Saturday, September 22, 2007

Lesson 266:

My holy self abides in you, God’s Son…

“Father, You gave me all Your Sons, to be my saviors and my counselors in sight; the bearers of Your holy Voice to me. In them are You reflected, and in them does Christ look back upon me from my Self. Let not Your Son forget Your holy Name. Let not Your Son forget his holy Source. Let not Your Son forget his Name is Yours.”

Once the decision for the Atonement is made, healing can’t help but be seen… For everywhere in everyone we see but our Self, shining in the light of Christ love. As our forgiveness becomes the only thing we have to do, the reason for why we are always at the right place at the right time becomes obvious. And we recognize it for what it is and not the seeming circumstances it is wrapped in. Temptation to see what is not there through projection looses its appeal, as the feeling of wholeness and everlasting purpose replace it.

I am interested in you, holy Son of God. For in my relationship with you is the only way I can re-member my Self. Each day I look forward to meeting my Self in the myriad of holy encounters laid out for my arrival home… We are united in the holy Love of God and there is no where and nothing else. How joyous to see and value only this… thank you…


Friday, September 21, 2007

Lesson 265:

Creation’s gentleness is all I see…

“In quiet would I look upon the world, which but reflects Your Thoughts, and mine as well. Let me remember that they are the same, and I will see creation’s gentleness…”

I just look around and all I see is the Thought of God… It is the Life Force which animates my dream of a beautiful forgiven world with brothers to dance and sing and laugh and cry with. It is the unlimited breath breathing me which allows me to seemingly have unlimited air to breathe. It is the eternal light of which I am a part, brilliantly lighting the grand and the miniscule, that I might see… It is the Vision that gives me might sight to see you, my Christ-brother and co-creator of the melody which creates music and the listening that gives life to hearing as well as the music to hear… I see magnificent unending beauty going on forever within the pin-point eternity of now… for what I see with, is beauty; the feeling of perfect completion…

I softened my eyes to the magic-picture artwork of this so-called world through forgiveness, and merely softened my heart, accepting the atonement for myself, and automatically, the world I see is inviting and generous and extending. It is the reflection on the still water of the Mind I share; the mind in which you and I are one, united in each other and in God…

Yes, it can be said that today, Creation’s gentleness is all I see…

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Lesson 264:

I am surrounded by the love of God…

“Father, You stand before me and behind, beside me, in the place I see myself, and everywhere I go, You are in all the things I look upon, the sounds I hear, and every hand that reaches for my own. In You time disappears, and place becomes a meaningless belief. For what surrounds Your Son and keeps him safe is Love itself. There is no Source but This, and nothing is that does not share Its holiness; that stands beyond Your one creation, or without the love which holds all things within Itself. Father, Your Son is like Yourself. We come to You in Your Own Name today, to be at peace within Your everlasting Love…”

Ummm…. That feeeels soooo gooood…. Basking in the message of this prayer, which the lesson calls salvation’s prayer; brings the invitation to rest in peace, forever. And you can feel it unmistakably. It is really all we want, isn’t it. It is the heart of our oneness at the foundation which we can simply feel, right here, right now… a sense of such completeness, such wholeness, such Love. You can feel it… Yes? And haven’t you noticed that it is the base essence of what all our practicing has/is all about.

As we take this prayer’s symbols into our being, their meaning finds connection with the ‘receptor sites’, so to speak, which have been opened through our forgiveness; our letting go, the blocks to loves awareness that not only dragged us to the Course, kicking in our misery and defeat in the first place, but has systematically uncovered and released the deep-seated core beliefs we held about what we are. Now we can see that we had a case of mistaken identity which we’ve come to realize we’re but a dream and could never be in truth… And although at time we still forget, we know that if we feel yucky ~ it’s a forgiveness lesson ready for release….

This feeling of complete satisfaction and peace which we rest in behind the world-symbols of this prayer is the Love which we can count on to direct our so-called life. It is the one choice for the Holy Spirit within our mind while we remain where we are not at home. It takes us beyond belief to recognition. And here we feel the truth these words point to…. And we are ready…. If there is one thing that we can count on, it is that if life isn’t feeling yummy and we are experiencing love, everywhere, and in everyone, it is a prompt from our internal guide to choose once again; to choose forgiveness and see things differently.

Holy are we as the Son of God, united in purpose and one with our Father whom created us like unto Himself…

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Lesson 263:

My holiness sees all things as pure…

“Father, Your Mind created all that is, Your Spirit entered into it, Your Love gave life to it. And would I look upon what You created as if it could be made sinful? I would not perceive such dark and fearful images. A madman’s dream is hardly fit to be my choice, instead of all the loveliness with which You bless creation; all its purity, its joy, and its eternal, quiet home in You.”

Holy vision… that’s what we’re talking about here. That feeling we always feel beneath the surface of every encounter, resting in the very belly of life itself; the initial ‘love looking itself in the mirror’ yummy feeling, the first feeling, before fear voice tells us what we see. … The one that says, “This too is me…” It is the soft, beyond the concept of judgment, eyes from which we gaze upon our infant child and see only purity and love’s blessing… We are the seer… the choice is ours… Today we merely see instead of imagine…

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Lesson 262:

Let me perceive no differences today…

Father, You have one Son. And it is he that I would look upon today. He is Your one creation. Why should I perceive a thousand forms in what remains as on. Why should I give this one a thousand names, when only one suffices? For Your Son must bear Your Name, for You created him. Let me not see him ads a stranger to his Father, nor as stranger to myself. For he is part of me and I of him, and we are part of You Who are our Source, eternally united in Your Love; eternally the holy Son of God.

Remember as we began this year; we took the suggestion offered at the end of chapter 15, to make this year different by making it all the same…? How are we doing? Today’s lesson is tuned to the same single perspective where all is included in God’s Love extended as His One Son in which we are all united…

Life for me has become merely a softening of the eyes, in many ways. You know, like when you look at a sunset or watch the waves roll in and out upon the beach…Judgment has ceased to attract me as a means of organizing my life due to the desire for true meaning replacing it. Today I value only truth, and look only for its messengers of love’s awakening. This way I see from behind the body’s eyes…For this I must rely on the Holy Spirit within my mind for definition. And what I have found is that all the solid edges that fenced off differences in my perception were made of judgment, which crumbles at the sight of forgiveness. Looking out from the forgiven perspective, all is seen a one beautiful tapestry. And joyous union and belonging well up and fill the being in the place where differences, defenses and fear used to reside.

Let us place our faith the TRUTH today; we are God’s One Son as God created and we are not alone…

Monday, September 17, 2007

5. What is the Body?

The body is like the point of reference to substantiate the reality of the world of separation. What is mine is comfortable housed within a thin layer of skin. Adding to that, costs. But it is also the quest… get more! More of what? Whatever! Yes? So we start with this separate individual ‘self’ and then we try to add to, so to speak, until… what? We have it all? Till it all belongs to us? And of course, we have to assign x-amount of the self, to guard and protect said ‘stuff’ from invaders and thieves, yes? Nothing and no one be trusted completely. Yet, we need them all to have it all? Don’t we.

The body life is all about pains and pleasures, hurts and grievances, toys and thrills… And once you get beyond that, the world of bodies is a whole different ball game…

The body is a dream which, although designed to keep us safe from realizing love, we cannot separate from what we are. Period.

The funny part about this so-called life is, that the biggest, most coveted prize of all is L O V E and its got no skin to fence it off; no defining parameters, nothing so-called ‘solid’ from which to prove its possession…. Humph…

Yet, every brush with love’s presence; every time our guard is down and we F E E L our life, it is LOVE that has called us and which we feel most compelled to follow after…

In other words, we spend our lives seeking a state of wholeness through a faulty (actually impossible) apparatus for its acquisition. Yet, just behind it, just beyond, housing the dream itself, is the wholeness that could not be separate from Self; the holographic oneness of completion found within the minutest and grandest of being Self…

What one begins to notice if paying attention in at all is that in all this world of separate bodies, we’re more similar than different; that beneath the fear of loss, our goals are pretty much the same~ LOVE, being the end-all. We realize that it is easier, and feels better, to hold a hand, than to chop one off. That what we put out is what we experience… and it just plain feels better to accept than to judge…

By the way, this kind of attention doesn’t come as easily for most as I’m making it sound. Escape is the watchword of this world of bodies. Yet, when all escape routes have been exhausted and death inevitably visits, breathing you back to the recognition of life beyond the dream, within the eternal Now of God, you see the dream from awareness beyond the dream. You see that it is all perception… God’s Love, or a call for love…

And, if you’re lucky, and like me, and making real a world of hate and separation and not enough-ness, killed you off as the hero of the dream… And, instead of death, found your Self in eternal Life; and the body was still available as a vehicle in which to communicate within in the dream… and what is the message? Love eternal… God is… And we are as God created us… There is nothing and nowhere else…

Lesson 261:

God is my refuge and security…

Oh, my gosh .once you get this, you can actually breathe. How exhausting and futile it was to seek refuge and security in something as flimsy and inconsistent as concepts with judgments and hierarchies of values and rules and punishment of guilt and shame, looking for happiness and safety and love in all the wrong places.

And how feeing and peaceful and joyous to relinquish it and find I was already resting in the Certainty and Love of God…

Although, temptation to seek outside myself arises, it is easily enveloped in the belly of forgiveness; where the mirror of my brother which shows me my mind is transformed to vision of Christ…

I say, bring it on ~ God has my back! Even when I seem to fall asleep, the Holy Spirit’s Certain gentle Voice is quick to vibrate through, awakening my mind to the new perspective ~ I reconnect my awareness to the truth~ I live and have my being in God, right here, right now, always. And you are one with me… I choose again to be only as God created me to be and that lets me see you as my savior and my Self…

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Lesson 260:

Let me remember God created me…

Father, I did not make myself, although in my insanity I thought I did. Yet, as Your Thought, I have not left my Source, remaining part of Who created me. Your Son, my Father, calls on You today. Let me remember You created me. Let me remember my Identity. And let my sinlessness arise again before Christ’s vision, through which I would look upon my brothers and myself today…

Umm…. Such a perfect prayer of remembrance we are included in( and concluded within). We are the whole effect of the Thought of Love, with but its characteristics, including all and excluding none in the glorious holy expansion containing all creation…

If we but refuse to hop on the trains of thoughts of subjectivity; of time and space and things and peoples that pass through, but rather stay in the borderland station above the battleground of the illusory, we have available a respite from which to choose once again, the truth: Love which is our Identity as God created from which our sight of all things becomes Christ’s vision and our brothers~ our Self…

The tenor is one of pure bliss… For through remembering our Source and our true Identity, the simple way of the Atonement, the way of perfect happiness and peace, becomes clear at last…

We are innocence in love’s embrace forever now…