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.

From Fear to Love

“Living without fear is only possible when you live in certainty.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

To live in certainty is to know that we are One in God, sure of His love, knowing that all will be well.  To live in certainty is to experience, first hand, invulnerability.  Experiencing invulnerability first comes in glimpses of Awakening, and then in Awakening itself (on a constant basis).

We want to live without fear, and the way to woo this experience is to open ourselves more and more, as time passes, to love.  Love always cancels out fear, and all of us do know some ways to invite love into our daily lives.  We become more congenial as we go about our days; we cease the anger and hostility; we become peaceful.

Yet we aren’t always successful in making this transition from fear to love, because it takes God’s help to make a permanent change in our outlook.  We don’t do very well when we try to effect permanent change without any divine help.

Let divine help into our lives today.  Don’t try to alter thoughts and behavior by purely secular means, for these will all eventually fail.  If we have the certainty of God’s help, we have a Power on our side that will create a permanent change from fear to love in our outlook.

Give God a try today.  He is always willing to help anew and afresh, regardless of how long we have neglected Him.

Walk into the Present Moment for the Best Living

“[Y]ou need not heal the hurts of the past, nor project or plan a golden future of revenge for a baleful past.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

This quotation flies in the face of psychotherapy, which focuses very often on an attempt to heal the past by bringing it up for consideration.  But this does mean that we tend to live in the past, and that is a dead end.  We are often in low moods when we decide to consider the past, and this just makes our current predicament seem insurmountable. 

There is a better way.  Consider the past only in lifted moods, and then what we experienced is more likely to stay in the past, where it belongs.  We do not have to dwell in the past at all.  It was what it was.  “Healing” the past all too often keeps us tied to it, and we want to walk into the sunlight with Jesus holding our hand.

We certainly don’t want to plot revenge, which is the opposite of forgiveness.  Largely the reason that we don’t need to heal the past is that it only needs our forgiveness.  If we offer that, the past ceases to bother us.  And we are on the road to a happier life.

Let the past remain in the past.  Don’t try to relive it; don’t try to reform it.  Just realize that the secret to good living is remaining in the moment.  This moment. 

Our past doesn’t have to drag us down unless we make a decision for it to do so.  Let the past drop from us like chains that have bound us.  And the chains will miraculously fall from our body.

Peaceful Mind & Loving Heart

“Fear is unconsciousness; once you begin to accept that fear is unconsciousness of your true self, you will inevitably take the next step, which is to become aware that unconsciousness is simply the denial of something that you feel or have felt in your heart, or what you think or have thought in your mind.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

We feel with our heart; we think with our mind.  And both are necessary to good living.  Fear turns us aside from good living.  Here, in Choose Only Love, we see fear described as “unconsciousness.”  Certainly we are not in our right mind and not feeling blessed in our heart when we fear.  And so many of us have fears that just won’t leave us alone.

A friend gave me a lovely prayer that is apropos to this situation: “May I have peace in my mind and love in my heart.”  She recommended this maxim as a mantra to help in drifting off to sleep.  But it can be used anything that fear rears its ugly head.  We can’t get over all our fears just by wishing them away, but over time, when we walk back to God, fears diminish and eventually fade from view.

When we are truly ready to relinquish fear, the right reading will find its way into our library.  And we will know the right prayers to pray, the right form of communion to invite with our God.  When we live in the moment, conscious and aware of our being in this world, we invite fear to leave us.

Ask today for a lessening of fear.  When love takes over, fear always scurries away.

Turn to More Awareness by Giving Up Fear & Judgment

“Judgment is a turning away from consciousness out of fear.  Thus you are urged again and again not to judge.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

Judging makes us unhappy, too.  As a fearful reaction, it is nothing to be desired. 

The New Testament was very clear about a non-judgmental attitude.  Now we see the same in Choose Only Love.  And the same in A Course of Love, where both fear and judgments were prohibited if we were to make progress toward Christ-consciousness.

We need full consciousness in our lives, and we cannot have this blessing if we have restricted our thinking and our feeling out of fear.  Fear contracts the soul, and who would have that?

We often have to evaluate things in our lives, but evaluation is not the same as judgment.  Judgment has a denunciatory aspect that evaluation does not.  When we denounce another, we suffer in our attitude.

Keep our mind clear today of judgment. 

We will know a release in daily life that has been denied us previously.

Return to Loving Consciousness

“You return to the Father’s house, that is, to the loving consciousness that you are, whenever anything that arises from your being is embraced in it [i.e., in our being].”  COL bk.2, 19:II

If we embrace all that arises in us, arises from our being, then we metaphorically return to the Father’s house.  We don’t need to reject any part of ourselves; resistance just makes the negativity cling to us.  If we embrace, we are enfolded by God Himself, Who teaches us that all things are either from Him, or allowed by Him.

We do have a loving consciousness, but we are often unaware of it.  Yet love is the great panacea of all that ails us.  And being conscious of love will cure the negativity that rejection of that negativity does not.

I would embrace my being today, my being as a loving consciousness.  Tell me, dear God, how to do this.  Don’t let me get lost in my own little mind, a little mind that doesn’t know which way to turn.

If I turn to You, You will guide me to embrace all parts of my being, and this action will always heal me.

Calm Center of Our Being

“Being always what you are means not to disconnect from anything that happens within yourself.”  COL bk.2, 19:I

We don’t need to judge ourselves harshly when thoughts arise from the depths, where all is peace.  This is what is actually happening “within” ourselves.  We do need to turn aside from negativity, analyzing our conflicts, getting ourselves overwrought by frightening ourselves with our own thoughts.  Much of these last attitudes are either the ego or egoic patterns that have not yet left us.

But the ego will leave when we invite his demise, and the egoic patterns will also, eventually, cease.  We must have patience with ourselves.  We didn’t get all tangled up in an instant, and it will take more than an instant to start out on a better pathway.

When we look within, we see an equanimity that stands us in good stead regardless of what is happening external to ourselves.  Or what we perceive as happening outside ourselves.  Actually, A Course in Miracles says that projection makes perception, and so we are still projecting our outside world, what we are experiencing.  When we don’t like what we see, we need simply to delve more deeply within our mind and heart, to the calm center of our being.  This allows us to be who we really are.

Turn inward for a while today, connecting with our inner being.  We may not yet be able to sustain this stable look at our real Self, but we can form new habits that will allow us to live as this real Self.

And then we are home free.  Safe in the arms of God.

Becoming More Aware of Our True Self

“This essential matter of being aware of your true self is what will make fear disappear forever from your sight, reduced to the memory of an unpleasant nightmare.”  COL bk.2, 19:I

What does it mean, to be “aware of your true self”?  I think this message in Choose Only Love means that we are to drop egotistical leanings, just resting in God’s grace as we approach each day.  Our true self is our Christ-Self, and this Self has been hidden in our depths for a very long time.  The ego did this to us.

But now we would walk a different way.  We would drop the ego from our experience.  When we rest in God’s grace, we approach life with a soft focus.  We don’t drop into analytical nightmares, trying to make sense of our world from a stressed and difficult attitude of mind.  We rest easy.

What a promise we have when we become aware of our true self!  Fear will disappear, becoming only an unpleasant nightmare.  We may not see how this is possible, but this word from Jesus does indicate that fear will not be a factor for us any longer.

Let us take Jesus at his word.  If we feel the need for help, let’s simply ask him to hold our hand as we walk along.  A Course in Miracles says that doing so will be no “idle fantasy.”

Joy on the Horizon

“What joy it is to live in the uncreated truth.”  COL bk.2, 19:I

Truth is “uncreated”?  This assertion attributed to Jesus in Choose Only Love is telling us that truth is eternal, not something that came to be in our world, but originated outside our world, yet immanent in it.  We did not, in other words, “make” truth when we fell into the ego.  We will not even “create” truth when we are living in Christ-consciousness.  Truth is not of the personal self, nor the Self that is differentiated from God.  Truth is of God.

Knowing this, we can walk a green earth.   There are some things that don’t change as we go forward into evolution.  And truth is one such static thing.  Let us ask to be made aware of the eternal truth that we have heretofore not known.  God is not trying to keep secrets from us; He is perfectly willing to share His truth.  It is our own limitations, emerging fresh from an egoic past, that hinder us.

Yes, joy—joy!—is in our future.  If we let the thoughts of our finite mind flow in and out, in peace, we will not get so tangled up.  This way of living will keep us constantly in God’s shadow.  We will listen to what He says, in His silence, and know.  Just know.  This is the Christ-Self speaking to us, the essence of who we are.

Let’s listen well today.

Serenity Will Heal

“The impulse to struggle and defend is the impulse that moves the egoic world because the ego is only concerned with its survival.”  COL bk.2, 18:II

Perhaps we can read in this quotation from Choose Only Love the implication that to struggle and defend are false issues for us.  Certainly struggle is not God’s way with us.  His way of speaking to us is all peace.  And defending our little territory of mind and heart in this world is not the way, either.  Yes, struggling in vain and defending our way as the only way are both signs of an egoic leaning.

The ego would like to continue to lead us around.  But its days are numbered.  In A Course of Love, as we read through it meditatively, we discover that the ego has left us.  If we latch onto a new way of living, we will not build a new ego on the ashes of the first one.  And we would not choose to do that, for such a futile choice would take away all our gains.

When tempted to struggle with an issue, go within and get quiet.  In the silence, God will speak to us.  He knows that serenity is one of our greatest blessings.  And He will bring serenity to our personal issues in life.  Serenity irons out the difficulties, and we will walk a smooth pathway as we go along.

Defenses do what they would defend, as A Course in Miracles tells us.  So a defensive attitude in life is not the way either.  Drop our defenses today.  We will be the better for it.

Give up the ego and egotistical leanings as bad choices.  Let the subconscious mind be cleansed as we pray for help. 

This in itself will go a long way toward saying good-bye to the ego.

The Living Christ

Note:  If you like this blog, “Miracles Each Day,” I have others that you might want to view; go to this blog, and click on “Blogs – Online Books – Print/E-Book – Personal Web Site” at the top of the screen.  Thanks! — Celia

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“The truth is that only you exist.  Your being, the true being that you are, the living Christ who lives in you, is the only reality.  All else is fiction, all else is illusion.”  COL bk.2, 18:II

This quotation is saying that we are all One, one being, and that being is the essence of God Himself.  Of course, this is a mystical understanding, and we are certainly limited in our entity who lives on earth.  Here we are simply a “part” of God, and we are sometimes lost and confused because of our finite nature.  But the truth is that we are one with the All, including all of our brothers and sisters who share this world with us.  We are blessed beyond description.

We are the living Christ, for “Christ” is a plural term when it refers to the children of God.  Jesus started us down this pathway 2,000 years and more ago.  And he helps us still.  Just ask, and he will be holding our hand.

The “all else” that is fiction is the ego, something we want to shed from our consciousness.  This is the illusion that we have been hamstrung by for eons. 

But when we turn to God, eliminate fear and judgment, and envelop our being with the Love Who is God, we are saved for something better.

Let us ask today to be saved for that something better.

Sweetness of Love

“We contemplate our sleeping brothers and sisters with the sweetness of love and treat them always with tenderness, understanding that their acts are nothing other than the movements of those terrified by nightmares.”  COL bk.2, 18:II

A quotation that encourages us to forgive, and to forgive each and every time—knowing that sleeping brothers and sisters are terrified by nightmares.  What a poignant image!  May we remember it now that times seem so tough for us.  May we remember this image often.

Some of us reading this have still not awakened fully, and so we too sleep part of the time, at least.  When we do sleep in waking life, we need to be forgiving of ourselves, too.  We lapse into fears that overwhelm us.  We lapse into anger and attack, twin negatives that are caused by our unconscious fear.  Treat ourselves with the “sweetness of love,” and we will hasten full Awakening into Christ-consciousness.  The oscillations are sometimes great, from fear to love and back again.  But remember that we have mighty companions accompanying us. 

The “movements of those terrified by nightmares” need not cause us to fear.  As bad as things get, still we have our heavenly Father with us.  It is true that He does not intervene in human matters by robbing us of our free will.  Consequently, some in this world get into real trouble.

But there will come a glorious day when all, simply all, are in the presence of God, home in Him. 

Our faith and trust in God will bring that day closer in time.

Awakening

“At first you wake up slowly.  Then you begin to walk-awake and you meet those who have awakened, and finally are ready to receive with serenity and peace those who are waking up.”  COL bk.2, 18:II

This is the pathway to Awakening, spelled out for us in Choose Only Love.  We do wake up slowly at least most of the time, when we have been reading channeled works from Jesus.  With him, the pathway is smooth.  With his guidance, the way is sure.

We do meet those who have awakened, though they may be reticent about telling us that they have awakened.  Genuinely awakened people do not brag; the ego is gone from them.

And then, ultimately, we help others who are awakening.  We are led to them.  We react with serenity and peace, sure of what to say and what to do, knowing that we have help from the celestial realm.

Awakening is the same as Christ-consciousness, the same as enlightenment.  Eastern religions have long known about this, but the West is just learning.  And from the best teacher, Jesus himself.

Let us listen and be assured that all will be well when we walk this gentle pathway.

Walk the Path of Life Hand-in-Hand

“Now you know who you are, and who is speaking.  Now we walk the path of life hand-in-hand, and you know for sure that you and I are the same being.”  COL bk.2, 18:I

We know who we are, when we have walked the path of life back to God.  We are one being with Jesus, for we share the Christ as the All of who we are.  ALL of us are One, and this is what this message, attributed to Jesus, really means.  We share one being as children of God, and the fact that Jesus has walked farther ahead of us does not actually matter.

This one being is the Christ-Self, something discussed at length in A Course of Love.  It is an inner being who is just now coming out from our depths.  No longer living an egoic life, we are primed to enjoy our merger with the Christ-Self from within.

It is very reassuring to know that we were never intended to be alone, but to be One with the All.  This All includes God, but it also includes our brothers and sisters with whom we share this world.  Let us never forget the glue that binds us together is Love—Love of God, love of each other, love of ourselves. 

We are walking hand-in-hand, and this makes all the difference.  We will not lose our way again.  We will walk peacefully back to our God—holding hands, always holding hands.

Seek to Attract Love

“You attract everything that happens in your life.”  COL bk.2, 17:III

This quotation, attributed to Jesus in Choose Only Love, is a firm affirmation of the law of attraction.  Taken on the surface, it doesn’t seem to make any sense.  Surely we don’t attract the awful circumstances with which many of us are faced this day?  On some level, we may.  But it is not the level of the personal self; if anything, if we can believe this assertion, it is on the level of the soul—a soul who sees more than our vision can give us while on earth.

If this is true, and I believe it is, then we need to put more time into attracting love in our lives.  The way to do this is to practice faith and trust in God, the kind of faith and trust in God that we saw emulated by Jesus in his life on earth.  He set the example that we all need, all must, follow.  When we follow faith and trust to their logical conclusion, we have to realize that a loving God has allowed the things that happen to us.  And this is because he has never for a moment contemplated removing free will from the gifts he gives to us.

Seek to attract more loving thoughts by accentuating faith and trust in God today.  The love will make all the difference.  The love will save us.

Jesus: “Certainly Everything Will Be Fine”

“Certainly everything will be fine.  Do not doubt this.  God and you, your being and my love, are always the universal winners, not in the sense of triumph of the egoic thought system, but in truth.”  COL bk.2, 17:II

We do need this reassurance now!  It is attributed to Jesus, in the new series of books, Choose Only Love, and the words were channeled within just a year or two ago.  We need to hear, “everything will be fine.”  And we are not to doubt!

We are not talking about an egoic victory, but something much, much grander—the peace that the end of separation from God actually gives.  We are heading into Awakening, Christ-consciousness, enlightenment—all of us.  And when we have traversed the barriers of fear and judgment, we will have that which we desire, a peace that passeth understanding virtually all the time.

For reasons that we don’t understand, it is easier to reach Christ-consciousness now.  We have grown through our travails, and now we are ready.  Devote time to contemplation and meditation, prayer, and simply loving our brothers and sisters.  We will find our walk in life will go much easier when we have done these simple things.

We need to cooperate with God as He seeks to bring us home to Him.  He would have us turn from the insanity that is egotism.  When we do this, we will have that which we most long to have, and for many of us it is peace and joy.

May the peace and joy of God’s blessings reach us, wherever we are, today.

God’s Plan for Us

“That which you see before your eyes, or takes place as if it were a movie, is nothing other than God’s plan for you.”  COL bk.2, 17:II

Hugh Prather once made an analogy of our lives as a movie being shown in a theater, a movie that we wrote.  And if we are part of God, this scripting is actually true.  And we are a part of God.  He lives in our depths, and He lives through us.

If we can see the drama of our lives as something meaningful, always attuned to the Universal, then we are less likely to become upset by the vicissitudes of our daily lives.  We are not promised a smooth walk in every particular.  It is true that as we attune ourselves to God’s plan, our lives lose some of the devastating drama that is egoic.  And eventually the ego falls away, leaving us soothed and at peace.

Our understanding of God is often flawed, for we blame Him when things go wrong.  But our free will is at issue here, and He would never take that from us.

Be at peace today.  We are simply watching a movie unfurl in the theater that is our world.

Kernel of God’s Love Awaits

“You attracted to yourself everything that was necessary, so that what was not true could crumble and give way to what is.”  COL bk.2, 17:I

I see this quotation, attributed to Jesus in Choose Only Love, as an affirmation that love wins out in the end.  When we are asked to wait through hard times, we gain patience, an essential virtue.  When we wait patiently as the years unfold, we truly do get ready for an explosive affirmation of Love from God Himself. 

This is “what is” in our world.  What has not been true in love just crumbles away, and then we are left with the kernel of God’s love for us.  The period of rejection is over, and now it is time for the blessings to descend upon our heads.

This is the law of attraction in effect.  We could not appreciate the love well unless we had lived through its opposite, the rejection of our proffered love.

Now we are primed for a new, good beginning.  We have waited, we are ready, we have grown by the ending of something that wasn’t meant to be at all.

Now we are overcome with Love, and God, this time, makes sure that we get the message.  Love is the Answer, the one true Answer to what is.

Love

“You can never be inside my heart enough.  That is the same as saying you can never love too much or be too loved.”  COL bk.2, 16:I

The panacea for what ails us is always and ever the same:  love.  I fear that we hear this ode to love so often that we tune out, not seeing the wonderful implications.  It is true that hearts can be hardened to love, and love then does not transform negative actions.  But we never know when this is really true.  The offer of love may take root in a hardened heart at any time, softening it and turning it to the positive.

This is another quotation from Mary.  Her channeled writings always are filled to the brim with her love.  We often see her as the “mother,” and mother love is known to be all-inclusive, all-forgiving.  So we are “inside” Mary’s heart, and she would have us be there forever.  This is a particularly wonderful way of saying that Love means everything to our well-being.

Love does not mean that we accept abuse.  We have a concept called “tough love,” that is effective in some cases when faced with a particularly obstinate person.  But we must be careful that tough love does not hide a refusal to forgive, because forgiveness is the greatest message of A Course in Miracles.  The right overture from a heart filled with love will transform the most awful situation.  We just have to give love a chance.

When faced with a hard decision, ask, “What would God’s love do now?”  This is the same as the oft-repeated injunction to ask, “What would Jesus do now?” or “What would Mary do now?”

Contemplating this question will do much to see that our heart remains in the right place.

Knowing Heaven

“[I]f you knew the Heaven that awaits you here and now you would cry of happiness.”  COL bk.2, 16::II

Here we are considering a series of quotations attributed to Mary, mother of Jesus.  She constantly reminds us of joys that we could know, if we weren’t so obtuse.  We can even know Heaven, she says here, and she adds, we can know Heaven “here and now.”

What a glorious promise!  We would be happy beyond compare if our world were to open up into an experience of Heaven.  And this can come true, regardless of outer circumstances.  Of course, it takes some mental adjustment on our part.  We need to turn inward, not outward, because within is where the treasures are. 

We turn inward not in a self-centered way, but in a way that opens up God’s treasure house for our enjoyment.  We touch God when we clear our mind, open our heart, and listen to the gentle, quiet promptings from inside.  Then Heaven really does begin to appear outwardly, too, for we are projecting our vision from the inside, making for the perception of a better world.

A Course in Miracles tells us that projection makes perception.  And it is this truth that allows us to see how Mary’s promise can come true in our lives—even when things seem darkest.  We are not fooling ourselves when we see a better world.  We really do see a better world, for we are not adding our pain to that world. 

Our happiness is seeded from within.  And there too we find Heaven on earth.

Ever More Love

“The more you love, the more free you will feel.”  COL bk.2, 16:II

We do want to feel free, to be free, even in the midst of circumstances that might seem to hem us in.  And if we give ourselves up to love, this quotation, from Mary, says that we will feel more free, and the more we love, the more free.

We can soften our hearts even in the midst of a bad day, or turmoil, or suffering, or just pain.  We don’t have to let agitation take us over.  When we soften our hearts, we are opening up to love, and love will take us back home to God. 

It is just that simple.  Turn to the love in our hearts, and know that God is acting on our behalf all the time.  He would have us taste freedom.  And here we are getting the instructions that we need to experience the freedom that we want.

We Need to Experience Unconditional Love

“I need you above all human understanding.  You are always in my heart.  Please meditate calmly on this message.  My love is not poetry, although it can be expressed in that way.  It is not philosophy, either.  My love is truth.”  COL bk.2, 16::I

In a statement attributed to Mary, this quotation suggests that she needs us.  Actually needs us.  And this need is above our understanding.  If she holds us in her heart, we know that we are in a safe place, being with her.  Her love, she says, is “truth.”

The scribe, Sebastian, is Roman Catholic, and his religion has had a history of revering Mary.  We might, whatever our religion, take to heart these messages.  Her words do indeed sound like poetry, though that is not how she describes her love.

If we know that we are truly loved, we can gain a good bit in our daily lives.  Part of the problem of our world is the fact that people do indeed feel unloved.  We can see this in everyday life, and a paucity of love has dire implications.  When things get desperate enough, tragedy happens.  The truth of love often cannot be heard in such circumstances.

Let’s take a step back and realize that God’s Love is always available to us.  And Mary is an apt messenger of that love, being, as she was, the mother of Jesus.  This quotation does not say it, but love of this nature is definitely unconditional.  And it is unconditional love that our tired ole world needs most keenly.

We Have the Company of Heaven with Us

“You are never alone and have never been alone.  I refer not to the company of the world, which is transient, but to the company of Heaven, which is eternal.”  COL bk.2, 16:I

What a wonderful comment to read:  that we are never alone and have never been alone!  We may be isolated in our daily lives now, but we have the “company of Heaven.”  And this company is eternal.  Who is involved?

Angels, of course.  And entities we have known who have passed over to the Other Side.  Plus advanced souls who seek to help us from their greater knowledge.  And especially, in the company of angels, the particular beings assigned to us, our guardian angels.  And then there is God Himself Who listens in on our prayers with patience, knowing that there is nothing that we need, but realizing that we don’t know this. 

Our needs are answered at the point that these needs are recognized.  Of course, we can’t see this, and we often think ourselves in a worse place than we are.  But if we settle down, calm our overwrought mind and heart with praying to the One Who loves us beyond all imagining, we will succeed at being enveloped by peace.  And this peace, if we woo it, will stay with us indefinitely.

We are never alone.  This in itself is a great way to soothe a troubled breast. 

Yes, we have the company of Heaven.

Drowned in Perpetual Ecstasy

“Sweet son!  Sweet daughter!  If you were aware of the ocean of love that gushes uncontrollably from my core and flows towards you, you would be drowned in perpetual ecstasy and you could not stay alive in the body.”  COL bk.2, 16:I

This statement is attributed to Mary, from Choose Only Love.  The statement exudes with love, overflowing love from a full heart. 

We can ask to accept such love in our depths, and this will make all the difference.  We need simply to open to the experience, to dwell on the positive, to drop our worries and concerns and realize that there are other entities who look out for us and bless us.

Mary’s statement is heartwarming in the extreme.  It is a way home to God.  Knowing that the mother of Jesus, chosen by God for that experience, wishes us well, is a great blessing.

Open our mind and heart a bit, and realize that this may just be the truth, to hear from Mary in the dailiness of our lives.