Reflections 15 to 28
10th August 2023
It is impossible to pray for idols and hope to reach God. True prayer must avoid the pitfall of asking to entreat. Ask, rather, to receive what is already given; to accept what is already there. (ACIM, S-1.I.1:5-7)
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Ref: Think but how holy you must be from whom the Voice for God calls lovingly unto your brother, that you may awake in him the Voice that answers to your call! And think how holy he must be when in him sleeps your own salvation, with his freedom joined! (ACIM, T-26.IX.1:1-2)
We believe in many but there is just the one.
We look at the false but there is only the true.
We cherish the temporary but ignore the eternal.
All we ever have is what is now. A Course in Miracles is quite clear; our only solution is with us always.
We learn that the past is an illusion and the future is just a dream.
Everything is now. This instant is all that matters.
Keith Kavanagh continues with the Song of Prayer in the third instalment of his sixteen-part series. He begins by saying how The Song of Prayer is a master class in bringing the darkness to the light. This means looking at the ego and facing our fears. Illusions can’t stand up to the light of Presence.
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16/ Lifting the Veil
11th August 2023
You have been told to ask the Holy Spirit for the answer to any specific problem, and that you will receive a specific answer if such is your need. (ACIM, S-1.I.2:1)
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Ref: Fear of the Will of God is one of the strangest beliefs the human mind has ever made. It could not possibly have occurred unless the mind were already profoundly split, making it possible for it to be afraid of what it really is. (ACIM, T-9.I.1:1-2)
A Course in Miracles tells us that we have absolutely no understanding of the enormous amounts of energy we expend as we deny the truth. A question then arises. So what are we denying?
Truth is eternity. It never changes and has no opposite.
Truth is peace and does not know fear. It is the condition for happiness.
Truth is life. Truth always extends which means that nothing can die.
The passage above, taken from the Text, tells us that the mind is split. Another way of putting it is that we are all hallucinating. We are seeing things that are not real. We are in a collective psychosis.
The Holy Spirit is the remedy because the ego is the cause of our insanity. If we want to continue suffering, then we listen to the ego; if we want to know peace, then we refer to the Holy Spirit.
The Song of Prayer tells us that each one of us plays a part in the eternal song of life but, without our voice, Heaven’s melody is incomplete. Our job is therefore to remember the song and to sing it.
The ego will not ever allow this but it can be ignored and shunted aside. Another way of putting it is that we need to lift the veil. When the veil is lifted, the mind can only go from darkness to light.
17/ Love and Light
12th August 2023
You have also been told that there is only one problem and one answer. In prayer this is not contradictory. (ACIM, S-1.I.2:2-3)
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Ref: Father, my holiness is Yours. Let me rejoice in it, and through forgiveness be restored to sanity. Your Son is still as You created him. My holiness is part of me, and also part of You. And what can alter Holiness Itself? (ACIM, W-285.2:1-5)
The problem is the ego.
The answer is the Holy Spirit.
The ego’s prayer is to seek and do not find.
The Holy Spirit’s prayer is to ask and then receive.
The prayer that begins this reflection comes from a lesson late in the Workbook. It is a prayer of thanks. It is a statement of what we are.
The paradox is that A Course in Miracles needs to communicate to a mind that believes it is what it is not. It communicates to a mind that is angry, fearful and lost.
Our job is to simply face that anger, fear and loss. It is to know that we are safe, secure and loved.
When the mind goes one way, it only feels abandoned; when it goes the other way, it finds peace.
We are taught that prayer is a joining. Prayer is therefore a merging of love and light.
13th August 2023
There are decisions to make here, and they must be made whether they be illusions or not. (ACIM, S-1.I.2:4)
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Ref: Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a reawakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. It is the acceptance of the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of the world’s purpose; the acceptance of the Atonement for oneself. (ACIM, M-28.1:1-3)
The resurrection is the goal of A Course in Miracles. It is the purpose of the Workbook. It is to know that we can be happy with no opposite.
This means there is no death. Nothing can ever die.
The resurrection therefore tells us that all differences have disappeared and love looks only on itself.
We have no needs or concerns because there is nothing to be needed and nothing to be concerned about.
The mind is awake to the truth of what it is. No clouds obscure the sun.
Joy and peace, then, have become our birthright and love is everywhere. A Course in Miracles simply ends as it began - with everything clear, real and totally known.
The Holy Spirit remains as the only dream. Otherwise, all divisions have disappeared and the Self is regarded as whole and complete. The living Christ is seen in all.
A song of thanks then rings out across the world. We know we are totally loved and without an end.
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19/ The Will of God
14th August 2023
You
cannot be asked to accept answers which are beyond the level of need that you
can recognize. (ACIM,
S-1.I.2:5)
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Ref: The belief in sin is an adjustment. And an adjustment is a change; a shift in perception, or a belief that what was so before has been made different. (ACIM, T-20.III.1:1-2)
An adjustment is a distortion; we are distorting the truth of what we are.
The world of sin arises out of this distorted perception. However, this can never make any sense to the distorted mind.
It therefore takes time to fully understand that we are projecting our own internal reality. How could we possibly know that how we see the world - how we see others - is how we feel about ourselves?
A Course in Miracles likens the ego to a wayward stranger. It teaches us that the ego is unwelcome and actually completely insane. If we listen to madness, then this is what we project.
The world simply reflects our inner condition. Everything we see bears no resemblance to truth.
A Course in Miracles merely reminds us that reality is perfect and needs no adjustment. It states that prisoners bound in chains, thin and emaciated, do not leap up the moment they are made free.
It is up to us to slowly adjust to the light of eternal love. And, as we adjust to our known reality, the mind becomes clearer and more certain of its Source.
There are no differences in reality. There is nothing to be feared. Kindness is our Teacher because everything is one with the Will of God.
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20/ Love Comes to All
15th August 2023
Therefore, it is not the form of the question that matters, nor how it is asked. The form of the answer, if given by God, will suit your need as you see it. This is merely an echo of the reply of His Voice. (ACIM, S-1.I.2:6-8)
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Ref: The light of truth is in us, where it was placed by God. It is the body that is outside us, and is not our concern. To be without a body is to be in our natural state. To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves as we are. (ACIM, W-72.9:1-4)
The lesson quoted today informs us that the ego’s fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego’s whole belief is that it is God.
A Course in Miracles therefore withdraws this belief. It undoes it. It shows us how ludicrous it is to believe that we could ever be so limited.
We are taught to see that so much of what we pray for is for the body. Or, to put it another way, so much of our thinking is about the body.
If we feel endangered, sick, concerned about loss or about being abandoned, then this becomes our prayer. These are the thoughts that we send out.
A Course in Miracles leads us back to right thinking. It is a healing of the mind. It is a course in mind training so we learn to know exactly who we are and what we are.
What we really are is infinite, wondrous and full of joy. We are beings of light that have never been encased in darkness.
How we find our way back to light is unique to each one of us. It might not happen quickly but it is going to happen. It is an inevitable truth that love comes to all who search for it.
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21/ Being Is Infinity
16th August 2023
The real sound is always a song of thanksgiving and of Love. (ACIM, S-1.I.2:9)
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Ref: You cannot perpetuate an illusion about another without perpetuating it about yourself. There is no way out of this, because it is impossible to fragment the mind. To fragment is to break into pieces, and mind cannot attack or be attacked. (ACIM, T-7.VIII.4:1-3)
A Course in Miracles asks us not to be afraid of the ego. It tells us we made the ego up by believing in it and, as such, we just need to withdraw our belief from it.
The ego projects and the Holy Spirit extends; one hurts and the other heals. Our job is to withdraw our faith in the projection of the ego and to place our faith in the extension of the Holy Spirit.
The ego desperately needs to preserve the conflict. We - as the ego - invest all our guilt and shame in others instead of understanding that the whole problem arises from within our own self.
The Holy Spirit knows that without extension there can be no love. The Holy Spirit’s purpose is to undo all the guilt buried in the mind and allow God’s Love to flow out, spontaneously and naturally.
God is Love and God extends His Love through His Son. If we can forget all the imagery and dogma that inevitably gets associated with a statement like this, then we can see how simple it really is.
All that has to be done is to see the ego for what it is - a thought of fear.
All we then have to do is to see in the Holy Spirit exactly what God wants for us - boundless Love.
A Course in Miracles tells us that being is infinity and wholeness has no limits. We should never see ourselves as lonely, small and afraid. Instead we should know ourselves to be perfect in every way.
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22/ Stepping Back
17th August 2023
You cannot, then, ask for the echo. It is the song that is the gift. (ACIM, S-1.I.3:1-2)
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Ref: What can I seek for, Father, but Your Love? Perhaps I think I seek for something else; a something I have called by many names. Yet is Your Love the only thing I seek, or ever sought. For there is nothing else that I could ever really want to find. Let me remember You. What else could I desire but the truth about myself? (ACIM, W-231.1:1-6)
The echo is anything we need in the world of form.
The song is a song of gratitude and thanks. It is direct communication with God. The song is the only thing we could ever need because it is the only thing we could ever want.
The song is therefore the truth about who we are. However, since we see ourselves as struggling to cope, we need any help that is given us and the echo is that help.
The Holy Spirit is here to guide us; the ego is here to hinder us. If we are confused about one or the other, then we are not at peace.
Peace is simply a stepping back. It arises out of the echo. Peace actually does not have an opposite because peace just gives and never takes.
Keith Kavanagh takes another look at the Song of Prayer in the fourth of his sixteen-part instalment. We learn that all is one. We learn that there is no division. We learn that nothing is outside of us. It is this constant repetition that allows us to know that the only thing that matters is the song. It is the song that is the gift.
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23/ God Needs Helpers
18th August 2023
Along with it come the overtones, the harmonics, the echoes, but these are secondary. (ACIM, S-1.I.3:3)
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Ref: There is no need for help to enter Heaven for you have never left. But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs of your Identity, which God alone established in reality. (ACIM, C-5.1:1-2)
Each body is an illusion, no matter what the form it seems to take.
By definition, then, you, me and us - we are all illusions; whoever we are, whatever we have done, wherever we live, it means nothing. The only thing that has any meaning is a mind that knows itself.
Cut ourselves and we bleed; hurt ourselves and we suffer. Whether we accumulate wealth or have none, no one can deny that nightmares always arise from our physical existence.
The passage above is from the Clarification of Terms. It is a page that actively defines Jesus and the Christ. However, within it, it always refers to Jesus in the lower case - as in ‘he’ was this and ‘he’ did that. This tells us that Jesus was an illusion, just as all bodies are.
Within the whole of A Course in Miracles, only that which is Christ - or God, or Spirit - is referred to in the upper case (as in Identity). We therefore learn that Jesus was the Christ - just as every one of us is the Christ. We are all one Christ and there is only God.
This is the song - this is our oneness. However, while the one mind believes that it can be many and separate, God needs helpers. Only by helping each other can we find our way back to Him at last.
A Course in Miracles wants us to do our own thing but insists we need not be martyrs. Suffering always arises through the mind and the whole point of the Course is to stop this needless suffering.
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24/ Our Other Self
19th August 2023
In true prayer you hear only the song. All the rest is merely added. (ACIM, S-1.I.3:4-5)
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Ref: Forgiveness is the key to happiness. (ACIM, W-121)
Forgiveness offers wings to prayer and becomes prayer’s ally.
Healing is the only outcome of true forgiveness.
The unforgiving mind does not know what true prayer is. The unforgiving mind is learned. It is manufactured and, as such, it can easily be undone.
The lesson above tells us that forgiveness is acquired. It is not inherent in the mind because the mind cannot sin. There is only one single error. It is the belief that we can be apart from our Creator.
Sin, then, has to be seen for what it is. Sin is something we made up and is an error of judgement.
It is pretty clear that we still have an unforgiving mind and that the ego (our separate self) completely thrives on judgement.
A Course in Miracles therefore asks that we refer to our Higher Mind. In the vernacular of ACIM, this means asking the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the Teacher who represents our other Self - the Self we really are.
The Self absolutely needs no forgiveness. The Self just Is. Everything that we were before - our little self - is gone. Forgiveness has ended and we just are.
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25/ Ending where It Began
20th August 2023
You have sought first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all else has indeed been given you. (ACIM, S-1.I.3:6)
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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)
Let every situation be exactly what it is.
Allow peace to open up through us.
Accept truth as our goal.
We are not asked to do that much. In fact, we are told that we expend far more energy on doing exactly what we shouldn’t be doing.
Think of sickness, terror, sadness and hate, and we can see we are making a hell out of a heaven.
The reversal of this is within us. It can never be found anywhere else because there is nowhere else.
We just have to stop being unconscious to our thinking and start being the witness of our thoughts.
A Course in Miracles tells us we have no need to suffer. Suffering is irrelevant and totally pointless.
The eternal can only be experienced in this moment - never in another time - and everything else in time is imagined and false. If we drop into the holy instant, our search simply ends where it began.
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26/ Love Overcomes Fear
21st August 2023
The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you need. To ask for the specific is much the same as to look on sin and then forgive it. (ACIM, S-1.I.4:1-2)
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Ref: Every mind must project or extend, because that is how it lives, and every mind is life. (ACIM, T-7.VIII.1:11)
Projection is of the ego; extension is of the Holy Spirit. One preserves conflict and the other extends love.
Love, according to the ego, always has conditions. Love, for the Holy Spirit, is infinite and has no end. This is because this is what it is. Love has no opposite and is actually the song of prayer.
The ego arose out of fear and has anger at its core. The ego is actually a prayer for separation.
The Holy Spirit is the nearest we get to God, being the memory of God. It is actually a prayer of joy.
Stillness is the easiest way to access the memory of God. We are unlikely to ever know stillness without practice. The ego simply drowns out the stillness in order to keep its grip on the mind.
The ego is therefore rampant. It secretly keeps us fearful but pretends to be our friend. And, since the ego hates to be observed, it demands that we (the Self) should never look at it.
A Course in Miracles states that we need to do just that in order to withdraw our belief in the ego. We need to step back and observe the ego’s antics and then let the Holy Spirit do the rest.
We (the Self) can then be aware of all that is not real (the ego). We observe what is happening and allow our thoughts to lose their power. Love overcomes fear as we bring the darkness to the light.
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27/ No Order of Difficulty
22nd August 2023
Also in the same way, in prayer you overlook your specific needs as you see them, and let them go into God’s Hands. (ACIM, S-1.I.4:3)
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Ref: There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion. Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one? (ACIM, M-8.5:1-2)
A Course in Miracles begins by saying there is no order of difficulty in miracles. This pushes us in right at the deep end.
The passage above says much the same thing. If we believed that there was no order of difficulty in healing, then we wouldn’t be reading this.
The world is full of opposites and yet A Course in Miracles tells us that they all arise from a split mind. When the mind is healed, we simply come to the following conclusions.
- There are no opposites in Creation and Creation is perfect as it is.
- God has no opposite and God’s Love in infinite and endless.
- The Son thanks God for His creation and God thanks His Son for His extension.
A Course in Miracles states that only the mind is the cause of suffering and the resulting effect is an order of difficulty in everything. It means we make up illusions and allow the illusory to rule us.
All illusions are untrue. Truth is truth and has no opposite. A Course in Miracles leads us back to sanity, and sanity is when the mind is healed of all its doubts.
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28/ Completion Is in the Mind
23rd August 2023
There they become your gifts to Him, for they tell Him that you would have no gods before Him; no love but His. (ACIM, S-1.I.4:4)
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Ref: Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother you will feel deprived, because denial is as total as love. It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part. (ACIM, T-7.VII.1:1-2)
A Course in Miracles tells us that all confusion comes from not extending life, because that is the Will of our Creator.
It also shows us that what we see in others is what we see in ourselves. We make little gods of some and utter demons of others.
If we see someone as an ’enemy’, we are simply placing our guilt in someone else.
If we see someone as a ‘friend’, we are hoping that ‘someone’ can ease our pain.
There is only one of us. We are the guiltless Son of God. We either accept this totally or not at all.
The ego (our wrong mind) sees us as deprived, unloving and vulnerable; the Holy Spirit (our right mind) sees us complete, wholly loved and totally safe. The ego believes that when we give, we always lose; the Holy Spirit knows that what we give is what we receive. There are no half measures in this because there are no half measures. It is always one or the other.
The mind is powerful beyond measure. Our thoughts are literally our prayers; we are asking and receiving all the time.
A Course in Miracles tells us that completion is in the mind. We are only vulnerable because we have forgotten that we are invulnerable.
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