Reflections 310 to 323

 

310/ Limiting Our Receiving

4th December 2021

“Whatever you put attention to will start manifesting in your life. Intention, attention, manifestation; that is how the universe works.” Ravi Shankar.

***

How can you become increasingly aware of the Holy Spirit in you except by His effects? You cannot see Him with your eyes nor hear Him with your ears. How, then, can you perceive Him at all? (ACIM, T-9.VI.1:1-3)

A Course in Miracles is telling us that God does not limit His giving but we limit our receiving. Receiving all of God's Love is impossible when we think with the ego. The belief that we are not worthy of God's love is a huge lie that the ego loves.

The solution is to ask the Holy Spirit to undo all the unconscious guilt that made this possible. This is A Course in Miracles’ main teaching. It tells us that unconscious guilt is what keeps us tied to the ego. It is what keeps up coming back, life after life. Through forgiveness we can undo it, but we do this by working with the Holy Spirit.

When A Course in Miracles tells us that we are limiting our receiving, it is telling us we are deciding against love and deciding for fear. The decision to receive is the decision to accept. This means accepting that God's Love is for all.

Only the ego believes in division. Only the ego believes in separation. Each time we recognize that there is no division, we are healing the whole.

A Course in Miracles tells us that, each time we remember the connection we have with each other, it adds to our wholeness.  It tells us that wholeness is indivisible. It tells us that we can’t learn about the wholeness of wholeness until we see it everywhere. 

You will never know that you are co-creator with God until you learn that your brother is co-creator with you. (ACIM, T-9.VI.7:9)

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311/ Every Minute and Every Second

5th December 2021

“Don’t count the days. Make the days count.” Muhammad Ali.

***

A Course in Miracles tells us that the ego exists within the mind because we have accepted it there. The Holy Spirit exists within the mind because God put It there. Our choice is simply whether we want to awaken to the peace of the Holy Spirit in our minds.

Awakening can only happen when we are out of our comfort zone. It happens when life becomes painful. We won't awaken when we are in our comfort zone. Why would we? Life is too comfortable.

A Course in Miracles tells us that we take our pain for granted. We take the ego for granted. We are so used to thinking only with the ego that we don't even consider there is an alternative.

The alternative is to go beyond the thought system we are used to. We can’t solve our problems from within it. When we go beyond our thought system, we can look back and see the contrast.

This basically means leaving insanity for sanity.

A Course in Miracles says that the decision to awaken is with us every minute and every second of the day. It also tells us that the only way we can experience this awakening is through each other.

Every hateful thought prevents us knowing who we are. Every loving thought shows us who we are. Every painful thought is an opportunity to go beyond what we think we are.

Every minute and every second gives you a chance to save yourself. Do not lose these chances, not because they will not return, but because delay of joy is needless. God wills you perfect happiness now. Is it possible that this is not also your will? And is it possible that this is not also the will of your brothers. (ACIM, T-9.VII.1:6-10)

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312/ The Irreplaceable Us

6th December 2021

"When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit weeps for what it has gained." Sufi Proverb.

***

A Course in Miracles highlights the underlying nature of the ego. It tells us that it swings between suspiciousness and viciousness. It is self-inflating. It is competitive and loves to attack.

This is self-imposed madness. If we listen to our thoughts, we might admit that this is so.

A Course in Miracles asks that we don't accept this. It asks that we see past it. It asks us to step into the present moment, and lose all sense of the nature of the ego. What we then learn are two things.

Firstly, that reality is infinitely bigger than anything that the ego can offer. Even the faintest hint of reality means that we would have absolutely zero interest in the ego.

Secondly, that we can never be anywhere except in the Mind of God. 

The Mind of God surrounds us. It is everywhere, and there is nowhere that it cannot be. The ego prevents us from knowing this. We might feel that we are alone and separate, but nothing is further from the truth.

A Course in Miracles says that all of us, as single individuals, are totally irreplaceable. We are all completely unique, completely whole and completely loved. 

You are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God. No one else can fill your part in it, and while you leave your part of it empty your eternal place merely waits for your return. God, through His Voice, reminds you of it, and God Himself keeps your extensions safe within it. Yet you do not know them until you return to them. (ACIM, T-9.VIII.10:1-4)

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313/ Achieving True Perception

7th December 2021

 A Course in Miracles tells us that it is only by doing the exercises in the Workbook that we can achieve the goal of the Course. The goal of the Course is the shift from false perception to true perception.

True perception arises only when we see everyone through the eyes of the Holy Spirit. No one is excluded. If we feel that just one person is not perfect, then true perception becomes impossible. This could be anyone, past or present.

The ego tells us that no one is perfect. The ego compartmentalises everything. We like this and that. We search externally for everything that we think will make us happy.

A Course in Miracles says that this is perceiving falsely. People and things are just images in our minds. It is only the ego that sees them as being real. 

A Course in Miracles says that a total understanding of just one lesson in the Workbook is enough to understand all of the above. It is also enough to draw just one conclusion. Heaven and earth do not exist as separate states.

Achieving true perception means seeing Heaven here on earth. This means that we are able to live in a body, but we know we are not that body. We know that we are spirit, whole, pure and innocent.

The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. (ACIM, M-12.5:1-5)

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314/ The Love of Presence

8th December 2021

“Absence sharpens love. Presence strengthens it.” Benjanin Franklin.

***

Nothing beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing is beyond you. Time and eternity are both in your mind, and will conflict until you perceive time solely as a means to regain eternity. You cannot do this as long as you believe that anything happening to you is caused by factors outside yourself. (ACIM, T-10.in.1:1-3)

These are the opening lines that form the introduction to Chapter 12 of A Course in Miracles. They are basically telling us that we have to take responsibility for ourselves. It all begins and ends in the mind.

We can’t blame anyone or anything else. We can only blame ourselves.

The near-death experience might also show this. When we listen to someone’s account of an NDE, it can show us that we need to take more responsibility for our lives. We have free will but we don’t always use it properly.

Scott Drummond had a near-death experience when he was 28. He describes it like “a mother's love.” His life review profoundly moved him because it showed him that life is not about the achievements and success that he had sought as a businessman. Life is about caring for each other.

He says this: "We are supposed to help each other in our jobs, we are supposed to help our friends, we are supposed to help people we come in contact with."

The love behind his NDE has stayed with him throughout his life. It is quite simply the Love of Presence. Scott's account can be heard on YouTube and is with Anthony Chene. The link is below.

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315/ The Law of Creation

9th December 2021

“We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.” Lao Tzu.

***

The law of creation is that you love your creations as yourself, because they are part of you. Everything that was created is therefore perfectly safe, because the laws of God protect it by His Love. (ACIM, T-10.I.1:3-4)

 A Course in Miracles tells us we don't know our creations because we don't know ourselves. Our minds are split. We don't understand what God has given us. We live in the Mind of God but we don't know the Mind of God. 

The law of creation is lost to us. Why? A Course in Miracles tells us it is because we are sleeping.

A Course in Miracles is here to explain the unexplainable. It's here to relieve our suffering. The only reason we don’t awaken to its truths is because we have a voice which tells us not to.

This voice establishes our separation. It creates its own laws. When we listen to this voice, we believe everything it says.

A Course in Miracles wants us to listen to another Voice. This Voice knows where we come from, who we are, and what we have to do to get back there. This Voice basically tells us that we are alive, will always be alive, and have never not been alive.

Only by listening quietly and in silence can we really understand the law of creation.

You will remember everything the instant you desire it wholly, for if to desire wholly is to create, you will have willed away the separation, returning your mind simultaneously to your Creator and your creations. (ACIM, T-10.I.4:1)

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316/ The Miracle of Surrender

10th December 2021

"If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it.” Toni Morrison.

***

Unless you first know something you cannot dissociate it. Knowledge must precede dissociation, so that dissociation is nothing more than a decision to forget. (ACIM, T-10.II.1:1-2)

A Course in Miracles tells us that we have replaced our knowledge with an awareness of dreams. This is what we are afraid of. ACIM tells us we are not afraid of the knowledge that we have dissociated ourselves from.

 Our minds reflect the fear that we have forgotten who we really are. Our minds hold the fear that we will be punished. The ego is an expert at reminding us about this because the ego loves to attack.

A Course in Miracles tells us that any thought that is not peaceful, loving and kind, is an attack. It reminds us that, when we think in this way, we are denying ourselves.

All attack is Self attack. It cannot be anything else. Arising from your own decision not to be what you are, it is an attack on your identification. Attack is thus the way in which your identification is lost, because when you attack, you must have forgotten what you are. (ACIM, T-10.II.5:1-4)

Our reality is what we make it. It is whatever our minds want it to be. Reality can either be shown to us through the calming Voice of the Holy Spirit, or we accept something else in its place. This is anything that the ego decides it to be. This will change. It varies. It is never consistent. True reality can never be inconsistent. It either is, or it isn’t.

The miracle of surrender restores to our minds what is already there. The miracle of surrender is a choice. It is the choice between fear and love.

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317/ Minds Are Not Separate

11th December 2021

If God has but one Son, there is but one God. You share reality with Him, because reality is not divided. (ACIM, T-10.III.10:1-2)

***

We label ourselves as this or that.  A Course in Miracles tells us there is just one Self.

We might say there are many minds. A Course in Miracles says there is just one mind.

We take sickness for granted. A Course in Miracles wants us to think otherwise. 

A Course in Miracles tells us that, to believe that we can suffer, is to believe that part of God can suffer. 

A Course in Miracles wants us to know that, when we are sick, it is because we are not asking for peace. We have no idea that peace is our birthright. 

We are asked to re-evaluate the whole way we see each other. We are asked to stop believing that we are fragile and weak. We are told that believing we are fragile and weak is a ploy of the ego – the ego being the part of the mind that believes in separation and death.

We are asked to only see the Holy Spirit in each other. We are told there is only the one mind. We are asked to look past the faults of any person we meet, and just see the wonder that they are.

We think we are divided but we are not. What is written below just repeats what is being told to us time and time again in the whole thousand-plus pages of A Course in Miracles.

Your minds are not separate, and God has only one channel for healing because He has but one Son. (ACIM, T-10.III.2:5)

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318/ Making It All Right

12th December 2021

A Course in Miracles wants us to know the following. 

Reality can dawn only on an unclouded mind. (ACIM, T-10.IV.2:1)

Knowledge cannot dawn on a mind full of illusions. (ACIM, T-10.IV.2:5)

A Course in Miracles is telling us we are searching for freedom in the wrong places. We won’t find it anywhere except within the mind.

We have to trust that part of the mind which thinks correctly. The ego does not think correctly but the Holy Spirit does. Trying to correct anything with the ego is impossible because the ego made it all wrong in the first place.

A Course in Miracles teaches us to listen for the Voice for God. This is because God made it all right in the first place.

So, as stated above, it is really about stepping through the clouds in our mind. The clouds are our thoughts, and our thoughts are simply mental chatter that has no form. Knowledge is always there. The clouds simply block the understanding that we have never left it.

A change of perception is all that is needed. By making it all right, we stop what is making it all wrong.

The power of one mind can shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere and it is eternal. (ACIM, T-10.IV.7:5-6)

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319/ Placing Our Allegiance

13th December 2021

A Course in Miracles tells us that allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. (ACIM, T-10.V.3:1)

A Course in Miracles also says this:  You may believe that you judge your brothers by the messages they give you, but you have judged them by the message you give to them. (ACIM, T-10.V.2:3)

Here are two essential teachings that are found in A Course in Miracles, and both lead to the same conclusion. We don’t know what the cause of our suffering is. ACIM tells us it all begins and ends in the mind. The mind dictates what we feel, how we think, and what we do. We make the world we see.

If we think the world is dark and cold, then we are feeling dark and cold. If we think the world is loving and kind, then we are feeling loving and kind. What goes on within is projected without. It becomes our reality.

A Course in Miracles wants us know that we are loved unconditionally and without exception. The love is within us and outside of us. The love is shown to us in so many different ways.

In this life, good things happen and bad things happen. How we respond depends on where we are placing our allegiance. But even if our allegiance is with the thought system of the ego, it is still important to know that everything will be all right.

Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him you bring sin, pain and suffering into your own mind because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also deny what it creates because it is free. (ACIM, T-10.V.9:9-11)

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320/ A Centre of Light

14th December 2021

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus and see the light.” Aristotle.

***

It's dark this morning. The middle of winter. The curtains are drawn and light seems impenetrable. We all know the sun will rise, but always in its own time.

It's a useful metaphor for our internal world. We are veiled from our reality. We all have a tiny spark of light within us. To know this light is a subtle shift. It happens slowly, distinctly and perfectly.

A Course in Miracles tells us the light is hidden from us because we think with the wrong thought system. The ego's thought system is limited and has darkness at its centre. The Holy Spirit's is limitless. It has a centre of light.

The cornerstone of God’s creation is you, for His thought system is light. Remember the Rays that are there unseen. The more you approach the center of His thought system, the clearer the light becomes. The closer you come to the foundation of the ego’s thought system, the darker and more obscure becomes the way. (ACIM, T-11.in.3:2-5)

Jane Thompson's near-death experience illustrates the experience of knowing and experiencing this light. It happened in 2009 after being in excruciating pain. She says: "My soul was no longer a part of the shell that I saw on the hospital gurney."

She found herself in the white light, and describes it as Heaven. She says she felt an unconditional love, and talks of how it made her feel valued, appreciated and accepted. The light had an overwhelming sense of peace. Slowly, she knew that she was that white light, and the light was one with her.

Jane Thompson's near-death experience can be heard on YouTube.  One account, that includes the quote above, is with Anthony Chene. The link is below.

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321/ Feeling Alone

15th December 2021

A Course in Miracles tells us that infinity has no end and time has no meaning.

To be alone is to be separated from infinity, but how can this be if infinity has no end? (ACIM, T-11.I.2:1)

We also learn that our importance is beyond words.

It’s hard to understand, but each one of us plays an essential part in the Infinite Mind that makes up the Mind of God.

If you were not part of God, His Will would not be unified. Is this conceivable? Can part of His Mind contain nothing? If your place in His Mind cannot be filled by anyone except you, and your filling it was your creation, without you there would be an empty place in God's Mind. (ACIM, T-11.I.3:1-4)

A Course in Miracles makes clear that the laws of the universe do not permit contradiction.

What holds for God holds for you. If you believe you are absent from God, you will believe that He is absent from you. Infinity is meaningless without you, and you are meaningless without God. There is no end to God and His Son, for we are the universe. (ACIM, T-11.I.5:2-5)

There is no need to feel alone. The solution is within us. It is the choice between feeling connected to all, and not feeling connected to anything at all.

A Course in Miracles simply asks that we learn to trust the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit’s Voice that makes this connection.

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322/ Healing By Truth

16th December 2021

A Course in Miracles wants us to only know the truth. It wants us to heal ourselves. ACIM says we are quite capable of awakening to this truth. All we need is a willingness to try.

Everyone searches for peace, regardless of how frenetic a life might be. Even If someone pulls a trigger, peace needs to be found. This could be through numbing the mind with alcohol and drugs.

Everyone searches for love, despite actions that might appear to the contrary. The spiritual teacher, Cate Grieves, says everyone should have a big sticker on their forehead saying ‘please love me!’

Peace and love are the truth of who we are. Learning this can be painful. We need to have a total trust in any teaching that leads us through all the pitfalls that inevitably await us. What is very clear in A Course in Miracles is its absolute authenticity. It leads us gently, but firmly, and all we have to do is follow.

A Course in Miracles merely says we have to commit fully either to the ego or the Holy Spirit. It's one or the other. Anything less and denial is as total as love (ACIM, T-11.II.3:1). We need to be aware of what is going on in our minds. Healing thoughts teach us the truth. Hurtful thoughts deny the truth.

We all start from where we are. We are all totally and utterly unique. However, we all have the same purpose.

A Course in Miracles is about slowly and systematically re-training our minds. We heal by truth. It's what we have to do if we want to be whole.

Think like Him ever so slightly, and the little spark becomes a blazing light that fills your mind so that He becomes your only Guest. (ACIM, T-11.II.5:4)

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323/ This One Moment

17th December 2021

"One moment can change a day, one day can change a life, and one life can change the world." Buddha.

***

A Course in Miracles tells us this.

God is very quiet, for there is not conflict in Him. (ACIM, T-11.III.1:6)

Yours is the way of pain, of which God knows nothing. (ACIM, T-11.III.4:2)

These two lines show the simplicity behind what we think is really complicated. We feel lost and isolated, and yet there is nothing to be lost and isolated from. 

If ours is the way of pain, then there has to be another way which is the way of peace.

A Course in Miracles puts the responsibility right back onto our shoulders. It tells us that we have made our suffering. We have done this to ourselves. No one else has.

There is no entity out there that is responsible for our suffering. We need to look at our minds.

The essence of what A Course in Miracles is teaching us is hard to grasp. It needs consistent application. However, when we look closely, the message is simple.

There is only one God and we are His one Son. It is impossible to suffer in this one moment. This one moment is perfect as it is.

God hides nothing from His Son, even though His Son would hide himself. (ACIM, T-11.III.5:1)