Living ACIM3 Wk 1 - Rhonda Britten

Transcription

Living A Course in
Miracles
Week 1 Class
Fear a nd L ove Rhonda Britten With Jennifer Hadley
Fear and Love............................................................................................................... 4 Opening..........................................................................................................................4 Hard to Choose Love ......................................................................................................5 Thinking Thoughts of Separation ..................................................................................8 Love is Compassion ......................................................................................................11 Practice Gentleness ......................................................................................................13 Embrace Humanity ......................................................................................................15 Personal Story of Fear ..................................................................................................16 Relationship With God.................................................................................................20 Choose Higher..............................................................................................................23 Gratitude Exercise ........................................................................................................26 Acknowledgement Exercise ........................................................................................27 No Accidents In Thought.............................................................................................29 Gifts From Rhonda .......................................................................................................33 Closing Prayer..............................................................................................................34 Copyright © 2012 by Reverend Jennifer Helen Hadley.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the
written permission of the publisher.
Published by JenniferHadley.com. Printed in the United States of America.
For more inspiration to live a life of love, visit www.JenniferHadley.com.
Living A Course in Miracles
Week 1
Fear and Love
Rhonda Britten With Jennifer Hadley
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Opening Rev. Jennifer
Let’s take a deep breath together. Here we are Week 1, Living A Course
In Miracles, Walking the Talk, Living the Love with Rhonda Britten.
And with all of these classes, we always begin with a prayer.
So, I’m going to invite everyone to place your hand on your heart and
let us take a breath of love and gratitude together and be so grateful and
so thankful in this very moment, that we truly are interested in walking
the talk and living the love in our own life, truly being the love of our
life.
This is our divine destiny, to live a life of pure love, harmony, peace and
joy, unconditional, unprecedented love and joy. Our divine destiny is
awake and alive in us right now and we claim it together.
We are grateful and thankful to absolutely accept our healing and our
expansion right now. There’s no delay. We’re accepting it now. And we
are grateful and thankful to share the benefits of this healing and this
expansion that’s happening now with everyone everywhere because
we’re one with them.
In gratitude, we let it be and so it is. Amen. Amen, Amen.
4 Living A Course in Miracles Hard to Choose Love I want to mention that both you and I, Rhonda, are trained at the
Agape International Spiritual Center founded by Michael Beckwith, our
beloved friend, reverend and teacher.
And we went through many years of training to be Science of Mind
practitioners. And that’s how I first met you, at Agape. You were a
practitioner ahead of me by a number of years.
I’ve been following that same path as you and it’s been that foundation
for us in all that we’ve done. And it’s that foundation of understanding
the oneness of all life, that we are love.
That is that inspiration and motivation to choose love in every moment.
And it’s definitely not easy, but it is doable. In fact, I want to ask you…
I’m going to ask you a really deep question to start which is, if love is all
there is, and love is our true identity, why does it seem so hard to choose
love sometimes?
Rhonda
I love that question. We say that God is all there is, right? And yet there
is starvation and there’s disease. I love the dichotomy, “Well, wait.”
There’s the consciousness of all of us put together. There’s God
consciousness. And it’s all there is, right?
The opportunity we have in every moment is love is available to us, just
like our breath is available to us, just like the air is available to us, just
like connection is available to us.
Love is available to us and we just have to decide to step into that place.
We have to decide to step into that river. And we have been so trained
to see with different eyes.
We’ve been so trained in our perceptions and filters. We’ve been so
trained through our life experiences, through a level of protection that
we learned when we were young, through our culture, et cetera.
That place of love is not a safe place. Love is not a safe place. We’ve
actually learned that when we have been loved in the past, in a human
Rhonda Britten With Jennifer Hadley 5 Living A Course in Miracles
relationship with our parents, mentors, colleagues, family, friends, and
I’m talking I don’t care if you’re 2 or 5 or 12 or 25 or 63, we have
learned that it is not safe as a human being to love because we get hurt,
or we get betrayed.
We feel guilty. We feel shameful. People try to shame us and so we
have, unbeknownst to us, turned our back on love, not meaning to, but
not knowing any other way, because as we are little, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, how
we learn, and we all know this, is we mimic our parents.
And we mimic those people that we love around us. But it may, or may
not, be the love of God in that moment. It may not feel like the love of
God in that moment.
It may not feel the ever presence of love eternal. And sometimes it feels
like love is just getting food, eating and getting fed and just getting
clothes on.
It’s really just… I don’t want to say trained out of us. It’s not out of us at
all, but we are trained not to look there. So, when we decide to take the
veil down, when we decide to touch the hem of the garment, when we
decide to live in our true nature of love, then we just turn towards love
again.
I don’t want to say it becomes easy, but once we understand how fear
perpetuates the falseness of our reality and we can turn toward love, it’s
so much easier to dip the toe in. It’s so much easier to start choosing
ourselves.
It’s so much easier to give. It’s so much easier when we really feel safe
on the inside. So for me, when I work with people what I really support
them in feeling is safe, right? It’s safe within themselves, safe within
God.
It’s because when they feel safe, they can feel love. They can love
themselves. They can allow love in their life. It’s just literally been on a
6 Living A Course in Miracles human plane, again never on a spiritual realm, but on a human plane,
we just learn that that’s not a safe place.
Jennifer
It’s interesting because as you’re saying this, what I’m thinking is that
we actually have convinced ourselves that that unsafe experience of
love is what love is.
Let’s say for instance, we had a mother or a father who was controlling
and manipulative and so we made the association that that controlling
manipulative behavior is love, then we won’t trust love. Love won’t feel
safe, but the fact is that’s not love. Controlling and manipulating is not
love.
Rhonda
Yes, but how do you distinguish that when you’re 2 years old, 5 years
old?
Jennifer
Exactly.
Rhonda
When you’re little, you don’t have the resources. You don’t have the
support. You don’t have the skills. You don’t have the resources. You
have no ability to put boundaries in place.
You have no ability to go, “Hey, buddy, cut it out,” right? You have
nobody, no skill to do that. So, basically between 0 and 5, we’re
learning how to survive, period, end of story.
And if you happen to have loving parents, if you happen to have
parents that allow you to express yourself, you have this place of love,
then what happens… I’ve had people and I’m sure, Jennifer, you have
too, that have had loving parents and have had all this love thrown on
them, and then when they reach 8, 10, 12, 15, 22 years old, they
actually feel guilty for all that love because they see how everybody else
doesn’t have that.
I’ve had people come to me and go, “Oh, Rhonda, I’ve not have
anything bad happen in my life. I feel so bad.” You know? I go, “Wait,
wait, wait, wait. You feel bad because nothing bad has happened to
you.”
She’s like, “Yes, I feel bad.” And I go, “Okay, wait. Now, I’m going to tell
you something that’s a revolutionary thought, that if nothing bad has
happened to you per se, then I want you to be a role model that bad
things don’t have to happen to all of us. And I want you to stand up and
shout to the heavens, ‘Nothing bad happened to me and I’m happy,’
because we need role models that allow us to know that we don’t have
to go through bad to find ourselves, so to speak.” Right?
Yeah, our deep human need is to connect. On a human plane we want
to connect and also on a spiritual level we also want to connect with
God.
And we have this deep human need to connect. And that connection
keeps us in that unsafe, fearful place because we’re trying to figure out
how to get love rather than knowing that we are love. And that’s a
tricky distinction. It’s easy to say, but it’s a tricky distinction to really
live, right?
Thinking Thoughts of Separation Jennifer
It is. And one of the being challenges for people is their mind is trained
to be thinking thoughts of separation, as A Course In Miracles students
would say.
And those thoughts of separation are usually some form of attack
thought. Sometimes they’re thoughts of less than and not enough, or
unworthiness.
In a certain sense it doesn’t matter whether it’s I’m thinking I’m
unworthy, or I’m thinking you’re unworthy. Either way, it’s an attack
thought. It creates a sense of separation and generates that sense of
deep fear. Then we go into that coping and managing and selfmedication and it becomes overwhelming on a physical level.
Rhonda
8 Yes, absolutely. I like to go to A Course In Miracles and know there’s only
two emotions. There are only two emotions. There’s only two ways of
being, either love or fear.
Living A Course in Miracles People have told me… I’ve studied A Course In Miracles for almost 25
years. One of my mentors was Marianne Williamson and I studied with
her for years before I actually became an Agape practitioner.
That’s how I actually got to Agape is through Marianne.
Jennifer
Oh.
Rhonda
Yeah, so I was studying course way before Reverend Michael taught
truth to me. One of the things that I really live my life by is that notion
that you’re either in fear or in love.
It simplifies it so much. I’ve created my whole life as that, fear or love,
fear or love, period, end of story. When you are accessing that love and
trusting that love, and not just trusting God with love.
I want to say something here. But it’s not just trusting God’s love, but
trusting that you are an emanation of God’s love and that trusting you
as your own inspiration, as your own creation and as your own desires
and wants, trusting those as well, that those are expressions of God’s
love.
You have this desire to be an artist and you think, “Well yeah, but I
don’t really have all that great skill.” Or, you want to start dating and
you haven’t and you think, “Well, I’m not ready to date.”
Well, everytime you thwart God’s expression through you, you are
expressing quote/unquote attack thought. And those attack thoughts
are coming from our fear.
Every moment, how to self-correct through A Course In Miracles, the
eyes of A Course In Miracles, is literally asking yourself moment by
moment, is it love or fear? Am I living through love or fear?
And love is not from our thwarted, human reality of, “Oh, I’ll just
accept how people treat me,” because then that’s not loving yourself. I
find, Jennifer, that most people are so focused on love or fear, when they
think of love they think of love towards others.
They don’t think of love of themselves and they cut themselves out all
the time and they think they’re so loving but they never include
themselves.
So, then they don’t actually feel love. And they’re giving all this love,
but they don’t actually feel love, because unless you include yourself,
you never feel loved. It’s impossible.
I love the idea of A Course In Miracles has given me such a foundation in
life knowing that if I use the course and know that there’s only fear or
love, and that I can lean on the love of God, and that fear is just a
vehicle to actually have me express more love and everything is God,
that gives me great solace. That gives me great peace.
Jennifer
One of the things that I say all the time, Rhonda, that this is how it
helped me to understand what you’re talking about is that the attacker
always feels attacked. The judger always feels judged and the lover
always feels beloved.
When we entertain these attack thoughts, these judgmental thoughts,
we are literally blocking our ability to feel the love of God. And so we
feel unloved and we’re not being loving.
If we’re not being loving, then we feel unloved. And if we’re not being
loving then we feel unworthy of love, too. One of the things I really
wanted to ask you about, Rhonda, is spiritual seekers and students have
particular fears.
And they actually have quite a lot of fears sometimes because, on one
hand they’re seeking, seeking, seeking, reading all these books and
trying to intellectually understand spiritual principle, but they’re living
out of integrity and they know that they’re not walking the talk.
They’re not living the love, so they feel spiritually stupid.
Rhonda
Yes. Well, you feel like a fake and a liar too.
Jennifer
Exactly.
Rhonda
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Jennifer
And that brings a lot of fear.
10 Living A Course in Miracles Love is Compassion Rhonda
You know, it’s such a fascinating opportunity. One of the things that I
know that love is, is compassion. And when you are studying, studying,
studying and not being loving every minute and not being gracious
every moment and having that level of integrity that you want in your
own life, it’s actually a moment of integrity to say, “Ah, I’m in practice.
Ah, I’m in practice.”
The fact that you think that you’re going to have a loving thought
every minute denies your humanity, because one of the things that I
know is that the more I embrace my humanity, the more divine my
experience.
I’ll say that again. The more I embrace my humanity, the more divine
my experience, because I actually find that most people that are on a
spiritual path, not all people, but a certain percentage.
I know that this is how I was and this is what you were saying I believe,
Jennifer, is that our quest to be that spiritual being, that quest to get
closer to God, that quest to live God’s life through us, when we are in
our humanity, when we’re in that having a judgment thought, or we’re
having less than perfect integrity, we’re not being as loving as we could,
we then put like a mark against us and say, “See, I’m not very spiritual.
See, I’m not really doing it. See, see, see.”
In that moment we’re beating ourselves up and we’re denying that we
are in that moment. When we deny that, when we put ourselves down
in that moment, even just a bit, we’re actually putting God’s creation
down. We’re actually putting it down.
I know A Course In Miracles says that this is school and these are all
lessons. So, in those lessons, in that school that we’re in called
humanity, is that regardless of how much we’re in quote/unquote
excellence, or how much we are quote/unquote what percentage we’re
living the spiritual life we want to, those numbers actually are
irrelevant.
What’s relevant is that are you being more of that than less each and
every day? Are you moving towards that, or less? Like every decision
you make, every action you take, are you moving towards that or away
from that?
Are you showing more love towards yourself? And even when you’re
not perfect, are you showing love to yourself in that moment? Are you
having compassion for yourself in that moment? Are you loving the
person that’s not being very loving to you in that moment?
It’s never about, are you always going to be loving? The answer of that
is pretty much, no. Are you never going to be judgmental? The answer
to that is, pretty much, no.
Remember there’s something called grace consciousness and that also
moves to our thoughts, and that moves to our body. Again, we don’t
have to attach to it, but it does move through.
So, can you love yourself as you’re practicing? To me, that is one of the
highest callings we can give ourselves. The highest calling that we have
is, can we love the practice of loving?
Can we love ourselves as we practice discovering who we are in this
love? Because as we discover who we are in this love, we’re going to find
places that we’re not loving that we thought were.
We’re going to recognize that we’re loving in places we didn’t know we
were. And that’s a continuous evolution, a continuous discovery.
You’re with one mate, then you have a new friend. And then you have
a new colleague.
All those places you are growing into love. So, it’s can you be loving to
yourself in the process of expressing love outwardly? That, to me, is
when freedom happens, because now there is no more judgment of
yourself and there’s no more judgment of others because everybody is
truly… They want more than anything else to be love, to give love, to
receive love.
12 Living A Course in Miracles And my opportunity and your opportunity and our opportunity is to see
the innocence in all of us, including yourself, and I find that most
negate that.
And so they negate their own innocence and they expect more from
themselves which, of course, the minute they have an expectation
that’s fear, period, end of story. Fear, expectation, fear, period.
Jennifer
So, it’s having compassion for yourself as a spiritual student who is
attempting to walk the talk and live the love and to course correct
moment by moment, not expecting perfection, having compassion.
Practice Gentleness Rhonda
Yeah, I think when I’m teaching my students, I introduce them to a
word that most people don’t know and they don’t practice. And it is a
word that is revolutionary to some people and I will introduce it to your
students now. I will introduce it to A Course In Miracles.
And this word, everyone sit down. Get ready because I’m going give you
this word. Whoo! It’s going to be touch for some people. And this word
is called gentle. This word is gentle.
How gentle can you be with yourself? How gentle can you be with your
process? How gentle can you be? And for many people, being gentle
with themselves one, either they’re disgusted by it like, “I’m gentle with
myself,” or it’s revolutionary. Or, it’s revolutionary like, “Oh, be gentle
with myself? Are you kidding me?”
And then other people think that when they’re gentle, they’re weak.
Fear tells them gentle is weak. Or, it’s woo woo or wimpy and they’re
afraid of that.
So everybody’s definition of gentle stops them from actually
experiencing the love God is giving through this gentleness of spirit.
Jennifer
Can you give an example of how you’re gentle with yourself? Let’s say
you’ve been judgmental, or critical and now you’re thinking, “Oh, er.”
So, how do you move into gentleness?
Rhonda
Well, the first thing is recognizing it, right? And this is the first point of
gentleness. As you build up your awareness, you may not even know
you did it until three days later.
Let’s say I had a judgmental thought about somebody. And three days
later I’m kind of reliving it, or I’m remember the conversation and I’m
like, “Oh, man, I can’t believe I did that.”
And it’s three days later, or a week later, or a month later. The first
thing that we do is beat ourselves up for not realizing it right away.
Like, “Ah, it’s a week later. What kind of spiritual person am I? I should
know this right away.”
So, we immediately judge our awareness of it. The first gentleness is
going, “Oh.” The minute I get aware of something, you have a choice to
be happy like, “Oh, my God, I’m aware of it. This is good news. This is
good news. Oh, my God, I’m aware of it. Oh, hallelujah, good news.”
So, the gentleness, spirit comes in and says, “Good news, I saw it this
time. I saw it this time.” And if you can make that awareness a
welcome, if you can welcome that awareness, what I know to be true is,
as you practice that wecoming of that awareness, the awareness gets
closer and closer to the actual event.
And so it’s three days later, then it gets a day later. And then it happens
right after the event, and then soon enough… And I know this in my
own life and I’ve seen it in my clients, then you start becoming aware of
it as you’re saying it like, “Oh, boy. What am I doing?”
And then you can correct in that moment. And then the cool part is is
that it soon becomes before you say it you recognize it and don’t even
say it anymore.
And then pretty soon you don’t even have the thought. And people
think that they shouldn’t just have the thought. There’s actually a
process to practice that gentle welcoming awakening from whether you
14 Living A Course in Miracles remember that you recognize the thought that’s judgmental a week
later, or right before you say it or while you’re saying it.
It doesn’t matter when you recognize it. It’s hallelujah. The thought is
good when you do. And then in that moment…
Jennifer
That is so true. That is so true. As you’re saying it, I realize this has
exactly been my process of being gentle and welcoming the awareness.
We made a mis-take so we can say, “Oh, wow, I can see that and I can
course correct.”
Rhonda
And it’s to love yourself through it, to be like, “Oh, wow.” Awareness is
our greatest asset. Awareness is our greatest spiritual tool. The more we
welcome that awareness and not judge it or make ourselves bad for
doing it…
Embrace Humanity Remember, the more I embrace my humanity, remember Rhonda’s
motto. The more I embrace my humanity, the more divine my
experience.
So, the more I embrace my humanity that I am human, I’m human and
I am having a human experience, the more I embrace that which
means I’m going to have a judgmental thought. You know I’m not
going to like somebody’s shoes. And you know what? I’m not going to…
It’s also that judgment of that it also stops us spiritual people from
putting boundaries in place because we think we should be able to put
up with anything because if we’re spiritual it shouldn’t affect us.
Again, that stops us from loving ourselves. We are paying for it
ourselves rather than being loving and saying, “No, thank you.” So,
we’re it’s costing our own self to love others and it doesn’t include us.
So, if everybody is us and there’s only one of us here, if you’re not loving
to yourself, hello, not loving to others, not really, not so much.
Jennifer
This is a very practical process. what you’re giving us is something we
can really apply. And you’re giving it to us so freely it almost could be
deceptive.
It seems so simple that it couldn’t actually deeply and profoundly
transform your life, but I’m telling you. I’m telling you folks, what
Rhonda is giving us here is incredibly deep practice.
It seems so deceptively simple. And one of the things I would like to
recommend right now is you’ve got 48 hours to re-listen to the replay,
to call some friends and family members together.
When you listen to the replay, the free replay, you can pause and you
can discuss. You can make notes. You can write this down. And I’m
telling you.
Make an appointment with yourself now to do that because what
Rhonda is sharing is profoundly and deeply healing. And what I would
like to ask you to share with us, Rhonda, is because you’ve had an
amazing, extraordinary walk in your life and you have had experiences
that are so shattering, the fact that you can discover and embrace your
humanity and your divinity after some of the things you’ve experienced
is quite amazing.
You have really discovered and applied this for yourself. I wonder if you
can tell people a little bit more about your history, because there are
people who are listening from other countries and all over the world
who really don’t know how it is that you came to deeply seek a spiritual
understanding of how to stop choosing fear and to choose love. Can you
share with people your story?
Personal Story of Fear Rhonda
16 Thank you, Jennifer. And I have a real personal relationship with fear.
It’s very, very personal. And this is my work and this is my passion. And
I really love fear. I love, love, fear.
Living A Course in Miracles And it is so, so freeing once you understand the pathway that fear
provides you in love, because fear loves you. Fear actually loves you.
And how I’ve come to this and how I’ve come to the work that I do
now, and what Jennifer is eluding to is, when I was 14 years old, I grew
up in a little town in Upper Michigan.
It’s about 5,000 people. I wanted to be a minister. I was 14 years old
and we didn’t have a church youth group and I started one. And I was
the president of the youth group.
And my whole life was God. And Christmas gifts, I would give people
pamphlets. I would give God pamphlets out to people for Christmas
because I was that little geeky girl.
I would knit a scarf for you and then stuff it with pamphlets about God.
And so I had, at the age of 14, given my life to God and really turned it
over and knew that God was everything.
A few months after I had done this, my parents, it was Father’s Day.
And on Father’s Day, my father was coming over to brunch. My parents
had recently separated and were in the process of getting divorced.
And when my father came over for Father’s Day, my mother and I were
going out to the car to get in the car, my sisters were in the bedroom
still. I have two sisters and they were in the bedroom fighting it out.
As my mother and I were walking to the car, my father pulled out a gun
and started screaming at my mother, “You made me do this. You made
me do this. You made me do this.” And he fired one once.
And then he pointed the gun towards me and I thought I was next. And
that wasn’t me making it up. My father tried to kill me when I was 12.
So, I really believed that he was going to kill me at that moment.
In that split second, as my father was cocking the gun to perhaps shoot
me, my mother actually humped over there with a bullet inside of her
and screams, “No! No, don’t.”
And my father takes the bullet that was for me and shoots it, and shoots
my mother a second time. This second bullet goes through my mother’s
abdomen, out her back and lands on the car horn.
And for the next 20 minutes all I heard was, “Aaaaaaa.” And my father
then comes running over next to me. He puts the gun to his head and
fires.
Within two minutes, my father had murdered my mother and
committed suicide. The part that most people don’t know and I can
share with you is that, in that moment, I ran to my mother’s room. I
ran to my mother’s room and I got on my knees and I prayed to God
and I said, “Please, please, please, I have devoted my life to you and I
will do anything. Please keep my mother alive. Please, God. Please.”
And I bargained. Oh, I bargained. And I said, “I will do anything you
ask. And if you don’t, I don’t know what I’ll do, but please, God.” And I
emerged from the bedroom tearstained, and my sisters and I ran across
the street to get help and my mother had died.
From that moment on… And again, this is a story I rarely tell. From that
moment on I blamed myself because somehow in my mind I had
believed that I was at fault.
Of course, you’re 14 years old. I went out there. I didn’t save my
parents. I didn’t stop my father. I didn’t jump on him. I didn’t grab the
gun. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t say anything but, “Stop, Dad stop.”
And I also, and this is the part I rarely talk about which is, because I had
just devoted my life to God, and they say, “Oh, well. God will not give
you a lesson that you can’t handle,” right?
I thought, God, this is a bad lesson, God. This is a bad lesson. I
remember saying this to God, “If these are the kinds of lessons you’re
going to give me to test my faith, no, thank you. No, thank you.”
And I put a line between me and God. And I said, “God, you know
what? I love you.” I love God. Oh, God, I love God. “I love you, God, but I
cannot, I cannot trust you. You are not trustworthy. You cannot lead
my life because if this is the mess you’re giving, no, hmm mm.”
18 Living A Course in Miracles And from that moment on I tried to kill myself three times. I used
alcohol. I did a lot of things because I blamed myself so I really didn’t
believe I didn’t deserved to live. I really deserved to die.
At my third suicide attempt, I realized that I wasn’t going to kill myself.
It wasn’t good, Jennifer. It wasn’t going to happen. And I had to figure
out another way.
Now, I also during this time, started wrestling with God. Like I said, I
started going to A Course In Miracles with Marianne. And Marianne
would say, “God,” and I’d change it to, “There’s a light, a spiritual
energy, universe.”
If you said the word God to me, I was like, “I can’t say the word God. I
can’t say the word God.” So, I would change it atm she would start
speaking.
And I only started going to Marianne because I was in so much pain. I’d
just gotten sober. I had gotten my third suicide attempt. I’d gotten three
DUIs. I’d spent time in jail and I knew I had to turn my life around but I
couldn’t go to church.
So, I went to A Course In Miracles, started sitting course, and then slowly
through that I started being able. And it was years, but really years that
I could say to God.
And then it was one night that I had it was God. I wrestled it out. And I
was actually coming from Agape and I was in practitioner training.
Wait. Was I in practitioner training yet?
Maybe I was in Science of Mind 2. I wasn’t in practitioner training yet, I
don’t think. I was driving home from Science of Mind class and I was
still going, “Universal light, spiritual thing, energy,” I couldn’t say the
word God.
And I was coming home and I was driving and I just started crying
because I was like, “God, I love you so much,” but what had occurred
for me was that God equaled death. God equaled death.
And I pulled over the car, my car on the side of the road and I said to
God, “God, I want to believe in you again, but I’m so afraid somebody
else is going to die. If I trust you again, somebody is going to die.”
I literally wrestled with God that night. You want to talk about
wrestling with God, I sat in my car for hours, hours and I wrestled it out
and I got to the point where I said to God, “Fine. Let my family die if they
have to, but I can no longer deny you. I cannot deny you, God. I cannot
deny you.”
And I turned towards God and absolutely, from every cell in my being,
was willing to let my family members to die. Of course, did I want my
family members to die? No, of course not.
Jennifer
Right.
Rhonda
But it was so cellular, it was so cellular that I literally be okay, that I had
to release that I was keeping my family alive by turning my back to God.
It’s because I believed that how did I have a right to be happy because I
was a bad daughter? How did I have the right to have a relationship
with God? How did I have a right?
All of these things are entertained, tangled up. So, that night, I wrestled
with God. And I really was okay, to a certain level of course, with my
family dying.
Now, I can say with great joy that nobody died, right?
Jennifer
Right.
Relationship With God Rhonda
20 But my relationship with God literally hinges on life and death. So,
when I talk to you about my relationship with God, it is not a theory. It
is not a nice little experiment I’ve done.
Living A Course in Miracles It is truly releasing and surrendering life and death and being willing to
walk in the arms of God and being held in the arms of God and knowing
that spirit and love truly are the pathway home, and that our
willingness to have a relationship with our fears, and that’s what I
specialize in. It’s fearless living.
What I help specialize in is mastering their fear so they can express that
loving being. I know what that’s like from a very cellular level. And of
course, nobody has to have the experience I had, but everybody
wrestled with that love and fear like I do, again, differently and
uniquely.
Everybody does it on some level. So, it does not have to be the wrestle
and you do not have to wrestle alone. That’s for sure. You do not have
to wrestle alone. Whoo! Jennifer, I shared something that I rarely share.
Whoo!
Jennifer
Well, thank you. I feel very moved that you have shared it with us. And
I can feel that there are many people who are listening who have gone
through that same kind of experience in a sense of turning their back on
God.
And even though they love God more than anything else, they move
into a fear of God, a fear of that surrender. And also, we all have our
different kinds of false idols.
That’s what I was hearing even in the last part of your story, that this
belief that by taking yourself back from God, in a sense, in order to keep
your family, and then realizing that you could trust God at that level.
To me, Rhonda, one person can do something like that to overcome the
deepest fear, and certainly our attachments to our loved ones, are so
intense, to be able to overcome that and trust and have faith in God,
even in the midst of that incredible experience of making that equation
between giving your life to God and having God test you in that way.
To be able to say, “I’m going to trust God, even in the face of this
experience,” it profoundly lifts and shifts everyone because we are one.
Rhonda
And sometimes when you say that, Jennifer, sometimes that’s what
gives me courage. I think of my nieces and nephews. I think of the
people that I meet. I think of my students. I think of the people that
attend my talks and watch my videos and read my books.
I think of them, and in the moment of when I want to choose, when I’m
about to make a choice, when I’m in that choice point, when I’m
turning away from fear and turning towards love, or starting to turn
towards fear and away from love, I know that I am just a vehicle, as we
all are, for the entire shift of the planet.
Sometimes I can’t do it for myself, sometimes. But I can do it for you. I
can do it for you sometimes. And so I have more courage knowing that I
am one with you.
I have more courage knowing that we are one together. I have more
willingness and opens and willing to be gentle when I, Rhonda Britten,
as the human form, may want to be critical, that does not support you
and I know that.
So I am willing to practice that gentleness, not only to practice loving
myself, but for you then to have the courage to practice loving yourself,
for you to feel the love.
It’s a wonderful knowingness when you really know that we’re all
interconnected. And sometimes you can’t choose for yourself because
you think you have to believe that you’re unworthy or that you don’t
deserve or the fear that you’re not perfect enough.
And who are you? Why would God choose you? You know, it’s all of
these beliefs that keep us stuck in fear. If those are your beliefs, okay. Do
you want to keep them? Okay.
22 Living A Course in Miracles Choose Higher But if you want to help me, you can’t indulge those another minute.
You cannot indulge those another minute because I need you to choose
higher. Jennifer needs you to choose higher.
Again, it’s not to be a burden. It’s an opportunity. It’s an opportunity
that your attachment to the fear-based beliefs that you keep, that keep
you small, take down us all.
It’s like, hey, I don’t know. It gives me great courage to think of you. It
gives me courage to think of my sweet friend Jennifer. It gives me great
courage to think of my sweet niece Rachel and my loving nephew
Adam. It gives me courage.
And I do believe we’re choosing every moment fear or love. That’s why
I wrote my book Fearless Living. That’s why I created the Fearless Living
online training program. That’s why people say that my book Fearless
Living is really kind of a primer for A Course In Miracles.
It’s really the practical application of the course. I’ve been told that
many, many times by A Course In Miracles students because I do believe
A Course In Miracles can be really theoretical and very heady and very
deep and very cumbersome to apply to our lives.
And I thank you, Jennifer, for making it easy and simple for all of us.
And we all need to recognize how our fears and our human reality need
to be addressed, needed to mastered in order to actually access all the
love available to us, because it’s right there. It’s right there. It’s right
here.
Jennifer
Going back to the… I just want to keep listening to you. I want to ask
you. When people are really feeling that intense, physical experience of
fear, you’re suggesting to practice gentleness.
Rhonda
Yeah, and some people absolutely have a physical… We all have
visceral experiences of our fear. And one of the things I’ve recognized
over my year as being a fear expert is that most of us don’t even know
how subtle fear is.
Most of us can address the big fear when it’s that wrenching, or when
it’s that spotty shaking, or when it’s that petrifying. But in reality, we’re
courting fear all the time.
We’re indulging, courting fear all the time when we participate in
stress, when we participate in overwhelm, when we participate in
confusion, when we participate in blaming and shaming ourselves or
others, when we participate in judgment.
We’re actually saying, yes, to fear in those moments. It’s easy to identify
when we’re all the way over to the right, or the left, when we’re in the
“Ah!” earth shattering frozen.
And what I’m suggesting is building that awareness that we talked
about earlier. It’s if you build your awareness, you can actually catch it
a lot earlier so it doesn’t have to get to that stomach turning, want to
throw up, frozen in my feet place.
If you catch it, just like we talked about the thoughts, it’s the same with
our actions. It’s the same way we talk to ourselves. It’s everything we
do.
If we can catch it earlier, then it doesn’t have to get there, right? When
it does, and let’s say that you are right now in this moment and you’re
listening to me, and you’re listening to Jennifer, and you’re thinking to
yourself, “Oh, my. What is she telling me to do? Oh, my. What, be
gentle with myself? I want to go throw up right now.”
Or, she’s saying like, “What? I have to do what?” Right, Jennifer? I
know when I would listen to Reverend Michael or Marianne
Williamson, it would be like, “What?”
And I’m such a freaky fan of Marianne. When I would study her, I
literally had 120 Marianne Williamson tapes. I’m not joking. And for
five years, if not more, probably I would say seven to eight years in
reality, all I’d listen to, all I’d listen to is Marianne Williamson tapes.
24 Living A Course in Miracles And I live in Los Angeles, California, so I drive everywhere. I would
listen hours, hours a day, hours a day, hours a day. TV no, Marianne
Williamson tapes, hours a day.
It’s that continuous practice. So, listening to you, Jennifer, hours a day,
listening to this tape as you suggested already, the replay for two, three,
four times, listen to it over and over again.
Like get it in… It’s because your cells are vibrating at a different
vibration when we are speaking. Let that vibration be more and more
inside of your cells, inside of your being.
Have that become your norm. And the more you listen, the more you
listen, the more you listen, the more it is going to be something that you
can catch, something that you can feel comfortable with, something
that you can know more at a cellular level, rather than an intellectual
experience.
When you’re frozen, gentleness is the way out. Gentleness is the way
out. And I definitely have some exercises that I can share that make it
very visceral for you.
We’re all taught to be grateful. We talk a lot about gratitude and we
want to be grateful and we want to have thanksgiving and we want to
say hallelujah and we want to do all those things.
And I want to give you a little twist on that. And I also want to give you
another exercise that will build your self-confidence and self-esteem.
The first one is let’s just talk about gratitudes for a minute, the Rhonda
Britten way, the fearless way. The way I want you to do it is, and again,
any gratitude is awesome gratitudes, but I have a specific way. It’s
because the way I’m asking you to do gratitudes, is it literally refocuses
your filtering system effortlessly.
I don’t know about you, but I sure could use some effortless filtering
shifting. I discovered this in my own transformation, going from a
woman, from a girl and then to a woman, because this lasted 20 years
from 14 to 34.
I was in a state of life and death survival, really fear-based thinking,
trying to find my way out, trying to find God. And it took me 20 years. I
had nightmares every single night. My father was killing me.
I had all these things that I had to battle, quote/unquote on a daily
basis. When I discovered this particular to way to say gratitudes, it
literally started shifting my mind effortlessly.
Gratitude Exercise This is what I want you to do then. I want you to write everyday,
“Today I’m grateful for…” I want you to write it out, yes, I want you to
do it by hand.
And today I’m grateful for… I want you to get that visceral experience,
that kinesthetic experience. And what I want you to be grateful for is
something that is outside of yourself.
And this is the key. You must be specific and you must say it in a
empowering bent. So, today I’m grateful for the blue sky. It’s not very
specific.
Instead it’s today I’m grateful for the way that the daisy breaks through
the sidewalk as I’m taking my walk through my neighborhood.
What I want you to do is write it in such a way that if I asked you a year
from now to read that gratitude, you would be able to go right to that
space, right to that moment and relive that experience. That’s how
specific I want you to be.
Now, what that does is again, what’s our greatest asset? Awareness.
When you are that specific in your gratitudes, you are literally building
your muscle of awareness.
You are literally shifting your perception and you are changing your
filtering system with doing nothing but focusing on gratitudes. I
26 Living A Course in Miracles literally want you to write, “Today I’m grateful for…” and be very, very
specific and bent in the positive, five a day.
That’s going to shift the way you see the world, through a shift the way
you see the world and I can’t wait to hear. After one week I know it’s
already going to shift your world. I know that.
Acknowledgement Exercise The other exercise I want to give you is acknowledgement. It’s called
acknowledgements. And these acknowledgements are all about you.
Remember, I’ve been talking about loving yourself, and being gentle
with yourself.
I want you to acknowledge five times a day, just like gratitudes, five
gratitudes not about yourself. Gratitudes aren’t about you. They’re
about someone, something or something outside yourself.
Acknowledgements are all about you. And so I literally want you to
say, “Today, I acknowledge myself for…” and again, be very specific.
Now, I want to share an exercise that I want to give you.
It is at a Website and it’s a free video series. It’s called My Stretch, Risk
and Die series. And it’s at bit.ly/stretchriskdie. And it’s bit.ly/, the word
stretch, risk, die.
And when you go to that and watch that video series, you’re going to
see me talking also in more detail about stretch, risk and dies and about
acknowledgements and gratitudes and how you want to do those.
But acknowledgements are acknowledging anytime that you’re moving
out of your comfort zone, moving out of your fear-based reality, shifting
your perceptions and filter, being gentle with yourself, trying anything
new and different, noticing any level of expansion, no matter how
small.
I don’t care if you go, if you complain 100 times a day and you say, “I’m
going to quit complaining because Rhonda’s shown me that’s fearbased. I’m going to quit doing it.”
I don’t want you to say… Let’s say you keep track of your complaints at
100 times a day and tomorrow you get it down to 99. And what do we
normally do? “Oh, I’m still complaining 99 times a day. I’m so
horrible.”
No, in the Rhonda Britten world of fearless living, in that place of love,
what you’re going to do to really express that living in the course, living
a course, living A Course In Miracles, is you’re actually going to focus on
the fact that you only did it 99 times.
Like how great is that? Oh, my God. You’re better. You’re better. You’ve
moved towards love. That’s awesome. You’re awesome, right?
Jennifer
Yes.
Rhonda
It’s like one less time. It’s like hallelujah, God is good. Hallelujah, right?
Jennifer
And that’s embracing your humanity right there to say… One of the
ways I think about it is to be with yourself the way that you would be
with a child that you really loved.
If the child did it one less time, you’d be like, “Hooray, you’re a rock
star. Look at that.” You’re changing your life.
Rhonda
Yes, yes, but we don’t do that to ourselves, so when you talk about fear
versus love, fear and love, when you talk about A Course In Miracles,
and there’s only one of us here, right?
Then how you treat yourself with that gentle inspiration, with that
gentle kindness, with that gentle hand, with the gentle voice of love, the
gentle empowerment, you are, as you love yourself, you’re loving
everyone.
You’re loving me. You’re loving Jennifer as you love yourself. And let
the tears flow. Let the anger come out and let it release. Let the tears
flow. Let whatever moves through you move through you.
28 Living A Course in Miracles And just know in the gentleness, even though you might have some
anger spewed out, or some tears flow out, or some negative thoughts
come up.
It doesn’t matter. Just let all that go in meditation, just like we meditate.
Let all those thoughts just go through and focus. Just stay on the
gentleness, the gentleness of you. Just stay focused.
And let those thoughts move through you. Do not get caught in them.
Do not think you’ve failed. Do not label it bad. Just let those through. It’s
just shifting your energy. That’s all it is. It’s shifting your energy. Let it
shift. And then say, “Please, bring it on God. Bring it on, more love.
Bring it on, God.”
Jennifer
I love what you’re sharing. It’s actually such a personal affirmation to
me, Rhonda, because these are the exact tools that I have used to heal
myself.
And the way you’re talking about them is exactly what I have done.
You talk about living in L.A., driving around in the car and listening to
tapes and all of that, so you were listening to Marianne. I was listening
to Reverend Michael and the Agape Choir, and those things.
And I remember so clearly, tears streaming down my face. I’m in traffic
listening to the tapes and literally tapes, of course. And I’m looking at
the blue sky and I’m saying, “I’m grateful for you blue sky,” with tears
running down my face. “I’m grateful for you traffic because you’re
giving more time to listen to the tape. Oh, thank you, God.”
Rhonda
Exactly.
Jennifer
With just tears running down my face, “I’m grateful that I’m grateful.”
No Accidents In Thought Rhonda
Right, right. There are no accidents in thought. A Course In Miracles
says, there are no accidents in God. There are no accidents, that
everything is unfolding for your greatest good.
And, as a student of the course, it’s to embody that more and more and
more. If you actually believe that everything is for your greatest good, if
you actually believe what the course says, and that you know from the
bottom of your toes to the tip of your head and beyond, that everything
is helping you, supporting you in having a deeper relationship with
God, then anything that’s happening is not bad, even though it might
hurt, or there might be some anger, or there might be a betrayal, or
shame and all that.
It’s like all working itself out. If you focus on it all working itself out and
you hang on, what I like to say is I hang onto the rope. I hang onto the
gold thread. I hang onto the gold thread of God. And I hang onto that
rope.
And I just keep putting my hand, one hand over the other and just keep
walking and let the negativity and the falseness and the lies and the
betrayal and the shame just move through me and just keep on that
thread and just hang on for dear life and just one hand over the other.
And soon I can breathe again and love is happening again. And I feel it
and joy. And I don’t know about you, Jennifer, but I want to wake up
every morning super, super happy to be me, super happy to be me.
And that’s how I want everyone to wake up, super happy to be them,
like super happy, like, “Oh, my God. I get to be myself. I get to be
myself.” You get to be yourself. How cool is that? It’s so awesome.
Jennifer
It is. I tell you. One of the things is I wake up every morning now and I
give thanks for my life, my precious life. And there are plenty of times
when I think, “Oh, living in density is so dense, living in this illusion,
this illusion of density and form.”
There have been many times when I just thought, “Ugh, I hate this. I
hate this density. I can feel what it’s like to be pure light and I feel so
dense right now.”
30 Living A Course in Miracles Transforming that has been such a journey. And to now stand in
awareness of whatever it is, I’m giving thanks for it because I am
remembering the oneness of all life and that is the treasure.
Rhonda
Yes, yes.
Jennifer
As you were sharing that every choice that we make for love we share
the benefits with everyone, that we can learn to walk in that
consciousness. So there’s every choice for love, there’s not one of them
that’s small or insignificant, not one.
Rhonda
I agree. I couldn’t agree more. And I just want to hit that point just
another moment because I love what you’re saying and I so agree. It’s
that it’s never about perfection, gang.
And I know we hear that 100 times, but as I’m saying we lift each other
up, I also don’t want you to walk away from this call going, “Oh, I’m
bringing everybody down because I’m so judgmental.”
That’s not the point of that. The point of that in that moment is about
gentleness, too. Because it’s not how many days, how many times a day
that you quote/unquote miss the mark.
And as Marianne Williamson says, the sin, sinning is missing the mark.
That’s all that is. It’s not about whether you miss the mark or not, it’s
about can you love yourself through it?
I might have days, I might have a day where I’m off. I’m just having an
off day and I feel like I’m just judgmental and grumpy and oh, I just feel
in my stuff.
And I don’t sit there and think I’m not spiritual. I’m a horrible person. I
sit and go wow; I sure do need some gentleness today. Boy, I need…
Wow, I need some gentleness today.
I might go off and ask a friend to lunch and maybe cancel a business
meeting and do something really loving for myself. I’m not wanting you
to walk away with this sense of responsibility for everybody and
everything.
I want you to walk away knowing that we’re all there with you and
that we’re all loving you, and that everything that Jennifer and I have
done is available to you and is already done, therefore just jump into the
stream with us. Just jump in the stream. Just say, yes. Just say, yes, right
now. Just say, yes.
Jennifer
Make one choice for gratitude, one acknowledgement, one, just one.
Yeah.
Rhonda
Yes, just say, yes, because it’s the eternal now, right? So, in this
moment, everything is forgiven. In this moment everything is forgiven,
everything in this moment. Every moment everything is forgiven. Every
moment you’re new. Every moment you’re new. Every moment you’re
new.
So, just say, yes. Just dive in with Jennifer and I. Just dive in with
Jennifer and myself, right? Dive in with us and we are here to bolster
you up and to support you as you’re finding your way in certain places.
And we, too, have our spiritual teachers to help us find our way. We all
feed ourselves, feed each other. I have worked with my spiritual
practitioner for 10 years and I meet with her every week.
I don’t miss a week with my spiritual practitioner. I seek my support.
We all need support to remind ourselves how amazingly magnificent we
are, every single one of us. I do. Jennifer does. You do. So, lean on us.
Lean on us. We’re here.
Jennifer
That’s right. That’s right. And when I became a minister I started
saying to people, “It takes a village to raise a minister,” because
[laughter]. It takes a huge amount of love and support for each one of
us to live our divinity.
And as the course talks about, when we extend love, when we extend
patience, kindness, compassion, generosity, gentleness to our brothers
and sisters, then we experience it as well.
Rhonda
32 Yes.
Living A Course in Miracles Jennifer
I wish we had another hour. I really do because I feel like I could just
keep going with you. And we’ll have to find something else we can do
together, Rhonda, because I really would like to mine some more and
share some more and receive from you more insight, more wisdom to
share with the Living A Course In Miracles community.
To that end, your Website is RhondaBritten.com. And will you give us
that web address again for the video series?
Gifts From Rhonda Rhonda
Sure, it’s for the free video series, absolutely. It’s bit.ly/stretchriskdie.
And that’s stretch, as stretching yourself, s-t-r-e-t-c-h, risk r-i-s-k, die di-e. So it’s bit.ly, b-i-t-.-l-y forward slash stretch, risk and die.
And you know what? I’m just going to throw in another free thing. May
I, Jennifer?
Jennifer
Yes, please. We love it.
Rhonda
As I’m sitting here, I hurried up while we were talking and just created
something else because I just want to share this. I have something also
to overcome difficult conversations, because I think as we become more
spiritual, more true to ourselves, we don’t know how to handle those
difficult people in our lives who are maybe friends when we weren’t so
gentle with ourselves.
Jennifer
All the time.
Rhonda
And we don’t know how to deal with that. And so go again to bit.ly/.
And this one is called Living A Course. I named it for you, Living A
Course. So, it’s bit.ly/livingacourse.
And in there is a two hour audio for you on how to handle, how to talk
to anyone about anything and about how to master some difficult
conversations that maybe you need to have in order to be more fearless
and more free and more love.
Jennifer
That’s fantastic. Thank you.
Rhonda
You’re welcome. It’s my journey and my pleasure.
Jennifer
Yeah, sharing is the best. It’s really the best. We work so hard for our
gold nuggets that the greatest gift we get is to turn around and share
them.
Rhonda
Yes, well you know, the course says the cost of giving is receiving. So
there you go, Miss Jennifer. The cost of us giving is that we have to
receive. [laughter].
Jennifer
Okay, bring it on. Bring it on.
Rhonda
Bring it on. Bring it on, God. Bring it on, people. Bring it on. Thank you,
Jennifer. It was fantastic.
Jennifer
Thank you and I agree. I agree. I’m so excited to share the magnificence
that you are and the healing presence that you are, Rhonda. I feel so
grateful. I know we all feel blessed.
I’m encouraging everyone to make an appointment with yourself, with
your friends and your family to listen to the replay together. That way
you can pause. You can discuss. You can practice. You can make your
notes.
And, yes, you can purchase the downloads and the transcripts. All of
that information is right there on your class page so I don’t have to
review it.
But it’s very inexpensive if you would like to own the transcripts and
own the recordings. Just before we completely close out, I’m going to
bring us back to prayer.
Closing Prayer I’m going to invite everyone to place your hand on your heart and take
a deep breath of gratitude.
And we are grateful for Rhonda. We’re blessing her life and her family.
We’re giving thanks for her walk in God. She is our sister and we are
one with her and we are grateful.
34 Living A Course in Miracles We are so grateful that the healing that she has experienced in her life,
we can share it with her. And we’re accepting this right now as part of
our treasure.
We are grateful and thankful right now to acknowledge ourselves as
spiritual beings who are facilitating a human experience. We’re
developing that massive capacity of compassion, to be a loving presence
in our own heart, in our own mind, in our own life.
We’re giving thanks that we are truly walking the talk and living the
love. And we are grateful to share these benefits of our healing and our
expansion with everyone because we’re one with them.
We are grateful to acknowledge and celebrate the unity of all life now
and forever. We let it be and so it is. Amen.
36 Living A Course in Miracles

Living ACIM3 Wk 1 - Rhonda Britten

Transcription

Similar documents

A Cut Above

NEWS FLASH

How Green Is Your Dog? - Eco Touch Premium Car Care

Yesterland - Jennie Nunn

Incoming 4th Summer Reading 2015.pages

Summer Flyer - National Louis University

3IPOEB 8BMLFS - Rhonda Walker Foundation

“left handed virtuoso of the upright bass”

2016 Sponsorship Options - Rhonda Walker Foundation