And Then I Knew My Abundance

AND THEN I KNEW MY ABUNDANCE

LESSONS FROM A COURSE IN MIRACLES

JAMES NUSSBAUMER

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

PART I - The Dream of Life

Chapter 1 - The Jewel

Chapter 2 - Humanity’s Vicious Circle

Chapter 3 - The Dream Character, or Ego

Chapter 4 - The Ego will Try to Surround Your Reality

Chapter 5 - The Two Thought Systems

Chapter 6 - Jailer or Liberator? It’s Your Choice

Chapter 7 - The Secret Society

Chapter 8 - Your Real Vision

Chapter 9 - The Mission

PART II - THE SHIFT THROUGH TIME

Chapter 10 - Your Shift to Abundance

Chapter 11 - That Place of Zero Ego Involvement

Chapter 12 - To Have and to Be

Chapter 13 - Is Space the Divider?

Chapter 14 - The Name You Choose For Reality

Chapter 15 - Accepting Yourself

Chapter 16 - Our Shared Certainty

Chapter 17 - Claiming the Power of Extension

PART III - LIVING WITH CERTAINTY

Chapter 18 - The Certainty of Your Extension

Chapter 19 - Conflict Seeks Allies

Chapter 20 - The Gathering Place

Chapter 21 - Forgetting So You May Remember

Chapter 22 - Laying the Groundwork

Chapter 23 - Healing in Order to Forget

Chapter 24 - An Exercise for Peace of Mind and Certainty

PART IV - THE POWER OF YOUR HEALING MIND

Chapter 25 - The Unhealed Healer

Chapter 26 - Healing and Harmony

Chapter 27 - Knowledge Doesn’t Depend on Beliefs

Chapter 28 - Are You Making or Creating Your Life?

Chapter 29 - Accepting The Power of the Universe

Chapter 30 - Denial as a Defense

Chapter 31 - Giving Intuition a Chance

Chapter 32 - An Exercise: Offer It and Ask for It

PART V - MIRACLES

Chapter 33 - The Wine Country

Chapter - Abundance or Scarcity as Your Choice

Chapter 35 - Are You Preserving Your Beliefs?

Chapter 36 - The Carbon Copy

Chapter 37 - Selfishness Versus Self-Fullness

Chapter 38 - Wondering if it’s Real

Chapter 39 - The Bridge Club

Chapter 40 - Your Natural Environment

PART VI - BEYOND THE EGO

Chapter 41 - There is No Substitute

Chapter 42 - The Evolving of Holiness

Chapter 43 - Reality Holds Your Holiness

Chapter 44 - Don’t Give Him What He Doesn’t Ask For

Chapter 45 - Your Naturalness Beyond the Dream

Resources

About the Author

© 2018 by James Nussbaumer

All rights reserved. No part of this book, in part or in whole, may be reproduced, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, photographic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from Ozark Mountain Publishing, Inc. except for brief quotations embodied in literary articles and reviews.

For permission, serialization, condensation, adaptions, or for our catalog of other publications, write to Ozark Mountain Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 754, Huntsville, AR 72740, ATTN: Permissions Department.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nussbaumer, James – 1957 -

And Then I Knew My Abundance by James Nussbaumer

This book is concerned with making contact with the effective and purposeful part of the mind where the confusing possibilities about your consciousness are cleared away, and the absolute is brought forward. Imagine a place of insightful activity that you’re able to find somewhere in your mind — this place exists. It’s where your true potential can once and for all be realized, and then accepted.

1. Manifestation 2. Co Creation 3.Power of Thought 4. Metaphysical

I. Nussbaumer, James, 1957 - II. Metaphysical III. Title

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PO Box 754, Huntsville, AR 72740

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TO MY FATHER AND ALL THOSE FACES IN THE CROWD

HE TAUGHT ME TO DEEPLY CONSIDER.

INTRODUCTION

Imagine a place of insightful activity that you’re able to find somewhere in your mind—a place where the confusing possibilities about your consciousness are cleared away, and the absolute is brought forward. This place exists. It’s where your true potential can once and for all be realized, and then accepted. As your curiosity plays alongside doubts, reaching the ever-widening boundaries of your thoughts, you are able, if you so choose, to reestablish contact with the Source of the active center of what gives you life.

This book is concerned with making contact with this effective and purposeful part of the mind. You will learn to realize your consciousness in a different way from the familiar way it may have been making you operate in the physical world. You will learn to recognize consciousness as an entity that you create, but do so from behind it. I know this may seem confusing, so for now, and just to buffer the impact of this thought about "you being behind your own consciousness," allow me first to ask you to consider a couple of extending thoughts. By extending I mean sharing our Reality together as One.

Ask yourself, what is truly a higher order: the physical or our natural Divine Self? If separated from nature the mind becomes a hollow bundle of shallow thoughts, lacking all activity, without luster and authenticity, seeking only projected images seen as form, and without the pleasure of being real, or, let’s say Divine. I do realize we’re just beginning our journey together through this book, but for now consider a projected image being something the world has taught us to see since our birth into this world. Something your physical past has taught you to picture in your mind.

Imagine a physical experience, like hearing the ringing of the opening bell on Wall Street, and then imagine a natural experience, like hearing a wood hen hammering as it hollows out an oak tree, the sound echoing through the forest. When you compare the two, you will note the two different portrayals consciousness gives us to consider. One is a reflection through your body’s eyes, and the other is simply a gratifying vision. Which one is real?

For now the question might provoke confusion, because the way the world teaches us makes us initially think that both are real. But that’s okay; at least I’ve got your perceptive mind’s eyebrow raised. With that, let’s consider how you feel about this world.

Have you ever felt that the world around you—all that you see through the air, land, and sea—just doesn’t seem to be home? Or, phrased differently, that something feels like it’s missing in your life, but you can’t seem to pinpoint it, or even narrow it down? How often have we all said, I wish I could find myself, or I just can’t seem to touch what has been bothering me?

You may experience such a stage in your life that passes with the help of time, but then with more time that lost feeling arises again. Your experience tells you that nothing is different in the way you feel, other than this time you are older. The situations or circumstances going on around you may divert your attention for a while, until the lingering memory or sense of a greater reality comes back to haunt you and seems to own you. You still feel lost or like an alien from somewhere unknown. It’s as though you are here in exile. This may be a subtle feeling that surfaces every now and then, sometimes nothing more than a tiny throb, and at other times a blur that is hardly remembered—actively dismissed, but persistent and sure to return.

No one ever figures out where this place might be that has claim to your naturalness. Many try to shrug it off, or hide their suffering in dreams, or in games they play to occupy their time and keep their sadness suppressed. Others will deny any such feelings and not recognize or admit their fear at all. And most people will maintain that what I speak of here is a figment of the imagination. Yet who, in simple honesty, without being defensive and self-deceived, would deny he understands what I mean?

Is There Really Any Stability I Can Achieve?

This book is for everyone who walks this planet and who wants to understand that it is okay to be seeking something stable, because you surely are lost and seemingly not at home. The individuals who seek out the many messages this book offers have been uncertain, in an endless search through the fog for what he or she cannot seem to find, while not recognizing that they already hold onto it. Striving continues for the perfect family and home, the career, cars, the vacations, and all the toys, which are all fine, and you should enjoy these things. Yet none of this gives contentment to our restless mind, with one thing for sure: the fear of death and hell, and believe it or not, the fear of the gate to Heaven.

If you’re like I used to be, you wish you could return to your childhood so you could have a chance to do things differently. You know, that younger body, that old neighborhood—maybe with the ongoing ballgames in the backyards, running through the lawn sprinkler on hot summer afternoons, or building a snowman in the front yard in the winter. All of this is only a memory, like a dream you once had, so distorted that you can barely hold a picture of it now.

As you find your way through these pages, you may find it to your advantage if you’ve already read my two previous books, The Master of Everything and Mastering Your Own Spiritual Freedom. If you haven’t read either, however, that’s okay, because I’ve written this book while considering those who lack the information in the previous books, and this book will help first-time readers when you do get a chance to read the others.

My goal in this book is that you will come to know the part of you that accepts yourself as an alien in the world. Your home is the childhood all around you, which is eternal, with an innocence that calls the shots while you’re here walking around this land. This real and true childhood is your Divinity and brings to Earth a pure reflection of why you are here. In that reasoning of why is the spotlight that has already shone its intended purpose onto you, and now all you need to do is simply play out the role. It’s really that simple, with nothing to fear.

While living in the Light you’ll know your way and will no longer feel lost, because you will discover you are innocent of everything. All fear and guilt will fade. Your goals are not a figment of your imagination, but are real, if they are your heart’s desire.

Your imagination is the voice that tells you to lay down all defenses and let the child within you lead the way. His home is yours. The gate is not to be feared and the way is open to you. The only figment of your imagination has been the world’s blockade that you’ve allowed to hold you back, along with the obscuring fog limiting your vision of this Light. You’ve already taken the first step by opening this book, and in the pages ahead simply walk the gentle way while fearing no evil and no shadows in the night. Both are unreal.

I welcome you to the journey with all that I can be.

James Nussbaumer

PART I

THE DREAM OF LIFE

CHAPTER 1

THE JEWEL

In a remote realm of perfection, the kingdom was suddenly bereft. There ruled a just and all-loving monarch who had wonderful children, and they lived in happiness together as a loving family. One day the father called to his eldest child with something extremely important to say.

The time has come, my dear son, he announced, "to complete what has suddenly left our kingdom wanting. I am sending you away, an infinite distance, to another land. You shall seek and find and bring back the precious Jewel."

The son traveled in disguise to this strange land, whose inhabitants almost all lived in darkness. Such was the effect of this place that the child lost touch with himself, wandering around in a daze as if only partially awake.

From time to time he saw phantoms, and similitudes of his homeland and of the Jewel, but such was his condition that these things only increased the degree of his daydreaming, which he now accepted as his reality.

When news of his son’s plight reached the king, he sent word to the son by a trusted messenger, a Guide, who possessed a wise spirit blessed by the king. The Guide located and approached the son. Remember your purpose here, he told the lad. You must begin to awaken from your reverie and find your way.

With this message the son roused himself, and with the help of the Guide, the son dared to face the monstrous perils that surrounded the Jewel. But by the miraculous powers within the Jewel, the son easily returned to his realm, to remain in increased peace and happiness forevermore.

You have these miraculous powers of the Jewel deep within yourself, as do we all, and it is a treasure of incalculable value. Because the power and strength of the Jewel is within, you are that Jewel. If you can realize and accept this fact, you will come into a permanent endowment of knowledge, revealing and extending your true identity to others so that they too may realize this in their own selves. You will come to know yourself and become confident as to why you are here. Just as this ancient parable is said to contain all wisdom in its various levels of interpretation, so do you contain this truth within you.

What Actually Is an Interpretation, Anyway?

Idries Shah, the foremost contemporary exponent of Sufism, was once asked to name a fundamental mistake that most individuals make, and his response sparked my thinking about my own interpretation of reality. He answered that Our errors rest in the fact that we think we are alive, when we really have fallen asleep in life’s waiting room, which is the illusion most of mankind is influenced by.

In a similar discussion about man’s destiny, a Zen master added, "It is the ordinary state of consciousness we call ‘waking’ that is so far from our seeing things as they truly are, that it could more accurately be called ‘sleep’ or ‘dreaming.’"

The philosopher Bertrand Russell has written, The dreams we call waking perceptions have only a very little more resemblance to objective reality than the fantastic dreams of sleep.

Think about it. How do you really know that you’re awake right now? Could it be because the world tells us, Of course you are awake. Why would you argue this fact? Are you nuts?

You may say you remember waking up from your last night’s sleep. But that may merely have been a false awakening, and you might be fooling yourself now by actually being in a dream that is telling you it’s not a dream. Perhaps what we take to be true awakenings are just another degree of partial or false awakenings.

So once more, now, try to really ask yourself this question: Am I really awake?

You will note within yourself how difficult it is to genuinely raise the question. A part of you says that this is a ridiculous thought. However, to even ask sincerely whether or not you’re really awake requires honest doubt—a willingness to accept no for an answer, even if the amount of doubt and willingness is tiny. Or is there an urging inside of you that is asking this? Inside, you are aware that if you try to believe this you’ll feel some guilt, due to the idea seeming ridiculous. This is no easy matter for most of us. But also consider, if the idea does seem ridiculous to you, how did this notion get seeded into you?

Please move on now, and as you do, seriously ask yourself about all of this again, and then again. How might we not be fully awake? If this is so, could it be that we possess a higher sense—such as a type of intuition, let’s say—that ordinarily remains asleep, when our lesser, though better- accepted senses are awake?

Additionally, the daily experience we call waking up, and consider to be complete, may in fact only be a partial awakening. This is the case in what is called "lucid dreaming," where part of us is consciously awake while another part of the mind dreams while asleep. This alone has been a deep subject that has undergone countless research studies by so-called dream experts. Or could we just call them expert dreamers?

All kidding aside—and please take my comment lightly—notice that even in your own dreams there is usually a character present whom the sleeper, you, takes to be yourself. It’s through the dream eyes of your dream body that you normally witness the events of the dream. The dream body is usually who we think we are while dreaming, and this seems an obvious conclusion. But we actually are only dreaming of being that person.

The dream character is merely a representation of ourselves—or we can call this the dream ego, as the actor of the dream. The point of view of the dream ego is that of a willing participant, apparently contained within a multidimensional world (the dream), much as you probably experience your existence at this moment, while you read and think about this possibility.

CHAPTER 2

HUMANITY’S VICIOUS CIRCLE

Wouldn’t you agree that a dreaming mind is made by thought and expressed in form, and then projected sort of like a movie? A dreaming mind does begin with a thought that is totally separate from its true reality. Without a reality, the thought and the dream must, of course, be unreal.

The strangest dream that humanity as a whole could ever dream continues today, and includes thoughts of fearing God. I say here humanity as a whole because man’s complete entity, or system, which must be the mind and not the body, derived from a more Supreme Mind, which extended Itself in thought, an activity known as the Creation. Symbolically we call that very first extension, in bodily form, Adam—a word that means humankind.

The Bible tells us that Adam—all of humankind—fell into a deep sleep before Eve’s casual conversations with the serpent. Nowhere, however, is there a single reference to his/her waking up. How could there be? Humanity must still be asleep. A dreaming mind can only either dream about one day awakening or simply awaken, with the dream being ended. If Adam did awaken, wouldn’t it have been discussed and written about, especially in the Bible? When the mind does awaken, wouldn’t it most likely be a slow and natural process, one of comfort and ease, rather than an abrupt jolt? I believe so; any other way would be forced and wouldn’t be natural. That is, of course, if it’s a sweet dream instead of a nightmare. While you allow that to sink in, there’s more to consider. Somewhere along the line the very first thought, ever, to separate from its Source, or Reality, can be considered a projected image onto the movie screen of life, making an identity of flesh and bones. From that point on, thoughts proliferated. In the Garden of Eden, on what seemed to be a spring morning, all sorts of thoughts gave birth, sending perceptions of doubt, fear, and guilt zinging through the air to form further images, in a process of thought that would later be termed consciousness.

This consciousness, or conscious mind, continues to dream and is the projected image of time and space. The images appeared as a seeming reality, and oceans were suddenly breaking ashore, accompanied by a misty, obscuring fog. Seagulls and pelicans and all other wildlife had not realized humanity’s fall to the knees of guilt. These creatures, as well as plant life, were brought to the dream as symbols of something natural, giving humankind a sense of the certainty of a naturalness to which it was connected in the reality behind the dream. We can call this the naturalness behind consciousness.

This nature became the changing seasons, which humanity dreamed up to project the tick of time. Through the fog many other images compelled themselves, as consciousness continued to usher in more and more space to accommodate the panoramic picture. With the continued projection of guilt, painful changes began to be ordered onto the horizon.

Making History

As humanity’s first few conscious thoughts, in the symbolic form of Adam and Eve if you’d like, exited paradise, their real home, the first separated minds were hit hard with shame and regret. Their guilt-laced thoughts of separating from the Oneness of eternal bliss plagued them. But they would never come to accept that it was only an error in thought that ignited the dream of a frightening future, and they continued to search for a way out of the fog. Keeping their eye on the future and dwelling on the past, generations to follow in their footsteps would continue to repeat more errors, thus making history. The errors would consciously, and then religiously, be labeled as sin.

Although merely a separated thought, and nothing more, is what makes the dream, the guilt attached to this error has snowballed to be seen as the mountain of sin on which we live.

To this day humanity as a whole still dreams of sin and has failed to realize that through time, our erroneous zone for processing thoughts is being reversed in an ongoing, effortless process by the power of true reality. This process is our Divinity, slowly helping us to awaken from the dream of sin. Being a dream, sin is not real and is the illusion we live by. Can it be that our dreamed-up authors of this illusory form of life also developed a thought system to fit the picture? The projection of sin seems to be the vicious circle by which we live.

For now much of the world sees this as a fearful thought that keeps us frantically searching the drama for something out there that may save us. But accepting the error as just that, an error, is all it takes to undo the process. This undoing is the reversal necessary so we can comfortably, without pain, awaken to our true reality of inner peace.

Look at it this way: Hallucinations fade away when they are faced head-on. All that we project seems to have fear attached to it in some form. Then we further project a cost of sacrifice in order that we may rid ourselves of the fear.

By going along with this we get nowhere. It’s the strangest belief man has ever made in the dream of separate identities. We’ve been taught to think that our Source, which I call God, is angry because of our errors, when all along this has been nothing more than a wishful fantasy of the way we look at the world. We believe if we focus our fear long enough, the pain seen as sacrifice will eventually reward us with salvation. This is why, in order to be looked upon as righteous, we think we need to be considered a God-fearing individual.

This type of conscious thinking is an example of wrong-mindedness, where wrong perceptions and thoughts make up wrong ideas in a mind that dreams it is split apart, or separated from its original Source, or God. But keep in mind that the word wrong is not to be interpreted as bad. Rather, wrong-mindedness is simply erroneous.

Projecting Images

Wrong-mindedness consists of thoughts and perceptions that establish the fear we live by. We can call this the dream ego or simply the ego. The ego is the false idea of who we are—the illusion of separate identities or selves. It identifies itself with the