Reflections 282 to 295

 

282/ A Fundamental Law of the Mind

6th November 2021

“Do not confuse peace of mind with spaced-out insensitivity. A truly peaceful mind is very sensitive, very aware.” Dalai Lama.

***

A Course in Miracles tells us not to be afraid of the ego.

The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever be unbelievable. (ACIM, T-7.VIII.7:1)

What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. (ACIM, C-2.2:1-2)

A Course in Miracles also tells us that without the projection of the ego there can be no anger, and without the extension of spirit there can be no love. This is a fundamental law of the mind.

The ego and the Holy Spirit are diametrically opposed as to the interpretation of this law. To the ego, conflict is everything. This is very subtle. We can see it in our minds if we look very closely.  We continually project conflict onto other minds without even knowing it. We might dispute this but the conflict is always there. The ego loves conflict. It just will never tell us. 

This is because, if we knew this was so, we would get rid of the ego. We wouldn’t even hesitate.

A Course in Miracles tells us that a mind without the ego is a mind that is free. A mind that is free is a mind that shares. It is a mind that extends love. Fear does not operate within this mind. It only knows peace.

A fundamental law of the mind is this. It has the freedom to choose as it pleases. No one tells us what to do or say, but we can make that choice. The choice is up to us.

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283/ The Power of Prayer and Light

7th November 2021

Prayer is a way of asking for something. It is the medium of miracles. (ACIM, T-3.V.6:1-2)

Know yourself in the One Light where the miracle that is you is perfectly clear. (ACIM, T-3.V.10:9)

These two lines, taken from A Course in Miracles, are relevant to the near-death experience that follows. Help was asked for, and help was given. Fear was experienced, then Light was experienced.  Words can't do justice to the power of prayer and Light. Words are limited, like drops in the ocean. 

Astrid Dauster had her near-death experience in 2011. She recalls collapsing and watching the ambulance staff treating her body. She remembers feeling emotionally distraught, then later crying out to the ether: "Help me. I don't know what I should do." It was at that point that everything changed, and the healing part of her experience began. Her prayer had been answered.

She also had a number of other near-death experiences as a child, the result of extreme physical abuse. On the very first occasion, she screamed to God for help. She suddenly passed through a tunnel and into the Light. Her scream was the prayer, and her prayer was answered.

"When I look back on my life as a whole now, I have to say my life was very hard. But always, again and again, I received help from above, Divine help, so that I could manage to walk that path." 

Later, she says this when talking about the Light: "The human language has no word for it. It is simply wonderful, endless and infinite security, infinite and endless peace, and endless and infinite love."

Astrid Dauster's interview can be heard on YouTube, and is with Thanatos TV. The link is below.

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284/ Careful of What We Wish for

8th November 2021

“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.” Mother Teresa.

***

The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you need. (ACIM, S-1.I.4:1)

Prayer is a stepping aside; a letting go, a quiet time of listening and loving. (ACIM, S-1.I.5:1)

We have all prayed. Who hasn’t? When life is painful, we get desperate. Deep within us, we know that there is help out there. And, even if doubt persists, sometimes our prayers are answered in ways we don’t know. Maybe coming across a spiritual practice is an answer to a prayer?

A Course in Miracles tells us that prayer takes many forms. At its most basic level, it is merely a wanting. We want because we are scared. We believe we are suffering lack. At its highest level, prayer has no beginning and no end. It is just part of life. It is a thanks and a giving. We are part of life and life is part of us. 

As we get into the study of A Course in Miracles, we begin to see a glimmer of its core teaching. We begin to see that everything we think has happened to us has actually never happened. It has all occurred in the mind. This is the reality that appears impossible to fully understand. This is the reality that the ego can never accept. Why? Because it proves the ego does not exist. It proves that what we thought was real is not real at all.

Being careful of what we wish for is an important concept to consider. We probably don't know what our higher purpose is. We probably don't know what we have to do for the greater good. We think the enemy is outside of ourselves when really it is within. So prayer should always be for the liberation of all. It should be for the forgiveness of what has never occurred.

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285/ The Miracle of Total Perception

9th November 2021

A Course in Miracles tells us that selfishness is of the ego, but Self-fullness is of spirit. The ego's purpose is to ensure its own survival. Spirit's purpose is to simply extend God's love.

We learn that the ego and spirit therefore have a life of their own. The ego blocks the extension of love. Spirit extends it. The ego blocks our joy. Spirit promotes it. The ego keeps us unfulfilled. Spirit fulfils us. 

We can never understand the Self-fullness of spirit because we live in a world that keeps us unfulfilled.  If we have achieved something, isn’t there always something more we need to achieve? When we have finished a day of hard work, can we ever feel totally satisfied? There is always something else to do. There is nothing in the world that can satisfy us totally. 

A Course in Miracles tells us that a split mind cannot perceive its fullness. Its fullness is the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is simply the awareness of perfect oneness.

We don’t know our own Self-fullness. We can’t find the elusive thing that makes us whole. We come back to this. The opposite of Self-fullness is selfishness. Selfishness only relates to the ego. Self-fullness only relates to perfect peace. 

A Course in Miracles tells us that only our Identity is real. This is what we need to identify. When we truly perceive this Identity in everyone, then our learning experience is complete. 

Be confident that you have never lost your Identity and the extensions which maintain It in wholeness and peace. Miracles are an expression of this confidence. They are reflections of both your proper identification with your brothers, and of your awareness that your identification is maintained by extension. The miracle is a lesson in total perception. By including any part of totality in the lesson, you have included the whole. (ACIM, T-7.IX.7:1-5)

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286/ Willing and Wishing

10th November 2021

“The will is not free – it is the phenomenon bound by cause and effect – but there is something behind the will which is free.” Swami Vivekananda.

***

Joy and pain are opposites, just like weakness and strength are opposites. A Course in Miracles tells us that all opposites exist within the mind, and the ego made them. ACIM also tells us that God wills only one thing, and that is joy. This is our birthright and, because God wills it, it means it has been done.

We wish for so many things in this life, and yet we wish through the fear generated by the egoic thought system in our minds. We have forgotten what belongs permanently in our minds. What exists permanently is the opposite of fear, the opposite of the ego, and the opposite of everything we have ever known during our limited time as a human being. It is Infinite Love, just another term for the Will of God.

 

You believe that doing the opposite of God's Will can be better for you. You also believe that it is possible to do the opposite of God's Will. Therefore, you believe that an impossible choice is open to you, and one which is both fearful and desirable. Yet God wills. He does not wish. Your will is as powerful as His because it is His. (ACIM, T-7.X.4:3-8)

A Course in Miracles tells us that only the ego wishes. It tells us that we wish for the impossible by thinking with the ego. It tells us that wishing is the weakness of the ego. Willing is our strength because it comes through the Love that created us.  We just need to have faith in that Love. We can’t touch it. We can’t see it.  But we can definitely experience it. And  we are told it is willed for us in the bucketload.

We wish for so much in this world. We might wish for a better life. We might wish for the suffering to end. A Course in Miracles says that our wishes have nothing to do with God. It has everything to do with the insane belief that we are separate. We need to learn the difference between wishing and willing. We have to learn to let the Holy Spirit give us what we need, because only the Holy Spirit knows exactly what we need.

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287/ The Sharp Contrast

11th November 2021

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” Albert Einstein.

***

A Course in Miracles tells us that each person we meet becomes the perfect opportunity to know God. It tells us we are limiting ourselves if we think otherwise. If we do anything less than this, we are denying what is real.

Knowing God sounds a bit scary. It sounds presumptuous. It is definitely not something we would have been taught, or even thought. It is not mainstream thinking.

A Course in Miracles tells us another thing. Only those in hell can ask for hell. So if we think of someone negatively, it will be reflected right back to us. 

 A mind in hell is a mind under the control of the ego. A mind under control of the ego is a mind that suffers. A mind that suffers projects that suffering onto others. This is in sharp contrast to a mind in Heaven.

A mind in Heaven is a mind at one with the Holy Spirit. A mind at one with the Holy Spirit is a mind at peace. A mind at peace is a mind that sees peace in everyone and everything. True happiness can only arise from being in this awareness.

A Course in Miracles tells us we are powerful creative beings, and it is up to us to recognize this.

When a mind has only light, it knows only light. (ACIM, T-7.XI.5:1)

Nothing is so easy to recognize as truth. (ACIM, T-7.XI.5:7)

A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is with God. (ACIM, T-7.XI.2:6)

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288/ A War with No Opponent

12th November 2021

“You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.” Leo Tolstoy.

***

A Course in Miracles tells us we are at war with ourselves. It is an illusory war with no opponent. It is a war the ego made up. This war is probably the reason we are drawn to A Course in Miracles, whether we know it or not.

The war exists within our minds, just as the Holy Spirit exists within our minds. However the Holy Spirit isn't at war with anything. The Holy Spirit simply mediates. Below are a few snippets of information that provide food for thought.

Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is (ACIM, T-8.I.1:1-2). A Course in Miracles is telling us that peace is the condition of knowledge. If we want knowledge, we have to meet its conditions. 

The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect it to say "I am not real (ACIM, T-8.I.2:2-3).” A Course in Miracles is asking us to merely look at our life. If we like it, we keep it. If we don’t like it, we change it. In ACIM-speak, this simply means allowing the ego to be removed from our minds. 

Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does deprive you of peace. Yet in this war there is no opponent (ACIM, T-8.I.3:1-2). A Course in Miracles is teaching us something we have probably never really considered. The ego is simply fighting a battle with itself. The Holy Spirit doesn’t oppose. It simply is. Ditch the ego and we ditch the war.

You cannot learn simultaneously from two teachers who are in total disagreement about everything (ACIM, T-8.I.6:2).  A Course in Miracles is merely telling us that both the ego and the Holy Spirit are teaching us about ourselves. Learn from the ego and we learn about fear. Learn from the Holy Spirit and we learn about peace.

Our minds are at war but no one else is out there.  As A Course in Miracles states, it’s a war with no opponent. The war is in our minds. 

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289/ Effects Without a Cause

13th November 2021

“Knowing your own mind is the solution to all our problems.” Thubten Yeshe.

***

Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet without effects there is no cause. The cause a cause is made by its effects; the Father is a Father by His Son. Effects do not create their cause, but they establish its causation. (ACIM, T-28.II.1:1-3)

What is written above might take some reading. In fact we can read the complete Text of A Course of Miracles any number to times, and still not quite get it. Then, when our minds become clearer, we find that each page refers back to the same thing. We are all One with God, nothing more nothing less. 

This understanding is the direction the Holy Spirit takes us in. The ego takes us another way, to a sense of separation and a sense of despair. 

A Course in Miracles tells us that when we pray with the ego, we are essentially repeating patterns of the past. We are maintaining our dream of separation and our sense of fear. It tells us that the aim of prayer is to release the present from the past. Every decision is then made from present moment awareness.

A Course in Miracles asks us to let go of our past conditioning, and to look for the true Cause of our existence. 

A Course in Miracles shows us that really there is no cause. All our issues are causeless. The cause of everything is the ego, which is just an illusory state of mind. The Cause of everything else is God, who is real and is right here, now.

A Course in Miracles has one fundamental message.  We are dreaming. We are dreaming the effects without a cause. Time's only purpose is to waken to the Cause and Its Effects.

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290/ The Way to True Humility

14th November 2021

“Be like the bamboo: the higher you grow the deeper you bow.” Chinese Proverb.

***

The ego does not know what true humility is. This becomes abundantly clear when we listen to our thoughts.

A Course in Miracles tells us that the path to true humility starts with the recognition of who we are. Within us all is the Christ - the Thought of God and the Self we share. Within us all is the Holy Spirit - the Voice for God. There are no exceptions to this. 

Only the ego can make exceptions so we need to look past the ego. We need to look at our fears. This ultimately means confronting our fear of death. When we have no fear of death, we have no fear of separation. Face our fears and the ego is gone.

A Course in Miracles teaches us that true humility brings peace. Humility and peace co-exist just like the ego and anxiety co-exist. The ego and anxiety, however, are illusions: Illusions and humility have goals so far apart they cannot co-exist, nor share a dwelling place where they can meet. (ACIM, S-1.V.2:1)

The way to true humility comes when we understand the nature of the mind.

The way to true humility comes when we understand the nature of each other.

The way to true humility comes when we understand the words transcribed below.

I cannot go without you, for you are a part of me. (ACIM, S-1.V.3:9)

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291/ Imprisonment and Freedom

15th November 2021

A Course in Miracles gives us the low-down on our two teachers, the ego and the Holy Spirit

The ego does not know what it is trying to teach. It is trying to teach you what you are without knowing what you are. It is expert only in confusion. It does not understand anything else. (ACIM, T-8.II.1:4-7)

The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only one direction and has only one goal. His direction is freedom and His goal is God. Yet He cannot conceive of God without you, because it is not God's Will to be without you. (ACIM, T-8.II.6:1-3)

A Course in Miracles tells us that either imprisonment or freedom lie in the understanding of the above. It tells us that we can only learn confusion from the ego because the ego knows nothing. Freedom and joy come from learning with from the Holy Spirit. This is our real leaning experience.

A Course in Miracles also tells us that imprisonment and freedom are the same as pain and joy. The Holy Spirit teaches us to make this distinction. The ego does not. With this in mind, it might be helpful to again contemplate the following statement, which ACIM states is the message of the crucifixion.

Teach only love, for that is what you are. (ACIM, T-6.III.2:4)

This means that every moment becomes a new chance to change; every interaction becomes another chance to express acceptance and love; every day is just another opportunity to stay imprisoned or accept freedom.

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292/ The Only Happy Dream

16th November 2021

“The best way to serve God is by going in search of your own dreams. Only the happy can spread happiness.” Paulo Coelho.

***

A Course in Miracles tells us we live in a world of opposites and we must choose between these opposites every moment that we are here.

A Course in Miracles also tells us that forgiveness is the only happy dream in this world of opposites. It says that forgiveness is an illusion, the same as the world is just an illusion. However, forgiveness is needed for just one reason - to awaken from the dream.

Forgiveness, truly given, is the way in which your only hope of freedom lies. Others will make mistakes and so will you, as long as this illusion of a world appears to be your home. (ACIM, S-2.I.6:1-2)

A Course in Miracles tells us that forgiveness is acquired. We have to practice forgiveness for ourselves because it is not something that is inherent in the mind, just like sin has never existed in the mind. However, we learn to practice our forgiveness through the Holy Spirit, and never through the ego.

Forgiveness-to-destroy is the term A Course in Miracles uses for the forgiveness that the ego employs. This type of forgiveness makes the dream unhappy. It is why we suffer. It is what reinforces all our unconscious guilt. It is essentially the reason why we come to ACIM. 

 Forgiveness-to-destroy will overlook no sin, no crime, no guilt that it can seek and find and “love.” Dear to its heart is error, and mistakes loom large and grow and swell within its sight. It carefully picks out all evil things, and overlooks the loving as a plague; a hateful thing of danger and of death. (ACIM, S-2.I.2:2-4)

The only happy dream is the true forgiveness as taught through A Course in Miracles. No one is wrong. Everyone is right. No one has ever sinned. We are all perfect. 

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293/ The Goal of the Curriculum

17th November 2021

“Those who have failed to work toward the truth have missed the purpose of living.” Buddha.

***

The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is "Know thyself." There is nothing else to seek. Everyone is looking for himself and for the power and glory he thinks he has lost. (ACIM, T-8.III.5:1-3)

A Course in Miracles tells us that, to know ourselves, we cannot listen to the ego. This is where we go wrong. We listen to the chatter in our minds consistently, without ever questioning it. We have no idea we can do anything else. We bow down to it. We think we are it.

A Course in Miracles teaches us about the Holy Spirit being the means to know the truth about ourselves. However, there are many other ways to know the essence of our Being. Those who have had a near-death experience might consider their NDE to be another way. With this in mind, reading or listening to NDEs is a good foundation for gaining insight into who we really are.

Anke Evertz had her near-death experience in September 2009 due to an accident where she was set alight. As her body was consumed by the flames, she found herself offering her thoughts to a Higher Power. Her spirit was then catapulted out of her body. Later, in a Munich hospital, her body was put into a coma for nine days. It was during those nine days that she learnt the meaning of life, and why we, as humans, lose our connection.

During the interview, she talks of meeting her Teacher, of having a life review, and of experiencing her past lives. She concludes by saying she lives life much more fully now, and with much more joy. She says she has stopped all worry of the past and of the future: "There is just this present, and there is just this one moment."

The interview with Anke Evertz can be heard on YouTube. The title is ‘Nine Days of Eternity’ and is with Thanatos TV. The link is below.

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294/ The World of Form

18th November 2021

A Course in Miracles has this message. We might think we know who we are, what we are, and where we are, but we don’t. We have forgotten.

We are all stuck in the world of form and so it is impossible to know anything that relates directly to the truth. The world of form is solid and dense. The world of form is nothing like what is described anywhere in the Text, the Workbook, or the Manual for Teachers.

The world of form surrounds us because that is what the ego recognises. The ego does not know complete peace and complete joy. Complete peace and joy are as foreign to the ego as despair and unhappiness are foreign to the Holy Spirit. The two cannot co-exist. 

So we have two opposites. A Course in Miracles tells us that the only way out of this world of form is through the type of forgiveness that does not blame, does not compare, and does not judge. 

A Course in Miracles calls this forgiveness-for-salvation. Forgiveness-for-salvation sounds biblical. It sounds as if we have to earn it. But all it really means is that we become present. We stay completely present. We see that there is nothing to forgive right here, right now. 

While forgiveness-to-destroy always entails the projection the ego, forgiveness-for-salvation always involves the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit sees no separation and always sees past the world of form. The Holy Spirit uses everything to bring us to the now, and this includes each person in front of us.

When someone calls for help in any form, He is the One to answer for you. All that you need do is to step back and not to interfere. Forgiveness-for-salvation is His task, and it is He Who will respond for you. (ACIM, S-2.III.2:5-7)

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295/ Overcoming Separation

19th November 2021

“And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” Khalil Gibran.

***

I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation, maintained by fear of the same loneliness that is its illusion. (ACIM, T-8.IV.2:1-3)

Here are some key points that might arise out of what is written above.

The whole of A Course in Miracles is about re-discovering this light. It is about overcoming the darkness within us. It has nothing to do with individuals, or one person, being better or greater than us.

When the passage above talks about a world that does deny itself everything, it means that we deny ourselves everything.  We have dissociated ourselves from our reality. This occurs in the mind.

When it says the world is an illusion of isolation, and that it is maintained by fear of the same loneliness that is its illusion, we are being shown the nature of the ego. Later, we learn this.

Light does not attack darkness, but it does shine it away. (ACIM, T-8.IV.2:10)

The world tells us that it is impossible to see only light. The ego tells us tells us that it is impossible not to see darkness.

A Course in Miracles teaches us that, not only is it possible to see only see light, it is also what we are. It teaches us that finding the light is our means of overcoming separation.

We all can become the light of the world.