There Is Nothing Outside You

“There is nothing outside you.  That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is the realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-18.VI.1)

This passage puzzled me for a long time.  I think it is a statement of a holographic universe:  Each part contains the whole.  So we are a part of the All, the One, that is God—and therefore there is nothing outside of us.  We and our brother—all of our brothers—are One.  Everything is alive with energy, the stuff of the universe.  

We return to Heaven when we realize that we never really left at all.  What leaving we did was all a mirage, an illusion, something that never happened in actuality at all.  The separation never occurred!  The separation could not have occurred because we are a part of God, and so we can be “separate” from him only in illusion, not reality at all.

These ruminations reflect the theology of A Course in Miracles.  We will read further on, and then we will see the theology becoming all of one cloth.  There is no strain.  We will wake up to find ourselves at home in Heaven, the Oneness that we never really left at all.

God’s Gifts for Us Redeemed

“Thoughts from Heaven feel like light and breath; they are full of certainty, can never be forgotten, and they bring a great ‘amount’ of truth in the blink of an eye.”  Choose Only Love, Book 7, A Message from Sebastian, II.

Thoughts from Heaven are manna to our spirit.  When we enjoy a true revelation, the gist of it stays with us, never to be completely forgotten and often changing our lives in drastic ways.  “Light and breath,” Sebastian says.  We might ask, Can this type of revelation really happen to us?

Yes!  A resounding yes!  Revelation is always from God to us, and is more lasting than a miracle in our hearts.  Revelation is the way of the future, for those of us reading this far in Choose Only Love have, it is said in its pages (in different words), that we have traveled far along our pathway back to God, and He is able to get through to us quite remarkably.  Our struggles have been greatly reduced, and we are ready for revelation in our very being.  We live a peaceful life, marred only temporarily by those things that cause us regret.

Does this sound too good to be true?  It is truly not too good to be true.  God trusts us to keep His universes going through our expressions of being, our Love for all that is.  He could not gift us with all He would wish so long as we were recalcitrant.  But He can now.

And He does.

Who Heard God Say?

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

Who heard God say

“let us make man”?

Can we be sure

that “in our image”

was not addendum

for enjoyment of

imagination of an ego

eager for some status

in the face of fearful

existential angst?

Who learned of angels

and the guarantee that

we can almost match

them in God’s hierarchy?

Is this a fable poised

like all such stories

to smudge  

the universal question marks

and make us rank ourselves

more highly than we ought?

Or set a standard of perfection

dangling always right above our reach?

There must be some fast truth

imbedded in the tale told throughout

the rounds of galaxies

and baby weaning days.

There must be more than make-believe

to stir the heart’s awakening

to a melody mysteriously

making sure we don’t

forget the humming tune

and lyrics long repeating

“fearfully…wonderfully.”

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.

Rest

“Rest, when truly learned, is a state of being in which struggle has ceased and peace has triumphed over chaos, love has triumphed over fear.

“You may still see but two choices:  peace or struggle.  But with such an attitude, you would soon be struggling to maintain your peace.  There is another choice, and it lies within.”  (A Course of Love, T2:1.6 – 1.7)

We are at rest when we commune with our depths, which is the same as saying that we commune with our God.  He is always there, ready and eagerly waiting to help in any way that we will allow.  He doesn’t interfere if we thwart His ways by not turning to Him; He gave us free will so that we would turn to Him out of our extreme need.

Many don’t turn to God unless and until we are in dire straits.  But what a way to live!  Let intellectual doubts rest in the knowledge from the heart that there is a Supreme Power that dwells in the depths of our souls.  Within and without, He is always there—waiting for our nod in His direction.

We don’t have to choose peace over struggle in some kind of balancing act that seeks to keep the peace and resist the struggle.  We need only rest within, and all struggle ceases easily.  We have peace when we rest within.  And then God reigns.  And all is well in His world—and His world is our own.

Purpose

“I and my Father are one.  Only Love is real, and Love, alone, heals.  My commitment is to the reality of Love.  Therefore, Father, bring each moment to me that I might learn anew to love, and allow that Love to transform a temporary illusion into that which extends the good, the holy, and the beautiful.

“Herein lies your purpose.  Herein lies your function, and herein—and only here—is Life.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 18, Page 217)

What is our purpose in life?  I think it is to discover how to live, and when we get really close to God, we discover that living Love is the only way to proceed.  Everything else makes no sense at all.

God’s universes could not survive if such was not built on Love.  And if it weren’t for our sometimes dim awareness that Love is the Answer, we would long ago have destroyed ourselves. 

Sure, we make mistakes—many mistakes.  But there is a resolution when we seek forgiveness of ourselves and move forward undeterred.  God, according to A Course in Miracles, does not need to forgive us because He has never condemned.  He condemns no one.  He simply spreads Love, always and forever.

God does give us free will, and so He lets us do as we will for a long time.  He knows with foresight that eventually we will tire of our games and turn to Him.  He knows that Love will draw us to His side—eventually.  It is the one Force in this world that ultimately will not be resisted.

It is this turning to Him that saves us from agony.  And when we love, in this world, however imperfectly, we are on the right track.

Pouring Nard

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

Our alabaster jars emit

some essence purely ours

unnamed but permeating

deep within our secret place

saved up long years ‘til space brim-full

to be poured out unconsciously

on that most precious personhood

soul-born within the womb of God

anointing as one would a king

except this spills down past the head,

the seat of power, of will, of aim,

and covers all the flesh

and all interior dwelling

and all ethereal parts unknown

but to Begetter in beginning

that all may know the kingdom

and royal robes forever wear

and offer oblations as the high priest

and spread divinity throughout the realm.

Considering the Godhead in Masculine/Feminine Terms

“A Special Note about Gender:  God has no gender.  The masculine/feminine duality of personality is a human attribute.  And yet, God is both masculine and feminine, for God is All.  As All, God is both as personal as you and as impersonal as ‘It’ or ‘Principle.’  Human beings can relate more intimately to a personal God than an impersonal one, and so ion his lifetime Jesus created the idea of ‘God the Father,’ which casts God as a loving presence, and humans as part of a Divine Family.  During Jesus’ time, the culture could only accept a masculine figure; and ever since much of the world has related to God as masculine in both imagery and in language.  I grew up in a Catholic society in which God was universally referred to as ‘He.’  That tradition is reflected in the first three books of Choose Only Love.

“In Book IV, however, God more fully revealed Herself:  ‘Until now, God Himself, in His infinite knowledge, wanted to show Himself in the world as Father, as well as the love that He is.  But from now on She wants to show Herself as Mother, not only as wisdom.  The ‘feminine’ of God will come to light more and more every day.’  Thus the reader will notice that the language of the final four books in this series reflects both the masculine and feminine natures of God.”  – from Sebastian Blaksley, receiver of Choose Only Love.  Passage is from Choose Only Love, Bk. 7, introductory material.

The explanation about gender, you will note, quoted above, comes from Sebastian and is here quoted from Book 7.

Traditionally, Christianity has used the masculine gender, as did Jesus 2,000 years ago.  Now we are encouraged to think of God in broader terms, knowing (as I think Jesus knew, too) that God is bigger than one gender.  In the more inclusive way that God is dealing with us now, we are encouraged to try to see His/Her grandeur, that the God we worship is not to be seen in anthropomorphic terms.

We tend to see God in our own image, but that somewhat misstates the case.  We are told in the Genuis that God created us in His image—not the reverse.  So we are encouraged to try to think in “God terms,” and of course this attempt asks a lot of us.

The Mother God will be seen by us as a gentler version, for most of us carry warm feelings toward the one who birthed us and cuddled us in her arms.  The mother/child bond has been seen as the most significant of all our relationships.  And Book 7 of Choose Only Love recognizes this significance.

Ask God to show us how to think of the Godhead.  See if what Sebastian says here in his reception of Choose Only Love finds a place in our hearts. 

God’s Listening Ear

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

Breaking Bread

Am I engaged in eating

when another I might feed?

Must both the giver

and receiver dine together?

And if I

not hungry

simply want to share

is table fellowship required?

But if no food have I

not even for myself

might my meal partner

have some to share with me?

Or if we two

have no fresh bread

to break and eat together

might there be

a different kind of meal?

A breaking open of ourselves

revealing sustenance?

A spirit sharing one with one?

And wafting through the meal

aroma of the Father’s favorite food?

---

From Celia’s Images in a Reflecting Pool: a Journal:

“Lead, kindly Light . . .

Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.”

–Arthur Hays Sulzberger

Simply put one foot in front of the other and walk.  This is the secret of getting over an enervating malaise, if it is only mildly debilitating.  Truly pathological depression is going to require something more: usually biochemicals as well as a good listening ear.  (And God has the best Listening Ear of all.)

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.

Recovering Ideals

“[Y]our pulse is not the pulse of your heart alone, but of you connection to time, to space, to your esteemed and symbolic places, to ideas made manifest, and to humanity’s own fall from its ideals.”  Memoria

We are living in difficult times, and we see in Memoria (a new book channeled by Mary of Nazareth, received by Mari Perron) that Mary is aware of our difficulties.  Of course.  Her appearances in the world have always championed the downtrodden and forgotten.

I want to focus on our fall from ideals.  We can recover.  Perhaps those who are denigrated the most actually mean well; it is not for us to judge the hearts of our brothers and sisters.  It is not for us to judge at all, for fear and judgment keep us from Awakening.  This from A Course of Love, an earlier work received by Mari.

If we have fallen from our ideals, then we need to recoup.  We need to make a new start.  And we can.  It simply means that we turn to God and ask for His help in perilous times. 

He knows how to right our world, and if we ask with sincerity, wanting to know what to think, say, and do, He will surely tell us.  We are on the cusp of something called The New, and in this new world order, we will surely know peace when we draw it to ourselves.

Recapturing What We Lost in the Fall of Man

“In unity, all that you desired was participated in fully by a mind and heart combined in wholeheartedness.  You knew your Self to be the creator, and loved all that you created.  You did not desire and fear something at the same time, and your desires did not change from moment to moment.”  (A Course of Love, C:18.14)

We are now living eons past the time of “first” unity.  This first experience of unity cannot really be recaptured as a sense impression now, but it can be recaptured as we move farther along the pathway back to God.  We lived eons ago in wholeheartedness, knowing ourselves as a creator, a co-creator (if you will), of God Himself.  But because of something that couldn’t really happen, but did (the “tiny mad idea” that A Course in Miracles discusses), we fell from grace into an adolescent rebellion.  We weren’t patient enough to come into the fullness of our Being, our Self.  So we coalesced around a false persona, driven by an ego that we made ourselves, and we fell into deep despair as a result.

We can return to the unity that we have forgotten.  It takes patience and abundant willingness to capture what we have lost, but the recapture is God’s intention for us, and so he is right there helping us every step along the way.

Don’t get depressed that the way seems too long and tortuous.  It may be long, but the way is not tortuous at all.  Not with all the help that we are being given.  Our way back is assured—indeed, has always been assured, from the beginning.  God’s will only takes time in the working out, and time does not really exist, for we live in eternity.

Joyous Praise

“What a joy it is to know that through expression we can know being!  How much joy there is in our hearts now that we recognize that the Creator speaks to us through creation.  Each cloud will speak to us of love.  Each gust of wind will sing melodies of love.  Every drop of water will show the purity of love.  The whispers of love will no longer be dim like moonlight, but like melodious songs that the mind and heart hear with gratitude.  As never before, everything we see will tell us of God.  You will recognize that love surrounds you everywhere, that you live, move, and exist in it.”  Choose Only Love, bk.7, 5:III

This quotation, from the last volume in the series–newly published–we see our love for God as a palpable thing. In effect, we are saying hosannas to God, thanking Him for the beauty of our world. Mary, in Mirari, has also commented on what a beautiful world we inhabit. Praising rising to God becomes easy when we live the being that this volume encourages us to inhabit.

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus tells us that our praise of God does not mean that we tell Him how wonderful He is. He has no ego with which to accept such praise. But we ourselves need the discipline of gratitude. It warms our heart. Appreciation, or gratefulness, goes hand in hand with love.

This quotation lifted my spirits very high. When we feel close to God, we naturally want to say “thank You” to Him. And our day goes better as a result, for we are thinking positively, letting go of the many negatives in the world as we are living it today.

Loving Thoughts

“I once suggested to you that you remember only your loving thoughts.  But the trick to that is that you must first become aware of them.  So many become trapped in the depression, anxiety and insanity of the mind because they put all of their energy into perceiving what is amiss and no energy into perceiving their success as Christ.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 20, Page 247)

Focusing on what is amiss is focusing on the negative, and I think God would make positive thinkers out of all of us. Here Jesus certainly clues us in to that. What we focus on expands and/or creates, and if we are constantly failing to love, we are missing out on the best thing out there.

God is Love, though many of us don’t understand how the Great Creator could be an emotion. Love is more than an emotion. It is the bedrock of creation. If God hadn’t recognized that Love needs to be in the ascendancy always, we would have destroyed ourselves long ago. Creation, the universes, don’t work if they aren’t founded on love. And when we lose our madness, this is one of the first things we will recognize.

We have been living in madness as long as we formed an ego that tried to leave out our divinity, our Oneness with God. It didn’t work. And nobody knows it better than us, lost in depression, anxiety, insanity–and knowing somehow deep within that there is a Higher Power Who will save us from ourselves.

Turn to God today–however we conceive of Him. He holds the Answer to every perplexity with which we have ever been confronted.

Humanity & Divinity Will Now Embrace

“Your humanity will be completely absorbed in that which is beyond all human thought, while remaining what it is.  Humanity and divinity will now embrace, establishing a new bond of love linking the Supreme Source with the nature of the human.  And with that we will become increasingly aware of a union that is above all union, and includes them all.

“Beloved mirror of wisdom!  What a joy it is to be able to sing with you a new song every morning, every sunset, and every night.”  Choose Only Love bk. 6, 1:II

Book 6 of Choose Only Love is taking us beyond simply Awakening.  Our humanity and our divinity, as we read in this quotation, will now embrace.  We are evolving further, with God’s help.  We are becoming the Self Who touches God.

We will naturally move to praise when we experience this new beginning.  Our little mind cannot comprehend all the glories that God will bestow on us.  We are speechless as a result.

God’s wisdom will become a part of what we experience.  We will know more about Divinity than we have ever known before.  Indeed, it is not overstating to know that He will be sharing His Godhead with us.

There is a reason that we were born in the physical on earth.  Each of us has a different mission, though there will be similarities.  Ask today to know what we are individually called to do.  Ask today to know what we are individually called to think.  God’s infusion into our mind and heart will be complete.

Grace of God

“Thank you Father-Mother God for giving me life.  Thank you for being as you are:  pure mercy, pure companion.  Thank you, each path of my life, for bringing me here where I can dwell forever in the sweetness of love.  I leave you with my blessing as I continue now on this new path at whose doors I find myself.  You have left me here and cannot come with me.  I bless you in the name of love. 

“After having blessed everything lived, known, taught, and experienced, we let it go forever and begin a new path, a path without past, without plans, without pre-conceived ideas.  We are carried by the Grace of God.”  Choose Only Love bk. 6, 1:I

The first paragraph of the quotation above is set apart as a prayer to God.  He listens, though we know not how.  We are embarking on a new path, a path beyond anything we have known before completely before.  We are seeking to “be,” to walk on the path of being. 

We have long thought that to please God, we need to be busy bees, going about his work with a busy mind.  Part of this traditional thinking comes from St. Paul in the New Testament, when he says that faith without works is dead.  But “being” doesn’t mean we are idle.  We will still work for God, but in a new and different way that is without strain or bother.  We will tap into guidance of a new approach to Self, the Self who is merged with God.  God will then give us our marching orders.

The Grace of God is a magnificent thing.  We have previously struggled to please Him, but this is not what we ought to be about.  He will gently guide; He will gently make us aware of the next step.  Premeditation is not necessary; living in the moment is.  We cease from wearying plans, but we don’t cease from doing all the good that He recommends.  Our stance of “being” informs us what to do, what to say, even what to think.  Our heart informs our mind.  We are safe in His arms.

Vulnerable before God

“This is why when any mind truly begins to awaken, it becomes more and more painful to continue certain thoughts or behaviors that do not reflect the deep desire of the heart.  This is why the gap becomes less and less—the gap of unconsciousness, the gap in which the mind tries to defend its choices and perceptions—until finally, it rests in complete vulnerability.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 20, Page 243 – 244)

Perhaps not all of us want to be vulnerable, but here vulnerability is set forth as a high goal. When we surrender to God, the vulnerability is good, for we are pliable in His hands. Then He can do much with us. We are flexible, like a reed; if we are as strong as the oak, we might topple in a strong wind.

The “gap of unconsciousness” is the place where we have not re-surrendered to God. He can’t do much with us and for us when we are stubborn in our independence, caught in our ego. Let all that go, and rest in the assurance that when we are vulnerable toward God, we are in the best place imaginable.

Loving from the Heart

“If you love some more than others, or if you love certain aspects of creation in a different way than you love others, then you do not understand what love is.”  Choose Only Love bk.4, 4:I

What does Choose Only Love mean by this statement about love? How can we wrap our minds and hearts around this idealistic statement?

Like A Course in Miracles, Choose Only Love can be read on different levels. When we seek love in the interpretation of CHOL, we are seeking the love of God, Who loves all equally for we are all treasured children in His eyes. The closer we come to loving the way that God loves, the more “on the beam” we are.

This statement about love does not mean that we don’t choose different expressions of love with different people in our world. We do. This statement about love is not about those different expressions. It is about the heart, our heart as well as the heart of all others. In the heart, we can love equally, and when we do we are touching God’s hemline.

Say Good-Bye to the Ego

“All those absurd ideas that you harbored about the superiority or inferiority of beings, both physical and spiritual, was an inevitable response of the ego, that totally fearful state of consciousness.  It was unnecessary and not part of God’s dream.”  Choose Only Love bk.4, 3:II

God’s dream for us is benign. We make the drama that surrounds us, and when we have walked farther along on our pathway back to God, everything becomes calm and quiet. In A Course in Miracles, these are the “happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings.”

We are all equal children of God, though some of us, in time, are farther behind others. And some are ahead. But time does not exist; time is illusory. Thus all such comparisons pale.

The ego makes the hell that we sometimes live in, for the ego is “totally fearful,” and fear is an attribute of the hell we make for ourselves.

When we stay close to God, all of this mischief disintegrates. We have good days, like pearls on a string–all, if not perfect, at least a goodly share of perfect. Don’t be too intense about it, but be in constant touch with God. If we are too intense in our constant prayer, we will have an overload of thinking that leaves out the heart. The mind makes for stress. Let our love for God and our brothers and sisters derive from our heart, and this Love is what will make for goodness in every day we spend on earth.

To Attack Anything in Creation Is Never Necessary. It Never Was.

“As you begin to allow the memory of this truth to dawn, answer this question:  Do you despise or attack any brother or sister who accompanies you for a short time on the journey you make towards your heart?

“To attack anything in creation is never necessary.  It never was.”  Choose Only Love bk.4, 3:II

We have feet of clay, being human, and to say that we need hold anyone at all in creation in a less than loving light is not beneficial to our growth as spiritual beings returning to God. We need instead to practice the love that has been preached by every spiritual tradition in existence.

If we are thinking negatively about anyone at all (and all of us has someone in that category), then we need to ask God for help in cleansing our minds. Our hearts already know that truth of what love can do, but our minds are still at least partially deluded. Even awakened people are not perfect in this change to a wholly loving perspective.

Bless us today as we open our hearts to all in creation, barring none. And especially open our hearts to You, dear God, the hope of our life.

Surrendering to God

“That requires, then, learning how to use consciousness differently.  But it is all predicated on a return to peace.  That is why, above all things, your responsibility is to enter into surrender—to let the tiny mad idea of a separate self be dissolved entirely from the mind, so that there is only the Mind of Christ.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 19, Page 234)

Today’s quotation speaks to me, particularly today. I have just been realizing how important re-surrenders are to our spiritual life. When we don’t re-surrender, we often don’t feel totally justified with God. He–as well as our soul, our Self–can see so much farther than can we, in this world, with our personal, little self. When we just give up trying to control things, we live so much better. Control is the wrong attitude. We do make preparations, but control goes too far.

The Mind of Christ is something we all share. This Mind is our very Self, the overarching soul with which we bond with everyone and everything. Surely, when we know our soul is One with the All, God Himself, we can trust that He has our best interests at heart.

Re-surrender today. Re-surrender every day. Re-surrender every time we feel obstinate about anything. There is, in this, the better way.

In the Bosom of God

“Once you accept that you are one with life, one with God, and are together a unit just like a child in the womb, you can begin to live in the reality of the bosom of God.”  Choose Only Love bk.4, 2:II

This quotation from Choose Only Love, an inspired work by Sebastian Blaksley just out, emphasizes to me the meditative nature of this work. It is coming out in multiple volumes, and is a blessing recognized by those of us who read it.

When we imagine ourselves a child in the womb, we are thinking safety, and nothing says safety more conclusively than being held close to the bosom of God. We need to practice love as well as seek safety, of course, and the best way for me to react with love in my devotionals is to feel the warmth of love in my heart–for God, for others, even for myself. This “cocooning” by God does lead us to recognize that without love, we are truly lost. He does not will it, but our personal will might take over and lead us into narrow pathways of ill choice.

I have sometimes said that we need to “milk” the love, when we feel it (especially when we feel it keenly), and then we will be more likely to turn to our heart instead of intellectualizing everything.

Our heart, as A Course of Love also said, does then inform our mind, working in conjunction with our mind–and we are led in the pathway back to God.

Love

“The rebellion against love is what gave rise to fear.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 11:II

We know that this quotation is true. Even today, when we start to feel fear, we can recognize that we are not feeling love–at least not enough love.

So the solution to us of an end to fear is to rev up our love–love for God, love for our brothers and sisters, even love for ourselves. Of course, the quotation harks back to a time before time, when we separated from God because we thought we could make a world we would like better than what He provided. And such a mess we got into.

The way back is to become overwhelmed with love. When we sense even the slightest bit of love, we can “milk” it for more. When we milk the tiny bit of love for all it is worth, we discover what God can do. He meets us more than halfway. He restores our soul to a calm place, a place where there is not fear and we sense only love.

Ask for such a blessing today.

“The Everything of Everything”

“I am that within which everything exists and is.  Inside me is mind and thought, which I created.  In me is your heart with its thoughts, because they come from me.  The body itself exists within me, since nothing is outside of me.  I am the everything of everything.  I am Christ consciousness.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 11:II

Our Christ consciousness is the embodiment of our part of God, our divinity.  And we are emblematic of the whole, a hologram who can touch God because every little bit contains that whole.

Do we understand this?  No.  But we can intuit an understanding.  God doesn’t keep secrets from us.  Our finite minds, even our hearts, are just too finite to comprehend the great mysteries of the cosmos.

When we delve deeply within, in soul-gratifying prayer, our minds and hearts are opened to the joys of our living in the universe.  We don’t know it all, but we do have enough power of understanding to know that we are not alone, that God shares His creative spirit with us.

Simple Desire to Be with God

“The end of illusion is very near when the mind reaches this following point.  When any mind looks out upon its creations that it has attempted to make of itself and finds all of it lacking—that something is missing—and when that mind simply decides to withdraw the value it has placed on the world, and rests into the simple desire to be with God, then Heaven is but a step away.  And that final step is taken by your Creator for you.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 19, Page 233)

When we are unfulfilled in this world, then we can know that something more is needed. Oh, of course, we have flights of fancy that everything is alright. But when we know in our heart of hearts that something is missing, we need to re-surrender to God’s direction. He sets us straight, and this ultimately becomes Awakening. After Awakening, nothing but shines and shines constantly. Our down times don’t seem as down, our happy times seem happier. If something seems lacking, what we really need to do is turn to a Higher Power. The old advice is the best.

We Are Exalted

“Surrender means to settle into the position of the servant, the conduit through which the Mind of God, the Love of God, can be expressed.  The mind that exists in perfect surrender sees absolutely no purpose to any moment of experience save this.  The mind in perfect surrender looks out upon a world that has been healed from its own misperception that the world has had power over it.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 19, Page 231)

I can see a problem in the expression of this quotation. Our surrender is couched in such terms that say we need to be a “servant.” Now, in our culture, the role of servant is seen to be a discriminatory position, and we probably have bought into this interpretation. The word servant has not always been seen in such a way. And when we are servants to God, in surrender, we are in no way subordinate. He lifts us up to be co-creators with him.

But first we have to surrender to His way of doing things. This is not optional. We are God’s creations, and he planned it this way. But it is out of love that He so acts. His universes could not survive if we didn’t finally go His way. We would destroy ourselves in the universes, much as we have come close to destruction of our world.

Our world, in truth, has no power over us. Of course, we don’t believe this, because in our daily experience, many things seem to impede upon us. But we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And our spiritual being has never been harmed by anything that happens in our world. And because we live in illusion, nothing has, in actuality, happened to our human selves either.

We are alright in this world. And when we bow the knee to God, we see what blessings He is ready to bestow upon us. When we are servants to God, in surrender, we are, in actuality, exalted.

Surrender to Love

“Surrendering to love is what will finally make you able to free your mind, your heart, your memory, and your will from all restrictions.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 10:IV

We need to have–and keep–a clear mind, heart, memory, will. Just this morning I was praying for my hangups just to recede and ultimately to disappear. And then I turn to my document from Choose Only Love, and immediately my eyes light on this quoted passage. It seems, in its own way, a miracle.

The Answer is even in this quotation. The Answer, as it so often is, is just surrendering to love. Yet we often tie ourselves in knots, trying a little bit of everything else. When we seek God’s kingdom, the entrance is gained by love. Nothing else. No other way.

I sometimes think that we hear this imperative to love in so many spiritual teachings that we are a little numb about it. Just how do we “surrender to love”? What is the way?

It is possible that the way is paved by simple trust in God. We must trust that God has our best interests at heart. If we don’t believe this, we will be too frightened to surrender to Him. Many of us have subconscious fears about the validity of God’s love for us. We think His will for us, and our will for ourselves, are at odds. The wills are the same, but if we are to adopt God’s choices for our lives, we will see blessings that our own personal wills can never attain.

Ask, just ask, how to surrender to Him. Surrender will come when we get very quiet. When we give up trying to navigate a difficult world all by ourselves.

When we give up, the light dawns.

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. 

Thought

Note: Jayem, who channeled The Way of Mastery live, is offering an online course, an immersion, in the Lord’s Prayer, focusing on the Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Please consider. Here is the link:

https://wayofmastery.com/the-aramaic-jesus/aramaic-lord-s-prayer-an-immersion

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“That illusion by the way, is not the physical body, nor is it the physical dimension, since in reality, the physical dimension does not exist.  What exists is thought, streaming forth from mind, creating, or outpicturing, that which has been held within the mind.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 19, Page 230)

Here, in a capsule version, is the metaphysics of our reality. We are living “thought,” and what we are experiencing is the “outpicturing” of God speaking to us in our mind and heart.

For those of us who have longed to know ultimate reality, this is a welcome explanation. It says that the universe is actually thought. With this in mind, we can realize that the energy of the cosmos is actually God’s thought. And we know that we are a part of Him, and so our reality is thought as well.

Think on these things. It makes our metaphysics so much clearer, even though our finite minds can’t comprehend how thought can be solidified.

But it can. And when we know that thought is the genesis, we can know that the silence in which God speaks to us is very real.*

The Good, the Holy, the Beautiful

“Therefore, the extension of the good, the holy, and the beautiful needs to become your sole purpose—as it has become ours.  For only when the mind is used for this purpose alone can there be the perfect remembrance of the Kingdom.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 19, Page 229)

Yes, these are beautiful words from Jesus. He did not remind us to “love,” for when we intend to express the good, the holy, and the beautiful, there is no way to do so unless we are loving as well.

We are meant to “remember,” because we are revisiting the past (A Course in Miracles tells us), and in that revisiting we shape that past into something more in tune with God. When we remember, we have remembrance of the Kingdom of God. And this remembrance can only bring us peace, joy, and security in a life well-lived.

It helps to have our purpose spelled out so clearly. Choose Only Love uses the same terms to indicate our purpose, and so there is evidence that Jesus is remembering what he has told us–and remembering exactly.

The good, the beautiful, the holy. A high expectation for us, but eminently doable when we stay close to God.

Fully Experiencing the Will of God

“To fulfill the Will of God perfectly is the only joy and peace that can be fully known, because it is the only function that can be fully experienced.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-8.III.2)

This statement is the statement of a man of God.  Jesus gets his joy from fulfilling what he understands to be God’s will.  And he asks nothing less but that we do the same.

It is not hard, this following of God.  The guidance comes through precisely all the time.  The only question is whether or not we will turn into that guidance.  The best way to live is to tune in.  Then our days and nights develop a substantial flow, one event into the next, with ease and grace.  We fret less; we worry not at all.

These are our best days, the days that we follow guidance and in so doing develop a flow.  Ask that today be such a day for you.  If you are intent on following what you perceive to be the will of God, you will not be disappointed in the extraordinary day that will be afforded you.

Jesus is on the verge of introducing us in A Course in Miracles to the Holy Spirit.  Up to now, he has focused on asking us to imagine what he, Jesus, might say to us, and then following his guidance unfailingly.  He will not leave us now, though, if we are willing to keep doubts at bay, and consider that he is serious when he says that he will come to us in response to “one unequivocal call.”  He also says that we can imagine that we hold hands with him, and he says that this will be “no idle fantasy.”

But now Jesus is introducing us to the Holy Spirit, an introduction that may be unnecessary to some of us.  The Holy Spirit is, in A Course in Miracles, our Guide to right action.  He is also called the Universal Inspiration, and references to Him in ACIM are always capitalized. 

We need to have good days, like pearls on a string, blessed days.  And here we have the key:  follow guidance.  We will not be led astray.

“Easy and without Effort”

“The end is always a thought away.  Liberation—a simple choice.  The way is easy and without effort.  It rests in the power to decide.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 18, Page 228)

The “end” is Awakening, enlightenment, Christ-consciousness, transformation. Many long for this, but most don’t know that our power of decision rests in the God within. And if God is within, if we are a part of Him, then our power to decide is not simply a matter of just letting our God decide the timing.

We remove the blocks of fear and judgment, and then we make a simple decision that we long to experience the best of God today. THIS is the “power to decide.” Of course, this sounds difficult to our unknowing ears. But here Jesus says that the way is easy and without effort. When we rest on God’s bosom, things are easy and without effort.

The only problem is that we try to do it all with our finite self. And this won’t work at all.

Surrender to the God within. With this choice, we ready ourselves to a greater transformation than we can ever imagine.

Our Worth Is Established by God

“Your worth is not established by teaching or learning.  Your worth is established by God.  As long as you dispute this everything you do will be fearful, particularly any situation that lends itself to the belief in superiority and inferiority. Teachers must be patient and repeat their lessons until they are learned.  I am willing to do this, because I have no right to set your learning limits for you.  Again,–nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth.  This point is not debatable except in delusions.  Your ego is never at stake because God did not create it.  Your spirit is never at stake because He did.  Any confusion on this point is delusional, and no form of devotion is possible as long as this delusion lasts.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-4.I.7)

An important quotation, because so many of us struggle with confusion over self-esteem.  As the ego manages self-esteem, we will never measure up.  As our spirit measures self-esteem, we cannot help but measure up.

And this quotation tells us why:  Our worth is established by God.  We don’t have to “do” in order to merit His approval.  He has made us perfect, and only the extent to which we have varied from this epitome, in our dream, is what needs remedying.  We are worthy, still perfect in our essence.  And this, in itself, must lead to a very serene sense of self-actualization in our depths.

We constantly compare ourselves to each other.  This is wrong.  All talents will one day be shared equally, and, in the meantime, when someone else has what we lack, we too have something that he/she lacks.  All of this comparison leads to either a sense of superiority or inferiority.  And to demoralization.  There seems no way out.

But there is a way out.  Simply repeat to yourself, “My worth is established by God.”  If this affirmation doesn’t work for you, then commune with our Maker to ask what and how you might believe what Jesus has said is true. 

We need to get over the delusion that we have to merit approval from God.  We will stay confused as long as we think that egoic ideas are separating us from our Creator.  It is true that, in the illusion, the dream, we are separate from God—but in reality, we have never left.

Let God Have His Way with Us

“Creation waits upon your welcome by merely holding the thought within your mind, ‘All right, it’s all arising within me anyway.  I’ve tried in a million ways to avoid it and get away from it, and yet it seems to follow me wherever I go.    (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 18, Page 221)

“Creation” is another word for God. He creates, and we appreciate His creation. We must always recognize that we did not create ourselves, something we are apt to forget when we are being particularly egotistical.

God has been called the “hound” of Heaven. He patiently pursues us through millennia, but He does not force His hand upon us. He waits patiently, for He knows that we will eventually realize, as Bill and Helen of A Course in Miracles did, that there is “another way.” And we might add, a “better way.”

We need to welcome divinity into our lives. Of course, here I am speaking to the choir, in that all of you who view my blog are already open to the spiritual life.

Know that we can do much in the world by simply “being,” letting God have His way with us.

Love’s Transforming Purpose

“When you decide to fully accept the one purpose given to you, in reality, there will be nothing that will block your way.  Every step you take will, literally, take you through obstacles that dissolve as you approach them.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 18, Page 219)

The one purpose is to walk more closely with our God, to transform into loving individuals who forgive when hurt. God does not even require that all of us hold to the same belief about Him. He is God of the secular as well as the devout. But we can all recognize that our world has gone very awry. Most of us know that a general consensus to care more about each other, to love, would make a great difference, a transformative difference. We know this because our need for love is great, and we often seek for that love with our nearest and dearest.

Transformation, Awakening, Christ-consciousness–these, all meaning the same, are the next evolutionary leap for humankind.

Pray that the day may come soon when we all recognize that there is a better way.

Sacred Path

“My sons and daughters, the path of each one has been ordained by God and is sacred.  He and the soul know.  Rest in this certainty and release any attempt to understand in a world way.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 9:II

This very comforting passage from Book 3 of Choose Only Love is emblematic of the entire series, out now in five books, and eventually to be seven.  Here we read that we walk a sure path ordained by God.  We don’t have to be uncertain that we are walking in the right way if we stay close to Him, enjoying His presence in our daily walk.

We need comfort in this sometimes difficult world.  And here we have it.  Let us be glad on any day, whether the sun seems to shine upon us or not.  We can’t understand what happens in a “world way,” which I think means that we are trying to understand godly, divine, things with the worldview of our human walk on Earth.  The world’s take on what happens to us is very different from God’s.  If we are to have happiness even in the midst of the tragedies of our world, we must look higher, to Divinity.  Or deeper, which is what we are actually doing, for God is within, and our attempts to reach Him will not dissolve into nothingness.  We will have an Ally in Him.   And this relationship will succeed when nothing else has in the past, or ever could in the future. 

In the present, listening to guidance from God, we are safe—safe in this world, sure of our footing, certain that we have a Father Who walks with us.

Love & Life

“I and my Father are one.  Only Love is real, and Love, alone, heals. . . .

“Herein lies your purpose.  Herein lies your function, and herein—and only here—is Life.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 18, Page 217)

Being in love, in love with this world, our friends and family, our God, is the only way that works.  We really don’t have to run around “doing” frantically.  If in a measured pace, what we seek is not there, then it was not meant to be there.  Take time today, time just to “be.”

This is, according to A Course of Love, Mary of Nazareth’s way.  And, also according to A Course of Love, the way that more and more of us will adopt as we move ahead in time.  We think that we have to merit salvation.  It is not so.  God loves us and will guide us to right living if we will let Him.

Be very quiet today and listen to the Love of the Father.  We will in this way only have abundant Life.

Teach Only Love

“Ultimately, it is not so much about going anywhere, as much as it is about abiding within, realizing that this world is unreal, this world is harmless.  And in any situation, it is you with all power under Heaven and Earth to teach only love.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 17, Page 215)

The Way of Mastery is echoing A Course in Miracles when Jesus here says to “teach only love.”  That IS what we are about, and until we accept this mission, we will fret and stew and live a life that is below what we could aspire to.

How do we teach only love?  This quotation also has this answer:  We go within.  God is within, and He will teach us what we need to do to live good lives, lives suffused with His blessings, lives that do Him justice.  Going within offers us a nurturance that our relationships cannot offer, at least not all the time and in all ways. 

We have depended on our relationships, especially our special relationships, to take care of us emotionally.  The only way that succeeds all the time is to turn to our Maker, Who supports us with an everlasting support.  When we turn within, we sense love, and when we sense love from God, we are in a position to offer that love to others.  It is necessary first to receive from God, and then to offer, to give.

This is the way that we teach only love. 

God has much to teach us.  Commune with our depths today, and see what today’s message from Him might turn out to be.

Devotion

Let us look at the real act that makes manifest: devotion. Heart and soul working together to fulfill destiny. “Knowing” where you are meant to be and what you are meant to be doing. Mirari.

Not all of us are ready for such certainty as Mary expresses in this quotation.  We may not yet understand where we are meant to be or what we are meant to be doing—much less “know” it with any certainty.

But Mary does not leave us hanging.  She tells us the secret to “knowing”—and it is devotion.  Listening to our heart and soul.  Listening to God in the silence that speaks to us.  We are never left bereft.  God beckons, “Come to Me,” and then He opens the floodgates of love that transform us.

We all have a destiny to fulfill.  Or we may have several different purposes over our lifetimes.  Purpose is everything.

Ask for our destiny today.  God does not keep secrets from us.  We will know all we need to know when His time to reveal arrives.  And for this time to be now, we only need devotion—and to ask Him for a knowing.

Living Christ

“When you pray to God, you are praying to that part of yourself that is divine, that which we call the living Christ who lives in you.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 11:II

We are not just praying to our little personality when we pray.  We have a larger Self who is merged with God, and this larger Self is a part, but only a part, of the Christ.  Christ is a plural term, not meant in this era for only Jesus.  We partake of divinity, too.

Know that turning inward is not praying to an external God, for God is not external to ourselves.  We are a part of Him, always and forever, even when we are living with the ego in a “fallen” state.  We gain insights by turning inward to the God Who dwells deep inside.  We know better how to live.

Ask today how to proceed in life.  Let our intuition be our Guide, for God is speaking in the silence to us through our intuition.

One with God

“Meditate with serene joy on the fact that you are one with God:  that you are that of God which extended in form to be able to know yourself.  You are God in God, literally.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 11:II

Life is formed from the inside out, with God directing every move whenever we will let Him.  We get nudges just all the time, and it is only when we resist that our life falls on rocks.  God is living through us, though we are endowed with a mind that is finite, and so we can only intuit Him in His fullness.

This must be the only way that God could enjoy His reality, His existence in untold universes and beyond form as well.  We have been told in numerous spiritual works that God is at play in the universe, that He is experiencing bliss as He looks upon us—and even when we fall short.  When we fall short, God knows that it is a temporary failing, because He knows what the end result will be—union with Him, bliss for all creations, us among them.

Say a prayer of thankfulness today for the Intelligence that created this way of experiencing His totality.

Love & Miracles

“Since that part of God that dwells in you is as powerful as God Himself in its totality, then certainly you can do miracles by invoking the divine aspect of yourself or getting events to be harmoniously oriented in love.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 11:II

What does this mean? It does not mean that we are as powerful as God. The divine aspect of us “in its totality” is what we are talking about. And with this divine aspect we can work miracles that are prompted. We don’t work miracles that we think are well-advised, for this is the one way to get ourselves and others into trouble. We wait for guidance, and then, almost without knowing, we are in a miracle-minded state. From there it is easy to bring about the miracles that we are asked to perform.

If our lives are flowing in the harmony of love, we are right where we ought to be. We are living joyously. We are in tune with the Infinite, God Himself. If we are depressed in spirit, our good deeds will be tainted, for we will bring our suffering into them. If we want to live well, doing good for others while we ourselves are listening to guidance, we need to remain centered in wellness. This is not so hard to do when we are living with the thought of love in our mind and heart.

Love will transform us so that miracles will light not only our path, but those in our circle of family, friends, acquaintances–and even the larger world.

Lift our eyes to the heavens. We will be lifted up at the same time.

God’s Help

“When you ask God to help you with this or that, you are consciously joining the part of you that is divine.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 11:II

I ask God for help just a lot. And this quotation says that I am joining with Him, with His divinity that is deep within me.

Most of us don’t recognize that we are joining with a part of our Self when we join with God. But He is not separate from us. He is everywhere, and He is within all of us. We are One with Him and all others, all that has been created. The universes are One.

It is OK to beseech Heaven with requests for help. We have finite minds and hearts that are only now just coming into loving in a big way. We don’t know it all. God will gift us with intuitive thoughts from the silence in which He dwells. And He will warm our hearts while informing our minds. We will be much better off.

Don’t feel that we have to go it alone. The God Who dwells within us knows all, sees all, and can let us know the right way to proceed. His love for us does all this for us.

God’s Plan

“You have not entered the physical plane after My incarnation by chance.  It is part of God’s plan.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 8:III

There are no accidents in life, no chance meetings, no happening that “just” happened to come about.  We are living at the right time for us, the time following Jesus’ incarnation. We are living a plan, a plan that we intuited from God, and then set up as our contract for our life.  We put bad things in our contracts as a way of growing, a growing to perfection.

We know from A Course in Miracles that it is not necessary to learn through pain.  Jesus said in ACIM that learning through rewards is more lasting.  Unfortunately, many of us are just learning this, discovering this.  And so we are caught in bad things happening to good people.

We can change on a dime.  We can soften the hard parts of our contract with life.  When we turn to God in our daily lives, He comforts and soothes us.  Always with us, living through us, He would not have us turn the pain in our contracts into suffering.

Make a decision today to live above the fray.  If we lighten up about life, life lightens up for us as well.  We are caught in a drama, in a series of dramas, but we don’t have to buy into the chaos.

Know that every prayer to God is heard. 

And with this knowledge, the fray will recede in our minds and hearts, hopefully never to return. We just must remember to do our part, a part we discover when we ask for guidance on a frequent basis.

We Live in God

“God is a marriage of love because everything, male and female as you consider it, resides in God, as well as in all true creation.”  COL bk.4, 1:IV

We are composed of love—through and through.  We are living, many of us, in madness still, because the ego has not yet died in us.  When the ego does die, we will know what it is to live in God.  We will be part of “all true creation.”

What we have made of ourselves in this world is not “true creation,” for our mistakes have made us labor under extreme conditions of depravity.  Never God’s intention, He “let go” when we rebelled (A Course of Love concept).  What else could He do?  We as parents even do this with our rebellious teenagers.  Neither we, in God’s sight, nor teens, are yet mature—or we wouldn’t make such havoc for ourselves.

Let the love that we are embrace us and give us new life.  In this time of spring in the northern hemisphere, we can be at home in our world when we recognize that all of life can be our springtime—a time of new growth, new growth into greater immersion in God.

Prayer

“We come to invite you to live in prayer.  Prayer, as has been said, is the life of the soul.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 8:I

When we feel reverent and at peace, our prayers seem to have wings.  But sometimes we think they don’t reach the ceiling.  What is going on here?

We have to realize that what we feel at any given time is not always evidence of reality. 

When we turn to God often, sensing that He is here for us, then our prayerful life will mean that we live better.  This is when we are in touch with our very soul.  This is when we live in Love.

We don’t always “feel” it, even though we are making an effort to live in prayer, making an effort to live in Love.  This is the time for faith, for our mind and heart to work together, knowing that God is real and that He is always near.  Found deep within us, and also outside, God is the energy of consciousness, emanating through and through the cosmos.

When we want to feel Him more than intellectually, we can turn to our heart.  The merger of mind and heart influences us to know that God is always near, ready and willing to help us whenever we call on Him.

Warmth from God Transforms Our Concerns

“I ask you to observe the pattern of concern, the recurring pattern of worry.  Always it takes concrete form:  maybe money, a business, health, the safety of the children.  Everyone has an area in which they feel insecure.  Maybe there are several areas, but they are always few and very specific.  We now work with these areas to experience those patterns of thought and emotional responses, and to transmute them.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

Here Jesus, in channeled writing, says that the areas for which we have concern or worry are always “few and very specific.”  Yes!  The few and very specific may vary over the years, even over the days and weeks, but our finite mind cannot encompass more than a few at any one time.

It is our job now to consider these areas of concern and then to move beyond them, to “transmute” them, as Jesus says.  They have come up out of the subconscious for just such a transformation in our mind.  We had to invite the subconscious into the conscious in order to be ready for Awakening.  We had to transmute that which has troubled us.

If we see these concerns/worries as insecurity, as Jesus also says, then this will help us to deal with them.  We absolutely do not have to feel insecure in God’s world.  When our minds and hearts are listening to His word, we know how to attract those things that bless.  We don’t get lost in negativity that invites disaster.

Turn to God with our concerns.  In a heartbeat He can warm us, cocoon us, and we can know in just that moment that all is well.

Trust

“[T]oday I speak of trust.  Observe how the thought patterns of worries and concerns of all kinds seem to assault you again and again.  These concerns come, in fact, from beliefs contrary to trust.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

How do we eliminate worries and concerns?  We trust God to take care of us!  As many of us know, “trust” is the first and most important attribute of a teacher of God.  This from the Manual of A Course in Miracles.  So it stands to reason that when we have progressed and can call ourselves “teachers,” then in our trusting we will see worries and concerns just drop away.  If we are tied up in knots, we can’t represent God well.  And we can’t do our spiritual tasks well, either.

It is hard to get started on the path toward trust.  But as we open more and more of our lives to God’s action in us, each next step becomes easier.  And we see the results in better living.  No longer tangled up, we walk happier, joyfully, and we accept life as it is without adding to our discomfort by worrying about what is happening.

We all face adversities.  It is not the fact of what we face that is important, but how we face it.  We can dip low and feel sorry for our misfortune, importuning God to take away our troubles, or we can lean on Him, legitimately, asking for help in bearing up under the burden.  We do have this choice.

And this choice is enough.

Peace in Our Soul

“[S]tay for a few moments in the silence of your heart as you experience the peace of your soul as you hear these words:  You are safe and sound.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:III

We all need to be sure that we are “safe and sound.”  Jesus knows us at least as well as we know ourselves, and many believe that much in Choose Only Love is channeled from him.

Jesus appeals to our heart, letting us know that when we turn there, we experience peace in our very soul.  Most of us fret too much when faced with the difficulties of our world and of our daily lives.  We need to turn somewhere, and this passage suggests that our soul needs us to turn to our heart.  This is a primary emphasis in A Course of Love as well.  We have lived in our deluded minds too long, entertaining an ego that did not mean us well.  But many of us are leaving madness behind as we choose to relinquish the ego at every point that it seeks to ensnare us.  And ALL of its points seek to ensnare us.

Link our soul to our heart today.  Our feelings will indicate to us when we have succeeded in this exercise.

God speaks in silence, and He often speaks to our heart because it is not caught up in remaining patterns of the ego.  See what our heart is trying to say to us today.  See what we need to discover.

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 something to do.  This word from Jesus tells us just what it is.  If something we recognize is not love, love-oriented, then take charge of it, and banish it from our lives. 

There are many emotions that are love, emotions of positivity.  Harmony, peace, tranquility, being soothed, being cocooned—all of these are of love.  But there are also emotions that are not of love.  Anger, attack, jealousy, violence—all of these are not of love. 

If we recognize that we are harboring one of these negatives, we must do something about it.  We must not depend on anyone else to banish these emotions from our self.  WE must do it.

The good news is that when we enlarge the love in our lives, the negative emotions of hate fall away of their own accord.  We don’t have to seek to discredit them or to remove them.  Love embraces all and transmutes the negativity, leaving the positive emotion of love as an all-embracing blessing.

Ask for help from God to shift into love-oriented living today.  God is Love, and He will understand our own failings in this regard.  He will fill us with His Love, and then all will be well.