Reflections 351 to 365
11th July 2024
Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing, leading you in prayer beyond the sorry reaches of the world. (ACIM, S-3.IV.6:6)
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Ref: Forgiveness is this world’s equivalent of Heaven’s justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from beyond the gate behind which total lack of limits lies. Nothing in boundless love could need forgiveness. (ACIM, T-26.IV.1:1-3)
A Course in Miracles tells us that it is impossible to forgive unless we have a belief in sin. Deep within us is a single wound that lurks like a festering sore.
The goal of A Course in Miracles is to see that there is nothing to forgive. There is just a belief that we are somehow separate and apart from our Creator.
Sin is separation. Only the sinless can know their Source is God.
Forgiveness shows us the face of Christ. This is the Love of God. To know Christ is our salvation which means we return to our natural state of awareness and tranquillity.
Within us all is Heaven. Heaven is complete awareness, perfect peace and endless love.
The wound we have takes away love’s awareness. It is only forgiveness that can heal the mind.
Cate Grieves describes how forgiveness-for-salvation gives us the peace we crave. We are either in peace or out of peace. If we look outwards for peace, we can be sure that the world will never give us what we want. Instead, by turning inwards, peace arises naturally from the stillness at our core.
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352/ Truth and Reality
12th July 2024
He comes for Me and speaks My Word to you. I would recall My weary Son to Me from dreams of malice to the sweet embrace of everlasting Love and perfect peace. (ACIM, S-3.IV.7:1-2)
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Ref: It is not difficult to relinquish judgment. But it is difficult indeed to try to keep it. The teacher of God lays it down happily the instant he recognizes its cost. (ACIM, M-10.6:1-3)
A Course in Miracles makes a fundamental distinction between what is real and what is unreal.
Truth belongs to God and all that He created. We might not be able to recognize it, but what God created is unalterable, unambiguous and eternal.
The Word of God tells us that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists. Christ - the ‘He’ that is mentioned at the top of the page - is the ‘I’ that keeps us one with God.
Christ is our only reality along with God. Christ is God’s Son, the Self we share, and the Thought that abides forever within the Mind of God.
What is unreal, therefore, is projected from a mind that is split. It arises from the ego which is a thought of fear. Fear has made the body and also the world as we see it.
Judgement manifests out of this fear and veils the truth that never leaves our side.
Non-judgement means there is nothing to fear. A quiet mind can only know God.
It is through non-judgement that we relinquish the ego. There is no attachment to its antics.
What is real then stops being what we want it to be. When the unreal goes, we find the truth.
353/ A Holy World
13th July 2024
My Arms are open to the Son I love, who does not understand that he is healed, and that his prayers have never ceased to sing his joyful thanks in unison with all creation, in the holiness of Love. (ACIM, S-3.IV.7:3)
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Ref: The holy do not interfere with truth. They are not afraid of it, for it is within the truth they recognize their holiness, and rejoice at what they see. (ACIM, T-20.III.3:1-2)
A Course in Miracles uses the term “holy” only in relation to forgiveness and healing. By forgiving others, all of our relationships become holy ones.
The holy relationship is one where we have a shift of perception. We do not know of separation and fear, but only of unity and peace. All relationships are seen within this context.
Any relationship where unity and peace is not present becomes a special relationship. The ego is in control and the ego is the certainty that we are apart from God.
Absence from God means fear, in that we are bitterly afraid and try not to show it. Connection to God means truth and knowledge. We are always aware of what we are and what God Is.
Truth, then, is unalterable and eternal. Truth applies to everything that God created and is beyond time and space. Truth has no opposite and has no beginning and no end.
Knowledge arises only through oneness with God and can never be learned. We either know knowledge totally or we don’t know it at all.
Ultimately, the mistake we make is that we try to be holy egos. This is like calling death a blessing.
A “holy” world can only be seen by a mind that is healed. What is forgiven is always one with God.
14th July 2024
Be still an instant. Underneath the sounds of harsh and bitter striving and defeat there is a Voice that speaks to you of Me. Hear this an instant and you will be healed. Hear this an instant and you have been saved. (ACIM, S-3.IV.7:4-7)
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Ref: In order to heal, it thus becomes essential for the teacher of God to let all his own mistakes be corrected. If he senses even the faintest hint of irritation in himself as he responds to anyone, let him instantly realize that he has made an interpretation that is not true. (ACIM, M-18.4:1-2)
A Course in Miracles tells us that our only purpose is to accept the Atonement for ourselves.
The Atonement is the correction of the error, which means we only hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit and not the voice of the ego. Until then, the mind is split between illusions and the truth.
We have a right mind and we have a wrong mind. The right mind knows only peace and the wrong mind doesn’t. Really, if we don’t feel constantly peaceful, then we are in our wrong mind.
The Voice of the Holy Spirit has to be recognised in the form that it takes. It might come through as an intuition or a prompt. The Holy Spirit knows that, when the error is corrected, we know God.
The choice is always in the mind. It is simple, direct and has nothing to do with the body. We either make a choice for life and the miracle, or we make a choice for form and what arises out of fear.
We have to be kind to ourselves. Truth never changes. When are in the wrong mind and we suffer, we are not doing anything wrong. The Mind of God knows only peace, love and joy.
We are here to enjoy life. To know this, we use forgiveness by bringing the non-peace to the peace.
This is the Atonement. Fear vanishes into the Mind of God as love is accepted and we find the truth.
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355/ Core of Peace
15th July 2024
Help Me to wake My children from the dream of retribution and a little life beset with fear, that ends so soon it might as well have never been. (ACIM, S-3.IV.8:1)
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Ref: The limits the world places on communication are the chief barriers to direct experience of the Holy Spirit, Whose Presence is always there and Whose Voice is available but for the hearing. (ACIM, M-25.2:5)
The Voice for God wakes us up to our true reality.
God put it there the instant that the Son thought of separation from his Father. And, as the Son thought the thought, the Son of God forgot to laugh.
We need to lighten up. In other words, we need to have fun bringing our sense of shame to a light that can heal the guilt we’ve made. This is awakening.
A Course in Miracles states it as it is. It doesn’t shirk from what it sees as a very simple problem. It shows us that separation does not exist and, if we think it does, then we are wrong.
The children, as mentioned at the top of the page, represent the single thought of fear. There is just the one ego which means that we are all thinking with the same thoughts and with the same mind.
The world is a projection of those thoughts. And it is fear that halts the flow of communication between God and His Son. This is why we need the Holy Spirit.
We are all stuck in the mud of a thought system that demands control of the love in our minds. However, we are that love. We are eternal beings who have simply forgotten that we are the Son.
And this is why we shouldn’t take life too seriously. From a core of peace, we can laugh at anything.
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356/ A Ticking Clock
16th July 2024
Let me instead remind you of eternity, in which your joy grows greater as your love extends along with Mine beyond infinity, where time and distance have no meaning. (ACIM, S-3.IV.8:2)
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Ref: Teacher of God, your one assignment could be stated thus: Accept no compromise in which death plays a part. Do not believe in cruelty, nor let attack conceal the truth from you. What seems to die has but been misperceived and carried to illusion. Now it becomes your task to let the illusion be carried to the truth. (ACIM, M-27.7:1-4)
Anyone who undertakes A Course in Miracles has to look at every aspect of their guilt. We look at our dark side and try not to not shirk away from it.
Within us all is a ticking clock. It wakes us up in the morning and begins a tirade of abuse. We either go back to sleep or medicate ourselves. We do this through distraction.
Coffee, phone obsession, needless procrastination, looking at the telly - all are examples of how we try to get away from the inner voice that is berating us.
And it is this that needs our awareness. We have to stand back and observe what is going on within.
As stated above, we bring the illusion to the light. We step away from our belief in what brings us happiness and place our trust in what is wholly peace.
Observing the ego without judgement requires persistence. Indeed, it is all we have to do. As we persist in being comfortable with the ego, the Holy Spirit does the rest.
Forgiveness is the Holy Spirit’s job. For us, it the same as removing the battery from a ticking clock.
We look at our dark side and give it to the light. Love is in action and forgiveness does the work.
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357/ Return to Love
17th July 2024
While you wait in sorrow Heaven’s melody is incomplete, because your song is part of the eternal harmony of love. Without you is creation unfulfilled. Return to Me Who never left My Son. (ACIM, S-3.IV.8:3-5)
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Ref: Mistakes do not correct mistakes, and distorted perception does not heal. Step back now, teacher of God. You have been wrong. Lead not the way, for you have lost it. Turn quickly to your Teacher, and let yourself be healed. (ACIM, M-22.5:6-10)
The song of prayer is a song of thanks. It is sung without words or thoughts or desires. It is an ever-extending flow of love that passes to-and-fro between the Creator and the created.
Prayer is part of life. Everyone literally prays without ceasing.
A Course in Miracles tells us that to pray as a body means we are praying as an ego. We are asking for something that we think we need. What we really want to do is to wake up to our true nature.
And this is why, at the top of the page, it sounds like God is calling us. He has given us a Teacher to bring us home. Love is being directed towards us but we are not sending that love back.
Instead, we are imprisoned by our thoughts and punished by our thinking.
Our prayers are desperate. We have completely forgotten God, Heaven and the wonder of what we are. It feels impossible to wake up and know that our lives are just a dream.
The Holy Spirit is the solution and forgiveness is the answer. Both will disappear as they combine to dispel the illusion.
And this is how we return to Love. Truth becomes clear as we remember that we are the song.
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18th July 2024
Listen, My child, your Father calls to you. Do not refuse to hear the Call for Love. Do not deny to Christ what is His Own. Heaven is here and Heaven is your home. (ACIM, S-3.IV.8:6-9)
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Ref: There is nothing outside you. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is the realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. For God created only this, and He did not depart from it nor leave it separate from Himself. (ACIM, T-18.VI.1:1-3)
A Course in Miracles states that we are the Kingdom of Heaven. This is a state of perfect Oneness and complete unity with God.
It means that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, around us and everywhere we look.
It also means that the Kingdom of Heaven is ruthlessly banished from the part of the mind that the ego rules. Since we listen to the ego, then it should be obvious why we do not know peace.
It is the mind that is responsible for what the body does. The mind of the ego is the mind of fear.
And the ego is merely a self-made fantasy. Forgiveness undoes the fear that fuels this fantasy.
The Kingdom of Heaven is then restored to our awareness. All minds become one mind, and only the Mind of Love can be eternally peaceful and not at war.
Cate Grieves takes the penultimate look at the Song of Prayer. She asks if we are we ready to surrender and give ourselves to God? To pass through the eye of a needle simply means we leave all our thoughts behind. Heaven is then returned to our awareness and we know we’re one with Love.
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359/ Clarity of Mind
19th July 2024
Creation leans across the bars of time to lift the heavy burden from the world. Lift up your hearts to greet its advent. See the shadows fade away in gentleness; the thorns fall softly from the bleeding brow of him who is the holy Son of God. (ACIM, S-3.IV.9:1-3)
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Ref: You will not find peace until you have removed the nails from the hands of God’s Son, and taken the last thorn from his forehead. The Love of God surrounds His Son whom the god of crucifixion condemns. (ACIM, T-11.VI.7:1-2)
We crucify ourselves. This is what A Course in Miracles teaches and this is what the split mind ensures we can never know.
The Son of God is not crucified. We are merely dreaming a dream of crucifixion.
The ego is the dream and the Son of God is the reality. The truth of what we really are has disappeared into misperceived identities. Truth can only be known within the clarity of the mind.
Clarity of mind brings freedom. It is how we hear the song of prayer. It means we have become aware of the Voice for God without being consumed by the loud and raucous voice of the ego.
The ego always sets up boundaries and limits. It tells us that we are a nobody and that it will pursue us even after death. Essentially we live in fear and this is a crucifixion in itself.
A mind with clarity always knows its Source. It fully understands that we were created holy and that God’s Love is all there is.
Clarity of mind means that we never need to torture ourselves again. The face of Christ is all we see.
The truth is, we all return to what we have never left. Love has no opposite and neither does the Son.
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360/ Receive Everything
20th July 2024
How lovely are you, child of Holiness! How like to Me! How lovingly I hold you in My Heart and in My Arms. How dear is every gift to Me that you have made, who healed My Son and took him from the cross. (ACIM, S-3.IV.9:4-7)
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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)
We interpret the ‘facts’ as we see them. We have forgotten the truth.
We have made an ‘enemy’ of God. This much is obvious.
We don’t understand that the ‘fear’ of God is causeless but the Love of God is Cause of everything.
A Course in Miracles is the ‘enabler’ that allows us to make a decision. The decision is really a choice between life and death, or to choose the miracle instead of the ego.
Everything is within us. We learn that nothing is out ‘there’.
The only thing we have to do is to allow peace to arise naturally. No effort is required to be our Self.
We then see that time is an illusion and reality is only ‘now’. Instead of pushing all our goals into the future, we come to see that only inner peace can bring us what we need.
Inner peace then becomes our single purpose. The body might be in pain but the mind is quiet.
The Song of Prayer is here to show us our power. It tells us that true forgiveness shapes the world we see. It gives us the knowing that we have done nothing wrong and that we receive everything.
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361/ Truth Is True
21st July 2024
Arise and let My thanks be given you. And with My gratitude will come the gift first of forgiveness, then eternal peace. (ACIM, S-3.IV.9:8-9)
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Ref: The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is happiness. (ACIM, T-14.II.1:1-3)
The Holy Spirit sees where we are but knows that we are elsewhere.
Where we are is in the Heart of God; there really is nowhere else. Where we are not is just a dream; it is a parody of truth and is simply made up.
The Holy Spirit is the Voice for God; God is calling us but has no clue about the world of form. What God created has nothing to do with a piece of flesh. The Son of God is Spirit and nothing less.
We are in misery because we feel that we have left Heaven. The truth is that we have never left Heaven but we are dreaming we have. Forgiveness is the process that takes us home.
Forgiveness is the Holy Spirit’s job but we have to be prepared for this to happen. What we need to do is to look at our misery and bring it to the light.
The illusory self then disappears and what never was is simply gone. Our true Self becomes known.
The ‘elsewhere’ disappears into the now and, as stated above, we attain the gift of eternal peace.
Only truth is true. Truth means we know God and God knows His Son. Together, we sing a song of love and gratitude which never ends and actually never began.
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362/ Holy Mind
22nd July 2024
So now return your holy voice to Me. The song of prayer is silent without you. (ACIM, S-3.IV.10:1-2)
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Ref: You who are sometimes sad and sometimes angry; who sometimes feel your just due is not given you, and your best efforts meet with lack of appreciation and even contempt; give up these foolish thoughts! They are too small and meaningless to occupy your holy mind an instant longer. (ACIM, M-15.3:1-2)
There is the right mind, the wrong mind and the holy mind.
The right mind is at peace with the Holy Spirit; it sees the real world. The wrong mind is ruled by the ego; it sees the world through a lens of fear. The holy mind knows God; there is only Heaven.
A Course in Miracles tells us that ideas never leave their source; thoughts do not leave the mind that thinks them. In terms of mind, only the holy mind does not think; all it knows is the Love of God.
Any thoughts we have about being a body with a name, address and telephone number always arise from a thought of fear. These thoughts are born of the ego and die in the ego.
Thoughts of love arise through the Holy Spirit and the right mind. Because the body is a puppet of the mind, it can only express peace. The right mind could never think of war.
The mind is split between illusions and truth. We project the thoughts we think.
It’s as if two curtains divide the real and unreal. We might get glimpses of light on occasion but the curtains need to be drawn apart to see the whole. Forgiveness allows this to happen.
Only the holy mind can sing the song of prayer. All that’s right has stayed and all that’s wrong has gone. The mind is one with God and we are the light.
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363/ Song of Love
23rd July 2024
The universe is waiting your release because it is its own. Be kind to it and to yourself, and then be kind to Me. (ACIM, S-3.IV.10:3-4)
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Ref: Throughout the Sonship is the song of freedom heard, in joyous echo of your choice. You have joined with many in the holy instant, and they have joined with you. (ACIM, T-17.V.10:1-2)
A Course in Miracles tells us that there are many ways in which we can blame our brother, but there is only one way in which we can thank him.
We give thanks to our brother by recognising the Christ in him. We blame him because we have forgotten the Christ in ourselves.
A Course in Miracles also teaches that the ego is legion but the Holy Spirit is one. This means that we can have many problems but there is only one solution.
We either see our brother as the perfect Self that is the Son of God, or we don’t; it doesn’t matter who he or she is. We either have the vision of the Holy Spirit or we have the eyes of the ego.
How we see one single thing always defines the whole. Because the mind is split, we either have a mind of peace or we have a mind of noise. We either know love or we don’t.
To see with love or fear are our only two options. The way we look becomes what we get.
And within the holy instant is everything we need, even if time has made us lose sight of it. The holy instant is the cause that has peace as its effect.
We either attack love’s presence or we give thanks to love’s presence. Only the mind can decide what it wants to do. If we see our brother as Christ, then within us all is a song of love and gratitude.
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364/ Inner Peace
24th July 2024
I ask but this; that you be comforted and live no more in terror and in pain. Do not abandon Love. (ACIM, S-3.IV.10:5-6)
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Ref: God’s teachers have the goal of wakening the minds of those asleep, and seeing there the vision of Christ’s face to take the place of what they dream. (ACIM, M-28.6:3)
The Song of Prayer tells us that the body’s cause is the unforgiveness of the Son of God. It also reminds us that the body can be healed only as an effect of true forgiveness.
The body is an image that we’ve made up and what we are is God’s Son. This has nothing to do with a body. Our mind is completely free and totally connected to all that we are.
A Course in Miracles doesn’t want us to neglect the body. We aren’t expected to forget the body or do anything that might be labelled as ‘magic’. If we need a doctor, we go to a doctor.
We simply need to know that healing is always in the mind. This is where the cause of sickness lies and this is where the solution is also found.
Any pain that we might have in the body, any mental illness or neurosis, needs to be looked at from a state of inner peace. A mind at peace is what we are working towards.
The Song of Prayer is therefore a summary of all that we have learnt via the text and the workbook. It really shows us the purpose of forgiveness, the power of prayer and the effects of healing.
We discover that the world has no meaning. Only a thought can label something as good or bad.
Inner peace is therefore our sole purpose as students of A Course in Miracles. It is the peaceful mind that leads us beyond the body and to the boundless joy that is the song of prayer.
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365/ One with God
25th July 2024
Remember this; whatever you may think about yourself, whatever you may think about the world, your Father needs you and will call to you until you come to Him in peace at last. (ACIM, S-3.IV.10:7)
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Ref: The Will of God is One and all there is. This is your heritage. The universe beyond the sun and stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive, belongs to you. God’s peace is the condition for His Will. Attain His peace, and you remember Him. (ACIM, M-20.6:9-13)
God is all there Is. This is what A Course in Miracles is telling us.
The Son of God is what we are. The body is simply a cloak that covers the truth. Really, because only truth is real, the body is just a fantasy.
Love is our birthright. God’s Love is infinite and extends through the Son. Love has no opposite.
Forgiveness awakens the mind to this love since it is the Son that appears to be sleeping. It removes the veil that keeps love covered. Forgiveness lights up the mind so that love is all it knows.
Truth doesn’t mess about. There are no hidden corners or secret codes to truth. Truth is either known completely or not at all.
And Heaven is always now. Heaven is the awareness that the Son has never not been One with God.
Cate Grieves finishes off the Song of Prayer by reminding us that only forgiveness brings us peace. Without the help of the Holy Spirit, there is no way out of fear. Our job is to bring all our non-peace to the peace and then quietly step aside. Only God can take the final step by lighting up the mind.
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