Reflections 268 to 281

 

268/ What's In a Name?

23rd October 2021

“You can’t reach what’s in front of you until you let go of what’s behind you.” Unknown.

***

A Course in Miracles never claims to be the only path. It never claims to be the vehicle for the teachings of Jesus. What's in a name?  The paragraph below might give us more clarity.

The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God. So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God. The man was an illusion, for he seemed to be a separate being, walking by himself, within a body that appeared to hold his self from Self, as all illusions do. Yet who can save unless he sees illusions and then identifies them as what they are? Jesus remains a Savior because he saw the false without accepting it as true. And Christ needed his form that He might appear to men and save them from their own illusions. (ACIM, C-5.2:1-6)

A Course in Miracles requires faith. It requires trust. It shows us that Christ is the Self, simply a Thought of God that exists within each one of us. This is not what we have been taught. ACIM wants us to believe in some fundamental truths that are not attributed to the historical Jesus.

There is no sin.

We are dreaming our own hell.

We have never left Heaven.

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269/ Hearing the Voice for God

24th October 2021

A Course in Miracles is the path back to God. 

A Course in Miracles tells us that, collectively, we are the Son of God. It tells us that we can communicate as fully with God as God does with us. It reminds us that God created the Son but the Son did not create God. ACIM tells us this is the same as parents give birth to children but children not giving birth to parents.

Creating extends outwards, from God through us.

To create is to love. Love extends outward simply because it cannot be contained. Being limitless it does not stop. It creates forever, but not in time. God's creations have always been, because He has always been. Your creations have always been, because you can create only as God creates. Eternity is yours, because He created you eternal. (ACIM, T-7.I.3:3-9)

The ego, our separated self, creates only for itself. It can make life heaven or hell. The ego is the path to death. A Course in Miracles wants us to see the ego for what it is. It wants us to listen only for the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the Voice for God. The Holy Spirit abides in our minds, which is only really one mind. The Holy Spirit represents our Self and our Creator. We can only find our Self when we connect with the Holy Spirit in each person we meet. This is our training. To hear the Voice for God in all.

You are His manifestation in this world. Your brother calls to you to be His Voice along with him. Alone he cannot be the Helper of God's Son for he alone is functionless. But joined with you he is the shining Savior of the world, Whose part in its redemption you have made complete. (ACIM, C-6.5:1-4)

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270/ The Two Kingdoms

25th October 2021

How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. (ACIM, T-5.IV.8:1-2)

***

A Course in Miracles says this: What you project or extend is real for you. This is an immutable law of the mind in this world as well as in the Kingdom. (ACIM, T-7.II.2:4-5)

A Course in Miracles tells us that the ego projects and the Holy Spirit extends. We have learnt to project but the Holy Spirit can teach us to extend. To extend through the Holy Spirit is simply a lesson in remembering. We know it. We have just forgotten that we know it.

Within us is always the answer. It is both a memory and a belief. However, the mind has distorted this memory, and it is this that we have to unlearn.

Within us is complete truth, and the ego's distortion of that truth. Within us is complete love, and the ego's condition of that love. Within us is the creation of God, and the ego's creation of other gods. Within us is the Kingdom that is Heaven, and the ego's kingdom that can be hell.

In the Kingdom there is no teaching or learning, because there is no belief. There is only certainty. (ACIM, T-7.II.3:4-5)

Outside the Kingdom, the law that prevails inside is adapted to "What you project you believe." (ACIM, T-7.II.3:1)

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271/ The Way, the Truth and the Life

26th October 2021

What higher goal could there be for anyone than to learn to call upon God and hear His Answer? And what more transcendent aim can there be than to recall the way, the truth and the life, and to remember God? (ACIM, P-1.2:2-3)

What A Course in Miracles is teaching us is that the way, the truth and the life is in the mind. We lose sight of it because we perceive ourselves as being different. We perceive only the unreal.

A Course in Miracles calls this insanity. It tells us we are insane simply because the ego is insane. It wants us to know that there is another part of the mind that is totally sane. This is the ego's "enemy" but also our friend. It is the part of the mind where the Holy Spirit resides.

The Holy Spirit is peace. The Holy Spirit is illumination. The Holy Spirit provides the certainty the ego can never provide. A Course in Miracles teaches us that the Holy Spirit is always there, always waiting and always answering. We just need to quieten our minds to listen. 

The way, the truth and the life is just a metaphor for knowing what is real and what is unreal.

Jesus, the Voice of A Course in Miracles, guides us to understand what is peace and what is not peace, what is sanity and what is insanity.  Jesus tells us to look at our minds and, the more we look, the more insight we get. Jesus wants us to be alert to what we are thinking. Jesus wants us to know the answer is always in our minds.

When I said "I am with you always," I meant it literally. I am not absent to anyone in any situation. Because I am always with you, you are the way, the truth and the life. (ACIM, T-7.III.1:7-9)

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272/ Healing and the Laws of God

27th October 2021

Since only the mind can be sick, only the mind can be healed. Only the mind is in need of healing. (ACIM, P-in.1:2-3)

A Course in Miracles tells us that our inspiration comes from the Voice for God.

A Course in Miracles tells us that our certainty comes from the laws of God.

A Course in Miracles tells us our healing comes from remembering the laws of God and forgetting the laws of the ego.

What, then, are the laws of God, what are the laws of the ego, and what is healing? 

A Course in Miracles tells us the laws of God are anything that does not oppose peace, love and truth.  The laws of the ego are anything that does.

A Course in Miracles tells us that healing cannot come directly from God. God only sees us as perfectly whole. 

Healing, therefore, comes from knowing what is right and what is wrong. And this can only be found in the mind.

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273/ What Is it to Know God?

28th October 2021

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.” Kahlil Gibran.

***

To be a teacher of God, it is not necessary to be religious or even to believe in God to any recognizable extent. It is necessary, however, to teach forgiveness rather than condemnation. (ACIM, P-2.II.1:1-2)

A Course in Miracles then gives us this bit of advice: 

If any two are joined, He must be there. (ACIM, P-2.II.6:5)

A Course in Miracles teaches us that it is impossible to know God without recognizing the Christ in each other. The ego loves to make boundaries, and we have to transcend the ego to know God. This essentially means overcoming our fear of death - the fear of annihilation of our separate self.

 What is it to know God? Steve Gardipee's near-death experience during the Vietnam War is as good an account as any of what it is like to be in God's presence. He ends his account by saying that there are no human words that can adequately describe what happened to him, but that he hopes the words he used can somehow do it justice.

His account can be heard on YouTube. The interview is with Lee Witting of NDE Radio. The link is below.

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274/ Illness and the Mind

29th October 2021

“Calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence, so that’s very important for good health.” Dalai Lama.

***

We've all been sick. We've all know people who have died. Denying the reality of sickness does not make any sense to a mind that knows it as real.

A Course in Miracles teaches us to investigate the mind. It is a process. Few can achieve the level of control that enables us to be free of sickness and death - in other words, being free of the control of the ego. We need to look after ourselves. Life just gets harder when we feel sick and unwell.

The two statements below illustrate how the mind is the cause of our sickness. When we read them, we are really being told that the ego is the cause of our ill health.

Illness of any kind may be defined as the result of a view of the self as weak, vulnerable, evil and endangered, and thus in need of constant defense. (ACIM, P-2.IV.6:1)

What, then, can illness be except an expression of sorrow and of guilt? (ACIM, P-2.IV.1:6)

A Course in Miracles has one message. There are no degrees of sickness. It also has another: Sickness is insanity, because all sickness is mental illness, and in this there is no degrees (ACIM, P-2.IV.8:1). It tells us that sicknesss is just an error in the mind. Until we have undone the ego, getting rid of one sickness will just pave the way for another. The only solution is to rid the mind of guilt, and we achieve this through the practice of forgiveness.

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275/ Healing is Holy

30th October 2021

A Course in Miracles tells us that truth is simple, it's just that we have lost our way in an endless maze of complexity. It then tells us that this is the great illusion. An illusion has established our belief that we have to control the unknown.

Regardless of who we are, regardless of what we have done, A Course in Miracles tells us that healing is purely in the mind. Quite often we go to others for healing, but others come to us, whether we know it or not. It doesn't matter the context. If someone is hurling abuse at us, we deal with it in whatever way is appropriate, but our goal is still to have the understanding that that person is calling out for help. That person needs healing. If we can do that, we are fulfilling our purpose in life.

A Course in Miracles tells us that healing is holy. Nothing in the world is holier that helping someone who is asking for help. As mentioned above, this could be the person who is hurling abuse at us.

 Truth is simple. If we are present enough to offer healing, the healing will always come. 

Truth has no exceptions. We just have to be present to our minds. The Holy Spirit always heals. The ego always divides.

Hear a brother call for help and answer him. It will be God to Whom you answer, for you called on Him. There is no other way to hear His Voice. There is no other way to seek His Son.There is no other way find your Self. (ACIM, P-2.V.8:4-8)

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276/ Reality Is a Choice

31st October 2021

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” Nelson Mandela.

***

A Course in Miracles teaches us that all healing is of the mind. The process of healing can simply be defined as forgiveness, for it says that no healing can be anything else. 

Healing occurs as a patient begins to hear the dirge he sings, and questions its validity. Until he hears it, he cannot understand that it is he who sings it to himself. To hear it is the first step in recovery. To question it must then become his choice. (ACIM, P-2.VI.1:5-8)

We have a narrative that runs through our minds literally every second of the day. We shape everything around this narrative which arises from past events and past experiences. It causes us pain and gives us pleasure. It is unpredictable, and we can never entirely trust it.

A Course in Miracles teaches us to question it. It tells us not to dismiss it uncorrected. The process of forgiveness begins with the understanding that we can change this narrative. 

Our awareness is the key. Being aware of what is happening in the mind is a huge first step. We need discernment to understand that hearing is a choice. We can listen to what we choose. Listen to the ego, and we can become aware of the flimsy nature of our false beliefs. 

We therefore have false beliefs and true belies. The true beliefs are hidden by the false, just like the voice of the ego drowns out the Voice of the Holy Spirit.

The false images that we see can’t be changed without a drastic change of perception. For us to get real vision too quickly would be too drastic. We have to slowly change our beliefs until what is real replaces what is not real. A Course in Miracles is not an exercise in control.  It simply tells us that reality a choice, and nothing more than that.

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277/ The Unhealed Healer

1st November 2021

“An unhealed person can find offense in pretty much anything someone does. A healed person understands that the actions of others has absolutely nothing to do with them. Each day you get to decide which one you will be.” Unknown.

***

A Course in Miracles tells us that only minds can communicate, but they cannot hurt. It tells us that only the mind in the service of the ego can hurt another body. 

This is a key point in learning the difference between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not accept the confusion of mind and body. While the ego wants to divide and separate, healing is the Holy Spirit’s only form of communication in this world. The Holy Spirit does this through the mind and not through the body,

A Course in Miracles talks about the unhealed healer. This applies to most of us, whether we think we are healers or not. We think that the damage we see is real so we try to change it. In fact it is just a smokescreen to the truth. ACIM tells us that an unhealed healer believes in fantasies and not the truth.

We are all unhealed healers until we learn to only think with the Holy Spirit. It might feel like a long haul, but in fact it is simply a moment to moment decision. Jesus was the perfect healer because his thought was in perfect alignment with the Holy Spirit. He only saw the Holy Spirit in everyone. The unhealed healer can't do this. 

We just need to be aware of what needs healing. Our minds are powerful and, as long as they are unhealed, the help we give someone else will always be temporary. When we heal our mind, we only see one mind. When this happens, there can be no order of difficulties in miracles.

See only this Mind everywhere, because only this is everywhere and in everything. It is everything because it encompasses all things within itself. Blessed are you who perceive only this, because you perceive only what is true. (ACIM, T-7.V.10:10-12)

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278/ The Power of Our Thinking

2nd November 2021

The mind that accepts attack cannot love. That is because it believes it can destroy love, and therefore does not understand what love is. (ACIM, T-7.VI.2:1-2)

Love is your power, which the ego must deny. (ACIM, T-7.VI.4:7)

The ego therefore wants to engage your mind in its own delusional system, because otherwise the light of your understanding would dispel it. (ACIM, T-7.VI.8:5)

A Course in Miracles is showing us the power of our thinking. In many ways, it is quite simple.  We just have two options.

We create our reality through our thought. Fear arises only from the ego. 

The power of the mind is love, given to us directly from God. It is our reality.

In the language of A Course in Miracles, our minds are divided between two kingdoms. Our problems arise because we keep swinging between the kingdom of the ego and the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit. We have to learn to totally commit to the latter in order to awaken. This requires unshakeable trust, but it’s also an absolute must. The power of our thinking creates our reality. How we feel is how we think.

Your divided mind is blocking the extension of the Kingdom; and its extension is your joy. If you do not extend the Kindgom, you are not thinking with your Creator and creating and He created. (ACIM, T-7.VI.12:4-5)

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279/ The Only Message

3rd November 2021

“It always seems impossible until it is done.” Nelson Mandela.

***

A Course in Miracles tells us these two things.

In sharing, everyone must gain a blessing without cost. (ACIM, P-3.III.6:11)

The journey is not long except in dreams. (ACIM, P-3.II.8:8)

We all yearn for freedom. We all yearn to be loved. Life is challenging, whether we like it or not.

A Course in Miracles tells us that this is simply a dream of fear. Fear is the veil that covers our true nature, and we can share that true nature without a cost.

A Course in Miracles also tells us there is no order of difficulty in healing. We just think there is.

So, when we see something that disturbs us, we should know it needs just one correction. Every problem, no matter what the form, is the same to the Holy Spirit. Our goal is to simply trust in the formless, and then the Holy Spirit rights the wrong.

Healing occurs when we know our true nature. Healing comes when we see it everywhere. Healing arises when we realise that the faults of others are our own faults.

A Course in Miracles tells us that healing occurs when judgement ceases. It teaches us that there is no order of difficulty in healing because there is no order of difficulty in dreams.  When we look at this deeply, we can see that this is ACIM’s only message. 

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280/ Denying What Is Whole

4th November 2021

“God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.” Mahatma Gandhi.

***

Every response you make is determined by what you think you are, and what you want to be is what you think you are. What you want to be, then, must determine every response you make. (ACIM, T-7.VII.2:7-8)

A Course in Miracles is giving us a fundamental truth. We make our own reality. It is reminding us that we are whole. We are one. When we see differences in each other, we are giving strength to the ego. We are denying the whole. 

Below are some further excerpts that help to illustrate this.

It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part. (ACIM, T-7.VII.1:2)

You cannot be totally committed sometimes. (ACIM, T-7.VII.1:4)

Reality cannot be partly appreciated. (ACIM, T-7.VII.1:7)

A Course in Miracles teaches us that every person we see is a mirror of ourselves. We have to look at ourselves closely to see what we want to be. 

A Course in Miracles tells us that ultimately there is only the Love of God, and this is all we secretly want.  When we learn to see the Love of God in ourselves, we see it everywhere; when we learn to see the Love of God in each other, we see it in ourselves. ACIM tells us that the peace of God arrives by understanding this. If we don’t understand this, then we are denying what is whole.

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281/ The Question of Payment

5th November 2021

“Money is the worst discovery of human life. But it is the most trusted material to test human nature.” Buddha.

***

A Course in Miracles tells us that the only therapy is psychotherapy. Regardless of how we dress it up, we are dealing with the mind. So when we get our aches and pains, it is really the mind we should be looking at.

This is not reality for most of us. Pain is debilitating. Pain is hard to handle. When we are in pain, nothing else matters. To be told the cause is in the mind is not helpful. And yet A Course in Miracles is not about analysing the cause. It is not about analysing the ego. It is all about giving everything to the Holy Spirit as the means to undo our unconscious guilt.

The process of psychotherapy, then, can be defined simply as forgiveness, for no healing can be anything else. (ACIM, P-2.VI.1:1-2)

So, if we go to a therapist, or we are a therapist, the goal is to release everything to the Holy Spirit. We let go of the ego. We stop our judgements. We allow the mind to do the healing.  Forgiveness is the tool we need to heal ourselves and others. 

A Course in Miracles tells us that money should not be an issue when we want to be healed. It tells us that no one is sent to anyone by accident. All it requires is a recognition that transcends the ego. When we go to a therapist, we recognise the Holy Spirit in each other. 

No one can pay for therapy, for healing is of God and He asks for nothing. It is, however, part of His plan that everything in this world be used by the Holy Spirit to help in carrying out the plan.  Even an advanced therapist has some earthly needs while he is here. Should he need money it will be given him, not in payment, but to help him better serve the plan. Money is not evil. It is nothing. (ACIM, P-3.III.1:1-6)