Awareness Gives Us the Choice of What to Experience

“Awareness is all that you have and all that you are. Out of your use of it, comes all that you choose to experience. And out of that comes your decision of how you will experience what you have called to yourself.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 8, Page 98)

Jesus here gives us a complicated short passage. The basic idea is that awareness is our lease on life, the way that we call to ourselves all that we experience. It is what we have in our awareness, what we are aware of, that determines what we see.

So we have some choice in the matter, of course. We can purify our awareness, looking for the positive, and in so doing, we will reap great rewards. Our experiences will improve in tone, our mood will be higher, and we will see a beautiful world, rather than one that we would discount as being harsh and unkind to us.

This is another of Jesus’ reminders that we create our own reality. It is very hard, though, to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and “force” ourselves to be positive, when we are feeling down. The best way to approach life is to “be willing to have it so,” even our negative moods. Don’t resist them, for resistance makes the negativity stronger and less likely to dissipate. Resistance cements in place, and we would not do that.

Just go with the flow, which is another way of saying “be willing to have it so.” Just accept that in this world, our moods will vary as does the weather.

We can move with the tide, or we can buck it—or attempt to do so. And bucking it never, ever works.

Be gentle with our emotions, always and forever. We won’t experience perfection in this world, though we will ease into constant joyousness when we discover how to ride out the rough spots, move into the grand ones.

Jesus’s Difficult Words about Healing

“Healing is the change of mind that the Holy Spirit in the patient’s mind is seeking for him. (M20)”

Affirmation: “Healing is a change of mind.

1 – Of the Mind

Yes! Healing is a change of mind—not necessarily of body! So this is why we have hesitated when we approached Jesus’s words about healing in the Manual of A Course in Miracles. Seeing the body as an illusion, he focuses on the mind.

2 – Healing

And the mind knows healing.

3 – Emotions

This sets the healing in the realm of the emotions, which everyone can recognize is a much easier place to be than the physical. All too often we are “caught” in the physical, seeing effects of illness, and we cannot get beyond this. That is why we doubt healing because of continuing symptoms.

4 – Jesus

But Jesus is talking about a healing of the mind, for the mind, unlike the body, is real. Of course, there may be healing of the body as well, but we do not have to depend upon this to believe Jesus’s encouraging words.

5 – Change of Mind

This passage summarizes the idea that we have been exploring for the last several days. Healing comes about with a change of mind, a change from a desire for illness–external searching–to a desire for health. Nowhere is this concept made clearer in A Course in Miracles than in this one sentence.

6 – Health

It is clear here that the Holy Spirit is for health all the way. Yet He will not stand between cause-and-effect, if our minds desire illness. Even when we don’t recognize that we desire illness, this still is true. It is frequently an unconscious choice.

7 – Death

Death would best come by just laying down the body as finished, its usefulness over (ACIM concept). There is no reason for a prolonged illness to overcome us at any time in our lives, unless we mistakenly think that this external searching will lead us to what we need to know. And often it appears to do so. A Course in Miracles would not choose this for us, though. ACIM would choose health, and by reading such passages as this one, we can see that health is the choice of the Holy Spirit as well.

8 – Holy Spirit

“And it is the Holy Spirit in the mind of the giver Who gives the gift to him. How can it be lost? How can it be ineffectual? How can it be wasted? (M20)”

The Holy Spirit gives healing. This is familiar territory for us, for long have we talked about guidance and the place of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

9 – Giver

The “giver” is the individual seeking to be a conduit to healing for another person. We must not doubt; that is imperative. And we must recognize that the healing will be accepted when it is not a threat.

10 – Sickness as a Way of Life

Elsewhere Jesus talks about healing that must stand aside if an individual has used the sickness as a way of life. He notes that perhaps depression would result from a sudden healing, that the person might even attempt suicide, his loss being so great. So, in such cases, healing must stand aside as too dangerous for the personal self (the “little” self).

11 – Gifts

“What concern, then, can a teacher of God have about what becomes of his gifts? Given by God to God, who in this holy exchange can receive less than everything? (M21)”

12 – God Within

“Given by God to God” is an indication that God is within each of us. God is the All, in the interpretation of A Course in Miracles.

13 – More Certain Healing

This whole exchange about healing in the Manual is an example of the level of the ideal to which ACIM points. Some are ready to meet Jesus at that level, but some are not. And it behooves us to commune with God to reach that level of the ideal. Then healing is far more certain.

14 – Body an Illusion

Certainly healing is of the mind, for the body is only an illusion. So emotional healing will get us home free every time. We won’t worry so much, even about pain, for we know that we are safe.

15 – Home

We have found the medical treatment that works—a healing of the mind. Let the physical symptoms remain, if they seem stubborn. We have found the way home.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Help me to realize that true healing is a change of mind, and that if continuing physical symptoms are present, it does not mean a lack of healing.

Thank you for the many healings that I have known in my life. I know that all of them came from You.

Amen.

Slight Twinge of Annoyance / Intense Fury

“You will become increasingly aware that a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury. (W-21)”

Affirmation: “May I be angry with no one today.”

Reflections:

1 – Nighttime Dreams

This assertion, one of the more well-known from A Course in Miracles, does not seem credible on first reading. But actually our egoic minds delude us. We may dream at night far more hostilely than we think in the daytime. And so nighttime dreams of anger can clue us to the fact that we can be intensely furious when we think that we are mildly upset.

2 – No Gradations in Emotions

Why would this passage be true? Jesus does not give credence to gradations in emotions. In some ways, he thinks in black and white. And we may be used to this from his reactions in the New Testament. So what he says here has a certain ring of authenticity.

3 – Why?

Why would we really be furious when we think that we are only mildly annoyed? The ego wants it all for itself. The ego doesn’t really think in gradations, but it knows that we won’t accept extreme anger for ourselves, and so, in its wily way, the ego softens its attitudes. If this makes the ego sound independent, it does indeed function in this way quite often. But it is merely a part of our belief about ourselves, and we can choose to let it wither away. Indeed, we must choose this.

4 – Fury

How do we “lose it”? Do we lose it often? This shows that Jesus’s statement is indeed true. When we are tired, we are likely to express more fury than at any other time. Or if something else has already upset us (something that is never the “real thing” that is upsetting–an ACIM tenet). We can recognize, when we contemplate, that intense fury is actually veiled when we get upset. And we are the worst for it.

5 – Love

May all of us turn to the love within, the love that will eliminate these bouts of fury.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I learned in my maturity that I never get angry unless I am stressed. Many others are surely like this as well. But isn’t stress with me, still? And don’t I try to veil the anger that sometimes visits at inopportune times? I would be finished with this expression of the ego. No more.

May I invite the serenity that displaces the ego and put Your love in the center of my life. Then and only then will I no longer feel or show extravagant displays of negative emotion. Be with me as I seek to leave all this foolishness behind. I would not do this to myself, as I would not do it to my closest companions.

Amen.

I Am a Messenger of God / Each Heartbeat Calls His Name

ACIM Workbook Lesson  267 – for Saturday, September 24, 2011

Affirmation:  “My heart is beating in the peace of God.”

“I am a messenger of God, directed by His Voice, sustained by Him in love, and held forever quiet and at peace within His loving Arms.  Each heartbeat calls His Name, and every one is answered by His Voice, assuring me I am at home in Him.

“Let me attend Your Answer, not my own.  Father, my heart is beating in the peace the Heart of Love created.  It is there and only there that I can be at home.  (WB429)”

Reflections:

1 – At Home in God

This passage would reassure us that even though caught in illusion by our egos, we are actually at home in God.  We never truly separated from God; the thought that we might was a “tiny, mad idea” about which the “Son of God forgot to laugh” (quotations are from the Text).  But because we forgot to laugh, the ramifications were extreme, and we have found ourselves caught in misery for eons.  The separation, Jesus says, happened over millions of years, and the return may take similar millions, perhaps even longer.  This sounds discouraging.  But it does not have to be, for God is ready to welcome us home whenever we turn to Him and ask.  That does not mean that we are all ready for Awakening, but we will have psychic gifts develop in us that will assure us of God’s mercy on us.  We are not to use these gifts in an ill way, for of such is ego-oriented thinking made.  We are warned that the ego is especially wily in such situations.  It may try to reassert by guile (from the Manual).

2 – Do Not Let Emotions Intrude on God’s Presence

If we sense God’s presence, we will sense our heart beating in His peace.  This may not happen each time we get upset, because our emotions are strong and sometimes influenced by the ego.  But this peace will descend upon us frequently enough that we know what are experiencing.  And the peace of God is surely our greatest earthly gift.

3 – Messengers of God

We would be messengers of God.  We would not act in this way if we are motivated by egoic wishes.  We would pray for protection (which, we are told, will always be given, an ACIM tenet), and safety from misinterpretation.  This does not mean that we are above making mistakes, because we are still fallible beings, a very human manifestation of our Self.  But if we listen to guidance, we will sense when we have gone astray and take steps to move to higher ground.  We will ask forgiveness for our misinterpretation.  And we will forgive ourselves.  Forgiveness is the great clarion call of A Course in Miracles, often emphasized even more than Love.  In our fallible state, it is a gesture that we often need to make toward ourselves and toward others in our circle.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I know, when I feel my heart beat today, that my heart is truly at home in You.  May I sense Your presence above all else, and may I remain calm and at peace throughout the day.  Help me to be of use to my brothers and sisters, who may need me now.  Help me to know what to say and do to assist their upward progress back to You.

I would be a messenger of God, but I would wish to be certain that no egoic thinking intrudes on this wish.  If egoic thinking intrudes, I am almost certain that my emotions will intrude, and that I will not truly follow Your will by hearing accurately.  I would hear accurately from Your Guide, the Holy Spirit, today.

Amen.