We fear that the inner voyage of discovery will lead us to some dreadful, awful truth. In its programming of our minds, this is one of the barriers that the world has set up to prevent us from finding out the real truth. There is one thing the world does not want us to find out and that is the truth about ourselves. Why? Because then we will become free. We can no longer be controlled, manipulated, exploited, drained, enslaved, imprisoned, vilified, or disempowered. Therefore, the inner voyage of discovery is cloaked over with an aura of mystery and foreboding.

What is the real truth about this voyage? The real truth is that, as we go within and discards one illusion after another, one falsehood after another, one negative program after another, it gets lighter and lighter. The awareness of the presence of love becomes stronger and stronger. We will feel lighter and lighter. Life becomes progressively more effortless.

from Letting Go, ch. 6, pg. 106

I thought this conversation between Dave and I was fitting on this Halloween.

Susan: How would you say is the best way to teach children about spirituality?

Dr. Hawkins: Well, I think teaching the value of love. I think the reverence in which we hold spiritual figures, Jesus Christ and the Saints and how all of society holds God. So I believe in teaching children from very early on about God and Jesus Christ and saints and good persons and the value of going to church and how we love the clergy, we love the priests and we love the nuns. We love them all those who help the church. The reverence in which society holds the spiritual domain. The reverence in which the integrous members of society hold it.

Other people, it’s their enemy. Holiness and spirituality and that which is Divinity is the enemy of people that are anti-God. There’s a lot of people that hate God and hate Divinity and hate spirituality and they exist in every religion. They hate Muslims, they hate Christians. So a good deal of hatred gets mixed into their religious sectarianism. So it’s very paradoxical, you know. Hate people who picture God in a different style than you than what you do so, you hate them. It’s tragicomic, tragic comical.

Susan: What is the spiritual significance of a couple choosing not to have children?

Dr. Hawkins: It’s not necessary. They might do it for spiritual reasons if they thought that having the children was going to interfere the spiritual design of their life. But that would be a selection that everybody makes, whether to get married or not in the first place and then whether to have children or not and the part that spirituality plays in that.

Nuns and priests don’t have children, you know. Well, priests do, in the Episcopal church, you know. Well, Catholic priests don’t. So in some churches you can’t have a family and other churches like Episcopal, you can have a family. So, it’s how it’s pictured. It can be pictured as a positive contributor to one’s spiritual dimension or could be pictured as retarding it. I think it’s how you hold it in your mind. I don’t think it is intrinsically is one way or the other.

Listen

The Importance of Family

It is necessary to develop respect for spiritual endeavor. Straight and narrow is the path; waste no time or effort. Precision is discipline that is innate to serious commitment. Some students may yet be in a period of exploration, but once one gets the “fire in the belly,” the urge to reach God becomes a relentless drive – or even, in the eyes of the world, a “madness.” From that point on, there is no patience for amusement or diversion. It depends on decision, will, the level of consciousness, and karmic propensities. As it gets more intense, the love for and of God allows no delay.     Dissolving the Ego, Realizing the Self  ch. 7, pg. 120.

This is a great little story that Dave shared at this lecture:

“I was happy being poor. I have been poor, I have been rich and frankly there is no difference between the two. You get up that day and you are happy or you are not happy. When I first came to the West, I slept on a cot I got at the Dime Store. We had an apple to celebrate any special occasions. I tested the teachings of A Course in Miracles. I left the house with no money, no food, and everything was provided for me. By 11:00 AM someone would say, ‘What are you doing for lunch? Come along with me.’ Everything I needed just appeared. I drove the old truck to Sedona; just as I needed a pair of pliers to fix the truck, on the side of the road was a brand new, never used pair. I fixed what I needed and went on. Everything went that way. It is true you do not need anything at all except faith.”

from “Serenity” August 2005 lecture and “Book of Slides” pg.125

Q:  If practically everything in one’s life depends on the evolution of the level of one’s consciousness, it would seem that, aside from mere survival needs, developing that level of consciousness would eclipse all other endeavors in importance.

A:  That would seem to be so, but that has to be integrated into the overall context of one’s life.  Endeavors and activities can remain the same but need to be recontextualized and repositioned within a spiritual framework.  To spiritualize one’s life, it is necessary only to shift one’s motive.  To constantly be aware of one’s actual motive tends to bring up positionality and the pairs of opposites, such as gain versus service or love versus greed.  These then become visible and are available for spiritual work because one is now conscious of them.

…In spiritual work, there is no tangible worldly gain to be acquired, but there is instead an inner reward of pleasure, satisfaction, delight, and even joy.  Goals replace gains as motives.

from I: Reality and Subjectivity, Ch. 5, pg. 155-156

I thought all you folks would enjoy this great technique from one of Dave’s lectures on how to eliminate fears:

“In surrendering a stack of fears, you can use the technique of “And then what?” You take a fear and say “And then what?”:

I lost my car. And then what?

I won’t have transportation. And then what?

I will lose my job. And then what?

I will have to walk to work. And then what?

There aren’t any jobs like that and I won’t have any money. And then what?

Then I’ll be poor. And then what?

Then I will starve to death.

So at the bottom of every stack of fears is the fear of death, physical death. So once you’ve accepted physical death, then, most of the fears that we have which are focused on the body and loss of possessions and things disappear. You do that by acceptance.”

from “Serenity”, August 2005 lecture, disc 2 and “Book of Slides”

Choosing the Positive
We can ask ourselves: “When was I ever trained in the techniques of emotional self-healing?  When I went to school, did they teach me courses on consciousness? Did anybody ever tell me that I had the freedom to choose what went into my mind? Was I ever taught that I could refuse all of the negative programming?  Did anybody ever tell me the laws of consciousness?  If not, why beat ourselves up about having innocently believed certain things? Why not stop beating ourselves up right now?

We all did what we thought was best in the moment.  “It seemed like a good idea at the time” is what we can say about our past actions and those of others. We’ve all been unwittingly programmed without our conscious assent.  Out of our confusion, ignorance, and naiveté, we bought into the negative programs.  We let them run us.  But now we can choose to stop.  We can choose a different direction.  We can choose to become more aware, more conscious, more responsible, and more discerning.

from Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, ch. 4, pg. 66-67

Dave was so right on with this passage and his humor came out with every lesson he taught, allowing us to laugh at ourselves in the smallest detail.

Susan: I don’t know, I look at people and I see that so many of them, their wants are so large. Their wants are more than what their earnings are. “I have to have that car and I’ll be happy”. “I have to have this house and then I’ll be happy” and then “I have to have this pool for the house and then I’ll be happy”, but then when they get all that, it’s always another thing that they’re not happy with.

Dr. Hawkins: Yes, that’s the error of seeing happiness as something outside of yourself, something to be gained. The value of things is purely a projection, each and every thing of its own, you know. If you were starving to death in the middle of the desert, the Hope Diamond wouldn’t do you much good. So it’s desirability, then, and it’s called glamour or the energy of glamour is projected onto things. We think the attractiveness is out there. There’s no attractiveness out there. All attractiveness is in here. It’s because you desire that, want it and value it that it looks desirable and attractive to you. Pickled beets look very good to you, if you like pickled beets and if you don’t they aren’t attractive, you know.

So that’s the projection of value onto the external world and that of course is the basis of materialism and the whole economy is based on wanting this and wanting that and wanting something else and to instill such wants if you don’t want something then you’ll get programmed to wanting it. Better burial benefits! They’re out to sell you something. Prepaid funerals, I mean they are right down to the very last thing. Better coffins, you know what I mean. So, there’s no end to programming people to wantingness. So wantingness is the backbone of our economy, the backbone of our economy is wantingness. And when people stop wanting things, it all comes to a halt. But when you let go wanting the physical, then you want the emotional and you want the spiritual. What you’re looking for the world cannot provide. What you’re looking for is the return of love. A glance of love is all that you really wanted that entire day.

—from the “What is the World?” Feb 2009 lecture

I thought everyone would enjoy this passage from one of Doc’s books:

Lovingness is a way of relating to the world. It is a generosity of attitude that expresses itself in seemingly small but powerful ways. It is a wish to bring happiness to others, to brighten their day and lighten their load. To merely be friendly and complimentary to everyone one meets in the course of a day is revealing. That this is not a commonplace attitude is revealed by people’s responses when they encounter it. Often, they respond with surprise or even a pleased state of shock. “Nobody ever compliments what I do; they only complain,” is a remark that will be heard. Most people, because they are focused on their own wants and critical attitudes, apparently do not even see the positive aspects of life and cannot respond to them. They take others’ service for granted with the explanation, “Well, they’re getting paid for it, aren’t they?” (Which is really beside the point.)

Major segments of society operate on the level of lovelessness. Giant corporations and government agencies can only be described as dourly functioning. Gratitude does not appear nor is it even considered to be socially appropriate. Love is belittled as ‘touchy-feely’. Love is therefore socially restricted to romance, mothers and their children, or one’s dog. Expressed elsewhere, it becomes an embarrassment. There are a few masculine areas where love is okay, such as for family, sports, one’s country, or a car.

The large area of life that is socially acceptable and open to everyone is that which is called ‘caring’. To ‘care for’ is a wide open avenue for the expression and expansion of love. People say they can’t find love as though it were something to be gotten. Once one becomes willing to give love, the discovery quickly follows that one is surrounded by love and merely didn’t know how to access it. Love is actually present everywhere and its presence only needs to be realized. 

From: “The Eye of the I: From Which Nothing is Hidden” (2002), Chapter 15: Clarifications, pp. 226–227