Certainty through Intuition

“Being fully aware that you have life everlasting is totally different than having faith in an afterlife. Faith is based upon the unknown. If the unknown were not unknown faith would not be necessary. Faith will become unnecessary, as life everlasting becomes known to you.” (ACOL, T4:4.13)

When we know something, Jesus is saying here that faith in the unknown becomes unnecessary. When we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that life everlasting begins in this lifetime on earth, and continues through eternity, we don’t have to have faith in the unseen. We may not “see” life everlasting, as we see another body on earth, but we see with vision, and we know in the depths of our hearts.

It is a startling assertion that faith in an afterlife will become unnecessary. But Jesus says many startling things in his channeled works (A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, The Way of Mastery, etc.). When we have come to trust in our intuitions, then we will see why faith in an unknown becomes unnecessary. We believe because we trust in our intuitions. And that is all. But that is enough.

The Bible says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And faith can seem nebulous indeed, to us on earth before we have walked along the pathway far enough and long enough to trust in an unseen God, One Whom we have come to know.

Knowing is the secret. Knowing is the way back. Knowing will come to us through our inner Self, the intuition that wells up from deep within us.

Prayer

Be with me as I seek to express love today. Expressing love is the way back to You. It is the greatest thing that I could ever do with my day. I wish to express love with every fiber of my being.

Thank You for guiding me to the right sources to come to a better understanding of what You would ask of me. May I lean on You, now and always.

Amen.

The Promise of Life Everlasting Has Been Fulfilled

“The promise of life everlasting was not an empty promise. It is a promise that has been fulfilled. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 3.15)”

1 – New Testament

This promise echoes the New Testament, in that we are led to understand in some of Jesus’s words, said on earth, that life everlasting begins now. We do not have to wait for Heaven to be happy; certainly A Course in Miracles suggests this idea clearly. Eternal life is a joy waiting to be found while still on earth.

2 – Edgar Cayce

Edgar Cayce, the psychic of the last century who died in the Forties and who lived in Virginia, once did a reading that indicated, in great detail, the Last Supper. One of the sayings attributed to Jesus by Cayce was a reassuring word by Jesus to his apostles that indicated that “Heaven” would be experienced even now, in the moment, when the apostles were gathered with him in love and fellowship. If we take Cayce seriously (and many people over the years have done so), then we can believe that Jesus was encouraging that the life everlasting to begin now, and, moreover, in the happy times, it is Heaven on earth.

3 – Eternal Life

Eternal life is a given for students of both A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love. Many psychics have detailed what life after death is supposed to be like (Note: Ruth Montgomery in The World Beyond, is one such), and when we take the teaching of ACIM and ACOL to heart, we can believe that the future beyond our bodily death is very grand indeed. And so the fear of death is gone.

4 – Ruth Montgomery

Ruth Montgomery’s Guides said that death is like “walking through an open door.” Certainly, if this be true, there is nothing to fear about waking up on the Other Side-and much to look forward to. But the grand promise of today’s quotation is that Heaven doesn’t wait until we die. It is here and now for us, when we have understood and taken unto ourselves certain knowledge. And it is knowledge, not perception.

5 – Intellectual Doubts

So many of us have, at one time or another, had intellectual doubts about these promises of eternal life, life everlasting. Many of us may still entertain those doubts. It behooves us to study and to learn the better way, the “another way” of A Course in Miracles, the “another A Course in Miracles” that is A Course of Love. When we languish in indecision about these eternal question, it is like a ticking time bomb that will engulf us at the end of our lives, when we face death. We won’t know what to believe, and we will seek desperately for answers at that time.

6 – Blind Faith?

How much better to resolve these questions now—here and now! Read further until you are satisfied. Read widely. There is not dearth of material that will lead us homeward. Look beyond simply the Bible, A Course in Miracles, and A Course of Love. There is a course for every teacher of God, and if you look, very likely you will find. In ACIM and ACOL, we are given assurances that we do not have to rely on blind faith. Like Carl Jung, we don’t have to have “faith,” because we can know.

7 – A Knowing

This knowing is the blessing Jesus holds out to us today in A Course of Love, the blessing of the knowingness of life everlasting.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

What a grand promise is life everlasting! If we believe truly, we will lose all fear of death. And we know that pain does not have to lead to suffering, so the illness of life is mitigated.

May I experience the joy today that You would have me to feel. This is a glorious day; may I recognize this.

Thank you for guiding me to the readings that I needed in this lifetime. I didn’t find certain early reading evidential of eternal life, or even of life after death. I was a skeptic until graduate school. May my readers find the things that they need to find to have a firm and solid belief in matters of eternity. May they come upon the readings that they need.

Be with all of us today, as we seek to make our way through this sometimes difficult world. It is all illusion, but it seems very real to me sometimes. And hard. Let this world not seem a difficult experience today.

Amen.

Heaven on Earth in Our Physical Forms

“. . .[T]he nature, even of form, once returned to its natural state of love, is one of unity and everlasting life. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 3.13)

1 – No Need to Die to Experience Heaven

This passage comes very close, in my opinion, to a promise that we can know “Heaven on earth.” We do not have to die to experience the joys that previously were believed by our forebears as reserved for the afterlife.

2 – Everlasting Life

The “everlasting life” is a phrase that has heretofore been reserved for the afterlife, although traditional Christianity does teach that one joins into this life once one has been “saved,” in the old-fashioned sense. But it does seem that A Course of Love goes a bit farther in its promises than anything that has appeared previously, even in other New Age thought. The term “unity,” used so often in ACOL, appears in this context. This unity always refers to unity with God, inside and outside, and in particular the unity that we share with our brothers and sisters in this world. This makes us all One, and One with God (a tenet of ACOL).

3 – Love

How can we know the joy that everlasting life holds out to us, even in this sometimes troubled world? And even in our sometimes troubled personal world? We must remember that in our better moments, we realize that we love and are loved. This twin concept, loving and being loved, is not new, but it is newly emphasized and interpreted in A Course of Love. We have been told repeatedly that at this point, we have left the ego behind. And so, we have actually left fear behind, leaving only the love that we have longed to have.

We may still know fear from time to time. Christ-consciousness does not always come suddenly and completely, with a complete break with the past. Awakening does not either, and the two concepts are so often linked that they may be seen as one and the same. That puts ACIM and ACOL on the same wave length, because Christ-consciousness is trumpeted in the latter, and Awakening in the former.
And we can know this joy in physical form. That is a basic tenet of ACOL, and in this ACOL emphasizes something that is not made firm in ACIM.

4 – Celebration

That we can champion the physical form may well be cause for rejoicing, maybe because we are so used to this form—not remembering any other. But if we are to encourage salvation (and this is our function as the light of the world), we will need to have a communication device to do so, and that communication device is the body (ACIM tenet).

5 – The Best

It is reassuring that we can have the best that God intends for us while still in the physical body. We don’t have to die to experience great joy, to experience Heaven on earth. Our Heaven on earth is here waiting for us, here and now.

6 – Join with Heaven

Let’s join with this Heaven today.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I love and, if it is Your will, experience love today. May I know that any lack of love that I perceive is simply a disguised call for help (and love) on the part of the other person. Surely I will know Your love today, in my mind and spirit, even if not always in my emotions.

May Christ-consciousness descend upon me today. I do not know this state on a continuing basis, but may I catch glimpses of this glorious state today.

What part is my decision in coming into Christ-consciousness? I ask for an answer to this question today. I wish to do my part, but I also wish to wait patiently for Your timing. May this day go well, with my following Your guidance to be and know all that You would have for me.

Amen.

Matter – Divine?

“Continuity is an attribute of relationship, not of matter.  It is only in the relationship of  matter to the divine that matter can become divine and thus eternal.  If you can abide in unity while in human form, you will have no cause, save your own choice, to leave human form.  (The Treatises of A Course of Love:  A Treatise on the New, 4.15)”

Affirmation:  “Matter can become divine.”

Reflections:

This statement is not a call to believe in the immortality of the physical form that we occupy today.  It is, rather, a belief that we choose the moment of our death.  We do not live blindly buffeted by fate in such matters.  Jane Roberts, an early psychic who channeled Seth, said much the same thing.  We live our charts of our lives, and we exit from this life when we have chosen.  This puts us in the driver’s seat.

The truth of this interpretation is clear, it seems to me, in the opening sentence:  “Continuity is an attribute of relationship, not of matter.”  We do not choose to continue matter indefinitely, but we do often choose to continue the relationships that we have begun here.  At least this is my belief.

A Course in Miracles says that it is the goal of all relationships to become holy, and so we will transform our special relationships while in this world or, perhaps, in the next.  All who meet will meet again, to make of their relationship a holy one.  What a blessing this is!

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I choose to make all my relationships holy.  May You help me to do this.  Only with Your help is it possible.

May I choose to see the eternal in my physical body, the elevated Self of form.  May I know this great blessing in my interactions today.

Amen.

Shall I Continue to Live in Physical Form?

“Once the return to unity has occurred in form, the decision to continue in form or to not continue in form will be yours.  (The Treatises of A Course of Love:  ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 4.14)”

Affirmation:  “unity in physical form”

Reflections:

This suggests, but does not spell out, that we have the choice of whether or not to return to earth in another incarnation.  Edgar Cayce said that many of us are here to save others who would not be able to find their way back without us.  This seems reason enough to know that many of us will choose to come back.

This is not a statement on reincarnation, a statement that A Course in Miracles encourages us not to make.  We will turn off those whom we are trying to reach if they do not find reincarnation plausible.  So we do not take doctrinal stands, which can only divide.  It is enough to know that the embodiment of form, the elevation of form, is our choice as we accept Christ-consciousness in our lives.  ACOL calls this the “elevated Self of form,” and it is an oft-repeated refrain.

The passage does seem to say that we have some way to make a decision through the Higher Self about the time of our death.  It does not condone suicide at all, though.  It merely suggests that the Self of which we are a part–the Self that has not taken form–does in fact guide us in making life-and-death decisions.  A Course in Miracles echoes this theme in a passage on illness.   It suggests that we choose the agents that will minister to us in sickness, and that we get well if that is our decision; if we choose not to get well, then we go on to the Other Side.

Of course, this decision is not made by the “little” self, the personality that embody in this world.  It is an “other-worldly” decision, and we cannot know for sure, normally, what the decision will be.  But our spirit knows, and it is this that makes the decision of remaining in form (in body) or to go to the Other Side.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I am not ill unto death; most of us reading this are not.  So my Self has chosen to have a form on this earth for the foreseeable future.  May I make the most of this time.  May I love and cherish You, and may I love and cherish my brothers and sisters in this world.

Thank You for helping me today when I falter.  May I put my faith in You only.  May I realize that the choice for illness is a faulty decision-making process, and that You are “for health” all the way.  May I choose good emotional and physical health today.

Amen.

“Knowing” about Life Ever-Lasting

“Faith will become unnecessary, as life ever-lasting becomes known to you.  (The Treatises of A Course of Love:  A Treatise on the New, 4.13″)

Affirmation:  “May I know that life is ever-lasting”

Reflections:

Faith is all too often seen as something that we try to convince ourselves about, but that we actually find hard to believe.  Here Jesus reassures us that the time of the blind faith requirement is no longer.  We will know.  We will understand.  Like a great man of psychology, Carl Jung, we will not even have to “have” faith, because we will just “know.”  This is a fact of Christ-consciousness.

According to the Bible, faith was the evidence of things not seen.  Now, in this era, we will “see.”  Now enough people have reached Awakening that we are undergoing a sea change.  The play on words of “see” and “sea” is inadvertent, but illustrative.  We will know without having to place blind faith before us.

Most of us reading this do already believe in eternal life.  May we so live our lives on this earth that we are prepared for the Other Side.  But may we recognize that we do not live for the afterlife.  We live for today, taking the time to experience daily the blessings that are ours.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I know, as only Jesus can understand, that life is eternal.  May I not have to depend on a timid “faith” that this is so.

Thank You for the assurances that Jesus is giving me.  Help me to apply this new knowledge as I try to live, joyfully, today.

Amen.

Life After Death

“Changing form is part of the pattern of life-everlasting.  (The Treatises of A Course of Love:  ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 4.8)”

Affirmation:  “I need not fear death, for it is only a change in form.”

Reflections:

This passage echoes a previous reflection on life after death.  We are not meant, according to A Course of Love, to hope for new discoveries in science that will give us an eternal physical life on earth.  Would we really want such a thing, if it were possible?

Some early writings on A Course in Miracles thought that a passage in those volumes promised that eternal physical life would be not only possible, but to be expected.  This has not been upheld by more recent writings, and ACOL now comments on this hypothesis.

We may be threatened by death, in that it is the one thing that we cannot control.  The control freaks among us may be especially threatened.  We do not know exactly what form our body will take in the afterlife.  Even careful readings of psychic commentary do not make this finally clear.  But of one thing we can be certain:  Life after death is not to be feared.  We will change form, but we will know life everlasting.  And we can hope that the death itself, as Ruth Montgomery’s Guides said, will be like “walking through an open door.”

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I know in the depth of my being that death is not the end, that I only change form.  I do not, therefore, have to fear death.

As time goes by, and pain comes to me through health changes, may I not suffer any more than would happen when I finally make the transition to life everlasting, life after death.

Amen.

Life Everlasting

“The promise of life everlasting was not an empty promise.  It is a promise that has been fulfilled.  (The Treatises of A Course of Love:  ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 3.15)”

Affirmation:  “May I revel in the fact of everlasting life today.”

Reflections:

This promise echoes the New Testament, in that we are led to understand in some of Jesus’s words, said on earth, that life everlasting begins now.  We do not have to wait for heaven to be happy; certainly A Course in Miracles suggests this idea clearly.  Eternal life is a joy waiting to be found while still on earth.

Edgar Cayce, the psychic of the last century who died in the Forties and who lived at in Virginia, once did a reading that indicated, in great detail, the Last Supper.  One of the sayings attributed to Jesus by Cayce was a reassuring word by Jesus to his apostles that indicated that “heaven” would be experienced even now, in the moment, when the apostles were gathered with him in love and fellowship.  If we take Cayce seriously (and many people over the years have done so), then we can believe that Jesus was encouraging that the life everlasting to begin now, and, moreover, in the happy times, it is heaven on earth.

Eternal life is a given for students of both A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love.  Many psychics have detailed what life after death is supposed to be like (Note:  Ruth Montgomery in The World Beyond, is one such), and when we take the teaching of ACIM and ACOL to heart, we can believe that the future beyond our bodily death is very grand indeed.  And so the fear of death is gone.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

What a grand promise is life everlasting!  If we believe truly, we will lose all fear of death.  And we know that pain does not have to lead to suffering, so the illness of life is mitigated.

May I experience the joy today that You would have me to feel.  This is a glorious day; may I recognize this.

Amen.

Unity and Everlasting Life

“. . .[T]he nature, even of form, once returned to its natural state of love, is one of unity and everlasting life.  (The Treatises of A Course of Love:  ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 3.13)

Affirmation:  “May I remember to only love today.”

Reflections:

This passage comes very close, in my opinion, to a promise that we can know “heaven on earth.”  We do not have to die to experience the joys that previously were believed by our elders as reserved for the afterlife.

The “everlasting life” is a phrase that has heretofore been reserved for the afterlife, although traditional Christianity does teach that one joins into this life once one has been “saved,” in the old-fashioned sense.  But it does seem that A Course of Love goes a bit farther in its promises than anything that has appeared previously, even in other New Age thought.  The term “unity,” used so often in ACOL, appears in this context.  This unity always refers to unity with God, inside and outside, and in particular the unity that we share with our brothers and sisters in this world.  This makes us all One, and One with God (a tenet of ACOL).

How can we know the joy that everlasting life holds out to us, even in this sometimes troubled world?  And even in our sometimes troubled personal world?  We must remember that in our better moments, we realize that we love and are loved.  This twin concept, loving and being loved, is not new, but it is newly emphasized and interpreted in A Course of Love.  We have  been told repeatedly that at this point, we have left the ego behind.  And so, we have actually left fear behind, leaving only the love that we have longed to have.

We may still know fear from time to time.  Christ-consciousness does not always come suddenly and completely, with a complete break with the past.  Awakening does not either, and the two concepts are so often linked that they may be seen as one and the same.  That puts ACIM and ACOL on the same wave length, because Christ-consciousness is trumpeted in the latter, and Awakening in the former.

And we can know this joy in physical form.  That is a basic tenet of ACOL, and in this ACOL emphasizes something that is not made firm in ACIM.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I love and, if it is Your will, experience love today.  May I know that any lack of love that I perceive is simply a disguised call for help (and love) on the part of the other person.  Surely I will know Your love today, in my mind and spirit, even if not always in my emotions.

May Christ-consciousness descend upon me today.  I do not know this state on a continuing basis, but may I catch glimpses of this glorious state today.

Amen.