Love Is the Answer to Our Prayers

“Thus you go from the top of the mountain to the world with a clear goal: to bring love.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

This quotation is strongly reminiscent of the journey to the top of the mountain that takes up the last 40 (actually 41) chapters of A Course of Love.  We take that journey with Jesus, and with our brothers and sisters.  And we return to the world with a burning message of Awakening in love.

I fear that discussing love so often in this blog will make others feel that the advice is trite.  The idea that love is trite is simply because religious leaders have harped on this idea for millennia.  It is the principal advice we find from Jesus as well:  Love God, and love our neighbor. 

We need to take a good, hard look at love, and realize, perhaps, that we have never fully considered its meaning before.  The ego had veiled our eyes.

The point is made in other channelings by Jesus that if love were some new substance in the universe just discovered by scientists, we would take a further look at it—saying that we had just been ignorant of it previously, but we are open to it now.  Well, as often as the word “love” has been evoked, we are missing the mark if we don’t take it seriously in our life.  But not serious in an egoic sense, but in a lighthearted, even playful, way.

Love will take us to lighthearted happiness.  And it is this that God would have us experience in this world.  Sure, there are serious problems in our world, but we do no one any favors by walking around with a long face.  We help our brothers and sisters most keenly when we love them in the joyful sense that Jesus means.  Then and only then do we make a difference.

Take a good, strong look at the love that we might have missed.  Know that this is indeed the Answer to our prayers.

Transformed

“Let yourself be transformed more every day by my love and you will see that your path will be as serene and harmonious as a summer breeze.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

This is a statement attributed to Jesus, in which he affirms the life-changing result of letting ourselves be transformed by the love that he feels for us.   Not the love that we feel for him, but the love that he feels for us.  We therefore have very little to do with our transformation.  We simply have to hold ourselves ready to receive, to receive love from him.

Very little is actually asked of us in salvation/transformation.  That little is the fact of being open to the change, the transformation.  The Holy Spirit (A Course in Miracles) or the Christ-Self (A Course of Love) will effect the change, but only when we are responsive.  We must be ready, but we don’t have to ready ourselves.  A Higher Power will ready us. And we only have to be willing to receive from Jesus and his holy companions.

The outcome of our receptive spirit is a path as “serene and harmonious as a summer breeze.”  Would we not want this?  What are we waiting for?

Clear our mind, open our heart, and be prepared for a transformation.  It is just that simple, and just that profound.

Let’s decide today to allow this alteration in ourselves to come about.  It takes our decision, nothing more.  When we decide for truth, truth finds us.

And we are never the same again.

Christ

“Beloved, accept now that you are Christ.  Begin to walk on Earth as gods, loving everything, always in love.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

When we walk the world loving everything, always in love, then indeed we are Christ.  And there is something further: “Begin to walk on Earth as gods.”

This is heady stuff.  But we will be misinterpreting if we let these words be an appeal to our ego.  These words are not meant in such a fashion.  Our little personalities often misconstrue. 

When we are living in love, everything looks different—and this includes us.  We truly are being a Christ when we walk in love upon the face of this earth.

To do so will make such a difference.  We won’t be so much changed as just living more fully.  Our minds will have slowed down, and cleared, and we will be happier.  Yet Christ-consciousness is not so much a matter of a changed mind as it is of a changed outlook, though Jesus says elsewhere (in The Way of Mastery) that if our scientists knew what to look for in the brain, they would have found it.

Do we have to have walked the whole pathway back to God in order to be considered a Christ?  No, because being a Christ is our inheritance, what we are meant to step into.  We don’t have to be perfect in order to reach this place.  It is our joint certainty that all is well.  It is our renewed hope for a better life.

And the only way that we can have a better life is to turn ever more completely to expressions of love in everyday life.

Jesus: “You Are a Joy to Me”

“Let nothing disturb your heart.  Let nothing have you believe that anything within you is wrong.  You are a joy to me.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:I

We have so much trouble accepting ourselves.  Accepting ourselves just as we are.  Always trying to improve, we get ourselves all tangled up for the trying.

But we are OK as we are.  We must let nothing disturb our heart.  If Jesus tells us, here, that we are a joy to him, then why can we not accept ourselves, just as we are?

Our ego is to blame.  And even if we have abandoned our ego, we have patterns of the ego that linger and disturb our peace.  The ego was always telling us we weren’t good enough, that if we only tried harder, we would find ourselves in a better position, sure of ourselves, sure of our value as human beings.

This idea from the ego is a mirage.  Just as an individual lost in a desert, seeing water ahead, aims to reach that water and then finds nothing there.  We have always held out to ourselves that we could be better than we are.  Of course, in some sense, this idea is true, but it is not the bottom line.  God accepts and loves us just as we are.  He wants us to be sane, though, and the insanity is what has made us dissatisfied with ourselves.  When we allow the insanity to fall away, we will know that God’s love is for the genuine Self who we are.  And we will be much more accepting of the truth that we are alright just as we are.

Keep in mind that Jesus says we are a joy to him.  He has the most sanity of anyone, and so I am inclined to believe that he sees something that we do not.

Ask to be accepting of our foibles as remnants of insanity that just need to fall away.  Accept our Self, know that all is well, and we are loved—just as we are.  We need to take this truth unto ourselves, and, yes, love ourselves, too.  We can’t love others well until we love ourselves, too. 

We need to realize that our lives will smooth out when we engulf ourselves with the Love that only God can give.  And He is giving this Love constantly.

Let Love Encompass Us

“I invite you, from the Heaven of your holy heart, to let yourself be loved.”  COL bk.2, 20:III

This quotation, attributed to Mary, suggests to me that all too often we aren’t aware of the love for ourselves that surrounds and envelops us.  If we can let ourselves be loved, we will know that we are worthy of love, and this is something that we don’t often tell ourselves.  In egoic thinking, we think we are just miserable people.  At least some of the time.

We sometimes do a kind of dance with our nearest and dearest.  If the other person becomes too close to us, for some reason this scares us, and we instigate a fight to make for distance between the other and ourselves.  This makes no sense at all.  It just says that we are afraid of closeness, of letting someone else, even someone we love, come too close.  We are afraid of intimacy.

Let these inferior thoughts go today.  We don’t need to “protect” ourselves from love, although that is what we are doing when we make for barriers to intimacy.  Our nearest and dearest deserves something better from us.

So:  Don’t fear anything.  Just let ourselves go today, and invite love into our holy sanctuary, the “Heaven of holy heart.” 

We will be blessed beyond compare.

Love

“Your current world plays havoc with your peace of mind.  If you want to bring Heaven to Earth, information must be always subject to love.”  COL bk.2, 20:III

What we know of the world through our news sources is here just called “information.”  We need to ask what the loving thing is to do—rather than get ourselves upset in listening and watching the latest newscast.  We can change our immediate environment, and, through prayer, we can even influence the bigger picture of our world.  One person can make a difference, if that person is attuned to the Divine.

We often don’t believe this, believe that we can make any difference.  We think that a single, solitary person is very limited.  But we have the power of God working in us.  And He is Love.  We can be Love, too.

If we thought that Love were something new and different that we had been ignorant of, we might give it a greater try.

Give Love a greater try today.  It always works.

Holy Abode of Christ

“When you have opened the floodgates of your consciousness, allowing everything you experience, whatever it may be, to be embraced, then you will live as what you are:  the holy abode of Christ.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

Embracing our experiences is, as Choose Only Love says, necessary to our continued march toward God.  Others have said just to dismiss negativity, but perhaps the better Answer, as COL says, is to integrate the negativity; overcome the fear with love.

This is scary business—but it works!  There is absolutely nothing that the power of Love cannot overcome.  If we dismiss our thoughts of negative outcomes, the negative things may very well just go underground in our subconscious, just waiting there to make us uneasy and then to rear their ugly heads again.  If we transmute (i.e., change the form) of our thoughts, they will never arise to hurt us again.  We will be free of the bad thoughts, and we will, we know, have overcome them with the much better value of Love.

There is nothing that can’t be righted this way.  As COL says elsewhere, when a worry arises, sit down, relax, take a deep breath, connect with our desire for something better, and then the Answer will arrive.

There is nothing that can’t be integrated toward the positive.  Pushing down the negative thought by trying to put it out of mind only saves it for another rainy day. 

We want to be the “holy abode of Christ.”  Letting Love overwhelm us and our problems is the way to achieve this wonderful outcome.

Love Will Be the Only Thing You Experience

“Rather than trying to eliminate fear, focus instead on not leaving anything out of your consciousness.  As you do this, fear will disappear without the slightest effort, and love will be the only thing you experience.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

What practical advice, advice I have never heard before!  Fear is illusion, and only love is real; this is why this advice works.  “Fear will disappear without the slightest effort. . . .”  This quotation says that we are not to struggle to reject anything.  We know that the effort to reject actually makes the thing rejected stronger.  It is like trying not to think of the elephant in the room.  We just have to turn aside gently, and here we are learning that even that action of turning away is unwarranted.

Welcome into our consciousness any feeling, any thought.  This mystical interpretation of how fear will leave us is most encouraging.  We don’t actually have to work to dismiss thoughts that we don’t want.  The thoughts, being illusion and never real in the first place, will just leave, once brought to the surface of the mind.  It is only that which is in the subconscious, undetected, that keeps us lingering in illusion, in fear.

This is good advice from Choose Only Love. 

Now we seek to put it into practice.

Being

“To be the being that experiences and to bring that experience to consciousness without the slightest fear of anything that we may feel or think, is what will allow us to go wherever we go and do whatever we do without fear.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

These words constitute a practical way to live without fear.  We know that we cannot live in fear and experience Christ-consciousness, and we all need to move to this greater experience of Love—something that beckons to us constantly.  To “be” the being that we are, experiencing in depth, and not suppressing this experience—yes, this is what we must do.  Not suppressing our experiences will therefore bring our experiences to full consciousness.  We don’t need to live an unconscious life, something that leads us to hurt others without really meaning to do so.

The lack of fear, a turn to love instead, will build upon itself.  I know that feeling love, and Love (God), mitigates against a negative attitude.  Low moods simply dissipate when we express love to our nearest and dearest.  A settled good will toward all of humanity then comes about, for we have discovered how to turn to that which matters.

Focus on “being” today instead of constantly riding the treadmill of “doing.”  Being is the way of the future, the way of great relationships with others.  Our doing has all too often had an egoic tilt.

Become aware of our living today.  Awareness—a determination to feel what we feel and think what we think—will keep our feelings and thoughts from going underground.  We will live a fully conscious life, and this will enliven us and give us a better future to look forward to.

Overcome Fear with Love

“Fear never came from anything external because the universe as a whole is neutral; it does not and cannot ever do anything to you.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

We made fear in the “fall of man” or separation from God—after we made the ego.  We were too afraid to live alone, and we still feel that way.  If we commune with our Maker, our Creator God, we will have no more need to sense fear because we will know that we are not alone.  We will have overcome fear with love of the Highest.

“Is the universe friendly?” is a question that Einstein posed for us.  Our answer must be “yes.” When we realize that this means neutrality in the happenings that surround us, we will often question, “How can this be?”  This can be because how we experience events external to ourselves is always an internal choice.  That is why the happenings in the universe are neutral.  Different people have different experiences of the universe. This would not be true if the universe were causing our reaction. We do have commonality, as people, when the happenings are especially good or seem especially bad. But this does not mean the universe is not neutral.

The bad things we experience are actually illusion, for we live in a non-dualistic universe. All things are of God, including us, for we are part of Him. The only things that are true reality are the intangibles of love, harmony, peace, serenity.

We are safe in a safe universe.  When we give up judgment, as A Course in Miracles tells us, we will know that we are safe.  Regardless of how bad things get, there is another day, always and forever. 

The universe and the things of the universe cannot hurt us.  The blood is catsup, not real; and our own fears are overcome when we seek the love of our Creator.

Ask to overcome fear today.  Love always wins in the end, for Love is God.  And He always triumphs. There is no higher value than Love, Who is God.

Lovingly Accept

“Fear does not accomplish anything.  It never made a dent in your soul.   Thus when you eliminate the fear of your experience, and lovingly accept all that you are now and always—then you return to experiencing the purity of your virginal heart.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

Our “virginal” heart is one that lives in love, the way it was before we thought we separated from God, the “fall of man.”  Yes, our love is the panacea for all that ails us.  Knowing that we are loved by our Creator will go a long way toward accepting whatever our lot in life is.

Fear is a non-entity, in reality.  It does nothing except in our illusory experience.  As this quotation says, “It never made a dent in your soul.”  If we can just eliminate our “love” for fear, we will be well on our way to a satisfying existence.

Acceptance is writ large in the channeled writings we are receiving now.  We are also to “allow” what happens, without taking it to heart unless it is good.  Allowance sets us right with God.  We assent to the myriad of details that make up our life.  We say “yes” to life.  We change only those things that speak to us for change.  God would have us live a peaceful time in this world.  If we rail against what is happening in our life, we only cement it in place.  Just gently turn aside from what hurts. 

We want purity.  And we can have it, however undeserving our ego has made us feel.  Now we are walking ever closer to Christ-consciousness, where the ego falls away.

Let us be grateful to a good God Who saves us from ourselves, for we are the engineers of all that hurts.

Love What Arises from Our Depths

“By loving everything that arises within you, you eliminate fear of yourself.  By eliminating fear of yourself, you eliminate fear of your experience.  By removing it [fear] from your innermost self, nothing and no one can make it arise again.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

Many of us studied “positive thinking” for many years.  But one thing that bothers me now is that we reject our negativism, and this takes effort.  This quotation would have us embrace anything and everything that arises in our consciousness.  We won’t have to judge ourselves so harshly for a stray thought that is not positive enough.  We will simply love it away.

If we love everything that arises in us, we won’t be afraid of our mind anymore.  Many of us have thought of our mind, especially our egoic mind, as the enemy.  And that may be true.  But rejection does not work, because what we resist becomes stronger.  We need simply to turn aside from thoughts that we don’t want.  Entertain something else, in the present moment.

If we are in a low mood, our thoughts will be negative.  At such times Richard Carlson counsels us simply to relax and invite a graceful response.  He says that if we don’t relax, we will be afraid of our own thoughts.  And this is exactly what today’s quotation warns against.

There is no reason to be afraid of what arises from the depths of our mind to be healed.  This rising from the depths is how we are prepared for Awakening, enlightenment, Christ-consciousness.  We must see, with God’s help, that the subconscious is cleansed from the bottom up.  This idea, from The Way of Mastery, makes perfect sense to those of us who have followed Freud.

Be gentle with ourselves today.  Let fear fall away in the only way possible, by embracing love.

Loving Consciousness

“Can you begin to realize that it is entirely possible to walk in this world without the slightest hint of fear?  This is possible—and necessary.  This can be achieved today, when you sincerely acknowledge that everything you feel in your heart and everything you think in your mind can and should be embraced by your loving consciousness.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

What a promise this is!  No hint of fear can be achieved today!  If we could only believe this strongly enough, I believe it would come to pass.

Again, love is the Answer.  Our heart and mind must be overshadowed by a loving consciousness.  And then we will see the evidence of what we read in today’s quotation.  We embrace all in our heart and mind, leaving nothing out.  But we don’t dwell on the past or the future, because we know that living in the present is the route to happiness.  And happiness we can have when we live in love and banish fear.

This quotation also tells us that to walk in this world without the slightest hint of fear is “necessary.”   We know that we cannot entertain Christ-consciousness as long as fear has a hold on us.  Fear and Christ-consciousness cancel each other out. 

Focus on the love that we already think about and feel.  And then ask to have this love enlarged so that it covers our whole vision.   Ask for the warmth of God to enfold us.  This is a palpable experience, possible for all (though experienced, perhaps, in different ways for different people).  If we trust enough, trust God enough, then we will know that we are safe in a sometime difficult world.  We will thank God for the gift of life itself, and our desires for more, more, more will fall away.

The only “more” we will want will be love.

Walk into Love, Away from Fear

“Given the energetic state of fear, the soul begins to grapple with it, just as the body does with a toxin.  It is a natural reaction.  Fear is so foreign and unnatural that the soul always seeks to eliminate it.  Fear is soul poison.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

These blunt words about fear will make us want to banish it forever from our mind and heart.   We can do so, though it takes patience and special dispensation from God.  If we love enough, we won’t have fear, because love always displaces fear.  But here, in this world, this degree of love is unusual.  Often we have to take tiny steps to displace fear, seeking calm, seeking peace, seeking tranquility.  Love, true love, comes later, because the vast majority of our love-seeking behavior has been bent on finding special loves that never become holy.  When our special loves transform into holy, then, yes, we are making progress.

Meditation and contemplation, prayer and communion with God, can hasten the arrival of true love in our heart.  These things mitigate against fear, makes us immune to its shrill beckoning.  If we really want to make progress in our walk back to God, we need to invite love into our every moment.  Fear comes from the ego, which we would give up.  Patterns of fear and patterns of the ego will haunt us, though, for a time even after Christ-consciousness has arrived.  We are just that stuck from eons of fear-ridden living.

Be patient.  The end is certain.  We will walk away from fear when that is our intention. 

And this soul poison will haunt us no longer.

From Fear to Love

“Living without fear is only possible when you live in certainty.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

To live in certainty is to know that we are One in God, sure of His love, knowing that all will be well.  To live in certainty is to experience, first hand, invulnerability.  Experiencing invulnerability first comes in glimpses of Awakening, and then in Awakening itself (on a constant basis).

We want to live without fear, and the way to woo this experience is to open ourselves more and more, as time passes, to love.  Love always cancels out fear, and all of us do know some ways to invite love into our daily lives.  We become more congenial as we go about our days; we cease the anger and hostility; we become peaceful.

Yet we aren’t always successful in making this transition from fear to love, because it takes God’s help to make a permanent change in our outlook.  We don’t do very well when we try to effect permanent change without any divine help.

Let divine help into our lives today.  Don’t try to alter thoughts and behavior by purely secular means, for these will all eventually fail.  If we have the certainty of God’s help, we have a Power on our side that will create a permanent change from fear to love in our outlook.

Give God a try today.  He is always willing to help anew and afresh, regardless of how long we have neglected Him.

Peaceful Mind & Loving Heart

“Fear is unconsciousness; once you begin to accept that fear is unconsciousness of your true self, you will inevitably take the next step, which is to become aware that unconsciousness is simply the denial of something that you feel or have felt in your heart, or what you think or have thought in your mind.”  COL bk.2, 19:II

We feel with our heart; we think with our mind.  And both are necessary to good living.  Fear turns us aside from good living.  Here, in Choose Only Love, we see fear described as “unconsciousness.”  Certainly we are not in our right mind and not feeling blessed in our heart when we fear.  And so many of us have fears that just won’t leave us alone.

A friend gave me a lovely prayer that is apropos to this situation: “May I have peace in my mind and love in my heart.”  She recommended this maxim as a mantra to help in drifting off to sleep.  But it can be used anything that fear rears its ugly head.  We can’t get over all our fears just by wishing them away, but over time, when we walk back to God, fears diminish and eventually fade from view.

When we are truly ready to relinquish fear, the right reading will find its way into our library.  And we will know the right prayers to pray, the right form of communion to invite with our God.  When we live in the moment, conscious and aware of our being in this world, we invite fear to leave us.

Ask today for a lessening of fear.  When love takes over, fear always scurries away.

Return to Loving Consciousness

“You return to the Father’s house, that is, to the loving consciousness that you are, whenever anything that arises from your being is embraced in it [i.e., in our being].”  COL bk.2, 19:II

If we embrace all that arises in us, arises from our being, then we metaphorically return to the Father’s house.  We don’t need to reject any part of ourselves; resistance just makes the negativity cling to us.  If we embrace, we are enfolded by God Himself, Who teaches us that all things are either from Him, or allowed by Him.

We do have a loving consciousness, but we are often unaware of it.  Yet love is the great panacea of all that ails us.  And being conscious of love will cure the negativity that rejection of that negativity does not.

I would embrace my being today, my being as a loving consciousness.  Tell me, dear God, how to do this.  Don’t let me get lost in my own little mind, a little mind that doesn’t know which way to turn.

If I turn to You, You will guide me to embrace all parts of my being, and this action will always heal me.

Walk the Path of Life Hand-in-Hand

“Now you know who you are, and who is speaking.  Now we walk the path of life hand-in-hand, and you know for sure that you and I are the same being.”  COL bk.2, 18:I

We know who we are, when we have walked the path of life back to God.  We are one being with Jesus, for we share the Christ as the All of who we are.  ALL of us are One, and this is what this message, attributed to Jesus, really means.  We share one being as children of God, and the fact that Jesus has walked farther ahead of us does not actually matter.

This one being is the Christ-Self, something discussed at length in A Course of Love.  It is an inner being who is just now coming out from our depths.  No longer living an egoic life, we are primed to enjoy our merger with the Christ-Self from within.

It is very reassuring to know that we were never intended to be alone, but to be One with the All.  This All includes God, but it also includes our brothers and sisters with whom we share this world.  Let us never forget the glue that binds us together is Love—Love of God, love of each other, love of ourselves. 

We are walking hand-in-hand, and this makes all the difference.  We will not lose our way again.  We will walk peacefully back to our God—holding hands, always holding hands.

Seek to Attract Love

“You attract everything that happens in your life.”  COL bk.2, 17:III

This quotation, attributed to Jesus in Choose Only Love, is a firm affirmation of the law of attraction.  Taken on the surface, it doesn’t seem to make any sense.  Surely we don’t attract the awful circumstances with which many of us are faced this day?  On some level, we may.  But it is not the level of the personal self; if anything, if we can believe this assertion, it is on the level of the soul—a soul who sees more than our vision can give us while on earth.

If this is true, and I believe it is, then we need to put more time into attracting love in our lives.  The way to do this is to practice faith and trust in God, the kind of faith and trust in God that we saw emulated by Jesus in his life on earth.  He set the example that we all need, all must, follow.  When we follow faith and trust to their logical conclusion, we have to realize that a loving God has allowed the things that happen to us.  And this is because he has never for a moment contemplated removing free will from the gifts he gives to us.

Seek to attract more loving thoughts by accentuating faith and trust in God today.  The love will make all the difference.  The love will save us.

Kernel of God’s Love Awaits

“You attracted to yourself everything that was necessary, so that what was not true could crumble and give way to what is.”  COL bk.2, 17:I

I see this quotation, attributed to Jesus in Choose Only Love, as an affirmation that love wins out in the end.  When we are asked to wait through hard times, we gain patience, an essential virtue.  When we wait patiently as the years unfold, we truly do get ready for an explosive affirmation of Love from God Himself. 

This is “what is” in our world.  What has not been true in love just crumbles away, and then we are left with the kernel of God’s love for us.  The period of rejection is over, and now it is time for the blessings to descend upon our heads.

This is the law of attraction in effect.  We could not appreciate the love well unless we had lived through its opposite, the rejection of our proffered love.

Now we are primed for a new, good beginning.  We have waited, we are ready, we have grown by the ending of something that wasn’t meant to be at all.

Now we are overcome with Love, and God, this time, makes sure that we get the message.  Love is the Answer, the one true Answer to what is.

Love

“You can never be inside my heart enough.  That is the same as saying you can never love too much or be too loved.”  COL bk.2, 16:I

The panacea for what ails us is always and ever the same:  love.  I fear that we hear this ode to love so often that we tune out, not seeing the wonderful implications.  It is true that hearts can be hardened to love, and love then does not transform negative actions.  But we never know when this is really true.  The offer of love may take root in a hardened heart at any time, softening it and turning it to the positive.

This is another quotation from Mary.  Her channeled writings always are filled to the brim with her love.  We often see her as the “mother,” and mother love is known to be all-inclusive, all-forgiving.  So we are “inside” Mary’s heart, and she would have us be there forever.  This is a particularly wonderful way of saying that Love means everything to our well-being.

Love does not mean that we accept abuse.  We have a concept called “tough love,” that is effective in some cases when faced with a particularly obstinate person.  But we must be careful that tough love does not hide a refusal to forgive, because forgiveness is the greatest message of A Course in Miracles.  The right overture from a heart filled with love will transform the most awful situation.  We just have to give love a chance.

When faced with a hard decision, ask, “What would God’s love do now?”  This is the same as the oft-repeated injunction to ask, “What would Jesus do now?” or “What would Mary do now?”

Contemplating this question will do much to see that our heart remains in the right place.

Ever More Love

“The more you love, the more free you will feel.”  COL bk.2, 16:II

We do want to feel free, to be free, even in the midst of circumstances that might seem to hem us in.  And if we give ourselves up to love, this quotation, from Mary, says that we will feel more free, and the more we love, the more free.

We can soften our hearts even in the midst of a bad day, or turmoil, or suffering, or just pain.  We don’t have to let agitation take us over.  When we soften our hearts, we are opening up to love, and love will take us back home to God. 

It is just that simple.  Turn to the love in our hearts, and know that God is acting on our behalf all the time.  He would have us taste freedom.  And here we are getting the instructions that we need to experience the freedom that we want.

We Need to Experience Unconditional Love

“I need you above all human understanding.  You are always in my heart.  Please meditate calmly on this message.  My love is not poetry, although it can be expressed in that way.  It is not philosophy, either.  My love is truth.”  COL bk.2, 16::I

In a statement attributed to Mary, this quotation suggests that she needs us.  Actually needs us.  And this need is above our understanding.  If she holds us in her heart, we know that we are in a safe place, being with her.  Her love, she says, is “truth.”

The scribe, Sebastian, is Roman Catholic, and his religion has had a history of revering Mary.  We might, whatever our religion, take to heart these messages.  Her words do indeed sound like poetry, though that is not how she describes her love.

If we know that we are truly loved, we can gain a good bit in our daily lives.  Part of the problem of our world is the fact that people do indeed feel unloved.  We can see this in everyday life, and a paucity of love has dire implications.  When things get desperate enough, tragedy happens.  The truth of love often cannot be heard in such circumstances.

Let’s take a step back and realize that God’s Love is always available to us.  And Mary is an apt messenger of that love, being, as she was, the mother of Jesus.  This quotation does not say it, but love of this nature is definitely unconditional.  And it is unconditional love that our tired ole world needs most keenly.

Drowned in Perpetual Ecstasy

“Sweet son!  Sweet daughter!  If you were aware of the ocean of love that gushes uncontrollably from my core and flows towards you, you would be drowned in perpetual ecstasy and you could not stay alive in the body.”  COL bk.2, 16:I

This statement is attributed to Mary, from Choose Only Love.  The statement exudes with love, overflowing love from a full heart. 

We can ask to accept such love in our depths, and this will make all the difference.  We need simply to open to the experience, to dwell on the positive, to drop our worries and concerns and realize that there are other entities who look out for us and bless us.

Mary’s statement is heartwarming in the extreme.  It is a way home to God.  Knowing that the mother of Jesus, chosen by God for that experience, wishes us well, is a great blessing.

Open our mind and heart a bit, and realize that this may just be the truth, to hear from Mary in the dailiness of our lives.

Delights of God’s Love

“As you go along this path, painting your being with the delights of God’s love, you will begin to enjoy life much more, whatever your life is like and wherever you are.”  COL bk.2, 15:III

This quotation is very true.  When we hunger for greater enjoyment, thinking of the things in our life that give us joy, we really do see an increase in our joy, more things to be happy about.

This experience is independent of actual circumstances.  Many people in the world in impoverished circumstances are actually happier than we, in our materialistic culture, are.  And this holds true even though we are living now in the midst of a scary pandemic.  We have the wherewithal to rise above our difficulties, with God’s help, and when we do so in tough times, we will be the better for it when times smooth out again.

When we “paint” our being with the delights of God’s love, we are walking the pathway that will lead us to Christ-consciousness.  God would have us find pleasure in everyday occurrences.  And this change in our outlook is eminently possible.

It is just a prayer away.

Harbor Only Thoughts of God

“Those who live in God do not harbor thoughts that are not of God.  This is essential for those who follow this path.”  COL bk.2, 15:III

How do we know what is “of God”?  We turn to our past, what we have learned of God.  And we learn that He is all Love.  So if any of our thoughts leave out love, then we are misguided.

It is not easy to turn aside from the negativity that is not God.  Our anger, hostility, resentments—all have to go as we walk along the path back to Him.  These inferior thoughts can be avoided if we listen to our heart, which is the beacon taking us to love.  Let the mind rest awhile in God’s peace, listening to what the heart is trying to say.  Let the heart speak to us.

Knowing that every aspect of our thoughts and feelings that are not of Love is not of God should help us move closer to Awakening/Christ-consciousness/enlightenment.  Give the soft answer if rebuffed.  Retreat within ourselves to heal wounds of speech and action.  Know that many in our circle struggle mightily; give them some slack.  And when giving slack, don’t leave out ourselves.  We need to forgive ourselves for our lapses into negativity. 

God is not through with us yet.

REVERENCE BORN OF LOVE

 An Appreciation of Book One from Choose Only Love

Published in Miracles magazine for May – June 2020 (Jon Mundy, publisher); also on Amazon.

Reviewed by Celia Hales

Miraculously receiving in Argentina from the angelic realm, Sebastian Blaksley has bestowed upon us a marvelous gift in Choose Only Love:  Echoes of Holiness.  This book, the first published in a series of seven by Take Heart Publications, is emblematic of all great books that inform us of ultimate truth.  We will be primed to move to Awakening or Christ-consciousness through an infusion of the energy of Love.  Reading it, we will discover that few other books touch us with such an overwhelmingly reverent, worshipful feeling.

Sebastian describes himself as merely a “pencil in the hands of the love.”   His Roman Catholic faith brings passion to the words of the book.  I “hear” words coming through a very devout individual, one “in the world” but not “of it,” a man whose sincerity is palpable.  Yes, Choose Only Love:  Echoes of Holiness will move us to a receptive frame of mind and heart, inviting the mellow feeling that characterizes Awakening. 

            Sebastian’s experience of channeling is unique.  He hears choirs of angels singing, then finds himself in the company of Archangels Raphael and Gabriel.  Jesus and Mary are present from time to time in the channeling.  Sebastian absorbs the message from the Voice of Christ, then later transcribes it into words, first Spanish, and then he receives again, this time in English.  The Archangels oversee that the meaning is correct.  Afterwards Sebastian rests, for he is very fatigued from the influx of great energy.

            Each of the 21 chapters begins with the words, “A message from the Voice of Christ through a Choir of Angels in the presence of Archangel Raphael and Archangel Gabriel.”  As we proceed, we find quite a bit of metaphysics, an explanation of ultimate reality.  We come to understand how and why we were created by God, and we discover what caused our illusory separation from Him. We find that Love can transform, and, indeed, end all suffering.  We read that creation is actually neutral, that what we experience we write upon it.  Our purpose is to “be who we are,” not to struggle to become an ideal image of ourselves.  In other words, we do not actually have to labor to change ourselves.  We are beloved by God just as we are.  We are heading into an experience of freedom as Awakened individuals, a blessed state of mind and heart that has been overshadowed by the ego and its fear for eons.  We are invited just to “be” the Self who we are, and that Self is Christ.  Many of us keep hearing that Love is the Answer, and this book echoes this idea with certainty.  Its heartfelt message will help us to absorb Love deeply, taking us to the truth of what Love can do for us.  If we are devotees of A Course of Love, as Sebastian is, we will see the influence of that gift first received by Mari Perron around the turn of the century 2000 (also published by Take Heart Publications). 

Jesus, the risen Christ, and Mary, his mother (equal to her son), are greatly revered by the angels who visit Sebastian.  The angels recognize purity of love.  We are encouraged to follow Jesus and Mary as we seek to walk more closely with God.  And, yes, Jesus and Mary are only a call away from us.  We can believe as does Sebastian, who has heard from Jesus: “Our love story will never end.”

If we want an intense spiritual experience in the moment, we could do no better than read Sebastian’s gift slowly and meditatively.  In my estimation, this series is a prime choice for our morning and evening devotionals.  We cannot read it rapidly, or its beneficent meaning will be lost to us.  But we can read at a measured pace, and our receptivity will bloom.  We will live the words.  Remember:  Read slowly.

Thank you, Sebastian, for your faithfulness to this calling from God, this calling from Love, to contribute a universal message to humankind.

Eternally Extend Perfect Love

Note: After this post, I am going to take a brief break from posting. Thank you for your views.

“Everything has been created for the same purpose:  to eternally extend perfect love.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 15:I)

Everything is an extension of God, and God is perfect Love.  So, when we are living right, we are extending love.  If we don’t do this, we will be falling down on the job.  We simply need to reassess and decide that God’s way is the way that we want to go.  That is all.  It will be enough.

But this is “perfect” love, and not many of us feel that we live up to that.  At least not often and not in every situation.  Pray today to live a more perfect love.  That too will be enough.

We are eternal beings, never to lose life at all.  We move into and out of form in this world, and possibly others as well.  The only evidence of eternity in our world is the “now,” and so it would be very good to live in the present on a constant basis.

So:  What are we about, but to love and be loved, living with our focus in the here and now?  This should be easy enough.  Why, oh why, do we make it so hard?  God would not have it so.  His way is easy and non-conflicted.  Let us ask to walk His way now and every day.

Loving Everything that Arises within Us. . .

“[L]oving everything that arises within you is the key to bringing love to the world.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 15:I)

We think we see so many things in ourselves that we want to reject as not being worthy.  We are very hard on ourselves.  Here, though, we read that we ought to love everything that arises in us.  How can this be so?

It is so because, regardless of how many mistakes we have made, we are still innocent in the eyes of God.  We don’t reject tiny children when we have to reprimand them; we see their innocence.  And we are tiny children, at least sometimes, in the eyes of God.  Certainly He knows that we try, and little children do not try without sometimes falling into error.  A wise parent does not turn against the child because that child is not perfect.

Being innocent is not the same as being perfect.  We fall down, and we will continue to fall down, but we ought to give ourselves some slack.  We get up, and we try again.  If we stay down, we aren’t able to live in God’s light.  Eyes on the ground, we see only darkness.

If we can love ourselves, then we can bring love to others, to the ones in our circle in the world.  If we despise ourselves, we are ignorant of what love is, and we cannot meaningfully give it to another.

Know that love saves us, from ourselves and also from the rejection of others.  We need instead to wrap the world with open arms, sure of our love, blessed by the love that God has taught us to feel.

Crystallize Our Love in the World

“If what you think you perceive is uncontrolled anger, tell it also, just as you would with a very angry girl, ‘I love you, you are part of me, you are very beautiful.  I love you as you are, because you are a part of me.’ 

“This exercise is not a banal.  It is the exercise that will crystallize your ability to bring love to the world.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 14:III)

All of us have expressed anger and hostility on some occasions, often when we are feeling very hurt.  I read this quotation as the reaction of a girl in pain.  She is being told that she is actually a part of the one who speaks to her.  Yes, all of us are One.  We may also have counterparts in the world, soulmates who speak to us in ways that resonate through and through.

We write a contract before we enter this world, and we may write rejection and pain into it.  Why?  We won’t know the “why” of suffering while in this world.  These ultimate questions cannot have an Answer here that we would accept.  But it is in the overcoming of anger and hostility, even when we are in pain, that strengthens us in ways we cannot comprehend.  It is in the overcoming that we grow into our own.

When we overcome our anger, we are primed for the love that has actually enfolded us without our knowing, but only with our acquiescence. 

This love will save us now.  This love will save us each and every day.

Fill Our Heart with Love

“The screams of the world, those echoes of the past that you still hear, are telling you in thousands of different ways:  Brother, do not deny me love.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 14:II)

We do hear screams in the world right now, echoes of a past that was filled with anguish.  Perhaps we know that today is filled with anguish also. 

But there is an Answer, and it is the age-old response to worry and fretting—just fill our heart with love, and spread that love out on the world that we see.

If we love enough, there will be absolutely no space for fear and judgment.  According to A Course of Love, fear and judgment are the two impediments to Christ-consciousness.

We need to move into the next dimension of Christ-consciousness.  This will happen when we are so filled with love that anxieties have taken a back seat.

Yes, as hackneyed as it sounds, Love really IS the overwhelming Answer.  The screams of the world recede into nothingness when we are able to sense God’s Love for us.

He is ready and willing.  Are we?

Always & Only Love

“This message invites you to remember that your function is to bring love to the world.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 14:I)

Life would be so much simpler if we just realized most of the time that we are meant to bring love to the world.  A single, all-embracing purpose such as this also gives meaning to our lives.

Unfortunately, we have heard “love” mentioned so often in this context that we zone out because it seems like the same concept, over and over.  If we had taken this concept to heart, this might be understandable.  But the problem is that we have not taken this concept to heart.  We “play” at love, often special love, an inferior rendering to love that has plenty of drama, including low points.  Our holy love, one to another, will save us now.  It is the only thing that will save us.

I have found that if I focus on just giving my husband love in this time of isolation, I am walking a green earth.  We are happy in the midst of quarantine.  May we take this knowledge with us, out into the world, when the quarantine is over.

A Course in Miracles says variously that forgiveness and happiness are functions for us.  But Choose Only Love makes it simpler for us.  If we focus on love, the forgiveness and happiness will happen all of its own accord.

What more could we ask?

Sense the Love of Our Hearts

“Let yourself be carried away by love and you will feel safe.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 13:IV)

Who among us does not want safety?  Who among us does not want to feel safe?

These are the same questions.  And the Answer is the one that we have heard all of our lives:  just to love.  Let us be “carried away” by love.

The Way of Mastery, another received work, this one from Jesus, says that if we were told that scientists had discovered something new in the universe, never before known, and if it were called some exotic name, we would be more likely to listen than when we say that that this something new is love.  It is new because love has never been tried on a large scale.  We have loved in our families, perhaps, though this love has often been conditional and therefore imperfect.  We have loved our significant others, though often we have special relationships that do not become holy, and therefore fail us in the long run.  We have loved our friends, but often this too is fickle.  Whatever are we to do?

For love to work for us, we must sense love in our hearts.  This is the only way.  When we are enthralled by love in our hearts, we will know, finally, that we are safe in this earth.  Even in this earth that is fraught with dangers.

Safety is not always a physical thing.  But it can always be a “feeling” thing. 

Our hearts know the Answer, the Answer to one of our greatest needs—to know that we are safe in the arms of God.

Be the Love that We Truly Are

“Letting your whole life be lived by the Christ who live in you, will release you from the fear of loss forever.  You will realize that the only thing you need is to be the love that you truly are.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 12:II)

We fear loss of love from other people, but it is the love in our hearts that will save.  If we live the Christ-Self in us, we will be filled with the presence of love all the time.  We will know what it is to live in love.  We will be at peace, tranquil, relaxed, sure of God’s blessing on us.  When we live this love, we are “being” love.  This insulates us from rejection by others, something that we often experience as a loss of love.

I have long felt that rejection from other people is my Achilles’ heel.  I want so much to be accepted as a part of the group.  This builds confidence in me, gives me comfort.

But the only comfort actually comes from the love of God in us, and the Christ-Self is the inner manifestation of Him.  The Christ-Self still needs to learn things, of course, for it is finite.  But when we attune our minds and hearts to God through our inner essence, He responds.  We know no more rejection.  We live a serene existence.

So:  If we feel alone today, know that the love in us is the panacea.  When we love another, it is actually the love in ourselves that we are feeling.  It is because there is something in us that can love fully, in holy love.  This is the secret of holy relationships, the transformation that we all undergo with our brothers and sisters from special love to holy.

We must be this love.  If we invite God to act in our innermost being, we will in fact be this love.

Let’s do so today.

Cling to Love, Harmony, Peace in This World

“Clinging to the transient as if it were eternal is painful. . . .If you cling to what sooner or later will no longer be. . .you will fear its loss.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 12:II)

Love is eternal, and even though we know that the lives of those we love do end on earth, they continue in another plane.  So here we are not talking about love, for love is not transient.

There are many things that are, though, and we adore them to our peril.  This truth helps us to see why we have such fears, fears that keep us from enjoying life to the full.  We fear the loss of what we have valued, when what we have valued is not going to last.  The material blessings of our lives fall into this category, a place where loss might certainly happen.

We have to put our faith in what does last, and these are all intangibles.  The intangibles are love (as we have said), harmony, peace, joy, contentment, happiness.  It is true that some of these things wane from time to time, but we are much better off putting our trust in their continuance, lest we create a self-fulfilling prophecy of loss.

Avoid the pain of clinging to the transient.  Ask to put our faith in the intangible, and our lives will blossom evermore into something beautiful.

Know that Love Is without Condemnation

“Blessed soul, you are ready to accept that . . . all the damage you think you have caused. . .is past. . . It is only necessary to recognize that it is past, and be willing to put it in the hands of forgiveness. . . .”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 8:I)

All of us have fallen short, been angry and hurt people, shouted out when we were hurt.  All of this matters not, now.  The only thing needful is that we forgive ourselves and let the Christ spirit forgive us.

It would be arrogance to believe that we are beyond forgiveness, that what we have done is so bad as to be unforgivable.  This is simply untrue.  We can express remorse, vow to do better in the future, and know that God Himself smiles on us.  We were simply little children, his creations, who didn’t know any better at the time.

To walk forward in confidence, it is necessary to come to terms with the past, to put it to rest.  We were acting on only partial knowledge.  A part of us didn’t know how to act any better, and that little part swayed all the rest.

Every time we err, we just need to pick ourselves up and try again.  There is no punishment outside our own remorse that will ever touch us.  Our own judgment is the only condemnation that we will ever know, for God never condemns.  This new knowledge is different from what we were taught in the past, in the Old Testament, but Jesus, in the New, brought a gospel of love.

Let us accept that love today.

Introducing Choose Only Love

Note:  I am now going to include, from time to time, passages and my reflections from the new series, Choose Only Love.  The work is being received by Sebastian Blaksley, who lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  The book is presented as a contribution by angels, archangels, Jesus, and Mary.

This is to be a seven-volume series, two volumes of which have now been published.  The publisher is Take Heart Publications.  Available on Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com in print and e-book.

Reading the passages slowly and meditatively, part of a devotional, seems to me to be best.

–Love, Celia

—

Little by Little, Let Love Fill Our Being

“Calm your minds.  Calm your hearts.  Close your eyes for a moment.  Stay with me, your Heavenly Mother.  Together let us repose in peace, united in the stillness of Christ.  Give me your imagination, your memory, your will, your all.  Leave everything aside.  Feel how your heart widens when receiving the love of God.  Little by little, let love fill your being and overflow completely, extending to all creation.”  Choose Only Love:  Let Yourself Be Loved (COL bk.2, 7:IV)

We have in this section of Choose Only Love a contribution from Mary, mother of Jesus.  This passage, like all from her, are soothing in the extreme.  We see the influence of A Course of Love, in that we are encouraged to calm both mind and heart, a dual reminder of the emphasis placed on both mind and heart (“wholeheartedness”) in ACOL. 

Love is at the center of this passage, something that we will see throughout this Volume 2, fittingly entitled, “Let Yourself Be Loved.”  I feel reassured here, for the onus is not placed on us as a command:  to love.  We do not extend Love until we have been assured that we are loved by God.  If we try to move from an unstable core, the ego, we will quickly find that nothing we do will have enough love in it.  It is true that giving and receiving are one, but we love because “He first loved us,” as the Bible says.

Little by little, we read, we fill our being to overflowing with love.  When we have done this, drawing from the celestial realm, we will know a peace and happiness that has eluded us until now.

Ego Ideal

            If, as for most of us, the ego is debased before meeting a special “other,” another dyn\amic comes into play.  The weakened ego is likely to see in the other her “ego ideal.”  Only if this very special one can love me, will I be perceived in my own (ego) eyes as “worthy.”  All of the other’s special qualities then become fodder for falling in “love.”

            Such “love” always proceeds on part knowledge, and even this part, the Course would have us see, is not knowledge, but faulty perception.  There seem to be many secrets in an egoistic love, though in the words of the A Course in Miracles, “God has no secrets.  He does not lead you through a world of misery, waiting to tell you, at the journey’s end, why He did this to you.” (T-22.I.3:10-11)

            In the unholy love, we are primarily aware of the differences between self and the other.  But this can only be ego, because only the ego knows of differences.  Under the skin, we are all the same.  Only the “lonely and alone, who see their brothers different from themselves” (T- 22.intro.2:2) have need of sin.  When we truly join with another, we know that we are just as capable of his mistakes as he is, as well as just as capable of the love that springs forth from him.  Only when we call an error “sin” does it appear separate and apart from ourselves.

–from Out of the Maze, an e-book by the author of this blog.

Love & Hate

            In much romantic love, the picture of our brother that we see is one of contradictions.  We both love and hate him, and the two concepts effectively cancel each other out.  So we are left with nothing.  We do not know whom we see in our brother any more than we know whom we see in ourselves.  A Course in Miracles counsels that we will be given a picture to replace what we thought, an image of our brother that we will prefer over all our contradictory images.  Even this is not all of him, for it is a perception, and it remains for perception to be translated into knowledge before we will ever see our brother truly.  This final step remains in the future for all of us, because it is our translation into Heaven, a step taken at the end of our pathway by God himself.

Join Hands with Our Brothers

            In forgiving mistakes, in ourselves as well as others, we no longer need to feel that we must hold ourselves “above” another (more special than she).  We are all in this together.  As I forgive my brother of the illusory evil that he does, miraculously I find that I am more tolerant of my own mistakes.  Everything is not a matter of life and death, purest glory or blackest sin.  If I can overlook my brother’s misdeeds, forgiving them before I study them sufficiently to make them seem real to me, then I am well on the way to handling my own problems with the same benign feeling.  Judgment always reverts back to the one who judges.  That is the truth of “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” and the A Course in Miracles has given us the explanation of why this is true.

            The desire for specialness simply dissipates.  One wishes instead to be part of the great mass of humankind with a kind of mystical love that leaves one at peace.  The guilt engendered by the false pursuit of specialness and separateness from one’s brother dissipates as well.  On some level, we all intuit that holding oneself apart, with a little sense of superiority, is actually self-deception and evidence of a shabby self-perception, not an exalted one. (M-21.5:5) Walk with Jesus as together we seek to join hands with all of our brothers, enemies in specialness no more.

Without Love, Peace Cannot Be

Certainly most of us have believed a lie sometime, somewhere in our lives. We have been susceptible to deception because we wished it so. If we doubt this, look back to see how our wish made it true for us, even though the basis may have been pure fantasy. Hidden in that wish, if we trace to its sources, is a desire for specialness, a desire to be a creature specially favored by God, singled out for merit that does not also belong to our brother.

Yet there is no peace in these dreams. When we put ourselves on a pedestal, we do not readily forgive lesser mortals. Without forgiveness, love cannot begin, grow, or thrive; and without love, peace cannot be. When we look with Christ’s eyes, we understand that no brother has sinned against us; we see only love where earlier condemnation had reigned. Condemnation need not be very blatant; just a hint of grievance against our brother, and the spell of love is broken. Guilt reigns supreme, because in our deepest heart we know intuitively that nothing in Reality has ever happened that is damaging to us. In contrast, when the earth sparkles and glows, seems alive in love, and is literally full of bright color, we know in our depths that we have truly forgiven our brother for formerly perceived “sins” against us. Our heart is so overflowing with love, seeking our brother to be One with him, that nothing is held back from us. We know no guilt in this epiphany, and the inner calm at being finally reconciled to God is overwhelming. We have forgiven ourselves for our failure to love God more, for in loving our brother with open hands and a clear conscience we have at last forgiven ourselves for what we believe that we did to God. We feel cleansed of evil intent and in that purification comes the knowledge that we truly were never sinners, only guilty of mistakes now left behind. And all because at last we have laid down our arms against our brother.

–from Out of the Maze, an e-book by the author of this blog.

Peaceful Mind & Loving Heart

“That Love which God is, is incomprehensible forever!  The sunbeam can never comprehend the sun.  I am a sunbeam to that sun.  You are a sunbeam to that sun.  We are therefore made of one substance, and that substance alone sustains us throughout eternity.  The greatest of joys is to surrender fully into allowing that Light to light your way without ceasing.”  (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 12, Page 151)

We too are sunbeams to the sun, for we are actually no different from Jesus.  He has just walked ahead of us a little.  And now he returns to take us home with him.  The pathway is clear, and we need but to surrender to God’s love, and we will be taken home to Him.

Would we like more joy in our lives?  This pathway is the way.  When our heart is loving and our mind is peaceful, we are walking in the right direction.  And it does take surrender to God, for He cannot help us if we resist Him.  Surrender is not a passive subjugation; it is the sincerest form of love for our Maker.  He loves and loves and loves, and when we open to His love, we know a peace and happiness that is unavailable to us when we are in denial of Him.

His Light will light the way for us.  His Light will do what everything in this world has failed to do.  Haven’t we had enough of resisting Him?  Haven’t we had enough of trying to be joyous in ourselves, without His blessing upon our choices?

Choose to develop a loving demeanor today.  A loving heart and a peaceful mind will take us far.

Right into the arms of God, Who plans all things for our benefit.

Experiencing Love

“If you value sweetness, sweetness will come.  If you value receiving Love—listen to this carefully—if you value receiving Love, the world will begin to show up at your doorstep in completely different embodiments.  Different vibrations, different thought patterns will be mirrored back to you that let you receive Love.”  (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 12, Page 150)

We see what we want to see, and if Love is what we want to see, soon it will show up for us.  The sweetness of Love transforms, and after we have experienced the Love that Jesus here describes, we will be well on our way to a better life and a better future.

We get what we focus upon.  But the fulfillment of the law is made through Love.  Love is the highest and best energy available in the universe.  We touch God when we love. 

And nothing is ever the same again.

This quotation seems to emphasize that what we focus upon becomes our own. This is great news! If things are going awry, we need only change what we are thinking and feeling about, and life will smooth out.

This is true philosophy, true theology. And Love is the most fulfilling way that this manifestation will come about for us.

Walk a Flower – Strewn Pathway

“You cannot take fear into Love.  You cannot take judgment into forgiveness.  You cannot take limitation into unlimitedness.  These things must be released at the level in which they were first created.”  (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 12, Page 146)

Jesus’ channeled writings (the principal of which are A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, and The Way of Mastery) could not have been written in the manner given prior to Sigmund Freud.  Freud developed the idea of a subconscious mind that the mind of conscious awareness knew not of.  The fear, the judgment, and the limitation are lodged in this subconscious.  In the quotation for today, Jesus says that these things “must be released at the level in which they were first created.”   And this means the subconscious.

We didn’t set out to be fearful, to be judgmental, to be limited in our personalities.  These things developed over time in a world that impinged upon us.  We inherited much of this, but it is a dead-end street to blame our parents.  They too were hoodwinked.  People have simply not known any better because of the construct called the ego.  This is the false persona that rose up when we decided that we wanted a make a world different from what God had created.  We would try to do better than he.  And in this ridiculous notion, we retreated into fear when we “separated” from Him.  He let us go, knowing that with his gift of free will, He did not want to coerce us.

We cleanse the mind of fear, judgment, limitation by spending time communing with God in prayer, meditation, quiet times that nourish our soul.  We learn again that we are not sufficient unto ourselves, that we need each other.  We join others in relationships that promote the unity that we have to realize we need with God.  We take a step back from the ego.  We begin again.

We need to remove the blocks to the awareness of love.  This may take time, but it does not, should not, be a struggle.

When we seek, we do find.  And in the finding are all things made right again.  One with God and with each other, we walk a flower-strewn path—even in this world.

Passionately Embrace Love

“The Way of the Heart has been designed to bypass the cognitive or thinking mind, and to strike at the roots of fear that abide in the depth of the mind in a place that is, by and large, unconscious.  All that we do seeks to dissolve that root from the depth of your being.”  (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 12, Page 142)

Our minds get us into trouble.  Our intellect, that intellect that we have often prized, is a handicap as we seek God.  Our intellect depends upon perception, which is an illusory way of viewing the outer world.  It is our heart that will save us, a concept that A Course of Love makes clear.

Uproot fear, reach for the root of it, and then be done with it.  Turn aside firmly, and passionately embrace love.  Love is the realm of the heart.  All that is not love is fear in some form.  And we need to find a way to remove ourselves from the fear.

Our thinking mind has often done us in, though we were taught to be proud of what we “knew” when we were going to school.  This was not true knowledge, which comes unbidden, intuitively.  What we had in school was a perception of ideas, and perception is fraught with illusion.

We need to let the unconscious rise to the surface, and to do this, we need quiet.  We need to spend time in our quiet corner each and every day.  If this is meditation, so be it.  The silence of quiet will heal.  And if the mind is busy, the unconscious won’t rise to the surface, where those thoughts can be healed.

Be patient, for we have many, many years of pushing down into the unconscious those things that disturbed us.  Fears, all.  Be assured that we will have help as we do our quiet part of releasing fears in the unconscious.  Don’t let the rising up be a disturbance.  The rising up is necessary for healing to take place.

Caressed by the Touch of God

“When you think a loving thought, you have been caressed by the touch of God. When you hear not loving thoughts within yourself, this can mean only that you have returned to the surface, and have denied the depth within you.

“If you would hear only loving thoughts, simply observe where your attention is. And allow it to settle deeply into this place, beyond time, beyond the body, beyond the dream of the world. For this place—the Kingdom of Heaven within you—is vast beyond comprehension. The world you know when you take your attention to the surface of the mind is contained and embraced within this heart, like a dewdrop begins to be consumed by the ocean that receives it.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 11, Page 136)

We are encouraged to take our mind and heart deep within us, often.
This soulful living will keep us moving in the best direction. We will know peace. We will know stillness. We will be led to make good choices, the right decisions, and we will find peace in those decisions.

This takes love, and we might spell Love with a capital “L,” for this Love is God Himself. We need Him, and all of us know this, though we frequently take our mind to the surface and seem to get disconnected from the vast ocean of His love. If we are to thrive, we must practice not only Love of God, but Love of others, and (particularly difficult for us) Love of self.

This love of Self is not an egotistical thing, for that would break the circuit. This love of Self is recognizing that we can’t love our Creator if we don’t love ourselves. And this is where many of us get hung up. We think that self-love is egoic, and even when we know better, we find many things about ourselves to regret. We think we aren’t good enough, and so we make New Year’s resolutions that seek to turn us into something we can accept.

We are good enough right where we are! Our mistakes are just that, and when we are aware of those mistakes, and seek retribution in God’s love, we have done all that needs to be done. We are sorry for our wrongs; we apologize to others; we apologize also to ourselves.

Take the time today to take to heart the truth of A Course in Miracles: that we are innocent of wrongdoing, that we have been living in a dream, and that our mishaps have not really happened at all.

Dreams are not true reality. When we awaken from our dream, then we will know the reality of harmony and peace, true blessings of the Love Who created us.

Love Has Worked Its Magic

“Here, beloved friends, is the way to the Truth that sets you free. You must absolutely become wholly committed to being awake for no other reason than that you have realized you have no other choice. You have already made them all and they have only led to pain.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 10, Page 128)

We know that we have had pain in our lives; nobody has escaped it. It is particularly our choices that have led to pain that gives us the most cause for regret. We think, “If only I had not done that, then things would have been different!” We think if we had done something else, our pain would never have arisen.

But pain is a part of the human condition. Until there comes a time that we surrender, totally, to God, and in that surrender choose Love with all its ramifications. When we choose Love, we have made the only legitimate choice open to us. And this one choice is all that is required to heal our minds all the way to their depths. Over time, in the awakening process, the bad reactions that need healing come to the surface, and we surrender them, forgiving ourselves and others, including God, who come to mind. In this process, we are open to true Love.

And then the great Awakening comes, in God’s timing, not ours. But our Self, being a part of God, has had something to do with that timing. If we carry out the exercises that Jesus gives us in The Way of Mastery, we will speed along our healing. Then we become enlightened, Christ-conscious, individuals.

Is there much change? Not to others. We appear as we always have, and indeed, with no ego to protect, we may appear even more “ordinary.” Our humility masks what a great transformation we have undergone.

Our pain is gone. Oh, there may be a few physical twinges, but the emotional pain (which has been the most damaging to us) has been healed. Our minds are right with God. We know it, if nobody else does, for there comes a particular moment in time that we realize that all has changed.

Love has worked its magic. We are home in God.

Teach ONLY Love

“The wisest of students are those that hear the word and put it into practice, diligently, for themselves—not for their mother, not for their father, not for their spouse, not for their brother, not for their sister, not for the sake of the planet, not for the sake of the universe, not for the sake of the new dawn that is coming, not for the sake of anything but themselves. For their Self is what God created. And that Self calls out to you to honor it, by separating your Self from the illusions that you have allowed to make a home in your mind, and becoming wholly committed to teaching only Love.

“There is no other way. Yes, you can learn to sit in meditation and allow the mind and body to float free, to relax. Yes, you can learn rituals that help to focus your attention so that you remember what you are committed to, and the distractions of the world do not seem to quite catch you or hook you as much. There are many strategies that you can enjoy and experience. But in the end, it is only this: a quiet choice within that no one recognizes, that no one sees, that no one hears.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 10, Page 127)

Yes, living and teaching Love is the only way to awaken.

It is a simple choice. Jesus makes plain here that methods of stilling the mind in silence may help, time spent in meditation may help, but the real elixir is to just to love. Turn to the ones in our circle and love them. Then embrace the world as a whole, even those outside our circle.

The practice of loving will transform us, will grant us awakening. There is no other sure way.

We make this choice for ourselves, and perhaps saying this makes our choice sound selfish. But there is a more altruistic reason. We can control only ourselves, and even this we do imperfectly. We aren’t supposed to attempt to control those in our circle, and especially not our nearest and dearest, our significant others, including spouse, children, parents. They will resist our control, and for good reason. We simply have to let everyone walk their own path.

Our quiet choice of awakening has to embody the whole Self, and that Self includes God Himself. Our Self, a part of God, is the decision-maker. Elsewhere it is said that God makes the decision of when we are to experience Awakening, but we hold some of those cards ourselves. We walk along the pathway, in surrender to Him, and then, lo and behold, we have the great blessing descend upon us—first in snatches, and then continually.

We might seem to change to nobody else, but inwardly there will be a certainty that we have experienced something that we have wanted very much. We will still seem like ordinary people, social security numbers and street addresses and ID cards, but inwardly we will be very different indeed.

Bid that difference come to us today. But wait on God’s timing, in patience.

Living a Passionate Life

“I learned to value unlimitedness. I learned to value Love. I learned to value fearlessness. Yes, my method for doing that was rather unique, and I would not recommend that you follow in my footsteps. Unless, of course, you like the drama of being nailed to a cross and then stood up in front of all of your friends in order to learn to transcend fear in your mind!” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 9, Page 117)

Jesus is the channeler of The Way of Mastery, and here he rather lightheartedly refers to his crucifixion. We need to value unlimitedness, Love, fearlessness. And we can do so, not by following in his footsteps, but by listening to his words.

Our own pathway will be unique to ourselves. And the first step that we need to take is the prayer that will bring us unlimitedness, Love, fearlessness. If our heart is sincere, we will walk into what we are asking for, maybe not immediately, but over time.

We want to live broad lives, and that is what unlimited living really means. We want to live with passion, not in dramatic highs and lows, but in the essence of who we are as people. To live a dull life appeals to nobody. Love and fearlessness will give us that passionate life. We will survive in what is seemingly a new world, for we project what we would experience. As A Course in Miracles makes clear, “projection makes perception.” Think about what we want to create in this day, and then watch the movie screen of our mind bring it to pass.

Jesus is our model, but we don’t have to be crucified to follow his way. He is showing us an easy pathway to Awakening, and it behooves us to listen carefully.

Live with passion, healthy passion, hurting nobody. And all good things will come to us.

Living in Love to Create Good Tomorrows

“I speak from the perspective of one who is an awakened Christ, who already knows how to birth universes to create that which is holy, good, and beautiful. I know that this is the way. It is the only way. Release the value you have attached to your experiences. . . and spend your time instead deciding which pebbles you are going to drop into the field of your mind. For you will create as the result of what you choose to think today. And what you value today will show itself to you tomorrow.” (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 9, Page 117)

If we don’t monitor our minds today, to create in this world the type of experiences that we long to have, then our tomorrows will disappoint us. This world responds to what we focus upon, something that is the law of attraction in operation. We need to lift our hearts and minds in love for what we encounter, even if that something seems sometimes to disappoint. God will do the rest. He will see that our experiences improve as our mind slant improves. It is just that simple.

Drop pebbles of contentment into our minds. This will turn around the things that have made us suffer; this will work. It takes some effort to turn around a negative mind slant, but we have the wherewithal to do so. Let’s make a decision today to live in the peace of God. Let’s make a decision to live in contentment, regardless of what this day brings.

Our decisions make our destiny. When we make a decision to love, then the peace of God descends upon us.

And we are happy.