Living A Course in Miracles - members.jenniferhadley.com · 9/7/2011 · With Paul Ferrini and Reverend Jennifer Hadley . Thursday, June 9, 2011 . Opening Prayer Rev. Jennifer We

LLiivviinngg AA CCoouurrssee iinn MMiirraacclleess Week 4 Class

Making Friends with the Ego With Paul Ferrini and

Reverend Jennifer Hadley

Making Friends with the Ego Class ............................................................................ 4

Opening Prayer .............................................................................................................. 4

Duality and Oneness ...................................................................................................... 4

When Fear Comes Up .................................................................................................... 5

Bringing Love to the Egoic Experience ........................................................................... 7

Compassionate Response to the Upset ........................................................................... 9

Catching and Stopping Yourself .................................................................................. 10

The Wounded Child ..................................................................................................... 11

Consciousness, Mind and Heart .................................................................................. 13

Paul’s Journey ............................................................................................................. 15

Commitment and Patience .......................................................................................... 18

Self-Love, with Honesty, is the Door ............................................................................ 18

The Holy Spirit and Core Self ....................................................................................... 21

About the Shadow ....................................................................................................... 22

Taking Responsibility .................................................................................................. 25

Letting Go .................................................................................................................... 28

The Role of Relationships ............................................................................................ 28

Deep Healing Work, Minute by Minute, Day by Day ................................................... 29

Next Steps .................................................................................................................... 31

Closing Prayer ............................................................................................................. 32

Living A Course in Miracles

4 Making Friends with the Ego Class

Week 4

MMaakkiinngg FFrriieennddss wwiitthh tthhee EEggoo CCllaassss With Paul Ferrini and Reverend Jennifer Hadley

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Opening Prayer Rev. Jennifer We are focused on receiving the highest level of insight that we can

possibly receive. We begin with a breath of gratitude, opening our hearts and opening our minds. We are making ourselves fully available. We are invoking divine grace, divine faith, divine wisdom, divine clarity. We are invoking the Higher Holy Spirit Self. We are so grateful and thankful to align with wisdom itself, with the truth, with Love. We’re stepping into the unprecedented right here and right now. We are making ourselves available for a profound healing, profound expansion. We’re saying, yes, whole heartedly. In grace and gratitude, we share the benefits of our healing and our expansion with everyone because we’re one with them. In gratitude, we let it be—and so it is. Amen.

So we are going to jump right in here, Paul, and I have to say I’m so curious to really understand what you have to teach us about loving the ego because, for many A Course in Miracles students, that is a new thought. And we’re open to a new thought so—what does that mean, loving the ego?

Paul I want to start by talking a little about A Course in Miracles in general.

Rev. Jennifer Okay, great.

Duality and Oneness Paul One of the things that one notices about the way the Course is written is

that the language is dualistic. It talks about Love, and it talks about fear,

With Paul Ferrini and Reverend Jennifer Hadley 5

and it talks about the ego, and it talks about the Holy Spirit. And in this respect, it’s similar to other teachings that have come before it; even traditional, even fundamentalist Christianity sets up the kind of dualistic structure between God and Satan, between the part of us we see as good and the part of us that we see as evil.

So to really understand what needs to happen experientially, to come into the Oneness the Course talks about, we have to be in a place where we don’t have an enemy. We don’t make something bad. We don’t say, “Okay, we’ll take this, but we won’t take that.” We don’t set up a structure in which we accept part of our lives and reject another part of our lives. If we look at what Jesus had to say about that… And Jesus has been speaking to us for thousands of years, not just in A Course in Miracles.

If we look to the Gospels, Jesus says to us very clearly, “Resist not evil.” What does that mean? Well, if we translate that into A Course in Miracles language, it would be, “resist not ego.” You cannot make the ego go away. You cannot make fear go away. If you actually try to do that, and many A Course in Miracles students do that… Because of the dualistic language structure, they try to make the ego go away and what happens is, the ego gets more intense.

Rev. Jennifer Well, can you give us an example, Paul, of how people do that? They try to make the ego go away.

Paul Let me talk about it a little bit more.

Rev. Jennifer Okay.

Paul Okay. What we’re looking at is a process by which we make judgments about our experience. And we say part of our experience is good, and part of our experience is bad. Part of our world is good, and part of our world is bad. Part of our mind is good, and part of our mind is bad. So the part of our mind that is good is Holy Spirit—is God. The part of our mind that’s bad is ego or fear.

When Fear Comes Up



Now, we are human beings. Jesus was a human being just like us. So within the context of our life experience, fear comes up. This is a normal and natural experience for every human being. Fear comes up. Now if you resist your fear, or make it bad, or try to push it away, or try to pretend that it’s not happening when it is happening, you intensify that fear. You become more afraid.

So practice what Jesus was telling us, “Resist not evil. Resist not fear. Resist not the ego.” What we have to begin to do is, number one, acknowledge that fear is coming up. That’s a natural thing. We don’t have to try to force it out of our experience or out of our consciousness, but what we do have to do is, number one, be aware of it. We need to begin to hold it gently and compassionately.

So instead of resisting our fear, we bring it in. We hold it gently. We breathe with it. We see, “Oh, fear is coming up. I’m scared.” And we continue to breathe with it and to allow it to be there, because it’s going to be there anyway, and we don’t repress it. We don’t project it onto somebody else. We just live in the awareness of fear rising up and being with our fear.

As we do that, what happens is, it’s like a wave that comes in the ocean. The wave gathers strength and intensity, and then it crests, and then it breaks, and then it subsides. So fear rises, and then fear subsides as we breathe with it.

This is true for all emotions, and as we learn to hold them gently and ride the wave, what happens is, we drop into our hearts and move out of our heads. And we are able to be okay with our humanness, okay

Instead of resisting our fear, we bring it in. We hold it

gently. We breathe with it. We see, “Oh,

fear is coming up. I’m scared.” We continue to breathe with it and to allow it to be there, because it’s going to be there anyway. We

don’t repress it.


with the fact that fear comes up for us and okay with our human imperfection.

This act of being okay with our human imperfection totally and quintessentially changes our consciousness and our experience of our life, and moves us out of the dualistic experience into unity consciousness.

Now this really works. I’ve been doing this with people for 30 years, 35 years, but it doesn’t work necessarily the first time you try to do it. It’s a spiritual practice. It’s something that we really have to be with and be committed to. To hold something in compassionate awareness doesn’t sound like it’s such a difficult thing but, “Oh, my God.…” Try it.

Rev. Jennifer Yes, I do every day.

Bringing Love to the Egoic Experience Paul What happens is this: instead of resisting the ego and pushing it away,

and making it bad, and trying to get rid of it in yourself, and trying to get rid of it in everyone else, and creating enemies everywhere and fighting, what happens is, we begin to bring Love to our egoic experience. And the act of bringing Love is what shifts everything.

As we bring Love to the parts of ourselves that do not feel loved, those parts of ourselves begin to experience what they want. A Course in Miracles talks about the call for Love. All the ego is, is a call for Love. Well, as we bring Love and answer that call for Love with Love, our experience begins to transform. So then instead of trying to make something go away, we bring Love to all of it.

Psychologically what happens is that we take those parts of ourselves, which are shadowy parts, parts that we’re not so proud of, we may be ashamed of, all of our fear, all of our shame… We take those parts of ourselves and instead of either repressing them and projecting them out onto other people when we judge others and find fault with others, what we do is, we begin to bring them in, hold them in awareness, love them, heal them. And there is an integration that takes place within the psyche where the parts of us that we don’t like and the parts of us that



we do like begin to meld together into a Oneness in which the divine and the human are dancing together.

They are the same. They are not separate. It’s not spirit trying to defeat the body or trying to defeat the humanness. It’s dwelling together because that is what the human is. The human is this dwelling together of both fear and Love.

Now, there is a technology. It’s a very simple technology. Jesus gave it to us when He said, “Resist not evil.” Another way of saying the same thing is, “What you resist persists.” Or what I say is, “What you resist intensifies.” So here we are living our lives and along comes an experience that triggers us and pushes our buttons, and we want to make judgments about that experience or about other people who are pushing our buttons, and when we do that we get drawn into a big drama; attack and defend, projection, counter-projection. A Course in Miracles talks about all that. If we can slow that down and breathe into that, and say, “Okay, I’m being triggered right now. I have fear coming up right now, and I don’t want to judge that experience. I want to make it be about others.”

If I can breathe into that and say, “Oh, that’s really all about me. That’s my experience. I’m having it so I have to own it. I have to be with it. I have to learn to bless it instead of finding fault with it. I need to hold everything that happens in my experience in compassion and awareness. If I can do that, I can come to peace with it and I can stop creating an enemy.”

Rev. Jennifer Yes.

Paul This is the process. This is the transformational process. Go ahead.

Jesus has been speaking to us for

thousands of years, not just in A Course

in Miracles.


Compassionate Response to the Upset Rev. Jennifer I was going to say what I’m hearing… just to say it again. It’s

developing the ability to have a compassionate response to the upset, to be the loving embodiment of that Christ presence and rather than go into judgment and say, “This is bad. This is wrong. This shouldn’t be happening,” or to deny it, or self-medicate it. It’s developing the discipline… just like somebody who’s going to develop the discipline to lift heavy weights or run long distances. You develop the ability to not run away but to sit with the challenge and discover the healing that is possible and that through—what you’re telling us is—through applying Love.

Paul Bring Love, yes. Sometimes we don’t know what Love is, so we start with acceptance because acceptance is the beginning of Love. We

accept that it is what it is, that it’s happening. We don’t worry about who’s to blame. We don’t go into blame and shame. We recognize that there is a tendency in us that wants to shame and blame. We don’t allow ourselves to go there and to go into projection. We say, “Okay, it’s happening. It is what it is. Let me accept it. Let me breathe with it. Let me be with it. Let me see my judgments. Let me not try to make my judgments real because they’re not.”

No judgment has any ultimate reality. It’s just a judgment, which means there’s fear behind it. So I have fear coming up. Let me be with my fear rather than projecting it onto others.

We practice this with everything that comes up that we want to find fault with, or we want to push away, or that we want to blame on others. We practice being with our own fear, recognizing our own fear, holding it compassionately, forgiving

ourselves for being afraid, forgiving ourselves for making mistakes, breathing, being with, bringing acceptance, bringing Love moment to moment. And as we do this, everything begins to shift.

It’s developing the ability to have a

compassionate response to the upset, to be the

loving embodiment of that Christ presence

and rather than go into judgment and

say, “This is bad. This is wrong.



Catching and Stopping Yourself Rev. Jennifer What if we catch ourselves and we have been on the blame and shame

train for 20 minutes or an hour or a whole day? How do we get off the train?

Paul It doesn’t matter because at the moment at which you catch it and hold it compassionately, you are, in essence, diffusing any power that that has to run your life at an unconscious level. As long as you’re projecting it onto somebody else and making it be their responsibility, shaming and blaming, the conflict continues inside. But when you bring it in that moment in which you can bring that compassion and awareness, you can own it, be with it and not project it, it dissolves, it diffuses. It no longer gets shoved into the unconscious where it continues to drive our experience automatically and reactively.

Rev. Jennifer What if you have a realization in the middle of an argument with somebody?

Paul Well that’s the real practice. It’s having that realization when you’re in an argument in which you say, “Wait a minute. Let me take a deep breath here. I realize I’m really getting triggered. I really have a lot of fear coming up,” and you breathe and you recognize, “When I have fear coming up, everything that comes out of my mouth is going to be driven by that fear. So that instead of blurting something out that I’m going to regret saying, or taking an action that’s wound-driven and reactive, I need to breathe. Be with the fear. When I’m consciously with the fear, it no longer has the potential to drive my life.”

So then, and frequently in relationship when this happens, partners learn to say, “Time out. Fear is coming up. I’m being triggered.” And they either breathe together or they say, “I need to take a break. I need

Partners learn to say, “Time out.

Fear is coming up. I’m being triggered.”


to go and breathe on my own and center on my own, and understand what fear is coming up and why it’s coming up and why it got triggered. Then I can come back, and then I can have a conversation that’s not reactive, that’s not an attack on you or an attempt to blame you or shame you.”

If partners are doing this, then relationship becomes a spiritual path and becomes the quickest and the most poignant way toward freedom and toward spiritual growth. But nobody wants to do this work. Nobody wants to do this work. It does work, but nobody wants to do it because what it means is, they can’t be unconscious anymore. It means they have to really make the commitment to be with what’s happening.

Rev. Jennifer Don’t you think though, Paul, that part of why we resist doing the work, and don’t want to do it, is because it’s so unfamiliar. And we want to be right.

Paul I think it’s very familiar.

Rev. Jennifer Doing the work?

Paul Let me expand on that just a little bit.

Rev. Jennifer Great.

The Wounded Child Paul Within each one of us is a little kid, and that kid never got the Love that

he or she wanted. And that kid, no matter how wonderful his or her parents were, got shamed and blamed and began to internalize all kinds of beliefs about himself or herself. And those beliefs continue to drive life at an unconscious level, affecting the person’s choice in career, affecting the person they decided to marry, affecting all the major decisions of life by bringing pain and bringing suffering. Because that little child feels, “I am not worthy of Love. There’s something wrong with me. There’s something deficient about me. Everybody else is doing great but I am not doing great. In fact I don’t even believe I have the right to breathe the air.”

Every one of us has a child like this. Either it’s conscious or it’s unconscious. If it’s unconscious, that child will drive all of our behavior



throughout our entire life and we will never wake up. If it’s conscious, then we will begin to get in touch with the wounded child within, and begin to heal that being within us. This is the most intimate part of ourselves.

Our relationship with this child is the most intimate place in consciousness. It’s even more intimate than any relationship we can have with another. And the truth of the matter is, we all know this place and we’re all deeply ashamed of this child and in deep judgment of this child. And that’s why we don’t want to go there.

But when we do go there, what we find is that we can feel compassion for him or her. We can understand how we became Mommy or Daddy who judged the child and whose judgments now have become

internalized within us so that now we judge the child. And we say, “You’re no good. You’re not worthy. You’ll never amount to anything. You have to do this to be loved. You have to do that to be loved.” Of course it’s all about conditional love. It has nothing to do with the child feeling Love without conditions.

So our ultimate responsibility is to learn to love that child within unconditionally, to make friends with that child. Because that child, to use A Course in Miracles language, is the root of the ego. It’s the root of the egoic experience. If you try to make the child go away or make the ego go away, no one will become the bringer of Love and there will be no

resurrection of the human being. The one who resurrects the child is each one of us. It’s not Jesus. It’s not Buddha. It’s you and me. Each one of us is the redeemer of that rejected child within.

The wounded child, as it is loved, as we re-parent that child and bring Love and acceptance and encouragement to that child, goes from being unredeemable to being the savior, to being the Christ child. This is the psychological process that each one of us is going through. It’s entirely experiential. I know people who have read the Course 20, 30, 40 times, but nothing has shifted in their relationship to their child. They are still fighting the ego like Don Quixote fighting windmills, trying to make the

Our ultimate responsibility is to learn to love that

child within unconditionally,


ego go away, trying to override their fear, and never coming into alignment with the part of themselves that is afraid or ashamed. And until that happens, nothing shifts.

So for 35 years that’s been my work, and that was my work when I was very much involved in the A Course in Miracles community.

Rev. Jennifer So if Love is the healer, and the Course tells us that all healing is at the level of the mind, and people…

Paul This is where words become problematic.

Rev. Jennifer Exactly, exactly.

Consciousness, Mind and Heart Paul Because what is the mind? The Course uses the word, “mind.” What we

have to understand is that a better choice of word is “consciousness.” Consciousness includes mind and emotions. Every thought we have, particularly the intense core beliefs that we have, that we’ve grown up with, every thought is energized by an emotion that runs very deep, so you can’t just change your mind.

There are many metaphysical teachings that have to do with, “Just change your thought. Change your reality.” Well, it’s not so easy to do because behind every thought is this whole trail of emotion that goes all the way back to childhood and maybe in utero, maybe even back to previous lifetimes. So it’s not so easy to just change a thought or change your mind. This is big work. This is not little work. “Okay, I’ll just change my mind, and everything will be fine.” It doesn’t work like that.

Rev. Jennifer So we take it into the heart, but the heart is not really located in the physical body. We’re not talking about the physical heart.

Paul Well the physical heart is in the approximate area of the Heart Chakra.

Rev. Jennifer Right.

Paul Which is the place within us where we can experience giving and receiving Love. So it’s an important location. If you breathe into the heart, if you allow your consciousness to move from the Third Eye Chakra to the heart, you will have a different experience because the Third Eye Chakra is all about trying to figure it out. It’s all about



thinking. It’s all about perception. But the heart is about being with, being present with Love.

Rev. Jennifer So it’s an energetic embodiment of Love.

Paul Love is a palpable energetic reality. Love is not an abstraction. Love is an energy that you can feel in your Heart Chakra. As you begin to do the kind of work that I am doing and that I have been teaching, what happens is, you begin to feel an energy in the heart. It gets stronger and stronger and stronger, and it begins to move throughout your body, into your hands and your feet, up into your crown, all over the place. It is the embodiment of Love.

Rev. Jennifer What I feel like what we’re both talking about here is that it’s an energetic embodiment because words are symbols, and we’re trying to be clear here so people can understand this: that it’s not necessarily the physical embodiment. It starts with this energetic embodiment.

Paul But you feel it in the body.

Rev. Jennifer Yes, you do because you feel the Heart Chakra, you feel all the chakra energy in the body, or so it seems that you do.

Paul Well you don’t have to exclude any aspect of experience so that there is a physical experience of it. There is an emotional experience of it. There is a mental experience of it and there is a spiritual experience. You’re experiencing it on all levels.

Rev. Jennifer And that’s what we’re going for.

Paul What’s nice about the physical experience is that it’s kind of a sign that your heart is really opening. The energy cannot come into a heart that is shut down. The energy cannot come into a mind that is closed, so when you are in a place of open heart, open mind, then the energy can come in and can support you in your journey.

It’s not so easy to just change a

thought or change your mind. This is big

work.


Rev. Jennifer So part of what I’m hearing you say is, this practice is what the Course says: “that little willingness.”

Paul Yeah, that’s one of the great lines from A Course in Miracles—“little willingness,” because without your willingness, nothing can happen. And a lot of people say, “No” to this and “No” to that, and there’s a time to say, “No,” particularly if you’re experiencing abuse or something. It’s not until you get to the point where you can say, “Yes” to Love.

Rev. Jennifer You’ve been working with this so intimately for decades and you are one of the most appreciated and beloved teachers of this work of compassion and Love and forgiveness and heart-opening and embodiment. I could make easily a list of people that are very highly esteemed. Teachers themselves who just love and adore you and I love what Larry Dossey said about you being… Larry Dossey said that you’re like our generation’s Kahlil Gabran and that you have this amazing ability to translate things for us, to help us feel it and see it and know it and sense it with the whole of our being.

Let me ask you, Paul, because that’s something we’re all moving toward and opening to. How did it begin for you? How did your spiritual awakening begin? How did you get where you are?

Paul’s Journey Paul Well my journey began where I believe most journeys begin, which is

coming to terms with my pain and learning to find the source of my pain and to discover what would work to take me out of my pain, or at least help me move… I don’t want to say take me out of—but to help me move through my pain to a place of peace, a place of self-acceptance, self-actualization. And my journey began very early in life when I began asking these questions. And it’s continued throughout my life, and everyday there are challenges and everyday there is something to learn. But my commitment to the journey was made very early on because I didn’t want to be in pain anymore. Pain is the great motivator. It’s the wake-up call.

Rev. Jennifer Yes, it is. So we need to be grateful if we’re suffering that we have a strong motivation to move out of…



Paul Understand. Don’t be ashamed of your pain, because pain is the messenger. Pain is the one that comes and knocks on the door and says, “Time for a change.”

Rev. Jennifer There must be a better way.

Paul There must be a better way. There is a better way.

Rev. Jennifer For sure. Now did you begin this…?

Paul Can I just say one other thing?

Rev. Jennifer Yes.

Paul The better way is not an external thing. It’s not something you’re going to find outside of yourself. It is in coming to a new relationship with yourself, being more honest with yourself, to look at aspects of yourself that you’ve never looked at before. That’s where the journey takes you. It’s a journey within. It’s not a journey outside.

Rev. Jennifer So it’s not in a book.

Paul It’s not in a book. I mean there may be helpful clues in the books that help you to go within, but it’s not about looking outside of yourself. It’s about establishing a Love relationship with yourself. That is what real happiness is. Real happiness is a loving relationship with yourself. Once you have that, those are the keys to the kingdom, you know? Jesus said, “Seek ye the kingdom first and everything else will be added.” So once you have a loving relationship with yourself, then everything else comes into place. You can have a loving relationship with your partner. You can have fulfilling work. You can discover your life purpose. You can become self-actualized. All of it, though, begins with cultivating a loving relationship with yourself. That is the place of beginning. There is no other place to begin.

Real happiness is a loving

relationship with yourself. Once you

have a loving relationship with

yourself, then everything else

comes into place.


Rev. Jennifer So when you began and you said your pain was your motivator, can you tell us how low did you go? What were you feeling at that time that pushed you?

Paul Well, when I was 13 years old, my cousin died of leukemia. She was someone I felt very close to. I had not been told by my parents or her parents that she was even sick. I was protected from that whole

experience, and one day she was there and the next day she was dead, and I was pissed at God. And I went and I had a talk with God and I said, “How could you let this happen?” It’s nothing different from what happened in your life or other people’s lives, you know? The big questions come up. Why does this happen? Why are people persecuted? Why are people abused? Why do all these things happen if there’s a loving God? You know?

So that begins the journey. Why? And then of course we want to make it be about something external because we think God is out there. But in time, as we really begin the process of seriously looking at our own consciousness, we realize that

God is not something out there. God is something inside. God is a connection we have with all that is and it’s an internal connection.

Rev. Jennifer So you were 13 and then—how did it unfold for you, this journey?

Paul My life is no different from anyone else’s life. I mean let me just talk about it as little as I can because this is not about me. My journey’s just like yours, just like anybody else’s. When I work with my students, I don’t put myself on a pedestal. I’m learning the same lessons that everybody else is learning. There’s nothing special about me. There’s really nothing really special about Jesus, although some people have a hard time believing that. But Jesus was just a human being who had pain and had struggle —just as Buddha did.

Both of these human beings began asking questions, “Why? Why does this happen? What is the way out of suffering?” And each one had to figure it out internally. And it’s no different from you and me. There’s nothing unique about my experience. All consciousness is challenged

God is something inside.

God is a connection we have with all that is and it’s an internal

connection.



by the exact same issues. So it’s just a question of whether we’re willing to make the commitment to learn to love ourselves. And if we have enough pain, then we get on our knees.

Rev. Jennifer And surrender.

Paul And when we get on our knees and we say, “Lord, please help.” That’s a little willingness.

Rev. Jennifer Yes, it is.

Commitment and Patience Paul That’s where it begins and then it’s a journey. It does not just happen.

People are so impatient, you know? We live in a time in which everybody just wants to click and have instant gratification. People used to meditate in caves for 50 years in silence. We’re not apt to do that, but we’re not going to get it in five seconds.

This is a commitment to a practice, to a spiritual practice, day in and day out, hour by hour. The fruits come as you practice. There’s just no way around it. Everybody wants to skip over the practice, skip over the emotional healing work. If you try to do that, you’re going to come up empty. You’re going to have the same pain in your life that you had before.

There’s no magic bullet. What you’re cultivating is a loving relationship with yourself.

Self-Love, with Honesty, is the Door Paul The truth of the matter is, we hate ourselves and we condemn

ourselves. We crucify ourselves on the cross of perfection every single day. Our self-hatred is just unfathomable. So to have a loving relationship with ourselves, that’s quite a challenging proposition. There is nobody we hate and judge in the way we hate and judge ourselves. That’s the truth. A Course in Miracles students don’t talk about that, but that’s the truth.

I remember the very first time I began teaching A Course in Miracles. And I had a co-facilitator. She would come in… She was a lovely


woman, but you know, she was really in her head with the work the way most people are. And she’d come in and she’d say, “Oh, I had 14 miracles this week and I had this one and that one.” She’d rattle them off. And I would look around the room and everybody’s face would be pointed at the floor and I could tell people were going like, “I didn’t have any miracles this week. There must be something wrong with me.” Everybody was feeling shame, you know?

Rev. Jennifer Right.

Paul So I went into the next meeting and I said, “I had a shitty week. I yelled at my kids. I yelled at my wife. I got in traffic and I screamed, and I did this and I did that, and everything that went wrong, went wrong.” And I looked around the room and everybody was looking right at me, right in the eyes, nodding their heads and smiling because that’s what our lives are like, but nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants to talk about what life really is. Nobody wants to say life is suffering. Buddha did. Jesus did. A Course in Miracles students don’t want to say that.

It’s time that we begin to be honest about our experience, first to ourselves and then to others. We hate ourselves. We condemn ourselves. We do not have a loving relationship with ourselves. If we did, our entire lives would shift.

Rev. Jennifer Is it possible for us to have the awakened, enlightened awareness that we’re seeking if we don’t love ourselves?

Paul No.

Rev. Jennifer Is it possible?

Paul No.

Rev. Jennifer It’s the number-one doorway we have to go through, don’t you think?

Paul It’s the only doorway.

Rev. Jennifer Everything unfolds from that.

Paul That’s right. That is what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the door.” He wasn’t talking about Him as a unique being. He was talking about the experience. That’s the doorway. Each one of us has to go through that doorway individually. Nobody else can bring us through, and it starts with the willingness.



But there’s an honesty that we have to have about our lives. There’s a willingness to talk about our fears and our shame and what’s going on and how we judge ourselves, to begin to have that real spiritual conversation which is about our pain. And then, as we have that conversation, it’s easier for us to walk through our shame because we know that we’re not the only ones who have these issues.

Every single one of our brothers and sisters has these issues, and we can support each other in moving through shame and blame. Now we can go home and say, “Well, maybe it is possible that I could ease up on myself a bit.” We’re not going to ease up on others until we learn to ease up on ourselves.

Rev. Jennifer Yes.

Paul It’s just the flip side of the coin. We treat others exactly as we treat ourselves. You can’t love others and not love yourself. And if you don’t love yourself, you won’t love others, even if you have a wonderful

spiritual mask and you’re running around feeding the hungry and doing all the right things.

How could Jesus be with the lepers? How could Jesus be with those who are unfortunate? He had to be with that part of himself in order to be with them! We all have to be with that part of ourselves before we can show up for anybody else. If we never met our own wounded kid, how are we supposed to be meeting the wounded children in others? We might not think they’re out there but if you get in relationship with somebody, within a couple of days you’re going to find out there’s a wounded child there.

Why is relationship so hard for us? It’s because beneath the spiritual mask there are two wounded kids that don’t feel Love and who project all their pain, all their shame, all their judgments on each other and attack and defend. And that is why A Course in Miracles was written. It was to help us deal with that reality.

We’re not going to ease up on others until we learn to ease

up on ourselves.


The Holy Spirit and Core Self Rev. Jennifer In your spiritual walk of loving yourself, how does the Holy Spirit play

into it?

Paul It’s just a word. It’s just a word. You know, I guess people have so many different words for God. I like to use different words. I use the word “The core self,” and what I say is that in each of us there is a core self that is a being who’s innocent, a being who is one with God. We’re its source. A being that is perfect just the way it is and doesn’t need to be fixed and doesn’t need to fix anyone else. A being who is in absolute bliss and absolute acceptance of everything within each one of us.

We don’t see that being. We don’t feel that being. We don’t encounter that being because the only way we can see and encounter that being is to look with Love. And until we learn to love and bless and redeem the wounded child, we cannot see the Christ child within. We cannot encounter the core self. The shining being we are in our essence, we cannot encounter that until we learn to love all aspects of ourselves. So Holy Spirit is another word. I’m looking for an interior location for spirit. And that interior location is very deep, deeper than the schism, deeper than the duality of life and we have to heal that duality. We have to move through that pain to encounter the shining being within who is innocent.

Rev. Jennifer Isn’t that core self the kingdom?

Paul That’s the kingdom of heaven, or that’s the doorway to the kingdom of heaven. Let’s put it that way.

Rev. Jennifer To me that’s the Holy Spirit.

Paul Okay, then it’s the Holy Spirit.

Rev. Jennifer It’s because there’s unity. There is no separation.

Paul Yeah. You know, people use the word “Holy Spirit” and I often get the impression that they don’t mean that it may be the opposite of the ego. And I’m not talking about the opposite of the ego. I’m not talking about something that is in the dualistic structure of life. I’m talking about something that is prior to any dualism, any dualism in language or experience.



Rev. Jennifer So it’s not about having a codependent relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Paul No. It’s not about trying to get rid of anything inside of you. It’s about embracing all of it.

Rev. Jennifer Yes.

Paul Including the shadow.

Rev. Jennifer Yes.

About the Shadow Paul A lot of people are running around saying, “I don’t have a shadow. I’m

a child of God.” You are a child of God, but you have a shadow. Your shadow is standing right in the way of your being able to really deeply experience the God within. If you never learned to love that shadow, to embrace those parts of yourself, you’re not going to ever experience your innocence or the innocence of others. There is a whole piece of emotional and psychological healing that has to happen before we can move into these higher spiritual states of consciousness.

People want to take the rocket ship to heaven, you know? They buy their ticket and they want to go right through all this stuff and jump over the emotional healing so they take some kind of a ready-made pill. And they seem to leapfrog over the difficult times—and it might last for a week or a month or a year—but then it all falls apart.

Rev. Jennifer So resist not, deny not, be with what is coming up?

Paul Be with all of your experience. Be with all of who you are, even the parts of yourself you have trouble accepting, that you judge. Be aware of your own judgments of yourself and hold them compassionately. Don’t beat yourself up for having judgments or you will just be deepening the judgment. You’ve got to catch the judge somewhere. Wherever you catch it is fine. Don’t beat yourself up.

Then you’ve got it. Now you can say, “Look. See how I’m judging myself. I don’t have to do that. Let me ease up a little and not be so harsh on myself. Let me breathe and be with this. Let me see that behind this judgment of myself, there is fear rising up. There is


unworthiness rising. Let me be with the little child within who does not feel worthy and who’s really scared.”

If you are not going to be with that little child, who is? We are the bringers of Love to our own experience. No one else can do the job. No one else can bring that Love. We’d like our partners to, or our gurus to, or whatever. but it doesn’t work. Nobody else can bring that Love, only you can be the bringer of Love to your experience.

Rev. Jennifer So for people who are spiritual seekers and students, like the folks who are with us on the call… When these folks feel like they are wanting to put on a mask, when they are wanting to pretend that they are more spiritually evolved than they are, when they’re feeling inadequate as a spiritual being with their spiritual friends, how can they actually be transparent, vulnerable? How do they wrap their mind around shifting that behavior and moving out of a spiritual arrogance?

Paul There are parts of myself I feel ashamed of that I feel aren’t good enough.

First you have to acknowledge that for yourself and then you begin to connect with people in a more authentic way and to tell the truth. And then you find people who are also willing to engage in truth-telling and they become your spiritual community that can support you in moving forward. But these are not people who are living in denial or hiding behind masks. These are people who are willing to talk about their pain.

Rev. Jennifer How do you know if you’re talking about your pain excessively and you’re kind of stuck in it, feeling like a victim?

Paul Okay. Well, there is a process. I mean part of what I have been developing over the years is a roadmap to transformation so there are steps along the roadmap. And so the early steps have to do with

It starts by being willing to look

at the shadow, to be willing to

acknowledge that there are parts of me I don’t like very well.



acknowledging the shadow, taking off the mask, of being honest about what’s going on, telling the truth to others, supporting others in moving through their pain and their shame, creating a community of

equals. And then as you have that, you move to deeper levels of healing where you recognize your wounds, your Mommy wound, your Daddy wound. You recognize the core beliefs that you developed as a little child and that have been running your life. You recognize the reactive behavior patterns that come up when you’re in partnership and your buttons are pushed.

You begin to look at all that stuff, and there is always the tendency when you’re looking at that to feel that it’s overwhelming, to feel like the shadow is real. The shadow is the only thing that’s there. It’s like sometimes people just want to look at the light, and they won’t look at the shadow—and that doesn’t work.

But sometimes what happens is, they move into the shadow work. They think the shadow is the only thing that is there and they don’t see the light

behind the shadow. So a lot of what the community does is to hold the space of the light and the support so that as we go into looking at our wounds and our beliefs and reactive behavior patterns, we look with Love, not with judgment. And as we look with Love, healing begins to happen.

The sign that healing has begun to happen is that we move out of victim consciousness: we stop having excuses why we can’t grow up, why we can’t get a good job, why we can’t be in a good relationship. When we stop blaming everybody else we think screwed up our lives, when we come out of victim consciousness and we begin to come into our power, that’s how we know that healing has happened.

But for some folks, they get arrested in their pain. They get arrested in blaming other people. They get stuck in their story and they can’t move through it. That happens, but in our community and using the roadmap that we have, we see that that is a stage on the journey and

Be aware of your own judgments of yourself and hold

them compassionately.

Don’t beat yourself up for having

judgments or you will just be deepening the

judgment.


we can help facilitate people to move through that because we don’t want to get stuck in our pain. We don’t want to get stuck in our story. We don’t want to stay in victim consciousness and in codependence. We want to move into our power. We want to move into equal relationships. We want to move into our life purpose. We are all here with tremendous gifts to share with others, and we cannot do that if we are betraying ourselves, if we’re living in victim consciousness.

Taking Responsibility Rev. Jennifer What is the role of responsibility, taking responsibility for our feelings in

this process?

Paul It’s profound. I give people what I call the crash course in boundaries because part of what people have to learn to do is, they need to set limits with other people who want to tell them how to live their lives, whether they are parents or parental figures or gurus or whatever.

To help them understand how to set boundaries, I give them a crash course, which goes like this. Everything I think, feel, say, and do belongs to me. Everything you think, feel, say, and do belongs to you. So if you say, “White people are stupid,” that belongs to you. If you say, “I hate you,” the hate belongs to you. Whatever your experience is, it belongs to you. You can’t make it be my experience and I cannot make my experience be yours.

The problem in interpersonal relationships is that we’re always trying to make somebody else responsible for our experience or they’re trying to make us be responsible for theirs. So clear boundaries are really important.

My responsibility is to own my experience and to forgive myself when I make a mistake, to make amends with others I may have hurt. My responsibility is to tell the truth and not pretend. My responsibility is to admit my mistakes, but I don’t have the responsibility for you or anyone else, nor do you have the responsibility for me.

So understanding where our responsibility lies is critical because there are many people who are caretakers, and that’s the role. It’s wound-driven. It’s based on things that happened in their childhood and based



on a core belief that they have to take care of others in order to be loved. And caretakers are wanting to be responsible for somebody else’s experience because they believe that if they’re not, they won’t be loved. Well, this is completely against the crash course in boundaries because they are not ultimately responsible for anybody else’s experience, and they are not here to take care of anybody else. They are here to take care of themselves and to be responsible for the choices they make, and to learn from their mistakes, and to forgive themselves for their mistakes.

And as long as we are taking appropriate responsibility, then we move forward into our empowerment, and we move out of codependent behavior, and we stop giving our power away to others or taking, misappropriating the power of others and trying to make decisions for others and doing for them what they need to do for themselves.

There is a huge morass here in lack of boundaries and trying to make other people be responsible for our choices or vice versa or feeling responsible for somebody else’s choices, whether they are our children, our friends or our partners, or whoever.

Rev. Jennifer Another aspect of that, which I see with many spiritual seekers—and this was a big challenge for me as well—is I realized one day I had become dysfunctionally compassionate. I was so compassionate that I was dysfunctional. I didn’t have clear boundaries.

Paul Yes.

Rev. Jennifer And for a lot of spiritual seekers, they can fall into that. The pendulum has swung to the place where they see that not holding themselves accountable and other people accountable can be… They’re trying to express compassion. They’re trying to express Love, but really what

I was so compassionate that I

was dysfunctional. I didn’t have clear

boundaries.


they’re doing on a certain level, they’re controlling and manipulating the flow of love, or trying to.

Paul The most compassionate thing that we can do with other people is to listen from our hearts, to support them in their growth, to love them unconditionally. And the least compassionate thing that we can do is to try to fix them, to try to go, “Oh, read this book. Go to this workshop. Oh, if you do this, then you’ll get better.” In other words, to think that we know what they need to do to wake up. That is the least compassionate thing we can do.

If we want to be compassionate, then we have to really look at this tendency that we have to try to fix others which comes from our own inadequacy, and refrain from trying to fix others and allowing others to have their experience and supporting them and knowing that they will figure it out. And it’s their responsibility to figure it out.

Rev. Jennifer So, I love this tool that you’ve given us about what’s yours is yours, what’s mine is mine. In working in relationship with somebody, when we’re developing the capacity to be compassionate, to not judge, and we want to have clear boundaries, how do we stand up for ourselves without hurting other people? If we’re changing and they’re used to us being a certain way, how do we handle that?

Paul I mean, it happens that sometimes in a relationship, one person begins to grow to greater freedom and responsibility and the other maybe does not. The thing is that it’s uncomfortable, but there are times in our relationships where we just have to let go and realize that the other person is choosing not to grow or is choosing to make different choices. We need to honor that they are free to make the choices that they want to make and we cannot, in any way, coerce them or push them in the direction that we want them to go in.

They’re trying to express Love, but

really what they’re doing on a certain

level, they’re controlling and

manipulating the flow of love, or trying to.



We are all free to choose. Sometimes we have to let go of people who aren’t going to make the choices that we feel are congruent with the choices that we need to make. And this is difficult.

Letting Go Rev. Jennifer Yes, and does that letting go include blocking someone? How do we let

go?

Paul I don’t know what you mean by blocking?

Rev. Jennifer Well, sometimes people will say, “I have to let go of this.” And then they won’t return calls, they won’t reach out.

Paul It means being honest. It means being very honest and saying what’s going on for us in a respectful way toward others, but being clear about what we need. It doesn’t mean cutting off the love. We have to love ourselves first, and if we give our power away to others, we won’t be able to love ourselves and we will become codependent. And we’ll look to that person to love us and fill the big hole inside of our hearts, and that never works.

Nobody else is going to take care of us. We have to be the ones who take care of ourselves. If we do that, then it’s not hard to be in a loving relationship. When both people are carrying their own weight, when both people are taking responsibility, when both people are involved in some kind of practice that keeps them in their heart and enables them to speak the truth to one another, it’s not that hard to be in relationship.

To be sure there are challenges that are going to come up every day because that’s the way life is, but it’s not so hard when people are carrying their own weight and taking responsibility. But as soon as either one of those people stops taking responsibility or stops doing their practice, then it becomes very difficult.

The Role of Relationships Rev. Jennifer So the kinds of fulfilling relationships—it could be friends, it could be

family, it could be coworkers, it could be romantic partnerships—those kinds of fulfilling relationships that you’re describing, don’t you think


that they’re part of “Seek first the kingdom and all else will be added unto you?”

Paul Absolutely. We all have to do our own work or we won’t even know how to set boundaries and limits in our relationships, healthy boundaries and limits. We have to start by doing our own work and oftentimes there will be people in our lives who are not going to follow suit. They’re not going to do their work so our capacity to be intimate with them will be greatly reduced. We may need to have some distance. It doesn’t mean we can’t continue to love them and support them from a distance, but we can’t afford to give our power away to others who do not see who we are or support us in being authentic.

Rev. Jennifer How does that work in the workplace? Can you give people some clear guidance about how they can transform in the workplace if, say, they have a boss that’s very overbearing?

Paul Again, we have to start by learning to love ourselves and value ourselves. So if we are doing the work, and this is a big if because this doesn’t work if you’re not doing the work.

If we are doing our work and our boss is extremely critical or devalues us, or does not treat us fairly or kindly, then we will stand up and we will say, “This doesn’t feel good to me. Either it will stop and you will take responsibility for stopping it, or I will not stay.”

Now if we are not doing our work, then we will be afraid to stand up for ourselves because we will be afraid we’re going to be fired, and we will allow ourselves to be manipulated and abused. Of course, that happens a lot. People don’t do their work. They don’t stand up for themselves. They allow themselves to be violated and then they hate the people that did it, not understanding that it is their responsibility to stand up for themselves.

Deep Healing Work, Minute by Minute, Day by Day Rev. Jennifer And by doing the work, you are really talking about honoring the core

self, doing that deep healing work, minute by minute, day by day.

Paul Yes, because life offers us profound opportunities to heal every day of our lives. We are offered profound opportunities to heal. I say to my



students, “We don’t give you a shovel when you come into our learning and teaching program. We know that life is going to bring everything up. You’re going to get triggered by life and everything that is not loving that’s in your consciousness is going to come up for healing. You don’t need a shovel. You don’t need to dig.”

When people first start doing the work with their judgments, they think, “Oh, well, I have a few judgments.” But as they begin observing their judgments and they say, “Oh, my God. I had 200 judgments in the last two hours.” So then they think, “Oh, I must really not be spiritual because, look at all these judgments I had!” Well actually, what they are doing is profoundly spiritual because now they are looking at themselves. They had those 200 judgments before, but they just weren’t looking at them. They weren’t aware of them.

We get to this place where we’re willing to look compassionately. We don’t beat ourselves up because there’s work for us to do. We realize that it’s not just us that has this work. It’s really that all of our brothers and sisters have the same work. We’re all doing the same stuff. We’re all learning how to love ourselves. We don’t know how to do it, but we’re learning.

Rev. Jennifer It really is one by one and sometimes when you can let go of one judgment what you really are doing is letting go of the 40,000 other judgments.

Paul You don’t have to let go and that is the other thing I would like people to understand. You don’t have to let go of your judgments. You can’t let go of them. That’s like going back to where we started, you know, trying to make the ego go away, trying to make your judgments go away. Try to make your judgments go away. They just get stronger. All you do is so simple. I mean, it’s hard to do. but it’s so profoundly simple what you’re being asked to do. It’s simply to be aware of the judgment,

We’re not trying to make the

fear go away, because if we try to

make the fear go away, we’re not

bringing Love.


hold it gently and don’t judge yourself and others for having a judgment. That’s it. You don’t have to let go of it. Just by holding it compassionately, the judgment does its number and fades and dissolves, and you’re not making anything happen. But what you’re doing is you’re bringing Love. What happens to fear when we bring Love?

Rev. Jennifer Love is the healer.

Paul Love is the healer. So we’re not trying to make the fear go away because if we try to make the fear go away, we’re not bringing Love. But if we bring Love, guess what happens?

Rev. Jennifer Yes, every time. It never fails.

Paul Yep that’s true.

Rev. Jennifer And we don’t know that unless we apply it.

Paul It’s all practice. It’s all practice. There’s just no shortcuts, you know. Everybody wants a shortcut, but there are no shortcuts.

Rev. Jennifer You can’t have an intellectual approach and have a healing.

Next Steps Rev. Jennifer Alright, so just winding up here, I am reminding everyone to make an

appointment for yourself. Bring a friend. Bring a journal and plan to listen to the recording. Oh, we’re so grateful for the good. And it’s my responsibility to remind everyone to make an appointment with yourself. Bring a friend. Listen to the recording again. You have 48 hours to listen to this call with Paul Ferrini and myself and then the homework call that’s coming up tomorrow. Make an appointment. Make a plan to re-listen to the calls at least once, because you really will get more out of it, and bring your journal along. Write down your aha’s. We’ve gotten some really good insights.

The thing that makes the difference is when we apply it. So give yourself that opportunity. And if you feel stressed at all about our 48-hour schedule, just relax. You can always purchase the downloads. And if you do, you also have the option to purchase the transcripts. We have a great package for that. And the transcript packages, the downloads, the multiple listenings, all these programs are really not expensive at all. It’s



just a few dollars for each call when you do the math to buy the package. You’ll get a bunch of bonuses you can listen to as well. Remember you get the free CD from Colin Tipping if you purchase the packages. And Paul Ferrini is giving us a wonderful thing and all of that is going to be posted on the website, all the details at LivingACourseInMiracles.com. So give yourself the opportunity to get all this good stuff from these recordings, from these classes. It’s you partnering up with your own holiness. That’s the gift you’re giving yourself.

These teachings are profound. They’re healing. They’re nourishing if you apply them in your life. If you don’t apply them in your life then it’s just a conversation that somebody had and you listened to. That’s all that it is. So please apply the teachings. Make the appointment to listen and re-listen and apply the teachings to your life. It was an honor and a pleasure, Paul.

Paul Well, thank you for all that you’re doing and for pulling this all together. I’m sure that this is going to really open up a lot for whoever is listening to the calls.

Rev. Jennifer That’s my strong intention and also my strong intention is to assist more people in finding the teacher that can help them access their inner teacher.

Paul Yeah, that’s great. Wonderful.

Rev. Jennifer Yeah, and I’m really hoping that many thousands of people will be inspired to come and check out your website and learn more about how they can work with you.

www.PaulFerrini.com

Closing Prayer Rev. Jennifer Let’s all put our hands on our hearts right now and be so grateful and so

thankful for this blessing that we’ve received, the insight, the wisdom, the clarity that’s gone right to our heart. We’re consciously becoming heart/mind congruent right now. We’re opening ourselves to fully absorb the blessing. We are united, with the One, One with each other. We are so grateful and thankful to share the benefits of our deep


healing, our profound expansion. We are opening ourselves to self-love and sharing the benefits of it with the whole world, with all humanity because we’re One, always One, eternally One in line with the infinite. So grateful and thankful are we. We receive our blessings fully, to the core. In grace and gratitude, we joyfully let it be. And so it is. Amen. Amen, Amen. Thank you, Paul. Thank you so much.

Paul Thank you.

Documents

Living A Course in Miracles - members.jenniferhadley.com · 9/7/2011 · With Paul Ferrini and Reverend Jennifer Hadley . Thursday, June 9, 2011 . Opening Prayer Rev. Jennifer We