Reflections 239 to 252
21st March 2024
Take nothing else, or you have sought your death, and prayed for separation from your Self. (ACIM, S-2.II.7:6)
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Ref: You do not have to seek reality. It will seek you and find you when you meet its conditions. Its conditions are part of what it is. And this part only is up to you. (ACIM, T-8.IX.2:4-7)
A Course in Miracles tells us that sickness in any form is simply a physical expression of the fear of awakening. This is quite a statement and not one that the ego likes.
It means we have to question all of our beliefs. We have to unlearn what we have learned.
Life is not about suffering, it is about living. Life is not about a healthy body, it is about a healthy mind. To know what real life is, we have to change our perception.
Wrong perception means we see things as they are not. We see life through the body’s eyes. We see what is totally harmless as something that does us harm.
Correct perception means we see things are they are. We see life under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit. Everything unfolds in a totally loving way because love is our motivation, and not our fear.
Fear of living turns to love of life.
Anne Fulkerson felt this during her near-death experience in 2015. In one sense, her NDE allowed her to see that she had been saying “no!” for all of her life. However, she also learned that we are all totally interconnected, love is all there is, and it is by saying “yes!” that we begin to change our lives.
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240/ Continual Communication
22nd March 2024
Christ is for all because He is in all. It is His face forgiveness lets you see. It is His face in which you see your own. (ACIM, S-2.II.7:7-9)
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Ref: Say to the Holy Spirit only, “Decide for me,” and it is done. For His decisions are reflections of what God knows about you, and in this light, error of any kind becomes impossible. (ACIM, T-14.III.16:1-2)
We don’t communicate with our Creator because we have taught ourselves not to. A relationship with God should be as normal as breathing or feeling the soft touch of sunshine on our skin.
Equally, we are not guilty of anything. Being guiltless is a done deal. We can’t ever change our guiltlessness, no matter how hard we try.
A Course in Miracles tells us that everything we feel about ourselves has been made up by a thought of fear. It has been established from of a falsehood that only appears to be true.
The Atonement undoes this error. The Atonement could be defined as the righting of the wrong. Without the Atonement, guilt just fuels the flames of suffering sitting in the mind.
To douse these flames, we bring every last shred of our guilt to the Holy Spirit. This is forgiveness.
To find our Self, we curb all the judgements we make about our brothers. This is just common sense.
The Atonement is then known. Why? Because what we see in others, we always see in ourselves.
We are the one Son, and the one Son is in continual communication with His Father. The remembering of this becomes the song of prayer.
241/ Chasing Fear away
23rd March 2024
All forms forgiveness takes that do not lead away from anger, condemnation and comparisons of every kind are death. For that is what their purposes have set. (ACIM, S-2.II.8:1-2)
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Ref: For psychotherapy, correctly understood, teaches forgiveness and helps the patient to recognize and accept it. And in his healing is the therapist forgiven with him. (ACIM, P-1.2:6-7)
When we are not at peace, we are going to attack.
If we don’t see light, then only darkness fills the mind.
As we get closer to the goal, the further away it appears to be.
Awakening might be compared to peeling an onion. Layer after layer is slowly removed until, suddenly, only clarity remains. Until then, our tears are still here.
A Course in Miracles reminds us that we need to heal the cause of these tears. Forgiveness removes the delusional thought system that prevents the truth from appearing.
We are asked to invite the Holy Spirit into any relationship that we enter. It means the ego has nowhere to hide. Love instead of hatred fills the gap.
When forgiveness becomes our silent practice, then nothing needs to be said.
If love is always with us, we don’t need to search and find it.
As peace replaces non-peace, the fear is chased away.
24th March 2024
Be not deceived by them, but lay them by as worthless in their tragic offerings. You do not want to stay in slavery. You do not want to be afraid of God. (ACIM, S-2.II.8:3-5)
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Ref: A further point must be perfectly clear before any residual fear still associated with miracles can disappear. The crucifixion did not establish the Atonement; the resurrection did. (ACIM, T-3.I.1:1-2)
Slavery and sacrifice are synonymous. They go together like a hand in glove.
The crucifixion and the resurrection are direct opposites. One is extreme suffering and the other is complete peace.
A Course in Miracles tells us that the only love that can satisfy us is between the Father and the Son. This is the only love there is and it is this that we need to find.
The ego uses love for its own purpose. Slavery, sacrifice, torture - all are symbols of the containment of that love. Our minds are dominated by an opposing force that is completely self-made.
The Holy Spirit, too, uses love for its own purpose, but only to bring us back to what we have never left. It transmutes all our discontent into contentment and peace We come to know the joy of life.
The resurrection therefore means that only love exists. It demonstrates that we are the Child of God.
Our essence is certainty, joy, love and light. Anything else is just a mask that covers our true nature. When we take off the mask, the real Self is there.
This is the Atonement. It is the reality of who we are. It shows us that there is no order of difficulty in anything. All pain is a mask that hides the love we share.
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243/ Truth Is not Frail
25th March 2024
You want to see the sunlight and the glow of Heaven shining on the face of earth, redeemed from sin and in the Love of God. From here is prayer released, along with you. (ACIM, S-2.II.8:6-7)
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Ref: It is not you who are so vulnerable and open to attack that just a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a circumstance that suits you not, or an event that you did not anticipate upsets your world, and hurls it into chaos. (ACIM, T-24.III.3:1)
We live in a world of duality. Opposites are everywhere. If we feel a little peaceful, there is always something that will bring us pain.
At the top of the page, the song of prayer gives us hope. It tells us that it is possible to live in the world peacefully. True prayer asks for nothing. We don’t need anything because we are everything.
The passage from the text reminds us that we don’t believe this. It tell us that we are not the body. What we are is infinitely more powerful and more alive than anything that the body can ever be.
True prayer therefore connects our beingness to our Creator’s. It shows us that we are the holy Son of God. True prayer is a demonstration that truth can never lie.
Instead, we have the insane belief that God has somehow punished us. It feels like we have been crucified. This belief is buried deeply, to the point where we do not even know that it is there.
A Course in Miracles simply asks us to forgive the great Creator of the universe.
Collectively, we are His perfect Son. Each one of us is the perfect Son of the perfect Father.
Truth is not frail. Not one illusion can ever disturb this relationship. Love is always perfect as it is.
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244/ The Real World
26th March 2024
Your wings are free, and prayer will lift you up and bring you home where God would have you be. (ACIM, S-2.II.8:8)
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Ref: You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from within it. Its range precludes this. You can only go beyond it, look back from a point where sanity exists and see the contrast. (ACIM, T-9.VII.6:1-3)
A sane thought system belongs to the Holy Spirit; the insane thought system belongs to the ego.
What is transcribed above states that we always have free choice, but only two choices. We can rise up to Heaven and be as God created us; or we can just stay as we are and remain in hell.
Hell is therefore a state of mind. Hell can be the slightest anxiety or the deepest pit of despair. The way out of hell is forgiveness, and forgiveness means that we return to where we have never left.
A Course in Miracles’ whole purpose is to allow us to have a taste of Heaven within the real world. It is not spiritual bypassing. We don’t go to the light and pretend that the darkness never happened.
Instead, we look at the darkness directly, which means looking at the ego. We have to look squarely at our pain, but without judgement. This is because, without judgement, there is no ego.
We bring all of hell to the state of Heaven. Darkness simply disappears when faced by the light.
It means that all of our non-peace gets transmuted into peace. The ego dissolves into the Holy Spirit. Every scrap of pain is simply forgotten as the wonder of love becomes remembered by the mind.
Insanity turns to sanity as the false world becomes the real. As implied at the top of the page, the real world is where our wings fly free, and we are then lifted up to where God would have us be.
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245/ A Peaceful Life
27th March 2024
Forgiveness-for-salvation has one form, and only one. It does not ask for proof of innocence, nor pay of any kind. It does not argue, nor evaluate the errors that it wants to overlook. It does not offer gifts in treachery, nor promise freedom while it asks for death. (ACIM, S-2.III.1:1-4)
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Ref: Retrogression is temporary. The overall direction is one of progress toward the truth. (ACIM, P-2.I.1:8-9)
Healing is of the mind. Only this is possible.
Illusions are illusions and truth is truth. One is totally incompatible with the other.
Forgiveness either hinders us or brings us closer to peace. Only we can choose which way to go.
Yet everyone wants peace. The method we use for achieving a peaceful life either comes through the ego or the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit can make peace permanent.
A Course in Miracles is a systematic practice in which we uncover the way to make this journey. We need to feel that we have tried everything else. Life has become too painful and has got to change.
We see that the ego is that pain. The ego regresses our development and the Holy Spirit progresses it. It is because of the ego that we appear to take two steps forward and one step back.
To allow ourselves to move forward at a quicker pace, we are asked to bring every ounce of guilt to the Holy Spirit. This is true forgiveness. Healing happens when we bring illusions to the truth.
And this is the paradox. Pain is our greatest teacher - in the sense that it demands we search for the peaceful life that, in truth, we have never left.
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246/ Words and Actions
28th March 2024
Would God deceive you? He but asks for trust and willingness to learn how to be free. He gives His Teacher to whoever asks, and seeks to understand the Will of God. (ACIM, S-2.III.1:5-7)
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Ref: Seeing is always outward. Were your thoughts wholly of you, the thought system you made would be forever dark. (ACIM, T-14.I.3:1-2)
A Course in Miracles tells us that forgetfulness, sleep and even death become the ego’s best advice for us when dealing with the impact of guilt on peace.
To acquire peace, we have to first achieve the conditions in which peace exists.
Guilt arises out of our fear of God. Guilt is a deep, inner certainty that we will be punished. This is why distraction always seems to be the best way to avoid our own deep inner pain.
Peace is our natural inheritance. It is God’s gift to us. We find eternal peace only through our own beingness, and this is because the past and the future just gets pushed aside.
Also, the thought system that we think with is the cause that produces the effect. How we think then becomes the way we perceive our lives.
This means that words and actions are always paramount. Everything we do begins with a thought. It is our thinking that shapes the world we want to see.
Kelly Curry paid no attention to her words and actions prior to her near-death experience in 1998, but she was shown very clearly that what we say can change people’s lives. As she changed her thinking, she found that life changed her. She had no idea she would become a professional artist.
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247/ Realizing Wholeness
29th March 2024
His readiness to give lies far beyond your understanding and your simple grasp. Yet He has willed you learn the way to Him, and in His willing there is certainty. (ACIM, S-2.III.1:8-9)
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Ref: You are a stranger here. But you belong to Him Who loves you as He loves Himself. Ask but my help to roll the stone away, and it is done according to His Will. (ACIM, C-ep.2:1-3)
Would God deceive us? Everything that is written above suggests that God could not.
And yet, surely, this world is proof of abandonment? It’s normal that we feel entirely alone and build up walls of protection.
A Course in Miracles tells us that all our beliefs are held in the mind. We either believe that God is real or we do not. There is no middle ground. To dither is merely playing with doubt.
Which means we are on a journey of discovery. The journey is about regaining our certainty. We are here to establish that we are not here at all. The world is an illusion and we have never left Heaven.
This doesn’t mean that we deny our existence as a body. It simply means we look into the mind to find the truth. The truth is so much greater than what we see, hear and touch.
What we think we are is a narrative that runs continuously, telling us we are either good or bad, a believer or a non-believer. These are just concepts that we hold.
What we are is beyond any concept. When we discover the truth of what we are - that we are whole and complete and entirely known - we realize we have never left anything at all.
A Course in Miracles is therefore about realizing our wholeness. One day, we have to decide it is all or nothing. We either want to know God completely or not at all.
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248/ Don’t Make Error Real
30th March 2024
You child of God, the gifts of God are yours, not by your plans but by His holy Will. (ACIM, S-2.III.2:1)
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Ref: The Holy Spirit cannot ask more than you are willing to do. The strength to do comes from your undivided decision. (ACIM, T-2.VI.6:2-3)
A Course in Miracles tells us that to heal means that we are seeing others as we really are. This doesn’t mean a little separate self, but as the holy Son of God.
In other words, we are infinitely greater than the body. We are what the world tells us we cannot be.
This is the end game. If we knew ourselves as the holy Son of God, we wouldn’t need A Course in Miracles. We would still be in Heaven where, coincidentally, it tells us we have never left.
Currently, we see ourselves as little entities and this is not a pleasant thing. Very often, it includes a suffering so intense that we might want to make radical changes that could even end the body.
And the suffering appears to be external to us, caused by a something or a someone else. It might come in the form of a virus or bacteria, or the words that someone says.
A Course in Miracles tells us that this is the error, and we need to stop making error real.
Forgiveness, from the worldly point of view, just increases the error. We see all our sins in someone else. This type of forgiveness never allows us to see that we are the cause and not the effect.
Forgiveness, as taught by A Course in Miracles, reveals the truth. The error is always in the mind.
The solution is to heal all misperceptions. We are the holy Son of God and we can’t be anything else.
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249/ Free Will
31st March 2024
His Voice will teach you what forgiveness is, and how to give it as He wills it be. (ACIM, S-2.III.2:2)
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Ref: It is never God Who coerces you, because He shares His Will with you. His Voice teaches only in accordance with His Will, but that is not the Holy Spirit’s lesson because that is what you are. (ACIM, T-8.II.3:4-5)
Our will and God’s Will are one. This is the only lesson that the Holy Spirit needs to teach and the only lesson we need to learn.
The Voice for God is the Holy Spirit. We have to learn to be aware of It. This is our only practice if any of the words above are going to resonate as being true.
A Course in Miracles teaches that we have free will to do whatever we want. Free will means we have another voice that we choose to listen to. The voice of the ego is entirely of our own making.
The voice of the ego varies in intensity. It can be much more strident early in the morning or late at night. Watching the television and checking the phone are two ways to distract us from its demands.
The Voice of the Holy Spirit is always still. It arises in moments of clarity. It seems that something just happens and we know that Voice. It wants to lead us from our fear and towards an endless peace.
It’s likely we don’t feel that we are imprisoned, but this is what the ego does. It nails us to a cross. The ego loves to make up big and colourful stories so that we forget entirely what we are.
The Holy Spirit opposes any imprisoning of the will of a Son of God, because freedom is our right. The Holy Spirit knows that our will is the same as the Will of God. We are made of love and light.
Free will means we can do anything that we want. God’s Will guarantees we have eternal peace.
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250/ Creation Is Sharing
1st April 2024
Do not, then, seek to understand what is beyond you yet, but let it be a way to draw you up to where the eyes of Christ become the sight you choose. Give up all else, for there is nothing else. (ACIM, S-2.III.2:3-4)
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Ref: I said before that of yourself you can do nothing, but you are not of yourself. If you were, what you have made would be true, and you could never escape. (ACIM, T-10.V.5:1-2)
Jesus tells us that the Son is helpless without the Father.
There is only the Father, but we have made our own substitutes for His Fatherhood. These are our little gods. There is the god of frustration, the god of fear, the god of jealousy... the list is endless.
Since the Son is a creator, we are all creators. What we create has nothing to do with our Creator. It is all an illusion. The truth is that God creates out of love and His Son creates only like Him.
God is everywhere, which means there is nowhere that His Call is not. Everyone we meet is that Call. Whoever we meet is the perfect opportunity to know the Son of God, which is our Self.
A Course in Miracles is therefore the process whereby we change our minds about what we see. We learn there is love instead of fear and truth instead of illusion. We just see spirit instead of the body.
Even as Jesus was being crucified on the cross, he saw only love. He knew that the Son of God was in everyone just as God is everywhere. This is the miracle that we have to learn.
And forgiveness takes us to this point. We are forgiving ourselves for making up a world.
Creation is sharing and it cannot create what is unlike itself. What we have created is isolation. This is the pretence that has to be changed.
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251/ Justice for All
2nd April 2024
When someone calls for help in any form, He is the One to answer for you. All that you need do is to step back and not to interfere. (ACIM, S-2.III.2:5-6)
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Ref: If miracles, the Holy Spirit’s gift, were given specially to an elect and special group, and kept apart from others as less deserving, then is He ally to specialness. (ACIM, T-25.IX.7:2)
A Course in Miracles states that everyone has an equal right to miracles. No one is more important than anyone else.
Miracles are timeless little helpers. Essentially, they take away the pain and replace it with peace.
Only forgiveness allows miracles to happen and anything that is not forgiveness withdraws them completely. Miracles arise from love and light, and never out of a sense of fear and darkness.
If we feel unforgiven, then it is impossible to forgive others. This is why A Course in Miracles reminds us that our sole responsibility as miracle workers is to accept forgiveness for ourselves.
Forgiveness alters our state of mind. Forgiveness means we become aware of the light instead of the darkness. Only light can give us a miracle that changes everything.
Forgiveness also means handing all our inner uncertainties to the Holy Spirit. The ego is like an out-of-control freight train. The noise of the ego keeps on rumbling through our minds.
Our job is to observe this noise with a lack of judgement. A mind without judgement means that there can be no ego. And without the ego, the mind is clear, peaceful and perfectly serene.
Justice is for all. No one is exempt. If one mind is healed then all minds are healed. What we are is simply one.
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252/ Our Inner Template
3rd April 2024
Forgiveness-for-salvation is His task, and it is He Who will respond for you. (ACIM, S-2.III.2:7)
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Ref: Psychotherapy is necessary so that an individual can begin to question their reality. (ACIM, P-in.1:5)
We give all our pain to the Holy Spirit. If we knew all the answers, we would be fine. There would be no war and no suffering.
Whether or not we have lasting joy and happiness is always our own choice. Without an inner glow, things just stay as they are.
This means we will continue to be in limbo. We will continue to identify as a body. We will keep searching search for an elusive happiness that is always just around the corner.
A Course in Miracles says that the external world is proof of an inner condition. Basically we are at war with ourselves. The mind is split. We have a mind that is good and bad, but the bad dominates.
The ‘good’ part of the mind never retaliates. It never sets the agenda. Its existence is in the present moment and this is where it will always be.
The ‘bad’ part of the mind always has its source in fear. It looks to the past and to the future for all its solutions. The past is the template for what it does now.
Psychotherapy tries to resolve the bad part of the mind but, as A Course in Miracles implies, what is wrong can have no resolution. It is merely a thought that can as easily be forgotten.
The Holy Spirit is the constant reminder that our template is the Mind of God. Within us and outside of us always God’s Presence. The mind either knows this completely, or not at all.
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