For years I intended to walk in the world as a somewhat ferocious person. When something triggered me, when I felt frustrated or irritated or upset in any way, I went to anger. My hurt felt so deep. I felt like an open, gaping wound, and my protection was my anger.
Think of a growling dog in front of a house.
You see that dog and you think, maybe I don’t need to go to that house. I’ll try the next one, where there isn’t a ferocious animal out front. That was exactly the purpose of my anger. To warn people off. To let them know I’d have no problem hurting them, biting them, frightening them.
“If you threaten me, I will take you down.” That really was my mindset. Underneath all of it, I felt very sad and very hurt.
I had done a lot of study by then. A decade of spiritual study, then nine years of Science of Mind practitioner and ministerial training. I’d begun my own personal practice of nonviolence, studying the work of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, teaching about their life and work, writing out ways to practice nonviolence every single day and sending them out.
I’d written a couple hundred of those before I ever picked up A Course in Miracles. Then, when ACIM came into my life, it made immediate sense to me, because of all that work and because the practices were so similar with completely different languaging.
The living of it is what transformed my mind. Not the reading of it.
A Course in Miracles puts the assignment plainly: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
The growling dog was a barrier to anyone who threatened my vulnerability.
A very effective one.
We don’t have to go looking for love. Instead, we’re being guided to be willing to look at what we’re choosing that blocks the natural flow of Love.
For many of us those barriers were built early, and they’re held in place by grievances we’ve never set down. If you’d like a few hours of tender, practical company while you look at yours, that’s what my FREE Forgiveness Workshop is for.
I learned that the anger and the keeping people at a distance wasn’t the problem, they were the symptoms pointing me to the underlying cause which was my belief that there was something profoundly wrong with me. All the symptom experiences were inviting me to address that underlying belief. Triggers are helpful and healing.
SEPTEMBER: My Finding Freedom From Fear Bootcamp is 90 days of moving out of coping and into real trust, faith and listening to the higher wisdom, together. This is my longest running program – popular because it is such a game changer. Are you up for truly moving past fear? I only offer this once per year – We start in September! Click here now to learn more now.
SEPTEMBER: How about some free classes with great ACIM teachers? Living A Course in Miracles: Release the Worry, Rest in Trust is open for registration now! Worry isn’t natural. It’s a habit, and habits can be dissolved when we’re truly willing. That’s what we’re doing together September 10 through 13 in my FREE series. 5 teachers, 8 classes, 4 days, and every one of us has walked through the worry ourselves and come out the other side. We’ll look at what worry actually is in the mind, why willpower has never once dissolved it, and how to hand the future over so we can rest even while life is still unresolved. Not denial. Not pretending we’re fine. A real change of mind. It’s FREE, and I’d love to have you with us. Register now so you don’t forget at powerofloveministry.net/Release
Next Free Forgiveness Workshop is Monday, Labor Day, September 7th. Sign up now so you don’t forget.
NEW PODCAST EPISODE: I Took God to Couples Therapy with Neda Boin. We can put ourselves through so much and call it devotion. The harder it gets, the more committed we think we are. Neda Boin lived that for years, and when she finally sat down with God about it, what surfaced wasn’t the thing she’d been trying to fix. It was sitting one layer underneath, and it’s the layer almost none of us look at. If you’re forgiving faithfully and peace still hasn’t come, this is the one I’d like you to hear.
