The Force Field

Copyright 2011 by Stefan Bolz

I have been thinking about my resistance to writing lately. I felt that there is this barrier that comes up whenever I want to write or do things creatively. It wasn't there all the time but it is there more than not. Actually, it is more like I have to sneak in the writing between the pretty solid wall of almost constant resistance. I decided to talk to Julie about it. When I sat down with her and started to describe it I realized that the resistance felt like a force field around me. I could almost stretch out my hands and touch it, like compressed air or a magnetic field of sorts. It surrounded me and seemed to come out of the top of my head. From above it was pink colored. I could see through it to the outside but it was like looking through a darkened window.

When Julie asked me what the purpose of the force field was my first thought was to protect myself from influences from the outside. Like a defensive wall I built around myself to protect my personal space from intrusion. I thought about this a bit further but felt that even though it made sense, that wasn't the whole truth. There was more to it. I didn't really need that much personal space to write. A laptop and headphones provided plenty of that usually. And I could make time for it if I really wanted to, as well.

Then a strange thought occurred to me. What if the force field wasn't there to protect me from the outside. What if it was there to protect the outside from me? As I let the thought stand there for a while, Julie asked me to maybe follow it and see if it leads me to something in my past, an image, a feeling or something similar. I then saw a room high up in the tower of a medieval castle. There were large paintings on the walls of the round room. I was an older man with a white, gruff beard and a long robe of sorts, standing in front of a large canvas on an easel. I think I painted landscapes. There were several servants. I must have been very powerful or influential and very rich. I did not care at all about the servants. I did not treat them with respect but was certain they were all literally there to serve me and that I didn't need to concern myself with their well being at all. The servants were very loyal. They loved me and served me selflessly. I never said a kind word to them, nor gave them praise. In fact, I was rude at best and cruel at worst. And still, they served me.

It became clear to me that at some point I must have decided never to do that again, never again to abuse my creative abilities in that way. I think how I thought I could best keep my abilities and therefore the misuse of it at bay was to never let this creative side of me flow unencumbered into the world. My sense of shame for what I did previously gave way to this 'solution' of never even getting close to my creative potential. I thought that by keeping myself in check I would protect the outside world from the misuse of my power and from my potential selfishness. I associated creativity with selfishness and cruelty towards others.

Obviously that 'solution' wasn't a solution at all. It was a bad patch of band aid over an oozing wound. Neither myself nor anyone else benefited from this. Ken Wapnick, the director of the Foundation For A Course in Miracles, spoke about something similar in one of the CD sets on A Course In Miracles and called it a 'maladaptive solution to a non existent problem'. In this sense we punish ourselves in order to pay God back for what we 'did'. We diminish our abilities in order to never abuse them again.

Back in the tower room, I got the sense that I wanted to tell the servants that I was sorry for what I did, for how I behaved towards them. When I told them I somehow knew that they did not feel how I thought they would feel. They didn't feel mistreated. They loved me. I felt touched by their sentiment and their silently assuring me that I didn't have to go through all this trouble and that I was forgiven.

I thought the session was over when suddenly an image came up that was connected to a session I had a couple of years back. It was the vision of me cowering under a table and eating whatever crumbs fell down from the people that sat at the table (See 'No More Crumbs' in the blog). In this previous image I, for some reason, couldn't face the people at the table and take my rightful place amongst them but was content with the crumbs that were dropped. Suddenly something clicked and I connected the two visions. I realized to my astonishment that the people that sat at the table a few years back were the servants and I was so ashamed over what I 'did' that I couldn't face them and sit with them at the table but rather stayed under it shamefully.

When I let that image rise up within me again, I saw myself under the table unable to get up. Then a hand reached down and I reluctantly took it. I was in the tower room. The table was round and about 20 people sat at it. I recognized each and everyone of them as the previous servants. They talked quietly amongst themselves and I got the sense that they had known each other for a very long time. In fact their connection went past time and space and into something very ancient. They didn't really pay attention to me. I wasn't a stranger that just joined their group. I was one of them and they treated me as if I had always been with them in their circle. Tremendous comfort enveloped me at that moment. I was finally home after seemingly eons of searching and hiding in fear and shame.

One more thing occurred: As I looked around the room I noticed the paintings on the walls. I realized that what looked like paintings weren't paintings at all. They were windows showing the magnificent landscape outside the tower: Rolling hills and forests on one side and the ocean and rising sun on the other. It seemed like an optical illusion for I was not sure if they were just windows of the landscape that looked like paintings or if they were paintings that depicted the landscape in such realist fashion, I couldn't tell the difference.

I am thankful for everyone sitting here with me, thankful that they held a chair for me - a chair that nobody else could fill. We each have one and it stays empty until we get up from the floor and join the banquet that is set in time but clothed in timelessness. The chair is our inheritance. It has been there since time was and will be there until time disappears again and we are all back in our home that we have never left and which has never left us.

"Make This Year Different..."

A few thoughts on Christmas and 'A Course In Miracles.'

Most of the sections on Christmas in A Course In Miracles were actually dictated to Helen by Jesus around Christmas time. In Chapter 15, for example, there are two, "The Time of Rebirth" and "Christmas as the End of Sacrifice". At the end of the latter, there is a line that seems especially fitting for the new year: "Make this year different by making it all the same." This is basically a plea from Jesus to us to try, as best as we can, to make everything the same, meaning, not to make distinctions between the parts of the sonhip. As the lesson of forgiveness is in every situation, in every encounter and in every circumstance, so is the opportunity to make everything in our lives infused with the same purpose: To learn to look at our egos without judgment and to let go of the seeming differences between ourselves and others. If we start, slowly but surely, to 'make it about them' rather than about us, making it about the people in our lives and not so much about our own imagined needs, we learn that our interests of escaping our ego thought system of separation, sin, guilt, and fear are shared by everyone and everything. Ultimately, the acceptance of Jesus' love for us is something that we all need, despite our resistance against it and despite our ego telling us that there are people out there that do not deserve this love, as if they were not part of the sonship but somehow outside. We are reminded that each time we cast someone out, we are casting ourselves out and shut the door to our own peace and the experience of love we so long for. "Make this year different by making it all the same" becomes the mantra reminding us of our purpose of looking with Jesus at all the differences we see in each other and smiling at them, knowing that they have absolutely no reality whatsoever. As it states in the introduction:

"Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God."

I pray but to myself

For You would never leave me comfortless

For You but give it all to all

But I cannot accept Your gentle touch

My fear of You forbids me to accept

Your everlasting love

My belief in my own littleness

dictates the little that I will receive

I pray but to myself

For You give everything and always

There are no limits to Your love except my own

I pray but to myself

For You would not want me to suffer pain

Or loss of any kind

And so I pray to what I made of you, an image that I hold

To substitute Your magnitude for things that last

Only an instant and that leave

Me with less than nothing to behold

 All this I pray to while Your love 

Surrounds me in an everlasting light

so vast and unimaginable 

I can only shut the door to You 

And ask for scraps when what You offer to me

Is Yourself

Your glorious Self, Your peace and stillness deep

Your comfort and Your everlasting arms

And so I pray until one day 

I realize that I have everything I want

And ever wanted 

And then prayer can become

What it has always been, a song

Of love between

Creation and Creator

Lover and Beloved

You and me

Destiny (part two)

Your destiny is laid before your feet

Clear as a summer's path through golden fields

Clear as a shining star in cloudless night

And clearer still

Like the path of the sun from dusk till dawn

Like the tides in the ocean, like the moon

And its reflection in the stillness of a lake

And clearer still

You are but what you want to find when searching high and low

From East to West from deepest sea to highest peak
From smallest into smaller still
With no place else to go

You search in vain, yet feverishly you look for what you lost

You look for what you can not find
But what you want the most

For you but search for searches sake
In order not to find and even as you look for things
Outside your holy mind
You do not see that everything you looked for all your life
Is here, right there in front of you to end your endless strive

You will but weep when finally your eyes set on your self
And find in utter loveliness the love you but withheld
From you and only you for all of it is laid
In front of you to carry you beyond the world you made

Fear not that loneliness awaits you at your place of rest

For everyone you ever met has saved your kindnesses 

And laid them at your feet as gifts

When you arrive at what you are
Your journey will be gone
The journey ends where it began
And all that's left is everything
You thought you lost but won.

Your destiny is laid before your feet
And even that is not the truth
The path through golden fields
The shining star in cloudless night
Is all but part of you.

Destiny (part one)

Copyright 2011 by Stefan Bolz

You journey not in outer realms but only deep within
Your destiny can not be found in dust or cloud or wind
You cannot find it in this world whatever you may do
You only find it in yourself
Your destiny is you.

Threshold

Copyright 2011 by Stefan Bolz

This poem came about while thinking about an experience I had during a play I was in. I had been nervous before the show and just sat there trying to calm my mind a bit. For a moment I saw myself standing on stage in front of the audience, looking at them. My nervousness, my fear of judgment from them towards me based on my performance was for a moment exchanged by a deep experience of love that flowed freely between us. It was as if the veil of fear was lifted for an instant and the true emotion - love - was allowed to flow freely. At that moment, there was no fear of judgment, no nervousness, no dread to go out on stage. All there was - ALL there was -  was an intense feeling of love that was flowing between me and the audience. Everyone was very dear to me and I knew that I was dear to them. There was just no question about that. It was a given, like the sun rising in the morning and setting at night. It was the only reality there was between us. And like an underground river that nobody on the surface notices, the love flowed, not only unnoticed but also undisturbed by what was going on above it. I felt at that moment that love was the only true emotion that existed between us and that everything else was made up by me for one reason only - to not experience it. After a minute or so, I went back to my old and well known feeling of nervousness, a bit lessened perhaps but still present. The memory of the experience lingered a while longer before it disappeared leaving but the slightest trace behind.

*     *     *

Behind appearances
Beyond the sights you see
On the far side of the veil of fear
Far past the reaches of the world
And yet more near than breathe itself

There lies your brother's love waiting at the threshold to your Self
To give you comfort and the memory of love so deep
Your worldly feelings of it are no more
Then the tiniest sun beam is to the sun
A drop of water compared to the ocean.

Just past all grievances, all hatred and all fear,
Past conflict and each others guilt you hold so dear
You will find everything you want and everything the world
Has promised you since time began but hurled
Far far away from you beyond your hopeless grasp
Just one step past all this it waits in patience for your choice at last

And then in golden silence arising in your mind
The memory of home
Your love, your light, your life
The drop returns into the oceans womb
The sunbeam finally remembers that it is the sun

And with your fingers outstretched and your heart
Finally open, seeing what you are
The lover returns to the beloved
The endless circle ends where it began
And we say 'Amen'
And we say 'Amen'

Stillness

Copyright 2011 by Stefan Bolz

Let this world be still
Let its sounds and sights move far into the distance
Of your mind. Let no thoughts of past or present
Or of things to come linger one moment longer
Leave them all behind

The world you will now see is unlike anything you dreamed of,
Anything you hoped for or anything you've lost all hope
Of ever finding once again

It is not ruled by day and night
By time and tide, by chance or destiny
Neither war nor peril can enter through its gates
The futile search, the journey into darkened tombs
The memory of damaged hearts and loss of innocence
Is gone and will return no more into your sight

The gate into the other world is sealed
Against all false ideas you still hold within your heart
And it is there until you finally remember
Until you come, in tears perhaps
Until at last you throw away your shield
And free of it you enter
Until your worn and bleeding feet will find their destined path
Through your own labyrinth and to a place
Where you and I will never be apart

And as you look at it, this world will pass, will gently slide
Into the nothingness from which it came
The other world will dawn wtihin your mind
Far beyond even the moon and stars and all you hoped to find
And what your eyes behold will bare no trace of this one
Other than the loving thoughts you left behind

These will remain and will assure
A swift transition into a world
That you have loved so long before
Before the journey into darkness had begun

And it is here where you will rest in peace
And it is here where you will know that it is done
And it is here the journey ends
In the place where you remember
That you and I are one.