Reflections 281 to 294
281/ Only Love Matters
2nd May2024
Death stares at them as every moment goes irrevocably past their grasping hands, which cannot hold them back. And they feel fear as bodies change and sicken. For they sense the heavy scent of death upon their hearts. (ACIM, S-3.I.2:4-6)
***
Ref: Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? In no fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely. (ACIM, T-17.II.1:1-2)
A Course in Miracles tells us that we can only attain the real world through the forgiveness of the old world. It’s as if we are looking at the same thing but with a mind that is clear.
The old world is all the pain and suffering that we see. There is some beauty and occasional love, but the imperfections are obvious. Even on the street by our window, we might hear people arguing.
It is therefore just a matter of perception. We can perceive with the ego as we hear the sounds from outside or we can perceive with the Holy Spirit.
And all we are doing is hearing our own internal sounds. There is just one ego and just one Spirit.
A Course in Miracles is therefore the process of moving from what is false to what is true. We see love instead of fear and, as we do, the mind is perceiving what is perfect and what is true.
Truth never changes and is with us always, and it is true forgiveness that allows our minds to heal.
Pauline Glamochak learnt this from Jesus during her near-death experience in 1977. She was shown that love is the only thing that matters, and was told that we create our life by what we focus on. Below, she also describes three other NDEs that she has had, two before 1977 and one as an adult.
____________________________________________________________________________
282/ The Bigger Picture
3rd May2024
The body can be healed as an effect of true forgiveness. Only that can give rememberance of immortality, which is the gift of holiness and love. (ACIM, S-3.I.3:1-2)
***
Ref: No one can give if he is concerned with the result of giving. This is a limitation on the giving itself, and neither the giver nor the receiver would have the gift. (ACIM, M-6.3:4-5)
True forgiveness is the recognition that nothing has happened. Each moment that we thought that something did happen is just the holy instant folding in on itself. There is only now.
Immortality is what we are. We can never die and can only live. The body is quite irrelevant in the bigger picture. Its source is pain and we are love.
Giving is all part of life. The ego thinks that giving means losing. The Holy Spirit knows that giving is sharing. The gift is that the more we give, the more we will receive.
A Course in Miracles tells us that trust is essential if we are to learn any and all of the above. It states that trust is the foundation on which we fulfil our function.
We also need to have run out of options for trust to be possible. We need to have learnt that the world can never give us what we want.
The Holy Spirit can only be heard if we listen sincerely. The Voice for God lies below the fast-talking ego and it is the ego’s voice that always talks first.
Practice is therefore essential if we want to be perfect. This means we heal the split in the mind.
But we have to see the bigger picture. All minds are one despite the world of form that we see.
283/ The Script Is Written
4th May 2024
Forgiveness must be given by a mind which understands that it must overlook all shadows on the holy face of Christ, among which sickness should be seen as one. (ACIM, S-3.I.3:3)
***
Ref: As the teacher of God advances in his training, he learns one lesson with increasing thoroughness. He does not make his own decisions; he asks his Teacher for His answer, and it is this he follows as his guide for action. (ACIM, M-9.2:1-2)
A Course in Miracles tells us that the script is written. Everything we think that happens has already been and gone.
The movie has been shot and we are in the cinema. It is our choice how we interpret what is happening on the screen in front of us.
This is advanced metaphysics and not an easy concept to grasp. However, the whole of A Course in Miracles is about unlearning what we have learned.
Towards the end of the text, there is a section called Rules for Decision (ACIM, T-30.I). It starts by saying that we make decisions continuously. It is always up to us as to the type of day we want.
This doesn’t mean that the whole day would be rosy if we were directed by the Voice of the Holy Spirit. Since the script is written, it just means that we can change our minds about what we see.
At the very start of the workbook, we learn that nothing we see has any meaning. It is therefore not going to make any difference to our day if the grass needs cutting or the plates need washing.
Everything is an interpretation of the mind. We either see in the present or we look with the past.
The script is written and we have no need to worry. The simple truth is that there is nothing to fear.
5th May 2024
Nothing but that; the sign of judgment made by brother upon brother, and the Son of God upon himself. For he has damned his body as his prison, and forgot that it is he who gave this role to it. (ACIM, S-3.I.3:4-5)
***
Ref: If you did not feel guilty you could not attack, for condemnation is the root of attack. It is the judgment of one mind by another as unworthy of love and deserving of punishment. (ACIM, T-13.in.1:1-2)
The excerpt above comes from the beginning of a chapter entitled The Guiltless World (ACIM, T-13.in). By definition, then, the world we are looking at now is fuelled by guilt.
The world we see is a picture of the crucifixion of God’s Son. The real world - one where only love exists - can only be seen by a mind that has been healed of hatred.
The excerpt from the Song of Prayer at the top of the page implies that the body is our prison cell. The analogy is that we have imprisoned the Son of God.
Clearly, imprisoning the formless is impossible. To think we can just fuels our belief in the ego.
A Course in Miracles reminds us that it was the acceptance of guilt into the mind of God’s Son that began the separation, and its correction is the end. This is the Atonement.
This means that somewhere deep within the mind is a little spark of light. It is a memory of Heaven that needs to shine. And it will only rise in us when we forgive ourselves of our guilt.
It’s as if we are blindfolded and at a crossroads. We need to make a choice about which way to go.
Love beckons us and fear draws us back. By removing the blindfold, we know which way to go.
____________________________________________________________________________
285/ There Is only the Song
6th May 2024
What he has done now must God’s Son undo. But not alone. For he has thrown away the prison’s key; his holy sinlessness and the remembrance of his Father’s Love. (ACIM, S-3.I.4:1-3)
***
Ref: To give thanks to your brother is to appreciate the holy instant, and thus enable its results to be accepted and shared. To attack your brother is not to lose the instant, but to make it powerless in its effects. (ACIM, T-17.V.12:5-6)
Presence is the only thing that will bring us peace. This is the holy instant.
In any relationship that we are in, there is always the potential to use the past to block the holy instant. We can never see things as they are.
How we view our brother is therefore crucial as to how we feel about ourselves. If we see him as innocent, then our own mind is innocent; see him as guilty, and this is what we are.
There is just the one mind. If a relationship isn’t working, it only takes one half of any relationship to recognize the mind’s wholeness and for the split to heal.
This means we undo the ego. This is why the ego does all it can to stop us from knowing the truth.
And when the ego goes, all relationships are holy. The song of freedom is heard because the Holy Spirit has shined away the darkness of the ego from the mind.
The mind is always wholly creative. It can make mountains out of molehills and it sees what it wants to see. Truth, however, is always consistent.
A Course in Miracles tells us that there is only the song. The holy instant remains exactly as it is. There is only the now and it is only a thought that thinks there isn’t.
____________________________________________________________________________
286/ Practice Forgiveness
7th May 2024
Yet help is given to him in the Voice his Father placed in him. The power to heal is now his Father’s gift, for through His Voice He still can reach His Son, reminding him the body may become his chosen home, but it will never be his home in truth. (ACIM, S-3.I.4:4-5)
***
Ref: Holy are you, eternal, free and whole, at peace forever in the Heart of God. Where is the world, and where is sorrow now? (ACIM, M-15.1:11-12)
A Course in Miracles refuses to compromise on anything. It makes no concessions. It tells us that we are God’s Son and there is no opposite.
The body has nothing to do with God and the ego is a thought of separation. The world is a projection from the mind that either mirrors our love or mirrors our hate.
Everything we see has been made up. We are walking around thinking we are real but the self that we identify with is just a figment of our imagination.
Forgiveness is the only method by which we can allow ourselves to awaken from this nightmare. We actually have to forgive ourselves for what has never happened.
The ego is only mentioned in A Course in Miracles because Jesus needs to talk to us at a level that we can understand. He also tells us that we don’t need to analyse the ego at all.
We just need to locate a terror that we have to kept buried since time began and we never like to look at. It lurks at the depths of our being and fuels our doubts.
We have to face it. We need to see it for what it is and bring it to the light.
A Course in Miracles shows us how. Then, as we practice forgiveness, it is love that does the rest.
____________________________________________________________________________
287/ A State of Despair
8th May 2024
Distinctions therefore must be made between true healing and its faulty counterpart. The world of opposites is healing’s place, for what in Heaven could there be to heal? (ACIM, S-3.I.5:1-2)
***
Ref: The body is the ego’s idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward. This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. (ACIM, T-20.VI.11:1-2)
The mind is the master of the body. The body only responds to the impulses of the mind.
There is Heaven and there is hell. Heaven is perfect oneness and hell is when it has an opposite.
A relationship is holy only when the Holy Spirit is present. If the ego enters, it becomes unholy.
There is life and there is death. Life is endless love and death is a thought of fear.
This instant is either perfect or imperfect. We either know it or we miss it.
A Course in Miracles gets to grips with all of the above. It tells us that, if we want to be healed, we have to be completely aware of what is right and what is wrong.
God’s Voice is here to direct us. If we don’t hear His Voice, then this puts us into a state of despair.
A state of despair is the ego. It is all the mental chatter that drowns out the Holy Spirit. It corrupts us into the thinking we are a body with all the limits that having a body entails.
By hearing the Holy Spirit, our minds become more peaceful. This is the silence that is our home.
____________________________________________________________________________
9th May 2024
As prayer within the world can ask amiss and seeming charity forgive to kill, so healing can be false as well as true; a witness to the power of the world or to the everlasting Love of God. (ACIM, S-3.I.5:3)
***
Ref: Healing is not creating; it is reparation. The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed. (ACIM, T-5.II.1:1-2)
A Course in Miracles tells us that both the principle of the Atonement and the pain of the separation were made at the same time. When the ego came about, God placed the Holy Spirit into the mind.
The ego is therefore the thought that we are apart from God; the Holy Spirit is God’s Answer and the only one which cancels that thought out. The two are occurring at exactly the same time.
Within the mind we therefore have both the solution to the separation and the cause. By making one more alive, we are decreasing the other.
The ego chatters constantly and is the loudest. The Holy Spirit is quiet but has infinitely more power.
The ego dissolves at the sound of the Holy Spirit’ Voice. That is why it numbs us to Spirit’s presence.
Within us all is the Call to Joy. It is the sound of a song that bring to an end an event that never was.
Ana Christina witnessed the terror of the ego and the love of the Holy Spirit during her near-death experience. She was the victim of attempted murder and the Holy Spirit became her Comforter throughout the process. She not only witnessed how she died but also felt the joy of life in Heaven.
____________________________________________________________________________
10th May 2024
False healing merely makes a poor exchange of one illusion for a “nicer” one; a dream of sickness for a dream of health. (ACIM, S-3.II.1:1)
***
Ref: The first step toward freedom involves a sorting out of the false from the true. This is a process of separation in the constructive sense, and reflects the true meaning of the Apocalypse. (ACIM, T-2.VIII.4:1-2)
The Greek word apokálypsis literally means “an uncovering”. As the passage above mentions, our freedom comes from uncovering what is true and what is false.
A Course in Miracles only wants us to change our minds. It tells us there can be no destruction of the world because the world is just a projection from the mind.
Likewise with false healing and true healing. False healing is where we are still caught up in the dream of separation. True healing is where we awaken to our reality.
Everything that we have forgotten feels like the dream. It does feel apocalyptic to be true to God. We learn that getting past the ego is just like passing through a ring of fire.
Yet this is what we do have to do. If we really want to get to know our true Identity, we have to undo our sense of separation and aloneness. This can never happen without the rising of fear.
We have to look at the fear. We need to bring all of our aloneness to the love that is the Holy Spirit.
We do this by giving our wrong mind to the right mind. It becomes a sort of internal alchemy.
Our worry is the ring of fire. It is the thought that we are somehow going to suffer terribly, except we don’t. We can’t suffer. The mind simply becomes healed of all its doubts instead.
____________________________________________________________________________
290/ The Self that We Are
11th May 2024
This can occur at lower forms of prayer, combining with forgiveness kindly meant but not completely understood as yet. Only false healing can give way to fear, so sickness will be free to strike again. (ACIM, S-3.II.1:2-3)
***
Ref: God’s peace can never come where anger is, for anger must deny that peace exists. Who sees anger as justified in any way or any circumstance proclaims that peace is meaningless, and must believe that it cannot exist. (ACIM, M-20.3:3-4)
There is no fear (hard to believe if we spend one moment alone by ourselves).
Only love exists (impossible to understand if we see a cat playing with a mouse).
God and His Son are One (which has no meaning in the world of duality).
A Course in Miracles is a simple expansion on all of the above. We learn what wholeness is, and this doesn’t mean we learn the curriculum by rote. It simply means that we experience truth directly.
False healing is always to do with the body. The body is the ego in physical form. The body is actually everything that God is not, which means it deteriorates, distorts and eventually disappears.
True healing arises only in the mind. It is the undoing of the formless ego that we cannot see. True healing means that we lose all of our fear so that what remains is only love.
We cannot be happy unless we find the way out of suffering. The solution is always within us - not within the body but within the Self that we are.
The Self that we are is expansive, huge and reaches up to Heaven. It appears that we have to discover it for ourselves. To return to our Self is the goal that every one of us has to share.
____________________________________________________________________________
291/ Remembrance of Self
12th May 2024
False healing can indeed remove a form of pain and sickness. But the cause remains, and will not lack effects. (ACIM, S-3.II.1:4-5)
***
Ref: But Will is constant, as the gift of God. And what He gives is always like Himself. This is the purpose of the face of Christ. It is the gift of God to save His Son. But look on this and you have been forgiven. (ACIM, C-3.7:4-8)
It is impossible to forgive another. This is because there is no other.
Christ is Love. To see the face of Christ is to see our Self. What we are is only appearing to be split into eight billion different parts.
This appearance is the dream and forgiveness is the only happy dream in all the world. It awakens us to our reality which is the total Peace of God.
The world deceives us into believing that we are bodies, although everything the world shows us is just a projection from the mind. We are asleep to the fact that we are dreaming.
A Course in Miracles is the simple reminder that we are God’s Son. One Self is imagining itself to be multiple selves. And this takes us to the very heart of the problem, which is our fear.
Fear drives the world and love heals it. The world begins and ends in the mind, and it is always our thoughts that create our reality.
Nothing arises without a cause. If something awful happens to us, then we’ve done it to ourselves.
The solution is always forgiveness. We forgive what has never happened and we forgive ourselves for what we didn’t do. This is the key to the remembrance that there really is no other.
____________________________________________________________________________
292/ A Song of Freedom
13th May 2024
The cause is still the wish to die and overcome the Christ. And with this wish is death a certainty, for prayer is answered. (ACIM, S-3.II.1:6-7)
***
Ref: The Holy Spirit will never teach you that you are sinful. Errors He will correct, but this makes no one fearful. You are indeed afraid to look within and see the sin you think is there. (ACIM, T-21.IV.1:1-3)
We have two parts to the mind and one is terrified to look upon itself.
The part that fears belongs to the personality that operates in this world. It has two arms, two feet and walks around confidently. It always looks outwards to find every comfort that it needs.
The mind is telling it not to look within or God will strike it blind. The belief in sin is so strong, so deeply buried, that it is all it can do to keep it buried.
A few of these personalities might not know of sin. They see everyone as the Christ and love unconditionally. They know only joy. The awareness of Heaven has replaced any belief in death.
The mind allows them to see everyone perfectly because only love can be seen. They know we are all the same Christ and are whole, pure and innocent. There is no sin because God’s Son is sinless.
A Course in Miracles tells us that there is no inconsistency in anything that the Holy Spirit teaches. The ego, however, is completely insane. We live in an insane world because the ego is projecting it.
The way out of insanity is to buckle down and believe in peace. It is to train the mind to see that there is no sin. Our belief in the ego is then replaced by the belief in the Holy Spirit.
Peace is within us. As we know this, a song of freedom is the perfect reward for our constant search.
____________________________________________________________________________
293/ One with Everything
14th May 2024
Yet there is a kind of seeming death that has a different source. It does not come because of hurtful thoughts and raging anger at the universe. It merely signifies the end has come for usefulness of body functioning. And so it is discarded as a choice, as one lays by a garment now outworn. (ACIM, S-3.II.1:8-11)
***
Ref: The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path, – all this is taken as the Will of God. And no one asks if a benign Creator could will this. (ACIM, M-27.1:6-7)
It takes a lot of suffering to question our beliefs. If everything was comfortable, then why would we ever have to look for an alternative?
The Buddha became the Buddha because he witnessed suffering for the first time, having lived his life until then as a prince. That there has to be better way is a mantra that is likely to be familiar.
A Course in Miracles is a path to spiritual awakening. It takes us from the darkness to the light. However, if we don’t apply its teachings, then it is really just another book of words and concepts.
Oneness is always dependent on having a mind that is clear. The ego needs to be looked at and thoroughly undone. The body then becomes the messenger of a mind that knows the truth.
This really means we stop doing anything that the world has taught us. Our journey always starts and ends with the challenging of fear.
Fear limits our awareness and confines us to a struggle. It makes life difficult. We are always looking out for the next obstacle that we have to cross.
Love, however, frees us from bondage. We are not hemmed in by constraints nor by the body. We are one with everything. Love makes our lives a blessing and not a curse.
____________________________________________________________________________
294/ Fact and Fiction
15th May 2024
This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. (ACIM, S-3.II.2:1)
***
Ref: The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world’s learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible. This is not an opinion but a fact. (ACIM, M-10.3:1-2)
As alluded to above, A Course in Miracles deals only with fact, not fiction.
The facts are that the body is a neutral object and the ego is a thought of fear. God and his Son remain all there is and the world is just a projection from the mind.
The world labels this as fiction. It pays great attention to the body and the ego. The world analyses the body and the ego endlessly, offering great importance to both their expansion and growth.
Death is rarely talked about by the world and we try to protect ourselves from its onset. Death, however, is never too far away and even a fallen leaf is proof that something that has died.
A Course in Miracles has to operate within the world of limits and the world of form. It uses the symbols that we know in order to bring us closer to the knowledge that we have lost.
We have to sort the fact from the fiction and we can only do this with a quiet mind. The world changes as we hear the Holy Spirit speak and for this to happen we have to go deep inside.
We have to go past all the thoughts that block our connection to God. By learning to quieten the mind, we are allowing ourselves to return back to where we have never left.
What we are has nothing to do with the world. What we are is God’s Son with no limits and no form. When we know this as a fact and not as fiction, then it’s clear that what we are can never die.
Comments
Post a Comment