Love and Fear

“In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds along these lines:

“Perfect love casts out fear.

“If fear exists, then there is not perfect love.

“But

“Only perfect love really exists.

“Therefore, if there is fear, it produces a state which does not exist.

“Believe this and you will be free.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.50.2:3-8)

This quotation is a favorite part of A Course in Miracles for its students and teachers. Of course, saying that we love, and that we want to be free of fear, is easier than having it done for us. But it can be done for us, by the Holy Spirit. And by God, when He reaches down and lifts us up to Awakening.

In the meantime, for us lowly mortals, we know that we need to love more completely to get line for these great blessings. Any attack will move us farther away from our goal, and attack/anger are the result of fear. When we don’t have stress/fear, we may proceed in a harmonious way through our days.

But life is life, and things happen, prompting us to leave our good intentions for something that doesn’t work at all. Keep in mind that we think awry when we fear and stress, and that we are on the beam when we love. And the more completely we love, the better off we can be.

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More on Miracles

“The miracles you are told not to perform have not lost their value. They are still expressions of your own state of grace. But the action aspect of the miracle should be Christ-controlled, because of His complete awareness of the whole plan.” (ACIM, COA ed., T-1.45.3:1-3)

When we sense love for another, that awareness of love may lead us to want to express love right away. An expression of love is the definition given to miracles. But we don’t always make the best decisions about performing miracles. We may feel love, but maybe right now is not a propitious time to express that love. So we must ask. Always ask; we will be answered by guidance, often in the form of a deep awareness or an intuition.

This quotation talks about “Christ” control, and by this Jesus may be meaning something more than just himself. He may be meaning the Christ soul that inhabits all of us, deep inside. A Course of Love says more about the inner Christ-Self. It is a manifestation of God Himself/Herself, found within each of us. It becomes our way to know when we have moved beyond the Holy Spirit as intermediary, and we wish to contact God directly.

When we know by guidance, we are tapping into knowledge of the whole plan. And knowing the whole plan is vitally important. It is the way that we stay in harmony with all of God’s creation, this world and worlds beyond. At its simplest, it is cooperation rather than competition, and it assures us that we are on the beam. It never asks us to stand independently, for the desire for psychic autonomy is left over from our ego. Our ego would like us to strive mightily to be independent, but independence is not the way. Interdependence is. We are with others on this plane for a reason; we are meant to join with our brothers and sisters to create a viable world, shorn of misdirected impulses of those who turn from God.

So: Ask what miracles we are to perform. Let love be expressed where it will do the most good, succeed better than at any other time or place. An expression of love is always good, but this may sometimes need to be an internal matter, not moving into the external realm outside one’s mind and heart.

An Endless Quest for Love’s Expression Is Eternity Itself

“What will there be to strive for? What quest will replace this quest for being? The quest for love’s expression—the quest to see, experience, and share, as many of love’s expressions as the world needs to be returned, along with you, to its own Self.

“Does this seem like a long and harrowing road? An endless quest? An endless quest for love’s expression is eternity itself.

“Be happy that there is no end in sight to this road you travel now. It is simply the road of what is endlessly creating like unto itself.

“You now know how to respond to love, for you are love, being. So be it.” (ACOL, E.27 – E.30)

So here is what we are about: an expression of love for all eternity. We need to be sure that we listen to these beautiful words in the quotation from A Course of Love, for love is a much-maligned word that promises more than we realize. It promises us everything, and everything is what A Course in Miracles says that we really want. We won’t ever be satisfied with separating a small segment of reality, and saying that we will be satisfied with that; we won’t be. And everything is ours, that is the beauty of it.

If we have wondered the purpose of our being, our very existence, then here we have the answer: an expression of love carried out through all eternity. If we think we don’t know how to do that, then we need to look within, where all expressions of love emanate. We will discover what it is we have been missing in our own little expressions of love. For the first time, looking within, we will see what Love really is all about.

Love is not just an emotion, but an attribute of universal consciousness. Our consciousness with God, Whom we all know to be Love through and through. We get ourselves tangled up when we imagine that all love is, is a feeling. Love is much more than that. As an attribute of consciousness, Love gave us our very Self. And the inner Christ-Self, now a knowing being, knows what it is to love. Let out of our depths, the Christ-Self wanders about a world, seeing with new eyes, our new eyes.

If we drop into low emotions, then let us rise up from that mire to new heights, knowing that all, all that we really have to do is love. This is not a mindless love, and certainly it is not a special love. On the contrary, it is a holy love felt with all our mind and heart, in wholeheartedness (as A Course of Love says).

Feel this holy love today. Don’t let anything hold us back from expressing the best that we have in us, and that, of course, is Love.

Dear God,

As we face a new year with new beginnings, let us leave not out Love that You show to us. You are showing us how to love with every right thought/action that we take. And we are discovering with a master, Jesus himself, who has channeled works such as ACIM and ACOL for our benefit. Be with us as we seek to keep an uplifted affect in this new year. There is no reason to be down about the state of the world, for we, as newly enlightened beings, have the power to effect real change, even unto creating a new world.

Thank You for warming me with Your Presence. May I be thankful that You are always living through me, expressing love as I will best allow.

Amen.

We Are Pure Love

“You have returned to your true nature. Perhaps you will remember that within A Course of Love you were once asked to “Imagine the ocean or the cheetah, the sun or the moon or God Himself, attempting to learn what they are. They are the same as you. All exist within you. You are the universe itself.” (ACOL, E.4)

We are love personified. The only problem is that we just don’t realize it, and we make all kinds of problems for ourselves by being less than we are. It is such a pity!

But there is a way back to what we once were, and lost our way a little while. A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love give us the way. We turn away from the ego, regardless of what it still tries to tell us, and we form a new and more stable identity, a Christ-Self Who has been waiting for us to recognize Itself. We need to take ourselves in hand and realize the wonder of it all. Pure love: That is what we are!

If we don’t recognize this, we are still lost in dreams, still in illusion rather than true reality. And we ought to do what we can to move into true reality, and the sooner, the better.

Dear God,

The wonder of love is a blessing indeed. Thank You! And this love is what I am, what all of us are. May we relax in Your care and realize that coming home to You is easy. We just don’t fight the inevitable any longer, and coming home to You is the inevitable. We haven’t been happy in separation; it is time to try something new.

Help us to form this new identity of solid love that You have planned for us. Let the wonder of Your Being enfold us today. And maybe I do my part to make it so.

Amen.

See Love Afresh

“I did not make you in my image. I created you in love because it is the nature of a being of love to extend. Realize that it is only when being is added to love—only when love is in relationship with being—that love is given its nature. Realize that it is only when love is in relationship with being that it attains this quality that we are calling extension.” (ACOL, D:Day40.4)

Jesus is talking about a mystical creation here, that he, joined with God in all fullness, “created” us in love. He has in mind and heart an understanding of being that is true and good, and far better than what you and I made in egotic misdeeds. Jesus’ understanding of us is of beings who live in extension from God Himself/Herself, being part of His/Her Being.

Thus we differ from the image that is Jesus. In other words, his persona/personality is uniquely his, as ours is our own as well. We all are unique, distinct entities who share the personhood of the Deity. We thus have a God Who lives through us. His Being limitless, and ours is restricted, but we can intuit what He knows simply by asking. Often we will receive an Answer, and we will know the Source of the Answer because it will always ring true. Our inner Self, one with God, will know that what we are “hearing” is true.

Ask for more understanding, a better knowledge of what is what. None of us is meant to live in befuddlement. Ask, and we truly will receive. God does not keep secrets from His beloved children.

Love has been so talked about by every religion and every religious leader that to talk about it more falls a little flat. When we open our minds and hearts to what exactly is being said, we will comprehend with a knowing that makes the idea of love fresh. With the idea of a fresh love, we are finally getting the message, said so long ago and so often throughout the years.

Dear God,

I ask to have a fresh understanding of love today. I don’t want a hackneyed understanding, something that will seem too old to be meaningful. I ask to see with fresh eyes, non-physical vision. Only then will I truly see what I am asking to see.

Thank You for Your patience with me. It must get very wearing to see Your children so constantly going astray. I am attributing human qualities to You, and this helps me to understand how I would feel. In your limitless Being, You see All, and this gives you total patience with our foibles.

Amen.

Love “Enough”

“What must occur now must occur between you and me. Your willing¬ness is all that is required.

“Let me tell you what has occurred in the past so that you know not to respond to love in the same way again.

“Who I have been to you is who you have been to yourself. Remember the idea of projection. This is what projection does. It projects outward. It is different from extension in that extension is like a projection that remains at one with its source. Projection separates.” (ACOL, D:Day39.15 – Day39.17)

We are being asked to compare what we have thought about Jesus in the past with what we think about him now. He doesn’t want us to build too much on our Christian tradition, for he has repeatedly said that he is equal to us, that we are The Accomplished. Of course, we may not believe this, or, at the least, we don’t understand it.

But say it he has. And it merits our careful consideration.

If we have read this far in A Course of Love, we know that Jesus is asking us to form a personal relationship with him, a belief that will entail a suspension of disbelief—for we must realize that, as spirit, he can focus his consciousness anywhere and everywhere at once.

It is hard to suspect disbelief this much. Let just a crack in. It might be true.

We know that Jesus asked us earlier to request a miracle. We might or might not have taken him up on his request, not for a specific miracle (he says this), but for the miracle-mindedness that is our birthright. The “art of thought” is how he describes what he is after for us. We need, in other words, to live in a state of readiness for miracles all the time, to live in a state of believing that the numinous pervades our lives and our world. Is this really so hard to believe, when we believe that all of us are a part of God Himself/Herself?

We are seeking to have extension in our lives, not projection. So our previous ideas of Jesus’s presence may have been wrong or misguided. Now we know that we have projected our beliefs onto him. Now he would have us love him in a more mature and more accurate image. If we extend what we know of love to him, we will be on the right track. Love, as always, is the great panacea.

Dear God,

I would seek to love more deeply today. You know that I have a question in my heart for which I request a quick Answer, from You. Perhaps you are telling me that if I love enough, I will get along very well indeed. That is my hope.

Guide me to love enough, although Jesus says in A Course of Love that we often think that one can love too much or too little, but never enough. But I would think differently today. I would love with my whole heart—enough!

Thank You for guiding my thoughts this day.

Amen.

Only the Loving Gesture Really Works

“You keep striving for differentiation in a way that simply will not work—through separation! And what’s more, you keep striving for differentiation while wanting to continue a certain reliance. Your differentiation from the being of God can only come through the relationship and unity that you would deny in your quest for separation! This would be like demanding to be a body and not a mind! Your reliance on God can only come through the relationship and unity that you would deny in your quest for separation! This would be like demanding that the mind send the body the signals it needs while proclaiming their separation.” (ACOL, D:Day37.8)

Woe unto to us who continue to choose separation from God! Sometimes we think that if we follow God’s Will (really our true will as well) we will be coerced into doing things that we don’t want to do. At such times, we don’t trust God to have our best interests at heart. Old ideas of a punitive god die hard. And that is just what we have in our minds—a punitive god who demands sacrifice at the cost of our good living.

Many of us have had faulty images of God in the past. The time is now upon us to love a God Who is more mature and more accepting of us than we have ever imagined. His desires for humankind are benign, not directive except to let us know that only the loving gesture really works. We do exert our free will, sometimes disastrously, and He doesn’t step in to call a halt, even to horrific things. And we blame Him for this. Instead, we ought to blame ourselves, and our society and culture, for failing each other. When we blame God for not intervening, we ask Him to sacrifice the truth of His creation. Free will is among His greatest gifts, and to intervene in our violent deeds is to ask Him to meddle in a creation that He would set free.

Violence is not of God. Evil is not of God. He knows that regardless of the forms that we use, we are either expressing love or calling for love. Regardless of the form that we use. Without exception.

Ask to be more loving today to those in our circles, our brothers and sisters near and far. It is only when we reach the tipping point in our societies and cultures with more of us choosing the expression of love than not, then and only then will we truly be saved from ourselves.

Dear God,

Guide me today to express only love in my dealings with other people. This may mean that I need to call a halt to a quick retort, remain silent when I want to speak, or (contrariwise), speak up when I would prefer to remain silent. You know what I can best do. You know me through and through. Take charge of me as You live through me. Don’t let a divided self seek to stand.

Thank You for guiding my thoughts today, for it is from my thoughts, the thoughts of my heart, that I will discover how best to be a friend to all.

Amen.