Reflections 113 to 126
16th November 2023
The way is open, and hope is justified. (ACIM, S-1.IV.2:3)
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Ref: The holy instant is nothing more than a special case, or an extreme example, of what every situation is meant to be. The meaning that the Holy Spirit’s purpose has given it is also given to every situation. (ACIM, T-17.VIII.1:1-2)
A Course in Miracles describes our presence as the holy instant. We could call it timelessness or this very moment. Whatever it is, it is really the only thing there is.
And this is what we miss. Our minds are far too preoccupied with what was or what will be.
Our purpose, then, is to become aware of what is happening. Where is the present moment when the mind keeps ticking over? Can we be aware of being aware?
And where is love when all of this is going on? We’d rather reject love than be in the here and now.
Some people can spend their whole lives in complete submission to the ego. Very few transcend the ego’s grip entirely.
And yet, some might occasionally have an experience of presence. These are the stories that can help us to stay fixed on our path.
Ray Kinman’s near-death experience demonstrates all that presence is. He describes his NDE more in terms of verbs as opposed to nouns - a state of beingness where nothing else exists. He also talks of merging with the song of prayer and calls this a living love, because that is what it is.
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17th November 2023
Yet it is likely at first that what is asked for even by those who join in prayer is not the goal that prayer should truly seek. (ACIM, S-1.IV.2:4)
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Ref: Physician, healer, therapist, teacher, heal thyself. Many will come to you carrying the gift of healing, if you so elect. The Holy Spirit never refuses an invitation to enter and abide with you. (ACIM, P-3.III.8:1-3)
A Course in Miracles wants us to know that our thoughts are our prayers. Whatever we send out, we always get back.
We have to learn discernment. We need to see that judgements of any kind will always come back to haunt us. This may not happen immediately, but it does at some point.
Peace attracts peace; anger attracts anger; fear attracts fear. What we probably don’t realise is that the ego is just waging a battle to ensure its own survival.
A Course in Miracles teaches love. It shows us how the mind works and states that one mind fits all.
We therefore need to heal our minds of all the injustices that the ego has ever dealt us. We do this through the quiet practice of true forgiveness.
We are then able to discern our peaceful centre, where any judgement is simply not possible.
As the split mind heals, it simply means that the one mind becomes a wellspring of love.
And we go on to discover the joy in everything. When the one mind contains only thoughts of peace, there is nothing to diminish the power of prayer.
115/ Our Deepest Wish
18th November 2023
Even together you may ask for things, and thus set up but an illusion of a goal you share. (ACIM, S-1.IV.2:5)
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Ref: You whose mind is darkened by doubt and guilt, remember this: God gave the Holy Spirit to you, and gave Him the mission to remove all doubt and every trace of guilt that His dear Son has laid upon himself. It is impossible that this mission fail. (ACIM, T-13.XI.5:1-2)
We wish for both illusions and the truth. Forgive ourselves of the illusions we see and we have the truth. This is A Course in Miracles summed up in a nutshell.
Illusions make us suffer; they keep us awake at night. Illusions seem so real, so utterly solid and uncompromising, that it feels impossible to escape them.
We try everything we can to escape our suffering, but we never get close to it.
Truth is everything that makes us joyful; it never leaves us and is everywhere. Truth seems hidden until it reveals itself, and we then fully understand that it was always there.
We do everything we can to discover the truth, and yet it constantly seems to evade us.
A Course in Miracles tells us that the solution is within us. The solution is not a thing, an entity, or an object. It is merely the silence and stillness that always is.
Silence and stillness arises when we hush our internal chatter; it appears when we go beyond the narrative of our lives. Silence and stillness reveals itself when we withdraw the ego’s seeming power.
The Holy Spirit is that silence and stillness. Hush the voice of the ego and we hear our deepest wish.
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19th November 2023
You may ask together for specifics, and not realize that you are asking for effects without the cause. (ACIM, S-1.IV.2:6)
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Ref: The avoidance of magic is the avoidance of temptation. For all temptation is nothing more than the attempt to substitute another will for God’s. (ACIM, M-16.9:1-2)
There is a cause and there is a Cause. All of our suffering comes from the former.
Suffering may take many forms. It might be just a minor niggle or a full-blown tragedy. Either way, it always arises within us through a deep, unconscious terror.
We may dispute this completely. We might feel that it is irresponsible to suggest that a minor niggle has the same cause as a major war. And yet A Course in Miracles teaches us that we are merely looking at the effect and not the cause. It is always the cause that needs to be dealt with.
That is why A Course in Miracles labels any form of correction of the effect as ‘magic’. Magic - whether a cup of tea or the United Nations - is simple anaesthesia. All it does is delay the inevitable.
Magic means the fear sinks, only to rise again. The solution is to contact the part of the mind that has no fear. This undoes the cause so there is no more effect, and we do this through forgiveness.
Forgiveness undoes the ego. It unpacks the fear and lets it dissipate back to where it came from. Forgiveness is the practical solution to the only problem that we have, and this is one of separation.
There is no substitute for the Cause, and A Course in Miracles tells us that this is the Will of God.
Magic only tricks us into believing that there is, and this is simply just another illusion.
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117/ Healing Relationship
20th November 2023
And this you cannot have. For no one can receive effects alone, asking a cause from which they do not come to offer them to him. (ACIM, S-1.IV.2:7-8)
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Ref: Faithlessness brought to faith will never interfere with truth. But faithlessness used against truth will always destroy faith. If you lack faith, ask that it be restored where it was lost, and seek not to have it made up to you elsewhere, as if you had been unjustly deprived of it. (ACIM, T-17.VII.3:9-11)
We bring the darkness to the light, not the light to the darkness; we bring our non-peace to the peace, not the peace to our non-peace.
Truth is always with us but it seems we still ask the untruth to solve all our problems. The fact is, truth never disappears. It simply cannot be seen.
Faith, then, has to be acquired. As stated throughout The Song of Prayer, we want to celebrate our connection to the infinite and not to what is solid and tangible.
A Course in Miracles tells us that minds cannot attack. The bodies that we see are just distorted images within the mind. Faith in the body only means that we are being faithless to the truth.
The simplicity of A Course in Miracles can therefore be summed up with this.
Everything that hurts and has solidity bears absolutely no connection to what is real.
There is just one God and just one Self. There is just one mind with no division.
All we do is heal the relationship with our Creator and with each other, and then discover that this is a relationship that has never been hurt at all.
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118/ Teacher of Peace
21st November 2023
Even the joining, then, is not enough, if those who pray together do not ask, before all else, what is the Will of God. (ACIM, S-1.IV.3:1)
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Ref: Learning is therefore in the past, but its influence determines the present by giving it whatever meaning it holds for you. Your learning gives the present no meaning at all. Nothing you have ever learned can help you understand the present, or teach you how to undo the past. (ACIM, T-14.XI.3:3-5)
A Course in Miracles tells us that peace and understanding go together like a hand in glove. They are interchangeable and can never be apart.
One causes the other and, without one, the other cannot exist.
The Will of God is clearly peace. Whatever else we think it might be, it could not be anything else.
We therefore have to let go of everything that we have ever learned, as well as all that we have ever been taught, if we ever want to know that perfect peace. Our way of thinking has to be replaced.
Our current way of thinking is punitive and harsh. It never allows us to veer from its path. A Course in Miracles might describe it as death dressed up as life
To unlearn all of this - all that we have ever learned - simply means we have to learn a new way of thinking. This is the Holy Spirit reminding us how to be fully alive.
Peace is its outcome, along with a new understanding of who we are.
Only the Teacher of Peace can give us this, and only we can learn that it is here and now.
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119/ Our Loving Cause
22nd November 2023
From this Cause only can the answer come in which are all specifics satisfied; all separate wishes unified in one. (ACIM, S-1.IV.3:2)
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Ref: The world of time is the world of illusion. What happened long ago seems to be happening now. Choices made long since appear to be open; yet to be made. What has been learned and understood and long ago passed by is looked upon as a new thought, a fresh idea, a different approach. (ACIM, M-2.3:1-4)
Our Cause is God. This might be argued, but only by the ego.
The ego is the little part of us that believes in a different cause. It believes in bodies and separation. It tells us that the world is our playground and that the world is quite apart from us.
The mind is split between the two. In reality, there is just one mind and it arises out of spirit, which is the Thought of God
A Course in Miracles states that, the instant a thought of separation was made by the Son, it was corrected by the Father. Nothing happened. We are simply reliving that momentary thought.
In the eyes of the world, then, this is either blasphemous or just completely daft.
To the split mind, it is insanity. The body is all the proof that it needs.
So, for us to know the truth - if we really want to discover what the world can never teach us - we need to quieten the mind and allow truth to do the rest.
We find that we are eternal. We are one Son and one Self, and our Loving Cause is always there.
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120/ Fractals of the Whole
23rd November 2023
Prayer for specifics always asks to have the past repeated in some way. (ACIM, S-1.IV.3:3)
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Ref: The miracle does not restore the truth, the light the veil between has not put out. It merely lifts the veil, and lets the truth shine unencumbered, being what it is. It does not need belief to be itself, for it has been created; so it is. (ACIM, T-29.VIII.5:5-7)
It is the past that keeps us from knowing what is now.
What is now is everything that this character thinks it is, is not.
There is no fear. There is no doubt. It is only in this very moment that we find the purity of life.
A Course in Miracles tells us that everything else is simply a veil across the face of Christ (ACIM, T-29.VIII.4:1). It states that a cloud can never put out the sun.
This means that everything we think we are just deflects from what is perfect.
A Course in Miracles states that God only has one Son, not many (ACIM, T-29.VIII.9:1).
We therefore find that it is only now that we can find this oneness, and our connection to all that is.
Dr. Mary Helen Hensley’s near-death experience shows us that we are all fractals of the whole. She tells us that we are never alone; we already are what we seek. Equally, what we do to each other is what we do to ourselves. Ultimately, we are all characters in a story and we can’t ever mess this up.
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121/ Absolute Truth
24th November 2023
What was enjoyed before, or seemed to be; what was another’s and he seemed to love, – all these are but illusions from the past. (ACIM, S-1.IV.3:4)
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Ref: I am spirit. (ACIM, W-97)
Spirit has no division. It has no past or future, or exclusivity. Spirit just is.
Truth makes no compromise. It cannot be corrupted. Truth is pure and complete oneness.
Love can only be. Love simply extends in all directions. There are no barriers to love’s presence.
Light is everywhere. At no point can light ever be missing. We just imagine the light is not there.
A Course in Miracles has to expand on what really only takes a few words to explain. This is because it has to get through to a mind that has the ego, and the ego has to be seen for what it is.
The ego is just a thought; it is a total disconnection from everything that we are. The ego is simply a dream that we are characters within that dream.
We are imagining that the formless has been replaced by form, and that truth has been changed to a lie. Love now appears to be hate, and light seems to be extinguished by darkness.
What was once real appears to have gone… except it hasn’t.
A Course in Miracles is the reminder that we are immortal spirit that has no end. As we learn this fully, we find that we were never born and we go on forever. This is the simple and absolute truth.
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122/ One-Way Ticket
25th November 2023
The aim of prayer is to release the present from its chains of past illusions; to let it be a freely chosen remedy from every choice that stood for a mistake. (ACIM, S-1.IV.3:5)
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Ref: No one can die unless he chooses death. What seems to be the fear of death is really its attraction. Guilt, too, is feared and fearful. Yet it could have no hold at all except on those who are attracted to it and seek it out. (ACIM, T-19.IV-C.1:4-7)
A Course in Miracles tells us that death is made by the ego. We also find that guilt is just a shadow in the mind and sin is simply our lack of peace.
It’s clear we are acting insanely. We are seeing illusions where only the truth should be.
The ego allows us to only pray for the things we don’t need. The ego always expects the body to be the centre of attention. It is the body that reflects everything that is going on in the mind.
Anger imposes an angry body; fear gives us a fearful body; peace allows the body to be peaceful.
Prayer then becomes the means for asking God to solve the problems that have never happened. The Son (who we are) has never left Heaven (perfect oneness). We (the ego) just believe we have.
The illusion of separation never occurred and we appear to be imprisoned within form. Into this apparent confusion comes A Course in Miracles.
We learn that the only solution is forgiveness. Forgiveness (another illusion) undoes the ego.
Forgiveness is our one-way ticket home. It returns us back to where we started. Forgiveness enables us to see our true Self everywhere, so that each person we meet reminds us exactly of what we are.
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123/ In a Nutshell
26th November 2023
What prayer can offer now so far exceeds all that you asked before that it is pitiful to be content with less. (ACIM, S-1.IV.3:6)
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Ref: No one can become an advanced teacher of God until he fully understands that defenses are but foolish guardians of mad illusions. The more grotesque the dream, the fiercer and more powerful its defenses seem to be. (ACIM, M-4.VI.1:6-7)
A Course in Miracles states that we are all, collectively, the one Son of God.
This is our real Identity and has no opposite. However, while we all appear to be in bodies that suffer and die, A Course in Miracles reminds us that we can also learn to be a teacher of God.
This doesn’t require that we wear dog collars or have halos above our heads. However, it does mean that we need to become inwardly quiet and listen. This is how all our questions are answered.
Our path is to simply learn to trust. We need to understand that life unfolds at its own pace; everything we need for our own welfare is always given us, as and when we need it.
However, we can also see why this doesn’t happen. The ego is constantly harassing us with problems of lack and need. This means we are always in a state of unease.
The solution is to connect with the part of the mind that is always peaceful. This is where the Voice for God lies. To be a teacher of God, we have to tap into this quiet power as often as we can.
The mind then moves from unease to ease. Our prayers become ones of gratitude and of thanks.
And we teach what we know. In a nutshell, this is either everything or nothing.
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124/ Contrast and Differences
27th November 2023
You have chosen a newborn chance each time you pray. (ACIM, S-1.IV.4:1)
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Ref: Heaven is perfectly unambiguous. Everything is clear and bright, and calls forth one response. There is no darkness and there is no contrast. There is no variation. There is no interruption. There is a sense of peace so deep that no dream in this world has ever brought even a dim imagining of what it is. (ACIM, T-13.XI.3:8-13)
This is a world of shift and change. No worries here. This is always quite apparent.
A Course in Miracles tells us that our minds all do the same. This is because the world is just a projection from the mind.
The shift and change we see outwardly is therefore the interruption of guilt on peace. It can appear as relentless and heartbreaking; equally, it can be as easily hidden in the background, simply waiting.
Whatever we see as happening around us, it is remorseless. No two days are ever the same. Then, at some point, it changes completely. Our whole character disappears and the body turns to dust.
This is hilariously gloomy but the good news is that it need not be so. Only a split mind can make up this struggle and only a healed mind can make it whole.
A Course in Miracles tells us that this is why God gave us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was put into the mind to be a reminder of what can never change.
Within us all is a beautiful and perfect Love. We need to train our minds to perceive that beauty.
Contrast then fades as the mind begins to heal; differences only disappear with a mind that knows.
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125/ Real Thoughts
28th November 2023
And would you stifle and imprison it in ancient prisons, when the chance has come to free yourself from all of them at once? (ACIM, S-1.IV.4:2)
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Ref: You will find, if you train yourself to look at your thoughts, that they represent such a mixture that, in a sense, none of them can be called “good” or “bad”. This is why they do not mean anything. (ACIM, W-4.1:6-7)
A Course in Miracles informs us that our thoughts determine our reality.
The cause of everything is in the mind. Accept it or reject it, it is still a premise that we have to learn.
As stated above, we can have “good” thoughts and “bad” thoughts. What the lesson teaches us is that only we can give the thoughts their meaning. By themselves, they are quite benign.
“Good” thoughts are simply shadows that hide the truth in us; “bad” thoughts block the truth out.
Our real thoughts are therefore those that align only with the simple, eternal truth.
There is one ego (our “good” and “bad” thoughts); there is one Holy Spirit (our real thoughts); and there is one God and one Son (this is beyond thought).
The purpose of A Course in Miracles is to enable us to see the real world. The real world arises from our real thoughts, and it is impossible for our false thoughts to know of its existence.
We seem to have the choice of two wholly incompatible thought systems. One is totally real (arising out of light) and the other is totally false (arising out of darkness). Real thoughts establish only love and false thoughts establish only fear. Our learning, then, is to simply know the difference.
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126/ The Little Space
29th November 2023
Do not restrict your asking. Prayer can bring the peace of God. (ACIM, S-1.IV.4:3-4)
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Ref: Salvation is immediate. Unless you so perceive it, you will be afraid of it, believing that the risk of loss is great between the time its purpose is made yours and its effects will come to you. (ACIM, T-26.VIII.3:1-2)
A Course in Miracles tells us that nothing can be perceived in future time. The only time we ever have is always within the present moment.
Forgiveness offers us everything now; the miracle is now. These are concepts that the separate mind finds impossible to accept.
We are told that future loss is not our fear, but present joining is our dread. We (the separate mind) are terrified of knowing our true, authentic Self.
Time is therefore an illusion in the same way that separation is an illusion. The cause of all our suffering is happening right now, and not at some future date.
A Course in Miracles merely states that we should never be content with future happiness. It wants us to be present to the Holy Spirit’s purpose, and thus become aware of the clear light of God’s Love.
Clear light is always immediate. It can only be within us and can never be anywhere else.
The small gap between that light and darkness does not exist. We just dream it does.
And the little space between our brothers is easily undone. This is the miracle and this is forgiveness. The mind only knows what is love.
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