Saturday, August 11, 2007

Lesson 224:

God is my Father, and He loves His Son…

This is not personal, you know~ It is a fact. Who can dispute a fact? Only opinions find conflict and only with themselves… and opinions, by nature, are not real…

God is Father ~first Cause~ the All-in-all… His Son; His effect…

It is the equivalent, in this world, as the sun is shinning, or the ground beneath ones feet…

I am God’s Son. Period… God extended His Love in natural creation and His Son is the result. There is nothing else…

Now, one could argue semantics certainly. But the beseeching nature of that request, already points to insanity… Does it not?

One knows what one is. ~It is~. The questioning essence is the mark of forgetfulness which is referred to in the Course and the tiny mad idea, where the Son remembered not to laugh, or the detour into hell…

Now, I’m interested in where this line of thought is going, so please bare with me and we’ll find out together.

At some point, even at accidental quieting of the mind due to exhaustion from futile ‘trying’ and running, etc., a prayer of truth finds a space to eek out room for the truth to real-ize… Mine was something like: “whatever is haunting me from behind the scenes of my so-called life that makes it impossible to satisfy, if you’re not there, I’m screwed~ cuz there’s got to be another way…” Today’s lesson is a clear, honest and present prayer of truth, coming form a place of willingness for the truth to be true: “My Name, O Father, still is known to You. I have forgotten It, and do not know where I am going, who I am, or what it is I do. Remind me, Father, now, for I am weary of the world I see. Reveal what You would have me see instead”.

See, as we begin to still the raucousness of the busy, little, strategic mind, we can’t help but notice that most of what we seemed determined to think, plan, regret and ‘learn from’, are just ridiculous, irrelevant ideas; designed to distract the mind from its natural state of stillness and beingness. In other words, sanity…

But then, simultaneously, we realize… we already knew that, too. Yes?

It begins to unfold, that one does, indeed, know oneself and it is merely a matter discarding (through forgiveness) the overlays of false ideas, to reveal the light of truth behind and within…

I am totally bored with the disillusionment of the so-called world story. How could it possible hold ones interest for long? As the Son, God created as Himself, this dream of death we call a life, is much too small and ridiculous to take seriously any longer… One can only throw up ones metaphorical hands in final surrender to the great Cosmic Belly Laugh…

This world now, where life is present, because only present, is… looks lovely as far and close as seeing eyes can see. The reflection of the face of Christ smiles back from the far reaches, and from as close as the beating heart; in completion of each holy instant, of each holy encounter.

There is only the fact; the truth…

God is my Father, and He loves His Son…

Friday, August 10, 2007

Lesson 223:

God is my life. I have no life but His…

This is the sustenance by which I am maintained. I count of this internal knowing. Each day as I wake, this is the first thought or experience I have. God is my life. I have no life but His.

I’m aware that there was a time in my life when I was out of touch with this truth; yet truly, as I write this, I can’t really recall the essence of that experience of aloneness and separation from my Source ~ from my very Self; my breath, my life.

What I do recall is that it was this very contrast; this death-ness~ this ‘loneliness of nothingness’, that brought me to my knees, imploring the prayer of the desperate, “there has got to be another way”.

My life today is that other way… Oh, the joy of the forgiving mind.

It is astounding how, when life is but God, there is always time if it is needed, always resources, always enough. Was there a time when it was different?

No, I think not. Merely mistaken identity which thought it could think. But it was nothing. Who can remember it now, when everyone and every seeming situation and circumstance, is my greatest lover… Each part completing Life. I wouldn’t miss it for the world…

The good news is I don’t have to. The world, it turns out, is in my mind. And today, I look out on only Christ… and the deeper I look the more I see my Self reflected there. I see my life in God. And it looks like you… and you and feels like joy and love and peace and life… Thank you.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Lesson 222:

God is with me. I live and move in Him.

Ummm… Our theme is forgiveness for this series of lessons. And, oh my gosh, can’t you just feel the tremendous loving impact of peace, that learning the true meaning of forgiveness has transformed life into...

I know I do. It is the only thing I know.

And furthermore, in the expedience of this one tool; practicing its application by merely going to our Now-Coach (Holy Spirit) for instruction with everything we seem to experience; in the place where fixing or competing or attacking or judging used to be the tool box we used… and bingo! Peace.

And now, forgiveness is becoming a way of life; how simple, effective, easy to use, and transferable it is among our so-called problems. How sure we are becoming that what today’s lesson says, “God is with me. I live and move in Him”, must be the truth. It is quickly becoming the only thing that feels right. Nes’t pas?

How lovely it is to rest for an instant in the certainty of our being in Him. Please join me in the prayer offered us in today’s lesson:

Father, we have no words except Your Name upon our lips and in our minds, as we come quietly into Your Presence now, and ask to rest with You in peace a while…

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

PART II Introduction:

Today, we begin the final part of this year's lesson's; this year that we have given to devoted to know the experience of God the Father and of our Self; His Son..."For now we seek direct experience of truth alone. The lessons that remain are merely introductions to the times in which we leave the world of pain, and go to enter peace. Now we begin to reach the goal this course has set, and find the end toward which our practicing was always geared...we wait in quiet expectation for our God and Father....Now do we come to Him with but His Word upon our minds and hearts, and wait for Him to take the step to us that He has told us, through His Voice, He would not fail to take when we invited Him. He has not left His Son in all his madness, nor betrayed His trust in Him. Has not His faithfulness earned Him the invitation that He seeks to make us happy? We will offer it, and it will be accepted. So our times with Him will now be spent. We say the words of invitation that His Voice suggests, and then we wait for Him to come to us"…

I love this section of the lessons, Part II. I love the format; with a key idea heading a series of ten pertinent lessons for integration of the idea, speaking to the truth within us. Each has a prayer, which alone would be enough to bring one home… They are marvelously simple, astonishingly salient and beautifully poetic. I always find myself singing the great chorus of “Y E S” in the background of my mind while I read and contemplate them. I am so pleased to have you join me this time around. ~Truth rests in constant presence, with assured joy, gratitude and love ~

WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?:

Lesson 221:

Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still…Y.E.S...This is what matters now… the stillness... where the voice for God becomes my own, where clarity is no longer in question and choice has been answered with the certainty of the love of God, which is His holy Son, expressed as my Self. Here, I know what I am…

And from here, this being takes her place ~her function within the world... I know her well, she is in everywhere... She has a face, that face is Christ. Vision is her sight and her eyes but serve to witness to her holy face in every projected person, place and circumstance. And but for one purpose only... that her holy function of forgiveness be fulfilled in you my brothers, as myself...

Where are conflict and competition and hierarchies and ordering of thoughts when the mind has stepped back allowing each unforgiving construct to slip gently into the appropriate place to turn the cogs of the great mechanism of the forgiven world?

God’s perfect plan for salvation has carefully taken all that I made to forget my Self, my Creator and you; the replacement team I made within my mind to pose for what was not, and denying what was true. But, alas, God's placement of the Holy Spirit as His Voice within my mind, then used these skills and abilities designed for this denial to teach me to deny the denial of truth, instead.

Only the truth is left standing in my mind. And the stillness beating in my heart inspires all movement of all seeming actions and decisions. The comforting awareness of knowing that it is all, already done; rests and stabilizes experience. Everything is sure….

Yes, a happy outcome is indeed sure… and all worry and planning has ceased… Ah, yes. It is here… now… peace… all has been answered, forgiven, set back to freedom; the natural state of love… ummm yummy… Join me in this prayer of engagement offered as a beacon for the mind attempting weariness, which revives and reminds and connects…

“Father, I come to You today to seek the peace that You alone can give. I come in silence. In the quiet of my heart, the deep recesses of my mind, I wait and listen for Your Voice. My Father, speak to me today. I come to hear Your Voice in silence and in certainty and love, sure You will hear my call and answer me.”

We are in this together, you and I… There really are no separate parts. And while we might pretend a little longer that there just might be, and that 'whole' forgiveness may be served upon this world made to separate; we gather each other, to each other. Each time we allow forgiveness to serve its purpose as designed by God; our hearts swell with the Love that is our Self, impelling Spirit reality to become visible and increasingly substantial as ‘reality’. Our physical-ness begins to fade as presence in our mind for truth has been allowed to be…

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Lesson 220:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

There is no peace except the peace of God.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

The Course tells us in Chapter 17 of the text, that God established His relationship with us to make us happy, and that nothing we do that does not share His purpose can be real. Also, that the purpose God ascribed to anything is its only function. And furthermore, that because of His reason for creating His relationship with us, the function of relationship (that means all relationship of any kind), became forever “to make happy”. And nothing else... To fulfill this function we must relate to our creations as God does to his. And nothing God created is apart from happiness, and nothing God created but would extend happiness as its Creator did. So, whatever does not fulfill this function cannot be real. Accepting the Atonement for ourselves is the same as saying we accept the only the truth is true. And nothing else is true…

Now since in this illusive world, we can’t actually create, we are only true to our relationship when we are ‘making happy”. Forgiveness is the constant restorative always at the ready for the return to peace and joy, if we are but willing to see things differently; give up our ‘specialnes’ in favor of the ‘peace of God’. That’s all. This can be done by seeing all relationship through the eyes of peace, by seeing with the Holy Spirit part of our minds. We then merely soften our eyes at seeming differences and let vision show us what peace would have us see instead.

We merely allow the Holy Spirit to transform our ‘special relationships’ into ‘holy ones’ with everyone and everything. We simply turning our faithlessness in favor of perfect peace, when we choose the peace of God be seen in our relationships… Then we place our faith in our brother, that he will do his part perfectly.

Faith arises from the Holy Spirit’s perception, and is the sign we share it with Him. Faith is the gift we offer God’s Son, through Him. And as such, it is wholly acceptable to both Father and Son, in reality; and therefore, it is immediately offered wholly to our Self… This is the Holy Relationship, which the peace of God makes possible…

Choosing the peace of God, is offering a clean slate to the Holy Spirit to write upon it what God would have us learn. And because of our relationship with Him, which was created to ‘make happy’, it stands to reason, that happiness only, could be God’s Will for us. Yes?!

So, we can lean back in the peace of God and let the Holy Spirit place meaning and correction and joy on all we thought we knew… paving our way to walk together on the path to re-member-ing Heaven and the peace of God…

Monday, August 6, 2007

Lesson 219:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

I am not a body. I am free…

I am God’s Son…

Be still, m mind, and think a moment upon this.

And then return to earth, without confusion

As to what my Gather loves forever as His Son.

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

The body experience certainly feels real, yes? When anything seemingly happens in our lives, in this world, our body is where we seem to feel our experience. It is poignant, tangible, a mark of change, a major distraction device from the simple truth beyond, which is our Self; God’s Son…

But, there is not one of us that hasn’t felt, deeply within, that there is something much more ‘real’ beneath, within, beyond all this chaotic mechanism which is unmistakably our Self; the Self that breaths life into all these so-called physical experiences~ the Self that is God’s Son.

This lesson is inviting us to just settle into that holiness beyond this world, yet within our Self, and rest in the calm certainty of joy that is guaranteed when we release what we have made, and accept what God created as our Self.

It is the truth after all. ~ You know it, and I know it~ deep within…

Let’s just see how devoted to the truth we can allow ourselves to give to today; how present we can keep the lesson thought:

I am God’s Son…I am not a body. I am free…at the forefront of our minds. And when we notice we have lost contact, then quickly return to our memory-thought. Even when the slightest discomfort tempts us to forget our Happiness lies only in our joint Will with God’s…

Let this be the day where we release our grandiose childish game of ‘King of Bunkers Hill’ and let the grandeur that is our birthright and being, have its way…

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Lesson 218:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Only my condemnation injures me.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Without fail, whenever I cannot feel the humility of my glory in God, my birthright and my only status here, it is because I have made someone responsible for my state of mind, through my condemnation of them. Sure, it doesn’t always look like blatant judgment. In fact, it rarely does. The ego is much to slick for that. No, it usually shows up in some form of expectation. An expectation is just a thinly veiled threat, a lack of acceptance, a refusal to let all things be exactly as they are. It is my attempt to win-out over God. When I dream you up to my specifications in any form, I am no longer allowing the Holy Spirit’s vision to shine my brother’s light and reveal my only Self to me. It is like putting on sunglasses. Funny, a song form the nineties keeps playing in the back of my mind right now. It goes: There’s a little black spot on the sun today…”

Ya gotta love it…

So it is only my sight that suffers when I engage the little black spot of condemnation. You’re merrily going about the business of being the perfect Son of God, playing the role of showing me my Self and my condemnation/expectation has not affected who you are, in any way.

Now on the same note, it takes but my recognition of disconnection; which is easily seen since I no longer like the way I feel. My feeling sense has been appropriated to either the past or the future and I feel alone. It takes but this tuning-in to set in motion, the obvious next step. Forgiveness. It is the return inward to the Holy Spirit within my mind and the remembrance of the truth:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

And, you and I are One.

Only my condemnation injury me. only my forgiveness sets me free…