I recall once having a conversation with a spiritual practitioner about something that keeps proving true and it feels important to talk about it.
Reading books and listening to audios, even this podcast, isn’t healing.
It’s healing when we apply what we read and what we learn.
For many years, I wasn’t satisfied. Yet I settled for a lot of listening and a lot of reading without rigorous application.
The rigorous application is the challenging part. And that’s the part I wasn’t willing to do. Reading books is easy, it’s enjoyable. Applying spiritual principle in our every day is another thing entirely.
It’s very challenging.
I know that pattern from the inside.
We read the book. We highlight the passage. We feel the truth resonate. We close the cover and feel a little better for a moment. It’s like listening to a favorite song. For a little while we feel lifted by it’s resonance. And then …
… we go right back to fanning the flames of the same upset we’ve always fanned.
The book didn’t fail us.
We didn’t apply it.
Here’s what I’ve come to know: the books are tremendous. The teachings are tremendous. The audios and the broadcasts are tremendous.
None of it heals us by being consumed.
People tell me all the time that they’re grateful for the healing they’ve received from my work.
And I do my best to point out that they are the ones who did the healing work. I can only heal myself. But I can share what I’ve learned about healing and I intend to do that to my dying day, with my last breath, because I am SO grateful I could learn anything at all.
There’s something else to note. When we read alone, we’re going it alone. When we practice with another, even one other, we’re eliminating the sense of separation, which is the only problem we have.
That partnering is what’s profoundly healing. That’s not what’s happening when we’re reading a book.
This is exactly why the programs I offer are built around application week after week rather than study alone. We’re learning A Course in Miracles deeply because we’re practicing it consistently, together, and the scales fall from our eyes.
I’ve watched it happen over and over. People start seeing clearly because they’re actually working with the mind, working with the mind, working with the mind.
Application takes willingness, strength, and courage. I applaud everyone willing to do it.
THIS FRIDAY If you’d like to take one step from studying to practicing, my FREE Forgiveness Workshop this Friday is a beautiful place to begin. Free. Come as you are.
We’re done being satisfied with just collecting information, we’re choosing miraculous healing.
Sometimes when we become overwhelmed and upset by what we think we see we find ways to drown out the intensity of our reactions. We fall into various forms of self-medication and self-sabotage. I know a lot about that. And that’s why I created a program to rise up out of that pain.
End My Self-Sabotage 6-Week Program begins Sunday, July 26. Self-sabotage is designed to slow down our spiritual growth. But what if I told you that we can dissolve that pattern? When you recognize the pattern, you can interrupt it. And when you interrupt it with Love instead of willpower, everything changes. I used to struggle with self-medication and other forms of self-sabotage, but that’s behind me now – if you can relate – let’s do it together! Click here to learn more.
NEW PODCAST EPISODE: Where the Love is Now What if what’s keeping us from love isn’t what happened to us, but where we keep looking for it? I’m just back from our counseling intensive in Asheville, and I opened A Course in Miracles to Chapter 13 to a line I still find astonishing. It doesn’t tell us to release the past. It tells us we can’t see it at all. So what are we looking at, every time we’re upset? I’ll be honest with you about the years I taught forgiveness before I was willing to forgive, and about the wall I kept hitting without understanding why. And I’ll share what I do now with the hardest seasons of my life. It asks almost nothing of us, and I didn’t believe it could work either.
