E-News
April 2011 Volume 36
Dear E-News Subscriber
Thanks for joining me in this adventure. Just when I thought that I’d be winding down after Tomas’ passing, I recently received strong guidance to do the opposite and what a laugh that was (after I got over the shock). As many of you know I am quite the introvert, being a home-body whose favorite past-time is ‘open-eyed’ meditation – not the customary sitting still meditation, but free moving, open-eyed, now moment presence that goes about with me in my apparent busy-ness.
It seems now that Spirit is prompting me to set up a Nonprofit Foundation called Take Me to Truth. It will be a 501(c) (3) tax-exempt Nonprofit Foundation incorporated to provide resources, education and mentoring aimed at empowering individuals with the means to access their Divine Wisdom within. The process will take a few months to complete and we will notify you when our brand new website is up and running.
Please stay with us because in this issue I am welcoming a gifted healer, Stacy Sully who has joined me in our mission to be of service. And see below a wonderful new book about FORGIVENESS…
With Love,
Nouk.
In This Issue
- Documentary Film on Tomas and Nouk’s Experience with the Course
- Exciting New Practical Discussion on Living ACIM!
- New Book! Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness - By Susan Dugan
- A Gifted Healer Joins Nouk - Introducing Stacy Sully
- Undoing the Illusion of Suffering – the ‘self’ - by Nouk Sanchez
- Nouk is Offering Phone Mentoring Sessions
Documentary Film on Tomas and Nouk’s Experience
The past 2 years there has been a documentary/film in the making, of Tomas’ and my journey. As you know, with Tomas’ recent passing, this past 2 years held a wealth of practical application teachings for us.
Film-maker Stacy Vereen (you can see some of his work with Philip Urso’s A Crash Course in Miracles Podcast, http://podcast.com/show/11540/ ) has been guided to document our journey with the intent to edit and release it as a helpful teaching aid (film) in the future.
The week of May 3 – 10, 2011 we plan to take Tomas’ ashes down into a sacred place in the Grand Canyon, a place that Tomas found greatly inspiring. This will be a journey albeit a symbol in itself, of devotion to the One Life and Love to which we all belong. I don’t know what will take place down there over those days and nights but I feel something incredibly powerful just thinking about it. Film-maker Stacy Vereen will take this sacred journey with us…
We would welcome any donations toward the making of this film. It’s an ongoing project and we truly trust that it will be perfectly completed and financially supported. Many thanks for any contributions to this cause. If you feel inspired to contribute? In North America, checks can be made payable to: Nouk Sanchez -Take Me to Truth, PO. Box 6924, Santa Fe, NM 87502. USA. Or by Paypal: nouk@takemetotruth.com
JOINING - A multi-part discussion on living ACIM principles
“Listen in” as three unconventional authors dig deep to uncover what it really means to practice the principles of A Course in Miracles. Nouk Sanchez, Carrie Triffet and Elizabeth Griffin bring their fresh insights and wealth of experience to a range of topics we can all relate to, in an easygoing dialogue – or “trialogue” – blog format. First topic up to bat: RELATIONSHIPS. It’s free! Go to: http://ourjoining.wordpress.com/
A New Book!Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness
By Susan Dugan
The heart of the profound spiritual psychology A Course in Miracles is the forgiveness practice many of its students overlook. Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness by Susan Dugan, published by O-Books, shows readers exactly how to apply this process in their daily lives to heal their minds about their relationships. Far from dry and theoretical, the book grabs the reader, draws him in, and keeps him thoroughly entertained while demonstrating the inner transformation available when we honestly commit to getting over ourselves and learn to smile at the ego’s antics.
Susan Dugan chronicles her personal experience with A Course in Miracles transformative mind healing in her blog: www.foraysinforgiveness.com, and is co-founder and faculty member of the School of Reason for A Course in Miracles teachers and students (www.schoolofreason.org) in Denver, Colorado. She appears in the documentary A Course in Miracles: The Movie along with other Course teachers including Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira, Take Me to Truth: Undoing the Ego, premier Course scholar, teacher, and prolific author Kenneth Wapnick, PhD, and Gary Renard, best-selling author of The Disappearance of the Universe.
To Purchase this Book go to Amazon.com
A Gifted Healer Joins Nouk - Introducing Stacy Sully AEH (Advanced Energy Healing)
I want to introduce Stacy Sully, a gifted energy healer. Tomas and I met Stacy two years ago in Victoria, BC. We had an instant recognition and connection. Stacy soon became our dear friend. In June 2010, Tomas was ‘called’ to spend his last six months with Stacy. Both Tomas and Stacy knew the purpose of their joining – was healing. Not the ego’s pseudo ‘remedies’ but the healing of the one cause of all fear.
Tomas was not big on meditation till he met Stacy. She gently and persistently led Tomas into the quiet Center. And then…an unmistakable leap, an astonishing shift occurred for him…
To read more go to: http://www.takemetotruth.com/stacy-sully--advanced-energy-healer.html
Undoing the Illusion of Suffering – the ‘self’
By Nouk Sanchez
All thoughts, all beliefs that are not of God, must be undone. The whole idea of and belief in a personal ‘self’ as a body, is the primary example of our unconscious investment in a power other than God. If God is all Love with no opposite, if God is all there is and if God is eternal joy and peace…then what is the “self” that appears to suffer and die? How real can this self be?
It’s impossible for there to be God Who is all Love AND there be a personal self as well. There cannot be both so which is real? There is only one, take your pick. The two are mutually exclusive and irreconcilable. If we choose the personal self then it’s on its own. By our choice to believe in it and in the world that it projects, we effectively reject God’s Love. By making ourselves into an “I” apart from God’s All we separate and make our own world based on fear. This includes the ideas of conflict, pain, time, loss, deprivation, disease, aging, death, scarcity, suffering and imperfection.
The self or ego is a will apart from God’s Love. It seemingly exists apart from the all ness of eternal Love, it experiences amnesia of its true Inheritance in God. All its desires when traced back to their source arise from a deep sense of separation from God. The essence from which it exists is deprivation. Therefore it sees itself as deprived forgetting that the true Self is in God meaning that we are all and have all eternally. The ego self is purely an idea, a collection of beliefs and values that have no reality. It’s always attempting to get, to have, to keep, to avoid, to protect, to defend, to plan, and to control. The self is an illusion appearing real, it’s a mask of judgments to obscure from our memory the Real One Self who has all, and is all… always.
The self, being a collection of thoughts and beliefs is the block to our awareness of love’s eternal presence.
Looking Past Appearances – Forgiveness
All thoughts and beliefs that are not of God - must be undone. Therefore the undoing process necessitates bringing into our awareness, experiences that trigger us; that give us an emotional charge. The level of emotional charge is the indicator as to just how much we’re still projecting, unconsciously investing in separation. This is the unconscious guilt in our mind projected outward as conflict within relationships, disease or pain in the body, depression, or any scarcity regardless of the form, etc. So instead of reacting to it and perpetuating its reality, we must learn to ask “What is it for?” And the answer is always the same; to allow Holy Spirit to reinterpret it, to undo the guilt in our mind.
Suffering occurs anytime we judge that ‘something or someone’ is wrong…that what occurred should not have happened. We have these encounters every day with self, others and situations that don’t appear to meet the ego self’s expectations. When we judge that something is wrong instead of taking responsibility for our reaction to it and giving it to Holy Spirit to heal, we really tell ourselves that God is wrong; that God is against us. When we take it upon the personal self to protect and defend ourselves, to control and to plan, we’re really acknowledging that God is our enemy. What we’re saying is that Love is our enemy and we need to protect ourselves from Love.
If Love is all there is, then anything that appears as suffering is not real. Now if we take it upon ourselves, as our responsibility to defend against the illusion of suffering – what are we teaching ourselves and those we love?
Whatever we value is exclusive. If we value suffering (believe it is real) then we cannot value God. As we said earlier, the two are diametrically opposed. So if we find that we are trying to save ourselves from a seeming threat, i.e. disease, divorce, conflict, scarcity, or death, etc., then we need to recognize that:
- The threat is not of God’s Love therefore it is an illusion appearing real
- We resign the personal ‘self’ (ego), as defender of the threat or champion of the cause
- We demonstrate willingness and ask Holy Spirit to reinterpret this lesson
When we discover that we’re trying to save ourselves (or a loved one) from fear – we will attract the very fear that we attempt to save ourselves from. For example when Tomas was going through the process of cancer, some people with good intentions offered their prayers for healing. But what some didn’t realize was that their own unconscious fear of disease was a block to their being of any help. While we hold a judgment, such as the belief in disease being real, then we cannot heal or help another to heal. To the degree that we believe the disease is real, to that extent we will deny true healing which is in the mind. So that’s why Tomas would tell us all, “if you truly want to help me, to pray for me, then pray for forgiveness ofyour own belief in illness and death.” If we pray for another (or self) while still believing the threat as real then we reinforce the illusory threat in our joined experience. As Jesus says in the Course, “Yet no one can forgive a sin that he believes is real.” T-27.II.2:4.
While the personal self appears to have our own best interests at heart, it has but one goal – and that is our death. If the body dies prior to awakening then the ego perpetuates in a cycle of amnesia and suffering. This is what time becomes when used by a personal self who fears awakening from the idea of self, awakening into an indescribable majesty as the One Self in eternity. The choice couldn’t be clearer. The ‘self’ wants our death, over and over in millions of ways always seeking the outcome that we seem most afraid of, physical death. However the One Self is our true Inheritance; it is eternal Life, and uninterrupted Love, being the embodiment of endless Joy and Peace.
Just recently I had to prepare some government paperwork to file. I didn’t understand the questions so you can imagine the frustration at trying to place coherent answers to questions that for me were incomprehensible. The resulting conflict and struggle was so uncomfortable that I quickly realized I’d lost my state of peace which is the first sign that I’d taken a wrong-turn. I remembered that in any situation where my peace was threatened that I had to make a choice again; the choice for peace rather than in this case…a need to understand the questions.
Our un-relinquished (un-forgiven) day to day fears become idols apart from God. And these idols grow as they are hidden and protected from the light of Holy Spirit’s Love. The more we take it upon ourselves ‘personally’ as a will apart from God’s Will to problem-solve, the more the problem will perpetuate. While it may seem that we overcome one disease or problem we can be sure the cause remains un-healed and will reappear later in another form.
The ‘self’ is a will apart from God’s Love. Any thought, belief, judgment or value apart from God’s Love, is a denial ofLove. Their purpose always is to reject and exclude the Light of God’s Love in our mind. None of these thoughts are neutral. If it’s not of God then its intent is the denial of Love and the promotion of fear. Anything not of Love is an investment in the appearance of darkness no matter which form the darkness may appear as. It’s always the same, an investment in the illusion of darkness – and a belief in and value of a power other than the One Power of God’s Love.
Any seeming threat, whether it be minor or monumental is at its core, all the same. Illusion is illusion and there are no degrees of illusion. In our undoing journey the ‘self’ will not be destroyed; it will simply fall away when we no longer value the beliefs and appearances that make it seem real. There is no loss in this.
As we progress with undoing our blocks, our judgments (beliefs), we begin to appreciate that all our challenges are really only symbols of the one mistake; the belief that we separated from God’s Love. Our lessons become generalized and we start to see that they’re all healed in our acceptance of the one Answer. That Answer is Love and this Love is the outcome of forgiveness. Forgiveness takes place every time we choose to look past the appearance of anything not of God. When we choose to see past whatever triggers us, when we choose to perceive only the Love that rests beneath any upsetting appearance, then eventually, only Love becomes our awareness. And when Love takes place more frequently in our mind, the world we encounter being a projection from the mind, reflects the essence of what it extends…and we experience the truth of this… that WE ARE LOVE and that LOVE… IS ALL THERE IS.
“There is no love but God's and all of love is His. There is no other principle that rules where love is not. Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds Them both forever as the same.”W-pl 127 3:5
Nouk is Available for One-to-One Phone Mentoring
My strength comes from “living” the principles of A Course in Miracles; from practical application of its miraculous teaching. While there was theoretical study involved most of my learning came from mis-understanding the Course and making every conceivable mistake especially in the early years of practice. Seeing as I (along with Tomas) made so many mistakes and learned from them, I’d like to think that I may be able to help you:
- Avoid making these common mistakes and escape the unnecessary suffering they produce.
- Alleviate and eliminate the subsequent feelings of confusion and isolation they cause.
- Open to trusting the Teacher Within to receive consistent Guidance
- Learn to validate, to accept and to receive the Love that rests at your center
Appearances with Nouk
As Tomas is no longer with us physically, Nouk is taking a break from traveling in the near future. She has expressed a desire to be of service and would consider working with groups who are sincerely dedicated to undoing the ego. If you have such a group and wish to discuss a possible workshop please contact me: tania@takemetotruth.com
During this time, I invite you to join with us in healing of the one mind and the mistaken belief in
being a body and experiencing sickness, deprivation, suffering and death.
Stay tuned... Tania De Winne
Email: tania@takemetotruth.com
If you wish to read previous NEWSLETTERS please go to www.takemetotruth.com/newsletters.html
Don't forget to pass this along to your friends if you find this valuable.
And please drop us a line if you have a question and or contribution to make.
Remember, we are all students and teachers so please share with us that we may all learn.
See you soon
You are Love...
Nouk, Rikki, Tania & Stacy
For more information visit our website - www.takemetotruth.com
www.youtube.com/user/tomasVieira1
groups.yahoo.com/group/takemetotruth
