Tag: personal transformation

FINAL ROUND

by Maasaisis

I’ve just completed my 8th and final round of chemo, and I didn’t ring the bell.

I actually had to think about it and even ask for guidance. What does it mean to ring the bell? It means I achieved something difficult. I followed through. It is the sound of, “I did it!”

To tell you the truth, chemo was a walk in the park compared to the intense protocols I put myself through. I probably would have rung the bell at that time—for being diligent, determined, and disciplined. But I’m not who I used to be. There is a quiet part of me wanting to turn toward an inquiry: What is this for?

It’s not that I want to downplay the act of completion with a celebratory ring for all to hear. I have witnessed enough people in the chemo lounge looking sick, tired, and withdrawn while we all face the uncertainties of being in that room. I get it. Healing can look like a step-by-step process, and to finish one process is worth celebrating. I remember how I hooted and hollered when my beloved friend finished her rounds. For her, she was done. She was moving into a future away from that room.

For me, part of me doesn’t want to declare completion when I still don’t know what comes next. I don’t want to claim something I still cannot know—the state of my body. Instead, I want to ring a bell only I can hear: the one that sounds when I recognize my true inheritance. I always have the opportunity to choose the domain of peace within my mind.

I believe I came to recognize that place during the rounds of treatment that required my energy, time, and commitment, and to value my own invulnerability. So I celebrate today in my quiet way, with a smiling heart and so much gratitude for the lovely doctors and nurses who helped me along the way. That is enough.

The accomplishment for me is to remain anchored in the safety of my true home, where I reside with God, even while the world tries to convince me otherwise. I keep having to remind myself that I am not separate from God. Perhaps this is the biggest lesson of all: I am not outside of Love, but part of it, and there I am always safe.

Whether I’m back in the chemo lounge, searching for my purpose, facing a crisis at home, or stuck in my familiar, fear-induced messy mind space, what I want to celebrate is my determination to find my way back to joy, regardless of what appears to be happening to me—even if only for an instant.

I’m also claiming that I am much more open to what is happening and what may happen at the level of my body. The next PET scan will tell me where I’m at, but the less I invest in my experience as being solely of my body, the less afraid I am.

The body is not where the mind resides. The mind has the potential to express our Spirit, an extension of Creation itself, or to experience itself as separate from it when we have forgotten who we are. Remembering this allows me to remain open to possibilities I may otherwise close myself off to. I know that the place to focus is on the healing of my mind. From there, time and time again, I am finding my way.

The life I led before prepared me, in a sense, for this. It fueled my search for purpose and deeper meaning, the things that lit up my spirit. Life with Lump led me into the darkest caverns in my mind, where fear mimicked the power of cancer cells—to seed, multiply, and take over.

I’m learning that the mind, like the ocean, can be both ominous at the surface and utterly still in its depths. If I keep trying to tread water at the surface, I will eventually tire out. If I remember that what I really am is the stillness that cannot be affected deep below, my life becomes less about my concerns of being flung around by every wave.

For me, my healing journey became my spiritual journey, and I am eternally grateful that I’m finding my way back to God through applying the teachings of the Course. It could be cancer. It could be a breakup, a natural disaster, loss, war… In our finite world, we are all running from the same seed of fear that fuels our personal hell. I’m not suggesting that we bypass our humanness, but I believe there is a choice to decide when we are ready to pass through it.

Perhaps our spirit is always calling us to inhabit our rightful state, and each and every one of us, at some level, is hearing that call and responding, consciously or unconsciously. Maybe our life circumstances are the catalysts that answer it. I believe there are many paths that all lead to the same changeless place, meeting us exactly where we are.

My personal curriculum is learning the real meaning of life—that it goes on even when the body eventually turns to dust. In the inner sanctum of what we really are, we are already whole, perfect, and healed for always. The more I inhabit that knowing, the more supported I feel navigating the surface stuff. There is a way out of the hell we interpret our lives to be. Heaven is a state of mind, and it can only be entered through there.

I needed to go all the way to the top to understand my original design. In doing so, I restored my relationship with my Maker and discovered that the power of this Divine relationship is ignited when I choose to be in relationship with it. I’m awakening an ancient memory of what is unalterable, with no conditions or compromises. It is available to us all. It reminds me that we are of the same, that suffering is where the waves are crashing on the surface, but we are also safe in the nature of what we really are. That is the paradox of being here. We can hold both. We hold the key to recognize that the door has always been open, and we don’t have to die to walk through it.

As a result, the relationships I care about most have healed, and the relationships I thought didn’t matter now matter to me.

I don’t have regrets. I look for cues for what is holding me back. When I’m afraid, I ask for help. I’m becoming more aware of how easily judgment can slip into even my attempts to be kind or loving, and how the same thought system that produces a subtle jab or gossip can, left unchecked, become something far more destructive. This horrified me at first, but now I counter it with correction as soon as I notice my error, which takes a great deal of forgiveness. I’m a work in progress, and perhaps my greatest lesson is to be patient and kind as I learn to undo the tendencies that need to be healed.

When I feel I need to defend my identity, my opinions, my body, my reputation, or my future, I have already accepted the belief that I am alone, separate from the Love that binds us, mortal, and vulnerable. The undoing of my defenses against the dangers of the world brings me home to Oneness and invulnerability.

I am no longer driven to find my grandiose purpose because I recognize that it happens every time I choose love over fear—through life circumstances and in relationships that contribute to the healing of the world.

Sometimes love asks me to stand up against injustice in worldly matters. This is where I know I need a lot of help—learning to decipher how to respond without reacting from defensiveness, anger, or retaliation. Not to attack back or fight, but to ask for the miracle to stand strong and serve everyone, even those causing the injustice. In the world of cause and effect, justice may still be served, but perhaps it can be done from a place of recognizing that even heinous acts arise from defending a false identity born of fear—the very same thought system that would have me believe I am a sick, vulnerable body.

I have become watchful, with a willingness to stop and question my motives for why I may be driven to do something. Even when I think I am being kind and loving, I’ve come to discover that my motivation can come from serving my ego—to feel special, to be appreciated, or to receive love in return.

I’m practicing that what I give is what I receive. If I have the awareness to take a sacred pause and follow the motive to its root, I can then ask how else I should respond. Often, I get the message to just wait. To not jump into rescue mode and let the “get things done and fix things” mode settle down.

I’ve been amazed at how solutions have come from a much deeper, more loving place than the surface fix I initially had in mind. Because as long as I see the problems of the world at face value, the solutions I come up with will only touch what shifts and changes like ocean waves.

LESSON: LIFE IS RETURNING HOME OVER AND OVER AGAIN UNTIL WE STAY.

THE CONCEPT OF ME

by Maasaisis

Aren’t so many of us in search of meaning in our lives? Isn’t that quest ultimately driven by the age-old question, Who am I?

When we’re born, most of us don’t yet know who we are. As we move through life, we begin to fill that blank space with ideas shaped by our experiences and the people around us. We form an image of who we should be—one that reflects inherited beliefs about what makes us worthy, safe, and special. Over time, we find ourselves striving toward that image or resisting anything that threatens it.

Our sense of good and bad is shaped entirely by experience. Some of us are even taught to mold ourselves into someone else’s version of “good,” or to believe that what another person calls “bad” is actually right.

Being born can feel like beginning a painting on a blank canvas. At first, each brushstroke is our own, but as life unfolds, other hands begin touching the canvas—through influence, circumstance, and expectation. Eventually the shapes and colors morph into something foreign, something other than me.

So we keep painting, layering new strokes in search of meaning, hoping to finally create something magnificent. Yet the more we add, the more we forget what was there before the first stroke—the untouched space that quietly recognizes itself completely.

Perhaps our longing comes from that remembrance. In this way, the world becomes the practice ground—to learn to unlearn the belief that we must become something in order to find peace. We gently undo every version of ourselves we thought we needed, each one an avatar created for a different chapter of the dream. But who is the one dreaming the life lived through them?

It can feel mind-bending, especially when our senses insist that only matter is real. Yet suffering always arises at the borders of the self-concepts that make up the collective—the places where we divide and separate. When the little “i” of separation becomes the center of perception, we can’t fathom the all-inclusive reality of Love—a Love so abundant it breaks the laws of this world, where one’s gain must come at another’s loss. In the realm of the shared Self, what is given is also received, because the giving and receiving happen within the same One.

When I scrutinize what version of myself would finally make me happy, I see that I can never be truly satisfied, no matter what I overcome, do, or achieve. Fulfillment based on what my body does—or fails to do—is always temporary. I find myself asking: What are these values for? What version of myself am I protecting, and why am I so afraid of losing it? Perhaps it’s because I made it and it feels so precious.

The healthy self, the creative self, the strong self, the generous self—all exist beside their opposites, each quietly in conflict with the other. Life becomes a dance between these selves, each grasping at fleeting ideas of happiness and safety.

My state fluctuates with my mind. My vitality can be snatched away in an instant when old fears catch up with me in a single thought. Even when nothing around me has changed, the thought I don’t want this to change can take my healthy self hostage, seized by the one facing the formidable unknown.

These moments remind me, viscerally, that no version of my constructed self can protect me from impermanence. Peace can only be found through trust in divine law—the truth that we are already perfect, whole, and eternally safe as we were created, of the same essence, beyond any concept of ourselves we could imagine.

I can only begin to envision that everlasting beauty, and so I practice believing—trusting that what is real has never changed.

When I contemplate my true identity as a perfect creation untouched by what I think or do, I feel immense relief. Whatever I believe I am—or should be—has nothing to do with what I truly am. Beneath all layers of self-concept lies the original, unalterable holy Self, exactly as Love created me. This same unchanging Self lives in everyone, quietly waiting to be remembered. And because our minds are ultimately joined, remembering it in myself and choosing to recognize it in others helps reveal it in all. This is no easy feat, especially in the face of pain or injustice, nor does it turn me into a passive bystander to be tossed about. It does, however, give me the sense that I’m standing for something meaningful—something that points toward a freedom resting on stable ground.

Duality—the yin and yang of life—reflects the tension of opposites that governs this finite world. But what if duality was a choice we made with the first stroke on our canvas? What if we set in motion a painting meant to contain everything we thought we wanted, only to discover that no canvas could ever hold what we truly are?

And yet, beneath every shifting stroke, something changeless remains. The shared Self is untouched by striving, fear, or judgment. The world continues to teach and challenge us, but we can look beyond its rules for solutions—to step back, breathe, and question what is determining our state.

When the insanity and heartbreak of this world bring me to my knees, my practice is to return home—to divine reality—where our shared essence holds us, and peace is all there is.

Holding this paradox—the life we experience and the perfection of our true identity—is where I seek freedom. As we release the layers of self-concept that shift with every experience, we find steadier ground within. Each moment of awareness becomes an opportunity to return to that quiet, unchanging Self—the part of us that has never been lost. Even for an instant. And that instant can lengthen into the next, and the next.

Life is not about finishing the painting or capturing every detail perfectly. It is about remembering that the masterpiece already exists within us—the quiet assurance that nothing we do or fail to do can alter what is already complete.

ACIM LESSON199: I AM NOT A BODY I AM FREE

This blog was inspired by my reflections on my weekly ACIM Essentials class, “A Case of Mistaken Identity,” taught by Robert and Emily Perry at the Circle of Atonement. They have a vast selection of podcasts exploring A Course In Miracles here https://circleofa.org/podcast/