Lesson 299 Eternal Holiness Abides In Me

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II.  SECTION 8.  What is the Real World?

Lesson 299.  Eternal Holiness Abides in Me

  1. My holiness is far beyond my own ability to understand or know.  Yet God, my Father, Who created it, acknowledges my holiness as His.  Our Will, together, understands it.  And our Will, together, knows that it is so.
  2. Father, my holiness is not of me.  It is not mine to be destroyed by sin.  It is not mine to suffer from attack.  Illusions can obscure it, but can not put out its radiance, nor dim its light.  It stands forever perfect and untouched.  In it are all things healed, for they remain as You created them.  And I can know my holiness.  For Holiness Itself created me, and I can know my Source because it is Your Will that You be known.[1]
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A word to the wise:  When we experience the eternal holiness that abides in us, recognize immediately that there is no fault at all in our inability to understand it or know much about it.  It is perfectly fine to just acknowledge quietly without broadcasting it to others who must share our human journey. 

It is there simply because God is there.  We each have a holy spirit because God created our spirits whole and holy.  It is His Will for our spirit to be holy, and it is our will for our spirits to be holy.  There it is inside of us; we know that it is so.  However, that does not mean that everybody else knows that this is so.  It is not the nature of this world to grant that what we carry around on the inside, invisible to everybody else, is our reality.  Especially since there is little to no difference in our outward appearance, manners, or prior experiences to back up our claims of godliness!

The bible is full of the most beautiful stories, myths, and parables.  Last year this time, we studied the story of Joseph from the book of Genesis. While Joseph played a critical role in staving off starvation in Egypt, its neighboring countries and people, including his own family, it is important to note that he could have saved himself a lot of hardship by not showing off.  His elevated opinion of himself had been going on since the boy was a little guy, I postulated.  Born in Jacob’s older years, he probably played games with and showered attention upon Joseph in a way that he never had the time or the inclination to do with the older sons. Can we presume that none of the other sons sported fancy threads and swaggered about, spouting forth their dreams, and playing snitch for dad? The brothers’ dark jealousy, envy, and murderous rage more than likely stemmed from fear that Joseph would inherit all of their father’s riches, after years of putting in their own unrecognized labor. While Joseph naturally enjoyed being the apple of his father’s eyes, did he necessarily have to run and tell dad when the sons of the lesser wives and concubines got into a little mischief?   Was it any wonder they plotted to kill him when the young braggart indicated that they were all going to bow down to him one day?  No matter that one day Joseph would save their all their lives and livelihoods; no question that he was destined by God to be an important man that would save Israel, it may have happened in much less torturous paths for all involved if he only could have kept his inner greatness to himself!

Growing up, I was intimately acquainted with someone who could not keep their holiness where it belonged.  Holiness abode in them, placed by God, but it was obscured by boasting and postulating.  In ego mind – holiness was an outward posture that had to do with covering up the flesh, wearing outdated fashions and hair styles to prove to God and everyone else that one had separated themselves from the world. Holiness was about not smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol.  It was about not going to dancehalls, not wearing two-piece bathing suits, and not watching television.  It was about not turning to doctors and not taking medicine.  It was about not wearing lipstick or nail polish.  You get the picture.  And woe to those who did such things – because they were unholy and would not only forfeit ever seeing God; they would burn in hell, forever. Little wonder when others took offense at attacks on their lack of holiness over such matters.  Little wonder that all this outward posturing led to isolation, a sense of despair, and a cultish belief in being the one and only human left on earth who really lived to please God. 

We can learn a valuable lesson from this teacher – some things are better left between you and God.  If we are showing off our eternal holiness in the physical realm, quoting scripture at people, or reminding others of some great work that God has called us to do – we are going to have a tough row to hoe.  If we boast about our godliness on social media or use God and His Son as a weapon to remind others of our holiness versus others’ lack, we will not lose our holiness – since it is invulnerable, but we will end up dejected, and feel as if we did. 

Let it be known that holiness does not make us special.  In the story of Joseph, he had an important role to play in the mortal salvation of his family.  While we are perfectly required to own one’s function, there is certainly no excuse for boasting about it or lifting ourselves up in spiritual pride.  Our holiness is not of our own making.  We can be very thankful for this, for it cannot be destroyed or suffer attack.  However, our insipid boasting, our strutting pride, our misunderstanding of and striving for holiness can certainly make it appear like anything but. 

No worries!  Jesus tells us today, no matter what we do in the flesh, we simply cannot put out the radiance of our holiness.  In the real world, just beyond our vision here in ego world, our holiness stands forever perfect and unmarred by the mistakes we make of it and the ridiculous posturing we may go through in our dim understanding of God’s eternal gift. 

In our holiness are we healed, for in our holiness do we remain as we were created.  The real world can only be seen and experienced through healed perception.  When we recognize our holiness as our true and holy Selves, we will know Creation as it was created by God, we will be reunited with Him, we will know Him – because it is His Will.[2]

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 299. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 448.

[2] Excerpts and inspiration from 10-26-2019 blog post Lesson 299 – Eternal holiness abides in me. Used by permission from the friar patch at http://www.eckiefriar.com.

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

Lesson 298. I Love You, Father, And I Love Your Son

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II.  SECTION 8.  What is the Real World?

Lesson 298.  I Love You, Father, and I Love Your Son

  1. My gratitude permits my love to be accepted without fear.  And thus am I restored to my Reality at last.  All that intruded on my holy sight forgiveness takes away.  And I draw near the end of senseless journeys, mad careers, and artificial values.  I accept instead what God establishes as mine, sure that in that alone I will be saved; sure that I go through fear to meet my Love.
  2. Father, I come to You today, because I would not follow any way but Yours.  You are beside me.  Certain is Your way.  And I am grateful for Your holy gifts of certain sanctuary, and escape from everything that would obscure my love for God my Father and His holy Son.[1]
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King David begins his beloved Psalm 23:  The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…The words to this psalm have always filled me with a sense of peace, gratitude, and well-being.  You are in charge, Lord.  I have no worries and cares.  In today’s lesson, Jesus gives us the peace that surpasses all ego understanding by teaching us the same message: I love You, Father, and… I love Your Son.  I am at rest.  The stress is gone.  My love for God and for His Son establishes – without a trace of concern – His love for me.  I have no need to earn His love, to fear that it will be used against me, that He will withhold knowledge, goodness, or understanding from me in an attempt to keep me in ignorance and as an inferior being.   

Last year when I meditated upon this lesson, Holy Spirit showed me that when we come to know God as cherished children who take their parents’ love as their right and privilege, our real Selves are restored to us.  There is no fear!  We no longer believe the lies of the ego’s version of deities with sulky, jealous tempers who pour their wrath upon us, tempt and test us, who thirst for blood and the aroma of sizzling fat and roasting meat.  We asked for the truth, and Holy Spirit set us free from the lies of our traditions, our religions, the false teachings which led to conflict, division, and a dizzying array of rules, rites, and rituals with which to worm our way back into the good graces of a seemingly testy and changeable god.    

All that intruded upon our holy sight forgiveness takes away.  We can say goodbye to the meaningless exercises in madness, trying to make truth come from ancient and varied texts which were clearly not the inspired word of God.  We can free ourselves from its curses, its hellfire and brimstone, its floods and earthquakes, its comets and cupids, its donders and “blitz-thems.”  Forgiveness fades away all the fear our past associated with our Loving Father – the ungodly striving we do in order to win His approval, the fake religions we make to separate us from our brothers, the ridiculous pieces of paper we grant to those who study and practice the lies of that which is not love – Gone! 

Last year I shared how for quite a few years of my past I avowed atheism, or maybe not atheism, but definitely agnosticism.  (I had not quite made up my mind about it.)  I was no longer willing to spend any time seeking God or trying to please and appease a deity that kept me in a state of uncertainty.  The god I had learned about in the bible and in church was not the Creator that appealed to my sense of love, devotion, and unreserved respect.  Streets of gold and gates of pearl did not seem like a good tradeoff for being expected to sing praises to a maker who would blame his creations for their faults.  It hardly seemed fair to burn, forever, in a lake of fire, those who were not amongst the predestined elect.  The scripture, the teachings, the doctrines were a convoluted mess of vague interpretations, illogical dreams, and frightful visions, which led to variance and rivalry on every level.   I was no longer willing to support institutions which taught this view.  I stopped praying.  I stopped reading the bible.  I stopped singing hymns.  And I stopped pretending that I felt otherwise.  However, I could not stop loving God!  I could not stop loving Jesus.  I could not follow a disbeliever’s path, simply because – bottom line, I am His and He is mine. 

Like me, you, too, may have prayed this prayer in your own words and based upon your own experiences:

I cannot find You, Father, in church!  I cannot find You, Father, in the scriptures, letters, and gospels from centuries past.  I cannot find you, God in my relationships or in my profession.  I cannot find You in this doctrine or that.  But here You are inside of me.  Loving me and accepting my love.  Holding nothing against me because there is nothing I could ever do or say or become that would change the fact that I am Yours and You are mine.  I love You Father, and I love Your Son, with whom I am one and with whom all of Creation is one.  I do not know how to stop loving You.  I do not know how to stop loving Your Creation.  And for Your holy gift of escape from all that would decry my love for You and Your Love for me – I am grateful now and forever.  Amen.[2]

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 298. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 447.

[2] Parts of the personal notes and application of this posting have been borrowed from and inspired by Lesson 298 I love you Father and I love Your Son, posted 10-25-2019, at the friar patch @ www.eckiefriar.com. Used by permission.

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

Lesson 297 Forgiveness Is The Only Gift I Give

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II.  SECTION 8.  What is the Real World?

Lesson 297.  Forgiveness Is The Only Gift I Give

  1. Forgiveness is the only gift I give, because it is the only gift I want.  And everything I give I give myself.  This is salvation’s simple formula.  And I, who would be saved, would make it mine, to be the way I live within a world that needs salvation, and that will be saved as I accept Atonement for myself.
  2. Father, how certain are Your ways; how sure their final outcome, and how faithfully is every step in my salvation set already and accomplished by Your grace.  Thanks be to You for Your eternal gifts, and thanks to You for my Identity.[1]
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Last year I found myself growing tired of the lessons on forgiveness.  When forgiveness came up again in Lesson 297, I asked the Lord when we could get past it and was reminded that our lessons are not to entertain us but rather are designed to train our minds to see past our previous programming in lies and to get to the truth of the matter.  In an upside down world which is based upon a shadow of twisted truth, conjecture, and uncertainty, the lessons in forgiveness must be repeated, practiced, and repeated again until our minds have become one with holiness, until we identify completely with Holy Spirit. 

Jesus tells us that forgiveness is the only gift we want, and in order to receive forgiveness we must give it.  No matter what we think we want, all said and done, the only thing we truly yearn for is to be forgiven and to be restored to the Kingdom of God.  This prayer is at the bottom of all our unhappiness, hatred, and projection and it goes something like this:

Forgive us, Father.  We thought we could take God’s Creation and make something else out of it, but we ended up in cycles of death and decay.  We do not like it here.  It cannot be real.  We are done with lies.  Bring us home, O Father. 

One of the keys to understanding our spiritual life is that everything we give, we receive.  On the physical level it simply does not work in the same way.  When I give money, food, clothing, or even my time and effort to you, I have less of it, and you have more.   

But spiritual gifts work on a completely different law that teaches sharing, extension, and oneness.  The only way I get to experience love is to give love.  The only way I get to experience joy is to bestow joy.  The only way I get to know to become innocent is to recognize innocence in others.  When I forgive my friend for the betrayals, thievery, and wrongdoing that broke my heart and filled my mind with sorrow, I experience my own holy innocence.  No matter how good or bad we think we are, we have all lost our way; we have all believed lies; we have all made mistakes and chased happiness where it can never be found.   When we offer forgiveness, we are not saying – “Even though you are bad, I am good – so I will forgive you.” We are saying:

“I no longer hold you accountable.  If you did something wrong, it was not true because only the everlasting Will of God is true.  No matter how true it seems in this realm, it does not define who and what you really are in Christ.  I offer you forgiveness because you and I are one and the same – we are God’s Son.” 

Forgiveness then becomes not a superior being offering a favor to an inferior, but a lovely gift that establishes our unity, our mutuality, our true identity in Christ. 

When we allow our minds to ruminate upon the general lack of goodness in our fellow human beings, we are not only denying their Sonship, but refusing to recognize our holy Self as the Son of God.  Whether the brother I offer forgiveness to accepts it or not, when I give it to him, it is mine!  He cannot snatch it out of my hand and refuse to reciprocate.  He cannot refuse to acknowledge it and toss it aside.  When I recognize him as a Son of God and forgive the ego identity that he demonstrates in this realm, we are both forgiven.  For him to keep forgiveness, he must extend it as well.  For me to keep forgiveness, I must keep offering it to him.  No matter what. 

We live in a world that needs salvation by giving the gift of forgiveness.  We can do all kinds of things thinking we are doing God’s Will.  We can agonize in our hearts and minds because we have not done enough for Him.  We can plead the blood of Jesus over our loved ones.  We can speak in tongues and prophecy over people and do all manner of bold, unquiet things in the name of God.  We can chase after good works, put hundreds of dollars in the collection plate, build churches in third world countries, and literally pour ourselves out for the poor, the hungry, the sick, and dying.  And yet in today’s lesson, Jesus tells us if we want to see the real world, the gift we give, the only gift we give is forgiveness.  If we want to be saved, give forgiveness to all, including ourselves.  No preaching, no striving, no sighing, no crying – we simply come to understand that this is all one mistake with manifold forms, and we forgive it.  “Forgiveness is the only gift I give” – is a guaranteed formula because it is God’s plan of salvation and it is accomplished by His grace. 

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 297. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).  p. 447.

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

Lesson 296 The Holy Spirit Speaks Through Me Today

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II.  SECTION 8.  What is the Real World?

Lesson 296.  The Holy Spirit Speaks Through Me Today

  1. The Holy Spirit needs my voice today that all the world may listen to Your Voice, and hear Your Word through me.  I am resolved to let You speak through me, for I would use no words but Yours, and have no thoughts which are apart from Yours, for only Yours are true.  I would be savior to the world I made.  For having damned it, I would set it free, that I may find escape, and hear the Word Your holy Voice will speak to me today.
  2. We teach today what we would learn, and that alone.  And so our learning goal becomes an unconflicted one, and possible of easy reach and quick accomplishment.  How gladly does the Holy Spirit come to rescue us from hell, when we allow His teaching to persuade the world through us to seek and find the easy path to God.[1]
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In our Wednesday night meeting, we discussed the false humility involved in accepting the ego’s version of our identity and allowing it to burden us on our return to God.  So often we hear our fellow Christians say that they are a nobody, that the ego is the one that talks to them rather than the Holy Spirit, or we unwittingly give the ego the throne of our minds by maintaining, not our Holy Mind of Christ, but that we still, unfortunately, hear its voice instead of God’s.  Perhaps it is fear of spiritual pride and drawing too much attention to ourselves, that results in our wishy-washy, hesitant, and floundering progress as we remain in a state of following but never leading, holding back our natural, God-given Holy Spirit lest we make a mistake, lest we share the wrong voice, lest we lead people astray.  We will let someone else stand in the arena and take the risk.  We will support others who teach and preach the gospel, and then feel disappointed, resentful, and confused when they make a mistake or teach us a questionable doctrine.  We may even use their failure as an excuse to welcome the ego to rule our minds and use our voice.  When we keep our eyes upon another brother to lead us we will always be disappointed and misled.  When we put our preachers and teachers on a pedestal we are abdicating our responsibility to accept the call of God in our lives.  We are in this walk together, as mutual teachers and students. Nobody who remains in this realm is above the need for correction, edification, and learning.  In other words – there are no “masters.”  We and our fellows are one. 

Today in our devotional practice, Jesus reminds us that Holy Spirit needs our voice – not only the preacher’s voice, the rabbi’s, the guru’s, and shaman’s of the world – our individual voice to reach the world in which we influence.  We resolve within ourselves to use no words but the ones that Holy Spirit gives us, to have no thoughts except the ones from Holy Spirit – for these are the only words and thoughts that can be, that are true!  When we commit to our Holy Selves, to the Holy Spirit within each one of us, we are technically removing the false self from the thrones of our minds.  When we become one with Christ through our identity in Holy Spirit, we are no longer followers, worshippers, forever fawning over and praising that which is greater than us – we are part of the Godhood.  We are Sons of God.  We are saviors with Christ.  The Second Coming of Christ takes place within our hearts and minds.  And brother, it is our oneness in Christ which saves Creation.

During our devotional practice today, let us hear the Voice for God within us.  With unwavering faith in the power of God within each one of us, we shut down the clamor of the ego.  We say, “No More,” giving it no place on the throne of our minds. Our thoughts, our words, our deeds, freed of the ego, become conduits of holiness, purity, and innocence.  It is not until we practice the authority that God put within each one of us, that we will gain the experience base we need to know and use the quiet and ultimate power of Holy Spirit over the wiles of the ego in our lives.  One of the brothers shared the example of an athlete, expounding upon how it is only when we use muscles that they become strong.  This serves as an excellent metaphor for not only claiming but using our wisdom, will, and power of election to allow the mighty light of holiness, purity, and innocence to shine through us and draw others to truth. 

It is our privilege to give our voices to Holy Spirit.  Let others hear the joyous gospel that we are free and free indeed.  We are not followers of this doctrine or that particular denomination.  We keep our eyes on Jesus, not any particular TV evangelist or A Course in Miracles guru or any of the cultish fads and trends that would lead us to the desert in a vain adventure in madness. We give our flesh bodies, our eyes, our voices to God as individuals and as a collective.  We accept our holy function.  If we make a mistake, we learn a wonderful lesson, we stand corrected, and we use our mistake to teach others.  This keeps us on the path to return to Him, choosing now and forever our true identity in Him and with all of Creation.   

This is the real world.  The way may seem narrow to our ego-minds, which delights in opposites and cherishes the multitude forms of fear. The way may seem dull without all the melodrama of the ego – the murderous secrets, wittiness, coyness, and cunning that thrills and keeps our minds trapped in dark corridors that lead nowhere.  However, as we gain experience in the real world, we realize that there is simply no place for the ambiguities, conflicts, demands, and specialness that define the world of fear and nothingness.  As we elect our true identity in Christ, our Holy Spirit rescues us from the hellish realm of false humility and shines His Holy Light upon this ridiculous conceit. Today commit to putting away false humility, which keeps us small and smarmy.  Our Holy Spirit speaks through us, persuading the world to uncover the blissful, sinless path that leads us Home.

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 295. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 446.

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

Lesson 295 The Holy Spirit Looks Through Me Today

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II.  SECTION 8.  What is the Real World?

Lesson 295.  The Holy Spirit Looks Through Me Today

  1. Christ asks that He may use my eyes today and thus redeem the world.  He asks this gift that He may offer peace of mind to me and take away all terror and pain.  And as they are removed from me, the dreams that seemed to settle on the world are gone.  Redemption must be one.  As I am saved, the world is saved with me.  For all of us must be redeemed together.  Fear appears in many different forms, but love is one.
  2. My Father, Christ has asked a gift of me, and one I give that it be given me.  Help me to use the eyes of Christ today and thus allow the Holy Spirit’s Love to bless all things which I may look upon, that His forgiving Love may rest on me.[1]
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Today as we come to our holy practice, Jesus teaches us to give Him our eyes.  Our eyes used by the false self will report all manner of alarms.  While the often quoted Buddhist saying offers an equal amount of joy for sorrow, our human eyes are programmed to perceive more like a thousand sorrows for every passing joy.  The world will not be redeemed by perceiving it through eyes designed to see opposites, distinctions, hierarchies, and independence from God.  The world cannot be redeemed through power struggles, taking up arms against our enemies, or competing for limited resources. The world can only be redeemed by giving Christ our eyes and replacing them with His clear vision unclouded by that which is not love. 

When we give the Lord our eyes, we see the world anew.  The shadows that filled us with despair, decay, destruction, and death are gone.  The worries that plagued our minds, the shame and guilt that weighed upon our consciousness, the fear and terror of death and disease – melt away.  As we see the real world that lies just beyond our consciousness of this one, we are renewed in our love and devotion for our Redeemer.  We begin to see how this world cannot be real, that it is only a program designed to keep us hostage in a cycle of death and dying, in a holographic world designed to pit us one against the other, to be consumed by dread for impending death and doom.  When we ask the Lord to take our eyes and use them for Him, our hearts and minds are set free of the ego-program and put on the holy program that leads us back to our eternal Home with Him. 

Today Jesus offers us a basic key to His vision.  We give Him our eyes and we see with His Vision.  And His Vision informs us of the difference between the ego-program based upon fear and His program based upon love.  Fear will come in many forms; love only comes in one. 

My holy brother lived in a different country for awhile and was a bit dismayed at the little to no interest in Christ that many of the citizens exhibited.  Coming from our area of Pennsylvania where even the tiniest villages boast at least one or two denominational churches, the dearth of places to worship gave him consternation.  One day two Witnesses appeared at the door.  While not accepting the publications that they were promoting, he was still full of delight to hear the name of Jesus and to share the message of the oneness of Christ.  You love Jesus and I love Jesus.  This doctrine you are promoting means nothing in the face of our love for Him! 

Jesus is the logo of our love for God, for Jesus, and for the Holy Spirit which is our true identity in Him. We have no need for many forms, for different forms are the symbol of fear.  Love makes us one.  Love is one. 

When we cherish dogmas based upon ancient documents that add to separateness and division rather than unity, when we weaponize our religious texts and use them to project blame and shame and damnation upon our brothers, we are perceiving through the ego’s eyes of fear.  We cannot see the real world for our eyes are clouded by the ego-programming of this one.   When we no longer accept the different forms of religion, we become single in our Love of Jesus Himself.  Jesus makes us one. 

Today we ask the Lord to give us the needed experiences we must have in the real world to convince us that we are on the path to God and not deceiving ourselves in yet another form of fear!  God does not expect us to believe blindly.  We are allowed to question and to ask for proof.  We are not shamed for seeking truth and being wary of its impersonators.  We are not asked to believe in ancient texts that leave us with more questions, uncertainty, and division.  Jesus promises that those who seek truth will find it.  But first we must give Him our eyes.  We must pray:

My eyes are of no use to me. I give them to You, My Lord and Savior.  I give You my eyes, so that I may clearly see the real world – redeemed, saved, and as One in You.

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 295. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 446.

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

Lesson 294 My Body Is A Wholly Neutral Thing

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II.  SECTION 8.  What is the Real World?

Lesson 294.  My Body Is A Wholly Neutral Thing

  1. I am a Son of God.  And can I be another thing as well?  Did God create the mortal and the corruptible?  What use has God’s beloved Son for what must die?  And yet a neutral thing does not see death, for thoughts of fear are not invested there, nor is a mockery of love bestowed upon it.  Its neutrality protects it while it has a use.  And afterwards, without a purpose, it is laid aside.  It is not sick nor old nor hurt.  It is but functionless, unneeded, and cast off.  Let me not see it more than this today; of service for a while and fit to serve, to keep its usefulness while it can serve, and then to be replaced by greater good.
  2. My body, Father, cannot be Your Son.  And what is not created cannot be sinful nor sinless, neither good nor bad.  Let me, then, use this dream to help Your plan that we awaken from all dreams we made.[1]
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Today Jesus asks us to consider if we can be a Son of God and be an aging, decaying, falling apart mortal body as well.  Jesus asks us what use God would have for that which dies, which turns to dust.  Jesus also offers us a concept which sets us free from the vain, illogic of all that would confuse us, lead us astray, and keep us from recognizing our true identity in Him – the body is a neutral thing – it is not full of fear nor does the body mock love.  It simply serves as a useful device in which to learn of separation, to learn of disunity, to learn the hard lessons that send us back to the path toward Home. 

In last year’s post, I was not being fresh when I asked you to imagine God having a penis and testicles, a belly button and vestigial nipples.  In our hearts we know that God does not have an anus or sit on a heavenly toilet to take a poop!  He does not wake up with morning wood.  His stomach does not rumble with hunger; he does not lick his chops over roasted meat or burnt offerings of baby animals.  When we consider how vain and silly we are as humans to make the Divine in our earthly image, we come to understand that we are created in His Image only in our Holy Spirits, our holy Selves.  Our bodies serve as the symbol of our separation from Him, taking our unity and trading it in for individuality, differences, and disunity. 

In today’s lesson, Jesus corrects our misconceptions about the body.  He addresses the false teachings that we have been indoctrinated with, the idolatry that we have engaged in most unwittingly, the mistaken ways in which we have worshipped that which is not of God.  While we live in the body it is neither sinful nor saintly.  It is neutral.  It is used by Holy Spirit to teach us the lessons we learn about being apart from God.  We learn how fragile we are without Him.  We learn how vain and silly, cruel and dangerous we are without Him.  We learn that no matter what we do as separated beings we amount to be a big fat zero without Him.  Our bodies can only be laid aside when we find our way to Him.  There is no more use for a separate body.  It is laid aside.  It is cast off. 

Today we are thankful for our bodies.  They served a purpose in our past; they serve a purpose now.  Our bodies are not sinful nor are we supposed to worship them or identify with them.  Our bodies separate us from Creation; they distinguish us.  Before we find our path to God, our bodies serve our egos; after we find the path to God, our bodies serve our holy Selves.  We will not see them for anything else – we will not grow too attached to them and begrudge the time which will come to let them behind and replace them for the greater good!

In our devotional prayer for today, Jesus asks us to recognize that our body that our bodies cannot be God’s Son.  We are not to hate or despise our bodies and blame them for our shame and sinfulness.  We are not to idolize our bodies and believe that we are going to take them with us to our eternal home.  We use the illusion of bodies in order to awaken from all the dreams of separation in which we engaged. 

Ask God to reveal this truth to you today.  Allow your mind to be freed of the false teachings about the body that has steeped us in confusion about our identity in Christ and our role in this world for centuries.  As we awaken from the stupor of illusion, the real world comes into focus.  There we behold the truth about God and about ourselves.  Happiness floods our being as we are delivered from thoughts of fear and ignorance and accept the love, joy, and peace which are our rightful inheritance as Sons of God.   

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 294. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, (1992).  p. 445.

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

Lesson 293 All Fear Is Past And Only Love Is Here

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II.  SECTION 8.  What is the Real World?

Lesson 293.  All fear is past and only love is here.

  1. All fear is past, because its source is gone, and all its thoughts gone with it.  Love remains the only present state, whose Source is here forever and forever.  Can the world seem bright and clear and safe and welcoming, with all my past mistakes oppressing it, and showing me distorted forms of fear?  Yet in the present love is obvious, and its effects apparent.  All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last.
  2. Father let not Your holy world escape my sight today.  Nor let my ears be deaf to all the hymns of gratitude the world is singing underneath the sounds of fear.  There is a real world which the present holds safe from all past mistakes.  And I would see only this world before my eyes today.[1]
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In today’s lesson Jesus expounds upon the Real World.  All fear is past!  Only love is here.  Many of us who have come to this path have had a past filled with sorrow, shame, and a sense of guilt and reproach.  Our relationships have been rocky.  We did not always do the right thing.  We had opportunities to do good, but we chose to do something else.  In other words, we screwed up.  The paths that led us to God were not always ones of chastity, charity, or conformity.  As sincere and devoted as we are to God now, we often encounter other Christians who are simply unwilling to overlook our unsavory pasts, who hold us accountable, who resent our present happiness and would like to keep us quiet and afraid because our paths to God were strewn with sin and shame.   

In our study groups, our one-on-one meetings, and devotionals, we talk quite openly about our innocence and purity, our sense of liberation from our past, while also acknowledging and taking full responsibility for the choices we made, the experiences we relished, the sorrows we suffered.  We are thankful for our pasts because our pasts brought us to the path to God, while at the same time we are aware that our pasts simply cannot hurt us anymore. 

Today I was blessed with an opportunity to face my past with no sense of shame, guilt, or apology.  Although this particular brother has never found himself pregnant, abandoned, without the skill sets to support himself, let alone the developing fetus within him – he seemed unnaturally keen to project a sense of shame, reproach, and ungodliness upon those of us who, having been in that situation, made the difficult choice to terminate pregnancy.  Years ago, when my own ego had done its best to chastise me, to think of myself as a murderer, a baby-killer, a less than human for the choice that I elected, my Holy Spirit stepped up and showed me how much I meant to God.  I was no more or no less than anybody else!  Holy Spirit assured me that I had made the best decision for me and for everybody involved at the time, and there was no cause for remorse, shame, or guilt. 

How liberating it is to be freed from the judgment of the ego.  How wonderful it is to own one’s past and extend love and forgiveness not only toward one’s past but to anyone who would try to use it for fear and retribution.  It is not our oneness with Christ which poises us for attack, for blame and shame, for projection.  The ego will use anything and anybody it can to keep us from looking upon our own wrongful behavior and keeping us paying our tithes and worshipping its own-made gods hellbent on revenge and vindictiveness.  As long the ego can keep us heaping scorn and spite on the “baby killers,” carrying signs and shouting protests, we can continue to ignore the cries of the refugees, the war-torn, the homeless, the already born! 

We are free from our past when it no longer frightens us or hinders our journey to the Real World.  All the thoughts of guilt and shame, the fear that someone will find out the truth about us, will expose us as the frauds the ego tempts us to consider ourselves to be, are gone.  When all that stuff fades away, Love remains the only present state.  The Source of Love is all we know forever and ever.  No more worries or cares about our past mistakes!  The Real World shines in the reflection of Love’s holy light, and we perceive a world forgiven at last. 

Today ask our Father God to let you see the Real World, to hear the hymns of gratitude that the ego tries to drown out with sounds of fear.  Step into the Real World, the present moment which is safe from all the mistakes of our past.  Get used to a state of love and laughter, where all is bright, clear, and beautiful.  Hold precious and offer the miracle to all that surrounds you because you are one with God and all of Creation.  Have a lovely day!

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 293. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).  p. 445.

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

Lesson 292 A Happy Outcome To All Things Is Sure

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II.  SECTION 8.  What is the Real World?

Lesson 292.  A Happy Outcome To All Things Is Sure

  1. God’s promises make no exceptions.  And He guarantees that only joy can be the final outcome found for everything.  Yet it is up to us when this is reached; how long we let an alien will appear to be opposing His.  And while we think this will is real, we will not find the end He has appointed as the outcome of all problems we perceive, all trials we see, and every situation that we meet.  Yet is the ending certain.  For God’s Will is done in earth and Heaven.  We will seek and we will find according to His Will, which guarantees that our will is done.
  2. We thank you, Father, for Your guarantee of only happy outcomes in the end.  Help us not interfere, and so delay the happy endings You have promised us for every problem that we can perceive; for every trial we think we still must meet.[1]
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During my awakening to the real world, this lesson in particular gave me pause.  Last year when I came to this lesson, I was having a struggle making sense of the resistance that my ego-self was putting up against forgiveness.  I wanted to forgive but unpleasant thoughts about people who mean next to nothing in my daily life, people from the past, people I went to school with kept coming to my mind.  This one had made fun of the secondhand clothes that made up my wardrobe; this one had joined in a stalking incident years ago with a rather creepy neighbor who had developed a crush on me.  I felt small inside when I thought of them and they loomed large.  Engaging in these unwelcome thoughts and not knowing what to do with them, I made them seem real.  I was back in the past, reactivating those painful memories – that futile search for love in all the wrong places; the desire to fit in with people that excluded me, and the ache that accompanies such rejection; the lost and bewildered feeling that I experienced on an almost constant basis in the world of meat and matter. 

It was hard to understand why when I asked Holy Spirit to give me love for these particular people, I was instead reminded of even more hurtful instances – the times a loved one betrayed my trust, a particularly trying friend, a beloved relative who had turned on me with vengeance.  As increasingly more hurtful memories poured into my mind, I wondered why Holy Spirit would allow me to be tormented by them all over again.  I did not want to look at them anymore, I had worked my way through them already.  I had forgiven them; I had asked to be infilled with love for those who had hurt me.  So why was my mind still full of all that hurt, pain, shame, and blame?

Over the course of the next year, the truth that gradually sank into my consciousness provided the answer to what felt like a contradiction in my path to God.  A happy outcome to all things is sure because what happens in ego-world stays in ego-world.  When we identify with Holy Spirit instead of unholy ego, we no longer have anything to forgive except being part of and supporting a mass identity crisis.  As I learned to find my true identity as a Holy Spirit, nothing that happened in my past can hurt me because no longer do I see through the eyes of that which can be hurt. 

Now that I know that all those situations that would tempt me to forget who and what I am in Christ, that would keep me trapped in a go-round of feeling victimized, misunderstood, ashamed, and spiteful, is part of the whole set-up, I can let it all go.  I no longer sit about praying and asking God to give me the Holy Spirit and help me to love other people’s egos. Instead I accept that in reality I am a Holy Spirit and not the ego-self. As a Holy Spirit I cannot be hurt by that which is temporal, a fabrication, and ends in death, because it is already over.  Accepting my identity in Christ, nothing can hurt me unless I give place to the ego in my mind and thoughts.  No longer do I cry out and ask for Holy Spirit to come to me, for now I realize my Holy Spirit has been there all along, waiting for me to accept my truth in Him. 

No longer do I allow the ego to oppose God’s Will in my life.  Those thoughts that would torment me and cause me to falter have no reality.  A happy outcome of all the problems I have ever perceived, all trials I have experienced, and every situation that I have ever met is guaranteed by simply accepting the truth of my Identity in God and the reason for my existence in the world of egos.  Nothing goes to waste – my Tuesday Teacher reminds me often. Every word, kind or unkind; every action, right or wrong; every behavior, positive or negative leads me closer to my goal.  They are learning tools.  They are education experiences.  The more we experience of separation and ego, the deeper our longing for that which leads us Home.  A happy outcome to all things is sure! 

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 291. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).  p. 444.

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

Lesson 291 This Is A Day Of Stillness And Of Peace

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PART II.  SECTION 8.  What is the Real World?

Lesson 291 This Is A Day Of Stillness And Peace

  1. Christ’s vision looks through me today.  His sight shows me all things forgiven and at peace and offers this same vision to the world.  And I accept this vision in its name, both for myself and for the world as well.  What loveliness we look upon today!  What holiness we see surrounding us!  And it is given us to recognize it is a holiness in which we share; it is the Holiness of God Himself.
  2. This day my mind is quiet, to receive the Thoughts You offer me.  And I accept what comes from You, instead of from myself.  I do not know the way to You.  But You are wholly certain.  Father guide Your Son along the quiet path that leads to You.  Let my forgiveness be complete and let the memory of You return to me.[1]
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As we enter into our devotional practice, setting aside time each day to consciously lay aside our false self with all of its calls, demands, and desires and dedicating our time to connect and identify with only our Holy Spirit, we begin to perceive the world differently.  The worries and cares, the grudges and concerns that had once plagued our minds and usurped our peace melts away. 

For me, the letting go of the false self is experienced as the freedom and adventure of getting to know the truly wonderful Being who has been my true and Holy Self all along. Waiting with the certainty of God, my Holy Spirit quietly and gently waited for me to grow tired and bored with my ego identity and return to who and what I really am in Christ. 

Life with my missionary mother has taken me into the byways and highways of the world, just as my life with my husband has taken me pert near all over the world. I have been at home in migrant camps, trailer parks, shabby apartments, slums, and projects just as I have made homes in five-star hotels, mansions, villas, and high-rise condominiums at privileged addresses.  When I look back over the last sixty years of my life, sometimes I am amazed at all the opportunities that this little country gal from Mooresburg Road has been afforded.  And yet getting to know the real me has been one of the most exciting adventures that I have ever experienced.

When I got to know myself in Christ and began to see the world through the eyes of my Holy Self, all things were forgiven, all things became calm and at peace and this is what I began to offer to the world in turn  – to my husband, to my children and grandchildren, to my cats and chickens, to my friends and family members.  My mind became quiet and still – gone were the voices of contempt, of mockery, ridicule, shame, and blame.  My mind began to experience the real world where the calls of this world to become agitated, regretful, angry, and spiteful were gone and all I could see were calls to love and joy and peace. 

What loveliness we look upon today! Jesus exclaims.  What holiness we see surrounding us!  When we get in touch with who and what we really are we begin to see the world as it really is – past the shadow of the ego, past the dark clouds that would obscure its light.  The world and our Holy Spirits, our Holy Selves are one for we share the Holiness of God Himself. 

Today as we set aside time for our holy habit, quiet your mind by shutting down all the calls of the world.  They will still be there after your blessed time with God.  Accept the thoughts which come from your Holy Spirit; shut down the voice of your unholy ego which has been erected in His place. That “my-self” has no idea who and what it is because it is a conglomeration of conflicting wishes, desires, drives, and impulses.  It has puffed itself up with grudges and opinions and likes and dislikes.  It needs constant attention and reassurance and offerings.  You do not want it anymore! 

That “my-self” has no idea how to find its way to God because it was designed and manufactured in opposition to the true Creation of God.  Your Holy Self knows the way.  Your Holy Spirit will guide you to God because your real Self knows Him as Father. 

It is a quiet path that leads to God.  It is not loud and clamorous; it is not showy and glamorous.  It is path that has no room at all for the ego-self, it is a path for those who are forgiven and offer forgiveness to all, it is a path for those who know that the ego-self offers nothing because it is a lie and there is no truth in it; it is a path for those who long for the stillness and peace that only comes from God. 

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 291. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 444.

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

Part II:8 What Is The Real World?

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PART II.  SECTION 8.  What is the Real World?

  1. The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers.  Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made.  Your world is seen through eyes of fear and brings the witnesses of terror to your mind.  The real world cannot be perceived except through eyes forgiveness blesses, so they see a world where terror is impossible, and witnesses to fear can not be found.
  2. The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world; a sure correction for the sights of fear and sounds of battle which your world contains.  The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace.  Nothing but rest is there.  There are no cries of pain and sorrow heard, for nothing there remains outside forgiveness.  And the sights are gentle.  Only happy sights and sounds can reach the mind that has forgiven itself.
  3. What need has such a mind for thoughts of death, attack, and murder?  What can it perceive surrounding it but safety, love, and joy?  What is there it would choose to be condemned, and what is there that it would judge against?  The world it sees arises from a mind at peace within itself.  No danger lurks in anything it sees, for it is kind and only kindness does it look upon.
  4. The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin and guilt is over, and God’s Son no longer sleeps.  His waking eyes perceive the sure reflection of his Father’s Love, the certain promise that he is redeemed.  The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless.
  5. The Holy Spirit has no need of time when it has served His purpose.  Now He waits but that one instant more for God to take His final step, and time has disappeared, taking perception with it as it goes, and leaving but the truth to be itself.  That instant is our goal, for it contains the memory of God.  And as we look upon a world forgiven, it is He Who calls to us and comes to take us home, reminding us of our Identity Which our forgiveness has restored to us.[1]
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Just as this world is a symbol of the ego, the Real World is a symbol of forgiveness – a world with no terror, no fear, no sense of worry, fret, dismay, or despair. The Real World has no death, no dying, no sense of loss, no crying.  The Real World is the world we perceive through the eyes of Christ, the eyes of forgiveness, the eyes of truth.  We look past this world made with fear and see the world which stands as a counterpart for all the unhappiness we encounter. 

When we see all the petty bickering and battles for predominance and power, all the bluster of past conflict and ongoing strife, all the racial and gender posturing with deepened spiritual understanding and forgiveness, we see differently!  We see a world of peace.  We see a world of bliss, of rest, of gentleness, tenderness, happiness and delight. 

When our minds are freed of thoughts of death, attack, and killing, we can only experience safety, joy, and love – Jesus tells us today.  We do not wake up with sour thoughts towards those who have seemed to wrong us in the past; we wake up to happy thoughts of appreciation, gratitude, blessings, and remembered joys. Instead of condemnation which belittles our minds and entraps us in the shadow of ego, our minds are filled with kindness and mercy. We no longer hold ourselves or others accountable for the melodrama of ego – the mean words, the spite, the jealousy, the spreading of lies and sowing seeds of discord. 

In the mind that practices forgiveness, that perceives through the eyes that are open – we experience no more danger, for we are kind, and we see only kindness.  The dream of sin and guilt is over!  God’s Son remembers who and what He is and the eyes that had been blinded to the truth by the ego’s dreamworld now only perceives the Father’s Love.  When we see the world with the eyes of forgiveness and remember who and what we are in Christ, when we experience the Real World, time no longer has any meaning for us. 

Our Holy Spirit is through with time because it has served its purpose. During our sojourn here, we have come to the end of ego.  We see our false selves for unholy fabrication.  We understand that we have been set up by an idea that simply could not endure infinity, which could only exist within the illusion of time, which would have its way with God’s Creation until God’s Creation remembered the Father, the Creator, the Love and tenderness with which all was made. 

Only one more instant!  Time will disappear and perception with it, Jesus says.  We have reached our goal.  We have looked upon the world with forgiveness, we recollect who and what we are for we have remembered God, and now He comes to take us home. 

Today open your eyes to the Real World by practicing the forgiveness of Christ.  Hold nobody accountable for your pain, your suffering, your sorrow. Stop looking for your identity in your gender, in your cultural, ethnic, or racial heritage, in your religions, clubs, and political leanings.  We have been programmed with eyes that see separateness, differences, and disagreement.  With faith in the One who calls to us ask for the eyes of Christ!  Wait and watch and carefully take note as the ego’s symbols fade away, revealing your Holy Self, the Holy Spirit that makes us one.  This is the path that restores us to the Real World, the forgiven world which leads us to our true identity in Him. 

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Part II. 8. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).  p. 443.

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

Lesson 290 My Present Happiness Is All I See

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PART II.  SECTION 7.  What is the Holy Spirit?

Lesson 290 My Present Happiness Is All I See

  1. Unless I look upon what is not there, my present happiness is all I see.  Eyes that begin to open see at last.  And I would have Christ’s vision come to me this very day.  What I perceive without God’s Own Correction for the sight I made is frightening and painful to behold.  Yet I would not allow my mind to be deceived by the belief in the dream I made is real an instant longer.  This the day I seek my present happiness and look on nothing else except the thing I seek.
  2. With this resolve, I come to You, and ask Your strength to hold me up today, while I but seek to do Your Will.  You cannot fail to hear me, Father. What I ask have You already given me.  And I am sure that I will see my happiness today.[1]

This morning as I was tinkering about in the kitchen, wiping counters, straining the evaporated milk that had baked in the crockpot over night, planning what to do with the last of the green peppers from our pepper patch, I was troubled by the memory of a particular cousin of mine who has always seemed on a mission to embarrass or put other people down.  Loud and bossy and apparently without shame – once she had hollered all the way across a restaurant where I sat eating quietly with my daughter and boyfriend that my blonde hair was not my natural color and that I must be dyeing it.  Clearly she felt it her God-given duty to set the record straight in case I was trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes and present myself as a born blonde!  Now years later, this particular memory seemed to symbolize the spite and ill will that seemed so prevalent in our family and I knew that Holy Spirit was telling me to correct my perception of this.  That the perception itself was wrong – nobody was trying to tear people down or keep them in their place lest they start to think too much of themselves.  This was a construct that my ego had made up in order to get me to despise others and use as an excuse to choose that which is not love.   

Throughout my whole life I had jealousy looked on as I watched my friends and coworkers talk about how kind, good, and helpful were their family members.  While other people got together to go on cruises, picnics, and weekend shopping sprees, to help bale hay, shuck corn, and shell peas, it seemed as if my family members could not be in the same room together for more than a half hour before they started their mind-numbing, character-destroying, mocking ridicule of first one and then the next relative not present.  For years I had kidded myself and thought that I was the “nice” one that did not do that. While others were intent on tearing down, I saw myself as the kind who built people up and showed love and forgiveness. 

But then came menopause and all those decades’ worth of secretly cherished condemnation, judgments, resentment, jealousy, and denial that I had banked in my mind, and wrote so prodigiously about in my journal, came out of my mouth and into the ears of the ones whom I had been harboring ill will toward.  While for years I had envisioned myself as a passive, sweet thing smiling and humbly taking putdowns, letdowns, and false friendship, now the dark thoughts that I had stored in my secret places came out with a vengeance.  There were few stones left unturned!  People were dismayed to learn that I had been keeping track of all their wrongdoing for decades, that I had dates and times and pages of script detailing all their sins against me and mine.  It was not as if I wanted the dam to leak, to crack, to spew forth all those dark torrents of long, held back grudges and mean observations, it just did. 

At first I experienced this as the disaster it seemed to be.  The aftermath of hurtful, vengeful, and bitterly perceived accusations against others, left only a handful of loved ones behind. While I mourned the lost friendships and family members, slowly I came to realize that nothing real can ever be lost.  The rubbish that washed away in that mad flush of pent up adversity, bitterness, jealousy, and grudges were things that I did not want anyway!  Shallow-rooted relationships serve no ultimate purpose. Hypocrisy, unwillingness to be corrected and to correct, lack of courage and truth-telling regarding myself and others, washed away.  What seemed to be a disaster led to a deeper walk with God, a true coming to Jesus that was not based upon hiding darkness but bringing darkness to light. Now it seems ludicrous to build any kind of relationship that is not holy, honest, and holistic. 

Jesus tells us today that when we perceive without God’s Own Correction – our Holy Self, our Holy Spirit – we perceive that which is frightening and painful to behold.  While I can choose to think of others as being the hostile, uncaring, mocking and begrudging beings that I experienced them as in the past, I would be choosing the unreality of the ego and using false perceptions as a reason to withhold love, to practice unforgiveness, thus keeping us in hell.    

I choose to see only my present happiness, appreciating God’s blessings, joy, and peace.  No matter the joys or the sorrows of the past, both serve only to cloud and distract me from expressing gratitude and enjoying the freedom of my present.

Today during our devotional practice and throughout the day, we train our minds to disengage in stories of the past.  We begin to see that our life and our reality here in time is only a teaching and learning experience brought to us in a dream of time.  It is a dream that when understood and experienced in truth awakens us to God, because we set our minds only to learn the value of forgiveness, love, peace, and joy. When we commit ourselves to see only our present happiness, our minds are free from the unreal past and we see it for the false perception it is. 

Today we end Part II:7 ‘What is the Holy Spirit?.’  Accept your holy Self today.  Accept God’s Gift to you.  Be His Voice that calls to you.  Let forgiveness rest upon this dream and be restored to the sanity and peace of mind that only recognizing your Holy Spirit as your holy Self can do.  Our Holy Spirits as one complete God as we are completed in Him.  He is our Father; we are His Son.  Ask God to reveal this truth to you if you experience resistance to accepting who and what you really are in Christ.  God bless you, one and all.

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 290. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).  p. 442.

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

Lesson 289 The Past Is Over. It Can Touch Me Not.

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PART II.  SECTION 7.  What is the Holy Spirit?

Lesson 289 The past is over.  It can touch me not.

  1. Unless the past is over in my mind, the real world must escape my sight.  For I am really looking nowhere; seeing but what is not there.  How can I then perceive the world forgiveness offers?  This the past was made to hide, for this the world that can be looked on only now.  It has no past.  For what can be forgiven but the past, and it if is forgiven it is gone.
  2. Father let me not look upon a past that is not there.  For You have offered me Your Own replacement, in a present world the past has left untouched and free of sin.  Here is the end of guilt.  And here am I made ready for Your final step.  Shall I demand that You wait longer for Your Son to find the loveliness You planned to be the end of all his dreams and all his pain?[1]
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In order to survive in the ego-made world of fear, shortages, and limitations, we believe that we must hold on to the past.  The past informs our minds of all our former dealings with people – this one picks up things that do not belong to him; this one stretches the truth; this one cannot be trusted with your lover, spouse, or secret crush.  We remember the ones that blab our secrets, that do not reciprocate favors, that clog our toilets, and never reach for the bill when we share a meal in a restaurant!  How stupid it seems to our egos to forgive and forget the past, for remembering it keeps us on guard from those who are jealous, spiteful, dangerous, and cruel.  Hauling our brother’s past up in our mind, keeping their hurtful behavior and wrongdoing fresh in our minds, never forgetting a slight, a slur, a shameful act, helps us to protect our selves from it happening again – or so we are led to believe. 

Conversely, our ego loves to ride upon its vain glories from the past.  Awards and accomplishments that we received years ago for our efforts in our field of expertise would still provide a hook which to fasten our egos, to fill us with a sense of privilege and pride, to excuse our current indolence.  If we are not caught up in our past to cherish its sufferings, we will often get caught up in our past to distance ourselves from our present glories.

Jesus teaches us today that even the joys of the past, blind us to the joys and beauty of our present.  We all know people who cherish their losses and bring them up every chance they get in order to remind us of their former glory and their current suffering.  I have an acquaintance whose husband is handsome, kind and hardworking.  He waits on her hand and foot; he built her a beautiful home, he has a quiet, humble relationship with Christ.  And yet every chance she gets she mourns her first husband who died decades ago.  Everyone who knows her wishes that she would let it go and recognize how blessed she is to have had the privilege to have not one, but two super-nice husbands.  But nope, she elects to stay in the past and be miserable. 

Our egos will often glorify a former special relationship making it appear that the shallow roots that held that fragile alliance together provided us with delights that gratified our every desire – when the reality is that ego had blinded us to the sacrifices we made and idolatry we committed to keep that special relationship chugging along for as long as it did. 

When we hold on to the past, we will mourn the death, the loss, the empty spot at the table and be blind to the richness that is being given to us moment-by-blessed-moment as we journey through time.  Instead of accepting our sojourn in this world as the dream it is, we often get so caught up in the story of it that we fail to see our brothers for who and what they really are in Christ.  We think of them as their human story and when their human form dies, moves away, develops interests and friendships that do not include us, it is a cause for sadness, sorrow, shame, accusations, and unreasonable expectations.  In my own life, if I did not accept that my daughter Manda only died in the flesh, that her spirit lives on in God’s Kingdom, which is within me and all around me, I could easily miss the joys and blessings that surround me every single moment of every single day – the precious grandchildren, the loving son and daughters that remain, the loving husband, the healed and holy relationships, not to mention the gifts of home, hearth, and happiness that envelope my mind with His goodness as I become reacquainted with my Holy Self. 

Today let the past be over!  Do not let your memories keep you from seeing the real world and your real and holy Self.  Your memories from the past serve as a mirage; nothing is there; they are not based on reality; you made them up!  Our sojourn in time is a ruse that keeps us in a state of separateness from God, keeping us so wrapped up with each other’s images that we do not hear our Holy Selves, our Holy Spirits, calling to us to remember, to return, to reacquaint ourselves with the Divine which is Love which is God.

Pray the prayer Jesus offers us in our lesson today in your own words and in your own way: 

Dear Heavenly Father:  Today I let the past go.  It is not there.  I take what You have for me instead – this present moment which is free of the past and the idolatry it offers.  The end of all guilt has come!  My brothers are innocent and so am I.  And knowing this, I am ready for the final step to You.  I will not ask for extra time or delay my return to You for nothing in this world could compare with the loveliness You made to end this dream of pain and madness.  In the name of Jesus with Whom I am one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 289.  Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).  p. 442.

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

Lesson 288 Let Me Forget My Brother’s Past Today

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PART II.  SECTION 7.  What is the Holy Spirit?

Lesson 288 Let Me Forget My Brother’s Past Today

  1. This is the thought that leads to You and brings me to my goal.  I cannot come to You without my brother.  And to know my Source, I first must recognize what You created one with me.  My brother’s is the hand that leads me on the way to You.  His sins are in the past along with mine, and I am saved because the past is gone.  Let me not cherish it within my heart, or I will lose the way to walk to You.  My brother is my savior.  Let me not attack the savior You have given me.  But let me honor him who bears Your Name, and so remember that It is my own.
  2. Forgive me, then, today.  And you will know you have forgiven me if you behold your brother in the light of holiness.  He cannot be less holy than can I, and you can not be holier than he.[1]
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This lesson is one that would give us all pause if our efforts to seek God would put us on a higher plane than our brothers!  For they are our saviors – each and every one of them teach us, perfect us, test us, and prove our love for God and for our Selves.

Our brothers do not seem to be our friends, let alone our saviors, Lord!  They abandon us in our hour of greatest need, fail to understand us when we simply need a bit of alone time; deny our right to setting boundaries, and mock and make fun of our efforts to grow and become all we can be. 

It is much easier to relate to the historical Jesus who was always so kind and good and healed the sick and cleansed the leper and cast out devils.  There He is tucked neatly away in history – we did not know Him personally; time and distance has removed any grating traits or unpleasant personality quirks from our awareness.   This Jesus makes a good Savior.

Certainly our brothers have their good points, but Lord!  They are infuriating.  Certainly you cannot be speaking of the people I know.  This one constantly talks about herself and her only child to the point of making me want to gag.  Could she be my savior?  This one has done his best to manipulate me through silent treatments, snubs, and cutting remarks for years.  How could he possibly be my savior?  And those people in that organization, Lord!  How could those bloated with their own self-importance brothers possibly be my saviors?  So and so called me for years in the middle of the night blathering to me about people I didn’t even know, and I am supposed to call him my savior?  And those rude people who came to my house and ate my food, and sprawled on my couch, and would just pack up and leave and not even say good-bye – are they really my savior, Lord?   The ex-boyfriend who cheated on me; the ex-husband who didn’t pay child support or send his children birthday cards; the preachers who tried to molest me when I was a kid – how can they possibly be my savior? 

Yet the lesson idea for today is the thought that leads the way to God and brings us to our Father.  We cannot come without them.  To have God, we must recognize that we are one with our brothers.  It is their hand that leads us on the way to God.  We must see our brothers’ wrongdoing even as we wish to see our own – gone, washed away with the past, never to be thought about, spoken about, or brought up again.  We must not cherish their cruel jealousies, their lies, hypocrisies, meanness, unfairness, ridiculous self-posturing, sexual escapades, or infidelities within our minds.  We must stop building cases against them and encouraging others to despise them.  We must put down our weapons and see past their egos, asking Holy Spirit to open our eyes to their holiness and purity.  Otherwise, we lose our way to God.  

Our brothers are our saviors.  We are not saved without them.  We will forget and forgive their pasts and honor them who bear the name and likeness of God, for when we forgive and forget their pasts, we are forgetting and forgiving our own acts of ego and separation.

Astonishingly, in today’s lesson Jesus throws Himself right into the mix.  He asks us to forgive Him! You will know, Jesus says, that you have forgiven Me, when you behold your brother in the light of holiness.  Jesus says that our brothers cannot be less holy than He is, and that we cannot be holier than our brothers.  Meaning that we are in no position to preach at them, condemn them, or call them infidels.  We are called to see them and us as a whole, and as one in Christ. As long as we see our brothers as separate, we are separate.

What did Jesus do that I must forgive him?  He did not come into my heart like I was told He would and chase away all the darkness and make me pure and holy with no real effort on my own part.  He pointed the way to my salvation, but He did not deliver me from the process nor spare me the saviors I chose to teach me the hard lessons that brought me back to the path to God.  He stands by me through time but does not liberate me from my ego or the egos of my saviors. I want my way back to God to be a cool breeze, while Jesus has made it more like a brisk wind!  I have to face my own darkness; I have to forgive those I do not want to forgive in order to be forgiven.  And in doing so I have to forgive Him. 

The thought of not forgiving Jesus tears at my heart.  How could I not forgive Him whom I love and cherish and adore?  And yet He insists that as long as I see my brothers in less than a holy light, I have not forgiven Him, nor have I forgiven myself. 

I pray then for such forgiveness![2]

[1] A Course In Miracles.  Workbook for Students. Lesson 288. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 441.

[2] the friar patch @eckiefriar.com. Post 288, 10-15-2019.  Re-posted 10-15-2020 by permission.

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

Lesson 287 You Are My Goal, My Father, Only You

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PART II.  SECTION 7.  What is the Holy Spirit?

Lesson 287 You Are My Goal, My Father.  Only You.

  1. Where would I go, but Heaven?  What could be a substitute for happiness?  What gift could I prefer before the peace of God?  What treasure would I seek and find and keep that can compare with my Identity?  And would I rather live with fear than love?
  2. You are my goal, my Father.  What but You could I desire to have?  What way but that which leads to You could I desire to walk?  And what except the memory of You could signify to me the end of dreams and futile substitutions for the truth?  You are my only goal.  Your Son would be as You created him.  What way but this could I expect to recognize my Self, and be at one with my Identity?[1]
Photo by Luis Quintero on Pexels.com

This morning I woke before the alarm and as quietly as possible made my way downstairs to the coffee pot, to my devotional, to sitting on the recliner with my legs up and my mind attuned to God as I read Lesson 287.  James had been up way into the night working on a wedding video for some dear friends, and I left him to snore while I contemplated today’s lesson idea.

This year I am doing my best to pay attention to the themes of each section of our workbook and apply the theme to the lesson idea.  In doing this, my mind has been illuminated with a deeper understanding of the truth about who and what we are in God’s Kingdom and what our function is in the dream of separation.  As we identify with our Holy Selves, we identify with Holy Spirit, which is one and the same.  The Holy Spirit is one with God, just as Christ is one with God, and we are part of that oneness as our Holy Selves, as our Holy Spirit. 

As we elect Holy Spirit’s return to the throne of our minds, we begin to realize the futility of chasing after the things of the world.  In verse two and sentence four Jesus leads us in a prayer that addresses this very matter: And what except the memory of You could signify to me the end of dreams and futile substitutions for the truth.”

There is simply nothing here that would ever take the place of making God our goal!  The whole world is set upon the laws of atrophy, entropy, and loss.  There is no certainty, there is no truth, there is no substance, love, or value.  Making our goal anything less than God will only lead to death and despair. 

As we make God our goal, we learn to recognize our Self as holy and as spirit rather than as sinful and as flesh.  While we may experience this transformation as an infilling of Holy Spirit, the truth is simply that Holy Spirit has been there all along, hidden by the false self we made to take the place of our Holy Self.  As we become one with our true Identity in Christ, we let the ego self fade away.  We have no more use for an unholy sense of self.  We have no more use for any identity except our identity as Holy Spirit, God’s Son. 

Meditate upon our lesson today with an open heart and an open mind.  Continue to ask the Lord to reveal to You His truth.  Those who sincerely seek truth will not be misled.  We may make mistakes in our understanding, we may not have the correct perceptions, we may misunderstand the teachings of Christ, but the only thing that matters is our humility, our humble seeking, and our courage to make mistakes and be corrected by our holy brothers.   

The path to God is said to be narrow because there is absolutely no room on it for the ego and all its chaos, devices, desires, and tricks.  We need nothing on our path to God except a clear and certain goal which supersedes all others.  Our holy Selves know the way to God because deep within each of us is our Holy Spirit, a homing device implanted by God at our creation.  Our holy Selves will never leave us, never deceive us, and bring to our remembrance all we have forgotten.  It is our Holy Spirits that give us the courage, faith, and devotion required to make our return to our Father our only goal.  It is God’s Love that calls us home.    

[1] A Course In Miracles, Workbook for Students, 287.  You are my goal, my…Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, p. 441

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

Lesson 286 The Hush Of Heaven Holds My Heart Today

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PART II.  SECTION 7.  What is the Holy Spirit?

Lesson 286 The Hush of Heaven Holds My Heart Today

  1. Father, how still today!  How quietly do all things fall in place!  This is the day that has been chosen as the time in which I come to understand the lesson that there is no need that I do anything.  In You is every choice already made.  In You has every conflict been resolved.  In You is everything I hope to find already given me.  Your peace is mine.  My heart is quiet, and my mind at rest.  Your Love is Heaven, and Your Love is mine.
  2. The stillness of today will give us hope that we have found the way and travelled far along it to a wholly certain goal.  Today we will not doubt the end which God Himself has promised us.  We trust in Him, and in our Self, Who still is one with Him.[1]
Photo by Kaushal Moradiya on Pexels.com

The hush of Heaven holds our heart today.  Come back to this meditation throughout the day and let its words sink all the way through your consciousness for in this stillness will we walk along the path to God with certainty and surety of foot. 

When we change our minds about how boring and unexciting peace can be and let go of our fascination with darkness, drama, and dreams, we can quietly stand by and watch all things fall into their proper perspective!   In this stillness and in this rest do we learn the need for no more worry, no more fear, no more measly manipulations or trying to prove our worth to others or to God. 

Today we meditate upon our choice for God.  We know beyond doubt that as we made that choice all conflicts are resolved.  Our Holy Self, our Holy Spirit takes care of everything.  He takes every single thing that is going on, has gone on, and is going to happen and makes something worthy and good from it.   Our Holy Self takes our special relationships that about drove us batty before our decision for God and turns them into holy relationships that correct, renew, and unite us as one.  Our Holy Self, our Holy Spirit sits upon the throne of our minds, taking the place of the pompous toady which would sit in His place.   Our Holy Self, our Holy Spirit brings us home to God, calling to us with certain unconcern that nothing in the dream can disturb our rest, our calm, our peace.  No mad rush, no impatient tapping of the feet – in the end all our separate selves become Holy Selves and come home.  It is grandeur.  It is magnificent.  It is simple, natural, and real.

Our soft and humble hearts, our relaxed and happy minds lead us to the hush of Heaven. There is no frantic calls for grinding, headache-producing, backbreaking sacrifice, pain, or loss of any kind.  We have no more need for shame or sorrow.  The stillness of God is our confidence, our assurance that we are on the path that leads us out of the darkness and insanity of separation and into the light and righteousness of God. 

We come to know our holiness in this stillness.  As we clear the throne of our mind of the false self and welcome our Holy Self, the Holy Spirit to take His rightful place – the clamor and glamor of the world loses its hold upon our imaginations and the quiet certainty of God establishes our place in His Kingdom.   

Today open your mind and heart to the truth of our lesson.  Ask God to reveal to you the truth of who and what the Holy Spirit is and what role Holy Spirit fulfills in your mind and heart.  Do not take my word for it!  Do not take A Course in Miracle’s word for it.  Do not take the words from your holy books or the words from your rabbi, priest, or guru!  Have courage and embrace all that God has for you even if it seems to conflict with all of your previous understanding and teaching.  Nobody is blessed by our being a good Catholic or a good Protestant or a good Jew, Greek, or African Methodist.  Nobody is blessed by our cowardice, by our refusal to feel smart enough, good enough, or worthy enough to seek beyond the vain traditions, primitive belief systems, and false teachings offered by the world.  The path that leads to God is revealed by our humble and contrite spirits sincerely seeking truth and understanding, saying “There must be a better way!”  When we get past our false humility and ask God directly for the truth, He reveals Himself through Love, for that is all He is and ever will be.     

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 286. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).  p. 440.

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

Lesson 285 My Holiness Shines Bright And Clear Today

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PART II.  SECTION 7.  What is the Holy Spirit?

Lesson 285 My Holiness Shines Bright and Clear Today

  1. Today I wake with joy, expecting but the happy things of God to come to me.  I ask but them to come and realize my invitation will be answered by the thoughts to which it has been sent by me.  And I will ask for only joyous things, the instant I accept my holiness.  For what would be the use of pain to me, what purpose would my suffering fulfill, and how would grief and loss avail me if insanity departs from me today, and I accept my holiness instead?
  2. Father, my holiness is Yours.  Let me rejoice in it, and through forgiveness be restored to sanity.  Your Son is still as You created him.  My holiness is part of me, and also part of You.  And what can alter Holiness Itself?[1]
Photo by Wictor Cardoso on Pexels.com

Today is a chilly, overcast, drizzling, dreary day at the Friar Patch.  So today’s lesson idea was especially appealing.  As I read over my post from last year, its words rang like new in my heart and mind. And so I share it again, today with the bountiful blessings from God extended from me to you. 

To experience joy, to expect the happy things of God to come to us, is to be released from the ego’s dark message of fear, torment, and certain death.  Our lesson today is again putting the responsibility for our experiences upon our thoughts – what we are inviting to us through our thoughts about ourselves, others, and God.  When we accept the holiness of God as our own, realizing that God could not create unholy, we begin on the spot to ask for and expect only that which is happy-making, peaceful, loving, and blissful.  We have no more use for pain and suffering.  We have no more use for guilt, for pointing fingers, for assigning blame.  We are no longer living by the laws of the insane ego because we are accepting the holiness of Sons of God, creatures made in God’s likeness. 

Let us claim our holiness as God’s Son today.  We can rejoice in it. Consciously forgiving all the false teachings and belief systems that would drive us and keep us insane, our practices will restore our right minds.  We are still as God created us.  God’s holiness is part of us, and we are part of God.  And there is nothing that can change that. 

We go down so many wrong paths to finally come to this truth.  The ego would deceive us into thinking holiness a dull and boring walk with goody-two-shoe companions who hold their heads in that stiff, funny way some religious people seem to have.  The ego tempts us to trade in the joy and bliss of our holiness for the bangs and clangs of trendy intoxicants, wearying status climbing, and hurtful and manipulative special relationships, thus keeping our attention distracted from the inevitable conclusion of every ego-inspired scheme for our lives – pain, suffering, death. 

Today we forgive this insanity.  We forgive ourselves and each other for falling for these lies, for trading in our holiness for such paltry substitutes.  And through our forgiveness, we shine bright and clear today in holiness and in joy. 

[1] A Course In Miracles, Workbook for Students. Lesson 285. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).  p. 440,

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

Lesson 284 I Can Elect To Change All Thoughts That Hurt

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PART II.  SECTION 7.  What is the Holy Spirit?

Lesson 284 I Can Elect To Change All Thoughts That Hurt

  1. Loss is not loss when properly perceived.  Pain is impossible.  There is no grief with any cause at all.  And suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream.  This is the truth, at first to be but said and then repeated many times, and next to be accepted as but partly true, with many reservations.  Then to be considered seriously more and more, and finally accepted as truth.  I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.  And I would go beyond these words today, and past all reservations, and arrive at full acceptance of the truth in them.
  2. Father, what You have given cannot hurt, so grief and pain must be impossible.  Let me not fail to trust in You today, accepting but the joyous as Your gifts; accepting but the joyous as the truth.[1]
Beloved daughter 1981 – 2000

In Lesson 284, we learn that what we perceive as loss, as sorrow, as causes for grief, weeping, and bitter sadness is nothing but a dream.  My life has been about loss from the time I remember.  First it was my beloved pets – my furry little felines run over by cars, combines, and taken for “rides” – dropped off at neighboring farms when my mother got tired of them.   One little mama cat got caught in the ash bin of our coal furnace and died an agonizing death within minutes from the hot coals that had been raked on her.  I spent my early childhood mourning my pets as if they were my best friends, being mocked and teased for the depths of my anguish.  And then I learned that losing animals is only the beginning…

Experiencing life in the flesh as the dream it is, lifts us from a state of anxiety, depression, and fatalism to a stable certainty in the reality that lies beyond the dream.  On earth, we will dream about hurt and loss, suffering and sorrow until we recognize the truth that lies beyond.  In the Kingdom of God there is no pain, there is no suffering, no grief, heartache, or sense of loss.  Like the prodigal son – the depression, the shame, the pain wakes us up.  We say, “I want to go home!  I’ve had enough of this!” 

For me, it seemed like I had no choice but to grieve the death of my father, my beloved boy cousins, my brother, my daughter…Who among us is heartless enough to make a choice not to grieve for those who leave us through death, through divorce, estrangement, and mental illness?  Jesus is not telling us to throw a party when we suffer a loss of any kind.  Jesus is telling us to clear the altars of our mind, to welcome our Holy Self, our Holy Spirit to choose to see that suffering of every kind is nothing but part of the dream of separation.  No matter how beloved the fatality or heinous the death; no matter how brutal the betrayal; no matter how absolutely absurd the reason for strife and discord – we are to see it through the eyes of truth.  It is part of the dream and we simply choose to see through our holy eyes of Spirit. 

Jesus outlines the steps of this election.  In our holy habit we practice repeating the lesson idea until it is embedded deep within our consciousness.  At first we believe that it may be true in certain circumstances – I can believe that the anxious thoughts I experienced over losing my brand new pewter gray Henley as part of the dream and stop frantically searching the house, but I will never stop grieving the death of my daughter or the estrangement between my sister and me.  I have reservations about looking at the rift in our family with anything but sorrow, grief, and a sense of shame for them and for myself.  And while I can accept that the losses I experienced decades ago were only part of a dream that means nothing at all now – the things that hurt me last year, last month, last week, and yesterday –  the snubs, the mean words, the spite seem all too real to perceive with anything but sadness, anger, and more spite.

But the more I considered the implications of electing to think with the perception of my Holy Spirit, the more the truth became apparent to me.  Ongoing grief does nothing but make that which is not real in any ongoing, perpetual way – take the place of truth.  When I grieve for my daughter who died 20 years ago, I am not accepting the fact that she is an eternal Holy Being, a Holy Spirit so to speak (if we remember the theme of this section and apply it to each of our lessons).  She has been released from the flesh and the ego for which it stands.  She accomplished what she came here to do.  When I no longer choose to be distracted by false grief and sorrow, I can accept that she abides in me and with me in the unity that can never be achieved in humanity but only in our divinity with Christ.  I am one with her, I am one with Christ, we are one with all – she is no longer “my daughter” with all the special obligations, demands, and duties attached to a relationship of that kind, but she is a magnificent creature in Christ, whole and holy.  I can choose then to be happy, to release the memory of her as broken and bruised, to a memory of her majesty, her holiness, her invulnerability in Spirit. 

This same concept is applicable to any sense of hurt, pain, loss, and suffering.  We accept that humanity is all about loss and hurt and suffering and pain.  It can be no other way for humanity represents our separateness from God.  We do not bring our bodies to Christ; we bring our minds and hearts and give Him the darkness in exchange for the light.  In the light of our divinity in Him and with Him we know the truth of the matter.  When we elect the mind of Christ to perceive our lives in the dream, we choose joy and only the joyous as the truth. 

Join with me in today’s prayer, repeating each word until you know beyond a shadow of doubt the truth of our Father’s love and goodwill toward us, each one:

Father, Today I put all my trust in You.  No matter how the ego wants to cloud my perception with hurt feelings, jealousy, sorrow, shame, and pain, let me see it as impossible because I am one with You in spirit and in truth.  You only give me gifts of joy, of happiness, of bliss and peace.  Today I only accept the joyous as the truth.  Everything else is a lie to distract me from the only real thing there can possibly be.  In the name of Jesus, with Whom I am one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 284. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 439.

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

Lesson 283 My True Identity Abides in You

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PART II.  SECTION 7.  What is the Holy Spirit?

Lesson 283 My True Identity Abides in You

  1. Father, I made an image of myself, and it is this I call the Son of God.  Yet is creation as it always was, for Your creation is unchangeable.  Let me not worship idols.  I am he my Father loves.  My holiness remains the light of Heaven and the Love of God.  Is not what is beloved of You secure?  Is not the light of Heaven infinite?  Is not Your Son my true Identity, when You created everything that is?
  2. Now are we one in shared Identity, with God our Father as our only Source, and everything created part of us.  And so we offer blessing to all things, uniting lovingly with all the world, which our forgiveness has made one with us.[1]
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Jesus tells us today that the ego that each one of us makes as a substitute for our holy self is an idol.  While we may think of our bodies and our egos as a creation of God, as His Son, the Lord informs us today in no uncertain terms that our bodies and the self-centered, attention-seeking, worried and fragile little ego that we call “myself,” in the world is not God’s Creation.  God’s creation is unchangeable.  God’s creation is perfect, holy, and whole.  The only thing of God about us is our reality in Christ, our Holy Self, our Holy Spirit.  Invisible to the flesh eyes, at the core of our very being, is the God in us, His unchanging Kingdom, our reality, our salvation, our truth.  Jesus says that we light up heaven, that we are the Love of God, that we are His Son. 

Today we are to stop worshiping and bowing down to the images that we made in the separated world to replace the Kingdom of God.  Jesus asks us to see ourselves through His eyes.  During this time of devotion, we reach beyond our idols – we stop devoting ourselves to them and instead devote this time to God and to the reality of who and what we are in Christ.  My reality in Christ is not based on being white or female or going on 62 years old!  My reality in Christ is not based on my social security or insecurity.  My reality in God is not based upon my handicaps or my health, my poverty or my wealth, my earthly achievements or lack of accomplishment.  My reality in God just is – my holiness and your holiness together light up heaven, brother!  We are the love of God.  Our true identity abides in God. 

The Shepherd’s Psalm is easily the most beloved of them all – The Lord is my Shepherd, David writes, I shall not want… What could we possibly want when we are He whom God loves?  When we are no longer separate little chards of the whole, lost and adrift and yearning for connection and completeness but as one in Him, we no longer identify with our penises or vaginas, our blackness or whiteness, our fatherland or motherland, our religions or traditions.   None of that matters anymore for we know ourselves as spirit and not flesh, as One in Him. 

As hard as that may be for us to imagine, Christ teaches us to use our devotional habit to practice the teachings of forgiveness, to offer blessing, to deepen our understanding, and prepare our minds for return to God. 

Today practice relating to yourself and to others as Beings who are the love of God.  Merrily look beyond the mistakes and egoism that our brothers display and imagine them as perfect Sons of God, holy beings of light, of love, of peace and joy.  Go out on a limb and laugh at insults with the freedom of one who knows the truth; give tender thoughts to those who are cruel; be generous to those who are stingy.  We forgive and bless them one and all because we are forgiven, we are love, with Christ we are the Son of God.   

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 283. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).  p. 439.

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

Lesson 282 I Will Not Be Afraid Of Love Today

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PART II.  SECTION 7.  What is the Holy Spirit?

Lesson 282 I Will Not Be Afraid Of Love Today

  1. If I could realize but this today, salvation would be reached for all the world.  This the decision not to be insane, and to accept myself as God Himself, my Father and my Source, created me.  This the determination not to be asleep in dreams of death, while truth remains forever living in the joy of love.  And this the choice to recognize the Self Whom God created as the Son He loves, and Who remains my one Identity.
  2. Father, Your Name is Love and so is mine.  Such is the truth.  And can the truth be changed by merely giving it another name?  The name of fear is simply a mistake.  Let me not be afraid of truth today.[1]
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Clearly, there are a lot of things to fear in the world.  As children we are warned against the strangers who would abduct us and do dirty things to our little bodies; we are warned about spiders and snakes, about playing in the streets, about brushing our teeth against decay.  From the time we are born our parents and caregivers go to great lengths to keep our bodies from harm, and if we have a place with the more spiritually inclined we are warned against moral dangers such as lying, cheating, being lazy, settling for normal, stealing, and licking our chops over the flesh of other bodies.  And then there are those of us who are raised in the hypervigilant homes of the spiritually warped who are taught to protect our bodies by hating them, being ashamed of them, and denying them as much earthly pleasure as possible in order to please a jealous, possessive God who is ready to stomp the be-Jesus out of you for exposing your chubby, lumpy thighs, reading books other than the bible, or liking (er, well perhaps more than liking) boys! 

While few of us are taught outright to be afraid of love, all that teaching about fear and protection and reining our impulses, drives, and passions in and sacrificing them to God makes our natural and holy inclination for love, for affection, for unity dissolve in a sea of anxiety, worry, and strife. 

It is only when we lay down our defenses and begin to love that the world can be saved from madness.  We make the choice when we accept God’s version of our Selves and love our Selves as He loves us.  Jesus says that this is a decision we make to awaken within the dream of insanity itself.  When we see that the dream of death cannot and never could be our reality, our eyes are opened to the truth of eternal life, joy, and love.  We accept our true identity which is the Voice for God, Holy Spirit, our true and eternal Selves, the Self that remembers, the Self that comforts, reminds, teaches, and guides because that Self never left God’s Kingdom. 

We give up nothing to receive Everything.  With our eyes open and our understanding attuned to our Holy Spirit, we realize that giving up insanity for sanity is only a sacrifice for the crazy, lying little creep that has been usurping our identity and leeching our God-given glory, majesty, and truth, filling our life with such distraction, demand, and drama that we had no time at all to consider that the substitutes it offered were fleeting, empty, and ended in death. 

When our Holy Selves remember themselves, we are no longer afraid of the world, we are here to forgive it, to love it, and to see beyond it to the world it becomes.  We are no longer here to worry about dwindling resources, melting ice caps, and getting our fair share of its mortifying pie.  Living in love requires us to rise above the news that would fill our minds with mad tales of rudeness and despair.  Living in love means we will find spiritual lessons which lead to spiritual growth and understanding in every single device ego uses to ensnare us.  Living in love means we make the choice to align our minds with our Holy Spirit in a moment-by-moment devotion to all things of Love, Which is the Name of God. 

Jesus teaches us today that when you and me, us and we are no longer afraid of love, the world reaches salvation. When we no longer choose to kill one another, scream obscenities at each other, lick our chops with greed and lust over one another’s goods, when we accept all of Creation as God created us and practice love, goodwill, and brotherhood we are saved, and the illusion world melts away and the real one returns to take its place. 

Today we put down our fear of the world, and we see it through the eyes of Christ.  We identify with our Holy Spirits, with love and love alone.  We are no longer afraid of our brothers no matter how beastly and depraved they appear today, because we love them, we uphold them, we pray for them and help them remember who and what they are in Christ.  When thoughts of hatred, resentment, unforgiveness, bewilderment, and confusion come to muddle our minds and crowd out our awareness of Love, we will simply call upon our Holy Spirit.  We will no longer be tricked by the lies of the little creep for it would only lead us to despair and to our deaths.  When ego tempts us to weaponize our spirituality and use it to interfere in the processes of our brothers, we will give that arrogant thought to the sanity, humility, and goodness of Holy Spirit, while we stay focused on our own journey, keep our noses in our own business, and put any concerns for others in the capable hands of God! 

Borrowing from last year’s post, today when ego would fill our minds with worries for survival and distrust of friend and foe alike, we will remind ourselves that God is Love and so are we.  When ego distracts us from devotion and holy practice with chores and activities that only appear again tomorrow and the next day, we will say that we simply made a wrong choice, for the Name of my Father is Love and so is mine, and my Holy Spirit will use everything to teach me and bring me home.  Being afraid of love is not a sin – it is only a mistake, which is easily forgiven and even more easily corrected.  We will accept Love’s call and correct that mistake today!    

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 282. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).  p. 438.

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

Lesson 281 I Can Be Hurt By Nothing But My Thoughts

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PART II.  SECTION 7.  What is the Holy Spirit?

Lesson 281 I Can Be Hurt By Nothing But My Thoughts

  1. Father, Your Son is perfect.  When I think that I am hurt in any way, it is because I have forgotten who I am, and that I am as You created me.  Your Thoughts can only bring me happiness.  If ever I am sad or hurt or ill, I have forgotten what You think, and put my little meaningless ideas in place of where Your Thoughts belong, and where they are.  I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts.  The Thoughts I think with You can only bless.  The Thoughts I think with You alone are true.
  2. I will not hurt myself today.  For I am far beyond all pain.  My Father placed me safe in Heaven, watching over me.  And I would not attack the Son He loves, for what He loves is also mine to love.[1]
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Today Jesus teaches us the power of our thoughts.  Remember that the theme of this lesson is What is the Holy Spirit.  Even though Jesus does not mention the Holy Spirit in today’s lesson, He is reminding us Who is to be in charge of our thoughts.  When we are hurt in any way it is simply because we have forgotten to think with the Holy Spirit.  This is a moment-to-moment walk and especially while we are in training, we are to devote as much time and energy and focus to our lesson concepts in order to train our minds to choose happiness, wholeness, and holiness.  We can only do this by accepting the help of the Holy Spirit!

When we hold unforgiveness in our hearts toward those who hurt us, who abused us, who mocked or tormented or disappointed us in any way, we are not allowing Holy Spirit to sit on the throne of our minds.  We have put up our small-minded ego to squat in His place.  And it is going to hurt us because that is how it gets its jollies.  We are going to get depressed instead of full of joy.   We are going to be sad instead of happy.  We are going to come down with symptoms.  We are going to feel weak, helpless, grumpy, mean, and ill.  If we continue letting the little toad spread viciousness and unforgiveness and condemnation in our minds, we will only get sicker and darker and sadder and weaker. 

Jesus reminds us in today’s prayer that the thoughts we think with God can only bless.  The thoughts we think with God alone are true.  So let’s stop hurting ourselves today.  Let us put God’s Gift upon the throne and keep Him on the throne of our minds.  Holy Spirit only comes when welcomed.  He only stays where He is respected, embraced, and heeded.  Welcome with joy and with eyes alight Holy Spirit.  Tell Him to influence our every thought, word, and deed.  When memories of past abuse, bad manners, rudeness, and false prophets come to mind, hark back to what Jesus tells us in Chapter 22:6 v.8:

You will see your value through your brother’s eyes, and each one is released as he beholds his savior in place of the attacker who he thought was there.  Through this releasing is the world released.  This is your part in bringing peace.  For you have asked what is your function here and have been answered.  Seek not to change it, nor to substitute another goal.  This one was given you and only this.  Accept this one and serve it willingly, for what the Holy Spirit does with gifts you give your brother, to whom He offers them, and where and when, is up to Him.  He will bestow upon them where they are received and welcomed.  He will use every one of them for peace.  Nor will one little smile or willingness to overlook the tiniest mistake be lost to anyone.[2] 

As we stop cherishing our victimization and are willing to let the past be over in our minds, we step into the holy instant where everyone who has ever done anything wrong to us is welcomed as new creatures.  What they did in the flesh is washed away.  We no longer see an attacker; we no longer use their attack as an excuse to attack.  We set them free and we are set free.  We are not only releasing ourselves and our attackers, but we are releasing the world from sin.  We are fulfilling our holy function.  No matter what else we may think we are doing for God, if we harbor any unforgiveness and condemnation in our hearts toward our fellowman, we are keeping ourselves alien from the Sonship of God. 

Years ago my sister and I had it out.  I tried to set a boundary with her and instead of respecting it, she decided to withdraw from me and make me the guilty culprit.  There is no doubt in my mind that I could have said what I said in a kinder way, there is no doubt in my mind that the issue was much larger than setting a much-needed boundary, I have no trouble at confessing that there were many other issues, namely that our relationship was built upon a framework of specialness instead of holiness and was doomed long before our falling out. 

For years I dwelled upon all the ways in which my sister let me down.  I talked it over with a therapist, I talked about it with my son and husband, my stepdaughter and friends.  I talked about it at work. No matter how many times I gave the situation to Holy Spirit, I took it back again and tried to figure it out, get insights from others, come up with solutions that would not subjugate me to the old ways of making up with her – mainly taking all the blame, saying I was sorry when I was clearly not in the wrong, and letting her completely off the hook which would not help either one of us.  It was not until I gave the relationship completely to Holy Spirit with total forgiveness extended on both sides and I quit dwelling on it, talking about it, and trying to patch things up that peace came to my mind.  Now when I think of my sister, I think of her goodness, beauty, humor, kindness, the fun things we did together down through the years, the deep and abiding love we have for one another in our spirits. The flesh part of our relationship may have been hindered by mockery, jokiness, falsehoods, jealousy, and rivalry but through Holy Spirit I can overlook all of that and can rest assured that one day, when she welcomes God’s Gift, so will she.  The fallout no longer makes me ill.  I have learned so many important lessons from it through the gift of Holy Spirit who translated all of the hurt, pain, and sorrow into a means to learn the difference between a special relationship built on ego and a holy relationship built upon the love of God. 

When we hold on to unforgiveness, when we condemn others in our minds and with our words, when we allow our minds to ruminate upon the negative things from our past that hurt us and confused us, we are holding on to our pain and sorrow and our bodies will reflect it and we will suffer. 

However when we take everything to Holy Spirit and ask Him to translate it into whatever he sees fit, we no longer carry the pain, the hurt, the stress of trying to find a solution in a world designed to keep us searching without finding.  We are taking it to the one whose very function is to take that which is unreal and make something useful from it.  Only Holy Spirit knows the answer to our relationship woes.  The ego craves to sit on the throne where Holy Spirit belongs, but it is ill-equipped to heal relationships, offer healing, or bring correction to the circumstances and situations we find all around us in the world. The ego can only make matters worse filling our hearts and minds with thoughts of hatred, fear, attack, and counterattack.  And we end up hurting ourselves and everyone around us when we let the ugly little squatter sit where it simply does not belong. 

Refuse to have anything more to do with ego worries, frets, concerns, and fear.  Invite and keep the altar of your mind fresh, clean, and pure for the Holy Spirit to move and work its heavenly function of love and forgiveness.  Every time you think of one who hurt you, who took from you, who did something that your ego simply will not forgive, put down the ego by calling upon God’s love.  Follow in the footsteps of Jesus who loved His enemies, blessed those who cursed Him, and prayed for the very people who beat, humiliated, and crucified Him.  While this is impossible to the ego, this is the Holy Spirit’s function in our lives. Our function is to keep our minds aligned with His. 

Remember this is only hard on the ego, not on our true Selves.  This is our way to health, our well-being, our eternal happiness and is well-worth every effort! 

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 281. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 438.

[2] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 22:VI:8, Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). P. 482.

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

Part II:7 What Is The Holy Spirit?

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PART II.  SECTION 7.  What is the Holy Spirit?

  1. The Holy Spirit mediates between illusions and the truth.  Since He must bridge the gap between reality and dreams, perception leads to knowledge through the grace that God has given Him, to be His gift to everyone who turns to Him for truth.  Across the bridge that He provides are dreams all carried to the truth, to be dispelled before the light of knowledge.  There are sights and sounds forever laid aside.  And where they were perceived before, forgiveness has made possible perception’s tranquil end.
  2. The goal the Holy Spirit’s teaching sets is just this end of dreams.  For sights and sounds must be translated from the witnesses of fear to those of love.  And when this is entirely accomplished, learning has achieved the only goal it has in truth.  For learning, as the Holy Spirit guides it to the outcome He perceives for it, becomes the means to go beyond itself, to be replaced by the Eternal Truth.
  3. If you but knew how much your Father yearns to have you recognize your sinlessness, you would not let His Voice appeal in vain, nor turn away from His replacement for the fearful images and dreams you made.  The Holy Spirit understands the means you made, by which you would attain what is forever unattainable.  And if you offer them to Him, He will employ the means you made for exile to restore your mind to where it truly is at home.
  4. From knowledge, where He has been placed by God, the Holy Spirit calls to you, to let forgiveness rest upon your dreams, and be restored to sanity and peace of mind.  Without forgiveness will your dreams remain to terrify you.  And the memory of all your Father’s Love will not return to signify the end of dreams has come.
  5. Accept your Father’s gift.  It is a call from Love to Love that It be but Itself.  The Holy Spirit is His gift, by which the quietness of Heaven is restored to God’s beloved Son.  Would you refuse to take the function of completing God, when all He wills is that you be complete?[1]
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Today Jesus teaches that Holy Spirit bridges the gap between our nightmare here in separation and the reality of Sonship.  Holy Spirit translates so to speak the language of fear, chaos, the multitude of clamoring, chattering, calamitous voices to the language beyond words, the quiet and still language of love, of oneness, of knowledge.  Holy Spirit takes everything that we hear and see and experience in this world and uses it to lead us to the knowledge of God, the purity and perfection of our creation, our Sonship of God and Brotherhood in Christ. 

The Holy Spirit is reserved for all who turn to God for truth.  We do not have to beg for it, plead with God to give it to us, or have priests, prophets, or shamans perform rites, rituals, or offer special prayers.  God freely gives us the gift of Holy Spirit to stand in the gap between our perceived life in the world and our real Self in the mind of God.  Holy Spirit reminds us of our sinlessness, our perfection in Christ, our purity and innocence because this is what our Father yearns for us to know.

We can be so utterly thankful to Holy Spirit and keep our hearts and minds open to His Voice and to the truth that replaces thoughts of sin, shame, and sorrow in our lives.  Our hearts and mind lift in gratitude when we realize that without God’s Gift to us, we would continue to search for answers to life’s deep questions where they can never be found.  Without Holy Spirit, we would continue to search for happiness in the world where every happiness is a fleeting commodity that is over as soon as it has begun.  Without Holy Spirit we could not begin to understand the things of God, to have faith in what we cannot see with our flesh eyes and hear with our flesh ears.  And yet when we give Him our flesh eyes and ears, Holy Spirit uses them to restore our mind to truth!  We are no longer in despair, we are no longer victims of a ruthless world, we are no longer exiles in a strange land – we begin to see the nightmare world as a learning tool of separation and as we become doers and teachers of forgiveness we see the reality which lies beyond – the dreams of this world can no longer terrify us or hold us in bondage. 

Today, Jesus tells us to accept God’s gift of the Holy Spirit.  Do not be afraid of the peace and calm and joy that Holy Spirit restores to your mind no matter how alien it feels in this world that calls for us to take up every cause and keep ourselves twisted in a state of constant stress, worry, and over-concern, pushing our minds and bodies beyond their finite limits in our unattainable search for happiness, meaning, and truth.   Do not let these calls of the world tempt us to dethrone Holy Spirit from His rightful place in our minds.  The ego will tell you that you have to change the world, that you must get out there and fight for God, defend the cause of righteousness, go to battle against evil and sin.  This will not bring you peace.  This will not bring you joy.  This will certainly not bring you anything but exhaustion, unrest, heartache, disease, and death.  Let the world exactly as it is and trust in God.  Accept His Gift which will complete you as God’s Son and thus complete God in His love and desire for your wholeness. 

The next ten lessons will inform us more each day about God’s Gift to us who turn to Him for truth.  Let each lesson rest upon your mind and open your heart to its message and core concepts.  Each day practice putting down the ego’s resistance to the quiet restfulness of Holy Spirit.  Ignore the ego’s call to do, do, do and fight, fight, fight, and simply walk in a state of the forgiveness that sees beyond this world to the one in which God resides in utter assurance, certainty, and rest.  Join with me each day as we learn of God’s Gift and apply the concepts Jesus has given us to deepen our understanding and train our minds to surrender to His Love and call upon our lives. 

[1] A Course In Miracles. Workbook for Students. Part II: 7 What is the…Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 437.

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

Lesson 280 What Limits Can I Lay Upon God’s Son?

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PART II.  SECTION 6: WHAT IS THE CHRIST?

Lesson 280 What Limits Can I Lay Upon God’s Son?

  1. Whom God created limitless is free.  I can invent imprisonment for him, but only in illusions, not in truth.  No Thought of God has left its Father’s Mind.  No Thought of God is limited at all.  No Thought of God but is forever pure.  Can I lay limits on the Son of God, whose Father willed that he be limitless and like Himself in freedom and in love?
  2. Today let me give honor to Your Son, for thus alone, I find the way to You.  Father, I lay no limits on the Son You love, and You created limitless.  The honor that I gave to him is Yours, and what is yours belongs to me as well.[1]
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As the last lesson in the section “What is the Christ?” draws to a close today, Jesus is urging us to understand a spiritual concept that sets our minds free and supports our return to Him.  Step out of the illusion, Jesus says.  Stop inventing imprisonment by living for the body and identifying with that which is not God’s Son.  We are only as free and limitless as we choose to believe we are.  We are only like Christ in freedom and in love when we stop living for ego and start living for God. 

As we draw our energy, our thoughts, our minds, our devotion to Christ, the things of the world no longer bear much weight, if any, upon our consciousness.  We let the world be exactly as it is.  Our minds are one with Christ.  We are no longer caught up in the things that would entice, enthrall, or entertain the flesh.  The worries and cares that had once caused us sleepless nights, knots in our stomach, rain on our parades are now in their proper perspective because we see past this world of chaos and opposites, unceasing demands and dwindling resources to the place of abundance, calm, quiet, and rest. 

How can we be at peace when the world around us is in turmoil?  Because the world of sin, scarcity, shame, and sorrow is forgiven, over, done with.  We are one with Christ; we are God’s Son created in His likeness and to do His Will.  Let us thank God and honor Him for our Sonship with Christ.  Today let us thank and honor our Selves for it is only when we see our Selves as Sons that we find the way to God. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 280. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 436.

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

Lesson 279 Creation’s Freedom Promises My Own

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PART II.  SECTION 6: WHAT IS THE CHRIST?

Lesson 279 Creation’s Freedom Promises My Own

  1. The end of dreams is promised me because God’s Son is not abandoned by His Love.  Only in dreams is there a time when he appears to be in prison, and awaits a future freedom, if it be at all.  Yet in reality his dreams are gone, with truth established in their place.  And now is freedom his already.  Should I wait in chains which have been severed for release, when God is offering me freedom now?
  2. I will accept Your promises today and give my faith to them.  My Father loves the Son Whom He created as His Own.  Would You withhold the gifts You gave to me?[1]
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From the time I can remember I experienced life in the body as having been abandoned, as having been punished, as being in exile among a species alien to me.  While I learned to love and be part of my earth family, their abuse, inconsistencies, jealousies, false accusations, mockery, mixed in with love and affection always filled me with bewilderment, a sense of horror and dread.  As a child whenever I could get a few moments to myself, I would sink myself into the bible or any book that I could get my hands on, hoping that I would find another person like me, one who experienced life here as an alien trapped in a flesh and blood body, knowing that they did not and never would belong! 

And yet, underneath all the consternation, questions, and confusion, I knew my Father’s love for me.  I knew that my sojourn here would come to an end, that all my questions would be answered, that I would find, someday, a way out.  Instinctively I knew that what I was being taught about God was not truth, and yet I had no comprehension of the truth to take its place.  So I followed the clamor of the ego, the flesh, the temptations of the world. I had my way with the world and the world had its way with me.  It was a heady dance of ups and downs, ins and outs, joys and sorrows, gains and losses, changing partners, special relationships, barking up this tree and then that.  In other words it was the same old ego story that we all go through with its own little twists, turns, and plot devices!  I’ve sung the song of the ego; I carried banners, marched for causes, chased after symbols, sacrificed for and to gods of status, achievement, lust, and money.  And all I found were more chains and less freedom, more lies and less truth, more dread and less joy, more chaos and less peace. 

Today Jesus promises us the end of such dreams.  God has not abandoned us to the flesh, to the story of indignity, to a chaotic, uncertain world of relationships and circumstances outside our control.  We are not at the mercy of the body’s drives, urges, and demands.  The dream is over when we accept the truth about ourselves as one with Christ.  We are set free.  Those imaginary chains that seemed so heavy, tight, and fast melt away when we accept the truth about our state in the world.  It is over!  The spell has been dispelled.  When we align our minds with the mind of Christ, we see past the world to the reality that has never changed, has never suffered, has never experienced so much as a blip of dismay. 

As we pray the prayer of freedom, open your mind to its deep, endless truth.  Instead of only saying the words, experience the Word.  Step into the freedom of Creation which is still as God created it.  Recognize your part in the delusion of madness which has seemed to take its place and put an end to your allegiance to that which simply cannot be of God! 

Today I accept Your promise of freedom, liberty, and truth, dear Heavenly Father. I take all my faith in that which is not real and give it to Your Kingdom, Your Love, and Your Promise.  I accept all the gifts that You have given me freely, without sacrifice, without pleading, without cost – because I am Your Son Whom You created as Your Own.  In the name of Jesus, with Whom I am one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 279. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).  p. 436.

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

Lesson 278 If I Am Bound, My Father Is Not Free

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PART II.  SECTION 6: WHAT IS THE CHRIST?

Lesson 278 If I Am Bound, My Father Is Not Free

  1. If I accept that I am prisoner within a body, in a world in which all things that seem to live appear to die, then is my Father prisoner with me.  And this do I believe, when I maintain the laws the world obeys that I must obey; the frailties and the sins which I perceive are real and cannot be escaped.  If I am bound in any way, I do not know my Father nor my Self.  And I am lost to all reality.  For truth is free, and what is bound is not a part of truth.
  2. Father, I ask for nothing but the truth.  I have had many foolish thoughts about myself and my creation and have brought a dream of fear into my mind.  Today I would not dream.  I choose the way to You instead of madness and instead of fear.  For truth is safe, and only love is sure.[1]
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This morning I woke up with my mind in a whirl.  I had slept later than I like.  I had three blog posts to catch up on today. There were emails to respond to and prayers to be said.  I had a mound of receipts to enter into our accounting program.  My closet is in a state of disarray waiting for me to put away my summer wardrobe and sort out the fall/winter one.  The whole house could use a good dusting and mopping…and my son is picking me up by 3:30 today to go for a hike, which I have mixed feelings about going on. 

As I lay there dreading getting out of bed and yet yearning for a cup of coffee, I experienced a bit of anxiety – how could I ever do everything that God is calling me to do when I feel heavy, tired, and craving more sleep?  Am I really hearing the Voice for God in my life?  Can any of this be real?  Oh dear Lord, I prayed, let my mind be free of all that is not of Your love, Your peace, Your calm, Your joy.  I clear the altar of my mind.  I want only You and what You have for me. 

Only a moment later James appeared with a cup of coffee just the way I like it.  Instead of launching into a description of everything he plans to do today as he normally does, we began to discuss the spiritual concepts of quietness that Ervin Laszlo writes about in his book, What is Reality? The New Map of Cosmos, Consciousness, and Existence.  We shared some thoughts about a bible passage that my mother had claimed when she prayed for an ailment James had suffered years ago.  One of her favorites, was “By His stripes ye are healed,” and we pondered the meaning of this even as we realized that the humiliation, pain, and suffering of the crucifixion itself stands for the unreality of the body, the meaningless of all symbols that would lift themselves up against God, and that our healing comes from the peaceful, calm tranquility field in which everything is holy, perfect, and pure and there is One certain Voice in place of the multitude. 

Last year’s post spoke to my heart and so I share the prayer and the message again here in a slightly revised form.  Join with me in prayer using your own words from your own heart, mind, and experiences:

Dear Heavenly Father, I no longer accept my reality as a body or my Self as a prisoner to this fleshy mound of clay. You did not place me in a world where chaos, drama, suffering, and death are sources of delight and entertainment.  This is a nightmare that would stand in place of Your perfect love and peace and joy.  I will never find You in a world of perpetual demands, limited time and resources, infirmity, imprisonment, and certain death.  You are not the Creator of this world and this is not of Your doing!  If I would believe such a thing, I could do nothing but deny my Father and my Self out of sheer and utter fear and loathing.  Thank You, Father, for the truth, the truth that sets us free and releases us from false beliefs in the nightmare world and the nightmare gods we made as substitute for You.  In the name of Jesus with Whom we are one.  Amen. 

Today we ask for nothing but the truth!  The ego gives us multi-varied theories about ourselves and our creation.  Who are we?  Where did we come from?  What is the purpose of our being?  Enquiring minds down through recorded history ask these questions of their priests, prophets, seers, shamans, and scientists.  There are thousands upon thousands of paths to follow to the truth – every religion upon the face of the earth has a slightly different take on their gospels; scientists have their theories; shamans have their mind-expanding drugs, alternate realities, spiritual guides, and hypnotic states. 

Today, however, we want to pass through the mists of dogma, theory, magic, and dreams. We ask for the truth.  We go past all the nonsense that would distract and keep us bound.  We want to be released from lies, illusions, and vain imaginations.  We are no longer bound from the stupor of separation.  Today we are free to walk the path of love.  Today we awake to truth.  We are Sons of God, made in the likeness of our Father, and in Him we find our liberty, our freedom, and Home.    

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 278. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 435.

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

Lesson 277 Let Me Not Bind Your Son With Laws I Made

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PART II.  SECTION 6: WHAT IS THE CHRIST?

Lesson 277 Let Me Not Bind Your Son With Laws I Made

  1. Your Son is free, my Father.  Let me not imagine I have bound him with the laws I made to rule the body.  He is not subject to any laws I made by which I try to make the body more secure.  He is not changed by what is changeable.  He is not slave to any laws of time.  He is as You created him, because he knows no law except the law of love.
  2. Let us not worship idols, nor believe in any law idolatry would make to hide the freedom of the Son of God.  He is not bound except by his beliefs.  Yet what he is, is far beyond his faith in slavery or freedom.  He is free because he is his Father’s Son.  And he cannot be bound unless God’s truth can lie, and God can will that He deceive Himself.[1]
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Today Jesus leads us in prayer that resonates with freedom.  We accept the liberty of our eternal Spirits, which have absolutely no need for the laws devised for the body.  We stand as God’s Son Who cannot be changed by the constant flux of the world.  This prayer said in faith, in love, in utmost praise and glory frees us from the laws of time – we are no longer concerned about the passing hours, days, months, and years – for we live and enjoy our being with God forever!   

As God’s Son we have no need for the laws of this world devised to keep us bound to our bodies.   Because we are as God created us, we know no laws except the law of love.

Jesus tells us today not to worship idols.  The physical forms that we find in our world hide our freedom from us.  While our bodies, special relationships, jobs, houses, cars, and possessions and alliances in the flesh keep us bound to a belief that this is our reality – we can free our minds from its captivity by remembering our true and holy Self Who is free in Christ. 

Today Jesus is leading us to practice being one with Him.  Get used to the idea that we are not bound to the laws of the body, practice using your Christ mind to experience freedom from your attachments to the physical world and let your mind bask in the eternal gifts of love, joy, peace.  Our possessions and special relationships will never bring us peace, love, or joy.  Our possessions own us, they enslave us, they keep us preoccupied with that which will never gratify or satisfy us except in the realm of passing time. If we are pinning our future hopes on that which is physical – made of flesh or alloy – we will be left with nothing.  When we think with Christ, we are set free from the laws that bind us to this world.  It no longer matters.  The only thing that matters is our return to God and the laws of love. 

Meditate upon our prayer today and let the words sink into your consciousness.  Ask God to reveal to you its deep meaning as you practice freedom.  Pray to be delivered from idolatry, pray to be shown the truth of who and what you really are.  Know that with Christ, you cannot be bound by the laws of the world. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 277. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, (1992). p. 435.

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

Lesson 276 The Word Of God Is Given Me To Speak

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PART II.  SECTION 6: WHAT IS THE CHRIST?

Lesson 276 The Word of God Is Given Me To Speak

  1. What is the Word of God?  My Son is pure and holy as Myself.  And thus did God become the Father of the Son.  He loves, for thus was he created.  This the Word His Son did not create with Him, because in this, His Son was born.  Let us accept His Fatherhood, and all is given us.  Deny we were created in His Love and we deny our Self, to be unsure of who we are, of Who our Father is, and for what purpose we have come.  And yet, we need but to acknowledge Him Who gave His Word to us in our creation, to remember Him and so recall our Self.
  2. Father, Your Word is mine.  And it is this that I would speak to all my brothers, who are given me to cherish as my own, as I am loved and blessed and saved by You.[1]
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God’s Word declares us like Him.  God’s Word declares our purity and holiness.  When God made us, He created us in His likeness, to be like Him as His Sons.  He did not make a mistake.  He did not create us to see us suffer, to give us a long list of rules, regulations, and sacrifices.  He did not make us to grovel before Him and flatter Him throughout eternity.  God made us as His Sons in love and to extend His love. 

Our minds are given peace, calm, quiet, and eternal love and gratitude – and relief – when we accept the Fatherhood of God and all that comes with it.  When we believe doctrines and dogma which were designed to condemn, shame, and fill us with fear, our minds will be in turmoil.  We will live in a state of anxiety, we will not love and respect God for we have believed the myths and stories about Him that were intended to enslave our consciousness, be “good” citizens of the world, and keep us from our true identity in Him.  Our identity as God’s Son assures us of our ultimate purity, salvation, redemption, and return to Him.  We will no longer be defined by our identity in the ego world of splinters, shards, and separate pieces.  For we are as one with God! 

Deny God’s Love, Jesus states in our lesson today, and we deny our true Selves.  We stupefy ourselves.  We forget who we are and what we are and why we are here.  We try to find ourselves in a world where we must survive by our wits, our cunning, our abilities to get to the goods before someone else gets there!  We devise all manner of ridiculous and degrading theories of our origins in our religions, in our sciences, in our private thoughts and personal philosophizing.  We make up stories about God that make Him out to be a petty tyrant who demands blood sacrifice, temples designed to break the backs and rob the pocketbooks of those who are commanded to build them, and harsh punishments for those who break meaningless rules. 

It is any wonder we drown our despair in gluttony, prescription drugs, alcohol, sex, perversions, religion, and consumerism?  Is it any wonder we demand that our special relationships supply us with the sense of love and belonging that only our Father can provide? With bitter regret and tragic consistency, we strike out at the ones we love the most because they fail to deliver, using them to project our own sense of sin and shame and bewilderment, using them as an excuse for our own unholiness. 

Today listen to your heart while you meditate upon the words of our lesson.  Jesus leads us to acknowledge God Who gave of Himself in creation.  If we want to know who we are, we remember our Father – Who created us in love. 

Do not be ashamed of your hunger and thirst for God for He is our birthright.  No matter how many separate pieces Creation splinters into – each separate entity is crying out for wholeness, love, and unity with our Maker.  Today, with faith and courage, we broadcast the Word of God – the good news, the gospel of liberty, freedom, and truth.  We are over sin.  We are over shame. We are over sorrow.  We are over wondering who we are and what we could possibly be about.  We are pure and holy, and God loves us!  Today we stand with Christ as God’s perfect Son.    

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 276. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, (1992). p. 434.

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

Lesson 275 God’s Healing Voice Protects All Things Today

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PART II.  SECTION 6: WHAT IS THE CHRIST?

Lesson 275 God’s Healing Voice Protects All Things Today

  1. Let us today attend the Voice for God, Which speaks an ancient lesson, no more true today than any other day.  Yet has this day been chosen as the time when we will seek and hear and learn and understand.  Join me in hearing.  For the Voice for God tells us of things we cannot understand alone, nor learn apart.  It is in this that all things are protected.  And in this, the healing of the Voice for God is found.
  2. Your healing Voice protects all things today, and so I leave all things to You.  I need be anxious over nothing.  For Your Voice will tell me what to do, and where to go; to whom to speak and what to say to him, what thoughts to think, what words to give the world.  The safety that I bring is given me.  Father, Your Voice protects all things through me.[1]
Photo credit: http://www.soulshepherding.org

Let us listen carefully to our lesson today.  Jesus offers us a primary lesson that will save us from all the grief and despair the ego has planned for us.  Although today’s lesson is not a new one, but indeed a very old one, today is the day that we are to not only learn it but also set our minds to understand it.  Let this time of devotion be a time of true quiet, a setting apart of a time and a place today within your mind, your heart, your home and commit to not leaving this devotion without a deepened comprehension of all that the lesson imparts.

Jesus tells us that we join together in hearing – not with our physical ears and the separate spaces between us as we gather from around the world – but with our spiritual ears and in our spiritual places in which no space separates us, but we are as one.  We come together – we do not learn these deep spiritual truths on our own.

This is our protection – there is no one amongst us that is given more or has more.  We learn it together and we come together to God’s Kingdom and to God’s truth.  No matter what our religions and faiths have taught us before that there are special ones and elect ones that know things that are withheld from us, now we know the truth.  We come together; we learn together; we are saved as one.  In this way we are protected from spiritual arrogance and pride, we are protected from cultish adoration of priests, preachers, gurus, and monks. 

As we join together as one no matter the space, the time, the distance between us – we seek God; we hear the Voice for God, we learn, and we begin to understand that which at one time bewildered us and sent our minds into turmoil.  We begin to see how we are each other’s teachers; we are each other’s way to truth; we are each other’s savior as we stand with Christ. 

Today we leave all things to God.  Every single concern we have – big or small.  We give up our anxiety over our special relationships; we give up our worries over not having enough time to fulfill our earthly obligations and duties; we clear the altar of our mind of all the chatter of the ego and we seek to hear the Voice for God.  We learn to recognize His Voice.  We learn to love His Voice.  We learn to trust His Voice.

We have an inner guidance system called Holy Spirit.  Holy Spirit is the Voice for God who tells us everything we need to know. Do not let today’s lesson confuse you.  We do not have to wait around to get an infilling of Holy Spirit.  Holy Spirit is part of us and has always been a part of us.  God breathed His Voice into our being when He created us.  We have been confused about His Voice because it is not the only voice we hear – we hear a lot of other chatter, a lot of other drives and desires and calls to go here and to go there.  When we lay our egos down, when we turn our special relationships over to God, when we only want what God has for us – we stop listening to the voice for vanity.  We no longer listen to the voice of condemnation.  We no longer listen to the voice for fear and unholiness.  When all those noisy, clamorous, querulous voices go away, it is then we hear the quiet, holy voice for God.  It was there all the time.  It is our natural God-given gift.  This is our true Voice which belongs to our Holy Self, our Holy Spirit.   It will never lead us astray but always keep us on the path to God. 

This Voice is our one true Voice.  It is not only our safety, but it is our healing because it protects us from all the false leads, detours. and dangers of following the jibber-jabber of the ego which would always lead us astray.  This Voice tells us where we should put our energy, our attention, our talents.  This Voice will show us our interconnectedness, our oneness, the way of God’s Kingdom, for I will fulfill your needs and you will fulfill mine and both of our cups will run over with blessing, receiving and giving.  This is a very precious teaching and brings us together as one as we practice our Sonship here in the world and teaches us the limitlessness of eternity.

For application today I have a simple story that illustrates recognizing and heeding the Voice for God. Recently my cousin was buying a quart of ham and bean soup from a vendor at the fair.  Holy Spirit told her to buy a quart of bean soup for her youngest brother.  She had not spoken to her brother for nearly a year.  The last time she had seen him such mean words and accusations had been expressed that she felt unloved and unappreciated by him.  Months passed, anniversaries, birthdays, holidays – no word.  She had never been invited to his new home.  Even though she could not understand why she should buy soup for this particular brother, she did it anyway.  She delivered it to his door, and he said to her, “Oh, how did you know I was hungry for bean soup? I never make it because I am the only one in my family that likes it.” He was visibly touched that she had thought of him.  He was so grateful for her thoughtfulness and the soup, that he forgot his anger and invited her in.  She got to see his new house and visit with his family. They had a lovely time. When she left he gave her a big hug and expressed, not meanness or hate, but love and appreciation.  This is what our lesson means when we learn that God’s Voice is healing, and it is for our protection.  A special relationship designed for strife, discord, and projection was given over to God and then healed with bean soup of all things! 

Today meditate upon our lesson and repeat the prayer that Jesus gives us until its message is emblazoned upon your heart and mind.  God’s healing Voice protects all things today through you and through me seeking, hearing, learning, and understanding together.  I welcome you to learn with me even as I learn with you.  The Lord imparts His knowledge to those who share the path, who seek Him in spirit, who understand and apply the concept of God in all and all in God. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 275. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, (1992). p. 434.

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

Lesson 274 Today Belongs To Love, Let Me Not Fear

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PART II.  SECTION 6: WHAT IS THE CHRIST?

Lesson 274 Today belongs to Love.  Let Me Not Fear.

  1. Father, today I would let all things be as You created them, and give Your Son the honor for his sinlessness, the love of brother to his brother and his Friend.  Through this I am redeemed.  Through this as well the truth will enter where illusions were, light will replace all darkness, and Your Son will know he is as You created him.
  2. A special blessing comes to us today, from Him Who is our Father.  Give this day to Him, and there will be no fear today because the day is given unto Love.[1]
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Notes and Personal Application In today’s prayer, Jesus directs us to commit all things to God.  We just let everything stand the way it is.  We do not ask for healing, we do not ask for forgiveness, we do not ask for a job so we can pay our bills, and we do not ask for the salvation of our loved ones.  We let things be the way they are and see past them to our oneness in Christ, to our sinlessness in Christ, to the love we have for one another in Christ, and the love that God has for us His Son.  When we look upon our world as it is right now with the eyes of Christ, we are redeemed, and the world, indeed all of creation along with us. 

We do not arrive at truth by coming to God in sackcloth and ashes, fasting and smiting ourselves in sorrow.  We do not arrive at truth by reporting the sins of our brothers, agonizing to Him about the sorry state of the world, pleading and groveling before Him to save the world.  When we lay down the eyes of flesh and see with the vision of Christ, light will replace darkness.  Our minds will be flooded with the sure knowledge that we are as He created us. 

God wants us to exercise the power of our Christ mind so that we may come to understand that He made us to be like Him.  He did not make us to be underlings!  He did not make us to be eternal babies and toddlers who must always come to Him for help, for sustenance, to get our diapers changed.  God made us like Him because He loves us.  He shares everything He is with us, His Son, because He loves us.  We were created to inhabit the Universe with Him.    

Today free your mind from the ego’s god who would design creatures who were perpetually dependent upon it, perpetually manipulated by its need for attention and admiration, its changeable moods, tempers, and demands. When we free ourselves from this concept of our Father we come to Him in love and respect.  We understand our worth to Him for with Christ, we are His beloved Son, and still as He created us. 

Today look at the world as it is with the faith, the courage, the power and glory to see beyond it.  Instead of seeing it through the eyes of ego which were designed and put into our flesh faces to see discord, destruction, and deviltry, see the world through the spiritual eyes of Christ – returned to our Father in peace and joy and love, where each and every aspect of Creation is holy, innocent, pure, where each one of us live – loving and laughing forever, together as one. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 274. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 433.

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

Lesson 273 The Stillness Of The Peace Of God Is Mine

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PART II.  SECTION 6: WHAT IS THE CHRIST?

Lesson 273 The Stillness of the Peace of God Is Mine

  1. Perhaps we are now ready for a day of undisturbed tranquility.  If this is not yet feasible, we are content and even more than satisfied to learn how such a day can be achieved.  If we give way to a disturbance, let us learn how to dismiss it and return to peace.  We need but tell our minds, with certainty:  The stillness of the peace of God is mine, and nothing can intrude upon the peace that God Himself has given to His Son.
  2. Father, Your peace is mine.  What need have I to fear that anything can rob me of what You would have me keep?  I cannot lose Your gifts to me.  And so the peace You gave Your Son is with me still, in quietness and in my own eternal love for You.[1]
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Notes and Personal Application As we come to our devotional practice today, we quiet our hearts and minds of all that would call us away from meditating upon and claiming the stillness of the peace of God.  Jesus tells us that maybe we are and maybe we are not ready for a day of undisturbed tranquility.  I can speak only for myself, but I am always ready for undisturbed tranquility.  I love it so for it is in tranquility that I find a quiet, certain mind full of God’s love through my oneness with Christ. 

James and I have learned how to let anything that disturbs our peace go almost immediately.  When we flare up at one another in disagreement or grumpiness, we have come to recognize that this is something we can dismiss quickly because we are happy only to return to peace.  Nothing can intrude upon the peace of God in our Christ-mind unless we choose to let it. 

This is a wonderful practice.  It is also an ego reveal because when you opt for tranquility you will see just how far your ego will go to cause unnecessary and histrionic drama in your life.  If you pay attention, you will come to know the people who are used by the ego to trigger your cravings for that which is not peace, for intrigue, for gossip, rumors, anger, shame, guilt, and sorrow.  If you pay closer attention, you will see how your ego will use these people as an excuse to lose your peace and how willing, and even eager, you are to let the things of the world disturb you.  If you pay even closer attention, you will see how in each of these instances are golden opportunities to practice the mind of Christ.  Whether it is an unjust accusation, a flareup from the past, a drain on your finances or social standing, an issue with your special relationships or your health – let the mind of Christ reflect the stillness and sureness of God.

It is in this peace that God moves in us His Son.  It is in this peace, not in the clamor and chatter and hysteria of ego, that we offer and receive miracles.  When we can say with confidence and certainty that nothing can intrude up on the peace that God has given us, His Son, we have grasped a truth which lays the framework for our return to our Home in Him. 

The disturbances to our peace are opportunities to teach us lessons on both an earthly level and a Kingdom level.  On an earthly level, disturbances must be dealt with firmly and with authority.  We are under no obligation to play with, cater to, or have anything to do with our own ego or the ego of others.  The ego will often use our special relationships to wreak havoc upon our stillness, our calm, our miracle-working realm.  The ego takes no greater pleasure than to tempt the Son of God to degrade his holy Self and forget who and what he is in Christ.  While we love the Son of God within; we do not entangle ourselves with others’ ego.  We must never make the mistake to think that an ego – whether our own or someone else’s is our friend, playmate, or ally.  We do not tease egos, mock them, remark upon them, or flatter them.  We do not try to manipulate them, cast them out, or attack them.  Egos thrive on attention; they shrivel and disappear when we let them go. 

We honor God by keeping our peace and being vigilant – this is not only a service to God and to the Christ within us, but it is a service that benefits everybody in our lives.  When we keep the drama that comes with ego out and let Christ’s peace and calm and stillness reign, we create an environment where miracles naturally and spontaneously occur.  When we make careful, mindful choices for those who are aligned with holiness in place of those who are aligned with that which is not holy, we are extending Christ in our minds, our homes, our work environments.  We are not to let the ego blind us to what is obvious.  This is the way of Christ. 

It is in this active, actionable decision-making process that we grow in Christ.  We are not passive, waiting for God to make the choice for us.  We cannot lose our peace, our love, our place in Christ unless we give it away to that which would plunder it. 

Today when we pray, Father, Your peace is mine…make a commitment to not only keep your mind free of the chatter, clamor, and chaos of the ego, but to also expand His peace to your environment.  Fill your room, your office, your car, your home with the stillness of the peace of God and know that it is yours to keep, to share, to extend to all Creation.    

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 273. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p. 433.

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

Lesson 272 How Can Illusions Satisfy God’s Son?

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PART II.  SECTION 6: WHAT IS THE CHRIST?

Lesson 272 How Can Illusions Satisfy God’s Son?

  1. Father, the truth belongs to me.  My home is set in Heaven by Your Will and mine.  Can dreams content me?  Can illusions bring me happiness?  What but Your memory can satisfy Your Son?  I will accept no less than You have given me.  I am surrounded by Your Love, forever still, forever gentle and forever safe.  God’s Son must be as You created him.
  2. Today we pass illusions by.  And if we hear temptation call to us to stay and linger in a dream, we turn aside and ask ourselves if we, the Sons of God, could be content with dreams when Heaven can be chosen just as easily as hell, and love will happily replace all fear.[1]
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Notes and Personal Application As the truth becomes apparent to us, the world can longer keep us in bondage to its lies, it fears, its temptations.  The longer we stay in the world the less enchanted we become with it, no matter how enamored we may be at the outset.  Our Father knows this – He made us in truth, He made us in Love, He made us for Heaven.  That is where we belong.  That is where we find meaning, joy, and happiness.  We can dream of finding happiness here in ego world, but we are setting ourselves up for bitter disappointment.  No matter what tree we are barking up in order to shake out some pleasure, some promise, some gratification, this world demands too hefty a ransom of blood, sweat, and tears for its highly overrated indulgences and fleeting satisfactions.    

As long as we are living for the body we are slaves to the body.  Our whole lives revolve around its needs.  From the time we are born until the time we die, we are at the mercies of our hunger, thirst, need for shelter, warmth, pre-programmed drives for sex, power, and a sense of belonging.  The world swarms with a sea of humanity with built-in cravings that can only be satisfied in a momentarily, ongoing basis.  Our text teaches us that our separated egos are as if each briny droplet has separated itself from the ocean while thinking it is all of it. 

For the undone ego, the whole of creation revolves around our bodies, our needs, our affections, and affectations.  Bodies are a cleverly devised substitute made by the ego to imprison, manipulate, and degrade the Sons of God.  If you believe that God created us from dust, you must ask yourself what kind of Father would do that.  Jesus teaches us in the text that if we end up here in a body, we chose separateness.  We took our Godhood and traded it for humanity.  We were promised that separateness would make us bigger and better than God only to find that separateness is a nightmare of uncertainty, beastliness, and false pride.  When we begin to realize how controlled we are as bodies by their dependence on food, water, sex, cravings, drives, and urges, we can no longer glorify the body or kid ourselves that our bodies are made by a loving God.  Our bodies were designed to be manipulated.  A perfect Creator could not make an imperfect creation and it does not take long in the body to realize that it is not a blessing but a curse. Understanding this, not being afraid to look at this, to study this, to reflect upon it, to take a stand against any teaching that would say otherwise, is critical to our understanding of the Course, Atonement, and our ultimate salvation. 

In today’s lesson we acknowledge the truth for we see that it belongs to us.  We remember who we are and where we belong.  We wake up and say, “Hey, this is not reality!  I am not this body.  I am a Son of God!  No matter how much I may enjoy some things of this world, this world is a twisted replica of my true Home.  I am through with its lies.  I am through with its unequal playing fields, rivalries, drama, decay, destruction, and death.  I come from a place of freedom, love, joy, and peace that is forever gentle and eternally certain, safe, and right. I come from a place of mutuality and unity.  I can find no happiness in a world where some people are rich and others are poor, some people are intelligent, and some people have an intellectual disadvantage, some kids are born healthy and others are handicapped from birth. I am over food chains, hideous hierarchies, and the trite inner circles of ego.  I remember who and what I am, I remember where I belong, and I am through with this nightmare!”  

Today we pass illusion by – Jesus recounts in paragraph two.  We have no desire to stay in la-la land of temptation, false promises, and ridiculous posturing.  We turn our back on hell for now we see it for what it is – a nightmare from which the unwary are trapped in cycles of denial, despair, and death. We choose Heaven where love replaces all hellish dreams. 

Today if you are still confused about the difference between our egos and our holy Selves, ask the Lord to reveal your ego to you, to help you see what you must stand against, what you must lay down in order to not only start your journey home to Him but to remain on the path that leads us home. 

The ego lurks in our mind, posing as our Self, feigning friendship while plotting our shame, sorrow, despair, depression, and eventual demise.  Some people, even teachers of the Course, will advocate for the ego, but while we are not called to attack our ego, we are called to see it for what it is and deny it any say in our life.  The ego is the symbol of separation from God.  As long as it can imprison our mind and distract us by its constant, pointless chatter we are blinded to the truth about our identity as God’s Son.

Once we recognize it for what it is, we can pray today’s prayer in empowered humility.  Our hymn of praise becomes The Truth Belongs to Me!  My Home is Set in Heaven by Your Will and Mine, O Lord!  The illusions of this world can never tempt us again.   

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 272. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, (1992). p. 432.

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

Lesson 271 Christ’s Is The Vision I Will Use Today

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PART II.  SECTION 5:  WHAT IS THE BODY?

Lesson 271 Christ Is The Vision I Will Use Today

  1. Each day, each hour, every instant, I am choosing what I want to look upon, the sounds I want to hear, the witnesses to what I want to be the truth for me.  Today I choose to look upon what Christ would have me see, to listen to God’s Voice, to seek the witnesses to what is true in God’s creation. In Christ’s sight, the world and God’s creation meet, and as they come together all perception disappears.  His kindly sight redeems the world from death, for nothing that He looks on but must live, remembering the Father and the Son, Creator and creation unified.
  2. Father, Christ’s vision is the way to You.  What He beholds invites Your memory to be restored to me.  And this I choose, to be what I would look upon today.[1]
With Christ’s Vision the World and Creation Meet – Photo by http://www.eckiefriar.com

Notes and Personal Application Today we choose to see with the eyes of Christ, to understand the world through the lens of its need for forgiveness, correction, and return to God.  This is our prayer, our commitment, our salvation. 

As students of the Course, we have come to understand the need for vigilance in our walk to God.  We have come to understand that we are not the separate ego which would keep us from our identity in Christ, and yet each day, each hour, every single instant, this ego works to distract us and keep us caught up in the drama world of deceit.  As long as the Son of God looks upon the lies as truth, the Son of God remains in a world of time, of death, of decay. 

So today Christ’s is the vision we use.  Each day we come to our practice, each moment we give to God, each insight that we receive from Holy Spirit, each step we take forward on our walk toward truth, each time we forgive rather than condemn we are bringing darkness to light.  We are bringing lies to truth.  We are ending the separation and standing with Christ in saving the world. 

It is a choice how we spend our time, what music we listen to, what voices we heed.  It is a choice which witnesses we choose to tell the truth to us.  When we suffer a loss in this world, do we give it to God and count it all joy or do we sulk, complain, or allow our mind to become full of bitterness, anger, or sorrow?  When we have a few moments to relax and take it easy, do we call our friends to fret over the political turmoil of the day and call names and blame the other political party for what is wrong about our country or do we focus upon the love and peace and joy that Christ has established in our hearts and minds?  Do we allow our neighbors to offend us by their conceits and misdeeds or do we practice the forgiveness we ask for ourselves over our past wrongs?  

When we use Christ’s vision, we step out of the ego and into the light of truth.  We are no longer caught up in this world and all of its constant clamor, chatter, and chaos.  When we see with the eyes of Christ, we see beyond this realm.  We see the place where heaven and earth meet and where we no longer perceive separation because we are the one Son of God. 

Join with me in today’s prayer in your own words and for your own circumstances:

Father, let us see with the eyes of Christ because this is the only way to You.  When we see love instead of hate, when we see happiness instead of sadness; when we see immortality instead of death – we know that Christ’s vision is our own and that the memory of You is restored to us.  This is what we want to see today.  We want to see happiness!  We want to see togetherness!  We want to see people having fun and doing good!  We want to see beauty.  We want to see righteous living and truth telling.  This is what we choose for we will be what we look upon today.  In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 271. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). p 231

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

Part Two Section Six: What Is The Christ?

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PART II.  SECTION 6:  WHAT IS THE CHRIST?

  1. Christ is God’s Son as He created Him.  He is the Self we share, uniting us with one another, and with God as well.  He is the Thought Which still abides within the Mind that is His Source.  He has not left His holy home, nor lost the innocence in which He was created.  He abides unchanged forever in the Mind of God.
  2. Christ is the link that keeps you one with God and guarantees that separation is no more than an illusion of despair, for hope forever will abide in Him.  Your mind is part of His, and His of yours.  He is the part in which God’s Answer lies; where all decisions are already made, and dreams are over.  He remains untouched by anything the body’s eyes perceive.  For though in Him His Father placed the means for your salvation, yet does he remain the Self, Who, like His Father, knows no sin.
  3. Home of the Holy Spirit, and at home in God alone, does Christ remain at peace within the Heaven of your holy mind.  This is the only part of you that has reality in truth.  The rest is dreams.  Yet will these dreams be given unto Christ, to face before His glory and reveal your holy Self, the Christ, to you at last. 
  4. The Holy Spirit reaches from the Christ in you to all your dreams, and bids them come to Him, to be translated into truth.  He will exchange them for the final dream which God appointed as the end of dreams.  For when forgiveness rests upon the world and peace has come to every Son of God, what could there be to keep things separate, for what remains to see except Christ’s face?
  5. And how long will this holy face be seen, when it is but the symbol that the time for learning now is over, and the goal of the Atonement has been reached at last?  So therefore let us seek to find Christ’s face and look on nothing else.  As we behold His glory, will we know we have no need of learning or perception or of time, or anything except the holy Self, the Christ Whom God created as His Son.[1] 
Photo credit: http://www.aits.org

Notes and Personal Application So far in Part II of our Course we have learned the meaning of the following subjects:  Forgiveness, Salvation, the World, Sin, the Body, and now we learn of the Christ.  Who and what is Christ and what does He stand for in our life?  The introduction to section six of Part II tells us that Christ is the perfect son of God.  He is still as God created Him.  He did not wish to separate from God.  He did not wish to come and make a body for Himself and live in an indeterminate state of illusions. Christ was not interested in physicality and the sense of darkness, decay, and death that accompany the temptations of ego. 

Today we are introduced to the idea that Christ is who we identify with as Sons of God.  He did not come here because He wished to leave God’s perfect kingdom.  He came to save us because He is one with us.  He came to the dream and was crucified in the dream but let us not for one moment make the mistake that this has changed His perfection, His wholeness, His innocence.  As He came here to dream the dream of death, so do we come to dream the dream of death.  As He awoke to His eternal home in the mind of God, so we awake in the eternal home of the mind of God.  Just as we are not complete without Him, Christ is not complete without the Sonship.  His wholeness and our wholeness are one and the same. 

Christ is the One Who reminds us of our eternal connection to God.  Christ is the One Who sees beyond this world of clamor, opposites, and vanity.  Nothing in this world matters to Him for He knows what is real and what is not.  In the eyes of Christ, the world is already over, a thing of the past, a distant blip in the eternal calm and certainty of God. 

Christ is the only aspect of our lives in the world that is real about us.  Christ is the only aspect of our lives in the world that has any eternal meaning.  As we shed our egos and all of its symbols, we find our home in Him, our holy and forever Selves as one with Him.  Because of Christ, who lives in God and is home to Holy Spirit, we who are in the body can claim all that Christ has and is and forever will be – for we are one in Him.   

In paragraph four, Jesus tells us that Christ sends Holy Spirit to this dream we have of separation.  Holy Spirit translates the nothingness of this world into truth.  He exchanges every single separate dream for the final dream which God appointed as the end of dreams when all truth will be revealed.  When we have forgiven it all, when we stop pointing fingers at each other and recognize our state of being for what it is, when peace comes to each of us, we see the face of Christ in one another. 

And when we see the face of Christ in all we will know that our time of learning is over.  We have reached our goal.  Atonement has been realized by you and by me and by all of the world.  When we are no longer content to look upon anything that keeps us apart, when we see the world as the illusion it is, we behold His glory – our sojourn in time has come to an end.  We no longer perceive – we know.  We no longer learn because we have become.  We are like Him and there is nothing withheld from us, for we are one with our holy Self, our Savior, our Friend, the holy Son of God.   

In the next ten lessons, ask God to reveal the meaning of the Face of Christ to you.  Do not take my word for it!  In your daily devotional practice, ask God to show you the truth about the world.  Take notes of the discourse in which God speaks to your heart and mind each day.  Listen for the still, quiet voice of the Holy Spirit who will guide you out of the illusion and into the truth.  Find someone with whom to share your holy insights in a way that feels comfortable, natural, and welcome.  Be humble and willing to learn from those whom your ego may tempt you to resist.  Refrain from becoming preachy, acting the spiritual know-it-all, and judging others for their more traditional interpretations and beliefs.  We are all in this together – learning, forgiving, and answering the call of Christ upon our lives and hearts and minds. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Part II: 5 What is the Christ. Foundation for Inner Peace (Second Edition). p. 431.

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

Lesson 270 I Will Not Use The Body’s Eyes Today

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PART II.  SECTION 5:  WHAT IS THE BODY?

Lesson 270 I Will Not Use The Body’s Eyes Today

  1. Father, Christ’s vision is Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body’s eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world! Yet how much more will I perceive in it then sight can give. The world forgiven signifies Your Son acknowledges His Father, lets his dreams be brought to truth, and waits expectantly the one remaining instant more of time which ends forever, as Your memory returns to him. And now his will is one with Yours. His function now is but Your Own, and every thought except Your Own is gone.
  2. The quiet of today will bless our hearts, and through them peace will come to everyone. Christ is our eyes today. And through His sight we offer healing to the world through Him, the holy Son whom God created whole; The holy Son whom God created one.[1]
Doe on Mooresburg Road by http://www.eckiefriar.com

Notes and Personal Application: Today while James and I were taking our morning walk a beautiful doe leapt toward us spiritedly and then turned and sprang through our neighbor’s field in such a naturally elegant way. It was a gorgeous fall day here in central Pennsylvania.  The air smelled clean and crisp.  The sky above an early autumn blue; cotton ball clouds offering no hint of shadow or storm, the sun splashing a golden hue across the trees and grass.   

Our prayer reminds us of how glorious and gracious the world is even while we perceive with eyes of flesh.  Imagine how much more glorious and gracious when we experience the certainty of God, the promise of forever, the love and joy and peace that passes all understanding! 

Today as we calm our hearts and clear the altar of our minds of all that would distract us from our path to God, let us not use our eyes but the eyes of Christ.  Let the peace that comes only through forgiveness fill our hearts and flow from us to all the world.  When we ask God to take our eyes and give us the eyes of Jesus, we see our fellow creatures as ourselves.  No part of Creation matters more and no part matters less.  In God’s Kingdom we do not prey upon and devour creation nor fear victimization, starvation, or any of bodily concerns.  With God we live in peace and harmony with a healed and restored Creation that carries on in love forever!  

As the deer ran toward us this morning, I was so struck by her gracefulness; her friendliness; her beauty.  I had the distinct impression that she wanted to play.  When she stopped in her tracks and ran off the other way, she was no doubt remembering that humans are dangerous playmates.  My heart went out to her for she and her kind are “in season” soon and they will be hunted for meat, for trophy heads, for their velvet covered antlers. 

This is the nature of this world.  No matter how civilized we think we have become, no matter how many advances in medical technology, no matter that we have electric cars and have put astronauts into space, what we call life in the body is precarious and uncertain.  Understanding this, we must be very clear about what we are doing today.  We are electing to no longer use the body’s eyes to comprehend the things of God.  In the example of the doe this morning, when we see the world through the eyes of Christ, we are not thinking venison, we are not thinking “poor deer,” we are not thinking “wicked, depraved hunters,” we are not engaging in the world of form – we forgive the world of form which puts us in these kinds of quandaries!  We do not waste our time getting caught up in the things that are wrong about the world.  When we see the world through the eyes of Christ instead of our earthly eyes, we are looking at the world as we know it and experience it only as a tool to teach us about separation.  We are the prodigal son with his eyes opened.  He wakes up in a pigsty, separated from his father, starving, friendless, filthy, and broke – and he remembers who and what he is.  He sees the pigsty for what it is – not his home, not his destiny, and certainly not his identity.  And he starts the journey home.  With the eyes of Christ we are in the same position.  We see the nature of the separated world clearly for exactly what it is.  We are not going to call a pigsty a palace or a mansion; we are not going to call in the professional cleaners to try to clean it up or change it into something else; we will not deny the filth, the stench, the conditions that goes on it, we are going to see past it to who and what we really are and move toward that. 

Just as there is no point trying to clean up a pigsty, we have no reason to get ourselves worked up into a tizzy over any particular injustice or crime against creation in the separated realm.  When we no longer look upon the world with the body’s eyes, we can no longer see its separateness as real.  We see beyond to oneness.  We see beyond to wholeness.  We see that the world as we know it now as the symbol of the ego in which it is.  It can no longer cause us to worry, fret, and sorrow for we are looking through a different lens!

Let the eyes of Christ transform the world that our body’s eyes would behold today.  We can do this with faith, with quickened understanding, and with our daily practice of return. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 270.  will not use the body’s…Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, p. 230

Audio credit: the friar patch at www.eckiefriar.com

Lesson 269 My Sight Goes Forth To Look Upon Christ’s Face

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PART II.  SECTION 5:  WHAT IS THE BODY?

Lesson 269 My Sight Goes Forth To Look Upon Christ’s Face

  1. I ask Your blessing on my sight today.  It is the means which You have chosen to become the way to show me my mistakes and look beyond them.  It is given me to find a new perception through the Guide You gave to me, and through His lessons to surpass perception and return to truth.  I ask for the illusion which transcends all those I made.  Today I choose to see a world forgiven, in which everyone shows me the face of Christ, and teaches me that what I look upon belongs to me; that nothing is, except Your holy Son.
  2. Today our sight is blessed indeed.  We share one vision, as we look upon the face of Him Whose Self is ours.  We are one because of Him Who is the Son of God; of Him Who is our own Identity.[1]
George Farms on Mooresburg Road – http://www.eckiefriar.com

Notes and Personal Application Today Jesus leads us in a prayer that authorizes us to visualize past the world of form, of bodies, of ego to the world in which all separation is forgiven; unity is restored, and we are one in Christ.  In this prayer we use our holy imaginations as a telescopic device to transcend this world of form, of bodies, of time, and death, and decay to a world where all is forgiven.  We choose to pray this prayer on a moment-to-moment basis, for when we pray the Face of Christ prayer, we are simply asking God the Father, to enlighten our consciousness, to take the blinders from our eyes, to help us see not the spaces between us, but His Holy Son which unites us and makes us one and whole. 

This is a powerful prayer and one in which we should ask the Lord to reveal to our minds through personal application in our relationships, observations, and circumstances from daily life.  When we ask our Father to show us our mistakes, we are saying, We are not going to blame others anymore for that which You want us to take responsibility.  We are not going to tell of the sins of others but now we are ready to focus on our own mistakes, so that we can see beyond them for correction and to return to truth.  When we are willing to pray this prayer, we are ready to accept that this world is not real.  We may not be quite ready to give up our bodies, our world of form and physicality, but we are ready to look at the world in a forgiven state, we are willing to say bless my sight so that I may see the face of my Redeemer, so that I can recognize my oneness with Him, so that I can see Him in all of creation. 

Throughout my life there are many instances where I contributed to separation rather than unity.  When I allowed the ego to choose my response to the dramas that played out on the stage of my life, I put my nose where it did not belong.  I thought it my right to boss people around and tell them how to live their lives.  I worked too hard to maintain a facade of love, tradition, and togetherness with a bunch of individuals who did not share the same goal.  In my efforts to fulfill ego’s mission, I put myself out for undeserving others who did not express gratitude, respect, or reciprocation.  I became resentful, indignant, and reproachful in turn.  I made harsh judgments.  I said and did mean things. 

Just as I allowed the ego to give me false missions, I allowed the ego to choose my response to the fallout – to feel dirty, ashamed, not good enough, left out, lonely, and in despair.  In text reading (Chapter 19, 4A) Jesus refers to the ego’s messengers as hungry, fearful, devouring dogs.  That is what they seem, pouncing upon us for the mistakes in which they lead us, raking us over the coals, dragging us back to their master, yipping and howling in perverted pleasure, loving the guilt and shame and suffering of it all, while offering no correction, no chance of recovery, no forgiveness, no clean slate.  Who would choose those wild dogs over the gentle love of Holy Spirit?    

When I asked God to bless my sight so that I could see my mistakes and look beyond them, it became very clear to me that it was not my job or my calling to help those who should be helping themselves.  All the things that I thought I was doing in love and for love were revealed to me as having been done in a spirit of wanting to be the big “I am.”  Holy Spirit showed me that my desire to lift others from a history of poor decisions, poverty mentality, and estrangement was my way of projecting how I felt about myself on them.  As long as I was “helping” them, I did not have to look at my own mistakes and work on the only one that I was sent here to correct.   

My misdirected good intentions, my failures, my mistakes are no cause for shame, guilt, or dismay.  I am here for correction, just as you are here for correction.  Our egos will never correct us.  Jesus tells us in our Course that our egos form special relationships for projection and as excuses for sin.  And we hear it everyday and in every way from our coworkers, our family members, and our friends – listen carefully and you will begin to hear the projection and the excuses for an unloving, unforgiving, and condemning mindset. 

As we pray for the Face of Christ, we are praying for the oneness, the unity, the wholeness that can only be found in Him.  This is a prayer of correction for the world of variances, separateness, and incompleteness.  This is a prayer of acceptance and for letting things be. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 269. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

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

Lesson 268 Let All Things Be Exactly As They Are

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PART II.  SECTION 5:  WHAT IS THE BODY?

Lesson 268 Let All Things Be Exactly As They Are

  1. Let me not be Your critic, Lord, today, and judge against You.  Let me not attempt to interfere with Your Creation and distort it into sickly forms.  Let me be willing to withdraw my wishes from its unity and thus to let it be as You created it.  For thus will I be able, too, to recognize my Self as You created me.  In Love was I created, and in Love will I remain forever.  What can frighten me when I let all things be exactly as they are?
  2. Let not our sight be blasphemous today, nor let our ears attend to lying tongues.  Only reality is free of pain.  Only reality is free of loss.  Only reality is wholly safe.  And it is only this we seek today.[1]
Oak Tree on Mooresburg Road

Notes and Personal Application Do we dare complain about a thing or cast our judgment upon the screen of our lives?  Time and our lives in it, as it stands, is our perfect learning tool.  We may play a cast of different characters within the drama of life, for this is but a stage in which we learn our lessons, act out the separation, and learn forgiveness toward ourselves and others for the parts we play in pointing them toward God.  What happens in time, stays in time – it is not eternal, and therefore it is not real in a perpetual sense of the word.  All we forgive is what happened in time.   

For no matter how much we cherish it and hold it in our memories and relish the telling of it, all suffering comes to an end.  All pain and sorrow are washed away.  Our lives in the flesh can be our personal heaven or our personal hell – heaven when we recognize and forgive the illusion; hell when we cherish the drama of loss, decay, and death, and use what our brothers did to us as an excuse for not taking responsibility for our own awakening.

Giggling to myself this morning over an antic from the past, at one point I would have tsked, tsked and hung my head in shame instead of having a good laugh.   But now I see the mistakes I have made as an important component of my return to God.  Judgment is reserved for those who would love condemnation and would themselves condemn!  I will let all things be exactly as they are. 

Have you ever played the game of If Only?  I have.   If Only James and I had met when we were young.  If Only I had been to Japan with him.  If Only I would have graduated high school and gone straight to college and made something of myself.  If Only I had not had to raise two kids by myself and struggle and juggle jobs, relationships, and emotional issues.  If Only my dad would not have died when I was a kid.  If Only my mother would have not been so troubled. If only I had not been such a stinker.  If Only I had not spent nearly a decade of my life mooning over someone who was clearly not that crazy about me!  If Only I had been more independent and not so needy.  If Only I had had more insight.  If Only I had spoken up; If Only I had kept my mouth shut.  If Only I had had more tact… 

The game of If Only not only serves to keep us from appreciating things exactly as they are but will prevent us from using things exactly as they are to lead us to our Heavenly Father.  Letting all things be exactly as they are awakens us.  We can be happy for all those hard lessons, take joy in them, remember them with relish and forgive them, because they serve to help us see past the clouds and shadows of the ego world’s stage that would obscure our true identity.  Letting all things be exactly as they are leads us back to our real Home, our real people, our real Selves.

Dear Heavenly Father, we will let things be exactly as they are.  We will not judge against You, myself, or others. The game of If Only would only lead us down a path that is that much farther from Your love and unity.  The game of If Only is not a pastime for the righteous, but a hoax of separation, blasphemy, and lies.  The game of If Only tempts us to think that we have missed the right paths, the good people, the good life because of our poor choices, our stunted opportunities, our wayward ways.  Instead, we choose to play the happy game of salvation – awaking to the reality of Christ, accepting responsibility for our mistakes, recognizing the ego world as a stage, accepting our process and the processes of our brothers as we learn the hard lessons of separation and choose to be reunited with You.  In the name of Jesus, with whom we are one.  Amen

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 268. Let all things…Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition p. 429.

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

Lesson 267 My Heart Is Beating In The Peace Of God

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PART II.  SECTION 5:  WHAT IS THE BODY?

Lesson 267 My Heart is Beating in the Peace of Go

  1. Surrounding me is all the life that God created in His Love.  It calls to me in every heartbeat and in every breath, in every action and in every thought.  Peace fills my heart and floods my body with the purpose of forgiveness.  Now my mind is healed, and all I need to save the world is given me.  Each heartbeat brings me peace; each breath infuses me with strength.  I am a messenger of God, directed by His Voice, sustained by Him in love, and held forever quiet and at peace within His loving Arms.  Each heartbeat calls His Name, and every one is answered by His Voice, assuring me I am at home in Him.
  2. Let me attend Your Answer, not my own.  Father, my heart is beating in the peace the Heart of Love created.  It is there and only there that I can be at home.[1]
Photo credit: Ridizio’s Grill at Hamilton Place, Chattanooga by eckiefriar.com

Notes and Personal Application For the past five days while we visited our family in Tennessee, I took a little breather from the workbook lessons and from the ACIM blog.  Not only was this time away necessary for me to process the spiritual truths I have been studying, but lately I have felt as if some of the old traditional fear of not pleasing God was creeping back into my spiritual practices.  There was a feeling of obligation and perhaps even obsession that I was experiencing in my devotionals, and so the six-day respite was a good way to bring the mind/body levels back into their proper perspective. 

It was wonderful to see our daughter and her family, the brothers, my sister-in-law, and nephew.  Zachary, our middle grandson went along, which was an added treat.  The early fall foliage was just popping, affording us beautiful vistas; it was fun not cooking, cleaning, gardening, or gathering eggs for nearly a week, and the grandboys and I had a blast playing Marco Polo in the hotel swimming pool. 

However, it would be less than honest or helpful if I did not address the stress inherent in travel, in reconnecting with distant family members, in adjusting to different parenting and relating styles!  For instance, when we got to the hotel there were several aggravations which could have spoiled our stay.  Zachary’s bed was not prepared, and we had to wait while the night manager rousted some sheets and pillowcases from somewhere else in the hotel.  The fireplace which had been a key factor in reserving this particular suite did not work.  The garbage disposal was out of order.  After we unpacked and had all our clothes in drawers or on hangers and had comfortably settled in, we were informed that there would be no daily housekeeping services and that our used towels and washcloths would have to be turned into the front desk in order for us to receive fresh ones.  On top of that there were dozens of preschoolers attending a birthday party in the room across the hall from us, complete with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends making a lot of racket and leaving a trail of disarray behind them. 

Yes, there were several instances during our time away when it seemed impossible to connect with the inner world of love.  Traffic backups, lukewarm coffee, whining, noise, too many demands, disappointment, exhaustion, headaches, grumpiness all served to distract us from the peace that fills our hearts and floods our being with resolutions of forgiveness.  

And yet in today’s lesson, Jesus assures us that we are surrounded by life created by God’s Love.  That it is everywhere if we choose to see it.  We can look upon the world with our human’s eyes and see crowds of people swarming here and there like beetles, taking the parking space we wanted; pushing in front of us in line; not flushing their toilet properly in the restroom; dropping trash and not bothering to pick it up. 

Or we can look with the Vision of Christ and see God’s Love beyond the separation.  We can offer forgiveness and embrace His peace.  We can let human foibles, aggravations, and pet peeves roll off our consciousness and into the nothingness where they came from!  They do not matter.  Forgiveness matters.  Peace matters. With forgiveness comes peace and with peace comes healing and with healing the world and all who are in it are saved. 

When our minds are one with God, we are at one with all.  We step out of the need to prove our point, to promote our values, to defend our belief system.  We no longer embrace the symbols of the world to justify or condemn.  As we recognize our oneness with God, we are no longer motivated by worry, guilt, fear, or a sense of obligation.   Our mind is not obsessed or possessed by the idea to save humanity.  Our minds are not fixated on the world of bodies, our minds are fixed upon the reality of oneness.  We can relax into our quiet, knowing, certain minds and have a good, good time. 

[1]A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 267. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

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

Lesson 266 My Holy Self Abides In You, God’s Son

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PART II.  SECTION 5:  WHAT IS THE BODY?

Lesson 266 My Holy Self Abides In You, God’s Son

  1. Father, You gave me all Your Sons, to be my saviors and my counselors in sight; the bearers of Your holy Voice to me.  In them are You reflected, and in them does Christ look back upon me from my Self.  Let not Your Son forget Your holy Name.  Let not Your Son forget his holy Source.  Let not Your Son forget his name is Yours.
  2. This day we enter into paradise, calling upon God’s Name and on our own, acknowledging our Self in each of us; united in the holy Love of God.  How many saviors God has given us!  How can we lose the way to Him, when He has filled the world with those who point to Him, and given us the sight to look on them?[1]   
Photo by Skyler Ewing on Pexels.com

Notes and Personal Application In our prayer today we recognize all of Creation as being savior and counselor.  We recognize the voice for God in all.  In Creation we see a reflection of God’s love, in Creation we see the reflection of our true and holy Selves.  We put down our separateness and take up our oneness with God.  We step out of the body that would encase us and hold us apart from one another, and we step into the Source, the holy Mind and Consciousness that brings us all together.  We no longer identify with our bodies or call ourselves humanity; we identify with our Holy Father and take His name and accept our rightful place in paradise. 

When we stand with Christ, we stand as one.  We act then as saviors to one another.  When we give our human eyes to the Lord in exchange for the vision of Christ, we see that everything that happens to us, every circumstance, every event, every interaction becomes touched by holiness and serves to point us to our home in Him.  No longer do we cringe in fear and shame.  No longer do we scream in frustration, rage, and indignation.  No longer do we point the finger and blame other people, holding them responsible for our pain and sorrow.  No longer do we identify each other and judge one another by the shortcomings and imperfections of the body.  For we will never stand alone, be vulnerable, and without a friend again! We are as one in Him – our perfection, holiness, and goodness are complete.

Today let the consciousness of your salvation and what it means bless your every encounter.  Each time you look in the mirror today greet your reflection with a smile of love, gratitude, and peace.  Look upon all of nature with eyes of compassion.  Exchange thoughts of judgment, blame, condemnation, and vengeance with tender forgiveness.  When you feel weary, take a moment to rest your eyes, put up your feet, gather energy for your human body by quieting your mind and going within.  Let go of every inconsequential chore on your to-do list.  It will be there tomorrow and the next day and the day after.  Calm your troubled, wounded spirit.  Lay down your burdens.  Spend as much time as you possibly can in the Presence of God today.

[1]A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 266. Foundation of Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

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

Lesson 265 Creation’s Gentleness Is All I See

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PART II.  SECTION 5:  WHAT IS THE BODY?

Lesson 265 Creation’s Gentleness Is All I See

  1. I have indeed misunderstood the world, because I laid my sins on it and saw them looking back at me.  How fierce they seemed!  And how deceived was I to think that what I feared was in the world, instead of in my mind alone.  Today I see the world in the celestial gentleness with which creation shines.  There is no fear in it.  Let no appearance of my sins obscure the light of Heaven shining on the world.  What is reflected there is in God’s Mind.  The images I see reflect my thoughts.  Yet is my mind at one with God’s.  And so I can perceive creation’s gentleness.
  2. In quiet would I look upon the world, which but reflects Your Thoughts, and mine as well.  Let me remember that they are the same, and I will see creation’s gentleness.[1]
Photo credit: http://www.John15.Rocks

Notes and Personal Application In our daily meditations, we quiet our minds and hearts and look upon the world which reflects the thoughts of God.  Jesus reminds us that we are like Him.  God’s Thoughts are our Thoughts.  When we remember that we are the same as God, we see humanity as a lie.  We see our lives as bodies as a sorry substitute.  We see the world of danger, deprivation, destruction, and death as the big fat zero it really is! 

God’s Creation is gentle, tender, good.  There is no deprivation, despair, destruction, and death.  In our quiet moments dedicated only to Thoughts of God, we no longer see the world made of fear, born of a lie, inflated from a mistake.  We recognize it for what it is – a manufactured device, a temptation, an empty place, a void, a big nothing.  No longer can it hold a place of eminence in our minds.  All its idols and images have toppled from its phony throne. We have no interest in it.  Instead we have the Mind of Christ – we perceive creation’s gentleness and it is toward this place we yearn, we seek, we reach, and train our thoughts and very Being. It is this place where we find our true and holy Selves, where we come Home. 

Each day we gain in awareness, each day our practice leads us to a quickened understanding, a new grasp of reality, a deeper experience of celestial calm and peace.  Sometimes we will feel as if our feet are not quite touching the ground.  We will wonder if it is okay in this world to encounter such joy.  Do not be afraid of God’s gentleness, His tenderness, His innocence and joy.  These are our natural, God-given, God-created attributes.  We are meant to know them so intimately that they inspire no remark!  Let them inhabit our mind, saturate our being, become our every word, thought, and deed.  It is this Creation to which we return our minds and devote our full attention.  It is this Creation which wipes the world of fear from our consciousness.  It is this Creation for which we pray:

God’s Kingdom Come; God’s Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.  In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one.  Amen.

[1]A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 265. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

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

Lesson 264 I Am Surrounded By The Love Of God

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PART II.  SECTION 5:  WHAT IS THE BODY?

Lesson 264 I Am Surrounded By The Love Of God

  1. Father, You stand before me and behind, beside me, in the place I see myself, and everywhere I go.  You are in all the things I look upon, the sounds I hear, and every hand that reaches for my own.  In You time disappears, and place becomes a meaningless belief.  For what surrounds Your Son and keeps him safe is Love Itself.  There is no Source but This, and nothing is that does not share Its holiness; that stands beyond Your creation, or without the Love Which holds all things within Itself.  Your Son is like Yourself.  We come to You in Your Own Name today, to be at peace within Your everlasting Love.
  2. My brothers, join with me in this today.  This is salvation’s prayer.  Must we not join in what will save the world, along with us?[1]
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Notes and Personal Application In this morning’s devotion we sat outside in the sun, sipping our second cup of coffee, looking out over the pond and the woods.  It was a lovely morning here in Central PA – the temperature may have been just a few degrees above freezing but the sun was shining bright and warm, the air smelled clean, and the scent of fall in the air filled our lungs and seemed to uplift our spirits. 

Jesus teaches that God is everything and everywhere.  He is what we see, what we hear, what we touch.  In God, Jesus says, time and place disappear because we are once again together, realizing we are whole and holy only when we are no longer dreaming of separateness, adrift and alone.  As we awaken, we realize our divine nature.  We step out of the sheath of flesh and blood destined to repeat cycles of decay and death; we return to our everlasting spirits, divine Sons of God, like God, and at peace in His everlasting love.  No longer do we perceive ourselves as separate, lost, and yearning for that which never satisfies, for in God and through God we are united with the whole, we are home, and our desires are fulfilled. 

When we discussed this concept this morning, we talked about how the eyes of the body do not see.  In fact the eyes of the body were purposefully designed to see only separateness, promoting judgment, condemnation, favoritism, and specialness.  With my human eyes I can only see you as different from me.  I do not see how we are alike.  I can only imagine the ways in which we may match for my eyes will only see the shape of your body, the color of your skin, the length of your hair.  I will only see and judge you by the clothes you wear, the condition of your teeth, the way you smell, or by your gender identity or sexual preferences.  I will not be able to see with my eyes how you lay awake in bed at night and ponder the meaning of life, how you feel ashamed of the ways you have disappointed your family and friends, or how you may worry about being able to pay your bills.  I will not see how hard you work at being smart, rich, and accomplished, it will look to me that you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth.  I will think when I look at you all spiffed up in your Sunday best, that all your stars lined up to make your life wonderful while all my stars scattered to make my life chaotic and unlucky.  I will not see the hours your practiced, the fun you missed, the meals you did not enjoy.  I will not know that you went without sleep, or that at one time in your life, you felt like giving up.  I will have no way of knowing that you and I are one, for in this realm we experience reality in shards and bits and pieces; reality has shattered for us in the world of separation, and I judge you and you judge me  on what our ego tells us about the other based upon the ego-devised senses, perceptions, and judgments.    

We are doomed in our separateness.  We cannot partake in the everlasting kingdom as long as we see each other as apart from ourselves.  This world of separateness will never be stable or offer us a place of certainty, love, peace, or joy because it is a kingdom apart from certainty, love, peace, and joy.  In a universe where God is Everything, that which is not of God must be an illusion, a mass delusion.  To escape this madness we seek God, we forgive the separation, we accept the message of Christ and devote our minds and hearts as one to God and all of Creation. 

On a personal level, it simply means we lay our egos aside.  On a moment-to-moment basis we train our minds to identify with Christ and no longer define Creation as separate from ourselves.  Instead of seeing differences, we see how we are alike, how we fit into the whole. God directs even our dream of separation when we seek Him, recognizing our need for salvation, preparing our hearts and minds to return to Him, to come Home – bringing all of Creation with us. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 264. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

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

Lesson 263 My Holy Vision Sees All Things As Pure

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PART II.  SECTION 5:  WHAT IS THE BODY?

Lesson 263 My Holy Vision Sees All Things As Pure

  1. Father, Your Mind created all that is.  Your Spirit entered into it; Your Love gave life to it.  And would I look upon what You created as if it could be made sinful?  I would not perceive such dark and fearful images.  A madman’s dream is hardly fit to be my choice, instead of all the loveliness with which You blessed creation; all its purity, its joy, and its eternal, quiet home in You.
  2. And while we still remain outside the gate of Heaven, let us look on all we see through holy vision and the eyes of Christ.  Let all appearances seem pure to us, that we may pass them by in innocence, and walk together in our Father’s house as brother and the holy Sons of God.[1] 
Photo by Alex Andrews on Pexels.com

Notes and Personal Application How do we see all things as pure when the world around us rages and whirls with wrongdoing, strife, and terror?  The rapists, and killers, psychopaths and bums, drug dealers and human traffickers, plotters, liars, and cheats – are we really called to see this as pure?  Who are we kidding? 

It is easy for us to balk at today’s lesson.  It sounds as if Christ is asking us to walk through this life wearing rose-tinted glasses, in an imaginary world of love, peace, and joy while the world is fraught with starvation, floods, fires, and violence.  Instead of allowing the ego to tempt us to resist our lesson today, let us quiet our minds and hearts and humbly ask the Lord to show us the meaning of our lesson. 

In every situation, in every moment we make a choice whether we are going to see through the eyes of the ego or the eyes of Christ.  When we use holy vision, we bring forgiveness, love, joy, gratitude, and peace to every circumstance.  Being one with Christ, means that we walk with intentions of true helpfulness instead of promoting more violence, shame, guilt, and sorrow.  We no longer buy into the world’s interpretation of others.  Instead of standing around gossiping and condemning others for their perceived wrongdoing or social foibles, in Christ we see this as an opportunity to offer forgiveness, restoration, and healing. We find ourselves no longer able or willing to maintain status or find meaning in our material possessions, our social caste, or professional standing.  

As long as we are in human form, we continue to see with our eyes of flesh, but instead of promoting condemnation, punishment, and fear – as Sons of God – we look upon all that is wrong as a mistake that can be corrected.  We understand that the world of separation, change, and time cannot be real because it is perceived as separate from God and from one another.  While the path is narrow to truth and broad to illusion, all is takes is a few that seek to align themselves with Christ, the few that would take this stand against the unreality of this world and stand for the reality of God’s Kingdom.  When the ego’s messengers are screaming, “Kill, maim, destroy,” Holy Spirit is quietly calling us to forgive, heal, and restore.  

Today we pray with reverence and understanding:

Father, Thank you for the eyes of Christ.  That we may see purity and innocence instead of bloodshed and violence.  That we may walk in our humanity safe from all the wiles of the enemy that would tempt us from the path to You.  We give you our human eyes so that they may see only to inform us where we can be of use.  We give you our human tongue so that it will no longer condemn, mock, or put down, but that it may be used to uplift. We give you our human ears so that we hear only calls for love and to love.    

We ask that all living things are awakened from the insane dream of separation.  Deliver us from our craven natures, our false perceptions, from our blinded eyes, deafened ears, and cruel tongue.  Let us walk in purity and innocence trusting fully in You.  In the name of Jesus with Whom we are one.  Amen. 

[1]A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 263. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

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

Lesson 262 Let Me Perceive No Differences Today

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PART II.  SECTION 5:  WHAT IS THE BODY?

Lesson 262 Let Me Perceive No Differences Today

  1. Father, you have one Son. And it is he that I would look upon today. He is your one creation. Why should I perceive a thousand forms in what remains as one? Why should I give this one a thousand names, when only one suffices?  For your Son must bear Your Name, for You created him. Let me not see him as a stranger to his Father, nor as stranger to myself. For he is part of me and I of him, and we are part of You who are our source, eternally united in Your love, eternally the holy Son of God.
  2. We who are one would recognize this day the truth about ourselves. We would come home, and rest in unity. For there is peace, and nowhere else can peace be sought and found.[1]
Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

Notes and Personal Application In the prayer Jesus leads us offer today, we recognize the fact that we are one.  Today we will look upon each other and all of creation as a whole.  We will train our minds today and for a focused time each day after to no longer name the things we see with our physical eyes as being separate from us, as being apart from us.  We, all of Creation, are the one Son of God.  We stand with Christ and in our oneness with Christ we are one. 

In our devotional time today we practice this prayer.  We see ourselves, our brothers, all of Creation not as fallen, not as separate, not as having many names and different forms, but as being part of ourselves.  If we see our brother as beautiful, strong, good, and true, we will see ourselves as beautiful, strong, good, and true.  If we see our brother as unattractive, weak, evil, and dishonest, we will see ourselves as being in the same category.  Jesus is asking us not only to recognize this truth but practice only seeing one another as God created us. 

When we first start this practice, it seems as if we are trying to deceive ourselves in believing something that simply is not there.  However, the more time we give to God in our minds and hearts, the more that we make Christ the foundation of our lives, the more our oneness with Him becomes apparent to us.  Yes, on this level we experience ourselves as human.  Yes we all have many faults, weaknesses, perversions, and weird habits.  But we are not discussing our humanity here.  We are not referring to what our ego-eyes would have us perceive.  We are instead giving the ego-eyes to God and asking for the vision of Christ. 

When we practice the vision of Christ, even if it is only for a few minutes a day, we begin to see others as ourselves.  We develop a deep and abiding empathy.  We begin to understand God’s plan of salvation.  We begin to understand the concepts in the Course which ask us to see beyond this world of physicality and seek the Kingdom of God within each and every one of us. 

We look past the outward appearance of our brothers.  We do not judge someone as fat or skinny, black or white, old or young.  We do not judge others by the styles and trends they follow.  Rich or poor, conservative or liberal, male or female, we have absolutely no desire to stick our nose in or flap our gums about the private parts or the private matters of humanity.  It no longer matters to us which church others attend, or if they attend a church at all.  Religious dogma loses its hold upon our consciousness; traditions, rites, and rituals become meaningless as we move away from our humanity and accept our divinity in Christ.  Patriotism becomes love not only for our own beautiful country, but respect, love, and ardor for the whole. 

When we begin to know our true identity in Christ, we no longer care for the same things we cared about when we thought we were a body.  As we let loose our need to perceive differences, to judge and compare, to look at mistakes and call them sins, to condemn others for the very things we do ourselves, we experience a sense of joy, freedom, and peace.  There are times the world seems encased in a golden haze of purity and love as we no longer insist on labeling Creation as apart from ourselves or separate from God. 

Today, practice coming home to this truth and resting in oneness, in unity with God.  At home in unity with God is where we find what we really seek and what we really want – the peace that can be found no where in the realm of bodies, separateness, and idols. 

[1]A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 262. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

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

Part Two – Section Five: What Is The Body

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PART II.  SECTION 5.  WHAT IS THE BODY

  1. The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love outside?
  2. The body will not stay. Yet this he sees as double safety. For the Son of God’s impermanence is “proof” his fences work and do the task his mind assigns to them. For if his oneness still remained untouched, who could attack and who could be attacked? Who could be victor? Who could be his prey? Who could be victim? Who the murderer? And if he did not die, what “proof” is there that God’s eternal son can be destroyed?
  3. The body is a dream. Like other dreams it sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear, where every dream is born. For only love creates in truth, and truth can never fear. Made to be fearful, must the body serve the purpose given it. But we can change the purpose that the body will obey by changing what we think that it is for.
  4. The body is the means by which God’s Son returns to sanity. Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape yet has the goal of Heaven been exchanged for the pursuit of hell. The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him. Now is the body holy. Now it serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill.
  5. You will identify with what you think will make you safe. Whatever it may be, you will believe that it is one with you. Your safety lies in truth, and not in lies. Love is your safety. Fear does not exist. Identify with love, and you are safe. Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love and find your Self.[1]
Photo credit: http://www.gloryshift.com

Notes and Personal Application:  Hold tight!  Now that we are informed of the unreality of sin, we are being introduced to the concept of the unreality of the body.  In paragraph three, Jesus teaches that the body is a dream that sometimes seems to bring us happiness but can just as quickly snatch it away.  We learn that to cherish the body is to cherish death – it was not created in love and therefore cannot be truth.  We were born to be afraid.  To survive in this world, we must always be on guard against potential harms, shortages, abuses, and deprivations.  When we are young, our parents are about driven mad by thoughts of the dangers we face.  As our bodies grow old in time, we can literally lose our minds with worry over the dangers that face our children and grandchildren, not to mention ourselves as feebleness and loss occur in the already vulnerable body. 

The good news is that when we begin to accept the truth about who and what we are as Sons of God, we can change the very purpose the body.  We can use the body as a means to return to sanity.  We exchange the fear and bondage to its hellish purpose for the goal of Heaven.  We forgive one another the shortcomings and failures that occur from relating to one another as mere bodies, and we help one another walk along the road to God.  This is the way we bring our bodies to holiness.  This is the way that our bodies begin to heal the mind that is was made to extinguish. 

When we identify with our bodies, we are putting ourselves in a state of fear.  Our bodies are very much dependent on food, water, shelter, clothing, warmth, and sustenance.  We need activity and we need rest.  We need a sense of belonging to feel safe and to thrive in the world because alone we are not only an easy target for predators, but we cannot provide for even our most basic needs without the help and the contribution of a fleet of people.  We often forget this in our daily lives as we slurp down our smoothies, enjoy our warm, sudsy showers, perform equations on our computers, call for pizza delivery on our smart phones, but a brief meditation upon the many people with their knowledge, skills, and physical labor in the fields of agriculture, technology, plumbing, heating, cooling and so on will soon inform us that no matter how independent we may deceive ourselves into believing we are, we would not be able to exist without our fellows. 

Our bodies made as a fence to keep us from recognizing our oneness with the Whole, deceives us into thinking we have no use or need others.  We do not need brotherhood, fellowship, or forgiveness.  We protect what is ours and mine and let the rest of the world go to hell.  We can look after ourselves.  We can be the boss of me. 

Jesus points out that even though the body cannot really defend us, it is still proof that separation works to accomplish the goal of the ego.  For as the body fades away, those who place their identity in it, prove that the Son of God can be destroyed. 

Today we can make the choice to use our bodies as a means to return to the truth.  We who are in the body can no longer embrace thoughts of sin and separation, but rather extend our hand to reach our brothers who walk in the path back to God.  When we lay down our defenses against the other and walk in holiness, our bodies naturally follow.  Our bodies, Jesus says, now serve to heal the mind that it was made to kill.  Identify with what you think will make you safe, and that is what you will believe you are.  Simple logic and reason tells us that we simply are not safe with the body.  It will always fail us in the end.  Our bodies do not only fail us but fail all those who are entrusted to our care.  Our safety lies in the truth of God.  His Love is our safety.  Identify with the reality of love and we are safe.  We are home.  We have found our Selves.

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Part two section five: what is sin? Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

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

Lesson 260 Let Me Remember God Created Me

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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]
Photo credit: http://www.lifestyleblock.co.nz

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

Lesson 259 Let Me Remember That There Is No Sin

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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]
Photo by Bianca Salgado on Pexels.com

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

Lesson 258 Let Me Remember That My Goal Is God

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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]
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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

Lesson 257 Let Me Remember What My Purpose Is

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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]
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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

Lesson 256 God Is The Only Goal I Have Today

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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]
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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

Lesson 255 This Day I Choose To Spend In Perfect Peace

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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]
Photo credit: http://www.christskingdom.org

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

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

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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

Lesson 253 My Self Is Ruler Of The Universe

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PART II.  SECTION 4:  WHAT IS SIN?

Lesson 253 My Self is Ruler of the Universe

  1. It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself.  Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny.  What happens is what I desire.  What does not occur is what I do not want to happen.  This must I accept.  For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me.
  2. You are the Self Whom You created Son, creating like Yourself and one with You.  My Self, Which rules the universe, is but Your Will in perfect union with my own, which can but offer glad assent to Yours, that it may be extended to Itself.[1]
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Notes and Personal Application:  In today’s lesson Jesus teaches that when we accept our Sonship with Him, we rule the Universe.  Nothing can hurt us.  Even while we are still cloaked in flesh and blood, we rule what comes to us by what we invite into our lives.  By joining our consciousness with Christ’s, we go past our role as humans trapped in time, doomed to die, to return to dust, and accept our role as rulers of the universe. 

In today’s lesson Jesus teaches us that we are to assume responsibility for all things pertaining to our personal destiny not only in this realm but also the universe beyond.  We are here to correct our mistake, move past it, and return to the Kingdom that belongs not only to God, but to us as His Sons.  There in the real creation, all that was created is our own, for we are one with God.  We are not created as inferior beings to serve a God who demands worship, praise, and eternal adoration because of some very ungodly ego needs that we would foist upon our Creator.  We are created to be one with Him.  To join His consciousness, to rule the consciousness of the universe with standards of love, peace, and joy forever.

This is a lesson in getting past victimization.  We no longer think of others as having wronged us, even childhood abuses are not excuses to lick our wounds and blame upon our unhealthy, unwise choices.  Last year I wrote about how difficult I was finding it to agree with the concept that I chose my childhood:  losing my father at a tender age, dragged about the world on seeming goose chases for Jesus with my missionary mother, living with a strange assortment of charlatans, the deranged, and unwholesome.  Thinking of the struggle to find honesty, friendship, safety, and love in all that chaos still fills me with a sense of that old dread.  And yet Jesus states that this is what we chose when we separated from God.  We chose to come to a realm that would make us forget our identity, would tempt us to think of ourselves as helpless, powerless, and vulnerable.  We chose danger over security – doing things our way instead of God’s way excited our imaginations, presented itself as attractive, enticing, and fun.  And it is – at first!  Until it breaks our hearts.  Until it tears us to pieces.  Until the separation is exposed for exactly what it is – that which keeps us from the love of God and our Creation. 

In our prayer today we expand our minds to accept our oneness with God and with all of Creation.  We accept our power, our roles as rulers with Him.  We have changed our concept of God from a false deity who would create beings to worship and fear Him to a loving Father who created Sons to be like Him and be one with Him.  We stand with Him through Christ who woke us from our false identity in flesh and restored to us our identity as Sons. 

Lord of the everlasting universe – Who rules in love, order, benevolence, and goodwill – is our Father, Creator, and Friend.  We are one with Him, ruling in happy communion.  His creations are our creations.  Today we give our glad assent to wake from the stupor of humanity and accept our destiny in Him. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 253. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

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