Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Praying with the Christ Within

Prayer has no beginning and no end. It is a part of life. But it does change in form, and grow with learning until it reaches its formless state, and fuses into total communication with God. In its asking form it need not, and often does not, make appeal to God, or even involve belief in Him. At these levels prayer is merely wanting, out of a sense of scarcity and lack.

These forms of prayer, or asking-out-of-need, always involve feelings of weakness and inadequacy, and could never be made by a Son of God who knows Who he is. No one, then, who is sure of his Identity [as God’s Son] could pray in these forms. Yet it is also true that no one who is uncertain of his Identity can avoid praying in this way. And prayer is as continual as life. Everyone prays without ceasing. Ask and you have received, for you have established what it is you want.

It is also possible to reach a higher form of asking-out-of-need, for in this world prayer is reparative, and so it must entail levels of learning. Here, the asking may be addressed to God in honest belief, though not yet with understanding. A vague and usually unstable sense of identification has generally been reached, but tends to be blurred by a deep-rooted sense of sin. It is possible at this level to continue to ask for things of this world in various forms, and it is also possible to ask for gifts such as honesty or goodness, and particularly for forgiveness for the many sources of guilt that inevitably underlie any prayer of need. Without guilt there is no scarcity. The sinless have no needs. (A Course in Miracles, S-1.II.1-3)

The Course is teaching us that the Son of God is our true Identity. We remain united and whole in the innocence of the Love of God. This is not how we see ourselves. The world we experience is the out picturing of the decision to believe that we are separate from God. Not only do we not experience the peace of God’s Love, we feel guilty for having denied our Father, our Creator.

This guilt influences all our perceptions in the world. The pain of guilt is intolerable. To reduce the pain, we try to project it on other people and the world. But it does not eliminate the guilt, it only hides it in our unconscious. Guilt demands punishment. The unconscious guilt prays for punishment. It finds punishment in physical sickness and many forms of attack on the body, the ego’s chosen home.

The Course is offering us another way to pray. Instead of praying for punishment, we are being taught to see with Christ’s vision. Christ, our true Self, overlooks the forms of the world and sees the Love beyond the forms. Prayer to see the innocence of Christ frees our mind from the self-imposed need for punishment.

As we learn to recognize the truth of our innocence, we no longer need to bring pain and fear into our minds. As we pray through our willingness to receive Christ’s vision, we free ourselves from the bondage of an identity separated from Love. We welcome the Love that joins us with All That is real. Love is no longer feared but accepted as the healing balm that forgives our perceived sins. This brings us to true prayer that leads us Home to the welcoming arms of God’s Love.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Receiving the Gift of Christ

Praying to Christ in anyone is true prayer because it is a gift of thanks to His Father. To ask that Christ be but Himself is not an entreaty. It is a song of thanksgiving for what you are. Herein lies the power of prayer. It asks nothing and receives everything. This prayer can be shared because it receives for everyone. To pray with one who knows that this is true is to be answered. Perhaps the specific form of resolution for a specific problem will occur to either of you; it does not matter which. Perhaps it will reach both, if you are genuinely attuned to one another. It will come because you have realized that Christ is in both of you. That is its only truth. (A Course in Miracles, S-1.I.7)

Christ is the symbol of our true Self. It is the part of us that shares the reality of oneness in Love’s innocence. Christ is in everyone. Praying to Christ is joining with the Truth.

We join with the Truth in a brother who may at the time feel a perceived need. As we join in Christ, we open to receive the awareness of Love’s presence. In this awareness, the need is answered in a form that can be understood and accepted.

This joining brings healing to both the one who has asked for help with a need and the one who joins with him in the remembrance of Christ in them both. They have joined together with willingness to receive the gift of Christ that has always been in them, ready to be acknowledged.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Practicing True Prayer

Prayer is an offering; a giving up of yourself to be at one with Love. There is nothing to ask because there is nothing left to want. That nothingness becomes the altar of God. It disappears in Him.

This is not a level of prayer that everyone can attain as yet. Those who have not reached it still need your help in prayer because their asking is not yet based upon acceptance. Help in prayer does not mean that another mediates between you and God. But it does mean that another stands beside you and helps to raise you up to Him. One who has realized the goodness of God prays without fear. And one who prays without fear cannot but reach Him. He can therefore also reach His Son, wherever he may be and whatever form he may seem to take. (A Course in Miracles, S-1.I.5:5-7;6)

The ego believes that accepting our Identity in the oneness of God’s Love is a sacrifice. This is because the ego, the thought of separation, cannot exist in Love’s oneness. This is why the ego is afraid of Love. True prayer then involves setting aside, at least temporarily, our identification with the ego little self. It means that we have opened our mind to join with the Christ Mind in ourself and our brother.

The ego always has a sense of lack because it does not recognize our true oneness with all that is real. And so the ego always comes from a place of need. This need is interpreted by the ego as a form. It thinks it needs a certain status, relationship or circumstance to feel safe or complete. Our Christ Mind sees only that we are already complete in God’s Love.

While in the ego dream, we need help to recognize that we already have everything we need; we already have all of Love. So when we perceive a need in ourselves or in another, we need to ask for help to recognize the Christ, our true Self, within. We are asking for healing of the mistaken belief in being separate.

Each time we practice this, we loosen our identification with a false image and open to the Light of Love that shines away its shadow and brings us to see the forgiven world. This is the world of the Christ Mind, where all is seen as innocent. The practice of true prayer leads us to accepting that we are at Home in Love.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Opening Our Minds to God’s Answers

The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you need. To ask for the specific is much the same as to look on sin and then forgive it. Also in the same way, in prayer you overlook your specific needs as you see them, and let them go into God’s Hands. There they become your gifts to Him, for they tell Him that you would have no gods before Him; no love but His. What could His answer be but your remembrance of Him? Can this be traded for a bit of trifling advice about a problem of an instant’s duration? God answers only for eternity. But still all little answers are contained in this.

Prayer is a stepping aside; a letting go, a quiet time of listening and loving. It should not be confused with supplication of any kind, because it is a way of remembering your holiness. Why should holiness entreat, being fully entitled to everything Love has to offer? And it is to Love you go in prayer. Prayer is an offering; a giving up of yourself to be at one with Love. There is nothing to ask because there is nothing left to want. That nothingness becomes the altar of God. It disappears in Him. (A Course in Miracles, S-1.I.4-5)

The ego, maker of the dream of separation, can only conceive of images or forms to which it gives meaning based on the belief in separation. Its dedication to separation makes it oblivious to the eternal oneness of Love. While we are believing in the dream, God provides answers in forms that we can understand. His answers are always a reflection of the oneness of Love. They lead us toward the recognition that only Love is real. His answers meet us where we believe we are, taking us gently and progressively toward awakening from the dream.

Our part in the process of awakening from the dream is to be willing to turn over to God the things we think we need in the world with willingness to see them as Love sees them. An example of a way to do this in our mind regarding a specific perceived need is to ask, “How would Love see this? How would Love respond to this?”

This is an expression of willingness to let Love’s reflection be revealed to us in the dream. We are promised that answers specific to our perceived need will be given us. They will always in some way reflect the reality of Love’s oneness. We do not have to understand how it works. We need only be willing to let go of what we think the need is. This is how we open our mind to receive specific guidance for what to think, do or say.

We must be willing to frequently step back from our perceptions and offer them to the Holy Spirit for His loving correction. The more consistently we do this with an open mind, the more peace we will experience in our lives. We will be shifting our attention from the ego mindset to the Love that is our true Self.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Understanding True Prayer

Prayer is a way offered by the Holy Spirit to reach God. It is not merely a question or an entreaty. It cannot succeed until you realize that it asks for nothing. How else could it serve its purpose? It is impossible to pray for idols and hope to reach God. True prayer must avoid the pitfall of asking to entreat. Ask, rather, to receive what is already given; to accept what is already there.

You have been told to ask the Holy Spirit for the answer to any specific problem, and that you will receive a specific answer if such is your need. You have also been told that there is only one problem and one answer. In prayer this is not contradictory. There are decisions to make here, and they must be made whether they be illusions or not. You cannot be asked to accept answers which are beyond the level of need that you can recognize. Therefore, it is not the form of the question that matters, nor how it is asked. The form of the answer, if given by God, will suit your need as you see it. This is merely an echo of the reply of His Voice. The real sound is always a song of thanksgiving and of Love.

You cannot, then, ask for the echo. It is the song that is the gift. Along with it come the overtones, the harmonics, the echoes, but these are secondary. In true prayer you hear only the song. All the rest is merely added. You have sought first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all else has indeed been given you. (A Course in Miracles, S-1.I.1-3)

As we seek to apply the principles of A Course in Miracles in our daily life, asking for the Holy Spirit’s guidance can seem confusing. How do we ask for help? What should we ask for?

In the ACIM supplement, The Song of Prayer, we are provided with help in understanding true prayer. The key to prayer for help is willingness to set aside our ideas of what the answer should look like. These ideas come from the ego, which always seeks forms to satisfy its perceived needs. These forms are always a limit on Love. True prayer seeks to join with unlimited Love.

While we believe we are in the dream of separation, answers to true prayer will come in a form that helps us let go of our limits on Love. These answers will help us bring into focus the ever-present Love beyond all form. The answer may look like a new job, a transformed relationship, a holy instant of forgiveness. These are reflections or echos of recognizing and joining in Love. Our heart’s desire is to remember that we are Love and nothing else. We truly want to see only the innocence of Christ in everyone. True prayer is a means to welcome this vision.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Receiving Truly Helpful Guidance

Prayer is the greatest gift with which God blessed His Son at his creation. It was then what it is to become; the single voice Creator and creation share; the song the Son sings to the Father, Who returns the thanks it offers Him unto the Son. Endless the harmony, and endless, too, the joyous concord of the Love They give forever to Each Other. And in this, creation is extended. God gives thanks to His extension in His Son. His Son gives thanks for his creation, in the song of his creating in his Father’s Name. The Love They share is what all prayer will be throughout eternity, when time is done. For such it was before time seemed to be.

To you who are in time a little while, prayer takes the form that best will suit your need. You have but one. What God created one must recognize its oneness, and rejoice that what illusions seemed to separate is one forever in the Mind of God. Prayer now must be the means by which God’s Son leaves separate goals and separate interests by, and turns in holy gladness to the truth of union in his Father and himself.

Lay down your dreams, you holy Son of God, and rising up as God created you, dispense with idols and remember Him. Prayer will sustain you now, and bless you as you lift your heart to Him in rising song that reaches higher and then higher still, until both high and low have disappeared. Faith in your goal will grow and hold you up as you ascend the shining stairway to the lawns of Heaven and the gate of peace. For this is prayer, and here salvation is. This is the way. It is God’s gift to you. (A Course in Miracles, S-1.in.1-3)

Everyone in this world is searching for Love, because it is a dream where Love is denied. True prayer leads us out of this dream to the recognition of our unity with the Love that created us. Praying for any form in the world is praying for idols. Love has no form, for it is one and the same eternally.

In the world it seems that we have needs. These needs are the reflection of the dream’s denial of Love, Which is all we really need. True prayer has at its core the willingness to join in Love. The willingness to accept Love is reflected in our dream world as specific answers to perceived specific needs. These answers are truly helpful. They always answer in a way that no one loses and in some way the remembrance of Love’s innocence and oneness is facilitated.

As we are willing to be truly helpful and ask for guidance for what to think and say and do, we will always receive answers that are helpful and healing.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Return from Fear to Love

Nothing I see means anything.

The reason this is so is that I see nothing, and nothing has no meaning. It is necessary that I recognize this, that I may learn to see. What I think I see now is taking the place of vision. I must let it go by realizing it has no meaning, so that vision may take its place.

These thoughts do not mean anything.

The thoughts of which I am aware do not mean anything because I am trying to think without God. What I call “my” thoughts are not my real thoughts. My real thoughts are the thoughts I think with God. I am not aware of them because I have made my thoughts to take their place. I am willing to recognize that my thoughts do not mean anything, and to let them go. I choose to have them be replaced by what they were intended to replace. My thoughts are meaningless, but all creation lies in the thoughts I think with God. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 51, W-pI.51.1;4. See also ACIM Lesson 51 Insights.)

“Nothing I see means anything” is the title of the first lesson of the ACIM Workbook. It is this idea that is the basis for all healing of our mind that will bring us back to remembering the truth that we are Love and nothing else, united with the Love of our Creator.

Our identification with the body is the denial of our true Self, which is formless Love and nothing else. It is what the body can seem to do and experience that is the cause of all fear and guilt. The body is incapable of recognizing Love, for it can perceive only form which denies Love.

We are so convinced that we are a body that we insist what the body sees is real. In order to see the unreality of the world, we must question the reality of the body. This brings up fear because if we are not a body, what are we?

Our belief in being a body denies the experience of unlimited, eternal Love. So the loss of the body as our identity seems to mean the end of our existence. Yet the body is a made up image that seems to exist only in a dream of separation. But dreams have no existence in reality. Anything experienced in the dream is recognized as having no effect when we wake up. Nothing in the world has ever happened in reality. It only seems to happen in the dream because we have given the world meaning based on the false idea of being disconnected from the oneness of Love. That is why the dream is a dream of death because our real life comes only from the Love of God.

To shift our perspective from the ego’s denial of Love to the Love of our true Self, we need to step back from the dream. We need to ask the help of God’s Voice to see with Love’s vision. With practice, we begin to see the antics of the world as being less disturbing. We begin to recognize them as calls for Love that come from a mistaken thought of lack of Love.

Everything in the dream is a representation of belief in lack of Love. But as we accept Love’s vision more and more, we respond to the world’s calls for Love with Love. Our mistaken beliefs are healed as we let Love lead the way. This reversal of our thoughts takes time only because of our resistance to giving up our mistaken identity as separate from Love. But the effect of this practice is the return from fear to Love. Our thoughts join with God in extending His Thoughts of Love.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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