PART II.  SECTION 4:  WHAT IS SIN?

Lesson 260 Let Me Remember God Created Me

1. Father, I did not make myself, although in my insanity, I thought I did.  Yet, as Your Thought, I have not left my Source, remaining part of Who created me.  Your Son, my Father, calls on You today.  Let me remember You created me.  Let me remember my Identity.  And let my sinlessness arise again before Christ’s vision, through which I would look upon my brothers and myself today. 
2. Now is our Source remembered and Therein we find our true Identity at last.  Holy indeed are we, because our Source can know no sin.  And we who are His Sons are like each other, and alike to Him.[1]

Notes and Personal Application  Borrowing from last year’s post, I will once again write that I never believed in evolution.  I did not believe that we created ourselves.  Beyond my agnosticism, attempts at atheism, indignation and resentment at my plight as a human, trapped in a meaty, lusty, vulnerable body, accused of sin and destined to die, I remembered God.  I knew of His Love.  I remembered how appalled I was at the teachings of the church, the stories in the old testament, the ways in which preachers and teachers cherished the idea of God’s wrath, His vengeance, His playing favorites.   

What I have learned over this past year of studying the Course and completing and sharing each day’s lessons is that while I may not have believed in evolution, I did make a false sense in which to survive in this world.  This false sense, the ego me, posed as the real me.  I turned to it for protection, for power, for a sense of adventure, for a means in which to sink into and enjoy my humanity and forget my divinity.  Only when I began to see with the vision of Christ, did I notice the stark difference between the self I created and my real and holy Self that God created.  While the real and holy Self began to emerge and the ego self began to dissolve, I was the only one that could experience this happening.  The process feels like walking through the valley of the shadow of death mentioned in Psalms 23.  There is Holy Spirit guiding, protecting, walking with me, as I experience the death to the false self, while in the outer world there is Eckie pulling her weeds, planting her cabbages, making a sandwich, taking a shower, going to market, the same old girl doing her daily routine. 

When we remember our Source and begin to discover our true Identity, the false sense has to go in order to make room in our mind for our Real Self.  If we try to hold on to the false self, we will be trying to serve two masters, which is impossible.  We live then in a state of confusion.  For years, I had an on/off again approach to God.  I could not understand the plan of salvation.  I could not for the life of me understand why, if we were created beings, our tendency for wrongdoing was any fault of our own.  A car manufacturer takes responsibility for the mistakes made on the assembly line.  Our old Dodge Ram, our Jeep and even my little Mercedes coup has had manufacturer recalls correcting flaws in their construction.  My mind refused to believe in sin or the idea that God was out to punish us for a mistake that He made when He created us.  I tried to go to church, to read my bible, to pray to this God that the minister talked about each Sunday, but it all seemed a ploy, contrived, an attempt to pull together  a neat little theology, dignify it with meaningless rites and rituals, put a ribbon on it, call it salvation, and bestow it upon only those who were gullible enough to not question its validity and veracity.  In other words I experienced my spiritual process as a series of false starts and dashed hopes. I remember my sister scolding me for how often I changed my mind about my Christianity.  And I felt so ashamed of myself.  I felt so sorry for Jesus that He had such a wishy-washy, sometimes in and sometimes out of the fold, old mutton who kept wandering off on her own insisting that what was good for the rest of the sheep failed to hold her interest. 

And yet when the words of Christ came to me, to tell me that I was not lost, that I was not a special case, that in His eyes, I never left the fold, that I am not some stubborn old ewe who can’t buckle down with the rest of the old girls munching grass and filling my belly with small leafy greens.  I am His Son. I am His Creation.  I will only find myself in Him.  While I may find companionship, helpful tips, and earthly guidance in the religious institutions of the world, my salvation comes from accepting my true Identity, my oneness with Christ.  Here is where we cherish thoughts of sin no more.  It simply does not exist – it is erased from our consciousness and we are happy to see it go. 

We call on God today as His Son.  We let go of the false self and remember that God created us.  What God creates can only be wholesome, true, beautiful, and holy.  What God creates cannot be riddled with sin.  Today we join together from across the world and recognize the intelligence and logic of this thought.  God Who knows no sin creates no sin.  We are holy because He is holy.  We are as God created us.  Let not the lies of this world tempt us to believe we made ourselves separate and apart from Him Who is our Source. 

[1]A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 260. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

PART II.  SECTION 4:  WHAT IS SIN?

Lesson 259 Let Me Remember That There Is No Sin

1. Sin is the only thought that makes the goal of God seem unattainable.  What else could blind us to the obvious, and make the strange and disturbed seem more clear?  What else but sin engenders our attacks?  What else but sin could be the source of guilt, demanding punishment and suffering?  And what but sin could be the source of fear, obscuring God’s creation; giving love the attributes of fear and of attack?
2. Father, I would not be insane today.  I would not be afraid of love, nor seek for refuge in its opposite.  For love can have no opposite.  You are the Source of everything there is.  And everything that is remains with You, and You with it. [1]

Notes and Personal Application Today our lesson informs us that the idea of sin is foreign to God.  Believing in sin is the one thought that makes us believe that the path to God is simply too much for us, in our human form, to attain. When we think of ourselves as sinful, fallen, cursed of God there seems to be simply no point in seeking God, holiness, or heaven.  Why would we want to serve such a harsh mean Fellow who would create a universe in which we were expected to worship grovel before Him forever in exchange for atonement, anyway?  Such a belief system traps the ignorant and unsuspecting in fear and superstition. It encourages fanatical, violent witch hunts against the true message and mind of Christ.  It seeks to turn our natural love and longing for God into fear and attack. 

Today we give up such insanity.  We no longer fear our devotion to God and for one another.  We are no longer afraid to say how much we love our Father and Creation.  We are no longer afraid to claim our holiness as His Son.  We are no longer afraid to accept our rightful place in His Kingdom as we stand with Christ.   Thoughts of sin no longer keep us from God or from our true identity in Him!  We do not weaponize the gospel of Christ against those who rise against us for sin and death and destruction is an image of the insane world’s perception and has no place in our eternal mind and home with God. 

Our hope, our peace, and joy is found in this:  Love has no opposite.  God is Everything.  God is Everywhere and Everlasting.  God is Reality.  All else that would try to establish itself against Him is a lie which cannot stand against the truth. 

When we realize that our salvation from sin is deliverance from a lie that presents itself as truth, our hearts and mind will leap in holy recognition of what has kept us from loving God and accepting our rightful place as His Son.  Suddenly the traditional teachings of the church, of the bible, of our established institutions and organizations will be seen through the eyes of Christ rather than with the eyes of the ego. 

When Jesus lived on earth in a human form, he did not pastor in a church, collect tithes and offerings, or establish a group of musicians to lead the participants in song.  He did not waste his time studying liturgy, ministry, biblical studies, and theology.  Jesus followed His heart, His holy mind, His calling.  He simply did what God told him to do and told his disciples to do the same.  He told stories that illustrated God’s love and devotion to Creation.  He gave people hope.  He delivered them from belief systems that purposefully trapped them in servitude and slavery, draining them of their sovereignty.  Instead of avoiding the lepers and outcasts, he ministered to them.  He told the people He healed “sin no more.”

There are all kinds of theories about what Jesus could have meant by this.  We are told in one section of the bible that it is impossible for us not to sin.  We are told that sin must be punished.  In the book of James we are told we are liars if we say we have no sin!  The idea that we are sinful, guilt-ridden creatures who are an offense to our Creator is the basis for nearly every religion in the world. 

Yet today in Lesson 259, Christ informs us to remember there is no sin.  Sin is not of God.  If God is Everything; then sin is only an idea that lifted itself up against Him.  It is something we do not give a second thought. We simply let the idea of sin go.  We cannot take that idea or any of the consequences of believing in its imaginary power with us to His Kingdom.  When the prodigal comes home, he does not bring the idea of sin with him, his sense of guilt and shame or his imaginary offenses are lifted.  He takes off his rags stained with pig dirt.  They are not put into an archive to keep forever as evidence of his having squandered his inheritance.  The grime from his journey is washed away, not kept in a jug to remind the sinner of how thankful he should be to be taken back in.  He is home!  He is grateful to have learned from his mistakes, welcomed with open arms and joyful heart to his rightful kingdom.   He is given a clean robe, a ring, and the best seat of the house while a feast is prepared in his honor.  The Father reproves any talk of sin, of punishment, of spite and vengeance and accountability.  Remember there is no sin!  He was lost.  Now he is found.  He made a mistake.  He learned a lesson.  He is back where he belongs. 

Let us go again and again to this simple but powerful story to remind ourselves of the insanity of believing in sin. The idea that we are born in sin obscures the fact that we are born in separation.  When we believe in our sinfulness, we believe that we have earned God’s wrath and condemnation.  We believe that the only way to return to our Father is through systems of fear that involve sacrifice, shame, guilt, and bloodshed.  Our relationship with Christ becomes tainted because we believe that our sinful natures caused our Lord to suffer.  We miss the point of His ministry and focus on the cross, His bloodshed and suffering rather than on His command to forgive and to seek God and His Kingdom.  We are taught that God cannot be appeased without blood, even that of His Own Son, while all God asks of us is our love, our devotion, our return. 

From around the world, we join as one in putting down our ideas of sin.  We have simply made a mistake.  We fell into a realm of separation.  Like the prodigal we thought to leave the sure thing of Everything and make our own way in a world of Unreality, of opposites, of love and hate, peace and war, gentleness and violence, truth and lies, courage and fear, health and decay, life and death.  We would set up our own Kingdom where we could be boss, only to find that without our Source we are lost, confused, driven mad with uncertainty, forgetting our way, and swamped in thoughts of sin.  We want to come Home!  We learned the lessons of separation.  We see that without our Everything we are nothing.  We have made of ourselves a hellish version of that which is Holy, Innocent, and Sublime. 

Today we pray:

Our Father Who is Everything, we love and devote ourselves to You.  We have made a mistake.  We want to come Home.  We want Your kingdom.  We want Your Will.  We miss Your Love, Your Holiness, Your All in All.  Deliver us from thoughts of sin, despair, and death.  Let us see this madness for what it is!  Let us no longer fill our minds with the Unreality which makes the strange and distorted seem real while blinding our eyes to Your Kingdom.  We give You our eyes in exchange for the vision of Christ.  We give You our divided minds for the unified mind of Christ.  We give You thoughts of sin and shame for thoughts of mistakes corrected by Your love, patience, and mercy.  Let the rest of our sojourn in time be devoted only to You.  You are the Everything and sin, which cannot be part of You, is nothing but a vain attempt to separate ourselves from Your Love.  In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one.  Amen.    

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 259. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

PART II.  SECTION 4:  WHAT IS SIN?

Lesson 258 Let Me Remember My Goal is God

1. All that is needful is to train our minds to overlook all little senseless aims and to remember that our goal is God.  His memory is hidden in our minds obscured but by our pointless little goals which offer nothing, and do not exist.  Shall we continue to allow God’s grace to shine in unawareness, while the toys and trinkets of the world are sought instead?  God is our only goal, our only Love.  We have no aim but to remember Him.
2. Our goal is but to follow in the way that leads to You.  We have no goal but this.  What could we want but to remember You?  What could we seek but our Identity?[1]

Notes and Personal Application In our humanity, we have all manner of goals that really make no sense at all when we realize who we are in Christ.  One of the thoughts that we explored yesterday in our study group was the fact the ministry of Christ did not instruct men how to be good, godly husbands or women how to be respectful, loving wives. In fact Christ made it perfectly clear that the whole question of marriage and what is lawful and what is not within the realm of this most special relationship has no meaning at all in the kingdom of God.  The things that concern us as earthlings have no room in our consciousness when we practice the mind of Christ. 

When our goal is centered on what concerns our humanity, our time, focus, and efforts will be used to get that new promotion, to find a mate which is better suited to us than the one we have now, to make sure our kids get into a good college, or we will needlessly stress ourselves and everyone close to us in order to distinguish ourselves in some way before we die.  We will often plot, scheme, cheat, borrow, or steal to get what we want.  We will distress ourselves and depress ourselves over the humiliating realization that no matter what we do, how much money we have, what car we drive, how big and glorious our mansions, how important our job – we can never have it all.  Something will always be missing.  We may be married to the perfect mate, but our little darlings for whom we work so hard to provide all the luxuries and extravagances that we never had as children turn out to be major disappointments.  We may do everything right – live in the right neighborhood, go to the right church, pay our taxes, contribute to the community, show up in all the right places only to be falsely accused of horrendous crimes and our friends, reputations, and livelihood ripped away for no reason.  Earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes, landslides, lightning – acts of the gods of this world – all seem to be in cahoots against those who would make anything in this world their goal.

When our goal is to find a path to God, we no longer concern ourselves with that which can only leave us empty, unfulfilled, and disappointed.  Jesus tells us in the gospel of Matthew to seek the kingdom of God first, not to worry or fret about material needs or things that would bring us worldly esteem or status.  This is not something that happens unless we make it happen.  We are to seek God’s Kingdom, to train our minds to want God more than we want love and romance, more than we want that new car, or that promotion, or that cruise around the world.  Jesus promises us that when we put first things first, all our material needs will be met.  When we devote ourselves to the Kingdom of God, all other things that would take up our time, our thoughts, our energy will fall into their proper perspective.  We will realize that all that shines is not gold.    

The prayer offered in today’s devotional reminds us that we can never know who and what we really are unless we rigorously keep our goal of seeking God at the forefront of our mind.  This means we need a curriculum to keep our faith and our commitment strong.  We need a program that keeps our minds focused, addresses our weakness and temptations, explains and expounds upon what we need to know to see the world for what it is and why we need to be saved from it!

Join with me today in committing yourself to seeking God.  Find a spiritual path that speaks to you both as an individual and as part of the oneness of God.  For me, I have found a deep and abiding love for Jesus as Savior within the pages of A Course in Miracles.  The Course has defined Christianity for me in a way that makes sense to me, that rings true in my heart and mind, that fills me with peace and love and joy.  Each day I strive to keep my focus on seeking God.

In seeking God, we can avoid all the senseless aims that the toys and trinkets of this world would dangle in front of our physical eyes, to gratify for only an instant our physical senses, and then leave us full of despair, loneliness, and shame.  In seeking God we learn to love God and not fear Him.  We learn to know ourselves as His Son as we become one in Christ.  Finding and following our individual and collective paths to God we raise the consciousness of the whole world.  The world as we know it is transformed through the eyes of Christ.  We stand with Him.  We are one with Him.  And the Lord’s Prayer becomes our prayer.  God’s Kingdom Come! God’s Will be done – on earth as it is in Heaven. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 258.  Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

PART II.  SECTION 4:  WHAT IS SIN?

Lesson 257 Let Me Remember What My Purpose Is

1. If I forget my goal, I can be but confused, unsure of what I am, and thus conflicted in my actions.  No one can serve contradicting goals and serve them well.  Nor can he function without deep distress and great depression.  Let us therefore be determined to remember what we want today, that we may unify our thoughts and actions meaningfully, and achieve only what God would have us do this day.
2. Father, forgiveness is Your chosen means for our salvation.  Let us not forget today that we can have no will but Yours.  And thus our purpose must be Yours as well, if we would reach the peace You will for us.[1]

Notes and Personal Application The world is in a state of confusion.  It is unsure of what it is.  It is conflicted in its actions.  This morning I think of several situations which illustrate this point. We have God-loving, God-fearing people, for instance, who insist that abortion is murder, that once a woman is pregnant her body and what happens in her body and to her body is no longer of her concern alone.  That the fetus which she is carrying within her, belongs to the state, the government, to God.  In the eyes of many, the fetus is a viable human being from the time of conception whether or not it can exist independently outside the womb.  And yet many of these same people vocalize rabid resentment toward the government funds and welfare systems established to help poor families and single mothers raise their children.    

We have religious institutions that for hundreds and even thousands of years in some cases have perverted the gospel of Christ to suit their own greedy purposes.  Every good deed was offset by atrocity and cruelty.  Avarice, idolatry, and lust powered the spread of this twisted gospel around the globe.  Crimes against humanity, committed in the name of Christ, butchered the defenseless, tortured those who refused to bow down, and enslaved and raped the unfortunate boys and girls entrusted to their care.  And yet adherents to this ruthlessness would condemn and demonize a gospel that teaches love for God and for others, equality, forgiveness, sinlessness, holiness, freedom from shame and guilt! 

We have forgotten who we are.  It is to the best interest of the gods of this world that it remains so!  As long as we are trying to save humanity, we are serving contradictory goals.  As long as we are making rules for our bodies to live by so that we can all get along and live in peace and brotherhood here in the world, we are not cognizant of who we are and what we are about.  This world is not the place where we fight for our rights, force others to do things our way, get ourselves worked up into a lather over our political and religious beliefs, not to mention our favorite sports team or movie star. When we realize who and what we really are, there is no need to seek recompense for all the wrongs done to our people, bomb abortion clinics, or march for peace while screaming obscenities at those who promote war! 

This world is an illusion of madness.  All kinds of horrible things go wrong when we confuse our holy purpose with the body, with humanity, with this illusory kingdom.  While we think we are doing the work of Christ, we are contributing to the separation, we are supporting the futile attack on God, we are aligning ourselves with a miscreation that took what belonged to God and made something else out of it.  As long as we think our salvation can be found in this world, we are trapped in the cycles of time, the go-rounds of despair, disease, and death.  

Jesus was crucified for teaching this gospel.  He taught that all of us are Sons of God.  There is no special church or religion that has a special in with God.  He taught that we must lay down our humanity to truly live, to truly grasp the meaning of life.  He taught us that every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord.  He taught us that God so loved the world, He gave His Son so that what went wrong can now be saved. 

Today we stand with Christ, in oneness with Him, we are that Son.  We practice our only function in this world.  We practice it wherever we are, whatever we are doing, no matter the color of our skin, the nature of our culture, the spiritual traditions of our family, tribe, or clan.  We unify from all over the world by simply remembering what we want today – we want the Will of God.  We want the peace of God.  We want salvation – not only for ourselves and our little band of believers, our little clan, our little bunch of those for whom we are especially fond – but for all. 

As we remember what we want, we are reminded that forgiveness is the chosen means for our salvation.  We forgive the world, we forgive ourselves, we forgive each other for thinking that there was another will than God’s.  We forgive our egos, the gods of this world, which would take that which belongs to God and make a lie, a fabrication, a nightmare.  

Today let our thoughts and actions be unified by devoting ourselves to what God would have us do and avoiding what God would have us not do!  We will speak words of forgiveness.  We will speak words of love.  We will not engage in corruption, finger-pointing, and blame.  We will not allow the world to distress us or depress us.  We will stand strong, single-minded, and committed lest we be conflicted in our aim and useless to His kingdom.    

Dear Father, Today we are determined to remember that we can have no will but Yours.  The gods of this world would convince us otherwise, but we belong to You.  You made us.  You made us like You to share Your glory and power and goodness with us.  Your purpose is our purpose.  Your peace is our peace.  Your mind is our mind.  Let this truth sink deep into our consciousness, Lord, so that we never forget who and what we are in You.  In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 257. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

PART II.  SECTION 4:  WHAT IS SIN?

Lesson 256 God Is The Only Goal I Have Today

1. The way to God is through forgiveness here.  There is no other way.  If sin had not been cherished by the mind, what need would there have been to find the way to where you are?  Who would still be uncertain?  Who could be unsure of who he is?  And who would yet remain asleep, in heavy clouds of doubt about the holiness of him whom God created sinless?  Here we can but dream.  But we can dream we have forgiven him in whom all sin remains impossible, and it is this we choose to dream today.  God is our goal; forgiveness is the means by which our minds return to Him at last.
2. And so, our Father, would we come to You in Your appointed way.  We have no goal except to hear Your Voice and find the way Your sacred Word has pointed out to us.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  Forgiveness means we put this whole human experience in its proper perspective.  We realize it is a dream of sin and shame.  We forgive all the participants in its unworthy version of Creation.  We no longer cherish our wounds and sustain ourselves on the blood and flesh of Creation.  We no longer doubt our holiness and our worthiness in God. 

Jesus tells us today that all we can do in this realm is dream, and yet we choose our dreams.  We forgive our fellow creatures for their part in the dream which separates us from our reality in God.  We forgive those who taught us to find our identity in our bodies, in our gender, in our intellect, and in our preferences.  We forgive those who lied to us and taught us to fear God instead of love Him.  We forgive those who wrote words of hatred and favoritism and called them holy.  We forgive our neighbor for not sharing our political and religious beliefs, we forgive our fellows for corrupting themselves and others with unwholesome practices.  We forgive God for He seems to have abandoned us in this god-forsaken territory.

We choose to dream of forgiveness because we choose to see this illusion for what it is – a counter creation, a twisted version, a stolen, turned upside down and inside out copy of all that is real, alive, and awake. 

To make God our goal, we must choose forgiveness.  This is our way to Him.  We must have no other goal before us; we must choose no other god to take His place.  We must take Him at His Word. 

Dear God:  Today we soften our minds and thoughts with forgiveness.  Today our minds and hearts reflect Your love.  Laying down our dreams of sin, shame, and separation, we dream of forgiveness because we are as You created us, sinless – without the mark of beastliness, depravity, and death.  Our only aim is to find our way to You, and it is with forgiveness we walk the path to make our way home.  Make this real in our minds and hearts today.  Let us not be deceived by the world.  Let not temptation keep us from our journey another day.  In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one, Amen.    

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 256. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

PART II.  SECTION 4:  WHAT IS SIN?

Lesson 255 This Day I Choose To Spend In Perfect Peace

1. It does not seem to me that I can choose to have but peace today.  And yet, my God assures me that His Son is like Himself.  Let me this day have faith in Him Who says I am God’s Son.  And let the peace I choose be mine today bear witness to the truth of what He says.  God’s Son can have no cares and must remain forever in the peace of Heaven.  In His Name, I give today to finding what my Father wills for me, accepting it as mine, and giving it to all my Father’s Sons, along with me.
2. And so, my Father, would I pass this day with You.  Your Son has not forgotten You.  The peace You gave him still is in his mind, and it is there I choose to spend today.[1]

Notes and Personal Application Today is a beautiful day in Pennsylvania.  The scent of early fall is in the air.  There are clouds promising us rain, giving us a respite from relentless heat and drought of summer.  Our grandson is coming over to do our weekly grocery shopping, enjoy lunch out at TGI Fridays, and help clean the chicken coops, trim back weeds, and work in the garden.  Tonight we invited our daughter-in-law over with us to have cheeseburgers and fries and spend some time together.  

And yet for James and I who had a bit of a party last night with some dear friends, we suffered brain fog, a dull headache, and a struggle to hold on to joy throughout the day.  We skipped our devotional in the morning, we trudged through our day the best we could, we snapped at each other a few times and contradicted each other’s memories.  I felt so much ego-resistance to our Course study that I did not even look at it during the day and was sorely tempted to give it up as being too hard for me and taking all the fun out of life. 

Throughout the day, the still small voice of Holy Spirit continued to be a presence in my mind, and yet I was very much aware of the other voice that yammered its chorus of distractions and downright delusions.  Instead of turning a deaf ear to its calls, I listened to what it was saying:  You have only one life to live.  You only have a decade or two left.  You should forget about this inner voice you listen to and let steal all your fun and interest and whoop it up.   Your life is over.  You are deceiving yourself, Eckie.  God is not interested in you.  God is not the least bit concerned about you or anybody else in the world.  This is all there is and ever will be.  You get one shot at life; Girly Girl and you should squeeze as much out of it as possible.

One of the biggest shocks and disappointments in my life has been that growing older does not make it easier to resist the false self.  It is still the same old girl it has always been a fun-lover, a prankster, a fibber, a flake. The false self that I made to take the place of my real Self has provided me with a life full of fun, adventure, drama, love affairs, reminders of fleeting fancies in the form of an inglorious past, all which add up to a big, empty, go-nowhere, build-upon-nothing zero without the transforming power of Holy Spirit. 

I know this false self to bring me nothing but that which is not peace, and yet today it was coaxing me, wheedling with me, enticing me with its giddiness, its puerile pluck, its yearnings to be back in control.  All through the day while outside me was shopping, chatting with my husband, grandson, and daughter-in-law, shoveling out chicken manure and taking it to the garden, weed whacking, harvesting, cooking, and cleaning – my thoughts were not on God.  I did not want to find what God wills for me for I was afraid that what God wills for me was going to be too hard, too much of a sacrifice, and all I wanted to do was have fun and enjoy my life as it appears in the illusion.  Other people seemingly enjoy their godless lives, it argued.  So can you, Eckie.    

Listening to this other voice, I was promised high adventure, an appetite and passion for things which failed to satisfy for more than a few moments in the past and fail to even interest me at all anymore.  You are not God’s Son, it sneered, but a human being made of flesh and blood.  You are going to die and be gone for good.  Do not waste your time in this go-nowhere spiritual quest when you only have a short time to live and enjoy the world, your family and friends.  It is not right for you.  Other people can devote their life to God because they do not have anything going for them.  But for you it is vanity.  It is useless.  You change your mind too much.  You get bored.  You do not really like people that much, and for good reason!  Quit promoting such insane ideas.  Stop these meetings, this blog – it is just a big waste of your time.  It gives you a false sense of hope that you should not be sharing with others. 

What I chose to watch on Prime and Netflix after dinner and before bed did not reflect peace or any form of godliness.  I did not forget God, I resisted Him.  I chose to go my own way, and instead of peace, I felt heavy, grumpy, despondent, and out of sync.  I ate too much. My stomach was jumpy.  Just about everything anyone said to me got on my last nerve.  I swore at the poor cat.  Our house seemed a heavy burden instead of a place of shelter, warmth, and love.  Restless sleep, bad dreams, and blaming thoughts revealed to me, not God’s Will for my life, but the ego’s desire for my life. 

We can learn our lessons through joy or suffering.  It is our choice.  We rule our destiny simply by the thoughts we choose to think; the Voice we choose to heed or to oppose.  Today I chose not to spend my day in perfect peace. In listening to the old self, I got a good taste of what I am missing in the world of separation.  I found the empty self full of disturbance, lies, false promises, and unrest.  This is not God’s Will for me, and it is not my will for myself. 

Today I pray our prayer in my own words, a prayer for the days we choose not to spend in perfect peace. 

And so our Father, we did not pass this day with You. We opposed our real Self who is one with You and chose our old selves, who offers us a different way.  We thought we could enjoy a day without You in it, and it was not a place we want to be.  We want to pass all our days with You.  We never want to oppose You and Your Will for us again, because it was quite apparent that what our ego wants for us is not what we want at all!  Thank you for Your patience, Your constancy and love.  In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one, Amen.

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 255. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit:  the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

PART II.  SECTION 4:  WHAT IS SIN?

Lesson 254 Let Every Voice But God’s Be Still In Me

1. Father, today I would but hear Your Voice.  In deepest silence I would come to You, to hear Your Voice and to receive Your Word.  I have no prayer but this:  I come to You to ask You for the truth.  And truth is but Your Will, which I would share with You today.
2. Today we let no ego thoughts direct our words or actions.  When such thoughts occur, we quietly step back and look at them, and then we let them go.  We do not want what they would bring with them.  And so we do not choose to keep them.  They are silent now.  And in the stillness, hallowed by His Love, God speaks to us and tells us of our will, as we have chosen to remember Him.[1]

Notes and Personal Meditation

Here in the early dawn, the rooster is crowing, the darkness is lifting, I am sitting in my office reading over today’s lesson, quieting my heart and mind from every voice and every call upon it.  Last night I attended a Core 52 meeting at Linda’s house, and the theme of last night’s message was worry.  We learned how worrying and fretting over anything here on earth is telling God that our trust is not in Him.  In yesterday’s lesson we learned that as God’s Son we are to accept our role as ruler of the universe with Him with Whom we are one. Worrying and fretting is hardly a behavior or a characteristic of a ruler who is sure of his position or ability. 

Today we will let every voice but God’s be quiet within our minds.  All those things that seem to catch us up – the concerns we have about money, about our houses, our pantries, our status in the world – we will put aside.  We will remind ourselves who we are in Him.  We will calm our minds, quiet our tongues, and rule our minds with perfect peace and trust in Him and in our Self Who is one with Him. 

We will simply step away from that other self, the ego, who is not one with God.  We will observe its futile attempts to take back our holy minds.  We will recognize its ridiculous postures and defenses.  It will not be a hardship to let it go.  There will be no sense of sacrifice involved.  We will be happy to let it go.  For now we know what the thoughts of the ego bring with them. 

For the most part, we dread being around others who have allowed their minds, words, and actions to be directed by the ego.  We have learned to recognize the craving need for constant attention and adulation, the jealous, watchful, guard-dog scowls of insecurity, the repetitive, condemning rants, and meaningless blather as stemming from an unrestrained ego seeking to stunt our minds and distract us from God.

Last night in Core 52’s video presentation, Mark Moore referred to the negative spiral of not thinking with God.[2]   According to research from University College London, dwelling upon the worries and wrongs in our life is strongly corelated to unfriendly protein deposits forming in the brain, which is linked to mental illness, loss of intellect, and a higher risk of dementia.[3]

Today we ask God to show us our true will in Him.  We ask that our minds be free from the calls to remember past wrongs, engage in fruitless endeavors, to worry and fret.  In all ways we pay no attention and give no heed to the multitude of ego voices which would distract us from our path to Him. 

Dear Father, that our consciousness be only cognizant of You.  As we draw our minds’ full attention to only You, we recognize that our Will is one with Yours; our will is one with one another’s.  We want the Everything that is You.  We give up nothing to accept Everything.  You are our all in all.  We praise You Father for Your love and Your patience with us as we grasp the true understanding of salvation’s plan.  Our hearts are lifted in holy gratitude as we offer our humanity to You in faith believing in the promise of Your Love, Your Peace, Your Joy.  In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 254. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

[2] Moore, M., (2019). Core 52. Waterbrook.  p. 331.

[3] https://www.healthline.com/health-news/negative-thinking-can-harm-brain-increase-dementia-risk (retrieved 9-11-20).

Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

PART II.  SECTION 3:  WHAT IS THE WORLD

Lesson 250 Let Me Not See Myself As Limited

1. Let me behold the Son of God today, and witness to his glory.  Let me not try to obscure the holy light in him, and see his strength diminished and reduced to frailty; nor perceive the lacks in him with which I would attack his sovereignty.
2. He is Your Son, my Father.  And today I would behold his gentleness instead of my illusions.  He is what I am, and as I see him, so I see myself.  Today I would see truly that this day I may at last identify with him.[1]

Notes and Personal Application We all have characters in our lives who cause us to worry and give rise to concern.  While every single person we meet has their own particular set of virtues and vices, it is the foibles of our family members and close friends which bombard our peace and cause us the most consternation.  When those we hold dearest exhibit personality disorders, greed and selfishness, lack of direction, a tendency towards careless relationships, and bad manners it is difficult, if not impossible, for us to bear witness to their glory. 

Especially in the case of our children and grandchildren, it is all too easy to fall prey to our egos and expect them to be extensions of ourselves.  We interfere in their lives, we demand their allegiance to our traditions, we expect them to like our friends and despise our enemies.  Often we stand between them and learning the necessary lessons that they need not only to survive and thrive in this world, but the spiritual truths that Holy Spirit teaches throughout the natural unfolding of their development.  We demand they adopt our values, take over the family business, raise their children in the same religious dogma, and never bring shame or infamy on the family name.  We make it very clear that their joy fills us with happiness, their achievements and glory brighten our lives, while their heartaches give us pain, their dishonor and shame brings us sorrow, their unhappy mental states give us cause for alarm.  Many times our egos trick us into believing that we are to blame for every wrong choice they make, every heartache they experience, every setback or attack they endure.  We make the mistake of thinking of ourselves as God in their lives instead of brothers. 

Today we are to look past the specialness in the relationships we have in our lives.  We see them not as extensions of our ego. We put aside all our desires and wishes for them in the world, and we recognize them as brothers, as part of the Sonship in all its glory.  We will not interfere with their glory!  We will not focus upon their needs or their limitations.  We will not focus upon the ways in which we failed them, or they failed us.  Jesus tells us today to recognize His sovereignty and their sovereignty.  In other words, when we quiet our minds and hearts, put aside our human wants and desires for those who are special to us, we can recognize our oneness with Christ.  We can stop worrying and fretting.  We can stop blaming ourselves or wondering what we can do to alleviate their burdens or make up for past wrongs.  We can stop pressuring them to do things our way, to make the choices we think they should make, to avoid the pitfalls we made.  We can happily stand aside and allow them to lead their own lives, learn their own lessons, come to God their own way.  We do not have to preach at them, lecture them, or worry over them.  We trust in God; we trust in them. 

In Part Two, Section Three – What is the world, we learned that the world and all that is in it is God’s Son, making up a story of separation, seemingly trapped in an illusion of despair and death, in desperate need of salvation.  Today, let us awaken in Christ.  Today, let His holy light be our holy light; His strength be our strength; His sovereignty be our sovereignty.  Let us trade in our special relationships for holy relationships and see others as we see ourselves, as holy Sons of God, equipped with all we need to find our way to Him. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 250. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

PART II.  SECTION 3:  WHAT IS THE WORLD

Lesson 249  Forgiveness Ends All Suffering and Loss

1. Forgiveness paints a picture of a world where suffering is over, loss becomes impossible and anger makes no sense.  Attack is gone and madness has an end.  What suffering is now conceivable?  What loss can be sustained?  The world becomes a place of joy, abundance, charity, and endless giving.  It is now so like to Heaven that it quickly is transformed into the light that it reflects.  And so the journey which the Son of God began has ended in the light from which he came.
2. Father, we would return our minds to You.  We have betrayed them, held them in a vise of bitterness, and frightened them with thoughts of violence and death.  Now would we rest again in You, as You created us.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  In my first year through the lessons, I had no words for this lesson.  I had no real understanding of it.  I knew that forgiveness was critical to my return to God and I was willing and able to forgive myself and others as the Son of God, and yet I didn’t understand how the simple act of forgiving would end the world’s suffering, how it would bring back the dear ones in which death and estrangement had snatched away, how the madness of the world would stop.  Though my individual experiences with forgiveness gave me a deepened sense of peace, joy, and understanding, the hurts still lurked between times. I still missed our daughter, our parents, our friends and family members who had bit the dust in one way or the other.  There were moments, even days, that the sense of pain and misery would send me into a spiral of self-condemnation, depressing thoughts, and a flopping about feeling as if I had no where in which to put the gloomy shadows that darkened my mind.  Growing old with this miserable sense of loneliness and despair, depleted my life of all meaning. It did not seem a bad thing to die, to let my life be essentially over.  Temptation came at such times in the form of making lifestyle choices that would hasten my own death, such as overeating, becoming lethargic, developing a penchant for watching TV shows, reading novels, and shutting myself off from others in order to stop spreading the affliction that seemed to infect everything I touched.  Forgiveness did not seem to be working for me. 

Yet forgiveness is the key to end all suffering and loss.  Sticking with our Course and letting each day’s lesson teach us more, get through the willful resistance in our minds, taking down our defenses against the truth, letting the world teach us its falsity and lies all works together to bring this truth home to our minds.  When we develop the heightened sense of forgiveness, when it completely takes over our mind, we see the world for what it is.  We see ourselves for who we are in the flesh and we are filled with pity.  We are filled with tenderness.  We are filled with mercy. 

We are not called to deny that good and evil exist on this level of existence, we are called to deny that this level exists at all!  We are not called to despise our flesh and punish ourselves forever for choosing a realm of opposites, we are called to see the realm of opposites for what it really is – not a place of punishment, sin, and shame, but a virtual reality placed in time that teaches us the most important thing we will ever learn – we are nothing without the Everything of God. 

Forgiveness is the key because as long as we believe that death and estrangement, divorce and betrayals, murder, war, rape, cynicism, disease, decay, and death define our reality, we are in a state of constant offense or defense against that which is only a made-up story.  We are here to play our parts – parts that must be forgiven because we all took part in making up this story.  We all had a hand in making up the story of separating from God and from each other.  No matter how small or how large our role is in this story, no matter how seemingly insignificant – Jesus teaches us that those who are born here chose to take God’s Creation and put their own twist on it.

For those of us who are fond of blaming Satan on everything evil in the world, the Course teaches that the devil is our own egos.  There is no outside force involved.  The story of the world is the story we make up about it.  It is the lies we have believed about Creation that make our perceptions of the world seem real.  When we forget our Sonship, when we put aside our Brotherhood, we are floundering about lost and lonely in a world of shards, fragments, and pieces searching for a way to put it back together again in a place that harbors opposites and division, rather than wholeness, unity, and love.  The best we can hope for here is the special relationship, a tricky alliance complete with rules, expectations, and obligations that foster neediness, stress, and an ongoing sense of sin, shame, and fear. 

Once we see the world for what it is, we can forgive it.  We free ourselves from special relationships and seek only holy relationships, which focus on love, forgiveness, freedom, mutuality, and oneness with God.  We stop holding grudges toward this one or that one for failing us.  We stop holding ourselves accountable to the obligations and tiresome expectations that others would demand from us.  We forgive the past and all that it holds because we understand it is only a story, a chapter in our lives that is over, that we revisit only for purposeful exercises in understanding, illustration, and wisdom. 

This is how forgiveness paints a picture of a world where suffering is over, loss is impossible, and anger makes absolutely no sense.  We see it as the inglorious story of man, not the story of God.  God’s Kingdom has never and will never go to war because there is nothing to fight against.  A Kingdom with all power, glory, and honor cannot and will not seek more power, glory, and honor.  God’s kingdom is love, joy, and peace because it is Everything.  God’s Kingdom has no interest in this false kingdom except to bring His prodigals home.  Leave his-story, God says, and come back to My Story, which is your story, which is Our Story, which is the One Story that ever was, which ever is, which ever will be. 

Today forgiveness leads us to return our minds to God.  In holy humility, we admit to ourselves and to our Father how we have betrayed our holy minds.  We have filled them with bitterness.  We have cherished soured and perverted thoughts against Creation.  We have preyed upon and gorged upon that which was meant to be loved and cherished, held in reverence and awe.    We have infested our minds with thoughts of bloodshed, cruelty, derision, and death.  Forgiveness frees us of our blame and shame.  Our minds return to God – no longer riddled characters in the story of man – but beloved, everlasting Sons as God created us to be. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 249. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

PART II.  SECTION 3:  WHAT IS THE WORLD

Lesson 248 Whatever Suffers Is Not Part of Me

1. I have disowned the truth.  Now let me be as faithful in disowning falsity.  Whatever suffers is not part of me.  What grieves is not myself.  What is in pain is but illusion in my mind.  What dies was never living in reality and did but mock the truth about myself.  Now I disown self-concepts and deceits and lies about the holy Son of God.  Now am I ready to accept him back as God created him, and as he is.
2. Father, my ancient love for You returns, and lets me love Your Son again as well.  Father, I am as You created me.  Now is Your Love remembered, and my own.  Now do I understand that they are one.[1] 

Notes and Personal Application:  This morning, as I do every day, I ask the Lord to bring the lesson home to me, to give me personal application, to make the ideas, the concepts, the prayers and meditations real to me.  It is one thing to have a theoretical understanding of a concept, but to really get something and to experience it as truth, we must have something to pin it upon.

In today’s lesson, Jesus is reminding us that those who live in the flesh have disowned the truth.  In other words, we seem to exist and have our being in an alternative, temporal time warp outside the endlessness of eternity.  In this alternative dimension, truth does not seem to stand alone.  All that is true and lovely and of good report has an opposite.  There is the yin and the yang.  There is male and female.  There is light and darkness.  There is right and wrong.  In this world we are assured one thing and yet get quite another.  Everything that is true is tinged with untruth.  The promise of youth is answered with the inevitability of age, decay, and death.  In this hellish realm, we embrace that which abhors affection; we seek logic and reason where there is none; we glorify that which eats us alive.  Jesus tells us today, to stop cherishing this realm of falsity and deny its hold and power over us. 

This morning in our devotional discussion, James and I both went down a path that could have led to pain, suffering, shame, and unease.  We were talking about our past in the light of who we are now.  Memories of our former lovers, spouses, and romantic encounters, seen in the light of falsity fill us with sorrow that we had not been together, that we did not share those years, that we had been so foolish as to have tried to find love with anybody but each other. 

Through the physical eyes, through the condemning eyes of the world, our former relationships are a source of regret at best, shame, contempt, and spite at worst.  There is a much-rehearsed litany of all the reasons that this one and that one failed us, disappointed us, betrayed us, or in some way, shape, or form did not measure up to assuage our loneliness, gratify our desires, or respect our boundaries.  There is a less-rehearsed litany of all the ways in which we had failed ourselves, had gladly hopped into the sack with someone before we so much as knew their middle name or their favorite color, not to mention the nuances of their particular character.  While all our good sense was screaming silently at us to run, we obligated ourselves further to those who would only take advantage.  No wonder we wince at the memories!

Yet today Jesus is telling us that none of this suffering is real.  God has no use for pain or suffering.  It simply was not created by Him and it is not part of His Will or Nature to see us suffer, deservedly or otherwise.  When we see our past through the eyes of Christ, we can revisit it with love, with deepened understanding and forgiveness, with gratitude of all the lessons we learned.  When we take responsibility for our failed romances, marriages, and relationships, we no longer feel victimized by them or our former selves.  We can bless ourselves and the people with whom we shared that time frame.  We can remember the fun and excitement, the kindness and generosity, the ups and the downs in the light of God’s love.  Our story would not be complete without them in it!  Their story would not be complete without us.  It is simply that – a story about separation, a story about making something other than God’s Will. 

Once we recognize this key truth of the world, we can be free of it.  It is only a story, a dream, an illusion.  It is an illusion of the prodigal mind which has seemed to separate from its Source.  We save ourselves and the world from grief, pain, and suffering by recognizing what it is and what it is for – a story of separation, the story of us, finding our way back to God and our oneness with Him. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 248. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit:  the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

PART II.  SECTION 3:  WHAT IS THE WORLD

Lesson 247 Without Forgiveness I Will Still Be Blind

1. Sin is the symbol of attack.  Behold it anywhere, and I will suffer.  For forgiveness is the only means whereby Christ’s vision comes to me.  Let me accept what His sight shows me as the simple truth, and I am healed completely.  Brother, come and let me look on you.  Your loveliness reflects my own.  Your sinlessness is mine.  You stand forgiven, and I stand with you.
2. So would I look on everyone today.  My brothers are Your Sons.  Your Fatherhood created them and gave them all to me as part of You, and my own Self as well.  Today I honor You through them, and thus hope this day to recognize my Self.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  We blind ourselves to the truth of God when we continue to hold condemnation and unforgiveness in our hearts toward others.  When we look upon the world and the people, circumstances, and events as sinful, evil, and out to get us, to persecute us, to take away our sunshine, to steal Christmas, to deny us our pleasures and treasures, we are blind.  We still do not get what salvation is all about.  No matter how much we talk about Jesus, we do not know Him.  No matter how many people we drag to church, no matter how much we read our bibles, no matter how much we cry out to God, as long as we fail to see others as ourselves, as long as we are content that we get to go to heaven while others burn in hell, as long as we see God as the unloving father who prepares dungeons of torment for His prodigals, we have missed the point.

In today’s lesson Jesus urges us to see that the idea of “sin” stands for attack.  If I can call my coworker sinful and think of myself as holy, I am attacking my coworker.  I am not recognizing our oneness.  I am seeing myself as separate from him and therefore separate from the Lord. 

Years ago I was having such a struggle with a coworker.  I kept complaining about her in my prayers.  I cited her wrongdoing: the lies she told, the ways in which she cheated, stole, and used people to get what she wanted.  Sharing an office, I was privy to the personal phone conversations she took on company time.  I sat, dumb and seething, as she turned family members against each other; played favorites; lied to her husband in a soft, crooning voice, cajoled officials, wormed her way in to high places.  Our office was full of her secret purchases, boxes and files of bills and letters from creditors crammed our file cabinets, bookcases, and work closet.  Day after day I was regaled with the boring, trite ongoing drama of her out-of-control personal life. 

And yet everyone seemed to prefer her over me!  She was tall and thin and bleached her hair.  She was showy, sporting the latest fashions and trends.  I despised this woman but every time I went to God in prayer, God told me how much He loved her.  He would turn a deaf ear to all of her wrongdoing.  He did not want to hear the bad report.  His still quiet voice inside would ask me to forgive her, to love her, to learn what she was teaching me. 

I have come to realize that we were one – that her problems were my problems; that her mistakes were my mistakes.  While I thought of myself as more honest, smarter, and spiritual, I was blind to the truth of our oneness.  Her mistakes may have taken a different form than my own, but that did not absolve me from the attack and condemnation that I chose to perceive rather than her loveliness, her purity, her innocence, and goodness.  I was so caught up in my jealousy and superiority toward her that I was blinded to her divinity, and therefore to my own.  I could have offered her forgiveness, but instead I cherished the thought of her as a narcissist, a sociopath, a raving egomaniac.  If she was all that, then I mistakenly thought that I could be something else. 

But it does not work that way, Jesus tells us.  We suffer as long as we refuse the simple truth of His Vision.  Refuse the Vision of Christ for anybody and we deny it to ourselves.  We remain trapped in a dark pit along with all we see as different from ourselves.  What we see in our outer world is there to teach us lessons in separation and darkness.  I learned so much about myself from my coworker.  Perhaps her wrongdoings seemed more blatant than my own, but they brought to light my own tendency to be sneaky, to tell fibs, to exaggerate my own worth, to compete and push myself to the forefront, to rely on my charm and winsomeness, to nose in the affairs of others, to get ahead in a game that goes nowhere. 

As long as we are engaged in pointing fingers and blaming others for their godlessness, telling their stories of shame, and broadcasting their mistakes, we are causing our own suffering.  We are not healed, and we cannot offer salvation and healing to others.  We can invite people to our tabernacles and offer them a social “gospel,” a pleasant place to come and make friends with other nice people who try not to tell lies, cheat on their taxes, or covet their neighbor’s ass, but we are not recognizing our true function in Christ.  We are not standing with Him.  We are not accepting our role in the plan of salvation. 

We honor Christ every time we refuse to give place in our minds to sin in any form.  We honor Christ each time we deny the power of sin and shame to defeat us, to frighten us, or cause us to cower.  We honor Christ when we can look upon the world with forbearance and forgiveness because we recognize it as the farce it is. 

Today look on everyone through the eyes of the Father sure of His Sons’ return.  He created all of us, we are one with Christ, His beloved and truest, trusted Son.  We honor God when we honor one another and hold each other in our minds and hearts, not with our fallen, perverted natures, but our true natures in God.  Today we come before God not as the accusers, but as the forgivers.  We tell Him of how dear our brothers are to us, how worthy of our affection and love, how grateful we are to them for being part of us, our created being, our story incomplete without them. 

Today we honor God through His Creation and it is through His Creation that we come to know our true and everlasting Selves. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 247. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

PART II.  SECTION 3:  WHAT IS THE WORLD

Lesson 243 Today I Will Judge Nothing That Occurs

1. I will be honest with myself today. I will not think that I already know what must remain beyond my present grasp. I will not think I understand the whole from bits of my perception, which are all that I can see. Today I recognize that this is so. And so I am relieved of judgments that I cannot make. Thus do I free myself and what I look upon, to be in peace as God created us.
2. Father, today I leave creation free to be itself. I honor all its parts, in which I am included. We are one because each part contains Your memory, and truth must shine in all of us as one.[1]

Notes and Personal Application Lately I have been have a D.H. Lawrence fest.  It started with rediscovering the book Sons and Lovers that my friend Janet had given me for my birthday years ago when we were living in Shanghai.  I reread the book and ever since have been reading everything I can get my hands on from the author.  What he has to say about the reduction to absurdity found in idealism struck me as I was reading over today’s lesson.  We want the universe to be something else and not what it is.  We think we understand the way it should be from our little bits of knowledge, our extremely limited perception, and from our stunted viewpoints of reality.  We think the cat is cruel for playing games of death with the mice, and yet we do not want the pests pooping in our silverware drawers and nibbling holes in our tableware.  In the House that Jack Built, as Lawrence refers to the world, people should have been different than they are, everybody should have been somebody else and not himself![2]

Today I was processing a lot of veggies from our garden.  I made a big jar of refrigerator dill pickles from our excess of cucumbers.  The okra was soaked in vinegar solution, dried, and set aside for a future fry.  The ripe tomatoes were made into an Instant Pot full of ketchup ingredients for James who does not like all the corn syrup in Heinz.  The eggplants were put up.  It was a lot of work, but I enjoy doing things like this.  While I was working my mind dwelled upon our grandson Jonathan who left for Air Force basic training yesterday.  I was trying my best not to feel bereaved.  It seems as if not only our own children, but now our grandchildren have grown up and left the nest before I am ready. 

Only yesterday he was our little blonde, blue-eyed cherub who toddled about and tramped through mud puddles with me.  I thought of our candy picnics, our rides to Hershey to see his cousin, Halie, the times he traveled with us to Chattanooga to see our Friar clan.  How the grandsons used to quarrel amongst themselves about who got to sit next to Grammy when we sat down to eat, who got to sit in the front seat with me when we went for a drive, who got to carry my luggage or help bring the groceries in.  And then he hit puberty and adolescence and he was gone even before he went off to the Air Force, always up to something with his friends, with sports, with other interests.  My heart cried for him – not because I am not proud of his accomplishments, his courage, his stalwartness, and bright plans, but because he felt gone from me.  Grammy is not a big figure in his life anymore.  I feel put on a shelf along with all the other things from his childhood.  He has his own life to start now and because he chose to go away, it will be months before we get to see him again. 

When I opened up about my thoughts to James, he was experiencing much the same thing.  The distance between us and our bootcamp grandson looms large and worrisome in our minds, yes, but there is also the feeling of time having slipped past us way too fast.  Jonathan’s childhood is over and with it the vital role that we played in his life.

Last weekend we hosted a send-off dinner for him and then a brunch before he left, but it just did not feel like enough.  We were at a loss for words to express to him our love, our deep affection, our hopes, and high regard.  And so we left the good food, laughs, and memories suffice.     

But when we are honest with ourselves, we understand that time and people are not meant for us to hold on to.  We are in no position to make judgments, to put our own needs and desires to be important, necessary, and made mindful of on others.  It does not matter that we have collected bits of hard-won wisdom over the decades of our lives, our grandchildren must learn their own way, enjoy their own adventures, accomplish their own dreams.  All we can see, and experience is that our grandson grew up way too fast and now he is off on his own preparing to serve his country, with dreams of manning great flying machines.  It is not for him to stick around making sure that grammy and grandpa know where he is and who he is with and what he is doing, assuring them of his safety, comfort, and companionship. 

We free ourselves when we give up these concerns and go with trust in God.  Worries, concerns, and a sense of neediness, despair, and grief are gone when we accept the peace of God.  How we honor our grandson is how we honor all of creation – we leave him free of our own ego demands and desires.  We recognize our oneness, our certainty in God, and the truth that shines in all of us the world over, no matter where we are, whom we are with, and what role we choose to learn our way back to God. 

Today walk in this freedom.  Refuse to judge no matter what occurs.  Do not put a right or wrong on it.  All roads lead back to God – here in the house that Jack built.   

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 243. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

[2] D.H. Lawrence, The Complete Novels…Kindle Edition.

Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

PART II.  SECTION 3:  WHAT IS THE WORLD

Lesson 242 This Day is God’s.  It Is My Gift To Him.

1. I will not lead my life alone today. I do not understand the world, and so to try to lead my life alone must be but foolishness. But there is One who knows all that is best for me. And He is glad to make no choices for me but the ones that lead to God. I give this day to Him, for I would not delay my coming home, and it is He who knows the way to God.
2. And so we give today to You. We come with minds wholly open. We do not ask for anything that we may think we want. Give us what You would have received by us. You know all our desires and our wants. And You will give us everything we need in helping us to find the way to You.[1]

Meditation and Thoughts for Today

The longer we live in the world, the less we understand it!  Everywhere we turn for guidance leads to more bewilderment and confusion.  We thought education would inform us, only to discover a relentless march of theories, suppositions, and feeble perceptions that lead nowhere.  Dedicating our lives to good causes, we find that all causes are dependent upon that which they stand against.  Joining charitable and religious organizations does not alleviate the burden of our selfishness for it is there we find only more egotism, greed, and vanity.   In standing against one source of unwholesomeness, we begin to perceive the world itself as vile. 

It happens to each and every one of us.  We finally are forced to admit that we simply do not and cannot (do not even want) to understand the world.  We stop thinking we know all the answers.  We realize that we are not experts.  The more we work to make the world true, the larger the external world looms in our own minds, filling our minds with fear, dread, and uncertainty.  We come to see how silly we were to think that we could fix that which is not fixable, that which has no reality, no life, no substance.  We arrive at the place of surrender.

Today James and I had the privilege to participate in a dear brother’s public surrender at a baptismal service.  What a festive ceremony the Christ Wesleyan Church provided – sacred music, surround sound, projections on twin screens, tents to provide shade, Rita’s Italian Ice, hot dogs and other goodies… it was quite an event.  As each of the recruits came to the submerging tank to receive their rite, they gave a brief testimony of what brought them to this place.  One by one, old and young, male and female, they spoke of their need for help in traversing the world.  They recognized how foolish it is to try to lead their life alone, adrift, and apart.

Today we surrender our egos, our separated splintered selves, to Holy Spirit within.  Holy Spirit leads us to God, and we become whole again. We become one.  We are tired of resisting our unity, our brotherhood, our Sonship.  We are done with the fleeting thrills, passing sensations, and theoretical suppositions that the world offers in place of God’s eternal love, certainty, and devotion.  Today we place all of our trust, our devotion, our hopes and dreams in His Hands.  We let Him lead the way because it is the only way to God. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 242. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 2:2 WHAT IS SALVATION

Lesson 240 Fear Is Not Justified In Any Form.

1. Fear is deception.  It attests that you have seen yourself as you could never be, and therefore look upon a world which is impossible.  Not one thing in this world is true.  It does not matter what the form in which it may appear.  It witnesses but to your own illusions of yourself.  Let us not be deceived today.  We are the Sons of God.  There is no fear in us, for we are each a part of Love Itself.
2. How foolish are our fears!  Would You allow Your Son to suffer?  Give us faith today to recognize Your Son and set him free.  Let us forgive him in Your Name, that we may understand his holiness and feel the love for him, which is Your Own as well.[1]

Thoughts for Today

Jesus teaches that this world, the way we see it, experience it, and fear it – is impossible.  It cannot exist.  It cannot be true.  No matter how real it may seem it is simply a lie, an illusion, an intolerable, infeasible realm.  No matter what form the world’s madness takes, it can only be a strange, unholy, and twisted version of the truth. 

We are not to fear the world and we are not to fear God.  God did not make Creation to fear Him.  He made Creation as an extension of Himself.  He did not seek to be catered to – God has no need of servants.  He is a Spirit and not flesh.  He does not need anybody to scratch His back, trim His whiskers, or massage His shoulders.  God did not make Creation to kill it, torture it, or bully it.  God did not create because He longed to be admired, worshipped, or slavishly adored or praised.  He made Creation as an extension of His Love and Creativity.  He made Creation as a holy and equal companion to Himself.  He breathed His Life into us, He gave Creation to us.  He trusted us with Creation and He still trusts us with Creation.  

Today Jesus tells us we are deceived by fear no longer.  We are wise to it.  No longer does the world witness to our separation from God.  We do not worry about what the world thinks of us, because it is not real.  We have no concerns of what army may be raised against us, because it is not real.  When we know who and what we are there is no fear in us for our trust is in Reality, our Creator and our holy Selves, His Creation. Only when the truth of our identity becomes real to us, will we be able to see the folly of fear.  Today our lesson instructs us to ask God for the faith we need to recognize our true identity in Him.  In Him, we free ourselves of sin, suffering, and stupidity.  In Christ, fear is not justified in any form. 

Let our hearts and minds be full of courage!

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 240. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, (1992).

Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 2:2 WHAT IS SALVATION

Lesson 239 The Glory of My Father is My Own.

1. Let not the truth about ourselves today be hidden by a false humility.  Let us instead be thankful for the gifts our Father gave us.  Can we see in those with whom He shares His glory any trace of sin and guilt?  And can it be that we are not among them, when He loves His Son forever and with perfect constancy, knowing he is as He created him?
2. We thank you, Father, for the light that shines forever in us.  And we honor it because You share it with us.  We are one, united in this light and one with You, at peace with all creation and ourselves.[1]

Personal Notes and Application:   The other day a holy brother referred to himself as a blabbermouth.  “You are not a blabbermouth,” I reminded him.  “You are a Son of God!”  Although I was quick to remind my brother of his holiness, there have often been times I have called myself the same thing.  In today’s lesson, Jesus asks us to abstract ourselves out of time, out of our process, out of our humanity and experience our divine natures.  As Sons of God we are without sin and guilt because God shares His glory with us. 

Would we call God and His Son a blabbermouth?  Would we refer to Jesus as a blabbermouth?  Of course not.  In describing ourselves we must be vigilant in that we do not ascribe the ego’s traits, its defenses and offenses, to our identity.  Instead we accept and appreciate the gifts our Father gave us!  He gives us the power to be quiet, to listen, to be still.  He gives us dignity and respect for ourselves and others.  He blesses us with discretion and entrusts us with not only our salvation but the salvation of the world.  We are not blabbermouths.  We hold our counsel until Holy Spirit leads us rather than jumping in ill-prepared, ready for attack, hot under the collar.  We have no spite, no vengeance, no overwhelming need to share or defend our opinion, our position, or our process.  We are blessed with a calm, still mouth devoted to the peace of God. 

Our mistakes do not define us.  In time we are in process.  We are going to fall back into the ego’s way of surviving and thriving in the world.  There may be times we forget who and what we are in Christ.  We may say things that would have better left unsaid.  We may interrupt others, butt in, and tell their stories for them.  We may tell people off or unwisely blather on about our spiritual insights.  No matter how vain, silly, rude, or unwise we may be at times, that is not who we are and that is not what we are.  We are Sons of God and nothing we do in our human is held to our account when we bring it to God.

When we are tempted to call ourselves names or define ourselves by our defenses and offenses, we can thank the Father for shining His light upon our hurtful, wrongful habit.  Instead of staying in the go-nowhere cycle of self-condemnation, we step out of the false humility and give our blabbermouth to God. 

Here it is, Lord.  Thank You for my beautiful mouth!  Thank You for letting me speak the words of the Voice for God!  I honor my mouth because You share it with me.  My mouth is Yours – at one with You and all creation. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 239. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

*Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 2:2 WHAT IS SALVATION

Lesson 238 On My Decision All Salvation Rests

1. Father, Your trust in me has been so great.  I must be worthy.  You created me, and know me as I am.  And yet You placed your Son’s salvation in my hands, and let it rest on my decision.  I must be beloved of You indeed.  And I must be steadfast in holiness as well, that You would give Your Son to me in certainty that he is safe Who still is part of You, and yet is mine because He is my Self.
2. And so, again today, we pause to think how much our Father loves us.  And how dear His Son, created by His Love, remains to Him Whose Love is made complete in him.[1]

Meditation Notes for Lesson 238

Today Jesus leads us to meditate upon our Father’s trust in us.  We are to see ourselves as worthy of His trust, a creature made by God who is forever pure, holy, and without blemish.  We did nothing to deserve eternal sin or punishment.  We made a mistake.  We fell for a lie, an illusion, a temptation.  I picture it like this:  We said, “Okay, God thanks and all for everything but now we want Creation for ourselves to do with it what we want done with it.  It is a good thing You have going here, but honestly all this purity, innocence, and peace could use some spicing up!  We want a world of opposites. We love Your love but give us a little hate.  We love Your Peace but give us a bit of war and friction.  We love Your abundance, but we want to scrounge and scarf and quarrel over limitations.  We love Your equality and oneness, but we want to be special, to make ourselves distinct, to have hierarchies and power struggles and popularity contests.  We love certain species of the animal kingdom, but we want to eat some of them, not pet them or be their friend.  We appreciate the flora and the fauna, but we want to build cities, barricades, and kingdoms.  Give us Creation and let us do with it what we want.  Let us take the laws of love and use them for our own devices.” 

And God said, “Okay.  But that is not your reality.  Your reality is in me.  Go ahead and have your illusions.  Do it your way.  I trust that You will come back to me, because you are mine and without Me, you do not exist.  Here is time.  Take as much as you want and need.  I will give you darkness and light.  I will give you joy and sorrow.  I will grant you your desire for opposites in a realm that will in no way affect your truth.  You are My Son, forever beloved, forever safe, forever pure and holy as the moment in which I created You.  You will awaken.  You will come home.”

And so we dream our dream of separation, of doing it our own way, of coming to know God only through coming to understand what He is not.   

Today Jesus asks us to meditate upon God’s love for us.  He trusts what He made.  He sent Christ to remind us that what is in us cannot be relinquished, cannot be killed, cannot be denied.  We are His and He is ours.  The world, time, and all that it holds is only a dream of death, of seeking but never finding, of false and fleeting satisfactions, thrills, and pleasures, of ups and downs, of ins and outs, changing moods and unstable temperatures.  Our Course teaches that every living creature who is born in time arrived here because of a choice we made to leave God’s Kingdom.  We are enchanted by the physical world.  Fallen nature and all of its bloodthirsty, predatory drives teach us to crave power over love.  We fasten our identity not on truth but on our gender, the color of our skin, our tribes, our culture, our countries, our religions and social clubs.  Instead of oneness, we find strength in numbers.  We learn the value of equality and oneness only through inequality and division.  We search for answers only to find more questions.  We turn to religion for comfort and solace only to find more terror.

And God trusts us through it all.  Our salvation is within us for we are His Son.  Nothing can take it away because it is invisible, it is irreplaceable, irrevocable, and forever. It is the one thing in this world that we can count upon.  This is the peace of God.  He did not create us in hate to get His jollies from our sorrow, torment, and penance.  He created us in Love, to be His Son and take our place in unity and oneness with Him forever.  This is who we are.  We are dear to Him.  He is completed in us as we are completed in Him. 

This is the message of Christ.  Let this truth ring in your heart and mind today.  Ask the Lord to reveal and seal His love and trust for you in your consciousness today.  Meditate upon the true lessons of Christ.  Refuse to be misled by fearful connotations of God and His hatred, condemnation, and war upon humanity.  He loves us.  He has not abandoned us.  We are not adrift in time forever.  He is not devising bloody ways in which to separate the good from the bad, the righteous from the unrighteous.  He has not declared war upon humanity.  He is not sending balls of fire to torment our flesh and make us rue the day we were born.  We are in time to learn, to remember, to seek Him and find Him.  There is absolutely nothing we can do or fail to do that will remove us from His Love.  When we awaken to His Love, all fear is gone.  All shame and sorrow is past.  We come Home to the place that technically we never left.  Jesus tells us in the Course that we do not have to wait for death in our bodies to experience coming Home.  We can be Home the moment in which we accept the truth of God’s great love and trust in us.  It is a state of mind, a tiny step, a blink of an eye, a portal in which we pass in our quiet devotion.  It is a state of calm, of peace, of tranquility that lengthens time and reaches to eternity. 

Ask the Lord to bring you to this place today.  Give your journey home all the time it takes and experience how time accommodates accordingly.  God blesses all of our awkward attempts, our false starts, our wayward seeking – do not give up your love and devotion because the way seems hard or others may not understand.  Go to your quiet, secret place today and with all sincerity ask God to reveal His love and trust in you.  Do not castigate yourself.  Do not feel as if your discomfort or pain will win God’s favor.  Do not bring God a sacrifice of any kind.  That God does not exist.  That God is an ego fabrication.  God’s Will is that you seek Him.  God’s Will is that you are happy.  God’s Will is complete in you, His Son.     

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 238. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 2:2 WHAT IS SALVATION

Lesson 233 I Give My Life to God to Guide Today.

1. Father, I give You all my thoughts today.  I would have none of mine.  In place of them, give me Your Own.  I give You all my acts as well, that I may do Your Will instead of seeking goals which cannot be obtained and wasting time in vain imaginings.  Today I come to You.  I will step back and merely follow You.  Be You the Guide, and I the follower who questions not the wisdom of the Infinite, nor Love whose tenderness I cannot comprehend, but which is yet Your perfect gift to me.
2. Today we have one Guide to lead us on.  And as we walk together, we will give this day to Him with no reserve at all.  This is His day.  And so it is a day of countless gifts and mercies unto us.[1]

Notes and Personal Application: This morning when James woke up, he discovered that our coffee pot had bit the dust.  No matter what he did to resurrect it, our beloved mechanical servant who has faithfully made us a delicious brew each morning is no longer able to serve us.  So when I woke up, one of the first things that James asked me was if I wanted to go along with him to go shop for a new one.  Instead of deciding to just buy a new coffeepot, I wanted to make sure that we got one that met my specifications, I told him.  That is why he asked me to go along, he said.  We decided to make a morning of it, go shopping for a coffee pot, pick up some other things we wanted, and have a bite of lunch.  What fun!

But before we headed out, I sat down and thought about what I wanted in a coffeepot.  I wanted a glass carafe – I like seeing how much coffee is left in the pot.  I wanted a clear and removeable water reservoir, preferably dishwasher safe.  I wanted a flat-bottomed filter instead of a cone shaped one.  I wanted a coffeemaker that makes at least 12-cups at a time.  We really like our coffee here at the Friar Patch and most of our family and friends do, too.  I like the color red, too.  Our kitchen and most of our major appliances are stainless steel, grays and white and small appliances in red add an uplifting splash of color. 

We had our smoothies for breakfast; we quieted our minds and hearts to partake in today’s devotional and prayers.  I drank a cup of tea.  We got ready and we were off.  The sun was shining. The sky cerulean blue.  There were no dark clouds on our horizon except in our foggy, caffeine-deprived brains evidently, for God was not the source of our thoughts or our talk. Instead we crabbed about how we feel like stooges along with everybody else who puts on masks to go out in public.  We grumped about the economy.  We talked about Dr. So-and -So who was calling out the government for staging a highly exaggerated epidemic, making up reasons to arrest citizens, and take away even more of our freedoms and rights.  It is very clever, I said.  Instead of forcing people to take the mark of the beast, frighten them with a deadly disease, offer them a vaccine in the form of a chip, turning humanity into government-censored, government-controlled automatons.  Our projections onto the world came from a place of the fear-based religions in which we were raised.  I have always been sensitive to the effects of negativity and our Jeep was full of it this morning.  Before I knew it, I was wishing that I had stayed home and let James go get the coffee pot on his own. 

We both realized that if we wanted to have a good day we would follow the guidance of Jesus from our lesson today.  We have so much for which to be thankful, let us focus upon that.  We have each other!  Our kids and our grandkids are healthy, happy, and whole.  We have such nice friends.  We have a fridge and freezer full of food.  We have a garden.  We have chickens which give us fresh brown eggs everyday.  We have cats which help keep vermin off our property.  We have our health.  We have a nice house to live in.  We have vehicles that take us where we want to go.  But most of all we have God.  We seek God.  We are God’s Will.  We are as God created us.  Let our vain imaginings and opinions about the world be given to God.  Let God run the show.  Let us trust in Him the way we are called to do and have a good day.  And let’s not for one instant mistake our happiness, our peace, our sanity, security, and love as being based upon the changing tides of this world. 

Jesus tells us that we have one Guide to lead us onward.  We walk with Him, we give our wants to Him, our needs, our fears and dismay, our joys and our triumphs.  We hold nothing back from Him because this day, and all days, are His.  He knows when time will no longer serve the purpose for which it was made, and He will give us as long as we need to return our hearts and minds to Him.  Each day holds countless gifts and mercies which He gives to us.  Today we were blessed with a new coffeepot that we both liked.  We appreciated all of its fine features, most of which matched my earlier specifications.  We appreciated the fact that we did not have to search high and low for it – it was right there at our discount club, a special price, a limited edition. 

God’s Grace toward us knows no bounds.  Today give all your thoughts to Him.  Commit your mind, your words, your actions to God’s Will.  There is nothing that can happen in the world that worries God!  He will never forget His great love and tender mercy toward us.  As His Son, we have no business theorizing conspiracies or vainly preparing for the end times. Trump is neither our savior nor our enemy – as every other world leader, he is only a human being trying to do the best he can to run a first-world country which is moving in a multitude of different directions.  He deserves our love, our forgiveness, our patience, and our best thoughts and prayers. 

Jesus reminds us that God’s love toward us is so tender that it is impossible for us to comprehend in our current state, but it is His gift to us.  Today accept His Grace, let Him take first place. Surrender your humanity to Him and take on the divinity in which you were created. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 233. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). 

Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 2:2 WHAT IS SALVATION

Lesson 232 Be In My Mind, My Father, Through The Day.

1. Be in my mind, my Father, when I wake, and shine on me throughout the day today.  Let every minute be time in which I dwell with You.  And let me not forget my hourly thanksgiving that You have remained with me, and always will be there to hear my call to You and answer me.  As evening comes, let all my thoughts be still of You and of Your Love.  And let me sleep sure of my safety, certain of Your care, and happily aware I am Your Son.
2. This is as every day should be.  Today, practice the end of fear.  Have faith in Him Who is your Father.  Trust all things to Him.  Let Him reveal all things to you and be you undismayed because you are His Son.[1]

Meditation for Lesson 232

Today our prayer invites God to our minds from the time we wake up in the morning, we ask Him to shine on us all day long.  We ask Him to dwell with us every minute; every hour we lift our hearts in thanksgiving to Him for staying with us, always there to here our every call, for answering our heart’s cry.  We give this day completely over to the presence of God – taking us into the evening and putting us to sleep in safety, certainty, and happiness because we are His Son. 

Jesus instructs us today that this is how every day is designed to be – practicing the presence of God, which is practicing the end of fear.  This is how we build faith and trust in our Father.  We learn to trust Him in all things. 

When we lose something for example, instead of driving ourselves crazy looking for it, we quietly trust God to lead us to it. This is a wonderful way in which to build trust and deepen our awareness of God’s Holy Spirit which He gave to each one of us and will never take away.  When we have a worry or a care, we call upon God to calm our minds and help us deal with the matter in a wise and discreet manner rather than fretting, spreading needless alarm, or casting our burdens upon others.  When someone says something that hurts our feelings or betrays our trust, we thank God for revealing their hostility so that we know to ask for healing, so we know to examine ourselves to find where we have wounded them.  When we have a problem with running our mouths and being irresponsible with the confidences of others or talking over other people, we ask God to be the keeper of our lips, to give us the respect and kind regard that it takes to listen, to sit silently, to not feel compelled to add our opinions or tell long, blow-by-blow accounts that bore people or cause them to lose interest. 

From the time we come into this world, each of us begins making a false self, we develop a personality, defenses, quirks, habits, and ways to get out of doing what we do not want to do.  We decide if we want to be a “good” person and follow the rules and toe the line or if we want to go rogue and be a troublemaker, a risk-taker, a joker, a prankster, a bully, or freak.  We figure out the ways that we are going to draw attention to ourselves and how we are going to draw attention away from ourselves.  We figure out that turning on the water works may work with one parent but not with another.  We learn to either move toward all that makes us feel good and away from all that makes us feel otherwise, or we learn to ignore our good judgment and do the opposite.  We develop agendas.  We make plans.  We think we know what will make us happy and what will tear our hearts to pieces. 

But today Jesus is telling us to do things differently.  Instead of relying on our made-up self, our human, to make it through the day, clouding our holy vision, and asserting itself as our reality, we are to invite God in our mind, we are to ask God to help us when we encounter a challenge, a difficulty, a sorrow.  All through the day, instead of relying upon our false self to inform our decisions, to approve or condemn, to decide what we will do and where we will go – we go deeper.  We look to our Source, we say, “What is this for, Father?  What am I to learn?  Please stay in my mind and teach me all I need to know. Show me what to do in this matter.  Should I stay or should I go?”

We get to know God by spending time in His Presence and learning to listen to His Voice, Holy Spirit within. It is not in attending services at the tabernacle, doing good works, reading our holy books, or donating time and money to charitable causes that we come to know God.  As helpful, kind, and even gratifying as these activities may be, many times it is a poor substitute for keeping our mind stayed upon Him, learning to trust in Him on a moment-to-moment basis, experiencing His love and constant care as we become one with Him. 

When we become one with God we have nothing more to fear.  There is absolutely no cause for dismay.  We live and move and enjoy our being in Him, we trust all things to Him, and He tells us everything we need to know and He gives us everything we need to grow, to thrive, to prosper in this life and in the life to come.

Be in our minds, O Father, throughout the day!

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 232. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part II:1 WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

Lesson 230 Now Will I Seek and Find the Peace of God.

1. In peace I was created.  And in peace do I remain.  It is not given me to change my Self.  How merciful is God my Father, that when He created me He gave me peace forever.  Now I ask but to be what I am.  And can this be denied me when it is forever true?
2. Father, I seek the peace You gave as mine in my creation.  What was given then must be here now, for my creation was apart from time, and still remains beyond all change.  The peace in which Your Son was born into Your Mind is shining there unchanged.  I am as You created me.  I need but call on You to find the peace You gave.  It is Your Will that gave it to Your Son.[1] 

Personal Notes and Application:  Just as we are created by Love and for Love and to be Love, so were we created in peace.  We thrive on peace.  We live forever in peace.  Without peace we go insane, we lose our minds, we are stressed and tormented, we worry and fret, our sleep is troubled, there is a permanent scowl etched upon our foreheads, a downward turn to our mouths, a droop in our shoulders, a heaviness in our hearts.  One of the saddest things about being raised in an unpeaceful home is that kids grow up thinking that chaos, squabbling, noisiness, melodrama, and unrest is the norm and something in which to pattern one’s life after.  There are those who actually become addicted to the adrenalin rush of onslaught, who despise the quiet, the blissful, the serene.  We have all had the friend or family members in our lives that cannot stand when people are getting along, who thrive on stirring up trouble, bringing up old grudges, telling lies, and spreading rumors in order to keep peace at bay. 

When we lay down the selves we have made and take up our real Self in God, we begin to cherish peace.  No longer do we have to flit from one activity to the other trying to find meaning, purpose, or entertainment.  No longer do we have to find a cause in which to latch unto to give our life meaning and to keep our blood pressure up against a supposed enemy.  We embrace the peace in which we were created, the peace which was given to us when we were created, the peace which is still shining there inside our minds, calling to us to be still and know that we are one with God. 

Peace is where we find God.  We do not find God in our banners, in our war songs, in our patriotism, or in our politics.  We do not find peace in our denominations, our religious cults, or our spiritual leaders.  We find peace when we seek God, for God’s peace is the only peace. 

It is the duty of every single person to seek and find the peace of God.  There can be no troublemaking in God’s Kingdom.  There can be no competition over who is smarter, bigger, better, more evolved, or has the best ideas about how to run the planet.  In God’s Kingdom we must be completely committed to our original Creation, our holy Self.  We must recognize that any time we choose attack, defense, ill will, and affection for battle, we have proved ourselves not ready for the peace of God, we have denied our minds access to where we belong, and we are setting up camp in a realm which keeps us trapped in a very elementary level of being. 

Before I began studying A Course in Miracles, I was aware that I had an unhealthy attraction to unrest, to war, to retribution, to stirring up trouble.  However, I had no idea how addictive the thoughts of conflict, strife, and turmoil were until I began to seek the peace of God.  In my work in prevention, my mind was being fed a constant diet of injustice, abuse, child sexual abuse, human trafficking, violence, rape, victimization of every ilk.  At home, when I would relax in front of the television, the productions I was drawn to were not dramatic reenactments exemplifying acts of love, peace, and joy but rather tales of more violence, infidelities, vengeance, unsolved mysteries, crime and psychological thrillers.  In conversations with colleagues, family, and friends, I became aware of an alarming pattern of negativity that focused on what was wrong with others instead of what was right, none of which promoted peace in the environment, but rather incited conflict and discord. 

Only when I began to see the relationship between the work I was doing, the entertainment choices that I was making, and the conversations and relationships that I had going on in my life with my unhappy state of mind, troubled sleep, paranoia, suspicious nature, and condemning and unloving thought patterns, did I realize how deeply my mind was entrenched in forms of attack.  Daily and even hourly meditations, a prayerful state of mind, a deep desire to know and serve God is helping me to accept the peace that can come only from God. 

Our reality is apart from time, Jesus tells us in our prayer for today.  Peace is ours because it still shines the same as when God created us within its bright and glowing light.  It is not the Self that God created that would choose darkness over His light, that would choose attack and defense instead of His Love, that would fill my mind with visions of bloodshed, betrayal, injustice, and death in place of His Peace and Joy. 

Jesus tells us to call upon Him to find the peace of God.  We call upon God today as we align our will with His.  Today we join in prayer and unity from all over the world to welcome the quiet bliss and tranquility that calms our minds, heals our spirits, and loosens the bands of time. 

Let us find our Peace O Father!

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 230. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part II:1 WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

Lesson 229 Love, Which Created Me, is What I Am.

1. I seek my own Identity, and find It in these words: “Love Which created me, is what I am.”  Now need I seek no more.  Love has prevailed.  So still It waited for my coming home, that I will turn away no longer from the holy face of Christ.  And what I look upon attests the truth of the Identity I sought to lose, but Which my Father has kept safe for me.
2. Father, my thanks to You for what I am; for keeping my Identity untouched and sinless, in the midst of all the thoughts of sin my foolish mind made up.  And thanks to You for saving me from them.  Amen.[1]

Meditation for Lesson 229

Jesus reminds us today that love prevails.  Through every way in which the ego would have its way with us, each thrust of pain, of disappointment, of discomfort, and unpleasantness, through all the hard lessons we must learn in separation, love prevails.  Our Identity is unscathed by all the lies, the torment, the false promises, and betrayals that this realm has prepared for us.  Our Identity, which we sought to lose when we thought to separate from our Creator, remains love in a realm that attempt to exchange love for high adventure, the thrill of independence, the cavernous enticement of lust, power, and specialness, and the arrogance of doing it our own way. 

But we were created by the unchanging God to be constant as the One who made us.  No matter what we dreamed of doing with our holy Sonship, it remained unchanged.  We are the Love, Which created us, Jesus asserts.  You can turn away from it as long as you want, but this fact will never change.  We cannot escape our Identity in Christ, we cannot escape our holiness, our truth, the fact that no matter what we dreamed up to separate ourselves from Him, we will ever remain as Love created us.

Today take every opportunity to let the words of our lesson take root in your consciousness.  No matter how unloving you may feel toward others, no matter how much better you think the world would be if there were certain groups of people who were not getting in your way to make it so, no matter how many grudges, resentments, and feelings of ill regard you may feel you have every right to feel toward those who abused you, you are created by Love and that is what you are.  Love is waiting for you to come home; Love is waiting for you to wake up from the self you made in ego-land and come home to this everlasting truth.

Daily as we set aside time to seek God, as we allow the truth of our lessons to inform us of our reality in Christ, as we begin to develop the forbearance and spiritual rigor required for this process, the holy face of Christ becomes apparent in our mind and informs our every decision, our every thought, our every move.  As tedious as this may sound to the uninitiated, even getting one glimpse of our true Identity in Christ, our holiness, our wholeness, the peace, love, joy, and sense of ultimate reality is all it takes to make the world of lies, special relationships, sin, sorrow, and suffering commence to melt away.   

No matter where we are today, no matter who the world says we are, no matter if people love us or hate us, if we live in a palace or if we live behind bars, no matter the color of our skin, our religious or cultural background,  if we have a penis or a vagina or perhaps both or neither, we will no longer allow our bodies, the opinion of others, or the world tell us who we are.  We will not let the history of “our people” define us.  We will not let our privileges, or our disadvantages define us.  We will not align our identities with political parties or charitable organizations.  For now we know.  Love created us and that is what we are.  We are Love.

In our quiet time of meditation and devotion pray this prayer in your own words, from your own unique experience:

Dear Father, Thank You for keeping my Identity one of Love no matter the mistakes I make, the lies I believe, or how my family, friends, and affiliates may characterize me.  Thank You for seeing past what the world makes me out to be – a body, an old woman, white, an American, a Protestant, privileged in some areas, disadvantaged in others.  Thank You for not defining me by the scars I have collected in the world, the defenses I have built, the defiance I have exhibited toward Your Love and my reality in You.  Thank you for delivering my mind from a past full of abuse, mistrust, grudges, resentments, memories of hostility, opponents, meanness, and stupidity.  Thank You, Dear Father, for making me in Love, for Love and to be Love, for delivering me from all things that would vie to take the place of who and what I am in You. 

In the name of Jesus, with Whom I am one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 229. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part II:1 WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

Lesson 228 God Has Condemned Me Not.  No More Do I.

1. My Father knows my holiness.  Shall I deny His knowledge, and believe in what His knowledge makes impossible?  Shall I accept as true what He proclaims as false?  Or shall I take His Word for what I am, since He is my Creator, and the One Who knows the true condition of His Son?
2. Father, I was mistaken in myself, because I failed to realize the Source from Which I came.  I have not left that Source to enter in a body and to die.  My holiness remains a part of me, as I am part of You.  And my mistakes about myself are dreams.  I let them go today.  And I stand ready to receive Your Word alone for what I really am.[1]

Today’s Meditation

It takes a lot of courage to accept our holiness in God.  When we think of ourselves as a body we are at the mercy of our hunger, our drives for sex, for power, for love and belonging.  We love the rush of adrenalin that surges through our brains when we are excited.  We love the sense of power and control we experience when we learn how to manipulate people and events to suit our own purposes.  Our unfulfilled needs and abuses lead us through strange and dark corridors, we develop addictions, perversions, and a warped sense of right and wrong.  At the very least, we are taught to fear God instead of love Him.  We are taught that God is out to punish us instead of waking us up to bring us home.  We are taught guilt and shame, sacrifice and bloodshed rather than accepting our true identity as God’s beloved Son. 

Today we accept our holiness with valor, quiet happiness and delight.  We know now who and what we are and who and what we are not.  We realize our mistakes.  We accept that all those mistakes are part of a dream of being separate from God, of being who and what we made instead of who and what God made.  Today we look at our mistakes and let them go.  We no longer want to be anybody but whom God created.  We no longer want to confuse our bodies with who and what we really are.  We remember the God in us today.  We take His Words and make them our own. 

Remind yourself often throughout the day that God is holy and what He creates is like Him.  A holy God makes holy creations.  Accept your holiness and do not let it frighten you.  Holiness is real; unholiness is not.  Holiness is forever; unholiness exists in a realm of time that passes away and is no more.  No matter who you are or what you have done in the flesh will change who and what you are in the eyes of God.  The mistakes we make in the flesh, no matter how seemingly trivial or vile have no lasting value.  When we bring them to the light, learn all we can from them, confess and give them to God, they melt away and are remembered no more. 

When we are plagued by guilt and shame, sorrow and sadness, we must stand strong and remind ourselves of who we are in Christ.  We are one with Him as God’s Beloved Son.  Ask the Lord to reveal to you what He wants you to do with the guilt and shame, the sorrow and sadness.  Perhaps He will lead you to reach out to someone you have hurt in the past to express a sincere apology. 

Several years ago, Holy Spirit led me to ask forgiveness from my first husband for not being kind, for being emotionally and physically abusive, for playing mean tricks on him, for blaming him for things that I was guilty of myself.  So many people told me not to apologize to him – they felt as if his sins had so outweighed my own that he deserved all the ways I had devised to get even with him.  They thought that to apologize to him would be encouraging him to see my faults while not acknowledging his own.  It was his third wife who picked up the phone when I called.  Even she did her best to talk me out of apologizing to him.  She told me several things about him that convinced me that I must have been wrong – surely Holy Spirit would never have me apologize to such a man.

Sadly, I followed her advice rather than obeyed the leading of Holy Spirit.  A few years later, Kenneth died a painful, lonely, premature death leaving a wake of hurt and pain and bitterness behind him.  I will never know how a simple apology for my own shortcomings and failings may have led him to surrender his own.  All I know is that I allowed others to convince me not to go with God’s Will and therefore I did not accept my own holiness. 

Let us continue in our daily practices to align our wills with God’s Will.  We will make mistakes, but we will not let them discourage us or tempt us to give up our return to God.  Our mistakes do not define us, they do not hold us back, they do not have any real substance, they only last as long as we need them to learn the lessons we must learn.  Today we know that God does not condemn us for any mistakes we make in the dream of separation.  So we will not condemn ourselves either.  Just as we are to forgive others, we forgive ourselves for we know Who made us as our God, our Father, our King.

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 228. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part II:1 WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

Lesson 227 This Is My Holy Instant of Release

1. Father, it is today that I am free, because my will is Yours.  I thought to make another will.  Yet nothing that I thought apart from You exists.  And I am free because I was mistaken and did not affect my own reality at all by my illusions.  Now I give them up, and lay them down before the feet of truth, to be removed forever from my mind.  This is my holy instant of release.  Father, I know my will is one with Yours.
2. And so today we find our glad return to Heaven, which we never really left.  The Son of God this day lays down his dreams.  The Son of God this day comes home again, released from sin and clad in holiness, with his right mind restored to him at last.[1]

Meditation for Today

In today’s lesson Jesus leads us in a prayer of surrendering the self we made in exchange for our real Self in God.  Until we realize that an alien will has made us at animosity toward God, we are trapped in a state of nothingness.  It looks real, it tastes real, it seems real, but it is death and decay.  Nothing apart from God lasts forever, and until we exchange our temporality for eternity, we are trapped in a state of illusion, a mass enchantment, a dream of separation, sorrow, and uncertainty. 

Jesus tells us to pray this prayer of release as we put the self that we made before God and accept His Will, our true Will, our true Self in Him.  This is the way of return to His Kingdom.  We surrender all the trinkets of time for the treasures of eternity.  We recognize the difference between what has value and what is valueless.  We exchange a state of sin and shame for wholeness and well-being.  We exchange the wrong mind of the ego for the right mind of Christ. 

Join with me in faith as we free our minds and join our wills with God’s.  As we continue our practice, aligning our will with God’s Will, surrendering the final remnants of the false and fickle ego that would still cling to our minds, we are liberated.  Ask God to reveal the meaning of this lesson to you.  Find your still and quiet place and meditate upon the words and sentences.  With sincerity and no pretentions pray the prayer of release found at the beginning of this lesson.  Our spiritual eyes can be opened in the dream and we can awaken others. 

Let this be our holy instant of release!

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 227. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part II:1 WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

Lesson 225 God is My Father, and His Son Loves Him.

1. Father, I must return Your Love for me, for giving and receiving are the same, and You have given all Your Love to me.  I must return it, for I want it mine in full awareness, blazing in my mind and keeping it within its kindly light, inviolate, beloved, with fear behind and only peace ahead.  How still the way Your loving Son is led along to You!
2. Brother, we find that stillness now.  The way is open.  Now we follow it in peace together.  You have reached your hand to me, and I will never leave you.  We are one, and it is but this oneness that we seek, as we accomplish these few final steps which end a journey that was not begun. [1]

Notes and Personal Application:  We love God because He first loved us.  We were made in love and by love and for love.  Is it any wonder that we suffer so much in a world that talks about love, sings about love, makes so much of love, and yet has no idea what it really is? 

Jesus teaches us that giving and receiving are the same.  It does not seem that way in our world.  If we text someone and they do not respond to our text, we feel as if we gave something and did not receive anything back.  It feels like a threat or at the very least a sadness, a disappointment.  No response is a clear message that says – I do not care about you enough to respond to your effort at communication.  If it happens only once, if it happens only once in a great while, we are willing to overlook it – technology fails us, people get busy and forget, perhaps our message got erased or lost in the flush of others.  Otherwise this seemingly slight discourtesy can cause trouble in even solid relationships. 

In God’s Kingdom the only way to receive what is already yours is to give.  In God’s Kingdom it is impossible to receive without first giving; it is impossible to give without first receiving.  It is natural, it is simultaneous, spontaneous, and certain.  When God gives us His Love, He knows that we can do nothing but give it back – it is a continual virtuous cycle of giving to receive, receiving to give.  As long as we live in a realm of separation, our minds are uneasy waiting to receive before we can give, waiting to see who we can trust to play fair, to repay what they receive. Here in time the love of God is experienced as alien to our natures and our wills can resist loving Him in return.  When we begin to lay down our defenses, we see how worthless our efforts to seek anything but God, because we recognize the value of His great love and devotion to us.  We recognize who we really are in relation to Him and to each other.  We can do nothing but love Him. 

How do we love God?  We love Him by seeking Him.  We love Him by stilling our minds and hearts and asking Him to talk to us, to lead us back to Him, to return our minds and hearts to His Kingdom where we are one now and forever with Him as His Son.  Jesus assures us in this lesson that the way to God is open and that we follow the way hand-in-hand with Him.  We are delivered from the enchantment of separation, illusion, and despair.  Today let His peace quiet your mind and calm your spirit.  Today we walk with Jesus on the path to our reality in God. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 225. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ www.eckiefriar.com

Part II:1 WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

Lesson 224 God is Father, and He loves His Son.

1. My true identity is so secure, so lofty, sinless, glorious and great, wholly beneficent and free from guilt, that Heaven looks to It to give it light.  It lights the world as well.  It is the gift my Father gave to me; the one as well I give the world.  There is no gift but This that can be either given or received.  This is reality, and only This.  This is illusion’s end.  It is the truth.
2. My Name, O Father, still is known to You.  I have forgotten it, and do not know where I am going, who I am, or what it is I do.  Remind me, Father, now, for I am weary of the world I see.  Reveal what You would have me see instead.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  Today is the anniversary of my earthly father’s death.  Although it has been 61 years ago, and I was a girl of ten at the time – I will never forget my dad.  He was everything a little girl dreams of in a dad – kind, smart, funny, and fun-loving – I never heard him say a curse word, grumble about how hard he had to work, or show my mother anything but love, adoration, and appreciation.  He was the kind of man who cried when his Brittany Spaniel died.  He loved the ocean.  He liked Sunday drives and taking his family out for dinner after church.  He read the funnies to me at night while mom prepared supper.  He taught me good manners and insisted that I use them.  He loved a good story and always had a stack of books next to his bed and favorite chair. 

My earthly father gave me his DNA, he gave me his name, he gave me sustenance, love, and provided as safe and happy home for me as he was able.  Because of this, it is not difficult for me to accept our heavenly Father’s love.  For others who have suffered abuse, inappropriate sexual touches and incest, witnessed or been a victim of domestic violence at the hands of their earthly fathers, it can be a real challenge to accept God’s Love.  The other night at our meeting, Linda shared the story of how she has finally be able to know the love of God in spite of what she suffered growing up at the hands of her own father.

The fact that she shared her story set my own heart free at last.  For I had kept her secrets for her when we were little kids.  I held them in my heart and never told anyone, never went for help for her, had no way to know how to make what she was going through stop.  She came over to stay at our house when things got too rough – thankfully, my parents were the kind of people who loved having kids around, who did not mind an extra mouth to feed, who always made room for one more. 

I had known the role that Linda played in my life as a child but I had always felt as if I had failed her – there is a sense of guilt and shame that comes with helplessness, with keeping secrets, with knowing that something wrong is taking place and not knowing how to make it stop.  Harking back to last year’s post, in Chapter One, Jesus tells Helen that a miracle is the maximal service one can render to another. It is a way of loving another as yourself.  It is recognizing your own and another’s worth simultaneously.  I knew that Linda had done that for me throughout our troubled childhoods, but I had always believed that I had failed her.  And yet tonight when she shared her story and it opened up the hearts and minds of others in the room, we both recognized that I had understood her worth and that I did what I was supposed to do at the time.  I held her hand.  I loved her.  I gave her a safe place.  I was a little girl and I was giving her my best. 

No matter if we have been blessed with a loving father or a wounded father here on earth, we will experience the unreality of the world and the inability of our fathers to protect us from a world that is designed to teach us cruelty, subterfuge, and death.  We will come to realize that there has to be a better way and we will seek for it – first in the better ways that the world offers and then, weary of the inconstancy and false promises of the world, we will seek for the better way and return to our Heavenly Father to find our truth in Him.   

God is our Father and He loves us as His Son.  Be blessed by this thought and turn to it often today, cleansing your mind of all that would try to define you by your body, by your mistakes, by your gender, family, country, culture, class.  God is our Father and He loves us as His Son. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 224. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part II:1 WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

Lesson 223 God is my life.  I have no life but His.

1. I was mistaken when I thought I lived apart from God, a separate entity that moved in isolation, unattached, and housed within a body.  Now I know my life is God’s.  I have no other home, and I do not exist apart from Him.  He has no Thoughts that are not part of me, and I have none but those which are of Him.
2. Our Father let us see the face of Christ instead of our mistakes.  For we who are Your holy Son are sinless.  We would look upon our sinlessness, for guilt proclaims that we are not Your Son.  And we would not forget You longer.  We are lonely here, and long for Heaven, where we are at home.  Today we would return.  Our Names is Yours, and we acknowledge that we are Your Son.[1]

Notes and Personal Application: Today while I was filling my gas tank with fuel a beautiful little boy peeked around the other side of the gas pump, looked up into my eyes and smiled. I smiled back, and we did not stop.  Even after his father took him by the hand and led him into the convenience store, he twisted his head around and kept smiling at me.  It was a very precious encounter, innocent and pure, expressing friendly curiosity and warmth between a gray-haired grandmother and a little brown-eyed boy with a cute afro.  Yet I was well aware that we live in a world where suspicions and fears could have given his father a sense of alarm.  This is what we call life here in this realm – a place where little children must be warned against smiling at strangers, even harmless looking matronly types like me! 

But this is not our life, and this is not our home.  We live with God.  We do not live apart from Him in a world of misgivings, unfulfilled yearnings, and fear.  We live where we can smile openly and for as long as we want at all living things without worries and concerns.  Our minds are free of thoughts of sin.  We are innocent, tender, and pure without intentions of harm or worries of ill will.  Here the face of Christ takes the place of the mistakes we made toward each other.  Here we are one with Christ, and we stand with Him as God’s Son, whole and holy. 

Here on earth we long for our heavenly home where we belong.  There we are not separated from one another and uncertain of one another’s motives and secret intentions.  In God we hold no grudges or selfish conceits.  In God we have Everything – leaving our human form behind to embrace our beautiful Oneness in Christ, we have no concerns about poverty and disadvantage, race and culture, lust and perversion, limited resources and the struggle to survive.  Today in the quiet and still time we give to God, we return to this place.  We remind ourselves; we are not a body, we are free.  We are still as God created us.  God is our life.  We have no life but His. 

It is in this thought we linger – taking as much time as it takes to let this prayer, this meditation, this lesson take root in our minds and release us from our bondage to the ego and the external world.  When we begin to experience our life in God, our hearts are filled with joy and happiness.  We can smile upon all of Creation as all of Creation smiles upon us.

Let us keep our minds and hearts a place of warm welcome to today’s idea.  We do not have to earn God’s Love.  We are not unworthy of God’s love because of our sins, our laziness, our lack of commitment or drive.  We are made holy and whole simply by seeking Him, inviting Him to take our darkness and fill us with His Light. There is nothing we can do or fail to do that would earn God’s Love for us.  Our will and God’s Will have become one.  We are no longer lonely or full of despair.  He is our life!  We have no life but His. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 223. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).  p.403.

Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part II:1 WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

Lesson 222 God is with me.  I live and move in Him.

1. God is with me.  He is my Source of life, the life within, the air I breathe, the food by which I am sustained, the water which renews and cleanses me.  He is my home, wherein I live and move; the Spirit Which directs my actions, offers me Its Thoughts, and guarantees my safety from all pain.  He covers me with kindness and care, and holds in love the Son He shines upon, who also shines on Him.  How still is he who knows the truth of what He speaks today!
2. Father, we have no words except Your Name upon our lips and in our minds, as we come quietly into Your Presence now, and ask to rest with You in peace a while.[1]

Notes and Personal Application: When we begin to perceive our world through the eyes of Christ, we realize that God is with us, that we live and enjoy our being in Him.  No longer are we concerned about the things that the world is concerned about – our water, our air, our food, our home, our thoughts and attitudes – everything that we thought was separate from God, has now become one with Him. 

Now that we are in Part II of our Course lessons for this year, we come in quietness and stillness to our lessons.  We clear the inner altar of our minds of all that would distract us, and we invite our Father to visit with us.  We call to Him.  We read our lesson in this quietness.  We linger over the words and let the meaning of the sentences sit upon the still water of our mind.  We sit in the stillness without words and immerse ourselves in the presence of God, knowing that He is Everything.

Do not forget that our theme in section one of Part II of our lessons is “What is forgiveness?”  Forgiveness is simply sitting still and quietly doing nothing.  We do not seek out the guilty culprit.  We do not seek to punish or to take vengeance.  We let our human desire to give someone a good taste of their own medicine sit there in the quietness and stillness of God with us and melt away in the peace that comes with forgiveness.  It is a lovely and loving experience.  We remove ourselves from that which would hurt us, get us all worked up, turn us inside out with pain and remorse and wrench our guts with sorrow.  We let it go.  We look at it.  We wait upon the Lord.  We let heal that which never occurred in God’s Kingdom and only seemed to occur here in the serfdom of separation. 

When we know God; when we take the time to get to know God within us; when we live and move in Him, we are guaranteed all safety from pain. We are assured of everlasting kindness and care.  The Light of His Love shines upon us forever. 

Ask the Lord to open your mind to this teaching today.  Bring all your worries, cares, fears, and concerns to Him and ask Him to shine His truth upon them.  Sit still in His Presence and let His peace come to commune with you in the secret garden of your mind.  Ask Him to fill your mind with His fruits, give no thought, time, or energy to the weeds that would come in to crowd out His tender love, joy, and peace.  We can think of our devotional practice as entering that secret garden.  In that secret place where we abide with Him no evil can befall us, no plague can touch us, all weapons formed against us will simply melt away. 

In Part II’s introduction, Jesus tells us that we had a wish to go a separate way from God.  We made a God who was angry, vengeful, full of wrath and jealousy.  We made God out to be a deity who loved the smell of roasting flesh and desired sacrifices of blood.  We believed that our precious Father would burn us forever with the flames of hell for our sins, humiliate us, and felt loved only when we suffered.  We said that He played favorites, that He set creation against itself, that He would move heaven and earth to take his revenge upon us.  Then we taught ourselves and others that these insane ideas we held about Him were the truth. 

But now we know better because the memory of His Love shines upon our minds.  He has never forgotten us.  He has not forsaken us.  He abides in us.  He gives us life and love and laughter. 

Today let everything that disheartens us fall away as we remember God is with us.  We live and move in Him, in this world and in His.     

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 222.  Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 402.

Audio credit: The Friar Patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part II.1 What is Forgiveness?

Lesson 221

Peace to my mind.  Let all my thoughts be still.

1. Father, I come to you today to seek the peace that You alone can give.  I come in silence.  In the quiet of my heart, the deep recesses of my mind, I wait and listen for Your Voice.  My Father speak to me today.  I come to hear Your Voice in silence and in certainty and love, sure You will hear my call and answer me.
2. Now do we wait in quiet.  God is here because we wait together.  I am sure that He will speak to you, and you will hear.  Accept my confidence, for it is yours.  Our minds are joined.  We wait with one intent, to hear our Father’s answer to our call, to let our thoughts be still and find His peace, to hear Him speak to us of what we are, and to reveal Himself unto His Son.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  In yesterday’s devotional discussion, James and I talked about how challenging it is to accept that we are not bodies in a world in which just about everything we do is for our body and the bodies of others.  We also discussed how the Course has given us both much inner peace and a sense of certainty of God’s love and devotion toward us, how we have come to understand the role of Jesus in salvation as a role model for forgiveness, as a brother who never forgot His Sonship with God and came to earth to experience humanity to reclaim us who have split from the Kingdom in a simulated reality caught in time. 

Still, there are days that we both have a keen concern that while we practice in faith, faith does not necessarily make it true.  And no matter how much we think something is true, it does not make it true in the sense of making us or anybody else an authority on God, on Jesus, or Holy Spirit.  We know only that the Course rings true in our hearts and minds when we put it into a daily practice and that on a high spiritual plane, it makes sense.  For the first time in our lives, we found a practice that we can do every day no matter how much it challenges us, no matter how much we may resist it, that when we do it, it begins to make perfect sense and gives us a kinder, calmer, and more forgiving approach toward God and all of Creation. 

While practicing the Course and doing a lesson each day has changed our minds and attitudes in a positive way, it really has not changed the outward appearance or behaviors in ourselves and it has not necessarily solved our problems.  While it is love and peace and joy in the relationships we keep in our lives, we have had to let a lot of other relationships go.  The only thing that has changed is that we have practiced forgiveness with ourselves and with others.  We are both loners and get deeply and perhaps even obsessively involved in our projects, and that has not changed.  While my addiction to darkness is not the driving force in my life that it once was, I still am drawn at times to the meaningless tales of death, vengeance, and injustice that fill our Netflix and Prime Video offerings.  And there are days I get a little bored and find our daily devotional irksome and farfetched. 

Here then is what keeps drawing me back to the Course.  This is what keeps me loving Jesus and opening my mind to the Reality of God.  God gives me peace that goes past my body, my understanding, and all my experiences.  When I quiet my mind and sit still before Him, when I ask Him for peace, I am given peace and it does not go away – ever.  

If you were a constant onlooker in my life, it may appear to you that the peace of God leaves me.  I get up awful cranky in the morning at times.  The other day I growled at Zachary and told him not to even say my name or look in my direction until I had my first cup of coffee.  I scowled at James and curled up in a ball on the corner of the sofa and it was not until the caffeine hit my system that I could look at either one of them with affection or appreciation.  There are times I will think of someone from my past and remember how much I simply do not like them.  It does not mean I have not forgiven them, mind you.  It just means that I do not like the role they played as a human.  I do not like the way they borrowed money off of me and never paid me back.  I do not appreciate the lies they told me.  I do not enjoy the fact that they took credit for my work.  It was not nice.  It did not seem to serve me well at the time, but oh the lessons I learned from what they did.  There is nothing like experiential learning, and I remember to thank God for what they taught, to bless them for being my teacher, to absolve them in my mind from all that would otherwise protect projection and crush reality in my mind.   

No matter how much I struggle with my humanity there is that Self within that knows that I am loved and cherished by God.  I know that there is nothing I can do in my body that will make God love me more or less.  His Love is constant and forever and is not dependent upon my actions – it is dependent upon who and what I am. 

Peace be to your mind today.  Bring your questions and concerns about the Course to Him.  Jesus promises that when we ask for truth we will not be given lies.  When we ask for Holy Spirit, we will not be given an unholy guide.  Let all your thoughts be still as you come before our Father and seek the peace that can only come from Him.

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 221. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Part Two: What Is The World?

Lesson 241 This Holy Instant is Salvation Come.

1. What joy there is today!  It is a time of special celebration.  For today holds out the instant to the darkened world where its release is set.  The day has come when sorrows pass away, and pain is gone.  The glory of salvation dawns today upon a world set free.  This is the time of hope for countless millions.  They will be united now, as you forgive them all.  For I will be forgiven by you today. 
2. We have forgiven one another now, and so we come at last to You again.  Father, Your Son, who never left, returns to Heaven and his home.  How glad are we to have our sanity restored to us, and to remember that we all are one.[1]

Today’s Meditation

When we forgive the world, we are forgiving Christ, for all of us belong to Him and are one with Him.  Jesus tells us today that all sorrows are washed away, and pain and suffering are gone for good as we forgive one another and come at last to God.  All the splintered, separated, shards of Creation who had thought to build a kingdom on a lie have given up the foolish dream and surrendered to the simple, everlasting Truth of God.  The Sons of God who chose to become the sons of man stand together now.  War is no more.  We put down our weapons which attacked the Sonship and we take up the glory of salvation, that which sets us free, the forgiveness that Christ came to teach and to ask of us. 

No longer do we blame one another for the problems in the world.  No longer do we attack, build defenses, or devise weapons of mass destruction.  We do not build walls or fortresses; we do not send our sons and our daughters off to the armed services.  We have no worries about safety, security, or the wrath of God.  In forgiveness we come to our Father again, united, forgiven and forgiving, we come Home.  The insane calls of the lost world no longer hold any attraction to us.  No longer do we wade in the conflicted sea.  No longer do our feet falter.  No longer can the waves and the storms fill us with fear.  We are one with Christ who came to give life to all who were doomed to die. 

Today we stand with Christ.  We shake off the floppy, dicey, mischances of our egos.  We ignore the calls to take up arms, to put our trust in feeble defenses, to kill, to maim, to terrorize.  We stand with Christ.  We trust in God.  Our sanity is restored to us.  We are One in Him. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 241. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, (1992).

Audio credit: the friar patch @ http://www.eckiefriar.com