What's Changing?

"The thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 30, Section III, 8:4

I was just talking to a friend who commented how everything in the world is in the process of monumental change.  My rather surprising and spontaneous comment was: "Not here.  Everything here seems to be hardly changing at all."  I think it took me by surprise as much as it did my friend!  And it gave me pause.  After all, there are a lot of outer changes in my life.  I was just blessed with grandson number four.  I just took on two new cats and a new dog here at the Sanctuary, and a new Quaker parrot may be coming, as well as another horse.  I'm making changes in my websites and the content offered there.  And I've started doing more public speaking appearances.  So what is the source of the 'nothing's changing' comment?

People are always complaining about their lives, of course.  Either everything is changing or nothing is changing... and both seem to be cause for complaint!  So what is the real issue?

A Course in Miracles explains that literally everything in our daily lives, the things we think we want and the things we think we don't want, serve only one purpose:  to keep us so preoccupied with the illusion of life, the constantly changing kaleidoscope of forms and events, that we don't acknowledge that it isn't real.  Our true Self is eternal and unchanging, the Ground of All Being... and the changing, shifting forms that come and go are mere shadows, and are falsely perceived as substance by the egoic, conditioned mind.

The more our awareness of the eternal deepens, the more we notice that there is no real difference in content in all the constantly changing forms.  The quality of all of them is nothingness... and so nothing really changes.  Forms shift and change, the furniture is rearranged, but nothing in the world of illusory forms ever really happens.  It doesn't matter if we move from one side of the world to the other... we find that nothing has changed.  Because what is Real remains in us... unmoving, eternal, perfect, and joyously serene. 

It's the Real and eternal shining in my new grandson that I celebrate.  It's the Real shining through the eyes of the animals and people in our lives that we love.  It doesn't change, even though our emotions may be in flux, and the forms and relationships may shift and change.  The Real, the Eternal, the True, the Love... no matter what we call It, THIS is always effortlessly present, and can be attended to with our awareness in the midst of it all.  This we can depend on.  This will never change.

"As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with all transitory states by definition false.  And that includes all shifts in feelings, alterations in conditions of the body or 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; WB 152, 5:1-3

Spiritual Paranoia

"Once you understand it is impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear of God must disappear.  You cannot then believe that fear is caused without [from outside your own mind]. And God, Whom you had thought to banish, can be welcomed back within the holy mind He never left." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 196, 8:3-5

Welcoming God back into the holy mind He[She] never left??  God is in my mind, and has always been????!!!!!????  These are very frightening thoughts to all of us.  For we find so much objectionable in our minds and thoughts... things we would never want anyone else to know about, much less God!  What is God, some kind of spirit lurking in the recesses of our minds, attempting to overtake us?  If God is IN our minds, then what is this other stuff???  And how can it be there if God is All, and everywhere and everything???

These thoughts, or something like them, arise in all our minds when we get too close to the Truth.  Our spiritual paranoia is such that we would rather die as weak and sinful mortals than acknowledge the grandeur of our true Being in God, as reflections and extensions of the Infinite.  We would rather live with the illusion that we are at the mercy of the world around us, that we are powerless and subject to all the laws the world evangelizes:  the laws of health, of diet, of economics, of 'nice' relationships and people, of judgment and punishment and guilt, of cause and effect as the material laws proclaim them.  As ACIM puts it, "The thing you dread the most is your salvation.  You have sought to be both weak and bound, because you feared your own strength and freedom.  Yet salvation lies in them." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 196, 9:4 & 7-8

This can be quite terrifying.  "When you realize once and for all that it is you that you fear, the mind perceives itself as split."  Both bondage and salvation, both in my own mind!  Yikes, what hope is there, then?  Won't it always be just this war of the worlds????

If we want to know the Truth enough to come this far, then it is easy to see the certainty of outcome.  The very nature of mental constructs and thought forms is that they are illusory... not real.  They are phantasms of the mind, as all fear is.  What is real is eternal and formless, and resides in the Mind of God, which extends ItSelf to all that Is, eternally whole and loving and calm, strong and free, infinite in Truth and in Being.  We are One with this Mind, and so sanity and Truth are in us, and we are always free to return to this Awareness of Self.  Or we can continue to make up scary stories and pretend to be bound by them.

So remember, when we find ourselves in the grip of such spiritual paranoia, it is a very good sign.  It means we are very close to reclaiming our power... to realizing that we are the terrorist, and the healer. 

"This is the only thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain, and the complete escape from sin, all to be given you.  Say only this, but mean it with no reservations, for here the power of salvation lies:
          I am responsible for what I see.
          I choose the feelings I experience,
         And I decide upon the goal I would achieve.
         And everything that seems to happen to me, I ask for,
         And receive as I have asked.
Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you.  Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 21, Section II, 2:1-7

Real Freedom

"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws you have set up to save you.  There are no laws except the laws of God.  This needs repeating, over and over, until you realize it applies to everything.  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.  Hear Him Who tells you this, and realize how foolish are the 'laws' you thought upheld the world you thought you saw." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 76, 3:1, 6:1-2, 9:3-6, 10:1

How did your day begin today?  Is your mind clear and clean of all thoughts of what has been or what will be?  Is your mind free?  The realization that none of our man made laws or rules has any real effect or hold on us is the beginning of real freedom.

Jesus walked the earth with this liberated awareness.  He didn't always wash his hands before he ate.  He healed on the Sabbath, to the horror of the other rabbis.  He hung out with people who were social and political outcasts.  He precipitated food and coin and wine out of thin air when needed, seemingly from out of nowhere.  He didn't work for a living, and told his disciples that to follow him meant "the son of man has nowhere to lay his head."  He didn't need to own anything, because he knew that the Allness of God is omnipresent.  He knew that God's laws forever give, and never take.  He knew that in the awareness of Allness, whatever is needed is already present.

Questions arise for us:  "How can I be expected to live like this?  I have to be practical, don't I?  It's not freedom to live in fear of what tomorrow will bring, is it?"  The Voice of Christ speaks quietly but firmly in answer to our fears: "Peace, be still.  Beloved, I am with you always, and all that I have is thine.  Not some, but ALL that I have, infinitely and forever, unchanging and always."

Each of us must face these conditioned fears of lack and loss in our own lives, in our individual circumstances.  Some might look bigger or scarier than others... some might seem inconsequential in the scheme of things.  But don't be fooled.  There is no hierarchy of illusions, and there are no projected beliefs that are more or less important than any others, or any more or less true or real.  They are all made up, learned, conditioned... all mental constructs without any substance.  We may live and move in the world as if they were true, but when we remember God and our true life in God, we remember the infinite freedom in which we live and move and have our being.  We are always safe, always fulfilled, and always home.  Where else would we be, since God is All? 

Every day my prayer is to return to the Truth of Being... that there is only God, and God is All and only Good. That God is Love, and only Love.  My prayer is for a deeper awareness of what the omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence of Spirit IS... and for a deeper knowing of the nothingness of all our projected fears and lacks and limitations that make up the so-called laws of the projected world... an illusory world of thought-forms, dreams and imagination without substance.  In Reality there is nothing but God, and we live and move and have our Being in God's Oneness.  What does that make us?

"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom.  I am under no laws but God's.  I am constantly tempted to make up other laws and give them power over me.  I suffer only because of my belief in them.  They have no real effect on me at all.  I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's.  And His are the laws of Love and Freedom." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 88, 3:2-8

An Affirming Flame

This excerpt from a poem by Auden moves me to tears, because it could have been written about the thought currents and fears of the world today:

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-Second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade;

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright

And darkened lands of the earth,

Obsessing our private lives...

Defenseless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out whenever the Just

Exchange their messages;

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

Poetry like this is powerful because it points to what we all must face. We have to accept and acknowledge the world around us as we have projected it... "The appreciation of wholeness comes only through acceptance." (A Course in Miracles; T11, V, 13:2) Acceptance means we no longer blame or project, but that we realize what true forgiveness is... "This is the shift that true perception brings: What was once projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear." (ACIM, MT4, 6:1)

Why is seeing and accepting the negation that is the world so important? Aren't we supposed to simply focus on what's good and positive and affirm the nothingness of everything else? This is the common wisdom in new thought traditions. The thing is, by denying what seems to be, we're simply engaging in self-deception. We haven't realized that we're the one projecting it. We may see our thoughts as having cause and effect, but we don't actually see that everything is thought. We're not actually aware that we can only see our own projections, our own interpretations... "Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward." (ACIM; WB304, 1:3-4)

A Course in Miracles reminds us that "Perception can make whatever picture the mind desires to see. Remember this: In this lies either heaven or hell, as you elect." (ACIM; MT 19, 5:2-4) The acceptance of this, taking responsibility for our own projections and perceptions is the first step in true forgiveness, which realizes that "there can be no form of suffering that fails to hide an unforgiving thought. Nor can there be a form of pain forgiveness cannot heal." (ACIM; WB198, 9:5-6) Only by facing our own projections, our own shadows, can we finally see that they are all made up. We have done this. And this we undo, day by day, through forgiveness.

We become the Just, the points of light in Auden's poem. We don't deny the world, we transform it. We are the forgiving, affirming flame.

"What cause have you for anger in a world that merely awaits your blessing to be free?" -- A Course in Miracles; T30, II, 4:1

Allness, Oneness, Nothingness

"There is no fear in perfect Love because It knows no sin, and It must look on others as on ItSelf. Here there is only holiness and joining without limit. For what is Heaven but union, direct and perfect, and without the veil of fear upon it? Here we are One, looking with perfect gentleness upon each other and on ourselves. Here all thoughts of any separation between us become impossible." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 20, Section III, 10:2-5, 11:3

"We love Him, because He first loved us." -- The Bible; 1 John 4:19

I had a reader e-mail with some great questions. How, the reader wanted to know, do we know what is real and what is not? How do we know that God is? All of us have asked these questions... and if we are honest, we continue to ask them in times of challenge and personal anguish. Even Mother Theresa had her dark nights of the soul.

So let's look at three questions that lead us to the Truth:

1. What is God? Every scripture and every spiritual teacher throughout time agrees on one very important description of God... Allness. What does this mean to me? If God is All in All to me and in my life, then everything I do and everything I say and everything I think about is God... there can be no escaping this Allness or being separate from it, no going unconscious, no fear of what it All means. "And thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul and with all your strength." All. This means that when times are apparently challenging, the Allness of God includes the opposite. Allness includes all Divine Ideas and their expressions... all ideas in harmony with every other idea. There is no competition in Allness. My judgements about what appears are made up, illusory stories about appearances. But every idea that appears in the Mind of God is self-complete, is ALL. As I rest in this, I do whatever needs to be done in any given situation in harmony with All, as a transparency for this Divine harmony, without resistance or judgment.

2. What does it mean that I am One with God, the image and likeness of God? What does this tell me about my spiritual nature and the Truth of my Being? What does it tell me about the situation in which I find myself now? Oneness with God means that there is no attribute of God that I do not share, and share equally. "Beloved, All that I have is thine." Oneness with God means that there is nothing in me that is not perfect and good and in Divine harmony with everything else, which is also my Self. Oneness with God means eternal love and companionship and sufficiency and ever-new joy. Oneness with God means that I can only ever find my Self in God, and that there can be no other situation. Only the Allness and Oneness of Self, of God, of the One.

3. What is my actual relationship with and to God? What does it mean? What is this Oneness we share with God, and how does it help in this situation? How does this relationship bring healing even when faced with seemingly insurmountable circumstances? If you stop and think about it, how can the Allness and Oneness that I am in God be anything other than self-complete and harmonious? Nothingness is the word that spiritual teachers and scriptures have used to describe all situations that seem to be problematic, insufficient, lacking, or full of fear and loss. How can that which is forever One and Whole be anything other than in Divine Order and Self-Loving? Nothingness is the only word to describe the nightmare stories we believe about ourselves and the world. Just as the stories about who I thought I was as a teenager had no real effect on Who I Am (as a matter of fact, I can now look at them and laugh, knowing it was all made up and ridiculous), in the same way, all stories of fear and loss and lack and limitation (whether of the body or finances or relationships or personal identity in any form) are all make believe, hurtful images that we have made. And that is all they ever are, images with no real substance. Nothing at all.

There is one other thing to remember... we reflect the Allness of God, and our Oneness with God assures that we Love and express that Love as God does. Everything else is the Nothingness of the dream. As A Course in Miracles reminds us, only that Love is real.

"The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 20, Section VI, 1:1

The End of Denial

"By knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the Allness of God... utter reliance upon the One God, to Whom belong all things." --Unity of Good by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 9, Line 28, & Page 10, Lines 9-10

Have you noticed that we all have a tendency to interpret our spirituality personally and selfishly? When confronted with unpleasantness, like starving children or human trafficking or animal abuse, or even the reality of where the meat we insist on eating is coming from and how barbarically the animals are treated, the tendency is to fall back on, "It's not real anyway." And then we do whatever we want and pretend it's not there. This is not the proper use of denial. This is the co opting of denial by the little, imaginary self, that wants its own comfort and survival and pleasure above all else.

Not one thing in this world is true, and that is certain. And yet, whatever we encounter in our own consciousness is true for us, and therefore must be forgiven, not avoided by sticking our heads in the sand. And as we forgive, I guarantee the Holy Spirit will urge us to action within the dream to reinforce that there is nothing to fear, nothing to avoid. The thing about the courage to walk our talk is that we are saying 'no' to what is not real, saying no to the fear and appearance of suffering encountered in consciousness. Everything is met in consciousness. There is nothing else.

The actions we take in the world are symbols in the dream, symbols of where we are in consciousness. I notice that Jeshua ben Joseph did not continue to sit on the mountain top or in the desert, but was actively led to the poorest, neediest, most despised people and places. He looked it all in the face and knew it was not of God, and therefore not real... and yet he walked and talked and healed and comforted while knowing the Truth. "Jesus taught us to walk over, not into or with, the currents of matter, or mortal mind." (Unity of Good by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 11, Lines 3-4)

So when we turn away from suffering by saying it's not real, we're really just acknowledging that to us, it seems scary and real and we don't want to go there. "Whatever you accept into your mind has reality for you. It is your acceptance of it that makes it real to you." (A Course in Miracles; Chapter 5, Section V, 4:1-2) The trick is, as Tolkien said, to "...take care of the evil in the fields that we know..."; we do what we can, moving over the illusion, untouched by it, while silently knowing the Truth in consciousness, the Allness of God and the Nothingness of suffering and death.

The end of denial comes as we realize there is nothing to deny. We don't need to pretend as we go through life... we simply meet whatever we meet in consciousness, knowing the Allness of God and our Oneness with Her... and we willingly meet any and all challenges in consciousness as the nothingness they are. World problems or family problems, the healing is the same. Fear not... there's nothing and no one but God. We learn to play our part with the assurance that it's our own True Self we are always meeting.

"Relationships in this world are the result of how the world is seen." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 19, Section IV, i, 12:1

"All your difficulties stem from the fact that you do not recognize yourself, your brother, or God." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 3, Section III, 2:1

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

What is One is One

"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." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers, 12. 6:6-10

"As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body's function is but to let God's Voice speak through it to human ears... to let the thought of unity come in, and what is One is recognized as One. The teachers of God appear to share the illusion of separation, but because of what they use the body for, they do not believe in the illusion despite appearances." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers, 12. 4:2, 5-6

Oneness seems the simplest of concepts, and the most easily disproved by the ego. I remember arguing with my sister after reading Allan Watts in the late 1960's. How can we be one? You're there and I'm here. Ridiculous concept! Then I had my first psychedelic experience and reframed that opinion. I discovered, with and without hallucinogens, that Oneness has nothing to do with concepts and everything to do with Reality. I remembered.

It has been many years since that experience of remembering, and there have been many benchmarks along the way. None of them matter. What matters is what is revealed as old ideas and self-concepts fall away. I remain as God created me, One with God and every aspect of creation, and have never been anywhere but safe and whole and free in the Field of intelligent, loving Oneness that we call God. I dream a dream of separation and judgment. I Awaken, and remember. Perhaps I seem to dream again, but I remain Awake in the dream. And so, all that enters my consciousness Awakens, too. It's my dream. As A Course in Miracles reminds me, "My mind is part of God's, and I am very holy. There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

What is One is forever One. No dream of fear or hate or separation or even misguided human love and attachment can change our Reality of Oneness with God and All that Is. Peace and Joy and Freedom and true Love without limits or boundaries is our Reality. It doesn't shift and change with circumstance, and isn't dependent on bodies or imaginary human laws and supposed limitations. What is One is One. And nothing else.

"Truth must be All-Inclusive, if it be the Truth at all. Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the Truth entirely. Salvation is the recognition that the Truth is true, and nothing else is true." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 152, 2:6-7, 3:1

"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, and the false kept separate from the Truth, as what it is." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 152, 5:1-3

The Gift of Opposites

"What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. Let not their form deceive you. Idols are but substitutes for your Reality. In some way, you believe they will complete your little self, or have the power to supply your lacks. An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of anti-Christ, that constitutes a gap between the Christ and what you see." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 29, Section VIII, 1:1-3, 2:1-4, 3:1

"In erring mortal thought the Reality of Truth has an antipode, the reality of error. God has no opposite in Science. To Truth there is no error. As Truth alone is Real, then it follows that to declare error real would be to try and make it truth." -- No and Yes by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 5, Lines 4-9

We live in a dream world of mental constructs. The thing about constructs is that they are constructed ON something. A house is constructed on a foundation. Mental constructs are either constructed on the foundation of assumed material reality or on the Truth of Oneness. These are the only two choices, and assumed material reality is the foundation for the mental constructs of opposites that populate our dream world.

Jeshua ben Joseph spoke in parables to illustrate such things. He reminded us over and over that judgment is not our function here, and that when we judge (see things as this or that), we remain asleep and lost in the dream. He told the following parable about hearing this, but not practicing it:
"Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell. And great was the fall of it." (The Bible; Matthew 7:24-27)

So it's not that we shouldn't judge... it's that we can't. How can you build a world (or a true idea) on what is constantly shifting and changing? Like the house built on sand, we fall again and again. There is no truth (not some truth, but NO truth) in the ideas of the world, and there is absolutely no true cause and effect nor reality in matter.

Mary Baker Eddy said it this way: "If disease is real as health, and is itself a state of being, and yet is arrayed against being, then Mind, or God, does not meddle with it. Disease becomes indeed a stubborn reality, and man is mortal. A kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation." (No and Yes by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 5, Lines 18-22) How can the Oneness and Allness of God, the unchanging Good ItSelf, contain or behold anything other than ItSelf? When we base a world on this insane possibility, we are indeed a kingdom divided against itself.

This world of seeming opposites becomes a gift when we heed the words of Christ. When we see what shifts and changes and vacillates from this to that, we know it is not true. We would not build our house upon the sand. Instead, we look for what is unchanging in every seeming circumstance and appearance. We build our house on the Ground of Being that lies beneath every seeming person, place, or situation, unchanging and sure.

The gift of seeming opposites is that they are so easily and transparently seen as arbitrary judgments, based on selective and exclusionary mental tactics. We mentally try to split Reality in two. There is in Truth nothing opposing Reality... nothing at all. There is only One, and this unchanging One holds All in its changeless embrace.

The gift of opposites is that through ceasing to judge them, we come to see that only thoughts in isolation project our illusory world of separation and loss and pain. They are a "thought without the power to change one blade of grass from something living to a sign of death. Their form is nowhere, for their source abides within your mind where God abideth not. Where is this place where What Is Everywhere has been excluded and been kept apart? Christ's enemy is nowhere. It can take no form in which it ever will be real." The real gift of opposites is revealed as we forgive and rejoin what has been separated only in our dreams. And the memory of Wholeness dawns at last.

"God has not many Sons, but only One. Who can have more, and who be given less?" -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 29, Section VIII, 9:1-2

I Already Am

"God asks for nothing, and His Son, like Him, need ask for nothing. For there is no lack in Him. An empty space, a little gap, would be a lack. And it is only there that he could want for something he has not." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 28, Section VII, 1:1-4

"You are prepared. Now you need but to remember you need do nothing. It would be far more profitable now merely to concentrate on this than to consider what you should do. When the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it always comes with just one happy realization; "I need do nothing." Here is the ultimate release which everyone will one day find in his own time, in his own way. You do not need this time. Save time for me by only this one preparation, and practice doing nothing else. "I need do nothing" is a statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty. Believe it for one instant, and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of contemplation, or of struggle against temptation." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section VII, 5:4-6, 7, 6:1-2, 6-8

This is the razor's edge of Awakening to Self. Our entire existence as limited human bodies within the dream is a negation. It's based entirely on what we're NOT, with the illusion that we can or will become what we're not. It never happens. Though the plot twists and turns and people have success along with failure, the one sure thing is that we remain mortal, subject to sickness, struggle, suffering, and death... the rich and famous along with the poor and lost. And the most interesting part of this dream of negation is that we pretend that none of this is true, while secretly believing it is reality and fearing it. And none of it is true.

How can a negation be true? Even within the dream this is not possible. The very nature of a negative is that it is the reverse image of what it exposes. So it is not reality, but a reversal. This is why ACIM reminds us over and over that not one thing the world believes is true, and so we must reverse ourselves. And that even more to the point, there is no world. Like quantum physics, the Truth of Being exposes that what we pretend is solid and real is nothing more than a smokescreen, the dream of the person who is looking. As Mary Baker Eddy so clearly stated, "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is Infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-All. Spirit is Immortal Truth; matter is mortal error." --Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 468, Lines 9-12

Reality is solid and dependable, but not as we imagine it. It is the Ground of Being, the clear Light of Omnipresence. There is nowhere and no one and nothing that does not share this Omnipresent Being that is Reality. We have nothing to do to make this so... it already and always IS. Yet we cannot know this when we are intent on dreaming a negation. We struggle against phantoms and say that we want what we already are.

"Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of Truth. It is nothing, because it is the absence of Something. It is unreal, because it presupposes the absence of God, the Omnipotent and Omnipresent. Every mortal must learn that there is neither power nor reality in evil." -- Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy; Page 186, Lines 11-16

As long as we struggle with the negations that make up the world of the dream, we remain lost in the maze of forgetfulness. How can I remember Who I already AM, when I am intent on remembering and living what I imagine I am NOT? And here's where it gets tricky.

We already are the Son of God, collectively. We individually reflect this Light and Truth. Of ourselves, we literally are nothing. The imagined separate self is simply a negation of what is... it is a fiction. So when ACIM reminds us that we need do nothing, literally, it is speaking the absolute Truth. Who we think we are is not real. Our True Self doesn't need anything from our fictional self except the willingness to let it go by not feeding it, by not doing anything to perpetuate the fiction. The statement, "I already AM" is not spoken by the contracted awareness of the fictional personality. It is the statement of Awareness of Being, the expanded, inclusive awareness of Our True Self.

This is the razor's edge of Awakening, because we still appear to live and move and interact within the dream. We dream Awake, yet know that we do nothing. Jeshua ben Joseph spoke the literal Truth when he said, "I can of mine own self do nothing." -- The Bible; John 5:30

As we Awaken, we reflect the Truth even within the dream, not by anything we do or by any external changes in behavior or appearance of the fictional self, but by Being One with God and reflecting only this Awareness. There is no individual I, only the Allness of God as I AM. I ALREADY AM is the literal Truth.

"No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are One with God. Let me remember I am One with God, at One with all my Brothers and my Self, in everlasting Holiness and Peace." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 124, 6:1, 12:2

Living from Wholeness

"Routines as such are dangerous, because they easily become gods in their own right." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers 16, 2:5

"Time is but another phase of what does nothing. It works hand in hand with all the other attributes with which you seek to keep concealed the Truth about yourself. Time neither takes away nor can restore." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 28, Section I, 6:1-3

Our daily schedules and routines are very seductive. We feel safer with them, as if they make us somehow more valid as human beings, more in control of our lives. We are dependent on each little aspect of routine, as if these things in themselves were life. These are the idols we have made, the gods we worship each day.

ACIM reminds us that we are really not doing anything at all with these habits and schedules and routines. We think we are actually doing something... if I brush my teeth, I'm protecting them. If I eat healthfully, my body won't get sick (and when has THAT ever worked?). A dream figure cannot cause anything, or be the effect of anything. There are no laws within the dream that hold consistently. Like all dreams, little anomalies pop up all the time that make us wonder... but not too hard. We don't want to know. We willingly fall back into our routines and pretend, like everyone else, that they make sense.

As ACIM points out, time does nothing. Time is just another god we have created in the dream, an imaginary comforter. "Remember nothing that you taught yourself, for you were badly taught. What you remember never was. It can deserve but laughter." (ACIM; Chapter 28, Section I, 7:1, 9:1,3) It is this awareness that brings true forgiveness of our illusions. And once forgiven, our illusions no longer obscure our Wholeness of Being.

The miracle of forgiveness reveals that we are and have always been safe and innocent and free, perfect and whole and complete. We cause nothing, because we are the holy Effect of God. We haven't done anything at all. And so we are free of our dreams of guilt and blame. "This world is causeless, as is every dream that anyone has dreamed within the world. No plans are possible, and no design exists that could be found and understood. What else could be expected from a thing that has no cause? You may dream a dream, but never will you give it real effects." (ACIM; Chapter 28, Section II, 6:1-3, 5)

Living from Wholeness requires that we allow the miracle of healed perception, by forgiving the dream. "The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No one is afraid of them when he perceives he made them up." (ACIM; Chapter 28, Section II, 7:1-3) Whenever we think we are doing it, whatever it is, we are lost in a dream. As Jeshua ben Joseph said, "Of myself, I do nothing." We are the Effect of God, and so whatever we think we are doing and causing is false, illusory... we are dreaming. We don't need the false security of dreaming imaginary comforters. We are forever the Effect of God. Living from the Wholeness that is our True Self, we reflect the Love of God even in the the dream.

"The miracle reminds you of a Cause forever present, perfectly untouched by time and interference. Never changed from what It IS. And you are Its Effect, as changeless and as perfect as ItSelf. It is not revealed in miracles. They but remind you that It has not gone. When you forgive It for your sins, It will no longer be denied. Your innocence has not been lost. You need no healing to be healed. In quietness, see in the miracle a lesson in allowing Cause to have Its Own Effects, and doing nothing that would interfere. The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is still." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 28, Section I, 9:4-6, 8, 10:7-9, 11:1

"The world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream's alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 28, Section II, 12:1-3

Drawn by the Light?

"Miracles are seen in Light, and Light and Strength are One." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 92

"May the blessings of Light be upon you, Light without and Light within. And in all your comings and goings, may you ever have a kindly greeting from them you meet along the road." -- Irish Blessing

"You are the Light of the world. A city that is set upon a hill cannot be hidden." -- The Bible, Matthew 5:14

"I am the Light of the world." A Course in Miracles, Workbook 61

I love noticing how much we fear the Truth about ourselves. How many sayings do we have that reflect this? We say 'they were caught like a moth in a flame' or 'they were blinded by the light' or 'too much light causes cataracts and skin cancer' and on and on and on. We fear the Light that we are, and so we project that fear and make a world where the fear stays hidden anxiously below the surface in the beliefs we hold about each other and the world.

Just for fun, and because it's St. Patrick's Day and my grandparents were O'Bannons... here's a little joke about this very thing. It seems an Irish farmer named Paddy and his beloved wife were expecting their first baby. She was very close to her time, and that very evening when Paddy came in from the field, he found her in their little loft in the throes of labor. He sent a neighbor for the doctor, and heard her cry, "Paddy, come quick, bring the lamp!" And he watched his first-born enter the world. He was overcome with awe, and when the doctor arrived he handed him the baby and said to his beloved wife,"Darlin', it's happy that I am, so I'll just be goin' to the pub for a pint and a wee celebration." He took the lamp and started down the ladder, when the doctor called him back with, "Paddy, quick! Bring the lamp!" And lo and behold, infant number two was born. After everything settled down, Paddy was truly overcome with joy, and said, "It's so happy that I am, and a lucky man with two such fine babes. I'll just be goin' along now to the pub for that pint..." And so saying, he started down the ladder once more. But once again the doctor cried, "Paddy quick! Bring the lamp!" And baby number three entered the world. At this point, poor Paddy was truly overwhelmed and a wee bit concerned. "Doctor," he said, "Do you think it could be the Light that's drawin' them?"

In all religions, Light is synonymous with God. In all traditions, Light is synonymous with wisdom. And yet, in this world, we fear it even as we are drawn to it for warmth and illumination. In this projection we call the world, we have made a mockery of the Truth. We believe that the fire that gives light can burn and destroy. We believe the moth is destroyed by the light. We believe that light can be concentrated, focused, and used as a weapon. We believe that light can come and go. This is not Light... this is a dream. The Light of God is eternal, and we are told in The Bible that "in Him there is no darkness at all." So if there is no darkness in God, Who is Infinite Being, All-in-All, and we are told that we "live and move and have our being" in Him, then where exactly is the darkness that we think we experience? Where are all the lacks and limitations and fears that make up the darkness of the world we imagine?

So in this world, we are drawn to the light, the sun, the happy, the loving... and these can certainly reflect the Light of God and seemingly dispel the darkness of the world for a time, like Paddy's pint at the pub. But the Truth remains, unchangeable and eternal: we are not drawn to the Light... We Are the Light.

"Who is the Light of the world except God's Son? This, then, is merely a statement of the Truth about yourself. It is the opposite of a statement of pride, of arrogance, or of self-deception. It does not describe the self-concept you have made. It does not refer to any of the characteristics with which you have endowed your idols. It refers to You as You were created by God. It simply states the Truth." -- A Course in Miracles, Workbook 61, 1:1-7

Being Nothing

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There is no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream in which it acts as if it were a person to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by other bodies, born into the world outside the body, lives a little while an dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different and can be told apart." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 1:1-8

Today's blog longer and is entirely about Chapter 27, Section VIII in A Course in Miracles. I urge you to read this entire section, and over and over. We know theoretically that we are not who we think we are. We know God created us in His Image, and that image is the reflection of pure Spirit. We know theoretically that our bodies are vehicles, a way to navigate in the world, like a car or a bicycle, and that the only real use for them is communication within the world. But what we don't want to see, don't want to acknowledge, is that the body is nothing at all.

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to prove it is autonomous and real. It puts things on itself that it has bought with little metal discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and real. It works to get them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does not need and does not even want. It hires other bodies, that they may protect it and collect more senseless things that it can call its own. It looks about for special bodies that can share its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies that would hurt and torture it." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 2:1-7

Winner or loser, lover or fighter, consumer or consumed... there are no real differences in the serial adventures of this fictional object we call the body.

"Thus you are not the dreamer, but the dream. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that it contrives. That this is all the body does is true, for it is but a figure in a dream. But who reacts to figures in a dream unless he sees them as if they were real? The instant that he sees them as they are, they have no more effects on him, because he understands he gave them their effects by causing them and making them seem real." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 4:1-5

The whole point to the endless stories we call life is to make it seem like life is happening TO us. If we really see for one second that it is all made up, we cease to feel like the effect of the world, like the victim, like the winner or the loser. We recognize the subject we have been calling 'me' to simply be another object, another character in the dream... and we recognize that we are the dreamer. And the dream is nothing at all. A fiction.

"How willing are you to escape effects of all the dreams the world has ever had? Is it your wish to let no dream appear to be the cause of what it is you do?" -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 5:1

Ah, here is clincher. How willing are we? How willing are we to really SEE? How willing are we to take responsibility for creating a universe of smoke and mirrors, and living our lives as willing slaves to nothing at all?

"Into eternity, where all is One, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 6:2-5

What a joke! That we spend every minute of every imagined day taking ourselves and our imaginary world so damn seriously! We want so badly for our illusions to have substance that we think the seriousness and drama gives them weight and substance. And how's that working for us?

"A timelessness in which is time made real; a part of God that can attack itself; a separate brother as an enemy; a mind within a body; all are forms of circularity whose ending starts at its beginning, ending at its cause. The world you see depicts exactly what you thought you did. Except that now you think that what you did is being done to you. The guilt for what you thought is being placed outside yourself, and on a guilty world that dreams your dreams and thinks your thoughts instead of you." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 7:1-4

Circularity indeed. It's no accident that many indigenous cultures depict the world as a snake eating its own tail. Everything we see 'out there' is some form of Karma. Karma is not what happens TO us. It's the reliving over and over of what we imagine we have done, in dreaming ourselves separate from the One, separate from God and the Allness of Good. And it gets bigger and more complicated as the dreaming goes on, since we have completely buried the 'original sin.' We think it is the characters in the dream that we do things to, or that do things to us. And over and over we think that we must relive and redeem these actions, or take vengeance, or somehow get it right. And so Samsara, the endless wheel of suffering continues to turn throughout imaginary births and rebirths, throughout imaginary heavens and imaginary hells.

"The world but demonstrates an ancient truth; you will believe that others do to you exactly what you think you did to them. But once deluded into blaming them you will not see the cause of what they do, because you want the guilt to rest on them. How childish is the petulant device to keep your innocence by pushing guilt outside yourself, but never letting it go! It is not easy to perceive the jest when all around you do your eyes behold its heavy consequences, but without their trifling cause." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 8:1-4

The heavier and more real the dream seems, the harder it is to see the joke. The only way to let it go is to forgive... we can't trust our own deluded sight and senses to know the truth from fiction. And so we have to forgive it ALL. And as we forgive and turn it all over to the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God that still resides in each of us in the midst of our delusion... as we forgive and let go, the Holy Spirit translates it all for the Awakening of all.

"In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks not to effects. How else could He correct your error, who have overlooked the cause entirely? He bids you bring each terrible effect to Him that you may look together on its foolish cause and laugh with Him a while. You judge effects, but He has judged their cause. And by His judgment are effects removed. Perhaps you come in tears. But hear Him say, "My brother, Holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in which this could occur." And you will leave the Holy Instant with your laughter and your brother's joined with His." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 9:1-8

How comforting is this? To know that all we have to do is ask. To know that all we have to do is be willing to let it all be as it really is. Without the story, without the need to judge and blame and be right, without the need for anyone to be guilty (including ourselves), we can see the clear and simple Truth. We can breathe again and laugh at what once brought us pain. How is this possible?

"The secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself. No matter what the form of the attack, this still is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, still is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is still true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 10:1-6

Being nothing is the nature of a dream. When we identify with a character in a fiction, we are being nothing. No wonder we spend our lives wanting to BE somebody. The sane part of us knows Who We Are. The problem is that we can never be somebody in a dream. A fiction will never be true. A fiction will never give us what we really want.

"This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering whatever form it takes." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 27, Section VIII, 11:1

No Other Gods

"Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." -- The Bible, Exodus 20:3

“And what agreement hath the Temple of God with idols? For ye are the Temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” -- The Bible, 2 Corinthians 6:16

"My House shall be called of all nations a House of Prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves." -- The Bible, Mark 11:17

"All idols of this world were made to keep the Truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is outside yourself to be complete and happy. It is vain to worship idols in the hope of peace. God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 29, Section VI, 6:1-4

First, one more reminder: The weekly ACIM conference call every Saturday morning begins at 9 a.m. central time. All are welcome. The call-in number is 605-475-4333, and the access Code is 101546.

It's sometimes hard to see, let alone agree, that every belief in a power or motivation outside of oneself is an idol, a god whose graven image we worship; and this includes the people and things we think are good and those we think are evil, and everything in-between. They are idols, false gods, because we have invested what has no reality or life, our own dream, with the power to control or motivate the Son of God. This can never be. We have given it all the meaning it appears to have, and it is all made up. That's why, as ACIM reminds us, "You will weep each time an idol falls."

ACIM also asks us, "What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. That is the only power they have." And what does the Temple of God, your BEING, have to do with idols? Nothing. Whether it's the belief that a particular person is good for you or bad for you or meant for you or wrong for you; or that money can buy peace of mind or cause you suffering or bring you anything at all; or that drugs can kill or hurt or cure or heal; or that a certain way of eating and exercise can create life and health... every false idea is an idol, a god that you live with daily and invest with great meaning and importance... and it's all made up. It's your belief in the BEING of a person or thing or activity, and not the person or thing itself, that seems to hurt or help. In Truth, it does nothing... except delay your return to your Father's House.

You are the Temple of God, the House of God. Not your body, which is just another idol... your BEING. And we have made of God's House a den of thieves by welcoming false ideas and encouraging them to set up booths for exchange of other false ideas throughout the Temple. When Jeshua ben Joseph threw the money-changers out of the Temple, he was throwing out false ideas of BEING. The thieves and money-changers are our own false beliefs, the idols and false gods that populate what A Course in Miracles calls "the great projection." The world that we see and invest with such power and importance is nothing but projection, and is all smoke and mirrors.

Of course, every Biblical and scriptural passage, without exception, is talking about ways of BEING. And we have even made scripture an idol, when we make it something outside of us that is literal and necessary for our 'salvation.' We might as well cast it in gold and prostrate ourselves before it. THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE OF US, BECAUSE THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE OF GOD. And we are the Temple. We are IT.

We live and move and have our BEING in GOD. In the Oneness and Allness of Being, there is no outside. As I have said before, it's an inside job. :-))

"There can be no salvation in the dream as you are dreaming it." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 29, Section IX, 4:1

God is NOT Insane

"To justify one value that the world upholds is to deny your Father's sanity and yours. For God and His Beloved Son do not think differently... So if he chooses to believe one thought opposed to Truth, he has decided he is not his Father's Son... This you believe. Think not that this belief depends upon the form it takes. Who thinks the world is sane in any way, is justified in anything it thinks, or is maintained by any form of reason, believes this to be true." -- A Course in Miracles, Text, Chapter 25, Section VII, 4:1-2, 4-7

Well, there you have it. Either God is nuts, or we are, or both. Reading contemporary metaphysics and theology, they're pretty much all true. How could any of it have any meaning when you are willing to actually question the premise that insanity in any form could exist within the Oneness and Allness of God? This is not a matter of theology. This is a matter of extreme delusion and psychosis, collectively. We are all collectively insane in our imagined separateness.

Within the Ocean there exist many currents, many forms, many ecosystems, and all come and go within the Oneness that is the Ocean. To call any of them true in themselves is insanity. A fish out of water is no longer a fish... it's sushi.

Let's say we're that fish. We think we are autonomous, and we choose to flop out onto dry land to see what it's about. Or we grab that hook dangling temptingly in front of us, sure that this one will be different! Yeah, this is it! Or we simply choose to swim in the same circle over and over and over again, hoping that we will stay safe, or that it will look different this time around. We tell ourselves how beautiful and safe it is in this little circle. Over and over the same story in re-enacted, with different fish and a different host of supporting actors and roles... but the outcome is always the same. What imagines itself as separate is all made up, and it comes and goes within an illusory world of delusion that sometimes looks like pleasure, sometimes like pain. In this world there really is no difference.

A Course in Miracles reassures us: "The Holy Spirit has the Power to change the whole foundation of the world you see to something else; a basis not insane, on which a sane perception can be based, another world perceived. And one in which nothing is contradicted that would lead the Son of God to sanity and Joy. Nothing attests to death and cruelty; to separation and to differences. For Here is everything perceived as One, and no one loses that each one may gain. Test everything that you believe against this one requirement, and understand that everything that meets this one demand is worthy of your faith. But nothing else."

In our insanity of imagined separateness, we think we have to compete and struggle against others and against the environment and even against our own tendencies and habits. It's constant war with someone or something. We thrive on it. We institutionalize it in our schools and athletic teams. We market it with our music and video games. We spiritualize it with our religions and metaphysics. And it's still the same old insane story. We imagine gods many, and we suffer the disillusionment of the inevitable. Our gods are not alive. They will always fail us because they are all made up.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." The Bible, Exodus 20:3. Not because we shouldn't, but because there aren't any. It's insanity and delusion to make imaginary gods out of our own stories. All that really exists is in God, and to imagine ourselves anywhere else is to suffer, like the fish imagining that he could want to be anywhere but in the Ocean in which he lives and moves and has his being.

Yes, we are all weaving in and out of insanity, waking up to Who We Really Are. We are the Son of God, and God is NOT insane. Thank God.

"Your special function is the special form in which the fact that God is not insane appears most sensible and meaningful to you. The content is the same. The form is suited to your special needs, and to the special time and place in which you think you find yourself, and where you can be free of place and time, and all that you believe must limit you. The Son of God cannot be bound by time nor place nor anything God did not Will." -- A Course in Miracles, Chapter 25, Section VII, 7:1-4

Nothing and Everything

"The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. 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, because it is not really thinking about anything... and 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

"God breaks no barriers; neither did He make them. When you release them, they are gone." -- A Course in Miracles

"What is loosed on earth is loosed in Heaven." -- The Bible

I had an ex-husband who accused me of being extreme... to the point where he dubbed me 'extreme Mary.' And he was and is correct. I could never accept anything at face value, and questioned everything. I used to accept his judgment, that this predilection for questioning everything was a liability and a bad thing. After all, isn't moderation the key to health and happiness?

Nope. As it turns out, everything that the world accepts as true is really nothing at all. Thank God for questioning minds, that lead us to the shedding or molting phase of consciousness. Without this phase we would never remember Who We Are.

We have to question, to begin to see that it is all a world of ideas that add up to nothing, nada. When we think in this unquestioning manner, we are not thinking at all, but looking at a blank screen. Picture a group of hypnotized people, sitting in front of a big T.V. set with nothing on it. But each of them is projecting onto this screen a series of imaginary stories, and populating an imaginary world with them. Now let's say they snap out of their mesmerized state. They see there is nothing on the screen, and that they've been making it all up. Only then do they bother to question the whole shebang. This is where we are. The questioning phase of Awakening.

Vision is an authentic trait of Who We Really Are. But in our sleep, we have substituted our projected dreams of illusory war and peace for the Vision of Reality, of Divine Love and Truth and Peace and Joy. And so the long winter of the hibernation of the Son of God appears to go on and on and on... when in reality it never happened... it is nothing at all. What a hat trick!

The gift of Everything is our birthright... not by human birth, but by Being reflections of God, Sons of God. But the Vision of Everything isn't possible until we stop trying to make something out of nothing. This is the addiction we need to give up. This is our ticket Home, our ticket to Freedom. For never will nothing and Everything meet. Darkness appears to exist only until the Light is turned on. And where is the nothingness of the world we thought we knew, when the Allness of God is realized to be Everything?

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. The Holy Spirit enables you to perceive this Wholeness now. You cannot extend His Kingdom until you know of its Wholeness." -- A Course in Miracles

The Stillness of Perfection

"The stillness of your Self remains unmoved, untouched... and unaware of any condemnation that could need forgiveness." -- A Course in Miracles

"Completely unaffected by the turmoil and the terror of the world, the dreams of birth and death that here are dreamed, the myriad of forms that fear can take; quite undisturbed, the Thought God holds of You remains exactly as it always was. Surrounded by a stillness so complete no sound of battle comes remotely near, it rests in certainty and perfect peace." -- A Course in Miracles

"Neither God nor the perfect Man can be discerned by the material senses." -- Mary Baker Eddy

I almost didn't write this blog today. It is a morning of such quiet busy-ness, such pristine contentment, that nothing arose. And then, as I was putting another load of laundry in to wash, I heard, "The Stillness of Perfection." And here we are.

We tend to think that spiritual silence and stillness have something to do with the physical senses. Nothing could be further from the Truth. As Mary Baker Eddy is fond of saying, there is no place where Truth (Spiritual Being) and matter (the material world of the senses and the belief that there is life and intelligence in the material and mortal), ever meet. How can something ever meet or be touched by nothing? Another way of saying it would be that the Allness of God has never known limitation or change in any form. Perfection and Allness are synonymous when applied to God and our Spiritual Reality.

Perfection is not something to be attained, any more than stillness can be achieved. Perfection is the infinite and continuous state of completeness that is our True Self. Silence, stillness is the omnipresent state of resting in this completeness, the Awareness of Self, limitless in Peace and Joy. Another way of saying this is that although there is a blanket of sleet shining in silence on the world outside my window, I cannot be aware of it and appreciate it unless I look out the window and include this in my perception. As long as my perception is preoccupied with other things, I will not look up and notice it. Once I do see it, I realize it was right here all along, but I simply didn't see it. Your Self is always present, the Ground of Being, Perfect and unchanging in its Stillness and expansive Joy. Not dependent on anyone or anything. Effortlessly YOU.

So what could possibly prevent our knowing of Self, of what is effortlessly True, not just a story like everything else? ACIM tells us that, "The unforgiving mind is torn with doubt, confused about itself and all it sees; afraid and angry, weak and blustering, afraid to go ahead, afraid to stay, afraid to waken or to go to sleep, afraid of every sound, yet more afraid of stillness." The unforgiving mind with its unexamined stories and mental constructs, is the source of all suffering. The Buddha said that desire is the source of all suffering. And every story of unforgiveness has at its heart the desire to be other than we are, or for some person or situation to be other than it is. Always, the wheel of suffering spins on fulfilled or unfulfilled desires. No difference, really.

As ACIM puts it, "Forgiveness is the key to happiness," just as desire is the source of suffering and is always some form of grievance against ourselves or the world, some form of unforgiveness. "Why would you seek an answer other than the answer that will answer everything? Here is the perfect answer, given to imperfect questions, meaningless requests, halfhearted willingness to hear, and less than halfway diligence and partial trust. Here is the answer! Seek for it no more. Would you stand outside while all of Heaven waits for you within? Forgive and be forgiven."

The forgiven world rests safely within you, in the midst of all the busyness that comes and goes within this dream of a world. Your Reality is always safe and sound, within your own heart... in the Stillness of Perfection.

"You Who were created by Love like ItSelf can hold no grievances and know your Self." -- A Course in Miracles

One Answer

"To give up all problems to One Answer is to reverse the thinking of the world entirely." -- A Course in Miracles

"When this Power has once been experienced, it is impossible to trust one's own petty strength again. Who would attempt to fly with the tiny wings of a sparrow when the mighty power of an eagle has been given him?" -- A Course in Miracles

One problem, one solution. A Course in Miracles makes it so clear and so simple that only the deliberately delusional could call it confusing. Our problem is always some version of a separated self, exiled from God, surrounded by the idols that are our individual projections and illusions, in the deceptive forms of people, places, and things. Our One Answer is always remembering that God is One, not many... and that there is no place or time or situation where God is NOT. One Power, All Power... One Intelligence, All Intelligence... One Love, All Love... and everything that appears as 'other' is simply, well, NOT.

So what are you certain of? We may think we are certain our bodies are real, for example... but where is the body you were so sure of when you were a teenager? Where is the body you were so sure of yesterday? If it dissolves and vanishes like a dream, as if it never existed... then how can you call it real? Where are the 'great' civilizations of the past? All that remain of them are the stories we tell... no reality in stories. All stories are simply, well, STORIES.

What is True is always True. It is a principle on which we can stand. ACIM says, "The Truth is True, and nothing else is true." Can't get much clearer than 'nothing else.' Nothing means, well, NOTHING.

Bodies are not true. Personalities are not true. Feelings come and go like weather and so are not true. Judgments are simply mental constructs and so not true. Possessions are not true. Time and space come and go and are not true. What comes and goes and dissolves like smoke and mirrors is simply, well, NOT.

The One Answer to whatever confronts us today and all days is this knowing. "Hear O Israel, the Lord Your God is ONE." This Truth lights the Way, corrects all projections and errors, and escorts us safely through every fire and every challenge within the world of dreams. There is nothing else.

"All this complexity is but a desperate attempt not to recognize the problem. If you could recognize that your only problem is separation from God, no matter what form it takes, you could accept the answer because you would see its relevance. There is only one problem, and One Answer." -- A Course in Miracles

Spiritual Sense

"Looking outside yourself for the Source of Love and Grace, you lose the real Presence within. That which you receive through spiritual sense comes as the Grace of God, and only this is important." -- Joel Goldsmith

"'I am as God created me.' This idea is all you need to let complete correction heal your mind, and give you perfect vision that will heal all the mistakes that any mind has made at any time or place. It is enough to heal the past and make the future free. If you remain as God created you, appearances cannot replace the Truth, health cannot turn to sickness, nor can death be a substitute for life, or fear for love. All this has not occurred, if you remain as God created you. You need no thought but just this one, to let redemption come to light the world and free it from the past. In this one thought is all the past undone; the present saved to quietly extend into a timeless future. If you are as God created you, then there has been no separation of your mind from His, no split between your mind and other minds, and only unity within your own. The healing power of this idea is limitless." -- A Course in Miracles

"Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." -- The Bible

Spiritual sense is the only sense we need. We have been badly taught to listen to the material senses, which are not instruments of detection, but of fiction. The physical, material sense always and only tells us what we want to hear. We are proving, like all delusional minds, that our illusions are true and that we are right. Even in the midst of our suffering, damn it, we are right. This is the way it is.

Spiritual sense is the only sense we really have. Joel Goldsmith was fond of saying that unless we can hear what can't be heard by the physical ears and see what can't be seen by the physical eyes, we will never know the Kingdom of God that is in the midst of us. Jeshua ben Joseph shortened that to, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear. He who has eyes to see, let him see." Short and to the point... and unintelligible to the human sense of things.

Spiritual sense is how we honor the First Commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Material sense is the evidence of gods many, with the imaginary power to change and manipulate and control the Son of God. How could this be true or even exist at all within the Allness of God?

The First Commandment is not an ultimatum... it's a roadmap Home. As ACIM says, "I am under no laws but God's." The sights and sounds that seem to show us many powers and many laws are the evidence gathering machine of the illusory, material dream. Believe in them, and you are lost in the dream for now. Believe in even one of them, and it is as if you believed in all of them. There is no hierarchy of illusions, and you cannot be a little bit asleep. You either wander in the dream, lost and alone in spite of the illusion of many bodies... or you Awaken to Awareness of Who You Are, and in Whom You Live and Move and Have Your Being. There is nothing in between these two choices. It really is All or nothing.

As long as we prefer one illusion to the Truth, we sleep and suffer and die within the dream, over and over and over. Our spiritual sense cannot awaken unless we value it above all else. As long as one twinge of attachment and emotion holds you to the old allegiances, you sleep and suffer and die, over and over and over. There is no compromise nor meeting place between illusions and Truth. One IS. The other simply isn't, and so there is nothing to do but wander within the nonsense of the dream. Sometimes it looks like life, sometimes like death, but there is no real difference. Sometimes it looks like love, sometimes like hate, but there is no difference. What isn't true simply doesn't exist, and no new stories or attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable will every change it into Truth.

Our spiritual sense cannot be lost. But as long as we look outside ourselves for evidence with the material senses, we cannot see or hear what is Real and True. As long as we look to person, place, or thing for love, approval, validation, or survival, we are lost. The good news is that the spiritual sense of Our True Self is available to us any instant we let go of the illusions that have fascinated us for so very long. The First Commandment is couched in uncompromising tone because this act of surrender and commitment is truly our first and only need, our first and only Love, and the only sense we ever need to pay attention to.

"Hear O Israel: the Lord your God is One. And thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your soul, and with all your strength." -- The Bible

Your Inheritance

"Have you really considered how many opportunities you have had to gladden yourself, and how many of them you have refused?" -- A Course in Miracles

"Let not your heart be troubled; neither let it be afraid." -- John 14:27

"All things work together for good. There are no exceptions..." -- A Course in Miracles

Today's blog is going to be short and to the point. ALLNESS means that all that IS, is only and always the Light of unchanging Good... as God said in the beginning, "Let there be Light, and there was Light." Nowhere does it mention creating darkness in the first chapter of Genesis.

Oneness means there is absolutely no thing other, no other power, no other substance which can cause us fear or lack or limitation or death. As Jeshua ben Joseph said, "Peace, be still... God is One."

Nothingness means that not one exception exists to the Goodness, Love, Allness, and Oneness of God... no exceptions, nothing other than Good, God.

Allness, Oneness, Nothingness...

"The Will of God is One, and all there is. THIS IS YOUR INHERITANCE." -- A Course in Miracles