Reflections 15 to 28
15/ A Place of Peace
9th November 2024
“Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.” Mother Teresa.
The goal of love is but your right, and it belongs to you despite your dreams. (ACIM, T-12.II.5:7)
***
Lesson 15. My thoughts are images that I have made. Yesterday. I did the lesson as instructed but spent long periods forgetting all about it. This meant I only managed to observe the meaninglessness of the world for less than a minute in-between the formal practices. I just didn’t feel I did justice to the lesson. Today. A few minutes ago, I was in the middle of the first practice when I used my reflection in the darkness of the window as an image. Then I saw the ego staring back at me and was horrified. Also, when I initially read through the lesson, I felt a pang of disappointment. It mentions seeing the edges of light around images (the onset of true vision) and that has never happened to me.
A Course in Miracles tells us this: Truth is restored to you through your desire, as it was lost to you through your desire for something else (ACIM, T-20.VIII.1:2). This implies that we either know God fully, or not at all.
We are so used to labelling everything we see with our eyes, and what we see is rarely disputed. We label a tree as an oak and a body as male or female. Seeing beyond form is labelled as weird.
We are ruled by our needs. Most of us have grown up trying to bring as much pleasure as we can to our senses. However, it is pain that begins the search for alternative ways to find just a bit of relief.
A Course in Miracles has no interest in anything to do with the body. This doesn’t mean that we don’t take care of the body if it gets sick, or show compassion when someone suffers, but it does mean that we do so from a place of peace. We don’t reinforce the pain by believing in it.
A place of peace is always within us. In order to find it, we simply need to question all that we fear.
What if you recognized this world is an hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you accepted this? And would you see it? (ACIM, T-20.VIII.7:3-7)
16/ I Am-ness within
10th November 2024
“Fear has only two causes: the thought of losing what you have or the thought of not getting what you want.” Byron Katie.
The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, the mind heals the body because it has been healed. (ACIM, T-5.V.5:1-2)
***
Lesson 16. I have no neutral thoughts. Yesterday. I could relate to yesterday’s lesson when contemplating it with eyes closed - i.e., thoughts are images that I have made - but not so much with eyes open. Looking at a table, for example, and calling it self-made did not feel natural. Today. Yes, this lesson rings true. As I did the first practice of the day, it was clear that I have no neutral thoughts. Most came from memories and always seemed to be predicting the future.
Mankind has never got to grips with the cause of suffering. Spiritual teachers come and go but, to really know how pain arises, we don’t look to the world. We have to go within to a place of inner truth.
A Course in Miracles withdraws all blame from the external world and puts the responsibility firmly onto the mind of the thinker. This is because there is no external world and there is only the I am.
The lines above essentially sum up the whole purpose of doing the Workbook. It is about undergoing a course in mind training, thus enabling our minds to become peaceful enough to have an awareness of the Holy Spirit. The only reason for suffering is that we do not appreciate the power of the mind.
We have to fully realise that nothing happens to us by chance. Everything arises out of the mind.
And we do this by observing our thoughts. We find that they either help or hinder us. Then, as we stop judging whatever is going on, we have the perfect opportunity to fully get to know the I am-ness that lies within us all.
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11th November 2024
“If God sends us on strong paths, we are provided strong shoes.” Corrie ten Boom.
Learning is joyful if it leads you along your natural path, and facilitates the development of what you have. (ACIM, T-8.II.2:7)
***
Lesson 17. I see no neutral things. Yesterday. Practised the lesson for the required practice periods, and also for a few times in-between. However, part of me is always wondering if I am doing it correctly - there’s a small voice that nags away at me and sometimes it gets quite loud. Today. It’s difficult to fully understand that the thought comes first when we look at an object, as the lesson informs us. However, the lack of neutrality of thought does make sense. Every thought has to carry some weight, no matter how benign it seems.
A Course in Miracles tells us that good teachers have to believe in the ideas they teach, but they also have to reach another condition; they must believe in the students to whom they offer their ideas (ACIM, T-4.I.1:4).
The Holy Spirit, resting quietly in the mind of every creature who walks this planet, knows that there is only the one mind. There is only the one Father and the one Son. We have just made up a story of separation and are confused about our Identity.
Our confusion means nothing because it is nothing. So anything we do - anything that appears to happen in this supposed world - has no impact on how the Holy Spirit sees our erratic behaviour. There is only Heaven and we (the Son) have never left it.
Our job is to see the Holy Spirit in everyone we meet, regardless of what they are doing. We never respond with the ego. To use the ego means we are judging the body; to look with the Holy Sprit is to still see the body but without using judgement of any kind.
A peaceful mind will always give us the best course of action that will always help us. It will show us exactly what to do, although in a way that would never inflame the situation and make it worse.
Forgiveness is the practice that brings us peace. It looks past the body to what is always just and fair.
18/ Voice of Stability
12th November 2024
“The very purpose of our life is to seek happiness.” Dalai Lama.
When you accepted the Holy Spirit’s purpose in place of the ego’s you renounced death, exchanging it for life. (ACIM, T-19.IV-C.2:13)
***
Lesson 18. I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing. Yesterday. Completed five practices of the lesson. It was clear that we see no neutral things - the essence of the lesson. Neutrality is not part of the ego’s thinking. It seems that we are either bigging something up or turning our back on something we don’t like. Today. As I practised the lesson for the first time this morning, I did get a sense of what the lesson was telling me. There are no neutral thoughts and all our minds are joined. What we think really does have an effect.
Our thinking is erratic and unruly; this much is clear. If we have spent any time observing our thoughts, it is hugely apparent that we can swing from happiness to anger in just the blink of an eye.
We wouldn’t have found A Course in Miracles if we didn’t help, and we can only be helped if we are really desperate for change. The good news is that we are in the right place at the right time. This means we are on track to complete our mission which is to awaken from the dream.
Jesus is the teacher of A Course in Miracles and we need to have faith in him - not from a perspective of being sinful and needing his blessing, but from the perspective of looking up to an older brother with adoration and affection. We all have a connection to Jesus because we are all of one mind.
Our purpose is to look at all the dark stuff in our minds and then ask Jesus to let us see it differently.
Below is miracle principle no.37. Jesus is telling us that he can help us heal our minds, but only if we allow him to. All we have to do is to have faith in the Voice of Stability and not the voice for insanity.
A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly. This places you under the Atonement principle, where perception is healed. Until this has occurred, knowledge of the Divine Order is impossible. (ACIM, T-1.I.37:1-4)
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19/ Cause and Effect
13th November 2024
“Find the sweetness in your own heart, then you may find the sweetness in every heart.” Rumi.
This is how a man must think of himself in his heart, because this is what he is. (ACIM, T-1.III.2:4)
***
Lesson 19. I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts. Yesterday. It was my birthday and it was a pleasure to practice the lesson somewhere new (by the sea) with birthday treats in between. This is what every day should be like. Today. As I was beginning the first practice of the day, I was surprised at how subtle my thoughts were. For example, a thought flashed by in an instant about some distant sound and it still needed to be recognized. This is because it is a cause that has an effect.
A Course in Miracles tells us that this is a course in cause and not effect ACIM, T-21.VII.7:8). The lesson today also states that cause and effect are never separate (ACIM, W-19.1:4).
The implication, then, is that all thoughts are important. Each thought we think has an effect. This is highly significant to the wrong mind (the ego) but of no concern to the right mind (the Holy Spirit). The Holy Spirit knows that there is only the one mind, and only the one Thought of God.
We are being reminded that we need to be responsible for our thinking. As a body, we don’t like to think that bad things happen to us because we think bad thoughts. However, A Course in Miracles states that the outside world is a reflection of an inward condition. The cause is making the effect.
We therefore have to change our minds in order to change the world. We also have to learn that there are no order of difficulty in making changes; it all begins and ends in the mind of the thinker.
Fear only arises because we are denying our true Self. We are asleep to truth and are lost in thought.
To awaken to what we really are takes commitment. The miracle allows us to have a glimpse of truth but, for truth to fully arise the mind, we have to be constantly aware of our only Cause and its Effect.
In the presence of truth, there are no unbelievers and no sacrifices. In the security of reality, fear is totally meaningless. To deny what is can only seem to be fearful. (ACIM, T-9.I.9:3-5)
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20/ Home to God
14th November 2024
“When we let go of all our notions about things, everything becomes really true.” Kōshō Uchiyama.
No one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for truth to him has become what he wants it to be. (ACIM, T-12.I.5:2)
***
Lesson 20. I am determined to see. Yesterday. Last night, I was walking back from a hugely enjoyable coastal hike and looked up to see the fullish moon with a ring of light around it. It reminded me of how lesson 15 tells us that, if we see edges of light around an object, it could signal the onset of true vision. This seemed both profound and beautiful. Today. This lesson clearly requires more commitment. We are asked to repeat it every half hour, but not to beat ourselves up if we don’t. This sounds simple but am sure the ego won’t make it easy.
Let reason take another step. If you attack whom God would heal and hate the one He loves, then you and your Creator have a different will. Yet if you are His Will, what you must then believe is that you are not yourself. (ACIM, T-22.I.1:1-3)
A Course in Miracles speaks to us in a language that we can understand, but it is also a language that we have forgotten. Its whole purpose is to enable the mind to remember what it is.
The tone of the words can be affectionate, demanding, loving or stern. They speak to our ego because our real Self has no need to be spoken to; in fact, it is our real Self that is actually speaking.
We are asked to develop the vision to “see” beyond form and to know that we are not the body.
And knowing that we are not the body is also what the near-death experience very clearly teaches us. An NDE is yet more proof that what we are is formless, whole, expansive and complete.
Kimberly Clark Sharp’s near-death experience in 1970 transported her into the loving arms of eternity. Time and space no longer existed. She felt only peace and the love that held her knew everything about her. It was as if the light had become her and she had returned home to God.
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21/ Giving and Receiving
15th November 2024
“The future doesn’t exist. It hasn’t happened yet. The past doesn’t exist. It has already happened.” John Daido Loori.
Guilt, then, is a way of holding past and future in your mind to ensure the ego’s continuity. (ACIM, T-13.I.8:6)
***
Lesson 21. I am determined to see things differently. Yesterday. The lesson was simple - it was to repeat “I am determined to see” every half hour or so. It now seems clear that this is a way of training the mind to see beyond the form of what we are looking at. It didn’t work but I did try. Today. The lesson today is a bit more internalised than yesterday’s. It states that even the gentlest irritation is supposedly suppressing the most intense fury. Our deepest fears therefore have to be looked at before we find their opposite, which is love.
A Course in Miracles tells us that the ego’s whole continuance depends on the belief that we cannot learn this course (ACIM, T-22.III.2:1). It’s really as simple as that.
The body’s eyes always rest on externals and cannot go beyond. This means that the ego is blocking the awareness of love’s presence, which is really another way of say that the Son has forgotten the Father. We are dreaming a dream and just have to wake up
One way out of this is to fully understand that giving and receiving are the same. There is no way out of this, if we want to see beyond form. The world teaches us that, when we give something away, the giver loses and the receiver gains. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to change this belief.
Another way of putting it is that we have to give love in order to receive love. This is creation. God’s Love always extends outwards and this is what we (His Son) have to do. We give blessings in order to receive blessings and it can all be done silently. We practise peace in order to receive peace.
The whole purpose of the Workbook is therefore to remove the blocks to love’s presence. We are learning to see that giving and receiving either leads us towards Heaven, or lets us stay in hell.
This course will be believed entirely or not at all. For it is wholly true or wholly false, and cannot be but partially believed. And you will either escape from misery entirely or not at all. (ACIM, T-22.II.7:4-6)
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22/ What always Is
16th November 2024
“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” William Shakespeare.
And all of time is but the mad belief that what is over is still here and now. (ACIM, T-26.V.13:4)
***
Lesson 22. What I see is a form of vengeance. Yesterday. Practised the lesson yesterday six times instead of five. I obviously want to see things differently (the theme of the lesson) but am scared of the intensity of emotions I have to confront. Deep down, I have this terror and do everything I can to cover it up. Today. I felt a little sad when I finished my first practice. Quite a lot of what I look at, I actually enjoy. What happens when it is gone? I feel afraid of what lies beyond the images and what I have forgotten.
A Course in Miracles tells us that reality opposes nothing. What merely is needs no defense, and offers none. Only illusions need defense because of weakness (ACIM, T-22.V.1:6-8).
Our weakness is a belief in separation. It is actually an illusion and so is the complete opposite of what truth is. Truth is available to us only in this present moment and not at some later stage. We are breathing into truth but choosing not to know it.
The miracle brings truth to our awareness. It is like a lifting of the veil and seeing everything exactly as it is. Time stands still and the mind stops. Peace becomes apparent as the illusory moves aside.
The world we currently see arises from within us. Pain, death and sin are all within the mind and we are projecting all the negatives out. We perceive a world of suffering because we are suffering. Change our minds and we change the world.
And so, if we apply the lessons correctly, we will find that love has no opposite. Love is all there is.
Only peace knows peace, just as only pain knows pain. Get to know peace properly and we can only see a peaceful world.
It is forgiveness that break downs the barriers to love. What never was makes way for what always Is.
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23/ Love Does not Resist
17th November 2024
“Life is very simple. What I give out comes back to me. Today, I choose to give love.” Louise Hay.
Love’s Arms are open to receive you, and give you peace forever. (ACIM, T-20.VI.10:6)
***
Lesson 23. I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. Yesterday. I went to have my bloods taken as part of a research project into health and wellbeing. My blood pressure was a little high, which was partly due to white-coat syndrome. It threw me and the effect of my thoughts stayed with me for the rest of the day. Today. This lesson makes perfect sense. The world we see is shaped by our thoughts. Even when I meditate in the early morning, my practice is to step aside from my thoughts and observe them come and go. Most of my thoughts are fear-based but what observes them is never fearful.
Do you want freedom of the body or of the mind? For both you cannot have. Which do you value? Which is your goal? For one you see as means; the other, end. (ACIM, T-22.VI.1:1-5)
The whole purpose of A Course in Miracles is to teach us that we are a mind and not a body. We are forever innocent and never guilty. We are pure beings of light instead of solid masses of flesh.
Historically, we’ve been taught that we have to do everything we can in order to get what we want. This could mean riding rough-shod over other peoples’ feelings. Each body on this planet wants to have the best life possible, and this might have to occur at the expense of others.
Aggressive behaviour is part of the ego’s thinking. The ego can also be peaceful but its peace is always temporary. What today’s lesson shows us is that we have to change our system of thought. As the cause of our thinking changes, so does its effect.
The wholly innocent can only have minds that are peaceful because fear does not exist. The world sees innocence as a weakness. These are facts.
To be in the world, but not of the world, means a change of mind. There is no way out of this.
Love does not resist. By following our own inner guidance, the world we see arises from our peaceful thoughts.
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24/ Healing the Ache
18th November 2024
“Once your mind becomes absolutely still, your intelligence transcends human limitations.” Sadhguru.
The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is still. (ACIM, T-28.I.11:1)
***
Lesson 24. I do not perceive my own best interests. Yesterday. The lesson was about giving up attack thoughts, and attacks thoughts are anything that is not peaceful. In the afternoon, we went to a local production of musical amateur dramatics. I could feel myself making judgements all the time, both of myself and others. It was definitely a case of the ego being pretty vicious. Today. It seems obvious, having just practised the lesson for the first time, that I am always being triggered by the ego. Behind every situation I think about, and there is a constant flow, there is a hidden anxiety. No thoughts arise from peace.
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)
This is the goal of A Course in Miracles. It is to find the silence and stillness within us all - the quiet centre. Nothing else matters outside of that, because there is nothing else.
We just imagine there is. Our thoughts run riot and it is the ego talking. We can’t seem to escape the internal dialogue which is completely one-sided. It is always the ego giving its take on our successes and failures; this means all that we’ve got wrong and all that we’ve done right.
However, within every storm, there is a quiet centre. No matter what is happening around us - whether loud explosions or passive inertia - we can always drop into that space of silent peace.
This is, in the parlance of A Course in Miracles, the Holy Spirit. It is alive and free and totally loving, but it has no form. We can’t see it or touch it. Instead, we just need the belief to know it’s there.
The Holy Spirit heals the ache of separation. The ache is all the chatter that drowns out the peace.
And healing the ache arises when we practise true forgiveness. We then see how we are that quiet centre and not the thunderstorm around it formed by rising, unstable air.
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25/ Beingness without End
19th November 2024
“Happiness depends on how you accept, understand and surrender to situations.” Mātā Amritānandamayī.
The choice is yours to make between a sleeping death and dreams of evil or a happy wakening and joy of life. (ACIM, T-27.VII.9:4)
***
Lesson 25. I do not know what anything is for. Yesterday. I really don’t perceive my own best interests. This was obvious as I practised the lesson. If a peaceful mind is the Holy Spirit, then it is clear the ego creates a rod for my own back. Today. The lesson makes perfect sense as I read it, but I do find that I lose that certainty later in the day when the full description is not in front of me. Basically, it is telling me that I give everything I see only the meaning the ego ascribes to it. But I am not the ego; I am love without an opposite.
There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. (ACIM, T-23.II.19:1-3)
We are the Kingdom of Heaven; we are not the ego.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a life full of love. It does not know fear because there is no fear. Love has no opposite because God has only one Son. We are that Son.
The ego is our separate self and arises from fear. It never arose because there is no past. It is just a thought of separation in the now.
Our whole identity - who we are in the world and what we do - means absolutely nothing. There is no world and there is no form. Form is just an illusion that arises from the thought of fear.
A Course in Miracles is therefore complete thought reversal. Everything that we think is true becomes untrue. What we consider to be the external world suddenly becomes a reflection of our own inner world. What we consider to be love is only a symbol of fear.
This means we move away from what we know to become what we are - a beingness without end.
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26/ The Midday Sun
20th November 2024
“Our consciousness is our contribution to reality. What we perceive as real, becomes real.” Deepak Chopra.
If you will accept only what is timeless as real, you will begin to understand eternity and make it yours. (ACIM, T-10.V.14:9)
***
Lesson 26. My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability. Yesterday. The theme of the lesson related to the fact that we don’t know what anything was for. This was not clear to ‘Mark’, who did the lesson routinely throughout the day, but it did become a little clearer when he asked Jesus (in his mind) to help him see a certain situation differently. This lessened rush of his thoughts and the ego’s sense of importance. Today. This lesson is really showing us the difference between fear and love. When I practised the lesson for the first time just now, I looked at only one problem in the full two minutes. It is clear that I was attacking myself.
What is not love is murder. What is not loving must be an attack. Every illusion is an assault on truth, and every one does violence to the idea of love because it seems to be of equal truth. (ACIM, T-23.IV.1:10-12)
Love has no opposite, or maybe we think it does?
Our thoughts control our reality, or maybe we think they don’t?
A Course in Miracles takes us right to the cause of our pain, which are our thoughts. Jesus is telling us that we shape our reality through our thinking. We have to take responsibility for our minds but we also need help with the process of forgiveness. The Holy Spirit is that help.
Ultimately, if we were to hear that there is only God and His one Son, and that the body does not exist, the split mind would dismiss it instantly. The ego can’t comprehend it, doesn’t want to, and would label these words as the ramblings of a lunatic. However, if were to apply the lessons and follow the practice, the truth becomes clearer. Patience is required to move through the hoops.
It’s like peeling an onion until no layers are left. Love’s presence comes to us like the midday sun.
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27/ Mind of Love
21st November 2024
“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.”Meister Eckhart.
Accept your sense of failure as nothing more than a mistake in who you are. (ACIM, T-15.VIII.3:6)
***
Lesson 27. Above all else I want to see. Yesterday. Have the feeling that I might only have done five practices yesterday, not the six that were advised. I felt slightly nauseous in the evening which, as the lesson implied, was really my attack thoughts attacking my invulnerability. Today. The desire to see really means we forget the ego. The ego will make up lots of stories of what happens if we go against its wishes but this is only our fears establishing more fear. Love is always with us and it is clear that today’s lesson is all about love.
The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of loveliness they do not see. Freedom and peace and joy stand there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death. (ACIM, T-24.III.7:1-2)
A Course in Miracles is definitely a course in absolute love. It is all about awakening to our true reality instead of being asleep in a dream of death. To not know this is to stay in the dream.
The near-death experience is proof that there is life outside of the dream; and yet it is also the dream. We still have to return. This means we suffer because we are disconnected from our Source.
And the near-death experience is not always an experience of love and light. Sometimes it can be hellish. However, as A Course in Miracles also tells us, hell is purely a state of mind.
Hell becomes Heaven when we awaken. A mind of love then becomes the focus of what we are instead of multiple minds of fear.
Howard Storm’s near-death experience began in hell but ended in Heaven with Jesus. Hell was a reflection of how he had lived his life and Heaven showed him his potential. Before returning to the body, Jesus told him to always love the person he was with. We are love and love is all that matters.
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28/ Specialness and Holiness
22nd November 2024
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” Friedrich Nietzsche.
There can be no conflict between sanity and insanity. Only one is true, and therefore only one is real. (ACIM, T-6.V-B.6:1-2)
***
Lesson 28. Above all else I want to see things differently. Yesterday. I tried to practise the lesson consistently throughout the day, saying “above all else I want to see”. Easy, until I found myself planting some cyclamen in the winter cold and followed this up by going out for a walk with snow underfoot. The lesson was forgotten as I got involved in what I was doing. Today. This lesson enlarges on the theme of yesterday’s. As I applied it during my first practice, I was amazed at how much my mind wandered within the two minutes. But it made sense. I never see anything exactly as it is and only see it through the lens of my own judgements.
He is within you, yet He walks beside you and before, leading the way that He must go to find Himself complete. His quietness becomes your certainty. And where is doubt when certainty has come? (ACIM, T-24.V.9:5-7)
A Course in Miracles tells us that the Christ within is very still (ACIM, T-24.V.1:1). Our purpose is to find a way of listening to that stillness - an aliveness - and allow it to direct us as to what to do and what to say. This means we allow ourselves to be holy instead of special.
Holiness doesn’t mean we become pious, or that we feel we are better or less sinful than someone else. It just means that we are not ruled by fear. Instead, we are led by love.
We find our holiness through relationships. Developing a holy relationship is one of the key practices of A Course in Miracles. We are being taught to see our brothers as ourself.
The Christ within us is always there, although our specialness hides it. This means it is only through the absence of the ego that we can find it. We simply take ourselves far too seriously. If we can just lighten up and relax a little, then it becomes increasingly easier to touch our holiness.
Pursuit of specialness is always at the cost of peace. Who can attack his savior and cut him down, yet recognize his strong support? (ACIM, T-24.II.2:1-2)
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