Reflections 71 to 84

 

71/ A Christmas Special

5^th October 2023

The stages necessary to its attainment, however, need to be understood, if peace is to be restored to God’s Son, who lives now with the illusion of death and the fear of God. (ACIM, S-1.II.8:8)

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Ref: Behold this infant, to whom you gave a resting place by your forgiveness of your brother, and see in it the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn. And everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, not to the cross, but to the resurrection and the life. (ACIM, T-19.IV-C.10:7-9)

Every day is Christmas day.

This means we are seeing the Christ in each other. We see our innocence. We see the Love that we are. We see ourselves as God’s Son and nothing else.

A Course in Miracles states the following. We are not a body. Nothing ever dies. We are wholly alive.

What we are is Love without boundaries. We are limitless. We are infinity without an end.

Christmas therefore does not happen once a year. It is with us every moment of the day.

We can celebrate Christmas now, if we want to. It is to recognise that we are loved beyond measure.

Below, Keith Kavanagh hosts a Christmas-themed one-off special (recorded on December 18^th 2022) which is really a festive break from the Song of Prayer. The themes, though, are very familiar. Oneness, for example, can never be divided and silence and stillness is what we are.

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72/ Our State of Mind

6^th October 2023

We said that prayer is always for yourself, and this is so. Why, then, should you pray for others at all? And if you should, how should you do it? (ACIM, S-1.III.1:1-3)

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Ref: What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this. (ACIM, M-11.1:9-12)

A Course in Miracles tells us that God’s Word has promised us peace. It also tells us that there is no death, that the resurrection has to occur, and that rebirth is our inheritance.

This isn’t much help if we are staring down the barrel of a gun or facing crippling debt.

In a split second, our lives can change. Nothing is ever certain, although we like to think it is.

The ego (the thought process that makes it happen) adores this struggle. In fact, the ego encourages it. It knows that when our inner world is in chaos, our outer world has to be the same.

The Holy Spirit (the memory of God’s Love) is oblivious to anything that arises from the ego. The Holy Spirit knows that if we feel peace within, then we can only see peace without.

We have two opposing thought systems in the mind. One has no idea about the other.

The ego makes war, the Holy Spirit makes peace. The ego knows us as a body, the Holy Spirit knows us as a mind. The ego is limited to a story, the Holy Spirit is limitless within that story.

We are the decision maker in everything that we think or do.

We choose either the false or the true. The world is just a reflection of our current state of mind.

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73/ The Seed of Truth

7^th October 2023

Praying for others, if rightly understood, becomes a means for lifting your projections of guilt from your brother, and enabling you to recognize it is not he who is hurting you. (ACIM, S-1.III.1:4)

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Ref: Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God’s teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. (ACIM, M-12.6:6-8)

Below are some facts that precede what is written above.

• Truth can only arise when it is recognized without fear.

• The purpose of the body is to let God’s Voice speak through it so others can hear.

• Oneness and sickness cannot coexist.

A Course in Miracles also states the following as fact. There is just one mind. There is just one ego and just one guilt. The ego uses guilt to manifest itself into trillions of different forms.

The ego is therefore a dream of guilt, and the mind has forgotten that it is even doing it.

The song of prayer has become a yearning. We are asking for help from the guilt we have made. The only way out of this is to look at guilt directly. We then join with Spirit, and allow truth to do the rest.

Our purpose is to wake up from the dream. As one mind awakens, the memory is held for all minds to follow.

There’s a seed in the mind that holds all of creation. If we allow it to flourish, then truth just grows.

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74/ What Truth Is Meant to Be

8^th October 2023

The poisonous thought that he is your enemy, your evil counterpart, your nemesis, must be relinquished before you can be saved from guilt. (ACIM, S-1.III.1:5)

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Ref: All that I give is given to myself. (ACIM, W-126)

There is just the one of us, and there is just the One who created us.

There is nothing else because nothing else exists.

All that our eyes can see is just an illusory state of mind.

The ego hates to hear this. It craves that we have enemies. The ego does not want us to know that the universe is just a projection of our guilt, and so it has to keep that guilt alive.

The ego states that, if we just took one look at the guilt we feel, we would be annihilated. Love would literally strike us blind.

A Course in Miracles is proof that this is impossible. There is no guilt. We are eternal and infinite.

We made suffering up. We are dreaming it. We are just a character that is being dreamt.

There is no enemy. There is no sin. There is nothing to fear.

There is just the Love, and we are the magnificence that was created by that Love.

A Course in Miracles states that truth needs no proof. Truth is entirely what it is meant to be.

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75/ Love Is Perfect

9^th October 2023

For this the means is prayer, of rising power and with ascending goals, until it reaches even up to God. (ACIM, S-1.III.1:6)

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Ref: All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that you have the ability to usurp the power of God. Of course, you neither can nor have been able to do this. Here is the real basis for your escape from fear. (ACIM, T-2.I.4:1-3)

We have been created perfect. Fear is not part of the equation.

To extend love is our natural inheritance. Love is where we came from and love is what we are.

Peace can only be found within. It can never be found in anything external.

Health is inner peace. Illness arises as some form of external searching.

Light illumines the mind. Light not only sets us free, but clearly demonstrates that we are free.

A Course in Miracles is about accepting the Atonement. The Atonement means that the mind has simply woken up and fully understands that nothing ever happened.

There was never a sin. There was never a body. There was never a separation.

We never lost our connection to our Creator. We never lost our sense of timelessness. We never stopped experiencing the wonder of the song of prayer.

There is nothing to atone for because Love is perfect. Perfection can’t change, and the thought system that believes in imperfection simply dissolves and isn’t there.

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76/ Seeing the Wonder

10^th October 2023

The earlier forms of prayer, at the bottom of the ladder, will not be free from envy and malice. They call for vengeance, not for love. (ACIM, S-1.III.2:1-2)

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Ref: God is said to have looked on all He created and pronounced it good. No, He declared it perfect, and so it was. And since His creations do not change and last forever, so it is now. (ACIM, P-3.II.4:1-3)

A Course in Miracles tells us that the only relationship is that of the Father and the Son.

This means there is just the One Relationship. To think otherwise means that we feel separate and barely joined.

There is no judgement when dealing with the holiness of any relationship. There is only love and a complete sense of knowingness.

If we look with the ego (our split mind), then we can’t help but judge. It’s as if we are peering through a veil. We can only guess at what is really there.

When looking with the Holy Spirit, then the veil is lifted. We are seeing things exactly as they are.

We therefore use the right mind or the wrong mind. It is always just one or the other. The right mind blesses and the wrong mind damns.

The One Mind is what the Creator created. The world is gone because it was never there.

The miracle, then, allows us to have a change of perception. We see only what is right.

We see only the loving. We see only the truth. We see the wonder that is the song of prayer.

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77/ What Is God?

11^th October 2023

Nor do they come from one who understands that they are calls for death, made out of fear by those who cherish guilt. They call upon a vengeful god, and it is he who seems to answer them. (ACIM, S-1.III.2:3-4)

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Ref: The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God. So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God. (ACIM, C-5.2:1-2)

A Course in Miracles redefines everything that we believe to be real or imaginary.

We come to see that we make the unreal real. What we once considered truth becomes an untruth.

There are currently hundreds of little gods in everything we do. We learn that these are idols. All they do is distract the mind from knowing its true Identity.

Idols become addictive (as in money, sex and alcohol, or just needing another cup of coffee or watching the news). They hold a power over the mind. A mind without idols just knows itself.

Little gods have replaced the only truth that is real. This is that there is only the wonder of God and the magnificence of what God created.

Jesus knew this in his lifetime and, like him, we are all the Christ. We are all God’s Son. We are all the Self that has no opposite.

What is God? God is pure and infinite Love. God is the Joy that has no end. God is everything that the body and the world are not.

There is no opposite to God. God just Is and we (as the Self) have been created out of that Isness.

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78/ We Don’t Do Healing

12^th October 2023

Hell cannot be asked for another, and then escaped by him who asks for it. Only those who are in hell can ask for hell. ACIM, S-1.III.2:5-6)

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Ref: All through their training, every day and every hour, and even every minute and second, must God’s teachers learn to recognize the forms of magic and perceive their meaninglessness. Fear is withdrawn from them, and so they go. And thus the gate of Heaven is reopened, and its light can shine again on an untroubled mind. (ACIM, M-16.11:9-11)

A Course in Miracles tells us we can all be God’s teachers. Most of us just don’t know it yet.

This is because we are caught in a loop of despair. We have made a hell out of a heaven.

To have an untroubled mind, we need to train the mind away from troubling thoughts. The ego needs to be looked at and listened to without judgement. Judgement is what feeds the ego.

Forgiveness means that we don’t make the error (the ego) real. Truth has no need for forgiveness.

Minds are not individualized. Minds are joined because there is only one mind. Forgiveness is the means for doing this, and healing arises as the effect.

Prayer, then, is just a joining. We see the oneness in everything and this becomes our love for God.

Keith Kavanagh continues with the Song of Prayer in the video below, and begins by looking at the third and final section on healing. He reminds us that we don’t do healing. Healing is just a side effect of true forgiveness. Forgiveness looks past the body. In fact all it ever does is simply heal the mind.

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79/ Extending the Present

13^th October 2023

Those who have been forgiven, and who accepted their forgiveness, could never make a prayer like that. (ACIM, S-1.III.2:7)

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Ref: Therefore lay judgment down, not with regret but with a sigh of gratitude. Now are you free of a burden so great that you could merely stagger and fall down beneath it. And it was all illusion. Nothing more. (ACIM, M-10.5:1-4)

Perception follows judgement, and it all happens in a split second.

A Course in Miracles tells us we are responsible for what we see. We either make a heaven or a hell, and it all happens in the mind. Nothing less than this is possible.

The seer, then, is the ego or the Holy Spirit. The ego is just a belief system that arises out of the false part of the mind. The Holy Spirit is the expansion and wholeness that arises out of the true.

The ego’s purpose is to suppress all that is known. It talks loudly and demands we listen. If we listen closely enough, we will find it is quite deranged. What it is planning is all based on fear.

The Holy Spirit’s purpose is to show us what is known. It talks quietly which means we have to concentrate and listen. It is always reliable and calm. Above all, it shows us what is based on love.

The ego always focuses on illusions and the Holy Spirit always focuses on truth.

This is how the world appears to us. It arises according to the part of the mind we listen to. The world either appears threatening through fear or welcoming through joy.

We can make a future out of the past or we can stay with extending the present. The choice is ours, and only this can translate into what we understand to be a song of prayer.

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80/ Think Big

14^th October 2023

At these levels, then, the learning goal must be to recognize that prayer will bring an answer only in the form in which the prayer was made. This is enough. From here it will be an easy step to the next levels. (ACIM, S-1.III.3:1-3)

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Ref: Heal your brothers simply by accepting God for them. Your minds are not separate, and God has only one channel for healing because He has but one Son. (ACIM, T-10.III.2:4-5)

We pray for idols, though not for truth. We ask for health, but out of fear. We demand attention, yet are unsure why.

Our minds seem cloudy, unpredictable and impenetrable. We are lost in a haze of uncertainty.

A Course in Miracles is a reminder that we are not individuals. It tells us that we are, collectively, the one Son of God.

This means that part of God can’t suffer. God is Love and has no opposite. Love can never attack.

Our job is to reconnect with this oneness. This is the song of prayer. It means humming along to a familiar melody, or hearing a tune that was once forgotten but is always there.

If we just stay as we are, we are going to see opposites in each other. We see the body and not the Christ; we look at the pain and not the peace.

We value only what we believe we are. A Course in Miracles would tell us that belief in the body is valuing little more than dust; belief in sickness and in death means we are valuing our own guilt.

We have to think big if we want to return to where we started. What we are is vast and glorious and magical. If we see this in our brothers, we know it in our Self.

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81/ Changing Our Tune

15^th October 2023

The next ascent begins with this: What I have asked for for my brother is not what I would have. Thus have I made of him my enemy. (ACIM, S-1.III.3:4-6)

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Ref: Healing occurs as a patient begins to hear the dirge he sings, and questions its validity. Until he hears it, he cannot understand that it is he who sings it to himself. To hear it is the first step in recovery. To question it must then become his choice. (ACIM, P-2.VI.1:5-8)

We bring the darkness to the light; we bring the non-peace to the peace; we bring the false to the true.

A Course in Miracles asks us to forgive what never happened. Totality is never disrupted, we just think it is.

We have the belief that we did something terrible, and this builds a narrative. It tells us what we are. It shows us that we are a body and our only purpose is to ward off death.

The Answer was placed into the mind by God, and as soon as the belief arose. It is proof that we are God’s Love, with no opposite. It is a reminder that our only purpose is to reconnect with this truth.

Only in God’s presence can we hear the song of prayer. Everything else is just a fantasy.

It is therefore impossible to have an enemy because there is only love; it is impossible to die because there is only life; it is impossible to know pain because there is only peace.

We have tricked ourselves away from our true Identity. And it is all a dream.

It is simply a case of changing our tune. We do not have to believe the story that is in our minds. We just have to question why it is there.  

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82/ The Kingdom of Heaven

16^th October 2023

It is apparent that this step cannot be reached by anyone who sees no value or advantage to himself in setting others free. (ACIM, S-1.III.3:7)

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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)

A Course in Miracles tells us that nothing of the above can ever mean anything to the ego.

The ego believes in a separated state. The ego’s only certainty is that it is a body. Ultimately, it all comes down to one self amongst many selves.

What, then, is the Self? The Self is the vastness of the ocean compared to the smallest drop of water.

What is our Identity? Our Identity is the soaring eagle compared a tiny feather carried by the wind.

What is Truth? Truth is everywhere and everything, and it is nothing that the eye can see.

We don’t realise our full potential. We are limiting ourselves if we accept we are the body. But we can change what we think we are. We need to question it. We have to experience what actually is.

A Course in Miracles tells us that it is impossible for the ego to know what ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’ really means. The ego believes that any kingdom is outside of it, but it is not. Nor is it even within us.

We learn that the Kingdom of Heaven is actually what we are.

We are God’s Kingdom. We are the perfect Son without a body.

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83/ Peace Is always there

17^th October 2023

This may be long delayed, because it may seem to be dangerous instead of merciful. (ACIM, S-1.III.3:8)

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Ref: Let me not obscure the light of the world in me. (ACIM, W-81.2:2)

The line above expands to say that all shadows will disappear before the light.

The line from The Song of Prayer implies that it can feel dangerous to see the light in others.

The two combined sum up our dilemma. We are lost in the darkness but we are the light.

A Course in Miracles comes from the light. It does not recognize darkness but needs to bring our awareness to it. It tells us that it is not necessary to stay as we are.

If we keep looking at the darkness, then we won’t see the light.

The ego is that darkness, but we are not the darkness; the ego is the body, but we are not that body; the ego is the thoughts, but we are not those thoughts.

We are the light that does not think; we are the thoughts that have no form; we are the oneness that has no other.

The Holy Spirit is the reminder of that light. It is an echo of what we are. The Holy Spirit sits in our minds, quietly and peacefully, and acts as a signpost towards the song of prayer.

We want to bring the confusion to the certainty. By aligning ourselves with the light that never leaves us, we can find the peace that is always there.

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84/ One and the Same

18^th October 2023

To the guilty there seems indeed to be a real advantage in having enemies, and this imagined gain must go, if enemies are to be set free. (ACIM, S-1.III.3:9)

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Ref: Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified perception. (ACIM, M-22.1:1-3)

Atonement is the complete dismantling of one single error: that there is a division.

We are wrong. The ego is wrong about everything.

This means we need to look into changing our teacher. And we can’t do this without help.

A Course in Miracles is that help. Also, if we do its training slowly and systematically, forgiving ourselves as we slip up or take a break, then we are guaranteed success. We cannot fail.

Two things, though, have to be achieved before this can happen. Firstly, we have to complete the Workbook; and secondly, we have to bring the darkness to the light.

Miracles only happen through the light. While we remain in darkness, the miracle remains unseen.

The miracle is always with us, but our awareness of it is not. Only the mind can have a miracle.

Enlightenment, then, is just the recognition that we are not a body. We understand what the light is, not what we would want it to be. All errors are gone and we come to know truth as a totality.

Atonement proves that oneness is everything. Nothing can stop us being one and the same.