No Greater Love

"Do not interpret against God's Love, for you have many witnesses that speak of it so clearly that only the blind and deaf could fail to see and hear them.  This year determine not to deny what has been given you by God.  Awake and share it, for that is the only reason He has called to you. His Voice has spoken clearly, and yet you have so little faith in what you heard because you preferred to place faith in the disaster you have made.  Today let us resolve to accept the joyful tidings that disaster is not real and Reality is not disaster.  Reality is safe and sure and wholly kind to everyone and everything.  There is no greater love than to accept this and be glad.  For Love asks only that you be happy, and will give you everything that makes for happiness."- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 16, Section II, 8

No greater Love than to accept happiness.  Wow.  

We associate love with sacrifice.  We think love involves denying happiness for ourselves to give someone else happiness.  We don't notice that this belief is based on separation and duality.  And in duality, someone wins and someone loses.

In the Awareness of Love, there is unity and there is Oneness.  In Oneness there is no sacrifice, because there is wholeness and happiness everywhere, always.  The thought of sacrifice is meaningless when Oneness is accepted and known.  Only our stubborn belief in the disaster of our projected world prevents accepting and knowing what is eternally Present and True.  This is why we can let it all go in any Holy Instant we choose.  We give the world and everything in it all the meaning that it has. Like a movie, without an audience it is nothing.  

"You have never given any problem to the Holy Spirit He has not solved for you, nor will you ever do so.  You have never tried to solve anything yourself and been successful.  Is it not time you brought these facts together and made sense of them?" -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 16, Section II, 9:1-3

I love the irony in the above quote, because it calls lightly to us to laugh at the absurdity of it all, rather than make it all seem so heavy and real.  Instead of sitting in the dark in this theater of the absurd, we can Awaken.

"This is the year for the application of the ideas that have been given you.  For the ideas are mighty forces, to be used and not laid idly by." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 16, Section II, 9:4-5

It is up to us to allow the Truth to permeate all our thoughts, all our actions, and all our perceptions.  What we do comes from what we think, and what we think arises from the ideas we habitually focus our awareness on.  This is all there is to it.  We are giving our awareness to Truth, or we are sitting in the dark theater, focusing only on the grim illusions we have projected because we prefer them to Love.

"This year invest in Truth, and let it work in peace." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 16, Section II, 9:7

We who have treasured our painful and crazy perception of a world gone mad, can also forgive it and let it go.  How hard is it to let steam rise and disappear?  Letting go of illusions is no harder than this!  Simply bring all your insane beliefs to the Holy Spirit and let them go.  And allow the Truth to reveal the Love that is All, and Everything.  Let Truth work in peace.  There is no greater Love than to accept this, and be glad!

Have a blessed and holy holiday, and an Awakened New Year!

The Miracle

"Judgment is the weapon I would use against myself, to keep the miracle away from me." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 347

The miracle.  How often are those two words repeated in ACIM, always pointing to the wholeness and perfection that exist without an opposite.  It isn't really anything, doesn't really do anything, never changes and never opposes.  The miracle is what is revealed with a shift in awareness from physical sight (projection) to Spiritual Sight (extension).  It reveals the Spiritual Reality that is all there is, or ever will be. Only the perceptual mechanism of judgment made a world other than perfect and whole appear to exist.  When judgment is forgiven and released, only the innocence of Spiritual Perfection is here.  Only One, only God, only pure Spirit, Mind Awake and Aware of Its Infinite Beauty.

So why would any aspect of mind judge?  Why would any aspect of this Infinite I Am attempt to hide from Self-Awareness?  What part of One Self imagines that there is another to defend against or hide from?  How foolish this all sounds, and yet how familiar.

The great reversal, as ACIM calls the process of mind awakening to Itself, can seem long indeed.  Judgment is used in many forms, in many disguises, always to justify our addiction to the contracted mental state we call a self.  But no matter what we call this upside down perception, these inverted and projected images have no relationship to Reality.  They don't need to be changed or understood.  They simply need to be forgiven and released.

When all judgment is finally put aside, projected images fall away and reveal the miracle of One Spiritual Self abiding and unchanging, All-Loving and All-Whole, Encompassing all that appears to be with pure and radiant Joy.  This is the miracle, the coming of the Christ Child... your own Beloved Self.

"And the angel said unto them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." -- Luke 2:10

The Great I Am

"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 but reflections of the worshipping of death as savior and as giver of release." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 163, 1:1-3

When I read this passage before my morning meditation it was like a cartoon light bulb lit up over my head!  When Jesus said the last thing we'll overcome is death, he wasn't talking about bodies!  He was talking about the wish to be something else... the desire for change.  How often have we heard that change is the only constant?  How often have we thought, "I just need a change."  Maybe it's a change of mates, a change of jobs, a change of scenery.  Maybe it's a diet or exercise plan, yoga, meditation, or a commitment to read the Course every day.  "But wait!" I can hear you all saying... "those are all good things!  It's good to focus on health, on awakening, on self-improvement!" But the one thing all of these good intentions have in common is the wish to be as you are not.

Think carefully about this... the only reason to improve something is if it is somehow lacking.  It is this that is impossible.  God created only God, everywhere and always.  There can be no other substance or existence.  What would it be made of?  Where would it be?  And the continual search for improvement is the same as saying, "I am not" instead of "I Am."

While we dream of a world that seems imperfect and in constant flux, we have great need of forgiving the desire to be as we are not.  As we let go of wanting things to be different, as we let go of wanting ourselves or them or it to change, we discover the unchanging I Am as the very Ground of Being. When Buddha said that desire is the source of all suffering, he was pointing out that it is the desire or wish for change that spins the wheel of samsara, the dream of life as change and suffering and death.  Awakening from the dream is simply recovering our Awareness of Self, of I Am without a fluctuating object.

Ironically, there can never be a change in Reality.  As Jesus pointed out, "Before Abraham was, I Am."  Before and after are dream-concepts, meaningless to the radiating Bliss that I Am.  What we call the Christ, the birth of the Awareness of Changeless Oneness we celebrate as Christmas, is "the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow."  We are perfect ideas, extensions in pure Spirit, forever in the Mind of God.  Emmanuel, God with Us, is the Great I Am. 

"God Wills you learn what always has been true: that He created you as part of Him, and this must still be true because ideas leave not their Source.  Such is Creation's Law; that each idea the mind conceives but adds to its abundance, never takes away." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 26, Section VII, 13:2-3

This or That

"Peace is impossible to those who look on war.  Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers 11:4, 1-2

How then do we offer peace?  In our Wednesday night ACIM Tele-class we were talking about judgment.  We discovered that we even judge our spiritual experiences, those moments of Revelation that seem all too rare. This one was amazing, that one wasn't real, etc. Interestingly, it's the very judging and labeling of our experiences that makes peace seem fleeting and impossible.  To the mind asleep and dreaming, every person, place, thing, or phenomenon is either/or.  Everything is either this or that to the mind dreaming in duality.  The categories of this or that are irrelevant.  It's the categorization of every aspect of life that makes peace impossible... because where there is either/or, there is war.

Into this impossible situation comes the Teacher of God, the Voice that speaks in each and every seemingly separate mind.  The Voice is One, and has One judgment that is Its' function: "We are One, not many.  We are Whole, not parts.  We are Peace.  We are Joy.  We are Love Itself.  There is nothing else... There is no either/or..."  Over and over the Voice echoes in our minds, behind every image of incompleteness, every image of conflict, every competitive or ambitious urge, behind every call to struggle and war with the images or people and situations we project and then think we see: "Nothing Real can be threatened.  Nothing unreal exists.  Herein lies the Peace of God." -- A Course in Miracles; Introduction, 2:2-4

This Peace extends infinitely and eternally.  This means It isn't subject to our imagined concepts of time or space or circumstance.  This means that when we remember our only function is forgiveness, we can forgive and release every imaginary obstacle to the awareness of this eternal Peace, Whose other name is Love.  We are literally swimming, floating, flowing, Being as this Peace, this Love.  We have no other existence.

Thank God we are neither this nor that.  We are the All, the Everything... the All-Loving, All-Encompassing, Infinitely Joyous Peace that we mentally tried to distance ourselves from by calling it 'that'.  Such machinations have never, and will never succeed.  We offer Peace because we ARE the Peace of God, forever One and forever extending the Light of Love that shines from the heart of Peace. 

This Holy Christmas Season, please don't get caught up in judging the world and its inhabitants as this or that.  Let's forgive this madness, and see every Radiant aspect of Life as the Peace and Joy and Love that is its Reality.  Whether it appears as big or little, cheap or expensive, good or bad, old or young, cold or hot, enjoyable or miserable, even alive or dead... these are just illusory judgment-veils, instigators of war.  Peace remains untouched and radiant throughout Creation. 

"Like to the sun and ocean your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part regards itself as you.  It is not missing; it could not exist if it were separate, nor would the Whole be whole without it.  It is not a separate kingdom, ruled by an idea of separation from the rest.  Nor does a fence surround it, preventing it from joining with the rest, and keeping it apart from its Creator.  This little aspect is no different from the Whole, being continuous with It and at One with It.  It leads no separate life, because its life IS the Oneness in which its being was created.  Do not accept a little, fenced-off aspect as yourself." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section VIII, 6:1-6

Merry Christmas!

"You Who remember what I really am, remember what I really want.  And all I want is what You offer me, in just the form You choose that it be mine.  Let me not forget, my self is nothing, but my Self is all." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 358, 1:1, 4, 7

As I sit waiting for the dawn on Christmas morning, I'm filled with gratitude for the Self we share, the Christ-Self that is born again and again as each holy mind awakens it ItSelf.  And I know that no story of Santa Clause, however sweet and wonderful, can compare to the miracles we experience through remembering our Christ-Self.

Our way is lit by miracles... the healed perceptions that lift us to remembrance.  And each holy instant becomes sacred, regardless of form or appearance.  "All I want is what You offer me, in just the form You choose that it be mine."  Yes!  Such freedom and grace in this effortless and radical reliance on what is True.  "Let me not forget, my self is nothing, but my Self is all."

May the merriest of joy-filled moments be yours on this Christmas morning, as we remember Who We really Are.

"The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness.  See it not outside yourself, but shining in the the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 15, Section XI, 2:1-2

Goodness and Light

"The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness.  See it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 15, Section XI, 2:1-2

Joy and more joy, goodness and light... these are signs of the coming of Christ, the awakening of the Son of God.  These are the Self-attributes we experience, as we realize we are the light, and that shining in the darkness is what we're here for!  

This Christmas, don't look out there for the source of joy.  You are the Goodness and Light of God.  Share your joy...

Christmas love and blessings to all!

Mary