Prayer – Love – Miracles

“Prayer is the medium of miracles.  It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator.  Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-1.I.11)

We need prayer more than God needs it from us, though He is said to be lonely when the minds He created do not commune with Him.  Since God is within (All is within), then we are communing with our innermost depths when we pray.  We will not be disappointed.  If we turn to God whenever we feel tangled up or mixed up, we will find solace for our aching souls.

We get this solace because we are feeling love from God, and love is the great resolver of everything that has gone wrong or might go wrong.  This is not a trite expression of faith; it is the way that life is set up.  We may be blessed without communing with God, for He loves us still, but we will not feel so blessed as we will with complete and utter surrender to His way and will.

We ask Jesus what miracles we are to perform, once we have received this all-encompassing love from God Himself.  We don’t just think up good deeds for others, and then seek to do those good deeds.  Even the most altruistic impulse of ours could easily be the wrong thing to do, if we haven’t received guidance about that action.  Ask Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, what we are to do about any impulses for altruistic action that we have.  Is doing something a right thing?  Or would it be better to wait on His guidance?  We will get our answers when we stop long enough to surrender to a Higher Will, and to do the bidding that we receive.  We will not have to wait long; the Holy Spirit can speak to us, and will, when we ask from a tranquil and easy heart.

Why is it this way?  We do not know enough to make decisions on our own.  When we attempt to do so, we are attempting to develop our own judgments about a given issue or person.  And our judgment will be wrong, for we don’t see the whole picture—past, present, and future.  But there is One—the Holy Spirit—Who does see that whole picture.  His judgments are always true.  And He speaks from that loving judgment to all of us who ask for guidance.  We are set on our way through this meandering world by starting the day right by asking.  Always asking.  And we continue to ask as the day unfolds.  This way what we do and say, and even what we think, are miracles of expediency in our journey through life.  We walk surely, for we have a sure Guide.

Teach Only Love

“Ultimately, it is not so much about going anywhere, as much as it is about abiding within, realizing that this world is unreal, this world is harmless.  And in any situation, it is you with all power under Heaven and Earth to teach only love.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 17, Page 215)

The Way of Mastery is echoing A Course in Miracles when Jesus here says to “teach only love.”  That IS what we are about, and until we accept this mission, we will fret and stew and live a life that is below what we could aspire to.

How do we teach only love?  This quotation also has this answer:  We go within.  God is within, and He will teach us what we need to do to live good lives, lives suffused with His blessings, lives that do Him justice.  Going within offers us a nurturance that our relationships cannot offer, at least not all the time and in all ways. 

We have depended on our relationships, especially our special relationships, to take care of us emotionally.  The only way that succeeds all the time is to turn to our Maker, Who supports us with an everlasting support.  When we turn within, we sense love, and when we sense love from God, we are in a position to offer that love to others.  It is necessary first to receive from God, and then to offer, to give.

This is the way that we teach only love. 

God has much to teach us.  Commune with our depths today, and see what today’s message from Him might turn out to be.

Holding Our Breath

Holding on to what you think will meet your needs is like holding your breath.  Your breath cannot long be held.  It is only through the inhaling and exhaling, the give and take of breathing that you live.  Each time you are tempted to think that your needs can only be met in special ways by special relationships, remember this example of holding your breath.  Think in such a way no longer than you can comfortably hold your breath.  Release your breath and release this fear and move from special to holy relationship.  (A Course of Love, T1:9.17)

We have been trying to hold our breath for eons, hoping against hope that what one special relationship did not give us ultimately can be met by yet another.  Our special relationships all fail us eventually.  Love turns to hate, and we know not what we did wrong.  Always we blame the other person for not living up to the unwritten agreement to be there for us anytime, anywhere.  We feel betrayed.

This is a script that has been played out in our various dramas for far too long.  The only true assurance that we can have from another comes when we have let our special relationship to that person blossom into a holy relationship.  Now we know in our bones that this person will never let us down, that love will stay love and not fall into alienation and even hate.  We are holding our breath no longer.  We know that the safety that we long to have in a human being can be counted upon.  We are safe, finally, and we know it to be true.

This is what happens in long-term marriages that stay fresh.  We discover how to mesh our needs and wants with those of another whom we love unconditionally, come what may.  We know that if our marriage should end, the love will not; the love is eternal now, and we have this assurance as we live out our time on earth.  This world can touch this blessing not.  We are living our dream of eternal love, and it is our brother or sister, our partner in life, who makes the living out of our lives truly meaningful.  He or she is our way back to God, a holy relationship that promises all things, and keep those promises.  Our forgiveness even becomes meaningless, for we recognize that there is nothing we need forgive.  The significant other is significant only in that we live in close proximity; we don’t look to the other for outrageous answers.  We live and let live, in the holiness which God intends for us.

All of us have seen this love, but perhaps fleetingly.  We want it for ourselves.  And we can have it when we give up thinking that specialness is our due.  Holiness is our due.  And with our inheritance as favored children of God, all of us are favored in a holiness that does not play favorites.

Prayer

“Prayer is the medium of miracles.  It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator.  Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-1.I.11)

We need prayer more than God needs it from us, though He is said to be lonely when the minds He created do not commune with Him.  Since God is within (All is within), then we are communing with our innermost depths when we pray.  We will not be disappointed.  If we turn to God whenever we feel tangled up or mixed up, we will find solace for our aching souls.

We get this solace because we are feeling love from God, and love is the great resolver of everything that has gone wrong or might go wrong.  This is not a trite expression of faith; it is the way that life is set up.  We may be blessed without communing with God, for He loves us still, but we will not feel so blessed as we will with complete and utter surrender to His way and will.

We ask Jesus what miracles we are to perform, once we have received this all-encompassing love from God Himself.  We don’t just think up good deeds for others, and then seek to do those good deeds.  Even the most altruistic impulse of ours could easily be the wrong thing to do, if we haven’t received guidance about that action.  Ask Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, what we are to do about any impulses for altruistic action that we have.  Is doing something a right thing?  Or would it be better to wait on His guidance?  We will get our answers when we stop long enough to surrender to a Higher Will, and to do the bidding that we receive.  We will not have to wait long; the Holy Spirit can speak to us, and will, when we ask from a tranquil and easy heart.

Why is it this way?  We do not know enough to make decisions on our own.  When we attempt to do so, we are attempting to develop our own judgments about a given issue or person.  And our judgment will be wrong, for we don’t see the whole picture—past, present, and future.  But there is One—the Holy Spirit—Who does see that whole picture.  His judgments are always true.  And He speaks from that loving judgment to all of us who ask for guidance.  We are set on our way through this meandering world by starting the day right by asking.  Always asking.  And we continue to ask as the day unfolds.  This way what we do and say, and even what we think, are miracles of expediency in our journey through life.  We walk surely, for we have a sure Guide.

Love Will Offer Fulfillment

“This is why once I said:

“If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.  If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you.

‘If you do not bring forth what is within you—and what is within you is Love, is Christ—you will feel burdened and unfulfilled.  Usually, most human beings go through their entire life with a sense of unfulfillment, lamenting what the world has done to them, lamenting the decisions and choices they have made in the past.  They become burdened by what is on the outside, along with what is in the past.  An eventually the body dies, the Spirit withers on the vine.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 17, Page 212)

This is Jesus speaking in Jayem, who channels live. Jesus is quoting the Gospel of Thomas.

I think we don’t really understand how love, and only love, can cure all our problems. As our attitudes change, we walk a green earth. When we meditate, often love comes to the forefront; we make alpha waves, and we sense love more than most times.

If we are feeling unfulfilled, I know of no better way to experience the love that we want and need than to find a quiet corner and become “perfectly calm and quiet” (as A Course in Miracles encourages us to do).

Without a good dose of love–given and received–our lives play out with unfulfilled longings and grieving about lost love. We may not always get love from the one person we want it from the most. But the world is filled with people who can supply this essential need. And the feeling of love is essential to our well-being.

Even pets, companion animals, can supply the need to a degree–and often a great degree.

When we find a quiet corner, something that elicits calm and quiet in ourselves, we will sense God. And when we sense God, we will know that there is a Force Who loves us. He first loved us, and the experience of being loved then allows us to give love. He had to first love us, or we would have no basis for experiencing the giving of love. And the giving often prompts others to give back, though we don’t want to make this a quid pro quo.

Banish the sense of unfulfillment today by opening to the true and real experience of nothing more important to our lives than simple love.

IDLE THOUGHTS

Published in Miracles magazine (Jon Mundy, publisher).

by Celia Hales

There is no more self-contradictory concept than that of “idle thoughts.”  What gives rise to the perception of a whole world can hardly be called idle.  (ACIM, W-16.2:1-2)

You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, thus tacitly condoning your mind’s miscreations.  (ACIM, T-2.IX.5:6)

You who have so filled your mind with senseless wanderings and thoughts that think of nothing that is real, rejoice that there is a way to end this chaos.  (ACOL, C:5.2)

It is a decision to choose to discipline the mind in each moment, to teach only Love, to hold only loving thoughts, and to recognize that there is no such thing as an idle thought, since each thought or perception held in the mind immediately generates your experience.  (WOM, Lesson 20, Page 239)

            When we let our “monkey mind” (as they say) rule us, we are lost indeed.  We recognize that what we focus upon tends to materialize.  And when we lapse into idle thoughts, Jesus is telling us that we are veering off track in a major way.

            I often say Jesus’ words almost as a mantra when my busy mind won’t slow down, “You are much too tolerant of mind wandering.”  I say this when I am trying to go to sleep, and just can’t quite drift off.  But the actual damage begins during daylight hours, when we focus on things that are substandard and not worthy of us.  These substandard things come to pass because even social scientists know that a self-fulfilling prophecy is at work here.

            We might best remedy this situation by a deliberate attempt to bring mindfulness into our daily round.  In my estimation, mindfulness means deliberate action, not necessarily slow, but definitely not rushed.  I find mindfulness most often in the kitchen.  (We all have our favorite places, and cooking is a hobby of mine.)  Actually, mindfulness is necessary in every situation.  It is easier than meditation, for in mindfulness we can give our minds something to hold on to, the actions that we are undertaking.  Meditation, at least traditionally, is particularly hard to practice if we are frenetic Westerners.

            But meditation has its place, and stilling the mind, letting the heart speak, is healing.  We certainly aren’t letting idle thoughts rule us when we are meditating. 

            Listen to Jesus’ words, said in all of his best-known channeled works.

            Let him speak to us, and our mind will slow down enough so that we listen with our heart.  Idle thoughts will diminish, peace will reign.

Joy Calls

The universe exists in reciprocal relationship or holy relationship, rather than special relationship.  This is the nature of existence, as unity is the nature of existence and cannot be changed and has not changed, although you believe it not.  It is a joyful relationship, as the nature of relationship is joy.  Once you have given up your belief in separation this will be known to you.  (A Course of Love, C:29.17)

Once we give up our belief that we could actually separate from God, and have done so, much good will result.  We will know that holy relationship is the nature of the universe(s), and we will realize that holy relationship does not take anything away from our nearest and dearest.  Holy relationship will expand our love to meet the whole world.  We will not know the separatism that has characterized our various special relationships, relationships that have often ended badly.

My friend Carol knew what it is like to suffer special relationship, and “suffer” is the salient word here.  As mentioned, she once fell very hard into a love that was strong on ego, though she did not realize it at the time.  If the special love had ever been transformed into holy, then her sense of desolation at the end of the “relationship” would have saved her from needless regret. 

There was something eminently good about the love that Carol felt.  It was not a love that would be easily surpassed.  That was the clue that something else was going on here.  She was being led, ever so gently and before A Course in Miracles was published, to give up her interest in being special (and having someone else be special as well).  In retrospect, holiness is the transforming key to relationship that goes sour.  And there doesn’t have to be any continuing contact with the other at all to effect a holy relationship.  Relationship that is holy is thus seen to be mystical.

We are meant to enjoy joyousness is our relationships.  Special love invites the highs and lows of drama, and egoic drama at that.  A holy relationship is one that has been dedicated to the Almighty, a Source beyond just our little personality.  And this dedication to Something bigger than ourselves is what makes all the difference.

When we feel united with all other people, our brothers and sisters, we know a peace that is not of this world.  We are meant to live in unity, and of course, we can see that seeing one small part as more special that another would make this joyous unity impossible. Ask to see with a greater vision today.  Ask to comprehend as never before what a special love transformed into a holy one can really mean.  There is no comparison, but until each of us has seen the difference for ourselves, we will remain skeptical that we aren’t losing something in the transformation.

Prayer

“True prayer consists of living in the truth.  Every time you connect with the truth of who you are, you are praying, for prayer is love, and love is union.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 8:III

Here we see, from Jesus, several words that actually mean the same.  These words are prayer, truth, love, and union.  And when we are engaged in any of these ultimate values, we are being who we are.

No longer do we have to feel guilty that we don’t pray enough.  When we seek to tell the truth just always, not only when it is convenient to ourselves, we (Jesus says) are praying.  And then we are living in love, and we are living in love with All that exists.  That All includes Jesus, of course, and it also includes our Creator.  When we sense love from Him, we are set for a good day.

Union is where we are all headed, though this does not necessarily mean an absorption into the Deity.  We are One, and this is the real meaning of union.  We have relationship with diverse entities, but together we are united in God.

When we live in love, truth, union, we are praying.  And our prayer life will then transform everything else.

Hope for Transformation in This Decade

“We are close now, close to a time in which a new choice can make true living available here and now.  This is the decade in which transformation proceeds, and the time in which the mother’s heart enters to show the way to care of the living, and the end of what does not need to be.  This is time of Mirari:  The Way of the Marys.”  Mirari

The “mother’s heart” is Mary herself, but she extends this to all mothers everywhere.  “The Way of the Marys” is the way of women everywhere.  And this decade Marys will be coming into their own.

One cannot adopt the name Mary without being overcome with love for all beings, all creations of God, all people everywhere.  But when we do adopt this name for our own, we are proceeding into a transformation that will affect all life.

The patriarchal society will be influenced more and more by women, and if women choose love, that change will be a good thing.  Women have historically cared for the living, especially their own children.  But now the female aspect of God is moving to a new level of Being, and the female in our societies will be asked to take a more leading role.

If women succeed, we will have greater harmony throughout the world.  Women have historically been close to intuition, and intuition is of the heart.  It is the way that we hear from God—all of us, men and women.

THIS decade is when all this New will be born, for Mirari was received just in the last few years.  We are fortunate indeed to live in a time of hope, when so much around us seems to be crumbling. 

The old is making way for the New, first announced in A Course of Love.

Discovering Love

“This is a course in miracles.  It is a required course.  Only the time you take it is voluntary.  Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum.  It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time.  The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught.  It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance.  The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.”  (A Course in Miracles, T-in.1)

The emphasis here is on “miracles.”  And the fact that what we are taking in A Course in Miracles is a required course.  Is it required for everyone in the world, eventually?  That is an open question, for Jesus does not take a stand on reincarnation.  And Jesus has also said that there are other teachers in this world, teachers other than him.  But we have chosen that he be our teacher, because his words come to us in a manner that we can recognize and love.

We are trying to dislodge the ego; that is “removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence.”  We give up struggle in this task.  Jesus and the Holy Spirit will show us the way effortlessly, step by step.  If we take one situation today and choose once again that we respond in a wholehearted manner, bereft of ego, we will have done well.  Just for today, seek to choose by altruistic means, not egoic.  And your time will be well spent.

Love actually has no opposite of fear, for fear is nothing—a manifestation of illusion, of dreams.  We live in dreams until we choose once again.  Sooner rather than later the Holy Spirit will replace our fearful dreams with happy dreams.  And then the way is smoothed to lead us, ultimately, to Awakening.  If the way seems long, we are encouraged not to fret, that the end is certain.  We have chosen God’s way, and the Holy Spirit is a guide Who cannot fail.  Revelation may occasionally reveal the end to us, but to get there the means are needed, and the means are being revealed in this course.

God would not withhold the rest, when what we ask—Awakening—is His Will for us.  In the meantime, we need just to be patient.  The way is being shown.  Let no fearful thought of the ego hinder your way.

Join in Love

“Beloved friends, peace be unto you always, and always I am with you.  I come to you not alone, but with many who have delighted in creating a resonance with me, and I with them, for no other reason than that power expands exponentially when  minds join in love from a foundation of wholeness and not neediness.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 13, Page 168)

Jesus comes to us in The Way of Mastery by way of Jayem, who channeled “live,” and these three books of The Way of Mastery are the result.  Often in these books, Jesus stresses that he comes with others who join forces to help us all.  He calls his particular group, a very large group, simply “the lineage.”   Their work has been going on for a long, long time; their work is what led up to Jesus’ life 2000 years ago.

When we join with others, our power too is expanded, as Jesus says, “exponentially,” when we are joined in love.  We don’t join with others strictly out of our need, for we will soon come to know that we are whole beings residing in God.  We don’t have to look to others out of this neediness.  We join others because we come to love them.

Right after this passage, Jesus asserts that he and Mary, who are bonded together, do not join because they “need” each other.  He and Mary are joined in love and the result of a common purpose—to save us.  And we might also realize that there are many of us on earth who share that common purpose—though being finite and in physical bodies, we don’t know all that will be known in the cosmic realm.

Join with others of like mind (and heart—as A Course of Love says), if there is love as the overarching feeling.  When we let love lead the way, our ratio of mistakes to truth changes drastically.  We let go of many of our old ways, and walk into a new world being created even as we speak.

Live the Life that You Love

What you love enough to give your life to, is what will give life.  Mirari

Our life is what we make it.  How often we have heard those words!  And when we choose out of love what our daily activities will be, we choose aright.  Then we truly have a life that is worth living.

What we have settled upon as our purpose, choosing out of love, will manifest the life that we most want and the life that we most need.  Matters like this ought not to be chosen in a hurried manner.

Others’ choices are not for us.  What we devote our time to should be our decision, and only our decision.

When we live like this, we come to know what “life” is all about.  Life in this sense is the enlivenment of the daily round, the aliveness with which we live. 

Choose carefully, in prayer, and life will bless us abundantly.

Gentle Mary

The words of the feminine are literally heard in a different way. Mirari

I think the reason that the words of the feminine are heard differently is because we remember our mothers, the first evidence of love we ever encountered.  A mother nurtures in a soft way, a way that invites reciprocation.  There is a special mother-child bond that is unlike anything else we will encounter in our lifetimes.

If this bond is not well-formed or is broken, we have scars.  This is how important maternal love really is.

Women speak differently from men, regardless of how hard a man might try to be nurturing.

This is the advantage that women have in this new era.  Women’s voices are ready to be heard now.  Mirari tells us this.  We are ready to BE more often than DO, for the way of Mary is to “be.”  May we ask in the privacy of our thoughts what this means for our world, and respond as we come to understand.

Love & Miracles

“Since that part of God that dwells in you is as powerful as God Himself in its totality, then certainly you can do miracles by invoking the divine aspect of yourself or getting events to be harmoniously oriented in love.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 11:II

What does this mean? It does not mean that we are as powerful as God. The divine aspect of us “in its totality” is what we are talking about. And with this divine aspect we can work miracles that are prompted. We don’t work miracles that we think are well-advised, for this is the one way to get ourselves and others into trouble. We wait for guidance, and then, almost without knowing, we are in a miracle-minded state. From there it is easy to bring about the miracles that we are asked to perform.

If our lives are flowing in the harmony of love, we are right where we ought to be. We are living joyously. We are in tune with the Infinite, God Himself. If we are depressed in spirit, our good deeds will be tainted, for we will bring our suffering into them. If we want to live well, doing good for others while we ourselves are listening to guidance, we need to remain centered in wellness. This is not so hard to do when we are living with the thought of love in our mind and heart.

Love will transform us so that miracles will light not only our path, but those in our circle of family, friends, acquaintances–and even the larger world.

Lift our eyes to the heavens. We will be lifted up at the same time.

Holy Spirit

“[T]he Spirit of God that lives in you, which is what Holy Spirit means, likewise encompasses the love beyond attributes that God is.”   Choose Only Love bk.4, 1:III

We haven’t had a good handle on Who the Holy Spirit really is, and today we discover–the Spirit of God. Though part of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is nothing really separate, even as the Son (and Daughter) are not actually separate from God–for God lives in all, the All, everything.

The Way of Mastery refers to “a” holy spirit that overshadowed Jesus in his time on earth. Yes, a holy spirit really did overshadow him. And that Spirit was the Spirit of truth (though we can see that truth in reality is really Love).

We have moved into the time of Christ now, the time in which all of us following God’s pathway do indeed embody Christ. Christ is not limited to one entity, Jesus. Jesus welcomes us all into his mantle.

Ask that our truth today be informed by the love that truth really contains. We need each other, and we need each other in love.

We Live in God

“God is a marriage of love because everything, male and female as you consider it, resides in God, as well as in all true creation.”  COL bk.4, 1:IV

We are composed of love—through and through.  We are living, many of us, in madness still, because the ego has not yet died in us.  When the ego does die, we will know what it is to live in God.  We will be part of “all true creation.”

What we have made of ourselves in this world is not “true creation,” for our mistakes have made us labor under extreme conditions of depravity.  Never God’s intention, He “let go” when we rebelled (A Course of Love concept).  What else could He do?  We as parents even do this with our rebellious teenagers.  Neither we, in God’s sight, nor teens, are yet mature—or we wouldn’t make such havoc for ourselves.

Let the love that we are embrace us and give us new life.  In this time of spring in the northern hemisphere, we can be at home in our world when we recognize that all of life can be our springtime—a time of new growth, new growth into greater immersion in God.

Love

“Bringing human nature to its fullness in love is what has been the purpose of Our incarnation, just like yours.  There are no differences between you and Us.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 8:III

Jesus is here speaking of himself and Mary.  If we know that we have one purpose in this world, and that purpose is to live in the fullness of love, then life becomes very easy.  We do things that promote love, and we avoid things that do not.  How hard can this be?

One purpose means that life becomes simple.  Oh, how our insane ego has made life in this world so complicated!

But we are through with this madness—and through with it now!  Affirm to God that we will walk His way, and His way only.

And then life will become completely bearable, and easy and simple in the extreme.

Living in Love

“[L]iving with fear was the reality of the contraction in which you lived.  Now we begin to live consciously without fear, joyfully recognizing that we are the resurrection and will live in love.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:III

I know that this assertion is true; I know from long life experience.  I used to live with the anxiety of a stressful job, and now that I am no longer in the work force, I am amazingly calm, sometimes sleepy in the mornings, something I resist.

I can make accommodations so that I am more alert, living in Love and not fear.  I have read that it takes more patience to live calmly than to live in agitation.  We have been used to dramas, dramas that kept us uptight.  Now all of us can adjust to a better way, if we have a mind to.  We can adjust to peace without highs and lows that are emblematic of an egoic existence.

Here Jesus says that we are the “resurrection.”  He is seeing us in a new era, the new time of Christ, the second coming of Christ.  Elsewhere Choose Only Love asserts that we are living in the end times.  This does not mean the annihilation of the earth, but it does mean the annihilation of the difficult ways of the ego.

Accept calm when it comes.  Accept calm in this new era.  And be grateful for it. 

Our lives will smooth out, and we will know a better way of walking through the new world that we will be creating.

Love

“My beloveds, I cannot fail to mention that you must take charge of everything that you experience in yourself that is not love.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:III

We have something to do.  This word from Jesus tells us just what it is.  If something we recognize is not love, love-oriented, then take charge of it, and banish it from our lives. 

There are many emotions that are love, emotions of positivity.  Harmony, peace, tranquility, being soothed, being cocooned—all of these are of love.  But there are also emotions that are not of love.  Anger, attack, jealousy, violence—all of these are not of love. 

If we recognize that we are harboring one of these negatives, we must do something about it.  We must not depend on anyone else to banish these emotions from our self.  WE must do it.

The good news is that when we enlarge the love in our lives, the negative emotions of hate fall away of their own accord.  We don’t have to seek to discredit them or to remove them.  Love embraces all and transmutes the negativity, leaving the positive emotion of love as an all-embracing blessing.

Ask for help from God to shift into love-oriented living today.  God is Love, and He will understand our own failings in this regard.  He will fill us with His Love, and then all will be well.

True Peace

“Realize that I am love.  Remembering this is enough to bring true peace to your heart and mind.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:I

This is a message from Jesus.  I think this assertion will work for us when we do follow him as our leader.  Following Jesus as our leader and savior is the message of traditional Christianity as well as the recently channeled works which many believe are from Jesus, including this one—Choose Only Love—and A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, and The Way of Mastery.

We need someone who has walked the whole pathway back to God as our guide.  When we trust that one, we know that we can have the peace that we feel when we think of him.  He paved the way.  Now he is inviting us to join him as an equal, not subordinate to him in any way.  He got there first, but he wants nothing more than for us to share the love that that journey showed to him.  And he takes us by the hand as we walk along.

If we trust Jesus as our leader and guide, oftentimes our savior, we will—he says—experience true peace.  And who among us does not want that?  Let go of doubts that Jesus is actually speaking to us in this quotation and open the mind and heart to the belief that he is.

When we feel true peace in this belief, we will know all we need to know.  We will walk a smooth road back to God, with Jesus’ hand clasped in ours.

We Are Christ!

“You are consciousness.  You are awareness.  You are that which witnesses, that which pays homage to the one thing that God has created:  Christ, which means the anointed.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 17, Page 201)

We are the awareness that is Christ. Of course, if we shouted this too loudly when we are caught in the ego, we would have a “high” that would quickly turn on us and lead us into despair. But now that we are relinquishing the ego, we can shout from the rooftops (metaphorically) that we ARE the Christ. In the new era of Christ, we understand that the “Christ” is a plural concept, not limited to Jesus. He paved the way, and still does. But he welcomes us into his inner sanctuary with God.

How do we actually come to realize that we are morphing into something new and better? We go within, in peace and tranquility. God Himself will welcome us. We can believe that He knows how important it is to us to relinquish an egotistical stance toward life and living. When we welcome others with the same manner in which we seek to welcome ourselves into God’s embrace, we will realize that we are all in this together.

We seek to rest in God’s embrace, and in His embrace we feel no fear. We see that we are equal to all others in the eyes of God, and so judgment has no place. And it is these two impediments–fear and judgment–according to A Course of Love, that keep us from manifesting Christ, that keep us from love in all its fullness–Love as God loves.

Know that we are loved, and because God first loved us, we can give and receive love now. We can be cocooned in that love of God.

He is reaching upward from our depths to love us with an abiding love. Do we feel it yet?

Divine Play

“Peace, then, be unto you, beloved and holy friends.  ‘Friends’ because you are a part of me, and I a part of you—particles of light dancing in the wave of the one God, the one Mind, the one Truth, the real world.  The joke has been on us!  And we played it upon ourselves well.  Now, the time of rejoicing is at hand, as we arise in our individuation, recognizing our oneness—to dance the dance of creation ceaselessly, extending only the good, the holy, and the beautiful.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 16, Page 200)

What is the “joke”? That we thought we separated from God, formed an ego that led us astray, and now we recognize the folly of our ways and are rapidly, all of us, returning to God. Now we know that Love answers all needs. And when we leave behind judgment and fear (as A Course of Love advises), we are making real progress to a better life ahead. The law of attraction kicks in magnificently to allow us to realize that God is in our corner, has always been in our corner. He was just waiting patiently for us to find that out.

Now we know. We are not meant to be isolated and alone; we need each other, and we need God, the Force of the Universe Who realizes that Love is the only way that reality would work. He knew this from the beginning, when He first awoke and realized, “There is only I. Why be afraid? But I feel lonely. I will create my “children,” and then I will companion with them.”

We don’t really know how God thought, but what I just said is an ancient story retold by Joseph Campbell. And to our finite minds, it makes sense–though we are molding God in our own image, and that may not be good.

Let ideas of God play in our minds. This is companionship, we can feel, for Him–and it is companionship for us. Our “play” has a larger scope, and in Awakening we will come to see more and to know more.

Let God’s Love enfold us today. Even He could wish for nothing greater for us.

Delight in Living

“Your journey is not alone.  Even now, you are perfectly awake.  For only one who is awake could dare to create the great cleverness and creativity, through which you are a spark of God become increasingly aware of your Self:  God diving into God; God discovering God!  What a delightful, delightful play!”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 16, Page 198 – 199)

This quotation leads us to a celebration! A celebration of life itself. Jesus, here channeled by Jayem, is getting us to see that the “way we are,” here now, right now, is OK. If there are things that we want changed, we ask for help from our God, and He obliges us. But, if we can believe this quotation, He is far more pleased with ourselves than we often are. And what a pity! That we don’t recognize our own grandness.

We can’t see it, but we are at play in a great drama in the universe. Yes, there is still plenty of suffering, but we will find our way out of that when we focus on the right things–the love, the harmony, the peace that we all want immeasurably. Even the people we see who seem to be “bad” want only love, in their deepest heart. Unconscious people just don’t recognize how a change of focus could bring all this to them. They need our prayers, not our condemnation.

In our creativity, we will join forces with God to create a better world. We may differ on how this is done, but our aim is the same.

And an underlying truth is that we CAN see delight in this “play.” Not in a selfish way, an uncaring way, but in a way that shows God’s truth in everything we say and do.

God’s Love

“Here, there is great richness not found in any other dimension, the richness of the dramas of separation, of seeking—seeking, seeking, seeking. . . .

“The very energy of seeking is the egoic energy.  For only the ego can seek.  Pure Spirit can only extend.  And there is a huge difference!”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 16, Page 197)

We have been seeking for long eons. But there is an end to seeking, and A Course of Love, which followed The Way of Mastery, calls for an end to seeking also. ACOL says that that end has come.

How do we make the shift into something better? Something that truly satisfies?

We develop patience, patience with ourselves. Our extension (“Pure Spirit can only extend”) is the extension of love, Love, God’s Love. And only when we rest in the certainty of knowledge can we feel secure, willing to give up seeking for something elusive that we might have missed.

In patience we possess our souls. We have heard that, but have we believed it? It is true, completely true.

Let us ask for the patience to accept what we already know, that Love, God’s Love, when sensed, is the Answer we have been seeking.

He will do all the rest.

Live with Full Hearts

“As that first thought of separation is dreamt. . .You could say a drop of milk . . .  seems to separate and take on its own energy.  And that we have called fear. . .the experience of contraction . . . .”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 16, Page 192)

Fear is only a dream. Only. The image here is of a glass of milk being poured, and a drop of milk splashes upward, and that splash of milk seems to be separate and different from the rest, and in the separation, fear is born.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can stay merged with the whole glass of milk. Our dream of fear can be left entirely in our past, a journey we took that would lead us to recognize how imperative it is to live fear’s opposite, love. How do we do this?

The most important consideration is how we spend our time. If we commune with our Maker often and well, we will feel His love surrounding and supporting us. This is prayer. This is real prayer.

We can leave the contraction of fear by being expansive in our relationship to our brothers and sisters. And loving them. Love cancels out many wrongs, and the most noticeable wrong that it cancels is the experience of fear. When our hearts are full, we have no room for fear.

And fear leaves us entirely.

Spirit

“Rather, it was more like a mathematical concept.  It was the idea of space, in which extension could occur.  There were not yet planets and suns.  There was not yet a single atom or molecule of matter.  There was pure thought, pure Love, pure being, beginning to entertain, and I emphasize that word for a certain reason, the idea of pure space, pure extension—unlimited, unbounded, forever.  There was pure Spirit.  That is what you are, now and forever.  Spirit does not change.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 16, Page 189)

Spirit is an energy that pervades the whole. In the beginning (if we can say that), there was nothing but Spirit. Then God moved, and His energy–or Thought–slowed down a bit, and lo and behold, matter came into being. Matter has been most of what we have known. And unfortunately, in our separation from God–something that we, in error, imagined we wanted–we developed a false self, an ego, that felt all alone and lonely without our Creator, God Himself.

Now things are changing for us. We know that egotism is not the way of the Christ-Mind. And we are tired and burned out from the suffering that our ego has laid upon us. We now have a new choice before us–choosing God, again, this time to stay with Him. Our ego diminishes into nothingness, and we have true joy in our newfound communion with our Creator.

We are pure Spirit, and despite our foray into egotism, our essence has not changed.

Now we choose again, this time in Love. And Love, with a capital “L,” is God Himself.

Our Essence

“You are God Itself.  Now, that is the first time that we have been quite so bold.  It is the first time that we have described you as that which is God.  This can only mean that what you are in your essence, in your essential being, is God Himself.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” The Way of Mastery, Chapter 16, Page 188)

What this quotation is saying is that the All, everything, is composed of “God-stuff.”  There is no energy that exists except the essence of God, and He created children from that Essence that are differentiated out of His very being.  We are those children.

There are differences, of course, starting with the fact that we are finite and lack full knowledge.  We could not live if we knew it all, because our mind would act like a computer drive that has had too much data stored in it (an analogy from A Course of Love).  We have also “fallen,” in that we made an ego that has separated us from God—or so we thought.  We could not actually separate from Him, for we are part of Him, part of His essence.

When we return to God, to know it, we will be in a position to partake more of His very essence.  Our benefits will be great, for love and loving will be the way we live.  Love is God, as we know.  But God is not an emotion, and so by this statement we mean something grander than the emotion of love.  We draw sustenance from Love (something that remains a mystery), for when we forgive completely, we know that we are safe in His arms (we know this from A Course in Miracles, which stresses forgiveness as our great need).

And when we have walked the whole way back to God, we will then know that there is really nothing to forgive.  The dream is over, the reality is in full sway now.

Love is the way we walk in peace.

Living in Love

“Beloved friends, the world that you look upon is not real! . . . But it is a creation that can be impregnated with the perfect Love of God.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 15, Page 182)

When we are living in love, we are living in reality.  Then the creation that is the world is “impregnated” with the “perfect Love of God.”

We see with real vision when we live in love.  Our physical eyes see with a nonphysical expression.  When this first occurs, we see little edges of light around the same familiar objects in our everyday world.  This is one of the signs that real vision is coming upon us.

Real vision is not seen with the physical eyes.  It is something else entirely.  We see with Love that is imbued with the harmonies of love, peace, tolerance, kindness.

This physical world will one day disintegrate.  It is only slowed down energy of the cosmos. 

But the real vision that we have when we are living in Love will be eternal.

Take a moment today to ask for real vision and to see the real world.

Live in Love

“[I]t is essential that you remember that the fundamental thing is not to accumulate information or particular worldly knowledge.  The essential thing is to live in love, to know you are loved.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 7:II

First things first—and love is always and forever the answer.  Our knowledge/information is something in which we take pride.  But our love is the only thing that matters.  When our lifetime is nearing a close, we will know this.  Nobody wishes that they had spent more time at the office when that person is on a deathbed.

We who study Jesus’ channeled writings may be studying them for the wrong reasons.  Perhaps this is implied in what Jesus is saying here.  It is interesting to understand ultimate reality, but it is not essential.  And anybody who gives up grievances and resentments can live in love.  The knowledge that Jesus imparts in his books give us grounding in love, it is true.  But we are born with an innate ability to love.  It is our birthright.

Turn to our significant others today in love.  Express love.  Feel love.  Live love.  There is no other way to live successfully.  Living in love is the true measure of success.

Jesus: “This Work Is a Love Letter”

“The secret of this world lies not in what can be learned, but that love, and only love, is what it evokes.

“This work is a love letter.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 7:I

When we project love from within, then we see love without.  Our projections create our perceptions.  While we think negatively, this world does not seem to evoke love.  But Jesus, who channeled these words, sees with the eyes of love, and thus he sees in the world something infinitely better than we could ever imagine.

His words to us, this “work,” is thus a love letter to us.  How grand!  This message can and will evoke love in our heart, as surely as Jesus’ heart is filled with love.

May we lay aside all resentments, antagonisms, grievances today—right now.  These feelings are not worthy of God.  Ask Him to fill our mind and heart only with what is worthy of Him.

And what is worthy of Him is always and only seeking to live love.

We Are in League with Jesus & Mary

“Creation had to be restored, recreated again on the basis of divine love.  The original plan had become distorted and needed to be redirected back to the light of perfect love.  This is what my life and that of Jesus accomplished once and for all, in union with you.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 5:II

We have been part of the restoration of creation on the basis of divine love.  Of course, we don’t understand how this can, particularly because we don’t feel good enough.  But the lives of Jesus and Mary accomplished this, in union with us.  Here Mary makes this clear.

This is cause for rejoicing!  We must do what we can to bring salvation to the world.  We must allow ourselves to be conduits for divine love.  We can do this, if we reaffirm our dedication.  If we realize that everybody does a little bit for God, once a person has decided to be “for God” all the way.  We need to say, often, “I am determined to go God’s way.”

And it will be done.

Remember that we are loved deeply.  We couldn’t make any difference in the world unless we were loved, are loved.  Our tranquil and kind words and deeds, prompted by this love, do count for something.

Love Is What We Are

“Love is not an idea.  Love is not an abstraction.  Love is you.  Love is what you are.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:II

We need to understand much more about love than we do.  We often think of it as simply a feeling or an emotion.  But it is a Force, the Force that is God.

When we give ourselves up to love, we know peace.  And we don’t know genuine and lasting peace any other way.

Here we learn that love is what we are.  This is actually saying that we partake of the essence of God.  He does not stand apart from His creation, but is in it, through and through.  So He overshadows us with the love that is the essence of Himself.

Ask to understand love better today.  Ask to see how love could be the essence of the universes, of us, of God Himself.  We are created of the essence of Him. 

We can thrive in no other way than to let love embrace us.

Love’s Embrace

“In the wisdom of love is where you will receive what you are waiting for, receive the certainty that you are seeking, the peace you are longing for, the embrace that your hearts need.  It is in love where all that is needed is given.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:II

We need that embrace!  A Course of Love has a wonderful passage in which Jesus talks to us, inviting us into his embrace.  And there he gives us certainty and peace.  Our hearts need the embrace.  We are bereft without it.

In love we find what we have been needing.  In love we both give and receive.  And our heart overflows with love that dwells deep within all of us, where God is.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in our heart.  Be patient, for the blessing will come.  Jesus has promised, and, if anything, he keeps his promises.

Love = True Function

“Your function is not to be anything, but to be what you are, which is love.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:I

We don’t have to fulfill a self-described image of what we want to be, a self-image.  Images are often ego-originating, and false to the core.  Instead, we simply need to focus on what we know of love, to fulfill a vision of someone who loves.

This cannot be hard, though our real Self has been covered over by egoic notions for a long time.  Yet, even in the midst of folly, all of us have known love, from someone or something.  We first receive love from God, and this first receipt from Him enables us to be able to give.  If we had not first received, we would simply be unable to heal the separation, something that God Himself longs to see.

Simplify life today.  Know that when all is said and done, we don’t want more honors, more promotions, more achievements. When life is ending for us, we will never say that we wish we had spent more time at the office.  We will say that we wish we had loved better.

Begin today to rectify gaps in our experience of love.  Pray to be brought closer to true reality, which at base is nothing if it is not love.

Being Who We Really Are

“The wind does what is natural to wind.  The purpose of existence is to be its true nature.  That is why, we have spent so much time reminding you of who you really are.

“Being aware of who you really are allows you to live as who you truly are.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:I

Often we try to live up to an ideal that is only in our mind.  “Being who we are” is something more substantial than just an appeal to ideals.  Knowing who we are takes some deep thought, some mystical insight, and a connection to God Himself Who will guide us to blossom as He intended.

We are individuals who best live in love, not fear, and especially not egoic fear.  We know that we are really One with all our brothers and sisters, with whom, if things are good, we live in holy relationship.  We unite with the depth of ourselves, the Christ-Self.  As the Christ-Self learns over time, we see a bloom come to all we encounter, for projection makes perception.  What we are inwardly, we see as external to ourselves.  We are projecting “reality” as we view it.

God wants us to enjoy ourselves in this lifetime.  Often we don’t, because we know pain, sorrow, even suffering.  But these things can disappear more often than not when we are keen to follow guidance as we know it.  God means us well.  He does not visit bad things upon us.  Usually our free will has brought the more unfortunate parts of our lives to us.

Ask today, deep in contemplation and prayer, for an understanding of the personality that has been given us.  We do have some say in the matter, of course.  Some of life is meant to be play.  When we develop the best that is in us, we know a joy that cannot be known by anybody who is simply playing a part.  We know a joy because our innermost essence is divine, and when we touch the divine, we sense God’s love in everything about us.

Love

“To the extent that you allow your consciousness to live fully in the truth of who you are, the love that you truly are, to that extent you fulfill your purpose.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 4:I

Who we truly are is just – love.  And when we live love, we are on purpose.

We often don’t realize how much a simple decision to love more deeply will effect change in our daily life.  And this change is all good.

This is not a sentimental love, a love that overlooks bad things in an effort to make ourselves feel better.  We may still express negative emotions, when we feel them warranted, but we will find them unwarranted far more often than we realize now.  Love is a sold feeling, something substantial to cling to in uncertain times.  It is never a tame thing, but the hardiest sense of coming into our own.  We do nobody any favors when we let other people walk all over us.  This is a false way of viewing love that has turned people off all too often.

Love can be and is strong in the face of provocation.  Love is gentle in the extreme, but the gentlest feeling is the most powerful.  It is not a two-edged sword that can be turned against us.

Ask to be shown what love really means, because we have not known.  We have not known what it means to say that God is Love.  We have been in the dark about this, as about many things connected with love.  Love is many-faceted, solid, substantial, a Force to Whom we can cling.

Let God speak to our hearts today about this matter of His Love and what it means to us.  Give God some time to get through by spending some time in quietness. 

God speaks in the silence with sudden insights that warm the heart.

Trust Fully in God’s Love

“Being alert in favor of love means trusting fully in love—God’s love.  This is no idle clarification about trusting in the active love of God. Trusting others to solve what you think of as your problems constantly leads to disillusionment.  Two similar beings cannot have in each other what the other lacks to solve their apparent problems.  If this were true, one would have to be incomplete and another not, which would annul the equality of the children of God.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:II

I don’t think this means that we can’t get advice from other people.  If neither one has a clue, though, this quotation does make sense.  We can’t trust other people to solve our problems, because the problems are our contract, and for help with problems, we need to get quiet and go within, to God.

We have all we need to solve problems, but this idea will remain elusive to us until we depend on our one Source, God Himself.  Often we muddle along with a problem for weeks, months, years, never asking for help.  This makes no sense whatsoever.  But there it is.  We need to go immediately to our Higher Power when something puzzles us.  Ask for clarification, ask to be shown the light.

And we will be.

Inner Peace

“Once the thought pattern of concern arises, you make that concern real, which then encompasses the entire space of your mind and heart, and thereby you lose peace.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

When we dwell on a feeling, we make it real to us.  If we dwell on antagonism to our brother or sister, we make it real, and thus harder to overlook.  This is an idea from A Course in Miracles.  Likewise, with concerns or worries.  When we focus upon them, they grow in our mind and even our heart.  The concern overturns more positive thoughts, and then we really are in trouble.

When the bad feeling mushrooms, it encompasses, as this quotation says, the “entire space of. . .mind and heart.”  This takes away our peace, and inner peace is one of the greatest attributes we might aspire to have.  Inner peace goes hand-in-hand with a loving heart.  Inner peace gives us a world that is all-encompassing in its goodness.

We see what we want to see, because we invent our world (as ACIM says).  If we want trouble, we will see it, though we may not be aware that we “want” it.  Focus is everything, for the law of attraction is in operation.  What we focus upon becomes true for us, even if it is not objectively “true.”

Let the mind and heart swell with inner peace today. 

Do not dwell on worries or concerns, making them an obsession.  If we give up worries/concerns, we will walk throughout this world with a serenity that has eluded us until now.

Open the Way to Peace

“Observe how the thought pattern of worry blocks access to peace, and therefore to your true self.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

Our “true self” does not worry.  This is the Christ-Self described so well in A Course of Love.  If we are prone to worry, let’s decide today to give up negative obsessions.  Our lives will be so much better.  We do have the power to effect this.

All of us long for peace in this world, even when we are not aware of what we are longing for.  A Course in Miracles says that our future is to be “perfectly calm and quiet” all the time.  This may seem a bit extreme, but it is a good metaphor for the meek who will inherit the earth.  Meekness is not passivity, though, something we would all be wise to come to understand.

If we want peace, we are learning that we must drop worry from our habitual frame of mind.  Let the heart speak to us, for the heart knows how to love, and when we love rightly, we depend on our faith in God to evict worry from our mind.  Doing this can be as easy as dismissing worry thoughts, one right after the other, when they occur to us.  Substitute thoughts of love, loving thoughts, and the worry will have no place to occupy.  It is always best to substitute another thought, lest our attempt to dismiss thoughts is akin to ignoring an elephant in the room.  Not possible.

We want access to our true self.  It behooves us to take steps in that direction, especially when we are tempted to turn aside from our true self.  Worry is a form of fear, and we know that love cancels fear.

Let’s let love do its work today.

Trust

“[T]oday I speak of trust.  Observe how the thought patterns of worries and concerns of all kinds seem to assault you again and again.  These concerns come, in fact, from beliefs contrary to trust.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 3:I

We would not worry so much if we trusted more.  If we trusted in God.  We do know that most of what we worry about never, ever, comes to pass.  How much better we could live if we dropped worry and replaced it with trust!

We can’t just determine to drop worry and concerns.  We need to edge these negative thoughts out of the mind with something more powerful.  The perfect alternative to worry/concerns is trust that a good God doesn’t mean us harm and, instead, is showering love on us just all the time.  He is, you know.  The bad things in life don’t come from God, but from our own misguided notions and ideas.  We use our free will to make for chaos, and chaos finds us.

Drop chaos when we drop worries and concerns.  Let trust in God, the first prerequisite for a teacher of God (according to A Course in Miracles), take their place.  Then, even if bad things happen, we won’t feel them nearly so much. 

We will have a faith in things ethereal and permanent that overshadow, and sometimes negate, the transient things of this world.

Living in Love

“[L]iving with fear was the reality of the contraction in which you lived.  Now we begin to live consciously without fear, joyfully recognizing that we are the resurrection and will live in love.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:III

The only two emotions, fear and love, are polar opposites to one another.  The degree to which we open to love is the degree to which the contraction of fear leaves us.  If we are feeling fear, ever, maybe we ought simply to stop, just stop, and ask ourselves in what way we are not being loving. 

This will make all the difference.  Love cancels out fear, always and forever.  It is true, however, that fear and anxieties may have such a toehold in us that we can’t, right away, focus on love.  First we need to relax.  Let the fear sweep over us, but do nothing about it.  It will come to a conclusion as we relax.  Open then to love and loving feelings.  Think of something or someone whom we truly love.  This shift in feeling will open the way to a tremendous surge, and in this surge, a surge of love, and Love (meaning God), we will be released enough to drop the fear from our mind and heart.

Experiment today, if you are in fear.  Let relaxation quell the emotion of anxiety, and then move serenely into the feeling of love.

Our day will brighten.  Our mind, through Christ, is very powerful: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”  Let the heart rule the mind in this instance of turning to love.

The heart already knows how to do this.

Retain Only What Is Love

“My beloveds, I cannot fail to mention that you must take charge of everything that you experience in yourself that is not love.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 2:III

WE have some power in our Awakening!  This message from Jesus asserts it.  WE must take charge of our thinking, being quick to dismiss those thoughts that are not loving.  If we do this consistently, we might believe that our Awakening will come sooner rather than later.  We will have made a difference.

We can’t “prepare” ourselves, though, as the Holy Spirit (A Course in Miracles) or the Christ-Self (A Course of Love) can.  The part that we do out of the whole is actually very little.  A Course in Miracles says that the part of the Holy Spirit is disproportionate to ours.  That means that we need His constant help.

We experience what is happening in our mind.  And we know that we have to listen to our heart, let our heart take the lead.

A Course of Love says that the barriers to Awakening, the impediments to the awareness of love, are fear and judgment.  Fear is seen as the opposite of love, with all feelings either being fear or love.  Judgment is described separately, but I see it as a subset of fear.  After all, we don’t love others if we are afraid of them or of what they might do to us.

What we experience that is not love should be a red flag, always and forever.  Then take steps to remove that other feeling from our awareness.  It can be done.  It just consists of dismissing the thought that brought on the feeling, and then substituting positive love as the anecdote.

Try it today, for many of us will experience feelings that are not love in the course of our walk.  Substitute love, for it is the strongest, most all-encompassing, feeling of all.  And God, and we, are made of it.

Mission for God

“Go into the world announcing the good news.  You have a means to do it.  Enjoy the joy of sharing.  Be messengers of peace.  Take love to the world.”  Choose Only Love bk.2, 21:II

What better way could we spend a life than to follow the directions given in this quotation?  What is the good news?  Simply that we are beloved of God, the beloved of God.  He stands with us in every earthly dilemma, every quandary, every mystery.  He may not take away every mystery, but if we bear with him patiently, the dilemmas and quandaries lift.

How might we announce the good news?  We won’t seek to recruit others to our way of life, unless they express obvious interest in knowing how we live.  We will turn off others if they are not ready for a change, even a change for the better.  So announcing the good news, when and where, needs deep prayer.  We need to discern when and where to offer the message.  Our own way may not, ultimately, answer the needs of our brothers and sisters if they are in a different place from ourselves, mentally and emotionally.

So depend on guidance in this delicate matter of influencing others.  But when the time is right, and the person before us is right, we can enjoy the joy of sharing.  And they too will be enlivened.

Offering peace and love to the world is a less delicate matter than sharing the good news of what we have found in God.  Peace and love are always welcome.

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.