Reflections 267 to 280

 

267/ Our Moral Compass

19th January 2023

 

Lesson 267: My heart is beating in the peace of God. (ACIM, W-267)

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that what we dislike most about ourselves - namely our sin - is within us only because we want it there. This then becomes the source of our fear.

 

The lesson today is somewhat at odds with the above. It states that the peace of God is with us wherever we go. There is nowhere that God’s peace is not.

 

If we were to consider both of these viewpoints a little more deeply, we would probably relate more to the first than the second. However, A Course in Miracles is about truth. A brief summary of ACIM in just a few words might be this. Fear is not real. God is real. Only love is a natural state of mind.

 

We are asked to listen to our guidance. We are told that the Holy Spirit fully understands (but does not share) the depth of our shame. We learn the ego perpetuates this shame because that is its job.

 

What if you looked within and saw no sin? This “fearful” question is one the ego never asks. And you who ask it now are threatening the ego’s whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is your friend. (ACIM, T-21.IV.3:1-3)

 

The ego, then, is our nemesis. It drowns out any influence the Holy Spirit might have in our minds.

 

Jesus simply acts like our moral compass. He points to the right direction and helps us find our way.

 

The next two compilations of the Love Covered Life Podcast look at Jesus through the eyes of a selection of near-death experiencers. Each person has their own unique understanding of Jesus from within their NDE. We learn how hard we are on ourselves and that there is nothing to fear. However, the most important message of Jesus is this. We are here to spread love and this is all we have to do.

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268/ Suspended Water Droplets

20th January 2023

 

Lesson 268: Let all things be exactly as they are. (ACIM, W-268)

 

The ego doesn’t know anything about the Holy Spirit. The ego hates to look at itself too closely. The ego is scared of God. A Course in Miracles tells us that the ego does not give us anything.

 

The ego is scared of truth. The ego thinks it’s something but it is actually nothing. The ego is just a thought.

 

This means we are scared of a bit of energy that we attach meaning to.

 

The ego is madness, the Holy Spirit is sanity; the ego is fear, the Holy Spirit is love; the ego is anything that is apart, the Holy Spirit is everything that is joined. Both play their part within the mind and each has nothing in common. The ego and the Holy Spirit are just different ways of thinking.

 

The Holy Spirit’s purpose was accepted by the part of your mind the ego knows not of. No more did you. And yet this part, with which you now identify, is not afraid to look upon itself. It knows no sin. How, otherwise, could it have been willing to see the Holy Spirit’s purpose as its own? (ACIM, T-21.IV.4:5-9)

 

Today we are asked to let all things be exactly as they are. The ego hates today’s lesson, as it hates every lesson. The ego twitches all the time. Letting things be is an anathema to the ego.

 

Letting things be for the Holy Spirit is what it loves. The Holy Spirit is the Voice for God - the echo of all that God Is. The Holy Spirit knows that everything is perfect and that nothing needs changing. Perfect peace, after all, can have no opposite.

 

The lesson today finishes by saying that reality is free of pain, reality is free of loss and reality is wholly safe. We can have all of this today, but not if we try to change it.

 

What we fear does not exist. Fear is simply a thought in the mind. Passing thoughts are like clouds in the sky. What we’re really scared of is no more than a few suspended water droplets.

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269/ Love Has no Opposite

21st January 2023

 

Lesson 269: My sight goes forth to look upon Christ’s face. (ACIM, W-269)

 

 A Course in Miracles tells us that what we look for in the world, we will find. What we prefer to overlook, we will not see.

 

Perception is therefore a witness to the inner voice we choose to listen to. It is nothing more than that.

 

The lesson today is about listening to one Voice. It is about seeing one Self - one God, one Love, one Son, one Christ - in everyone we meet. This is actually the end of the road. Know this and we know perfection. It is like we have never gone anywhere - we are back to being what we are.

 

A Course in Miracles states that oneness has no division. There is only one Identity. The big Self has no little self and we are deluded if we think otherwise.

 

Reality needs no cooperation from you to be itself. But your awareness of it needs your help, because it is your choice. Listen to what the ego says, and see what it directs you see, and it is sure that you will see yourself as tiny, vulnerable and afraid. (ACIM, T-21.V.2:1-3)

 

We cannot fight the ego. We cannot do a deal with the voice in our heads. Nothing can pacify the ego because the ego’s demands basically have no end.

 

Our sole purpose is to become aware of the quiet Voice - the stillness within us that speaks. The Holy Spirit isn’t an entity but it is a force. And there is no force greater than the Voice for God.

 

The ego does not exist in the present - it can only be found in the past or the future - and this is where all our problems lie. The Holy Spirit does not exist in the past or the future - it can only be found in the present moment - and this is where freedom lies.

 

A Course in Miracles has a simple message, and it can be summed up in three simple sound bites. Nothing lies outside of love. Love arises out of the Infinite. Love has no opposite.

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270/ Clarity of Mind

22nd January 2023

 

Lesson 270: I will not use the body’s eyes today. (ACIM, W-270)

 

 A Course in Miracles states that our belief in sin is a call for help. We do not know that help is always with us. We are not sinful. We have just forgotten what we are.

 

The lesson today is about seeing beyond the body. This means letting go of all we hold dear. If forgiveness is the main practice of A Course in Miracles, then vision is our main purpose.

 

Guilt and shame are what separates and divides us; clarity of mind is what connects us. The mind is one because we are one mind. Oneness is the whole focus of Jesus’ teaching.

 

No one can think but for himself, as God thinks not without His Son. Only were Both in bodies could this be. Nor could one mind think only for itself unless the body were the mind. For only bodies can be separate, and therefore unreal. (ACIM, T-21.VI.3:1-4)

 

Jesus is always straight with us. He tells us we are either mad or we are sane; we are either whole or we are incomplete; we are either the problem or we are the solution.

 

Faith in the body can never change what is continuous. When we place our trust in something that has no meaning, then Jesus states that this is madness. The body is really just a tool of the mind.

 

A Course in Miracles is a journey away from everything we know. It is a complete u-turn for both our thinking and our seeing. This arises as the result of just one thing. It is a change of mind.

 

The power of belief is written into history. Jesus, Buddha - many have mastered their minds. A Course in Miracles is a statement that we can do this too.

 

All we need is one moment of clarity. Clarity arises from determination and a single-minded focus.

 

By finding clarity, the body is not needed anymore. Clarity means we have found freedom of mind.

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271/ Transference of Power

23rd January 2023

 

Lesson 271: Christ’s is the vision I will use today. (ACIM, W-271)

 

The lesson today begins with a statement of fact. It tells us that we are choosing what we want with every moment that passes. We are literally choosing whether we want to be powerful or powerless.

 

A Course in Miracles states that truth is constant. We might be able to dip into it and dip out of it, but truth never leaves us. We are either aware of it or we aren’t.

 

The joy of life is therefore always with us. It is ours free of charge, regardless of what we think.

 

This means we deny or accept what is ours by right. Only we can decide what to do with constancy.

 

What, then, is it to be powerless?

 

Being powerless is anything and everything that occurs by way of having a split mind. It is about being ignorant of the dream and the fact that we are dreaming. It is an acceptance that this is it - that we live and we die. It is the conclusion that we have little or no control over our destiny.

 

What, then, is it to be powerful?

 

Being powerful means knowing the absolute truth. It means not having one iota of doubt in our minds about the purpose of life. It is the acceptance of life as it is, not as how we would wish it to be. It is the knowing of what we are and that we have no need to be anything else.

 

A Course in Miracles teaches the transference of power. This is the movement from being powerless to being powerful. Only in this moment can we decide whether or not to accept this offer of help.

 

No one believes the Son of God is powerless. And those who see themselves as helpless must believe that they are not the Son of God. What can they be except his enemy? And what can they do but envy him his power, and by their envy make themselves afraid of it? (ACIM, T-21.VII.2:1-4)

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272/ Constancy in Action

24th January 2023

 

Lesson 272: How can illusions satisfy God’s Son? (ACIM, W-272)

 

The lesson today is asking us to correct a mistake. We are, after all, exactly as God created us.

 

Since God did not create suffering, we learn that we must have wandered off track. Either our heads are in the clouds or our feet are stuck in sand.

 

The error is ours. Somewhere we have taken a wrong turn. A Course in Miracles tells us repeatedly that we are not the physical body. In fact, we are exactly the body’s opposite. We are spirit, whole, pure and innocent, with not a single care in the world.

 

Any concerns with money, any pain in the body - even the slightest doubt about the future - is simply a separate mind talking. It is a constant barrage of thought that wants to crush our spirit.

 

This, of course, is impossible. Nothing can crush the spirit. No thought can ever damage what we are. It is impossible that we lose our Identity. Only what is NOT real is making it seem very real indeed. This is the dilemma that we need to overcome.

 

Are thoughts, then, dangerous? To bodies, yes! The thoughts that seem to kill are those that teach the thinker that he can be killed. And so he “dies” because of what he learned. He goes from life to death, the final proof he valued the inconstant more than constancy. (ACIM, T-21.VIII.1:1-5)

 

No one is saying that pain is not painful - that losing our home is not disastrous - or that any sense of fear is not suffering. However, A Course in Miracles says this need not be.

 

Jesus is teaching us that what we really are - a Self - is quite alien to anything that the ego might be. Joy, happiness and innocence are the conditions of a peaceful mind. A Course in Miracles is just one way of achieving this centred state of being.

 

If illusions cannot satisfy God’s Son, then what can? The lure of the carrot is to know that there is something better. Love is constancy in action. Our minds simply need to go with the flow.

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273/ What Do We Want?

25th January 2023

 

Lesson 273: The stillness of the peace of God is mine. (ACIM, W-273)

 

The lesson today questions how much we want the peace of God? If we do, then undisturbed tranquillity is ours, for sure; if we don’t, then we will get whatever else we ask for.

 

Where might we find the peace of God? A Course in Miracles tells us it is only in the holy instant: Here is the constant peace you could experience forever (ACIM, T-21.VIII.5:3). The holy instant is anything and everything that might be seen within the present moment.

 

The peace of God is found in the holy relationship: Here is belief in differences undone. Here is the faith in differences shifted to sameness. And here is sight of differences transformed to vision (ACIM, T-22.in.4:2-4). The holy relationship is therefore when we look at each other through God’s eyes. This means we are seeing only with love.

 

The peace of God is found with the Holy Spirit, not with the ego: Here is the ultimate release which everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time (ACIM, T-18.VII.6:1). The Holy Spirit allows us to stay calm, centred and open to possibilities. We go beyond the demands of the ego.

 

Anything that is holy, then, arises from beyond time and space. Being holy means having the capacity to love, and to share that love. What is holy does not change and is the same for everyone.

 

Holiness simply means being connected to the Infinite. Apart from that, we still have to pay the bills.

 

What do we want? We can stay as we are or we can choose to change. A Course in Miracles tells us that the only way to change is through the changing of the mind.

 

We do this with trust. We do this through relationship. We do this by seeing every encounter as a holy encounter.

 

Here is the golden circle where you recognize the Son of God. For what is born into a holy relationship can never end. (ACIM, T-22.in.4:9-10)

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274/ Looking at Love

26th January 2023

 

Lesson 274: Today belongs to love. Let me not fear. (ACIM, W-274)

 

The lesson today is a simple choice. It is between fear and love.

 

The ego makes us think we are a body. This is fear-based thought. The brain tells the body what to do and the ego just connects the dots. We see this as a natural way of life.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that truth lies completely beyond the body. This is love-based thought. We learn that all is love, we are love, so love is the only thing we need to live life fully.

 

If we think we are a body, it is impossible to believe that this is true. The ego is very selective about love. It establishes boundaries and makes up rules. The ego is basically everything that love is not.

 

And where, you wonder, does your strange uneasiness, your sense of being disconnected, and your haunting fear of lack of meaning in yourself arise? It is as though you wandered in without a plan of any kind except to wander off, for only that seems certain. (ACIM, T-22.I.1:6-7)

 

Jesus tells us that the ego’s limited way of thinking is keeping our minds grounded in fear. It fuels the worry and smothers the natural flow of life. Breaking free of the ego is the only way to find true love.

 

We have been held in place by ritual and dogma. A Course in Miracles is a path out of the ego’s grip. If fear is an illusion and love is all there is, then we are looking at love with a mind that is trapped.

 

The Love Covered Life Podcast explores the theme of life and religion in the next two instalments of its twelve-part series on all aspects of the near-death experience. Part seven has multiple NDEers talk about their views on the purpose of life; part eight is concerned with how they feel about religion - both now and during their NDE. The two videos can be seen below.

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275/ Entirely or not at all

27th January 2023

 

Lesson 275: God’s healing Voice protects all things today. (ACIM, W-275)

 

The lesson today is about the Holy Spirit.

 

A Course in Miracles repeats time and time again that the Holy Spirit sits in the mind along with the ego. We can only hear one or the other. This is a law that cannot be broken.

 

Another law that can’t be broken is that thoughts never leave the mind of the thinker. It is impossible. What we think is our reality and this can never change.

 

A Course in Miracles also tells us this. We can never be apart from God - we just think we can.

 

Thought, then, is incredibly powerful. We are literally creating a world with every thought we think. And every thought we think either makes it a real world or a false world.

 

Behold the great projection, but look on it with the decision that it must be healed, and not with fear. Nothing you made has any power over you unless you still would be apart from your Creator, and with a will opposed to His. (ACIM, T-22.II.10:1-2)

 

It is therefore impossible to look on anyone as our enemy, and to find any release from suffering.

 

Equally, it is a fact that one illusion cherished and held against the truth makes all truth meaningless.

 

The result is that our minds are split between what is real and what is not real. We can think with the illusions of the ego or the reality of the Holy Spirit, but never both. Our thoughts are either wholly real or wholly false. Only we can decide what to do but it has to be entirely or not at all.

 

This course will be believed entirely or not at all. For it is wholly true of wholly false, and cannot be but partially believed. And you will either escape from misery entirely or not at all. (ACIM, T-22.II.7:4-6

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276/ The Changing of the Form

28th January 2023

 

Lesson 276: The Word of God is given me to speak. (ACIM, W-276)

 

Jesus tells us that the ego’s whole continuance depends on the belief that we cannot learn anything. It is all or nothing. We either know what truth is or we don’t.

 

A Course in Miracles paints a picture of the ‘us’ in form - the body and the ego - and the ‘us’ that is formless. If we knew the latter, we would have no need for words.

 

The ego has strong views about everything, sometimes keeping them to itself and sometimes voicing them to others. However, one thing is certain. The ego will never question its own existence.

 

The lesson today is therefore about knowing we are not the ego, and accepting that we are the Self.

 

Everything the body’s eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the whole would give. (ACIM, T-22.III.4:3)

 

The body’s eyes see only form. They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. And they were made to look on error and not see past it. (ACIM, T-22.III.5:3-5)

 

To see with the body’s eyes is reality only to the ego. Everything needs judging, referencing and labelling. Our eyes will never see the truth of who we are because the mistake is seeing the mistake.

 

To see with a vision beyond our eyes is reality only to the Holy Spirit. It needs no judging, referencing or labelling because reality is clear and understood. We are seeing truth through the eyes of truth.

 

Form changes but reality does not. We have to see past the changing of the form.

 

Beyond the body that you interposed between you and your brother, and shining in the golden light that reaches it from the bright, endless circle that extends forever, is your holy relationship, beloved of God Himself. (ACIM, T-22.II.12:1)

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277/ Seeing the Self

29th January 2023

 

Lesson 277: Let me not bind Your Son with laws I made. (ACIM, W-277)

 

There are the laws we make and there are laws we don’t make. The ones we make are all to do with the body being more secure. The laws we don’t make are all to do with what the body is not.

 

The lesson today therefore points towards the laws of love. Follow these laws fully, and we come to appreciate the flow of justice arising from our Creator - a flow we could also label as Infinite Love.

 

To everyone we meet, then, we either offer a miracle or we offer an illusion.

 

To everyone we see, we either give the gift of love or we deny the gift that is ours to give.

 

To everyone we know, we either see a wall of flesh or we see the loving Self that has no walls.

 

A Course in Miracles is simply the opportunity to know exactly what we are. This knowledge is given to us with the proviso that we can stay exactly as we are if we want, and we don’t have to go anywhere or do anything if we don’t want to.

 

To all who share the Love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received. And so they learn that it is theirs forever. All barriers disappear before their coming, as every obstacle was finally surmounted that seemed to rise and block their way before. (ACIM, T-22.IV.6:1-3)

 

A Course in Miracles states that there is a veil that stands between each and every one of us. We can either draw it back or allow it to remain resolutely in place.

 

There comes a time where we all have to make a decision. It is like a branch in the road. We either go one way or we go the other. Dithering is pointless and doesn’t get us anywhere.

 

Every decision we make in life serves a purpose, but sometimes we have to make a big decision. Facing change can be scary. Deciding to see the Self in others is that change.

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278/ Certainty and Uncertainty

30th January 2023

 

Lesson 278: If I am bound, my Father is not free. (ACIM, W-278)

 

The lesson today tells us that we can never be bound. If we could, we would be lost to reality and this is impossible. Reality can’t be changed in any way.

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Reality is freedom. It is a clear state of mind. The body cannot know this freedom and so it is always just one or the other. We are either free or we are not free.

 

A Course in Miracles states that the path to freedom arises through forgiveness. It is forgiveness that gets to the heart of all the blocks that keep us smothered. However, because freedom can’t be compromised, we are essentially undoing the blocks that are not there.

 

Jesus is therefore pointing out the obvious. He highlights our fixation on the ego repeatedly because that is our reality. It seems we stare into the face of truth and can only see untruth staring back.

 

Reality opposes nothing. What merely is needs no defense, and offers none. Only illusions need defense because of weakness. And how can it be difficult to walk the way of truth when only weakness interferes? (ACIM, T-22.V.1:6-9)

 

We might feel weak but we are strong; we might feel powerless but we are powerful; we might feel limited but we are limitless. Everything is there for the taking but we fail to grasp it.

 

All we have, then, is certainty and uncertainty. There can be nothing in between.

 

Truth is simple. It is only illusions that make it complicated. A Course in Miracles is a signpost to the obvious. It is up to us if we want to turn the other way.

 

God rests with you in quiet, undefended and wholly undefending, for in this quiet state alone is strength and power. Here can no weakness enter, for here is no attack and therefore no illusions. Love rests in certainty. Only uncertainty can be defensive.  And all uncertainty is doubt about yourself. (ACIM, T-22.V.3:8-12)

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279/ Means and End

31st January 2023

 

Lesson 279: Creation’s freedom promises my own. (ACIM, W-279)

 

The lesson today uses the metaphor of a prison. It tells us we are imprisoned in dreams only - not easy to accept if we are sick or scared or low in mood. Despite this, we are told that we can have total freedom now because freedom is only a state of mind.

 

The suggestion is that the body is our prison cell and the ego is our jailor - an analogy that is easier to accept if we struggle with pain of any kind. Freeing ourselves from its grip, however, is not so easy.

 

A Course in Miracles is unequivocal. The body serves the mind; the mind does not serve the body. Whenever we feel pain of any kind, the cause is always in the mind. It has its origins nowhere else.

 

The ego is the body. The ego feigns happiness, but it actually needs us to be in pain to feel secure.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us it is the mind we need to look to, and it is within relationship that we find the means to be happy. Means become the end. Relationship either frees us or imprisons us.

 

This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in strength, and blazing with a light far brighter than the sun that lights the sky you see, is chosen of your Father as a means for His Own plan. Be thankful that it serves yours not at all. (ACIM, T-22.VI.4:1-2)

 

We battle, then, with the familiar and the unfamiliar - with what we know and what we don’t know.

 

Anything that is not light within us - and this is anything that makes us suffer - is witness to the fact that the ego has multiple ways of keeping us locked up and imprisoned.

 

A Course in Miracle is the simple reminder that there is one solution to any problem we might have.

 

Forgiveness is the solution - it is the way out of suffering. Forgiveness opens to door to happiness. It is the means that serves the end.

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280/ Saviour or Attacker

1st February 2023

 

Lesson 280: What limits can I lay upon God’s Son? (ACIM, W-280)

 

A Course in Miracles knows we feel limited. We can only surmise why we don’t feel limitless.

 

• Only the different can attack. It’s obvious we think we are different.

 

• What one person thinks, another will experience it directly. Clearly, we believe our minds are separate.

 

• We can choose between dark secrets and tiny gifts. A split mind can’t differentiate between the two.

 

The lesson for today therefore establishes a few facts.

 

• Everything that God created is limitless and free.

 

• All suffering is of our own making.

 

• What is God’s belongs to us. God plays no part in suffering.

 

From this, a question might arise. Do we see each other as saviour or attacker?

 

The ego attacks but the Holy Spirit saves. The Holy Spirit knows no difference and sees all minds as joined. We therefore either save ourselves or hurt ourselves, but we only do just the one.

 

If you were one with God and recognized this oneness, you would know His power is yours. But you will not remember this while you believe attack of any kind means anything. It is unjustified in any form, because it has no meaning. (ACIM, T-22.VI.12:1-3)