Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 199 I am not a body.  I am free.

1. Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself.  The body is a limit.  Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found.  The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it, and sheltered by its presence.  If this were the truth, the mind were vulnerable indeed!
2. The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked.  Attack thoughts cannot enter such a mind because it has been given to the Source of love, and fear can never enter into a mind that has attached itself to love.  It rests in God.  And who can be afraid who lives in Innocence, and only loves?
3. It is essential for your progress in this course that you accept today’s idea and hold it very dear.  Be not concerned that to the ego it is quite insane.  The ego holds the body dear because it dwells in it and lives united with the home that it has made.  It is a part of the illusion that has sheltered it from being found illusory itself.
4. Here does it hide, and here it can be seen as what it is.  Declare your innocence and you are free.  The body disappears, because you have no need of it except the need the Holy Spirit sees.  For this, the body will appear as useful form for what the mind must do.  It thus becomes a vehicle which helps forgiveness be extended to the all-inclusive goal that it must reach, according to God’s plan.
5. Cherish today’s idea and practice it today and every day.  Make it a part of every practice period you take.  There is no thought that will not gain thereby in power to help the world, and none which will not gain in added gifts to you as well.  We sound the call of freedom round the world with this idea.  And would you be exempt from the acceptance of the gifts you gave?
6. The Holy Spirit is the home of minds that seek for freedom.  In Him they have found what they have sought.  The body’s purpose now is unambiguous.  And it becomes perfect in the ability to serve an undivided goal.  In conflict-free and unequivocal response to mind with but the thought of freedom as its goal, the body serves, and serves its purpose well.  Without the power to enslave, it is a worthy servant of the freedom which the mind within the Holy Spirit seeks.
7. Be free today.  And carry freedom as your gift to those who still believe they are enslaved within a body.  Be you free so that the Holy Spirit can make use of your escape from bondage, to set free the many who perceive themselves as bound and helpless and afraid.  Let love replace their fears through you.  Accept salvation now and give your mind to Him Who calls to you to make this gift to Him.  For He would give you perfect freedom, perfect joy, and hope that finds its full accomplishment in God.
8. You are God’s Son.  In immortality you live forever.  Would you not return your mind to this?  Then practice well the thought the Holy Spirit gives you for today.  Your brothers stand released with you in it; the world is blessed along with you; God’s Son will weep no more. And Heaven offers thanks for the increase of joy your practice brings even to it.  And God Himself extends His Love and happiness each time you say: I am not a body.  I am free.  I hear the Voice That God has given me, and it is only This my mind obeys.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  We are born with the Voice for God inside of us, given to us by God and calling for us to awaken from the dream of separation, from the dream of being a body, from the dream of being split between opposites.

When we think of ourselves as a body, we are prisoner to a form which keeps us enslaved to its never-ending needs for mere survival.  The nature of this world is set up for the fight for survival, the struggle to matter, the race for limited resources, the effort to make one’s self and one’s species special and at the top of the food chain.  It is violent and full of vengeance.  If someone tells you that nature is nice, that it is natural to love one another and to ignore differences, ask them to go live in the woods and commune, unprotected with it for a few weeks.  Let them get away from their computers and from behind their desks and experience for themselves what hard work it is to survive in nature!   

A loving God did not this world make.  A God devoted His Son has bestowed upon His Son all of His own features, privileges, and characteristics.  A God devoted to His Creation has taken responsibility for His Creation’s salvation and will bring them home from their captivity in self-deception, in believing a lie, in creating a dark enchantment which blinds them to reality and keeps them trapped in a hallucination of death and despair. 

Returning our minds to our true identity sets us free.  We are no longer content to drown out the Voice for God with the shrill and chaotic, mindless and thoughtless, constant and repetitive calls of the body.  The body serves the mind; the mind serves not the body.  We are the Son of God.  We are not a body; we are the Mind of God.  Today Jesus tells us to remember this and bring this thought into all of our practice.  To share this idea with all who are still mistaking themselves for a body.  As we realize the truth of this lesson idea, we will increase our joy, we will have no reason for tears and sorrow, we will experience God’s Love and happiness each time we say these words:  I am not a body, I am free.  I hear the Voice that God has given me.  And it is only This Voice my mind obeys.  

Do not worry if your ego puts up a fuss and tells you how crazy you are.  Do not let concerns over how your body certainly feels like you, defeat your dedication to the truth.  Do not allow your love for your body and the great care you take for it convince you that it is your reality and that your life ends when it does.  Just simply open your mind to the truth of the matter – time will wreak its havoc upon all things that are not real – this is the purpose of time.  Time teaches us what has value and what has none by simply wasting away all that is not real, slowing eroding, changing, and converting one form into another.

Jesus emphasizes to us today that Holy Spirit is home of us who seek our freedom from the hold of the body and the lies of the ego.  Today we ask for and listen for the Voice for God.  We will take a little while several times a day to clear our inner altar and practice knowing who and what we really are.  We will be patient and kind with ourselves. There is no need to get discouraged or overwhelmed with impossible spiritual goals, because we put our spiritual progress into the hands of Him Who created us and is calling us to remember.  We will enjoy our spiritual walk.  We will have fun with it!  We will not grovel or plead with God, for He is not a God who takes pleasure in such piddling behaviors.  It does not please Him to see us cry or humiliate ourselves, our bodies are not a sacrifice.  God already has Everything; He simply does not want or need our bodies.  He did not create them, they will never be holy, or of any value except as a vessel through our lessons in time.  Our Heavenly Father only wants us, our hearts and minds, our love and devotion, even as He has given us His Heart, His Mind, His Love and Devotion.  Our bodies will disappear in time and we are thankful that this is so because we are not the symbol of the ego; we are not an emblem of death and decay.  Day by day, moment by moment, we loose ourselves from identifying with ego and the body and we choose our identity in Christ.  Day by day, moment by moment, we will come to see how much more we are, how much more is all Creation.  In the name of Jesus the Christ, with whom we are one.  Amen.

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 199.  Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 198 Only my condemnation injures me.

1. Injury is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion. If you can condemn, you can be injured. For you have believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you, till you lay it down as valueless, unwanted, and unreal. Then does illusion cease to have effects, and those it seemed to have will be undone. Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave.
2. Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge. To condemn is thus impossible in truth. What seems to be its influence and its effects have not occurred at all. Yet must we deal with them a while as if they had. Illusion makes illusion. Except one. Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest.
3. Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others. All illusions save this one must multiply a thousand-fold. But this is where illusions end.  Forgiveness is the end of dreams because it is a dream of waking. It is not itself the truth. Yet does it point to where the truth must be and gives direction with the certainty of God Himself. It is a dream in which the Son of God awakens to his Self and to his Father, knowing They are one.
4. Forgiveness is the only road that leads out of disaster, past all suffering, and finally away from death. How could there be another way, when this one is the plan of God Himself? And why would you oppose it, quarrel with it, seek to find a thousand ways in which it must be wrong; a thousand other possibilities?
5. Is it not wiser to be glad you hold the answer to your problems in your hand?  Is it not more intelligent to thank the One Who gives salvation, and accept His gift with gratitude?  And is it not a kindness to yourself to hear His Voice and learn the simple lessons He would teach, instead of trying to dismiss His words, and substitute your own in place of His?
6. His words will work.  His words will save.  His words contain all hope, all blessing, and all joy that ever can be found upon this earth.  His words are born in God and come to you with Heaven’s love upon them.  Those who hear His words have heard the song of Heaven.  For these are the words in which all merge as one at last.  And as this one will fade away, the Word of God will come to take its place, for it will be remembered then and loved.
7. This world has many seeming separate haunts where mercy has no meaning and attack appears as justified.  Yet all are one; a place where death is offered to God’s Son and to his Father.  You may think They have accepted.  But if you will look again upon the place where you behold Their blood, you will perceive a miracle instead.  How foolish to believe that They could die!  How foolish to believe you can attack!  How mad to think that you could be condemned and that the holy Son of God can die? 
8. The stillness of your Self remains unmoved, untouched by thoughts like these, and unaware of any condemnation which could need forgiveness.  Dreams of any kind are strange and alien to the truth.  And what but truth could have a Thought which builds a bridge to it that brings illusions to the other side?
9. Today we practice letting freedom come to make its home with you.  The truth bestows these words upon your mind, that you may find the key to light and let the darkness end:  Only my condemnation injures me.  Only my own forgiveness sets me free.  Do not forget today that there can be no form of suffering that fails to hide an unforgiving thought.  Nor can there be a form of pain forgiveness cannot heal.
10. Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God’s Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream.  This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father.  Let today be celebrated both on earth and in your holy home as well.  Be kind to both, as you forgive the trespasses you thought them guilty of, and see your innocence shining upon you from the face of Christ. 
11. Now is there silence all around the world.  Now is there stillness where before there was a frantic rush of thoughts that made no sense.  Now is there tranquil light across the face of earth, made quiet in a dreamless sleep.  And now the Word of God alone remains upon it.  Only that can be perceived an instant longer.  Then are symbols done, and everything you ever thought you made completely vanished from the mind that God forever knows to be His only Son.
12. There is no condemnation in him.  He is perfect in his holiness.  He needs no thoughts of mercy.  Who could give him gifts when everything is his?  And who could dream of offering forgiveness to the Son of Sinlessness Itself, so like to Him Whose Son he is, that to behold the Son is to perceive no more, and only know the Father?  In this vision of the Son, so brief that not an instant stands between this single sight and timelessness itself, you see the vision of yourself, and then you disappear forever into God.
13. Today we come still nearer to the end of everything that yet would stand between this vision and our sight.  And we are glad that we have come this far and recognize that He Who brought us here will not forsake us now.  For He would give to us the gift that God has given us through Him today.  Now is the time for your deliverance.  The time has come.  The time has come today.[1]

Personal Notes and Application:   The other day I got up on the wrong side of the bed.  Our coffee tasted like there was something wrong with it – I was certain that James did something to it, watered it down, put something in it – he likes to try new things and I do not mind trying new things either, but not my morning coffee.  No butter, no spices, no coconut oil, no flavors.  Later when we went on a little lark, I was still grumpy, and I prayed and asked the Lord to please fill my mind with gratitude and He did.  It was wonderful.  After that I asked the Lord to continue to talk to me.  I was following James down to Harrisburg and I did not want to listen to the radio, my random thoughts, or even an Audible book – I wanted to hear from the Voice for God.  We had not had devotions in our haste to get the show on the road and I missed that “little while” we spend with God each morning.

God showed me a brother from our ACIM study group who had voiced that he will not say the name of someone who hurt him.  The Voice for God assured me that he will say the name and he will say it without any rancor, with no trace of pain, with nothing but thanksgiving and forgiveness, and that when I hear him saying the name and how he will be saying the name with forgiveness and joy, forgiveness and happiness will flood his being.  It was such a lovely message, and I thought to myself, “I am so happy that I can say everybody’s names.  I have nobody with whom I hold a grudge or any resentment.  All is forgiven.” 

As I drove down the road passing the structures where I had once worked, I thought of a fellow I used to work with.   I could not even remember Rod’s last name even though I had once sat on a few committees with him – committees that were formed with community leaders who had joined in a mission to prevent child sexual abuse.  A few years ago, I was working with some wonderful people from the local to the state level in an effort to educate the public on attainable, practical measures to stop child abuse.  As I mused about the past and the work that we had been doing, thoughts towards that group of people took a downward turn.  Without at first being aware of it, I spent about 20 minutes thinking of all the ways in which the efforts of all these other people only lasted as long as preventing child sexual abuse was the trendy thing to do.  When human trafficking and other social issues came to take the forefront, they dropped the ball, no longer attended meetings. and showed little to no interest in giving their time or efforts to the foundation.  It was their egos, I decided.  They were just in it to make themselves look good.  They had latched on to the cause to distinguish themselves and then dropped it when it was no longer a popular topic…I remembered how alone and unsupported I felt.  I remember how the CEO of the agency bluntly informed me that while there were generous funds for rescuing victims, there were few directed toward education and prevention.  One woman had brashly indicated that the name of the foundation was simply not sexy enough.  Imagine!  I remembered with no small trace of bitterness the prevention videos we were assigned were so outdated, to the point of being laughable. I remembered how few people attended the informative workshops – free certified training, childcare, and a meal were not enough to persuade them to come learn about the topic.  Nobody seemed to care!  They could not be motivated to do what it takes to make the horror stop. 

I had thought this was a settled matter in my mind.  I had forgiven it all.  I had stopped thinking about it, but here it was still lurking in my mind unnamed and unexposed – a case against them, an outside force.  Today the Voice for God showed me that there was no case.  It was my ego which had latched on to the cause.  It was my ego that had found a worthy cause to make real in the illusion and then use this as a means of attack against anybody who did not jump on and stay on the bandwagon with me.  Anybody who did not want to support this admirable mission was up for condemnation.  Their efforts were not sincere.  Their efforts were not enough.  They had a hidden agenda, and all the while my ego was finding reasons to attack others for what it was doing itself. 

Today’s lesson then would beseech me to forgive those who had failed to give their undivided efforts to ending child sexual abuse, while understanding that forgiveness itself is but another illusion. They had not done anything wrong except to disappoint my ego for not joining with it in making another illusion “real.”  My unforgiveness and resentment toward these people was my ego’s way of keeping me blind to the crafty, subtle way in which first, it could get me caught up in something that is not real and second, condemn others who did not give “the cause” as much as I thought they should.

Condemnation was making me prisoner.  As I “forgave” them, it was myself I forgave because my ego had made the whole case up in the first place – it was all an illusion.  I was binding myself to the unreal world by getting ensnared in a social issue that has no reality in Christ.  Every effort that I would make to prevent child sexual abuse would be an effort toward making an ungodly practice real in my mind and in the minds of all that joined with me.  Illusion breeds illusion, Jesus says in paragraph two. 

When I practice the kind of forgiveness that today’s lesson is talking about, it is all swept away.  It breeds no lies or misrepresentations.  All illusions multiply by a thousand, but not the illusion of forgiveness.  Forgiveness is the illusion that ends the dream.  I forgive only to realize I have nothing at all to forgive.  Nothing here in this illusion is worth taking sides, fighting for, or defending – because nothing here is true.  As long as we believe it is, we are entrapping ourselves in the past which we continue to project into the future, skipping over the holy present which leads us to reality, which leads to God. 

The world appears to be full of injustice.  Attacks against cheaters, child molesters, and charlatans may seem more than justified – yet Jesus says that all are one.  Our condemnation towards “others” injures us; only our own forgiveness sets us free.  And even this is an illusion because in reality there is nothing at all to forgive – what happens in the dream, stays in the dream.

Dear Father: Thank you for showing me where grudges still festered in my mind unawares.  I thought that I was somehow ahead of my brother in our journey back to you, only to find that nope, my brother and I are one.  Help me to be kind today – to forgive the trespasses I think that others are guilty of inflicting and to know that in reality there is nothing at all to forgive for nothing here could change the Will of God or His great love and devotion to His Son.   Christ needs no thoughts of mercy.  Let me see others as Christ.  Let me see with His vision; let me know reality.  Bring me back forever into You.  In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one.  Amen.   

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 198.  Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). 

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 197 It can be but my gratitude I earn.

1. Here is the second step we take to free your mind from the belief in outside force pitted against your own. You make attempts at kindness and forgiveness. Yet you turn them to attack again, unless you find external gratitude and lavish thanks. Your gifts must be received with honor, lest they be withdrawn. And so you think God’s gifts are loans at best; at worst, deceptions which would cheat you of defenses, to ensure that when He strikes He will not fail to kill.
2. How easily are God and guilt confused by those who know not what their thoughts can do. Deny your strength, and weakness must become salvation to you. See yourself as bound, and bars become your home. Nor will you leave the prison house, or claim your strength, until guilt and salvation are not seen as one, and freedom and salvation are perceived as joined, with strength beside them, to be sought and claimed, and found and fully recognized.
3. The world must thank you when you offer it release from your illusions. Yet your thanks belongs to you as well, for its release can only mirror yours. Your gratitude is all your gifts require, that they be a lasting offering of a thankful heart, released from hell forever. Is it this you would undo by taking back your gifts because they were not honored? It is you who honor them and give them fitting thanks, for it is you who have received the gifts.
4. It does not matter if another thinks your gifts unworthy. In his mind there is a part that joins with yours in thanking you. It does not matter if your gifts seem lost and ineffectual. They are received where they are given.  In your gratitude are they accepted universally, and thankfully acknowledged by the Heart of God Himself. And would you take them back when He has gratefully accepted them?
5. God blesses every gift you give to Him, and every gift is given Him, because it can be given only to yourself. And what belongs to God must be His own. Yet you will never realize His gifts are sure, eternal, changeless, limitless, forever giving out, extending love, and adding to your never-ending joy while you forgive but to attack again.
6. Withdraw the gifts you give, and you will think that what is given you has been withdrawn. But learn to let forgiveness take away the sins you think you see outside yourself, and you can never think the gifts of God are lent but for a little while before He snatches them away again in death. For death will have no meaning for you then.
7. And with the end of this belief is fear forever over. Thank your Self for this, for He is grateful only unto God, and He gives thanks to you onto Himself. To everyone who lives will Christ yet come, for everyone must live and move in Him. His being in His Father is secure because Their Will is one. Their gratitude to all They have created has no end, for gratitude remains a part of love.
8. Thanks be to you, the holy Son of God. For as you were created, you contain all things within your Self. And you are still as God created you. Nor can you dim the light of your perfection. In your heart the Heart of God is laid. He holds you dear because you are Himself. All gratitude belongs to you, because of what you are.
9. Give thanks as you receive it. Be you free of all ingratitude to anyone who makes your Self complete. And from this Self is no one left outside. Give thanks for all the countless channels which extend this Self. All that you do is given unto Him. All that you think can only be His thoughts, sharing with Him the holy Thoughts of God. Earn now the gratitude you have denied yourself when you forgot the function God has given you. But never think that He has ever ceased to offer thanks to you.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  Today we are taught that we earn only gratitude toward ourselves in Christ.  I know how this feels on an earthly plane – to feel grateful to oneself.  I experience this sometimes when I think of how long it took me to fulfill my earthly accomplishments.  No matter how long it took me or how old I got in the meantime, I kept plugging away refusing to give up.  How I longed at times to relax and let go of my dreams!  I remember castigating myself for not being content to reading other people’s novels, why did I feel compelled to write one of my own?  And why not sit and watch my favorite TV shows, eating popcorn and ice cream snuggled on the couch every night instead of studying, writing papers, researching, or working on my novel?  Sometimes I would give in to laziness or lack of belief in my ability to accomplish my goals.  Sometimes I would let the opinions and tempting offers of others knock me off course.  But in the end how exciting it was to learn and apply my newfound knowledge in my life and in my work.  How utterly fulfilling it felt to see my book in print.  All the time and effort and fun times I missed when I was working toward my goals was now worth it.  No matter how people teased me about how old I was to finally be graduating from university, no matter how many people loved my novel or refused to read it, I was just so darn thankful that I had finally accomplished the things that had been instilled in me since I could remember. 

Today however, it is not the earthly accomplishments that Jesus is talking about.  Our concept today is to be applied to how we are to free our mind from all thoughts of an outside force pitted against our own force.  When we extend forgiveness to those who have wronged us and they show no sign of gratitude toward our mercy, the worse thing we can do is take back our forgiveness and continue to hold a grudge toward them.  Jesus is telling us today that we must extend our gifts of forgiveness and goodness no matter what the reception because if we “take it back,” we will likewise believe that God takes back His gifts, that He only loans them to us, or that He only wants us to forgive and be kind to make us vulnerable and defenseless against Him. 

When we are not aware of the power of our thoughts, we confuse God with guilt.  We forget how strong we are, and we think that weakness is our defense.  We see this all about us when it comes to people who love and fear God.  They do not like to take credit for anything but are quick to say, “Oh it was God who did it, not me.”  They are so afraid that God will get His little feelings hurt if they take credit for their hard-earned business success or their beautiful artwork or handiwork.  “I am weak, Lord, You are the big strong One,” is another line in this false humility before the Lord.  In the eyes of someone who fears God, establishing their weakness and their lack makes God seem all the more powerful and stronger and bigger.  But Jesus is telling us today to stop this – God did not create us to be weak and to cringe before Him.  We are not to appease Him by not accepting our power and strength and intelligence.  Weakness is not salvation!  We are not to believe “I am weak, but You are strong.”  We are to accept our Sonship.  Freedom and salvation are joined with strength beside them.  We are to seek this and claim this and find it and fully recognize this fact – today. 

When we begin to see that God did not make us as underlings to worship and praise Him out of fear and smallness and weakness, but to become One with Him – we are released from our puny, sad, stupid little lives that spin and spin but never go anywhere at all.  And when we are released, we release the world.  It is all a matter of freeing our minds from the illusion of the outside world.  Personally, the way that I have come to understand this is to realize that my ego human eyes have been programmed to see a world of illusion, discord, separation, shame, blame, guilt, and sin.  Yes, my ego eyes report a world of that is nice, sweet, and kind in many areas but equally badass and bitter in others.  My ego eyes take all that is pure and good and forever and turn it into somewhat and doomed.  My ego eyes take the eternal love and devotion that God has for us, His Son, and turns it into anger, rage, and eternal damnation – except of course for the select few that manage to better themselves above the rest of us and sail into the heavenlies waving a cheery ta-ta.  Ego wants us to believe in a God that would not take responsibility for His Creation and help them to find a way back to Him, not only blaming His Creation for failing to please Him, but devising ways to torment and torture them throughout eternity. 

We earn our gratitude and we earn the gratitude of God when we stop believing such tripe and listen to the call of Love within our hearts.  Kindness and forgiveness then comes naturally to us as we forgive the blinded and misguided world.  It does not matter what they say or do – they may express thanks for our insights or they may reject them – they may honor us one day and discount our words the next – when we claim our strength, when our thoughts are set free of the ego dogma that would have us fear God and seek approval and honor from those who still believe this world is their home and these bodies are who and what they are – we earn the gratitude of Him with Whom we are One. 

It is God who blesses our gifts and when we give them to Him, we give them to ourselves because we are One.  Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms today – we will only know that His gifts are certain, everlasting, unchanging, without limit, always extending and giving love and joy when we forgive and never take it back, when we forgive and never attack those with whom we forgave. 

Death has no more allure or meaning.  Fear is gone forever.  We forgive and never do we have to forgive again because there is simply nothing anyone can do or say that will cause us to believe in the lies of this world.  Now that we see with the eyes of Christ, now that we love God instead of fear Him, we choose only thoughts of love, joy, and peace.  This is how we earn gratitude; this is how we walk in love.  This is how we return to God from whence we came. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 197. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 196 It can be but myself I crucify.

1. When this is firmly understood and kept to full awareness, you will not attempt to harm yourself, nor make your body slave in vengeance.  You will not attack yourself, and you will realize that to attack another is but to attack yourself.  You will be free of the insane belief that to attack a brother saves yourself.  And you will understand his safety is your own, and in his healing, you are healed.
2. Perhaps at first you will not understand how mercy, limitless and with all things held in its sure protection, can be found in the idea we practice for today. It may, in fact, appear to be a sign that punishment can never be escaped because the ego, under what it sees as threat, is quick to cite the truth to save its lies. Yet must it fail to understand the truth it uses thus. But you can learn to see these foolish applications and deny the meaning they appear to have.
3. Thus do you also teach your mind that you are not an ego. For the ways in which the ego would distort the truth will not deceive you longer. You will not believe you are a body to be crucified. And you will see within today’s idea the light of resurrection, looking past all thoughts of crucifixion and death, to thoughts of liberation and of life.
4. Today’s idea is one step we take in leading us from bondage to the state of perfect freedom. Let us take this step today, that we may quickly go the way salvation shows us, taking every step in its appointed sequence, as the mind relinquishes its burdens one by one. It is not time we need for this.  It is but willingness. For what would seem to need a thousand years can easily be done in just one instant by the grace of God.
5. The dreary, hopeless thought that you can make attacks on others and escape yourself has nailed you to the cross. Perhaps it seemed to be salvation. Yet it merely stood for belief the fear of God is real. And what is that but hell, who could believe his Father is his deadly enemy, separate from him, and waiting to destroy his life and block him from the universe, without the fear of hell upon his heart?
6. Such is the form of madness you believe, if you accept the fearful thought you can attack another and be free yourself. Until this form is changed, there is no hope. Until you see that this, at least, must be entirely impossible, how could there be escape? The fear of God is real to anyone who thinks this thought is true. And he will not perceive its foolishness, or even see that it is there, so that it would be possible to question it.
7. To question it at all, its form must first be changed at least as much as will permit fear of retaliation to abate, and the responsibility returned to some extent to you. From there you can at least consider if you want to go along this painful path. Until this shift has been accomplished, you cannot perceive that it is but your thoughts that bring you fear, and your deliverance depends on you.
8. Our next steps will be easy for you take this one today. From there we go ahead quite rapidly. For once you understand it is impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear of God must disappear. You cannot then believe that fear is caused without. And God, Whom you had thought to banish, can be welcome back within the holy mind He never left.
9. Salvation’s song can certainly be heard in the idea we practice for today. If it can but be you you crucify, you did not hurt the world, and need not fear its vengeance and pursuit. Nor need you hide in terror from the deadly fear of God projection hides behind. The thing you dread the most is your salvation. You are strong, and it is strength you want. And you are free, and glad of freedom. You have sought to be both weak and bound because you feared your strength and freedom. Yet salvation lies in them.
10. There is an instant in which terror seems to grip your mind so wholly that escape appears quite hopeless. When you realize, once and for all, that it is you you fear, the mind perceives itself as split.  And this had been concealed while you believed attack could be directed outward and returned from outside to within.  It seemed to be an enemy outside you had to fear.  And thus a god outside yourself became your mortal enemy, the source of fear.
11. Now, for an instant, is a murderer perceived within you, eager for your death, intent on plotting punishment for you until the time when it can kill at last.  Yet in this instant is the time as well in which salvation comes.  For fear of God has disappeared.  And you can call on Him to save you from illusions by His Love, calling Him Father and yourself His Son.  Pray that the instant may be soon, – today.  Step back from fear and make advance to love.
12. There is no Thought of God that does not go with you to help you reach that instant, and to go beyond it quickly, surely, and forever.  When the fear of God is gone, there are no obstacles that still remain between you and the holy peace of God.  How kind and merciful is the idea we practice!  Give it welcome as you should, for it is your release.  It is indeed but you your mind can try to crucify.  Yet your redemption, too, will come from you.[1]

Notes and Personal Application: We have no enemy outside of our self!  Our enemy is within us, dear Brother and Friend.  We have an imposter who has usurped our identity and goes by our name.  We have so aligned ourselves with the ego that we need salvation to deliver us from its fearful lies, its petty hatreds, its triteness, and its murderous intent.  Only when we realize that any blame we try to pin upon our brothers is blame and shame we pin upon ourselves, will we begin to understand mercy, the light of resurrection, and soar past vengeance, sorrow, suffering, and death to take flight with thoughts of liberty and life. 

Jesus teaches us through today’s lesson idea that salvation does not come by offing our enemies, calling them out, blaming them for our problems, or assailing their institutions.  Salvation does not come from forcing our ideas about right and wrong upon others.  Perhaps in the eyes of the world this seems to be the way to make positive change, but these endeavors – no matter how seemingly worthy or justified – merely stand for the belief that God is to be feared, that He uses His power against us or else keeps it all for Himself, and that we are not His Son. 

In other words, Jesus spells it out to us in paragraph five – This is not heaven, this is hell. 

If we think we can attack another to set ourselves free, there is no hope.  Instead of loving God and trusting God, those who believe in attack believe that God is fearful, that He favors some over others, that He loves war and is strengthened through physical feats performed by bodies which bleed, suffer, and ooze pus, mucus, and saliva.  When we rise up to defame another, to trash our neighbors, to spread rumors and engage in gossip, to form cliques…we believe in a God that cannot be trusted, a God who made a world set upon itself, a world in which we must band together to fight and arm ourselves against those who are different from us to thrive, to survive, to carry on our lineage to the next generation.  When we take up signs and carry placards, pin our hopes on a political figure and make enemies of her rival, when we report negative things about our neighbors and recount all their wrongs and failings, we must understand that we are engaging and caging ourselves in hell. 

There is no escape until we lay down our arms.  There is no escape from this dreary madness until we take responsibility for the thoughts we cherish and carefully consider the path in which they lead us upon.  Until we change our mind about this, Jesus says, until that shift takes place, we will not realize the truth of the matter:  It is our thoughts that bring us fear.  God does not reach down from Heaven and deliver us; deliverance comes from our willingness to stop thinking thoughts of attack and fear.  We clear the altar of our minds, we dedicate our minds to thoughts of truth, of love, of unity and it is impossible to be hurt.  When we accept this as true, we recognize God as our Father.  We no longer think that the world is going to make us happy.  We know that the world cannot and will not save us.  We change our minds about who and what we are; we change our minds about who and what God is.  We know Him and we love Him and in knowing Him we know ourselves and all of creation as one. 

When we no longer experience ourselves as split between darkness and light, good and evil, black or white, we are saved.  When we no longer fear God, we have peace.  Our minds let go of the worries and cares that make this world spin in space and time.  When our minds are full of the light of resurrection, there is no place for thoughts of the past.  We break free from humanity and all its calls for taking up arms against each other – and into our rightful identity in God.

Dear Father, Enlighten our minds so that we come to know that when we harbor attack and defense thoughts toward others here on earth, we are binding ourselves to the hellish realm.  Make it real to our minds that only when we let such thoughts go do we realize that we have no enemy except the enemy within – the ego whose only aim is to nail us to the cross in its efforts to crucify your beloved Son.  Give us courage, O Lord, for this is the instant in which our salvation comes.  We are saved from the lies of the enemy with Your Love.  You know us as Your Son for we are one in Christ now and forever.  And it is in His name we pray.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 196. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 195 Love is the way I walk in gratitude.

1. Gratitude is a lesson hard to learn for those who look upon the world amiss. The most that they can do is see themselves as better off than others. And they try to be content because another seems to suffer more than they. How pitiful and deprecating are such thoughts! For who has cause for thanks while others have less cause? And who could suffer less because he sees another suffer more?  Our gratitude is due to Him alone who made all cause of sorrow disappear throughout the world.
2. It is insane to offer thanks because of suffering. But it is equally insane to fail in gratitude to One Who offers you the certain means whereby all pain is healed, and suffering replaced with laughter and with happiness. Nor could the even partly sane refuse to take the steps which He directs, and following the way He sets before them, to escape a prison that they thought contained no door to the deliverance they now perceive.
3. Your brother is your “enemy” because you see in him the rival for your peace; a plunderer who takes his joy from you and leaves you nothing but a black despair so bitter and relentless that there is no hope remaining. Now is vengeance all there is to wish for, now can you but try to bring him down to lie in death with you, as useless as yourself; as little left within his grasping fingers as in yours.
4. You do not offer God your gratitude because your brother is more slave than you, nor could you sanely be enraged if he seems freer. Love makes no comparisons. And gratitude can only be sincere if it be joined to love. We offer thanks to God our Father that in us all things will find freedom. It will never be that some are loosed while others still are bound. For who can bargain in the name of love?
5.  Therefore give thanks, but in sincerity. And let your gratitude make room for all who will escape with you; the sick, the weak, the needy, and afraid, and those who mourn a seeming loss or feel apparent pain, who suffer cold or hunger, or who walk the way of hatred and the path of death. All these go with you. Let us not compare ourselves with them, for thus we split them off from our awareness of the unity we share with them, as they must share with us.
6. We thank our Father for one thing alone; that we are separate from no living thing, and therefore one with Him. And we rejoice that no exceptions ever can be made which would reduce our wholeness, nor impair or change our function to complete the One Who is Himself completion. We give thanks for every living thing, for otherwise we offer thanks for nothing, and we failed to recognize the gifts of God to us.
7. Then let our brothers lean their tired heads against our shoulders as they rest awhile. We offer thanks for them. For if we can direct them to the peace that we would find, the way is opening at last to us. An ancient door is swinging free again; a long-forgotten Word re-echoes in our memory and gathers clarity as we are willing once again to hear.
8. Walk, then, in gratitude the way of love. For hatred is forgotten when we lay comparisons aside. What more remains as obstacles to peace? The fear of God is now undone at last, and we forgive without comparing. Thus we cannot choose to overlook some things, and yet retain some other things still locked away as “sins.” When your forgiveness is complete you will have total gratitude, for you will see that everything has earned the right to love by being loving, even as your Self.
9. Today we learned to think of gratitude in place of anger, malice, and revenge. We have been given everything. If we refuse to recognize it, we are not entitled therefore to our bitterness, and to a self-perception which regards us in a place of merciless pursuit, where we are badgered ceaselessly, and pushed about without a thought or care for us or for our future. Gratitude becomes a single thought we substitute for these insane perceptions. God has cared for us and calls us Son. Can there be more than this?
10. Our gratitude will pave the way to Him and shorten our learning time by more than you could ever dream of. Gratitude goes hand in hand with love, and where one is the other must be found.  For gratitude is but an aspect of the Love which is the source of all creation. God give thanks to you, His Son, for being what you are; His Own completion and the Source of love, along with Him. Your gratitude to Him is one with His to you. For love can walk no road except the way of gratitude, and thus we go who walk the way of God.[1]

Notes and Personal Application: Today Jesus teaches us that love makes no comparison.  We do not give God our gratitude because we were born with more privileges than other people nor are we supposed to be jealous and ungrateful if someone has more.  The only reason we offer thanks to God is that in Christ with whom we are one will all of creation find freedom.  Nobody will remain enslaved while some go free – we are one in Christ and as one body we bring all into the Sonship of Christ, where there differences between us that seem so apparent in the world disappear and we one with Him. 

With the vision of Christ, we do not differentiate between the Sonship based upon the color of skin, genitals, cultural traditions, or the clothes we wear.  When we look upon our brothers we do not judge them according to their bank accounts, the car they drive, the house they live in, or their favorite football team.  None of these matter in the eyes of love.  Hatred cannot abide where comparisons and judgments are laid aside, when we walk in the light of His Love.  In His Love, the world and all of its distinctions, competitions, differences, injustices, privileges and disadvantages, finger pointing, games of blame and shame melt away into the past that never was.  The world is made new.

As we learn the plan of salvation we begin to see that it is no longer Jesus dying on a cross for the sins of the world that saves us from the hallucinations of sorrow, shame, and death, but that it is our minds and hearts becoming one with Him.  

Love is the way we walk in gratitude when we single-mindedly and with no exception recognize the fact that we are given power over any thoughts of anger, malice, and revenge.  We accept the gift of everything in place of nothing, and we are free.  Our hearts and minds are filled with gratitude and we walk the way of God to God. 

 If we reject the gift of everything, we will experience animosity, we will feel persecuted, pushed about, enraged and at every disadvantage.  We will rage and riot and demand that the injustices of the past be made up to us, as victims someone has to make things right for us and ensure our future.  We think that the world owes us something; we fall for the deception that others live and work and breathe in a fairy land of privilege while we go without.  We will fill our heads with disturbing images of past abuses, current injustices, and dark and mysterious rites and rituals performed by the atrocious one percent which rules the world, stealing our children, enslaving our minds, and blinding our vision.  When we reject God’s gift of everything in exchange for nothing, we forget how to love each other, we think of ourselves and others as meat, as commodities, as competing with one another for the prime cuts, for the biggest slice of the pie. 

In today’s lesson, Jesus is asking us to examine these insane perceptions and see them for what they really are!  God loves us.  He calls us His Son.  What more could we possibly ask for?  For this we are grateful and learning this powerful lesson – Jesus promises – will shorten our learning time by great measure.  Love and gratitude go hand in hand.  Love does not abide where there is ingratitude, ill will, and competition and comparison. 

O Father Let us walk the way of love in gratitude.  Deliver our minds of the world’s dark madness and give us the Vision of Christ.  Thank you for every living thing, dear Father. Let us not see others as being different from ourselves but help us to recognize and accept our oneness in Christ.  In the name of Jesus with Whom we are one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 195. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 194 I place the future in the Hands of God.

1. Today’s idea takes another step toward quick Salvation, and a giant stride it is indeed! So great the distances that it encompasses, it sets you down just short of heaven, with the goal in sight and obstacles behind. Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to Heaven’s gate; the quiet place of peace, where you await with certainty the final step of God. How far are we progressing now from earth! How close are we approaching to our goal! How short the journey still to be pursued!
2. Accept today’s idea, and you have passed anxiety, all pits of hell, all blackness of depression, thoughts of sin, and devastation brought about by guilt. Accept today’s idea, and you have released the world from all imprisonment by loosening the heavy chains that locked the door to freedom on it. You are saved, and your salvation thus becomes the gift you give the world, because you have received.
3. In no one instant is depression felt, or pain experienced, or loss perceived. In no one instant sorrow can be set upon a throne and worshiped faithfully. In no one instant can one even die. And so each instant given unto God in passing, with the next one given Him already, is a time of your release from sadness, pain, and even death itself.
4. God holds your future as He holds your past and present.  They are one to Him, and so they should be one to you. Yet in this world, the temporal progression still seems real. And so you are not asked to understand the lack of sequence. You are but asked to let the future go and place it in God’s hands. And you will see by your experience that you have laid the past and present in His hands as well, because the past will punish you no more, and future dread will now be meaningless.
5.  Release the future. For the past is gone, and what is present, freed from its bequest of grief and misery, of pain and loss, becomes the instant in which time escapes the bondage of illusions where it runs its pitiless, inevitable course. Then is each instant which was slave to time transformed into a holy instant, when the light that was kept hidden in God’s Son is freed to bless the world. Now is he free, and all his glory shines upon a world made free with him, to share his holiness.
6. If you can see the lesson for today as the deliverance it really is, you will not hesitate to give as much consistent effort as you can, to make it be a part of you. As it becomes a thought that rules your mind, a habit in your problem-solving repertoire, a way of quick reaction to temptation, you extend your learning to the world. And as you learn to see salvation in all things, so will the world perceive that it is saved.
7. What worry can beset the one who gives his future to the loving Hands of God? What can he suffer? What can cause him pain or bring experience of loss to him? What can he fear?  What can he regard except with love? For he who has escaped all fear of future pain has found his way to present peace, and certainty of care the world can never threaten. He is sure that his perception may be faulty but will never lack correction. He is free to choose again when he has been deceived; to change his mind when he has made mistakes.
8. Place, then, your future in the Hands of God. For thus you called the memory of Him to come again, replacing all your thoughts of sin and evil with the truth of love. Think you the world could fail to gain thereby, and every living creature not respond with healed perception? Who entrusts himself to God has also placed the world within the Hands to which he has himself appealed for comfort and security. He lays aside the sick illusions of the world along with his and offers peace to both.
9. Now are we saved indeed. For in God’s Hands we rest untroubled, sure that only good can come to us. If we forget, we will be gently reassured. If we accept an unforgiving thought, it will soon be replaced by love’s reflection. And if we are tempted to attack, we will appeal to Him Who guards our rest to make the choice for us that leaves temptation far behind. No longer is the world our enemy, for we have chosen that we be its Friend.[1]

Notes and Personal Application: Prior to accepting the truth about the world, I knew the future to be in God’s Hands, but it was in a fatalistic, negative way in that I saw no point in having any hope or doing anything meaningful in the world because “God” would blow on it and make it disappear.  I hated the temporal world; it confused, frightened, and seemed to hold me captive to a form of flesh and blood which existed in a span of time only long enough to spawn, grow old, and die. 

Knowing who and what I really am has changed all that!  The future in God’s Hands is an incredible experience, one in which has eternal meaning and goes from glory to glory, expanding in joyful creation in every direction.  My Heavenly Father, a God of Love and Happiness is not intent on extinguishing anything that has meaning to me, but rather replaces all my thoughts of unhappiness, woe, and sorrow with the truth of love, assurance, a promise and a blessing without end. 

Today Jesus declares that only good can come to us when we stop interfering with the future and put our trust in God.  He is not out to get us, trip us up, or teach us lessons of hate, fear, and torment.  He is not out to embarrass us, wound us, or humble us.  We are one with Christ, we are His Son, and God wants for us what we want for our children and grandchildren – to be loved, protected, happy, and surefooted, good, kind, sweet, and generous.  With the future in God’s Hands, the world is no longer an enemy to fear, but a friend which comes along with us in a future entrusted to God, safe and comfortable, loving and kind.  When we lay aside the lies of the world, no longer taking pleasure in its perversions and misadventures, closing our mind to its call to sorrow and misery, the world follows suit. 

This is the sure way to salvation.  Only good can come to us when we put our faith in God.  No longer do we rely on the shaky, unstable systems of the world; no longer do we blame the president for our problems or give credit to the forms of the world for providing our needs.  We have no need to worry if we change our minds about God and backslide into sin because if we forget, Jesus promises that we will be reminded.  If we fall into unforgiving attitudes, the reflection of love will come to take root in us.  Temptation to fight, to go to war, to blame and point fingers will all seem so stupid and silly in the light of His love, His peace, His joy. 

Today every concern we may have about the future, we place in the Hands of God.  My worries and concerns about growing old and being a burden on my family are placed in the loving Hands of God.  My concerns about the cucumber leaves wilting on the vine – I put in the Hands of God.  He knows how much I enjoy making pickles, sharing pickles, eating pickles.  And His Will is for me to be happy – not to be worried about my cucumber crop!  God knows how much I love and miss my family members.  How I dread growing old without them in my life, talking and remembering things together, always coming up with fun things to do together.  God’s Will is for me to be happy, not to be concerned about them never talking to me again or cherishing dishonest, unjust grudges from the past.  I put all my loved ones in His Hands, forgiving the reasons why I built cases against them and the cases they built against me.   God knows each and every desire of my heart.  I put the future in His Hands.  I do not have to worry about my energy levels, running out of speed, losing strength and courage, my goodness or my tendency to be selfish and egocentric, for I belong to Him. 

Only good can come to us when the future is in God’s Hands.  The world is no longer an enemy in which I must fear attack, but the world becomes friend when I place my future in the Hands of God. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 194. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 193 All things are lessons God would have me learn.

1. God does not know of learning.  Yet His Will extends to what He does not understand, in that He wills the happiness of His Son inherited of Him be undisturbed; eternal and forever gaining scope, eternally expanding in the joy of full creation, and eternally open and wholly limitless in Him.  That is His Will.  And thus His Will provides the means to guarantee that it is done.
2. God sees no contradictions.  Yet His Son believes he sees them. Thus he has a need for One Who can correct his erring sight and give him vision that will lead him back to where perception ceases.  God does not perceive at all.  Yet it is He Who gives the means by which perception is made true and beautiful enough to let the light of Heaven shine upon it.  It is He Who answers what His Son would contradict and keeps his sinlessness forever safe. 
3. These are the lessons God would have you learn.  His Will reflects them all, and they reflect His loving kindness to the Son He loves.  Each lesson has a central thought, the same in all of them.  The form alone is changed, with different circumstances and events with different characters and different themes, apparent but not real.  They are the same in fundamental content.  It is this: Forgive, and you will see this differently.
4. Certain it is that all distress does not appear to be but unforgiveness.  Yet that is the content underneath the form.  It is this sameness which makes learning sure because the lesson is so simple that it cannot be rejected in the end.  No one can hide forever from a truth so very obvious that it appears in countless forms, and yet is recognized as easily in all of them, if one but wants to see the simple lesson there.  Forgive, and you will see this differently.
5. These are the words the Holy Spirit speaks in all your tribulations, all your pain, all suffering regardless of its form.  These are the words with which temptation ends, and guilt, abandoned, is revered no more.  These are the words which end the dream of sin and rid the mind of fear.  These are the words by which salvation comes to all the world.
6. Shall we not learn to say these words when we are tempted to believe that pain is real, and death becomes our choice instead of life?  Shall we not learn to say these words when we have understood their power to release all minds from bondage?  These are words which give you power over all events that seem to have been given power over you.  You see them rightly when you hold these words in full awareness, and do not forget these words apply to everything you see, or any brother looks upon amiss.
7. How can you tell when you are seeing wrong, or someone else is failing to perceive the lesson he should learn?  Does pain seem real in the perception?  If it does, be sure the lesson is not learned.  And there remains an unforgiveness hiding in the mind that sees the pain through eyes the mind directs.
8. God would not have you suffer thus. He would help you forgive yourself.  His Son does not remember who he is.  And God would have him not forget His Love, and all the gifts His Love brings with it.  Would you now renounce your own salvation?  Would you fail to learn the simple lessons Heaven’s Teacher sets before you, that all pain may disappear, and God may be remembered by His Son?
9. All things are lessons God would have you learn.  He would not leave an unforgiving thought without correction, nor one thorn or nail to hurt His holy Son in any way.  He would ensure his holy rest remain untroubled and serene, without a care, in an eternal home which cares for him.  And He would have all tears be wiped away, with none remaining yet unshed, and none but waiting their appointed time to fall.  For God has willed that laughter should replace each one, and that His Son be free again. 
10. We will attempt today to overcome a thousand seeming obstacles to peace in just one day.  Let mercy come to you more quickly.  Do not try to hold it off another day, another minute or another instant.  Time was made for this.  Use it today for what its purpose is.  Morning and night devote what time you can to serve its proper aim, and do not let the time be less than meets your deepest need.
11. Give all you can and give a little more.  For now we would arise in haste and go unto our Father’s house.  We have been gone too long, and we would linger here no more.  And as we practice, let us think about all things we saved to settle by ourselves, and kept apart from healing.  Let us give them all to Him Who knows the way to look upon them so that they will disappear.  Truth is His message; truth His teaching is.  His are the lessons God would have us learn.
12. Each hour spend a little time today, and in the days to come, in practicing the lessons in forgiveness in the form established for the day.  And try to give it application to the happenings the hour brought, so that the next one is free of the one before.  The chains of time are easily unloosened in this way.  Let no one hour cast its shadow on the one that follows, and when that one goes, let everything that happened in its course go with it.  Thus will you remain unbound, in peace eternal in the world of time.
13. This is the lesson God would have you learn:  There is a way to look on everything that lets it be to you another step to Him, and to salvation of the world.  To all that speaks of terror, answer thus: I will forgive, and this will disappear.  To every apprehension, every care and every form of suffering, repeat these selfsame words.  And then you hold the key that opens Heaven’s gate and brings the Love of God the Father down to earth at last, to raise it up to Heaven.  God will take this final step Himself.  Do not deny the little steps He asks you take to Him. [1]

Notes and Personal Application: Today let us practice saying: I will forgive, and this will disappear, every hour to all thoughts that would steal our joy, cause us rage or anger, blight our light, or darken our pathway.  We do not have to hold any such thoughts in our mind.  We can set ourselves free from all that the world would throw upon us to wreak havoc upon our minds and cause us to arm ourselves against one another, snub one another, or widen the separation between ourselves and God. 

There are times that the past comes to my mind in such a vivid way – as if undesirable events and wrongdoings that happened decades ago have just now inflicted the pain, sorrow, disappointment, and anger.  My ego does not want me to forget the many reasons I have to shield myself against love and forgiveness.  As long as the ego can keep me in the go-round of holding grudges, keeping others accountable, building cases against those who wronged me, doubting their goodness and worth, I are trapped in the senseless state of time, of separation, and of uncertainty.

Today Jesus is telling you and me to take a stand against the lies of the ego.  We are to open our eyes and know that all of the hurt, the sorrow, the disappointment, the ongoing agony of it all will simply disappear once and for all when we realize that the past has no meaning.  The adversities that I suffered in childhood are simply gone.  The difficulties, betrayals, and false friends that cluttered my adulthood are no more. There is absolutely no good reason to hold on to them, to let my mind make them real to me, to hold the actors and the players accountable for the nothing that passes in time.  All things that happened to me are lessons that God would have me learn.  If I thought it would be a lark to separate myself from God, live in a place of opposites, uncertainty, and competition for limited resources, well, then I must learn in whatever manner it takes that it is no picnic, no lark, no high adventure.  Jesus insists in today’s lesson that there is nothing that can happen in the realm of separation, in the simulated world of that which is not love that can possibly be cause for me to hold unforgiveness in my heart. 

I see things differently through the eyes of forgiveness.  All things are lessons God would have me learn.  God’s Will is for me to be happy, for my happiness to be undisturbed throughout eternity, for my happiness to expand itself int the joy of creation, gaining scope forever and limitless in Him.  That is God’s Will for me and for you.  And His Will guarantees that it is done. 

Today let us learn the lessons God would have us learn!  Every single thing that happens to us either personally or vicariously is a lesson we are here to learn.  We are not to hold the people involved accountable.  We can avoid any bitterness, anger, resentment, or sense of loss by learning the lesson and forgiving all who were involved in teaching it to us.  God hold no ill will toward us.  He does not devise lessons to hurt us, to take revenge upon us, or to punish us.  Yet each dark circumstance, each jealous, loveless act, each situation that befalls us is a lesson to lead us back to God.  Reaping what we sow is not a punishment, it is a lesson in an eternal principle.  Casting our pearls before the swine and then experiencing a sense of shame and worthlessness is not a punishment, it is a lesson in an eternal principle.  Taking something that does not belong to us and then having the same thing happen to us, is a lesson in an eternal principle, not God taking revenge upon our sin. 

When we learn our lessons in truth, we can thank the very ones who taught us by forgiving the role they played in driving those hard lessons home.  Forgive, Jesus says, and we will see things differently.  These words Holy Spirit speaks to us in all our pain and suffering of every kind.  We can put an end to all our problems, we can make our pain and suffering disappear simply by accepting it as a lesson from God.  This is a key to the gate of Heaven, Jesus claims.  This is how we bring God’s Kingdom to earth – by accepting everything that happens to us as a lesson, forgiving the circumstances, choices, and characters that led us to each lesson, and experiencing  healing through the sense of love and peace and joy instead of resentment, grudges, and confusion. 

Dear Father, Today let me take each event in my life as a lesson from You.  Let me accept the lesson, learn from it, and forgive all the circumstances and people involved who have made the lesson seem loveless and painful.  When I forgive, I will see things differently.  When I forgive, any hurt, trauma, pain, or sorrow will disappear.  Help me to see this through the eyes of Christ.  In the name of Jesus, with whom I am one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 193. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 192 I have a function God would have me fill.

1. It is your Father’s holy Will that you complete Himself, and that your Self shall be His sacred Son, forever pure as He, of Love created and in love preserved, extending love, creating in its Name, forever one with God and with your Self.  Yet what can such a function mean within a world of envy, hatred, and attack?
2. Therefore, you have a function in the world in its own terms.  For who can understand a language far beyond his simple grasp?  Forgiveness represents your function here.  It is not God’s creation, for it is the means by which untruth can be undone.  And who would pardon Heaven?  Yet on earth, you need the means to let illusions go. Creation merely waits for your return to be acknowledged, not to be complete.
3. Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world.  It has no meaning here.  Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth.  For being Heaven-born, it has no form at all.  Yet God created One Who has the power to translate in form the wholly formless.  What He makes are dreams, but of a kind so close to waking that the light of day already shines in them, and eyes already opening behold the joyful sights their offerings contain.
4. Forgiveness gently looks upon all things unknown in Heaven, sees them disappear, and leaves the world a clean and unmarked slate on which the Word of God can now replace the senseless symbols written there before.  Forgiveness is the means by which the fear of death is overcome because it holds no fierce attraction now and guilt is gone.  Forgiveness lets the body be perceived as what it is, a simple teaching aid, to be laid by when learning is complete, but hardly changing him who learns at all.   
5. The mind without the body cannot make mistakes.  It cannot think that it will die, nor be the prey of merciless attacks.  Anger becomes impossible, and where is terror then?  What fears could still assail those who have lost the source of all attack, the core of anguish and the seat of fear?  Only forgiveness can relive the mind of thinking that the body is its home.  Only forgiveness can restore the peace that God intended for His holy Son.  Only forgiveness can persuade the Son to look again upon his holiness.
6. With anger gone, you will indeed perceive that, for Christ’s vision and the gift of sight, no sacrifice was asked, and only pain was lifted from a sick and tortured mind.  Is this unwelcome?  Is it to be feared?  Or is it to be hoped for, met with thanks and joyously accepted.  We are one, and therefore give up nothing.  But we have indeed been given everything by God.
7. Yet do we need forgiveness to perceive that this is so.  Without its kindly light we grope in darkness, using reason but to justify our rage and our attack.  Our understanding is so limited that what we think we understand is, but confusion born of error.  We are lost in mists of shifting dreams and fearful thoughts, our eyes shut tight against the light; our minds engaged in worshipping what is not there.
8. Who can be born again in Christ but him who has forgiven everyone he sees or thinks of or imagines?  Who could be set free while he imprisons anyone?  A jailer is not set free, for he is bound together with his prisoner.  He must be sure that he does not escape, and so he spends him time in keeping watch on him.  The bars that limit him become the world in which his jailer lives, along with him. And it is on his freedom that the way to liberty depends for both of them. 
9. Therefore, hold no one prisoner.  Release instead of bind, for thus are you made free.  The way is simple.  Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head.  And it will fall or be averted as you choose to be condemned or free.  Thus does each one who seems to tempt you to be angry represent your savior from the prison house of death.  And so you owe him thanks instead of pain.
10. Be merciful today.  The Son of God deserves your mercy.  It is he who asks that you accept the way to freedom now.  Deny him not.  His Father’s Love for him belongs to you.  Your function here on earth is only to forgive him, that you may accept him back as your Identity.  He is as God created him.  And you are what he is.  Forgive him now his sins, and you will see that you are one with him.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  Jesus asks in paragraph eight, who can be born again unless he has forgiven everything.  Hold nobody prisoner, our Teacher instructs.  What is keeping us trapped in the illusion of time, separation, and a world where we are all at each other’s throats, pointing fingers and holding one another accountable for our rift from God, from Love, from each other is our lack of forgiveness, our mistake in believing that we are flesh and blood bodies, the Sons of man and not the Son of God. 

The Son of God deserves our mercy, Jesus says.  The Son of God is all of us, is all of creation.  Is all of us lost in time, stumbling about in the dark, uncertain, forgetting who we are and how we got here and what we are to do about it.  Meaning is lost to us.  The Son of God has traded in his eternal spirit for an identity that is trapped in a cycle of death and despair – and yes, He deserves your mercy.  We are not to deny Him His true identity.  We are to remind Him Who and What He is in Christ. 

Our religions in the world teach us that the way to salvation is to be a good person, but Jesus tells us that there is no such thing.  Our good deeds, our perfect behaviors, our denying ourselves meat on Friday’s, sex outside of marriage, and that extra slice of cake may indeed get us a pat on the back from our priests, our neighbors, and our health care professionals.  Our human goodness will certainly make us better citizens, trustworthy parents, nice friends, and the kind of people who will more than likely succeed in the world, but it will not earn our salvation or get us any closer to God’s Kingdom. 

The way to salvation is through forgiveness.  We recognize the world for what it is, we recognize humanity for what it is, and we forgive it for deceiving us into thinking it is the Creation of God.  Now we know!  We hold nobody accountable, for truly they know not what they do.  No longer does the thought of death hold us in terror, for we will be only too happy to lay the body aside when we have learned all that the world has to teach us. 

We are full of mercy for as we show mercy, mercy is granted to us.  We are one.  No longer splintered, no longer facing the dark abyss alone and afraid, we know that this is not Creation and that our God is not a madman who would devise perversions, distortions, opposites, and insecurities.   We were created in Love, by Love, and for Love.  We are extensions of God, extending His Love forever through Creation.  We can forgive time, we can forgive the world, we can forgive our lessons learned in darkness for only in separation do we learn to cherish oneness and unity; only in darkness do we learn to devote ourselves to light; only in uncertainty, doubt, and fear can we learn to treasure the certainty of God, and only in the throes of death do we learn to accept everlasting life. 

Dear Father, Let our hearts and minds be full of mercy toward our fallen state.  Our enchantment for darkness and death has seemed to blind our eyes to the light and love of God.  Let us forgive one another and show mercy – for this is the function that You would have us fill.  In the name of Jesus Christ, with Whom we are one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 192. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 191 I am the holy Son of God Himself.

1. Here is your declaration of release from bondage of the world. And here as well is all the world released. You do not see what you have done by giving to the world the role of jailer to the Son of God. What could it be but vicious and afraid, fearful of shadows, punitive and wild, lacking all reason, blind, insane with hate?
2. What have you done that this should be your world? What have you done that this is what you see? Deny your own Identity, and this is what remains. You look on chaos and proclaim it is yourself. There is no sight that fails to witness this to you. There is no sound that does not speak a frailty within you and without; no breath you draw that does not seem to bring you near death; no hope you hold but will dissolve in tears.
3. Deny your own identity, and you will not escape the madness which induced this weird, unnatural, and ghostly thought that mocks creation and that laughs at God. Deny your own identity, and you assail the universe alone, without a friend, a tiny particle of dust against the legions of your enemies. Deny your own identity, and look on evil, sin and death, and watch despair snatch from your fingers every scrap of hope, leaving you nothing but the wish to die.
4. Yet what is it except a game you play in which Identity can be denied? You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everyone set free. In this one thought are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything, the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality.
5. But let today’s idea find a place among your thoughts and you have risen far above the world, and all the worldly thoughts that hold it prisoner. And from this place of safety and escape you will return and set it free. For he who can accept his true Identity is truly saved. And his salvation is the gift he gives to everyone, in gratitude to Him Who pointed out the way to happiness that changed his whole perspective of the world.
6. One holy thought like this and you are free; you are the holy Son of God Himself. And with this holy thought you learn as well that you have freed the world. You have no need to use it cruelly, and then perceive this savage need in it. You set it free of your imprisonment. You will not see a devastating image of yourself walking the world in terror, with the world twisting in agony because your fears have laid the mark of death its heart.
7. Be glad today how very easily is hell undone. You need but tell yourself: I am the holy son of God himself. I cannot suffer, cannot be in pain; I cannot suffer loss, nor fail to do all that salvation asks. And in that thought is everything you look on wholly changed.
8. A miracle has lighted up all dark and ancient caverns, where the rites of death echoed since time began. For time has lost its hold upon the world. The Son of God has come in glory to redeem the lost, to save the helpless, and to give the world the gift of his forgiveness. Who could see the world as dark and simple, when God’s Son has come again at last to set it free?
9. You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given on to you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you.
10. Then let the Son of God awaken from his sleep, and opening his holy eyes, return again to bless the world he made. In error it began, but it will end in the reflection of his holiness. And he will sleep no more and dream of death. Then join with me today. Your glory is a light that saves the world. Do not withhold salvation longer.  Look about the world and see the suffering there. Is not your heart willing to bring your weary brothers rest?
11. They must await your own release.  They stay in chains till you are free.  They cannot see the mercy of the world until you find it in yourself.  They suffer pain until you have denied its hold on you.  They die till you accept your own eternal life.  You are the Holy Son of God Himself.  Remember this, and all the world is free.  Remember this, and earth and Heaven are one.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:   Even though I understand that I am a holy son of God Himself, and I know that Jesus really wants us to get this so that we no longer identify with the miscreation, I still feel a twinge of embarrassment to say it.  It is true.  We are as God created us, not the thing that evolved here in time, but when I read our lesson today with my husband and grandson, there was a part of me that shrunk back inside.  They hear me say bad words!  They hear me gripe and complain.  They know how bossy I am and how I can stomp about when I do not have my picture met.  Saying that I am not “a” holy Son of God, but the Son of God is even more cringeworthy to my ego which is far more comfortable being a splintered self, full of opposites, addicted to darkness, doomed to death and despair. 

Here in the world living in my flesh and blood body, being prone to temptation by the very ego that would tempt me to deny my eternal Self while spoon feeding my habit of succumbing to its lies, it seems a far stretch that I am the holy Son of God Himself.  And yet Christ has made me one with Him, just as you are one with Him and all of creation is one with Him.  Asleep in the world of time, it may seem as if this is something in store for us at a much later date when we manage to get all the kinks worked out of our humanity and clean ourselves up to become acceptable to God’s Kingdom.  But today’s lesson states otherwise.

In paragraph 10 Jesus calls for us to waken from our sleep, open our holy eyes, return again to bless the world we made.  We who have been taught about the second coming of Christ, take heed.  We are the second coming of Christ. We who have been asleep, identifying as sons of man are to accept the call of Christ and recognize that we are one with Him.  Jesus calls to us: “Join with me today.  Your glory is the light that saves the world.  Do not withhold salvation longer.  Look about the world and see the suffering there.  Is not your heart willing to bring your weary brothers rest?…”

Jesus reminds us of who and what we are and until we are willing to accept our true identity in Him, we are not saving the world.  We are in chains; we find no mercy, we suffer pain, we die, and the cycles of time keep spinning until we accept our eternal life, our holy Son of Godship.  When we remember this, the world is set free and becomes one with Heaven. 

Let us practice today with this prayer:

Dear Father, I am one with Christ.  I am Your Holy Son.  I do not believe in suffering; I do not believe in pain. I cannot lose or fail to do all that salvation asks.  I am not a prisoner here, persecuted, fearful, afraid of death and disease and discomfort because I am one with Christ; I am the holy Son of God.  All power is given to me in Heaven and on the earth and there is nothing I cannot do.  I am not helpless in the face of my earthly nature; I am not at the mercy of the merciless ego.  I forgive all the lies, unmet promises, and dashed hopes found in everything and everyone who would take the place of You. I no longer crave the lifeless trinkets of the world or the satisfaction of vain drives and desires – because all of my love, my trust, my devotion belong to You.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 191. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com 

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 190 I choose the joy of God instead of pain.

1. Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes that will not disappear if seen right. For pain proclaims God cruel. How could it be real in any form? It witnesses to God the Father’s hatred of His Son, the sinfulness He sees in him, and His insane desire for revenge and death.
2. Can such projections be attested to? Can they be anything but wholly false? Pain is but witness to the Son’s mistakes and what he thinks he is. It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed; for attack on what is wholly unassailable. It is a nightmare of abandonment by an Eternal Love, Which could not leave the Son whom It created out of love.
3. Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth. It demonstrates God is denied, confused with fear, perceived as mad, and seen as traitor to Himself. If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real, there is no God. For vengeance is not part of love. And fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain.
4. Peace to such foolishness! The time has come to laugh at such insane ideas. There is no need to think of them as savage crimes, or secret sins with weighty consequences. Who but a madman could conceive of them as cause of anything? Their witness, pain, is mad as they, and no more to be feared than the insane illusions which it shields and tries to demonstrate must still be true.
5. It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in anyway. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail.  But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness.
6. My holy brother think of this awhile: the world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents your thoughts. And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind and choose the joy of God as what you really want. Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable, forever and forever. And would you deny a little corner of your mind its own inheritance, and keep it as a hospital for pain; a sickly place where living things must come at last to die?
7. The world may seem to cause you pain, and yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects. As an illusion, it is what you wish. Your idle wishes represent its pains. Your strange desires bring it evil dreams. Your thoughts of death envelope it in fear, while in your kind forgiveness does it live.
8. Pain is the thought of evil taking form and working havoc in your holy mind. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. In pain is God denied the Son He loves. In pain does fear appear to triumph over love, and time replace eternity in heaven. And the world becomes a cruel and a bitter place, where sorrow rules and little joys give way before the onslaught of the savage pain that waits to end all joy in misery.
9. Lay down your arms and come without defense into the quiet place where Heaven’s peace holds all things still at last. Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. Let no attack enter with you. Lay down the cruel sword of judgement that you hold against your throat and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness.
10. Here will you understand there is no pain. Here does the joy of God belong to you. This is the day when it is given you to realize the lesson that contains all of salvation’s power. It is this: paying is illusion; joy, reality. Pain is but sleep; joy is awakening. Pain is deception; joy alone is truth.
11. And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; We choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven. Let our gratitude unto our teacher fill our hearts, as we are free to choose our joy instead of pain, our holiness in place of sin, the peace of God instead of conflict, and the light of Heaven for the darkness of the world. Amen. ¹

Notes and Personal Application:   Lately I have been experiencing the world as hard and mean, spiteful and full of vengeance.  Not necessarily in my personal life, but in the news media, in the conversations that I have with others, with the things that assail my mind – old resentments trying to resurrect themselves in my thoughts, ancient sorrows, betrayals, unkind things said and done.   And my body has not been holding up as well as I think it should – it is no wonder either as I am carrying around extra weight with me, a drag on my energy levels and an impediment to everything I want to do. 

Yesterday while we were out shopping, I sighed to myself, saying a little prayer, as if this life was too hard for me and I was ready to come home anytime the Lord sees fit.  And Holy Spirit was so kind and showed me how much I have to live for here – the little heaven that is going on right here and right now, which I was choosing to shut out because I choose to see the darkness instead of the light, that I have become addicted to being stirred up, sad and sorrowful, full of angst and wondering what the world is coming to!  Holy Spirit showed me so plainly that when I choose to entertain myself with darkness, when I choose to talk about darkness, when I choose to keep my mind awhirl with darkness, the light in me is obscured, the sweet truth of my Heaven is being covered by the lies of the world. 

Then in Tuesday’s lesson which I did not study until later in the day, Jesus taught us that there is no need to wait for Heaven, that if we are not experiencing heaven, we are covering our eyes against it, because the light of Heaven is in us already.  It is simply a matter of what I choose to focus my mind upon.  Do I choose thoughts that are real, true, and holy or do I choose the lies of the world that blacken my perception and trick it into seeing enemies instead of friends, darkness instead of light, sorrow instead of joy? 

Today when we are tempted to let the lies of the world be our reality, let us meditate upon our lesson idea for today: “I choose the joy of God instead of pain.”  Nothing external to us can cause us pain or oppress us because nothing but ourselves affects us.  Nothing can make us ill, sad, weak, or frail because in Christ we have the power to dominate all things we see by simply knowing who and what we are.  As we see how utterly harmless these things we are giving power to really are, our holiness becomes their holiness.  What seemed to cause us to be worried or afraid now becomes a place of purity and goodness. 

When we choose truth, truth becomes apparent to us.  When we choose the illusion, the illusion becomes apparent to us.  Jesus tells us we choose what we fill our mind with – pain or joy, hell or Heaven.  Oh how thankful we are to Him to know that we get to choose!  No matter what situation we are in, we can look at it with joy and faith and love or we can look at it in resentment, sorrow, and bitterness.  We can say:

O Lord lead me out of this temptation to think of these weary bones, strained muscles, and aging body as my reality! The world’s quarrels, spats, wars, and factions have no reality in Christ.   I know who I am in You.  I know that I cannot be assaulted by the world outside of myself.  My Heaven is right here and right now.  I choose to experience Heaven and not the lies of darkness.  That has no reality in You!  I keep my mind focused on the truth to save myself from despair.  In Jesus name.  Amen. 

¹A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 190. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 188 The Peace of God is shining in me now.

1. Why wait for Heaven?  Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes.  The light is in them now.  Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all.  Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well.  The light came with you from your native home and stayed with you because it is your own.  It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source.  It shines in you because it lights your home and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home.
2. This light cannot be lost.  Why wait to find it in the future, or believe it has been lost already, or was never there?  It can so easily be looked upon that arguments which prove it is not there become ridiculous.  Who can deny the presence of what he beholds in him?  It is not difficult to look within, for there all vision starts.  There is no sight, be it of dreams or from a truer Source, that is not but the shadow of the seen through inward vision.  There perception starts, and there it ends.  It has no source but this.
3. The peace of God is shining in you now, and from your heart extends around the world.  It pauses to caress each living thing and leaves a blessing with it that remains forever and forever.  What it gives must be eternal.  It removes all thoughts of the ephemeral and valueless.  It brings renewal to all tired hearts and lights all vision as it passes by.  All of its gifts are given everyone, and everyone unites in giving thanks to you who give, and you who have received. 
4. The shining in your mind reminds the world of what it has forgotten, and the world restores the memory to you as well.  From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. To you, the giver of the gift, does God Himself give thanks.  And in His blessing does the light in you shine brighter, adding to the gifts you have to offer to the world.
5. The peace of God can never be contained.  Who recognizes it within himself must give it.  And the means for giving it are in his understanding.  He forgives because he recognized the truth in him.  The peace of God is shining in you now, and in all living thing.  In quietness is it acknowledged universally.  For what your inward vision looks upon is your perception of the universe.
6. Sit quietly and close your eyes.  The light within you is sufficient.  It alone has power to give the gift of sight to you.  Exclude the outer world and let your thought fly to the peace within.  They know the way.  For honest thoughts, untainted by the dream of worldly things outside yourself, become the holy messengers of God Himself. 
7. These thoughts you think with Him.  They recognize their home.  And they point surely to their Source, Where God the Father and the Son are one.  God’s peace is shining on them, but they must remain with you as well, for they were born within your mind, as yours was born in God’s.  They lead you back to peace, from where they came but to remind you how you must return.
8. They heed your Father’s Voice when you refuse to listen.  And they urge you gently to accept His Word for what you are, instead of fantasies and shadows.  They remind you that you are the co-creator of all things that live.  For as the peace of God is shining in you, it must shine on them.
9. We practice coming nearer to the light in us today.  We take our wandering thoughts, and gently bring them back to where they fall in line with all the thoughts we share with God.  We will not let them stray.  We let the light within our minds direct them to come home.  We have betrayed them, ordering that they depart from us.  But now we call them back and wash them clean of strange desires and disordered wishes.  We restore to them the holiness of their inheritance.
10. Thus are our minds restored with them, and we acknowledge that the peace of God still shines in us, and from us to all living thing that share our life.  We will forgive them all, absolving all the world from what we thought it did to us.  For it is we who make the world as we would have it.  Now we choose that it be innocent, devoid of sin and open to salvation.  And we lay our saving blessing on it, and we say: The peace of God is shining in me now.  Let all things shine upon me in that peace And let me bless them with the light in me.[1]

Personal Notes and Application:  Why wait for Heaven indeed?  There are times that this world gets to me – first it reels me in with its mysteries and its stories of death and despair, and then once in I forget about the peace of God.  Instead I rail upon Him.  How could He let this happen?  Where is all this love and devotion He is supposed to have for us.  Why would He let us dream such a dream, experience, even vicariously the torments of such a dark and despairing realm?

This is me in the world.  I have known from the time I can remember that it is a dangerous place and to survive I must use my wits against all who would come up against me.  And yet I am so drawn to its darkness, to its fearful tales and cryptic lies.  The very stories that draw me in crowd out my love and trust in God.  The illusions of the world enchant me and then like an unfaithful lover, leave me dangling in a state of confusion, despair, and disbelief. 

But today Jesus says that we do not have to wait for Heaven.  We do not have to cover our eyes with the dark fables of murder, espionage, revenge, and kidnapping.  All we have to do is let our light shine, the light that came with us from Heaven when we came to the world, the light that can never be extinguished, the light that leads us back to our true home. 

When we let our light shine, it reminds the world of all it has forgotten, and when the world remembers it reminds us as well.  When we stand with Christ, we add our light to His light.  Jesus tells us today that the peace of God is shining in us right now, it is shining in all living things, and it is in the quietness of our inward vision that Christ’s vision becomes apparent to the universe. 

Today we sit for our little while with our eyes closed to the forms of the time-bound world.  We sit quietly and let our thoughts take wing and transport us to the peace of God within each of us.  Our thoughts, Jesus says, untainted by the world outside of us, are holy messengers of God.  It is these thoughts which think with God.  They take us home.  They bring us to that state of oneness and unity to remind us where we came from and how we must return. 

When we refuse to listen to our Father’s Voice, it is these thoughts, these inward, holy thoughts that heed His Voice.  These thoughts are the ones that gently urge us to turn off the bloody, screaming, angry, sad, despairing images on our screens and accept ourselves not as humans trapped in flesh and blood but as Sons of God, co-creators of all things that live, accepting of the peace of God shining in us all in spite of what our programs would have us believe about ourselves. 

In our quiet, solitude we practice getting in touch with our inner light.  We take all thoughts of the world outside of ourselves and bring them in line with all the thoughts we share with God.  We have betrayed our thoughts with strange desires and disordered wishes to chill out with stories of death, of lies, betrayals, and the petty drivel of the world.  But for our devotional times, we train our thoughts to God.  We see that the peace of God still shines in us and in all living thing.  We absolve the world from all the pain we thought it brought to us.  The thoughts we think with God bless and save the world. 

Father, the peace of God shines in me!  Let all living things shine on me in the peace of God.  Let me bless all living things with Your light which shines in me.  In Jesus name.  Amen.  

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 188. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 187 I Bless The World Because I Bless Myself.

1. No one can give unless he has. In fact, giving is proof of having. We have made this point before. What seems to make it hard to credit is not this. No one can doubt that you must first possess what you would give. It is the second phase on which the world and true perception differ. Having had and given, then the world asserts that you have lost what you possessed. The truth maintains that giving will increase what you possess.
2. How is this possible?  For it is sure that if you give a finite thing away, your body’s eyes will not perceive it yours. Yet we have learned that things but represent the thoughts that make them.  And you do not lack for proof that when you give ideas away, you strengthen them in your own mind. Perhaps the form in which the thought seems to appear is changed in giving. Yet it must return to him who gives. Nor can the form it takes be less acceptable. It must be more.
3. Ideas must first belong to you before you give them. If you are to save the world, you will first accept salvation for yourself. But you will not believe that this is done until you see the miracles it brings to everyone you look upon. Herein is the idea of giving clarified and given meaning. Now you can perceive that by your giving is your store increased.
4. Protect all things you value by the act of giving them away, and you are sure that you will never lose them. What you thought you did not have is thereby proven yours. Yet value not its form. For this will change and grow unrecognizable in time, however much you try to keep it safe. No form endures. It is the thought behind the form of things that lives unchangeable.
5. Give gladly. You can only gain thereby. The thought remains and grows in strength as it is reinforced by giving. Thoughts extend as they are shared, for they cannot be lost. There is no giver and receiver in the sense the world conceives of them. There is a giver who retains; another one who will give as well. And both must gain in this exchange, for each will have the thought in form most helpful to him. What he seems to lose is always something he will value less than what will surely be returned to him.
6. Never forget you give but to yourself. Who understands what giving means must laugh at the idea of sacrifice. Nor can he fail to recognize the many forms which sacrifice may take. He laughs as well at pain and loss, at sickness and at grief, at poverty, starvation, and at death. He recognizes sacrifice remains the one idea that stands behind them all, and in his gentle laughter are they healed.
7. Illusion recognized must disappear. Accept not suffering, and you remove the thought of suffering. Your blessing lies on everyone who suffers, when you choose to see all suffering as what it is. The thought of sacrifice gives rise to all the forms that suffering appears to take. And sacrifice is an idea so mad that sanity dismisses it at once.
8. Never believe that you can sacrifice. There is no place for sacrifice in what has any value. If the thought occurs, its very presence proves that error has arisen, and correction must be made. Your blessing will correct it. Given first to you, it now is yours to give as well. No form of sacrifice and suffering can long endure before the face of one who has forgiven and has blessed himself.
9. The lilies that your brother offers you are laid upon your alter, with the ones you offer him beside them. Who could fear to lookup on such lovely holiness? The great illusion of the fear of God diminishes to nothingness before the purity that you will look on here. Be not afraid to look. The blessedness you will behold will take away all thought of form, and leave instead the perfect gift forever there, forever to increase, forever yours, forever given away.
10. Now are we one in thought, for fear has gone. And here, before the altar to one God, one Father, one Creator, and one Thought, we stand together as one Son of God. Not separate from Him who is our Source; not distant from one brother who is part of our one Self whose innocence has joined us all as one, we stand in blessedness, and give as we receive. The Name of God is on our lips. And as we look within, we see the purity of Heaven shine in our reflection of our Father’s love.
11. Now are we blessed, and now we bless the world. What we have looked upon we would extend, for we would see it everywhere. We would behold it shining with the grace of God in everyone. We would not have it withheld from anything we look upon. And to ensure this holy sight is ours, we offer it to everything we see. For where we see it, it will be returned to us in form of lilies we can lay upon our alter, making it a home for Innocence itself, Who dwells in us and offers us His Holiness as ours.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  The idea to focus upon today is one of letting go of the idea of sacrifice.  We have been taught that God demands sacrifice, but this is the one lie that stands behind all pain and loss, sickness and grief, poverty, starvation, and death.  The fear of God is the great illusion.  We are so blessed when we get past the fear of God because that is when we come to understand God’s love and devotion.  When we no longer fear God we can love Him with our whole hearts and minds.  We can look upon Him without being afraid.  When we look to God without fear, without the thought of sacrifice, the world and all its darkness, its injustice, and its spite fades away.  It is no more.  We are one with God and with each other.  When we begin to experience this, we can do nothing but bless others because we see God in everyone and in everything.  The world’s version of murder, mystery, and uncertainty is of little account.  We are here to free the world from the idea of sacrifice, to bless the world and to bless ourselves.   

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 187. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 186 The Salvation of the World Depends on Me.

1. Here is the statement that will one day take all arrogance away from every mind.  Here is the thought of true humility, which holds no function as your own but that which has been given you.  It offers your acceptance of a part assigned to you, without insisting on another role.  It does not judge your proper role.  It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven.  It unites all wills on earth in Heaven’s plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven’s peace.
2. Let us not fight our function.  We did not establish it.  It is not our idea.  The means are given us by which it will be perfectly accomplished.  All that we are asked to do is to accept our part in genuine humility, and not deny with self-deceiving arrogance that we are worthy.  What is given us to do, we have the strength to do.  Our minds are suited perfectly to take the part assigned to us by One Who knows us well.
3. Today’s idea may seem quite sobering, until you see its meaning.  All it says is that your Father still remembers you and offers you the perfect trust He holds in you who are His Son.  It does not ask that you be different in any way from what you are.  What could humility request but this?  And what could arrogance deny but this?  Today we will not shrink from our assignment on the specious grounds that modesty is outraged.  It is pride that would deny the Call for God Himself.
4. All false humility we lay aside today, that we may listen to God’s Voice reveal to us what He would have us do.  We do not doubt our adequacy for the function He will offer us.  We will be certain only that He knows our strengths, our wisdom and our holiness.  And if He deems us worthy, so we are.  It is but arrogance that judges otherwise.
5. There is one way, and only one, to be released from the imprisonment your plan to prove the false is true has brought to you.  Accept the plan you did not make instead.  Judge not your value to it.  If God’s Voice assures you that salvation needs your part, and that the whole depends on you, be sure that it is so.  The arrogant must cling to words, afraid to go beyond them to experience which might affront their stance.  Yet are the humble free to hear the Voice Which tells them what they are, and what to do.
6. Arrogance makes an image of yourself that is not real.  It is this image which quails and retreats in terror, as the Voice for God assures you that you have the strength, the wisdom, and the holiness to go beyond all images.  You are not weak, as is the image of yourself.  You are not ignorant and helpless.  Sin can not tarnish the truth in you, and misery can come not near the holy home of God.
7. All this the Voice for God relates to you.  And as He speaks, the image trembles and seeks to attack the threat it does not know, sensing its basis crumble.  Let it go.  Salvation of the world depends on you, and not upon this little pile of dust.  What can it tell the holy Son of God?  Why need he be concerned with it at all?
8. And so we find our peace.  We will accept the function God has given us, for all illusions rest upon the weird belief that we can make another for ourselves.  Our self-made roles are shifting, and they seem to change from mourner to ecstatic bliss of love and loving.  We can laugh or weep and greet the day with welcome or with tears.  Our very being seems to change as we experience a thousand shifts in mood, and our emotions raise us high indeed, or dash us to the ground in hopelessness. 
9. Is this the Son of God?  Could He create such instability and call it Son?  He Who is changeless shares His attributes with His creation.  All the images His Son appears to make have no effect on what he is.  They blow across his mind like wind-swept leaves that form a patterning an instant, break apart to group again, and scamper off.  Or like mirages seen above a desert, rising from the dust.
10. These unsubstantial images will go, and leave your mind unclouded and serene, when you accept the function given you.  The images you make give rise to but conflicting goals, impermanent and vague, uncertain and ambiguous.  Who could be constant in his efforts, or direct his energies and concentrated drive toward goals like these?  The functions which the world esteems are so uncertain that they change ten times an hour at their most secure.  What hope of gain can rest on goals like this?
11. In lovely contrast, certain as the sun’s return each morning to dispel the night, your truly given function stands out clear and wholly unambiguous.  There is no doubt of its validity.  It comes from One Who knows no error, and His Voice is certain of Its messages.  They will not change, nor be in conflict.  All of them point to one goal, and one you can attain.  Your plan may be impossible, but God’s can never fail because He is its Source.
12. Do as God’s Voice directs.  And if It asks a thing of you which seems impossible, remember Who it is That asks, and who would make denial.  Then consider this; which is more likely to be right?  The Voice That speaks for the Creator of all things, Who knows all things exactly as they are, or a distorted image of yourself, confused, bewildered, inconsistent, and unsure of everything?  Let not its voice direct you.  Hear instead a certain Voice, Which tells you of a function give you by your Creator, Who remembers you, and urges that you now remember Him.
13. His gentle Voice is calling from the known to the unknowing.  He would comfort you, although He knows no sorrow.  He would make a restitution, though He is complete; a gift to you, although He knows that you have everything already.  He has Thoughts which answer every need His Son perceives, although He sees them not.  For Love must give, and what is given in His Name takes on the form most useful in a world of form.
14. These are the forms which never can deceive because they come from Formlessness Itself.  Forgiveness is an earthly form of love, which as it is in Heaven has no form.  Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed.  In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still.  Salvation of the world depends on you who can forgive.  Such is your function here.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:   Who do we think we are claiming that the salvation of the world depends upon us?  We are Sons of God, beloved of our Father, irreplaceable, inerasable, accepting our true identity, our proper role in acknowledging the Will of God on earth and restoring our world to Heaven’s peace. 

Jesus encourages us in today’s lesson not to fight our function.  Do not let a false sense of being unworthy keep us back from answering the call of God in our lives.  We will not let the ego’s twisted modesty trick us into thinking we are not good enough, educated enough, special enough to do our part in God’s plan for salvation.  God knows us!  If He says we are worthy, we are worthy.  He does not care how many times we screwed up.  He does not care how skinny or how obese we are.  He does not care how many times we ended up behind bars or on probation.  He does not care how many degrees we may have after our name.  He does not care how much money we have.  The only thing that God cares about is that we accept that there is nothing we could do – that would shake His love and devotion.  There are not enough vices in the universe to come between us and God.  There is no sin that would remove the Christ in us.  There is no hardship that the world can mete out to prove its strength and power that does not begin and end in time.

God asks of us to accept our function.  The world cannot be saved without us.  Answer this call.  God does not expect for us to clean up our act and change ourselves into something that is more fitting for His Will.  What He asks of us is not hard nor is it impossible.  We are to simply put down our umbrage, our resentment, our grief and sorrow.  No longer can the world affront us for we forgive its twisted dream, we forgive the surreal world made from the dreams of those who lost their way.  When we forgive we are fulfilling our function to save the world.  It is a matter of not holding the world accountable for all of its wrongs, its injustices, its inequality, its bad manners, and bloodthirsty ways.  We forgive it, not because we are good and it is bad, not because we are charitable and want to make brownie points with God.  We forgive it because we recognize it for what it is – a world that simply cannot exist, a world that simply cannot go on, a world that was based upon a mad idea of specialness, hierarchies, and the spaces in between instead of unity, oneness, and the equality of God. 

Take your little while today reviewing our lesson, measuring its words, asking Holy Spirit to help you hear the call of God in your mind.  You do not have to leave your house to save the world.  You do not have to buy special kinds of clothes to wear.  You do not have to change a thing about who and what you are.  All that is required of us is to accept our role with humility. 

Father, we forgive the world.  We thought it was one thing but found that it is not.  Our striving in the world of men has only brought us more striving.  Our efforts to clean up this world has only uncovered more filth.  Our longings for that special someone has only led to heartache and sorrow, bitterness and regret.  No matter what we chase to make us happy, to bring us joy and peace and love, the world is only a tease.  It only gives us a taste to take it away again.  It gives us a sense of hope to only stomp it in the dust. This world is not our home, Father.  We choose to forgive it for pretending to be something it is not.  We choose to forgive ourselves and others for falling for the world’s lies, the ego’s defenses, the heartlessness of nature, and the untrustworthy words of those who pretend to lead us to You.  We forgive it all.  Thus we stand with Christ; thus we save the world.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 186. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 185 I want the peace of God.

1. To say these words is nothing.  But to mean these words is everything.  If you could but mean them for just an instant, there would be no further sorrow possible for you in any form, in any place or time.  Heaven would be completely given back to full awareness, memory of God entirely restored, the resurrection of all creation fully recognized.
2. No one can mean these words and not be healed.  He cannot play with dreams, nor think he is himself a dream.  He cannot make a hell and think it real.  He wants the peace of God, and it is given him.  For that is all he wants, and that is all he will receive.  Many have said these words.  But few indeed have meant them.  You have but to look upon the world you see around you to be sure how very few they are.  The world would be completely changed, should any two agree these words express the only thing they want.
3. Two minds with one intent become so strong that what they will becomes the Will of God.  For minds can only join in truth.  In dreams, no two can share the same intent.  To each, the hero of the dream is different; the outcome wanted not the same for both.  Loser and gainer merely shift about in changing patterns, as the ratio of gain to loss and loss to gain takes on a different aspect or another form. 
4. Yet compromise alone a dream can bring.  Sometimes it takes the form of union, but only the form.  The meaning must escape the dream, for compromising is the goal of dreaming.  Minds cannot unite in dreams.  They merely bargain.  And what bargain can give them the peace of God?  Illusions come to take His place.  And what He means is lost to sleeping minds intent on compromise, each to his gain and to another’s loss.
5. To mean you want the peace of God is to renounce all dreams.  For no one means these words who wants illusions, and who therefore seeks the means which bring illusions.  He has looked on them and found them wanting.  Now he seeks to go beyond them, recognizing that another dream would offer nothing more than all the others.  Dreams are one to him.  And he has learned their only difference is one of form, for one will bring the same despair and misery as do the rest.
6. The mind which means that all it wants is peace must join with other minds, for that is how peace is obtained.  And when the wish for peace is genuine, the means for finding it is given, in a form each mind that seeks for it in honesty can understand.  Whatever form the lesson takes is planned for him in such a way that he can not mistake it if his asking is sincere.  But if he asks without sincerity, there is no form in which the lesson will meet with acceptance and be truly learned.
7. Let us today devote our practicing to recognizing that we really mean the words we say.  We want the peace of God.  This is no idle wish.  These words do not request another dream be given us.  They do not ask for compromise, nor try to make another bargain in the hope that there may yet be one that can succeed where all the rest have failed.  To mean these words acknowledges illusions are in vain, requesting the eternal in the place of shifting dreams which seem to change in what they offer, but are one in nothingness.
8. Today devote your practice periods to careful searching of your mind, to find the dreams you cherish still.  What do you ask for in your heart?  Forget the words you use in making your requests.  Consider but what you believe will comfort you and bring you happiness.  But be you not dismayed by lingering illusions, for their form is not what matters now.  Let not some dreams be more acceptable, reserving shame and secrecy for others.  They are one.  And being one, one question should be asked of all of them, “Is this what I would have, in place of Heaven and the peace of God?”
9. This is the choice you make.  Be not deceived that it is otherwise.  No compromise is possible in this.  You choose God’s peace, or you have asked for dreams.  And dreams will come as you requested them.  Yet will God’s peace come just as certainly, and to remain with you forever.  It will not be gone with every twist and turning of the road, to reappear, unrecognized, in forms which shift and change with every step you take.
10. You want the peace of God.  And so do all who seem to seek for dreams.  For them as well as for yourself, you ask but this when you make this request with deep sincerity.  For thus you reach to what they really want and join your own intent with what they seek above all things, perhaps unknown to them, but sure to you.  You have been weak at times, uncertain in your purpose, and unsure of what you wanted, where to look for it, and where to turn for help in the attempt.  Help has been given you.  And would you not avail yourself of it by sharing it?
11. No one who truly seeks the peace of God can fail to find it.  For he merely asks that he deceive himself no longer by denying to himself what is God’s Will.  Who can remain unsatisfied who asks for what he has already?  Who could be unanswered who requests an answer which is his to give?  The peace of God is yours.
12. For you was peace created, given you by its Creator, and established as His Own eternal gift.  How can you fail when you but ask for what He wills for you?  And how could your request be limited to you alone?  No gift of God can be unshared.  It is this attribute that sets the gifts of God apart from every dream that ever seemed to take the place of truth.
13. No one can lose and everyone must gain whenever any gift of God has been requested and received by anyone.  God gives but to unite.  To take away is meaningless to Him.  And when it is as meaningless to you, you can be sure you share one Will with Him, and He with you.  And you will also know you share one Will with all your brothers, whose intent is yours.
14. It is this one intent we seek today, uniting our desires with the need of every heart, the call of every mind, the hope that lies beyond despair, the love attack would hide, the brotherhood that hate has sought to sever, but which still remains as God created it.  With Help like this beside us, can we fail today as we request the peace of God be given us?[1]

Personal Notes and Application:  In today’s lesson Jesus reminds us that as long as we ask for anything of this world, we are asking for dreams.  It doesn’t matter if we are asking for money to pay our bills or money to spend on a lavish luxury; it doesn’t matter if we are asking for the Lord to save our marriage for the sake of the children or if we are seeking a new mate who will liven up our love life and take us to new heights of impassioned ecstasy.  We are to carefully think about what we believe will bring us comfort and happiness.  When we ask God to give us anything from this world, we are not choosing Heaven or the peace of God No matter what form it takes – we either desire things from this world that will bring us temporary satisfaction at best or we pray for God’s peace which is everlasting.

Here in the flesh, I seem to want and need so many things.  My husband seems paramount to my happiness; my love for cooking is only surpassed by my love for eating.  I love my house, my car, my garden.  I love our kids and grandkids.  When too many days go by and I do not hear their voice or see their faces, I get a sad and lonely feeling.  The estrangement of my sister weighs heavily upon me; how could I ever experience peace or enjoy my life without her love and affection?  I have a bucket list with all the things I want to do before I die – walk Hadrian’s Wall, visit Italy, master making the perfect bagel…

Today I lay that all aside.  I know that there is nothing in the world – the love of my cherished husband, my older sister, our kids and grandkids, the Roman wall, the olive groves of Italy, and no homemade bagel this side of heaven which is going to give me everlasting peace or even the tiniest bit of Heaven.  It does not work that way.  I either desire the world and the things in the world or I desire God and the peace of God. 

There comes a time when we start to grasp this concept and understand why there can be no compromise.  As long as we seek the things that the world has to offer us we are closing our minds to who and what we really are, we are accepting the identity which the world has given us – a body with its never-ending, never-satisfied lists of needs, wants, desires, and lusts.  Identifying with the body keeps us on a go-round of always living for the next fix.  This is not peace. This is not joy. This is not Heaven. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying one’s dream, of having a happy dream, abundant and well-spent in time.  Love, food, travel, cooking, adventures…there is no sin involved in any of it.  But we do not confuse this with the true desires of our heart and mind.

We know the peace of God when we understand our unity, when to take anything away becomes as meaningless to us as it is with God, when all we want is to share God’s Will and there is goodwill for all and to all. 

May the peace of God be yours today. 

[1]A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 185. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 184 The Name of God is my inheritance.

1. You live by symbols.  You have made up names for everything you see.  Each one becomes a separate entity, identified by its own name.  By this you carve it out of unity.  By this you designate its special attributes and set if off from other things by emphasizing space surrounding it.  This space you lay between all things to which you give a different name; all happenings in terms of place and time; all bodies which are greeted by a name.
2. This space you see as setting off all things from one another is the means by which the world’s perception is achieved.  You see something where nothing is and see as well nothing where there is unity; a space between all things, between all things and you.  Thus do you think that you have given life in separation.  By this split you think you are established as a unity which functions with an independent will.
3. What are these names by which the world becomes a series of discrete events, of things ununified, of bodies kept apart and holding bits of mind as separate awareness?  You gave these names to them, establishing perception as you wished to have perception be.  The nameless things were given names, and thus reality was given them as well.  For what is named is given meaning and will then be seen as meaningful; a cause of true effect, with consequence inherent in itself.
4. This is the way reality is made by partial vision, purposefully set against the given truth.  Its enemy is wholeness.  It conceives of little things and looks upon them.  And a lack of space, a sense of unity or vision that sees differently, become the threats which it must overcome, conflict with, and deny.
5. Yet does this other vision still remain a natural direction for the mind to channel its perception.  It is hard to teach the mind a thousand alien names, and thousands more.  Yet you believe this is what learning means; its one essential goal by which communication is achieved, and concepts can be meaningfully shared.
6. This is the sum of the inheritance the world bestows.  And everyone who learns to think that it is so accepts the signs and symbols that assert the world is real.  It is for this they stand.  They leave no doubt that what is named is there.  It can be seen, as is anticipated.  What denies that it is true is but illusion, for it is the ultimate reality.  To question it is madness; to accept its presence is the proof of sanity.
7. Such is the teaching of the world.  It is a phase of learning everyone who comes must go through.  But the sooner he perceives on what it rests, how questionable are it premises, how doubtful its results, the sooner does he question its effects.  Learning that stops with what the world would teach stops short of meaning.  In its proper place, it serves but as a starting point from which another kind of learning can begin, a new perception can be gained, and all the arbitrary names the world bestows can be withdrawn as they are raised in doubt.
8. Think not you made the world.  Illusions, yes!  But what is true in earth and Heaven is beyond your naming.  When you call upon a brother, it is to his body that you make appeal.  His true Identity is hidden from you by what you believe he really is.  His body makes response to what you call him, for his mind consents to take the name you give him as his own.  And thus his unity is twice denied, for you perceive him separate from you, and he accepts this separate name as his.
9. It would indeed be strange if you were asked to go beyond all symbols of the world, forgetting them forever; yet were asked to take a teaching function.  You have need to use the symbols of the world a while.  But be you not deceived by them as well.  They do not stand for anything at all, and in your practicing it is this thought that will release you from them.  They become but means by which you can communicate in ways the world can understand, but which you recognize is not the unity where true communication can be found.
10. Thus what you need are intervals each day in which the learning of the world becomes a transitory phase; a prison house from which you go into the sunlight and forget the darkness. Here you understand the Word, the Name Which God has given you; the one Identity Which all things share; the one acknowledgement of what is true.  And then step back to darkness, not because you think it real, but only to proclaim its unreality in terms which still have meaning in the world that darkness rules.
11. Use all the little names and symbols which delineate the world of darkness.  Yet accept them not as your reality.  The Holy Spirit uses all of them, but He does not forget creation has one Name, one Meaning, and a single Source Which unifies all things within Itself.  Use all the names the world bestows on them but for convenience, yet do not forget they share the Name of God along with you.
12. God has no name that we could ever give Him, He has no need of a name.  And yet His Name becomes the final lesson that all things are one, and at this lesson does all learning end.  All names are unified; all space is filled with truth’s reflection.  Every gap is closed, and separation healed.  The Name of God is the inheritance He gave to those who chose the teaching of the world to take the place of Heaven.  In our practicing, our purpose is to let our minds accept what God has given as the answer to the pitiful inheritance you made as fitting tribute to the Son He loves.
13. No one can fail who seeks the meaning of the Name of God.  Experience must come to supplement the Word.  But first you must accept the Name for all reality and realize the many names you gave its aspects have distorted what you see but have not interfered with truth at all.  One Name we bring into our practicing.  One Name we use to unify our sight.¹

Father, our Name is Yours.  In It we are united with all living things, and You Who are their one Creator.  What we made and call by many different names is but a shadow we have tried to cast across Reality.  And we are glad and thankful we were wrong.  Shine the light of Christ upon all our mistakes, our beliefs in darkness, our fractured thoughts, and fragmented distortions, that we may be absolved from all the dastardly effects our strange devices seemed to have.  We accept the truth You give, in place of every little thought that would distinguish us from You.  Your Name is our salvation and escape from the hellish realm we made.  Your Name unites us in the oneness which is our inheritance and peace. Amen.

Notes and Personal Application:  The world’s view of Creation intends to keep all things little, separate and distinguished.  Its reality are the spaces between things; while true vision perceives lack of space, a sense of oneness and wholeness.  True vision is a threat to separateness.  Any attempt to see correctly is a cause for ego to attack, to create conflict, to go into denial.  Time and the world it runs thrives in the mind of separateness and lack of wholeness.  Its systems are built upon it.  Here the Sons of God believe they are sons of man, splintered, segregated, and suppressed.

No matter!  The vision of Christ is the natural direction for the mind to channel its perception.  Who wants to be burdened with thousands upon thousands of names for all the different pieces in which the world would splinter Creation?  The more names we know, the more things we can dissect, dismember, and distinguish the smarter we think we are, while the reality is how apparent it is that this only seems to make the rift and divide between us deeper and denser.  We think that we strengthen our vocabulary but the less we can communicate meaning and purpose, the less we understand, the less we exchange ideas that have the ability to heal and transform.   

We learn to accept the signs and symbols, the names and ranks that the world assert is real.  We learn to call childlikeness and innocence an impediment to truth; to believe in our Father a fantasy, and belief in the world’s point of view as proof of our sanity and intelligence and worth.  As we come through the world, all of us are educated in this matter.  We cannot escape it, but we can question it, we can see it for an illusion, a place where time gobbles up every passing moment and never gives it back, how all of it is set up to attack and take away, how decay and death are its ongoing gifts.  When we begin to question our humanity, we begin to question the theater of life, the mechanics of our vision, the falseness of its premises, the programming of its vision. 

Learning that stops with what the world teaches, stops short of meaning.  No matter how many certificates, diplomas, or degrees we may have, or how many letters distinguish us from others, it doesn’t matter how many languages we can count to 100 in, none of it will have any meaning unless we take what we learned in the world and use it as a starting point from which another kind of learning will begin. 

Jesus affirms that it is only when we begin to recognize what is missing in the world’s perception that we can gain a new perception – a perception that undoes the world’s vision and replaces it with the true vision of Christ.  In paragraph eight, we are told that we did not make the world, but we are certainly responsible for the illusions we made to take the place of the real world.  It is important to recognize this fact:  Truth in Heaven and on earth is beyond our ability to name.  When we sum one another up, we are summing up an illusion because we have no idea of the holiness and the purity and the value of that which we name here on earth. The true identity of each one of us, indeed of all Creation, is hidden from our human eyes.  We give each other names and titles – even our pets will perk their ears at the names they have been given, but Jesus says do not be deceived for this is only a way to deny our oneness twice over because as we demand a name, we are distinguishing one part of Creation from another, and when he responds to the name he is accepting his separated state.

As long as we are in the world we use the world’s symbols, but we do not need to be deceived by them!  They do not stand for anything and knowing this and meditating upon this thought will release us from our bondage to the idea of separateness.  We can use the world’s symbols, its words, its names, its ways of perceiving one splintered part of Creation from another, but Jesus emphasizes that we must fully understand that this is not true communication and oneness and knowledge cannot be found where space and time has splintered the minds and hearts of God’s creation into separated parts.

I keep thinking of a chocolate cake and how awful it would be if every ingredient separated itself and vied for independence.  What a pickle we would be in if our bodies decided to separate their parts and live independently of one another, our livers taking a little road trip through the Rockies while our spleens decided to go to camp meeting in Miracle Valley, Arizona.  

In our devotional practices we take time to realize and appreciate what we learn in the world while recognizing it as an elementary and temporary phase of our learning.  Jesus likens it to darkness, a prison even, which we leave to go into the sunshine and forget its lonely cells and dim corridors.  Our practice is the sunshine that lights our minds with truth – we are not these dimwitted creatures fighting one another and vying for special privileges – we are Sons of God; we all share the same name.  Basking in this truth, letting our minds rest upon its loveliness and joy, we take it back with us to the house of bondage, knowing that the prison house of death is not our reality.  Sharing the good news that we are not bodies; we are everlasting spirits which share the identity of God becomes our only function naturally and willingly.  We are ready to transform.  We look forward to the day when we can shed our humanity and take our real identity as a whole, and not in parts, with God.   

In conclusion, we use the names and words and phrases of the world, but we no longer accept them as our reality.  For Creation has one name, one meaning, one Source Which unified everything with His Love.  Never again will we be seduced into thinking that God will fight our battle and not theirs, that our holiness is greater, our skin color defines us, that our physical beauty gives us worth.  We are one and we have one name and that name we share with God. 

And yet we know that God has no name that can be spoke or understood in the human tongue.  When we learn the namelessness of God we are one with Him.  We know everything there is to know, all names are unified, all space is filled with truth, there are no more illusions, nothing is hidden from our consciousness.  We are one – you and me, us and we – transparent in our love and affection and complete as a whole. 

To seek the meaning of the Name of God, we are guaranteed to grasp the truth.  Our experiences will make the truth we study quite apparent to us.  But before all that, we must accept God’s Name for all reality.  Realize that while naming of this thing and that, of putting privilege here and taking advantages there, of prizing one thing and disregarding another may have perverted the truth in the worldlings’ mind, truth still stands untouched by any vain imaginings. 

In our devotions today we meditate upon One Name.  One Name we use to unite our perceptions.  We begin to open our mind to the oneness of God which He has given to us.  It is One Name where all the foolish separateness, which blinded us to truth will go away.  It is reflecting upon the idea of One Name where we are given strength to see beyond the splintered, splattered distortions of this world.  Only when we recognize that we are one with God, that we share His Name and His Being, can we give as we receive.  

¹ A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 184. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 183 I call upon God’s Name and on my own.

1. God’s name is holy, but no holier than yours. To call upon His name is but to call upon your own. A father gives his son his name, and thus identifies the son with him. His brothers share his name, and thus are they united in a bond to which they turn for their identity. Your Father’s name reminds you who you are, even within a world that does not know; even though you have not remembered it.
2. God’s Name cannot be heard without response, nor said without an echo in the mind that calls you to remember. Say His Name, and you invite the angels to surround the ground on which you stand, and sing to you as they spread out their wings to keep you safe, and shelter you from every worldly thought that would intrude upon your holiness.
3. Repeat God’s name, and all the world responds by laying down illusions. Every dream the world holds dear has suddenly gone by, and where it seemed to stand you find a star; a miracle of grace.  The sick arise, healed of their sickly thoughts. The blind can see; the deaf can hear. The sorrowful cast off their mourning, and the tears of pain are dried as happy laughter comes to bless the world.
4. Repeat the name of God, and little names have lost their meaning. No temptation but becomes a nameless and unwanted thing before God’s name. Repeat His Name and see how easily you will forget the names of all the gods you valued. They have lost the name of god you gave them. They become anonymous and valueless to you, although before you let the Name of God replace their little names. You stood before them worshipfully, naming them as gods.
5. Repeat the Name of God, and call upon your Self, Whose Name is His. Repeat His Name, and all the tiny, nameless things on earth slip into right perspective. Those who call upon the Name of God cannot mistake the nameless for the Name, nor sin for grace, nor bodies for the holy Son of God. And should you join a brother as you sit with him in silence, and repeat God’s Name along with him within your quiet mind, you have established there an altar which reaches to God Himself and to His Son.
6. Practice this but today; repeat God’s name slowly again and still again. Become oblivious to every name but His. Hear nothing else. Let all your thoughts become anchored on This. No other word we use except at the beginning, when we say today’s idea but once. And then God’s Name becomes our only thought, our only word, the only thing that occupies our minds, the only wish we have, the only sound with any meaning, and the only Name of everything that we desire to see; of everything that we would call our own.
7. Thus do we give an invitation which could never be refused. And God will come and answer it Himself. Think not He hears the little prayers of those who call on Him with names of idols cherished by the world. They cannot reach Him thus. He cannot hear a request that He be not Himself, or that His Son receive another name than His.
8. Repeat God’s Name, and you acknowledge Him as sole creator of reality. And you acknowledge also that His Son is part of Him, creating in His name. Sit silently, and let His Name become the all-encompassing idea that holds your mind completely. Let all thoughts be still except this one. And to all other thoughts respond with this and see God’s Name replace the thousand little names you gave your thoughts, not realizing that there is one Name for all there is, and all that there will be.
9. Today you can achieve a state in which you will experience the gift of grace.  You can escape all bondage of the world and give the world the same release you found. You can remember what the world forgot and offer it your own remembering. You can accept today the part you play in its salvation, and your own as well. And both can be accomplished perfectly.
10. Turn to the Name of God for your release and it is given you. No prayer but this is necessary, for it holds them all within it. Words are insignificant, and all requests unneeded when God’s Son calls on His Father’s Name. His Father’s Thoughts become His own. He makes his claim to all his Father gave, is giving still, and will forever give. He calls on Him to let all things he thought he made be nameless now, and in their place the holy Name of God becomes his judgment of their worthlessness.
11. All things are silent. Little sounds are soundless now. The little things of earth have disappeared. The universe consists of nothing but the Son of God, who calls upon his Father.   And his Father’s Voice gives answer in his Father’s holy Name. And this eternal, still relationship, in which communication far transcends all words, and yet exceeds in depth and height whatever words could possibly convey, is peace eternal. In our Father’s Name, we would experience this peace today.  And in His Name, it shall be given us. [1]

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 183. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 182 I will be still an instant and go home.

1. This world you seem to live in is not home to you.  And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true.  A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called you to return, although you do not recognize the voice, nor what is it the voice reminds you of.  Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown.  Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here.  Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again.
2. No one but knows whereof we speak.  Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to occupy their time and keep their sadness from them.  Others will deny that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all.  Still others will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but dream.  Yet who, in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self-deception, would deny he understands the words we speak?
3. We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home.  He goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is he seeks.  A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind.  He does not understand he builds in vain.  The home he seeks can not be made by him.  There is no substitute for Heaven.  All he ever made was hell.
4. Perhaps you think it is your childhood home that you would find again.  The childhood of your body, and its place of shelter, are a memory now so distorted that you merely hold a picture of a past that never happened.  Yet there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father’s house and knows that He is alien here.  This childhood is eternal, with an innocence that will endure forever.  Where this Child shall go is holy ground.  It is His holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one.
5. It is this Child in you your Father knows as His Own Son.  It is this Child Who knows His Father.  He desires to go home so deeply, so unceasingly, His voice cries unto you to let Him rest a while.  He does not ask for more than just a few instants of respite; just an interval in which He can return to breathe again the holy air that fills His Father’s house.  You are His home as well.  He will return.  But give Him just a little time to be Himself, within the peace that is His home, resting in silence and in peace and love. 
6. This Child needs your protection.  He is far from home.  He is so little that He seems so easily shut out, His tiny voice so readily obscured.  His call for help almost unheard amid the grating sounds and harsh and rasping noises of the world.  Yet does He know that in you still abides His sure protection.  You will fail Him not.  He will go home, and you along with Him.
7. This Child is your defenselessness; your strength.  He trusts in you.  He came because He knew you would not fail.  He whispers of His home unceasingly to you.  For He would bring you back with Him, that He Himself might stay, and not return where He does not belong, and where He lives an outcast in a world of alien thoughts.  His patience has no limits.  He will wait until you hear His gentle Voice within you, calling you to let Him go in peace, along with you, to where He is at home and you with Him.
8. When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas ceases to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice.  So poignantly He calls to you that you will not resist Him longer.  In that instant He will take you to His home, and you will stay with Him in perfect stillness, silent and at peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt, sublimely certain that you are at home.
9. Rest with Him frequently today.  For He was willing to become a little Child that you might learn of Him how strong is he who comes without defenses, offering only love’s messages to those who think he is their enemy.  He holds the might of Heaven in His hand and calls them friend, and gives His strength to them, that they may see He would be Friend to them.  He asks that they protect Him, for His home is far away, and He will not return to it alone.
10. Christ is reborn as but a little Child each time a wanderer would leave his home.  For he must learn that what he would protect is but this Child, Who comes defenseless and Who is protected by defenselessness.  Go home with Him from time to time today.  You are as much an alien here as He.
11. Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence.  Christ has called you friend and brother.  He has even come to ask your help in letting Him go home today, completed and completely.  He has come as does a little child, who must beseech his father for protection and for love.  He rules the universe, and yet He asks unceasingly that you return with Him and take illusions as your gods no more.
12. You have not lost your innocence.  It is for this you yearn.  This is your heart’s desire.  This is the voice you hear, and this the call which cannot be denied.  The holy Child remains with you.  His home is yours.  Today He gives you His defenselessness, and you accept it in exchange for all the toys of battle you have made.  And now the way is open, and the journey has an end in sight at last.  Be still an instant and go home with Him and be at peace a while.[1]

Personal Notes and Application:   This world is not our home, and when we are honest with ourselves, we know that this is true.  We are haunted by a sense of homesickness, a sense of longing, a persistent feeling that there is a world which has been snatched from us, a place of peace and love and joy that this world can only simulate in brief, rare moments sandwiched between blood, sweat, and tears of frustration and hard work. 

No matter how hard we try to make this world our home, to deny our unhappiness, to pretend to love its cruel games and its dark pleasures, its insane laws and unfair practices, all of us, if we are honest will admit that we know that this world is not our home.  We may not remember the other world where we experience certainty, oneness, joy, and wonder but we yearn for it.

In our efforts to recreate that world in this one.  Jesus tells us in verse three that in darkness we can make a thousand homes and yet find no rest.  Every story here, every search, every attempt to find meaning, joy, friendship, and certainty here in this world ends in the hell of death.  We simply cannot survive without our Source; in a world which is built upon saints and sinners, hopes and fears, love and hate, darkness and light, we will never experience anything but upheaval, uncertainty, and inequality. 

No matter how rosy our past looks and how far we go to return to it, it is gone.  It will never be again; in fact, it never really was.  No matter how fond you may be of your memories of the past, they are nothing but images of nothing that matters, nothing that truly exists, nothing that has made one bit of difference in the reality of God. 

Jesus teaches us today that we have an inner Child who has never been and never will be at home in this world where to survive it must take up arms against its brothers and alienate itself from love and survive on fear and defense against attack.  This innocent Child which abides in each of us, knows God as His Own and God knows as His Own.  This Child of God calls us and keeps calling us to let Him rest, to give Him peace and rest and joy from all the things of this world that weary Him and keep Him from His real home in God. 

This little Child calls to us to protect Him.  He is the baby Christ within each one of us – born into a world so dark and full of contradictions, knowing that He must go through the torments of darkness to get to the light from which He came.  He will go home, and we will go with Him.  It is why He is there inside of us, God-placed and never erased. 

It is during our quiet moments, our devotional practices, our times of putting aside this world and remembering the place from which we came, that we will hear the baby Christ within us.  Today Jesus tells us that His Voice will touch us in such a way that we will no longer be able to ignore it or resist it, and that it is in these moments of quietness and reflection, of meditation and our full attention in which this perfect Child takes us home.  Our lesson today reflects the innocence, the purity, the faith to believe in that which the world would distort and call crazy, the tenderness evoked by the holy Child.

For Christ, our brilliant Holy Brother who resisted darkness and temptation, was willing to become the little Child that we may learn of strength through defenselessness, how to offer love to those who would make us an enemy.  This Child holds all the strength of God’s eternal Kingdom; He is friend to all and calls us all as brothers and as friend.  This Child protects us as He calls to us to protect Him as well in this dark world far from reality and from which He can not return without us along with Him.  

Today Jesus teaches us that Christ is reborn into each one of us as we enter into this world, a world that we ended up in when we left the realm of love to explore the realm of darkness.  And it is this Child in which we must learn to protect because as a child He is defenseless, and it is our defenselessness which protects Him and protects us.  We build no defenses against God as we build no defenses against each other.  We lay them aside.  We take the Child by the hand and we walk with Him a while each day learning again to become as He is, to become Him.

This Child knows the love and peace and joy we have not entirely forgotten.  This Child knows that there is nothing in the world that He wants or needs.  This Child knows that this realm is for those who forgot who and what they really are and have lost their way.  This Child calls to us, leading us back to where we belong – exchanging all our ways of war and discord for the love and peace of God. 

Today we spend our “little while” with this Child.  We go Home with Him for a few moments.  We experience His peace, His Love, His Joy, His sense of wonder and appreciation.  We know that this is our heart’s desire.  We experience our innocence through the purity of this holy Child.  The shade of the trees, the green of the grass, the blue of the sky, the white clouds, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat are all a reflection of care of His Father and His love and devotion to us.   

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 182. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 181 I trust my brothers who are one with me.

1. Trusting your brothers is essential to establishing and holding up your faith in your ability to transcend doubt and lack of sure conviction in yourself. When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by what you have perceived in him. You do not look beyond his errors. Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to your awareness of the Self That lies beyond your own mistakes, and passed his seeming sins as well as yours.
2. Perception has a focus. It is this that gives consistency to what you see. Change but this focus, and what you behold will change accordingly. Your vision now will shift, to give support to the intent which has replaced the one you held before. Remove your focus on your brother’s sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in you. And you will not transcend their sight and see the sinlessness that lies beyond.
3. Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such little focuses give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent. We instruct our minds that it is this we seek, and only this, for just a little while. We do not care about our future goals. And what we saw an instant previous has no concern for us within this interval of time wherein we practice changing our intent. We seek for innocence and nothing else. We seek for it with no concern but now.
4. A major hazard to success has been involvement with your past and future goals. You have been quite preoccupied with how extremely different the goals this course is advocating are from those you held before. And you have also been dismayed by the depressing and restricting thought that, even if you should succeed, you will inevitably lose your way again.
5. How could this matter?  For the past is gone; the future but imagined. These concerns are but defenses against present change of focus in perception. Nothing more. We lay these pointless limitations by a little while. We do not look to past beliefs, and what we will believe will not intrude upon us now. We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within.
6. We recognize that we have lost this goal if anger blocks our way in any form. And if a brother’s sins occur to us, our narrow focus will restrict our sight, and turn our eyes upon our own mistakes, which we will magnify and call our “sins.”  So, for a little while, without regard to past or future, should such blocks arise we will transcend them with instructions to our minds to change their focus, as we say: It is not this that I would look upon. I trust my brothers, who are one with me.
7. And we will also use this thought to keep us safe throughout the day.  We do not seek for long-range goals. As each obstruction seems to block the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an instant from the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and uncorrected will remain.
8. Nor do we ask for fantasies. For what we seek to look upon is really there. And as our focus goes beyond mistakes, we will behold a holy sinless world. When seeing this is all we want to see, when this is all we seek for in the name of true perception, are the eyes of Christ inevitably ours. And the love He feels for us becomes our own as well. This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves.
9. The world which once proclaimed our sins becomes a proof that we are sinless and our love for everyone we look upon attest to our remembrance of the holy Self which knows no sin, and never could conceive of anything without its sinlessness. We seek for this remembrance as we turn our minds to practicing today. We look neither ahead nor backwards. We look straight into the present.  And we give our trust to the experience we ask for now. Our sinlessness is but the Will of God. This instant is our willing one with His.[1]

Personal Notes and Application:   Last year when I was first studying the Course lessons, I understood that, basically, my mind was being trained to think with love, acceptance, guiltlessness toward God, toward myself, and toward mankind.  By lesson 181, I had concluded that studying A Course in Miracles was not going to give me a magical experience; Jesus was not going to float down from the heavens, come into my heart, fill me with ecstasy, and transform me into a holy being.  I would have to ask, I would have to show, and I would have to practice my willingness to “give up” hatred, ill will, resentment, judgments, superiority/inferiority, jealousy, old wounds, imagined wounds, sad stories, sorrowful stories, false prophesies, a know-it-all attitude, bluff, arrogance, and littleness – and exchange it bit by bit for tiny holy instants of innocence, purity, goodwill, blessing, forgiveness, and Atonement. 

A Course in Miracles is the path that I chose to prepare our minds for the Kingdom of God.  A Course in Miracles explains why the traditional ways we have interpreted the gospel, revered some sages and “saints,” while castigating and torturing others, saved certain manuscripts and texts and called them holy, adopted and cherished false idols and wrongful images of God have stunted our minds, blinded our vision, and keep us in a prolonged state of separation from the very one Who promises us unity, love, and everlasting peace.  Today Jesus tells us that we must know the blocks to our attainment of the Kingdom of God in order to recognize them and put them aside. 

I had expected a miracle – as in a cloud of holiness, purity, and innocence that would sweep through me in an instant and change me, and I was a little disappointed that it was more than that – that I had to be prepared, I had to practice, I had to have things explained to me in a way that I could understand.  I thought that I was through with school, but here I was again, learning what had befallen us, the deception that has tricked and seduced and held us captive, and how we cannot escape it on our own.  Our human brains are designed to keep us trapped in this nightmare, and if we want to wake up and make our return to our Home, we cannot rely upon the very ideas, systems, and vision which has held us as slaves to its manipulations and dramas since time began.   

We must answer God’s call from within.  We have to reach for the truth.  God cannot come to a lie and make it real.  God does not come into a dream of death and despair and somehow work to take what is only a lie, an illusion, a nightmare and fix it up pretty so that it is more tolerable to us.  We must come to understand that the whole thing is a lie, that time itself is an illusion, that we are Sons of God and not sons of man. 

When we practice trusting in our brothers and seeing them as one with us, we are putting our faith in God and in God’s way of thinking.  In the world we are accustomed to seeing each other as separate beings, living separate lives, accomplishing separate things. We are used to building trust with those who look like us, think like us, and share the same values.  We are used to mistrusting those who look different, think different, and have a different set of values.  We embrace some brothers and take up arms against others.  This is how it is done here.  The harder you try to bring peace to this world, to change the nature of this world, to make the separation real and everlasting, the worse it becomes.  You trade one offense for thousands more. 

You can carry your signs and banners, you can lecture all your friends on Facebook about social justice and racial inequality, you can vote for this one and start a campaign of hatred and blame toward another for not agreeing with you, but you will only cause more unrest, more war, more injustice. 

When we focus upon the “sins” and failings of others, anger comes to block our return to God. We cannot enter into the peace of mind and the everlasting joy and love of God as long as we look upon the behaviors of those who do things that hurt, worry, and offend us through the eyes of fear.  We must embrace a new understanding of what this world is, what happens here, and why we are here. 

We are here to end the separation.  We are here to establish unity and oneness with God.  We are here to trust our brothers who are one with us.  This is not a fantasy, this is not mind games, this is not wishful thinking.  This is the reality of Christ.  When all we want to see is how holy and precious are our brothers, when we recognize the truth of Christ’s perception, this will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves. 

Today practice this holy approach a little while.  Meditate upon it.  Ask Holy Spirit to bless your encounters and interactions with your brothers and teach you to trust in Him and in them.  Here our eyes are trained on attack and defense; in God we have the eyes of love and devotion.  Here we are steeped in thoughts of sin and shame; in God we know our sinlessness is His Will and God’s Will is done. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 181. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 180

1. (169)  By grace I live. By grace I am released.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (170)  There is no cruelty in God and none in me.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review V:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, You will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Notes and Personal Application: As we say the words in Lesson 169’s lesson idea, realize that it is God’s Grace that has allowed us to leave His Kingdom in a dream state, but continue as we were created.  It is His Grace, not the world’s technology, that has simulated the separation so that we can dream and dream again the lessons we must learn from leaving His Kingdom of Love and making a world which grows old in time, a world where nothing lasts, a world of preying upon Creation instead of loving Creation. 

It is by God’s grace that the hell we have made is only a simulation, and it is God’s grace that we awaken to find that it is not real, that our lives do not end in death but in life everlasting, that we are released from the hell of our vain imaginings and return to our Father as pure and holy as when He created us. 

Be thankful for God’s grace.  Jesus tells us in lesson 169 that grace is not something that can be learned.  Grace is not the goal of A Course in Miracles.  However, the goal of our Course prepares us to accept God’s grace, to awaken from this dream of death and fear, to answer the call of God in our hearts and in our minds.  Our Course lessons and the text of A Course in Miracles helps us to become aware of things we do not know about ourselves, readies us to accept another state of being completely different from the experience of our humanity.  Our human brains cannot begin to grasp the meaning of oneness with God.  And yet it is God’s grace which calls to us, to waken from the dream of separation and specialness in which we made the world.  It is grace and the experiences that come from grace that allows us to live in the dream and be released from the dream; it is grace that allows us to share with others and see their release as well.

What better release than to realize the lesson idea presented in Lesson 170 – There is no cruelty in God and none in me.  There is no meanness in God.  The things we were taught about Him preparing a place of eternal happiness for the goody-goodies of the world and preparing a place of eternal fire and brimstone for the rest of us – are not the least bit true.  One of the main reasons that Jesus was crucified on the cross was because He told the truth about God.  He is our loving Father, the Good Shepherd, the One who cares about the sparrows.  Our Father never ordained that we prey upon each other’s flesh, let alone demand blood and meat sacrifices to appease His rage. There is no cruelty in God and there is no cruelty in us.

If you have been worshipping a cruel god, today Jesus urges us to look at our beliefs with dispassion.  Cruelty has no place in the character of God.  God is God and nothing can stand against Him.  If cruel god’s lips are smeared with blood and fire seems to burst forth from him, this god is an idol.  It will never bring you everlasting joy, peace, and love.  It cannot give you refuge.  It has no real power.  Cruel god is not your personal warrior and it will never vanquish your enemies.  Gods of cruelty are humanity’s nightmares, made to keep you in fear and bondage and keep you from your Father’s love.    

Recognizing this may be a shock to our systems, but it is our release from slavery.  For until we see the cruel god for exactly what it is, we can not lay it aside and recognize our true God and His great and abiding love for us.  We will continue to believe that cruelty can somehow defend us, save us, and make all our fears go away.  We will continue to believe in a god that makes enemies of his creations and does not accept responsibility for the ways in which they went wrong.  We will put our trust in fear and fear God instead of love Him. 

However, when we see God as Love, we are no longer burdened by the world; we no longer look through its blind eyes, but we see with the vision of Christ.  When we choose God instead of the false gods of cruelty and madness that the world’s religions offer us, our hearts and minds are filled with everlasting peace for when God is love, we are love.  We can trust in Him.  He will not let us to our own devices.  He has a plan and Creation is restored. 

Our prayer then becomes: 

Dear Father, we are like You.  We are not cruel because You are not cruel.  Your peace is ours.  When others point their fingers in accusation of how mean we are, how insensitive, how racist, and sexist and unjust – we are not tempted to agree with them, for we know who we are and what we are in You.  We bless the world.  We make our brothers one with us.  We fulfill our function in Your plan of salvation as we have received it from You.  We give thanks for all of Your creation because in Creation we see Your glory, and in Creation we find our peace.  We are holy because Your holiness has set us free from the deceptions and temptations of the world and all that would bind us to brutal humanity.  Thank you, Father.  In Jesus name.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 180. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 179

1. (167)  There is one life, and that I share with God.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (168)  Your grace is given me.  I claim it now.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, You will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Personal Notes and Application:  As we review Lesson 167, There is one life and that I share with God, Jesus reminds us that it does not matter that there appears to be death in this world – it simply does not exist.  Nothing in time is real – it passes away into nothingness as soon as it begins – it is impossible for anything to really exist in time because time itself is not real.  Our whole experiences in the world of time then, can be likened to a dream, an imaginary state, a virtual reality where once awakened, the mind, our eternal spirits, continue as we always have – safe in the one life that we share with God. 

Jesus calls upon us to wake up to this fact.  We were created in unity of life, He reminds us, nothing, not even death can separate us from the Source of life from which we came.  As we wake up and accept the truth about ourselves, about God, about our Holiness in Christ we no longer need to be coaxed or persuaded into forsaking death in all its forms – we have no interest in it and we no longer believe in the reality of anything that does not pertain to our life in God.

In Lesson 168, we claim the grace that God gives us.  He is our Father.  He is available to us.  He answers when we call.  We call to Him because we know His Love and are certain of His devotion to us.  No longer do we try to serve a god we fear, someone we must grovel before and chastise our humanity.  There is no god who holds our mistakes against us, who terrorizes us with thoughts of hell and damnation, who would let His Son be tortured throughout eternity.  These are lies that are taught to us to control and manipulate us, to keep us from our true heritage in God, to keep us from knowing and experiencing His grace. 

God’s gift of grace restores the memory of Him to our sleeping minds, God’s gift of grace restores the certainty of the meaning of His love.  Ask Him today to give you the means by which this world will disappear, and vision will come.  And after vision, Jesus promises, we will know.  It is God’s grace that gives us light that covers our world with love.  We can watch every single fear disappear from every face as hearts rise up and take the light as their own. 

God’s grace is ours.  We claim it today. 

We come to you, Father.  And You come to those who ask.  We are the Son You love.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 179. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 178

1. (165)  Let not my mind deny the Thought of God. God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (166)  I am entrusted with the gifts of God.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, You will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Personal Notes and Application:  As we review Lesson 165 today, let us remember where our safety and peace, our joy and healing, our peace of mind, our rest, and our calm awakening abide!  In order to have the gifts of God, we must abandon all else as worthless in comparison to them.  To keep our blessings from our Father, we must make sure that we keep our mind focused upon and abiding in the Thought of God. 

All around our physical life in this world are temptations to deny the Thought of God.  On Friday, one of my cousins whom I was so close to as a little girl, was killed instantly in a head-on car crash.  Donnie was one of my best friends as a preschooler.  I can still remember spending the night at his house and getting off the school bus at each other’s houses.  We played for hours in the sandbox and sitting at the kitchen table playing with homemade dough.  In first grade, I got into trouble for helping him with his worksheets – I had been taught to help my neighbors and the teacher had not explained the concept of cheating to either one of us.  Donnie and I grew apart over the years – he had his life and I had mine, but once in a while, when we were outside working, he would stop as he was going by in his dark blue truck just to chat.  Now he has died, suddenly and what would seem like tragically.  His days on earth as a son, father, uncle, cousin, and friend are over and he will be missed greatly by those who loved and depended upon him. 

And yet, Jesus tells us that we are not to let thoughts of death and misery obscure the perfect happiness and eternal life that our Father has for us.  We are not to let the world tempt us to see through the eyes of the stranger, who would have us sob and groan over our dearly departed loved ones, but rather hold fast and be happy because we see with the vision of Christ. 

Heaven is ours for the asking – right now, today.  It comes whether we believe in it or not.  There is no trick to this.  Christ is not holding out Heaven and then taking it back because we do not believe in it enough.  We simply ask and it is given to us.  The faith lies in the asking.  We say to our Father, You are Reality and therefore this world and all that is in it, cannot be real.  The only thing that is real about this world is that it is a simulation, it is a trick to believe in a God we must fear instead of Love.  We want reality, Lord.  We want Heaven because we are tired of living in the lie of fear rather than the truth of love. 

When we accept God’s Heaven there is nothing on earth that can induce us to give it up.  The world has nothing that we want or need.  We see the world of time for what it is.  We are blind to its dark magic!  We know the end of every story here, every desire, every false judgment and harsh condemnation.  Like Christ, we become the saviors of the world.  We live in a state of such abundance that the depravities and the deprivations of this world can no longer trick us into denying thoughts of God. 

Our daily lessons helps us to remove all doubts which we have in God and in our certainty of His care.  We no longer fear our Father, for we know Him, and we love Him, and we know His love and devotion toward us.  We keep our thoughts fixed upon Him for our thoughts are meaningless without Him.  The worries and concerns, the births and the deaths, weddings and funerals, ups and downs and ins and outs of this world can no longer affect our trust in Him. 

As we review the next lesson idea, we realize that we can forego this world, because we have been entrusted with the gifts of God.  God’s trust in us has no limit.  He knows us as we really are.  He is not deceived by what the world has made of us.  He is not tempted to believe the lies of the ego or the ravages of time.  He knows that He is God and God’s Will must be done.  When we realize that He did not make this world, that this world is nothing but a simulation, a perverted dream, an imagined playground for all that can never be of God and therefore never be real – we have uncovered the truth of the matter. 

We know the world is not our home.  We may wander around in it for awhile until we come to our senses and like the Prodigal, head back to the place where we belong, where we are safe, where we are certain, where we know who and what we are now and forever. 

God calls to us.  He walks with us.  He knows who we are and what we are even when we have forgotten.  He knows Who He is in relation to us and knows that we are like Him.

This is the gift of God, and this is the gift we accept and share freely with Creation.  We share that God is Love.  We share that the world and all that is in it is not His Will and this is not His Creation.  We share that our humanity is not salvageable, and we do not want it to be.  We share that our spirits are made in God’s image and that happiness comes to us as we become one with Christ and recognize God’s gifts to us.  We are filled with joy, God’s joy, and now we go to share it with the world. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 178. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 176

1. (161)  Give me your blessing, holy Son of God. God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (162)  I am as God created me.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review V:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, You will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Personal Notes and Application:  We are taking a stand against our anger toward others when we ask them for a blessing and refer to them as a holy Son of God.  In this lesson we learned that one brother stands for all brothers, for in God we are one.  In our bodies, we seem separate and distinct; in God’s eyes we are one and we are love.  In bodies, we are colored in different shades of skin, eyes, and hair.  Our body structures are all slightly different.  We are prone to like and trust others who look and smell and share similar traits; to dislike and distrust those who look and smell and have different traits than us.  Politically, people want to deny this, to say that this is a condition that must be learned, but this is simply not so, and we need to be truthful about it in order to face the truth about humanity.  We have evolved to protect and cherish that which is like us and to war against that which is not like us. 

Today Jesus is asking us to go beyond our evolved human forms – our cherished grudges, to step out of the fear and anger toward others whom we have blamed and projected all manner of evil upon.  He requires that we choose one brother in particular to symbolize those who have caused us pain and ask this holy Son of God to bless us.  When we ask this symbol for a blessing, we are asking of him our salvation.  As we picture his face, his hands and feet, his clothing, his gestures we are to recognize that the blame and shame we are imagining about him conceals Christ from us.  We are to say to our symbolic holy brother:  Give me your blessing, O Holy Son of God.  I would behold you with the eyes of Christ and see my perfect sinlessness in you.

There were all these people that I had grudges and resentments toward.  I blamed my mother for ruining me as a child with her madness and inappropriate practices and teachings. I blamed my sister for spreading discord in the family, holding me accountable for her own failings to love and to accept certain people.  I blamed my first husband for abandoning me and leaving me with a child to raise; I blamed my beloved niece for running off with her jailbird lover when my daughter died, leaving me worried, while beside myself with grief; I blamed an ex-boyfriend for misleading me with his vows of eternal love while all the while he was consorting with a couple of married women on the side!  There were countless others who paraded about in my mind as my sworn enemies, friends who had lied to me, family members who had mocked my efforts to become something, coworkers who took credit for my work, people who seemed intent on keeping me in a place where they could control and manipulate me.  There were those who had snubbed me, clubbed me, or dubbed me as less than.   It was difficult to find one person to symbolize them all, but I finally settled upon one and she became my savior, she turned from devil into Christ simply by performing this exercise.  When we see another with the vision of Christ, we realize that we are all the Son of God, at one with Christ, that salvation does not separate us, but rather unites us. 

So lesson idea 162, “I am as God created me,” naturally follows.  If those who have caused me to be angry and fearful are one with Christ, I am also as God created me – holy, pure, sinless, and good.  I am not my human form.  I am not the character that my human form became.  I am not the role that it performed.  Me and the stranger that would usurp my identity are not one!  I am innocent, not because I allowed the stranger to convince me to forget who I am or because I let the stranger’s wrong ideas lead me astray.  I am innocent because it is a simulation, God made time as a means for us to learn the lessons of separation without it affecting our eternal Selves.

Nothing can change the fact that I am as God created me.  These words dispel the dark night; dawn has come to bless the world.  When I recognize who I am in Christ, you recognize who you are.  When you recognize who you are in Christ, the world recognizes it as well.  This is how salvation works.  Let the words of today’s lesson ring through our minds and hearts – dispelling the dark dream and welcoming the light. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 176. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 175

1. (159)  I give the miracles I have received.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (160) I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, You will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Personal Notes and Application:  This morning when I woke up, there were all the thoughts from dreams, the past, and all the chores waiting me for the day all in a jumble.  The aches and pains from yesterday still with me, the tired muscles, the sore back… Garden, they say.  It is so healthful, they say, but didn’t I go and get carried away with it?  Now coupled with all the other projects we have going on around this place, I am barely able to move without something hurting.

Yet beyond the pain is such happiness and joy and excitement.  There is this love of life, this deep forgiveness for all the taxes and levies against it, the respect and awe of the miracle of it all, the joy of the green sprouts pushing up through the dirt, the wilted leaves coming alive with a drink of water, the sweet green marbles tucked all in a row within a pod. 

In lesson 159, Jesus says that the only way we can understand that we are healed is when we heal others; the only way we accept forgiveness is when we forgive others, that miracles can only be experienced when we give them to others. 

The vision of Christ is the miracle in which all miracles are born.  Jesus tells us that the vision of Christ is the bond where giver and receiver are united here on earth as they are in Heaven.  When we look upon Creation, including ourselves, with the eyes of Christ, we are sinless.  There is no grudge. There is nothing but love and forgiveness.  This has been the most difficult thing for my mind to wrap itself around, but once I got it, I am free from the grudges, resentments, and stress that had plagued me for years. 

I knew that I wanted to love and to be loved, but I did not know how to love people – including myself.  I liked others when they behaved themselves and were nice to me; I did not like them when they misbehaved and disappointed me.  Simple and uncomplicated, it was the only way I could manage relationships.  To love people was to be in a constant state of forgiveness toward them, and try as I might, it seemed impossible; I could not cope.

The vision of Christ changes this completely.  We no longer require ourselves to go through the ups and downs of special relationships designed to keep us trapped in forms and fictionalized versions of “love.”  As we free ourselves of the tentacles of what poses for love in this world, we are free to love Creation in a state of forgiveness, for with the vision of Christ, we know that this world means nothing.  All of its “likes” and “dislikes,” its little hatreds, its wars and its peace, its marriages and divorces, its mean girls and bad boys, its high priests and lowly prophetesses, its dichotomies and opposites, its justice and injustice is only a distorted, perverted echo of what is real and holy and forever. 

As we ask for and receive the vision of Christ, the world can no longer get to us.  Oh, we might flare up now and again to drive the moneychangers out of the temple, but the aches and pains, the trials, and tribulations of a dream, stay in the dream.  We know it is not real.  We know that it is our desire for specialness and spite which is responsible for all this.  We know that giving up that desire and exchanging it for the vision of Christ is the wake-up call.  This is the source of all miracles.  This is what we share in order to experience.  Share this vision with someone today!

In reviewing lesson 160 we are reminded that fear is no longer the meaning of our being.  We are no longer driven to survive in the dog-eat-dog world of humanity, snapping and snarling over the limited resources, forming tribes and clans to war against those who are different from us.  When we give up fear, we give up our defenses against the world.  When we give up our defenses against the world, we forgive it for its idea of separateness, its desire to be special, to hoard, to form cliques and clubs, to love this one and despise that one.  We forgive it everything because it was all a mistake, a bad idea, a little wrinkle in eternity that evolved in time and will end in time.

In our minds then, fear is a stranger.  We are no longer afraid.  The shortages, the injustices, the struggles for dominance and power, the blacks against the whites and the whites against the blacks, the males against the females and the females against the males, the poor against the rich and the rich against the poor – none of it matters – it is a dream of death, and it ends when we open our eyes and see it for what it is. 

While our forms may be in the world, our minds are at home, at one with God.  At home with God, we begin to understand our experience in the separation through the eyes of Christ who has awakened us.  Our stint in the madhouse of opposites is over!  For now we know who and what we are in Him.   

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 175. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 174

1. (157)  Into His Presence would I enter now.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (158) Today I learn to give as I receive.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, You will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Personal Notes and Application:  Today we teach this lesson to learn this lesson.  Lesson 157 reminds us that it is in quietness and trust that we experience the light of Heaven and hear the echoes of eternity.  In the clamor and glamour of the world our mind is beset by celebrations that end in death, but it is the joy of life we learn to feel in our silent practice, our sacred devotion, our love, and desire for God. 

Lesson 157 reminds us to clear the inner altar of our mind of all the cluttered thoughts and distractions that the world fills it with.  Our minds become a place of serenity and peace as we sweep its altar clear of the world’s senseless distractions. Its junky trinkets and false charms no longer hold any meaning to our quiet, holy minds and Christ’s presence becomes real to us; His face smiles upon us and does not fade away from our vision. He reveals to us, here in the world of form and fiction, that which transcends and goes beyond all words and vision.  These foretastes of Heaven cannot be shared – they were not taught to us, for they are our memories of the place from which we came before our earthly exile.  There we have no questions about who and what we are because we know our Maker.  We have no question of where we came from for we are home where we belong, no longer sifting through the shifting sands of human striving and conniving.  There the theme of Review V is a given:  God is Love and therefore so am I!

In review of Lesson 158, we learn to give as we receive.  When we receive God’s love, we give God’s love.  No longer are we who we thought we were, a blighted, bloated ego, an overripe fruit rotting on the vine, twisted with pain and sorrow, spite and vengeance.  We are the Sons of God, united with Christ. We are as God created us, our humanity is but a spell, an illusion of splintered brotherhood, unholy sonship at war with one another and ourselves.  When we recognize our true identity, we can no longer look to humanity for our answer, for the cure, to make right of all its wrongs.  We can no longer hold ourselves or others accountable for what we have done and what we continue to do in darkness – for we are groping about doing the best we can to survive another day in a world designed to grind our bones to make its bread.  With this understanding of the world forgiveness comes naturally and graciously.  We can say with certainty, “It is forgiven.  It never happened.  It never was,” because what happens in a dream stays in a dream and does not affect reality one iota. 

When we remember who we are and what we are, we remind others of who they are and what they are.  When we wake up; others wake up.  We do not have to shake them awake.  We have no need to scream in their ear, preach endless sermons, quote scriptures, or get down on our knees and grovel before God for their salvation.  Our salvation is a given; God never abandons His Creations, or He would not be Love. Our only choice in the matter is how long we choose to spend spinning our wheels in time, trying to find another way than Love’s way. 

We give as we receive, with grace and love and forbearance.  God is love, and therefore so are we. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 174. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 173

1. (155)  I will step back and let Him lead the way.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (156) I walk with God in perfect holiness.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review:

Personal Notes and Application:  Dear Father, we thank you for showing us to step back and let You lead the way.  We cannot do this apart from You.  We know nothing except through You.  Thank you for showing us the way through this human experience, of being born into a physical form, of learning the ropes of a game that is not holy because it is not based upon love.  Thank You, Father, for reminding us of our identity in You.  Here we are as You created us; here Your love has never left our consciousness; here we are united with You and all Creation; here we walk with You in perfect holiness.  Christ leads the way to our return to You.  

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 173. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 172

1. (153)  In my defenselessness my safety lies.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (154)  I am among the ministers of God.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, you will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Personal Notes and Application:  In Lesson 153, Jesus told us that it is in our defenseless where our safety lies.  In our study group recently we were talking about the defenses of the world.  When we come in to the world, vulnerable and at the mercy of our parents and all the older, stronger people around us, we must learn the ropes, the rules, the ways things roll in this confusing, upside-down version of the place from which we came.  Some of us learn the lessons of this world earlier than others, but we all must learn them because our very survival depends upon them.  Our defenses ensure that we are kept safe and feel secure in the face of those who would keep us unsafe and insecure.  We learn to play the game, we learn the perimeters, we learn skills and maneuvers, manipulations and techniques that help us to get what we want and need from the world. 

And then Jesus comes along and tells us that indeed it is our defenseless that saves us.  Salvation is a game that happy children play.  A game designed by a Creator who loves His Creations and who replaces all their guilts, fears, shame, and blame with a joyous game which bring an end to all their need of defense.  Everyone who plays the game of salvation wins and all who win ensures the gain to all.  Nobody who plays the happy game of salvation has any desire to play any other game – fear is gone, defenses are seen as needlessly cumbersome, and we realize that this world and all its disappointments, contradictions, lies, and shortcomings is nothing but a farce, a place where the Sons of God come until they remember who and what they really are.  The sea of humanity is but a mistaken dream, a simulated reality in which that which was and is and always will be one could be splintered, separated, and severed.   

Christ gives us our salvation; defenselessness is all we give in return.  We lay aside our need to protect that which we never were, to look on Christ and become one with God.

God is only Love and therefore so am I.

In lesson 154 we accept our function as ministers of God.  We no longer see ourselves as the sinful, shipwrecked fools that the ego would have us be, ashamed and sorrowful, contrite, and unworthy.  We are Sons of God and we are called, each and every one of us, to receive and to give the messages of God.  Jesus tells us in this lesson that we do not know that we have received the messages from God until we share them.  Many times we cause the time of sorrow and suffering to extend needlessly because we are fooled into thinking that we are not worthy to call ourselves ministers of God.  Who would listen to us after the mess we have made of things?  We may feel ourselves ill educated, unprepared, too worldly, selfish, and ruined to believe that God would have any use of us.  And yet none of that matters.  Our human experience does not define us.  There is nothing anybody could say or do to earn more or be meted less of God’s love.  God created our holy Selves and our holy Selves are in His safekeeping – nothing that we experience in the world can change this fact.  The world does its best to keep this fact from our awareness.  The world will tell us all kinds of lies about ourselves; the world will teach us perverted gospels and distorted holy books that promote God as a god of ill-intent, who would create a suffering world full of craven, fleshy creatures intent upon preying upon each other’s meat.  Many of our spiritual paths, intentionally or unintentionally, lead us down this same path – emphasizing our humanity, obscuring our true and godly Selves. 

We cannot be true ministers of God until we recognize that we are free of our humanity, our sinful natures, our lusty drives, our craven hungers, and thirsts that pose as pleasures and yet hold us captive to that which is doomed to decay.  In paragraph 13 of our lesson, we learn that our lesson is stated this way:

“I am among the ministers of God, and I am grateful that I have the means by which to recognize that I am free.” 

We have changed our mind about who and what we really are.  We will accept our only real function in the world and gladly share the gospel of Christ.  We are not flesh and blood; we are spirit and we are one with God. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 172. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

Lesson 170 There Is No Cruelty in God and None in Me

1. No one attacks without intent to hurt.  This can have no exception.  When you think that you attack in self-defense, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty.  You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom.  And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion, and from fear.
2. How thoroughly insane is the idea that to defend from fear is to attack!  For here is fear begot and fed with blood, to make it grow and swell and rage.  And thus is fear protected, not escaped.  Today we learn a lesson which can save you more delay and needless misery than you can possibly imagine.  It is this: You make what you defend against, and by your own defense against it is it real and inescapable.  Lay down your arms, and only then do you perceive it false.
3. It seems to be the enemy without that you attack.  Yet your defense sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable.  For love now has an “enemy,” an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are.
4. If you consider carefully the means by which your fancied self-defense proceeds on its imagined way, you will perceive the premises on which the idea stands.  First, it is obvious ideas must have their source, for it is you who make attack, and must have first conceived of it.  Yet you attack outside yourself and separate your mind from him who is to be attacked, with perfect faith the split you made is real.
5. Next, are the attributes of love bestowed upon its “enemy.” For fear becomes your safety and protector of your peace, to which you turn for solace and escape from doubts about your strength, and hope of rest in dreamless quiet.  And as love is shorn of what belongs to it and it alone, love is endowed with attributes of fear.  For love would ask you lay down all defense as merely foolish, and your arms indeed would crumble into dust.  For such they are.
6. With love as enemy, must cruelty become a god.  And gods demand that those who worship them obey their dictates and refuse to question them.  Harsh punishment is meted out relentlessly to those who ask if the demands are sensible or even sane.  It is their enemies who are unreasonable and insane, while they are always merciful and just.
7. Today we look upon this cruel god dispassionately.  And we note that though his lips are smeared with blood, and fire seems to flame from him, he is but made of stone.  He can do nothing.  We need not defy his power.  He has none.  And those who see in him their safety have no guardian, no strength to call upon in in danger, and no mighty warrior to fight for them.
8. This moment can be terrible.  But it can also be the time of your release from abject slavery.  You make a choice, standing before this idol, seeing him exactly as he is.  Will you restore to love what you have sought to wrest from it and lay before this mindless piece of stone?  Or will you make another idol to replace it?  For the god of cruelty takes many forms.  Another can be found.
9. Yet do not think that fear is the escape from fear.  Let us remember what the text has stressed about the obstacles to peace.  The final one, the hardest to believe is nothing, and a seeming obstacle with the appearance of a solid block, impenetrable, fearful and beyond surmounting, is the fear of God Himself.  Here is the basic premise which enthrones the thought of fear as god.  For fear is loved by those who worship it, and love appears to be infested now with cruelty.
10. Where does the totally insane belief in gods of vengeance come from?  Love has not confused its attributes with those of fear.  Yet must the worshippers of fear perceive their own confusion in fear’s “enemy;” its cruelty is now a part of love.  And what becomes more fearful than the Heart of Love Itself?  The blood appears to be upon His Lips, the fire comes from Him.  And He is terrible above all else, cruel beyond conception, striking down all who acknowledge Him to be their God.
11. The choice you make today is certain.  For you look for the last time upon this bit of carven stone you made and call it god no longer.  You have reached this place before, but you have chosen that this cruel god remain with you in still another form.  And so the fear of God returned with you.  This time you leave it there.  And you return to a new world, unburdened by its weight; beheld not in its sightless eyes, but in the vision that your choice restored to you.
12. Now do your eyes belong to Christ, and He looks through them.  Now your voice belongs to God and echoes His.  And now your heart remains at peace forever.  You have chosen Him in place of idols, and your attributes, given by your Creator, are restored to you at last.  The Call for God is heard and answered.  Now has fear made way for love, as God Himself replaces cruelty.[1]

Note and Personal Application:  Today Jesus expounds upon the idea that there is nothing to fear in God for God is love.  Loving God and fearing God is not the same thing – in fact, it is impossible to love and fear God or anyone else at the same time.  There is no cruelty in God and therefore nothing to fear in Him.  God’s Will is always for our supreme happiness, our comfort, our joy.  He gives us peace.  There is no peace outside of God’s Will.  Outside of God’s Will is the god of fear.

When we worship the god of fear we may say we love God, but the truth is far from us.  For we have smeared God’s reputation with the blood of our brothers whom we would smite in God’s name and call it holy.  When we worship fear as god, we devise cruel ways in which to kill our brothers, to attack them, to cause them sorrow and shame and we call it defense.  When we embrace fear and call it love, we subjugate others to our will and call it God’s Will.  We get ourselves into a frenzy and point fingers and blame others, taking up placards and marching against those who are evil, because we are afraid to look at our dirty, cluttered altars and bring our own darkness to light.  We are so afraid that God will deny us heaven, will send us to the fiery pit, will abandon us to those who would make our lives a living hell, that we forget that none of this can be true.  There is no cruelty in God, and all we must do to escape this illusion of fear, of darkness, of attack and defense taking the place of love is to remember this.

Today Jesus is urging us to put aside all these vain ideas about God once and for all.  God is Love; His thoughts toward us are of love and we have no need to worship a god of fear, of bloodshed, of vengeance, and spite.  These hateful ideas of our Creator are insane; they bring sorrow and suffering to those who believe in such lies, who practice cruelty in the name of God, and lead others into paths of bondage and oppression.  We will no longer sing hymns or recite scriptures that depict our Father as making enemies of the brotherhood of Christ, who craves bloodshed, demands sacrifices, and has favorites.  We will no longer blame our Creator for the unholy world, a blip in time, devised by the wayward minds of God’s wayward sons, who have taken on a human form to make a world of fear and limitations in place of the kingdom of God.  We will no longer form allegiances with the princes of this world who would lead us to fear God instead of love Him, who would bid us take up arms against another rather than seek to unite and remember our brotherhood. 

We bring our love for cruelty and hostility to our inner altar, Father, and we lay it down once and for all before You.  We are like You.  No cruelty abides in us, for there is none in You.  Your peace is ours.  We bless the world with the love we have received from You alone.  Once again, we choose to love our brothers, knowing that no matter what it may appear, they are one with us, we are not whole without them.  When we are saved, they are saved.  We are not saved alone.  And for this we are so grateful, for Your Kingdom would be incomplete without all of us.  Instead of seeing enemies in our brother, we see Your glory.  Instead of going to war, we find in them Your peace.  We are holy because we are like You, and holiness has set us free from our identity in the flesh to one of spirit and wholeness.  Thank you, Father.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 170. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). 

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 199 I am not a body.  I am free.

1. Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself.  The body is a limit.  Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found.  The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it, and sheltered by its presence.  If this were the truth, the mind were vulnerable indeed!
2. The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked.  Attack thoughts cannot enter such a mind because it has been given to the Source of love, and fear can never enter into a mind that has attached itself to love.  It rests in God.  And who can be afraid who lives in Innocence, and only loves?
3. It is essential for your progress in this course that you accept today’s idea and hold it very dear.  Be not concerned that to the ego it is quite insane.  The ego holds the body dear because it dwells in it and lives united with the home that it has made.  It is a part of the illusion that has sheltered it from being found illusory itself.
4. Here does it hide, and here it can be seen as what it is.  Declare your innocence and you are free.  The body disappears, because you have no need of it except the need the Holy Spirit sees.  For this, the body will appear as useful form for what the mind must do.  It thus becomes a vehicle which helps forgiveness be extended to the all-inclusive goal that it must reach, according to God’s plan.
5. Cherish today’s idea and practice it today and every day.  Make it a part of every practice period you take.  There is no thought that will not gain thereby in power to help the world, and none which will not gain in added gifts to you as well.  We sound the call of freedom round the world with this idea.  And would you be exempt from the acceptance of the gifts you gave?
6. The Holy Spirit is the home of minds that seek for freedom.  In Him they have found what they have sought.  The body’s purpose now is unambiguous.  And it becomes perfect in the ability to serve an undivided goal.  In conflict-free and unequivocal response to mind with but the thought of freedom as its goal, the body serves, and serves its purpose well.  Without the power to enslave, it is a worthy servant of the freedom which the mind within the Holy Spirit seeks.
7. Be free today.  And carry freedom as your gift to those who still believe they are enslaved within a body.  Be you free so that the Holy Spirit can make use of your escape from bondage, to set free the many who perceive themselves as bound and helpless and afraid.  Let love replace their fears through you.  Accept salvation now and give your mind to Him Who calls to you to make this gift to Him.  For He would give you perfect freedom, perfect joy, and hope that finds its full accomplishment in God.
8. You are God’s Son.  In immortality you live forever.  Would you not return your mind to this?  Then practice well the thought the Holy Spirit gives you for today.  Your brothers stand released with you in it; the world is blessed along with you; God’s Son will weep no more. And Heaven offers thanks for the increase of joy your practice brings even to it.  And God Himself extends His Love and happiness each time you say: I am not a body.  I am free.  I hear the Voice That God has given me, and it is only This my mind obeys.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  We are born with the Voice for God inside of us, given to us by God and calling for us to awaken from the dream of separation, from the dream of being a body, from the dream of being split between opposites.

When we think of ourselves as a body, we are prisoner to a form which keeps us enslaved to its never-ending needs for mere survival.  The nature of this world is set up for the fight for survival, the struggle to matter, the race for limited resources, the effort to make one’s self and one’s species special and at the top of the food chain.  It is violent and full of vengeance.  If someone tells you that nature is nice, that it is natural to love one another and to ignore differences, ask them to go live in the woods and commune, unprotected with it for a few weeks.  Let them get away from their computers and from behind their desks and experience for themselves what hard work it is to survive in nature!   

A loving God did not this world make.  A God devoted His Son has bestowed upon His Son all of His own features, privileges, and characteristics.  A God devoted to His Creation has taken responsibility for His Creation’s salvation and will bring them home from their captivity in self-deception, in believing a lie, in creating a dark enchantment which blinds them to reality and keeps them trapped in a hallucination of death and despair. 

Returning our minds to our true identity sets us free.  We are no longer content to drown out the Voice for God with the shrill and chaotic, mindless and thoughtless, constant and repetitive calls of the body.  The body serves the mind; the mind serves not the body.  We are the Son of God.  We are not a body; we are the Mind of God.  Today Jesus tells us to remember this and bring this thought into all of our practice.  To share this idea with all who are still mistaking themselves for a body.  As we realize the truth of this lesson idea, we will increase our joy, we will have no reason for tears and sorrow, we will experience God’s Love and happiness each time we say these words:  I am not a body, I am free.  I hear the Voice that God has given me.  And it is only This Voice my mind obeys.  

Do not worry if your ego puts up a fuss and tells you how crazy you are.  Do not let concerns over how your body certainly feels like you, defeat your dedication to the truth.  Do not allow your love for your body and the great care you take for it convince you that it is your reality and that your life ends when it does.  Just simply open your mind to the truth of the matter – time will wreak its havoc upon all things that are not real – this is the purpose of time.  Time teaches us what has value and what has none by simply wasting away all that is not real, slowing eroding, changing, and converting one form into another.

Jesus emphasizes to us today that Holy Spirit is home of us who seek our freedom from the hold of the body and the lies of the ego.  Today we ask for and listen for the Voice for God.  We will take a little while several times a day to clear our inner altar and practice knowing who and what we really are.  We will be patient and kind with ourselves. There is no need to get discouraged or overwhelmed with impossible spiritual goals, because we put our spiritual progress into the hands of Him Who created us and is calling us to remember.  We will enjoy our spiritual walk.  We will have fun with it!  We will not grovel or plead with God, for He is not a God who takes pleasure in such piddling behaviors.  It does not please Him to see us cry or humiliate ourselves, our bodies are not a sacrifice.  God already has Everything; He simply does not want or need our bodies.  He did not create them, they will never be holy, or of any value except as a vessel through our lessons in time.  Our Heavenly Father only wants us, our hearts and minds, our love and devotion, even as He has given us His Heart, His Mind, His Love and Devotion.  Our bodies will disappear in time and we are thankful that this is so because we are not the symbol of the ego; we are not an emblem of death and decay.  Day by day, moment by moment, we loose ourselves from identifying with ego and the body and we choose our identity in Christ.  Day by day, moment by moment, we will come to see how much more we are, how much more is all Creation.  In the name of Jesus the Christ, with whom we are one.  Amen.

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 199.  Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 198 Only my condemnation injures me.

1. Injury is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion. If you can condemn, you can be injured. For you have believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you, till you lay it down as valueless, unwanted, and unreal. Then does illusion cease to have effects, and those it seemed to have will be undone. Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave.
2. Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge. To condemn is thus impossible in truth. What seems to be its influence and its effects have not occurred at all. Yet must we deal with them a while as if they had. Illusion makes illusion. Except one. Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest.
3. Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others. All illusions save this one must multiply a thousand-fold. But this is where illusions end.  Forgiveness is the end of dreams because it is a dream of waking. It is not itself the truth. Yet does it point to where the truth must be and gives direction with the certainty of God Himself. It is a dream in which the Son of God awakens to his Self and to his Father, knowing They are one.
4. Forgiveness is the only road that leads out of disaster, past all suffering, and finally away from death. How could there be another way, when this one is the plan of God Himself? And why would you oppose it, quarrel with it, seek to find a thousand ways in which it must be wrong; a thousand other possibilities?
5. Is it not wiser to be glad you hold the answer to your problems in your hand?  Is it not more intelligent to thank the One Who gives salvation, and accept His gift with gratitude?  And is it not a kindness to yourself to hear His Voice and learn the simple lessons He would teach, instead of trying to dismiss His words, and substitute your own in place of His?
6. His words will work.  His words will save.  His words contain all hope, all blessing, and all joy that ever can be found upon this earth.  His words are born in God and come to you with Heaven’s love upon them.  Those who hear His words have heard the song of Heaven.  For these are the words in which all merge as one at last.  And as this one will fade away, the Word of God will come to take its place, for it will be remembered then and loved.
7. This world has many seeming separate haunts where mercy has no meaning and attack appears as justified.  Yet all are one; a place where death is offered to God’s Son and to his Father.  You may think They have accepted.  But if you will look again upon the place where you behold Their blood, you will perceive a miracle instead.  How foolish to believe that They could die!  How foolish to believe you can attack!  How mad to think that you could be condemned and that the holy Son of God can die? 
8. The stillness of your Self remains unmoved, untouched by thoughts like these, and unaware of any condemnation which could need forgiveness.  Dreams of any kind are strange and alien to the truth.  And what but truth could have a Thought which builds a bridge to it that brings illusions to the other side?
9. Today we practice letting freedom come to make its home with you.  The truth bestows these words upon your mind, that you may find the key to light and let the darkness end:  Only my condemnation injures me.  Only my own forgiveness sets me free.  Do not forget today that there can be no form of suffering that fails to hide an unforgiving thought.  Nor can there be a form of pain forgiveness cannot heal.
10. Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God’s Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream.  This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father.  Let today be celebrated both on earth and in your holy home as well.  Be kind to both, as you forgive the trespasses you thought them guilty of, and see your innocence shining upon you from the face of Christ. 
11. Now is there silence all around the world.  Now is there stillness where before there was a frantic rush of thoughts that made no sense.  Now is there tranquil light across the face of earth, made quiet in a dreamless sleep.  And now the Word of God alone remains upon it.  Only that can be perceived an instant longer.  Then are symbols done, and everything you ever thought you made completely vanished from the mind that God forever knows to be His only Son.
12. There is no condemnation in him.  He is perfect in his holiness.  He needs no thoughts of mercy.  Who could give him gifts when everything is his?  And who could dream of offering forgiveness to the Son of Sinlessness Itself, so like to Him Whose Son he is, that to behold the Son is to perceive no more, and only know the Father?  In this vision of the Son, so brief that not an instant stands between this single sight and timelessness itself, you see the vision of yourself, and then you disappear forever into God.
13. Today we come still nearer to the end of everything that yet would stand between this vision and our sight.  And we are glad that we have come this far and recognize that He Who brought us here will not forsake us now.  For He would give to us the gift that God has given us through Him today.  Now is the time for your deliverance.  The time has come.  The time has come today.[1]

Personal Notes and Application:   The other day I got up on the wrong side of the bed.  Our coffee tasted like there was something wrong with it – I was certain that James did something to it, watered it down, put something in it – he likes to try new things and I do not mind trying new things either, but not my morning coffee.  No butter, no spices, no coconut oil, no flavors.  Later when we went on a little lark, I was still grumpy, and I prayed and asked the Lord to please fill my mind with gratitude and He did.  It was wonderful.  After that I asked the Lord to continue to talk to me.  I was following James down to Harrisburg and I did not want to listen to the radio, my random thoughts, or even an Audible book – I wanted to hear from the Voice for God.  We had not had devotions in our haste to get the show on the road and I missed that “little while” we spend with God each morning.

God showed me a brother from our ACIM study group who had voiced that he will not say the name of someone who hurt him.  The Voice for God assured me that he will say the name and he will say it without any rancor, with no trace of pain, with nothing but thanksgiving and forgiveness, and that when I hear him saying the name and how he will be saying the name with forgiveness and joy, forgiveness and happiness will flood his being.  It was such a lovely message, and I thought to myself, “I am so happy that I can say everybody’s names.  I have nobody with whom I hold a grudge or any resentment.  All is forgiven.” 

As I drove down the road passing the structures where I had once worked, I thought of a fellow I used to work with.   I could not even remember Rod’s last name even though I had once sat on a few committees with him – committees that were formed with community leaders who had joined in a mission to prevent child sexual abuse.  A few years ago, I was working with some wonderful people from the local to the state level in an effort to educate the public on attainable, practical measures to stop child abuse.  As I mused about the past and the work that we had been doing, thoughts towards that group of people took a downward turn.  Without at first being aware of it, I spent about 20 minutes thinking of all the ways in which the efforts of all these other people only lasted as long as preventing child sexual abuse was the trendy thing to do.  When human trafficking and other social issues came to take the forefront, they dropped the ball, no longer attended meetings. and showed little to no interest in giving their time or efforts to the foundation.  It was their egos, I decided.  They were just in it to make themselves look good.  They had latched on to the cause to distinguish themselves and then dropped it when it was no longer a popular topic…I remembered how alone and unsupported I felt.  I remember how the CEO of the agency bluntly informed me that while there were generous funds for rescuing victims, there were few directed toward education and prevention.  One woman had brashly indicated that the name of the foundation was simply not sexy enough.  Imagine!  I remembered with no small trace of bitterness the prevention videos we were assigned were so outdated, to the point of being laughable. I remembered how few people attended the informative workshops – free certified training, childcare, and a meal were not enough to persuade them to come learn about the topic.  Nobody seemed to care!  They could not be motivated to do what it takes to make the horror stop. 

I had thought this was a settled matter in my mind.  I had forgiven it all.  I had stopped thinking about it, but here it was still lurking in my mind unnamed and unexposed – a case against them, an outside force.  Today the Voice for God showed me that there was no case.  It was my ego which had latched on to the cause.  It was my ego that had found a worthy cause to make real in the illusion and then use this as a means of attack against anybody who did not jump on and stay on the bandwagon with me.  Anybody who did not want to support this admirable mission was up for condemnation.  Their efforts were not sincere.  Their efforts were not enough.  They had a hidden agenda, and all the while my ego was finding reasons to attack others for what it was doing itself. 

Today’s lesson then would beseech me to forgive those who had failed to give their undivided efforts to ending child sexual abuse, while understanding that forgiveness itself is but another illusion. They had not done anything wrong except to disappoint my ego for not joining with it in making another illusion “real.”  My unforgiveness and resentment toward these people was my ego’s way of keeping me blind to the crafty, subtle way in which first, it could get me caught up in something that is not real and second, condemn others who did not give “the cause” as much as I thought they should.

Condemnation was making me prisoner.  As I “forgave” them, it was myself I forgave because my ego had made the whole case up in the first place – it was all an illusion.  I was binding myself to the unreal world by getting ensnared in a social issue that has no reality in Christ.  Every effort that I would make to prevent child sexual abuse would be an effort toward making an ungodly practice real in my mind and in the minds of all that joined with me.  Illusion breeds illusion, Jesus says in paragraph two. 

When I practice the kind of forgiveness that today’s lesson is talking about, it is all swept away.  It breeds no lies or misrepresentations.  All illusions multiply by a thousand, but not the illusion of forgiveness.  Forgiveness is the illusion that ends the dream.  I forgive only to realize I have nothing at all to forgive.  Nothing here in this illusion is worth taking sides, fighting for, or defending – because nothing here is true.  As long as we believe it is, we are entrapping ourselves in the past which we continue to project into the future, skipping over the holy present which leads us to reality, which leads to God. 

The world appears to be full of injustice.  Attacks against cheaters, child molesters, and charlatans may seem more than justified – yet Jesus says that all are one.  Our condemnation towards “others” injures us; only our own forgiveness sets us free.  And even this is an illusion because in reality there is nothing at all to forgive – what happens in the dream, stays in the dream.

Dear Father: Thank you for showing me where grudges still festered in my mind unawares.  I thought that I was somehow ahead of my brother in our journey back to you, only to find that nope, my brother and I are one.  Help me to be kind today – to forgive the trespasses I think that others are guilty of inflicting and to know that in reality there is nothing at all to forgive for nothing here could change the Will of God or His great love and devotion to His Son.   Christ needs no thoughts of mercy.  Let me see others as Christ.  Let me see with His vision; let me know reality.  Bring me back forever into You.  In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one.  Amen.   

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 198.  Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). 

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 197 It can be but my gratitude I earn.

1. Here is the second step we take to free your mind from the belief in outside force pitted against your own. You make attempts at kindness and forgiveness. Yet you turn them to attack again, unless you find external gratitude and lavish thanks. Your gifts must be received with honor, lest they be withdrawn. And so you think God’s gifts are loans at best; at worst, deceptions which would cheat you of defenses, to ensure that when He strikes He will not fail to kill.
2. How easily are God and guilt confused by those who know not what their thoughts can do. Deny your strength, and weakness must become salvation to you. See yourself as bound, and bars become your home. Nor will you leave the prison house, or claim your strength, until guilt and salvation are not seen as one, and freedom and salvation are perceived as joined, with strength beside them, to be sought and claimed, and found and fully recognized.
3. The world must thank you when you offer it release from your illusions. Yet your thanks belongs to you as well, for its release can only mirror yours. Your gratitude is all your gifts require, that they be a lasting offering of a thankful heart, released from hell forever. Is it this you would undo by taking back your gifts because they were not honored? It is you who honor them and give them fitting thanks, for it is you who have received the gifts.
4. It does not matter if another thinks your gifts unworthy. In his mind there is a part that joins with yours in thanking you. It does not matter if your gifts seem lost and ineffectual. They are received where they are given.  In your gratitude are they accepted universally, and thankfully acknowledged by the Heart of God Himself. And would you take them back when He has gratefully accepted them?
5. God blesses every gift you give to Him, and every gift is given Him, because it can be given only to yourself. And what belongs to God must be His own. Yet you will never realize His gifts are sure, eternal, changeless, limitless, forever giving out, extending love, and adding to your never-ending joy while you forgive but to attack again.
6. Withdraw the gifts you give, and you will think that what is given you has been withdrawn. But learn to let forgiveness take away the sins you think you see outside yourself, and you can never think the gifts of God are lent but for a little while before He snatches them away again in death. For death will have no meaning for you then.
7. And with the end of this belief is fear forever over. Thank your Self for this, for He is grateful only unto God, and He gives thanks to you onto Himself. To everyone who lives will Christ yet come, for everyone must live and move in Him. His being in His Father is secure because Their Will is one. Their gratitude to all They have created has no end, for gratitude remains a part of love.
8. Thanks be to you, the holy Son of God. For as you were created, you contain all things within your Self. And you are still as God created you. Nor can you dim the light of your perfection. In your heart the Heart of God is laid. He holds you dear because you are Himself. All gratitude belongs to you, because of what you are.
9. Give thanks as you receive it. Be you free of all ingratitude to anyone who makes your Self complete. And from this Self is no one left outside. Give thanks for all the countless channels which extend this Self. All that you do is given unto Him. All that you think can only be His thoughts, sharing with Him the holy Thoughts of God. Earn now the gratitude you have denied yourself when you forgot the function God has given you. But never think that He has ever ceased to offer thanks to you.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  Today we are taught that we earn only gratitude toward ourselves in Christ.  I know how this feels on an earthly plane – to feel grateful to oneself.  I experience this sometimes when I think of how long it took me to fulfill my earthly accomplishments.  No matter how long it took me or how old I got in the meantime, I kept plugging away refusing to give up.  How I longed at times to relax and let go of my dreams!  I remember castigating myself for not being content to reading other people’s novels, why did I feel compelled to write one of my own?  And why not sit and watch my favorite TV shows, eating popcorn and ice cream snuggled on the couch every night instead of studying, writing papers, researching, or working on my novel?  Sometimes I would give in to laziness or lack of belief in my ability to accomplish my goals.  Sometimes I would let the opinions and tempting offers of others knock me off course.  But in the end how exciting it was to learn and apply my newfound knowledge in my life and in my work.  How utterly fulfilling it felt to see my book in print.  All the time and effort and fun times I missed when I was working toward my goals was now worth it.  No matter how people teased me about how old I was to finally be graduating from university, no matter how many people loved my novel or refused to read it, I was just so darn thankful that I had finally accomplished the things that had been instilled in me since I could remember. 

Today however, it is not the earthly accomplishments that Jesus is talking about.  Our concept today is to be applied to how we are to free our mind from all thoughts of an outside force pitted against our own force.  When we extend forgiveness to those who have wronged us and they show no sign of gratitude toward our mercy, the worse thing we can do is take back our forgiveness and continue to hold a grudge toward them.  Jesus is telling us today that we must extend our gifts of forgiveness and goodness no matter what the reception because if we “take it back,” we will likewise believe that God takes back His gifts, that He only loans them to us, or that He only wants us to forgive and be kind to make us vulnerable and defenseless against Him. 

When we are not aware of the power of our thoughts, we confuse God with guilt.  We forget how strong we are, and we think that weakness is our defense.  We see this all about us when it comes to people who love and fear God.  They do not like to take credit for anything but are quick to say, “Oh it was God who did it, not me.”  They are so afraid that God will get His little feelings hurt if they take credit for their hard-earned business success or their beautiful artwork or handiwork.  “I am weak, Lord, You are the big strong One,” is another line in this false humility before the Lord.  In the eyes of someone who fears God, establishing their weakness and their lack makes God seem all the more powerful and stronger and bigger.  But Jesus is telling us today to stop this – God did not create us to be weak and to cringe before Him.  We are not to appease Him by not accepting our power and strength and intelligence.  Weakness is not salvation!  We are not to believe “I am weak, but You are strong.”  We are to accept our Sonship.  Freedom and salvation are joined with strength beside them.  We are to seek this and claim this and find it and fully recognize this fact – today. 

When we begin to see that God did not make us as underlings to worship and praise Him out of fear and smallness and weakness, but to become One with Him – we are released from our puny, sad, stupid little lives that spin and spin but never go anywhere at all.  And when we are released, we release the world.  It is all a matter of freeing our minds from the illusion of the outside world.  Personally, the way that I have come to understand this is to realize that my ego human eyes have been programmed to see a world of illusion, discord, separation, shame, blame, guilt, and sin.  Yes, my ego eyes report a world of that is nice, sweet, and kind in many areas but equally badass and bitter in others.  My ego eyes take all that is pure and good and forever and turn it into somewhat and doomed.  My ego eyes take the eternal love and devotion that God has for us, His Son, and turns it into anger, rage, and eternal damnation – except of course for the select few that manage to better themselves above the rest of us and sail into the heavenlies waving a cheery ta-ta.  Ego wants us to believe in a God that would not take responsibility for His Creation and help them to find a way back to Him, not only blaming His Creation for failing to please Him, but devising ways to torment and torture them throughout eternity. 

We earn our gratitude and we earn the gratitude of God when we stop believing such tripe and listen to the call of Love within our hearts.  Kindness and forgiveness then comes naturally to us as we forgive the blinded and misguided world.  It does not matter what they say or do – they may express thanks for our insights or they may reject them – they may honor us one day and discount our words the next – when we claim our strength, when our thoughts are set free of the ego dogma that would have us fear God and seek approval and honor from those who still believe this world is their home and these bodies are who and what they are – we earn the gratitude of Him with Whom we are One. 

It is God who blesses our gifts and when we give them to Him, we give them to ourselves because we are One.  Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms today – we will only know that His gifts are certain, everlasting, unchanging, without limit, always extending and giving love and joy when we forgive and never take it back, when we forgive and never attack those with whom we forgave. 

Death has no more allure or meaning.  Fear is gone forever.  We forgive and never do we have to forgive again because there is simply nothing anyone can do or say that will cause us to believe in the lies of this world.  Now that we see with the eyes of Christ, now that we love God instead of fear Him, we choose only thoughts of love, joy, and peace.  This is how we earn gratitude; this is how we walk in love.  This is how we return to God from whence we came. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 197. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 196 It can be but myself I crucify.

1. When this is firmly understood and kept to full awareness, you will not attempt to harm yourself, nor make your body slave in vengeance.  You will not attack yourself, and you will realize that to attack another is but to attack yourself.  You will be free of the insane belief that to attack a brother saves yourself.  And you will understand his safety is your own, and in his healing, you are healed.
2. Perhaps at first you will not understand how mercy, limitless and with all things held in its sure protection, can be found in the idea we practice for today. It may, in fact, appear to be a sign that punishment can never be escaped because the ego, under what it sees as threat, is quick to cite the truth to save its lies. Yet must it fail to understand the truth it uses thus. But you can learn to see these foolish applications and deny the meaning they appear to have.
3. Thus do you also teach your mind that you are not an ego. For the ways in which the ego would distort the truth will not deceive you longer. You will not believe you are a body to be crucified. And you will see within today’s idea the light of resurrection, looking past all thoughts of crucifixion and death, to thoughts of liberation and of life.
4. Today’s idea is one step we take in leading us from bondage to the state of perfect freedom. Let us take this step today, that we may quickly go the way salvation shows us, taking every step in its appointed sequence, as the mind relinquishes its burdens one by one. It is not time we need for this.  It is but willingness. For what would seem to need a thousand years can easily be done in just one instant by the grace of God.
5. The dreary, hopeless thought that you can make attacks on others and escape yourself has nailed you to the cross. Perhaps it seemed to be salvation. Yet it merely stood for belief the fear of God is real. And what is that but hell, who could believe his Father is his deadly enemy, separate from him, and waiting to destroy his life and block him from the universe, without the fear of hell upon his heart?
6. Such is the form of madness you believe, if you accept the fearful thought you can attack another and be free yourself. Until this form is changed, there is no hope. Until you see that this, at least, must be entirely impossible, how could there be escape? The fear of God is real to anyone who thinks this thought is true. And he will not perceive its foolishness, or even see that it is there, so that it would be possible to question it.
7. To question it at all, its form must first be changed at least as much as will permit fear of retaliation to abate, and the responsibility returned to some extent to you. From there you can at least consider if you want to go along this painful path. Until this shift has been accomplished, you cannot perceive that it is but your thoughts that bring you fear, and your deliverance depends on you.
8. Our next steps will be easy for you take this one today. From there we go ahead quite rapidly. For once you understand it is impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear of God must disappear. You cannot then believe that fear is caused without. And God, Whom you had thought to banish, can be welcome back within the holy mind He never left.
9. Salvation’s song can certainly be heard in the idea we practice for today. If it can but be you you crucify, you did not hurt the world, and need not fear its vengeance and pursuit. Nor need you hide in terror from the deadly fear of God projection hides behind. The thing you dread the most is your salvation. You are strong, and it is strength you want. And you are free, and glad of freedom. You have sought to be both weak and bound because you feared your strength and freedom. Yet salvation lies in them.
10. There is an instant in which terror seems to grip your mind so wholly that escape appears quite hopeless. When you realize, once and for all, that it is you you fear, the mind perceives itself as split.  And this had been concealed while you believed attack could be directed outward and returned from outside to within.  It seemed to be an enemy outside you had to fear.  And thus a god outside yourself became your mortal enemy, the source of fear.
11. Now, for an instant, is a murderer perceived within you, eager for your death, intent on plotting punishment for you until the time when it can kill at last.  Yet in this instant is the time as well in which salvation comes.  For fear of God has disappeared.  And you can call on Him to save you from illusions by His Love, calling Him Father and yourself His Son.  Pray that the instant may be soon, – today.  Step back from fear and make advance to love.
12. There is no Thought of God that does not go with you to help you reach that instant, and to go beyond it quickly, surely, and forever.  When the fear of God is gone, there are no obstacles that still remain between you and the holy peace of God.  How kind and merciful is the idea we practice!  Give it welcome as you should, for it is your release.  It is indeed but you your mind can try to crucify.  Yet your redemption, too, will come from you.[1]

Notes and Personal Application: We have no enemy outside of our self!  Our enemy is within us, dear Brother and Friend.  We have an imposter who has usurped our identity and goes by our name.  We have so aligned ourselves with the ego that we need salvation to deliver us from its fearful lies, its petty hatreds, its triteness, and its murderous intent.  Only when we realize that any blame we try to pin upon our brothers is blame and shame we pin upon ourselves, will we begin to understand mercy, the light of resurrection, and soar past vengeance, sorrow, suffering, and death to take flight with thoughts of liberty and life. 

Jesus teaches us through today’s lesson idea that salvation does not come by offing our enemies, calling them out, blaming them for our problems, or assailing their institutions.  Salvation does not come from forcing our ideas about right and wrong upon others.  Perhaps in the eyes of the world this seems to be the way to make positive change, but these endeavors – no matter how seemingly worthy or justified – merely stand for the belief that God is to be feared, that He uses His power against us or else keeps it all for Himself, and that we are not His Son. 

In other words, Jesus spells it out to us in paragraph five – This is not heaven, this is hell. 

If we think we can attack another to set ourselves free, there is no hope.  Instead of loving God and trusting God, those who believe in attack believe that God is fearful, that He favors some over others, that He loves war and is strengthened through physical feats performed by bodies which bleed, suffer, and ooze pus, mucus, and saliva.  When we rise up to defame another, to trash our neighbors, to spread rumors and engage in gossip, to form cliques…we believe in a God that cannot be trusted, a God who made a world set upon itself, a world in which we must band together to fight and arm ourselves against those who are different from us to thrive, to survive, to carry on our lineage to the next generation.  When we take up signs and carry placards, pin our hopes on a political figure and make enemies of her rival, when we report negative things about our neighbors and recount all their wrongs and failings, we must understand that we are engaging and caging ourselves in hell. 

There is no escape until we lay down our arms.  There is no escape from this dreary madness until we take responsibility for the thoughts we cherish and carefully consider the path in which they lead us upon.  Until we change our mind about this, Jesus says, until that shift takes place, we will not realize the truth of the matter:  It is our thoughts that bring us fear.  God does not reach down from Heaven and deliver us; deliverance comes from our willingness to stop thinking thoughts of attack and fear.  We clear the altar of our minds, we dedicate our minds to thoughts of truth, of love, of unity and it is impossible to be hurt.  When we accept this as true, we recognize God as our Father.  We no longer think that the world is going to make us happy.  We know that the world cannot and will not save us.  We change our minds about who and what we are; we change our minds about who and what God is.  We know Him and we love Him and in knowing Him we know ourselves and all of creation as one. 

When we no longer experience ourselves as split between darkness and light, good and evil, black or white, we are saved.  When we no longer fear God, we have peace.  Our minds let go of the worries and cares that make this world spin in space and time.  When our minds are full of the light of resurrection, there is no place for thoughts of the past.  We break free from humanity and all its calls for taking up arms against each other – and into our rightful identity in God.

Dear Father, Enlighten our minds so that we come to know that when we harbor attack and defense thoughts toward others here on earth, we are binding ourselves to the hellish realm.  Make it real to our minds that only when we let such thoughts go do we realize that we have no enemy except the enemy within – the ego whose only aim is to nail us to the cross in its efforts to crucify your beloved Son.  Give us courage, O Lord, for this is the instant in which our salvation comes.  We are saved from the lies of the enemy with Your Love.  You know us as Your Son for we are one in Christ now and forever.  And it is in His name we pray.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 196. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 195 Love is the way I walk in gratitude.

1. Gratitude is a lesson hard to learn for those who look upon the world amiss. The most that they can do is see themselves as better off than others. And they try to be content because another seems to suffer more than they. How pitiful and deprecating are such thoughts! For who has cause for thanks while others have less cause? And who could suffer less because he sees another suffer more?  Our gratitude is due to Him alone who made all cause of sorrow disappear throughout the world.
2. It is insane to offer thanks because of suffering. But it is equally insane to fail in gratitude to One Who offers you the certain means whereby all pain is healed, and suffering replaced with laughter and with happiness. Nor could the even partly sane refuse to take the steps which He directs, and following the way He sets before them, to escape a prison that they thought contained no door to the deliverance they now perceive.
3. Your brother is your “enemy” because you see in him the rival for your peace; a plunderer who takes his joy from you and leaves you nothing but a black despair so bitter and relentless that there is no hope remaining. Now is vengeance all there is to wish for, now can you but try to bring him down to lie in death with you, as useless as yourself; as little left within his grasping fingers as in yours.
4. You do not offer God your gratitude because your brother is more slave than you, nor could you sanely be enraged if he seems freer. Love makes no comparisons. And gratitude can only be sincere if it be joined to love. We offer thanks to God our Father that in us all things will find freedom. It will never be that some are loosed while others still are bound. For who can bargain in the name of love?
5.  Therefore give thanks, but in sincerity. And let your gratitude make room for all who will escape with you; the sick, the weak, the needy, and afraid, and those who mourn a seeming loss or feel apparent pain, who suffer cold or hunger, or who walk the way of hatred and the path of death. All these go with you. Let us not compare ourselves with them, for thus we split them off from our awareness of the unity we share with them, as they must share with us.
6. We thank our Father for one thing alone; that we are separate from no living thing, and therefore one with Him. And we rejoice that no exceptions ever can be made which would reduce our wholeness, nor impair or change our function to complete the One Who is Himself completion. We give thanks for every living thing, for otherwise we offer thanks for nothing, and we failed to recognize the gifts of God to us.
7. Then let our brothers lean their tired heads against our shoulders as they rest awhile. We offer thanks for them. For if we can direct them to the peace that we would find, the way is opening at last to us. An ancient door is swinging free again; a long-forgotten Word re-echoes in our memory and gathers clarity as we are willing once again to hear.
8. Walk, then, in gratitude the way of love. For hatred is forgotten when we lay comparisons aside. What more remains as obstacles to peace? The fear of God is now undone at last, and we forgive without comparing. Thus we cannot choose to overlook some things, and yet retain some other things still locked away as “sins.” When your forgiveness is complete you will have total gratitude, for you will see that everything has earned the right to love by being loving, even as your Self.
9. Today we learned to think of gratitude in place of anger, malice, and revenge. We have been given everything. If we refuse to recognize it, we are not entitled therefore to our bitterness, and to a self-perception which regards us in a place of merciless pursuit, where we are badgered ceaselessly, and pushed about without a thought or care for us or for our future. Gratitude becomes a single thought we substitute for these insane perceptions. God has cared for us and calls us Son. Can there be more than this?
10. Our gratitude will pave the way to Him and shorten our learning time by more than you could ever dream of. Gratitude goes hand in hand with love, and where one is the other must be found.  For gratitude is but an aspect of the Love which is the source of all creation. God give thanks to you, His Son, for being what you are; His Own completion and the Source of love, along with Him. Your gratitude to Him is one with His to you. For love can walk no road except the way of gratitude, and thus we go who walk the way of God.[1]

Notes and Personal Application: Today Jesus teaches us that love makes no comparison.  We do not give God our gratitude because we were born with more privileges than other people nor are we supposed to be jealous and ungrateful if someone has more.  The only reason we offer thanks to God is that in Christ with whom we are one will all of creation find freedom.  Nobody will remain enslaved while some go free – we are one in Christ and as one body we bring all into the Sonship of Christ, where there differences between us that seem so apparent in the world disappear and we one with Him. 

With the vision of Christ, we do not differentiate between the Sonship based upon the color of skin, genitals, cultural traditions, or the clothes we wear.  When we look upon our brothers we do not judge them according to their bank accounts, the car they drive, the house they live in, or their favorite football team.  None of these matter in the eyes of love.  Hatred cannot abide where comparisons and judgments are laid aside, when we walk in the light of His Love.  In His Love, the world and all of its distinctions, competitions, differences, injustices, privileges and disadvantages, finger pointing, games of blame and shame melt away into the past that never was.  The world is made new.

As we learn the plan of salvation we begin to see that it is no longer Jesus dying on a cross for the sins of the world that saves us from the hallucinations of sorrow, shame, and death, but that it is our minds and hearts becoming one with Him.  

Love is the way we walk in gratitude when we single-mindedly and with no exception recognize the fact that we are given power over any thoughts of anger, malice, and revenge.  We accept the gift of everything in place of nothing, and we are free.  Our hearts and minds are filled with gratitude and we walk the way of God to God. 

 If we reject the gift of everything, we will experience animosity, we will feel persecuted, pushed about, enraged and at every disadvantage.  We will rage and riot and demand that the injustices of the past be made up to us, as victims someone has to make things right for us and ensure our future.  We think that the world owes us something; we fall for the deception that others live and work and breathe in a fairy land of privilege while we go without.  We will fill our heads with disturbing images of past abuses, current injustices, and dark and mysterious rites and rituals performed by the atrocious one percent which rules the world, stealing our children, enslaving our minds, and blinding our vision.  When we reject God’s gift of everything in exchange for nothing, we forget how to love each other, we think of ourselves and others as meat, as commodities, as competing with one another for the prime cuts, for the biggest slice of the pie. 

In today’s lesson, Jesus is asking us to examine these insane perceptions and see them for what they really are!  God loves us.  He calls us His Son.  What more could we possibly ask for?  For this we are grateful and learning this powerful lesson – Jesus promises – will shorten our learning time by great measure.  Love and gratitude go hand in hand.  Love does not abide where there is ingratitude, ill will, and competition and comparison. 

O Father Let us walk the way of love in gratitude.  Deliver our minds of the world’s dark madness and give us the Vision of Christ.  Thank you for every living thing, dear Father. Let us not see others as being different from ourselves but help us to recognize and accept our oneness in Christ.  In the name of Jesus with Whom we are one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 195. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 194 I place the future in the Hands of God.

1. Today’s idea takes another step toward quick Salvation, and a giant stride it is indeed! So great the distances that it encompasses, it sets you down just short of heaven, with the goal in sight and obstacles behind. Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to Heaven’s gate; the quiet place of peace, where you await with certainty the final step of God. How far are we progressing now from earth! How close are we approaching to our goal! How short the journey still to be pursued!
2. Accept today’s idea, and you have passed anxiety, all pits of hell, all blackness of depression, thoughts of sin, and devastation brought about by guilt. Accept today’s idea, and you have released the world from all imprisonment by loosening the heavy chains that locked the door to freedom on it. You are saved, and your salvation thus becomes the gift you give the world, because you have received.
3. In no one instant is depression felt, or pain experienced, or loss perceived. In no one instant sorrow can be set upon a throne and worshiped faithfully. In no one instant can one even die. And so each instant given unto God in passing, with the next one given Him already, is a time of your release from sadness, pain, and even death itself.
4. God holds your future as He holds your past and present.  They are one to Him, and so they should be one to you. Yet in this world, the temporal progression still seems real. And so you are not asked to understand the lack of sequence. You are but asked to let the future go and place it in God’s hands. And you will see by your experience that you have laid the past and present in His hands as well, because the past will punish you no more, and future dread will now be meaningless.
5.  Release the future. For the past is gone, and what is present, freed from its bequest of grief and misery, of pain and loss, becomes the instant in which time escapes the bondage of illusions where it runs its pitiless, inevitable course. Then is each instant which was slave to time transformed into a holy instant, when the light that was kept hidden in God’s Son is freed to bless the world. Now is he free, and all his glory shines upon a world made free with him, to share his holiness.
6. If you can see the lesson for today as the deliverance it really is, you will not hesitate to give as much consistent effort as you can, to make it be a part of you. As it becomes a thought that rules your mind, a habit in your problem-solving repertoire, a way of quick reaction to temptation, you extend your learning to the world. And as you learn to see salvation in all things, so will the world perceive that it is saved.
7. What worry can beset the one who gives his future to the loving Hands of God? What can he suffer? What can cause him pain or bring experience of loss to him? What can he fear?  What can he regard except with love? For he who has escaped all fear of future pain has found his way to present peace, and certainty of care the world can never threaten. He is sure that his perception may be faulty but will never lack correction. He is free to choose again when he has been deceived; to change his mind when he has made mistakes.
8. Place, then, your future in the Hands of God. For thus you called the memory of Him to come again, replacing all your thoughts of sin and evil with the truth of love. Think you the world could fail to gain thereby, and every living creature not respond with healed perception? Who entrusts himself to God has also placed the world within the Hands to which he has himself appealed for comfort and security. He lays aside the sick illusions of the world along with his and offers peace to both.
9. Now are we saved indeed. For in God’s Hands we rest untroubled, sure that only good can come to us. If we forget, we will be gently reassured. If we accept an unforgiving thought, it will soon be replaced by love’s reflection. And if we are tempted to attack, we will appeal to Him Who guards our rest to make the choice for us that leaves temptation far behind. No longer is the world our enemy, for we have chosen that we be its Friend.[1]

Notes and Personal Application: Prior to accepting the truth about the world, I knew the future to be in God’s Hands, but it was in a fatalistic, negative way in that I saw no point in having any hope or doing anything meaningful in the world because “God” would blow on it and make it disappear.  I hated the temporal world; it confused, frightened, and seemed to hold me captive to a form of flesh and blood which existed in a span of time only long enough to spawn, grow old, and die. 

Knowing who and what I really am has changed all that!  The future in God’s Hands is an incredible experience, one in which has eternal meaning and goes from glory to glory, expanding in joyful creation in every direction.  My Heavenly Father, a God of Love and Happiness is not intent on extinguishing anything that has meaning to me, but rather replaces all my thoughts of unhappiness, woe, and sorrow with the truth of love, assurance, a promise and a blessing without end. 

Today Jesus declares that only good can come to us when we stop interfering with the future and put our trust in God.  He is not out to get us, trip us up, or teach us lessons of hate, fear, and torment.  He is not out to embarrass us, wound us, or humble us.  We are one with Christ, we are His Son, and God wants for us what we want for our children and grandchildren – to be loved, protected, happy, and surefooted, good, kind, sweet, and generous.  With the future in God’s Hands, the world is no longer an enemy to fear, but a friend which comes along with us in a future entrusted to God, safe and comfortable, loving and kind.  When we lay aside the lies of the world, no longer taking pleasure in its perversions and misadventures, closing our mind to its call to sorrow and misery, the world follows suit. 

This is the sure way to salvation.  Only good can come to us when we put our faith in God.  No longer do we rely on the shaky, unstable systems of the world; no longer do we blame the president for our problems or give credit to the forms of the world for providing our needs.  We have no need to worry if we change our minds about God and backslide into sin because if we forget, Jesus promises that we will be reminded.  If we fall into unforgiving attitudes, the reflection of love will come to take root in us.  Temptation to fight, to go to war, to blame and point fingers will all seem so stupid and silly in the light of His love, His peace, His joy. 

Today every concern we may have about the future, we place in the Hands of God.  My worries and concerns about growing old and being a burden on my family are placed in the loving Hands of God.  My concerns about the cucumber leaves wilting on the vine – I put in the Hands of God.  He knows how much I enjoy making pickles, sharing pickles, eating pickles.  And His Will is for me to be happy – not to be worried about my cucumber crop!  God knows how much I love and miss my family members.  How I dread growing old without them in my life, talking and remembering things together, always coming up with fun things to do together.  God’s Will is for me to be happy, not to be concerned about them never talking to me again or cherishing dishonest, unjust grudges from the past.  I put all my loved ones in His Hands, forgiving the reasons why I built cases against them and the cases they built against me.   God knows each and every desire of my heart.  I put the future in His Hands.  I do not have to worry about my energy levels, running out of speed, losing strength and courage, my goodness or my tendency to be selfish and egocentric, for I belong to Him. 

Only good can come to us when the future is in God’s Hands.  The world is no longer an enemy in which I must fear attack, but the world becomes friend when I place my future in the Hands of God. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 194. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 193 All things are lessons God would have me learn.

1. God does not know of learning.  Yet His Will extends to what He does not understand, in that He wills the happiness of His Son inherited of Him be undisturbed; eternal and forever gaining scope, eternally expanding in the joy of full creation, and eternally open and wholly limitless in Him.  That is His Will.  And thus His Will provides the means to guarantee that it is done.
2. God sees no contradictions.  Yet His Son believes he sees them. Thus he has a need for One Who can correct his erring sight and give him vision that will lead him back to where perception ceases.  God does not perceive at all.  Yet it is He Who gives the means by which perception is made true and beautiful enough to let the light of Heaven shine upon it.  It is He Who answers what His Son would contradict and keeps his sinlessness forever safe. 
3. These are the lessons God would have you learn.  His Will reflects them all, and they reflect His loving kindness to the Son He loves.  Each lesson has a central thought, the same in all of them.  The form alone is changed, with different circumstances and events with different characters and different themes, apparent but not real.  They are the same in fundamental content.  It is this: Forgive, and you will see this differently.
4. Certain it is that all distress does not appear to be but unforgiveness.  Yet that is the content underneath the form.  It is this sameness which makes learning sure because the lesson is so simple that it cannot be rejected in the end.  No one can hide forever from a truth so very obvious that it appears in countless forms, and yet is recognized as easily in all of them, if one but wants to see the simple lesson there.  Forgive, and you will see this differently.
5. These are the words the Holy Spirit speaks in all your tribulations, all your pain, all suffering regardless of its form.  These are the words with which temptation ends, and guilt, abandoned, is revered no more.  These are the words which end the dream of sin and rid the mind of fear.  These are the words by which salvation comes to all the world.
6. Shall we not learn to say these words when we are tempted to believe that pain is real, and death becomes our choice instead of life?  Shall we not learn to say these words when we have understood their power to release all minds from bondage?  These are words which give you power over all events that seem to have been given power over you.  You see them rightly when you hold these words in full awareness, and do not forget these words apply to everything you see, or any brother looks upon amiss.
7. How can you tell when you are seeing wrong, or someone else is failing to perceive the lesson he should learn?  Does pain seem real in the perception?  If it does, be sure the lesson is not learned.  And there remains an unforgiveness hiding in the mind that sees the pain through eyes the mind directs.
8. God would not have you suffer thus. He would help you forgive yourself.  His Son does not remember who he is.  And God would have him not forget His Love, and all the gifts His Love brings with it.  Would you now renounce your own salvation?  Would you fail to learn the simple lessons Heaven’s Teacher sets before you, that all pain may disappear, and God may be remembered by His Son?
9. All things are lessons God would have you learn.  He would not leave an unforgiving thought without correction, nor one thorn or nail to hurt His holy Son in any way.  He would ensure his holy rest remain untroubled and serene, without a care, in an eternal home which cares for him.  And He would have all tears be wiped away, with none remaining yet unshed, and none but waiting their appointed time to fall.  For God has willed that laughter should replace each one, and that His Son be free again. 
10. We will attempt today to overcome a thousand seeming obstacles to peace in just one day.  Let mercy come to you more quickly.  Do not try to hold it off another day, another minute or another instant.  Time was made for this.  Use it today for what its purpose is.  Morning and night devote what time you can to serve its proper aim, and do not let the time be less than meets your deepest need.
11. Give all you can and give a little more.  For now we would arise in haste and go unto our Father’s house.  We have been gone too long, and we would linger here no more.  And as we practice, let us think about all things we saved to settle by ourselves, and kept apart from healing.  Let us give them all to Him Who knows the way to look upon them so that they will disappear.  Truth is His message; truth His teaching is.  His are the lessons God would have us learn.
12. Each hour spend a little time today, and in the days to come, in practicing the lessons in forgiveness in the form established for the day.  And try to give it application to the happenings the hour brought, so that the next one is free of the one before.  The chains of time are easily unloosened in this way.  Let no one hour cast its shadow on the one that follows, and when that one goes, let everything that happened in its course go with it.  Thus will you remain unbound, in peace eternal in the world of time.
13. This is the lesson God would have you learn:  There is a way to look on everything that lets it be to you another step to Him, and to salvation of the world.  To all that speaks of terror, answer thus: I will forgive, and this will disappear.  To every apprehension, every care and every form of suffering, repeat these selfsame words.  And then you hold the key that opens Heaven’s gate and brings the Love of God the Father down to earth at last, to raise it up to Heaven.  God will take this final step Himself.  Do not deny the little steps He asks you take to Him. [1]

Notes and Personal Application: Today let us practice saying: I will forgive, and this will disappear, every hour to all thoughts that would steal our joy, cause us rage or anger, blight our light, or darken our pathway.  We do not have to hold any such thoughts in our mind.  We can set ourselves free from all that the world would throw upon us to wreak havoc upon our minds and cause us to arm ourselves against one another, snub one another, or widen the separation between ourselves and God. 

There are times that the past comes to my mind in such a vivid way – as if undesirable events and wrongdoings that happened decades ago have just now inflicted the pain, sorrow, disappointment, and anger.  My ego does not want me to forget the many reasons I have to shield myself against love and forgiveness.  As long as the ego can keep me in the go-round of holding grudges, keeping others accountable, building cases against those who wronged me, doubting their goodness and worth, I are trapped in the senseless state of time, of separation, and of uncertainty.

Today Jesus is telling you and me to take a stand against the lies of the ego.  We are to open our eyes and know that all of the hurt, the sorrow, the disappointment, the ongoing agony of it all will simply disappear once and for all when we realize that the past has no meaning.  The adversities that I suffered in childhood are simply gone.  The difficulties, betrayals, and false friends that cluttered my adulthood are no more. There is absolutely no good reason to hold on to them, to let my mind make them real to me, to hold the actors and the players accountable for the nothing that passes in time.  All things that happened to me are lessons that God would have me learn.  If I thought it would be a lark to separate myself from God, live in a place of opposites, uncertainty, and competition for limited resources, well, then I must learn in whatever manner it takes that it is no picnic, no lark, no high adventure.  Jesus insists in today’s lesson that there is nothing that can happen in the realm of separation, in the simulated world of that which is not love that can possibly be cause for me to hold unforgiveness in my heart. 

I see things differently through the eyes of forgiveness.  All things are lessons God would have me learn.  God’s Will is for me to be happy, for my happiness to be undisturbed throughout eternity, for my happiness to expand itself int the joy of creation, gaining scope forever and limitless in Him.  That is God’s Will for me and for you.  And His Will guarantees that it is done. 

Today let us learn the lessons God would have us learn!  Every single thing that happens to us either personally or vicariously is a lesson we are here to learn.  We are not to hold the people involved accountable.  We can avoid any bitterness, anger, resentment, or sense of loss by learning the lesson and forgiving all who were involved in teaching it to us.  God hold no ill will toward us.  He does not devise lessons to hurt us, to take revenge upon us, or to punish us.  Yet each dark circumstance, each jealous, loveless act, each situation that befalls us is a lesson to lead us back to God.  Reaping what we sow is not a punishment, it is a lesson in an eternal principle.  Casting our pearls before the swine and then experiencing a sense of shame and worthlessness is not a punishment, it is a lesson in an eternal principle.  Taking something that does not belong to us and then having the same thing happen to us, is a lesson in an eternal principle, not God taking revenge upon our sin. 

When we learn our lessons in truth, we can thank the very ones who taught us by forgiving the role they played in driving those hard lessons home.  Forgive, Jesus says, and we will see things differently.  These words Holy Spirit speaks to us in all our pain and suffering of every kind.  We can put an end to all our problems, we can make our pain and suffering disappear simply by accepting it as a lesson from God.  This is a key to the gate of Heaven, Jesus claims.  This is how we bring God’s Kingdom to earth – by accepting everything that happens to us as a lesson, forgiving the circumstances, choices, and characters that led us to each lesson, and experiencing  healing through the sense of love and peace and joy instead of resentment, grudges, and confusion. 

Dear Father, Today let me take each event in my life as a lesson from You.  Let me accept the lesson, learn from it, and forgive all the circumstances and people involved who have made the lesson seem loveless and painful.  When I forgive, I will see things differently.  When I forgive, any hurt, trauma, pain, or sorrow will disappear.  Help me to see this through the eyes of Christ.  In the name of Jesus, with whom I am one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 193. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 192 I have a function God would have me fill.

1. It is your Father’s holy Will that you complete Himself, and that your Self shall be His sacred Son, forever pure as He, of Love created and in love preserved, extending love, creating in its Name, forever one with God and with your Self.  Yet what can such a function mean within a world of envy, hatred, and attack?
2. Therefore, you have a function in the world in its own terms.  For who can understand a language far beyond his simple grasp?  Forgiveness represents your function here.  It is not God’s creation, for it is the means by which untruth can be undone.  And who would pardon Heaven?  Yet on earth, you need the means to let illusions go. Creation merely waits for your return to be acknowledged, not to be complete.
3. Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world.  It has no meaning here.  Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth.  For being Heaven-born, it has no form at all.  Yet God created One Who has the power to translate in form the wholly formless.  What He makes are dreams, but of a kind so close to waking that the light of day already shines in them, and eyes already opening behold the joyful sights their offerings contain.
4. Forgiveness gently looks upon all things unknown in Heaven, sees them disappear, and leaves the world a clean and unmarked slate on which the Word of God can now replace the senseless symbols written there before.  Forgiveness is the means by which the fear of death is overcome because it holds no fierce attraction now and guilt is gone.  Forgiveness lets the body be perceived as what it is, a simple teaching aid, to be laid by when learning is complete, but hardly changing him who learns at all.   
5. The mind without the body cannot make mistakes.  It cannot think that it will die, nor be the prey of merciless attacks.  Anger becomes impossible, and where is terror then?  What fears could still assail those who have lost the source of all attack, the core of anguish and the seat of fear?  Only forgiveness can relive the mind of thinking that the body is its home.  Only forgiveness can restore the peace that God intended for His holy Son.  Only forgiveness can persuade the Son to look again upon his holiness.
6. With anger gone, you will indeed perceive that, for Christ’s vision and the gift of sight, no sacrifice was asked, and only pain was lifted from a sick and tortured mind.  Is this unwelcome?  Is it to be feared?  Or is it to be hoped for, met with thanks and joyously accepted.  We are one, and therefore give up nothing.  But we have indeed been given everything by God.
7. Yet do we need forgiveness to perceive that this is so.  Without its kindly light we grope in darkness, using reason but to justify our rage and our attack.  Our understanding is so limited that what we think we understand is, but confusion born of error.  We are lost in mists of shifting dreams and fearful thoughts, our eyes shut tight against the light; our minds engaged in worshipping what is not there.
8. Who can be born again in Christ but him who has forgiven everyone he sees or thinks of or imagines?  Who could be set free while he imprisons anyone?  A jailer is not set free, for he is bound together with his prisoner.  He must be sure that he does not escape, and so he spends him time in keeping watch on him.  The bars that limit him become the world in which his jailer lives, along with him. And it is on his freedom that the way to liberty depends for both of them. 
9. Therefore, hold no one prisoner.  Release instead of bind, for thus are you made free.  The way is simple.  Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head.  And it will fall or be averted as you choose to be condemned or free.  Thus does each one who seems to tempt you to be angry represent your savior from the prison house of death.  And so you owe him thanks instead of pain.
10. Be merciful today.  The Son of God deserves your mercy.  It is he who asks that you accept the way to freedom now.  Deny him not.  His Father’s Love for him belongs to you.  Your function here on earth is only to forgive him, that you may accept him back as your Identity.  He is as God created him.  And you are what he is.  Forgive him now his sins, and you will see that you are one with him.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  Jesus asks in paragraph eight, who can be born again unless he has forgiven everything.  Hold nobody prisoner, our Teacher instructs.  What is keeping us trapped in the illusion of time, separation, and a world where we are all at each other’s throats, pointing fingers and holding one another accountable for our rift from God, from Love, from each other is our lack of forgiveness, our mistake in believing that we are flesh and blood bodies, the Sons of man and not the Son of God. 

The Son of God deserves our mercy, Jesus says.  The Son of God is all of us, is all of creation.  Is all of us lost in time, stumbling about in the dark, uncertain, forgetting who we are and how we got here and what we are to do about it.  Meaning is lost to us.  The Son of God has traded in his eternal spirit for an identity that is trapped in a cycle of death and despair – and yes, He deserves your mercy.  We are not to deny Him His true identity.  We are to remind Him Who and What He is in Christ. 

Our religions in the world teach us that the way to salvation is to be a good person, but Jesus tells us that there is no such thing.  Our good deeds, our perfect behaviors, our denying ourselves meat on Friday’s, sex outside of marriage, and that extra slice of cake may indeed get us a pat on the back from our priests, our neighbors, and our health care professionals.  Our human goodness will certainly make us better citizens, trustworthy parents, nice friends, and the kind of people who will more than likely succeed in the world, but it will not earn our salvation or get us any closer to God’s Kingdom. 

The way to salvation is through forgiveness.  We recognize the world for what it is, we recognize humanity for what it is, and we forgive it for deceiving us into thinking it is the Creation of God.  Now we know!  We hold nobody accountable, for truly they know not what they do.  No longer does the thought of death hold us in terror, for we will be only too happy to lay the body aside when we have learned all that the world has to teach us. 

We are full of mercy for as we show mercy, mercy is granted to us.  We are one.  No longer splintered, no longer facing the dark abyss alone and afraid, we know that this is not Creation and that our God is not a madman who would devise perversions, distortions, opposites, and insecurities.   We were created in Love, by Love, and for Love.  We are extensions of God, extending His Love forever through Creation.  We can forgive time, we can forgive the world, we can forgive our lessons learned in darkness for only in separation do we learn to cherish oneness and unity; only in darkness do we learn to devote ourselves to light; only in uncertainty, doubt, and fear can we learn to treasure the certainty of God, and only in the throes of death do we learn to accept everlasting life. 

Dear Father, Let our hearts and minds be full of mercy toward our fallen state.  Our enchantment for darkness and death has seemed to blind our eyes to the light and love of God.  Let us forgive one another and show mercy – for this is the function that You would have us fill.  In the name of Jesus Christ, with Whom we are one.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 192. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 191 I am the holy Son of God Himself.

1. Here is your declaration of release from bondage of the world. And here as well is all the world released. You do not see what you have done by giving to the world the role of jailer to the Son of God. What could it be but vicious and afraid, fearful of shadows, punitive and wild, lacking all reason, blind, insane with hate?
2. What have you done that this should be your world? What have you done that this is what you see? Deny your own Identity, and this is what remains. You look on chaos and proclaim it is yourself. There is no sight that fails to witness this to you. There is no sound that does not speak a frailty within you and without; no breath you draw that does not seem to bring you near death; no hope you hold but will dissolve in tears.
3. Deny your own identity, and you will not escape the madness which induced this weird, unnatural, and ghostly thought that mocks creation and that laughs at God. Deny your own identity, and you assail the universe alone, without a friend, a tiny particle of dust against the legions of your enemies. Deny your own identity, and look on evil, sin and death, and watch despair snatch from your fingers every scrap of hope, leaving you nothing but the wish to die.
4. Yet what is it except a game you play in which Identity can be denied? You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everyone set free. In this one thought are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything, the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality.
5. But let today’s idea find a place among your thoughts and you have risen far above the world, and all the worldly thoughts that hold it prisoner. And from this place of safety and escape you will return and set it free. For he who can accept his true Identity is truly saved. And his salvation is the gift he gives to everyone, in gratitude to Him Who pointed out the way to happiness that changed his whole perspective of the world.
6. One holy thought like this and you are free; you are the holy Son of God Himself. And with this holy thought you learn as well that you have freed the world. You have no need to use it cruelly, and then perceive this savage need in it. You set it free of your imprisonment. You will not see a devastating image of yourself walking the world in terror, with the world twisting in agony because your fears have laid the mark of death its heart.
7. Be glad today how very easily is hell undone. You need but tell yourself: I am the holy son of God himself. I cannot suffer, cannot be in pain; I cannot suffer loss, nor fail to do all that salvation asks. And in that thought is everything you look on wholly changed.
8. A miracle has lighted up all dark and ancient caverns, where the rites of death echoed since time began. For time has lost its hold upon the world. The Son of God has come in glory to redeem the lost, to save the helpless, and to give the world the gift of his forgiveness. Who could see the world as dark and simple, when God’s Son has come again at last to set it free?
9. You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given on to you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you.
10. Then let the Son of God awaken from his sleep, and opening his holy eyes, return again to bless the world he made. In error it began, but it will end in the reflection of his holiness. And he will sleep no more and dream of death. Then join with me today. Your glory is a light that saves the world. Do not withhold salvation longer.  Look about the world and see the suffering there. Is not your heart willing to bring your weary brothers rest?
11. They must await your own release.  They stay in chains till you are free.  They cannot see the mercy of the world until you find it in yourself.  They suffer pain until you have denied its hold on you.  They die till you accept your own eternal life.  You are the Holy Son of God Himself.  Remember this, and all the world is free.  Remember this, and earth and Heaven are one.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:   Even though I understand that I am a holy son of God Himself, and I know that Jesus really wants us to get this so that we no longer identify with the miscreation, I still feel a twinge of embarrassment to say it.  It is true.  We are as God created us, not the thing that evolved here in time, but when I read our lesson today with my husband and grandson, there was a part of me that shrunk back inside.  They hear me say bad words!  They hear me gripe and complain.  They know how bossy I am and how I can stomp about when I do not have my picture met.  Saying that I am not “a” holy Son of God, but the Son of God is even more cringeworthy to my ego which is far more comfortable being a splintered self, full of opposites, addicted to darkness, doomed to death and despair. 

Here in the world living in my flesh and blood body, being prone to temptation by the very ego that would tempt me to deny my eternal Self while spoon feeding my habit of succumbing to its lies, it seems a far stretch that I am the holy Son of God Himself.  And yet Christ has made me one with Him, just as you are one with Him and all of creation is one with Him.  Asleep in the world of time, it may seem as if this is something in store for us at a much later date when we manage to get all the kinks worked out of our humanity and clean ourselves up to become acceptable to God’s Kingdom.  But today’s lesson states otherwise.

In paragraph 10 Jesus calls for us to waken from our sleep, open our holy eyes, return again to bless the world we made.  We who have been taught about the second coming of Christ, take heed.  We are the second coming of Christ. We who have been asleep, identifying as sons of man are to accept the call of Christ and recognize that we are one with Him.  Jesus calls to us: “Join with me today.  Your glory is the light that saves the world.  Do not withhold salvation longer.  Look about the world and see the suffering there.  Is not your heart willing to bring your weary brothers rest?…”

Jesus reminds us of who and what we are and until we are willing to accept our true identity in Him, we are not saving the world.  We are in chains; we find no mercy, we suffer pain, we die, and the cycles of time keep spinning until we accept our eternal life, our holy Son of Godship.  When we remember this, the world is set free and becomes one with Heaven. 

Let us practice today with this prayer:

Dear Father, I am one with Christ.  I am Your Holy Son.  I do not believe in suffering; I do not believe in pain. I cannot lose or fail to do all that salvation asks.  I am not a prisoner here, persecuted, fearful, afraid of death and disease and discomfort because I am one with Christ; I am the holy Son of God.  All power is given to me in Heaven and on the earth and there is nothing I cannot do.  I am not helpless in the face of my earthly nature; I am not at the mercy of the merciless ego.  I forgive all the lies, unmet promises, and dashed hopes found in everything and everyone who would take the place of You. I no longer crave the lifeless trinkets of the world or the satisfaction of vain drives and desires – because all of my love, my trust, my devotion belong to You.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 191. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com 

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 190 I choose the joy of God instead of pain.

1. Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes that will not disappear if seen right. For pain proclaims God cruel. How could it be real in any form? It witnesses to God the Father’s hatred of His Son, the sinfulness He sees in him, and His insane desire for revenge and death.
2. Can such projections be attested to? Can they be anything but wholly false? Pain is but witness to the Son’s mistakes and what he thinks he is. It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed; for attack on what is wholly unassailable. It is a nightmare of abandonment by an Eternal Love, Which could not leave the Son whom It created out of love.
3. Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth. It demonstrates God is denied, confused with fear, perceived as mad, and seen as traitor to Himself. If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real, there is no God. For vengeance is not part of love. And fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain.
4. Peace to such foolishness! The time has come to laugh at such insane ideas. There is no need to think of them as savage crimes, or secret sins with weighty consequences. Who but a madman could conceive of them as cause of anything? Their witness, pain, is mad as they, and no more to be feared than the insane illusions which it shields and tries to demonstrate must still be true.
5. It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in anyway. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail.  But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness.
6. My holy brother think of this awhile: the world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents your thoughts. And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind and choose the joy of God as what you really want. Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable, forever and forever. And would you deny a little corner of your mind its own inheritance, and keep it as a hospital for pain; a sickly place where living things must come at last to die?
7. The world may seem to cause you pain, and yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects. As an illusion, it is what you wish. Your idle wishes represent its pains. Your strange desires bring it evil dreams. Your thoughts of death envelope it in fear, while in your kind forgiveness does it live.
8. Pain is the thought of evil taking form and working havoc in your holy mind. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. In pain is God denied the Son He loves. In pain does fear appear to triumph over love, and time replace eternity in heaven. And the world becomes a cruel and a bitter place, where sorrow rules and little joys give way before the onslaught of the savage pain that waits to end all joy in misery.
9. Lay down your arms and come without defense into the quiet place where Heaven’s peace holds all things still at last. Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. Let no attack enter with you. Lay down the cruel sword of judgement that you hold against your throat and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness.
10. Here will you understand there is no pain. Here does the joy of God belong to you. This is the day when it is given you to realize the lesson that contains all of salvation’s power. It is this: paying is illusion; joy, reality. Pain is but sleep; joy is awakening. Pain is deception; joy alone is truth.
11. And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; We choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven. Let our gratitude unto our teacher fill our hearts, as we are free to choose our joy instead of pain, our holiness in place of sin, the peace of God instead of conflict, and the light of Heaven for the darkness of the world. Amen. ¹

Notes and Personal Application:   Lately I have been experiencing the world as hard and mean, spiteful and full of vengeance.  Not necessarily in my personal life, but in the news media, in the conversations that I have with others, with the things that assail my mind – old resentments trying to resurrect themselves in my thoughts, ancient sorrows, betrayals, unkind things said and done.   And my body has not been holding up as well as I think it should – it is no wonder either as I am carrying around extra weight with me, a drag on my energy levels and an impediment to everything I want to do. 

Yesterday while we were out shopping, I sighed to myself, saying a little prayer, as if this life was too hard for me and I was ready to come home anytime the Lord sees fit.  And Holy Spirit was so kind and showed me how much I have to live for here – the little heaven that is going on right here and right now, which I was choosing to shut out because I choose to see the darkness instead of the light, that I have become addicted to being stirred up, sad and sorrowful, full of angst and wondering what the world is coming to!  Holy Spirit showed me so plainly that when I choose to entertain myself with darkness, when I choose to talk about darkness, when I choose to keep my mind awhirl with darkness, the light in me is obscured, the sweet truth of my Heaven is being covered by the lies of the world. 

Then in Tuesday’s lesson which I did not study until later in the day, Jesus taught us that there is no need to wait for Heaven, that if we are not experiencing heaven, we are covering our eyes against it, because the light of Heaven is in us already.  It is simply a matter of what I choose to focus my mind upon.  Do I choose thoughts that are real, true, and holy or do I choose the lies of the world that blacken my perception and trick it into seeing enemies instead of friends, darkness instead of light, sorrow instead of joy? 

Today when we are tempted to let the lies of the world be our reality, let us meditate upon our lesson idea for today: “I choose the joy of God instead of pain.”  Nothing external to us can cause us pain or oppress us because nothing but ourselves affects us.  Nothing can make us ill, sad, weak, or frail because in Christ we have the power to dominate all things we see by simply knowing who and what we are.  As we see how utterly harmless these things we are giving power to really are, our holiness becomes their holiness.  What seemed to cause us to be worried or afraid now becomes a place of purity and goodness. 

When we choose truth, truth becomes apparent to us.  When we choose the illusion, the illusion becomes apparent to us.  Jesus tells us we choose what we fill our mind with – pain or joy, hell or Heaven.  Oh how thankful we are to Him to know that we get to choose!  No matter what situation we are in, we can look at it with joy and faith and love or we can look at it in resentment, sorrow, and bitterness.  We can say:

O Lord lead me out of this temptation to think of these weary bones, strained muscles, and aging body as my reality! The world’s quarrels, spats, wars, and factions have no reality in Christ.   I know who I am in You.  I know that I cannot be assaulted by the world outside of myself.  My Heaven is right here and right now.  I choose to experience Heaven and not the lies of darkness.  That has no reality in You!  I keep my mind focused on the truth to save myself from despair.  In Jesus name.  Amen. 

¹A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 190. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition, (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 188 The Peace of God is shining in me now.

1. Why wait for Heaven?  Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes.  The light is in them now.  Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all.  Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well.  The light came with you from your native home and stayed with you because it is your own.  It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source.  It shines in you because it lights your home and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home.
2. This light cannot be lost.  Why wait to find it in the future, or believe it has been lost already, or was never there?  It can so easily be looked upon that arguments which prove it is not there become ridiculous.  Who can deny the presence of what he beholds in him?  It is not difficult to look within, for there all vision starts.  There is no sight, be it of dreams or from a truer Source, that is not but the shadow of the seen through inward vision.  There perception starts, and there it ends.  It has no source but this.
3. The peace of God is shining in you now, and from your heart extends around the world.  It pauses to caress each living thing and leaves a blessing with it that remains forever and forever.  What it gives must be eternal.  It removes all thoughts of the ephemeral and valueless.  It brings renewal to all tired hearts and lights all vision as it passes by.  All of its gifts are given everyone, and everyone unites in giving thanks to you who give, and you who have received. 
4. The shining in your mind reminds the world of what it has forgotten, and the world restores the memory to you as well.  From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. To you, the giver of the gift, does God Himself give thanks.  And in His blessing does the light in you shine brighter, adding to the gifts you have to offer to the world.
5. The peace of God can never be contained.  Who recognizes it within himself must give it.  And the means for giving it are in his understanding.  He forgives because he recognized the truth in him.  The peace of God is shining in you now, and in all living thing.  In quietness is it acknowledged universally.  For what your inward vision looks upon is your perception of the universe.
6. Sit quietly and close your eyes.  The light within you is sufficient.  It alone has power to give the gift of sight to you.  Exclude the outer world and let your thought fly to the peace within.  They know the way.  For honest thoughts, untainted by the dream of worldly things outside yourself, become the holy messengers of God Himself. 
7. These thoughts you think with Him.  They recognize their home.  And they point surely to their Source, Where God the Father and the Son are one.  God’s peace is shining on them, but they must remain with you as well, for they were born within your mind, as yours was born in God’s.  They lead you back to peace, from where they came but to remind you how you must return.
8. They heed your Father’s Voice when you refuse to listen.  And they urge you gently to accept His Word for what you are, instead of fantasies and shadows.  They remind you that you are the co-creator of all things that live.  For as the peace of God is shining in you, it must shine on them.
9. We practice coming nearer to the light in us today.  We take our wandering thoughts, and gently bring them back to where they fall in line with all the thoughts we share with God.  We will not let them stray.  We let the light within our minds direct them to come home.  We have betrayed them, ordering that they depart from us.  But now we call them back and wash them clean of strange desires and disordered wishes.  We restore to them the holiness of their inheritance.
10. Thus are our minds restored with them, and we acknowledge that the peace of God still shines in us, and from us to all living thing that share our life.  We will forgive them all, absolving all the world from what we thought it did to us.  For it is we who make the world as we would have it.  Now we choose that it be innocent, devoid of sin and open to salvation.  And we lay our saving blessing on it, and we say: The peace of God is shining in me now.  Let all things shine upon me in that peace And let me bless them with the light in me.[1]

Personal Notes and Application:  Why wait for Heaven indeed?  There are times that this world gets to me – first it reels me in with its mysteries and its stories of death and despair, and then once in I forget about the peace of God.  Instead I rail upon Him.  How could He let this happen?  Where is all this love and devotion He is supposed to have for us.  Why would He let us dream such a dream, experience, even vicariously the torments of such a dark and despairing realm?

This is me in the world.  I have known from the time I can remember that it is a dangerous place and to survive I must use my wits against all who would come up against me.  And yet I am so drawn to its darkness, to its fearful tales and cryptic lies.  The very stories that draw me in crowd out my love and trust in God.  The illusions of the world enchant me and then like an unfaithful lover, leave me dangling in a state of confusion, despair, and disbelief. 

But today Jesus says that we do not have to wait for Heaven.  We do not have to cover our eyes with the dark fables of murder, espionage, revenge, and kidnapping.  All we have to do is let our light shine, the light that came with us from Heaven when we came to the world, the light that can never be extinguished, the light that leads us back to our true home. 

When we let our light shine, it reminds the world of all it has forgotten, and when the world remembers it reminds us as well.  When we stand with Christ, we add our light to His light.  Jesus tells us today that the peace of God is shining in us right now, it is shining in all living things, and it is in the quietness of our inward vision that Christ’s vision becomes apparent to the universe. 

Today we sit for our little while with our eyes closed to the forms of the time-bound world.  We sit quietly and let our thoughts take wing and transport us to the peace of God within each of us.  Our thoughts, Jesus says, untainted by the world outside of us, are holy messengers of God.  It is these thoughts which think with God.  They take us home.  They bring us to that state of oneness and unity to remind us where we came from and how we must return. 

When we refuse to listen to our Father’s Voice, it is these thoughts, these inward, holy thoughts that heed His Voice.  These thoughts are the ones that gently urge us to turn off the bloody, screaming, angry, sad, despairing images on our screens and accept ourselves not as humans trapped in flesh and blood but as Sons of God, co-creators of all things that live, accepting of the peace of God shining in us all in spite of what our programs would have us believe about ourselves. 

In our quiet, solitude we practice getting in touch with our inner light.  We take all thoughts of the world outside of ourselves and bring them in line with all the thoughts we share with God.  We have betrayed our thoughts with strange desires and disordered wishes to chill out with stories of death, of lies, betrayals, and the petty drivel of the world.  But for our devotional times, we train our thoughts to God.  We see that the peace of God still shines in us and in all living thing.  We absolve the world from all the pain we thought it brought to us.  The thoughts we think with God bless and save the world. 

Father, the peace of God shines in me!  Let all living things shine on me in the peace of God.  Let me bless all living things with Your light which shines in me.  In Jesus name.  Amen.  

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 188. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 187 I Bless The World Because I Bless Myself.

1. No one can give unless he has. In fact, giving is proof of having. We have made this point before. What seems to make it hard to credit is not this. No one can doubt that you must first possess what you would give. It is the second phase on which the world and true perception differ. Having had and given, then the world asserts that you have lost what you possessed. The truth maintains that giving will increase what you possess.
2. How is this possible?  For it is sure that if you give a finite thing away, your body’s eyes will not perceive it yours. Yet we have learned that things but represent the thoughts that make them.  And you do not lack for proof that when you give ideas away, you strengthen them in your own mind. Perhaps the form in which the thought seems to appear is changed in giving. Yet it must return to him who gives. Nor can the form it takes be less acceptable. It must be more.
3. Ideas must first belong to you before you give them. If you are to save the world, you will first accept salvation for yourself. But you will not believe that this is done until you see the miracles it brings to everyone you look upon. Herein is the idea of giving clarified and given meaning. Now you can perceive that by your giving is your store increased.
4. Protect all things you value by the act of giving them away, and you are sure that you will never lose them. What you thought you did not have is thereby proven yours. Yet value not its form. For this will change and grow unrecognizable in time, however much you try to keep it safe. No form endures. It is the thought behind the form of things that lives unchangeable.
5. Give gladly. You can only gain thereby. The thought remains and grows in strength as it is reinforced by giving. Thoughts extend as they are shared, for they cannot be lost. There is no giver and receiver in the sense the world conceives of them. There is a giver who retains; another one who will give as well. And both must gain in this exchange, for each will have the thought in form most helpful to him. What he seems to lose is always something he will value less than what will surely be returned to him.
6. Never forget you give but to yourself. Who understands what giving means must laugh at the idea of sacrifice. Nor can he fail to recognize the many forms which sacrifice may take. He laughs as well at pain and loss, at sickness and at grief, at poverty, starvation, and at death. He recognizes sacrifice remains the one idea that stands behind them all, and in his gentle laughter are they healed.
7. Illusion recognized must disappear. Accept not suffering, and you remove the thought of suffering. Your blessing lies on everyone who suffers, when you choose to see all suffering as what it is. The thought of sacrifice gives rise to all the forms that suffering appears to take. And sacrifice is an idea so mad that sanity dismisses it at once.
8. Never believe that you can sacrifice. There is no place for sacrifice in what has any value. If the thought occurs, its very presence proves that error has arisen, and correction must be made. Your blessing will correct it. Given first to you, it now is yours to give as well. No form of sacrifice and suffering can long endure before the face of one who has forgiven and has blessed himself.
9. The lilies that your brother offers you are laid upon your alter, with the ones you offer him beside them. Who could fear to lookup on such lovely holiness? The great illusion of the fear of God diminishes to nothingness before the purity that you will look on here. Be not afraid to look. The blessedness you will behold will take away all thought of form, and leave instead the perfect gift forever there, forever to increase, forever yours, forever given away.
10. Now are we one in thought, for fear has gone. And here, before the altar to one God, one Father, one Creator, and one Thought, we stand together as one Son of God. Not separate from Him who is our Source; not distant from one brother who is part of our one Self whose innocence has joined us all as one, we stand in blessedness, and give as we receive. The Name of God is on our lips. And as we look within, we see the purity of Heaven shine in our reflection of our Father’s love.
11. Now are we blessed, and now we bless the world. What we have looked upon we would extend, for we would see it everywhere. We would behold it shining with the grace of God in everyone. We would not have it withheld from anything we look upon. And to ensure this holy sight is ours, we offer it to everything we see. For where we see it, it will be returned to us in form of lilies we can lay upon our alter, making it a home for Innocence itself, Who dwells in us and offers us His Holiness as ours.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:  The idea to focus upon today is one of letting go of the idea of sacrifice.  We have been taught that God demands sacrifice, but this is the one lie that stands behind all pain and loss, sickness and grief, poverty, starvation, and death.  The fear of God is the great illusion.  We are so blessed when we get past the fear of God because that is when we come to understand God’s love and devotion.  When we no longer fear God we can love Him with our whole hearts and minds.  We can look upon Him without being afraid.  When we look to God without fear, without the thought of sacrifice, the world and all its darkness, its injustice, and its spite fades away.  It is no more.  We are one with God and with each other.  When we begin to experience this, we can do nothing but bless others because we see God in everyone and in everything.  The world’s version of murder, mystery, and uncertainty is of little account.  We are here to free the world from the idea of sacrifice, to bless the world and to bless ourselves.   

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 187. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 186 The Salvation of the World Depends on Me.

1. Here is the statement that will one day take all arrogance away from every mind.  Here is the thought of true humility, which holds no function as your own but that which has been given you.  It offers your acceptance of a part assigned to you, without insisting on another role.  It does not judge your proper role.  It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven.  It unites all wills on earth in Heaven’s plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven’s peace.
2. Let us not fight our function.  We did not establish it.  It is not our idea.  The means are given us by which it will be perfectly accomplished.  All that we are asked to do is to accept our part in genuine humility, and not deny with self-deceiving arrogance that we are worthy.  What is given us to do, we have the strength to do.  Our minds are suited perfectly to take the part assigned to us by One Who knows us well.
3. Today’s idea may seem quite sobering, until you see its meaning.  All it says is that your Father still remembers you and offers you the perfect trust He holds in you who are His Son.  It does not ask that you be different in any way from what you are.  What could humility request but this?  And what could arrogance deny but this?  Today we will not shrink from our assignment on the specious grounds that modesty is outraged.  It is pride that would deny the Call for God Himself.
4. All false humility we lay aside today, that we may listen to God’s Voice reveal to us what He would have us do.  We do not doubt our adequacy for the function He will offer us.  We will be certain only that He knows our strengths, our wisdom and our holiness.  And if He deems us worthy, so we are.  It is but arrogance that judges otherwise.
5. There is one way, and only one, to be released from the imprisonment your plan to prove the false is true has brought to you.  Accept the plan you did not make instead.  Judge not your value to it.  If God’s Voice assures you that salvation needs your part, and that the whole depends on you, be sure that it is so.  The arrogant must cling to words, afraid to go beyond them to experience which might affront their stance.  Yet are the humble free to hear the Voice Which tells them what they are, and what to do.
6. Arrogance makes an image of yourself that is not real.  It is this image which quails and retreats in terror, as the Voice for God assures you that you have the strength, the wisdom, and the holiness to go beyond all images.  You are not weak, as is the image of yourself.  You are not ignorant and helpless.  Sin can not tarnish the truth in you, and misery can come not near the holy home of God.
7. All this the Voice for God relates to you.  And as He speaks, the image trembles and seeks to attack the threat it does not know, sensing its basis crumble.  Let it go.  Salvation of the world depends on you, and not upon this little pile of dust.  What can it tell the holy Son of God?  Why need he be concerned with it at all?
8. And so we find our peace.  We will accept the function God has given us, for all illusions rest upon the weird belief that we can make another for ourselves.  Our self-made roles are shifting, and they seem to change from mourner to ecstatic bliss of love and loving.  We can laugh or weep and greet the day with welcome or with tears.  Our very being seems to change as we experience a thousand shifts in mood, and our emotions raise us high indeed, or dash us to the ground in hopelessness. 
9. Is this the Son of God?  Could He create such instability and call it Son?  He Who is changeless shares His attributes with His creation.  All the images His Son appears to make have no effect on what he is.  They blow across his mind like wind-swept leaves that form a patterning an instant, break apart to group again, and scamper off.  Or like mirages seen above a desert, rising from the dust.
10. These unsubstantial images will go, and leave your mind unclouded and serene, when you accept the function given you.  The images you make give rise to but conflicting goals, impermanent and vague, uncertain and ambiguous.  Who could be constant in his efforts, or direct his energies and concentrated drive toward goals like these?  The functions which the world esteems are so uncertain that they change ten times an hour at their most secure.  What hope of gain can rest on goals like this?
11. In lovely contrast, certain as the sun’s return each morning to dispel the night, your truly given function stands out clear and wholly unambiguous.  There is no doubt of its validity.  It comes from One Who knows no error, and His Voice is certain of Its messages.  They will not change, nor be in conflict.  All of them point to one goal, and one you can attain.  Your plan may be impossible, but God’s can never fail because He is its Source.
12. Do as God’s Voice directs.  And if It asks a thing of you which seems impossible, remember Who it is That asks, and who would make denial.  Then consider this; which is more likely to be right?  The Voice That speaks for the Creator of all things, Who knows all things exactly as they are, or a distorted image of yourself, confused, bewildered, inconsistent, and unsure of everything?  Let not its voice direct you.  Hear instead a certain Voice, Which tells you of a function give you by your Creator, Who remembers you, and urges that you now remember Him.
13. His gentle Voice is calling from the known to the unknowing.  He would comfort you, although He knows no sorrow.  He would make a restitution, though He is complete; a gift to you, although He knows that you have everything already.  He has Thoughts which answer every need His Son perceives, although He sees them not.  For Love must give, and what is given in His Name takes on the form most useful in a world of form.
14. These are the forms which never can deceive because they come from Formlessness Itself.  Forgiveness is an earthly form of love, which as it is in Heaven has no form.  Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed.  In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still.  Salvation of the world depends on you who can forgive.  Such is your function here.[1]

Notes and Personal Application:   Who do we think we are claiming that the salvation of the world depends upon us?  We are Sons of God, beloved of our Father, irreplaceable, inerasable, accepting our true identity, our proper role in acknowledging the Will of God on earth and restoring our world to Heaven’s peace. 

Jesus encourages us in today’s lesson not to fight our function.  Do not let a false sense of being unworthy keep us back from answering the call of God in our lives.  We will not let the ego’s twisted modesty trick us into thinking we are not good enough, educated enough, special enough to do our part in God’s plan for salvation.  God knows us!  If He says we are worthy, we are worthy.  He does not care how many times we screwed up.  He does not care how skinny or how obese we are.  He does not care how many times we ended up behind bars or on probation.  He does not care how many degrees we may have after our name.  He does not care how much money we have.  The only thing that God cares about is that we accept that there is nothing we could do – that would shake His love and devotion.  There are not enough vices in the universe to come between us and God.  There is no sin that would remove the Christ in us.  There is no hardship that the world can mete out to prove its strength and power that does not begin and end in time.

God asks of us to accept our function.  The world cannot be saved without us.  Answer this call.  God does not expect for us to clean up our act and change ourselves into something that is more fitting for His Will.  What He asks of us is not hard nor is it impossible.  We are to simply put down our umbrage, our resentment, our grief and sorrow.  No longer can the world affront us for we forgive its twisted dream, we forgive the surreal world made from the dreams of those who lost their way.  When we forgive we are fulfilling our function to save the world.  It is a matter of not holding the world accountable for all of its wrongs, its injustices, its inequality, its bad manners, and bloodthirsty ways.  We forgive it, not because we are good and it is bad, not because we are charitable and want to make brownie points with God.  We forgive it because we recognize it for what it is – a world that simply cannot exist, a world that simply cannot go on, a world that was based upon a mad idea of specialness, hierarchies, and the spaces in between instead of unity, oneness, and the equality of God. 

Take your little while today reviewing our lesson, measuring its words, asking Holy Spirit to help you hear the call of God in your mind.  You do not have to leave your house to save the world.  You do not have to buy special kinds of clothes to wear.  You do not have to change a thing about who and what you are.  All that is required of us is to accept our role with humility. 

Father, we forgive the world.  We thought it was one thing but found that it is not.  Our striving in the world of men has only brought us more striving.  Our efforts to clean up this world has only uncovered more filth.  Our longings for that special someone has only led to heartache and sorrow, bitterness and regret.  No matter what we chase to make us happy, to bring us joy and peace and love, the world is only a tease.  It only gives us a taste to take it away again.  It gives us a sense of hope to only stomp it in the dust. This world is not our home, Father.  We choose to forgive it for pretending to be something it is not.  We choose to forgive ourselves and others for falling for the world’s lies, the ego’s defenses, the heartlessness of nature, and the untrustworthy words of those who pretend to lead us to You.  We forgive it all.  Thus we stand with Christ; thus we save the world.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 186. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 185 I want the peace of God.

1. To say these words is nothing.  But to mean these words is everything.  If you could but mean them for just an instant, there would be no further sorrow possible for you in any form, in any place or time.  Heaven would be completely given back to full awareness, memory of God entirely restored, the resurrection of all creation fully recognized.
2. No one can mean these words and not be healed.  He cannot play with dreams, nor think he is himself a dream.  He cannot make a hell and think it real.  He wants the peace of God, and it is given him.  For that is all he wants, and that is all he will receive.  Many have said these words.  But few indeed have meant them.  You have but to look upon the world you see around you to be sure how very few they are.  The world would be completely changed, should any two agree these words express the only thing they want.
3. Two minds with one intent become so strong that what they will becomes the Will of God.  For minds can only join in truth.  In dreams, no two can share the same intent.  To each, the hero of the dream is different; the outcome wanted not the same for both.  Loser and gainer merely shift about in changing patterns, as the ratio of gain to loss and loss to gain takes on a different aspect or another form. 
4. Yet compromise alone a dream can bring.  Sometimes it takes the form of union, but only the form.  The meaning must escape the dream, for compromising is the goal of dreaming.  Minds cannot unite in dreams.  They merely bargain.  And what bargain can give them the peace of God?  Illusions come to take His place.  And what He means is lost to sleeping minds intent on compromise, each to his gain and to another’s loss.
5. To mean you want the peace of God is to renounce all dreams.  For no one means these words who wants illusions, and who therefore seeks the means which bring illusions.  He has looked on them and found them wanting.  Now he seeks to go beyond them, recognizing that another dream would offer nothing more than all the others.  Dreams are one to him.  And he has learned their only difference is one of form, for one will bring the same despair and misery as do the rest.
6. The mind which means that all it wants is peace must join with other minds, for that is how peace is obtained.  And when the wish for peace is genuine, the means for finding it is given, in a form each mind that seeks for it in honesty can understand.  Whatever form the lesson takes is planned for him in such a way that he can not mistake it if his asking is sincere.  But if he asks without sincerity, there is no form in which the lesson will meet with acceptance and be truly learned.
7. Let us today devote our practicing to recognizing that we really mean the words we say.  We want the peace of God.  This is no idle wish.  These words do not request another dream be given us.  They do not ask for compromise, nor try to make another bargain in the hope that there may yet be one that can succeed where all the rest have failed.  To mean these words acknowledges illusions are in vain, requesting the eternal in the place of shifting dreams which seem to change in what they offer, but are one in nothingness.
8. Today devote your practice periods to careful searching of your mind, to find the dreams you cherish still.  What do you ask for in your heart?  Forget the words you use in making your requests.  Consider but what you believe will comfort you and bring you happiness.  But be you not dismayed by lingering illusions, for their form is not what matters now.  Let not some dreams be more acceptable, reserving shame and secrecy for others.  They are one.  And being one, one question should be asked of all of them, “Is this what I would have, in place of Heaven and the peace of God?”
9. This is the choice you make.  Be not deceived that it is otherwise.  No compromise is possible in this.  You choose God’s peace, or you have asked for dreams.  And dreams will come as you requested them.  Yet will God’s peace come just as certainly, and to remain with you forever.  It will not be gone with every twist and turning of the road, to reappear, unrecognized, in forms which shift and change with every step you take.
10. You want the peace of God.  And so do all who seem to seek for dreams.  For them as well as for yourself, you ask but this when you make this request with deep sincerity.  For thus you reach to what they really want and join your own intent with what they seek above all things, perhaps unknown to them, but sure to you.  You have been weak at times, uncertain in your purpose, and unsure of what you wanted, where to look for it, and where to turn for help in the attempt.  Help has been given you.  And would you not avail yourself of it by sharing it?
11. No one who truly seeks the peace of God can fail to find it.  For he merely asks that he deceive himself no longer by denying to himself what is God’s Will.  Who can remain unsatisfied who asks for what he has already?  Who could be unanswered who requests an answer which is his to give?  The peace of God is yours.
12. For you was peace created, given you by its Creator, and established as His Own eternal gift.  How can you fail when you but ask for what He wills for you?  And how could your request be limited to you alone?  No gift of God can be unshared.  It is this attribute that sets the gifts of God apart from every dream that ever seemed to take the place of truth.
13. No one can lose and everyone must gain whenever any gift of God has been requested and received by anyone.  God gives but to unite.  To take away is meaningless to Him.  And when it is as meaningless to you, you can be sure you share one Will with Him, and He with you.  And you will also know you share one Will with all your brothers, whose intent is yours.
14. It is this one intent we seek today, uniting our desires with the need of every heart, the call of every mind, the hope that lies beyond despair, the love attack would hide, the brotherhood that hate has sought to sever, but which still remains as God created it.  With Help like this beside us, can we fail today as we request the peace of God be given us?[1]

Personal Notes and Application:  In today’s lesson Jesus reminds us that as long as we ask for anything of this world, we are asking for dreams.  It doesn’t matter if we are asking for money to pay our bills or money to spend on a lavish luxury; it doesn’t matter if we are asking for the Lord to save our marriage for the sake of the children or if we are seeking a new mate who will liven up our love life and take us to new heights of impassioned ecstasy.  We are to carefully think about what we believe will bring us comfort and happiness.  When we ask God to give us anything from this world, we are not choosing Heaven or the peace of God No matter what form it takes – we either desire things from this world that will bring us temporary satisfaction at best or we pray for God’s peace which is everlasting.

Here in the flesh, I seem to want and need so many things.  My husband seems paramount to my happiness; my love for cooking is only surpassed by my love for eating.  I love my house, my car, my garden.  I love our kids and grandkids.  When too many days go by and I do not hear their voice or see their faces, I get a sad and lonely feeling.  The estrangement of my sister weighs heavily upon me; how could I ever experience peace or enjoy my life without her love and affection?  I have a bucket list with all the things I want to do before I die – walk Hadrian’s Wall, visit Italy, master making the perfect bagel…

Today I lay that all aside.  I know that there is nothing in the world – the love of my cherished husband, my older sister, our kids and grandkids, the Roman wall, the olive groves of Italy, and no homemade bagel this side of heaven which is going to give me everlasting peace or even the tiniest bit of Heaven.  It does not work that way.  I either desire the world and the things in the world or I desire God and the peace of God. 

There comes a time when we start to grasp this concept and understand why there can be no compromise.  As long as we seek the things that the world has to offer us we are closing our minds to who and what we really are, we are accepting the identity which the world has given us – a body with its never-ending, never-satisfied lists of needs, wants, desires, and lusts.  Identifying with the body keeps us on a go-round of always living for the next fix.  This is not peace. This is not joy. This is not Heaven. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying one’s dream, of having a happy dream, abundant and well-spent in time.  Love, food, travel, cooking, adventures…there is no sin involved in any of it.  But we do not confuse this with the true desires of our heart and mind.

We know the peace of God when we understand our unity, when to take anything away becomes as meaningless to us as it is with God, when all we want is to share God’s Will and there is goodwill for all and to all. 

May the peace of God be yours today. 

[1]A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 185. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 184 The Name of God is my inheritance.

1. You live by symbols.  You have made up names for everything you see.  Each one becomes a separate entity, identified by its own name.  By this you carve it out of unity.  By this you designate its special attributes and set if off from other things by emphasizing space surrounding it.  This space you lay between all things to which you give a different name; all happenings in terms of place and time; all bodies which are greeted by a name.
2. This space you see as setting off all things from one another is the means by which the world’s perception is achieved.  You see something where nothing is and see as well nothing where there is unity; a space between all things, between all things and you.  Thus do you think that you have given life in separation.  By this split you think you are established as a unity which functions with an independent will.
3. What are these names by which the world becomes a series of discrete events, of things ununified, of bodies kept apart and holding bits of mind as separate awareness?  You gave these names to them, establishing perception as you wished to have perception be.  The nameless things were given names, and thus reality was given them as well.  For what is named is given meaning and will then be seen as meaningful; a cause of true effect, with consequence inherent in itself.
4. This is the way reality is made by partial vision, purposefully set against the given truth.  Its enemy is wholeness.  It conceives of little things and looks upon them.  And a lack of space, a sense of unity or vision that sees differently, become the threats which it must overcome, conflict with, and deny.
5. Yet does this other vision still remain a natural direction for the mind to channel its perception.  It is hard to teach the mind a thousand alien names, and thousands more.  Yet you believe this is what learning means; its one essential goal by which communication is achieved, and concepts can be meaningfully shared.
6. This is the sum of the inheritance the world bestows.  And everyone who learns to think that it is so accepts the signs and symbols that assert the world is real.  It is for this they stand.  They leave no doubt that what is named is there.  It can be seen, as is anticipated.  What denies that it is true is but illusion, for it is the ultimate reality.  To question it is madness; to accept its presence is the proof of sanity.
7. Such is the teaching of the world.  It is a phase of learning everyone who comes must go through.  But the sooner he perceives on what it rests, how questionable are it premises, how doubtful its results, the sooner does he question its effects.  Learning that stops with what the world would teach stops short of meaning.  In its proper place, it serves but as a starting point from which another kind of learning can begin, a new perception can be gained, and all the arbitrary names the world bestows can be withdrawn as they are raised in doubt.
8. Think not you made the world.  Illusions, yes!  But what is true in earth and Heaven is beyond your naming.  When you call upon a brother, it is to his body that you make appeal.  His true Identity is hidden from you by what you believe he really is.  His body makes response to what you call him, for his mind consents to take the name you give him as his own.  And thus his unity is twice denied, for you perceive him separate from you, and he accepts this separate name as his.
9. It would indeed be strange if you were asked to go beyond all symbols of the world, forgetting them forever; yet were asked to take a teaching function.  You have need to use the symbols of the world a while.  But be you not deceived by them as well.  They do not stand for anything at all, and in your practicing it is this thought that will release you from them.  They become but means by which you can communicate in ways the world can understand, but which you recognize is not the unity where true communication can be found.
10. Thus what you need are intervals each day in which the learning of the world becomes a transitory phase; a prison house from which you go into the sunlight and forget the darkness. Here you understand the Word, the Name Which God has given you; the one Identity Which all things share; the one acknowledgement of what is true.  And then step back to darkness, not because you think it real, but only to proclaim its unreality in terms which still have meaning in the world that darkness rules.
11. Use all the little names and symbols which delineate the world of darkness.  Yet accept them not as your reality.  The Holy Spirit uses all of them, but He does not forget creation has one Name, one Meaning, and a single Source Which unifies all things within Itself.  Use all the names the world bestows on them but for convenience, yet do not forget they share the Name of God along with you.
12. God has no name that we could ever give Him, He has no need of a name.  And yet His Name becomes the final lesson that all things are one, and at this lesson does all learning end.  All names are unified; all space is filled with truth’s reflection.  Every gap is closed, and separation healed.  The Name of God is the inheritance He gave to those who chose the teaching of the world to take the place of Heaven.  In our practicing, our purpose is to let our minds accept what God has given as the answer to the pitiful inheritance you made as fitting tribute to the Son He loves.
13. No one can fail who seeks the meaning of the Name of God.  Experience must come to supplement the Word.  But first you must accept the Name for all reality and realize the many names you gave its aspects have distorted what you see but have not interfered with truth at all.  One Name we bring into our practicing.  One Name we use to unify our sight.¹

Father, our Name is Yours.  In It we are united with all living things, and You Who are their one Creator.  What we made and call by many different names is but a shadow we have tried to cast across Reality.  And we are glad and thankful we were wrong.  Shine the light of Christ upon all our mistakes, our beliefs in darkness, our fractured thoughts, and fragmented distortions, that we may be absolved from all the dastardly effects our strange devices seemed to have.  We accept the truth You give, in place of every little thought that would distinguish us from You.  Your Name is our salvation and escape from the hellish realm we made.  Your Name unites us in the oneness which is our inheritance and peace. Amen.

Notes and Personal Application:  The world’s view of Creation intends to keep all things little, separate and distinguished.  Its reality are the spaces between things; while true vision perceives lack of space, a sense of oneness and wholeness.  True vision is a threat to separateness.  Any attempt to see correctly is a cause for ego to attack, to create conflict, to go into denial.  Time and the world it runs thrives in the mind of separateness and lack of wholeness.  Its systems are built upon it.  Here the Sons of God believe they are sons of man, splintered, segregated, and suppressed.

No matter!  The vision of Christ is the natural direction for the mind to channel its perception.  Who wants to be burdened with thousands upon thousands of names for all the different pieces in which the world would splinter Creation?  The more names we know, the more things we can dissect, dismember, and distinguish the smarter we think we are, while the reality is how apparent it is that this only seems to make the rift and divide between us deeper and denser.  We think that we strengthen our vocabulary but the less we can communicate meaning and purpose, the less we understand, the less we exchange ideas that have the ability to heal and transform.   

We learn to accept the signs and symbols, the names and ranks that the world assert is real.  We learn to call childlikeness and innocence an impediment to truth; to believe in our Father a fantasy, and belief in the world’s point of view as proof of our sanity and intelligence and worth.  As we come through the world, all of us are educated in this matter.  We cannot escape it, but we can question it, we can see it for an illusion, a place where time gobbles up every passing moment and never gives it back, how all of it is set up to attack and take away, how decay and death are its ongoing gifts.  When we begin to question our humanity, we begin to question the theater of life, the mechanics of our vision, the falseness of its premises, the programming of its vision. 

Learning that stops with what the world teaches, stops short of meaning.  No matter how many certificates, diplomas, or degrees we may have, or how many letters distinguish us from others, it doesn’t matter how many languages we can count to 100 in, none of it will have any meaning unless we take what we learned in the world and use it as a starting point from which another kind of learning will begin. 

Jesus affirms that it is only when we begin to recognize what is missing in the world’s perception that we can gain a new perception – a perception that undoes the world’s vision and replaces it with the true vision of Christ.  In paragraph eight, we are told that we did not make the world, but we are certainly responsible for the illusions we made to take the place of the real world.  It is important to recognize this fact:  Truth in Heaven and on earth is beyond our ability to name.  When we sum one another up, we are summing up an illusion because we have no idea of the holiness and the purity and the value of that which we name here on earth. The true identity of each one of us, indeed of all Creation, is hidden from our human eyes.  We give each other names and titles – even our pets will perk their ears at the names they have been given, but Jesus says do not be deceived for this is only a way to deny our oneness twice over because as we demand a name, we are distinguishing one part of Creation from another, and when he responds to the name he is accepting his separated state.

As long as we are in the world we use the world’s symbols, but we do not need to be deceived by them!  They do not stand for anything and knowing this and meditating upon this thought will release us from our bondage to the idea of separateness.  We can use the world’s symbols, its words, its names, its ways of perceiving one splintered part of Creation from another, but Jesus emphasizes that we must fully understand that this is not true communication and oneness and knowledge cannot be found where space and time has splintered the minds and hearts of God’s creation into separated parts.

I keep thinking of a chocolate cake and how awful it would be if every ingredient separated itself and vied for independence.  What a pickle we would be in if our bodies decided to separate their parts and live independently of one another, our livers taking a little road trip through the Rockies while our spleens decided to go to camp meeting in Miracle Valley, Arizona.  

In our devotional practices we take time to realize and appreciate what we learn in the world while recognizing it as an elementary and temporary phase of our learning.  Jesus likens it to darkness, a prison even, which we leave to go into the sunshine and forget its lonely cells and dim corridors.  Our practice is the sunshine that lights our minds with truth – we are not these dimwitted creatures fighting one another and vying for special privileges – we are Sons of God; we all share the same name.  Basking in this truth, letting our minds rest upon its loveliness and joy, we take it back with us to the house of bondage, knowing that the prison house of death is not our reality.  Sharing the good news that we are not bodies; we are everlasting spirits which share the identity of God becomes our only function naturally and willingly.  We are ready to transform.  We look forward to the day when we can shed our humanity and take our real identity as a whole, and not in parts, with God.   

In conclusion, we use the names and words and phrases of the world, but we no longer accept them as our reality.  For Creation has one name, one meaning, one Source Which unified everything with His Love.  Never again will we be seduced into thinking that God will fight our battle and not theirs, that our holiness is greater, our skin color defines us, that our physical beauty gives us worth.  We are one and we have one name and that name we share with God. 

And yet we know that God has no name that can be spoke or understood in the human tongue.  When we learn the namelessness of God we are one with Him.  We know everything there is to know, all names are unified, all space is filled with truth, there are no more illusions, nothing is hidden from our consciousness.  We are one – you and me, us and we – transparent in our love and affection and complete as a whole. 

To seek the meaning of the Name of God, we are guaranteed to grasp the truth.  Our experiences will make the truth we study quite apparent to us.  But before all that, we must accept God’s Name for all reality.  Realize that while naming of this thing and that, of putting privilege here and taking advantages there, of prizing one thing and disregarding another may have perverted the truth in the worldlings’ mind, truth still stands untouched by any vain imaginings. 

In our devotions today we meditate upon One Name.  One Name we use to unite our perceptions.  We begin to open our mind to the oneness of God which He has given to us.  It is One Name where all the foolish separateness, which blinded us to truth will go away.  It is reflecting upon the idea of One Name where we are given strength to see beyond the splintered, splattered distortions of this world.  Only when we recognize that we are one with God, that we share His Name and His Being, can we give as we receive.  

¹ A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 184. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 183 I call upon God’s Name and on my own.

1. God’s name is holy, but no holier than yours. To call upon His name is but to call upon your own. A father gives his son his name, and thus identifies the son with him. His brothers share his name, and thus are they united in a bond to which they turn for their identity. Your Father’s name reminds you who you are, even within a world that does not know; even though you have not remembered it.
2. God’s Name cannot be heard without response, nor said without an echo in the mind that calls you to remember. Say His Name, and you invite the angels to surround the ground on which you stand, and sing to you as they spread out their wings to keep you safe, and shelter you from every worldly thought that would intrude upon your holiness.
3. Repeat God’s name, and all the world responds by laying down illusions. Every dream the world holds dear has suddenly gone by, and where it seemed to stand you find a star; a miracle of grace.  The sick arise, healed of their sickly thoughts. The blind can see; the deaf can hear. The sorrowful cast off their mourning, and the tears of pain are dried as happy laughter comes to bless the world.
4. Repeat the name of God, and little names have lost their meaning. No temptation but becomes a nameless and unwanted thing before God’s name. Repeat His Name and see how easily you will forget the names of all the gods you valued. They have lost the name of god you gave them. They become anonymous and valueless to you, although before you let the Name of God replace their little names. You stood before them worshipfully, naming them as gods.
5. Repeat the Name of God, and call upon your Self, Whose Name is His. Repeat His Name, and all the tiny, nameless things on earth slip into right perspective. Those who call upon the Name of God cannot mistake the nameless for the Name, nor sin for grace, nor bodies for the holy Son of God. And should you join a brother as you sit with him in silence, and repeat God’s Name along with him within your quiet mind, you have established there an altar which reaches to God Himself and to His Son.
6. Practice this but today; repeat God’s name slowly again and still again. Become oblivious to every name but His. Hear nothing else. Let all your thoughts become anchored on This. No other word we use except at the beginning, when we say today’s idea but once. And then God’s Name becomes our only thought, our only word, the only thing that occupies our minds, the only wish we have, the only sound with any meaning, and the only Name of everything that we desire to see; of everything that we would call our own.
7. Thus do we give an invitation which could never be refused. And God will come and answer it Himself. Think not He hears the little prayers of those who call on Him with names of idols cherished by the world. They cannot reach Him thus. He cannot hear a request that He be not Himself, or that His Son receive another name than His.
8. Repeat God’s Name, and you acknowledge Him as sole creator of reality. And you acknowledge also that His Son is part of Him, creating in His name. Sit silently, and let His Name become the all-encompassing idea that holds your mind completely. Let all thoughts be still except this one. And to all other thoughts respond with this and see God’s Name replace the thousand little names you gave your thoughts, not realizing that there is one Name for all there is, and all that there will be.
9. Today you can achieve a state in which you will experience the gift of grace.  You can escape all bondage of the world and give the world the same release you found. You can remember what the world forgot and offer it your own remembering. You can accept today the part you play in its salvation, and your own as well. And both can be accomplished perfectly.
10. Turn to the Name of God for your release and it is given you. No prayer but this is necessary, for it holds them all within it. Words are insignificant, and all requests unneeded when God’s Son calls on His Father’s Name. His Father’s Thoughts become His own. He makes his claim to all his Father gave, is giving still, and will forever give. He calls on Him to let all things he thought he made be nameless now, and in their place the holy Name of God becomes his judgment of their worthlessness.
11. All things are silent. Little sounds are soundless now. The little things of earth have disappeared. The universe consists of nothing but the Son of God, who calls upon his Father.   And his Father’s Voice gives answer in his Father’s holy Name. And this eternal, still relationship, in which communication far transcends all words, and yet exceeds in depth and height whatever words could possibly convey, is peace eternal. In our Father’s Name, we would experience this peace today.  And in His Name, it shall be given us. [1]

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 183. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 182 I will be still an instant and go home.

1. This world you seem to live in is not home to you.  And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true.  A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called you to return, although you do not recognize the voice, nor what is it the voice reminds you of.  Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown.  Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here.  Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again.
2. No one but knows whereof we speak.  Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to occupy their time and keep their sadness from them.  Others will deny that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all.  Still others will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but dream.  Yet who, in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self-deception, would deny he understands the words we speak?
3. We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home.  He goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is he seeks.  A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind.  He does not understand he builds in vain.  The home he seeks can not be made by him.  There is no substitute for Heaven.  All he ever made was hell.
4. Perhaps you think it is your childhood home that you would find again.  The childhood of your body, and its place of shelter, are a memory now so distorted that you merely hold a picture of a past that never happened.  Yet there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father’s house and knows that He is alien here.  This childhood is eternal, with an innocence that will endure forever.  Where this Child shall go is holy ground.  It is His holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one.
5. It is this Child in you your Father knows as His Own Son.  It is this Child Who knows His Father.  He desires to go home so deeply, so unceasingly, His voice cries unto you to let Him rest a while.  He does not ask for more than just a few instants of respite; just an interval in which He can return to breathe again the holy air that fills His Father’s house.  You are His home as well.  He will return.  But give Him just a little time to be Himself, within the peace that is His home, resting in silence and in peace and love. 
6. This Child needs your protection.  He is far from home.  He is so little that He seems so easily shut out, His tiny voice so readily obscured.  His call for help almost unheard amid the grating sounds and harsh and rasping noises of the world.  Yet does He know that in you still abides His sure protection.  You will fail Him not.  He will go home, and you along with Him.
7. This Child is your defenselessness; your strength.  He trusts in you.  He came because He knew you would not fail.  He whispers of His home unceasingly to you.  For He would bring you back with Him, that He Himself might stay, and not return where He does not belong, and where He lives an outcast in a world of alien thoughts.  His patience has no limits.  He will wait until you hear His gentle Voice within you, calling you to let Him go in peace, along with you, to where He is at home and you with Him.
8. When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas ceases to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice.  So poignantly He calls to you that you will not resist Him longer.  In that instant He will take you to His home, and you will stay with Him in perfect stillness, silent and at peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt, sublimely certain that you are at home.
9. Rest with Him frequently today.  For He was willing to become a little Child that you might learn of Him how strong is he who comes without defenses, offering only love’s messages to those who think he is their enemy.  He holds the might of Heaven in His hand and calls them friend, and gives His strength to them, that they may see He would be Friend to them.  He asks that they protect Him, for His home is far away, and He will not return to it alone.
10. Christ is reborn as but a little Child each time a wanderer would leave his home.  For he must learn that what he would protect is but this Child, Who comes defenseless and Who is protected by defenselessness.  Go home with Him from time to time today.  You are as much an alien here as He.
11. Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence.  Christ has called you friend and brother.  He has even come to ask your help in letting Him go home today, completed and completely.  He has come as does a little child, who must beseech his father for protection and for love.  He rules the universe, and yet He asks unceasingly that you return with Him and take illusions as your gods no more.
12. You have not lost your innocence.  It is for this you yearn.  This is your heart’s desire.  This is the voice you hear, and this the call which cannot be denied.  The holy Child remains with you.  His home is yours.  Today He gives you His defenselessness, and you accept it in exchange for all the toys of battle you have made.  And now the way is open, and the journey has an end in sight at last.  Be still an instant and go home with Him and be at peace a while.[1]

Personal Notes and Application:   This world is not our home, and when we are honest with ourselves, we know that this is true.  We are haunted by a sense of homesickness, a sense of longing, a persistent feeling that there is a world which has been snatched from us, a place of peace and love and joy that this world can only simulate in brief, rare moments sandwiched between blood, sweat, and tears of frustration and hard work. 

No matter how hard we try to make this world our home, to deny our unhappiness, to pretend to love its cruel games and its dark pleasures, its insane laws and unfair practices, all of us, if we are honest will admit that we know that this world is not our home.  We may not remember the other world where we experience certainty, oneness, joy, and wonder but we yearn for it.

In our efforts to recreate that world in this one.  Jesus tells us in verse three that in darkness we can make a thousand homes and yet find no rest.  Every story here, every search, every attempt to find meaning, joy, friendship, and certainty here in this world ends in the hell of death.  We simply cannot survive without our Source; in a world which is built upon saints and sinners, hopes and fears, love and hate, darkness and light, we will never experience anything but upheaval, uncertainty, and inequality. 

No matter how rosy our past looks and how far we go to return to it, it is gone.  It will never be again; in fact, it never really was.  No matter how fond you may be of your memories of the past, they are nothing but images of nothing that matters, nothing that truly exists, nothing that has made one bit of difference in the reality of God. 

Jesus teaches us today that we have an inner Child who has never been and never will be at home in this world where to survive it must take up arms against its brothers and alienate itself from love and survive on fear and defense against attack.  This innocent Child which abides in each of us, knows God as His Own and God knows as His Own.  This Child of God calls us and keeps calling us to let Him rest, to give Him peace and rest and joy from all the things of this world that weary Him and keep Him from His real home in God. 

This little Child calls to us to protect Him.  He is the baby Christ within each one of us – born into a world so dark and full of contradictions, knowing that He must go through the torments of darkness to get to the light from which He came.  He will go home, and we will go with Him.  It is why He is there inside of us, God-placed and never erased. 

It is during our quiet moments, our devotional practices, our times of putting aside this world and remembering the place from which we came, that we will hear the baby Christ within us.  Today Jesus tells us that His Voice will touch us in such a way that we will no longer be able to ignore it or resist it, and that it is in these moments of quietness and reflection, of meditation and our full attention in which this perfect Child takes us home.  Our lesson today reflects the innocence, the purity, the faith to believe in that which the world would distort and call crazy, the tenderness evoked by the holy Child.

For Christ, our brilliant Holy Brother who resisted darkness and temptation, was willing to become the little Child that we may learn of strength through defenselessness, how to offer love to those who would make us an enemy.  This Child holds all the strength of God’s eternal Kingdom; He is friend to all and calls us all as brothers and as friend.  This Child protects us as He calls to us to protect Him as well in this dark world far from reality and from which He can not return without us along with Him.  

Today Jesus teaches us that Christ is reborn into each one of us as we enter into this world, a world that we ended up in when we left the realm of love to explore the realm of darkness.  And it is this Child in which we must learn to protect because as a child He is defenseless, and it is our defenselessness which protects Him and protects us.  We build no defenses against God as we build no defenses against each other.  We lay them aside.  We take the Child by the hand and we walk with Him a while each day learning again to become as He is, to become Him.

This Child knows the love and peace and joy we have not entirely forgotten.  This Child knows that there is nothing in the world that He wants or needs.  This Child knows that this realm is for those who forgot who and what they really are and have lost their way.  This Child calls to us, leading us back to where we belong – exchanging all our ways of war and discord for the love and peace of God. 

Today we spend our “little while” with this Child.  We go Home with Him for a few moments.  We experience His peace, His Love, His Joy, His sense of wonder and appreciation.  We know that this is our heart’s desire.  We experience our innocence through the purity of this holy Child.  The shade of the trees, the green of the grass, the blue of the sky, the white clouds, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat are all a reflection of care of His Father and His love and devotion to us.   

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 182. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

LESSON 181 I trust my brothers who are one with me.

1. Trusting your brothers is essential to establishing and holding up your faith in your ability to transcend doubt and lack of sure conviction in yourself. When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by what you have perceived in him. You do not look beyond his errors. Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to your awareness of the Self That lies beyond your own mistakes, and passed his seeming sins as well as yours.
2. Perception has a focus. It is this that gives consistency to what you see. Change but this focus, and what you behold will change accordingly. Your vision now will shift, to give support to the intent which has replaced the one you held before. Remove your focus on your brother’s sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in you. And you will not transcend their sight and see the sinlessness that lies beyond.
3. Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such little focuses give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent. We instruct our minds that it is this we seek, and only this, for just a little while. We do not care about our future goals. And what we saw an instant previous has no concern for us within this interval of time wherein we practice changing our intent. We seek for innocence and nothing else. We seek for it with no concern but now.
4. A major hazard to success has been involvement with your past and future goals. You have been quite preoccupied with how extremely different the goals this course is advocating are from those you held before. And you have also been dismayed by the depressing and restricting thought that, even if you should succeed, you will inevitably lose your way again.
5. How could this matter?  For the past is gone; the future but imagined. These concerns are but defenses against present change of focus in perception. Nothing more. We lay these pointless limitations by a little while. We do not look to past beliefs, and what we will believe will not intrude upon us now. We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within.
6. We recognize that we have lost this goal if anger blocks our way in any form. And if a brother’s sins occur to us, our narrow focus will restrict our sight, and turn our eyes upon our own mistakes, which we will magnify and call our “sins.”  So, for a little while, without regard to past or future, should such blocks arise we will transcend them with instructions to our minds to change their focus, as we say: It is not this that I would look upon. I trust my brothers, who are one with me.
7. And we will also use this thought to keep us safe throughout the day.  We do not seek for long-range goals. As each obstruction seems to block the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an instant from the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and uncorrected will remain.
8. Nor do we ask for fantasies. For what we seek to look upon is really there. And as our focus goes beyond mistakes, we will behold a holy sinless world. When seeing this is all we want to see, when this is all we seek for in the name of true perception, are the eyes of Christ inevitably ours. And the love He feels for us becomes our own as well. This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves.
9. The world which once proclaimed our sins becomes a proof that we are sinless and our love for everyone we look upon attest to our remembrance of the holy Self which knows no sin, and never could conceive of anything without its sinlessness. We seek for this remembrance as we turn our minds to practicing today. We look neither ahead nor backwards. We look straight into the present.  And we give our trust to the experience we ask for now. Our sinlessness is but the Will of God. This instant is our willing one with His.[1]

Personal Notes and Application:   Last year when I was first studying the Course lessons, I understood that, basically, my mind was being trained to think with love, acceptance, guiltlessness toward God, toward myself, and toward mankind.  By lesson 181, I had concluded that studying A Course in Miracles was not going to give me a magical experience; Jesus was not going to float down from the heavens, come into my heart, fill me with ecstasy, and transform me into a holy being.  I would have to ask, I would have to show, and I would have to practice my willingness to “give up” hatred, ill will, resentment, judgments, superiority/inferiority, jealousy, old wounds, imagined wounds, sad stories, sorrowful stories, false prophesies, a know-it-all attitude, bluff, arrogance, and littleness – and exchange it bit by bit for tiny holy instants of innocence, purity, goodwill, blessing, forgiveness, and Atonement. 

A Course in Miracles is the path that I chose to prepare our minds for the Kingdom of God.  A Course in Miracles explains why the traditional ways we have interpreted the gospel, revered some sages and “saints,” while castigating and torturing others, saved certain manuscripts and texts and called them holy, adopted and cherished false idols and wrongful images of God have stunted our minds, blinded our vision, and keep us in a prolonged state of separation from the very one Who promises us unity, love, and everlasting peace.  Today Jesus tells us that we must know the blocks to our attainment of the Kingdom of God in order to recognize them and put them aside. 

I had expected a miracle – as in a cloud of holiness, purity, and innocence that would sweep through me in an instant and change me, and I was a little disappointed that it was more than that – that I had to be prepared, I had to practice, I had to have things explained to me in a way that I could understand.  I thought that I was through with school, but here I was again, learning what had befallen us, the deception that has tricked and seduced and held us captive, and how we cannot escape it on our own.  Our human brains are designed to keep us trapped in this nightmare, and if we want to wake up and make our return to our Home, we cannot rely upon the very ideas, systems, and vision which has held us as slaves to its manipulations and dramas since time began.   

We must answer God’s call from within.  We have to reach for the truth.  God cannot come to a lie and make it real.  God does not come into a dream of death and despair and somehow work to take what is only a lie, an illusion, a nightmare and fix it up pretty so that it is more tolerable to us.  We must come to understand that the whole thing is a lie, that time itself is an illusion, that we are Sons of God and not sons of man. 

When we practice trusting in our brothers and seeing them as one with us, we are putting our faith in God and in God’s way of thinking.  In the world we are accustomed to seeing each other as separate beings, living separate lives, accomplishing separate things. We are used to building trust with those who look like us, think like us, and share the same values.  We are used to mistrusting those who look different, think different, and have a different set of values.  We embrace some brothers and take up arms against others.  This is how it is done here.  The harder you try to bring peace to this world, to change the nature of this world, to make the separation real and everlasting, the worse it becomes.  You trade one offense for thousands more. 

You can carry your signs and banners, you can lecture all your friends on Facebook about social justice and racial inequality, you can vote for this one and start a campaign of hatred and blame toward another for not agreeing with you, but you will only cause more unrest, more war, more injustice. 

When we focus upon the “sins” and failings of others, anger comes to block our return to God. We cannot enter into the peace of mind and the everlasting joy and love of God as long as we look upon the behaviors of those who do things that hurt, worry, and offend us through the eyes of fear.  We must embrace a new understanding of what this world is, what happens here, and why we are here. 

We are here to end the separation.  We are here to establish unity and oneness with God.  We are here to trust our brothers who are one with us.  This is not a fantasy, this is not mind games, this is not wishful thinking.  This is the reality of Christ.  When all we want to see is how holy and precious are our brothers, when we recognize the truth of Christ’s perception, this will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves. 

Today practice this holy approach a little while.  Meditate upon it.  Ask Holy Spirit to bless your encounters and interactions with your brothers and teach you to trust in Him and in them.  Here our eyes are trained on attack and defense; in God we have the eyes of love and devotion.  Here we are steeped in thoughts of sin and shame; in God we know our sinlessness is His Will and God’s Will is done. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 181. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 180

1. (169)  By grace I live. By grace I am released.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (170)  There is no cruelty in God and none in me.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review V:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, You will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Notes and Personal Application: As we say the words in Lesson 169’s lesson idea, realize that it is God’s Grace that has allowed us to leave His Kingdom in a dream state, but continue as we were created.  It is His Grace, not the world’s technology, that has simulated the separation so that we can dream and dream again the lessons we must learn from leaving His Kingdom of Love and making a world which grows old in time, a world where nothing lasts, a world of preying upon Creation instead of loving Creation. 

It is by God’s grace that the hell we have made is only a simulation, and it is God’s grace that we awaken to find that it is not real, that our lives do not end in death but in life everlasting, that we are released from the hell of our vain imaginings and return to our Father as pure and holy as when He created us. 

Be thankful for God’s grace.  Jesus tells us in lesson 169 that grace is not something that can be learned.  Grace is not the goal of A Course in Miracles.  However, the goal of our Course prepares us to accept God’s grace, to awaken from this dream of death and fear, to answer the call of God in our hearts and in our minds.  Our Course lessons and the text of A Course in Miracles helps us to become aware of things we do not know about ourselves, readies us to accept another state of being completely different from the experience of our humanity.  Our human brains cannot begin to grasp the meaning of oneness with God.  And yet it is God’s grace which calls to us, to waken from the dream of separation and specialness in which we made the world.  It is grace and the experiences that come from grace that allows us to live in the dream and be released from the dream; it is grace that allows us to share with others and see their release as well.

What better release than to realize the lesson idea presented in Lesson 170 – There is no cruelty in God and none in me.  There is no meanness in God.  The things we were taught about Him preparing a place of eternal happiness for the goody-goodies of the world and preparing a place of eternal fire and brimstone for the rest of us – are not the least bit true.  One of the main reasons that Jesus was crucified on the cross was because He told the truth about God.  He is our loving Father, the Good Shepherd, the One who cares about the sparrows.  Our Father never ordained that we prey upon each other’s flesh, let alone demand blood and meat sacrifices to appease His rage. There is no cruelty in God and there is no cruelty in us.

If you have been worshipping a cruel god, today Jesus urges us to look at our beliefs with dispassion.  Cruelty has no place in the character of God.  God is God and nothing can stand against Him.  If cruel god’s lips are smeared with blood and fire seems to burst forth from him, this god is an idol.  It will never bring you everlasting joy, peace, and love.  It cannot give you refuge.  It has no real power.  Cruel god is not your personal warrior and it will never vanquish your enemies.  Gods of cruelty are humanity’s nightmares, made to keep you in fear and bondage and keep you from your Father’s love.    

Recognizing this may be a shock to our systems, but it is our release from slavery.  For until we see the cruel god for exactly what it is, we can not lay it aside and recognize our true God and His great and abiding love for us.  We will continue to believe that cruelty can somehow defend us, save us, and make all our fears go away.  We will continue to believe in a god that makes enemies of his creations and does not accept responsibility for the ways in which they went wrong.  We will put our trust in fear and fear God instead of love Him. 

However, when we see God as Love, we are no longer burdened by the world; we no longer look through its blind eyes, but we see with the vision of Christ.  When we choose God instead of the false gods of cruelty and madness that the world’s religions offer us, our hearts and minds are filled with everlasting peace for when God is love, we are love.  We can trust in Him.  He will not let us to our own devices.  He has a plan and Creation is restored. 

Our prayer then becomes: 

Dear Father, we are like You.  We are not cruel because You are not cruel.  Your peace is ours.  When others point their fingers in accusation of how mean we are, how insensitive, how racist, and sexist and unjust – we are not tempted to agree with them, for we know who we are and what we are in You.  We bless the world.  We make our brothers one with us.  We fulfill our function in Your plan of salvation as we have received it from You.  We give thanks for all of Your creation because in Creation we see Your glory, and in Creation we find our peace.  We are holy because Your holiness has set us free from the deceptions and temptations of the world and all that would bind us to brutal humanity.  Thank you, Father.  In Jesus name.  Amen. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 180. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 179

1. (167)  There is one life, and that I share with God.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (168)  Your grace is given me.  I claim it now.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, You will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Personal Notes and Application:  As we review Lesson 167, There is one life and that I share with God, Jesus reminds us that it does not matter that there appears to be death in this world – it simply does not exist.  Nothing in time is real – it passes away into nothingness as soon as it begins – it is impossible for anything to really exist in time because time itself is not real.  Our whole experiences in the world of time then, can be likened to a dream, an imaginary state, a virtual reality where once awakened, the mind, our eternal spirits, continue as we always have – safe in the one life that we share with God. 

Jesus calls upon us to wake up to this fact.  We were created in unity of life, He reminds us, nothing, not even death can separate us from the Source of life from which we came.  As we wake up and accept the truth about ourselves, about God, about our Holiness in Christ we no longer need to be coaxed or persuaded into forsaking death in all its forms – we have no interest in it and we no longer believe in the reality of anything that does not pertain to our life in God.

In Lesson 168, we claim the grace that God gives us.  He is our Father.  He is available to us.  He answers when we call.  We call to Him because we know His Love and are certain of His devotion to us.  No longer do we try to serve a god we fear, someone we must grovel before and chastise our humanity.  There is no god who holds our mistakes against us, who terrorizes us with thoughts of hell and damnation, who would let His Son be tortured throughout eternity.  These are lies that are taught to us to control and manipulate us, to keep us from our true heritage in God, to keep us from knowing and experiencing His grace. 

God’s gift of grace restores the memory of Him to our sleeping minds, God’s gift of grace restores the certainty of the meaning of His love.  Ask Him today to give you the means by which this world will disappear, and vision will come.  And after vision, Jesus promises, we will know.  It is God’s grace that gives us light that covers our world with love.  We can watch every single fear disappear from every face as hearts rise up and take the light as their own. 

God’s grace is ours.  We claim it today. 

We come to you, Father.  And You come to those who ask.  We are the Son You love.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 179. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 178

1. (165)  Let not my mind deny the Thought of God. God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (166)  I am entrusted with the gifts of God.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, You will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Personal Notes and Application:  As we review Lesson 165 today, let us remember where our safety and peace, our joy and healing, our peace of mind, our rest, and our calm awakening abide!  In order to have the gifts of God, we must abandon all else as worthless in comparison to them.  To keep our blessings from our Father, we must make sure that we keep our mind focused upon and abiding in the Thought of God. 

All around our physical life in this world are temptations to deny the Thought of God.  On Friday, one of my cousins whom I was so close to as a little girl, was killed instantly in a head-on car crash.  Donnie was one of my best friends as a preschooler.  I can still remember spending the night at his house and getting off the school bus at each other’s houses.  We played for hours in the sandbox and sitting at the kitchen table playing with homemade dough.  In first grade, I got into trouble for helping him with his worksheets – I had been taught to help my neighbors and the teacher had not explained the concept of cheating to either one of us.  Donnie and I grew apart over the years – he had his life and I had mine, but once in a while, when we were outside working, he would stop as he was going by in his dark blue truck just to chat.  Now he has died, suddenly and what would seem like tragically.  His days on earth as a son, father, uncle, cousin, and friend are over and he will be missed greatly by those who loved and depended upon him. 

And yet, Jesus tells us that we are not to let thoughts of death and misery obscure the perfect happiness and eternal life that our Father has for us.  We are not to let the world tempt us to see through the eyes of the stranger, who would have us sob and groan over our dearly departed loved ones, but rather hold fast and be happy because we see with the vision of Christ. 

Heaven is ours for the asking – right now, today.  It comes whether we believe in it or not.  There is no trick to this.  Christ is not holding out Heaven and then taking it back because we do not believe in it enough.  We simply ask and it is given to us.  The faith lies in the asking.  We say to our Father, You are Reality and therefore this world and all that is in it, cannot be real.  The only thing that is real about this world is that it is a simulation, it is a trick to believe in a God we must fear instead of Love.  We want reality, Lord.  We want Heaven because we are tired of living in the lie of fear rather than the truth of love. 

When we accept God’s Heaven there is nothing on earth that can induce us to give it up.  The world has nothing that we want or need.  We see the world of time for what it is.  We are blind to its dark magic!  We know the end of every story here, every desire, every false judgment and harsh condemnation.  Like Christ, we become the saviors of the world.  We live in a state of such abundance that the depravities and the deprivations of this world can no longer trick us into denying thoughts of God. 

Our daily lessons helps us to remove all doubts which we have in God and in our certainty of His care.  We no longer fear our Father, for we know Him, and we love Him, and we know His love and devotion toward us.  We keep our thoughts fixed upon Him for our thoughts are meaningless without Him.  The worries and concerns, the births and the deaths, weddings and funerals, ups and downs and ins and outs of this world can no longer affect our trust in Him. 

As we review the next lesson idea, we realize that we can forego this world, because we have been entrusted with the gifts of God.  God’s trust in us has no limit.  He knows us as we really are.  He is not deceived by what the world has made of us.  He is not tempted to believe the lies of the ego or the ravages of time.  He knows that He is God and God’s Will must be done.  When we realize that He did not make this world, that this world is nothing but a simulation, a perverted dream, an imagined playground for all that can never be of God and therefore never be real – we have uncovered the truth of the matter. 

We know the world is not our home.  We may wander around in it for awhile until we come to our senses and like the Prodigal, head back to the place where we belong, where we are safe, where we are certain, where we know who and what we are now and forever. 

God calls to us.  He walks with us.  He knows who we are and what we are even when we have forgotten.  He knows Who He is in relation to us and knows that we are like Him.

This is the gift of God, and this is the gift we accept and share freely with Creation.  We share that God is Love.  We share that the world and all that is in it is not His Will and this is not His Creation.  We share that our humanity is not salvageable, and we do not want it to be.  We share that our spirits are made in God’s image and that happiness comes to us as we become one with Christ and recognize God’s gifts to us.  We are filled with joy, God’s joy, and now we go to share it with the world. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 178. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 176

1. (161)  Give me your blessing, holy Son of God. God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (162)  I am as God created me.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review V:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, You will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Personal Notes and Application:  We are taking a stand against our anger toward others when we ask them for a blessing and refer to them as a holy Son of God.  In this lesson we learned that one brother stands for all brothers, for in God we are one.  In our bodies, we seem separate and distinct; in God’s eyes we are one and we are love.  In bodies, we are colored in different shades of skin, eyes, and hair.  Our body structures are all slightly different.  We are prone to like and trust others who look and smell and share similar traits; to dislike and distrust those who look and smell and have different traits than us.  Politically, people want to deny this, to say that this is a condition that must be learned, but this is simply not so, and we need to be truthful about it in order to face the truth about humanity.  We have evolved to protect and cherish that which is like us and to war against that which is not like us. 

Today Jesus is asking us to go beyond our evolved human forms – our cherished grudges, to step out of the fear and anger toward others whom we have blamed and projected all manner of evil upon.  He requires that we choose one brother in particular to symbolize those who have caused us pain and ask this holy Son of God to bless us.  When we ask this symbol for a blessing, we are asking of him our salvation.  As we picture his face, his hands and feet, his clothing, his gestures we are to recognize that the blame and shame we are imagining about him conceals Christ from us.  We are to say to our symbolic holy brother:  Give me your blessing, O Holy Son of God.  I would behold you with the eyes of Christ and see my perfect sinlessness in you.

There were all these people that I had grudges and resentments toward.  I blamed my mother for ruining me as a child with her madness and inappropriate practices and teachings. I blamed my sister for spreading discord in the family, holding me accountable for her own failings to love and to accept certain people.  I blamed my first husband for abandoning me and leaving me with a child to raise; I blamed my beloved niece for running off with her jailbird lover when my daughter died, leaving me worried, while beside myself with grief; I blamed an ex-boyfriend for misleading me with his vows of eternal love while all the while he was consorting with a couple of married women on the side!  There were countless others who paraded about in my mind as my sworn enemies, friends who had lied to me, family members who had mocked my efforts to become something, coworkers who took credit for my work, people who seemed intent on keeping me in a place where they could control and manipulate me.  There were those who had snubbed me, clubbed me, or dubbed me as less than.   It was difficult to find one person to symbolize them all, but I finally settled upon one and she became my savior, she turned from devil into Christ simply by performing this exercise.  When we see another with the vision of Christ, we realize that we are all the Son of God, at one with Christ, that salvation does not separate us, but rather unites us. 

So lesson idea 162, “I am as God created me,” naturally follows.  If those who have caused me to be angry and fearful are one with Christ, I am also as God created me – holy, pure, sinless, and good.  I am not my human form.  I am not the character that my human form became.  I am not the role that it performed.  Me and the stranger that would usurp my identity are not one!  I am innocent, not because I allowed the stranger to convince me to forget who I am or because I let the stranger’s wrong ideas lead me astray.  I am innocent because it is a simulation, God made time as a means for us to learn the lessons of separation without it affecting our eternal Selves.

Nothing can change the fact that I am as God created me.  These words dispel the dark night; dawn has come to bless the world.  When I recognize who I am in Christ, you recognize who you are.  When you recognize who you are in Christ, the world recognizes it as well.  This is how salvation works.  Let the words of today’s lesson ring through our minds and hearts – dispelling the dark dream and welcoming the light. 

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 176. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 175

1. (159)  I give the miracles I have received.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (160) I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, You will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Personal Notes and Application:  This morning when I woke up, there were all the thoughts from dreams, the past, and all the chores waiting me for the day all in a jumble.  The aches and pains from yesterday still with me, the tired muscles, the sore back… Garden, they say.  It is so healthful, they say, but didn’t I go and get carried away with it?  Now coupled with all the other projects we have going on around this place, I am barely able to move without something hurting.

Yet beyond the pain is such happiness and joy and excitement.  There is this love of life, this deep forgiveness for all the taxes and levies against it, the respect and awe of the miracle of it all, the joy of the green sprouts pushing up through the dirt, the wilted leaves coming alive with a drink of water, the sweet green marbles tucked all in a row within a pod. 

In lesson 159, Jesus says that the only way we can understand that we are healed is when we heal others; the only way we accept forgiveness is when we forgive others, that miracles can only be experienced when we give them to others. 

The vision of Christ is the miracle in which all miracles are born.  Jesus tells us that the vision of Christ is the bond where giver and receiver are united here on earth as they are in Heaven.  When we look upon Creation, including ourselves, with the eyes of Christ, we are sinless.  There is no grudge. There is nothing but love and forgiveness.  This has been the most difficult thing for my mind to wrap itself around, but once I got it, I am free from the grudges, resentments, and stress that had plagued me for years. 

I knew that I wanted to love and to be loved, but I did not know how to love people – including myself.  I liked others when they behaved themselves and were nice to me; I did not like them when they misbehaved and disappointed me.  Simple and uncomplicated, it was the only way I could manage relationships.  To love people was to be in a constant state of forgiveness toward them, and try as I might, it seemed impossible; I could not cope.

The vision of Christ changes this completely.  We no longer require ourselves to go through the ups and downs of special relationships designed to keep us trapped in forms and fictionalized versions of “love.”  As we free ourselves of the tentacles of what poses for love in this world, we are free to love Creation in a state of forgiveness, for with the vision of Christ, we know that this world means nothing.  All of its “likes” and “dislikes,” its little hatreds, its wars and its peace, its marriages and divorces, its mean girls and bad boys, its high priests and lowly prophetesses, its dichotomies and opposites, its justice and injustice is only a distorted, perverted echo of what is real and holy and forever. 

As we ask for and receive the vision of Christ, the world can no longer get to us.  Oh, we might flare up now and again to drive the moneychangers out of the temple, but the aches and pains, the trials, and tribulations of a dream, stay in the dream.  We know it is not real.  We know that it is our desire for specialness and spite which is responsible for all this.  We know that giving up that desire and exchanging it for the vision of Christ is the wake-up call.  This is the source of all miracles.  This is what we share in order to experience.  Share this vision with someone today!

In reviewing lesson 160 we are reminded that fear is no longer the meaning of our being.  We are no longer driven to survive in the dog-eat-dog world of humanity, snapping and snarling over the limited resources, forming tribes and clans to war against those who are different from us.  When we give up fear, we give up our defenses against the world.  When we give up our defenses against the world, we forgive it for its idea of separateness, its desire to be special, to hoard, to form cliques and clubs, to love this one and despise that one.  We forgive it everything because it was all a mistake, a bad idea, a little wrinkle in eternity that evolved in time and will end in time.

In our minds then, fear is a stranger.  We are no longer afraid.  The shortages, the injustices, the struggles for dominance and power, the blacks against the whites and the whites against the blacks, the males against the females and the females against the males, the poor against the rich and the rich against the poor – none of it matters – it is a dream of death, and it ends when we open our eyes and see it for what it is. 

While our forms may be in the world, our minds are at home, at one with God.  At home with God, we begin to understand our experience in the separation through the eyes of Christ who has awakened us.  Our stint in the madhouse of opposites is over!  For now we know who and what we are in Him.   

[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 175. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).

Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com

Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now

REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.

LESSON 174

1. (157)  Into His Presence would I enter now.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
2. (158) Today I learn to give as I receive.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I.[1]

Daily Prayer for Review:

Steady our feet, our Father.  Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us.  We have no words to give to You.  We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours.  Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand.  Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You.  And if we stumble, You will raise us up.  If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering.  We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back.  Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You.  And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.  In Jesus name.  Amen.