Reflections 169 to 182

 

169/ A Distant Memory

13th October 2022

 

Lesson 169:  By grace I live. By grace I am released. (ACIM, W-169)

 

We learn today that grace arises in a mind that is not closed to change. The mind has become aware that there are things it just does not know.

 

The mind is then returned to its natural state. The journey is over.

 

To get to this point, the lesson today tells us that our forgiveness has to be complete. Our minds have been cleansed of all their guilt. We have become free of all attachments to the world.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that this is pre-ordained. We cannot fail to know our Self within. We are protected from all destructive thoughts simply because Infinite Love cannot be compromised.

 

We therefore find that we make our own suffering simply through our thinking. A Course in Miracles tells us that only we are responsible for how we feel, and the world we see. We learn that everything that happens to us arises through the thoughts that we think.

 

You attack the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot see it. If you seek love in order to attack it, you will never find it. For if love is sharing, how can you find it except through itself? (ACIM, T-12.VIII.1:3-5)

 

There is a distant memory contained deep within us. Our job is to find it, and fully understand what it is.

 

This distant memory is recalled in the continuation of Roy Mills’ book, The Soul’s Remembrance. It gives us the complete recall of Roy’s memories of Heaven. The first three sections were included in last week’s reflection. Chapter’s three and four can be seen in the videos below.

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170/ What Reality Is

14th October 2022

 

Lesson 170:  There is no cruelty in God and none in me. (ACIM, W-170)

 

This lesson tells us that what we think is happening to us isn’t real. It doesn’t actually exist.

 

A Course in Miracles’ whole premise is that we have made reality invisible to our minds. What we cannot see has become the truth.

 

When you made visible what is not true, what is true became invisible to you. Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. (ACIM, T-12.VIII.3:1-2)

 

The fact that the world is not real can best be summed up with this.

 

• ·         What is real is only what the Holy Spirit sees.

 

• ·         Reality comes only from God and does not come from us.

 

• ·         Only we have made reality invisible.

 

You have but to ask for this memory, and you will remember. Yet the memory of God cannot shine in a mind that has obliterated it and wants to keep it so. For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remember, and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality. (ACIM, T-12.VIII.5:1-3)

 

A Course in Miracles therefore tells us that we have made invisible the only truth that this world can hold. It tells us that the world we see is a thing of despair. We can never be content without reality.

 

What reality is, then, is not what we think it is. Reality bears no comparison to anything that we believe is there. Reality is beyond words. It is beyond this world. It is beyond anything a split mind can ever experience. Reality just is, and nothing else compares.

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171/ Silence and Stillness

15th October 2022

 

Lesson 171: Review 5: Lessons 151 & 152.

 

The fifth review starts today. There is one statement that is repeated time and time again within this review. This statement tells us that God is Love, and Love is what we are.

 

The two lessons reviewed today suggest that all things are echoes of this Love, but the decision to know this is only one that we can make.

 

A Course in Miracles is quite specific. We currently don’t have a clue what God’s Love is because of the deep and painful guilt within our minds. Guilt is the cause of all our suffering: The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God’s Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end (ACIM, T-13.in.2:1). The Atonement is therefore the complete healing of the mind, in which all of our guilt has simply disappeared.

 

We are all one mind. Within that mind is the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego loves to dominate, making it seem as if there are multiple minds. The Holy Spirit sits patiently in the background, knowing the mind only as one. The ego makes the mind guilty; the Holy Spirit makes it guiltless.

 

If you did not feel guilty you could not attack, for condemnation is the root of attack. It is the judgement of one mind by another as unworthy of love and deserving of punishment. (ACIM, T-13.in.1:1-2)

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that God did not create the world we see. This is a fundamental fact within each lesson of the Workbook, and on every page of the Text. ACIM constantly reminds us that the world we see is simply a manifestation of our guilt.

 

Everything we see therefore arises out of pain or out of love. It arises out of the ego or the Holy Spirit. It arises out of a god we have invented, or the God that created us.

 

One could say that the ego is the culmination of all our thinking while the Holy Spirit is the space between our thinking. A Course in Miracles tells us that it is only in this space that the silence and stillness of God’s Love can be found. 

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172/ The Condition of Our Being

16th October 2022

 

Lesson 172: Review 5: Lessons 153 & 154.

 

If God is but Love, then we teach what we know and we are what we teach.

 

This is the crux of the two lessons reviewed today.

 

A Course in Miracles teaches that we are all guiltless, and are simply caught up in time. By accepting our total guiltlessness, we learn that nothing ever expires. Past and future just never was.

 

Guilt, then, is a way of holding past and future in your mind to ensure the ego’s continuity. For if what has been will be punished, the ego’s continuity is guaranteed. Yet the guarantee of your continuity is God’s, not the ego’s. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. (ACIM, T-13.I.8:6-9)

 

A Course in Miracles therefore tells us the following.

 

• ·        The ego can’t survive without guilt.

 

• ·         There is no journey, just an awakening.

 

• ·      We are guilty in time, but not in eternity.

 

The condition of our being is therefore perfect blamelessness. A Course in Miracles repeats time and time again that we were created out of love, and love is where we will always abide.

 

If guilt is the way of binding past and future together, we undo this continuity through forgiveness.

 

Forgiveness takes us to the core of our being, and this is perfect, undiluted, unconditional love.

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173/ A Sense of Purpose

17th October 2022

 

Lesson 173: Review 5: Lessons 155 & 156.

 

The purpose of A Course in Miracles is happiness and peace. In this, it never wavers.

 

We receive what we have never lost.

 

The two lessons reviewed today point us in this direction. We step back from what was, and we walk with What Is.

 

A Course in Miracles has another purpose. It is to expose the ego. The ego’s only concern is its own survival.

 

To the ego, what we are, who we are, and where we are is something that can never be revealed. The ego keeps this from our minds. It warns us about punishment and makes it our guilty secret.

 

The basic problem with the ego is that it is scared. At its very core, it wants to see us dead.

 

The darkest of your hidden cornerstones holds your belief in guilt from your awareness. For in that dark and secret place is the realization that you have betrayed God’s Son by condemning him to death. You do not even suspect this murderous but insane idea lies hidden there, for the ego’s destructive urge is so intense that nothing short of the crucifixion of God’s Son can ultimately satisfy it. (ACIM, T-13.II.3:1-3)

 

Another purpose of A Course in Miracles is simply to show us how we hurt ourselves, how we fail ourselves, and how we crucify ourselves every minute of every day.

 

The real purpose of A Course in Miracles is therefore to demonstrate what never changes.

 

We are fed this sense of purpose. We are told that nothing ends because only God is there.

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174/ Separation and Sanity

18th October 2022

 

Lesson 174: Review 5: Lessons 157 & 158.

 

The whole reason for the review today is fear. Fear prevents us from entering into God’s presence. Fear prevents us from knowing that giving is receiving.

 

A Course in Miracles is a training that enables us to encounter our fear head on. It makes us face it, look at it and challenge it. This is what Jesus teaches. He wants us to look at what is not there.

 

Your fear of attack is nothing compared to your fear of love. You would be willing to look even upon your savage wish to kill God’s Son, if you did not believe that it saves you from love. (ACIM, T-13.III.2:3-4)

 

You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome. But hatred can, for it enters of its own volition and cares not for yours. (ACIM, T-13.III.5:4-5)

 

Jesus knows that the memory of God is deep within us. He also knows that this is our deepest fear.

 

Jesus tells us that the deeper we go into ego’s thought system, the closer we come to the memory that is hidden there.

 

It all comes back to three basic dilemmas: Dying is more important to us than our living oneness; we are more afraid of God than of the ego; we are more afraid of Love that we are of fear.

 

For still deeper than the ego’s foundation, and much stronger than it will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, and His for you. This is what you really want to hide. (ACIM, T-13.III.2:8-9)

 

Separation therefore means insanity. Just look at the world and we can see insanity everywhere.

 

Joining with spirit means sanity. A Course in Miracles is proof that this is so.

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175/ Extending the Present

19th October 2022

Lesson 175: Review 5: Lessons 159 & 160.

Time is the great illusion, according to A Course in Miracles.



Of the two lessons reviewed today, one mentions miracles, the other mentions our Home. Both occur within a realm where time does not exist.



In order for A Course in Miracles to appear in our lives, it is evident that time has played a part. We are a certain age and certain things have happened. ACIM wants us to step away from this. It tells us that healing is our function, and healing can only happen in the present moment.



The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful. Remember that its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past, and thus avoiding the present. (ACIM, T-13.IV.4:2-3)



The “now” therefore has no meaning to the ego. The ego always reacts to the present as if it were the past. This means that everything we do, and everyone we meet, can only be seen through the lens of a mind that is clouded by the passage of time.



It is in the reality of “now,” without past or future, that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. For only “now” is here, and only “now” presents the opportunities for the holy encounters in which salvation can be found. (ACIM, T-13.IV.7:6-7)



The Holy Spirit works within this context. The Holy Spirit teaches that pain is just an illusion. The Holy Spirit teaches us that pain is a condition of something that never was.



A Course in Miracles is therefore about love because love is what we are. The ego - our separate self - plays no part in this. It has no awareness that love exists only in the perfect present moment.



Extending the present is therefore our practice. Whatever we do, we always have this in mind.

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176/ Our Private Worlds

20th October 2022

 

Lesson 176: Review 5: Lessons 161 & 162.

 

The two lessons reviewed today tell us that we are all just the same. Each one of us is a holy Son of God.

 

Our holiness is buried deep within us. It is pretty clear we do not know that it is there.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us how to find it. It tells us we only have two emotions - love and fear. Only fear disconnects us from this holiness because it takes a multitude of different forms.

 

Fear is the fuel for all suffering. Fear is the source of the ego. Fear is actually just a blip in the mind.

 

Fear is the one reason why we are reading these words today.

 

As you look with open eyes upon your world, it must occur to you that you have withdrawn into insanity. You see what is not there, and you hear what makes no sound. Your manifestations of emotions are the opposite of what emotions are. You communicate with no one, and you are isolated from reality as if you were alone in all the universe. (ACIM, T-13.V.6:1-4)

 

Our private worlds might vary but only love is certain. Love equals holiness and, as soon as we really face our fears, we learn that only love is there.

 

The narration of The Soul’s Remembrance continues to expand on this theme. In chapters 5 and 6 below, Roy Mills describes his own experience of being helped early on in his own life, as well as describing further memories of Heaven. He demonstrates how we always have help around us, regardless of the form it might take. We don’t realise that angels are guiding us in so many different ways.

 

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177/ Two Ways of Seeing

21st October 2022

 

Lesson 177: Review 5: Lessons 163 & 164.

 

We learn in the review today that nothing dies - there is no death. There is no death because there is only one of us. Our Source is Life and Life has no opposite.

 

Nothing around us would ever make us think that this is true. But then, everything we are taught within A Course in Miracles is the opposite of what we think is true.

 

It is autumn now and leaves are falling. Colours are changing and the nights are closing in. This is the onset of winter but we are looking outwards. It is inwards that we are asked to look.

 

A Course in Miracles does not want us to seek vision with our eyes. It tells us that this is a way of seeing that means we see in darkness. Darkness is of the ego, and the ego never knows that light is always there.

 

You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was given you. Each is a way of seeing, and different worlds arise from their sights. See through the vision that is given you, for through Christ’s vision He beholds Himself. And seeing what He is, He knows His Father. (ACIM, T-13.V.10:1-4)

 

Christ, then, is quite simply what we are. Christ is the Self that we share. Christ is the home of the Holy Spirit, and Christ has just one purpose. It is to sit quietly in the Mind of God.

 

The Christ as revealed to you now has no past, for He is changeless, and in His changelessness lies your release. For if He is as He was created, there is no guilt in Him. No cloud of guilt has risen to obscure Him, and He stands revealed in everyone you meet because you see Him through Himself. (ACIM, T-13.VI.3:2-4)

 

We therefore have two ways of seeing. One arises from stillness. It simply accepts things as they are.

 

The other always judges. It never sees the whole. It loves to analyze, not seeing  things as they there.

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178/ Love Is in the Present

22nd October 2022

 

Lesson 178: Review 5: Lessons 165 & 166.

 

We have the memory, the love and the gifts of God. We have everything within our minds. This is the essence of the review today.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that, to find God, we have to look lovingly on the present. It tells us it is only the past that can separate, and the past is nowhere. The past is just a thought in our minds.

 

The present, then, holds these three things: the Thought of God, the Love of God and the Holy Spirit.

 

In this one, still dimension of time that does not change, and where there is no sight of what you were, you look at Christ and call His witnesses to shine on you because you called them forth. And they will not deny the truth in you, because you looked for it in them and found it there. (ACIM, T-13.VI.7:5-6)

 

Jesus tells us only this. We are the same as he is. He is love, we are love; he is Christ, we are Christ.

 

This means there is just one rule, and with no exception: what we see in others, we see in ourselves.

 

This is particularly true with anything the ego projects, and it is an endless list.  A Course in Miracles teaches, however, that everything arises within the one mind, and we are the love within that mind.

 

Each one you see in light brings your light closer to your awareness. Love always leads to love. The sick, who ask for love, are grateful for it, and in their joy they shine with holy thanks. And this they offer you who gave them joy. (ACIM, T-13.VI.10:3-6)

 

Jesus warns that we are sleeping. He says we are dreaming a world that does not exist.

 

Love, then, is in the present. We are all that love, and it is a love that never sleeps.

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179/ The Two Steps

23rd October 2022

 

Lesson 179: Review 5: Lessons 167 & 168.

 

A Course in Miracles teaches that we see everything from a wrong perspective.

 

The two lessons reviewed today teach that we share everything with God, and we have it now. Nothing ever ends and nothing begins. God is Love, but only we can decide if this is in our hearts.

 

This leads us to a quandary. How do we find God’s Love, and do we even want it?

 

The peace of God passeth your understanding only in the past. Yet here it is, and you can understand it now. God loves His Son forever, and His Son returns his Father’s Love forever. The real world is the way that leads you to the remembrance of the one thing that is wholly true and wholly yours. (ACIM, T-13.VII.8:1-4)

 

A Course in Miracles tells us we will never see the real world if we still believe in a world that is false. We might get glimpses of it, but usually we will always see the norm - we see only what reminds us of our mortality. What we see always has a past because we have a past.

 

The real world is not what we think it is: It has no buildings and there are no streets where people walk alone and separate. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever. (ACIM, T-13.VII.1:2-7)

 

Jesus wants us to know that our minds are too distracted to know the real world. He tells us that to know it permanently requires a complete change of mind.

 

There are two steps in doing this. The first step is to change our frightened dreams to happy dreams.

 

The second step is to get complete clarity in the mind. It is important to know that this has absolutely no repercussions. We are guaranteed safety. Clarity is simply our correct state of mind.

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180/ Travel Light and Journey Lightly

24th October 2022

 

Lesson 180: Review 5: Lessons 169 & 170.

 

The final two lessons are reviewed today. One states there is no cruelty in God, and none in us. Shock horror! We make our own worlds. Peace has absolutely nothing to do with anything external.

 

The other is concerned with grace and the release from suffering. This also might feel mystifying. The grace of God seems unlikely if the bailiffs are knocking at the door.

 

Our lives may be difficult. However, it is also clear that only difficulties can point the way to truth.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that possession is the ego’s law. We are like squirrels hoarding acorns for the winter.  The ego has a constant fear of lack, and ACIM tells us that these fears won’t abate until the ego leaves the mind.

 

The Holy Spirit, also in the mind, sees that we are whole. It knows we lack for nothing. However, the Holy Spirit also understands that we are lost. Its purpose, then, is to guide us back to what we are.

 

As Mediator between the two worlds, He knows what you have need of and what will not hurt you. Ownership is a dangerous concept if it is left to you. (ACIM, T-13.VII.10:9-10)

 

And yet He knows that everything you need is temporary, and will but last until you step aside from all your needs and realize that all of them have been fulfilled. (ACIM, T-13.VII.12:6)

 

A Course in Miracles reminds us to travel light and journey lightly. The following words - You dwell not here, but in eternity. You travel but in dreams, while safe at home (ACIM, T-13.VII.17:6-7) - are repeated throughout the Text. The journey, then, is an illusion. It is also a journey that is very real.

 

All that we need on this journey is given us, because it is accepted we all need to feel secure. We are not asked to suffer. However, it is suffering that makes us question our identity. It is suffering that makes us choose a path that does not use ownership to make us feel secure.

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181/ Knowledge Is Certainty

25th October 2022

 

Lesson 181: I trust my brothers, who are one with me. (ACIM, W-181)

 

Today’s lesson is a change in perception. We see past what we think is there to what is really there.

 

We see what is, instead of what is not. In the parlance of A Course in Miracles, we see sinlessness instead of sin.

 

Jesus is our teacher in telling us this, and there is a difference between what he teaches through A Course in Miracles and what we learn in the Bible. ACIM tells us there is no sin, just errors; there is no death, just life; there are not two of us, there is just one.

 

A Course in Miracles’ whole emphasis is on changing our perception. It tells us we see differently when we bypass the past. The ego cannot do this but the Holy Spirit can, and this is why Jesus tells us that the miracle is merely this shift in perception. We see past our duality to what is only one.

 

There is one miracle, as there is one reality. And every miracle you do contains them all, as every aspect of reality you see blends quietly into the one reality of God. (ACIM, T-13.VIII.6:3-4)

 

Jesus reminds us there is nothing partial about knowledge. He tells us that every aspect is whole and no aspect is separate.

 

This means that we are part of knowledge and knowledge is part of us. What is within is without and what is without is within.

 

Reality can therefore only be seen as one. There is only one Self, one God, one Heaven, one life, one moment, and one mind.

 

That is why the lesson today teaches us to trust in each other. We have to trust in an unseen truth. Only trust can lead to experience, and only experience can lead to knowledge. Knowledge is certainty so the two go hand in hand.

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182/ A Barrier to Being

26th October 2022

 

Lesson 182: I will be still an instant and go home. (ACIM, W-182)

 

Our true home is just a thought away. It is found in stillness. Our true home is a distant memory. It is something that we try to replicate in a thousand different ways every day.

 

Homesickness is therefore the theme of the lesson today.

 

The memory of Heaven is always with us and yet clouds of guilt block out its sight. Guilt is our nemesis. Guilt is the reason for all our addictions. Guilt fuels the need to numb the ache that makes our lives what they are all about.

 

Cutting through this guilt is what A Course in Miracles is here to teach us.

 

You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. The doubtful service of such displacement is to hide the real source of guilt, and keep from your awareness the full perception that it is insane. (ACIM, T-13.X.1:1-2)

 

To get to the real source of guilt, then, we are asked to look within.

 

The source of our guilt is not in the past. It is right here: When you maintain that you are guilty but the source of your guilt lies in the past, you are not looking inward. The past is not in you. Your weird associations to it have no meaning in the present (ACIM, T-13.X.4:1-3). A Course in Miracles is telling us that guilt is a barrier that blocks off the awareness of our real home.

 

Every time we label and judge another person, we reinforce this barrier. Then, when we do see that person for what they are, we dissolve the barrier. Forgiveness is the practice that supports this, allowing us to have a peaceful state of mind.

 

A Course in Miracles has one purpose. It is to release us from the past and to allow us be in the present. Guilt, after all, is just a barrier to being. Without it, we would simply be at home with God.