Saturday, June 16, 2007

Lesson 168:

Your grace is given me. I claim it now…

The grace of God is the present moment experience. It has a tangible distinctive quality; free from pain, pleasure, guilt or worry. It is the real, experienced behind the scenes of this so-called world life. Grace is the subtle resounding “YES-ness” within us, always, already; ultimately disputing the ego’s time/space philosophy and acting out.

Not one of us has not felt it. It is not some whirlwind, sweep-one-off-their-feet rescue from Spirit-super-hero like ego stories would have us believe. It is the quiet presence of the truth beyond, which is within. It is the very substance of the Supreme in which we reside and have our being.

“Spirit is in a state of grace forever.

Our reality is only Spirit,

Therefore, we are in a state grace forever.” (T-3.6)

That distinctive validity we experience when mind is focused totally in the present instant; absent from agenda, dismissed in personality, but present in Self, is the experience of grace. It is the experience through grace of Heaven on earth.

Can we really have a problem in the present? Think about it. Problems are the making of time’s agendas and cease to exist at the absolute zero-point, the actuality of Now…

In this world we are the willing soldiers of the king of time and illusion; allegiant only by our decision to believe. Withdraw belief and we withdraw our allegiance from the dictates of time. Withdraw our belief and where do we find ourselves? Here. Now. Grace is where we find ourselves: belonging, and forever real. Withdraw our belief in the ephemeral and claim God’s eternal gift of grace…

“Your grace is given me. I claim it now. Father, I come

to You. And You will come to me who ask. I am the

Son You love.”

Each holy instant of accepted truth in place of the false, by any brother, is for all, now. We are the One. We are the One Son our Father loves. And we cannot but be graced… ~ACCEPTED= ATONEMENT~

Friday, June 15, 2007

Lesson 167:

There is one life, and that I share with God…

Here’s my take: God is~ and therefore I am… God is what life is and all creation can but be the material of which its Source supplies… I live because God is, and lives in me. I know my being as the experience that life is, in this, the present moment…Yet to relay this experience already removes it from the present and reality itself. There are no particulars of past, present by which to give description…

Still, this life force, this ever-living presence beats constantly the truth of what I am and what sourced my very being.

Behind the dream of a sleeping mind that makes pretend of me instead, rhythmically pulses the truth, while mind imagines it uses life for dreams of opposites, with the idea of death running neck and neck with life. These are the kissing cousins of the ego’s ingenuity… I love what it says in chapter 7 of the text:

“The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it stems from the very power of the mind the ego denies. This means that the ego attacks what is preserving it, which must result in extreme anxiety. That is why the ego never recognizes what it is doing. It is perfectly logical but clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source that is totally inimical to its existence for its existence, fearful of perceiving the power of this source, it is forced to depreciate it. This threatens its existence, a state which it finds intolerable. Remaining logical but insane, the ego resolves this completely insane dilemma in a completely insane what. It does not perceive its existence as threatened by projecting the treat onto you, and perceiving your being as nonexistent. This ensures its continuance of you side with it, by guaranteeing that you will not know your own safety…. The ego cannot afford to know any thing. Knowledge is total and the ego does not believe in totality. This unbelief is its origin, and while the ego does not love you, it is faithful to its own antecedents, begetting as it was begotten. Mind always reproduces as it was produced.”

What represents the idea of life within this ego dream has in its genetic material, the signature of death. Every scenario is played out to see which one is fittest. Within the ego framework, neither the idea of life nor the idea of death, when brought to the test of present Life; stand up as real. They don’t vaguely resemble life eternal, which is the very substance from which all creation, you and I, have our being.

Spirit is life expressed through mind and here we reside.

It is the very power of creation; the breath of life, which the ego borrowed from the willing to believe, that gave seeming ‘reality’ to the dream of time, in the first place.

However, God creates only mind awake. Period. And time is not real, no more does anything that God created not, exist at all. The mind is free to make up innumerable scenarios of life expressed, temporarily snuffing itself out with every thought which Love did not give life, but never will it change Love’s verve~ Spirit~ cursing through and as creation, as God has Willed. Creation has but One Life, the one it shares with God. We are invulnerable to losing this life: we gave it not to ourselves and nothing we can fear or believe can alter the eternality of the Life from which our being came. Today, let us forget the meaning we subscribed to life in this world of sleep and wake up to truth eternal instead. We know its being, for it is our Self. We join being in the thought of eternal Life; the One Life we share together with God the Father, Source of all life itself…And it is here, now, that we reside…

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Lesson 166:

I am entrusted with the gifts of God…I love this paragraph from today’s lesson (makes me weep in gratitude). It says it all… “God's Will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His Will. There was a need He did not understand, to which He gave an Answer. That is all. And you who have this Answer given you have need no more of anything but this.”

Love extends itself. This is what I have noticed. God, being love, is my reason for being. How can I be anything else? How can I separate out all that Love has extended and call that a self, except in my imagination. It is simply impossible that all is not one. One is the gift, the giving and the receiving, which created what I am… And within the ever-living presence of His Love, God could only but trust the natural proclivity of the gift to continue the completion cycle set forth by love…

Anything else is but imagining; vein imagining at that. One comes to realize when Christ is recognized that the Self we share as one is the only reality that resonates as true… This realization may seem to take place while one seems to still reside within this world of imagination and illusory states. Yet, the recognition takes place beyond. It resides in the still eternity of Now; the holy instant of suspended personal thought, in utter dis-identification of the body-mind… Here the fullness of eternal-Mind disentangles from the obligatory self. In this holy instant reality is known, complete with all gifts given and received… This world is not the Will of God, and so it is not real….

Christ imbues this recognition indelibly in the mind… And when we seem to return to the dream as a daily reality, there is a presence in our mind we can no longer completely ignore… He walks with us along the road in transcendence, lighting the lamp of forgiveness on the path of our return to knowing our eternality. We have a sense (although we may heed it not, much of the time) that there really is nothing to fear. This is enough. As the lesson states… One walks with you Who gently answers all your fears with this one merciful reply,” It is not so.” Over and over again the steady reply rings through the falsity of what we seem to see, dispersing its effects, making way for vision to rest in its place… We see that we need our brothers to reflect the face of Christ, which we now recognize has given back our true identity to be summoned to presence of mind… We recognize Christ and remember…

In this world where separate parts pick a number in the office of “Forgiveness Rules”, we come with open hands, in holy gratitude, whose magnitude is too big for this world to contain; we summon our brothers and all situations and circumstances. We are entrusted with our Fathers love and the One Voice we can really hear; that we might see ourselves. We see first the false to be revealed and transformed, unveiling time and time again only the truth of what our Father Wills that we are… Our will, being one with God’s, becomes apparent. We develop but one single desire: to do God’s Will. So, naturally we begin to trust all circumstances, events and people as precisely necessary for its fulfillment. We become devoted to giving the gifts we have been entrusted with. Joy is the result of this devotion, as the natural consequence of gratitude. We simply cannot help ourselves. Filled to the brim with joy we set forth on our mission to bring the light of Christ to every mind that has drawn the shades and thinks darkness real. We know it is not so and that simply by shining the light… darkness is dispelled. We know also, that this joyous mission, like unto the extension of God’s Love which gave us life, is how we keep the gifts we have received, in present awareness in the mind… We have no other desire… The presence of truth is irresistible and ultimately, inevitable… We go forth in fearlessness today, entrusted with the gifts of God, knowing his plan for salvation rests safely in our hands, for Christ is directing the show… We are all in this together… We bless, for we are blessed…

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Lesson 165:

Let not my mind deny the Thought of God…

The Thought of God ~I am… Nothing else. Why deny it? Ultimately, resistance is futile… It is what I am ~ and only that… It is through the grace of miracle-mindedness, inherent in accepting the Atonement for my Self that this is possible, now. You are what I am~ the Thought of God. My acceptance is yours and yours mine…

And we are no longer wholly insane. By accepting the Atonement, we have become miracle workers in this world… The Course tells us that the task of the miracle worker is to deny the denial of truth. I am convinced that this is singly, the most significant assignment for the mind that still finds itself at all vulnerable to seeing itself as split. We deny the denial of truth rather than the Thought that gives us life. And that one moment is our holy instant of release~ we are aware that God’s Thought is what gives our life is. And love is the limitless Being-ness left as experience…

Love is the Source that created like unto itself, and we are here, resting in the truth of the Self as One, and nothing else is really happening at all. In this holy instant of now, reality rests in the spirit of being.

We are fulfilled, feeling the completion in this Thought that gives certainty to identity and peace of mind so thorough, there is no question to give answer to. We accept therefore the reality of creation; regardless of the vain imaginings we have called ourselves. Irrelevant are these identities which are displayed on the screen of the world-theater, where the characters wear the costume of a body amongst many bodies in a multitude of different personalities and separate interests~ Where, in the next moment we seem to have forgotten the truth about our Self and our Source, and take the drama to be our life, for real. We take the characters problems to be in need of solving, for survival of the fittest and conquest and acquisition and sickness and death ignite our senses with textures designed as nearly impossible for the ego identity to ignore. The bitter taste of fear rests at the back of our throats, while its cold loneliness pumps as blood in our veins. We stand convicted and wish for hope to rescue us from the dense and taut existence this character is condemned to…well, death ~It is that irrelevant drama which at last we wholly deny and deny not the Thought of God ~well, life…

The thing is, we have seen the light… If, even only for an instant; perhaps an instant distant in mind, that we can’t really put our finger on, but it is there. Somehow, we know it is there, and somehow it increasingly lightens the burden of pretend reality. We see from beyond. And what we see is simply that we seem to be junkies of fear, subject to the confusion rendered by that familiar drugged state of guilty fear with its insane definitions and interpretation of what reality is.

Yet, we can no longer wholly agree with our belief that what this medicated state of mind represents is what our life is, in truth. Yet, the truth rests quietly, patiently, within, awaiting but our desire for it. DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH! Simply this is required to slip past addictive-repetitive-past-no-thought.

Let not my mind deny the Thought of God. This thought is not only everything we ever wanted to know about ourselves, but everything we are… it is our very life! And here, in this so-called world, we are a mirror of truth, in which God Himself shines in perfect light.

When the temptation to deny the Thought of God and seek the dark enticing alternative; the ego’s relentlessly murmurs to the mind, we quietly respond, “I will not look there because I know these images are not true”… We lean back and let the Holy Thought of God shine on us in peace, knowing that His and only His Thought must be. The compulsive pull to deny it subsides and the ultimate familiarity of the peace of God pumps through our veins, the memory of truth…

We are the Thought of Love God Created as His Son; with us always, defining us always, giving us vision to see and power to create… Let us not deny the Thought of God. We are joined in purpose and we cannot fail~

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Lesson 164:

Now are we one with Him Who is our Source…

Now! It is here (now) the Call for love to answer itself rings true and through and as the mind of Christ within us all. He has called and Christ has answered. We are Christ as One… Our Fathers only Son… And it is NOW we recognize our oneness with His Love…

Only now can we be known. Christ is the meaning of sight, and the means as well, reflecting truth upon the world. He is the capability to hear and the joyous call and answer, with the meaning of Who are. It is Love we remember here today~ the love that is our Source and our Self as well.

The lesson asks we practice with earnestness today… Yet, are we even sure what this means? Hasn’t our earnestness been filtered through the images of what we dreamed-up that Christ experienced would be?

Such is the on-going questioning brought to my mind in times gone by; the ever questioning of the ‘not enough’ personality trait. Yet, this was my earnestness, as best I could offer… Somehow, I learned to offer this questioning as part of the package of ‘me’~ as well as the desire to perfect myself first (duh, isn’t this exactly what the Holy Spirit’s is for?)… It was clearly a worthiness issue, which just boils down to the continuing ‘competition with God’ aspect of identifying with and believing in the ego, making it seem real within mind. The good news is: it is not real. This lesson gives entry to the parting of the curtain of this belief revealing the truth beyond. The lesson itself, gives clear and present instruction for its accomplishment, NOW: “Open the curtain in your practicing by merely letting go all things you think you want. Your trifling treasures put away, and leave a clean and open space within your mind where Christ can come, and offer you the treasure of salvation”

Once again, the passage is encompassed in the all of all which is this present moment, this holy instant, where Christ alone is restored to presence in our mind. It is enough to do only what is asked… The purpose and its accomplishment reveal themselves the instant we remember not to think we know; remember that we want nothing that the past ‘knowing’ valued, nor the gifts ‘being right’ promises… They have failed us. But He has not. Beyond and within the instant of pure presence, Christ, stands as you, and myself; as one Self…

Our true identity experienced now literally dispels the world and its so-called life as identity, from mind completely, this holy instant. Life itself shines pure, as we accept our own identity in Him. Where once the ‘separate’ identity seemed so real, in its stead, the ever-present expanse and wholly unified identity of Love, accepts Christ’s account in its place… unending, Now…

The gifts received this day, reflect this identity everywhere, in everyone. Its message is the one to hear and guides all actions to visit it upon all situations and circumstances: we are as God created us…

Thus the world becomes the reflection of returning to the truth, before the dream of beginning and end; where only Now is the only time, and love the joy judges all as wholly worthy and wholly healed… We are the One! And now, are we one with Him Who is our Source

Monday, June 11, 2007

Lesson 163:

There is no death. The Son of God is free…

There is no death. The Son of God is free… I am as God created me…

Glorious is this uncompromising truth. It but restates yesterday’s lesson in a formula that threatens the core of the ego’s rule. I was the ego’s fantasy and not our own which sought to conquer God and take His place as ruler of our the Son’s mind…. It is not true.

The ego (E-edging G-God O-out) is merely a set of beliefs which exclude God, oneness, changelessness, love: truth. It is the dream of the impossible, identified with while dreaming perhaps, but completely ludicrous when awakened. This lesson speaks the language of the ego to the mind that listens only for the truth. It simultaneously undoes the belief in death, which we so cherish by fearing it, dissolving it into the no-thing-ness from which it came.

I am as God created me! There can be no death since God is Life Eternal itself, creating only like itself… All the perpetual appeals, with countless variations of the death trap, are the ego attempt to convince God’s Son of what he is not.

It is crucial to accept that the ego-thought-system (e.t.s.) is not real, but merely a program in the matrix of the dream mind. What we are in truth resides beyond, in our Being.

The e.t.s. relies heavily upon the addiction operating system in the body-mind program, which is tuned to belief in the false… Once a belief is set and accepted, the mechanism of addiction with its obsessive, compulsive drive to numb the mind of any other option runs every thought through the filter of its king. In this world, the ultimate proof of its reality is that it ends in death. And no one questions the inevitability of death’s eventual sentence upon all creatures, great and small. It is the first thing we learn when we are born, through the fear for our fragile safety by the ones who love us. It is reinforce and substantiated in every decision made for us and by us… Can I make this choice and survive the grip of my demise? Sure we dress it up as millions of other choices and shallow it up within our minds. But honestly, doesn’t it get down to this?

We say the two unavoidable entities in this life are taxes and death, putting the spin of jest on it… Yet in the despair center in our gut, we mean: there is no avoiding the tax of death visited upon our lives as the temporary, the fragile, the inevitable weakening of the seemingly strong. We mistrust all relationships because we accept on some level that each must be truest to its own survival and on this one count, in the end, anyone else could need to be sacrificed. This is the state of fear which the program runs through the veins of the body, as the blood of life… And, once identified with it as our self, all we can do is distract and deny and attempt to stay one step ahead of death within our minds. We make elaborate plans for the future. We break them down into ten year, five year, one year, next month, this week, today segments. We design and develop and train and test and re-evaluate… We join in clubs and groups; religions and countries to make our position for survival seem stronger… We try to keep the enemy of our demise “out there”.

This is the hopeless dirge of illusion: Nothing will ever work to save us from deaths door… God has been replaced by death, perhaps, done in by death as well. Death will spare no one…That is not its function, not what it was made for. It was made to replace the memory of life eternal within the presence of mind of the Son of God. And that is all. Never has it shown any signs of truth. It is truth’s nemesis, yet it battles only with itself, on the battleground leased from the Sonship through the willingness to believe… And that is all.

Once willingness has been withdrawn and the mind of God’s Son commits his willingness to its natural place in truth, illusions of life; of birth and death, and all others in the dream of separation from our Source, begin the forgiveness transport back to no-thing-ness. Awakening has begun and questioning of illusions validity co-ordinates revealed and energized… Now the return to the memory of life eternal takes its rightful place baring the qualities of inevitability.

“God is”… becomes the text-over where residual self-image was within the happy dream, due to the dreamer accepting responsibility for the dream… The happy dream of forgiveness shines the memory of love and ceaseless joy within our hearts. Our eyes and ears and hands and feet become the instruments of Christ, reminding us of our reality.

The dream of death is but the shadow requisitioning forgiveness… The eternal smile of Christ is spread across the face of the One Son in all, as far as one is willing to see… And when we look upon our brother we see ourselves; blessing and receiving and saving each other with the single heartbeat our Father joined us with and gave that we may know ourselves and the Son He created by the bounty of His Love…

I thank you my brothers for the irresistible light of life within you, shining so brilliantly as the Christ identity we share, that no character the ego comes up with or could ever present, could ever convince me that it was more that just dream beaconing forgiveness’s touch upon it. All I hear behind the raucous story-telling of our so-called lives is: “Come forward and take my hand, we walk together you and I, side by side, with Love lighting the way for our return from the long useless journey that was never more than imagination.”

And here we have today’s blessed prayer upon our lips, to speak of, and to, our devotion to Life Eternal~ God is Life and we are free:

“Our Father, bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything. We live and move in You alone. We are not separate from Your eternal life. There is no death, for death is not Your Will. And we abide where You have placed us, in the life we share with You and with all living things, to be like You and part of You forever. We accept Your Thoughts as ours, and our will is one with Yours eternally. Amen” ~Thank you forever more ~lovedanét

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Lesson 162:

I am as God created me…

Holy indeed are we who make these words our own; arising with them in our mind, recalling them through the day, at night bringing them with us as we go to sleep… This is all that is asked of us today in practicing our lesson for the day. We begin aright by bringing our minds to the Holy Spirit‘s guidance with these simple words, the word of God: I AM AS GOD CREATED ME.

The lesson says that these are the words God’s gave in answer to the world we made and that by them it disappears; that all things seen within its misty clouds and vaporous illusions vanish as these words are spoken. For they come from God… Now that is some kind of declaration!

I am as God created me…. Just repeating the words brings peace to mind. Contemplating the apparent truth of them truly dispels the petty insecurities of the self-concept in favor of the Self; the Son God created always as Himself.

I am as God created me~ This is the one truth. It is a statement I am wholly connected to in meaning, dependent on for reality, and holy in my value. I honor life with this truth. Whenever anything seems to tilt off-kilter, this statement is a sure restorative to peace and to right-minded thinking and to the vision of my brothers as myself.

It stands to reason that developing the habit of engaging with God through the means provided by Him; from first waking till sleeping with our true identity in mind, is an important habit to develop.

I’ll tell you how it is for me. This practice has become a fixed part of mind. Whenever I experience any disturbance to my peace of mind, I immediately think, “What I am seeing cannot be who I am or who you are. We are as God created us. What I am seeing must be within an illusive mind I have mistakenly identified with, which I give now to the Holy Spirit for correction and restoration to truth”. The disturbance, without fail, dissolves back into the emptiness from which it came.

Making these words; I am as God created me, and indelible habit of mind is crucial. They are the word of God, the short-cut Home, connecting us instantly to the one truth available in this world. It is, simply, why we are here.

We practice simply today, honoring our Father, our brothers and Self with our holiness till we recognize our right to perfect holiness and offer it habitually to everyone… The light dawns today and blesses all, for we recognize we the Son of God: I am as God created me…