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 360:

Peace be to me, the holy Son of God.

Peace to my brother, who is one with me.

Let all the world be blessed with peace through us…

Of course the lessons wrap up in a state of perfect peace, because that is our true state… All is well with creation and us… always, already. We merely mistook ourselves to be the characters in a dream of separation and specialness, scarcity and loss… Yet through joining with a single-heart, in wholehearted willingness for the true~only, and giving ourselves innocently over to the curriculum of this Course, the mind has been returned, at last, to where it never really left in truth; to our natural state of perfect peace extending and blessing…

Sure, there are a good deal of forgiveness opportunities still to reveal themselves as we go about our lives, but now we see them as beacons ~lighting the way to unity with each other, and the way home…

Please join me in the exquisite prayer offered in the lesson today:

Father, it is Your peace that I would give, receiving it of You. I am Your Son, forever just as You created me, for the Great Rays remain forever still and undisturbed within me. I would reach to them in silence and in certainty for nowhere else can certainty be found. Peace be to me, and peace to all the world. In holiness were we created, and in holiness do we remain. Your Son is like to You in perfect sinlessness. And with this thought we gladly say “Amen”.

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 352:

Judgment and love are opposites. From one come all the sorrows of the world. But from the other comes the peace of God Himself…

All of us actually know this simple truth and know it in actuality… Every time we judge, we can feel our heart constrict, yes? And in that instant of judgment, we can not feel the love we have, nor the love we are….

Pick a judgment; any judgment. Now try to hang on to that judgment as reality and feel the love that you are, simultaneously… Can’t be done, can it? Now, feel the deepest love you can within yourself; whether you identify this with your relationship with Self, with God, your children, Jesus, or whatever… just rest there in that yummy place of peace within~ This is the present moment~ the presence of God… Now try to judge, and stay in touch with that feeling of now… Doesn’t work, does it?

Judgment is a characteristic of time; founded in fear and fleshed out in memory… We simply have to leave the present to get to it…

The Course tells us that we don’t need judgment to organize our lives and that the letting go of judgment is the obvious prerequisite for hearing the Voice for God… We need but be still and present an instant… Then love will direct our actions …

When we can let all things be exactly as they are, we easily live in the now; in the presence of love…

There is now way to get love. Love is what we are, and therefore love is the way! Simply Love Now! And the rest will fall into place for the good of all…

What am I?

~I am God’s Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love. In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. In me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. I am the holy home of God Himself. I am the Heaven where His Love resides. I am His holy sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His Own.~ …

This statement, from the beginning of this section, What Am I, has bee a constant mantra for me almost from the beginning of my study with the course. It has served as a key that unlocks my consciousness to truth; to intrinsic awareness of the truth of what I am…

I remember that the first time I read it, I felt I already knew it by heart and I was merely recalling and reciting. I was so humbled by the experience of Self sweeping me away from my perceived self, I just sat and wept for the longest time in total gratitude for absolute opening to the possibility of total salvation from all I had designed and imprisoned myself with….It was my first Taste of recognizing eternity in the Self…

I feel that same awesome gratitude and eternal oneness right now~

I rest serenely, in the realization of instant and total forgiveness….

Lesson 351:

My sinless brother is my guide to peace. My sinful brother is my guide to pain. And which I choose to see I will behold…

You are my self and how I see you, is what I wish to be…. That is really some kind of truth to ‘white-flag’ the ego-identity to… Spectacular!!! Once you’ve recognized it, even for one holy instant, it changes everything… mutating your very DNA… I can never really ‘cop-out’ again… on some level I always know, I am responsible for literally everything that ‘seems’ to happen in my world of perception…by my choice of what I wish to see… I have gotten awfully particular about my wish-list anymore... I have truly come to know, that in this world, it is only by my function of forgiveness that happiness is mine… making happiness the only way to see….

Any resistance to love’s presence, that seemingly ‘shows-up’ in my life, boils down to an authorship or authority issue, easily seen now as the ego’s die-hard competition with God… None of this make-believe has mattered-a-whit to the truth. Always, it has presented itself via the Holy Spirit in mind, as a chance to forgive, which is the chance for the restoration of peace, which is the reestablishment of the memory of my Self…. There’s simply no way to loose….

One thing has remains constant; how I choose to see you is what I end up experiencing as me. My perception of you ends up being my perception of myself. And oh, the joy of seeing your innocence ~ the perfect reflection of what I am…. Thank you.

Lesson 345:

I offer only miracles today, for I would have them be returned to me….

For years I took the miracle on faith, choosing out of hopelessness and into hope. And gradually, miracles have altered my whole life; my total way of thinking, therefore seeing the world… And now, miracle-mindedness has become a habit you might say. I am ever awe-struck by how the Holy Spirit uses all the ego’s little tactics, like the addictive mechanism, for exactly the opposite purpose than they were made, healing the mind to wholeness through complete surrender to what is... We, as the characters in the dream, are already networked with the mechanisms once used for defense, and find another purpose; one of unity rather than separation, peace rather than competition, sameness rather than specialness ~till this is all we want~….

I want only the healed perspective. I want only to see unity where division once seemed so real.

Because of the single goal to see the truth set forth by my accepting Atonement for myself, I accept it for you, for we are one. The methodology I have at my disposal is the Miracle~ the correction of the error of seeing any interests apart from my own. ~I want only to see the false for what it is, denying its power, and leaving only the Christ we are as one. And in this one desire rests the miracle, which is now visited upon us both in grace, and with it deep abiding peace.

How joyous is the timeless gift of unending Love we experience by merely choosing to offer only miracles today.

Even on the level of this world, just slowing down our compulsive, competitive, thought system and therefore actions, and thinking of the ‘other’ choice; miracle-mindedness ~ the possibility of looking with only loving eyes/perception) already feels better. Geez, just softening our eyes and considering it, starts warming the heart, ~yes?….

I offer you only miracles for I would have them for myself~ otherwise I am blind…. Truth be know, I have no other goal to choose any more. No-thing else satisfies or raises the slightest interest for me…

Thank you for the miracles you have given and received…. Not one has been lost on me (or anyone in truth). I might have been (and still can be) a resistive study at times, but I have found that every loving thought merely awaits reception. Period. Like the ever-favorite quote from the Course says: “LOVE WAITS ON WELCOME NOT ON TIME”.

I bless you with miracles today…

Lesson 342:

I let forgiveness rest upon all things, for thus forgiveness will be given me….

This is a guarantee…. It isn’t crucial that we understand everything about forgiveness, just that we practice it… Keeping in mind that it is the ‘ego that analyzes; where the Holy Spirit accepts’ puts us in right-minded alignment for forgiveness. The crucial piece is that we practice our willingness to have our perception changed … We are ‘doing it right’, if we leaning in the direction of being willing to see the situation or person or belief or circumstance differently. And this is enough to engage the Atonement principle, and release the mind to healing... The Holy Spirit handles the details…

This transformation procedure actually takes place within a dimension of reality where the needs for conflict and forgiveness aren’t viable. The change of heart, inherent in deciding we want forgiveness’s blessing on a situation or relationship, is the softening or opening that invites the Holy Spirit to visit the light of truth upon it.

Before we realize it, our guts have started shape-shifting and our smudged vision of the other/circumstance, clears and love’s clarity shows us another way of addressing the situation, entirely.

In fact, often we don’t even recognize that it is the healed and forgiven issue, sponsoring our involvement in a given miracle.

FORGIVENESS MUST REST UPON ALL THINGS… that is the promise of the Atonement…. In reality, it has all already been accomplished… Yet, for the mind that still believes in the reality of the dream of separation, forgiveness is simply the means by which the Atonement is accomplished in the time/space mind dynamic… So that’s all handled through God’s plan for salvation…

We just need remember that all things are for-giving to all as one…

And doesn’t it just feel better to give up the burden of having to be right, or of having to know? Whew!

Please join me in today’s perfect, yummy prayer:

“I thank You, Father, for Your plan to save me from the hell I made. It is not real. And You have given me the means to prove its unreality to me. The key is in my hand, and I have reached the door beyond which lies the end of dreams. I stand before the gate of Heaven, wondering if I should enter in and be at home. Let me not wait again today. Let me forgive all things, and let creation be as You would have it be and as it is. Let me remember that I am Your Son, and opening the door at last, forget illusions in the blazing light of truth, as memory of You returns to me.”

Lesson 329:

I have already chosen what You will…

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

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

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

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

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

I have already chosen what You will…

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

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

Lesson 295:

The Holy Spirit looks through me today…

This is the decision we make when we choose the Atonement for ourselves; we step back and let the Holy Spirit’s vision (interpretation) replace the body’s eye’s program. We no longer value a program for sight that separates out and limits the Son of God, neither in our brothers nor Self…

What once appeared as the world’s horrors; pain and suffering, and terror, loss, and death is seen as falsehood drawn on a flimsy overlay stretched across the light of truth, which now lifts and disappears, as only truth is valued… and the Holy Sprit given reign to see…

In place of hopelessness, we now see salvation, ancient hatred’s have become present loves, and as each pair of eyes is lifted; the seer and the seen, recognize the face of Christ~ which is one…

The peace of God has settled over the mind that sees only for Christ and Love is one… Join me in offering today’s lesson’s prayer in union:

“Our Father, Christ has asked a gift of us, and one we give that it be given us. Help us to use the eyes of Christ today, and thus allow the Holy Spirit’s Love to bless all things which we may look upon, that His forgiving Love may rest on me…”

PART II Introduction:

Today, we begin the final part of this year's lesson's; this year that we have given to devoted to know the experience of God the Father and of our Self; His Son..."For now we seek direct experience of truth alone. The lessons that remain are merely introductions to the times in which we leave the world of pain, and go to enter peace. Now we begin to reach the goal this course has set, and find the end toward which our practicing was always geared...we wait in quiet expectation for our God and Father....Now do we come to Him with but His Word upon our minds and hearts, and wait for Him to take the step to us that He has told us, through His Voice, He would not fail to take when we invited Him. He has not left His Son in all his madness, nor betrayed His trust in Him. Has not His faithfulness earned Him the invitation that He seeks to make us happy? We will offer it, and it will be accepted. So our times with Him will now be spent. We say the words of invitation that His Voice suggests, and then we wait for Him to come to us"…

I love this section of the lessons, Part II. I love the format; with a key idea heading a series of ten pertinent lessons for integration of the idea, speaking to the truth within us. Each has a prayer, which alone would be enough to bring one home… They are marvelously simple, astonishingly salient and beautifully poetic. I always find myself singing the great chorus of “Y E S” in the background of my mind while I read and contemplate them. I am so pleased to have you join me this time around. ~Truth rests in constant presence, with assured joy, gratitude and love ~

WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?:

Lesson 221:

Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still…Y.E.S...This is what matters now… the stillness... where the voice for God becomes my own, where clarity is no longer in question and choice has been answered with the certainty of the love of God, which is His holy Son, expressed as my Self. Here, I know what I am…

And from here, this being takes her place ~her function within the world... I know her well, she is in everywhere... She has a face, that face is Christ. Vision is her sight and her eyes but serve to witness to her holy face in every projected person, place and circumstance. And but for one purpose only... that her holy function of forgiveness be fulfilled in you my brothers, as myself...

Where are conflict and competition and hierarchies and ordering of thoughts when the mind has stepped back allowing each unforgiving construct to slip gently into the appropriate place to turn the cogs of the great mechanism of the forgiven world?

God’s perfect plan for salvation has carefully taken all that I made to forget my Self, my Creator and you; the replacement team I made within my mind to pose for what was not, and denying what was true. But, alas, God's placement of the Holy Spirit as His Voice within my mind, then used these skills and abilities designed for this denial to teach me to deny the denial of truth, instead.

Only the truth is left standing in my mind. And the stillness beating in my heart inspires all movement of all seeming actions and decisions. The comforting awareness of knowing that it is all, already done; rests and stabilizes experience. Everything is sure….

Yes, a happy outcome is indeed sure… and all worry and planning has ceased… Ah, yes. It is here… now… peace… all has been answered, forgiven, set back to freedom; the natural state of love… ummm yummy… Join me in this prayer of engagement offered as a beacon for the mind attempting weariness, which revives and reminds and connects…

“Father, I come to You today to seek the peace that You alone can give. I come in silence. In the quiet of my heart, the deep recesses of my mind, I wait and listen for Your Voice. My Father, speak to me today. I come to hear Your Voice in silence and in certainty and love, sure You will hear my call and answer me.”

We are in this together, you and I… There really are no separate parts. And while we might pretend a little longer that there just might be, and that 'whole' forgiveness may be served upon this world made to separate; we gather each other, to each other. Each time we allow forgiveness to serve its purpose as designed by God; our hearts swell with the Love that is our Self, impelling Spirit reality to become visible and increasingly substantial as ‘reality’. Our physical-ness begins to fade as presence in our mind for truth has been allowed to be…

Lesson 211:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

I am the holy Son of God Himself.

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Within us is God’s glory, for we were created by it, with it, and as it. We are the product of the glory of God. We are the hallelujah chorus of creations song.

Today we sit in silence and true humility (for we are as God created and nothing else.) and allow our true identity to come forth.

You know, when we enter into the silence with intent for only truth; as with this lesson, and we allow ourselves to feel the truth, sloughing off any other thoughts that might attempt to enter, we can literally feel the reformatting that has taken place as we move back into this world of form and function. Yes?

These are such important lessons we’re doing in our curriculum right now. For we are no longer of the world, but residing in it, and no longer comfortable identifying ourselves wholly with its dictates. This series of lessons beef up our resonance with our Source within, giving us ample opportunity to experience the background music:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

as the reality it is; the reality of what we are in truth. This of course, amplifies our focus of healed perspective as we seemingly move about in the so-called world at large. Increasing gratitude for, each and every person and experience result becomes the neighborhood in which we live.

Within the shadowy figures of the belief we once held that we’ve peopled our world with, we are beginning to recognize our brother and the Christ light emanating from him. He is the holy Son of God Himself. And he is the reflection of our very self… Our relationships with them are now taking on a similar feel to the one we hold with God the Father and we feel comforted and sure of our path. Faithfulness in our brothers, our Self and our holy function is now seen as the only reasonable choice and happiness the only reasonable feeling. Thank you.

Lesson 207:

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

I bless the world because I bless myself…

I am not a body. I am free.

For I am still as God created me…

Joy is my natural state. Forgiveness allows for me to let go all resistance to experiencing the fullness of this joy that I am. In other words, to release the blocks to love’s awareness, accepted within the mind with acceptance of a belief in identity not my own.

Now, this is what I have come to see: the more I forgive the false by merely recognizing that if it doesn’t feel good, it isn’t true and simply giving the situation over to the Holy Spirit for correction, letting go all expectation of what that correction might look like, leaning back, and letting the Holy Spirit show me; the more I trust that what is, right here, right now, could be the only perfect way things could go for the good of all. And the simplicity of letting joy rip is at ready access as the experience of my Self. So this becomes the way I bless myself and therefore the world.

This is the blessing methodology of the miracle. I bring the darkness I have been hiding in, from and believing in, to the Holy Spirit’s light. How do I know what to bring and when? Any time I feel any kind of alteration the pure, full-on flow of joy, it is right there: forgiveness lesson opportunity.

Always, this results in feelings of camaraderie with all involved and a warm glow of peace… at the least. So who wouldn’t do it, if they knew how much more of what they really want, comes through forgiveness rather than competition? Who wouldn’t take the deal, if they knew? My blessing is to bless everyone I encounter with my Self as the presence of this choice, and unite with the Self in them, blessing me again in return. Joy is always the natural result…

Thank you, my brothers who are one with me.

We are not a body. We are free.

For we are still as God created that we be…

Joyous, happy and free…

Lesson 187:

I bless the world because I bless myself…

We bless as is our true nature. Blessing is an extension of creation which happens naturally when we resist not what we think we see or feel or experience. When we say we bless, we are accepting we have received the simple fact that we are as God created us, into our mind and therefore have blessing to extend. Blessing is another way of saying, “all of love is mine in union with One Source, which purifies whatever else mind might think it sees or feels or has, with the peace that passeth understanding, but belongs to all as one, nonetheless…”

As we look closely at our daily lives, we see that how we are experiencing ourselves at any given moment is what we’re ‘blessing’ the circumstances around us with... If I see myself as limited and scarce and being generous in my thoughts to others as some sort of sacrifice to me, I come across as stingy and bitchy, because I have temporarily forgotten who I am and have taken myself to be ‘less’, requiring ‘more’ to feel I can give… We’ve all had this experience. If I notice however, that I don’t like the way I feel, so therefore must have decided wrongly about myself and the situation, and choose to forgive my misperception and allow the Holy Spirit within my mind to show me another way of perceiving; hell turns to Heaven… Persons and the situation suddenly are seen as bearing a gift for all. Haven’t we all had those miracle moments where we changed the way we were looking at a situation or person, from a negative perspective to one of commonality, and seen the whole situation shift around us? Yes.

When I turn my mind to the remembrance of truth; assigning it as my one goal, I bless my self. And the entirety of my involvement with the world becomes one blessed by the desire to unite with the truth in everyone and everything; for-giving the false in accordance.

We revisit in coupling some of the fundamental themes this Course rests corner-stoned upon. “Ideas leave not their source” and “to give and to receive are one”. We give to realize we have. I love the clarity of these paragraphs from today’s lesson:

“Ideas must first belong to you, before you give them. If you are to save the world, you first accept salvation for yourself. But you will not believe that this is done until you see the miracles it brings to everyone you look upon. Herein is the idea of giving clarified and given meaning. Now you can perceive that by your giving is you store increased…

Protect all things you value by the act of giving them away, and you are sure that you will never lose them. What you thought you did not have is thereby proven yours. Ye t value not its form. For this will change and grow unrecognizable in time, however much you try to keep it safe. No form endures. It is the thought behind the form of things that lives unchangeable.

Illusion recognized must disappear. Accept not suffering, and you remove the thought of suffering. Your blessing lies on everyone who suffers, when you choose to see all suffering as what it is. The thought of sacrifice gives rise to all the forms that suffering appears to take. And sacrifice is an idea so mad that sanity dismisses it at once.

Never believe that you can sacrifice. There is no place for sacrifice in what has any value. If the thought occurs, its very presence proves that error has arisen and correction must be made. Your blessing will correct it. Given first to you, it now is yours to give as well. No form of sacrifice and suffering can long endure before the face of one who has forgiven and has blessed himself… “

Let us not be afraid to look within at the truth of who we are, first, today, and stay with that inward vision till it fills the entire embodiment of our being, blessing us and giving us eyes to see and desire to bless each and every encounter as the holy encounter that it is…