Off the sideline
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| Written by bastiaan | |
| Tuesday, 06 July 2010 | |
Off the sidelineI had attended enough Course meetings to know that I strongly desired to experience the light of truth. Every time I was with the miracle teachers a light awakened in me and shattered my world. It became harder and harder for me to deny the message, particularly because of the uncompromising and energetic way in which the Wisconsin teachers presented it.During a weekend intensive, as they called it, I would release the corruption and the conflict in me and come to a lighter self awareness. I would feel safe and vulnerable, open to love and light. But when the weekend came to a close I would become afraid and confused about going back and picking up the pieces of my worldly existence. The going back and forth between the joy I felt and the depression that would follow became excruciating. I had no middle ground to stand on. The Course set off illusion against truth. The choice was inevitable, I would either choose illusion; to live in fear and guilt, or I would choose truth; to live in love and be free. As long as I kept standing here, on the sideline looking in, I could exercise my free will and keep my options open, but I would not gain the peace and love of God. The peace was promised me and I had tasted of it many times, but I just couldn’t make it permanent unless I made an undivided commitment to truth and the transformation that wanted to complete itself in me. For 2 or 3 years now I had put off the decision to do only this. The real thing had come to me. It had come to me when I first met with the Course and its teachers. I was delaying the inevitable decision. I looked at other courses on the menu but my eye had already fallen on what I wanted. Now I started to feel the urgency because at any moment now the waiter would be standing at my table to take my order. I send out two inquiries, one was to Andrew Cohen’s Moksha foundation and one to the admissions office of the Endeavor Academy in Wisconsin, where the Miracle teachers came from. A week or so later I received two items in the mail. One was a return envelope telling me the Moksha foundation had relocated and that the address was unknown, and the second item was an introduction package from Endeavor Academy, a magazine, a couple of booklets and a handwritten letter. The person from admissions responded my questions first and then she informed me about two teachers who were in the Netherlands at this moment, and about the weekend intensive they would be teaching only a couple of weeks later. The weekend was taught in Biezemortel, which is a former convent only 10 miles away from where I lived. I reconnected with the teachers and I entered the light with more focus, and a stronger intent than I had before. At the end of the weekend, the teachers confronted me and the rest of the interested yet uncommitted Dutch group with the question: “What do you really want, and where do you want to go from here”? Later I learned that the teachers had been living out of their suitcases for months now. They were frustrated with the lack of commitment they got from the Dutch group. Thus far they had failed in creating a core group of Dutch students singularly dedicated to their transformation through A Course in Miracles. There and then I became aware of my responsibility for the decision that lay ahead of me. To pursue and reap the benefits of this Course I needed to step off the sideline, into the center. The May following, another intensive was organized in the Netherlands. But this time it was the summit of all intensives, an international event with Master Teacher. It was organized in Soeria, a large healing estate in the Veluwe which is the largest and most beautiful nature area in the Netherlands. I spend the whole weekend in this man’s profound presence. It was the ultimate demonstration of an awakened life. He was the genuine article; gentle, loving and caring as well as in your face and confrontational. I lost my defenses, judgments, and cynicisms. The single eye in my forehead had opened all the way and light was entering through the top of my head and filled me. On Sunday afternoon the weekend ended and I stood in that unbearable indecisiveness again. Everyone had left the session room, most people had left the building and some people were gathered in the tea and coffee lounge. That’s where I stood for somewhere between 5 minutes and an hour. I was cornered by the question how do I go on from here? If I was to make the step, how would I make it, what would I have to do? I didn’t want to go back to what no longer felt like home, but I was terrified to choose for something I couldn’t oversee or control. This desire in me to commit was real, yet I couldn’t see a concrete outcome to it, it was so abstract. I could not see a visible outcome or a concrete form to result if I was to make this decision. I would have to decide for the unknown, which is not a comfortable decision to make. I was in a state of panic. This time there really was no turning back. I held the world in my hand as a wilted bunch of pierced balloons not worth patching. One guy who had also attended the weekend saw me standing there frozen in the middle of the lounge. He invited me to sit down with him and a group of others, and gave me a lesson to read. I sat down, relaxed and read out loud from lesson 155, “I will step back and let Him lead the way”. It was the perfect answer to my dilemma. It told me to step back from illusions and let the truth step forward, that there is a way of living in the world that is not here, that I am different but still appear the same, that there is a middle road that leads away from suffering, and that there is a light in me that I should follow. To sit down with them was to step back, and to step back is how I decided. I was off the side line and had finally entered in. |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 06 July 2010 ) |
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