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Emerson Online Studies
The
Power of Now Moving From Theory Into
Practice
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"For
most people, presence is experienced either never at all or only accidentally
and briefly on rare occasions without being recognized for what it is. Most humans
alternate not between consciousness and unconsciousness but between different
levels of unconsciousness." |
Dr. Susanne Freeborn
6 Sessions - 1 Unit of Credit PS 200 Level Credit Thursday Nights
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"To meet everything and everyone through stillness
instead of mental noise is the greatest gift you can offer to the
universe." Eckhart Tolle Eckhart Tolle Note: You
can locate good inexpensive used copies of books through |
Course Objective: This course will explore the popular book written by
Eckhart Tolle entitled The Power of Now from a New Thought perspective.
New Thought teaches us the powerful practice of consciously directing
our thoughts, and that by doing so we can change our lives. Sometimes we refer to the automatic,
“already always there” form of thinking as “race consciousness” or we used
the term Carl Jung relied upon, the “collective unconscious.” This hazy body of thought is what we know
without any thought at all. Sometimes
it disguises itself as “the truth” or “common sense.” Tolle
refers to this as “your mind,” which can be a little confusing for those of
us in New Thought, but try this exercise to get at what he means: Excerpts from:
PRACTICING THE POWER OF NOW FREEING YOURSELF
FROM YOUR MIND .....The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This
is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. START LISTENING TO THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD as often as you can. Pay
particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old audiotapes
that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by "watching the thinker," which is
another way of saying: Listen to the voice in your head, be there as the
witnessing presence. When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. …. Do not
judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice
has come in again through the back door. You'll soon realize: There is the
voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization,
this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the
mind. ..... We will
spend six weeks studying and focusing our attention upon this witness within
ourselves learning to recognize it more readily and access its power on a
moment-by-moment basis. Since ancient times, spiritual masters of all traditions have pointed
to the Now as the key to the spiritual dimension. Despite this, it seems to
have remained a secret. It is certainly not taught in traditional or orthodox
churches and temples. If you go to a church, you may hear readings from the
Gospels, such as, "Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall
take thought for things of itself" or "Nobody who puts his hand to
the plow and looks back is fit for the ·How will those around me know that I have achieved the course
objective? In the first two lessons students will identify
measurable spiritual goals for their participation in the course through
which authentic recognition of spiritual progress can be recognized both by
the student, as well as by named significant people in ones life. "To
offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and
lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a
certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner
dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer
forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you
thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or
effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them—while they
last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and
go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows
with ease." EXCERPTS FROM THE POWER OF NOW: What is the power
of Now? None other
than the power of your presence, your consciousness liberated from thought
forms. So deal with
the past on the level of the present. The more attention you give to the past,
the more you energize it, and the more likely you are to make a
"self" out of it. Don't misunderstand: attention is essential, but
not to the past. Give attention to the present; give attention to your
behavior, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions, fears, and desires as
they occur in the present. There's the past in you. If you can be present
enough to watch all those things, not critically or analytically but nonjudgementally, then you are dealing with the past and
dissolving it through the power of your presence. You find yourself by coming
into the present. ______________________________________________________________ .....So break
the old pattern of present-moment denial and present-moment resistance. Make
it your practice to withdraw attention from past and future whenever they are
not needed. Step out of the time dimension as much as possible in everyday
life. If you find it hard to enter the Now directly, start by observing the
habitual tendency of your mind to want to escape from the Now. You will
observe that the future is usually imagined as either better or worse than
the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or
pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are
illusory. .... ______________________________________________________________ .....The word
enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the
ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt
oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something
immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is
essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true
nature beyond name and form. The inability to feel this connectedness gives
rise to the illusion of separation, from yourself and from the world around
you. You then perceive yourself, consciously or unconsciously, as an isolated
fragment. Fear arises, and conflict within and without becomes the norm.
..... ______________________________________________________________ DR. SUSANNE FREEBORN - Has been teaching online since 1997 when she completed the requirements
of her ministerial studies program.
Dr. Freeborn is the developer, director, and founder of the Emerson
Online Studies program for Emerson Institute.
She received a Juris Doctorate degree in 1995 from Monterey College of
Law in Contact Information Emerson Online
Questions to: Dr.Susanne@comcast.net Tuition and Materials:
$110.00 Registration Form |