Undivided

"Only Love is strong, because it is undivided." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 12, Section V, 1:1

The current atmosphere in the world can only be described as fragmented, divisive, and competitive.  How can we even conceive of a world where there is One Mind, One Purpose, where Love and Joy and Peace are our shared and constant state of Being?

A Course in Miracles tells us that our purpose becomes unified when we share a common goal.  And when the goal is undivided, the means and end are in complete accord.  "You need offer only  undivided attention" to that goal, it reminds us.  There's that word again... 'undivided.'  The Course points out over and over again that this unification of purpose, regardless of seeming circumstances, is what allows our mind to return to sanity, to awareness of Oneness. Undivided. 

So everything is returned to holiness and Wholeness by this simple unification of Purpose.  No longer is the purpose of fixing dinner to feed a body.  It is to remember that our true Self is pure, undivided Love, eternally Whole and Complete, and we participate in this world to joyously remember the Love that we are.  This is our only Purpose.  No longer do we interact with others to get something.  Our holy Purpose is always to see the One Love that we are in all things and all Beings.  Our holy Purpose is to let the Love that we are be the guiding Force in our lives, because only Love is strong in Oneness.  Only Love is undivided.

In a world where unity has different meanings to different people in vastly differing cultures, Unity is still possible.  But not out there.  Only in the heart of each of us can Love be Love.  Only by making this return to Oneness our only Purpose can we experience Oneness in the  midst of seeming insanity.

So every time we are tempted to judge the world as it appears, let's remember to ask, "What is it for?"  This reminds us that, in Truth, everything shares one purpose, without exception.  This returns our undivided attention to the One Goal that all things share, and lets the undivided strength of Love be reflected in the most unlikely of places.  Every time we remember to ask, "What is it for?" we always receive the same answer.  Our unified Purpose is to remember that God, Love, is All. There is only God, only Love, no matter how it appears. Which means that right where I seem to be, as a separate self with separate agendas and purposes, there is only the One Self that we share in God.  One Self, One Light, One Love, reflected everywhere.  Undivided.

"You need offer only undivided attention.  Everything else will be given you." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 12, Section V, 9:4-5

In and Out

"In Him we live and move and have our being." --The Bible; Acts 17:28

"I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." -- The Bible; Galatians 2:20

"My mind is part of God's. I am very holy." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 35

Whether we talk about the Mind of God, or the Spirit of God, or the Allness of God, we are always speaking of Infinite Mind which is all-encompassing.  The problem with our shared dualistic perspective is that even when we speak of God as All, we place ourselves inside that allness, as if we're sort of part of it, but still something 'other'.  Arthur Corey spoke of this dilemma when he wrote, "AS Mind we live and move and have our Being -- not inside of Mind, like seeds in a watermelon!"  We can't seem to help viewing everything as in or out.

I began this blog with some Biblical passages that have pointed me toward the Truth over the years.  And of course, the famous Workbook Lesson from A Course in Miracles that reminds us we are as holy as God is, and never separate from this Infinite Awareness.  Of course, it does so in language that we can understand, however imperfectly.  And I have been reflecting on just how inadequate our language is to speak of what is forever One and indivisible.

In Hindu scriptures they compare our minds to waves in the Ocean of Divine Mind.  In other words, waves are always and forever ocean... not IN the ocean, but ocean BEING ocean.  Our minds are not just part of God's Mind.  Our Minds are God's Mind, Infinitely Extending in Perfect Awareness.  God BEING God.  

"But..."  I know.  I know.  The mind that sleeps seems to shrink in awareness until all it sees is imperfection and fragmented being, everywhere it looks.  It is the act of focusing on this tunnel vision that creates the illusion of in and out.  From the mountaintop, everything looks different.  From a unified Mind, there is only the Beauty of Holiness.

So are both real?  This is the question all of us have asked at some point.  Immersed in dualism, we imagine there is a 'both', a 'two', an in and an out.  The gift of A Course in Miracles is that it shows us how our tunnel vision perspective deludes and frightens us, when it is just a false sense of things, an insubstantial projection of the sleeping mind, and completely false.  "Where is the darkness when the Light has come?" the Course asks us.  "Nothing, and nowhere," is the reply.

We are forever pure Spirit, pure Mind, which is beyond all appearances that shift and change. We are neither in nor out.

"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers 12, 6:10

The Truth About You

"The Truth about You is so lofty that nothing unworthy of God is worthy of you.  Choose then what you want in these terms, and accept nothing that you would not offer to God as wholly fitting for Him/Her.  You do not want anything else." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 9, Section VII, p.8:4-6 

Well, it has been exactly six months since my last blog... that is the longest I have gone without posting since this blog began over 7 years ago.  And yes, since time is illusion, I know that the Voice speaks to all of us daily, with or without symbols like this blog.  However, we all seem to have a story of being less than good, other than God.  Thank Goodness for the Truth about you (and me), which is beyond measure, beyond all judgement.  The story of 'me' fears this Infinite Glory, because it fears everything.  It judges and measures and compares because, "The ego cannot survive without judgement, and is laid aside accordingly." (ACIM; Ch.4, II, 10:3).  To help understand this, remember that the ego is story.  And what is a story without protagonists and antagonists, after all?

In this world of stories, a dream world of continual judgment and conflict, how can we know the Truth?  A Course in Miracles puts it so very simply:  "How can God's Son awaken from the dream? It is a dream of judgement.  So must he judge not, and He will awaken." (ACIM; Ch.29, IX, 2:3-5)

I urge you to try releasing all judgement in every situation, in all circumstances.  Since God is All, and we live and move and have our Being in and as that All, then there can be nothing but God, nothing but Good.  So the only thing we are ever letting go of, or releasing (another word for forgiveness), is a false sense of things, a story that is the projection of a sleeping mind.  What remains, and is ever-present behind every projection, is the Truth.  The Truth of a villain or a hero or a rock or a tree is the same, because there is only the One Self, only God.  It is always the Truth About You.

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

Please join us for ACIM Teleclass to study A Course in Miracles, every Sunday evening at 7:30 pm CT. 

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

Hallucinations

"What if you recognized this world is an hallucination?  What if you really understood you made it up?  What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal?  Could you have faith in what you see, if you accepted this?  And would you see it?  Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are.  This is the healing and the remedy." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 20, Section VIII, 7:3-7, and 8:1-2

Like all spiritual scriptures, A Course in Miracles can be read on multiple levels, which results in what the Course calls level confusion.  Just like church, any spiritual teaching can be used to make the user more comfortable in their own illusions.  They just seem shinier and holier than other illusions.  In Truth, they are all made up.  All hallucinations' only value (including the Bible and the Course!) is whether they assist the mind in waking up to its own hallucinations and letting them go. I love A Course in Miracles because it reminds us of this repeatedly.  But it's so easy to gloss over those passages and latch on to the comfortable ones, isn't it?

In The Bible Jesus told us that we have to lose our lives to find Life.  He wasn't talking about the cross, although that was an extreme example and symbol of the teaching.  He was talking about losing the little self, the identification with a separate self with separate ideas and separate agendas.  He was talking about the compulsion to identify that self with a body that needs special care and special protection.  He was talking about the little self with its constant planning and schemes for pleasure and self-reliance.  He was talking about life as usual.

Nobody wants to hear this.  What little self, with its vested interest in an identity, wants to hear that it is an hallucination?  Who wants to hear that all our cherished values and ideas about how life works are all made up, and simply not even there?  Who wants to hear that we are the mentally ill, every last one of us?  This seems like a no-brainer to the little self... just focus on what you believe to be true, and live as if it is true, and ignore the fact that it keeps not being true. This is the nature of the world, where every hallucination comes to pass. 

But we have another choice!  When we change our mind about the purpose of the world, it isn't about perpetuating the hallucinations, but about letting them go.  And when the only purpose of the world becomes the healing of the mind, then every single hallucination dissolves, and the Light of the Self that is always here is revealed. 

"Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one?  Will he agree more quickly to the unreality of a louder voice he hears than to that of a softer one?  Will he dismiss more easily a whispered demand to kill than a shout?  And do the number of pitchforks the devils he sees carrying affect their credibility in his perception?  His mind has categorized them all as real, and so they are all real to him.  When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers, 8, 5:2-7

In the Light of Self that remains, there is only God, only One Self.  All hallucinations are simply the opportunity to awaken from the insanity of self-preservation.  And this is not death, but Life!

"Give up this frantic and insane attempt that cheats you of the joy of living with your God and Father [Unified Self], and of waking gladly to His Love and Holiness that join together as the Truth in You, making you One with Him.  When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing.  There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer.  Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard.  The Holy Spirit [the Voice of Self] will not delay in answering your every question what to do.  He knows.  And He will tell you, and then do it for you." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 14, Section IV, 5:6, and 6:1-6

Who in their right mind would let hallucinations run their life?  Who would let an hallucination decide for them?  That's what we do every day, every hour, and every minute that we live as if we were a separate self with separate desires and separate needs.  But as we forgive the fictions and let them go, we find the One Self is ever-present, and All that has ever been.  This One Self, this Infinite Love, is all we ever need to dispel the dreams and Awaken to Joy.

THIS is the Glory

"You are not saved from anything [there is nothing but God], but you are saved for glory [the extending of the Light of God that we are].  Glory is your inheritance, given you by your Creator that you might extend it." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section IV, 1:4-5 (brackets hold the whispers of Holy Spirit about this quote)

Last night I dreamed about a trio of friends, a girl and two boys.  They were part of some much larger community, a typical hierarchical organization of some sort, which was transitioning from an old building and format to a much newer building and organization.  It was a big deal, with a new head administrator and gala celebration in the works.  And as in all group situations, everybody wanted to be in charge, everybody had personal ideas and preferences, and everybody had an agenda.  Somehow (in the way of dreams) my characters decided to kill off the new administrator and take his place, since no one really knew him yet.  The ringleader took on that appearance and persona, with the other two going along and making sure everyone believed it.  Then ensued a series of such ‘take-overs’, where one of them would kill someone else off and morph into that appearance and persona to take their place.  I kept wanting to wake up, but felt powerless to do so until the impostors were somehow ‘safe’.  I kept hoping they would just be happy with what they had done, but they kept it up until they started killing each other off to be in charge.  I only woke up when my dog-alarms woke me, and I felt hung-over and desperately bad and guilty, as if ‘I’ had been the one doing all the killing, posturing, and deception.  And of course, I had been the one.  What other one could there be? Whose mind dreamed this? 

The Course says in the Manual for Teachers that it takes great learning to understand that ALL things, events, encounters, and circumstances are helpful.  Our nightmares are gifts that bring the buried guilt to the Light to be forgiven.  What is the source of this guilt?  Nothing real, but a lifetime (or lifetimes) of believing the impossible… that we are separate and in competition with many others and with God.  Who knows how many dreams we have projected onto the screen of the sleeping mind, with casts of thousands of players, some seemingly innocent and some obviously guilty.  But all simply perpetuate this insane desire to kill off what gets in the way of our seeming preferences, and to cast as innocent our desire to do so.  All the while we are generating the smoke screen of many separate and sleeping parts, when there is only the One, and that One forever Awake and Aware.

This compulsion to create multiple forms and meanings and needs and versions is hell.  Heaven is the unified Awareness of our Eternal Self, the Oneness of Perfect Wholeness and Love without limits.  This is not boring sameness, but Infinite Creation, Infinite Bliss.  The extension of Love is Our only Purpose, and this Love has no object and no agenda.  It is eternally free and isn’t limited to or by imagined forms.  It doesn’t need to get rid of anything, or change anything, or keep anything. 

Every Sunday in my little church, we sing these words:
“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.  As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: World without end, AMEN, AMEN.”

Glory is the sheer joy of reveling in the Truth, the Source, the One, that shines and extends and includes ALL.

The Son is ALL that extends in and as the Awareness of that One.

The Holy Spirit is the extension of this Glory even within the dream, as the Awakening and Quickening of this Awareness.

This Glory, this ALLNESS, this Quickening of Awareness of Self is the only Purpose of every dream, whether by night or by day (because make no mistake, everything sensed with the body is a dream).  How is this Purpose lived?  By shedding every judgment, every preference, every personal agenda, every belief in limits and limitations of form.  THIS is true forgiveness and the Atonement.  THIS is the Glory.

This World of Light

"This world of Light, this circle of brightness is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness.  Here the world outside is seen anew, without the shadow of guilt upon it.  Here are you forgiven, for here you have forgiven everyone.  Here is the new perception, where everything is bright and shining with innocence, washed in the waters of forgiveness, and cleansed of every evil thought you laid upon it.  Here is your innocence waiting to clothe you and protect you, and make you ready for the final step in the journey inward.  Here are the dark and heavy garments of guilt laid by, and gently replaced by purity and love." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section IX, 9:1-7

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself.  The body is a limit.  Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found.  The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever is asked... It has been given to the Source of Love... It rests in God." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 199

Love, Light, Limitless Awareness... all of these are words, symbols twice removed, that have been used to describe the experience of our unified Self, the Field of Light and Love and Intelligent Awareness that is called God.  The Christ is the Light of this Awareness, and the Holy Spirit is Its Voice.  But it is the Christ Light that we speak of here.

This Light is the only Body we have.  It is formless, but includes everything.  It has no boundaries or limits, and is the only Reality behind every appearance in the world of projection.  It is the only Reality wherever we appear to be, wherever we appear to go, whatever we appear to do.  It is the only Reality of ALL, because it is literally ALL.  There is no other Cause, and no other Effect. 

The Christ Light is our only Mind.  It's not a physical light, since all seeming physicality is ephemeral projection.  This Light is pure Awareness, boundless Love, and limitless Mind.  It is Mind Awake.

A Course in Miracles repeatedly reminds us that "I am not a body.  I am free." (Workbook Lesson 199) And what in the collective delusion we call form is ever free?  The illusion of time seems to hold everything in form in bondage, as does the very nature of everything that comes and goes.  The fixation of the so-called egoic mind cannot even conceive of Freedom.  It is always trying to be free from.  Awakening occurs when the fixation loosens through constant forgiveness and release, when the mind opens and finds no boundaries at all.  True Freedom is not subject/object.  True Freedom is One, and is limitless and boundless, without a beginning and without an end.  It shines, and shines forever.  It is the Real World of endless Light and Love.

"This world of Light, this circle of brightness is the REAL WORLD."  Yes, where guilt meets with forgiveness all seeming boundaries and limits are released, and our eternal, unified nature of pure Innocence and Freedom is remembered.

"You are God's Son.  In Immortality you live forever.  Would you not return your mind to this?" -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 199, 8:1-3

Accept and Give Miracles

"You are entitled to miracles because of what you are.  You will receive miracles because of what God is.  And you will offer miracles because you are One with God. Your claim to miracles does not lie in your illusions about yourself.  It does not depend on any magical powers you have ascribed to yourself, nor on any of the rituals you have devised.  It is inherent in the Truth of what you are.  It was ensured in your creation, and guaranteed by the laws of God." -- ACIM; Workbook Lesson 77

"I am under no laws but God's.  There are no laws but God's." -- ACIM; Workbook Lesson 76

I am inspired to offer this as a day of miracles.  Instead of the world we think we see, we are entitled to the miracle of healed perception.  This is my only prayer for each and every one of us. 

"Hold your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice that speaks the Truth to you.  You will be listening to One Who says there is no loss under the laws of God.  Payment is neither given nor received.  Exchange cannot be made; there are no substitutes, and nothing is replaced by something else.  God's laws forever give and never take." -- ACIM; Workbook Lesson 76

We claim miracles for ourselves whenever and wherever we find ourselves forgetting Who We Are.  And we give and share miracles as the Voice directs... always in overflowing Love and Gratitude for the Allness and Oneness we share. 

"Ask for them whenever a situation arises in which they are called for.  You will recognize these situations.  And since you are not relying on yourself to find the miracle, you are fully entitled to receive it whenever you ask." -- ACIM; Workbook Lesson 77

Accept miracles today.  And give them freely.  This is your natural vocation.

"Let us today open God's channels to Him, and let His Will extend through us." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 76

Sharing and Ownership

"There are no strange images in the Mind of God, and what is not in His Mind cannot be in yours, because you are of One Mind, and that Mind belongs to Him.  It is yours because it belongs to Him, for to Him ownership is sharing.  And if it is so for Him, it is so for you." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 10, Section IV, 6:2-4

It's always amazing to me that after all these years, I still find sections of the Course that blow me away, as if I've never read them before.  And this in spite of the heavy underlining and highlighting that shows I did indeed read it and find it important.  But how could I miss the import of the statement, "It is yours because it belongs to Him, for to him ownership is sharing."  There's no putting a spin on this statement.  And then this morning I read in Workbook Lesson 106, "Thus does salvation start and thus it ends: when everything is yours, and everything is given away, it will remain with you forever."  It doesn't say some things are given away... it states everything.  And promises that because we give it away, we have it forever.

This is obviously not the way the world seems to work, and it certainly is not the way we have been taught to understand giving and receiving.  It's radical and blunt... whatever we have must belong to all, because to God ownership is sharing, and so it must be for us.  The Course tells us over and over in so many ways that to have, we have to give.  Not giving to get, but giving because it's Who We Are... the outpouring of unconditioned and unconditional Love that simply extends for eternity.

I've always had the tendency to be idealistic and non-materialistic, as a child of the 60's and a life-long lover of the Spiritual.  I remember as a youth being inspired by the book, Stranger in a Strange Land, with its message of Love without limits and sharing without boundaries.  But all of my ideas and concepts through the years still centered on the notion of me in a body, and other people in the form of their bodies, attempting to share and love in a world of limitation and competition.  It never works.  These are the strange images the opening quotation refers to... images of discrete forms that seem to divide and limit the Oneness of Spirit.  But no such strange images exist in the Real World.

The Course reminds us that we are not bodies... we are pure Spirit, the image and reflection of God:  "I am as God created me." (ACIM Workbook Lesson 110) and "Spirit am I, a holy Son of God; free of all limits, safe and healed and whole; free to forgive, and free to save the world." (ACIM Workbook Lesson 97, 7:2)  The dream world of strange images seems to come and go, seems to enjoy or seems to suffer.  But consider all your night dreaming over the years.  You have had dreams of every description, and have lived and died many times and in many ways.  You have defied the seeming laws of the world, and failed and triumphed again and again.  And yet, what real effects have any of those dreams had?  Not one dream was ever cause of anything, and none of the seeming effects survived your waking.  No dream analysis has ever done anything except give us a new story to tell.  Our 'past lives' in dreams have absolutely no effect.. they are just dreams. 

The really good news is that our supposed waking life is another layer of dreaming.  "Hear the one answer of the Holy Spirit to all the questions the ego raises: You are a child of God, a priceless part of His Kingdom, which He created as part of Him.  Nothing else exists and only this is Real.  You have chosen a sleep in which you have had bad dreams, but the sleep is not real and God calls you to awake.  There will be nothing left of your dream when you hear Him, because you will awaken.  Your dreams contain many of the ego's symbols, and they have confused you.  Yet that was only because you were asleep and did not know.  When you wake you will see the Truth around you and in you, and you will no longer believe in dreams because they will have no reality for you." (ACIM Chapter 6, Section IV, 6:1-7)

Our Reality is the unified Oneness of Spirit, the unconditioned Awareness of One Self, One Mind, One Life and Love.  Competition and ownership cease to have meaning in Oneness, for who would have more than another?  Who in Oneness could possibly know anything other than perfect sharing with All?  And what could be lacking in All? Our dreaming mind has imagined a self that is split into infinite pieces, projecting infinite dreams of competition, striving, ownership, and struggle... always in the vain attempt to reclaim for the split self the sense of wholeness and completion that seems to be lost in separation.  The joke is that we never lost the Wholeness and Perfection we seek.  And we regain our memory of our True Self by giving... as we give, as we share, as we no longer seek to divide and keep divided bits of life to ourselves through ownership, we re-discover the infinite Being that we are.

"God gave you all there is.  And to be sure you could not lose it, did He also give the same to every living thing as well.  And thus is every living thing a part of you, as of HimSelf." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 29, Section VIII, 9:7-9

The Key to Happiness

“You made this up.  It is a picture of what you think you are; of how you see yourself… Have you not wondered what the world is really like; how it would look through happy eyes?  The world you see is but a judgment on yourself.  It is not there at all.” – A Course in Miracles; Chapter 20, Section III, 4:3-4, 5:1-3

A friend recently asked me about the practice of forgiveness as the Course teaches it.  It’s not really forgiveness as the world thinks about it, because it’s not about anything ‘out there’ at all.  It’s a mental process, because everything I experience is in my mind, and then projected outward.  And while our minds appear to sleep, there is a great need for reminders that the nightmares we project have no real effects.  “What God has created follows His Laws, and His alone.  Nor is it possible for those who follow them to suffer the results of any other source.” (ACIM 20, IV, 3:6-7)  This means our insane projections, though scary, can have no real effects.  Of course, as long as we’re asleep, we’re stuck in a nightmare thinking it’s really happening.  So forgiveness is the way out of the dream.

Forgiveness as the Course teaches it makes use of the Holy Instant, the “little breath of eternity that runs through time like golden Light that is all the same; nothing before it, nothing afterwards.”  The reality of God and the Holy Spirit (which is our reality) is always, now, and forever.  “The past takes nothing from it, and the future will add no more.  Here then, is everything.  This gift returns the laws of God to your remembrance.” 

Because our reality in God is already perfect, whole, and complete, there really is only one purpose to everything… to awaken from the dream we made up.  So the Course reminds us repeatedly that forgiveness is our only function.  Don’t bother judging the seeming situation, since trying to judge a dream is insane… it’s all made up.  Practice forgiveness, and wake up to Perfection.  Practice forgiveness, and be Happy.

“God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.” --  A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 101

Here is an example of how the function of forgiveness unfolds in the mind.  Use your own words, and be specific and thorough with each individual person, situation, or feeling you are examining.  Once you experience the deep peace this process brings, don't try and fill the clean and open space with concepts and stories again.  Remember that it’s the false concepts and beliefs in your mind that project as the world you think you see.  So step back and let Truth arise and lead the way.  Ask the Holy Spirit whenever you need to make a decision.  BE peace.

This feeling (fear, anger, hurt, pride, jealousy, frustration, pain, hopelessness or whatever the unsettling emotion may be) that I feel toward and about you and this situation seems to be about:

(Take time to be honest about this, in detail)
 

I see that every aspect of this is a projection of my belief that I am separate from God and everyone and everything, which means I think I’m separate from this situation and from the All, the Everything that is God, which includes all Goodness and Love and Perfection and Completeness.  Because I think I’m separate, I’m projecting false images of conflict and pain and lack instead of radiating the Wholeness and Peace that I am.  I’m projecting false images of lack and limitation instead of radiating the perfect Love and Completeness that I am.
 

I see that it’s impossible to be separate from the Love of God, which is Everything and All.   I have never been separate and my fear is all made up and projected as false images.  Everyone and everything that seems to be involved is also eternally One with the Love of God, and so everyone and everything that seems to be in conflict is actually all Good and only Good, Perfect, Innocent and Complete.
 

And so I forgive myself and everyone and everything for what never even happened!  I let it go, and overlook all the seeming ‘evidence’ of lack and pain and suffering.  I look instead to the Holy Spirit, and I give all these images to the Holy Spirit to be dissolved in my perception throughout imaginary space and time.
 

I know that as I release these images to the Holy Spirit, they are completely undone throughout the dream (past, present, and future… which are all made up, too)... the false concepts and images dissolve in the Light like the dreams they are, and now I know none of it ever happened in reality.  All that remains is the Holy Instant of Light and Love.  There is only God, only innocence and peace, only the clean and open space of Spirit… the Light, Perfection, Peace, Love, and Joy that is our eternal Home. 
 

By being honest about our thoughts and feelings in this way, and giving them to the Holy Spirit, we let Truth correct all such errors in our minds (which is where it all appears to be happening!).  We can then step back and let our Wholeness (holiness) lead the way, and the symbols and projections in the dream we call life begin to reflect this Wholeness.  Innocence and Peace, Joy and Happiness… these are the Reality behind everything.  And forgiveness is the way to remember the Reality behind it all. 
 

“Forgiveness is the key to happiness.”  A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 121
 

Please join us for ACIM Teleclasses every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. central time.

Give All to All

"Only those who have a real and lasting sense of Abundance can be truly charitable.  This is obvious when you consider what is involved.  To the ego, to give anything implies that you will have to do without it.  When you associate giving with sacrifice, you give only because you believe that you are somehow getting something better, and can therefore do without the thing you give." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 4, Section II, 6:1-4

Whoa... this is really true, isn't it?  I pay my cable bill because I think I'm getting something for it.  I buy feed for the horses and dogs and cats because I think I'm getting a sense of satisfaction taking care of all these animals.  I give to my children because I think it gives me a sense of satisfaction and connection. 

Now the Course is not telling us to stop paying our bills or giving to our children.  But it is pointing out the way the egoic mind works.  Our conditioned self only gives to get.  Because getting is what the ego does to maintain the illusion of separate self, and to make sure guilt stays repressed and hidden.

"The ego never gives out of abundance, because it was made as a substitute for it.  That is why the concept of 'getting' arose in the ego's thought system.  Appetites are 'getting' mechanisms, representing the ego's need to confirm itself.  This is as true of body appetites as it is of the so-called 'higher ego needs'." -- ACIM; Chapter 4, II, 7:3-6

What is giving out of Abundance, then?  Abundance is an attribute of God, and therefore of our true nature since we exist as extensions of the Mind of God.  God has given us EVERYTHING, because God IS EVERYTHING... literally.  There is no other.  All means all.  So what exists that could be lost, or needed?  Giving out of Abundance is just being natural.  The Course gives the first teaching of the Holy Spirit as "To have, give all to all."  We know that we have because we have it to give. :-))

How do we make such a shift in perception?  How do we change our minds to such an extent?  Our self-concept, our egoic notion of a self, says we are limited, with limited resources, and only those that are careful with their resources have enough in this world.  In other words, our egoic notion of self-esteem is tied up with what we think we have acquired by what the Course calls the 'getting' mechanism.  "Self-esteem in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its reality, and is therefore temporarily less predatory." (ACIM; II, 4, 6:8)  So we think we have by getting, and temporarily think we are safe, as long as we don't have to give.  Ha!

True Abundance is the Awareness of God.  The overflowing of Being that is our True Self, living and moving and having being in God.  By learning to listen only to the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit... by learning to walk in the Awareness of God's ever-Presence... we come to realize we are the Abundance of Spirit.  Giving is the only natural extension of this realization, because all giving is mental, and of the mind.  We are pure Spirit, reflecting the Mind of God.

"To have, give all to all." -- A Course in Miracles;  Chapter 6, Section V: A

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.

Full Focus

"To be in the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention on it." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 7, Section III, 4:1

A long time ago, one of the greatest teachers the world has ever known told us that if we would simply seek what he called the Kingdom of God, and make it our number one priority, then everything else would fall into place.  His words, as quoted in The Bible, were, "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you."  For years I have turned to this Biblical passage when in distress or in seeming need.  The 'added things,' the things of this world, have always shown up... though often (O.K., usually) not in the ways or forms I would have expected.  Similarly, as a long-time student of A Courses in Miracles, I have turned to the Workbook Lessons like, "There is no will but God's" and "God's Will for me is perfect happiness." Over the years my very human fear and distress over happenings in the world and especially in my personal life have always been stilled by these Truths.  So imagine my surprise at reading, for perhaps the hundredth time, the passage above, and finding myself absolutely humbled. 

As always, this 'revelation' is nothing new.  I simply saw it anew.  And that is what Awakening is... seeing with eyes that no longer focus on the separate and limited, but allowing the focus to expand to Wholeness.  With full attention.  All the time.  Not just grudgingly giving that attention at certain times of day, or when things seem less than perfect.  So I am humbled to realize that I regularly give the Kingdom less than my full attention.  And also relieved, because I can see how foolish I have been, and how simple is the solution!

When we fall in love in this world, it seems so easy to give our full heart and mind to the beloved, whether that is an amorous partner or a new child or grandchild... or even a pet.  But how many of us have ever sustained that expanded attention?  Once we know that person is here and part of our life, we tend to take them for granted much of the time.  Sometimes it takes a near loss to remind us how important they are to us, and to jolt us into full attention again.  Well, I have been taking the Beloved for granted, in a much larger sense.  And although this doesn't matter from the perspective of eternity, it matters to me and my quality of life NOW... just as our neglect of our loved ones negatively impacts our human lives.  So I am simultaneously humbled and grateful for the resulting awareness of how simple our lives are meant to be.  "Seek first the Kingdom..."  "Focus your full attention on it..."  "All these things will be added..."

Vigilance and full focus aren't a chore... they are our natural state of Awakened Awareness, which effortlessly remains aware of the Allness of Self, and yet focuses on all that lives and loves, providing and sustaining all.  "When you have given up this voluntary dis-spiriting, you will see how your mind can focus..." (ACIM; 4, IV, 6:3)

"You need be neither careful nor careless..." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 5, Section VII, 1:4
"Those who choose freedom will experience only its results." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 20, Section IV, 4:1

A Special Form

"It is not difficult to understand the reasons why you do not ask the Holy Spirit to solve all problems for you.  He has not greater difficulty in resolving some than others.  Every problem is the same to Him, because each one is solved in just the same respect and through the same approach.  The aspects that need solving do not change, whatever form the problem seems to take.  A problem can appear in many forms, and will do so while the problem lasts.  It serves no purpose to attempt to solve it in a special form.  It will recur and then recur again and yet again, until it has been answered for all time and will not rise again in any form.  And only then are you released from it." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 26, Section II, 1:1-8

Everywhere I look there appear to be problems.  Problems facing our world, our nation, our families, our own lives and bodies.  Problems that appear to be different from one another, and that appear to have unique solutions.  Problems that grip the attention and leave no room for doubt in the reality of the perception.  There appear to be specific needs, specific lacks, specific things that don't work as they should.  And we argue with each others' assessments of what isn't working and what needs to be done.  Each thinks that someone else has to lose so that their perspective can be the true one.  It is this that is the antithesis of Truth.  And only Truth is the universal solution to every perception that is less than Whole, less than Holy.

"The Holy Spirit offers you release from every problem that you think you have.  They are the same to Him because each one, regardless of the form it seems to take, is a demand that someone suffer loss and make a sacrifice that you might gain.  And when the situation is worked out so that no one loses is the problem gone, because is was an error in perception that now has been corrected." (ACIM; Chapter 26, Section II, 2:1-3)

There are no special forms, just as there are no special cases or special relationships.  There is only One.  And this One is Whole, Holy, Complete.  This One cannot lack or try and take something from one to give another.  Oneness has no divisions and no direction.  Oneness is All... Everywhere, Always, Forever.  This One Thought is as close to Truth as our divided language can come.  And so it is all that is needed.  It is the Holy Spirit's answer to every so-called problem.

"You have no problems, though you think you have.  And yet you could not think so if you saw them vanish one by one, without regard to size, complexity, or place or time, or any attribute which you perceive that makes each one seem different from the rest.  Think not the limits you impose on what you see can limit God in any way." (ACIM; Chapter 26, Section II, 3:3-5)

And so it becomes obvious why we don't ask the Holy Spirit to solve ALL problems.  "Every problem is an error."  (ACIM; 26, II, 4:2) They are false perceptions, mere interpretations or points of view.  They are a fragmented and faulty picture.  But there are some false perceptions we choose to keep.  They are the 'limits' that we set to define reality.  They are all made up, but we lull ourselves into the group mind of the status quo, of the family or tribe with which we've identified.  This could be a family of origin, a political party, or a religion.  There are no real differences.  It's all made up.  Given to the Holy Spirit, our minds are made Whole and Holy again, and all differences disappear.  There is only One.  WE ARE ONE.

"Think then how great your own release will be when you are willing to receive correction for all your problems.  You will not keep one, for pain in any form you will not want.  And you will see each little hurt resolved before the Holy Spirit's gentle sight.  For all of them are little in His sight, and worth no more than just a tiny sigh before they disappear, to be forever undone and unremembered.  What seemed once to be a special problem, a mistake without a remedy, or an affliction without a cure, has been transformed into a universal blessing.  And in its place the Love of God can be remembered, and will shine away all memory of sacrifice and loss.  For it is not your Father's Will that you should offer or receive less than He gave, when He created you in Perfect Love." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 26, Section II, 7:1-7 & 8:6

The Other

I remember years ago when I attended Loving Relationships Training with Sondra Ray.  She had us all looking for our personal lies.  If we could let that one lie go, she insisted, then all our false beliefs about ourselves and the world would fall away.  She used the image of a hand (the personal lie) holding a bunch of balloons (our beliefs about ourselves and the world).  If the hand is released, the balloons are too.  It's a great image.  However, the reason it didn't appear to work for anyone for any length of time might be because it was based on belief.  A belief about beliefs is still belief.  What lies behind all beliefs?  What is the original lie?

What I mean is that Truth, being True, just IS.  It doesn't need belief to BE.  Who We Are in Reality must be True, because when every thought and belief is released, I Am.  The only accurate statement I could make about this is that I Am Awareness ItSelf.   So are you.  What has been termed the Christ of Our Being is Whole, with no other.  Oneness, Aware of ItSelf as I Am.

The original belief, the original lie that projects all other lies is that I am Other.  I am other than God.  I am other than you, or them, or it.  The Other belief is then projected onto the screen of the mind as a host of others, with a host of issues and problems and longings and sorrows.  The Other is never complete... how could Completeness be experienced in such a fragmented state?  When I am the Other, then everything is experienced as other.  Nothing is ever whole, never here, never complete.

A Course in Miracles tells us, "My function here is to forgive the world for all the errors I have made."  This is a way of taking back the responsibility for all the otherness we seem to experience, instead of the projected pretense that it's happening to us.  Once released, it's possible to return to the awareness of I Am, instead of I am with an otherly object.  In the Great I Am, there is no other.

When I recognize the Other in my life, I need only forgive and release.  Behind every seeming lies the perfection and holiness and beauty that we are... that I Am.  This is the Miracle.

"...Say, 'Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven' and you have said, 'I know what I Am'... " -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 3, Section VI, 11:8

In Our Own Image

"No one can conceive of his Creator as unlike himself." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 68, 1:7

I have been practicing self-inquiry as taught by A Course in Miracles for a long time now.  It's a version of self-inquiry very similar to "Who am I,"the form given by such advaita masters as Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj.  The drill goes that as you examine your body, you realize that if you're looking at it, it's not 'I' but a projected image.  The 'I' is actually what is looking and witnessing.  As you look at the senses and their subject/object relationship with the world, you realize the senses are not 'I'.  As you look at your thinking mind, you realize that there is some 'I' looking even at the thoughts that come and go.  And so you gradually refocus the mind to Source, the 'I Am' at the heart of all Being.  As A Course in Miracles teaches it, you reverse the process of projection to return to Self with a capital 'S.'   This Self is All-Inclusiveness, a Oneness or Singularity without an object.

This is a very effective tool for those who really want to remember who they are.  But for most of us, the desire and self-discipline is pretty much lacking.  We can't focus for any length of time on who is looking because we're too distracted by what we're looking at... and that is because we don't really want to know.  We're enamored of our own images... and why wouldn't we be?  We projected them... they're our babies, and we're attached to our own images and thought-forms.  And so we pretend they're real.  As A Course in Miracles reminds us, "Projection will always hurt you.  It reinforces your belief in your own split mind." (ACIM; Chapter 6, Section II, 3:1-2)  Our imagined separateness seems to defend and protect that separateness by forgetting, and by projecting outward the images of the sleeping mind.

The real problem, though, is also the good news.  Because our sleeping minds are constantly projecting, the projected world appears as divided as our minds.  We can have lovely dreams, but we also will have nightmares.  The experience of one guarantees the experience of the other.  Or you could say that suffering is implicit in pleasure, and pleasure is implicit in suffering.  And how is this good news, you may well ask?  Because the unstable nature of our projections sooner or later drives us to self-inquiry.  Sooner or later our undisciplined minds seek meaning beyond the appearance of our own projections. 

The real Truth is that the projected world is a collection of thought-forms in our own image.  We project who we think we are, divided into a cast of thousands.  The quote I used at the beginning of this blog points out that for the mind asleep, even our conception of Source is projected and experienced in our own image.  This is why the God of Christianity and Islam is so often seen as violent, judgmental, vindictive, etc.  It's not our Source that we're seeing, but our own sleeping minds.

The even better news is that our actual Source is not the sleeping mind, but Mind Awake.  This Mind is One, All-Inclusive, All-in-All.  As the Tao te Ching puts it:  "There is a Being, All Inclusive, Who 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."  Source doesn't project... it IS.  The refocusing of the mind through self-inquiry returns us to this primal Awareness.  And this Awareness then is reflected in the seeming individual mind as Self, a Oneness that is reflected in the projected world as unified vision and experience.  In this Awareness of Self there is only Perfection, only Love, and a Joyous Peace that includes everything.  

So whose image am I projecting?  As long as we live in this dream world, we will always be projecting a world and its imagined source in our own image.  So the real question is: Who am I?

"The concept of the self has always been the great preoccupation of the world.  And everyone believes that he must find the answer to the riddle of himself.  Salvation can be seen as nothing more than the escape from concepts [images].  The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them.  There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will see you know not what you are.  It is to this unsealed and open mind that Truth returns, unhindered and unbound.  Where concepts of the self have been laid by is Truth revealed exactly as it IS." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section V, 14:1-3, 17:1-4

The Awareness of Being One

"All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation." -- Mary Baker Eddy

"Heaven is not a place nor a condition.  It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section VI, 1:5-6

I love the way Life continually presents us with opportunities to see Truth everywhere.  Truth being, of course, simply another name for Oneness.  Discovering that Good is the Reality of this Oneness, no matter how it appears, is so flipping exciting I have a hard time writing about it coherently.  After all, we've all heard this a million times:  "It's all good," we say hopefully... all the while noticing how not good it appears to be.  

The above quote from ACIM helps... there is nothing outside Oneness, and nothing else within.  How could there be?  So with only the One, there is only, well... the One!  All Good, only Good... in Principle and in manifestation.

The thing is, this all sounds good, but I see riots in Egypt and people going hungry and pets being mistreated, etc., etc., etc.  I see my bills mounting and donations falling short.  I see people judging one another and arguing over things that don't matter.  So how does Oneness even matter, in Principle or in manifestation? 

Again, A Course in Miracles helps to discern the false from the True: "Perception is a mirror, not a fact.  And what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward." (ACIM Workbook 304, 1:3-4)  Obviously, when the mind is unaware of Oneness, it projects duality in person, place, and thing.  The awareness of Oneness is the Principle that reflects the wholeness and perfection that is Reality.  The awareness of Oneness reflects the All-Good in all ways.

I have experienced, and continue to experience, many miracles of healed perception.  Always what occurs is that I have, at least momentarily, accepted the One Mind as All.  This is the healing... and the healed mind reflects wholeness, abundance, and endless Good in all possible forms.  As I mature spiritually, it becomes more and more comforting to rest in the awareness of Being One, which is the miracle for everyone and everything, in every situation.  There is nothing else.  The seemingly hidden Presence of Good awaits only our recognition.

"In all thy ways acknowledge Him [Biblical speak for the One] and He shall direct thy paths." -- Proverbs 3:6

Self to Self

Wow, it's been nearly a month since I posted last.  I have had many inspired thoughts, but no inspiration to write about it.  This morning I read a great quote from Margaret Laird that expresses this perfectly: "There was a time I believed that I read or listened to others to find out what others thought.  Now I know I read and listen to another's speaking to discover what I am [the I AM] thinking.  We cannot expect to find Truth outside of our own awareness."  This past month, I spent a lot of time looking inward, listening to the Voice of I Am, and inquiring deeper into the appearance of things.  It's been fruitful, though challenging.

The challenge is the deeper recognition that duality in all its forms is only appearance, and that appearance is always and only my own conceptualization of what appears.  Mary Baker Eddy said, "Can you see an enemy, except you first formulate this enemy and then look upon the object of your own conception?"  Without those concepts, duality (subject and object consciousness) dissolves or resolves (words are inadequate here) into Truth, which is experienced as Oneness, a unity, a whole, with no opposites or contraries or negations. 

This going deeper involves seeing that everything we perceive in the phenomenal world is a duality:  I perceive goodness, but it is my concept of goodness, which is based on the opposite of what I perceive as badness.  I perceive supply, or income, but it is my concept of income, based on the opposite of what I conceive as lack or poverty.  I perceive kindness, but it is my concept of kindness, based on what I conceive of as unkind or hateful or spiteful.  I'm really just wandering around in a world of concepts, rather than experiencing Goodness, Supply, or Kindness (Love), which are a unity without opposite because they are All-Inclusive.  We can't conceive of Oneness.  But we can become Aware of It, since It is the Truth of everyone and everything. 

A Course in Miracles puts it this way: "When you decide upon the form of what you want, you lose the understanding of its purpose.  Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited."  In duality thinking (which is all thinking), what we lose is the Awareness of Wholeness.  And as we gradually glimpse the deeper meaning of the oft-misunderstood Biblical statement: "Take no thought," we become explorers of this dawning Awareness, which includes everything but is not defined by any of it.  It heals and blesses, but not for any reason we could give conceptually.  It simply IS the Reality of All.

How do you write about this?  How do you speak of It?  Which is why I haven't been inspired to write much over the past month.  And then I read Margaret Laird this morning, as she explained that the only reason anyone writes is to know their own mind.  So I'm writing this morning, to clarify for myself this deepening Awareness of Self.

To paraphrase Margaret Laird again, the individual living Self-consciously as Mind (Unconditioned Awareness, Oneness... concepts fail here) evolves an apparent ego-image never afraid for itself, never taking thought for itself as 'I', as well as a physical body that is self-restoring as long as it is apparently needed.  The ego-image which evolves from this Awareness (that the only 'I' is the Mind of Unconditioned Awareness, our very Self) never reacts to concepts and situations, but always acts with intelligence.  It has no power to save itself, fix itself up, or transcend itself.  The Mind (the Unconditioned Awareness of 'I' that is Self) is its existence and its power for constant newness and freshness.  In this Light everything takes on the loveliness of perfection, beyond all concepts.

Of course, all of this exercise in giving voice to the unspeakable is just a smokescreen... the inclusive Reality is that only the 'I' is writing and reading this, and only the 'I' knows its Self.  There's only One.

"The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them.  There will come a time when images have all gone by... It is to this unsealed and open mind that Truth returns, unhindered and unbound.  Where concepts of the self have been laid by is Truth revealed exactly as it is." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section V, 17:1-4

My Only Need

"God has already done all things that need to be done.  And I must learn I need do nothing of myself, for I need but accept my Self." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 337, 1:5-6

There has long been a virtual cult in self-help circles, a cult of the virtues of self-esteem.  And it's true that we can build our ego up and feel better about ourselves attitudinally.  But it's not real self love.  The love of an illusion of self can only give us the illusion of love, an illusion that comes and goes.  It's the same with loving (or hating) another person... loving (or hating) the illusion we've projected can only breed more illusion.

There is only one way to know the Truth... we have to release what isn't true, and see what is always here, always effortlessly present.  Like the huge dome of the sky, God is what is always here, regardless of the thought clouds and projections that come and go.  To accept that my real Self is One with God and all that Is... and that God is the Source and I am One with Source... and that creation is seamless, whole, and complete, no lack or limitation possible in all of God's Being... this acceptance allows me finally to simply BE.  I need do nothing. 

In this lies freedom... because it also means that I am free to do whatever arises through the spontaneous inspiration that emanates from our One Being.  I am not obligated or coerced or in bondage to anyone or anything.  I co-create with all of Self in joy and love.  Like the sun shines, we ARE.  My only need, and yours, is to accept this and live it.