Being Who We Are in Mellowness & Gentleness

“We have talked little of feelings here, and there has been a reason for this discussion coming so late in our time together. To accept the feelings of the self of illusion would have been to accept the feelings generated by the fear of the ego thought system or the bitterness of your heart. It would have been to accept the feelings of a personal self who had not yet unlearned the lessons of the past or taken these steps toward elevation. Now, however, it is crucial that you come to acceptance of yourself—in the present, as you are—for only by doing so will you come to full acceptance of who you are and be able to allow the Self of unity to merge with the self of form, thus elevating the self of form. You will also, only in this way, come to true expression of the elevated Self of form. Access and expression are both conditions of the present.” (ACOL, D:Day8.17)

We are accepting the feelings of the Self of union, the Self who has merged with the Christ-Self deep within us. We are not accepting the feelings of an egoic self any longer. When we accept the feelings of the newly emerged Self, we are mellow and forgiving. We are at peace, and who among us would not want peace at all times?

How do we invite mellowness and peace? This is an important question to come to terms with, for in it is our pathway home made clear to us. Our insights will grow ever greater as we walk the mellow pathway of gentleness. By forgiving those who do not seem forgivable, we are given the blessing of a full peace.

What is more, we are given the blessing of glimpses of Christ-consciousness, the state of mind and heart that will soon be our permanent state. We will sustain Christ-consciousness when we have truly realized that we forgive, first, for ourselves, to ease the pain and torment of a tortured mind and heart. Our brothers and sisters are, many of them, living in insanity, and thus nothing that they do means anything. We can sometimes feel pity for them, but we do best when we feel compassion instead. This compassion will ease the way toward a full-hearted forgiveness of the illusion that we actually reside in.

Be gentle with ourselves today. Know that to dwell on problems is not the way. Ask for a solution at the point of need, and then rest easy—for the solution will come, and at just the right time, an immediate time.

Be good to our neighbors, our brothers and sisters. We will have less to forgive when we embrace all of them with compassion born of a serene and full heart.

Prayer

Dear God,

Thank You for the insight that I had recently, just yesterday, that I once made my own problems with a passion that I have given up now. I would not obsess about any seeming difficulty. There is too much to be happy about, too much to rue a good day.

If I am certain that You will always provide a solution when there is a problem, I will walk a green earth again. And I am certain. Thank You.

Amen.

Live Zen-Like Lives Filled with Mellowness

“You must not see your brothers and sisters within the house of illusion but must see them where they truly are—within the House of Truth. As soon as you would “see” the house of illusion, you would make it real, and with its reality judgment would be upon you…not any judgment of God, but judgment of your own mind.” (ACOL, T3:11.13)

We must not hold hard feelings against our brothers and sisters who have not yet emerged from the house of illusion. Indeed, in this passage we learn that we must not make real this house at all. We must look past it to the House of Truth which encompasses all things. This House of Truth, the Kingdom of God, is where we really belong. And we have known this throughout our religious upbringing. Jesus does not make new rules so much as he reminds us of the ones that we have always heard and tried to live by. He shows us the new way, though, in that we don’t give any credence to sin anymore, and we realize mistakes for what they are. We move beyond our mistakes to that which will erase them forever. We know that we are innocent of wrongdoing, for we have been living in illusion, and what happens in illusion does not really happen at all.

If we see our brothers and sisters in the house of illusion, we are guilty of judging them. And newly arising fear and judgment will cripple our progress. Our glimpses of Christ-consciousness will stop, and a new egoic consciousness will be in danger of taking us over.

This we cannot let happen. This we do not want. Let us walk toward what we do want, which is a world washed clean of mistakes and the resultant conflict, suffering, and pain. There is a way to see a world like this. Jesus tells us that God sees this world, a world of joy and peace, happiness and contentment, serenity and calm. All of this can be ours when we leave behind fear and judgment. If this seems too much to ask, we might ask instead how we might live Zen-like lives filled with mellowness. Not lives that engage with the suffering and pain, but lives that look beyond to a better horizon.

Our way will smooth out as we let more and more glimpses of enlightenment take us over. The way will clear; life will emerge from the ruins of an ego that has been rejected.

Take time today to ask what we can do to bring this world into being. That is the best question that we could ask. It is the only real question before us now.

Prayer

I ask for a once-and- for- all end to anxieties today. I know that I have not walked the whole pathway as long as I still have fear as part of my emotional makeup. I ask for this fear to end.

And may I not judge my brothers and sisters. This too is forbidden, according to Jesus.

Be with me for a calm and centering day. Thank You.

Amen.

Our Mellowness Alerts Us to the Joining of Heaven and Earth

“You will be tempted, nonetheless, to re-enter the house of illusion, if only to grasp the hands of those you love and gently tug them through its doors. You will be able to take note of the explosions happening within and will want to return to add your own to those going on inside, thinking that with the force of one more, maybe the walls will finally come tumbling down and those inside be held within illusion no more. This was the work of many who came before you but the time of such work, for you, is past. Many remain to shake the walls of illusion. Few stand beyond it to beckon to those within.” (ACOL, T3:9.5)

Here Jesus gives us our motive for living, a motive that for adherents of A Course of Love is somewhat different in scope than what we knew before we learned how to leave illusion. We have learned that leaving illusion and joining with the truth, with reality, is as simple as walking outside the doors of the house of illusion, for when we do this, we are automatically in the House of Truth. The House of Truth has not abandoned all of us who chose to live in illusion for a long while; it has always encompassed the illusory place that we heretofore called reality. Now we know better, for we are the ones who have left our egos behind. We either have experienced Christ-consciousness or have caught glimpses of it, for in peace and harmony, the two worlds of earth and heaven come very close to each other. We are close to knowing a mellowness that will signal the start of something very grand for us, and something very grand for this world as well. Our mellowness alerts us to the joining of heaven with earth.

If we choose to enter illusion again, we will flirt with the ego again, and life is much too important to let the ego ever try to rule again. People with egos are still abundant on this planet, and many of them are doing very good and important work. They are enmeshed in the treasures of art, music, and science that explosions of the Self have wrought. They are leading all within illusion to see the best of what there is to see in illusion. These individuals have their calling.

Our calling is different as we approach Christ-consciousness. This is not egoic nonsense, but an understanding that something fundamental has changed within our mind and heart. We did not effect this change, though we did remove the barriers to the awareness of love, and thereby invite love into our very being. The Christ-Self dominates the new people whom we are rapidly becoming. And many more will join us as revelatory thought takes dominion over our psyches.

We would do ourselves and others a disservice if we thought ourselves unfit for a higher purpose, if we believed that because others are caught in illusion, we ought to be as well. We are harbingers of better growth for our world ahead. We are harbingers of the new. And it is in humbly taking our place in this great commission that we find the purpose for which we were born.

Prayer

Thank You for the mellowness that I am feeling these days. I wish it for all I encounter. Mellowness is another word for inner peace, and long have I associated inner peace with A Course in Miracles. After all, the foundation that first published ACIM was the Foundation for Inner Peace.

I need to discover—and discover is the right word—how to sustain this mellowness, for in doing so my glimpses of Awakening will lengthen into something more. Sustaining Christ-consciousness is the next step in our plan of becoming something more than we were in egoic prison. Sustaining Christ-consciousness will allow all of us to create a new world, something that we don’t even have to plan, but can await as creativity wells up from within us. Something outside the dot of the self, as Jesus says, will engage us in discovery and acceptance of a new world.

I need to take to heart the revelations of A Course of Love. Our world needs all of us to discover a new way of being, a non-egoic way of accomplishment that will embrace all, all with the One Self whom we share.

Amen.

Mellowness Prepares for Christ-Consciousness

“This going back is, in reality, more in the way of reflection than review, although if you were to think of this as a re-viewing of your self, you would be quite accurate. It is like unto the final judgment as it has been described, a sorting of the real from the unreal, of truth from illusion. Despite the similarity between what this will call forth and the description of the final judgment, judgment is not the means or end of this reckoning.” (ACOL, C:19.22)

This quotation is important. It explains how we ready ourselves for Awakening. We need to go into our deeper mind, to let the memories surface, and as those memories are brought to the surface (however briefly), we are healed. This is akin to a final judgment, though it is not actually judgment, but something more benign. We are simply bringing up old reactions, egoic reactions, to be able to heal. And in the healing, we have moved into readiness for Christ-consciousness.

We can’t have access to the subconscious mind except when we are calm and serene. All of us know examples of times that we couldn’t think of a person’s name when we were trying to introduce that person to another. This common problem is emblematic of the fact that stress interferes with memories coming up to the surface.

It is the same as we seek to heal. We block awareness of past happenings when we are tense. This tension, this stress, would block our healing; that is the point. That is why we need to relax, relax the body, relax the mind. I have previously extolled “mellowness” as the right type of condition to welcome. It might even be said that
mellowness harbors a glimpse of enlightenment.

And so it will be with all of us. We will invite relaxation, mellowness, and the hidden memories from the subconscious will surface—to be healed. We need this final reckoning. It is the way that we prepare, virtually the only thing that we need to do to “get ready” for God to take the final action, reaching down to us to lift us up for Awakening.

Invite mellowness today. Meditation, quiet time, will help. Just listen to the words that surface in the mind, for these are clues of what needs to be forgiven. And in the forgiving we are saved, saved for enlightenment.

Prayer

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank You for the mellowness that I feel this morning. May I continue to feel this mellowness all day long. And may I open my mind to the memories that, brought up to the surface, will be healed.

May this day go well. I think that it will. But I can so easily get tangled up, even after a good beginning of the day. Help me to stay straightened out today. Help my mellowness to last.

Thank You.

Amen.