Saturday, September 8, 2007

Lesson 252:

The Son of God is my Identity…

This series of lessons are just so simply, profoundly obvious in their representation of our state of being; always, already.

The Son of God is my Identity…

“Father, You know my true Identity. Reveal It now to me who am Your Son, that I may waken to the truth in You, and know that Heaven is restored to me.”

The one thing we always already are, whether we are focusing our attention elsewhere (like the false) or not, is the Son of God. And the one thing we can never be without is….awareness, yes? Can you think of a time in which some part of you is not aware? This awareness is the Son of God… Spirit itself. We all have basic awareness, we come that way. And it is this basic awareness in the form of the ability to witness whatever arises, that is the Son of God, breathing the animation of our so-called lives. So too, the Son of God is all that can be witnessed… Behind the shadows of falsehood, and directly in to the light beyond, seen with and through, is the Son of God that we are, aware and alive. We can’t miss it… Can we even imagine a state where awareness is not? No, because we would still be aware of imagining it… and that would witness to the Son of God, all over again.

Furthermore, there are not two different types of son’s; holy and unholy. There is but One Son and it is us… and in actuality, we always, already are aware of this…. Any attempt to get it, is redundant, and frankly, totally beside the point. We merely quit resisting what we know is true.

Mistaken identity was but a dream dreamed by the Son of God without tampering with our Identity at all… And this Identity, exactly and precisely as it is, without correction or modification at all, is itself Spirit… And, since there is nowhere Spirit is not, there is nowhere in eternity where we are not the Son of God.

The purpose then of these lesson’s guidance is to bring our attention to full and present recognition of our Identity; our true face as the Son of God that we always, already are… And as so, we can begin to recognize the already present awareness of Spirit, and in turn recognize the Self, and abide as that.

The entire world is but a mere reflection of the Self and seen from our Identity as the Son of God which we are, the life we live and world around us is a beautiful place indeed… Heaven: restored to present awareness…

Friday, September 7, 2007

4. What is Sin?

Those of us who have been known to describe ourselves as ‘sinners’ will certainly agree, from personal experience, with the statements laid out in the first paragraph of this section… Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where the truth should be, and where it really is. Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? What would they hear or reach to grasp? What would they sense at all? To sense is not to know. And truth can be but filled with knowledge, and with nothing else”.

Definitely, for me, during my stint as a ‘bad-girl/sinner’, insanity ruled the day… I constantly felt ‘driven mad’, desperate to make illusions take the place of truth. And oh, how the body was the central, inescapable reality in which I found myself trapped; hopelessly hooked on its addictions to feed its reality through the pleasure/pain, acquisition/consequence dynamics… It ruled my logic and imprisoned my soul…

‘It’, the sin premise, of course, was still my responsibility. It was my choice, my decision to believe real ~ no victims here~.

Yet, once this choice is made and the premise set (as we all know, cuz that’s how the world got real for us) this trap is hidden from view…

From the sin premise, the acceptance as reality, of victim and perpetrator appears to be too obvious to question. Denial is the primary symptom of the sin disease… No one wins. Everyone is guilty. This totally justifies the convoluted means one uses to meet one’s so called needs… And, incidentally, it requires a body to make this experience viable. “The body is the instrument the mind made in its efforts to deceive itself…Its purpose is to strive”.

Now, if we’ve been lucky, as I have, and in a moment of temporary death-by-sin, chose Life; the life of truth instead of sin, we understand that all things, the striving and the body and even denial, can be used by forgiveness (Holy Spirit) toward the awareness of ever-present truth… We deny the denial of truth each time we look honestly at our beliefs and values and question their validly, each time we look beyond the body to the Christ spirit which is constantly unifying us as brothers, each time we allow an ancient hate to become a present love…

Lesson 251:

I am in need of nothing but the truth…

Today, let us recognize this simple fact as the premise from which we operate our day and let truth guide our choices and relationships. We do nothing that is of the ‘should/have to’ nature … Instead, we wait for truth’s messengers to arrive and show us the way that we must go…

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Lesson 250:

Let me not see myself as limited…

It seems anything of this world and its symbols that we can use to describe the Son of God would be by definition, too limiting to accurately depict. It is the experience of wholeness and magnitude present within that is us… the one we feel fully in the holy instant and tune to in forgiveness. That feeling where lack has disappeared and passionate giving moves us to speak and act….

We’re all familiar with it. In fact, we love it so much; we try to use the ego’s mechanisms to simulate it in special relationships that we design. (As if one could replicate what was created by God) You can’t get something you already have and have never lost. You can only let go every thing that is in the way of feeling its presence. ~Bingo~forgiveness~

The unlimited glory and power of the Son of God is closer than our breath, yet gives us our breath, beats our hearts and moves us within and beyond the gross and the subtle; the world, the universe and the empty fullness of the zero-point to which it all returns in full appreciation and creation ~ God, His Love, the Son, the sun, the beam, the Light…

It is spectacular that something glorious and so easily reached could so elude us, so much of the time…

Yet, we get caught in a little contraction in the thought of time; give our body’s name to it and separate it off… then spin time’s wheels trying to get off the self-appointed merry-go-round of self-identity, and back to the truth of what we already, always, are…

Certainly it’s insane. But in truth, it’s nothing…. (And inevitably culminates in the big cosmic belly-laugh)

We but need suspend everything we think we know, believe, value or love, for an instant and come with wholly empty hands unto our God~ and in a holy instant our

Today’s lesson is that invitation once again…

Self floods our awareness with the only thing we ever knew… the love we are~

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Lesson 249:

Ah, but to look exclusively upon a world freed from the bonds of falsehood, and reflecting but what remains; the pure, radiant, innocence of the ever fresh now… Yes! This is the world seen by the one whom has taken hold of the divining rod of the Holy Spirit and fearlessly (well, at least courageously) looked within; past and through the dark shadows of mistaken beliefs, touching each one to the touchstone of eternity for its authenticity, and accepting the findings. We find that the once solid structure of the world of pain and suffering and loss crumbles in the light the new and single perception of a unified purpose.

Here is the world looked out upon when one recognizes that they are the perceiver and not the perceived; the dreamer and not the dream… FREE!

Surrendering to forgiveness; giving over everything we ever thought was real to the Holy Spirit for translation into the mighty oneness of truth, we have accepted that we, indeed, denied the truth of what we are~ but no more.

Today we will be only as God created us to be and the world that rises up before and around us must reflect this Self we share with God, which is creation itself… and so, render a world where only Love and its reflections can be seen.

We might not have as solid fix on our true identity as yet (a residual desire from believing in the false), but we have a knowing more true to us than the symbols of this world can articulate… We are now present with the one relationship; our relationship with our Creator, allowing us to reflect this relationship in our relationship with all our perceptions….

As the lesson states: Forgiveness paints a picture of a world where suffering is over, loss becomes impossible and anger makes no sense. Attack is gone, and madness has an end. What suffering is now conceivable? What loss can be sustained? The world becomes a place of joy, abundance, charity and endless giving. It is now so like to Heaven that it quickly is transformed into the light that it reflects. And so the journey which the Son of God began has ended in the light from which he came.

How beautiful is that…

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Lesson 248:

Whatever suffers is not part of me…

Nor is what is pleasurable. Pain and pleasure are interchangeable states of mind; mind-body… I, the Self, one with creation, am beyond. Suffering only arises in the experience assigned to the dream… Suffering is not present at all in dreamless sleep…so it is not real. It comes and goes according to the value one places on the belief in its reality…The inalienable Self resides beyond, in the true.

Suffering, and its bed-partner, pain, is a belief absolutely fundamental and critical to the operational function of this world as reality. No one questions it. Until of course, we’ve absolutely had enough, and we’re willing to give up the pleasure factor as well, in order to find the truth… And this is when the real questioning of our beliefs begins. After the obvious, private-mind thoughts have been revealed as the fraudulent perspective that fathered the beliefs we have held in our personal lives, we delve deeper, to the core belief system that fathered the world and all its seeming realities… Beliefs designed to secure our retreat from God; beliefs like scarcity and suffering, where our belief that we are afraid of God, lays hidden. After all, if we can suffer, God cannot be real. Or at the very least, he’s a real bitch; totally justifying our tenacity to run and hide from him…. Our deeper, patient, inquiry of the beliefs behind the apparent beliefs reveals merely a mistaken-identity belief and its mis-creations… which, in actuality, never touched the Son of God’s innocent perfection at all.

See, once we get that far surrendered, we can feel the Love of our being, the love we share; the love that disputes suffering forever. At this stage, the path is set; the false reflections of the false ideas of pleasure, pain and suffering can’t hold our attention for long… We recognize them as distraction, and we question… and forgive… restoring us to our natural essence of peace and joy and oneness…

We are as God created us and we are beyond the belief in suffering and scarcity. It is inevitable we will remember the truth, for it cannot be assailed… The Love of God is what we are, and we have never left the mind that creates us as Himself…

Father, my ancient love for You returns, and lets me love Your Son again as well. Father, I am as You created me. Now is Your Love remembered, and my own. Now do I understand that they are one.

Monday, September 3, 2007

Lesson 247:

Without forgiveness I will still be blind…

Forgiveness is seeing within, rather than at… It is the looking through the apparent reality of the person, situation or circumstance, to the power of creation within and beyond it. We always say we see things differently with hindsight or that if we had the foresight prior to the event, well… perhaps I’d been more loving, less judgmental, enjoyed more… its always some way we would have chosen happiness instead, if we’d just known… The message of today’s lesson and the entire Course actually, is; why wait?

The capacity to see the bigger picture is given instantly when the strategic mind (ego) is surrendered and given over to big-mind or Holy Spirit… When the student is ready, the teacher appears…

Big awareness, that space behind what you think you’re aware of in any given situation (often recalling detail and peripherals much later, after the mind has relaxed) is a condition all of us are aware of. Like insight and inspiration; where things lay out before us in a way unforeseen when we were ‘trying to figure it out’…

If I look at my so-called life at any point in time; yesterday’s events, childhood memories, future fantasies, the life stories of those around me or perhaps historical figures and events I’ve learned about or maybe future predictions, I notice a remarkable similarity in their tangibility~ it’s vague. Add some emotions based on strong belief and I can crystallize its presence in my mind almost as if it is happening right now. Given enough of that, and it could border on obsession. Yet, none of that is happening now… only my awareness of it is…and who is this my? My, could certainly only refer to the awareness itself...this moment, Now… Don’t all the characters and events arise within it? Now, this very instant, is empty, undefined. Yet, the Self is here; the Self of pure awareness, undefined, the same Self who sees the events in time, the Self that gives power to seeing... It is not the character selves, and yet the are part of it, it is beyond.

The Self is behind; beyond; within and without. It is the unity factor prior too…the Self is prior to time. And time arises within it.

Forgiveness allows us to take a step back and see this unifying factor threading itself through all there is. It allows us to accept that we have been wrong about, well, everything… So if we’re out of touch with our joy, it’s a forgiveness lesson and we need but step back and let big-mind, the Holy Spirit reinterpret and give our mind the sight to see the truth of our oneness … We forgive and see things differently... Simple as that… it has been done. The only thing we need be concerned with is making the decision for forgiveness ~now~ Without forgiveness our awareness is obsessively stuck in the judgment-scratch on the circular record of time. But through forgiveness we see beyond the record altogether to the love within, through and uniting us in oneness…

So would I look on everyone today. My brothers are Your Sons. Your Fatherhood created them, and gave them all to me as part of You, and my own Self as well. Today I honor You through them, and thus I hope this day to recognize my Self.

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Lesson 246:

To love my Father is to love His Son…

The magnitude of love of God is too vast to conceptualize. Yet it is much closer, more life-giving, than our breath, more truly part of all our experiencing than we can be aware of through the self-identity in which we seem to live in bodies and in this world. The ego identity will never get a accurate fix on the truth. The ego mind is too small, too contracted strategic for the abstract…it was made from the false and cannot leave its source. Anymore than we, God’s Son could leave our Father’s Love…

Yet, it can be brought into alignment; its purpose transformed, by accepting the Atonement for ourselves and merely following the simple guidance laid-out, moment upon moment. And, for the purpose of this lesson work, the ego is the vehicle in which this work is being done. In other words, my participation in the love of God equation is simply to love my brother and myself.

I do this by forgiving every false identity I have given, in each and every encounter, knowing that the truth lies beyond. This allows for me to suspend my judgment of what a situation is for and listen to the voice for God to tell give the instruction needed for the good of all concerned. It lets me look behind what the body’s eyes reveal to the vision that shows, always, that my brother is my Self, and we are Christ…

Love floods rapidly into every equation given over to the Atonement and the feeling of completion literally lifts one to the state beyond concepts, fostering abundant willingness to continue whatever the forgiveness curriculum requires... It just feels so good to love instead of judge… n’est pas?

To love my brother is to love God…

To love my Father is to love His Son…