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Ebrace - Co-creating the New

Your Last New Year's
Resolution—Ever
By Laurel Elstrom

Do yourself a huge favor. Let this year's New Year's resolution be your last one—ever. Let it be the last one you would ever feel the need to make.

There's a good reason why New Year's resolutions have stood the test of time. The human compulsion to improve one's self seems relentless. The ego is never satisfied. And that is perfectly fine—just as it should be—up to a point. That point, because you are reading this, is NOW.

Let's step back and look at the big picture for a moment. Self-improvement follows a cycle that goes something like this:
  • Feeling "something's not OK"
  • Mind tries to identify the problem
  • Mind formulates a plan to address the problem
  • Feelings of hope from having a plan
  • Temporary or limited behavioral change
  • Failure, either to change behavior or to feel OK
  • Repeat
The self-concept of "I'm not okay" is incredibly persistent. It was accepted as truth when we are very young. It has been the foundation for the personal identity. Thankfully we learned, with the help of A Course of Love (ACOL), that we are not our personal identity. When the veil of the ego is revealed as false, a lot of "not OK" energy dissipates, but the habit pattern lingers on.

Most of our personal life stories are self-fulfilling prophecies, drawn to us in order to "prove" that our not-OKness true. As individual expressions of consciousness, we are powerful magnets. We manifest what we believe. If we accept the idea that we are unlovable, we create ways to avoid or sabotage intimate relationships. If we believe ourselves to be "not good enough," we continually fall short of our own standards.

The New Age movement took hold of this realization and taught us to change our beliefs to create more fulfilling lives. These techniques met with limited success because we were still mis-identifying as separate from the truth of who/what we are. Manipulating the dream won't loosen the hold of the dream.

We are but an expression of the One Consciousness! We are not the thoughts, feelings and perceptions that come and go. We are that which is aware of all that comes and goes. We are the great I Am who gives attention to, and holds space for all that comes and goes.

The Christ-Self we each are is a unique individualized expression of the One Consciousness—a divine paradox. A unique expression of that which is One. The Christ-Self is not on a self-improvement path because the Christ Self isn't separate, trying to be better. There is nothing to improve!

Therefore, the last resolution is to stop trying to fix the personal self but to feel the reality of our natural state.

So what and who is the Christ-Self, if not a person? The Christ serves as the bridge between the world of separation and the One Consciousness. The Christ experiences the perceptions of an individuated Self while knowing it is an expression of what my students like to call "The Juice."

When we live as the Christ, a new matrix is available. In the movie, The Matrix, we saw the binary code flood the screen as it programmed the illusory world. This image is an apt metaphor for ACOL's "house of illusion." It's as if we are plugged into a collective matrix that creates the world of separation. The belief that we are a separate being is an essential component of that matrix.

When the matrix of separation is exposed, there arises the opportunity to unplug from it. Each of us, as aspects of the One, must make this choice independently. Only your free will enables you to make the shift. Have you taken the red pill yet?

We need a new framework from which to operate while we are still individualized. We need to live in what ACOL calls "The House of Truth." We need to switch our operating system to the Christ matrix. When Jesus, an expression not separate from you, transcended the separation matrix, a new matrix was created, the Christ matrix. But certain conditions are required to make the switch.

Within the Christ matrix, there is simply no room for "I'm not OK" beliefs. Feelings of judgment about the personal self keep us imprisoned. Jesus was humble not because he was a perfect character, but because he saw through the illusion of his own character and the characters of others. By seeing and interacting with his other-selves as they truly were—expressions of the One rather than who they thought themselves to be—he enabled others to see their own truth.

So it is with you. Just as "I'm not OK" is the foundation of the separation matrix, "I Am" is the foundation of the Christ Matrix. A Christ doesn't merely believe that the illusion isn't true; a Christ knows it. Transmission of truth, or, as ACOL calls it, "observation," is attended by certainty of the experience. There is no place for personal insecurity.

So the first step in shifting to the Christ Matrix is choosing to let go of "I'm not OK" beliefs. A pervasive belief in our culture is that it's vain to think we're OK as we are. Don't buy it. All expressions of the One are welcome in the embrace.

The next question may be, "How do I let go of such entrenched thought patterns?"

The Dialogues of ACOL speak of a state of complete acceptance. There is a surprising alchemy that happens with complete acceptance of whatever appears—including those feelings of self-loathing and not-OKness.

When the impulse toward the self-improvement cycle begins, rather than turning toward analysis of "the problem," and formulating a plan, stop the cycle in its tracks through complete acceptance of whatever is showing up. Allow space for all thoughts and feelings without seeking solutions. This is not denial but rather the opposite—the inclusion of everything into your own sacred embrace. It is allowance of the self and others to be exactly as they are. It is allowing the I Am to take any form. It is not threatened by any of it.

This is an essential practice as we step into the new matrix. When we accept whatever arises, we short-circuit the old cycle. When resistance to the feeling of "I'm not OK" is dropped, and we become willing to fully experience all feelings tension vanishes. The old impulse to indulge in feelings also vanishes. It's as if we were in a tug of war and one side dropped the rope. The war is over!

This stage of the un-doing process can feel like the work of a spiritual warrior. It takes great courage to allow uncomfortable feelings to come and go without interference. The only thing we are fighting, however, is our own mental constructs. There is comfort in the knowledge that all phenomena come and go, even sadness and loneliness. Happiness and spiritual elation come and go as well. It's all fine. There is no need to cling to pleasant feelings nor run from discomfort.

"I," however, do not come and go. I am that which holds the space for the coming and going of all phenomena. Everything is welcome here. The heart stays open to receive the movement and mystery of life.

When all experience is welcome, the Christ Matrix becomes available. You are now the Bridge between the individuated and the One. You are needed here on earth, living as the "elevated Self of form," to use an ACOL phrase.

Your final resolution? The last one you would ever want? To stop trying to improve the separate personal self as you take your place, with divine authority, in your own two shoes as the living Christ.

Laurel Elstrom is a certified professional coach and a teacher of A Course of Love. She shares her reviews of ACOL chapters on Youtube, http://acourseoflove.org/helpful-resources/ and offers additional support for students on her website, www.laurelelstrom.com. Among her current projects is a written work, "An Inquiry Companion to the Forty Days and Forty Nights of A Course of Love," to be published in 2017. For more information, go to www.laurelelstrom.com or contact laurelelstrom@gmail.com.

Please explore the many ACOL resources in the new website



NEW! A Course of Love:
An Overview


By Celia Hales – 48 pages, $3.95



Coming to Philadelphia:

Mari Perron will speak on "Journey Home to Wholeheartedness" and
"The Mystical Experience"

Feb. 25 & 26, 2017

For info and to register:
https://contemporarymysticism.org/



And in Minnesota

10 a.m.. Sunday, January 29
At Unity of the Valley



The First Translation of ACOL:
Un Cours d'Amour

Yes, ACOL is now available in FRENCH! It is the first of many translations. Contact Le Dauphin Blanc for more information.



Now—24 FREE Chapters

You and your friends can now download and read 24 chapters of ACOL—a selection from the entire book, designed to give a good taste of what it offers.


On a Scale of One to Ten

By Michael Mark

We'll never know
what it's like
to exist forever
in a condition
of perpetually transforming joy
and goose-bump inducing discovery
if we don't consider
it a very real
and inevitable
possibility.

It does sound pretty out there,
but so don't NASCAR races
to German Shepherds.

If we don't consider
it a very real
and inevitable
possibility,
we'll likely take something
perfect and beautiful
just as it is,
something like space exploration
or boat building
or moccasin mending
and we'll require it to be
something it's not
to make up for this loss.
One of these simple things
will become a complexity--
a claim,
an identity,
a salvation of some sort,
with limited terms, of course,
and endless stipulations.

Also,
we'll never know
what it's like
to live forever
in a condition
of perpetually transforming joy
and goose-bump inducing discovery
if we think
the body's precise location in space and time
and confirmed participation
in "events" of significance
has all that much relevance
on what I'm talking about.

On a scale of one to ten
of what's most important
to entering this palatial abode
with ten being like you
have to have it, and one being like
uhmm... yeah, you need this, too,
even though it fits in the carry-on
and doesn't make noises when you tickle it--
the body doesn't even get a number.

Roses are beautiful,
but they are not beauty itself.
If a rose gets eaten by a decrepit old hyena
who is shockingly dehydrated
and wandering around fish-eyed
in search of a botanical aphrodisiac,
beauty itself isn't going to feel the pinch.

Beauty isn't going to panic.

Beauty is actually going to come
to the rescue.

So if your body were to disappear tonight
for regularly schedule maintenance
(because a hyena ate it for instance)
and never come back,
Love wouldn't go into a panic.
And neither should you.

A tool is only any good
if you know what it's for, anyways.
And if you knew that,
you would never lose it
to start with.
Thou
gh you might lend it out sometimes.
To whom, I don't know.
Hafiz, perhaps.
Any number of people, actually,
can dress up just like you
without your knowing it.

Breezes living in a forest
don't respond to roll call,
preferring to pass right through
one another instead,
back and forth and
merging and gliding
and surrounding one another
just to see what it's like,
often losing track of who was who first,
and also,
because it drives
the census takers
mad.

Courtesy of Michael Mark, from his blog Embracing Forever, Explorations in Authenticity.


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