Know with an Inner Knowing that Will Aid the Eyes’ Sight

“Have you thought your instincts will be sharpened and that you will know with an inner knowing that will aid the sight of your eyes? (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 2.31)”

1 – Jesus

This passage describes succinctly what Jesus has explained earlier in the “Treatise on the New,” but in less cogent terms. We will know with an inner knowing, once we have accepted the Christ-consciousness that he holds out to us as awaiting us at the end of the “journey without distance” (an ACIM quotation) that we have taken. This inner knowing is somewhat different from the intuitions that we have come to recognize from the Holy Spirit. In my experience of the Holy Spirit, there was a definite statement, felt internally, of what the next step was to be. There was a bit of a delay as the Holy Spirit stepped back and let me make a decision of whether or not to follow His guidance.

2 – No Delay

But in this inner knowing of the Christ-consciousness, there is no delay. The way is effortless and easy. We want to follow the instinct that has suddenly, almost imperceptibly, arisen in us. This is akin to allowing Jesus to guide us without our conscious awareness, a step that he told us in A Course in Miracles still awaited us. He said there that most were not yet ready for this type of guidance. In A Course of Love, we have become ready. We are asked to become ready. We are told that we need not seek for yet another way, another pathway that will give us more peace. The time of peace has arrived. We are justified. We do not have to wonder if we are worthy.

3 – Misleading Us?

This type of reassurance is very important at this juncture. Many will feel that it is too good to be true, and many will believe that Jesus is misleading us–but if we take him at his word, we will experience the truth of what he says. ACIM also talked about the fear from us that Jesus might be misleading us. But no one who has studied those volumes long and faithfully still clings to this early misinterpretation.

4 – ACOL

Now we are asked to accept A Course of Love with the same acuity. We need to recognize that perfection on our own part, achieved by ourselves, is not the goal. Has the belief that perfection of our little personalities not always been the sticking point? But in A Course in Miracles, Jesus reassures us that he stands at the end of the journey to reach to us, to correct the mistakes that we cannot correct. He stands ready to help us at our point of failure. This he is doing in A Course of Love (though he does not say this specifically). Jesus would have us to realize that mistakes do not impede the “perfection” to which he draws us. He wants only a perfect faith, and even though we demur, this perfect faith is, as A Course of Love indicates, within the power of all of us–with Jesus as our always loving guide, ready to correct our errors as we move toward Christ-consciousness (and indeed, as we live Christ-consciousness).

5 – Inner Understanding

The decision to listen to inner understanding is not lost on those of us who might still be living with the Holy Spirit rather than the Christ Self. All of us have access to a knowing that is vastly superior to anything that we had access to when the ego was in the foreground.

6 – Internal Asking

If we don’t feel that we have a real sense of what to say and do, just ask internally.

7 –

That is all that is required.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I live Christ-consciousness today, living with the knowing that is inner entirely. I recognize the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and I find that actually there is an oscillation between the two ways of coming to know the right pathway.

You would have me just to “know,” but I will be patient and wait for Your messages, however they are given to me. In A Course of Love, Jesus indicates that what got us in trouble in the first place was our impatience; this is when the “tiny, mad idea” crept in. May I know patience today. And may You walk with me every step of my day today.

Amen.

Definition of Love

“Knowing and love are inseparable.  When this is realized, it is obvious that love is the only true wisdom, the only true understanding, the only true knowing.  Love is the great teacher.  And your loving relationships the means of learning love.  (A Course of Love, 23.1)”

Affirmation:  “I would learn love from my relationships today.”

Reflections:

1 – Knowing

We must seek to “know,” not to perceive, for perceptions are fleeting and knowledge is eternal.  When we love our significant others, and even beyond to other people, we come to knowledge.  This is the way of A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love.  It is through relationships that we come to know.

2 – Love Cancels Out Fear

Only in relationships will we be free of fear, for love, true love, cancels out fear.  Is not this motivation indeed?

3 – Dislodge the Ego

The motivation to dislodge the ego, and to replace that ego with true identity, is paramount if we are to know lasting happiness.  And lasting happiness, along with salvation and forgiveness, represent our function here.  Happiness, salvation, forgiveness–all are synonymous.  And when we have reached outward to our brothers and sisters, we will know that love is here to envelop us.

4 – Today’s Task

May we know this today.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would know love today, for surely this is the all-important pathway to happiness.  And happiness is a worthy goal, though I have not always believed that it was my function (along with salvation and forgiveness, as ACIM says).  Help me to love, first, my significant others, and then may I also love myself as I love them, and then may I love my brothers and sisters, met and unmet, in this world.  I am conscious of the Other Side.  Indeed, I imagined that my great-grandmother and a friend of ours visited me in the middle of the night two nights ago when I was having trouble sleeping.  I sensed their presence, though I did not see nor hear anything.  Thank You for that experience.  A very comforting experience.

May I seek only to bring comfort today, an affirmation that Hugh Prather, the late writer/speaker on ACIM, recommended.  May I bring comfort to my husband, who is so good to me and such a blessing in my life.  I waited a long time to find him, but the wait was worth it.  Thank You for giving me the patience to wait until the right man entered my life.

Be with me as I seek to know more of love today.  You are Love, and You are not simply an emotion.  Help me to see more of that which You are.  And thank You for guiding me so gently and peacefully to good days of serenity.

Amen.

THE GIFT CALLED GUIDANCE

Published in Miracles for November/December 2012 (publisher Jon Mundy).

by Celia Hales

A Course in Miracles would have us defer to the Holy Spirit in our decisions.  This guidance is true, and it does not always have to be constant in our lives.  But it can be.  Let me explain.

“Does this mean that you cannot say anything without consulting Him?  No, indeed!  That would hardly be practical, and it is the practical with which this course in most concerned.  (M71)”

Jesus goes on in this passage to recommend consulting with the Holy Spirit in the morning, asking for the His guidance when it is feasible to do so, and then thanking Him at night.  In other passages throughout the Manual, though, Jesus goes further in recommending that we turn over our decisions increasingly to the Holy Spirit.  He speaks of this need particularly in regard to judgmental thinking, which he indicates that accuracy is impossible for us, because we do not know all the facts–past, present, and future–that impinge on a given decision.  If Jesus really means this (and I feel certain that his words are very intentional), how might we turn our decisions, especially our judgments, increasingly over to the Holy Spirit?  How do we know when the Holy Spirit is speaking to us?

My own reflections over the years of studying ACIM have evolved from a primary dependence upon feelings, or intuition, to a broader recognition that the aspects of life that we cannot get out of our minds may be the Holy Spirit speaking to us.  Here is a 10-point list with some commentary of the ways that I have discovered guidance acting in my life.  Do not take anything unto yourself unless it finds a place in your heart.

1 – Listening in Prayer.  The “listening” time of prayer is the best way that I believe that I receive guidance.  I am careful, though, not to forget that my own desires may interfere with what I “hear,” and that I may make a mistake.  Many have said that God speaks in the silence, and I think this is an appropriate way to seek His Will.

2 – Keep a Prayer Log.  In the early eighties the spiritual writer Catherine Marshall recommended keeping a prayer log, very specifically, with prayers listed succinctly and then the answer, when it was received, recorded and dated.  I followed this recommendation for the remainder of the eighties and into the nineties, and I found it very, very useful.  (Probably I should return to this practice.)

3 – Intuitive Advice.  In daily life I receive guidance through a feeling that I ought to take a given course of action.  “Feeling” is akin to intuition, but that is not the whole of it, I think.  I believe that our minds, our intellects, frequently interfere with receiving the Holy Spirit’s messages, and that the Holy Spirit finds it easier to reach us through our emotions, our feelings.

4 – Intrusive Words.  Sometimes I am able to be in a spirit of inspiration, and, much as if I were writing without being sure what I would say next, words come into my mind from my unconscious that suggest a given pathway.  I do not actually hear a voice; it is my own thinking, but it also seems to be a bit beyond me.

5 – An Inner Knowing.  Quiet times may bring forth an inner knowing of how to proceed in a matter that is troubling us.  This is non-verbal, akin to hearing the Holy Spirit in our innermost hearts.  This “knowing” without being able to verbalize “how” we know is powerful stuff.  I think that it is certainly one of the most potent forms of guidance.

6 – Journaling.  Writing out our struggles in a journal is a way to invite the Holy Spirit’s input.  I try to let my conscious mind die down and to invite thoughts from my deepest spirit.

7 – Dreams.  In especially faithful times, we may have a dream that appears vivid and suggests the next step for us in our life.  Certainly dreams and visions are important ways in which God spoke to His people in the past, as recorded in Scripture.  I have had two significant “warning” dreams in my life that I still recall vividly.  The dreams came when I was contemplating a pathway that I now realize would not have been healthy for me.

8 – Agitation.  Occasionally in my life I have become severely agitated when I was walking along a given pathway.  I have come to see such agitation as evidence from the Holy Spirit that I am walking the wrong way.

9 – Visions.  Many years ago, when I was 25, I had a series of nighttime hallucinations, or visions, that became important to me in setting the pathway for my life.  Perhaps there was a reason that this gift came at an early age.  The visions have not recurred.

10 – Signs.  Signs are welcomed by many, but I would caution against too much an emphasis here, because it is very easy to twist signs around to mean anything that we want.  (Jesus says in ACIM that we can twist symbols around.)

I have not followed blindly.  Jesus would not have us check our minds and spirits at the door.  I have tested out my perceived guidance, and that is how I have found it true.  I invite you to do the same.  Intuition is a right-brain activity, and, as such, it does not respond well to our timetables.  We may need to present a question to the Holy Spirit, and then go about our day in full confidence that the answer will come when the matter has retreated from the forefront of our minds.  Present a problem or question, and then let go.  Trust the Holy Spirit to make His will known to us.  He will not fail.

In my twenties I heard a very dynamic preacher of the gospel speak on the topic of guidance.

He stressed, “I have known people at the end of their lives who said, ‘I knew that God was telling me to do that.  But I didn’t do it, and I regret it.'”

He went on, vehemently, “I have never known anyone to say, at the end of their lives,  ‘I knew that God was trying to get me to do that, and I did it, and I regret it.'”

Jesus may be commenting on the same guidance when he says the following in the Manual, in a passage that is comforting in the extreme:

“Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit’s guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies.  It is the way out of hell for you.  (M70)”

By this statement, I think that ACIM is telling us that we make our own hells on earth.  Listening to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency shows us the way out of our self-made hells.  I believe that in fact there is no limit to how the Holy Spirit speaks to us,  for our God is not a limited God in any way.  He will find a way to get through to us.  He asks only that we try to discern.  If we miss the first glimmering of guidance, God will bring the same message to us in yet other ways until we get the message.    Remain flexible.  Learn to turn on a dime.  Following the Holy Spirit in this way is joyous.  It is the enlightened way to live, even before we know the Awakening that the Course holds out to us.  As A Course in Miracles makes clear, there can be no better way to live, in the time of the Holy Spirit,  than in following the guidance of Universal Inspiration.

I once read, “Why beseech heaven for a miracle one would not recognize at high noon?”  After actively seeking guidance, we are perhaps in the right frame of mind, for the first time, to recognize miracles when they occur.