Reflections 197 to 210

 

197/ The Guide along the Path

10th November 2022

 

Lesson 197: It can be but my gratitude I earn. (ACIM, W-197)

 

 A Course in Miracles tells us we have two choices for who we turn to - the ego or the Holy Spirit.

 

The lesson today tells us that the ego is our weakness and the Holy Spirit is our strength. Gratitude can only be ours because of our strength.

 

When we listen to our weakness, we are really walking alone. We are in darkness because we cannot see the light. External gratitude is demanded by our weakness. When we feel weak, we feel bereft.

 

Jesus constantly reminds us of our strength. He tells us we need complete understanding of the Holy Spirit in our minds because peace and understanding go together. The two are inseparable. Without an understanding of what the Holy Spirit offers us, fear replaces peace. Weakness then results. We feel alone and vulnerable. Nothing flows because there is no flow.

 

The Holy Spirit is our Guide along the path. The Miracle arises from this understanding. The Holy Spirit simply observes anything we do and knows exactly who we are. The Holy Spirit knows we are never separate and knows we can never be alone.

 

God’s Son will always be indivisible. As we are held as one in God, so do we learn as one in Him. God’s Teacher is as like to His Creator as is His Son, and through His Teacher does God proclaim His Oneness and His Son’s. (ACIM, T-14.XI.11:1-3)

 

Anne Murphy’s testimony of her two near-death experiences shows us that we all have help along the path, no matter how traumatic our life events may be. She came through a childhood of intense suffering, and now understands why her life is the way it is. She has learned to see her own life experiences from the point of view of her ‘I-amness’, and not her little ‘i’ which is completely apart. The first video below is Anne’s interview with Melissa Denyce. The second is questions and answers.

 

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198/ The Goal of Time

11th November 2022

 

Lesson 198: Only my condemnation injures me. (ACIM, W-198)

 

The lesson today tells us there is condemnation and there is forgiveness. One makes us a prisoner and one sets us free.

 

Both occur within the dream. However, forgiveness is a dream of waking as opposed to sleeping.

 

The Self that we are neither forgives nor condemns. It is perfectly awake and perfectly happy

 

The lesson’s title therefore relates to anything the ego might do to us. The ego is the Self’s prison guard, believing it can keep It captive within the dream. The ego tortures our mind. If we could observe our thoughts for just one second without any attachment, we would know that this is true.

 

The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it. The ego teaches that hell is in the future, for this is what all its teaching is directed to. Hell is its goal. (ACIM, T-15.I.4:1-4)

 

Jesus wants us to imagine hell’s opposite - an opposite where we have no fears and no problems of any kind. There is just calm and tranquillity. Jesus states that this is our reality. Our belief in the past and future simply smothers it. Hell’s opposite is timeless and requires a peaceful state of mind.

 

A Course in Miracles teaches that there is no hell. It states that hell is just what the ego makes of this moment. This moment is Heaven. This moment is a state of mind where only perfect peace lies.

 

The goal of time is therefore to break the cycle of life and death.  It is to make us aware that we are infinitely bigger than what we think we are. A Course in Miracles is a teaching that states that it takes no time at all to be what we are.

 

Our real Self is always happening right now. Every moment is a choice. We either accept this instant or we don’t. We either stay in the dream or we wake up. The goal of time is simply one or the other.

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199/ Clarity or Confusion

12th November 2022

 

Lesson 199: I am not a body. I am free. (ACIM, W-199)

 

We learn today that we are not a body. Our minds are free only when they serve the Holy Spirit. To have this freedom is the whole purpose of the Workbook.

 

To know that we are not the body is the very foundation of A Course in Miracles. We come to it as a living, breathing lump of flesh and bone. We leave it as a mind set free.

 

A Course in Miracles teaches that we are all God’s Son. It teaches that we are all immortal. Jesus states that we should prove this to every person we meet. Every person we meet is just a reflection of what we think about ourselves.

 

You who have spent days, hours and even years in chaining your brothers to your ego in an attempt to support it and uphold its weakness, do not perceive the Source of strength. In this holy instant you will unchain all your brothers, and refuse to support either their weakness of your own. (ACIM, T-15.II.3:5-6)

 

Jesus teaches that everything happens in time but not of time. He teaches that truth is so far beyond time that only the timeless is relevant. Jesus teaches that oneness is not dependent on time at all.

 

Each lesson is therefore a training that helps us to be aware of what our minds are thinking now.

 

To learn to separate out this single second, and to experience it as timeless, is to begin to experience yourself as not separate. Fear not that you will not be given help in this. God’s Teacher and His lesson will support your strength. (ACIM, T-15.II.6:3-5)

 

The Holy Spirit makes us think we can; the ego makes us think we can’t. Each second of time is just another reminder of our own clarity or confusion.

 

One second is all it takes. Confusion disappears, and the mind tunes into the clarity of its Source. 

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200/ Little and Large

13th November 2022

 

Lesson 200: There is no peace except the peace of God. (ACIM, W-200)

 

 The lesson today asks us to come home. It asks us to change our minds about the purpose of the world. Everything begins and ends in the mind. We can have Heaven or we can stay in hell.

 

Hell is the grip of the body. Hell is a world of suffering. Hell is the fear that stops the flow of love. Hell is basically the noisiness of the mind.

 

The quiet of the mind is what holds the key to Heaven. The quiet of the mind is where we find our peace. Silence, joy and love go together. Heaven is therefore the wonder that arises out of peace.

 

A Course in Miracles shows us how to find this wonder. It keeps reminding us that we are this peace. ACIM tells us the peace of God is always shared. There can be no limit to the peace that God gives.

 

Call forth in everyone only the remembrance of God, and of the Heaven that is in him. For where you would have your brother be, there will you think you are. Hear not his appeal to hell and littleness, but only his call for Heaven and greatness. Forget not that his call is yours, and answer him with me. (ACIM, T-15.III.12:1-4)

 

Jesus tells us that we don’t know our own greatness. Our minds are lost in a web of thinking that tumbles from peace to terror in an instant.

 

We can’t understand what is large while we are little. It is as if we can only see our limitations, just like an elephant can only seeing its trunk.

 

We, then, can be small or we can be big; we can be a leaf or we can be the forest; we can be a pond or we can be the ocean; we can stare at our feet or be in the stars.

 

A Course in Miracles is the choice between being little or large. It is a choice between staying where we are or following our destiny. Every decision we make is literally a choice between Heaven or hell.

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201/ Our Private Thoughts

14th November 2022

 

Lesson 201: Review 6: Lesson 181.

 

 Another review starts today. Twenty lessons are reviewed. Each lesson reviewed becomes just another chance to awaken.

 

All the lessons are accompanied by the following statement: I am not a body, I am free. For I am still as God created me (ACIM, W-rVI.in.3:3-5). This statement is a key component to everything that A Course in Miracles teaches us.

 

The first lesson reviewed today is about the freedom that arises from being at peace with our one Creator and our one Self. We can only fully understand this truth when we see past all the judgments that the ego spreads across our minds.

 

Jesus tells us that we can come to know complete this truth despite the vagaries of the ego; we can always drop into the holy instant despite the fluctuations of the mind.

 

The necessary condition for the holy instant does not require that you have no thoughts that are not pure. But it does require that you have none that you would keep. Innocence is not of your making. It is given you the instant you would have it. (ACIM, T-15.IV.9:1-4)

 

It is clear our minds are riddled with doubt. Jesus tells us that God feeds the mind only with love.

 

The holy instant is therefore a mirror of God’s love arising this moment and every moment. It is holy because it is pure, unconditional and without opposite.

 

The Holy Spirit knows where the holy instant is, but we don’t. The Holy Spirit’s only purpose is to lead us past all our private yearnings. These yearnings are the ego’s attempt to control our minds.

 

Our practice is simply to release all our private thoughts. We see them arise and we let them go. The holy instant is the knowing that only truth connects us; our minds are actually all just joined as one.

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202/ Lessons in Love

15th November 2022

 

Lesson 202: Review 6: Lesson 182.

 

The lesson reviewed today basically tells us that home is not where we think it is. Home is not the body, nor is it the world. Home is perfect, undiluted, unalterable love.

 

A Course in Miracles states there are certain laws on love that can’t be broken. Below are some of the reasons ACIM gives us as to why we should heal the split in our minds.

 

You cannot love parts of reality and understand what love means. (ACIM, T-15.V.3:1)

 

To be alone is to be guilty. For to experience yourself as alone is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to attack reality. (ACIM, T-15.V.2:6-7)

 

There is no substitute for love. (ACIM, T-15.V.6:2)

 

God knows you now. (ACIM, T-15.V.9:1)

 

Jesus highlights another two reasons for ridding the opposite of love from our minds.

 

• Without the ego all would be love.

 

• Separation is the source of guilt.

Our lessons in love, then, are really quite simple. Firstly, we should never look to the ego to give us love; and, secondly, love never changes. Love is complete as it is

 

The meaning of love is the meaning God gave to it. Give to it any meaning apart from His, and it is impossible to understand it. (ACIM, T-15.V.10:3-4)

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203/ Safe and Free

16th November 2022

 

Lesson 203: Review 6: Lesson 183.

 

What do we share - truth or untruths?

 

What do we remember - God’s Name or many names?

 

What do we learn - to join together or draw apart?

 

The lesson reviewed today is the answer. It tells us that God’s Name undoes all our belief in separate minds and separate bodies. The Holy Spirit is the catalyst that changes all these long-held beliefs.

 

Under the Holy Spirit’s teaching all relationships are seen as total commitments, yet they do not conflict with one another in any way. Perfect faith in each one, for its ability to satisfy you completely, arises only from perfect faith in yourself. (ACIM, T-15.VI.1:3-4)

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that the body is not real, but the mind is. It reminds us that all minds are one mind. Every relationship we have is just another chance to prove that we are all connected.

 

Jesus knows our freedom lies in each other. He tells us that all our relationships happen in the mind. If preferences are perceptions based on the past, we can use what is present to bring about change.

 

The essence of the Workbook, then, is to simply remove the veil between illusions and the truth.

 

We begin by loving our neighbour. Jesus states our neighbour always reflects what’s in our mind.

 

It continues as we change our perceptions. Questions are answered when we seek only the truth.

 

The memory of God then returns as we finish our healing. We know we are one mind, safe and free.

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204/ Everything and All and One

17th November 2022

 

Lesson 204: Review 6: Lesson 184.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that bodies can never forgive. They only do what the mind directs.

 

A Course in Miracles states that bodies can never communicate. It is the mind that communicates. The body responds only as a result of the mind.

 

Jesus therefore wants us to be aware of these three facts.

 

• ·         The body arises out of the ego’s plan for autonomy.

 

• ·         The body enslaves us with guilt and fuels our anger.

 

• ·         The body can never do anything that will ever set us free.

 

The lesson reviewed today states exactly this. We are not slave to time, to the ego or to the body. We have arisen out of Infinite Love, pure and simple. This is what we are and what we will always be.

 

There is no other love that can satisfy you, because there is no other love. This is the only love that is fully given and fully returned. Being complete, it asks for nothing. Being wholly pure, everyone joined in it has everything. This is not the basis for any relationship in which the ego enters. For every relationship on which the ego embarks is special. (ACIM, T-15.VII.1:2-7)

 

Andy Petro had complete exposure to this love in 1955 as a result of drowning. His near-death experience is as clear today as it was then. He states that Infinite Love saturated him and was him. In fact, he has spent his whole life knowing that we are the complete opposite of a body. He knows we are everything and all and one. The interview is with the Jeff Mara Podcast and can be seen below.

 

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205/ The Holy Spirit’s Job

18th November 2022

 

Lesson 205: Review 6: Lesson 185.

 

The lesson reviewed today is quite simple. We want the peace of God.

 

This has to be above all else. It is above that cup of coffee in the morning. It is above our daily routines. It is beyond anything that the ego puts in our way.

 

A Course in Miracles does not say we should not live normally. It simply states we have lost sight of what we are. What we are is far beyond any of the opposites of the world. We are a formless aliveness that is beyond the stars. We are a combination of everything that we cannot see.

 

There is just one of us and just one of God. God is Infinite Love which means we are Infinite Love.

 

A Course in Miracles states that the Holy Spirit uses everything in the world in order to teach us that this is true. Nothing is excluded from our learning.

 

Your relationships are with the universe. And this universe, being of God, is far beyond the petty sum of all the separate bodies you perceive. For all its parts are joined in God through Christ, where they become like to their Father. (ACIM, T-15.VIII.4:4-6)

 

Jesus tells us that the loneliness of God’s Son is the loneliness that God feels. He tells us that the Holy Spirit is God’s attempt to bring us back to what we have never left.

 

God is real. The Holy Spirit is real. Only our sense of separation makes us feel that it is not.

 

The Holy Spirit’s job is therefore to restore what God wants. God knows that we can never be apart. We are always in His Mind. We are always protected by His Love.

 

All we have to do is trust in the Holy Spirit. Eternal peace arises only through the Voice for God.

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206/ God’s Gifts in Our Hands

19th November 2022

 

Lesson 206: Review 6: Lesson 186.

 

A Course in Miracles states that both light and truth can only found in the holy instant. The problem from our point of view is that we avoid knowing this in so many different ways.

 

The lesson reviewed today informs us that it is our responsibility to find both light and truth. That is why we are here. Our inner-most desire is to know what we are.

 

A metaphor that could be used is that we need broad shoulders. We have to be courageous. This is not how A Course in Miracles would put it. Instead, it might say we need only to be single-minded.

 

Our single-mindedness is therefore our beingness, which is the essence of this still point in time. What we think we are is a body - the symbol of our stuckness. The body keeps us bound in time.

 

Jesus tells that, in the holy instant, there are no bodies. We can only experience what we are.

 

In the holy instant, where the Great Rays replace the body in awareness, the recognition of relationships without limits is given you. But in order to see this, it is necessary to give up every use the ego has for the body, and to accept the fact that the ego has no purpose you would share with it. (ACIM, T-15.IX.3:1-2)

 

What we are, then, is spirit. We are union. We are undivided and never-ending awareness. We are any relationship that is whole and without barriers. We are the essence of all that is love and light.

 

Today’s lesson helps us to expand our minds. It wants that we look beyond everything that is a body. If we do, then we can use another bodily-related metaphor. We have God’s gifts in our hands.

 

You have no conception of the limits you have placed on your perception, and no idea of all the loveliness that you could see. But this you must remember; the attraction of guilt opposes the attraction of God. (ACIM, T-15.IX.6:1-2)

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207/ The Release from Time

20th November 2022

 

Lesson 207: Review 6: Lesson 187.

 

The lesson reviewed today tells us we all have God’s blessing within us. Everything happens within this context. It just appears as if something is happening that is outside of this.

 

This means that everything is happening within our minds. The world is just a projection we play onto a screen. This is the central teaching of A Course in Miracles. We are dreaming a projection. Change the projector and we change the dream.

 

It does indeed appear as if everything is happening in linear time. However, A Course in Miracles tells us it doesn’t - we are timeless in so many ways. For example, ACIM might say we are the Self and the Christ; we are a stillness that witnesses; we are the Isness that Is; we are the awareness that sees. 

 

Jesus puts it another way. He tells us we are simply the peace of God. God’s peace is our blessing.

 

This is actually our greatest fear. It terrifies us and we project it outwards. We cannot look at it because we fear it would crucify us. It is actually what we feel complete bondage really is.

 

A Course in Miracles is therefore the choice between freedom and bondage. It is about looking for questions and finding the answers. It is the difference between a difficult dream and eternal peace.

 

Time takes us in many different directions. What is not of time just stays still and shows us what we are. What we are is purity and wholeness. A timeless song is singing to us and only this we can hear.

 

Jesus has been portrayed as our Messiah. In A Course in Miracles, he is merely our older brother. He is teaching us the release from bondage. This release from suffering is simply the release from time.

 

The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. For in this liberating instant no guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is thus restored to him. What other gift can you offer me, when only this I choose to offer you? (ACIM, T-15.X.2:1-3)

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208/ Abundance for All

21st November 2022

 

Lesson 208: Review 6: Lesson 188.

 

A Course in Miracles states that communication remains unbroken even if the body is destroyed. It states that communication is of the mind. Only the mind can join with another mind.

 

The lesson today tells us that stillness is where the Peace of God lies. This is also in the mind. The body is just a speck of dust within that stillness. The body is just a thought within the mind.

 

Death of the body is the ultimate sacrifice and depriving the body is our ultimate fear. Both sacrifice and deprivation are familiar bedfellows. They arise only by clinging to the belief that love is fear.

 

Jesus knows that the ego demands sacrifice. He knows the ego feels deprived. Jesus tells us the ego thrives on keeping us anxious, and does this by making the body a symbol of what will always die.

 

As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long will you perceive yourself as lonely and deprived. And so long will you also perceive yourself as a victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing for others. (ACIM, T-15.XI.5:1-2)

 

Jesus teaches that sacrifice separates us from love while deprivation only cements our fear. He tells us that it is only by completing the Workbook that the trust in abundance begins to draw near.

 

We do this by acknowledging the Holy Spirit within our thought system. We do this by questioning why we might think that loss and lack are wrecking our life.

 

The true meaning of A Course in Miracles is far greater than anything our minds can imagine. ACIM tells us we are one love disguised as many. Within this context, there is complete abundance for all.

 

The meaning of love lies in what you have cast outside yourself, and it has no meaning apart from you. It is what you prefer to keep that has no meaning, while all that you would keep away holds all the meaning of the universe, and holds the universe together in its meaning. (ACIM, T-15.XI.6:4-5)

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209/ Substituting Reality

22nd November 2022

 

Lesson 209: Review 6: Lesson 189.

 

Yesterday, the lesson was about peace. Today, it is about love.

 

We are learning what seems obvious. All that is real arises only from the Love and Peace of God.

 

It should be taken as fact that it is impossible for God to create suffering. The Love of God is the here and now. Only joy and peace can extend from His Source.

 

A Course in Miracles asks that we refuse to understand suffering. It demands that we shouldn’t even recognise it. Suffering arises out of the ego, and ACIM gives the ego absolutely no credence at all.

 

Jesus asks only that we trust in the Holy Spirit - a relationship that is always based on love. Without the Holy Spirit we forget we are the ocean. With the Holy Spirit we are both the ocean and the sea.

 

The meaning of love is lost in any relationship that looks to weakness, and hopes to find love there. The power of love, which is its meaning, lies in the strength of God that hovers over it and blesses it silently by enveloping it in healing wings. (ACIM, T-16.I.6:1-2)

 

Jesus tells us we do not know what healing is. We do not know how to find peace. He states that we only have to ask for guidance. We won’t know how this will be answered, but answered it will be.

 

The Holy Spirit is the giver of Guidance. This is absolute truth. The Holy Spirit is God’s Love in action

 

We can be in Heaven or we can be in hell. We can forget the mind or we can use its power. We can believe we are separate or we can know we are one. Either way, God’s Love does not change.

 

We substitute reality every time we think a thought of judgement. This might seem unfair, but it is not. We make reality through our thinking. God’s Love is the only way to bring reality to the mind.

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210/ Whole Is Whole

23rd November 2022

 

Lesson 210: Review 6: Lesson 190.

 

Reality is kind to everyone. Love asks only that we be happy. A Course in Miracles is the demonstration of these two universal truths.

 

The lesson reviewed today accepts this. It asks that we choose joy instead of pain. This is the same as saying that we accept our birthright.

 

Jesus does not want to confuse anyone with the intricacies of what he is teaching. He always calls a spade a spade. By definition, then, he also states that a miracle is just a miracle.

 

Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship when you do not understand the miracle itself? One attribute is no more difficult to understand than is the whole. If miracles are at all, their attributes would have to be miraculous, being part of them. (ACIM, T-16.II.1:6-8)

 

To recognise that a single part is whole, and the whole is the sum total of all its parts, is how A Course in Miracles tells us that God thinks. It is also partially, but not totally, how the world thinks.

 

The world tells us that the part is always apart, and bodies never join. It demands we trust its laws. A Course in Miracles dismantles these laws, and also explains how the world arises in the mind.

 

Jesus tells us to always look to the mind and never to the body: When two minds join as one and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as One has been made (ACIM, T-16.II.4:3). This statement forms the basis for everything that he wants us to know.

 

Jesus is therefore showing us the path to awakening. He is teaching us complete non-duality. He is telling us that we can awaken within the Mind of God and just be our Self.

 

What is whole is whole. The miracle proves that this is true. A Course in Miracles is therefore a course in the re-discovery of wholeness.