Reflections 29 to 42
29/ Do We Want Peace?
23rd November 2024
“Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.” Khalil Gibran.
Yet is the world of hatred equally unseen and inconceivable to those who feel God’s Love in them. (ACIM, W-189.4:1)
***
Lesson 29. God is in everything I see. Yesterday. I did an additional practice to what was required - seven instead of six. Did I see everything differently (as the lesson requested)? Only by a tiny margin. Otherwise my mind was like a salivary gland salivating, or like a runaway train. Today. This lesson does feel restful and, having just finished my first two-minute practice, it makes complete sense. However, I am also aware of the angry voice at the back of my mind muttering that this can’t be so. It’s distracting and persistent.
Without you there would be a lack in God, a Heaven incomplete, a Son without a Father. There could be no universe and no reality. For what God wills is whole, and part of Him because His Will is One. (ACIM, T-24.VI.2:1-3)
There appears to be two of us - or at least that is what we are told. One is real and the other is not.
We are also told that truth isn’t affected by an untruth, although an untruth is affected by the truth.
When we are thinking thoughts related to the ego - whether they are fast and furious, or simply benign - the clarity of the mind does not disappear; God is not rendered impotent. However, if we are thinking thoughts related to the Holy Spirit - the Voice for God - the force of separation has to disappear. It evaporates as quickly as a drop of water in the sun.
If God is in everything we see, as today’s lesson informs us, then it is clear that we are allowing the mind to make up stories. And it is also clear that we believe those stories because we want to.
Our job is to change the storyline to suit our purpose, and our purpose is to awaken to the truth.
The search for truth begins by asking ourselves this: do we want peace or do we continue trying to eradicate that peace?
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30/ God Is forever
24th November 2024
“Silence is the language of God; it is also the language of the heart.” Swami Sivananda.
You can do nothing apart from Him, and you do do nothing apart from Him. (ACIM, T-7.VII.5:6)
***
Lesson 30. God is in everything I see because God is in my mind. Yesterday. The lesson was quite simple - but that didn’t mean it was easy. It stated that God is in everything we see, the implication being that what is of God can see God. As I think about this now, I feel an inner warmth rising within me. Today. This lesson asks that we repeat the idea silently to ourselves throughout the day, and only to do formal practices if we think it will help us. I have decided to because I know I can be easily distracted. The first practice has just been completed and, when my mind was quiet enough, the effect was quite beautiful (and obvious).
The Christ in you inhabits not a body. Yet He is in you. And thus it must be that you are not within a body. (ACIM, T-25.in.1:1-3)
It is clear that we come to A Course in Miracles believing we are a body, and this means we have experienced the suffering that being a body entails. Pain is the motivation for starting our search.
Spiritual awakening is the inevitable result of that search. It is the moment when the mind becomes aware of its own aliveness and spaciousness. There is no identification with form, no “I am happy” or “I am sad”. There is just the “I amness” of the Self that is without an object.
The room that we are in, or wherever we are sitting or standing right now, will contain a variety of objects but its own spaciousness does not identify with those objects. It just is.
Likewise with the mind. A spiritual awakening means that the mind does not identify with its thoughts. The mind is whole and spacious. It just is, in the sense that there is no other.
Clearly, as we work our way towards this clarity, we don’t deny the body. That would be lunacy and spiritual bypassing. Instead, we apply the lesson of the day and be with the awareness of the mind.
We always have our good days and bad days, but this doesn’t matter because we are moving towards the light and not away from it. God is forever in our minds and it is this that we need to see.
25th November 2024
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” Carl Jung.
You cannot dream some dreams and wake from some, for you are either sleeping or awake. (ACIM, T-29.IV.1:7)
***
Lesson 31. I am not a victim of the world I see. Yesterday. I found yesterday’s lesson helpful. There was something very affirming about the words we had to repeat - about God being in my mind - and it allowed me to see the stark difference between my own inner world and a world of peace. Today. During the first five minutes of today’s practice, I was amazed at how many storylines appeared, proving that I do feel a victim of the world that I see. As the lesson explains, my inner world is the cause of the outer world that is witnessed.
You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you want it there. Perception has no other law than this. (ACIM, T-25.III.1:3-4)
It’s important to dedicate ourselves to the teachings of A Course in Miracles if we want to fully arrive at its outcome, which is a mind forever at peace.
A good starting point is to observe our thoughts as they come and go, and to not allow them to join up into thinking. Any thought is quite painless in itself but the feelings they provoke can be painful.
And we are told that nothing happens to us by chance. It is our thoughts that make our reality.
Jesus noted this during his lifetime. He knew that thoughts of judgement would cause a gap to open up between the perceiver and the perceived. He saw how thoughts of harm and avarice caused havoc in the minds of those that thought them.
And while there appears to be billions of bodies, we can’t change one fundamental fact. The mind is one. The mind is not fragmented and fearful, but complete and whole and always at peace with life.
You and your brother are the same, as God Himself is One and not divided in His Will. And you must have one purpose, since He gave the same to both of you. (ACIM, T-25.II.11:1-2)
26th November 2024
“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.” Helen Keller.
Trust in my help, for I did not walk alone, and I will walk with you as our Father walked with me. (ACIM, T-12.II.7:5)
***
Lesson 32. I have invented the world I see. Yesterday. I spent large parts of the day looking around and trying not to be a victim of the world I saw. This was not always easy, especially when I looked at our fence in the garden and saw that it had been blown over by a passing storm. Gale force winds and gale force thoughts. Today. This lesson gets right to the heart of the matter with no messing around and no ambiguity. Everything we think and see is made up. The cause establishes the effect.
Minds that are joined and recognize they are, can feel no guilt. For they cannot attack, and they rejoice that this is so, seeing their safety in this happy fact. (ACIM, T-25.IV.1:1-2)
The body separates us like a suit of armour. It smothers our Identity, plus we tend to fight for it and die for it. The body acts like a shield against the truth.
The facts, according to A Course in Miracles, are that we are not the body and that the body is just an image in the mind. One of the most often repeated phrases from the Workbook is this: I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me (ACIM, W-201).
A Course in Miracles tells us that we can never not be what God created. We are the sun, the moon and the stars. We are whole, pure and innocent. We are life without an opposite, and life itself.
For this to be known, we have to forgive everything that has forged the body in the mind. We have to forgive both sin and guilt (which actually go hand in hand). Without one, the other is meaningless.
And it is forgiveness that brings us back to the fundamental truth of what we are, which is love itself.
We are not the story; we are the author of the story. Everything we see that is solid and tangible, and anything that is related to the body, has simply been made up in the mind.
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33/ An instant Remembered
27th November 2024
“If you are on the right path, you will find that invisible hands are helping.” Joseph Campbell.
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 33. There is another way of looking at the world. Yesterday. The lesson taught me that my thoughts were inventing the world that I see; somehow, this just felt more direct and impactful than two days ago when the theme was about how we feel a victim of the world. Today. It’s funny but, as I awoke this morning, I began repeating “I can see peace instead of this”. My thoughts were whirling and worrying. That was about an hour ago and it now feels that this lesson is showing me how a peaceful mind always establishes a peaceful world.
The magic of the world can seem to hide the pain of sin from sinners, and deceive with glitter and with guile. Yet each one knows the cost of sin is death. And so it is. (ACIM, T-25.VII.1:5-7)
We are all mirrors of each other. This is a fundamental fact.
There is just the one of us and this is the Christ. We are all collectively the one Son of God.
God created His Son but God did not create the world. Nothing exists outside of the Kingdom of Heaven and separation is equal to a thought of hell.
Nothing is changeless except the Will of God. The world is actually meaningless and the only thing that makes it meaningful is a belief in sin. We all have free will as to what we want to believe.
The Holy Spirit is God’s gift to us. The moment the Son of God thought of life outside of Heaven, God replaced that thought with a Thought of Peace. Nothing happened, except the mind thinks it has.
A Course in Miracles is a course in a change in perception. This is the miracle. It brings clarification to the mind which means the mind becomes illumined. The miracle takes the mind out of the darkness and into the light, and it is only in the holy instant that God’s Love can ever be remembered.
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34/ Joining in the Mind
28th November 2024
“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” Mother Teresa.
Reality is safe and sure, and wholly kind to everyone and everything. There is no greater love than to accept this and be glad. (ACIM, T-16.II.8:6-7)
***
Lesson 34. I could see peace instead of this. Yesterday. I repeated the lesson (about there being another way of looking at the world) throughout the day, plus did the two formal practices, but somehow I just didn’t feel any connection to the purpose of the lesson. It was just me doing the looking with no awareness of anything deeper. Today. It was early yesterday morning when I began repeating the title of today’s lesson, and had no idea it was coming up. Have just done the first practice and didn’t have any problems finding thoughts that needed to be replaced with peaceful ones.
The Holy Spirit can use all that you give to Him for your salvation. But He cannot use what you withhold, for He cannot take it from you without your willingness. (ACIM, T-25.VIII.1:1-2)
The point of A Course in Miracles is to show us that there is always another way. We don’t have to live in a constant state of anxiety, depression or anger. We can be at peace and it’s always a choice.
A mind at peace has no conflict. Whatever arises in our lives is looked on with total acceptance.
The ego analyses and the Holy Spirit accepts, and this is what we learn. There are always only two ways of thinking and only the thought system of the Holy Spirit can know the flow of love and joy.
Jesus gave us A Course in Miracles in order to help us reclaim our inner peace, and we just have to hold out our hand. Holding hands with Jesus is a visual image that equates with a joining in the mind.
Erin Michelle Galito channels Jesus in the video below. Jesus reminds us that this is the time of awakening because there is only now. We have never left the state of perfect oneness and only a thought makes us think we have. Jesus’ whole message is that we are all God’s Son and nothing else.
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35/ Justice of God
29th November 2024
“You are searching the world for treasure, but the real treasure is yourself.” Rumi.
Remember that where your heart is, there is your treasure also. (ACIM, T-2.II.1:5)
***
Lesson 35. My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy. Yesterday. The purpose of yesterday’s lesson was to establish peace in a mind that uses fear to make its choices. When I found myself imagining scenarios in my life that could go wrong (or might even go right), it was hard to believe that I even had a quiet centre. Today. It’s early in the morning and I have just finished my first practice. This was a pleasant exercise to do, almost a relief. It felt good to have such a positive affirmation of what we really are.
We only know justice from a worldly point of view. When we have done something wrong, the world expects us to pay a price. We might even be incarcerated.
The initial doorway to a prison is used both as an entrance and also as an exit. We either go in or we go out. The prison is therefore a useful metaphor for our spiritual practice. Do we want the body to limit us or do we want to escape its limitations?
A Course in Miracles tells us that, in order to expand our awareness, we have to eliminate all restrictions from the mind. We have to remove the blocks to love’s presence. We might still be imprisoned with a body, but we want to use it in the service of love.
The body, then, is just a shadow that hides the face of Christ. It limits us to a little isolated self that is at the mercy of its thoughts and feeling. This means we have completely forgotten our true Identity.
To not limit ourselves to a body means we gain the full understanding of the justice of God. It means we have the knowing of what we are and where we came from. It is the total forgiveness of any mistakes we think we might have made, and the realisation that we never made them at all.
What is the Holy Spirit’s special function but to release the holy Son of God from the imprisonment he made to keep himself from justice? Could your function be a task apart and separate from His Own? (ACIM, T-26.I.8:5-6)
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36/ The Quiet Centre
30th November 2024
“Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” Chinese Proverb.
You are the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your mind and so you need a new light. (ACIM, T-5.II.4:1)
***
Lesson 36. My holiness envelops everything I see. Yesterday. I was getting myself quite worked up about whether I should go to a local quiz in the evening and so the lesson was helpful to practice. It stopped the mind from racing away, if only for a short while. In the end, the ego won because I didn’t go and, if I had, I know it would have magnified my own sense of stupidity. Today. When I take away my own misperceptions about ‘holiness’ - the sense that being ‘holy’ sounds as if there’s a need to be churchgoing - I began to really understand the essence of the lesson. My first practice gave me a sense of total, all-encompassing love.
Complexity is not of God. How could it be, when all He knows is one? He knows of one creation, one reality, one truth and but one Son. Nothing conflicts with oneness. (ACIM, T-26.III.1:1-4)
If nothing conflicts with oneness, then love can have no opposite. Peace is all there is.
If my holiness envelops everything I see, then it’s my choice whether to extend wholeness.
If God has one Son and the body is just an image within a dream of separation, then we are either awake or asleep. God’s Son is light, and the body arises as a symbol of our darkness.
A Course in Miracles shows us that only love can be extended because it arises out of God’s creation. It tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us. However, it also states that to enter the Kingdom Heaven is beyond the scope of what we can get from the Course.
The split mind refuses to believe that anything is within us. Our job, as the decision maker, is only to step aside from the insane madness of the ego and to step into our quiet centre.
The quiet centre is where all is known and peace just radiates. To find the quiet centre is the only measure we have of knowing if we have succeeded with what the Workbook wants us to achieve.
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37/ Return of Wholeness
1st December 2024
“The greatest mistake a person can make is to be afraid of making one.” Elbert Hubbard.
The mind without the body cannot make mistakes. (ACIM, W-192.5:1)
***
Lesson 37. My holiness blesses the world. Yesterday. I completed the four practices yesterday. We were asked to spread them evenly throughout the day and so, to accommodate this, I had to discretely use the cloakroom where I was working in order to do the second practice. The five minutes seemed like a long time. Today. The theme of how holiness blesses the world makes sense to me, and it feels especially helpful to combine the outer world with the inner world. There are no end of people that have affected me in one way or another.
A little hindrance can seem large indeed to those who do not understand that miracles are all the same. Yet teaching that is what this course is for. (ACIM, T-26.V.1:1-2)
There was just one small mistake, one “tiny tick of time”, that caused the whole delusion of the world. The moment was over so quickly, so absolutely, that it is hard to believe it happened at all.
A Course in Miracles tells us that this is what we are re-living. Each moment is a recreation of the instant when the Son of God forgot to laugh. And now we seem to be taking it very seriously indeed.
There is just one problem and just one solution, and it doesn’t matter how big or awful our troubles seem to be. Each problem is always an illusion. A Course in Miracles begins by saying that there is no order or difficulty in miracles; likewise, then, there is no order of difficulty with anything illusory.
The way to fully comprehend our dichotomy is to look past all illusions to the truth. This means, we need to step back from our circling thoughts and not identify with them. Darkness can’t affect us if we allow the light in; light is always there and it just needs to be recognized.
We are the servant of the thoughts that hurt us. To stop the pain we simply have to feel the peace.
Love is always with us but fear is only temporary. Since the theme of today’s lesson is holiness, we can conclude that extending our holiness begins the process in which wholeness always returns.
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38/ Run and Hide
2nd December 2024
“There is nothing so confining as the prisons of our own perceptions.” William Shakespeare.
Let us not rest content until the world has joined our changed perception. Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete. (ACIM, W-pII.3.5:1-2)
***
Lesson 38. There is nothing my holiness cannot do. Yesterday. I managed the four practice periods throughout the day, plus practised as and when I remembered. As I write this, I remember the ego being particularly vicious in the early hours of this morning. The thought of holiness was completely forgotten. Today. Reading this lesson is a real validation that ‘holiness’ is the answer to all those racing thoughts. Holiness is outside of time and space. This gives me renewed hope for my first five-minute session.
Forgiveness takes away what stands between your brother and yourself. It is the wish that you be joined with him, and not apart. (ACIM, T-26.VII.9:1-2)
All suffering arises because we think we are alone and isolated. We do the best we can to try and change this, but we all know that life can be brittle at the best of times. If life is good, there is always a chance that it will turn bad.
A Course in Miracles tells us that how we know if we have achieved the goal of the Workbook is to ask ourselves whether we feel completely peaceful, and this includes the times when the body might be feeling pain. The right mind is established in peace for every moment of the day and the night.
To know total peace is why we are here. It is fear and guilt that brought us, and it is fear and guilt that gives rise to the world that we see. We all fully understand just how painful the world can be.
The mind is powerful; it can make us supremely happy or really sad. Both, though, are illusory.
The body is neutral; it always responds to what the mind is thinking. Of itself, the body is nothing.
And all we have to do is look at the cause of our suffering. The ego just wants us to run and hide.
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39/ Present Love
3rd December 2024
“You are the universe, expressing itself as a human for a little while.” Eckhart Tolle.
The universe within you stands with you, together with your brother. And Heaven looks with love on what is joined in it, along with its Creator. (ACIM, T-18.I.11:7-8)
***
Lesson 39. My holiness is my salvation. Yesterday. The lesson basically told us that salvation is limitless. For me, I felt very limited. I often forgot what I needed to say and, for periods, I forgot all about the lesson itself. But I did have it written down in my pocket and I did do the four practice sessions (although I was quite sleepy during the third one). Persistent but not perfect. Today. Having read through the lesson, I do feel it is asking us to become a little more committed. Also, and having just practised it for the first time, I can appreciate why. Most of my thought do seem quite ‘hellish’.
Future loss is not your fear. But present joining is your dread. Who can feel desolation except now? (ACIM, T-26.VIII.4:3-5)
A Course in Miracles tells us that salvation is immediate (ACIM, T-26.VIII.3:1). If we fear anything, it is always because of a present cause. Only this needs correcting and not some future state.
We are told that Christ is in each one us. However, Christ is not a body and Christ is not a form. Christ is the Love of God which is endless, formless and entirely real.
And, instead of seeing Christ, we are told we see an ancient hate. This, too, has no form but it does appear in the form of a body. It is an internal feeling and is the memory of the supposedly awful and paralysing loss of God’s Love. However, the paradox is that we haven’t lost God’s Love at all. We just think we have and therefore hate ourselves for it.
The Workbook gives us a foothold into this understanding. We learn to unmake what we have made.
In addition, the lesson today reminds us to be in the present, which is both holiness and salvation.
And the Text states that the holiest spot on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love (ACIM, T-26.IX.6:1). This is our ultimate goal. It is to find that present love.
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40/ Inheritance of Love
4th December 2024
“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.” John Milton.
Until you choose Heaven, you are in hell and misery. (ACIM, T-22.II.7:8)
***
Lesson 40. I am blessed as a Son of God. Yesterday. The lesson was all about holiness being our salvation. It showed me it was all or nothing - we either love totally or not at all. Everything, then, is for forgiveness and this also means forgiving ourselves when we slip up and don’t do the lesson properly. We have to let it go. Today. The lesson asks us to repeat the idea every ten minutes or so, and this is what I wrote down in my instructions, confident that I would do so. Hmmm. I have a feeling in my belly that this might not happen.
Confusion is not limited. If it occurs at all it will be total. And its presence, in whatever form, will hide Their Presence. They are known with clarity or not at all. (ACIM, T-26.X.1:5-8)
A Course in Miracles tells us that we are all One. God creates His Son and His Son creates along with God. There is no opposition to this love and Their Presence (as mentioned above) is the face of Christ and the memory of God.
Both are within us and both are denied whenever the slightest friction arises between the mind that thinks it is a body, and the body that is seen by that mind.
This means that, the mind that believes that it is separate and apart (the split mind) can never feel true joy and happiness. It can never know love totally. In other words, it will always suffer.
Forgiveness takes us back to our Source. This is where we truly know what we are. No clouds are crossing the sun and no thoughts are blocking our inheritance.
Our inheritance is love itself. It is only when we have this clear in the mind that we can ever know the one thing that we have temporarily forgotten. And this is summed up in the words below.
You have no enemy except yourself, and you are enemy indeed to him because you do not know him as yourself. (ACIM, T-26.X.3:6)
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41/ Celebration of Life
5th December 2024
“It’s easy to stand in a crowd but it takes courage to stand alone.” Mahatma Gandhi.
God would not have us be alone because He does not will to be alone. (ACIM, T-8.VI.8:6)
***
Lesson 41. God goes with me wherever I go. Yesterday. We were asked to repeat the lesson - about being blessed as a Son of God - for every ten minutes or so. Later in the morning, I did a couple of hours work for some new clients and was asked to cut back a hedge full of brambles. The memory of the lesson disappeared from my mind until about 90-mins later when it suddenly reappeared. And that was how it was for the rest of the day. I would forget for a while and then persist. Today. I have just done the extended practice and managed to almost escape the clouds (my thoughts). I don’t know if it was my imagination but my mind felt quiet enough for the clouds to open momentarily. It was as if I had a moment of peace.
If the mind is at peace, then the body feels peaceful.
If the mind feels agitated, then the body responds with agitation.
Within us all is a memory that brings about a certain amount of homesickness. This memory has nothing to do with the body, but the body responds to it. Sometimes it feels sad.
They say that when the body is born, the angels weep; and then, when the body dies, the angels celebrate. And while we feel so confined to everything that the body appears to feel, A Course in Miracles would tell us that the body isn’t born at all.
The near-death experience, therefore, becomes a celebration of life. It shows us exactly what we are and what we are not. The NDE proves that we are not the body; it completely confirms that we are infinitely greater than our physical form.
Bill Tortorella’s near-death experience shows us that, when the body dies, the spirit returns back to where it belongs. He tells us that the love was unlike anything he had ever known. Since we are all part of the light, it’s of paramount importance that we express God’s Love in whatever form we can.
42/ Correction of Perception
6th December 2024
“When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.” Mildred Lisette Norman.
In shining peace within you is the perfect purity in which you were created. (ACIM, T-13.X.9:4)
***
Lesson 42. God is my strength. Vision is His gift. Yesterday. The lesson asked us to remember the presence of God throughout the day. I found this to be quite affirming, although my blood pressure did go up at the prospect of visitors arriving later in the evening and then having to entertain them for a few days. Repetition of the lesson was a helpful way to counter the stress. Today. This lesson left me a little confused when I read through it. How can I feel God’s strength and what is His vision? However, I have just done the first practice and found that, by relaxing inwards, thoughts recede and love expands. It is always one step at a time.
Who forgives is healed. And in his healing lies the proof that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing. (ACIM, T-27.II.3:10-11)
What is healing? Certainly it is nothing that we know through the eyes of the ego. As long as we see a world of violence, of pain and suffering, then we should know the mind is not remotely healed.
The cause of anything we see out in the world always begins and ends in the mind. This means we want to take responsibility for what we see. It means giving our minds over to the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is always the corrector. We could never do it by ourselves. We are asked to be aware of what is happening in our minds and allow that perception to be corrected. This is the miracle.
Another way of putting it is that we bring the darkness to the light. Light doesn’t ever come to the darkness as we wallow in our own self-made guilt and despair.
Correction of perception is the Holy Spirit’s job. We need to find this peaceful presence in the mind.
No one can forgive until he learns correction is but to forgive, and never to accuse. (ACIM, T-27.II.10:4)
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