Reflections 183 to 196

 

183/ Change and Shift

27th October 2022

 

Lesson 183: I call upon God’s Name and on my own. (ACIM, W-183)

 

The theme of the lesson today is inheritance. We inherit our genes from our parents. We cannot change our parents but we can change ourselves.

 

A Course in Miracles teaches that we are God’s Son. This means we have inherited our Father’s characteristics. Infinite love is therefore our birthright.

 

It also means that, deep within us, there is the deepest peace and the most wondrous joy. This peace and joy does not change or shift. Jesus tells us that there is nothing our little selves can do to take these qualities away from us.

 

God would not have His Son embattled, and so His Son’s imagined “enemy” is totally unreal. You are but trying to escape a bitter war from which you have escaped. (ACIM, T-13.XI.2:1-2)

 

Jesus tells us we won’t find anything in this world that will give the qualities of God. He says that God wills us only happiness, but first we have to undo our source of unhappiness which is the ego.

 

You will not remember change and shift in Heaven. You have need of contrast only here. Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids, for by them you learn what to avoid and what to seek. When you have learned this, you will find the answer that makes the need for any differences disappear. (ACIM, T-13.XI.6:1-4)

 

All of the above begins to make sense when we consider pre-birth memory. In the penultimate two chapters of Roy Mills’ book, The Soul’s Remembrance, the narration continues with Roy’s memories of the Prayer Room in Heaven, and more accounts of how the angels prepared him for his life on earth. We learn that humour exists in Heaven, and we can enjoy this humour while here on earth. Indeed, the whole theme of the book is that we don’t need to take life so damn seriously.

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184/ Partial Vision

28th October 2022

 

Lesson 184: The Name of God is my Inheritance. (ACIM, W-184)

 

This lesson ties in with the first few lessons of the Workbook. They tell us that we give names to everything we see, and yet what we see means nothing. Everything in the world therefore has a label which supports a separate state of mind.

 

The Name of God is Light. It means oneness. The Name of God is not a thousand different names, but totality. To find it, we have to see it in our brother. This is where the real truth lies.

 

A Course in Miracles states that seeing is always outwards, meaning we are basically seeing our own insanity. We are projecting outwards our own beliefs, and are making the world in which we believe.

 

This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream is sacred to you. That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream. (ACIM, T-14.I.2:6-8)

 

The Workbook therefore teaches us to see with the Holy Spirit. We are learning to quieten our minds and to hear His Voice. This is the same as trusting in our instinct and going with what we feel.

 

Any direction that would lead you where the Holy Spirit leads you not, goes nowhere. Anything you deny that He knows to be true you have denied yourself, and He must therefore teach you not to deny it. Undoing is indirect, as doing is. (ACIM, T-14.I.4:1-3)

 

It is clear that God’s Name is beyond our comprehension while we believe that we are separate. A mind can only judge when it believes that it is apart from God. We could compare it to being like a race horse with blinkers. We all have partial vision and can only see what is straight ahead.

 

A Course in Miracles teaches that our minds hold the answer, and to our minds we always turn.

 

The lesson today just asks us to stop and listen. It is in the silence that God’s Name can be heard.

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185/ The Dream of Nothingness

29th October 2022

 

Lesson 185: I want the peace of God. (ACIM, W-185)

 

The lesson today tells us that minds can only join in truth. Truth unites because it has no opposite.

 

Outside of this is nothing. It is a dream. Minds cannot unite in dreams.

 

The peace of God therefore only arises in a mind that has awakened from the dream.

 

Jesus had a mind that was awakened. He saw only truth and that truth was seen in him. Truth only connects, and A Course in Miracles is a manifestation of this truth. Our connection to ACIM arises from a mind that knows exactly what this means.

 

You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is happiness. (ACIM, T-14.II.1:2-3)

 

Jesus teaches only that we have made ‘nothing’ precious. We have made the untrue true.

 

The Holy Spirit therefore brings the light of truth into a mind which is thinking nothing. Light shines on nothing so that everything is revealed. The mind is either complete or not all.

 

What else could ever be, or ever was? This simple lesson holds the key to the dark door that you believe is locked forever. You made this door of nothing, and behind it is nothing. The key is only the light that shines away the shapes and forms and fears of nothing. (ACIM, T-14.II.7:4-7)

 

Jesus’ basic teaching is that Infinite Love is everywhere and we have everything. This is the same as saying that God is Life and Life is God.

 

The dream of nothingness does not exist. We just think it does.

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186/ Interfering with Truth

30th October 2022

 

Lesson 186: Salvation of the world depends on me. (ACIM, W-186)

 

The lesson today teaches that only arrogance can stop us from understanding totality. The whole depends on us. Only arrogance can think that we are apart from completeness.

 

Arrogance is of the ego. It is separating and divisive. It allows only grudging compromise.

 

An arrogant mind suppresses guilt. Guilt is wholly unconscious. We are wholly alive only when we are free of all our unconscious guilt.

 

A Course in Miracles is therefore a simple choice. It is between guilt and guiltlessness, arrogance and humility. It is a choice between being wholly awake or wholly asleep.

 

Each day, each hour and minute, even each second, you are deciding between the crucifixion and the resurrection; between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego is the choice for guilt; the Holy Spirit the choice for guiltlessness. The power of decision is all that is yours. (ACIM, T-14.III.4:1-3)

 

We believe that we can mix guilt with guiltlessness, arrogance with humility. Jesus is teaching us that this is impossible. It is simply one or the other. Two opposites are always mutually incompatible.

 

We might think that it is alright to be kind one week, and nasty the next. A Course in Miracles says that this produces only conflict. Conflict has to be ended completely, or not at all.

 

There is no compromise that you can make with guilt, and escape the pain that only guiltlessness allays. Learning is living here, as creating is being in Heaven. Whenever the pain of guilt seems to attract you, remember that if you yield to it, you are deciding against your happiness, and will not learn how to be happy. (ACIM, T-14.III.3:1-3)

 

Interfering with truth is therefore arrogance. Our guilt arises because we are apart. Guilt and arrogance are an effect of the ego, and so forgiveness of the cause is what makes us complete. 

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187/ A Happy Teaching

31st October 2022

 

Lesson 187: I bless the world because I bless myself. (ACIM, W-187)

 

The lesson today teaches that it is the thought behind the giving that is important. It states that a thought is unchangeable but form changes. The form of what is being given therefore doesn’t matter. It is within the formless that possibilities lie.

 

Thoughts grow in strength. They extend. The thought of giving is therefore given back to the thinker. Blessing others means we are blessing ourselves.

 

The essence of this is that our thoughts can either bless or they can damn. Our choice is to extend the Peace of God or merely to deliver what the thinker thinks.

 

A Course in Miracles states quite simply that we see what we think. The world is therefore an outward representation of an inward condition. The world is a summary of our thoughts.

 

When the mind is split, what we see can be clearly destructive. When the mind is whole, what we see can only be loving. We only see one or the other; we see what is false or we see what is true.

 

Jesus tells us it all has a happy ending. What never was can never be, and what only is can only be.

 

God is the only Cause, and guilt is not of Him. Teach no one he has hurt you, for if you do, you teach yourself that what is not of God has power over you. The causeless cannot be. Do not attest to it, and do not foster belief in it in any mind. Remember always that mind is one, and cause is one. (ACIM, T-14.III.8:1-5)

 

Essentially, Jesus is saying that there is nothing to worry about. What we really are can never be hurt. We are invulnerable. We are beyond anything that takes place in the world of form.

 

A Course in Miracles is a happy teaching. It celebrates total love. Jesus empowers us throughout the Workbook. Every lesson is a blessing that has the potential to change our beliefs.

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188/ The Release from Guilt

1^st November 2022

 

Lesson 188: The peace of God is shining in me now. (ACIM, W-188)

 

This lesson states that enlightenment is just a recognition. Reality cannot change at all. Like leaves being blown away from the ground, the full glory of God’s Love is revealed. It has never been lost and has never gone anywhere. Reality is just as it always is.

 

We do our best to interpret reality all the time. We try to distort it but we can’t. Complete reality goes nowhere. There is nothing within reality that can ever change.

 

A Course in Miracles provides the tools to know what true reality is. It gives us a state of mind that has no second.

 

The first in time means nothing, but the First in eternity is God the Father, Who is both First and One. Beyond the First there is no other, for there is no order, no second or third, and nothing but the First. (ACIM, T-14.IV.1:7-8)

 

To know the above requires the state of guiltlessness. Guiltlessness is the condition of being awake. Guiltlessness means our minds are clear. All our illusions have been replaced by truth.

 

 We need forgiveness to know that everything is guiltless. All is perfect just as it is.

 

Unless you are guiltless you cannot know God, Whose Will is that you know Him. Therefore, you must be guiltless. Yet if you do not accept the necessary conditions for knowing Him, you have denied Him and do not recognize Him, though He is all around you. (ACIM, T-14.IV.7:1-3)

 

Jesus tells us that it is impossible for the guiltless and the guilty to know each other. Each is only able to perceive the same in another’s mind. This is why doing the Workbook is so essential. We begin to learn how to release the blocks to a guiltless mind.

 

A Course in Miracles is the release from guilt. It is the gift of freedom. This is the healing of the mind. 

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189/ A Simple Metaphor

2nd November 2022

 

Lesson 189: I feel the Love of God within me now. (ACIM, W-189)

 

What we have within is reflected without. This is the theme of the lesson today.

 

If we feel the Love of God within us, then how we act can only mirror that. If we are self-obsessed and grandiose, then similar patterns arise. The purpose of A Course in Miracles is simply to undo the patterns that prevent the spreading of what is always there.

 

Jesus tells us that the Atonement is the means to do this.

 

The Atonement was established as the means of restoring guiltlessness to minds that have denied it, and thus denied Heaven to themselves. Atonement teaches you the true condition of the Son of God. It does not teach you what you are, or what your Father is. (ACIM, T-14.IV.9:2-4)

 

Within us is always our Source, despite the fact that opposites do indeed appear to exist. A Course in Miracles teaches that God can have no opposite. God is within us and His Love is what we are.

 

We are asked to leave the world of opposites well alone and only remember what has no opposite. We are asked to turn our backs on death and walk quietly into Heaven. We are asked to forgo the ego and remember only the Holy Spirit. We are asked, quite simply, to just be our Self.

 

The function of the Holy Spirit is therefore to teach us how to find our inheritance. Its purpose is to bring our minds back to a state of calm. What the Holy Spirit really does is to lead us to our resurrection. This means we awaken to what we really are.

 

The ego has another function, the opposite in every way to that of the Holy Spirit. What the ego does is crucify our minds and those of others. It does this in many thousands of different ways.

 

Every moment of every day, our minds either crucify or resurrect. This is a simple metaphor for loving or hating. It means we either bring others into our hearts or we banish them outside. 

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190/ The Simplicity of Living

3rd November 2022

 

Lesson 190: I choose the joy of God instead of pain. (ACIM, W-190)

 

The lesson today states that pain makes us think that God is cruel. Pain is a witness that we don’t know who we are.

 

A Course in Miracles teaches us that it is only our thoughts that cause us pain. There is no other cause because God is the only Cause. Nothing external to us can cause us pain. ACIM is therefore a transition from the painful to the loving, from the terrifying to the nurturing.

 

The journey that we undertake together is the exchange of dark for light, of ignorance for understanding. Nothing you understand is fearful. It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening, and shrink away from it to further darkness. (ACIM, T-14.VI.1:1-3)

 

Jesus is telling us that only the hidden can terrify. However, he also explains that it is only in the hiddenness that pain arises. This is the paradox of A Course in Miracles. It states that nothing is actually hidden because nothing is actually there.

 

Jesus asks that we bring all our hiddenness to the Holy Spirit. Jesus knows that only the Holy Spirit can see exactly what should be done. The goal, then, is that we re-establish what never was broken. We regain the awareness of communication with God, the only Cause.

 

This is really the simplicity of living. Pain arises by being separate and is gone when we are healed. This is the same as saying that we have been sleeping in pain and have awakened to peace.

 

The final two chapters of Roy Mills’ book The Soul’s Remembrance are narrated below. In them, we learn how we pre-plan events in our lives in order to grow. We learn that we all have God’s gifts, enabling us to deal with the situations that cause us pain. We learn that everything is for the benefit of the whole. We are all one with no division. We are love and God is Love. It is all as simple as that.

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191/ Truth Is Union

4th November 2022

 

Lesson 191: I am the holy Son of God Himself. (ACIM, W-191)

 

We are as God created us. When we deny this, we deny our own Identity.

 

When we deny our own Identity, it is as if we are a tiny particle of dust fighting against the universe.

 

This is what the lesson today teaches us. This is what the whole of A Course in Miracles teaches us. Our Identity can’t be disputed; we, however, think it can.

 

What do you want? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are yours, but not both. Opposites must be brought together, not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as you are. (ACIM, T-14.VII.1:1-4)

 

Jesus is telling us that, to discover truth, we have to weed out everything that interferes with truth’s clarity. Jesus tells us that truth just Is. To God, anything that is not truth does not exist. We have forgotten our heritage, and yet we know what it is because truth is what we are.

 

Light cannot enter darkness when a mind believes in darkness, and will not let it go. Truth does not struggle against ignorance, and love does not attack fear. What needs no protection does not defend itself. Defense is of your making. God know it not. (ACIM, T-14.VII.5:1-5)

 

God has given us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit always brings light to darkness. This is His job.

 

Our job is to search our minds and bring up all our hidden secrets. We then hand them over. The Holy Spirit acts like a recycling unit. He takes all our fears and then lets us see them all afresh.

 

Truth is love. Truth is light.  Both love and light are what we are. 

 

Truth is union. To God, nothing can exist outside of union. To God, everything is unified and whole.

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192/ The Closing of the Doors

5th November 2022

 

Lesson 192: I have a function God would have me fill. (ACIM, W-192)

 

The lesson today is about contrast. It is the contrast of what Is, and what is not. Our function is to undo this, and we do this through forgiveness. Forgiveness is our ticket home.

 

Heaven has never gone anywhere. It is all around us, just like God is all around us. Forgiveness is necessary only because we think we are somewhere else. This is the place that we call earth.

 

Ultimately, it comes down to belief in life and death - Heaven is life and earth is death. By undoing our fear of death, we release our dependency upon the body. This relieves the mind of its source of fear. We are simply changing our beliefs.

 

A Course in Miracles enables this to happen systematically and organically. It is the slow process by which we start exploring the darkness of the ego with the light of the Holy Spirit.

 

In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you, and the power He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All this lies hidden in every darkened place, shrouded in guilt and in the dark denial of innocence. Behind the dark doors you have closed lies nothing, because nothing can obscure the gift of God. (ACIM, T-14.VIII.1:1-3)

 

Jesus tells us that our complete connection with all that Is arises through a mind that has a total connection with the Holy Spirit. Jesus makes this very clear in the two statements below.

 

Where God is, there you are. Such is the truth. (ACIM, T-14.VIII.4:4)

 

Heaven itself is union with all of creation, and with its one Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God for you. (ACIM, T-14.VIII.5:2-3)

 

The closing of the doors is therefore the shutting off of the Holy Spirit. It is the blocking off of Heaven. Forgiveness returns our dignity. We are still on earth but know that Heaven is our home.

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193/ A Spotless Mirror

6th November 2022

 

Lesson 193: All things are lessons God would have me learn. (ACIM, W-193)

 

Today’s lesson is a paradox. God does not need to teach us anything because we are perfect, yet we think He does. Forgiveness of this error is the key. Forgiveness allows us to see our own perfection.

 

Only we have made our imperfection. It arises through thoughts that can sometimes seem random and terrifying. However, it is always our choice whether we rise above them or they rise above us.

 

A Course in Miracles is the simple act of bringing forgiveness to form. We bring errors to truth, which means we bring the ego to Holy Spirit. The ego is the error and ACIM states that an error can only be corrected in a moment that is outside of time.

 

The making of time to take the place of timelessness lay in the decision to be not as you are. Thus truth was made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion. And the past, too, was changed and interposed between what always was and now. (ACIM, T-14.IX.1:7-9)

 

A Course in Miracles states that everything we think has happened to us is actually just a thought in the mind. ACIM states the past never was. The past is just a thought that the mind keeps repeating.

 

The Workbook, then, enables us to see through this error so that the ego becomes redundant. We learn to replace the fear of death with the joy of life. If God is life, then we are life. We are training the mind to release all its fears so that we sever every root that keeps us bound.

 

A Course in Miracles is all about censoring our internal dialogue. It is about connecting with light in order to pierce the darkness. It is about knowing that our one true Self is created by light.

 

We find our light through forgiveness. This heals the mind, allowing it to reflect what it knows.

 

We become like a spotless mirror. Anyone who looks into this mirror can see their own perfection shining back.

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194/ Our Fairy Tale of Fear

7th November 2022

 

Lesson 194: I place the future in the Hands of God. (ACIM, W-194)

 

The lesson today is like a fairy tale. It tells us that the future, the past and the present are all in God’s Hands. This is definitely the last thing the world would ever teach us.

 

We might understand this better if we were instructed to release all our yearning for a better life. The future is now, just like the past is now. This present moment is all we need.

 

A Course in Miracles teaches us to look past illusions to the truth. It states reality is not a fairy tale. Reality is what is now. ACIM is about God being reality and reality being God.

 

When no perception stands between God and His creations, or between His children and their own, the knowledge of creation must continue forever. The reflections you accept into the mirror of your mind in time but bring eternity nearer or farther. (ACIM, T-14.X.1:1-2)

 

The world states that Heaven is in the future. Heaven is the reward we need to earn.  Heaven is a place we go to when we are good. We therefore earn Heaven by submitting to the will of the world.

 

Jesus teaches that Heaven is with us now. This is the primary teaching of A Course in Miracles. Heaven is just a change of awareness. Our minds either bring us closer to Heaven or take us further away. The ego, then, wants to give us Heaven but can’t; the Holy Spirit only knows Heaven and can.

 

In Heaven reality is shared and not reflected. By sharing its reflection here, its truth becomes the only perception the Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of his Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality. (ACIM, T-14.X.2:1-3)

 

We therefore have two points of reference and two states of mind. It’s a choice of one or the other.

 

We either know God or we know the ego. We either know Heaven or forms of hell. One single doubt or concern about the future means we believe in the ego. The ego, then, is our fairy tale of fear.

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195/ A Shift in Perception

8th November 2022

 

Lesson 195: Love is the way I walk in gratitude. (ACIM, W-195)

 

Love makes no comparisons. Hatred cannot survive if we lay comparisons aside. Gratitude walks hand in hand with love.

 

These are some key points arising from the lesson today.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us we are not the ego - we never have been and never will be. ACIM calls the ego chaotic. It’s a mystery, then, why we can never stop its constant chatter in the mind.

 

A mind without the ego does not judge. It merely recognizes what is, and responds accordingly. This is the miracle of A Course in Miracles. The miracle never judges. It sees everything as a call to love.

 

Where there is love, your brother must give it to you because of what it is. But where there is a call for love, you must give it because of what you are. (ACIM, T-14.X.12:2-3)

 

Jesus tells us that, when two or more minds join together in the search for truth, a union occurs which is free of analysis. It’s a coupling which means the mind has simply allowed itself to just be.

 

Ultimately, seven billion of us are constantly searching for this truth but have no idea how to find it.

 

Everyone seeks for love as you do, but knows it not unless he joins with you in seeking it. If you undertake the search together, you bring with you a light so powerful that what you see is given meaning. The lonely journey fails because it has excluded what it would find. (ACIM, T-14.X.10:5-7)

 

God communicates to us through the Holy Spirit in our minds. The ego shuts this communication off. We perceive light or darkness, love or fear. Only one of these fulfils our endless search for love.

 

Everything arises from a shift in perception. The mind either sees the call for love or the call for war. 

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196/ We Do not Know

9th November 2022

 

Lesson 196: It can be but myself I crucify. (ACIM, W-196)

 

We attack only ourselves but do not know it.

 

It seems to be an enemy outside of ourselves we fear, but it is not.

 

Nothing is done to make us suffer. We make our own suffering.

 

The lesson today asks us to take responsibility for everything we do.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that all that stands between our little selves and the power of God is the awareness of what is true and what is false.

 

Can God learn how not to be God? And can His Son, given all power by Him, learn to be powerless? What have you taught yourself that you can possibly prefer to keep, in place of what you have and what you are? (ACIM, T-14.XI.2:3-5)

 

Jesus is teaching us that everything is simple, natural and immediate. All it takes is just a thought.

 

We crucify ourselves but do not know it. We feel our problems arise from our status in the world.

 

Nothing you have ever learned can help you understand the present, or teach you how to undo the past. Your past is what you have taught yourself. Let it all go. (ACIM, T-14.XI.3:5-7)

 

Jesus asks us to release all attachments to finding light in darkness. He tells us it will not work.

 

The only test to know if we are on the right path is whether we have perfect peace. If we don’t, then we do not know. Nothing more needs to be said.