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 305:

There is a peace that Christ bestows on us…

The choice for Christ’s vision and nothing else settles in my mind like the single drop of rain on a still pond. The ripples of peace spread out across my thinking, settling all conflicting ideas into a haven of unified purpose… The little fears and worries of the physical world easily slip off my mind into the still peace of eternal oneness in Christ… Here I rest…

And here, in the peace that Christ bestows, I continue to rest while I move about my so-called life, doing and relating and being… With Christ’s vision as my chosen perspective, old fears or worries dissolve into opportunities for forgiveness and the return to love’s oneness…

I walk with you, along the way that we must go in truth… The familiarity of your face, which reflects my own, shines the light of Christ, allowing us to see each encounter as the holy encounter that it is, guided by the Holy Spirit for the full return to the memory of God…

Today let us accept the gift of Christ as the truth of what we are…. And let peace envelop us, changing our perception to love’s awakening in action… Can’t you just feel the deep and imperturbable peace that this decision brings? Ah… ~ such blissful, tranquility to come from as we embark on this day with today’s lesson’s prayer:

Father, the peace of Christ is given us, because it is You Will that we be saved. Help us today but to accept Your gift, and judge it not. For it has come to us to save us form our judgment and ourselves.”

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 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 262:

Let me perceive no differences today…

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

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

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

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

Lesson 232:

Be in my mind, my Father, through the day…

Aren’t the prayers in this section of the lessons, just so yummy and complete and satisfying? I love the feeling of safety and certainty and peace they seem to materialize from. Thank you for joining me in saving the world we see, through our acceptance and appreciation of salvation, now:

“Be in my mind, my Father, when I wade, and shine on me throughout the day today. Let every minute be a time in which I dwell with You. And let me not forget my hourly thanksgiving that You have remained with me, and always will be there to hear my call to You and answer me. As evening comes, let all my thoughts be still of You and of Your Love. And let me sleep sure of my safety, certain of Your care, and happily aware I am Your Son.”

I decide with the Holy Spirit in mind, and peace is mine. The world I drew-out with my perception just a minute ago, dissolves into the timeless presence which is my Self in God…

The world I draw-out now includes all and excludes none. Each thought I think; each act I seem to commit; each forgiveness I embrace, I do for all. Each encounter~ a holy encounter~ after all, ultimately, it is my Self I deal with, always. We are the one Self, which God created as Himself… It is this I hold in mind with my Father… for we are the One…

Lesson 217:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

I can be but my gratitude I earn.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Appreciation is the best of all feelings… is it not? Whether you are looking at a sunset or holding your child in your arms, thanking a friend for a favor or a stranger for assistance, or joining together in a common cause for the salvation of the world. Whether that salvation looks like Katrina relief or some other physical coming together, or the commitment to persistent forgiveness of every thought we ever had that hurt, and letting the miracle wash over our vision, clean it up, and cause a new perception. It is the feeling of gratitude in the end that makes us feel unified and identified with those around us. ~ And, aaahhh, the joy…~

You know what I am so grateful for that goes along these lines? I am grateful for a healed perception from one that teaches that the world is somehow outside myself and I am at the mercy of its dictates, to one where all seeming minds are One-Mind, the one we share with God. That Mind thinks only thoughts of Creation; with love at the base, extending and receiving in full appreciation, returning in kind and extending again…. And on and on….

I am grateful too, that because this is the only thing that could be real and it is what I am. (And I know it by the resounding cha-chink that rings the chorus of joy throughout my being as I tune inward to the Oneness that creates or makes-up worlds…) On the same note, I am so grateful to bare witness to the fact that the false is always false; all the pains and frustrations and pettiness and competition and scarcity and sacrifice and worry and guilt ~ well, fear in other words, are but nothing; merely given the semblance of life on illusions screen…

Every single thing you say or do, or not, shows me what I think I am… what the texture of my current belief structure is, and where I am in my forgiveness lessons. If I am experiencing anything but appreciation… its time to offer the situation and all involved, to the Holy Spirit for reinterpretation and healing… It’s so simple and always works, every time to restore my mind to peace…. Thank you, thank you, thank you… for we are the One…

Lesson 183:

I call upon God’s Name and on my own…

So here it is; the way to escape to reality:

“Repeat the Name of God, and call upon your Self, Whose Name is His. Repeat His Name, and all the tiny, nameless things on earth slip into right perspective. Those who call upon the Name of God can not mistake the nameless for the Name, nor sin for grace, nor bodies for the holy Son of God. And should you join a brother as you sit with him in silence, and repeat God’s Name along with him within your quiet mind, you have established there an altar which reaches to God Himself and to His Son.

Practice but this today; repeat God’s Name slowly again and still again. Become oblivious to every name but His. Hear nothing else. Let all your thoughts become anchored on this. No other word we use except at the beginning, when we say today’s idea but once. And then God’s Name becomes our only thought, our only word, the only thing that occupies our minds, the only wish we have, the only sound with any meaning, and the only Name of everything that we desire to see; of everything that we would call our own.”

We do only this one thing today; we offer our lesson practice and let time slip away as it is engulfed in the timeless essence of the eternal…One name, one thought, one meaning one life; the one we share as one.

It seems too simple a thing to simply redirect the wandering mind back to God’s Name and let its meaning light what we see and feel and experience. And it is simple. In fact it is the most natural condition available to us in this world, because it rests in the beyond, the being-ness, is-ness, am-ness. Experience is proportionate to our earnest willingness.

I have been graced with the experience of the world dissolving into God, and myself with it. In fact, it might be the only ‘real’ experience I have had. Within it I am…

I find myself thinking about the book Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein as I’m coming out of meditation this morning. It was the first “fiction” book I read that I felt contributed to my experience of life since I began my so-called spiritual path. And actually, this marked a complete change of mind about the purpose of so-called fiction, for me. Anyway, why I think it came to mind, was that the mantra I took from it was: Thou Art God… All that is, is God… I was moved by the absoluteness of this statement; not taking it to mean that one was Creator, but of the One, and inseparable from, Creator, and that until we recognize the One-Creator-ness in everyone and even the minutest thing (like a table), we are unaware of the true reality in which we live.

I notice the light of God’s name is the light in the mind-projector of this so-called life, when tuned in; one can’t miss its incredible beauty. It’s impossible. It is our eyes! And too, when we are tuned to God’s Name, the possibility of separateness diminishes in favor of the obvious inheritance given all in virtue of His Name. We are the One…

We call upon God’s Name and on our own…

Lesson 177:

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

This glorious premise we practice; where all is love, and only Love, gives life and meaning to and for you and me, keeps everything so very simple. From the Love premise, extension only, is seen as life’s creation. I am so very grateful for this dedicated series of lessons… deliberately resting in the belly of LOVE…

It’s funny, in all the times I’ve gone through the lessons and their applications, always, what I am looking for, I find. Here’s an example; I’m going along yesterday, feeling absolutely yummy, grateful, good, and one with everything: imperturbable. Everything was going my way, as usual.

So, I get this phone call. It’s like premise-slide; and I instantly I am no longer thinking or feeling, I am being thought and felt-up by the premise I allowed. The premise is dictating a spectrum of responses appropriate to its design.

Each premise comes complete with its own thoughts and feelings; each true to the core of the premise. Once the premise shift is made in mind, one is at the mercy of it until one chooses again. FLASHING-RED-FORGIVNESS-OPPORTUNITY!!! Whatever it is within my thought system that I am still vulnerable to sliding into, represent my forgiveness lessons. How glorious it is to see this immediately, and what’s more, be grateful for it…

Only one premise is true: LOVE: abstract, changeless, formless, eternal oneness…

There is no death. The Son of God is free…

Everything else is some form of the death-script, authored by the belief in the time/space reality. Every judgment, every need to be right, is a choice that death be true. Death is the belief in the possibility of being in competition with God for authorship of reality. It plays out in every call for love in this world; from preferences, to threats, persons to events. It is survival by way of scarcity and specialness. Doesn’t that sound insane? It certainly does to me as I rest here in the premise Love~ as I am.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

As we recognize the false premise with which this world takes it meaning, and choose once again, the truth, bringing each illusion; each forgiveness opportunity back to the premise of Love; the Holy Spirit within our mind, we are restored to the peace beyond this seeming world of shifting tides, to the ocean which is creation. We find that we are at home already.

Now we are one with Him Who is our Source…

Simply…

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

Lesson 176:

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

Let us, together, sink down into this statement; past recognition of the symbols and their assigned meaning. Deeper and deeper, let us sink deeper still, beyond and through and unto our Self… Here, we rest at last ~~ or rather: resting~ is…

Give me your blessing, holy Son of God…

In this world of seeming myriads of experiences, one allows for me to discern illusion from truth. It is the experience of ‘peace~ which passeth understanding’ that I feel when I say YES to you wholeheartedly; when I choose you without reservation, as my necessary companion in the so-called journey back home. It needn’t matter how long the encounter; each encounter is a holy encounter; each a critical piece of the re-member-ing of my place in the Sonship. You are the blessing, which reflects back to me the truth of what I am. Without you I could not know my Self. You are the screen in which I see the beliefs I thought I believe or/and the Christ-Love that forgives them all…

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

When I tune to this one thought and allow for it to ease my mind and dissipate my busy-body monkey-mind into the ethers of the nothingness in which they originated, I find I rest with you already, for l am… It is here, in the still peace of Love, I have my being, all is the body of that being… It has no individual, only oneness….

I am as God created me…

I receive your blessing, offering you mine, and we are one. We experience the truth behind this statement only as a result of the leap of faith into the pull we feel within it, to re-mind ourselves of the truth…

God is but Love, and therefore so am I…

Lesson 167:

There is one life, and that I share with God…

Here’s my take: God is~ and therefore I am… God is what life is and all creation can but be the material of which its Source supplies… I live because God is, and lives in me. I know my being as the experience that life is, in this, the present moment…Yet to relay this experience already removes it from the present and reality itself. There are no particulars of past, present by which to give description…

Still, this life force, this ever-living presence beats constantly the truth of what I am and what sourced my very being.

Behind the dream of a sleeping mind that makes pretend of me instead, rhythmically pulses the truth, while mind imagines it uses life for dreams of opposites, with the idea of death running neck and neck with life. These are the kissing cousins of the ego’s ingenuity… I love what it says in chapter 7 of the text:

“The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it stems from the very power of the mind the ego denies. This means that the ego attacks what is preserving it, which must result in extreme anxiety. That is why the ego never recognizes what it is doing. It is perfectly logical but clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source that is totally inimical to its existence for its existence, fearful of perceiving the power of this source, it is forced to depreciate it. This threatens its existence, a state which it finds intolerable. Remaining logical but insane, the ego resolves this completely insane dilemma in a completely insane what. It does not perceive its existence as threatened by projecting the treat onto you, and perceiving your being as nonexistent. This ensures its continuance of you side with it, by guaranteeing that you will not know your own safety…. The ego cannot afford to know any thing. Knowledge is total and the ego does not believe in totality. This unbelief is its origin, and while the ego does not love you, it is faithful to its own antecedents, begetting as it was begotten. Mind always reproduces as it was produced.”

What represents the idea of life within this ego dream has in its genetic material, the signature of death. Every scenario is played out to see which one is fittest. Within the ego framework, neither the idea of life nor the idea of death, when brought to the test of present Life; stand up as real. They don’t vaguely resemble life eternal, which is the very substance from which all creation, you and I, have our being.

Spirit is life expressed through mind and here we reside.

It is the very power of creation; the breath of life, which the ego borrowed from the willing to believe, that gave seeming ‘reality’ to the dream of time, in the first place.

However, God creates only mind awake. Period. And time is not real, no more does anything that God created not, exist at all. The mind is free to make up innumerable scenarios of life expressed, temporarily snuffing itself out with every thought which Love did not give life, but never will it change Love’s verve~ Spirit~ cursing through and as creation, as God has Willed. Creation has but One Life, the one it shares with God. We are invulnerable to losing this life: we gave it not to ourselves and nothing we can fear or believe can alter the eternality of the Life from which our being came. Today, let us forget the meaning we subscribed to life in this world of sleep and wake up to truth eternal instead. We know its being, for it is our Self. We join being in the thought of eternal Life; the One Life we share together with God the Father, Source of all life itself…And it is here, now, that we reside…

Lesson 164:

Now are we one with Him Who is our Source…

Now! It is here (now) the Call for love to answer itself rings true and through and as the mind of Christ within us all. He has called and Christ has answered. We are Christ as One… Our Fathers only Son… And it is NOW we recognize our oneness with His Love…

Only now can we be known. Christ is the meaning of sight, and the means as well, reflecting truth upon the world. He is the capability to hear and the joyous call and answer, with the meaning of Who are. It is Love we remember here today~ the love that is our Source and our Self as well.

The lesson asks we practice with earnestness today… Yet, are we even sure what this means? Hasn’t our earnestness been filtered through the images of what we dreamed-up that Christ experienced would be?

Such is the on-going questioning brought to my mind in times gone by; the ever questioning of the ‘not enough’ personality trait. Yet, this was my earnestness, as best I could offer… Somehow, I learned to offer this questioning as part of the package of ‘me’~ as well as the desire to perfect myself first (duh, isn’t this exactly what the Holy Spirit’s is for?)… It was clearly a worthiness issue, which just boils down to the continuing ‘competition with God’ aspect of identifying with and believing in the ego, making it seem real within mind. The good news is: it is not real. This lesson gives entry to the parting of the curtain of this belief revealing the truth beyond. The lesson itself, gives clear and present instruction for its accomplishment, NOW: “Open the curtain in your practicing by merely letting go all things you think you want. Your trifling treasures put away, and leave a clean and open space within your mind where Christ can come, and offer you the treasure of salvation”…

Once again, the passage is encompassed in the all of all which is this present moment, this holy instant, where Christ alone is restored to presence in our mind. It is enough to do only what is asked… The purpose and its accomplishment reveal themselves the instant we remember not to think we know; remember that we want nothing that the past ‘knowing’ valued, nor the gifts ‘being right’ promises… They have failed us. But He has not. Beyond and within the instant of pure presence, Christ, stands as you, and myself; as one Self…

Our true identity experienced now literally dispels the world and its so-called life as identity, from mind completely, this holy instant. Life itself shines pure, as we accept our own identity in Him. Where once the ‘separate’ identity seemed so real, in its stead, the ever-present expanse and wholly unified identity of Love, accepts Christ’s account in its place… unending, Now…

The gifts received this day, reflect this identity everywhere, in everyone. Its message is the one to hear and guides all actions to visit it upon all situations and circumstances: we are as God created us…

Thus the world becomes the reflection of returning to the truth, before the dream of beginning and end; where only Now is the only time, and love the joy judges all as wholly worthy and wholly healed… We are the One! And now, are we one with Him Who is our Source …