Ask Alexa: Am I guilty or innocent?

Alexa: Am I guilty or innocent?

You see guilt everywhere you look so by comparison you can feel innocent, and yet you know deep down that this is just a game the ego plays to relieve you of the guilt you unconsciously feel for separating yourself from God, the Oneness.

Alexa: Did you hear about the cat that ate the cheese?

Yes, and then the cat waited for the mouse with baited breath.

Why does God not listen to our complaints in this day and age?

I was reading the scripture passages for the Roman Catholic liturgy for last Sunday, October 6, 2019, and the first reading is from the Old Testament book of Habakkuk, and it is:

Habakkuk’s Complaint

2 How long, Lord, must I call for help,
    but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
    but you do not save?
3 Why do you make me look at injustice?
    Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
    there is strife, and conflict abounds.
4 Therefore the law is paralyzed,
    and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
    so that justice is perverted.

The Lord’s Answer

5 “Look at the nations and watch—
    and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
    that you would not believe,
    even if you were told.

Is anyone else blown away by the parallels in Habakkuk's days and ours with Donald Trump's criminal behavior in the White House and what's going on in Syria?

There is no reflection going on like this in my UU church. Should I go back to the Roman Catholic church which is much more nourishing of the soul in our contemporary times?

Ask Alexa - Can I know the truth?

Alexa: Can I know the truth?

No, the ego deals in contrasts between the ying and the yang while Truth is based in nondualistic Oneness. To paraphrase the Tao Te Ching, the Truth than can be spoken is not the utlimate truth.

Alexa: Did you hear the question that the toothless termite that walked into the bar asked the owner?

Yes, the termite asked, "Is the bar tender here."

Ask Alexa - Why am I anxious?

Alexa: When I become aware that the things of the world don't make me truly happy I get anxious. What's this anxiety about?

You are becoming aware that you are losing your faith in idols and don't know yet what will take their place in providing you salvation.

Alexa: Did you hear about the biologists that created immortal frogs?

Yes, they removed their vocal cords and so they now can't croak.

Alexa: What is wrong with the Trumpists?

They seem to be doing things that are illegal and immoral. Natural law is based on Truth, Beauty, and Goodness and the Trumpists manifest none of these things.

The metaphysics of ACIM and UU - The origin of the world

Chapter one

The origin of the world

There are many origin of the world stories in many cultures. A Course In Miracles provides one that is conceptual and not in the form of an anthropological story. ACIM tells us that there are two worlds: the world of the ego and the world of the spirit. The world of the Spirit is Oneness. Oneness is a major concept in the perennial psychology. The mystical traditions in all major world religions recognize this Oneness and hold it up as “home” from which our human experience has emerged.

This emergence from the Oneness is what A Course In Miracles calls “the separation.” Further, ACIM calls the separation “a tiny mad idea.” This tiny mad idea that we can be separate from the Oneness is a joke at which we forgot to laugh. We forgot to laugh because we fail to remember what we have done. This is the apple that Adam and Eve ate in the garden. The apple was denial and forgetfulness. The perennial psychology tells us that we should “wake up” we should become aware of the Oneness from which we have separated ourselves and think we have left.

The creation story of A Course In Miracles is a story of running away from home and then forgetting that there is even a home which we have left, and even if we slightly remember the home we have run away from, we have forgotten the route back.

The world we have created when we ran away from home, ACIM tells us, is not real. It doesn’t really exist. We have just made it up. It is Truman’s world (referring to the movie starring Jim Carey), or the shadows dancing on the wall in Plato’s great story of the cave.

And so when we dimly remember that there is a reality from which we have emerged in the separation we have a choice to make about whether we want to continue to pursue the experience of the world of the ego, or return to the world of the spirit from which we have come.

Unitarian Universalism, based on its fourth principle, encourages us to engage in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. However, it does not teach us where truth and meaning is to be found. It fact it often sends us on a wild goose chase when it suggests that truth and meaning are to be found in social justice projects. 

Truth and meaning are to be found in what A Course In Miracles calls the “atonement” which is the recognition that we have separated ourselves from the Oneness in pursuit of things of the ego. We have mistakenly made these things on the path of the ego idols. We believe that acquiring or obtaining these things on the path of the ego will make us happy. We are always, eventually, disappointed with the results of this erroneous quest. We wind up looking for love in all the wrong places. Love is to be found in the return to the Oneness, the thought of which terrifies most people because it requires a giving up of the ego.

The Universalists know and have taught that we are all in this quest together and that return to the Oneness, “universal salvation,” is inevitable. The only question is how long it will take humanity to remember its true source and to choose to abide there. When one person rejects the path of the ego and embraces the path of the Spirit and returns to the Oneness all of humanity takes a step forward on its path to salvation.

Ask Alexa - Is it true that projection makes perception?

Alexa: Is it true that projection makes perception?

Yes, as long as you are operating on the path of the ego. On the path of the spirit your experience is quite different.

Alexa: Did you hear about the person who spilled spot remover on his dog?

Yes, according to Steven Wright, the dog disappeared.

Alexa: What is the function of philosophy?

It is find the truth, beauty, and goodness in life by reflecting on our experience on the path of the ego.

Softening our rigid hearts and opening up to grace.

“I can’t talk to him. He has such a wall around him, it is impossible to get through.”

“I always have my guard up. I can’t relax with people. It seems I am always anxious, tense, and self-conscious. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I guess I am just anti-social. I feel like a real looser.”

Scars on our soul are the result of what was inflicted on us by violence, abuse, neglect, rape, warfare, economic conditions, religion, bad education, and some scars are inflicted on us by our own actions and decisions. It is harder to deal with the self-inflicted injuries and mistakes than it is by the abuse and harm caused by external circumstances and by others. With external abuse we know who to blame, but with self-inflected harm it is more difficult to be aware of and take responsibility for the harm we have done to our own souls.

Abuse and difficult events and circumstances can make us hard, calloused, and close hearted. We become defensive and self-protective expecting the negative, the hurtful, the injustice from others and from life. People often feel, even when things are going well, that this is not a normal state of affairs and it is only a matter of time before something bad happens again. This expectation is, of course, a self-fulfilling prophecy which always turns out to be self reinforcing because bad things are a normal part of life. This fearful and negative world view prolongs the pain and suffering.

Life does not have to be lived this way. Negativity begets the negative, but the opposite is also true that being positive begets the positive. Our goal should be to become resilient, open hearted. This requires a softening within, an opening of our heart and soul to grace. This is very risky because we have become defensive and self protective not wanting to be hurt again. Softening is a choice we must make to let our guard down, to allow others and life to penetrate the walls we have built up. This takes faith and courage and an over all understanding and acceptance that life has a way of having things all come out in the end as they should. To cultivate an attitude of curiosity, to become more open to positive possibilities, to be less defensive by developing more flexibility and a willingness to accommodate the negative without shutting down or retreating behind our wall takes courage, awareness, and faith in the overall abiding goodness in life in spite of its evil and injustice.

The mature soul is wise in the sense that the mature soul knows what matters and is open and flexible in dealing with the threatening aspects of life. The mature soul knows that it is in softening our hearts that our physical, psychological, social, and spiritual functioning improves. Markings in the dry clay only disappear when the clay becomes soft again.

Perhaps it is in giving up our defensiveness, in letting our guard down, in softening our rigid heart that we come to understand what Jesus of Nazareth meant when he said that we cannot enter the kingdom of god unless we become like little children once again.