Creation Story

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:

Habitat           

Standing there afar

my habitat held in your hand

my heart’s pure ache so palpable

the world must sense my longing

but turn from me as

from some clanging bell.

How many labyrinthine turns must I traverse?

How many sandals must I wear sole thin?

How many times pray “show the way”?

What game of hide-and-seek has been ordained

among the tall trees of my weary mind?

How many clues must I search out

to later disregard?

Am I to be not privileged to sleep

before the hearth before I die?

or sup at table?

or rock contented all way round

and there attend the fire?

to sing and laugh

and let my homing spirit feel the joy?

---

From Celia:

Creation Story

There is a myth about the creation of souls that helps me to understand why we falter and fall away from God.  This myth, first expounded by Ruth Montgomery’s Guides in the 1960s, says that in the beginning God sent out from Himself sparks of light, souls in embryo, to experience life.  Some wandered farther, away from God, and got into trouble.  Others stayed close to Him and were guided by His greater Light.

We sometimes need to learn from both good and evil, and choose the good from a sense of knowing, and in that John Milton’s great treatise Areopagetica is right.  When we choose good from experience, we truly know.  It would be wrong, though, to deliberately set out to experience evil in order to learn from it.  It is enough that we learn to avoid the choices that take us away from God. In the myth, the fear to wander from God, felt by those souls in embryo who stayed close to Him, seems to be the flip side of Love.    

There is a long tradition in Christianity that says Christ needs our hands and feet to carry out his mission in this world.  We might be lost indeed if it weren’t for the souls who cling to God and learn of Love. We do know that sometimes we learn best from others like ourselves, people with two hands and two feet, homo sapiens.

God’s Light grows dim in us when we turn a deaf ear to His pleading.  But He stands ever ready to rescue us by whatever means it takes.

Every religious tradition, in every age, says that only Love matters.  In the end, this truth is the only truth yet to discover. And it will be no secret we are healed.

Let God Have His Way with Us

“Creation waits upon your welcome by merely holding the thought within your mind, ‘All right, it’s all arising within me anyway.  I’ve tried in a million ways to avoid it and get away from it, and yet it seems to follow me wherever I go.    (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 18, Page 221)

“Creation” is another word for God. He creates, and we appreciate His creation. We must always recognize that we did not create ourselves, something we are apt to forget when we are being particularly egotistical.

God has been called the “hound” of Heaven. He patiently pursues us through millennia, but He does not force His hand upon us. He waits patiently, for He knows that we will eventually realize, as Bill and Helen of A Course in Miracles did, that there is “another way.” And we might add, a “better way.”

We need to welcome divinity into our lives. Of course, here I am speaking to the choir, in that all of you who view my blog are already open to the spiritual life.

Know that we can do much in the world by simply “being,” letting God have His way with us.

We Are in League with Jesus & Mary

“Creation had to be restored, recreated again on the basis of divine love.  The original plan had become distorted and needed to be redirected back to the light of perfect love.  This is what my life and that of Jesus accomplished once and for all, in union with you.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 5:II

We have been part of the restoration of creation on the basis of divine love.  Of course, we don’t understand how this can, particularly because we don’t feel good enough.  But the lives of Jesus and Mary accomplished this, in union with us.  Here Mary makes this clear.

This is cause for rejoicing!  We must do what we can to bring salvation to the world.  We must allow ourselves to be conduits for divine love.  We can do this, if we reaffirm our dedication.  If we realize that everybody does a little bit for God, once a person has decided to be “for God” all the way.  We need to say, often, “I am determined to go God’s way.”

And it will be done.

Remember that we are loved deeply.  We couldn’t make any difference in the world unless we were loved, are loved.  Our tranquil and kind words and deeds, prompted by this love, do count for something.

Benevolence of Creation

“Remember once again that this problem that concerns you so much, I will solve it.  That paralyzing fear has no reason to be.  What you think will happen will not.  Rather you will see for yourself the benevolence of creation.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:III

Jesus is here referring to something specific, I think, in Sebastian’s (the receiver) life.  His “paralyzing fear” was without reason.  But now, in our world, we can take solace in these words as well as imagine that Sebastian did.  “What  you think will happen will not.”  So often we get ourselves tangled up in knots with anticipation of the worst.

It is true that sometimes the worst does happen.  Yet God gives us the grace to survive it.  He gives us the grace to be sustained through the worst of it.

God will always do this.  We can count on him.  We can know that He means what He says.  Creation is benevolent, though in our turmoil we cannot always see this.

CREATING A NEW WORLD

Published recently in Miracles magazine (Jon Mundy, publisher)

by Celia Hales

“To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before.” (ACIM, COA ed., T:IX.7:6)

But the choice many of you will make—the choice to move from learning to creating—will create a new world. (ACOL, C7:9)

. . .[W]ithout intention, desire cannot become the crystal clear focus, the laser-like focus that can cut through the dross of this world so that a new creation can flow forth through you.” (WOM, Book 1)

Jesus is very eager to see a new world arise out of the chaos that we know now. In A Course of Love, he says that some of us will continue learning, out of choice, and thereby change the world. But many of us will go on to create a new world.

What could this mean, for we find the same sentiment in A Course in Miracles and The Way of Mastery (Christ-Mind Trilogy), quoted above. It can only mean that we are on the brink of something very grand. Christ-consciousness (Awakening) will emerge for many of us, and when a tipping point is reached, peace will truly reign.

Of course, this doesn’t seem possible now. But it is always darkest just before the dawn, and it is dark now. The dawn is coming, is imminent—if we do our part. If we remove the blocks to the awareness of love, seek to relinquish fear, and thereby live in freedom untainted by egoic leftovers, patterns of the ego that cry to be relinquished, things will get better. If our choices are made without fear, we will have moved into the next realm—the realm of Christ-consciousness as a tipping point, the point at which things do indeed get better around the world.

Let us pray for such an outcome today. We are thankful for many things in our personal world, our little plot of land on which we reside. But we can pray for something better for all people, and if we pray diligently and often, forces will come to our aid that we have not foreseen. We are surrounded by angels (Jesus says so), and they add their prayers to ours. Miracles abound in such a world, miracles that can and will transform this hostile and violent world into a world of peace and joy and harmony.

Do you believe it can happen? Belief is pivotal. And we can have such a belief if we trust what Jesus has said in his channeled works.

Be sure today that Jesus would not mislead us. Be ready for the new world. And then ask what each of us can do to effect that new world.

We need to thank God for the many blessings that we have, our friends, our families, our house, our neighborhood, our cities and towns. These are not little blessings, and I know, within the depths of my being, that the more gratitude we feel for present blessings, the more we open to something more.

May God be with us now for a great today and a great tomorrow.

Save a Thousand Years

A difficult concept in the Course is the idea that we made the world; God created us, but we made (not “created”) the world. The metaphysical explanation is that we are projecting an illusion, and no one doubts very strongly that she “projects” nocturnal dreams. Seen in this light, it is a small step forward to consider that we do the same in our waking hours. Only the form of the dream changes. Even granted that we accept this, though, most of us, on some level, still think that we can derive knowledge of how to act in life from this projected dream. If it is the ego’s projected dream, such a conclusion is patently false. If it is the Holy Spirit’s dream, then we have a better basis on which to learn. The Course says that following the Holy Spirit is the “way out of hell” (M-29.3:11) for us.

Most of us, however, still do spend much time under the influence of our egos. This attitude, though, ensures that we are looking at projections from within. To take the projections of the ego as truth is to make an idol, to make a god, of something we made. Is this really very different from melting down our gold and fashioning a sculpture of Baal, while our better way is being written for us on the mountaintop? If we look to our idol–this world– to tell us how to act and what to do next, we are looking to a man-made god to save us. Most of us would admit that nothing in this world has ever “saved” us for long.

When we are under the influence of the ego, we are under the influence of an insane idea. It may coalesce our personalities, but we have given away all our real power. We should not give away our power under any circumstances. It is only the power of our real minds, informed by the Holy Spirit, which can offer us any hope. This is the promise held out by A Course in Miracles. It is only one pathway, but its pathway has the power to get us out of all bad dreams. It is one way, among thousands in this world, by which we can awaken. And Jesus promises that this way will save time for us. (T-2.II.3:8) We are promised, each of us, to save a thousand years (as the world calculates time). (W-pI.97.3:2) And that represents many years for the millions of people still trapped by ego-tainted nightmares of pain.

–from Out of the Maze, by Celia.

New Day Is Dawning

In this action of joining in union and relationship is contained the key to creation of the new. It was spoken of earlier as the act of informing and being informed, as the step beyond that of observing and being observed. It is where creation of the new can begin because it is the intent of creation, rather than the intent of the observer, that is the creative force, the animator and the informer. Being joined in union and relationship allows for the channeling of creation through the one Self because the one Self is joined in union and relationship. (ACOL, D:Day19.15)

We are creating anew when we envelop ourselves in being joined with our Creator as well as joined with other people, in relationship, and in Oneness. This is when creation itself takes over. The forward thrust of what we experience powers the very experience itself. And all is well in our concepts; we are at home in God.

This being “at home in God” is another way of saying that we are experiencing heaven on earth. Now, not everything has to be perfect, in ourselves, other people, or the world, for us to experience contentment and a euphoric feeling of joy. When we let our problems drift from our minds, and we start to live in our hearts, we can the end in sight, our desired end, our “at home” in God. Clearing the mind of problems does take some practice, but this clearing is not difficult. We simply live on a higher plane, letting our difficulties rest lightly on our minds, knowing that we have a Friend Who will soothe us, comfort us, and provide solutions at the point that the problem is recognized.

Creating a new world is our new work, and every little thing that we do in a positive sense is bringing that world ever closer to us. A new day is dawning, and we are the harbingers of that new day.

Mastery

“For when the anchor is firmly in place, you will literally create whatever you so desire from perfect freedom and from perfect deliberateness. You will even transcend miracle mindedness. For miracle mindedness is still a stage of perception just short of mastery. Mastery comes when you know that you are literally and deliberately creating. There is nothing miraculous about it. You will decree a thing and it shall be so!” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 2, Page 21)

Decrees make it so in our experience. And this, we learn, is even beyond perception, for miracles are based in perception, and we are taking the first tentative steps into knowledge now. In this knowledge is mastery.

Is it not news to us that we move even beyond miracles?

We may feel a little bereft, for we have depended on asking for miracles in our daily life, perhaps, and this dependence has fostered a dependence on Jesus’s presence to us. He will still take us by the hand and comfort us; we have not lost his good will, but we have gone beyond the good will of a single entity, even Jesus himself.

We are moving into a greater reality, one in which what we decree, happens.

Do we doubt this? If our subconscious has been sufficiently cleansed, there is no mystery about it. We have transcended our old habits and ways of thought. We are, like A Course of Love says, creating a new world. The layers of subconscious muck are being cleansed, and when that cleansing happens, we are in a prime position to create only that which will be positive and good.

Be reassured that we have help in this. We are not all alone in the cosmos. We are part of the Whole Who is God, and the individualized Parts of God, entities all, are available to help us.

Comfort in Creation

“Therefore, the pathway of awakening—The Way of the Heart—must start with the decision to embrace the Truth that is true always:
“I am a creator of all that I think and see and experience. I am free always. Nothing impinges upon me, but the thoughts I have chosen to hold within. Nothing imprisons me, but my own perception of imprisonment. Nothing limits me at any level or dimension of experience, save that which I have chosen.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 2, Page 13 – 14)

This quotation elaborates on the thesis that we create our own reality (begun in this blog recently). This idea has the potential to be very, very comforting, but it also has the potential to scare us. How can we control what we think? And isn’t it thought that brings our reality to us, in the law of attraction?

We must remember that we have help, the help of the Spirit within, the Holy Spirit as a mediator between ourselves and God, or the Christ-Self, Who is merged with God deep within each of us. We are beset by both subconscious and conscious wishes, and that is why what we want does not always materialize into a belief that will draw the blessing to us. Our soul knows the whole pathway. We don’t. And we trip ourselves up with part-knowledge.

“I am the creator of all that I think and see and experience.” There is satisfaction in those words if we listen aright. We are not at the mercy of any outside force, nor of any person outside ourselves. We are in the driver’s seat. And we can create joyous moments through a contemplation of the Love that God pours out upon all of us.

We aren’t victims of anything or anybody. This alone ought to give us solace. If we are hurting, our souls know why—though we may not know why on this side of the veil of death. Yet knowing that there is an Answer we will know ultimately must give us a particular comfort.

Experience the Soul

“I speak from experience that separation is an illusion. When death occurs in your plane, in that very moment you still have the power to choose to recognize that something has changed, and to shift your attention to a different faculty that the body could never possibly contain. One in which you perceive and hear and communicate with that spark of divine light—the soul—that seems to have given up the idea of trying to keep a physical form animated. This is imperative. In fact, it is the very first step of The Way of the Heart.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Chapter 1, Page 4)

We here get a glimpse of what it is like to die. The body is given up, and our souls emerge in full light of day. The soul, “spark of divine light,” will emerge at death if it has not already. I believe that the soul, in The Way of Mastery (The Christ Mind Trilogy), is part of the all-embracing Self, and the same as our personal self, here, called the Christ-Mind, in of A Course of Love. Jesus uses different words over the years, but his meanings remain stable.

We are not actually separate from God (and never have been). He emerges from deep within all individuations of Himself, what we and our brothers and sisters really are. My comprehension is that this differentiation of “God-stuff” was necessary that God might experience. He differentiated His Self into parts, and we are part of those parts, His creation. Totality, or the All, is not experiential. “All” and “nothing” often, ultimately, are experienced in much the same way. But there is an “All,” and we are participating, as an individuated entity, in that All, Who is God. He lives through us. And our soul, when freed from the depths of our entity, knows this.

We shift energy when we die. That is all that happens. We can experience the soul here on earth, too.

And it is that which we would do today.

Why Creation Went Awry

“This is the one disjoining that your choice for separation brought about, and it is but a separation from your Self. This is the most difficult point to get across, because in it lies a contradiction, the one contradiction that has created the world you see and the life you live. Although it is impossible for something to have gone wrong in God’s creation, something has gone wrong!” (ACOL, C:12.10)

We have pondered how separation from God, even illusory separation, could have occurred. If God is perfect, we have wondered how the world we see, if created by God, could have gone awry. How could there be such suffering in a world that was perfection itself? These are all doctrines of traditional Christian theology.

A Course in Miracles and A Course in Love see the unfolding of our world differently. Something did go awry! ACIM calls this a “tiny, mad idea,” about which God’s children forgot to laugh. ACOL calls this a contradiction that couldn’t have occurred, but did. In neither are we told that God created the illusion in which we live; we are told, in contrast, that we ourselves, in separation, made the illusion in which we find ourselves.

This interpretation can free us from blaming a perfect and loving God with placing us in a world in which so much seems to go wrong. God is not present in the illusion, but he did “let go” when we were rebellious, eager to embrace a physical body and, with it, a separation from Him. We are also told, in ACOL, that a physical body did not have to mean that we would be separate from God. We did that part. And we can undo it. We can walk along the pathway, heading backwards in time, to the point at which the mistake was made to travel separately from God. And then, when God knows that we are ready, we embrace Awakening or Christ-consciousness (these are the same), and nothing is ever the same again. Everything is, contrariwise, much, much better.

We separated from Self, which is One with God, when we separated from God. And in union, announced by A Course of Love, we reunite with the Self and therefore with God. We also enjoy a new form of holy relationship with everyone, for we are not truly separate from anyone at all. All of us are One, with our Self, with God, with others who inhabit the known universe with us.

God allowed us to leave him, though we knew not what we were doing. He did endow us with free will, and in that free will we decided that illusion would show us something that true reality lacked. What the illusion did show us has been pretty bad indeed. And the vast majority of us want out. We want to reunite with God, to know Love again. On our deathbeds, we know that love is all that matters. And many of us now in active life are now realizing that love is all that matters.

Give God His due. He did not follow us into illusion, but He found us there, and He now is trying, with the help of enlightened beings, to help us find our way back to a better life indeed. Listen to the voice of guidance, which will show us the way back. Let nothing interfere with a desire to know and to love God again, full out, no reservations.

We Are a Part of God

“You think your source and your Creator are two separate things, and too seldom remember even that you are not your own creator. You have made this separation based on the idea that what created you cannot be one with you. Again this only points to your lack of recognition of what creation really is.” (ACOL, C:11.2)

Here Jesus is telling us that we are One with the Creator, with God, that we are “made” of “God-stuff.” He is saying that we are not the handiwork of a God Who stands outside His creation.

This assertion is at odds with some of what we learned in traditional Christian doctrine. God was seen to be the Prime Mover, and He was seen to have reached down and made us as His handiwork. This is seeing that He made Adam from the dust of the ground.

There are many interpretations of how God might be understood in relation to creation. Certainly seeing that He is one with creation is an assertion that removes dualism from our range of responses. We are in the realm of monism in Jesus’s assertion from the passage for today. And we feel good to know that God is not over and above us, indifferent to our sufferings.

If God is One with us, then the inner Christ Self is One with Him. And so when we turn to guidance from this Self, we are really turning to God. And no longer afraid of Him, we don’t have to imagine a Holy Spirit Who intercedes for us. We are the stuff of which God is made. We are part of Him, as this blog has said over and over.

So let us realize that when we begin our day, God is beginning it right with us. We want to give a good day to God, don’t we? And we want to give a good day to ourselves. There is no difference, except that God is, in a sense, “larger” than are we.

Contemplate the vastness of Jesus’s message for today. We are meant to create like unto the Creator, but we did not create ourselves. To believe that we did create ourselves is extreme arrogance, not something that we want for ourselves now that we are moving beyond the ego.

Listen to Jesus today. There is comfort in his words.

We Were Created Perfect

“God in His devotion to you created you devoted to everything, and gave you what you are devoted to. Otherwise you would not have been created perfect. Reality is everything, and you have everything because you are real. You cannot make the unreal because the absence of reality is fearful, and fear cannot be created. As long as you believe that fear is possible, you will not create.
Opposing orders of reality make reality meaningless, and reality is meaning.” (ACIM, T-9.I.13)

We have been given everything, each of us. And so there is never any reason for envy. Of course, we do not all have everything at any given point in time, but we do have everything in eternity. We cannot really make the unreal, which are illusions. We cannot make nothing out of nothing. We can see illusions, but we can never make them real. And in that sense we are desirous of returning to true reality, for in our heart we recognize that this is all there is. It is the true meaning of anything and everything that is actually real. Illusions, being unreal, are inferior props for experiencing an untrue reality. And this is all that we can experience until we open to God and His way to salvation.

We were created perfect, and it is only in illusion that we fell from grace. We are still perfect in our innocence—not in the illusion, but in reality. So there has really been no separation from God, for we are part of Him, and to separate in reality would be impossible. But we can not “know” God in His entirety, in a mystical sense, when we are lost in attack and anger, and all other negative emotions that spring from fear. Fear is unreal, but we don’t recognize this, and so we think that we experience it. The truth of reality is far bigger and far better than anything fear would introduce into our world. Love has a way of creating the happiness that we all crave. And in the love do we find true reality.

Tomorrow’s blog posting will take up the term, “love.”

Separation and the Ego Are Actually Impossible

“The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation never occurred. The ego cannot prevail against this because it is an explicit statement that the ego never occurred. (T-6.II.10)”

The separation occurred only in illusion, when our minds became mad from a “tiny, mad idea” about which we forgot to “laugh.” Because we are a part of God, separation is actually impossible. This is the full awareness that the quotation tries to cover.

We need to turn aside from the ego, and we can do so, particularly, when we realize that this “part of belief” about ourselves never actually occurred. The ego will not be destroyed, but will simply cease to seem to be. We will be Awake, and these vestiges of madness, insanity, will fall away.

The future looks bright with such a prognosis, doesn’t it? We simply turn aside from belief in that which could actually never be, and we return to being co-creators with God, creating in like Mind and living in the Love with which He created us. What this creation will look like, nobody can say. But it will be free of pain and suffering in the illusion that we made for ourselves. We will dwell in peace. And what more could we ask?

Mind Returns to Full Creation when Atonement Is Accepted

“Your mind does make your future, and it will turn it back to full creation at any minute if it accepts the Atonement first. It will also return to full creation the instant it has done so. Having given up its disordered thought, the proper ordering of thought becomes quite apparent. (T-5.V.8)”

This quotation is, I think, very important to the theology of A Course in Miracles, and it may be easily overlooked. We do “make” our future by projecting from within, but our better nature, once we accept Atonement, is to “create” our future in the real world, the one that isn’t all illusion. This real world comes into being as we approach Awakening.

Our minds have had disordered thought, in that our thought has really been insane. All of us are afflicted with insanity to one degree or another. The insanity starts leaving as we follow along the pathway to return home to God. But not by death. We return home to God by fulfilling the purposes for which He created us. We fulfill the function of salvation, forgiveness, happiness—for all of these are actually one.

Our minds will work right to create a new future when we have given up our insane desire to control reality (as we perceive it). We do not at first perceive true reality, but illusions. And it is these that we give up as we follow the pathway of Atonement.

The Kingdom of Heaven is You. What Else but You Did the Creator Create, and What Else but You Is His Kingdom?

1 – Understandable?

“It is hard to understand what ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you’ really means. This is because it is not understandable to the ego, which interprets it as if something outside is inside, and this does not mean anything. The word ‘within’ is unnecessary. The Kingdom of Heaven is you. What else but you did the Creator create, and what else but you is His Kingdom? (T60)”

2 – Not “Within You” – But “You”

Here Jesus clarifies a quotation from the New Testament: The Kingdom of Heaven is “within” you, but this becomes, in A Course of Miracles, that Kingdom of Heaven “is” you. This interpretation is theological, and we need to be careful about theology—not to let it divide us as students of ACIM. But, for those who are interested, I think that this means, essentially, that we are the body of Christ, or of God, that God does not stand outside His creation, but that the All is He. This differs from traditional Christianity, which sees all that is created as God’s handiwork, and sees God as standing apart from His creation. Here Jesus affirms, “What else but you did the Creator create, and what else but you is His Kingdom?”

3 – God Stuff

The “stuff” of the universe—the totality of all universe(s)—is thus seen to be God stuff. There are worlds upon worlds, much beyond what we can understand. But out of the void, the First Mover moved, knowing that He did not want to be alone. Joseph Campbell gives ancient myths that help to see this dynamic, metaphorically. The Void, that is God, felt fear upon realizing that He was alone. But then He said, “What do I have to fear? There is only Me.” Then he felt lonely, and so He decided to create from within His “body.” And from the undifferentiated Mass of His Body, He created the All that exists. And He is still creating.

4 – Prime Mover

This explanation is a very rudimentary form of explanation, something that we can hold to when we wonder about the Prime Mover, God Himself. It is not the truth, for our minds are too tiny to understand the truth, but metaphorically it answers some of our questions. The “you” in the following question is the One, the All, “What else did the Creator create?”

5 – Tiny, Mad Idea

So we move to the tiny, mad idea that we allowed to happen in our holy minds, the One that was the All, and then seemed to separate:

“You project onto the ego the decision to separate, and this conflicts with the love you feel for the ego because you made it. No love in this world is without this ambivalence, and since no ego has experienced love without ambivalence the concept is beyond its understanding. (T61)”

We thought that we would be controlled too much if we allowed God to direct us. We thought that All should not be One, that to express ourselves demanded diversity. And so the Whole fragmented. And the ego, part of our belief about ourselves—nothing more—separated. Even this was an illusion, for we cannot separate from our Essence, which is God. But we could think that we had, and in the thinking, God could experience with us what He is really like. We head ultimately to being Co-Creators with Him. But right now we are caught in “making,” not “creating.” For we make illusion, a dream.

6 – Love

Our loves are tainted. Our loves are not pure in this world. And the reason for this is the ego, which sees ourselves as not needing or wanting others. We try to be independent, but this is not the way of God’s creation, and so we fall on our faces repeatedly. Pain enters, for our will is no longer free. We are not listening to the Holy Spirit, Who chooses the best for us—the will that we would have if we knew what was best for us.

7 – True Want

“Love will enter immediately into any mind that truly wants it, but it must want it truly. This means that it wants it without ambivalence, and this kind of wanting is wholly without the ego’s ‘drive to get.’ (T61)”

We sometimes limit the love that we can receive by specifying that this love must come from a particular source. Such thinking usually signals that one is dealing with a special relationship, not a holy one. But the Course would purify our special relationships, rather than remove them from us by force. All special relationships are meant to become holy eventually.

8- Source of Love

We would do better if we did not specify the desired source of the love that we invite to come to us. Then the real world can deliver our desired love in any number of ways. Love is not always found in a special relationship, even in the beginning. The love of nature, for example, is a great healer in times of stress. The love we desire does not have to be always from another person.

9 – Love Is with Us

When we truly want love in our lives, it is there already. There are no exceptions to this rule, though the ego would often make us think so. God answers our prayer for love by sending into our lives the love that is ours for the asking. We do not have to plead or to struggle. We simply need to ask. And this is truly without the ego’s “drive to get.”

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I do want love. I want love to enter my life immediately and unconditionally. I don’t want my ego to interfere.

May I drop all desires to have something that my ego dictates. May I have, instead, the love that You have promised me.

May the theology that I posted today be acceptable to some, and may others just drop it from their minds. We are not meant to divide ourselves by theology, but we are meant to enjoy a common experience. And You have pointed out that common experience in A Course in Miracles. Thank You. For this common experience is necessary, whereas a common theology is impossible for individuals with such disparate personalities.

Amen.

No Better Way to Spend a Day

“The new means of thinking is referred to here as the ‘art’ of thought in order to call your wholehearted attention to the continual act of creation that is the relationship between creator and created.  Creation is but a dialogue to which you have not responded.  The art of thought will free you to respond.  (The Treatises of A Course of Love:  Treatise on the Art of Thought, 2.12)”

Affirmation:  “I will practice the art of thought.”

Reflections:

1 – Unlearning

We need to unlearn the way that we have been “learning.”  We have been using our ego-mind, and now we are encouraged to observe through wholeheartedness.  This is the art of thought, as Jesus describes it.  We arre unlearning the old way, and we are “learning” through observation.  We no longer use our left brain as much.  Our thought is more abstract.  And this is the very reason that reading and “learning” A Course of Love can seem frustrating.  We are still trying to learn in the old manner.

2 – Read like a Story

Let us stop this inefficiency of learning now.  Let us relax in our learning, reading as we would ready a story.  We do not need to concentrate with wrinkled brow.  There is a better way.  And the art of thought shows us what it is.

3 – Christ-Consciousness

We experience more real creation, rather than the things that we made with our ego.  Our Christ-consciousness creates in a way that the ego-mind never could (though it tried mightily).

4 – Create

Let us create today.  Let us ask for help in creating.  There is no better way to spend a day.

5 – Call to Create

We have not responded to this call to create previously.  We have chosen to be afraid instead.  Let us drop fear now, and create with the art of thought–the means of observation that will help us to learn aright.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would observe rather than allow my ego-mind to ruin what could be a good day.  I will observe the world around me, and I will ask for help in understanding what I am seeing.  I will practice the new way of learning through the “art of thought.”

Be with me as I seek to make this transformation real.  There is no better way to proceed on my walk to You.  Be with me, with Your felt Presence, as I try to convert an old way of learning to a new, more effective way.  It is time for all of us to do what we can to effect transformation in ourselves and in our world.  But You must call the shots.  We are lost without Your guiding Presence.

Amen.

You Did Not Create Something from Nothing

“You are not your own creator.  This is your salvation.  You did not create something from nothing, and what you started with is what God created and remains as God created it.  You do not have to ask yourself to stretch your belief beyond these simple statements.  (A Course of Love, 9.28)”

Affirmation:  “I am still as God created me.”

Reflections:

1 – Akin to ACIM

The passage for today from A Course of Love is absolutely consistent and reminiscent, as well, of A Course in Miracles.  We do not understand “God,” but how could we?  It is enough to know the age-old injunction that God is Love.  He created us, not we ourselves.  Science cannot explain this, though the new physics is trying (and, in some cases, seemingly coming close).

2 – We Do Not Have to Understand Metaphysics

We do not have to understand metaphysics to have a good life.  We only need to turn to God in our perplexities.  But some concepts of metaphysics may help.  We are a part of God, and, like a hologram, the part is filled with the whole; every part is filled with the Whole.  And All is One–God.  This is not pantheism, which would see individual gods in everything.  There is a mystical understanding that will come as we proceed along this pathway.  All are truly One.

3 – We Would Self-Destruct

The fact that we are not our creator is indeed our salvation, for we would self-destruct if left to our own devices.  Indeed, we often think that we have done this anyway, when our way seems lost and very dark.  But we are saved from this impasse by the fact that there is One whose divine spark within us cannot be put out.  This is our salvation, that one divine spark.  And we will come to live joyous, happy times when we acknowledge that we did not make ourselves.

4 – This World

We did make this world, though, and that is a concept from A Course in Miracles that nobody on earth can understand.  There are worlds upon worlds, and a Self that is beyond all knowing while on earth.  But we did not create ourselves.  We did make the ego, and we can just disown it and thereby walk away from it.

5 – We Are Being Helped

If the way seems long and hard, know that Jesus and his companions are helping us.  The way back, the remembering, take great patience and willingness to learn, but as A Course of Love says, if we listen to our hearts we will make greater progress.  The heart does not ask for all of the “why’s” that the mind asks.  And that is a saving grace.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I did not create myself, though ACIM does say that we did “make” the illusion that is this world.  This is theology that I do not understand, and I thank You that I do not need to understand it.  It is enough to know that I remain as You created me, even though I have fallen away from the Ideal and made mistakes.  Be with me as I seek to move closer to Your way of life, the best way that all of us can live.

Help me to reach out to others even when I am not at my best.  Reaching out helps them, I hope, and I do know that reaching out helps me.  Thank You for shining Your light on the pathway that is ahead.  And knowing that all will be well, that I am coming into the good years.  Thank You for this insight.

Amen.

In Peace Create the World Anew

“Creation becomes the new frontier, the occupation of those too young to rest, too interested in living still to welcome the peace of dying.  Those who could not change the world one iota through their constant effort, in peace create the world anew.  (A Course of Love, 6.17)”

Affirmation:  “I would create the world anew in peace today.”

Reflections:

1 – Our Vocation

What a glorious vocation this passage elucidates!  We are to create the world anew, in peace but not effort.  What we will change permanently will indeed come effortlessly.  And in peace.  Our effort could not make this change, but our peace will do so–not in the future, but here, now.

2 – Edgar Cayce

I welcome the continued chance to make a difference.  I am personally not ready for death.  According to Edgar Cayce, many of us came to earth to make a difference in the lives of those who were trapped, without hope, in physicality.  We do not, with ACIM, take a stand on reincarnation, but since all time is an illusion, we do not need to feel that reincarnation is an issue.  We certainly do have this one life to live, and we can spend all of our days, in peace, with the hope and desire that others will live better lives because we have been here with them.  This indeed is our function of salvation, and we do live this function in conjunction with happiness.  God takes care of us, in unity with Him and in relationship to others.

3 – Effortless Work

When we desire peace, we sometimes think that death would be a welcome option.  But we still have effortless work to do here on this earth.  And death is nothing; it is like walking through an open door (from Ruth Montgomery’s Guides).  So do not long for death when the world turns difficult.  Put one foot in front of the other, and walk.  We will walk through the difficulty, so long as our thought and feeling processes remain good.  For this is the world that we make.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would have a good day today, an effortless day of work that will improve the world–indeed, that will create it anew.  What a glorious promise You have made to us!  It gives a motivation for living, a goal toward which we can all look–but without the ego making of anything a challenge.  Just effortless work.  Thank You!

Be with me as I seek to smooth the way for others today, and in so doing may I also smooth the way for myself.  As I treat others, I will be treated.  To give and to receive are one.  Be with  me as I seek to live this truth today.

Amen.

The Nature of Love

ACIM Workbook Lesson 84 – for Sunday, March 25, 2012

Affirmation:  “Love created me like Itself.”

Selected Passage:

“I am in the likeness of my Creator.  Love created me like Itself.  (WB149)”

Reflections:

We are meant to be creatures of Love.  This lesson echoes biblical teaching:   made in the image and likeness of the Creator.  And we were taught, long before ACIM was given, that God is Love.  May we assume the mantle of Love today.  This does not make us equal to God, though ultimately we are meant to be co-creators with Him.  He created us; we did not create ourselves (an ACIM tenet).  We are told in ACIM that we are particularly apt to forget this distinction when we are being egotistical.

Affirmation:  “Love holds no grievances.”

Selected Passage:

“Grievances are completely alien to love.  Grievances attack love and keep its light obscure.  If I hold grievances I am attacking love, and therefore attacking my Self.  My Self thus becomes alien to me.  I am determined not to attack my Self today, so that I can remember Who I am.  (WB149)”

Reflections:

This passage is a strong motivator, almost in selfish terms (though not intended to make us selfish).  We would give up grievances so that we do not attack our Self.  We can have no peace, of course, when we are unloving to our Self.  This is reminiscent of the biblical teaching to love thy neighbor as thyself.  If one does not love one’s self, then it is impossible to love our brothers and sisters.  But this directive is in direct contradiction to the kind of love of self that the ego encourages.  We would do well to remember this.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Help me to understand this lesson.  What is Love?  Are You the Love Whom I am like?

I would believe so.  And help me to absorb this great blessing.

I would not hold grievances today.  I would know that I am perfectly safe.  Thank You for this reassurance.

Amen.