1 – Day 16
“Everything that can’t be seen but is, is consciousness. Accepting everything that can’t be seen, including the unknown, is full consciousness. Acceptance is key. You can’t accept what you fear. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 16)”
2 – Acceptance
Much emphasis on acceptance in the Dialogues of A Course of Love! Jesus reiterates here how very important it is for us just to accept—not to judge, not to regret, not to even feel sorry over. Of course, A Course in Miracles emphasized forgiveness of our brother throughout. And forgiveness is still the key to undoing the ego. But in A Course of Love, it is hoped that we, the readers, will have gone beyond the ego into another realm—not yet Awakening or Christ-consciousness, but closer than ever before. And to move into this new realm, acceptance of ourselves just as we are is crucial. We may see many imperfections in our personalities, and, objectively, there may be many imperfections. How do we handle this? We just turn aside from those parts of our personalities that we don’t want to keep. Importantly, we don’t resist, for in the resistance the ego reasserts itself. Resistance to undesired personality traits is a form of defensiveness, and the ego is strong in defensiveness. Also, defenses make what they would defend against (from A Course in Miracles).
3 – Self
So we accept. Just as we are. Knowing that we are whole and good in our real Self, the inner Christ Self. Our imperfect, personal self has been made only in illusions. None of the bad things that we thought we might have done to others, or that we did to others, has actually done anything at all—in reality. Of course, in the illusion the material objects seem very hard to us, very real. And we may need to ask for forgiveness from those we might have wronged. This sets the record straight. We are undoing what made wrong in the dream, the illusion. And sometimes this endeavor moves us closer to accepting our Self just as we are. We accept the personality, and, as the personality is cleansed by turning aside from those character traits that we wish to overcome, we are healed.
4 – Consciousness
We need to move into full consciousness, and we need, as this quotation points out, to move into consciousness without fear. We will not fear when we have allowed Jesus to guide our minds. Or allowed the inner Christ Self to guide our minds (as in A Course of Love)—or the Holy Spirit (as in A Course in Miracles). How can we give up our fears? We can but try, and in the loving of ourselves and others—when the love replaces the fear—we find rest for our spirits.
5 – Sickness
“Sickness is not sickness but rejected feelings. The rejected feelings exist as separate and forgotten physical manifestations until they are willfully remembered and accepted back into the spacious Self. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 16)”
6 – Spacious Self
We want to get over any and all sickness. If we conceive of the spacious Self as a larger, more all-encompassing Self Whom we are, we can imagine enfolding that sickness into this spacious Self, and then, miraculously, we are healed of sickness. Sometimes physical symptoms do linger, but that does not have to concern us. Healing is actually of the mind, and when the mind is healed, our real Self is healed.
7 – Healing
The physical manifestations may go away. We can ask God for a healing, engage in dialogue with our inner Self, and then miraculously learn of a new medication, a new treatment, or a new way of living that will eliminate the physical manifestations of illness. Pills, medication, are a form of magic, but Jesus does not counsel giving up pills if they are keeping fear at bay. He says in ACIM that the last thing that the fear-ridden mind needs is more fear, and we may have more fear if we throw away our pills. We are living an illusion, and if we are aware that the pills are healing our symptoms, then we will find that in our dream. We create our reality. And our ideas about that reality come true. This is a stern warning as well as a truth about the nature of our illusory reality.
8 – Illness
If we dialogue with the illness, talk to it, actually, we may see that we are no longer rejecting feelings about that illness. And the illness may spontaneously disappear. Our ideas about “reality,” our dream, are stubborn, though, and nobody should doubt the reality of a healing because of the continuance of physical symptoms (from ACIM).
9 – Reintegration
“The reintegration requires, of course, a change in what you want to prove to yourself. All you may now continue to seek proof of is that your feelings, rather than your thoughts about your feelings, reflect who you are, and that by acting on them, you will act in accord with who you are and thus in accord with the universe. (Dialogues of A Course of Love, Day 16)”
10 – Feelings
We need to get close to our feelings. We don’t need to be cerebral about it, meaning that we don’t need to bring the thoughts of our minds into the act. We need to experience feelings directly.
11 – Thinking
All of our lives we have been taught to discount feelings in favor of the so-called “rational” mind. Of course, the mind is not rational, and its judgments are always, always, faulty. The world teaches for reliance on judgment of our (ir)rational mind, but we need to recognize, as ACIM tells us, that judgment in our own minds is not possible. We cannot see past, present, and future in all its ramifications. We cannot judge aright. Not that we don’t judge aright, but that we cannot. Then we look to a Higher Power for His counsel. In ACIM, this is the Holy Spirit; in ACOL, this is the Self within, the Christ Who is the All with God.
12 – Holes
If we act on feelings, we will stop digging holes for ourselves. We will climb out of the holes that the ego dug for us. If we act on feelings, we will first experience the happy dreams the Holy Spirit sends; and then we will move ever closer to the reality that the Awakening will show us. Know, though, that we cannot merit Awakening. It is God’s gift, given us when we are ready. And being good and spiritual will not guarantee readiness. Only God knows what in us He is looking for, before we move into Christ-consciousness (Awakening).
13 – Intuition
“When you feel an ‘intuition’ you respond differently than you do to unwanted feelings that you are quick to want to ‘do something’ about. If all feelings were treated more like intuition is treated–with a ‘knowing’ that the feeling has come to tell you something that is as yet unknown to you, but nevertheless for your benefit, you would go a long way toward acceptance. (A Course of Love: Dialogues)”
14 – Spacious Self
We need to accept all feelings, even those that seem borne of fear rather than love. By so doing, we encompass all feelings with the spacious Self of Christ-consciousness, and the fear, held within the love, is dissipated.
15 – Illness
Illness is a form of rejected feelings. When sickness comes upon us, we are likely to try to reject it as an unwanted intrusion into our world. But we must hold within ourselves these feelings, knowing that illness is a form of external searching. When we accept all feelings, whether of loneliness or despair, anger or grief, we join with the spacious Self.
When we live in the present, we are accepting of all feelings by living the Christ-consciousness that we have all so desired to call our own.
16 – Paradise
Paradise is re-found when the fear that had been expelled is welcomed back by the embrace of love. No feelings are bad; all are to be accepted, and kept if we deem them good and “loved” into a better feeling if we deem them bad. The rejection of fear thoughts helped to create the hell that overcame our world. Welcoming back the fear thoughts, while encompassing them always within love thoughts, will lead us back to paradise.
Prayer:
Dear Father/Mother,
May I come to understand my feelings in the same way that I have, over the years, come to accept intuition as valid guidance. May I come to understand and to act on what my feelings are telling me, but only if they are loving feelings for my brothers and sisters.
May I encompass fear with love, rejecting nothing, because rejection will only act as a force field to make the fear stronger. Thank You for these thoughts by Jesus for this day.
Many people pray for Awakening, for Christ-consciousness. And I am among those people. Take from me all part of my personal, little, self which is hindering the bestowal of this great blessing. Like Michaelangelo, carve away the parts of the block of my personality that are in the way of the Self Whom you want me to display always. I know that it is only these excess blocks of marble that are keeping me from You. I would move closer to You today. Now and forever.
Amen.
MIRACLES EACH DAY 