Let Memories Pave the Way to a Beautiful Future

“As was already stated, the first opportunities for you to learn the art of thought will be provided through what we have called the re-experiencing of memory. These are opportunities to re-experience the lessons your life has brought you.” (ACOL, T1:4.21)

This directive is fun to do. Who does not like to re-experience our life through memories? Of course, later on Jesus will caution against interpreting what we are reviewing. This interpretation is what we are used to doing, and it won’t get us where we want to go, which is to respond to our past with love and patience, sure that when we relive, we are safe.

We do learn through our lives. In the Dialogues, the third and last book in A Course of Love, Jesus encourages us to avoid study of the old masters, the learned wisdom of those whom we have deemed wiser than we are. In its place, he counsels observation of our lives, observation of the world and all that is in it, observation that will take us somewhere. And this observation is what we are now doing with our memories. We are trying to see what we can learn from what has gone before.

My own personal recommendation is that one lie across a bed when re-experiencing memories. This puts the body at rest. It is how I got up-to-date with my life when I was quite young, a child. We can’t retrieve memories well if we are uptight; the subconscious won’t come to our bidding. But the subconscious is what we are retrieving now. And when we have successfully retrieved the subconscious, we go on to the Unconscious, the God/Self deep within. And the union with our depths is what this re-experiencing of memories is really all about. It will lead to this further blessing of union with our depths.

Our life is our best learning mechanism. Have we really ever doubted this? The best knowledge that we have ever read is meaningless unless we can find something with which to identify. And this identification is with what has occurred in our lives.

Be still today, in whatever place or position you deem wise. Let the mind (and heart) rest. And see if God Himself doesn’t speak to us from our depths.

Dear Father/Mother,

May I spend some time today in contemplation of my life history. I get so busy sometimes, and in the busyness I fail to reach to You.

I would not make that mistake again today. Be with me as I seek to find You in my depths. Be with me as I seek to learn from my past. And may I know that regardless of what has happened, I am safe now.

Amen.

Reflection Eases Our Mind and Heart

“The “meaningless” category might include such things as the happen-ings of your daily routine, chance encounters, illness, or accidents, while in the “beyond meaning” category exists the relationship that broke your heart, grief, poverty, war, the events that seemed to alter your destiny, the search for God. By using the word sit, I mean to imply that these things have not passed through you and in the act of passing through formed a relation¬ship and a partnership with you.” (ACOL, C:22.13)

In this quotation, we are back to the “onion” analogy: We are to let those things in our lives that have been meaningless or beyond meaning just pass through us, and then we will have absorbed their shock and can move on to a better future. When we don’t absorb the meaningless or the beyond meaning, these things clog up our minds and hearts, and we can’t make progress toward enlightenment. We are stuck. And nobody likes this feeling.

Jesus is giving us very practical advice in these words of the passage for today. He knows that we let the bad memories from the past hold us back. We need simply to reflect on what has happened, to re-experience the memory, and then to be ready to leave these bad memories behind, lest they trip us up.

Ask today to move into the future, unburdened by the trials and tribulations of the past. Reflect for a while, and then just move beyond dwelling on what has gone amiss.

This is the best way to move into the New.

Prayer

Dear Father/Mother,

I want to move into the New today, the new reality, the new world. I want to let my old mistakes fall away, my old regrets be no more. This is a new day in Your world. Help me to treat this new day right.

Be with us as we seek to have a future unlike the past, a better future with You, reaching out from deep within us, from the Christ Self, to reform this world. We don’t proselytize, though, but we do share with others at every point that seems right. We reach out in this sharing, and in this doing the world will never seem the same again.

It will be a better world, seen from within, projected outward. May I walk in Your light today.

Amen.

Memories

“While you will not realize it at first, because you have no experience but only memory of feeling yourself in such a way, you will eventually realize that the memories you recall of the spirit of others include memories that are your own, memories that are of your own Self.  For no spirit exists that is not part of you, or you of it.  (A Course of Love, 13.8)”

Affirmation:  “My brothers and sisters are one with me.”

Reflections:

1 – Our Spirits Are One

We, our Selves, have no experience, at least now, of the fact that our spirits are one with others.  We do have memories of a time when we knew this.  And this time reaches backwards to a time beyond time, beyond hope of remembrance, except that God intervene.  This idea is alluded to also in A Course in Miracles.  But there it says that the time is past all hope of remembrance, and here we are told that the memory can return.  So there is some conflict between the two ideas.

2 -Unite with Our Spirit

How might we understand this conflict?  Our remembrance, as described in ACIM, is part of our experience, and ACOL clearly says that we can remember the experience of oneness with others.  But there is a part of us, in our spirit, that does lock away the memory.  And  when we come closer to a union with our spirit in everyday life, we will have memories that have heretofore been excluded from us.

3 – Self/Christ

Our Self is the Christ that we all share, and when God has reached down and lifted us up (a metaphor), we will know Awakening (as called in A Course in Miracles) or Christ-consciousness (as called in A Course of Love).  No spirit is alone.  All are part of the one Christ spirit, and that is how we can understand our kinship with Jesus.

4 – Jesus

Traditional Christianity avoids the issue of whether we can have what Jesus had–the Christ embodied, although the New Testament clearly points to the fact that he indicates that there is nothing that he has that we will not one day have as well.  ACIM and ACOL make this similarity conclusive; we are one with Jesus, once we, like him, have walked the whole pathway back to God.  And, because he walked it first, he will help us, and he will clear our imperfections that otherwise we would not be able to alter (an ACIM tenet).

5 – A Great Promise

What a great promise today’s passage offers to us!  May we not forget to offer our gratitude to God for such a glorious plan of salvation.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would welcome memories to my mind today.  I know that it is possible to recall that which has been hidden to me until today, because Jesus says so in this passage, and I trust him.  May I put aside all temperamental thoughts and actions that would negate this great promise, this great blessing.  Be with me as I seek to walk Your way today.

Help us to recognize that the memories that we hold of others include ourselves.  We are not alone in this.  There is a definite joining of minds, and therefore spirits, one with another.  May I sense this today.  And may I give up all attack thoughts, for these are separating, and they, as well, will be felt by the people whom I encounter.

Be with our walk today, as always.  And thank You.

Amen.