God’s Love Resolves All Fear

“While God is nothing but the Source of Love, you have, in your doubt, made of God the source of fear.  Pause a moment here and let the enormity of this confusion sink in, for this is the reversal in thinking that will pave the way for all the rest.  Because of this confusion you have responded to Creation with fear.  Is it no wonder a new response is asked of you?”  (A Course of Love, T1:4.26)

We fear many things, but we don’t often realize that what we fear most is actually God.  Or our concepts of God, which are misguided and inaccurate.  He is Love—as we know—but still we forget, even when we pray daily.  We think that maybe He doesn’t have our best interests at heart, our best interests as we view them.  We think that what we want for ourselves would be better.  And when we realize that God is in the depths of our spirit, then we can realize how very confused we have become.

God means us well.  Our Depths mean us well.  We don’t have to fear God at all.  It is not He Who punishes us, if indeed we are punished at all.  (And the ego does punish, though we are trying to get away from this concept, this deluded concept.)  Once we are able to fully believe that God is “for us,” then our love for Him can blossom, and our egoic pattern of fear will soon drop away.

Finding an Ideal in God

Some very idealistic people mix inappropriately the sacred with the profane.  Living out our being first of all as human may show much about how to love God.  We can’t always repress the human, or we will be denying the very arena in which we have been placed.  And the human “ideal” may lead inexorably toward the Heavenly Ideal.  

Much romantic love, in the beginning at least, manifests a kind of imperfect love for God that needs a concrete object.

Live Exclusively in the Present

“You begin to realize that wherever you are, there is a precious moment that offers an opportunity for healing, for Love, for awakening.  And it is not to be missed.  Each moment of your existence in this plane of density is not to be missed.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Lesson 23, Page 277)

This apt quotation is saying that we just must “stay present.”  When we let our minds/hearts wander to the past and the doubtful future, we wander amiss.  It is only realizing that we are ever in the present that saves us.  Staying in the present is rarely terrifying, whereas remembering bad things and anticipating equally bad things gets us into trouble.  When we live in day-tight compartments, closing off past and future, we are safe for today.  And we are especially safe for today when we remember God’s ever-present part of our lives. We think we need to plan, but this is not nearer as true as we think. Guidance will prompt, in the present, anything that we need to either feel or do.

God is living through us, which means that He experiences right along with us.  If we suffer, we give Him a bad day, though, being omniscient, He knows that the outcome is always going to be good.  If we feel joy, He is experiencing that ecstatic feeling right along with us.  Give God a good day today.

Do ourselves a favor, and sink right down into the midst of the day.  Don’t revisit old trauma and don’t forecast trauma ahead, either.  

Then we are safe–safe for today.  We may even have glimpses of Awakening if we can calm down enough to experience God’s peace.  Then whatever lies on our pathway can hold no outcome that will elicit any apprehension from us.

Vision Invites Joy

“Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations that show you all the fearful outcomes of imagined sin into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace.  These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. They are His substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the ego’s purpose brought to your horrified awareness.  They step away from sin, reminding you that it is not reality which frightens you, and that the errors which you made can be corrected.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-20.VIII.10)

Reality is not frightening.  This is the answer to our question, first voiced by Einstein, about whether or not the universe is friendly.  Our own inner confusion projects outward, making a terrifying pseudo reality.  But when we adopt the vision that the Holy Spirit grants to us, we are once again reassured, the projections settle down, and we see happy dreams as prompted by grace.

The ego, once again, is the bogeyman.  It is ever thus.  The mind, enthralled by the ego, sees terrible sights, makes objective reality a fearful place indeed.  We don’t need to cling to such fantasies, for fantasies, born of the ego, are indeed frightening.

Knowing that we project the outer world is a helpful concept for us to assimilate.  We will know that it is only our minds that need to be changed, and then the effect, the perception of a fearful world projected from within, will change to something much happier.  This is real vision, when we are seeing with eyes that have been transformed by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Don’t terrify ourselves any longer.  There is no need.  We can see a beneficent world as easily, indeed even more easily, than a place of jagged swords and pitchforks held by demons.

Let us see the more benign world today, the more benign world that the Holy Spirit invites with the vision that He gives us.

Our Being Unlocked / New Life Announced

“Your being was locked securely within the heart of Christ, to be given to you when you yourself claimed your inheritance.  That treasure is literally God’s plan for you.  It is the divine will come true for your being.  It could not be delivered before this  moment; you were not ready.  But now you are, and so I give it to you.  Love placed it in my immaculate hands and honored me with the gift of giving it to you, and with it, new life.”  Choose Only Love, bk.7, 3:II.  Message from Mother Mary.

When we awaken, we will rest easy in words like these.  In the meantime, most of us will have numerous satori, or glimpses of Awakening, glimpses that do not last because, all too often, we lapse back into our fear of the world, our fear of God, our fear, period.  We also lapse into judgment, particularly of our fellow men and women, and for this the antidote is to request forgiveness.  While it is not God who forgives us, because He has never condemned, it is our own selves, for we are our own worst enemy.

When we have reached Book VII of Choose Only Love, we are ready for Mary’s announcement in this quotation.  We have been cleansed.  Our way back is announced, and we are on the brink of Awakening.

All of us will recognize when this is possible.

Impulse to Love Comes from the Spirit

From Celia’s Images in a Reflecting Pool: Journal Entries Inspired by A Course in Miracles. Copyright 1995.

Know that the impulse to love comes from the spirit.  When one is “crazy in love,” the feeling partakes more of what is within than what is without.  The person being idealized is somehow more yourself than him.  The best part is that the experience points to the Love at the center of one’s being.  At base one is seeking God, and it is not really fair to one’s beloved to make of him an idol in one’s journey back Home.

The Choice for Love

“When you were created, you were called to exercise your free will.  In your essence there is the cry of freedom.  Your Creator always knew that, first of all, He should create a reality where freedom exists.  So He guarded your holy being until you could make the choice for love.  It was buried like a seed in damp soil, waiting for the perfect time to germinate.  That moment has arrived.  That moment is now.”  Choose Only Love, bk. 7, 3:II.  Message from Mother Mary.

Somehow, some time, we imaged, illusion, that we could fashion something apart from God, and in that fantasy, separation from God was born.  The only thing we gained from this fantastic imaging was conflict, some large, some small–and the development of an ego.  Most of us have now found that our plans did not work well.  We have been miserable in this world without turning to God.

But we did have the freedom to have a different choice.  And we still have that freedom, but, again, most of us are choosing again–choosing for miracles of redemption in God’s sight.

He let us make a “reality” in illusion, but it was never true reality, for true reality is only and always the Love in which God created us.

Until we turn to others in love, and truly discover how to love ourselves, we are walking a dim pathway that holds no promise of good.

Turn today.  Let God reestablish His sovereignty in our minds and hearts, especially in our minds–for our hearts are already choosing Him.

Relationships

“You have a real relationship, and it has meaning.

It is as like your real relationship with God

as equal things are like unto each other.” (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-20.VI.12:4-6)

When we are in league with God in a big way, our relationships with others transforms.  Rather than being “special,” meaning egoic, our relationships take on a reality that they have heretofore lacked.

If one wants real relationships, we must get right with God.  Putting God first in our lives rights things.  He speaks to us in silence, but a silence that gives us guidance–if we are open to hearing and to healing.

Heaven on Earth

“My field is your field.  This is what I am helping you to see.  We are together now to save this world so that Heaven on Earth can come to be.”  Mirari

This is a message believed to be from Mary of Nazareth, who inspires Mari Perron to write her newest books.

We do need a Heaven on Earth, and it seems that this is possible, however much we see conflict and disarray on Earth now.  We can reach the tipping point for this blessing of Heaven on Earth.

Many of us are waking up as from a long sleep.  First we wake up in snatches, then longer times, and then we sustain Christ-consciousness.  When enough of us (and all of us are moving right along, however much this seems incomprehensible) have sustained Christ-consciousness, this world will be transformed along with us.

Ask for the blessing of a glimpse of Awakening today.  The glimpse is very peaceful, and will reassure us that this peace is what we really want.

Let Our Heart Lead Us to Flow Along

“You will simply flow and be carried in a firm, accurate, sweet way by the swell formed by the force that arises from the union of truth and love, the union of your thoughts and feelings.”  Choose Only Love, bk. 7, 2:III.  Message from the Archangel Raphael.

When we commune with God, really commune with Him, we are not kept off track very long.  A flow develops that carries us through our days.  And this flow is supernatural, far beyond anything that we could sustain without divine help.

Pray for truth and love, especially if we feel off-track.  Our truth responds to reason and common sense, not madness.  Our love is the catalyst that allow truth to blossom.

If our heart feels dead, do not let this state of affairs remain.  Turn to God, in direct relationship, and ask for His healing, His reaching to us from our depths, to heal and bless.

God will not ignore our pleas.  He always responds, and if He seems not to do so, then we are thinking amiss.  Our mind may have fooled us, but our heart never will.  And it is with our heart that we sense God’s presence.  And then our thoughts fall in line.

Child of the Wind and the Sun, Delight of the Heart of Jesus

“Child of the wind and the sun, delight of my heart!  Remember now that the being that you really are is what every truth-seeker has been looking for and that for which every lover yearning for eternal love longed.  The desired unity was union with your being, a union between you and me in which we both merge into an ‘us’ that extends the reality of love.”  Choose Only Love, bk.7, 1:I.  Message from Jesus.

By the time we reach Book VII of Choose Only Love, we are assured that we have moved into being and its eternity, no longer egos, no longer longing for Awakening–for it is happening even as we speak.  We are encouraged to join with Jesus, something that traditional Christianity also champions with its emphasis on a personal relationship with Christ.  But now we learn that ALL of us are Christ, or becoming so, and this term is no longer identified just with Jesus, who is our leader.

What we are about is the extension of love.  It is all we are about.  There is not other purpose in living, no other purpose for us to have been born on Earth in this era.  We live in an eternity that unfolds with great beneficence for us.  There is a good quotation from Eastern religion:  “You live in an eternity.  Be happy now.”

That is just what we need to encourage, in ourselves and others.  Love creates happiness/joy.  Love is truly all we need.

Rest

“Rest, when truly learned, is a state of being in which struggle has ceased and peace has triumphed over chaos, love has triumphed over fear.

“You may still see but two choices:  peace or struggle.  But with such an attitude, you would soon be struggling to maintain your peace.  There is another choice, and it lies within.”  (A Course of Love, T2:1.6 – 1.7)

We are at rest when we commune with our depths, which is the same as saying that we commune with our God.  He is always there, ready and eagerly waiting to help in any way that we will allow.  He doesn’t interfere if we thwart His ways by not turning to Him; He gave us free will so that we would turn to Him out of our extreme need.

Many don’t turn to God unless and until we are in dire straits.  But what a way to live!  Let intellectual doubts rest in the knowledge from the heart that there is a Supreme Power that dwells in the depths of our souls.  Within and without, He is always there—waiting for our nod in His direction.

We don’t have to choose peace over struggle in some kind of balancing act that seeks to keep the peace and resist the struggle.  We need only rest within, and all struggle ceases easily.  We have peace when we rest within.  And then God reigns.  And all is well in His world—and His world is our own.

A Closer Walk with God

“While your mind did not accept the truth of your identity or the reality of love without fear, it existed in a reality of fear and judgment, and bound heart and body to this reality.  Your heart has now heard the appeal of this Course and worked with your mind to bring about this acceptance of the truth, a truth your heart has always known but has been unable to free you to accept without the mind’s cooperation.”  (A Course of Love, T4:7.5)

This quotation explains the concept of wholeheartedness, that we need to join mind to heart, not letting either take the ascendancy alone.  In wholeheartedness, we give up fear, not with a whimper, but with a joyful shout.  We are free at last!  Fear and judgment go together, and both are anathema to reaching Christ-consciousness.  Our heart has always known truths that our mind rejected because of our intellectualism.  Basically, we didn’t want to be superstitious.  We feared that believing in God was intellectually suspect.

Our heart doesn’t have such misgivings.  Our heart knows that there is a Something—or Someone—More.  And when we listen to our hearts, we are happier.  Would you not take happiness, any day, over intellectual skepticism that locks us in despair?

It Still Is True that Nothing Is Without.  Yet upon Nothing Are All Projections Made.

“It still is true that nothing is without.  Yet upon nothing are all projections made.  For it is the projection that gives the ‘nothing’ all the meaning that it holds.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-20.VIII.9)

This quotation is a cogent statement of some of the theology of A Course in Miracles.  It states, without saying so, that everything that we look upon is a hallucination, that there is nothing outside of us.  This is somewhat like the medieval preoccupation with wondering how many angels could balance on the tip of a needle.  Our projections from within make the illusion – dream – hallucination that we see.  And it is only what we are imagining within that makes this outer manifestation.

This interpretation from ACIM of true reality is not understandable to the finite mind.  Not understandable, but we can get a glimmer of the truth, and in that glimmer we can make huge advances.  When our minds change from egoic preoccupation, then we project something better so that the illusion or hallucination loses some of its terror for us.  We have an improved experience in our world.

How can others exist independently of us, if we are projecting the illusion?  The bottom line is that they and we are really One; we are joined as One being, there being no difference between us.  That is the primary reason that forgiveness is so necessary to us; we are really forgiving ourselves, and our projections are being healed.

When we have reached Awakening, will the real world also be a hallucination?  I think not, though I don’t find the metaphysical underpinnings in ACIM that would support that belief.  Mainly I don’t want to think that we are forever lost in illusion, but I want to believe that there is a way to reality, true reality, the real world.  

Perhaps the real world is only the intangible, positive traits of God:  the love, joy, harmony, peace, etc., that comes upon us in good moments in this world, and then depart, mysteriously, when we fall into fear, attack, planning, and judging.  These harmful states of mind keep us from ultimate salvation in Awakening.  We would do well to eliminate all aspects of fear in our world.  Then we stand a chance of sustaining Awakening.

“Stop and smell the roses”

From Celia’s Images in a Reflecting Pool: Journal Entries Inspired by A Course in Miracles. Copyright 1995.

 This everyday admonition invites speculation: If we don’t, what is the worst that will happen to us?  

An unexamined life may mean less real living (as opposed to existing), especially if what happens always seems just to “happen” to us, rather than being selected by us.

METANOIA

by Celia Hales. Published in the May – June 2023 issue of Miracles magazine; Jon Mundy, publisher; Glenn Hovemann, editor.

If you understand it well, the healing of memory is the only thing that the world needs . . . (Choose Only Love, bk. I, 13:III)

And along the way, everything unlike Love would come up for you to release it.  (The Way of Mastery, Lesson 4, Page 52)

I want to tell you to be embraced by love and to let all the feelings of love flowing through you now find their expression.  (A Course of Love, D:Day10.38)

In saying “metanoia,” Archangel Raphael is using a term not previously used in received writings, but which he explains as atonement or transformation (Choose Only Love [CHOL], bk. VI, 11:III).  The new term is so apt, for it conjoins  mind and heart, as we are asked to do.  The search engine Bing says “change of mind”; Google says “a transformative change of heart,” and so both mind and heart are united in the meaning.  We have earlier found the words Awakening or Christ-consciousness in received readings.  The experience, whatever we might call it,  dovetails a healing of memory with progression to a new place in the evolution of our spiritual development.

Before we can reach metanoia on our pathway, we are encouraged to let unconscious thoughts rise to the surface.  The only thing we have to do is not abort this process by a return to the ego.  Metanoia will happen of its own accord when God knows we are ready, and I believe He knows we are ready when we are letting ourselves be loved.   We let what wants to arise do so, and we drench those memories in forgiving love, relinquishing everything that is not love.  This first step marks the healing of memory.

In this process, we can see that we are dropping from memory all that does not embrace love.  We are told of forgetfulness, a necessary step.  Do not let a forgetful memory “throw” you; it is “always temporary,” as we are promised (CHOL, bk. IV, 7:II). We are relinquishing,  by a process of transmuting, everything that hinders our direct relationship with God.  We will now be guided by revelation, not the thinking mind.

A time of great rejoicing follows.  I think we are buoyed by the love we are sensing that God, Jesus, Mary, angels are showering upon us at this crucial juncture.  There may be a powerful influx of energy during this time; it is a necessary step, not to be aborted, not to be “prayed” away.

We next move into our own more complete expressions of the love of God as we now comprehend that Love.  Jesus wants our work in the world, our contributions.  Yet this is not so much in “doing” as an effortless way of being that suffuses our  lives as well as the lives of our brothers and sisters–wherever  they might be found in the world or even in the universes.  “Being” is our way now, following Mary’s way (as we first discovered in A Course of Love).  

And being who we really are is the end result of a progression of spiritual evolution and development that will culminate, we are promised, in “weaving a new tapestry that literally means a new world” (CHOL, bk. IV, 9:IV).  

Thy Grace Descends

From Celia’s forthcoming Sonnets Divine:

I long for Ye, dear God!  Today I need

To turn my life o’er once again to Ye.

My faith seems weak and frail, a mere small seed

That ought to grow all great in Love, doth see?

Surrender all I do just now, again,

And yet again.  When I surrender all,

When I surrender all, a hand Ye lend.      

Thy grace descends; Ye turn and heed my call!

Indeed, I need a re-surrender true,

For oft’ I have made turn in life to Ye.

What more ought I now seek to say or do?

No thing, my Lord!  Abide in Ye be key!

Ye love and bless me sure; I don’t ask more.

Thy guidance heals in truth–no lie, no lore!

On What Really Counts in Life. . .

From Celia’s Images in a Reflecting Pool: Journal Entries from A Course in Miracles. Copyright 1995.

I’ve wondered if putting A Course in Miracles into practice in a fast-paced and demanding life is the best thing that I could do in that regard, to calm things down. I long for lasting peace, and the way to follow God is to slow down.

I don’t think life is meant to be as fast-paced as we live it.

Love / Safety / Trust

“Where you learned to hate, you will learn to love.  Where you learned to fear, you will learn safety.  Where you learned to distrust, you will learn trust.  And each learning experience will be a learning experience because it will touch your heart.”  (A Course of Love, C:24.1)

We are thinking about the heart in A Course of Love.  Of course, technically we are thinking about “wholeheartedness,” which is the union of mind and heart.  But we focus on the heart because we have so long neglected that vital center of our Self.  When we were caught by the ego, we listened to what our deluded and insane mind said.  And when we sought to relinquish the ego, we were changing our minds.  

But there is a step beyond that A Course of Love seeks to have us reach.  And this step is reached without words that the mind could understand, or rational understanding that is totally beyond the ego.  This is the realm of the heart, where words fail us and we are at home in God.  We “know” things without having to be told.  We “understand” things without a rational explanation.  Life just “is,” and we are finally and ultimately happy in the “isness” that will lead us to Christ-consciousness.  We don’t ask anymore because we have no need.  We know.  And this knowledge saves us.

Laws of the Universe of Love

“This cooperation is natural when fear has been rejected.  You have long embraced fear and rejected love.  Now the reverse is true.  This reversal of truth has changed the nature of your universe and the laws by which it operates.  The laws of fear were laws of struggle, limits, danger, and competitiveness.  The laws of love are laws of peace, abundance, safety, and cooperation.  Your actions and the results of your actions in a universe of love will naturally be different from your actions and the results of your actions in a universe of fear.  You set the laws of the universe when you chose fear.  The laws of the universe of love are God-given.”  (A Course of Love, C:20.30 – 20.31)

We need love; it is our very nature.  We have lived for a long time in the “tiny, mad idea” (from A Course in Miracles) that gave us a universe of fear.  We were not at home there; we struggled mightily.  We listened to an egoic persona that did not mean us well, that tried to protect us by isolating us from each other in a cacophony of diverse sounds that spelled “fear” to us.  We never felt safe, because we never were safe.  Our “creations” had come back to haunt us.

But now all that can change.  Now we know better.  In a universe of love, we know peace abundance, safety, cooperation.  Our laws of struggle, limits, danger, and competitiveness are now outdated.  What a joy to envision what awaits us in this new age!  We are safe because we are no longer “creating” with the ego; we are working within the laws of God, laws which complement our true reality.  We are homebound, safe in a universe where love reigns and where we have turned aside from the ego and its sad and forlorn dictates.

Choose Holiness Today

“Only two purposes are possible.  And one is sin, the other holiness.  Nothing is in between, and which you choose determines what you see.  For what you see is merely how you elect to meet your goal.  Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness.  They are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin and seems to witness to its reality.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-20.VIII.9)

We live a dream, for we are lost in insanity until we choose again.  This new choice is a choice for what A Course in Miracles calls the “real world,” and seeing it occurs shortly before God reaches down and lifts us up to Awakening.  Here Jesus points out that the illusion that we see is an illusion of sin, projected from within.  He would have us choose holiness, though, and the real world that holiness brings about is a world of kindliness, joy, love, harmony, and the like.  These intangibles of God are accompanied by dreams of happiness, chosen for us by the Holy Spirit as we get closer to Awakening and lose some of the madness.

Giving up madness in favor of seeing the real world is a fairly slow process in most cases, because we must give up judgment.  We learn to give up judgment and turn to the Holy Spirit for all of our words and actions, because He alone knows all circumstances—past, present, and future—that impinge on a given choice.  We are not infallible; the Holy Spirit, being God’s Guide for us, is.  The Holy Spirit guides surely, in every instance.  And only our own stubbornness prevents us from seeing that His is the way that we would travel, indicating the words to say and the actions to take.  Any decision is made easy when we leave the judgment of what to say or do to the Holy Spirit.

We would know holiness.  We would leave insanity behind.  And we would walk into the sunlight of the real world with the Holy Spirit.  We assert this now, but why is it so hard to consistently choose to follow the gentle way being pointed out to us, at every point, all the time?  We are stubborn children of God, used to our own way as pointed out by the ego.  But the ego doesn’t mean us well, and we choose amiss when we listen to this part of our belief about ourselves.

Choose holiness today.  To do so means that we must also choose to turn aside from madness and walk the way pointed out by the Holy Spirit.  Give the Holy Spirit a chance in this time.  We will certainly not be disappointed.

The Reason to Avoid Judging

“Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination.  But vision sets all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway of Heaven’s laws.  What if you recognized this world is a hallucination?  What if you really understood you made it up?  What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal?  Could you have faith in what you see, if you accepted this?  And would you see it?

“Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are.  This is the healing and the remedy.  Believe them not and they are gone.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-20.VIII.7-8)

We all too often lapse into judgment, even though this is one of the handful of emotional reactions that will keep Awakening far in the future.  It is easy to judge, easy but so wrong.  As this quotation makes clear, we are judging an illusion, and how much sense does that make?  To judge an illusion is to make wrongs for ourselves, and the wrongs are based on nothing more than a bad dream.  Our brother has not done the thing that we are inwardly (or outwardly) criticizing.  The action is only illusory, and so it has not really happened at all.

If we can refrain from judging and make sense of our dream, we will realize that we are seeing something that is only hallucinatory.  And what good does it do to denounce an image in one’s mind?  The image has no credence at all.  It is totally unreal.  But in the denunciation we are ruining our chance to heal our minds, and with a lack of healing, Awakening is still a long way off.

Our minds need healing, and this comes only through forgiveness of the wrongs that have not really happened in the real world at all.  This is the way of A Course in Miracles.  Forgiveness of our brother.  We take his hand, and we also take Jesus’s hand, and together we walk through this illusory world, and on to the real world.  It doesn’t have to take any time at all, though it frequently does take time, sometimes a long time.  Pray today that as our judgments cease, the time will be shortened, and we will be healed of our mental sickness.  Our insanity.  Our madness.

When we overlook the words or deeds that our brother says or does, we will have overlooked what had been keeping us from our blessings.  We don’t make real, in our minds, what has been said or done, because then it becomes impossible to overlook.

We would not have it impossible to overlook.  Take time today to turn aside, gently, from judging our brother.  He needs a holy relationship with us to heal himself, and we need our holy relationship with him to heal ourselves.  Forgiveness is healing.  Judging is not.

It is just that simple.

A Voice

“[T]he soul in its maturity has ascended into union with the voice for God.  That is, it has ascended into the depth of its Self.  It has learned to stabilize itself in that internal silence.  It has, through time, experienced that process of transformation in which even the conscious mind is no longer thinking of itself, but is informed from the depth of the true Self, the depth of the soul, the voice for Love, God Herself, Christ Itself.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Lesson 23, Page 273)

There is a voice that we hear internally when we have walked far enough on the pathway back to God, the pathway to transformation and Awakening.  This is not an audible voice, but almost whispers that seem to emerge from our depths, where God is.  Choose Only Love talks of this voice in its sixth volume.  

This voice, a voice that we can adopt as guidance, is a form of Inner Wisdom.  We can dialogue with it, when we get quiet.  We can test it out, be sure that nothing will harm anyone–for if there is harm, this is not a voice from God.

We are not set adrift in this world to fend for ourselves.  Angels surround us, God loves us with a love greater than human minds and hearts can comprehend.

Let us be grateful that we are not left to our own devices, for the ego is such a device, and we have learned long ago that the ego does not mean us well.  The ego is madness, and now we would walk in surest sanity, listening to a voice that arises from our depths and from the heart and mind of God.

Invisible Thread of Perfect Love

“Here you and I live intertwined by the invisible thread of perfect love.  There is no longer room for the temptations that one day led my beloved to think that she had to focus her life on survival, recognition of others, acceptance of peers, life plans–things that had nothing to do with the blessed expression of her being.”  Choose Only Love, bk.7, 1:I.  Message from Jesus.

“My beloved” in this quotation is the intimate way that Jesus speaks to us, and in this case he uses the feminine pronoun. But he does not mean to exclude the masculine. He speaks warmly of the perfect love that we share with him, a love that moves his heart as well as our own.

Many of us have sought kudos in this world–the perfect career, popularity among our peers, acclaim–but these are false values borne of the ego. A true, loving expression of one’s being does not extend to egotistical acquisition. A true, loving expression of our being is all that is ever asked of us. And we know when we are being true to ourselves, when we are being truly ourselves.

Success is not measured by the world’s standards, and the closer we walk with God, the more convinced we are of this. Jesus would have us work with good values, and truth and love are at the top of his list.

Jesus

“Child of the wind and the sun, delight of my heart!  Remember now that the being that you really are is what every truth-seeker has been looking for and that for which every lover yearning for eternal love longed.  The desired unity was union with your being, a union between you and me in which we both merge into an ‘us’ that extends the reality of love.”  Choose Only Love, bk.7, 1:I.  Message from Jesus.

When we relax into our being, the being we share with all others–including Jesus–we are blessed immeasurably.  If we don’t relax into our being, we continue to question what we truly are, asking incessantly, “What am I?”

These questions have an answer when we are home in God.  He (also She) takes us by the hand, metaphorically, and draws us into His heart.  When we merge with God, we know all that is good for this life.  We have our needs all satisfied.  We are at peace.

Jesus is very much a part of this, for he is our leader in all matters spiritual.  He does not intrude if we can’t accept him, but he can do so much more for us if we open our minds and hearts, and believe in his reality as a Saviour of all peoples.  He is asking for a personal relationship with all of us, and here we see what has been said in traditional Christianity since its inception.

All religions can benefit from greater knowledge, and it is knowledge that Jesus gives us.  

Be open to his telling of truth.

Ripening

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:

Ripening up we are

I say to friends

lamenting their advancing age.

And this I do believe:

tending our soul

as if it were the tree

planted center

in the garden

our most important task.

The sapling grows

but no label announces

name and climate zone

and when we can expect to flower

or fruit mature.

We give or withhold water

and sometimes perform pruning

to let the sun shine in.

We’re told to tend the tree

and if our tending

measures true

we grow our tree

‘til fruit delightful to the eye

from branches hang

and ripened to perfection

is gathered for the holy feast.

Meeting God in Silence

“The great trick of evolution, if you would permit me to use such a term, is to grow the soul’s awareness so that it rests in silence, and yet does not need to withdraw or turn away from the expressions of creation to do so.  That is, it need no longer judge the body.  It need no longer judge the world that you see around the body.  It need no longer strive to ascend to some spiritual height in which all things disappear.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Lesson 23, Page 272)

The body is often seen as an impediment to our spiritual life.  But here Jesus is saying that the body is simply an expression of creation, and we do not need to make it “disappear” so that we can ascend to God.

We rest in silence, where God speaks to us.  Saint Teresa (formerly Mother Teresa) said the same thing, that God speaks to us in silence.  I think God is very much with us, that He guides us in literal terms.  Our own mind/heart can form words that are guidance from the subconscious, those things we say to ourselves without putting any thought into them.  And these too are one way that God reaches us, for He is in our depths.

Turn off the radio today.  Talk to God in the silence of our own heart.  This is prayer, and a very potent way to pray.

He will make Himself (also known as Herself) known in the best way possible to meet us where we are.  He will not push us to ascend some height if we are not ready.  But He will accelerate our course when we are ready, for God acts quickly when the time is ripe.

Land of Heaven

“Beloved, you have come to the land of Heaven.  Tell me:  what other purpose could the way of being have but to serve love?”  Choose Only Love, bk.7, 1:I.  Message from Jesus.

When we come to Book 7 of the series, Choose Only Love, it is certainly hoped that we have walked the whole way back to God. And if we have been able to take to heart what has been said in the preceding books, we will have found a lasting place in our hearts for God.

We are asked just to “be,” which is an effortless way to live. Our times of effortful living are past. We did ask for struggle, as have learned, but the struggle can come to an end when we give God first place in our lives and we seek to let Jesus into our lives more and more. He asks for this early in the series, when he promises us that he himself will solve our problems.

We are well attended. If we believe the promises that Choose Only Love gives us, we are well situated to begin a new life.

Let’s ask for this today–if the new life has only just begun. Walking back to God is not meant to be an endeavor that depletes us; it is meant to be a glorious pathway with ever more joy coming to our lives each day.

Funerary

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:

Early in the morning

while darkness still wraps

its cloak around you

go out

carrying the oils and spices

of your tended life

in careful vessels

searching for the place

told you by those who heard of it

from someone else

who

party to a conversation

overheard the details of direction

and generalized a map

which

holding in your hand

you see

has not the compass points

but only wavy lines

to indicate the route to take.

When I Am an Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple

From Celia’s Images in a Reflecting Pool: Journal Entries Inspired by A Course in Miracles. Copyright 1995.

Years ago in an especially sensitive moment, I saw a phonograph record jacket that depicted a glamorous, vivacious woman in a cherry red, sequined dress, and in a smaller picture off to one side, a subdued, paler, more timid version of the same woman holding a violin.  

I imagined that as a little child I would have wanted to grow up to be the glamorous woman, but that my parents wanted the artistic violinist.  Playing the violin had actually been one of many ambitions of my father for me.  

Looking back, I know that the path my parents set me on was what the innermost “I” wanted in my lifetime.  Certainly my talents are not “show biz.”  But there is still that urge to be a freer sort of person than would ever have passed muster in my childhood home.  

These fantasies are akin to the poem, “Warning,” in which a woman looks on her life longing to be a braver sort:  “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple,” Jenny Joseph says.  

Might I take this to heart?  Isn’t there time to redress?  And shouldn’t I begin right away?

Every day is the first day of the rest of our lives.  

And possible of new beginnings.

Bread

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:

I file through recipes

to search for Grandma’s

special rolls

and practice to perfect

the taste remembered

and then like Grandma

add pinch of this and that

to make original

the handed down

old recipe from

prior generations

and all the while

wondering how much bread to bake

or how much kneading

of my soul before I’m

made into some bread

communion worthy.

Birthing Christ

“You are birthing Christ.  Nothing can prevent it from occurring now.  Merely trust each moment.  Surrender into each moment.  Embrace your commitment to Reality.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Lesson 22, Page 270)

Jesus is trying mightily to bring us to enlightenment, the next step for humankind in our world.  It is very reassuring that here he says, “Nothing can prevent it from occurring now.”

The time that Jesus heralds is not the time of our world.  “Now” may be off in the future.

But we have been given hope, and with this we can express our appreciation to Jesus, our elder brother (as called in A Course in Miracles).  To evolve, we need surrender to God, and re-surrender, and re-surrender.  There is literally no end to it, but traveling in this way makes for happiness.

God would not have placed us on Earth without a plan in place to give us guidance as we make our way back to Him.  Be grateful for the small advances that we make.

The end is assured.  And that end is God Himself (also includes the feminine).

Awakening

“You may wonder how you can be at peace when, while you are in time, there is so much that must be done before the way to peace is open.  Perhaps this seems impossible to you.  But ask yourself if it is possible that God would have a plan for your salvation that does not work. Once you accept His plan as the one function that you would fulfill, there will be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not arrange for you without your effort.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-20.IV.8)

“. . .[W]ithout your effort”:  What a happy thought!  The Holy Spirit will take us by the hand and lead us home, however meandering our pathway may seem to be as we strive to reach Heaven on earth.  Evolution is not a straight line, and our passage through this world to the Awakening will not always be smooth either.  We will have glimpses of Awakening that do not last (most of us, that is).  We will have to realize, over and over, that the Holy Spirit’s guidance is what we want, and then we will have recommit to following Him in every instance of daily life.  Even those who have Awakened do not consistently follow guidance.  Even the most advanced teachers.

To assure our continuance in the Kingdom, though, we need to follow guidance consistently.  Otherwise, we are once again making the decisions, and we make decisions so erratically that no smooth passage through this world, emerging into Heaven, is possible.

God’s plan for our salvation does work.  And it is that we take our brother’s hand and, with him, form a holy relationship that saves time as we seek to reach salvation.  We forgive him totally, never to renege on the forgiveness that we offer him.  And we also forgive ourselves in this process.

The bumps and jolts on the pathway are inevitable, at least for most of us.  There is occasionally an understanding that reaches perfection in a moment, knowing that the Holy Spirit’s way involved the complete relinquishment of our own judgment.  But this is comparatively rare, for we have been trained by the world to rely on our own judgment.  We have been trained that we grow up honing our judgment, to stand independently on our two feet.  This is an erroneous way to live; it will not get us what we want.  The world trains in exact opposition to the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit says to relinquish judgment as the necessary accompaniment to salvation.

We often feel demoralized when the way to Awakening seems so elusive.  But God’s way, outlined in A Course in Miracles and encapsulated in this brief meditation, does work.  It works every time.  And we only have to work it to see that it works.  There is no reason to fret that the way seems long; it will open out as we train our minds to think of the Holy Spirit and His way as we walk through this world.  The best is before us.  Let us traverse the impediments as surely and as sanely as we can.  And then the madness that we have embodied will fall away.

From Darkness into Light

“Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and emaciated, weak and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember not the light, do not leap up in joy the instant they are made free.  It takes a while for them to understand what freedom is.  You groped but feebly in the dust and found your brother’s hand, uncertain whether to let it go or to take hold on life so long forgotten.  Strengthen your hold and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-20.III.9)

A picturesque account of what we have been through in this sad and troubled world.  We have been like prisoners, lost in our own misery, bound by the imprisoned will that we found when we separated, in illusion, from God.  We were trapped by a part of our belief about ourselves, our ego, and we suffered long and hard.

Now is the time to put all of this suffering behind us.  This quotation gives us the solution to separation by A Course in Miracles:  take our brother’s hand, and in the holy relationship that we form with him, we are saved at last.  We are free when we are one with our brother; our brother saves us, and we save him.  There is no better way that we can reach salvation in its ultimate form of Awakening, no better way that we can save the time still left before we are made ready to rejoin God.

Prisoners don’t become happy all at once, when the imprisonment has been long and cruel.  Most of us won’t achieve a stable happiness all at once, but achieve happiness we will, over time.  And this is happiness that will not desert us as we walk forward into the sunlight with the Holy Spirit as our Guide.  He knows how to negotiate the darkness, as well as how to lead us to the sunlight.  

Listen to Him today.

Fish

From Ann Glover O‘Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:

Pilgrim meets pilgrim

on dusty road in sandaled feet

and stopping as do travelers

to rest

one makes a wavy mark

in sand with staff

and just as nonchalantly

draws the other

a complementary line.

Both gaze at image

neither yin nor yang

and punctuated eye

creates the fish.

Wordless now the two

reluctant to abandon

their unifying art

continue meditation

on the routed lines in dirt

wonder at a multiplying message

where none became some

and all became more

and bits and portions gathered in

made up a travel bag for each disciple

going out in pilgrimage

to find if he could fish

or be a fish

or even teach someone to fish.

Miracles Become Natural Occurrences

“You are a unique expression of the selfsame love that exists in all creation.  Thus your expression of love is as unique as your Self.  It is in the cooperation between unique expressions of love that creation continues and miracles become natural occurrences.”  (A Course of Love, C:20.30)

We are meant to live in a miraculous world, surrounded daily by a higher realm that meets our every need with miracles attuned to supply and demand.  We are unique individuals, each of us, but when we live in cooperation with each other, this uniqueness suggest that being different is not so much a fact as is our sameness.  We are all equally special, or, seen in the reverse, none of us are special at all.  We are simply entities of the creative endeavor of a limitless God Who knows no bounds to His loving of us, His creatures, of us, His Sons and Daughters.

We were born of His love, and when we extend the love that is at the core of our being, we soon live a life that is miraculous in the extreme.  We no longer take nature for granted.  We no longer take the dawn of a new day for granted.  We no longer take our health as a given.  We know that the love that sustains us also provides for us.  

And we know that that love comes from God Himself.

Orthodox Question

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:

Who are you?

asks the priest

high plumed in radiant robes.

Who are you?

a second time

repeats the accent verb.

Who are you?

comes again

and echoing through ears

which having heard

the triplicated liturgy

more times than three

reflect upon the ancient worship form

that claims the right

of sense and sound

to challenge chattled children

of the Sacred One.

And we who hear the story

may ponder poverty of thought

when we so gladly give reply

with surname, nation, or career

and watch slip through our fingers

the gem-stoned opportunity

to show our true identity.

Giving & Receiving as One

“Others represent the accidents waiting to happen, love that is not returned, the withholding of things you deem important.  This fear that you feel in relation to others is as true of those you hold most dear to you as it is of those you would call strangers.  It is the very independence of others that makes your own independence seem so important to you.  Dependency is not consistent with your notions of a healthy self.  What, then is the alternative?

“The alternative is believing in giving and receiving as one.”  (A Course of Love, T2:7.2 – 7.3)

We are in unity with others, but we often don’t encourage this unity because of our fear of these same others—even our most significant others.  We think that being independent of needing other people will serve us best.  We think being close with others will lead to an unhealthy dependency.  But is this in line with A Course of Love?

Absolutely not.  We give and receive in tandem when we follow the dictates of ACOL.  We know that independence is not so very healthy, that the opposite of independence is not dependency, but a heartfelt joining of ourselves to other people.  We give them our love; they return our love.  The giving up of our solitary nature is actually a most joyful undertaking—when we realize that we were never meant to be isolated and alone.  We are meant to share with others, to live in a partnership with others.  Why else would the world have so many people?

We are meant to join and to share, giving up our prideful isolation in a choice to give and receive as one with other people sharing our world.  This choice will give us joy.  Can it be so wrong to choose what will make us happy, avoiding the false independent nature that has failed us so many times?

Living in Unity

“In unity, all that you desired was participated in fully by a mind and heart combined in wholeheartedness.  You knew your Self to be the creator, and loved all that you created.  You did not desire and fear something at the same time, and your desires did not change from moment to moment.”  (A Course of Love, C:18.14)

We are now living eons past the time of “first” unity.  This first experience of unity cannot really be recaptured as a sense impression now, but it can be recaptured as we move farther along the pathway back to God.  We lived eons ago in wholeheartedness, knowing ourselves as a creator, a co-creator (if you will), of God Himself.  But because of something that couldn’t really happen, but did (the “tiny mad idea” that A Course in Miracles discusses), we fell from grace into an adolescent rebellion.  We weren’t patient enough to come into the fullness of our Being, our Self.  So we coalesced around a false persona, driven by an ego that we made ourselves, and we fell into deep despair as a result.

We can return to the unity that we have forgotten.  It takes patience and abundant willingness to capture what we have lost, but the recapture is God’s intention for us, and so he is right there helping us every step along the way.

Don’t get depressed that the way seems too long and tortuous.  It may be long, but the way is not tortuous at all.  Not with all the help that we are being given.  Our way back is assured—indeed, has always been assured, from the beginning.  God’s will only takes time in the working out, and time does not really exist, for we live in eternity.

Messenger

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:

The messenger arrives

to tell the laughter

and those who bother

listening regard him

as some street-smart

stand-up comic

and muffle chuckles

at absurdities he declares

and shares

more personal examples

than they care to hear.

He goes in search of faith groups

but they are telling their theology

each to each as memorized

from ragged texts of faded ink.

He goes in search of children

and they pretend to hear

but he observes them

playing rhyming games

with words he speaks.

He goes in search of kin

and scarce does utter simple phrase

but finds himself derided

for his clothes and style

of hair and questioned

on current war debate.

Retreating to his chamber

relishes delight

remembering

the banquet he enjoyed as

honored guest

and apologizing to his Lord

he offers sorrow

that no one wished to hear

about the feast prepared

especially for them.

The Ego’s Madness in Our World

“Seek not to make the Son of God adjust to his insanity.  There is a stranger in him, who wandered carelessly into the home of truth and who will wander off. . . .Ask not this transient stranger, ‘What am I?”  He is the only thing in all the universe that does not know.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-20.III.7)

We are all insane to one extent or another, if we have not yet awakened, that is.  And most of us have not yet awakened.  This quotation gives a particularly poignant description of the “stranger” who has wandered in and occupied the place of our Self.  This stranger does not know who he is, and this stranger is our egoic self.  So we do not know who we are, even though asking “What am I?” has become the preoccupation of most of us.  We are bade not to ask of this stranger what we are, for the egoic self does not know.  The egoic self puts faith in things of this world, seeking always more, more, and more.  This is the way of the ego’s version of truth, for “more” is insatiable for this egoic self.

We need to set our sights higher, to the Guide we have been given.  The Holy Spirit will answer our query about what we are, and He will answer us immediately.  We are the innocent Son of God, occupying a self who has lost his way a little while, wandered into madness, and will eventually wander out, never to return.  This self will be transformed into the Self that is God’s Son.  And then the pain that we have known in the self that we have occupied so long will be no more.  We will know ourselves to be an innocent risen Self, at home at last in God’s world.

If we doubt this, we need only take a look at what the egoic self has made of this world.  Do we really think that this sad and dreary world is of God’s creation?  If we look in all honesty, we would have to say that either we are insane or God is.  Is it not more likely that we ourselves are insane, making a world that knows not of God, and knocks us about in hostile and profane ways?  

The way home to God may seem long, but once begun the end is certain.  And we will find our way home, never fear.  We walk an easy way when we turn to go back to God.  Our times smooth out, and we know joy again, for the dreams that we dream become happy, because these dreams are given by the Holy Spirit.

Our minds are no longer fully asleep, and we are not longer fully mad.  We will know joy again.  And in this assurance will we know peace, even in this world.

RELEASING ATTACK

by Celia Hales. Published in Miracles Magazine; Jon Mundy, publisher; Glenn Hovemann, editor.

—

I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. (ACIM, COA ed, W-23)

When anyone attacks you . . ., they are merely crying out in their own fear and insanity.  (WOM, Part 3, Lesson 31)

The time has passed when the forces of ego attacked the truth with all their ferocity.  (CHOL bk 7, 5:I)

No one who has studied A Course in Miracles can forget the first quotation above; it is a mantra.  The world in Workbook Lesson 23 (of 365) is a world in which attack rules because we have not traveled far back to God.  Our first step is to change our own attack.  When we drop attack, we find that the sword we have been pointing at our heart has a blunt end.

The next lesson is a reassurance about the attack that we still perceive from others.  The Way of Mastery says that what we are seeing from others is really coming from fear and insanity.  I have found that when I say internally, to myself, “This is just insanity,” my own insanity subsides; I don’t want to attack in return.

Finally we reach the place of Choose Only Love.  Our world has become calmer now, and attack has taken a much secondary place–if we see it in ourselves or others at all.  Attack has actually been a ploy of the ego, and when the ego and its egoic patterns have been sufficiently weakened and then dissipated, we are living in a new age, the time of Christ.  Now life will get better, a lot better.  We will find in most of our moments that we experience the happiness that God wishes for us.  Perhaps happiness has been a long time in coming, but come it does.  Life without an egoic propensity to attack–and be attacked–takes on a mellow, pleasant aspect that is the essence of God’s peace.  And where God’s peace reigns, happiness reigns.

We see this in the spirit of Christmas, which as I write is ending for another year.  Even egoic people drop their defenses once a year.  If we retain God’s spirit, we know the spirit of Christmas year-round.

And that is what leaving the ego behind does for us.

Concavity

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:

I hold with concave hands

an empty bowl

and pray as I sit

gazing at its contours

and ready space

this glad receptacle

for what might come.

I look

and pray

for all the empty bowls

and bellies sat beside them

whose pangs make known

the hollow hunger

crying to be filled.

I look again

at potter’s vessel

remembering I came from clay

and cry out “fill me

with living water

pouring down and through

the sacred round impression

in my soul

to help the hallowed hungry

fill their bowls.”

Express Ourselves!

“We have talked about the expression of feelings.  It is necessary.  For this, first we travel the path of the silence of the heart.  Then we allow being to express itself.  The manner in which this expression is realized will vary, given the vastness of what you are.  Embrace, sing, dance, cry, moan.  Express yourself!  – Choose Only Love, bk. V, 20:III

Jesus is here channeling the progression to Awakening, or enlightenment, also called Christ-consciousness or metanoia.  We are so diverse that never ought there to be any judgment about how our enlightenment unfolds.  Choose Only Love, in seven volumes, has as its purpose the healing of memory.  There is a progression to the healing of memory, for as The Way of Mastery also points out, all aspects of the mind must be brought to the light by coming up from the depths of the subconscious.

This may sound hard, but never forget that God is in charge.  And also we have help from other realms.  It is God’s will that we progress to our next stage of evolution, to Awakening, and for this our mind and heart work in conjunction.

Let our heart lead.  The message is in our feelings, and there is great depth as we touch God directly through our feelings.

He will do the rest.  God is also a “She,” and so we need to become accustomed to this terminology also.  God is also our Divine Mother.

A New Way of Remembering

“Perhaps you consider this review to be unnecessary.  However we repeat it here given the forgetful nature of your minds–a feature that won’t last much longer.  You are at the threshold of remembering fully the truth of what you are and of sustaining that memory in a continuous way.”  Choose Only Love, “Echoes of Holiness,” bk. 1, 15:III

Choose Only Love continues this thread of thought/feeling in Book IV, “Wisdom,” and so the quotation conveys important points.   We are becoming forgetful, for a time, as our memories are healed.  The healing of memory is the purpose of the seven books of Choose Only Love.

As our thoughts fill with new understanding, the old survival needs are reduced and then eliminated.  We know what is true for us by revelation from God, not our admittedly flawed thought processes.

We discover that as we progress toward Awakening, transformation, that our mind, informed by our heart, clears–and we “float” in assurance that God, in revelation, will bring to mind all that is important or necessary.

We have more help now.  And we are freer.  We no longer need to struggle in our remembering.  We can rest assured that God is in the background, prompting us about everything we need to know.

The  Challenge

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:

The boast brought forward

the challenge tossed

as one would hurl a hand grenade

to startle eyes that thought

pulled pin meant sudden death.

But verbal confrontation

is all the giant brings

as David and Gawain

and other folklore heroes

stand pondering

the greater good

and fathomless fear

that sticks them to the spot.

And we

the Jacobs and the Percevals

wreak havoc in the wrestling ring

with neither stone nor strap

nor any lethal means at our dispose

but only question ringing in our ears

demanding answer from

our battle-shy reserves.

We

called to combat

full well knowing

that conquest is impossible

and imminent death awaits

sudden resolve

are seized

and see ourselves step forward

an instinctual response

that knows we must

engage or never know

the essence of the giant or ourselves.

The boast brought forward

the challenge tossed

as one would hurl a hand grenade

to startle eyes that thought

pulled pin meant sudden death.

But verbal confrontation

is all the giant brings

as David and Gawain

and other folklore heroes

stand pondering

the greater good

and fathomless fear

that sticks them to the spot.

And we

the Jacobs and the Percevals

wreak havoc in the wrestling ring

with neither stone nor strap

nor any lethal means at our dispose

but only question ringing in our ears

demanding answer from

our battle-shy reserves.

We

called to combat

full well knowing

that conquest is impossible

and imminent death awaits

sudden resolve

are seized

and see ourselves step forward

an instinctual response

that knows we must

engage or never know

the essence of the giant or ourselves.

Peace

From Celia’s Images in a Reflecting Pool: Journal Entries Inspired by A Course in Miracles. Copyright 1995.

I am gradually giving up my habit of taking on more – more – more.  And then having to pull back.

A Course in Miracles says that the first obstacle that peace must flow across is the desire to get rid of it. (T-19.IV.A.1:1)  

How true!

Dare We?

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:

Dare we defy tradition

concerning the Creator

and Sustainer

and Redeemer

whom we love?

Dare we turn upside down

mores ecclesiastical?

Dare we pluck grain

when hungry bellies cry for food?

and dip a cup in some strange well

to quench authentic thirst?

or speak as messenger of Him

who many messengers recruits

to tell the truth

through insights

to be judged by all who hear

as to the source?

I say we must

since we complete our  trinity

on Sabbath and/or any other day

and this flat world

more circles needs.