“Although you are different now than you were as a child, and different now than you were a few years ago, and different now than when you began your learning of this course, you are not other than who you have always been. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 2.15)”
Affirmation: “I am not other than who I have always been.”
Reflections:
A Course in Miracles indicates that our memories of childhood are so covered over with misconceptions that it is like we remember a different past. This ACIM concept is reiterated and elaborated upon in this passage from A Course of Love.
We are, in many ways, the same people that we have always been. If we have kept journals, we may recognize this more clearly. I once read entries from my teen years, and thought to myself, “You haven’t really changed very much.” Now Jesus agrees with this idea. But he makes a clear distinction: We are ready to assume the elevated Self of form, because our study and learning have prepared the way, a way that we could not have known in an early part of our lives.
Much of what Jesus says in A Course of Love is meant to reassure us that we do not have to hold negative views of ourselves, always seeking for a new pathway that will give us the inner satisfaction and will eliminate the inner emptiness that is a part of the human condition. In ACOL, especially in the concluding Forty Days and Forty Nights of the Dialogues, he indicates that we are ready for Christ-consciousness.
Eckhart Tolle, in an interview available on the CD, “Even the Sun Will Die,” says that our early experiences of Awakening may be brief, and that we may have experienced these brief glimpses even without being aware at the time of what was transpiring. His own experience of Awakening was significant and sudden, but other people experience a gradual opening to Awakening–nothing as dramatic as what Eckhart experienced. Eckhart also indicates that many of his correspondents are reporting evidences of a new life, that they are on the cusp of Awakening.
Certainly Jesus would feel that those of us who study A Course of Love are ready. We have only to accept this great blessing. We have only ourselves to blame if we do not ask to receive the great blessing of Christ-consciousness. If it is withheld from us, then perhaps we are not as ready as we think. But Jesus’s clear explanation in A Course of Love does say that we are ready for the elevated Self of form. It is held out to us for the taking, and what a blessing it is!
Prayer:
Dear Father/Mother,
I have had glimpses of Christ-consciousness, and for that I thank you. I hope to move gradually into an experience of Christ-consciousness continually. Help me to do this.
Help my brothers and sisters to evolve also. I know that this is Your will for all of us. Be with us throughout this day, and may we remain calm and easy in the face of any outer turmoil.
Amen.
ACIM Workbook Lesson for Day 215:
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Love is the way I walk in gratitude.
