I’m 72 today. Around the time of my birthday last year, I was privileged to be working on a new film project from Hay House called My Greatest Teacher. The story is based on my experience at my father’s grave in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1974.
It was a moment of forgiveness that turned my whole life around and changed everything—from my writing to my career to my relationships. I stopped drinking and doing so many things that were debilitating to my body. In that moment, I got rid of the anger and rage against my father that I had carried around inside of me since I was a child.
The film has a contemporary setting with an actor playing the young me—angry, impatient, careless of the feelings of others—until he faces his greatest teacher. Essentially, he can’t go on with his life until he settles up with the huge burden of blame he is carrying. A Course in Miracles says, “If you didn’t blame, there would be nothing to forgive.” Continue Reading
Everyone knows the experience of “performance anxiety” whether you are a prima ballerina or a job candidate or a student taking a qualifying exam. Life is filled with what we think of as performance challenges. The key word here is think because it’s really our thinking about these experiences that scares us—not the opportunity to show what we can do.
A way out of the “I’m scared” thought pattern is offered in A Course in Miracles. I have a special love for this weighty tome that tells us there are only two emotions we can experience: love and fear. Anything that is love cannot be fear, and anything that is fear cannot be love. If we can find our way to stay in a space of love, then fear is an impossibility.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous refrain from his first inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” was crafted from Thoreau’s observation that “nothing is so much to be feared as fear.” These Tao men had it right—there really is nothing to be afraid of. We have no need to fear and we can accomplish anything for the simple reason that we are never alone. The presence of our all-loving Source banishes fear.
When you face a “performance” that might provoke the “I’m scared” response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It’s more fun than Dancing with the Stars! Bring your highest Self to the occasion, your loving, serving, giving, joyful self, and be prepared to show the world what your God-aligned Self has to offer.