Reflections 57 to 70
21st September 2023
Pray for yourself, that you may not seek to imprison Christ and thereby lose the recognition of your own Identity. Be traitor to no one, or you will be treacherous to yourself. (ACIM, S-1.II.4:6-7)
***
Ref: You may not realize that the ego has set up a plan for salvation in opposition to God’s. It is this plan in which you believe. (ACIM, W-71.1:1-2)
Salvation is simply the return to our original state. It is a state that we have never left.
We are immortal spirit - whole, pure and innocent. To think otherwise is to trick ourselves.
A Course in Miracles tells us that, if we follow an opposing plan for salvation, then we suffer. We can only believe in the true or the false. One leads away from suffering and the other leads towards it.
The ego’s plan for salvation is clearly about holding grievances; God’s plan is not. There is nothing within Heaven that has a grievance because everything within Heaven is Love.
Grievances, then, form the basis of the ego’s whole thought system and this becomes very apparent when life becomes difficult.
A forgiven world changes everything. True forgiveness - when we are asking for nothing in return - brings us peace. We either believe in this wholly or not at all.
Keith Kavanagh continues his look at the Song of Prayer. In the next instalment below, he continues to teach us how to follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance simply by looking at the ego. He tells us we don’t need to change anything. We simply observe the darkness at work and let the Holy Spirit do the rest.
____________________________________________________________________________
22nd September 2023
An enemy is the symbol of an imprisoned Christ. And who could He be except yourself? (ACIM, S-1.II.5:1-2)
***
Ref: Forget not that the motivation for this course is the attainment and the keeping of the state of peace. Given this state the mind is quiet, and the condition in which God is remembered is attained. (ACIM, T-24.in.1:1-2)
The enemy is anger, fear and depression.
The Friend is joy, peace and love.
We can either fight with the enemy or we can join with the Friend.
A Course in Miracles tells us that we have to look deeply into our belief system if we are ever going to learn what it teaches. It tells us that the world will never give us what we want.
In many ways, then, we have to get ourselves out of a loop of despair. How can it be otherwise?
The ego is very demanding. Any peace that we have is drowned out by the voice in our heads.
Spirit is never demanding. It speaks to us quietly - but we have to listen for that Voice instead.
A Course in Miracles is really a course in applying mindfulness. We need to be constantly aware of what is going on.
Questioning our beliefs is how we find this out. We can then begin to undo what was never there.
____________________________________________________________________________
59/ Problem and Solution
23rd September 2023
The prayer for enemies thus becomes a prayer for your own freedom. Now it is no longer a contradiction in terms. It has become a statement of the unity of Christ and a recognition of His sinlessness. And now it has become holy, for it acknowledges the Son of God as he was created. (ACIM, S-1.II.5:3-6)
***
Ref: It is the function of God’s teacher to bring true learning to the world. Properly speaking it is unlearning that they bring, for that is “true learning” in the world. (ACIM, M-4.X.3:6-7)
A Course of Miracles does not give us the world’s view - that the Son of God is one single person. ACIM tells us that the Son of God is what we are.
We learn that we are all, collectively, the created Son of God. It has nothing to do with the body and everything to do with what is outside of time and space. This is impossible for the ego to believe.
Being the Son of God, we are also the one Self and the Christ. Since we don’t recognize this, we make up illusions. What is real becomes unreal, and we lose the truth of what we really are.
A Course in Miracles teaches us to “unlearn” all that we have learned. Our new understanding is this.
- The Son of God is not found within the body. It is found beyond the body.
- The mind is not split into different minds. It is just the one mind that thinks it is apart.
- The song is not heard in constant dreaming. It is only heard when the waking starts.
The world tells us that different problems have different solutions. A Course in Miracles states there is just one problem and one solution. The solution is to understand that the problem is not there.
____________________________________________________________________________
24th September 2023
Let it never be forgotten that prayer at any level is always for yourself. If you unite with anyone in prayer, you make him part of you. The enemy is you, as is the Christ. (ACIM, S-1.II.6:1-3)
***
Ref: The body can bring you neither peace nor turmoil; neither joy nor pain. It is a means, and not an end. It has no purpose of itself, but only what is given to it. The body will seem to be whatever is the means for reaching the goal that you assign to it. (ACIM, T-19.IV-B.10:4-7)
To pray for the body does not work. We are praying for something that is not there.
To pamper the body does not bring happiness. Suffering only continues unchecked.
To punish the body is foolish. We are allowing fear to dominate what we think.
A Course in Miracles tells us only this. The body is a puppet of the mind.
If the mind is peaceful, the body is peaceful; if the mind wants to kill, the body kills.
We therefore need to go inwards not outwards. We need to tune into the peace beyond the noise. This has nothing to do with the body. It has everything to do with the mind.
The Holy Spirit is the part of the mind that makes this so. The Holy Spirit is the peace maker. What arises as peace stays as peace, so that only peace eventually arises from the mind.
The body, then, should not be fixated on. It is the mind that needs the work.
Within us all is a lasting silence. If we think another has this, then a peaceful body is the clue.
____________________________________________________________________________
61/ True and False
25th September 2023
Before it can become holy, then, prayer becomes a choice. You do not choose for another. You can but choose for yourself. (ACIM, S-1.II.6:4-6)
***
Ref: Illusions will not last. Their death is sure and this alone is certain in their world. It is the ego’s world because of this. What is the ego? But a dream of what you really are. A thought you are apart from your Creator and a wish to be what He created not. (ACIM, C-2.1:1-6)
The ego and the miracle are opposites in every way. We can only have one or the other.
A Course in Miracles tells us that the ego damns and the miracle accepts. Both are illusions. One perceives falsely and the other perceives correctly.
False perception is dark and lonely. It views a world of form where shadowy figures move around in isolation and fear. It is hell dressed up as heaven - a place where happiness is purely temporary. Everything we see is simply an outward picture of an inner condition.
Correct perception views a world of light. Peace and joy are manifest because that is what we are. Everything is love because everything arises out of Love. We see only the good in everyone because only the miracle blesses.
The ego therefore knows only the form and the miracle knows only the formless; the ego crucifies and the miracle recognises; the ego sees death and the miracle sees life; the ego chooses darkness and the miracle chooses light.
We can only know the ego or the miracle, but never both. Both the ego and the miracle are mutually exclusive to each other.
A Course in Miracles is a journey of choosing the miracle over the ego. This is not dissimilar to drops dissolving in the ocean. We find out what is false by giving it to what is true.
____________________________________________________________________________
62/ An Open Mind
26th September 2023
Pray
truly for your enemies, for herein lies your own salvation. Forgive them for
your sins, and you will be forgiven indeed. (ACIM,
S-1.II.6:7-8)
***
Ref: I do not know what anything is for. (ACIM, W-25)
A Course in Miracles requires that we have an open mind. As stated above, we have to do exactly what it isn’t natural to do.
Change means shift: we are preparing ourselves for a shift in perception.
Loss means gain: we are moving from one end of the spectrum to another.
Full means empty: the mind begins to quieten as we disengage from our thinking.
Bad means good: caresses are felt instead of stabs of pain.
Doubt means certainty: we adjust from limiting ourselves to beginning to know ourselves.
Hearing means quietening: we disengage from the noise so we can hear the love.
Coming means going: internally we surrender as we alter our direction.
Gross means subtle: darkness disappears as we bring in the light.
We let go of all wishes. With an open mind, we accept that there is better than what we know.
____________________________________________________________________________
63/ Let Love Flow
27th September 2023
Prayer is a ladder reaching up to Heaven. At the top there is a transformation much like your own, for prayer is part of you. The things of earth are left behind, all unremembered. (ACIM, S-1.II.7:1-3)
***
Ref: No one who learns to forgive can fail to remember God. Forgiveness, then, is all that need be taught, because it is all that need be learned. All blocks to the remembrance of God are forms of unforgiveness, and nothing else. (ACIM, P-2.II.3:1-3)
A Course in Miracles tells us that forgiveness is prayer’s ally. Up the ladder they go, hand in hand, until forgiveness is no long needed and our prayer simply becomes the song.
Prayer is the constant communication of what we are. If we are a body, then we pray like a body; if we are God’s Son, then we pray like that.
Forgiveness allows us to know our true nature. Forgiveness undoes our separation completely. By empowering the Holy Spirit, forgiveness allows the light to heal the mind in many different ways.
All we need is a change of perception. We are asked to change what we think we know.
A Course in Miracles asks a simple question. What if we bring our illusory self (a figure in a dream) to our real Self (the reality outside the dream)?
Only silence and stillness can make this happen. This is actually what we are.
We are limitless joy. Peace never went anywhere. We have never left the Mind of God. We are oneness without an opposite, complete and healed and whole.
We need to undo. We want to allow. We have to forgive totally and without exception. There’s just one rule as the song starts as singing. It is to gently surrender and to let love flow.
____________________________________________________________________________
64/ A Lighthouse in the Mind
28th September 2023
There is no asking, for there is no lack. Identity in Christ is fully recognized as set forever, beyond all change and incorruptible. The light no longer flickers, and will never go out. (ACIM, S-1.II.7:4-6)
***
Ref: The face of Christ has to be seen before the memory of God can return. (ACIM, C-3.4:1)
What happens when we look into a mirror? Hundreds of little judgements probably pop into our awareness - and most are likely to be less than complimentary.
A Course in Miracles takes us from illusions to the truth. ACIM is a reminder that we can see the face of Christ anywhere. It tells us that the face of Christ is all there is, and this is what we are.
The face of Christ establishes us as God’s Son. It is our Identity. The face of Christ has no opposite - it is joy without an end. The face of Christ can only be seen when all forgiveness is done and complete.
We deny the face of Christ when we see a body. We recognize it when we heal the mind.
Fear, then, is what keeps us from eternity. This is similar to peering through a pane of darkened glass. All we can see is a shadowy reflection of what we know.
The Holy Spirit allows us to see through that glass. It acts like a lighthouse within up the mind. Everything becomes clearer, more real and certain. We see only the love on the other side.
Keith Kavanagh expands on this in the video below. He continues with the Song of Prayer, showing us how true forgiveness removes every aspect of our false self, and how this can only lead to the face of Christ. The face of Christ is our true Self, and this is what we really are.
____________________________________________________________________________
65/ What Is always There
29th September 2023
Now, without needs of any kind, and clad forever in the pure sinlessness that is the gift of God to you, His Son, prayer can again become what it was meant to be. (ACIM, S-1.II.7:7)
***
Ref: Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real. In this one sentence is our course explained. (ACIM, M-20.5:7-8)
A Course in Miracles tells us that the peace of God is unlike any experience we have ever had. The past just slips away and in its place is everlasting quiet.
Anger prevents this. In fact, it makes it impossible.
We also learn that living arises only from God; death is a choice that we have made.
Life has no opposite - except when we decide that death is the end of life. A Course in Miracles reminds us that we can have life or we can have death. However, one always precludes the other.
Therefore, if we really want the peace of God, there has to be no opposites.
We need to be completely aware of our thinking. We want to be aware of what we are doing and how we are acting. We have to learn that the ego always damns and takes away.
It is the Holy Spirit that heals, and it happens by bringing our non-peace to the peace.
The peace of God is in our hands. The only reason we can’t grab it fully is because the mind too busy. Busyness is why we find it impossible to understand what is always there.
____________________________________________________________________________
66/ The Key to Life
30th September 2023
For now it rises as a song of thanks to your Creator, sung without words, or thoughts, or vain desires, unneedful now of anything at all. (ACIM, S-1.II.7:8)
***
Ref: Judgement was made to be a weapon used against the truth. It separates what it is being used against, and sets it off as if it were a thing apart. (ACIM, W-311.1:1-2)
The ego always judges but never accepts. The Holy Spirit always accepts but never judges.
The body demands with prayer. Spirit extends though prayer.
Love doesn’t know fear. Fear might dream of love.
A Course in Miracles tells us that anything to do with separation is just part of the dream. Forgiveness is the key to waking from this dream. Forgiveness brings awareness back to the mind.
Everything we learn by applying ourselves to A Course in Miracles points to the fact that truth is joyful. It never sleeps. Truth is with us always, just like the song of prayer.
Truth is infallible. It has no opposite. Truth is a oneness that has no other.
We have a prison door within the mind that needs to be opened. We are locked into a way of thinking that is destructive, yet we do not know the key to freedom is always there.
A Course in Miracles provides all the training we need to open that door.
Truth never holds back. Truth is gentle and patient. Truth keeps reminding us of its presence by repeating continually what we have pushed to one side: the key to life is in the mind.
____________________________________________________________________________
67/ Wish and Will
1st October 2023
So it extends, as it was meant to do. And for this giving God Himself gives thanks. (ACIM, S-1.II.7:9-10)
***
Ref: Miracles are in accord with the Will of God, Whose Will you do not know because you are confused about what you will. This means that you are confused about what you are. (ACIM, T-7.X.8:1-2)
If we do not accept God’s Will, then we are denying joy.
Joy is love and love is truth. This is the miracle and this is the prayer.
A Course in Miracles asks us to only choose the miracle. If we don’t, it tells us that we are willing limitation instead.
It seems that we redefine ourselves every day by either going with the ego or simply allowing the miracle. We are always the decision maker in all that we do.
The ego’s reliability is variable at best. The ego dominates the mind as if its survival depends on it (which it does). Without our firm belief in its existence, the ego would simply disappear.
The miracle arises only through the Holy Spirit. It is the stillness of the mind that allows it to speak.
And this is how we learn the Will of God. This is how the song is heard. The song of prayer becomes the miracle when we stop seeing ‘two’ and start seeing ‘one’ instead.
God’s Will is perfect oneness and the ego’s wish is to disrupt that oneness. It is the Will of God to give us life and it is the wish of the ego to make us dead.
____________________________________________________________________________
68/ Drawing the Line
2nd October 2023
God is the goal of every prayer, giving it timelessness instead of end. Nor has it a beginning, because the goal has never changed. (ACIM, S-1.II.8:1-2)
***
Ref: The choice to judge rather than to know is the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not knowledge rests. (ACIM, T-3.VI.2:1-2)
We are in the ego’s world… unless we change our mind about it. When we look at anything, the ego gives us a running commentary on all that we see.
This means good, bad and indifferent. Whatever we do, all sorts of judgements cross our minds and they all happen in a split second. This goes on for every moment of the day.
The ego crushes our spirit. It demands our attention. Our whole perception revolves around the ego. If we took our time and considered this, we would find that the ego is exhausting.
Some questions, then, might arise for us to consider, and especially if we want to achieve the goal of A Course in Miracles (which is a mind at peace).
Do we want to hear God’s Voice, or don’t we? Is it a chore to pray, or is it timelessness in action? Are we secretly terrified of what we are seeking, or does it attract us?
A Course in Miracles challenges all the beliefs we have ever held. It makes us look at every aspect of what we think the world is, and what we think we are. In this, there are no exceptions.
It is impossible to find peace by ourselves. We are here to help each other out.
At some stage, though, we have to draw a line in the sand. The ego loves to scare us; the ego loves to trip us up. We have to make the decision whether to get rid of the ego completely, or not at all.
____________________________________________________________________________
69/ A Single Wholeness
3rd October 2023
Prayer in its earlier forms is an illusion, because there is no need for a ladder to reach what one has never left. Yet prayer is part of forgiveness as long as forgiveness, itself an illusion, remains unattained. (ACIM, S-1.II.8:3-4)
***
Ref: The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness. I am the means God has appointed for the salvation of the world. (ACIM, W-63.3:4-5)
A Course in Miracles may use Christian terminology but its message is universal.
There is only one of us.
Prayer is simply the show of gratitude that this is so. We give thanks to our creator and our Creator gives thanks back to us. Love is just extending itself through the song of prayer.
However, we appear to have problems. Pain and suffering dominate the mind.
Forgiveness undoes these illusions. We see that we are in the world but not of the world. We notice that two becomes one just by the shedding of our guilt.
And yet the world keeps on beckoning us. It demands we search for a solution. It makes us to look to the future so that everything will be fine at a later date.
We forget to look to where we can only be happy. We forget to look into the stillness of the mind.
A Course in Miracles tells us that to make a single wholeness requires presence. It needs diligence.
To get back to presence, we have to look past all language. We want only to experience what is now.
____________________________________________________________________________
70/ Two Opposites
4th October 2023
Prayer is tied up with learning until the goal of learning has been reached. And then all things will be transformed together, and returned unblemished into the Mind of God. Being beyond learning, this state cannot be described. (ACIM, S-1.II.8:5-7)
***
Ref: The ego does constant battle with the Holy Spirit on the fundamental question of what your function is. So does it do constant battle with the Holy Spirit about what your happiness is. (ACIM, W-66.2:1-2)
We have a mind, but we don’t know where the mind comes from.
We have an ego, but we still can’t understand what the ego is.
We have the truth, but we always refer externally for truth’s validation.
We have prayer, but don’t realise that prayer is thought. We therefore pray all the time and prayer is just a state of constant wanting.
We have doubts, but have forgotten that our purpose is to forgive those doubts. To be peaceful (i.e., without sin) is our function in the world.
A Course in Miracle tells us that our function and our happiness are co-dependent. If we listen to what the ego expects of us, then it is impossible to be happy. The ego arose from unhappiness.
The ego has a deep fear of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit never reciprocates. The Holy Spirit is the silence and stillness within our minds. Silence and stillness only knows love.
The ego and the Holy Spirit are two opposites. One is illusory and one is reality. Our function is to know reality so that our happiness can always flourish.
Comments
Post a Comment