Lessons 361~365:

This holy instant would I give to You. Be you in charge. For I would follow You. Certain your direction gives me peace…

For years this statement has been my daily waking prayer … In actuality, this has the prayer in my mind ever since I truly accepted the miracle; since my I changed my mind from hell to Heaven, from illusory goals to truth as my only goal, from imprisoning myself as hostage to the ego to embracing my Self as host to God and accepting my function of happiness through forgiveness by making the one irreversible choice for the Atonement for my Self. This releases me from fantasies of ‘special-nesses’ of any kind. I so love what I seen now… You are my Self!!! …

It is with deepest gratitude, I reflect on this past year’s joining through ACIM lessons. I am so very blessed and as we move into the next year of time and space, I have but one New Year’s resolution:

I will to see what I denied~ because it is the truth. This is to say, I accept each person, place, thing, circumstance, and/or situation with equal value, without exception. Christ vision has now been received and opened the flood-gates of light behind and beyond which I experience as the great rays; full-love~

At last…. Our time of fantasy has come and gone~ Only God’s time, this present moment, is… The answer was gifted where it could be used. After all, God placed the answer together with the problem, so that they could not be separated by time…. Duh! How simple to see now; it is impossible that I have a problem that has not been -solved already. It has been done and Love is all that remains as viable for our forward path…

We cannot loose our way because there is no way but His, and nowhere can we go except to Him. We began this year with the happy decision to align our choices with the Holy Spirit by listening to the Voice for God~ using the daily workbook lessons… And we can rest in His certainty that this was no idle task…. You can feel it, can’t you?! We are as God created us! This one thing is sure…. Joy and gratitude are our natural state and our constant companion for direction…. We simply can’t loose what we are! ! ! ~ LOVE ! ! ! ~PURE, UNTAINTED, INNOCENT, GIVING~RECIEVING LOVE !

Happy New Year!!!

LESSON 358:

No call to God can be unheard nor left
Unanswered. And of this I can be sure;
His answer is the one I really want.

This is why we’re all here isn’t it? First in letting the imagination run wild and project a world and existence seemingly separate from our Source and all else. And Now, in glimpsing its transparent falseness, choosing to remember truth instead…

Here’s what I’ve seen; all prayers, or calls to God, are always answered instantly. Our reception isn’t nearly so clear. When our prayers are requests to a false god or idol, their manifestation follows the false laws of scarcity, specialness and loss. When our prayer is for only the truth, Heaven’s host rallies to assist us in remembering who we really are through the Holy Spirit… reminding us that we are under no laws but God’s. Forgiveness is the medium of the Holy Spirit to translate all that we thought we wanted into what we really want behind, beneath and beyond what can be experience with perception, but can be felt as love, acceptance, unity, and peace… every call is a call to God, to see the truth about ourselves

This is the truth: we are love’s radiant reality; we are as God created; His sinless Son, co-creator of all that is… Every call to any son of God is ultimately a call to remember Self through seeing Christ in our brother…

You are my sinless Self and I am joyously in your debt, welcoming the full remembrance of our eternal oneness, Now!... Thank you…

Lesson 347:

Anger must come from judgment. Judgment is the weapon I would use against myself, to keep the miracle away from me…

All judgment is self judgment. Every decision we make in our live is based on what we believe we are. Am I what I made of myself through the criteria of judgments the ego laid out? In other words, am I a body in a world of survival of the fittest...

Or, am I as God created me through extending His Love? Which would make me, basically, Love; the essence of life itself… What I decide determines what I will see. In the former, my perception comes after manifestation; leaving me at the mercy of what shows up and therefore what is available as far as resources goes, to make do the best I can to survive and hopefully, be happy…. In this scenario~ the more ‘stuff’, the better the success … Sounds pretty tenuous and insecure to me…

With the latter, identifying myself as the Son, which God created as Himself, my perception develops from within; taking form from the meaning or purpose of the situation. So what I see is part of me… and the purpose of life itself… The particulars of any circumstance or chain of events are seen as relevant only in so much as they serve the relationship to each other… Here, happiness rules, because it is not dependent on a state other than Now… Patience and certainty are present, because nothing is missing, for oneness is known.

The miracle allows us to make that shift from fantasy to reality in God; to see the false as false and only the truth as true... to experience our unity with each other as well as our oneness with Creator and creation.

This lesson is reminding us that when we experience anger of any kind, we have flip-switched to the false, attacking our true identity…And that by that decision, we are keeping the miracle at arms length… Luckily, at this stage of the game, we are generally quick to realize our error because any lack of peace is becoming increasingly intolerable. Plus, we know the restoration of peace and joy is just decision for forgiveness, away…

We judge because we’re afraid to trust. However, what we know now, is that this need not be. And we are willing to give up our defense against love and let anger dissolve into this instant where we are willing to listen… and in that stillness, we recognize the gentle Voice for God assuring us that He has judged… and that we are the Son He loves…

Lesson 340:

I can be free of suffering today….

There is a flow, like water; to this section of lessons… It is the steady, gentle awareness of our choice to no longer serve guilt but to allow for all the defenses and make-believe that held its value in place, to be dispersed into the tranquil rousing that forgiveness brings. What is apparent now, here, as we gaze with Christ’s vision is all the beauty which was always present, but which our faith in guilt concealed. It is here, we have the chance of recognizing the Son of God; to look and see the face of Christ.

The freedom from suffering is the change of mind from dreams of guilt to happy dreams. This is the choice takes the place of the formerly worshiped ‘idol’ of guilt and its dwindling reign in mind. ‘Choose once again’, the Course tells us again and again… This lesson says we can, today, choose forever to let go of suffering and allow the flow of love forgiveness brings…freely…

We decide one simple thing; we do not want whatever we believe an idol gives. For thus the Son of God declares that he is free of idols. And thus he is free…

I am, indeed, free of suffering today; for I am as God created me. This choice exposes the madness of following guilt’s chosen path as a way of life…. Appearances can but deceive the mind that wants to be deceived. There is no meeting place for the peace of God and guilt. Forgiveness allows for the dance of suffering to be seen for what it is: guilt is the one and only cause of pain, no matter what it seems to look like. And the peace forgiveness brings makes it so we are no longer enticed by guilt’s pretentious, hopeless allure.

We choose freedom from, or instead of suffering and through this choice we see what was previously invisible (due to our desire not to see, per guilt’s wishes). The idea of salvation is viable at last. This one choice is the decision to expose the false; not so much running from the make believe toys in the idol dream, but rather deciding against their reality, which was only kept alive by deception. It is the decision to let the truth be true. I love the what the Course says in the section in the text called Beyond All Idols where it states:

“Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be except a happy dream? It asks you but that you forgive all things that no one ever did; to overlook what is not there, and not to look upon the unreal as reality. You are but asked to let your will be done, and seed no longer for the things you do not want. And you are asked to let yourself be free of all the dreams of what you never were and seek no more to substitute the strength of idle whishes for the Will of God… No more than this is asked… salvation asks for nothing in reality. And even in illusions it but asks forgiveness be the substitute for fear Such is the only rule for happy dreams”…

To “let all things be exactly as they are” is another way of stating the running theme of these later lessons in the Course… as a matter of fact, that is what the Course says… “No rules are idly set, and no demands are made of anyone or anything to twist and fit into the dream of fear. Instead, there is a wish to understand all things created as the really are. And it is recognized that all things must be first forgiven, and then understood…. The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness.”…

The peace of God flows naturally as we let go all attachment to guilt… Can’t you just feel it? Right Now!

~We can be free of suffering today~

Ah, God’s plan for salvation rocks! There’s simply nowhere to turn that doesn’t lead back to the yummy presence of God’s Love; always, already forever present… now that’s a groovy present, eh?

Lesson 339:

I will receive whatever I request…

Here, I sit, with today’s lesson working its magic in my mind… I am feeling full and light… And part of what keeps coming to my mind is chapter 30 in the text. Section entitled; Rules for Decision. OMG, I cannot describe what a precious source of perfect, specific as well as general, this guide has been for me… It is so completely contrary to the very make-up of the ego-self, to be clear on any thing. The entire ego thought system, after all, was made for precisely the opposite. So, in other words, asking the self of this so-called life what it wants and what will make it happy is futile. And really nothing… what a waste of perfectly good life force, eh? Oh, sure the ego is a great ‘used-vehicle’ type salesperson; shape-shifting when necessary to play the role of motivational speaker and counselor… and maker–of-promises.

However, there is no unity in division, no clarity in confusion. Going to the source of unhappiness for the umpteenth time for ‘a new plan’ for happiness, is the very definition of insanity, yes? … Doing the same thing over and over; expecting different results…sound familiar?

The Course bypasses engagement in this common, redundant thinking, and it delivers it message directly to the part of the mind which is ready to receive. Even when we feel we don’t understand, what I have seen is that it delivers and waits till my forgiveness opens that part of my mind where the wisdom of its message patiently waits for my wholehearted welcome…. So many times, haven’t you, as I have, experienced that ‘ah ha!’; so that’s what the Course meant about that’ kind of moment? It speaks directly to right-mind…

Now, referring specifically to the Rules for Decision section, for many years I fell under the category, it addresses:”…if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready”. I hated for this to be true about me, and often I lied to myself that I was ready, but results always revealed the discrepancy… You can’t hide from what you have given value to… it shows up in your life, regardless, because thoughts create things…

However, in moments of non-resistance I found that I could certainly follow the very next instruction” ”… and I was able let it go how it went; the outcome as well, often, as the process…. “A little willingness”… It goes along ways… In fact, it is always just enough…

And here’s the thing, in spite of myself, or was it in-spired of my-Self, truth has become my single goal; regardless of what things look like externally, somehow that zero-point of love is always present at the center of my mind. In revisiting the process laid out in Rules for Decision, as I have, oh so many times, I am profoundly moved by the miracle; I found that somewhere along the line, the kind of deep abiding peace and joy, I glimpse in this practice, I was now coming to recognize as my natural state… I had been willing and ready and able to remember and apply its principles as part a natural part of my life of forgiveness, and just allow, not needing to understand or figure out….

I invite you all to join in the yummy treat of reviewing this section, Rules for Decision along with today’s lesson. The goal, after all, belongs at the beginning… So, if we want to set the day right~ aligned in truth~ that is, for the best possible application of today’s lesson: ‘I will receive whatever I request’ , why not take advantage of the specificity of this exercise? The directions, after all are for the un-perfect mind that will inevitably attempt them (as is the entire Course, thank you, Jesus)… Today I join with you in accepting Atonement through the means appointed us… I offer all my love and faith~

Lesson 335:

I choose to see my brother’s sinlessness….

As with all perception, I see only what I want to be there. This, in itself is a huge hurdle, perhaps the largest. Bottom-line, nothing exists outside my mind. I notice that as long as I endorsed (valued) a private mind, I could not wrap my mind around this idea of ‘you believe what you see, because you see what you believe’…. It was just too small to grasp, I guess…. Somehow my willingness to be wrong, allowed me to see that the same mind that seemingly chooses daily perceptions, with or without forgiveness, with or without love or attack, is the same one-mind that originated the crucial premise; the idea of separation, which instigated and maintains the entire sudo-reality of time and space, and rights and wrongs, and loneliness and bodies, fear and forgiveness, and you and me~ Gosh, if you boil it down to the zero point… all concepts, all seemingly real, all hinge on the self-concept; the idea called 'me'.

~Funny isn’t it, when ya really see that… It’s what I like to call ‘the big cosmic belly laugh’…. Cuz there is no me, or you…

There is only God and His Son; the extension of His Love. Another word for this ‘me’ I am referring to, is of specialness.

Specialness is the me that is always wanting more than everything~ it is the subject. The ‘you’ is anything or one ‘other’. It is the object for subject’s acquisition or enhancement…. That’s the dream… and none of it is real.

It was within the holy instant where ‘reality’/Love/truth, where I first experienced the clarity of oneness, which directed me toward the awareness that I am, indeed, the dreamer of the dream. Within this awareness , too, was the gift of the Atonement : that is my will, as God’s Will for me, to fulfill my function as the dreamer…

That function is to forgive and see this world differently; to see my brother’s sinlessness, to recognize my own.

I simply allow the Holy Spirit within mind to decide for God for me, and show me my forgiveness curriculum. I choose to see my brother sinless because that is the only way I feel loving toward him. And I, simply, can no longer tolerate less than loving feelings. The slightest attachment to outcome, the merest outside-Self referent, puts me on shaky ground. ~For peace is the only state where I know you or myself at all. And from peace I feel our oneness. Forgiveness is the answer: I choose to see the situation through forgiving eyes where you are sinless and so am I.

This is also the choice for freedom; returning me to Mind, because choice for forgiveness is the switch allowing me to listen to the Voice for God. This reminds me that I am the dreamer and whatever I might have originally perceived as an example of ‘sin’, I now choose to see as a chance to forgive, recognize what is my perception, is not really there. That the fear and guilt/ lack of peace is clearly in my mind….

My same Mind, which with the Holy Spirit, can now see beyond and into the heart of love we share. The choice for forgiveness; the choice to see your innocence, gives me back my dignity and changes everything.

It allows Love to rule the day, define the moments… and allow Presence to permeate everything, here and now… It is always enough….

Thank you for your holy light that shines eternal, that I may see my Self through you~ I love you~

Lesson 330:

I will not hurt myself again today…

It’s yummy to say that in honesty, with absolute faith… Yes? This feeling of trust comes with accepting forgiveness as our only function…

Here’s what happened for me…. A recognition dawned in my mind of another possibility, another guide; s love/based guide already within my mind~ already guiding my life within the whole of life itself; fully directed in its entirety, awaiting but my acceptance, for perception to quickly follow to seemingly materialize it. It was but my wholehearted desire to see a unified perspective that flipped the lid to open in a mind that previously saw only reasons to fear or avoid fear. The joy of love is and always was; abundantly already flooding the system~ Forever extending~ that is the nature of love.

This is the miracle mind; awake and aware. The Course says to the extent to which we value guilt, proportionately we see a world where attack is justified. And for me, as long as guilt is of value to me, whatsoever, forgiveness attempts were just more of the same dignity attack. True forgiveness was impossible to even recognize, let alone allow. See, I thought forgiveness was something that ‘I’ did for someone else, or myself, or vise-versa. Funny how, now, that statement only feels riddled with inconsistencies… course, inconsistencies are indicative of the confused mind.

Forgiveness, it turns out, is the other way of viewing through the mind, simultaneously operating. Wholly visible by my choice to see. It is the total view. It is generous only in the sense that judgment is impossible here, for everything has the same value. All things are exactly as they are and there is no pull to desire something else. Perfection, rather than being the definition of ‘getting it just right’, reflects the impossibility of wrongness… And the ‘right Mind’ allows for illusions to be the nothingness that illusion must surely be, for it is aware of no threat from no-thing.

I’m remembering the section in the text called Perception and choice in chapter 25 where it talks about perception’s fundamental law: ‘You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you want it there! (BINGO) It also speaks to us of God’s more basic law: Love creates itself, and nothing but itself! (again, BINGO)

Everything which seems to form-ulate this reality eventually faces the blinding fear boogieman which dissolves into the boundless joy described in this section as the final message to the mind in error, “God is Love. (And therefore so am I).” The error-self cannot house or resonate with this spectacular awareness and its inevitable annihilation begins taking place….

‘The fear of God’ is referred to in the Course as the final obstacle to peace, which one must cross through. And it seems all obstacles boil down to this one~ we begin to see the absolute absurdity of fear, when we recognize that ‘Only Love Is’… ~ no matter what angle we come at it from, we all finally face, square on, that God and Self are the One Love that all creation is…

Once I allowed myself to see that all the ‘story’, my mind was always blabbering on about was nothing; just simply the ego; an illusion dueling it out with itself in an effort to substantiate its flimsy position within the framework of Reality where wholeness makes no allowances for specialness, it was much easier to feel the compassion inherent to wholeness, for wrong-minded ego specialness to want to survive as a possibility. That used to be me after all…

Somehow I let go the desire for the wrong-mind and became willing to forgive all the concepts contained within it, thereby allowing that the false is false and none of my business, which leaves the truth to resonate as the Self we are as one.

I love immersing myself in the only purpose that makes sense. The Atonement Principle: where forgiveness is my only function. Which, incidentally, just feels like love, eh? I couldn’t be happier about this job… like yesterdays lesson says; I have already chosen what God Wills and will it along with Him. My function and my happiness are one. I will only to see Christ in Mind ~where you and I are one…

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…

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 ~

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…

10. What is the Last Judgment?

This section of lessons really drives home the core principle A Course in Miracles strives to teach…. Only the truth is true… and what is false is nothing… We have come far on the path the Course lessons guide us down, this year dedicated to the truth. It is the acceptance of the Atonement for ourselves, the choice for Christ’s vision as our own and taking up our ministry as miracle worker’s that brings us to this crucial point. In other words, as the section states; it is Christ’s Second Coming. “Christ’s Second Coming gives the Son of God this Gift: to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgment is in which perception ends. At first you see a world that has accepted this as true, projected form a now corrected min. and with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done…Accept this holy truth: God’s judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God’s saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering, return to peace, security and happiness, and union with your own identity…”

Humph… sounds familiar… Still, the choice to let truth alone be true, and forgive all perception’s barriers to its awareness, is ours; the one we made together when we embarked on this so-called journey to re-member… It is ours for the unequivocal saying yes to God’s judgment in place or our own…. And this we do today ~YES!

Lesson 311:

“I judge all things as I would have them be.”

This, of course, is the premise by which I choose what world I would see. And choosing with the Holy Spirit allows me to be joyously present and in full communication with my brothers regardless of the seeming ‘physical proximity’. Anything that resembles ‘specialness’; any degree of separation in any way is merely my competition with God complex, from which I am recovering… That is, un-covering my true identity in truth… Every choice I make is a decision about what want to be true. And since only the truth is true, I choose therefore, the Holy Spirit’s judgment of what I will see. Forgiveness is my function. And the Holy Spirit’s vision reveals to me the choice I make.

“Father, we wait with open mind today, to hear Your Judgment of the Son You love. We do not know him, and we cannot judge. And so we let Your Love decide what he whom You created as Your Son must be...”

Lesson 298:

I love You, Father, and I love Your Son…

This is the one true statement, yes? Love is what I am. Every encounter, experience, action or idea within this world is gently being guided by the Holy Spirit within mind, to assist the full recognition of this simple fact. Absolute Realization of this one true fact is realization of the Self at one with all that is… In other words~ LOVE.

Let’s slip into the prayer of facts in today’s lesson, together, right this moment, and sit for a while in the truth of our sure way in God…

“Father, we come to You today, because we would not follow any way by Yours. You are beside us. Certain is Your way. And we are grateful for Your holy gifts of certain sanctuary, and escape from everything that would obscure our love for God our Father and His holy Son…”

Let this be the day of complete release from all former resistance; from valuing what cannot ever serve the holy Son of God… Let only the love that we are sure of, be our guide… waiting until we feel the inspiration born of love to move us into action in any circumstance that might arise. What do we have to lose? We’ve exhausted all the half-measures and obligatory duties as a method back to the love we are and have for our brothers, our Father and our self… We forgive it all, NOW! And come with open minds and hearts and arm unto the truth:

I love You, Father, and I love Your Son…

Lesson 297:

Forgiveness is the only gift I give…

Actually, Forgiveness is the only gift I have to give in this so-called world. It is the only thing that makes life interesting here~ seeing past the labels and their meanings and their linking belief structures that make up a false self for you and for me…

Yes, forgiveness is the gift I give myself which opens my eyes to, instead, the actually of the present moment. The world of time and space are a past memory; gone simply by withdrawing valuing it. Now is where the ‘real’ world can be experience here. The present moment stands out with a sense of the ‘real’ even within the dream of time… haven’t you noticed? Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the gates of time into the world of the miracle, where you and I are one.

The present is all I am interested in now; the fresh, the alive; vibrant livingness itself… memory and anticipation in their best dress, pale miserably to provide any real sustenance. Everything about relationship with God is now, and cannot be outsourced to time… Forgiveness is the declaration of leaving the past in the past and the future with it, and allowing spirit to rip, now as we are. With nothing in its way, Love shines so brilliantly, it is impossible to miss. It looks like you and it looks like me in all our full innocence and glory.

The Self in truth, always now, in the eternal present, become me and now shares my reality. And it is within this realm of perfect acceptance that I impart to the present which makes it what it is… where forgiveness bestows its gift of perfect love…

Please join me in today’s prayer from the lesson:

Father, how certain are Your ways; how sure their final outcome, and how faithfully is every step in our salvation set already, and accomplished by Your grace. thanks be to You for Your eternal gifts, and thanks to You for our Identity…”

Lesson 290:

My present happiness is all I see…

This is what I notice; there is no place but here. There’s no such thing as better or worse, I am no longer interested in ‘improving’ the dream. All those old stand-by’s validate time for changing are now seen as silly delay tactics employed by a false identity to hang on as long as it could. The thing is, that that identity was false. It never actually had a place in the mind of God’s Son, save it be dreaming… I have lost interest in figuring anything out. I don’t care about the story and only stories feel something which seems different than love; happiness peace and oneness…

I have seen that there is no way to do it right … or wrong… there’s no place and nothing to get… The Atonement answered the idea of separation completely! Simply by accepting the Atonement for myself, the goal is changed. I am interested only in God’s Will, which is my will, for perfect happiness for all, and what I see is how the Holy Spirit orchestrates every minute detail for ever one to complete in our awareness the accomplishment of the universal experience of happy truth…

When the seeking was done, and my happiness was felt exclusively within; the joy present was the presence of Self, everywhere and in everyone…

The past and future have no home here. In my here/now, only the present lives and gives life; in other words, Love’s presence and my awareness and identification with it. I have no interest in what yesterday means and when I notice a conversation going in that direction, the obvious red-flag question arises: for what possible reason would we reference past, whatever’s? To substantiate now? The past is gone and what it seemingly contains that we would apparently discuss, are the dynamics of a time/space continuum which has no basis in reality… The present is complete, Now, stands on its own. The present is where forgiveness sees past the current dream-character identification into the ever-present eyes of love; giving and receiving as one… And it is always, already, a state of happy enough-ness…

My present happiness is all I see because any variation on that, is merely an opportunity to fulfill my function of forgiveness, which instantly puts me in touch with my function of perfect happiness present now…

I accept the Atonement as my only function here and everything is enough. The certainty of the peace of God yield no need… I can no longer see any ‘needs improvement’ signs.

Lesson 287:

You are my goal, my Father. Only you…

I can say without reservation that this is true for me. Nothing else matters. In the final analysis everything else burns off, or burns itself up, leaving only the pure, the eternal, the Love of God…

So is it with each seeming goal within this so-called life… Each burns up its hungry pull and seductive trappings in the light of forgiveness.

The Course tells us that in any situation, it is critical to set the goal at the outset. When I became clear that there was but one goal; the one I share with God~ forgiveness became simplicities ‘big-easy’, which in itself inspires right-action and live is a joyous opportunity of ‘suit-up and show-up’ to fulfill my function of forgiveness. Then lean back as the miracle washes over everyone and circumstance.

I am blessed to have wiped-out my so-called-self, leaving room to full recognition of my Self in God…

God the Father is the full joy of my now, the breath I breath and the very love that beats through my heart uniting your love with mine and revealing Christ in every face and time… For heaven is where I rest in Him along with you…. Such is the endless joy of the one goal:

You are my goal, my Father. What but You could I desire to have? What way but that which leads to You could I desire to walk? And what except the memory of You could signify to me the end of dreams and futile substitutions for the truth? You are my only goal. Your Son would be as You created him. What way but this could I expect to recognise my Self, and be at one with my Identity?

Lesson 284:

I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt…

This is the great gift of accepting the miracle, yes? Once we see through the disguises of the ego’s emergency death threats and realize that the thing all hurt, grief and pain have in common, is that they are false ideas about an anticipated situation we fear~ which also is false, we begin to instantly see the next step… We can elect to change a thought that hurts to one of forgiveness… Understanding that the Holy Spirit has got it wired for the return to love brings immediate peace…

I’ll tell you what, capitalizing on this gift (changing my mind ~ being willing to see things differently ~ reaching for the thought that feels better or even offers some relief ) has been, truly, a life-saver for me. And I mean that in every sense. I saw pretty quickly that the ‘mind-changing skill was worthy of practicing, honing and mastering…

So many bennies have come as a result. For instance, taking responsibility of changing my thought so I wouldn’t be in pain gave me a sense of accountability and integrity and lessened the desire to blame some one or situation for my circumstances…

And, the more I did it, the more I wanted that experience of feeling in my integrity and 100% responsible. I saw that forgiveness was the obvious avenue for the quickest investment in my happiness. This made me all the more willing to look more deeply into my core belief structure which brought these things about, serving them up as opportunities for happiness-by-way-of-forgiveness lesson accountability… which made me see that the script is written and the problem has been answered by the Atonement. And my changing my thoughts from fear to ones that allow love to express itself, which joins me with everyone and every thing… this is my part… So I can easily have faith in my brothers and that they are doing their part perfectly as well…

I am so very grateful to that I elect to change all thoughts that are not the truth of what I am and you are… and let the Holy Spirit handle the detail…

Father, what You have given cannot hurt, so grief and pain must be impossible. Let me not fail to trust in You today, accepting but the joyous as Your gifts; accepting but the joyous as the truth.

Lesson 274:

Today belongs to Love. Let me not fear…

Love is extension and creation… I find myself referencing the section in the text called The Origins of Separation, which serves up the miracle of the light of understanding to those willing to see… “God extended Himself to His creations and imbued them with the same loving Will to create... Created perfect, there is no emptiness in us… because of our likeness to our Creator we are creative. No child of God can lose this creative ability because it is inherent in what we are, but we can use it inappropriately by projecting… It reminds us that this world we think we live in is basically a case of the inappropriate extension, just an alteration in focus based on a false belief in what we are…a projection which occurs when one believes that some emptiness of lack exists, and that one can fill it with one’s own ideas instead of truth… This process involves the following steps:

First, we believe that what God created can be changed by our own mind.

Second, we believe that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect or lacking.

Third, we believe that we can distort the creations of God, including our self.

Forth, we believe that we can create our self, and that the direction of our own creation is up to us…

It tells that these related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the mind that got us dreamed-up in the world of separation and fear in which we seem to find ourselves… It further tells us that all fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that we have the ability to usurp the power of God. Of course, we neither can nor have been able to do this. Here is the real basis for our escape from fear. The escape is brought about by our acceptance of the Atonement, which enables us to realize that our errors never really occurred… whatever lies we believe are of no concern to the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease…there is no order of difficulty in miracles… In reality we are we are perfectly unaffected by all expressions of lack of love… “

Love: we spend our lives attempting to express and receive it…often in very convoluted ways. But the desire for knowing and extending the love that we are is the same pure extension of Source Love which is our creation… and why we are the children and parents of love.

For me, the journey has been so much about God, earning God’s Love… betraying it with my rules and guilt and entreating for forgiveness and praying for some intervention outside myself to infuse me with enough ‘self-love’ to do a better job… I begged for a day that I would not make mistakes of assassinating myself and others in the service of incompletion; sacrifice, competition and scarcity all in the compulsive effort to get love… Sounds insane, stated as it is without the disguise, doesn’t it. And insane it is…

But here’s what I came to realize through allowing the miracle, waiting for me just behind the insanity, the gift of accepting the Atonement for myself; it was but the premise from which I saw myself and therefore believed I was, that was insane.

Atonement turns the dial, so to speak, and cha-ching! I am no longer within the dream I thought so real, but rather the dreamer of the dream… And I am, as always, already, all love itself… and all perception finds itself in me… my brothers /myself…

Love is the Self, complete. Up till I real-ized every single ‘other’ as but the One which is myself, I didn’t understand love, for I didn’t really know myself as love. Inclusion is the watchword. Exclusion has no meaning in Love’s awareness… I actually thought it was something you could get or earn or even give… (Well ‘give’ isn’t that far off, except that to re-cognize the Self is to realize love only extends, and this is creation…)

All arises from LoveSelf… even illusion; for the ego and its world is just a thought, a set of ideas exploring the possibility of the impossible~ to separate from Source, and make oneself the source of It… And these ideas are but in the mind, which arises from the Self; from Love itself... The Atonement is GodLove’s guarantee... Atonement is the total commitment we make to let Love be itself and to let creation be exactly as it is…

I know it’s cliché, but: “With Love, all things are possible… There is nothing to fear…

Lesson 272:

How can illusions satisfy God’s Son?...

“Father, the truth belongs to me. My home is set in Heaven by Your Will and mine. Can dreams content me? Can illusions bring me happiness? What but Your memory can satisfy Your Son? I will accept no less than You have given me. I am surrounded by Your Love, forever still, forever gentle and forever safe. God’s Son must be as You created him.”

This lesson is one of only two lessons (both under the section: What is the Christ?)which are stated as questions… Only the Son of God can answer them. Only the Christ knows.

Illusions of the self, or the self-concept, in other words the false, which then form what it desires, cannot understand satisfaction. It can want and crave and make itself a slave to craving, engaging the addiction mechanism of obsession and compulsion, adequately distracting one from truth and making the false seem imperative by enacting the death script and instilling the fear of God. But distraction isn’t satisfaction… The self-concept cannot identify with truth and only truth can satisfy what is truth.

We are as God created us… His Will is our own… And, nothing but doing God’s Will ever satisfy Christ, the Son of God. Period… Can we just for once and all, strip down and let go all fancy of illusion’s childish dreams of a life apart from God, and rest in the belly of the truth?

Let’s get off it and quit pretending… How can illusions satisfy God’s Son? We know the answer. We are truth: Christ, the holy Son of God… we are the very meaning of satisfaction; for in our creation is our Father’s completion… And illusions are, well… illusion are really nothing…

Lesson 267:

My heart is beating in the peace of God…

Oh my, the love, the total sweep of oneness that expands and lifts in glorious appreciation and completion, the experience this message lift one to…

I just love this: “surrounding me is all that God created in His Love. It calls to me in ever heartbeat and in every breath; in every action and in every thought. Peace fills my heart, and floods my body with the purpose of forgiveness. Now my mind is healed, and all I need to save the world is given me. Each heartbeat brings me peace; each breath infuses me with strength. I am a messenger of God, directed by His Voice, sustained by Him in love, and held forever quiet and at peace within His Loving Arms. Each heartbeat calls His Name, and every one is answered by His Voice, assuring me I am at home in Him...”

Hallelujah! Could we be more secure? Could certainty of love and safety be any closer than a heartbeat or a breath in this dream of bodies and brothers? We can truly lean back and wait for Forgiveness’s Voice to tell us what to do in each seeming situation… It has been done; complete in the Atonement already. We can’t get it right… We can’t get it wrong… But we can look with loving or fearing eyes; see our unity or division, see separate goals or see forgiveness unifies into one glorious purpose of remembering that we are as God created...

AND OUR HEART IS BEATING IN THE PEACE OF GOD…

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…