Reflections 127 to 140
127/ Life as a Body
1st March 2025
“The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started.” T.S. Eliot.
As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you, you will realize that there is no journey, but only an awakening. (ACIM, T-13.I.7:1)
***
Lesson 127. There is no love but God’s (ACIM, W-127). Yesterday: The lesson was “all that I give is given to myself”. I could understand this theoretically - as in there is just the one Self - but practically it was hard to experience this on a soul level. Travelling a long distance during the day probably didn’t help; I was tired and distracted, and this is a good recipe for forgetting. Today: The fifteen minutes spent on my first practice was nice and straightforward. The lesson states that there is just one love, and this love is totally without an opposite. This means that anything that comes into my mind and is out of alignment with love is always of the ego. I will see how my connection with love goes today.
Ask and it shall be given you, because it has already been given. Ask for light and learn that you are light. If you want understanding and enlightenment you will learn it, because your decision to learn it is the decision to listen to the Teacher Who knows of light, and can therefore teach it to you. (ACIM, T-8.III.1:2-4)
A Course in Miracles states that the ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for anything because there is a complete communication difference between the two.
The ego is all the pain and suffering we have ever gone through in this life. The ego is the horror in which we think our lives will end. The ego is really everything that the Holy Spirit is not.
However, if we look at what has happened to us in the past now, in this very moment, we will see that it is really just a series of images. None of it is concrete. The past has gone and we are just here.
The body is our proof of the past and so, to find absolute truth, we have to go beyond the body and the ego. We have to know that the sun and the stars are contained within us, which means within the mind. And this is why each lesson is just another chance to see past the ego completely.
The Workbook shows us that life as a body is just a dream. The Workbook allows us to awaken and know our reality, which means that we are in the now and know this very moment.
128/ Mind Is Healed
2nd March 2025
“There is no other spiritual teacher than your own soul.” Swami Vivekananda.
The Holy Spirit is the perfect Teacher. He uses only what your mind already understands to teach you that you do not understand it. (ACIM, T-5.III.10:1-2)
***
Lesson 128. The world I see holds nothing that I want (ACIM, W-128). Yesterday: During the day, the lesson asked us to think of anyone we were holding a grudge against and to bless them with our minds. We were asked to do this three times an hour and it felt impossible for me just because twenty minutes went by so quickly. However, another problem was that there were so many people to forgive. I had no idea so many people had offended me. Today: The instructions for this lesson are so clear; everything we see in the world acts like a chain that binds us. True peace comes only when we know that all our needs are met and this is regardless of where we are and who we are with.
When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. As you think of him you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself. (ACIM, T-8.III.4:1-5)
A Course in Miracles tells us that we can recognize the Holy Spirit only by giving Him to others. What we see in others, we always see in ourselves.
Everything we receive is in direct proportion to what we give: give love and we receive love; give peace with a twist of anger, and that is what we receive.
We are also told that the Holy Spirit denies us nothing because we deny him nothing. Everything is shared because we are all the same mind. The basic premise that giving and receiving are the same is a law of the universe, and the universe exists within the mind.
The mind is everything. The mind just appears to be unholy instead of holy, and in pain when it’s at peace. A divided mind is always ruled by the ego which is another way of saying it is ruled by fear.
The only way out of fear is through forgiveness. A light replaces the darkness and the mind is healed.
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3rd March 2025
“Life with God is not immunity from difficulties, but peace in difficulties.” C.S. Lewis.
God’s laws will keep your mind at peace because peace is His Will, and His laws are established to uphold it. (ACIM, T-10.IV.4:1)
***
Lesson 129. Beyond this world there is a world I want (ACIM, W-129). Yesterday: It was about 3.15pm. There was a beautiful clear blue sky and I had spent some time in the garden getting it ready for spring. I was at the recycling centre delivering the green waste when I suddenly remembered I needed to do my second practice for the day. And so I began… until my phone went off. It was my wife telling me she had finished what she was doing a little early. I sped off to pick her up and ended up spending the ten minutes on a bench by the ninth tee of the golf course where we had gone for a walk. The theme was “the world I see holds nothing that I want”. Clearly it does. Today: I have a minor problem - one which the ego has been magnifying for about a week or so - and so it was hard to concentrate on this first ten-minute practice. The real world seemed distant because I was making the false world appear too real.
You can encounter only part of yourself because you are part of God, Who is everything. His power and glory are everywhere, and you cannot be excluded from them. The ego teaches that your strength is in you alone. The Holy Spirit teaches that all strength is in God and therefore in you. (ACIM, T-8.III.7:1-4)
All or nothing.
Win or bust.
Now or never.
Make or break.
Death or glory.
A Course in Miracles in our path back to oneness. The Workbook asks us not to dabble in duality any longer. It’s a leap of faith in that we need to trust what’s always there.
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4th March 2025
“Beyond the belief that something can be lost, there is nothing to lose.” Ramana Maharshi.
Nothing that is good can be lost because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the Voice for creation. (ACIM, T-5.IV.1:7)
***
Lesson 130. It is impossible to see two worlds (ACIM, W-130). Yesterday: The goal of the lesson was to see a world that is totally peaceful, although the lesson didn’t tell us is that it all exists within the mind. I had begun the day feeling quite ragged but, as the day progressed, what was worrying me resolved itself. On reflection, then, it is clear that my mind always needs external verification to know its own happiness. Today: The five-minute practice period (to be done six times in the day) asks us to see no value in this world. I realized half way through my first practice that I had just spent a large part of those five minutes arguing with myself about the need to buy lunch before we go for a walk tomorrow. Absurd and crazy, which is why I am a student of ACIM.
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)
The lesson today tells us that love and perception go hand in hand, but only fear can obscure in darkness what is always there.
In the passage above, Jesus informs us that he has come as a light into the world - a world that does indeed deny itself everything. A little later on, he also tells us that reality has not gone anywhere and that the Second Coming is merely a reawakening of our reality, as opposed to its return.
A Course in Miracles therefore arises from the part of the mind that knows everything. And while it knows there is no world, it wants us to at least see the real world by giving us the means to become awake.
The Workbook is our chance to look at the world through the lens of the Holy Spirit, and not the ego. This means we can see everything instead of nothing, reality instead of illusion. We are able to look at the world with expansive thoughts of love and not with self-limiting thoughts of fear.
Everything is reality. Everything is all that exists. Everything is what is now as well as what always is.
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131/ Mind of the Thinker
5th March 2025
“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” Buddha.
The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It cannot come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal gentleness. (ACIM, T-23.I.1:1-2)
***
Lesson 131. No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth (ACIM, W-131). Yesterday: We were asked to apply the lesson for five minutes, six times during the day. I had just enough time to complete my third practice before my tai chi class at 1pm but then dithered and convinced myself I would be late. I arrived at the class as the first person there and had to wait a few minutes for the next person to arrive. The irony was not lost on me. Today: As I did my first ten-minute practice, I was aware how easily my thoughts get caught up in my identity - how much the ‘me’ wants to be heard. The theme is all about opening the door to the real world where the thoughts we think are not ours. This is where our identity gets dissolved and it felt as if I was hovering on the edge, stuck between going in and being drawn away.
Alone we can do nothing, but together our minds fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts. By not being separate, the Mind of God is established in ours and as ours. This Mind is invincible because it is undivided. (ACIM, T-8.V.1:6-8)
Today’s lesson reminds us that God did not make two minds, the implication being that he did not make the world which is the effect of the split part of the mind.
What God created was His Son, which He did as an extension of His Love. However, the Son now appears to be split into billions of different parts and we are all just playing a part in the One.
A Course in Miracles is therefore a way back to knowing that we are collectively sitting within the one Mind of God. In this Mind, we have absolutely no need for anything of any kind.
And, if the mind of the thinker awakens to this fact, it also means that we don’t have to leave our bodies. The only thing that changes is that we use the body differently. We use it to communicate peace instead of war.
It is forgiveness that allows us to know that we have done nothing wrong. All the mind of the thinker has really done is to misuse its power to create and, as a result, has split itself off from Love.
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132/ Find our Awakening
6th March 2025
“There’s no need to rush. What’s meant for you always arrives right on time.” Unknown.
The peace of God is shining in you now, and from your heart extends around the world. (ACIM, W-188.3:1)
***
Lesson 132. I loose the world from all I thought it was (ACIM, W-132). Yesterday: I did an extra practice (one more than the three ten-minute sessions that were asked to do) and only because I felt that I wasn’t doing the lesson justice. I was working in the morning and then we were out and about in the afternoon. I just had my notes to refer to and always felt I was scrambling around for time. The result was, when I did get to sit, I was thinking too much about the lesson. Today: This lesson contains some absolute gems, not least that there is no world - except in the mind that thinks there is. My practice swung between an intense desire to know my own reality and some internal arguments that were quite ludicrous.
God’s Oneness and ours are not separate, because His Oneness encompasses ours. To join with me is to restore His power to you because we are sharing it. I offer you only the recognition of His power in you, but in that lies all truth. (ACIM, T-8.V.3:1-3)
The near-death experience teaches us about oneness. NDEs are important teachings because, in order to know our own wholeness, we have to let go of the thoughts that show us our fragmentation; in order to heal we have to become undivided.
A Course in Miracles establishes that God created His one Son, and that God’s Son is what we are. Division arises only in the mind of the thinker and, as the lesson today states “ideas leave not their source”. We have to change our minds to know the truth.
The near-death experience can therefore become our catalyst for learning. NDEs prove that we are whole even if we think we aren’t. This then leaves the door open for us to find our awakening.
Tony Cicoria is an orthopaedic surgeon who was struck by lightening and then had his near-death experience. He found that going from the physical to the spiritual was instantaneous; he saw that the body is just a costume; and he learned that it is only through service that we finally go home.
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133/ Infinity Is Now
7th March 2025
“Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good, and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins, I answer, the one I feed the most.” Sitting Bull.
The Holy Spirit and the ego are the only choices open to you. God created one, and so you cannot eradicate it. (ACIM, T-5.V.6:8-9)
***
Lesson 133. I will not value what is valueless (ACIM, W-133). Yesterday: This lesson told us that we need to change our minds about the world, and what we need to change can only be achieved in the present moment. It also told us that, in the present moment, there is no world at all because all our ideas about the world have disappeared. And so, during the two practices yesterday, it was a good time to reflect how crazy my mind is. I can literally see a good world and a bad world in just a blink of an eye. Today: The lesson tells us that we ask far too little of life. This became apparent as I did my first meditation; what seemed important belonged to the ‘life’ of the ego - as in my bodily needs and certain chores - and not too much came into my mind from the other ‘life’ that is spirit.
The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described and it cannot be explained. (ACIM, T-8.VI.9:6-9)
The truth is within us; to know truth means we have to stop looking outside.
God has no opposite; to think God has an opposite becomes a choice of the mind.
Our purpose is simply to be; “to be or not to be” is really a question that arises out of fear.
Time has to be used correctly; if we use time correctly, only then is it possible to find out what is.
A Course in Miracles is the simple practice of moving from isolation to infinity. By definition, isolation suggests restriction and infinity has no beginning and no end.
It is only by training our minds to find the present moment that the Love of God can be known directly. God’s Love is infinite and infinity, not isolation, is always now.
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134/ All about Relationship
8th March 2025
“In order to realize the worth of the anchor, we need to feel the stress of the storm.” Corrie ten Boom.
No storms can come into the hallowed haven of our home. In God we are secure. (ACIM, W-244.2:2-3)
***
Lesson 134. Let me perceive forgiveness as it is (ACIM, W-134). Yesterday: A key line that we were asked to repeat during our two fifteen-minute practices was “only what has value do I seek”. I found this very helpful to sit with (but not always easy to remember) and this was because I tend to seek outside of myself for whatever I think I need. The lesson therefore proved that what is really valuable is the Love of God and this can only be found within. Today: Here we have another key line when practising forgiveness - “would I accuse myself of doing this?” For me, asking this question is absolutely crucial. My mind tends to extend so many judgements and it’s useful to ask myself if I would ever want to accuse myself of those judgements? I don’t think so.
Do not allow the body to be a mirror of a split mind. Do not let it be an image of your own perception of littleness. Do not let it reflect your decision to attack. Health is seen as the natural state of everything when interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, Who perceives no attack on anything. (ACIM, T-8.VIII.9:5-8)
We are sick because we have forgotten that all truth belongs to God.
We are stuck because we don’t realise that the forgiveness of the world is always linked to illusions.
We are confused because we don’t understand guilt. It is impossible for guilt to ever be forgiven.
Really, we have wrapped ourselves up in chains so heavy that it is impossible to escape. Jesus calls it our crown of thorns - and this is yet another metaphor for the antics of the ego as it senses danger.
The lesson today reminds us that no one is crucified alone and no one can enter Heaven by himself.
A Course in Miracles is therefore all about relationship. It is the complete reversal all the thinking of the ego. We are taught very quickly that how we see others is how we see ourselves.
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