Living without Fear and Embracing All

“The mind then, that becomes the one who is no longer in fear, no longer in resistance, is the mind that has forgiven all things, including itself.  The mind that can embrace all phenomena that arise and pass away with passion, with joy, with aliveness, with innocence, with simplicity, that mind cannot taste death.  It literally transmutes death, even as death seems to be passing by.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 21, Page 257)

When we are no longer afraid of death, death will seem to be passing us by–even at the point of the end of our time on earth.  We will thus not taste of death in our thoughts for long years prior, as well as when the time comes.  Our hearts will be free of fear.  We will accept all things, even this, being willing to “have it so.”  This type of relinquishment is a secret of how to approach life at any time, and not just when life is ending.

“Be willing to have it so.”  This is acceptance brought to the forefront of our lives.  This is the acceptance that lets God know that we are at last in His fold.  We have tried everything else, and now we know that His is the best way.

Decide for Him today.

Living in Love

“Beloved friends, the world that you look upon is not real! . . . But it is a creation that can be impregnated with the perfect Love of God.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 15, Page 182)

When we are living in love, we are living in reality.  Then the creation that is the world is “impregnated” with the “perfect Love of God.”

We see with real vision when we live in love.  Our physical eyes see with a nonphysical expression.  When this first occurs, we see little edges of light around the same familiar objects in our everyday world.  This is one of the signs that real vision is coming upon us.

Real vision is not seen with the physical eyes.  It is something else entirely.  We see with Love that is imbued with the harmonies of love, peace, tolerance, kindness.

This physical world will one day disintegrate.  It is only slowed down energy of the cosmos. 

But the real vision that we have when we are living in Love will be eternal.

Take a moment today to ask for real vision and to see the real world.

Listen to God

“God communicates eternally with your self and all selves without interruption of any kind.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 7:III

If we only listened to the message of this quotation!  Yes, God is always right here, trying to get through to us.  Why don’t we listen more?  We are willful, and sometimes that will is turned against divine guidance.  We think we know better, but we should know from experience that when we forge ahead, unmindful of what God might say, we make mistakes.  We don’t live as well.

Make a decision today that regardless of personal thought, we will lift up our decisions to a Higher Power.  He will show us why His way is best.  And when we think rightly, we know that we are communing with our interior, where God dwells.  We will make the right decision, if we listen attentively, if we discern carefully.

This communication with God is eternal.  We will place ourselves in a better position for the future if we listen well today.  There is no interruption to God’s influence on us.  Even the ego did nothing, when it held sway.  It acted only in illusion, and we would now be firmly embedded in reality.

All selves are the Self whom we all share.  When we make a decision with God’s input, we choose for all the lives that we touch.  And we touch everyone, though we can’t see how this is possible.  Don’t let our finite ideas change the truth that we are impacting a vast field of all of our brothers and sisters.

Joy on the Horizon

“What joy it is to live in the uncreated truth.”  COL bk.2, 19:I

Truth is “uncreated”?  This assertion attributed to Jesus in Choose Only Love is telling us that truth is eternal, not something that came to be in our world, but originated outside our world, yet immanent in it.  We did not, in other words, “make” truth when we fell into the ego.  We will not even “create” truth when we are living in Christ-consciousness.  Truth is not of the personal self, nor the Self that is differentiated from God.  Truth is of God.

Knowing this, we can walk a green earth.   There are some things that don’t change as we go forward into evolution.  And truth is one such static thing.  Let us ask to be made aware of the eternal truth that we have heretofore not known.  God is not trying to keep secrets from us; He is perfectly willing to share His truth.  It is our own limitations, emerging fresh from an egoic past, that hinder us.

Yes, joy—joy!—is in our future.  If we let the thoughts of our finite mind flow in and out, in peace, we will not get so tangled up.  This way of living will keep us constantly in God’s shadow.  We will listen to what He says, in His silence, and know.  Just know.  This is the Christ-Self speaking to us, the essence of who we are.

Let’s listen well today.

Eternally Extend Perfect Love

Note: After this post, I am going to take a brief break from posting. Thank you for your views.

“Everything has been created for the same purpose:  to eternally extend perfect love.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 15:I)

Everything is an extension of God, and God is perfect Love.  So, when we are living right, we are extending love.  If we don’t do this, we will be falling down on the job.  We simply need to reassess and decide that God’s way is the way that we want to go.  That is all.  It will be enough.

But this is “perfect” love, and not many of us feel that we live up to that.  At least not often and not in every situation.  Pray today to live a more perfect love.  That too will be enough.

We are eternal beings, never to lose life at all.  We move into and out of form in this world, and possibly others as well.  The only evidence of eternity in our world is the “now,” and so it would be very good to live in the present on a constant basis.

So:  What are we about, but to love and be loved, living with our focus in the here and now?  This should be easy enough.  Why, oh why, do we make it so hard?  God would not have it so.  His way is easy and non-conflicted.  Let us ask to walk His way now and every day.

Living in Love—and in Eternity

“In your souls is a deep yearning to live in eternity.  To fully satisfy that desire, you must live in love.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 12:II)

We dip below time when we are experiencing real love.  We see a glimpse of living in eternity, for the things of love are the things of eternity.  In actual fact, only love is true reality in our experience.  Otherwise, we are living an illusion.  If we place our faith in illusion, it will always let us down.  Love that is true and good never lets us down.  Even a presumed end to a relationship is not the real end.  A Course in Miracles tells us that all who meet will someday meet again, that it is the result of love never losing sight of itself.  All relationships are meant to become holy.

If we live in love, we are safe from all that might trouble us.  Sure, we still experience painful happenings, but they don’t have the staying power that they once did.  We rise above pain and suffering when we live in love.  Love is the great panacea for all manner of ill.

We need to recognize that our yearning for permanence in eternity is actually a desire, a longing, for love.  And when we experience love, even fleetingly, we will never be satisfied with living any other way.

Love is God.  Love makes itself known in an eternity that can be experienced even on this earth. 

Ask to experience this eternity, in Love, today.

Nothing Can Touch Us Eternally that Is Not for Our Good

“[W]orries shall pass, pain shall pass, life on Earth shall pass, but your being shall never pass.  You are eternal.  Therefore I invite you to let nothing trouble you, let nothing scare you, whatever may seem to happen.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 12:2)

We worry about what our personalities will be called upon to endure in our time of Earth.  Certainly many people have lived through many tough times, and we are called to do so now, with the coronavirus affecting all of us in some way.  But this too shall pass.  The fact that things pass away, in time, may help us to cope today.  Nothing can touch us eternally that is not for our good.

May this time of peril reach inside our hearts and lead us to discover what we need to discover.  May this time of peril pass quickly.

God Has Not Erred in Calling Us to Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go to God with our questions.  He will respond.

At Death We Merely Leave One Room & Step into Another

“Would you call it a death when you leave one room and close the door behind you and step into another room? Of course not. You just say, ‘I was there; now I am here.’ That is all that truly occurs when the molecules you have called to yourself are unglued because you release your value of them, and their constituents, their parts, dissolve back into the dust or the energy field of the planet. You merely leave one room and step into another.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 8, Page 100)

This understanding of death is so reassuring and so important to us. So many people don’t believe that we continue as a recognizable personality when we cross the barrier of death. This makes of death an ogre, and it pains my heart to know that so many are so lost in fear when it comes to mortality.

Thanks to Jesus in The Way of Mastery for making this clear. His appearance in the graveyard wasn’t enough for many people. People come to understanding in very many ways. I hope that this quotation will lead many who view my blog to a blessed understanding.

This eternity can be joyous when we realize that it is one continuous tapestry to living, here and in the hereafter.

Eternity Will Free Us

“Eternalness is the one function that the ego has tried to develop but has systematically failed to achieve. It may surprise you to learn that had the ego willing it to do so, it could have made the eternal because, as a product of the mind, it is endowed with the power of its own maker. But the decision to do this, rather than the ability to do it, is what the ego cannot tolerate. This is because the decision, from which the ability would naturally develop, would necessarily involve true perception, a state of clarity which the ego, fearful of being judged truly, must avoid.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-4.VII.11:1-4)

This quotation is filled with dense meaning. The ego would not want true perception, because then it would be judged truly, and then it would be rejected summarily. So, caught by the ego, our mind alters perception in a thousand, and more, crazy ways. Seeing unclearly, we wander hinter and hon, in uncertainty, lost in a maze.

Do we really want this maze to continue? We do want the eternal, and the ego can’t give us this. The eternal assures that we will forever be here, in the now, the present—not lost in past and future meanderings. The eternal and time are actually not compatible, and when we come to know more of the eternal, we will realize that time itself is, in our world, only for convenience. We can, though, partake of the eternal in the Now. The eternal is on a vertical line, with time being on a horizontal. Only at one point, the Now, do they intersect.

Decide to stop walking the maze now, today. Giving up the temporal for the permanent is another way of seeing eternity.

Eternity will free us, for the cause and effect of suffering/pain, born of fear, will be no more. Ask to have eternity shown to us now, in our complete and total awareness of the present.

An Endless Quest for Love’s Expression Is Eternity Itself

“What will there be to strive for? What quest will replace this quest for being? The quest for love’s expression—the quest to see, experience, and share, as many of love’s expressions as the world needs to be returned, along with you, to its own Self.

“Does this seem like a long and harrowing road? An endless quest? An endless quest for love’s expression is eternity itself.

“Be happy that there is no end in sight to this road you travel now. It is simply the road of what is endlessly creating like unto itself.

“You now know how to respond to love, for you are love, being. So be it.” (ACOL, E.27 – E.30)

So here is what we are about: an expression of love for all eternity. We need to be sure that we listen to these beautiful words in the quotation from A Course of Love, for love is a much-maligned word that promises more than we realize. It promises us everything, and everything is what A Course in Miracles says that we really want. We won’t ever be satisfied with separating a small segment of reality, and saying that we will be satisfied with that; we won’t be. And everything is ours, that is the beauty of it.

If we have wondered the purpose of our being, our very existence, then here we have the answer: an expression of love carried out through all eternity. If we think we don’t know how to do that, then we need to look within, where all expressions of love emanate. We will discover what it is we have been missing in our own little expressions of love. For the first time, looking within, we will see what Love really is all about.

Love is not just an emotion, but an attribute of universal consciousness. Our consciousness with God, Whom we all know to be Love through and through. We get ourselves tangled up when we imagine that all love is, is a feeling. Love is much more than that. As an attribute of consciousness, Love gave us our very Self. And the inner Christ-Self, now a knowing being, knows what it is to love. Let out of our depths, the Christ-Self wanders about a world, seeing with new eyes, our new eyes.

If we drop into low emotions, then let us rise up from that mire to new heights, knowing that all, all that we really have to do is love. This is not a mindless love, and certainly it is not a special love. On the contrary, it is a holy love felt with all our mind and heart, in wholeheartedness (as A Course of Love says).

Feel this holy love today. Don’t let anything hold us back from expressing the best that we have in us, and that, of course, is Love.

Dear God,

As we face a new year with new beginnings, let us leave not out Love that You show to us. You are showing us how to love with every right thought/action that we take. And we are discovering with a master, Jesus himself, who has channeled works such as ACIM and ACOL for our benefit. Be with us as we seek to keep an uplifted affect in this new year. There is no reason to be down about the state of the world, for we, as newly enlightened beings, have the power to effect real change, even unto creating a new world.

Thank You for warming me with Your Presence. May I be thankful that You are always living through me, expressing love as I will best allow.

Amen.

We Live and Love Eternally

“This Self with whom you have a relationship is love’s extension. It is the Self you long to be as well as the Self you are. This paradox has kept you as intrigued with the idea of self as with the idea of God. You have searched for a “one, true, self” as you have searched for a “one, true, God.” This search only makes sense to the separated self, who believes all things are separate and thus believes that its self, as well as its God, must be separate from what it is being. It doesn’t understand, until joining with the Christ Self, before becoming one with holy relationship itself, that relationship is an identity.

“God is a relationship with love. This relationship with love is all that provides for the I Am of God.” (ACOL, D:Day40.20 – Day40.21)

The theology of this quotation is especially apt as we seek to understand how relationship, holy relationship, can be so important to our knowledge of God. We are joining with the inner Christ Self, and in this joining we form a holy relationship that is unique to each of us. Our identity is tied up with the Christ Self, who forms the identity that we have been searching for in vain while we embodied the egoic mind. We have been searching for this Christ Self, and it is here with us now. We need search/seek no more.

We are led, surely and swiftly, to an immersion in love. This love shows us the Godhead, for we intuit God when we give our all to love. We can know God only when we are obsessed with love; this obsession is good, unlike the obsessions that plagued us when we were living egoic lives. Now our one hope and our one joy is a love that is not of this world. When we give our all for this love, we know a peace/joy/happiness that is beyond anything available to us prior. We are finally at home, even though our physical bodies still reside in this world. Our mind/heart occupies an ethereal world, though physical still, to us. We live and love eternally, and we know it for maybe the first time.

Dear God,

I would cease trying to “find myself.” That has been done for all time when I comprehend that the inner Christ Self is my “real” Self. This Self does not let me down; this Self draws peace to me in every encounter, sure of living well in a conflicted world. This Self knows how to live without letting the noise of this world get in.

Thank You for guiding me. Always I thank You for that.

Amen.

Eternity Experienced

“Our “time” on the mountain would be more rightly described as “time outside of time.”

““Time outside of time” by itself will not cause the shift that needs to occur, however. What will create the shift is the ability to experience “time outside of time” and “time” simultaneously. Thus is the “wholeness” of time, or eternity, experienced and made real.” (ACOL, D:Day28.19 – Day 28.20)

Jesus seems to be saying that we will be in the world, but not of it. In time, but not of it. In eternity as well as in time.

This will be a balancing act, but a good one. He talks in A Course in Miracles about there being a way to be in the world, but more serene, and those who are like us, recognize their own. But others, who have not understood, will see us also, and think that we are like we have always been.

That is the place that we want to go in this time, and time outside of time.

We will experience eternity made real, as Jesus says. We will be in a good place emotionally. And we will gradually attract those who do recognize that something about us has changed. And they will ask what is different. And then our tongues will be loosed, and we will tell them.

Pray to be a good witness.

Dear God,

I ask to be a good witness today. I will be out and about, but I also ask to be a good witness at home. It makes such a difference.

I seek to be in the world but not of it today. May this prayer be heard and given an affirmative response.

Thank You.

Amen.

We Live in an Eternity / Be Happy Today

“Discovery is not bound by time as it is an ongoing aspect of creation. As you were told in “A Treatise on the New”, the future is yet to be created. While this seems like a time-bound statement, it is not. It is merely one way of stating that creation is ongoing rather than static. That while creation is and is as it was created, it was created to be eternally expanding and expressing in new ways.” (ACOL, D:7.19)

The word “creation,” as eternally expanding and expressing in new ways, is a way of talking about God. And, to my mind, Jesus’s assertion here about creation is a new interpretation of God. Traditional Christianity saw God as essentially static, as the Unmovable, and this flies in the face of this new interpretation. Jesus’s reasoning is impeccable. Would God be the only thing in creation to be static? Not likely. Eternally expanding and expressing in new ways. What a great promise this truly is!

Our concepts of God are challenged by A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love. God is seen as the Everything that exists, as the Consciousness that pervades everything, as ourselves. He is seen as living through us. And living through all of creation. This is heady stuff. But absolutely necessary if we are to move into the New.

We don’t have to fear the loss of a God to Whom we can appeal. He is still there, just deep within us. And he is called, also, our “Self.” This Christ-Self is the One, the All, that everybody joins as One. Our body is one body, even. Our Self is One. We are sharing in an eternity, a timeless place that will never end, for it is eternally present.

Time is a measurement of learning, and we have moved beyond learning now. We are observing and envisioning, keen to see the new present and the unfolding future. We live in an eternity. Be happy today. (This is advice from Eastern religion.)

If we are able to calm our minds enough, we will know the essence of what is happening to us in a way that we have known nothing in the past. Mellowness invites Christ-consciousness, and this consciousness is our future. For some it is the present already. Be that as it may, we know that we are not alone, that we have no reason to dwell on the singular consciousness that we knew earlier. Our singular consciousness has morphed into a shared consciousness. Indeed, we could not function with all of this new knowledge if we didn’t share it. And we are moved in Christ-consciousness to share with our brothers and sisters. Christ-consciousness is not available to those who would remain in singular consciousness. And we know that we have had quite enough of singular consciousness.

Be mellow today. Know that if we don’t understand today, the future in which we do understand is written already. And with this new knowledge comes a new world. This is what Jesus is banking on.

Prayer

Jesus says that no day is meant to be lived in a struggle with what it brings. I would live calmly today, in relaxed mode. I would welcome Christ-consciousness, in a glimpse, by staying relaxed and easy. These words, said to me so long ago by another, soothe me still. Thank You for taking me through and beyond that turmoil. Life is easier now, but I do believe that there is a reason for everything.

Thank You for giving me the knowledge that these new concepts about You don’t remove You from my awareness, but instead make that awareness more keen. Help me to understand, in sharing with others, all that my finite mind and heart can hold. It is in the sharing that we come to know.

Amen.

Our New Goal: Changing Consciousness to the Eternal

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prayer

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

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

Amen.

Call to Respond

“Your thoughts are released from their concentration on what exists outside of you as your responsibility is placed where it belongs, in the call to respond.  This response is only yours to give and is all you are asked to give.  This response comes from within the Self–the rightly identified and acknowledged Self.  (The Treatises of A Course of Love:  Treatise on the Art of Thought, 4.9)”

Affirmation:  “I will respond as my Self tells me.”

Reflections:

1 – Restatement

This passage for today is a restating of the same passage quoted yesterday.  Jesus repeats his ideas when the idea is especially important.  Maybe he wants to be sure that we have caught the meaning.  And the idea is very, very important to central themes in A Course of Love.

2 – Internal Looking

We need to look within to determine what response to the outer world is called for.  This internal “looking” is a bid for guidance from the Self/Christ, who is within all of us.  We could also see that God is within, and look to Him for guidance.  The distinction is not too important, in my estimation, for we are a part of God.  This is in line with the monistic nature of A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love.

3 – Eternity

When we recognize the Self within, we are well on our way along the pathway to Awakening.  Only time delays us, and time does not really exist.  All time is simultaneous, but it appears spread out to allow us to experience all that is happening.  Eternity is timeless.

4 – Look Within

We are not to focus too much on externals, seeking external cues as to how to respond.  We are actually becoming more introverted in our movement toward Christ-consciousness.  We no longer look to others to tell us what to do.  We look within.  And there we find our peace.

5 – Personal Experience

I personally started out as an introvert, and then moved closer to extroversion (as tested on written tests) when I practiced reference librarianship.  All of those questions from the reference, all of that interaction with library users, turned me outward.  Now that I am no longer practicing reference librarianship, I find myself naturally turning inward more, to introversion–actually my most natural response.  And it is good to know that this change is in line with A Course of Love.  We need to seek our cues from within, because listening to our brothers and sisters does not mean that what they say is “our” truth.  We can easily be misled.  We need to take nothing external unto ourselves unless it finds a welcome place in our heart.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank You for being with me today, even when I was not conscious of Your presence.  I know that You were with me, because in spite of a hectic day, I am calm and at peace now that it is the evening.  Only You could effect such an experience.

May we be transformed as we live our lives day to day.  I belong to You, and that statement is one of the most important that I remember from my early years.  A woman friend, rich with faith, said, “I belong to God.”  And I have remembered that witness all the years since.  Now I too belong to You.  And knowing that this is true gives me a life beyond my wildest dreams.  Thank You.

Amen.

We Live in an Eternity. Be Happy Today.

“As God created us so will we be forever and forever, and we wish for nothing but His Will to be our own.  Illusions of another will are lost, for unity of purpose has been found.  (M-28.5)”

Affirmation:  “unity of purpose”

Reflections:

1 – Eastern Thought

We live in an eternity.  Be happy today.  The previous two sentences are from an Eastern master.  But I have long loved those words, as though they had been in my own religious tradition.

2 – God Will = Our Real Will

Here Jesus is saying the same thing.  Because God’s Will and our will are actually identical, we do wish to do God’s Will.  We do not want to wander off in tangents, seeking who knows what.  We want to follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance, because it is the way home for us.  Nothing and Nobody else will do.  There is no other way, until we reach Christ-consciousness (as discussed, perhaps, by Jesus in A Course of Love).

3 – A Course of Love

We are united, yet in relationship to one another and to God.  A Course of Love talks repeatedly about “unity and relationship,” and to my eye this seems a paradox.  How can something united be in separate parts that would be demanded for a relationship to take hold?  I think that Answer is that we are One, and yet we have differentiated into seemingly separate entities, separate Selves, in order to experience all facets of reality (an interpretation, not stated in ACIM or A Course of Love).  So the fact that A Course of Love counsels “unity and relationship” repeatedly is actually a fact that must be faced head-on.  We must be One with ourselves and our brothers and sisters, at the same time that we are in relationship one to the other.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would be happy today, knowing that we live one day at a time.

May my day equal my magnificent expectation for it.

Thank You.

Amen.

Do Not Make Errors “Real”

“To perceive errors in anyone, and to react to them as if they were real, is to make them real to you” (T167).

Affirmation:  “I will not make errors real today.”

Reflections:

1 – Do Not See Error

A Course in Miracles would have us see our brothers and sisters as innocent, caught in a dream of attack and grievances, but able to find their way to a real world that is very different, through the help of the Holy Spirit.  To effect this change in our perceptions is easy, once we turn over our judgments over to the Holy Spirit.  We literally do not see error in our brothers and sisters.  We extend love to them, and our perceptions are modified accordingly.  This is really all that we have to do.

2 – We Have Sinned in Time, but Not in Eternity

A Course in Miracles notes that we have “sinned” in time, but not in eternity.  And there is, ultimately, no time, because time is an illusion.  We have only made errors or mistakes in eternity, and we are strong and wise enough to recognize the value in forgiving errors in ourselves and our brothers and sisters in this world.  If we are blaming God for anything, we can likewise let go of those grievances–a gesture that will be freeing to us.

3 – Let Us Seek to Live in the Real World

To live in the “real world” is not described conclusively in ACIM.  But much note is made of the fact that following the ego is only following illusions, and that following the ego makes it impossible to live in the real world, otherwise known as simply “reality.”  We can interpret ACIM by realizing that the real world is composed of the attributes of love–the joy, the peace, the forgiveness.  Sometimes we do reach the real world fleetingly.  All of us remember times when all seemed right with our little world, and we were completely at peace.  We may have recognized this as a “peak experience,” a term used by Maslow and receiving much press in popular psychology.

4 – Peak Experiences

If we want more peak experiences, we need to live in the flow that will give us the real world (an interpretation, not stated in ACIM).  Living in the flow is a concept that all of us can appreciate.  We throw ourselves into some task, and time disappears for us.  We realize, minutes or even hours later, that we have experienced a peace in those moments that usually eludes.

5 – Forgive = the Secret

Jesus would have us forgive ourselves and others, and thereby to invite the forgiveness of the errors that we all, without exception, make.  Then those errors do not become “real” in our experience of them, and we are walking gaily on the pathway home.

Prayer:

 Dear Father/Mother,

 I would begin this new year with high hopes and many expectations that I will live in You and not in my ego.  I would let the ego wither away.  By this I mean that my false sense of self needs to go.  You know this better than I.  Thank You for the words in ACIM that caution my reliance on the ego, a part of my belief about myself.

 I would invite peak experiences this year.  I know that You would have me live in a better way than I did last year, and I would hope not to disappoint You.  Be with me as I seek to come to understand Your wishes for me ever more completely.

 Let me be good to my significant others as well as all others who cross my path this year.  We need each other.  We need to let attack and anger go, knowing that poor behavior is a sign that we need help.  All of us will still need some help along the way, but I would live in Your love so completely this year that I do not cause others to distress. 

 Help me to live up to my resolutions this year, to be a better person, to love ever more deeply, to let the ego just disappear as a part of my belief about myself.  Thank You for your ever-present help.

 Amen.