Express Ourselves!

“We have talked about the expression of feelings.  It is necessary.  For this, first we travel the path of the silence of the heart.  Then we allow being to express itself.  The manner in which this expression is realized will vary, given the vastness of what you are.  Embrace, sing, dance, cry, moan.  Express yourself!  – Choose Only Love, bk. V, 20:III

Jesus is here channeling the progression to Awakening, or enlightenment, also called Christ-consciousness or metanoia.  We are so diverse that never ought there to be any judgment about how our enlightenment unfolds.  Choose Only Love, in seven volumes, has as its purpose the healing of memory.  There is a progression to the healing of memory, for as The Way of Mastery also points out, all aspects of the mind must be brought to the light by coming up from the depths of the subconscious.

This may sound hard, but never forget that God is in charge.  And also we have help from other realms.  It is God’s will that we progress to our next stage of evolution, to Awakening, and for this our mind and heart work in conjunction.

Let our heart lead.  The message is in our feelings, and there is great depth as we touch God directly through our feelings.

He will do the rest.  God is also a “She,” and so we need to become accustomed to this terminology also.  God is also our Divine Mother.

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.

Be Aware

“Therefore, look upon that which resides within your awareness, within your consciousness. What are the things that you know that you know? What are the things that you would avoid? What are the feelings that you have not explored? What are the objects, the people, the places, the values that you strive for, that seem to thrill even the cells of the body? (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 8, Page 94)

Jesus is here asking us to have self-awareness, and surely self-awareness helps us to live good lives. If we know our inner being, we come a long way toward functioning well in the world. And in a better world that we will create, as A Course of Love says.

What are we sure we know? There may actually be very little of which we are very sure. Our egoic worlds have been turned upside down with our new reading, the new channelings of Jesus. And we may take some time to settle down. Let’s ask for Jesus’ blessing to eliminate our confusion, if it is confusion. We need to realize that the old egoic nonsense is truly gone, that we are living in the Christ-Self Who will function in a new way in a new world.

What would we avoid? Top on our list of what to avoid is surely a return to the ego. Pray that the egoic patterns will cease to enthrall us. Pray that we not return to the pit of egoic despair that we used to know.

What are our feelings? These feelings are highly important as we seek to create a new world. Let intuition rule our lives. Test out the insights, and I am sure that you will find that intuition is the very best way to live. It is the panacea to all ills.

What thrills us? That which speaks to our very core with happiness/joy is what we ought to pursue, for God placed in our minds and hearts the best ways, to be determined by the joy that we feel. Don’t forget to thank Him as we encounter joy on our everyday rounds.

Live today in the thrill of knowing that we will not return to our old ways of the ego.

We are walking ahead to a new day, a new day in a new world.

Our Feelings in Truth 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.” (ACOL, 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). ACIM 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.

Listen to Our Heart

Deny not the role of feeling in this dimension, for feeling is everything! (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 6, Page 78)

Jesus indicates that we have been thinking too much, that feeling is the manner of reaching God, our feeling self is all that it takes. When we are trying to remove the barriers to Love, it is through our feelings that we will discover whether or not we have been successful. Only our feelings can tell us that.

This is something we can know well. If we sense, through feelings, that we are making headway in removing the blocks to the awareness of love (as this is stated in A Course of Love), then we will be able to make adjustments if the feeling doesn’t “feel” right. We will know that we are not making headway.

That is all that is necessary. Get in touch with our heart. Our heart is where the feelings reside. And our mind will never be smart enough to understand these things. Our intellect won’t do it for us.

Listen to our heart as we seek to determine if we are removing barriers to love.

Just listen to our heart.

Confidence in Our Feelings Will Lead Us Home

“Confidence in your feelings will lead to confidence in your Self. While you think it is your access to unity that will be the more difficult to achieve and sustain, this will not be the case for most of you, for the simple reason that the certainty that comes from union will seem to come, at least initially, from a place other than the self. Because certainty seems to come from a place “other than” or beyond the self of form, you will instinctively have greater trust in it. You will believe it comes from a place “other than” or beyond the self of form because it comes in the form of certainty.” (ACOL, D:Day10.6)

We all want to have a good relationship to our feelings, and feelings are the precipitating force behind guidance. If we would act on what we feel, we would get along a lot better. Of course, this does not mean acting on hostile and aggressive feelings, for these are of a lower nature than what we are trying to achieve. Our dependence on our feelings to lead us through a good day will give us the certainty that we have lacked heretofore. We must not make ourselves wrong in our feelings. We must not chastise ourselves if we feel that we are not living up to some supposed “ideal.” This ideal is a false idol, as I have discussed in this blog before. Our feelings will not lead us wrong, if we keep our eyes on the prize of God, our Self, and our friend, Jesus.

We are used to looking outside ourselves for certainty. When we read something or feel something that seems a bit beyond what we can tell ourselves, we think, “Ah, that is right; that has the ring of truth.” But we need to learn to depend on our Self, the Christ-Self from within. This Self has learned much in our time with A Course of Love, and the principal thing that it has learned is reliance upon an Authority that is deep within, God Himself. This Authority will never, never, let us down. If we pray enough, we will know this. And all of our nebulous plans to achieve more, or to do more, or to be more, will be lost as dross that has no meaning.

We are alright just as we are. Our imperfections will be cleansed by Jesus himself, for he says that he will take care of any imperfections that we have been unable to rid ourselves of. As our subconscious mind comes to the surface to be cleansed, we are, at last, freed. The way back is assured. Life is good.

Dear God,

Be with me today as I seek to find the blueprint for my life ahead. I ask often; help me to listen well.

Thank You for being with me always and forever. The way back to You is assured. May I remain confident of this.

Amen.

Be with Our Feelings Today

“Realize how freeing it will be to not go through the gyrations of attempting to figure out “how to” reach acceptance of what you do not like! How freeing it will be to realize you have no need to do this! How freeing it will be to accept all of your feelings and not to puzzle over which are true and which are false! To realize that you no longer have false feelings. That your feelings are not misleading you but supporting you! That they are but calling you to expression of your true Self! To true representation of who you are—who you are now!

“Remove all thinking that says that you can err in following your feel¬ings. This is the thinking of the old thought system, not the new.” (ACOL, D:Day8.28 – 8.29)

If we can believe what is being said here, surely it must mean that our feelings have been purified now that we are nearing the end of A Course of Love. Otherwise, these words would make no sense, as many vile and hostile actions have come to the world from people who were following their feelings. So we must use some discernment in considering these words. We must be sure that we are living in love, not anger, joy, not rancor.

We can accept our feelings as true and good when we have walked a while on the pathway back to God. And this is where Jesus finds us in this quotation for today. When we are being who we truly are, now, we are being someone who does not knowingly harm another, and we are being someone who seeks to redress a wrong, once it is perceived. This is very different from the person we were before we accepted the teaching of A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love. We are simply at a different place now.

Be with our feelings today. Be with who we truly are, accepting ourselves, but also accepting change when it comes. Our intuition, our guidance, will save us now.

Listen.

Dear God,

Be with me today as I seek to live a happy life, a life that You choose for me. Help me to turn aside from meaningless wrangles, from those things which disturb my peace to no good purpose. May everyone I encounter today be peaceful, and if someone is not peaceful, may I lend my peace to that someone.

Thank You for our dialogue this morning. I wrote for a while, and then I imagined, in the silence, what You might say to me. And peace descended. Help me to remember this easy solution to all difficulty.

Amen.

Combining Intellect and Feelings

“Whether you be male or female matters not, as you are in truth, the union of each. The end of separation that brought about the resurrection brought about this union and the separation of male and female continues to exist only in form.

“However, we are talking now, in a certain sense, of an elevation of form. While this is actually an elevation beyond form, it must begin in the reality where you think you are. In other words, it must begin with form. You cannot await some changed state but must create the changed state you await.” (ACOL, T1:9.2 – 9.3)

We have heretofore been much concerned with roles that were clearly identified, and we all know from living in our culture that this is changing somewhat, in that women are taking on men’s former roles, and also the reverse for men. Women have been historically seen as more intuitive, living more in their feelings. Men have historically been seen as more intellect, living in their minds. And feelings have been associated with the heart, intellect with the mind.

As we allow the Self to emerge, we will see a natural tilt toward the opposites in what we perceive. Not all women listen to their feelings first, and not all men their intellect. But many women and men do react this way. And in the new age, women will listen more to their minds, and men, to their feelings. If we allow this union to take place, men and women will be, in the best sense, better able to understand each other because our gender roles will not be polarized.

Our culture is conflicted about whether this change is good. Very conflicted. And it is not for us in studying A Course of Love to take sides in a cultural conflict. It is enough to know that we are both made up of heart and mind, and that the union of each, in wholeheartedness, is the way that the Self will emerge. Many will still prefer to retain strict gender roles; many will not. But both have both mind and heart, and both parts of the psyche need to work together for the best outcome for us in this matter of developing Christ-consciousness.

Our forms will be elevated as we allow our self to be in union with the Self, a change that is based on the union of mind and heart that Jesus calls wholeheartedness. This elevated Self of form will be our new home base. And we will look out on a different world, a world that we are creating anew, even as our new psyches have been created anew. This is where we are heading, to a new world of evolved souls who have experienced Awakening. And this change is helped along by the use of feelings (heart) as well as intellect (mind). Of course, we don’t have to have conflict at all to see the positive change that feelings and intellect, together, can bring about. This is a natural emergence as we inhabit the elevated Self. And for this we can all rest in peace without bringing in cultural dichotomies that will only divide us.

Older adults (and people are living longer now) have long seen a closer interaction in marriage as they age. Women naturally become more assertive as hormones change, and men also undergo a similar hormonal change. This is not a product of our culture, except that we are, as said, living longer. This maturity can be seen as a good thing. We can understand each other better as our hormones shift and change. And Jesus is saying that much the same similarities are coming out in the union of the Self with our personal self. The ethereal Self, unlike the personal self, cannot be said to have gender, just as most of us believe that God does not have gender. The Self, as part of God, does assume gender when It emerges in form with a transformed personal self who has reached Christ-consciousness. But the divine memories linger, and this is the likely reason that Jesus begins the discussion of changes between men and women in the passage for today.

Prayer

I know that I have become more assertive as I have grown older. I would not overreach this plateau, though, as assertiveness can turn into aggressiveness, and I would not have that. Be with me as I age. Help me to accept the natural changes that come with age, and to make of them something laudable.

I turn to my feelings often, feelings as in “intuition.” I follow intuition a great deal, and this helps me to navigate our world. Be with me as I seek to embody the intellect that must cooperate with feelings.

Thank You for being with me today and every day. I am in Your hands, always. And I seek to remember this.

Amen.

Trust Your Feelings

“You will never fully understand what unity means, but you will come to feel what unity means, and this I promise you. This is what we work toward in this Course, for once you have experienced the feeling of unity, you will need no understanding of it.” (ACOL, C:13.1)

This very reassuring passage encourages us to trust our feelings. Our feelings don’t lead us wrong, unless they are quite negative feelings, and then we are dipping into something egoic, very different from unity. We are seeking to unify with the All, the Everything—God, our brothers and sisters, the world and everything in it. This unity indeed knows no bounds.

If we trust the feeling of unity, we will be home free. Unity is not something meant for the mind to “understand,” something that Jesus says here would be impossible.

But we can feel the difference between the ego and the unity that the heart leads us to. And this difference is phenomenal.

Let your heart lead today. Let your heart lead everyday. The way will clear when we are open to the feelings of unity that the hearts leads us to find.

Bringing Love to Us and Us to Love

“You do not yet believe nor understand that the urges that you feel are real, and neither good nor bad. 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.” (ACOL, C:5.11)

We are told in this passage that we are not “bad.” But so often we think that we are. This is the ego finding fault with us once again. We live in fear when we response to our feelings with trepidation. This is so unnecessary, so unnecessary: “Your feelings in truth come from love, your response to them is what is guided by fear.”

Jesus makes the startling assertion here also that even our feelings of destruction and violence come from love. We cannot understand this; there is no point in trying. Just open our minds to the concept. We don’t need to act on feelings of destruction and violence, of course, and we would be very wise not to do so. We are misguided, in that we don’t know how to transmute these destructive and violent feelings. For this transmuting we need guidance. And guidance is always forthcoming when we ask.

The best thing that we can do is to accept all of our feelings, even the so-called “bad” ones. Just accept. That does not mean to condone, because we would all be better off if we could quickly and easily get rid of the negative emotions. Praying them away works. It may be practically the only thing that works.

Prayer works in so many ways, but not to a God Whom we perceive as outside ourselves. For He is we, we are a part of Him. Until we take this truth and assimilate it, we will be lost in miseries and tragedies, the tragedy of the human condition.

The human condition does not have to be tragic. We will ultimately inhabit an elevated Self of form, which is the enlightened Self Who is now deep within, layered over by illusions that seem to have no end of trouble for us. We do not have to lament the physical body, for the physical body can be elevated to a good thing. Let us do so today.

If you would awaken, then mellow out. The genius of enlightenment is that it is so calm, so tranquil. It is true that some who go through Awakening do so from a very chaotic point of departure—depression and the like. And these transitions to enlightenment can be, but do not have to be, traumatic. The best way to ease into enlightenment is to welcome it with mellowness. The glimpses of Awakening show us an invulnerable self, even the personal self, that is transmuted into something that blesses every part of us and our days.

Our feelings are to be accepted, even the so-called bad ones. But we don’t act on the bad ones, and sooner or later they fall away—when we catch enough glimpses of the Christ-consciousness toward which we are all moving.

Ask for help today in lengthening the glimpses that come to us, the glimpses of Christ-consciousness. This is a prayer fully in line with God’s desires for us. There is no better prayer, no better way to spend our prayer time.

All True Feeling Is Love

“Every living being has a heart. Let us define heart as the center of being, that place from which all feeling arises. All true feeling is love. All love praises God. All love is recognition of the glory of God and all God created. Love is the only pure response of the created for the Creator, the only response of the Creator to the created. Your recognition of what love is will return you to God and your Self.” (ACOL, C:1.1)

These definitions of what love is can take us far. We know that Christ-consciousness arises only in one who is willing to make all relationships right, through forgiveness, and who feels love for all within his/her world. These are bottom-line requirements. And we gain a lot when we realize that very little is asked of us. But how do we bring that very little into view?

We ask through prayer for not only Christ-consciousness, but its precursors, forgiveness of others (and ourselves) and love of others (and ourselves). Jesus contributed the idea of forgiveness to world religions. In the well-acclaimed Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade, we learn from the index that forgiveness occurs only in the context of Jesus’s teachings. So Jesus originated this important requirement for enlightenment. Many others as well, in contrast, have trumpeted the value of love. But Jesus may have said it best, in that we are to love God, and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.

We want to be returned to our Self, and our Self is the Self whom we know in Christ-consciousness. Let us decide today that this is what we want, all that we want. There must be a decision on our part to pursue this dimension of being, Christ-consciousness. Then, when we are made ready (and this is a mysterious process), we will find that God Himself answers us with the blessing of enlightenment.

How to Re-find Paradise

1 – Day 16

“Everything that can’t be seen but is, is consciousness. Accepting everything that can’t be seen, including the unknown, is full consciousness. Acceptance is key. You can’t accept what you fear. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 16)”

2 – Acceptance

Much emphasis on acceptance in the Dialogues of A Course of Love! Jesus reiterates here how very important it is for us just to accept—not to judge, not to regret, not to even feel sorry over. Of course, A Course in Miracles emphasized forgiveness of our brother throughout. And forgiveness is still the key to undoing the ego. But in A Course of Love, it is hoped that we, the readers, will have gone beyond the ego into another realm—not yet Awakening or Christ-consciousness, but closer than ever before. And to move into this new realm, acceptance of ourselves just as we are is crucial. We may see many imperfections in our personalities, and, objectively, there may be many imperfections. How do we handle this? We just turn aside from those parts of our personalities that we don’t want to keep. Importantly, we don’t resist, for in the resistance the ego reasserts itself. Resistance to undesired personality traits is a form of defensiveness, and the ego is strong in defensiveness. Also, defenses make what they would defend against (from A Course in Miracles).

3 – Self

So we accept. Just as we are. Knowing that we are whole and good in our real Self, the inner Christ Self. Our imperfect, personal self has been made only in illusions. None of the bad things that we thought we might have done to others, or that we did to others, has actually done anything at all—in reality. Of course, in the illusion the material objects seem very hard to us, very real. And we may need to ask for forgiveness from those we might have wronged. This sets the record straight. We are undoing what made wrong in the dream, the illusion. And sometimes this endeavor moves us closer to accepting our Self just as we are. We accept the personality, and, as the personality is cleansed by turning aside from those character traits that we wish to overcome, we are healed.

4 – Consciousness

We need to move into full consciousness, and we need, as this quotation points out, to move into consciousness without fear. We will not fear when we have allowed Jesus to guide our minds. Or allowed the inner Christ Self to guide our minds (as in A Course of Love)—or the Holy Spirit (as in A Course in Miracles). How can we give up our fears? We can but try, and in the loving of ourselves and others—when the love replaces the fear—we find rest for our spirits.

5 – Sickness

“Sickness is not sickness but rejected feelings. The rejected feelings exist as separate and forgotten physical manifestations until they are willfully remembered and accepted back into the spacious Self. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 16)”

6 – Spacious Self

We want to get over any and all sickness. If we conceive of the spacious Self as a larger, more all-encompassing Self Whom we are, we can imagine enfolding that sickness into this spacious Self, and then, miraculously, we are healed of sickness. Sometimes physical symptoms do linger, but that does not have to concern us. Healing is actually of the mind, and when the mind is healed, our real Self is healed.

7 – Healing

The physical manifestations may go away. We can ask God for a healing, engage in dialogue with our inner Self, and then miraculously learn of a new medication, a new treatment, or a new way of living that will eliminate the physical manifestations of illness. Pills, medication, are a form of magic, but Jesus does not counsel giving up pills if they are keeping fear at bay. He says in ACIM that the last thing that the fear-ridden mind needs is more fear, and we may have more fear if we throw away our pills. We are living an illusion, and if we are aware that the pills are healing our symptoms, then we will find that in our dream. We create our reality. And our ideas about that reality come true. This is a stern warning as well as a truth about the nature of our illusory reality.

8 – Illness

If we dialogue with the illness, talk to it, actually, we may see that we are no longer rejecting feelings about that illness. And the illness may spontaneously disappear. Our ideas about “reality,” our dream, are stubborn, though, and nobody should doubt the reality of a healing because of the continuance of physical symptoms (from ACIM).

9 – Reintegration

“The reintegration requires, of course, a change in what you want to prove to yourself. All you may now continue to seek proof of is that your feelings, rather than your thoughts about your feelings, reflect who you are, and that by acting on them, you will act in accord with who you are and thus in accord with the universe. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 16)”
10 – Feelings

We need to get close to our feelings. We don’t need to be cerebral about it, meaning that we don’t need to bring the thoughts of our minds into the act. We need to experience feelings directly.

11 – Thinking

All of our lives we have been taught to discount feelings in favor of the so-called “rational” mind. Of course, the mind is not rational, and its judgments are always, always, faulty. The world teaches for reliance on judgment of our (ir)rational mind, but we need to recognize, as ACIM tells us, that judgment in our own minds is not possible. We cannot see past, present, and future in all its ramifications. We cannot judge aright. Not that we don’t judge aright, but that we cannot. Then we look to a Higher Power for His counsel. In ACIM, this is the Holy Spirit; in ACOL, this is the Self within, the Christ Who is the All with God.

12 – Holes

If we act on feelings, we will stop digging holes for ourselves. We will climb out of the holes that the ego dug for us. If we act on feelings, we will first experience the happy dreams the Holy Spirit sends; and then we will move ever closer to the reality that the Awakening will show us. Know, though, that we cannot merit Awakening. It is God’s gift, given us when we are ready. And being good and spiritual will not guarantee readiness. Only God knows what in us He is looking for, before we move into Christ-consciousness (Awakening).

13 – Intuition

“When you feel an ‘intuition’ you respond differently than you do to unwanted feelings that you are quick to want to ‘do something’ about. If all feelings were treated more like intuition is treated–with a ‘knowing’ that the feeling has come to tell you something that is as yet unknown to you, but nevertheless for your benefit, you would go a long way toward acceptance. (A Course of Love: Dialogues)”

14 – Spacious Self

We need to accept all feelings, even those that seem borne of fear rather than love. By so doing, we encompass all feelings with the spacious Self of Christ-consciousness, and the fear, held within the love, is dissipated.

15 – Illness
Illness is a form of rejected feelings. When sickness comes upon us, we are likely to try to reject it as an unwanted intrusion into our world. But we must hold within ourselves these feelings, knowing that illness is a form of external searching. When we accept all feelings, whether of loneliness or despair, anger or grief, we join with the spacious Self.
When we live in the present, we are accepting of all feelings by living the Christ-consciousness that we have all so desired to call our own.
16 – Paradise
Paradise is re-found when the fear that had been expelled is welcomed back by the embrace of love. No feelings are bad; all are to be accepted, and kept if we deem them good and “loved” into a better feeling if we deem them bad. The rejection of fear thoughts helped to create the hell that overcame our world. Welcoming back the fear thoughts, while encompassing them always within love thoughts, will lead us back to paradise.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I come to understand my feelings in the same way that I have, over the years, come to accept intuition as valid guidance. May I come to understand and to act on what my feelings are telling me, but only if they are loving feelings for my brothers and sisters.

May I encompass fear with love, rejecting nothing, because rejection will only act as a force field to make the fear stronger. Thank You for these thoughts by Jesus for this day.

Many people pray for Awakening, for Christ-consciousness. And I am among those people. Take from me all part of my personal, little, self which is hindering the bestowal of this great blessing. Like Michaelangelo, carve away the parts of the block of my personality that are in the way of the Self Whom you want me to display always. I know that it is only these excess blocks of marble that are keeping me from You. I would move closer to You today. Now and forever.

Amen.

Trust in Your Feelings

1 – Trust

“You think of feelings either as that which comes to you through your five senses or as emotions, and you have not trusted in these feelings as much as you have trusted in rational thought. This lack of trust works both for you and against you now. It works for you in that you do not have to resist and reject an existing trust as you do with the thoughts of the mind you call rational. It works against you because all feelings are capable of providing what you have called intuitive knowledge or insights and your distrust of this knowledge and insight will need to be overcome. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day Ten)”

2 – Intuition

We need to rely on feelings, as this is our insight into intuition. We have previously, often, and especially before studying A Course in Miracles, believed that feelings would lie. Now that may be true, and so we test out our feelings; we fail to act on aggressive or unkind impulses, but impulses are not the same as genuine feelings as meant in this quotation. Genuine feelings don’t lie; they tell us what to say and do. They are our only Guide to what the Self is trying to say to us. (A Course in Miracles called this inner sense the Holy Spirit, or Universal Inspiration.)

3 – Thoughts

We do not have to reject feelings in the same way that we have to reject the thoughts of the mind that previously appeared to be rational. These thoughts were egoic notions that led us badly astray. And we would be rid of those lamentable thoughts now. We are through with the ego.

4 – Feelings

Listen to your feelings about what to say or do. If these feelings are genuine, they will be harmless, even better than harmless—for that will offer salvation to all around us.

5 – To “Know”

“To ‘know’ before you act is wise. But to think that doubting your feelings or seeking outside assurances of what you know will lead to either confidence or certainty is foolish. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day Ten)”

6 – Christ Self

To “know” is an inner sense that comes from following the inner Christ Self. It relies on feelings, and it is the same as intuition. The “knowing” is even more profound than run-of-the-mill feelings, though. The knowing is profound, a real insight that what you are contemplating saying or doing is right in God’s eyes.

7 – Foolish Doubts

We are told in this significant quotation that to doubt our feelings is foolish. What a revelation! We have been taught by this world to doubt our feelings always—to rely instead on the judgments of our the mind that we thought were rational. These judgments were amiss, for we cannot know the past, present, and future in all its ramifications. We cannot judge aright, and so we cease trying.

8 – Blessing

This brings a great blessing to us. We always know what to do and say when we rely on the intuition that is down deep within, the Christ Self.

9 – Christ-consciousness

“Thus I will speak to you from this point onward as the voice of Christ-consciousness, the voice of your own true consciousness, the consciousness that we truly share. I came to you in the form of the consciousness of the man I once was because you were, prior to this point, unready to give up image for presence, the individual for the universal, reliance on an outside source for reliance on yourself, Jesus for Christ-consciousness. (ACOL Dialogues, p. 148)”

10 – Time of Christ

This quotation explains that we are to rely on the inner Christ Self. The quotation does not specifically mention the Holy Spirit, but elsewhere in A Course of Love, Jesus has proclaimed that the time of the Holy Spirit has ended, and that we are now in the time of Christ. And he doesn’t mean only himself. The Christ is a shared identity, an identity which all of us have.

11 – Home

We need to cease relying just on the man Jesus. We need to depend on Christ-consciousness for our reliance upon the truth. This will take us home. This will sustain Christ-consciousness in ourselves.

12 – True Consciousness

Our true consciousness is Christ-consciousness. And it is this on which we must come to rely.

13 – Save the World

This chapter is lengthy, but the quotation above does encompass the most important point. Jesus tells us many things about power, but his most important concept is the fact that reliance upon our own Self in Christ-consciousness will help us to save the world. This is a strong assertion, but he does not mean for us to be crusaders unless our intuition guides us to our goals. He says quite a bit about following intuition, in relying on our Self rather than to turn to outside sources in trying to make decisions about our life. We must have confidence in our feelings.

14 – Jesus

So Jesus will stop speaking in these 40 days and nights as the man who lived over 2,000 years ago. He will speak as our own Self, the Christ-consciousness that we are meant to share with him and all others. Jesus stresses that these communications are dialogues, not simply the imparting of information from him to us.

15 – Elevated Self of Form

He describes what we will feel as the elevated Self of form. We will feel not much different than we do now, but more peaceful and free of the constraints of the body. Jesus compares what we will feel in this world with how we imagine our loved ones who have crossed the barrier of death. We imagine them as we knew them, but more peaceful and free of the body that they knew in this life. Jesus too notes that he wants us to feel happiness and peace, especially now in this final chapter in which he addresses us as the man Jesus, rather than the Christ-consciousness which we will share in the remainder of the 40 days and nights.

16 – Relationship with Jesus

“I ask you not to give up your relationship with me as the man Jesus, but to accept that the man Jesus was simply a representation in form, of Christ-consciousness. I do, however, ask you to give up your identification of the voice of this dialogue as that belonging to the man Jesus who lived two thousand years ago. To continue to identify this voice with that man is to be unable to recognize this voice as the voice of your own true consciousness—the voice of Christ-consciousness. Yet to realize that this is the same that animated the man Jesus two thousand years ago will aide you in realizing that this is the voice that will now animate the elevated Self of form, or in other words, you.” (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day Ten)”

17 – Consciousness

“Consciousness is about what you are aware of, not about what you think. And you are very much aware of your feelings. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day Ten)”

18 – Egoic Thoughts

We are told to doubt our thoughts, for they have previously been mostly egoic. We need to be aware of consciousness that points to intuition and comes to us as feelings to be followed. Only in genuine mental illness do we have to be very, very careful of “guidance” that would lead us astray. Dependence on inner voices in mental illness becomes a warning sign.

19 – Insanity

But most of us are quite sane, though we have previously, under the grip of the ego, been insane for eons. We lived out insanity, or madness, and now we would be through with it. A Course in Miracles repeats this truth quite a bit. We don’t want to accept it, but when we see the state of our world, it becomes something that is not so easily brushed aside.

20 – Love

“The power of love is the cause and effect that will change the world by returning you, and all your brothers and sisters, to who they are in truth. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day Ten)”

21 – A Healed World

This is the way that the world will be healed, and the answer, “love,” sounds almost trite to hear. Yet if we reflect on what love really means, we will know peace, and we will know how to heal our brothers and sisters. We need to return to who we are in truth, and that is the Christ Self within. The little self, the personal self, has always been a mirage, an illusion, a persona. And we would cease to make masks that hide us from the world.

22 – Compassion

“Blessed brother and sister, we feel the same love, the same compassion, the same tenderness for each other and the world. This is unity. This will save us. This will save the world. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day Ten)”

3 – Salvation, Forgiveness, Happiness

Here is the emphasis on saving the world, our function (though we do not lean on anybody who is not ready). Our function is salvation, forgiveness, happiness—all synonyms for what we would be and what we ever more would become fully.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank You that Jesus is ready to see our own Christ-consciousness, and, in effect, to speak to us as equals. I do not feel worthy, but help me to realize that these thoughts and feelings are the vestiges of the ego.

On this day, please set my feet on the right pathway, if I have in any way veered off that pathway. Help me to help my brothers and sisters in need, and may You help me as well. I need your help desperately, for my allegiance varies from day to day as I seek to eliminate my neuroses. Be with me today as I seek to live a sane Christ Self. This is really the one way to be, and I would be that way henceforth. If I doubt that this is possible, please remove all doubts from me. Help me to walk slowly and gently through this world, for it has many obstacles to my inner peace. May the inner Self encompass all my mind and feelings today, so that I fulfill Your wishes for me in this day.

I welcome Jesus, once again, into my life today. I am very grateful that he lives in service to all of my brothers and sisters, and myself. Thank You for Jesus.

Amen.

Now Can the Teacher of God Rise Up Unburdened, and Walk Lightly On. Giving Up Judgment, His Sense of Care Is Gone.

1 – Sense of Care

“Now can the teacher of God rise up unburdened, and walk lightly on. Yet it is not only this that is his benefit. His sense of care is gone, for he has none. (M28)”

2 – Holy Spirit

This passage refers to turning over our decisions to the Holy Spirit. We carry life more easily once we have done this, and we do not feel burdened, as if we are carrying a load on our backs.

3 – Walk Lightly

Our sense of care is gone. We walk lightly in the light. These reassurances are worth their weight in gold. Who would not wish to walk the earth in peace and calm that is not abated?

4 – A Sure Guide

Why would we have a sense of care, when we have a Guide that is sure? We must only ask that we be given the grace always to follow that guidance. As we do follow that guidance, we become more and more reassured that it will always be there for us, and we drop our cares into the lap of God.

5 – Judgment Gone

“He has given it [sense of care] away, along with judgment. (M28)”

6 – Martha and Mary and Jesus

What a joy to give up the sense of care! We are, like Martha of the New Testament, worried about so many things. Martha was preoccupied with preparing a meal, and she wanted Mary, her sister, to help her instead of sitting at the feet of Jesus, where Mary was drinking in the words of Jesus.

7 – Rebuke

Yet Jesus kindly rebuked Martha, saying that Mary had chosen the best part, which in this case, was listening to him.

8 – Sit at the Feet of Jesus

May we be like the Marys of the world, not to disregard our obligations, but as often as at all possible, to sit, metaphorically, at the feet of Jesus and drink in his words. Then indeed is our care given away.

9 – Judgment

“Judgment, like other devices by which the world of illusions is maintained, is totally misunderstood by the world. It is actually confused with wisdom, and substitutes for truth. (M27)”

10 – “Good” Judgment?

Judgment seems to be wisdom, but, as we have been suggesting, it is far from wisdom. We think that “good judgment” will get us the outcome that we cry to have.

11 – Guidance

This is not true. Good judgment, whatever that is, will not get us the outcome that we cry to have. Only following guidance will do that.

12 – We Cannot Judge Rightly

“It is necessary for the teacher of God to realize, not that he should not judge, but that he cannot. In giving up judgment, he is merely giving up what he did not have. He gives up an illusion; or better, he has an illusion of giving up. He has actually merely become more honest. (M27)”

13 – Honesty

Would we like to be more honest? Of course! And this is the way—give up judgment! We cannot judge aright—ever. We may make wise decisions because we have been protected by God, but the consistent right decisions only come from guidance.

14 – Intuition

What does it feel like with intuition, the most prevalent kind of guidance? I sense a feeling tone to such guidance, in that I sense what the next right step should be. Sometimes guidance looks to the future, but in the step-to-step process of our days, intuition usually gives us the next right step. Sometimes the guidance comes to us as our own thinking rather than as a feeling. We will know that this thinking is guidance because it will seem a bit beyond us, though actually the thinking is coming up from the unconscious deep within. There God rests, and there the Holy Spirit communicates from God to us.

15 – Judgment Always Impossible

“Recognizing that judgment was always impossible for him, he no longer attempts it. This is no sacrifice. On the contrary, he puts himself in a position where judgment through him rather than by him can occur. (M27)”

16 – Relinquish Judgment to the Holy Spirit

This inner process of thinking, or the inner process of feeling (intuition), allows judgment “through” us to come out. So we do not give up judgment entirely; we just relinquish it to the Holy Spirit, Who is deep within. And His decisions are right. We will soon realize this. It takes little time to know that one’s egoic notions are faulty, and that the guidance of the Holy Spirit is on the beam.

17 – Guiltless Son/Daughter of God

“And this judgment is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad.’ It is the only judgment there is, and it is only one: God’s Son is guiltless, and sin does not exist. (M27)”

18 – Theology

This passage is a theological construct of A Course in Miracles. God’s Son (or Daughter) is innocent of wrongdoing, for he/she has acted only in illusion, a dream. And thus he/she has not acted at all.

19 – Sin

Sin does not exist, for sin is seen as an attractive alternative. Call something a “sin,” and we want to do it again. This is lamentable human nature.

20 – Mistake

In contrast, call something a “mistake,” and the only right thing is immediately seen to be correction of the mistake. Our “sins” are all mistakes, in the theology of ACIM.

21 – Past, Present, and Future

“In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things; past, present and to come. One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everything and everything involved in them in any way. And one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception, so his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future. Who is in a position to do this? Who except in grandiose fantasies would claim this for himself? (M27)”

22 – Prescience

This passage summarizes what we have been considering. We can’t know, in a prescient manner, what we are about. Lacking knowledge of past, present, and future in all its ramifications, we no longer attempt to judge on partial understanding. We give over judgment to the Holy Spirit, who is omniscient or all-knowing.

23 – Lay Judgment Down

“Therefore lay judgment down, not with regret but with a sigh of gratitude. Now are you free of a burden so great that you could merely stagger and fall down beneath it. And it was all illusion. Nothing more. (M28)”

24 – Jesus’s Appeal

This passage is Jesus’s appeal to us to stop the foolish judging to which we are almost addicted. If possible, try to live this day without judging what to do next. Let guidance direct your footsteps.

25 – Close of the Day

And see, at the close of the day, if you did not get into a free-flowing frame of mind that offered you a good day.

26 – Reassuring Passage

A reassuring passage, as so many of the passages A Course in Miracles, are. We are bade to lay judgment down–to make no decisions for ourselves. Can we really do this? The Course elsewhere indicates that we should set our will at the beginning of the day to follow guidance, and then give thanks at the end of the day. Then our decisions will be far more likely to be right. ACIM is always practical, and asking at every juncture may not always be practical (an ACIM concept).

27 – A Guide

It is calming to know that we have a Guide who will not fail. This we can feel with gratitude.

28 – Burden of Judgment

The burden of trying to make judgments of what to do or say has always been extremely difficult for us. And we learn now that doing so has all been illusion. We don’t have to feel all alone in the universe. We have a Guide, and His guidance is the Way that makes our life a calm and gentle experience.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I be led to lay judgment down forevermore. I do know in my heart of hearts that judgment can only hurt me. Let me be through with it forever.

Thank you for guiding me through the Holy Spirit. When I follow His prompting, I know that I am always taking the right pathway.

Amen.