Conflict

“Many of you believe you are on a spiritual path. You will know if that is true by your willingness to feel and experience wholly exactly what is in front of you, moment to moment. So if you have a conflict with another and you sit in your chair and decide to pray or meditate in order to change the feeling state within yourself, and you arise later and say, ‘There, I’m feeling much better now,’ but the issue has not been solved with another, nothing has changed.

“Go, therefore, to the other. Open your heart, share, and resolve. If you have offended another, ask them their forgiveness. If you have judged another, admit it. Ask for their forgiveness. It is only in such a way that you can truly heal the place of conflict within.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 80)

When we have a misunderstanding with one of our brothers and sisters, we probably don’t want to hear Jesus tell us that we ought to resolve the issue by going to that person and clearing up the conflict. But this is biblical advice also. We need to find within ourselves the wherewithal to confront, in Love, and thereby turn the experience into Love for both of us. There is no other way for full resolution. There is no other way that our meditation and prayers can truly sink into our minds and hearts.

Jesus and the Holy Spirit often ask us to do something that seems unwise to us. We are afraid of how we will be received. We are going to be embarrassed. But Jesus says in A Course in Miracles that this perception comes from a shabby self-image, and we would be done with that.

If there is somebody you feel that you have wronged, meditate and pray to know how to approach that person. Being in our closet with prayer can help tell us what to say, how to act. Prayer and meditation can determine our resolve.

Only if approaching the other is now impossible do we seek redress in our thoughts, our deep thoughts. Psychically the other will know our intentions, will know that we are seeking forgiveness on another level.

Don’t confuse ourselves about this. There may be times that we say the confrontation, the reconciliation, is impossible, when actually it is very possible indeed.

Discern the difference.

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Living in Love

As of this date on your calendar, there have only been a handful of beings who have truly lived life upon this lane, a very small handful. There are many of us that would just absolutely be thrilled if you would join the club!

I will let you in on a little secret: Until you do, you do not get to graduate. You will never leave this plane, filled with conflict and suffering, as it seems to be, until you have lived the experience of walking this Earth wholly as the thought of Love in form, with no other allegiances, but to Love. You will never leave this plane. You will never take up your cross and follow me. You will spin around again and again and again, only to be confronted by the same need to decide wholly for Love. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 79 – 80)

Jesus is here telling it like it is. We don’t “get to graduate” until we know how to live. We will stay on this plane, this earth, going around and around, often in misery and suffering, if we don’t learn to live in Love. On this plane forgiveness is all. Forgiveness will show us how to love. Only forgiveness.

Nobody else has done it to us. We have done it to ourselves, for we are manifesting our illusions, illusions that keep us tied to an existence that is not worthy of us.

Life is meant to be full of great joy, great blessings. Our only reason for being here is salvation, making the choice for Love.

Decide that real life is what we want. Decide today. Real life means that we remove the blocks to the awareness of Love, and a prime way to do that is to forgive.

We will “graduate” when our purpose here has been fulfilled. That may be a long way off, but if we live in Love here, we can enjoy heaven on earth. Truly. Completely.

There is no better way to live a life.

Forgive and Be Free

Until you fully decide to come into life as the presence of Christ, as the presence of Love, and to own each moment of your experience as wholly self-created, for no other reason than that you have chosen it from the perfect and infinite freedom of your unlimited being, life has not yet begun. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 79)

Have we truly been living? Or have we merely been existing? This is not an unimportant point. We have been creating our reality, and we haven’t known how to do that very well. We have often seen ourselves as victims of others, as victims of our experience in life.

This attitude is not accurate. We have been making the decisions that brought our experiences in life to us. We have been doing the manifesting. Just because we didn’t know how to do this very well is no reason to blame anybody else, to blame others. It has all been our fault.

Now Jesus is showing us the way to manifest, to truly own each self-created moment. He is teaching us how to live. We will not truly live until we know what we are about. Until we stop blaming others for our plight in life.

We are the instigators, the manifesting entities. We need to look with fresh eyes upon our experiences, knowing that in forgiveness of others lies our reward. They have not done anything, for they have acted in innocence, in illusion. True reality has not been affected. The harmony, joy, peace, mellowness are still here for us to dwell in. But to get to that height of passion, we need to recognize that our brothers and sisters have done nothing to us, in reality; they have just been pawns in a larger game.

Forgive our experiences and the people who seemed to perpetrate them. Forgive and thereby be free.

Listen to Our Heart

Deny not the role of feeling in this dimension, for feeling is everything! (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 78)

Jesus indicates that we have been thinking too much, that feeling is the manner of reaching God, our feeling self is all that it takes. When we are trying to remove the barriers to Love, it is through our feelings that we will discover whether or not we have been successful. Only our feelings can tell us that.

This is something we can know well. If we sense, through feelings, that we are making headway in removing the blocks to the awareness of love (as this is stated in A Course of Love), then we will be able to make adjustments if the feeling doesn’t “feel” right. We will know that we are not making headway.

That is all that is necessary. Get in touch with our heart. Our heart is where the feelings reside. And our mind will never be smart enough to understand these things. Our intellect won’t do it for us.

Listen to our heart as we seek to determine if we are removing barriers to love.

Just listen to our heart.

Freedom

. . .[W]hen you look upon another person or another situation or another thing and realize that nothing in this world has the power to hurt you and nothing in this world has the power to take anything from you, you are free. . . The seeker is no more and only Christ walks this Earth. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 78)

What would it take for our Self, as the Christ Self, to walk this earth? We do have to release barriers, within ourselves, to Love. We have to let Love pass through us. Our experience of energy, through the chakras, changes. We realize in such moments that nothing in the world can hurt us, for we are enthralled by God. He is calling the shots. He is in charge.

We are free when we extend the Love that He has first given to us. We would not know how to love if we had not first experienced it from God Himself. “Because He first loved us,” which is a quotation from the New Testament. We can do all things now, because we are ready for living as created beings created to love. We are free to experience the world in a new way. Jesus even says that we have transcended birth and death, and that we seek no more.

Seeking is a constant thing for us, until we recognize that Love is all that we want. When we surrender to the Love in our heart, we are surrendering to God. A necessary step that will make everything that follows palatable. Our lives will smooth out.

We will be at home.

Let Love Live through Us

The Truth is very simple. It is not complex at all. Get out of the way, and let Love live through you. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 77)

How do we get out of the way, and let Love, let God, live through us? This takes a humble mind and heart. A sense of surrender, knowing that when we cast our cares on Him, He will keep us safe. If we let fear intrude, we have let the patterns of the ego intrude—even if the ego, proper, has been vanquished from our being.

We need just to rest in the assurance that all that we need for daily living will come to us, a gift of God. It does now mean, of course, that we do nothing.

Believing this would be a belief in magic, and a testing of God. But every busy doing on which we are sent will seem easy. Effortlessness will reign. And we will be happy.

This is how life is meant to be lived. This is how we live the Truth. The Truth will dawn suddenly upon the prepared heart. And the heart is prepared when we turn our affairs over to a Higher Power, turn our affairs over to God. He wants to show us how to work, how to live. The effortlessness by which all things come to us is simple indeed, not complex.

We are making the decision to let go and let God.

And this makes all the difference.

Parting in Relationships

If a twinge of sadness arises because you recognize that two bodies in space are now going to go to separate parts of the planet, as that twinge arises, you will recognize it as the effect of a mistaken perception. You will move within, to the place in which all minds are joined. You will remember that your fulfillment does not rest in gaining love from another, but in giving Love to everyone. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 77)

Parting from significant others is painful. But there is a way that we accept whatever comes. There is a way that we can wish these significant others godspeed, and send them along their way. How might that be?

We need to know that we don’t gain love from others. We gain love from deep within ourselves, where God dwells. This is truly all we need to know, but perhaps we don’t understand what it means. Our fulfillment comes from giving love, for we have first received it from God Himself. If the person or persons to whom we give our love changes, we need to realize that the change happened for a reason. Often it is because our vibration changed. We were no longer on the same wavelength as the significant other.

Knowing this takes acceptance. We don’t easily give up the ones we have loved. But sometimes life asks this of us, and when we acquiesce, we listen to God’s guidance, and we are satisfied. We know that there is a larger plan at work.

Ask to see that larger plan today. Shrouded in mystery, we often have to turn to our faith to be reassured. But glimpses of reasons will come to us, for God does not keep secrets from His children. It is only our finiteness that prevents, sometimes, the whole truth from dawning on our minds.

Love

All you need is Love. Love fulfills all things. Love heals all things. Love transforms all things. Therefore, remember well: You, and only you, can become the cause of your fulfillment, your peace, and your completion of time. This requires that you do nothing save remember to establish the connection with your Creator. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 75)

We can wander around, willy- nilly, feeling unfulfilled, or we can remember to reconnect with our Creator, with God, often during the day. I know from experience that attempts to “feel good” by positive thinking won’t do it. The connection with God is the only thing—the only thing—that ensures a good day. When we fail to spend time with God, we fail ourselves. Only when we have received an infusion of Love from our Source, often, will we feel good constantly. Love is the only way.
“Love fulfills all things.”

Yes! This quotation from Jesus says it all.

All too often we think that this is the same old answer that we have heard, and we dismiss it. This is a grave mistake! Why seek to reinvent the wheel, when Jesus has walked the journey before us. The fact that he reconnected with God is the assurance that we can and will do so also. But time wears on wearily, and the world is sad and sometimes frightful.

When we surrender to the Love that is found in our hearts, the world takes on a new aspect. We no longer fear what we will encounter on any given day. We are at peace. And we feel fulfilled in our daily walk.

Let Love lead the way today. Let Love lead the way everyday.

Bliss

When you have experienced in relationship with anyone or anything a moment of bliss, a moment of a peace that forever passes all understanding, a moment of fulfillment so sweet and so sublime that no word could touch it, much less express it, what you have experienced is on the flow of the Love of God through you. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 75)

God is living through us, and so when we experience this bliss, of the Love of God flowing through us, He is actually acting, in Love. This is the way that we are meant to live, conscious of Love, conscious of God. The external has not caused this bliss; it is all internal. So we don’t have to think that we “need” the person who seems to be the instigator of our sense of Love. God is our sense of Love. The external person has just been the catalyst.

This sense of Love streaming through us will not only be bliss, it will be an example of the peace that passeth understanding. And we will feel fulfilled in that moment of bliss and peace. Our dissatisfactions with life will seem far away and very insignificant. We are at home in God in such moments.

These moments won’t last, at least not at the same sublime feeling. We have momentarily stepped out of our illusion and out of our dramas. But when we return to what we think of as everyday life, we will remember what we experienced. We will want this experience again. And we can have it. This has been a glimpse of Christ-consciousness, of enlightenment, of Awakening, and our road ahead will be easier—for we know what is possible.

We may not always live at such heights of bliss, but knowing what is possible will act as hope for us.

A Quiet Heart

Fear is the act of disconnecting your cord from the only socket that can truly satisfy you, and running about trying to plug it in to somebody else’s or something else’s. I would ask you to consider this one question, as you look upon the whole of your experience: Has it ever worked? Can it ever work? (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 74)

The only “socket” that can ever satisfy is our attachment, in the center of our being, our heart, to God Himself. We have long known this, but we “forget,” and have to be told again. We must quiet our minds and hearts in order to sense God’s presence, in order to feel His warmth. If we are trapped in a drama of fear and judgment, we are cutting ourselves off from the power that is in that “socket.”

Because God is within, as well as without—in just everything and everybody—He is unable to get through to us when we are in dire conflict. This is why the peace that passeth understanding is so important. A quiet heart opens the way to get God’s knowledge flowing into our personal, or “little,” mind.

If we look outside ourselves for peace, we will never find it dependably. Sure, we may be able to distract ourselves for a time, but the problem will recur, and maybe it will recur with greater force than previously. We are free of fear and judgment when we declare them to be in our past.

God helps us make that determination. And to make that determination, we must look within. Trying to find an answer in the outer world is an incomplete answer. The truest Answer wells up from deep within our soul, and it takes us Home to God right away, seeing a little bit of Heaven here on earth.

Heaven Blesses Us with Peace

Having free will does not mean that you can elect to take the only curriculum that life is offering you in every moment. It means only that you do have the right to put it off yet another day. And each time you put it off, you slumber in your suffering. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 73)

We would “slumber” in our suffering if we put off confronting God with every fiber of our being. We need to be fearless as we approach living in this world. How might we effect this?

We look to living in the present, not putting off the eternal questions of Love, peace, joy, harmony. When we are rooted in the moment of the present, there is no fear. And fearlessness is the primary characteristic of mastery. When we make the decision to stop entertaining our own dark places, when we ask Heaven to bless us with peace, we are making a decision that will change the content of our days. We are coming Home to God. We will eventually be approaching mastery.

When the day goes badly, and our heart is pounding, our bodies jittery, what then?

This is fear personified. The best that we can do is to turn within, to the peace that is always present inside. Know that this peace is not far away, because God would comfort His children when we ask. We need simply to rest in the knowledge—
and it is knowledge, not perception—that outside of our jittery bodies is a truth that is currently eluding us. We allow God to act upon our confusion. We allow Him to grant us peace.

Enough times of simply turning away from fear will do the trick. Enough times of allowing God to touch us with His healing balm will promote the fearlessness that we all want.

If we are distraught today, know that there is a better way. Know that God is trying to get through our tangled emotions. Quieten down, in any of the ways that we have used previously—meditation, prayer, quiet reading, even distraction.

We will know God’s peace, because He wishes it for us. He wishes it for us just all the time.

Finding God

When you choose to surrender, to give up the game, to give up the dream of trying to resist the Truth that is true about you always, you will become a mere channel, a mere conduit. You will become no more a seeker, for you will have decided to have found. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 72)

We do not want to remain seekers forever; we want to find. When we open ourselves to the God within, we put ourselves in a place where we can declare that we have found. And this is very sweet indeed. Much of our reading has been seeking behavior. We have wandered in and out of treatises, ancient advice, channeled writing. This has not been wrong; we had to find something that would speak to our hearts. But if we don’t want to remain seekers forever, never to find, we must start listening to our own hearts, sans the advice.

God speaks to each of us, just all the time. His way is clear, when we get out subconscious fears and judgments set aside.

Set aside fear and judgment today. Let God know that we are serious about listening to Him. Not that we will never read again, but that we will bring our own insight to the table. Then our reading can really speak to us.

Resting in God

At times, within your hearts, there is a longing to follow me. If you would but heed that longing, if you would make that longing primary at all times, your own desire will bring you wholly to where I am. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 71)

We are all—every one of us—residing in the Mind of God. Our longing to follow Jesus to where he is, is a laudable desire, but the way we think of it is a little misdirected. He is in that Mind of God also! Of course, we imagine that he has moved a little bit beyond us, and indeed he has. But our locus of operation, where our lives originate, in the Mind of God, is exactly the same.

So we have not moved an inch when we have come to where Jesus is, and he indicates elsewhere that we will laugh when we realize this. Jesus’ sense of humor is palpable. And he uses it to good effect in The Way of Mastery.

We don’t have to go anywhere to experience God. We are everywhere and in every way surrounded by Him, for He lives through us. We are part of Him. And He experiences right along with us.

Trust in the Mind of God to give us the grace to know that all is well. Jesus tells us not to be afraid about anything at all. If our trust seems weak, then we need to expand our love, and the trust will follow.

Friend in Jesus

There is no one who shall receive these words who has not already looked upon me and seen the face of Christ within. And likewise, I look upon you and call you ‘friend.’” (“The Way of the Heart, WOM, Lesson 6, Page 70)

Jesus is coming close to us today, in these words that will comfort our heart, in the quotation for today. He knows that we have need of him. He would not allow us to lean on him forever, for he will finally resign from being our teacher. But until our guidance is sure, he will allow us to ask him for what would work best.
Jesus does not want our love for him to breed dependence. He wants us to depend only upon our God, personal relationship to the Almighty that all of us have when we reach down deeper, within. We have the will to reach God when we are not afraid of Him. And, as Jesus, we call God a “Friend.”

Know that Jesus comes upon a single unequivocal call. He promises this in A Course in Miracles. If the need seems dire, call today. And be sure to say a silent “thank you” when he blesses us, graces us, with his presence.

Friendship is a two-way street. Be sure that we are good friends to Jesus, too.

Don’t let him try to forge the relationship out of whole cloth.

A Gentle Voice

“Peace then, be with you always. Let peace pervade your being at all times. Know that you are safe in the Love of God that arises from that great Source of mystery and would move through you with every breath you breathe and every word you speak, until you hear only that impetus of guidance that wells up from the depth of your being as a gentle voice that you trust completely. And you will know the freedom that you seek.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 69)

We are always needing guidance, and especially when we think that we are on the right pathway. We fool ourselves, and we think that we can do it ourselves now.

This is never true. We always need the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or the Christ Self. We are never so smart that we can forge our own way through the thicket that surrounds us. For in this world, there are many temptations, many erroneous ideas that will ensnare us.

Ask today. Just ask.

And the Way will unfold for us, bounteously.

Bliss Calls to Us

Surrender is the cultivation of the recognition that your happiness can be found only in the submission of your will to the will of God. For your will has been in conflict and struggle and limitation. God’s will is that you live without conflict, in peace, joy, fulfillment and happiness. It is called bliss. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 68)

Why is surrender necessary? I have long known that it is, but the why has not been clear. Now I think it is. Only in surrender to God do we start living in constructive ways. Our little, personal, finite minds have not known where to turn when we try to take things in our own hands. We flounder, we make many mistakes, we aren’t happy.

Our will and the will of God are actually identical, for we want what we make us happy and allow us to make a contribution in this difficult world in which we live. We want to see others happy as well, and we would like to do something to effect that. Salvation is our business, our only true business. And when we turn to God, in abject surrender, He takes us by the hand and leads us out of our quandaries.

We live in a freer fashion, for our non-surrendered will has been imprisoned. God could not let His universes self-destruct, and our power is such that perhaps this could happen if He allowed it.

Surrender repeatedly, for this is necessary. We walk away from time to time, read things that confuse us, fail to follow guidance that comes to us unbidden, and even bidden.

Our way home to God includes surrender to His will and way. There is no other way to make the changes in our lives that need to be made.

No other way at all.

Nothing Is Happening by Accident

. . .[N]othing is happening by accident. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 68)

We can experience God when we allow Him to dwell, observed, in our very bodies. Of course, he (and we) are not truly bodies. But in this world of form, we experience that, and it is all good. Allowance opens the door to God’s action in our lives. It is the best thing that we have going for ourselves.

Elsewhere in the Way of Mastery, Jesus says that allowance is one of the keys to good living. It gives us salvation, the ultimate salvation of Awakening (Christ-consciousness). Allowing things to influence us is a matter of some faith, at least in the beginning, before we believe concretely that there is Another World, a place beyond us to which we go at death. Then we do not have to have faith, because we “know.” Jung said the same thing a few years before his death.

When we know of God’s reality, then our allowance for Him has taken hold.

Then we are living lives of growing joy and abundance.

Let us allow God to have His way with us. Let us let Him take the controls.

Following the Spirit

From my “ponder” series. . .

I don’t know when I encountered the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It must have been a quiet experience. I do know that when I was working as a media coordinator in the public schools in North Carolina, I went about my duties in the library with one ear tuned to what I was feeling. The Holy Spirit talked to me through my feelings. Sometimes it seemed that I was even prompting to turn left or right at a given time, not sure what I would see when I turned.

It was all a bit unnerving. My preacher had previously told me that Holy Spirit doesn’t tell you whether to turn left or right at a stop light, but my experience was different. To me, guidance spoke in particular ways in my everyday life.
Things went along well when I tuned in. The “feelings” were somewhat different from what I would term “intuition.” Intuition can be a “knowing,” and the nudges I got were not a knowing, because I didn’t understand what would transpire when I made a move in the direction prompted.

My Unconscious mind, where I think the Holy Spirit resides, must have been very close to the surface during that early period of learning how to listen. And the listening continued for long years, culminating now in a sense of knowing. I don’t get those indications of whether to turn right or left.

Is something missing, or am I just following guidance another way?

Ask to Do the Best of Which We Are Capable

The Holy Spirit can gather millions of beings to come to you in many planes, because it knows you will not distort the Love of God by usurping God’s position and putting yourself upon the throne. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 66)

We need to give God His due. We are not living alone in this world; we have Him backing us up, living through us. And this is always true, though we make mistakes that are not of God’s origin in the narrowest sense. We are living as finite gods, and so we do make mistakes. Ask the ultimate Authority to heal us of these mistakes. Ask to live, in peace, in His world.

If we sense that many people are looking in on our world, perhaps this is not paranoid. We live in glass houses, and the unseen world can spy on us. This has always been going on, but it may disconcert us if we are just coming to realize it. But near this passage Jesus is telling us just that. He is telling us that we can be an example for untold “millions.” Let this not go to our head, but let us sense the responsibility of it all.

Ask to be a good example to the disembodied souls who look in on us. Ask to do the very best that we can in this false world, where illusions reign, and the world is not truly real. We can make it real, in our estimate of it. And it certainly does seem real when we knock on wood.

Ask to do the best of which we are capable.

We can do no more.

Mysteries

The world would teach you to be a doormat so that you fit in and do not ruffle anybody’s feathers. But as you become empowered, one way you will know that it is occurring is that some people will not like you. You will push their buttons just by walking into the room, for darkness abhors light. It is that simple. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 66)

If we find ourselves rejected by the world, or even by a few individuals in our world, let us rest easy. There is a bigger reason for this. It may, of course, be our fault, and we can ask to have this remedied by God. But it may be that we, by just who we are, are pushing others’ buttons. And that is not our fault.

What a revealing group of statements by Jesus! I had thought that if people didn’t like me, it was just bad karma. Something had happened in a past I could not remember that was affecting relationships today.

And this may be the case. This may be the case when we push others’ buttons. Their souls are remembering when maybe we did them wrong, and they turn from us as a reaction from further hurt.

We do the same. We may find ourselves unaccountably nervous around certain people, and we do or say things that hinders the good relationship. We may be remembering when that person was not good for us. And maybe that person is not good for us now.

There are mysteries in the world that surrounds us. Let us put the best face that we can on this world.

And then let it go.

Now We Know What Love Is

No matter how deep you go into the depth of God, and no matter how deep you achieve an awareness and consciousness of union with God, what God is remains forever beyond your growing capacity to understand God. It is like an ocean of infinite depth. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 64 – 65)

We will never, if we visit a thousand worlds, know God completely. His Godhead is the All, and we can know, intuitively, only facets of His personality. He shares with us, but the sharing is not a sharing of equals. We are creations of the Creator. It is true that we are a part of Him, in that he differentiated His essence to form entities without number, an infinite number. The magnitude invites humility in us. Knowing that we are God, but we are not all that God is, can give us a realistic estimate of ourselves.

We are growing in understanding. Not so long ago, most men and women of faith believed that God stood apart from His handiwork, that we (and the earth) were His handiwork, and that the distance between ourselves and our God was so great as to be unreachable. Now we know that we can have a direct knowledge of God, and this knowledge is known to us because in the age of Christ we are not so afraid of Him. His magnitude, when we were sinners caught by the ego (read “Devil”) was beyond us. We needed a Comforter to bridge the distance, and that Comforter was the Holy Spirit. Now we know that this, a holy spirit, is a part of us, and we no longer quake in our boots at the thought of approaching His majesty as just our humble selves. We know what love is, and we sense that we are loved just as we are, mistakes and all. It is awe-inspiring. And humbling at the same time.

Let God talk to you today. He is in the silence of our meditations. He will comfort our aching minds with wisdom of our hearts.

Let the heart tell us this today.

Let God Act in Gentleness in Our Very Souls

I and I alone am the source of what I experience and perceive. I am not a victim of the world I see. Everything I experience, I have called to myself, plain and simple—no excuses, no ifs, ands, or buts. That is the way it is.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 64)

We are one with Jesus, as we are one with all other beings in our world. We are responsible for this “pebble” (Jesus’ word) called “earth.” There is one Self only, and this Self is a manifestation of God, insane though we have been in manifesting Him. He is not insane, and so we could not fully experience God in our illusory separation from Him. But we have never been victims. We did just what we wanted. We thought it smart to develop a worldview that left God out, and in the doing of it, we suffered mightily. Our suffering was chosen by our souls to lead us back to knowledge that what we were about would never work.

God was not punitive. He just had to have universes that were based in Love in order to keep that Creation from self-destructing. We didn’t know this, for our finite minds could not contain the ramifications of this in our delusions. We projected the ego as the Devil, and we imagined a cosmic war going on. This has never been, but we didn’t have, in separation, a certain way of knowing the truth.

Now we do. We live in the time of Christ, and certain things that have been hidden until are now, now are out in the open. Our way back is seen as the smooth path that it is. We need fret, worry, suffer, be in pain, no more. Our Self, seen as individuated entities apart from each other, will gradually return to the fold, knowing that suffering is unnecessary. We will let God have His way with us, learning through rewards, a way that is vastly superior to pain.

Jesus says in A Course in Miracles that it is not necessary to learn through pain. Believe him, and watch the agonies of this world recede.

Let God act in gentleness in our very souls, and our way will be smoothed for all time.

It Is in God’s Hands

. . .[Y]ou suddenly realize you are not the maker and doer, that you can accept responsibility for anything and everything because through you all power under Heaven and Earth is made to flow, to manifest the Love of God. So, in short, it is in God’s hands, not yours. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 63)

We are not the doers, at least not in our personality. The Doer is God Himself, Who dwells deep within each of us as One. We are, of course, One, being part of the one Self Who is manifested in the world. That’s why harm to another actually harms the self, for there are not two, but one.

The world is meant to manifest God’s Love, and it is only in our desire to see if we could create something better than He that we wandered away into separation from Him. It was never so, but we were free to be lost in the illusion that it was the truth.

Now we know better. Our separation from God was only in dreams of illusion, dreams that have played out on the stage of this world, and perhaps others. We have never left God’s bosom, and when we allow His Love to encompass us again, we will be very close to enlightenment, a stage of life, coming to all of us, that will make manifest in our world the truth that Love is the All, the Everything. God, as we know, is Love, though to think of love as an emotion is to miss the point. Love is a fact, a reality, a truth, that permeates the whole, and now we know this in our inmost being.

The eons have passed in which we walked in a fog. Now time is fleeting, and we are all passing into the knowledge of God, past perception. Now we know what was only a shadow heretofore.

Now we know. What are we to do with this knowledge? That is the only question left to answer. Let intuition rise to the surface, and that secret, too, will be revealed.

Allow God’s Gentle Direction

You come to see that you cannot think a thought without disturbing the farthest of stars. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 63)

Our thoughts contain worlds, and influence worlds. We have not believed this truth, not because it is so unbelievable, but because we feared the ramifications. If we know this, ought not we to do something major with our lives? Ought we to realize that we can affect the very course of history?

We are not powerless, but very powerful. And as bits of foam on the tips of waves in the ocean which is God, we will grow in grace as we realize how powerful we really are. When we allow God’s direction to manifest in our lives, we will accomplish much that would have seemed impossible previously. Of course, we won’t know how strong our influence really is, and perhaps this is wise, for the ego might try to win back our allegiance by guile. The ego is very cunning, and its patterns are still a part of our mind. The farther away we can run from these patterns of the ego, the better off we will be. And the greater our influence really will turn out to be.

Ask for guidance, for we do not want to harm anybody with our thoughts and feelings. We don’t want to adversely affect anything, and if we allow God’s gentle direction, we will not cause ripples in the ocean that is our home in God. We will know His magnitude, and this magnitude will erase the cunning of the ego in its false majesty.

Subconscious Cleansed from the Bottom Up

. . .[Y]our life is no longer your own to dictate and control. But that rather, you have given it over the Source of your own beingness, to that depth of wisdom in the depth of the ocean that knows best how to bring about what is required to push up the dross from within your consciousness, so that you can release it.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 62)

We are becoming enlightened by a process by which the subconscious is cleansed from the bottom up. We don’t try to dictate how this will come about. Our part is simply to allow it to happen by not focusing on the wishes of the dying ego. Allowance is the way that Jeshua (Jesus) moved Jayem to enlightenment, as described in The Jeshua Letters. His own conscious willingness to let go in surrender was all that was needed, for his own subconscious had been largely cleansed by the time that Jesus approached him, perhaps through the Eastern wisdom that he had read voraciously for years.

Likewise, allowance is our way, too. If we try to remain in the driver’s seat, we will miss the point as well as miss enlightenment, Awakening, Christ-consciousness.

God must be allowed to have His way with us, and in this ultimate surrender, He blesses us with the knowledge of His love and His guidance. Our pathway will be as clear as our next step, for we see the pathway only step by step. But we have said “yes” to the whole route, and in so doing, we have fallen into Jesus’ arms. His embrace, as described in A Course of Love, heals. And it is this embrace that contains the whole universe(s).

Abundance

You have chosen what your experience will be and you have manifested it. There is nothing new about that. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 61)

We have always manifested, though the world has been slow to recognize this.

Manifestation, or the law of attraction, has gotten popular acclaim only in the work of Rhonda Byrne, author of the film and book, The Secret. She traces the roots of the law of attraction, also known as the law of love, back generations. Some earlier folks did not want the masses of people to realize how powerful their thoughts and feelings were, and only a few were knowledgeable. Now this has changed, a groundswell of change that is identified particularly in Jesus’ The Way of Mastery (The Christ Mind Trilogy), the third book, The Way of Knowing.

Now the truth of our thoughts and feelings and their manifestation is becoming common knowledge. We might think that we have discovered something magnificent, but we have been doing it all along, as Jesus tells us in this quotation. We have not been directive about it, though, and now many people are being directive. We miss the point if we dwell on the material, because material blessings are often wanted by our ego, and we are trying to let the ego pass away from us. Abundance is a vital part of God’s plan for us, and His abundance is best asked for by intangible blessings in the emotions of peace, joy, happiness, serenity, mellowness. If we have these intangible blessings, the material will normally take care of itself without our even having to ask.

Blessing from God

From my “ponder” series. . .

Does God play any role in the law of attraction other than seemingly being a genie in a bottle?

The law of attraction entered the mainstream just a little over ten years ago, primarily encouraged by Rhonda Byrne and The Secret (both book and film). The initial writing seemed to downplay any role that God might have in our lives. The focus was, quite a bit, on egoic thoughts and material possessions. To her credit, later writing by Rhonda in The Power and The Magic does make a return to traditional spiritual values of love and gratitude, respectively.

The law of attraction is often a secular way of receiving God’s blessings when we are too conflicted to hold a belief about a deity. But I think it is a blessing from God to keep us on the right track. I think God doesn’t ultimately care if we disbelieve (though He can help us more if we have belief in Him); he doesn’t have an ego to need the praise that traditional religion often asks us to make. So, using our minds, even though they are not spiritually attuned, will often get us what we want. This is the bottom line of the law of attraction.

Having a faith in God can bring us a much more fulfilling life, though. Just trying to think positively, and trying to feel good all the time, won’t do it for us—and it is these points that are often made about how to attract what we want.
What we want will fail us unless there is a deeper Mystery to ponder. Getting what we want is not the final answer because at some point we will be saying, “Is this all there is?”

A full surrender to a Higher Power (as we understand this Power) will ensure a better life. And this is classic spirituality.

Believe

The universe is always answering your questions. And when you ask unclear questions, you get unclear answers. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 60)

Jesus’ practical advice shines through today’s quotation. “And when you ask unclear questions, you get unclear answers.” Yes! We need to get clear in our minds (and hearts) what we really want, then ask, believing that our agreed-upon goal will manifest. Then we only need wait (and not wait long) for the manifestation to appear.

Believing is the crux of the matter. And when we don’t really believe, then we are trying to force something into our reality that is not in our contract for this lifetime. Our innermost Self knows that this way is not for us; we are only with a request. When we truly believe a thing, then we are on the beam of the pathway for our lifetime. We need do no more, for we will see it become ours.

What are we committed to in this lifetime? Spend a while contemplating this important question. Let it permeate the subconscious mind. Then, with a clear mind, revisit the question. If we have turned the decision of commitment over to our deepest mind, we will have a knowing that has eluded us until then.

Thought of Love in Form

You are here to remember that you are the thought of Love in form. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 59)

Allow God to live through us without restriction. He is doing so, of course, but our little or personal self can mess up the loveliest reality. Living in illusion, in the dream of a world that doesn’t really exist, we are trapped in matter that seems to hold us firm. But this way of viewing our lives is so defeatist. We are not trapped in anything when we let go and allow the Higher Power (think God) to have His way with us. Until that time, we make a thousand inroads into oblivion, lamenting our very existence on earth.

We are in form, and when we live with this form, we ultimately become the elevated Self of form (as A Course of Love says). We become this when we have allowed Christ-consciousness to spread throughout our holy minds. Our hearts will guide our minds to this better place. And the heart knows only Love. And Love is of God.

The way back is effortless. Sure, we don’t believe this now, but after Christ-consciousness has transported us to a new reality, we will believe it.

Allow God to make this difference in our lives today.

Love Is the Elixir

Rest assured, whenever you believe you have not succeeded or not completed some decision fueled by desire, it is because you were simply not wholly committed—or you decided to change your mind. And when you change your mind, you literally change what you experience in the world or the solar system in which your self spins. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 5, Page 56)

Our mind does control what we experience. If we are not firmly in the driver’s seat, for God makes a difference, we have some power in our creations. If we are constantly changing our minds about what we want to experience, we will go through oscillations that seem never-ending. We will also have conflict, as one idea rubs against another.

There is a better way. We need to let desire be informed by the Holy Spirit or the Christ Mind, and if we do this, we will have a way of living that will emerge as our heart’s desire. Conflict aside, we will be well-equipped to deal with the many disturbances in our world, this world of illusory separation from God. Our way forward will be magical in a good sense, not in the lamentable way of viewing magical thoughts that A Course in Miracles describes.

Our desires fuel what we bring into our little corner of the world. And when we allow God to act in us as He would will, we know that His will and ours are inseparable. We know that we never really wanted anything but His presence in our convoluted lives. When we feel His Love, we are transported beyond ourselves, into something that offers us our dreams.

Love is the elixir. Let Love fuel the choice of our desires, and keep our will firmly rooted in the Holy Spirit or Christ Mind. God’s choices then give us a value to everyday experience that has heretofore been lacking.

And suffering is no more, for, as illusion, it retreats into mists before the sun.

Let God’s Glory Be Reflected in How We Live

Of myself, I do nothing. But my Father, through me, does all things. And it is very good. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 4, Page 55)

We too can step aside and let God’s direction flow into our lives. After all, we are composed of “God-stuff.” He is living through us, and when the separation has been healed, we will know it with a certainty that puts all confusion to rest. Our confusion will melt away, and we will be home, in God’s arms.

Our desires direct what we do. Ask those desires to be filled with God’s grace. We are immersed in Life when we feel our desires. Pray that our desires might be worthy of us—and worthy of God. A nearby statement says in WOM, “. . .[L]et the petals of the rose blossom within our holy being.”

We are not used to thinking of ourselves like this, in this exalted way. We are so used to denigrating ourselves, calling it humility. But true humility does not disenfranchise us. A false humility will mean that we have a poor self-image, and while self-images are actually a false concept (in that no image is needed), we ought to rise up to the best that we have in us.

God asks no less of us, that we let His glory be reflected in the glorious lives that we live.

Born of the Spirit

For as you take up your rightful place, you become a vehicle through which the voice for God will creatively touch the lives of countless persons that you may never ever meet physically.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 4, Page 55)

What an exalted notion Jesus has of us! We might cringe, thinking that we are being humble, but this is simply another evidence of our playing small. Jesus calls us to greatness, not greatest borne of the ego, but greatness borne of the spirit. We are children of God, created in His image, and when we give up our separation from God (for we have this in our power), we will grow all the way up to whatever glory we have in us.

We will attract others, whether they be many or few. Our persona will radiate a good will that is attracting. Nobody likes to interact with an ego, lest of all our brothers and sisters who are in our close circle. Egotism puts off everyone, though when we are lost in the ego, we don’t recognize how off-putting this way of being really is.

We do appreciate Jesus, and here he indicates near the passage for today that he knows this. He too appreciates us, and our best efforts, and will support us in every worthy endeavor.

Ask for Jesus’ help today. He won’t be long in coming to us, holding our hand, and walking along. Our best efforts will then be multiplied, with such a companion as he.

Gratitude

Reposted from my discontinued Ponder blog:

Most spiritual traditions tell us that being grateful for our lives and what we have in them is a necessary component of a full life. If we believe that God needs our praise, then I can see that expressing thanks to Him in our prayers would make sense. But I have had more trouble understanding the “why” of gratitude since I don’t believe God needs us to tell Him how wonderful He is. (Jesus says this in A Course in Miracles.)

Of course, I can understand that we need gratitude. It opens our heart. And, not incidentally, it makes us just feel good. Writing about the Law of Attraction, particularly Rhonda Byrne’s The Magic, says that without gratitude our wishes for a more abundant life will fall on deaf ears in the universe. But is not a rote recall of things we are grateful for just seem to be manipulation of ultimate reality?

Our heart needs to be in the right place when we are expressing thanks for the blessings of our life. We need not to be manipulative, we need not to say “thanks” just because it does feel good.

There is a higher reason for gratitude.

I know that I appreciate my life, and that is a good start. Gratitude does warms our heart, and maybe that is reason enough to be diligent in feeling and expressing gratitude for our lives.

Gratitude does keep us in the right pathway back to God. Separation healed, we are on our way.

Note

Note: I’ve decided to discontinue the blog entitled Ponder that I began last week. Instead, I will occasionally post points to ponder on this blog, Miracles Each Day.
The received writings by Jesus will still be front and center.

Thank you.

Love, Celia

Christ Self

If you arrive at home, it will mean that you will have had to give up being a seeker. You will have had to become one who has found. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 4, Page 53)

Christ is a term for the real center of the Self, and the Christ Self is the individual whom we become when we have given up extraneous wishes and rest in God. In the vicinity of this quotation, Jesus says “Christ incarnate” about us. This term, applied to us, may arrest us quite a bit, for we are used to that term being applied to Jesus, and who among us would compare ourselves to him? But Christ is an umbrella term for all of us who have given up the ego, are walking into salvation, even ultimate salvation—Christ-consciousness. There is no better way to walk, and we would be wise not to be afraid of what will be our greatest blessing.

Marianne Williamson, teacher of A Course in Miracles, echoes what Jesus is saying here, in a well-recognized passage from her book that popularized A Course in Miracles; the book was A Return to Love, published decades ago now. She, and Jesus, here, caution against “smallness,” and all of us have a little desire to play small, because we think that we won’t get into any trouble with God if we are little spots on the horizon. But it isn’t desired that we “play small.” We need to grow all up to the best that we can be.

A Course of Love indicates that we aren’t to just go along placidly, attempting to do good in this world. We are to create a new world! And this won’t ever happen if too many of us remain small.

Let our fears drop away. We are Christ Selves, and this more exalted persona need not make us afraid. We can draw on the One Christ in our daily lives, and this nod to a larger reality will save not only us, but the world.

Guidance

What do I truly want? What is it in my heart that keeps calling to me, keeps compelling me? (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 4, Page 50 – 51)

When we ask the Almighty to give us guidance about what we truly want, we are asking Him to give us what is the will of God. He wants us to know how to proceed; He doesn’t wish for us to stay in the dark. We will start knowing, much better, when we take the time to ask for divine influence.

We may simply “be,” in love, with all other creatures of God. A Course of Love talks of the way of Mary, of being; and the way of Jesus, of doing. And ACOL says that all of us will eventually follow the way of Mary. This means that putting our arms around our loved ones, and just simply giving them love is a gift of the greatest magnitude. It is being par excellence.

What does matter is how we accept ourselves, warts and all. We are not perfect, and it will take Jesus to correct the mistakes in our soul’s path that we have been unable to correct. (This is indicated in both A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love.) This correction, because Jesus is gentle, will be gentle and nothing to fear. Jesus can give us much help along the way, as we seek to walk a better path. And the Holy Spirit/Christ Self do their part as well.

We are not left dangling.

Waves Rising from the Ocean of God

The mystical transformation that carries you from feeling yourself to be a disempowered little drop of foam on the edge of a wave to the sense of freedom and empowered living that flows from the Mind of God through you to express only beautiful creations filled with majesty, power and miracles is willingness. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 4, Page 49)

Jesus compares us to waves rising from the ocean, with God being the ocean. We are no more separate from God than a wave is separate from the ocean. We are a part of God.

The willingness mentioned in this quotation is called just a “little” willingness in A Course in Miracles. When we give ourselves to God, He takes our bending to His will and grows it tremendously. We may have heretofore felt thwarted in some of our projects. If we give the details of our lives, even the practical details, over to a Higher Power, we will know a success unexpected in common hours. And we will know God.

It is through knowing God that we know what next step to take. When we have walked far along the way, knowing becomes a most intimate part of ourselves. We don’t have to stop and think. We just know what to say and do. We act in innocence in our world. If our initial impulse would hurt anyone, then we need to go within and recognize that our response is not, in fact, from God.

When we, children of God, act on His side, what we say and do is not harmful to anyone. It is permeated, through and through, with the innocence that is our very being.

We Need to Blossom

And God wonders, “Well, it is interesting. These roses that I have created seem to have a mind of their own. As the elixir I tried to give them rises through the stems, they tie themselves in little knots and only a little bit of the elixir reaches out. So the petals never quite blossom fully.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 4, Page 49)

The “tie themselves in little knots” is, of course, exactly what we do when we worry. And many of us are prone to worry a lot of the time.

How do we get beyond this worry, this tension? We cast all our care on God. We allow His life-giving sap to rise in our limbs, and when we do, we know the expansion that Jesus is talking about in this quotation.

To expand is to grow. And that oft-quoted idea from the Talmud is that an angel leans over every blade of grass, saying, “Grow, grow.”

We are like that blade of grass. Our growth is extension. We might not get it right the first time when we try. But our batting average rises exponentially when we let God have the reins of our life. The Holy Spirit speaks for Him; let the Holy Spirit into our lives. Then the growth that we will experience, the expansion, will be noble and good.

And we will know what it means to truly live for the first time.

Wanting Aright

“Then as you drive home and a Mercedes pulls up alongside you, you cannot help but turn and say, ‘God, I wish I could afford one of those.’ Then you think, ‘Oh, God! I can’t have that thought, so I’ll just drive my old Volkswagen down the road. But I’m being a very good spiritual person.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 4, Page 48)

Jesus is saying here that we try hard to be spiritual, trying to purify our own thoughts even as we walk through out days. But do we succeed in such a personally driven desire? Aren’t we leaving something out?

Leaving something out will lead to resentment, surely the least lovable of characteristics. If we want the Mercedes, we don’t have to decide that such a wish needs to be squashed because it is “unspiritual.” Maybe we need to be honest about all of our secret wishes, even the ones that seem “unspiritual.” Then we are truly getting somewhere.

It is not the Mercedes, or our desire for it, that is bad. It is a false, egoic-driven way to be “better” in spiritual matters than we are. This leads to spiritual pride, self-righteousness, and, of course, resentment.
Acknowledge the desire. That is all that is needed. Acknowledge the desire, and then ask God if it is a legitimate desire borne of good will. If not, then is the time to alter our wishes.

What We Decree, Is

Remember that what you decree is, and the thought you hold in the mind will be reflected through the nature of your experience. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 4, Page 47)

The sentiment in the quotation is an affirmation of the law of attraction: What we decree, is. This truth lets us realize that we have to watch our thoughts, even getting out of bed in the morning. The way in which we begin our day will decide whether the day will go well or ill. Of course, we can always start the day over, as A Course in Miracles tells us. But wasting time is not to be desired (something also ACIM says).

Answer honestly, first thing in the morning, about what we want. This will put us in the right relationship to God, Who can then lead us gently to purify our thoughts.

Ask what is best that we want.

And then be assured of an Answer.

Nothing to Fear in Guided Desire

You have learned, therefore, to fear desire because that fear is the effect of fearing yourself, and that is what cripples you. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 4, Page 46)

Our fears have done us in, mostly just fearing ourselves.

Now is the time to change, to alter trajectory to a new and glorious word. There is nothing to fear in desire, IF it is informed by following guidance. If we think we are not looking to guidance, then we are just falling back on asking the ego what to do. And the ego will always lead us wrongly.

We are right in loving ourselves. The lack of self-love also means that we don’t love God in the way that we ought, for if we cannot love ourselves, then we also think (wrongly) that our love for God is something too elusive to join in faith.

If love of God does seem elusive, then look to what in our lives we do love. One woman, in a story told my Norman Vincent Peale, said that she knew that she loved her little nephew. And Norman said to her that this was where her mission lay. In loving the nephew, she would come to see from whence all Love comes, the very Godhead Itself.

We have not trusted ourselves to know where to turn and what to do, and this psychological disturbance has caused much inner turmoil.

Make the decision today to reach that which is higher and more all-encompassing than our little egoic self; make the decision for God.

Healed in Mind, Body, Spirit

Healing requires the willingness to feel desire, to see it as good and to see it as holy. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 4, Page 46)

We are in charge. We can listen to guidance, and thereby give up at least some of the control. But we remain in the driver’s seat. What we say goes, for we are creating our reality.

Of course, it is best if we open to guidance, the Holy Spirit, the Christ Self, the Higher Self, God. We simply are not aware enough, in our finite minds, of all that we need to do to create the best reality. We are limited that way.

We know too much to let the ego rule, and that is why we no longer seek guidance of this false persona. True, we can lapse into egoic thinking, and thereby lose our way, but do we really want to risk this? I think not. We want to be healed in mind, body, spirit. And our desire to be healed fuels the changes that we need to make in order to be healed.

Healing is, ultimately, Awakening, enlightenment, Christ-consciousness. Before we reach that milestone, we will see glimpses of what that mellow, heartwarming state of being really is. We will be led, ever so gently. It isn’t as though we will be hurled into reality, and this is something that A Course in Miracles makes plain. Our pathway will be gentle, though of course, because we are fallible, there will be some bumps along the way. Nobody, well, almost nobody, escapes the ego in one fait accompli. Escaping the ego is a gradual process.

Ask for healing today. Know that when we ask, the healing is already on the way. God has just been waiting for this opening.

Love in Which We Swim

If you were to walk down one of your city streets and to truly look into the eyes of everyone you see, would you not recognize that death seems to have already made a home in the minds of many that are living? (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 4, Page 45)

Yes, I too have had this experience, seeing death in the eyes of a loved one, a family member. There was a glazed-over expression, a deadness that seemed to me at the time to reach her very soul. And she lived for several more years, and so actual death was not imminent. Jesus says that all of us reading these words has had this experience.

I have often wondered what I was seeing. Now Jesus’s words in this statement bring home to me again what I experienced long ago, looking within the eyes of a loved one. I have often wondered if my loved one had not experienced God in her lifetime. Certainly she had led a life that would seem circumscribed and a disappointment in many ways. Was failing to know salvation one of her problems?

We don’t have to live like this, for we are especially fortunate to have Jesus’ newly channeled works to help us live well. If we sense our own eyes as being too dull, let us ask for a surrender to God that will remedy this death-like reflection. We need God, and He will rush to our aid immediately, for the Godhead knows His children. I believe that God knows his children, for I don’t subscribe to the idea that God doesn’t know what we are about because we live an illusion.

Ask for encouragement today. I think this is all that any of us need, encouragement borne of the Love in which we swim.

Hero’s Journey Is Our Journey

As you know yourself to be, you are the effect of God’s desire to extend Love.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 4, Page 43)

Yes, we are the extension of the Godhead as Love. We just fell into separation, wanting to explore how we might be different if we “forgot” that we are Love. We didn’t know what a magnificent entity we could be if we remained in Love. Yet God chose this pathway for us, along with us. It was a mutual decision. We will return to Him, ready to be embraced by Love, much more knowledgeable and much more mature than new souls who had previously not embarked on any journey.

This is the “hero’s” journey. Ultimately, we return to where we have been. And there, T. S. Eliot, the poet, says, “to know the place for the first time.” This is what life is all about, to explore, to make mistakes in our ignorance of the whole picture, to finally know that God is all we want. Jesus says this elsewhere in WOM (Christ Mind Trilogy), that he is still constantly wanting to know more and more of God, still progressing as an entity. He encourages us to move fast if we want to be where he is, because his place in the universe is not static. He will yet be farther along than we, if we hesitate.

God created us as a way to extend Love. His Love acted in the cosmos to individuate portions of His Self so that He could truly experience existence. Neale Donald Walsch, in his conversation with God series, describes this well. Neale goes on to say that God in His totality would be as unknowable as “nothing,” if He did not differentiate His Self into component parts. Yet we may believe that, like a hologram, each part (each entity) contains the Whole. So we can reach deep within, and intuitively, just “know.” This knowing takes us a very long way on our pathway back home.

We Are in Union with God like Waves in the Ocean

You must make the decision to desire—above all things—awakening into perfect remembrance of your union with God. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 4, Page 42)

In an excellent metaphor, Jesus likens us, as individual entities, to waves that have emerged from the depth of the ocean. The ocean is the All Who is God. He asks to identify with God, with the ocean and its depths. We do have uniqueness as waves, and our uniqueness is celebrated in The Way of the Heart. This will sit well with all of us as we emerge from the ego.

We like our individuality, as it is part of what we are, what we embody. In this, we are affirming the magnificence of God’s plan to differentiate, or individuate, all of us as entities that operate, often, seemingly on our own. He will use the inner Being to direct our pathways, though. This inner Being is called the Holy Spirit by A Course in Miracles and the Christ-Self in A Course of Love. It is simply recognized as our inner self by The Way of Mastery.

This analogy, of us and the ocean and its waves, from The Way of the Heart is especially apt and also especially beautiful. The imagery is superb. Jesus knows how to communicate with us, to reach our heart.

Let him.

Still Heart

Note: The last post ended the first part of Out of the Maze, a book I wrote some years ago (and is available as an e-book link from this blog). Now this blog will consider The Way of Mastery for a while, beginning with Chapter 4 of that book.

“For in truth, there is not a time that I am not with you.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 4, Page 41)

Jesus is here echoing something that he said in A Course in Miracles, that he is as close as a “single, unequivocal call.” Do we believe it? I think often the answer is “no.” Yet he says that he holds our hand as we walk along the carpet back to God. He says that this is no “idle fantasy.”

I, for one, believe him. I have had enough miracles of overwrought turning to peace that I know whereof Jesus speaks. Jesus knows what we need before we ask, but it is good practice to put into words what we want. Articulate our need; don’t just cry, “Lord, Lord.” Articulate what you would have him do for us. This paves the way for him to act.

Jesus is spirit, on the Other Side, and we don’t know how spirit can be anywhere and everywhere all at once. I used to say that Jesus was cloning himself, but being spirit, that is probably not necessary. He does need to establish a focal point of attention for his consciousness, though, and it is likely that his ability to do so enables him to assure us that he is with each of us whenever we make a “single, unequivocal call” to him. I doubt that many of us, entities here or on the Other Side, have the ability to direct numerous foci of consciousness just all the time. Jesus is very advanced, a very advanced entity.

Take him at his word. Ask for help the next time an upset looms on the horizon. When calmness comes, know that he has stilled our heart.

Quiet Answer

Note that while a request to remove anger may be granted immediately, it is more likely to be a slow process. Giving up all our angers requires a complete relinquishment of self-will (in the egoistic sense) to the better way of the Spirit within. And it requires attunement to the Divine at the moment in the heat of anger. Do not fight the sin (error)! That will only make it stronger. Instead, withdraw into one’s heart and mind and seek the solace of God’s solution to the situation that so troubles. Avoid the quick retort; know that this impulse is fueled by fear (stress) and is unworthy of a child of God. If we fall down on the pathway, know that God is ever ready to pick us up and set us aright again. Forgive self for the lapse! It does no good and much harm to chastise one’s self harshly and in the throes of guilt. Ask for divine assistance and it will be forthcoming. Above all, be grateful for the surfacing of anger. It is the only way for the boil to be lanced, the false self to be undone, and the better way available to all of us once again.

If problems assail us one by one, two by two, or more, please know that we are living in error. This is the human condition. Jesus says, though, that we will have freedom when we give over all problems to the one solution—the Holy Spirit. He will impress upon our minds the solution in a quiet answer without fanfare, a quiet answer that leaves no one the loser. Until every problem is given over in this way to a Higher Power, the essentially same “problem” will arise repeatedly in different forms. To keep a problem, moreover, is to make it great, past the hope of accomplishing a solution. God would not have this so for His children. In the Holy Spirit’s sight, though, problems are little and “. . .worth no more than just a tiny sigh before they disappear. . . .” (T-26.II.7:4)

If God’s Son in truth is innocent, then God’s justice would hold nothing against him. When we fail to offer the same justice to our brother by seeing instead that he is not due true justice, that he has done something not worthy of forgiveness, we judge against ourselves as well. Madness, as Jesus says, only seems terrible; in truth it has no power to make anything. (M-17.9:1-2) Justice would say to our brothers, “Choose again. This thing you decry is false and not reality at all.” Then our brother is granted complete justice as an innocent, though mistaken, son or daughter of God. We forgive, though we, strictly speaking, do not need to do so at all because there is nothing to forgive. Illusions need to be simply dispelled, and all will be as if they had never been.

Anger

When we recognize that our minds are one, that the mind that is in one’s brother connects to our own, it is a very short step to eliminate attack, because we recognize that the attack is upon ourselves as well. And eliminating attack will eliminate guilt, the reason that we have been driven mad and into this world of illusion.

This new way of approaching life may not come readily. We first may find our anger rising more easily from the depths because we have been sensitized to the fact that it is there. How can we eliminate it unless we are first made aware of it? As one comes closer to living in the fully spiritual life, the tiny inconveniences of living, the nagging doubts and negative thoughts, the scraps of anger, will seem more burdensome to us than before. That is why saints have historically viewed themselves as the blackest of sinners: They are more conscious of the tiniest of errors. So too will this dynamic occur as we make our way along the spiritual pathway. Do not, therefore, lament the awareness of anger within; open up to feel it and then bid it leave forever. Think you that the Holy Spirit would not grant this request, so in line with God’s will for us?

Egoic “Devil” Is a Mirage

One point in the deluded sufferer’s mind of attack needs to be addressed. Not only will we have trouble believing in the essential innocence of our brother, but we will believe that A Course in Miracles is deluding us as the tool of the “devil” as well. The Holy Spirit will therefore not be seen as God’s emissary, but as the voice of evil, cloaked in “good.” This is the essential aspect of the Course that Jesus says will cause us trouble; we will believe that he is misleading us. But is he really? Isn’t it our own projections that are the culprit here? We think the “sin” within is actually perpetrated by following an external demon, when in truth the demons are all within–products of our deluded mind. This is all that we are really dealing with. The devil is a myth, a projection from within of the “evil” we have seen there. And it was all a mirage–nothing more. A mirage that we can discard as invalid as soon as we accept the truth that we are dreaming in chaos, living with a diseased mind that in truth wants fervently to be sane again.

Jesus explains this dilemma in two succinct sentences. Referring to the Holy Spirit, he says, “What could He be to them except a devil, dressed to deceive within an angel’s cloak. And what escape has He for them except a door to hell that seems to look like Heaven’s gate?” (T-25.VIII.7:3-4) Words like these are the reason that the early portion of the Course must be carefully studied, because without this preparation, the ego will react with such fear that the experience will be more traumatic than beatific.” (T-1.VII.5:8) Trauma we can leave behind if we only trust Jesus and the Course a little longer. Suspend egoistic judgment of the parts that frighten, and patiently study the whole.

Jesus and the Holy Spirit will bring us out of the tunnel into the light, and into a world of Reality that sparkles and shines unlike anything seen since we fell asleep. And the Awakening will be gentle, once all the steps on the ladder have been retraced. Before the steps have been taken, there indeed may be a revelation of some startling proportions, a revelation revealing the end. But to get there the means are needed, and Jesus in the Course carefully explains those means. (T-1.VII.5:11)

Jesus’ Example

We must never forget that we and our brother are always “in this together.” If we imagine that we can be treated unfairly, we are trying to combine our innocence and his attack. The world doesn’t work that way. Because projection makes perception, it is our own attack thoughts that have prompted the cry of “unfair.” Attack is simply a mad reaction, and the notion even if a “fair attack” is without meaning. Moreover, we do our brother an injustice when we blame him for what we perceive as unfair attacks upon ourselves. We see him as guilty, and thus damn him, figuratively, to a hell of our own making. We have consented to this attack, for whatever reason, good or bad. A Course in Miracles says, “Walk you the gentle way, and you will fear no evil and no shadows in the night.” (T-27.I.1:3)

Even Jesus’s own suffering is an example of this dynamic. He did not share his tormentors’ view of attack (that it was “fair”) nor of his friends and apostles (that it was “unfair”). Thus he did not strengthen the attack in any way whatsoever. And a short while later he demonstrated that resurrection (for all of us, not just him) always follows death, showing that death is essentially an illusion of this time and place only. Jesus made no defense at all, the posture that he recommends for us as well, for to react defensively is to acknowledge that there is some evil therein to be defensive about.

So in the days following death and entombment, Jesus appeared in a body that could manifest itself among the apostles behind shut doors, and could walk along a road and almost not be recognized, and could “break bread” and eat. Surely he had entered a realm of living about which the rest of us know nothing. But the most important point was that the cross had not hurt him in any lasting way at all. By this truth we see an example of defenseless living wholly without reproach. Jesus says, “Let it [the body] receive the power to represent endless life, forever unattacked.” (T-27.I.10:6) In order for this picture to be true, we must not let the past intrude, much as we must not let the picture of Jesus’s crucifixion intrude on the glorified body that he occupied in the 40 days on earth following his resurrection.

Yet healing is to many a threatening idea. We cling fast to our sickness, even unto death, for we still blame our brother for the suffering that we, in actual fact, have allowed ourselves to endure. Withdraw the blame, and part of the reason for sickness (i.e., the reproach) is gone as well. Only the healed can truly pardon, because their (formerly) sick bodies do not stand in mute testimony that a brother is guilty of attack upon one’s self. And because only now is eternal and real, the illusory past has vanished, taking its causeless suffering with it.