Saturday, March 10, 2007

Lesson 69~ contemplationshare~

Lesson 69:
My grievances hide the light of the world in me...
God is the light in which I see, creating me like Himself and I am still as God created me ~to be the light of the world extending Gods light and love…Therefore, I am the light in which I see…
This is the Truth that I denied …
When I consider my so-called life and world of seeming ‘reality’, it’s wild to consider that the ‘secret elusive self’, I sought to keep concealed from exposure to this so-called harsh and misunderstanding world, (clearly a judgment/grievance, I held against it), was actually the light of the world, and my salvation. I know that’s a mouthful, yet so very true… I actually believed my salvation rested in keeping secret what I judged ‘others’ would judge, wouldn’t approve of, etc. The principle is the same, what I conceal; no one can look upon… I didn’t, of course, realize at the time, that there was no such thing as private minds. That what can’t be shared, does not exist at all. What my grievances concealed was the availability to see at all…
I’m thinking about the early part of the text in chapter 7; an excellent standard by which to assess the current state of our ‘reality’, this is what it says:

“Consider the kingdom you have made and judge its worth fairly. Is it worthy to be a home for a child of God? Does it protect his peace and shine love upon him? Does it keep his heart untouched by fear, and allow him to give always, without any sense of loss? Does it teach him that this giving is his joy, and that God Himself thanks him for his giving? That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, any more than you can make yourself. It has been created for you as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing. Yet when they deny Him they do not know this, because they deny themselves everything. You who could give the Love of God to everything you see and touch and remember, are literally denying Heaven to yourself…” (T-7.XI.3)
Holding a grievance is such a horrible feeling… makes me want to puke (literally in the past). It is a total punishment in and of itself. For me it has been intolerable… What a relief I never have to feel it again. Here’s the question, “Do I want to know my Father’s Will for me?” ~ YES! ~ And only yes is the answer. This handles all temptations to wander down the primrose path of perceived past, revisited. After all, the end of the journey proceeds, yes? One begins to recognize we “have reached the end of an ancient journey, not realizing yet that it is over…
It is this idea of grievance as the foundation, which seems to materialize and make solid the clouds of darkness called the world today’s lesson talks about. Isn’t this just the most yummy exercise? Slipping through the nothingness of the dark clouds of fear, guilt, attack, etc., completely unimpeded, carried along by the very light we are, back to the recognition that only truth is true, experienced as an encompassing lightness, extending. How glorious it is to glimpse the truth. If, even only for an instant, it is enough to draw us back again.
Oh, but ahh… to move in this so-called world from this place of total peace and light~ as the same ~this has been, for me an gift of unspeakable bliss… Can anything really ‘rock –my- world, from this place above the battleground? No! It would require a re-entry into make-believe; a state which I find no longer quite believable in any significant way… the temptation to value ‘specialness”, to hold grievances, is the first cloud to begin to conceal the light… these excerpts from the later chapters of the Course, speak beautifully to this:

“The “reasoning” by which the world is made, on which it rests, by which it is maintained, is simply this: You are the cause of what I do. Your presence justifies my wrath, and you exist and think apart from me. While you attack I must be innocent. And what I suffer from is your attack”…” (T-27.VII.3)
“In your brother you see the picture of your own belief in what the Will of God must be for you. In your forgiveness will you understand His Love for you… Look once again upon you brother, not without the understanding that he is the way to Heaven or to hell, as you perceive him. But forget not this; the role you give to him is given you, and you will walk the way you pointed out to him because it your judgment on yourself”. (T-25.V.6)
“The secret of salvation is but this: That you are doing this unto yourself. No matter what for of attack, this still is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, still is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is still true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and vicious as the may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream.”
T-27.VIII.10)

This transformation of consciousness; from a world held in secret from my self, by judgment and holding grievances, to one where forgiveness lights my path and peace abides and every where I look I see my Self ~ is beyond my ability to describe, save it to say ~ eternal gratitude.
I never knew just how anorexic my joy had been until I was released. “You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment…” (T-3.VI.3) I feel this statement from the Course is present in me, right here, right now… It has been given me to give my Self and I am forever in your debt…

Friday, March 9, 2007

~Lesson 68 musings~

Lesson 68:

Love holds no grievances…
Love is all that I am … I hold no grievances… Can I say this without reservation, in complete safety and peace and total expansion? I rest in God and nothing else is really happening at all… Love is, and ‘i’ ceases to be. It is the keystone melody that harmonizes all seeming discord of the personal self and private thoughts. Only a 'person' can hold grievances, and must have ‘others’ in which to evaluate personal significance and weigh against. This is necessary to solidify the seeming ‘real’-ness of the world peopled by the personhood concept… A 'person' is just simply an image which is in constant need of defending; it unconsciously fears its instability will be discovered and its ‘nothingness’ revealed. After all, what seems more solid than a person fighting for their very life; defending against enemies perceived and not yet known? …Sitting at the edge of the cave in breathless attack mode, to ward off being stabbed in ones sleep? Only a person has enemies. A person can loose their so-called life, because a person’s life is extinguishable… Yet, persons are only figures in the dream of separation. We perceive ‘others’ because we sleep. Grievances are the sleeping pill that darken the mind to submission to the deep-sleep or unconsciousness of the belief in ‘special personage’~ the ‘hero’ of the dream, which was promised by the ego in that past, unholy instant of forgetfulness…The past is nowhere now, having already been Corrected. It is not reality. We are not mindless, as the ego would have us believe, We are the Mind that thinks the thought of God… The miracle restores us to awareness of Mind, which is the activating agent of Spirit. We are therefore Spirit, and spirit is in a state of grace forever. Therefore, we are in a state of grace forever… where could grievance possibly fit into this perfect picture of all-encompassing peace?
The whole of universe of perception; with it the scarcity principle, the idea of needs, the structure of personhood, and the entire ego dynamic produces and perpetuates the necessity to order our thoughts. Judgment is, of course, what is at the heart of grievance. Judgment is the tool we use to develop and maintain hierarchies of values, is the chosen hiding place for the idea that reality is ours to select from. This is the darkness the personal-self flails around in, protecting its survival. The Atonement answered this darkened thought with the light of truth. And the miracle restores light to the mind with the memory of the Self.
I’m thinking about the part in chapter I of the text called “The Escape form Darkness”, it seems apropos to revisit here...

Thank you my brothers for bringing my Self to my awareness, at last!

Thursday, March 8, 2007

~Lesson 67:~musings~

Lesson 67:
Love created me like itself….
“One blazing Light of perfect completion”, these are the symbols that came together for me as I rested in the suggested exercise of today’s lesson. I am… Love is, that I am…. Light-now-always-love-light…this holy instant…
There is literally no where else I’d rather be… and the only place I am in truth. The Joyous awareness of the only thing that could be true ~ “Love created me like itself, where God is but Love and therefore so am I”, brings with it the experience of timelessness. “An instant borrowed from eternity”, as the Course refers to it~ NOW~ this holy instant.
It is complete freedom from doubts or limits of any kind or even the recognition of thoughts such as that… It is an experience of utter defenseless invulnerability. Just Peace expressing~ experiencing only peace ~peacefully resting in the holy gentleness of Communication ~ Communion, our bequest of perfect Oneness with our loving Source. It is the experience of unrelenting generosity to give all to all as all ~ to LOVE, extending on and on… Pure Oneness…
Oneness is beyond words and symbols and images. Yet the Holy Spirit uses words to point toward where words have no meaning and could only limit, “We say “God Is”, and then we cease to speak”…. He uses symbols to go beyond symbols entirely… and time to teach there is no time. Only what God creates has origin. Christ could never leave the mind of God. Ah, just slip back behind the thinking mind, and be thought by love… yes…
You know, throughout my so-called journey back to my self, all attempts at trying to understand this were meaningless. (Trying itself denotes the desire to have assistance from the ever-helpful ego ~ but one can't know till ...)
Only complete surrender to the One Understanding allowed the unveiling of it; already, forever presence in me, and in itself, my part in it…
It was only when, for one pure instant, I let go all desire to be identified with anything but Love, and along with it all definitions I placed, I began to experience a sense that life itself, as love, expresses me…
Nothing else is real and it is the recognition of this fact for which Jesus and the Course offer constant, clear directions.
I see now that fear and time and space and all definitions, are simply aspects of the one and only “original error”~ the belief in the separation from God. Yet, this belief truly has no origin. Since love can only create like itself, how can anything else be fathered or therefore, exist at all? The singular unholy instant is over and gone ~ the Atonement answered it. What was the same could not be different, for what was One could not be made of separate parts. Heaven is Wholeness. Pure Oneness, the Holy Instant brings memory of this fact back to Mind. Even in dreaming the entire spun-out universe fathered by the ‘separation’ belief, through the Atonement principle, unifying all concepts through the concept of forgiveness, realizing there were no separate parts. Love is perfect oneness…it is what it is and what it was, always …Love creating like Itself… this is my inheritance… this is my joy… this is what I am…
Thank you for joining me… I love you forever and ever~

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

~Lesson 66~ contemplation~

Lesson 66:

My happiness and my function are one…

Once the shift to the world within was truly made, the idea that anything, except what my Father Will’s for me, could satisfy, became obsolete, so to speak.
Don’t get me wrong; I recognized the temptations of the ego trying to get my attention… I ‘m all too familiar with its antics; attempting to seduce, pull me out ~ return me to mindlessness. It offers substanceless gifts of nothingness playing dress-up with all the things I once thought I valued in the so-called life, continually hatching another scheme to draw my attention to something. And, then upping the ante when I don’t respond, with an ‘ace’ ~it goes something like this, “my happiness is contingent on some indefinable, unreasonable, responsibility for another’s happiness~ a feat which of course, requires self-betrayal, well actually, Self – betrayal. It’s sneaky, yes, parading as ‘helpfulness’, [“hero of the dream”], but it’s just viciousness and separation… in this scenario, there must be an 'other' to be helpful to ~ an other to be ‘guilty’ while I remain innocent, needed, etc., ad nausea… See, here’s the thing… THERE IS NO OTHER , clear as day… there is nothing out there… there's no out-there... there is only the zero-point: Mind. …choose once again…
Happily, the ego’s charms are wasted on me, [mostly] now; the light of Christ is all I am and all I want to see. THIS IS HAPPINESS! Seeing the false is false and looking beyond to the light in you which gifts me my forgiveness and bathes me in blameless gratitude… this is what I live for! Could any thing all, in the wildest of dreams, [oh, yeah, we’ve already got that] begin to approach the joyous fullness and sense of completion that occurs when we make the only choice that can be made and return our mind to creation ~ every seeming step becomes a glorious moment of gratitude and love. Each ‘call for love’ is the same and answered by miracles… just the awesome function of one whose only function is the one God gave … and happiness abounds…
Turns out, we can’t find happiness…we look on all the barriers to love's awareness we have erected, seeing that they were all the same ~ FALSE~ therefore easily seen past with forgiveness at the helm. We travel through the maze shining the light of willingness, trusting that ONLY TRUTH IS TRUE. Peace envelops us and happiness finds us, or more like, is us… From here it's relatively simple to realize that what is part of, can never really be lost. What is One can not be separate… And it all comes back home to Heaven where we reside...
Is there anything more yummy that this…than the perfect happiness inherent in fulfilling the function God has given to re-member Him? ...
I THINK NOT…
Radiant gratitude and contentment overflowing ~

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

~Lesson 65 musings~

Lesson 65:

My only function is the one God gave me…

Let no thought reflect a goal that prevents me from accepting my only function…On this clean slate let my true function be written for me… My only function is the one God gave me~ I want no other and have no other…
Accepting only this function is my only goal. And any thought that is not this, is an attempt to author myself… it is ultimately part of the authority problem inherent in the idea of separation; the ‘DNA’ or so-called genetic material of ‘nothing’, posing as life , as a physical universe called existence. This is the thought from which I need salvation… Only through my total commitment to fulfilling my function can I return to ‘First Cause’. This lesson asks we look honestly at where this commitment lies… at how willing one is to be free of competition with God…
I remember the difficulty I had, for years, remembering designated practice times throughout the day which the lessons suggested. And, furthermore, I found that attempting to control that remembering through some external means, like for instance, using an alarm, was ultimately an exercise in maintaining guilt, which is just another way to keep separation alive in my mind…
I found ‘i’ could not help myself. Even as the author of my “doing the Course right’, my ‘good’ intentions could not be counted on. “Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust implicitly, your willingness…Concentrate only on this, and be not disturbed that shadows surround it. This is why you came…the holy instant…is always the result of your small willingness combined with the unlimited power of God’s Will…” (T-18.IV. 1-4) Experience taught me what this passage means. My willingness uncovered a rich, undying commitment to fulfill the only function given me by God ~and forgive the rest… A commitment that I could never have comprehended … a commitment not from me, but for me… It has been enough to bring me to the bridge across which I found only Christ…
The attractiveness of this state of peace only continues to increase and the experience extends … It is truly the simple desire of my heart~ uncovered and released…
My life, it seems, has become one in which the shadowy figures of illusion’s “DNA”, have given way to beaming truth that shines behind and beyond; the simple fact that ‘God is but Love ~and nothing else could ever be’…
Now, what was so hard about that? …Can it really be so hard to do what Christ has already accomplished? …It just doesn’t hold water does it? Can any little ‘importance’ be worth the price? It's all or nothing.
Heaven is the decision one must, and ultimately does, make … It is offered at every seeming turn; in every encounter, every situation and circumstance. The Course is such a direct and gentle route that unfolds this one decision within millions upon millions of apparent decisions in every moment, every day, as long as time is used.
There is peaceful stillness, which accompanies the decision to forgive and be happy … We are the One… So now, it is a joy to see that every decision I make reflects who and what I think I am, what I value and what I want to be real for me. Each one is a chance to choose again my only function~ the one God gave me ~ the only one I want and the only one I have… I can hardly wait…

Chapter 16 of the text speaks beautifully of this experience of transition. In sections V and VI :
“The decision whether or not to listen to this course and follow it is but the choice between truth and illusion. For here is truth, separated from illusion and not confused with it at all. How simple does this choice become when it is perceived as only what it is. For only fantasies make confusion in choosing possible, and they are totally unreal…This year is thus the time to make the easiest decision that ever confronted you, and also the only one. You will cross the bridge into reality simply because you will recognize that God is on the other side, and nothing at all is here. It is impossible not to make the natural decision as this is realized…You see the world you value… Across the bridge it is so different! For a time the body is still seen, but not exclusively, as it is seen here. The little spark that holds the Great Rays within it is also visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness. Once you have crossed the bridge, the value of the body is so diminished in your sight that you will see no need at all to magnify it. For you will realize that the only value the body has is to enable you to bring your brothers to the bridge with you, and to be released together there… The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in the perspective of reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted and completely out of perspective. What is little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and powerful cut down to littleness. In the transition there is a period of confusion, in which a sense of actual disorientation may occur. But fear it not, for it means only that you have been willing to let go your hold on the distorted frame of reference that seemed to hold your world together… Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality. Time is kind, and if you use it on behalf of reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in your transition. The urgency is only in dislodging your mind from its fixed position here. This will not leave you homeless and without a frame of reference. The period of disorientation, which precedes the actual transition, is far shorter than the time it took to fix your mind so firmly on illusions. Delay will hurt you now more than before, only because you realize it delay, and that escape from pain is really possible. Find hope and comfort, rather than despair, in this: You could not long find even the illusion of love in any special relationship here. For you are no longer wholly insane, and you would soon recognize the guilt of self-betrayal for what it is… You have allowed the Thought of your reality to enter your mind, and because you invited it, it will abide with you. Your love for it will not allow you to betray yourself, and you could not enter into a relationship where it could not go with you, for you would not want to be apart from it. (T-16.V.16., T-16.VI.6-9)
Through the willingness to allow the Holy Spirit to train my mind in discipline, along with desiring truth, above all else, to dawn, other goals began to pale, grow weak in attraction and slough off. Now, it seems I can’t forget my function; it goes with me everywhere I go. Although, it is seemingly hidden in physical activities at times, it whispers re-member-ance softly, in every encounter, “This is God Son, in whom He is well pleased… He stands beside the door to which forgiveness is the only key. Give it to Him to use instead of you, and you will see the door swing widely open upon the shining face of Christ. Behold your brother there beyond the door; the Son of God as He created him.”
In unending gratitude I honor my indebtedness to you, forever and ever~

Monday, March 5, 2007

~Lesson 64:~

Lesson 64:
Let me not forget my function…
Only by fulfilling the function given me by god will I be happy. It is my function to light the world through my forgiveness…To be the light of the world would be a tall order if it had anything to do with the definitions inherent in the ego structure of sin, guilt, and fear ~the ‘unholy trinity’~ as Jesus refers to it in the Course. But, by the Grace of God, that’s not the case. Forgiveness is for this world ~but not of it~ it is the simple decision to be happy! To be happy through the one means available to us, the one vestige of ‘reality’ is afforded this gig called life on planet earth. EVERYthing else is a lie. Everything else is an attempt of the ego to mimic the appeal of God through ‘special’ treasures ~and, lots of them; pretty trinkets, perfect bod’s, romance, sexual fantasy fulfillment, money and kids and successes and more and more and on and on…always returning back to the inevitable ZERO-point of nothingness.
We who are everything cannot be content with nothing...period. ‘Let me not forget my function. Let me not try to substitute mine for God’s”…
The detour into darkness was a journey that but seemed to happen ~and the instant it was accepted into the mind, it was already answered ~for there is only the ‘Light of Creation’. Therefore, darkness cannot hide [regardless of the complex ingenuity of the ego’s world]. At no single instant, has the body or the world existed at all. All efforts to change and make better~ futile… only a delay tactic to deflect the fact that only the changeless is real. It is only through forgiveness that we recognize the truth of what we are. Only forgiveness releases the light that shines away the constructs of shadows made by a mistaken mind. It releases the construct of ‘residual self-image”, as The Matrix refers to it. A construct which attempted to hide the unbearable idea of guilt, of usurping the power of God and making up something to take the place of ‘ALL-CREATION’ shifting, changing forms of betterment and specialness ~spawning a world peopled by the constructs of our belief in it. “Let me forgive and be happy.”
Forgiveness resides only in the ever-present NOW, which is the only place I find my Self ~In the light of Christ ~my true identity.
Where is this darkness now? ~It could only be but where an idea of victory over God could exist~ ~NO WHERE~ It but seemed to reside an instant in the past ~yet where too is the past? ~NO WHERE~

ONLY LIGHT IS REAL… So, being what I am can’t be that difficult. It is only the belief in the reality of the unholy trinity and its ensuing spawn that hides this simple fact from my awareness ~forgiveness sets this free. I don’t and can’t know how this is accomplished. It is not me who accomplishes it. I do just one thing:
I decide to be happy by fulfilling my function… this is my invitation to let the Holy Spirit do the rest through me. ~And I can trust that whatever seems to go down, ‘all things work together for good’ … and that’s how I can let go and accept the “This is the world it is function to save’…
I love what “The Song of Prayer “ supplement to the Course says about the forms in which forgiveness takes. Please share this blissful expression with me now:

“Do not establish what the form should be that Christ’s forgiveness takes. He knows the way to make of every call a help to you, as you arise in haste to go at last unto your Father’s house. Now can He make your footsteps sure, your words sincere; not with your own sincerity, by with His Own. Let Him take charge of how you would forgive, and each occasion then will be to you another step to heaven and to peace… It matters not the form that dreams may seem to take. Illusions are untrue. God’s Will is truth, and you are one with Him in Will and purpose.
“What should I do for him, Your holy Son?” should be the only thing you ever ask when help is needed and forgiveness sought…. The light of Christ in him is his release, and it is this that answers to his call. Forgive him as the Christ decides you should, and be His eyes through which you look on him, and speak for Him as well. He knows the need; the question and the answer… Do not confuse His function with your own. He is the Answer. You the one who hears…”

Happy listening ~ forgiving ~ lighting the world…

Sunday, March 4, 2007

~Lesson 63~ thoughts

Lesson 63:

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…This is no idle request that is being asked… to accept salvation that it be mine to give…

What a holy purpose ~beyond what one can articulate. Although I allow the symbols for my experience to form and place themselves together on the page through this danét model, as I feel in-spirit-ed to do… :
For one totally incapable of judging anything, dispute the holy purpose the perfect plan for the salvation of the world, provided by the One Creator, one must rely completely on being God’s Son in truth and not what might ‘seem’ to be. Christ within is up to the task, for God so love his Son that He gave a forgiven world as the answer to a ‘tiny mad ‘ wish by which His Son sought to father a world of his own ~ completely foreign to the all- encompassing, eternal Peace of the Mind of God…
The forgiven world emerges as merely the dawning in the mind of God’s Son that he sleeps and dreams of exile… And, being the dreamer of the dream, he sees within his mind an alternative. This alternative is the ancient memory of the Truth. It lights the mind in such a way that all attractive-nesses of the world appear pale and illusory to the mighty appeal of remembering NOW.
NOW holds the perfect plan for complete return to the Mind of Truth. This perfect plan is forgiveness: seeing the false, the illusory shadows of projected guilt, which ‘materializes’ this apparent world, as FALSE…substance-less. Forgiveness brings with it the Peace of God and His One Son. The One Son who is still, always as God created… who actually IS the light that allows this awareness to dawn. It is the light in the projector ~with or without film/slides/overlays. Forgiveness is the switch that returns the mind to purpose… A purpose only necessary since the idea of “two alternatives” seemed to occur within One-Mind. And the wrong one seemed to be chosen. ~Once returned to purpose, we choose… We choose as and for the entire of the holographic universe as one… (The choice of film has only two themes: Love/Truth/oneness or falsity/fear/separation)…
It’s so simple really… I mean, who would have ever guessed, that what once seemed impossible to see as an ”inside-job”, becomes impossible to really project any longer. The purchase of my innocence at the price of your guilt~ just doesn’t feel good any more, no physical appetites satisfied~ satisfy [but are recognized as what they are, “misdirected miracle impulses”]
Finally one comes to the one answer to all seeming screen dramas, complete with players and storylines and emotions, yada, yada…At last one realizes that~ ONLY FORGIVENESS SATISFIES…
We are Christ ~the light of the world... we bring peace to every mind through our forgiveness...the very means appointed by God for the salvation of the world... and we are saved by God for our OneSelf...