Reflections 127 to 140
30th November 2023
What time-bound thing can give you more than this, in just the little space that lasts until it crumbles into dust? (ACIM, S-1.IV.4:5)
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Ref: There is one thought in particular that should be remembered throughout the day. It is a thought of pure joy; a thought of peace, a thought of limitless release, limitless because all things are freed within it. (ACIM, M-16.6:1-2)
We have no reason to fear death.
Death should be seen as a celebration of life. It should be seen as joy and peace magnified. Death is a breaking free of limitation. It is a return from where we came.
A Course in Miracles tells us the death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. It is the symbol of the fear of God. Death is actually just a thought.
The fear of death therefore takes many forms, and most of these remain wholly unrecognized. Our job is simply to look past the form and find the formless.
Our biggest fear, then, is that God uses death as a punishment. This fear has to be addressed.
The near-death experience simply helps us to love life. It allows us to see that we are all the light.
Nadia McCaffrey has had three near-death experiences - in 1952 (aged seven), 1962 and 1999. In all three, she became part of the light; in all three, as well, she received clear messages. Now, she says that she no longer has any fear of dying and helps others to overcome their own fear of death.
1st December 2023
Prayer is a way to true humility. (ACIM, S-1.V.1:1)
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Ref: I share God’s Will for happiness for me. (ACIM, W-102)
The lesson above states that our function in this world is happiness.
The line at the top of the page is asking us to be humble.
Being both happy and humble might appear so contrary to our usual state of mind that the very concept seems inconceivable. Desperate measure are clearly needed.
Alcohol, comfort eating, gambling… any form of addiction can only arise from a negative mindset.
A Course in Miracles wants us to see that this is all self-made. The burden of responsibility is always ours. If we just took the time to see what we have done, we could easily allow it to be undone.
This might feel like scaling Everest or crossing the Pacific, but it really starts with one single step.
We take one lesson and one challenge at a time. We face our fears (the ego) and let the light in our minds (the Holy Spirit) do the rest. We never try to interfere with the process.
This allows our guilt to be undone. It means that the blocks to Love’s presence can disappear. It enables the mind to establish that we are Self-made and totally at one with our Creator.
Joy and peace arise when we surrender to Love’s presence. Love has no barriers, and only those who are both humble and happy can ever know that this is true.
129/ The Healer’s Prayer
2nd December 2023
And here again it rises slowly up, and grows in strength and love and holiness. (ACIM, S-1.V.1:2)
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Ref: Healing is a thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and lets God go out into them and through them. (ACIM, T-5.I.1:1-2)
A Course in Miracles states that to heal is to make happy. To be happy is to be full of light.
Light is simply the expression of joy. To be joyful is to be full of love.
Love and joy and light consequently go hand in hand. To be healed is to fully know their presence.
The Holy Spirit is known as the Healer, the Comforter and the Guide (ACIM, T-5.I.4:2). To know that we are healed is simply to be peaceful. The healed mind is aware of its inner silence and stillness.
Silence and stillness therefore arise through the undoing of guilt. To be fully present means that we have a mind that has no fear and no guilt.
Fear and guilt feed off each other. One cannot survive without the other.
It is forgiveness that allows us to undo all the guilt in the mind. We also find that fear does not exist.
And the mind begins to see all that is true. Truth establishes itself as light and love, joy and peace.
The healer’s prayer (ACIM, T-5.in.3:8), then, can be paraphrased as follows: “We see in each other only what we treasure in ourselves.” See love on the outside, then love is treasured on the inside.
3rd December 2023
Let it but leave the ground where it begins to rise to God, and true humility will come at last to grace the mind that thought it was alone and stood against the world. (ACIM, S-1.V.1:3)
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Ref: The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world’s perception. (ACIM, M-8.1:1)
A Course in Miracles starts by saying there is no order of difficulty in miracles. It ends by telling us that our Father will keep calling to us until we come to Him in peace at last.
It is the bit in between that requires the work.
The miracle establishes we move from illusions to the truth. We see that all illusions are based on differences; truth never changes and is always total and complete.
The Father is beyond comprehension. It is impossible for the ego (our separate mind) to ever know the changeless. Judgement means we give the unknown all the meaning that we want it to have.
To be familiar with both the miracle and the Father requires some reflection. We need to look into the mind and not be scared by what we find. It also means that we have to trust in simplicity.
The ego stresses that there is an order of difficulty in everything. The ego wants us to constantly search and not to find.
The Holy Spirit, then, becomes the calming influence that reminds us there is just one Father and just one Son. That is why there is no order of difficulties in anything.
We look past illusions and we find the truth. Truth tells us that nothing changes and, when we fully understand what this means, all our work is instantly done.
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131/ Return to Wholeness
4th December 2023
Humility brings peace because it does not claim that you must rule the universe, nor judge all things as you would have them be. (ACIM, S-1.V.1:4)
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Ref: It is surely apparent by now why the ego regards spirit as its “enemy.” The ego arose from the separation, and its continued existence depends on your continuing belief in the separation. (ACIM, T-4.III.3:1-2)
The Song of Prayer is a celebration of the power of prayer, the wonder of forgiveness and the richness of healing. It has no need to expound on the ego.
Forgiveness-to-destroy, then, is the closest it comes to elaborating on the ego’s shortcomings.
The Song of Prayer says that love’s presence has no restrictions. True forgiveness allows the Holy Spirit to work through us. Our healing then establishes humility because peace is seen everywhere.
Forgiveness-to-destroy only means that we see differences in everything. The ego is harsh with its judgement and the body becomes like our own little shell. We keep searching for crumbs of comfort.
A Course in Miracles tells us that the ego is nothing more than a thought of terror. This thought lies deep within our unconscious mind and we do everything we can to keep it buried there.
What are we terrified of? We are terrified of death, of oblivion and of God’s punishment.
True forgiveness simply dismisses this thought. It sees it as an error and never makes it real.
This means we return back to wholeness. There is no loss with true forgiveness, except the ego demands that this can’t be so.
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132/ Let Go and Let God
5th December 2023
All little gods it gladly lays aside, not in resentment, but in honesty and recognition that they do not serve. (ACIM, S-1.V.1:5)
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Ref: Remember how many times you thought you knew all the “facts” you needed for judgement, and how wrong you were! Is there anyone who has not had this experience? Would you know how many times you merely thought you were right, without ever realizing you were wrong? (ACIM, M-10.4:1-3)
We are asked to let go of all little gods. The Song of Prayer is telling us they do not work. There is just one God and just one Son.
We are asked to stop judging. To do this, we need to do the exact opposite of what the world wants us to do. Judgment, according to the world, needs to be fostered and encouraged.
The world’s opinion, and what A Course in Miracles teaches, are diametrically opposed. It’s probably better to come to this logical conclusion slowly and sincerely.
The world (actually just a projection from our minds) views judgement as a mark of learning. It believes that a person is wiser and has better judgement than a person who lives on the streets.
A Course in Miracles teaches that, to judge correctly, we would have to appreciate an inordinate amount of facts that we simply could never be aware of. This includes past, present and future. The wise person is no better at judging than the homeless person, and this is because both are the ego.
The Holy Spirit is aware of all the facts. The Holy Spirit is completely aware of all that we have to do.
Really, all judgement ends when we just do this. We surrender to the Holy Spirit. We join with the light. We let go and let God.
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133/ Crossing the Bridge
6th December 2023
Illusions and humility have goals so far apart they cannot coexist, nor share a dwelling place where they can meet. Where one has come the other disappears. (ACIM, S-1.V.2:1-2)
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Ref: Love is not an illusion. It is a fact. Where disillusionment is possible, there was not love but hate. For hate is an illusion, and what can change was never love. (ACIM, T-16.IV.4:1-4)
A Course in Miracles tells us that our task is not to seek out love. Instead, it is to remove all the barriers within ourselves that we have built against it.
Love, according to our split mind, always has conditions. This type of love is really fuelled by hate.
The ego simply views love as an escape from death. This is the crux of the ego’s belief system and one we have to confront if we ever want to know what true love is.
Love, according to our sane mind, is endless and boundless. It cannot have an opposite because there isn’t one. It is a love without conditions and is given freely to everyone and everything.
A Course in Miracles is the reminder that, if we seek love outside of ourselves, then we can be certain that we are finding hatred within. The Holy Spirit is within our minds to show us that there is no hatred. We are dreaming of an illusory fear and are asleep to the presence of love.
We therefore have to move past the ego (our fear) to the Holy Spirit (complete love).
The Holy Spirit allows us to see that Heaven is waiting silently. The Holy Spirit is the proof we need that love has no opposite.
We are crossing the bridge between illusions and the truth. We move from fear and return to love.
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134/ Love Is the only Reality
7th December 2023
The truly humble have no goal but God because they need no idols, and defense no longer serves a purpose. (ACIM, S-1.V.2:3)
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Ref: God is in everything I see because God is in my mind. (ACIM, W-30)
A Course in Miracles states that everything we see is simply a projection. It arises in the mind and stays in the mind.
We are told that what we don’t like, we see as outside of ourselves. This is the hardest thing to accept because it includes just about everything that we hate in the world.
We also learn that we complicate things by pretending that the external world has nothing to do with us. It does. It arises from an unconscious thought system that is fuelled by guilt.
This thought system is simply a minor blip that plays no part in truth. It might appear to be very big and very real, but the irony is that it is just a fantasy. And we believe in this fantasy.
This means we are dreaming of a reality that does not exist.
A Course in Miracles reminds us that truth is not unconscious. The Holy Spirit has been put into our minds to remind us of what we are. Our real Identity is peace and love, joy and light.
Bill McDonald tells us that love is the only reality. In the video below, he talks about listening to the heart and having our awareness on the Divine. He states that small miracles can only lead to bigger miracles. In his words, a smile leads to love and it is love that makes the world a better place.
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135/ Peace of One
8th December 2023
Enemies are useless now, because humility does not oppose. (ACIM, S-1.V.2:4)
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Ref: The world I see holds nothing that I want. (ACIM, W-128)
We are asked not to be deceived by what we see.
The world is a millstone around our necks. It is a thought that chains us to an identity of being small, vulnerable and afraid.
What we need to do is start removing the bars across the door that prevents us from having a true awareness of the Self. This allows liberation, freedom and joy to enter.
As implied at the top of the page, we are blocking out love’s presence. An enemy is anyone we oppose. Humility can never oppose.
It therefore appears as if the world is the arbiter that brings peace to every dispute, and to all hostility and disruption. Actually, this is not true. Peace only arises from within us.
A Course in Miracles makes it clear that there is nothing in the world that we can cherish. The world is simply a painful reflection of what is going on in our minds.
This means we are either seeing our non-peace or we are seeing our peace.
To see only peace, we have to own our non-peace. We bring our darkness to the light.
We then look at the world and it changes. Instead of outer pain, there’s just the peace of one.
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136/ Love Is all there Is
9th December 2023
It does not hide in shame because it is content with what it is, knowing creation is the Will of God. (ACIM, S-1.V.2:5)
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Ref: The gift of God to you is limitless. There is no circumstance it cannot answer, and no problem which is not resolved within its gracious light. (ACIM, T-26.VII.18:4-5)
Unless our minds are aligned with the Will of God, His gifts will not be received.
This world is not the Will of God, and so it can’t be real.
What God created arose out of wholeness, and so division is impossible.
God only has one Son, and this is what we are.
The self we are, the world we see, the pain we feel is all self-made. It has no connection to anything related to the Love of God.
The mind knows this. The Self is this. At our very core, we fully understand the truth.
A Course in Miracles is therefore just another way to uncover the wonder of our being.
We learn that we are all complete, whole and limitless. The fact that we have forgotten this makes no difference at all.
No one can take away from what is perfect, unblemished and pure. Love is all there is, and it is with this Love that we sing the song of prayer.
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137/ Light of the World
10th December 2023
Its selflessness is Self, and this it sees in every meeting, where it gladly joins with every Son of God, whose purity it recognizes that it shares with him. (ACIM, S-1.V.2:6)
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Ref: I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation, maintained by fear of the same loneliness that is its illusion. (ACIM, T-8.IV.2:1-3)
Jesus is telling us that the world is a belief that love is impossible.
We have an illusion of separation, and this appears to be very real indeed.
What we are being asked to accept is a guidance from within. Jesus is reminding us that we have to unite instead of separate, and this is impossible as bodies.
It means we have to establish a relationship with the light that Jesus is.
We do this by being an awareness that is alive and whole. It is a light that has no conditions.
Currently, we are is a thing of darkness, and this is why we need to change our minds about what we see. We can’t do this by labelling and judging. We can only do this by being free of judgement.
The world is an outward picture of an inner condition. As peace arises within, it is seen without.
The world of darkness turns to a world of light, and it is true forgiveness that enables this transition.
Jesus, as the light of the world, is within us. True learning shows us he can never be anywhere else.
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138/ Undoing the World
11th December 2023
Now prayer is lifted from the world of things, of bodies, and of gods of every kind, and you can rest in holiness at last. (ACIM, S-1.V.3:1)
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Ref: It is not easier to forgive one sin than to forgive all of them. The illusion of orders of difficulty is an obstacle the teacher of God must learn to pass by and leave behind. One sin perfectly forgiven by one teacher of God can make salvation complete. (ACIM, M-14.3:5-7)
What we read above goes against all the thinking of the world.
Prayer always seems to ask for things. It can never be just a joining, as in the song of prayer.
Holiness is a term that is awarded to a select few. It can’t be viewed as a trait that is inherent in us.
Forgiveness is thought to be about forgiving an event or someone. It has to be something concrete, something that is done to us, which is exactly what it isn’t.
To be a teacher of God requires a qualification; it can’t ever be seen as a normal state of mind.
Sin obviously requires punishment and salvation is clearly some form of deliverance from sin. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
A Course in Miracles simply states that there is no order of difficulty in anything.
When the thought system that makes the world is reversed, then we wake up to our reality.
Our reality is complete oneness with God, and this is something the world can never understand.
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139/ Law of One
12th December 2023
Humility has come to teach you how to understand your glory as God’s Son, and recognize the arrogance of sin. (ACIM, S-1.V.3:2)
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Ref: You who are sometimes sad and sometimes angry; who sometimes feel your just due is not given you, and your best efforts meet with lack of appreciation and even contempt; give up these foolish thoughts! (ACIM, M-15.3:1)
All judgement belongs to the ego. This is a law that is set in stone.
The ego is merely a thought that separates us from a total lack of judgement. Without the ego, our minds are clear. We see things as they are.
Jesus, in the passage above, tells us that all suffering is self-made. He wants us to know we are responsible for what we think. In other words, our suffering has nothing to do with the external.
There is just one Judgement. And this is that we are complete, whole and absolutely loved.
God’s Love might appear to be distant from our own reality. For example, bills still need to be paid and life can appear to be a bit of a lottery. It seems that we are lucky to survive a day unscathed.
A Course in Miracles merely states that this is all a dream, but also knows that we should never just deny our experience. Instead, we need to change our minds about what we see.
There are always two choices. One is to suffer and one is complete freedom.
Within the mind, there is the ego and the Holy Spirit. And while the ego always acts as judge and jury, the Holy Spirit’s silent justice knows there can only be a law of one.
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140/ Acceptance of Truth
13th December 2023
A dream has veiled the face of Christ from you. (ACIM, S-1.V.3:3)
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Ref: How foolish to be so afraid of nothing! Nothing at all! Your defenses will not work, but you are not in danger. You have no need of them. Recognize this, and they will disappear. And only then will you accept your real protection. (ACIM, M-16.6:9-14)
Clearly, we think we are a body. This is obvious.
We inwardly believe that we are in constant danger. Why else do we hoard and collect?
Money, cars, shopping, eating... nothing ever fills the gap. It still comes back to wanting more.
A Course in Miracles is a reprogramming of all the software in the mind. It allows us to see things differently. It tells us we are the Son of God. It reminds us not to take things so seriously.
God is everywhere, in everything and part of everyone. We train our minds to see past what is not real to what is real. We essentially return to a life of simplicity.
Consequently, our real protection lies not in a mind that is fearful but in a mind that is calm.
So much of our inner disturbance comes from a mental chatter that has no connection with what we are right now. It is all based on past experiences and future fears.
By allowing everything to be exactly as it is, nothing can ever harm us. It is impossible.
Accept this, and we look past what can be harmed toward what is absolute truth (God’s Love).
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