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