~ACIM lesson thoughts for one year

I love A Course in Miracles... My holy-mirror friend Patricia and I always joke that our relationship with the Course is the greatest love affair of our lives; everything we ever looked for in a relationship in this so-called world. Which is true... And the best part is that it points to a very real experience beyond the Course and this world entirely, which soon becomes the Only relationship... Source and creation in perfect union.This blog is about that relationship, my experiences and thoughts. I am using a base format of i year of ACIM workbook lessons as a springboard each day, from which Ill let inspiration take it from there...In deepest appreciation and love~ forever and ever

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/

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~ ~

Lesson 313:

“Now let a new perception come to me”.

Here’s what I notice… It takes but one wholehearted decision for truth to be but the truth got me and for loves presence to take the lead, for everything to change. The decision for truth is made, and the goal is then set to re-open my eyes to a forgiven world. Where even just a minute previously I mistakenly thought my identity was tied up with irritation or fear, just the mere surrender to the possibility, that my interpretation of current events is wrong ~ because I am not at peace~ makes way to receive the miracle… It’s as if, like they say, a veil is lifted and I see the innocence I was looking for all along, simply by unreservedly offering it to that moment’s guests and allowing sinlessness to be reflected back.

So simple it is, really… "Love will come wherever it is asked"… No more significant statement could I make about my learning. I ask that love be present and I recognize it is, always, already, waiting but my decision to only be but what I am and to see that you are but what you are; sinless and wholly innocent of the lies duality portrays that ebb and flow across the dreaming mind; their unreality exposed and passed over for the truth…

Love waits on welcome… It doesn’t come to us, it is us… Forgiveness shows us the only path in this world, in truth; choose once again and awaken; already at home in the arms of love.

This one decision to let truth be itself and love to enter the mind/heart that a minute ago had refusal on its lips, warms and relents to peace’s gentle touch. This is the holy relationship with the ‘real’ world, which forgiveness offers me … identifying with the Christ and recognizing its already present gift within, out-pictured upon the world. The simple lesson which forgiveness brings and the Course restates again and again is: I see my own innocence by seeing the world's innocence… I find my forgiveness through forgiving others… I recognize my own innocence by seeing yours.

Ideas are shared. By allowing the Christ identity in you, I recognize it in myself, already present, now. This is the holy wake-up call, and we have answered… Love forever and ever~

Lesson 310:

In fearlessness and love I spend today…

“This day, our Father, would we spend with You, as You have chosen all our days should be. And what we will experience is not of time at all. The joy that comes to us is not of days or hours, for it comes from Heaven to Your Son. This day will be Your sweet reminder to remember You, Your gracious calling to Your holy Son, the sign Your grace has come to us, and that it is Your Will we be set free today.”

Thank you for joining with me in this day of freedom… it is by our choice to let Christ’s vision reveal our life to us that today; we can rest in the true essence of our relationship with our Source. This is the second coming and we fearlessly accept Christ as our Self, transforming our so-called world within our mind to the zero-point: LOVE… It is the eternal now; where deep within we feel the expansive wholeness we share with Him…. We always had it and today we are merely attuning through His grace and ours to the love we cannot be without, but can experience in fullness by our single desire for it. And we are no longer afraid, for there is nothing that isn’t resolved by this choice to feel with God, and let His plan for salvation rip. Is anything that wouldn’t cease to bother us if fearlessness and love were at the heart of everything? Is there a chance we wouldn’t feel present with what matters most? I think not… We trust the Holy Spirit to show us what to do with time… and we lean back in peace…

We see that there is nothing we need do, but see that everything is for- giving for all… I join you now in the Heavenly chorus singing thankfulness and joy …

Lesson 309:

I will not fear to look within today…

Getting past the boogie-man, that’s the thing, isn’t it. As we go within and face the darkness we always believed was there~ the loneliness of nothingness… Oh my gosh, I spent a lot of years here; afraid to enter the darkness fully… But when I had no where else to go; when I had basically backed myself into the dark corner of self; having sealed off every other avenue as an option, I entered the abyss of the unknown… mumbling the prayer of desperation and initiation, “There has got to be another way…”

Just like the lesson says, it was my innocence instead of guilt which I found. The relief was so powerfully poignant, that I feel literally lifted up and lightened up. Some kind of light of love seemed to virtually blast all that I identified with up to that instant.

“I’m sorry” was the secret creed I had always had tucked behind everything I did and coloring all my interactions. It was what I would call my defining personal lie… my guilty little secret identity; ‘I’m sorry I’m not enough, better, stronger, faster…worthy’…~This was the horror I believe would destroy me?... sounds more like a scared little girl, to me. And it was. Oh, I was trying… but I knew… it was inevitable… I didn’t deserve…

Well, it was inevitable alright, as it is with each of us. There come a time when each of says, with complete surrender, ‘there has got to be another way’; and listens to the call to go within… It is Love’s call… to Love, and it is the Love within which is our true Self, that answers. (Though we are generally unaware, on love’s level, at the time.)

What ‘they’ say about our beliefs and ‘reality’ being an illusion, turns out to be true. It is the FEAR boogieman which the ego placed as the gate keeper that keeps us from venturing into the path of truth within… Frantic Effort to Avoid Reality…~good acronym for fear, yes? It’s an emotion, it can’t stop a thing. And what’s more, withdraw belief in it and it crumbles cuz it’s only propped alive by the seer’s belief. What I’ve come it see is that all the beliefs I had about myself and the world were but the veil this boogieman held up to distract me from my return to truth…

As I have forged ahead with the Holy Spirit’s guiding voice and my trusty forgiveness flashlight, whatever horror I believed was there, once looked at straight on, has always dissolved behind the lamp of love’s innocence…

Turns out, KNOW THYSELF…in other words, look within, is the only game in town! And the prize? The incredible lightness of being ~Heaven; here and now…

9. What is the Second Coming?

“Christ’s Second Coming, which is sure as God, is merely the correction of mistakes, and the return of sanity. It is a part of the condition that restores the never lost, and re-establishes what is forever and forever true. It is the invitation to God’s Word to take illusions place; the willingness to let forgiveness rest upon all things without exception and without reserve…”

This is the coming together of all the lessons we have decided to learn through the Holy Spirit and this Course…

I love this section from the text, which would be complimentary reading (T-12.VI.5-6)

The second coming is the final choice to see our brother only as our self…because we realize we want nothing else…

Ya know, I can hardly even remember when I didn’t have this goal: to see Christ in all my brothers, that I might know my Self… to look past the appearance of form to join with the love that I feel calling me out and inward…

Now, I’m not saying I have not made this difficult for myself. In fact there have been times when I have totally drunkened myself on the self-pity of failure to meet the goal on its own terms… But, that was only an illusion as well, tragic in time (which, at that point I confused as myself), but nothing in eternity. I see that now. In the eternal present moment, I recognize the ego but delaying the inevitable; and the delay ends up to be but a silly dream, long gone…

I look at the second coming as the time when all the residual heavy sleepiness affects of the drug; ‘belief in the ego identity’, has totally worn off for each and every one of us, and we have chosen the awakening to love’s presence in all others, events and circumstances through forgiveness. We are then totally ready and willing to let God take the final step in our return to Him, so we happily live out the healed vision of God’s Son in the real world where love alone reigns within our mind…

And how is it for every one of us, here? However it is that I see my brother is the only way it is… for there is only one of us in Christ… Here, is a relative term which only exists in time. I see from within Heaven or hell by where I place my brother…

It seems apropos to reference (T-II.) in the text which so beautifully speaks to walking with Christ… Joyously I join you in the only useful journey… re-membering…

Lesson 301:

And God Himself shall wipe away all tears…

Today’s prayer really says everything. Please join me:

“Father, unless I judge I cannot weep. Nor can I suffer pain, or feel I am abandoned or unneeded in the world. This is my home because I judge it not, and therefore is it only what You will. Let me today behold it uncondemned, through happy eyes forgiveness has released from all distortion. Let me see Your world instead of mine. And all the tears I shed will be forgotten, for their source is gone. Father, I will not judge Your world today…

Simple as that.

I’m done being interested in judging and assessing and rating… well, in thinking I know anything about anything without Voice for God giving meaning to it for me… Actually, nothing in the world I saw through the eyes of judgment hold any interest for me anymore… If I can’t share it equally with all my brothers, I don’t want it… it can’t possible be real.

Yet love; love is always available and can readily be accessed and given and received as one perfect moment in time, one holy instant shared by all… easily felt by valuing nothing else, yes? ‘I love you’ is the lamp that lights the way eternally now…

8. What is the real world?

This section of takes the hand of those whom are ready, and gently steps beyond the world of hell, once so familiar and unquestioned and accepted as real, shedding it like lovers clothes, allowing trust to answer every question and eyes of forgiveness to rest upon all things…

This is a glorious time in the curriculum, for we are more identified with the truth, more comfortable with the happy dream as home than the antiquated script of fear, the competition for control, and death. Joyously I invite you into my every thought… The fantasy of private minds and special relationships have been replace by the compellingly appealing beauty of the face of Christ, our oneness, and the mighty chorus of love’s gratitude…

Each of the lessons in this section gives a touchstone in which to rest in the real world without resistance, re-membering our home in Heaven, Now…

Lesson 291:

This is a day of stillness and of peace…

This is the zero point ~ the touchstone. The place we begin and end our day. If we don’t start here, what can we expect? The goal belongs at the outset… We dump all thoughts that try to tell us what the day is about into the Holy Spirit’s hands and rest in stillness and peace… We need do nothing; we have released our agendas because trust is now our guide… Inspiration moves us to action, yet we remain still and peaceful within the center of our being... And what we do today we do joyously from this place of inner knowing that whatever it is, it is for the good of all…

Let’s launch this day, by joining in the lesson’s prayer:

“This day my mind is quiet, to receive the Thoughts You offer me. And I accept what comes from You, instead of from myself. I do not know the way to You. But You are wholly certain. Father, guide Your Son along the quiet path that leads to You. Let my forgiveness be complete, and let the memory of You return to me.”

LESSON 286:

The hush of Heaven holds my heart today…

“Father, how still today! How quietly do all things fall in place! This is the day that has been chosen as the time in which I come to understand the lesson that there is no need that I do anything. In You is every choice already made. In You has every conflict been resolved. In You is everything I hope to find already given me. Your peace is mine. My heart is quiet, and my mind at rest. Your Love is Heaven, and Your Love is mine…”

I need do nothing… This is an often used term with ACIM students. But do we really have more than mere concepts of what that means? This lesson speaks in harmony with the experience of peace that comes from accepting the Atonement for oneSelf… When we begin to see that what we thought was life, was the dream of death, and what we enjoyed as ‘special relationships’ were really the dream of exclusion and loneliness, we see also that all seeming problems are the same problem~ we think we that we have separated ourselves from our Source and therefore from each other and even split our own mind to attempt to identify with a false identity we made-up ourselves and simultaneously feel the power of the Atonement; that all falsehood has been given answer by the truth…

The peace and joy of Heaven are not far behind… With each forgiveness we offer, we feel the still peace the miracle blesses us with as we Christ’s face, which is our own, replace the ‘other’ with our love…

We were lost in the exile of denying the truth… but now, we deny the denial of truth and feel the hush of Heaven in the still belonging beneath the surface of the apparent reality which is being undone even as we forgive and bless…

What’s more, we are truly realizing the unified purpose of the Self we share. It is easier and easier to trust the ‘wholly certain goal’ and give our effort-ing to the Holy Spirit to use in behalf of the entire Sonship and the Atonement.

For just this instant, join me in breathing deeply into the hush of Heaven, already here, right now…

The hush of Heaven holds my heart today…

7. What is the Holy Spirit?

I love that the Holy Spirit within our minds is and has always been, (since the beginning of time when it became necessary, that is) right there, reinterpreting, healing, and forgiving our misguided dreaming and believing…. Cuz as soon as one is finished with the game of bunkers-hill and quits the futile effort of making God an object of ‘competition for control’, and the wrong-mind is surrendered; right here, right now, is the Holy Spirit Voice, already, as always, righting the perception of one’s so called life and filling the listener with peace…

This is certainly my experience. When I became willing to recognize that I had been wrong… about everything, I realized that the Holy Spirit, which was the right answer, had been there all along, in the midst of every situation and circumstance. I had simply placed on my attention on false ideas instead of truth (placed on the inner alter) death instead of eternal life, fear instead of love, and therefore, that was the experience it rendered in place of Love and God…

What a relief! For me, the more I got into the forgiveness thing, the more I saw how very little my character is required to do to fulfill my function in God’s plan for salvation. My willingness, it turns out, ~whatever that level of willingness might be at the time, is enough, and will be used. For that matter, any and every thing I offer will be used… For it is the Holy Spirit that bridges the gap from what has already been accomplish in God and my recognition of completion in Him. In other words, it is the mere decision see instead of dream that changes for me, all situations into the “call from Love to Love that it be itself”… strangers to brothers and earth to Heaven…

Lesson 281:

I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts…

Boy, you really get this awareness up close and personal as you begin the active practice of mind-watching, forgiving and seeing differently, yes?!! What a blessing to see that we are not what we once imagined, and that no one else was either, but rather that we are all joined in a unified purpose to bring to awareness, Love’s eternal presence…

Today’s lesson prayer is a perfect reminder of the truth. Please join me in recognizing and aligning:

“Father, Your Son is perfect. When I think that I am hurt in any way, it is because I have forgotten who I am, and that I am as You created me. Your Thoughts can only bring me happiness. if ever I am sad or hurt or ill, I have forgotten what You think, and put my little meaningless ideas in place of where Your Thoughts belong, and where they are. I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts. The Thoughts I think with You can only bless. The Thoughts I think with You alone are true…”

In joy~

Lesson 277:

Let me no bind Your Son with laws I made…

Every problem; every uncomfortable feeling, every sense that something is amiss, come from a split mind, temporarily identifying with the false; with an ‘I’-concept of self attempting to bind God’s Son with laws I made…

‘X’ happens and I say, “It should have gone Y”, due to some thing in this so-called world and some fancied results I think I want, always having to do with persons and circumstances, past and future… In other words, they are the children of the belief in the body and time and space…

What it is never about is the truth; the Self which is God’s Son as He created… LOVE!

Always, the instant I am willing to release my agenda back to the abyss of unknown and ask to be shown the meaning of what I behold instead of what the bodies sentinel brought forth, I realize my Self as dreamer of the dream and I have already changed my mind… In other words, I choose once again what He would have me be instead of dreams. And allow the miracle to work its magic in the mind of all concerned ~ which, of course, is the entire Sonship, since minds are joined and One in God…

Deeper still at the center of my being, zeroed into Now, I feel the peace of God and the recognition of the ever-present, unchanging, unchangeable, Self; God’s Son, who cannot suffer pain…

Here, now, always, beyond time and space and persons and bodies and illusion of any kind, I am resting in quiet certainty knowing I am that Son…I am aware I have never left, and you are there with me in Heaven where we are at home…

Lesson 226:

My home awaits me. I will hasten there…

Forgiveness merely allows us to open our eyes to the Self before us, instead of the contracted images of decayed beliefs and nauseating regurgitation of the ancient blinders to the truth. The truth shines so brightly that when we first glimpse it, it seems too bright to even open our eyes to. We don’t, at first, see that it is the light that was beyond, before, within, all along… the light that made seeing possible at all. But gradually, as we feel its warm inviting presence through forgiveness, we feel more and more compelled to open our eyes. Yes? And what we see of course, is the Self we were looking for in all our illusion, right there in our brother-beyond-the-judgment; Christ, in other words…

Whenever we so choose, we can depart this world in favor of the forgiven or ‘real’ world, by merely changing our mind about its purpose. Joy in creation is the eternal purpose we share as One. We don’t need to look for this or wonder how this is. We simply let the false go and truth is revealed already…. Heaven is with in us now, and it is our Home, right Here, right Now… relax the try, soften the eyes… and bingo… there, present/presence~ all along…