You Are Home

"The learning of the world is built upon a concept of the self adjusted to the world's reality. A concept of self is made by you.  It bears no likeness to your Self at all.  It is an idol, made to take the place of your reality as Son of God." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section V. 

Many of these blog posts have explored the question, Who am I?  And A Course in Miracles teaches us that this is the only real question we can ask.  Once we have clearly understood this, everything changes.  As the Course says, I cannot have what I am unwilling to be.

The Course reminds us over and over, in thousands of uniquely poetic ways, that our lives are not as we imagine them.  Those of us who are writing or reading this obviously have glimpsed this, and know it to be true in spite of the tenacity of the egoistic image of a self.  Why else would you be reading this blog?  Such words hold no interest to those who still believe their own self-concepts.  It is those of us whose concepts are dissolving that are drawn to such things.

Dissolving is what is going on, you know.  The false will fall away automatically when it is no longer defended.  This is a blissful process when you realize what is happening.  It is like a delicious melting away of all that is false, and a relaxing into the Self that has always been Who We Are.  Like realizing you are Home, and have always been Home.   

"Whatever form temptation seems to take, it always but reflects a wish to be a self that you are not.  And from that wish a concept arises, teaching that you are the thing you wish to be.  It will remain your concept of yourself until the wish that fathered it no longer is held dear.  Be vigilant against temptation, then, remembering that it is but a wish, insane and meaningless, to make yourself a thing that you are not.  Consider then what temptation is, and see the real alternatives you choose between." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section VII.

Choose wisely today, and see all things in the Light of this one Self.  You are the Self that God created... One Self that excludes no one and no thing. You are that Self.  You are Home.

"You are as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, regardless of the images you see.  What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive your self defenseless and in hell.  Yield not to this, and you will see all pain in every form, wherever it occurs, but disappear as mists before the sun." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section VIII.

Please join our ACIM Teleclass every Wednesday evening at 7:30 pm CT.  All are welcome.

The Miracle

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

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

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

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

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

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

All Loving and All Worthy

I have a human pattern of judging a situation and then feeling wrong, or then concluding that I'm not good enough for whatever.  I know this is a familiar story for some of you, too.  Human beings are always feeling bad about something, and either blaming self or someone else for the feelings.  But the Atonement reveals that even these feelings bear unexpected spiritual fruit.  When we're willing to suspend judgment through forgiveness, the still, small Voice of Truth is heard in the midst of the sadness, the anxiety, the hopelessness.  And it always returns the Mind to the Awareness of ever-present Joy.  It always reveals that the images of judgment are simply false.  The feelings the ego conjures have no meaning, because they have no substance.  They are simply not there.

"When you are sad, know this need not be.  Depression comes from a sense of being deprived of something you want and do not have.  Remember that you are deprived of nothing except by your own decisions, and then decide otherwise.  When you are anxious, realize that anxiety comes from the capriciousness of the ego, and know that this need not be.  You can be as vigilant against the ego's dictates as for them.  When you have given up this voluntary dis-spiriting, you will see how your mind can focus and rise above fatigue and heal.  Yet you are not sufficiently vigilant against the demands of the ego.  This need not be.  The problem is not one of concentration; it is the belief that no one, including yourself, is worth consistent effort.  You are a mirror of Truth, in which God Himself shines in perfect Light.  To the ego's dark glass you need but say, "I will not look there because I know these images are not true."  Then let the Holy One shine on you in peace, knowing that this, and only this, must be." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 4, Section IV

So am I worth the time and attention it takes to reverse these human patterns?  Certainly not as I imagined myself, nor is anyone else that I've imagined worth the effort.  But Who AM I?  Christ appearing as me is far beyond any human measure of worth.  I AM worth consistent attention and effort, because I AM is the Truth about me and thus about all that Is.  I AM a mirror of Truth, where God shines in Perfect Light and Joy.  Only this IS.  As the Course says, "This, and only this, must be."

I was reading a transcript of a workshop given three decades ago by Herb Fitch, and this passage transported me: “Whenever you are reverting to the opinion that you are a human being, you’re blocking the Light, you’re blocking the Voice.  The Voice does not come except where there is purity.  And purity means not a divided concept of matter and Spirit.  So please examine your deeper feelings and know that you are not both Christ and a human being.  You are not both Spirit and a human being.  You are pure Spirit, Christ and no other. The greatest thing I have is the assurance that I and the Father are One. If I and the Father are One that means I am not human.  I must learn how to accept this in the quietness of my own Being, resting there, waiting for the inner impulse that tells me Who I AM, feeling the nature of my true Being and trusting what I feel and hear enough to LIVE it, and act upon it. ” – Herb Fitch

So purity means not having a split mind, not seeing the projected concepts of separate bodies and separate things we call matter as if they were the truth.  Because we cannot see two worlds.  We are unable to know Self as Infinite, as Pure and Perfect Spirit, as long as we believe in the limited forms we call matter.  Knowing Who I AM means knowing I am not both Christ and a human being.  And if I and the Father are One, there is nothing but Spirit.  Consistent effort is needed only to return my attention to this Awareness in my own Being.  I must remember Who I really AM, and that I AM worth it.  There are no human beings here.  Only the Christ We Are and Our Infinite Expressions.  All Loving and All Worthy.

The Blessed Residue

"Every loving thought that the Son of God ever had is eternal.  The loving thoughts his mind perceives in this world are the world's only reality." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 11, Section VII, 2:1-2

"In Heaven there is no guilt, because the Kingdom is attained through the Atonement, which releases you to create.  The word 'create' is appropriate here because, once what you have made is undone by the Holy Spirit, the blessed residue is restored and therefore continues in creation.  What is truly blessed is incapable of giving rise to guilt, and must give rise to joy." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 5, Section V, 2:1-3

I woke up in the wee hours last night, inspired to search my mind for unforgiveness.  I woke up with a new understanding of hidden places and grievances.  I realized that every expectation of person, place, or thing is only in my mind, is all made up, and is a grievance.  Every person or organization that I want or expect something from, every animate or inanimate form I look to for anything at all is a fictional mental veil across the face of Christ.  I experienced a flood of gratitude for each insight, and pure joy at letting it all go.  And then I heard the Voice speak the words "blessed residue."  I knew that I was to write about these words, and remembered reading them in the Course, so I asked if I should write them down or look them up.  I was told to go back to sleep, that I would remember.  And I did.

Love is the blessed residue.  When everything is forgiven, there is only the innocence of pure Love.  When everything is forgiven, even the things you thought were problems are revealed as pure, innocent Joy.  This is a spiritual alchemy that has been written about by mystics throughout time.  The irony is that we already know this, but pretend that we don't.  If we open our minds even slightly, the floodgates open and we can no longer pretend that the minutiae of our world is true or even really there.  So we practice tunnel vision on worldly problems and details, and even spiritual questions, clinging to them as if they were our safety and survival.  This is their only reality.  "I have given everything I see... all the meaning that it has for me." (ACIM; Workbook Lesson 2)

An utter dependence on Love and the Holy Spirit is our true safety and security.  We can safely give our every question and care to the Holy Spirit and know that Love can only give and expand and increase in joyous intensity.  This is true creation.  "Love created me like ItSelf," we are reminded in ACIM Workbook Lesson 67.  We have only to give over (forgive) each thought, each judgment, each expectation to the Holy Spirit to be undone.  And the blessed residue, which is pure Love and our true Self, is restored to creative awareness.  It was here all along. 

"You have not lost your innocence.  It is for this you yearn.  This is your heart's desire.  This is the Voice you hear, and this the Call which cannot be denied." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 182, 12:1-4

Level Confusion: The Projected World

"2. A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct.  This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of Truth, and had thus perceived yourself as lacking.  The idea of order of needs arose because, having made this fundamental error, you had already fragmented yourself into levels with different needs.  As you integrate you become one, and your needs become one accordingly.  Unified needs lead to unified action, because this produces a lack of conflict. 
 3. The idea of orders of need, which follows from the original error that one can be separated from God, requires correction at its own level before the error or perceiving levels at all can be corrected.  You cannot behave effectively while you function on different levels.  However, while you do, correction must be introduced vertically from the bottom up.  This is because you think you live in space, where concepts such as 'up' and 'down' are meaningful.  Ultimately space is as meaningless as time.  Both are merely beliefs." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 1, Section VI, 2-3

The Projected World and the entire universe as we imagine it is simply mind-stuff, consciousness.  It all takes place in the mind and is seen as if it were ‘outside', making it the original virtual reality. But the appearing world is simply effect, a continual out-picturing of the mind’s desires, filtered through beliefs, thoughts, and emotions. The world has no objective reality... it is effect, not cause.

Even after you get in touch with the power of your own emotions and thoughts, you can believe things about your thoughts and feelings that aren’t true. Most people believe their thoughts are ineffectual or powerless, or that their feelings don't really matter, and so they are experienced as such.  We have been taught, and so believe, that the world mysteriously exists first and is thus the source and cause of our emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and ultimately, our desires.

There is little hope for real change in such a world where we have no control, and where the real cause remains mysterious. No wonder prayer as practiced by the world has no real effect. It is just a belief in magic, belief in a mysterious something outside ourselves and our world that may be called upon to rescue us. Forgiveness in such a world makes no sense, and has been mostly practiced out of a fear of an invisible, magical force that judges us.

Forgiveness as taught by A Course in Miracles is a belief too, because in the perfection of our True Self there is nothing to forgive.  We have never left the Mind of God.  But while we experience ourselves as split from Source, forgiveness has the power to release the false and hidden beliefs and blockages within the mind. This is the process of what the Course calls Atonement, the interlocking chain of forgiveness that is the correction for all false beliefs and thus erases their images or effects from the mind. Because the problem is not out there… it’s in the mind of the perceiver.

Atonement is the correction for false beliefs. When we practice true forgiveness and give our perceptions to the Holy Spirit for correction, we accept the Atonement and allow all layers of mind to be corrected, healed and aligned with Truth… so all that remains is Unification, One Mind, Wholeness. This is what Jesus called seeking first the Kingdom of God, and He promised that all else that we need will be given when this becomes our primary vocation in life.  The Course tells us plainly that forgiveness is our only function in the world (and that forgiveness, happiness, and joy are synonymous).

Why do we need forgiveness and the Atonement? Because we see the phenomenal world as the cause of our emotions, thoughts, and beliefs, and see our desires and prayers as attempts to countermand external causes.  Forgiveness is the reversal of the mind, where we discover happiness and joy as the core of our Being, and effortlessly radiate this state of mind outward,  to reflect only the Love that we are.

As we willingly accept the function of forgiveness as our only purpose here, we gradually shed the layers of indoctrinated belief, thought, and emotion. Yes, the world still appears to be here.  But as we become clear of the images generated by false beliefs, thoughts, and emotions, we reflect only the Light of Truth, the Light of Love, the Light of the One Mind rather than the lie of fear and separation. This is what the Course calls the Happy Dream of the Holy Spirit, which is the earthly experience of Awakening and Enlightenment. Level confusion has vanished in the unified Awareness of Self.  We now hear only One Voice, think only the thoughts of the One Mind, and so reflect this Light on earth, as it is in the Heaven of Enlightened Awareness.

"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; 18, VI, 1:5-6

ACIM Teleclass every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Central time.  For call-in number and access code, click here.

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

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

As Common as Grass

"Therefore the Master says... I let go of all desire for the common good, and the good becomes common as grass." -- Tao te Ching, p. 57; Stephen Mitchell Translation

"Miracles are natural.  When they do not occur, something has gone wrong." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 1, Section I, 6:1-2

What seems to come naturally in our lives is evidently not really natural.  For example, babies aren't born with the ability to sing an Aria, or a pop song.  But singing feels natural to me.  If I inquire honestly though, it took a lot of practicing as a child and then as an adult to get to the point where it feels so automatic.  Reading the above quotations has me thinking about just what is natural, what is common and ordinary?  If Goodness and Miracles are actually what is common and natural, then we have done a bang-up job of obscuring the Truth with a lot of the un-natural and un-common.

A Course in Miracles explains that defenses are the costliest of habits.  They obscure the ever-present Goodness and perfection of our true Self.  And what are defenses?  They are thoughts, perceptions, habits, projections... all to distract the awareness and attention from the perfection of Self.  All with the common attribute of dividing and dissecting the awareness into multitudes of judgements about what is good, what is bad, what is me, what is them, what is here, what is there... and on and on and on.  It's the original and ultimate defamation of character. 

But what remains when these defenses are forgiven and released is the natural perfection of our Christ Self.  The miracle is natural because the Christ is our reality.  The miracle reveals what has always been effortlessly true, and so is the most natural thing in the world.  All that is required of us is the willingness to let our judgements go, to forgive our false witness to the Son of God.  We can twist ourselves into un-natural and un-worthy caricatures, but we can never make them true.  Who we are remains holy... wholly innocent and free, eternally One in the Mind of God.

"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

Brushing Our Teeth

"Mind reaches to ItSelf.  It is not made up of different parts which reach each other... Within ItSelf It has no limits, and there is nothing outside It.  It encompasses everything... There is nothing else anywhere or ever." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 18, Section VI, 8:5-6, 8-9, & 11

While speaking to a spiritual coaching client the other day, the analogy of brushing our teeth arose.  I was explaining that all spiritual sight and spiritual understanding are in and of the Mind... everything without exception takes place in the One Mind.  There is nothing but Mind.  Body only exists within the perception of the sleeping mind that imagines itself separate and so 'projects' a separate experience in mind. 

However, there is no denying that we are all having the experience of being in a body.  And as we go about our daily experience of being in a body, there are certain things we do without exception or question.  None of us would think of going a day without brushing our teeth at least once, and usually at least twice.  Many of us brush and floss more often than that.  We don't question it or think about it... we just do it. 

In order to remember the Truth, it is necessary to practice that type of unquestioning vigilance with certain thoughts and visual images that awaken the mind.  It's sort of like mentally brushing our spiritual teeth, and we do it not because such thoughts or practices are magic, or will give us something we think we want.  We practice spiritually because it re-aligns our sleeping minds with Truth, with Mind Awake. Spiritual practices themselves are irrelevant, just as all form is irrelevant.  It's their purpose, their mental content, that matters.  And the only purpose of any spiritual practice is to align the sleeping mind with Truth, which is always already here, fully present and all-encompassing.  Only the sleeping mind could imagine otherwise.

A Course in Miracles is a system of mind training that has blessed my life for over twenty years.  The Course teaches us to how to practice forgiveness in a way that releases our mind from all the projected images we have accumlated, and allows the unconditioned Mind (pure Spirit, Joy, and Love) to return to Awareness.  There are many other spiritual practices, and all have validity because of their ultimate shared purpose.  What I love about the Course is that it clearly returns all power to the Source, the One Mind, and reminds us that we are One with that Source.  Not as individuals (that's the imaginary part), but as pure Spirit/Mind.  All we have to do to remember and awaken is practice faithfully, just like brushing our teeth.  It really is that simple, and that hard.  What are you practicing faithfully today?

"This is a Course in mind training.  All learning involves attention and study at some level." (ACIM, Chapter 1, Section VII, 4:1-2)