I feel I'm here in this world to experience and to know deeply the central role of thought in creating reality. This course was born of my intent to help others uncover for themselves the infinite intelligence available to us all.
It took several years of effort to win approval from a public university that is built around the assumptions that consciousness is limited to the brain, and that intellectual, conceptual thought is the only means of understanding the world around us. My own experiences, the lessons from a multitude of teachers, and a burgeoning body of scientific evidence puts the lie to these assumptions, but it will take years for us as a society to grasp the implications in order to transform our thinking and our institutions to reflect a much grander reality that lies before us.
In my work as a counselor and teacher, I've seen a startling correlation between how a person perceives their world and the results they experience in their lives. During the late 1980's, along with my wife, Elke Siller Macartney, who also is a counselor, seer and teacher, I began to search out people who experienced great trauma in their life, such as terminal illness, but who, in spite of the crisis, were living remarkably happy and fulfilled lives.
An amazing similarity was discovered in how these people viewed the crisis and how they responded to it. By shifting awareness, they experienced themselves as already whole. In terms of our cultural beliefs, miraculous or "impossible" healing occurred frequently in this group.
Clearly these people exhibited something that could not be adequately understood based upon my professional training, or fit into what I once believed constituted reality.
Another phenomena began to emerge, and that was the changing awareness of children, and increasingly, adults. Many of the "problem" children referred to me for counseling turned out to be bright in their own unique way, and who demonstrated attributes that coincide closely with what recently has been labeled the Indigo children. Interestingly, it seems one of their strengths (and problem for parents and teachers) is saying "no" to educational or parenting processes that deny important aspects of how they experience the world.
In the last decade, many extraordinary teachers, writers and researchers have painted an ever clearer and compelling picture of our relationship to our mind and the world around us, one that validates the ordinariness of miracles, challenges us to take responsibility for our life at all levels, and urges us to recreate our institutions and communities anew.
Young people especially need a new context to understand themselves more fully and to feel the safety necessary to express the expanding miracle of who they are. I challenge myself right along with my students and clients to experience and integrate the deeper nature of wholeness and connection available to us as Human Beings. I'm excited to join you in the journey.
Jim Macartney, MA
choices@cnw.com
LaConner Washington
