Reflections 155 to 168

 

155/ Fake It Till We Make It

2nd July 2021

A question arises: Is it possible to really see everyone as a holy Son of God?

When looking with the Holy Spirit, the answer is 'yes'. When looking with the ego, the answer is 'no'. The ego is a constant source of judgement. Right now, we are probably making a judgment on what being a holy Son of God means.

The ego sees a body. It sees a world that is made up of bodies. It remembers the bodies that have hurt it. It's impossible for the ego to accept that the world and those bodies are simply a mirror for what is going on in each one of us.

That is why to be told the opposite - that everything the ego thinks is just a false sense of self, and that our reality is total oneness with God - is difficult to accept. A Course in Miracles simply guides us to remove the blocks to this truth. It teaches us to think with the Holy Spirit. It asks us to look at the world in a different way.

The world you see is based on "sacrifice" of oneness. It is a picture of complete disunity and total lack of joining. Around each entity is built a wall so seeming solid that it looks as if what is inside can never reach without, and what is out can never reach and join with what is locked away within the wall. (ACIM, T-26.I.2:1-4)

We basically have to look past the body. We have to look at the world in a different way. We have to look deeply within ourselves to where the truth lies buried. 

To see each other as a holy Son of God requires the desire to go deeply into the truth of who we are. There's a teacher on YouTube called Glenda Carlin. She teaches a weekly Tuesday evening class, and tells her students: "Fake it till you make it". In other words, the forgiveness needed to cut through the unconscious guilt of the ego has to be practiced silently and consistently. We don't need to understand what is happening. We just do it. We fake it till we make it.

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156/ A Mind at Peace

3rd July 2021

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. " Albert Einstein.

***

A mind at peace seems so foreign to us. Many of us haven't a clue what that is. We just live with thoughts that are a constant barrage of negativity.

We struggle to find the remedy. Alcohol and drugs might be one option, but it just numbs us for a while. We seek an endless list of other solutions, and we might die trying.

The miracle of A Course in Miracles is that there is a solution. A peaceful mind exists. It is real, and mirrors the real world. A mind not at peace produces everything else we see. There is no off switch. It will always be there in the background, until we do the work that will challenge this negativity.

The near-death experience of Chris Batts shows how this negativity can be challenged. A desperate childhood in and out of care led to a suicide attempt when he jumped out of a speeding car.

During his experience, he was shown that a mind at peace is found through love. He realised that what caused his suicide attempt was feeling loveless. And what stops us spreading love is the fear of not getting love back.

"People need love. Even the most angry person needs love in their life."

Chris's near-death experience can be found on YouTube. One is with Anthony Chene Productions. It is a profound story  of love and acceptance. The link is below.

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157/ A Problem Occurs In Many Forms

4th July 2021

We are told there is no problem the Holy Spirit cannon solve: They are the same to Him because each one, regardless of the form it seems to take, is a demand that someone suffer loss and make a sacrifice that you might gain. (ACIM, T-26.II.2:2)

We all have problems. Some might seem huge and some might not. The fact is, long-lasting and historical problems will reoccur time and time again, until we learn to see them as they are.

A Course in Miracles is nothing but direct. It doesn't beat about the bush. There might be 669 pages of text, but there is an underlying theme; that there is one God, and God is fair. 

Problems are of the ego - the part of us that sees itself as separate from God. They lie in our mind in the form of unconscious guilt. They appear, and reappear, in many forms. They are to do with the past, and the ego loves the past. It will definitely remind us of it anytime it can.

The Voice for God, the Holy Spirit, sees a problem in any form as just an error of perception. One is not larger, or bigger, than another, just as there are no order of difficulty in miracles. If we look at the problems of the world - the imbalance of wealth and poverty, hunger and greed, war and peace - and also understand  that the world is projected from the mind, then this might help us to understand the origin of every problem.

A Course in Miracles tells us that there is only one mistake. We think that someone loses and someone gains. If this were true, then God would be unfair, sin would be possible, attack be justified and vengeance fair (ACIM, T-26.II.2:6). ACIM tells us we just need to change our way of thinking. We need to undo the illusion that makes this so.

And all you need to do is but to wish that Heaven be given you instead of hell, and every bolt and barrier that seems to hold the door securely barred and locked will merely fall away and disappear. (ACIM, T-26.II.8:5)

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158/  A Simple Statement of Fact

5th July 2021

The goal of A Course in Miracles is to teach us what is the same and what is different. We seem surrounded by choice.  Yet the Course tells us there is no choice. This is where our confusion lies.

That there is choice is an illusion. Yet within this one lies the undoing of every illusion, not excepting this. (ACIM, T-26.III.6:4-5)

A Course in Miracles talks of a borderland of thought (ACIM, T-26.III.2:1). It states that it stands between this world and Heaven, and calls it the real world. Near-death experiencers also talk about going through a tunnel to something similar; to a place where, if they go further, they know that they won't come back. This place seems to change for each individual, according to what makes them feel relaxed. It is apart from time. It is a place where choice becomes simplified.

There, the sense of separation is gone. Fear is gone. Thought is telepathic. But here, in the world in which we appear to live, everything seems real. Fear seems real. The absence of choice just seems impossible while we are functioning with the ego. But we are told that the ego is just an illusion. The illusion is simply the belief that we are separate from each other, and from God.

Complexity is not of God. How could it be, when all He knows is one? He knows of one creation, one reality, one truth and but one Son. Nothing conflicts with oneness. How, then, could there be complexity in Him? (ACIM, T-26.III.1:1-5)

A Course in Miracles tells us that truth is simple. Truth is simply one without an opposite. Truth makes no decisions. Truth is in our minds but has been superimposed by illusions. 

It is the undoing of all illusions that becomes our goal as students of A Course in Miracles.

The only choice that can be made is to believe that we are not separate. This means undoing the false sense of self, which is the ego. This will come naturally when the time is right. It is not complicated. It is a simple statement of fact.

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159/ A Song of Gratitude

6th July 2021

“When eating fruit, remember the one who planted the tree.” Vietnamese Proverb.

***

There are so many things we don't see that we should be grateful for. The air we breathe is one. Then there is the unseen force that permeates everything. It allows the flower to grow and the world to spin. We move around in it. What we don't see is as wonderful as what we do.

There are also so many things we are not grateful for. There's the fear that arises within us, but we don't know where from. It permeates our dreams and overlaps into our waking state. There's sickness, anger and injustice. There's a whole list of things we prefer to avoid.

A Course in Miracles calls this a tiny spot of sin. 

This tiny spot of sin that stands between you and your brother still is holding back the happy opening of Heaven's gate. How little is the hindrance that withholds the wealth of Heaven from you. And how great will be the joy in Heaven when you join the mighty chorus to the Love of God! (ACIM, T-26.IV.6:1-3)

A song of gratitude arises naturally when we start to undo this tiny spot of sin. The remedy is the practice of forgiveness. This is the whole essence of A Course in Miracles. It is the simple practice where we forgive what never happened.

Forgiveness turns the world of sin into a world of glory, wonderful to see. (ACIM, T-26.IV.2:1)

And what was tiny then has soared into a magnitude of song in which the universe has joined with but a single voice. (ACIM, T-26.IV.5:5)

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160/ The Next Moment Is Just a Thought

7th July 2021

Spiritual teachers tell us there is only the present moment. The next moment is just a thought.

Spiritual teachers talk of effortless being. We allow things to arise from a state of detachment which is our true nature. Thoughts may come and go, but they are just thoughts.

A Course in Miracles has a lesson in the Workbook entitled: All fear is past and only love is here (ACIM, W-293). In it, it contains the following.

Yet in the present love is obvious, and its effects apparent. All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last. (ACIM, W-293.1:4-5)

A Course in Miracles tells us there are only two directions we can take.  One is towards love, and the other is towards fear. To move toward love, we have to undo our unconscious guilt. We do this through the practice of forgiveness.

In the present moment, we are told love is the only reality. Fear arises only from thoughts of the past. A Course in Miracles stresses the importance of love in every page of the Text.

Be not afraid of love. For it alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dream of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. (ACIM, W-pII.10.4:2-3)

A Course in Miracles is all about love. It is all about the undoing of fear. If the next moment is just a thought, let it arise through a thought of love.

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161/ The Tiny Tick of Time

8th July 2021

"The time has come to turn your heart into a temple of fire. Your essence is gold hidden in dust. To reveal its splendour you need to burn in the fire of love." Rumi.

***

Ultimately, it all comes down to one moment from long ago. This was the instant that an idea crept into eternity, and so quick that it was barely recognised. It was the tiny, mad idea (ACIM, T-27.VIII.6:2) that God's Son can be separate from God Himself.

This tiny, mad idea occurred in what A Course in Miracles calls the tiny tick of time (ACIM, T-26.V.3:5). It is the cause of all our suffering.  It is the instant the dream was made. It is the illusion that we are actually separate.

The tiny tick of time in which the first mistake was made, and all of them within that one mistake, held also the Correction for that one, and all of them that came within the first. And in that tiny instant time was gone, for that was all it ever was. What God gave answer to is answered and is gone. (ACIM, T-26.V.3:5-7)

A Course in Miracles is all about undoing the error. It shows us that this mistake simply exists within the mind. The tiny, mad idea enabled the ego to arise. The ego is our teacher of fear. The tiny tick of time also enabled the Correction to be made. The is the Holy Spirit, the Teacher of love. The Holy Spirit is God's gift to us. Both now exist within each one of us, and within the dream of separation that we created.

That is why A Course in Miracles says: This course will teach you only what is now. (ACIM, T-26.V.10:2). To learn this, we have to cross the gap between past and present. 

The gap between past and present is really no gap at all. It is simply contained within the tiny tick of time.

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162/ Fear Is Well Disguised

9th July 2021

"Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

***

Fear is so subtle. It can appear in many different ways. A lot of the time, we don't even realise it is there. But it is, lurking in the background.

A Course in Miracles confronts fear head on. It tells us that fear arises when we don't know the truth of what we are. It tells us this: Fear appears in many different forms, but love is one. (ACIM, W-295.1:7)

All aspects of fear are untrue because they do not exist at the creative level, and therefore do not exist at all. To whatever extent you are willing to submit your beliefs to this test, to that extent are your perceptions corrected. (ACIM, T-1.VI.5:1-2)

What we believe is what we make true. However,  A Course in Miracles also tells us that, when light  enters darkness, then the darkness disappears. 

A Course in Miracles directs us to work with the mind. It tells us that ideas leave not their source (ACIM, T-26.VII.4:7) and that no illusion has any truth in it (ACIM, T-26.VII.6:3-4). Everything arises out of the mind. We simply work with the part of the mind that is supporting us in undoing this fear.

This means working with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not know what fear is. It simply dismisses fear in the same way that It dismisses any illusion.

We can only know this by applying ourselves to A Course in Miracles. Other traditions have their own approaches. Many overlap. All require trust because fear is well disguised. Trust, however, will support us because  truth is not disguised

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163/ The Cause Is in Our Mind

10th July 2021

A Course in Miracles asks us not to look to the future for our happiness. Everything happens now. It tells us that it is just the perceived space between each one of us that is the cause of our suffering.

This space is what our ego manufactures as our differences. This can cause anger, fear, resentment - the list is endless. Countries fight wars over these perceived differences. It really is madness.

The space is what the Holy Spirit joins. It is our wholeness and our birthright. It is what we have forgotten and lost sight of. Sanity lies in knowing we are all the  same. We clearly don't know this.

The cause of everything is in the mind. The effect is happening to us right now.

Delay is senseless, and the "reasoning" that would maintain effects of present cause must be delayed until a future time, is merely a denial of the fact that consequence and cause must come as one. (ACIM, T-26.VIII.9:6)

The miracle is possible when cause and consequence are brought together, not kept separate. (ACIM, T-26.VII.14:1-2)

For us to be happy, we have to be acutely aware of what goes on within our minds. We have to be  aware of what our judgements are. We have to be aware of how we think.

Changing this can't be done alone. The irony is that we need the help of those that we perceive we fear; those who we perceive are making us angry; those who we would rather avoid.

The cause of all suffering lies in thinking we are different.  The undoing of our suffering  lies in forgiveness. We don't have to invite everyone over to dinner, but we do have to forgive them.

Change the cause, and we change the effect. This happens in our minds.

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164/ Bitter Winter and the Freezing Cold

11th July 2021

"A clever person turns great troubles into little ones, and little ones into none at all.” Chinese Proverb.

***

A Course in Miracles uses the title as a metaphor to describe the effects of our separation from God. Bitter winter and the freezing cold (ACIM, T-26.IX.7:3) is just the same as the fires of hell. It is the state we get into. It is the agony as opposed to the ecstasy, the pain as opposed to the joy.

When we learn that the opposite is possible - that the sun can shine in times which we perceive as dark - A Course in Miracles uses another metaphor.

Where stood a cross stands now the risen Christ, and ancient scars are healed within His sight. (ACIM, T-26.IX.8:4)

The option is that we can stay as we are, or we can find out who we really are. We don't have to symbolically nail ourselves to a cross. We can find that our real Self is always here. However, it can only be seen with a mind that doesn't attack.

This is the essence of A Course in Miracles. The face of Christ is God's Son, which is our true nature. God is real, but we have forgotten Him. Instead we suffer, and we attack each other. We do this with our thoughts, and sometimes with our fists. It is the craziness of a crazy world.

All of us suffer, some more than others. However, it all come down to one problem. We have forgotten our real inheritance. We have replaced the eternal summer with the coldest winter in our minds. We've no need to do this, but we are free to do as we choose.

A Course in Miracles is all about transformation. It tells us this.

The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love. (ACIM, T-26.IX.6:1)

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165/ A Question of Priorities

12th July 2021

A Course in Miracles guides us to think only with the Holy Spirit. 

A Course in Miracles wants to show us a reality we have forgotten, yet we know. 

A Course in Miracles  uses the term mind a lot and yet, for most of us, the term mind is a mystery, just as the term spirit is a mystery. The passage below sheds some light on what we know as mind and spirit, and is from the Clarification of Terms.

The term mind is used to represent the activating agent of spirit, supplying its creative energy. When the term is capitalized, it refers to God or Christ (i.e., the Mind of God or the Mind of Christ). Spirit is the Thought of God which He created like Himself. The unified spirit is God's one Son, or Christ. (ACIM, C-1.1:1-4)

A Course in Miracles tells us that we have a split mind. Our minds simply appear to be separated off from each other. This is an  illusory state. This also means that the ego, which maintains this sense of separate identity, is an illusory state of mind. 

Only spirit is real within the mind.

Spirit is the part that is still in contact with God through the Holy Spirit, Who abides in this part but sees the other part as well. (ACIM, C-1.3:1-2)

The other part of the mind is entirely illusory and makes only illusions. (ACIM, C-1.4:1)

The illusory mind can't know reality. It can only hypothesise and make up theories. It's a question of priorities, and the priority of A Course in Miracles is to train our minds to think with spirit. 

Reality is all around us. We simply use the Holy Spirit within the mind to know the truth.

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166/ The Mirror Image

13th July 2021

How we see ourselves, and how we learn to see ourselves, are crucial steps along the path that A Course in Miracles leads us. The fact is, we probably will always see ourselves as a body. Very few of us will ever fully identify with spirit, as Jesus did. However ACIM's message is very clear. Identify with the body and we get sick. Identify with Holy Spirit, and sickness becomes impossible.

The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it all signs of accusation and of blamefulness. (ACIM, T-27.I.9:3-5)

All of us have varying degrees of suffering we have to deal with. We might blame it on other people and events. We might blame it on  our environment.  But all of us have peace and certainty within us. We learn that what we see is our choice.

It all comes down to forgiveness of ourselves and others. It all comes down to our actions towards ourselves and others. It all comes down to how we perceive ourselves and others.

Peter Anthony's near-death experience in 1987 proves this. Prior to his NDE, he was a freelance image consultant with CBS News. He had no belief in anything except himself and the American dream. After collapsing with ulcerative colitis, things changed.

During his life review, he saw a scene with his sister the day before she died. She was teasing him to tell her he loved her, and he refused. Another scene he saw was when he flicked a chewing gum wrapper out of his car window. That wrapper then fell into a river, only to join more garbage, and he could see how that garbage then accumulated. Every action we do has an effect.

He says that every moment of our lives is recorded like a matrix. Nothing we do or think can ever escape us. "My life review was about everything and nothing. It was about how each moment that we live in this life is a moment of value, and we kind of forget that."

Peter has a number of accounts on YouTube. The account with the quote above is with Anthony Chene Productions. The link is below.

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167/ The Unclouded Sky

14th July 2021

 The forgiveness that is taught within A Course of Miracles means that what occurred to us has never happened.  The passage below might sum this up.

Who can say and mean, "My brother, you have injured me, and yet, because I am the better of the two, I pardon you my hurt." His pardon and your hurt cannot exist together. One denies the other and must make it false. (ACIM, T-27.II.2:8-10)

Clearly this is at odds with our experience. Everything that has happened to us seems very real. However, we don't realise that we are dreaming.  The dream is in the half of our mind that is split. The split mind is the cause of our suffering.

A Course in Miracles is about healing that split, and waking up from the dream. It is about finding our way back to oneness. We only have to do our part, which is the forgiveness practice. The greater part, which is the correction, is left to the Holy Spirit. This requires trust, because trust in the unseen is incompatible with our experience.

In the Text, there is mention of  all of it (ACIM, T-27.II.13:3). All of it, from the Holy Spirit's perspective, is like the unclouded sky, completely boundless, unending and limitless. All of it, from the other part of the mind, is limited. This is our separated self, the false self, the part that is split off from eternity.

From an idea of self as two, there comes a necessary view of function split between the two. And what you would correct is only half the error, which you think is all of it. (ACIM, T-27.II.13:2-3)

This gives us the clarity to know that we can't do it by ourselves. Our minds just function within the restricted world of the ego. The mind is clouded, but the ego doesn't think it is. A Course in Miracles teaches us to see beyond the  clouds. It teaches us to see beyond our limitations.

We see totally when our forgiveness practice is complete. The mind then becomes like the unclouded sky. The ego will always tell us this is impossible but our part is just to practice. Everything else, we leave to the Holy Spirit. 

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168/ The Second Coming

15th July 2021

“Your darkness is one of the most powerful tools you have for your spiritual evolution.” Unknown.

***

A Course in Miracles tells us that, if we can't hear the Voice for God, it is because we choose not to listen. 

A Course in Miracles tells us another thing. If we do not seek the face of Christ, it is because we are filled with schemes to save the face of the ego.

A Course in Miracles tells us something else. We do not understand the Second Coming because we are being tricked. It tells us that what is completely obvious is only blocked from our minds because of a voice that is controlling and cruel.

Some of the terminology may need a little clarification.

'The Voice for God' is the Holy Spirit, and to hear the Holy Spirit is our purpose as we get more and more into A Course in Miracles.

'Seeking the face of Christ' means seeking what is real in everyone. It is the light, in the sense that it is the truth.  Again, this becomes our purpose as we begin to understand the concepts of A Course in Miracles.

'The Second Coming' is the culmination of all of the above . The purpose of A Course in Miracles is to dismantle what is false, and reveal what is true.  This means that the second coming is not about a messiah.  It is simply a change of mind.

Christ's Second Coming, which is sure as God, is merely the correction of mistakes, and the return of sanity. (ACIM, W-pII.9.1:1)