Saturday, August 4, 2007

Lesson 217:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

I can be but my gratitude I earn.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Appreciation is the best of all feelings… is it not? Whether you are looking at a sunset or holding your child in your arms, thanking a friend for a favor or a stranger for assistance, or joining together in a common cause for the salvation of the world. Whether that salvation looks like Katrina relief or some other physical coming together, or the commitment to persistent forgiveness of every thought we ever had that hurt, and letting the miracle wash over our vision, clean it up, and cause a new perception. It is the feeling of gratitude in the end that makes us feel unified and identified with those around us. ~ And, aaahhh, the joy…~

You know what I am so grateful for that goes along these lines? I am grateful for a healed perception from one that teaches that the world is somehow outside myself and I am at the mercy of its dictates, to one where all seeming minds are One-Mind, the one we share with God. That Mind thinks only thoughts of Creation; with love at the base, extending and receiving in full appreciation, returning in kind and extending again…. And on and on….

I am grateful too, that because this is the only thing that could be real and it is what I am. (And I know it by the resounding cha-chink that rings the chorus of joy throughout my being as I tune inward to the Oneness that creates or makes-up worlds…) On the same note, I am so grateful to bare witness to the fact that the false is always false; all the pains and frustrations and pettiness and competition and scarcity and sacrifice and worry and guilt ~ well, fear in other words, are but nothing; merely given the semblance of life on illusions screen…

Every single thing you say or do, or not, shows me what I think I am… what the texture of my current belief structure is, and where I am in my forgiveness lessons. If I am experiencing anything but appreciation… its time to offer the situation and all involved, to the Holy Spirit for reinterpretation and healing… It’s so simple and always works, every time to restore my mind to peace…. Thank you, thank you, thank you… for we are the One…

Friday, August 3, 2007

Lesson 216:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

It can be but myself I crucify.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Surely, we have all gotten honest enough with ourselves by this stage of the curriculum; to not only recognize that we can do nothing to ‘someone else’ that does not directly give the same feeling set to ourselves, but also, to begin to take that awareness into consideration while making decisions. Yes?

I know for me, the consequences of even the slightest lean in the direction of other-hood; victim-hood, attack, defense, causes a level of discomfort to my integrity, so intolerable as to demand an accounting from me, usually prior to any acting on the negative thought. And, of course, I can never justify it. What the Course says; ‘anger is not justified in any form’ is living, breathing, reality for me… So too is the fact that forgiveness is always justified.

You know what used to always hook me up in the past, and then loop me back around and around the merry-go-round of ‘not quite getting-it’? “Why”. Asking why, thinking I needed to understand why something happened or why I was a certain way; why someone behaved or felt ~whatever. As if… as if these why-items were at all real, yeah? Hello! There can be not understanding in insanity. Duh. “Why”, I noticed, basically resonates in the domain of the ego. Every time I want to know ‘why’, I am just searching for a target to shift my 100% responsibility for my life experience on to. I am attempting to escape accountability…

Of course, that is impossible. And the way I feel, always reminds me of that I am wholly responsible, and brings me back to the truth for my answers. I get what I give. There are only two emotions in this world; love and fear. And of those only one is real. Only one of them feels good; joyous, happy and free. Love sets me in alignment with my Self… Forgiveness is the alchemy that takes any seeming difficult or differences-latent situation and transforms it into brotherhood, oneness and the peace of God.

And that all the ‘need-to-know’ I need to know, to do my part. Thanks for Joining me.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Lesson 215:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Love is the way I walk in gratitude.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Haven’t you noticed that the slightest attention to gratitude opens the floodgates that heretofore (through judgment or some kind of pushing against) were holding love’s awareness at bay? Just the mere notice that you are learning an important lesson that you would not be learning without this exact situation, which you were, just a second ago, pushing against and gratitude seeps into the cracks of your defense… And that feels so much better than resisting, that the next thing you know, powerful, all encompassing love comes flooding through and your entire perception of the situation begins to change.

This is the miracle…

The Course tells us that appreciation is the only proper response to a brother. Well, when you think of it this way, not only does it make sense, you can feel the pull into love’s open arms, which, by the way, we must share, to keep in it in our awareness.

Pretty cool how God has this thing set up. Being completion itself, God’s creations must be one. In the dream of separation, where the Atonement was needed, God placed the key to awakening within relationship.

TRUTH: The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator. If it we elsewhere it would rest on contingency, but there is nothing else. And this is wholly loving and forever.

So, here, in this so-called world/life, we invented what the Course refers to as the Special (or unholy) relationship. The first is being all inclusive, could not be found in bodies, which were made to separate-out. It further points out that any relationship in which the body enters is based not on love, but on idolatry. Love wishes to be known, completely understood and shared. That is its make up, its God DNA so to speak. It can’t be any other way. It has no secrets; nothing that it would keep apart and hide. It walk in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome and in sincerity so simple and so obvious it cannot be misunderstood. (T-20.v1. 1-3, 2.4-7)

Gratitude is the easy release-button out of the dream of being unfairly treated, all manner of trumped up expectations and faulty planning… It is the built in ready-access button to leave our perception’s world and all we thought it was, and enter the Holy Spirit’s healing realm; where Love’s never-ending relationship with us reminds us what we are and what our brother is as well.

In this dream of otherness, our awakening to oneness lies within our brothers; and we cannot get there without him…. I, for one, cannot express the deep gratitude I have for each of you… Yet, I gladly honor you each day with love so complete as to bridge our path back home to our completion in God... Love is the way I walk in gratitude…

The Holy Spirit is my only Guide. He walks with me in love. And I give thanks to Him fro showing me the way to go.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Lesson 214:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

I place the future in the Hands of God.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

We always hear, and maybe even say; now is all there is… Now is the only moment in which we can truly live. How real is that for us? Will we, this day, this moment, place the ‘future’ in the Hands of God? Apparently, it wasn’t ours to begin with. So what’s the beef? I know, in my own experience of this so-called life, that the very deference to timeline; past, now, future, places me in a position of impotence, ~now~. I can’t make a legitimate decision about what is and what I want to do with it, from the reference vantage of the past/now/future. Because, time and space are meant to be used in service of Spirit; which is only~ now. What I’ve seen, is that when I am attempting to make decisions based on what I have learned in the past, I am really attempting to not decide. I am attempting to not be accountable for right here, right now.

This is the way the ego mind likes it; use guilt from the past and threats and promises about the future, to seduce my mind in to relinquishing its decision making power. I know. I have fallen prey to its seductive antics; feared them, and believed them, and gave myself temporarily to their addictive pull…. It was nothing, in the end. It was death. Which too, turned out to be ‘nothing’...

“I am responsible for what I see.

I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the

goal I would achieve.

And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for,

And receive as I have asked”... (T-.21.11)

When I place my decision making in the service of Spirit; this present moment becomes fully alive for me, and all manner of resources seem to appear within my field of vision, which previously alluded me. Also, I am unconcerned about the so-called future; I know that no accident or chance is possible within the universe as God created it, ~outside of which is nothing. I decide for happiness, now; I give the power of decision to the Holy Spirit, Whom is consecrated by God to decide for God for me.

Yes… I place the future in the Hands of God, for in the now, I feel my Self; alive and creative:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

What God gives can only be for good. And I accept but what He gives as what belongs to me…

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Lesson 213:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

All things are lessons God would have me learn.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

The truth is true and only the truth is true. This is the simple lesson which is at the core of all the miracles, or lessons God would have us learn in place of we made that hurts. Simplicity is very difficult to twisted minds, so a restorative of peace, from judgment, is necessary for us to hear the Voice for God.

God’s Will for us is perfect happiness.

The course tells us to learn to be a happy learner. And that to do so, we must give everything to the Holy Spirit, so we can see that what we valued was really ‘nothing’. And, it says ‘be not content with nothing, for you have believed that nothing would content you. It is not so’. This surrender of everything is the beginning of our learning the joyous lessons that come quickly on the firm foundation that truth is true.

Every lesson is one that teaches us what false beliefs we have peopled our world with and where healing can heal our misperceptions. So the first guide to realize a lesson God would have us learn is right here, right now, is that we aren’t feeling perfectly happy. Yes? The next obvious step is stop doing whatever it is that we are currently identifying with, seeing it must be false if we are not happy, and recognizes the opportunity to choose once again. We forgive and see things differently. Previously perceived difficulties become simplicity seen as the lesson God would have us learn. And the miracle replaces all error in our minds.

Anytime we think that what is happening is about persons and bodies and things, and time and space; we have another opportunity to recognize that God’s lesson is within this very situation, if we but ask for the miracles we are entitled to. No matter what the situation may seem to be, within it lies the truth:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Monday, July 30, 2007

Lesson 212:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

I have a function God would have me fill.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

My function is to show my brother sin can have no cause.

My function is forgiveness; to see everything and everyone without the mark of guilt upon them, nor myself. My happiness and my forgiveness are one in the same. My function is to clear the blockage, by giving all over to the Holy Spirit, and to allow the light within which is the Self we share to shine its healing balm upon the world, through forgiveness.

The Course tells us that forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to my brother and myself. It is my function to attest his sins have no effect on me to demonstrate that are not real, which shows him he is guiltless. My forgiveness shows us both that we are innocent and that our so-called sins have no effects to warrant guilt, but are rather merely mistaken identity…

I like to remember what it says in chapter 27 of the text: “The ‘cost’ of your serenity is his (my brothers).” This keeps humility in its proper place for me. I can have, but what I insist my brother has.

I want perfect peace. And I can have it only by fulfilling my function of for-give-ness, and seeing peace and sinlessness and innocence for and in everyone and situation and circumstance.

I have a function God would have me fill…

When I remember that the body and the world are but an empty page with which either I see the fetid past written upon it, or see it NOW with the Holy Spirit, (through forgiveness), eagerly awaiting creation’s expression of which I am apart, I can feel the truth within:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Lesson 211:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

I am the holy Son of God Himself.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Within us is God’s glory, for we were created by it, with it, and as it. We are the product of the glory of God. We are the hallelujah chorus of creations song.

Today we sit in silence and true humility (for we are as God created and nothing else.) and allow our true identity to come forth.

You know, when we enter into the silence with intent for only truth; as with this lesson, and we allow ourselves to feel the truth, sloughing off any other thoughts that might attempt to enter, we can literally feel the reformatting that has taken place as we move back into this world of form and function. Yes?

These are such important lessons we’re doing in our curriculum right now. For we are no longer of the world, but residing in it, and no longer comfortable identifying ourselves wholly with its dictates. This series of lessons beef up our resonance with our Source within, giving us ample opportunity to experience the background music:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

as the reality it is; the reality of what we are in truth. This of course, amplifies our focus of healed perspective as we seemingly move about in the so-called world at large. Increasing gratitude for, each and every person and experience result becomes the neighborhood in which we live.

Within the shadowy figures of the belief we once held that we’ve peopled our world with, we are beginning to recognize our brother and the Christ light emanating from him. He is the holy Son of God Himself. And he is the reflection of our very self… Our relationships with them are now taking on a similar feel to the one we hold with God the Father and we feel comforted and sure of our path. Faithfulness in our brothers, our Self and our holy function is now seen as the only reasonable choice and happiness the only reasonable feeling. Thank you.