Unveiling the Inner Self

“The Self That God created needs nothing.  It is forever complete, safe, loved and loving.  It seeks to share rather than to get; to extend rather than project.  It has no needs and wants to join with others out of their mutual awareness of abundance.”  (Preface, A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., “What It Says,” 7^th paragraph)

The Self is the inner essence, the part of our Being that recognizes oneness with God.  It is the Christ Who is within.  We do not have to feel that to think like this is arrogance; instead, it is supreme good sense.  The Self is “complete, safe, loved and loving.”  What more could we want?

We need to realize that sharing and extending are functions of the Son of God, our real Self.  The little self who is dominated by the ego is really nothing, a travesty of reality.  We ought to avoid “getting” and “projecting.”  And when we share and extend, by definition we are deemphasizing the ego in our experience.  The ego gives only to get; it seeks to aggrandize self at the expense, sometimes, of others.  Even when we seek to aggrandize ourselves with no expense to others, we are still thinking amiss.  And it is this wrongful thinking that is nailing us to our little crosses.

We do have abundance.  Abundance is our inheritance.  And as soon as we have taken steps to avoid egotistical leanings, just choosing to stop such thinking in its tracks, we will be taking the first step toward unveiling the inner Self.  When we have taken this first step, God moves to supply the rest forthwith.  He only waits on our invitation, and that invitation can come as soon as we recognize what we really need is Him.

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.

Just a Quiet Knowing

“Within this awareness lies the answer to every question you might choose to ask. Within this shimmering awareness is the reassurance that the end of the journey is certain. Within this shimmering awareness do you abide at one with all minds and every aspect of creation. Join with me here often, in remembrance of me. For this is the secret of communion—to relinquish the perception of the world in favor of the acknowledgment of Reality.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 11, Page 136)

The perception of the world includes much that is deplorable. We don’t have to look with fearful eyes at this perception, though. Reality, true Reality, is perfectly harmless. It is the way we perceive that shows us harmony, joy, peace, Love. It leads into knowing, or into just “knowledge,” which is an immediate understanding that is largely intuitive. We act out of knowing when we are sure of the action we are taking. No voices, no locutions, no magic. Just a quiet knowing.

We are invited to commune with Jesus so that he can show us more than we could figure out on our own. Our awareness takes a giant leap forward when we take him up on his word. His foci of consciousness is very great, so that many of us can tune in and be answered at any given time. Of course, such speculation is beyond us. How could there be numerous foci of consciousness on the part of one entity? We don’t know, but then again, we don’t have to know. We can test out our suspicions about Jesus’ availability to us, and we will not be disappointed. We will find him here for us, if we ask for his presence with an open heart.

Would it not be wonderful to have the solution to every problem, shining in the wind? Every question we seek to ask has a ready Answer in the Holy Spirit or the Christ-Self. We need simply pose a question, clear our minds, get quiet, and then wait patiently. The Answer will, when we are open, pop into our mind. There is no struggle. We are the ones who make struggle, and we are looking deep in our depths, where there is only quiet, no struggle at all.

Commune with our depths today.

We will never find a better way to live.

Eat Only Good Fruit to Heal the Separation from God

“No one ever told you, and your Creator never insisted, that you eat of the tree of good and evil. For all good fruit has been given you freely. And you are always free to choose which fruit you will eat thereof.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 8, Page 103)

Here The Way of Mastery, which many believe was channeled by Jesus, he says that Genesis in the Bible got it wrong. We didn’t have to eat “apples” of the tree of good and evil; that was a misunderstanding. In terms of the recently channeled works, we see that separation from God was never foreordained; we could have done it differently. But now we are to eat only good fruit, which means that we are to heal the separation, something that the Holy Spirit or the Christ-Self prepares us for.

How do we heal the (illusory) separation? We go within and commune with our God Who lives in our depths. We have never been externalized, something that we have long misunderstood. We remove the blocks to the awareness of love, as another channeled work, The Course of Love, says. These blocks are fear and judgment, something that is within our power, with help, to turn aside from.

Let’s turn aside from fear and judgment today. Of course, this is easier said than done, and it is impossible unless we turn to our depths. We simply turn, with our awareness, inward, over and over, asking and receiving help.

Eventually we heal the subconscious depths. As each negativity is brought to the surface, we heal because we have the knowledge of what is holding us back. We walk into the sunlight with God, Jesus holding our hand.

There is no better way to live. When the time is right, God Himself will reach down and us up into enlightenment, Awakening, Christ-consciousness—all words for the same ineffable transformation.

In the meantime, we will catch glimpses of Awakening, and these will happen when we are in a particularly receptive frame of mind/heart. Then the glimpses will elongate, and God Himself will act to take us unto His heart with transformation.

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.

STRUGGLE NOT

Note: This article was published in Miracles magazine, January – February 2019 issue (Jon Mundy, publisher).

by Celia Hales

“Out of His lack of conflict comes your peace. And from His purpose comes the means for effortless accomplishment and rest.” (A Course in Miracles, COA ed., T-VI.13:7)

“All that you retain is a belief in effort and a struggle to be good and to do good, a belief that clearly demonstrates that you have rejected who you are.” (A Course of Love, C:P.13)

When we launch into self-help mode, struggling to be better than we really are, then we are on the wrong track. Nobody, by effort, can effect great change. This is the ego’s plan, and it is a bad plan. The ego would have us fail continually, until we give up, turn against God, and decide that nothing we can ever do will make any difference anyway.

The quotation above from A Course in Miracles points out a better way. We know “effortless” accomplishment when we are depending on the Holy Spirit to rule our days. And we know the same when we follow the Christ Self, as A Course of Love would have us do in this time of Christ.

How might this effortless accomplishment come about? I think that quiet contemplation is the real way of change, effortless change. When we turn inward, we are merging with our Maker, for we are made of God-stuff. When we turn inward, calmly, we often intuit that things are not as bad as we thought when we judged ourselves as guilty. Our true innocence leads to self-acceptance, and this self-acceptance is being who we really are, something that A Course of Love champions.

Of course, we have not been perfect in our lives. We may have hurt ourselves and other people; we may have been guilty of violent acts. The Answer (which we all know) is forgiveness borne of the certainty that rescue is available. As faulty as our behavior may have been, we acted as well as we could, given our level of understanding at the time. And this is true for everyone.

Now we know better, for A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love both show us the way to a life of being who we really are, innocent children of God, no longer in a struggle to change by force of personal will. We listen to guidance, and in restful listening, let the Holy Spirit or the Christ Self take over. And thereby does change become effortless.

Self & the New Elevated Self of Form

“This is not meant to convey any division between the Self and the elevated Self of form, but to demonstrate that there is a difference in form between the Self and the elevated Self of form. The Self was and will always remain more than the body. The body, however, is also newly the Self. The body is also, newly, one body, one Christ.” (ACOL, D:3.18)

The Self of form occupies a body, but the Self is larger than just what we know on earth. And this One Self, of which we all occupy, mystically, the same One, is the Christ-Self. In the largest sense, this all-encompassing Self is composed of God, for there is no division in the universe. It is all God-stuff.

Jesus hopes that all of us will come into our own sooner rather than later, that we will achieve Christ-consciousness, and with this, the elevated Self of form, the entity that occupies a body in this world. This elevated Self of form is new, in that the world has never had a comprehensive Awakening. Previously, we had to die to this world and emerge on the Other Side to know more of what the cosmos offered. We knew, after death, things that now we will be able to know while still in a body, in form. But this elevated Self of form, though able to access the mystical One, the Self that is out of form, will never occupy all that we are. Our Self is larger than life on earth, larger than the body that we occupy.

In another sense, we need to come to realize that the elevated Self whom we are is shared with our brothers and sisters. God does not subdivide. The Christ-Self is One, not a myriad of little Selves that in any way at all stay separate from each. There is not separation any longer (and there never was, in truth, ever any separation at all). We speak, therefore, of the Self in the singular, even though it is mystically shared with everyone. It is our bodies that appear separate to our eyes, and this truth can make the truth of the One seem confusing. If we don’t consider that we are delving into mystical truth.

“The Self was and will always remain more than the body.” Yes! So life continues, unabated, on other planes and in other existences in the cosmos. In our limited way, these other planes are closed to us in a very real sense, but if we take to heart the message in today’s quotation, we can know that we cannot see with physical eyes all that exists. The physical universe is one place for a particular wave of energy, but there are other waves of energy that we cannot see.

If we take to heart this message, we will be warmed by it. We will know that we in our essence are more than we can see, that there is a part of us that is apart from this world. But this part, we can intuit, communicates with us in ways that we don’t understand. All of us have experienced intuition, and it is quite possible that this method of communication emanates from the larger Self, the one beyond this world.

Commune with the larger Self today. It is truly our link to God Himself. Though it is a mistake to think of “parts” of God, we can use language loosely to say that the Self, outside form, is our part of God.

Prayer

Help me to learn through communing with the part of my Self who does not live on earth. I would know more of You, and this is how I will come to know more of You. All if composed of You, of necessity the All IS You. Help me to wrap my mind and heart around this concept.

The way back is not far. When these matters tease me out of thought, I know that I am getting close to You, close to Your Essence. Thank You.

Amen.

Open to True Knowing from the Christ-Self Deep Within

“Just beyond your mind’s ability to call it forth lies the truth that you and all other beings know. The access to what seems to lie beyond your ability lies in the Christ in you. You might think of the ego as the hand that swats away this knowing.” (ACOL, T2:10.8)

We do know the truth, because the truth is of the Christ-Self deep within us and all of our brothers and sisters. When we open more and more to the Self within, our subconscious becomes available to us, and we know in a way that we have not known when the ego has been in the ascendancy. We need to dethrone the ego now, now and forevermore. It does us no good to think ourselves better—or worse—than another. We just drop into highs and lows, for the way of the world is to undo the ego. It is God’s Will that we give up this part of our belief about ourselves that has done us no good. It is also God’s Will that we request Christ-consciousness, and that we remove the barriers to the bestowal of that blessing upon us. God makes the decision, but we can and must get irrelevant specks of our personalities out of the way before. Our personalities have latched onto the ego as something that will save us from ourselves, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

All of us are equal to one another. All of us are equally gifted, though the display of that giftedness might vary in this time of learning. Thinking we are more special than another is an ego mechanism for weakness, a weakness that will unhinge us repeatedly. Give up the idea that we are special in any way—or conversely, believe that ALL are special, for all are creations of God, and He means all of us equally well.

We can learn more about our lives and what we are doing when we let the Christ in us come out. Our Christ-Self will not lead us wrong. It is the ego that does that. And our knowing is affected by the ego’s swatting away the truth. We need knowing in our lives, true knowing. And this true knowing will come when we stay open to the Self, who speaks from deep within us. We must get quiet to hear this quiet voice. We must give up our adrenaline rushes, too caught in the world, to a perfect calm and quiet that will lead us surely down the path to greater peace.

Prayer

Thank You for the mellow feeling that overcomes me today. It is true that I am somewhat tired, even though it is early in the morning; I have had two stressful days. But You are able to encourage me to get extra sleep when needed, and this I will do. Thank You for Your encouragement that I listen to my body and get the rest I need.

Be with me as this day unfolds. Help me to feel Your warmth, Your loving Presence. This always sets my day aright. And it may even mean that I don’t really need to sleep right now. Guide me, please.

Thank You.

Amen.

Make the Shift to Union with the Self

“Without union all your seeking will not reveal the truth. And while there is a part of you that knows this, you prefer instead of union a game of speculation, conjecture, and probable cause. You look for explanations and information rather than the truth you claim to seek. You look in judgment rather than in forgiveness. You look from separation’s stance rather than from the grace-filled place of union.” (ACOL, C:8.11)

When we are in union, we are united with our inner Self as well as with other people. Union is a joining of heart and mind to form wholeheartedness. The term is used in several different ways in A Course of Love, but always it indicates a joining, a unity of Self and soul with ourselves, God, and others.

Jesus is chastising us a bit in this passage. He feels that we are not doing enough of the right things to walk into a new day. To create a new world. We fall back on old habits of mind, the habits of mind that were in the ascendancy when the ego-mind was dominant.

We have had enough of this. Now is the time to make the shift to a union with the Self, the inner being that is the Christ. Our days will improve, our service will improve, the ways in which we help Jesus to save our world will improve as well. We have waited long enough; now is the time for right action.

We are used to analyzing, and this analysis is virtually always of the egoic mind. This is the “speculation, conjecture, and probable cause” that we seek, and we seek in vain—for this way of looking is not found in the real world, true reality. If we look in forgiveness, we see truly. And we often don’t look in forgiveness; we want to drop into analysis, hoping to find that we have not really gone astray.

But we have gone astray when we analyze. We are interpreting the past, something that Jesus counsels against in other parts of ACOL. This interpretation merely goes over the same territory without really finding new ground. And we have had enough of the old ground.

Ask to join with our innermost Self today. Let our little grievances go into the better world of forgiveness. And unite heart and mind. The heart knows how to live; the mind, unless informed by the Self, does not. The Self can inform, of course; just be sure that it is not the egoic self that is trying to intervene.

The best is yet before us. Stop complaining about our lot in life. Just go with the flow, and see if the day doesn’t smooth out. The Self will have taken the first step toward giving us the love that we seek, sometimes in vain, from others.

Give Up Struggle & Follow Guidance

“Struggle to succeed and succeed to struggle yet another day” is the life you have made, and the life you fear heaven would replace. To give up the idea that this is where meaning is found, fulfillment attained, happiness birthed amongst sorrow, is seen as giving up. Heaven’s help is most called upon for just this time, this time when giving up is close, for never do you feel more in need of help than when all your plans have failed and giving up becomes an alternative more attrac¬tive than carrying on.” (ACOL, C:6.13)

When we give up, paradoxically we are closer to home than ever before. We are finally open to God, and this makes all the difference.

We have become very accustomed to struggle over the eons of separation. Now, when we are told that enlightenment doesn’t come from struggle and work at all, we don’t know what to think. How do I reach Christ-consciousness, then, if I can’t work for it?

Three books channeled by Jesus have given us many answers, A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, and The Way of Mastery. Not all believe that Jesus channeled all three, but there are similarities among the three that invite that speculation. In all, Jesus advocates a surcease of struggle, a giving up of needless effort, a following of the guidance that will come to us. This guidance will take us home. If we do nothing more to go home, then following our guidance is the only thing that will succeed where everything else has failed.

So give up struggle as a bad idea. Turn the details of our days over to a Higher Power, either the Holy Spirit or the inner Christ Self. We won’t know where the guidance is coming from, but God is within—as are the Holy Spirit and the Christ Self—and so knowing exactly which entity is guiding us is a moot point. But guidance we need, and, as we progress along the pathway, guidance is what we will want.

Give up to all except this guidance, and see what a fantastic difference it makes in our days. Guidance is my little theme song, and today is the first day of the rest of our lives.

Let’s make this day count by following the guidance that comes.

Gentle Whispers of Guidance

What are good intentions but a choice to do what you can, alone, by yourself, against great odds? This is why good intentions so often fail to come to be at all, and why, when every effort has been made, the outcome seldom seems worth the effort. You cannot earn your way to heaven or to God with your effort or your good intentions. You cannot earn, and will not ever feel as if you have earned, the designation of a person of such worth that you are deserving of all that God would freely give. Give up this notion. (ACOL, C:P.19)

We have often seen ourselves as unworthy, unworthy in the sight of God. While Jesus seeks to dispel this error, he does note here that we cannot merit our way to heaven. We try to be good, but we will always fail, even in our own sight. Thus we have such good intentions, only to be thrown on the ground, totally dejected, when once again we have failed to live up even to our own hopes. We realize (or we need to) that we cannot effect salvation for ourselves. We can remove the barriers to the acceptance of love, but that is all. Yet removing the barriers is a great step forward, something that we can give ourselves—but not our ego—some credit for.

The Self acts to remove these barriers. We are guided by the inner Christ Self further to accept Jesus’s great promises for us. But we don’t try to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, an endeavor that is bound for failure.

We, in every instance that we can muster, follow the gentle whispers of guidance as to what we need to do and say next, even what to feel. We learn that this is enough. Always enough.

And Jesus’s way, pointed out in ACIM and ACOL, gets us home.

Is there anything else that we want? Just be patient in the gathering of this new era. Don’t get frustrated with yourself if Christ-consciousness doesn’t come when we wish. Jesus never intended for us to get frustrated and confused about our coming into our own as children of God, awakened children of God.

Radiant Message of God’s Love

“The only part of your mind that has reality is the part that links you still with God. Would you have all of it transformed into a radiant message of God’s Love, to share with all the lonely ones who have denied Him? God makes this possible.” (ACIM, T-14.V.1)

Our inner Christ Self is the linkage with God, the internal linkage that allows us to welcome others, to love them intensely, and to be at home in all the universe. We are no longer lonely when we recognize that we are one with God. And we reach out to others, as just something that we want to do. Not a compelling, in reaching out to others. Just something that we feel led to do, with no coercion at all.

Our Christ Self is discussed at length in A Course of Love. It is the truest of true reality, the “only part of your mind that has reality.”
Let us go forth today to reach out to others in whatever ways we can. They will welcome our interest and our words, if we listen guidance within that tells us when and where to speak.

Reality, true reality, is asking us to do the best that we can. And guidance is always there to be sure that our thoughts, words, and actions are well-considered.

Feel Your Heart’s Leanings

“Now this power is available to assist you in accomplishing the final joining, the joining that will end duality and return you to wholeness—to who you truly are—in the reality in which you truly exist.” (D:Day29.3)

We are joining with the inner Christ, the Self with a capital “S.” Is this so hard? I think not. We begin to look within for our answers, we begin to look within for our guidance, and we don’t sway back and forth between egoic leanings and true leanings, the latter being leanings that are encouraged by the Self.

Much is said in A Course of Love about being who we truly are. The final parts of the Dialogues, the concluding book, say this, over and over. Being who we are is not any harder than joining with the inner Self. But it does take some practice, because we are so used to living a persona that satisfied the ego. We have to realize, once and for all, that we have left the ego behind now. We are living better, we hope. We are thinking better, we hope. The world, including our world but not limited to it, depends on our moving beyond the ego to loftier concerns.

Joining with the Christ Self may take some praying, some communing with God. Jesus says in ACOL that the miracle is the prayer. And miracles are not specific, but all-embracing. We think so much in specifics, a habit left over from the ego, and to think specifics is often wrong-minded. Enlarge the scope of your mind to include the heart, and watch the specificity drop away. It will.

And we will have a better day for living in a heartfelt manner.

—

“This is no more complicated than ending the rift between mind and heart. You have accomplished that and you can accomplish this—in your reality. As you realize by now, all this talk of accomplishment is merely about bringing forward what already exists into the reality in which you exist. Another way of saying this is bringing who you are into wholeness, which can be interpreted both as bringing all that you are into existence and as bringing all that you are into existence in union.” (ACOL, Dialogues, Day 29, 29.3 – 29.4)

This quotation says it all in succinct fashion. But it takes some rereading. We are joining mind and heart into wholeness, what Jesus calls “wholeheartedness.” We can accomplish this; it is within our power. We are trying to move toward union one with the other, and one with our inner Self. The two are not contradictory or even diverse in meaning, for we are One with ourselves as well as One with others, including the God who encompasses everything that exists.

We need this union. We will be bereft until we have it, even though we may not now recognize what is missing. When we join with our significant others, don’t we feel a blessing? Don’t we recognize that we are coming home? It is just this way with the inner Self. And we are now The Accomplished (from ACOL), which says that we can and ought to make this transition into true reality.

Take the First Step into Shared Consciousness

“Take the first step outside of the known reality of your conscious awareness, the learned reality of your separate consciousness, and into the realm of shared consciousness.” (ACOL, Dialogues, 8.12)

We are not meant to be independent, as much as that flies in the face of the conditioning that our culture has given us. Our culture welcomes the gradual growth of young people, believing that when we as a young adult are standing on our own two feet, independently, we have arrived at a certain level of maturity. And we make our own judgments. Both the thoughts of mature independence and the thoughts of personal judgment are erroneous, if we believe anything that Jesus is telling us in A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love.

We are not meant to be separate from one another in independence that increases our isolation; we are to share with others in a shared consciousness that we do not, as yet, even fully comprehend. We have psychic attunement with each other, and this is a sign of our shared consciousness. We don’t make our own decisions, our own judgments; we listen to guidance—in the case of ACIM, from the Holy Spirit; and in the case of ACOL, from the inner Christ Self.

This shared consciousness, once we are aware of it, will mean much to our progress in a new reality, a true reality. We are herein invited to take the first halting steps into that new awareness, this new business of sharing with others. Our minds, under egoic influence, want to be separate, and believe that a shared mind is infringement of our liberty. We need to think again. How nice would it be to know that others are there for us, in our deepest understandings, as given us not only by our mind but also by our heart?

We don’t have to stand in “splendid” isolation. We are not meant to be alone. Our brothers and sisters are given us in this world for a purpose, and that purpose is the communion of their spirits with our own. We have less to worry about when we know that we are not required to be isolated in independent living. We need each other. In our heart of hearts, we know this already, and now we can act on it, knowing that we are moving into grace when we do.

Time of Tenderness Accomplishes Atonement: the Culmination

“The time of tenderness is the time of your approach to unity. The atonement that is accomplished here is the means of opening the gate to your approach. No one has closed this gate to you, but you by your own hand pulled it shut as you departed your heavenly home, and you do not remember that your own hand can open it once again.” (ACOL, C:29.9)

The time of tenderness is an especially heart-wrenching period for those of us who are reading A Course of Love. Jesus has brought us to a point in which we see ourselves as particularly sensitive in our reactions. This sensitive point will render us able to recognize the indwelling of the Christ Self. It will tenderize our relationships to God, other people, and also ourselves. We will be ready for something more, an embodiment, a full embodiment, of the Christ in physical form. We do not have to rue this embodiment in physical form, for it has been elevated to a place very high in Jesus’s scheme of things. And forgiveness has helped to bring us to this point, the forgiveness championed so much in A Course in Miracles.

And we go on, at this point, to see where forgiveness fits:

“We speak not of forgiveness or even atonement here, for these have been thoroughly discussed earlier. You have all been through the time of tenderness, the time that preceded your giving and receiving of forgiveness, your request for and granting of atonement, your re-viewing and unlearning of the perceived lessons of your life.” (ACOL, D:Day 2.14)

“Unity” means the time that God and the self are once again One. We are no longer dependent upon the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit, to take command of our lives, through guidance that takes us home. We are home. We have a more direct approach to God than at anytime during the separation. We are living the Christ Self, a concept that is welcomed as we become the elevated Self of form.

At this point the theology becomes unified, something that we would expect when Jesus calls this time the “approach to unity.” We are a part of God, and we have welcomed Him once again, for we are not longer asleep. He does not have to think that His children sleep and need to be awakened. When we come into Christ-consciousness, we are awakened. The Unconscious is available to us. We see the merging of ourselves with the inner Christ Self in this time of the second coming of Christ.

In reading A Course of Love, we did go through a time of tenderness, and this time opened our hearts to greater understanding, full knowledge of what God would once again mean to us. We were actually “tender” during part of the reading of ACOL, and this stirring of the heart accomplished great things in us.
Now we can realize that atonement continues throughout time, until it is finally relinquished as a done deal. We do not try to hasten its ending, though sometimes we feel impatient. We rest in God’s timing.

It is enough. Once begun, the ending is sure.

And we welcome the ending, whenever God feels that we are ready for the Christ-consciousness, the elevated Self of form, that He wishes for us.

Joining of Personal Self to True Self

“Have we not worked throughout this course to return your true identity to you now? The joining of heart and mind in relationship is the joining of the personal self with the true Self in the reality in which you exist now. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 4.16)”

1 – Theme

This passage encapsulates the primary theme of “A Treatise on the New.” We are not to look for some far-off and distant culmination for the blessing that we seek. Christ-consciousness is ready for us, here and now, if we are ready. And we can be ready. That is spoken to all who are studying A Course of Love.

2 – Failure

We will not always feel the truth of these words. We will fall down, often many times, before we know Awakening to be a constant state. These lapses should not deter us. We will find our way Home.

3 – Time

There is no time. This is an implied message of ACOL. All time, in fact, exists simultaneously, which is one of the laws of those who follow the newest findings of physics.

4 – Pathway

Do not fail to reach the pathway today. Know that lapses in understanding that happen today will fall away tomorrow. Know that the reality in which we now reside is the best place from which we can grow to the elevated Self.

5 – True Self

This quotation equates the movement from just the personal self to the elevated Self, or true Self, with the joining of mind and heart into wholeheartedness. This latter was the emphasis of the first part of A Course of Love, the original volume. When we open to our heart, we know that we do not need the proofs for ultimate reality that the mind demands, especially the mind in service to the ego. We love more deeply as well. Our heart understands and knows, at one in relationship to others in our little world. This is the “unity and relationship” that ACOL stresses so much also. We are One, and yet we are differentiated into the many, in relationship one to the other. It is a paradox that we are both the One and the many, in relationship. But it is the best way that we can come to know the ultimate reality in which we are immersed.

6 – Ego

We have been occupying a form that encompassed a small-minded version of ourselves. We are asked to enlarge our self-concepts to something much bigger. We will be rewarded when we make a transition to a greater sense of Self. It will be more than a larger personal self, which would invite fear because it would encompass a bigger ego, and bigger egos are always scary. Think of the people you have known who seemed to have big egos. Weren’t you, on some level, afraid of these individuals? And now we are recognizing that we ourselves have perhaps sometimes scared others by our own inflated egos. Now we would leave all this behind.

7 – Being

The Self that we will embody is larger and grander than any ego could imagine. And so much more completely the true Being that we are. In oneness with God, we walk into the sunshine of this world, seeking to effect salvation in those who are ready to listen.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

In this Thanksgiving season, I thank You for my true identity, especially for the truth that my true identity can be known now–without tedious waiting for some distant future time.

If I find myself prone to doubt this truth, may I rethink my position, and accept Your words as true. We can know ourselves in our true identity in this world, and may we recognize this glorious truth today.

Help me navigate through this day, moving ever closer to Christ-consciousness. Remove the egoic blocks that I have to this blessing. I know that this is Your will, and now it is mine as well. We all need to move into a greater dimension of Being, there with You. Help me to make great strides to this new place, with You, today.

Amen.

Seeing with the Vision of Christ-consciousness Is upon Us

“Seeing with the vision of Christ-consciousness is already upon you. You are in the process of learning what it means. This treatise is here to help you do so. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 2.33)”

1 – Transition

This passage clarifies the point of transition. We are ready for Christ-consciousness, but we may still have questions, and it is these questions that the “Treatise on the New” seeks to explain to us.

2 – Give Ourselves to the Experience

Certainly no transition is without bumpy spots. Neither will this one. But it can be effortless if we give ourselves to it wholeheartedly, as Jesus asks in the first volume of the series of A Course of Love. We are used to hearing the Holy Spirit, and most of us are used to rejecting His advice from time to time, even when we know in our deepest being that what He bids us say or do is the right choice.

3 – Inner Knowing

Now we will take the next step into the time of Christ. We will follow our inner knowing without the struggle that we sometimes experienced when trying to follow the Holy Spirit. Previously, we were often weak, often indecisive, when the Voice of the Holy Spirit asked us to say or do something that made us uncomfortable. Jesus described this situation well in A Course in Miracles. He even said that what the Holy Spirit bade us to say or do might be embarrassing to us. But this, he said, was a misperception coming from a “shabby self-perception,” and would best be left behind. All of us have struggled with this advice, sometimes with more success, sometimes with less.

4 – Unconsciously

Now we are at the point of allowing the guidance that we receive to be received unconsciously, if we so will. God has promised this; Jesus has passed the Word along to us in A Course of Love. This becomes the effortless way that we will live in the future, once we have accepted the promise of all that this way of life holds out to us. This is the essence of living in Christ-consciousness. Let us not allow indecisiveness to delay us further. May we accept this promise today.

5 – Internal Guidance

It seems right to say that our guidance will come internally, but how will we hear it? Will there be nudges of guidance such as the Holy Spirit gave us?

6 – Nudges

Based on my limited experience, I think that the nudges that we get from the inner Christ-consciousness will be virtually indistinguishable from the nudges of the Holy Spirit, except that I do think that Jesus is working with us as more willing followers. We will not get stubborn nearly so often. We will recognize that nudge as a celestial accompaniment to our day, something that is going to give us a better day.

7 – Identical to Holy Spirit

The nudges themselves are, I think, identical to the nudges that were given by the Holy Spirit. When I had glimpses of Awakening on two occasions many years ago, my guidance was exactly the same in “nudges” that I had earlier come to recognize as being from the Holy Spirit. The intuition is identical. But how we respond to it is not.

8 – Respond More Readily

If we are on the beam, we will respond much more readily. We are more willing followers of Jesus now. And we know that what he encourages us to say and do is right on.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I see the vision of Christ-consciousness today. May I know what lies ahead for me, if I follow what Jesus has been saying to me. May I offer the words that he gives to me without embarrassment, and may I listen to the Voice of the Holy Spirit until such time as my guidance is received internally, without any strain at all.

Be with me today as I seek to leave attack, judgment, and unneeded planning of the future behind. When I have done that, I will know that God will be willing to take the final step for me to reach Christ-consciousness. Thank you.

May this day go well. Remove any confusion that I still have over the guidance that I receive. If the guidance in a given day seems to change, help me to know if I have edged into a new probable reality. Help me to follow Your guidance, minimizing my own confusion.

Amen.

Connections

“And yet your vision has already changed, although you are not aware of the extent of this change. Realize now that you have come to recognize unity. You do not any longer see each person and event as separate, with no relation to the whole. You are beginning to see the connections that exist and this is the beginning. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: A Treatise on the New, 2:29)”

“Connections” is a potent term in our culture today. We are, even in secular society, constantly talking about our connections to others. We want to be connected, no longer separate, encased in physical bodies that don’t reach out to one another.

This change may very well be the result of A Course in Miracles’s increasing influence in our culture. Many people quote from ACIM without letting anybody know the source of their remarks. Many people write entire books with the message of ACIM without ever attributing their sources. So the inclusion of ACIM in our culture is significant. It behooves
us to study the original, with a view toward understanding fully. We can learn what others say, including this blog, and we can get a good overview, but the best writings point to their source, and that is the text of A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love.

“Examine what you may have felt the onset of true vision would mean. Have you considered the question? Have you expected to see in the same way but more lovingly? (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 2.31)”

This command is daunting. We are asked to reexamine our thoughts and emotions for the changes that we are undergoing. And change may be stressful, though Jesus would have us to realize that change, under his direction and without the ego’s interference, is not stressful.

Our vision from God is an expression of revelation. A Course in Miracles explains that revelation will occasionally reveal the end to us, but to get there the means are needed. Those means are, first of all, explained in ACIM. Now A Course of Love has taken us a step forward, beyond the time of the Holy Spirit and His guidance, into Christ-consciousness, which depends on an inner knowing that is normally wordless.

If we have never thought about what true vision would entail, we will not be ready to accept vision from God when it comes. I once read that one should not beseech heaven for a miracle that one would not recognize if seen at high noon. That is a particularly graphic illustration of the change that is set before us now. We must ask for eyes to see, ears to hear. We must be anticipatory about the change that awaits us. Above all, we must not fear this change. Faith can substitute for the fear that we once had, and which we once felt protected us. Faith, as I am describing it, is a form of love–and A Course in Miracles says that fear and love are the only two emotions, all others being variant forms of these two.
May we wait at high noon for the miracle–indeed, the revelation–that awaits us. It qualifies as a revelation rather than a miracle because, asACIM points out, revelation comes only from God. God will stay by us now, as He especially eagerly awaits our transformation. As so many have pointed out before, He has only our hands and feet to do His bidding. (The same has also been said of our guide, Jesus.)

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I long for true vision, for the revelation that Christ-consciousness holds out for me. Be with me today as I keep this request in mind. I know that You have placed this longing in my heart and mind, and that, since it is Your wish, my prayer will be answered. If not today–if I must wait beyond today–help me to prepare for the vision that You will surely grant when I have been made ready.

I believe that if my faith in You is strong enough today, this will be the day that vision will come to me. Help me to be steadfast.

I would have a good day today, resting in Your peace. Be with me as I seek to make good decisions, following the advice and guidance that I get. I would not make my own decisions today, for my judgment is necessarily faulty.

I would make good decisions. For that I need Your guidance.

Thank You for guiding me.

Amen.

To Understand What “Unity and Relationship” Really Mean

“Only from this shared vision, this observation of what is can you begin to produce unity and relationship through unity and relationship. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 2.18)”

1 – Hallmark Features

The hallmark features of A Course of Love are the “unity and relationship” in which we are now to live. We are one in unity, and we are one in relationship. We do not “learn” in the old way, but we observe in this world, and especially in our encounters with our brothers and sisters, the new way.

2 – Personal Self

“A Treatise on the Personal Self,” the third treatise (just prior to the “Treatise on the New”), explains more fully what unity and relationship really mean. In a sense, the meaning is no different from the words themselves. We are all One (unity), and yet we are differentiated into individuals (making relationships necessary, and, indeed, allowing us to experience life, and for the God within us to experience life).

3 – Sharing a Vision

We share a vision with all of our brothers and sisters, whether or not they have walked the same pathway that we are walking through ACIM and ACOL. They may choose a different pathway, even though Jesus says that this curriculum is required. He goes on to say, elsewhere, that the curriculum is mandatory much as school is mandatory for young people, but if they don’t go to school, they learn in a different way. In ACIM, Jesus says that contemplation will work, but that it is tedious, and it is not our way. In ACIM, our way is the special, turned holy, relationships with our brothers and sisters, through forgiveness. And even this forgiveness, we ultimately realize, is not even necessary, as the thoughts and actions that we spurned were madness, an illusion. In ACOL, the difference in emphasis is on the unity and relationship that we experience with these same brothers and sisters who people our world. Thus there is a logical progression from ACIM toACOL.

4 – Pay Attention

The terms “unity” and “relationship” are used so often in A Course of Love that we must be very careful always to remember what they mean. It is easy to gloss over the terms, but Jesus means something very precisely by them, and it is well for us to take in their full meaning.

5 – Oneness and Diversity

In a sense, the terms mean “oneness” and “diversity,” and if we think of the fact that we truly are all One, and yet we are divided into a multiplicity of beings, then we have the concept firmly in hand. This is the way that God experiences Himself through us. This is the way of reality.

6 – Shared Reality

There is another aspect to this quotation, the aspect of a shared reality. We are all in this together, and the sooner we realize that we are never, ever, isolated, the better off we will become. This means that we are never alone.

7 – Does God Know about Us?

For too long, we have tried to be “independent,” when this is a flawed concept. We are not meant to be independent of God as we understand Him. We are meant to communicate with our Creator, and He will communicate with us. There is some difference of opinion among students/teachers of A Course in Miracles about whether or not God actually enters into our illusion, and therefore knows about us. I think He does know, and knows intimately. Obviously, we are a part of Him—how can He not know? To remove God from our faith is to take away a support that we all need, and we all need, sometimes desperately. We can talk about the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but this seems somewhat barren if we don’t realize that God is a part of this Trinity. I don’t want to leave God out of my life by deciding that He doesn’t enter into my dream, my illusion. This is not my experience. My experience of the Ultimate is of a God Who cares, and cares intimately. The Holy Spirit, when we are following ACIM, is our Teacher, but His guidance doesn’t give me the intimacy that communing with God does. His guidance seems more impersonal.

8 – Our Community

These are personal reflections. These reflections are not spelled out in either A Course in Miracles or A Course of Love. There is plenty of room for differences of opinion about what God knows in A Course in Miracles. Our community of ACIM and ACOL ought to peacefully coexist with differences of opinion in interpretation.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Please help me to understand all is One, and that, with my brothers and sisters, we are One in relationship. When I am very busy, it is so easy to get tunnel vision, to fail to look outward and to offer my help to those who surround me. May I not forget to reach out to my brothers and sisters today.

Thank you, as always, for being there for me. As someone said, “I may forget You today. But please don’t forget me.”

Thank you for Your guidance, the guidance that comes either from the Holy Spirit or from the inner Christ Self. I am never certain from where my guidance comes, but comes it does, and often. I try to use my mind and heart, in conjunction, so that I don’t make inferences that are misinformed. Help me to use my wholeheartedness today, as I walk through a peaceful world. Thank You for allowing me to see peace in the midst of turmoil. Be with me today, as always. And thank You for talking to me, in inner silence.

Amen.

The Christ Self Comes into Its Own Again

“Your awareness of the Self that you are now was not present in the past, but you can truly now, with the devotion of the observant, see that the Self you are now was indeed present, and was the truth of who you were then as now. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 2.15)”

1 – Secular Psychology

As I mentioned yesterday, even secular psychology says that our personalities don’t change a great deal over the course of our life. We may not actually like this; we might want to be very different from what we were when we were insecure teens. And certainly some of the superficial changes are obvious. We grow more self-confident; we are less reticent to speak our minds; we don’t feel that being popular is the most important thing in the world.

2 – Self

But A Course of Love is saying here that our Self (with a capital “S”) has always been with us, but we just did not know this. This Self is the Christ Self, the inner Self that the ego sought to override and to rule. This Self is the tie to God that had been missing when the ego was in the ascendancy. This tie to God, so long missing in the separation, is the reason that the Holy Spirit was created (according to A Course in Miracles).

3 – Guidance

Now we are seeing this Self again, and we are listening to its guidance. This is the time of Christ, and are well-received by our whole Self when we listen to what this Self says.

4 – Remembering

This passage indicates that we “remember,” that we have never really lost, the true Self that was covered over during the time of our separation from God. Our separation, given elsewhere in A Course of Love, was a plan in which we participated because we were eager to experience life, and God had no other way to deal with us but to let us go (much as a parent lets a teen who is rebellious find their way through a sometimes troubled world). But if we “remember,” we have not really lost that Self that existed prior to the separation. And we are now ready to remember, in the form of the “elevated Self of form” (an ACOL tenet).
What a joy to know that this new way of living has always been available to us, but that our culture covered it over with concepts of God and the Holy Spirit meant for another time and place. We are ready now to walk into the light. May we do so today.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I truly know, in the depth of my being, the Self that You have said I really am. May today know no attack nor anger. May my little self not intervene in the glory that I can feel when the Self is in ascendancy.

Thank You for these words of reassurance in the passage for today. I know that if You say that I have always been this Self, then my awareness of this Self will expand and develop.

May this day be good. May I listen carefully to my inner Self as I seek to follow the good guidance that only You can give.

Amen.

Beauty / Truth / Wisdom — God’s Gifts

1 – Day 20

“You have realized now your relationship with the unknown and ceased to fear it. You are, perhaps, even eager now, to move beyond the known to the unknown. . . .

“This is the first transition, the transition in which you really ‘get it’ that the unknown cannot be taught, laid out on a map, or shown to you by another. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 20)”

2 – Teaching?

We cannot teach another what is buried deep within our hearts. Only our Self can accurately guide us in this life.

3 – Mentors

Oh, we have tried other things. We have listened to mentors, we have read—in all ways we have sought to learn from the teachings of others. But in this time of Christ we need to stop reaching out to others for the riddle of our lives; we need to realize that deep within are the Answers. So we get quiet, and we listen.

4 – Meditations

Now, meditations written by others may still help. They serve to anchor us, though, still deeper within ourselves. These meditations only remind us of what we have forgotten. They do not point out the road on which we ought to travel. Or, if we try to make them point out that road, we use those meditations in the wrong way. If we follow a path that has been laid out by another, we go nowhere—for each individual has a unique path. This point is well made by Joseph Campbell and is related in a book entitled, “Companion to Joseph Campbell.” The book blends oral comments from Joseph in a seminar of some time at Esalen, with quotations from Joseph’s work. And Joseph says just this—if we follow the path that has been followed by another, we go nowhere. Joseph also says, tellingly, that if follow our bliss, doors will open that have been closed before, and doors that would be closed for anyone else. So listen to your Inner Wisdom (a phrase used by an enlightened friend of mine), dialogue with your Inner Wisdom, and you will come out all right—not alright, for ALL right.

5 – We Receive

“What has happened here is that words have been put on the feelings and remembrances that you have within your minds and hearts and have been sharing in this dialogue. The way of saying this perhaps is new, but the way of saying this is the expression of the human being receiving it. The way in which you are hearing and responding to these truths is perhaps new, but that way too is of the human being receiving it, in this case, you. (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 183)”

6 – Learning

We have long depended on learning, on our minds, to live as comfortably as possible in this world. Day Twenty clarifies that we cannot learn the truth that way, the unknown cannot be taught. We know intuitively, and have always known intuitively, the truth of our being, the unknowns for which we have sought externally for solutions.

7 – Transitions

The first transition ends when we realize that we are in a state of transition, the state of knowing that we cannot learn anything, that we have always held internally the truths of which we are becoming aware. The more we turn inward, the more we will know these truths. Our minds are not the way; our hearts are. Thus we are at the true end of learning.

8 – Level Ground

We are preparing here, at the halfway point of our Forty Days and Forty Nights, to return to level ground, to leave the mountain top. We will be different people when we have returned to level ground. We will know the beauty, truth, and wisdom of the one Self, the Self that we share with all our brothers and sisters.

9 – Truth

“The truth is the truth. It doesn’t change. It is the same for everyone.

“What, then, is the unknown? The reception and expression of truth.

“This is why you can ‘know’ while always coming to know. . . .The only thing there is to know is the One Self in its many expressions. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 20)”

10 – Paths

The “truth” that is same for everyone is not the same as the path that someone will take in life. We all take different paths, but if we are to stay on that pathway, we need the same truths that speak to all of our brothers and sisters. We need authoritative truth, not subjective. We need to hear from someone like Jesus—and here he is speaking to us as an equal, a companion on our trek to the mountain top with him, leading to Christ-consciousness.

11 – Surrender

Surrender is an important component of arriving at Christ-consciousness. It is not within us to know the place nor the time that God appoints. This is a paraphrase from the New Testament in regard to the coming of the Kingdom of God, Heaven on earth. And what will we have in Christ-consciousness but the Kingdom of God, Heaven on earth. Nothing. We are walking to fulfillment as a Christ Self, allowing that inner Self to blossom and become obvious to ourselves and all around us.

12 – Timing

It is not hard, but it does take surrender to God’s timing, for He makes the decision about when.

13 – Preparation

Are there things that we can do to prepare? Yes, or A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love would never have been channeled. The ultimate purpose of both is to see us awaken. Jesus says in ACIM that revelation may occasionally reveal the end to us, but to get there, the means are needed. And he continues, that the means are being carefully explained to us. That is A Course in Miracles, the means.

14 – Struggle

I think that it is likely that Jesus saw many of struggling, once we knew that the ego was a bad thing, meant to be eliminated for our lives. How do we replace it with something? And so I think that Jesus had unfinished business with us, he recognized this, and, accordingly, as the new century dawned, he channeled A Course of Love to Mari. Just as he had channeled A Course in Miracles to Helen. There are other books available, many others, believed by their scribes to be channeled by Jesus in this new age. I do not judge these books. We find truth, sometimes wherever we look. But my way to a culmination is A Course of Love, just as my way was (and is) A Course in Miracles. And, as Jesus says about ACIM, why choose some other way that has served others well when this one is intended for you (for me). Yes, we need to realize that there are many pathways to God, and there is a different course for every teacher of God (the latter a paraphrase from the Manual of ACIM).

15 – Beauty, Truth, and 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. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 20)”

16 – Beautiful Passage

This is an especially beautiful passage (as are many passages of particular beauty in A Course of Love). We are a source of coming to know for ourselves; we do not first seek outside ourselves. We are deliberately told not to seek outside ourselves by A Course in Miracles.

17 – Seeking

But isn’t outside seeking what we have been doing so often? We don’t just look on others’ writings as meditative, inspirational reading; we seek in them the ultimate answers to the ultimate questions. And we will not find such there, for such can only be found within. We can prepare, we can learn—but now is a time of rest, a time of reflection, a time of ultimately coming to know from our inner Christ Self. We are prepared. We may (and we do) still have flaws of personality, but we are “all right.” We accept ourselves the way that we are, or we decide that we don’t like a given personality trait, and so we just quietly turn aside from it. (Note that we don’t resist, which would tie the trait to ourselves all the stronger.)

18 – Gifts

So: beauty, truth, wisdom. These are gifts of the Christ Self Who is within all. We can know these gifts today. We do not have to wait. Just ask. For what we ask is in strict accordance with the Will of God, and if we have a little faith, a tiny faith that He will answer, indeed He will answer. Just first ask, politely and with love.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

It seems to me that You are teaching me that I have always known intuitively what is just now becoming clear to me. How foolish I have been! I have put more faith in what others have told me than in what I knew internally.

I ask for Your guidance, and the will to follow that guidance, today. I will never have done all that I can do to prepare for Awakening if I refuse, out of stubbornness and recalcitrance, to follow your Way. The Way that You point out to me. Sometimes I do feel stubborn, but if I follow Your Way, as it is pointed out to me by guidance, as soon as I can relinquish resistance, all will have returned to the right track. Just follow as soon as I can. With willingness and abundant joy, for joy is the hallmark that I am in the flow of my day. My day has flow when I follow guidance, and I chafe against illusory binding when I resist Your Way. How foolish would I be today? I choose not to lead a foolish life, not to see that foolishness in my thoughts, words, and actions today. I do want flow, and the only way that I can have it is to surrender to Your guidance as I comprehend that guidance. It is not hard, when the day has started right. And if the day starts wrong, I can start again. The path is both gentle and kind. And especially loving, for it is Your Way, which is always and ever loving.

Perhaps I needed to learn from others. But now You are teaching me to rely on the inner Word that You have place in my heart. May I rest in the comfort of this concept.

Amen.

We Are Wholeness / This We Accept

1 – Acceptance

“Acceptance is necessary because escape is not possible. Everything that is, is with us, which is why we are the accomplished as well as the void, the healed as well as the sick, the chaos and the peace. Thus we heal now by calling on wholeness, accepting the healed self’s ability to be chosen while not encountering resistance or any attempts at rejection of the sick or wounded self. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 14)”

2 – Spacious Self

This quotation aims at saying that the spacious Self encompasses all parts of the Self, especially including, we must learn, the parts of the self that we would like to disown. The little or personal self is fraught with error, even when we have advanced far along the pathway. We may find ourselves still getting angry, still attacking, still being defensive. If we don’t like these aspects of our personality, we don’t resist, for resistance would make the force field stronger. We simply turn aside from less-desirable personality traits, giving them no energy. This “no energy” is our way to reach toward perfection.

3 – Perfection

Remember, though, that Jesus indicates that we don’t have to be perfect to be Christ-conscious. Eventually, we will know a kind of perfection, because in the New Testament, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” And in A Course in Miracles, Jesus says that he stands at the end, the correct the mistakes that we ourselves cannot correct. If he stands at the end, we still have some mistakes now. But we can do our part, as well as seeing Jesus do his. We can turn aside from those traits that are negative, turning instead to the light that is within all of us.

4 – Light of the World

We are the “light of the world.” This is declared in the New Testament as well as in A Course in Miracles. Let us together bring that light to our brothers and sisters who are lost in a damaging world of illusions.

5 – Contrasts

We are the contrasts. This quotation makes this clear. We are the up and the down. Only when we accept that the “down” needs to be enfolded into the spacious Self do we find relief from our discomfort.

6 – Today

Let us do that today, now.

7 – Projection

“The spacious Self realizes that the outer world is a projection and most often a rejection rather than an extension of what is within. Thus, sickness is a rejection of feelings. All that causes fear is rejection of feelings. All that causes loneliness is rejection of feelings. All that causes violence is rejection of feelings. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 14)”

8 – Extend

We need to extend what is within. This Self of ours is within, and extension is how we create well. But just now we are still caught in illusions, and for this to be our world, we have been projecting from our minds. Our little minds, the personal self.

9 – Rejection

We have been rejecting our feelings, because we have known unhappiness. In any given day, most of us have times of feeling down. And we tend to reject the feelings rather than to experience them fully; we stuff them downward into our psyches. But we don’t find relief that way.

10 – Relief

The only way to have relief is to welcome ALL feelings—even the negative ones. Welcome them into the spacious Self (by which we mean the all-encompassing Christ Self Who is within all of us), and there, within, see these rejected feelings transformed into something much more positive. We will not be disappointed when we stop trying to overcome negative feelings by rejecting them. Just welcome. And then the low mood will pass.

11 – Others

“It is by holding all feelings of others within the spacious Self, by not forgetting that the one and the many are the same, by willfully remembering that the feelings of the many can be ‘held’ and not projected into the world as sickness, violence, and so on, that acceptance occurs. It is in accepting all feelings as the feelings of the many that the feelings of ‘others’ are accepted as one’s own and held within the spaciousness of the One Self, the whole Self. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 14)”

12 – Turn to Others

We turn to others with this quotation. We need to accept their feelings as well as our own. All others, all brothers and sisters, are part of us, part of the All, the One. So we communicate telepathically all the time, particularly, perhaps, when we are unaware of such communication. We need to accept the negative feelings of others as well as the negative feelings of ourselves. When we accept, we are much more likely to transform. We will transform, in fact. We will not add our discomfort to the discomfort of our brothers and sisters, thereby projecting violence, sickness, and the like upon the world.

13 – Feelings

We accept others’ feelings as though they were our own. We are One, remember. So in a very real sense, we don’t see any feelings that are not our own. But we can rise above dishonest, reprehensible feelings by absorbing them into our spacious Self, our inner Christ Self. And they and we will be made much the better for it.

14 – All

“What the spacious Self holds within is the relationship of all to all. Relationship is the invisible reality only expressed through form. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 14)”

15 – Form

We see others as occupying form. This is the way that we see our brothers and sisters who are in this world with us. This is relationship in our world. We need the others’ bodies to be able to communicate in this world. And communicate we must.

16 – ACIM

In A Course in Miracles, we are told that Jesus needs our voice, our hands, our feet, to spread salvation. He needs the form that we occupy, for that is how we experience this world. That is how others experience us.

17 – Relationship

Relationship is actually invisible, because our spacious Self is invisible. It is the invisible force field that surrounds our natural bodies. We think that our bodies encompass ourselves, but it is actually the reverse; we are invisible forms that occupy forms that we can see. And we become the elevated Self of form, because we live in this world. It is the way in which we will survive once we reach Christ-consciousness.

18 – Acceptance

“Your acceptance of these words is a form of acceptance of the unknown and as such a means of coming to know. These words are only one means, which is why this is called a dialogue. Realize now that this is but one voice of the many. You have entered into the dialogue with the many as well as the one. This dialogue is going on all around you. Have you been listening to but one voice? Or have you begun to hear the one voice in the many? (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 161)”

19 – Healing

Healing is found in the acceptance of the spacious Self–the Self that we share with all others in unity and in relationship one to another. Earlier we have been tempted many times to reject feelings, and we have thereby been led many times into sickness. Now we are called upon to accept all of our feelings. Our feelings are not unique to each of us individually, but are part of the whole which we all share. Others feel as we do. This concept in itself is comforting, because we are tempted to think that nobody else in our world has ever felt quite as we do when we are feeling down.

20 – Hold Within

We are asked to hold within our feelings in the spacious Self, the Self we share with all others. We are not as likely to feel wounded when we know that others are a part of ourselves. We will not understand all things, but we will hold within not only our spaciousness but also the invisibility of that which we do not comprehend. We do not reject these unknowns; we hold them in our spaciousness. We are accepting of the unexplainable.
Our spacious Self will be a healed Self. We reach out to others, and we accept them in this dialogue. We are not alone on the mountaintop! We accept that others are with us on the same ascension. We then sustain one voice, the many expressing the unity in relationship that we have all needed for eons.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I recognize that in my Self are the others that surround me. I am never alone. My spacious Self includes all.

May I be forgiving of all of those others. May they be healed along with me, as we realize that we are all One.

May this day go well. I am seeking sudden change, so that my withered ego doesn’t have time to adapt to change. May I see that sudden change today. May I enjoy the day, enjoy all others whom I meet. The time for change will be as right as the Answer. Help me to know this internally, in my deepest Self.

Amen.

The Journey of the Self into Form and into Separation

1 – Day 13

“Once the One Self became form and knew its Self, it knew separate thought. The separate thoughts of the one self, rather than the form of the one self, allowed for the knowing of the self that created the many selves. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 13)”

2 – One Self

The One Self was, ultimately, God. But with free will, we made separation real; we thought that we had separated from God, though in reality this would be impossible. We could lack the knowledge of His One Will, though, forgetting that we were God Himself.

3 – Detour into Fear

This detour into fear (from A Course in Miracles) is all that has happened as we have moved into the world of form, the little or personal self. The Self became differentiated into the many, so that God could experience Himself. But the experiencing was faulty, for we are meant to commune with our Creator—something we didn’t do when we thought ourselves lost in separation from Him. We though that we could make a world that we would like better, but God limited our will to miscreate, lest creation be doomed . He allowed us to go into illusion, which would hurt nothing in reality. We think that we suffer, but it is all illusion.

4 – The Godhead

The many selves came from the One Self, the Godhead. There is no Other. We have done this illusion unto ourselves. We think that we have pain and suffering, that we have made a “better” world than God could create. But we only have lived with an imprisoned will, a will that first the Holy Spirit (as in ACIM) and now the Christ Self would lead us to disavow.

5 – Self of Form

“The ‘one’ self of form is the self you were born into. The one self of form comes to know the One Self through relationship with other selves experiencing oneness through being selves of form. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 13)”

6 – Relationship

It is only through relationship that God can know Himself, that we can know ourselves, as the Self that has been individuated, i.e., made into separate “parts.” This individuation is a means that, through relationship to each other, we can know ourselves, and God can know Himself. We are God, but we are not yet in union with each other, and so we are therefore somewhat less than the Godhead. In union with others, we come into our fullness. Then and only then do we know both unity and relationship, and we are home in God.

7 – Christ-consciousness

This is Christ-consciousness, but it is not here for many of us. The timing of Awakening, according to ACIM, is when God deems us ready. And many people who seem flawed will nevertheless experience Awakening. It is not a matter of perfecting ourselves. There are mysteries here that we don’t comprehend.

8 – Jesus

Yet Jesus in A Course of Love is attempting to spell out the process of reaching Christ-consciousness to us. He is writing a metaphysical document that explains creation and our place in it. The words are sometimes dense, but when studied as one would study a textbook, absorbing every line, the prose becomes comprehensible. Unlike something I once thought, you can’t read ACOL as though you were reading a story. Perhaps this works on the first times through, but to understand in depth, study at some level is needed.

9 – Integrate Many and One

“You are thus not meant to lose the experience of the self of form but to integrate it so that you are both the many and the one. The oneness that your individual self represents in this life is the oneness of the Holy One who is both one—somewhat in the way you think of the individual self—and All. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 13)”

10 – Elevated Self of Form

This antedates the elevated Self of form. This passage leads us to that concept. We occupy form, and we are not to disavow it. But this personal self of form needs to be elevated to the Self that is the inner Christ. What will bring this about?

11 – Study / Love

Study gets us there. But love actually effects the transformation—love and a forgiving attitude (from ACIM) that is not judgmental. In A Course in Miracles, we are told that we cannot judge and hope to awake. Yet we still fall into judgment a thousand times a day—until we don’t. When we don’t, we have found Christ-consciousness.

12 – Happiness

And we are happy. Stupendously happy. And we live effortlessly. We have no fear. We have no anxieties. We will with inner peace, in loving relationship to every individual with whom we are introduced.

13 – Spacious Self

“Thus holding the loveless self within the spacious Self of love is the answer to the question of evil and the final lifting of the last veils of fear. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 13)”

14 – Imagination

There will be parts of us which are unloving. But we can imagine—and “imagine” is the important word—that we have a “spacious” self that is the real Self. This Self chooses to encompass the unloving parts of ourselves, and this creates a transformation in ourselves.

15 – Evil / Fear

This ends evil. This ends fear. We are at home in God.

16 – Enfolding

If we just enfold the unloving part of ourselves into the part that is always deep within, held in Love, the Self, we will know peace. There is actually no other way that we can know peace. For evil and fearful dreams will disturb our illusions. And, actually, we can never be happy with illusions, unless they are dreams that the Holy Spirit brings—the happy dreams that precede Awakening, to prepare us for it

17 – Happy Dreams

We do not want to get stuck in desiring the happy dreams that the Holy Spirit brings. We want the real world; we want reality. And we want to awake. This can come about when we seek Awakening earnestly, with all of our being. Yet in our striving, we must realize that our striving cannot be as the ego pushed us previously. Or the ego will reawaken and much will be lost; we will be on the treadmill again.

18 – Eastern Story

So seek enlightenment as a man whose had is held under water seeks air (an old Eastern analogy). We will have enlightenment when we devote ourselves to the loving that brings it, the loving in relationship and union with all others whom we encounter.

19 – Easy Way

The way is smooth. The way is easy. And when we look back on Christ-consciousness, we will know that we need do nothing in this world (from ACIM, but the term “Awakening” is used). We will want to do something to lead our brothers and sisters to the realization that we have had, but we will do so effortlessly. Life will become one sweet song.

20 – Suffering Self

““The same is true of all you would fear, such as the suffering self. A suffering self, held within the spacious Self exists in harmony with the spacious Self. Attempts to eject the self of suffering from the spacious Self create disharmony. It is only by this holding within that the loveless self and the suffering self are rendered ineffective. It is only in this way that you realize that all exist within. It is only in this way that you become completely fearless and totally spacious, for fear is part of the density of form, being a lack of love. (ACOL Dialogues, p. 158)”

21 – Boundary-less Self

Before we can understand Day Thirteen, we need to try to comprehend what is meant by the “spacious Self.” It is discussed herein as a “boundary-less Self,” the all-encompassing Self that we share with everyone. It is the Self of Love, and when we focus on Love, we can overcome any fearful thoughts and feelings of the small self of form.

22 – Self of Fear

Jesus says that we are not to try to eject the self of fear, but to encompass with the greater spacious Self, thus rendering it ineffective. Trying to eject the self of fear actually makes it worse in our experience of fear.

23 – Summation

Look again at the passage from A Course of Love, the Dialogues, quoted above. It actually summarizes much that is said in Day Thirteen. At the conclusion of the chapter, Jesus once again returns to the theme of unity and relationship. We have true relationship with our brothers and sisters when we recognize and incorporate the spacious Self, and then we are truly in unity with all.

24 – Union

“Once fear is gone, true relationship is not only possible but inevitable. True relationship exists naturally in the state of harmony that I the spacious Self. This is the state of union. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 13)”

24 – Not Fearful

When we are not fearful of others, our brothers and sisters, we will seek union with them. We will seek relationship with them. And this will take us home. Yes, home. We are not living as God unless we are living in union, something that we have not been doing as our separated selves. We have been in relationship, but this has been flawed, for we have been judgmental of each other. And we can never know Awakening if we are judgmental. This is a crucial point that can be easily overlooked. We cannot know Christ-consciousness, cannot come to Christ-consciousness, cannot receive the gift of Christ-consciousness, if we are judgmental.

25 – Judgment

Come to God today and ask that judgment be taken away. All of us must do this, all who have not already been freed of judgmental thoughts.

26 – Accepting

Without judgment are we accepting of all—in union with each personal self elevated to the Self, and in relationships as individuated beings.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Help me to be fearless, and to know that I can transcend the suffering self by my fearlessness. Help me not to be tempted to try to reject this suffering self. Help it simply to wither away as I come to know my real Self.

I know that my real Self is always one of Love, but I tend to forget this oft-repeated truth. Help me not to forget the Self of Love today. Thanking You in advance, I turn to You often today and every day.

Amen.

Learning Is Not Meant to Be Effortful

1 – Thinking

“Learning was not meant to be linked with thinking. Again I’ll draw your attention to the learning of childhood. Learning begins long before the onset of the time of language that constitutes your ideas about what it means to think. (Dialogues, Day Four)”

2 – Children

This truth, that children learn before they have language, proves Jesus’s point that there is a way to learn, through observation, that is easy and requires no effort. We have long put great store by our learning abilities, that we put forth a great effort in school, and then we reap the benefits. But we make everything too hard on ourselves, way too hard. We may still sometimes choose to learn through effort, but this is not the optimal way. We learn best when we learn easily.

3 – Minds

Can we really believe that learning is meant to be linked with thinking? We give our minds way too much credit. We think that the thinking of the mind is what will get us back to Heaven, even. This is not true, actually, though learning in the old way might have been needed when we were assimilating the truths of A Course in Miracles. As we assimilate those truths, we come into a new era, an ear in which we seek to have the heart guide us, not the mind. And our learning proceeds through observation, not thinking.

4 – Language

“Even after the onset of language, children continue to learn without thinking. Does this sound odd, foreign to you? And yet this is the way learning was designed to be. Learning was given as a natural mean of access to all that was available to you, but not through effort any more than breathing was designed to be effortful. (Dialogues, Day Four)”

5 – Ego

So actually learning is not meant to be effortful. We made it that way, when we were consumed by the ego, the ego which always made things as hard as it could—thus approving its value to us. Breathing is not effortful, normally, and we are told here that learning is just as easy as breathing.

6 – Struggle

May we spend some time today deciding that what we struggle to learn is maybe best not learned.

7 – Personal Experience

I know that I worked very, very hard in college, attending a difficult school in which I ranked by ability in the middle of the class. But I wanted better than average grades, and so I sought to overachieve. College was not very much fun. My personality flattened out. I felt oppressed. And not until I had finished that dark time in my life did my personality come alive. So I know first hand that learning achieved through effort exacts a high price, a price that it would be best not to pay.

8 – Thinking as a Constraint

“Thinking, in this time beyond learning, could be rightly seen as a constraint you but try to impose on all that is natural. Your thinking, since it is a product of learning, does nothing but attempt to learn or teach. These are the natural responses of its training. Thus, a major key to your discovery of all that exists within you in the state of unity, is an end to thinking as you know it. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day Four)”

9 – An End to “Thinking”

So let us “end” thinking as we know it. Let’s let the heart rule, the heart that listens to intuition, or the deeper Christ Self. (A Course in Miracles had termed this listening through the Holy Spirit.) We are said to be in the time of Christ now, and listening to the Christ Self is a harbinger of things to come. We are no longer in the time of the Holy Spirit. We have moved beyond as we read A Course of Love.

10 – Fear / Love

“You must realize that here is where fear must be totally replaced by love. If you fear to go where the portal of access will take you, you will not go. Thus your desire needs to be greater than your fear. Love needs to reign. Love of self and love of your brothers and sisters, love of the natural world, of the world of form that is, love of the idea of the new world that can be, all of these must come together and be victors over the reign of fear. (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 113).

11 – New Temptations

The “new temptations” meant in this title are two: real choice and access. These are not negatives, but goals toward which we wish to go. We are leaving behind the time of learning, so that we learn through “thoughts that we do not think,” as a child does, and as early man and woman did–before language entered into our experience.

12 – Union

We must now want union in relationship to our brothers and sisters and our God more than anything else. We must find acceptance of ourselves, despite our anger or our depression, or anything else that seems to be imperfect. We are told that we do not have to be perfect, and we are reminded of the Prodigal Son, who surely did not feel perfect when he returned to his father. He only needed to accept the father’s love. That is our situation now. And unity is within ourselves; our God is within.

13 – Access

The portal of access is love and only love. Nothing else will do at all. This is the portal that here on the mountain top, we will discover with Jesus. We are only just beginning our 40 days and nights with him on the mountain top. More is to follow. But we would do well to realize that perfection is not required of us. Acceptance of love as the only way is. Fear must be left behind forever, and when we have done that, we will be Home.

14 – Jesus

“I do not have to spell out this choice for you, for you know exactly what it means. It means you will be as I am. It means you will live from love rather than from fear. It means that you will demonstrate what living from love is. It means that you will resurrect to eternal life here and now. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day Four)”

15 – Guidance from Love

It is important always to live from love and not from fear. Guidance always comes from love, and if we think we hear a guidance that is telling us to protect ourselves with a sense of fear, we are really hearing the personal self that is not yet rid of the ego. Guidance does not rule us through fear, and any message that we receive that is fear-tainted is a false message.

16 – Protection

Of course, we can take prudent measures to protect ourselves from danger. But we are normally safe in everyday life, though there are those among us who find themselves in dangerous situations, and thus would find this assertion untrue in their experience. The world we inhabit can be a dangerous place, but we make it worse by our thinking of it in such a way. We defend, making that worse by our defense. We seek to protect ourselves at all costs, and we need to ask if this is really the heart-centered Self that we are protecting, or the ego of the personal or little self. It will prove to be, more than likely, the ego of the little self. And Jesus has declared that we, at this point, are free of the ego. If we have followed A Course of Love, we will know ourselves to be free.

17 – Christ Self

If we resurrect to eternal life here and now, we are living as our Christ Self. This is what we seek to do. This is home for us. Heaven is here and now. There is no waiting.

18 – Prodigal Son

“Think a moment of the story of the prodigal son. All that the prodigal son was asked to do was to accept his own homecoming. Do you think he would have considered himself perfect as he approached his father’s presence? Surely he would not have. You are asked but to accept your own homecoming. To leave behind the time of wandering, seeking, learning. To leave behind fear for the embrace of the love and safety of your true home. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day Four)”

19 – Seeking

In A Course of Love, I believe that we are asked to leave behind the incessant seeking—the time of wandering, seeking, learning. I suspect, but this is an interpretation, that Jesus channeled A Course of Love because he saw many students and teachers of A Course in Miracles still seeking, though finished with these books. With what were we to replace the ego? I think that ACIM does not make this point as crystal clear as Jesus wished it to be. We replace the ego with the Self, and this point is made in ACIM, but it can easily be overlooked. Jesus revisits us with iterations of the answer in ACOL. We are to give up seeking, because we have at last arrived. And to say this is not arrogance, unless we truly are still tied to our egos.

20 – Homecoming

The prodigal son only had to accept his own homecoming. So it is with us. We need only to accept, as the first two days of the 40 days and 40 nights told us. If there are things about ourselves that we don’t like, things of our personality, we can ask, humbly, that these be removed, and watch them fall away. God is very powerful, and He hears our prayers, I believe. I don’t think that we are alone because we are lost in illusion. Now we are moving into the real world, the world just short of Heaven, and we have advantages from this vantage point that we lacked previously. We will see miracles wherever we look.

21 – Choice

“This choice has come before you might have expected it to. It does not come at the end but at the beginning of our time together for a reason. This is simply because this choice is the beginning. This is the choice that allows us to continue our dialogue as one. To talk heart to heart. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day Four)”

22 – Hearts

We choose to listen with our hearts, and we make a choice to stop our incessant seeking. That is the choice that Jesus refers to in this quotation. We have arrived. Let us rest easy and be glad. We do not yet know everything that we wish to know, but we can rest—knowing that what we need will be revealed to us. We need not fear any longer that we will ever be bereft.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I recognize that, like the Prodigal Son, I do not have to be perfect to be accepted by Jesus, to reach the heights that the mountain top experience is meant to bring to me. I may resist this concept, and so please guide my thoughts and feelings so that it is acceptable to me.

Thank You for this good day. I feel especially grateful for the congenial way in which people are interacting with me this day. It is not always so. We live among people who have many problems, and it is up to us to try to heal their problems by loving more strongly. We cannot heal for them, in many cases, but we can ask for miracles that will work in their lives to heal. We can be the instrument of that healing, but only when we ask guidance as to what we ought to do. Be with us as we sense Your Presence, ask for guidance, and then carry out the impulses that arise in us. Thank You for the sense of Your Presence always.

May I be united with love. May I drop fear. These are perhaps my two greatest needs, and these build on A Course in Miracles and are further explained to me now in A Course of Love. Thank You for helping me to devote my life and myself to love.

Amen.

God’s Teachers Have No Basis for Judging, because We Are Not Aware of All Situations that Have Impacted Points of Decision.

1 – Do Not Judge

“God’s teachers do not judge. To judge is to be dishonest, for to judge is to assume a position you do not have. (M12)”

In our better moments, all of us are God’s teachers as well as His students. There is no difference between teacher and student; only time separates, and time seems to be flexible. In our better moments, as well, we don’t judge. Judgment implies a omniscience that we do not have. Only the Holy Spirit (and later on, the inner Christ Self, deep in the Unconscious) can see what past, present, and future circumstances impinge on a given situation. Since we as our personal self don’t have the benefit of knowing all of these factors, we need to depend on Someone who does. This means that we give up judgment, which is always false, in opposition to what this world has taught us from childhood on. We give up what we never had, which was a prescience about the things to come, so that we might make sound decisions. We must learn that we were wrongly taught. We alter what the world has taught us about developing sound judgment on our own, and we move to listening internally to what the Holy Spirit says about what we best think and say and do.

2 – Choosing Wrongly

We are being “dishonest” when we depend solely on our personal selves, our “little” selves. We do not have a position that can see all past, present, and future circumstances—and so we virtually always, if left to our own devices, will choose wrongly. We try to assume a position that we don’t have, a position of all-knowing, when we all know that this is a mirage.

3 – Give Up Illusions of Grandeur

Let’s give up these illusions of grandeur about our knowledge forthwith. Let’s give over our judgment to the Holy Spirit or the Christ Self (as detailed in A Course of Love), knowing that now we have a Guide Who will not fail.

4 – Judgment

“Without judgment are all things equally acceptable, for who could judge otherwise? (M12)”

Judgment is one of the hardest ego tactics to give up. Herein we are bade not to make choices using our own judgment, but to let all things be equally acceptable.

5 – Don’t Condone Wrongdoing

This does not mean that we condone wrongdoing, or that we accept, without action, all the things in our world that we believe need correction. But it does mean that we start with ourselves first, and we don’t judge our brothers and sisters for choices that we cannot understand. We leave that judgment to the Holy Spirit, who sees all events prior and forward in time.

6 – Judgment Causes Misery

Judgment is easily laid aside once we see all the misery that it has caused for us and this world. Why would we hold to an illusion that we can judge at all? We have no basis for doing so, because we are not aware of all the situations that have made a given choice in this world. To judge is to be involved with an illusory self, one that really cannot know the best way. It is far better to leave judgment to Someone who does know–the Holy Spirit. He always sees the innocence is all actions. Everyone does the best that he or she can, given the circumstances, and everyone feels justified in his or her choices. The Course would not have us to judge matters of which we cannot know the whole.

7 – Honesty / Trust

“Judgment destroys honesty and shatters trust. No teacher of God can judge and hope to learn. (M12)”

We are in the time of learning when we are studying A Course in Miracles. Later on, if we follow the sequence and entertain the possibility that A Course of Love is a true sequel to ACIM, also channeled by Jesus, we will give up learning in favor of simple observation of our surroundings, present before us and thought about.

8 – Honesty = Consistency

Now we learn, as we follow A Course in Miracles. Honesty actually means consistency (ACIM Manual), and no word or act belies our desire to be honest in our dealings with ourselves and with others, as well as with our God. If we judge, we give up the chance of being right. We give up our experience of love, for judging is a separating factor, ruining our relationships. We find ourselves caught in a negative spiral, and negativity breeds further negativity, as Rhonda Bryne in The Power points out so eloquently. Only when we inject the positive in our dealings will we find peace and more positivity. Only then can we hope to be happy.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

My ego clings to judgment because judgment–as well as anger, attack, and planning for the future–keep the ego alive. May I recognize this ploy for what it is, and turn aside from judgment this day.

May I understand why I need to be accepting in this world. May I recognize when action is required of me to right a wrong, but may I be very careful about these choices. May I seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit always.

Amen.

All Your Past except Its Beauty Is Gone. I Have Saved All Your Kindnesses and Every Loving Thought You Ever Had.

“How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. (T83)”

Affirmation: “I have saved all your kindnesses and love.”

Reflections:

1 – Difficult Passage

This is a hard passage to understand. It is true that Awakened individuals acknowledge feeling pain, but not suffering. Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now; A New Earth) is one of these individuals. He says that since his Awakening some 30 years ago, no thought has brought him pain. But most of us have not yet known Awakening on a sustained basis, and what are we to do when bad things happen?

2 – Holy Spirit

I think that the Answer is the one we so often find in the Course. The Answer is turning to guidance from the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself says in this passage that he has saved our kindnesses and loving thoughts. We can, without self-satisfaction, realize that, almost despite ourselves, we have had moments of kindnesses and loving thoughts. If these were ever a comfort to our brother, they can also be a comfort to us in our times of pain. This recollection will help to ensure that suffering, even in the midst of pain, will not arise.

3 – Purification

“I have purified them [kindnesses and loving thoughts] of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God creates is eternal. (T83)”

What a good thought! We have within us many good things, things that we hid when we did not live in the light. The Holy Spirit or the Christ Self thus knows only kindnesses and loving thoughts. May we be so fortunate, sooner rather than later.

4 – No Struggle

The Holy Spirit or the Christ Self (the latter described in A Course of Love), inwardly, does make these adjustments for us. We no longer have to struggle to be good. Indeed, we ought not to so struggle. Our redemption is sure. Jesus has seen to that in the resurrection (which is never disclaimed in either A Course in Miracles or A Course of Love, though I would postulate that we are talking about Jesus in his ethereal body as the resurrection).

5 – Ego

We have a problem with our egos in this matter of seeing ourselves as possessing kindnesses and loving thoughts. We are never good enough for the ego, and if we think that we are (even when thinking in an egoless state of mind), we are warned by the ego that we are arrogant. But Jesus assures us that it is the ego that is arrogant only. Once we have let the ego wither away, on its way away, then we can be certain that the good things said about us have more truth than formerly. It is the ego that is the bogeyman here. Avoid egoistic thinking, and the bane of our existence, the ego, will be undone.

6 – Satan

The ego is indeed the devil of our mythology.

7 – Pain

If we are still not above suffering, we can find in the pain a blessing. The initial passage in this posting seems to say this. The passage also notes that we ourselves are holy, a concept that we find difficult to accept, because we usually feel so unworthy. May we take Jesus at his word, and believe that we do not have to suffer in this world. As we study A Course in Miracles, perhaps we will come to see this concept more clearly and to feel pain, when it comes, but no suffering.

8 – Peace of God

“I place the peace of God in your heart and in your hands, to hold and share. (T83)”

This is Jesus speaking. We are so early in ACIM at this point that Jesus has not yet made the role of the Holy Spirit explicit. So he has us turn to him.

9 – Jesus Holding Our Hands

Indeed, he never neglects or abandons us. He is always available to hold our hands in our imagination. May this image walk with us today.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I know in my innermost being that I do not need to suffer. In the Course, Jesus says that we do not have to learn through pain. May I feel the truth of this reassurance.

It is good that my loving thoughts have been saved. This seems to mean that my unloving thoughts will fall away. Thank you.

Be with me today as I seek to live an egoless life, an egoless existence. If I falter, please set my foot back on my pathway to You. I specifically ask that the impediments to Awakening be removed, for it is only these impediments that make You realize that I am not yet ready. I do not try to merit Awakening, for that is beyond what can be done. I ask only for patience to run the race set before me.

Amen.

Praying for Others Lifts Projections of Guilt

“Praying for others, if rightly understood, becomes a means for lifting your projections of guilt from your brother, and enabling you to recognize it is not he who is hurting you. (S-1.III.1)”

When we pray for our brothers and sisters, we are enabled to feel more positively toward them. We begin to feel compassion much more readily, and, if all goes well, we recognize that others deserve the forgiveness that we try to offer.

2 – Projecting Guilt

This passage indicates that what we are doing when we fail to forgive is to project guilt upon our brother. The reason for this projection is that we never hold anything against our brother that we do not first think we ourselves are guilty of (from the ACIM Text). We first denounce and reject ourselves, and then we project that denunciation upon our brother, who is actually as innocent as are we. We ourselves, though, while we can see ourselves as innocent (and normally do see ourselves as innocent), do not automatically, without some guidance from the Holy Spirit or the Self, see our brothers and sisters as innocent. On the contrary, we are wont to blame them for all manner of our troubles. This is projection from our own inner personal self (or “little” self) to others. And it is insane.

3 – Hurt Ourselves?

Our brother is not really hurting us. We are hurting ourselves. Our brother has done nothing to hurt our Self, though he may verbally or physically abuse our minds/bodies. Our Self remains above the fray.

4 – Special to Holy Relationships

We always hurt ourselves by this dynamic of projecting guilt onto our brothers and sisters. We would not have it so. And we must not have it so if we are to see our special relationships turn to holy. Turning to holy relationships prepares us for the Awakening.

5 – Praying in Error

“It is not easy to realize that prayers for things, for status, for human love, for external ‘gifts’ of any kind, are always made to set up jailers and to hide from guilt. These things are used for goals that substitute for God, and therefore distort the purpose of prayer. (S-1.III.6)”

This can be a difficult passage. When we pray for tangible goods, we often mislead our inner personal selves, our little selves. Our Self is not mislead, but this inner Self can become inaccessible to us in our rapaciousness to gather the physical to ourselves.

6 – Intangibles

We need to focus on the intangibles. We need to rise above a constant desire for more material goods, because this is an endless road. We will get one “toy,” only to want another, and then another. There is no end to the desire of the ego for material things.

7 – God as Our Friend

It is hard to realize sometimes that having God as our Friend will ensure that we stay on the right pathway, the pathway to complete and total happiness—even in the absence of material goods. We know that God also wants our material needs satisfied; He is not blind to our creature comforts. But the communion of our spirit with God is the greatest blessing that human beings have on this earth. And this communion, in prayer, assures that more and more good will flow to us. It is an example of the law of attraction, like attracts like. Our desires are in the right place, and God answer us, therefore.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Help me today to life guilt from my significant others. May I realize that I am always blaming myself when I see guilt in others; it is my own presumed guilt that I see.

Be with me today as I seek to get my projections ended. I would not push onto others my own sense of guilt. And my own sense of guilt is misplaced. To know this is such a blessing!

Help me to have a good day. I haven’t asked for this recently, but this day promises some stress, and I would not buy into that emotion. Help me to offer gratitude to You for the day that has been given. And may I reap the reward of another day in this world, the intangible rewards of communion with You while still on earth.

Amen.

Your Dark Dreams Are but the Senseless Isolated Scripts You Write in Sleep. . . .Only Dreams of Pardon Can Be Shared.

1 – Dreams

“Your dark dreams are but the senseless isolated scripts you write in sleep. Look not to separate dreams for meaning. Only dreams of pardon can be shared. They mean the same to both of you. (T-30.VII.6)”

We cannot have smooth sailing in our relationships, even when those relationships have shifted from the special to the holy. Personalities differ, and when we live in close proximity to others, we will pick up on their unhealed natures, the parts of their personalities that the ego still rules. We will suffer accordingly, unless we invite a quick restorative, to forgive the illusion in which we live, to forgive our brother for the pain that he only seems to be causing.

2 – A Perfect Brother

For our brother is perfect in his inner Self, and only when we see him as perfect will we be freed. This can seem a long stretch, when tempers are frayed and love seems far away.

3 – Senseless Scripts

But these dark dreams are merely senseless scripts, A Course in Miracles tells us. We do not have to dwell on such misgivings. Our brother has been given up to heal. We have one purpose in our holy relationship, and that is to love despite appearances. Pray for a miracle, if the way seems hard. The miracle will not be long in coming. It may come in the form of a changed attitude on our part. Our brother may be just as vicious as he may, and it will have no effect on us, for we see that it is a script that we have written; it is our dream (from ACIM).

4 – Forgiveness

“Our common language lets us speak to all our brothers, and to understand with them forgiveness has been given to us all, and thus we can communicate again. (T-30.VII.7)”

Forgiveness, pardon, is fully deserved by every Son or Daughter of God. Because we live in illusion, in a dream, nothing bad as ever, in reality happened to us. Our brothers and sisters may have reacted to us many times out of “distress that rests on error” (from ACIM). This distress is a call for help (also from ACIM), and we are asked to run to their side with the healing for which they are really calling.

5 – Happy Dream

“The happy dream about him [your brother] takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health, his perfect freedom from all forms of lack, and safety from disaster of all kinds. The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be changed. (T-30.VIII.2)”

We can, as Marianne Williamson so often reminds us, ask for a miracle. And life can quickly be turned around. But even if it isn’t, our minds will be at peace. We rest on knowing that, when we have consulted the Holy Spirit about our next step, we have done all that we can. If we realize that our own anger and attack is always unjustified, we will be well on our way to lightening the atmosphere in our personal spaces, and granting our brother or sister the healing that is needed.

6 – Happy Dream

So we do have a “happy dream” about this brother or sister who is disturbing us. We can see his/her perfect health, perfect freedom from all want, safety from disaster. And this will not be a pipe dream (an illusory belief in what may transpire that has no basis in reality).

7 – Relationships

Ask today for a happy dream about all the special and holy relationships in our lives. The dream will not be long in coming.

8 – Read A Course in Miracles

And, in the meantime, read A Course in Miracles. It can become, as it has for me, a “happiness” book.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I live harmoniously with my brothers and sisters, especially my significant others. May all I encounter be led to a greater happiness by our encounter; help me to know what so say and do. Help me to relax as I interact with others. A pent-up mind does not do anyone any good.

Be with me today, to give me a happy day. I ask this so often, but it is always apropos. You want my happiness, and in the happiness, I am moved to make a contribution to Heaven. Guide me to know what that contribution ought to be.

May my significant others be relaxed and at peace today. We have a lot on our plate. Help us to stay on the same page in our discussions.

I love You.

Amen.

True Denial. . .You Can and Should Deny Any Belief that Error Can Hurt You

“True denial is a powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. (T199)”

Affirmation: “True denial is protective.”

Reflections:

1 – The Self

True denial refers only to our real self–the Self that cannot be hurt. We aren’t usually very aware of this Self, but this Self influences us constantly. Whether or not we listen is our own decision, but this Self can and does influence what happens to us.

2 – A Course of Love

This Self is the inner Christ that A Course of Love discusses, and some view A Course of Love as a sequel to A Course in Miracles. We become much more aware of this Christ Self, who guides our actions, the farther along on the pathway to Awakening (Christ-consciousness) we have walked.

3 – We Live a Dream

We have been told that we live a dream, our dream. And that as long as we recognize that it is our dream, that dream figures can be as hateful and vicious as they may, but it can have no effect upon us unless we fail to recognize that it is our dream. Can we always do that, can we always recognize the dream and therefore feel no hurt? This way of perceiving is an ideal, and most of us cannot live an ideal all the time. But we can make progress. We can remind ourselves that we live a dream, and that what other dream figures do need have no effect upon us.

4 – Error

Error can actually accomplish nothing that is ultimately hurtful, because the Self is beyond being hurt. The Course does not use the word “soul,” but in common language this is what is meant. (ACIM usually uses the word “spirit.”)

5 – Pain

When we are caught in the midst of suffering, of feeling our pain, in our own lives, or when we see suffering in others (whether our significant others or the world at large), we can affirm that the pain is illusory. Certainly it is felt; this is not what is meant by “illusory.” The pain actually accomplishes nothing permanent except, upon occasion, bringing us closer to God and thus to ultimate release. This understanding will eliminate any tendency to project the blame for our pain onto God, thus removing one of the main reasons that we reject faith as being beyond our comprehension.

6 – Unhurt

We aren’t hurt in our essence. But pain can soften our hearts and bring us closer to God. It is better, though, to learn through rewards, because the effect of pain is only temporary (ACIM tenets). We do not have to learn through pain! (ACIM tenet.)

7 – Hearts Full and Heads High

Let us go forward today with hearts full and heads high. We don’t have to cringe when another treats us badly. It is their problem. We can pray for them, and send them along to a better attitude. This better attitude will come when we use forbearance not to retaliate with anger or attack.

Prayer:

Dear Father,

May I learn the power of true denial, and use it only rightly. May I truly know in the depths of my being that error–error in myself or error in others–cannot hurt my real Self.

May I forgive error in myself and in others. May the error that does occur be an occasion to practice forgiveness, and may I turn to the Holy Spirit for guidance in how to forgive.

Amen.

The First Obstacle that Peace Must Flow Across Is Your Desire to Get Rid of It

1 – Masochism

I think all of us have some masochism in us that we need to overcome. Certainly if we take this passage to heart, we will realize that we do have symptoms of masochism, though we don’t often call it that, and this passage certainly does not use the term. But here it is:

“The first obstacle that peace must flow across is your desire to get rid of it. For it cannot extend unless you keep it. You are the center from which it radiates outward, to call the others in. (T-19. IV.A.1)”

2 – Why?

Why would we try to get rid of peace? Why indeed? Is it not what Marianne Williamson, lecturer/teacher of A Course in Miracles, has said in her books: We are addicted to the adrenaline rush. Certainly we must push ourselves often in this world of which we are a part. We have jobs, we have families, we have obligations. And so time is short and stress is severe. We do produce adrenaline in our bodies, and we get addicted to the high that it gives. But is this wise?

3 – Adrenaline

Most assuredly to become addicted to adrenaline is not wise. We need the peace of God. We need the felt oneness of Being that Eckhart Tolle recommends. We need to feel the presence of God in our inner body (also a recommendation of Eckhart).

4 – Peace

Peace needs extension, an extension which is the way of creation. And as much as we need peace, so do others with whom we come in contact. There is no limit to what we can do when we extend the love that we feel within. Love knows no bounds even in this world of ours, our flawed egoic world. Others need the peace that we can extend, but to be willing to extend it, we first must experience that peace ourselves. And to experience that peace, we need to “keep” it. Let us vow to do so today.

5 – Feather of a Wish

“This feather of a wish, this tiny illusion, this microscopic remnant of the belief in sin, is all that remains of what once seemed to be the world. (T-19.IV.A.8)”

This “feather” can light on anything, marring the beauty of anything. But it is only a feather, a wisp of unreality. And with our wish, it is gone. The love that we share with our brother or sister is the best example of when this feather can interfere. If we feel conflict arising in our relationship, we can know that the belief in sin has reared its ugly head once again. And we will be disquieted.

6 – Distress that Rests on Error

Know that this unreality is “distress that rests on error” (from ACIM). Seldom have I found any quotation from ACIM so useful as this one, this distress based on error. It immediately counsels forgiveness, for mistakes are being made, mistakes that can be corrected.

7 – Home

“His home is in your holy relationship. (T-19.IV.A.6)”

The “His” is the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is our way of guidance, as recommended in ACIM. (A Course in Miracles uses the inner Christ Self as our guidance.) And it is through our holy relationship that we see God, that we experience Him. And that we awaken. A Course in Miracles sees our holy relationship as a means of saving time, a means to further salvation by collapsing time. Let us ask for this blessing today, for the world, as ACIM says, is worn and very weary.

8 – Accept Peace

Let us accept the peace that is ours today. We cannot know what blessings are ours until we walk in peace throughout the day—not in an adrenaline rush that has become addictive.

Affirmation: “I would accept and extend peace today.”

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

So many times when I awaken too early in the morning, and I get up to listen to music, I eventually find myself agitated. After all, before 5 in the morning is not what I would wish to be awakened. But You have plans for me. I think that there are times when You want me all to Yourself, and early in the morning, with the black sky dotted with stars, You have me. All of me.

The next time that I awaken early, help me to remain calm, to let Your peace overwhelm me. That is what You would wish, of that I am sure.

Be with me today as I seek to walk through another day with peace and comfort and joy. I wish to be contented, and, so far, this has been a good day for that. Thank You. May I carry out Your wishes, which are also my own, in a tranquil and serene spirit.

Amen.

The Time of Christ

“While this has been called the time of Christ, it is obviously no longer the time of Jesus Christ. My time came and my time ended. The time when a single baby born of a virgin mother could change the world has passed. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 21.21)”

Affirmation: “I meditate on Jesus’s place in this world today.”

Reflections:

1 – Jesus Clarifies

Jesus clarifies for us today: He says that this is the time of Christ, but not the time of Jesus Christ. He is saying that the example that he set a couple of thousand years ago is for an earlier time, though we can still learn from this era. One person, even such as he, cannot change this world any longer. He anticipates that many of us will move to make changes that we are led to make by our own internal Christ Self.

2 – Christ Does Not Just Mean Jesus

Also intuited in this brief quotation is the fact that “Christ” does not just mean Jesus. Of course, we have known this, because repeatedly I have referred to the Self/Christ or the Christ Self, and many other current day writers have done the same. “Christ” is an umbrella term for the individual manifestations of God in human beings who are living salvation, living Awakening or Christ-consciousness. And we do not have to sustain the elevated Self of form to live, intermittently, this Christ Self. Indeed, in the beginning, most people see only glimpses of the Self, glimpses that are carefully contained for a while, perhaps a long while.

3 – Personal Experience

I myself have had two extended periods of such glimpses: one when I was 23, for ten weeks over a relaxed summer; and the other when I was 34 to 35, for six months in an altered state of consciousness. I did not sustain either time, and both were many years ago. The second period was while I was first reading A Course in Miracles, and I suspect that I was one of those who was asked to change life experience almost immediately. I moved to another state in the US, and there lived and worked for that six-month period. Later, I returned to home grounds, and proceeded with my life—but a life that would not be the same after this experience.

4 – Continued. . .

Why have I not sustained Awakening? I try not to ask this question, for it suggests that I have somehow failed. I know that such an interpretation is not the whole answer, and so I focus on what I learned in those two altered states of being. In the first and in the second, I was anxiety-free, and so I had left fear behind. Would that this were still possible! But I try to be patient, and to recognize that the elevated Self of form is not often sustained, and I may do more good by detailing my experience of “glimpses” than if I had actually experienced all that Jesus holds out to us as promise.

5 – Listen

So we listen to the Christ Self within. I can imagine that many times we are free of stress and free of fear/anxiety. At such times the ego withers away from our perception. And each such time can be sustained for a while. The fact that we don’t sustain this wonderful state keeps us humble. We realize that we cannot merit this form of heaven, of home. God takes the initiative of reaching down to lift us up when He deems that we are ready. And that first step, we must remember, is His and His alone.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank You for this day, this day of joy. May tomorrow be a harbinger of good times ahead as well. I ask for patience as I run the race that I am set upon. Help me to fulfill Your way in my daily life. Help me to be tolerant and kind. May I be ever more loving.

Guide me each moment, even when I forget. Thank You for Your Presence which fills my life from time to time. Daily life would not be same if You withdrew. Thank You for staying near.

Amen.

Our True Identity

“Now however, you are being called to accept your true identity even while you retain the form of your personal self. As your true identity is that of a Self who exists in unity and the identity of your personal self is that of a self who exists in separation, this would seem impossible. Even while your belief system has changed and you believe that you exist in unity, all the things we have enumerated above will act to challenge these beliefs unless you are able to see them in a new light. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 21.17)”

Affirmation: “I would seek the elevated Self of form today.”

Reflections:

1 – Elevated Self of Form

This passage, above, highlights, in different words, the call that Jesus will make to us later on—the call to embody the elevated Self of form. In other words, we understand that we are One, in unity with All, including our brothers and sisters, but we retain the physical body, and that is identified so far with the personal or “little” self. To effect this change, we need to see life in a new light. We need to alter our beliefs to realize that we can embody the physical while keeping our hearts and minds on a higher plane.

2 – Christ Self

Our true identity is the Christ Self within, and we are called to accept this identity even while we embody the physical that has always been ours. We do not truly exist in separation, and we truly never have. But we have thought that we existed in separation, and so that became our “reality.” Now we are asked to relinquish this belief in favor of something far better as well as far greater. Our shift in perception (the definition of a miracle in A Course in Miracles) will truly embody the best change that we have ever known.

3 – Separate from Others?

We have always, when caught by the ego, believed that we were separate from each other as well as separate from God. This was always false, but we made it true for ourselves because we wanted it to be true. We thought that we lost something if we merged with God, following His will. We did not know that our real will is the same as His. But now we do know this. And we have, many of us, tested it out in daily experience. We know that when we follow intuition that we know to be true, guidance, that our lives turn out better. We know that our lives evolve more smoothly. And so we have the proof that heretofore we have lacked. Yet we got this proof by testing it out in daily experience. We followed guidance, as we perceived it, and when we perceived guidance rightly, we benefitted.

4 – Not Impossible

Don’t any longer think that what Jesus is asking of us is impossible. I trust him enough to believe that if he says we can do it, we can do it. We can embody the Christ Self, i.e., we can remain true to the Self within even as we continue to occupy a personal self that has become (in words described later in the Dialogues) a “spacious” self that no longer just “observes,” but who informs and is informed by the Whole of what we have found.

5 – Knowledge

This transition is not complex, though explaining it becomes a bit too complex. Just rest in the knowledge—and it is knowledge—that we can embody the elevated Self of form, and that Self is the Christ Self in physicality.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would live mindfully today, letting the Self within shine forth. I would pay attention to the specific things that I do, knowing that living in the moment is the best preparation for embodying and sustaining the elevated Self of form

Help me to do this, for I know that I need Your help to effect change in the way that I go about my day. I would embody presence, which is a quiet realization that You are there with me. I would embody stillness, knowing that meditating upon what You guide me to think, say, and do will get me home more quickly than any other way—in fact, the only way to get me home.

May I do right by my brothers and sisters today. May I do right most especially by my significant others, for they are most affected by what I do. Guide all of us to do the will that is Yours, the will that we all share as what we truly want.

Amen.

We Learned the Untrue

“It may seem ridiculous to say that the untrue can be learned, but this is exactly what has been learned during the time of your experience in physical form. Since your true Self could not learn the untrue, a new self, which we have called the ego self, was made. Since the ego self cannot learn the true, your true self had to be appealed to for this learning to take place. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 17.5)”

Affirmation: “I would leave off the learning of the ego today.”

Reflections:

1 – Theology

This passage for today reflects a theological point in A Course of Love: that the true self, which could learn, was called upon to save the ego self from itself, for the true could be learned only by the true self. Meanwhile, the ego was busy teaching us—or trying to teach us—the untrue. And we assimilated much of this untruth into the persona that we presented to this world.

2 – Christ Self

Now is the time to let such foolishness fall away. We are leaving behind the ego self, which is withering away, and we are recalling the true, from our true self, which never actually disappeared (though we thought that it had). This “true self” is the Christ Self, to whom we turn now to learn what to say and to do next. The Christ Self, in this time of Christ, is our guidance, even as the Holy Spirit was our guidance in the time of the Holy Spirit. We have moved beyond just what A Course in Miracles said, that the Holy Spirit would guide, to what A Course of Love (channeled later) says, that the inner Christ Self will guide. I am of the opinion that there may be overlap within a given person, and certainly there is overlap in this world in general. Many are still engrossed in the wonderful message of ACIM and have not moved onward to ACOL; indeed, many do not yet know of ACOL.

3 – ACIM vs. ACOL

A Course of Love is dense reading, and in many ways more difficult than a Course in Miracles. I find that I cannot study ACOL as I did ACIM; the meanings do not easily come to mind as memorized passages. I suspect this is because the beautiful language is not in iambic pentameter, a rhyme scheme of poetry, and therefore the memorization is more difficult.

4 – Rereading ACOL

Even the passage for today is difficult reading, but worthwhile when one rereads. In fact, rereading may be the best way to learn ACOL, and certainly the fact that the real self is trying to learn the true will shine through. We are learning through observation, though, not intense scrutiny. Some have recommended that we read A Course of Love as though it were a story. There is much repetition, intended I believe, by Jesus to drive home his points, which are fewer in number in ACOL than in ACIM. But these points truly do take us home, for we have been prepared, first through ACIM, and now through ACOL, to inhabit the elevated Self of form. Would that we could do so consistently. At least we know that this consistency is where we are heading.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would do what You say today to allow Your blessing of Christ-consciousness to come sooner rather than later. Thank You for the glimpses that I have seen. Thank You for the glimpses that my brothers and sisters have seen.

May I read A Course of Love today in the best way that will help me to assimilate its concepts. Help me to remember the beautiful words, to remember the beautiful sentiment, and to learn what I need to learn in growing ever more closely toward You.

Amen.

Cease Struggle

“By saying that you are not only accomplished, but The Accomplished, it is being said that you are already what you have sought to be. In order to live by the truth, you must live in the world as The Accomplished and cease struggling to be other than who you are in truth. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 16.8)”

Affirmation: “I can avoid struggle today.”

Reflections:

1 – When Ego in Charge

Struggle is a given when the ego is in charge. But struggle, and its concomitant of strain and striving, is unnecessary in the new world of Christ in which we live. We change inwardly, and then we see the outer world change as well. We do effect societal change, but, as traditional Christianity has pointed out, we first must change internally.

2 – We Are Not Defective

We are not defective. Our Self has never left us, even when we were lost in the ego and its fears. Now we are called to affirm that the Self, the Christ, is motivating us—and in this motivation we have no fears that are unfounded. Fear serves only to alert us to dangers that still exist in this world. And fear does not degenerate into anxiety.

3 – Joy and Peace

We have struggled long and hard. We thought that this struggle was better than a superficial happiness that made us fail to change the world. But, as many have noted, real change starts from within. And happiness is a laudable goal, one that others would emulate. How can we change the world through salvation if we do not live lives of joy and peace? Who would want to listen to us?

4 – Be Exactly as We Are

We do no longer have to cease being exactly what we are. It is so close to the ego to say that we are The Accomplished, but that is exactly what Jesus is saying. We do not rest on our laurels, but we cease trying to turn ourselves inside out to become something that we are not. We are enough, given our dedication to God and His way.

5 – Contentment

Let us vow to enjoy contentment today. Contentment assures that we will not struggle to attain salvation. Such a struggle would be counterproductive. Rest in God, and He will show us all that we need to know, through the Christ Self within.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I am very hopeful that I can cease struggling in any way at all. You want that for me, and I thank You. Struggle, though it does not seem like it, is of the ego. And I have asked to let the ego wither away. In Your will.

Help me to understand how I can be The Accomplished when I don’t feel it throughout my whole being. I do not understand. Open my eyes that I might understand, free of the ego, in all humility.

Thank You.

Amen.

A Holy Relationship with the Self

“The holy relationship has been accomplished by the joining of the mind and heart in unity. The holy relationship is with the Self, the Self that abides in unity with all things within the house of truth. This relationship makes the Self one with all and so brings the holiness of the Self to all. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 15.10)”

Affirmation: “I will focus on the holy relationship with my Self today.”

Reflections:

1 – Movement Away from Special Relationships

In A Course in Miracles, the emphasis on holy relationships was with the other, our brother. This emphasis moved from special relationships, which were ego-driven, to holy relationships that would save us, is a function of our salvation. This change was seen as the fundamental way that we expressed forgiveness of our brother, and it was the fundamental way that we were to move toward Awakening.

2 – Relationship to the Christ Self Within

In A Course of Love, this movement to holy relationships with others is seen to be accomplished, and we are bade to develop a holy relationship with our deeper Self, which is the Christ within. We are once again, in the passage for today, told that we need to join our hearts and minds into unity—and that means the wholeheartedness that Jesus mentions quite a bit elsewhere in ACOL. When we experience the holiness of our Self, and we join with that Self is holy relationship, we automatically extend the same beneficence to others, and all are joined with us in holy relationship. We do not have to take individuals one-by-one. We have accomplished the all.

3 – At First Not Easy

It is not easy, at first, to recognize that the Christ within is present in us, and that this means, once we have recognized the Christ within, that we are The Accomplished. What vestiges of the ego exist in us still try to lead us to think that we are being arrogant.

4 – True Humility

True humility is what is called for here. All others have the same internal Christ, but all have not, as yet, so recognized. And we are needed to call the minds and hearts of others to this blessing of the inner Self, the inner Christ. We do not proselytize when others are not ready, but when others express a wondering about how we live and why, the way is open for us to respond. They are ready to hear.

5 – Make the Christ Self Real

May all of us think, say, and do the things today that will make the Christ Self real to us. May we make immeasurable progress today toward living as the Christ Self throughout our days.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would share a holy relationship with my significant others, and I would reach inwardly to toward relationship to my Self, also holy (though I don’t often recognize this). I would invite the Christ Self to make itself known to me today. And, if I stay close to You, this will happen, for I am asking in Your will.

Be with me today. Be with my brothers and sisters. We all need You, far more than sometimes we recognize.

Thank You.

Amen.

The Future Can Be Different from the Past

“You must now birth the idea that human beings do indeed change. While you have known instinctively that there is a core, a center to each that is unchangeable, you must now give up the idea that this core or center has been represented by the past. You must forget the idea that the future cannot be different than the past. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 15.7)”

Affirmation: “The future can be different from the past.”

Reflections:

1 – The Past

The past carries a lot of baggage. Just prior to the passage for today, Jesus gives examples of apprehensions about the future for certain people being any different from their past. He catalogs a student who has done poorly in school in the past (and hopes to change), an alcoholic who is on the wagon (and hopes to stay there), the loved ones of an alcoholic (who hope for the best), and criminals in our penal system who are not really expected to be rehabilitated. In all of these cases, the past can be changed, even though expectations are sometimes low. In today’s passage, Jesus affirms for us that the past does not have to hold us captive. We can change, and so can our circumstances.

2 – Our “Center”

The core or center of a person has not really been represented by the personal self in league with the ego. There is an unchangeable core or center, but for most people we have never seen it. But it is this core or center that is the Self/Christ toward which we are marching. And when this Self/Christ comes forth, the future will be very unlike the past. People will seem to change and to change greatly.

3 – Christ Self

Let us have hope that the individuals in this world will come more and more to rely on the Christ Self that is within. Jesus has said that we are now living in the time of Christ, that the time of the Holy Spirit (represented by A Course in Miracles) is over. By this, I understand him to be saying that those of us who read and take to heart A Course of Love are living in the time of Christ. (This is personal interpretation.) For those still depending upon the Holy Spirit, ACIM is appropriate, but there is a step beyond, in ACOL, that we are seeking. And we can know the Awakening that ACIM holds out to us, and we can know the Christ-consciousness that ACOL discusses, and these two descriptions of enlightenment are different terms for the same phenomenon. Not everybody will reach enlightenment, but many of us will see glimpses of enlightenment in our daily lives. And the extent to which we give over our egoic self-will is the extent to which God (or the Holy Spirit, in ACIM) can work with us. We can change. Let us take steps today that will look inward to that core or center that does not change. Let us realize that the egoic personal self can transform into the holy personal self (an interpretation, not stated as such in either ACIM or ACOL).

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

This is a time of great change for me, and not only in external factors. I hope to change on the inside, so that my central core becomes One with You. Help me to make this transition, a transition that is in line with Your wishes for all of us.

Be with me in the days that follow. May the external changes that I face be gentle and easy. May the internal changes that I hope for come without hassle and upset.

I wish for my brothers and sisters, as well as myself, a good day. I know that if all of us stay attuned to You, the day will go well—regardless of what we face.

Amen.

When I Have Let Grievances Go, I Will Know that I Am Perfectly Safe

“I am safe and nothing that I do or do not do will threaten my safety. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 13.8)”

Affirmation: “I cannot threaten my safety today.”

Reflections:

1 – Grievances and Safety

This passage for today is an echo of a significant passage from the Workbook of A Course in Miracles. ACIM say that when we have let all grievances go, we will know that we are perfectly safe. But here in A Course of Love, we are not even warned about grievances (but maybe because we are presumed already to have let grievances go). Nothing that we do or do not do can threaten our safety. We will in a safe universe.

2 – Peace and Quiet

Of course, that does not mean that the body will never feel pain. But our Self will never be hurt. Our core Self is always calm and at peace, quiet. The inner assurance that we can derive from believing this blessing is overwhelming. We can likewise allow pain, if it comes, but we ourselves have the wherewithal not to turn that pain into suffering. We are safe.

3 – Safety and Security

Safety and security are never unsought in this world. But when we are caught by the ego, we cannot know safety and security on a constant basis, because the ego is constantly being undone. Our flights of joy turn to chaos and tears.

4 – Our Only Security = God

In this world, we will live in a much more stable environment when we give up seeking security. Our only security is God, and He has always been there for us, though we have not always known this. If we seek to prepare for our material needs, we may find ourselves shaken, for sometimes we seem to have needs that go unmet. This is the illusory “reality” of this world. Yet God knows our needs, and our real needs are met. Our wants are not always met, and perhaps our Christ inner Self knows that it would not be good for us to have all of our wants met. We get in our heads some very strange wants.

5 – Needs and Wants

Be willing to wait on God’s timing for the satisfaction of wants. First may be a desire for safety, and this is a need that is met, even when we don’t see it that way. The needs are often inscrutable, for we so often confuse needs and wants. What God gives to us may be superior to what we earlier wanted. Let us trust Him enough to know what is best for us.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I have clung to Your promise that when I let all grievances go, I will know that I am perfectly safe. I feel the truth of that promise just this moment. Thank You.

You know that we need safety and security in this world, and the only real security is found in You. Even when bad things happen (and they do in this world), I can know that my Self is not hurt. The inner Christ Self is never harmed, and that is truly the only self that we are. Our egoic personal self often knows flights of joy followed by the depths of despair, because the ego is a false part of belief about ourselves that is constantly being undone. I would let the ego go today. I would make that a priority, though I realize that I may pray this prayer tomorrow also. The ego dies hard. But it does die, and my glimpses of Awakening have shown me that.

Thank You.

Amen.

Temptations of the Human Experience

“Thus we begin to address the temptations of the human experience. Two are spoken of in tandem here: The temptation to judge and the temptation to accept the existence of a reality other than the truth. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 11.12)”

Affirmation: “I will seek the truth today, not judging anything or anybody.”

Reflections:

1 – Judging

This passage for today echoes part of a passage from A Course in Miracles: the prohibition not to judge, lest we lose our salvation, our walk toward Christ-consciousness or Awakening. The indication that we try to walk away from the truth is the fact that we, in bowing to the ego, all too often stay lost in illusions—the opposite of truth. Truth is, however, a slippery concept.

2 – Truth?

I once met a man who was trying to employ people in his political operation, and he put great emphasis on publishing the “truth.” But I realized that his mind was lost in illusions, and I felt that he honestly did not have a handle on a “truth.” Many zealots in our world think that they set forth the truth, but we ourselves may have misgivings about the particular brand of truth to which they ascribe.

3 – How Can We Know?

How can we know? In the bottom line, we cannot be sure, even when we have prayed long and hard. Zealots also pray long and hard, and they are certain that God is on their side. The litmus test is whether or not what we believe will hurt someone else. And if there is any chance that what we do will hurt, we can be sure that this particular pathway is not God’s.

4 – Hurt

Of course, our own proclivities in life may mean that we inadvertently hurt others when we tell our truth. This is particularly prone in romantic relationships, when another loves us (or vice-versus), and the love is not reciprocal. This is not the kind of hurt to which I refer. The kind of hurt to which I refer is the kind fraught with violence. And we all know that our wars and rumors or wars, sometimes fought for the noblest of reasons, are examples of hurting, though sometimes, perhaps, unavoidable.

5 – Attack, Judging, and Planning

And we must not judge. ACIM goes further: We are not to attack, and we are not to make plans against contingencies to come (unless prompted by guidance). Judgments hurt us, for we are not in a forgiving state of mind. And so judgments are examples of temptations best avoided.

6 – Today’s Task

So avoid temptations today: Avoid judgments and avoid trying to evade the truth as we see it. We will all make different decisions, based on our personalities and backgrounds, but the way seems clear when we walk the pathway of love.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I need to realize that my greatest temptation right now is to plan for the future, even if guidance has not led me in that direction. This is a path that I would not take, though my idle mind bends in that direction. I would also avoid attacking others, and I would avoid judging others. Right now those two temptations do not hurt me so much as the planning that I am wont to do. Be with me to put a stop to this planning.

I would follow your pathway. I would live as long as you deem right for me, doing healthy things to keep my physical and emotional body is good shape. I would be there for my brothers and sisters. They have been there for me, just as You always have been. Help me to walk the straight pathway back to you today. And guide me ever-closer to Christ-consciousness at the time that You deem appropriate.

Thank You.

Amen.

You Have Not Forgotten Thought System of the Christ-Self

“What we are doing now is much like translating the learned thought system of the ego into the thought system of the Christ-self that you but think you have forgotten. As you dwell in the house of truth, if you do not resist unlearning the ego thought system, the thought system of your true Self will quite simply return to your memory. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 10.4)”

Affirmation: “I would remember the thinking of my true Self today.”

Reflections:

1 – Don’t Resist Unlearning of Ego

The passage for today is very reassuring, in that we learn that we can just not resist unlearning the thought system of the ego, and the forgotten memory of the thought system of the Christ-self will reemerge. We have just forgotten what has been buried in us all along. We do not have to struggle to learn something new. The truth has always been present, but the part of ourselves that was the ego just overshadowed our real thinking, the real thinking of our Self.

2 – The Self

Is there a difference between our Self and the Christ-self? No, there is not. I often just say “Self” because in many cases we think we are claiming something that does not belong to us when we say “Christ.” Our ego all too quickly gets involved again, and the ego tells us that we are being arrogant, that we cannot possibly share in the Christ that Jesus himself embodied.

3 – Share

But we can share in this Christ, and we can just gently turn aside from the egoistic thinking that rejects this thought as vainglorious. If we resist the ego, it will only become stronger. So do not resist, but just gently reply, when it “speaks,” with a “no.” This no will silence the ego, and we will be let ever so gently into the communion with God that will assure us that we are on the right track.

4 – Universal Christ

We do not become Jesus, of course. All too often we think that he is the only one who can be Christ. Yet it is not egotistical to claim a universal Christ of which we are a part. The ego will never be a part of this, but we in our Self will be, and this Self is found deep within, where God is. We project the world, but the point of Christ within is the essence of God Himself. And the same is true for all of our brothers and sisters, who are not illusion. Our brothers and sisters are as real as we are, and they too share the Christ that is within us. All is One in this non-dualistic universe(s), and God is One. Ask within if this interpretation can be accepted by you.

5 – Universal Experience

But do not let theology delay you. We are after a universal experience, which is necessary (from A Course in Miracles). The universal experience for today is to recognize that the Christ within is capable of transforming ourselves as well as the world that we perceive. We are on the cusp of a transforming experience when we take to heart the passage for today.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would gently turn aside from the thought system of the ego so that I would easily and peacefully unlearn that thought system. I would learn the thought system of the Christ Self, one that is gained in large part through my heart. Help me to reconcile myself to this twin resolve today.

I would share in the universal experience that is the transformation of all of us from the ego-mind to the Christ-mind. I would delay not. Help me to gently turn aside from all that was unfortunate in the past and to turn gently ahead to a glorious future.

Amen.

Blame

“All you need do is catch yourself in the act of placing blame and say to yourself, ‘I was placing blame again and I choose to do so no longer.’ You need not spend any more time with blame than this and I offer you no word of sentiment to replace it. I ask you simply to take the thought of it from your mind as quickly as it enters. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 10.4)”

Affirmation: “I will avoid blame today.”

Reflections:

1 – Blame and Guilt

It is easy for the ego to get one tripped up by encouraging the placing of blame on others and on ourselves. We need to do neither. We are all innocent, as A Course in Miracles so eloquently states. Blame is to my mind a first cousin to guilt, and it is guilt that has driven us mad (from ACIM). We need to keep our relationships with others as cordial as possible, and holding grievances would mean that this is impossible. We are not safe when we hold grievances, because we point a finger at another, but three fingers are pointing back at us. And grievances and blame are akin.

2 – Benign Emotions

Why would we harbor ill will if we could harbor more benign emotions? And we can harbor more benign emotions. We get ourselves all tangled up, criticizing (even in our minds) the words or actions of another. We don’t make friends that way; we alienate people. There is no way that we can blame without suffering repercussions that are bad.

3 – Blaming Ourselves

We often blame ourselves when we think that we have fallen short of our ideal behavior. And this is just as bad as blaming others for their shortcomings. We are innocent! And that is enough to know. We don’t have to chastise ourselves that we are falling short. We are enough.

4 – Let Grievances Go and Be Safe

The ego trap of blame need trouble us no further when we remember from the Workbook of ACIM that when we have let all grievances go, we will know that we are perfectly safe. Without that knowledge, we invite anxiety, and blaming ourselves and others is a prime way that anxiety (and fear) can enter our lives.

5 – Being Good

We are good people, even when we don’t act in a good way. Our inner Christ Self knows no sin, and even our personal self knows only mistakes—not sins. And we would correct mistakes as soon as possible. Then there is no reason to blame ourselves for falling short of what we want to be. We can pick ourselves up and simply try again—no harm done, for we live in an illusory world in which God knows that his children are innocent. If the blame seems to invite it, we can ask for forgiveness of others and ourselves. God does not forgive, because He has never condemned (from ACIM). God just loves, and it would behoove us to follow the Almighty in this laudable task for loving only.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I will not allow myself to fall into the temptation of blaming either myself or another for perceived shortcomings. I know that this is an egoic trap, and that blaming will only bring on the more sinister guilt.

Help me to keep to this vow. Help me to avoid blaming if things don’t go to suit me. The day is long and there is time for much to go wrong. But I can start the day over again at any time, and I would do so if I step amiss.

Be with me for a good day. Always be with me.

Amen.

Heaven on Earth

“You who have followed me beyond the walls of the house of illusion are now called to begin the act of revealing and creating anew the life of heaven on earth. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 9.6)”

Affirmation: “I would seek to help create heaven on earth.”

Reflections:

1 – The Future

What a delightful future! Jesus says in this passage that we are beyond the walls of the house of illusion, and so now is the time to work together to create heaven on earth. Could we ask for anything more in this world? I think not. This is the ultimate promise.

2 – Inner Guide Reveals Our Part

What would we do to reveal and to create heaven on earth? Only our inner Guide, our inner Christ Self, can answer this question, because I think that the answer is different for each of us. We have a common goal, but the means to reach that common goal—heaven on earth—are different for each of us, because our talents differ, our personalities differ, our gifts differ. We are unique, each of us, and that uniqueness means that there is no single answer available.

3 – Contributions to This World

If we had to predict our course in this lifetime, our way to contribute to this world, what would it be? I think that we ought to spend some time contemplating this important question. Of course, our answer will differ as we move through life, because we grow and develop, we change, and we move into different probabilities (from the writings of Jane Roberts, who channeled an entity known as Seth). As times change, we must change with them. And so if the way that we first seek to walk becomes closed to us, if a door is closed, we walk onward, and find an open window. God never leaves us with a closed pathway. Many have so said.

4 – Missions

We are called to a mission, and it is up to each of us to find that mission, though it differs from person to person. Certainly we do not proselytize others to the way of A Course of Love, or of A Course in Miracles, if those others are not ready. Those channeled books are our way, but there are many courses in this world (from ACIM), and each individual interprets from his/her own perspective. Even our teaching of ACOL and ACIM will differ, because the words give different insights to people with varying experiences. This is why no universal theology is possible (from ACIM).

5 – Universal Experience

But a universal experience is not only possible, but necessary (from ACIM). And the universal experience now includes a call to reveal and to create heaven on earth.

6 – Now

May we begin now.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would try to create heaven on earth. I would try to do my small part, guided by You. I will surely try to make amiss if I barge ahead without consulting You. You know the way; I do not. Help me to walk the right pathway, making turns as You indicate, today.

I need to be able to turn on a dime. I need to change my course whenever You indicate that I am traveling along a road that is a dead end. May I walk only sure pathways today.

I would live in this heaven on earth that I wish to help create. And so would my brothers and sisters. Let us go forward today, together, seeking Your way to create heaven on earth always.

May today be truly recognized as the first day of the rest of our lives.

Amen.

What Would Mary Do?

“I repeat, and will do so again and again, that the ego self is gone from you. Whether you fully realize this or not matters not. This A Course of Love has accomplished. Now the choice is before you to do one of two things. . .to proceed toward love or fear. If you proceed with fear you will assemble a new ego-self, an ego-self that perhaps will seem superior to the old, but which will nonetheless still be an ego-self. If you proceed with love, you will come to know your Christ-self. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 4.8)”

Affirmation: “I would leave fear behind today.”

Reflections:

1 – Fear

Fear is our great enemy, but if we dwell on this fact too long and deeply, we will scare ourselves, making the ego strong. And the ego is strong when one is fearful. Let us leave behind this state of affairs today.

2 – When Baited

Let us proceed toward love. This means that we need to make a decision about how we will react when we are baited by those closest to us. We must determine what we will say and do, ahead of time, or we are likely to attack or otherwise react with anger.

3 – Personal Experience

I have found that the easiest way to handle a difficult conversation is to say a reminder, just the word “gentle,” followed by the question, “What would Mary do?” By “Mary,” I mean the mother of Jesus, a woman given great importance in A Course of Love (though not in A Course in Miracles). This immediately puts me in a conciliatory state of mind. I tried the phrase, “quiet control,” but I found that it tended to put me in an uptight attitude, just the reverse of what I wanted.

4 – Communion with God

You will find other words, or perhaps none, just a communion with God. Many of us do need words that help us in times of difficulty.

5 – Proceed toward Love

I would proceed toward love always with those closest to me. And this movement will take me into the Christ/Self, sooner rather than later. We need to move toward the Christ Self, because if the ego is gone, which Jesus says it is, we need to have a replacement in mind to whom we can turn.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank You for giving me the words, “What would Mary do?,” when I am stressed, in a difficult conversation, when I am being baited. There is no reason that I can’t keep my cool, except a lack of discipline. And You would have me be gentle with all those with whom I come in contact.

I would proceed toward love today, away from fear. I have tried this many times, but perhaps not strongly enough, because anxiety dogs my steps from time to time. I would make a determination today to slow down and relax, to meditate when I can.

I never get angry unless I am stressed. May I remember this today.

Amen.

Definition of the Ego

“The Self that I recognize as You, is not other than who you are, but who you are. All that was ever other than who you are was the ego. The ego is gone. The ego was simply your idea of who you were. This idea was a complex set of judgments, of good and bad, right and wrong, worthy and unworthy, a list was endless as it was worthless. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 3.10)”

Affirmation: “My ego is gone.”

Reflections:

1 – Ego

If only it could be so—that the ego is truly gone from me! I see glimpses of time in which I do feel the truth of this statement, but I also know that my ego rears its despicable head far more often than I would wish, making me tend toward egotism. I would not have it thus. I would be the Self that Jesus recognizes, and that Self only. I need help when I make assertions such as this, though.

2 – Help

How might I get help? We know that Jesus asserts in A Course in Miracles that he will hold our hand as we walk along, no “idle fantasy.” Traditional Christianity, especially the inspirational writing based on traditional Christianity by Norman Vincent Peale, asserts the same.

3 – Jesus by My Side

I often have some trouble imagining Jesus by my side, for I do have a mind that would have doubts about how he might be anyplace, anytime. But it is enormously comforting at night, when I have a bout with insomnia, to think of him standing by the bed, comforting me. If it is all imagination, my thinking nevertheless slows down. I feel comforted, and is that not what all of us would wish in the middle of the night when we are discomforted?

4 – The Christ Self

What sort of Self is this whom Jesus recognizes? It is the universal Christ Self, the one that he shares with us. We do not have to let the ego interfere with this concept. The ego would tell us that we are off center, that this cannot be. But I do have enough belief in what Jesus has said in these channeled writings (ACIM and A Course of Love) to believe that he means business. He affirms that our ego is dead, and that the Self is very much alive. And so I choose to believe that this will be the case as soon as I am ready. He affirms that all of us reading A Course of Love are ready, and so perhaps it is my own failing that I quibble a bit about this. There is no way to know for sure until Awakening has come to us. We know then, though Awakening can be periodic rather than sustained. Jesus would have us to sustain this Self, the elevated Self of form.

5 – The Physical

And we will know for sure that a physical being in this world can live in God’s grace, that we do not have to lament the physical. The physical is a blessing, a chance to enjoy adventures that could be ours in no other way.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I can see my ego gone when I realize that it has simply been my view of what I have been, my egoic persona. My view of who I am has changed, and for that I am grateful. But I still make missteps, and I still fall prey to the ego. I would be gone with all of this foolishness, sooner rather than later.

Help me to truly know that the ego was a bad delusion. I would walk Your way always. And I need help to do so. Please send that help to me today.

Amen.

Treatise on the Personal Self

“The choice to represent your Self in form was a choice for separation but not because separation itself was desired as you have assumed. This is the assumption you have accepted in much the same way you have accepted your free will as that which allows you to be separate from and independent of God. Once this assumption was accepted, the duality of your existence became paramount, became the only means (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 2.3)”

Affirmation: “There is a good way to view the separation, and I seek to find that way today.”

Reflections:

1 – ACIM vs. ACOL

We have, most all of us, been taught that the separation from God was a bad thing. We were also taught, in A Course in Miracles, that this separation was an illusion, that we could not separate from God because we are part of Him. Now Jesus is expanding upon ACIM to let us know in A Course of Love that a separate form and the independence that it implies do not always mean that we leave out God.

2 – Gnostic Influence

In ACOL, the physical form is championed much more than it was in ACIM. There was much Gnostic influence in A Course in Miracles, and the maya (illusion) in which we are caught seemed to imply that we would be better off without physical form at all. But A Course of Love ends, in the Dialogues, with a new being for us: an elevated Self of form. And this is seen as desirable, a new experience for humankind. The Self is the Christ Self, the Self who has been lurking inwardly, waiting for emergence at our new being.

3 – No Dualism

We do not actually live in a dualistic universe. What does that mean? That there are boundaries among various worlds and concepts, including most precisely the body and the mind. But repeatedly in ACOL we are told that unity is our way, that everything is One, and that that One exists in disparate parts with which we are to be in relationship. And that One is God. There are not gods everywhere, but one God immanent throughout all that exists, whether seen or unseen.

4 – Separation

So we ought to seek to make our separation meaningful, and that sense of meaning comes from knowing that we can be as independent as we wish, but that the best life is one in which we accept guidance from the Unseen, God. Our judgments pale in comparison to knowing what to say or do next. Our inspired ways become the way that life becomes joyful to us.

5 – One = All

And then separation loses its negative aspects. We are One in relationship to All.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would realize today that my personal self is part of the whole, part of You. And this monism is a cause for rejoicing. Thank You that You are here for me, and thank You that You have always been here for me, even when I didn’t recognize the blessing that this is.

May I enjoy my physical body in this world. I do not have to lament that I live on this earth. There is a way to find You even here. And I ask to find You today and every day.

Amen.

You Have a Persona

“While the personal self is the subject of the next treatise, this is my invitation to you, specifically, to enter into a holy and personal relationship with me, specifically. While you are here, you have a persona. While this persona is no longer an ego self but a Christ self, it is still a persona. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition, 13.3)”

Affirmation: “May my persona mean only good today.”

Reflections:

1 – Relationship with Jesus

Just before the passage for today, Jesus calls upon us to form a personal relationship to him. He is more exacting in A Course of Love than he had been in A Course in Miracles. He indicates further on in ACOL that he IS the way, and we need to realize this. It is indeed true that if we have come this far, he is the way that we ourselves have chosen. In A Course in Miracles, though, he indicated only that we could gain much more if we took him as a personal friend, but he could still help us even if we did not choose to develop a personal relationship.

2 – Jesus as Our Guide

We don’t have to discount the many people of this world who choose another pathway. We do know that there are many teachers (an assertion from the Manual of ACIM), and that each teach a different form of the universal curriculum. But at this point in A Course of Love, Jesus would have us make a deliberate choice for him as our guide. Much later on in the Dialogues, he resigns as our teacher and sees himself as an equal to ourselves.

3 – Bad Example

We do have a persona here, and it behooves us to make that persona attractive to this world. What can we do as individuals on a spiritual pathway if we are constantly having run-ins with the people we encounter? We present a bad example of what our spiritual readings are teaching us. And none of us would have it so.

4 – No Idle Fantasy

So let us choose that personal relationship with Jesus today. We do not have to maintain that close a tie, if we do not gain anything from such a choice. But give him a chance. And see if you are not surprised, when you imagine walking along in this world, holding the hand of Jesus. He said in ACIM that this would be no idle fantasy.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would choose Jesus as my guide today, once and for all. He does not want to dictate to me what to do, but he does want me in close touch with God. He will help bring about a better day for me. And for other people. We all benefit from listening to his guidance.

I would set a good example today. This may be easier said than done. Help me to walk the fine line between being coerced in my daily activities and choosing a compliant attitude that allows me to get along well with others. None of us needs to have interpersonal difficulties in daily life when we stay close to You.

Amen

Tending Your Garden

“This holy relationship is what you are called to cultivate as a gardener cultivates her garden. The gardener knows that although the plant exists fully realized within its seed, it also needs the relationship of earth and water, light and air. The gardener knows that tending the garden will help it to flourish and show its abundance. The gardener knows she is part of the relationship that is the garden. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition, 12.10)”

Affirmation: “I will spend time tending my garden today.”

Reflections:

1 – Holy Relationship

The holy relationship is a relationship not only with others, but also with the Self. We reach inwardly and outwardly. And we tend what we find there. What exactly do we do?

2 – Meditative Work

There are ways that we can enhance our relationship to our Self as well as with our brothers and sisters. Earlier, Jesus mentioned meditation, yoga, affirmations as ways to grow in grace (though he did not use that term “grace”). Tending the garden is an ongoing process that in itself is meditative. Think of the gardener who loves the work of a physical garden. Do he/she not feel rejuvenated by the work that is done in the garden? It is the same here in the realm of the mind and heart, the wholeheartedness that Jesus has set forth. We do not struggle to tend. We just relax in the meditative expanse of our days.

3 – Ego

The ego would try to tend the plants without relationship (from ACOL). The ego would believe that relationship is not primary, and that the personal self is all that is important. When we are selfishly hung up on the ego, we are not mindful of our Self or of others. Sometimes someone will wonder if we actually “like” people, perhaps including ourselves. We may be so hung up on personal problems that we think that the only one we can care about is ourselves: It is enough just to keep ourselves going, and we can’t mind other people as well. They are seen as a distraction.

4 – Special Relationships

This set of mind, that relationship is unneeded and even impossible, given our state of mind, is just where the ego would have us be. The ego thinks that holy relationships, especially, are beside the point. The only relationship which the ego thinks of any benefit to the personal self is the special relationship. And we know where this leads. To pain and sometimes suffering.

5 – Special into Holy Relationships

But when we turn our special relationships into holy ones, we tend our garden in the process. This metaphor of the garden is particularly dear to the heart of Jesus, we must intuit. Later on, in the Dialogues of A Course of Love, he devotes a whole chapter to the concept. Here he is just getting started with the topic.

6 – Neurosis

Try to think today of ways that you can leave neurosis behind, and with neurosis, the ego. Try to become acquainted with the Self today. Leave time for others, for the holy relationships that we are developing with our brothers and sisters. The time of today will be well spent, and we will have followed Jesus’s advice to tend our garden.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would tend my garden today, especially my relationship to my Self and my significant others. If others are stressed, I would remain calm, secure in the Self, leaving the ego behind. Help me especially to be patient today.

This day can go smoothly if I remember You. You are my Rock, my assurance that what I do with Your blessing will turn out alright.

Help me to think and to do with Your blessing today.

Amen

From Ego Self to Christ Self

“The alternative is replacing belief in an ego self with belief in a Christ self. Total replacement. As long as you hang on to both identities the world will not change and you will not know who you are. You may think you know, and you may waste much time in perceived battles, valiantly fighting for good to win out over evil. But this is not the new way and the lack of value from this type of effort can surely now be seen. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition, 11.16)”

Affirmation: “I will contemplate my Christ self today.”

Reflections:

1 – Move Away from the Ego Self

We need to move away from the ego self into allowing (and that is the salient word) the Christ self. We don’t have to worry that we are not ready. We are ready as soon as we start our contemplation. While we may not know Awakening now (and maybe not for a long time), we can–in all likelihood–catch glimpses of this new self. And we will be the better for it. We will drop our conflicts and our complexes. We will drop our anger and our attack. And we will see peace where conflict, complexes, anger, and attack had been.

2 – Pipe Dream?

We cannot live in two different worlds simultaneously. We need to realize that we would not hold on to the ego self any longer. While this may seem a pipe dream, it is anything but. It is the way of the New, and the Treatise on the New (previously considered–see the About page, above) spells this out for us.

3 – Real World

We drop the egoic world by becoming more mindful of the real world (an interpretation, not stated in A Course in Miracles or A Course of Love). Mindfulness is recommended in ACOL, though not in ACIM. We are living in the time of Christ as we study ACOL, and that time means that mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and affirmations are all ways that we can draw closer to God. Jesus gets very specific with us in his helps.

4 – Drop Battles

We do not need to worry about whether or not good will win out over evil. It will. We do not need to engage in various battles in our own minds or in our world about the relative validity of truth or falsity as a way of life. Or of good over evil. These battles are false ways of engaging with our world. And false ways of engaging with ourselves.

5 – Guidance

The best way to live in this world is to know God through guidance, and this guidance comes most of the time through our heart. We know, without knowing how we know. And when we act on that guidance, that advice, our world becomes smoother out and all is well. We are home, even while on earth, in this world.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I choose today to walk a smooth pathway. I choose to invite glimpses of the Christ Self who is within all of us, and I choose to invite that presence into my life today. I would not say that this can’t happen, because I know that it can. I will prove my invitation by trusting in God, living a serene and tranquil day.

Be with me as I seek You. I would not presume more than I feel, but I would not have my ego say that these dreams of mine are pipe dreams.

Take me home for a little while today.

Amen

Considering Miracles and Time

“The recognition that you are already accomplished is a condition of your recognition of the state of unity. It is a recognition that you exist in unity outside of the pattern of time. Miracles create an out-of-pattern time interval. Thus living in a state of miracle-readiness is the creation of a new reality outside of the pattern of ordinary time. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition, 6.9)”

Affirmation: “I will live in miracle-readiness today.”

Reflections:

1 – Miracle-Readiness

What does it mean to live in “miracle-readiness”? First, it assumes that we believe that miracles are not only possible, but likely, and likely to happen to us. This sometimes takes a giant leap of faith, though neither A Course in Miracles nor A Course of Love say very much about faith being required. When even once, one has experienced a miracle and recognized and remembered it, then the way is smoothed for more to follow. We don’t need to ask for a miracle that we wouldn’t recognize at high noon. But we do need to ask for miracles that we would recognize.

2 – Outside of Time

We are outside of time when we are in miracle-readiness. In A Course in Miracles, Jesus indicates that he will adjust time so that we can work miracles that he himself has chosen. So this is an example of A Course of Love following A Course in Miracles, with the same explanation–just in different words.

3 – Misguided Miracles

Why can we not choose our own miracles to perform? Consciously selected miracles are apt to be misguided (from ACIM). We do not know enough to know when to do any specific miracle. We would try to judge, and we are trying to leave judgment behind completely, because we don’t see the whole picture. In ACIM, we leave judgment to the Holy Spirit. In ACOL, we leave judgment aside, because we are following guidance from the Christ Spirit within. In ACIM, we are in the time of the Holy Spirit. In ACOL, we are in the time of Christ.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank You for guiding me to consider miracles today. You want me to see them as natural and inevitable, once I am following Your way. I know that miracles are outside time, but I do not always recognize the miracles that I do encounter. Often I overlook what You have given to me. May this pattern of events change for the better. I would recognize miracles given to me, and I would perform miracles that guidance show me to perform.

I do not want to doubt the validity of miracle-readiness. I do not want the ego to get involved, for this would mean great calamity. I thank You that You indicate in inspired writing that I can indeed perform miracles, under guidance that is devoid of ego.

I ask for Your help today to move beyond conventional wisdom to a knowledge of higher realms that includes a knowledge of my place in Your scheme of things, Your place in miracles.

Amen

Our Natural State Is Miracle-Readiness

“As was said within A Course of Love, time is but a measurement of the ‘time’ it takes for learning to occur. As this notion of time dissolves, the state of miracle-readiness becomes your natural state. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition, 4.18)”

Affirmation: “I ask for miracle-readiness today.”

Reflections:

1 – What We Are Headed

Would it not be wonderful to know that we are living in miracle-readiness all the time? That this is our natural state of being? Well, this is where we are headed now in A Course of Love. We do not choose the miracles we will perform, though. Jesus directs us, because consciously selected miracles are apt to be misguided (from A Course in Miracles). We can rest, knowing that one who has transcended all barriers is right beside us, guiding us. We do not try to understand how this can be so. We just try a bit to follow, and then the results of the following are evidential to us. We will know who leads us.

2 – Jesus

The Christ Self will ultimately lead us to miracles. Jesus does not want to make all decisions for us, a statement that he imparted to the scribe Mari sometime after A Course of Love was channeled. Later on, in the Dialogues, Jesus resigns as our teacher, and becomes simply our companion. And so there will be shifts in what we perceive as this change is happening.

3 – Natural

“Natural” is a good word. What is natural to us is our birthright. And listening from within will give us the guidance that we need, when we are in a calm and tranquil, contemplative, state of mind. The guidance may and often does turn us aside from the pathway that we were barging ahead upon. We need to be able, as I have said before, of “turning on a dime.” And remember that harm will never come if we have heard correctly.

4 – “Shabby Self-Perception”

We may sometimes be embarrassed by what we are called to do. But Jesus in A Course in Miracles says that this perception is coming from a shabby self-perception. There is no reason to be embarrassed. We are following the pathway that will lead us Home, and sooner rather than later.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I think, when I read what Jesus is saying in the passage for today, that I am not worthy of such exalted characterizations. I realize that I do not have to be worthy, because this sort of thinking is just of the ego. But I think that I do need to be ready for Jesus’s encouragement to take hold. I need to know that miracle-readiness is not something for me to effect, but something that happens to me from a Higher Power from within–You.

I would stand in miracle-readiness as much as I can, but I ask You to understand if I fall down. I will always only fall down if I decide, ever, to depend on myself. My Christ Self is united with You, and I am asked to listen to this Self which I seem not to know well enough. But You will help. You will guide. As You have always. I have just been too obtuse to recognize.

Be with me today as I seek to unite my own will with Yours. Always I have only wanted what You want for me, but I have not always known this. Now I intellectually know this, and I ask You to lead me to emotionally know this as well. Be with my brothers and sisters, and guide our steps in this sometimes difficult world.

Thank You.

Amen

No Struggle / Only Ease

“A first step then in learning to recognize when you are acting upon notions of who you think you are rather than on who you truly are, is the appearance of the struggle or resistance. A a swimmer quickly learns, the only way to return to ease of movement is to cease to struggle or resist. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition, 4.6)”

Affirmation: “I would choose ease today as I follow ACOL.”

Reflections:

1 – Metaphor

The metaphor of a swimmer is used very well in A Course of Love. We are told elsewhere that we would not want to try to move in the water the same way that we move on land. Our movements are actually easier in water, but require an awareness that our environment is different from land. We move with more ease in the water, if we do not fight the water. This fighting would be a completely detrimental reaction, leading to major problems in swimming. And the same, in effect, with trying to live ACOL. We move with ease and not resistance when we don’t fight the words that have been given us. We soon feel much more ourselves, as the Christ Self will come through more and more over time, and we will be living our real Selves.

2 – No Struggle

We do not need to struggle anymore! What a relief this is! To give up struggle is something that we have wanted to do for a long time, but very likely we did not think giving up struggle was possible. And maybe we didn’t think that it was even desirable. We pit ourselves against forces beyond our control, thinking that we are building character. And we do, in fact, build some strength by struggling. But there is a better way. We give over our concerns to a Higher Power, and He paves the way for us. He is strong for us. In A Course in Miracles, this Power is the Holy Spirit. In A Course of Love, this Power is the Christ Self. Jesus declares elsewhere in ACOL that we were previously in the time of the Holy Spirit, but that now we are in the time of Christ. He is not here referring to the Jesus of 2,000 years ago, but to the Self that we all can inhabit.

3 – Time of Christ

Moving in water can be effortless, but it requires some practice. One may intuitively grasp the concept of swimming, but usually some training is required. And the same with what we are doing here. We are learning in the time of Christ. We are learning effortlessly, but we need some attention to what we are learning to assimilate all of it. And that new way of learning is by observation, not intense study (which would be very effortful indeed). We will learn, and we need to relax in the learning. One’s better life depends on mastering these concepts in A Course of Love (since we have chosen to use this as our means to Christ-consciousness), but we do not have to do so with great expenditure of effort. Indeed, to try that way would be counterproductive.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would learn a new way in the time of Christ. I would learn without trying to resist or to struggle, but I would learn with effortless ease. Sometimes to my personal self this seems too good to be true. But this evaluation comes only when my ego is rearing its head.

Learning now can be full of ease as well as joy. I do not have to pit myself against hard challenges. I ask You to pave the way for me. Tell me how to do my part. Tell me, guide me to do the right thing. May Your intentions for me win out always.

Be with all of us who still question if a new way is too easy. I know intellectually that a new way is not only possible but also easy, and I would bring my emotions in line with this knowledge. Thank You for being with me, for giving me the sense of Your presence.

Amen