Real Freedom...

"There is no death.  The Son of God is free.  Death is a thought that takes on many forms, often unrecognized.  It may appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness, and lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as you are not may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are reflections of the worshipping of death as savior and as giver of release." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 163, 1:1-3

It takes some quiet reflection to really take in the truth of this passage from ACIM.  "Death takes many forms, often unrecognized."  And it's all in the mind... the mind that imagines itself separate and vulnerable and at effect with the world around it.  The mind that imagines that it would be somehow better off if someone or something were different.  We want to delete whole parts of our lives and replace them with others.  We want to delete some people, and acquire others.  All of these things are the out-picturing of the idea of death, because they involve the coming and going of the transitory and inevitably unfulfilled.  They all involve the serial adventures of a separate body that doesn't have a lot of time here on earth, so hey, we better make the most of it.

"There is no death.  The Son of God is free."  We are already the Son of God.  We don't need to change the world around us for that to be true, or to escape from someone or some situation in order to realize it.  The world is just the out-picturing of the belief we're not free.  That we're imprisoned in a body, at the mercy of a separate world and a capricious God.  There is no such world, except in our tortured minds and perceptions.  Because as long as we cling to the notion of separateness and separate interests, we believe in death.  We believe and experience as true that someone or something has to die so that someone or something else can live.  Eat or be eaten.  Stand up for yourself.  You and me against the world.  There are many versions of the story of me.

The Course tells us that "It's impossible to worship death in any form and still select a few you would not cherish and would yet avoid, while still believing in the rest.  For death is total.  Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die.  No compromise is possible." What this means is that we are either aware of ourselves as One Mind and Spirit, the Sons of God, or we are believing that we're separate bodies in a dog eat dog world.  We can't have it both ways. 

There is no death, because God is All, and there is nothing and nowhere else.  Where would death be?  Outside of All?  There is no death, because we live and move and have our being in and as this All.  There is no death because there is One Infinite Self that we share for all eternity. 

"What time but now can Truth be recognized?  The present is the only time there is.  And so today, this instant, now, we come to look upon what is forever True." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 164, 1:1-3

We're All God's Teachers

"A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one.  His qualifications consist solely in this: somehow, somewhere, he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else's.  Once he has done that, his road is established and his direction is sure.  A light has entered the darkness.  It may be a single light, but that is enough.  He has entered an agreement with God even if he does not yet believe in Him.  He has become a bringer of salvation.  He has become a teacher of God." -- ACIM; Manual for Teachers 1.1:1-8

A Course in Miracles repeatedly reminds us that we are all teachers and messengers for God. In the Manual for Teachers it points out that whenever we see that minds are joined, we acknowledge this teaching function of forgiveness and atonement that is the miracle.  And so our bodies are given a different purpose.
 
"The central lesson is always this: that what you use the body for it will become to you.  Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful.  Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak it suffers and it dies.  Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy.  Because it is holy it cannot die.  When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all.  The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition.  Yet the teacher of God does not make this decision alone.  To do that would be to give the body another purpose from the one that keeps it holy.  God's Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is.  He does not suffer either in going or remaining.  Sickness is now impossible to him." -- ACIM; Manual for Teachers 12.5:1-12

Focusing on forgiveness and Oneness rather than the next meal, the car that needs fixing, or the job we have to do... this is the shift we make as we accept our true function in the world.  In the Bible, Jeshua ben Joseph is quoted as saying, "Take no thought for what you will say, what you will eat, what you will wear... but seek first the Kingdom, and all these things will be given."  In other words, when we fulfill our natural function of Oneness with God and with each other by practicing the miracle of forgiveness, the world we're dreaming naturally reflects Wholeness as fulfillment in every moment, in the form of what we seem to be needing or doing.

The Course calls the perception of unfilled needs sickness and sin.  It's the out-picturing of our imagined separation from the Wholeness of God.  The good news is that as we accept this Oneness and forgive our perceptions of separateness however they show up, we find that we never lacked anything at all.

"Oneness and sickness cannot coexist.  God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while.  It is a conscious choice.  For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences.  The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?  Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers.  They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.  Yet they are not deceived by what they see.  They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful.  UNITY ALONE is not a thing of dreams.  And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming, and yet surely theirs." -- ACIM; Manual for Teachers 12.6:1-11

We're all God's teachers.  UNITY ALONE is all that is ever taught, and all that we ever need to learn.

Decisions, Decisions

In this so-called life, decisions make up every minute of every day.  Even my youngest grandson is choosing his state of mind minute by minute, second by second.  I can see the impulses arise and cross his little three-month-old face like clouds.  I can see the second he decides to smile instead of cry.  I can see him struggle to give voice (and I mean voice) to his discomfort.  Little Kai Joseph is just like us... choosing to react to external forms, or to interact with the Love that is in him and all around him, always.

We're not talking about will-power here.  That's the mistaken belief that we can exert control over our bodies and other forms in the external world.  As Mary Baker Eddy put it, "Will power is a product of belief... and is not a faculty of Soul.  Hence it cannot govern man aright."  And A Course in Miracles says it very simply: "There is no Will but God's."

So what are all the decisions we make every day?  We have to first remember that all decisions are of the mind, and have nothing to do with form.  My grandson's decisions may reflect in his face, but it's all in his mind.  Similarly, our minute-by-minute decisions are mental processes.  The illusion of a world arises from these mental projections.  "Perception is a mirror, not a fact.  And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward." (A Course in Miracles; Workbook 304, 1:3-4)

Decisions, decisions... how can we make decisions, then, if we're not in our right mind... if we think we've made a will other than God's?  Again, A Course in Miracles gives us a way out: "Let us today be truly humble, and accept what we have made as what it is.  The power of decision is our own.  Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear.  What rises to awareness then will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now.  And it will take the place of self-deceptions made but to usurp the altar to the Father and the Son." (A Course in Miracles; Workbook 152, 8:1-5)

Decisions are continuous, and we are always looking at only two choices, two mental states.  Our True Self, the Son of God Who is Peace and Love and Life and Reality... or an illusion of a separate self, which projects as fear and lack and limitation and death.  We know which we're choosing by our state of mind. 

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this:  All power is given unto you in earth and Heaven.  There is nothing that you cannot do.  Then let the Son of God awaken from his sleep, and opening his holy eyes, return again to bless the world he made.  In error it began, but it will end in the reflection of His holiness." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 191, 9:1-2 & 10:1-2

Gang Wars

"You always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you.  And what you choose is what you think is real.  Simply by never using weakness to direct your actions, you have given it no power.  And the light of Christ in you is given charge of everything you do." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section VIII, 2:3-6

I was watching some crime drama on T.V. (don't ask me why!) and I saw very clearly the choices that led a young man from a good family to become a member of a street gang... and not just a member, but an active participant in an ongoing war against other street gangs.  The choices he made were always based on who he thought he was, and where his safety and fulfillment could be found.  Wrong choice after wrong choice led him to a nasty ending.  Does this sound familiar?

I love how extreme examples in our lives and cultures serve to show us our own mental choices.  We project them and create cultural stories and tragedies to pretend they are 'out there.'  We live in perpetual cultural gang wars... clashing ideas, values, stories, all seemingly competing for our time, our allegiance, our money, and our very souls.  What gang do you belong to?  What are your colors?

I used to belong to the 'spiritual' gang.  We tend to act like we're not a gang, but we are.  We pretend we're lacking enlightenment, so we have to perpetually seek fulfillment.  We attack the culture and society that seem to prevent us from living as we want to live, that doesn't seem to honor us or understand us.  We pretend to be 'better' and more evolved, and so we are entitled to judge the other gangs.  We think our safety and fulfillment lie in these games.  We are no different than any other gang.  We are mentally at war with the world.

Every country, every culture, every political party, every passionate cause, and even every family has its colors and its gang culture.  We all belong to gangs within gangs, and sometimes our gang wars overlap and intertwine with each other.  But make no mistake... every conflict, no matter how mild, is the result of gang wars, always based on choosing to value a weak and fictional self as real.  "Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you.  In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, "My brother, choose again."  He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the Truth." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section VIII, 3:1-3 

How simple to realize that we are always choosing between the false self, the gang member, or our True Self, the Christ in us!  The false self is like that boy in the crime drama... he thought he was weak and limited, thought he needed to belong to a gang to be strong and protected.  Was he ever wrong!  And so are we.  "The images you make cannot prevail against what God HimSelf would have you be.  Be never fearful of temptation then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ's strength [your True Self] prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before.  You are as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, regardless of the images you see.  What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell.  Yield not to this, and you will see all pain, in every form, wherever it occurs, but disappear as mists before the sun." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 31, Section VIII, 4:1-2 & 6:1-3

Wow.  This seems too good to be true, doesn't it?  And besides, we are loyal to our gangs.  Our family is still our family.  We should be grateful to belong to (fill in the blank).  Our family, country, church, school, group, etc.  is so much better, isn't it?  What if we belonged to that country?  What if we had those people as relatives?  What if, what if, what if... an endless litany of justification for our choices of misplaced allegiance and mis-identification.  We feel safe and protected by the numbing familiarity of belonging.  And we never question.

But we can always choose again.  As Scarlett said, "Tomorrow is another day."  Each instant is new, fresh, infinite in possibility and beauty.  We have only to choose again.  Gang wars only go on as long as we think there are separate, conflicting gangs.  When we remember that we are collectively One Self, one with God and everything that lives, there can be no more war... only endless love, appreciation, and joy.  We have simply awakened to the Truth, safe in God.

"Learn then the happy habit of response to all temptation to perceive yourself as weak and miserable with these words:  I Am as God created me.  His Son can suffer nothing.  And I Am His Son.  Thus is Christ's strength invited to prevail, replacing all your weakness with the strength that comes from God and that can never fail.  And thus are miracles as natural as fear and agony appeared to be before the choice for holiness was made.  For in this choice are false distinctions gone, illusory alternatives laid by, and nothing left to interfere with Truth." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section VIII, 5:1-7

See No Evil

"See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." -- 17th Century Japanese Proverb

Sometimes the oddest things inspire me.  This proverb, which comes from a carving above the door of the Tosho-gu Shrine in Nikko, Japan, has been a part of our culture as long as I can remember.  It's one of those things that everybody says, but nobody actually does.  There was a hilarious movie (See No Evil, Hear No Evil with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder) that played on that very thing.  Part of their promo line was, "The blind guy couldn't see it.  The deaf guy couldn't hear it."  Obviously when you're blind, you have no choice but to see no evil... or anything else.

But of course this proverb refers to a deeper meaning, one that is embedded in collective consciousness, even though we choose to ignore it.  There is no real evil.  There is only an upside-down projection, and our reaction to those projections (after all, the word 'evil' is the word 'live' spelled backwards!).  Action (projection) and reaction to our own projections maintains the momentum, and is the karmic wheel of suffering referred to in eastern philosophy.  

Another way to put it is in terms of quantum physics.  There is nothing there until we look at it.  It is only energy, waves of energy, until we look and project that something is there.  This is called the complementary principle, and says that it is the observer that creates the appearance (particles) upon observation (projection).  Until then, everything remains pure potential, pure unconditioned energy.

Jeshua ben Joseph, whose birth we're celebrating at this time of year, said it this way: "Resist not evil." (Matthew 5:39)  And later in the Bible we're told to "Overcome evil with Good." (Romans 12:21) You could paraphrase this to say, you can't fight evil by seeing it (that is what gives it the illusion of reality!)... but you can dissolve the reality of illusion by knowing this Truth and seeing only the Good, which is another name for God. 

I found this passage in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy: "We must learn that evil is the awful deception and unreality of existence.  Good is not helpless; nor are the so-called laws of matter primary, and the law of Spirit Secondary.  There is but One primal cause [GOD, Who is All-Good].  Therefore there can be no effect from any other cause, and there can be no reality in aught which does not proceed from this great and only Cause.  The spiritual Reality is the scientific fact in all things." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 207, Lines 9, 20, and 27

The scientific fact in all things is Spiritual Reality.  Quantum physics couches it in different terms, but says the same thing.  It really is the scientific reality... and spiritual wisdom has been telling us this in all cultures and all languages for all of recorded history.  This everyday proverb is a good example. 

But how?  How do we do this?  Well, how do you see anything differently?  You can change your mind about a person, so that one who was previously someone you liked or even loved, you now find offensive, or vice versa.  What changed?  Your mind.  Who changed it?  You did.  You can change your mind about most anything, and do on a daily basis.  The problem is not the ability to change how we see things.  It's what we're basing those choices on.

We are constantly looking 'out there' for reasons and validity, not remembering that it's our projection in the first place... we're reacting to our own mental constructs, not reality.  These 'false gods' give us the illusion of not being responsible... but at what price?  If we base our changing mind on trying to manipulate or change something 'out there', we're basing our choices on phantoms, on illusions, the false gods and idols of the world we've projected  by our split mind.  However, if we first understand the Truth of Being, that we live and move and have our being in the Allness and Oneness of God, of All-Good, then that's all we can project and see.  We begin to take responsibility for sight, and understand the Biblical injunction to "Choose this day whom you shall serve."

A Course in Miracles happily reminds us, "The images you make cannot prevail against what God Himself would have you be.  Be never fearful of temptation [evil] then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again." (ACIM Chapter 31, Section VIII, 4:1-2)  And again, "You are as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, regardless of the images you see." (ACIM Chapter 31, Section VIII, 6:1)  We have a choice about what we project and therefore see in this world... but no choice in Reality.  Our Reality is safe in God.  To see no evil in this world is the result of remembering that Truth. 

"Nothing inharmonious can enter being, for Life IS God." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 228, Line 5

"Learn then, the happy habit of response to all temptation to perceive yourself as weak and miserable with these words:  I am as God created me.  His Son can suffer nothing.  And I am His Son." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section VIII, 5:1-4

The Choiceless Path

I just read a book about the idea that everything is already decided, predestined. It posits that choice is just an illusion. Of course, it was based on the assumption that material life is our reality, and that it has life and substance and meaning. But what if predestination simply refers to our spiritual Reality?

While walking in this dream we call life, we seem to move in endless reaction to the world around us. Sir Isaac Newton described it with his Third Law of Motion: "Whenever a first body exerts a force F on a second body, the second body exerts a force -F on the first body. F and -F are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction." This endless action and reaction, whether physical or emotional or mental, is what constitutes the sowing and reaping Jesus talked about, or the wheel of samsara referred to in Eastern philosophy, the wheel of karma. In this endless spinning of action and reaction, it seems the only real choice is the choice to get off the wheel. But how do we do that? This has been the quest of wise women and men throughout time.

I like to think about it this way: even a wheel has to be spinning in space. What is the space that contains the wheel? What is the "I" that contains all my ideas about the world? Moving our attention to the unchanging, limitless Self that holds it all, we realize what Lao Tzu meant by these words: "There is a Being, whose name I do not know. It surrounds everything with Its Love, like a garment. I do not know Its name, and so I call it Tao, the Way... and I rejoice in Its Presence."

I call this Presence God, or our True Self... but you can use whatever name is big enough, inclusive enough for you. Names and symbols shift and change, but God remains unchanging, as do we. Consider the following quote from A Course in Miracles: "As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind; in all awareness and in all response." (A Course in Miracles; Workbook 152, 5:1-3) This is not the action and reaction of Newton or karma, but is the unchanging, choiceless Reality that holds everything in Its embrace.

Our true Life is not as we imagine it to be when we're bouncing around like ping pong balls in endless reaction to the people and circumstances of our lives. The choiceless, effortless Path is revealed as we come to realize that "The choice you fear to lose you never had." (ACIM; Chapter 27, Section III, 7:4) Only through forgiveness do we find release from the imagined cause and effect of the material dream, from the wheel of samsara. And in the quiet light of forgiveness we see the eternal, choiceless Love that is our true Life.

"In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 27, Section IV, 1:1

The Only Content

"There are no powers of evil external to yourself. Discords have no external existence. Resolve them within your own consciousness." -- Joel Goldsmith

"Perception can make whatever picture the mind desires to see. Remember this. In this lies either Heaven or hell, as you elect." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers 19, 5:2-4

"The kingdom of God is within you." -- The Bible; Luke 17:21

Such responsibility. To know that we're not victims of circumstances or people. To realize that we're the dreamer of our own dream. To really know that our reality has always remained untouched and perfect and pure, within our very own consciousness. The form doesn't matter... the content is always God. Remembering this is our responsibility... and when we do remember we're dreaming, there is such freedom! As Joel Goldsmith put it, "There is an insight in man that visions through all appearances."

We decide every moment of every day where our holy attention lies... where we think we are in consciousness. This affects nothing in reality, but affects everything in the dream. We are only the decider within the dream. Safe in God, all is changeless and free and eternal. So the only real choice, ever, is to remember or not. When we know we're safe in God, when we remember who we are as emanations of God, then the dream will reflect that. And that's all that really matters. That's our only purpose here.

We may be artists or teachers or factory workers... but our purpose is united and one. We're all here to reflect Heaven on earth, to remember who we are, as One in God. Whatever we do, wherever we go, we can make remembering who we really are in God our motive. Then everything is translated in the dream into a holy journey with a holy purpose. The form doesn't matter. God is the only content.

"I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven." -- The Bible; Matthew 16:19

Mind Awake

"God creates only Mind Awake. He does not sleep, and His creations cannot share what He gives not, nor make conditions which He does not share with them." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 167, 8:1-2

"God is All-in-All. From this it follows that nothing possesses reality nor existence except the Divine Mind and His ideas. The Scriptures also declare that God is Spirit. Therefore in Spirit all is harmony, and there can be no discord; all is Life, and there is no death. Everything in God's universe expresses Him." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 331, Lines 11-17

A Course in Miracles points out that in our everyday life, our dreaming minds are simply blank. What passes for life is really nothing at all. What passes for thinking is really a void. Only when we are reflecting God are we Mind Awake. "No one really sees anything. He sees only his thoughts projected outward. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. The mind is actually blank when it does this." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 8, 1:2 & 5, 2:3-4

There is only One Mind, and that Mind is All. So the endless preoccupation with an illusory self... a home for a self, and work for a self, and food and clothing and transportation for a self, and companionship for a self, and a healthy body for a self... the endless litany of needs and wants that the ego, the illusory self, seeks... this cannot be at all. If God is All, then what appears to be unlike the All is simply a thought form, a projection, a very convincing mirage.

Tell me, what do magicians do to convince you of the reality of their illusions? They redirect your attention, misdirect and distract. Have you ever noticed that every time you glimpse the profound Truth that there is no world as we imagine it, your life gets very busy, or very involved, or that you get sick or have some drama, or simply feel very tired and your mind wants to shut down for a while and distract itself? Who is doing this? Who is the dreamer of your dream?

There is only one dreamer of your dream, and that is you. Just as there is only One Mind in Reality. You chose to dream instead of remain Awake in God. So now the choice must be made again, and yet again. "Choose this day whom you shall serve."

We are always and only Mind Awake. Dreams change nothing in reality. But how long would we suffer in dreaming? For the love of God, let's forgive ourselves and all our dreams, and return to our right Mind... Mind Awake and Aware of Truth, Love, Light, and Life eternal.

"While thoughtless ideas preoccupy your mind, the Truth is blocked. Recognizing that your mind has been merely blank, rather than believing that it is filled with real ideas, is the first step to opening the way to Vision." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 8, 3:2-3

Full Disclosure

"Covering iniquity will prevent prosperity and the ultimate triumph of any cause. Ignorance of the error to be eradicated oftentimes subjects you to its abuse." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 446, Lines 30-32

"I will there be Light. Let me behold the Light that reflects God's Will and mine. I will there be Light. Darkness is not my will." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 73, 10:2-3, 11:3-4

"And do I want to see what I denied because it is the Truth? This final question, which is indeed the last you need decide, still seems to hold a threat the rest have lost for you. Forget not that the choice of sin or Truth, helplessness or Power, is the choice of whether to attack or heal. For healing comes of Power, and attack of helplessness. And if you choose to see a world without an enemy, in which you are not helpless, the means to see it will be given you." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 21, Section VII, 5:14, 6:5, 7:1-2, 9:4

I woke up this morning with a vague sense of dis-ease. And I just sat with it, allowing thoughts to arise and not attaching to any of them. I find it funny that there is not one thing wrong with my life at this point, that everything is flowing and very good from a human perspective, and yet this sense of something missing still arises. A Course in Miracles repeatedly reminds us that this is what the false self is made of... the need to generate more, and it doesn't even matter more of what. This requires the need for something more. The need for something more requires a this and a that. Oneness is not conducive to desire and suffering.

So as I watched this dog and pony show unfold in my own delusional thoughts, I realized that the normal tendency is to cover up what is really going on with activity or with projection... as in, "look what he/she is doing!" So that we can dissociate from our need to be separate and feed our appetite for more. I just got a huge rush as I wrote that sentence. Herein lies the key.

Sometimes the appetite for more shows up as the need to do stuff around the house, fixing, rearranging, redecorating, feng-shui-ing... just so it's more something. Sometimes the appetite shows up as a compulsive need to hear more of other people's stories to try and get what they have, or to try and help them, acting wise as if we know something they don't. Sometimes the appetite shows up as a need to stay within the familiar (more of this, please), so that we are never really outside our comfort zones. I could go on and on here, since the ingenuity of the ego's desire for more is legion. It is especially sneaky in the so-called spiritual arena, where the appetite shows up as the desire to hear other people's stories about spiritual stuff, or to read more, or to try a new person or path. But even the desire to help others is this appetite for more in disguise... wanting to appear to be more spiritual, even to ourselves. This is truly delusional. Since God is All, who is there to be spiritual, or non-spiritual?

A Course in Miracles puts it bluntly: "One illusion cherished and defended against the Truth makes all Truth meaningless, and all illusions real." (A Course in Miracles; Chapter 22, Section II, 4:4) So the question of seeing ourselves with full disclosure becomes imperative for Awakening. Where am I hiding this lust for more that keeps the illusion of a separate self spinning with abandon? In the lust for food, for new experiences, for new people, for new stories? Or the lust for isolation and safety? Or the lust for 'harmless' pleasures like movies and books? This is the last unanswered question: do I want to see? Do I really want to know?

Wanting is not bad... it's a mistake. The mistake is that something more of anything will ever satisfy and complete the ego. The mistake is that this subterfuge keeps you caught in the illusion of a life, a separate material self with a so-called spiritual side. You remain as God created you, not as you imagine yourself. And yet your dream life is lived as you imagine you. As Jeshua ben Joseph put it: "Ye are Sons of God, and yet ye die like men." We choose this illusion of separation and suffering because we want more. It's the wanting that kills us. It's the wanting that perpetuates the illusion of self that lacks something. It's the Seven Deadly Sins played out as my life, and your life, and the lives of everyone who comes into this dream world. Grandiose saga or utter tragedy, a story of earthly love or of darkest revenge, the mechanism and the end result is always the spinning of illusion, and more illusion. More. Always more.

I can Awaken in any given moment, and see myself as God created me: Perfect, Whole, Complete in every way, now and always. All that is necessary is the desire for full disclosure. In the face of discomfort, dis-ease, dis-satisfaction, be ruthlessly honest: do I want to see what I denied because it is the Truth?

"Now must you choose between your Self and an illusion of yourself." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 22, Section II, 6:6

A Brighter Day

"And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God." -- The Bible; Revelation 12:6

My whole life I have been withdrawing from one thing or another. Always, like the woman in Revelation, I have withdrawn to a quiet wilderness in one form or another, a place where I can breathe and hear the Voice again. This "place prepared of God" doesn't have to be literal, in the external. It can and must eventually be the wilderness within... the unexamined stories and assumptions that make up your particular life stream. Within your unexamined stories, hidden by them, is the "place prepared of God." It's always with us. Immanuel, God with Us. Always.

There is of course nothing wrong in withdrawing, nor is there anything right about it. It is simply one way of gaining perspective, of seeing through the dream. The only danger lies when we think it is the external act that is the point. The external matters not at all. Its only significance is that it may seem to lead us to the "place prepared of God" within us.

There is nothing to fear in the dream, and certainly nothing to run and withdraw from. And yet there is a need felt by every heart for silence and a deeper knowing. We long for home, for the deepening awareness of God that is our True Self. We have an innate longing for clarity and Truth. Sadly we settle for substitutes, distortions of truth. Just as we substitute for real nutrition with processed foods that don't nourish the body, we substitute for our Spiritual Reality with manufactured truths, dreams and idols that leave the soul starving.

So how do we withdraw from the world of half-truths, this world of slow spiritual starvation? How do we find the "place prepared of God" that is our salvation from the nonsense we have perpetuated in the name of being 'good' or 'practical' or whatever? How do we find our way when our own stories and manufactured values are designed to obscure the way? They are the ego's insurance policy that we will never walk away. Because, so the story goes, if you walk away you will be bad, or irresponsible, or cruel, or thoughtless, or crazy, or (fill in the blank).

What stories bind you? What keeps you from withdrawing, from gaining the perspective that distance will bring you? They are now and always your own creations... they are all made up. Not one of them has any power or any hold on you other than your own determination to be right in choosing them. Give it up. Would you rather be right than happy?

A brighter day dawns when we are willing to withdraw every single day to the "place prepared of God," to spend time listening to a different Voice. This Voice speaks always of Love and Goodness. This Voice never blames, and gently guides us in paths of Good for All. This Voice has no favorites, and no exceptions from its Love. This Love is All-in-All. And yet this Love appears to be obscured by our unexamined stories of praise and blame. And so we flee into the wilderness of our own stories, braving the savage wildness to find our "place prepared of God." It's here, always here. But we have to brave the wilderness to find it.

"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." -- The Bible; Psalm 30:5

The Inner Voice

"The experiences that come to us when we live in obedience to the inner Voice are miracles of beauty and joy. Let us not be afraid to follow that Voice even if at first we are so poorly attuned to it that we do not hear it correctly. There is no need to be afraid of mistakes or even of failures. Any mistakes which may be made by a person who is obedient to the still, small Voice will be few, and he can quickly pick himself up again and soon be wholly immersed in the Spirit of God. Mistakes of the personal sense are not fatal; not one is forever. Success in God is forever, but human failure is only the illusion of a day." -- Joel Goldsmith

"The 'Divine Ear' is not an auditory nerve. It is the all-hearing and all-knowing Mind, to Whom each need of man is always known and by Whom it will be supplied." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 7, Lines 23-26

Oh, what a misunderstood and abused phrase: the Inner Voice. It is a made-to-order tool for the ego, a perfect way to do what we want by 'following guidance.' We can follow our fears and say, "I heard a 'no,' so I am not doing it." Or we can indulge in fantasy and say we are following our hearts. The personal self is a maze of vested interest and self-justification. Which voice are you listening to? How can you know?

The Inner Voice is not personal. It is closer than personal. It never indulges the personal self, yet it always leads us in ways of utter fulfillment. Yes, this seems like a paradox. But if we can even for a moment release all need to define or justify or weave a story about whatever the Voice says, the transmission is clear and we can simply trust that within the big picture, even the little self is fulfilled.

One way to know which voice you are following is this: how much of your time and attention goes into the comfort and indulgence of the personal self? In other words, how much time and attention goes into taking care of the physical body (this includes your 'personal' environment, care of the home, gardens, and yard, your car, your family, your animals, your stuff), of the emotional body (intimate relationships, talking on the phone to friends, e-mails, escapist reading or watching movies, recreational eating and drinking, even playing music and other artistic endeavors, wanting to be humanly good or successful, etc.), or of the mental body (our work, our so-called spiritual reading, study, thinking, trying to figure it out, rationalizing, etc.)? All of these are feeding aspects of the illusory notion of a personal self. All of these take up pretty much 100% of the time in our dream, even those of us who are supposedly on 'spiritual' paths.

So how is it possible in this world to hear a different Voice? We are so accustomed to the strident demands of the illusory self, the contrived fears and lusts and indulgences, the fragmented and split allegiance and attention, that we mistake them for the real. In A Course in Miracles Jeshua ben Joseph tells us: "The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Joy. He is the Call to Return with which God blessed the minds of His separated Sons. It is possible even in this world to hear only that Voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn this. Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you, and teach your brothers to listen as I am teaching you. The Holy Spirit is the call to Awaken and be glad." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 5, Section II

You see, the alleged personal self is never glad. It is reactively pleased when it gets something it wants, and reactively displeased when it doesn't. But it is incapable of joy. Joy has no edges, no boundaries. It's not attached to anything. It IS. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Joy, is the Voice that is your True Self. It is not personal because YOU are not personal. Who you are has no edges, and no personal interests. Who you are is not limited to the vested interests of one tiny speck of creation. Who you are is Infinite, Limitless, Omnipresent Love.

So which voice are you following today? The illusory personal, which always weaves deeper illusion as it goes, until we don't know where we are or how we got there? Or the only real Voice, the Voice for God, which brings Peace and quiet Joy and utter certainty of Self? The choice is not hard; but as Jesus said, it takes effort and great willingness to reverse ourselves in this way. The momentum has been in the direction of illusions for so long. The Inner Voice leads us in a new direction, and is the only trustworthy guide out of the pain and forgetfulness of the personal dream.

"Our meditation is a quietness, a stillness, a state of receptivity, in which we open our consciousness to the impartation of the Spirit. Then, when the Spirit answers--when we receive the impulse that gives us that sense or awareness that God is present--the Spirit which we have touched, lives our lives." -- Joel Goldsmith

Inconsistency

"It would be contrary to our highest ideas of God to suppose Him capable of first arranging law and causation so as to bring about certain evil results, and then punishing the helpless victims of His volition for doing what they could not avoid doing. Good is not, cannot be, the author of experimental sins. God, Good, can no more produce sickness than Goodness can cause evil and Health occasion disease." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 230, Lines 11-

"The Holy Spirit does not work by chance, and healing that is of Him always works. Unless the healer always heals by Him the results will vary. Yet healing itself is consistent, since only consistency is conflict -free, and only the conflict-free are Whole. By accepting exceptions and acknowledging that he can sometimes heal and sometimes not, the healer is obviously accepting inconsistency. He is therefore in conflict, and is teaching conflict. Can anything of God not be for all and for always? Love is incapable of any exceptions." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 7, Section V, 5:1-7

"The ego focuses on error and overlooks truth. It makes real every mistake it perceives, and with characteristically circular reasoning concludes that because of the mistake, consistent truth must be meaningless. If consistent truth is meaningless, inconsistency must be true. Holding error clearly in mind, and protecting what it has made real, the ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system: Error is real and truth is error. The ego makes no attempt to understand this, and it is clearly not understandable, but the ego does make every attempt to demonstrate it, and this it does constantly." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section V, 14:2-8, 15:1

We, the people of this dream we call the world, value inconsistency. We are inconsistent about pretty much every single aspect of our lives. Division and separation are seen as normal, and therefore we don't have singleness of thought about anything. The only thing we do constantly, as referenced in the above quotation, is to find evidence that something is wrong. Except for brief and delusional moments when we pretend this is not so, this is our life. Jeshua ben Joseph said, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Well, we treasure inconsistency.

Think about our favorite aphorisms, like "Change is the only constant," and "This too shall pass." We use such statements to make sense of this insane world, in our own warped way. And they seem true in the dream... we find evidence for inconsistency everywhere, proving to ourselves that only inconsistency is true.

It's impossible for the human, ego mind to conceive of the eternal and constant. Because the ego mind is itself a fiction, it cannot conceive of Reality. It can only scramble for evidence of its own existence. As it says in Scripture, "The things of God are foolishness to man."

The Good News is that we have never been separate from God, Good, and so our True Mind is always available to us. ACIM calls this the Voice for God, or the Holy Spirit. This True Voice of our Holy Mind knows and values only the eternal, and this it sees and knows everywhere and always, with perfect constancy and consistency.

We can always tell which voice we are listening to by the way we feel. Are we at peace? Are we valuing the eternal and constant? Are we consistent in which Voice we turn to immediately, always, for healing for ourselves and others? Or do we find ourselves restless, anxious, or wanting to change someone or something? This is the wish for inconsistency, a not-so-subtle desire to make the ego and its insanity true. "Analyzing to attack meaning, the ego succeeds in overlooking it and is left with a series of fragmented perceptions which it unifies on behalf of itself. This, then, becomes the universe it perceives. And it is this universe which, in turn, becomes its demonstration of its own reality. Do not underestimate the appeal of the ego's demonstrations to those who would listen. Selective perception chooses its witnesses carefully. The case for insanity is strong to the insane." (ACIM, Chapter 11, Section V, 15:2-4, & 16:1-3)

Healing is healed perception. Every miracle is healed perception. Allowing our fragmented perceptions to be given a new meaning, a meaning consistent with Reality, is the function of forgiveness and is accomplished by the Holy Spirit whenever we are willing. Willingness to let go and allow our perceptions to be translated and unified is our only function here. This is the ongoing function of forgiveness. How consistently are we willing to practice our function? Until it becomes 24/7, we are still valuing inconsistency and the fictions of the human dream. This is ultimately what must be forgiven, and let go.

"The Holy Spirit will never teach you that you are sinful. Errors He will correct, but this makes no one fearful. Your faith that sin is within you but witnesses to your desire that it be there to see. There is no inconsistency in what the Holy Spirit teaches. This is the reasoning of the sane. You have realized that all the gifts the ego would withdraw from you, in rage at your 'presumptuous' wish to look within, you do not want." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 21, Section IV, 1:1-2, 9, 6:1-2,6

Intentions or Willingness

"Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust implicitly your willingness, whatever else may enter. Concentrate only on this, and be not disturbed that shadows surround it. That is why you came. If you could come without them you would not need the Holy Instant. The miracle of the Holy Instant lies in your willingness to let it be what it is. And in your willingness for this lies also your acceptance of yourself as you were meant to be." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section IV, 2:1-6, 8-9

"The Holy Instant is the result of your determination to be Holy. It is the answer." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section IV, 1:1-2

There is a lot of hype about intentions in contemporary spiritual books. From Wayne Dyer to Lynn McTaggert to Harry Palmer, there is a collective belief (which is not new) that we decide the course of the dream through supposedly conscious intention. Like most persistent lies within the dream, there is a kernel of truth in it, though well-hidden because it's upside down and backwards. All our intentions show us is our ego-agendas. But the one power of decision that we do have as the dreamer of a dream is to align ourselves with what IS, beyond all dreaming. This is the determination and willingness to BE as God created us, without interference from our very human, illusory agendas.

Like everything that is True, this makes no sense to our list-making ego-selves. If we don't do it, who will? If I don't choose to do something, nothing will get done! Right? Well, it's amazing but true that if one ant in the anthill stops or dies, the anthill still goes on. It's the same in all aspects of this dream we call life. Forms of people, places, animals, and things all come, only to pass. Everything and everyone is expendable in the dream. Haven't you ever asked yourselves why we work so hard to be somebody, to be important, to have money, to have security, when all those who have gone before us and achieved supposedly 'great' things have one thing in common: they are all dead, and all their great achievements go the way of all things within the dream. Even if we still tell stories about certain of these people, that is only to justify our own insane search for meaning within the dream. Talk about your no-win situation.

The mystery is that when we let go of planning and intending and goal-setting, and forgive all our illusions, the dream unfolds as if we had done a great deal of planning and intending. It's so funny to see yourself being completely fulfilled and happy in unexpected and blessed ways. Who would have thought? A Course in Miracles tells us that "humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it does require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not of you." (ACIM; Chapter 18, Section IV, 3:1-2) And Jesus said that "of myself I do nothing." The effortless life is not one in which we do no work and sit gazing at our navels. It's one in which we don't decide from our false ego-perspectives. Instead, we are willing to stop, to listen, and to follow. We are willing to be nothing, so that we can remember we are Everything.

"Do not attempt to give the Holy Spirit what He does not ask, or you will add the ego to Him and confuse the two. He asks but little. It is He Who adds the greatness and the might. He joins with you to make the Holy Instant far greater than you can understand. It is your realization that your need do so little that enables Him to give so much." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section IV, 1:6-10

Imaginary Comforters

"Know, then, Who abides with you merely by recognizing what is there already; and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section II, 7:8

"Jesus demonstrated Christ; He proved that Christ is the Divine Idea of God -- the Holy Ghost, or Comforter, revealing the Divine Principle, Love, and leading into all Truth." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 332, Lines 19-22

Have you ever wondered how Jeshua ben Joseph did all that he did without being anything at all? He healed the sick, but never claimed to be a healer. He fed the multitudes, but never claimed to be a philanthropist. He directed his disciples where to fish to get the biggest catch, and to find the money for taxes in the mouth of a fish, but he never claimed to be a manifester or a magician. When people asked him if he was this or that, he said things like, "you have said it." When the spiritually ambitious wanted to follow him and learn what he knew (the ego always enters relationships to get something), he told them, "the son of man has no place to lay his head." In other words, if you're looking for a better identity, you've come to the wrong place. His job was to show us the end of all earthly identities, the end of getting. At other times, when people praised him and tried to make him special, he said, "why do you call me good? There is none good but God." He wisely modeled for us how to walk in the world with the Beloved, as Oneness ItSelf. He showed us how to be truly happy and free in a world of sorrow and bondage. What a gift.

He uncompromisingly told the Truth of our Oneness with God. He knew It, and he lived It. He never passed a suffering person or avoided pain by saying, "oh, it's not real." He knew it wasn't real, and so he fed the hungry, healed the sick, and comforted the sorrowing with Truth. He didn't see himself as having a body or a home or an identity to protect. The forms were irrelevant. And he told us that unless we do the same, we can never truly remember Who We Are. "Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Likewise, he said that when we ignore the suffering around us, we are doing it to him, to our Self... and we suffer accordingly.

We spend our days with imaginary comforters, instead of listening to the Voice for God that is our true comfort. We look for roles, activities, ego enhancement, emotional or intellectual questions and preoccupations, or just bodily and emotional comfort, all in service to an imaginary 'I'. These all lead to suffering, since we are serving a false god (our self) and ignoring the longing for wholeness that is always present.

The Comforter of God is what The Bible calls the Holy Spirit. A Course in Miracles refers to the Holy Spirit as the Voice for God, the part of our holy mind that has never lost touch with God, our True Home, our True Self. This Comforter always alleviates suffering whenever and however possible, with the forms involved totally irrelevant, knowing that, "God is still Love, and this is not His Will... and so it cannot be at all." Even Jesus, with His Perfect Love and Perfect Knowing, urged us to love one another in tangible ways in order to remember, and to trust the Voice for God in all things. We don't need to fear the forms of suffering that present themselves, individually and collectively. We can fearlessly meet them with Love and Acceptance, knowing that the Truth of Love is only momentarily obscured by the lie of separation and suffering. And remember, Jesus fed them while knowing the Truth. He healed them while knowing it wasn't real. He did not abandon them while saying, "they're not really there."

It takes courage to leave behind our imaginary comforters, what ACIM calls the dark companions. These companions tell us that we have to take care of ourselves first, and that others have their own lives, their own stories. We see separate people and separate interests, and are comforted by our false autonomy. We enter into relationships (even spiritual ones) to get something, to figure out something, to acquire knowledge to better navigate our own personal dream, all in the service of a fictional, separate 'I'. We stay lost in the dream. And yet, the Comforter of God is in us. This is the Truth. The Voice for God is our salvation.

"Only God's Comforter can comfort you. In the quiet of His temple, He waits to give you the peace that is yours. But be Holy in the Presence of God, or you will not know that you are there. For what is unlike God cannot enter His Mind, because it was not His Thought. You cannot enter God's Presence with the dark companions beside you, but you also cannot enter alone. All your brothers must enter with you, for until you have accepted them you cannot enter. For you cannot understand wholeness unless you are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded if he would know the Wholeness of His Father." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section III, 7:1-2, 4-5, 8-10

Hanging On, Letting Go

"Release the future. For the past is gone, and what is present, freed from its bequest of grief and misery, of pain and loss, becomes the instant in which time escapes the bondage of illusions where it runs its pitiless, inevitable course. Then is each instant which was slave to time transformed into a Holy Instant, when the Light that was kept hidden in God's Son is freed to bless the world. Now is He free, and all His glory shines upon a world made free with Him, to share His Holiness." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook, 194, 5:1-4

There is an old Indian parable about a monkey who stuck his hand into a bottle to get to a piece of fruit. His hand went in just fine, but once he had clutched the fruit in his little fist, his hand would no longer fit through the opening of the bottle. Unwilling to let go of his prize, he was easily captured by the man who had put the fruit in the bottle (which was attached to a rope) for just that purpose.

We are just like that monkey. Unwilling to let go of people and things that keep the drama of the ego alive, we remain captives of our own illusions. Unwilling to let go of the smokescreens we maintain, we insist that what we cling to is a part of life, a part of happiness, a part of our fulfillment. And as we cling and hang on, we are willing slaves to our own illusions.

What is it like to be free? To not grasp anything, to allow everything? We have been assured by the Awakened Ones throughout time that Freedom is our birthright and our True Nature. So why do we, like the monkey, hang on to the very people and things that seem to obscure our awareness of Self and Freedom?

No person or thing has the ability to imprison us. Neither do they have the ability to give us anything at all. We are our own captors and jailers. We choose to use other people and things to imprison ourselves, to absorb our time and attention so completely that we don't notice our hand stuck in the bottle. Or to keep us absorbed in stories of guilt and need and debt and obligation. Smokescreens all.

And yet, we can change our minds. We can let go. Letting go doesn't always mean the end of things or relationships. But it does mean they will no longer be smokescreens for fear and guilt, no longer used to imprison our awareness in limited and destructive ways. By letting go, we allow what is untrue to be corrected and healed by Truth, which is always Present. By letting go, we allow all people and things to move to their Highest Good, which is always some version of Awakening. The miracle is the healed perception that helps us let go, even in the midst of doing.

Hanging on to illusions, or letting go and letting Truth heal our perception... every minute of every day we are choosing Truth or illusions. Like the monkey, we fear that if we let go our treasure will be lost. What we have forgotten is that by this voluntary imprisonment of our awareness, we have obscured our Real Treasure.

Hanging on is the costliest thing we've ever done, resulting in our greatest losses. And letting go is certainly the highest and best investment of time and energy... revealing the Infinite Storehouse of Treasure that is our Awareness of God.

"The world must thank you when you offer it release from your illusions. Yet your thanks belong to you as well, for its release can only mirror yours." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook, 197, 3:1-2

Playing Our Part

"As you share My unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to My Voice, learn to undo error, and act to correct it. The power to work miracles belongs to you. I will provide the opportunities to do them, but you must be ready and willing." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 1, Section III, 5:6-8

"Each day should be devoted to miracles. Miracles reawaken the awareness that Spirit, not the body, is the Altar of Truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle. Only the creations of Light are real. The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 1, Section I, 15:1, 20:1-2, 24:4, 38:1

Playing our part in the Great Awakening of the Son of God is our true purpose in life. Each of us moves within the dream that ACIM calls the great projection, each with individualized issues and dramas. These don't really matter. What matters is that wherever and however we find ourselves today, every moment of every day can be devoted to restoring our minds to Truth. We don't have to go to a deserted island or a cave to do this... in fact, many who have done so have found their unhealed perceptions simply morphed and stayed with them. We are simply asked to bring ALL our perceptions to the Holy Spirit ALL the time, every Holy Instant, where Truth enfolds our errors and projections and restores our holy awareness to Oneness, undoing the effects of our errors omnidirectionally, throughout imagined time and space. This is the healing aspect of the miracle.

The miracle is a corrective device, since the reality of Spirit is forever whole and perfect and complete. The Holy Spirit, the part of our minds that remains in perfect communication with God and Truth, is the mechanism of miracles. In other words, the Holy Spirit is like the cooking pot... our perceptions and problems and fears are the ingredients we put into the cooking pot... and the Truth that remains eternally in the awareness of the Holy Spirit is the alchemical ingredient that transforms all ingredients into their eternal and essential Truth.

There is another way to look at how we play our part, using analogies within the world as we know it. In acoustics, there is a phenomenon called phase cancellation. For every frequency of sound, there is an opposing frequency, its mirror opposite. When these two frequencies of sound are brought together, there is no sound. You could say that they have achieved the perfect balance and become One. Using this idea, we can see that the Holy Spirit holds within it the balancing frequency for every thought, every error that could possibly exist. By bringing these errors to Truth, we allow the error to meet with its mirror opposite, and so it is no more. Out of this marriage of error and its opposite, there emerges the miracle. In my book (http://www.thelittlebookoforganicabundance.com), I call this spontaneous emergence within the dream Vibratory Kinesis.

A Course in Miracles reminds us that "Miracles are habits, and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control." (ACIM; Chapter 1, Section I, 5:1-2) In other words, playing our part is simply to bring all our perceptions, without exception, to the Holy Spirit, all the time. The alchemy of miracles is not our function. Our part is to bring all that we think we are to the Holy Spirit, all the time. The Holy Spirit holds the Truth that corrects all errors, all the time. So playing our part is entirely the willingness to do this, all the time.

Are we willing to play our part? This is not an exercise for the faint of heart. It will cost you the world as you have known it. But, as Dr. Phil might say... how's that working for you?

"Whatever is True is eternal, and cannot change or be changed. Spirit is therefore unalterable because It is already Perfect, but the mind can elect what it chooses to serve. The only limit put on its choice is that it cannot serve two masters. The miracle is a sign that the mind has chosen to be led by Me in Christ's service. The Abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow Him. Truth is always Abundant." A Course in Miracles; Chapter 1, Section IV, 5:1-3,6:1-2, 3:4

Do You Want to Be Healed?

"Wilt thou be made whole?" -- The Bible; John 5:6

"And whithersoever he entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole." -- The Bible; Mark 6:56

"Forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to your brother and yourself. You must attest his sins have no effect on you to demonstrate they are not real... A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect... Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 27, Section II, 4:1-2, 5:2, and 6:4

"Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee." -- The Bible; Matthew 9:2

Do you want to be healed? The need for healing takes so many different forms. It can appear to be physical, like so many of the healings in The Bible. It can appear to be relationships that need healing. It can appear to be emotional, or mental, or financial, or simply a vague feeling of disquiet and discontent. It can even show up as the longing for special relationships or as ambition and lust for power and control. A Course in Miracles says that it takes great spiritual maturity to realize that there is absolutely no difference in any of these. Form is irrelevant and essentially unreal and therefore untrue. The content of all seeking (even spiritual seeking) and all problems is the same. The content is always the belief in separation from God, the belief that we are separate from Goodness itself, and therefore have to make our own way. This fragmented perception projects a wounded self and a wounded world.

This fragmented perception that I have named 'me' has a vested interest in not being healed, not being whole. This autonomous fiction uses fear, which is also a fiction, to avoid, resist, obscure, and generally maintain the illusion of separateness and pain, suffering, lack, and every other imaginable form of separation from Good. An illusion isn't capable of truly doing anything, so it relies on projection, very much like a movie relies on the projection of images to suck us into story. We like it. It's our illusion.

So do we want to be healed? Jeshua ben Joseph always asked this first. Because when we do truly want to remember our wholeness more than our fragmented perceptions, we will. As Jesus said, "For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?" (The Bible; Matthew 9:5) ACIM says it this way: "Forgiveness offers everything I want." (A Course in Miracles; Workbook 122) When we let go of insisting we are separate, all the imagined, projected sins (our 'own' and everybody else's) are simply not. They never were.

I love that in the biblical stories about Jesus' healings, all anybody had to do was touch the hem of his garment. In other words, all we have to do is want to Remember Who We Are. If we turn ever so slightly, if we mentally reach out and barely touch the Truth, then the dream simply vanishes, the illusion dissolves. In the Light of Truth there is no darkness, sin, suffering, or death. This is the true forgiveness of sins that offers everything we want.

So do you want to be healed? Do you want to remember your Wholeness, your Infinite Beingness, your unchanging Love, and your endless Joy? Can you handle it? The little separated self says no. It says that just this little separated piece is all I want... just this imaginary form, without real content. Infinite Being is unimaginable. It's too much. It's delusional. Look around you with your body's eyes, and behold the great projection. This is your everyday reality. Be content with the little you think you have. If you let go of it, you'll be sorry. Everything will change. You'll be sorry. What do you think you're doing?

I love to think about the great courage it took for the sick and outcast to reach out to Jesus. They were subjected to scorn and disbelief afterwards, and some part of them knew that would happen... how could there not be a lot of hoopla when someone who has been deformed and crippled from birth suddenly gets up and walks? No wonder they all said, "He did it!" To acknowledge their own choice within themselves would have been the real healing (which is why Jesus said, "Go and tell no one")... but even though they had the courage to reach out for an end to their apparent suffering, they did not have the courage to be truly healed. And true healing through forgiveness is what Jesus still teaches today.

Do you want to be healed? Do you want to see the split within your own mind that is projected as body and as world? Do you want to forgive and Remember?

"Who forgives is healed. And in his healing lies the proof that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 27, Section II, 3:10-11

Awakening from the Dream

"Life is, like Christ, "the same yesterday, and today, and forever." Organization and time have nothing to do with Life. You say, "I dreamed last night." What a mistake is that! The I is Spirit. God never slumbers, and His likeness never dreams. Mortals are the Adam dreamers. Sleep and apathy are phases of the dream that life, substance, and intelligence are material." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; page 249, lines 18-25

"Nothing can prevail against a Son of God who commends his spirit into the Hands of his Father. By doing this the mind awakens from its sleep and remembers its Creator. All sense of separation disappears." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 3, Section II, 5:1-3

"You are not really capable of being tired, but you are very capable of wearying yourself. The strain of constant judgment is virtually intolerable. It is curious that an ability so debilitating would be so deeply cherished. Yet if you wish to be the author of reality, you will insist on holding on to judgment." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 3, Section VI, 5:5-8

Awakening from the dream we call life is what this blog is always about. You may wonder how I can continue to write about this same topic, day after day. I wonder it, myself. And the only answer that always arises is, "Because more than anything, I want to know the Truth. More than anything, I want to Be as I Am. More than anything, I want to Awaken fully." You see, this blog is my daily reminder of Who I Really Am. And if it helps to remind you, too... wonderful!

Even if only for this brief space and time we remember and cease to judge the world according to man-made laws, we have shared a Holy Instant. Even if only for a moment we glimpse the grandeur that We Are, beyond the dream of material existence, then we have Awakened. The imagined ongoing and interminable dream of matter has no power, no substance, no real existence at all. All it takes is these Holy Instants of knowing. Awareness is Everything.

In Reality there is only Awareness or dreaming. There is nothing in between, and only One of these is True. Our Awareness of Being, Our True Self, is always and eternally effortlessly Present, with Clarity and Peace and Love as its hallmarks. The dream is like a self-reiterative computer virus that feeds on itself, and yields no clarity or awareness of being... only a sort of pseudo-life that sometimes feels like life, sometimes like death, but is always shifting and changing, morphing into new and sometimes interesting appearances that keep us immersed and preoccupied... but never will it be real.

As we dream we are material bodies subject to material laws, we dream ourselves tired and weary or temporarily energized and inspired. But it is always changing. Remember that "the Holy One of Israel never slumbers nor sleeps." We are not bodies... we are Spirit, created "in the image of" Infinite Life, Infinite Love, Infinite Truth, the only Infinite Substance. We are not capable of being tired or lost or confused or limited in any way. So who questions? Who cries? Who is tired and discouraged? And if that is not 'I', then Who Am I?

Self-inquiry is the only path to the Freedom of knowing Who We Really Are. Every moment of every day we need to know who we are being. Either we are being a dream of a self, or We Are Being as God created Us, in Reality. There is nothing in between. Awakening from the dream of the little, separated I is the only pursuit worthy of any of us.

"You are surrounded only by Him. What limits can there be on You Whom He encompasses?" -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 18, Section VI, 10:6-7

Infinite Patience

"Now you must learn that only infinite patience produces immediate effects. This it the way in which time is exchanged for eternity. Infinite patience calls upon Infinite Love, and by producing results now it renders time unnecessary." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 5, Section VI, 12:1-3

"Do you really believe you can make a voice that can drown out God's? Do you really believe you can devise a thought system that can separate you from Him? Do you really believe you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can? You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your cares upon Him because He careth for you." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 5, Section VII, 1:1-4

I don't know about you, but patience has never been my favorite word. I have been notoriously impatient all my life. Now that I am 57 years young, I have more tolerance and patience than before, but I would still not call myself a patient person. Of course, this is a judgment made through the world's eyes, based on actions and reactions within a story, by a fictional identity of 'me.'

The above quote from ACIM is talking about absolute patience, not patience as the world uses it. In the world, if you are not putting up with whatever is going on with a smile on your face, or at least a long-suffering sigh, you are impatient. If you want things to happen right away, you are impatient. If you aren't always pretending to be O.K. with what is going on, you are impatient. So the translation for the world's notion of patience is to be fake, inauthentic, a pretender. Hmmmm... sounds like the ego to me.

Absolute patience, on the other hand, is the recognition that there is no time and space, no world as we imagine it. ACIM tells us, "The Holy Spirit, who speaks for God in time, also knows that time is meaningless. He reminds you of this in every passing moment of time, because it is His special function to return you to eternity." We are never asked to be anything but real. We are never asked to be anything at all... we simply BE as God created us. This requires no effort, and is why absolute patience has immediate effects. There is no pretending, no false identities and stories between us and Who We Are.

Do we actually imagine that all our posturing and pretending and putting on of identities has any real effect? No wonder we feel guilty all the time and project this out into an imaginary world. It's all so exhausting and intolerable. ACIM says that "Guilt feelings are the preservers of time. They induce fears of retaliation or abandonment, and thus ensure that the future will be like the past. This is the ego's continuity." In the bad dream we call the world, we feel guilty every time we don't act according to the judgments of our family, our friends, or the world as we imagine it. This is THE smokescreen of the ego. And it will go on and on and on, like the energizer bunny, until we decide to forgive our illusions and return to sanity.

We are offered complete release from our delusion, every moment. In ACIM, the Voice for God tells us that "God offers you the continuity of eternity... When you choose to make this exchange, you will simultaneously exchange guilt for Joy, viciousness for Love, and pain for Peace. My role is to unchain your will and set it free. Your ego cannot accept this freedom, and will oppose it at every possible moment in every possible way."

Infinite patience is always available to us, and it has nothing to do with how we act within the world. Because we are Spirit, everything takes place in consciousness. It has everything to do with forgiving and letting go of our projections, the so-called good and the so-called bad. It has everything to do with forgiving and letting go of our projected identities and relationships. Infinite patience is the willingness to let it all go, so Reality can dawn once again on our unclouded and open minds.

"I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him. I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 5, Section VII, 6:10-11

The Truth About You

"Can Truth have exceptions? If you have the gift of everything, can loss be real? Can pain be part of Peace, or grief of Joy? Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where Love and perfect Holiness abide? Truth must be all-inclusive if it be Truth at all. Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the Truth entirely. Truth cannot have an opposite!" -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 152:2:2-7, and 3:5

"As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind; in all awareness and in all response. This is the all-inclusiveness which sets the Truth apart from falsehood." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 152:5:1-3

When working with a personal challenge recently, I realized that the words I used to describe the problem were all reflections of who I think I am. And it brought to mind the story of the Prodigal Son.

Jeshua ben Joseph told the parable of the Prodigal Son, and it has been used in Christian theology to justify evangelizing... that God wants his lost children to return to Him. Well, first of all, how could the Allness of God, in which everything is One, lose anything? So there must be another meaning... because every story Jeshua told was eminently practical and pragmatic. He was always giving us the means to sanity and peace.

In the parable, the son takes his inheritance and runs away, spending it all on the pleasures of life until there is nothing left. Finally, finding himself starving and living in squalor, he decides to return home, thinking that if nothing else, he can live as a servant and eat the crumbs from the table. He says, "I will return to my Father's house." To his surprise, on returning home, his Father greets him with open arms and heart, "for what was lost has been found."

It seems to me that what was lost was true identity. The young man in the story wanted to create a new 'self,' a worldly identity of pleasure and pain. Only when the suffering became unbearable did he remember that this was not his true home. "I will return to my Father's house." And though he went with fear and desperation, he found only the consistent outpouring of Love that had always been there, awaiting only his return.

The return of the Prodigal is simply the return to Awareness of Self, as God created Us. We are the Sons of God, and we remain as God created us, eternally. Only our wandering minds tempt us with exciting new stories and keep us preoccupied, miscreating illusory experiences, projections and relationships as we try to live on our own, far from our Father's House. Returning to the Kingdom of Perfect Oneness, we find we never really left.

So what is the Truth about me? What is the Truth about you? A Course in Miracles tells us to "wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions, as we humbly ask our Self that He reveal Himself to us. And He Who never left will come again to our awareness, grateful to restore His home to God, as it was meant to be... He will substitute the Peace of God for all your frantic thoughts, the Truth of God for self-deceptions, and God's Son for your illusions of yourself."

The Truth about me is also the Truth about You. Our Truth is so glorious, so all-enveloping in its Love and Joy, that there is nothing more to say.

"The power of decision is our own. And we accept of Him that which we are, and humbly recognize the Son of God. To recognize God's Son implies as well that all self-concepts have been laid aside, and recognized as false. Their arrogance has been perceived. And in humility the radiance of God's Son, His right to Heaven and release from hell, are joyously accepted as our own." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 152:10:1-5