Friend in Jesus

There is no one who shall receive these words who has not already looked upon me and seen the face of Christ within. And likewise, I look upon you and call you ‘friend.’” (“The Way of the Heart, WOM, Lesson 6, Page 70)

Jesus is coming close to us today, in these words that will comfort our heart, in the quotation for today. He knows that we have need of him. He would not allow us to lean on him forever, for he will finally resign from being our teacher. But until our guidance is sure, he will allow us to ask him for what would work best.
Jesus does not want our love for him to breed dependence. He wants us to depend only upon our God, personal relationship to the Almighty that all of us have when we reach down deeper, within. We have the will to reach God when we are not afraid of Him. And, as Jesus, we call God a “Friend.”

Know that Jesus comes upon a single unequivocal call. He promises this in A Course in Miracles. If the need seems dire, call today. And be sure to say a silent “thank you” when he blesses us, graces us, with his presence.

Friendship is a two-way street. Be sure that we are good friends to Jesus, too.

Don’t let him try to forge the relationship out of whole cloth.

Open Our Heart to Parents & Friends

“Your parents probably did misperceive you in many ways, but their ability to perceive may have been quite warped, and their misperception stood in the way of their own knowledge. There is no reason why it should stand in the way of yours. It is still true that you believe they did something to you. This belief is extremely dangerous to your perception and wholly destructive of your knowledge. This is not only true of your attitudes toward your parents, but also of your misuse of your friends. You still think that you must respond to their errors as if they were true. By reacting self-destructively, you are giving them approval for their misperceptions.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-3.VIII.13:1-7)

Here we find that our attitude toward our parents and our friends is pivotal for a good future for our minds. When we believe that parents and friends “did” something to us, we are giving our power away, dangerous to perception, wholly destructive of knowledge.

We still don’t believe that we ourselves, and others, are innocent creatures, children of God, who made mistakes that actually, in reality, never occurred. We are living in illusion! How often do we have to reiterate this to ourselves?

When we believe that illusions are true, we bind ourselves to the past, and we make a future like the past, a deplorable future. Let’s wash ourselves clean, now, of these misperceptions. Let’s ask God to tell us how we can all be innocent. Step out in faith, and His Voice will answer.

We don’t need to stay in self-destructive thinking. Let the heart lead, for its way is Love, and its understanding is true. We can and will come to understand what innocence is all about when we open the heart to our parents and our friends. We have closed down when we misconstrued them, and this makes a mockery of innocence.

Sharing with Like-Minded Friends

“There is a purpose for this time in which both informing and observing, being informed and being the observed coexist. You must respect the boundaries of those who are still in need of them and not offer more than can be received. This is why practice among those who are ready to be boundary-less and spacious selves is appropriate and acceptable.” (ACOL, D:Day15.22)

At this point in A Course of Love, we are encouraged to seek out like-minded people for discussion. We need our brothers and sisters. Once again we are not encouraged to proselytize; explain what is making the difference in our lives only when asked. But talk freely with others who have progressed as we have, progressed farther along the pathway that all much eventually walk.

As spacious selves, we are absorbing the emotions of our brothers and sisters, rather than keeping these others at arm’s length. We are One with them, ever eager to share and to be shared with. This is what informing and observing is all about. We are no longer looking for learned wisdom of the past; we are immersed in the Now, the present, the time when everything, for us, is changing.

Of course, not all of us have like-minded friends. We can seek out a discussion group if such is available, but what do we do when it is not? Many people nowadays are seekers, and it may be that we can share with those who seek but have not yet found either A Course in Miracles or A Course of Love. I have a friend who believes many of the same things that I do, but her reading has been entirely different, her pathway a different one. Yet when we are dealing with perennial knowledge, we find many accounts that are similar. It is very likely that we have in our acquaintance someone(s) who shares a knowledge of esoteric things, but who has been reluctant to talk about their reading. If we intuit this, we can open the conversation. And that is all that it really takes.

Dear God,

Thank you for the friends that I have gathered who do know A Course of Love. And thank you for the friends I have gathered who do not, but who have similar seeking patterns. Our common ground is not hard to find.

Be with me on this day, to make it a great day. There is much that can be done on any one day; help me to find my duties for today.

Amen.