Reflections 225 to 238

 

225/ A Conscious State of Awareness

8th December 2022

 

Lesson 225: God is my Father, and His Son loves Him. (ACIM, W-225)

 

Stillness and peace are the consequence of knowing God. This is the lesson for today.

 

A mind needs to be disciplined to know its Creator. We are in a separated state. Basically, it is faith versus faithlessness - one is developed, the other is dismissed. These are our only two options.

 

Faith is simply when we know the Cause of all these little things that we call ‘us’. Faithlessness is where we think we understand that we are the only cause.

 

Faith means that there is no problem that cannot be solved; everything is solved from the inside out. Faithlessness means we think our problems are insurmountable; problems are always outside of us.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us what we are and what we are not. It tells us that minds cannot attack but bodies can. This means that the mind drives the body; the body does not drive the mind.

 

The thought of bodies is the sign of faithlessness, for bodies cannot solve anything. It is their intrusion on the relationship, an error in your thoughts about the situation, which then becomes the justification for your lack of faith. (ACIM, T-17.VII.3:5-6)

 

Truth can never be interfered with. Truth is complete as it is. What is whole can never be halved.

 

A Course in Miracles therefore undoes our belief in illusions; it then ignites our faith and trust.

 

Joe Homsey’s near-death experience gave him that faith and trust, allowing him to overcome the pain resulting from injuries sustained in a car collision. His NDE taught him that we are all a conscious state of awareness. Ultimately, we are all a part of God. He talks to the Jeff Mara Podcast.

 

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226/ Truth Asks for Nothing

9th December 2022

 

Lesson 226: My home awaits me. I will hasten there. (ACIM, W-226)

 

The lesson today asks us to change our minds about the purpose of the world. Everything arises out of thought. If we question the world, we question our thinking.

 

If we seek peace, we should never look to the ego. The ego only feeds our need for protection. However, the ego can’t give us any protection because the ego is just an illusion of the mind.

 

The Workbook begins the process of changing our minds, and each lesson in the Workbook reflects the whole. Each lesson points us toward the Holy Spirit, re-connecting us only to what is complete.

 

A Course in Miracles states that, to change the world, we have to change our minds about the world. We have to learn to approach everything with present moment awareness. ACIM tells us that it is only in the present moment that the real peace lies.

 

Jesus calls this the holy instant. Jesus states that the holy instant is simply a perfect reflection of what every situation is meant to be.

 

The holy instant is the shining example, the clear and unequivocal demonstration of the meaning of every relationship and every situation, seen as a whole. (ACIM, T-17.VIII.1:4)

 

The holy instant is therefore the microcosm of the macrocosm. It is a miniature moment of what is always huge and expansive.

 

Jesus asks why we wouldn’t want to make a holy instant of every situation in which we find ourselves. This is the practice we undertake when we start A Course in Miracles. In fact, it has to be the essence of any spiritual practice that we might ever want to undertake.

 

Truth asks for nothing. Truth needs nothing. If we learn to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, truth will give us everything. This is the beauty of the unending peace that is this present moment.

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227/ Two Ways of Seeing

10th December 2022

 

Lesson 227: This is my holy instant of release. (ACIM, W-227)

 

The lesson today infers we have made a mistake. Heaven is really just a thought away.

 

This would suggest we have a right mind and a wrong mind. This is not rocket science. We should know instantly when we are in our wrong minds.

 

Time, then, leads us either to truth or it leads us to lies. It has to be clear which way we are heading.

 

This might imply that there are always two choices. A Course in Miracles narrows it down to one.

 

Where the ego perceives one person as a replacement for another, the Holy Spirit sees them as joined and indivisible. He does not judge between them, knowing they are one. (ACIM, T-18.I.2:2-3)

 

One would unite; the other separate. Nothing can come between what God has joined and what the Holy Spirit sees as one. But everything seems to come between the fragmented relationships the ego sponsors to destroy. (ACIM, T-18.I.2:6-8)

 

Our minds, then, are split but the mind itself is perfectly complete.

 

Fear takes many forms but love only has one form. Love is love.

 

Truth extends inward, to where loss is meaningless and clearly absurd. Nothing is ever outside of us.

 

This is the whole teaching of A Course in Miracles. It tells us that sanity is within; insanity is without.

 

We only have two ways of seeing. One can lead to trouble and a life full of strife; the other always leads to peace and a mind that forever knows truth. 

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228/ The Choice of Truth

11th December 2022

 

Lesson 228: God has condemned me not. No more do I. (ACIM, W-228)

 

The lesson today states we are mistaken about ourselves. We can pretend that we have problems but it is all a trick of the mind. The moment we awaken, this person that we think we are disappears.

 

This doesn’t mean we suffer. It doesn’t even mean that anything changes. It just means we remember we have never left our Source. This is the whole premise of A Course in Miracles. What we think is real, is unreal; and what we think is unreal, is real.

 

None of this makes any sense as the snow begins to fall and we have skidded on the ice; of even if our team has just gone out of the football World Cup (God forbid). Bombs go off around the world with over 15 conflicts every day but this doesn’t change anything. What we think is happening is not out there. It is in our minds.

 

All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same. They are your protest against reality, and your fixed and insane idea that you can change it. (ACIM, T-18.II.5:12-15)

 

Jesus tells us that the dreams we have at night might feel quite real, but we forget them when we wake up. We do just the same when we eventually awaken from our daytime dream.

 

Dreams therefore have no relevance to what is true. They only arise from a mind that is in conflict. Dreams show us we have the power to make the world that we want. This world seems to be outside of us but it is not. It is all a product of the mind.

 

The issue is that, despite our difficulty in accepting this, the cause of everything is the mind. This is why the central practice of A Course in Miracles is forgiveness. Forgiveness undoes all our unconscious guilt, and it is guilt that keeps us in this separate state.

 

The choice of truth is an important option; truth is something that never sleeps. The choice of fear is our other option; but all fear is, is a mind asleep.

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229/ Fear Can’t Stop Us

12th December 2022

 

Lesson 229: Love, which created me, is what I am. (ACIM, W-229)

 

Love, light and truth - all are interchangeable. They mean the same. One is no different to another.

 

This means our Identity - who we really are - is a Trinity. We are the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are love light and truth. We are essentially one with all that Is.

 

The lesson today asks us to seek love. It wants us to remove all doubt about love from our minds. It wants all minds to be one. Seven billion of us are love, light and truth. We have the changeless within us; we are what can never end.

 

A Course in Miracles is the asserter of truth. It is the bringer of light. It is the portrayer of love. We can’t know this with the ego, but we can know it with the Holy Spirit. This means we have to bring our darkness to light, our errors to truth, and our hate to love.

 

The light is in you. Darkness can cover it, but cannot put it out. (ACIM, T-18.III.1:7-8)

 

Truth has rushed to meet you since you called upon it. If you knew Who walks beside you on the way that you have chosen, fear would be impossible. (ACIM, T-18.III.3:1-2)

 

You go toward love still hating it, and terribly afraid of its judgement upon you. And you do not realize that you are not afraid of love, but only of what you have made of it. (ACIM, T-18.III.3:5-6)

 

Jesus tells us we have spent all our lives bringing truth to illusion and reality to fantasy. In other words, we have been doing the impossible. He wants us to see the error of our thinking and he wants us do change it in a logical and practical way.

 

The Workbook is a good first step. It is a step in the right direction. Along the way, we may encounter doubt and have periods of inertia. It might even seem as if fear is stopping us, but it can’t. Fear is really no more than a blip along the way.

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230/ We Determine the Outcome

13th December 2022

 

Lesson 230: Now will I seek and find the peace of God. (ACIM, W-230)

 

Commitment to anything is optional, but not with A Course in Miracles. It is always all or nothing.

 

The lesson today suggests we have committed ourselves to a state that we are not. It is a paradox. It says we were created as peace, and yet we are not peaceful.

 

Within us is always silence and stillness. This is clear. We have all had that moment when everything stops - when we have complete clarity of mind. This is when we are in tune with the Holy Spirit. Silence and stillness is the Voice of our Creator. It is what we are.

 

Despite this, we have a narrative that surrounds it, completely drowning it out. This narrative can be pugnacious and bombastic, and it seems to be who we are. Whatever this narrative is telling us, it can never be silent and still. It is essentially the opposite of a mind at peace in every way.

 

The holy instant is the result of your determination to be holy. It is the answer. The desire and the willingness to let it come precede its coming. You prepare your mind for it only to the extent of recognizing that you want it above all else. (ACIM, T-18.IV.1:1-4)

 

We cannot add anything to silence and stillness. If we did, we add the ego to it, and this is confusion.

 

There is no need to do anything to earn silence and stillness. In fact, the less we do, the greater is our reward. All we have to do is to respond as we are prompted, no more, no less.  It is an inverse relationship of absurd proportions.

 

Jesus teaches us to let everything be as it is. This is the practice of the Workbook and the essence of A Course in Miracles. We are in tune with whatever is happening now.

 

We determine the outcome of any situation we are in.  We shape our future which is really an unfolding of the present. We are the masters of our destiny and, of this, we can be quite sure.

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231/ A Win-Win Situation

14th December 2022

 

Lesson 231: Father, I will but to remember You. (ACIM, W-231)

 

A Course in Miracles has one goal - it is to accept the miracle. It is a change of perception. ACIM tells us that gifts abound but our minds are actively pushing them away.

 

The lesson today is to remember love. It is to remember the love from which we came. It is to know the truth of who we are.

 

The irony, then, is that we might think it would take a miracle even to begin to know our real Self. It doesn’t. Jesus tells us our contribution is minimal. All we need is a little willingness to change.

 

You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to prepare yourself for Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness, and not believe that it is up to you to establish the conditions for peace. (ACIM, T-18.IV.4:3-4)

 

We have to look into our minds. We need to sense there is something far greater than our limited perspective. A Course in Miracles is here to help us. We follow the instructions and enjoy the results.

 

We did not make the learner, and therefore cannot make the learner any different. We only made what cannot be learned; we have to unlearn only what we have taught ourselves.

 

We require a little willingness, but we also require a lot of patience.

 

We receive huge reward, but there is only minor inconvenience.

 

A Course in Miracles wants us only to ask and be ready to receive. We do not have to change. We do not have to change anything that comes to us because we don’t do the changing. It is the Holy Spirit.

 

It is a win-win situation. We let ourselves be humble and allow greatness to make our day.

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232/ In Heaven, there Is no Religion

15th December 2022

 

Lesson 232: Be in my mind, my Father, through the day. (ACIM, W-232)

 

The lesson today is the end of fear. By being aware of who we are, we go about our business knowing love.

 

A Course in Miracles is therefore the active promotion of peace and the complete dismissal of fear. It tells us we cannot work this out for ourselves. We need to have trust in something greater.

 

Put yourself not in charge of this, for you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of your greatest advances you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats you have evaluated as success. (ACIM, T-18.V.1:5-6)

 

Jesus wants us to be Self-aware. He wants us to have trust in a higher power. It is with this faith that our limited perspective can be replaced by a greater will.

 

The function of the holy instant is therefore to remove all fear and hatred from our minds; the function of the Holy Spirit is to remove all guilt.  We allow our minds to be the receiver of the truth.

 

Currently, then, we see everything as upside down. We see all things from the outside in, not from the inside out. Today’s lesson is a prayer that relieves the suffering that this causes.

 

The lesson today is a therefore reflection of our oneness. To have God in our minds throughout the day is the same as saying that miracles are for all of us. They are not for one person alone.

 

Carlos Vivas gave an interview to Anthony Chene about the miracles he has received throughout his life. He also talks of an experience where Jesus told him that, in Heaven, there is no religion. We are all equal and we don’t need to tie ourselves to anything that makes us different. We learn that miracles simply verify the truth. Reality is with us right now and all we have to do is ask that it be so.

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233/ Facts of Life

16th December 2022

 

Lesson 233: I give my life to God to guide today. (ACIM, W-233)

 

Today, we are asked not to question. Why would we question if we give this day to God?

 

What follows are some definitive truths, according to A Course in Miracles.

 

There is nothing outside you. (ACIM, T-18.VI.1:1)

 

Heaven is not a place nor a condition. (ACIM, T-18.VI.1:5)

 

Minds are joined; bodies are not. (ACIM, T-18.VI.3:1)

 

The mind cannot attack, but it can deceive itself. (ACIM, T-18.VI.4:3)

 

The body was not made by love. (ACIM, T-18.VI.4:7)

 

Below, then, are some facts of life according to what we might conclude.

 

• ·         We look and search for answers everywhere, except where is important - inside the mind.

 

• ·         We are filled with guilt, but have forgotten that there is nothing to be guilty about. Heaven is here with us, right now, and is with us all the time. It isn’t going anywhere.

 

• ·         We cannot hate our bodies but we can, and do, hate our minds.

 

• ·         The body by itself is just a vehicle of expression. Love can be expressed through it, if we want. This is what is suggested by the lesson for today.

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234/ When Limits Melt Away

17th December 2022

 

Lesson 234: Father, today I am Your Son again. (ACIM, W-234)

 

The lesson today is a statement of fact. It tells us that nothing has ever happened that could disturb this truth. We are one with a Father that loves us.

 

If we really believed that this was true, we could never identify with what has given us so much pain. It is the ego and the body that makes us separate.

 

Separation causes anxiety and it clear that we are all anxious - whether we believe it or not. However, there might also have been times when this anxiety has lifted and we have had a sudden sense of peace and joy; all awareness of the body was gone and we were free of time and space. Isn’t this the goal of any spiritual search?

 

A Course in Miracles has this as its focus. It is a spiritual search for freedom and complete peace of mind. It is the liberation from suffering. It is the complete exposé of who we are.

 

The body is outside you, and but seems to surround you, shutting you off from others and keeping you apart from them, and them from you. (ACIM, T-18.VI.9:1)

 

Mind reaches to itself. It is not made up of different parts, which reach each other. It does not go out. Within itself it has no limits, and there is nothing outside it. It encompasses everything. (ACIM, T-18.VI.8:5-9)

 

Yet love must be forever like itself, changeless forever, and forever without alternative. And so it is. You cannot put a barrier around yourself, because God placed none between Himself and you. (ACIM, T-18.VI.9:8-10)

 

The body is a great limit. It can be a burden. It represents a mind that is not free.

 

When limits melt away, we have freedom. What else but this can be our motivation to continue?

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235/ Our One Responsibility

18th December 2022

 

Lesson 235: God in His mercy wills that I be saved. (ACIM, W-235)

 

Today’s lesson is music to the ears of the ego. It suggests that there is a higher power that wants to correct us. This higher power is tut-tutting. The ego delights in letting us know that we will be the recipient of God’s unexpressed rage.

 

Read further and we find that the complete opposite is the case. God’s Love surrounds us. It immerses us and is what we are. Nothing we can do, have done, or ever will do, is going to change this.

 

A Course in Miracles talks to us at the level of the ego or else we wouldn’t understand. If it simply told us we are not the ego, and left it at that, we would ignore it. Change would be impossible.

 

So when we learn about the lack of effort required to find our freedom, then the ego in the mind makes us raise our eyebrows. Lack of effort is completely irrational to the ego’s thought system. We always have to expend a lot of energy. Doing and not doing cannot co-exist.

 

To do anything involves the body. And if you recognize you need do nothing, you have withdrawn the body’s value from your mind. Here is the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort, and escape from time. (ACIM, T-18.VII.7:1-3)

 

More confusion follows when we learn that at no single instant does the ego or the body even exist at all. A Course in Miracles tells us that both are always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced as the ‘now’.

 

‘Now’ is where God operates. It is where the ego and the body are forgotten. ‘Now’ is the essence of the lesson that we read today. Dip into the present moment and the cause of pain is simply gone.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us our one responsibility is that we need do nothing. Release is given us the moment we desire it fully. Our expression of this could take a thousand different forms but it is likely that each one will always involve the past and the future. Doing nothing simply involves the present moment. It is in this presence that all peace lies.

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236/ Limiting the Unlimited

19th December 2022

 

Lesson 236: I rule my mind, which I alone must rule. (ACIM, W-236)

 

The mind can only serve. This is the lesson for today.

 

A question then arises. What or who should it serve?

 

Thousands of spiritual paths give us many different answers, but A Course in Miracles infers it is a simple choice between justice and injustice. The ego holds us hostage in a mind that is forever free.

 

It is highly likely that being free of injustice does not entail us thinking we need to be free of the ego. To change the mind about anything can be difficult. To change it completely is simply terrifying.

 

The ego loves to control us through fear. Everything we do is to prevent fear from entering our lives. We build structures; we fill ourselves with food; we hoard and collect. It seems we do everything and anything to prevent what we have accumulated from disappearing.

 

A Course in Miracles is therefore a course in breaking free of habits. It is the escape from Alcatraz.

 

It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body is a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was made to limit the unlimited. (ACIM, T-18.VIII.1:1-3)

 

A Course in Miracles wants us to return to expressing and spreading the way of love. It doesn’t want us to be imprisoned. It might say we are free as a bird. The mind is not constrained by anything false.

 

We are asked not to limit our awareness. We are told we are not splintered from what is whole. Wholeness is not dependent on the body. We have it with us all the time.

 

We are limiting the unlimited through ignorance. The lesson today puts the responsibility solely back onto us.  If we are able to rule the mind, then we can decide on the thought system that is the ruler.

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237/ No Barriers to Freedom

20th December 2022

 

Lesson 237: Now would I be as God created me. (ACIM, W-237)

 

 A Course in Miracles equates the body to a little speck of dust. It states that the ego thinks it is in charge of the universe. It tells us the identity we have is like a ripple on the ocean.

 

The lesson today implies that trying to ignore who we really are - our real Identity - is like holding up a finger to blot out the sun. It is impossible and will never work.

 

The sun is not aware of a sunbeam; the ocean is not aware of a ripple; the earth is not aware of a speck of dust; and the universe is not aware of the ego.

 

By definition, then, the Self is completely unaware of this little self that we peer at in the mirror every morning.

 

Likewise, if the lesson today wants us to be as God created us, our creation is in no way related to the small, insignificant little entity that we are pretending to be.

 

The essence of all this is that we are not the body. We are so much greater than that.

 

What we are is formless and not a form. A Course in Miracles tells us we are the Love of God Himself.

 

Love knows no bodies, and reaches to everything created like itself. Its total lack of limit is its meaning. It is completely impartial in its giving, encompassing only to preserve and keep complete what it would give. (ACIM, T-18.VIII.8:1-3)

 

Jesus teaches us through A Course in Miracles not to choose so little when we could have so much. Love surrounds each one of us but we need the guidance to find it.

 

We expand when love extends away from the giver; we retract when we keep love inside. We can wither or we can flourish. The simple truth is that there are no barriers to the freedom of mind.

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238/ Our Tiny Part

21st December 2022

 

Lesson 238: On my decision all salvation rests. (ACIM, W-238)

 

What is salvation according to A Course in Miracles? It is a promise made by God that we will never be apart. The decision is ours. We can either be united and all one, or we can maintain our distance.

 

It is our decision whether to love or hate, support or ignore. It is always a choice. The lesson today is therefore quite a responsibility. We have each other’s freedom in our hands.

 

Our decision to join instead of separate, regardless of the circumstances, is all based on trust. We have to trust that the Holy Spirit will not abandon us as soon as we begin to feel the fear. A Course in Miracles is all about bringing fear to love, and doubt to certainty. Basically, when anything remotely unsavoury arises in our minds, it needs to be looked at. This is with the Holy Spirit and not the ego.

 

Be you not separate, for the One Who does surround it has brought union to you, returning your little offering of darkness to the eternal light. (ACIM, T-18.IX.2:1)

 

For this to happen, we are not asked to look outside of ourselves but we are asked to go within. It is our internal world that is important and it is where the solution lies.

 

A Course in Miracles teaches that, beneath all that is false, there is a world of light. This is where the Holy Spirit leads us to - but only if we have the trust. It is also where all words stop, for words cannot describe the indescribable.

 

We are in a false world that is entirely of our own making. We find the real world simply by an undoing. We drop through the layers of guilt and what is beneath their coverings is then revealed.

 

Jesus tells us we just have to play our tiny part. Nothing else is ever required.

 

Love is not learned. Its meaning lies within itself. And learning ends when you have recognized all it is not. That is the interference; that is what needs to be undone. Love is not learned, because there never was a time in which you knew it not. (ACIM, T-18.IX.12:1-5)