Saturday, July 21, 2007

Lesson 203:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me.

I call upon God’s Name and on my own…

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Today, as we slip back, beyond the mind, into the pull of the Great Love; (the very possibility of mind and consciousness where the dance plays out) let us allow ourselves to feel and receive the deliverance this lesson is truly brings. We will, if we want it truly, and nothing else. Yes must mean not no. We lay all judgment, not just aside, but in the Holy Spirit’s hands; give it fully unto Him whose job it is to transform the ‘special’ into the sacred. Let us immerge from this sacred time devoted to the truth, not only refreshed and renewed, but as the ministers of the message of deliverance we receive.

We call upon God Name and on our own.

Everything we look upon, we see with vision or the body’s eyes (which is not really seeing, but projecting the program from the brain of its dictator). When we truly call upon God’s Name, we are deciding for vision. It is all or nothing. We either choose to hostage to the ego or host to God.

We have taken the leap of faith. We have accepted we are what reason tells us could only be: WE ARE AS GOD CREATED US. This is the Word of God. We have heard His call; and we have answered. And we are no longer alone. We are among the ministers of His Word and we accept the Atonement for ourselves…

In deepest gratitude and great abiding joy, we thank everyone in every situation we encounter, for the holy encounter with our Namesake. For the chance to forgive and see differently. For the chance remember who we are through accepting them as they are: not a body, but free, with us, as God created it to be.

And I thank you, forever and ever, now…

Friday, July 20, 2007

Lesson 202:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me.

I will be still an instant and go home.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

“There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten; where no memory of sin and of illusion lingers still. There is a place in your which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard. There is a resting place so still no sound except a hymn to Heaven rises up to gladden God the father and the Son. Where Both abide are They remembered, Both. And where They ere is Heaven and is peace… Think not that you can change Their dwelling place. For your Identity abides in Them, and where They are, forever must you be. The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of it creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within.” (T-29.v.1-2).

Imagine that at any moment, you could just slip off into paradise of total peace and bliss.... You can. It’s called the present moment.

What this lesson is reminding us, is that we can experience this any time we choose. It’s saying, “How’s Now”?

It is a decision of the state in which we want to be. It is a wholehearted decision and can’t be made half-massed. We either want Heaven and the peace of God, or we want hell. In other words, what I am saying is that, if we are telling ourselves that we want Heaven yet don’t feel it is being given us, we are simply still harboring fugitive values in this world of hell. We are still valuing the belief that there is something outside our Self that can determine our experience of life. I like how the Course addresses this as a parallel to childish dreams. They make up characters and pretend the rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and talk and think and feel and speak for them. Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the minds of those who play with them. But they are eager to forget that they made up the dream in which their toys are real, nor recognize their whishes are their own, when in nightmares, it seems the toys have turned against the child who thought he made them real.

This is just how we do it, isn’t it? We experience said situation; say, you’re waiting at the amusement park, watching your child riding rides. It begins to pour rain. Those are simply the facts of the situation; the ‘innocent’ or neutral facts of the situation. It’s what is. Now, what if you don’t like it when this happens; what if you have a belief that rain will spoil the fun, or your hair, or you just plain don’t want it to rain, what happens? Does the rain back off? See, we give life (outside our self) to the object of our attention, with our judgment of it. Does our irritation change anything; but perhaps our sanity to insanity?

What if we remain in the present moment; totally, joyously accepting, without expectation, whatever happens?

This is the practice of ‘being still an instant and going home’. This is how we do our part in practicing the holy instant, till we have no more resistance left, and God can enter and the holy instant can be given us by God. For we are ready to receive…

Now, I am not talking about how we love certain things seemingly in this world, its only natural. We love what we make. Just as God loves what he created. We made the ego and with it a world opposite to Heaven in everyway (or it would be Heaven, wouldn’t it). So it must be a dream…

The thing is that we also cannot be apart from what we are; which is as God created, which is Heaven and home. We are the love we experience in this world. The joy and love and happiness we experience are infused by our being. Form has only the function we give it. It is our dream. We are at home in God.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me.

and

I will be still an instant and go home…

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Review VI:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Lesson 201:

I trust my brothers who are one with me…

The idea: ‘No matter where I go, there I am’, unfolds a much more intimate experience, the closer we get to truth. The further we go through the maze of false ideas, discarded for their lack of meaning, the more we begin to appreciate the little quirks of others seemingly around us. They too, begin to be seen with that pleasant oneness feeling you have at times with yourself and those you know you love. Like when you realize that you unconsciously hum when you’re happily going about your daily work without resistance. Or, the way your child always tilts his head a certain way, when he want to be taken seriously or when your husband gets excited over a show he’s seen a hundred times, just as if it were the first and he doesn’t want to miss anything… We allow love to flow unimpeded through our relationship with these quirks, because we deem them trustworthy of our faith…

We aren’t seeing the form at these times, but rather, have let all judgment be replaced by acceptance and love… What we begin to notice, is that all the judgments we held so dear, as some kind of protective device, are no longer of value to us. Seeing another as ‘a bitch; out to make my life miserable and screw me over”, is an idea so ridiculous to the mind given over to the Holy Spirit, that one can only double over in laughter at its absurdity. We are learning to recognize instead, that these kind of thoughts, and all the milder ones like it, are merely nothing. They are part of the false thought system to be brought to light and forgiven…

Anything that can change is false. Therefore, the body idea we came into this gig with, is part of that. We are beyond. We are One. And oneness cannot be divided. We were; before birth and death and ancestry dreams flooded the mind of God’s Son. We are one with our Creator. We are free. And we are still as God created us.

The reason these words are so appealing to the mind, is simply because they point to the truth. And we are not without some memory of it now.

We can’t dispute the beyond, in favor of the specks of dusts we see before us as reality. We are the life within…

So when we look at, think of, interact with anyone, it is this same life within; the One Life we share, that we are interacting with. As we begin to accept this unequivocally, it is easy to trust our brother, who is one with us. If we want to, we will. The question always comes down this: What do I want: what do I value and how much do I value it?

I like this beautiful reminder from chapter 13 of the text:

Behold the Son of God, and look upon his purity and be still… in quiet look upon his holiness, and offer thanks unto his Father that no quilt has ever touched him…

I like to use this ditty when I am tempted to judge, or already have, but know that I must restore us both to sanity within my mind instantly, to maintain the peace that is mine.

I trust my brother, who is one with me…

I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me…

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Lesson 200:

There is no peace except the peace of God…

The search is over. Halleluiah!!!

All the bvll-shit efforting of pretending we are getting something out of nothing, today, let go…We no longer need hang on to the false just because we have invested so much in it and it seems terrible to waste all that investment ...yada, yada… simply because we did not know how to see because our purpose was based in falseness? Please….

There is the peace of God and nothing else… the peace of God… we all come this moment of truth, one way or another, sooner or later… It seems always that this awareness comes when all other avenues have been exhausted, and come up short. In this world, it is the beginning opening, of innocence’s eyes; when defeated by rightness and trying and right ways and wrong ways and goods and bads; we give up, too empty to even ‘know’ what we are looking upon… And here, the Holy Spirit enters that emptiness and makes itself home in peace…

We have all felt it. The peace of Home… (If only for an instant)… Yet, it is a feeling so very familiar to our being… because it is our being… It’s not so much a slipping into peace, but rather a slipping out, yes? Like it has been trapped there, imprisoned by our faulty thought system and its purpose for us and the world. Making us see ‘the survival of the fittest’ where there was only the abundance and peace of God. There is no peace except the peace of God, because He has one Son who cannot make a world in opposition to God’s Will and to his own, which is the same as His.

It is this one recognition, which we all come to, that sets the course for all the rest.

As it did with me a not so many years ago, when I wrestled to the death with the mind of guilt~ and lost... Abandoning it all, I accepted the miracle (the Atonement for my Self) and with it, the truth of what I am. Suddenly, I could see, for I was not alone in my seeing, and would never be alone in it again. With the Holy Spirit, I see all the sonship as one; hear his voice echoing in the innumerable calls for love, harmonized with Love’s halleluiah chorus, of gratitude and joy… Stable in the peace of God, I share a single purpose and a mighty companionship with you… Thank you for joining me with today’s halleluiah message taking the lead:

There is no peace except the peace of God,

And I am glad and thankful it is so…

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Lesson 199:

I am not a body. I am free…

The Course speaks to the Self that is not a body. It speaks a language that this ‘beyond Self’ is somehow familiar with and drawn to in indefinable way. And yet, for some of us, it is so compelling, that the ‘real’ it points to becomes the only honest direction we can possibly take; and still face ourselves and our lives from its on-coming forward…

It is the infinite, inward journey; exposing its vastness as we expose the false in the light of truth. It is the journey of de-body-ing. Where once the body, and therefore the world at large, was a stable comfort zone, the recognition of Spirit within uncovers its instability in light of an indelible beacon of truth within. Within, we find a Self we perhaps weren’t aware was there, but nonetheless, recognize its works in bringing us this far. Reality as we knew it begins to take on a sort of dematerializing essence as our framework starts to shift. We begin to uncover that ‘reality’s’ solid nature was proportionate to our belief that it was true and that what we see out-pictured, was first in our mind, made solid by our attention to it. As we begin to question every belief and value we ever held, we see the body is the central theme of all the false, and beyond the construct of bodies, we find the truth.

For me, its pull to return home, to the seat of freedom within mind, where the Holy Spirit resides is so overwhelmingly compelling, that absolutely, as the Star Trek saying goes; “Resistance is futile”.

When I recognized the light within, it was so brilliantly true that I had a sense that if looked at it too long; it might burn off all that I now knew myself to be. I think I was right. “The Incredible Lightness of Being” can not be seen with the body’s eyes. But it can be brought to light through the body, when the body is used as a communication devise for truth. The Holy Spirit brings us on a much more gentle path of awakening, one in which we can get our footing back after the upset to our belief structure at each step along the way.

Somewhere inside we all remember and really know that bodies are not what we are in truth. Although we may not have a ‘solid fix’ on who we are in truth, our faith draws as forward and inward toward the match with the great Love in which we have our being. Free-mind lights our way as we practice, in gratitude, today’s lesson:

I am not a body, I am free. I hear the Voice That God has given me, and it is only this my mind obeys…

Thank for joining in…

Monday, July 16, 2007

Lesson 198:

Only my condemnation injures me…

Always an inside job isn’t it.

At least now I easily know where to look, when the idea of injury arises. And, what’s more, I do turn within readily, steadily, to the stillness of the Self; that imperturbable constant, that when turned toward, makes the path of forgiveness not only viable, but present and obvious. From the seat of Self, one looses the concept of injury and unfairness of others, as it is silently dissolved into the single path forgiveness lays out.

Forgiveness is the path of present time, folding up behind itself. The prison of past error is no longer valid. Freedom arises in its stead, lit by the lamp forgiveness shines. Every turning of the mind back around to the source of light within, allows us to see the light before us.

Only our belief that something other than love could be; that illusion might replace the Source of all; and our catching our breath at the absurdity of such a thought rather than laughing at it’s absurdity, could temporarily catch us up in that ‘tiny tick of time’ we call our life. It’s the big cosmic belly laugh. Any thing, belief, etc, looked upon with vision, loops back around to the same zero point of eternal love…

We are beginning to see it now, and choose once again. We are on the bridge across the worlds: it is forgiveness. Just like the chosen words representing today’s lesson:

Only my condemnation injures me.

Only my forgiveness sets me free…

Each situation, circumstance and person is the hand we hold in which we cross over together, purifying our minds back to the truth of our innocence with each choice to see or brother as our Self, to take accountability rather than blame, to forgive and see this differently…

Now is the time for our deliverance. The time has come. The time is today…

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Lesson 197:

The gift is always in the giving of the gift. The desire in my heart to share, to extend; this is where the gratitude begins and returns. And it is as natural as breathing when the gift we extend is one of truth. There really is no ‘give to get’, yet all the ‘special’ relationships of the world are based in this idea. It’s a bargaining, based on mistrust. All the external appreciation is never enough, ever. We can’t really let it in anyway. We have not made a place for it with our own gratitude where it can be received as it is given. Gratitude is the feeling that comes with feeling the Self. Even when we aren’t aware of it, something matches up and we feel seen (envisioned). It is and has always been the way, and now we can recognize it. We can receive only what we have made the space for within, by giving what we want to have. Nothing else is going on. All externals are a reflection of our state of mind, there for the purpose of re-turning the mind to truth.

As we choose truth as our only goal, as we choose forgiveness as the means to accomplish it and happiness as the way to experience it, gratitude comes of itself. Gratitude floods in and washes over us and heals our fragmented ideas of relationship. All relationship is a mirror of the one I have with my Creator and my Self.

As I begin to see the fraudulency of the entire ‘false world’ as a state of being; the belief in separation; separated persons in a scarce and competitive world, in subject and object and birth and death, and simply turn my mind back around to where it always wants to be, the joy of that decision alone, is overwhelming in the gratitude I feel. And when looking out upon the seeming world at large, again, from this high place, how I can feel anything but gratitude for all the reflections I see everywhere and in everyone? You are my only chance.

I wouldn’t miss it for the world (pun intended). Thank you, thank you, thank you…

I’m thinking of this poem by David Whyte, which feels right to wrap up with:

REVELATION MUST BE TERRIBLE

Revelation must be

terrible with no time left

to say goodbye.

Imagine that moment

staring at the still waters

with only the brief tremor

of your body to say

you are leaving everything

and everyone you know behind.

Being far from home is hard, but you know,

at least we are exiled together.

When you open your eyes to the world

you are on your own for

the first time. No one is

even interested in saving you now

and the world steps in

to test the calm fluidity of your body

from moment to moment

as if it believed you could join

its vibrant dance

of fire and calmness and final stillness.

As if you were meant to be exactly

where you are, as if

like the dark branch of a desert river

you could flow on without a speck

of guilt and everything

everywhere would still be just as it should be.

As if your place in the world mattered

and the world could

neither speak nor hear the fullness of

its own bitter and beautiful cry

without the deep well

of your body resonating in the echo.

Knowing that it takes only

that one, terrible

word to make the circle complete,

revelation must be terrible

knowing you can

never hide your voice again.

David Whyte from Fire in the Earth

Thank you, thank you, thank you…