Reflections 211 to 224
211/ The Truth of God
22nd February 2024
Therefore we make distinctions, so that prayer can be released from darkness into light. (ACIM, S-2.I.9:3)
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Ref: My only function is the one God gave me. (ACIM, W-65)
Our function as God’s creation is that we complete Himself. Our Identity is God’s Son.
In many ways, this is what we learn during the near-death experience. We are a completion of the light and we are all completed as a one.
The near-death experience is also way of learning that love is our only function. This is because love is all there is.
And small acts of love are no different to large acts - just as there is no order of difficulty in anything.
We are here to spread the light and learn that we are love. We could just as easily say that we are here to spread the love and learn that we are light.
Love is our only function. It is never what the world would teach us. But it is what becomes quite apparent when the form of the body drops away and the Truth of God reveals itself.
Dr. Bruce Greyson, one of the co-founders of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, has committed much of his professional life to the research and study of the near-death experience. Below, he talks about the past 50 years and discusses the NDE from a psychiatrist's perspective.
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23rd February 2024
Forgiveness’ role must be reversed, and cleansed from evil usages and hateful goals. (ACIM, S-2.I.9:4)
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Ref: There is always some risk in seeing the present in terms of the past. There is always some good in any thought which strengthens the idea that life and the body are not the same. (ACIM, M-24.2:7-8)
Forgiveness undoes the guilt in our minds. It has nothing to do with the past.
The past is always to to with the body. This is without exception.
A Course in Miracles labels the present in terms of the holy instant. The holy instant can be defined as a choice to accept love over fear, and unity over separation.
We therefore always have a choice. It is to stay in the past or to arrive into the present moment.
The mind is powerful beyond measure. It literally makes up a world and it is this world that becomes the projection of a mind that loves or a mind that fears.
A Course in Miracles therefore takes us away from suffering and leads us towards complete contentment. It is a journey that enables us to experience a peace that has simply been forgotten.
Our job is only to practice. It is to become completely aware of what’s going on in the mind.
Ultimately, we just need to relinquish a thought system of fear and learn to accept one of love.
These are our only two choices in any one moment. One gets it totally and one doesn’t get it at all.
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213/ Gifts of Giving
24th February 2024
Forgiveness-to-destroy must be unveiled in all its treachery, and then let go forever and forever. There can be no trace of it remaining, if the plan that God established for returning be achieved at last, and learning be complete. (ACIM, S-2.I.9:5-6)
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Ref: God’s peace and joy are mine. (ACIM, W-105)
A Course in Miracles tells us that a major learning goal we need to achieve is to reverse our thoughts on giving. It tells us that giving and receiving are the same.
Another learning goal is to understand the meaning of true forgiveness.
What the world considers to be ‘giving’ always implies that someone loses. Equally, what the world considers to be ‘forgiveness’ really means that someone has done a wrong.
The ego is always the main player in this. The ego establishes that there are always people who have more and people who have less; it tells us that there is always a victim and an aggressor.
The whole purpose of A Course in Miracles is to show us that we are one. All minds are joined. Bodies are just mental images, and we need to see that the ego is just a thought of loss.
By working with the workbook, we can at least appreciate that there is an alternative to the ego. The Holy Spirit’s sole purpose is to open our minds up to change.
The point is, everything is practised within a context of love. As we give out love, we expand as love; if we truly forgive, then the barriers to love’s presence come tumbling down.
The gifts of giving arise as our learning goals become achieved. It’s a simple shift from pain to peace.
25th February 2024
This is the world of opposites. And you must choose between them every instant while this world retains reality for you. (ACIM, S-2.I.10:1-2)
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Ref: Reality can dawn only on an unclouded mind. It is always there to be accepted, but its acceptance depends on your willingness to have it. (ACIM, T-10.IV.2:1-2)
A Course in Miracles tells us that truth can never dawn on a mind full of illusions. Truth and illusions are irreconcilable.
And it is this that sums us the world of opposites, as mentioned above.
It also means that everything that is outside of truth becomes an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. We are literally trying to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
We therefore have to assume that the mind is confused. The ego doesn’t know what it is doing. The ego is a loose cannon that seeks to give off the impression that it can be controlled.
The ego is the cause of every sickness we ever get, and every doubt we ever have. But what A Course in Miracles really wants us to do is to observe and relinquish.
To observe and relinquish means that the ego is witnessed in all its idiocy. We don’t amuse or entertain the ego. All its antics are simply handed over to the Holy Spirit.
Our part is to trust that the Holy Spirit knows what is best for us. This always involves total faith.
A Course in Miracles is the process of diligence and discovery. However, it is by observing and relinquishing that we get to see how the ego hurts us in the most subtle ways.
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215/ Completely and Totally
26th February 2024
Yet you must learn alternatives for choice, or you will not be able to attain your freedom. (ACIM, S-2.I.10:3)
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Ref: Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? (ACIM, M-27.1:1-2)
Death is the fixed and unchangeable belief of the world. We live and we die.
A Course in Miracles refutes this. In fact, its whole premise is that there is only life.
We are not asked to live in denial. We are not expected to behave differently if someone close to us does die. The only thing that matters is that we know that the body is irrelevant.
Outwardly, we attend the funeral and pay our respects; but inwardly, we don’t lend any truth to the body. The body is just an image in the mind. Our real nature is infinitely bigger and more wondrous.
What we really are can never die; there is only life. We are spirit, whole, pure and innocent. We are absolutely immortal and at one with God.
The Creator created His Son (who we are) with one purpose: to have an outlet for His Love.
We are that outlet. We are the expression and the extension of the whole of creation.
To know no death requires a quiet mind. No exclamations of the ego can ever disturb its centre.
We are life. We are free. Both of these statements have to be known completely and in totality.
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216/ A Will with no Past
27th February 2024
Let it then be clear to you exactly what forgiveness means to you, and learn what it should be to set you free. (ACIM, S-2.I.10:4)
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Ref: As God created us so will we be forever and forever, and we wish for nothing but His Will to be our own. Illusions of another will are lost, for unity of purpose has been found. (ACIM, M-28.5:8-9)
Forgiveness is our only way to freedom. It releases us from the past.
True forgiveness means that only God’s Will remains. After this, it is meaningless. What else could we ever need apart from the Love of God?
Until this happens, we can do whatever we want. Free will expresses itself in many different ways.
Free will gives us multiple options, the subtext being that the ego needs to feel whole and complete.
However, not one career choice can ever mean anything; whatever we do with our lives, it is always totally irrelevant. Everything is happening within a context of insidious aloneness and creeping fear.
This is because the ego is actually the fear of God. The ego is a barrier to remembering God’s Will.
God’s Will is that we should be ecstatic. It is that we should have eternal peace with no opposite.
This means that, whenever we get stressed, whenever we get fearful, whenever we get overly caught up in achieving and gathering, it is always because we have invented another purpose.
True forgiveness brings us to our purpose. It is to be totally immersed in a Will that has no past.
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217/ Only Light
28th February 2024
The level of your prayer depends on this, for here it waits its freedom to ascend above the world of chaos into peace. (ACIM, S-2.I.10:5)
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Ref: The Holy Spirit will always guide you truly, because your joy is His. This is His Will for everyone because He speaks for the Kingdom of God, which is joy. (ACIM, T-7.XI.1:1-2)
A Course in Miracles tells us that it is impossible to deny any part of truth.
Truth shows us that our being is only known by sharing.
We also find that we do not know ourselves because we do not know our Creator.
The world goes against our nature. It is out of accord with God’s laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in everything, and God most definitely does not. Everything is perfect as it is.
How do we find our way to perfection when the world so clearly takes us in the opposite direction?
Firstly, we have to take it slowly. The mind needs to be prepared for change. It is always one step at a time, and eventually the journey becomes complete.
And, secondly, we don’t fight the ego. We choose the miracle. Our choice defines the peace we feel.
We either love or fear. It is always just one or the other, and the Holy Spirit dissolves the ego’s fear.
A Course in Miracles is the reminder that, when a mind has only light, it knows only light. This is our purpose. It is to bring all of our darkness to the light.
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218/ All We Need to Know
29th February 2024
Forgiveness-to-destroy has many forms, being a weapon of the world of form. Not all of them are obvious, and some are carefully concealed beneath what seems like charity. (ACIM, S-2.II.1:1-2)
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Ref: No one is strong who has an enemy, and no one can attack unless he thinks he has. Belief in enemies is therefore the belief in weakness, and what is weak is not the Will of God. (ACIM, T-23.in.1:5-6)
The world seems to contain us. It shapes who we are and the personality that we have.
Everything of importance appears to be external to us. We never think to look within for solutions.
A Course in Miracles completely dismantles all our beliefs. It teaches us that life can never end. All that is important relates to the formless, and the world just arises as a projection from the mind.
The near-death experience shows us much the same thing. It is the reminder that life continues, but in a different form. All that we thought might have been real is suddenly not real at all.
A Course in Miracles therefore does not expect us to change the world; it only wants us to change our minds about the world.
And the near-death experience helps to validate this. It is a glimpse into all that we need to know.
Penny Sartori became interested in the near-death experience after a patient of hers had died on the ICU. At the time, she’d just begun her nursing career and the distress made her question her beliefs about dying. Below, she talks to Rick Archer about her research and how the NDE can inspire lives.
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1st March 2024
Yet all the forms that it may seem to take have but this single goal; their purpose is to separate and make what God created equal, different. The difference is clear in several forms where the designed comparison cannot be missed, nor is it really meant to be. (ACIM, S-2.II.1:3-4)
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Ref: All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same. They are your protest against reality, and your fixed and insane idea that you can change it. (ACIM, T-18.II.5:12-15)
The first step, before we can awaken to a greater reality, is when our dreams of fear are changed into happy dreams.
What we see is the real world instead of the false world, and the Holy Spirit is the catalyst for doing this. Everything we dream becomes transmuted from dreams of pain into dreams of peace.
Special relationships are perfect examples. Where we once saw our guilt in others, we now see the Son of God shining brightly. Specialness has been transmuted in holiness. Fear has become love.
This arises by applying true forgiveness. True forgiveness heals and nurtures, as opposed to the ego’s forgiveness which divides and separates (and is alluded to at the top of the page).
The song of prayer can never be heard by a mind that is lost in dreams. And this is the purpose of A Course in Miracles. It is to bring us back to what we have never left.
Our internal world needs to be sifted through. The ego has to be brought to the Holy Spirit. All of our lonely and painful dreams have to be transmuted into ones that are clear and bright.
However, nothing really changes because reality is changeless. All that happens is that we are seeing happy images. Dreams of fear have become transmuted into dreams of light.
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220/ Everything or Nothing
2nd March 2024
In this group, first, there are the forms in which a “better” person deigns to stoop to save a “baser” one from what he truly is. Forgiveness here rests on an attitude of gracious lordliness so far from love that arrogance could never be dislodged. (ACIM, S-2.II.2:1-2)
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Ref: The curriculum is highly individualized, and all aspects are under the Holy Spirit’s particular care and guidance. Ask and He will answer. The responsibility is His, and He alone is fit to assume it. To do so is His function. (ACIM, M-29.2:6-9)
As implied above, it is only deep introspection that helps us to know what is wrong and what is right.
What is wrong is that we believe our thinking plays no part in our destiny. We believe that it is only luck that decides our fate. We feel that it is always others who are the problem, and never ourselves.
What is right is to always refer to an inner Voice. It is correct to say that we can never know what we need in our lives. The Holy Spirit tells us that forgiveness is not only necessary but the only answer.
The ego uses forgiveness to meet its needs; it establishes us a winner or a loser, a hero or a fraud. The Holy Spirit uses forgiveness to guide us to truth. Truth simply reminds us that love is all we need.
A Course in Miracles therefore gives us everything or nothing. We can have the whole of eternity, or we just continue being finite and limited by form.
And the curriculum is “highly individualized” simply because the ego takes so many different forms.
No one person can ever have the same needs. And all the needs of humanity mean nothing at all.
We all get to the same goal in our own personal way. Love is our guide and fear just gets left behind.
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221/ Undoing Error
3rd March 2024
Who can forgive and yet despise? And who can tell another he is steeped in sin, and yet perceive him as the Son of God? Who makes a slave to teach what freedom is? (ACIM, S-2.II.2:3-5)
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Ref: To study the error itself does not lead to correction, if you are indeed to succeed in overlooking the error. And it is just this process of overlooking at which the course aims. (ACIM, C-in.1:5-6)
The error is the ego. It is the belief that we are somehow separate and apart from the love and peace of God.
As long as we hold any hatred in our hearts, then this will always be the case. True forgiveness allows no room for error. True forgiveness sees things exactly as they are.
A Course in Miracles brings us back to the core of our true Self. This is our unshakeable nature and is entirely what we are. To see things clearly allows us the capacity to see life from a different angle.
Everything we witness begins to have a reference point of love. We witness life through the stillness of the Holy Spirit. We rely on a total openness and stillness of mind.
The error is to think otherwise. It is to identify as as figure that has a name, address and telephone number. The error is to think that our identity as a body carries any importance at all.
The body is an illusion just as anything that has form is an illusion. However, this can’t just be accepted theoretically. We have to know it through the experience of being the loving Son of God.
Each and every one of us is that perfect Son. We are all a perfect wholeness that has no division.
Undoing the error of separation results in a peaceful mind. Peace is a mind that knows it is one.
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222/ Peace and Love
4th March 2024
There is no union here, but only grief. This is not really mercy. This is death. (ACIM, S-2.II.2:6-8)
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Ref: Reality is safe and sure, and wholly kind to everyone and everything. There is no greater love than to accept this and be glad. (ACIM, T-16.II.8:6-7)
Love only asks that we be happy, and gives us everything we need to ensure that happiness.
Fear’s only demand is that we lose sight of truth. Fear’s intent is to push peace away, even though it is impossible that peace can ever leave the mind.
We are the decision makers as to how we want to feel. We can be besotted by either love or fear, but only one can direct our thinking. We can never be led by both.
The ego loves to be the focus of our attention, and it is the ego that shapes the way we look at life. The ego tends to taunt us. It pretends to be love, but is actually the fear of death at its core.
The Holy Spirit sits in the background with infinite patience. The Holy Spirit provides the love that we need at any given time. It is through the Holy Spirit that we find the love that dispels all the hate.
A Course in Miracles is the shift from fear to love. It is the choice of the miracle instead of the ego. It is the proof that love is completely real and fear is totally false.
Everything changes when we turn to the love in our minds. It’s a case of allowing ourselves to have a strong sense of presence and not being fixated on the past.
Truth is ours if we allow peace and love to fill our minds. When peace and love combine to help us, fear just becomes afraid and moves away.
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223/ Love for Love
5th March 2024
Another form, still very like the first if it is understood, does not appear in quite such blatant arrogance. (ACIM, S-2.II.3:1)
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Ref: Yet the memory of God cannot shine in a mind that has obliterated it and wants to keep it so. For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remember, and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality. (ACIM, T-12.VIII.5:2-3)
A Course in Miracles tells us that the unreal world is a thing of despair. It is totally false and has no reality in truth.
We learn that a mind that shares God’s Being can never be content without reality.
And we end up being confused. Pain is everywhere and we are not able to believe that it is not true.
Into this drama comes the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit looks on truth and sees absolutely nothing else.
A Course in Miracles therefore teaches us that, by aligning our minds with the Holy Spirit, the unreal becomes real and all illusions turn to truth.
We always have two choices. It is to see with the ego or to see with the Holy Spirit. One selects the unreal and loves to hate; the other only knows the real and loves to love.
We either see pain and suffering, or we see love and peace. It is always a choice of the unreal world or the real world, and only the mind dictates which one we are going to see.
The attraction of love for love is irresistible. It is the function of love to unite all things with itself, and also to extend its wholeness. Our only purpose is to know love’s peace.
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224/ Discovery of Fact
6th March 2024
The one who would forgive the other does not claim to be the better. Now he says instead that here is one whose sinfulness he shares, since both have been unworthy and deserve the retribution of the wrath of God. This can appear to be a humble thought, and may indeed induce a rivalry in sinfulness and guilt. (ACIM, S-2.II.3:2-4)
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Ref: To see a guilty world is but the sign your learning has been guided by the world, and you behold it as you see yourself. (ACIM, T-31.V.15:6)
There is a self and there is a Self. Anything that is alluded to above is really helping us to see past our limitations. We are peering through the darkness to the light.
The self takes many different forms. It is everything illusory within the mind that we project out onto the world. The self is every thought we have that maintains it can be different and apart.
The Self is complete and total truth. It has no limitation nor doubt about what it is. The Self is certainty and perfect knowing. It is purity and peace without an opposite.
The self is divided, lacking and endlessly tormented. The self loves to be analysed and to be the focus of attention. The self simply plays with what we see, moulding a world that is a web of confusion.
The Self needs no healing because it is perfect love. It needs no forgiveness because it is total truth. And, as the Self becomes known within the mind, it is then that we begin to hear the song of prayer.
The Self is completely real while the self is completely false; the Self is linked to peace while the self is linked to pain; the Self knows only abundance while the self knows only lack.
A Course in Miracles speaks to our self, but only because we are totally confused. The Self can only be known through the undoing of concepts and it is this that leads to the discovery of fact.
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