Faith Is of the Heart

“Readers who have not moved away from their desire to learn something that will feed their minds or egos will seldom continue to this next level. The next level brings with it the same situation the reader encountered in receiving the Course, but the reader will now encounter these situations in life. The reader is no longer only a reader. Their experience of this Course has extended beyond reading and beyond the classroom situation. Now a time may come when studying truly seems to be in order. The guidance provided by their reading may seem to come and go and their desire to rely on what they have “learned” will grow. They may desire to backtrack, review, or begin to highlight passages to return to again and again. New questions may arise and a desire for feedback or discussion grow stronger. This may also be precisely the time when the reader is so caught up in experience and learning “in life” that return to a group or classroom situation feels next to impossible.” (ACOL, A.26)

As we read A Course of Love, going through different phases, we reach a point that out learning/discovery moves into the outside world. We learn/discover from what is happening in our lives. But this learning/discovery is helped along by what ACOL has taught. We are applying what we now know. We will be the better for it.

If we resist this change, we will be resisting the whole progress of ACOL in both our mind and heart. And we don’t want to do this. Allow our mind/heart to be moved along by the progress that we have made. Resist nothing. It doesn’t matter that we don’t learn/discover in the old ways any longer; what we have now is infinitely better—a choice for what the heart will teach the mind. Our wholeheartedness, mind and heart combined, is the result.

We will likely be tempted really to study ACOL, intently and repeatedly. This might not be wise, for it is a return to the mind shorn of the heart. Let the heart lead where it wants. Be assured that Jesus’s words have inculcated the heart, and now our heart is taking the lead—as Jesus recommends for all of ACOL.

Jesus may have realized that A Course in Miracles could trip us up by providing, as he did, a treatise that gave the mind lots to chew upon. The mind can and will get tangled up if we don’t return to the intuitive longings of the heart. And, fresh from the ego’s clutches, we will wander as in a desert if we don’t let our Christ-Self lead the way. The Christ-Self best leads the way not by evidence, but by faith, and faith is of the heart.

Be relaxed today. Listen to the warmth that the heart prompts. Be assured that this is the best way, heart-filled, miracle-minded impulses that enfold us in God’s grace.

Dear God,

I would feel Your warmth today. This mystical sense welcomes my mind, even as it reassures me of the truths of the heart.

Help me, always, to live a good and clean life, supported in this endeavor by the truths that have come to me unsought. Thank You for guiding me so precisely.

Amen.