Keeping on Course
Resta shares her thoughts on A Course in Miracles and how its ideas apply to her personal journey at The Church Within in Indianapolis. (www.thechurchwithin.org) The Thursday night class is called Keeping On Course. Samples of past class materials are found in the links below, and will sometimes be posted on this page. Also on this page Resta will answer Course-related questions, which you can send to restasmusic@mac.com.
SEEDS OF LIGHT: The Garden Of The Mind (9-15-05)
My favorite of Jesus’ parables is that of the sower and the seed, as it is a great metaphor for various states of mind. I expanded the metaphor from rocks, thorns and good ground to include forest, desert, swamp/quicksand, animals and insects/diseases. Course quotes are included, and a chart.
BE KIND (8-17-06)
We are all members of one team - Team Christ, I call it — and we can't find our way back home unless we work together. In the chart of the Wrong Mind, we see how "projection makes perception" and we are so overwhelmed by guilt that we must keep putting it onto other people and making them wrong so we can feel right. In the Right Mind Chart, we open up to the Holy Spirit and the "Thought-Field of Kindness" that lies within the right mind. Although we continue to project, now we can quickly pull those projections back and give them to the Holy Spirit for correction, realizing that everything we see in everyone else is a mirror of what is within our own minds. Our curriculum is all the relationships in our lives. As we continue our forgiveness work, we learn to transform what was a battlefield into a Zone of Kindness. More and more of our relationships are invited into this zone as we learn that this leads to peace. This accelerates the journey home for everyone.
THE PAUSE THAT REFRESHES (11-30-06)
This collection of a chart, Course quotes and song lyrics is meant to lift our awareness off the external world of time and form and to lead into the “quiet center” of the right mind. Introductory email offers three practical applications of the “pause that refreshes”.
THE COCOON OF UNWORTHINESS (1-25-07)
The notes begin with emails I wrote to two different people on the subject. The Course quotes have to do with our devotion to littleness The chart traces the process of moving from the caterpillar of materialism, the body-centered nightmare, to the butterfly of mind-centered awareness that we are dreaming. The Course tells us there is no need to learn through pain, yet we typically believe that we can only have anything good if we pay for it with suffering. Within the caterpillar is the DNA template of the butterfly. Just as we have only limited tolerance for pain, so the caterpillar's time of earth-bound thinking and body-centered existence is limited. It must ultimately respond to the butterfly calling from within the DNA. You could say that we have Christ DNA within us that is always calling to us to be transformed. As the call grows louder and more insistent, our very "caterpillar-ness" becomes painful. Our unworthiness encases us, while the Christ within is ever calling and shining. The ego's interpretation of the "conflict" between these two aspects of ourselves is pain. The Holy Spirit uses everything we've made and gives it a new purpose: waking up and going home. The pain becomes so intolerable that we say, "There must be a better way." The better way is forgiveness. Finally we let go and the butterfly or miracle comes forth to take us above the battleground. This doesn't happen just once but thousands of times, in all the various relationships and situations of our lives.
