The Only Destination There Is

Last night I went to a lecture to meet Sondra Ray – someone I’ve admired for nearly 25 years.

She and her husband, Mark Sullivan, were lecturing on Immortality and A Course in Miracles.  I can’t recall them ever appearing in the Midwest, so I took this opportunity as a gift from heaven.   In 1981 I purchased Sondra’s book, “The Only Diet There Is” and was thoroughly challenged by what she teaches in it.  Its message is a vital today as it ever was, and I brought my dog-eared copy with me hoping she might sign it.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was an intimate group.  Sondra and Mark had lead a Loving Relationships Training over the previous three days, hosted another lecture and also did private sessions.  This was their final presentation, and Sondra said that it took a lot of guts for us to show up to a presentation on Immortality.

Sondra and Mark had their heads shaved in India recently

So – Immortality —–

Do I really want to live to be 900? What would be the point? I’d need bullet-proof health insurance, that’s for sure.  My life insurance company would be none too happy, either.  And what could immortality possibly have to do with A Course in Miracles?

Sondra and her friend Leonard Orr developed a tool called Rebirthing that I had encountered many years ago.  Rebirthing is geared toward helping people overcome their unconscious death urge.  What is the unconscious death urge? Sondra explained that it’s the belief that you are born and you will die.  This belief comes from many corners: family tradition, religious dogma, past life memories of dying, our personal lie (more on that in a minute), guilt, separation from God, and so forth.

The Rebirthing experience (now re-named Liberation Breathing) brings you back to your birth into this life, the trauma surrounding it, and reconnects you to the being that you are/were before you became YOU.  It returns you to the arms of God where you lived before you were born.  You then take this new connection and live your life accordingly.

Rebirthing isn’t just a once in a lifetime experience. Our guilt constantly seeps back into our minds and reactivates the death urge – so rebirthing on a regular basis makes sense.  This practice also rejuvenates us and removes the reasons we secretly harbor for dying.

But once again – why live forever in the physical body?

This is the beauty and the crux of the path: In order to reach a place where physical death won’t happen, we must allow our egos to be undone.  And when we have reached that state, should we decide to stay in the physical body, our sole purpose would be pure service to our fellow humans on earth, to help them undo their egos, too.

This is heavy duty stuff – not for the faint-hearted.

So when the ego is in charge, what does life look like?  Well, we have beliefs that old age brings sickness, we’re held hostage to addictions, we believe in sin, guilt and fear….not a pretty picture.

And this is where it all gets terribly interesting to me.

I’ve been drawn to Rebirthing for over 20 years; and then when I discovered it about 8 years ago, to The Course.  In a very simplified form, The Course says that “there is no world” – that this life we think we’re living is an illusion we created because we tried to kill God, and then decided to hide from that horrible choice here, in the body.  The trouble is, that we have so much guilt about trying to kill God that we project it outside of ourselves, and it takes the form of bad people, horrifying events and the like – just so we can safely say that we are not guilty of being bad….that other guy over there is the bad one.  It’s a powerful reason to stay human.

The Course also says that guilt is a choice. Pure and simple. Rebirthing is a potent tool for helping us understand the choice for guilt that we are always making, because Rebirthing is just guided breathing. There’s no dogma to sign up for, there are no rules you must adhere to.

So – are you ready for a little experiment?

Sondra and Mark had us do this little exercise while they did it themselves onstage.  Find a friend.  I  used my sister, Melanie.  Each of you should have a piece of paper and a pen.  At the top, write these words:

“A negative thought that I have that is destructive to my body is…”

Now, each of you takes a turn.  Person #1 (Melanie) reads the statement, then fills in the blank.  Person #2 (me) will write it down on Melanie’s paper, read it back, say “thank you” and then Melanie will do it again.  She’ll come up with about 5-6 statements that are true to her.  Then, it’s my turn.  Melanie will write down what I say on my paper so we each have a record of what we said.

Examples might be: “A negative thought that I have that is destructive to my body is that I am lazy.”  Or, “…I overeat.”  Or even, “…I only have a few good years left.”

In a room full of participants, the first thing I noticed was that the scary, deep, dark secrets I  regularly repeat silently to myself during my day were pretty common in the room.  It was a relief to know I wasn’t the only person suffering from this negative thought or that one.

These statements represent our personal lie.  It’s our choice to believe them.  But I think you’re getting the picture.

Next – my own rebirthing experiences and more on Immortality and A Course in Miracles

….to be Continued……

Tagged as: A Course in Miracles, birth trauma, deborah frueh, guilt, immortality, mark sullivan, personal lie, rebirthing, sondra ray