living a course in miracles - members.jenniferhadley.com … · 11/9/2011 · living a course in...

LLiivviinngg AA CCoouurrssee iinn MMiirraacclleess Week 6 Class

Lasting Love for Couples With Lucia Espinosa and

Reverend Jennifer Hadley

Lasting Love for Couples ............................................................................................. 4

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

Why We Care about Relationships ................................................................................ 4

No Relationship is ever Over because We’re Eternal. .................................................... 6

About the Holy Instant .................................................................................................. 7

Casual and Sustained Relationships .............................................................................. 9

Lifelong Relationship ................................................................................................... 10

Relationship as Spiritual Practice ................................................................................ 11

A Relationship is a School ........................................................................................... 12

Five Specific Blocks to Love .......................................................................................... 14

When the World seems to Fight Back .......................................................................... 15

Block 1: Wanting Someone to be what You Need ....................................................... 17

Your Ideas Never Leave You ....................................................................................... 18

You don’t Need Someone to Make you Happy ............................................................ 21

Block 2: Judgment ....................................................................................................... 23

Your Partner is your Mirror, Your Teacher ................................................................ 26

Block 3: The Need to be Right ...................................................................................... 28

Block 4: “Course-ing” Each Other ................................................................................ 29

Block 5: Careless Words and Actions .......................................................................... 30

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

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

Living A Course in Miracles

4 Lasting Love for Couples

Week 6

LLaassttiinngg LLoovvee ffoorr CCoouupplleess CCllaassss With Lucia Espinosa and Reverend Jennifer Hadley

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Opening Prayer Rev. Jennifer I invite everyone to put their hand on their heart and take a breath of

gratitude with me as I bless our class and invoke the Higher Holy Spirit Self. We are so grateful and thankful right now to open our hearts and minds to Love, to a new understanding of Love, a new understanding of relationship. We are so grateful and thankful right now to dedicate ourselves to the listening. We invoke the Holy Spirit to guide us so that we hear exactly what can benefit us so that we are a healing presence in our own life, in our family, in our friendships, in our community, in our workplace. Each one of us is dedicating ourselves to being our true self, awake in love. In grace and gratitude, we share the benefits of our healing and our expansion with everyone because we’re one with them. We joyfully let it be. And so it is. Amen, Amen, Amen.

Why We Care about Relationships Rev. Jennifer I don’t know about you, Lucia, but I find that relationship is one of the

main topics everyone wants to hear about over and over again. You are helping us to focus on making our relationships be so prosperous and so beautiful that they last in Love. I know this is something that you know a lot about. Where do we begin? And by that, I want to ask you: What are the benefits that people are going to receive if they apply what you’re talking about, what you’re sharing with us? What are the benefits of this class?

Lucia First of all, hello again. I thank you for inviting me to participate in this class. I think it is a tremendous opportunity for all of us to join in

With Lucia Espinosa and Reverend Jennifer Hadley 5

thought and understanding, and learn together, because that’s what we do always. We always teach and we always learn. Probably the most important thing that we can learn by learning how to create relationships this way and maintain them is that our life can actually become a different experience. So we can actually learn to live life another way by making our relationships more peaceful and more beneficial, not just for ourselves but to everyone that we meet so we actually become a blessing to everyone that we meet, that we work with, that we live with, that we love with. It’s all about finding true peace in relationship.

Rev. Jennifer And that really is possible. People sometimes don’t believe it but I absolutely know that it’s possible because I’ve gone there myself and relationships that I never thought that I could have peace and harmony and true forgiveness in, I have experienced complete and miraculous healing. So I know that it’s possible and I want to encourage everyone to go for it. So where do we start?

Lucia Absolutely. Here’s the thing. You cannot have a relationship of one, right? By the definition itself, the word “relationship” is “to relate,” and

we are always relating. We’re always relating either to the world as we perceive it or even within ourselves, to ourselves. And actually we are not really relating to anyone out there. Everyone that we relate to, we carry within, and so we’re going to be talking today about how to build long-lasting relationships—and I’ve got news for you. You already have them! Every person that you meet, once you have an image of them in your mind, it has an effect. When you meet them for the first time, whether it’s the moment that you’re born or at points throughout your life, once you meet with that one unique person—or it could be not just a person; it can be another being of any kind—once you meet this other being, you are always going to know them. They’re always going to be with you.

So relationships by default are long-lasting. One of the things that is very good to learn from the get-go is that you cannot

Relationships that I never thought

that I could have peace and harmony

and true forgiveness in, I have

experienced complete and

miraculous healing.



get away from a relationship. You might as well make it beautiful because it’s with you forever. Once it’s entered your mind, it’s with you forever. And we’ll talk about all that, but that’s basically the core. It’s that to create long-lasting relationships, all you have to know is that they’re already there because they already are with you. So the point now is to make them loving, and to make them peaceful, and to make them beneficial.

No Relationship is ever Over because We’re Eternal Rev. Jennifer You know, what I hear in that too is, one of the things over the years,

many, many times people have come to me deeply upset because they think a relationship is over. What I’m hearing you remind us of is, no relationship is over because we’re eternal, we’re infinite.

Lucia Exactly. In fact, one way that I was considering starting this, and now we’re getting into it, I’d like to maybe go there: It’s the definition of the Course for relationships, right? A Course in Miracles defines “relationship” as “a teaching, learning situation,” and he calls relationships teaching, learning situations which involve a different relationship at the beginning—although the ultimate goal is always the same—to make of the relationship a holy relationship. So no matter how a relationship starts, the ultimate goal, in which both can look upon the Son of God as sinless, basically the ultimate goal of every relationship is that you end up looking at each other as completely innocent, completely sinless, completely worthy. In that situation, it doesn’t matter how a relationship starts; with that being the ultimate goal, it cannot help but end that way.

Because of that, every relationship that you start is never going to end because the end only comes when you join with them completely. And that’s not an end. That’s just a beginning of eternity which is our home. It’s our goal.

Rev. Jennifer So how many people actually hold that goal in their mind, even A Course in Miracles students?

Lucia Not many. Again to the practical side of things, right, as A Course in Miracles students all know, they just sound really beautiful, especially when we read them. We read them, and they tend to transport us places


sometimes far away. We feel transported; it sometimes even can feel like an out-of-body experience when we’re studying the Course, or reading the Course, or even listening to it ,or even thinking about it sometimes, something you’ve read a few times. And when you turn around the corner, the door opens, the phone rings, a person walks in—and out the window go all the beautiful platitudes and rhetoric, or what would seem like rhetoric because it’s very hard to think of specific ways to apply it.

The Course actually gives us a lot of that too. And one of the things it talks about is the fact that those relationships—basically every relationship—are teaching and learning relationships. But you have different kinds throughout your day and throughout your life. You have the casual encounter, which is the person you just happen to bump into, maybe the clerk at the store. The Course talks about the little child that bumps into you and at that moment you can scold them and be very angry at them or you can forgive them, smile at them, and let them know that it’s okay and there was no damage done, which means that you can make that a holy instant or not. That was a very short relationship that lasted a few seconds, but that person will walk away in peace and therefore it has been blessed.

About the Holy Instant Rev. Jennifer I just want to interrupt you for one second. Forgive me, because not

everyone listening to the call is versed in A Course in Miracles so one of the great things about this class is that there are a lot of people who are new to the Course who are tuning in for the first time, just getting inspired to study it. So when you say “the holy instant,” there are a lot of people who have no idea of what you mean.

Lucia Got you. Well, let’s be a little more specific.

Rev. Jennifer It’s because I love that. You bump into somebody going in and out the door.

Lucia Yeah. Let’s say you go to the store, and the clerk, and either you or she or he is having a bad day. Or something happened as you’re going through the counter and you’re going to the grocery store; as you go through the checkout counter, the milk spills right there as you’re trying to pay for your groceries, and it becomes a mess. That’s a very



short, casual encounter. You can get very angry. Blame the person. Cuss at them. Walk out without paying your bill. It’s a similar situation with a server at a restaurant, who maybe makes a mistake, brings you the wrong food. You could get angry at them, not tip them, make their evening kind of very unhappy.

Those are all casual encounters. So casual encounters are moments when you meet a person for a very short period of time and you may—or may never—see them again in your life. Imagine all the people that you’ve bumped into since you were born, and you wouldn’t be able to count them because there are thousands. You just don’t realize it, but every one of those has been a casual encounter. Every one of those has been a moment when you met someone.

Maybe you even looked at them eye to eye. What the Course means by “holy relationship” is a relationship in which there is no judgment when you look at that person. There’s no condemnation in you when you look at that person and when you’re with that person. And there’s more of an acceptance and openness, and a kind of a silent acceptance of that person just as they are without judgment, without preconceptions, without getting carried away with whatever is happening at that moment and then using that against them or judging them.

So when you’re able to just see a person simply as they are and meeting them without judgment, that becomes a Holy Instant. It becomes a moment out of time because you really step out of the everyday grind here. And you reach a high level in your mind where you join that person, and that’s what makes it holy. Holy really comes from whole. And you become whole again as you join again with your other

When you’re able to see a person

simply as they are and meeting them without judgment,

that becomes a Holy Instant.


because you and the other person are really two parts of one being, two parts of one great being.

When you do something that insults or judges the other person, you separate. And when you drop the judgments, you join. So that is what is meant by holy. It’s to find yourself in that person, to recover a piece of yourself at that moment.

Rev. Jennifer Beautiful.

Casual and Sustained Relationships Lucia And there are two more types of relationships. So you have those that

are very casual, ephemeral. They’re people you bump into, people you meet for a day, or who you ride the bus with, the clerk at the store, the server at the restaurant, anybody that you meet for just a few minutes, a few moments, even a few days. Maybe you share a spiritual retreat with some people and you never see them again in your life.

Then you have another kind of relationship, which is called a sustained relationship. And a sustained relationship—we don’t have to use these technical words, but basically it’s a relationship that’s temporal. It may last longer than just a few moments or days. It could be a friendship, a working relationship. You go work for a company. You work with somebody for a few months or years. You change jobs and you never see them again.

How many of us have never seen again our schoolmates from our elementary school, from high school, from college? Right? Yet we shared so many moments with them, and for a moment there when we were with them, it seemed like we were going to be together forever. And all of a sudden, whatever brought us together there ended, whether it was the college experience or the high school experience or the elementary school experience, and we never see them again.

But they’re always with us. They’re always in our hearts and in our minds. But from a physical perspective in the world, they are simply another type of relationship that’s temporal.



Lifelong Relationship Lucia And then there’s the what the Course calls—and we could also call—a

lifelong relationship. And those are the ones that become more teaching for us, although every one of them is a teaching/learning relationship. With the lifelong relationship, it gets a lot easier to turn it into a tool for you to reach a moment that we call enlightenment. I don’t mean like becoming like-a-Buddha enlightened. I mean like lighter weight, lightened, and lightened in your burdens, lightened in your lack of peace.

So the lifelong relationship is a way to get there because you have all this time span that you spend with this person or persons. For the most part, this kind of relationship relates to filial or familial relationships, your parents, your siblings, but also your partner, your romantic partner, the person that you choose to spend your life with, your spouse, your significant other. These relationships may start one day. Maybe you’ll meet one day—and then they go on forever, even if you happen to split up at some point.

Always, again—no matter what kind of relationship it is and how it started—it always ends up being a forever relationship. But because of the nature of this relationship and the fact that there’s so much basically joint living, a lot of sharing day to day that you don’t do typically with other people, then it becomes an even more practical school for you to achieve the ultimate goal of having a peaceful, happier life because you can use this relationship as a tool for your learning.

We’ll talk a little about that in more detail. So basically there’s all these different categories of relationships. So the one that we want to focus on today is the lifelong relationship, and how to make it meaningful instead of somewhere you’re obligated to be. Maybe you happen to sign

No matter what kind of relationship it is or how it started—it always ends up being

a forever relationship.


a piece of paper; or you happen to have said a few words, and now you’re committed, and you may be unhappy in it, and you don’t know how to turn things around. Or, you may have just met and you’re apprehensive and fearful because you don’t know where it’s going to lead. You don’t know if it’s going to work out. Or you’re together and you’re perfectly happy. You just want to make sure that it lasts, that it stays, and you want to learn more.

All of these things we can talk about over the next hour or so. It’s how to do that, how to make it a positive learning experience.

Relationship as Spiritual Practice Rev. Jennifer I love what you’re saying, Lucia, and part of what I love is the reminder

to people that the relationship is really a valuable tool to us in our expanding awareness, in our opening our hearts and minds, and becoming congruent in our hearts and minds for Love. That’s because so often I hear spiritual seekers talking about the demands of their relationship getting in the way of their spiritual practice.

So what we can do is begin to see our relationship as part of our spiritual practice, that our spiritual practice doesn’t have a beginning and an end. It’s not a set time of the day although we can certainly say, “Okay, this is my time for studying, meditation, prayer, etcetera,” but to really look at the relationship challenges and opportunities as part of our spiritual practice. It’s a real tool.

Lucia Exactly. And it’s not about being something that we’re not or trying to reach a certain level of attitude with this person, but more about how to manage a relationship from day to day and how to manage yourself in that relationship so that rather than that relationship just being there you’re actually growing with this person or through this relationship.

Maybe you’re doing the growing and they’re not and maybe you’re both growing. Maybe they’re growing and you’re not or maybe you’re both not growing. But really it’s all about you. The relationship really is controlled by you. What happens in the relationship is determined by you.



There’s a very famous author, and she’s a great, great inspiring author whom I admire very much, Byron Katie. She says that you really only need one in the relationship because that’s really all there is. And that’s exactly also what the Course says. There are many, many teachings that tell you that. One is all there is and all it takes.

And Byron Katie says that, for example, defense is the first act of war. So it’s really…the complete control of the relationship is in your hands if you follow certain steps, if you really learn to observe yourself and put into practice some principles that will help you nurture and help this relationship grow. All right?

So there are basically five things that I wanted to focus on tonight because we have an hour and there are so many things that you mentioned, Jennifer, that we could be talking about in relationships. We could talk all night, basically.

Rev. Jennifer Right.

A Relationship is a School Lucia We love to talk about it and there’s so much to be said. So how do we

bring it to a few concrete steps and things that we can do with which we can take action right now? And maybe…we can look at our relationship right now and make a change right now if it needs to be made, especially if things aren’t going kosher, if things aren’t going great. This is a good time to look at things.

Let me just run through the basic five points very quickly and then we’ll review them slowly. Basically I kind of condensed our talk today into five areas or five different topics. And it’s really as if they’re blocks. This teaching—and maybe you’ve never studied A Course in Miracles, you’ve never heard of it so it doesn’t have to be A Course in Miracles—but basically any teaching, any training that you undertake for the most part is not about being what you’re not yet.

That’s the goal. It’s to become. You take a class in health for example to become a nurse. You don’t have to be a nurse when you start taking the class. That’s why you’re taking it, right? When you’re going to be a doctor, you’re not a doctor yet. You have to go through the schooling to


become a doctor. It’s the same thing. A relationship is a school that’s going to lead you to be awakened, more aware, more peaceful, kinder, a gentler human being on this Earth while you’re having this experience.

Then you can extend even beyond, because the purpose of this is for us to overcome the blocks, and discover that eternal presence that is our true reality, our true nature which, by the way, we never left.

Rev. Jennifer But you truly have to be interested in that. You have to be interested in discovering that peace. You have to be cultivating your willingness all the time in order to be able to use the relationship as that vehicle for your expanding awareness, your enlightenment.

Lucia But we’re human. You’re entitled to your days off, okay? If you fall off the wagon, just jump back on. Don’t feel bad. If one day you blow up and have an explosion and you have a huge fight with your partner, or your significant other, and things just don’t go right, get right back on

it. And we’ll talk about all these different things that we can do. Let’s go quickly over the five.

This is about becoming. We’re arriving someplace, reaching a goal. And to do that, there may be some things that are blocking us from that goal, that are impeding our way. The goal is actually here because our nature, our true nature is to be Love. That’s what we are. And that is hidden under many layers simply because being or knowing that you’re true Love is a very scary proposition to any human being, the reason being that Love is all encompassing. True Love is very open so it scares us to lose our separate identity. We’re very attached to being separate people, to being individuals.

Love itself, by itself, is a powerful force and it’s also an all-embracing, all-encompassing force. Every human being has that natural fear of being lost, of

losing their individuality if they give themselves to Love completely. And we kind of try to do things to avoid that total commitment out of

You have to be cultivating your

willingness all the time in order to be

able to use the relationship as that

vehicle for your expanding

awareness, your enlightenment.



fear. When we lose the fear, we can jump into it with both feet and it is a wonderful, wonderful experience.

What keeps us from getting there are these blocks, right? So the purpose of this school is to learn to remove the blocks to the awareness of Love’s presence because Love is always present. Love is what you are. It is who you are, but we don’t see it because we’ve placed all these blocks in front of it to keep us from seeing it.

Five Specific Blocks to Love Lucia In relationship, there are a few very specific blocks that we rely on to

make the relationship something other than what it should be. I’ve kind of identified five specific blocks. This is something like when Moses was in the desert and he found that burning bush and he was basically called upon, right? And he said, “Why me? I was a slave owner, right? They’re not going to believe me. I was one of them. Why should I go defend the people I used to attack?”

Sometimes, you can be the most unlikely emissary, the most unlikely messenger to a message, and that’s actually a blessing because I consider myself blessed by having had the experiences I’ve had. I’ve actually learned in my own flesh to have terrible, terrible relationships and then to be blessed to have the most wonderful, beautiful, enlightened relationships.

Lucia To have that contrast in your life is a huge learning and enables you to share that with others. So that is where I identify these blocks. You can pretty much group them into five. And one of them is wanting that person to be what you need them to be for you. So we’ll get into that but that’s the number one block. It’s, “I need you to be what I need you to be.” That’s the point. I need you to be something for me right now.

And we are always holding our other person, our significant other, to hold a place in our lives to fulfill a role, to deliver, and this comes from a deeply rooted problem that we’ll talk about. So that is one of the first issues.

The second one is judgment and we’ll also review that in more detail. The third one—and this one always gets relationships really, really


hard—and it’s being right, our stubbornness to be right, and to know everything, and to not be willing to be wrong at some points.

The other one is basically…and this is more for Course students, but we call it coursing. And if you’re not a Course student you can actually use something to relate. It’s basically to expect the other person to live life the way you see it and to use whatever your philosophy is to define the relationship. So we’ll get into that.

And then the last one is basically respect: it’s about careless words and careless actions and letting those permeate the relationship. That’s something that you should say, “No” to from the beginning. And if it’s already there, then it needs to be plucked out. It’s something that, in the remodeling that your relationship is going to undergo in this process, needs to be taken out. It’s just like taking out a bad window when you’re remodeling a home. Taking out careless words is very, very important.

We’ll get into all of that but those are kind of the five key points that I wanted to review tonight with everyone, and then we can talk about those in more detail.

Rev. Jennifer That’s great, because so many people have said what they most appreciate about this Living a Course in Miracles tele-class is the simple, practical tools that they can apply every day to their life, that they’re really using them to change their life, and they’re seeing miracles. So I can already tell that what you’re giving us is going to be gold for each one of us.

When the World seems to Fight Back Lucia And I tell you that I’ve used it, and I have to use it every day because,

just because you’re on a path or on a process doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. Au contraire. Everything sometimes tends to become imperfect because sometimes it becomes like a test and it’s just the way the world works, because the world doesn’t want to be undone.

It tends to fight back and it likes to be the way it is, and when you tend to shake things up, sometimes it just doesn’t like it. And until it gets it



and it gets the message that this is how we’re going to live our lives from now on, by golly, and until it gets it, it’s going to fight you back.

There will be moments and days when you don’t feel like doing it and you feel like you’re failing. And that’s okay. It’s part of the process ,and you’re going to grow with it whether you fail one day or now. One thing to remember also, particularly in this process, is that no one, no one is keeping account. No one is keeping track of your progress. No one is measuring your spiritual level. No one is watching over your shoulder. There’s no ultimate judge. The only judge in your life is you.

The only thing that is looking over your shoulder is Love. That’s all there is. That’s the only reality there is. Everything else we kind of make up because of our fear of it. To get a little more practical, why don’t we begin talking about the first block in relationships?

It just so happens that you meet a person. Let’s just talk about the relationship, the romantic relationship tonight, just to have a specific example. Although, again, this can apply to any relationship. But let’s say that you meet a person and you start dating, and pretty soon you are pretty committed, right, because you like so much of them and they like so much of you that you want to spend the rest of your lives together, or at least move in together.

It depends on how committed you want to be. But let’s say you do that, and in about a year into it, you start having all these arguments. And about two years into it, the arguments become fights, and by the third year they become world epic wars. Pretty soon you’re packing your bags and moving out, or they’re doing that!

So what happened, right? And we’ve all done this because I think almost every human being has more than one relationship, even if it

You’re failing, and that’s okay. It’s part of the process, and you’re going to

grow with it whether you fail one day or

now.


wasn’t a marriage or a committed relationship. We’ve all had people whom we’ve met and we’ve parted ways with, because we just at some point agreed to disagree and part ways, because that was the best thing to do. We didn’t get along.

What happened? In the beginning we liked each other so much, and at the end, we just couldn’t even stand the sight of each other. What happens in between? One of the things, the principles, that the Course speaks about is called specialness. It sounds like a technical term. But what it means is that there’s two ways to have relationship. We can call it the bad way, right? And it’s called with specialness. It can be either special Love or special hate.

They’re both the same thing. They’re one and the same. Special Love says, “I want you for what you give to me which I lack in me.”

Block 1: Wanting Someone to be What You Need Lucia So we like the other person because they’re attractive, because they are

wealthy or they are successful or because they’re spiritual. They’re taller, whatever it is that we see in them. Deep down inside there’s some way that we see ourselves, in which we perceive a lack, and we’re looking for that person to fulfill that lack.

In the beginning when the relationship is starting, it works great because, guess what? You’re doing the same thing for them because we all play the same game. And so special Love means that I don’t truly love you. I just want what you can give me to make me feel better about myself. And unfortunately, as bad as that sounds, that is what the majority of the relationships in the world are based on until they find the real foundation, which is true Love and acceptance.

So special Love says, “I need you to buy me flowers every time we have a special occasion—anniversary, birthday, you know, Mother’s Day for parents or whatever—or every time you come home I need you to say hello and if you don’t, I’m going to be very angry.”



Or, “I need you to give me a compliment every time I wear a new dress or every time I change my hair, and if you don’t, I’m going to be very upset because I need you to lift me up.”

These kinds of things happen every day and we develop this kind of relationship where it’s a negotiation, right? “The more you give me what I want, the more I love you.” That’s what special Love is about. It’s not true Love. It’s more of a fulfillment of expectations, but where does that come from?

What is the source of this sense of lack, right? And that’s one of the things that is a very, very basic principle of A Course in Miracles—the only sense of lack you need to heal is the sense of separation from God that you have. It’s because God and Love are one thing and one and the same thing, and you are part of that. And there is never, ever, ever a moment when you’re separate from that. And we’ll talk about that in a very practical example with another idea that the Course gives us.

Your Ideas Never Leave You It says that ideas do not leave their source. Actually it says, “Ideas leave

not their source.” It’s because the Course speaks in very poetic language, very beautifully written so some of the ideas come out very poetically. Ideas leave not their source. What they’re saying is, if you think of an idea, it’s never going to leave you. Trust me. And it’s true.

Just to give you an example, let’s say, Jennifer, if you think of a recipe, right? You come up with a great recipe for a dish. You’re going to invent ice cream of a unique flavor and you say, “You know, we can make an ice cream that has this and this and that little bit of wine, a little bit of fruit, whatever.” And you write down your recipe and you keep it to yourself. So what happens to that idea is that it’s in you.

“The more you give me what I want, the more I love you.”

That’s what special Love is about.


Nobody has shared it yet. Nobody has enjoyed it yet, but it’s still in you. So let’s say, the next day I meet with you and you say, “You know I had this great idea for a kind of ice cream and maybe we can start a business together.” So you give me the recipe and I say, “Hmm, that’s interesting. Let me take it home and think about it.”

I take the recipe with me and I share it with my husband at home and now he has your recipe idea. And now there’s three of us. What the Course says is that the laws of heaven are different from the laws of the world. In the world what you have you must take from others, and what you give you lose. If I have fifty cents and you need fifty cents, I give you the fifty cents and then I no longer have it. That’s just the way the world works. You cannot keep things here by giving.

But in the world of spirit you keep things by giving them away. And not only do you keep them, but they increase as they are shared, and that is the nature of Love because Love comes from that same realm, from the spiritual realm where Love’s nature is to extend, extend, extend endlessly, endlessly. And it doesn’t want. It doesn’t need. It doesn’t expect. It just gives because giving is its own fulfillment.

So getting back to the ice cream idea, right? Let’s say that after three days my husband comes back and says, “You know, I need to tell Jennifer that was a great idea. I’ve made the ice cream. I’ve had a great time watching TV and had a big bowl of it, and it was awesome. Thank her so much.”

So we take that message to you and you feel so happy that your idea kind of made us have a great Sunday afternoon. And so the idea increased by being shared. You didn’t lose it. It’s in your mind still, and if you check in there, it’s in there.

You don’t need somebody to bring

you flowers to be happy. You are the

flower.



Let’s say 20 years have passed by, and we’ve moved away, and we’re no longer friends, and we’ve simply become distanced because of geography and whatever, and one day we run into each other. And you know, “Hey, Jennifer, remember the last time we met and talked, and you gave me this recipe? Well, guess what? My husband started a business with it and we’re millionaires. Thank you so much.”

And you go, “What recipe?” 20 years have gone by and you don’t even remember. So I say, “Remember that recipe for the ice cream?” and I tell you the details, and you go back in your mind and you think back and you go, “Oh, yeah,” and you search your mind. And the idea is still there. It has not left your mind, and you know what? It never will. It never will.

This is a very key thing to have cemented in you. It’s a principle that is very, very basic, but it’s incredibly powerful because the Course and many other philosophies teach that that creator has a creative energy in that you actually are a thought within that creative energy, within that creative power, that creative anima or spirit, so God had its thought, and that thought happened to be you.

But ideas leave not their source. So guess what? You have not left your source. You have completely—

Rev. Jennifer I was just going to say, what if the thought that you have is that your partner isn’t good enough? What if that’s the thought you have?

Lucia That’s where judgment comes in, so we’ll get into that.

Rev. Jennifer In terms of an idea not leaving its source.

Lucia That idea is still in your mind so you will need to transform it. It’s because it will always be there, right? So it’s a question of what ideas you choose now, not that you’re here, and that you think that you’re an individual and you have your own ideas. It’s more about deciding what ideas you pay homage to, and what ideas you want to live with and use to live your life, or what ideas you want to discard because they really aren’t good for you and are not good for your relationship. So that’s another one of the blocks that we’re going to talk about: not letting judgment set in. And that’s exactly one of them: saying the reason the relationship breaks up after a while is because you start


letting judgments set in in the relationship and you start basically changing the way you see that person.

We’ll get into that in just a couple of minutes. But basically, yeah, ideally not their source, meaning whatever thoughts you have, they’re not going to leave your mind even if 20 years go by. But the good news is, the principle is that you are at home in God, dreaming of itself because you’ve never left home, but what that gives you… It gives you the fulfillment and knowledge that you come from a source that’s completely abundant. You lack nothing, therefore you don’t need the other person to fulfill anything in you because you have everything you need to be perfect and to be whole.

You don’t Need Someone to Make you Happy Lucia You don’t need somebody to bring you flowers to be happy. You are the

flower. You already are perfect. You don’t need somebody to give you compliments to feel pretty because you already are beautiful. So when you learn to appreciate yourself as who you truly are, in time you kind of lose that interest in forcing that other person to constantly be catering to your ego, basically.

That’s one of the things: trying to make that idea, that basic idea, that I’ve never left my source and I’m really standing on a very strong foundation here and not on the sands—you know, the shaky sands of the ego are very shaky, and if I rely on my own self-esteem, it can be shaken very easily. If I have a bad hair day, I’m going to feel awful all day if I rely on my own self-opinion.

But if I rely on God’s opinion of me, God who thought enough of me to create me in his own image, then you know what? It’s going to take a lot longer for me to be independent and self-sufficient, and I don’t have to depend on other people doing for me and giving to me, and in a way I’m going to learn to become my best friend because I realize that I can be self-reliant. I don’t need to rely on others to constantly cater to my ego.

That’s one of the blocks that—for the relationship—is very important to pay attention to how many times a day, okay… And this is kind of one of the homework call ideas is that just take a moment to observe a day,



to observe yourself. You don’t have to judge yourself for doing. Especially don’t judge yourself for doing it when you catch yourself doing it. But try to observe how many times a day do you experience disappointment because your partner did not deliver, because they did not meet your expectations. They didn’t come home on time. They didn’t buy the thing you asked them to buy at the store and bring it home. Whatever it is they did or didn’t do that wasn’t according to your expectations… That day, try to make it a point to not to react as you always do because they didn’t comply, but just make a note of it. Oh, I was disappointed. Just write it down or make a mental note, “I was disappointed because he/she did not _____” and fill in the blank. Just fill in the blank.

Know that you are creating expectations and forcing this person to be responsible for your happiness, basically. And that’s a huge responsibility to lay on somebody else’s shoulder. It’s huge and it weighs and sometimes it can feel heavy and burdensome because they don’t know how to deliver to that.

Nobody’s perfect. That’s really what this point is about. It’s learning to observe how much expectation you place on your partner to deliver something that you really ought to be delivering to yourself. And you need to relieve them so that they can feel freer to be themselves without constantly having to deliver and be something that perhaps they’re not, or they’re not equipped to deliver, especially in a 24/7 way. I mean, sometimes people can bring you flowers once a year, but it can get old sometimes if they have to do it out of obligation.

That’s the difference. Let them be themselves. One day they bring you flowers—awesome—but if the next day or sometimes they don’t, that’s awesome too. There’s no need to place your happiness in the hands of

The shaky sands of the ego are

very shaky, and if I rely on my own self-

esteem, it can be shaken very easily.


expectations. And that’s really a very, very big relationship killer: managing expectations.

Rev. Jennifer Yes it is.

Lucia So, is this making sense?

Rev. Jennifer Oh, yeah.

Block 2: Judgment Lucia So if we want to move on then to your questions, moving on to

judgment, which actually is the second block. It’s a huge block in relationships. And I call it really allowing judgment to set in because when you first start the relationship, you tend to put your judgment under like a pressure cooker or something like that. You just kind of tuck it away, cover it up, and don’t want to hear it because you are in this idyllic moment in the relationship, which can last days, months, or years in which you don’t want to see anything wrong with that person because they’re behaving exactly the way you want them to. It goes back to Block Number one. They’re delivering to your expectations.

They’re calling you the names you want to be called. They’re bringing you flowers sometimes. They’re showing up on time. They’re just awesome. They haven’t done anything wrong, and you just love them. But at some point, the person maybe begins to show up late or one day they show up late and, or, they do something that is selfish. Every human being is selfish. That’s just how the world is built until we grow out of that, but we’re all children wanting our way.

And every person is going to have a selfish moment. So your partner is going to have selfish moments. You’re going to have selfish moments. So at some point in the relationship, that person is going to step in and say, “You know what? I don’t feel like doing this.” And I tell you what. People get tired of expectations, and because in this game when we start dating we deliver to each other, and everybody starts playing their relationship game so they play their role to perfection.

The girl does the makeup perfectly and the boy shows on time with the flowers and if it’s girl and girl, the same thing. You know they look great. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heterosexual or a gay couple—it doesn’t



matter. What matters is that you expect that person to show up a certain way, to behave a certain way, and then if they don’t deliver to you, then things start changing.

Block Number Two is judgment. Be on the lookout, especially if you’re already in a long-term relationship. You probably already have a set of judgments that are pretty set and pretty cast in stone about your partner, saying, “Oh, yeah, I know he’s just a chronic late-comer. He’s just a poor money manager.” It’s like a blanket descriptor that you put on their personality, but I tell you what happens when you allow judgment to set in is that it disfigures that person. It changes them from what they were to something else and you begin to see them through these horrible colored glasses, not rose-colored anymore like when you’re first in love.

You’re going to see them through the eyes of your judgment, and the funny thing is that the more you judge them, the more they behave that way. That’s just the way it works. We kind of tune into that and we begin to behave that way.

If you tell a person, “You know you’re so stupid,” they’re going to start acting more stupid. “You’re so selfish”: they’re more stubborn and more selfish. Pretty soon, instead of saying like you used to say, “He’s so loving. She’s so attentive. She’s so beautiful. He’s so kind”—those used to be the descriptors in the beginning of the relationship—two or three years into it, it’s “Oh, she’s such a blah, blah, blah.” You can think of any word to put in there. And, “Oh, you know he’s such a jerk,” and “Yeah, I have to go home to deal with the jerk.”

I’ve heard people talk like that about their spouses and their partners. And they live in a relationship that’s miserable so that’s not going to take them anywhere. It’s a teaching/learning relationship but they’re teaching/learning the wrong thing. The point is to teach and learn the right thing that’s going to take us both to a happy ending.

People get tired of expectations.


Judgment sets in the moment you have a thought about that person. And like you said, Jennifer, it could be a thought like, “Oh, he’s so stupid,” or, “Oh, he’s so sarcastic,” or whatever it is, or, “She’s so self-involved.” It’s whatever it is you want to say about that person. There’s a moment when you have that thought for the first time. There’s a moment when you adopt that thought as yours. Then there’s the moment when you adopt that thought as really being true about that

person, and now it’s like permanently cast on their personality, on their definition, and you disfigure them.

Immediately they become different and the relationship begins to kind of change and take on a different color. So it’s very important to watch your judgments. So that’s another exercise you can do. Again, do not judge yourself because you’re also very good at judging yourself, condemning yourself, critiquing yourself. Any kind of self-deprecating thought is a judgment thought.

Any kind of thought that you have that says, “Oh, I’m so stupid. Why did I do this?” That’s self-deprecation. Every time you look in the mirror and say, “Oh, I’m so fat. I wish I could lose two pounds,” or, “Why am I not taller? Why doesn’t my nose

look more straight?” Anything that you say about yourself, whether it’s your body or your behavior or your personality that you don’t like, and you berate yourself—that’s a judgment.

You do it with your partner as well. But the moment you perceive it, if you don’t adopt it, then you’re going to be able to transform that judgment into a different kind of thought, a forgiveness thought. You can call it forgiveness. You can call it a shift of mind. You can call it a mind shift or a change of mind, but the point is that it completely trains your mind to think differently, to not be happy about settling into judgment.

How do you do it if you’re already there and you already have lots and lots of judgments about your partner? Well, just again take the remodeling example. You need to take an inventory, and you can spend

“You have no idea of the

tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting

yourself and your brothers totally

without judgment,



a few days taking an inventory of your judgments of your partner. And write them down. Don’t discuss them with him or her. Don’t discuss them with yourself and don’t judge yourself for having them. Just simply make note of how and how many different ways you judge your partner.

Just do that for a couple of weeks. Then spend a couple of weeks making an inventory of the judgments you have against you. It’s a great, great exercise then to take a third period, another two weeks in which you take those two lists and you compare them and you’re going to be amazed, amazed at how similar they are. It’s because actually your partner is your mirror. He’s your teacher. She’s your teacher. And what you see in them that you don’t like, all they’re doing is reflecting back to you all the things in you that you don’t like.

Your Partner is your Mirror, Your Teacher Lucia That’s why they become your teacher. One of the most beautiful

phrases I remember when I read this for the first time in the Course, I cried. I just couldn’t stop crying. And it was a joyful cry and a peaceful cry and it was like a form of deliverance. And it’s a very simple statement. It says, “You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment, totally without judgment.” Just imagine a day when you could wake up in the morning and you could see everyone. You could see the whole world without a judgment.

The flower would be a flower and a cockroach would be a cockroach, but you would have no judgment, “This one’s pretty. This one’s ugly.” And you would see two people and you wouldn’t have a judgment, “This one’s tall. This one’s short. This one’s attractive. This one’s unattractive.” You would just see two brothers, two beautiful people standing in front of you with no judgment.

Imagine the joy. Imagine the peace, the contentment you would feel if you had no war inside of you fighting the outer world constantly, if for just one instant you could experience that. You would have reached heaven, and it’s a beautiful thing. So if you try to practice that with


your partner it’s a great blessing on your relationship. You’ll see that relationship take a 180-degree turn.

The partner is already expecting it. They’re already used to you saying, “Hey, remember to show up on time because you’re always late.” And if you this time don’t say that, they’re going to go like, “Oh, she didn’t say that. Oh, maybe I’ll be on time.”

Rev. Jennifer Going back to what you were saying at the beginning, I can just imagine if you’re with your husband and you say, “You know I thought you were going to do the thing you said you were going to do, and you didn’t do it, and now I’m annoyed.” And I can just see him looking at you and saying, “Well, honey, remember the goal of our relationship is to see me as sinless.”

Lucia Okay, you’re right. That’s another one that you know we’ll talk about in another point later, and it’s about not using the philosophy to poke at each other. So that’s part of that judgment because we’re very good at setting the expectation that the other one has to live the religion, but not me.

Religion is not Christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism. Religion is anything that you believe should be done your way. That’s it. So if your religion is everybody should always be on time and occasionally you’re late, guess what? You’re not living your religion. When you’re telling your partner, “Hey, you’re not supposed to be judging me,” guess what? You’re judging them.

And if you’re working together on this, then it’s good for you both to remember not to use the tool to judge each other because then you’re using the tool for the opposite of what it was designed for. We tend to do that. Ken Wapnick, our wonderful, beautiful teacher, just a great friend in the Course, has an example that’s very funny. He says, “You

know what’s worse than an A Course in Miracles student?” You go, “What?” He goes, “Two, two of them.” It’s because then we start using the Course to… I’ve actually seen people who may be actually

Religion is not Christianity or Buddhism or

Hinduism. Religion is anything that you believe should be

done your way.



psychologists. They’ve never read the Course but they use psychology to psychologize, you know, psychoanalyze everybody and they are always, “That person is… Oh, that person is…”

And they’re constantly just labeling people and diagnosing them instead of just letting them be people. But they’re using a tool that they learned, that would have been learned to bless the world, if they lived it. They use it as a tool to be destructive and judgmental. That’s another point and we’re going to talk about that later, and that is, not “Course-ing” each other.

That’s one of our points tonight as well.

Rev. Jennifer Just to give you a time check, Lucia, we only have a few minutes left.

Block 3: The Need to be Right Lucia Okay, so let’s move on real quick. So judgment really disfigures your

partner, so it’s very important to keep that one in check. The third one is being right. Being right is our worst enemy because most couples, after they separate they’re still fighting over the thing that they separated about or most of the things they separated about, and years go by and they’re still fighting over that.

What happens is, even if they separated physically, they’re still together. If they were married, they’re still married. It’s because the relationship was about wanting to be right at all times and proving the other person wrong. One other cute saying the Course has is, “Recognize what does not matter.”

So if your brother asks you for something outrageous, do it because it does not matter. Really nothing matters except what you think of it. So if you ask me to give you a glass of water and I don’t feel like doing it, I’m going to feel outraged if I don’t want to do it.

The point here is to be careful with wanting to always be right because that outrage comes from wanting to be right. Be willing to be wrong and happy. The Course has little sayings so you know everybody wants to be right and happy. Sometimes you have to be willing to be wrong to be happy. You’d be amazed how much happier you’d end up being if you accept sometimes being wrong and letting your partner be right,


even if it seems like they are wrong and you are right. Just be willing to be wrong. It can also be another relationship shifter. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of fighting for being right and wrong. How much time do we have left?

Rev. Jennifer Really just a couple of minutes.

Block 4: “Course-ing” Each Other Lucia Okay. And then we talked about Coursing each other. I call that

Coursing and that is using whatever philosophy you guys live. It could be that you’re Christian, and you’re using Christianity to judge each other. “Well, you’re not behaving this way. You’re not behaving that way. You’re not practicing this or that teaching that we learned in Sunday school.” If you’re an A Course in Miracles student, it’s “You’re projecting.” That’s our favorite insult. And I think psychologists do it too and people who study philosophies of the mind. They accuse the other person of doing what they’re doing so they use the Course rhetoric and language to fight with each other.

I have a couple of friends who do that a lot, and it’s just really funny. “Oh, he’s just projecting,” instead of, “He’s mad at me.” Just speak English. Don’t go around talking gibberish. People think, you know, as soon as you start studying the Course you get weird because you start using all these words. Sometimes I have friends that will call me and say things like, “Well, Lucia, I know the world’s not real but…” and then they couch it with a “but.”

Rev. Jennifer Right.

Lucia And they are using Course rhetoric to say, “I’m just trying to be human here.” Just be human. Be normal. Live your life. Don’t let the Course dictate how you talk, how you see people. Don’t let it color—and don’t let your philosophy and your religion color—everything you do and say. Use it as a tool as you practice it and live it. So that’s kind of the key of this point. Stop using your philosophy to fix others.

And one key point from the Course, another phrase that’s very, very, very helpful is “the sole relationship of the miracle worker…” Because that’s what we are, we are miracle workers, “miracle” meaning a



change of mind or a shift of mind. So we are all learning to change our minds. We’re all learning to get together. You task is not to seek for Love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

So your task is not to go around seeking for Love in others, correcting others, fixing others, but really to look for the barriers to Love in yourself. So that’s the fifth point. Try not to fix everybody. Just look within and see one of the things that you need to correct in order to make your life and make your relationship better.

Block 5: Careless Words and Actions Lucia And then the fifth point is simply about careless words and actions…

“Careless” means without care, loveless, or unkind. So before you say or do anything like that, ask yourself… And this is kind of a homework thing that you can take with you. And it’s every time that you’re about to—especially if you’re having an argument is what I’m about to say—do something, ask yourself, is it conducive to joining or separation? So you can tell right then and there that you’re trying to drive a wedge with that person if the answer is, “Oh, if I say this, they’re going to be upset or they’re going to walk away.”

And if you say it, it’s because you want them to walk away. But it’s very important for you to kind of learn to put the brakes on the specialness of the ego to end that game of “give me, give me, give me.” See the relationship for what it is, an opportunity to learn and to bless each other by meeting each other without judgment and allowing each other to be in a space where you’re met with non-judgment.

Allow the person to be themselves, and they will just bloom before your eyes. They will become a different reality, maybe go back to the way they were when you started dating.

Rev. Jennifer So true.

Lucia It’s very transformational.

Rev. Jennifer It is. One of the tools that some people can really have success with is if they have a tendency toward blurting and all of that, they can say,


“Does this need to be said by me?” or, “Does this need to be said? Does it need to be said by me and does it need to be said now?”

Lucia Exactly.

Rev. Jennifer And if it’s not kind, if it’s not loving, maybe it doesn’t need to be said now. Maybe I can sit with it and make an offering of it to the Holy Spirit and say, “Okay, this is how I feel. I’d like to be able to communicate with Love how I feel, so I’m going to invite the Holy Spirit to lead me.”

Lucia Exactly. If it doesn’t come from Love, don’t do it. And you know it. You know it. You cannot lie to yourself. I tell you what. You can fool everybody. You cannot fool yourself. You know when you’re about to be a devil. You know it. You know when you’re about to stab that person on the side. You just know it. Yeah, put the weapon down and just stop and say, “You know, do I really need to say this? Do I really need to do this?” And just make those two changes. Observe yourself and your judgments of your partner and watch your words to them and you will see your relationship just take a 180-degree turn that will amaze you.

Next Steps Rev. Jennifer It’s so true. You’ve given us so much to work with here, Lucia. Oh,

wow! It’s great. So the five blocks, we’ve got them, and tomorrow in the homework class I’ll be giving you further ideas of how to work with these and tools that you can use to really transform the relationship. I realize that I forgot to say earlier that with the packages, I wanted to say one word about that, and then we’re going to close out and that is that with the packages. If you purchase the gold or the platinum packages, the downloads, the CDs, those packages, you will get a whole bunch of goodies.

You’ll get a Radical Forgiveness CD from Colin Tipping. You’ll get a Love for No Reason workbook from Marci Shimoff. You get an interview with Gary Renard and four songs to download. You also get an entire workshop with me that’s called Self-Love, Self-Esteem, and Self-Confidence. And it’s actually going to be live Saturday morning, July 16. We’re going to do that class live. It’s a $44 class, and you’ll get the



transcript and the download so even if you can’t be there live, you’ll still get the download and the transcript.

Closing Prayer I’m going to say a prayer and bless us all on our way and our holy

relationships. I’m just going to invite everyone right now to put your hand on your heart. Place your hand on your heart, please, and take a breath of gratitude with me as we give thanks for Lucia, her beautiful teaching, her beautiful heart. It’s so easy to tell that she has truly lived the teachings of the Course.

Thank you, Lucia. We are giving thanks for her life, giving thanks for our own life and our opportunity to transform our relationships, to engage with the Holy Spirit, our teacher. We are willing in this moment right now. And I invite everyone to call to mind any relationship in particular that you’ve struggled with, that you would like to be able to think of as a lasting, loving relationship.

Just call that person into your heart and mind. Call them into the sacred circle right now. As we take another breath of gratitude, we’re grateful that no matter what the hurts of the past have been, we can make an offering of them right now and move into that place of true forgiveness. We are moving into that learning/teaching situation that all relationships are.

What I see and know and hold for everyone is that we’re all sinless, that for each and every one of us, the kingdom is within. We know that now. We are truly releasing the habit of seeking outside of ourselves. We are truly releasing any and all judgments and opinions, the need to be right. We let it go right now.

We’re grateful and thankful right now to live our true identity, respecting and honoring ourselves and everyone else because we’re one with them. We’re truly accepting and allowing the highest level of healing and expansion that we can receive at this time. We’re truly grateful for it. We’re grateful that we get to share the benefits of our healing, the benefits of our expansion with everyone, all relationships.


Truly we are grateful, grateful, grateful. And in joy we allow it to be. We accept it fully and so we know that it’s done. And so it is. Amen, Amen, Amen.

Lucia Amen.

Rev. Jennifer Thank you so much, Lucia. Beautiful.

Lucia Thank you, Jennifer. It’s been wonderful again to have this opportunity to share with everyone.

Rev. Jennifer Yes indeed. And I look forward to our homework class in just about 12 hours from now.

Lucia Wonderful. I’d like to leave everyone with just one thought. It’s a quote if I may. “The most important relationship you will ever have is that which you have with yourself.” This is a little quote that I picked up from Sex In The City one time. Carrie Bradshaw in a very philosophical moment stepped in and said, “Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that’s just fabulous.”

Rev. Jennifer Thank you, Lucia.

living a course in miracles - members.jenniferhadley.com … · 11/9/2011 · living a course in...

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