Saturday, June 30, 2007

Lesson 182:

I will be still an instant and go home…

Home and stillness reside as one in my mind; resonating together in a feeling of timeless peace. It is this state of being, that backgrounds the so-called experience of this life on earth. Through practice, such as we are directed to do today, we recognize what was and is, always, already within us.

Each of us has felt the exile of believing the world to be our home. Feeling alone, we have comforted ourselves with the adage that at least we are all exiled together… Yet, deep inside, we know we belong to something beyond our small and muted grasp… Yet too, a haunting feeling in the mind, an intangible memory of what we can’t be sure, but have a sense we should know, somewhere in our mind is present… Even when we sufficiently critical-ize the specifics of our so-called lives, so as to distract ourselves sufficiently from the ‘haunting memory of home’s presence in mind, the distraction is temporary, its rewards limited, and we are left hungering for our permanent home, beyond what we now experience, where we can rest at peace forever…

Each of us has felt the innocence of the beckoning child within, and responded from a source beyond person-hood consciousness, with a tender sense of being its protector. Have we not? We might not have put words to it or even consciously allowed ourselves to be present with this inner-innocence described in the lesson today, but as we read it, we recognized its presence within us; felt at home with its message, yes? There is a quiet knowing that this we must do although we might attempt to ignore, delay, even deny its presence, we still respond with the protection due the sacred… true Self-protection, till we are willing to know our own… Self…

This is the Self we can trust; this child of innocence within whose very innocence is our power, defenselessness, our strength. Each moment which we devote to the practice turning our minds to the stillness within, it is this child-Self we rest in, beyond…

It is this still presence we know and re-familiarize ourselves with through our practice and we begin to see the way within us. As the lesson says:

“And now the way is open, and the journey has an end in sight at last. Be still an instant and go home with Him, and be at peace a while….

Friday, June 29, 2007

Lesson 181:

I trust my brothers, who are one with me….

I was just reading what came up for me when I did this lesson last year. I could easily flash on the so-called experiences of that story of past. And you know, it was surrounded in the light of forgiveness. What I recall, is the way I changed my focus and the transformation of my brothers and myself into sinless beings, all doing our part. That’s a yummy miracle. The thing is, most of what I look on today shines in that same light of forgiveness and sinless freedom. So much of what I call my life has taken this lamp from which I see. But there are moments. There are those moments when the temptation to feel unjustly treated, or to see another or myself as ‘wrong’ in some silly way, catches me off guard.

I am filled with only gratitude for the practice, lessons such as these provide; always returning, re-tuning me, re-minding me to instantly re-member to shift focus back to sinlessness. I look around me and I see only the reason why my seeing your innocence is all I want... You are my Self. I cannot see anything about myself beyond my assessment of you. Has anything but the letting go of judgment ever satisfied? No. And truly, could any of the trumped up charges and defenses the ego satisfies itself with even remotely come close to the feeling of peace and timeless surety replaces it. Forgiveness offers everything I want.

Today, I want only to trust you, my brother, who are one with me…

I pledge my full devotion to experiencing only our sinlessness. Let ours be one will, to experience only the innocence inherent to God’s Son, in everyone and everything. We are Christ after all. We are as God created us. And we are free.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Lesson 180:

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

As we wrap-up this review of lessons, a still, over-presence of our true-being: LOVE holds us steady from within and beyond in an identity so lofty we dare not attempt to describe it as to fall too short, but which we feel securely in an irreversible awareness which we recognize as our Self; the Self we share in God, the Self of Love’s extending itself unto itself.

Ah, it is a feeling of profound peace and beauty, yes?

GRACE…

By grace I live. By grace am released…

We have had the fortune to experience this first hand, if even in a microcosmic way, throughout the application of this series of lessons sponsored by the ultimate truth thought:

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

Can we now accept that we have come this far together and left our old identity behind? And though we may feel tenuous in our identification with our true-identity as yet, we have been graced to feel its magnitude which asks only our faith to maintain. That is our faith in the Self the Holy Spirit holds safely for us; to recognize every seeming situation or problem in our life as the call-for-love it is, and answer it with the love that heals.

We need but allow Him to remind us when temptation to feel unjustly treated arises, that there could no reality in our mental-meanderings of unfairness~ It is a concept inconceivable in the Mind of God:

There is no cruelty in God and none in me…

Let us refer all such irrelevancies to Him to handle for us. That is His job. Ours is to allow the truth to dawn by forgiving all that interferes with the Light in which we have our being~ the Love that we are…

God is but Love, and therefore so are we…

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Lesson 179:

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

It’s interesting to watch the mind in all its gymnastics, try to avoid single focus. Have you noticed? Just declare one single-minded thought as a sort of point-of-reference hub, and the monkey mind will attempt to take you anywhere else, yes?

It’s also interesting to watch how, gently, another force is at work in mind; a strong, silent force, gently redirecting, re-minding, and waiting with the power of truth… haven’t you noticed this as well? With a little willingness to allow Him, we find our minds back on purpose, identifying with the thought of God ~Love~ Life… As a matter of fact, at this stage, we feel restless in our own minds and feel peace, only when we have allowed ourselves to give up our own thinking in favor of His.

Actually, once we have decided that our own thinking didn’t serve to bring unwavering peace and joy and happiness, and we ask for a new teacher for our mind, the path is set; we will re-member our Self as the Love that God created as Himself…

Some place inside we continuously feel that tickle for the truth, yes? Always have. It’s a sort of relentless, “slow down here, you’re missing the point”, kind of feeling…

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

It is our belief in the ego thought system, purporting the ‘death-around-the-next-corner ‘ scarcity act, that keeps us distracted and deflected. Yet we feel this tickle anyway, just behind all the busy mind-ruckus, yes? Something like, “this just might not be the whole story”... None of us are without it, deep within.

Each of us, at some point, stop for a breather, however brief, and declare, “There has got to be another way…”

And that is just the invitation needed for the Holy Spirit’s Voice to take the lead as teacher within our mind. His Voice is still and full and uncompromising in Love; saying essentially, through every tiny symbol we offer Him, “Teach only love, for that is what you are.” Then he shows us the way to do this using the very mechanics we used to screw ourselves out of our true-life experience, to unscrew us and grace us with a fullness and peace unforeseen in even dreams.

I keep thinking about the simple, few, powerful, and uncompromising lessons of the Holy Spirit, as described in lesson 6 of the text, which I joyously refer us to for reading in conjunction with today’s lesson: The Lessons of the Holy Spirit.

We are always placing our faith in what we want to believe. And at times, we take a leap of faith to believe what we sense we must know… These moments are enfolded in grace. We leap off the cliff of thinking-we-know- into the abyss of all-knowing grace. Grace asks but our willingness to claim it as ours to recognize its ever-presence…

Your grace is given me. I claim it now…

Reality has reentered presence of mind. And you know; there is nothing you can hold against reality. Love stands, unchallenged as all that is

In His Grace, we give up and rest, in this single truth:

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Lesson 178:

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

Let not my mind deny the thought of God…

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

I am entrusted with the gifts of God…

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

As I was meditating with today’s lesson, the section at the beginning of chapter 11 called ‘God Or The Ego’ seemed resident in my mind. This entire section of the text is perfect for review and study in conjunction with the lesson for today. The following is excerpted from it:

Nothing alive is Fatherless, for life is creation. Therefore, your decision is always an answer to the question, "Who is my father?" And you will be faithful to the father you choose… If you were not part of God, His Will would not be unified. Is this conceivable? Can part of His Mind contain nothing? If your place in His Mind cannot be filled by anyone except you, and your filling it was your creation, without you there would be an empty place in God's Mind. Extension cannot be blocked, and it has no voids. It continues forever, however much it is denied. Your denial of its reality may arrest it in time, but not in eternity… The laws of the universe do not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for you. If you believe you are absent from God, you will believe that He is absent from you. Infinity is meaningless without you, and you are meaningless without God. There is no end to God and His Son, for we the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you yours… God has given you a place in His Mind that is yours forever. Yet you can keep it only by giving it, as it was given you. Could you be alone there, when it was given you because God did not will to be alone? God's Mind cannot be lessened. It can only be increased, for everything He creates has the function of creating. Love does not limit, and what it creates is not limited. To give without limit is God's Will for you, because only this can bring you the joy that is His and that He wills to share with you. Your love is as boundless as His because it His… Could any part of God be without His Love, and could any part of His Love be contained? God is your heritage, because His one gift is Himself. How can you give except like Him if you would know His gift to you? Give, then, without limit and without end, to learn how much He has given you. Your ability to accept Him depends on your willingness to give as He gives… Yet what you will you do not know. This is not strange when you realize that to deny is to "not know." God's Will is that you are His Son. By denying this you deny your own will, and therefore do not know what it is. You must ask what God's Will is in everything, because it is yours. You do not know what it is, but the Holy Spirit remembers it for you. Ask Him, therefore, what God's Will is for you, and He will tell you yours. It cannot be too often repeated that you do not know it… You cannot be happy unless you do what you will truly, and you cannot change this because it is immutable. It is immutable by God's Will and yours, for otherwise His Will would not be extended. (T-11.in.1; T-11.I.3-10)

~L O V E is what I am. Therefore, love is the answer; love is also meaning for each seeming happening in my life in time, which has denied the truth. So if love is the answer, what is the question? The ego thought system imposed the first question, “what am I?” Then bombarded the mind with a myriad of ‘special answers’ designed to distract the mind … This must be the hypnotic mantra that lulls the mind of the perfectly complete, into a dream of fragmented mazes and puzzles. The flipside of the ‘what am I’ coin however, is the fear of finding out…

What a racket, eh? What a freakin’ trap the ego has set! The ego convinces us that we have to hide ourselves from ‘The Rath’ for the guilty~ as if we were guilty! And we bought it. So we go blindly about protecting our lie-self from our Self (which alone knows Love to be itself in God)…

And where did the seductive ego-lure originate? With the idea that one could make a life apart from God, which could only represent what God and all creation is not. ~Death~ Since God is all life… It seems ludicrous when you look at it honestly. But like the Course says, the ego never looks at anything honestly.

It also reminds us though, that the belief that there is another way of perceiving is the loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable and that is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is not the Self… This is why it is so crucial to question the validity of what we believe; question every value that we hold within the dream… and chose once again… Beneath the covers of the false identity, which the ego dream has pulled over the mind, sits the quiet knowing of the truth. The inevitable dissatisfaction with the dream of ‘being the boss of a world in which you’re the victim of it, begins to ruffle the bedcovers, and we just have to take a peek into the light… Deep in the center of the mind, rests the Holy Spirit, unmoved by the false, awaiting but our slightest invitation to realize the truth of what we are and who our Father is.

Each aspect of the dream, He has already given a new interpretation, which awakens and unites. Every shade and color; all persons and situations are seen as elements of healing the split-mind and re-member-ing the One Son of one God, the Father… This ability for full remembrance and awakening is always already within us awaiting change of mind… We are, after all, the dreamer of the dream of ‘not remembering who we are’.

Let us not deny the mind of God…

We deny instead, the denial of God, and accept the Atonement for ourselves… This allows us to recognize…

We are entrusted with the gifts of God…

And now we give as we were meant to give; through extending the love that we are. The happy dreams forgiveness render reflect our joyous, one purpose; bring to present-mind, the love of God, which is our one self…

Monday, June 25, 2007

Lesson 177:

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

This glorious premise we practice; where all is love, and only Love, gives life and meaning to and for you and me, keeps everything so very simple. From the Love premise, extension only, is seen as life’s creation. I am so very grateful for this dedicated series of lessons… deliberately resting in the belly of LOVE…

It’s funny, in all the times I’ve gone through the lessons and their applications, always, what I am looking for, I find. Here’s an example; I’m going along yesterday, feeling absolutely yummy, grateful, good, and one with everything: imperturbable. Everything was going my way, as usual.

So, I get this phone call. It’s like premise-slide; and I instantly I am no longer thinking or feeling, I am being thought and felt-up by the premise I allowed. The premise is dictating a spectrum of responses appropriate to its design.

Each premise comes complete with its own thoughts and feelings; each true to the core of the premise. Once the premise shift is made in mind, one is at the mercy of it until one chooses again. FLASHING-RED-FORGIVNESS-OPPORTUNITY!!! Whatever it is within my thought system that I am still vulnerable to sliding into, represent my forgiveness lessons. How glorious it is to see this immediately, and what’s more, be grateful for it…

Only one premise is true: LOVE: abstract, changeless, formless, eternal oneness…

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

Everything else is some form of the death-script, authored by the belief in the time/space reality. Every judgment, every need to be right, is a choice that death be true. Death is the belief in the possibility of being in competition with God for authorship of reality. It plays out in every call for love in this world; from preferences, to threats, persons to events. It is survival by way of scarcity and specialness. Doesn’t that sound insane? It certainly does to me as I rest here in the premise Love~ as I am.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

As we recognize the false premise with which this world takes it meaning, and choose once again, the truth, bringing each illusion; each forgiveness opportunity back to the premise of Love; the Holy Spirit within our mind, we are restored to the peace beyond this seeming world of shifting tides, to the ocean which is creation. We find that we are at home already.

Now we are one with Him Who is our Source…

Simply…

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Lesson 176:

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

Let us, together, sink down into this statement; past recognition of the symbols and their assigned meaning. Deeper and deeper, let us sink deeper still, beyond and through and unto our Self… Here, we rest at last ~~ or rather: resting~ is…

Give me your blessing, holy Son of God…

In this world of seeming myriads of experiences, one allows for me to discern illusion from truth. It is the experience of ‘peace~ which passeth understanding’ that I feel when I say YES to you wholeheartedly; when I choose you without reservation, as my necessary companion in the so-called journey back home. It needn’t matter how long the encounter; each encounter is a holy encounter; each a critical piece of the re-member-ing of my place in the Sonship. You are the blessing, which reflects back to me the truth of what I am. Without you I could not know my Self. You are the screen in which I see the beliefs I thought I believe or/and the Christ-Love that forgives them all…

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

When I tune to this one thought and allow for it to ease my mind and dissipate my busy-body monkey-mind into the ethers of the nothingness in which they originated, I find I rest with you already, for l am… It is here, in the still peace of Love, I have my being, all is the body of that being… It has no individual, only oneness….

I am as God created me…

I receive your blessing, offering you mine, and we are one. We experience the truth behind this statement only as a result of the leap of faith into the pull we feel within it, to re-mind ourselves of the truth…

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…