Christ Will Have Come to Us, Recognized at Last

“The fourth obstacle to be surmounted hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ.  Yet as His face rises beyond it, shining with joy because He is in His Father’s Love, peace will lightly brush the veil aside and run to meet Him, and to join with Him at last.”  (A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., T-19.IV.D.2)

We are all a Christ in miniature.  Jesus shares his Christhood with us. And when we have learned to see the face of Christ in all our brothers, we will be home free at last.  This quotation shows the way in which Christ’s face in our brothers rises to meet us; the veil is lifted.  This is true pleasure in the moment, when we see Christ in our brothers.  We are being blessed in this moment.  It is a harbinger of better days ahead.

We can pray to see Christ in all our brothers.  It is a mystical experience that will not last for most people.  But in the happening do we see what we are to see in our better moments for the rest of our lives.  For Christ is behind the veil of physical form in everyone.

We will join with our brother, metaphorically, when we see Christ in him.  We will want to be one with him.  And it will be granted us, if only that for holy instant in time.

We will be at peace.  Christ will have come to us, recognized at last.

God Is Listening

In the midst of some journey, you paused. And as a raindrop fell upon a leaf and your eyes looked upon that experience, you felt and knew that you were one with the leaf and the raindrop, and that, indeed, you were those things. (“The Way of the Heart,” WOM, Lesson 7, Page 84)

We live so unconsciously. Yet we ought to expand upon our mystical experiences, not dismiss them.

We have all had many mystical experiences that, if given the chance, would be healing to us. We have unfinished business with one of our brothers and sisters, an unforgiveness that just won’t let up. We don’t know how to end the problem, and so we drop it deeper in our subconscious, where it festers out of sight.

These are the healing moments, when we have realized that the other is actually one with us. Just as the leaf and the raindrop are one with us.

We are not separate and alone in this world, never can be, never will be. Living mystically, really experiencing the bliss of a moment of Oneness, is healing in the extreme. We must not turn aside from these mystical moments as though we are afraid of them. We need to welcome these mystical moments into our awareness, for doing so will give us a sense of God that we can get no other way.

Open ourselves to such experiences today. Indeed, ask for them.

We will know that God is listening, and responding.

Madness

As we have seen, the Course presents this world as a place of madness, full of violence and cruelty, projected from our own deluded minds. This world is therefore illusion, but we do not need to blame God for what we see, for this world is Heaven’s opposite (T-16.V.3:6) Even the food chain is based on a raw violence, and Jesus would say that we do God a disservice when we blindly dismiss the cruelty as “Nature’s ways.” The Course presents the world as an attack on God, meant to keep Him out and to keep the separation going. By projecting blame onto God, the ego does a good job at ensuring that we will continue to turn to it as our savior rather than to God. That this is patent magic, madness in the extreme, may not dawn on us until the pain of what we project becomes overwhelming. And even then we may blame God for our predicament.

The ego’s thought system is perfectly logical from within the thought system, as are most delusions. It is only the premises that are wrong, sending its world crashing down like a house of cards. From within our mind, it makes perfect sense. Madness is not illogical, though those in psychosis appear to the rational mind to be out of touch with reality. An all-embracing madness is just what has happened on a grand scale in our world, ruled by everyone’s ego. I once had a professor remark that everyone in mental hospitals thought that it was “we”—the ones outside of the hospital—who are “crazy.” He said, “What if they are right?”

Unknowingly, my professor presaged the Course a number of years before it was written. The Course does not say that our diagnosed mentally ill are actually sane, and we usually recognize that they are not. What may be happening, though, is that they are imperfectly seeing reality from another lens. This “other lens” may allow them to be particularly open to revelation. Certainly writers have drawn parallels between the schizophrenic mind and the mystic one. Both are swimming in the waters of their depths, the subconscious mind, but the schizophrenic may be drowning in it. The mystic, on the other hand, swims easily. This analogy is drawn from the writings of Joseph Campbell, an individual who has brought the myths of the ages home to all of us through writings that speak to our time. The Course would extend the definition of insanity to most of us in the world, most who are only partially, most who have only glimpses of true reality.

May we walk into the sunshine with Jesus, listening as we read the Course to what we need to do to emerge from the insanity of an illusory world.

We can do this.

Know God through Mystical Insight

“Only Jesus was known as the Son of God and as God. This is why Jesus came as your teacher and was used as the example life for this work. This is the point that this work has striven to get across. That man and God are one. Not only is man God. But God is man and woman and child. God is.” (ACOL, D:Day32.14)

What—or Who—is God? Until we have come to a new understanding of this puzzle, we will continue plugging along in our daily lives without attracting all the good that can be ours. I like to imagine that God is like a new husband who is eager to please his wife. When she thanks him for the little things, he delights in doing more, and then more, for her. God also seems to appreciate our gratitude in the little—and big—things. This is love in action. This is a fearless condition, for a lack of gratitude is a very, very fearful experience (though we may not recognize it as such in the beginning).

Jesus is our example life in A Course of Love. This doesn’t mean that there is literally no other way for men and women to approach God, for people differ, and there are religions that speak to those differences. For those of us brought up with the Bible, it is just easier to resonate with Jesus. We don’t have to get sappy sentimental about him; Jesus is a very rugged character, very mature, with one who takes himself lightly and expects us to do the same. Seriousness is very often of the ego, and A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love have both cautioned against identification with this false notion of the self.

Now, our true Self is available to us, because if we have been following ACOL, we know that the Christ-Self is the real deal. We are no longer a captive to the ego, and we need to be very sure that we don’t form a new ego as we proceed. This would be a step backward of major proportions, and so unnecessary. If we see all our brothers and sisters as our equals before God, we will not attempt to compete with them for anything. We will see the value of cooperation, and in that cooperation, we live and let live, on equal footing with all.

Our understanding of God must come through mystical channels, for our finite minds (and hearts) are not big enough to understand him with our intelligence. He is simply off the charts. So we rely on a mystical intuition of His Being to wrap us in love, protect us, and act in this world to make it a changed place.

Dear God,

I thank You for the fact that I don’t doubt Your existence any longer. Years ago I was an agnostic, but I put those ideas behind when mystical insight came into my life. This was a great blessing, and I was very fortunate to have this experience at a tender age. ThankYou.

I ask for Your Arms to enfold me with Your Presence. This benefit will carry me through all the years left to me in this world.

Amen.

Answer Lies in Unity with God

“This feeling of being misled is another cause of your anger—one of the primary causes, in truth. Not only has all that you have learned led to an inaccurate world-view in the here and now, but to an inaccurate world-view of the past, of the hereafter, of me, and of God. Not only has your mind been misled, but your heart and soul as well.

“What could bring solace to an anger so profound? How can you be certain you are not being misled once again?

“The answer to both come in the stated purpose of A Course of Love: Establishing your identity. You needed to first know yourself as a being existing in union before you could know anything else with the certainty you seek, for union is the treasure that has been locked away from you.” (ACOL, D:Day4.21 – Day4.23)

Jesus essentially says that we are angry because we are beginning to realize that the religion that we believed has not been explained accurately. Jesus does often fall back on the Bible to explain the theology that he expounds upon. But the theology that says that the world, the physical universe, is the handiwork of God, and that God Himself stands outside His creation, is, in the words of A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love, inaccurate. God is immanent in His whole creation, in the theology of ACIM and ACOL. The union that Jesus speaks of at the conclusion of this quotation is a union with God Himself, basically.

The union is a union of heart and mind that expands to cover union with the inner Christ and the larger Self Who still “lives” in the larger cosmos. Jesus explains this hard-to-explain concept by likening our bodies to a dot on a large white surface. The dot reaches out to the whole, though we are often unaware that that is what we are doing in our mystical moments. The whole is the greater Self Whom we share with the All, God Himself, and all of our brothers and sisters. The image is captivating.

But what about our anger at not knowing about this unobstructed universe? What about our anger at what has seemingly been done to us when we have been in pain and suffering? We need patience, patience to know that these questions of ultimate concern will never have satisfying answers in our world. I do believe that we will know somewhat more after death, on the Other Side. But even this is not for sure. There are psychic writings that indicate that we don’t know all that much more after death in regard to ultimate reality. In mysticism here on earth, we can discover much.

Take a moment today to invite the mystical. See what prompts we get. We may be led to a treatise we read long ago. And we may find much comfort in it. There is no end to the ways that God can reach us. And we now have a direct relationship with Jesus to guide us.

Let that be enough.

Dear God,

I thank You for the mystical moments of yesterday that have led into a good morning today. Mysticism is my way, as I realized in college, standing at a bus stop, looking up at the starry sky. May I not forget that moment of genuine insight. And thank You for the glimpses into the Ultimate.

Be with me today as I seek to get through another creditably. Be with me as I seek You. You have never failed me, even when I have doubted You. And now I thank You that the doubts have fallen away. You are here. You are with me. Thank You.

Amen.

We Can Live Well with Mystical Insight

“The first thing I ask you to forget is your need to find a place where blame can be placed. You who have been waiting to get to the “hard part” of this Course may find it here. The idea of blame is incongruous with the idea of a benevolent Creator and a benevolent creation and as such is the only blasphemy. To blame yourself is as senseless as blaming others and your inclination to place blame upon yourself must be given up as well. When it is said that you are the cause it is not meant that you are to blame for anything. Although many a child has been blamed for his or her failure to learn, blame of yourself is as uncalled for as is blaming a child for lessons yet to be learned.” (ACOL, T3:10.3)

All of us have, in our history, blamed God for the fix that the world, and ourselves, have been in. We did not see how the loving God whom we had been taught about could have allowed suffering so horrendous to engulf our world. Because we could not see any “why” for suffering of such intense proportions, we turned our anger on God. Even very religious people have harbored anti-religious sentiment by blaming God for the sad state of our world.

We don’t have anyone or anything to blame, or Anyone. A reason for our plight has been given in A Course of Love, and it is that we were just too impatient as a species to learn what had to be learned to live in physical form. We strained at the boundaries of ourselves to push aside a God Who seemed to be holding us back. And He let go, knowing that adolescent rebellion could be handled in no other way. Free will would be respected, for this was His own free will as well, as He lives through us, being the part of Him who we are.

Why would blame be the only blasphemy? It is the way in which we reject ourselves as well as God. It doesn’t allow the Christ-Self to function as the heart center of the self that it represents. We cannot love and hold onto blame, for the blame will pull us back every time. We cannot reject God and hope to live abundant lives. Because He lives through us, we must know that what we are experiencing is what He experiences as well. Maybe. Some believe that God does not know of our plight in this world, that only the Holy Spirit and the Christ-Self can help us now, that the Christ-Self is the true savior. Jesus himself seems to sign onto this belief in A Course of Love, and there are indications of the same in A Course in Miracles.

Whatever ultimate reality may be, we can only live well with mystical insight. We cannot live well by trying to figure everything out, because our minds are finite. The personal self does not know ultimate reality; the Christ-Self comes closer, but even here there are aspects of ultimate reality that go unknown. Do we have to know more to live well? I think not. Our eager minds have been given solace in the new revelations of ACIM and ACOL, and we can live well with the knowledge that mystical insight gives to us. Mystical insight is a knowing that knows but cannot speak of what it knows. But the heart, embedded in love, directs our course. And what more do we really need to know than that?

Prayer
Thank You for the mystical insight that You gave me just this morning. I need time just to “think,” to be grateful, to feel surrounded by love. And I took that time this morning. Thank You for encouraging me to take some time out.

Be with me to curtail my tendency to feel like complaining about every little thing that might go wrong. This does not become me. It does not become any of us. I need to know that this grand world still holds joy for me and joy for others.

The way back to You is assured. Thank You for this understanding.

Amen.

Mystical Insight Will Take Us Home

“It is your belief that change and growth are indicative of all that can be accomplished rather than of what is already accomplished that needs adjustment now. As a tree exists fully accomplished within its seed and yet grows and changes, you exist fully accomplished within the seed that is the Christ in you even while you continue to grow and change. Physical form and action of all kinds are but expressions of what already exist within the seed of the already accomplished.” (ACOL, T2:6.8)

James Hillman, a mentor for the well-known Thomas Moore, has said similar things. The seed that we are, deep within, contains all that we will become. Thus, the whole is contained in the kernel that we are. We are the acorn that contains the oak tree. We are, therefore, already accomplished; we don’t have to wait to fulfill elaborate criteria.

Can we accept that we are already accomplished? Not always, of course. Our egoic inferiority complex still rears its ugly head. But if we simply entertain the possibility that Jesus is right, that our kernel (the Self) is already accomplished, we will be in a position to say and do much more in our world. We will be ready to create the new—and that is something that Jesus wants very much for us to do.

This Self is, of course, the Christ who is within us. This is the seed that is already accomplished. When seen in this light, the statements are more believable, because we don’t really expect to fully understand the Christ-Self. We can, however, intuit in a mystical sense, and that is something we ought to give some prayerful consideration to.

There is much in A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love that can only be understood mystically. And mystics have long been suspect in our culture. Too way-out, many believe. Yet there are many things in this world that our scientists cannot explain, and the psychic is one of them. Mystical experiences are, in part, psychic, though that is not the whole of it. We can more easily accept psychic phenomena, because it seems to be “of this world.” The mystic seems to be of another world altogether, and perhaps a bit beyond us. But is mysticism really beyond us?

I think not. If we have read this far, we know that we have a spiritual track to run. We are attempting to expand our souls by coming into greater spiritual knowledge—and it is knowledge, not perception. We have made greater progress, according to Jesus in ACOL, than we can acknowledge. Our recent dedication to egoic thought has blinded us to the real Christ-Self. And we are also blinded to the assertion, made repeatedly, that we are already The Accomplished. This would indeed be a dangerous philosophy if we were still drawn by the ego, for this assertion would allow the ego to glorify itself. But we have moved beyond this in our time with A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love.

We are ready even for mysticism. Let’s embrace the unseen with at least as much enthusiasm as our previous ego did the scientific.

Prayer

Help me to keep my feet on the ground, even as I entertain the possibility of the mystical in my life. I would follow You into the mystical. The mystical is not something to push aside; it holds the germ of al that we need to know. Mystical understanding is full understanding. And, as The Accomplished, we need to realize that the seed that is within us is ready for greater knowledge.

I would follow You today into a better tomorrow. I would be joyous in my living, contented with daily routines, not chafing against rituals that I perform every day. The routine can be satisfying, if I don’t chafe against it. Be with me as I seek to see You in my daily life.

Amen.

All Is One / All Are One Self

1 – No Loss / Only Gain

“We are one self. How else could we be capable of receiving what we give? How else could our lives be capable of experiencing no loss but only gain? Why else would we have to share ourselves to know ourselves? (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 11)”

2 – Mystical

This is the truth, though it is a mystical concept and therefore difficult to understand, difficult to wrap our minds around. How can we be one self with others? How can the many be one?

3 – God-Stuff

We are all “God-stuff.” We are all differentiated from the Godhead. And the universe(s) is constantly expanding, and so there is always growth (though no real change). When we recognize that we are all one, that there is no loss but only gain, we know that what we “lose” goes to our brother or sister, who is actually one with us. So we only expand into a spacious self, as A Course of Love says. This spacious self recognizes that all are One, that we lose nothing when we spread abroad the intangibles.

4 – Sharing

When we share ourselves in conversation, we actually become more of what we truly are. We are sharing and in that process, actually gaining a sense of ourselves as One. We do not have to be extroverts to experience the release that we get through sharing. It is an experience that all can relate to and enjoy.

5 – Relationship

“To be separate in truth would be to not exist. To be the All of Everything would be to not know existence. Only what exists in relationship knows that it exists. Thus relationship is everything. Relationship is the truth. Relationship is consciousness. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 11)”

6 – God

This quotation points to a reason that God would have differentiated Himself in the beginning, and continues to do so. He cannot actually experience the Whole, if He is All that there is. It is only in relationship of the one to the other that such experience of reality is possible. Neale Donald Walsch, in the trilogy of Conversations with God, makes this identical point. But it is a theological point, and we do not want theology that we cannot accept to divide or separate us.

7 – One and the All

We are both one and the All. Unity and relationship, as A Course of Love says repeatedly. It is in reaching out to others, and in reaching down deep within, that we come to know reality. The deep within is God; the others are God as well, but as differentiated aspects of God. Parts of God that are yet part of the Whole.

8 – Hologram

It is like a hologram. Each part contains the whole. This is ultimately why everything has been given to each of us (tenet from A Course in Miracles).

9 – Christ-consciousness

“Christ-consciousness is the awareness of existence through relationship. It is not God. It is not man. It is the relationship that allows the awareness of God in everything. It has been called wisdom, Sophia, spirit. It is that without which God would not know God. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 11)”

10 – Awakening

We want and we need Christ-consciousness, a concept that is called Awakening in A Course in Miracles. We don’t know when God will bestow this blessing on any of us, but we can be sure that He will bestow Christ-consciousness at the exact moment that we are ready. If this seems long off, we need not fret. The time will be as right as the Answer. (These are paraphrases of A Course in Miracles.)

11 – In Relationship

We are in relationship when we are enjoying Christ-consciousness. We no longer feel envious that others have what we do not; we know that we all potentially have everything. If that thing we want is not in our life now, we will know that it will be added at a future date (though maybe not in this lifetime).

12 – Sophia

“Christ-consciousness is the awareness of existence through relationship. It is not God. It is not man. It is the relationship that allows the awareness that God is everything. It has been called wisdom, Sophia, spirit. It is that without which God would not know God. It is that which differentiates all from nothing. (ACOL Dialogues, p. 154)”

13 – Separation

This one passage helps to explain why separation from God, and our return to Him, was necessary in the first place. If God is within (as well as without), then He could know Himself only in separation from the Whole. But it is in the rejoining in unity and relationship that makes Christ-consciousness what it is.

14 – Unity and Relationship

The words, “unity and relationship,” are used repeatedly in A Course of Love. They are so repeated that their meaning may be lost, unless we take care to understand fully at the outset. We are one in unity with our brothers and sisters, and we are one in relationship to them–being that two or more are held together in relationship. Thus the phrase, “unity and relationship,” is the central point without which Christ-consciousness could not function.

We are one heart, one mind, one Self–but seemingly fragmented into parts. This is an illusion, but this fragmentation is the only way that God can experience Himself. The All must separate and then see Itself in those separate, but united parts. While this may be hard for us to wrap our finite minds around, here is one of the secrets of salvation, one of the philosophical tenets around which A Course of Love is built. We know Christ-consciousness when we have rejoined our brothers and sisters in unity, but kept them close to use in our relationship to them. This knowing is a celestial event of the highest magnitude.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I offer myself in service to the All that is You. I am in relationship to that All, and I will know Christ-consciousness only as I accept this relationship. I would accept this relationship now.

Thank You for this course, this Course of Love, a sequel to A Course in Miracles. Thank You for granting me the intuitive insight that seems to say, over and over as I read, “yes, yes!” May I come to know the insights of A Course of Love intimately, ever more so over the times that I study.

May I realize that study is necessary, that you can’t just read this sequel like you read a story, something I used to think. The study is ever-reinforcing, as I realize that here is truth that I really, really want to understand. Thank You for Jesus’s dedication in channeling, once again and for us, a work of this magnitude. Thank You for supporting Mari as she scribed.

Thank You for guiding me in this shift in perception, this miracle. I would know the elevated Self of form, and I will endeavor to turn to You often today, so that I may remain close to this new reality.

Amen.

You Are the Dreamer of the World of Dreams. No Other Cause It Has, nor Ever Will.

1 – Idle Dream

“You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No other cause it has, nor ever will. Nothing more fearful than an idle dream has terrified God’s Son, and made him think he has lost his innocence, denied his Father, and made war upon himself. (T-27.VII.13)”

We are caught in an idle dream, nothing more. And we can escape. We can have the happy dreams that the Holy Spirit brings (from the Workbook of A Course in Miracles). That idle dreams have consequences is superbly obvious now. Elsewhere Jesus says that the concept of “idle thoughts” is untrue, that every thought produces form at some level. Now, we cannot understand this, but we know that the forms that our nighttime dreams produce do seem real at the time of nighttime dreaming. Now we are told that idle thoughts are not really idle, that they too produce form. We may soon come to realize that this is how we make our reality, create our reality. We envision what we want (or don’t want), and it becomes our reality.

2 – Cause and Effect / Law of Attraction

This is the concept of cause and effect. This is the concept of the law of attraction. We must begin to guard our thoughts more carefully, lest we fall into the doldrums and see our world fall apart. But there is a way out, and A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love point out that way out. We turn from judging what to do next, or what to think, and we let inner guidance point out the way. There is no better way to proceed than to listen to intuition.

3 – Personal Experience

I remember recognizing intuition first when I was 21 and in the throes of an emotional crisis. My first precognition was intuiting that I ought to take a look at a specific monologue in Shakespeare just before the final exam, while I was in college. I did so, and in a few moments I found myself sitting in a classroom with that monologue staring back at me on the test. I had to identify not only the speaker, but also the context. And if I hadn’t intuited just moments before walking to class that I ought to take a look at the monologue, I would have been up a creek.

4 – Intuition

All of us have had these experiences. As time wore on, I felt such intuitive experiences more and more. There have been times when I have listened to little else. This can lead to some foolish choices.

As Jesus says, “The partial innocent are apt to be quite foolish at times” (from A Course in Miracles).

My best moments have been, though, when I listened to the intuition bubbling up from my interior, even when that intuition bade me say or do something that seemed embarrassing at the time. (Jesus also warns that this will happen, in the Manual.)

5 – Fearful Dream

“So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear, unless gentle dream preceded his awaking, and allowed his calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice That calls with love to waken him; a gentle dream, in which his suffering was healed and where his brother was his friend. (T-27.VII.13)”

What a beautiful passage! Can we not imagine a God who welcomes us gently and with love to Awakening? Can we not all look forward to this experience, however far in the future it may seem to be?

6 – Awakening

Our suffering is healed when we experience Awakening. Even if the body is sick. Our suffering is healed because we know mental clarity, and mental clarity is much to be preferred over bodily health. Many medieval mystics would be considered certifiably mentally ill if alive in our culture today. One need only scan Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism to recognize the truth of this statement. But their culture was different. There is, as Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces; Mythology to Live By) has pointed out, a fine line between swimming in the waters of the unconscious and being drowned in them. The mystic swims; the mentally ill (all too often) drown. But the waters of the unconscious are the same in both cases. And many people in psychosis are extremely religious.

7 – Change the Dream

“Accept the dream He gave instead of yours. It is not difficult to change a dream when once the dreamer has been recognized. (T-28.VII.14)”

Here is an indication that we play a part in determining just when our Awakening will be. If the dream is changed, if we determine to change it, we will be ready to awaken gently and without terror. Is it really so difficult to change a dream? There are those who can experience lucid nighttime dreaming, in which they determine the course of nighttime dreams. We are in a better position in daytime dreams, the illusion in which we are caught, for we are able to act more freely, are not so buffeted about by the dream.

Affirmation: “I would dream happy dreams today.”

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May my day go well, with dreams that I do not rue. May I follow guidance consistently and therefore have a great flow to my day.

Our desires sometimes get us into trouble. May we wash our desires in the unconscious that You inform, so that life is good and we are contented and happy.

Amen.

The Ocean or the Cheetah

“All that you desire and cannot learn is already accomplished.  It is accomplished in you.  It is you.  Imagine the ocean or the cheetah, the sun or the moon or God Himself, attempting to learn what they are.  They are the same as you.  All exist within you.  You are the universe itself.  (A Course of Love, 3.2)”

Affirmation:  “All is accomplished.”

Reflections:

1 – A Part of God Himself

This passage is not meant to be read in a grandiose way, but in a grand way.  We are a part of God Himself, and this concept is not often understood.  Mystics do understand, but what they have often said has been interpreted to be blasphemy.  Jesus himself said many things, as quoted in the New Testament, that were considered blasphemy.  Now he is telling us again exactly where we stand.  We are a part of the universe(s), and we actually have no reason to try to “learn” what we are.  As this passage says so vividly, the ocean or the cheetah would not attempt to learn what they are.  And neither should we.

2 – Accept the Practical

These are theological underpinnings of A Course of Love, and, as such, can be controversial.  It is best for us to step aside from controversy and to accept the practical aspects of ACOL.  Does believing this passage make our lives easier?  Does it make sense out of our experience?  If so, then entertain the possibility that Jesus is not misleading us here.  Indeed, in my experience and the experience of a good many others, Jesus simply does not mislead.  How could we imagine misleading by one such as Jesus?

3 – A Hologram

We are seeing in this passage a kind of hologram.  Each part contains the whole, as the whole (as incomprehensible as the whole might be) contains each part.  Our Self does not think in small ways, and neither should our personal (what I have termed “little”) self.  We would do well to consider Jesus’s statement in this passage, and to take it as a lodestone for our lives.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank You for this most vivid image of the ocean and the cheetah, each who would not think of “learning.”  We do not need to learn much more beyond what we already know.  We are reaching the “Accomplished,” a step on the pathway that we reach a little farther along in A Course of Love.  Thank You for these blessings of our rightness before You.  But correct our failings, even as we celebrate that You have blessed us with all that is good.

Be with us today as we seek to have a good day with our brothers and sisters.  When we imagine the ocean or the cheetah, we don’t try to imagine any learning at all.  And blessed is the day when we can just “observe,” without laborious learning.

Amen.

Nightmares

“[Miracles] thus atone for your errors by freeing you from your nightmares. By releasing your mind from the imprisonment of your illusions, they restore your sanity.  (T5)”

Affirmation:  “I would be free of nightmares.”

 

Reflections:

1 – Sanity

The restoration of our sanity is the great need of all humankind.  It is not sanity as perceived by the world, but sanity as perceived by the Awakening.  Miracles will bring this great event closer in time.

2 – What Does “Insane” Mean?

We are not all locked up in our insanity, but we live at large in the world.  Some who are certifiably “mentally ill” may have a deeper awareness of the real world than any of us who are supposed to be mentally healthy.  It is not a coincidence that much of the delusion of the mentally ill has to do with religious convictions.  They are living closer to reality, but they have drowned in the light.  As Joseph Campbell said, the insane are drowning, while the mystic is swimming in the same waters.

3 – Made Mad by Guilt

We have indeed been lost in nightmares.  We have been made mad by guilt (a Course concept).  Happy dreams will arrive as soon as we let the miracles replace our madness.  And the real world, according to the Course, will arrive soon afterwards.  Then it is only a brief moment in time before God Himself will take the last step, the Awakening.  This is not something that we can effect ourselves.

4 – Nightmares and Illusions

“Nightmares” and “illusions” are linked in this passage.  May we reach toward the promise of sanity in the real world when we give up our illusions, and, with them, our nightmares.  Fear will subside, and in calm and quiet we will live in the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

5 – The Real World

Nowhere in A Course in Miracles is the “real world” concisely defined.  We are simply told that its presence will be brief, and then we will be awakened by God.  Time (an illusion anyway) is not measured in eternity the same way that it is measured on earth.  And so we really have no guidance in ACIM about how long we will perceive the real world.  Let us hope that the real world will come soon to us, and may we remove all blocks to love’s awareness that keeps it from us (paraphrases from ACIM).

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would live today as sanely as it is possible for me, caught in this world, to live.  I would not scare myself with my own fears.  I would seek guidance of the Holy Spirit about my goings and comings.  I would not try to direct my life, for I cannot judge aright.  But my Guide can judge aright, and it is to Him that I will turn today.

Help me to keep these resolutions.  Thank You.

Amen.