ACFIP
Newsletter
Issue 5 - JUNE 2005
Quarterly Newsletter of the Australian Centre for Inner
Peace
Michael Dawson
PO Box 125, Point Lookout
North Stradbroke Island,
Queensland 4183,
Australia
Email: mdawson@acfip.org
Web site: http://www.acfip.org
CONTENTS:
- Article -
Resisting the Course
- Healing Section -
Sister Annette
- A Story of
Forgiveness
- Workshops
- Books and Audio
Materials for Sale
- Links
- Inspirational
Quotations
___________________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the FIFTH issue of the Australian Centre for Inner
Peace Newsletter.
If you wish to read previous issues please go to
http://www.acfip.org/newsletterarchive.html.
Each of these newsletters will contain an article on some aspect
of A Course in
Miracles and a section on healing {which will often
feature a story about how
forgiveness brings about healing). Sometimes I will include
articles and stories
by other authors.
Information is also available about my talks and workshops at
Point Lookout, Australia
and elsewhere in the world and details of my books and audio
materials for sale.
At present, all the workshops I am giving come from personal
invitations. I have
no dates of when I might be teaching at my new home at Point
Lookout as it can take
some time after arriving in a new country before people find out
what is being offered.
If you are new to the Course you might find my summary of help.
You can find it at
http://www.acfip.org/sum.html
Michael Dawson
http://www.acfip.org
___________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLE
Resisting the Course
Over the years
that I have been
teaching A Course in Miracles I have heard many accounts
of people's difficulty
in studying the Course. They illustrate the strong ambivalence
many (all?) students
have to studying and putting into practice its teachings. These
include starting
to study and then putting the book down and forgetting it, only
reading the Workbook,
and getting angry at the book (including destroying it or
throwing it away). Some
students try to change the Course to make it more acceptable to
their egos. Examples
include denial (where certain parts of the Course, especially
the metaphysics, are
not seen), reading Jesus out of the Course and altering its
language. Other students
may become preoccupied with such questions as "Why did the
separation occur?",
forgetting that if we practise our daily forgiveness lessons we
will receive an experience
that will answer all our questions (C-in.4:4-5).
Helen Schucman, who channelled the Course, also exhibited strong
ambivalence to taking
down the Course and practising forgiveness. She writes of this
in her poem Bright
Stranger:
Strange was my Love to me. For when He came
I did not know Him. And He seemed to me
To be but an intruder on my peace.
I did not see the gifts He brought, nor hear
His soft appeal. I tried to shut Him out
With locks and keys that merely fell away
Before His coming. I could not escape
The gentleness with which He looked at me.
I asked Him in unwillingly, and turned
Away from Him. But He held out His hand
And asked me to remember Him. In me
An ancient Name began to stir and break
Across my mind in gold. The light embraced
Me deep in silence till He spoke the Word,
And then at last I recognized my Lord.
from The Gifts of God
Foundation for Inner Peace
This beautiful poem applies to us all. One part of us, our right
mind, welcomes Jesus's
help while another part of us, the wrong mind, wants to shut him
out. Our egos happy
to ask him for things of this world like health, the right
partner, money, etc.,
but we don't want him to lead us out of this world to where he
is.
Jesus is well aware that in studying his Course we will become
fearful at times and
actively resist it.
This course
has explicitly
stated that its goal for you is happiness and peace. Yet you
are afraid of it. You
have been told again and again that it will set you free, yet
you sometimes react
as if it is trying to imprison you. You often dismiss it more
readily than you dismiss
the ego's thought system. To some extent, then, you must
believe that by not learning
the course you are protecting yourself. And you do not realize
that it is only your
guiltlessness that can protect you.
A Course in Miracles T-13.II.7:1-6
Your mind is no longer wholly untrained. You are quite ready
to learn the form
of exercise we will use today, but you may find that you will
encounter strong resistance.
The reason is very simple. While you practice in this way, you
leave behind everything
that you now believe, and all the thoughts that you have made
up. Properly speaking,
this is the release from hell. Yet perceived through the ego's
eyes, it is loss of
identity and a descent into hell.
W-pI.44.5:1-6
I saw a cartoon once that showed two doors. Above the first was
written "Lecture
on Heaven". In front of this door was a long queue of people.
The door next
to it had the sign "Heaven" above it but no people queued to
enter. The
fear we have to enter Heaven is mirrored in our fear of studying
and practising the
Course.
The section in the Text entitled 'The Fear of Redemption" gives
a very clear
explanation of why we resist the Course. As we progress with our
learning we move
ever closer to the love of God in our mind. This is the ultimate
threat to the ego
for it cannot withstand this love and survive. When the ego is
finally shone away
by God's love our precious individuality and specialness will
also go and it is this
which terrifies us. One part of us craves the peace of God
whilst another part fears
it. This translates into wanting to study the Course and leave
this world behind
(right minded thinking) and not wishing to have anything to do
with the Course, seeking
fulfilment only in the world (wrong minded thinking).
You think you have made a world God would destroy; and by
loving Him, which you
do, you would throw this world away, which you would.
Therefore, you have used the
world to cover your love, and the deeper you go into the
blackness of the ego's foundation,
the closer you come to the Love that is hidden there. And it
is this that frightens
you.
T-13.III.4:3-5
Under the ego's dark foundation is the memory of God, and it
is of this that you
are really afraid. For this memory would instantly restore you
to your proper place,
and it is this place that you have sought to leave.
T-13.III.2:1-2
Many of us start the Course hoping that we can learn to live
more happily in this
world. We look forward to finding the right partner or improving
our existing relationship,
to enjoying better health, to getting on better with people,
etc. As we practise
forgiveness we will see improvements in these areas eventually
reaching "a period
of settling down" (M-4.I.A.7), the fourth stage in the
"Development of
Trust" (M-4.I.A.), where we experience a "reasonable peace".
Many
teachings have the goal of making our lives here more happy and
fulfilling - the
book stores are full of them. The Course, however, is not a
coping philosophy but
a transcendent teaching. In the Bible Jesus says that his
kingdom is not of this
world. The aim of the Course is to take us to this world, what
it calls the Real
World. But this means leaving our ego behind, our sense of "I".
This leads
to the next stage in the "Development of Trust" called "a period
of
unsettling" (M-4.I.A.7:1) which may last a very long time as we
resist letting
our individuality go and enter the Real World of oneness with
God - the last step
on the ladder of trust.
As we start to realise where the Course is leading us we can
panic and resist its
teachings. We may not realise we are resisting and point to the
fact that we regularly
read the Course, go to our A Course in Miracles study
group and try to forgive.
However, to look deeply into our ego thought system is not a
pleasant experience.
It's more comfortable to live on the surface.
You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your
hatred and realize
its full extent. You may also think that it would be easy
enough for the Holy Spirit
to show it to you, and to dispel it without the need for you
to raise it to awareness
yourself. Yet there is one more obstacle you have interposed
between yourself and
the Atonement....You are not really afraid of crucifixion.
Your real terror is of
redemption.
T-13.III.1:1-3,10-11
To look without judgement at the hatred in our minds will take
us to the darkest
foundations of the ego's thought system. This is difficult
enough for us to do but
beyond this foundation is the love of God, our redemption, and
this terrifies us
even more as this love will dissolve who we think we are.
It is very helpful to realise we will fear and resist the Course
as it prepares us
for those moments when we just want to give it all up. Further,
when we do start
to get glimpses of the Real World with attendant loss of the ego
we will understand
better what is happening and will be less likely to succumb to
fear.
Our ambivalence to the Course can become another chance to
practise forgiveness.
We might say to ourselves, "Here I go again, frightened of
Jesus's love for
me and running away again. What's new! I can learn to smile at
this and wait patiently
for the day when I can let him and his Course back into my life
again".
And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you
are not ready. Do not
fight yourself.
T-30.I.1:6-7
The above quote illustrates well Jesus's love and understanding
of us. He does not
want us to beat ourselves up for being poor students at times
but to be gentle with
ourselves and our journey with him.
___________________________________________________________________________
HEALING SECTION
Sister Annette
A healing technique is of secondary importance compared with the
presence
of the therapist. By ‘presence’, I am referring to the
therapist’s state of
mind whilst working with a client. For healing to occur
therapists need to be
guided from within, and this can only happen if they are at
peace around the
client. A wonderful healing technique used at the wrong moment
is useless.
Knowing when to speak or remain silent, when to use a different
approach
or method, must be guided from a place higher than reason and
logic.
Therapeutic skill needs to be combined with inner listening. The
following
account of a therapy session conducted by Dr. Kenneth Wapnick
illustrates
this point (Reprinted from Forgiveness and Jesus by Dr.
Kenneth Wapnick.
Published by Foundation For A Course In Miracles © 1983 http://www.facim.org )
One of my first therapy experiences after I began working with
the Course
in Miracles afforded me a powerful example of the relationship
between healing
and forgiveness. I had seen Sister Annette for about two months.
She was
fifty years old and had been in religious life almost thirty
years. She was also
one of the angriest people I had ever worked with, filled with a
silent hatred
toward those in authority that would have destroyed mountains.
Over the
first few sessions, Sister Annette was able to begin questioning
some of her
attitudes toward her Order and her desire for revenge. She no
longer seemed
quite as committed to the retaliative steps she had
contemplated. Or so I
thought. One day Annette walked into the office with her face
coldly exhibiting
the ‘wrath of God!’ Her convent co-ordinator had done something
she
judged as being beyond forgiveness, and Sister Annette was hell
bent on war,
absolutely closed to any suggestions she do otherwise.
That same morning I had come down with a very bad cold and felt
miserable. Not all my prayers and meditation were able to shift
this, and I sat
before Annette feeling utterly helpless and discouraged. I knew
that if she left
me as she had come in, she would be making an irrevocable
mistake she would
regret the rest of her life. Yet nothing I said could budge her,
and my growing
frustration only made my cold worse. The more frustrated I
became, the more
real I made Annette’s angry symptoms and, correspondingly, my
own as well.
Obviously, I was projecting my unforgiveness of myself onto
Annette, seeing
in her stubborn clinging to her anger the mirror of my stubborn
clinging to
my cold, not to mention my own failure as a therapist.
Separation through
our symptoms became reinforced, and healing through joining
retreated still
further behind clouds of guilt and anger.
What added to my difficulty was the belief that Annette had been
sent
to me from God, and as she was in serious trouble it was my
responsibility to
help her. And I was obviously failing. About midway through the
session, my
desperation led me finally to remember that I was not the
Therapist, and that
I certainly could not be more concerned for Annette than Jesus
was. Even as
I was talking and listening to her, in another part of my mind I
began to pray
for help, asking Jesus to provide the words that would heal her
anger and fear,
and restore to her awareness the love that was her true
identity.
The response was immediate, and I suddenly became available to
the
help that was there – for me. A warm surge of energy rose up
from my chest,
through my lungs, nose and throat, and I could feel my cold
being healed and
my head clearing up. At the same time I began to speak. I don’t
recall what
I said, and doubt if it were anything too different from what I
had said previously.
Only now I was different. I no longer saw Annette as separate
from me,
a patient in trouble whom I, as therapist, had to help. She now
was my sister,
and by joining with her I was joining with Jesus. I had become
the patient as
well, and together we received healing from the forgiving love
of God. By the
end of the session, her softened face reflected the shift from
anger and fear to
forgiveness and love, as my well being reflected the same shift
in myself. I had
learned my lesson that day, to be relearned many times
thereafter.
Reprinted from The Findhorn Book of Forgiveness.
Findhorn Press by Michael
Dawson
See http://www.acfip.org/fbof.html
___________________________________________________________________________
PLEASE NOTE: The Australian Centre for Inner Peace is
not a counselling
or psychotherapy centre; therefore, we do not offer telephone or
email service or
counselling, therapy, or crisis intervention for personal
problems related to the
Course. Please see the Contacts section at the end of
this newsletter.
___________________________________________________________________________
A Story of Forgiveness
When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, the 123rd Evac unit
entered Germany with
the occupying troops. I was part of a group assigned to a
concentration camp near
Wuppertal, charged with getting medical help to the newly
liberated prisoners, many
of them Jews from Holland, France, and eastern Europe. This was
the most shattering
experience I had yet had; I had been exposed many times by then
to sudden death and
injury, but to see the effects of slow starvation, to walk
through those barracks
where thousands of men had died a little bit at a time over a
period of years, was
a new kind of horror. For many it was an irreversible process:
we lost scores each
day in spite of all the medicine and food we could rush to them.
Now I needed my new insight indeed. When the ugliness became too
great to handle
I did what I had learned to do. I went from one end to the other
of that barbed wire
enclosure looking into men’s faces until I saw looking back at
me the face of Christ.
And that’s how I came to know Wild Bill Cody. That wasn’t his
real name. His real
name was seven unpronounceable syllables in Polish, but he had a
long drooping handlebar
mustache like pictures of the old western hero, so the American
soldiers called him
Wild Bill. He was one of the inmates of the concentration camp,
but obviously he
hadn’t been there long: his posture was erect, his eyes bright,
his energy indefatigable.
Since he was fluent in English, French, German and Russian, as
well as Polish, he
became a kind of unofficial camp translator.
We came to him with all sorts of problems; the paper work alone
was staggering in
attempting to relocate people whose families, even whole
hometowns, might have disappeared.
But though Wild Bill worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day, he
showed no signs of
weariness. While the rest of us were drooping with fatigue, he
seemed to gain strength.
“We have time for this old fellow,” he’d say. “He’s been waiting
to see us all day.”
His compassion for his fellow prisoners glowed on his face, and
it was to this glow
that I came when my own spirits were low.
So I was astonished to learn when Wild Bill’s own papers came
before us one day,
that he had been in Wuppertal since 1939! For six years he had
lived on the same
starvation diet, slept in the same airless and disease-ridden
barracks as everyone
else, but without the least physical or mental deterioration.
Perhaps even more amazing, every group in the camp looked on him
as a friend. He
was the one to whom quarrels between inmates were brought for
arbitration. Only after
I’d been at Wuppertal a number of weeks did I realize what a
rarity this was in a
compound where the different nationalities of prisoners hated
each other almost as
much as they did the Germans.
As for Germans, feeling against them ran so high that in some of
the camps liberated
earlier, former prisoners had seized guns, run into the nearest
village and simply
shot the first Germans they saw. Part of our instructions were
to prevent this kind
of thing and again Wild Bill was our greatest asset, reasoning
with the different
groups, counseling forgiveness.
“It’s not easy for some of them to forgive,” I commented to him
one day as we sat
over mugs of tea in the processing center. So many of them have
lost members of their
families”
Wild Bill leaned back in the upright chair and sipped at his
drink. “We lived in
the Jewish section of Warsaw,” he began slowly, the first words
I had heard him speak
about himself, “my wife, our two daughters, and our three little
boys. When the Germans
reached our street they lined everyone against a wall and opened
up with machine
guns. I begged to be allowed to die with my family, but because
I spoke German they
put me in a work group.”
He paused, perhaps seeing again his wife and five children. “I
had to decide right
then,” he continued, “whether to let myself hate the soldiers
who had done this.
It was an easy decision, really. I was a lawyer. In my practice
I had seen too often
what hate could do to people’s minds and bodies. Hate had just
killed the six people
who mattered most to me in the world. I decided then that I
would spend the rest
of my life – whether it was a few days or many years – loving
every person I came
in contact with
From Return from Tomorrow by George Ritchie, M.D. © 1978
published by
Fleming H. Revell, a division of Baker Book House Company.
One of the hallmarks of the ego is that it always takes sides:
there are always ‘goodies’
and ‘baddies’. Wild Bill did not take sides. It mattered not to
him whether the people
he helped were so-called ‘victims’ or ‘persecutors’; they were
both unhappy and consciously
or unconsciously calling for love, which he then gave. It is
clear from the above
story that Wild Bill did not see himself in either category
either and this enabled
him to retain his peace under the most demanding of
circumstances. It also allowed
him to access a source of energy and reserve within himself that
allowed him to survive
the camps. So much so that he had more energy than the well fed
doctors who had come
to help the inmates of the camp!
Earlier, I talked about how all things that happen are neutral
and we ourselves decide
how to react. In the case of Wild Bill, we see how an event
judged as horrific by
the world became the means by which a saint was born on earth.
Seeing the world as
neutral does not, of course, condone the affliction of pain and
death on others,
but reminds us that we can still choose how we respond to
situations we find ourselves
in.
Wild Bill was an exceptional man who, in exceptional
circumstances, chose forgiveness
as his path.
Reprinted from The Findhorn Book of Forgiveness. Findhorn
Press by Michael
Dawson
See
http://www.acfip.org/fbof.html
___________________________________________________________________________
WORKSHOPS,
TALKS and TRAININGS
2005 Workshops
GERMANY
BONN - 16/17 July 2005
Opening to the Light
- from the perspective of A Course in Miracles
Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does
nothing.
... It merely looks, and waits, and judges not.
A Course in Miracles W-pII.1.4.
The light, love and joy of God are ever present and wait
only our acceptance.
We need not earn them as they were freely given at our creation.
Nor is sacrifice
or suffering required. So why do we rarely experience the light?
This workshop will
look, firstly, at why we are afraid of the light and the
illusions we fear to let
go. Our illusions and unforgiveness stand as barriers between us
and the light.
The second part of the workshop will focus on overcoming our
fear through forgiveness
- the path of awareness, acceptance and asking for help.
We will use material from 'The Obstacles to Peace' in the ACIM
Text and the 'Development
of Trust' in the Manual. Exercises will be used to help identify
our illusions and
fear of sacrifice so they can be healed through forgiveness. We
will practise watching
our minds without judgement or as the Course puts it ...
(forgiveness) "merely
looks, and waits and judges not."
No previous knowledge of A Course in Miracles is required
but attendance at
the Friday night talk would be helpful for people new to the
Course.
See article in the December 2004 newsletter
http://www.acfip.org/nl3.html
Intoductory talk evening 15th July
Contact:
Albert-Schwitzer-House
Beethovenallee 16
53173 Bonn-Bad Godesberg
Germany
Tel: 0228 364737
___________________________________________________________________________
FREIBURG - 9/10 July 2005
Opening to the Light
- from the perspective of A Course in Miracles
(description as Bonn
w/s)
Intoductory talk evening 8th July
Contact:
Sophia-Institut
Margarete Sennekamp
Adalbert-Stifter-Str. 16
79102 Freiburg
Tel/Fax : 0761-73930
<http://www.Sophia-Institut.de>www.Sophia-Institut.de
___________________________________________________________________________
NEW ZEALAND
A weekend workshop near Wellington, New Zealand
11th and 12th November 2005
Opening to the Light
- from the perspective of A Course in Miracles
(description as Bonn
w/s)
Intoductory talk evening 10th November 2005
Workshop Contact:
Krissy Dussler
15 Haumia Street
Paekakariki
New Zealand
Tel: 04 2927 228 2004
Email: krissyreadings@paradise.net.nz
___________________________________________________________________________
BOOKS AND AUDIO MATERIALS FOR SALE - by Michael Dawson
Books:
Healing the Cause - A Path of Forgiveness. Findhorn
Press. 1994
The Findhorn Book of Forgiveness. Findhorn Press. 2003
For more details and how to purchase please visit:
http://www.acfip.org/books_tapes.html
Audio Tapes and CDs
Since 1986 I have been conducting healing workshops in the
UK and abroad, and
have continually experimented to find healing and forgiveness
exercises that are
effective. I have found that a particular exercise can be
effective for one person
but not another. Accordingly, I was led to develop a series of
exercises. Over the
years workshop participants asked if these exercises could be
put onto audio cassettes
and CDs so they could repeat them. This has resulted in the
Healing the Cause - Exercise
series - Tapes 1 to 4
(2 exercises on each tape) and CD1 and 2 (4 exercises on each
CD)
For more details and how to purchase please visit: http://www.acfip.org/books_tapes.html
___________________________________________________________________________
CONTACTS
Resources
Foundation
for A Course In Miracles
41397
Buecking Drive, Temecula,
CA 92590
Tel: 909 296 6261 Fax: 909296 9117
Books, videos, CDs and audio tapes by Kenneth and Gloria Wapnick
are available from
their web site http://www.facim.org
Question and Answer Service:
Their electronic outreach section has a question and answer
service http://www.facimoutreach.org/ on the theory and
practice of the Course.
Their database of hundreds of questions and answers is
searchable and you can ask
your own questions.
Their publications can also be ordered in Australia at:
Adyar
Bookshop
230 Clarence Street
Sydney, NSW 2000
Foundation
for
Inner Peace - the publishers
of A Course in Miracles
http://www.acim.org/
ACIM study groups.
Go to The
Miracle Distribution Center
http://www.miraclecenter.org/ for the largest and most
frequently updated
list of A Course in Miracles study groups available
anywhere.
Miracles
Studies
Australia
http://www.miraclestudies.webcentral.com.au/ lists study groups for
Australia and new Zealand
A Course In Miracles Pen Pals
The Miracle Network http://www.miracles.org.uk hosts a A Course in
Miracles pen pals
group:
To
join this e-mail
discussion group, send your e-mail address to
e.pals@miracles.org.uk. They will send you updated lists of
other e.pals and
inform them of your e-mail address.
A Course In Miracles Chat Groups
http://miraclesalliance.no-ip.org/acim_chat_groups.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------
INSPIRATIONAL QUOTATIONS
About three or four times a week I send a short quotation from
some spiritual teacher
or poet to people who have requested some uplifting thoughts. I
have included some
below. If you wish I can add your name to the list.
Please email at 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Do understand that you are destined for enlightenment.
Co-operate with your destiny, dont go against it, dont thwart
it.
Allow it to fulfil itself.
All you have to do is to give attention to the obstacles created
by the foolish mind.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
---------------------------------------------------------------
When you listen to the voice in
your head, that
is to say, do not judge. You’ll soon realize: there
is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching
it. This I am realization, this sense of your own
presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond
the mind.
- Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now
---------------------------------------------------------------
In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do, and that
sign becomes this art.
- Rumi
---------------------------------------------------------------
One is more likely to awaken through surrender than through
seeking to waken. The
effort to awaken is the effort of ego, whereas to surrender is
to give up all efforts
and to place oneself in the hands of a vast force that is more
powerful than any
realization of non duality.
When one finally gives up one’s futile attempts to make reality
conform to one’s
own wishes, and allows it to unfold on its own terms, all the
energy that was tied
up in foolish attempts to manipulate the universe is freed up.
Mariana Caplan
Halfway Up the Moutain - The Error of Premature Claims to
Enlightenment
---------------------------------------------------------------
Yet searching is inevitable here. For this you came, and you
will surely do the thing
you came for. But the world can not dictate the goal for which
you search, unless
you give it power to do so. Otherwise, you still are free to
choose a goal that lies
beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one that comes
to you from an idea
relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage
forgot, yet holding
everything you really want.
A Course in Miracles Lesson 131
---------------------------------------------------------------
There’s one great delusion that
lies at the core
of all of our suffering: the false belief in the reality
of the separation of life and in the subsequent
true existence of an individual ego.
All fervent attempts to control or to mortify this
illusory ego through penance, rituals and sacrifice,
however, will only serve to intensify the delusion
that this ego is actually very real and that it only
needs to be, somehow, subdued, conquered or
destroyed.
- Chuck Hillig
Seeds for the Soul
Chuck Hillig
Black Dot Publications, 2003
--
Michael Dawson
PO Box 125
Point Lookout
North Stradbroke Island
Queensland 4183
Australia
EMAIL: mdawson@acfip.org
WEBSITE: http://www.acfip.org