1 – Day One
“Acceptance of me is acceptance of your Self. Acceptance of me is acceptance of your inheritance. (Dialogues, Day One)”
2 – Personal Acceptance of Jesus
Elsewhere in A Course of Love Jesus indicates that acceptance of him personally is a prerequisite for being on the mountaintop with him and making the final exit from our sad and troubled world by Christ-consciousness being received. This is a controversial point for readers of A Course of Love, for readers of A Course in Miracles were not so instructed. Why accept Jesus’s personal role in our salvation?
3 – Traditional Christianity
This may be a reflection of older, traditional Christianity, which saw Jesus as the only Savior of the world. If we believe that Jesus channeled A Course of Love, though, we need to look more deeply, because we are believing that just recently he said that he was the way. Christians will not have much trouble with his assertion, but people of other faiths who read A Course of Love may reject Jesus’s statement. I would recommend keeping an open mind, following Jesus up the metaphorical mountaintop, and, at least for this experience, believing that he can and will lead us home.
4 – No Longer a Teacher
“We are here on the top of the mountain together, beginning our work together. I am no longer your teacher, but there is a reason that you are here with me. You have been listening to my words, and these words are what have brought you here, not to a place but to an ascended state. (Dialogues, Day One)”
5 – Ascended State
Jesus says here that we are in an ascended state on the mountaintop. Elsewhere in A Course of Love he has declared that our egos are dead now, and that we have only a little farther to walk before we inherit Christ-consciousness (what A Course in Miracles calls “Awakening”). He has been guiding us, and especially if we are students of A Course in Miracles we have de facto accepted him as our guide. This is not controversial; it is practical good sense. (I seek to keep the controversial out of my interpretations.)
6 – Why No Longer Our Teacher?
Why is Jesus no longer our teacher? He says this in the quotation above. We have moved beyond needing him as our teacher; he is our companion, our fellow seeker as well, though he has found and what is accepted by him is only potential in us. Elsewhere in A Course of Love, Jesus stresses the brotherhood that we share with him; he says that we are equals. Much as was said in the New Testament, there is nothing that he has that cannot be ours as well. This is great good news.
7 – Mountaintop
We will have 40 days and 40 nights of communion with Jesus on the mountaintop, still immersed in our daily work lives, but living with our head in the clouds while our feet are on the ground. Let us be grateful that we are still immersed in daily life, for if Jesus had required of us a time apart, most would not make the journey to the mountaintop with him. He says elsewhere that this immersion in daily life is actually preferred, that we are right to be seeking salvation while going about our normal lives.
8 – Holy Men and Women
“Had any of the holy men and women who walked the way of the world since my time learned, accepted, and lived the teachings that have brought you to this point which I now would like to lead you beyond, the world would be a different place. Have I not called you to a new time in which the conditions of learning exist no more? In which the suffering and death that have obscured that love is the answer are banished, rejected, and a new world of love accepted in their place? (Dialogues, Day One)”
9 – New World of Love
We are seeking a new world of love, and this is no small feat. Our world of perception is troubled indeed. And Jesus is saying in this quotation that if holy people of the past had known what we have been exposed to, then the world itself would be different now. I think that he is suggesting that if we follow his words, our world of the present and future will indeed be different.
10 – Learning
Strangely, perhaps, Jesus says that learning in the old way is no longer desirable. We will learn, but through observation (said elsewhere in A Course of Love). Observing is effortless, as even we who have not yet ascended the mountaintop, with all that this holds out to us, can see. We welcome the effortless, indeed. We are being called to a new time, a new time in which we walk through out days (and these may be very busy days indeed), but without the strain that dealing for eons with the ego has cost us. There is no strain to following Jesus’s way.
11 – Our Fulfillment
“This has been spoken of as the second coming of Christ because my story goes unfulfilled without your fulfillment. It is only in your fulfillment of the continuing story of creation that my story reaches completion. (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 90)”
12 – Our Guide
This “Day One” represents the first of 40 days and nights on a “mountain top” with Jesus as our guide. In this chapter of the Dialogues, Jesus makes a comparison of these 40 days and nights with his own 40 days and nights in the desert, prior to the beginning of his mission on earth 2,000 years ago. We are to become what he became.
13 – God
Jesus stresses that it matters not what we call “God,” because God knows who He is. But acceptance of Jesus as our guide is necessary; it explains that this is just the way it is in salvation. This tenet of A Course of Love, the Dialogues, will be difficult for some of us to accept, perhaps, but if we realize that in A Course in Miracles we have already accepted Jesus as our guide, we will be less resistant.
14 – Example Life
We are meant to become all that Jesus was. His was the example life. We do not have to go through what he experienced, because that was for him alone. But we do have to accept him as our guide. Then we will be well on our way to recognizing that indeed this is the time of the second coming of Christ. We are meant to embody that second coming as we elevate our self of form to the elevated Self.
15 – Jesus’s Part
“My forty days and forty nights on the mountain succeeded my baptism and my acknowledgment as the Son of God, and preceded my time of living as my Self in the world. So too does it with you. (Dialogues, Day One)”
Prayer:
Dear Father/Mother,
May I wholeheartedly accept Jesus as my guide. May I drop any resistance that I have ever had around this idea. May I choose the best for my future, and may I realize that Jesus is a part of my personal future.
Be with me every day. I long for Your comfort. I get confused when I try to make decisions on my own, with my little self struggling so. The best that I can do is to turn inward to the Self Who is a part of You. Help me to come to understand, in these 40 days and 40 nights, what this Self really means. Guide me to make good decisions, for my own judgment is very faulty. Help me to walk into the sunlight with You, certain of guidance, sure of my steps, balancing securely as I walk along.
Thank You, dear God, for leading me to love better. As I go to the mountain top with Jesus over the next 40 days, may I know a resurrection that only You can bring to me.
Amen.
MIRACLES EACH DAY 