The Embrace

“This is a call to move now into my embrace and let yourself be comforted.  Let the tears fall and the weight of your shoulders rest upon mind.  Let me cradle your head against my breast as I stroke your hair and assure you that it will be all right.  Realize that this is the whole world, the universe, the all of all in whose embrace you literally exist.  Feel the gentleness and the love.  Drink in the safety and the rest.  Close your eyes and begin to see with an imagination that is beyond thought and words.  (A Course of Love, 20.2)”

Affirmation: “May I feel the embrace today.”

Reflections:

1 – Most Beloved Passage

This passage for today is one of the most beloved of all passages in A Course of Love.  In it, Jesus is speaking personally to every reader, but he is also speaking from a more universal perspective, saying that the universe is safe and holds us within its embrace.

2 – Gentleness, Love, Safety, Rest

The personal aspect will appeal to some; the more universal, to others.  We are bade to feel the gentleness and love of the embrace, the safety and the rest.  Jesus invites us to close our eyes and imagine what cannot be seen.  Often we have been told (in A Course in Miracles as well as A Course of Love) that our physical eyes cannot have “vision.”  We only have vision for the real world, which is not physical in the way that the illusory world is physical.  The physical world is seen differently in vision, and that is all that we really need to know.

3 – Comfort

This passage is comforting in the extreme, and it would be helpful to return to it over and over when we are ill-at-ease or distraught.  Life does throw us curves sometimes, and we would do well to take advantage of all that Jesus is offering to us.  He is with us, when we make one “unequivocal call” (from ACIM).  Can we understand this?  No, we can’t.  But, somehow, Jesus transcends ordinary physical laws and is with all of us as need arises.

4 – Personal

Do I believe this, truly?  Absolutely.

5 – A Blessing

And I hope that we will all come to believe this blessing also.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I have felt the presence of a person who seemed, to my mind, to be Jesus.  There was a comfort to this presence that I have felt from nobody else.

Be with me today as I seek to work out my intellectual doubts.  There are natural laws about which our science, as yet, knows nothing.  And I think that Jesus’s presence with us is one of those natural laws.  He comes in response to one unequivocal call, as A Course in Miracles tells us.

Thank You.

Amen.

Reassurance to Children of God

“Child of God, you need no imaginary friend when you have beside you he who is your friend always and he who would show you that you have no needs at all.  What you truly are cannot be used, not even by God.  See you not that it is only in illusion that you can use others who are like yourself?  (A Course of Love, 9.31)”

Affirmation:  “Jesus is beside me today.”

Reflections:

1 – Strains of Thought

There are several strains of thought in these simple sentences.  Let us take the strains up one at a time.

2 – No Idle Fantasy

Jesus walks beside us, when we have asked for his presence.  This is a long-time declaration of traditional Christianity, but here in A Course of Love, we find the same declaration in New Age thought.  In A Course in Miracles, Jesus says much the same, inviting us to imagine that we hold his hand as we walk along, and he says that this will be no “idle fantasy.”

3 – No Needs

We do not have needs, because all needs are met at the point that they arrive.  The solution is with the problem (an ACIM tenet).  Now, it is true that we may not recognize that our needs have already been met; there may be some delay before this is recognized.  But when we look within, we can know, and know immediately.  We do not have to wait for God’s grace.

4 – No Need to be Defensive

We are not people who can be used by anyone.  For this reason, we do not have to be defensive about anything.  To defend against is to make the resistance strong, and to reduce the likelihood that we recognize that we do not need to be defensive.  Our defenses will not work, but we have no need of them (from the Manual of ACIM).  Even God Himself, most of all, would not seek to “use” us.

5 – Being “Used”

Only in illusion do we encounter the concept of being used by another.  And this world is an illusion.  Do we need to defend against illusions, thereby making them real to us?  We should not think in this way.  We would not make real the attacks of others by focusing on them, and being used by another is an attack (an interpretation, not stated in ACIM or ACOL).  Let us turn aside from attacks of all kinds, giving them no emotion, and thus not reinforcing them.

6 – Happy Dreams

Then all will improve in this dream world where we find ourselves.  We will know the “happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings” (from the Workbook of A Course in Miracles).

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I thank You for the reassurance that nobody here can understand, but can only be experienced:  that Jesus walks beside all who ask him to do so.  Thank You for this helper, this companion.  Being companioned is a truly wonderful blessing, and, if we heed the message, we will fear no more.

May I leave fears and anxieties behind today.  This tendency toward anxiety which I have had does not have to haunt me any longer; that is your blessed reassurance.

Thank You.

Amen.