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Responsibility for Sight

The power of my wanting

January 24th, 2010

In a secret dream, I believed I separated from God and created myself, the ego. I felt tremendous guilt because of this sin and desperately wanted to hide from the responsibility of creating myself.

My desire was so great, and my mind so powerful, that I caused a dream world. I erased the memory that I was the dreamer of it and substituted the belief that I was just a figure in the dream of other people. I could now believe that someone else: my parents, spouse, boss or friends, caused my happiness and my upsets.

What I am doing is unconsciously projecting my delusion that I created myself onto others, so it appears that they are creating me. They are responsible for my life; they are responsible for creating who I am. T-3.VI.8  

The power of my mind is so great that it brought about a world in which I consistently perceive others as responsible for creating me and for causing how I feel. They have to act in a certain way for me to feel happy. In this world I am the miserable victim.

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Guilt Love

Holy Relationship - Means to Oneness

The light of the holy relationship

January 23rd, 2010

You are one with God and every aspect of creation. God’s power is yours. Attack is impossible because the universe is one.

But you will not remember this while you believe attack of any kind means anything. [Your wrong mind uses attack in its ongoing attempt to prove separation.] Because of fear, you think the Father and the Son are separate. And it seems safer to attack another than to attack the great Creator of the universe.

Yet every sin and every condemnation that you perceive and justify is an attack upon your Father. You choose attack because you see it separated from its maker [yourself. You project attack onto the other, then feel justified in your defense.] And thus it seems as if love could attack and become fearful. It has no meaning. Attack is impossible because the universe is one. And that is why it has not happened, nor could be real.

Because you and your brother are not different, you cannot attack. It is necessary that you have experiences in line with truth to teach you what is natural and true. This is the function of your holy relationship. For what one thinks, the other will experience with him. What can this mean except your mind and your brother's are one? And every thought in one brings gladness to the other because they are the same. T-22.VI.11-14

This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in strength, and blazing with a light far brighter than the sun that lights the sky you see, is chosen of your Father as a means for His Own plan. This holy relationship has the power to heal all pain, regardless of its form. Only in your joint will does healing lie. For here your healing is, and here will you accept Atonement. And in your healing is the Sonship healed because your will and your brother's are joined.

Before a holy relationship there is no sin. The form of error is no longer seen, [because I no longer read false meaning into what I projected]; and reason, joined with love, looks quietly on all confusion, observing merely, "This was a mistake." And then the same Atonement you accepted in your relationship corrects the error. T-22.VI.4-5    

You will see your value through your brother's eyes, and each one is released as he beholds his savior in place of the attacker who he thought was there. Through this releasing is the world released. This is your part in bringing peace. For you have asked what is your function here, and have been answered [forgiveness]. Seek not to change it, nor to substitute another goal. This one was given you, and only this. Accept this one and serve it willingly, for what the Holy Spirit does with gifts you give your brother, to whom He offers them, and where and when, is up to Him. He will bestow them where they are received and welcomed. He will use every one of them for peace. Nor will one little smile or willingness to overlook the tiniest mistake be lost to anyone. T-22.VI.8

Child of peace, the light has come to you. T-22.VI.6  

Tags: Forgiveness Relationships

Updated Posts

Information added

January 21st, 2010

These posts have just been updated with additional information:

Reversing Effect and Cause – Getting to the Bottom of the Belief in Linear Time - summary
The Script is Written
False Beliefs
The Five Levels of Mind
Movie Guide Supplement

Also, highlighting has been added to many more recent posts.

Tags:

Be You in Charge

For I would follow You

January 19th, 2010

I was restless during my meditation this morning. I tried all my usual ways to become still, but none of them worked. Then I remembered a phrase I usually say to myself and tried it:

This holy instant would I give to you.
Be You in charge. For I would follow You,
Certain that Your direction gives me peace.

And there it was: peace, deep and complete.

Tags: Awakening Ego Forgiveness Guilt Judgment

Advaita Vedanta and ACIM

David Hoffmeister speaks on non-dualistic philosophy in Belgium

January 17th, 2010

Advaita Vedanta is basically like A Course in Miracles and, at the highest point—the experience— they meet. The metaphysics of the Course are very deep and some parts are not talked about in the Advaita Vedanta. The Course is a training program that has many stepping stone teachings, but the Course is not internally consistent. Both philosophies agree that “I need do nothing,” and that at the highest level there is no ego. But there are several differences between them. The Course differentiates between choice and free will, saying in the Clarification of Terms that there is no free will in this world. Free will is just pure happiness. The Advaita Vedanta says that at the highest level there is no choice. They lead to the same place. Some find it difficult, because these philosophies don’t meet with their experiences in this world. I am equally comfortable with both.

Enlightenment is an experience without exceptions; the personal experience disappears; it is an impersonal state of mind. Practical things still get done. We just had 25 people living together in Mallorca for a month, with all the usual cooking and laundry things to get done. Yet, without anyone giving instructions, we were all practicing guidance, being in the flow. There is no practice in the Advaita Vedanta. The Course provides a program of exercises that you can practice. In the Course, Jesus says that miracles should be involuntary, not under conscious control; one is in a state of full acceptance. Advaita Vedanta can be frustrating because one can see lazy or apathetic people who have a sort of acceptance; they just don’t care about anything. But they have no consistent state of joy, so it isn’t enlightenment.

Oneness is an experience of complete integration and wholeness. It isn’t just talking about these things without the experience. If the mind has concerns of any kind, that is the opportunity to forgive. Enlightenment is the state of seeing everything as lila, joyfully, in the same state of mind. All is symbolic; all specialness is the same. There is nothing to fear; there is just interpretation. In the state of oneness there is no commitment; it just is. Just below oneness is atonement, or correction, which is a total commitment. In form we have a curriculum, a discipline, which is given you. You must make the transition through the temporary discipline to find the atonement. There is no choice in this. It’s not difficult. You must be given the steps and you must follow them, even if they are illusions. You cannot decide the form of the curriculum. You can only choose the time you take it. You can seem to delay in form. But you do not have a choice as to whether to follow the Course or not; whether to get married or not. Armelle called me and told me “I have been guided to get married to Erik in fifteen days.” Guidance is given as steps, as how to undo the ego. When you deny the curriculum, the guidance, you feel angry or cry. In the end you must accept the curriculum.

You may believe in happiness and unhappiness. What you believe you make real for your awareness. You may think you have control over the form, but you never have control over the form. What will happen, will happen; you can save time by listening to guidance and following it. It washes away belief in opposites and you see that you had no choice, which is good. It saves time. Guidance will help you if you follow it. You can break a temporary commitment, but it will bring you pain, not in reality, but in your awareness.  

Let’s bring it up to the mind. One part of the mind, one voice, seems to want to rebel against reality. The other voice accepts reality, guides you to it. You seem to have a choice which voice to listen to. If you are guided, the Spirit will take you from one step to another. Spirit gave Armelle the guidance to get married to Erik and get tattooed rings. We all listened to them say they had the guidance to get tattooed rings. I was laughing all along because these are very powerful symbols. That is extreme guidance to help overcome the fear of commitment. The ego has such fear of commitment that it doesn’t think commitment is possible. The Holy Spirit wants to move you to total commitment. So Spirit uses steps to bridge the gap. Initially, effort and vigilance are required. In awareness, guilt was in the mind before the Course. The Course says you can think this or that, not that you can do this or that. It is about right mind or wrong mind.

You can read Advaita Vedanta and say that you don’t believe in the seeker, the search, or in choice or questioning. But I ask you, how is your life? If you say, “I’m still working on x, y and z,” then I say, “Well then, you didn’t believe what you said.” Because you still believe in choosing and questioning. In Armelle’s situation it is a matter of integrity. People who get married are in no way special. But she was guided. Spirit does not play with you; there is a purpose underneath the guidance, underneath the discipline. The ego will come in with temptations and you have to practice to stay with the guidance. The mind that is asleep and has roller coaster emotions needs to practice. The awakened mind does not choose, but the sleeping mind chooses. There are two thought systems: the ego and the Spirit. There are two emotions: love and fear. The mind that seems to choose between the two emotions is asleep and dreaming. The difference between the Course and Advaita Vedanta is just a concept.

When you believe something that is not true, you make it real in awareness, not in reality. So, for example, this room seems to have a wood floor; not that there really are wood floors. So it is a belief system that has to be undone in a practical sense until you see that it never had any reality at all.

The mind can seem to believe in the ego or not. Not believing in the ego is the Christ Mind. The other mind is mind asleep. Mind asleep believes in unreal rules. It is by listening to and following the Spirit that those beliefs are undone. All beliefs are undone. The only way to do it is by listening and following. In my mind I heard and followed guidance, and that was the path of joy. It is the parable of going from Siddhartha to the Buddha, from David to the Christ. Until there is a sense of perfect happiness, the parable has a use, a value. Jesus spent three years teaching parables because those are steps to awakening for the sleeping mind. Otherwise it is shut off. If you follow Advaita Vedanta and at every thought ask, “Who is asking the question?” that is the path. The Course has a thought system and lessons; that is the path. Mind can choose correction, atonement. “Choose again.” When you don’t feel the bliss of oneness you have a conundrum. People and bodies do not choose. But the mind is choosing between ego and Spirit every second, one or the other, fear or love. They don’t mix. Advaita Vedanta is a philosophy that points toward the mountain top. I can find seeming errors in philosophies that point the way, but they are all solved in the correction.  

Practically, I will not tell you what to do, but I will join with you in the mind in looking at the beliefs and the conditions in the mind. What you did already in the script is not something that can be changed or controlled. But you can control the direction of your thinking, whether to align with Spirit or not. You must reclaim that ability to choose God: “Holy Spirit, decide for God for me.” The choice is in the mind; it is not in persons. The mind is to listen and to follow.

Tags: Awakening

Living Experience of Forgiveness

Told by Erik and Armelle Archbold

January 16th, 2010

This posting is about an amazing story/opportunity now unfolding.

In October 2009 Armelle was guided to marry Erik on two weeks notice, even though she had never met him, and go on a world tour with him to demonstrate Healing the Mind. He promptly agreed to both ideas; they were married, and the tour has begun.

Their world tour is about their healing. But fortunately, as it says in A Course in Miracles, “When I am healed I am not healed alone.”

Tags: Love Miracle

Many Forms One Correction

There is no loss

January 15th, 2010

David Hoffmeister: Today we’ll look at form and content. This Course sentence is probably an idea you’re familiar with: "The only judgment involved is the Holy Spirit's one division into two categories; one of love, and the other the call for love." T-14.X.7.

The Holy Spirit sorts all the messages that the mind seems to receive from the outside world into two categories. One is an extension of love, when you feel a warm resonance, like love is being extended to you. And the other one is the call for love: when someone is in fear or believes in the lack of love, then they’re calling for love. If it’s a call for love, then you need to answer with love.

But the ego has a third category, and that is attack. So if you don't perceive love or a call for love and you perceive attack, either you think you've attacked someone or you think someone else is attacking you. Defenses come up because it's misperceived. With this third option, the ego confuses the Holy Spirit's division into two categories.

Tags: Ego Jesus Miracle

Private Thoughts

Awakening Mind summary

January 12th, 2010

What are Private Thoughts?

In the unholy instant you thought you separated from God and could make your own world, usurping God’s function of creation. Your private perceived images, judgments and opinions make your own unique world. You identify with these private thoughts; you think they are who you are, and that you can control your life. But “It is a fact that there are no private thoughts.” W-19.2  What you think are your private thoughts are meaningless, outside rather than within, past rather than present. They are not real. They are nothing. When you think them your mind is a blank. You unconsciously carry guilt about your private thoughts because they are attacks on God.

Private Thoughts Are an Ego Defense

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Guilt Judgment

I Want the Peace of God

I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.

January 11th, 2010

I want the peace of God. The peace of God is everything I want. The peace of God is my one goal; the aim of all my living here, the end I seek, my purpose and my function and my life, while I abide where I am not at home. W-205

I must choose to hear one of two voices in my mind.

1) In the past I chose to listen to the ego, or self-concept, which is the voice for separation.

Listening to the ego I perceived an objective world and kept busy in it. This demonstrated my choice to be separate from God. I used everything and everyone to maintain separation.

2) Today I choose to listen to the Holy Spirit, which is the Voice for God within me.

Listening to the Holy Spirit I see the world as just a projected illusion, forgive it, and invite the Holy Spirit to show me a different world. I do not know what anything is for.

So I say to the Holy Spirit:

Tags: Forgiveness

I Don’t Know

What the darkness is

January 9th, 2010

When my older brother committed suicide I was 19 and my world fell apart. He was my idol and my hero. He alone made sense to me in an alcoholic household. My whole belief system seemed to collapse with his death. I felt I no longer knew anything about life, except that I didn’t fit in it. Depressed, I hitchhiked around Europe for a few months, then took the ferry over to Tangiers, intent on crawling off, perhaps to die.

The main square in Marrakesh was surreally bright, hot and almost completely deserted in the middle of the day. In the distance I heard the light tinkle of laughter. It was such a free and breezy sound I was drawn toward it. I found an American couple trying to communicate with a Moroccan electrician who spoke French, Berber and Arabic, but no English. Yet they were all not only good-natured about their misunderstandings, they were really enjoying them. Michael and Lee would slowly ask “Joe” a question. He would pause a second, then earnestly reply. They would look at each other with puzzled faces, make playful guesses about what they thought he said, and burst out laughing. He would laugh too. They were walking slowly along having a great time and getting nowhere.

It was irresistible. I spoke French and could see another level of humor they were missing. I asked if I could join them and they welcomed me. And sure enough, now I could make jokes with Joe that they couldn’t get. The two of us would start to laugh and all four of us would laugh at the situation. Then the three of us would laugh at something in English, I’d explain it in French to Joe and we’d all laugh again; Joe would add something to me and we were off again. What a riot. Joe took three days off from work to guide us all over town.

A week or so later I was lying face down on a skinny hotel bed in Casablanca, feeling like shit, in anticipation of taking the train to Algeria. I was back dragging along after the crawl-off-and-die idea. But it had just now lost its appeal; I was dreading it. I think I asked for a way out.

Then, in the distance, I heard Michael’s cheerful voice echoing up the stairs and down the hall, “Where’s Andy?” My heart leapt! I couldn’t believe they’d actually found me. Before they’d set off for Taroudant they’d suggested, in the unlikely event our paths crossed again, that we could meet at a bar in Casablanca owned by a friend of Joe’s. I’d stopped there and there was no sign of them; but in a futile just-in-case gesture, I left a note with the bartender that I was not where I had said I’d be. And they’d found me! I was the happiest man alive! We spent several delightful days together and I forgot all about Algeria.   

The Holy Spirit is always present. When I let go of the “I know” mind and ask for help, He answers the prayer of my heart.

Tags: Love

The Ego’s Theater

Cause, effect and time

January 8th, 2010

God is. God is Cause and His Effect is His Son. Both create with their thoughts. Cause and effect are simultaneous. All is One.

In a single instant, a thought believed separation from God could be possible, fell into a dream, made the world of form and time, and forgot doing so.

The belief in separation then seemed to separate into separate minds, each in a body with which it identified. The wrong mind made the world like a movie theatre to keep the mind deceived while attempting to manage its guilt and its fear of being punished by God for the sin of separation.

To make the movie convincing, the wrong mind split cause and effect apart and turned them around. The wrong mind’s special effects process worked like this: The wrong mind, (false) cause would project its guilt as a thought-image (effect) onto the screen of the world. Then, in a gap in linear time immediately after each projection, it would forget having projected it. The mind would then perceive the image as a real independent agent attacking its innocence. Thus the thought-image that started as effect reappeared as a causal agent, and a guilty one at that. The mind would then plan and execute its defense against it. This process presented itself as a constant steam of (false) perception, making it appear as though illusions from the past determined the present. The mind was doing this to itself with no awareness that the wrong mind was making it all up.

“What you believe is true for you. In this sense the separation has occurred.” T-2.VII.5.

We pretend to live in this nightmare past. The mind is addicted to fear, to the wrong mind. It attempts to resolve its fears and problems by the magic of changing or rearranging images in the world. This may appear to work for a time, but it never really works because the fear is not in the world; it has just been set up to appear there. The fear is in the mind.

But we are saved. In the instant of the separation illusion, God placed the Holy Spirit in the mind. Each moment the mind has a choice between the right mind of Love and the wrong mind of fear.

Mastery through Love is the only way for us to resolve our problems. Forgiveness, seeing the false as false and allowing correction by the Holy Spirit, is a reflection of love. To choose the right mind is to choose miracle-minded thinking. A miracle is a present decision to forgive that ends wrong-minded thought, thus collapsing time and returning the mind to love. Fear guilt and anger are no more; in place of the reeking movie theater, the Holy Spirit gives us the smiling and peaceful real world.

Tags: Guilt Love Miracle Time

I Give Purpose

There are only two purposes

January 4th, 2010

The Purpose of Separation requires multiple choices in form.

It is never the forms that I am watching that upset me.
It is the thought that if things were different I would be better off.
This thought occurs because I am feeling incompletion and lack within.
I have forgotten my mistaken choice—the choice for separation (fear, guilt, death), for the ego thought system.
I think there is something to do, something to choose between.
I select images, make orders of objects and sequence events.
This is judgment, the making of my reality, the usurping of God, for which I feel guilt.
My beliefs are projected on the screen of the world and guilt is attributed to a doing or a not-doing.
But there are no real choices between specifics in form because all are unreal projections.
Each choice is based on the false premise that I am a person, the subject, the ego.
If I am feeling upset I am choosing separation, giving value to the ego, believing that the past is present.

The Purpose of Forgiveness is the choice to surrender to the Holy Spirit.

Tags: Awakening Ego Forgiveness Guilt Judgment

Being in the Flow

Awareness of dreaming

December 30th, 2009

Today I was aware of dreaming. I just flowed happily along in a detached way as I drove my wife to Boston, where she had a very positive experience showing her art work. As I looked at cars and people, they no longer had a sense of hard physicality about them, which I found to be refreshing and fun. Everything unfolded perfectly.

But when we got home at about 3:30 I realized that I had lost a lens from my sunglasses somewhere during the ride home. Then I opened my e-mail and found that my son had requested that I deposit some money in his bank as he was about to overdraw his account. This set up clicked with me as I remembered that his bank and my bank each had branches in Goffstown. I felt certain that I would find my lens if I went to back Goffstown.

So I drove back to where I thought the lens would be and searched, but it wasn’t there. Then I tried a small shop where I had grabbed a coffee and a girl found my lens in a corner on the floor; she was delighted. And I had just enough time to withdraw money from one bank and deposit it in the other before it closed.

Tags: Forgiveness

Sickness - The Big Picture

Summarized from David Hoffmeister

December 29th, 2009

All apparent symptoms of sickness are the result of an attack thought, the attempt to project unconscious guilt stemming from the belief in separation onto the body. The mind believes it is guilty; and it is so determined to hang on to that concept, that sickness seems like a small price, because sickness is a witness that the body can tell the mind how to feel. It is a witness that smallness, that vulnerability must be true. The deceived mind so much wants to be right about being a separate self that it uses the body as proof. The sick body is the witness that it calls to the stand.

In the miracle it is seen that the mind was mistaken about what it thought it was; it no longer sees that it is in the body and no longer needs to see the body as a symbol of sin or as proof that separation is real. That is where the patient can rise up in the miracle and say, “I have no need of this.” Because the decision is seen to be a decision of mind and returned to the mind. The body is no longer victim.

In the ultimate sense the body can’t be sick and the body can’t be well. The mind in the miracle sees it is not in a body, and therefore the body isn’t being used as an effect or employed to be the victim. The body is seen as causeless and not a real effect. It is perceived to be outside the mind instead of containing the mind.

Tags: Ego Guilt Judgment

The Choice for Health

My experience

December 29th, 2009

The initial thoughts are summarized from A Course in Miracles, Lesson 136.

The Truth is whole and gives me everlasting life. Truth wants to give me happiness. I am not a body; I am free, for I am still as God created me.

But my wrong mind is attached to body identification, to war and vain imaginings. My mind is deluded. When truth arises I perceive it as a threat and defend against it. I use sickness as a defense against the truth, as a way to hide reality. A defense takes parts of the whole, sees them as wholes within themselves, and assembles them into an illusion, which stands as an attack upon the whole.

Tags: Ego Love Miracle

Attentiveness to Spirit

Paying attention over the holidays

December 28th, 2009

This letter is from Kirsten Buxton, a Messenger of Peace with Awakening Mind.

Dear Friends,

Christmas seems to be a time where extra vigilance is required to stay right-minded. Expectations to see or call relatives and maintain past associations come into the mind, providing many opportunities to ask the Holy Spirit to ‘decide for God for me’. This is the perfect time to strengthen in the Spirit, to choose to look at the motivation behind each call or connection, and to honestly observe ‘how do I really feel’ before, during and after these interactions. The ego sets the relationships in this world up, and so they do involve reciprocity and guilt. With the purpose of awakening, each interaction and communication must be for the purpose of forgiveness; otherwise the purpose is maintaining guilt. And this we do not want.

Tags: Awakening Guilt Relationships

Peace of God

His Will is wholly without opposite

December 26th, 2009

The peace of God is the simple understanding that His Will is wholly without opposite... Now is the mighty Will of God Himself His gift to you. He does not seek to keep it for Himself. Why would you seek to keep your tiny frail imaginings apart from Him? The Will of God is One and all there is. This is your heritage. The universe beyond the sun and stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive, belong to you. God's peace is the condition for His Will. Attain His peace, and you remember Him. M-20.6

Tags: Awakening

Oneness

My mind/Christ Mind

December 26th, 2009

My mind can never be lost. "In me is His Creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life."

I have been playing a game of mind asleep, of self-deception, of separation. I have found no real enjoyment in this.

I have One Self. Now I desire to awaken to the full experience of Christ Mind, losing nothing and gaining everything.

Tags: Awakening Self

Undoing Linear Time

David Hoffmeister

December 19th, 2009

Hypothetical thinking is the whole problem, that things could somehow be different from how they are. Thinking that the future can be different than the past keeps you stuck in time. The script is written. Only handing over what you see to the Holy Spirit will get you out of time. Learn to give time over to the Holy Spirit and you shorten time for everyone. See it completely differently, in the now. There are no problems right now. They are all time-based, all hypothetical; the future is the past. Seeking to change the world is seeking to change the past. “I see only the past.” W-7 It is over and gone. The mind fears future consequences; protects the body. We believe there is safety where there isn’t safety.

But the whole thing is a trick. What if you set aside your fear of consequences and live from love? The ego spun out the linear script. But to the Holy Spirit, time is simultaneous. The Holy Spirit is about the collapse of time in the holy instant and that is brought about by desire. You do nothing, let your mind rest. Stillness is energizing; this is a complete reversal of the thinking of the world.

The most useful thing you can do is really desire God, desire awakening. Let go of all concepts and the mechanics of spirituality. To judge not requires a lot of trust. The holy instant is not a moment in time; it is a state of being before time. In The Matrix, Neo is waiting for the oracle to tell him he’s the one. But there is nothing outside of you that can tell you you’re the one. She tells him to read the “Know thy self” sign. He says, “I’m not the one.” She just reflects his mind. No one can tell you who you are. When your mind is ready to accept what it really is, it does. You cannot find yourself in duality. Inside and outside are duality, more concepts.

Tags: Awakening Self Time

Demonstrate You Are Not an Ego

Bill Thetford's example

December 18th, 2009

Frances Vaughan speaks of a particularly important aspect of Bill's acceptance:

One of Bill's gifts was a presence that enabled people to grow. He was very accepting. He never tried to impose his own views on anybody. I would describe his way of being as an absence of personality noise. He created a safe place for people to be who they were. He was definitely very attentive to whomever he was with; it was as though he didn't need to take up any room. By making a space for you to fill up, he made you feel that you could just be who you are.

When I talked to Bill I felt he really listened and could understand what I had to say. That was one of the nicest things about him. He wasn't full of his own agenda or ideas about the way things should be. He provided a spaciousness and a quality of listening that was very deep. I felt he gave loving, non-interfering attention to everyone. That is a great gift that can be very healing.

Tags: Ego

Vision

Lesson 158

December 14th, 2009

"Into His Presence would I enter now," W-157 ushers in the experience of the joy of life, a touch of Heaven. This experience leaves me with an awareness of perfect Love, [metaphorically] a transformative vision of Christ's face, that I can offer everyone. The Holy Spirit has dreamed this journey for me.   

In Lesson 158 Jesus gives me a gift--Christ's vision! This is the point of the lesson. "Our concern is with Christ's vision. This we can attain." Unlike the revelation of Oneness, I can learn vision. "Today I learn to give as I receive." I demonstrate vision in order to learn it. Jesus explains it clearly:

Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees.

Tags: Forgiveness Giving Jesus Love Miracle Vision

Have a Happy Day

December 12th, 2009

Your day is not at random. The script is written. There is no freedom from what must occur.
This is not a problem, however, because you do have freedom in whether or not you experience happiness. Your happiness is linked to how you make decisions.

Two must be joined before there can be a decision; so you always ask advice before any decision is made. Your happiness is set by the counsel of the advisor you choose to make the decision with.

When you join with the Holy Spirit in the desire for happiness, your decisions result in happiness.

Tags: Ego Judgment

Three Songs

Resta Burnham

December 11th, 2009

Be Lifted Up

Be lifted up, high above the ground. Be lifted up where holiness looks down
and shows you that the battlefield of angry ghosts was never real,
and shows you all is in your mind: The world's a mask you hide behind.
Be lifted up, into a higher place. Be lifted up, beyond all time and space.
Let Spirit teach you how to see, the miracle will set you free
from images that never lived, that disappear when you forgive.
Be lifted up, into the quiet truth that lets you share love's gentle point of view,
where fragmentation is undone within the wholeness of God's Son.
A different world then shines with peace when grievances have been released.
Be lifted up into your holy home. Behold the light of glory that's your own.
Remember Who You really are, the Child of God, safe in His heart.
Remember that He ever sings this song to lead you back to Him.
Be lifted up. Be lifted up. Be lifted up to God.

Love's Manifesto

Tags:

The Script is Written

Condensed from Awakening Mind

December 9th, 2009

Life seems to be linear: the past is behind me, here I am now, and I’ve got certain things to deal with in the future. But the Course teaches that the script is written. W-158 The script is past and over. It is like watching a movie. It is not an interactive thing. It just seems interactive as long as it is perceived to be fragmented and to not be over.

During that tiny instant of madness, all of the perceptions that ever could be were spun out. The script is written, over and done. In the Rules for Decision it says there is no way of avoiding what must happen. It is not a question of free will. Jesus says that my will does not have anything to do with this world; my will is in Heaven. My will is complete happiness in my Father’s Will. It doesn’t meaningfully translate to the world. My will seems to be imprisoned while I am in this world. We can’t equate that with choice.

So the question is, "What do I have control over?" The only choice I have is how I look upon the situation, the meaning that I give to the script playing in front of me. I have a choice on how I look at the script; I have a choice between two lenses.

I can look at it through the ego lens, in which case I get mad, sad, fearful or depressed.
Or
I can see it differently, through the Holy Spirit’s lens and experience the miracle that results in peace.

God did not create the world; He does not have anything to do with the perceptual world. "Nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists." Form is not real because it occurred during the unholy instant in the past. The past is gone; it is over and done with. There is no reality to the script.

Jesus says we are all in the present; it is all right here – all of it! It is all in Divine Order. But as long as I perceive myself as having different levels with conflicting goals, I can’t see the Divine Order. It is right under my nose. Everything is perfect. I have to call to the Holy Spirit, "Help me, because I am not  experiencing that everything is for my own best interest."

Lesson 25 says that purpose is meaning. I do not know what anything is for; therefore it is meaningless to me. Everything is for my own best interests. That is what it is for; that is its purpose; that is what it means. It is in recognizing this that my goals become unified. It is in recognizing this that what I see is given meaning.

"The script is written" means the cosmos is past. The choice is the miracle, to see the past as over and gone, instead of believing that the future is different from the past. The images are past, and the deceived mind, asleep and dreaming, believes that it lives in the past. Yet Life is Eternal and the closest approximation to Eternity is Now. The Workbook lessons are designed to help me release everything I think I think, and everything I think I see, to behold the Light beyond the veil – the Present – and See with the Vision of Christ.

As I let go of all the meaning that the ego has written upon the world, the Holy Spirit will bless it. "Think of yourself as completely at peace with everyone and everything, safe in a world that protects you and loves you, and that you love in return." W-68 This is a whole different way of looking at the world.

Listening to the Holy Spirit and following that Voice eliminates all conflicts. I no longer have a menu of options. I am following inner guidance as the dreamer of the dream; I am not trying to change or control the script. I flow along effortlessly observing something that has already happened. I’m not looking back and saying “This could have been different,” or “We need to do this differently.” I am also not looking forward, planning, scheming, and straining to get things to go the way I want.

Strain is believing that I am in the dream, that I am a person thinking, “I could be somewhere else” or “this should be different than it is.”

There is no causation in the world. My deceived mind is denying that what I perceive is just a projection of thought. I am doing it to myself. The script was written in an instant, but as it unfolds, it gives the illusion of linear time unfolding. In my sleeping state, my perception is unreliable and continually changing. I must see that I made these toys up, and by giving another purpose to the toys I can see that they aren’t real, that they don’t have any life.

Instead of the tunnel vision of subject/object split, there is a higher way of looking at the world with the Holy Spirit, a non-dualistic way of seeing the whole. If I can get back far enough in the mind to be the observer, I will see that everything is interconnected. That is seeing One thing. That is beautiful, what Jesus calls the forgiven world, the real world, or true perception. It is a way of seeing that is whole, not fragmented.

I get into difficulty when I try to analyze "the script is written." The script in a play or in a movie is a linear story. The problem with analyzing "the script is written" is that time is really simultaneous and not linear. If I ask, "Can I change the script?" I become confused, because it is impossible to understand a linear metaphor. Clarity is simply seeing that I have to forgive the past. I have to let it go. When I forgive, time is simultaneously over.
   
Time is often represented in a time line of past, present and future. But if I take that line, like a dry spaghetti noodle, and turn one end away from my eye and look along it, it turns into a point! A point is simultaneous. Time is simultaneous; it is not linear. That explains the script metaphor. I can stop trying to figure out linear metaphors and behold the cosmos as whole.

Another way to look at the “script” is as the ego’s history of the world, which includes every lifetime. As a character in this history, I have no control of my destiny; it is already written. The ego’s purpose for the script is to make sin, separation, guilt, attack and death seem real. Whenever I become upset with the unfolding of the script, I am perceiving it from within the script, where I have no choices. But I can choose the meaning I give to it. The way out is to turn to the Holy Spirit and ask to see it differently, to release my identification with personhood, to remember “I don’t know what anything is for,” and to lift my mind above the “battleground” of the script to a place of safety.

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Miracle Time Vision

Watching My Mind

The process

December 8th, 2009

I pay attention to what I am thinking and feeling. I notice when I am not at peace and ask myself what is causing my upset. I often think my upset is caused by a person, event or situation.

I am wrong. I need to remember that I am never upset for the reason I think, that the reason for my upset is never in form.

What is upsetting me is my thought that I would be happier if something in form were different. This thought is a conclusion based on my underlying beliefs:

Tags: Body Ego Forgiveness Guilt Judgment

His Holy Sinlessness Itself

Thank you

December 6th, 2009

I got out of bed today and went right to my morning meditation. I was thinking time was short because there were three things I wanted to get done before 8:00AM. In meditation, I kept trying to let go of them, become still, and focus on spirit. But my mind kept drifting back to what I was planning to do.

I finally became frustrated—a sure signal to me that I needed the Holy Spirit’s help. I became still and asked sincerely for that help, went above the battleground, and had a serious talk with myself. What is important here? What is it for?

I looked at each of the three things and imagined what the real benefit or loss would be if I did or didn’t do it. The conclusion was that none of them mattered at all, done or not done; actually not in the least bit, because they involved my body, my self-image and my possessions, all of which are illusions my ego uses to keep me from the truth. The ego would have me believe that I should feel guilty if I don’t do them and so I should focus on them; I should stay in the wrong mind.

The truth is “I need do nothing.” Why? Because my state of mind is the only thing that is important. The right-minded use of these situations is not the ego’s purpose of guilt and distraction, but the Holy Spirit’s purpose of forgiveness, which is seeing that they are false. I do see that they are false. I let go of wanting to do them. This feels better.

But I still feel some guilt. I ask the Holy Spirit, and am reminded that I am God’s Son. “I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His Own.” Wow. I didn't separate. This is the truth. I am as God created me. I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His Own. I let this sink in.

It seems as if a great weight is suddenly lifted from me. Not just guilt about those three stupid things, but all my guilt. It is all the same. It is all nothing; just a mind trick. It is gone! Thank you God.

I have been carefree and laughing a lot today. And now I am again deeply thankful.

Tags: Awakening Forgiveness Guilt Miracle

Go Deeper Within

Selections from David Hoffmeister

December 4th, 2009

When progress in meditation and peace of mind seems slow and frustrating, this is always a Call to go deeper within. There is a tremendous fear of looking within, for the ego has convinced the sleeping mind that God will punish those that have “left” Heaven.

Christ teaches in the Course:

To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning. No belief is neutral. Every one has the power to dictate each decision you make. For a decision is a conclusion based on everything that you believe. T-24.in.2

Tags: Awakening Self

Favorite Workbook Lessons

My mind holds only what I think with God

November 25th, 2009

I put together a list of my favorite ACIM Workbook Lessons, about 80, in a one-page document to help me in my reviews.

Tags: Awakening Self

Razor's Edge

and Hindu mysticism

November 23rd, 2009

I located an article the shows how W. Somerset Maugham's novel, The Razor's Edge, integrates spiritual wisdom from the Hindu Upanishads. I edited it down to a four-page document. The truth is eternal.

David Hoffmeister recently spoke about similarities between the Advaita Vedanta and A Course in Miracles. His talk is summarized here.

Tags: Self

Responding to a Call for Help

With forgiveness or with magic?

November 22nd, 2009

What is the most helpful thing I can give to or do for my brother? I've got to choose between forgiveness and magic.

Forgiveness
To forgive is to see the things, people and events in the world as false. Whenever I feel irritated I need to stop and forgive myself for thinking that something I imagined was reality. When I understand that the perception is false, my mind lets it go. With the Holy Spirit I can then see the situation differently. This is how I change my mind about the world.

Magic
Magic is when I attempt to rely on myself, and I am relying on myself when I try to change something in the world; I am attempting to substitute my will for God’s, which confirms my belief in the separation. My ego mind believes that changing things in the world works. But all my attempts to change the world are “pathetic” and do nothing. Magic is a sorry substitute for true assistance. There is no substitute for the Will of God. M-16.8-10

The wish to help
My wish to help a brother can reinforce error. This is because in order to perceive that my brother needs my help in the world, I have to see him as a body that is sick or lacking, which is actually just to see images of my projected guilt. T-28.III.2, M-4.X.1 So my attempt to give him help in form reinforces the error of separation and guilt for both of us. And it also reinforces the error of my magic wish to be the provider of help. “It is this double wish that makes the help of little value, and must lead to undesired outcomes.” M-17.2:4  

When I first read this in the Manual I was confused. Jesus was steering me away from the way I usually showed that I loved somebody. How, then, can I be truly helpful and extend love to a brother?

Forgiveness is the only gift I give

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Giving

Lesson One

Crucial

November 21st, 2009

“Nothing I see in this room means anything.” This is explained in Lesson 51: “The reason this is so is that I see nothing, and nothing has no meaning.”

I see nothing! That is a big one! My cat is nothing? My partner isn’t real? My body is nothing? Yes, they are nothing and have no meaning.

This is the first lesson and the whole Course hinges on it. Realizing I see nothing and that nothing has no meaning is the requirement for forgiveness.

To forgive is to see the false as false. I must fully realize that the meaning I gave to what I perceive is false. Because only when the mind understands that the perception is false and has no meaning will it let it go.  

Another word for “forgive” is “overlook.” Here I need to be honest with myself. This does not allow me to take a shortcut by overlooking an upsetting perception, by skipping over it or pretending it’s insignificant. Especially at the beginning, I must look at the upsetting perception and determine that it is false before my mind can completely let it go. Only this will relieve the upsetting emotion that comes with it.

To determine it is false I must understand why it is false. It is false because it is based on my mistaken beliefs in a world of scarcity, separation and attack. These beliefs developed from the ego’s foundational false belief that I separated from God. Beliefs are the key to changing your mind. “No belief is neutral. Every one has the power to dictate each decision that you make.” T-24.in.2

I must fully understand that what I think I see is only an illusion in my mind. Only then can I dismiss it, let it go.

Tags: Ego Forgiveness

Choice

Identity, perception and my mistaken attitude

November 20th, 2009

My Recent Mistake

Yesterday morning, just as I was about to begin a task, a member of my ACIM group called me. He said he wanted to drop his car off at a garage and asked if I would give him a ride home afterwards. I thought, “He’s a brother asking for help; I’ve got to say yes.” I had been planning to do some things and felt reluctance about having to leave them to drive him around. I thought, “He’s always asking me to do this; why doesn’t he get his act together?” I gave him the ride and on the way home I ate three ice cream sandwiches. Evidently I was not at peace.

My Redemption

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Love

How I’m Stuck

And how it shifts

November 14th, 2009

My mind is vast, all-inclusive and joyful.

But I have restricted myself to a sleeping ego state in which my “thinking” is the internal verbalization of my reactions to perceived images. This gives me the illusion of knowing what is going on. People-images seem to confirm my “reality,” but they are merely acting out wishes that I forget having made. I am the one projecting the images in the vain hope of putting fear out of my mind. It doesn’t work. Yet I cling to the nightmare of being a person because, deep down, I mistakenly believe that I separated from God.

Now Jesus tells me the truth, that I am the Son of God, the Christ Mind, and can awaken to the reality of peace, love and joy. God loves me and His Will for me is perfect happiness. "The peace of God is the simple understanding that His Will is wholly without opposite." M-20 I want this.

To undo my belief in the ego/person self, I practice seeing that the ego and the images are false. I practice, practice, practice. I live so as to demonstrate that I am not an ego, that I do not value the ego’s falsehoods. As I let fearful perceptions go, the Holy Spirit replaces them with happy ones. I question beliefs. I ask the Holy Spirit for guidance. I become still and seek communion with God through prayer. Jesus gives me miracles—glimpses of my One Holy Self. And when I’m finally ready, I awaken.

Tags: Awakening Ego Forgiveness

Where’s the Fun in That?

A New Purpose

November 11th, 2009

I used to meet with friends, listen to them (automatically judge everything they said), become involved in the conversation, offer my comments and opinions, and part with a warm feeling of connection. Ah, the good old days (!?)

Now my purpose is forgiveness. In the morning I ask for a happy day of forgiveness. I’m happy to see my friends. But when I listen, I immediately notice I’m judging. I identify the judgment, see it is false, and let it go. Something else is said and I need to forgive again; and again. I realize my whole basis of interaction has been based on judgment. I want to share this idea, to talk about this, but it would break the easy flow of conversation. So I’m stuck, teetering with one foot on the dock of egoic people-pleasing and one in the boat of spirit.

In my next quiet moment I ask Spirit about it.        
What do you really want?
The peace of God.
And where is that?
In my mind.
When you feel connection, what are you connected with?
Holy Spirit, Self, God.
And while you believe yourself in time, where can you recognize Spirit?
In my brother; he is innocent; he is Spirit; regardless of anything he might say.
Focus on the content (Love), bless him, and overlook the form (body and words).
What about my words?
I’ll give them to you.
Oh, no problem.

Here’s the fun in that: I’m relaxed, present in the moment, (closer to being) single-minded, with a deep sense of appreciation and joy.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Merrily down the stream.

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Judgment Love Self

The Power of Wanting

Rebirth

November 10th, 2009

My mind is very powerful. My mind has been deceived, however, and has believed in the illusion of separation. It became accustomed to wanting things like money, food and friends and not wanting pain and loss.

I see clearly that in this illusory world, money, food and friends are brief possibilities, but pain, loss and death are inevitable.

I am coming to understand that God is real and that I am indeed His Son. He offers me genuine peace, love and joy forever.

Tags: Awakening

What Do I Know?

That I need to listen to the Voice for God

November 9th, 2009

There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will see you know not what you are. It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is.
I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself.
…in this learning is salvation born. And What you are will tell you of Itself. T-31.V.17

The savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts, and prepared to look on only what the present holds. It cannot judge because it does not know. And recognizing this, it merely asks, "What is the meaning of what I behold?" Then is the answer given. And the door held open for the face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks, in innocence, to see beyond the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear against the vision of the Christ in you. T-31.VII.13

I do not know what anything is for. To me, the purpose of everything is to prove that my illusions about myself are real. It is for this purpose that I attempt to use everyone and everything. It is for this that I believe the world is for. Therefore I do not recognize its real purpose. The purpose I have given the world has led to a frightening picture of it. Let me open my mind to the world's real purpose by withdrawing the one I have given it, and learning the truth about it. W-55 (25)

This day my mind is quiet, to receive the Thoughts You offer me. And I accept what comes from You, instead of from myself. I do not know the way to You. But You are wholly certain. Father, guide Your Son along the quiet path that leads to You. Let my forgiveness be complete, and let the memory of You return to me. W-291.2

Father, I want what goes against my will, and do not want what is my will to have. Straighten my mind, my Father. It is sick. But You have offered freedom, and I choose to claim Your gift today. And so I give all judgment to the One You gave to me to judge for me. He sees what I behold, and yet He knows the truth. He looks on pain, and yet He understands it is not real, and in His understanding it is healed. He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today. I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your Own. And He will speak for me, and call Your miracles to come to me. W-347.1

Tags: Ego Judgment

The Holy Spirit's Perspective

Or Roseanne Roseannadanna's?

November 5th, 2009

I think all day; always talking to myself in my head, often about a problem.

As the great mystic, Roseanne Roseannadanna, used to say on Satuday Night Live, “Ya know, it’s always something!”

But is it?

Actually, I only think I think. Because it is all about the past, which is the unreal being recycled in a variety of forms. So it is more accurate to say I hallucinate all day.

There is no world. As David Hoffmeister points out in Awakening through A Course in Miracles, “The world is only unreal thoughts in the mind.”

There is only Mind. This is the Mind of God and Christ. The Christ mind is my mind, because I am God’s Son, Christ. Since the unholy instant, however, I’ve been needlessly afraid of God and hiding in sleep. In my sleeping state I’ve been projecting fearful images of myself and others.

Tags: Forgiveness Self

I feel the Love of God within me now.

The Law of Seeing

October 31st, 2009

When I feel the Love of God within me, this is what I see: World of Love

When my beliefs block the Love of God, this is what I see: World of Hatred

LESSON 189    I feel the Love of God within me now.
   There is a light in you the world can not perceive.  And with its eyes you will not see this light, for you are blinded by the world.  Yet you have eyes to see it.  It is there for you to look upon.  It was not placed in you to be kept hidden from your sight.  This light is a reflection of the thought we practice now.  To feel the Love of God within you is to see the world anew, shining in innocence, alive with hope, and blessed with perfect charity and love.
   Who could feel fear in such a world as this?  It welcomes you, rejoices that you came, and sings your praises as it keeps you safe from every form of danger and of pain.  It offers you a warm and gentle home in which to stay a while.  It blesses you throughout the day, and watches through the night as silent guardian of your holy sleep.  It sees salvation in you, and protects the light in you, in which it sees its own.  It offers you its flowers and its snow, in thankfulness for your benevolence.
   This is the world the Love of God reveals.  It is so different from the world you see through darkened eyes of malice and of fear, that one belies the other.  Only one can be perceived at all.  The other one is wholly meaningless.  A world in which forgiveness shines on everything, and peace offers its gentle light to everyone, is inconceivable to those who see a world of hatred rising from attack, poised to avenge, to murder and destroy.
   Yet is the world of hatred equally unseen and inconceivable to those who feel God's Love in them.  Their world reflects the quietness and peace that shines in them; the gentleness and innocence they see surrounding them; the joy with which they look out from the endless wells of joy within.  What they have felt in them they look upon, and see its sure reflection everywhere.
   What would you see?  The choice is given you.  But learn and do not let your mind forget this law of seeing: You will look upon that which you feel within.  If hatred finds a place within your heart, you will perceive a fearful world, held cruelly in death's sharp-pointed, bony fingers.  If you feel the Love of God within you, you will look out on a world of mercy and of love.
   Today we pass illusions, as we seek to reach to what is true in us, and feel its all-embracing tenderness, its Love which knows us perfect as itself, its sight which is the gift its Love bestows on us.  We learn the way today.  It is as sure as Love itself, to which it carries us.  For its simplicity avoids the snares the foolish convolutions of the world's apparent reasoning but serve to hide.
   Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself.  Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed.  Hold onto nothing.  Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything.     Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God.
   Is it not He Who knows the way to you?  You need not know the way to Him.  Your part is simply to allow all obstacles that you have interposed between the Son and God the Father to be quietly removed forever.  God will do His part in joyful and immediate response.  Ask and receive.  But do not make demands, nor point the road to God by which He should appear to you.  The way to reach Him is merely to let Him be.  For in that way is your reality proclaimed as well.
   And so today we do not choose the way in which we go to Him.  But we do choose to let Him come.  And with this choice we rest.  And in our quiet hearts and open minds, His Love will blaze its pathway of itself.  What has not been denied is surely there, if it be true and can be surely reached.  God knows His Son, and knows the way to him.  He does not need His Son to show Him how to find His way.  Through every opened door His Love shines outward from its home within, and lightens up the world in innocence.
   Father, we do not know the way to You.  But we have called, and You have answered us.  We will not interfere.  Salvation's ways are not our own, for they belong to You.  And it is unto You we look for them.  Our hands are open to receive Your gifts.  We have no thoughts we think apart from You, and cherish no beliefs of what we are, or Who created us.  Yours is the way that we would find and follow.  And we ask but that Your Will, which is our own as well, be done in us and in the world, that it become a part of Heaven now.  Amen.

Tags: Love

False Beliefs

Identify them and forgive them

October 30th, 2009

I want the peace and Love of God. For this I must train my mind, undo the ego by carrying the Holy Spirit's purpose of forgiveness before me. I want to listen to and follow His Guidance more and more. He will help me correct my perception and experience more miraculous glimpses of Oneness. I want to accept the Atonement for myself and to awaken to my true Identity as the Son of God.

Recently I was thinking that it would be beneficial to me, as I practice mind watching and forgiving, to be with my mighty companions, the Messengers of Peace, because they would help me bring my private thoughts and false beliefs to the light more rapidly than I can by myself. I see real value in joining with them in this way for the purpose of forgiveness.

The other day, however, I put off making a decision to spend time with the Messengers of Peace, because my wife told me she didn't want me to leave for longer than two weeks.

Now I am reflecting on my decision to put it off. “A decision is a conclusion based on everything that you believe.” T-4.II.4 Your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego's chosen home, a mistake, an error in your self-appraisal. T-23.I.3

Tags: Awakening Body Ego Forgiveness Guilt

Mind Watching

In It, Above It

October 28th, 2009

Only three friends showed for our weekly breakfast, making for a more intimate discussion. Ann mentioned the time she learned from someone else that one of her art students had said about her, “I wish she [Ann] was my mother.” Those present who knew the student and her actual mother immediately replied that they could see why the student would prefer Ann for a mother.

And I thought, “You know, I kinda wish that for myself. Ann is so kind, so practical, honest and fun.” I then thought, “Relationships are definitely complex. And then there are so many hypothetical thought possibilities, each with a different emotional charge… Is it really so complex?” 

Then I floated up and looked down. Who am I and who are they? I’ve been caught up in the dream and really enjoying it.

Tags: Ego Miracle Relationships

My Relationship with my Brother

My pathway to healing

October 26th, 2009

As a student of A Course in Miracles, I watch my mind for fearful thoughts so I can recognize them and let them go. And I watch my brother for the same reason.

My brother mirrors my thoughts. My brother’s actions symbolize what I am thinking, in that, if I have a fearful thought, my brother may appear to be fearful or seem to induce fear in me. There is no reality to my brother’s actions, but there is symbolic meaning for me to recognize. I can recognize fear appearing in the dream. My special relationship is my pathway to healing.

When I see fear, I do not try to change my brother or to rearrange events or the dream environment. The fear is not out there. All fearful thoughts stem from the guilt I carry from believing that I separated from God. The fear is in my mind. I rule my mind. My goal is peace.

So I change my thoughts about my brother. My brother is the Son of God. He has no needs that I need supply. How I view him, however, is important, because as I see him I will see myself.

So I ask the Holy Spirit to look at my brother with me. I see my brother as extending love or calling for love. My brother’s call for love is my golden opportunity. As I listen in this moment, the Holy Spirit shows me how to respond with love.

Meeting a call for love with love teaches me that I am love.

Tags: Forgiveness Love Relationships Vision

Freedom is of the Mind

Not the Body

October 22nd, 2009

David Hoffmeister begins by reading from the Course:

Do you want freedom of the body or of the mind?  For both you cannot have. Which do you value?  Which is your goal?  For one you see as means; the other, end. And one must serve the other and lead to its predominance, increasing its importance by diminishing its own. Means serve the end, and as the end is reached the value of the means decreases, eclipsed entirely when they are recognized as functionless. No one but yearns for freedom and tries to find it. Yet he will seek for it where he believes it is and can be found. He will believe it possible of mind or body, and he will make the other serve his choice as means to find it. T-22.VI

When I first read this, the metaphysics of the Course began to get clearer. At the separation the mind ran from abstract light and hid in form as a body. The body became the end and the mind the means to serve the body. The mind came to be seen as confined to the brain. All my education went to provide for the body. If I want to have a free and open mind I have to let the body return to being the means. From the “I need do nothing” section:

Tags: Body Guilt Self

If the Script is Written

What can I do?

October 22nd, 2009

If the script was written in the unholy instant, what is the nature of my free will?

The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. You can decide to see it right. What you made of it is not its reality, for its reality is only what you give it.  T-12.VII.9

I can decide to see it right. I no longer want to see a world of attack and separation. I look within and ask myself “What is it for?” “What do I want to see?” I want to see peace. I decide the purpose of the world is forgiveness. Then, with the Holy Spirit, I can overlook the false and see only love or a call for love. Meeting my brother’s call for love is how I come to realize that I am love.

Tags: Forgiveness Love

Perception

And finding what we really want

October 20th, 2009

Perception means interpretation or “reading meaning into.” Every time I’m feeling upset in any way – it could be fear, anger, depression, boredom or whatever – I’m making a decision in that moment to feel that emotion based on my interpretation, or perception, of what’s happening. I see each situation from my own personal perspective. “I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me.” W-2 Hence, I don’t see anything the way it truly is.

My decision of what I perceive (the meaning I’m reading in) comes from my thoughts. I may see an event and feel upset. However, “I am never upset for the reason I think.” W-5 “I am upset because I see something that is not there.” W-6 “I see only the past W-7,” a hallucination. I am constantly watching the past and getting upset.

Whenever I’m thinking about the past or future my mind is actually blank because it is just projecting out past thoughts. The world is literally the past thoughts in my mind projected onto the world of form. I get upset viewing my past grievances and my angry thoughts taking form on the screen.

Why would I even want to play this perception game? My mind keeps calling on the past and believing in its reality as a way to deal with my entrenched guilt about the past. This guilt comes from my underlying belief that I separated from God.

A Course in Miracles is a course in changing perception, because only getting clear in my perception will make me free of guilt. I need, through consistent mind training, to shift to a different thought system.

There are only two thought systems: the fear-based ego thought system and the Holy Spirit’s thought. The past is the ego’s domain and the present is where the Holy Spirit lives. Changing my perception comes down to learning to tell the difference between the two.

I need to withdraw my investment in ego thought. If I think the ego is offering me something that is good, useful, or helpful, I’m going to want to hold on to ego thought. But is what the ego is offering what I really want? The Course asks me to look more closely at how I am finding value in ego thoughts without even realizing it.

David Hoffmeister gives this example of discerning the ego’s false offers of value.

Before reading the Course, David sought the same values we all want in life. He wanted intimacy: that feeling of being connected together with someone under the same roof, being so close “that it’s like we know each other’s thoughts.” And he also wanted freedom: to be able to go where he wanted to go, do what he wanted to do, and when he wanted to do it. But it wasn’t possible sustain an intimate relationship and still have freedom to go where he wanted when he wanted. One conflicted with the other.

Through ACIM he learned to look more deeply at what he really wanted. “To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold.” T-24.in.2 Freedom and intimacy were indeed what David wanted, but they are not of the body. He had been working from the ego’s body-centered concepts of intimacy and freedom. The body is the ego’s limitation. "Changing concepts is salvation's task." T-31.VII.1

David went on to find that true intimacy and true freedom are of the mind, not the body. He found that intimacy and relationship come from following the Holy Spirit, and that that is also what true freedom is. And both go together easily. Now he travels around the country and feels the sense of true intimacy and connectedness with people that he was always searching for.

Adapted from David Hoffmeister’s “Defining Perception” in Awakening through A Course in Miracles.

Tags: Ego Relationships

Central Course Ideas

Plus two new links

October 18th, 2009

I am not a person in a body in a world of separate people and things. There are no people; there is no world.

I am God’s Son, the One Christ Mind.

But since the “separation,” which is my ego belief that I sinned by usurping God, I have been asleep and dreaming. The script of the world is written. I do not attempt to change the world; rather I change my mind about the world.

Tags: Awakening Forgiveness Miracle

My True Identity

Returning though the mind

October 16th, 2009

I am the Son of God, able to create freely like my Father, with one exception. God created His Son. When I desired the impossible: to separate from God, to be different, to be autonomous, the only way I could give myself that seeming experience was to fall asleep and dream up the fantasy of being a person in a physical world.

This turns out to have been a lousy idea. I immediately felt massive guilt and fear. Instead of creating, I could now only project images and perceive them. Also, to be different from my Father’s eternity, my world was based on time and death. I took on the role of a reactive little fragment and turned running the show over to the fear-based ego thought system. What a mess.

But no harm done. Nothing changed. It was just a fantasy and it’s over. I am still God’s Son. There is only one little problem—I’m still asleep. My present choice to stay asleep takes the form of me believing I am a person in the world and valuing it. I do this because, in spite of having repressed it, I still believe I am guilty of sin and deserve punishment.

God placed the Holy Spirit in my mind so I could wake up when I was ready. I’m ready. A symbol of this is me finding A Course in Miracles, which spells out God’s Plan for salvation.

Now I just follow the Course. In part one of the Workbook, I practice undoing my false beliefs in perception, time, attack, idols, and my body as myself. I give up everything I thought I knew. In part two, I seek direct experience of the truth of God’s Love for me. I practice forgiveness—seeing the false as false and letting the Holy Spirit show me what to do. I see my brother in a new light, and that he and I are the same. Each direct glimpse of the truth is a miracle.

And I begin to remember my true identity:

I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love. In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. In me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. I am the holy home of God Himself. I am the Heaven where His Love resides. I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His Own.  W-pII.14.  p.479

I am mind. I am God’s Son. I am Christ Mind.

Tags: Awakening Miracle Self

Honesty

Working back through the mind for consistency

October 14th, 2009

“Conflict is the inevitable result of self-deception, and self-deception is dishonesty.” M-4.II.2

I start out with a deceived mind that believes people and things outside of myself are the cause of my problems and upsets. By working the lessons, I learn that these are false beliefs, and that even though I am not conscious of them, they are running my life. I learn that it is my responsibility to remove my fear, then the Holy Spirit will do the rest.

“Honesty actually means consistency. There is nothing you say that contradicts what you think or do; no thought opposes any other thought; no act belies your word; and no word lacks agreement with another.” M-4.II.1

Tags: Ego Forgiveness

Forgiveness is Always Justified

A condensation of T-30.VI-VIII

October 13th, 2009

The real world is achieved when I perceive the basis of forgiveness is quite real and fully justified. Forgiveness merely asks me to respond to what has not occurred by not perceiving it. Sin cannot be real in a dream without effects. I am asked to see forgiveness as the natural reaction to distress that rests on error, and thus calls for help.

Anger is never justified. Forgiveness is always justified. I am the dreamer of the dream. I must forgive all appearances in order to escape from the guilt I am projecting. I must think of my Creator as I look upon God’s Son. And I must forgive my brother entirely for he cannot make an error that could change the perfect Christ in him.

This is the only way to think of him if I would know the truth about myself:

I thank You, Father, for Your perfect Son, and in his glory will I see my own.

If I can see my brother merits pardon, I have learned forgiveness is my right as much as his.

Appearances deceive, but can be changed. If I fail to see beyond appearances I am deceived. Reality is changeless. The miracle demonstrates that all appearances can change because they are appearances, and cannot have the changelessness reality entails.

Miracles but show what I have interposed between reality and my awareness is unreal, and does not interfere at all. There is no false appearance but will fade, if I request a miracle instead.

Tags: Forgiveness Guilt Judgment Miracle

Error is not Sin

Perception is a choice

October 6th, 2009

Error made the world. I wanted, for an instant, to separate from God. In this fearful, guilty instant my mind fell asleep and dreamed a world in which I took a tiny role.

Deep unconscious guilt runs my life. I want to believe in this world of separation that proves sin and guilt are real, and therefore attack is justified.

My perception originates in my mind according to perception’s fundamental law: “You see what you believe is there, and you believe it is there because you want it there.” T-25.III I have given the world the purpose of sin, guilt and attack.

But perception rests on choosing. What do I want? What is really justified? The world I see is made on error, not on sin. And mistakes can be forgiven.

God put the Holy Spirit in my mind so I could choose to see a different world. “The Son of God could never sin.” I can only misperceive my brother doing so.

Is my brother's action a sin or a mistake, forgivable or not? Does he need help or condemnation? Is it my purpose that he be saved or damned? Do I want to see the truth in my brother’s call for help?

Holy Spirit, let me see his innocence, for that is what I want to see.

Tags: Forgiveness Guilt

Escape from Fear

In two steps

October 1st, 2009

Everything is in my mind. Dream figures are symbolic. My interpretations of my brother’s needs and motivations are my interpretation of my own. To interpret error with my ego mind is to give it power and to make the error real. So I don’t try to interpret my brother’s motivation. Nor do I attempt to “help” a brother in my way, for I cannot help myself.

The Holy Spirit’s interpretation of my brother’s motivation is the call for the Help of God. As I learn to recognize that, I learn to recognize my own need for the Father.

The Two Steps in the Escape from Fear

1)    I recognize fear
2)    I let the Holy Spirit translate fear into truth

If I do not protect my fear, the Holy Spirit will reinterpret it. With reason and practice I will learn that only attack produces fear. And that fear is a symptom of my own deep sense of the loss of love. Therefore the attack I perceive can only be a call for love.

If, when I perceive this call in others, I learn to supply the loss of love, the basic cause of fear is removed. By removing fear in others, I teach myself that fear does not exist in me. I have denied the power of fear to conceal love by giving it.

Fear is the appeal for love. Every appeal I answer in the Name of Christ brings the remembrance of my Father closer to my awareness. T-12.

Tags: Awakening Forgiveness Love

Where in the Course Does it Say...?

Annotated table of contents

September 30th, 2009

As a way to help me return to certain quotations in the text, I began making brief notes on the Table of Contents pages. A few days ago I flipped through these Contents pages and found they were an interesting way to review the text.

I put them all together in a 6-page Word document - Annotated Table of Contents

Condensing 666 pages into 6 presents a distorted picture, but some Course students may find it helpful.

Tags: Ego

My Only Purpose

T-30.IV-V

September 26th, 2009

The purpose of the world is idolatry, that I might forget the truth. Idolatry brings only guilt, and guilt is the only cause of pain in any form. I believe in idols. I expect something from my brother and attack him in my thoughts when he does not satisfy. It is my judgment and my attack that make the world seem real to me. I have set myself up, and I continually mistake illusions for reality.

There is no world; it is only my dream. The world is harmless because it is my dream. Nothing bad can happen because nothing really happens. There is no gap between me and my brother.

The purpose of the real world is the state of mind in which I see that nothing in the world is real and forgive it. To forgive is to genuinely see that all idols, all specifics, in the world are false. Then, in my quiet mind, I open to the guidance communicated by the Holy Spirit. I join with my brother and see his innocence. Behind the screen of the world is the reality of God’s Love, and joy is my sacred right.

Tags: Forgiveness Guilt

Simple is Good

All I need to know

September 25th, 2009

My Problem

There is only God’s Mind and mine. Unhappily, I have dissociated, and my mind is temporarily locked in an insane dream. But God lovingly placed the Answer, the Holy Spirit, in my mind.

My presenting problem is perceptual, a fixed delusional system, supported by my senses, that shows me a private world. I believe I am a person living in a vulnerable body, doomed to die.

Tags: Awakening Ego Forgiveness Guilt Judgment

Highlighting in Posts

Offers quick review

September 23rd, 2009

I review my posts and sometimes highlight the most important points. They give me quick reminders of what I most need to learn. I recently highlighted phrases in these posts:

This is a Course in Cause and Not Effect
Guilt Underlies the World
Reason Brings Vision
Fear of Redemption
Guilt
Changing My Purpose
The Decision for Guiltlessness

Tags: Guilt

Dealing with Money Worries

By being right-minded

September 21st, 2009

After reviewing some financial events, I found myself worrying about money. To break this thought-cycle I wrote down some ideas I have learned:

I am not a body; I am not even a person.
I am spirit. I am the Son of God.
There is nothing of value here, except for me to love my spirit-brothers equally.
There is nothing I need do.
I let all things be exactly as they are.
I think the thoughts of God.
I pray to God.
I think about God.
There is nothing to lose in giving up the world.
It was a mistake from the non-existent past, a hallucination.
It is not real.
It is a deceitful prison. It is hell.
Happily, all my problems have been solved.
In my mind I give my allegiance to the Holy Spirit:

This holy instant would I give to You.
Be You in charge.
For I would follow You.
Certain that Your direction brings me peace.

Tags: Awakening Self

Perfect Peace

and happiness

September 19th, 2009

This morning I read some Course prayers slowly several times. Then I was quiet. I went very deep. I heard Elizabeth call and speak to several family members. I just listened. When ideas arose to judge anything or to do anything, I reminded myself that it was all nothing. I gently stepped off thought trains. I let all things be exactly as they are. It is all Divine Order and my only job is to feel peace, love and joy; which I did. A while later I stretched out.

Then I heard Elizabeth walk by and the click of a camera. Here I am with my cat Felix (happiness) on the couch, not sleeping, just blissed out.

Tags: Self

Unlearning the World

Week Intensive with David Hoffmeister

September 18th, 2009

David Hoffmeister has a classic mp3 audio recording of an intensive week-long ACIM program on his Teacher of Teachers website. Topics include the ego belief system, roles, ordering thought, tracing back upsets with the Instrument for Peace, special relationships, death and the bridge to the real world. I have made an expanded version of notes on this program as a learning aid. It includes charts of the projector metaphor and the five levels of mind. Click on Notes on David's Week Intensive.

Tags: Awakening Ego Forgiveness Guilt Miracle Relationships

Subtle Guidance

From the Holy Spirit

September 9th, 2009

Since my readings and meditations yesterday, I have seemed a step removed from the busy-ness of human life and have felt peaceful, content and happy. This morning, after asking Holy Spirit for guidance, I met some friends for breakfast and had a wonderful time connecting with them about whatever.

A little after 8:00 I went to the bank, which hadn’t opened yet. I looked closely at the door for the banking hours and couldn’t find them so I went back to my car in the parking garage and put on Resta Burnham’s CD “Come to the Quietness.” I quickly went very deep inside. More than ever, each word resonated with me as the present truth. I felt great love for everyone, freedom, security and joy—definitely a touch of my true nature as God’s Son loved by His Father.

I sat for a while after the music ended, savoring my experience. Then I went to the bank and glanced at the door. This time I could easily see that the bank opened at 8:30. It was now 9:20.

The Holy Spirit listens to the requests of my heart and guides me beautifully. I am so happy and grateful for that!

Here is a description of another Course student’s experience.

Tags: Self

Kindness of Jesus

Selections from the Book of Urantia

September 7th, 2009

When I was growing up I knew my older brother loved me. He was my hero and role model until I was 19. Unfortuantely, his life was desperate and brief. After his death, I floundered  for a long time.

Recently, however, reading the Book of Urantia, I discovered my real older brother, Jesus. I identify a lot with the story of "The Young Man Who Was Afraid," who was born again. As a student of A Course in Miracles, I am being approached by Jesus in a similar way.

The Young Man Who Was Afraid

Tags: Jesus

Summary of Miracle Principles

September 6th, 2009

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.

Miracle Principles

My current thoughts are unreal, based in false perception, representing the lower or bodily level of experience.

Miracles are thoughts that are expressions of love representing the higher, real, or spiritual level of experience. They are corrections of perception inspired by Christ and directed by the Holy Spirit that reverse physical laws.

Tags: Forgiveness Love Miracle Self

The World is Fake

Parts Never Make the Whole

August 28th, 2009

Excerpted from David Hoffmeister’s presentation at a Camp for Miracles

The world you made is fake; don’t fool yourself about it and forget that it’s fake. This whole journey is about undoing your judgments, your preferences and your thoughts about what is good and bad. “Trust would settle every problem now.” T-26.VIII.2:3 You really have to fully understand that you do not have any problems now. You don’t have relationship problems, health issues or financial concerns. Keep your mind riveted on the purpose of forgiveness. That is just seeing the false as false. All are equally false. In order to awaken you have to see that illusions are one. They seem to take many forms, but behind the appearances there’s just one error. Do not be tricked by that error; do not make an exception. Learn to just give and not expect anything in return, both in terms of money and psychologically. Give freely as God gives.

In this world cause and effect are both split off and turned around. There is a gap of time between the cause and the effect. Instead of the mind being causative we have apparent causation in form, as in physics where for every action there is a reaction. So to repair that, you have to turn effect and cause back around and then bring them back together. To turn them around is simply to remind yourself, for example with Lesson 5, “I am never upset for the reason I think,” or Lesson 281, “I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts.” You remove causation from the world as in: I can be hurt from the sun’s rays or by a tornado. Everything is a decision and you literally have control over everything in the cosmos. “Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind.” T-8.VII.12    

Train your mind to give you a different perspective on the world. Director Henry Jaglom made a movie, Always, in which he shows that letting go of expectations and living in the moment is the only way to experience a “happy ending.” A happy ending is forgiveness, looking at the world in a completely different way. Like the line in Jody Ebling’s song “Holy Spirit look at this with me,” you’re asking for another perspective on the world, a change of mind. “Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. T-21.in.1

There is a strong sense of fulfillment and contentment in following the spirit. It’s quite intuitive. You feel centered, stable, strong; this is what is meant by the meek shall inherit the earth. You reinforce that you are spirit when you are defenseless. It gets back to cause and effect. The more you realize that everything is a decision in your mind, the more you transfer that training. You begin to question some common beliefs: that caffeine can affect you before you go to sleep; that the sun’s ultraviolet rays have an effect on your skin. There are lots of opportunities. Be well-grounded in the metaphysics beforehand. You must realize that you need to forgive and release these backwards thoughts, that there is something in the world that could harm you or cause you pain.

The more you get into the purpose of forgiveness, the less vulnerable you feel. Look at the Rules for Decision (Today I will make no decisions by myself. I can decide I do not like what I feel now. I want another way to look at this. T-30) Watch your mind to see if you think you have to accomplish something or obtain a certain outcome. When you get upset you made a decision on your own. One time I had to make a decision and asked Jesus which alternative to choose. He told me not to ask a question by myself. I asked what he meant. He said I was asking, “Of these illusions, which one do I prefer?” I had set an outcome I thought I needed to have a happy day.

Sometimes the very thing that you run from is the thing you need to face to be free. Judgment is an attempt to see something as if it’s not in your mind, and it’s a sense of rejection. People say: I’m so glad I’m not like that. It actually means they believe in that and they’re just seeing that projected over there, instead of as in their mind. I say: “If you spot it, you got it.” So it’s a mirror. When you try to reject something and it’s brought back in your face, it’s a great learning opportunity. It’s not a personal thing. But it will keep showing up until you get the lesson in the mind. Once your mind comes to a sense of integrity, you don’t have any more of those lessons.

Right-mindedness is recognizing that the world has not left the mind of the perceiver. Everything is connected. The cosmos is your mind in a unified way. Then you have no enemies out there. But until that point comes, lessons in forgiveness will pop up and show you that you still believe in your unconscious beliefs.

We fear life not death. The death of the body is not death at all. Everything in this world is continuous, like changing the channel with a remote. But to forgive is a significant change. That transcends death. The resurrection of your mind transcends the ego.

You can’t judge by the form. A healed mind knows itself as spirit. The problem is fragmented perception, and the solution is unified perception. Unified perception is seeing the whole tapestry as one. Jesus says don’t ask the spirit to heal the body but to heal your perception, from fragmentation to unification.

The attraction of guilt is what makes sickness seem possible. In one sense every symptom is selected wrong-mindedly. It comes down to willingness, to say “I have no use for this.” Jesus says the mind is the decision maker, not the body. “What does this recognition ‘cost’ you? It costs you the whole world you see, for the world [or the body] will never again dictate to the mind.” M-5.II.3 That shows that it is a perceptual problem. First, I’m hallucinating. Second, I’m judging the hallucination. That is a mental illness, that fragmentation. Jesus says you live by limits and by carving something out of reality and giving it a name. Sickness is trying to take a part out of the whole, give it a name, and make a whole of it. Thoughts from two lessons:

The Name of God is my inheritance.
    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 it 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.
    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, 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.
    What are these names by which the world becomes a series of discrete events, of things un-unified, of bodies kept apart and holding bits of mind as separate awarenesses? 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.
    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.
    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.
    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.
    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 its 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 to doubt.
    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.
    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.
    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 acknowledgment 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.
    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.
    God has no 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.
    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.
    And though we use a different name for each awareness of an aspect of God's Son, we understand that they have but one Name, which He has given them. It is this Name we use in practicing. And through Its use, all foolish separations disappear which kept us blind. And we are given strength to see beyond them. Now our sight is blessed with blessings we can give as we receive.
     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 Your Own reality. And we are glad and thankful we were wrong. All our mistakes we give to You, that we may be absolved from all effects our errors seemed to have. And we accept the truth You give, in place of every one of them. Your Name is our salvation and escape from what we made. Your Name unites us in the oneness which is our inheritance and peace. Amen. W-184

I walk with God in perfect holiness.
    Today's idea but states the simple truth that makes the thought of sin impossible. It promises there is no cause for guilt, and being causeless it does not exist. It follows surely from the basic thought so often mentioned in the text; ideas leave not their source. If this be true, how can you be apart from God? How could you walk the world alone and separate from your Source? You cannot walk the world apart from God, because you could not be without Him. He is what your life is. Where you are He is. There is one life. That life you share with Him. Nothing can be apart from Him and live. Yet where He is, there must be holiness as well as life. No attribute of His remains unshared by everything that lives. What lives is holy as Himself, because what shares His life is part of Holiness, and could no more be sinful than the sun could choose to be of ice; the sea elect to be apart from water, or the grass to grow with roots suspended in the air.
    There is a light in you which cannot die; whose presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you. All things that live bring gifts to you, and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet. The scent of flowers is their gift to you. The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat, and lay their leaves before you on the ground that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper round your holy head.
    This is the way salvation works. As you step back, the light in you steps forward and encompasses the world. In lightness and in laughter is sin gone, because its quaint absurdity is seen. It is a foolish thought, a silly dream, not frightening, ridiculous perhaps, but who would waste an instant in approach to God Himself for such a senseless whim? I walk with God in perfect holiness. I light the world, I light my mind and all the minds which God created one with me. W-156

Tags: Awakening Ego Forgiveness Judgment

A Course in Cause and Not Effect

T-21.VII.7:8

August 25th, 2009

This is a course in how to know yourself. You have been very careful not to see the real cause and effect relationship that is perfectly apparent. What can it be that has not learned it? It must be this part that is really outside yourself, not by your own projection, but in truth. [Ego] T-16.III.4

The ego has kept you from understanding who you really are and from understanding real cause and effect.

How did this happen?

Tags: Body Ego Guilt Miracle Self

Guilt Underlies the World

Not physics

August 24th, 2009

The illusion of the world does not rest on any laws of physics. The illusion of the world rests on the guilt in my mind, which stems from a false belief.

The circle of fear lies just below the level the body sees, and seems to be the whole foundation on which the world is based. Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury, the vengeance and betrayal that were made to keep the guilt in place, so that the world could rise from it and keep it hidden. Its shadow rises to the surface, enough to hold its most external manifestations in darkness, and to bring despair and loneliness to it and keep it joyless. Yet its intensity is veiled by its heavy coverings, and kept apart from what was made to keep it hidden. The body cannot see this, for the body arose from this for its protection, which depends on keeping it not seen. The body's eyes will never look on it. Yet they will see what it dictates. T-18.IX.4

The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs as long as you believe that guilt is real. For the reality of guilt is the illusion that seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a real foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent until you see the light behind it. And then you see it as a fragile veil before the light. T-18.IX.5
 
It can indeed be said the ego made its world on sin. Only in such a world could everything be upside down. This is the strange illusion that makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness that this world's foundation seems to have is found in this. For sin has changed creation from an idea of God to an ideal the ego wants; a world it rules, made up of bodies, mindless and capable of complete corruption and decay. T-19.II.6 

Tags: Ego Guilt

Undoing the World

Take a quantum leap

August 23rd, 2009

I have chosen God’s plan for salvation, which consists of undoing my various beliefs in the world. I mainly do this experientially by forgiving.

Reading about quantum physics has also recently been helpful. It teaches me that my core assumptions about matter, space and time are indeed false. In fact, matter, space and time have no objective existence. They only exist subjectively in my ego mind as long as I choose to make images and judge them.

The definition of subjective is, “a) Proceeding from or taking place in a person’s mind rather than in the external world. b) Particular to a given person. c) Existing only in the mind; illusory.”  

I didn’t used to know that I was the one who was making everything seem to happen with my mind. Now I do. Form has been proven false, and really it’s no loss.

My Father awaits me with open arms. I close my eyes and feel the Love of God within me now. Thank You, God.

Quantum Physics This links to a document that explains some fascinating quantum ideas.

Tags: Forgiveness Time

Reason Brings Vision

In Holy Relationship attack is impossible

August 22nd, 2009

The body's eyes see only form. They were made to look on error and not see past it. They can see only illusions. Everything the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the whole would give. And yet mistakes, regardless of their form, can be corrected. T-22.III.4-5

My Reason Brings Me Vision

Reason sees through errors, telling you what you thought was real is not. Reason can see the difference between sin and mistakes, because it wants correction. Therefore, it tells you what you thought was uncorrectable can be corrected, and thus it must have been an error. Reason's goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious. You can see reason. This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally. If it is not the body's sight, it must be understood. For it is plain, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It can be understood. Reason sees a holy relationship as what it is; a common state of mind, where both give errors gladly to correction, that both may happily be healed as one. All you need do to dwell in quiet here with Christ is share His vision. Quickly and gladly is His vision given anyone who is but willing to see his brother sinless. God rests with you in quiet, undefended and wholly undefending, for in this quiet state alone is strength and power. Here can no weakness enter, for here is no attack and therefore no illusions. Love rests in certainty. T-22.II-III

My Holy Relationship Shows We Are the Same
And Therefore Attack Is Impossible

This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in strength, and blazing with a light far brighter than the sun that lights the sky you see, is chosen of your Father as a means for His Own plan. This holy relationship has the power to heal all pain, regardless of its form. Only in your joint will does healing lie. A holy relationship looks quietly on all confusion, observing merely, "This was a mistake." T-22.VI.4-5

Who can attack the Son of God and not attack his Father?  How can God's Son be weak and frail and easily destroyed unless his Father is?  You do not see that every sin and every condemnation that you perceive and justify is an attack upon your Father. And that is why it has not happened, nor could be real. You do not see that this is your attempt because you think the Father and the Son are separate. And you must think that They are separate, because of fear. For it seems safer to attack another or yourself than to attack the great Creator of the universe, Whose power you know. If you were one with God and recognized this oneness, you would know His power is yours. But you will not remember this while you believe attack of any kind means anything. It is unjustified in any form, because it has no meaning. Attack is neither safe nor dangerous. It is impossible. And this is so because the universe is one. T-22.VI.11-12

Only the different can attack. So you conclude because you can attack, you and your brother must be different. Yet does the Holy Spirit explain this differently. Because you and your brother are not different, you cannot attack. Either position is a logical conclusion. Either could be maintained, but never both. The only question to be answered in order to decide which must be true is whether you and your brother are different. From the position of what you understand you seem to be, you can attack. Of the alternatives, this seems more natural and more in line with your experience. And therefore it is necessary that you have other experiences, more in line with truth, to teach you what is natural and true. This is the function of your holy relationship. For what one thinks, the other will experience with him. What can this mean except your mind and your brother's are one? You will realize that your relationship is a reflection of the union of the Creator and His Son. From loving minds there is no separation. And every thought in one brings gladness to the other because they are the same. T-22.VI.13-14 

Tags: Judgment Light Relationships Vision

Fear of Redemption

Guilt continued

August 21st, 2009

Why do I, the Son of God, insist on keeping a false identity and hiding in a dream state? Looking at the resistance Jesus Christ faced in the world (collective ego resistance) can help me identify the false beliefs repressed in my mind that trap me here.

At the time of Jesus everyone believed that redemption required sacrifice. This was so deeply engrained that the people reinterpreted Jesus’ demonstration of eternal life and made it a story of God sacrificing his only Son for their sins. I believe God wants to kill me for the sin of separation and I do not want to pay the price of sacrifice.

The people believed that Judas betrayed Jesus. Likewise I believe I have betrayed God’s Son by taking another identity and condemning him to death. I condemn him whenever I project my anger onto him, so this form of attack is something I engage in frequently. I am so terrified of bringing the dark secret of my betrayal to light that I would silence (kill) those who hold the opposite point of view, the guiltless.

“In the calm light of truth, let us recognize that you believe you have crucified God’s Son. You have not admitted to this ‘terrible’ secret because you would still wish to crucify him if you could find him. Yet the wish has hidden him from you because it is very fearful, and so you are afraid to find him… For the ego does want to kill you, and if you identify with it you must believe its goal is yours.” T-13.II.5

Why do I hold onto hatred? It saves me from love. My wish for something more than love caused the separation and I do not want it healed. If I remove the hatred, my love for my Father would impel me to leap into Heaven and I would lose the world and myself. I believe attack is salvation because it would prevent this. I want to hide my love for God because I associate love with weakness and hatred with strength.

“You can accept insanity because you made it, but you cannot accept love because you did not… Your individual death seems more valuable to you than your living oneness… You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome.” T-13.III.5

I wanted God to make the world real and he would not. So in my mind I made him into an unloving father who demanded sacrifice. Now I fear my real Father because I have attacked my own glorious equality with him. I sought a place to hide but God did not allow this to happen. “Yet you demanded that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so.” T-13.III.11

God answered my insane request with a sane answer that abides with me, the Holy Spirit.

Tags: Ego Guilt

Guilt

The problem

August 20th, 2009

In the unholy instant I believed myself guilty of the horrendous sin of separating from God. In a desperate attempt to escape punishment I repressed my memory of God and

1) made a world of billions of people in which to hide.
2) turned my mind over to the ego thought system.

The mind is powerful and gets what it wants. If I want to be happy I need to look at the results of those desperate measures.

Tags: Ego Guilt

Twelve ACIM Steps

Loosely paralleling the AA model

August 18th, 2009

1)    I admit I am powerless over my perception—that my life has become unmanageable.

• My thoughts are images that I have made. W-15
• I do not perceive my own best interests. W-24
• I do not know what anything is for. W-25
• I am not a body. W-84
• There is no world. W-132

2)    I trust in God and His Communication Link, the Holy Spirit, to restore me to sanity.

• I can escape the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. W-23
• I have invented the world I see. W-32
• My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy. W-35
• God is the strength in which I trust. W-47
• I am as God created me. W-94

3)    I turn my will and my life over to God.

Tags: Awakening Forgiveness

Quantum Physics

Basics and some implications

August 12th, 2009

When you see a star at night what is really going on? Newton would answer that you are seeing the star. Einstein would say that you are seeing the star as it was in a past epoch, since light travels with finite velocity and takes time to cross space; to see the star "as it is right now" has no meaning since there is no way to make such an observation.

A quantum philosopher, however, would answer that you are not seeing the star at all. The star sets up a condition that extends throughout space and time--an electromagnetic field. What you "see" as a star, is actually the result of a quantum interaction between the local field and the retina of your eye. Energy is being absorbed from the field by your eye, and the local field is being modified as a result. You can interpret your observation as pertaining to a distant object if you wish, or concentrate strictly on local field effects.

Our everyday experience establishes preconceptions that fail drastically when experience is extended to the very massive or to the very small. Generally, the large scale requires relativity theory and the small scale requires quantum mechanics. A quantum is an indivisible entity. At this level the usual picture of reality breaks down. Quantum physics deals with "Nature as She is—absurd." (Richard Feynman, author of QED)

Photons (discrete units of light) and other very small things are neither waves nor particles. Emitters of photons such as lights have spectra, but the spectra are chopped up instead of being continuous. The energies carried by photons form a discontinuous and color-coded series. The energies, the colors, and the spectral intensities of electromagnetic radiation produced are all interconnected by laws. But the same laws ordain that the more closely one pins down one measure the more wildly another measure relating to the same thing must fluctuate! Even more disconcerting, particles can be created as twins and therefore as entangled entities--which means that doing something that pins down one characteristic of one particle will determine something about its entangled twin even if it is millions of miles away. (Wikipedia)

The smallest sub-atomic particles are energy, and they are all the same. Atoms are not things; they are only potentials. Particles and waves behave differently yet particles fired through slits can then behave like waves.

Some possible conclusions:

Tags: News

What I Want

I forgive now

August 10th, 2009

The thoughts I think I think are meaningless.
I am not a body, not a person. There is no world.
I am a prisoner holding my brothers captive.
I have been mistaken about everything.

But now I change my mind; I choose my right mind.
My mind is part of God’s, I am very holy.
I am God’s Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of his Love.

To awaken, I follow God’s plan: I forgive
    I become aware that I am dreaming.
    The images are nothing but wrong-minded projections of mistaken guilt.
    There is nothing for me to value in the world.
    I want the peace of God.
    I ask the Holy Spirit to decide for God for me.

Tags: Forgiveness

Miracles and Forgiveness

How are they related?

August 7th, 2009

I have been thinking about the nature of the relationship between forgiveness and miracles. In looking through the Course I came across some helpful sentences. For example, "A miracle stands for what is past forgiveness and is true." T-27.VI.6:2

I put a number of these helpful ideas on an Ego, Forgiveness, Miracles chart and uploaded it as a PDF. This chart is a further development of the Five Levels of Mind chart I posted a while back.

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Miracle

Instrument for Peace

How I used it today

August 5th, 2009

The Instrument for Peace is a two-page, fill-in-the-blank document that David Hoffmeister made to make it easier for students to shift their thinking about cause and effect regarding upsetting situations. Filling it out helps you see that what you perceive outside yourself is the result of your own fearful beliefs. When you see that this is indeed the case, and that your fearful beliefs are false, the situation is no longer upsetting.

Here is the link to the Intrument for Peace I just completed.

You can download the Instrument for Peace Worksheet as a PDF and learn more about how to use it at David's Teacher of Teachers website.

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Guilt

Awaken Through Music

Song lyrics and source for downloads

August 4th, 2009

I carry these personal favorite songs on my i-pod and listen frequently. They help me stay joyful and in the experience of my spirit Self.

Here is a Word doc of lyrics with a link to the source for MP3 files.

Resta's Music of Christ

Tags: Awakening

Forgiveness - What The Preface Says

ACIM

August 3rd, 2009

We must learn to forgive all evil, destruction, malice, envy and despair because what we are seeing is not true. We have distorted the world by our twisted defenses. As we learn to recognize our perceptual errors, we also learn to look past them or “forgive.” Forgiveness is the Holy Spirit’s great learning aid. We look inside first, decide that kind of world we want to see, and then project that world outside, making it the truth as we see it. The Holy Spirit transforms relationships into perfect lessons in forgiveness and in awakening from the dream. In this world, forgiveness is a necessary correction for all the mistakes we have made. To offer forgiveness is the only way to have it. Through forgivingness the thinking of the world is reversed. The forgiven world becomes the gate to Heaven.

Tags: Forgiveness

Forgiveness - What The Text Says

ACIM

August 3rd, 2009

The emptiness engendered by fear must be replaced by forgiveness. That is what the Bible means by "There is no death," and why I could demonstrate that death does not exist. T-1.IV.4.    
You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness. T-1.VI.1.  

Miracle-minded forgiveness is only correction. It has no element of judgment at all. The statement "Father forgive them for they know not what they do" in no way evaluates what they do. T-2.V.A.16.    
Prayer is a way of asking for something. It is the medium of miracles. But the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven have everything. T-3.V.6.       
Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. T-3.V.9. 

To forgive is to overlook. T-9.IV.1.    
Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you. T-9.IV.5.    
Ask anything of God's Son and his Father will answer you, for Christ is not deceived in His Father and His Father is not deceived in Him. Do not, then, be deceived in your brother, and see only his loving thoughts as his reality, for by denying that his mind is split you will heal yours. T-11.VIII.9. 

Tags: Forgiveness

Forgiveness - What The Workbook Says

ACIM

August 3rd, 2009

I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. The idea for today introduces the thought that you are not trapped in the world you see, because its cause can be changed. This change requires, first, that the cause be identified and then let go, so that it can be replaced. The first two steps in this process require your cooperation. The final one does not. Your images have already been replaced. W-23

God is the Love in which I forgive. God does not forgive because He has never condemned. And there must be condemnation before forgiveness is necessary. Forgiveness is the great need of this world, but that is because it is a world of illusions. Those who forgive are thus releasing themselves from illusions, while those who withhold forgiveness are binding themselves to them. As you condemn only yourself, so do you forgive only yourself.
Yet although God does not forgive, His Love is nevertheless the basis of forgiveness. Fear condemns and love forgives. Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to the awareness of God. For this reason, forgiveness can truly be called salvation. It is the means by which illusions disappear. It is your forgiveness that will bring the world of darkness to the light. W-46

Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world. It is your forgiveness that lets you recognize the light in which you see. Forgiveness is the demonstration that you are the light of the world. Through your forgiveness does the truth about yourself return to your memory. Therefore, in your forgiveness lies your salvation.
Illusions about yourself and the world are one. That is why all forgiveness is a gift to yourself. Your goal is to find out who you are, having denied your Identity by attacking creation and its Creator. Now you are learning how to remember the truth. For this attack must be replaced by forgiveness, so that thoughts of life may replace thoughts of death.
Remember that in every attack you call upon your own weakness, while each time you forgive you call upon the strength of Christ in you. Do you not then begin to understand what forgiveness will do for you? It will remove all sense of weakness, strain and fatigue from your mind. It will take away all fear and guilt and pain. It will restore the invulnerability and power God gave His Son to your awareness. W-62

Tags: Forgiveness

Forgiveness - Clarification of Terms

ACIM

August 3rd, 2009

The miracle forgives; the ego damns. C-2.
Forgiveness is an illusion, but because of its purpose, which is the Holy Spirit's, it leads away from error and not towards it. Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction; a way in which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception and the truth. They cannot go directly from perception to knowledge because they do not think it is their will to do so. This makes God appear to be an enemy instead of what He really is. And it is just this insane perception that makes them unwilling merely to rise up and to return to Him in peace.

And so they need an illusion of help because they are helpless; a Thought of peace because they are in conflict. God knows what His Son needs before he asks. He is not at all concerned with form, but having given the content it is His Will that it be understood. And that suffices. The form adapts itself to need; the content is unchanging, as eternal as its Creator.
The face of Christ has to be seen before the memory of God can return. The face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness. Whoever looks on this no longer sees the world. It is the bridge to Heaven. C-3

Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. Forgiveness looks past bodies. A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real.
This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. For there the altar to the Son is set, and there his Father is remembered. Here are all illusions brought to truth and laid upon the altar. Seen within your mind, guilt and forgiveness for an instant lie together, side by side, upon one altar. There at last are sickness and its single remedy joined in one healing brightness. God has come to claim His Own. Forgiveness is complete. C-4

Manual for Teachers

Now is the goal achieved. Forgiveness is the final goal of the curriculum. M-4.X.2.

Tags: Forgiveness

Five Love Poems

By Rumi, 13th C Persian mystic

August 1st, 2009

You Come To Us

You come to us
from another world

From beyond the stars
and void of space.
Transcendent, Pure,
Of unimaginable beauty,
Bringing with you
the essence of love

You transform all
who are touched by you.
Mundane concerns,
troubles, and sorrows
dissolve in your presence,
Bringing joy
to ruler and ruled
To peasant and king

Tags: Love

Guidance Transcends Judgment

David Hoffmeister August, 2008 video summary

July 31st, 2009

The answer to awakening is to develop a closer and closer relationship with the Holy Spirit. This world is like a labyrinth and you have to make many turns every day, but you are not really sure which is the right turn to take to get out. The more tuned in to the Holy Spirit you become, the more specific His Guidance will be: Go here, do this, call this person. This way you don’t have to try to figure out what is the best thing to do now based on your education and history. You can put all that aside and the Holy Spirit will use the symbols of the world to guide you. When you become very willing you are easily guided and may even be lifted up to a higher perspective to a mystical experience like “rapture.” You see that you are no longer stuck in the labyrinth; you are above the battleground where peace is found. If you feel identified with a dream figure in the world, with the world’s images, then you will not have consistent peace of mind. You will find yourself reacting and responding to certain people and situations. Situations are little constructs that the ego made up to chop time and space into little increments. Situational thinking is part of the problem.

When you align with the Holy Spirit your mind starts to feel much more abstract. Your situational thoughts will begin to dissolve and evaporate because you start to experience that you are indeed everywhere. You are not defined in a human body with a small band of human experiences. Your mind was created by God and it is vast and expansive. If you work with the Course long enough certain passages start to come out like “When I am healed I am not healed alone. [When you accept the gift of healing] legions upon legions will receive the gift.” W-137 You are the savior of the world. Not a person with a messiah complex addressing a crowd on a street corner. But that presence, that state of mind, the Holy Spirit “You are the way, the truth and the life.” T-7.III.1:9 There are many names for that presence of Love. You begin to open to this state of expansiveness, like the Observer in quantum physics, where you feel peace and detachment like you’re watching everything and at the same time one with everything. You’re watching it from a unified perspective, not a human perspective.

People may think that a movie in the theater is fiction, with paid actors. Yet when they watch it they have emotional reactions like they’re right there in the scene. They engage in it and don’t see it as a movie. Likewise, they don’t think of their everyday experiences as a movie. This is why you need a lot of mind training. First a clear understanding of the metaphysics is necessary. The ego is frightened of this and will try not to let you understand. The second and most important part, from the Workbook, is the practical application of the metaphysical principles in all parts of your life, with no exception. When you do this your joy becomes more intense because you free your mind from the pockets you’ve held as exceptions. The ego looks for scapegoats to project on so you can justify your anger, so you do not have to look at the anger inside your mind that comes from your belief in separation from God. Finally you have to accept that you believe in anger, that you believe it is justified, and, if you follow that in deeper, you believe in an angry God. Where is anger supposed to come from? The Old Testament says “God is a jealous God.”Exodus 20:4-5 But what is the real source of the anger? The ego hides itself and projects anger out into the world. But the ego itself is where the anger is. The ego is the guilt, the fear and the anger.

Tags: Awakening Ego Judgment

Jesus Answers Poet

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

July 27th, 2009

I noticed correlations to some of Yeats' poems in Chapter 25.

But is there any comfort to be found?
Man is in love and loves what vanishes.
                                                               1919, W. B. Yeats

Tags: Ego

Giving Forgiveness

Clarifying giving and receiving

July 24th, 2009

"A major learning goal this course has set is to reverse your view of giving, so you can receive. Accept God's peace and joy, and you will learn a different way of looking at a gift. God's gifts will never lessen when they are given away. They but increase thereby. The "gifts" the world can give are but a bid for a more valuable return; a loan with interest to be paid in full; a temporary lending, meant to be a pledge of debt to be repaid with more than was received by him who took the gift. This strange distortion of what giving means pervades all levels of the world you see. It strips all meaning from the gifts you give, and leaves you nothing in the ones you take." W-105

The Course talks a lot about "giving." I was confused about what the Course meant by "to give is to receive," "to have, give all to all" and "all that I give I give to myself." I think the key is in Lesson 297.

I reviewed some challenging passages and have printed my interpretation next to each line:

Tags: Forgiveness Giving

Professor Gates Arrested at Home

No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth

July 23rd, 2009

“For several minutes watch your mind and see, although your eyes are closed, the senseless world you think is real.” W-131.11:5

A dispute arose between black Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and the white police officer who arrested him at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Review the thoughts as well which are compatible with such a world, and which you think are true.” W-131.11:5

My perception of a news story tells me that two people, each perceiving the same event in the world of form, interpreted its meaning differently. Each had a different version of the truth.

Can there be multiple versions of the truth? Can a world that contains multiple sources of causation be real? No.

“What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. Where is hope while sin is seen as outside? What remedy can guilt expect?” C-4.6:4-6

What is the alternative?

“This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. For there the altar to the Son is set, and there his Father is remembered. Here are all illusions brought to truth and laid upon the altar. Seen within your mind, guilt and forgiveness for an instant lie together, side by side, upon one altar. There at last are sickness and its single remedy joined in one healing brightness. God has come to claim His Own. Forgiveness is complete.” C-4.6

“And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. Here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever.” C-4.7

Tags: Ego Forgiveness

Movie Guide Supplement

Movie Watcher's Guide to Enlightenment

July 22nd, 2009

The Movie Watcher's Guide to Enlightenment, by the Messengers of Peace of Awakening Mind is a wonderful learning aid for understanding spiritual metaphysics and forgiveness through films.

To help me remember the characters and events in these movies I have put together an updated "Movie Supplement" which I have uploaded.

Tags: Awakening

What Is Forgiveness?

Part II of the Workbook

July 22nd, 2009

“Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred.” W-pII.1.1

The thoughts I think I think are recycled past thoughts. They are part of a script that was written for my life as a person. These thoughts and this life are a hallucination, an evil dream. They keep me isolated in a self-made insane asylum.

But through forgiveness I can return to the peace, joy and love of my reality as a Son of God.

1) I watch my mind. I notice in particular any judgment of another person or any thought that seems to justify my judgment of another person. These thoughts are all false because there is no world. My brother and I are one. There is no thinking apart from God. I made up the scenario, “forgot” that I made it up, saw it acted out, and judged it so as to reinforce my belief in separation, sin, guilt, fear and punishment. My eyes and ears have born false witness. I look at these thoughts until I clearly see their falsity.

2) Then I ask the Holy Spirit to help me.

“We had a wish that God would fail to have the Son whom He created for Himself. We wanted God to change Himself, and be what we would make of Him. And we believed that our insane desires were the truth. Now we are glad that this is all undone, and we no longer think illusions true. The memory of God is shimmering across the wide horizons of our minds. A moment more, and it will rise again. A moment more, and we who are God's Sons are safely home, where He would have us be.

Tags: Forgiveness

Stepping Stones to Awakening

From David Fishman and Linda Card

July 21st, 2009

Stepping Stones which ACIM provides for Awakening to Our True Identity

1. My Only Purpose is to AWAKEN from the dream of forgetfulness.

2. I am Cause. I am not a victim of the world. I invented the world I see.

3. Nothing in this world will satisfy the Eternal Son of God and nothing can hurt the SON unless He chooses to "believe it can."

4 "I do not know what anything is for."

5. Do I want to be right or Happy? Choose one, you can't have both.

6. It's ALL in the mind. If You Spot It You Got It, NO exceptions. It takes one to know one.

7. "The alertness of the ego to the errors of other egos is not the kind of vigilance the Holy Spirit would have you maintain. When you correct a Brother, you are telling him that he is wrong.”

8. "Only my condemnation injures me. Only my own forgiveness sets me free."

9. "What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good?”

10. "It takes great learning to understand that all things, events, encounters and circumstances are helpful.”

11. "Forgiveness is the key to Happiness"

12. The Law of Love, The Law of Mind, The Law of God. What We Give, We Give To Our Self. Love Knows Only Itself & Gives to Itself by Extending without limit. ONLY the LOVE IS REAL!

For the full text and references click on the One MInd Foundation. Also be sure to check out ACIM Gather if you are not already familiar with this online Course teaching program.

Tags: Awakening Ego Forgiveness

Best Book for Understanding the Course

Book Review

July 20th, 2009

TITLE: Awakening Through A Course in Miracles
AUTHOR: David Hoffmeister

I studied the Course for 18 years and thought I understood it. But reading Awakening Through a Course in Miracles took me to a much deeper level. What is so different about this book is that the author, David Hoffmeister, has been there and done that. Since his awakening almost two decades ago, David has clarified the message of the Course for individuals and groups across the United States and in over 20 foreign countries. He consistently speaks with the wisdom and unconditional love of the Christ Mind.

The book is a selection of David’s best teachings, letters and small group dialogues on key Course topics, sequenced from basic to advanced. His desire is that you clarify your understanding and accept God’s plan for salvation, healing and happiness. Jesus assures us that God’s plan for salvation works and David is living proof that it does.

Tags: Awakening Ego Forgiveness News

Changing My Purpose

Forgiving and Awakening

July 18th, 2009

I was just reading Chapter 29 of the Course and it helped me see that I must indeed have set the purpose of separation and made secret vows with my brother. Only my setting of that overall purpose and making separation vows (and then "forgetting" that I had done so) would explain why I consistently misperceive my brother:

"When you are angry, is it not because someone has failed to fill the function you allotted him? And does not this become the "reason" your attack is justified?… No one can fail but your idea of him… Perceptions are determined by their purpose, in that they seem to be what they are for."

I see that my purpose has been the ego's purpose, to prove that the separation is real. So I decide to change my purpose to that of the Holy Spirit. ("Unless the Holy Spirit gives the dream its purpose, it was made for hate." T-29.V.7) When my purpose changes to forgiveness, my perception changes:

"A shadow figure who attacks becomes a brother giving you a chance to help, if this becomes the function of the dream. And dreams of sadness thus are turned to joy. What is your brother for? Do not ascribe a role to him that you imagine would bring happiness to you. And do not try to hurt him when he fails to take the part that you assigned to him, in what you dream your life was meant to be. He asks for help in every dream he has, and you have help to give him if you see the function of the dream as He [Holy Spirit] perceives its function, Who can utilize all dreams as means to serve the function given Him. Because He loves the dreamer, not the dream, each dream becomes an offering of love. For at its center is His Love for you, which lights whatever form it takes with love." T-29.IV p613

Tags: Awakening Forgiveness Relationships

The Decision for Guiltlessness

Selections from Chapter 14

July 16th, 2009

You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy. The Holy Spirit says, with steadfast quietness: The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there. Let Me make the one distinction for you that you cannot make, but need to learn. Your faith in nothing is deceiving you.

Whenever you choose to make decisions for yourself you are thinking destructively, and the decision will be wrong. Seek not to appraise the worth of God's Son whom He created holy, for to do so is to evaluate his Father and judge against Him. And you will feel guilty for this imagined crime, which no one in this world or Heaven could possibly commit. The Holy Spirit teaches only that the "sin" of self-replacement on the throne of God is not a source of guilt. What cannot happen can have no effects to fear. Be quiet in your faith in Him Who loves you, and would lead you out of insanity. Never forget the Love of God.

You must give everything you have learned to the Holy Spirit, to be unlearned for you. You are whole only in your guiltlessness, and only in your guiltlessness can you be happy. Say to yourself gently, but with the conviction: I would accept my guiltlessness by making it manifest and sharing it. Let me bring peace to God's Son from his Father.

When you teach anyone that truth is true, you learn it with him. Each day, each hour and minute, even each second, you are deciding between the crucifixion and the resurrection; between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego is the choice for guilt; the Holy Spirit the choice for guiltlessness. The power of decision is all that is yours.

Tags: Guilt

A Clearer Understanding of Jesus

From the Book of Urantia

July 15th, 2009

I grew up mocking Jesus as a pious loser. So recently I was pleased to read in the Book of Urantia, Part IV, The Life and Teachings of Jesus, that “Self-conscious piety had no place in his philosophy.”

He was a man, certainly more intelligent and more friendly than most, who “by faith achieved the knowing and the doing of the will of God.” I highly recommend reading Part IV, which explains why Jesus did what he did and how Christianity misunderstood him. It is available online at http://www.urantia.org/papers/paper122.html I have also uploaded my own ten-page summary of Part IV.

Tags: Jesus

What I Am After

A concise list

July 6th, 2009

Goal: to prepare my mind to awaken to peace in the Oneness of God

Means: to remove the obstacles to my awareness of Love’s presence through

Forgiveness: identifying my false beliefs, thoughts and perceptions; being aware that I am dreaming; forgiving my brother without exception

Tags: Awakening Ego Forgiveness Guilt

Obstacles to Peace

Worth a close look

July 5th, 2009

In the unholy instant I thought I separated from God; I fearfully made the ego to maintain the separation and keep God out, and I adopted the ego as my self-concept. I use the illusion of linear time to  call forth that unreal instant. Dreaming a world of time and space demonstrates my belief that the separation from God is current. I value the past because I can hold it against everyone. I see only representations of my insane thoughts, replacing reality with illusions that I blame for my upsets. I make people enemies to justify my anger. I am only aware of my private thoughts. This prevents the present from dawning on my mind. I am using the past against God and against peace. The following obstacles exist because I find something in the world to be attractive and valuable. I would like to expose my faulty decisions so that I can see they really offer nothing I want.

1) The desire to get rid of peace because I find guilt more attractive.

The ego made the world based on the sin of separation from God. This is the ego’s past from which escape is impossible. Sin assumes that I/ego am guilty of making myself, mortal man, in defiance of God. This sin has seemingly rendered God incompetent. Sin wrests creation from truth; man kills God. The ego believes that sin is truth. Sin proclaims that attack is real and guilt is justified. The belief in sin is based on the conviction that minds attack, thus the mind is guilty. Sin demands punishment. I fear retaliation. The fact that sin is punished gives it enormity; hence it must be real. I want what I think is real. Sin is an essential part of what the ego thinks I am, so I will always want it. The ego rules the world of bodies. The belief that bodies limit minds leads to a perception of the world in which the proof of separation seems to be everywhere. Acceptance of the self as sinful is perceived as holiness. Sin is the idea that evil cannot be corrected and yet will be forever desirable. To believe in the body is to believe in sin. The body is the symbol of sin while I believe it can get me what I want. While I believe that bodies can unite, I will find guilt attractive and believe that sin is desirable.

Tags: Body Ego Forgiveness Guilt

How to Get it Right

From a loose cannon on the holodeck

June 25th, 2009

Last night, half asleep, I was again trying to figure out what went wrong at a job I was fired from. The conflict with Lynn occurred because I was subtly judging her and she became defensive. I should have forgiven what I perceived as her attack, completely forgiven her and been truly helpful to her. But I guess I couldn’t pull that off at the time. I woke up and thought about it some more.

Could I have made the right judgments and decisions?

No. The situation was a bunch of fragmented symbols arranged in my perception by my ego for the express purpose of having me think I was being unfairly treated. [Whoa!]

Tags: Ego Guilt

I Need Do Nothing

Because I am God's Son

June 14th, 2009

Today I got that I do not have to do anything in the world. I was thinking about what I could do about the Chris “problem”—him calling me wanting to talk about what he did during the day and me not wanting to listen because I thought he should be focusing on something different, i.e. wanting to change him and then I would be happy.

I realized it makes no difference what he does; as a doer, he is just an image doing what my ego wanted him to do. Whatever annoys me in the world, my ego mind was the cause. It’s over in the past; it has no reality; the thought of it can have no effect on me—I just change my mind. I let go of trying to change Chris because it doesn’t matter. It is nothing.

In the same instant I am relieved of the belief that I am Andy trying to learn the Course, thinking I need Chris to think and act a certain way. I am not Andy.

I am God’s Son. I am complete and healed and whole. Whole! I need nothing. I have no connection to Chris the doer and nothing in the world needs to change because it is not real.

I am complete and healed and whole because that is real, a true idea. I am Christ mind. I see that Chris is spirit, my perfect, innocent, joyful brother. I love him; he is so much fun! Happy, happy, happy.

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Self

The Laws of Healing

Summary of T-26.VII

June 10th, 2009

The laws of healing must be understood before the purpose of the course can be accomplished. This summarizes all that must occur for healing to occur.

1.    All sickness is punishment I inflict upon myself because I believe I separated from God and my brother. The guilt that I feel for committing this sin demands punishment in this world of shadows and illusions built on sin. Sin is the belief that some errors are past hope of healing. This world is an insane ego attempt to prove my innocence while cherishing attack, which leaves me still feeling guilty.

2.    Perception is wish fulfillment through image-making. Cause (a guilt/attack thought in my mind, the source) is projected out on the screen as an illusion of an attack being made on me, satisfying my demand for punishment. After an illusory gap of time, I see myself being attacked. None of this is outside my mind. My thoughts cause the apparent effect. The world is all in my mind. No illusion has any truth in it. All are false. Projection and time are illusions.

3.    The miracle is possible when cause (my attack thought) and consequence (my perception of attack) are brought together. Then I see that I am dreaming the dream; that I caused it because of my belief in separation and in bodies.

4.    There is no sin. There is only error, which can be corrected by making a different choice. My errors are beliefs that I impose between my brother and myself. They limit us in time and space, symbolized by a body, the representation of my wish to be separate.

5.    Forgiveness is my other choice; it is the answer to attack of any kind because it shows there was no attack and there was no hurt. By seeing there was no attack, it takes away my wish to be separate. There is no difference among the Sons of God. Unity is true; specialness is false. Forgiveness thus becomes the wish to join with my brother, and in his sinlessness I see my own. I become aware of love’s presence and bring joy to the world.

6.    A miracle makes no change; it makes what has always been true recognizable to me. Salvation asks only a little willingness to overlook what is not there, that the Will of God be seen. He wills that His Son have everything. What I have is what I am.

Tags: Ego Forgiveness

Seeing Differently

Reversing Perception

June 3rd, 2009

At the separation I repressed my enormous guilt and fear of God, made the ego thought system and gave up my mind to it. God placed the Holy Spirit in my mind, which I also repress.

I now identify with being a separate person in a body, the ego, wanting the ego world, which I consider to be reality. My memory is erased. [I am a clone in the Matrix or the Dark City.]

There is nothing out there. The world is a projection of my ego mind, an illusion, a hallucination.
The thoughts I think I think are not real.

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Vision

My Ego Is a Master Illusionist

I'm doing it to myself

May 30th, 2009

In heaven Christ’s thoughts simultaneously create wonderful, joyous effects.

But for an instant I wanted more than that; I wanted to separate from God and run my own show, an absolute impossibility. So to bring about the experience I wanted, I fell asleep and dreamed it. In that instant my mind made the world; and God placed the Holy Spirit in my mind so that, when I wanted to, I could remember who I was.

Inside my belief that I separated, however, I felt terribly guilty about usurping God and feared He was angry enough to kill me if ever I came back. Desperate to hide, I repressed my memory of God and turned my mind over to the ego thought system. Now I identify with the ego. The ego’s purpose is to keep me believing that I am a separate person in the world. While perpetuating my dream, the ego has to deal with my feelings of fear and guilt.

My ego self uses two means of deception to accomplish its purpose:

Tags: Ego Guilt Time

The Five Levels of Mind

Summarizes separation and forgiveness

May 28th, 2009

I have uploaded David Hoffmeister's chart of the Five Levels of Mind, which shows the structure of the ego mind.

I have also uploaded a chart showing how the ego develops the illusory world in which we believe. It also shows how God’s Answer, the Holy Spirit, corrected it through the process of forgiveness and miracles leading to the Atonement.

(Left-click on each link and open each in a new window. Then you can size them to see both easily at the same time.)

Tags: Ego Forgiveness

What is a Miracle?

updated

May 28th, 2009

Cause in my mind

A miracle springs from a state of miracle readiness, which includes the awareness that:

• I am spirit, the dreamer of a dream that has no real effects.
• I am causing the apparent situation by projecting my unconscious guilt to make a fearful image.

My choice to see that my false thinking made this illusion (this nothing) is my choice to be free of guilt.

Tags: Miracle

A Guilty Dream

My mind training must be working

May 23rd, 2009

I rarely remember dreams but early this morning I dreamed that a friend asked me to shoot someone for him because no one would suspect me. So I did it, partially reasoning that there was no life in bodies. It turned out the victim was a vice presidential candidate. I was able to pass through security in a hallway without arousing suspicion. But later I kept finding that I was holding a large syringe that belonged to my friend, no matter how many times I got rid of it. A woman seemed to be catching on to me, and then she had me cornered as I crouched by a table under which I was hiding a syringe. She came up to me in shorts and, to throw her off the murder possibility, I bit her on the thigh. [Hilarious now] Then I woke up feeling terribly guilty about committing murder and trapped. I was very relieved to find that it was only a dream.  

For a year now I’ve been going deeply into the Course and into my mind, apparently with no strong protest from my ego. I am pleased to have had this dream because to me it shows that my ego is beginning to feel the heat from my strengthening Self, and it is becoming more desperate in trying to make me feel guilty.

Tags: Ego Guilt

What is Wrong-minded about "Good”?

Forgiveness is relinquishment of all judgment

May 20th, 2009

At the Camp for Miracles David Hoffmeister pointed out the need for forgiving the good. He said, “Further into the Course we learn the ego projected out the cosmos and with it came a mechanism of rank ordering things into hierarchies, of judging, of dividing things up. This judgment mechanism of the ego keeps the illusion in place.”

So I looked in the Workbook and found:

These thoughts do not mean anything, "good" thoughts as well as "bad." None of them represents my real thoughts, which are being covered up by them. The "good" ones are but shadows of what lies beyond, and shadows make sight difficult. W-4
I am upset because I see a meaningless world. A "good world" implies a "bad" one. W-12
The images I think I see are merely the thoughts I think I think. W-15
I have no neutral thoughts. Everything I see is the result of my thoughts. Thoughts are merely true or false. W-16
I see no neutral things. This idea is a step in identifying cause and effect as it really operates in the world. I see no neutral things because I have no neutral thoughts. It is always the thought that comes first. This is the way I think. W-17

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Judgment

David Hoffmeister’s Gathering

May 11 in Manchester, New Hampshire

May 15th, 2009

David Hoffmeister held a gathering at the Manchester, NH ACIM group’s Sunday meeting on May 11, 2009. David answered questions about the Course and its practical application for experiencing miracles. It was a lively discussion punctuated by plenty of laughter.

Here is a transcript of the gathering.

Tags: Miracle

What is “light”?

What is “vision”?

May 13th, 2009

What is “light”?

Abstract light in the Course is a metaphor.
Light is the Holy Spirit’s purpose of forgiveness.
Light is miracle-readiness.
Light is the resolution, born of peace, of all your conflicts and mistaken thoughts into one concept which is wholly true.
True light is a state of mind that has become so unified that darkness cannot be perceived at all. And thus what is the same is seen as one, while what is not the same remains unnoticed, for it is not there.
Light comes from within. W-108
God put light in me.
Light is God’s strength in me that overlooks past appearances.
Light is truth.
Light is a reflection of God’s Will and mine.
Light is the extension of peace from my mind to another mind.
Light is my awareness of being one with the unified Christ Mind.
Miracles are seen in light.

The light of strength is constant, sure of love, forever glad to give itself away, because it cannot give but to itself. No one can ask in vain to share its sight, and none who enters its abode can leave without a miracle before his eyes, and strength and light abiding in his heart. W-92.8

Tags: Light Vision

Idols and Needs

There is no ambiguity in the Course

May 3rd, 2009

While lack does not exist in the creation of God, it is very apparent in what you have made. It is, in fact, the essential difference between them. Lack implies that you would be better off in a state somehow different from the one you are in. Until the "separation," which is the meaning of the "fall," nothing was lacking. There were no needs at all. Needs arise only when you deprive yourself. You act according to the particular order of needs you establish. This, in turn, depends on your perception of what you are. A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct. T-1.VI

"Self-esteem" in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its reality. Appetites are "getting" mechanisms, representing the ego's need to confirm itself. The ego tries to satisfy itself through the body. T-4.II  Your mission is very simple. You are asked to live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego. T-4.VI

The ego wants to have things for salvation, for possession is its law. Everything the ego tells you that you need will hurt you. For what you think you need will merely serve to tighten up your world against the light. Only the Holy Spirit knows what you need. Leave, then, your needs to Him. T-13.VII

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Guilt

Meditation

What works for me

April 23rd, 2009

Meditation is an essential part of the mind training necessary to hear God's Voice. I have uploaded relevant "how to" selections from the Course as a review: Hearing God's Voice

I am also posting below a summary of the meditiation instructions I received at an excellent program called The Pointing Out Way of Tibetan Buddhist Meditation by Dan Brown.

Assume cross-legged posture on a pillow— body like a mountain, spine like an arrow.
Focus on two-point meditation object: in-breath “now,” out-breath “now”                       
As they arise, seal thoughts as empty constructs, not real. Keep steering mind back to object.
Switch from event perspective to mind perspective— Become aware of and focus on the mind that is observing the stream of mental events.
Use intelligence to find “edge” between intensifying and easing up.
Search for the self’s ‘staying entity’— nothing is found, self is empty; ‘self’ recedes.
No time: in-breath already here, out-breath stays here. No past or future, only a slight motion.
Cease arbitrary mental activity: conceptualizing, elaborating; following past/anticipating future.
Allow awareness to manifest freshly in each discrete mind-moment and seal it as empty.
Extend your awareness to the vast background, aware of the simultaneity of mind’s relative activity and the Absolute, Ever-present Mind.

Tags: Forgiveness Self

About David Hoffmeister

The Foundation for the Awakening Mind

April 20th, 2009

David was inspired to seek spiritual Enlightenment and in 1986 he encountered A Course in Miracles. He recognized the Course as the tool he sought to help him transform his mind. As he read it, David found that the Voice of Jesus in the Course supported him in his deep examination of concepts and assumptions. Jesus became David’s internal teacher, answering his every question, and guiding him in the day-to-day management of his life and relationships.

David studied the Course with passionate intensity for several years and attended many Course study groups. The Voice of Jesus provided David with discernment about writings and teachings. Then the Voice of Jesus began to speak through David with authority. People began to refer their spiritual questions to him. David had several retreat experiences during which he was able to free his mind from ego chatter and enter into deep silence. It was in this manner that he ultimately experienced Enlightenment.

In 1991 David was guided to travel around the United States and Canada to share his understanding of A Course in Miracles . He followed Jesus’ instructions to “become as a child,” depending completely on the Holy Spirit for transportation, money, shelter, food and the words he spoke. David conveys a deep sense of peace, love and joy to people in Course gatherings, churches, spiritual groups and holy encounters. The Voice of Jesus told David, “Freely you have received; freely give.” Thus, David has never charged for his time or his teaching. He gives his teaching materials away and is supported only by love offerings.

Tags: News

The Unfairness Game

The ego’s use of guilt

April 20th, 2009

I believe I separated from God—an attack on God and a huge sin. I felt tremendously guilty and afraid of punishment. So I tried to escape by falling asleep and letting the ego thought system take over my mind. Now I identify with the ego mind and my body. The ego’s purpose is to prove that guilt is real, but that it is my brother who is guilty; I am innocent. To accomplish this purpose the ego has me play the Unfairness Game in my relationships. T-26.X.5

The Unfairness Game works like this:
I project my guilt feelings onto my brother. I want him to be the guilty party. What is he guilty of? The same thing I think I am guilty of—sinful attack. How can I demonstrate this? Projection (unconscious) makes perception (conscious). I have my eyes and ears perceive my brother treating me unfairly. He is blatantly attacking my innocence.

How can I prove to myself and to my brother that he treated me unfairly? How can I really make it stick? My sick body and my mental suffering bear witness to my brother’s guilt. They scream, “Look what you have done to me!” I hold a picture of my crucifixion up to him and say, “You are the cause of my loss.”

Tags: Ego

Total Commitment

My only function is the one God gave me.

April 19th, 2009

Having denied my Identity by attacking creation and its Creator in the unholy instant, my goal is now to find out who I am. I need to learn how to remember the truth. To accomplish this, attack must be replaced by forgiveness, so that thoughts of life may replace thoughts of death. W-62   

The purpose of the world I see is to obscure my function of forgiveness, and provide me with a justification for forgetting it. It is the temptation to abandon God and His Son by taking on a physical appearance. Only by fulfilling the function given me by God will I be happy because my function is to be happy. W-64

The full acceptance of forgiveness as my only function entails a total commitment to the recognition of forgiveness as my function and the relinquishment of all other goals I have invented for myself. W-65

So here I am, like Truman, awake in a lucid dream on the set of the world. What do I do? I don’t try to escape. I need do nothing in the world, for to do anything involves the body and thereby gives it reality in my mind. The world is in my mind. I come back to the source of the world in my mind and change my mind about the world.

Instead of changing anything in the world I “let all things be exactly as they are.” W-268 I withdraw my wishes from its unity, and thus let it be as God created it. For thus will I be able, too, to recognize my Self as God created me in love. I see everything in the world as the same. “It is their sameness that the miracle attests.” T-27.VI.6

To change all this, I need only decide I do not know the purpose of the world. T-29.VII.8  

I want to see the truth. I abandon judgment and, with total commitment, I ask the Holy Spirit to redirect me.

“As sight was made to lead away from truth, it can be redirected. Sounds become the call for God, and all perception can be given a new purpose by the One Whom God appointed Savior to the world. Follow His light, and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away, but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.” W-pII.3.4    

The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. T-30.V.1    

The world will end in joy. The world will end in peace. The world will end in laughter. And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. M-14.5

Tags: Forgiveness Self

Awakening Is My Only Choice

April 18th, 2009

I still (unconsciously) believe I separated from God, and I’m afraid of his wrath.
This fear motivates all my thinking.
I am spirit, but I have taken on a false identity as a person in a body.
My “thoughts” consist of:

• Projections of images for me to judge (to fool myself that I’m being attacked)
• A constant stream of verbalization in which I reorder meaningless past thoughts (to keep my mind busy so I don’t stop to question anything)
• Defenses like special relationships (as a God substitute and to keep the reality of Love out)

My thinking represents a complete break with reality, or a psychotic state.
My perception is hallucination, a nightmarish dream of “me” struggling in a world of constant change, insecurity, suffering and death.

God wills that I awaken to the reality of His Love, peace and joy.
He placed the Holy Spirit in my mind.
I accept the Holy Spirit’s purpose of forgiveness as my only function.

• As an attack thought arises in my mind I question it and see that it is false.
• I ask the Holy Spirit to show it to me instead as a call for love from an innocent brother.

Tags: Awakening Forgiveness

One Simple Choice

The legal basis for forgiveness

April 17th, 2009

Yesterday I was taking a walk down the peaceful country road on which I live. I was startled by a loud sound and flashed to anger as my neighbor, Bill, roared by on a muffler-less ATV. I thought: That #%&! Oops, I shouldn’t be angry. No, that’s not it. Don’t ‘should’ on yourself. He is a Son of God and I love him. But I don’t. Why doesn’t he grow up? Well, I guess he has a right to do what he enjoys. But, according to state law, he doesn’t have the right to do what he just did. It was an illusion so forget it. Yeah, right. This should do it: I let go of my attack thought and ask the Holy Spirit to let me see peace instead.” I repeated this, to no avail, till I got home.

Then I picked up the Course and opened it. Wouldn’t you know it? There was Lesson 86 saying:
God's plan for salvation will save me from my perception of this.
I am choosing between misperception and salvation as I look on this.
If I see grounds for grievances in this, I will not see the grounds for my salvation.
This calls for salvation, not attack.

I read on:
Let me perceive this in accordance with the Will of God.
It is God's Will you are His Son, [Bill], and mine as well.
This is part of God's Will for me, however I may see it. W-87

My perception of this shows me I believe in laws that do not exist.
I see only the laws of God at work in this.
Let me allow God's laws to work in this, and not my own. W-88

I would not hold this grievance apart from my salvation.
Let our grievances be replaced by miracles, [Bill].
Beyond this is the miracle by which all my grievances are replaced. W-89

I need not wait for this to be resolved.
The answer to this problem is already given me, if I will accept it.
Time cannot separate this problem from its solution. W-90

Mind apart from spirit cannot think. W-96   

The mind that sees illusions thinks them real. They have existence in that they are thoughts. And yet they are not real, because the mind that thinks these thoughts is separate from God . [“I am under no laws but God’s.”] Forgive what you have made and you are saved. W-99

God's Will for you is perfect happiness. Your joy must be complete to let His plan be understood by those to whom He sends you. They will see their function in your shining face, and hear God calling to them in your happy laugh. God's messengers are joyous, and their joy heals sorrow and despair. God asks you to be happy, so the world can see how much He loves His Son. You are God's messenger today. You bring His happiness to all you look upon; His peace to everyone who looks on you and sees His message in your happy face. Then realize your part is to be happy. Only this is asked of you or anyone who wants to take his place among God's messengers. It is your function that you find joy here, and that you find it now. For this you came. Let this one be the day that you succeed! Look deep within you, undismayed by all the little thoughts and foolish goals you pass as you ascend to meet the Christ in you. You can reach Him now. W-100

This morning I was out on the road and heard a big Harley coming. I looked up and smiled. The guy stopped. He was lost and asked me for directions. As he drove off he had to be saying to himself, “What a gracious and kind person that was!”

Tags: Forgiveness

Hearing the Voice for God

April 15th, 2009

Having some sort of communication with God is of the utmost importance to me. I meditate two or three times a day using this basic process:

I remind myself I am God’s Son and He loves me. “God takes you where you are and welcomes you.” M-26.4

As I begin my meditation I ask for what I really want, to know God’s Will for me. “Desire is the key.”

Then I let go of all my ego thoughts. “A mind in accord with the Holy Spirit is silent.”

The Holy Spirit communicates to me using symbols I can understand, so I remain open to all possibilities: words and/or feelings. I listen with my intuition.

“The best indicator of connection to God is how one feels. When you allow your mind to be guided by the Holy Spirit it brings you into a sense of relaxation and joy.” Quotes from Awakening through A Course in Miracles by David Hoffmeister

For more detailed information, I have uploaded quotations from the Course Text , Workbook Lessons and Manual about how to listen to the Voice for God .

Tags: Self

Thoughts on Time

The Big Illusions: Time and Duality

April 10th, 2009

God is. God is Love. God created His Son, Christ, as an extension of Love.

There is no world. There is no time.

My mind entertained the impossible idea of separation in an instant and fell asleep. In this instant my mind felt fear and chose to hide from God. My mind made an illusory loop of time and chose to get stuck in it, forgetting everything else. Time is a trick to fool the sleeping mind.

Time introduces an apparent gap, a separation, between cause and effect. It provides the mind with a fantasy space in which to dream and attribute false causes to effects. It introduces the possibility of choice where there is none. The illusion of duality provides things to choose between. Duality and the gap between cause and effect allow the mind to judge. It can pick and choose among various illusions, deciding certain ones are good and others bad. It makes its decisions on the basis of its prior decisions, the past. The mind believes it is a person and that there are other people with different motivations. My fearful mind perceives subjectively, my senses reporting data that confirm what my mind wants to perceive. My mind wants to perceive itself as the innocent victim of attack coming from outside itself, so it projects. It sees itself attacked and attacks in self defense.

All my thoughts are about the past, which has no existence. My mind is therefore blank but apparently busy. My mind keeps busy in the dream, confirming its self concept and blocking against the truth.

My solution is to forgive: to stop, to look at my perceptions, and to realize they are the false effects of a false cause. I call to the Holy Spirit to get me out of this illusory loop of time.

These thoughts are my reflections on David Hoffmeister’s Reversing Effect and Cause .

ACIM - Time

Awakening Mind – Time

Tags: Ego Forgiveness

Heal Thyself

A Summary of the Psychotherapy Supplement

April 6th, 2009

The aim of psychotherapy is to aid you to abandon your fixed delusional system, and to reconsider the false cause and effect relationships on which it rests. A change in your perception of interpersonal relationships enables you to begin to question your reality. You invite the Holy Spirit to enter into the relationship.   

The "self," which can attack and be attacked is a concept you made up. You must begin to change it. You must become willing to reverse your thinking, and to understand that the people and events you thought affected you were made by your [unconscious] projections on the world. The world you see therefore does not exist. Yet you are perceiving your projections as real, and using them as the basis for judging and condemning other people as guilty. Your belief that they are guilty justifies your angry thoughts about them. P-1.in. The belief that anger brings you something you really want, and that by justifying your attack thoughts you are protecting yourself is a fundamental error. P-2.in.

Healing/salvation can be found only in relationships. P-2.in. It is necessary to teach forgiveness rather than condemnation in your relationships. You must share one goal with someone else, and in so doing, lose all sense of separate interests. Be still and recognize your brother's need [to be seen as innocent] is your own. Then meet your brother's need as yours and see that they are met as one, for such they are. P-2.II. Meet attack without attack, and therefore without defense. Demonstrate that defenses are not necessary, and that defenselessness is strength. Teach that guilt is unreal and cannot be justified. Relieve the mind of the insane burden of guilt it carries so wearily, and healing is accomplished. P-2.IV.

Nothing in the world is holier than helping one who asks for help. A brother seeking aid can bring us gifts beyond the heights perceived in any dream. He offers us salvation, for he comes to us as Christ and Savior. What he asks is asked by God through him. And what we do for him becomes the gift we give to God. The sacred calling of God's holy Son for help in his perceived distress can be but answered by his Father. Yet He needs a voice through which to speak His holy Word. You are that voice. Ask the Holy Spirit for help. And He will send His Answer through you. Help your brother to forgive himself for all the trespasses with which he would condemn himself without a cause. His healing is your own. And as you see the sinlessness in him come shining through the veil of guilt that shrouds the Son of God, you will behold in him the face of Christ, and understand that it is but your own. Hear a brother call for help and answer him. It will be God to Whom you answer, for you called on Him. There is no other way to hear His Voice. P-2.V.

You see in your brother all that you have not forgiven in yourself, and are thus given another chance to look at it, open it to re-evaluation and forgive it. When this occurs, you see your sins as gone into a past that is no longer here. Your brother is your screen for the projection of your sins, enabling you to let them go. P-2.VI.

Do not demand, do not decide, do not sacrifice. Listen. The Holy Spirit’s help will be sent in whatever form is most helpful; a name, a thought, a picture, an idea, or perhaps just a feeling of reaching out to someone somewhere. The joining is in the hands of the Holy Spirit. It cannot fail to be accomplished. P-3.I.

It is in the instant that you forget to judge your brother that healing occurs and you recognize the equality of yourself and your brother. P-3.II.

Tags: Ego Forgiveness Self

The Course is Simple

The Focus is on Relationship

April 5th, 2009

Forgiveness, the central practice of A Course in Miracles , has three basic steps, and you are only responsible for initiating the first two.
The Course is a big book, however, because considerable learning and unlearning is needed for you to really understand these preliminaries:

• What you are (spirit)
• How you are currently thinking (the ego dream) and
• How you would rather think (your real thoughts with God)

You must come to genuinely desire this major change of mind, which requires developing trust in the Holy Spirit as you give up what you think you know and your “personal” control.
The special relationship is the crucible where your thought impurities can be transformed.
In this context, the three working steps to practice again and again are:

1. I recognize that I am having an attack thought (I am misperceiving my brother in my dream)
2. I choose to let it go (because it has no reality and causes pain where I would rather have peace and joy)
3. I welcome the holy instant of release for both of us and see my brother in a new light (a miracle)

With the growth of your miracle experience you come to accept the Atonement, your emergence into real or holy relationship, with no loss and the full recovery of your joyful, peaceful, loving reality.

Tags: Forgiveness

Forgiveness

Three views

March 27th, 2009

Forgiveness - View #1

I am dreaming.

My only function is to remember I am dreaming, see the false as false and let it go.

I dreamed up the world because I believed I separated from God. This is false. But, believing I separated, I felt enormous guilt and anticipation of punishment from God. This was so frightening that I adopted the insane ego thought system and the person self concept.

The ego wrote situations and events into the script allowing me to project my fears onto others and then perceive them as unfairly attacking me. I judge them as guilty of hurting me and feel right in defending myself by attacking them back. But this is just my present choice to separate from others and prove my vulnerable self concept to myself.

Any judgment I make is false because I imagined/dreamed up a situation in which I don’t really know anything. Even my everyday ordering of thought is an attempt to select from reality and make up my own, hence usurping God’s function and a source of guilt for me.

So I watch my mind. As I become aware of ego thoughts, I deny them and instantly ask the Holy Spirit to decide for me. Each change of mind is a miracle. I follow the guidance of the Holt Spirit in all things, for these are the thoughts of God and His will for me is perfect happiness.

As my experience of miracles builds I am able to make the final choice, the acceptance of the Atonement, the complete recognition that the imagined separation never happened.

Forgiveness - View #2

The truth: Everything is happening for my good; happiness is my birthright.

Problem: Events and other people can make me unhappy.

Solution: Forgiveness

An event occurs: “X” says “Y” to me.
I feel upset.
It appears clear to me that I am upset because X said Y.
I stop and ask myself what I really want to come of this:
Do I want to be right about X being bad and stay unhappy in my wrong mind? No.
Or 
Do I want peace of mind enough to be willing to choose again, to choose for the Holy Spirit’s Purpose of forgiveness? Yes.
I realize that such appearances are a trick of my ego mind. The cause of my upset is the meaning I am reading into the event, my (mis)perception of the event. I am seeing a symbolic out-picturing of my chaotic state of mind. I identify my judgmental thoughts causing my upset:
“X is wrong to say y.”
“X is bad.”
I trace back my thoughts, which are generated from my beliefs:  Tracing back beliefs
"I am an innocent self in a body vulnerable to attack."   
"X is different from me; X is attacking me."
These beliefs stem from my unconscious belief that I separated from God, about which I feel tremendous guilt and fear of punishment. When projected by my ego mind onto the screen of the world, it looks like X is attacking me. The Holy Spirit helps me see the truth:
The separation never happened.
Those beliefs are false. I am really spirit and my brother and I are the same.
Therefore those thoughts and perceptions were false.
What I thought happened did not happen.         
I forgive myself and X for my mistake and let it go, asking the Holy Spirit to help me see the truth, X’s innocence.
I feel relief and genuine happiness. Everything is happening for my good.

Forgiveness - View #3

I watch my mind. If I am not joyous I know this need not be. I do not want this ego temptation, so…

I turn to the Holy Spirit in quietness and give Him the problem:

What am I thinking? ______________________________
This thought is causing the effect I am experiencing.

What is the belief behind the thought?
Guilt “is but the fabric of a senseless dream.” T-27.II.6:11   I still dream that I separated from God. I feel guilty and sinful for this attack on God and on my brother. I expect God’s punishment.

In my desire to feel innocent, I have unconsciously projected attack onto someone or some situation in the world and I hold a grievance. I believe I am a person, a body doomed to die, and I have forgotten that I am the Son of God. I am trapped in false perceptions and false judgments.

This belief is false, a hallucination with no reality whatsoever. It is not true! I am not guilty. God loves me right now and always.

The thought that I projected onto this situation is totally false.
"I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo." T-27.VIII.11

I want to overlook this nothingness, to forgive it.

I ask the Holy Spirit to take this problem and to let me see peace, joy and love instead, for myself and for my sinless brother. I prefer to be happy in the truth that I am God’s Son.

Tags: Ego Forgiveness

Christ's vision

See with the heart

March 25th, 2009

You see the world that you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image maker. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause. This is what salvation means, for where is the world you see when its cause is gone? Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them, even though they were made of hate. For you will not be making them alone. W-23.4

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

…Christ's vision looks on everything with love. T-13.VIII.4

Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees. W-158.7

How can you estimate the worth of him who offers peace to you? What would you want except his offering? His worth has been established by his Father, and you will recognize it as you receive his Father's gift through him. What is in him will shine so brightly in your grateful vision that you will merely love him and be glad. T-20.V.4

Above all else I want to see. Recognizing that what I see reflects what I think I am, I realize that vision is my greatest need. The world I see attests to the fearful nature of the self-image I have made. If I would remember who I am, it is essential that I let this image of myself go. As it is replaced by truth, vision will surely be given me. And with this vision, I will look upon the world and on myself with charity and love. W-56.2

Christ's vision is a miracle. It comes from far beyond itself, for it reflects eternal love and the rebirth of love which never dies, but has been kept obscure. Christ's vision pictures Heaven, for it sees a world so like to Heaven that what God created perfect can be mirrored there. W-159.3

Today I let Christ's vision look upon
All things for me and judge them not, but give
Each one a miracle of love instead. W-349

Tags: Love Self

What I Am Not

March 17th, 2009

I forget the beginning, but there is no question that I firmly identify with my ego mind, separate from God. The ego has a thought system that upholds its purpose, which is to prove that I separated from God. Everything I believe is rooted in a fearful past, which has no reality. The world is neutral and there is no causation in it. But I am impelled to ascribe meaning to it because I, the ego, fear God and think I am in competition with Him about who I am.

I make up the world I see by projecting images and feelings onto it. Forgetting I projected them, I see the prejudiced images and think I am just now determining what they mean. It is a dream that brings me nothing of value. I feel lonely and afraid, suffer, compete, defend myself, have conflicted relationships and die. I think that other people, God and mother nature are the cause, but it is all in my mind. I am doing this to myself. I am not the ego. The Holy Spirit is waiting to welcome me to the reality of God’s peace and joy now.

Tags: Ego

Krishnamurti on Love and Loneliness

What I think I am

March 14th, 2009

This brief introduction establishes the metaphysical context.

God is Spirit, Mind, Love. God created Christ, His Son, as extension. When the mad idea of separation occurred, instead of laughing it off, the mind of the Son considered the possibility for an instant. God prevented anything from really changing, but the Son’s powerful mind dreamed up a whole world and then fell asleep into it. In the dream the thought of separation, the ego, could play out its fantasy. The ego split into fragments, attached each fragment to a body and then wiped its memory clear.

I am a thought fragment that identifies with a baby that was born in time and space. Unconsciously I feel very guilty, believing I separated from God, and fearful, believing God is angry with me. As I grew up I learned the fear-based ego thought system. 

Tags: Ego Love

Tracing Back a Belief

Instrument for Peace

March 2nd, 2009

The Instrument for Peace was made by David Hoffmeister to help Course students trace their lack of peace back to its singular cause in the mind so healing may occur.

When I think about this past event (A) I was the new manager of a social services program. An employee called me at home Sunday night saying he had to take Monday through Wednesday off to renew his driver’s license. I said there was no coverage and that he would have to do his job Monday and Tuesday until coverage was available on Wednesday. On Monday and Tuesday he did not show for work, so I followed procedure bycompleting a written warning form and informed the boss. Later the boss called us into his office and listened to the employee, an old friend of his, say the renewal of the driver’s license had been urgent. It appeared to me that the employee was making this up so I asked him to show his driver’s license. He wouldn’t. The boss did not reprimand the employee but reprimanded me for essentially calling the employee “a liar.” Not long after that the boss fired me for “poor communication.”
I feel (B) angry 
because I think that (C) the boss was to blame.

2. (A), (B), (C) prove that I am right about (D) being unfairly treated (my belief in lack, taking the form of an image of self/other/the world). I do not like how I feel now, so I am ready to consider the possibility that the way I am perceiving this is not the way it really is. As part of the healing process, I am willing to look beyond my perception of this upset (the meaning I have given it) and look within my mind.

3. I want to learn that there is a way that I can, without guilt, see the part I play in thinking (A) I was fired unfairly, in feeling (B) angry and in blaming (C) the boss.

4. I release my wanting to be right about my perception of all of this: (A), (B), (C), (D). I want instead to be happy. Through the ego (distorted thinking/seeing), I perceive the cause of my upset and its resolution as outside my mind. This projection seems very real; its purpose is to distract my mind from looking inward.
 
5. If the cause of my upset and its resolution were outside my mind, I would, in fact, be powerless to change it. My use of projection (seeing outside what I don't want to see within) is why I seem powerless, why (C) the boss seem(s) to be the cause of my upset.

6. Thinking (A), feeling (B) and blaming (C) result from my belief in lack (taking the form of an image of self/other/the world) (D) me being treated unfairly.

7. I am only upset at someone or something when they/it mirror(s) back to my mind a belief which I have denied from awareness. When I blame/fear something in the world, it is to avoid seeing the upset and resolution as they really are (a decision in my mind) and to instead maintain an image of self/other/the world as I wish. This mind trick seems to displace guilt and fear, but actually maintains feelings of upset. To blame or fear an image of self/other/the world requires that I believe I am limited to a body and world of bodies and denies the spiritual abstract reality of my being. As a first step in letting go of all upset, I want to see in my mind what I thought was outside it. Being upset about (A) being fired is only another attempt to make (C) the boss the cause of my guilt and fear.

8. Upset seems valuable and justifiable when (A) runs counter to what I wanted. What I wanted and expected is (E) for the boss to support me rather than the employee. I still believe in some form of lack (D) that I am a person who can be unfairly treated so I think I need (E) to be happy, complete, and at peace. Is this belief in lack and the resulting expectation more important to me than peace of mind?

9. Everything in the world works together for my good. What I think is the cause of my upset is not the cause at all. The choice to be upset is a choice not to see the cause, my belief in separation/lack, as a present decision in my mind. It's an attempt to see the cause in the past/future and the present as its effect.

So I rise above the battleground with the Holy Spirit. I am not a body; I am mind. The employee and the boss are merely images in my mind that I have invested with meaning and projected.
I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked. T-21.II.2
I made up this particular dream event because I believe I separated from God; then I wanted God to give reality to my dream. That was not possible. So I got angry feeling that God treated me unfairly.  

10. What I want RIGHT NOW, above all else, is peace. I question my belief (D) that I am a person who can be unfairly treated and I voluntarily let go of what I wanted/expected (E) for the boss to support me rather than the employee in order to reconnect with my one goal: peace.

11. Peace of mind is a present decision which I gratefully choose RIGHT NOW! Guilt and fear of consequences only seemed possible because I was determined to hold on to a belief in past/future cause. I let go of the meaning I gave to the past/future and open my mind to the present, absolved and innocent.

12. I am grateful for the realization that the cause of my upset, which I thought was in the world, was actually only an unquestioned belief and decision in my mind; I have decided anew for my PEACE OF MIND.

Tags: Ego Forgiveness

Thoughts on the thoughts I think I think

Forgiveness

March 1st, 2009

Today I have been aware that almost all of my thinking is wrong minded--based on the belief that I am a person, the subject who perceives. But what I think I perceive is not really there; it is merely my mental projection, just the out-picturing of an imagined past. I imagine causation in the world where there is none.

My wrong mind does this so I can judge and feel confirmed that I know. But I know nothing that is true, so I cannot judge. I think I am a separate person in a body. I am not separate in any way except for my present choice to hold on to the delusion that I am not what I am. I am spirit/mind. There is one unified Mind.

So I forgive. I do not attempt to write meaning on the world. Instead I just see the false thoughts and perceptions as false and let them go. I become still and open to the Holy Spirit for guidance to see my real thoughts. I ask, "What am I?" Perhaps I read the Course.

I am the holy Son of God Himself, spirit/mind, loved now and forever. The truth is now! I feel the love of God within me now. There is nothing I need do. There is only being joyful and at peace.

Peace, love and joy,
Andy

Be You in Charge

Tags: Ego Forgiveness

David Hoffmeister's new book

Awakening through A Course in Miracles

February 20th, 2009

Tags: News

What is Love?

The ego and God see it differently

February 18th, 2009

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life
I don't know

Landslide Stevie Nicks 1973

The dictionary says that “Love is a feeling of affection and caring toward another person. It arises in relation to certain partners, family members, and sometimes to others as ‘altruism.’” So we think love is selective. There are people to whom it does not apply.
A current definition of altruism is: “paying a cost to help another individual and never receiving any kind of benefit.” My Course discernment antennae start to hum: that sounds like sacrifice.

A Course in Miracles says that love is neither selective nor sacrificial. Love is of God and “is beyond what can be taught.” We can’t understand love because the ego thought system that made the world and thinks our thoughts is based on fear, love’s opposite, seeking to confirm itself. We can’t generate loving thoughts by ourselves yet because they come from the opposite paradigm. In order to have a loving thought we have to deny what our ego mind is telling us. We acknowledge that we are stuck in false perception and appeal to the Holy Spirit to help us see peace instead.

Tags: Forgiveness Love

Alphabetical list of posts

by title

February 1st, 2009

A Clearer Understanding of Jesus

A Course in Cause and Not Effect

A Guilty Dream

Tags: