There’s a documentary I invite everyone who takes classes with me to watch. It’s called Doing Time, Doing Vipassana, and you can find it online.
Vipassana is the form of meditation the Buddha used under the Bodhi tree. It’s an awareness meditation, a body awareness practice. There are Vipassana centers all over the world, and I’ve done a 10-day silent retreat myself, as have others in my Masterful Living Program.
Think of it like sitting inside a sacred fire that burns off your false beliefs, your illusions and delusions.
The documentary is set in a prison in India.
India is a huge country with a large population, and this particular prison held the most hardened criminals in that entire population.
It was an unhealthy, unhappy place. Endless challenges. Nothing they tried resolved them.
Then a woman became the warden.
She immediately instituted a new policy. All the inmates must do Vipassana. The full 10-day course.
Silent for 10 days, moving through the stages of learning the practice and then practicing it.
Before the Vipassana there was hatred between the prisoners and the guards. Anger. Violence. A stew of negativity everyone there was swirling in 24/7.
When the prisoners came out of those 10 days, for the very first time after years of animosity, they were literally hugging the prison guards. Weeping and hugging them.
That’s the level of transformation available when we practice deeply.
Notice what did the work.
They weren’t reading anything. There was nothing to read. They were only listening to their own Higher Holy Spirit Self while following a practice that’s endowed and encoded with the healing. We sit with intention, and we have a healing. Spirit cannot fail.
Here’s the part I don’t ever skip over.
Without humility, there’s no spiritual awakening.
The door can’t even be found without it.
Humility is recognizing there’s no better than and there’s no less than.
No “I’m better than you.”
No “I’m not as good as you.”
None of that sense of separation.
Humility is unity consciousness. Which means if we hate the ones who hate, we lose. Love loses.
I’d add this too: we don’t have to do what the prisoners did, or what the Buddha did, or what Jesus did. We don’t have to repeat other people’s curriculum, because we share the same mind. We’re a collective.
We don’t have to keep repeating the past.
Which means, we don’t have to have the same arguments with the same people about the same things in the same way without learning anything.
We have free will to choose happiness or unhappiness. Love or separation.
Here’s the piece that ties it all back to our cycles: when we put spirit in charge, victory is assured. We cannot fail. Spirit has no concept of failure.
Yet we can fail to put spirit in charge, and then it seems like spirit failed.
That’s the trap. We say fix my body, fix my life, fix my marriage, fix my finances while expecting to sit on the sofa, watch TV, eat snacks, isolate, drink, and work obsessively. Then we conclude that spirit let us down. I get it. I’ve been there.
The more intense the challenge, the greater the victory over the small self.
The selfish self. The delusional self. The separate self we imagined and then seemingly put in charge.
That’s not who we are.
We’re the perfect givers and receivers of love.
If you’re ready to stop going it alone, consider my Finding Freedom From Fear Bootcamp which starts next month.
We’re grateful and thankful to give away all forms of fear to the Higher Holy Spirit Self for healing. Spirit cannot fail.
We’re taking our power back.
On Saturday, August 8 we’re going deeper together in my Deep Dive Workshop, Why Am I So Hard On Myself? If self-attack and criticism is your struggle, come join me. This is a habit that can be dissolved. Two and a half hours. We’ll do the heavy lifting together.
YES, I’M GIVING MYSELF THIS GIFT Learn more now.
If shame has been living in your body for a long season, my FREE Forgiveness Workshops are a beautiful place to begin. Come as you are. Bring exactly what you’re carrying.
My next FREE Forgiveness Workshops is Saturday August 29. Come as you are, however you can. You don’t have to feel ready. You don’t have to have done any prep work. Your willingness is all that’s required. powerofloveministry.net/
TODAY: Sundays with Spirit – join for inspirational music and message. Totally FREE – all are welcome – register to get the zoom details for today.
NEW PODCAST EPISODE: The Decision to Forget One ordinary morning, Leon Joel Russell opened A Course in Miracles and hit a single paragraph that stopped him cold for six days. This week Jennifer Hadley sits down with her fellow ACIM teacher to follow where that paragraph led them, into a question most of us spend a lifetime avoiding: what are we actually afraid of, underneath all of it? Where they take it is lighter than the question sounds. Two friends who love the truth, going somewhere worth following.
