Our Love Is Not in Vain

“Think not that these are senseless questions, made to bring love and pain together and there to leave you unaided and unhelped, for pain and love kept together in this way makes no sense, and yet makes the greatest sense of all. These questions merely prove love’s value. What else do you value more?” (ACOL, C:3.21)

Senseless questions are not real questions, and they don’t accomplish anything in this world. But Jesus asks questions full of sense, questions asking where we are going from where we have been, questions that ask us to take another look at true reality. And when we do take another look at true reality, what do we find but a world enveloped in God’s love?

We don’t value anything above love, though we may, in egoic clutches, reach for those things that will hurt us. True love never hurts. Only egoic special love does that. True love is abundantly kind, above all else.

We all remember the drama of special relationships that we thought were true love. My, how we remember that! But, if we are lucky, that special relationship will morph into a holy relationship, and our hurt will subside. We will know that our beloved is after the same thing that we are—true love, which knows only peace. And kindness. The Dalai Lama once said that kindness was his religion. And surely we can understand what he is trying to say. A kind demeanor for the world is sure to bring more kindness in its wake. And we will know, for a sure thing, that our love has not been in vain.

Prayer Is a Way of Asking for Something. It Is the Medium of Miracles.

“Prayer is a way of asking for something. It is the medium of miracles. But the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven have everything. (T45)”

Affirmation: “the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness”

Reflections:

1 – A Way of Asking

Prayer is not discussed a great deal in ACIM, and this passage hints at why. A Course in Miracles recommends forgiveness of ourselves and our brother as the only basis for a good life. If we forgive, we “have everything.” This passage indicates that prayer is a “way” of asking, but it does not mean that asking is the whole of it. We will find, when we consider Song of Prayer, that prayer is not really about asking at all. But this is for advanced seekers. In the meantime, most of us need to ask for things of the world and things of the spirit, and God, I believe, does not think less of us for so doing.

2 – What is “Everything”?

It is hard to understand what this “everything” really is, but basically it is the recognition that we are not deprived in this life except by our own choice. This is part of the theoretical construct of ACIM. It is part of the secret outlined by Rhonda Byrne (in The Secret), which elucidates the power of attraction, through our emotional and vibratory resonance with the universe. The Self that deprives us of things is following our persona’s lead, the personal self (as described in A Course of Love, though this is an interpretation not stated therein). We create our own reality. I cannot stress this enough.

3 – Jane Roberts’s Seth

Creating our own reality is a credo of Jane Roberts’s Seth, and this is the means that I first learned of this law. I have followed this law, at least subconsciously, for most of my life since–since the age of 30. And I do consider that my life has been charmed in many ways. The law of attraction works. My low points were not necessarily bad as I look back upon them. Time of crisis leads to a greater realization later on. And this has happened repeatedly.

4 – Personal Experience

I think that prayer is one of the most important aspects of our life here on earth. I pray often at night, when I am trying to sleep. I presume that God does not decry my tendency to drift back off at some point in my praying. I am driving the thought deep into my subconscious; I am seeing God as my Protector, and He comes through this way for me. What is better for a persona that is trying to let go of the ego? To lead toward Awakening? In my thinking, there is no better way to walk toward enlightenment than to have a rich and full prayer life.

5 – Norman Vincent Peale and the Dalai Lama

Norman Vincent Peale says that most people, in his experience, admit to praying about five minutes a day. This, he says, in equivalent to one-half of one percent of waking hours–not nearly enough. He counsels more and more prayer time. Likewise, none other than the Dalai Lama meditates for four hours every morning, regardless of what the rest of his busy day anticipates. Prayer and meditation are much linked, though not the same. The final lessons in the Workbook of A Course in Miracles are, to my mind, a call for meditation, for prayerful reflection–a sort of Westernized version of meditation.

6 – Not a Call for Materialism

Why would we choose to deprive ourselves of anything? Maybe we are looking for the wrong things in life. ACIM is practical, but nowhere is materialism sanctioned. We are simply asked in this passage to pray for forgiveness, and then the miracles that will transform our lives will be forthcoming. This is the prayer of faith. This is the way that our lives will be fact be transformed.

7 – Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the theme of A Course in Miracles. And when we forgive, we are living in flow, for we will sense that we are on the beam with God. Nowhere else can this blessing be found. Only in prayer can we know that we have forgiven ourselves and that we have forgiven others. And we are pardoning illusions–never let us forget that. The world that we see is illusion, and the misdeeds perpetrated against ourselves (or so we interpret) have not really accomplished anything in reality. So let us forgive freely, not out of compulsion. The way home will open up; the pathway will become clear, when forgiveness is intimately in our minds and spirits.

Prayer:

Dear Father,

May I ask forgiveness for all the ways in which I have failed. May I ask that forgiveness be in my heart for those whom I feel have hurt me. I realize that actually I cannot be hurt, but I can feel the pain of believing that I have been hurt.

May I forgive, as I have asked to be forgiven. May all that I encounter feel the results of my prayer today.

May the blessings of this day reach me. Will you assist me to walk in Your light of forgiveness?

Amen.

Christ-Consciousness

“As I awaited my death, I was given the gift of knowing what would come to be through my resurrection.  This I tried to pass on in the simplest of terms.  I tried to make it known that while I would die and resurrect into a new form, you would also, that this new form would exist within you, that you would become the Body of Christ and giving and receiving would be complete.  (Treatises of A Course of Love:  Treatise on the Art of Thought, 9.9)”

Affirmation:  “I would resurrect in a new form, the elevated Self of form.”

Reflections:

1 – A Glorious Promise

In this passage, Jesus is saying to us that nothing that he experienced is closed to us.  We do not have to die in a crucifixion, but his resurrection is our own as well.  We too will resurrect, and sooner rather than later.  The time is upon us now.  What a glorious promise this is!

2 – Perfection?

We do not have to perfect ourselves for this blessing to befall us.  Jesus, according to A Course in Miracles, will correct all mistakes that we cannot correct.  And, in A Course of Love, he tells us that if we decide that we don’t want anger anymore, it will just fall from us.  We will make the changes in our personality that we want to make.  And nowhere does he say in ACOL that we have to be perfect to “merit” Christ-consciousness.  Even the Dalai Lama admits to getting angry sometimes.

3 – Body of Christ

What does it mean to become the Body of Christ?  I think that this characterization means that we are to be one with Christ, including but not limited to the man Jesus.  Giving and receiving will be one.  As we give to others, we receive.  And when we give the gift of love, we are giving of our fullness.

4 – Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle notes that his correspondence is replete with accounts of the coming of Awakening to people in many parts of the world.  He sees himself as at an epicenter, in that he has described his Awakening in several books, and people naturally write to him when they experience something similar.  The time seems ripe now for more and more of us to experience Awakening.  This is not only in line with what Eckhart says, but also indicated by Jesus in A Course of Love.  ACIM dislodged the ego, but we need to replace it with something, and that something is the Self/Christ.  The ego-oriented personal self is dying away in many, many of us.  But we need to do our part to eliminate egoic and egotistical thinking from disturbing our minds and hearts.  We need to realize that all of us are equal in the eyes of God, and this is not a new concept.  But, perhaps, it is a concept that only now we are fully ready to accept.

5 – Small Strides Daily

So let us become the Body of Christ, making small strides each day.  When glimpses of Awakening come to us, let us retain the feeling and prolong the experience.  Eventually the glimpses will smooth into a continuity that will assure us that we are well on the way to an ultimate transition to Christ-consciousness.  Some of us see this suddenly, but most are giving a gradual learning process (from the Manual of ACIM).

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would walk slowly, as You lead, to a greater future than I have yet known.  May I live the kind of life that You wish for me.  May I love and serve You.  May I find joy in the companionship of my brothers and sisters.  And may I know salvation in its fullness.

Thank You for the steps toward Awakening that Jesus has outlined in ACIM and ACOL.  I may not be ready, but You have given me glimpses, and for this I thank You.  May I do nothing to dishonor You.  May my days be well-filled, doing the deeds that You would have me do.  May I make the choices that You would recommend.  And may I share what You teach me as best I can.

Thank You for showing me Yourself by means of the felt sense of Your presence that comes over me.  I would walk in Your way, living by Your rules, and I would have no anxiety for the morrow.

Amen.

I Would Reach the Peace God Wills for Me

ACIM Workbook Lesson 257 – for Wednesday, September 14

Affirmation:  “Let me remember what my purpose is.”

“Father, forgiveness is Your chosen means for our salvation.  Let us not forget today that we can have no will but Yours.  And thus our purpose must be Yours as well, if we would reach the peace You will for us.  (WB423)”

Reflections:

Our function on earth is salvation’s pathway of forgiveness, according to A Course in Miracles.  Though we truly do not have anything to forgive, because the negative things that happen to us happen from the ego’s dream, we need the discipline of forgiveness because we are not saintly enough to recognize, like God, never to condemn.  It is said in ACIM that God doesn’t forgive because He has never condemned.  There is no need for God to forgive us; he knows that we are innocent, and that we are exactly, still, as He created us (an ACIM tenet).

We need to forgive for our own mental health and our own sense of felt Oneness with God.  If we carry around anger and attack thoughts, our peace of mind will be naught.  There is never any need for anger and attack, but as long as we are fallible (which we will be on earth), we are very, very likely to succumb to these emotions–perhaps even after Awakening.  The Dalai Lama has admitted to being angry at times, but he said this in a lecture with a kindly demeanor.  (He also denies being awakened.)

Forgiveness, then, will give us peace.  And peace of mind is our great need, and the great need of the world.  So we forgive almost more for ourselves than for our brothers and sisters, though their receipt of our forgiveness heals the holy relationships that we are meant to sustain.  We will not walk this world long without making mistakes.  We will get angry, and we will attack, feeling “justified” in our wrath when the ego is temporarily in control.  The best way to combat our tendency to drop into these emotions may have been identified by Norman Vincent Peale.  He tells an anecdote in which a man of 40, besieged by negative emotions, asked God to change him, and believed that He had.  His simple belief that a prayer in line with God’s blessing would be honored led him to “fly into a great calm” instead of expressing his temper.  His son reported, in this anecdote, that after this great prayer, he never saw his father in an angry outburst again.  Surely a miracle, and one that we might all ask to have in our own lives.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I asked about ten days ago to eliminate attack entirely from my cluster of ego-oriented misdeeds, and I have had a placid ten days.  Perhaps I have not been tested yet.  But perhaps also I am seeing my own small miracle.  After all, I live in close proximity with my most significant relationship to a “brother,” and we have lived normally for these ten days.

I would continue my prayer that attack be eliminated for me.  I never get angry unless I am stressed, and I never attack unless I am angry.  I thank You for these understandings.  Help me not to get cocky, for surely then the start of a new record of peaceful interactions will be disrupted.  

Be with me today, as always.  I cannot keep a resolution myself.  I am not strong nor saintly enough.  But You can walk the whole pathway with me, giving me (for me) the supernatural grace to walk as You would have me walk.  And You would not countenance attack, of that I am sure.  Be with me daily as I seek to walk Your way, only Your way.

Amen.

Fear Thoughts = Destructive but Unreal

ACIM Workbook Lesson 16 – for Sunday, January 16, 2011

Affirmation:  “I have no neutral thoughts.”

Selected Passage:

“There is such a temptation to dismiss fear thoughts as unimportant, trivial and not worth bothering about that it is essential you recognize them all as equally destructive, but equally unreal.  We will practice this idea in many forms before you really understand it.  (WB26)”

Reflections:

A Course in Miracles counsels that there are only two emotions, love and fear, and that only love is real.  All other emotions are derivative from these two.  We may want to deemphasize fear, when it occurs, because we have read in ACIM that it is unreal.  But it would be imprudent to deemphasize the destructive nature that unreal fear can evoke in our minds, our holy minds.  The ego, which is a part of our belief about ourselves, feeds on fear.  And when the fear and conflict are strong, the ego is strong–the opposite of what we want.

We want the ego to wither away.  We want love to take us over.  We want to feel love for ourselves as well as our brothers and sisters.  But this boon will not happen as long as we are afraid, because fear makes us unkind.  Love makes us kind, and it would be a worthy prayer to ask for more kindness in our lives.  To “be a little kinder” is one of the primary counsels of the Dalai Lama.  Jesus certainly lived this concept while on earth.  May we do no less.

So, our fear thoughts are not real, but they are real to us, because they disturb our peace of mind.  And they make it impossible to have the felt presence of God.  So, this is why, in my opinion, the lesson for today stresses, “I have no neutral thoughts.”  Fear thoughts are to be abandoned by whatever means we find helpful.  Probably the most efficacious is communion with God, which is described in the opening pages of the Text as the most meaningful kind of prayer.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would have fear thoughts just disappear, wither away–along with the ego.  I realize that I am not saintly enough to effect this on my own, but You can effect this.  I do not want the destructiveness of fear thoughts to disrupt my life.  My life belongs to You.  You take charge, I ask.

My thoughts are not neutral.  They are either positive or negative, and only the positive will lead me Home.  May I go Home sooner rather than later.  By this request, I am asking for Awakening.

Amen.