Be Fully Ourselves to Avoid Pain/Suffering

Note:  After today’s post, I’m going to take a break from posting for a little while.  Thank you for your views.  Love, Celia

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“All pain comes from not being fully yourself.  Whenever you suffer, you suffer because somehow you are not being fully you.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:II

This is a novel idea, that not being ourselves can cause suffering/pain.  If this is true, we have some control over suffering and pain.  If we sense these things, we can simply ask in what way we are not being true to ourselves.  Not being fully ourselves is not being true to ourselves.

Perhaps we aren’t certain how to be fully ourselves.  This is a common problem, but a problem easily solved if only we remember to go within for our Answers.  Going within solves so much that has troubled us.  It is the way we reach God.  It is the way that we go home for a while, even while in the midst of this sometimes troubling world.

Pain is not the same as suffering.  In this world, we will sometimes have pain, but we can avoid the emotional context that leads to suffering, because suffering nearly always has an emotional component.  Jesus seems to be saying here that if we are fully ourselves, we won’t even have pain.  This is an ideal situation, and not all of us can reach to Jesus’ ideal.  But we can try.

Go within, in prayer, in contemplation—especially when something is troubling us.  If we nip the trouble in the bud by having as a goal being true to ourselves, then we will eclipse much that has been a problem in the past.

Remember that God sustains us.  When we turn to Him, we are much more likely to be successful in our desire to eliminate pain/suffering from what we experience, because it is not He Who brings bad things to us.  True, He allows it, but these mysteries of pain and suffering are not anything that we can fully understand with finite minds.  We need to practice acquiescence, as God does.  Then and only then, in our acceptance, will we have taken the first step toward getting rid of the things in our lives that we don’t want—principally, pain/suffering.

Love Is What We Are

“Love is not an idea.  Love is not an abstraction.  Love is you.  Love is what you are.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:II

We need to understand much more about love than we do.  We often think of it as simply a feeling or an emotion.  But it is a Force, the Force that is God.

When we give ourselves up to love, we know peace.  And we don’t know genuine and lasting peace any other way.

Here we learn that love is what we are.  This is actually saying that we partake of the essence of God.  He does not stand apart from His creation, but is in it, through and through.  So He overshadows us with the love that is the essence of Himself.

Ask to understand love better today.  Ask to see how love could be the essence of the universes, of us, of God Himself.  We are created of the essence of Him. 

We can thrive in no other way than to let love embrace us.

Love’s Embrace

“In the wisdom of love is where you will receive what you are waiting for, receive the certainty that you are seeking, the peace you are longing for, the embrace that your hearts need.  It is in love where all that is needed is given.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:II

We need that embrace!  A Course of Love has a wonderful passage in which Jesus talks to us, inviting us into his embrace.  And there he gives us certainty and peace.  Our hearts need the embrace.  We are bereft without it.

In love we find what we have been needing.  In love we both give and receive.  And our heart overflows with love that dwells deep within all of us, where God is.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in our heart.  Be patient, for the blessing will come.  Jesus has promised, and, if anything, he keeps his promises.

Love = True Function

“Your function is not to be anything, but to be what you are, which is love.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:I

We don’t have to fulfill a self-described image of what we want to be, a self-image.  Images are often ego-originating, and false to the core.  Instead, we simply need to focus on what we know of love, to fulfill a vision of someone who loves.

This cannot be hard, though our real Self has been covered over by egoic notions for a long time.  Yet, even in the midst of folly, all of us have known love, from someone or something.  We first receive love from God, and this first receipt from Him enables us to be able to give.  If we had not first received, we would simply be unable to heal the separation, something that God Himself longs to see.

Simplify life today.  Know that when all is said and done, we don’t want more honors, more promotions, more achievements. When life is ending for us, we will never say that we wish we had spent more time at the office.  We will say that we wish we had loved better.

Begin today to rectify gaps in our experience of love.  Pray to be brought closer to true reality, which at base is nothing if it is not love.

Being Who We Really Are

“The wind does what is natural to wind.  The purpose of existence is to be its true nature.  That is why, we have spent so much time reminding you of who you really are.

“Being aware of who you really are allows you to live as who you truly are.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:I

Often we try to live up to an ideal that is only in our mind.  “Being who we are” is something more substantial than just an appeal to ideals.  Knowing who we are takes some deep thought, some mystical insight, and a connection to God Himself Who will guide us to blossom as He intended.

We are individuals who best live in love, not fear, and especially not egoic fear.  We know that we are really One with all our brothers and sisters, with whom, if things are good, we live in holy relationship.  We unite with the depth of ourselves, the Christ-Self.  As the Christ-Self learns over time, we see a bloom come to all we encounter, for projection makes perception.  What we are inwardly, we see as external to ourselves.  We are projecting “reality” as we view it.

God wants us to enjoy ourselves in this lifetime.  Often we don’t, because we know pain, sorrow, even suffering.  But these things can disappear more often than not when we are keen to follow guidance as we know it.  God means us well.  He does not visit bad things upon us.  Usually our free will has brought the more unfortunate parts of our lives to us.

Ask today, deep in contemplation and prayer, for an understanding of the personality that has been given us.  We do have some say in the matter, of course.  Some of life is meant to be play.  When we develop the best that is in us, we know a joy that cannot be known by anybody who is simply playing a part.  We know a joy because our innermost essence is divine, and when we touch the divine, we sense God’s love in everything about us.

Love

“To the extent that you allow your consciousness to live fully in the truth of who you are, the love that you truly are, to that extent you fulfill your purpose.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:I

Who we truly are is just – love.  And when we live love, we are on purpose.

We often don’t realize how much a simple decision to love more deeply will effect change in our daily life.  And this change is all good.

This is not a sentimental love, a love that overlooks bad things in an effort to make ourselves feel better.  We may still express negative emotions, when we feel them warranted, but we will find them unwarranted far more often than we realize now.  Love is a sold feeling, something substantial to cling to in uncertain times.  It is never a tame thing, but the hardiest sense of coming into our own.  We do nobody any favors when we let other people walk all over us.  This is a false way of viewing love that has turned people off all too often.

Love can be and is strong in the face of provocation.  Love is gentle in the extreme, but the gentlest feeling is the most powerful.  It is not a two-edged sword that can be turned against us.

Ask to be shown what love really means, because we have not known.  We have not known what it means to say that God is Love.  We have been in the dark about this, as about many things connected with love.  Love is many-faceted, solid, substantial, a Force to Whom we can cling.

Let God speak to our hearts today about this matter of His Love and what it means to us.  Give God some time to get through by spending some time in quietness. 

God speaks in the silence with sudden insights that warm the heart.

Jesus and Mary

“Today the face which was first shown in the feminine figure of Mary and the masculine figure of Jesus of Nazareth is now shown to the world in you.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:I

Here Jesus is saying that we are Christ.   While we may not have reached Christ-consciousness, our Self, deep within, is a Christ-Self just waiting to come out.  Be patient, because the great blessing Christ-consciousness may take some time.  It can’t be rushed.

When we remove barriers to love, principally fear and judgment, we are doing what we can to hurry Christ-consciousness.  And our role models are Jesus and Mary.  These role models were important long before Jesus’ channeled works arrived on the scene.  Now we are seeing these role models as ourselves.  If we can believe our holiness (as the Workbook of A Course in Miracles says), then we are making substantial progress toward our goal of being Christed.

Awakening comes to many in our world, especially now.  For reasons we do not understand, it is easier to reach Christ-consciousness today than it used to be.  Most people had to move into holiness after death, but now, right here in our bodies on earth, many will move into this step.

Pray for this blessing, a decision made by God Himself, today.  He wants it for us, and He will bestow Christ-consciousness as soon as He sees that only good will result.

Fear Overcome by Trust

“Fear produces what it fears.  Therefore, when one begins to distrust life, when one begins to create within oneself mechanisms of distrust, then facts arise that confirm that it is justified to distrust.  In reality, trust in such cases is lodged in what is unreliable.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:III

This quotation builds on the law of attraction directly.  We draw to ourselves the distrust: “. . .facts arise that confirm that it is justified to distrust.”  It is so obvious that the law of attraction is real, for spiritual texts constantly confirm these ideas.  And I am more likely to give credence to the law of attraction if it is discussed in a spiritual text.

We are lodging trust in that which is “unreliable”—that is, not trustworthy.  We need to place our faith in something more substantial, and, for me, that represents placing faith in God Himself, the Force that Star Wars, the movie, showed so well.

We attract fear if we are not careful, if we let our minds dwell on that which is fearful.  Like attracts like, as we know.  If we have a simple but profound trust in life, our attitude gives us the best.

We don’t have to fear.  We can turn to God, to our faith, to sustain us in our focus on higher ideals.

Trust Fully in God’s Love

“Being alert in favor of love means trusting fully in love—God’s love.  This is no idle clarification about trusting in the active love of God. Trusting others to solve what you think of as your problems constantly leads to disillusionment.  Two similar beings cannot have in each other what the other lacks to solve their apparent problems.  If this were true, one would have to be incomplete and another not, which would annul the equality of the children of God.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:II

I don’t think this means that we can’t get advice from other people.  If neither one has a clue, though, this quotation does make sense.  We can’t trust other people to solve our problems, because the problems are our contract, and for help with problems, we need to get quiet and go within, to God.

We have all we need to solve problems, but this idea will remain elusive to us until we depend on our one Source, God Himself.  Often we muddle along with a problem for weeks, months, years, never asking for help.  This makes no sense whatsoever.  But there it is.  We need to go immediately to our Higher Power when something puzzles us.  Ask for clarification, ask to be shown the light.

And we will be.

Release

“Concerns are a thought program.  I ask you now to observe that mechanism, recognized it for what it is, and accept the fact that it comes from fear.  It is fear of uncertainty, of not knowing what the future will bring.  This fear of uncertainty generates a state of anguish that must first be accepted, and then released.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

Jesus would have us take a look at our fears, and then, after looking at them, release them.  He would not have us just try to dismiss thoughts of uncertainty.  This dismissing never works very well, and the subconscious is less likely to be healed if we eject bad thoughts without considering them.  Of course, we don’t want to make them “real” to us (something A Course in Miracles warns against), and so it seems to be me that the moments of considering need to remain brief, not an obsession.

Acceptance is written all over what Jesus counsels in his channeled works.  If we cower, we will not accept, and then we will remain in anguish.  Just know that there is an Answer, that Jesus is right here with us, when we ask, helping us to move beyond fear.

If we have lived well in the past, our future will be certain to go smoothly.  Some fear death as the greatest uncertainty, but death is like walking through an open door, nothing to fear at all.  If we have not lived well in the past, we can nevertheless entertain a course correction.  We always get a second chance with Jesus.

Pray for the release of concerns and worries, the release of our own hesitancy in the face of a future that will always remain uncertain.  We cannot see the future, and I think this a great blessing. 

But it also means that the future may be brighter than we anticipate, and when we focus on those bright things, they tend to happen.

Blessings

“The days go by and it may seem that the problem has not been resolved, but then you realize that what you saw as a problem was a blessing, a blessing that you did not understand at the beginning.  It may have bothered you just as it bothers a child when a loving mother gives medicine that may taste bitter but is good for health.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

Our problems are not always to be lamented.  They may be blessings.  If we remember that the problem and solution are always found together (a tenet of A Course in Miracles), we will ask that the solution be shown to us, and we will be encouraged to ask, time and again, in the future.  When problems come up, we need to realize that, blessing or not, God has allowed it, though He did not cause it.  This allowing is one of the hardest things we have to accept.  But it is the way out of every quandary.

God means us well, but our free will makes for difficulties in our world.  And free will is one of our greatest blessings!  But we don’t know how to use it now, and so we, and others, suffer.  God would not be doing us a favor if he revoked free will when things get tough.  And this is something He understands completely.  He will never revoke free will.

Like medicine that is bitter, our blessings are not always recognized.  Ask to see the better part of any lesson that seems difficult in our world.  Ask to be shown the blessing.

And it will be so.

Inner Peace

“Once the thought pattern of concern arises, you make that concern real, which then encompasses the entire space of your mind and heart, and thereby you lose peace.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

When we dwell on a feeling, we make it real to us.  If we dwell on antagonism to our brother or sister, we make it real, and thus harder to overlook.  This is an idea from A Course in Miracles.  Likewise, with concerns or worries.  When we focus upon them, they grow in our mind and even our heart.  The concern overturns more positive thoughts, and then we really are in trouble.

When the bad feeling mushrooms, it encompasses, as this quotation says, the “entire space of. . .mind and heart.”  This takes away our peace, and inner peace is one of the greatest attributes we might aspire to have.  Inner peace goes hand-in-hand with a loving heart.  Inner peace gives us a world that is all-encompassing in its goodness.

We see what we want to see, because we invent our world (as ACIM says).  If we want trouble, we will see it, though we may not be aware that we “want” it.  Focus is everything, for the law of attraction is in operation.  What we focus upon becomes true for us, even if it is not objectively “true.”

Let the mind and heart swell with inner peace today. 

Do not dwell on worries or concerns, making them an obsession.  If we give up worries/concerns, we will walk throughout this world with a serenity that has eluded us until now.

Open the Way to Peace

“Observe how the thought pattern of worry blocks access to peace, and therefore to your true self.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

Our “true self” does not worry.  This is the Christ-Self described so well in A Course of Love.  If we are prone to worry, let’s decide today to give up negative obsessions.  Our lives will be so much better.  We do have the power to effect this.

All of us long for peace in this world, even when we are not aware of what we are longing for.  A Course in Miracles says that our future is to be “perfectly calm and quiet” all the time.  This may seem a bit extreme, but it is a good metaphor for the meek who will inherit the earth.  Meekness is not passivity, though, something we would all be wise to come to understand.

If we want peace, we are learning that we must drop worry from our habitual frame of mind.  Let the heart speak to us, for the heart knows how to love, and when we love rightly, we depend on our faith in God to evict worry from our mind.  Doing this can be as easy as dismissing worry thoughts, one right after the other, when they occur to us.  Substitute thoughts of love, loving thoughts, and the worry will have no place to occupy.  It is always best to substitute another thought, lest our attempt to dismiss thoughts is akin to ignoring an elephant in the room.  Not possible.

We want access to our true self.  It behooves us to take steps in that direction, especially when we are tempted to turn aside from our true self.  Worry is a form of fear, and we know that love cancels fear.

Let’s let love do its work today.

Answers to Prayers

“When you feel worried, sit down, relax, take a deep breath, connect with the desire, and wait for the answer.  The answer to desire will be given in due time and in perfect form.  Someone will knock on the door and bring you the solution, or a situation will be unlocked, or a successful idea will come, or simply the problem will be otherwise resolved.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

This good outcome is what happens when we pray with anticipation and a quiet mind.  I have found that some things that bother me have never found their way into my prayers.  And that is why the Answer may be a long time in coming.

If we articulate a need, the solution is found with the problem.  This tenet is part of A Course in Miracles.  I have found it to be very true.  Notice that there is no time delay.  Time delay is not always needed, particularly if we ourselves hold all the keys to the Answer.  Sometimes we just have to get ourselves and our worries toned down, and all will be well.

I notice that Jesus says here that we are to sit down, relax, take a deep breath.  Is this not common sense?  But how many of us do this, consistently?  We might get answers to our prayers more readily if we prepared ourselves as he describes.

If the Answer seems long in coming, know that there is a reason that we cannot fathom.  God Himself does not like delay; He works fast, once we know what we are really asking.

Focus on the questions for which we need Answers.  And give a prayer of thanks when the Answers come. 

Eliminating Worry

“I ask you to observe the pattern of concern, the recurring pattern of worry.  Always it takes concrete form:  maybe money, a business, health, the safety of the children.  Everyone has an area in which they feel insecure.  Maybe there are several areas, but they are always few and very specific.  We now work with these areas to experience those patterns of thought and emotional responses, and to transmute them.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

We get very practical help from Jesus here.  All of us have worries, and here he recognizes that these are very specific, and few, concerns.  We can lift our mind and heart from these negativisms, and Jesus is willing and able to help us do so.  Let’s accept his help. 

Of course, sometimes specific worries escalate into what is called “free-floating anxiety.”  Even if we suffer from this, we can spend some time in contemplation as we search out the specificity of what we are anxious about.  Identify the concerns, and take them one by one to a Higher Power.

We are not meant to dwell in worry.  At base, we are handicapped in trust.  If we open our mind and heart to God Himself, He will teach us how to trust Him in all things.

Then the concerns will fall away, often immediately.

Trust

“[T]oday I speak of trust.  Observe how the thought patterns of worries and concerns of all kinds seem to assault you again and again.  These concerns come, in fact, from beliefs contrary to trust.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

We would not worry so much if we trusted more.  If we trusted in God.  We do know that most of what we worry about never, ever, comes to pass.  How much better we could live if we dropped worry and replaced it with trust!

We can’t just determine to drop worry and concerns.  We need to edge these negative thoughts out of the mind with something more powerful.  The perfect alternative to worry/concerns is trust that a good God doesn’t mean us harm and, instead, is showering love on us just all the time.  He is, you know.  The bad things in life don’t come from God, but from our own misguided notions and ideas.  We use our free will to make for chaos, and chaos finds us.

Drop chaos when we drop worries and concerns.  Let trust in God, the first prerequisite for a teacher of God (according to A Course in Miracles), take their place.  Then, even if bad things happen, we won’t feel them nearly so much. 

We will have a faith in things ethereal and permanent that overshadow, and sometimes negate, the transient things of this world.

Living in Love

“[L]iving with fear was the reality of the contraction in which you lived.  Now we begin to live consciously without fear, joyfully recognizing that we are the resurrection and will live in love.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:III

The only two emotions, fear and love, are polar opposites to one another.  The degree to which we open to love is the degree to which the contraction of fear leaves us.  If we are feeling fear, ever, maybe we ought simply to stop, just stop, and ask ourselves in what way we are not being loving. 

This will make all the difference.  Love cancels out fear, always and forever.  It is true, however, that fear and anxieties may have such a toehold in us that we can’t, right away, focus on love.  First we need to relax.  Let the fear sweep over us, but do nothing about it.  It will come to a conclusion as we relax.  Open then to love and loving feelings.  Think of something or someone whom we truly love.  This shift in feeling will open the way to a tremendous surge, and in this surge, a surge of love, and Love (meaning God), we will be released enough to drop the fear from our mind and heart.

Experiment today, if you are in fear.  Let relaxation quell the emotion of anxiety, and then move serenely into the feeling of love.

Our day will brighten.  Our mind, through Christ, is very powerful: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”  Let the heart rule the mind in this instance of turning to love.

The heart already knows how to do this.

Silence of Our Heart

“[S]tay for a few moments in the silence of your heart as you experience the peace of your soul as you hear these words:  You are safe and sound.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:III

This is a beautiful message attributed to Jesus.  He wraps us up in His love, cocoons us.   And we are open to knowing that we are safe and sound when we trust him to mean what he says.

I do trust Jesus.  And I trust that I am safe and sound.  The peace that envelops me is palpable.  And so it is for all of us.

Peace in our soul!  Yes!  We fear when we let the ego rule us, for the ego is steeped in fear.  Turn aside from the egotistical, and watch our experience of life improve.  We make enemies when we are in competition with each other rather than attempt to cooperate in our various tasks.  WE don’t appreciate seeing egotism in others, and they are the same as we.

How can we experience being safe and sound in a world that seems fraught with perils?  Is this “pie in the sky” thinking?  I think not.  We attract what we focus upon, and when we focus on Jesus’ reassurances, we are attracting safety.  He is right here with us, though we cannot understand how that might be.  His ability to focus his consciousness just anywhere is the secret of multiple presence.

And Jesus has companions who stay with us just all the time.  Do not we believe in guardian angels?  The angels are deeply involved, Sebastian has experienced, in these messages in Choose Only Love.

Trust is the first characteristic of a teacher of God, according to A Course in Miracles, the Manual for Teachers.  We will live so much better when we open our souls to trust in a Power that is in the world, but not of the world.

Focus on the words, “safe and sound,” as an affirmation today.  See if our day goes better. 

See if we aren’t led to trust Jesus more and more.

Retain Only What Is Love

“My beloveds, I cannot fail to mention that you must take charge of everything that you experience in yourself that is not love.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:III

WE have some power in our Awakening!  This message from Jesus asserts it.  WE must take charge of our thinking, being quick to dismiss those thoughts that are not loving.  If we do this consistently, we might believe that our Awakening will come sooner rather than later.  We will have made a difference.

We can’t “prepare” ourselves, though, as the Holy Spirit (A Course in Miracles) or the Christ-Self (A Course of Love) can.  The part that we do out of the whole is actually very little.  A Course in Miracles says that the part of the Holy Spirit is disproportionate to ours.  That means that we need His constant help.

We experience what is happening in our mind.  And we know that we have to listen to our heart, let our heart take the lead.

A Course of Love says that the barriers to Awakening, the impediments to the awareness of love, are fear and judgment.  Fear is seen as the opposite of love, with all feelings either being fear or love.  Judgment is described separately, but I see it as a subset of fear.  After all, we don’t love others if we are afraid of them or of what they might do to us.

What we experience that is not love should be a red flag, always and forever.  Then take steps to remove that other feeling from our awareness.  It can be done.  It just consists of dismissing the thought that brought on the feeling, and then substituting positive love as the anecdote.

Try it today, for many of us will experience feelings that are not love in the course of our walk.  Substitute love, for it is the strongest, most all-encompassing, feeling of all.  And God, and we, are made of it.

God Lives through Us

“To believe in a God incapable of experiencing that which comprises the vast range of human experience is to misunderstand.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:I

I want to believe that this is accurate channeling, because it supports an idea that I have long written about in this blog:  God is living through us.  If we are a part of Him, which Jesus’ channeled writings say, then it seems to me very evident that He knows.  Yes, he knows when we are going through a bad patch.  He knows when we need a helping hand.  He knows when we are getting downhearted and could use His wider view.

It is better not to misunderstand, though with our finite minds we frequently do.  A Course in Miracles has words that seem to indicate that only the Holy Spirit knows about us, because we are caught in illusion, and God does not know illusion.  But there is reality deep within us, and this reality, I believe, is “God-stuff.”  So the fact that we spin illusions does not mean that He lacks the will or the power to know what we are experiencing.  Here Choose Only Love seems to second this interpretation.  God knows, regardless of how deep into illusion we have fallen.

If we suffer, we have a helping Hand.  If we are in pain, He reaches back to us.  And His experiencing of what we are going through does lighten the burden.  I believe God also knows why these bad things happen to us.  We don’t know this; at best we have guesses only.  The mystery of suffering will remain a mystery as long as love is incomplete in us.  Love heals always, and if we love enough, A Course of Love indicates that healing is a fait accompli.

When times get rough, remember that God is experiencing right along with us.  His infinite mercy will ease the pain, give us back a good life.  We may never know why the rough patch is necessary, but A Course in Miracles says that we don’t have to learn through pain, that learning through rewards is more lasting.

Ask to learn, or to discover, the best way today.   Through rewards, not pain.

This can and will happen for all of us, when we stay attuned to our Creator.

Jesus Is Love

“Realize that I am love.  Remembering this is enough to bring true peace to your heart and mind.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:I

As I drive through the streets of my town in the midst of a pandemic, economic uncertainty, and unrest in cities, I see signs out front of many houses that say, “My hope is in Jesus.”  Certainly the people who posted those signs have found hope in remembering that Jesus is love.  Here Jesus is quoted as saying that remembering him as love will bring true peace to heart and mind.

Take a moment to think as Jesus has asked.  This statement, “Realize that I am love,” brings comfort to my mind and heart.  It will do the same for yours.

Jesus speaks often in Choose Only Love as our personal savior. If this seems hard for some to accept, still there it is. Open the mind and heart a little. Consider that maybe traditional Christianity has it right. We need someone whose hand we can hold as we walk along in this difficult world. Nobody is so strong as not to need some help.

Jesus will empower us by his help. Open the mind and heart, and trust him.

He asks nothing more.

Veil Will Be Lifted. . .to Forgiveness

“Keep in mind during this journey that the world is a great illusion; and that the day will come when the veil will be lifted and in the forgiven world you will see the true creation of God. . . .”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 1:III

We are seeing an illusion when we live in this world.  Our best insight tells us this as well.  We cannot fully understand how all that we see is illusion, but there it is, in this quotation from the channeled work, Choose Only Love.

But we will live to see Heaven, the forgiven world.  This is true creation, and it is just a change of mind.  While the world, objectively, may still not be real, we will experience it as real in a way that is veiled to us now. This is what the “real world” truly is.

We project from our minds what we see.  Projection makes perception, as A Course in Miracles says.  Our vision, a more exalted concept, will show us a better world.  The Workbook of A Course in Miracles has us declare, early on, “I am determined to see.”  It does take our determination to see Heaven.  It does take our choice for a better world.

What we focus upon becomes our experience.  Never forget that we are beholden to God for our take on this world.  He always soothes away troubles, soothes away difficulties.

He does not leave us alone to fend for ourselves.

Mission for God

“Go into the world announcing the good news.  You have a means to do it.  Enjoy the joy of sharing.  Be messengers of peace.  Take love to the world.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

What better way could we spend a life than to follow the directions given in this quotation?  What is the good news?  Simply that we are beloved of God, the beloved of God.  He stands with us in every earthly dilemma, every quandary, every mystery.  He may not take away every mystery, but if we bear with him patiently, the dilemmas and quandaries lift.

How might we announce the good news?  We won’t seek to recruit others to our way of life, unless they express obvious interest in knowing how we live.  We will turn off others if they are not ready for a change, even a change for the better.  So announcing the good news, when and where, needs deep prayer.  We need to discern when and where to offer the message.  Our own way may not, ultimately, answer the needs of our brothers and sisters if they are in a different place from ourselves, mentally and emotionally.

So depend on guidance in this delicate matter of influencing others.  But when the time is right, and the person before us is right, we can enjoy the joy of sharing.  And they too will be enlivened.

Offering peace and love to the world is a less delicate matter than sharing the good news of what we have found in God.  Peace and love are always welcome.

Love Is the Answer to Our Prayers

“Thus you go from the top of the mountain to the world with a clear goal: to bring love.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

This quotation is strongly reminiscent of the journey to the top of the mountain that takes up the last 40 (actually 41) chapters of A Course of Love.  We take that journey with Jesus, and with our brothers and sisters.  And we return to the world with a burning message of Awakening in love.

I fear that discussing love so often in this blog will make others feel that the advice is trite.  The idea that love is trite is simply because religious leaders have harped on this idea for millennia.  It is the principal advice we find from Jesus as well:  Love God, and love our neighbor. 

We need to take a good, hard look at love, and realize, perhaps, that we have never fully considered its meaning before.  The ego had veiled our eyes.

The point is made in other channelings by Jesus that if love were some new substance in the universe just discovered by scientists, we would take a further look at it—saying that we had just been ignorant of it previously, but we are open to it now.  Well, as often as the word “love” has been evoked, we are missing the mark if we don’t take it seriously in our life.  But not serious in an egoic sense, but in a lighthearted, even playful, way.

Love will take us to lighthearted happiness.  And it is this that God would have us experience in this world.  Sure, there are serious problems in our world, but we do no one any favors by walking around with a long face.  We help our brothers and sisters most keenly when we love them in the joyful sense that Jesus means.  Then and only then do we make a difference.

Take a good, strong look at the love that we might have missed.  Know that this is indeed the Answer to our prayers.

Holy Path

“I invite you to walk a holy path, a simple way, just as love is.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

We are the ones who complicate our lives.  The way of Jesus, the way of love, is just simple.  The holy path that we walk is simple.  We introduce the complexity.  And if we introduce it, we can stop it.

Jesus has our best interests in mind.  He sees the turmoil of our world, the awful catastrophes we get involved in, and I often think it hurts his heart.  He tries hard to get us to reconsider our choices, to change our lives, to honor the love with which we were born.  Our innate leanings are all toward love.  We obscure this truth because it would hurt us so much to truly realize how and where we have gone astray.

Walk a holy path today.  Ask for help, for none of us can see the footpath if we don’t ask for vision.  Keep life a little simpler today.

And watch miracles unfold.

Jesus: “Invite Me to Be Part of Everything in Your Life”

“I invite you to tell me, ‘Jesus, I love you,’ ‘Jesus, I need you,’ ‘Jesus, this I must do,’ ‘Jesus that seems to be what I have done.’ ‘Jesus, I need this or that,’ or simply, ‘Jesus, help me.’

“Invite me to be part of everything in your life. . . .”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

Jesus spells out what he wants of us, want he offers us.  He could not be more plain.  He is inviting a constant communion in our daily life, if we want it.  He is being our personal savior.

Jesus does not come to us uninvited.  He will not force himself upon us.  But if we are open to it, we can have a close, affectionate, and love relationship to him, just by using our imagination.

This is not the same as fostering dependence.  Jayem, who channeled The Way of Mastery, made it very clear to me that Jesus does not foster dependence.  He wants us to depend on God, too.  And if we need a dependent relationship, then our God is the place for it.

Jesus is different.  We often work best if we see him simply as a good friend who is willing to help us out.  But not just when things go badly, though that is a possibility also.  He turns aside nobody.  He welcomes comradeship when things are going well, too.

We can understand so much more about life if we talk to a trusted companion such as Jesus.  Use our imagination to realize the depth of this relationship.

Let nobody slight the efficacy of a trusted companionship such as Jesus is here offering.

Personal Relationship with Jesus

“Just as you express love to your friends, children, or spouse, that is how I ask you to love me too.  I invite you to give me a kiss every morning, to greet me when you wake up, to tell me good morning, or to say good night before going to sleep.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

Jesus is inviting us into a very personal relationship with him.  Here he is emphasizing his human, rather than divine, characteristics. 

Perhaps we don’t know how to love Jesus.  We think this sounds too old-fashioned for us in the New Age.  A “personal relationship” with Jesus may have turned some of us off.

But give it a try.  We know that he is available to us as a friend, and here he invites something even closer, a family member.  There is great comfort in this, great comfort indeed.

We walk a cold and cruel world, at least part of the time.  Until we know that we are right with God, we won’t be satisfied for long with anything we find in our daily walk.  Jesus is here pointing out a very practical way to end dissatisfaction.  Just make friends with him, he says.  Know that when we express love for him as we would to any close companion, we are doing something that feels right.

We are having a personal relationship with Jesus.  This is something he is now asking of us.

Trust

“Remember, my children:  The love that springs from my most Sacred Heart can make your being a new being, and it will do so as you trust in me and give me your love.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

Now, unlike our quotation from yesterday, Jesus is asking for our love to be returned to him.  First he loves us, to show us what it is like, and then he asks for reciprocation.  There is nothing unusual in this.  Giving and receiving are the same, for we are one Self, one Christ, for all is One.

We need to trust in Jesus.  Trust is the most important attribute of the teacher of God, as we discover in A Course in Miracles.  We don’t understand trust, though, and it is this lack of understanding that hinders us all the time.  Ask for an understanding of trust.  It is our due, this understanding.  We can’t live well in this world without some understanding, because without it, it is as if we try to find our way through a maze.

Know that Jesus means us well.  He can spring a new being on the ashes of the death of the old, but only as long as we trust in him.  If we fear him, or think he is dissembling with us, we won’t make it Home.  Know that help is available, that help is here.  And then accept that help, loving the giver, who is Jesus himself.

We would like to be new beings in this world.  When we wake up to the world each morning with this intent, we are well on our way.

Talk to Jesus as though he were near.  Ask him the “how” of it.  He holds our hand as we walk along, as A Course in Miracles tells us.  He has the wherewithal to be with anybody at any time, though we don’t understand how this is possible.  Ask for the understanding, of this and of trust.

We will not be disappointed.

Transformed

“Let yourself be transformed more every day by my love and you will see that your path will be as serene and harmonious as a summer breeze.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

This is a statement attributed to Jesus, in which he affirms the life-changing result of letting ourselves be transformed by the love that he feels for us.   Not the love that we feel for him, but the love that he feels for us.  We therefore have very little to do with our transformation.  We simply have to hold ourselves ready to receive, to receive love from him.

Very little is actually asked of us in salvation/transformation.  That little is the fact of being open to the change, the transformation.  The Holy Spirit (A Course in Miracles) or the Christ-Self (A Course of Love) will effect the change, but only when we are responsive.  We must be ready, but we don’t have to ready ourselves.  A Higher Power will ready us. And we only have to be willing to receive from Jesus and his holy companions.

The outcome of our receptive spirit is a path as “serene and harmonious as a summer breeze.”  Would we not want this?  What are we waiting for?

Clear our mind, open our heart, and be prepared for a transformation.  It is just that simple, and just that profound.

Let’s decide today to allow this alteration in ourselves to come about.  It takes our decision, nothing more.  When we decide for truth, truth finds us.

And we are never the same again.

Christ

“Beloved, accept now that you are Christ.  Begin to walk on Earth as gods, loving everything, always in love.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

When we walk the world loving everything, always in love, then indeed we are Christ.  And there is something further: “Begin to walk on Earth as gods.”

This is heady stuff.  But we will be misinterpreting if we let these words be an appeal to our ego.  These words are not meant in such a fashion.  Our little personalities often misconstrue. 

When we are living in love, everything looks different—and this includes us.  We truly are being a Christ when we walk in love upon the face of this earth.

To do so will make such a difference.  We won’t be so much changed as just living more fully.  Our minds will have slowed down, and cleared, and we will be happier.  Yet Christ-consciousness is not so much a matter of a changed mind as it is of a changed outlook, though Jesus says elsewhere (in The Way of Mastery) that if our scientists knew what to look for in the brain, they would have found it.

Do we have to have walked the whole pathway back to God in order to be considered a Christ?  No, because being a Christ is our inheritance, what we are meant to step into.  We don’t have to be perfect in order to reach this place.  It is our joint certainty that all is well.  It is our renewed hope for a better life.

And the only way that we can have a better life is to turn ever more completely to expressions of love in everyday life.

Most Holy Beating of Our Humble Heart

“If you knew my Mother’s love for you, how She talks to me of your loving disposition, of the most holy beating of your humble heart, you would cry of happiness.  When you finish your journey on Earth, which is always temporary, we will meet in a new reality.”  Choose Only Love  bk.2, 21:II

This is Jesus, speaking of Mary’s reaction to us.  She certainly knows that sometimes we have a hard time on earth, and she is certainly forgiving.  We ourselves may not recognize our loving disposition, but it is true that the most important thing of all to us is the degree and amount of love we receive—and give.  That love is all that matters on one’s death bed.  This idea has been often mentioned in inspirational literature.

We may not recognize the love that is ours because we are actually rather humble about ourselves.  The fact that we feel sorry for our mistakes and our foibles is ample evidence that our hearts are in the right place.

Basically, I think Jesus is telling us that we don’t have to be so hard on ourselves.  We may not believe this when we first consider it.  We think that we are the ones being realistic, but actually we are mired in negativity.

If we forgive, we love.  And those two aspects of living on earth are the most important aspects.  Love and forgive, God and other people, neighbors.  And ourselves.  If we leave ourselves out of the equation, we aren’t able fully to love and forgive anyone else—including God and neighbors.

We will meet in a new reality when we are finished with this lifetime.  This gives us hope that we are finally on the right path.

Jesus: “You Are a Joy to Me”

“Let nothing disturb your heart.  Let nothing have you believe that anything within you is wrong.  You are a joy to me.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:I

We have so much trouble accepting ourselves.  Accepting ourselves just as we are.  Always trying to improve, we get ourselves all tangled up for the trying.

But we are OK as we are.  We must let nothing disturb our heart.  If Jesus tells us, here, that we are a joy to him, then why can we not accept ourselves, just as we are?

Our ego is to blame.  And even if we have abandoned our ego, we have patterns of the ego that linger and disturb our peace.  The ego was always telling us we weren’t good enough, that if we only tried harder, we would find ourselves in a better position, sure of ourselves, sure of our value as human beings.

This idea from the ego is a mirage.  Just as an individual lost in a desert, seeing water ahead, aims to reach that water and then finds nothing there.  We have always held out to ourselves that we could be better than we are.  Of course, in some sense, this idea is true, but it is not the bottom line.  God accepts and loves us just as we are.  He wants us to be sane, though, and the insanity is what has made us dissatisfied with ourselves.  When we allow the insanity to fall away, we will know that God’s love is for the genuine Self who we are.  And we will be much more accepting of the truth that we are alright just as we are.

Keep in mind that Jesus says we are a joy to him.  He has the most sanity of anyone, and so I am inclined to believe that he sees something that we do not.

Ask to be accepting of our foibles as remnants of insanity that just need to fall away.  Accept our Self, know that all is well, and we are loved—just as we are.  We need to take this truth unto ourselves, and, yes, love ourselves, too.  We can’t love others well until we love ourselves, too. 

We need to realize that our lives will smooth out when we engulf ourselves with the Love that only God can give.  And He is giving this Love constantly.

Knowledge

“Everything you should know, you will know at the right time, and what is not necessary to know you will never know.”  COL bk.2, 20:IV

A very reassuring idea, especially for those of us who have long taken to ourselves, “Trust in the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding.”  We have prized knowledge, especially book knowledge.  But there comes a time for this type of learning to end, as A Course of Love makes plain.  As time passes, we discover from observation of our world, and then this world in-forms us.

It is good to know that knowledge will come at the “right time.”  And also, as a warning, good to know that there are some things we never need to know.  God keeps some things for His providence alone.

Roethke had the right idea, about “locked rooms,” those things that we cannot know at the time we want to know.  His poetry speaks to my heart.  We don’t need to reach ahead to the future nearly so often as we do.  We wouldn’t be able to live our truth in a future that arrives before we are ready for it.

I find this quotation very close to my heart.  We are finite creations of God, and we know what we need to know, when we need to know, and we let the rest go.

Do the Things that Are of Christ

“Remember that you often seek to know, not out of love for wisdom, but simply to feel more powerful than your brothers and sisters, or not to feel inferior.  None of that is of Christ.”  COL bk.2, 20:IV

This quotation is a good description of our competitive culture.  We want to achieve more, not out of a desire to learn, but in order not to let others outdo us.

This attitude does not win us any friends.  Competitive spirits are a turnoff in what should be a cooperative work environment.  Cooperation always comes out ahead of competition.

If we want to know for the sake of wisdom, greater wisdom, we are OK.  If we want to know because we are seeking to be better than our peers, we are sunk in the competitive spirit.  It is not true that the only thing that has made us a great culture, world-wide, is competition.

Contemplate what a difference a loving and cooperative attitude would make.  It is not a copout to give up the bent to be better than another.

It is good sense.

Happiness of Heaven

“Let the wisdom of Heaven be your faithful companion.”  COL bk.2, 20:III

Everyone who reads this quotation will read it differently.  I focus on the happiness of Heaven this morning.  I will use this quotation as my mantra today. 

If we don’t focus on the goodness, the joy, the peace, of Heaven, then we so easily get ourselves tangled up as we live in a tangled world.  But, as A Course in Miracles tells us, projection makes perception, and we can therefore choose what we focus upon, what we will see.   If we let Heaven speak to us, we will be blessed indeed.  It is “wisdom” that Heaven gives, and so this is no mindless faith, borne of ignorance.  We will know things in a way that we have not before.  When we choose the wisdom of Heaven as our daily companion, we won’t lapse into recriminations, ruing our lot in life.  We will be grateful for what we have, and by living in that gratitude, we open the doors to Heaven’s storehouse, and more blessings rain down upon us.

The wisdom of Heaven will stay with us, when we invite it: “faithful” companion.  May we revel in the thought that God walks with us through thick and thin, always here, always living through us.

We don’t need to fear that He will ever let us down.  If we focus on His blessings, then we are doing our part to invite more.

Let’s let the wisdom of Heaven be our faithful companion today and every day.

Let Love Encompass Us

“I invite you, from the Heaven of your holy heart, to let yourself be loved.”  COL bk.2, 20:III

This quotation, attributed to Mary, suggests to me that all too often we aren’t aware of the love for ourselves that surrounds and envelops us.  If we can let ourselves be loved, we will know that we are worthy of love, and this is something that we don’t often tell ourselves.  In egoic thinking, we think we are just miserable people.  At least some of the time.

We sometimes do a kind of dance with our nearest and dearest.  If the other person becomes too close to us, for some reason this scares us, and we instigate a fight to make for distance between the other and ourselves.  This makes no sense at all.  It just says that we are afraid of closeness, of letting someone else, even someone we love, come too close.  We are afraid of intimacy.

Let these inferior thoughts go today.  We don’t need to “protect” ourselves from love, although that is what we are doing when we make for barriers to intimacy.  Our nearest and dearest deserves something better from us.

So:  Don’t fear anything.  Just let ourselves go today, and invite love into our holy sanctuary, the “Heaven of holy heart.” 

We will be blessed beyond compare.

Love

“Your current world plays havoc with your peace of mind.  If you want to bring Heaven to Earth, information must be always subject to love.”  COL bk.2, 20:III

What we know of the world through our news sources is here just called “information.”  We need to ask what the loving thing is to do—rather than get ourselves upset in listening and watching the latest newscast.  We can change our immediate environment, and, through prayer, we can even influence the bigger picture of our world.  One person can make a difference, if that person is attuned to the Divine.

We often don’t believe this, believe that we can make any difference.  We think that a single, solitary person is very limited.  But we have the power of God working in us.  And He is Love.  We can be Love, too.

If we thought that Love were something new and different that we had been ignorant of, we might give it a greater try.

Give Love a greater try today.  It always works.

Guidance

“Abandon the compulsion of the thinking mind.  I am asking you to stop looking for meaning in things.”  COL bk.2, 20:II

We analyze everything!  And here, in a message attributed to Mary, we are asked just to stop this, the compulsion of the thinking mind.  A Course of Love, received from Jesus, asks us to listen to our heart, which is actually the center of our being. 

When we look for meaning in everything, analyzing, we are often in the egoic mind.  How much sense do you think the ego is really making?  None!  We analyze wrongly, but then we act on what we “receive” from our mind, and we think that we are so right!  We are misinformed.  We cannot know much that we think we have figured out.

I used to analyze just all the time.  It earned me good marks on the analytical part of the Graduate Record Examination, but it was a poor way to navigate in life.  We need the guidance of the Holy Spirit (A Course in Miracles) or the Christ-Mind (A Course of Love).  The Way of Mastery echoes a similar theme, that the mind is meant to be a very “stupid servant.”  And we so prize our good intelligence!

There is an easier way to live.  And these received writings all point in the same direction.  Give up trying to make our own decisions about where to go, what to do, what to say.  Refer those decisions to a Higher Power.

And watch life ease out, never to give us many of the same problems again.  Now we are truly being “intelligent,” referring questions to a higher authority.

Accepting God’s Decision for Mystery

“From all eternity God has wanted mystery to exist.  Accepting this is important.”  COL bk.2, 20:II

Mystery exists because we are not the fullness, omniscience, of God, but, instead, His finite creations.  God wants to experience through us, in unity and relationship.  He differentiates Himself into unique creations, but all are unified in Himself.  We are in relationship to Him, and yet united in Him.  We live with the possibility of His guidance because we are related to the Whole.  And intuition gives us the wherewithal to know some of God’s Mind.

We can rest in the knowledge that we can live well, despite not knowing “everything.”  We can welcome mystery as an example of God’s providential care.  Mystery will draw us to the numinous, and we can rest in awe of God when we commune with Him.  His mystery can give us comfort, because our little mind could not comprehend the whole even if it were offered.

We need to accept the mystery, for this quotation, attributed to Mary, says it all.  We need not to chafe against restrictions, but to know inwardly that the restrictions are there for a good reason—even when we aren’t sure what that reason is.

Mystery has always been, “[f]rom all eternity.”  Be reassured that this mystery is the best way.  We are not being kept in the dark for no reason.  We could not live the full truth with a finite mind. 

Why is our mind finite?  Because we are not God.  We are a part of Him, though, and in this knowledge, true knowledge, we can rest easy.

Mysteries

“Pain is a mystery, as is life.  The path to peace requires it.  It is not helpful to try to understand what cannot be understood.”  COL bk.2, 20:II

This assertion, attributed to Mary in Choose Only Love, is an appeal to relax in God’s care.  We know that He is always with us, and that He wants us peaceful.  We also know that pain is something that many of us experience, at times, and for some, always, in our lives.  Mary says that the path to peace requires pain, but this is not something that can be understood.

Jesus differed from Mary in A Course in Miracles.  He said there that it is not necessary to learn through pain, that learning through rewards is more lasting.

This is the first instance that I have run across in which Mary and Jesus have different concepts.

I do agree with Mary, that pain cannot be understood, at least not in this world.  There are some things that we just have to accept, that this is the way that life shows up for us at times.

We don’t need to get ourselves hung up over this difference in advice.  Regardless of what Jesus told us in ACIM, many of us still endure pain—even when we think that we are following the new revelations.  So Mary’s advice may just be an acknowledgment that pain does dog our footsteps, and we can best live well when we don’t struggle for answers to the problem of suffering.

I do know that love heals suffering, this from A Course of Love.  So when we love enough, we are healed.  Not all of us can reach this pinnacle in every day.  It is quite possible that Jesus in ACIM was speaking on an ideal level.  Ken Wapnick talks a great deal in his works about the two levels of speaking that Jesus uses in A Course in Miracles.

There very well may be something that we don’t understand in this conflicting interpretation of pain.  Ask to understand; see if God moves to bring us to a better sense of what Mary and Jesus meant.

Holy Abode of Christ

“When you have opened the floodgates of your consciousness, allowing everything you experience, whatever it may be, to be embraced, then you will live as what you are:  the holy abode of Christ.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

Embracing our experiences is, as Choose Only Love says, necessary to our continued march toward God.  Others have said just to dismiss negativity, but perhaps the better Answer, as COL says, is to integrate the negativity; overcome the fear with love.

This is scary business—but it works!  There is absolutely nothing that the power of Love cannot overcome.  If we dismiss our thoughts of negative outcomes, the negative things may very well just go underground in our subconscious, just waiting there to make us uneasy and then to rear their ugly heads again.  If we transmute (i.e., change the form) of our thoughts, they will never arise to hurt us again.  We will be free of the bad thoughts, and we will, we know, have overcome them with the much better value of Love.

There is nothing that can’t be righted this way.  As COL says elsewhere, when a worry arises, sit down, relax, take a deep breath, connect with our desire for something better, and then the Answer will arrive.

There is nothing that can’t be integrated toward the positive.  Pushing down the negative thought by trying to put it out of mind only saves it for another rainy day. 

We want to be the “holy abode of Christ.”  Letting Love overwhelm us and our problems is the way to achieve this wonderful outcome.

Love Will Be the Only Thing You Experience

“Rather than trying to eliminate fear, focus instead on not leaving anything out of your consciousness.  As you do this, fear will disappear without the slightest effort, and love will be the only thing you experience.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

What practical advice, advice I have never heard before!  Fear is illusion, and only love is real; this is why this advice works.  “Fear will disappear without the slightest effort. . . .”  This quotation says that we are not to struggle to reject anything.  We know that the effort to reject actually makes the thing rejected stronger.  It is like trying not to think of the elephant in the room.  We just have to turn aside gently, and here we are learning that even that action of turning away is unwarranted.

Welcome into our consciousness any feeling, any thought.  This mystical interpretation of how fear will leave us is most encouraging.  We don’t actually have to work to dismiss thoughts that we don’t want.  The thoughts, being illusion and never real in the first place, will just leave, once brought to the surface of the mind.  It is only that which is in the subconscious, undetected, that keeps us lingering in illusion, in fear.

This is good advice from Choose Only Love. 

Now we seek to put it into practice.

Being

“To be the being that experiences and to bring that experience to consciousness without the slightest fear of anything that we may feel or think, is what will allow us to go wherever we go and do whatever we do without fear.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

These words constitute a practical way to live without fear.  We know that we cannot live in fear and experience Christ-consciousness, and we all need to move to this greater experience of Love—something that beckons to us constantly.  To “be” the being that we are, experiencing in depth, and not suppressing this experience—yes, this is what we must do.  Not suppressing our experiences will therefore bring our experiences to full consciousness.  We don’t need to live an unconscious life, something that leads us to hurt others without really meaning to do so.

The lack of fear, a turn to love instead, will build upon itself.  I know that feeling love, and Love (God), mitigates against a negative attitude.  Low moods simply dissipate when we express love to our nearest and dearest.  A settled good will toward all of humanity then comes about, for we have discovered how to turn to that which matters.

Focus on “being” today instead of constantly riding the treadmill of “doing.”  Being is the way of the future, the way of great relationships with others.  Our doing has all too often had an egoic tilt.

Become aware of our living today.  Awareness—a determination to feel what we feel and think what we think—will keep our feelings and thoughts from going underground.  We will live a fully conscious life, and this will enliven us and give us a better future to look forward to.

Remaining in the Flow

“We give ourselves the luxury and the freedom to feel and think whatever we feel or think.  We allow whatever comes; and release whatever goes.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

Here we are hearing another way of saying that we remain “in the flow.”  We don’t hang on to our thoughts and feelings; we let them drift in and out of our mind and heart.  This is the best way to live, because it gives us immediacy, the ability to live in the present.

Letting thoughts and feelings go and come is a luxury.  If we can discover how to do it, we will live far better, constantly.

All too often we dam up our thoughts and feelings; we obsess; and we make ourselves miserable.  This misery does not have to be.  Instead, we can be aware of God’s presence, living through us.  We can know that He is able to handle anything that comes up, anything that arises in our daily round. 

With this assurance, we walk a green earth.

Being the Living Christ

“We know for sure that we are all we are being, and that what we are is nothing other than the living Christ.  Thus we begin to enjoy the sanctity of our being.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

In the next step that we will encounter, we will walk Mary’s way, which was the way of being as opposed to doing.  This, from A Course of Love.  Now Choose Only Love is telling us the same thing.  In this new world we are creating, we will reach Christ-consciousness, and thus our Christ-Self will be in the ascendancy.  The Christ-Self is the living Christ, for no longer is the term “Christ” reserved just for Jesus.  It is a plural concept in the new world, for all of us share the Christ spirit.

We will still “do” things, but our primary responsibility is to “being.”  And this is a great relief.  “Doing,” all too often, made us think that we had to earn our way into heaven.  Not so.

Doing and being complement each other in this in-between time.  As A Course of Love makes clear, Jesus’ way was largely doing, but Mary’s was being, and therein lies the difference.  Those of us still called to doing will be helped by those called to being.  And vice-versus.  We are all in this together.

Being allows for more rest than does doing, or so we might imagine.  It is good that we are moving into a new era, where being will teach us how to live.

We never had to “earn” our way into heaven, and now we know it for sure.  Just being ourselves will take us straight to heaven, even heaven on earth.

Overcome Fear with Love

“Fear never came from anything external because the universe as a whole is neutral; it does not and cannot ever do anything to you.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

We made fear in the “fall of man” or separation from God—after we made the ego.  We were too afraid to live alone, and we still feel that way.  If we commune with our Maker, our Creator God, we will have no more need to sense fear because we will know that we are not alone.  We will have overcome fear with love of the Highest.

“Is the universe friendly?” is a question that Einstein posed for us.  Our answer must be “yes.” When we realize that this means neutrality in the happenings that surround us, we will often question, “How can this be?”  This can be because how we experience events external to ourselves is always an internal choice.  That is why the happenings in the universe are neutral.  Different people have different experiences of the universe. This would not be true if the universe were causing our reaction. We do have commonality, as people, when the happenings are especially good or seem especially bad. But this does not mean the universe is not neutral.

The bad things we experience are actually illusion, for we live in a non-dualistic universe. All things are of God, including us, for we are part of Him. The only things that are true reality are the intangibles of love, harmony, peace, serenity.

We are safe in a safe universe.  When we give up judgment, as A Course in Miracles tells us, we will know that we are safe.  Regardless of how bad things get, there is another day, always and forever. 

The universe and the things of the universe cannot hurt us.  The blood is catsup, not real; and our own fears are overcome when we seek the love of our Creator.

Ask to overcome fear today.  Love always wins in the end, for Love is God.  And He always triumphs. There is no higher value than Love, Who is God.

Lovingly Accept

“Fear does not accomplish anything.  It never made a dent in your soul.   Thus when you eliminate the fear of your experience, and lovingly accept all that you are now and always—then you return to experiencing the purity of your virginal heart.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

Our “virginal” heart is one that lives in love, the way it was before we thought we separated from God, the “fall of man.”  Yes, our love is the panacea for all that ails us.  Knowing that we are loved by our Creator will go a long way toward accepting whatever our lot in life is.

Fear is a non-entity, in reality.  It does nothing except in our illusory experience.  As this quotation says, “It never made a dent in your soul.”  If we can just eliminate our “love” for fear, we will be well on our way to a satisfying existence.

Acceptance is writ large in the channeled writings we are receiving now.  We are also to “allow” what happens, without taking it to heart unless it is good.  Allowance sets us right with God.  We assent to the myriad of details that make up our life.  We say “yes” to life.  We change only those things that speak to us for change.  God would have us live a peaceful time in this world.  If we rail against what is happening in our life, we only cement it in place.  Just gently turn aside from what hurts. 

We want purity.  And we can have it, however undeserving our ego has made us feel.  Now we are walking ever closer to Christ-consciousness, where the ego falls away.

Let us be grateful to a good God Who saves us from ourselves, for we are the engineers of all that hurts.

Love What Arises from Our Depths

“By loving everything that arises within you, you eliminate fear of yourself.  By eliminating fear of yourself, you eliminate fear of your experience.  By removing it [fear] from your innermost self, nothing and no one can make it arise again.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

Many of us studied “positive thinking” for many years.  But one thing that bothers me now is that we reject our negativism, and this takes effort.  This quotation would have us embrace anything and everything that arises in our consciousness.  We won’t have to judge ourselves so harshly for a stray thought that is not positive enough.  We will simply love it away.

If we love everything that arises in us, we won’t be afraid of our mind anymore.  Many of us have thought of our mind, especially our egoic mind, as the enemy.  And that may be true.  But rejection does not work, because what we resist becomes stronger.  We need simply to turn aside from thoughts that we don’t want.  Entertain something else, in the present moment.

If we are in a low mood, our thoughts will be negative.  At such times Richard Carlson counsels us simply to relax and invite a graceful response.  He says that if we don’t relax, we will be afraid of our own thoughts.  And this is exactly what today’s quotation warns against.

There is no reason to be afraid of what arises from the depths of our mind to be healed.  This rising from the depths is how we are prepared for Awakening, enlightenment, Christ-consciousness.  We must see, with God’s help, that the subconscious is cleansed from the bottom up.  This idea, from The Way of Mastery, makes perfect sense to those of us who have followed Freud.

Be gentle with ourselves today.  Let fear fall away in the only way possible, by embracing love.

Loving Consciousness

“Can you begin to realize that it is entirely possible to walk in this world without the slightest hint of fear?  This is possible—and necessary.  This can be achieved today, when you sincerely acknowledge that everything you feel in your heart and everything you think in your mind can and should be embraced by your loving consciousness.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

What a promise this is!  No hint of fear can be achieved today!  If we could only believe this strongly enough, I believe it would come to pass.

Again, love is the Answer.  Our heart and mind must be overshadowed by a loving consciousness.  And then we will see the evidence of what we read in today’s quotation.  We embrace all in our heart and mind, leaving nothing out.  But we don’t dwell on the past or the future, because we know that living in the present is the route to happiness.  And happiness we can have when we live in love and banish fear.

This quotation also tells us that to walk in this world without the slightest hint of fear is “necessary.”   We know that we cannot entertain Christ-consciousness as long as fear has a hold on us.  Fear and Christ-consciousness cancel each other out. 

Focus on the love that we already think about and feel.  And then ask to have this love enlarged so that it covers our whole vision.   Ask for the warmth of God to enfold us.  This is a palpable experience, possible for all (though experienced, perhaps, in different ways for different people).  If we trust enough, trust God enough, then we will know that we are safe in a sometime difficult world.  We will thank God for the gift of life itself, and our desires for more, more, more will fall away.

The only “more” we will want will be love.

Walk into Love, Away from Fear

“Given the energetic state of fear, the soul begins to grapple with it, just as the body does with a toxin.  It is a natural reaction.  Fear is so foreign and unnatural that the soul always seeks to eliminate it.  Fear is soul poison.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

These blunt words about fear will make us want to banish it forever from our mind and heart.   We can do so, though it takes patience and special dispensation from God.  If we love enough, we won’t have fear, because love always displaces fear.  But here, in this world, this degree of love is unusual.  Often we have to take tiny steps to displace fear, seeking calm, seeking peace, seeking tranquility.  Love, true love, comes later, because the vast majority of our love-seeking behavior has been bent on finding special loves that never become holy.  When our special loves transform into holy, then, yes, we are making progress.

Meditation and contemplation, prayer and communion with God, can hasten the arrival of true love in our heart.  These things mitigate against fear, makes us immune to its shrill beckoning.  If we really want to make progress in our walk back to God, we need to invite love into our every moment.  Fear comes from the ego, which we would give up.  Patterns of fear and patterns of the ego will haunt us, though, for a time even after Christ-consciousness has arrived.  We are just that stuck from eons of fear-ridden living.

Be patient.  The end is certain.  We will walk away from fear when that is our intention. 

And this soul poison will haunt us no longer.