Reflections 351 to 365

 

351/ All-Encompassing Love

13th April 2023

 

Lesson 351: My sinless brother is my guide to peace.

My sinful brother is my guide to pain.

And which I choose to see I will behold. (ACIM, W-351)

 

The lesson today confirms everything that A Course in Miracles teaches us. How we see our brother is how we see our self.

 

We see each other with judgement or without judgement. There is no other way that we can see.

 

Bodies separate and minds join. If we perceive ourselves as the body, then we feel apart. If we perceive ourselves as spirit, then we feel connected. One hurts and one heals.

 

Only love is there in minds that join. Spirit has one condition and that is perfect peace.

 

Only pain is there in minds that feel apart. Sickness and death are inevitable.

 

No mind is sick until another mind agrees that they are separate. And thus it is their joint decision to be sick. If you withhold agreement and accept the part you play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in letting it perceive itself as separate and apart from you. (ACIM, T-28.III.2:1-3)

 

God is not complicated. The Holy Spirit easily expresses the fullness of God’s infinite love.

 

God is all-encompassing. When minds do join, then all-encompassing love is what we know.

 

Cate Grieves explores how we can have this joining in the ninth part of The Healing of the Dream (ACIM, T-27.I). By using God’s love to see our brother, then peace and happiness are always ours. It is with this love that we heal our separation. It is with this love that we have a happy dream.

 

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352/ A Line in the Sand

14th April 2023

 

Lesson 352: Judgment and love are opposites. From one

Come all the sorrows of the world. But from

The other comes the peace of God Himself. (ACIM, W-352)

 

The lesson today tells us that everything is within us. We have the memory of God, the peace of God and the Voice for God.

 

A moment’s reflection would also tell us that we have a lot of noise. We have mindless chatter. We have an internal world that is dark and murky. With this, then, we might conclude the following.

 

• God cannot come to a mind that is cluttered. It needs to be cleared.

 

• God cannot break through sickness and shame. It needs to be forgiven.

 

• God cannot be heard by a mind that has noise. It needs to be silenced.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that it is silence that provides our connection to God. Without a peaceful mind, then the peace of God can never be known.

 

Forgiveness, then, brings us closer to God. Judgement keeps God at a distance. One heals the mind and the other harms the mind.

 

To know God fully, we need to draw a line in the sand. We have to decide to never give up.

 

No matter what the ego says, no matter how the ego makes us feel, no matter whether the ego thinks it is impossible, we must constantly go within. We need to look deeply at exactly what hurts.

 

The cause of pain is separation, not the body, which is only its effect. Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the empty space between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by. (ACIM, T-28.III.5:1-2)

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353/ Forgiving Dreams

15th April 2023

 

Lesson 353: My eyes, my tongue, my hands, my feet today

Have but one purpose; to be given Christ

To use to bless the world with miracles. (ACIM, W-353)

 

A Course in Miracles is concerned with Identity. It is about finding our true Self which is the Christ in us. We do this by giving, as stated in the lesson for today.

 

Jesus - the Voice of A Course in Miracles - tells us that we are dreaming a dream. This dream is simply an illusion within the mind. Jesus reminds us that it is the dream we fear and not the mind. This is why he asks us to undo the dream by looking into the mind.

 

We think we are the dream - the dream of a body - and all we are seems completely real. However, to know what we are, we have to go beyond the body. We look through the fear to find the truth.

 

What we are is endless; it is real and certain; it is complete and boundless love. What we think we are is finite; it is prone to change; it is insecure, obsessed and tragically unaware.

 

A Course in Miracles is the way to certainty. We are led from what is false to what is real. We are not asked to awaken completely. We are just asked to switch from the fearful dream to a happy dream.

 

There is a way of finding certainty right here and now. Refuse to be a part of fearful dreams whatever form they take, for you will lose identity in them. You find yourself by not accepting them as causing you, and giving you effects. You stand apart from them, but not apart from him who dreams them. (ACIM, T-28.IV.2:1-4)

 

We think we are the hero of the dream but we are just a tiny character playing a part in that dream.

 

We think the world is real but it is not. We dream a dream but we are simply asleep to our Identity. To forget what we are is just to prolong our suffering.

 

When we awaken, we go back to our Father. Until then, forgiving dreams help to make life fun.

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354/ Heal the Gap

16th April 2023

 

Lesson 354: We stand together Christ and I, in peace

And certainty of purpose. And in Him

Is His Creator, as He is in me. (ACIM, W-354)

 

The lesson today is about oneness. It is about the discovery of truth.

 

Our journey away from oneness and truth might be compared to a broken picture. What is whole and complete appears to have shattered into a trillion tiny pieces.

 

However, each shattered piece is the whole. Each shattered piece is that picture.

 

The mind is like that broken picture. It seems to have splintered into billions of parts.

 

And while each part has the appearance of being detached from the whole, each splintered part is actually the whole. Each splintered part is the truth.

 

Between each of those parts there appears to be a gap, except there is no gap.

 

Within each of those gaps there seems to be space, except there is no space.

 

All is simply love. Love and the mind are one, and love and the mind are whole.

 

A Course in Miracles gives us one bit of advice.

 

It is to heal the gap today.

 

The Holy Spirit is in both your minds, and He is One because there is no gap that separates His Oneness from Itself. The gap between your bodies matters not, for what is joined in Him is always one. (ACIM, T-28.IV.7:1-2)

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355/ Awareness of Heaven

17th April 2023

 

Lesson 355: There is no end to all the peace and joy,

And all the miracles that I will give,

When I accept God’s Word. Why not today? (ACIM, W-355)

 

God’s Word is Love. This is the lesson for today.

 

We have to take this as read. If we knew God’s Love totally, we would not be here.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that there is no compromise. We are either the Self that Is or we are the self that is not. We are either the whole truth or we are the complete illusion. There is no middle ground. For most of us, then, we are in a no man’s land from which we need to awake.

 

God’s Word is Love and so what is unloving cannot be God. God created only what is real and this can never die. God created only the Self, which is the same as the Son and the Christ. If God’s Word is Love, then Love is the truth of what we are.

 

The part of the mind where sickness lies is dark and full of guilt. It is through forgiveness that we remove the guilt and this heals the mind. What was dark before then becomes filled with light.

 

A Course in Miracles is the path away from guilt. It is the path that leads to light. ACIM tells us that sickness is pointless and makes life hell. We just have to remove the pain that makes us suffer.

 

What is a sense of sickness but a sense of limitation? Of a splitting off and separating from? A gap that is perceived between you and your brother, and what is now seen as health? And so the good is seen to be outside; the evil, in. And thus is sickness separating off the self from good, and keeping evil in. (ACIM, T-28.V.1:1-5)

 

 We need to be honest with ourselves to find the good. We need to look within to find the bad. God’s Love is contained within us, not outside. Love is the cause of the healing of the mind.

 

God’s Word is Love. Look inside and Love is there. Love is simply the awareness of Heaven.

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356/ We Can never Be Apart

18th April 2023

 

Lesson 356: Sickness is but another name for sin.

Healing is but another name for God.

The Miracle is thus a call to Him. (ACIM, W-356)

 

We are sinless. Within us all are all the qualities of God. The miracle is simply a reflection of God’s Love.

 

To be sick is to think that we are apart from God. To be healed is to realise that we are God’s Son.

 

The lesson today confirms that we are the Son. We have instant communication with all that Is. If we ask something of the Father, the Father’s only desire is to give it to His Son.

 

However, nothing happens if we ask for the wrong things. We have to be careful what we ask for.

 

It is clear that we believe we are the body. It is clear that we worry about things. Taking this into account, then, a lot of what we ask for will always be related to things that help the body feel safe.

 

A Course in Miracles changes our mindset. It is a journey from fear to love. It stops us being stuck in the body so that we can go with the flow of life. It demonstrates that sickness is all in the mind, caused by the ego, and fulfilling a wish to be apart. It shows us how to make the journey back to wholeness. The body then just becomes an image in the mind.

 

The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call your own and all the rest of what is really yours. You hate it, yet you think it is your self, and that, without it, would your self be lost. This is the secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart. (ACIM, T-28.VI.4:1-3)

 

We can be apart or we can be joined; we can be fearful or we can be certain; we can be a body or we can be the mind.

 

A Course in Miracles tells us that the Father promised His Son one thing. We can never be apart. 

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357/ A Little Gap of Nothingness

19th April 2023

 

Lesson 357: Truth answers every call we make to God,

Responding first with miracles, and then

Returning unto us to be itself. (ACIM, W-357)

 

 We look out and we see what lies within.

 

The lesson today tells us that forgiveness is truth’s reflection. If we can forgive what we think we are, then truth is what we see.

 

A Course in Miracles wants us to look at all our brothers and see wholeness, without exception. It says that either there is a gap between the seer and the brother, or there is none.

 

The gap means that we see everything with the ego. We are looking with a split mind. The ego loves to fill that gap with stories. These are judgments of that little mind.

 

The Holy Spirit shines its light on all those stories. It fills the gap with love and joy. The Holy Spirit’s only purpose is healing. We now look at God’s eternal Mind.

 

God asks for nothing, and His Son, like Him, need ask for nothing. For there is no lack in him. An empty space, a little gap, would be a lack. And it is only there that he could want for something he has not. A space where God is not, a gap between the Father and the Son is not the Will of Either, Who have promised to be one. (ACIM, T-28.VII.1:1-5)

 

God did not create the body and the body is just a thought. It has nothing to do with what we are.

 

Nothing that God created is fearful. Fear is of the ego, and the ego is an illusion in the mind.

 

God has one Son. The Son is perfect and has never left Heaven. The Son is actually what we are.

 

 Only a little gap of nothingness can keep God’s one Love - the Son - from lighting up the mind.

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358/ We End up Laughing

20th April 2023

 

Lesson 358: No call to God can be unheard nor left

Unanswered. And of this I can be sure.

His answer is the one I really want. (ACIM, W-358)

 

 The lesson today is one single message to the Holy Spirit. Help!

 

We are in trouble and this is crystal clear. Everyone in this world seems to put self-interest above anything else. We all get sick and eventually die. This is not a good recipe for happiness.

 

If we didn’t have at least some anxiety about our lives, then we wouldn’t be searching for answers.

 

A Course in Miracles offers us perfect peace and perfect happiness. It challenges us to face our fears and undo our guilt. It tells us that the Peace of God is our birthright.

 

We feel imprisoned but the walls of the prison are just a myth.

 

There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent. There is nothing to be feared. There is no way in which a gap could be conceived of in the Wholeness that is His. The compromise the least and littlest gap would represent in His eternal Love is quite impossible. (ACIM, T-29.I.1:1-4)

 

A Course in Miracles brings us certainty. It tells us that we are collectively the perfect Son of God. There is nothing else, except what the mind has made up. We have dreamt up a world of suffering.

 

Commit to the Workbook, then, and we get the rewards. Do it correctly and we can’t go wrong.

 

Cate Grieves says that we end up laughing in the final part of The Healing of the Dream (ACIM, T-27.I). We just have to trust in the process and do the work. The Holy Spirit does the rest. We think we are the hero in the dream but there is no dream. We are simply the perfect Son of God.

 

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359/ Untold Peace

21st April 2023

 

Lesson 359: God’s answer is some form of peace. All pain

Is healed; all misery replaced with joy.

All prison doors are opened. And all sin

Is understood as merely a mistake. (ACIM, W-359)

 

There is the shadow world and there is the real world. There is fear and there is love.

 

Today’s lesson is about the forgiveness of what Is. We are asked to forgive our Creator. This is where our greatest fear lies.

 

The Bible talks about the peace that passes all understanding. To describe how this feels has to be beyond the scope of words. The limited cannot describe the limitless.

 

A Course in Miracles merely states that to have total oneness with God is not the goal of the Course. Its goal is to have a mind that is totally at peace. It is to see the real world. It is to continue with what we are doing, but doing it having completed every part of our forgiveness practice.

 

Deep down, we don’t want to look at the awful terror that we are trying to ignore. However, the purpose of forgiveness is to expose exactly what it is that forms the foundation of all our fears.

 

The fear of God! The greatest obstacle that peace must flow across has not yet gone. The rest are past, but this one still remains to block your path, and make the way to light seem dark and fearful, perilous and bleak. (ACIM, T-29.I.3:1-3)

 

Forgiveness gets to the root of this very fear. We heal it through relationship. We see peace in every person that we meet. We come to see that it is really just the one mind that needs the healing.

 

Peace, then, is like a blocked water pipe. When the blockage is removed, it flows.

 

We have to forgive what never was. There is one Creator and one Son, and only love exists within the Mind of God. Untold peace is simply what Heaven is. It is actually what we are.

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360/ There Is no Plural

22nd April 2023

 

Lesson 360: Peace be to me, the holy Son of God.

Peace to my brother, who is one with me.

Let all the world be blessed with peace through us. (ACIM, W-360)

 

Silence and certainty bring us to peace. If peace is what we give then peace is what we get. The Son is like the Father. We are all a part of Love, sinless and holy.

 

This is the essence of the lesson for today.

 

We come to realise that there is just one of us - one Son. There is just one Creator - one Father. There is really nothing else to we need to know.

 

Words can only point to what just Is.

 

A Course in Miracles is complete non-duality. However, it needs to express itself in dualistic terms so that we can understand.

 

We therefore fear that we will always have to lose something, for we see opposites in everything.

 

It is not love that asks for sacrifice. But fear demands the sacrifice of love, for in love’s presence fear cannot abide. For hate to be maintained, love must be feared; and only sometimes present, sometimes gone. Thus is love seen as treacherous, because it seems to come and go uncertainly, and offer no stability to you. (ACIM, T-29.I.7:1-4)

 

We always seem to identify with the stream of thoughts within the mind, but really we are the witness to those thoughts.

 

This witness has no opposite. It is just what we are.

 

There is no plural. There is just one Son, one Father, and that is all there is.

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361/ The Final Five Lessons

23rd April 2023

 

Lesson 361: This holy instant would I give to You.

Be You in charge. For I would follow You,

Certain that Your direction gives me peace. (ACIM, W-361-365)

 

One Mind.

 

One Song.

 

One Christ.

 

One Truth.

 

No ego.

 

No self.

 

Nothing is wrong. We just think it is.

 

One solution.

 

Know the one Mind.

 

In God.

 

At peace.

 

No less.

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362/ The Final Four Lessons

24th April 2023

 

Lesson 362: This holy instant would I give to You.

Be You in charge. For I would follow You,

Certain that Your direction gives me peace. (ACIM, W-361-365)

 

Peace.

 

Love.

 

Joy.

 

Innocence.

 

Freedom.

 

Knowledge.

 

Invulnerability.

 

Holiness.

 

Tranquillity.

 

Wonder.

 

Stillness.

 

All are qualities that we possess.

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363/ The Final Three Lessons

25th April 2023

 

Lesson 363: This holy instant would I give to You.

Be You in charge. For I would follow You,

Certain that Your direction gives me peace. (ACIM, W-361-365)

 

Do not underestimate the power of the mind.

 

Do not underestimate the power of thought.

 

We are love.

 

 We are light.

 

What we give, we receive.

 

We

 

Are

 

The

 

Holy

 

Son

 

Of

 

God

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364/ The Penultimate Lesson

26th April 2023

 

Lesson 364: This holy instant would I give to You.

Be You in charge. For I would follow You,

Certain that Your direction gives me peace. (ACIM, W-361-365)

 

Be in the moment.

 

Seize the now.

 

Stay in the timeless.

 

Rest in this instant.

 

Don’t look to the future.

 

Forgive the past.

 

Listen to Spirit.

 

Sink beneath thought.

 

There is only this moment.

 

There is only what is.

 

The light keeps shining.

 

Love is all that exists.

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365/ The Final Lesson

27th April 2023

 

Lesson 365: This holy instant would I give to You.

Be You in charge. For I would follow You,

Certain that Your direction gives me peace. (ACIM, W-361-365)

 

Words are symbols.

 

Words are shapes on a page.

 

Words are thoughts put down on paper.

 

Words are sounds spoken through a mouth.

 

So read about peace.

 

Listen to joy.

 

Look beyond form.

 

Delve into truth.

 

Words can never give us a direct experience of God’s Love.

 

And only a direct experience is able to take us beyond words.

 

Thus we learn the power of A Course in Miracles.

 

Each word becomes the finger pointing at the moon.