Love’s Embrace

“In the wisdom of love is where you will receive what you are waiting for, receive the certainty that you are seeking, the peace you are longing for, the embrace that your hearts need.  It is in love where all that is needed is given.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:II

We need that embrace!  A Course of Love has a wonderful passage in which Jesus talks to us, inviting us into his embrace.  And there he gives us certainty and peace.  Our hearts need the embrace.  We are bereft without it.

In love we find what we have been needing.  In love we both give and receive.  And our heart overflows with love that dwells deep within all of us, where God is.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in our heart.  Be patient, for the blessing will come.  Jesus has promised, and, if anything, he keeps his promises.

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.

The Embrace

“To know who you are and not to express who you are with your full power is the result of fear. To know the safety and love of the embrace is to know no cause for fear, and thus to come into your true power. True power is the power of miracles.” (ACOL, C:20.28)

Seeing that we don’t express who we really are out of fear, let us contemplate what we might do to turn this situation around.

Jesus includes in A Course of Love a sensitively-written passage in which he takes us into his arms and embraces us. The passage exudes warmth, peace, and safety.
Here is the most cogent part:

“This is a call to move now into my embrace and let yourself be comforted. Let the tears fall and the weight of your shoulders rest upon mine. Let me cradle your head against my breast as I stroke your hair and assure you that it will be all right. Realize that this is the whole world, the universe, the all of all in whose embrace you literally exist. Feel the gentleness and the love. Drink in the safety and the rest. Close your eyes and begin to see with an imagination that is beyond thought and words.” (C:20.2)

This reassuring passage is emblematic of the tone of all A Course of Love, for ACOL looks to the heart, first of all, to entice us to give up the false values of the ego, the false identity to which we have clung for so long.

In letting this memorable passage fill our minds, we are led beyond the bounds of the fear-ridden ego. We will know that we want something different from what we have had all of our lives. We know that the enticement that Jesus represents is the true value of love, the way that we will come home to ourselves.

When we come home to ourselves, we will be fully powerful for the first time, and who among us does not want a right sort of power? The egoic power that we have known previously has given us flights of joy, but evermore it has dashed our feet on stones, and prompted tears of grievous regret. We can be finished with these tantalizing fits. We can stop sensing electric joy that dissolves into abject misery. Jesus is showing us the way out when he encourages us to be who we truly are.

When we don’t fear anything, in the embrace, we are primed to come into our real power. We are primed to be who we really are, in love with the whole world. And for this miracle, we need give up nothing! Nothing at all, for what the ego has given us has truly been nothing. The ego gives but to take away. And, even the giving is time-bound to be of short duration. The “gifts” of the ego don’t satisfy very long at all. Then we are off to a new goal. And, ultimately, what we have accumulated becomes ash and dust at our feet. No joy in the “everything” at all, for the everything is not enough. “Is this all there is?” becomes a legitimate question for the vast majority of us. And that is because we are looking for love in all the wrong places.

The best place to look for love is within the miracle. Both A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love say a great deal about the power of miracles. We aren’t to decide personally what miracles ought to be done, because we would be misguided if that were our attitude. Jesus makes clear that he decides when and if a miracle is timely, because he is in charge of the Atonement. But when we ask for something, such as love and the centrality of love in our life, we can be sure that Jesus is right there with us, cheering us along. We can’t know how the miracle will happen, only that it will. We are asking in God’s will for the relinquishment of fear and the shift to love in all our dealings. Prayers such as these do not go unattended.

The power of miracles is said in A Course of Love to be the true power. Would any of us want any other power? We need and want to be reverent in our asking, supportive of whatever guidance we get. We don’t need to launch into pipe dreams that become meaningless. With the attraction of true power in our minds and hearts, we will know Love sooner rather than later. And the fear that has hampered all our doings for many years will gradually fall away.

The Embrace

Time has ended and there is nothing you must do. Being replaces identity and you say, I am. I am, and there is nothing outside of me. Nothing outside of the embrace. (ACOL, C:20.9)

The embrace is a mystical Oneness with the All, the God-in-us and in our brothers and sisters—indeed, in everything living. There is a well-known passage in A Course of Love in which Jesus embraces us to give us comfort and emotional support. He lets us cry on his shoulder, for the journey has been long and hard, and we are weary and beaten down by the dust on the trail. He soothes all of that away in his strong, embracing arms. And we embrace him in return.

This is true acceptance. We have come to accept Jesus as our guide and partner in sustaining life that will be in the newly created world, a world that will arise with our effortless work as a result of revelation from God.

Miracles Embrace the World

“I repeat: Belief of another kind can foster the creation of form of another kind. A wholehearted belief in the truth about your Self is what is required to cause this to be so. It is what is necessary now. It will change the world.

“Belief of another kind is what miracles are all about. It is what you are all about as a miracle worker. For you to change your beliefs is the miracle that we are after, the result we seek from this Course.” (ACOL, C:23.13 – 23.14)

Jesus is here introducing the concept that will be a major feature of the final book in A Course of Love, the Dialogues. He is mentioning here, without using the words, the elevated Self of form. This is the body that we occupy that is informed by the Self, our inner essence, the part of us that joins with God so that we finally know who we are.

Quite a controversy has arisen about whether or not A Course of Love is a dualistic thought system, whether God seems separate and apart from His world, whether mind and body are different, whether unity and relationship as described in A Course of Love mean that all is not One. This is an unnecessary debate, for if one looks to the heart, these questions just fall away. Is A Course of Love, and the elevated Self of form, a helpful concept as we find our way toward Christ-consciousness? As we transform the world over the next millennia?

If we look for controversy, always and forever we will find it. There is always the means to take theological concepts and consider them exclusively to the detriment of the heart’s knowledge. But is theology necessary for inclusion as we consider the heart’s knowledge? As we consider the elevated Self of form, a new creation in a new world that we are co-creating with God?

The way to surety is to turn within. There we find God waiting for us. He lives our lives with us, for we are in no way separate. That is the monism on which A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love dwell. A universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible, but necessary. These words from A Course in Miracles will put our minds and hearts at rest.

Prayer

Dear Father/Mother,

Grant us the magnanimity to embrace the whole world, those who agree with us on various matters as well as those who don’t. The world will be a better place when we hold hands. And I ask for this hand-holding today and every day.

Be with us as we seek to know Your truth, as we turn within to the truths that speak to our heart.

Thank You for always being right here with us, experiencing our joy as the reality that it truly is.

Amen.

Embracing the World with Intimacy

“When you are asked questions such as, “How was your day?” respond as much as possible without using the word I or my. Quit referring to people and things in terms of ownership, saying “my boss,” “my husband,” “my car.”

“This removal of the personal “I” is but a first step to returning you to the consciousness of unity, a first step in going beyond meaning as definition to meaning as truth. As odd and impersonal as it will seem at first, I assure you the feeling of impersonality will be replaced quickly with an intimacy with your surroundings that you never felt before.” (ACOL, C:22.21 – 22.22)

Do not all of us want more intimacy in our lives? And if this change of words can bring that to us, ought we not to try it? After all, if we believe that Jesus channeled these words, I think we ought to consider that he knew what he was talking about.

How can we understand this? Leaving out the personal “I” or “my” does seem to remove the possessiveness from our lives. And is not possessiveness one of the things that we feel most strongly about in our special relationships?

Jesus is showing us that we don’t need the specialness, as much as we think that we still do. We have lived with our egoic possessiveness of certain others for so long that we can’t imagine how it would be if our husband or wife were to love others with the same intensity. Of course, we are not talking about physical intimacy here. We are talking about a holy love that holds the other in an embrace that includes the whole world. Can we really dare leave this goal untouched?

The way back to God has to be a way we have not found yet. A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love try in a myriad of ways to address the culture in which we live, the ways in which we interact with our brothers and sisters.

This small experiment in leaving our possessive pronouns just may be a harbinger of things yet to come for us. An embrace of the whole world.

And what more could we ask?

Dear Father,

Help me not to try to “possess” those closest to me. Help me to reach out to my larger world. I trust the techniques that Jesus advises, and I ask that I remember those techniques as I go through my daily rounds.

Be with me every morning, walk with me through the afternoon, and grant me serenity from a day well lived in the evening. You are deep within me, and my Self knows this. Help me to know my Self.

Amen.

The Embrace Is the One Heartbeat

“The holy relationship in its broadened form is eternity, the eternity of the embrace. If the embrace is the source of all, the one heartbeat, then it is eternity itself. It is the face of love, its texture, taste, and feel. It is love conceptualized. It is an abstract rather than a particular concept, even while having a seeming structure that your heart can feel.” (ACOL, C:21.3)

Another comforting passage from A Course of Love. It is not hard to conceptualize the embrace of Jesus. We feel his presence, and we return the embrace. This is something tangible to which we can cling when times seem tough. Times are never actually tough, though in our world they can certainly seem to be. There is always a way given us for our delivery from misery.

What is that way? A turning inward to the Christ Self, the one we will turn to more and more as we proceed in our reading and our study of ACOL. The Christ Self is our way now, the way we feel our guidance, we way we feel our solace. The way back home is not hard; everything and everyone in this world are in league with God’s plan to return us, of our own free will, to Him. All has been planned as a learning experience, at least this early in our reading of ACOL. (Later on, we will just observe the outer and inner worlds, and then we will be “in-formed” by that outer and inner world.)

Our heart is our guide, the center of our being. And it needs no proof of God’s love for us; it knows this with an ever-present knowledge. And it is knowledge, not perception with an egoic mind, that leads us to this truth. This true reality.

We are in holy relationship with our Self, first, and then everyone else in our world. And Jesus is in our world, though we do not see him. He is right here, for us, all the time. Believe him when he says that he takes us by the hand and will led us backward in time to where we took a misstep. And then we will be Home in God.

Prayer

Dear Father/Mother,

May this day go well. May I love well, work well, and, tonight, may I sleep well. This is Your will for me, of this I am sure.

The anxieties of this day need not concern me. They are negligible. The real blessing is the fact that I know that You are always here, deep within me, while I project a world from my Self. All of us are caught in a mass hallucination, but the real world can arise in our sights when we have a heart that is in the right place. This true reality is ours.

Thank You.

Amen.

The Embrace

“This is a call to move now into my embrace and let yourself be comforted. Let the tears fall and the weight of your shoulders rest upon mine. Let me cradle your head against my breast as I stroke your hair and assure you that it will be all right. Realize that this is the whole world, the universe, the all of all in whose embrace you literally exist. Feel the gentleness and the love. Drink in the safety and the rest. Close your eyes and begin to see with an imagination that is beyond thought and words.” (ACOL, C:20.2)

This quotation is the most well-known and well-loved in all of A Course of Love. Jesus invites us to be comforted in his embrace, and later on he invites us to embrace him as well. We have walked a long and lonely path, and this walk is over. We are going to be reaching the culmination of our journey without distance when we have read through A Course of Love. The ending is as sweet as this harbinger indicates. We are loved, and we love, and Jesus is here for us.

Believing that Jesus walks this way with us requires believing that on the Other Side he can clone himself to be anywhere, anytime. This may seem to require faith, but Christian stories are replete with indications that the great healer has come and visited those in distress. And we are in distress, sometimes even without being aware of it. We need Jesus’s comfort as much as anybody, and here he indicates that we can receive that comfort. Just lean on him; he will not fail us.

Later on in A Course of Love Jesus resigns as our teacher, and indicates that he is our companion only, and, moreover, that we are not to view him as the man who lived and died 2,000 years ago. He says that he is Christ-consciousness, and that we are One, one Self, and he invites us to realize that this wholeness is healing. This sharing of Self includes everyone, everywhere.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. For now, in this first book of A Course of Love, Jesus is still our teacher. And he lets us know that however downtrodden that we feel, there is hope. This comforting hope comes when we show him the love that is deep within us. And we feel his love.

Let our imaginations wander. Imagination works wonders, sometimes, and that is what will happen as we are embraced by Jesus, and we return his embrace.

Prayer

Dear Father/Mother,

All of us need comforting, sometimes often. I feel this need today. Help me to take Jesus at his word, that he is here for me. And for everybody who calls on him. May this day blossom into a lovely day, for pearls of days string along an imaginary rope, and we are healed. May this day become an imaginary pearl.

Be with us as we seek to walk a sometimes harrowing path in this world. We can’t be perfect, and Jesus doesn’t ask this of us. But he does ask that we walk a while with him, a way that returns us to union with God and all that lives.

May this pathway be clear ahead. May my next step be in line with Your will.

Thank You.

Amen.

The Embrace, by Ivor Sowton

I once had the great good fortune to be with Mari Perron, scribe of A Course of Love (ACOL), in a small group setting. As I suppose is natural, the group had questions about the process of receiving ACOL from Jesus and what that was like.

Mari graciously took these questions in stride. But then, as more of these “safe” questions continued, Mari seemed to take charge and volunteered: “But you know a real turning point for me was the chapter entitled “The Embrace.”

The dictation of A Course of Love had seemed a huge challenge at first, but had evened out after the early chapters into much more of a sense of flow. But then gradually efforting seemed to creep back in. By then the developing ACOL was at Chapter 16 or so. After that the chapters in ACOL were increasingly difficult for her, with more sense of tension and strain, like: “I have to do this.” After all, there was by this point a lot of direct instruction from Jesus to us the readers, and certainly also to Mari as the “first receiver”! Perhaps it was becoming more and more daunting, with a sense of a very high bar having been set for our learning.

Then, incredibly, the Voice stopped! The dictation of Jesus to scribe stopped! Mari knew from her relationship with Jesus that the work now called A Course of Love was not over, not complete!

Days of great angst passed. Then weeks with silence from Jesus! Truly a dark night of the Soul! Finally the completely unexpected! Mari was gazing at a beautiful plum on a beautiful plum tree in beautiful sunlight when such a wonderful bursting open of the heart spontaneously exploded forth! The absolutely gorgeous, pivotal chapter 20, “The Embrace,” soon followed, full flow restored!

It may be that we as listeners to Mari’s experiences here have to receive her revelation (for so I believe it truly is) in a way that we can personally access and apply in our own lives. Broadly speaking, we can say that the world became holy for Mari and for us now also, to the extent we can open ourselves to that kind of Union. The Divine was dancing in the surround! The mundane had been redeemed, now clearly seen and felt to be sacred, rather than perceived and felt to be separate from us (ACIM tenets).

And the Divine arms that cradle us in “The Embrace” bring so much needed comfort and reassurance:

This is a call now to move into my embrace and let yourself be comforted. Let the tears fall and the weight of your shoulders rest upon mine. Let me cradle your head against my breast as I stroke your hair and assure you that it will be all right. Realize that this is the whole world, the universe, the all of all in whose embrace you literally exist. Feel the gentleness and the love. Drink in the safety and the rest. Close your eyes and begin to see with an imagination that is beyond thought and words. (20.2)

So if you or I am feeling alienated, alone, frightened and cut off from Grace, let us remember the Embrace and be healed. The Embrace is personal. It can help us where we think we are, as who we think we are at present. This is so necessary, don’t you think?

In my online transpersonal therapy with students of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) and ACOL, (I see the two works as a continuum), I just try to facilitate that opening of personal relationship, that acceptance of the embrace FOR THEMSELVES. That is, the opening will be very personal for them. It will happen the only way it can happen for them—tailor made, you might say. Jesus is the guide in that process. Of course there are other guides, but we who have been drawn to Jesus’ current work in the world through ACIM and ACOL can settle down into discipleship with him personally and grow as much and as fast as is right for us.

But again, the essential message of the Embrace is that it is ours NOW. It’s the open heart in wholeheartedness. Jesus states in ACOL that the heart exists where we assume ourselves to be. So if we assume we live in ego world, frightened and alone, our world will FEEL like that, icy cold and bereft of comfort. But if we find our own way to FEEL the Embrace, then we will feel omnipresent divine love.

In Chapter 9 of the ACIM Manual For Teachers Jesus also reassures us that our own personal training is always highly individualized. Just right for us. Our own path will unfold in a beautiful way for us with his help. Not too fast or too overwhelming. But at the same time we can now always remember and remind ourselves that the Embrace is there for us NOW. As Jesus says “Who could be left out of the Embrace? And who from within the Embrace could be separate and alone? (20.18)

May we all come to feel the Embrace more and more, and more and more make our home there.

Let your heart remember that you are holy and that the world is sacred. (ACOL,C 20.23, pg. 140 in the Combined Version)

Jesus’s Embrace

1 – The Well-Known Passage from ACOL

“[This treatise] will continue the view from within the embrace, an embrace and a view that is inclusive of all. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: A Treatise on the New, 1.1)”

2 – Beautiful

The passage immediately above refers to one of the most beautiful (and beautifully written) passages in the first volume of A Course of Love. The “embrace” in that first volume was an invitation from Jesus to come into his arms, and to be at peace and at rest. He recognized then that many (maybe all) of us are tired from seeking, and that the ways of this world have taken their toll on us. He would have to rest awhile in the embrace, to feel his loving presence, to know that all is well.

3 – Jesus

The embrace in ACOL is essentially an assertion that Jesus is there for us when times are tough.
A Course in Miracles is to the mind what A Course of Love is to the heart. We are bade elsewhere to live in “wholeheartedness,” a combining of the mind and heart in Jesus’s loving embrace. He never leaves us comfortless. In Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, we too see this quality in Jesus. His reassurances are comforting in the extreme.

4 – ACIM

Jesus says in A Course in Miracles that he will come to us in response to “one unequivocal call.” He says the same thing, in different words, in several places in the Text of ACIM. We are told at one point to think of us holding his hand, and encouraged to realize that this will be “no idle fantasy.”

5 – Comprehend?

Now we do not understand how we can hold Jesus’s hand, nor how we can embrace him. But he seems to be recommending that we think of his physical self in our imagination. And, as Joan of Arc said, God speaks to us in our imagination. And I do not mean “fantasies.” Our imagination, informed by the Holy Spirit, can be good and true. Fantasies, on the other hand—especially “idle fantasy”—is discouraged by Jesus in A Course in Miracles.

6 – All Are Included

Note that the passage from ACOL emphasizes that all are included in the embrace. Jesus will soon say that “all are chosen.” This is a reemphasis of the statement in A Course in Miracles, a statement that became book titles for Kenneth Wapnick, a scholar and student/teacher of A Course in Miracles. Ken wrote books entitled, All Are Chosen, and Few Choose to Listen, quoting ACIM. I think that Jesus is saying in A Course of Love that all are chosen, and not only that, but perhaps we might imagine that those of us who are reading his words in A Course of Love do “choose to listen.” May we choose to listen aright, no longer letting the ego rule our lives.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I rest awhile in the warmth of Jesus’s embrace. May I know that this embrace is always there for me, to give me comfort and solace. This world bears heavily on us, sometimes, despite our best efforts. Thank You for the words of Jesus that what he offers is the rest and safety that we all need.

May I learn today what it is like to walk a path close to Jesus, to have him walk beside me as I hold his hand. May my imagination kick into high gear as the concepts overwhelm me. This is a joyous way to walk, leaving nothing out that we need, knowing that our needs are being met by the companionship of our teacher and our leader.

Thank You for being there for us. May I never forget that prayers to You give my day a greater benefit not only to myself, but to my brothers and sisters also. May I be alert to the guidance that is there for the taking. May I listen for the unheard, but felt, whispers of the heart–of the wholeheartedness–that tell me what to say or do next.

Amen.

When Our Minds Are Still

1 – Emptiness of Mind

“Emptiness of mind will now be something that may seem to plague many of you. Where once the mind was searching, yearning, questioning, now it is likely to become still. From the stillness comes its emergence as what it is. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 25)”

2 – Seeking

This is a quotation that heralds a time of blessing. We have searched for years, always seeking. And in A Course of Love, Jesus tells us that the time of seeking is finished, over. We are OK the way that we are, because we have left behind the ego. If there are personality traits that we don’t think are good, we can turn aside from them and they will disappear. We don’t have to feel that we are unworthy. We are fine.

3 – Christ-consciousness

If our minds are still, we may wonder if we have lost something—simply because we are not seeking any longer. But this is as it should be. We have not lost anything, but we have found a very great something. We are on the verge of Christ-consciousness, the culmination of the 40 days and 40 nights with Jesus on the mountain top. We may take this journey many times with him, rereading this part of the Dialogues, but he does not intend for us to keep repeating the journey. He is trying to bring up to Christ-consciousness now. Will we assent to this? For it is God’s Will for us (and Jesus’s will a well).

4 – Meditating

If we are still, we may be meditating, almost unawares. And out of the stillness will great surprises come. We will be at home in God almost without realizing what is about. We will embody Christ-consciousness forthwith.

5 – Certainty?

What of those of us who do not have this certainty? What do we do? What do we think? What do we say?

6 – Patience

We live in patience for the mighty act of Christ-consciousness to find us. If the way seems long, the end is certain. This is a promise made to us in A Course in Miracles, when revelation would occasionally reveal the end to us, but to get there the means were needed. And these means were explained to us in ACIM. Perhaps we did not understand what replaced the ego, who we do next. And so we were stuck.

7 – Jesus

I think this dilemma is why Jesus channeled A Course of Love. So many of us keep seeking, over and over, in very many ways. But this is all so unnecessary, Jesus tells us in ACOL. Stop the seeking. Rest in my [Jesus’s] embrace.

8 – Embrace

If your mind seems empty just now, this is why. You are in Jesus’s embrace without knowing it. Now you do know. And now you can delight in what seems to be an empty mind, but which is just a still one.

9 – Perfectly Calm and Quiet

We are being perfectly calm and quiet all the time, which is what Jesus says in A Course in Miracles is the way that we will view reality when the real world comes.

10 – Thoughts

“You are not what you once were. You need not guard against an over-zealous ego-mind. Your ideas in this time may sound crazy, even to your own ears. Let them come. Your feelings may be confused in one moment, crystal clear in the next. Let them all come. Your thought will slip from the sublime to the mundane. Let them come. (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 194)”

Jesus tells us that at this point in our progress we may feel an emptiness of mind, that the mind may be still. This is probably a new experience for us, and we are not to resist it. This relaxed attitude is what tending the garden is all about. We ought to let our mind wander as it will, relaxed or uptight. This is a period of transition, but the stillness is the hallmark of the progress that we have made.

We are encouraged to be reflective, to sort and to cull. This metaphor continues the image of tending the garden. It is not yet time for the harvest. It is a time for gathering, a time of preparation–but not of waiting.
We are not to try to sort things out with the mind, which is far too small to understand the totality of what we are experiencing. Don’t ask, “What am I looking for?” Just relax and realize that we are tending our garden. More will come later.

11 – Stillness and Non-Resistance

“It is in the new pattern of stillness combined with non-resistance that the new will come. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 25)”

12 – Sorting and Culling

“Rather than a time of questions and answers, you might think of this time as a time of sorting and culling. Become used to letting what comes to you come to you without judgment. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 25)”

13 – Judging

Avoid judging, for in judging it is impossible to awaken. This one thing we must choose to turn aside. We must just stop our minds from judging when judging seems to be upon us. A Course in Miracles says that if we cease judging, we will awaken. Is not this what we want? Many of us do, many desperately. We need to keep the desperate thoughts away from our minds, because they will make a demanding spirit. And God does not kowtow to a demanding spirit.

14 – Personal Experience

When I was 12, I prayed desperately to “be saved.” I sneaked away to my bedroom, to the far side of the bed, sat on the floor, and read Scripture. I kept saying to God, “I want to be saved.” And nothing happened. At least nothing that I could perceive. It wasn’t until four years later, when I was 16, that the miracle happened. I sat on the floor of a very crowded room, ready to hear a minister talk about life after death. And I felt my heart strangely warmed, just as John Wesley (founder of Methodism) had felt years before. I knew that things would be different from then on. And they were.

15 – The Dynamic

I think that walking toward Christ-consciousness has the same dynamic. We seek and seek, and then we seek no more. And when the demanding spirit is quiet, God reaches down and warms our heart—opening us up to greater fellowship with Him in Christ-consciousness.

16 – Preparation

“This is a time of preparation, not a time of waiting. What you need to know now cannot be gathered except by your own hands. . . .I remind you not to attempt this as a task to which you apply the mind or the question of What am I looking for? You are looking for nothing. You are tending your garden. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 25)”

17 – Awakening

We are in preparation for a great Awakening. This is why we are caught in Jesus’s 40 days and 40 nights on the mountain top. Know that we are preparing together. Know that God’s Will is that we awaken. The world needs us. And we are preparing to be ready.

18 – Conclusion

That is really all that we need to know.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

This day seems to be a time of confusion for me. In the past, I wanted to clear away any confusion as soon as possible. Let me now be patient with the confusion, knowing that I am being prepared for better things, better ways of living.

May I tend my garden well today. Thank You, as always, for Your easy guidance.

Amen.

Rest

“There is no such thing as a static level in unity where creation is continuous and ongoing. You should have no desire to reach such a state and the awareness that you are in such a state can alert you, or serve as a sign, that the ego-mind and its fear-based thinking has momentarily returned. This does not, however, mean that you will never be at rest or that you will be constantly seeking to arrive. As has already been said, you have arrived and rest exists only in the state of unity. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition, 9.14)”

Affirmation: “I will remember to rest today.”

Reflections:

1 – The Wish to Rest

We often wish to rest. There is a favorite passage in A Course of Love about the “embrace” with Jesus, in which he encourages us to rest in his arms. A very personal passage, this indicates that he too knows of our weariness and seeks to assuage it. We will be able to rest when we have “arrived” and are not burdened by the ego mind. But creation is not static; there will still be things that we are called to do. The joy of doing those things will be palpable, though. We will not struggle anymore.

2 – No Struggle

Not to struggle seems to good to be true. But in the state of unity with our Self and others we are not called to struggle. We rest in God’s peace, and we still find rest as we go about any busy doing that He calls us to. These moments of peace sustain us throughout the day.

3 – Personal Experience

I find that a quick restorative is all that is needed when the day starts off wrong. Sometimes we need just to sit down and talk to God, being certain that we allow Him time to talk to us as well. Just this morning I started rushing around (always a mistake), but I stopped in time, and just sat in meditation for a few moments. That was enough to get me back on track.

4 – Ego-Mind

The ego-mind can return. We are not home free yet. And when the ego-mind returns, we struggle. Let us recall this equation, and know that when the struggle arises, we are once again caught by ego. And we would not have it so.

5 – No Seeking

What does it mean to “have arrived”? It means that we can stop seeking incessantly. We have long, most of us, been on a search for God. But He never left us, and He will show us so if we will get still enough, often enough, to listen.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I wish for peace and rest today, as every day. I long for Your comfort, Your blessing that the ego-mind will depart, and I will be at home in You. Be with me as I find this state of being.

May today be the first day of a string of pearl-like days, filled with the assurances that only You can give me. May the day be well-spent, not selfishly seeking what could only benefit me, but what will benefit others with whom I come in contact.

Amen

The Embrace II

“The embrace can now be likened to the starting point of a shared language, a language shared by mind and heart and by all people.  It is a language of images and concepts that touch the one heart and serve the one mind.  (A Course of Love, 21.6)”

Affirmation:  “May I sense the embrace of Jesus today.”

Reflections:

1 – Beautiful Passage

The passage about the embrace of Jesus with us is in my opinion the most beautiful portion of all three volumes of A Course of Love.  We are bade to lay our head on Jesus’s shoulder, and we are comforted completely.  We know no fear in the embrace, and we are at peace and perfectly tranquil.  Jesus is not exclusive to any of us, but embraces us all.  And there is nothing untoward in this embrace.  It is a chaste embrace, something that is perhaps not entirely clear upon first reading in ACOL.

2 – Jesus, Our Companion

Jesus is not our lover, but he is our companion.  And ultimately in ACOL he will cease to be our teacher, but become our equal.  This may be a welcome change for him, so long praised by the world and so long set apart.  Here he rejoins us, and we are, like him, both human and divine.  Our elevated Self of form has reached beyond the ego in the mind to the place of the heart in our exalted body.  We trust in him, and we walk a new and infinitely better path.

3 – No Fear of Jesus

Be with me as we seek to comprehend the ramifications of the embrace of Jesus.  May we not fear him at all.  And fear has been an accompaniment of the long years of egoic rule.  We were afraid of Jesus.  And now we know that we need not to have this uncertainty about him ever again.  He is our friend extraordinaire.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I rest in the embrace of Jesus, my companion, as he is the companion of all who so choose.  May I know no fear, because Jesus is with me.  May I be comforted, as Jesus intends.  The joy of the moment may surround me with a certainty that all will be well, all manner of things will be well.

Thank You.

Amen.

Is Not the Embrace Holy?

“This lesson is only as complicated as the most complex among you needs it to be .  But for some it can be simple, as simple as realizing the oneness of the embrace.  Within the embrace you can let all thought go.  Within the embrace, you can quit thinking even of holy things, holy men and women, and even divine beings, even the one God.  Is not the embrace itself holy?  Is not the sunrise and sunset?  (A Course of Love, 20.21)”

Affirmation:  “I welcome the embrace today.”

Reflections:

1 – Beautiful Passage

This passage for today is especially beautiful in writing style as well as the message.  We can realize, when we imagine that Jesus embraces us, that we are totally protected and totally safe.  We can let our worries fall away.  We can drop our concerns.  We have no problems, for the solutions are presented at the point that the problems appear (an ACIM tenet).  Such a glorious way to live!

2 – Safety in Love

If we could only sustain this realization, this perfect safety in love, we would be well along the pathway home.  May we follow the way that Jesus has so beautifully pointed out to us.  May we not get ourselves all tangled up with the fretting of this world.

3 – Embrace = All Is Forgiven

The embrace is Jesus’s way of saying that all is forgiven.  Despite any regrets that we have, we do not need to hold them against ourselves, thinking we are not worthy, for we are children of God, and we remain as He has created us.  Everything else is illusion, and though we cannot discount what has happened in illusion, when we ask for forgiveness of our mistakes, all is indeed forgiven.  May we never forget this blessing of Atonement.

4 – Simple Lesson

May we learn a simple lesson today.  May we not make it complex or complicated.  It is as simple as telling a child that Jesus loves him/her.  We have not outgrown Jesus, but now, in A Course of Love, he ultimately sees us as companions to him, equals in every respect.  This is not the message of traditional Christianity, but perhaps it is a new message for our age,

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May we bask in the love that Jesus shows us that he has for us.  May we not let our minds wonder how this might be.  He is real, and he knows us–all of us.  Let us look beyond what science tells us to what we know in our hearts.

May we feel the embrace of Jesus today.  He will see that we come to understand all that we need to understand, so that intellectual doubt does not intrude.

Amen.

The Embrace

“This is a call to move now into my embrace and let yourself be comforted.  Let the tears fall and the weight of your shoulders rest upon mind.  Let me cradle your head against my breast as I stroke your hair and assure you that it will be all right.  Realize that this is the whole world, the universe, the all of all in whose embrace you literally exist.  Feel the gentleness and the love.  Drink in the safety and the rest.  Close your eyes and begin to see with an imagination that is beyond thought and words.  (A Course of Love, 20.2)”

Affirmation: “May I feel the embrace today.”

Reflections:

1 – Most Beloved Passage

This passage for today is one of the most beloved of all passages in A Course of Love.  In it, Jesus is speaking personally to every reader, but he is also speaking from a more universal perspective, saying that the universe is safe and holds us within its embrace.

2 – Gentleness, Love, Safety, Rest

The personal aspect will appeal to some; the more universal, to others.  We are bade to feel the gentleness and love of the embrace, the safety and the rest.  Jesus invites us to close our eyes and imagine what cannot be seen.  Often we have been told (in A Course in Miracles as well as A Course of Love) that our physical eyes cannot have “vision.”  We only have vision for the real world, which is not physical in the way that the illusory world is physical.  The physical world is seen differently in vision, and that is all that we really need to know.

3 – Comfort

This passage is comforting in the extreme, and it would be helpful to return to it over and over when we are ill-at-ease or distraught.  Life does throw us curves sometimes, and we would do well to take advantage of all that Jesus is offering to us.  He is with us, when we make one “unequivocal call” (from ACIM).  Can we understand this?  No, we can’t.  But, somehow, Jesus transcends ordinary physical laws and is with all of us as need arises.

4 – Personal

Do I believe this, truly?  Absolutely.

5 – A Blessing

And I hope that we will all come to believe this blessing also.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I have felt the presence of a person who seemed, to my mind, to be Jesus.  There was a comfort to this presence that I have felt from nobody else.

Be with me today as I seek to work out my intellectual doubts.  There are natural laws about which our science, as yet, knows nothing.  And I think that Jesus’s presence with us is one of those natural laws.  He comes in response to one unequivocal call, as A Course in Miracles tells us.

Thank You.

Amen.