Fear – MIRACLES EACH DAY

Loving Freely & Without Fear

“You who do not know how to trade your separated state for that of union have still done so when you have loved freely and without fear. In this state your memory returns to you of who you are, and you are innocent and joyous and one with love itself. That this memory does not last, and these feelings seem unsustainable, is the result only of that which does discard and replace. As we have said before, there are but two emotions. One is love, the other fear. Fear, through your own choice, replaces and discards love. Fear is always strongest when you value something that you feel may be threatened. Love threatens most your specialness. Before your conscious mind has any awareness of what is happening, your memory of love, of innocence and of joy, threatens your specialness, your ego, your separated self who quickly rushes in with love’s replacement. Nothing but fear could take the memory of love from you, or replace so quickly the glory that is your nature with the specialness that is not.” (A Course of Love, C:14.28)

Fear is of the ego, and fear is a game changer in the hope of reaching Christ-consciousness. We cannot, in fact, reach enlightenment when we still entertain fear. But, the rub, how to stop the fear that so often threatens to engulf us?

Prayer is one answer, in all likelihood the best answer that we could ever devise. And it is not our idea, but an intuition and an experience that comes from God. Our prayers put us in alignment with something greater than we are, and this Someone has the power to right our little world immediately. We don’t have to suffer anxiety any longer; it just dissipates when we start to pray.

Meditation is similar, of course. We go into a zone-type of thinking that eases our minds. We don’t actively think at all; we focus on a sacred word or our breathing. And the miraculous effect takes over.

Talking with a treasured friend is yet another solution to fear. Others have known the same fear that we dread, though often we think that we are all alone because they haven’t told us about their anxieties, wanting to appear strong and solid to us. This is a fallacy, of course, which we will come to see when we converse intimately. All short of enlightenment are victims of the fear mongrels that rob us of peace of mind.

Think a bit of the practices that have given us peace of mind in the past. Of course, like all things, this fear, too, shall pass. But there are a myriad of practices which can speed fear along its way, never to return in quite the same way again.

Trust that guidance will lead us out of the darkness of our anxieties and our fears. Trust that choosing to be unity one with another will be an almost magical solution to an intractable problem.

Love Is Welcome

“You exist, quite simply, because of your relationship with love. Love is the unity you seek. In having chosen separation over unity, you but chose fear over love. When you let go of fear and invite unity to return, you but send out an invitation to love and say you are welcome here.” (A Course of Love, C:11.18)

Being welcome is an attribute of friendship, and being “friends” with love is something that we all can do. We need to realize that we are one (unity), and in this realization we are inclined to love more than fear.

Of course, we can’t always banish fear. We are particularly prone to fear’s ravages early in the morning, when the whole day looms and we are apprehensive about what lies ahead. At such times we need to make a determined effort to calm ourselves down. Over time, we have developed some of these techniques: writing in a journal, meditation, deep breathing, quiet conversation with your significant other (if time permits), petting a beloved animal. All will make small increments to erode fear. And, as time passes, fear will become more of a stranger in our lives.

We feel ourselves separate and alone when we face the day with apprehension. We are living our comfy homes for a sometimes terrifying outside that seems to wish us no well. These are the types of thoughts that replace love with fear. And it need not be so. The outside world is as much in need of our love as are our nearest and dearest. Give a helping hand to those we meet outside our homes. And then they will seem much less the bearers of bad tidings, or, at the last, uncertain tidings that give us cause for fear. Love with a whole heart, knowing that we actually are safe when we set our minds to creating a beloved world.

Self Perfect in Love

“The only replacement that can occur that will accomplish what you seek is the replacement of illusion with the truth, the replacement of fear with love, the replacement of your separated self with your real Self, the Self that rests in unity.” (A Course of Love, C:9.24)

We see that A Course of Love makes parallels of illusion and truth, fear and love, and the separated self with the real Self, saying that a replacement of illusion, fear and the separated self needs to be made—with truth, love and the real Self. This is salvation, this is the coming to know that we will find in fullness in Christ-consciousness. Until then, we can see only rare glimpses, some longer than others, but still temporary.

This is the only accomplishment that we seek, and on some level it has already been accomplished, for Jesus says that we are The Accomplished. But not in any egoic sense, of course. We have walked the whole pathway, and now we find our way back to retrace our steps.

It doesn’t have to take long in the life of any individual, though the return may take a very long time for everyone on earth. Make no mistake: This is what we are about, the eventual return of everyone to full sanity, which means that we are in communion with our Creator and we have walked into the real Self through Awakening.

Returning Us to Our True Nature

“You may not feel that you have ever intended to live in fear. But the displacement of the original intent was so complete that each life has begun with fear and proceeded from this beginning continually reacting fear. While the original intent remained within you and caused you to attempt to express a Self of love despite your fear, fear has thwarted your every effort and caused the very effort that has continued the cycle of fear. To have to try to be who you are and to express who you are is the result of the displacement of the nature of love with the nature of fear. What we now are about is reversing this displacement and returning you to your true nature.” (A Course of Love, T4:3.5)

We had an “original intent” eons ago, and that was to live in love—not fear. But fear intervened, and nothing has ever been right since. This is the crucial, central feature of our lives. We have displaced love with fear, and then we have lived in this egoic state of fear. There ought to be a better way.

And there is. We can learn, and not necessarily by traditional means of study, to displace fear and the egoic self with the Self of love. This change will make all the difference. And A Course of Love is showing us how to effect this change. It is true (as A Course in Miracles says also) that God makes the final decision of when we are ripe for Christ-consciousness or Awakening. Then he metaphorically reaches down to us and lifts us up.

Yet there are things we can do to remove blocks to the awareness of love. This in itself will ease our way, and give us a happy experience. We need to get the idea of suspiciousness out of our minds; we need trust above all else. And trust we can have; just a decision to have it is enough to bring it to us. This does not mean that we will be gullible. We have our own good sense, and this is sense of the real Self, not the ego. When we place our faith in the inner Christ Self, we are far more likely to be right than to be wrong in our evaluations of others. Note that this does not mean “judgment” of others, for judging keeps us from attaining enlightenment. We need to simply rest in the assurance that if we are encouraged to avoid a particular situation (or person), we will know how and where to do so. That is all.

Displacement of Love with Fear

“The displacement of the original intent, while it did not change the original cause, formed a false nature for the personal self. This displacement of the original intent can be simply stated as the displacement of love with fear. It is as simple as that. Yet the way in which each of you have interpreted this displacement has come to seem quite complex.” (A Course of Love, T4:3.4)

We think that we live complex lives, and, indeed, the ego has reveled in that thought. But the only thing that happened, the detour into fear, was a shift from love to fear. We may this transition as quite young children. And we are led down a path toward living in fear that has always been hard to reverse.

Now we have a way, and it is simple in the extreme. We simply learn to listen to what our heart is telling us. Our heart always opts for the love that is hidden away deep within it. Our heart always knows how to guide us. In this time of Christ, the heart is our beacon, for the Christ-Self is within, like the heart. Of course, we don’t mean the physical heart. “Heart,” as used in A Course of Love, is a metaphor for the deepest feeling part of ourselves. We feel rather than think, and in that shift, a shift in consciousness comes slower or later.

We can hope for sooner, for those of us reading these words long for Christ-consciousness (if we have not already reached this). We long to live serene and awakened lives, sure of ourselves, sure of our brothers and sisters, and sure of God.

When we occupied physical bodies, we made a mistake, a mistake that could not happen but did. We opted for separation from God by feeling a tiny bit of fear that grew into an almost all-encompassing fear. This situation does not have to go on. We can retreat from fear into our real essence of love. At any time.

And the transformation will be arresting.

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.

A New Response

“While God is nothing but the Source of Love, you have, in your doubt, made of God the source of fear. Pause a moment here and let the enormity of this confusion sink in, for this is the reversal in thinking that will pave the way for all the rest. Because of this confusion you have responded to Creation with fear. Is it no wonder a new response is asked of you?” (A Course of Love, T1:4.26)

We fear many things, but we don’t often realize that what we fear most is actually God. Or our concepts of God, which are misguided and inaccurate. He is Love—as we know—but still we forget, even when we pray daily. We think that maybe He doesn’t have our best interests at heart, our best interests as we view them. We think that what we want for ourselves would be better. And when we realize that God is in the depths of our spirit, then we can realize how very confused we have become.

God means us well. Our Depths mean us well. We don’t have to fear God at all. It is not He Who punishes us, if indeed we are punished at all. (And the ego does punish, though we are trying to get away from this concept, this deluded concept.) Once we are able to fully believe that God is “for us,” then our love for Him can blossom, and our egoic fears will soon drop away.

Happy Dreams

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

New Truth

New truth comes to me

and I

eager to demonstrate

this sudden energy

look for someone

who might listen

but all are busy

looking for their own

interior informings

or if they hear me

give back blank looks

and realizing I have failed

to share some substance

of my newfound joy

I wince and wonder

if I’m meant to speak at all

or rather keep inside me

all that cries out to be told.

From time again of reaching out

with words

in vain attempts

conveying little

of this deepest gift

I come at last to know

the patience of the ancients

who learned what I must learn:

the simple waiting

until time and place

and question from another

might reveal

communal readiness

to share.

Meditation from Celia:

“I said before that the first change, before dreams disappear, is that your dreams of fear are changed to happy dreams. That is what the Holy Spirit does in the special relationship. He does not destroy it, nor snatch it away from you. (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-18.II.6)

The two parts of this quotations are linked together by the fact of a happy dream. The Holy Spirit acts in us to change our dreams of hostility and anger and pain to happy dreams, even though we are still asleep and don’t entirely know how this change is happening. What is going on is that our projection from within, where the Holy Spirit resides, is changing. We are projecting more loving thoughts, and thus the perception that we have of the outer world is that it is changing, independent of us. This change is not independently wrought. And as we become happier, seeing in a more loving and kind way, the dream we experience becomes even better!

At this point our special relationships will begin to look better and better, not filled as much with pain or the vicissitudes of mood. The special relationships, at this precise point, have not yet transformed into holy, but the potential is there. We will want them to be holy as we proceed in our study of A Course in Miracles.

The Holy Spirit does not snatch away our special relationships, though we are fearful that, being inferior, He will decide that this form has to go. The person most likely doesn’t have to go—if the transformation into a holy relationship can be made.

We are learning in the context of ACIM. We are projecting more positive aspects to our outer world, and everything changes at this point. We are drawn by the joy that we experience as these changes come about. This joy leads us to forget the ego, and just run to the joy.

And in that running will we take the next step, the sometimes disjointed next step, of transforming our special relationships (which have always been problematic) into something better—something holy.

Loving Thing

A decision made upon facing possible illness: “I’ve been my own worst enemy in fearing health conditions in the past, and it’s time to put faith into action and not aggravate the situation with meaningless fears.”

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Recognizing that a behavior is irrational is the first step toward changing it.

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On understanding the way the mind works: “I’m realizing that my superego (as Freud would say) is very strong, even severe. Maybe if I were more forgiving, my thoughts of what I ‘should’ do would be less punishing. The choice to do the loving thing is not at all coercive.”

Tempests

I wonder if I’ve sometimes created a tempest in a teapot out of boredom. If I get upset about something, then I have the upset to deal with rather than the boredom.

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Do I seek fear to avoid boredom?

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For the anxiety-prone part of me: “Sometimes I simply have to disengage my mind from worry. That seems the healthiest way to live, and I have not always been able to do that.”

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There is a truth about mental illness that sometimes only the mentally ill, and those who counsel troubled people, see. At the heart of a split from “reality” may be a glimpse of true reality. And perhaps there is a partially formed mystic crying to get out.

Who knows but that a psychotic sufferer has opted to jump ahead by one of the most wrenching means? Who knows what contributions recovery—and their next life—will bring?

God Is Not Fear, but Love

“When you seem to see some twisted form of the original error rising to frighten you, say only, ‘God is not fear, but Love,’ and it will disappear. The truth will save you. It has not left you, to go out into the mad world and so depart from you. Inward is sanity; insanity is outside you.” (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-18.I.7)

We have long heard that we need to turn inward, but have we really understood what this means? It means that we set aside time for God every day, maybe twice a day (as Jesus recommends in ACIM). And in this we turn inward.

We can affirm the truth, which is Love, and turn aside from those things that frighten us. Our affirmations will not seem strong enough when we are overwrought, and so we need to quiet ourselves before we can receive the blessing. When we quiet ourselves, turning inward, we will know—with every fiber of our being—that God’s way is not in any way fearful. That is the insanity of what we see outside ourselves. When we turn inward, to God, we find only peace.

Don’t try to assimilate this idea when you are in the throes of anger. Anger separates us from the truth that is within. And, likewise, don’t choose to practice affirmations when you are in a panic. Slow down and breathe. God will find you when you give Him a moment.

Insanity is without, in the world. And when we project from within, as long as the ego is in the ascendancy, we project insanity and our perception of the outer world is a thing of madness.

Don’t walk this way. Turn inward, not only two times a day, but as often as you think of God. “Pray without ceasing” is not an idle recommendation. The reverent feeling will flow over your whole world of insanity, remove the insanity then, and you will sense Oneness with God.

Loving Freely & Without Fear

“You who do not know how to trade your separated state for that of union have still done so when you have loved freely and without fear. In this state your memory returns to you of who you are, and you are innocent and joyous and one with love itself. . . .Nothing but fear could take the memory of love from you, or replace so quickly the glory that is your nature with the specialness that is not.” (A Course of Love, C:14.28)

Trust that guidance will lead us out of the darkness of our anxieties and our fears. Trust that choosing to be unity one with another will be an almost magical solution to an intractable problem.

Self United

Returning Us to Our True Nature

Yet there are things we can do to remove blocks to the awareness of love. This in itself will ease our way, and give us a happy experience. We need to get the idea of suspiciousness out of our minds; we need trust above all else. And trust we can have; just a decision to have it is enough to bring it to us. This does not mean that we will be gullible. We have our own good sense, and this is sense of the real Self, not the ego. When we place our faith in the inner Christ Self, we are far more likely to be right than to be wrong in our evaluations of others. Note that this does not mean “judgment” of others, for judging keeps us from attaining enlightenment. We need to simply rest in the assurance that if we are encouraged to avoid a particularly situation (or person), we will know how and where to do so. That is all.

Awareness of Love

“The only obstacle to enlightenment, to supreme knowledge, is fear. . .

“But fear overrides your awareness of love. Fear makes you lose sight of love. Therefore, I say with certainty that although you may do many things to reach God, if you are unwilling to put aside fear, none of what you may spiritually ‘do’ will help you, but rather it will bolster your ego.” Choose Only Love bk. 6, 1:II

Fear is not stronger than love, though. Negativity, which fear represents, is never stronger than positivity, which love represents. To believe that fear is impossible to overcome is to believe that there exists Someone or Something stronger than God. And we don’t believe this. The “devil,” or “Satan,” which might be said to be in a struggle with God, is simply illusion. In our understanding, the ego is the nearest thing that we have ever come to a devil.

With the law of attraction operating, we know that what we focus upon comes to be, in some form or other. And if we focus on praying for fear to disappear, we are focusing on negativity, which never works. Instead, make the simple shift to focusing on love in all our dealings. Ask to have our love increased. Ask to love ourselves, our brothers and sisters, nature (even), and God. Ask to have love so overwhelm us that we have no room for fear.

We are not perfect, and so there will come times when we are overwrought. But these times do not occur when we are experiencing a satori, a glimpse of Awakening. Those who have awakened do not focus on fear, and so their experience is quite different. In attempting to move toward enlightenment, we are encouraged to focus on what we want, not to insert a negative of what we do “not” want.

Ask to be overwhelmed by love today–God’s Love. This is one of the most powerful prayers that we can offer to the cosmos, and God listens.

Mistake that Could Not Happen but Did

A Greater Wisdom

“How can what continues to give in to fear know love? All your reasons for fear-based living have been discounted one by one. And yet you dare not try to live without it. Why? Because of the thoughts of the ego-mind. The ego-mind is concerned only with its own survival but it has you convinced it is your survival that depends on it. How can you be convinced to live as if the truth were otherwise? For only if you begin to live as if the truth were otherwise can you see that it truly is otherwise, or based on a wisdom other than what has come before.” (A Course of Love, T1:3.5)

We tremble in fear when we make short forays in to trying to live without fear. Fear seems a given, something that will protect us.

We are misinformed. Fear is not necessary for our continued survival in this sometimes harsh world. The reason that we think that fear is needed is the lingering influence of the ego-mind, the insane part of us that continues to dwell just below the surface of our good sense.

The ego is gone from us when we have assimilated the truths of A Course of Love. We may not realize this, we may still struggle. But the ego only has a residue of false thinking that continues to infiltrate our moments of reflection. We have always thought with the ego-mind, and so to hear Jesus say in ACOL that we are done with the ego is immediately enough to raise doubts in our minds. How can we be done with the ego? We see its influence constantly.

We need to let go. We need to trust what Jesus is telling us. If he says that the ego is no more for us, then let the mind rest in that knowledge—for it is knowledge, not perception. Just rest. And the truth of the elimination of the ego will dawn on a calmer mind in ourselves.

A greater wisdom is available to us, and we ought to take advantage of that greater wisdom forthwith. Let the smudge of ego on our minds be lightened by our prayer consideration that perhaps the ego is just a mirage, seeming to be ahead of us on our pathway, but actually not representing anything but illusion.

Return to Relationship

“In seeing the self as separate you have known fear and have been forced to reconcile fear with love. Now, in coming back to relationship and union with me you have realized that you are not separate and now have striven against the ‘opposing’ force of separation. With the acceptance of the Christ in you, you are returned to relationship and need no longer strive against the ‘opposing’ force of separation, for you no longer know it.” (A Course of Love, D:Day40.8)

As we turn from separation, we turn from fear to love. We may even strive actively to turn from fear to love. We have realized that we aren’t separate (as we could never be, for we are part of God), and we have striven to get past these ideas of the ego with every force of our personality. When we accept the Christ in us, we understand that we have returned to a relationship that has long eluded us, and now we no longer need to strive against separation. We know intimately that we are joined with the Christ Self; we know intimately that we are “separate” no longer.

To Be Free of Fear & in Perfect Peace

“You have one test, as sure as God, by which to recognize if what you learned is true. If you are wholly free of fear of any kind, and if all those who meet or even think of you share in your perfect peace, then you can be sure that you have learned God’s lesson, and not your own.” (A Course in Miracles FIP ed., T-14.XI.5)

This quotation comes early in the Text, and this is perhaps surprising, because it gives us a secret by which we can know if we are assimilating the message of A Course in Miracles. We are, though, at this juncture perhaps unable to affirm that pass this test.

Are we free of fear? Do others think of us with peace only?

This is a hard test. Even those who have been on the pathway to Awakening for a long time may not feel sure about their freedom from fear, or their choice to spread only peace.

How might we do these things? How might we be free of fear and embodying peace always?

There are no easy answers. A Course in Miracles in its entirety is seeking to bring us to this end. But we can begin. And we begin with study of ACIM. We commune with God. We listen to the Holy Spirit, Whose guidance will take us home to God surely. We walk alongside Jesus, in imagination holding his hand. This is the Holy Trinity, and in this we build on what we learned from the New Testament. ACIM now seeks to take us where we are in our progress as human beings in this Twenty-First Century. We have somewhat different needs in our salvation than people years ago had. We have become changed people. And we now know what the ego is, and we realize that its ways are not best for us. If we are spiritually smart, we will reach for forgiveness of our brother as our pathway. This is the means that A Course in Miracles is using to take us to God. This is our salvation, our access to Awakening.

Speak to God today in your effort to move closer to Him in daily life. Follow guidance for the best pathway in everything.

Our Internal Love Is Most Important

“Loss of love comes from only one source. Call it fear or call it separation but it is still the same. For in your separated state you ask that love make you special to someone else, and that one special to you. You think this is what love is for, and so you make of it something it is not and only call it love.” (C:14.22)

“If you do not believe you can reverse or ‘turn back’ to the state in which you existed before the original error, then you never shall.” (A Course of Love, C:17.12)

Within the separation, the illusory separation from God that hasn’t actually happened, it is impossible for us to be contented aside from special relationships. And, of course, these do not content us long, for we ask both too much and too little of them. Special relationships are fraught with fear. We fear being alone again, that this special one will love less (or leave), or that we (even though together still) do not love equally.

These concepts are all meaningless to a holy relationship, which seeks never to take, but always to give—though we know that giving and receiving are one in love. We will be contented when we give up the idea of having special relationships. Not that these relationships will be snatched away from us—no, never—but that we will never be happy on a continual basis until we have transformed our loves into holy loves.

Fear then will slip away. We know that if we lose one form of love, another will take its place. While we do not try to substitute loves for one another, we do recognize that it is our internal love that is most important. And this means that all Selves are One, all loves are One. Fear has no basis for gaining a foothold when ideas such as this are given sway in a life.

Love and Fear

We think that we live complex lives, and, indeed, the ego has reveled in that thought. But the only thing that happened, the detour into fear, was a shift from love to fear. We made this transition as quite young children. And we are led down a path toward living in fear that has always been hard to reverse.

From Ego-Self to Christ-Self

“I repeat, and will do so again and again, that the ego-self is gone from you. Whether you fully realize this or not matters not. This A Course of Love has accomplished. Now the choice is before you to do one of two things. . .to proceed toward love or fear. If you proceed with fear you will assemble a new ego-self, an ego-self that perhaps will seem superior to the old, but which will nonetheless still be an ego-self. If you proceed with love, you will come to know your Christ-Self.” (A Course of Love, T3:4.8)

Yes, the ego-self is gone from us. The first book of A Course of Love accomplished this, making us The Accomplished. It is not ego that says this. It is the unparalleled good sense. Jesus says it. Can we not believe it?

If we continue to walk with fear. we are in danger, for we will be tempted to form a new ego-self. Jesus says in fact that we will form a new ego-self, if fear intrudes on our peace. We need to get rid of the fear, for our right minds depend on it.

On the other hand, if we proceed with love, we will come to know our Christ-Self, the inner essence that is our real Self.

We need to make the distinction between fear and love to make the right choices upcoming. We need to know that we are safe in this world, that nothing can harm us, that the blood that we see is merely catsup, and that illusions are not reasons to be frightened. We need to see reality, and reality will launch us toward love. We see reality when we trust, for, as A Course in Miracles affirms, trust is the bedrock of our new thought system, the thought system of love, of the Christ-Self. We give up fear when we recognize how divisive a force it has been in clogging up our minds. Our minds are precious indeed, but we have walked with an insane mind.

Now we can walk with a sane mind by listening to our heart. Our heart is our saving grace in this new reality in which we find ourselves. Only our heart can save us now. Let us proceed by listening to our heart, a part of our being that needs no proof of God. In our inner essence, we just know that we are not all alone in the universe. That we have an indwelling spirit that means us well. And that that indwelling spirit is God Himself.

Wisdom that Has Not Come Before

We tremble in fear when we make short forays in to trying to live without fear. Fear seems a given, something that will protect us.

Separation / Fear

“Your attempt at individuation and extension, an attempt consistent with the nature of your being, failed only because you experienced separation rather than differentiation, and fear rather than love.” (A Course of Love, D:Day40.6)

What, eons ago, were we trying to do when we enter physical matter on earth? We were not at risk of avoiding God, as long as we didn’t think that we needed separation from Him. We needed only to be differentiations—individuations—of God, experiencing physical form in this new environment, new for souls such as we.

But we did think that we need to experience what life was like to be separate from God. This is why this experiment, at first, failed. To live without God, without communing with God, we needed to construct a separate existence ruled by a separate thought: the ego. And so we dropped into pain and suffering, for nothing that deems itself apart from God can survive well in such a harsh climate as we have found ourselves.

We fell into fear rather than love, and that has made all the difference. We didn’t known what we were getting into. Long have we rued that day, though we didn’t know what we were rejecting. Our attempt at individuation thus became known as the “fall of man,” and we have since struggled mightily to find our way back to our Maker.

It is important to note that extension into physical form was not the problem; it was only how we lived it that was (and is) the problem. Now we need to recognize that Awakening to reality is what we need. We have taught ourselves not to commune with God, and this is a most unnatural way to live. In our finite minds, we can’t know what best to do next. Only supernatural help will guide us rightly. And this supernatural help is right within us, in the Christ mind that dwells within.

Let’s make the right choice today, and seek the guidance that only communing with our depths can bring about.

Listen to Our Heart

“Uncertainty will not now come to teach you lessons you have already learned but will only visit you as an echo from the past. It is a habit, a pattern of the old thought system. All you must do is not listen to it. Its voice will not be gentle or full of love. Its voice will hold the unmistakable edge of fear.” (A Course of Love, T3:10.11)

When we refuse to surrender to divine love, we are racked with uncertainty about life and everything in it. We are like wind socks, buffeted about by the breeze, a gentle breeze that we mistake for the direst emergency. This uncertainty will fall away when we know enough to surrender to God. What uncertainty still plagues will only be a “echo” (T3:10.11) from the fear-ridden state of illusory separation. This echo will be fearful, and this fear is the way that we will recognize that it is a lamentable part of our past. It cannot do anything to us now except to make us uneasy. But it can and will do that, until we give up separation and its concomitant independence as a bad idea.

Don’t listen to uncertainty about anything in our lives. Let guidance from within give us the certainty about what to say and do and even think. The heart’s advice will stand us in good stead now. Listen to that which calls to us. Listen to our heart.

Loss of Love the Greatest Fear

“And all of these, those who would admit to fear, and those who would not, would still believe that love exists despite fear’s claim upon it, and think that they are lucky to have found a love to shield them for a little while from all the other things they fear. And yet the greatest fear of all is that of loss of love. You who have given everything to be alone and separate fear most of all that which you have given everything to attain. For what is loss of love but confirmation of your separate state? What is loss of love but being left alone?” (A Course of Love, C:14.21)

We thought that we wanted to be separate from God; this is part of the theology of traditional Christianity as well as A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love. Separation would be that we would be independent, on our own, isolated. Yet in the illusory actuality (for we could never actually separate from God, being part of Him) we have been the most afraid of being alone. Try as hard as we can, we still cling, desperately, to the special love relationships that would save us from ourselves—or so we think. So the living out of isolation has actually been the source of our greatest fears.

We fear being alone more than anything because somewhere in our deluded minds is the certainty that we are living amiss, and that a furious God will take revenge on us for denying Him. This is as true for atheists as anyone else, for each of us of whatever persuasion has a religion in which we put our faith. If this religion is ego-tainted, we will fear all the more, and what religion in our world is not ego-tainted? It is only in giving up our false idols of isolation and separation that we come even close to finding our way safely through this world.

We find our way safely in this world by acknowledging what our heart tells us. And this heart does not require “proof” of God’s existence. It is rightly said that there are no atheists in foxholes (a somewhat outdated reference recalling the first world war). When we get scared about our predicament, we do turn to what we hope will save us. And A Course of Love proclaims that this is the saving grace for what we understand to be our heart. It alone does not seek to have divine proof; it simply knows that we are not alone in all the universe. We are not isolated and independent; we are meant to share our living with others. And A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love call these relationships, the “holy” relationships. Most all of us have experienced loss of love in some form, with somebody. Somebody let us down, we cry. We think that if only this special someone had loved us for ourselves alone, we would be saved. This makes of love a mockery. And it places in our midst a scavenger that would devoir true love. We do not have to pin our hopes on one someone (or several someones) who can save us. We need only rest in the knowledge—and it is knowledge—that we are never meant to be alone, that divine love is there to protect and keep us safe. And once we give up the attributes of specialness, our relationships one to another will indeed be holy. We have to give up specialness in relationships, we are told. But the relationships will not be snatched from us, to leave us cowering in the dust. The special relationships turned holy will be a foretaste of Heaven, right here on earth.

World of Love

“Now, as we reverse this set of circumstances, and replace the world of fear with a world of love, there can be no more weighing of love against fear. God did not create fear and will not be judged by it. All judgment is the cause of fear and this effort to weigh love’s strength against fear’s veracity. While you chose to believe and live in a world the nature of which was fear, you could not know God. You could not know God because you judged God from within the nature of fear, believing it to be your natural state.” (A Course of Love, T4:3.7)

We thought that it was protective to have fear in our arsenal of defenses. But did it ever work very well? We got anxious often, but did this really protect us?

We don’t need fear’s protection. We don’t need protection at all. We have no need for defense against anything. We will be warned when we need to do anything to “protect” ourselves because we are in danger of some kind. God does not leave us defenseless; He is our defense, if we ever need to have a defense in this world at all, and that is debatable.

Defenses do what they would protect against.

We thought that fear was a natural reaction, not realizing that it was, instead, evidence of living insanity. We need to replace this world of fear we have made into a world of love, and only then can we relax in the grace that God gives us. We need to make a definite decision to give up judgment, and this much we can do. We can determine that we will not judge ourselves, others, or God, and we can stand by this as a promise. The world will never again look as dismal. We will have found means to emerge from a world of insanity. We will walk into the light.

Effortful Living Transformed

Even the most loving parent, like unto your most loving image of God, having brought a child into a fearful world, became subject to the tests of time. Thus did the world become a world of effort with all things in it and beyond it, including God, weighed and balanced against the idea of fear.” (A Course of Love, T4:3.6)

We were raised in a dysfunctional environment—all of us, regardless of how loving our parents tried to be toward us. They too partook of fear, and thus we were nurtured in fear. The world became a place in which we sought the approval of our parents, and this approval became something to earn, something about which we must exert effort.

Our relationships continued from this first one, of parents to children (us). We sought to grow through achievement, our own efforts, and the world became a fairly grim place indeed. We projected this fear upon our image of the God within, though we didn’t know that He was within. Most of us saw God as an external Creator, someone, something like Santa Claus, who knew everything that we thought and did, and weighed it in the balance to decide if we were good little boys and girls. This is indeed a fearful way to view God, and we imagine that this might indeed hurt Him (if the Creator were to have an ego such as we have, which He doesn’t).

So we grew up, supported by our fearful ideas of this world. Only religious convictions can actually save us from the dilemma in which we find ourselves. And these do not necessarily have to be of a traditional sense. God is God of the secular as well. And He will provide. We need only ask, though we are apt to forget the asking part when we are fearful.

Choose Love in Our World

“Think you not that reason opposes love, for love gives reason its foundation. The foundation of your insane world is fear. The foundation of Heaven, your true home, is love. The same world based upon these different foundations could not help but look quite different.” (A Course of Love, C:14.9)

We don’t have to have blind faith in the precepts of A Course of Love. We are told, “love gives reason its foundation.” (C:14.9) We are further told that the foundation of our insane world is fear. And the foundation of Heaven, our true home, is love. It is strongly implied that the way that we look at our world determines whether it is hell or Heaven. The way that we look. That is perception, and we know from A Course in Miracles that projection makes perception. What we feel inwardly will determine what we see in the outer world. And if we are feeling fear, we will see an insane world that is violent and destructive. If we are feeling love, we will see Heaven.

Is this too simplistic? Is this even true? Can the same images that flow before our eyes seem fearful or loving, based on what we are projecting? Yes. For the fearful mind sees more reason to fear, and the loving mind sees only that in its sight are lamentable things, but no cause for fear. The loving mind does not reject the outer world of insanity as not there; it sees that it is there, but it is only illusion, the illusion of insanity. And so it gives that outer, violent and destructive, world no credence.

“The same world based upon these different foundations could not help but look quite different.” (C:14.9) Yes! This is the secret for staying in this world, but seeing it differently. This is the secret of having peace in the midst of chaos. Choose fear or love, and all the world will change according to the emotion that is chosen.

This Too Shall Pass

“When you are anxious, realize that anxiety comes from the capriciousness of the ego, and know this need not be. You can be as vigilant against the ego’s dictates as for them.” (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-4.IV.4)

Anxiety dogs our steps, for anxiety is the most prevalent form of fear. We have an ego that is out of control, has always been out of control. And so we can easily recognize capriciousness when confronted with anxiety, for there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. We do, surely, attach reasons to our anxiety, but this is grasping at straws. Twisting in the wind. We know, deep inside, that something that is in us, but not real—the ego—is calling the shots. And we would not have it so.

We can be vigilant against letting anxiety turn our days into a living hell. It doesn’t take much vigilance, really. If we never let the anxiety escalate, if we go within at the first signs of agitation. Turn to the inner Self Who knows best how to turn aside the calling of the ego. Don’t wait, hoping the uneasy feeling will subside. Go within directly, immediately. And watch the see if you don’t sense help from a Higher Power as you go within.

Being able to give up anxiety is powerful motivation. Who can be at the best when confronted with the verge of panic? Nobody. Ever. And so we seek, once again, to turn aside from the ego. We don’t actively “resist” the ego, for to do is to make resistance real, and the act of turning away too strident. The ego becomes strong in strife, and strife is what we have when we seek to force a solution by shouting “no” at our anxiety, “no” at the ego.

Just turn aside, gently. Meditate. Pray. Write in a journal. The way will open to a smooth pathway once again.

If agitation doesn’t go away, then perhaps it has something to say to us. The ego will try to speak to us, but what it says is only confused thinking, best left alone. Don’t try to make sense out of its ranting. You can’t do it. It is impossible.

Be gentle with yourself when in the throes of an egoic attack. This too shall pass. And so it shall.

Feelings Come from Love

“Your feelings in truth come from love, your response to them is what is guided by fear. Even feelings of destruction and violence come from love. You are not bad, and you have no feelings that can be labeled so. Yet you are misguided concerning what your feelings mean and how they would bring love to you and you to love.” (A Course of Love, C:5.11)

Jesus forms a startling assertion about love and fear, one that we wouldn’t expect. He says that all of our feelings come from love, in essence because we are not “bad” (C:5.11). A Course in Miracles says that we have the “innocence of God” (T-III.17:2), and so Jesus is here asserting to the same thought. How our feelings of destruction and violence can come from love may remain nebulous to us, but Jesus believes that we have just misunderstood ourselves. We have been misguided about how to bring love to ourselves. So we have made wrong choices in our love, choices that gave us destruction and violence.

Do we not often noticed that nobody who is embroiled in violence and destruction thinks that he/she is at fault about anything that is bad? History is replete with wars that were fought in the name of God, believing that one is doing God’s will in the antagonism. This is one way of looking at love gone astray. This is one way to realize that fear has done nothing, that it is only our misperceptions about love and how it ought to be expressed that have done us in.

Our feelings are not bad, Jesus says. We only need to channel those feelings in the right direction, seeing love where it really is, avoiding feelings of destruction and violence, pain and suffering. Then we will find love’s fruits to be our chosen just desserts. We will have taken another step on love’s pathway. Another step toward Awakening/Christ-consciousness.

Perfect Love

“Know first that this is fear.

Fear arises from lack of love.

The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love.

Perfect love is the Atonement.” (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-2.VI.7)

Perfect love is the “undoing” of what has been an albatross around our necks for eons. We are moving toward Awakening, and as we take steps there, and we will fear less as we love more. This is the best way, the only way to welcome God into our lives. We must ask for help if we find our propensity to love, weak. And if we find ourselves in fearful states of mind all too often. These two characteristics—fearful, anxious feelings and a lack of love while experiencing those feelings—are easily overcome when we go to God. If tangled up or mixed up, go to God. He will take you into His arms and comfort and heal you.

Can we get perfect love by willing it? No. That is why this favorite quotation is so puzzling for so many of us. We want perfect love, because we so dislike the fearful feelings that we experience. This desire is the practical motivation. But perfect love is held out to us by God Himself, and we are led to that eventuality when we open ourselves to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Jesus was the essence of the Atonement, his gift to us.

The Atonement as gifted us by Jesus, as seen by A Course in Miracles, is not a sacrificial gift. Jesus would have us see the wholly benign lesson of the crucifixion, and then look beyond that to the resurrection. The resurrection is seen as the promise of eternal life to all of us. And whether or not we can accept that the resurrection really happened, Jesus still welcomes us. He does not need intellectual assent. He only needs the heartfelt response, the response from our inner being where we do not need intellectual proof.

Ask God today to allow the experience of perfect love to come to you. It will come first in fleeting glimpses, but then, as time passes and we remain true to God, the times of perfect love extend. We know perfect love, and the fears and anxieties of daily life drop from our experience.

Ask! The Only Thing to Do if Uncertain

“Before you choose to do anything, ask me if your choice is in accord with mine. If you are sure that it I, there will be no fear.” (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-2.VI.4)

Of course! Here Jesus is speaking before he has introduced us sufficiently to the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He wants us to imagine asking him if any given action is in accord with wishes that he would have. Is the action loving? Is it kind? Is it free of attack? Questions such as these will put us on the right track.

By what right does Jesus ask us to consider his wishes in regard to any action we take? He is in charge of the Sonship, and he is attuned to the miracle-mindedness and the revelation-readiness of all of us. He is our leader, our teacher, our guide. And so it is not foreign to consider his wishes when we want to make good decisions.

What a lovely way to rid ourselves of fear! We need only be sure that our choices are in accord with what Jesus would want. Can we be assured of ridding ourselves of fear if we do this? Jesus says so, and his word is enough for me, for I believe that he did indeed channel A Course in Miracles. And I do believe that he is in charge of the Sonship. So my course is clear: I will ask, internally, what I think Jesus would do, and I will take this guidance as my own.

Many people in traditional Christian faith have recommended that individuals ask, “What would Jesus do?,” when confronted with any dilemma. The words of A Course in Miracles here suggest something very similar. It is words like this that puts ACIM in direct lineage from the Bible.

Never fear that Jesus will give us something more to worry about, if we get the indication that what we are about to do is out of line with what Jesus would wish. He is a gentle teacher, and he always means us well. He will not to anything to raise our anxiety level, and therefore our fear (and our worry).

So ask when confronted with dilemmas. Imagine what Jesus would say. And we will be well-guided. Depend on it.

Love of God

“Each time you think a loving thought, you have literally blessed all infinite realms of creation. Each time you have become unwittingly identified with a fearful thought, you have separated yourself from the perfect Love of God, and you have denied yourself your function.” (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 18, Page 218)

There is a bigger reason to avoid anxiety as much as possible. Fear separates us from God. We are often failing to trust Him, and this is why we have the fear in the first place.

God will take care of us. But we won’t recognize His blessing at all if we doubt that He will care for us, regardless of what is happening in our world, in our lives. We are living in a protected environment as long as our thoughts and our heart are with Him. If we hesitate, negating God’s good action toward us is easy to do. Then the secular law of attraction moves into manifestation, and we suffer in needlessly bad ways.

If we keep our eyes on God, we will experience His Love. If we are having trouble sensing His Love, what we must do is to get quiet, be still, settle down, and stop so much frantic “doing.” Just focus on “being,” which is what He wants most of the time, anyway. In the quietness we will touch our souls.

And it is our souls that remain in the bosom of God.

Miracles Represent Freedom from Fear

“Miracles represent freedom from fear. ‘Atoning’ means ‘undoing.’ The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles.” (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-1.I.26)

Have you ever felt conflicted and agitated? In turmoil. Of course. All of us experience such things on a regular basis. And have you surrendered, turned it all over to God, and quickly felt a sure sense that all goes well? This is a miracle. This is our freedom from fear, from conflict, from agitation, from turmoil.

We are undoing the flow of events as we have known them—or, more precisely, the Holy Spirit within us is undoing that flow of events for us. And with this expansive change we give up fear. We have no reason to fear when we are surrendered, completely and totally. And the guidance that we will receive will be sure, for we ask with an open heart.

Ask for a quiet sleep tonight. Let this miracle be shown you. If sleeplessness comes instead, ask what you need to resolve with God tonight. There is always a reason for sleeplessness. The same for sleep. The miracle is always right on the beam. We don’t have to fear that God will not have His way with us when we have opened ourselves to Him. Ask for the undoing of fear now. This will be right in line with accepting the Atonement for ourselves. And accepting Jesus’s contribution to the Sonship is essential.

Jesus’s contribution is not seen in A Course in Miracles as being the atoning nature of his shed blood. This sacrificial nature is denied entirely. We are, instead, to look to the resurrection and all that it promises us about eternal life. If you have let the intellect intrude, and wonder, “How could this be?,” then suspend disbelief a bit and let your heart tell you what you need to know. A miracle will replace disbelief. Not that you will ever resolve intellectual doubt that easily, but a mystical understanding will encompass the whole for you. You will know that Jesus’s Atonement for us is real. Whether or not we intellectually grasp it.

Miracles are sure. Miracles are certain. And if they do not occur, then something has gone awry. We have either turned to attack, turned to judgment, or turned to making plans against contingencies to come. These three aspects of our “normal” experience are all that it takes to hide the miracle from us. And when we turn aside from this trio, we will wonderingly see that all was not lost for us, just misplaced.

Living in Love

“[L]iving with fear was the reality of the contraction in which you lived. Now we begin to live consciously without fear, joyfully recognizing that we are the resurrection and will live in love.” Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:III

I know that this assertion is true; I know from long life experience. I used to live with the anxiety of a stressful job, and now that I am no longer in the work force, I am amazingly calm, sometimes sleepy in the mornings, something I resist.

I can make accommodations so that I am more alert, living in Love and not fear. I have read that it takes more patience to live calmly than to live in agitation. We have been used to dramas, dramas that kept us uptight. Now all of us can adjust to a better way, if we have a mind to. We can adjust to peace without highs and lows that are emblematic of an egoic existence.

Here Jesus says that we are the “resurrection.” He is seeing us in a new era, the new time of Christ, the second coming of Christ. Elsewhere Choose Only Love asserts that we are living in the end times. This does not mean the annihilation of the earth, but it does mean the annihilation of the difficult ways of the ego.

Accept calm when it comes. Accept calm in this new era. And be grateful for it.

Our lives will smooth out, and we will know a better way of walking through the new world that we will be creating.

Live with Full Hearts

“As that first thought of separation is dreamt. . .You could say a drop of milk . . . seems to separate and take on its own energy. And that we have called fear. . .the experience of contraction . . . .” (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 16, Page 192)

Fear is only a dream. Only. The image here is of a glass of milk being poured, and a drop of milk splashes upward, and that splash of milk seems to be separate and different from the rest, and in the separation, fear is born.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can stay merged with the whole glass of milk. Our dream of fear can be left entirely in our past, a journey we took that would lead us to recognize how imperative it is to live fear’s opposite, love. How do we do this?

The most important consideration is how we spend our time. If we commune with our Maker often and well, we will feel His love surrounding and supporting us. This is prayer. This is real prayer.

We can leave the contraction of fear by being expansive in our relationship to our brothers and sisters. And loving them. Love cancels out many wrongs, and the most noticeable wrong that it cancels is the experience of fear. When our hearts are full, we have no room for fear.

And fear leaves us entirely.

Spirit

“You are Spirit. You are that which has come forth as a ray of Light from the Mind of God, as a sunbeam to the sun. In that form-less beginning, you are consciousness itself.” (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 16, Page 188)

Our Spirit is what is real, and our Spirit has no form. Our form, we can believe, came later, and because we made an ego, we have had quite a rocky time in form. Our consciousness is one with God, though we are finite and He is unlimited.

We need to return our form to God’s fold. If we can relinquish the ego, we will, according to A Course of Love, walk along the road to Christ-consciousness and embody the “elevated Self of form.” Many of our brothers and sisters are expanding their consciousness even as I write, so why not all of us? We do have some choice in the matter, though God has the final say.

When we remove fear and judgment from our range of emotions, we are preparing ourselves for God’s action in Awakening, enlightenment, Christ-consciousness. If we feel unsure how we could ever stop being fearful, or ever stop judging ourselves and our brothers and sisters, we need only withdraw into prayer and communion with our God. He will tell us what to do. He wants us to move to a new, expanded mind and heart, and He will always be right with us to speed along that eventuality.

Nothing to Fear

“You have a phrase in your world: ‘There is nothing to fear but fear itself.’ That is ninety-eight percent accurate. . . . The final two-percent would be to say there is nothing to fear, since fear is only a temporary insanity, and your right-mindedness is but a choice away.” (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 15, Page 182)

Jesus is saying here that we can choose to eliminate fear from our experience, by making a new choice.

We may need some help, though, and the greatest help comes from God. He will calm us down immeasurably. When we settle down, do our best to relax, and clear our mind by turning to our heart, we are doing all that we can do. The rest comes from God.

What we give we receive. And when we give peace in our talks with God, He returns that peace to us in a palpable way that we sense, if not right away, in the moments as they pass by and we just think of Him.

This works. Put aside any skepticism, and let God have His way with us.

Awakening Is Simple, without Effort

“The Way of Transformation is simple, for the way of efforting one’s way into the Kingdom cannot flow from the guidance of the Holy Spirit.” (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 14, Page 169)

We move into transformation when our heart is full, when Love overflows our being. We don’t get God’s attention by imploring relentlessly and often. He knows when we want to think that we are ready for Awakening. He doesn’t always agree.

So we must be patient, know that by our effort we can do only so much. A Course of Love counsels the removal of fear and judgment from our thoughts and feelings. When we do this, we are removing the blocks to the awareness of love. And that is what we need to do.

The only thing we need to do. Awakening may come suddenly, when we least expect it. I know someone who had suppressed anger for years, and then when he blurted out his discontent, he knew immediately that grace had descended upon him, and he felt intuitively that this Awakening would last.

God knew all along that he was cloaking his anger, and this very cloaking was standing in the way of genuine loving. And God certainly wants us genuine.

Know that efforting will stand in the way. Be ourselves, warts and all. Then God can act in us to remove the impediments that have kept us from Awakening. And we will find that removing fear and judgment, in genuineness, takes no effort at all.

Being Who We Really Are

“The wind does what is natural to wind. The purpose of existence is to be its true nature. That is why, we have spent so much time reminding you of who you really are.

“Being aware of who you really are allows you to live as who you truly are.” Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:I

Often we try to live up to an ideal that is only in our mind. “Being who we are” is something more substantial than just an appeal to ideals. Knowing who we are takes some deep thought, some mystical insight, and a connection to God Himself Who will guide us to blossom as He intended.

We are individuals who best live in love, not fear, and especially not egoic fear. We know that we are really One with all our brothers and sisters, with whom, if things are good, we live in holy relationship. We unite with the depth of ourselves, the Christ-Self. As the Christ-Self learns over time, we see a bloom come to all we encounter, for projection makes perception. What we are inwardly, we see as external to ourselves. We are projecting “reality” as we view it.

God wants us to enjoy ourselves in this lifetime. Often we don’t, because we know pain, sorrow, even suffering. But these things can disappear more often than not when we are keen to follow guidance as we know it. God means us well. He does not visit bad things upon us. Usually our free will has brought the more unfortunate parts of our lives to us.

Ask today, deep in contemplation and prayer, for an understanding of the personality that has been given us. We do have some say in the matter, of course. Some of life is meant to be play. When we develop the best that is in us, we know a joy that cannot be known by anybody who is simply playing a part. We know a joy because our innermost essence is divine, and when we touch the divine, we sense God’s love in everything about us.

Release

“Concerns are a thought program. I ask you now to observe that mechanism, recognized it for what it is, and accept the fact that it comes from fear. It is fear of uncertainty, of not knowing what the future will bring. This fear of uncertainty generates a state of anguish that must first be accepted, and then released.” Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

Jesus would have us take a look at our fears, and then, after looking at them, release them. He would not have us just try to dismiss thoughts of uncertainty. This dismissing never works very well, and the subconscious is less likely to be healed if we eject bad thoughts without considering them. Of course, we don’t want to make them “real” to us (something A Course in Miracles warns against), and so it seems to be me that the moments of considering need to remain brief, not an obsession.

Acceptance is written all over what Jesus counsels in his channeled works. If we cower, we will not accept, and then we will remain in anguish. Just know that there is an Answer, that Jesus is right here with us, when we ask, helping us to move beyond fear.

If we have lived well in the past, our future will be certain to go smoothly. Some fear death as the greatest uncertainty, but death is like walking through an open door, nothing to fear at all. If we have not lived well in the past, we can nevertheless entertain a course correction. We always get a second chance with Jesus.

Pray for the release of concerns and worries, the release of our own hesitancy in the face of a future that will always remain uncertain. We cannot see the future, and I think this a great blessing.

But it also means that the future may be brighter than we anticipate, and when we focus on those bright things, they tend to happen.

Living in Love

The only two emotions, fear and love, are polar opposites to one another. The degree to which we open to love is the degree to which the contraction of fear leaves us. If we are feeling fear, ever, maybe we ought simply to stop, just stop, and ask ourselves in what way we are not being loving.

This will make all the difference. Love cancels out fear, always and forever. It is true, however, that fear and anxieties may have such a toehold in us that we can’t, right away, focus on love. First we need to relax. Let the fear sweep over us, but do nothing about it. It will come to a conclusion as we relax. Open then to love and loving feelings. Think of something or someone whom we truly love. This shift in feeling will open the way to a tremendous surge, and in this surge, a surge of love, and Love (meaning God), we will be released enough to drop the fear from our mind and heart.

Experiment today, if you are in fear. Let relaxation quell the emotion of anxiety, and then move serenely into the feeling of love.

Our day will brighten. Our mind, through Christ, is very powerful: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” Let the heart rule the mind in this instance of turning to love.

The heart already knows how to do this.

Retain Only What Is Love

“My beloveds, I cannot fail to mention that you must take charge of everything that you experience in yourself that is not love.” Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:III

WE have some power in our Awakening! This message from Jesus asserts it. WE must take charge of our thinking, being quick to dismiss those thoughts that are not loving. If we do this consistently, we might believe that our Awakening will come sooner rather than later. We will have made a difference.

We can’t “prepare” ourselves, though, as the Holy Spirit (A Course in Miracles) or the Christ-Self (A Course of Love) can. The part that we do out of the whole is actually very little. A Course in Miracles says that the part of the Holy Spirit is disproportionate to ours. That means that we need His constant help.

We experience what is happening in our mind. And we know that we have to listen to our heart, let our heart take the lead.

A Course of Love says that the barriers to Awakening, the impediments to the awareness of love, are fear and judgment. Fear is seen as the opposite of love, with all feelings either being fear or love. Judgment is described separately, but I see it as a subset of fear. After all, we don’t love others if we are afraid of them or of what they might do to us.

What we experience that is not love should be a red flag, always and forever. Then take steps to remove that other feeling from our awareness. It can be done. It just consists of dismissing the thought that brought on the feeling, and then substituting positive love as the anecdote.

Try it today, for many of us will experience feelings that are not love in the course of our walk. Substitute love, for it is the strongest, most all-encompassing, feeling of all. And God, and we, are made of it.

Love Will Be the Only Thing You Experience

“Rather than trying to eliminate fear, focus instead on not leaving anything out of your consciousness. As you do this, fear will disappear without the slightest effort, and love will be the only thing you experience.” COL bk.2, 19:II

What practical advice, advice I have never heard before! Fear is illusion, and only love is real; this is why this advice works. “Fear will disappear without the slightest effort. . . .” This quotation says that we are not to struggle to reject anything. We know that the effort to reject actually makes the thing rejected stronger. It is like trying not to think of the elephant in the room. We just have to turn aside gently, and here we are learning that even that action of turning away is unwarranted.

Welcome into our consciousness any feeling, any thought. This mystical interpretation of how fear will leave us is most encouraging. We don’t actually have to work to dismiss thoughts that we don’t want. The thoughts, being illusion and never real in the first place, will just leave, once brought to the surface of the mind. It is only that which is in the subconscious, undetected, that keeps us lingering in illusion, in fear.

This is good advice from Choose Only Love.

Now we seek to put it into practice.

Being

“To be the being that experiences and to bring that experience to consciousness without the slightest fear of anything that we may feel or think, is what will allow us to go wherever we go and do whatever we do without fear.” COL bk.2, 19:II

These words constitute a practical way to live without fear. We know that we cannot live in fear and experience Christ-consciousness, and we all need to move to this greater experience of Love—something that beckons to us constantly. To “be” the being that we are, experiencing in depth, and not suppressing this experience—yes, this is what we must do. Not suppressing our experiences will therefore bring our experiences to full consciousness. We don’t need to live an unconscious life, something that leads us to hurt others without really meaning to do so.

The lack of fear, a turn to love instead, will build upon itself. I know that feeling love, and Love (God), mitigates against a negative attitude. Low moods simply dissipate when we express love to our nearest and dearest. A settled good will toward all of humanity then comes about, for we have discovered how to turn to that which matters.

Focus on “being” today instead of constantly riding the treadmill of “doing.” Being is the way of the future, the way of great relationships with others. Our doing has all too often had an egoic tilt.

Become aware of our living today. Awareness—a determination to feel what we feel and think what we think—will keep our feelings and thoughts from going underground. We will live a fully conscious life, and this will enliven us and give us a better future to look forward to.

Overcome Fear with Love

“Fear never came from anything external because the universe as a whole is neutral; it does not and cannot ever do anything to you.” COL bk.2, 19:II

We made fear in the “fall of man” or separation from God—after we made the ego. We were too afraid to live alone, and we still feel that way. If we commune with our Maker, our Creator God, we will have no more need to sense fear because we will know that we are not alone. We will have overcome fear with love of the Highest.

“Is the universe friendly?” is a question that Einstein posed for us. Our answer must be “yes.” When we realize that this means neutrality in the happenings that surround us, we will often question, “How can this be?” This can be because how we experience events external to ourselves is always an internal choice. That is why the happenings in the universe are neutral. Different people have different experiences of the universe. This would not be true if the universe were causing our reaction. We do have commonality, as people, when the happenings are especially good or seem especially bad. But this does not mean the universe is not neutral.

The bad things we experience are actually illusion, for we live in a non-dualistic universe. All things are of God, including us, for we are part of Him. The only things that are true reality are the intangibles of love, harmony, peace, serenity.

We are safe in a safe universe. When we give up judgment, as A Course in Miracles tells us, we will know that we are safe. Regardless of how bad things get, there is another day, always and forever.

The universe and the things of the universe cannot hurt us. The blood is catsup, not real; and our own fears are overcome when we seek the love of our Creator.

Ask to overcome fear today. Love always wins in the end, for Love is God. And He always triumphs. There is no higher value than Love, Who is God.

Lovingly Accept

“Fear does not accomplish anything. It never made a dent in your soul. Thus when you eliminate the fear of your experience, and lovingly accept all that you are now and always—then you return to experiencing the purity of your virginal heart.” COL bk.2, 19:II

Our “virginal” heart is one that lives in love, the way it was before we thought we separated from God, the “fall of man.” Yes, our love is the panacea for all that ails us. Knowing that we are loved by our Creator will go a long way toward accepting whatever our lot in life is.

Fear is a non-entity, in reality. It does nothing except in our illusory experience. As this quotation says, “It never made a dent in your soul.” If we can just eliminate our “love” for fear, we will be well on our way to a satisfying existence.

Acceptance is writ large in the channeled writings we are receiving now. We are also to “allow” what happens, without taking it to heart unless it is good. Allowance sets us right with God. We assent to the myriad of details that make up our life. We say “yes” to life. We change only those things that speak to us for change. God would have us live a peaceful time in this world. If we rail against what is happening in our life, we only cement it in place. Just gently turn aside from what hurts.

We want purity. And we can have it, however undeserving our ego has made us feel. Now we are walking ever closer to Christ-consciousness, where the ego falls away.

Let us be grateful to a good God Who saves us from ourselves, for we are the engineers of all that hurts.

Love What Arises from Our Depths

“By loving everything that arises within you, you eliminate fear of yourself. By eliminating fear of yourself, you eliminate fear of your experience. By removing it [fear] from your innermost self, nothing and no one can make it arise again.” COL bk.2, 19:II

Many of us studied “positive thinking” for many years. But one thing that bothers me now is that we reject our negativism, and this takes effort. This quotation would have us embrace anything and everything that arises in our consciousness. We won’t have to judge ourselves so harshly for a stray thought that is not positive enough. We will simply love it away.

If we love everything that arises in us, we won’t be afraid of our mind anymore. Many of us have thought of our mind, especially our egoic mind, as the enemy. And that may be true. But rejection does not work, because what we resist becomes stronger. We need simply to turn aside from thoughts that we don’t want. Entertain something else, in the present moment.

If we are in a low mood, our thoughts will be negative. At such times Richard Carlson counsels us simply to relax and invite a graceful response. He says that if we don’t relax, we will be afraid of our own thoughts. And this is exactly what today’s quotation warns against.

There is no reason to be afraid of what arises from the depths of our mind to be healed. This rising from the depths is how we are prepared for Awakening, enlightenment, Christ-consciousness. We must see, with God’s help, that the subconscious is cleansed from the bottom up. This idea, from The Way of Mastery, makes perfect sense to those of us who have followed Freud.

Be gentle with ourselves today. Let fear fall away in the only way possible, by embracing love.

Loving Consciousness

“Can you begin to realize that it is entirely possible to walk in this world without the slightest hint of fear? This is possible—and necessary. This can be achieved today, when you sincerely acknowledge that everything you feel in your heart and everything you think in your mind can and should be embraced by your loving consciousness.” COL bk.2, 19:II

What a promise this is! No hint of fear can be achieved today! If we could only believe this strongly enough, I believe it would come to pass.

Again, love is the Answer. Our heart and mind must be overshadowed by a loving consciousness. And then we will see the evidence of what we read in today’s quotation. We embrace all in our heart and mind, leaving nothing out. But we don’t dwell on the past or the future, because we know that living in the present is the route to happiness. And happiness we can have when we live in love and banish fear.

This quotation also tells us that to walk in this world without the slightest hint of fear is “necessary.” We know that we cannot entertain Christ-consciousness as long as fear has a hold on us. Fear and Christ-consciousness cancel each other out.

Focus on the love that we already think about and feel. And then ask to have this love enlarged so that it covers our whole vision. Ask for the warmth of God to enfold us. This is a palpable experience, possible for all (though experienced, perhaps, in different ways for different people). If we trust enough, trust God enough, then we will know that we are safe in a sometime difficult world. We will thank God for the gift of life itself, and our desires for more, more, more will fall away.

The only “more” we will want will be love.

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