Friday, January 31, 2014

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

A Healthy Relationship

These are the characteristics of a Healthy Relationship as outlined in ACIM.
They include the concepts of healthy interdependence, never independence.  St Paul said, “I find strength in my weakness”, and being inter-dependent with my fellow travelers is part of the interpretation of what he meant in that quote.
The deeper processes of the 10 healthy characteristics are compatible with all Twelve-Step programs and interestingly enough, compatible with the core teachings of the world's great religious systems, both Eastern and Western, including Christianity and Judaism.
Both the ancient and modern literature, realize Serenity is a result not a cause. First we have to discover who we are. 
The Second of the Twelve Steps says, “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity” wherein sanity means wholeness or completeness a sense of self.  The process of knowing who I am and how I can function in a healthy fashion with other people is the key here.
It follows then by simple progression that as we first become more aware of all the lost and split off parts of Our Self (our lower self—physical, mental, and emotional and then becoming aware of the heart, compassion and our True Self,) this becomes the bridge to our Higher Self—our intuition, creativity, compassion and God Consciousness … this is the spiritual essence of our being.
There is an ordering in all this and one happens after the other, there are no short cuts
Thus it follows that if we do the work of getting the hurt and shame of our false believe system out of the way, then we discover what is within and a part of us is the Divine connection.  It was always there; it just felt like it was missing. 
Put simply, this means that Spirit is in us. The process of understanding the concept of a Higher Power comes by inter acting with my fellow travelers and this leads me back home to me. It always will.  Christ said the Kingdom lay within and it does, but it is incumbent upon each of us as individuals to get off our duffs and go find it … then come to terms with something that is far deeper and more meaningful than our intellectual mind could imagine, but a part of us none the less.
The Course points out clearly that our True Self is the only part of us that can connect to God … it does this experientially not intellectually … thus this journey is not of the mind but of the heart.
A Healthy Relationship is:
1)    Is based on my love of Spirit, and my love of My True Self. (It has its origins in my individuality and in the true and proper expression of my feelings. It is something that is powerfully personal and individual but only as it is expressed in the greater situation.)
2)    I see this love in everyone. Sometimes it is hard to notice, Mother Theresa said it best:  “I see Christ in all his distressing disguises everywhere I look.”
3)    I take responsibility for my own suffering. I look within myself and I search it out and … I own it … I am proactive in my own healing and growth.
4)    I search out … address and release my shame, guilt, hurt, anger and resentments through the forgiveness process … me in combination with it releasing me from my past[1] in the present and regaining my future.
5)    I realize that Love has one graceful quality and that is Abundance, and that the scarcity principle that I had followed for most of my life is only an illusion that I dreamt up out of my own deep-seated fears. It was never a truth, but Abundance is the truth.
6)    I know that there is nothing lacking in me, That I Am A Perfect Child Of God, and Serenity is my natural state of being.
7)    I respect my positive ego and use it as an assistant in my growth[2]. The Ego is not my enemy, but my friend and tool.  It has a role in my life, and that role is to serve not to lead.
8)    I use daily spiritual practices. I have a spiritual maintenance program and I follow it. It is part of my ritual of life.  I acknowledge to myself that ritual is a necessary part of spiritual.
9)    I live and relate in the present moment or Holy Instant, the Now.
10)  In relationships, I am open and communicating, trusting, gentle, peaceful, joyful and celebrating.





[1] See ACIM 50 Principals #13…
[2] Also see Lazare A: Shame and humiliation in the medical encounter Achieves of Internal Medicine 147:1653-1658, Sept 1987