Saturday, April 28, 2007

Lesson 119:

Truth will correct all errors in my mind.

I am mistaken when I think I can be hurt in any way.

I am God’s Son, whose Self rests safely in the Mind of God.

To give and to receive are one in truth.

I will forgive all things today, that I may learn how to accept the truth in me, and come to recognize my sinlessness.

Mind is the activating agent of Spirit, which is our identity in God. Spirit is the thought of God which He created like Himself Here is where the truth is. So the mind is where we must look to find the truth in this so-called world, Outside of mind, this world does not exist at all. Don’t get me wrong; indeed, Spirit is being, mind activated to what we experience as reality, which is always what we want to experience. We do not leave the truth of what we are, in spite of the ego and the seeming existence of its world. Our experience simply reflects what we want to be real. This is why it is so critical, that we get clear that we want only truth.

The so-called human race (the ego-body self) and with the physical universe were designed and well developed, to defend against the recognition of our being~ Spirit. So really the nature of spirit cannot be understood in this world, since Spirit’s reality rests in a dimension that transcends time and space. Time and space, being the domain of the ego, are the only categories the human brain is equipped with to “understand” phenomena.

In chapter 4 of the text, it says: “The ego’s ceaseless attempts to gain the spirit’s acknowledgment and thus establish its own existence are useless. Spirit in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does not attack it; it merely cannot conceive of it at all… the ego is equally unaware of spirit… The ego and the spirit do not know each other. The ego and the spirit do not know each other.” (T-4.II.8; T-4.4)

This is why it is so critical to bring illusion to truth for evaluation; and not attempt to bring truth to our little fantasized life.

We are mistaken about what reality is and the Holy Spirit was place within our minds to reinterpret our perceptions within the dimension of spirit, realigning us to see differently.

“Think you that you can bring truth to fantasy, and learn what truth means from the perspective of illusions? Truth no meaning in illusion. The frame of reference for its meaning must be itself. When you try to bring truth to illusions, you are trying to make illusions real, and keep them by justifying your belief in them. But to give illusions to truth is to enable truth to teach that the illusions are unreal, and thus enable you to escape from them. Reserve not one idea aside from truth, or you establish orders of reality that must imprison you. There is no order in reality, because everything there is true. (T-17.I.5)

Whenever we feel hurt or wronged in anyway, we are merely mistaken about who we are. “I am mistaken when I think I can be hurt in any way. I am God’s Son, whose Self rests safely in the Mind of God”…

When the mind appeared to separate from its Source, it appeared to be split, and the ego was produced. Let us remember that appearances are not reality~ not the truth. That is why the Course speaks of two minds: Mind~ at one with God; and mind~ split off from Him, which of course, is the massive identity we call the ego; the alienated, illusory, sinful self. It is also the self, which the Course speaks to. The Course in fact makes the distinction between ‘being’, which is Spirit, truth, reality and its counterpart ‘existence’, which is the realm of the divided, specific, strategic mind. Chapters 4 through 6 it really speaks to this distinction. Here are some excerpts: “Existence as well as being rest on communication. Existence, however, is specific in how, what and with whom communication is judged to be worth undertaking. Being is completely without these distinctions. It is a state in which the mind is in communication with everything that is real… This is your reality. Do not desecrate it or recoil from it. It is your real home, your real temple and your real Self… God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually… Remember that in the Kingdom there is no difference between and as there is in existence… alone lives in the Kingdom, where everything lives in God without question. (T-4.VII.4-5; T-6.IV.7.4)

Once we accept Being as our true state, we slide into the perspective of truth, where it is relatively simple to make the connection that: “To give and to receive are one in truth…

Remember in lesson 70 where it says: “When you realize that all guilt is solely an invention you your mind, you also realize that guilt and salvation must be in the same place. In understanding this you are saved…”

What we have to remember is ‘it’s all in our mind’

Sure, the programmed, collective ideas of the ego –world about forgiveness, play a huge role in our resistance to truly surrendering to the salvation promised in the Course and accepting the Atonement for ourselves.

For the longest time, I always wanted to ‘see the error’ and ‘be bigger than it’. That’s what the ‘program’ asks for. This kept me entrenched in the reality of error anyway you diced it up, even if I temporarily felt better (usually righteous).

Then finally, I started hearing myself refer to the person or situation with something like, “This isn’t real’; this isn’t who you are and not who I am, we are love, so this could not be real”, and I realized the Holy Spirit was turning my mind right-side up…

I think it is crucial in understanding the Course’s to realize that it is not from the world or from our so-called sins, that we need it be saved, or that we need to forgive ~It is not an external problem.

The problem is the underlying thought system of separation. It is the way we think~ that brought this whole gig about… This is what needs correction. Accepting this correction allows us to receive healing, by giving it through forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the mechanism to implement God’s plan for salvation, complete with seemingly specific lessons appropriate to our seeming ‘each-ness’, so we can easily do our essential part.

We forgive each other for what we have not done, but what we thought apart from God…“ I will forgive all things today, that I may learn how to accept the truth in me, and come to recognize my sinlessness…” The truth does set us free…because, truth will correct all error in our mind… We are as God created us.

Let us receive what we give in accordance with truth, today~

Friday, April 27, 2007

Lesson 118:

God’s peace and joy are mine.

Today I will accept God’s peace and joy, in glad exchange for all the substitutes that I have made for happiness and peace.

Let me be still and listen to the truth.

Let my own feeble voice be still, and let me hear the might Voice for Truth Itself assure me that I am God’s perfect Son.

All ways~ always, all I ever wanted was peace and joy, consistently, constantly. I only wanted to not have something missing. I only wanted not to feel incomplete and needy. I wanted to be happy. But I wasn’t.

I was so obliviously immersed in the ‘outside world’ concept, looking for the right set of circumstances, (people, things, looks, events, labels) , whatever would prove my worthiness. And once worthy, I would be happy. And that worthiness and happiness would, hopefully, bring me peace and rest from an inner state of despair I seemed to have been born with. I seemed to have been born believing that the body was me.

It seemed that from the first second my bare feet hit the ground, I’d been afraid I had some free floating fear of being found out… I felt split between this inner fearful, unworthy self, which I kept exclusively to myself, and this outward persona of the people.

The mantra of my public self was, “can’t everybody just get along? Can’t we all just be happy”? I needed people to obey…

My private mind was another story. It was the private lonely hell of not-enough-ness, of undetermined guilty unworthiness. It had another mantra, “I’m sorry…”

I see now that my public jovial personality was an idol designed to maneuver my environment into acting and being and feeling in such a way that it would cover over my feelings of inadequacy and secret shame/ guilt.

There was a constant story going on; of “If you would just (fill in the blank), I would feel complete, I could be at peace, I would be happy…” I developed a style of deflection and humor that even I believed at times. Until, of course, I was alone.

Within my own private mind, I was stuck in the loneliness of nothingness and the emptiness my idols left in their wake… It was an intolerable state, hence the compulsive drive to people my world with an audience for my public self.

Even my ideas about love were meant to satisfy this unfulfilled-ness… I was a user and everyone and thing were my drugs. I was also a pusher, in desperate need of companions willing to pretend.

Here’s the thing; all illusions are like this. They are idols designed to give us what we think we lack. They are specific, little forms for which we willingly squeeze ourselves into, for the promise of joy and peace.

Like the course says, “It is as if you said, "I have no need of everything. This little thing I want, and it will be as everything to me." And this must fail to satisfy, because it is your will that everything be yours. Decide for idols and you ask for loss. Decide for truth and everything is yours Behind the search for every idol lies the yearning for completion. Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited.” (T-30.III.1-3)

Gratefully, what happened for me was total dissatisfaction with every idol, with myself and the entire fragmented state of illusive illusory happiness. It is a state of death by belief-system.

At some point, we all recognize, back in ancient memory, deep within the mind, that this whole trumped-up gig is a fraud… I did. That life is being. It is the essence of love present whenever, for an instant we are stilled from the raucousness of what we called life.

This awareness doesn’t actually speak the English language, but a more universal language of experience. It feels like something ‘real’ instead of the separate shadows of the bad film, is reaching to pull you into awareness. Here’s my story;

On disillusionments death bed, in an attempt to stop the #@! %in’ screaming, the bossing me around, the rules and broken promises, the hell, the loneliness, I fell to my knees, spent… ‘I’ was over.

I prayed the honest prayer of the desperate and innocent… “There must be another way! I want it! Please help!”… The screaming stopped.

And truth came softly, quietly in the essence of peace and safety, feeling like a whisper saying, “You are perfect love, complete and wholly loved. It will be all right now. I’ve got it all taken care of; you need not worry. There is nothing to fear, you are at home and I am with you. You will never be alone again…” This is the peace of God. This is the fullness of completion. This is constant abiding joy… This is the foundation of my life today. This is sort of the manta, in my language, which truth speaks and guides me with today… What substitute would I settle for instead of this?

None. When the temptation to forget arises, the compulsion to squeeze myself or you into small thoughts of forms of nothingness arise, the surefire remedy is to simply be still and listen…

I’m not talking about ‘finding a quiet place by myself, somewhere, although for years it did.

I am referring to the state that is always within mind; always present and active regardless of what the body surroundings seem to be. It is instantly available for the willing mind that wholly desires it... It always comes…

We are but asked to let our true will be done, and seek no longer for the things we don’t really want…. “Indeed salvation asks so little, not so much. It asks for nothing in reality. And even in illusions it but asks forgiveness be the substitute for fear. Such is the only rule for happy dreams”.

We are free from illusions grip, because it is our will is one with God’s; fear is gone because its purpose is forgiveness, not idolatry. And by this will, we are but restored to what we are. This is God’s plan for salvation, to give the Son back to Himself, in truth.

“The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. Fear is not its goal, for the escape from guilt becomes its aim. The value of forgiveness is perceived and takes the place of idols, which are sought no longer, for their "gifts" are not held dear. No rules are idly set, and no demands are made of anyone or anything to twist and fit into the dream of fear. Instead, there is a wish to understand all things created as they really are. And it is recognized that all things must be first forgiven, and understood”…

Thank you for joining me in the real world where God’s peace and joy are ours and we rest assured in the stillness that speaks the voice of truth…

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Lesson 117:

God, being Love, is also happiness

Let me remember love is happiness, and nothing else brings joy.

And so I choose to entertain no substitute for love.

I seek but what belongs to me in truth.

Love is my heritage, and with is joy.

These are the gifts my Father gave to me.

I would accept all that is mine in truth.

We say, “Looking for love in all the wrong places”, and isn’t that the same as ‘entertaining substitutes for love’? This dance with illusions of love is the main even and many of us become so addicted to the dance itself. And still, we have forgotten to look in the one place where it can be found, the place it is.

Love is within and beyond, like the breath we breathe, enlivening the focal point of wherever we place the attention of our mind…

This world as we know it is a substitute for love. Yet within is the means of our happiness. Love is what we are by birthright, inheritance, by very Creation itself. We are the Love we seek.

If one looks honestly, we see that our lack of joy is precisely because we have valued substitutes for love above the love that we are in truth. Has it truly brought us happiness? Has everlasting happiness ever been but an idea attached to every ‘idol for happiness’ we have sought, that this one would be the one to end all seeking? And hasn’t each one disappointed in the end?

This is the measure I resonate with: I am one with all the joy that comprises my life, now, always, no sense of past infiltrates this now. My joy is complete, with no want for more or something else (not even a trace) and completely without rhyme or reason. I am happy because I am. There is no other state to be … My joy is a song of praise unto my creator in holy gratitude for happiness that cannot be apart from me. So richly woven into the fabric of my being in truth, is joy. So essential is this joy, without which, I could not exist at all.

Just as with the integral nature of the Sonship: you are not just like unto me, not even one with me, you are what I am, and without the essential element of you, I could not exist. However… I AM… This is the truth: God, being Love is what I am, my happiness, my joy in truth, are alive, and awake, right here, right now…

This is the natural constancy of happiness ~ the state of being that is creation… My Father created me whole and complete as and extension of His Will to extend His Holy Love of Being… This is the fabric of the Son’s very being and there isn’t anything else…

This is the only state… in truth.

The miracle is the mechanism which tunes us into this natural state of reality. Tuning to the wavelength of truth is the only thing that brings happiness… The Holy Spirit is tuning fork for the remembrance of Love…

One can turn the mind away, even deceive the mind with trumped fantasized ‘realities’ that temporarily block awareness, due to the desire see something else, but it can’t change the changeless, eternal chemistry of God and therefore His Son. ~ Everything else is a false state, of mis- attunement, if you will, and produces a state, which does not exist. …

GOD IS… no other option…

I love how the Course puts it in practical terms for the student of the Course, (the dreamer of the dream of false existence):”To whatever extent you are willing to submit your beliefs to this test, to that extent are your perceptions corrected... In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds along these lines:

Perfect love casts out fear…

If fear exists… Then there is not perfect love…

But: Only perfect love exists…

If there is fear… It produces a state that does not exist…

Believe this and you will be free.

Only God can establish this solution, and this faith (T-I.VI.5)

Can we trust that we are being shown the truth?

I think it is so important, at this stage of the curriculum, to suspend our own judgment of how well we are doing with the lessons and allow the truth of Self to settle within the opened-up spaces in our minds.

It is a trick of the ego to get us wrapped up in some kind of measurement game with ourselves and ideals and others, etc. ~Note the temptation toward distraction and see it for what it is, Forgive its unreality in truth and leave the results to the Holy Spirit for perfect placement within God’s plan for salvation…

We are being prepared to look more deeply at our faulty belief structure; at the core self constructs that remain unquestioned. We need the identification with the memory of who we are in truth, which is finding a resting place within us, that these simple lessons offer us, as we continue on the path the Holy Spirit has chosen to lead us along…

Let us practice, with the confidence that where we waver in belief or faith or trust, our brother, Christ joined within us all, is picking up the slack… Now doesn’t that feel yummier than fearing you’re not doing it good enough, or quitting…

When the Course says we are not alone and the Holy Spirit and our brother walk with us on the way that we must go, it means it quite literally. I experience this very thing all the time. It seem I have lost the capacity to see apart from my Self… (at least and take it seriously. It is a huge relief to recognize we can’t do it wrong, or right, but the Holy Spirit does it perfectly, with whatever I will give him.

One just can’t lose with this plan… someone, somewhere, always picks up the ball in my behalf. How do I know? Yes… by the way I feel… I feel the backdrop presence of joyous happiness, always… The miracle reflects the truth of my heritage of love, and joy is the experience. Consequently, I see the love of my inheritance all around me, because I want nothing else…

The happiness this engenders is so encompassing, it blankets the world in peace we receive by giving it to everyone and everything. This is the way we remember that only love is happiness and nothing else brings joy. We remember that all we want is already ours in truth. We accept it by wanting only that which belongs to us in truth…

Let us rest in this sure remembering, together today, and joyously realize our full inheritance as LOVE … After all, we only want to be happy… We want only what belongs to us in truth…

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Lesson 116:

God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.

God’s Will is perfect happiness for me.

And I can suffer but from the belief there is another will apart from His.

I share God’s Will for happiness for me.

I share my Father’s Will for me, His Son.

What He has given me is all I want.

What He has given me is all there is.

God Wills only that we are joyously in love, forever.

When we are looking out on our lives, at what we have or don’t have, did or didn’t do, what others have or do, we are attempting to use an unreal measure to determine what happiness is. This is what the Course means about the hierarchy of illusions; the ego’s attempt to order our thoughts.

A Course in Miracles gives a clear and simple guide for which we can determine if this is indeed the place we are evaluating our lives from. It says simply: “Judge how well you have done this by your own feelings, for this is the one right use of judgment.”

If we do not feel God’s Will for us, which is perfect happiness, then we have identified the ego. The ego, remember, is just a set of ideas about who we are apart from God; in other words, not real.

Even if it appears (appears being the operative word here) that we feel happy temporarily, until the next glitch, so to speak. Appearances are not reality.

Reality is eternal, unchanging and forever NOW. It is a state of being.

Within the framework of our self-concepts, and the evaluation of our happiness from that point of view, our thinking is disordered because the ego sees on the basis of its own lack. This is the only point of reference it has, because the ego’s origin was the idea of lack. Subsequently, it wanted to author itself and therefore, its ‘special’ world; to get more of something, instead of the eternal oneness, which is eternity.

God knows not of loss or more or other of any kind. He knows of His Son, in truth, as He created him, perfectly happy and perfectly at peace, NOW.

For the minuscule instant that the impossible thought entered the mind of the Son, and seemed put him to sleep to dream about this impossible thought’s inception and execution, God implemented the ‘wake-up call’ ~ the Atonement, complete with the memory of Him. This is the Holy Spirit; the predilection of the truth… His voice for eternal truth, now, forever- awake and ever-present within the mind that thinks it wants to dream. He is constant re-member-ing of the truth…

The Holy Spirit is like a gentle whisper, a familiar, yet almost indistinguishable melody somewhere in the background, not part of the dream at all, yet heard within the mind that dreams.

Like in this so-call life, when we seem to be sleeping and somewhere we can hear voices or become aware of another life going on around you, even though you’re currently identified with the dream you’re having at the time, thinking its real for a second. It starts to distract us from the dream and eventually we realize the dream for what it is and wake up to ‘reality’, because it’s real…

The ego had to come up with so many accompanying beliefs such as guilt and fear and pain, as parts of ‘so-called reality’ so we would to expend mind to avoid the relentless dissatisfaction and unhappiness inherent in illusion. This expenditure of mind can literally render the dreamer temporarily mindless to reality, now.

And this is where the self-concept, comprising the sinful, guilty son, who stole creation from God, a crime punishable by death, resides. So intolerable is this concept of self, that projection was required. Once projected out, the self sees itself as an innocent victim of circumstances, perpetrated by others.

These opposing selves are what the course refers to as the war against our selves. They reside together. The self-concept is an image and images can’t see, but the ego believes it can see. When we attempt to see through images, which are of time and space, we choose to block awareness of abstract cause/ effect, now, with linear time and space images. This is purpose for linear time, to blot out this awareness, and sort of give us a chance to run away from ourselves.

None of this is real. It’s a dream. And the crucial thing is to notice the way we feel… When it feels like discomfort, we realize we have identified ourselves with an appearance of reality. We accept that what we think we think might be false, since it doesn’t meet the criteria of ‘perfect peace’, and forgive the false as false…

This opens us up to listen deeper, stiller, quieter for the reinterpretation and meaning of what we are in truth. It is there. Still within the mind that thinks itself a concept, residing right along side the ego’s alternative, is the Self.

So, central to the reversal of wrong-minded thinking and self-concept identity to right-minded, Self-identity in God, is to notice how we feel.

We begin with today’s true state-ment:“God's Will for me is perfect happiness… God's Will is perfect happiness for me. And I can suffer but from the belief there is another will apart from His”…

From here we can remember that what appears as real, is an image we have made to stand for a mis-thought within our mind, projected away or split off to alleviate the horror of guilt and pain and sorrow and loss of innocence we have identified ourselves with through our belief in the ego. It isn’t that we have to do anything… we already are everything. It is simply choosing to accept the Atonement, instead, which employs the Holy Spirit’s present service through miracles, to restore us to the perfect happiness that is our nature and will with God’s…

I share God's Will for happiness for me… I share my Father's Will for me, His Son. What He has given me is all I want. What He has given me is all there is’… There is nothing to fear… The Holy Spirit guides us at the pace that is most helpful for all. We need do nothing. Whatever I think I need, is an error in judgment. Only the Holy Spirit can judge and always judges for wholeness. The section in the text called The Happy Dream is beautifully eloquent as a complimentary read today.

We forgive and see differently. The reel of time/space images of the past need not be played again. We have accepted the Atonement for ourselves, which is One in truth…

We but merely turn in the direction of truth, and peace of mind through our desire for it, and the Holy Spirit corrects our thinking, aligning it with truth. This simultaneously lines up the so-called peoples and events and circumstances, to reflect or witness to our state of mind.

God's Will for us, His Son, is perfect happiness…

Aren’t we beginning to see we share His will in truth and this is, after all, what makes us happy? We are beginning to accept the truth that what He has given us is all we really want…

Isn’t it delicious to see the sun on the horizon of our mind rising from within? Here rings the truth: What God has given is all there is… This is the glorious melody so familiar, brought forward to present/presence in Mind… Glory to God for His perfect gift of perfect happiness! ~

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Lesson 115:

Salvation is my only function here…

(My function is to forgive the world for all the errors I have made.

For thus am I released from them with all the world.)

My part is essential to god’s plan for salvation.

(I am essential to the plan of God for the salvation of the world.

For He gave me His plan that I might save the world.)

Only means only, here… Nothing else is really ‘important’, such that ‘putting off’ forgiving the world, is justified…. Yet, it is the ego’s nature to use anything to deflect attention from this one function, essential to God plan. (Which when applied, by the way, dispels the ego, entirely. So it’s no wonder.)

Surely you have noticed by now, moments of unwillingness wrapped up to look like forgetfulness or busy-ness… and perhaps you gave yourself some credit for noticing and realizing it for what it is. And maybe you have then judged yourself, or excused yourself, of insincerity…

This was the course for me, for the longest time. I felt trapped by the bad habit of putting my petty, worldly life ahead of inner peace; a peace, touched on at times and within my ready reach, yet out of mind, much of the time~ due to my preferences.

And… I felt impotent to effect much change. Promises to myself only left me with guilt. I couldn’t consistently keep my word to myself.

I could see I was doing the same thing with “salvation” as I’d done with everything else. But I could not seem to get off the merry-go-round of addictive self-concept thinking, and wait and listen for only the voice for God. Oh, I tried… (Yeah, ~still more of the same jerking myself off to stay in the spin…)

Part of my gig, was to judge myself as weak and not dedicated ‘enough’. This felt so awful that I had to beef up my promises to myself to ‘be better’, just to get a good breath. Maybe you can relate.

Although, I was aware myself identity and the judgment on myself was perpetuating the ‘reality’ of my so-called trap, it didn’t seem to help in me get out of it…. Contra ire…

I guess I want to talk about this ‘mind-boggle’ because, for me, at this stage of doing a course of the workbook lessons, it would seem particularly poignant, this ‘bad habit’, around now in the lessons. Catch my drift?

I never could seem to remember my hourly, let alone half hourly pauses to be with what I purported to be “the most important thing in the world to me”, on any consistent basis… Talk about feeling like a hypocrite and fraud (also a mechanism sent by the ego to keep me hooked).

Was this really was the best I could do it?… We believe what we see, because we see what we believe… My mind was split and so I saw a split experience… Yet, I wanted a healed mind. I wanted to be whole… I wanted to want a single mind… until that want became single…

The Christ mind looks only on itself, in every one and situation and circumstance…. Desperately I wanted to want only this, truly, madly, deeply… Until at some point, this desire seemed to swallow ‘me’ whole, and lift me off the merry-go-round.

Talk about breaking the habit… There was nothing I could to help myself, to save myself. As long as I wanted my‘self’ to be true~ even a little, I was limiting the help the Holy Spirit could give me…

Somehow, I became willing to be wrong about everything, for just an instant… It was enough…

Somehow, consistency started setting into the pathways once belonging to my desire for inconsistency, and new habits of trust and faith in everyone, circumstance and situation began to take hold… The application of Course suggestions seemed to be a natural part of the events of my ‘daily life’. A certainty of purpose and function stabilized my mind.

You know how, after a disaster strikes an area and devastates the land or whatever, how, somehow, it uses this disaster as some sort of fertilization for the ‘rebirth of everything’ … It was like that…

“How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has not occurred, and can have no effects. And that is all. Can this be hard to learn by anyone who wants it to be true? Only unwillingness to learn it could make such an easy lesson difficult.” (T-31.I.1) So I want to take a moment to give ourselves over, together, to this lovely experience offered in the section called The Simplicity of Salvation in the text::

“Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean and what their purpose is. Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for. We do not know. Let every image held of everyone be loosened from our minds and swept away… Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone. Now do you know him not. But you are free to learn of him, and learn of him anew. Now is he born again to you, and you are born again to him, without the past that sentenced him to die, and you with him. Now is he free to live as you are free, because an ancient learning passed away, and left a place for truth to be reborn.” (T-31.I.13)

Each of us is all of us… This is what I have come to appreciate and value in awareness … Each part is all parts. Nothing could be more or less important when there are no degrees, but simply One Perfect Plan…

My, yours, our, part is essential to God's plan for salvation… You are my savior, and I yours… You hold the lamp that lights my way… for we are united in Christ and you are my One Self. And together our Holy Relationship can handle it all …

~ Truth is at the helm~

Monday, April 23, 2007

Lesson 114:

Am Spirit

I am the Son of God.

NO body can contain my spirit,

Nor impose on me a limitation

God created not.

I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation.

What can my function be but to accept the Word of God,

Who has created me for what I am and will forever be?

No definition of Spirit really ever fit just right or that made sense to me prior to A Course in Miracles. I always felt it was somehow very real yet indefinable. Something I was reaching for, not within. I am ~ because I AM SPIRIT. It is my being.

We’ve all got a story, and here’s one about this particular mock-up, labeled Danét, in early life span, viewed from the detachment of forgiveness. So it seems almost foreign, remembering this little girl’s thinking, like watching an old rerun. Humph. Anyway here goes…

I grew up believing… I’m not sure believing is the right word here. Let’s just say I was trying to believe, or at least trying to understand, yet not sure why I never felt like I really ‘got it’. Here’s how I saw it.

God created the world in 7 days, (that’s in God days, by the way). Anyway, I was never sure, (because, I think, of the confusion element necessary to seduction)… So, after He was done with the earth and all the animals and stuff, he thought, “Hey, how about something in my own image?” Which was male, Caucasian, Anglo-sax, …yes? So was man an afterthought? Anyhow, after that primary model was done, God thought, “My guy needs a companion”. Now was this so he wouldn’t be lonely? I don’t think they every really took a mark on this one. But I kind of thought it was to have someone to do the stuff he didn’t have time for our didn’t like doing, that God had designed into life on this earth, so he made a different model, which was more suited for these things, including the filling of the lonely place. So these two models sort of ended up being like a puzzle body with two pieces that fit together perfectly.

Okay, so when the models were done God breathed life into them. This was, I guess, what spirit was. It was some illusive life force that was subject to the destiny of the decisions the model made, for its salvation.

I personally felt ill equipped. For instance, I pieced it together in my mind that this male-female thing was why of the ‘special’ marriage part and of all the other stuff I learned about as it went along, stuff like ‘special’ covenants that one has to become worthy of in order to get into the ‘special’ part of Heaven. And if your model went to far wrong, well, you were doomed to never be with God…(Was this just your punishment for not getting good at the game?)

This is the thing, I was never really able to piece the whole picture together and have it come out looking or feeling like an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God. Instead, it looked sort of like one big crapshoot, to me. With no guarantee as to where the roll of the dice would land. (I never got that game, either, by the way).

So spirit had very little relevance to me in my little world. Here’s the thing… it seemed you would you only get to be ‘special’ if you ‘got it’. What if you weren’t sure? I wasn’t. Does the ‘special’ magic still work, if it’s real? And what if it’s not?

Hoping that what someone else believes is true is a pretty sad foundation to build a life on, I decided… So I guess I wasn’t sure where the idea Spirit was in my life. I hadn’t tossed it out. I guess I always felt it was somehow present, though I couldn’t comprehend it form the premise from which I was doing my life, which at the time included a lot of behavior-mod by way of guilt… Still, I felt something must be guiding my life in someway, saving me from myself. Nothing I studied or learned about was really a hit for me, close but not direct on. Only the need to seek it… that was a constant…

When I found A Course in Miracles, I had an instantaneous sense of recognition ~of what you might call finding my Self within its pages. I got a sense of gradually redefining myself as Spirit without this even being my goal at all. I was coming at the Course in an attempt to gain knowledge of the workings of the universe and to have God present in my life in a way that I could utilize. I wanted a personal relationship with God and wanted to feel worthy of it.

Somehow, for once in my life, at least most of the time, I just let the Course speak to me and let the information settle within me wherever it could. I seemed to be aware on some level that I couldn’t analyze what it said or what it meant. So, mostly, I just showed up to it when I could let myself and took in what I could make room for within my belief structure of survival. ~It was a luxury.~My belief structure found more and more space available for it. And my sense of Spirit, being what I am in truth, occupied a larger and larger space within my mind.

There was a while I resisted completely, although I couldn’t see it for what it was at the time. It looked like wanting more… adding to… I saw this as a good thing at the time. (silly ego ~ trix are for kids). What I also didn’t realize it at the time, was that I was I was giving myself over to the feeling I was accomplishing something, taking credit for ‘doing it right’. I started subtly taking credit for how good I was feeling. And this is where I started getting lost for a while. Yet, at the time, I was blind to this, I wanted more. I wanted my life, and god to be my magic genie.

I see now the obvious sign: I had placed my belief in the ego on my alter instead of God. I had begun listening to the ego voice within my mind.

I now look at this as kind of craving or temptation, as just a symptom of the authority issue which, although already been answered in truth, is very much up for my forgiveness, as my part in God’s plan for salvation. However, coming to that, was a painful act of resistance to Self through violent death attempts on myself.

I know that sound dramatic but its how it was for me, when I forgot I was the dreamer of the dream, for a while. It’s only dramatic within the dream after all, and the dream is, after all, just a dramatization of how to kill God’s Son an infinite number of ways, without his realizing it? Isn’t it?

Now here’s salvation… It’s all about realizing this simple fact: ‘I have done this unto myself. I am the dreamer of this dream’. I am Spirit. I am the Son of God. No body can contain my spirit, nor impose on me a limitation God created not… He Created His Son complete and wholly loving and lovable as Himself. Nothing could ever tamper with what God has Willed, nor cover over or render it in some way other than what he created. God Wills for me perfect happiness. This is reality. Noting real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exits… here in lies the peace of God. If we think we see some else, we are dreaming. Period. Accepting the atonement for myself means, I recognize I am the dreamer of the dream and this puts me in a position to ‘choose once again’ to hear only the call for love and forgive all images of other-nesses. This is my part… I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation… What can my function be but to accept the Word of God, Who has created me for what I am and will forever be?

Salvation is yielding fully to the truth that we are Spirit. We accept our part in God’s plan for salvation, accepting everyone and everything exactly as they are. Spirit reveals the eternal tapestry, and we recognize that which is eternal is unchanged, unchanging, and unchangeable. Spirit understands that no manipulation of circumstances, or acquisition of more, or self- improvement is necessary to "attain" the peace and happiness that is available NOW. The Kingdom of Heaven not only at hand, it is NOW. The Kingdom of Heaven is us. How could we not want do our Fathers Will once we see the truth of what we are, united as One.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Lesson 113:

I am one Self, united with my Creator…

Serenity and perfect peace are mine, because I am one Self, completely whole, at one with all creation and with God…

How delicious it is to just sink into this thought and leave all other thought behind; feel the serenity we always sought, restored to awareness at last… Ah, the perfect peace of resting in the Self, our brothers one with us, united in our Creator…

This is our one Self, beyond the strategic, finite mind, into the infinite Mind of God, where we are, as one with God already that completeness we sought. Our wholeness unquestionable…. Couldn’t you just rest here forever? So peaceful, so lovely, so endless is its contentment… as, yes… and the point is, we are… And now we begin to see…

Here it is now; plain as day. This is the premise now. Never need we leave this quiet home, where Heaven’s song sings the lullaby of stillness along with the beating of One heart~ the rhythm of perfect calm… It is within ~ it is our being….

At home in God~ in One Self, we see the world of illusions as one illusion. Each gift of forgiveness, offered to each other, for our Self, unfolds the insubstantial nature of all we have designed within the dream. We come to see how this whole so-called world with all its variations, are really one thought; the thought, “that God’s Son could be other than what he is as God created”.

It was one error in thought; a tiny, mad idea of other-ness, fantasized in horror and seemingly left to fend for itself. In that instant where the perfect flow of light and joy and peace seemed to have faded to the background, a seeming problem appeared within the mind, requiring one solution. God gave the one answer: The Atonement: “My sleeping children, awaken and be glad, the nightmare and all its seeming effects is over… I am your Father and you are My Son”.

The Atonement shows the entire universe as One Mass illusion, whole and unified. Levels and degrees dissolve into miracles, which have no order of difficulty. The belief in time, with all its intervals and uses collapse into the timeless present. With each gift of forgiveness, we accept the oneness of the Son, and the belief in comparisons, differences and opposites are released to its single truth…

Now, don’t get me wrong here, I’m not purporting that life’s not going to seem like a mad-house, at times, and sometimes, a lot maybe, seemingly worst than ever… What I am saying is that at this point in the ACIM curriculum, our readiness has placed us such that we have actually available, the option of remaining firmly grounded within Self within our mind, while our forgiveness lessons play out on the ‘big-screen’ of life.

We have this solid base of safety to rest in while we forgive each ‘other’ back to unity. This so-called life doesn’t have to be personal any more.

Even when we get a craving for specialness or someone to blame, something to fear or worry about, we don’t take need to take the death pill... We simply remember our faith in our one Self…Salvation comes from my one Self ~and trust the Atonement principle is in full effect along our way.

The recommended format for practicing this lesson review, where we spend our 5+ minutes when we wake, reviewing with the Holy Spirit, the two thoughts for the day and sinking into their meaning and then visiting the first on the hour and the second on the half hour, really assists with grounding. Don’t you feel?

This is where the laughter we are due can really come in handy to keep our path light.

It seems for me, some days (a lot), that all that remains is the laughter. Maybe left from when we forgot… It seems ever-present, somewhere in the background of my mind,

As I have given over my thoughts for correction, I have come to see that every thought that substantiates the reality of this seeming world and cosmos, if followed back to its starting point, past its circular reasoning that keeps it looped in, results in the light of the awareness of its absurdity, and dumps out in the cosmos of laughter. I laugh.

All the silliness of worry and fear and regret and anticipation, once given the ‘free ride’ on forgiveness back to their origin, end up in the “Big Cosmic Belly Laugh” (labeled by me) …

Salvation comes from my one Self… From my one Self, Whose knowledge still remains within my mind, I see God's perfect plan for my salvation perfectly fulfilled…

We need do nothing, except not to interfere. All our efforts are in-spirit-ed toward the goal of recognizing the truth. We can laugh at the futility of judging what that looks like, in the little details of our lives now given over to Self…

It is a perfect plan and we are each ‘the one’ that makes its completion possible. How could I not trust you now? How could I not place my faith in you to do your part? Indeed, my full appreciation is the gift you deserve, and the one I gladly give. For we are one Self, united in our Creator and we are not alone… Thank-you! Thank-you! Thank-you!