Love Will Be the Only Thing You Experience

“Rather than trying to eliminate fear, focus instead on not leaving anything out of your consciousness.  As you do this, fear will disappear without the slightest effort, and love will be the only thing you experience.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

What practical advice, advice I have never heard before!  Fear is illusion, and only love is real; this is why this advice works.  “Fear will disappear without the slightest effort. . . .”  This quotation says that we are not to struggle to reject anything.  We know that the effort to reject actually makes the thing rejected stronger.  It is like trying not to think of the elephant in the room.  We just have to turn aside gently, and here we are learning that even that action of turning away is unwarranted.

Welcome into our consciousness any feeling, any thought.  This mystical interpretation of how fear will leave us is most encouraging.  We don’t actually have to work to dismiss thoughts that we don’t want.  The thoughts, being illusion and never real in the first place, will just leave, once brought to the surface of the mind.  It is only that which is in the subconscious, undetected, that keeps us lingering in illusion, in fear.

This is good advice from Choose Only Love. 

Now we seek to put it into practice.

Return to Loving Consciousness

“You return to the Father’s house, that is, to the loving consciousness that you are, whenever anything that arises from your being is embraced in it [i.e., in our being].”  COL bk.2, 19:II

If we embrace all that arises in us, arises from our being, then we metaphorically return to the Father’s house.  We don’t need to reject any part of ourselves; resistance just makes the negativity cling to us.  If we embrace, we are enfolded by God Himself, Who teaches us that all things are either from Him, or allowed by Him.

We do have a loving consciousness, but we are often unaware of it.  Yet love is the great panacea of all that ails us.  And being conscious of love will cure the negativity that rejection of that negativity does not.

I would embrace my being today, my being as a loving consciousness.  Tell me, dear God, how to do this.  Don’t let me get lost in my own little mind, a little mind that doesn’t know which way to turn.

If I turn to You, You will guide me to embrace all parts of my being, and this action will always heal me.

God Has Not Erred in Calling Us to Life

“God has not erred in calling you to life.  He was not mistaken when from eternity He thought up the kind of life that you would have on the physical plane, the experience of human life.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 8:I)

God is here with us, living through us.  There is nothing we experience that He doesn’t experience right here with us.  We may find this hard to believe, but to believe otherwise is to doubt that we are a part of God.  He created us out of God-stuff, a form of energy and consciousness throughout the universes.

He did not make a mistake in giving us free will, though by invoking it wrongly, we have brought all manner of problems to ourselves.  He doesn’t interfere with our free will, and this is something that many of us don’t understand.  We blame God for not intervening when times are bleak.  But He realizes that free will is a greater gift that His interfering in what we have made in our world would be.

He did not err in creating us.  It was the way in which God could have companionship.  The way that He could experience the Whole whom He is.  We sometimes wonder if human life is really good for us.  What things have been better if we had never been born?

Most of us, though, don’t dwell on this nihilistic thought.  We like human life.  We are like very adventurous angels who have come here for a time, blessed by God, though we often don’t believe that what we are experiencing could, in any stretch of imagination, be considered a blessing.

Open up our minds and hearts to welcome God’s presence.  He wants our companionship, and, though we don’t always realize it, we want His.  It is in the companionship with God that we are the most blessed.  The things that we rue about life are fleeting, for God’s eternity is not our conception of time.  With every unfortunate thing, we can rightly say, “This too shall pass.”

There is always a higher reason, and it is never a punishment of us by God.  He doesn’t interfere with humankind’s free will, and therein is a great blessing, as well as, what we sometimes believe, a benign curse.  It is not a curse, even a benign one.  He has us in His hand, ready to rescue us from misery at any time.  The present is not the problem.  It is always an anticipation of the future, or a regret about the past, that tangles us up.

Go to God with our questions.  He will respond.

How to Know More

“Here is a simple exercise.  Take just a moment and within your consciousness, drop this simple pebble:

“I am not what I have perceived myself to be.  I am unlimited, pure Spirit and nothing is unavailable to me.  Therefore, in this moment, I choose to open access to other dimensions of experience so that I might call this moment to me in a different way.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 13, Page 155)

We seem to be more psychic than we know:  This is what Jesus is saying in this quotation for today.  If “nothing is unavailable to me,” then we can know those things that have been shrouded in mystery—just by asking to see with the eyes of our Spirit. 

On the other hand, if we think we can’t discern new things, we will be caught by our past.  Jesus would not have it so for us.

In The Way of Mastery, Jesus often speaks of dropping pebbles of thought into our consciousness.  These pebbles then circle outward, and the thoughts are thereby expanded.  The image is a comforting one.

Let us “open access to other dimensions of experience.”  We can’t know exactly what will come up from our subconscious when we do open up.  But what comes will heal us, be healing to us.  And if we are to have transformation, glimpses of enlightenment that lengthen to the real thing, then we are encouraged to heal all layers of our mind.

This is our way home to God.

New Consciousness Takes Hold

“The new patterns of sharing in unity and relationship and thus creating unity and relationship are only now being created by the one mind and heart that you share in unity with God. You will be the co-creator of the new pattern of consciousness that is sharing in unity and relationship, as you were once the co-creator of the pattern of consciousness that was learning.” (ACOL, T4:12.21)

“Unity and relationship” is a theme that is repeated quite often in A Course of Love. My interpretation of it is that we are all one, one with ourselves (heart and mind), and one with God, and one with our brothers and sisters. God is the All, the One, and our Christ-Self is a unity joined with Him. Yet we are in relationship, shared relationship with all that we know as one. If it weren’t for the relationship, we wouldn’t know anything, for differentiation or individuation is necessary for the All, the One, God, to know Himself. Our Christ-Self is shared with everyone, so that we are one Self.

These theological issues do not need to be fully understood for us to get the gist of them. We can know that we are united with all that exists, and yet we are differentiated into parts, in relationship with each of those parts individually. We can know something of the mystical import of those words, “unity and relationship,” by pondering their meaning in our heart. Our heart doesn’t need proof of God’s existence in the way that the mind sometimes seeks. Our heart knows in a way that the mind cannot, unless and until true reality has been taught the mind by the heart.

We are embedded in a consciousness that is somewhat new, in that we are sharing with one another, whereas as previously, we sought to know what we knew by learning from presumed authorities. Now we look within for verification of what is true and good, and when we look within, we find the guidance that we have long needed. This time, rather than the Holy Spirit, an intermediary between God and ourselves, we find guidance from our real Christ-Self, that which is merged with God, no longer afraid of Him as though he were Someone separate from us. He is not separate; our unity with Him is among the greatest of the tenets that ACOL shares with us, tenets of knowledge, always, not tenets formed from perception which may be faulty.

Share with our brothers and sisters in this Christmas season. Know the joy that can come from feeling God’s Presence deep within us. His warmth soothes the most troubled breast, for His solace is never-ending, always constant. If troubles come, know that they will pass when we create a new world. The things that happen that previously would have been considered troubles, difficulties, or problems, will seem mere trifles then. Our better future is assured. We need seek no longer. When we look within, to heart and mind joined, we know that we have found.

Prayer

Thank You for the warmth that I have sensed in my life today. I feel close to Jesus as I read his channeled words, and as I take those channeled words unto myself and make them my own credo.

Thank You for this good day. Help me to be worthy of Your love, though I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that You love me, regardless of any and all mistakes that I make. Thank You for your steadfastness. Forgive the eons that may have passed when I turned away, lost in dreams and illusions. I would come home today, I would re-surrender to You each day, and I would be the woman whom You wish me to be.

Amen.

Our New Goal: Changing Consciousness to the Eternal

“Matter or form is bound by time. Spirit is not. The House of Truth cannot be bound by time and be a House of Truth. How then can the personal self begin to realize the human experience outside of time? The answer is thus: by changing the consciousness of the personal self from a time-bound state of consciousness to an eternal state of consciousness. This change, as has been said before, is the miracle. This miracle is the goal toward which we now work.

“Realize that prior to this point, our goal was returning to your aware¬ness the truth of your identity. By changing our goal now, I am assuring you that you have become aware of the truth of your identity. The goal of this Course has been accomplished.” (ACOL, T3:12.4 – 12.5)

The passage for today is a very important turning point in A Course of Love. Jesus tells us that the initial goal of this Course has been effected. We have left the ego behind and by so doing we have formed a new identity. The blocks to the awareness of love have been removed. We are possessors of a new identity, the real Self, a Christ-Self, who will transform the little, or personal, self into something that knows its way around eternity, time-bound no longer.

We are now solidly in the place of miracles. We will recognize miracles when time loses its importance to us, and we realize that we are seeing things found only in eternity. When we live as though we are outside time and space, our vision is recharged, our eyes are cleared, we grasp the eternal. We do not leave our physical bodies behind, though. We are fast moving toward the elevated Self of form that will occupy Jesus’s words in the final book of A Course of Love, the Dialogues.

Our elevated Self of form recognizes that the body may not be real (in my interpretation), but it feels real to us, and therefore we would be unwise to try to discount and especially unwise to reject it. The things of the body occupy us quite a lot in our physical world. But it is the intangible things of the spirit that are most important, and these things transform the physical when it is elevated. This transformation effects great change in our world, either change or recreation. Some of will embody change, and some of us will simply create anew. There is room for both actions in our world. Jesus’s emphasis, though, is on creating the new world, not just in making changes within it. And when we commune with God, deep within us, we get some ideas of how to go about co-creating a new world.

We don’t have to have plans. Indeed, trying to weave plans will slow us down and even lead us wrongly. Instead, follow guidance that comes from within, the Christ-Self Itself. This Self knows in a way that our personal self has never known. And knowledge is our great need now. Commune with the depths, and see if we don’t really “know” for the first time ever.

Prayer

What a blessing this change in goal really is! To see the eternal in everyday life will be a miracle indeed. Thank You.

May I focus on those things which are eternal as I live each day of my future. Your way will succeed in ways that nothing else ever could. I am appreciative that I realize that.

Amen.

Take the First Step into Shared Consciousness

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

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

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

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

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

We Are All Part of the One Son/Daughter

1 – Christ

“The term mind is used to represent the activating agent of spirit, supplying its creative energy. . . .Spirit is the Thought of God which He created like Himself. The unified spirit is God’s one Son, or Christ. (C79)

2 – Term “Soul”

Jesus does not use the term “soul” very often at all in A Course in Miracles; he does use “spirit,” and this term refers to the animating Self, of which all of us are One. We all are Christ in our highest Self, but this takes some understanding, for we do not all manifest Christ in our daily lives. We often make grievous mistakes, and this propensity to take the wrong step does land us into trouble, even when help in the form of the Holy Spirit is so near to us. We cannot know our highest Self until we have walked far enough on the pathway home that we know that we HAVE a higher Self. We don’t know that in the beginning, and we lose the way—though help will rescue us.

3 – Spirit

“Spirit is the part that is still in contact with God through the Holy Spirit, Who abides in this part but sees the other part as well. . . .The other part of the mind is entirely illusory and makes only illusions. (C79)

4 – Baptism of the Holy Spirit

Spirit is our focus when we have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, a blessing that comes to all who ask. The illusory part of the mind is the persona that we have made with the help of the ego, the egoic mind. And this persona never wishes its maker well. We see that the ego is constantly being undone; this is necessary, by God, to ensure that our deviation from the pathway is not so severe that we can’t find our way back. So with the ego constantly being undercut, what do we have left but to choose another way, and for us the other way is A Course in Miracles.

5 – Ego

If the ego is making only illusions, we are going to be lost in illusion, and nothing that is made in that state of mind means anything. We walk a way that will not work, however long and hard we try to make it work. We are like prisoners who become accustomed to their chains (Jesus uses this metaphor in A Course in Miracles), and when the light is finally seen and we are freed, we don’t know what to make of freedom in the beginning. We are dazed by the light. But help is always near, and we will soon find that our new way is much preferred to our old.

6 – Right-Mindedness

“Right-mindedness listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ’s vision sees the real world in its place. . . .Wrong-mindedness listens to the ego and makes illusions; perceiving sin and justifying anger, and seeing guilt, disease and death as real. (C79)”

7 – Contrast

Right-mindedness and wrong-mindedness are opposites, and only the former will get us where we want to go. Only the former is blessed by God. And only the former will ease our way in this troubled and difficult world.

8 – Wrong-Mindedness

Wrong-mindedness is the state of mind in which mistakes predominate, mistakes predominating because of the ascendancy of the ego. We don’t really want to adopt a persona that is unworthy of ourselves, but we do it, even when we have invited the Holy Spirit to guide us. We fall down, we make mistakes, we don’t see our way clear to walk the charmed pathway.

9 – Light

These mistakes can all be undone by welcoming in Light. This Light is the Light of Christ, and Jesus is the spokesperson. Jesus will set us aright, if we follow A Course in Miracles with an open mind. He speaks the truth, and we are well-advised to follow carefully what he says. The beauty of the language, the depth of the thinking, the clarity of what is said—all work together to give authenticity to A Course in Miracles as a legitimate, channeled work of Jesus. Who else could say such things? Who else speaks with such authority?

10 – Worlds

“Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened. Therefore it is not the One-mindedness of the Christ Mind, Whose Will is one with God’s. (C79)”

11 – One-Mindedness

We want to head toward this One-mindedness, and that, I believe, is what happens to us when we have awakened. Then our will is truly one with God’s, and our walk is completely unencumbered.

12 – One Will

The One-mindedness is when we recognize that God’s Will and ours is the same, and, most importantly, when we acknowledge God’s Will and consistently choose His Way, as shown us by the Holy Spirit.

13 – Consciousness

“Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do increasingly. Yet the very fact that it has levels and can be trained demonstrates that it cannot reach knowledge. (C80)”

14 – Theory

These are the theoretical underpinnings of the Course. This passage indicates that achieving the real world, a world of love devoid of the ego, is a gradual process. Moreover, perception can be cleansed, and we seek to train our minds to increase our perception in order to get us out of the ego-oriented world that we see. But knowledge is of God, in revelation, and this cannot be taught. It is a gift of God, when we have removed the barriers to the presence of knowledge.

15 – Consciousness

Our consciousness is important to us, and we have learned falsely, through psychology, that a strong ego is necessary to live in this world. We do not need ego in the sense that the Course refers to the “ego.” But this word is slippery, and it is does not mean the same to all people, even psychologists. In the Course, the word “ego” is a false perception of ourselves, a false image that leads us into pain and suffering. It is not a thing that we would want, and we are bade to leave it behind.

16 – Ego Being Undone

In this world, the ego is constantly being undone. We are pricked at the point of our greatest pride, an egoistic trait. We are constantly brought low when the ego has been in ascendancy. This is no accident. It is the way of salvation for us, according to the Course.

17 – Real World

We may not realize it, but the real world is what we want while on this earth. The real world will sparkle with joy, and our eyes will light up at the thought of another day. Let us not be discouraged if we don’t achieve this boon on a constant basis. Elsewhere Jesus says that here we will not be without limitations, but that our task is to escape from them. This we will do increasingly as we study the Course and make its tenets our own.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I be increasingly conscious of the real world of joy and love. I realize that this is still a perception, and so it is not the knowledge that only You can give. I hope to walk further along the pathway, so that I am ready for the knowledge that only You can impart.

Thank you for being there for me. As I pray so often, help me to follow in Your way and by Your guidance.

Amen.

God’s Teachers Choose to Look on Dreams a While. All Choices Are Made Consciously, with Full Awareness of Their Consequences.

1 – Conscious Choice

Do we really believe the title of this posting? Do we believe that all of our choices are made consciously?

2 – Doubt

I think not. We think that the subconscious mind undoes us, more often than not. Yet Jesus asserts that we are making conscious choices. I think that this choice is made by the inner Self, which knows no unconsciousness. When we avoid guidance, we often make bad situations for ourselves, and in this avoidance, we learn that we are making a conscious choice to make our own judgments, judgments that are always wrong.

3 – Central Lesson

“The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. (M32)”

4 – Avoid Sin and Attack

We need to avoid “sin” and attack. Of course, we know this, but the flesh is weak, and we do often retaliate when faced with attack. We will then see the body as sinful, a truly lamentable self-image.

5 – Not Troubled

When we use the body rightly, we are not troubled by attack that reaches us from without. We go blithely along, untroubled by anything. Let us resolve today to so live. One does not have to be unhinged by attack or anger presented to us. We can realize that we are seeing distress that is based on error (from the ACIM Text). And we can gently turn aside, giving the poor attitudes no support from without.

6 – The Holy Body

“Use it [the body] to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. (M32)”

7 – When We Die

The body is laid by when we die. Most choose some sickness to effect a release from this world, but actually we don’t have to engage sickness to get release.

8 – Self-Preservation

Death is not a popular subject. We still cringe, wanting to live longer on this earth. Self-preservation is hard-wired into our psyches, and that is not bad.

9 – Word of God

Let us bring the Word of God to others in thought, word, and deed. Then we will see our bodies as holy, and we will not lament that we are still in this world. We will be glad of the opportunity. Thoughts of relinquishing our troubles will no longer trouble us. Our self-preservation instincts will carry us through.

10 – The Mind

“The mind makes this decision [the decision to lay the body aside], as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body’s condition. Yet the teacher of God does not make this decision alone. To do that would be to give the body another purpose from the one that keeps it holy. (M32)”

11 – Decisions

The mind makes the decisions; the body does not. We tend to forget this when we are sick. Sickness is faulty decision-making, an ACIM tenet. We think that it gets us something that we want.

12 – Sickness

But the “something” that we want is never the sickness that has laid us low.

13 – Holy Spirit

If we do not make the decision for death alone, with Whom do we make it? The Holy Spirit guides us in the final days of our lives, just as He has guided us throughout, as long as we have allowed Him to do so.

14 – God’s Voice

“God’s Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is. He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible for him. (M32)”

15 – The Ideal

More difficult passages about sickness. This is the ideal in A Course in Miracles, and not all of us can be ready for this ideal. But we can take steps in the direction of the ideal.

16 – Sickness

And when we do, our sicknesses are lessened incrementally.

17 – Oneness

“Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. God’s teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. (M32)”

18 – Illusion

What we are seeing in this world is illusion (a Course concept). The Course also calls what we see “dreams.” And we have chosen to look upon dreams, knowing on some level what will transpire for us. We may suffer, but we do not have to do so. Pain does not have to bring suffering, if our minds and hearts are in agreement with the Holy Spirit, who makes only one judgment: “God’s Son is guiltless.”

19 – External Searching

We can also be free of sickness, which is some form of external searching. The external searching may teach us something, of course, which is its purpose. But the Course would not have us learn in this way.

20 – One

We are One with our brothers and sisters. We know, on some level, what will happen in our lives. And we have chosen it–not consciously, of course, but on a deeper level. This is different from a “blame the victim” mentality, and it would be wise that we keep to ourselves this concept if voicing it would be hurtful to another. Not everyone is ready to see that choices made to experience illusion are not ultimately hurtful, however horrendous they may appear in our insane world.

21 – Awareness of Dreaming

“Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God’s teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. (M32)”

22 – Unity

“Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God’s teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs. (M32)”

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I be aware that my dreams–my illusions–are chosen consciously. I realize that my little self is not aware of this, but my larger Self is. And I do not blame myself or others for this state of affairs; it is simply a law of this world.

Be with me today if I seem to feel pain. May I not turn this pain into suffering by my own inner turmoil. You have promised to be with me always, and I thank you for Your blessing.

Amen.

Fantasies Are a Means of Making False Associations and Attempting to Obtain Pleasure from Them

“Fantasies are a means of making false associations and attempting to obtain pleasure from them. (T15)”

Affirmation: “May I not indulge in meaningless fantasies.”

Reflections:

1 – Fantasies Are Untruths

Many of us are prone to this unreality. We are bade to leave fantasies behind, as they are untruths that do not lead to the real world. The “false associations” are just that–lies that we tell ourselves. And would we not do well to stop lying to ourselves?

2 – Personal Experience

I once spent a an unhealthy amount of time in fantasies, not just for trying to get “pleasure” in my fantasies, but because the fantasies seemed to me to be a type of dream in which I could learn something. I wanted to learn more about my life and how I fitted into my overall picture of living. I wanted to know how I fitted in with the other people whom I knew and whom I wished to know. So I let my mind rove freely in reverie, which is a kind of fantasy.

3 – Continued. . .

Of course, I derived pleasure from these reveries as well, or I would not have continued so long in them. They were particularly prevalent, as the fantasies are for many people, when in high school I discovered boys. My first boyfriend, when I was 16, was a rich source of material for fantasy. But was this healthy? And is it healthy for anybody? I think not.

4 – Fantasies from Vivid Dreams

Later on, I had vivid dreams that seemed to me to tell me something more about my life than daily life could tell. And I enlarged on these nighttime dreams by “listening” in reverie. I do not discount that some of this fantasy may have been an attempt to make contact with the knowledge of the Holy Spirit. But in this passage for today, Jesus does not recommend such meanderings in the thought process. He will later tell us that we are much too prone to “mind wandering,” and that every thought creates form at some level.

5 – Creation of Form

While we cannot understand this form creation, we can see that we are on dangerous ground. And we can pull back.

6 – This World

When we live totally in this world, it is almost inevitable that we will find ourselves lost in fantasies. These fantasies are a way of coping in a world that seems far too cruel to allow us to live easily. But there is another way, a better way. And the Course always says the same thing: Turn to the Holy Spirit for guidance. He will lead us out of an illusory present into a real world that will bring happiness.

7 – We Do Not Have to Learn through Pain

We may still know pain, though Jesus assures us that we do not have to learn through pain. In our world, though, pain as a means of learning is more common than any other way. In the pain, we turn to God. We do not have to learn this way, but if it happens to us, we would be foolish not to take the new pathway that God points to–away from the pain. Fantasies then have no meaning in a world made anew by turning to spirit for answers and finding the wholly satisfying nature of true reality.

Prayer:

Dear Father,

I have indulged in fantasies when the world seemed too cruel. Fantasies were an escape. May, instead, I welcome Your teaching that will free me from unreal concepts of the world. Then I will find joy instead of sorrow.

May I leave fantasies behind as I follow the Holy Spirit into the real world, a world of forgiveness and joy.

May my brothers and sisters in this world also see the value of leaving behind an illusory world of fantasy. Perhaps the more we leave behind fantasy, the more ready for the real world we may become.

Amen.

Overcoming Fear of the Unknown

“You shy away from thoughts of a consciousness beyond that which you are aware of because of fear.  And yet you know you cannot claim that you are aware of all that exists within the universe, or even that you fully know your own self.  What is fearful about the unknown is simply that it is unknown.  Coming to know what was previously unknown to you can remove the fear, if you will let it.  (A Course of Love, 17.3)”

Affirmation:  “May my fears of the unknown end today.”

Reflections:

1 – Our Consciousness

We do have a consciousness beyond what we have known previously, at least as far back as we can recall.  We fear the unknown, and this greater consciousness is unknown and therefore fearful to us.  But this circumstance does not have to arise, or, if it does arise, it can be addressed by communing with God.  So much is resolved when we pray.  Let us not give short shift to this necessity in us as children of God who need to communicate with Him.

2 – The Universe

There is much that we do not know about the universe and even about ourselves.  And the only reason that it is fearful is because it is unknown.  When we pray to be shown, through our heart, what about our self we do not know, we will be free of the fear.  And once we know, we are at home in God.

3 – The Self/Christ

We do not want to shy away from thoughts of our greater consciousness, for the greater consciousness, the Self/Christ, is our way home.  So we shoot ourselves in the foot when we let our egoic self loose to arouse fear.  May we avoid this reaction today and everyday.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would not fear the unknown, as I did when I was a child.  We are no longer children, and we do not have to fear the dark, the unknown.

May I reach out to You in communion today, and may I reach out to Jesus as my companion.  He has promised to come to all of us in response to one unequivocal call.  I make that call right now.  And I ask him to guide my hand as I type.

May all of us have a good day today.  May we cease to struggle so much, for life, regardless of our difficulties, is meant to be joyous.  I reach for that joy today, without pushing or straining against my day.

And may I sense Your presence all the day through.

Amen.