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.

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.