Spend a While in Quiet Reflection

“You have felt this shift coming and so has the world. This is the yearning we have spoken of as the proof of love’s existence and of your existence in a state of unity rather than a state of separation. This yearning called you to the limits of the state of consciousness that was the time of the Holy Spirit. This limit acted upon you as a catalyst to create desire for the new.” (ACOL, T4:1.22)

We do want changes in our world. We do want to create the new. We have become a little bored with the status quo.

But don’t choose new things in a willy-nilly fashion. Be discerning in what we create, for we do create our own reality—as New Age thought says. And this creation of the new, defined as Jesus defines it in this fourth treatise of A Course of Love, will create a world that is miles ahead of what we have had in the past. Things in the new era will get wonderfully better. We will welcome in a new world, not by struggle but by being all that we can be.

We don’t need to make elaborate plans about what to do to effect change. Just go along, watching for signs, for signs are discussed in ACOL in a very encouraging way. A Course in Miracles warned against planning that was not instigated by the Holy Spirit; our own planning would take us off the pathway back to God. Ask what we ought to do. Just ask. And then wait, in patience, for the Answer. We won’t have long to wait.

We have yearned for God’s nod. We have yearned for a better experience of living. And now the time is ripe for these yearnings to bear fruit.

Spend a while in quiet reflection. Ask, and we shall receive. Our probable reality can develop into quite a nice future in which to live.

Prayer

I thank You for the many blessings that have rained down upon me in this lifetime. Any pain has receded; any struggles, passed away. Now is the time of the harvest of what You have had me create. I hope that this harvest of good things will benefit my loved ones and the larger world as well.

Be with me today and always. I ask this just all the time, but it is a heartfelt request. When I feel Your warmth, I know that all is well in my little world.

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.

We Try to Find Pleasure in Fantasies

“Fantasies are a means of making false associations and attempting to obtain pleasure from them.  (T15)”

Affirmation:  “May I not indulge in meaningless fantasies.”

Reflections:

1 – May We Stop Lying to Ourselves

Many of us are prone to this unreality.  We are bade to leave fantasies behind, as they are untruths that do not lead to the real world.  The “false associations” are just that–lies that we tell ourselves.  And would we not do well to stop lying to ourselves?

2 – Personal Experience

In my early adulthood, I often indulged in fantasies.  These were not quite for the reason that ACIM seems to say, but, for me, a way to understand the world in which I lived, the world and its relationships.  I considered various scenarios in my fantasies, seeking to understand why someone had acted as he/she had.  I analyzed.  And, of course, I was caught in the ego, because the ego rejoices in being analyzed.  The ego likes for us to study it, making its importance more real to ourselves (a Text paraphrase).  But we are studying nothing, and nothing that we “learn” in such ego-oriented moments of fantasy mean anything.  We rarely figure out insanity, and insanity is just what we are caught in in this world.

3 – Lost in Fantasies

When we live totally in this world, it is almost inevitable that we will find ourselves lost in fantasies.  These fantasies are a way of coping in a world that seems far too cruel to allow us to live easily.  But there is another way, a better way.  And the Course always says the same thing:  Turn to the Holy Spirit for guidance.  He will lead us out of an illusory present into a real world that will bring happiness.

4 – We Do Not Have to Learn through Pain

We may still know pain, though Jesus assures us that we do not have to learn through pain.  In our world, though, pain as a means of learning is more common than any other way.  In the pain, we turn to God.  We do not have to learn this way, but if it happens to us, we would be foolish not to take the new pathway that God points to–away from the pain.  Fantasies then have no meaning in a world made anew by turning to spirit for answers and finding the wholly satisfying nature of true reality.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I have indulged in fantasies when the world seemed too cruel.  Fantasies were an escape.  May, instead, I welcome Your teaching that will free me from unreal concepts of the world.  Then I will find joy instead of sorrow.

May I leave fantasies behind as I follow the Holy Spirit into the real world, a world of forgiveness and joy.

Amen.