In the Flow in the New Age

“Not knowing what you know, is, in essence the way of The New.  When the unknown becomes the known, the solidity forms, and so in The New, what is known will be known in this fluid way, a pulsing in and out that will keep it free from being structured into knowledge ‘of.’”  Mirari

Basically, this quotation from a channeled Mary of Nazareth is a plea that we stay “in the flow.” We all know what this is, even if we haven’t given a name to it. Being in the flow means that we move easily from moment to moment, lost in the moment, a sense of easy grace filling our mind and heart.

This is the way we will live, ever more and more, when we move into the New. The New was first heralded by Jesus in his channeled work, A Course of Love.

Being in the flow is the most effective living, also the happiest. There is little else we need to know. We will be in the flow when we rest in God, living as He would have us live by not getting stuck on any one thing, in our thoughts or in our lives.

Knowings

“Knowings that sometimes are fleeting—coming in a moment without thought—and that at other times are of a long-range nature, a knowing of the way that is unfolding in time.

“Every ‘knowing’ is God-given, so there is no need to distinguish from ‘where’ knowings come, but the ways in which they come are many and varied as they encompass the whole of life.”  Mirari

“Knowings” are a way that God reaches us. Previously, we may have relied on feelings to sense God’s guidance. But if we have been faithful, His presence is more certain in us now, and we don’t need the filter of feelings to know what He is saying to us. We just know.

Both A Course of Love and Choose Only Love allude to this matter of knowing, and Mirari is right in line with this new thought. Of course, we must be careful to ascertain if our knowing is accurate. An important test is the question of harm. If what we think we ought to do might harm another person, then we are thinking and perhaps feeling, too, awry. What God gives us as a knowing is always totally benign.

Seek to move into knowing today. We can know even when our feelings are overwrought and we therefore cannot seem to find God near.

Knowing is direct. And it is a new revelation.

Jesus & Mary

“[T]hroughout the history of humanity I have manifested as a self separated into two realities, that of Jesus and Mary.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 8:II

Edgar Cayce, perhaps speaking metaphorically, said that Jesus and Mary started out as Adam and Eve.  We can’t know what this means, though we know that Adam and Eve represent the advent of human beings on earth.

Here Jesus is raising the feminine to new heights.  We have lived so long in a masculinely oriented world.  But the feminine has great value, and recently channeled writings—A Course of Love, Choose Only Love, Mirari—have said much about greater leadership, leadership of being as opposed to doing, coming from women.

We would all hope for a soulmate relationship such as Jesus enjoys with Mary.  Perhaps we all have such a relationship, if not here on earth, then waiting for us on the Other Side.

Let our minds play with the benefits that a feminine concept can give.  For one thing, feelings are often transcendent in a woman, feelings rather than the thinking of the mind. 

See what that idea can do for us today.

Spirit

“You are Spirit.  You are that which has come forth as a ray of Light from the Mind of God, as a sunbeam to the sun.  In that form-less beginning, you are consciousness itself.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 16, Page 188)

Our Spirit is what is real, and our Spirit has no form.  Our form, we can believe, came later, and because we made an ego, we have had quite a rocky time in form.  Our consciousness is one with God, though we are finite and He is unlimited.

We need to return our form to God’s fold.  If we can relinquish the ego, we will, according to A Course of Love, walk along the road to Christ-consciousness and embody the “elevated Self of form.”  Many of our brothers and sisters are expanding their consciousness even as I write, so why not all of us?  We do have some choice in the matter, though God has the final say.

When we remove fear and judgment from our range of emotions, we are preparing ourselves for God’s action in Awakening, enlightenment, Christ-consciousness.  If we feel unsure how we could ever stop being fearful, or ever stop judging ourselves and our brothers and sisters, we need only withdraw into prayer and communion with our God.  He will tell us what to do.  He wants us to move to a new, expanded mind and heart, and He will always be right with us to speed along that eventuality.

Temporary Insanity

“You have a term in your legal system called temporary insanity.  The lawyer says, ‘My client is not guilty, it was just temporary insanity.’  Rest assured, that is exactly how it is in the cosmic dimensions of your being.  Your Father knows that given perfectly free will, you have elected at times to be temporarily insane.  Knowing this, no judgment has been passed, and you have never been made wrong by your Creator.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 15, Page 179)

When we have gotten it wrong, have made bad mistakes, then God knows that we have used our free will wrongly.  He doesn’t have to forgive, because He has never condemned.  God never condemns!  Isn’t this wonderful?  We have so often felt, wrongly, that if we made a mess of our lives, He would not be happy with us.  But He knows, that given free will, we will sometimes get it wrong.

He seeks to help us at such times.  He will lift us out of the morass, lift us up, and reassure us that He never even “saw” the error.  He will help us to avoid that error in the future.  Life is a learning process, at least until we have gone beyond learning to discovery—A Course of Love concept.

God does not “make us wrong.”  We do this judgment of ourselves.  And it is wrong to judge ourselves, as it is wrong to judge others.

Just turn aside from wrongdoing, forgive ourselves, make restitution if possible, and know that God realizes that we are finite beings with limited knowledge that sometimes goes astray from what we are meant to do.

Yearning that Takes Us to God

“The mind longs to know, but the heart longs for love.  In both yearnings, united, resides the longing to be, which is not other than yearning for God.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 7:I

This quotation highlights what has often been said about A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love—the former for the mind, the latter for the heart.  Together these two books explain our yearning for God and give us a way to fulfill that yearning.  Now the words of Choose Only Love are giving us a warm and inviting way to approach God experientially.  Not intended to be a “course,” like the other two, Choose Only Love is intended for meditative reading and inspirational thought.  Read slowly, COL fulfills its purpose of drawing us in to God, giving us the sustenance to know that we are experiencing God in our daily round.

Choose Only Love is a love letter to us from God.  And He never fails us.

God Lives through Us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love Is the Answer to Our Prayers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guidance

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

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

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

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

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

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

Walk the Path of Life Hand-in-Hand

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

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

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

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

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

Turn to Quiet Center of Self

“Remain with me here, for here do I abide. The only difference between us is that occasionally you believe that you abide somewhere else. When you journey up those stairs, to begin to be distracted by the thoughts on the surface of your mind and by the sensory feedback of the energy field that comprises your physical creation, I remain in our shared heart, patiently waiting for your return.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 11, Page 138)

We are all One, and this includes Jesus, who many believe channeled this message through Jayem. Here Jesus refers to our “shared heart,” and the Self is indeed the One to which he refers.

We often leave this shared heart to go about our business in the world. We don’t touch base with our interior nearly enough. And touching base with our interior is the best way that we have to make wise choices in life. This is communing with the Holy Spirit (as described in A Course in Miracles) or the Christ-Self (as described in A Course of Love).

When we lose touch with what is inside of ourselves, we lose touch with that which can give us solace and peace. We are cut adrift.

Turn to the quiet center of the Self today. Don’t try to go it alone in a hostile and cruel illusion of a world.

We won’t succeed in living a good life if we seek to be independent and self-sufficient.

True wisdom is recognizing that turning to our Creator is the wisest decision we can ever make.

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).

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.

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.

Deep Enjoyment in This World

“You seek innocence and peace. You seek abundance prosperity and joy. But often, when you touch these things, it frightens you. Why? Because the Truth of the Kingdom requires openness, trust, expansiveness and spaciousness. It involves allowing, trusting, witnessing and letting things come and go. It involves learning to cultivate a deep enjoyment of whatever arises, seeing that all things are just modifications of consciousness itself, and then let them go when it is time to do so.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 2, Page 16)

Could we enjoy all of our time on this earth, this world? That is what Jesus is asking us to do, but to reach this way of relating, we need to be open, trusting, expansive, spacious. Being “spacious,” a concept discussed at length in A Course of Love, means that we are actually empty inside, ready to receive. We aren’t bringing our own misguided thinking to the table.

When we allow what wants to come, we are living successfully. This involves the trust that A Course in Miracles says is the primary characteristic of teachers of God.
We do not need to be frightened of our very selves. We hesitate to open up sufficiently, out of fear, and this is an egoistic reaction that needs to be eliminated. Just turn aside from the fear, not resisting it, for the force field becomes more binding in resistance.

Our consciousness IS being modified. This certainty will take us smoothly over the rough spots, as our subconscious moves to the surface of the mind to be forgiven. Our forgiveness of our own past mistakes and foibles will prepare us for God’s true blessings, will prepare for the way we are really supposed to live in this world.

We need ask for nothing more.

Jesus: “What You Experience You Have Directly and Deliberately Called to Yourself”

“In each and every moment, you cannot be a victim of what you see, and nothing is outside of you. What you experience you have directly and deliberately called to yourself. If you hold the thought, ‘I do not like what I have called to myself,’ that is perfectly fine. For you have called to yourself the experience of being in judgment of yourself. Merely look with the wonder of a child and see what it feels like and ask yourself, ‘Is this an energy I wish to continue in or would I choose something else?’” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 1, Page 3)

Jesus echoes A Course in Miracles here when he says, “nothing is outside of you.” This is the idea that we are projecting our illusion, that the mind projects outwardly, and then we perceive. The fact that we are perceiving illusion is germane. How can we be a victim when we are making what we see?

This is a hard point to grasp, but the idea that we live in illusion is central to ACIM, and also central to The Way of Mastery (The Christ Mind Trilogy). Readers of A Course of Love have a divergence of opinion about whether or not the world is ever actually “real.” I really don’t think it matters to Jesus whether or not we think this world is an illusion; thoughts about metaphysics are controversies that may simply divide us from one another. As in the quotation for today, we are encouraged not to sit in judgment of ourselves nor anybody else.

We don’t call judgment to ourselves, and in turning aside from this judgment, we live a better life. We are tolerant. And we continue with energy that builds up ourselves and others.

“What you experience you have directly and deliberately called to yourself.” This is the law of attraction spelled out in an opening page of this first book in WOM (Christ Mind Trilogy), “The Way of the Heart.” It says nothing less but that we are doing this unto ourselves. And A Course in Miracles says the same. (Jayem was instructed by Jesus not to read ACIM before or during his channeling, and so there is no chance that he was merely echoing things that he had read.)

Look with wonder today to the world in which we find ourselves. Even though the world is projection, we can see, in what we see, a harbinger of better things to come.

Jesus Trusts Us!

“My trust in you is greater than yours in me at the moment, but it will not always be that way. Your mission is very simple: You have been chosen to live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego. I repeat that I do not choose God’s channels wrongly. The Holy One shares my trust and always approves my Atonement decisions, because my will is never out of accord with His.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-4.VIII.14:1-4)

Jesus trusts us! He sees us as a channel for good in this world, a channel for Atonement that is seconded by the Holy Spirit. Such reassurance that we are all on the right path. We all do want to be finished with the ego, and as long as we are careful not to reinforce the ego by egotistical/egoic thoughts and actions, we are hope personified. Jesus’ hope is for a new world, a world where the dreams are happy, brought to us by the Holy Spirit.

A Course in Miracles suggests that we are still caught by illusion, for dreams are not real. But the “happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings” can be enjoyed without guilt. We can stay a while on this beautiful earth, loving our fellow men and women, doing God’s work, and all will be well. No harsh judgment will assail us. We do create our own reality, and we discover how to do that when we listen to the Holy Spirit (as described in ACIM) or the Christ-Self (as described in A Course of Love).

Guidance is very, very important, for we cannot find our way back to God unaided. We are too lost in insanity. But a glimpse of sanity comes to us more and more as time passes. And ultimately, those glimpses will, in Awakening, merge into a dream that offers good days continuously. We can have a Heaven on earth. We just have to follow the rules, and guidance will elucidate those rules for us.

Reaching God

“When I told you to concentrate on the phrase ‘Here I am, Lord,’ I did not mean ‘in this world’ by ‘here.’ I wanted you to think of yourself as a distinct consciousness, capable of direct communication with the Creator of that consciousness. You must begin to think of yourself as a very powerful receiving and sending channel.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-4.VIII.8:1-3)

Jesus is first talking to Helen, but, as usual, we can appropriate his words to ourselves. We can communicate, as a “very powerful receiving and sending channel,” with God Himself. If this is too threatening to us, then the Holy Spirit will mediate. This is the whole purpose of the Holy Spirit, of course, to draw us back to God when we are in fear that would prevent a direct channel to the Almighty.

A Course of Love, sequel and continuation of A Course in Miracles, postulates a more direct route to God. In this age of Christ, it postulates, we are capable of direct communication with God, no longer so fearful of Him that we need the Holy Spirit as mediator. The age of the Holy Spirit, ACOL says, has now passed. We are to derive our guidance from the Christ-Self who dwells within each of us. This Christ-Self, still a learning being until morphing into discovery through observation and an informing by the heart, is capable of accurate choices. This Christ-Self is being healed, through and through, all layers of the subconscious. And when this healing is complete, we will know Awakening/Christ-consciousness/enlightenment.

God dwells within and without, though we project the world from the Mind. I believe this world does not really exist, because the Mind is all, and the Mind is, at base, Spirit. This non-dualistic world view gives a way to understand that God is everywhere at one time. We are “God-stuff,” and out of his individuations/differentiations of His Being, we develop as His children.

God then knows us as His own. Finiteness does serve a purpose, to experience, because knowing the Whole, as God does in His Godhead, would make experiential effects not separate from Cause, and thus unknowable. (This interpretation is based in part on Neale Donald Walsch’s “conversations” with God, and is not found in ACIM/ACOL.)

All Are Chosen

“Only your misperceptions stand in your way. Without them, your own choice is certain. Sane perception induces sane choosing. The Atonement was an act based on true perception. I cannot choose for you, but I can help you make your own right choice. ‘Many are called but few are chosen’ should read, ‘All are called, but few choose to listen. Therefore, they do not choose right. The ‘chosen ones’ are merely those who choose right sooner. That is the real meaning of the celestial speed-up. Strong wills can do this now, and they will find rest for their souls. God knows you only in peace, and this is your reality.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-3.VI.18:1-11)

The “celestial speed-up,” of which A Course in Miracles is an example, is an attempt by Jesus and his associates to bring salvation to the earth before we destroy ourselves. Edgar Cayce, the psychic, was an early example also. We are bent on destruction unless drastic measures are taken. So any of us could be part of the celestial speed-up. Many of us may have been born for that purpose.

All are chosen. Kenneth Wapnick wrote a book by that title, part of a two-book series that also gave the second part of that quotation, that few choose to listen. We must change this. We must know that we are chosen, and we must listen. Then we do take our place in the celestial speed-up.

Many of us have strong wills, but that strong will must be bent to God’s grace and guidance. I once wrote on a scrap of paper, and put it in my grandmother’s Bible: “I am determined to go God’s way.”

This when I was nine years old, for I can tell from my early handwriting my age. So I was one who had a strong will, and I attempted, in my immature way, to bend that will to God. I was witnessing even then.

Many of us can witness, and then we will become a multitude who change this world, and then create a new world. This is the message of A Course of Love. That we either change the world, or that (better) we create a new world. When we know that all are chosen, we can rest in the assurance that we are among that chosen.

We Can’t Return Home without Everybody

“The Sonship in its oneness does transcend the sum of its parts. However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all of the individual parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then can the meaning of wholeness in the true sense be understood.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-2.XII.7:5-8)

What is alluded to in this passage is why we are here on earth. We are to save our fellow men and women. This is why form is important, for our earth, we need form, and we need not to long for the ethereal only. In my opinion, this need, to save the Sonship, is why Jesus scribed A Course of Love. Readers of A Course in Miracles were left with a desire just to go into the ethereal, the formless, after death—and are we not needed on earth?

The Sonship needs each and every one of us saved in the ultimate sense, with Awakening, with Christ-consciousness (which is the same thing). Only when all have returned is our mission completed.

Only then can we float into the ethereal with a clear conscience. For we take everyone with us.

Getting on the Right Road

“Inappropriate denial and equally inappropriate identification of the real factors in the basic conflict will not solve the problem itself. The conflict cannot disappear until it is fully recognized that miscreation is not real, and therefore there is no conflict. This entails a full realization of the basic fact that, although you have miscreated in a very genuine sense, you need neither continue to do so nor to suffer from your past errors in this respect.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-2.XI.15:1-3)

Good news indeed! Miscreations that are not ongoing but in the past certainly don’t need to hold us back. We can welcome love, and true creation, at any and all times. We are free to drop our obsession with the ego, free to let the true heart lead the mind to creations of great value.

Just ask, internally, what experiences we really want. These experiences are creations, and they will take on a better tone, much more positive, much more loving, when we have dropped our pride and asked for help from a Higher Power. This can be Jesus himself, or God Himself. Our own Mind reaches deep within us to the Self, for we are a part of God. And with a Champion like this, how can we fail?

Mind Wandering

“The correction of fear is your responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it isn’t. You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions which have brought the fear about. This always entails a willingness on the part of your separated mind. At this level, you can help it. You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, thus tacitly condoning your mind’s miscreations. The particular result never matters, but this fundamental error does. The fundamental correction is always the same. Before you will to do anything, ask me if your will is in accord with mine. If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-2.IX.5:1-10)

The most important sentence in this quotation, I think, is the following: “You are much too tolerant of mind wandering.” Is this not just about everybody’s problem?

We need to discover how to wipe clean our minds, put problems on the back burner, and (as A Course of Love says) let our inner Christ-Self come up to the surface with an Answer, a divine Answer. This is the same as looking to the Holy Spirit, Who is within us also. Of course, we need the patience to allow this to happen. If we persist in wiping our minds clean of pesky problems, letting a wiser Wisdom surface, the results will be the proof. We really will find that the Self knows better, for it draws from Divinity, God Himself, to lead us, ever so gently, to the resolution of those matters that threaten to disturb our peace of mind.

We need not be fearful, but it does take an ego-free mind to realize this. And many of us are not there yet. As we make decisions, if we allow Jesus to influence us, we will know that the process by which we come to a decision is divinely led. This may not completely remove the fear, for we are used to fretting over trifles, and sometimes we are confronted with more than trifles in this life.

Let guidance from within lead. It will not fail. And we will rejoice when we know that this is so.

Way Out of Fear

“Whenever you are afraid, it is a sure sign that you have allowed your mind to miscreate; that is, you have not allowed me to guide it. It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of misthought can result in real healing. When you are fearful, you have willed wrongly. This is why you feel you are responsible for it. You must change your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of will. You do not need guidance except at the mind level. Correction belongs only at the level where causation is possible. The term does not really mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-2.IX.4:1-8)

Jesus knows that we have not given up fear, that we still have misthought, and we feel the results, in pain often. He emphasizes that a change of mind is far more important, and pivotal, than a change in behavior. A change in behavior will happen when we have changed our mind, then and only then.

He wants us to correct our thinking, and then we will see an improvement in our behavior. It seems that he is not so much concerned with the outcome of misthought as he is with the problem of the mind itself. He wants us to think aright.

A Course of Love, channeled later, emphasizes that we change our mind when we listen to our heart—a heart that has always known what to think, say, and do. Our heart does not need any teaching, but our mind, so long egoic, has still patterns of the ego lingering. And so we need a sounder basis for making decisions, and that sounder basis is our heart.

Everyone knows what the heart means without a tedious telling. Our heart will inform our mind, which will inform our behavior. Then we will really be healed.

The Spiritual Eye

“There is no doubt that the spiritual eye does produce extreme discomfort by what it sees. The thing that you forget is that the discomfort is not the final outcome of its perception. When the spiritual eye is permitted to look upon the defilement of the altar, it also looks immediately toward Atonement. Nothing which the spiritual eye perceives can induce fear. Everything that results from accurate spiritual awareness merely is channelized toward correction. Discomfort is aroused only to bring the need to correct forcibly into awareness.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-2.VIII.8:4-9)

The concept about the “spiritual eye” will allow us to realize that God is always and forever looking to move us closer to Him. If we realize that our own altar, the inner place in us, has been defiled by our choices, we can immediately look to the solution provided by Jesus, the Atonement, which will give us comfort and ensure us that the defiled altar will not stand when we are confronting Atonement. We begin to feel better. Our spiritual eye has saved us.

We all have this spiritual eye, and the eye is informed by the Holy Spirit (or the Christ-Self, if we are following A Course of Love). The spiritual eye is the discernment of our Wisdom, and this Wisdom is accessed in the present moment, especially when our heart is filled with gratitude about what life is presenting to us. Even if outer blessings appear to be minimal, there is still much to praise. And it is this praise, this gratitude, that will save us. It is this praise that will set us back on the pathway.

Let our spiritual eye discern today. Let our spiritual eye show us what needs to change, for all of us have desert places that need to be left. If we utilize our spiritual eye, we will walk a fresher path.

We will know the Love that spiritual discernment will always show us.

The World’s Plight

“The Atonement actually began long before the resurrection. Many souls offered their efforts on behalf of the separated ones. But they could not withstand the strength of the attack and had to be brought back. Angels came, too, but their protection was not enough, because the separated ones were not interested in peace.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-2.V.3:1-4)

This quotation highlights the importance of some belief in the resurrection, though many of us believe it in many different ways. In A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love, Jesus is never explicit as to whether it was a bodily resurrection or an ethereal one. But the belief in a resurrection galvanized his disciples and others of the time. I think something happened, even if we cannot be sure what.

Jesus is very clear that the crucifixion did not address the Atonement. He simply did not defend himself when he was brought for crucifixion, and in this he is our example, because he doesn’t want us in a defensive posture either. The resurrection is the salient point.

The idea that others came before, and could not withstand the attack from separated people is important, never stated before. Angels, Jesus says, came, too. Nothing seemed to work. Now Jesus, after the resurrection, is spearheading a “celestial speed-up” to try to help suffering people everywhere. A Course in Miracles is part of that speed-up, as he told Helen and Bill. We can imagine that other channeled works from Jesus are also part of the speed-up. Certainly we have been on the brink of destroying ourselves for many long years now.

Jesus deserves our gratitude. We have gotten ourselves in a grand problem, and entities far more advanced than are we are seeking to find a solution. Let us hope that we can add our little part to make a positive change as well.

Treasure

“The means are easier to clarify after the true worth of the goal itself is firmly established. Everyone defends his own treasure. You do not have to tell him to do this, because he will do so automatically. The real question still remains, What do you treasure and how much do you treasure it? Once you learn to consider these two points and bring them into all your actions as the true criteria for behavior, I will have little difficulty in clarifying the means. You have not learned to be consistent about this as yet. I have therefore concentrated on showing you that the means are available whenever you do ask. We can save a lot of time, however, if you do not need to extend this step unduly. The correct focus will shorten it immeasurably.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-2.IV.13:1-9)

Our treasure ought to be in the heaven on earth that we can create here. This goal would easily create a new world for us all.

Jesus is really trying to help us. There is back scenes work that we can’t see, and then there are A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, and Way of Mastery. Others have also channeled him. We need to lighten up from our crises, and ask what we really want in life. That would be our goal. That would also be our treasure. And we can get Jesus’ help in identifying goal and treasure.

Devote some contemplation to these basic questions: treasure (what is it?) and goal (what is that?). If we move lightly on our feet, the answers, informed by the Holy Spirit and the Christ-Self, will be obvious. And we will walk a better earth as a result. Our feelings will improve, because Love has shown the way.

Suffering

“It is all right to remember the past, provided you also remember that anything you suffer is because of your own errors. As an analogy, imagine a very young child who falls down the stairs when an adult has her arms open in welcome at the bottom of the stairs, and who then develops a totally unwarranted fear of that adult. The misstep which causes the child’s fall has nothing at all to do with the adult, just as your own missteps have nothing at all to do with me.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-2.III.9:1-3)

There is a very pertinent point in this quotation from Jesus. He says that we suffer because of our own errors! Nothing more. There is nobody to blame, including him. And, of course, no truth in blaming God either.
Elsewhere he has said that we do not need to learn through pain. Yet the fact remains that many of us do choose to learn through pain, and sometimes this pain escalates into emotional and physical suffering. Jesus says (elsewhere) that it is better to learn through rewards. Would that we could all take to heart what he is saying!

Our suffering has no basis. Trials are but lessons presented again, so that we make a better choice where before we made a faulty one. This idea from A Course in Miracles is also pertinent, for what are “trials” but suffering?

Jesus does not ever give a full explanation for the meaning of suffering, though in A Course of Love he indicates that Love is the answer. If we love enough, he says, we are free of pain and suffering. But it is, nevertheless, wrong to “blame the victim.” No human personality is to “blame” for the ills that he/she experiences. These errors are on another level entirely.

In The Way of Mastery, Jesus indicates that believing in karma as a way to explain the negative is a faulty world view. So it seems that we can’t place the blame on past lives.

Another channeled writing, from Pat Rodegast, has her source, Emmanuel, saying that there is no way, here on earth, for us ever to understand suffering. That is something that will be resolved for us only in the afterlife.

That makes sense to me, for even Jesus does not answer the riddle of suffering so that we cease having questions.

Escape from Fear

“All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that you have the ability to usurp the power of God. It is again emphasized that you neither can nor have been able to do this. In this statement lies the real justification for your escape from fear. This is brought about by your acceptance of the Atonement, which places you in a position to realize that your own errors never really occurred.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-2.II.16:1-4)

God’s world is still in His hands. We can’t change ultimate reality; we just fall into illusion. It is this that will save us. It is this that will save us from the debilitating experience of fear.

When we accept the Atonement, the place of Christ in history, the rapprochement of man/woman and God, then we have by-passed the separation forever. We have also eliminated the ego from our way of thinking. Of course, all of this is easier said than done. Often, the Atonement is felt over years, years in which we slowly come to see that God’s will and ours are actually identical. We stop trying to play God ourselves. We acknowledge that we did not create ourselves, something the ego wanted to have us believe.

We have been living in illusion. In the Atonement, we may still find illusion clinging to our feet, but we have nevertheless made progress. True reality, the intangible benefits of peace, love, joy, contentment, harmony—will become a tangible, viable result of healing the separation. True reality offers us what an illusory separation never did: peace of mind and, as A Course of Love says, a heart that informs our living.

Reopening Our Spiritual Eye

“When the ‘lies of the serpent’ were introduced, they were called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. You do not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless you choose to do so. All of your miscreations can disappear in the well-known ‘twinkling of an eye,’ because they are a visual misperception. Your spiritual eye can sleep, but remember, a sleeping eye can still see.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-2.II.13:1-5)

The “lies of the serpent” were, I believe, egoic lies that we told ourselves and each other when we fell into separation from God. Certainly many times we equate the ego with the “devil,” and this is not always a bad analogy. Our spiritual eyes, so long as we are trapped by the ego, are “asleep.” As Jesus says elsewhere, when Adam was put in a deep sleep in the Genesis story, an analogy, there is no recorded evidence of his awakening. This is what awaits all of us, though, when we choose to heal the separation from God. And the Holy Spirit will show us how to reestablish our relationship with God. (In A Course of Love, our relationship with God is “direct,” and the inner Christ-Self does the work for us of healing.)

We have miscreated when we fall into anger and attack, isolation and rejection, bad temper and assorted other troubles that signal a disconnect from Love. We have also miscreated material objects in our world, fashioning chemicals that pollute our environment, and weapons of war that destroy the lives of others and sometimes ourselves. Of course, we think that we have no choice but to defend ourselves, but we need to give Love a chance. There is no telling what progress could be made if all of us were to turn to a more harmonious interaction with our fellowman and woman.

Even an ordinary person makes a difference when he chooses harmony rather than discord. All of us are included in creating a better world, and actually none of us should be discounted as unimportant to that endeavor.

Mental Health Is Inner Peace

“You are perfectly unaffected by all expressions of lack of love. These can be either from yourself and others, or from yourself to others, or from others to you. Peace is an attribute in you. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of external searching. Mental health is inner peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles, of correcting the external conditions which proceed from lack of love in others.” (ACIM, COA ed.,T-2.I.26:1-7)

This person that Jesus is talking about in this quotation is the “real” “you,” the Self, the Christ-Self. Our personality, while it is egoic, does react to lacks of love, but all of this is not truly real. Our mental health for the Self gives us only peace. And it is this we can experience when we don’t get stuck in the egoic self, for this self is actually mentally ill (to use Jesus’ terms in this quotation).

Jesus refers to the insanity of the ego in other places in A Course in Miracles. We can never, never, expect to be mentally healthy until we have dislodged the ego, and dislodging the ego is a major goal of ACIM. When the egoic self is gone, we are free to let the Christ-Self emerge from the depths. Once this Self has learned how to proceed in the external world, we are set for life. This change is detailed in the continuation of ACIM, A Course of Love.

Anger and attack are evidence of madness, and it is this that the egoic self is familiar with. Forgiveness sets us on a higher road, with love a part of that road. Then the stress, fear, that led to anger and attack largely dissipate.

Inner peace is our elixir, the road to eternity in a time-bound world.

Depression & Anxiety

“Generally, three types of emotional disturbance result:

“a) The tendency to maintain the illusion that only the physical is real. This produces depression.

“b) The tendency to invest the physical with nonphysical properties. This is essentially magic and tends more toward anxiety-proneness.

“c) The tendency to vacillate from one to the other, which produces a corresponding vacillation between depression and anxiety.

“All three result in self-imposed starvation.” (ACIM, COA ed.,T-2.I.7:1-7)

Here Jesus gives us a metaphysical approach to depression and anxiety. If we think the physical is all that there is, of course we will be depressed: Who wants to end in the grave? And if we try magical solutions in materialism, we will become anxious, because we know, deep inside (where God is), that this is a falsehood. Lastly, we can vacillate between these two extremes, and then vacillate between depression and anxiety.

All of this is essentially disheartening. If we live from our heart, as A Course of Love (the continuation of A Course in Miracles), we will bypass all of this nonsense. Bypassing such false ideas is just good thinking, and in so doing we won’t feel depressed/anxious that we are on the wrong track.

Bypassing depression and anxiety is just good common sense. Why, when these falsehoods have been pointed out to us, would we continue allowing mood swings to affect our good living?

Miracles for Everyone

“Christ-controlled miracles are selective only in that they are directed toward those who can use them for themselves. Since this makes it inevitable that they will extend them to others, a very strong chain of Atonement is welded.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.49.2:1-2)

When we perform a Christ-controlled miracle, i.e., choose expressions of love directed by Jesus, we gain just as much as the recipient. This is illustrative of what a blessing miracles really are. We find out how to live “in the flow,” going about our day without trying to control everything, and we keep constantly attuned to the Answer. Our joy overflows, for living with a readiness for miracles is truly living a charmed existence.

If we strive to be happy, we will find that keeping an ear attuned to miracles will fulfill that adventure. Living close to Jesus is its own reward. If we think that we have a personal relationship with him, indeed we do. But he loves us more than we love him, for we are not purified as he is. His ability to love is therefore greater. It will not always be this way, but the earth sojourn is not easy, and we have learned things that will not help us as well as learned things that will.

Open ourselves to miracle readiness. Open ourselves to the Holy Spirit (if following A Course in Miracles) or the Christ Self (if following A Course of Love). It matters not that we think, in the beginning, that we are losing control of our lives. We are really growing into them, in the best way possible.

Wholly Satisfying Nature of Reality

Note: If I don’t post, we are having problems with our Internet connection.

“No fantasies, sexual or otherwise, are true. Fantasies become totally unnecessary as the wholly satisfying nature of reality becomes apparent.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.48.9:1-2)

As we progress, we feel better almost constantly. This is the “wholly satisfying nature of reality.” In the frame of mind that we develop, we have no need to escape into fantasies.

Fantasies have no basis in fact, and indulging in them catches us up in a false reality, an even greater illusion than we normally experience.

It is hard to imagine a more illusory state of mind than we normally inhabit in this world, for we are lost in illusions, far removed from God’s true reality. Only when we have progressed farther will we know the truth of this. And fantasies delay our progress. No one can fantasize often and expect to join God’s Kingdom, the real world, the House of Truth (the last, as called in A Course of Love).

What do we need to experience the wholly satisfying nature of reality? We need to open ourselves to the experience of God, something that comes very easy as we do so more and more often. Let Him speak to us, let Him remind us of Scripture that will ease our minds and hearts.

His way works. Our own does not, especially when that own is a fantasized projection from a deluded mind.

Miracles Save Time

“There is no relation between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers. It substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.47.2:5-6)

What a joyous revelation! The miracles that appear in our lives may be saving thousands of years, years often filled with suffering and pain. Jesus doesn’t specify if these miracles affect us or the people that we express love, a miracle, for—but it does seem obvious that the miracle affects everyone involved, giver and receiver. A Course of Love makes clear that giving and receiving are identical in this life. So we can be sure that any miracle happening around us in any way at all does bless us.

Jesus does not take a stand on reincarnation in A Course in Miracles, but the hint is seen here that we might save ourselves many thousands of years of reincarnations if we approach the miracle with the right mindset. Certainly we fall into unknowing in this life, failing to remember the love that may be so evident when we are on the Other Side (Heaven, if we wish to call it that). This forgetfulness can be very damaging to us, but it is necessary for the illusion to work.

We set ourselves very severe challenges in this life, though Jesus does say in the Manual for Teachers that there is no challenge to an advanced teacher of God. The reason for this is that we choose for all humankind, following guidance by turning to the Holy Spirit before we act.

Ask for miracles to surround us today. If we are open to this miracle-minded thinking, we will perhaps save ourselves many years of potential agony.

Miracles & Revelation

“When the Sonship can return to its original form of communication with God by direct revelation, the need for miracles is over. The Holy Spirit mediates higher- to lower-order communication, keeping the direct channel from God to humanity open for revelation. Revelation is not reciprocal. It is always from God to you. This is because God and you are not equal. The miracle, on the other hand, is reciprocal because it always involves equality.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.46.20:3-8)

This quotation gets to some of the keys in the theology of A Course in Miracles. We are given the Holy Spirit as a Gift, because we are, unfortunately, not ready for direct communication from God; our fear is too great. We think that God doesn’t mean us well, because what we have done with our lives is so despicable that He could not forgive our deeds. Actually, we learn in ACIM that God never forgives because He has never accused; He doesn’t blame us for anything, seeing us as innocent children who haven’t known any better. God thus has never, ever, condemned us in any sense at all. We are His prodigal sons and daughters, whom He wants mightily to return to the fold.

When we experience revelation (if we recognize it as revelation), it is intensely personal and cannot actually be explained to another. We know what we have experienced, but nobody else would believe us. Miracles are our expressions of love, though, prompted originally by the love of God, and so there is a reciprocal relationship in these. When we feel led to express love, Jesus will arrange time and space to allow us to do so—but only if that expression of love, that miracle, is something that Jesus recognizes as needed and right. He gives us the cue, and we would do well to remember this. Misplaced miracles miss the mark.

When we are stressed, we need to turn to the Holy Spirit, if direct relationship to God still threatens. Later on, in A Course of Love (many believe a sequel to ACIM), we will see a direct approach to God Himself by inviting the Christ-Self from our depths, where God resides, to lead us.

Miracles are more useful now to us and to others. We would do well to ask internally what miracles are needed each and every day, what there is there for us to do.

Sex

“Sex was intended as an instrument for physical creation (see previous notes), to enable souls to embark on new chapters in their experience, and thus improve their records. The pencil was not an end in itself.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.46.4:1-2)

Jesus must take a dim view of our society, for we have long noted that our commercials, television programming, and movies are saturated with sex. Even we realize that we are getting it wrong.

Jesus says that sex is intended for physical creation (think babies) as well as to enable us to embark on new experiences that will improve our “records.” These records are the history of our soul’s experiences on earth, though Jesus never takes a stand for or against reincarnation (believing that it will limit our usefulness to others who both believe, or don’t believe, in reincarnation).

Jesus aptly uses a Freudian symbol when he says, “the pencil was not an end in itself.”

In the spirit of Jesus, how might we approach sex? It is a gift of the Creator, not meant for personal, selfish aggrandizement. A Course of Love, believed by many to be the “continuation” of ACIM that it proclaims itself to be, says that many may want more physical expression as we proceed along the way to God, but many may also wish less. There is no judgment either way. ACOL also has quite a lot to say about “use” of others, and certainly sex can use others. But that is a wrong purpose. Sex is neither glorified nor debased in Jesus’s view. He does note that the physical closeness that we try to have satisfy us will not actually do what we want; nothing can take the place of our closeness with God.

Jesus’s message is a positive, all-inclusive one. He accepts homosexuality, and bids individuals not to be frightened by what they don’t understand. Indeed, it is generally known that Bill, co-scribe with Helen of A Course in Miracles, was gay.

Love, wherever it is found, if it is genuine love and not taking from what belongs to another, is seen to be good and true.

More on Miracles

“The miracles you are told not to perform have not lost their value. They are still expressions of your own state of grace. But the action aspect of the miracle should be Christ-controlled, because of His complete awareness of the whole plan.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.45.3:1-3)

When we sense love for another, that awareness of love may lead us to want to express love right away. An expression of love is the definition given to miracles. But we don’t always make the best decisions about performing miracles. We may feel love, but maybe right now is not a propitious time to express that love. So we must ask. Always ask; we will be answered by guidance, often in the form of a deep awareness or an intuition.

This quotation talks about “Christ” control, and by this Jesus may be meaning something more than just himself. He may be meaning the Christ soul that inhabits all of us, deep inside. A Course of Love says more about the inner Christ-Self. It is a manifestation of God Himself/Herself, found within each of us. It becomes our way to know when we have moved beyond the Holy Spirit as intermediary, and we wish to contact God directly.

When we know by guidance, we are tapping into knowledge of the whole plan. And knowing the whole plan is vitally important. It is the way that we stay in harmony with all of God’s creation, this world and worlds beyond. At its simplest, it is cooperation rather than competition, and it assures us that we are on the beam. It never asks us to stand independently, for the desire for psychic autonomy is left over from our ego. Our ego would like us to strive mightily to be independent, but independence is not the way. Interdependence is. We are with others on this plane for a reason; we are meant to join with our brothers and sisters to create a viable world, shorn of misdirected impulses of those who turn from God.

So: Ask what miracles we are to perform. Let love be expressed where it will do the most good, succeed better than at any other time or place. An expression of love is always good, but this may sometimes need to be an internal matter, not moving into the external realm outside one’s mind and heart.

Jesus: “The Thing to Do with a Desert Is to Leave”

“A desert is a desert is a desert. You can do anything you want in it, but cannot change it from what it is. It still lacks water, which is why it is a desert. The thing to do with a desert is to leave.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.43.12:2-5)

Jesus doesn’t explain exactly what his “desert” really means, but I think he is referring to the unsatisfying lives that many of us lead. We don’t have to live like that, of course. We can leave the desert at any time by turning inward to a contemplation of eternal values. These values will lift our spirits. And if there is something that we need to do internally or externally to lift our spirits, our intuition will tell us what that is. Living with the Holy Spirit and the Christ-Self is living with the very best that is available to us in this world.

We need to make sure that we stay out of the desert. We need to make sure that our goal of leaving behind the ego actually is sustained. There is a stern warning in A Course of Love (a continuation of A Course in Miracles) that we may form a new ego on the ashes of the old. We do have that potential if we don’t stand firm with our new knowledge. And this indeed would be the desert. A terrible, terrible back step.

Leave the desert today. Do what we know to do to create good lives in a new world, for we are creating a new world as we speak.

The way to better living is contained in our refusal to live superficially with material objects that don’t satisfy for long. Lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven, and we will have succeeded in this life. And our heaven can and should be right on this earth, long before our death takes us to another world.

Suffering

“One of the more horrible examples of inverted or upside-down thinking (and history is full of horrible examples of this) was the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution.’ I shed many tears over this, but it is by no means the only time I said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.43.8:1-2)

In this passage from the complete edition of A Course in Miracles, Jesus tells us personally what type of reaction he has had and continues to have over the terrible deeds of humankind and the suffering these deeds have wrought for ordinary people. He specifically refers to unspeakable crimes against Jewish people during World War II. Jesus responds with an appeal to the Father, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

His reaction is to be our own when we consider awful occurrences of human against human in this world. Jesus says that he has repeated his prayer with many incidents. We must do the same.

In this world, we cannot ever understand the “why” of suffering that innocent human beings undergo. Pat Rodegast’s Emmanuel says this. Perhaps an incomplete answer would be that it is enough for us to recognize in our own suffering that, when it is passed, we comprehend more; we may never understand, but we can realize that through it all, God was with us, and we have grown. I do not mean to say that the end justifies the means. We simply can’t with our little minds wrap around the awful things that people go through. It is a mystery.

But God does not “cause” our suffering. And it is never right, Jesus tells us in A Course of Love, to blame the victim. Jesus indicates that we are to have compassion, not heartlessness. Love is the healer of suffering, the end in sight. Jesus indicates this also elsewhere in A Course of Love. In “The Way of the Heart” (from The Way of Mastery), Jesus even affirms, “There is no suffering.” Of course we can’t know fully what he means.

If we believe that God is living through us, then He is experiencing right along with us. His Presence makes all the difference when we are confronted with eternal questions that seem to have no answer. Especially when that eternal question is the “why” of suffering.

Atonement and Miracles

“The answer is to never perform a miracle without asking me if you should. This spares you from exhaustion. Just because miracles are expressions of love, it does not follow that they will always be effective. I am the only one who can perform miracles indiscriminately, because I am the Atonement. You have a role in the Atonement, which I will dictate to you.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.35.5:1-5)

For students of A Course in Miracles, the admonition from Jesus to ASK before attempting a miracle is well-known. But how many of us really do stop ourselves as we go about our day, asking if now is the right time to give an expression of love. Many of us don’t think of love at all in our daily grind; we just want to get through the day creditably. Yet expressions of love, as miracles, would mean so much to our brothers and sisters. And to us, for the first person that a miracle affects is the one who is charged with bringing that miracle into the world.

We aren’t to push ourselves to exhaustion, for this is a form of sacrifice, and Jesus has also asked that we not sacrifice ourselves, even to Love. He says that he did not do so, and thus it is correct to know that he would never ask us to do so either. We need Jesus’ guidance about when to act and when to rest. We need to know that we are proceeding under guidance that is just beyond what we normally think about in our daily pathway. The Holy Spirit and, later, the Christ-Self, will provide careful instruction to us.

We are never left in the dark about what to do next; we just need to ask of a Power greater than our little, finite, personal selves.
Jesus, in charge of the Atonement, does let us know what is expected of us by way of support for the Atonement. We are joining together to create a new day, a day of ultimate salvation, a day of Christ-consciousness or Awakening. We are needed. All of us.

Miracles & Revelation

“29. Miracles are a way of earning release from fear.

“Revelation induces a state in which fear has already been abolished. Miracles are thus a means, and revelations are an end. In this sense, they work together. Miracles do not depend on revelation. They induce it. You are quite capable of miracles already, even if you may be still too fearful for revelations. Revelation will occur after you engage at the visionary level in a process of denying fear.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.29.1-2)

When Jesus or the Holy Spirit prompts a miracle, we are expressing love to the person(s) receiving the miracle. This heals us as well as them. And it prepares the way for revelation, which is always from God.

Perhaps at this early place in A Course in Miracles, we are still fearful of God. This is the reason for the Holy Spirit as intermediary; we don’t cringe before Him. His loving Spirit gives us comfort. Eventually, though, we will want to approach God more directly. And this is what the sequel, A Course of Love, does for us. We are said to be in the time of Christ now, the time of Holy Spirit having passed.

There is a period of crossover, for many are just now learning that ACIM exists. And our Guide during its reading is the Holy Spirit, Who has not gone anywhere, but is right here to help us. He will help us to envision a denial of fear. He will pave the way for this more direct approach to God Himself, the Deity. God dwells deeply within all of us, and His way counsels a life of Love.

Miracles and revelations do work together. And we are so blessed in our daily lives that we can and do have both. The trick is to recognize these blessings when they occur.

Mission

“Souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.27:3)

Here Jesus says something that I read a long time ago in Edgar Cayce. (Jesus mentions Cayce in the complete edition of A Course in Miracles.) Edgar indicated that certain souls came to earth to rescue other souls who had lost the light and were trapped here. In this quotation, Jesus seems to be saying that we have a mission, to save souls. Of course, we aren’t encouraged to save souls if the people having those souls are not open to hearing from us. We wait until God’s Voice has spoken to their hearts.

I think that this statement of Jesus goes a long way toward explaining the heralding of the elevated Self of form in A Course of Love. We need to inhabit a physical body to fulfill our mission. A Course in Miracles had focused on the ethereal so much that many of us just wanted to be rid of the earth, to get on with a better place on the Other Side. But we are needed here.

Each day we might ask the Holy Spirit or our deeper Self what the miracles for the day really are. As we know, we don’t make this decision. We ask how we might best express love in our daily round. We ask, and we are told. Then we act.

How to Ask for Divine Instructions

“Therefore, when you say, ‘If you want me to I will,’ please add ‘and if you don’t want me to I won’t.’ This is the right use of inhibition.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.24.5:3-4)

These are very specific guidelines for following guidance. We do get a sense of what we are to do, and when. Whether or not we follow that guidance depends on our resistance to what God is trying to tell us. Here Jesus is directing Helen and Bill, and by extension, us, very well. He knows that if he doesn’t want us to do something that we seem intent on doing, we need to be willing to be pliable.

Guidance is vitally important to a full and active life in the Spirit. Our little, finite, minds don’t know the whole picture, can’t see it, and so following the nudging of the Holy Spirit is vital. He guides us very specifically, whether to turn right at the next corner, even, sometimes. We don’t follow impulses willy-nilly, of course, but if we test out an impulse, and we see that there is no harm in what we think is being asked of us, then why don’t we respond, and respond quickly?

We don’t respond quickly because we have our own ideas about what is best for us, for our brothers and sisters, and the world. But how wrong we can recognize we have been in the past, before the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and even afterwards, when we were being headstrong.

There is a better way. Ask before resistance becomes confirmed. Ask what to do or say. The way will open. It will be a bright and glorious way, full of God, full of the Holy Spirit, and full of our best Self.

Take time to ask first today. If we proceed without that divine approval, we may make problems for ourselves that could be overcome with a little flexibility on our part.

Dear God,

Thank You for answering my prayer, and removing my resistance, to something You intend for me. I have known all along what You were saying, but I did so want to go my way. This is utter stupidity. The best way is always Yours, and I do know that my real will and Your will are identical.

Thank You for the blossoming of this day, after I bent my will to what I knew was divine leading.

Amen.

Good Learning Conditions

“Notes on this course should be read only under good learning conditions. They should also be reviewed, with the same rule applying to review periods. I’ll tell you when, but remember to ask.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.15.3:1-3)

Jesus stayed very close to Helen and Bill while Helen was taking dictation, the “notes” referred to here. We can imagine that he will stay as close to us, if we ask. He comes upon a “single unequivocal call.” And he comes with comfort and solace. When we read A Course in Miracles, we are reading the version of the notes he gave Helen, the version which is most complete in this “complete and annotated” edition prepared by the Circle of Atonement.

We need to show up, dressed and ready, with a mind ready to comprehend, “under good learning conditions.” If we are overly tired or sleepy, we will think Jesus unnecessarily complicated and obtuse. This he is not. The prose makes perfect sense when the mind is keen. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt to engage the heart, as A Course of Love (sequel to ACIM) makes clear. If we are living with our faith “full out,” so to speak, we will comprehend and be blessed. Anything less than this means that we have not been reading under good learning conditions.

Jesus stayed close to Helen and Bill, and they received guidance directly from him about when to study the Course. We can ask for the same, and he will be here. And, if we are following the Holy Spirit, He can be our responsive guide. If we believe that we have moved into the time of Christ, and the Christ-Self is in the ascendancy, we can ask this inner Self what the next right move might be. In any of these ways, if we expect and are open to an Answer, we will get it. God does not keep His children in limbo.

Dear God,

I find that I can read ACIM best in the evenings, before I get sleepy and reading to turn in for the night. Early morning finds my mind fuzzy, because I am not a morning person. I know that You will meet me when I am best able to take in the revelations that are there for me. Thank You for giving me the insight of when best to confront A Course in Miracles.

Amen.

Prayer and Miracles

“11. Prayer is the medium of miracles. Prayer is the natural communication between the created and the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.11:1-3)

There is a direct parallel between this quotation for today, from A Course in Miracles, and words in A Course of Love, a treatise that many believe is a sequel to ACIM. In the chapter on the “art of thought” in ACOL, we are encouraged to believe that the art of thought is miracle-mindedness, miracle-readiness, miracles themselves, as well miracles that come through prayer.

This is not the usual supplication to God. This prayer is virtually a constant thing in our lives, a habit of thought that encourages expressions of love and thereby creates miracles. In its highest form, prayer is communion with God in which words disappear. Our mind and heart are turned to God, attuned to Him, and we dwell in a new relationship to our deepest being, where God Himself dwells.

Would we not want to express love always? Why do we so often trip ourselves up when we would be about our Father’s business? We love, and then we get angry or upset, and we withdraw love. So our lives become erratic. A constant sense of love received and given is the better way. And it is the way in which miracles come into full force.

Trust today that guidance will tell us what miracles to perform, what expressions of love to make plain to our brothers and sisters. When we pray thus, we are in God’s will in a manner that allows all good things to occur. We are in God’s will with our deepest nature.

Dear God,

I would pray deeply and without words, just a constant sense of being with You, in communion with all that is good. The way to do this is simple, but often overlooked. It is to retain a sense of peace and harmony in the midst of life’s trials, and then the tribulations really do disappear. Jesus has said in ACIM that we don’t have to have tribulations here, unlike how he was quoted in the Bible.

I would also welcome Jesus into my life. His hand enfolds mine, and when that happens, it is easy to be peaceful.

Amen.

God Is Living through Us

“The experience of the Self is God. It is not from God. It is not of God. It is God.

“If all of life is the oneness that is God and God has chosen to experience that oneness through relationship, then you are also that experience and are in relationship with God through that experience.

“Here we must revisit the concepts of oneness and manyness for if you retain any notions of God that are inaccurate, they will arise here.” (ACOL, D:Day32.1 – Day32.3)

“The experience of the Self IS God. Here we find the unvarnished truth in all its glory. We probably still have trouble recognizing that God lives within us, and lives through us—but here it is. We still have unconscious and conscious misgivings that we are not the people that we ought to be, and that we certainly cannot be living experiences that are God.

Set aside doubts, and consider that A Course of Love just may be right. ACOL consists of a cohesive world view that does not deviate from the assertion that our separation from God was always illusory, and led to an illusory reality, and that we are now on the road back to true reality, where illusion reigns no more. We are living a new Self, one that has been covered over, on the inside, for eons. Of course this new idea takes some getting used to!

God IS living through us, and our experiences are His. Surely we want to give the Deity a new day, and when we drop into vestiges of separation and rebellion, we are doing Him and us a disservice.

Let God speak from our depths. Let Him tell us how to live. When we do, we will never look back. The way forward is too enticing.

Dear God,

I would use my best thinking today to intuit what the depths of me are saying. I know that You rule those depths, and that my contribution is simply, always and forever, to give You a good day. What other way can I say it, if You are living through me?

Be with me on this pleasant, sunny day, as I enjoy my sun porch. Nature is so close; You are so close. I enjoy being intimate with You. There is no more joyous feeling to entertain.

Amen.

Wholeness in Diversity

“Wholeness cannot be achieved without joining, thus the commonly known injunction of “where two or more are joined together.” If you would think of this in terms of “God” or the state of “Wholeness” or “Beingness” separating into more than one in order to know Itself, you would see that knower and known are one. You would see that two or more are needed in order for knowing to occur. To not know wholeness would be to be in a state of nothingness. Thus the joining of two or more are needed in order for wholeness to be known and thus to exist as a state of conscious awareness.” (ACOL, D:Day30.4)

This is the theology of A Course of Love. It is saying that God could not know Himself until He differentiated, or individuated, Himself into parts, and those parts included entities, souls, such as us. We can understand this best with the example that we have here, of two or more joined together, a biblical reference. God is in our midst when two or more of us join in supplication to Him. Jesus says the same thing about himself. It is reassuring to know that A Course in Miracles and ACOL are direct outgrowths of biblical knowledge imparted many, many years ago.

We would be in a state of nothingness if we didn’t have diversity in our wholeness. And it is Wholeness that we seek to know now. This Wholeness is the Essence of God.

We don’t have to “do” much; it will come to us when we are in relationship with our brothers and sisters. Then we can rest easy, knowing that all things come to them that wait. And waiting for Christ-consciousness to descend upon us is certainly one of the best ways to spend our time.

If we don’t wait patiently, we will have missed much of the blessing in waiting. So: wait patiently, pacing ourselves in activities that we know will bring God closer to our mind and heart. Then and only then are we primed for the good that will come.

Dear God,

I would know wholeness today, wholeness manifested in diversity. When I am patient, I can see the value of waiting until all is prepared for Your descent, Your descent to lift me up to You, wrapping me in Your Arms.

I offer myself to You, completely and totally. May this re-surrender, which I do often, be the very action that You most desire from me.

Amen.

Quiet Guidance

“Your self-guidance can be thought of as an internal compass. It will not necessarily know the answers as each answer is sought, but if paid attention to, it will show you the way to knowing.

“This alchemical transition, this passing of the unknown into the known, this moment when the unknown becomes the known within the Self, is the birth of creation. It is the culmination of all that has come before, the All of Everything realized in a single heartbeat, a single instant of knowing. This is the One Self knowing itself. This is not knowing that comes with a great ah ha, but knowing that comes with the awe of reverence. Creator and created are one and the homecoming experienced is that of union.” (ACOL, D:Day26.6 – Day26.7)

This explains the new way of receiving guidance! A very important topic indeed, considering how stressed was the Holy Spirit in A Course in Miracles. Now we have moved farther along our pathway, and we are being shown a new way of guidance, a way that Jesus explains in A Course of Love. The age of the Holy Spirit has passed, and we are now in the age of Christ, and so the instructions differ.

We are now to listen to the Self who lives within, and draws on a direct relationship with God, Who also dwells within. The Self and God are the same in spirit, though God is the Unlimited, and so omniscient. Our Christ-Self is still limited, but glimpses of a greater knowing do break through. Our Christ-Self is not, of course, omniscient. But the guidance that comes draws on the omniscient, and so is true, very true.

We are being shown knowing as opposed to perception. Our perception has been cleansed so completely that it has led the way straight through to knowledge. And knowledge is of God. Perception, on the other hand, started out being of the ego, and so needed to be purified before it could lead to knowing.

Guidance now is very, very quiet—with the awe of reverence. This is a tricky transition, for many of us have depended upon intuition and “feelings” from the Holy Spirit that will be absent now. There is just a very still knowing that emerges from our most quiet moments. We don’t think in any bombastic way anymore; we are being guided very gently to an understanding that is meant for us alone.

Dear God,

I was one who was confused by the lack of intuitive feelings, on which I had come to depend. Now I know that the next right step comes from a very silent, inner knowing that doesn’t make itself known loudly. I listen to my heart, in other words. And my heart is very still in my best moments, when my next right step comes through.

Thank You for this new understanding, the new understanding for this age of Christ. It is a simple reliance upon the Self who has now emerged from my depths. I thank You for this emergence.

Amen.

Miracles Point to Beauty, Truth, Wisdom

“In other words, all the truth and all the wisdom that is available but unknown to you, takes you to make it known. And if this is the only way that the beauty, truth, and wisdom of the One Self can be made known, then you are the source and the power of coming to know and making known.

“Apply the art of thought to this idea and you will complete the first transition.” (ACOL, D:Day20.9 – Day20.10)

The art of thought is miracle-readiness, miracle-mindedness, and the miracle itself. When applying miraculous thinking to the idea in this passage, we see that a miracle can lead us to understand the truth of what Jesus has told us—that it takes us to know beauty, truth, wisdom, and it is the “us” who are the One Self. This One Self is another way of referring to God Himself, of Whom we are a part. Of course it takes miraculous thinking to understand this concept! The concept is not hard to understand when we are leaning into God for an understanding. Our inner Christ-Self draws on the larger Self, and then we know whereof Jesus speaks.

Truth, beauty, and wisdom are certainly very lofty concepts. It is akin to the idea that we are to entertain ideas of the good, the holy, and the beautiful. When we merge the human and the divine in the elevated Self of form, we will know what these concepts are all about, for our mind and heart, working in concert with one another, will inform with knowledge. We won’t have to depend on faulty perception any longer; knowledge will be ours, and this is an element of eternity (not time).

We are transitioning into the elevated Self of form. This first transition, coming in Day 20, is halfway through our 40 days and 40 nights on the mountaintop with Jesus, and our brothers and sisters who are making this journey with us. Soon Jesus will begin preparing us for our return. As we know, we have remained in our regular daily lives as we have also made the mountaintop ascent. This dual vision has allowed us to realize that we can occupy more than one place at the same time. We can keep our feet on the ground while our heads are in the clouds. We can follow Jesus’s dictates, even as we live in a workaday world.

Enjoy our time on the mountaintop. Ask for miracles to inform us how to appreciate the beauty, wisdom, truth that surrounds us.

We will not be disappointed, for miracles are our birthright.

Dear God,

I ask for miracles today, a good day filled with bright and happy things. May the choice for miracles inform my decisions as I seek to put together a day that You can approve.

Be with me. I have come to expect Your solace all the day through. And You have not disappointed me.

Thank You.

Amen.