Reflections 239 to 252
239/ Healing Is in the Mind
22nd December 2022
Lesson 239: The glory of my Father is my own. (ACIM, W-239)
The lesson today essentially shows us the truth. We are one with our Creator in the light. Everything else is just an illusion.
It is clearly hard to accept this as true. In fact, since we are walking around as individual bodies, with separate minds and a long list of problems, it is probably correct to say that we regard it as hogwash.
We have allowed the ego to dominate our spit minds. In fact, a good part of A Course in Miracles is spent exposing the ego as an illusion. When this happens, truth can lovingly begin to reveal itself.
Truth is therefore the absence of illusion, just as illusion is the absence of the truth.
Truth
and illusion have no connection. This will remain forever true, however much
you seek to connect them. But illusions are always connected, as is truth. Each
is united, a complete thought system, but totally disconnected to each other. (ACIM,
T-19.I.7:1-4)
Likewise, A Course in Miracles tells us something else that is hard to accept. The body cannot heal itself; in fact, the body can’t do anything without the mind. Healing only occurs within the mind.
The body cannot heal, because it cannot make itself sick. It needs no healing. Its health or sickness depends entirely on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose that the mind would use it for. (ACIM, T-19.I.3:1-3)
Taking this into account, it is interesting to hear three doctors from the medical profession talk about their near-death experiences. They detail their personal and professional views prior to having their NDEs, as well as after. They talk of how their consciousness was drawn away from the body. They demonstrate how light can heal our false perceptions. All three accounts differ completely, but they tend to conclude with the same thing. We are extremely limited in what we know.
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240/ Seeing Everything as One
23rd December 2022
Lesson 240: Fear is not justified in any form. (ACIM, W-240)
The lesson today begins by saying that fear is deception. It states that not one single thing in the world is true. It concludes by saying that we are each a part of Love itself.
A Course in Miracles is therefore a course in mind training. We are being taught how to undo our belief in fear. ACIM is an instruction in how to be certain.
Essentially, it is all about having faith but without the religious dogma that can be attached.
Faith is the opposite of fear, as much a part of love as fear is of attack. Faith is the acknowledgement of union. It is the gracious acknowledgment of everyone as a Son of your most loving Father, loved by Him like you, and therefore loved by you as yourself. (ACIM, T-19.I.10:1-3)
Another central focus of A Course in Miracles is this. The thoughts that we think are crucial to our happiness. Our thinking is completely our own responsibility. It is the way we control our destiny.
We can perceive the world as hell or we can perceive it as Heaven. We can have a thought of fear or we can have a thought of love. We can govern the direction of our minds or we can allow our minds to direct and govern us. There are no in-betweens.
This means that, whenever we see something as divided and separate, we are feeding our fear. Whenever we see something as together and cohesive, we are touching the essence of who we are.
Everything starts with an idea. Seeing everything as ‘one’ might be the very foundation stone of what A Course in Miracles is teaching us, but the seed is planted when we complete the Workbook. It is up to us to let it flourish. It is up to us to let it grow.
You can enslave a body, but an idea is free, incapable of being kept in prison or limited in any way except by the mind that thought it. For it remains joined to its source, which is its jailer or its liberator, according to which it chooses as its purpose for itself. (ACIM, T-19.I.16:4-5)
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241/ Mistakes Can Be Corrected
24th December 2022
Lesson 241: This holy instant is salvation come. (ACIM, W-241)
A Course in Miracles tells us we cannot sin. It is impossible. We only make mistakes.
The lesson today is a celebration. It is the end of our last mistake. Today we are being told we are not alone - we are never apart from the eternal presence of That which created us.
The ego, however, wants to keep us separate. The ego is expert in making us feel worthless, unloved and without any sense of Self-worth or completeness. Sin is loved by the ego but is wholly dismissed by the Holy Spirit. A Course in Miracles describes sin as a simple error that needs to be forgiven.
A major tenet in the ego’s insane religion is that sin is not error but truth, and it is innocence that would deceive. Purity is seen as arrogance, and the acceptance of the self as sinful is perceived as holiness. (ACIM, T-19.II.4:1-2)
We have an upside down way of thinking. We think that what is right is wrong, and what is wrong is right. Our minds are way off track but it only takes a moment of clarity to bring the one, single mind back to what is always truth.
A Course in Miracles teaches us to stabilise our thinking. We might not get it completely right - at least not to the standard that Jesus sets - but we can try. We look past sin to the truth of life.
The Son of God can be mistaken; he can deceive himself; he can even turn the power of his mind against himself. But he cannot sin. There is nothing he can do that would really change his reality in any way, nor make him really guilty. (ACIM, T-19.II.3:1-3)
We might feel we have the weight of the world on our shoulders. We might feel that we are missing out on love. We learn our thoughts shape our reality and just believing in lack is a huge mistake.
Mistakes can be corrected and all we have to do is forgive. If we complete the Workbook and don’t practice forgiveness, this in itself is our biggest mistake.
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25th December 2022
Lesson 242: This day is God’s. It is my gift to Him. (ACIM, W-242)
Guilt and sin are so entwined. They are like lovers.
The reality of God and how we view God bears no comparison. Using words feels insignificant.
The world we see and the world we would like to see can change with just a thought. This feels like logical thinking.
The lesson today is a quandary. It is whether to choose the ego, or whether to choose something that is infinitely greater and bigger. It is the decision that A Course in Miracles makes us make with every lesson of the Workbook, and it is one that ACIM tells us we should use every day of the year.
We need an open mind. A Course in Miracles wants us to know that our belief in the likes of sin and guilt, fear and punishment, are critical decisions that keep our minds completely closed.
The
ego does not think it possible that love, not fear, is really called upon by
sin, and always answers. For the ego brings sin to fear, demanding punishment. (ACIM,
T-19.III.2:1-2)
The Holy Spirit cannot punish sin. Mistakes He recognizes, and would correct them all as God entrusted Him to do. But sin He knows not, nor can He recognize mistakes that cannot be corrected. (ACIM, T-19.III.4:1-3)
Fear, then, is the teacher of the ego. It restricts us and keeps us bound.
Love is the Teacher of the Holy Spirit. It expands us and sets us free.
A Course in Miracles tells us that there is no will that is greater than the Will of God’s. It simply asks that we incorporate this into our understanding. How can we combine what is completely incompatible? It is the same as trying to combine oil and water. It is a simple act that can’t be done.
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243/ Peace Is for Everyone
26th December 2022
Lesson 243: Today I will judge nothing that occurs. (ACIM, W-243)
A Course in Miracles tells us that anything we begin with the Holy Spirit will always be finished.
There are certain things, then, that we are asked to stop. The lesson today is a good example.
Trying not to judge is a curious path for minds apart. We love to judge anything and everything.
A Course in Miracles is open to judgement. However, a more objective appraisal might be this.
There is a need to stop running from fear. We have to look deeply into our fear in order to find love.
We have to let creation be itself. Nothing else exists except a gentle unfolding of the now.
We are asked to see everyone equally. Using judgment on another person simply distorts reality.
A true appraisal is this: You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see your brothers truly. And the light in them will show you all that you need to see. When the peace in you has been extended to encompass everyone, the Holy Spirit’s function here will be accomplished. (ACIM, T-19.IV.3:4-6)
We think we are in control of our lives, but it is our lives that are controlling us.
We assume that the body makes the pain, but it is the pain that makes the body.
We believe that what gives us peace is out there, but what gives us peace is in here.
Peace is for everyone. No one and no thing
can ever be excluded.
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244/ Making Ourselves Homeless
27th December 2022
Lesson 244: I am in danger nowhere in the world. (ACIM, W-244)
We are peace. This is the major teaching of A Course in Miracles.
It is why the lesson today is a statement of fact. To be in danger anywhere means we have forgotten what peace is. A Course in Miracles helps us to refine our search.
When peace arises through the ego, it is always dependent on something. That might be a simple cup of tea or a chocolate biscuit. It might be a friendly smile. It is always something exterior to us.
When peace arises through the Holy Spirit, it needs nothing to encourage it. It arises naturally, spontaneously and without support. It always arises from within. Peace is with us even when the cup of tea or chocolate biscuit is withdrawn. It is with us when the friendly smile turns to a snarl.
The Holy Spirit’s purpose rests in peace within you. Yet you are still unwilling to let it join you wholly. You still oppose the Will of God, just by a little. And that little is a limit you would place upon the whole. (ACIM, T-19.IV-A.3:1-4)
There are no barriers that can block the Will of God. However, our minds can, and do, reject it.
The ego is the symbol of that rejection. The ego is really nothing but a moment of panic, an instant of despair. The ego disappears the moment we see its insanity for what it is.
It is like a cloud in the sky. The cloud grabs our attention and then it is gone. The sky, however, remains changeless. We are a part of it and it is a part of us.
We make ourselves homeless, of this there is no doubt. We have peace within us always but we choose to ignore it.
The lesson today helps to establish our truth as obvious. Peace arises only when we want it enough.
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245/ Love just Is
28th December 2022
Lesson 245: Your peace is with me, Father. I am safe. (ACIM, W-245)
The lesson today is like a plea. If anyone comes our way, that person will see only peace.
Peace, love and light. These are the manifestations of what God Is.
Fear, guilt and pain. These are the manifestations of the ego’s control.
A Course in Miracles tells us that peace never looks on fear, love never looks on guilt, and light never looks on pain. It is the nature of truth to only look on truth.
We, however, try and mix the two. This does not work. It is always just one or the other.
Perception cannot obey two masters, each asking for messages of different things in different languages. What fear would feed upon, love overlooks. What fear demands, love cannot even see. (ACIM, T-19.IV-A.11:3-5)
What the mind sends out, we always get it back. By sending out fear’s messengers, we get fear back; by sending out love’s messengers, we get love back.
A Course in Miracles makes this our basic starting point. It tells us that what the Holy Spirit sees and what the ego sees are mutually exclusive. The two cannot co-exist.
Fear only dominates our senses because we allow it. We put it there and we can remove it
The truth is simple and it is this.
Love just Is. There isn’t anything else.
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246/ Cherishing Life
29th December 2022
Lesson 246: To love my Father is to love His Son. (ACIM, W-246)
A Course in Miracles states that the holy relationship is where truth proclaims truth, and love looks upon itself.
Jesus tells us that this is how the Father and the Son are joined, which is the lesson for today.
Jesus advises another thing within the framework of A Course in Miracles. He asks that we see him in others because what we see in others we see in ourselves. Jesus wants us to forgive him first so that we can begin to forgive ourselves.
Forgiveness is therefore the key to everything that A Course in Miracles teaches.
You want communion, not the feast of fear. You want salvation, not the pain of guilt. And you want your Father, not a little mound of clay, to be your home. In your holy relationship is your Father’s Son. (ACIM, T-19.IV-B.4:6-9)
A Course in Miracles continually makes the distinction between what is special (the ego) and what is holy (the Holy Spirit). It states that the ego expects us to fall into the traps it has laid out for us. The ego wants only that we to succumb to pain and the fear of death. The Holy Spirit, however, knows only of expansion and growth, truth and knowledge. The Holy Spirit wants only that we live.
Jesus is the symbol of that expansion.
Jesus wants us to cherish life because life cherishes us.
Ana Gonzalez was born with a life-threatening congenital heart condition but still kept cherishing life despite how poorly she felt. She says that she never believed in death and states that we don’t need a language to communicate with love. When she was twenty- four, she had a near-death experience in which she witnessed our deep interconnection and was experiencing it from the branches of a tree. Later she was healed by two angels. The interview is with Lee Witting and NDE Radio.
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247/ The Servant of Pain
30th December 2022
Lesson 247: Without forgiveness I will still be blind. (ACIM, W-247)
What we give out, we receive back. This is a fundamental law of the universe.
The lesson today asks that we recognize our Self in others. This is who we are being seen everywhere.
The alternative, then, has to be to stay as we imagine we are. This means being blind to the truth. It is like being deeply asleep and waiting to awaken.
A Course in Miracles tells us that only the mind can set a purpose, and only the mind can see that purpose through. We are what we think; our thinking creates our reality.
Your
little part is but to give the Holy Spirit the whole idea of sacrifice. And to
accept the peace He gives instead, without the limits that would hold its
extension back, and so would limit your awareness of it. (ACIM,
T-19.IV-B.9:1-2)
The lessons in the Workbook simply help to break our attachment to the body and the ego.
Our primary goal is then to love ourselves beyond the body. This is where forgiveness is needed.
We slowly learn to trust the formless. Our minds begin to be aware of the stillness within, so that anything that occurs without can be witnessed from a peaceful reference point.
Jesus is our guide in this. He tells us that the body is the servant of pain. This means we have to divorce from the ego and find the peace that’s hidden inside. We are then united with our real Self.
If peace is homeless, so are you and so am I. And He Who is our home is homeless with us. Is this your wish? Would you be forever a wanderer in search of peace? Would you invest your hope of peace and happiness in what must fail? (ACIM, T-19.IV-B.9:5-9)
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248/ Peering into the Darkness
31st December 2022
Lesson 248: Whatever suffers is not part of me. (ACIM, W-248)
The lesson today starts by saying we have disowned the truth. Only we can rejoin with it.
In a sense, then, we are dead to the truth. Aliveness is all around us and we just can’t see it.
Jesus tells us we can’t die. It is impossible. To understand that there is no death is the whole purpose of A Course in Miracles.
No
one can die unless he chooses death. What seems to be the fear of death is
really its attraction. (ACIM,
T-19.IV-C.1:4-5)
Made
by the ego, its dark shadow falls across all living things, because the ego is
the “enemy” of life. (ACIM,
T-19.IV-C.1:9)
Death is therefore a condition of the ego. Death is merely a thought that arises and then is gone. We sanction and glorify death because we have forgotten it’s opposite. We have forgotten life, and this is the Thought of God.
A Course in Miracles repeatedly states that an idea does not leave its source. We suffer because the ego is the source of suffering. Over and over again, we are told the ego is not who we are. The ego is just a narrative that has no meaning.
When the source of our thinking arises from a Source that is Infinite Love, then we are really onto something. We are living.
Currently, it is as if we are simply peering into the darkness. This is like a living hell.
We change when we shine a light on the darkness. Nothing can ever extinguish the light that we are.
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249/ Disrupting Communication
1st January 2023
Lesson 249: Forgiveness ends all suffering and loss. (ACIM, W-249)
A Course in Miracles tells us that the body is a dedication to death. It is essentially meaningless. The body is the ego’s little tool to work out its avarice and insanity.
The lesson today is about forgiveness. It paints a picture of how the loss of the body becomes totally irrelevant. Equally, by overcoming the body, we find only its opposite which is love, peace and joy.
If this sounds implausible to a mind that believes it is sane, it is because we are insane. If we take one look at the world through the telescopic eyes of the media, we will know that this is true.
Jesus gave a perfect demonstration of the uselessness of the body while on the cross. And now, through the manifestation of A Course in Miracles, he reminds us that his death had nothing to do with sin. The crucifixion was the perfect example of how God’s Love can never be extinguished.
We are all God’s Love, and the body can be used either to channel this or it can be used for insanity.
The body no more dies than it can feel. It does nothing. Of itself it is neither corruptible nor incorruptible. It is nothing. It is the result of a tiny, mad idea of corruption that can be corrected. (ACIM, T-19.IV-C.5:2-6)
Jesus tells us that we are taking part in a dream of death. What we really are is completely deathless. We are infinite and unending. We are totally innocent of anything we could ever think we might have done.
Disrupting communication is therefore the ego’s forte. We are in love with our Creator but we have just forgotten it. Jesus teaches about life, not death. The love of life is his teaching contribution.
From the ego came sin and guilt and death, in opposition to life and innocence, and to the Will of God Himself. Where can such opposition lie but in the sick minds of the insane, dedicated to madness and set against the peace of Heaven? (ACIM, T-19.IV-C.3:1-2)
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250/ Playing Mind Games
2nd January 2023
Lesson 250: Let me not see myself as limited. (ACIM, W-250)
The theme of the lesson today doesn’t touch on our feelings about awakening from our limitations. There’s no mention of the ego making threats. The closer we get, the harder the ego makes it for us.
This is because awakening means the end of the ego. It therefore takes it very seriously indeed.
If everyone made a list of their fears about having a total healing of the mind, each list would be different. Some might include worries of being sectioned or ridiculed; for others, it is grief over loss.
A Course in Miracles wants us to face these fears. It keeps nudging us to go beyond them. ACIM does not want us to feel anxious. It is simply teaching us how to re-establish our will.
It seems to you the world will utterly abandon you if you but raise your eyes. Yet all that will occur is you will leave the world forever. This is the re-establishment of your will. Look upon it, open-eyed, and you will nevermore believe that you are at the mercy of things beyond you, forces you cannot control, and thoughts that come to you against your will. (ACIM, T-19.IV-D.7:1-4)
If we are not happy, it is up to us to learn how to be happy.
If we feel lost and alone, only we can find the solution.
A Course in Miracles has all the answers but they will be the polar opposite to what we know. It tells us that our greatest fear is the fear of God, and this is a fear that manifests itself in multiple ways. If we face our fears with the Holy Spirit, then our terror that God will punish us will be gone one day.
Love is all encompassing. Our fears actually mean nothing. Nothing exists apart from love.
The ego loves playing mind games. It demands we know that it is always there. Really, though, the ego is just a little puff of wind. Love remains quite impervious as the ego puffs away.
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251/ Our Guide along the Path
3rd January 2023
Lesson 251: I am in need of nothing but the truth. (ACIM, W-251)
Everything we have done in our lives has brought us to this one point in time. We are now searching for one thing. Truth is our peaceful mission. This is the lesson for today.
Whether or not we believe this to be true is quite another thing. Our lives might be total disasters.
A Course in Miracles tells us that all the above occurs in the mind. Only the mind can lead to truth.
The ego is that total disaster. The ego does not know what truth is. The ego is passive or active, depending on how it feels. The Holy Spirit, however, is always the background. Its peace never leaves us. The Holy Spirit is the gentle hand of support that, mostly, we do not even know is there.
Finding truth is leaving the ego and linking with the Holy Spirit. It is finding it in another. In every person we meet, or anyone we even think about, we either see the disaster or we see the solution.
Beside you is one who offers you the chalice of Atonement, for the Holy Spirit is in him. Would you hold his sins against him, or accept his gift to you? Is this giver of salvation your friend or enemy? Choose which he is, remembering that you will receive of him according to your choice. (ACIM, T-19.IV-D.13:1-4)
The chalice of Atonement is simply translated as the complete healing of the mind. All our disasters have disappeared into the ether. Only peace remains because all our fears have gone.
The alternative is a mind that is not at peace, which means we are keeping hold of judgement. Every person we meet is either treated as a threat or a friend.
Forgiveness is the practice that brings about the healing. Forgiveness is the key to purity of mind.
We give out what we get back. If we give out peace, then peace becomes our guide along the path.
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252/ Simplicity Made Simple
4th January 2023
Lesson 252: The Son of God is my Identity. (ACIM, W-252)
A Course in Miracles is a celebration of life, not death.
The lesson today tells us our real Identity is bigger than anything we could ever have imagined.
We learn within the Text that the crucifixion is not important; the resurrection most definitely is.
The Workbook teaches us to join with the Holy Spirit and not with the ego. Peace is the result.
Our goal is only to know the love that we are, not the fear. Fear is a thing of the past.
A slain Christ has no meaning. But a risen Christ becomes the symbol of the Son of God’s forgiveness on himself; the sign he looks upon himself as healed and whole. (ACIM, T-20.I.1:4-5)
We cannot be united in crucifixion and in death. Nor can the resurrection be complete till your forgiveness rests on Christ, along with mine. (ACIM, T-20.I.2:9-10)
We are all that risen Christ. Collectively we are the Son of God.
Forgive ourselves and we forgive God. Nothing ends in death.
A Course in Miracles is simplicity made simple. There is no confusion about its message.
God created only what lives. He created nothing that can die.
There is only life. This is our Identity. Find our Self and we find this out for sure.
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