Love Does Not Conquer All Things, but It Does Set All Things Right.

1 – Gratitude

The passages for today emphasize that our gratitude to our brother/sister is our way home to God. The way of special relationships turned holy is the special way that A Course in Miracles is saving us time on the road to Awakening. We may need to be patient, for God’s timing is not always our own. A short time to God may seem very long to us. Awakening is, to my mind, still rare in this world, though Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now; A New Earth) believes that there is a speeding up of the number of people being awakened. He says that indeed this process must be speeded up, or our species will not survive. He cites the statistics on murder of our fellow beings in just this century as the reason for his cautionary note to us.

2 – Brother/Sister

Here is the first relevant passage:

“I will go with you to the Holy One, and through my perception He can ridge the little gap. Your gratitude to your brother is the only gift I want. I will bring it to God for you, knowing that to know your brother is to know God. (T69)”

The “Holy One” is the Holy Spirit, who sets all things right. There is a difference of opinion among ACIM students about whether or not God knows about us. ACIM does state that there are some things that God does not understand about us. This is a confusing statement—for how can God, who is omnipotent according to traditional teachings, not know everything about ourselves? The answer lies in the Gnostic interpretation of A Course in Miracles, which believes that we live in an illusion, and that God does not enter into that illusion. So there are, apparently, things that even He does not understand.

3 – Holy Spirit

But the Holy Spirit, given by God to us as a means to heal the presumed separation, does understand. And the Holy Spirit is part of the Triune—God, the Holy Spirit, and Christ. And we are the Christ Self, at least once we have walked farther along our pathway. The Christ Self was walked by Jesus, but he is not exclusively Christ.

4 – Universal Experience

But this is theology, and I would not stress theology, for there can, according to ACIM, never be a universal theology. There can and must be a universal experience, though, and A Course in Miracles is pointing out that experience. The means to Awakening are being carefully explained to us, and revelation may occasionally reveal the end to us. But sustainability of Awakening is what we choose to have.

5 – Have You Known of Awakenings without Pain?

A reader, yesterday, asked me if I knew of individuals, following ACIM, who have awakened without pain. I do not know of individuals at all who are students of ACIM and have awakened, despite having read publications of A Course in Miracles for years. Is this evidence that the way is indeed long? I think that it may be. But I do believe that we are being prepared. We are to awaken without a “scream of mortal fear,” and thus without pain, but the way may be long and may demand patience.

6 – Please Write to Me

If you, my reader, know of examples of individuals studying ACIM who have awakened, I would appreciate your commenting on this posting. Your comment, once I approve it, will appear on the left sidebar of this blog. This question is such an important one that I solicit your opinion and your comments.

7 – Love

“Love does not conquer all things, but it does set all things right. . . .As you come closer to a brother you approach me, and as you withdraw from him I become distant to you. (T69)”

Perhaps we have not come close enough to forgiving our brother/sister completely and unreservedly. Perhaps that is why we do not see Awakening happening with regard to studying A Course in Miracles. Perhaps too many of us are caught in “forgiveness-to-destroy,” which is a forgiveness that does not forget the presumed misdeed. In this type of forgiveness (which if not forgiveness at all), we think that the deed that has been done is something about which we have a choice whether or not to forgive. It further thinks that there are some deeds that are beyond forgiveness. But ACIM declares that pardon has a sound basis, that what has happened has happened in illusion, and that our brother/sister is innocent.

8 – Forgiveness

Would we not want our own misdeeds forgiven?

9 – Salvation

“Salvation is a collaborative venture. It cannot be undertaken successfully by those who disengage themselves from the Sonship, because they are disengaging themselves from me. (T69)”

We are not meant to isolate ourselves in this world–even to study A Course in Miracles. We are meant to stay in the world, and to minister to our brothers and sisters. Our brothers and sisters are the Sonship.

10 – Withdrawing

When we withdraw for too long, we also withdraw from Jesus. And we cannot do that, because he and the Holy Spirit are our guides to better living. He is the elder brother who catches us when we fall, and the Holy Spirit is the inner guide that leads us every step of the way–guidance.

11 – Sonship

Surely we do not want to disengage from Jesus. So this passage has a warning for those of us who would seek our own salvation and not frequently enough think of the Sonship. The two go hand-in-hand.

Prayer:

Dear Father,

When I am tempted to withdraw, help to remember my contribution to my brothers and sisters. They need me, as I need them. Salvation lies in our relationship.

May I learn from the Course with careful study, and then may I take that learning into the world. This is the solution that will work for the world and for me.

Amen.

Forgiveness-for-Salvation

“Forgiveness-for-Salvation has one form, and only one. It does not ask for proof of innocence, nor pay of any kind. It does not argue, nor evaluate the errors that it wants to overlook. (S-2.III.1)”

1 – Attack / Anger

The most important thing to remember when faced with the attack and/or anger of another person is to remember just to overlook the error. If we dwell upon the error, we will make it real to us, and thus much harder to forgive. Jesus knows that we tend to retaliate, and he would not have it so.

2 – Innocence

In this passage, Jesus indicates that we are not to spend any time looking for “proof” of innocence. We just know that, in his inner Self, our brother/sister is innocent of wrongdoing. Our brother/sister has merely made mistakes, which cry for correction, but not punishment. As Richard Carlson (Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff) says, nobody (except very disturbed people) get up in the morning with the express purpose of making our life miserable. If an individual knew how to have perfect love for us, that is what we would get. It is only ignorance of how to bring this about that brings on the problem. And the problem doesn’t really exist, being in illusion or dream.

3 – Payback

We do not ask for payback when we love our brother/sister. We do not just return love where we find it, and only there. We return love, in the form of forgiveness and pardon, even when we superficially think that another person does not “deserve” forgiveness. We especially return love at such times. And then we know the bliss that comes from going with the flow in our love. We do not retaliate; it is the worst thing that we could do.

4 – Forgiveness

Jesus indicates elsewhere that forgiveness preserves our rights, that it is the only sane response. We would be sane in an insane world.

5 – Comfort

“He will not leave you comfortless, nor fail to send His angels down to answer you in His Own Name. He stands beside the door to which forgiveness is the only key. Give it to Him to use instead of you, and you will see the door swing silently open upon the shining face of Christ. Behold your brother there beyond the door; the Son of God as He created him. (S-2.III.7)”

The “He” in this passage is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will not leave us comfortless, even when all the world seems against us. There is no conspiracy of attack on us. We are in fact seeing the attack because we do not want to see it. But we have attracted it to ourselves. Our brother is showing us a tableau of our secret wishes—what we would do to him. And we would change our brother only when we ourselves have changed.

6 – Key

Forgiveness is the only key, as given in this passage. We can, in following A Course in Miracles, only reach Awakening by our relationship to our brother, and that relationship must be transformed from the special to the holy, and this transformation happens only when we have forgiven. If only one person forgives totally, all the world is saved—a statement made in the Manual of ACIM that is not easily understood. But it may be understood by the fact that we all are One, and therefore there is actually only one person in this world—all of us in the One.

7 – Christ in Our Brother

When we see Christ in our brother, we will forgive. And Christ is in our brother’s heart. The Christ Self, according to A Course of Love, is deep within us all. It is the real person, not the persona, or little self, or personal self. This real person wants our forgiveness, and this real person does not wish to harm us in any way. Indeed, we cannot be harmed, though we can think that we are. For we live in illusion—a truth to which we return over and over.

Affirmation: “I would seek comfort in my brother today.”

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Please give me patience today. Especially patience with my significant others. I cannot get inside their minds to understand the motives of what they do. I can only forgive them their distress. I can go with the flow, and let their decisions in some measure dictate what our life together will be. This is as it should be. We are walking alongside each other, with neither ahead or behind.

Thank You for the many blessings that I can see, as well as the many that I can’t see. All comes to me from Your hand. I appreciate the love that You send down upon my head. May blessing reign upon my loved ones as well.

Amen.