Edgbaston. Its been sooooo long since I just had one of those chilled out Sundays where I do nothing but chew the fat and eat.

We talked a lot about truth, about the fear that lies behind lying, and the futility of choosing to be hurt by someone’s lies. The lying is simply the symptom. What is the purpose of being hurt by a symptom? It like being upset with some for having cancer. Surely what is more important is to look beneath the symptom at why the person is lying, and try to respond to the fear that lies there.

All this between mouthfuls of delicious chocolate chip cookies, coffee and walnut cake, Americano coffee and green tea. It was good too to see the Mosquito exhibition of paintings and photographs in the cinema gallery.

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Lessoon 118 – Review 28

Posted on April 28, 2012 by predencia

‘God’s peace and joy are mine.’

Today I will accept God’s peace and joy, in glad exchange for all the substitutes that I have made for happiness.

‘Let me be still and listen to the truth.’

Let my own feeble voice be still, and let me hear the mighty Voice for Truth Itself assure me that I am God’s perfect Son.

On the hour: God’s peace and joy and mine
On the half hour: Let me be still and listen to the truth

The search for truth over the last couple of days is paying dividends. I met with another very good (and honest) friend today who helped me to pull back the curtains on some of my most destructive behaviours. One of them is my reluctance to reveal my true power for fear of being rejected, especially when I meet new people. Another is my obsession with perfection in some areas of my life. I was reminded how sneaky the ego is and how it can use the tiniest of fear to grow insecurities and inhibit one’s joy.

I was awake at4.29 a.m.reflecting on all the things that are not going as well as I’d like them to. Rather than spiral downwards I decided to use the time constructively and catch up on my missed hours by going to bed earlier tonight. It’s amazing how many emails can be sent, how much research can be done, how much shopping can be purchased from the web in the hours between 4.30 and 7.30 a.m. – and I finally got round to writing the review of the Narrating the Caribbean Nation conference. That’s freed up a little bit of brain space.

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Narrating The Caribbean Nation

Posted on April 28, 2012 by predencia

Celebrating the Silver Anniversary of Peepal Tree Press, home of Caribbean and Black British writing.
14-15 April 2012: Leeds Metropolitan University

Why I went: I was still in the energy of the Black Writers Conference inManchester two weeks earlier where Adam gave me a leaflet and said he’d be there, as would many of the others fromManchester.

Saturday

Format:           Opening (Which I missed because I was still trying to find somewhere to park other than the £25 per day car park at the Rosebowl. It would have been helpful to have that info beforehand, but I was very grateful for the help from staff in pointing out alternatives)

Presentations: 90 minute sessions x 3: I attended Diasporic Caribbean Identities and thought the presentations too academic for a writer’s conference.

Keynote Speaker: Kwame Dawes who asked ‘when did we stop being theWest Indies and became theCaribbean?’ A highly amusing and thought provoking speech.

Lunch:             Uni café with better than average uni food

Presentations:90 minute sessions x 3: I attended Caribbean Queerness and having sat through a very academic paper by Alison Donnell was rewarded by a jaw dropping piece by Thomas Clave entitled Jamaican, Octopus (which he told me later will be published later this year in June) He made me see what brilliant writing looks like.

Presentations: 90 minutes x3: I attended Revisioning the Real: Folklore and Spirituality, and was frankly disappointed by how academic presentations turned what could have been an exciting topic into a dull and boring one. The only real spark came from Amorella Lamount who brought our attention to Kei Miller’s The Last Warner Woman and lit up when she stepped away from the PowerPoint and into the audience. It’s a style worth cultivating Amorella.

Caribbean Word Buffet: Food from Dutch Pot with a host of performers including Kwame Dawes, Sam Elmi, Curdella Forbes, Kendel Hippolyte, Keith Jardim, Anton Nimblett, Simon ‘Sai Murai’ Murray, Patricia Powell, Raymond Ramcharitar and Tanya Shirley.

 Live music from Royal Blood

 I missed all of the above on two counts. 1) I was exhausted, having spent the previous night inManchesterand not getting to bed till well after2 a.m., and 2) Lunch was late and large and still occupying way too much space in my stomach.

Sunday’s format was pretty much the same minus the keynote speech.

I attended two presentations, well actually I attended three but left after fifteen minutes of the first on the basis that if I lived to be 120 years old it was still too short a time to sit through another dry academic presentation. I went instead to peruse the book stall and all the delectable titles on display. I bought two books. Caribbean Erotic and Dog Heart both of which are published by Peepal Press and relate to Dare to Love. The first is self explanatory and the second because the author tells the story in two voices.

At lunchtime on Sunday I completed the bulk of my feedback questionnaire, and was hovering over an over all middle of the road 3, despite the excellent discussion between Jeremy Poynting (Managing Director of Peepal Tree Press) and Sarah White of New Beacon Bookstore, expertly chaired by Kadija George,  but they saved the best till last.

The last two presentations I attended shifted me to a 5. They were 1) The launch of INSCRIBE  and Jacob Ross’s reading from the beginning of his new and excellent novel and 2) The Folk Cultures of the Caribbean which gave me more of what I was expecting from this kind of conference. Two excellent papers illustrated with song, dance and drums. Who could not be moved by Abela Collective. Connie Bell’s storytelling, the drumming, and the focus on spirit which raised the energy and lifted us to another space? It showed everyone that we need not lose ourCaribbean identity in order to be academic, we can combine the two. Sadly my camera battery died and I have no pictures of this amazing performance.

It was fitting that the conference ended with foot stomping, hand clapping and dancing, combining the best of all both worlds.

Overall it was an excellent event for networking. I met some amazing people who I know already will become long term friends. I was inspired to take my writing to a higher level (Thomas Clave is such an inspirational person, a bright and shining soul), and to continue telling the stories of theCaribbean.

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Lesson 117 – Revew

Posted on April 27, 2012 by predencia

‘God, being Love, is also happiness.’

Let me remember love is happiness, and nothing else brings joy. And so I choose to entertain no substitutes for love.

‘I seek but what belongs to me in truth.’

Love is my heritage, and with it joy. These are the gifts my Father gave to me. I would accept all that is mine in truth.

On the hour: God, being Love, is also happiness.

On the half hour: I seek but what belongs to me in truth.

I was so exhausted today I read the wrong lesson (118) and practiced that instead.

‘God’s peace and joy are mind.’

‘Let me be still and listen to the truth.’

I took the opportunity to get up late, meditate and spend quiet time reflecting on why I’ve not got any further with the parenting course. So much pointed me in the direction of fear of being inadequate for the task. Lots of what ifs, none of them positive.

After I had a long chat with my friend and spiritual buddy about it, I was able to re-orientate myself into a more positive state, and accept the truth about myself. I am limitless and perfectly suited to the task. I reflected on how blessed I am to have received a beautiful poem by text from an even more beautiful friend of mine. Thanks so much Keisha.

Took the rest of the day off as a rest day, but will begin tomorrow.

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Lesson 116 – Review 26

Posted on April 26, 2012 by predencia

‘God’s will for me is perfect happiness.’

God’s will is perfect happiness for me. And I can suffer but from the belief that there is another apart from his.

‘I share God’s will for happiness for me.’

I share my father’s will for me, His Son. What he has given me is all I want. What he has given me is all there is.

On the hour: God’s will for me is perfect happiness.
On the half hour: I share God’s will for happiness for me.’

It was a long but happy day today. I once wrote a poem about the warm dent in my morning bed, and this morning it was a real struggle leaving that warm dent, especially as it was cold and wet outside. However, I had clients to see, meetings to attend, and houses to view.

It brings me great happiness when a client has an insight that creates a seismic shift in their thinking and therefore their live. At times like that I LOVE MY JOB!!! I am happy to be a small part of that awakening which leads to greater peace.

Its not often I have a meeting accompanied by a beautiful vegan lunch and music ranging from Etta James to India Irie to Tyrus Riley. Thanks Sue, the fried dumplings were well irie.

 It was a great day to remind myself that my purpose here is to be happy. Do you know what happens when you allow yourself to be happy? The cheap drama disappears out of your life. The only real drama is the thrill of the journey back to love, back to God.

There are a lot of purple flowers at this time of year, have you noticed?

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Lesson 115 – Review 25

Posted on April 25, 2012 by predencia

‘Salvation is my only function here.’

My function here is to forgive the world for all the errors I have made. For thus I am released from them with all the world.

‘My part is essential to God’s plan for salvation.’

I am essential to the plan of God for the salvation of the world. For He gave me His plan that I might save the world.

On the hour: Salvation is my only function here.
On the half hour: My part is essential to God’s plan for salvation.

This morning I got up and apologised for being so unforgiving last night. ‘I was offered a chance to practice instant forgiveness, and I blew it.’ I said. Why? Because I was in that ‘How dare you?’ place, and I didn’t want to come out until I felt the other person had suffered enough. The thing is, even as I was in that place, and knew I was there something stopped me just saying f*** it, lets get on with life.

I blamed it on the fact that I was really tired, that I would have behaved differently if I wasn’t so fatigued, but the fact is I felt justified in my grievance. I had been wronged and I was going to let him pay. His apology last night, which was pretty quickly on the heel of the misdemeanour was almost useless; I was going to let him see how his careless words had wounded me. I was unbelievably self-righteous.

Why didn’t I pull back when I knew what I was giving out I was giving to myself? Maybe there was a subconscious need to punish myself. I don’t know. Anyway the ego was running rampant last night. It is more under control today as I reminded myself that I cannot be part of God’s plan for salvation and carry grievances.

BIG CELEBRATIONS!! Betrayed went to he publisher today. Massive weight off my shoulders, and I’m off to Ceroc now. YEY!! LIFE IS GOOD!!

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Lesson 114 – Review 24

Posted on April 25, 2012 by predencia

‘I am spirit.’

I am the Son of God. No body can contain my spirit, nor impose on me a limitation God created not.

‘I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation.’

What can my function be but to accept the Word of God, Who has created me for what I am and will forever be?’

On the hour: I am spirit
On the half hour: I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation.

If I am spirit, it’s a heavy spirit. It was one of those days when I was doing something I’d rather not have been doing and far from relaxing into it and reminding myself that in my development ‘nothing is included that is contradictory or irrelevant’ I sulked my way through the day. Thus I was ripe to take umbrage when my husband made a comment I didn’t like, I rounded on him and sulked my way through what should have been a lovely meal to celebrate him passing the deep and wreck part of his diving course and me sending the manuscript to the publisher. (Of course I hadn’t managed my part).

He took me to the Hands and Heart Pub inNottinghamwhich has a cave restaurant with big portions and live music (see separate blog in review section). It’s true I was tired from a very late night the previous night, but I’m sure I could have made more of an effort to enjoy myself. I felt ashamed of myself. Now here’s an interesting thing, because I’d got my head in IT stuff all day, I didn’t practice my lessons for the day. Did this have something to do with it? Am I just looking for something to blame?

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