Saturday, June 2, 2007

Lesson 154:

I am among the ministers of God…

We are appointed Now! This is what the lesson says, telling us that mere arrogance on our part to continue to play small and set the world up as a fearful place of competition and loss. His message is not just that these states painful states and painful time is over, but that pain and separation were but a dream of falsehood. We are reminded how far we’ve come in the curriculum and how much we still have to learn. We are given the perfect tool to assist us. We don’t judge it, but merely accept our function as messengers of His Word, by receiving it first ourselves. We give only what we have to give.

Will we wait to receive and therefore fulfill our function by bringing the glad tidings of guiltlessness and purity to those appointed us for our delivery? We need seek not for who or what or when as messengers our ministry begins, our part was cast in Heaven and cannot be understood through the mind that made this world of hell. This is the happy news of enlightenment which forgiveness brings. We need not decide if we are worthy yet. Just to decide to accept our ministry, Now!

And like the lesson says: “We cannot judge ourselves, nor need we do so. These are but attempts to hold decision off, and to delay commitment to our function. It is not our part to judge our worth, nor can we know what role is best for us; what we can do within a larger plan we cannot see in its entirety. Our part is cast in Heaven, not in hell. And what we think is weakness can be strength; what we believe to be our strength is often arrogance. The Voice for God, Whose function is to speak for you, chooses and accepts your part for you, is not deceived in what you are, and listens only to His Voice in you….God has joined His Son in this, and thus His Son becomes His messenger of unity with Him. A messenger is not the one who writes the message he delivers. The role of Heaven’s messengers, which sets them off from those the world appoints, is that the messages that they deliver are intended first for them.”

How simple is salvation! I but accept the Atonement for myself. I am as God created me and you and I are one in Christ. This recognition brings a feeling of overwhelming peace and all-encompassing Love. Whatever does not feel this way, or interferes with this flow of perfect peace, in any way, is merely a forgiveness lesson. I recognize by the way I feel, that I have misinterpreted the situation and choose again. My role is to decide for the Holy Spirit within my mind and accept His replacement of love instead. My ministry consists of the people and situations I encounter in my life. It is they with whom I am to share the compassionate message that only truth is true and what seems painful, fearful and worrisome was merely false.

Let’s not waste one more moment wishing our particular ministry was not filled with disenchanted ‘special’ or failed relationships and wish we had something ‘better’ or easier to work with. This is as good as it could possible get. It has been done. Only the Holy Spirit; the Voice for God, has the entire blue-print; the Whole picture, from the so-called beginning to end, which is its completion in God.

We but look back upon it with Him, dreaming we make the journey but once again…. Let’s not waste it, but let time itself collapse into the miracle of our Father’s plan for salvation of and for our Self…

YES. We joyously accept our appointment among the ministers of God, today, as we say:

“I am among the ministers of God, and I am grateful that I have the means by which to recognize that I am free.

The world recedes as we light up our minds, and realizes these holy words are true. They are the message sent to us today from our Creator. Now we demonstrate how they have changed our minds about ourselves, and what our function is. For as we prove that we accept no will we do not share, our many gifts from our Creator will spring to our sight and leap into our hands, and we will recognize what we received.”

Thank you for joining in our holy function.

Friday, June 1, 2007

Lesson 153:

In my defenselessness my safety lies…

I didn’t realize just how exhausting living life in constant defense was, till I dropped dead in my tracks, so to speak; I realized I had literally been on guard all the time, ready with reasons and rebuttals and explanations and justifications virtually all my life. I came to it like learning the English language. It was the language of my family and their family before them.

When, at last, in defeat, I realized that I simply, was wrong; that I didn’t after all, know anything about anything. And man, what a relief ~ finally room to breathe. How can one catch a good breath and relax in peace when the story of life one is living in is one of constant justification? And why is this so?

The story, simply, is not the truth. All of our belief in and identification with it will not ever make it so. Our commitment to our story can at most, distract the mind; keep its attention busily tied-up on one chaotic fear, or guilty secret within the dream story. But it will never change the eternal love of God from which can only be, the whole truth of what we are.

I love this statement of truth from the today’s lesson: Choice is always made between Christ’s strength and your own weakness, seen apart from Him. Defenselessness can never be attacked, because it recognizes strength so great attack is folly, or a silly game a tired child might play, when he becomes too sleepy to remember what he wants…

I can’t begin to tell you just how much I resonated with this feeling of being too tired to be sane; fighting for a cause long forgotten, driven on by some elusive need to have been ‘right’. Half the time, I couldn’t even get a fix on what the real issue was, and even when it seemed I could, it turned out something was always not quite settled, always in need of defense.

It’s funny, as far back as I remember in my so-called life; from the first moment my bare feet hit the ground, I was haunted by the feeling of fear; unreasonable, indefinable fear, a sort of free-floating anxiety of being found out. Like any day now, I would go to my day and the jury would have convened and ‘judgment‘against me set. It would go something liked, “We have found out you are not what you say you are. You are a fraud and you don’t belong here. Get back on the bus and go back to where you came from. You are not wanted here. That’s when the horrifying aloneness would swallow me into the abyss of the nothingness from which I must have come, because anywhere else, I didn’t know.

Trying to be a member of a club that would not have me as a member, as one of the Marx brothers put it is extremely tedious. It required tenacious, vigilance to maintain this constant defense of my right to be here, while simultaneously trying to earn it through the jumping through hoops and selling of soul, and other initiation flogging… All, to pay the price of admission to an alien club (world). I never felt safe. I never really got a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow was never really another day…

As it turns out, none of us belong, here… We are at home in God, safe in his loving thoughts of His holy Son. This Sonship, created by God was given by membership of each and every aspect of creation as One. And it is a life-eternal membership…

What a total relief to give up the useless journey; to let die that which was born and feel life at once forever real. In life alone I am safe and sure. Life and joy are one in the same and give meaning to mistaken beliefs, reinterpreted from the dream of death.

Their shadows are seen in the darken corners of my atrophied mind, through the continual warm and present light of the love mind-sweep, lighting and restoring strength. Defenselessness is resurrection to life as love would have it be. I cannot see a reason to defend, when everything has been set expressly for this one purpose, salvation sets.

Innocence is my inheritance and you are all, the honored host that brings the gift of my Self to me… I have no need for defense, for there is no enemy within my mind anymore ~so none that I would need to project out upon a world which now only serves to unite with my Self…

I am free. I am as God created me, eternally safe and at peace, eternally one with you, my brothers, united in our Father’s Love…

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Lesson 152:

The power of decision is my own…

We see what we believe and we believe what we want to be true. This is what suffices in this world of illusion.

Yet only the truth is true and nothing else is true. Today’s lesson states: Truth must be all-inclusive, if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely.

I decide one thing within this dream; to view from the experience of oneness and innocence, accessing the Holy Spirit within mind, seeing as the dreamer of the dream, or I decide a worldly view, as a small character within the dream, alone. Literally everything that seems to happen in my world happens due to my decision. If I was not decided by me, it didn’t happen. And if it seemed to happen, I decided it was so. There is not someone else here making decisions, making up my so-called life. There isn’t anything else, at all, you see… There is only the truth. And truth alone is actually being/existing/ creating…

Now, within the realm of consciousness (which the Course tells us was the first split of mind), where the power of decision resides, and the seeming separation story began, made by our decision to split. My decision…

I decided to divert my attention from the truth to illusion. I decided to then to forget that I made that decision and decided to see myself as victimized by it instead. The focus of the mind in consciousness is entirely my discretion, based on what I believe I am. And what I believe I am is based on what I want it to be.

How do I know what I want my experience to be? Look around~ I’ve got it. If it seems I am a victim of a world outside myself~ that is the experience I want instead of truth. Period. ~Like captain Picarrd of Star Trek, I said: “make it so, and so it is… This is the power of decision. The power of decision is our own.

However, as the lesson states, we are in truth beyond consciousness: The power of decision is our own. And we accept of Him that which we are, and humbly recognize the Son of God. To recognize God’s Son implies as well that all self concepts have been laid aside, and recognized as false. Their arrogance has been perceived. And in humility the radiance of God’s Son, his gentleness, his perfect sinlessness, his Father’s Love, his right to Heaven and release from hell, are joyously accepted as our own.

So powerful are we that nothing can be beyond the all of everything that we are….

Let’s be honest with ourselves, not one of us, absolutely cannot identify, deep within, with the essence of the message of this lesson. It asks only that we come clean with ourselves and cop to our arrogance, and accept instead our holy station as co-creator, all mighty, all-powerful and humbly only the truth.

Truth comes present in our minds where it never left, the instant we decide for nothing else. This requires that we claim what we know is so; to the power of decision being ours, perfectly extended as creation in and through us. We can misuse this power and mis-create or make a images of illusory experience, in consciousness… and lord knows we have… but we cannot alter the unalterable, perpetual, wholly complete creation of God the Father and His holy Son, constant; eternally all that is… It is whole mind that decides … and decide it must…

The power of decision is my own… This day l will accept myself as my Father’s Will created me to be…

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Lesson 151:

All things are echoes of the voice for God…

This is the one perspective worthy of the Son of God, yes? Even repeating this statement slowly as the lesson instructs, invites us to feel expanded within, allowing us to sink past all meaning prior to this instant. We use the words only as a springboard request for the Holy Spirit to flesh out meaning purposeful for our lives. Sink deeper with me as we move beyond the familiar of this moment in time, leaving time behind… Feel the ever-present belly of holy witness~ We know this witness, already, naturally. It was only denied by diverting our attention from certainty to disparity. Sink back into mind to rest in meaning, letting it find its place of truth within us, simultaneously bringing forward the recognition of the Self.

This Self-sense is a not quite tangible in the usual sense, yet real in an all-encompassing, filling the gaps kind of way. It is an unlimited spaciousness, which bestows safety, a quiet resting in the certainty that we are indeed what we are exactly, completely, wholly as God created. The strategic mind cannot get a hold of this, so it relies on mindlessness techniques based in fear and guilt, which we relent to and habitually ignore this awareness of our Self. But rather, robotically plug into the matrix of the strategic, egoic play, which then details out through the body’s senses and the regurgitated memory bank the to-do list we call life. This then becomes what we see and hear, already fixed with the mistaken meaning believed … We find our strategic mind cannot be trusted as a source to know the Self.

“Where can one find a reliable, consistent source for meaning in a situation rendered meaningless, when ones own mind cannot be trusted? How can one possibly see this differently?”

Ask and you shall receive. I ask, and meaning arose of itself… It’s peculiar, even from the beginning, I had this sense that I had a different perspective~ some portal, somewhere deep within myself that would reveal a completely different picture of the world ~ if I could just access it… meanwhile, there were these obligations and experiences always buoyed up with that ‘last change or else’ mentality to keep them in the attention slot of my mind. I don’t know why, but for me, the realization of finding myself in a self-made prison of hell, made me more receptive to the possibility of another way…

Today I see that lessons learned through joy come easily and heal permanently. A major contrast in experience apparently was necessary for me to be willing to relinquish being right. Major. However, just this little willingness, regardless of what it took to get there, has truly opened the portal, the Holy Spirit manages.

My doubting the legitimacy of my what my experience was telling me was my ‘real life’, was enough to show me the entry to the portal where truth lights the world with gentle recognition of Christ seen everywhere in everyone.

It whispers softly a belonging so complete and whole, I want to listen up for my brother and my self to hear one message we all share, through every voice and in every situation: “We are as God’s Son, created by Him and still as He created us as one”. This joyous reinterpretation, this portal of forgiveness, comes quietly to the mind stilled for a moment by the release of thinking ‘I know’… Its essence is one of recognition that … all things are echoes of the voice for God…

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Lesson 150:

My mind holds only what I think with God… I will accept Atonement for myself… only salvation can be said to cure…

We accept Atonement for ourselves, accepting God’s plan for salvation in replacement for the one we made. The Atonement is the way for salvations accomplishment. It is the only cure for all that sickens us and seems to make us weak… accepting God’s plan for salvation re-minds us that this sick and weakened and frightened body cannot be the truth of what we are. It brings gently to the mind a way a perceiving the world we made that is truly familiar; feels natural and joyous to us. Where we once felt, “my god, the blind is leading the blind, here…” where there seemed that there was nowhere we could find reliable direction, interpretation or peace, before us unfolds a peaceful trusting-ness, already in place…

Beyond this world beckoning correction and awakening, the truth rest quietly; seeping peace into every thought requesting it truly. The Holy Spirit within our mind merely waits on invitation with the cure, the Atonement. We forgive and the truth sets us free. Truth needs no defense because it has never been in conflict. Forgiveness sees in every situation its holographic contribution to the wholeness of all. It looks past all illusions into the mirror of brother to see one Self

Here’s a section from the manual for teachers, which says again that salvation and Atonement are one in the same: “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. Partial Atonement is a meaningless idea, just as special areas of hell in Heaven are inconceivable. Accept Atonement and you are healed. Atonement is the Word of God. Accept His Word and what remains to make sickness possible? Accept His Word and every miracle has been accomplished. To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there, then, he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him?” (M-22.1-12)

Only this return to the truth of our wholeness in each other and God can cure the mental madness of the illusion of a separate world. Finally, we remember joy … “Indeed! Mind holds only what we think with God!”

Monday, May 28, 2007

Lesson 149:

My mind holds only what I think with God… When I am healed I am not healed alone… Heaven is the decision I must make…

I make is decision for Heaven now, always, and you are there with me. The decision for Heaven is the decision to be healed from our belief in hell as a possible choice.

In chapter 4 of the text, Jesus talks about our relationship with Heaven in a very real sense: “It is hard to understand what "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you" really means. This is because it is not understandable to the ego, which interprets it as if something outside is inside, and this does not mean anything. The word "within" is unnecessary. The Kingdom of Heaven you. What else you did the Creator create, and what else you is His Kingdom? This is the whole message of the Atonement; a message which in its totality transcends the sum of its parts.” (T-4.III.1-8)

This is why we are not healed alone. This is why when we accept the atonement for ourselves, which is another way of saying, “I decide for Heaven”; we accept healing, the only place where it can be found, for the whole Sonship. Only Salvation can be said to heal because all sickness has its beginning and end in the belief in separation, which is hell. All Healing must have at is core, then, one purpose. This unified purpose reacquaints us with our eternal oneness, which characterizes the mind that holds only what it thinks with God.

“The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen.” This is the prayer Jesus gives us to bring us back in touch with the truth of our being and the power of our united mind. Later in this same section of chapter 4 in the text, further clarification and assistance in dealing with the ego’s tempting persuasion is stated: “In your own mind, though denied by the ego, is the declaration of your release. This one fact means the ego does not exist, and this makes it profoundly afraid. In the ego's language, "to have" and "to be" are different, but they are identical to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit knows that you both everything and everything. Any distinction in this respect is meaningful only when the idea of "getting," which implies a lack, has already been accepted. That is why we make no distinction between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of God… The calm being of God's Kingdom, which in your sane mind is perfectly conscious, is ruthlessly banished from the part of the mind the ego rules. The ego is desperate because it opposes literally invincible odds, whether you are asleep or awake. Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to protect your ego, and how little to protect your right mind. Who but the insane would undertake to believe what is not true, and then protect this belief at the cost of truth?” (T-4.III.9-10).

The logic the Course presents addresses so poignantly the absolute truth within; it is virtually irresistible to the mind that seeks the truth. I am constantly, profoundly moved by the simplicity of the Course’s message, as well as it ability to give my analyzing ego mind some compulsory intellectual satisfaction for which it show up and serves; (since ego is the vehicle I have to work with). After all, it is here (ego-belief-mind) where healing takes place, since Heaven is a state of pure wholeness. We make the decision for healing and for Heaven, and the Holy Spirit marshals all forces in Heaven and earth to realign our will with God’s, which of course is our Will as well, being only all that is.
I am overwhelmingly grateful to join allegiance to healing, together as one.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Lesson 148:

My mind holds only what I think with God… When I defend myself I am attacked… Sickness is a defense against the truth…

When read altogether, this reads like:

1. Here we have the truth about my state of being. We are the thoughts of creation God created as His Son. These thoughts have never left the mind that created like Himself. Therefore, this state of being has never left the source for which its healed whole perception can be found; forever one with the eternal and the changeless, the loving and complete. 2. Any thought which seems to have a cause and/or effect that has not these eternal characteristics therefore can only be imagination and not real, being foreign to the Mind of all that is in truth.

3. These foreign thoughts are dreams and when believed to be reality, one identifies oneself with the false effects of a false cause. This is mental illness.

The Course says that all illness is mental illness, and from the perspective of ‘One Cause’, its relatively simple to see that this must be so… All physical characteristics of what we call sickness are the next layer of the denial of Source, to believe instead the impossibility that what is not sourced by God could source a world of all the opposite characteristics to those inherent in Creation; which is changelessly eternal forever.

Here we have the authority problem; up-front and center. It is this desire to be special instead of everything that constitutes the run-down of countless reasons to take a defensive posture toward everything we have now made in our minds.

Coming out of nowhere, this world was sponsored. It is not the truth. It is therefore, impossible to ground in the truth of what one is, as long as the belief that the false is true remains a more real presence to the mind, than the truth. No wonder it always feels like problems such as viruses, cancer, disease, arguments, disagreements, anger and defeat, (ad infinitum) seem to come out of nowhere. I mean, did anyone ever get up one day and say “my plan for today is that everything will go wrong”, yet how often have we said at the end of the day, “ everything went wrong that could have possibly gone wrong. An unreal source sponsors an unpredictable outcome. No wonder constant defense is required to maintain the ‘special status’ this world of nothing promises. These are defenses against the truth.

As long as we constantly occupy our presence of mind with pain-in-the-ass illnesses (and it’s always something, yes) we aren’t available in presence, to remember the truth instead. If the ego can just keep everything in this world coming at us with the ‘last chance, life or death mentality’, and we believe it’s real, we operate from a hectic program of survival mode and are unconscious to the really laughable state of this dream figure’s trials ~we are identified with them instead.

As truth returns to presence of mind by our willingness to see the impossibility of the false, we feel ourselves dis-identifying with the dream figure and its trials. We recognize ourselves as the dreamer of the dream, instead. We laugh, as the course says, when its quaint absurdity is seen. The need for defense is seen as just another aspect of the program of the false-reality, which is meant to dupe the mind of God’s Son into staying asleep and on guard….

Ah, the constant oxymoron of this world… We realize that all defense of the false, attacks the presence of mind and limits what we allow available to know the truth. So why defend, eh? It is only playing a role that separates us from the awareness of our reality. As is sickness… the entire world was made to defend against the truth. And whenever we believe our life depends on defending our little ‘whatever-ness’, it is just a forgiveness opportunity and we are just a little willingness’s reach from total safety and peace, within the mind that already holds only what it thinks with God….