Unveiling the Inner Self

“The Self That God created needs nothing.  It is forever complete, safe, loved and loving.  It seeks to share rather than to get; to extend rather than project.  It has no needs and wants to join with others out of their mutual awareness of abundance.”  (Preface, A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., “What It Says,” 7^th paragraph)

The Self is the inner essence, the part of our Being that recognizes oneness with God.  It is the Christ Who is within.  We do not have to feel that to think like this is arrogance; instead, it is supreme good sense.  The Self is “complete, safe, loved and loving.”  What more could we want?

We need to realize that sharing and extending are functions of the Son of God, our real Self.  The little self who is dominated by the ego is really nothing, a travesty of reality.  We ought to avoid “getting” and “projecting.”  And when we share and extend, by definition we are deemphasizing the ego in our experience.  The ego gives only to get; it seeks to aggrandize self at the expense, sometimes, of others.  Even when we seek to aggrandize ourselves with no expense to others, we are still thinking amiss.  And it is this wrongful thinking that is nailing us to our little crosses.

We do have abundance.  Abundance is our inheritance.  And as soon as we have taken steps to avoid egotistical leanings, just choosing to stop such thinking in its tracks, we will be taking the first step toward unveiling the inner Self.  When we have taken this first step, God moves to supply the rest forthwith.  He only waits on our invitation, and that invitation can come as soon as we recognize what we really need is Him.

Living Christ

“When you pray to God, you are praying to that part of yourself that is divine, that which we call the living Christ who lives in you.”  Choose Only Love bk.3, 11:II

We are not just praying to our little personality when we pray.  We have a larger Self who is merged with God, and this larger Self is a part, but only a part, of the Christ.  Christ is a plural term, not meant in this era for only Jesus.  We partake of divinity, too.

Know that turning inward is not praying to an external God, for God is not external to ourselves.  We are a part of Him, always and forever, even when we are living with the ego in a “fallen” state.  We gain insights by turning inward to the God Who dwells deep inside.  We know better how to live.

Ask today how to proceed in life.  Let our intuition be our Guide, for God is speaking in the silence to us through our intuition.

The Unlimited One – Us

“Whether it is a beautiful building or a beautiful painting, all that you are ever experiencing is something that you have drawn to yourself through the medium of the body.  It is an experience, and that is all.  You are the unlimited one who is in the driver’s seat.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 13, Page 162)

How many of us can actually feel in the driver’s seat, especially now?  Jesus’ words sound foreign to us, but I believe he means what he says.  But it is our soul that is making these decisions of what to experience. 

The little self, persona, that we are frequently resists what arrives for us to experience.  We can be glad that a “smarter” part of ourselves is actually in the driver’s seat.  This is the Self, Self with a capital “S.”  And we are all One in the Self, a part of God Himself.

It helps to see ourselves, in our greater essence, as “unlimited.”  If we chafe at restrictions now, we can realize that our soul has chosen this pathway—not only our soul, but the Self whom we share with all other brothers and sisters.  We are in this together.

Limitless Reality

“You are in the holiest of temples—your Self.  You abide in the perfect moment for your transformation.  Nothing limits you at all, or at any time. . . . In reality, nothing is impossible to you and nothing unavailable to you.”  (“The Way of Transformation,” WOM, Chapter 13, Page 159)

This is the perfection of the moment, as expressed by Jesus in channeled writings.  Where we are today seems very far from this pinnacle.  This pinnacle is the ideal.  The extent to which we can stretch ourselves to reach it is the extent to which we will have peace.

Our Self extends beyond just the body.  Our Self is one with God, the All, the Whole.  That is why it is the “holiest of temples.”  That is why we are limitless. Of course, we can’t see this, because our mind is finite.  In our greater essence, though, what Jesus says is true.  He is not speaking of the persona that we have in this world, but speaking for the larger dimension of which we are a part.

We can learn things from that larger dimension.  Things that will bless us.  Reach out today to our greater Self, and see if the day does not brighten.  There is always help on the way when we allow our sights to look skyward.

We Can See Clearly Now

The Course calls the act of pardoning, or forgiving, one’s brother of what is just illusion anyway as the “power to release your savior.” (T-21.II.3:8) If we will entertain the idea that the Course is right, that the world is truly illusory and illusion made in madness, the step of pardon becomes very easy. It becomes, in madness, the only rational choice that one would make. We would not get angry if our brother were psychotic, though we might wish mightily that he were healed, especially if in his madness he is causing us pain. In effect, the Course declares that this characterization is exactly what is happening on a daily basis in our world. We are all, to one degree or another, steeped in a metaphysical madness.

On a deeper level, though, we have never left Heaven, and our real Self is very strong. We are indeed strong enough to let this world go, accepting correction because we see that we are wrong. (T-21.II.4:10) It is only the extent to which we live by guidance that we can see a more benign dream, the still illusory Real World granted our waking dream by the Holy Spirit. The dreams he gives, though still illusory, are happy, and by them we see our way clear.

Ego Dilemmas

It has been hard for me to let go of egotistical striving. I was reared, as I am sure many of us were, to equate “success” with ego games–to equate the “good life” with having achieved. Part of me has always believed that actually “dropping out” was the way to go, and at various points in my life I have done just that, but never for very long. I enjoyed these respites, but ultimately I rejoined the success trap and sought in my everyday life and profession (especially profession) to achieve success because I knew that this had gotten me kudos as a child. Getting good grades was always highly regarded, and as a first and only child, this type of commendation was taken to heart in a big way.

When I discovered A Course in Miracles, I began to realize, as I read, that the egotistical striving that I was doing to “deserve” love, and my belief that only if I were successful would I have God’s stamp of approval, were just myths. Yet a part of me still wanted to strive, because, I told myself, what if I would come to regret a slowdown in the future? In my own case, library administration was my bugaboo. This is where the money is in librarianship, my profession, but more importantly, this also signals “success” in the eyes of my colleagues in my chosen field. What if I did not pursue this, and later felt sorry? The fact that I had not sufficient intrinsic interest in the responsibility that this would entail, or in the antagonism that I would likely incur from my subordinates (whom I would be evaluating) did not dissuade me, at least for a long time.

This period of indecision lasted fully 15 years. Once in a workshop that was boring, I wrote out five or six pages of reasons (pro and con) that I was considering for my next direction. Later, I destroyed the pages in an attempt not to be sucked back into this quagmire.

As the years were passing, I dropped big hints to my supervisors that I did not want to be considered administrative material. I said “no” before I might be asked. The fact that I was not asked (until later on) seemed only a minor point; in my egotism, I felt that I would be if I expressed interest. And I did not want to be faced with something that I might have trouble declining. I see the wiliness of the ego even in my indecision.

Later on I was asked. And it was largely a disaster that lasted scarcely two months, ending with me in a frazzle, resigning because my temperament rebelled. So, all along, my real self had been trying to get through to say that this particular pathway was not for me. I am a slow learner; it took trying it out to realize that my doubts (conscious and subconscious) knew best all along.

Let the ego battles go. Our inner Self knows the way we ought to go.

Is the Self of Union, God Himself?

“That response is wholehearted desire, which is the power that A Course of Love came to return to you. You were told within this Course that whole¬hearted desire for union would return union to you and return you to your Self. This is the moment of realization of that accomplishment. But your desire has not left you. Your desire is stronger than ever before.

“What is different now is that your wholeheartedness, as well as your desire, has moved beyond the pattern of thought.” (ACOL, D:17.12 – 17.13)

The Self of union is, I think, really God Himself. Jesus has focused on the Self in the Dialogues of A Course of Love because he wants to impress on us that we are really part of God, that God Himself is living through in every minute of every day.

Many of us, myself included, have called out to Jesus to help us, to come in response to “a single, unequivocal call.” And I think he will come. But Jesus needs to transfer our dependence from him as a person who lived 2,000 years ago to something larger. He doesn’t want us, he says in ACOL, to continue to think of him as an historical figure. He is part of our larger Self, part of God as we are. And he needs to transfer our dependence onto the Self of union, the Self that is One with God.

Norman Vincent Peale did the same with frantic individuals who called him often on the phone. He realized that they were looking to him as a father figure (in many cases), and he needed to transfer their dependence onto God the Father. He eased his listeners into just that assurance of God the Father’s abiding love for them. And miracles occurred.

Wholehearted desire for union will return union to us, provided we have met the stipulations of no judgment and no fear. Then we are in Christ-consciousness, when that union has been returned to us. And we are ready to help create a new world.

Prayer

My desires are many today. I seem to be going in many directions at once. Make me one-pointed, dear God. Help me to slow down and do things in flow, in Your flow. Help me to know Your certainty of what to do next, what to say next. I need Your certainty today and every day.

It is with wholehearted desire, as best I can imagine it, that I long for You. I come with love in my heart. Be with me to give this day all that You would wish it to be for me. Be with me always.

Amen.

From Self-less and Ego-less to Christ-Self

“These anti-ego tendencies are a real danger in this time. You are not called to selflessness but to Self!

“This is the transition you have felt yourself to be in. The ego is gone but the true Self has not been allowed as yet to dwell within the personal self, thus elevating the personal self. You have thus been self-less for a time and the personal self has floundered from this lack of identity. A person could literally die during this time from lack of identity, lack of cause. To die to the personal self is not what is required any longer as we work instead to elevate the personal self. This elevation occurs through the acceptance of your true identity, not through being identity-less. The reign of the ego began during just such a time of identity-less-ness. You cannot go on in such a way.” (ACOL, D:1.9 – 1.10)

I would suggest that this is the juncture that many of us occupied when we were at the conclusion of much study of A Course in Miracles. This floundering, without the ego but not knowing where else to turn, occupied many of us before Jesus channeled A Course of Love. He says definitely here that we can’t long survive ego-less, without a replacement, and he says that this replacement is the Self, the true Self who has been called the Christ, and who has dwelt deep within us for eons. Our personal, or “little,” self hindered the emergence of the Christ-Self.

Now we know better. We really do have to let the Self out to play. Effortlessly assuming our role in the new world, being created even as we speak.

This Self is the part of God Who dwells within every living thing. This is the Self who will save us now. It is about time.

Many of us have become frustrated with the promise of Awakening or Christ-consciousness, but no transformation seems on the horizon. Jesus would counsel us that there are things that we can do to make a difference, to allow Love in, to remove the blocks to Love. The Self knows how to counsel us as well, and as we retrieve broken parts of the subconscious, our way ahead brightens. All that is hindering is lodged in the subconscious mind. Let the heart inform that mind, and see what a difference it makes.

We need to recognize that just turning from the ego, without the replacement by the Christ-Self, is a dangerous place for us to occupy. Jesus even says that some, so disheartened, have died at such a point. He would not have us destroy ourselves out of frustration. He would have us walk into the fullness of our being. And we can do so today.

Prayer

I would, today, do all without my power to accept Jesus’s promise of a Christ-Self who will rule my personality. I will follow Your way, insofar as I can, but with Your help, all day long. The day will unfold gently as I realize that I am following in the way that You are pointing out.

Be with me today. May this be a good day, a stupendous day. May my limited awareness be opened up to all that You would hold out for me. This day holds much promise. Grant me the patience to see it unfold in Your good time.

Amen.

When We Unite Mind and Heart, We Unite with the Self

“Yet you have not remembered that the first union is of mind and heart. The first union is union with the Self. This union with the Self is resurrec¬tion or rebirth. All are capable of this life-giving union. All are capable of birthing the Self.” (ACOL, T1:9.7)

This passage for today is a summation of what has gone earlier (and will be expanded upon as we read farther on). First, we unite mind and heart, and when we do that, we have united with the Self Who is deep within us, a part of God Himself. What has actually happened in a resurrection or rebirth of this Self, a Self Who has been cloaked by the egoic, false, self for eons.

And this miracle is not limited in any way. All of us can—and will—have this union eventually. Our part, if we want this union now, a union that is Christ-consciousness, is to remove the blocks to love’s emergence. It is love that emerges, in full form. Our own form becomes “elevated,” in that we are living the truth in a way that has not been possible heretofore, because the ego has held sway over us.

All of us can birth this Self. As A Course in Miracles says, God Himself reaches down and lifts us up—when we are ready. And so asking for this miracle is in His Will. We don’t have to ever be shy about asking. It is the way of creations created by a Creator. It is the way that life is meant to be lived.
“Ask and ye shall receive,” as the New Testament tells us.

The passage for today can be memorized to good effect. It gives us the gist of much that Jesus is telling us in the totality of A Course of Love.

Prayer

I would seek to realize the union of mind and heart, the union that I have been wanting with my deepest Self. When I am deep within myself, I can feel Your warmth, and this warmth is a great blessing, a great blessing indeed. Thank You.

I would feel Your warmth when I am out and about in the world, not just when I am quiet and focused inwardly. I thank You for this assurance that You are always with me, that You love me unconditionally. Help me to love the people in my life unconditionally as well. We all are starved for love. May each of us give it as best we can, leaning on You and our Self for guidance as to how to do that.

Amen.

Union of the Human & the Divine

“My resurrection brought about the Word made flesh in each of you. You who have come after me are not as I was but as I Am. Does this not make sense, even in your human terms of evolution? You are the resurrected and the life.

“How does this relate to your thinking? You have been reborn as god-man, as God and man united. The resurrection is the cause and effect of the union of the human and divine. This is accomplished. This is in effect the way in which the man Jesus became the Christ. This is in effect the way.” (ACOL, T1:8.5 – 8.6)

Jesus says some startling things in this passage. If we allow our ego to rise again, we will be in for a fall, for Jesus says things that the ego would really like to latch upon. Don’t let it! This offering from Jesus is for the time after the resurrection, a resurrection that we now all share with him. The “god-man” of which is said later on to be the “elevated Self of form,” but at this point “god-man” may be easier to understand, though not easier to comprehend. We are both human and divine, as was Jesus. And when we have received full salvation, we will know what this means. But we can try to comprehend now: The Self is the part of us who is God, dwelling deep within. And we have previously been oblivious to this Self, preferring instead to dwell with a little, personal self, a self with a little “s.” Now we can raise our sights quite a bit, and know that God, as the Divine, has now taken hold of our personality and is raising it up to new heights, heights to which the ego could not climb.

Our god-man aspects, the union of the human and the divine, call for great acceptance of all of us. If we think that we still have faults, we can, in a manner of speaking, wish those faults away, and they will be gone. Jesus actually makes this promise in A Course of Love, though he uses different words, and what I have said is an interpretation. If we think that we attack too readily, we can just ask that this aspect of who we are might drop away—and it will. The solution, as A Course in Miracles says, is always with the problem. And, as A Course of Love says, we have no needs, for needs are resolved immediately. This cleansing of the personality is what the union of the human and the divine, with a Self released to outer play, can do for us. We have nothing to fear, no reason to judge. We are alright just as we are. God loves us just as we are, warts and all.

We ought to make determinations to clean up our act, and the Self will do this consistently, when we get still and simply ask. This is God enjoying His godliness, and being glad that his creations (us) have finally realized how to live a good life, an abundant life.

Our resurrected life can begin today. Jesus has said that he has nothing that we cannot have, that we are, in effect, all in this together.

Let’s ask today to live as who we are, just as ourselves. But realize that change for the better is always possible, once we have accepted ourselves first. We will never get anywhere good by lamenting what we are, the personalities that we have. We may have made many mistakes, but these are all correctable, and soon. We can live above the fray, in a quiet and calm way that gives us the best of heaven on earth.

Prayer

Jesus promises many exciting changes for us in the passage for today. And I need to be certain that I realize that You are behind his words, that You won’t fail to give me guidance to keep the ego at bay. These promises are real, and I accept them at face value. I wish for acceptance of myself, for changes that needs to be made in myself, and for the will to live peaceably even as change occurs.

Be with me today and always. Thank You for the promises that Jesus has made to all of us in A Course of Love.

Amen.

The True Self – More than a Persona

“The purpose of this Course has been stated in many ways and is stated again here: The purpose of this Course is to establish your identity. The importance of this purpose cannot be underestimated. Let us address the question of why this is so important.

“You have been caught in a cycle of seeing the self as important for a period of time and then seeing the self as unimportant for a period of time. Seeing the self as important seems at one time like a function of the ego, and at another as a function of the divine. You become confused between the personal self and a true Self only because you have not as yet identified your true Self. Once you have identified your true Self all such confusion will end.” (ACOL, C:27.4 – 27.5)

How do we identify the true Self? We remove the barriers to love’s presence. We drop attack, we drop anger, and we humbly approach the God Who resides within. The true Self is the part of God Who does reside within each of us. It is God’s answer to the separation, the separation that could never actually have occurred because God could not separate from us and live; and the reverse, that we could not separate from God and live, is also true.

We are trying to establish a new identity on a solid footing, a footing quite unlike the unstable stasis that the ego provided. The ego gave instability its name. We never knew what drama was going to hit us next.

Now we are seeking to live a more stable life, a life in which we turn aside from anger and attack, and we welcome the love that in our heart of hearts we all want more than anything else.

The personal self will remain as the self whom we present to the outer world, but the inner Christ Self will inform that personal self so that it is something much more and much better than a mere persona. We will know, for the first time, what harmonious living is all about. We will have a solid core for the first time since the ego took over. We will live fully, and in the living fully we will renounce the ego and all of its machinations.

We turned to the ego out of a sense of threat. Pray today that we encounter no reasons to be threatened again. Being threatened raises the banner of pain, and the red hot experience of anger and attack. We don’t need this type of undergirding any longer. We are safe in God’s arms, in the Self who is finally released from the depths of our very being. Our new identity will save us. Nothing more could do so.

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank You for the harmony and peace that reading A Course of Love gives to me. The feeling is, I think, a matter of letting my heart rule my head. The head—my mind—can seem to get in such conflict. And I would leave conflict behind as I seek to live in love, always and forever.

Thank You for helping me to realize that an ideal persona is as much a falsity as the ego. The ideal persona is an outgrowth of an egoic orientation, something I would leave behind. The true Self will lead me truly. And for that I am very grateful.

Amen.

Freely Give Away the Self

“Rejoice that there is something in this world that you will not bargain with, something you hold sacrosanct. This is your Self. Yet this Self that you hold so dear that you will never let it go is precisely what you must be willing to freely give away. This is the only Self that holds the light of who you are in truth, the Self that is joined with the Christ in you.” (ACOL, C:7.7)

We need to offer ourselves to our brothers and sisters in this world. This is what is meant by the Self being freely given away. We don’t lose by the giving away: It is a paradox, because we actually gain, and in amounts that we could never imagine before embarking on this course of “giving ourselves away.”

The Self will eventually be the elevated Self of form, when we have become enlightened, when we enjoy Christ-consciousness. This form is physical, but it does not employ the ego-mind any longer. The ego-mind is gone, once we have assimilated the first volume of A Course of Love. And this leaving is a very, very great blessing, far more blessed than we can even know, because for eons it has given us suffering and pain—and these are on the way out.

Physicality, as Jesus tells us in the Dialogues, is not a bad thing. We can choose physical form as our way for the future, if we want, even when we would not need to be reborn into the physical to find our way home. It is a new choice, but it is not a choice out of alignment with God’s wishes for us. This according to Jesus in the final volume of A Course of Love, the Dialogues.

But we will get to the Dialogues in due time. It is enough now to assimilate that we are to share and share freely with our brothers and sisters, for this is what “giving away” really means. Sharing does not seem, perhaps, to be so threatening a concept. And we do give away when we share.

We do not bargain with our Self, and this Self is the Christ Self Who is begging to be let out of our innermost being. When we freely open ourselves to Jesus’s words, we will share this Self with all, freely as well. The course is clear; the words unambiguous.

Think of way today that we might share our Self with others. We can “do” for them, but we can also simply be there for them. Our brothers and sisters, many of them, are hurting in this world. It behooves us to try to understand when they seem to attack us, and it behooves us not to return attack, but to give the gentle response.

The gentle response will always take us well ahead of where we were before we gave it. Be there for our brothers and sisters today; share all, indeed share more than we think we can. And the blessings of so doing will rain down upon our heads.

Inner Christ Is Wholly Human & Wholly Divine

“The Christ in you is wholly human and wholly divine. As the wholly divine, nothing is unknown. As the wholly human, everything has been forgotten. Thus we begin to relearn the known as the One who already possesses all. It is this joining of the human and divine that ushers in love’s presence, as all that caused you fear and pain falls away and you recognize again what love is. It is this joining of the human and divine that is your purpose here, the only purpose worthy of your thought.” (ACOL, C:5.1)

Our Self, the inner Christ, is both human and divine—just as was said about Jesus’s life on earth. We are inhabiting a body that is very much at risk for danger in a violent world, and we may still be inhabiting a body whose mind is eclipsed by egoic consciousness. If so, we are still suffering in this world of humanness. But things happen in stages, and perhaps we are not yet ready to let go of all things egoic. The Self, the inner Christ, the divine in us, would very much like to see us change our minds, to move beyond the ego into a consciousness that has been transformed. Again, all in stages. We may request an acceleration, but we are not in total charge; God has quite a bit of say in the matter. And we are a part of God.

When we join human to divine, we are giving up our emphasis on the ego, and with that, our pain (which still may be with us) will cease to be suffering. It just is. And we will rise above. Our purpose here is to join human with divine, and, ultimately (as described in A Course of Love, to inhabit the elevated Self of form. We will certainly be happier when this transformation has happened.

We have tried a multitude of ways to make the world satisfy us. And the world has always defeated us, brought us down, for we have not been consistently happy. And happiness is our function, according to A Course in Miracles—along with salvation and forgiveness as equated functions.

Make a decision today that we will seek Love as we understand God to be. This represents a joining of the human with the divine, for we are still on earth, still very much a part of this world. But seeking Love is a purpose, out of many that we might choose, that really gives us fulfillment. The only purpose that gives us fulfillment.

Try today to walk a little closer to God. We will sense His Presence, and the day will certainly go better.

Listen to the Holy Spirit or Christ Self as True Reality Passes through You

“Yet it is in the passing through that creates the intersection. Everything within your world and your day must pass through you in order to gain reality. While you think of this as everything outside of yourself, please, when thinking of this, use the words I have provided: everything within your world. In the act of pass-through you assign meaning to everything within your world. The meaning you assign becomes the reality of the object you have assigned meaning to.” (ACOL, 22.9)

Reality must “pass through” us for us to understand how to create a new world. Jesus uses the example of the sections of an onion to make his point, though the point is somewhat difficult to follow and needs some explanation. When everything in the world comes to our attention, it “passes through” us, and we assign meaning to it. This meaning now seems to encapsulate everything that the true meaning really is. But we may be wrong.

The fact that we may be wrong about what passes through us is cause for pause and reflection. Even if wrong, the meaning that we assign to something seen as external is all the meaning that, to us, it is going to have. Consequently, we make a world. The world may be illusion, though. And Jesus is here introducing his thought that we will eventually want to live in a new world, a new world that we have created freshly. And this new world will be true reality.

What passes through is given a kind of reality, even if the bottom line is that this “reality” is actually illusion. We would have meaning assigned to true reality instead. We would look at our outer world and give no credence to those egoic aspects that entrap us so. We would seek the evidence of true reality in the projections that we make from within. These projections will then take on the hue and color of true reality, and we will be at home in a world that is no longer mad.

Take the First Step into Shared Consciousness

“Take the first step outside of the known reality of your conscious awareness, the learned reality of your separate consciousness, and into the realm of shared consciousness.” (ACOL, Dialogues, 8.12)

We are not meant to be independent, as much as that flies in the face of the conditioning that our culture has given us. Our culture welcomes the gradual growth of young people, believing that when we as a young adult are standing on our own two feet, independently, we have arrived at a certain level of maturity. And we make our own judgments. Both the thoughts of mature independence and the thoughts of personal judgment are erroneous, if we believe anything that Jesus is telling us in A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love.

We are not meant to be separate from one another in independence that increases our isolation; we are to share with others in a shared consciousness that we do not, as yet, even fully comprehend. We have psychic attunement with each other, and this is a sign of our shared consciousness. We don’t make our own decisions, our own judgments; we listen to guidance—in the case of ACIM, from the Holy Spirit; and in the case of ACOL, from the inner Christ Self.

This shared consciousness, once we are aware of it, will mean much to our progress in a new reality, a true reality. We are herein invited to take the first halting steps into that new awareness, this new business of sharing with others. Our minds, under egoic influence, want to be separate, and believe that a shared mind is infringement of our liberty. We need to think again. How nice would it be to know that others are there for us, in our deepest understandings, as given us not only by our mind but also by our heart?

We don’t have to stand in “splendid” isolation. We are not meant to be alone. Our brothers and sisters are given us in this world for a purpose, and that purpose is the communion of their spirits with our own. We have less to worry about when we know that we are not required to be isolated in independent living. We need each other. In our heart of hearts, we know this already, and now we can act on it, knowing that we are moving into grace when we do.

Living Our Christ-conscious Self

“We discuss being what you represent in truth. We discuss the elevation of form. And what we have discussed thus far is the acceptance of form as what it is. This is the new reality you have desired. To live as who you are in form.” (ACOL, Dialogues, 5.19)

Jesus describes in A Course of Love that it is entirely possible to live in this world in our bodies as our real Selves. He calls it occupying the “elevated Self of form.” This is a condition that is ego-less, in that we are not living the little, or personal, self that is ruled by the ego—but instead living as our Christ-conscious Self, the inner Christ Self whom we all have in our depths.

At one point Jesus talks about this situation as a new choice, never made before in our world, and he says that he will not predict the future, that he does not have the means to know what we will do with this new embodied Christ-conscious Self in form (in body).
This new choice is probably welcomed by many of us, for we are used to the physical body and have difficulty imagining ghost-like embodiments, such as we might enjoy after death. We like our bodies. We don’t like our separated state, embodying an ego that doesn’t mean us well and leads us into suffering.

The good news is that when we eliminate the blocks to love’s awareness, we can come into our own as Selves. We can be Christ-conscious, which is another way of saying Awakening or enlightenment. This new state, never before sustained, is the aim at which A Course of Love moves. A new identity. And all of us need to give up attack, give up judging, give up planning (unless guided to do so), and give up fear/anxiety. These are barriers to the new reality.

Leaving Behind the Patterns of the Old Way

1 – Ego

“You would not be here if you were still interested in glorifying the ego, but you also are not yet completely certain of your Self and in your uncertainty, still subject to the patterns of thought of the old. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 2.13)”

2 – The Old

This quotation makes it clear: We do still sometimes dip into the patterns of the old, and this is especially true when we see that we fall into egoic thinking. Conflict is an example of the type of thinking that is egoic; conflict is left behind when we leave the ego behind.

3 – Conflict

If you aren’t sure whether or not you are still living, at least sometimes, with the ego in the ascendancy, then ask yourself if you still have conflict. The answer for nearly all of us will be “yes,” and so we have not completely left the ego behind.

4 – Go Within

It is major incentive to remove conflict from our lives. How do we do this? We go within. We seek silence, the silence that in which God speaks—whether we call His Voice the Holy Spirit or the inner Christ. In this era of Christ, we are led to understand that the Holy Spirit was acting in times past, but, for many of us who have stepped into the new world, the real Voice for God is the Christ within.

5 – Egotism?

This is not egotism; it is straight from A Course of Love. The Christ within will guide us surely, as we leave behind that nefarious ego. Let nothing conflicting stay in your heart and mind. Remove yourself from the conflict by going within. As often as the conflict returns, go within, asking that the conflict be removed.

6 – Conflict Dissipates

The conflict will leave you, for it is no longer welcome.

7 – ACIM vs. ACOL

This quotation emphasizes the movement between studying A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love. Most people will come to A Course of Love after studying A Course in Miracles, and thereby to have been lead to the thought processes that helped one to relinquish the ego as a bad idea. In ACIM, the ego is presented as a false way of viewing the self, part of our idea about ourselves, part of our belief about ourselves. And it is seen as a part of the self that led to visions of a terrifying hell that might await us on the other side.

Now we are in A Course of Love, and we would not have read this far if we still felt that glorifying the self was something that we thought good. Maybe we are still susceptible, but elsewhere in ACOL, we are told that we have left the ego behind. What a relief! Indeed, much of ACOL is meant to lead us to accept our limited self as it is, and to welcome the elevated Self of form that we are meant to inhabit.

8 – Salvation

In our uncertainty, explained in this passage, we will occasionally fall behind. Salvation is not a straight line to heaven; there will be detours. But we can be assured that if we follow Jesus’s advice, there will be fewer detours. We need to leave the old behind, and to accept these new ideas for the salvation that they bring, the Christ-consciousness that they make nearer. Then we will completely ready to leave the old behind.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I know that I will sometimes slip and let the ego take the upper hand. Even though I am studying A Course of Love, salvation is not a straight line.

May I live today for my brothers and sisters, as well as for my better Self–my real Self. Thank You for always being there to help in any and all situations.

Amen.

You Are Your Experience

1 – Day 31

“While you have been immersed in one level of experience you have been either knower or known. This is why experience has seemed to exist apart from you. You say, ‘I had this experience’ or ‘I had that experience,’ as if you have ‘had’ contact and interaction with circumstances or events that are separate from the self. . . .The truth that you are the experience escapes you. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 31)”

2 – Embodying Our Experiences

We are the experiences of which we are apart. We embody them, much as we think that our spirit embodies the physical form that is our body. We do not “have” experiences; we are them, because they transform us. And the extent to which the transformation comes from within is the extent to which we are aligned with inner forces, with the inner Christ Self.

3 – Transformation

We want transformation. All of us do. And we can have it when we give up fear. That is the salient factor. And to give up fear we simply must find out how we are to love each other, and also to love ourselves, and also to love God. All of this is One. Love is the Answer, as all religions have taught. But how do we come to love?

4 – Love

We remove all barriers to the experience of love. And the primary barrier is our own sense of insecurity, brought on by the egoic emphasis given fear. We surround ourselves with a hard casing that will protect. This casing is our defense. And A Course in Miracles tells us that we make what we defend against. So defense is not the answer. We need to realize that we are safe, and that we live in a safe world. Now, bad things happen all the time. But when we are at home in God, we will feel the pain, but we will not be immobilized by it.

5 – Pain

Some individuals who experience the most pain nevertheless have the greatest faith in times of turmoil. They see value in the bad experiences.

6 – No Need to Learn through Pain

ACIM says that we do not have to learn through pain. And so we don’t have to “be” experiences that are full of suffering. We can choose again, choose over. And in the better choosing, our suffering will drop away. Pain may drop away also, though if it is still with us it will miraculously become bearable.

7 – Mountain Top

“What the mountain top experience is helping you to see is that you are the experience. The mountain top experience did not happen to you or happen separately from you. It has happened and is happening within you. You are the experience and the experiencer, the knower and the known. This joining is the point of the experience and the key to experiencing wholeness. (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 209)”

8 – Summary

Day Thirty One functions as a summary of the thirty days that have preceded it. Jesus uses repetition deliberately and often to make his point.

9 – Joining

On Day Thirty One, we realize that “joining” has been what this trek to the mountain top, with simultaneously the experience of level ground, is to mean to us. We are One with our brothers and sisters, just as we are one within ourselves. The relationship that we share with others dovetails into union, one with another. This union is a manifestation of God. God is our point of unity, and we are all one with God. God is the essence of everything that we can see and know, and, moreover, all that we cannot see and know, but which is a part of the All.

10 – Separate from God?

Previously in our lives we knew only separation, and this includes a perceived (but inaccurate) sense that we were separate from God. Now we recognize how wrongheaded this thinking was. We were thinking only, thinking with our minds. Now our spirits have joined with our minds in wholeheartedness and with the realization that we are ready for the next step in spiritual evolution. Jesus will not disappoint us. He, as our companion, will lead us to discover what awaits in the final days of our mountain top experience.

11 – Knower and Knowee

“All experience is a product of knower and knowee. It is the One Self knowing itself as one individuated Self. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 31)”

12 – Repetition

This is a repetition of earlier statements made by Jesus. His repetition is deliberate, as he knows that repetition works. This quotation emphasizes that God individuated Himself in order to experience Himself, forming parts of the Whole as a way of experiencing. The One Self is God Himself, differentiated into the myriad parts of the universe(s).

13 – Hologram

And we are a hologram. We have the Whole deep within ourselves, for God is within. But we are the one individuated Self, for we do not yet have the union that is God. We are the relationship, but not the union In time we will also become the union. That is what the oft-repeated words in A Course of Love, “unity and relationship,” really mean.

14 – Individuated Self

“For the individuated Self to experience separately from God is to negate the purpose of the experience of the Self which is God. To negate is to deny what is. The denial of what is is the source of separation. The acceptance of what is is the source of union and the ability to experience in wholeness. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 31)”

15 – Turn Within

Do we want to experience as God does? Then we turn within, allowing the union between God and ourselves to happen. The final days of the 40 days and 40 nights emphasize how this transformation is possible. It becomes possible when we know Christ-consciousness, and not a moment beforehand—though we may catch glimpses of Awakening.

16 – What “Is”

How do we accept what “is”? We no longer wish for anything to be other than what it is. We can ask for a miracle, we can practice visualization and affirmations, we can invoke the law of attraction—but in the final analysis, this is not what we are about. All things are added to us when we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (from the New Testament). So we don’t waste our time trying to make our creature comforts more desirable to ourselves. They will fall in line as soon as our thinking is about God. There is no other way toward enlightenment. We accept what is. Pure and simple. We are willing to have it so, as Eastern religion encourages us. And then we have reached the pinnacle. We know, as we experience in wholeness.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Help me to know–not to perceive, but to know–what it means to be One with You. My little mind is so inadequate to comprehend such a great truth. Help me to understand today.

God is within. I have long known that. And God is within the All. God is the All-in-One. May I know what it is to experience your personal caring, in the midst of the great universe of which I, along with my brothers and sisters, are a part.

Amen.

Self – Guidance

1 – Day 26

“It has been said that you are the source and the power of coming to know and making known. It naturally follows, then, that you are capable of self-guidance. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 26)”

2 – Guidance

We have not been accustomed to thinking in the manner that this quotation leads us to think. We have believed that self-guidance was certainly guidance of the ego, and we have turned to the Holy Spirit. We have not attempted to make judgments by ourselves.

3 – Jesus

Now Jesus is telling us that we can know self-guidance. I think this is because we have walked further along the pathway. Note that he is not saying that we ought to give up guidance, relying on our feeble minds. Self-guidance, as he views it, is guidance of the the Self with a capital “S,” the Christ Self. This is the new way in the time of Christ. Jesus has already told us that we are leaving the time of the Holy Spirit.

4 – Wither Comes Guidance?

We may not know where we are getting guidance, and, this, I think, is an important point. We get a nudge or an intuition, we act on it, our life goes smoothly—and we never know if the Holy Spirit is guiding us or if it is the Christ Self. If it is the Holy Spirit, the Universal Inspiration, He is still part of us—for we are part of the All, Everything, God Himself. And if the guidance is coming from the Christ Self, we have tuned into that aspect of us, that at least temporarily, is experiencing Awakening. We may not yet have sustained Awakening, but we are getting glimpses.

5 – Self

“Now let’s speak a moment of the Self as guide. This simply means that you turn to the Self as the source of coming to know of the unknown. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 26)”

6 – A Progression

This quotation simply builds on the previous one. We turn to the inner Self, the Christ Self, when we want to know what to think, or say, or do. We don’t depend on our little minds, minds that have given up the ego but are perhaps floundering, not knowing where to turn.

7 – Inward

We turn inward, we are moved from within.

8 – The Garden

“You can trust in your Self. Will you? By tending your garden you will develop this trust and prepare for your descent to level ground.

“Your self-guidance can be thought of as an internal compass. It will not necessarily know the answers as each answer is sought, but if paid attention to, it will show you the way to knowing. (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 196)”

9 – Holy Spirit

We have often prayed for guidance from the Holy Spirit. This was the way laid out for us in A Course in Miracles. We may not have fully understood exactly Who the Holy Spirit was, but we knew that He was our true guidance, as the Course made clear. Now we are led to understand that we can get guidance from our Self–the grander Self, not the little self of the ego. We have traveled farther along the pathway.

10 – Internal Guidance

Turn inward for this internal guidance of the Self. This Self will lead us down the mountain top to level ground.

11 – Previously

Previously, not only have we listened to the Holy Spirit, but we have sought external guidance from other teachers and books. Now we reach inward, and we find the guidance that we have sought so fervently. This Self-guidance is the way that we will come to know the one Self, the Self that we share with all the universe.

12 – Birth of Creation

“This alchemical transition, this passing of the unknown into the known, this moment when the unknown becomes the known within the Self, is the birth of creation. It is the culmination of all that has come before, the All of Everything realized in a single heartbeat, a single instant of knowing. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 26)”

13 – Dawning

This “birth of creation” is the dawning of Christ-consciousness, or Awakening, or enlightenment. And we know in an instant. Or perhaps we don’t. But the moment is there in an instant, waiting to be discovered.

14 – Unaware

I think that many of us catch glimpses of Christ-consciousness quite unawares. When we are loving, when we have dropped fear and judgment, and when we have walked the pathway as far as we have, then we are open to Christ-consciousness almost without knowing it. The requirements are to drop fear and judgment. Indeed, if we don’t drop these consistently, we cannot sustain Awakening (said elsewhere in ACOL). And nobody has yet to sustain Awakening consistently. But now is the time for us to do so. Jesus is depending on us. The world is depending on us. And it is God’s Will that we live naturally, and natural living is what Christ-consciousness is all about.

15 – Heartbeat

To realize in a single heartbeat is a powerful metaphor, for we have learned in A Course of Love that we want wholeheartedness—the union of mind and heart. To know in an instant that we are living in Christ-consciousness is a great blessing. And we can have this blessing at any moment that we are not fearful or judgmental. The heavy curtains of fear and judgment drop upon us sometimes, and then we are lost again. We have not walked with Jesus, with God, or with our better Self.

16 – One Self

“Self-guidance is the propulsion, the fuel, for the One Self to know itself. You are ready to be so known. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 26)”

17 – Jesus’s Words

Jesus says here that we are ready for Self-guidance, and this is the same as saying that we are ready to follow the inner Christ. Note that the Self is capitalized here. This is our real Being, our God within. And He will never let us down.

18 – Home

We walk home to God in listening to our inner Self.

19 – What Matters?

If you don’t recognize when guidance is coming from the Holy Spirit or from the inner Self, don’t be perturbed. Does it really matter that we know this? Do we have to know this? The Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is One, Everything. Jesus does not discuss the Trinity as such in A Course of Love, but the evidence for the Trinity is here in everything that he says.

20 – Trinity

I think A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love build logically from the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, and these teachings build on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. There is a beautiful rightness about this.

21 – Other Teachers
Note that other teachers are available for those who are not open to Jesus. But to follow as we have, Jesus is our way. Let us go with him in peace.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I come to know through listening to guidance from my Self. May I never mistake the Self for the little self that is frequently informed by the ego.

When I am overwrought, I can’t hear the voice of the Holy Spirit or of my Self. Thus it behooves me to stay close to guidance when my mind is calm and easy. I think that this is true for many people. We just can’t think in realistic ways when we are agitated. May agitation fall from us, even in the midst of it. May we know Your peace. May we handle our upsetting moments in the best way, by going to You for an Answer.

Thank You for this logical progression, in the time of Christ-consciousness. Our heretofore dependence upon the Holy Spirit is tempered by the understanding that we live in the time of Christ now.

Amen.

We Are Wholeness / This We Accept

1 – Acceptance

“Acceptance is necessary because escape is not possible. Everything that is, is with us, which is why we are the accomplished as well as the void, the healed as well as the sick, the chaos and the peace. Thus we heal now by calling on wholeness, accepting the healed self’s ability to be chosen while not encountering resistance or any attempts at rejection of the sick or wounded self. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 14)”

2 – Spacious Self

This quotation aims at saying that the spacious Self encompasses all parts of the Self, especially including, we must learn, the parts of the self that we would like to disown. The little or personal self is fraught with error, even when we have advanced far along the pathway. We may find ourselves still getting angry, still attacking, still being defensive. If we don’t like these aspects of our personality, we don’t resist, for resistance would make the force field stronger. We simply turn aside from less-desirable personality traits, giving them no energy. This “no energy” is our way to reach toward perfection.

3 – Perfection

Remember, though, that Jesus indicates that we don’t have to be perfect to be Christ-conscious. Eventually, we will know a kind of perfection, because in the New Testament, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” And in A Course in Miracles, Jesus says that he stands at the end, the correct the mistakes that we ourselves cannot correct. If he stands at the end, we still have some mistakes now. But we can do our part, as well as seeing Jesus do his. We can turn aside from those traits that are negative, turning instead to the light that is within all of us.

4 – Light of the World

We are the “light of the world.” This is declared in the New Testament as well as in A Course in Miracles. Let us together bring that light to our brothers and sisters who are lost in a damaging world of illusions.

5 – Contrasts

We are the contrasts. This quotation makes this clear. We are the up and the down. Only when we accept that the “down” needs to be enfolded into the spacious Self do we find relief from our discomfort.

6 – Today

Let us do that today, now.

7 – Projection

“The spacious Self realizes that the outer world is a projection and most often a rejection rather than an extension of what is within. Thus, sickness is a rejection of feelings. All that causes fear is rejection of feelings. All that causes loneliness is rejection of feelings. All that causes violence is rejection of feelings. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 14)”

8 – Extend

We need to extend what is within. This Self of ours is within, and extension is how we create well. But just now we are still caught in illusions, and for this to be our world, we have been projecting from our minds. Our little minds, the personal self.

9 – Rejection

We have been rejecting our feelings, because we have known unhappiness. In any given day, most of us have times of feeling down. And we tend to reject the feelings rather than to experience them fully; we stuff them downward into our psyches. But we don’t find relief that way.

10 – Relief

The only way to have relief is to welcome ALL feelings—even the negative ones. Welcome them into the spacious Self (by which we mean the all-encompassing Christ Self Who is within all of us), and there, within, see these rejected feelings transformed into something much more positive. We will not be disappointed when we stop trying to overcome negative feelings by rejecting them. Just welcome. And then the low mood will pass.

11 – Others

“It is by holding all feelings of others within the spacious Self, by not forgetting that the one and the many are the same, by willfully remembering that the feelings of the many can be ‘held’ and not projected into the world as sickness, violence, and so on, that acceptance occurs. It is in accepting all feelings as the feelings of the many that the feelings of ‘others’ are accepted as one’s own and held within the spaciousness of the One Self, the whole Self. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 14)”

12 – Turn to Others

We turn to others with this quotation. We need to accept their feelings as well as our own. All others, all brothers and sisters, are part of us, part of the All, the One. So we communicate telepathically all the time, particularly, perhaps, when we are unaware of such communication. We need to accept the negative feelings of others as well as the negative feelings of ourselves. When we accept, we are much more likely to transform. We will transform, in fact. We will not add our discomfort to the discomfort of our brothers and sisters, thereby projecting violence, sickness, and the like upon the world.

13 – Feelings

We accept others’ feelings as though they were our own. We are One, remember. So in a very real sense, we don’t see any feelings that are not our own. But we can rise above dishonest, reprehensible feelings by absorbing them into our spacious Self, our inner Christ Self. And they and we will be made much the better for it.

14 – All

“What the spacious Self holds within is the relationship of all to all. Relationship is the invisible reality only expressed through form. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 14)”

15 – Form

We see others as occupying form. This is the way that we see our brothers and sisters who are in this world with us. This is relationship in our world. We need the others’ bodies to be able to communicate in this world. And communicate we must.

16 – ACIM

In A Course in Miracles, we are told that Jesus needs our voice, our hands, our feet, to spread salvation. He needs the form that we occupy, for that is how we experience this world. That is how others experience us.

17 – Relationship

Relationship is actually invisible, because our spacious Self is invisible. It is the invisible force field that surrounds our natural bodies. We think that our bodies encompass ourselves, but it is actually the reverse; we are invisible forms that occupy forms that we can see. And we become the elevated Self of form, because we live in this world. It is the way in which we will survive once we reach Christ-consciousness.

18 – Acceptance

“Your acceptance of these words is a form of acceptance of the unknown and as such a means of coming to know. These words are only one means, which is why this is called a dialogue. Realize now that this is but one voice of the many. You have entered into the dialogue with the many as well as the one. This dialogue is going on all around you. Have you been listening to but one voice? Or have you begun to hear the one voice in the many? (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 161)”

19 – Healing

Healing is found in the acceptance of the spacious Self–the Self that we share with all others in unity and in relationship one to another. Earlier we have been tempted many times to reject feelings, and we have thereby been led many times into sickness. Now we are called upon to accept all of our feelings. Our feelings are not unique to each of us individually, but are part of the whole which we all share. Others feel as we do. This concept in itself is comforting, because we are tempted to think that nobody else in our world has ever felt quite as we do when we are feeling down.

20 – Hold Within

We are asked to hold within our feelings in the spacious Self, the Self we share with all others. We are not as likely to feel wounded when we know that others are a part of ourselves. We will not understand all things, but we will hold within not only our spaciousness but also the invisibility of that which we do not comprehend. We do not reject these unknowns; we hold them in our spaciousness. We are accepting of the unexplainable.
Our spacious Self will be a healed Self. We reach out to others, and we accept them in this dialogue. We are not alone on the mountaintop! We accept that others are with us on the same ascension. We then sustain one voice, the many expressing the unity in relationship that we have all needed for eons.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I recognize that in my Self are the others that surround me. I am never alone. My spacious Self includes all.

May I be forgiving of all of those others. May they be healed along with me, as we realize that we are all One.

May this day go well. I am seeking sudden change, so that my withered ego doesn’t have time to adapt to change. May I see that sudden change today. May I enjoy the day, enjoy all others whom I meet. The time for change will be as right as the Answer. Help me to know this internally, in my deepest Self.

Amen.

The Journey of the Self into Form and into Separation

1 – Day 13

“Once the One Self became form and knew its Self, it knew separate thought. The separate thoughts of the one self, rather than the form of the one self, allowed for the knowing of the self that created the many selves. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 13)”

2 – One Self

The One Self was, ultimately, God. But with free will, we made separation real; we thought that we had separated from God, though in reality this would be impossible. We could lack the knowledge of His One Will, though, forgetting that we were God Himself.

3 – Detour into Fear

This detour into fear (from A Course in Miracles) is all that has happened as we have moved into the world of form, the little or personal self. The Self became differentiated into the many, so that God could experience Himself. But the experiencing was faulty, for we are meant to commune with our Creator—something we didn’t do when we thought ourselves lost in separation from Him. We though that we could make a world that we would like better, but God limited our will to miscreate, lest creation be doomed . He allowed us to go into illusion, which would hurt nothing in reality. We think that we suffer, but it is all illusion.

4 – The Godhead

The many selves came from the One Self, the Godhead. There is no Other. We have done this illusion unto ourselves. We think that we have pain and suffering, that we have made a “better” world than God could create. But we only have lived with an imprisoned will, a will that first the Holy Spirit (as in ACIM) and now the Christ Self would lead us to disavow.

5 – Self of Form

“The ‘one’ self of form is the self you were born into. The one self of form comes to know the One Self through relationship with other selves experiencing oneness through being selves of form. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 13)”

6 – Relationship

It is only through relationship that God can know Himself, that we can know ourselves, as the Self that has been individuated, i.e., made into separate “parts.” This individuation is a means that, through relationship to each other, we can know ourselves, and God can know Himself. We are God, but we are not yet in union with each other, and so we are therefore somewhat less than the Godhead. In union with others, we come into our fullness. Then and only then do we know both unity and relationship, and we are home in God.

7 – Christ-consciousness

This is Christ-consciousness, but it is not here for many of us. The timing of Awakening, according to ACIM, is when God deems us ready. And many people who seem flawed will nevertheless experience Awakening. It is not a matter of perfecting ourselves. There are mysteries here that we don’t comprehend.

8 – Jesus

Yet Jesus in A Course of Love is attempting to spell out the process of reaching Christ-consciousness to us. He is writing a metaphysical document that explains creation and our place in it. The words are sometimes dense, but when studied as one would study a textbook, absorbing every line, the prose becomes comprehensible. Unlike something I once thought, you can’t read ACOL as though you were reading a story. Perhaps this works on the first times through, but to understand in depth, study at some level is needed.

9 – Integrate Many and One

“You are thus not meant to lose the experience of the self of form but to integrate it so that you are both the many and the one. The oneness that your individual self represents in this life is the oneness of the Holy One who is both one—somewhat in the way you think of the individual self—and All. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 13)”

10 – Elevated Self of Form

This antedates the elevated Self of form. This passage leads us to that concept. We occupy form, and we are not to disavow it. But this personal self of form needs to be elevated to the Self that is the inner Christ. What will bring this about?

11 – Study / Love

Study gets us there. But love actually effects the transformation—love and a forgiving attitude (from ACIM) that is not judgmental. In A Course in Miracles, we are told that we cannot judge and hope to awake. Yet we still fall into judgment a thousand times a day—until we don’t. When we don’t, we have found Christ-consciousness.

12 – Happiness

And we are happy. Stupendously happy. And we live effortlessly. We have no fear. We have no anxieties. We will with inner peace, in loving relationship to every individual with whom we are introduced.

13 – Spacious Self

“Thus holding the loveless self within the spacious Self of love is the answer to the question of evil and the final lifting of the last veils of fear. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 13)”

14 – Imagination

There will be parts of us which are unloving. But we can imagine—and “imagine” is the important word—that we have a “spacious” self that is the real Self. This Self chooses to encompass the unloving parts of ourselves, and this creates a transformation in ourselves.

15 – Evil / Fear

This ends evil. This ends fear. We are at home in God.

16 – Enfolding

If we just enfold the unloving part of ourselves into the part that is always deep within, held in Love, the Self, we will know peace. There is actually no other way that we can know peace. For evil and fearful dreams will disturb our illusions. And, actually, we can never be happy with illusions, unless they are dreams that the Holy Spirit brings—the happy dreams that precede Awakening, to prepare us for it

17 – Happy Dreams

We do not want to get stuck in desiring the happy dreams that the Holy Spirit brings. We want the real world; we want reality. And we want to awake. This can come about when we seek Awakening earnestly, with all of our being. Yet in our striving, we must realize that our striving cannot be as the ego pushed us previously. Or the ego will reawaken and much will be lost; we will be on the treadmill again.

18 – Eastern Story

So seek enlightenment as a man whose had is held under water seeks air (an old Eastern analogy). We will have enlightenment when we devote ourselves to the loving that brings it, the loving in relationship and union with all others whom we encounter.

19 – Easy Way

The way is smooth. The way is easy. And when we look back on Christ-consciousness, we will know that we need do nothing in this world (from ACIM, but the term “Awakening” is used). We will want to do something to lead our brothers and sisters to the realization that we have had, but we will do so effortlessly. Life will become one sweet song.

20 – Suffering Self

““The same is true of all you would fear, such as the suffering self. A suffering self, held within the spacious Self exists in harmony with the spacious Self. Attempts to eject the self of suffering from the spacious Self create disharmony. It is only by this holding within that the loveless self and the suffering self are rendered ineffective. It is only in this way that you realize that all exist within. It is only in this way that you become completely fearless and totally spacious, for fear is part of the density of form, being a lack of love. (ACOL Dialogues, p. 158)”

21 – Boundary-less Self

Before we can understand Day Thirteen, we need to try to comprehend what is meant by the “spacious Self.” It is discussed herein as a “boundary-less Self,” the all-encompassing Self that we share with everyone. It is the Self of Love, and when we focus on Love, we can overcome any fearful thoughts and feelings of the small self of form.

22 – Self of Fear

Jesus says that we are not to try to eject the self of fear, but to encompass with the greater spacious Self, thus rendering it ineffective. Trying to eject the self of fear actually makes it worse in our experience of fear.

23 – Summation

Look again at the passage from A Course of Love, the Dialogues, quoted above. It actually summarizes much that is said in Day Thirteen. At the conclusion of the chapter, Jesus once again returns to the theme of unity and relationship. We have true relationship with our brothers and sisters when we recognize and incorporate the spacious Self, and then we are truly in unity with all.

24 – Union

“Once fear is gone, true relationship is not only possible but inevitable. True relationship exists naturally in the state of harmony that I the spacious Self. This is the state of union. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 13)”

24 – Not Fearful

When we are not fearful of others, our brothers and sisters, we will seek union with them. We will seek relationship with them. And this will take us home. Yes, home. We are not living as God unless we are living in union, something that we have not been doing as our separated selves. We have been in relationship, but this has been flawed, for we have been judgmental of each other. And we can never know Awakening if we are judgmental. This is a crucial point that can be easily overlooked. We cannot know Christ-consciousness, cannot come to Christ-consciousness, cannot receive the gift of Christ-consciousness, if we are judgmental.

25 – Judgment

Come to God today and ask that judgment be taken away. All of us must do this, all who have not already been freed of judgmental thoughts.

26 – Accepting

Without judgment are we accepting of all—in union with each personal self elevated to the Self, and in relationships as individuated beings.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Help me to be fearless, and to know that I can transcend the suffering self by my fearlessness. Help me not to be tempted to try to reject this suffering self. Help it simply to wither away as I come to know my real Self.

I know that my real Self is always one of Love, but I tend to forget this oft-repeated truth. Help me not to forget the Self of Love today. Thanking You in advance, I turn to You often today and every day.

Amen.

Enfolding Everyone in Our Experience of Christ-Consciousness

1 – Invisible Space

“Imagine the air around you being visible and your form an invisible space within the visible surroundings. This is the realty of Christ-consciousness. Consciousness may seem to be embodied by form but the reverse is true and has always been true. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 12)”

2 – Spacious Self

Jesus describes something called the “spacious self” on this day. He sees this self as an invisible space that encompasses our being. And we encounter others, outside our invisible space, that we can enfold. This would help explain why sometimes people seem very approachable; we have enfolded them into our invisible space.

3 – Form

We are not ultimately form—not at all. We have believed that the form of the body encompassed our minds, but this is not the way reality really is. Sure, we live in an illusion, but still the solidarity of form seems real. Yet it is a mirage. The solidarity of form is a mirage. When we embody the spacious self, we reach out to others from invisibility, enfolding them unto us. Then we really can communicate as One, as the All that God and we really are.

4 – Merging

“The merging of form with Christ-consciousness is this merging of the Self with the unconditional love of the One Self. The One Self loves Its Self. There is nothing else to love. The One Self is the All. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 12)”

5 – Elevated Self of Form

This explains the elevated Self of form, a concept defined repeatedly in A Course of Love. We seek to embody Christ-consciousness as the All Whom we are, but we do so within a visible body that is nevertheless not true reality, for true reality is formless. Yet, because we live on earth, we need a form to communicate with others; and so the form is provided.

6 – God

The elevated Self of form is knowing that we are living reality with God. We do love unconditionally when we occupy this form. And sustaining this form is what we are seeking to do. Not just to form that reality, but to sustain it into eternity.

7 – One Self

The One Self is the All, and so in loving ourselves as that One Self, we also unconditionally love everyone else as well. This is true reality, unconditional love in a Self that can be seen, viewed, by our brothers and sisters here in this world with us.

8 – Space

“Navigating this endless space as an expression of love is the simplest thing imaginable. All you must do is listen to your Self. Your Self is now a feeling, conscious space, unhindered by any obstacles of form. (ACOL Dialogues, p. 155)”

9 – Relationship

This Day Twelve we learn what being relationship is all about. Jesus calls upon us to rely on feelings within an empty form (a spacious form), because consciousness is not form. Our Self occupies emptiness in space, and by this we can easily join with others in this invisible space.

10 – Pets

This description is not totally clear in this first day of description. More days of description are to come. But this is the introduction to relationship with others, human and non-human. Jesus says that it is easy to join with non-human forms in invisible space, and when we read this, we may think of how easy it is to join with our pet companions.

11 – Unity

This space that we occupy is the space of unity, and with this assertion Jesus once again returns to his oft-repeated exhortation to join in unity and relationship in Christ-consciousness. He says that navigating this space is the simplest thing imaginable, once we follow our feelings and not our thoughts.

12 – Obstacles

“When an obstacle of form, be it human or material in nature, seems to present itself, all you must do is remind yourself that space has replaced what was once your self of form. Feel the love of the space that is you. All obstacles will vanish. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 12)”

13 – Loving Disappearance

We can make obstacles disappear, and this is not evil. It is ultimately loving. These obstacles, human or non-human, are enfolded into our spacious self, and then we can communicate as One. We reach out to the anger and the attack, the defensiveness and the rancor, and we just enfold into our spacious Self. We don’t fight; we don’t retaliate. We just reach out and enfold, in a healing gesture.

14 – Proceed in ACOL

This is part of the theology of A Course of Love, and the concept does raise a number of questions. We will know more as proceed through the coming days in our journey to the mountain top with Jesus.

15 – Space

“Not all forms will be met as obstacles. Forms are only as real as the perceiver perceives them to be. Thus your space will effortlessly join with the space that is free and open to joining. There is no boundary between space and space. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 12)”

16 – Perception

When we have a perceiver in front of us, another human being, then the form appears to be solid. When we have something that cannot perceive, the form is enfolded instantly. There is no barrier of perception.

17 – Non-Human Obstacles

“Non-human obstacles have no need of being deflected for their boundaries have not been made solid by perception. A seeming obstacle of non-human form is easily enfolded in the space of the One Self and can be moved or passed through.

“This is joining in relationship. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 12)”

18 – Love

This quotation, as an earlier one, suggest why it is so easy to love our companion pets. They are not resisting us in any way through their form. They do have perception, but it is not akin to the egoic perceptions of other people who cause us difficulties as we walk through life. The pets are open to being enfolded in our being by love.

19 – Others

Would that everyone were so constructed! And this is where we are heading on this earth Everyone will embody Christ-consciousness eventually. And we will have Heaven on earth.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I have long known that my feelings, and my following of them, are my way to salvation. Now I see that not only is salvation held out to me by feelings, but Christ-consciousness as well. Truly I am blessed, and I thank You.

Thank You for this good feeling that I have today. I get the impression that I am gradually, almost without noticing it, moving into Christ-consciousness. I have had glimpses in the distant past, and those glimpses did not last, were not sustained. I would sustain this new feeling that I have today. Help me to do so with the effortlessness that You say is due me. I can do nothing, just myself. I am totally dependent on You. You make the choice of Christ-consciousness for me, but I do pray that it be soon. Thank You.

Be with me as the mountain top experience proceeds, and I come to see more clearly. Guide my inner eyes to see more clearly. Guide my relationship to All. Thank You.

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.

The Choice to End Suffering

1 – Day Two

“Acceptance of your Self is acceptance of me. Acceptance of your Self is acceptance of your inheritance. Now is the time to come into full acceptance of the human self as well as the Self of unity. It is time for the final merging of the two into one Self, the elevated Self of form. (Dialogues, Day Two)”

2 – Elevated Self of Form

This new Self, the elevated Self of form, is a concept stressed throughout A Course of Love. Jesus’s statement herein also mitigates our difficulty with his first day’s insistence that we accept him as our companion on the mountaintop (though not our teacher). If our acceptance of our full Self, the little self or personal self as well as the Christ Self, means that we have accepted Jesus’s primary role in guiding us, then we are able to by-step the controversy of needing to accept Jesus as primary to our life’s progress.

3 – Our Inheritance

Acceptance of our inheritance is a view toward seeing the personal self (the one that we know most intimately as a persona, but minus the ego as central to that persona) and the Self as the unity that it ought to be. When we merge the personal self with the Christ Self, we have achieved the elevated Self of form. This does not mean that we have experienced Christ-consciousness, only that we have removed the blocks to receiving such a blessing. Christ-consciousness is seen to arrive during our time in these 40 days and 40 nights on the mountaintop with Jesus.

4 – Journey

He does not mean that we will make this journey repeatedly. Later on, soon, he makes that point in A Course of Love, the Dialogues. He is preparing us to make the journey once with him, and then to be done with that aspect of our growth. We will never finish growing, because there are always new plateaus, but apparently Jesus had felt that students/teachers of A Course in Miracles were caught by relinquishment of the ego with nothing spelled out as the way to go after the ego was history. This, to my mind, is his reason for channeling A Course of Love at all. He wanted to share more of what follows when the ego has been relinquished. And A Course of Love does just that.

5 – Inventor

“You are like an inventor who wasted many years, much money, and endured many hardships over many projects that did not come to fruition, and now has succeeded in inventing just what was always envisioned. This is the moment of fulfillment and desire coming together, the time in which to realize ‘it was all worth it.’ (Dialogues, Day Two)”

6 – Ego

This analogy dovetails a good bit of the rationale for A Course of Love. We have tried many things, struggled much, in finally letting go of the ego. What now? Now we find out. We are on the brink of a new day. And that new day is ushered in by A Course of Love.

7 – Moment of Fulfillment

This is the moment of fulfillment. What a glorious promise! We have waited long for this, and perhaps when we are finished with our 40 days and 40 nights, we will know how great a promise Jesus has made to us. If we have struggled with our study of A Course in Miracles for a very long time, we will read Jesus’s words with relief. We don’t have to struggle any longer to know the full fruition of our many deeds, words, thoughts. We are home free.

8 – Decisions

“I could give thousands of examples here, but the point is that we are not looking for degrees of wrong-actions, or wrong-doing. You all have moments you wish you could re-enact, decisions you wish you could change. These ‘actions’ are unchangeable. This is why simple acceptance is needed. (Dialogues, Day Two)”

9 – End of the Journey

Many students/teachers of A Course in Miracles site the passage in which Jesus says that he stands at the end of the journey, ready to remedy all mistakes that we ourselves could not remedy. This implies to my mind that there is some perfection being sought. Is this true? I think that it is not the whole truth, for the very idea of being perfect is an egoic construct. Our egos will have a field day with the idea that we need to be better than we are in every respect. This will hold off the acceptance even further.

10 – Chastisement

Jesus is saying here that there needs to be an end to the chastisement that we all give ourselves for not being perfect. He says elsewhere that if we recognize any personality trait, and don’t like it, we just turn aside from it and it will disappear. If we are satisfied to keep the anger, or the guilt, then we do just recognize their presence and accept them—but we don’t try to “change” constantly into a better version of what we are now. The ego loves the concept of trying to perfect ourselves. It keeps the game going. And there is no end in sight.

11 – Accept

But we who are relinquishing the ego will recognize that Jesus’s dictum that we just “accept” is welcome news indeed. In our acceptance, we stop the resistance that keeps the negative traits in place. This resistance has also kept the ego alive. This is to my mind why acceptance is so crucial to Jesus’s words here; not to accept would retain the ego. To accept will mean that the ego withers away.

12 – End Suffering

“Here, then, is where you need to make the choice that those in my time could not make, the choice to end suffering. This is the choice I made ‘for all.’ This is a choice you make for all as well. (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 95)”

13 – Worthy?

This passage makes the point well that many of us who are on the mountain top (the setting of these 40 days and nights) feel that we are not worthy of this experience to which Jesus calls us. We think of the many things that we have done wrong, or that were done wrong to us, and we do not accept these things and put them in the past. Acceptance is the great call that Jesus makes to us on this day.

14 – Jesus

Jesus says that his example life was meant to bring the end of suffering, that he did not suffer, because he knew who he was. We will find this assertion hard to believe, but we need to trust that Jesus is leading us aright.

15 – Self

We are worthy, we have experienced Atonement, and we are ready to elevate the Self of form. The self and the Self are meant to be combined. We will not recognize that we are worthy of this great blessing until we reach acceptance of all that has gone before. Our mistakes have been forgiven; that is all that we really need to know. Then we will be ready to take our place as Awakened beings. In this 40 days and nights, this call is made by Jesus to all of us who are his readers of the Dialogues and who accept his word, as expressed therein.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I accept myself as I am. May I know that the Atonement that You have offered me is freely given to all, including myself. If there are things about myself that I want to change for the better, help me to make these changes in the midst of my acceptance.

Be with me today as I seek to commune with You throughout the day. That communion is really the best way to live. Staying close to You keeps my attitude straightened out, my calm undisturbed, and gives me a peace that is not of the world. May my day go well with You at the helm. May I remember to thank You for the blessings of this day, which are many, more than I might usually have. I wish to remain steady and calm, relaxed and serene. Knowing Your Presence goes with me can ensure that this demeanor will be mine until the end of the day. Thank You.

May I assist in ending suffering in this world, for others and myself. Until I have taken my place in this great endeavor, I will feel that something is missing. May nothing be missing today.

Amen.

You Have Never Left Heaven

1 – Help?

“There is no need for help to enter Heaven for you have never left. But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs of your Identity, Which God alone established in reality. Helpers are given you in many forms, although upon the altar they are one. (M87)”

2 – Believable?

This is a lovely passage, but one that may be hard to believe. Have we really never left Heaven? It certainly seems that we have.

3 – The Self

The passage refers to the larger Self of which we are a part; this Self has indeed never left Heaven. The “false beliefs of your Identity” refer to the falling into the egoic state of mind, from which we would escape. We can escape by turning to the Helpers given us–the Holy Spirit (of primary importance), Jesus, other brothers and sisters, the Course itself, and the like. We are not alone in this world, and we would do well to reach out for help back Home.

4 – Release and Joy

It is a very loving thought to realize that we have never left Heaven. If we keep this one point in mind, it will lead us to the “limitless release” and “pure joy” that the Course speaks about elsewhere.

5 – Face of Christ

“The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God. So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God. (M87)”

6 – Elder Brother

This passage explains the true role of Jesus as the Christ. Elsewhere, repeatedly, Jesus in the Course refers to himself as our brother, our elder brother, who has walked the whole pathway, and who stands at the end to help us when we fail to walk the whole pathway. He will assist us. We do not have to feel alone.

7 – Christ-Consciousness

All of us are eventually to reach Christ consciousness (an interpretation, not spelled out in the Course). Then we will surely understand what Jesus has been trying to tell us.

8 – Face of Christ

When we see the face of Christ in all our brothers and sisters, we will know that we have made much progress. Seeing the face of Christ in our brothers and sisters is a prerequisite to finding our way Home.

9 – Along with You. . .

“Is he the Christ? O yes, along with you. His little life on earth was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of you. He will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God. And when you join your will with his, your sight will be his vision, for the eyes of Christ are shared. Walking with him is just as natural as walking with a brother whom you knew since you were born, for such indeed he is. (M88)”

10 – Comforting

A quite comforting passage, this indicates that Jesus has nothing that we too are not meant to have. He has just reached Home sooner, and therefore is in a better position to help us do the same.

11 – Part of the Christhood

We too are part of the Christhood. We have not assumed our place yet (at least most of us have not), but the time is at hand when we will. Studying the Course is our way Home. Other pathways are valid also, but we have chosen the Course, and it has been meant for us.

12 – Walking with Jesus

This passage indicates that we have walked with Jesus since we were born; we just have not been aware of this blessing. Let us now be aware of this blessing.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I realize the beauty of the fact that my Self has never left Heaven. Thank You for this reassurance. May I know where to turn and what to do to realize Heaven.

I appreciate the reassurance that You offer me continually. Help me to live through this day and to make of it a good day.

Amen.

Replacing the Ego Is a Miracle

“While you have learned much here, you may be thinking that your ego is still very much with you, and wondering, if you have not yet replaced it, how this miracle will come about. This replacement is indeed a miracle and the very miracle you have been prepared for within this course of learning. (Treatises of A Course of Love: Treatise on the Nature of Unity and Its Recognition, 11.17)”

Affirmation: “I would see the miracle that replaces the ego today.”

Reflections:

1 – Recognizing Miracles

We are used to the word “miracle,” but we are not used to recognizing in our own lives when we have experienced miracles. We dismiss them as coincidences or just lucky breaks. But if we start paying attention to such incidents in our own lives, it is very, very possible that we will see an increase in the number and the depth of such experiences–and these will be miracles that we are coming to recognize as such.

2 – Read ACOL

How will we replace in the ego in ourselves? One distinct means that Jesus recommends in this passage is the reading of A Course of Love, the learning therein which will be ours. We do not intensely study ACOL, for that would be counterproductive, but we are encouraged to read it repeatedly until its words become our own. We can even, effortlessly, memorize large chunks of it, and when we need solace, the memorized passages will pop into our minds to comfort us.

3 – Cessation of Ego Mind

We are being prepared for a cessation of the ego mind. While it will not be destroyed, it will be greatly diminished, so that it will not disturb our equilibrium. We are being prepared for the miracle of Christ-consciousness. In a short while in our reading, we will go to the mountaintop with Jesus (from the Dialogues of A Course of Love), and there for 40 days and 40 nights, we will finally learn how to ascend. (The 40 days and 40 nights have previously been considered; see the About page at the top of this blog.)

4 – Get Out of the Mire

May the miracle come sooner rather than later. Jesus needs us to learn, in his way, soon. This world needs us, and we will not fulfill our potential as long as we are mired in the ego-mind.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would get out of the mire today, the mire of the ego mind. I have taken steps in that direction, but always I have taken a backward step after a forward one or two. Has there been progress? Only You can say. I hope that there has been progress, and in my better moments I think that there has been.

The world does need us, but not as proselytizers for whom our brothers and sisters are not ready. I need to touch the lives of individuals who are ready for the message of ACOL. I need to touch the lives of individuals who are ready for the message of A Course in Miracles. I cannot make the determination of who is ready, but You can. Guide my words today.

Thank You.

Amen

False Persona

“I can be entrusted with your body and your ego only because this enables you not to be concerned with them, and lets me teach you their unimportance. I could not understand their importance to you if I had not once been tempted to believe in them myself. Let us undertake to learn this lesson together so we can be free of them together. I need devoted teachers who share my aim of healing the mind. (T-4.I.13)”

Affirmation: “I would seek to heal the mind today.”

Reflections:

1 – Undo the Ego

A Course in Miracles seeks to undo the ego, undo that part of ourselves that is a false persona. The body is normally a big part of the ego’s system of thought, for the body is the ego’s home. We need to recognize early on that Jesus can take over both ego and body, and in so doing, we will save ourselves much conflict. We will not be concerned anymore with that which is actually unimportant.

2 – The Body

It is important to note that the body is deemphasized in A Course in Miracles more so than in A Course of Love. By the time we have read, several times usually, A Course of Love, we have relinquished the ego. But we have seen from our reading that in the awakened state of mind, our physical bodies are still with us. We occupy the “elevated Self of form,” but we do not emphasize the body anymore as an ego device. We simply use the body, as it was intended, as a communication device (from ACIM). When we have relinquished the ego, we naturally do not place undue, egotistical pleasures on the body. The body cannot sustain such thoughts. We will always be dissatisfied after a moment of supposed glory in our own beauty or handsomeness. We will like our clothes, and then we will be dissatisfied. Living in the ego is a matter of living in conflict.

3 – Devoted Teachers

We are being encouraged to become devoted teachers, and there is a whole book, the Manual for Teachers of ACIM, that is designed to give us guidance. Only time separates student and teacher, and often the roles are reversed. All of us teach all the time, and we are teaching what we are (from the Manual). We are trying to teach salvation, mostly by example, but also by words. We will not be effective either as students or teachers if we cling to the ego and the body as its home.

4 – Holy Spirit

We need to get beyond ego and body. A Course in Miracles, when studied, will tell us how. Whether or not we take its advice to heart is a matter of motivation only. We will learn what we consider important. And The Holy Spirit, as described in ACIM, will guide us along the way. We will not be left to our own devices.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would move beyond the ego today and every day. There is no need for a false persona, and with Your help, my Self will assert and all will be well with me. I pray for this new direction today.

May I replace the ego with the Self. May I leave the personal or “little” self behind. I would choose enlightenment if it were up to me to decide. But You make that decision. Guide me to follow the pathway to Your choice for me of Awakening.

Amen.

Our Internal Self

“Yet you have not remembered that the first union is of mind and heart.  The first union is union with the Self.  This union with the Self is resurrection or rebirth.  All are capable of this life-giving union.  All are capable of birthing the Self.  (Treatises of A Course of Love:  Treatise on the Art of Thought, 9.7)”

Affirmation:  “I will seek to birth the Self today.”

Reflections:

1 – Enlightening Passage

This is an enlightening passage.  We first unite within ourselves, the mind and the heart into wholeheartedness, and then we move to the union with the Self within.  And this is resurrection or rebirth.  The words are clear, the meaning clear.  We do not have to do anything special by way of meritorious deeds.  We can all birth the Self.

2 – Christ-Consciousness

We can all birth the Self!  But will we recognize this when we have done so?  I think that the knowledge that we are birthing the Self comes upon us gradually, in snatches, even as birthing the Self is seen in snatches (an interpretation, not stated in A Course of Love).  I do know that Christ-consciousness, or Awakening, is most often seen in snatches, in glimpses.  And the birth of the Self, the rebirth of our entity from just the personal or “little” self is akin to Christ-consciousness or Awakening.  And Jesus says further on in the trilogy of A Course of Love that nobody has yet sustained the elevated Self of form.  But we are on the cusp of a reformation.  We are on the cusp of more and more individuals birthing the Self/Christ.

3 – What Can We Do to Birth the Self?

Is there anything that we can do to hurry the process?  Yes and no, and these ideas are interpretations, not stated in A Course in Miracles or ACOL.  We can commune with God on an almost constant basis, though constancy is not demanded of us, and may be beyond us.  We can study ACIM, but we can read ACOL as though we were reading a story.  (There are distinct differences in the way that the two trilogies are best read.)  And we can look to answering the needs of our brothers and sisters, in relationship to them, holy relationship to them.  ACIM indicates that our way home is through relationship to our brother.  ACOL indicates that our way home is through unity and relationship, adding the fact of unity or union.

4 – Union

The fact of union is perhaps an elusive concept.  But we join; we do not separate ourselves in any way from the universe or from God or from others.  We will be less inclined to go it alone when we have had our heart warmed by God’s love.  This time of tenderness is well-described in ACOL.  We may cry easily.  Certainly we will cry when listening to a poignant story of others’ plights.  This is what the time of tenderness does for us.  It readies us for the birth of Christ-consciousness (an interpretation, not stated in ACOL).

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would seek to begin today to let go of stress and to engage calm, for only in a peaceful mind and heart can the Self the birthed.  We cannot run around helter-skelter and expect to know peace.  Help me to talk to myself, to talk myself down, when I have let the world intrude on my inner being.  I would follow You, and You do not welcome an agitated mind.

Be with me as I walk through today and all the days to come.  Thank You for Your felt presence.  This feeling of Your being there for me is an enormously comforting and calming state.  

Thank You.

Amen.

In God Only Find Your Self

“Give up this notion of losing your Self to God, and you will be done for all time with resisting God.  Only in God can you find your Self.  This is known to you, and is the reason for man’s quest for God throughout all time. . . .Not looking to God to find your Self would be akin to searching everywhere but the Earth for humankind.  If you do not seek where what you wish to find can be found, you seek in vain.  (A Course of Love, 31.10)”

Affirmation:  “I turn to God today.”

Reflections:

1 – Nirvana

Perhaps many of us have feared the concept of nirvana, when the soul loses itself in God completely and is annihilated in God.  But Jesus is not here advocating such a belief.  He says that we find ourselves in God, and it in the Self that is consumed by God that we know peace.

2 – Lose Ourselves to Find Ourselves

Surely we all want to know peace.  And we may not know how to go about losing ourselves in God, losing ourselves to find ourselves.  This is a legitimate question, but one that is easily answered when we give the technique a try.

3 – Feel God’s Presence

When we feel God’s presence, we are giving this technique a try.  And who has not felt God’s presence?  The warmth is palpable, and so welcome.  We would have more of it; we would never leave it.  But the emotions are involved, and when the emotions are involved, there is always change.  So we do not feel God’s presence on a constant basis.  The times that we do feel His presence, though, are enough to propel us forward into asking for my evidence of His Being.

4 – Feeling Warmth in God

May God be with us as we seek His presence today.  Enough times of such warmth will assure us that He is not to be feared, in the sense of being afraid of him, or of the possibility that we will be annihilated.  We will be all-consumed, but not annihilated, and there is a substantial difference between these two concepts.

 

5 – In God

To be all-consumed by God is to feel His love at all times, as well as the love of our Self that negates pain (a tenet of A Course of Love).  This is indeed a blessing that we would seek, and we may ask for it today.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would no longer fear nirvana, which suggests loss that is foreign to my deepest understanding.  I would no longer resist God because I fear losing my Self.  In God I find myself.

Help me to feel Your Presence, a Presence which I feel, in my good moments, as a palpable warmth.  Thank You for giving me this blessing.  And may I do longer have foolish fears of annihilation in You.  Your are my completion, and that is all that I need to know.

Amen.

Definition of Creations

“If the urge to create is strong, certainly let it serve you.  But do not seek for praise or acknowledgement of your creations at this time.  You will soon realize that creation is not of, or for, the personal self.  (A Course of Love, 25.20)”

Affirmation:  “May what we create be without praise-seeking.”

Reflections:

1 – Creating Is What We Are Doing Now

Creating is what we are now doing all the time, if we have taken the precepts of A Course of Love to heart.  We are no longer just “making” a world.

2 – Creation of the Self/Christ

But creation is of the Self/Christ, not of the little self, the personal self.  This personal self was too ego-inspired.  For that reason, we may be asked of God to keep our creations private, lest we be led astray, by the ego, because we get praise for those creations.

3 – Personal Experience

Nobody is my hometown knows of my blog, for I have not told them, for a very personal reason.  Now I know that the real reason is that I might receive some sense of praise that would mislead me by activating my ego, still not dead in me.

4 – Definition of Creations

The same motive might attend your creations of whatever nature.  A Course in Miracles spoke of our “creations,” but did not define them.  Now here in A Course of Love Jesus does define creations, and it is a very simple definition of what we create of whatever nature.

5 – Diminish the Ego

We must do what we can to diminish the ego, and if keeping our creations a secret, then that is what we ought to do.  We need to recognize that we are weak until God has made us strong, and our weakness needs protection against temptations that may overcome us.  We ought not to step out seeking praise from anyone about anything, for surely this craving for adulation is egoic.  And we would leave the egotistical behind.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I create in Your will today, a will that is also my own (for that is the way things are)..  When I follow Your will, I find that it is what I want as well.  The plan is perfect.

Be with me as I see the ego diminish, or as I hope that I see the ego diminish.  Let me not get cocky, or for surely this is of the ego.  May I turn to the Self that is within me, and may I listen to You, also within me.  

Be with me for a good day.

Amen.

How to Live in Love

“All Selves are joined in wholeheartedness.  The one Self is solely involved in living love.  (A Course of Love, 25.17)”

Affirmation:  “I am One with all.”

Reflections:

1 – All of Us Are One

We are one, all of us, and often I have made this point in this blog.  But we don’t often believe this.  I must remind myself of the truth of it constantly.  Knowing that we are one with each other, and with God, is a freeing mechanism of the highest order.  We don’t fret any longer.  We know that we are safe.

2 – Living in Wholeheartedness

Living in wholeheartedness is, according to A Course of Love, the union of mind and heart toward which we are headed, as we know all that salvation holds out to us.  We no longer look for “proofs” of the mind that are largely ego-inspired; we listen to our hearts, who know that proofs are not needed.  But we don’t just have blind faith.  We do have understanding that is not perceptive, but understanding that is knowledge from God Himself.  We are led, step-by-step, into the larger world where we can live freely and peacefully with each other.  These are the Selves of which we are one.

3 – The Selves = One

The Selves, then, are actually One, one with everything and everyone.  Let us meditate upon this truth today, and let words fall by the wayside.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would make the decision again today to turn to love rather than fear.  I ask that You accept this determination and shape my desires so that I do not have to repeat myself and pick myself off the floor because I have failed once again.  Help all of us to reach toward You with a certainty and a determination that will brook no failure.  I know that You want us to commune with You in prayer, and that it is through prayer, with the silences of listening, that we will come to know Your greatest joys for us.  Be with us today as we seek to treat all whom we meet with the love that they so richly deserve.

If I fail today, may I recognize that You will rectify all mistakes.  I need not fret that I am not perfect.  Indeed, Jesus tells us in A Course of Love that perfection is not required.  He tells us in A Course in Miracles that he stands at the end to correct any mistakes that we could not..  So thank You that we are in good hands.

May we seek to grow today in lightness, even as we grow in love.  You would not have us approach life with a seriousness that eludes peaceful and easy living.  The light touch, the light burden, all hallmarks of Jesus.  May we incorporate these traits into our own Selves.

Amen.

Glimpses of Awakening

“Living in love in every instance is what occurs when the whole Self is involved in the love of life.  There are no ‘parts’ of the Self fractioned off and holding resentments.  There are no ‘parts’ of Self living in the past or the future.  (A Course of Love, 25.17)”

Affirmation:  “I would live my Self today.”

Reflections:

1 – The Present

How can we fail to live, somewhat, in the past and the future?  It is always so hard to keep constantly focused in the present, though this is perennial advice which so many of us fail to follow.

2 – Live in Love and Be in the Present

When we live in love, living in the present becomes easy.  We love life.  We love our brothers and sisters.  And we, appropriately, love ourselves.  But most of all, we love God.

3 – Plans

We will be guided to know when to make plans for the future.  This guidance will occur at the time that thought or action is needed.  (These are paraphrases from A Course in Miracles.)  Otherwise, we are bade not to make plans against contingencies to come.  So simple, and yet so hard to live consistently.

4 – Forget Personal Self

If we love life, we will be so immersed in it that we will forget the personal self in favor of the Self/Christ.  This Self is the one that we really want to live within.  And we can do so, when God knows that we are ready for Christ-consciousness.  He will reach down and lift us up, and the change in us will be magnificent.

5 – Personal Experience

Twice I have had glimpses of this revelation; one lasted three months, the other, six months.  I was living in love both times, and so I do know that this admonition of Jesus’s is true.  Living in love makes such a difference.  I would live in love all the time, and this will, I think, hasten God’s action toward to lift me up to Christ-consciousness (i.e., Awakening).  I will eagerly seek, but I will not dictate to God what I want Him to do.  He knows already.

6 – Living in Love

This way of living in love is magical, but not in the sense that Jesus uses the term “magic” in A Course in Miracles.  It is an unbelievable immersion in joy and harmony.  All seems right with the world, and that is because we are, however, briefly, right with ourselves.

7 – Revelation

May we so live today that this revelation will come to us.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

The fact that twice a long time ago I lived in love enough to experience glimpses of Awakening is motivating to me, hopeful that Awakening will come again.  But I try not to pester God with my request; He knows best.  It is enough to know that Awakening awaits all of us, when we are fully ready.

Be with me today for another good day.  If I stay active, I do have good days.  And when You make my agenda for the day, I have good days.  Open me to guidance today in all respects.  That is the only way that I want to live.

Help me to reach out to my brothers and sisters in need.  We all are in need at various times, and we are meant to help each other out.  When one is strong, the other is weak.  We take turns.  And this is as You intended us to live–in unity and relationship with ourselves, with You, and with others.

Amen.

Living from Love

“You begin to live from love when the personal self gets out of the way.  And when the personal self gets out of the way in any instance, it is the turning point.  It is the signal that you are ready to live from love.  This is what the Course is about.  Living from love.  Living from love is what will reverse the lessons of the past.  Reversing the lessons of the past is what will allow one to live in love in every instance.  (A Course of Love, 25.16)”

Affirmation:  “I would live from love all day today.”

Reflections:

1 – Definition of Personal Self

The personal self has historically been the egoic self, and we are fast moving away from that egoic self.  When we are loving, we are welcoming the Self/Christ that is the real Self that is within.  This Self will begin showing itself the more that we live from love.  And in living from love, we leave fear behind–strong motivation indeed.

2 – The Ego

Our lessons of the past have partaken of the ego, and, as a result, the lessons learned have not always been true.  We have misled ourselves.  We need never make the mistake that it is God who is to blame, for this is insanity.  He gave us free will, and He would not, under any circumstances, renege on that great gift.  But, because of free will, we often see horrific happenings in our world.  And we wonder why God does not intervene.  And that is only one step away from blaming God for the tragedies in which we become embroiled.

3 – Free Will

God would grant free will to all, and there are many who misuse this great gift.  To deny to those who misuse this gift, the gift itself, is to turn aside from the evolution of the universe.  God waits patiently.  He has waited patiently, knowing the ultimate outcome will be good.  That does not justify the means that some of us have used in a nefarious way.  But it does help to explain why evil exists in our world.

4 – Bad Things Lessened

When we live from love, even the bad things seem somehow to be lessened.  Sure of the final outcome, we offer solace where needed, but we do not add our own uncertainties to that solace.  We do not intone, “Perhaps it was God’s will.”  Bad things are never the will of God.  If we can open the door ever so slightly to this interpretation, we will be ever more ready to live a tolerant life.

5 – Reverse the Incorrect

Let us spend some time today in communion with God, asking Him how we might reverse the incorrect lessons that have marred our past.  He will respond, for reversing that false learning is what A Course of Love is all about.  Be grateful that we do indeed have an answer to “Seek and ye shall find” (from the Bible).

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would live from a loving heart today.  Thank You for the specific answer to one of my prayers yesterday, with understanding of what to do coming immediately after the prayer.  The solution really is with the problem.  Thank You.  

Today has started well, in large part because I have sought to carry out what I received from You immediately after prayer yesterday.  What a blessing You have given me.  I sensed at the conclusion of my prayer, which I had typed out, that there would be a quick answer.  And indeed there was.  Thank You for these glimpses of the psychic.

Be with me as I seek to show love today to my significant others, most especially, but to all others that I might touch in some way.  You know best how that might come about.  Thank You for Your guidance, and may I be strong enough and courageous enough to follow Your guidance consistently, to turn on a dime if necessary.

Amen.

Deemphasize the “I”

“Begin to imagine life passing through you rather than getting stopped for examination at its intersection with you.  Begin to imagine seeing the world without the emphasis on your personal self.  Begin to form sentences and eventually to tell stories without the use of the ‘I’ pronoun.  (A Course of Love, 22.20)”

Affirmation:  “I will deemphasize my personal self today.”

Reflections:

1 – An Onion

The affirmation summarizes what our passage for today is saying, but the passage usually particularly vivid illustration.  Jesus has used the image of an onion to explain what his passing through is all about.  There are various layers, all of which represent parts of ourselves and our world.

2 – Don’t Get Stuck in a “Layer”

But we are not to get stuck in any given “layer.”  We are to let all of reality, true reality, just pass through us onto something else, one adventure after another.  And life can be an adventure.

3 – Avoid “I”

We are encouraged to stop saying “I” so much.  We are encouraged, in sentences nearby, not to refer to other individuals as “mine.”  We are to free others as we wish to be freed.  This does not mean that we love any less, only that we recognize the ultimate right of all to be free.  And when we grant freedom to others, we automatically receive it for ourselves, for giving and receiving are one.

4 – Analysis

We often have analyzed too much.  This is the mind at work, and A Course of Love encourages us to look to our hearts (and, then, our mind and heart in conjunction, which make for “wholeheartedness”).  When we have analyzed too much, we have not let life pass through us.  We have stopped at various points in the layers of the onion to consider what everything means.  And we will be wrong, for it is only in the passing through, the letting go, that we truly experience the real world.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would deemphasize the personal self today.  I will not say “I’ so much.  That should encourage others to likewise deemphasize the “I.”

May I have a good day.  May I just let events flow through me.

This day You have given me to enjoy.  And to observe, coming closer to You and others, as well as my Self, all the time.  When we seek to serve You and others, we are also serving ourselves.  Let nothing hinder this threefold way of service today.

Amen.

Begin Your Transformation

“A wholehearted choice to abandon all ideas of glorifying the separated self and to let the world be what it is will begin the transformation.  This requires the first unification, the unification of mind and heart, after which unification with God is naturally returned to your awareness, for this unification returns you to the Christ in you and the one mind united with God which you have never left.  (A Course of Love, 19.4)”

Affirmation:  “May I be united with the Christ in me today.”

Reflections:

1 – A Sequence

There is a sequence of occurrences in this passage that is worth noting.

2 – Do Not Glorify the Separate Self

First, we must abandon thoughts of glorifying our separated self (or the self that we think, in illusion, is separated).  So often we seek to glorify the physical, with material objects and the trappings of “success.”  But we are digging our own grave when we do so.  So let us ask today how to avoid glorifying the self.  We will be told, and then when we act on this knowledge (for it is knowledge, not perception), then we will be set on the right path.

3 – Mind and Heart = One

Second, we need to ask that our mind and heart be made one.  We know many things intellectually, for many of us have studied diligently.  But intellectual understanding is often not comforting in the middle of the night, when fears try to overwhelm one.  So we need to invite our heart to join.  This is our emotional aspect, and we do not need intellectual proof when our emotions are involved.   We simply feel the good feeling (or the bad), and we live sanely.  The lack of intellectual “proof” does not disturb the heart, for the heart knows things that cannot be proved.  And the heart does not ask for proof.

4 – Christ/Self

Finally, we seek to unite with the Christ/Self in us.  This is the Self of whom Christ-consciousness is concerned.  We have never actually left this Self, and this point (made repeatedly) is pivotal.  We can clain Christ-consciousness as our birthright, but it is God Himself who makes the decision about when we are ready to receive this blessing..

5 – The Base of ACOL

This sequence is at the base of A Course of Love.  If we can ask for and receive (for receiving is, of course, necessary), then we will have walked the whole pathway.  And all of us wish for this.  We pray for this.  And one day this blessing of Christ-consciousness will belong to us all.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would ask for a transformation to begin today.  I know that I need to turn myself over to You in mind and heart for thsi transformation to happen.  Be with me as I make every effort to turn myself over to You today.

The Christ/Self who is within is my lodestone.  It is my way home to You.  Help me to sense today, if only for a moment, what this Self can do for me.  And may I reach out to others, for it is only in connectedness that we see the light.

Amen.

Believe that You Can, and You Can

“See you now why those who judge cannot enter heaven?  Judgment proceeds from the belief in sin and the irreversibility of all errors.  If you do not believe you can reverse or ‘turn back’ to the state in which you existed before the original error, then you never shall.  (A Course of Love, 17.12)”

Affirmation:  “May my beliefs dovetail with the good.”

Reflections:

1 – God Protects Us

There is subtle intrusion here, from Jesus, of the importance of belief in living our lives.  If we don’t believe that something is possible, then it will not find a place in our experience.  If we do believe (turning the statement on its head), then we will experience that for which we ask, provided that it is good and right for ourselves.  For God protects us still.

2 – Three Prohibitions

In A Course in Miracles, we are bade to avoid attack, avoid judgment, and avoid making plans against contingencies to come (unless prompted by the Holy Spirit).  To avoid these things is to invite heaven (an interpretation, not stated in ACIM).  Surely to do these things is to fall away from salvation, and our lives, likewise, will start falling apart.

3 – Judgment

In the passage for today, Jesus especially points out the dangers of judgment.  And, in doing so, he echoes the New Testament, as many of us know.

4 – Original Error

The original error was the presumed separation from God, the rise of the ego, and the loss of that sense of joining with God and all others.  This, according to ACIM, was a “tiny, mad idea” at which the children of God forgot to laugh.  And in the forgetting did it become possible for the impossible to seem to happen.

5 – Erase the Evil

We do need to realize that all of this misfortune can be erased.  We do not have to presume a separated state any longer.  When we allow God to speak to us from within (or the Holy Spirit, as described in ACIM), then the Christ/Self can rise to the forefront of our lives.  And our lives will get immeasurably better.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Please be with me today as I seek to implement the law of attraction, which is what this passage for today is saying.  I do choose to hope only for those things that You would have for me, because You see the whole picture, and I see in part.  Be with me to implement–not to “effort” to have, for this would be thinking amiss.  If my heart tells me that I am to have something, then I am more likely to be on the right beam.

If I do not feel internally that I can manifest something, then trying to manifest that thing (whatever it might be) is wrong.  I would not go wrong today.  Help me to follow You, as always.  And may my words help others who might chance to read this blog.

Amen.

Return of Heaven

“If you cannot claim at least a small amount of love for your own Self, then neither can you claim your power, for they go hand-in-hand.  There is no ‘common good’ as you perceive of it, and you are not here to assure the continuance of society.  The worries that would occupy you can be let go if you but work instead for the return of heaven and the return of your own Self.  (A Course of Love, 16.26)”

Affirmation:  “May I claim some of my love personally.”

Reflections:

1 – Power

“Power” is not a negative word as Jesus uses it.  We need to claim our power, and in this claim do we regain heaven and our Self.  This Self, as we have mentioned repeatedly, is the Christ within.  And when we work in tandem with our unseen helpers, we will know this Self sooner rather than later.

2 – Don’t Proselytize

We are not to proselytize.  We are here to offer help and sustenance to those who look to us for some small bit of guidance.  But we are not to reach out to those who are not asking and/or are not ready for the message of salvation as we teach it.  Nor are we told to do great things in society.  This is a personal gospel, in that when we have accepted the tenets of  A Course of Love, we will naturally reach out into our various parts of society and make a difference.  But we will not seek to evangelize.  Everyone learns at his/her own rate and in his/her own time.  It is not up to us to say who is ready for only a smile.  We will be guided what to say and what to do.  We need not fear to overstep.

3 – We Fret

So many of us are worriers.  We think that God is somehow great enough to be our Creator, but not to take in  hand the problems that engulf us, and to lead us to solutions.  And so we fret.

4 – Worry

This fretting is a false doctrine.  It is the “pound of flesh” (from William Shakespeare) that we all seek to sacrifice to ensure a happy ending.  We somehow think that if we worry enough, we will have done our part, and then we will ensure that the ending will be positive for us.  This reasoning is the height of insanity.  God created us, and He knows our needs.  He will answer all our needs, though not all of our wants–for many of our wants are misguided wishes.  Genuine need is met, and often by miraculous means.  Let us turn aside from our fears, for fear it is, and let the love of others and ourselves prepare us to receive God’s revelations.  He will reach down to us (metaphorically) and answer us with heartfelt knowledge that solves the problems and eliminates the fears.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would let God solve any and all problems that I have, but not by my own abdication.  He will give me the power to know how to act, what to say or do.  It is only when I stay close to God that my days go well.  And I, like everybody else, would like a good day.

Be with me as I seek to welcome out the Self within.  This in itself will move me closer to heaven on earth.  Be with me as I seek to do Your will, which is also my own true will.  Help me to help others who need me also.

Amen.

Specialness vs. True Self

“While you desire specialness for yourself, your true Self will remain hidden and unknown, and since this is a Course that seeks to reveal your true identity, specialness must be seen for what it is so that you will desire it no longer.  You can have specialness or your true Self, but never both.  (A Course of Love, 15.3)”

Affirmation:  “I would deny specialness in favor of my true Self.”

Reflections:

1 – Egocentric Specialness

Specialness is an egocentric desire to be better than other people (or, occasionally, the reverse–worse than others).  For whatever reason, we think that if we are different, rather than the same, we will merit more in this life.  We think that being special means that we have more than others–always “more.”  But this reasoning is fallacious.

2 – Specialness in Other People

We need to recognize that nobody welcomes specialness in another person–except as that specialness seems to give to the other something that he/she wants.  We look for certain special things in our chosen life partner, but we often find that this specialness is a mirage, and then we may drift away, only to seek again a specialness that will never last.

3 – Competition

In our peer relationships, we do not want another to excel in the competition.  We want to be better.  But does that make us more loved?  I think not.  Cooperation in a common goal means that all peers are equals, and equals we are indeed in God’s eyes.  All of us have been given everything, ultimately.  But on this earth, this is not so, and so we often find ourselves envious of the goods of another.  We do not love in such a state of mind, and love is the great need of all of us (as always).

4 – Self/Christ

We need the true Self, which is the Christ within.  When we really consider these words, how could we desire anything other?  We do not receive knowledge of the Self when the go reigns.  Everything sought by the ego ultimately turns to ashes and dust in our hands.  All of the ego’s playthings are temporary.  But when we turn from the desire to be better than our brother/sister, we are primed to know the Self that we all share, for we are all One.  Then we know that true boons of this world, as well as the world beyond.  We have indeed found our way home.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would drop specialness today for all time.  Competition just wore me out, when I tried it, and try it I did for years.  Finally, in the last 20 years or so, my desire for cooperative living has won out over specialness.  Thank You for this insight and the willingess and ease with which I have been able to accomplish it.  Only You did that.

Thank You for the understanding that cooperation works much better than competition.  There is no way that competition, over the long haul, can bring anything but misery.

Help me to resist specialness in all its forms.  I would choose a right sort of humility, and I would choose to avoid arrogance.  I can do what You lead me to do, when You help me.  Only then, when You help.

Amen.

Love Others and Thereby See the Self

“Re-establishing your relationship with your brother is what will show your Self to you.  You have one brother who wears but many faces in your perception of who he is and, while you know him not, you cannot know yourself.  (A Course of Love, 12.9)”

Affirmation:  “I love my brother.”  

Reflections:

1 – Forgiveness of Our Brother/Sister

This passage from A Course of Love highlights the way of salvation from A Course in Miracles:  forgiveness of our brother (or sister).  Forgiveness is not mentioned in this brief passage, though, but we can know that in order to re-establish our relationship to our brother, we must forgive him for the various transgressions that we think he has committed against us.  Forgiveness is the only sane response, because these transgression are not real in actuality (being illusion in an illusory world), but, more important, these transgressions are a call for help and love.

2 – Adverse Happenings

If we reframe all the things that happen to us in this world that are adverse, we can recognize that those from our brothers and sisters that hurt us were actually their own calls of love.  We would rush to their side with aid (if they are open to our aid).

3 – See Our Self

When we re-establish our appropriate relationship to our brother, A Course of Love goes a step farther in recognizing the blessings that will come to us:  We will see our Self, perhaps (probably) for the first time.  This Self is the Christ within, and in this world the combination of divine and human that is within becomes established in the physical world as the elevated Self of form.  There is no higher goal for us in this world, but, of course, we must wish for this blessing for all others as well, and we must do our part to make that goal a reality for them as well.

4 – Perception

We see many sides of our brothers and sisters in our perception of them.  That is because perception is so variable, being projected from within our own self.  And our brother does seem to have a multifaceted personality, some parts of which we like and some parts of which we don’t like.  We too are variable to him/her.  Part of this variability is just the reflection of different moods in ourselves and our brothers and sisters.  Bad moods do not mean that the person is bad, only feeling down or depressed, or acting out attack or anger because the inside of the person is hurting so much.

5 – Insane Behavior

The good news is that we don’t have to figure out what makes another act as he/she does.  We just recognize the attitude or behavior as insane, when it is anything but loving, and then we forgive.  We do not forgive reality, for we are not seeing reality.  We forgive illusion, and we forgive for ourselves as well as for the other.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Naturally we are going to get upset with our brothers and sisters as we walk through this world.  They will sometimes make mistakes that involve us or our loved ones.  Help me to handle such times in an appropriate manner.  I realize that this may mean speaking up, but help me to know that anger does not have to rise to the surface.  But, if it does, You will see that my attitude is adjusted.  I would only love my brothers and sisters who make mistakes, even serious ones.

Be with me today as I settle down from a difficult yesterday.  We are very human, and our Christ/Self as the divine does not always appear obvious to us.  As time goes by, may more and more of our time be spent in glimpses of Christ-consciousness.  May we live the life that You would have us lead.

I know that You have already forgiven me for any misdeeds that I made yesterday.  I will always fall short if You do not pick me up.  Do pick me up and allow me to try again.

Amen.

How to Overcome Uncertainty

“Uncertainty of any kind is doubt about your self.  This is why this Course aims to establish your identity, for from it all the rest will come.  (A Course of Love, 12.8)”

Affirmation:  “My identity is my Self.”

Reflections:

1 – How Often?

How often are we uncertain?  I would venture to guess that this state of mind happens very frequently.  We don’t know which way to turn.  If we have been students of A Course in Miracles, we know to turn to the Holy Spirit for guidance.  Now that we are studying A Course of Love, we know to turn inward to the Christ/Self within.  But do we yet believe that the inner self is really the inner Self/Christ?

2 – Christ Within

Probably not.  And that is what brings on the doubt.  We don’t really believe that we are good enough to hold Christ within us.  It is true that he is hidden from us when we are obstreperous, attacking, and angry–but we are (are we not?) learning to move beyond such undesirable states of mind and heart.  We are listening to our heart, something that we have done sporadically all of our lives.  We are listening to our heart if we are following the recommendation of ACOL.

3 – Perfection

The doubt that we are good enough to hold the Christ inside will fall away as we accept the good news that Jesus is telling us.  He assures us that we do not have to be perfect.  We only need to identify which character traits we would relinquish, and then it is done for us.  The intention is all.  And then the doubt will fall away.  We know that all of our brothers and sisters, likewise, hold Christ within.  We are not unique.  This assurance will help us to realize that we are not lost in grandiose dreams.  We are instead encouraged to accept the grandeur of our being, the grandeur that God welcomes us as His children, eventually as co-creators with Him.  And when the Self who is within, the Christ who is within, is accepted fully, we will not have any sense of false humility, not any false humility that is actually arrogance that we cannot be as good as God has created us.

4 – Accept Others

When we establish our identity as the Self/Christ that we are within, we will reach out with more acceptance of other people.  We frequently act badly because of a poor self-image, and this poor self-image will vanish in the glory of recognizing who we really are.  Then our Self will move to create the elevated Self of form, and we will not be quite so ready to denigrate the physical in our lives.  Yes, the physical is an illusion, but the illusion is quite solid to us, and to deny this fact is a particularly unfortunate type of denial.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I move closer to a full acceptance of the Christ/Self within me, as he/she is within all of us.  May I not feel that to think this way is arrogance, but actually not to think this way is arrogance.  Would we deny what we are learning about who we really are?  Who Jesus is teaching us that we really are?

Jesus has told us that we are the same as he.  And yet we find this difficult to accept.  May we seek forgiveness for our stubborness, a forgiveness that we need to grant ourselves, for God does not condemn and therefore does not need to forgive us.  We do not need to condemn ourselves either.  

Be with me today as I ponder these deep truths from A Course of Love.  There is little doubt that I can attract whatever I wish, and today I wish for Your mercy.  Be with me as I seek to reach for the stars, even as all of us reach for the stars.  This is not arrogance or grandiosity, but the sanest sense.  Thank You for leading Jesus to guide us to this knowledge.

Amen.

How the Body Is Used

“The body could not help but be thus, as it was made with dual purposes in mind.  It was made to make real and then glorify a separated self, and it was made to punish that separated self for the separation.  Its creator had in mind what is reflected in the body:  self-aggrandizement and self-effacement, pleasure and pain, violence and gentleness.  (A Course of Love, 9.7)”

Affirmation:  “May I unite today, rather than live in dualism.”

Reflections:

1 – A Dualistic Manifestation

We know such variations in our everyday mood when we are tied to the body too closely.  We do know pleasure, and we can know gentleness–but not all the time, for the body is a dualistic manifestation.  We are often led astray by our desire for the things of the body, the pleasures of this world.  But these pleasures turn to ashes and dust in our hands when we have avoided the joys and attributes of God.  He gives us joy, harmony, peace, tolerance, kindness, gentleness, and the like.  Only when we place these intangibles above any material things do we find the peace of God that “passeth understanding” (from the Bible).

2 – Why So Dense?

Why do we so often seek to attract the things of this world, when we ultimately find that these things do not satisfy for long?  Why are we so dense?

3 – Ecstasy of the Spirit

It is because we have known such poverty of spirit that we do not know the ineffable heights to which the ecstasy of the spirit can lead.  We have bowed down to idols, with the ego’s firm approval.  We have had this part of ourselves, our ego, tell us what to do and when to do it.  And, when we learn that we can attract better things for ourselves, the first thing that we think about is the material.

4 – Material Needs

Be sure that God wants to meet our material needs as well.  He knows that we have physical bodies that desire warmth and comfort, but He would comfort our hearts as well.  And the only way that He can do this for us is to bind our will to His.  To turn to our egoic will is to deny the joys of God.  And to turn to the material to satisfy us is to turn to something insubstantial and non-lasting.  Everything in this world will one day turn to dust.

5 – Christ/Self’s Action

Be careful of what you set your heart upon, for you will surely have it.  This is quotation the source of which I have long forgotten.  But it speaks to me today.  We need God and He knows it.  He would come from our depths to speak to us today, through the Christ/Self that knows both human and divine.  The Christ/Self mitigates the dual nature of spiritual/physical, and turns all to productivity.  May we have the happiness that we all seek, and may we get very clear about what will bring us that happiness.  It is not solely the material, or even primarily the material.  It is the intangible from God..

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would pray that I know the dualistic nature of the body no longer, that I experience the Christ/Self within that unites physical and divine.  This is a tall order, for I have traveled far into oblivion.  But I would reverse that direction today, to know You as my Creator and Sustainer.

Be with me as I seek to live a calm and tranquil life, but one with happiness and joy.  You know that I need aliveness and vitality, and the union of physical/divine in the Christ/Self can bring all these blessings to me.  Thank You.

Amen.

The Christ/Self Avoids Bargains with God

“Rejoice that there is something in this world that you will not bargain with, something you hold sacrosanct.  This is your Self.  Yet this Self that you hold so dear that you will never let it go is precisely what you must be willing to freely give away.  This is the only Self that holds the light of who you are in truth, the Self that is joined with the Christ in you.  (A Course of Love, 7.7)”

Affirmation:  “May I freely ‘give away’ my Self today.”

Reflections:

1 – Human / Divine

We are meant to be both giving and receiving human beings, human and divine in one in our Self.  This Self is the Christ within.  We need to be careful, lest our ego, still present, has a field day with this idea.  We can easily slip into grandiosity, inflated notions of ourselves, and that would only strength the egoic notions that we have held for eons.

2 – Give the Self Away

There is something better for us.  We can give ourselves away to others, constantly, because we are receiving constantly.  This is the way that our union of the human and the divine in the Christ within is supposed to work.  And in the giving and receiving with our brothers and sisters, we will know joy, for we will be accomplishing what God has ordained that we do.

3 – Christ/Self Is Not Blasphemy

This Self does take some understanding.  We are not accustomed to thinking in these terms.  We think that to say that Christ is within us, the Self is within us, is the height of blasphemy.  Yet it is not.  Jesus indicated while on earth that he had nothing that we did not also.  Yet he had walked the whole pathway, and we are just beginning.  Yes, our egos have been weakened, but not dispelled, and we would do well to depend mightily upon the power of God to do for us what we cannot accomplish for ourselves.  Jesus will be with us also, in some ineffable way that we ourselves cannot understand, but which I take as a promise.  Jesus said in A Course in Miracles that he would come with “one unequivocal call” and he recommended that, if it would help us, we imagine that he is holding our hand, saying that this will be no “idle fantasy.”

4 – The Self Is Inexhaustible

Let us take Jesus at his word as we seek to give to our brothers and sisters today.  We can give and give, because the Self is inexhaustible.  We do not have to worry that we will burn ourselves out, for this is no sacrifice being asked of us.  This is pure love.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I give myself away today, certain that I am inexhaustible–as I give, I receive.  And may I think it not blasphemy to know that the Self is the Christ within.  May I see glimpses of this Self today.

Be with me all day long, as I try to walk the path that You would have me walk.  Help me to own my power, and to cooperate with You in guidance.  You do not mean for me to be a passive creature, pushed around as a puppet.  We are partners in guidance, and I seek and am certain that You will see that I find.

Thank You for this glorious day.  May all of us find You, but each in his/her own time.

Amen.

Wholly Human / Wholly Divine

“The Christ in you is wholly human and wholly divine.  As the wholly divine, nothing is unknown.  As the wholly human, everything has been forgotten.  Thus we begin to relearn the known as the One who already possesses all.  It is this joining of the human and divine that ushers in love’s presence, as all that caused you fear and pain falls away and you recognize again what love is.  It is this joining of the human and divine that is your purpose here, the only purpose worthy of your thought.  (A Course of Love, 5.1)”

Affirmation:  “Let’s join the human and the divine.”

Reflections:

1 – Christ Is Within

This passage is packed with meaning.  We are the Christ within, but we often do not recognize this, and we do not act on it.  Elsewhere this Christ within is called simply the “Self,” and perhaps this latter term is more acceptable to us.  Later on, in the remaining volumes of A Course of Love, we will hear a great deal of the sustainability of the “elevated Self of form.”  This is where we are headed, a Self that is physically present in this work, in a recognizable physical form–our body.

2 – What We Can Do

In joining the human and the divine, we have made of ourselves what we can do in this world.  It is not unlike what Jesus is credited with doing, and we ought not to feel that we are taking from him when we assert this truth.  Jesus has indicated that there is nothing that he has that cannot also be ours.  We are meant to be equals with Jesus, when we touch the divine within us, within what is actually physical form.

3 – Jesus

Of course, we don’t live in a ethereal body, as I believe that Jesus did in his appearances after the crucifixion (a personal belief, not a tenet of either A Course in Miracles or A Course of Love).  We live in a very physical body, and this body is holy (an ACIM tenet).  We do not have to apologize for being physical, in physical form.  This choice is all part of God’s plan for us.  And His plan was mutually chosen by us and Him, and so we do not have to feel guilty that we fell from grace.  We are as God created us (an ACIM tenet).  The separation has happened only in illusion.

4 – What God Wills

When we join the human and the divine, we will know the love that God wills for us in this world.  We will not put heavy expectations on others to fulfill our longings for love, especially romantic.  We will not make an idol of our beloved.  We will know that only God’s love is that which we actually seek.  And God will be there for us.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I ask that You help me to recognize that the human and the divine are One within me, and that I exemplify this union in my relationships to others.  Be with us today as we travel throughout this world.  Help us to exhibit the love that You would have us to show.

Amen.

Guidance from Our Hearts

“It is to our hearts that we appeal for guidance, for there resides the one who truly guides.  (A Course of Love, 3.17)”

Affirmation:  “May I appeal for guidance to my heart.”

Reflections:

1 – Christ Within

Christ is within our hearts, our higher Self, the elevated Self of form (the latter being what A Course of Love eventually explains).  We are not different from Jesus as the Christ; he just walked the whole pathway back to God, something that we have yet to do.  But in this first volume of ACOL, he is seeking to teach us, through our hearts, what we need to do to walk that pathway with him as our teacher.  By the final volume in the trilogy, he will have resigned as our teacher, saying that we no longer have need of him as a teacher.  He then becomes our companion along the pathway.

2 – God Seen with Inner Sense

The heart, as we have been saying, does not demand intellectual proof of anything.  We just sense, or intuit, what to say or do, and when we follow this guidance, we are led home to God.  We do not die; we live in this world, but we see God with an inner sense, an inner vision with non-physical eyes.  (A Course in Miracles implies the same.)

3 – Avoid Discouragement

We must not get discouraged along the way.  As A Course in Miracles pointed out, we are not meant to be without limitations in this world, but we are to overcome them.  Previously, in ACIM, we followed the guidance of our Guide, the Holy Spirit (or Great Communicator, or Universal Inspiration), but now, in ACOL, we are to follow the guidance that comes from our hearts in the Christ spirit, for we are now in the time of Christ.  I would believe that there is some overlap, and that here Jesus is speaking specifically to those of us who are students of A Course of Love, who are those who have studied and understood A Course in Miracles.

4 – Be Vigilant Against the Ego

Be vigilant today against letting our minds take over, for this is a prime egoic tendency, and with the ego in ascendancy, we will be unable to hear what our hearts are trying to tell us.  Jesus is bypassing the mind, the intellect, for just this reason–that the ego lives here, sometimes beyond the time that we would wish it.  We may have made a decision to let the ego wither away, just disappear, some time before this actually happens.  And we are especially prone to making mistakes (though not “sins”) if we don’t listen to these new words from Jesus, and open our hearts for their counsel.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would be contented today, sure in Your love.  When challenges seem to arise, I will recognize that there really is no challenge that Your love cannot solve.  We are not meant to be challenged, because when we follow Your guidance, we choose for all humankind, sure of Your guidance and sure of what we ought to do.

Thank You for the improvement in my day as the morning ebbs.  Help me not to drop into melancholy, but to know that You have everything in hand.  With You we are safe.  With You we are loved.  Your way is best for us.  And I ask that all that I touch today, including myself, find Your way to the blessings that You hold out for us.  May we know tranquility.

Amen.

God / Real World / Love / We Ourselves = Formless

“You are not form, nor is your real world.  You seek the face of God in form as you seek for love in form.  Both love and God are there, but they are not the form that your body’s eyes see.  Just as these words you see upon this page are symbols only of meaning far beyond what the symbols can suggest, so too is everything and everyone around you, those you see and those you only can imagine.  To seek the ‘face’ of God, even in the form of Christ, is to seek for what is forever without form.  (A Course of Love, 3.4)”

Affirmation:  “The real world is not form.”

Reflections:

1 – Being without Form

This passage, like many others that we have considered, is a part of the theology of A Course of Love.  We do not have to be delayed by theology (A Course in Miracles tenet), unless we so choose.  We need only to seek the practical (also an ACIM tenet).  But we may be interested in this theology.  Just what does being without form really mean?

2 – Positive vs. Negative

If the real world, as well as God and Christ, are without form, then we do not have to pay too much attention to the images that we make in our minds.  They are images that are symbols only–symbols of a great reality that we cannot, in this world, fully comprehend.  But we can get some idea that the intangibles–the love, joy, peace, harmony, serenity–are real.  The negative emotions that the ego/fear make, though, are not real–the anger, hate, stress, anxiety, attack.  These negative emotions will only hold us back from experiencing our inheritance in this world.  Let us leave these negatives behind today.

3 – Symbols of the Real World

We are in a world that is composed of symbols of the real world.  Even, Jesus says, the words on this page are symbols of a more real reality.  May we seek the fact of God today, but may we realize that seeking His face is a dead end, for He is not there in our images.  Be with God in communion today, and see if His reality does not touch us.  He will answer when we call.  Jesus will also, as he promised in A Course in Miracles.

4 – Time of Christ

We are heading into Christ-consciousness, for now is the time of Christ.  This is a further development from A Course in Miracles, which was the time of the Holy Spirit.  Let us try to come to terms with these differences between ACOL and ACIM.  But let us take unto ourselves the concepts only that we are ready to accept.  And then our lives will smooth out and we will live at peace in this world.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Of course, most of us have recognized for years that to image what You might look like is to make an image of a human being out of You, and we know that this is an incorrect way to imagine You.  But we are just beginning to learn that we too are formless, that reality is actually formless, and, of course, that love is formless.  In illusion, but in illusion only, is there a form.

Later on in A Course of Love, we will be led to join our inner Christ/Self with an elevated Self of form that we will live in as part of the physical world.   This is where we are headed when we head for Christ-consciousness in this world.  May we all accept the things that Jesus tells us so that that day might be soon.  And thank You for the blessings that such a transformation promises.

Amen.

Living with Happiness and Love and Miracles

“Without your vigilance it [the ego] may even seem to have become stronger than before and fiercer in its criticism.  It pretends to hold you to new standards, only to use what you have learned to increase your guilt.  Thus it wins in daily battles and works for your final abdication, the day that you give up and admit defeat.  It challenges your right to happiness and love and miracles, and seeks only to have you claim that living with such fantasies does not work and will not ever be possible here.  (A Course of Love, 2.19)”

Affirmation:  “happiness and love and miracles”

Reflections:

1 – Reminiscent of ACIM

This passage reflects the attitude of A Course of Love in regard to the ego, an attitude that is in agreement with A Course in Miracles.  The ego was dislodged by our study of ACIM, and this previous reading was necessary as a precursor to A Course of Love.  (Mari Perron herself, the scribe, read A Course in Miracles seven times prior to channeling ACOL.)  But we need to go beyond just dislodging the ego, and that is, I believe, why Jesus channeled the later work, A Course of Love.  We need his definition fo “wholeheartedness” to replace the void that perhaps we have felt with no dependence on the ego.  We have to step forward and let the heart take over a bit from the mind.  We do not ignore the mind, but we combine the heart and the mind into what Jesus calls “wholeheartedness.”  So mind and heart work in conjunction with each other.

2 – Mind & Heart = Wholeheartedness

The paragraph above is a paraphrase of a good bit of what is told us in the opening pages of ACOL.  If we can keep these distinctions between mind and heart and wholeheartedness close to ourselves, we will come a long way toward understanding the new way of learning, dubbed “observation.”  But in this first volume of ACOL we are still learning in a somewhat anomalous way.

3 – The Ego = the Nemesis

As Jesus describes the ego, a part of our belief about ourselves, the ego sounds a lot like previous conceptions of the “devil.”  Yet all of this idea is internal.  There is not outer devil, in the understanding of A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love.  We do it all to ourselves (though we do not blame the victim, as the Self makes decisions that the personal self knows not of).  We would recognize that in an egoic world, we cannot conceive of the good without the bad, God without the devil.  And this is also madness.  But it is the way that our minds work.  We need to better than this, and we can when we study ACIM and ACOL.

4 – Into the Time of Christ

We do have a right to happiness, love, and miracles.  And we would do well to step forward to claim that right.  The Christ within us, the Self, will guide us as we move beyond the time of the Holy Spirit, into the time of Christ.

5 – Move Forward

And may we move willingly, not clinging to the past because it is all that we have known.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would spend today being sweeter, and this means that I look aside from the ego.  I don’t resist the ego, for that would increase its power in my life–but I just turn away, focusing on the love that is at the center of my being.  I focus on the Self/Christ that is internal to me.  I focus on the happiness and love and miracles that are mine to choose.  And they are mine to choose.  We do not have to live a paltry life.  Glorious blessings are our birthright.

Be with me today as I seek to be a sweeter person.  That is all that one member of my family ever asked of me, and I have remembered his blessing fondly.  His desire was in stark contrast to the push to “succeed” and to “achieve” that everyone else in my family wanted.

But You want us only to follow Your pathway, and Your pathway is a way of ease and the cessation of difficulty.  You will lead us to every miracle that You have saved for us.  Our health can improve daily, our dispositions as well.  And we can be the sweet creatures that You, too, want us to be.

Amen.

The Ego Slowly Dies

“Once you are what you have learned, there is no room in which the ego can exist and,, banished from the home you made for it, it slowly dies.  Until this happens, the ego takes pride in what the mind has acquired, even unto the greater peace and contentment offered by your learning.  (A Course of Love, 2.19)”

Affirmation:  “I would see the ego die a little each day, including today.”

Reflections:

1 – A Wily Ego

I have often used the term “wither” in regard to the dying of the ego.  But Jesus hear speaks firmly, saying that the ego “slowly dies.”  The ego, as we all know, is wily.  And we even take unto ourselves the credit for our increasing peace and contentment while we learn; this is the ego speaking, for we ourselves, in the egoic state, are doing nothing to increase our peace and contentment.

2 – Christ-Consciousness

Jesus would have us identify with what we have learned, and I think that this is a secret to why many of us are heading now into the era of Christ, leaving behind the era of the Holy Spirit.  We are identifying with the higher Self, the Christ, in us, and when we do so, we recognize that looking inward and not perceiving that an external help, in the form of the Holy Spirit, is meant to make our decisions.

3 – Identify with the Christ/Self Within

But let us not move too carelessly, but move carefully.  The ego will still speak to us as long as it is alive in us, in even the smallest degree.  And we will be misled.  Let us commune with God, as A Course in Miracles asks us to do, and only when we know, internally, that a given course of action is right should we take the first steps in that direction.  This will then be the clue that we have identified with our learning, and that we are listening to the Christ within.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I have made many promises to myself and God about the ego, but still the ego has hung on.  I do know that greater degree of peace and contentment in which the ego can take comfort.  But this is thinking that goes awry.

Today I choose instead of the ego a sweeter living, a calmer me, a more tranquil identity.  This inwardly focused identity is the Self that I really, and this Self conjoins the human and the divine.  Until I can live it, let me experience this blessing in snatches in my heart.  I would be through with the intellect trying to think its way into heaven.

Amen.

How Might We Become Complete?

“The goal of this world is for you to stand on your own, complete within yourself.  This goal will never be reached, and only when you give up trying to reach it can you begin to learn anything of value.  You are complete only within God, where you endlessly abide.  Striving to be that which you can never be is the hell you have created.  (A Course of Love, 1.13)”

Affirmation:  “I would depend on God, my Father.”

Reflections:

1 – “Complete within Yourself”

This passage from A Course of Love builds upon the passage from yesterday’s posting, “Are You Loveless and Alone?”  The passage gives a strong warning that we would not actually strive for that which this world encourages:  “complete within yourself.”  This is not a natural way to be.  It is full of stress and pressure, and it ignores the fact that we are in a world filled with our brothers and sisters, to whom we are meant to reach out–to help them and to help ourselves.

2 – Complete Only in God

We are complete only in God, as this passage says.  He is our completion.  And, with Him and our brothers and sisters, we are part of the All.  When we strive to be that which it is not in our nature to be, we make our own hell.  And we are very unhappy in this hell that we have made.

3 – “Make” and “Create”

A Course in Miracles keeps separate the idea of what we “make,” as opposed to what God “creates.”  But A Course of Love is not so careful about this terminology.  Here the passage says that we have “created” the hell in which we live.  Perhaps we may loosen up a bit about the terminology that we use.  Both terms, “make” and “create,” still keep us in hell, until we turn back to what is natural to use as Co-Creators with God.

4 – Independence

We need to give up the goal of independence, a word that is implied but not used in this passage.  We need to stop trying to be “complete within” ourselves.  We can never reach such a goal, and we will find happiness only when we give up trying.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I learned a long time ago that I would never be complete as long as I tried to be super-independent.  When my ego ruled, I thought that this independence was the epitome of right living.  How wrong I was!  Of course, You know that I remembered You, but I even thought that you wanted me to be independent of my family, and because I was shy and introverted, I had a small, though close, circle of friends.

How different life is now that I have learned from Jesus what a mistake it is to seek to be so independent!  We are meant to serve and to be served.  We are meant to help others, and they in turn will help us.  We are meant to reach out.

Once I started reaching out, life settled down for me.  Thank You.  This passage, written long after I learned from You that I would live best if I reached out, does say the same thing in different words.  Maybe Jesus was my companion then, unrecognized (and feared) by me at the time.

We learn as we grow in Your grace.  Help us all to live a bit more interdependently today.  And may we know the truth of the passage for today from A Course of Love.

Thank You for still being there for me in the years that the ego ruled.

Amen.

Overcoming Frustration

“It is only through union with me [Jesus] that you learn because it is only in union with me that you are your Self.  All your effort is based on disbelief of this truth, and on your attempts to prove that this truth is not the truth.  All that this effort brings you is frustration.  (A Course of Love, 1.10)”

Affirmation:  “union with Jesus”

Reflections:

1 – Jesus

It is my interpretation, based on A Course in Miracles, and assuming that A Course of Love is a sequel channeled by Jesus, that Jesus is saying here that those who choose him must go “through” him to Christ-consciousness.  He is our chosen leader.  But A Course in Miracles mentions other teachers who will speak for God also.

2 – Edgar Cayce

This can be confusing, because A Course of Love seems to say that Jesus is the only way.  This is a belief held by many traditional Christian faiths as well.  And, continuing with the New Age theme, it is also a position taken by Edgar Cayce, the psychic from Virginia Beach, whose foundation is now the Association for Research and Enlightenment.

3 – Reject Controversy

But let us reject controversy, though it is important we be aware of differences of opinion about Jesus.  I choose him as my leader, my elder brother, and so I listen when I think that he is speaking to me through scribes such as Helen Schucman/Bill Thetford and Mari Perron.  I also entertain the idea that he may speak more directly to me, though I do not dwell on this thought, because I could easily be mistaken.

4 – Christ/Self

When we unite with the Christ in Jesus, we unite with the Christ in our Self.  That is what is being said in this passage for today.  And this is where we are heading, though it may take longer than we hoped.  We do not know how long it will take, because time is an illusion, and time to God means something very different from time to us.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I reach out to Jesus today, having made the choice of him as my leader in matters of faith.  Others choose differently, and that is, of course, perfectly acceptable before You (though many do not hold to this idea).  I would accept Jesus as my elder brother, who walked the pathway ahead of me, and thus can lead me through the brambles and thicket.

May all of us choose today the leader that we would have.  If we are not ready to make that choice, You will be with us nevertheless.  I do believe that You know what is happening in our illusion, for that is my experience (though others believe that You do not enter the illusion that is our dream).  

May we step aside from any controversy or theological stance that divides.  May we pray as One today, to You as our Creator.

Amen.

Power of Heaven to Earth

“Jesus accepted his power and so brought the power of heaven to earth.  This is what the Christ in you can teach you to do.  This is miracle-mindedness.  This is love.  (A Course of Love, P.37)”

Affirmation:  “May I learn how to bring heaven to earth.”

Reflections:

1 – Brothers to Jesus

We are once again, in this passage as throughout A Course of Love, to recognize ourselves as brothers to Jesus, he an elder brother (as in A Course in Miracles).  But, as he said more than once in A Course in Miracles, he does not have anything that we cannot have.  This early in A Course of Love he is still teaching us.

2 – The Time of Christ-Consciousness

Would we not want to learn how to bring heaven to earth?  To say that we can learn this is a bold statement, but one foreshadowed by A Course in Miracles.  Here A Course of Love indicates that it is the Christ in us that will teach us.  So we are herein moving farther along; we are no longer in the time of the Holy Spirit, but in the time of Christ-consciousness.

3 – The Way Takes Patience and Willingness to Learn

Of course, I do not believe that this shift is made easily.  We are taught in A Course in Miracles that the way may be taught, but it takes great patience and great willingness to learn (a paraphrase).  Not all of us have experienced Christ-consciousness at all, but there is the truth that before Christ-consciousness is sustained (something very, very rare), we see glimpses of the truth, the Christ-consciousness.  And we can take back to our everyday living, our minds and spirit, the truths of what we experienced in that altered consciousness.

4 – Miracle-Mindedness

Miracle-mindedness means love, and when we love enough, we will experience Christ-consciousness more and more of our time (not stated in A Course of Love, but interpreted by me).

5 – Our Daily Walk

Let us ask God today to grant us this blessing our normal walk through life, a daily walk.  And may He know that we are ready for experience.  Being ready does include not being afraid of the experience, and A Course in Miracles has shined a light into our minds that will eliminate much if not all of the fear.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

We would know You more and more, as we would open our hearts to the realization of the Christ within who is our Self.  We may not understand this, but if we ponder these thoughts, perhaps the Way will become clearer.

We ask for Awakening, Christ-consciousness.  May You prepare us as far as our willingness will allow.  And, before this greatest of blessings, may we see glimpses that do not frighten us.

Amen.