Honoring the Purpose

“From starting around 1991 to 1996, I was living like Jesus and the apostles did: day by day. I wouldn’t know where I was sleeping from night to night. I didn’t have a place to lay my head but everything I needed always showed up. I would watch the sun go down and I would think, It’s going to be interesting to see how it goes tonight, and then again the next night and then again the next night. So, I learned trust. Before I got into communities, I was learning deep trust. And, I think that trust just carried over into the communities. Because when I did have the communities, I would have groups of people sitting around, and I would just be there in joyful presence. But occasionally, people would think that there was somebody that had a problem, or that somebody was a problem; like a “problem person” in the group, or “problem child.” I would just sit there in utter disbelief. ‘You really believe that? You honestly believe that it is this person’s fault?’ I would ask, and four, five, six would say, “Yeah, yeah, we all agree.” I would say, ‘You really believe that?’

You know, to me there aren’t any personal problems. When we believe problems are personal, that somebody is to blame, it is the sure sign that the ego is involved. It is a sure sign there is projection involved. And I’m not so interested in “unified projection.” When four or five people come and tell me that there is a problem, I will sit with them but I will just sit and sit and sit, because I’m just aware that the problems aren’t personal. It’s the filter; it’s the ego filter we look through that interprets and judges the world. That is the problem. We have to focus on cleaning the filter, not correcting people. Jesus even says that in A Course in Miracles; don’t correct your brother because he is the Christ. That is quite a teaching: don’t correct your brother.”