Significant Experiences

Student: What would you say were significant experiences or actions that you took that stand out in your mind?

Barbara: I guess we can go back to the first premise of this teaching, which is not to believe yourself or anybody else. We learn to listen to what we are thinking, what we are saying, and what other people are saying to us with a kind of impartiality, taking none of it personally, and making no demands on ourselves to conform with old ideas and ideals or to please the expectations of others.

That begins an entire journey of discovery and revelation. Listening to what life is messaging at all times, listening to how you give yourself messages of distress, messages of self rejection, and messages of judgment and how the human body is responding to those messages and has always responded to those messages throughout your life.

From that point of view, you as a mind or, as we say in this teaching, a program, become responsible for the care and welfare of a human body. This means you need to change the way you’ve been messaging. You have to change the way you dialogue with yourself and others.

The most important thing I learned in the process of getting to know myself and applying this teaching in my life was that I had sole responsibility for the way I perceived my life, the way I dreamed my life, and the way my reality reflected those perceptions.