Workshop Comments
This page is provided for commenting on the transcribed notes sent in by workshop participants at Ken Wapnick’s teaching institute. It is also the place to post notes that you have made and would like to share with everyone.
For access to the workshop notes, just click on “Workshops” on the purple navigation bar at the top of the page and you will find a list of the different academies and seminars.
“soooooo coool but not the peace of God!”
love that line!
Sounds like the decision maker keeping it real (:
Wishing everyone a really good day!
I see my reactions to Zafu’s wonderful words to Pat and me, and I want to meet this magical couple, too! I hear a little voice inside me say that I just hope we’re really like that!! Many thanks.
Melody, loved this: “However, the watching was done with either complete neutrality or amusement!” Oh, so good… I’ve been trying to practice that for the past week since being here, of course, can cause lots of little (and huge) ego thoughts and feelings percolate up to the surface where they need to be treated kindly and lovingly – and with lots of ‘amusement’ as you say!
I haven’t had much time in the hotel room for being on the computer, so again I’ll have to ask for your forgiveness and patience, everyone.
Big hugs all round.
Hi All,
I am sorry I haven’t gotten to the last day’s notes. I started….but having a lot of emotional turbulence right now. I had a very nice breakfast with Bernard and Pat…..met with Ken….and have cried almost all afternoon!
So…..I’ll get to it as soon as I can collect myself. JEEZ – I kinda wish I never found this FREAKIN’ blue book!
Love,
Jean
Dear Jean ~ Hugs to you and don’t worry – we all kinda wish sometimes we never found the freakin’ blue book!!!!!
Love, m
{{{Jean}}}
Hi All. I am slowing coming back up from the bowels of hell! Funny how we start feeling real good before a fall, huh? Anyway, I decided to work on the notes in hope that they would help restore my ‘right mind!’ It did help……I’m still processing though. But meanwhile, here are the last day of this most recent academy:
5/24/11 – Closing
• Forgive, forgive, forgive. When you have no ego investment, then the process becomes easier and easier.
• If you feel a book coming through you – simply do it. If the book is waiting to be born, get yourself out of the way.
• Don’t care about the outcome – otherwise you go from mind being important to the world being important. This doesn’t mean you don’t care about your mortgage payment, or whatever – you do what you need to do in the world, but without investment.
• When your mind is healed – in that moment there is no separation and all minds are healed.
• “The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the atonement for himself.” T.2.V.5.1
• If you feel a book coming through, write it. If a book is waiting to be born, get yourself out of the way. (Refer T.16.II.1.3)
• You don’t understand the miracle. Don’t care about the outcome – otherwise you go from the mind being important to the world being important. This doesn’t mean not to care about mortgage payments, etc.
• When your mind is healed, in that moment there is no separation and all minds are healed. This is why ‘the sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the atonement for himself.’ (T.2.V.5.1)
• If you write a book that is different from others, people will adulate you, and you can fall back into this trap of fragmenting the whole (complete abstraction) (Refer WB.161.2)
• How can you recognize the purpose? If what you are doing is apart from others, then you are in trouble.
• Everyone hears an inner voice. The question is which inner voice? It’s like being proud that you can speak in prose. Prose is anything that isn’t poetry – BIG DEAL!
• Just because you hear an inner voice –be careful. Some people say they hear the voice of the departed and think it is divine. What makes it divine if the person wasn’t divine when they are here in form?
• Helen wasn’t ‘chosen.’ He simply had an ego that didn’t interfere.
• There is nothing wrong with specifics as long as you don’t get attached to them.
• To think we know what something is for is to think we are totally without an ego.
• One way to discern the voice or leading – is if you have no investment in the outcome. Then you know it is the right voice.
• Open-minded means being open to the Love of God.
• Bill has been quoted as saying, ‘Helen could not have done it without him, and he could not have done it at all.’
• We go back and forth from wrong mind to right mind. When we stop doing this and stay only in the right mind – that is the atonement.
• The best way to deal with resistance is to press forward a bit. If the resistance presses back more than your pressing forward, stop! (Refer M.16.4.7)
• Like in Noah’s Ark when Noah sent doves out to see if they would return, recognizing that when they didn’t return it was time to get out of the ark…we should do likewise in our practice here.
• The Course’s aim is to remove blocks to Love’s awareness. These blocks are our ego.
• When you forget or fall asleep, just look at it and recognize it for what it is-resistance. Seeing this without judging is what helps undo the ego.
• If you are not comfortable in an ACIM study group, leave and find one that better suits you. Simply because you choose one over another does not mean you are attacking the other.
• Don’t believe anyone who says 2+2=4. They think they know how the world works. (Refer T.14.XI.12)
• The worst ACIM student is one that thinks they know.
• Recognize that everything here in the world is a symbol.
• When you test for peace this will always bring you back to the D.M. mind so that you can choose again. (Refer T.14.XI.12.4)
• Holy Spirit is the answer, but you don’t know the question.
• We don’t know ‘nuttin’’ This is hard to accept.
• The only investment you have is to be totally peaceful.
• Can’t understand this Course until you realize everything here is a classroom.
• Everything here is a call for love or an expression of love, and you don’t have to understand which it is – just be loving.
• People that want to do good things are coming from ego. The key word is ‘want.’ Then you are in trouble. This is ‘reaction formation’ where you want to appear to be good because you really believe you are the home of darkness and sin.
• Ask for help that you look at your need for specialness.
• Be totally detached from what is extending through you.
• Q: How can I get past the feeling that I can’t do this Course? A: Guilt is the source of all feelings. Don’t rely on your own criteria, but whether everyone is included. It is a wonderful feeling of joy to have everyone included. Any feeling that you are in the kingdom must bring everyone with you.
• When you are right minded and understand that everything is a dream, then you can serve a different purpose.
• Perfect peace does not come through the intellect. (Refer T.14.XI.12)
• It is a joke to believe that anything here can circumvent Love. Remember that the world is a maladaptive solution to a nonexistent problem. (Refer T.14.XI.15.3)
• Love will take whatever shape and form that will be helpful.
• Your challenge is to be in the world but not of it.
• You are of God’s world. Don’t identify with specifics but with the Source.
• A Course In Miracles is the route to get you back to this Source as quickly as possible.
Thanks, Jean –
Will go through them again later. Looks like there are some lovely nuggets in there.
Right now, the McDonalds (sorry, Michele (: )
beckons. Spicy nuggets and coffee, hmmm (:
ps. Jean – assume the first part of your comment is a rhetorical question ?
(: (if not, will happy to chime in with my not-so-humble opinion (: —
Remembering you, Jean, through my day…
ciao for now,
a
ha ha… lovely and spicy nuggets! The resistance too great (:
Thank you Jean for plowing thru and showing us how to just put one foot in front of the other and HS will take care of the rest.
re. 206 “If you feel a book coming through you – simply do it. If the book is waiting to be born, get yourself out of the way.”
I don’t feel a book comming through but getting myself out of the way might still be a good idea.
Would love to have more “back story” on this one if you are up to it,Jean.HUGS
Hi Pam…..just checking in here and saw your quoting that. I don’t always put all the background – figure we can fill it in and any way we do it will still be true! This was just in answer to a man’s question that was very long but ended in him saying he feels he wants to write a book about it all. So Ken was focusing on the ‘reason’ the man wanted to write the book……but, of course, it is for all of us in anything we do — I think there is another reference to this in the notes too – where Ken says writing a book can then become a stumbling block if you do real well and that feeds your ego…..but if you are totally out of the way – it doesn’t matter if it does well or not because that was not the reason you wrote it……. And this can generalize to anything we decide to do. That’s how I understand it, anyways…….
Love,
Jean
Thank you so much Jean -love to you and all~
Hi Melody – how are you doing? I read the notes here but couldn’t respond as I was too filled with ‘crap!’ But was thinking of you. A friend from the FACIM came here yesterday and bought some of my stuff for her new apartment – so I no longer have my dresser or bed-tables or bookcase in the living room — and so I am totally in the ‘transfer mode’ – of returning to NY. It’s a strange place to be after a year of immersion here and knowing that back in NY no one will understand me/ideas like they do out here. Even ACIMers – in NY it is so, so different. Or maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised at my changes and what before seemed so different won’t be now. Or maybe even if it is different (in form of course) it won’t matter as it did before I left. Should be interesting. I’m glad I found this little village to come to though…..thank you, Bernard, for giving us a ‘little resting place!’
Love,
Jean
Dear a,
Yeah – you can respond to that question. It is kind of how I was feeling — so the ‘?’ kind of was like ‘do you feel like this too sometimes?’ Anyway…..would be happy to here what you felt to share concerning this…..
Love,
Jean
Hi Jean and all~ I think we can all relate to being too filled with crap! 🙂
Sounds to me from the above, that you are very open to what the next stage of the journey holds for you Jean. Good for you! I know how sad I am, and how my choice for the ego causes so much pain when I am in Temecula just for a workshop – much less being there for as long as you have!
So many lessons you have learned while there – and many mighty companions that will never ever leave you – whether you (we) can feel them or not. Right beyond the pain is the love – we have to trust in that while “in the bowels…..”
I’m very glad you’re part of this village, Jean, and I share your gratitude to Bernard for giving us a “little resting place!” With yummy treats too! 🙂
Love and Gratitude to all,
m
Thanks again so much for the notes Jean!!! And very nice to hear that you are emerging from that difficult situation. These, our necessary steps, always give us a lot of learning. Ditto all what Melody said.
Lots of hugs to all,
Lisi
Thanks Jean, That is quite a change coming up for you. I’m pulling for the pleasantly surprised option for you. “A little resting place” how very apt a discription for this village.
‘A little resting place’, that’s such a great description of this place. It’s kind of true, no less.
Jean, we’re all there right in the ‘crap’ with you, dear. Don’t fear, there’s some sticking to all of us. We’re all one in the crap, and then we find out the crap is not real at all but just a shadow that we brush off lightly and easily. And then we see we were all One in the sparkling beauty and cleanliness of Heaven’s Light, all the time we were imagining something else.
Hi Jacalyn! Nice to meet you! I’m not quite sure what happened to those notes as I know they worked when I initially posted them in the month of April. I think the best place to look is on the ‘workshop comments’ page, if ever in doubt. That’s where they are initially posted, and then I copy and paste them in individual pages. If those pages don’t work for whatever reason (which I’ll have to investigate now) then it’s best to go to the source. And as Winnie says, there are additional notes on that page which I haven’t even got around to posting up correctly. There are also notes on that page from Ken’s seminar and academy from May.
See you in the Tavern for tea… oh, and biscuits and muffins today, too, I think. Actually, I forgot to ask Pam what’s on the menu, or is it Nina baking today?
PS this is a better place to post comments on the workshop notes. Don’t know why it worked to post on the page you found. Mysteries, mysteries. (Goes off humming, “I’ve been working on the eeeego…” Dubious thanks to Pam for that.)
Okay, I found the problem. It was just a question of the links between pages – the pages existed, but the links weren’t formatted exactly right. But now all is well! In fact, there as a huge amount of work to get all that colossal number of pages up and running perfectly, so I still have to finish, in fact. But for now, I’m on holiday!! (Till tomorrow, at least!)
Bernard, thanks for fixing the links. I’ll wait awhile before copying the notes on the Death and Dying series, after you’ve had time to work on it some more. In the meantime, enjoy your holiday! There is nothing urgent, I can wait (those notes are worth waiting for!).
Blessings, Jacalyn