Walk Forth: The Beatitudes Revisited

Note from Mari: I do not know how often this will happen, but I had a recent exchange with Jesus that links to my posting from 1999-2000 because of the Beatitudes and new meanings now revealed. When I notice such similarities, I will post them.

 

It is no accident that you began speaking to me with the Beatitudes and that you now have come upon a translation closer to its true meaning. That you are blessed goes without saying but was needed at the time, when “walk forth” was not the meaning chosen, but the meaning that was lost. The time that was not then, is now.   ~Jesus

(The new material on The Beatitudes that Jesus mentions was found in Jean-Yves LeLoup’s “The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.” I quote him here:

“Recent scholarship has found that previous translations of the eight beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew are in error inasmuch as they imply a kind of passive consolation in the face of tribulations. They are instead an invitation to stand up, to arise and walk forth, no matter what pain and trouble may lie on the road ahead. When we return to the original Semitic terms underlying the Greek version of Jesus’ words in this gospel, we find that blessed should be replaced by walk forth, which restores the text’s original dynamic quality. (pgs. 76-77)

Also spoken of are naturalness, depression, and the New.

 

June 25, 2018

(The Cabin was built in 2005. Early conversations with Jesus did not take place there.)

Coming out here, my shadow goes before me. I can’t believe how seldom that happens now that I’m noticing it. Almost startling. As though I’m walking beside myself. I am…so clear…the slope of my shoulders, looking as if I have a pageboy because I’ve got my hair stuffed under the back of my shirt. Elongated, I am slender and the way I see myself moving is truly the way I move and does not startle me but feels familiar.

A young squirrel is eating the bread I’ve left for him. He stops and looks in and I feel it has begun—we are communing. And now my second spotting of a hummingbird, the first just a week ago. Now the little finches arrive. They too, stop and peak in.

This place holds me in peace, yet even now, my thinking mind has its questions, and I enter that place where they won’t arise.

Let’s stay in this place together, my sister, this place of no questions and no answers. We hold this day together here, in stillness that surpasses understanding, and yet that is visible in the physical world’s movement around you this morning. We sit together in this still spot.

I can only “be here now” with my moving fingers reflected on the bottom of the screen on which I type. Shadows and reflection. My fingers are so bold and sure and, in their way lovely, that they almost bring tears to my eyes. Clear as day—there they are in living color, every line, the flesh-tones and the freckles and the redness at the knuckles, and the pink and white of my nails, my rings, the reflection even extended upward enough for a flash of my watch.

I pause and await you, even while I know I cannot await you. . . like I can’t ask you questions. It is as if there is a time in which, yes, questions are okay, but this is not that time, and I know that it is not, and that it very rarely is, as you know me better than I know myself, and the real questions of my heart, if there are any. Today there is no “forming” going on that allows it, and I feel this difference, and consider it holy ground. I sit on holy ground and abide there as best I can, welcoming every grace-filled distraction from thinking and posing, my fingers still being visible one of the distractions. . .as if this is a day of seeing myself in new ways. . .a conclusion I fall to, again, with that fragment of my thinking mind.

I move my hand to reach for my coffee cup, and that movement is reflected in the window!There is no escape!

An egret or heron flaps by overhead as I feel goosebumps between my shoulder blades and a sense of the in between realm: the visible and its reflection, as if it is something like that, and the reflection like unto what is truly real.

A startling ah ha! Does observation keep us from thinking? What a lovely idea, suddenly there. And knowing you are here is more important than what may yet be said.

I’ve felt that all the current “situations” swirling around me are here to show me something that is for my benefit and that of our Course. Do I leave the “something” amorphous, my brother? Leave off the assigning of meaning altogether? I do a quick look and, this phrase, “assigning meaning” is used three times in the Course chapter on Intersection, (never one of my favorites, as you know!) and only there. I can almost say with certainty that it is there to say, “Let meaning be revealed.”

“I do not know what anything is for.” Isn’t that a saying of ACIM?

I’m only realizing in this moment that I write in opposition to thinking, not all the time, but a good deal of the time. This pleases me. I DO observe in order to still my thinking…or not “in order to.” This is the whole crazy thing. Doing “in order to” is still willful. But in my natural observation in my cabin mornings, my observation simply does still my thinking mind. (Please don’t let me hang on to that “thoughtful” observation now Lord…as it could alter things. That is, in all likelihood, the scourge of current times. Having observed something truly meaningful, it becomes a goal to repeat it, and that is the death of it.)

I am returned.

Do not fear that we are here to speak of the shadowy side of your nature. The shadow you are so aware of today, aware of with childlike innocence, is the shadow of the in between. It is like to what you try to express as lack of willfulness, the leaving behind of questions and the quest for answers. You rarely observe what you know to be the difference between what “we” do and this quest.

YOU ARE FREE, and I would not have you be so burdened. I did alert you yesterday to an idea, to a theme that we can share together today, because it is related to all you see as personal failings—your ineptness, your inability to focus, your need to do one thing at a time, your need to end the busyness and fear that you then won’t tend to what needs tending to. And so, we have today an idea of your need of help, and my offer of it in my way.

Paint a new picture. I know you remember the years in which you were hearing “Paint a new picture,” and how you feel you failed to do so. But you did not fail. You’ve been painting ever since, sometimes in softer hues, sometimes in bolder ones, sometimes out of questioning and sometimes out of seeing. There is no failure to be seen. No failure in the picture that’s been emerging. And no perfection. No finished product. There is fire and ice, explosions and new growth, passings and comings on. And you are still standing. And still staying in touch with the imaginal realm. This is the combination all are walking through—all those who are approaching the new.

The New is rising up to meet you,
and there are collisions going on, of old and new.

It is no accident that you began speaking to me with The Beatitudes and that you now have come upon a translation closer to its true meaning.

That you are blessed goes without saying but was needed at the time, when “walk forth” was not the meaning chosen, but the meaning that was lost. The time that was not then, is now.

Walk Forth.

Each time there is newness, the corresponding feeling is “the time is now.” If you do not believe the time is now, what do you do? What do you believe? You continue to separate time and eternity. In eternity 2000 years are the blink of an eye…in eternity time is not real…in eternity all is already accomplished…perhaps, you think—in eternity all are powerful. But not right now. No.

Now is the time. If you can believe in a destiny field for you and Mary, for you and others, then you can begin to believe in a destiny field that includes the time being now. You experience the thinning of the veil. You dwell, especially when you know it not, in the imaginal…which is known in the different way that is the advent of the new.

The closing out of opposites IS happening as the physical joins with the nonphysical realm and begins to merge in a way destined to be. . .and to be . . .naturally. The new always begins in a startling, seemingly unnatural way, and then before too long, it becomes “in the nature” of the life of the one experiencing it. It becomes the nature of life to be loving and fearless…unafraid of change.

Each and every person has their fears of change because they think in terms of what they like and what they don’t like and fear giving up what they like…which is commonly thought of as such a part of their life that giving it up is like giving up all that brings them comfort or joy. You will ask me to…leave my job. (You know this one!) You will ask me to…quit smoking. You will ask me to give up my privacy. You will ask me to be so busy that I can’t contemplate. –(There’s one you never ascribed to me! Or to our holy work!)

Let’s say I ask you first to be…natural. Isn’t that what you take from our Course? That I am asking you first and foremost to be yourself? That I am asking this without any limits placed on it? No…be yourself, but be better. No, be yourself, but give up your habits. No…be yourself but stifle your creativity. None of that! But as you know it’s far deeper than that, too.

Do Not Abandon yourself! Do not leave yourself comfortless! Do not continue to feel alone! Do not live in fear!

As you return to nature—what is natural to you, your most comfortable and comforting place of being—only then can you begin. And it is partially as you have identified it today, a place devoid of willfulness because you are being natural and occupied by love. . .and not fighting what goes against your nature…as for you the busyness in which you are currently being depressed—made smaller.

Depression makes you smaller. It “occupies” you and takes up your spaciousness, little by little, until you feel compressed, as into a little box. Those who live with depression live with it because they do not feel free…many because they are not financially free and bound to slave labor (which is the definition of needing to obey another to stay alive). Many because their minds have suffered from so many causes of fear that they have become damaged and incapable of freedom. To live without the freedom to be who you are is much like a living death…from which many seek release.

The greatest cause of depression of all is no longer knowing naturalness. There is a strange hope that is arising from this realization, which even if it is not put into words, is the realization that has been arising and is leading to readiness for the new. It is like a great dropping of the arms of pretense, a cry of “live free or die” that is not a death wish but a burning desire to live a sacred life. To honor life by living it honorably, naturally, or within one’s true nature.

These things you think of as unnatural, (let’s say drugs) are not the real problem, as you know. And so it is with seeking for answers. The difference between seeking for answers and revelation is the difference between looking at the drugs and looking at the person. There is a mis-shapen-ness to the looking, the questions, the answers. And it is everywhere—not just with problems—and the only way to get beyond it is to come back to a natural place within that is not seeking, or questing, but pausing in restfulness, with no desire to change, fear of change, or intention to change.

This is the beginning—of a dream, of a new thought, of return.

There is no real choice until then…there is no opening…no spaciousness. And this is as true of right-thinking as wrong-thinking.

I am here to rescue you from thinking…because your power does not lie there…as you know…nor with the contemplation of the similarities and differences in our courses…which others are perfectly suited to, most particularly our brother Lee, who is good at it because he loves it and it is natural to him. Others are capable but not “in love” in the same way.

Each are in love in their own ways. This is the way of love. But love has stages too. And you, as the elder, are aware of some of the stages that those who enter our Course may experience, and you need to be confident in this experience, not only to suggest that some stages will be passed through which are thought, at the time, to be the ultimate, but that some of them, as in the new way of knowing, are disconcerting.

I am ready to speak of power and self-reliance.

“Power is the ability to be cause and effect” is the way Day 10 of The Dialogues begins. It is why you need confidence in the self of form…because it is about acting as the Elevated Self of Form…which is the self in union. Confidence is confidence in your feelings, and this is good for you, as feeling is your way of knowing. Yet when your feelings are challenged, especially when, as recently, your feelings make you angry, you begin to doubt. You especially doubt that you “know what to do.” This has been your major source of lack of peace: doing. This has an underground association with your past feelings about your personal self—feelings that lie dormant until triggered, especially when you feel disrespected.

When you are called to embrace your power, you are being called to embrace a power that does not distinguish between the personal self and the realm of power that lies beyond the personal self, in a way that, let’s say, is more intense due to what you already know. It is not odd that this is so. Not knowing the nature of the difference of a call, it is easy to say yes, and to believe you are agreeing to the call’s terms. Knowing the nature of a call that puts you on the front lines of creation of the new—it is not so easy. . .

That Mary has joined you now has eased your fear of this tremendously, and the sense of a “shared destiny field” has also filled you with delight and strength. You are even becoming aware of it. What you are not yet so skilled at is expressing it, and this is why we talk now of power and reliance on the self of form.

Already you can feel yourself strengthened by this acknowledgment—if you will let yourself be so.

My heart is bursting with thankfulness and love for you and so hopeful that, with your help, I will find my way to Rise! (or Descend fully, or Walk Forth, or whatever is needed)! Love, love, love…in the shadows and in the light.

~Your Mari

Like most of these sharings, this one was edited slightly, always with a carefulness to not changing meaning. The originals of all that I share here are maintained in my personal archives.