Lesson 144:

My mind holds only what I think with God…

There is no love but God’s…

The world I see holds nothing that I want…

I love the quiet peaceful presence of love experienced by sinking deep into the mind; that yummy awareness of being always, already in presence with God. His presence is the way I experience my Self, without which, nothing would be happening…

It seems so obvious from this premise. The mind with God premise; when the mind quiets. When the intent is only truth and experience and being merge leaving the rhetorical thinking of the strategic mind no hamster wheel for which to exercises its puny legs. It therefore passes by without even landing. It seems it ceases, but I see now, it never really happened. The strategic mind, born of the desire to believe the ego’s promise of ‘personal omnipotence’, finds no resting place in the mind whose one desire is to know it Self.

I tried for years to ‘let go’ of the thoughts I thought that were not of God. I tried to rid myself of all thoughts, so the thoughts of God could make themselves apparent to me. It was a lot of work. Sometimes I felt I was succeeding but there were always doubts.

~And then, in a blinding instant of recognition, I saw that the “I” that was doing the trying, came from place rooted in believing that the false was true. I was trying to move beyond my identification with this world of separate interests through the very means, which kept it firmly in place. Here’s the thing, the miracle was awaiting my acceptance of another way the instant I wanted it truly. When I did, I realized I (via little ‘I’) had never wholly desired the truth before.

Oh, I wanted to want it, begged and pleaded and made promises~ that kind of wanting it. But I simply never want only truth to be. Then, I did. ~Holy instant~

The miracle brought with it the realization that only the mind that thinks with God, (the Holy Spirit/right-mind), could bring the dawning of sight. That sight or vision reinterprets all I had refused to see in the world before (due to my desire to see what I believed, instead).

Healed perception, it turns out, is the eternal instant. It is the instant of recognition; NOW, “I” know nothing, yet, simultaneously, I am everything. This is the vision the Holy Spirit offers, always at the ready, when our desire returns to love.

My efforts naturally took on a different modality; irreversible. It switched from one of trying to do something, to one of noticing this habit of trying (along with all similar thinking habits of the strategic personal mind) and allowing the Holy Spirit to give meaning, instead.

A sweet aspect of becoming this sort of observer of my strategic mind came the pleasant side effect that the compulsion to ‘do as it said’ was diminished. It is, after all, only the mindless fixation of the restless soul that keeps its effectiveness in place.

Now it is simply a dream to choose to dream or not to dream. The ‘fix’ nature of this kind of dreaming can only work if the dreamer believes he is the dream. Once seen as the ‘responsible party’ for the dream, a deliberate choice must be made on the part of the thinker/dreamer. My experience tells me that all attraction to the trappings of the dream holds no value to the Self that no longer identifies itself in the dream.

The Course reminds us: “I am responsible for what l see. I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve. And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have ask.” (T-12.II.3)

When my desire is to see only the thoughts I think with God out-pictured in the world, Love’s presence is felt undeniably. All witness to the dream before the dream of forgiveness took its place, is easily passed over because true value is experienced instead. Everyone becomes the holy messenger of: “there is no love but God’s”. It is all we are, and all we want to behold.

Here is a passage from ‘The Song of Prayer’ that feels like an appropriate note to sign off with:

“What God created one must recognize its oneness, and rejoice that what illusions seemed to separate is one forever in the Mind of God. Pray mow must be the means by which god’s Son leaves separate goals and separate interests by, and turn in holy gladness to the truth of union of his Father and himself… Lay down your dreams, you holy Son of God, and rising up as God created you, dispense with idols and remember Him. Prayer will sustain you now, and bless you as you lift your heart to Him in rising song that reaches higher and then higher still, until both high and low have disappeared. Faith in your goal will grow and hold you up as you ascent the shining stairway to the lawns of Heaven and the gate of peace. For this is prayer, and here salvation is. This is the way. It is God’s gift to you”. (SP-2-3)