With much gratitude I read your thought and share them with you. As a small child looking through the window at the vast sky I had the thought ‘ I do not belong here’ not knowing quite what the thought meant. Looking back I believe I (metaphorically) saw a glimmer on light. I began a journey that has spanned 8 decades. Oh the ups and downs along the way… yet a sense of not being alone…? I too share the feeling of .. ‘ I am not there yet’ … tired.. weary.. yet seeing the glimmer in a baby ladybug 🐞 clinging to a tiny seed in the pool and rushing to save it and thanking it for helping me see it was here with me. Or saying how beautiful the red roses were to a thanksgiving shopper and she with a joyful voice saying thank you they are for my mom ❣️ a glimpse of she is here with me and a weary heart remembers the glimmer of light that seemed like yesterday. And thank you Sean you are here with me. We are never alone. 💖
Thank you so much for sharing this, Janice. Those little acts of kindness are love itself and I forget all the time how easy it is just let kindness flow - I don't even have to do anything, it's so natural! And yet, and yet.
And thanks too for yoking that light to childhood - I remember when it rained running out to the pasture to look at the quartz rocks - how sometimes when the light was just so, the gleaming would become prismatic . . . it made me so happy, nothing else mattered. . .
But really really thank you for the deeper notion that those kindnesses - and the ones with whom we share and experience them - stay with us. We are not alone, ever. Yes. Thank you for reminding me and being here.
Such powerful words prior to the start of Advent , "I have not fallen to my knees in the shit-stained straw to give thanks”.
I was actually taken over with joy and laughter in reading those words because they shone a light on exactly how I feel. In that moment I realized I am NOT stuck in the “shit-stained straw” when I recognize and admit I haven’t come to my knees, that I am still enjoying on some level wallowing in suffering.
The suffering of the world (which is the shit-stained straw to me) somehow gives me an identity. Yet, if I truly want something new there needs to be a sincere willingness to surrender the old. What a wonderful opportunity to spend this coming month with you exploring all the ways the old “shit-stained straw” shows up in my life to block Christ Consciousness. I look forward to the adventure with you and others….. 🙏
Thank you for sharing this, Glenda, especially for reframing that shit-stained straw as "the suffering of the world" which blocks Christ Consciousness. I would not think to use that langauge that way and yet it feels incredibly resonant to me.
Thank you for being here and radiating . . . I can see a little more clearly 🙏🙏
Good for you Sean - to open up to all of us and to dedicate the 24 ? days to giving up everything that comes up. Like lesson 306 - "In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give".
Thank you Robyn for sharing that lesson! That is a perfect summation of what I am trying to say and remember and understand. Tara Singh used to write that if we give attention deeply and seriously enough, a single sentence of the course will awaken us from the sleep of forgetfulness and illusion. This is such a helpful model! Thank you 🙏🙏
Sean, I want to thank you for your openness and honesty as a student of The Course. It’s so helpful for those of us who are new (8 months) to understand the journey, so I will be joining you as well. Happy Thanksgiving!
You're welcome, Frank, and thank you for being here and sharing. The course is such an incredible opportunity to remember ourselves in and through and with one another. We are altogether its light 🙏🙏
Wonderful Sean, I will be following your writings and I subscribed to your newsletter also on your website. I don't know if I can put comments under posts there, but I will also follow your idea to do that journaling exercise for myself and maybe if something worthwhile for sharing comes up there, I will post that or say something about it in a comment to you.
The tiredness I can relate to and isn't this a perfect timing to shake that off? I also want to let go of what is broken in me. I am in a situation with a loved one where I am (with the Course)working on a daily basis with healing but it is very good to don't forget myself here. I am part of that whole healing journey. We are in it together, my loved one and I. But we are ALL in it together! So let's indeed go this deep, the Course lends itself for that perfectly, so I am in! Thanks Sean for this golden idea. Love, Valentine💖
Thank you Valentine. I am always lifted and grateful when you share; I remember the cause for gratitude and that remembering makes me happy. I so appreciate your reminder that our work is local and intimate - the cry for healing, the potential for healing, the blocks to healing are all right before us, all in form, all in need of the openness and faith and trust (Susan referenced - that feels so fundamental to me, like not a piece of the puzzle but the table on which the unsolved puzzle rests and is even available to be solved). Thank you for reading and sharing; I am grateful for the clarity you always bring 🙏🙏
"I know it - and I know I know it - but it is not yet all I know. I have not yet fully released the many grievances that imprison me, much less my capacity for making new ones." Thank you for sharing Sean. I go from prison to freedom and back again, trusting that all things, events, encounters, and circumstances are helpful.
Thank you, Susan. It feels like that trust is fundamental to the process? Without it I tend to get lost in analysis which can so easily dissolve in a hall of mirrors. Thanks for being here and sharing. I appreciate it and hope all is well 🙏🙏
Kudos to Janice's post of two hours ago. Encapsulates my thoughts perfectly--can't top it! And thanks so much to Sean his guidance, honesty and determination.
When I read this post last week, I knew immediately that I would join you and what the focus of my writing would be. I will most likely not post my daily entries, but just know I am with you.
In my little trio, which includes @valentinelaout (who commented below) and @donnaeasler, I have gone deeper on my Course path (than during the previous decade of solo practice). That is the case whenever we join hands on the path. When I read about your Advent project, it felt like an important next step for us as we have similar experiences in our lives at the moment. But then again, don't we all?! So glad to be on this path with you, Sean, and with all the brothers and sisters I have been introduced to through your sharing here. Thank you. ❤️
I'm so glad, Margaret . . . yes, those relationships - and the relationships that they feed into and out of - are such precious sites of learning how to be happy. The intentionality of the unity seems to matter a lot in my experience - like being clear that undoing and creation are our function and we need one another for both parts. Thank you for being here - and for creating - and for sharing. I'm very grateful.
So happy to be on this ACIM path with you. @Margaret Reyes Dempsey and @Donna Easler and looking forward to walk this Advent-journaling journey with Sean and many more other brothers and sisters!
Thank you for sharing, Amanda. Part of what I long for - and part of what I need, and what we need, at least some of us - is to find Christmas in a way that is outside and unrelated to everything the culture has done to it. What does it really mean to find the manger? What does it really mean to care about the birth of Jesus? What is all that for? I want to know in a deeper way than I do.
With much gratitude I read your thought and share them with you. As a small child looking through the window at the vast sky I had the thought ‘ I do not belong here’ not knowing quite what the thought meant. Looking back I believe I (metaphorically) saw a glimmer on light. I began a journey that has spanned 8 decades. Oh the ups and downs along the way… yet a sense of not being alone…? I too share the feeling of .. ‘ I am not there yet’ … tired.. weary.. yet seeing the glimmer in a baby ladybug 🐞 clinging to a tiny seed in the pool and rushing to save it and thanking it for helping me see it was here with me. Or saying how beautiful the red roses were to a thanksgiving shopper and she with a joyful voice saying thank you they are for my mom ❣️ a glimpse of she is here with me and a weary heart remembers the glimmer of light that seemed like yesterday. And thank you Sean you are here with me. We are never alone. 💖
Thank you so much for sharing this, Janice. Those little acts of kindness are love itself and I forget all the time how easy it is just let kindness flow - I don't even have to do anything, it's so natural! And yet, and yet.
And thanks too for yoking that light to childhood - I remember when it rained running out to the pasture to look at the quartz rocks - how sometimes when the light was just so, the gleaming would become prismatic . . . it made me so happy, nothing else mattered. . .
But really really thank you for the deeper notion that those kindnesses - and the ones with whom we share and experience them - stay with us. We are not alone, ever. Yes. Thank you for reminding me and being here.
~ Sean
All I can say is . . .Yes.
Thank you, Cheryl - grateful to connect with you always - yes is the answer always, isn't it 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Such powerful words prior to the start of Advent , "I have not fallen to my knees in the shit-stained straw to give thanks”.
I was actually taken over with joy and laughter in reading those words because they shone a light on exactly how I feel. In that moment I realized I am NOT stuck in the “shit-stained straw” when I recognize and admit I haven’t come to my knees, that I am still enjoying on some level wallowing in suffering.
The suffering of the world (which is the shit-stained straw to me) somehow gives me an identity. Yet, if I truly want something new there needs to be a sincere willingness to surrender the old. What a wonderful opportunity to spend this coming month with you exploring all the ways the old “shit-stained straw” shows up in my life to block Christ Consciousness. I look forward to the adventure with you and others….. 🙏
Thank you for sharing this, Glenda, especially for reframing that shit-stained straw as "the suffering of the world" which blocks Christ Consciousness. I would not think to use that langauge that way and yet it feels incredibly resonant to me.
Thank you for being here and radiating . . . I can see a little more clearly 🙏🙏
~ Sean
I love this idea, Sean. I will definitely be joining you. I'm ready!
Thank you Michelle! 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Good for you Sean - to open up to all of us and to dedicate the 24 ? days to giving up everything that comes up. Like lesson 306 - "In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give".
Thank you Robyn for sharing that lesson! That is a perfect summation of what I am trying to say and remember and understand. Tara Singh used to write that if we give attention deeply and seriously enough, a single sentence of the course will awaken us from the sleep of forgetfulness and illusion. This is such a helpful model! Thank you 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Sean, I want to thank you for your openness and honesty as a student of The Course. It’s so helpful for those of us who are new (8 months) to understand the journey, so I will be joining you as well. Happy Thanksgiving!
You're welcome, Frank, and thank you for being here and sharing. The course is such an incredible opportunity to remember ourselves in and through and with one another. We are altogether its light 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Wonderful Sean, I will be following your writings and I subscribed to your newsletter also on your website. I don't know if I can put comments under posts there, but I will also follow your idea to do that journaling exercise for myself and maybe if something worthwhile for sharing comes up there, I will post that or say something about it in a comment to you.
The tiredness I can relate to and isn't this a perfect timing to shake that off? I also want to let go of what is broken in me. I am in a situation with a loved one where I am (with the Course)working on a daily basis with healing but it is very good to don't forget myself here. I am part of that whole healing journey. We are in it together, my loved one and I. But we are ALL in it together! So let's indeed go this deep, the Course lends itself for that perfectly, so I am in! Thanks Sean for this golden idea. Love, Valentine💖
Thank you Valentine. I am always lifted and grateful when you share; I remember the cause for gratitude and that remembering makes me happy. I so appreciate your reminder that our work is local and intimate - the cry for healing, the potential for healing, the blocks to healing are all right before us, all in form, all in need of the openness and faith and trust (Susan referenced - that feels so fundamental to me, like not a piece of the puzzle but the table on which the unsolved puzzle rests and is even available to be solved). Thank you for reading and sharing; I am grateful for the clarity you always bring 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Thanks Sean, see you also on you website for this journey ;-💖
"I know it - and I know I know it - but it is not yet all I know. I have not yet fully released the many grievances that imprison me, much less my capacity for making new ones." Thank you for sharing Sean. I go from prison to freedom and back again, trusting that all things, events, encounters, and circumstances are helpful.
Thank you, Susan. It feels like that trust is fundamental to the process? Without it I tend to get lost in analysis which can so easily dissolve in a hall of mirrors. Thanks for being here and sharing. I appreciate it and hope all is well 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Kudos to Janice's post of two hours ago. Encapsulates my thoughts perfectly--can't top it! And thanks so much to Sean his guidance, honesty and determination.
🙏🙏
Thank you, Sean. Happy Thanksgiving.
You're welcome, Juliet. Thank you for being here - Happy Thanksgiving to you as well 🙏🙏
~ Sean
When I read this post last week, I knew immediately that I would join you and what the focus of my writing would be. I will most likely not post my daily entries, but just know I am with you.
In my little trio, which includes @valentinelaout (who commented below) and @donnaeasler, I have gone deeper on my Course path (than during the previous decade of solo practice). That is the case whenever we join hands on the path. When I read about your Advent project, it felt like an important next step for us as we have similar experiences in our lives at the moment. But then again, don't we all?! So glad to be on this path with you, Sean, and with all the brothers and sisters I have been introduced to through your sharing here. Thank you. ❤️
I'm so glad, Margaret . . . yes, those relationships - and the relationships that they feed into and out of - are such precious sites of learning how to be happy. The intentionality of the unity seems to matter a lot in my experience - like being clear that undoing and creation are our function and we need one another for both parts. Thank you for being here - and for creating - and for sharing. I'm very grateful.
~ Sean
So happy to be on this ACIM path with you. @Margaret Reyes Dempsey and @Donna Easler and looking forward to walk this Advent-journaling journey with Sean and many more other brothers and sisters!
I didn't know what Advent is until your post and a google search just now I actually thought it was just a commercial Christmas gimmicky thing.
What a beautiful invitation, thank you.
Thank you for sharing, Amanda. Part of what I long for - and part of what I need, and what we need, at least some of us - is to find Christmas in a way that is outside and unrelated to everything the culture has done to it. What does it really mean to find the manger? What does it really mean to care about the birth of Jesus? What is all that for? I want to know in a deeper way than I do.
Thank you again for being here 🙏🙏
~ Sean
I am not there yet! I understand the language and am practiced in the logic but . . . I am not there yet.
Same… thank you for your faithfulness Sean ❤️
Thanks, Mike . . . we'll get there 🙏🙏