Christ Will Have Come to Us, Recognized at Last

“The fourth obstacle to be surmounted hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ.  Yet as His face rises beyond it, shining with joy because He is in His Father’s Love, peace will lightly brush the veil aside and run to meet Him, and to join with Him at last.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-19.IV.D.2)

We are all a Christ in miniature.  Jesus shares his Christhood with us. And when we have learned to see the face of Christ in all our brothers, we will be home free at last.  This quotation shows the way in which Christ’s face in our brothers rises to meet us; the veil is lifted.  This is true pleasure in the moment, when we see Christ in our brothers.  We are being blessed in this moment.  It is a harbinger of better days ahead.

We can pray to see Christ in all our brothers.  It is a mystical experience that will not last for most people.  But in the happening do we see what we are to see in our better moments for the rest of our lives.  For Christ is behind the veil of physical form in everyone.

We will join with our brother, metaphorically, when we see Christ in him.  We will want to be one with him.  And it will be granted us, if only that for holy instant in time.

We will be at peace.  Christ will have come to us, recognized at last.

Invitation to Sit Five Minutes a Day as Christ

“The struggle to awaken is the very obstacle to its accomplishment.  That is why the five minutes as Christ was given to you as a very simple exercise.  And if, indeed, you desire Christ above all things, would you not participate in it each day?  For that which you desire and love is that which pulls your attention to it.  If you love Christ, then let Christ pull you, attract you to spending five minutes a day in the realization that you can only be what you are created to be.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 20, Page 241)

The “five minutes as Christ” is explained elsewhere in The Way of Mastery as simply the choice to use one’s imagination to live as Christ, sitting quietly, for just five minutes–but five minutes every day. This is not an exercise for the ego, for we have moved beyond the ego. We are inviting our true self, the true Self, the Christ-Self, to fill our mind and heart with Jesus’ blessing.

Why would the struggle to awaken be the “very obstacle to its accomplishment”? I think it is because struggle is above all not “the way,” the Tao, to God. Sure, we will have anguish in this world, but our melding with God always happens when we quieten down and invite His peace. When we have glimpses of Awakening, satori, we can think back and realize that we were always silent on the inside.

With more silence, sitting as Christ, we leave struggle behind and invite the very process that we all want–Awakening/Christ-consciousness/enlightenment/transformation.

From Ego-Self to Christ-Self

“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.”  (A Course of Love, T3:4.8)

Yes, the ego-self is gone from us.  The first book of A Course of Love accomplished this, making us The Accomplished.  It is not ego that says this.  It is the unparalleled good sense.  Jesus says it.  Can we not believe it?

If we continue to walk with fear. we are in danger, for we will be tempted to form a new ego-self.  Jesus says in fact that we will form a new ego-self, if fear intrudes on our peace.  We need to get rid of the fear, for our right minds depend on it.

On the other hand, if we proceed with love, we will come to know our Christ-Self, the inner essence that is our real Self. 

We need to make the distinction between fear and love to make the right choices upcoming.  We need to know that we are safe in this world, that nothing can harm us, that the blood that we see is merely catsup, and that illusions are not reasons to be frightened.  We need to see reality, and reality will launch us toward love.  We see reality when we trust, for, as A Course in Miracles affirms, trust is the bedrock of our new thought system, the thought system of love, of the Christ-Self.  We give up fear when we recognize how divisive a force it has been in clogging up our minds.  Our minds are precious indeed, but we have walked with a demented mind.

Now we can walk with a sane mind by listening to our heart.  Our heart is our saving grace in this new reality in which we find ourselves.  Only our heart can save us now.  Let us proceed by listening to our heart, a part of our being that needs no proof of God.  In our inner essence, we just know that we are not all alone in the universe.  That we have an indwelling spirit that means us well.  And that that indwelling spirit is God Himself.

Dreams

“You had a dream for you.  God had another.  Yours was a dream of separation; Hers a dream of eternal union with Her son.  Your dream was a nightmare; Hers the endless joy of truth.”  Choose Only Love bk.4, 3:I

Dreams are a fruitful way to look at our experience in this world as well as eternally.  We thought we wanted to experience separation from God, and we did, in disaster.  We did not really separate, for we are part of Him and cannot be separate, but we thought we separated, and in the thought the illusion became complete.

When we dream of union with Jesus, we are dreaming of our rightful place, with him, of Christhood.  He shares his Christhood with us, though he got there first and is still our leader in all that we do.

We want the “endless joy of truth.”  We know enough now to know that trying to live without God is a fruitless proposition, an endless mistake.  But living with Him is endless joy.

He made us for joy, and we are only satisfied when we are living joy—with Him.

Surrendering to God

“That requires, then, learning how to use consciousness differently.  But it is all predicated on a return to peace.  That is why, above all things, your responsibility is to enter into surrender—to let the tiny mad idea of a separate self be dissolved entirely from the mind, so that there is only the Mind of Christ.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 19, Page 234)

Today’s quotation speaks to me, particularly today. I have just been realizing how important re-surrenders are to our spiritual life. When we don’t re-surrender, we often don’t feel totally justified with God. He–as well as our soul, our Self–can see so much farther than can we, in this world, with our personal, little self. When we just give up trying to control things, we live so much better. Control is the wrong attitude. We do make preparations, but control goes too far.

The Mind of Christ is something we all share. This Mind is our very Self, the overarching soul with which we bond with everyone and everything. Surely, when we know our soul is One with the All, God Himself, we can trust that He has our best interests at heart.

Re-surrender today. Re-surrender every day. Re-surrender every time we feel obstinate about anything. There is, in this, the better way.

Joining Jesus in Christhood

“The Christ in you is wholly human and wholly divine. . . .It is this joining of the human and divine that ushers in love’s presence, as all that caused you fear and pain falls away and you recognize again what love is.”  (A Course of Love, C:5.1)

We are indeed blessed now!  When we recognize the Christ in us, we are recognizing a joining the human and the divine.  And in this joining, we are told, love reigns, “joining. . .ushers in love’s presence.”  (C:5.1) All that has caused fear and pain drops away, and we finally recognize what love really is.  This is the celebration, when we recognize the Self within, the Self no longer a captive of the ego. 

The Christ in us is wholly human and wholly divine, not omniscient, of course, because of our humanness.  We are ready to experience true reality in the fullness of the Christ-consciousness (Awakening) that now engulfs us.  We may as yet have captured only glimpses of this Christ-consciousness.  But the purpose of A Course of Love is to lead us to understandings that will cause the impediments in our psyche to drop away.  Jesus wants us to reach Christ-consciousness.  A consolidation of awakened individuals is the best hope that we have for a world in disarray, lost in pain and suffering, lost in conflict of one brother and sister against another.  But God, we might add, is the omniscient Presence that makes the decision of when we are ready.  Thus, there is an indecisive quality about Christ-consciousness and its coming that we can’t predict.  Only the omniscient God of us all knows when any one of us is truly ready.

There are things that we can do.  Things we must do.  We must give up judgments, one of the other.  We must give up fear (a biggie).  We must give up attack and planning that is not the direct result of guidance.  A Course of Love highlights the giving up of judgment and fear; A Course in Miracles highlights the giving up of attack, judgment, and unguided planning. These directives are meant to remove impediments to the coming of Christ-consciousness, and we can all recognize how difficult these directives will be if we don’t have divine help.

We do have divine help.  We need only ask.  The part of ourselves, the inner part, that is God, will respond.  Angels will also come to our aid, for we are not all alone in the universe.    Those of us who are in close contact with the Other Side will also come to recognize other entities that move to help us, though Jesus does not point this truth out, in so many words.  Jesus has said that he is always with us, always guiding us by the hand.  He is our rock, our salvation to a higher world in this world.  We do not have to die to enjoy the benefits of a higher presence directing our efforts.

Quiet Soul

“Quiet your soul now and close your eyes.  Leave everything aside.  Open your heart and in the serenity of the self.  Receive the grace of being aware of the Christ that you are and have always been.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 9:II

When we sense that we are Christ—we ourselves as well as Jesus—we don’t have any worries.  We know that the power that was in him is in us as well.

And we know that God would have us happy in His world, despite appearances of difficulties worldwide.

These difficulties are a harbinger of a turning from the past to something better, amazingly better.  We are living in perilous times, but we don’t have to obsess about this. 

We can still live peacefully, with a quiet soul.

Miracles Represent Freedom from Fear

“Miracles represent freedom from fear.  ‘Atoning’ means ‘undoing.’  The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-1.I.26)

Have you ever felt conflicted and agitated?  In turmoil.  Of course.  All of us experience such things on a regular basis.  And have you surrendered, turned it all over to God, and quickly felt a sure sense that all goes well?  This is a miracle.  This is our freedom from fear, from conflict, from agitation, from turmoil. 

We are undoing the flow of events as we have known them—or, more precisely, the Holy Spirit within us is undoing that flow of events for us.  And with this expansive change we give up fear.  We have no reason to fear when we are surrendered, completely and totally.  And the guidance that we will receive will be sure, for we ask with an open heart.

Ask for a quiet sleep tonight.  Let this miracle be shown you.  If sleeplessness comes instead, ask what you need to resolve with God tonight.  There is always a reason for sleeplessness.  The same for sleep.  The miracle is always right on the beam.  We don’t have to fear that God will not have His way with us when we have opened ourselves to Him.  Ask for the undoing of fear now.  This will be right in line with accepting the Atonement for ourselves.  And accepting Jesus’s contribution to the Sonship is essential.

Jesus’s contribution is not seen in A Course in Miracles as being the atoning nature of his shed blood.  This sacrificial nature is denied entirely.  We are, instead, to look to the resurrection and all that it promises us about eternal life.  If you have let the intellect intrude, and wonder, “How could this be?,” then suspend disbelief a bit and let your heart tell you what you need to know.  A miracle will replace disbelief.  Not that you will ever resolve intellectual doubt that easily, but a mystical understanding will encompass the whole for you.  You will know that Jesus’s Atonement for us is real.  Whether or not we intellectually grasp it.

Miracles are sure.  Miracles are certain.  And if they do not occur, then something has gone awry.  We have either turned to attack, turned to judgment, or turned to making plans against contingencies to come.  These three aspects of our “normal” experience are all that it takes to hide the miracle from us.  And when we turn aside from this trio, we will wonderingly see that all was not lost for us, just misplaced. 

Are We Really “Christ”?

“You are Christ.  Your life in physical human reality is the same one I traveled, although I was first conscious of my unity with God.  Does that matter?”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 8:III

We will at first resist this assertion by Jesus.  We will want to leave the “Christ” concept to him alone.  But in recent channeled writings, the term “Christ” is a plural word that includes all of us who have followed in the way back to God.  .When we are conscious of our unity with God, we have done all that we need to do to appropriate the word “Christ” to ourselves.  We don’t even have to have yet Awakened.

Jesus makes it easy for us.  He says here that he was first conscious of his unity with God, but “Does that matter?”  I think the flow of the sentences in this passage means, “Does it matter that Jesus was first in experiencing the fact of being Christ?”   Elsewhere Jesus asserts that we will do what he has done, though that does not include a crucifixion.  Jesus has paved the way for us.  He was the initial pioneer.  Now we need simply to follow in his footsteps, and our lives will smooth out, and we will eagerly embrace the concept that we too can say we are “Christ.”

Traveling the Path of the Living Christ

“I traveled the path of the living Christ because that is what I am.  It is exactly the same path you travel.  Yours may not include portentous miracles.  You may not be famous.  You may not transform water into wine for humanity to begin to see a power not of this world.  You may not heal the sick, externally speaking.  None of that matters.  None of that is essential.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 8:III

I think Jesus is here giving us a context for believing that we can one day be equals of him.  Of course, those of us of faith don’t usually think in these terms.  Yet Jesus says things like this repeatedly in various received (channeled) works from the recent past.  We don’t have to perform the miracles that he did, though elsewhere he says that we will actually do more than he—certainly a startling assertion.

Jesus wants companions, not subservient individuals who idolize him.  He can be an ideal for us, of course, but that is not the same thing as idolatry.  He has pointed out the way, 2000 years ago, and he continues to be available to us in a mystical fashion that our finite minds and hearts cannot fathom.  Many of us believe that he indeed did channel A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, and The Way of Mastery.  Now in Choose Only Love there are numerous portions coming from him as well.

Jesus doesn’t want us to assert things that we don’t quite believe.  Even if we doubt the practice of channeling or receiving from a discarnate being, we still can read the words and be inspired.  Much of what we read has a basis in traditional Christianity.  This provides continuity from Jesus that is tremendously reassuring.

Ask today how we might emulate Jesus.  Ask what our contribution might best be.  Set up a dialogue in a journal, with questions and answers, and see if there doesn’t seem to be a way out there for all of us to experience directly.  Ask to know what our mission is.

We will not be disappointed in what we “hear.”

Living Christ

“When you pray to God, you are praying to that part of yourself that is divine, that which we call the living Christ who lives in you.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 11:II

We are not just praying to our little personality when we pray.  We have a larger Self who is merged with God, and this larger Self is a part, but only a part, of the Christ.  Christ is a plural term, not meant in this era for only Jesus.  We partake of divinity, too.

Know that turning inward is not praying to an external God, for God is not external to ourselves.  We are a part of Him, always and forever, even when we are living with the ego in a “fallen” state.  We gain insights by turning inward to the God Who dwells deep inside.  We know better how to live.

Ask today how to proceed in life.  Let our intuition be our Guide, for God is speaking in the silence to us through our intuition.

A Startling Assertion

“Those who join this angelic manifestation are those whom the Creator has called from eternity to join the new consciousness of the Second Coming of Christ, the new prophets of the end times.

“Nothing happens by chance.  God does nothing in vain.  You who receive these words are literally part of the one hundred and forty-four thousand announced.  Your new garments shine radiant in the whiteness of Mary’s virgin purity.”  Choose Only Love bk.4, 2:I

“You who receive these words” are those who are reading Choose Only Love (available on Amazon). This assertion is startling. We read of 144,000 called individuals in the New Testament. Can we really be seeing those of this calling in our world today?

This is not something to boost the ego. The ego will have fallen away from this 144,000. To whom much has been given, much will be expected. We need to ask what our task in the great unfolding drama really is.

We need to ask what God would have us do.

True Peace

“Realize that I am love.  Remembering this is enough to bring true peace to your heart and mind.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:I

This is a message from Jesus.  I think this assertion will work for us when we do follow him as our leader.  Following Jesus as our leader and savior is the message of traditional Christianity as well as the recently channeled works which many believe are from Jesus, including this one—Choose Only Love—and A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, and The Way of Mastery.

We need someone who has walked the whole pathway back to God as our guide.  When we trust that one, we know that we can have the peace that we feel when we think of him.  He paved the way.  Now he is inviting us to join him as an equal, not subordinate to him in any way.  He got there first, but he wants nothing more than for us to share the love that that journey showed to him.  And he takes us by the hand as we walk along.

If we trust Jesus as our leader and guide, oftentimes our savior, we will—he says—experience true peace.  And who among us does not want that?  Let go of doubts that Jesus is actually speaking to us in this quotation and open the mind and heart to the belief that he is.

When we feel true peace in this belief, we will know all we need to know.  We will walk a smooth road back to God, with Jesus’ hand clasped in ours.

Unlimited Life

“You then, are Christ, playing in the world—unlimited, unfettered, unvictimized by anything.”  (“The Way of Transformation, The Way of Mastery, Chapter 13, Page 165)

When Jesus welcomes into the embrace of the “Christ,” I am comforted that all of us are going to be on the right pathway. It will just take time for all to come into the fold. When we decide to get right with God, we are taking the first step toward a new life–a life that is “unlimited, unfettered, unvictimized.”

All of us welcome this change. Some have experienced it already. But for those who still feel caught by the struggles of the world, with quotations such as this we can take heart. There is a way out of the maze. We can live lives of great value, enjoying what we do, attracting that which gives us peace.

Reading has been a prime avenue for me in order to try to get right with God. A Course in Miracles taught me much–but so did the other newly channeled works by Jesus. Jesus is active in our world, of course. We just can’t see him. He is just as active on our behalf now as he was 2,000 years ago.

Resolve to live an unlimited life today. Resolve to take our places in the new world that is unfolding. We still can’t see it, but it is there. We have been caught up in a drama, and we are still. But beyond the drama of conflict and struggle is a new world, created by us with help from the Unseen.

Be sure to offer thanks for each bit of encouragement the Other Side gives us.

We Are Christ!

“You are consciousness.  You are awareness.  You are that which witnesses, that which pays homage to the one thing that God has created:  Christ, which means the anointed.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 17, Page 201)

We are the awareness that is Christ. Of course, if we shouted this too loudly when we are caught in the ego, we would have a “high” that would quickly turn on us and lead us into despair. But now that we are relinquishing the ego, we can shout from the rooftops (metaphorically) that we ARE the Christ. In the new era of Christ, we understand that the “Christ” is a plural concept, not limited to Jesus. He paved the way, and still does. But he welcomes us into his inner sanctuary with God.

How do we actually come to realize that we are morphing into something new and better? We go within, in peace and tranquility. God Himself will welcome us. We can believe that He knows how important it is to us to relinquish an egotistical stance toward life and living. When we welcome others with the same manner in which we seek to welcome ourselves into God’s embrace, we will realize that we are all in this together.

We seek to rest in God’s embrace, and in His embrace we feel no fear. We see that we are equal to all others in the eyes of God, and so judgment has no place. And it is these two impediments–fear and judgment–according to A Course of Love, that keep us from manifesting Christ, that keep us from love in all its fullness–Love as God loves.

Know that we are loved, and because God first loved us, we can give and receive love now. We can be cocooned in that love of God.

He is reaching upward from our depths to love us with an abiding love. Do we feel it yet?

Abide as Christ

“For I, like you, was once a student of the ways of seeking God.  And I dove deep into the nature of consciousness and mind itself and discovered how to attune the mind, the emotions, and even the nervous system of the body to resonate with the perfect will and Love of God.

“To begin to prepare a place for that teaching, return to the practice of abiding as Christ for at least five minutes.  Then, as that five-minute practice period is completed, allow the eyes to close . . . .

“Then, as you are beginning to feel that sense of relaxation ever more deeply, hold the thought:

“As Christ, in perfect safety, I release all tension.  As Christ, in perfect safety, I dissolve my mind in the perfect peace of God.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 15, Page 180 – 181)

This long quotation tells us much.  In The Way of Mastery, we were earlier encouraged to imagine (and to practice) sitting “as Christ” for five minutes.  This is similar to practices recommended in the Workbook of A Course in Miracles, but without the Workbook affirmation.

This practice of imagining ourselves as a Christ, keen on the imagination, will work just as well as affirmations to calm us down and give us a good day.  Remember that Christ, as used in both The Way of Mastery and A Course in Miracles, is a plural term meant to include anyone who has walked far along the pathway back to God.  I don’t think we have actually to have experienced Christ-consciousness or Awakening to see ourselves as a Christ.  Seeing ourselves AS a Christ is part of the preparation for this transformation.

Spend five minutes quietly today, imagining ourselves as a part of Christ.  If we stay in quietness, the rewards for this practice are great.

Jesus: “Awe of Mystery”

“I began to discern what brought me true joy.  Not just a moment of pleasure, or satisfaction, or sense of security, but which elicited true joy.  I discovered that what always brought joy was when I was willing to surrender into the awe of mystery. . . .”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 14, Page 175)

We too can experience true joy when we let our mind and heart rise upward to the true mystery of God.  Jesus is here laying out a pathway for us to follow, too.

We need to be aware when we are feeling joy as opposed to simply the earthly happiness.  Joy is on a higher plane, more akin to heaven on earth than our usual egoic world.  We have flights of happiness when the ego rules, but we don’t experience true joy—joy that lasts and warms our heart constantly.

Ask today to experience this true joy.  Lift our mind and heart to the mysteries of God.  Experience awe in His presence.

We will have a day like no other.

Unlimited, Unfettered, Unvictimized Living in This World

Note:  I will leave Choose Only Love for the moment, and return to The Way of Mastery in my blog posts.  I will return to Choose Only Love a little later on. – Celia

—

“You then, are Christ, playing in the world—unlimited, unfettered, unvictimized by anything. . . .You simply create the structure of your experience.”   (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 13, Page 165)

Here we see that we are indeed creating our own reality, just as we heard in New Thought and in the New Age.  If we believe that Jayem channeled Jesus, and I believe he did, we have on the highest authority—Jesus himself—that we attract what happens to us by the focus to which we bring our consciousness.

This is how Jesus can be with us, any of us, at one and the same time.  He focuses his consciousness wherever he might wish.  This is indeed a reassuring concept.

So:  We are all—ALL—Christ, playing in our world.  We are not victimized by anything, because we always have the choice to change our minds about what we experience.  We are unlimited creations of God.  Our potential is therefore limitless.  A Course in Miracles talks about “limitless release” and it is this that we are confronting today in this blog post.  We have the right and the will to structure our experience in line with the will of God—or to avoid Him and choose to live by our own very limited ego.

I hope that all will choose the guidance of God and will follow His will for a glorious future—beginning today.  There is no better way to live.  Unlimited, unfettered, unvictimized. . . .

Living in Love

“[L]iving with fear was the reality of the contraction in which you lived.  Now we begin to live consciously without fear, joyfully recognizing that we are the resurrection and will live in love.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:III

The only two emotions, fear and love, are polar opposites to one another.  The degree to which we open to love is the degree to which the contraction of fear leaves us.  If we are feeling fear, ever, maybe we ought simply to stop, just stop, and ask ourselves in what way we are not being loving. 

This will make all the difference.  Love cancels out fear, always and forever.  It is true, however, that fear and anxieties may have such a toehold in us that we can’t, right away, focus on love.  First we need to relax.  Let the fear sweep over us, but do nothing about it.  It will come to a conclusion as we relax.  Open then to love and loving feelings.  Think of something or someone whom we truly love.  This shift in feeling will open the way to a tremendous surge, and in this surge, a surge of love, and Love (meaning God), we will be released enough to drop the fear from our mind and heart.

Experiment today, if you are in fear.  Let relaxation quell the emotion of anxiety, and then move serenely into the feeling of love.

Our day will brighten.  Our mind, through Christ, is very powerful: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”  Let the heart rule the mind in this instance of turning to love.

The heart already knows how to do this.

Jesus Is Love

“Realize that I am love.  Remembering this is enough to bring true peace to your heart and mind.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:I

As I drive through the streets of my town in the midst of a pandemic, economic uncertainty, and unrest in cities, I see signs out front of many houses that say, “My hope is in Jesus.”  Certainly the people who posted those signs have found hope in remembering that Jesus is love.  Here Jesus is quoted as saying that remembering him as love will bring true peace to heart and mind.

Take a moment to think as Jesus has asked.  This statement, “Realize that I am love,” brings comfort to my mind and heart.  It will do the same for yours.

Jesus speaks often in Choose Only Love as our personal savior. If this seems hard for some to accept, still there it is. Open the mind and heart a little. Consider that maybe traditional Christianity has it right. We need someone whose hand we can hold as we walk along in this difficult world. Nobody is so strong as not to need some help.

Jesus will empower us by his help. Open the mind and heart, and trust him.

He asks nothing more.

Christ

“Beloved, accept now that you are Christ.  Begin to walk on Earth as gods, loving everything, always in love.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

When we walk the world loving everything, always in love, then indeed we are Christ.  And there is something further: “Begin to walk on Earth as gods.”

This is heady stuff.  But we will be misinterpreting if we let these words be an appeal to our ego.  These words are not meant in such a fashion.  Our little personalities often misconstrue. 

When we are living in love, everything looks different—and this includes us.  We truly are being a Christ when we walk in love upon the face of this earth.

To do so will make such a difference.  We won’t be so much changed as just living more fully.  Our minds will have slowed down, and cleared, and we will be happier.  Yet Christ-consciousness is not so much a matter of a changed mind as it is of a changed outlook, though Jesus says elsewhere (in The Way of Mastery) that if our scientists knew what to look for in the brain, they would have found it.

Do we have to have walked the whole pathway back to God in order to be considered a Christ?  No, because being a Christ is our inheritance, what we are meant to step into.  We don’t have to be perfect in order to reach this place.  It is our joint certainty that all is well.  It is our renewed hope for a better life.

And the only way that we can have a better life is to turn ever more completely to expressions of love in everyday life.

Do the Things that Are of Christ

“Remember that you often seek to know, not out of love for wisdom, but simply to feel more powerful than your brothers and sisters, or not to feel inferior.  None of that is of Christ.”  COL bk.2, 20:IV

This quotation is a good description of our competitive culture.  We want to achieve more, not out of a desire to learn, but in order not to let others outdo us.

This attitude does not win us any friends.  Competitive spirits are a turnoff in what should be a cooperative work environment.  Cooperation always comes out ahead of competition.

If we want to know for the sake of wisdom, greater wisdom, we are OK.  If we want to know because we are seeking to be better than our peers, we are sunk in the competitive spirit.  It is not true that the only thing that has made us a great culture, world-wide, is competition.

Contemplate what a difference a loving and cooperative attitude would make.  It is not a copout to give up the bent to be better than another.

It is good sense.

Holy Abode of Christ

“When you have opened the floodgates of your consciousness, allowing everything you experience, whatever it may be, to be embraced, then you will live as what you are:  the holy abode of Christ.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

Embracing our experiences is, as Choose Only Love says, necessary to our continued march toward God.  Others have said just to dismiss negativity, but perhaps the better Answer, as COL says, is to integrate the negativity; overcome the fear with love.

This is scary business—but it works!  There is absolutely nothing that the power of Love cannot overcome.  If we dismiss our thoughts of negative outcomes, the negative things may very well just go underground in our subconscious, just waiting there to make us uneasy and then to rear their ugly heads again.  If we transmute (i.e., change the form) of our thoughts, they will never arise to hurt us again.  We will be free of the bad thoughts, and we will, we know, have overcome them with the much better value of Love.

There is nothing that can’t be righted this way.  As COL says elsewhere, when a worry arises, sit down, relax, take a deep breath, connect with our desire for something better, and then the Answer will arrive.

There is nothing that can’t be integrated toward the positive.  Pushing down the negative thought by trying to put it out of mind only saves it for another rainy day. 

We want to be the “holy abode of Christ.”  Letting Love overwhelm us and our problems is the way to achieve this wonderful outcome.

Being the Living Christ

“We know for sure that we are all we are being, and that what we are is nothing other than the living Christ.  Thus we begin to enjoy the sanctity of our being.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

In the next step that we will encounter, we will walk Mary’s way, which was the way of being as opposed to doing.  This, from A Course of Love.  Now Choose Only Love is telling us the same thing.  In this new world we are creating, we will reach Christ-consciousness, and thus our Christ-Self will be in the ascendancy.  The Christ-Self is the living Christ, for no longer is the term “Christ” reserved just for Jesus.  It is a plural concept in the new world, for all of us share the Christ spirit.

We will still “do” things, but our primary responsibility is to “being.”  And this is a great relief.  “Doing,” all too often, made us think that we had to earn our way into heaven.  Not so.

Doing and being complement each other in this in-between time.  As A Course of Love makes clear, Jesus’ way was largely doing, but Mary’s was being, and therein lies the difference.  Those of us still called to doing will be helped by those called to being.  And vice-versus.  We are all in this together.

Being allows for more rest than does doing, or so we might imagine.  It is good that we are moving into a new era, where being will teach us how to live.

We never had to “earn” our way into heaven, and now we know it for sure.  Just being ourselves will take us straight to heaven, even heaven on earth.

Walk the Path of Life Hand-in-Hand

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

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

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

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

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

Depth of a Perfect Silence

“I share with you the depth of a perfect silence. I share with you wisdom supreme. I abide as you are: the thought of Love in form. To be in form does not mean to be a body. It means only that the Christ Mind, which is the reality of Love’s existence, truly abides within each of us equally. If this were not so, you could not recognize me. When you read a word, or a sentence, or a paragraph that resonates within you as being the truth, you could not know it was so, if that Truth did not already live within you as the reality of your very existence.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 11, Page 135)

We are not actually learning anything new: We are “remembering.” This is a tenet of The Way of Mastery, that we don’t actually learn new things, that we are recalling to mind what was learned a very long time ago, and then forgotten, much to our detriment.

Our Truth is written on our heart. Not our mind. When we say this, everyone knows what we mean. The “heart” has a very definite point of understanding in our psyche. When we soften to listen to our heart, we want a smooth pathway back to our God. Our feet don’t stumble on stones, we don’t trip and fall. We just walk smoothly along a flower-strewn pathway. And we discover much on this peaceful and often slow journey.

We get impatient to get on with it. We want Awakening, and we want it now.

But this is not God’s way. He acts only when certain that WE are ready for the great responsibility of Christ-consciousness. Sitting as Christ for five minutes a day can speed the process, but still God probably acts in a much more measured pace than we would like. The slowness prompts patience, something sorely lacking in many of us.

Jesus, our leader, is offering us the chance to commune with our God in silence. In silence is how God speaks to us. Understanding Him is a “feeling” issue, and feelings belong to the heart. That is why turning to our heart for decisions is so important. Our ratio of mistakes to good decisions becomes much improved toward good decisions.

When in doubt, just ask for the loving response to be writ upon our heart. This way we won’t go astray as we walk back to God, letting Love heal the separation.

Sit as Christ

“Now, to build on what you have been doing, we would simply ask you to add this simple practice. When you sit in your chair for five minutes abiding as Christ, remembering the Truth that has set you free, begin to ask yourself the simple question: “This day, how can I extend my treasure? “How can I add to that which I am storing up in the Heaven of my consciousness? “

“Immediately, you will begin to get pictures—an old friend who needs a phone call, someone to write a letter to. It could be something as simple as picking up your cat, placing it upon your lap, and seeing all of infinity in that living being, and feeling the joy that comes as you run your hand along its fur. It could be something as grand as going to Washington, D.C. in order to send a blessing to your president. It does not matter what it is because that voice of Love will be guiding your actions. It may be as simple as turning to your spouse and saying, ‘You know, I appreciate you.’“Whatever it is, let the day not fade away until that action is accomplished, or at least set into motion.”(“The Way of the Heart,”WOM, Lesson 10, Page 130)

Earlier Jesus has asked us to sit for five minutes “as Christ.”This quiet time is extended in this quotation. We are asked to ruminate, in a free-wheeling fashion, about our lives. To ask what we might do to help someone. To ask what we might do to help ourselves. If we have invited these “pictures,”then it behooves us to act on what comes up. It is all an attempt to take us closer to enlightenment, for all that we image can be an expression of Love demonstrated. And extending Love is the great secret to Awakening.

So: Just sit and think, keeping the body relaxed, the mind on neutral—until images come up that we will want to attend to. This type of contemplation is a form of meditation, though we are not saying a mantra. This type of contemplation, though, may be better suited to frenetic Westerners who have trouble stilling our minds. Assume a relaxed posture, and see what transpires. We may be closer to Awakening than we have any idea.

Imagining Christ

“The message of this lesson, built upon the last, begins to translate the Truth into an action—very simple, very practical—so simple and so practical that you will be hard pressed to find a reason, an excuse, against it. For those of you so busy trying to take care of dealing with all the things life throwa at you, even you know that you can find five minutes. And those five minutes can be the beginning of birthing a whole new universe for yourself.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 9, Page 120)

The ”five minutes” refer to sitting five minutes imagining that we are a Christ. It isn’t an egoic thing, not at all. It is a form of meditation, but a very potent form. We need to take time out from our busy lives to just imagine what it would be like to have no problems, to let those that we do have rest lightly on our mind and heart, and to dwell with God.

That is what sitting as a Christ actually means: dwelling with God. We start slowly, with just the five minutes. We clear our minds and hearts of problems, and we know that when we put problems out of the way, we will live as an imagined Christ.

This is not hard. Only if we doubt its efficacy will we run into problems. Give it a day or two.

The results will speak for themselves.

An Exercise in Reverence

“Five minutes of practice sitting in a chair as an infinite creator of exactly what you are experiencing in your emotional field. Just that. You might even want to play with what it would feel like to sit in a chair as a Christ. What would that feel like? I will let you choose whether or not you would like to experience it. Five minutes each day. Do it without fail! Be with yourself, ad decide how you will experience yourself now!” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 9, Page 114)

Here Jesus gives us an exercise that will help us to realize that we are alright just as we are. He asks us to sit in a chair and imagine that we are a Christ. Just that.

Does this seem too egotistical? Certainly if we let our ego rule, the exercise will be wrong for us. But something deeper is going on. We are heading into actually being Christs. This is what our ultimate resolution will look like.

We need have no fear that our ego will rule this exercise if we pray sincerely to be protected from that ego. Let us give this a “go.” Let us try Jesus at his word, and imagine, in reverence, that we sit as a Christ.

The Christ in Us Is Wholly Human & Wholly Divine

“The Christ in you is wholly human and wholly divine. . . .It is this joining of the human and divine that ushers in love’s presence, as all that caused you fear and pain falls away and you recognize again what love is.” (ACOL, C:5.1)
We are indeed blessed now! When we recognize the Christ in us, we are recognizing a joining the human and the divine. And in this joining, we are told, love reigns, “joining. . .ushers in love’s presence.” (ACOL, C:5.1)

All that has caused fear and pain drops away, and we finally recognize what love really is. This is the celebration, when we recognize the Self within, the Self no longer a captive of the ego.

The Christ in us is wholly human and wholly divine, not omniscient, of course, because of our humanness. We are ready to experience true reality in the fullness of the Christ-consciousness (Awakening) that now engulfs us. We may as yet have captured only glimpses of this Christ-consciousness. But the purpose of A Course of Love is to lead us to understandings that will cause the impediments in our psyche to drop away. Jesus wants us to reach Christ-consciousness. A consolidation of awakened individuals is the best hope that we have for a world in disarray, lost in pain and suffering, lost in conflict of one brother and sister against another. But God, we might add, is the omniscient Presence that makes the decision of when we are ready. Thus, there is an indecisive quality about Christ-consciousness and its coming that we can’t predict. Only the omniscient God of us all knows when any one of us is truly ready.

There are things that we can do. Things we must do. We must give up judgments, one of the other. We must give up fear (a biggie). We must give up attack and planning that is not the direct result of guidance. A Course of Love highlights the giving up of judgment and fear; A Course in Miracles highlights the giving up of attack, judgment, and unguided planning. These directives are meant to remove impediments to the coming of Christ-consciousness, and we can all recognize how difficult these directives will be if we don’t have divine help.

We do have divine help. We need only ask. The part of ourselves, the inner part, that is God, will respond. Angels will also come to our aid, for we are not all alone in the universe. Those of us who are in close contact with the Other Side will also come to recognize other entities that move to help us, though Jesus does not point this truth out, in so many words. Jesus has said that he is always with us, always guiding us by the hand. He is our rock, our salvation to a higher world in this world.

We do not have to die to enjoy the benefits of a higher presence directing our efforts.

Tension of Opposites

“As a separate being, you have been in a relationship with fear. This relationship with fear is all that has provided the ‘I’ of the separated self. But because you exist as an extension of love, you have always held within you the Christ, who is the relationship with love. This is why individuation has become the conflict between, or the tension of, opposites. Because you have relationship with both fear and love.” (D:Day40.22)

We need to have the fear fall away, but we are doomed from that prospect as long as the ego rules and separation from God rules. We are heading into a new dimension of our personhood, a Christ-consciousness that will mean that we occupy a physical form in this world, but our minds and hearts are elsewhere, in a new consciousness that means that we live very much in the present. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

For eons we have been in a relationship with fear, because we were governed by a false view of self that has come to be known as the “ego.” This relationship with fear meant that any pain was very likely to turn into suffering, and more pain, and disaster, even. To rescue us from this dismal situation, Jesus has channeled both A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love, the former to dislodge the ego, and the latter to establish a new identity. To establish a new peace.

We have never really snuffed out the Christ within. This is our true Self, the entity that is one with God, Who also dwells within. But our relationship with this false part of ourselves called the ego has meant that we couldn’t sense the Christ, and we couldn’t live well, and all in all we have been in a bad way. This is because we have been attached to fear rather than to love. And now is the time to remedy that.

Love and fear do not mix very well. Love is harmonious and kind, as we know, but love is not just an emotion. It is truly what we are, what we are meant to be. Fear, on the other hand, is the great pollutant of what we are. Because we bought into fear through the self ruled by the ego, we have never really stood a chance to be happy.

The ego gives but to take away. We have had flights of fragile joy, but egoic joy is never the real thing. And just as soon as we experienced one of these joyous flights, we were hurled downward, face on the ground, to a devastating sense of doom. It is clear that we can never enjoy peace of a lasting nature when this is the reality in which we live.

Is this not the way that we have experienced reality? But this is not genuine reality. Jesus is telling us now, in ACIM and ACOL, how to so live that we are in peace and happiness continually. If we heed his words, we will live in what is true reality. And we will have a calm peace that remains undisturbed by outward events in our physical and emotional world. We will truly have learned how to live.

And we will be who we truly are.

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.

Awaken the Christ in Each Other

We must always try to remember that we awaken the Christ in each other. Just so long as we persist in holding grievances against our brother, that is how long our deliverance will be delayed. These grievances are a “shadow” that obscures the face of Christ and the memory of God. (T-26.IX.2:2) Remember that the passage of time is not a problem, for whether we have the shadow removed now, or a hundred or a thousand years from now, for Heaven itself there is no time. It is only our own suffering that we collapse into nothingness when time is foreshortened.

Love one’s brother, however deep may be the rancor. He is our way back. Jesus says, “The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love” (T-26.IX.6:1)

More of Christ Can Be Lived

“When you find yourself in a situation that you believe is too big, rest assured, it is because something big ha finally come to the surface to be healed within you so that more power can shine forth through you. Why? You have reached the place where you are ready for it. More of Christ can be lived.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 3, Page 38)

If the something that we recognize in another seems particularly significant (here Jesus says “big”), then rest assured we are ready to heal something big in ourselves. It is NOT too big to be healed, but we do need help. Nobody heals themselves. We ask for help from God, and then the Holy Spirit moves to fulfill our need. We always ask for help, whether it be of the ego or of the spirit. And the spirit heals, whereas the ego drives us deeper into the morass.

We want more of Christ to be lived. And so we ought to be grateful for the big things that are shown to us, even the things that seem to overwhelm us. These overwhelming things assure us that we can’t, of our own, come back to stasis. We don’t have to imagine that we can handle it, because we know that we can’t. We are primed for reaching out, not for being independent and autonomous.

This is as it should be. We are meant to be creatures, children, of God, who live in a large world with many other beings who can help us. We are meant to be interdependent. And if a human being can’t help, if the thing is beyond human help, then the Holy Spirit will act on behalf of God.

These are reassuring steps in the path back to God. We are always helped at the point of need. We only need to turn inward, where the Christ-Self and the Holy Spirit reside, to know Who really helps us. We will sense what to do, if there is something that we need to do.

Thus is healing brought home to us.

Healing of the Mind

“The First Coming of Christ is just another name for the creation, because Christ is the Son of God. The Second Coming of Christ means nothing more than the end of the ego’s rule over part of the minds of men, and the healing of the mind. I was created like you in the First, and I am reminding you that I have called you to join with me in the Second.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-4.VI.14:1-3)

Here Jesus is explaining the new reality, the fact that when he came 2,000 years ago, he was embodying the Christ, the Awakened Son of God. Now, he says the Second Coming is a healing of OUR minds, that we too will recognize that we too are Christ, Sons and Daughters of God. This, being a healing of our mind, is the end of the ego’s rule.

The only thing that needs to happen is that we rest in God’s love, let the barriers to love’s rule dissipate, and wait, patiently, for our Awakening—by God Himself. This means, obviously, that we take measured paces to relinquish the ego. We don’t do anything to reinforce it; we stay away from egoic notions, for they will only derail us.

Does Jesus come in the Second Coming? Is there a physical manifestation? He never says, in any of his channeled courses (A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, The Way of Mastery Platform). It wouldn’t be wise for us to speculate about something that has been so divisive in our religions.

If he comes in physical manifestation, we will see great glories on earth. If not, perhaps he intends for us to manifest those great glories, in a new world that we will create. This latter point is made very plain in A Course of Love.

From Self-less and Ego-less to Christ-Self

“These anti-ego tendencies are a real danger in this time. You are not called to selflessness but to Self!

“This is the transition you have felt yourself to be in. The ego is gone but the true Self has not been allowed as yet to dwell within the personal self, thus elevating the personal self. You have thus been self-less for a time and the personal self has floundered from this lack of identity. A person could literally die during this time from lack of identity, lack of cause. To die to the personal self is not what is required any longer as we work instead to elevate the personal self. This elevation occurs through the acceptance of your true identity, not through being identity-less. The reign of the ego began during just such a time of identity-less-ness. You cannot go on in such a way.” (ACOL, D:1.9 – 1.10)

I would suggest that this is the juncture that many of us occupied when we were at the conclusion of much study of A Course in Miracles. This floundering, without the ego but not knowing where else to turn, occupied many of us before Jesus channeled A Course of Love. He says definitely here that we can’t long survive ego-less, without a replacement, and he says that this replacement is the Self, the true Self who has been called the Christ, and who has dwelt deep within us for eons. Our personal, or “little,” self hindered the emergence of the Christ-Self.

Now we know better. We really do have to let the Self out to play. Effortlessly assuming our role in the new world, being created even as we speak.

This Self is the part of God Who dwells within every living thing. This is the Self who will save us now. It is about time.

Many of us have become frustrated with the promise of Awakening or Christ-consciousness, but no transformation seems on the horizon. Jesus would counsel us that there are things that we can do to make a difference, to allow Love in, to remove the blocks to Love. The Self knows how to counsel us as well, and as we retrieve broken parts of the subconscious, our way ahead brightens. All that is hindering is lodged in the subconscious mind. Let the heart inform that mind, and see what a difference it makes.

We need to recognize that just turning from the ego, without the replacement by the Christ-Self, is a dangerous place for us to occupy. Jesus even says that some, so disheartened, have died at such a point. He would not have us destroy ourselves out of frustration. He would have us walk into the fullness of our being. And we can do so today.

Prayer

I would, today, do all without my power to accept Jesus’s promise of a Christ-Self who will rule my personality. I will follow Your way, insofar as I can, but with Your help, all day long. The day will unfold gently as I realize that I am following in the way that You are pointing out.

Be with me today. May this be a good day, a stupendous day. May my limited awareness be opened up to all that You would hold out for me. This day holds much promise. Grant me the patience to see it unfold in Your good time.

Amen.

Joy, Harmony, Peace, Calm

“The personal self exists as the self you present to others. This is the only way in which the personal self will continue to exist following the comple¬tion and the integration of this Course. Previously, the personal self that you presented to others represented an ego-self who you believed yourself to be. Now the ego has been separated from the personal self so that you may claim your personal self again and present to others a true representation of who you are.” (ACOL, T3:1.1)

A persona—but a true persona—is what the personal self will be from now on. Previously, we thought that our “self” was joined with the ego, and so it was. We thought this was a real self, but we were much mistaken. Now our personal self is a representation of the inner Christ-Self Who we are just coming to know. This personal self, or “little” self, as a persona, is not the whole truth of who we are, for the Christ-Self rules in truth. But our brothers and sisters, many of them, could not accept nor understand a Christ-Self, and so they see the personal self, a self that they imagine is much as it was previously. But they are wrong.

The personal self is now following the art of thought, miracle-mindedness, miracle-readiness, and as such our experiences are varying tremendously. We learned in A Course in Miracles that projection makes perception, and this is still true. But the projection is of a different personal self, a personal self no longer bound to the ego, and so our perception is miraculously changed. And life events will be changed as well, for what is within, projected outward, becomes quite different when the Christ-Self, within, is doing the projecting.

We are in reality now, not illusion, though we may or may not believe that the world we see is real. Our true reality may be what we think of as intangible—peace, joy, harmony, calm. The physical world does decay, which says that it is not permanent, and perhaps therefore not real. But genuine students of spiritualty from A Course of Love differ in their concepts of what true reality means. And there ought not to be a litmus test for the genuine among readers of ACOL.

Spend a while contemplating what the personal self without the ego will really mean. It is a whole new ball game. The blessings are great, and for this joy, we give up nothing—for the ego is nothing in a form that seems true. The ego is illusion, and therefore changes nothing in essence. We are well rid of a laborious and deadening illusion that pricked our conscience needlessly. We never did any harm in truth, only in illusion, and illusory deeds are ripe for forgiveness.

Prayer

I would choose to be certain that my little or personal self today will exhibit calming emotions—peace, joy, harmony. It is still possible to let excitement, and therefore conflict, come into my world. But too much excitement is not good for me; it heralds a pattern of the ego, even if the ego is gone. I would not encounter any patterns of the ego today; help me with this.

I know when I need to get quiet and turn to You. And that is now. Getting news that is exciting and supportive of me does not necessarily mean that a given way is right. You know my limitations. Help me to retain my quietude today.

Amen.

Union of the Human & the Divine

“My resurrection brought about the Word made flesh in each of you. You who have come after me are not as I was but as I Am. Does this not make sense, even in your human terms of evolution? You are the resurrected and the life.

“How does this relate to your thinking? You have been reborn as god-man, as God and man united. The resurrection is the cause and effect of the union of the human and divine. This is accomplished. This is in effect the way in which the man Jesus became the Christ. This is in effect the way.” (ACOL, T1:8.5 – 8.6)

Jesus says some startling things in this passage. If we allow our ego to rise again, we will be in for a fall, for Jesus says things that the ego would really like to latch upon. Don’t let it! This offering from Jesus is for the time after the resurrection, a resurrection that we now all share with him. The “god-man” of which is said later on to be the “elevated Self of form,” but at this point “god-man” may be easier to understand, though not easier to comprehend. We are both human and divine, as was Jesus. And when we have received full salvation, we will know what this means. But we can try to comprehend now: The Self is the part of us who is God, dwelling deep within. And we have previously been oblivious to this Self, preferring instead to dwell with a little, personal self, a self with a little “s.” Now we can raise our sights quite a bit, and know that God, as the Divine, has now taken hold of our personality and is raising it up to new heights, heights to which the ego could not climb.

Our god-man aspects, the union of the human and the divine, call for great acceptance of all of us. If we think that we still have faults, we can, in a manner of speaking, wish those faults away, and they will be gone. Jesus actually makes this promise in A Course of Love, though he uses different words, and what I have said is an interpretation. If we think that we attack too readily, we can just ask that this aspect of who we are might drop away—and it will. The solution, as A Course in Miracles says, is always with the problem. And, as A Course of Love says, we have no needs, for needs are resolved immediately. This cleansing of the personality is what the union of the human and the divine, with a Self released to outer play, can do for us. We have nothing to fear, no reason to judge. We are alright just as we are. God loves us just as we are, warts and all.

We ought to make determinations to clean up our act, and the Self will do this consistently, when we get still and simply ask. This is God enjoying His godliness, and being glad that his creations (us) have finally realized how to live a good life, an abundant life.

Our resurrected life can begin today. Jesus has said that he has nothing that we cannot have, that we are, in effect, all in this together.

Let’s ask today to live as who we are, just as ourselves. But realize that change for the better is always possible, once we have accepted ourselves first. We will never get anywhere good by lamenting what we are, the personalities that we have. We may have made many mistakes, but these are all correctable, and soon. We can live above the fray, in a quiet and calm way that gives us the best of heaven on earth.

Prayer

Jesus promises many exciting changes for us in the passage for today. And I need to be certain that I realize that You are behind his words, that You won’t fail to give me guidance to keep the ego at bay. These promises are real, and I accept them at face value. I wish for acceptance of myself, for changes that needs to be made in myself, and for the will to live peaceably even as change occurs.

Be with me today and always. Thank You for the promises that Jesus has made to all of us in A Course of Love.

Amen.

The Resurrected Christ in All of Us

“As I no longer suffer the separation, you need no longer suffer the sepa¬ration. Even though the resurrection returned not life to the form I once occupied, it returned me to you in the form of the resurrected Christ who exists in all of you, bringing resurrection even unto your forms. I became
the Word incarnate upon my resurrection rather than upon my birth.” (ACOL, T1:8.5)

This passage is a tantalizing glimpse at what the resurrection some 2,000 years ago actually meant, what actually happened. This passage says that the resurrection “returned not life to the form I once occupied,” and so this would seem to say that Jesus, in his appearances after death, was occupying an ethereal body. This does fall in line with part of the New Testament, which has Jesus appearing suddenly within closed doors. But he was the resurrected Christ, and he makes plain that, though he was first, his accomplishment was for all of us, “the resurrected Christ who exists in all of you.”

This resurrection for all of us will involve an elevated Self of form, as we learn in the third book of A Course of Love, the Dialogues. He does not say that this form is real, and certainly in A Course in Miracles, Jesus championed a non-dualistic view of the world, saying that it (the world) does not exist! There are some different interpretations in the ACOL community about what the elevated Self of form really means, whether or not it is real. But it is not wise for us to demand that everyone agree on everything. Theological concepts are slippery, and our finite minds cannot comprehend ultimate reality except when we are in mystical states of mind and heart. Theology also divides us as a community, and we certainly don’t want that.

The resurrection is a very mystical concept in A Course of Love. Jesus says elsewhere that he changed the world for all time with his resurrection, and that he changed the world for us. He also says that there is nothing that he achieved that we cannot also achieve. We are one with him, one with everyone, one with God. Thus there is no reason for division to reign among us.

May we occupy resurrected bodies today. This is where we are really headed, and there is no reason that, in this time of Christ, we cannot follow Jesus’s new teaching and assume that he means it when he says that his resurrection was meant for all. Elsewhere he says that it takes time for a truth to be realized, and he indicates that it may even take more than 2,000 years for the real truth to be understood. If so, we are in a fortunate position today, for we have the new revelations of A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love. We can see and understand what was veiled before, what was only hinted at, and not understood very well—if at all.

Prayer

Be with me today, to give me a good day. I ask this so often that I feel like a broken record. But You do answer, for when I have prayed, first thing in the morning, the events of my day do smooth out. Thank You for that.

Help me to come to understand what resurrection is all about. It is a hard concept, this matter of resurrection. And we all resurrect with Jesus, in forms that have been elevated to a new comprehension of life and what it is about.

Be with me today. Be with all of us today. Your Presence turns any day into the good.

Amen.

A New Era Dawns

“Yes, I have said that contrast is a favored teaching device of the Holy Spirit. But I have not yet said that the time of the Holy Spirit is ending even though I have stated that the time of the second coming of Christ is here. I have said that the time of parables has ended and asked you not to look to those historical figures that taught in such a way as your examples any longer. I have said a new way of learning is needed and is here. To continue to rely on the ways of old, no matter how effective they were and no matter how much they spoke the truth will be to not learn the new.” (ACOL, T1:7.4)

The new way of learning is the art of thought, which is another name for miracle-mindedness, for prayer, and for miracles themselves. Jesus even seems to be discounting his own work in the New Testament, saying that we are not to look for historical figures who taught in parables. If this is true, and it seems to be from this passage, we are to see Jesus in a new way now. His time has finally come, the time of Christ. And we are all sharing it with him. Christ is not a concept that is limited to Jesus, though he was the first. He shares with all of us, for we all have a Self Who is part of God, a Christ Self deep within. And we are finally letting this Christ Self out to play, for Jesus does not preach a laborious and overly serious way of life. In fact, at one point in A Course of Love, he tells us that the seriousness with which we have approached life has been of the ego. True life, lived in concert with the Christ Self, is lighthearted and joyous, a true change of direction from what we have known for eons.

The new way is to be learned through observation of the world around us, not learned wisdom. And, then, even this is replaced with an “in-forming” from that world of all that we need to know. These ideas, from the third book, the Dialogues, are only hinted at in this first Treatise, but the groundwork is being laid. We are going to be asked to create the new, to create a new world, and it will be said that nothing is more important.

Here, now, we are not learning through contrast any longer. We are learning through the miracle readiness in which we are suspended. We are learning from miracles that fall across our path. And these surprises, which cannot be anticipated, are joyous in the extreme. We are finally learning without any pain or struggle. We are striving for new concepts, opening our minds and hearts to the Jesus of today who channeled A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love.

If this is the time of Christ, does this mean an actual physical embodiment for Jesus? Jesus does not ever address this question in A Course in Miracles or A Course of Love. He does indicate in ACOL that we will embody elevated Selves of form, and these Selves will be the one Self Whom we all share, the Christ Who is universal. The question is tantalizing, of course: Will Jesus himself return to earth? But he doesn’t tell us in either ACIM or ACOL. He stresses that we are all part of the one Christ Self, and he now does say that our time has come with the second coming of Christ.

Prayer

May I reach a new understanding of how to live well today, in this time of Christ that is dawning. It is tantalizing to wonder about all that I don’t know, but in the final analysis there is very little that is needed to live well. If I reach out with love, and I avoid fearful thoughts and actions, and avoid judging thoughts and actions, then A Course of Love would say that I am on the right track. If I rest easy, in inner calm and quiet, I will be emptied of all that fear possessed previously. And if I make no decisions for other people, I will have no reason to judge their reactions and their decisions. This sounds so easy to me. Can it really be hard when You are there with me?

Amen.

Return of Heaven

“What happens when this oneness is accomplished is that divine memories arise to replace perception. This is miracle-mindedness. The accomplishment of this state of being is the reason for which you are here. It is your return to your Self. It heralds the return of heaven through the second coming of Christ, the energy that will bridge the two worlds.” (ACOL, T1:6.9)

This passage compresses a number of ideas in just a few words, words that cry out for deeper understanding. We are seeking oneness with God, and we reach that oneness when we turn inward to the Self, for the Self is part of God. When we have released this Self, we are flooded with memories that Jesus calls “divine,” and we are, finally and forever, released to miracle-mindedness. This is when we practice prayer that is unwavering and a constant thing in our lives; this is when we practice the art of thought, thought that embraces miracles just all the time, even in our very daily life.

We are on earth for a purpose, and it is the return of our being to the Self, the end of perception as the ego has taught it to us, and the coming of miracles that give us a new way to live. Jesus tells us in A Course of Love that we are now in the age of Christ, and this age will bridge heaven and earth. We are certainly, therefore, here at a wondrous time. A time that the ages have longed to see. We will not fully appreciate our position now in this world until we have reached union with the Christ Self Who resides within each of us. This is the Christ-consciousness, the Awakening, that we all long to see, and see right away.

We must at first be satisfied with glimpses of the Awakening. We will know a peace that passeth understanding, we will sense love in a deeper way than we can remember previously, and we will feel a harmony with others that has often been missing heretofore. These glimpses, if all goes according to the usual way, will lengthen, so that our thought processes slow down as we experience peace and not drama. We are on the verge now, and nothing could be more fulfilling. The ultimate bestowal of Christ-consciousness comes, however, when the ego has finally been vanquished, when fear has gone away, when judgment does not mar our days. Then and only then does God, metaphorically, each down and lift us up to the Christ-consciousness that has been His Will all along.

Let us pray for union with the Self today. Let us realize that we are praying in God’s Will. He will act as soon as we are ready, and we can remove the barriers to this abundant life by paying attention to what transpires for us. We can choose to drop fear by praying it away, we can choose to drop judgment by loving it away. The possibilities are endless, once we have touched miracle-mindedness ever so slightly.

God’s way will heal us. Let us ask for that today.

Dear Father/Mother,

I ask for a good day of no fear and no judgment, as well as no attack, no anger, and no senseless planning to protect myself in the future. These are the prerequisites to Christ-consciousness, or Awakening, as outlined in both A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love. I know the truth; help me to live it.

Thank You.

Amen.

It Is Time for Our Christ Self to Come into Its Own

“Now that we have more prop¬erly identified the miracle, you must see that your Self is what is in need of identification and acknowledgment. This identification and acknowl¬edgment was the stated goal of A Course of Love. It does not negate your existence as a human being nor does it deny your existence as being a gift of the Creator.” (ACOL, T1:4.4)

The Self is the inner Christ Self, the part that is of God. It is the part with which we have been out of touch, separated from, during the eons that the ego ruled. The Christ Self is what learns, what is in need of learning. While this may seem strange to our ears, it is nevertheless what Jesus affirms in A Course of Love. The Christ Self will come into evidence when our mind and heart has joined in wholeheartedness. We will be in union with the Self when wholeheartedness reigns. The fact that the Christ Self is coming into its own does not negate our human attributes in favor of the divine; it is a merger of the two. The art of thought, the miracle-mindedness that we will now utilize, will make clear to us that our Self is a creation of God, a differentiation of Him into parts, of whom each of us is one part.

As a creation of God, our very being is a gift from Him. This attitude will invite miracles in our life, for we will be responding with our whole being, human and divine, the Self with whom we are newly united. Miracles will become a way of life; indeed, everything will be a miracle. If it appears that we are living in heaven itself, then we would be deducing correctly. Miracles constantly smooth the way in heaven, and heaven on earth is what we are moving toward. Ever closer to heaven on earth, we accept the new learning that our Christ Self will reach through observation of ourselves, others, and the physical world. And then we will be in-formed by this observation. As you can perhaps intuit, we are leaving behind the necessity to refer to learned wisdom of the past. The past has helped us, but its viability in our new state of mind and heart, wholeheartedness, is limited.

The art of thought will free us to move away from egoic interpretation and allow us to move into a response to God and our brothers and sisters, not to mention ourselves. Response is what we are after now; analysis and interpretation won’t get us where we want to go. Remember the example of watching a sunset unfold; this simple everyday experience asks for a response from us. There is no need to do any analysis or interpretation. Analysis or interpretation would mislead rather than help. The glory of the sunset would be lost when our mind, still influenced by the ego, invited an analytical interpretation.

What does wholeheartedness really mean? It means that our heart will do the leading, and in that leading, the mind has acquiesced. The mind is no longer shadowed by the ego; it has been freed by the heart as the center of our being. This center will lead us rightly, and with the mind in union, we will have the innate capability to see a new world. Our perception will have been altered into knowledge, as A Course in Miracles said. Our new knowledge will show us a cleansed world, a world that we will love and that will love us in return. The way home is not hard or long; it just does patience not to run ahead before our heart has spoken the words that we need to hear. Christ-consciousness will follow, and then we will truly understand, for the first time, what union of mind and heart, and union with the Self, really mean.

Dear Father/Mother,

I would ask for good motivation and energy to listen to my heart today. I would shake off any lassitude and take steps in Your world to do the good on which you send me. Help me to listen well to what my Self, united with You, really understands. Help this guidance of the Self to be effortless and easy, a welcome blessing in a world that has heretofore been one, sometimes, of pain and suffering I am moving into a new world, and this new world, when I am who I really am, eliminates the precondition that causes suffering. I would be who I really am today, full and complete. Help me.

Amen.

The Glory that Is Ours

“Again I offer my life as the example life and reiterate the message expressed in A Course in Miracles: The true meaning of the crucifixion is that it was the last and final end to all such fears and myths. All such fears were taken to the cross with me and banished in the resurrection of the glory that is ours.” (ACOL, C:26.4)

Here Jesus addresses the crucifixion. He asserts that it was not meant as a propitiation for our sins. He asserts that the real value is to say that he has killed the suffering and pain of human life on that cross, and then he would have us look to the resurrection for the glory that is beyond it. Fear has been banished (though we may still fear sometimes and this should not be cause for being morose). Fear is understood as an archaic experience, not meant to be assimilated into our new lives, the new lives that we are creating in a new world.

Jesus did live an example life, and many have gained much from studying what we know that he said and did. Now he is guiding us once again, as he did in A Course in Miracles as well. These new revelations, in ACIM and A Course of Love, are meant to provide solace in a world on the brink of disaster. Jesus is taking us by the hand and leading us back from the abyss.

Jesus chose a very dramatic way to get his point across. He doesn’t ask us to do the same (lest we tremble with fear that he is asking for crucifixion). He has already led the way; it is now up to us to assimilate that way into our daily lives.

The crucifixion served as a powerful symbol of killing violence with gentleness. Now Jesus would have us look to his resurrection, a resurrection in which he emerged in a new form (he says this in ACOL). The resurrection heals because it is so positive. And with our propensity for pain and suffering, we need a harbinger of better days. It is time that we understood this meaning of the resurrection for the glory that it is. Eternity is ours; time is only temporary, and an illusion as well.

Turn to our inner voice to see what healing message the crucifixion and the resurrection might mean in this day and time. The message is the same, but the way that we will interpret will likely differ. We are looking to new revelations to show us the way.

Dear Father/Mother,

So many of us are repelled by the crucifixion, and perhaps it is right that we are. We don’t know what to think of the resurrection, and Jesus offers only clues in A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love. Whatever are we to think?

I ask You to guide my intuition to a response. I would not try to make definitive answers that Jesus leaves alone in ACIM and ACOL. I would instead ask that my inner knowing step to the forefront, and that I see in the resurrected Christ a model for myself. This is not ego, but the strictest humility.

Amen.

Join in the Dance

“The embrace has returned you to attunement with the heartbeat, the music of the dance. You have not known what you do or what to do only because of fear, only because you have been out of accord with the one heartbeat. The world, the universe, is your partner—and only now do you hear the music that brings grace to all your movements, all your actions, all your expressions of love. While this may seem to be metaphorical language it is not. Listen and you will hear. Hear, and you cannot help but rejoice in the dance.” (ACOL, C:20.34)

This is another beautiful quotation, rendered poetically, just for each of us. The embrace harkens back to Jesus’s embrace of each of us, an embrace that becomes mutual, in which we are encouraged to share with him our deepest longings as well as our bitter disappointments, our sadness and our tiredness from living in this world.

But the quotation for today is very upbeat, inviting us to join in the “dance” of life, the dance that will increase our joy and give us a warm heart to share with all whom we encounter. Jesus tells us that he is not speaking metaphorically, that is, using a word in place of another word. He is speaking literally, believing that if we listen, we will hear the music that will encourage us to dance.

Our heartbeat is evidence that our heart is the center of the self, a tenet of ACOL. We have lived so much of our lives in fear, hesitant to act, hesitant not to act, being unsure of what we do and say. This can all come to an end as we welcome the guidance of our Self whom we are welcoming out from the depths of our being. This Self is shared with all, for we are one Self. This is the Self who leads us rightly when we have begun to catch glimpses of Christ-consciousness. This Self-guidance is the new way, the way beyond the Holy Spirit, Who was of the past era. In this time of Christ, great things are abroad for us. Are we ready?

Reaching enlightenment is partially a decision on our part. We eliminate the impediments to its coming. God Himself makes the final decision about our readiness, but we know that to ask for Christ-consciousness is to ask in His will. And the Self will guide, bit by bit, point by point, to eliminating the blocks that have hindered our growth into a new and improved version of ourselves. This is the way that we walk today. And tomorrow.

Ask for help. Don’t assume that reading ACOL is enough. Look for inner guidance to remove the particular blocks that have kept us from a new and bright future.

Prayer

Dear Father/Mother,

It is the end of a long and busy day, a day in which I knew some anxiety at one point. This always makes me feel as if I have failed. Is this what You would say to me?

I think not. Anxiety is a pattern of the past, and these old patterns will dog our steps for a little longer. But they have lost their punching power, and each time that we say, “No, I won’t listen to this pattern,” we are healed ever so slightly.

Be with me tomorrow as I seek to avoid any evidence of a pattern of anxiety, even for a moment. Thank You, in advance, for the soothing quality of Your patience with me.

Amen.

Follow Guidance of the Inner Christ Self

“A Course in Miracles asks you to “receive instead of plan,” and yet few of you understand the meaning of this simple instruction or what it says to you of the unknown.

“What it says is that the unknown is benevolent. What it says is that what you cannot anticipate can be anticipated for you. What it says is that you could be receiving constant help if you would but let it come. What it says is that you are not alone.” (ACOL, C:17.7 – 17.8)

A Course in Miracles counsels against planning for the unknown future, usually. Jesus says in ACIM that we will be guided to make plans, if plans are necessary, and otherwise we need not concern ourselves with leaving the present to forge ahead to the future. This guidance is seen to be the guidance of the Holy Spirit. But now we are said to be living in the time of Christ, with the era of the Holy Spirit having been superseded. So our inner Christ Self will do the guiding. This is how we get constant help, when we let it come. This is how future happenings can be anticipated for us. This is how we know that we are never alone. The Christ Self, from deep within us, a Self joined with God, is now available for us.

This is very good news. To have a wiser being within us who knows better than we do what the future ought to hold for us. To have constant guidance without having even to be aware that this guidance is flowing into our lives, for it is so innately a part of us that the guidance flows smoothly, without any interference. Here we are receiving rather than planning. But our lives are functioning better than they ever have before.

Let the Christ Self come out from the depths. Listen to the whispers of guidance that come. Know that with such help, we need never be apprehensive of what the future will hold. We are protected. We are loved.

The best that we can do is to become comfortable with the concept of the Christ Self as a beacon of light in a world of confusion. Its light will keep us safe, grant us peace, and spread harmony over our little part of the world. And this Self will do more, for we ultimately affect everyone (though we can’t see how this is possible). Our salvation is the salvation for everybody, ultimately. For we are One, and this One is what will save us and them, too.

Join with the Christ in Us to Be Healed

“Where two are joined together can be used rightly here as well as in regard to relationship. Your choice to separate from God is but a separation from your own Self, and this is truly the separation that needs to be healed to return you to God.” (ACOL, C:17.2)

We are seeking to join our heart and our mind, our personal self (the one without the ego) and our Self, and we are seeking to join with God internally. These are the “two” that are mentioned, and they mean different things in A Course of Love at different times. But since all is One, these changes in terminology do not really matter much. We are seeking to join with our Self, the inner Christ, and when this happens, we have healed the split between God and us; we have healed the separation.

We have truly separated from our true Self. And to get back, earlier we needed the Holy Spirit, for by separating from our Self, we had come to fear God, and we needed an intermediary Who would help us return. Now the era of the Holy Spirit has been superseded by the time of Christ, and we approach God directly, this time without fear.

What a lovely truth—that we can approach God directly, without fear! This may still seem foreign to our ears, for we have felt twinges of fear around the concept of God for so long that we have not known how to seek Him without any fear. Now we do know, for our reading of A Course of Love has paved the way. We seek God in silence, expecting that He will answer us, also in silence.

Prayer

Dear Father/Mother,

I would be thankful today of all that You have given me, more blessings than I can count. May I revel in gratitude, for this mellow feeling accomplishes much to lead me to be The Accomplished, as A Course of Love points out.

Help this day to go well. I expect it to go well, and while expectations are not always good, this one has a good feel about it. Help my brothers and sisters to know You. May we all know You. You are here for us in every situation in which we find ourselves, and when we join with our Self, we will know this.

Thank You for being with me, keeping me mellow. Your peace is with me now, and for that I give thanks to You.

Amen.

THE AGE OF MIRACLES BEGINS

Published by Celia Hales in Awareness magazine, current issue.

Channeled Writing Announces the Time of Christ

Many of you are familiar with A Course in Miracles, the channeled writing from Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford that purported to be from Jesus. Now there is a continuation, channeled by Mari Perron and entitled A Course of Love. The most exciting announcement of this new work is the fact that we are said to be living in the time of Christ, a new age of miracles.

What is a miracle? Surprisingly, it is not an out-of-time and out-of-space one-time-only insertion into our everyday life. It is a way of living, a new way of thought that takes for granted the primacy of miracles. We are led to understand that miracles are our inheritance, our right in this world—even this conflicted and war-torn world.

We are encouraged to believe that angels are all about us, there to smooth our way, give us a better life. We are encouraged to choose a miracle, but not a specific miracle—instead to choose a new way of life and a new way of thought. It is a way of living that looks to our heart as the guiding force for our being. The benefits are many, and they surround the concept of elevating ourselves to a new height, a non-egoic Christ-consciousness that will allow us to live in peace and harmony.

Like A Course in Miracles before it, A Course of Love encourages us to turn aside from the ego, but not by resisting it, for the ego is made strong when we resist. We just gently make a new decision, a decision to live with acceptance of what life brings. This does not mean that we countenance the violence that is all around us. But we must first change ourselves if we are to have a meaningful impact on our world. And, of course, we want above all to live harmonious lives that will make a difference in the larger world.

To have a chance at Christ-consciousness, we must drop fear and judgment from our repertoire of emotions. Fear is unnatural; likewise, judgment. God’s world requires that we fall in line with what is natural, what has been intended for our living all along. We just got sidetracked into a separation from God that jumbled up our lives.

Now we are bidden to come home. And the return home will be a miracle to end all miracles. A glorious homecoming awaits us all. We will live in this physical world with a Self (capital “S”) that is shared with all, a Self that has been elevated to experience the very best that life has to offer. We do not have to wait for the afterlife to experience this blessing; indeed, we are encouraged not to wait any longer at all, but to welcome the miracle that will set our place in this world as people who know the truth. Our miracle-readiness will do this for us. And then we will go out and perform miracles, as guided to do, by the inner Self.

Miracles are our birthright. We need to stop our struggle, stop our ceaseless seeking, and come home to God through relaxing into His good care.

The Christ Spirit Dwells in Us

“I am here to teach you once again because I was the example life. Do you believe that when I walked the earth I was a body, or do you believe that I was the Son of God before I was born into human form, during the time I existed in human form, and after I rose again? This is rightly called the mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. What is missing from this recitation? Christ was born. Nowhere in the mystery of faith is it stated that Christ became a body.” (ACOL, C:10.15)

And we don’t become bodies either, except in illusion. And our illusory bodies get sick, fail us, march us to death. Is this really what we want to focus upon?

I think not. Just as Jesus is Christ, he has also told us that the Christ spirit dwells within all of us. And he led the way in what he calls in the “example life.” We can embody his way also. And we don’t have to wait to do so. We can embody Jesus’s way today, not by being example lives, but by following his example.

The way is clear. We don’t need to ponder long, for our response to his call creates a response in kind immediately. When we are truly ready to embody the Christ spirit, we will know Awakening, Christ-consciousness. Of course, we don’t know the day nor the hour, but once begun, the end of this journey is certain. And with the certainty comes a fearlessness that we have heretofore known only in fantasy. But it is not a fantasy any longer. We WILL reach enlightenment; it is just a matter of when.

We need to give up our fear and our judgment to reach enlightenment. If this seems impossible, please know that others who inhabit this globe with us now have done so. It is a transformation that can never be taught, and therefore never “learned” in any substantive sense. But our way becomes clearer when we grant to Jesus the willingness to walk in his way. We fear less, we judge less—and soon the great blessing descends upon us.

Pray today that we will not have long to wait.

Note: For those of you who love A Course of Love, I offer a link to Mari Perron’s blog. Mari was the scribe of ACOL, and posts each week, usually on Sunday.

Sitting as the Christ Self in a Holy Instant

“This moment without awareness of the body was beautifully described in A Course in Miracles as the Holy Instant. You may not think observation of your body is a good way to achieve this, but as you observe you learn to hold yourself apart from what you see. A reminder is needed here, however, a reminder to not observe with your mind, but with your heart.” (ACOL, C:8.19)

In The Way of Mastery, another work which many believe was channeled by Jesus, we hear that we are to sit for five minutes a day imagining ourselves as a “Christed” being. We are, obviously, sitting in our bodies when we do this. And the similarities to today’s passage from A Course of Love are striking.

When we observe the body in a holy instant, we are not thinking as an egoic being. We have left the ego behind at such times. We are thinking as the inner Christ Self, the One joined to God in the center of our being. And this “center of our being” is often called in ACOL the heart. ACOL makes much of the heart, because in so doing Jesus has by-passed the confused mind, the mind that has been entrapped by the ego for eons. Now we are free of a burden that has hampered our rise to God Himself. That burden is the ego, and as we turn aside from it, we are making a new beginning.

In A Course in Miracles, much was made of the holy instant. It was a moment free of time as well as free of the body, for we were caught in the reality of a heaven on earth—if only for that moment of the holy instant. Now we are encouraged, in The Way of Mastery, to sit with our bodies in observation, and in so doing, we see our bodies as apart from us. We don’t see the physical as the inevitable thing that is going to drag us downward. We observe our bodies, and then we let go—into a higher elevation, the one prompted by our heart.

Let the musings of our heart direct us today. Let go of anything and everything that would hinder the approach of a holy instant, a holy instant spent apart from the body because we are simply observing its illusion. The physical is, after all, an illusion, though it seems very real to us. And when we see the physical as an illusion, we don’t take it very seriously. We live, for the moment, sitting as a Christed being.

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.