Saturday, November 24, 2007

Lesson 329:

I have already chosen what You will…

Lately I have been having a bunch of weird, mundane type dreams; some fairly fun to watch and some which have that feeling of doing life with one foot nailed down (a feeling I am well familiar with from the past). The common factor is that none of the scenarios seem to have any particular reason, or matter much. They’re okay. They might, or might not, include someone else currently in my so-called waking experience.

I haven’t really thought much about this until this morning in the contemplative part of my meditation and lesson time. A couple of things occurred to me. First was that they were a good sampling of every-joe’s everyday life, on planet earth. The other was that I couldn’t remember the last time I had dreams such as these.

So I ask myself what it was about my every-joe so-called life that might be affecting a message to me…. Here’s what I came up with. In recent weeks, I have been deliberately trying to make something about my life different; something in form. First uncovering what my belief-system around it has been, as judgment had apparently sneaked in, which is how I got in front of the mirror, so to speak, about it. Next, I started to look for what I have felt were solutions for change. You might ask, as I did during my investigation, where I had perceived a problem, so as to need solution-izing?

The ego is a tenacious thought system; always on the alert to slip in where it can, to redirect the mind away from truth… wouldn’t you agree? Here’s the groovy part, right there, within and beyond the very avenue the ego takes, the Holy Spirit serves up ‘the other way’. Right where I wanted to take this seriously and feel ashamed or think there really could be a problem that needed solving and that I didn’t have the resources within to deal and therefore must seek outside myself, a familiar voice whispers softly, “Relax. All that I have already belongs to you. There is no outside of God’s Son. You are as God created and only the truth is true.” That when my perception flipped and I saw, again, that everything I had been attracting information wise had come easily and I felt inspired to actions I have been taking. I also saw that none of it really mattered in truth, only my peace of mind was imperative… And, that is restored instantaneously by my desire for nothing else… Ahhh….

I love forgiving my mind for its little attempt to reinvent itself~ the transition experience from futility to gratitude, peace and certainty is so delicious…

I have already chosen what You will…

So too, is today’s prayer… Let’s partake together:

“Father, I thought I wandered from Your Will, defied it, broke its laws, and interposed a second will more powerful than Yours. Yet what I am in truth is but Your Will, extended and extending. This am I, and this will never change. As You are One, so am I one with You. And this I chose in my creation, where my will became forever one with Yours. That choice was made for all eternity. It cannot change, and be in opposition to itself. Father, my will is Yours. And I am safe, untroubled and serene, in endless joy, because it is Your Will that it be so.”

Friday, November 23, 2007

Lesson 328:

I choose the second place to gain the first…

Don’t you love how everything that never made sense; all the contradictory ideas and fickle beliefs that haunted you prior to finding ACIM, are now being sorted out, and only those that reflect the truth are rising evermore to the forefront of your mind? I do. At least this is what seems to be the case for me.

Once I became willing to be wrong about everything; once I just let go into the experience of complete and total surrender, every concept I ever thought I was sure about flipped on its face and took my self-concept with it. In empting out completely, I noticed an indelible fullness deep within…This has continued to fill and spread without my being into the understanding that the world I see is, absolutely, a projection of the thoughts and ideas I believe at any given moment. Which I now distinguish to be what is currently up for healing and release. I have come to see it as my current forgiveness lesson/opportunity.

As I have become increasingly willing to suspend my little and arrogant interpretation, and allowed myself to instead, see with the Holy Spirit within, a great certainty has replaced great doubt. And if you have ever suffered from perpetual self-doubt as I have, you know what Heaven this relief experience is… In other words:

I choose the second place to gain the first…

By giving up our self-concept; surrendering our bogus competition with God, we come home to the joyous experience of the Self, as God created.

See, the thing about the truth, the present, and all that is ‘real’, is that there is an aliveness about it that is indistinguishable. And once you experience it, and keep experiencing it through forgiveness, you really see how the world is but a film of yesterday’s belief-system… I, for one, am bored with the rerun…

I choose the second place to gain the first…

Please join me in the lesson’s prayer:

There is no will but Yours. And I am glad that nothing I imagine contradicts what You would have me be. It is Your Will that I be wholly safe and eternally at peace. and happily I share that Will with You, my Father, gave as part of me…

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Lesson 327:

I need but call and You will answer me...

Holy Thanksgiving, batman! This lesson says it all!

Is there any other thanksgiving message? ~Ultimately, it has been done.

I am as God created me; wholly creative and at one with Him, uniting me as one in Christ, with ya all. Since Creation is the unique and only formula for the Son of God, cause and effect are one in the same. It has been done and all power in Heaven and earth, circle back to this.

We have always been answered. Example number one: When we said we wanted to be ‘we’ and hide-out in separation’s guilty pleasure/pain palace, and pretend we knew Creation not, a deep sleep to dream the impossible fell over Adam(us), so the good book says… This lesson invites us into the Comprehensive awakening that Jesus refers to in chapter 2 of the text.

I need but call and You will answer me... Oh, how I know this to be so... For I called; at first in the irreverence, commonplace to this ego life, “God help me feel more comfortable~ make me a better ‘me’… Then next came the prayer of the desperate, “there has got to be another way”~ and finally, “please, God, let me have been wrong”...

Little by little; incident by incident, belief by belief~ forgiveness by forgiveness~ as I have allowed myself to hear His ever-present call to ‘awaken and be glad’, I have learned, or rather, I remember, the true call within me, which, incidentally, is also ever-present.

It is the true prayer of thanksgiving…

Resting in the stillness of gratitude, I join the chorus of the heavenly host beyond the world of time and space yet always vibrant NOW...

Thank you joining me in the ‘GREAT LEAP OF FAITH’. You have never failed me. Because of you, I know what I am…I am eternally grateful… Today’s lesson’s prayer is like a mantra prayer for our commitment to this year’s round of lessons and their practical application in our so-called lives:

“Father, I thank You that Your promises will never fail in my experience, if I but test them out. Let me attempt therefore to try them, and to judge them not. Your Word is one with You. You give the means whereby conviction comes, and surety of Your abiding Love is gained at last”.

~ Forever and always ~

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Lesson 326:

I am forever an Effect of God….

Once in a while, I’ll be going about my daily business, feeling love-aligned, and, what seems like all the sudden, that old shadow-identity voice will rise up from its grave (and grave it is…) and start issuing orders: “Hey”, it says, “push this girl down and smack her around a bit. There’s a belly full of blame and judgment here, and no place to put it. I need a whipping girl. Now get to it!”

As false and absurd as I recognize this ‘baby-self’ voice to be, the twisted part is that there is a compulsion to buckle to its demands, a sick sense of ‘responsibility’ (for lack of a better word) to it. It’s like, in the past, when I have been identified with the role as ‘mother’, and my kids want something from me that I see as a sacrifice, but, as a mom, I have felt compelled to ‘make the sacrifice. Know what I mean? After all, they’re ‘my’ kids, right? I owe them something; some sacrifice of me, yes?

That’s just plain twisted… yes? I don’t know what I’m getting at here, but as long as I think I fathered myself, the sacrifices to that identity are endless and relentless. I am so grateful to finally see that all my pain has been caused by this ridiculous competition with God, (my Cause and the only reason for my being, incidentally). It is such a load off….

I love the description of my true-identity as the effect of God put so beautifully lesson 156. Remember what it says?

Truth must be true throughout, if it be true. It cannot contradict itself, nor be in parts uncertain and in others sure. You cannot walk the world apart from God, because you could not be without Him. He is what your life is. Where you are He is. There is one life. That life you share with Him. Nothing can be apart from Him and live.. Yet where He is, there must be holiness as well as life. No attribute of His remains unshared by everything that lives. What lives is holy as Himself, because what shares His life is part of Holiness, and could no more be sinful than the sun could choose to be of ice; the sea elect to be apart from water, or the grass to grow with roots suspended in the air… There is a light in you which cannot die; whose presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you. All things that live bring gifts to you, and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet. The scent of flowers is their gift to you. The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat, and lay their leaves before you on the ground that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper round your holy head... The light in you is what the universe longs to behold. All living things are still before you, for they recognize Who walks with you. The light you carry is their own. And thus they see in you their holiness, saluting you as savior and as God. Accept their reverence, for it is due to Holiness Itself, which walks with you, transforming in Its gentle light all things unto Its likeness and Its purity… This is the way salvation works. As you step back, the light in you steps forward and encompasses the world. It heralds not the end of sin in punishment and death. In lightness and in laughter is sin gone, because its quaint absurdity is seen. It is a foolish thought, a silly dream, not frightening, ridiculous perhaps, but who would waste an instant in approach to God Himself for such a senseless whim?”

I am forever an Effect of God….An effect can only exist from the attributes of its cause. Where else would it come from? What could possibly be its reality? It cannot be spawn from some alien subsistence outside its only state of being… except maybe in wild imaginings, which aren’t real. Oh yeah, that’s what this so-called-world-life is…

The mind is creative; deriving its natural prolusion to extend from its Loving Cause… Love extends. ~We’ve all felt the truth of this, regardless of what ‘belief base’ we’re signed on to~. We want to love and be loved~ No matter how we dress it up to look like something else or even believe it is. It’s not. When it is stripped down to its naked core; every success dance, anger dance, romance dance, family dance and/or system dance, be it political, religious, sexual, intellectual or ‘spiritual’, still comes down to one thing, we want love; to give and receive~ It is the very fabric of our being and impossible to remove from our being. ~Cover up perhaps, deny, definitely, but be without~ impossible…

We are the effect of God; of Love, and nothing else will ever give us happiness…

As we train our minds to see the false as false and forgive its unreality, love’s awareness seeps into our presence of mind as the present moment; and time, itself, slips to the background as relevant. This is the point of contact that we must come back to eventually, as we learn to let the Holy Spirit lead our thinking back to right-minded thinking, which is with our Source.

The ‘self-concept’ thinks for itself. It is wrong. The miracle for me has been to remain vigilant against the wrong-minded or false thinking of the ‘self-concept’ until my relying on the Holy Spirit became a habit of engaging with God, a habit worthy of the Son-returning-home… Nothing else feels natural any more and seeing/recognizing the false for what it is; false, seems simpler. Each and every experience in this world, I see it now as a forgiveness lesson in the making. Everywhere I look, there it is. As the shadow is dispelled by the light of forgiveness, there is Love, awaiting awareness.

Turns out, love is every where and every when and every one. It is unmistakably within all. In letting go the self concept altogether, truth of our being as Christ reveals itself; reflecting in everyone and everything we seem to see, in this dream of waking up to the Son of God as is…in truth. And in realizing Christ, we recognizing we had merely been dreaming the dream of ‘something else. ~ I am forever an Effect of God…

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Lesson 325:

All things I think I see reflect ideas

Boy, I can witness to the fact of this statement. Here’s what I’ve noticed; whatever way and for whatever reason, at any I am viewing the world, my-so-called life and what seems to be the lives of ‘others’, this fact: ‘All things I think I see reflect ideas’, relentlessly stares back at me. What I am seeing is what is in my mind… And how I see it, reflects what I believe to be so…

Prior to ACIM as a model, I suspected this. I observed that somehow, someway, what I thought and believed; even believed by wishing it not true, were being influenced, at the very least, by attention to them in my mind. Then I met the Course… And ah, I now had, a formula to pull this awareness forward in my mind to the point of true attention, rather than the addictive attention to form based structures, brought on by bringing my mind under the influence of the whole unconscious belief construct of the separation idea.

The precise articulation of this concept gave me a language for which I could be honest with myself. And perhaps more accurately, it gave me a whole new use for language in which to describe perception, as well as everything I seemed to perceive.

Now from this right-sided vision, I see only one thing, everything I see is only my mind; ideas I have aligned with, and only my mind that I am faced with. “I am responsible for what I see, I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve. And anything that seems happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked”. (T-21.II.2.3)

Will I choose the ideas of creation as host to God, or will I choose ideas that I have made up and be hostage to them? That is the question…

All of what is happening behind the scenes so to speak, is that I decide I want something as a possible “it” (even if ‘it’ is to scary to even consider consciously) the very decision to fear, details out the specifics in some department behind closed doors. But ‘its’ reality in my mind is in process. Like happened with the idea of separation, it’s like it went something like this; ‘what if one could separate from his source and make a world apart? … Oh, shit that’s too scary to even dream about… ~huge~ ‘what if’.

Once conceived of by the mind of the Son of God, for god’s sake, with all power of creation given him as the natural effect of God the Father, his Cause; it stands to reason that the ideas’ possibility prospectus would by drawn up. Ergo the Atonement principle…. Ideas leave not their source. This primary theme threads together the fabric of the message of the Course, and is consistently reestablished by its holographic design. ~Hum, just like us~

God’s Son is as God created: the whole extension of His Love~ Extension is Love’s only purpose. Therefore, nothing else could possibly ever happen… Love is what it is, such as are we the love that we were creeated, being one whole creation…

“God is”… says it all~ literally…

Please join me in the yummy reflection prayer to carry into the day…

“Our Father, Your ideas reflect the truth, and mine apart from Yours but make up dreams. Let me behold what only Yours reflect, for Yours and Yours alone establish truth”. ~

Monday, November 19, 2007

Lesson 324:

I merely follow, for I would not lead…

One of the most compelling features of my experience with A Course in Miracles is that I have felt moved (inspired), almost like a gravitational pull toward the message’s axis. While reading, contemplating and in particular, practicing it’s principles through the lessons, I have felt certain, yet unexplainable ‘on the mark’ feeling…Some significant place e within me unlocked and opened for truth to flow through, which I wasn’t even aware was there, let alone all locked up. Yet I felt it open…

This spaciousness certainty includes feeling energies such as, imperturbability, safety, un-questionability and inevitability, which I found defined themselves from within some inner translation center I was fore-to-then unfamiliar with. Yet, this very hub was absolutely the center from which I drew the wholly comforting feeling that I was finally coming back home….

From this place within, I felt myself unexplainably humming the message of today’s lesson within my heart: “I merely follow, for I would not lead”… even if my actions rarely reflected it. Now, as a controller, this is a miracle… Oh, how I attempted to lead…

Denial is one seductive bedfellow, yes? My experience at the time was weak in articulation and limited in scope, but my desire to follow was pure. Being hardwired by the ego and identifying with ego hardware and its programs, made for some very convoluted, bumpy going, at times. Many times taking some pretty upside-down twists of irresponsibility, which resulted in excruciating shame, quilt ~ (yet, always, ultimately blessed with gorgeous forgiveness).

Still, they couldn’t totally rock me off the path that had indelibly opened within me, where God never left, but always called me back on track toward the home I never really left…

Oh, how lovely it is to be free… To finally realize and accept that God’s plan for salvation (and only His plan) not only turns out to be the only shot at freedom in this so-called life, but outlines a clear and present methodology, a single purpose, so as to not confuse.

Simplicity is now, within the present moment. Plus, we have perfect companions along the way in which we forgive and join with, in which to know ourselves and reaffirm our awareness of what we are as well as what we believe at any given moment....

And to top it off, our coach and guide is, always, right within our mind; always on task, available to awareness upon request. In the presence of NOW, the futile effort to dispute ‘what is’ disappears, for time is but an illusion to keep this argument alive…

For me, it is just such bliss to follow in the way appointed me by Love… leaving all the details as well to Him… and so much simpler, nest pas?

Along the lines of this section of the lessons, ”What is Creation”, I have been thinking about Sekou, a beautiful spoken word artist, a dear friend turned me on to, and a piece of his work is playing in the background of my mind. I am attaching the link for your enjoyment. http://www.blindfaithrecords.com/

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Lesson 323:

I gladly make the “sacrifice” of fear…

Presumably, every sacrifice I seemingly made, most my so-called life, was made only in an effort to sacrifice FEAR. Dude, I hate that feeling; where your heart is beating at maximum, yet pumping ice through your veins… All you want to do is RUN; quit, get away from it, do anything to stop feeling it…And oh, the tactics I was will to implore… None of them worked.

These; my favorite acronym’s for FEAR, cover it pretty well:

False Evidence Appearing Real

Frantic Effort To Avoid Reality

F@#! Everything And Run…

Turns out, each ‘sacrifice’ was actually made at the feet of Fear’s throne, in worship; sacrificing Self to fear.

Remember, every single thought or action or feeling speaks to what I believe I am. There’s no other way it could go… it is the holographic nature of wholeness. Of course, what I believe is not what I am. If belief is involved, it is at best a symbol pointing toward the truth…. At worst, well we all know, it’s a total shredding of identity with One Self, replaced with a false identity to be feared and mistrusted, split off into millions of ‘other’ selves, separate and at odds with ‘me’. Thank God, that’s false! And thank heaven that the false always is false …

Only the truth is true~ forever, always. I job is to deny the denial of truth. Which looks like the lesson says; to sacrifice all suffering, all sense of loss and sadness, all anxiety and doubt, and freely let God’s Love come streaming in to my awareness, healing all ideas of pain and allowing God’s Own eternal joy. My mission, once I choose to accept it, is to accept love’s miracles in place of fear’s depiction of the world by committing all; that is every situation, circumstance, relationship and belief, to my function of forgiveness and therefore, happiness. Here is where the ‘real’ world is revealed… I love how the Course talks about this switch over in Chapter 28 of the text. Here's some excerpts from that section:: “The miracle alone is your concern at present. Here is where we must begin. And having started, will the way be made serene and simple in the rising up to waking and the ending of the dream. When you accept a miracle, you do not add your dream of fear to one that is already being dreamed. Without support, the dream will fade away without effects. For it is your support that strengthens it”…. “Like every lesson that the Holy Spirit requests you learn, the miracle is clear. It demonstrates what He would have you learn, and shows you its effects are what you want. In His forgiving dreams are the effects of yours undone, and hated enemies perceived as friends with merciful intent. Their enmity is seen as causeless now, because they did not make it. And you can accept the role of maker of their hate, because you see that it has no effects. Now are you freed from this much of the dream; the world is neutral, and the bodies that still seem to move about as separate things need not be feared. And so they are not sick…. The miracle returns the cause of fear to you who made it. But it also shows that, having no effects, it is not cause, because the function of causation is to have effects. And where effects are gone, there is no cause. Thus is the body healed by miracles because they show the mind made sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or effect, of what it made. Yet half the lesson will not teach the whole. The miracle is useless if you learn but that the body can be healed, for this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. The lesson is the mind was sick that thought the body could be sick; projecting out its guilt caused nothing, and had no effects… This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream's alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. They are the glad effects of taking back the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released because the mind acknowledges "this is not done to me, but I am doing this." And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of the world undone”.

Doesn’t that just leave you with a yummy feeling of being on track, identifying as the dreamer instead of the dream, learning from the right-mind, and coming home… Make you want to gladly pay the debt we owe to truth,—a debt that merely is the letting go of self-deceptions and of images we worshiped falsely—truth returns… Ummm Thanks for joining me~ ~