Make the Decision to Be Alive

“Surrender, then, is the process in which you finally relent; you give up resisting the fact of your very existence. You stop whining about it. You stop lamenting it. You stop worrying about it. You make the decision to get on with being alive! And what is alive about you is going to be alive forever. There is no place to hide and nowhere to go.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 8, Page 99)

We need to drop the past, with its laments, and march steadfastly into the future, pausing in moment-to-moment awareness of what “is.” This will get us where we want to go, which is deep in the heart of God. Our surrender to Him makes all the difference. It is the mechanism of healing. It is the way home.

All too often we do “whine,” as Jesus says. We regret that we don’t always feel chipper; we have our aches and pains that take us from thankfulness for the lives that we have been given.

But there is a way out, and this quotation gives it. We just get on with being alive; we just get on with living! We deemphasize the parts of our lives that we find undesirable, and we walk into the sunshine of a new day with emphasis on what is right.

That is all. We have the panacea for all life’s ills, here in this one quotation. We do live eternally, and the best place to start our eternal life is always and only Now.

Live the Day as a Thing of Joy

“This is the truth of your existence, an existence in which your eyes deceive you but your heart believes not in the deception. Your days are but evidence of this truth. What your eyes behold will one day deceive you while what your heart beholds will the next day see through the deception. And so one day lived in your world is misery incarnate and the next a thing of joy.

“Rejoice that your heart is not deceived, for herein lies your path to true remembering.” (ACOL, C:8.29-30)

We have highs and lows in this world. A good day, a bad day, a day full of drama so that there are both highs and lows in the same day. This is what Jesus understands so well. When we look with our physical eyes, we often see something bad. But, he says, looking with the heart gives a different and much better view to our living. When we are deceived into thinking that all is lost, we wake up the following day with a better viewpoint. And this following day we are listening to our heart. The heart holds the key. A Course of Love emphasizes the heart repeatedly.

What can we do to ensure a good day? The day that begins right has an advantage over one in which we struggle to get out of bed. It is always possible to start the day over if things go badly, but time is saved if we get off to a good start from the beginning. Getting out of bed right away is a tip of mine for a better day. To lounge around is to invite speculation about one’s life, and when one is in a fog from heavy sleep, the speculation often turns negative.

Mornings are frequently the worst time for anyone who battles depression, and a mild depressed spirit follows many of us around who are trying to make a way through this world. As the day proceeds, our mood may lift, and what we can do to cause that lift to happen sooner and sooner is to focus on what we feel in our heart. What would our heart have to say about this situation in which we find ourselves? What solutions present themselves that are filled with love? These two questions are identical. When we follow the way that love prompts, we are setting ourselves up for success. Nothing the physical eyes can show us will ever succeed by nearly as much.

Jesus understands our predicament. The passage for today bears repeated readings, for the compassion that emanates from it is palpable. We need also to treat ourselves with the compassion that comes of authentic self-love, for not only do we need to love God and other people. Without a genuine self-love, our days will seem lackluster, and any depression to which we are prone will deepen.

See today if we can’t look to the things of the heart, particularly the love that the Christ Self embodies. This Self will heal us, being an extension of God Himself. Then the highs and lows of our lives will smooth out, and the heart will have directed us to a new high in spirit-filled living.

Love Is Meant to Be Vibrant & Alive

“To continue to identify love incorrectly is to continue to live in hell. As much as highs and lows of intense feeling are sought by some to be avoided, it is in the in-between of passionless living that hell is solidified and becomes quite real.” (ACOL, C:2.7)

We need to eliminate boredom from our lives, because boredom set in with that in-between of passionless living that Jesus mentions here. We often think that we need to eliminate drama from our lives, and then we feel little emotion, and we think that we are depressed. A Course in Miracles discussed the dilemma that we face when we eliminate drama and think that we are merely depressed. But there is a way of living that is not passionless, and that is not drama, either. When we love with all of our being, we are living in passion, but not necessarily in drama. When we love with all our being in the egoic state, there is plenty of drama, as our own life scripts will testify. But the love that Jesus counsels is vibrant and alive, just not filled with the highs and lows to which the ego takes us—always.

If we don’t identify love as our need, we will live in hell. A hell on this earth, in this world. And we have been living in a hell of our own making for far too long already. Think of the individuals who get up, get dressed, go into work at a job that they despise, and draw a paycheck that allows that passionless living to continue. Is this not a hell of our own making?

We may not see how we can change our lives today. But when we listen to the words of Jesus, we will get inklings of what to do differently. As much as we might think, we need courage to change our lives for the better. And that courage will come when we learn, first, how to love the life that we have, and, then, when and what to change to make a better life. The things to change will not be apparent at first. And they may not be obvious things. But our guidance, from the state of loving our life, will point to a better way of living.

And we will never regret that we chose the egoless passion of true living.

Meaningful Existence

“The only thing within the human experience that made you incapable of representing who you are in truth was the ego. The only thing within the human experience that deprived the human experience of meaning was the ego. With the ego gone, you are perfectly capable of representing the truth of who you are and returning to an existence that is meaningful. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Personal Self, 7.5)”

Affirmation: “I would choose a meaningful existence today.”

Reflections:

1 – The Ego Is Gone

This passage says, once again, that for those of us who have read this far in A Course of Love, and taken its tenets unto ourselves, the ego is gone. We are The Accomplished. If we find this hard to believe, we are only being human. And we can always backslide. So the ego remains a temptation best left alone, and that follows for all the eternity that we have ahead of us.

2 – Ego Constantly Being Undone

The ego never meant us well. The ego was always a mad idea. And the ego was always being undone. If we were especially egoistic, we knew flights of joy that were undone by tears of pain that often turned to suffering. We paid for all the joy that we beheld.

3 – Living, Not Existing

Now we would live a meaningful life, and it would be an existence that is truly “living.” We would be rid of the ego by turning aside from it gently, for to resist the ego is to make it strong. The ego, according to ACIM, is strong in strife.

4 – Truth

Jesus says a great deal in A Course of Love about the “truth.” We would do well to remember, though, that we are fallible beings who may not recognize the truth when we see it. Likewise, we may think that we are viewing truth when we are actually seeing falsity. So it behooves us to contemplate our decisions well, to let guidance form our decisions. We would always mess things up, if left to our own devices without divine guidance.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I know intellectually that I am better off without the ego, but still I fear that it rears its ugly head. Help me to be through with all this foolishness today. I would not do egotistic things, and I would not make decisions from an egoistic foundation. I would follow Your way, which substitutes love in every situation.

I would live a meaningful existence today, an existence that is truly “living” rather than merely “existing.” Help me to do this. I am so dependent upon You these days. I have chosen that way of living, and You have responded. I know that Your presence sustains me, even when I am saying affirmations that keep my temper under control. I would be rid of temper today. I would say “gentle,” and “What would Mary do?” I would stop and take a timeout if I am overwrought. There is no better way to come unto Your presence.

Thank You for being there for me. Thank You for giving me the blessing of a happy life, and may I serve You in ways that You would direct. This does not mean slavish obedience, because my real will is always Yours. We are not separate, and I thank You that, through Your help, I have come to know this.

May I reach out to others today who cross my path. May I be a blessing in Your world.

Amen.