Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Opening Our Minds to Love’s Presence

All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. Choosing is easy just because of this. Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke, which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult. What is the gain to you in learning this? It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain.

Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. We will attempt to reach this state today, with self-deception laid aside, and with an honest willingness to value but the truly valuable and the real. …begin with this:

I will not value what is valueless,
and only what has value do I seek,
for only that do I desire to find.

And then receive what waits for everyone who reaches, unencumbered, to the gate of Heaven, which swings open as he comes. Should you begin to let yourself collect some needless burdens, or believe you see some difficult decisions facing you, be quick to answer with this simple thought.

I will not value what is valueless,
for what is valuable belongs to me. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 133, W.pI.133.12-14. See also ACIM Lesson 133 Insights.)

The early lessons of the ACIM Workbook teach us that the world we experience with the body is not real and is therefore valueless. If we value anything in the world of form, we are valuing illusion and therefore nothing. We have identified so completely with the body as what we are that it is difficult to accept that there is no value in the world.

Certainly the ego teaches us that only things of the world have value. At the very least we believe we need protection from the dangers of the world. We also believe that things we acquire in the world — status, possessions, relationships — give us value. Yet all this is a deceptive smokescreen that hides the truth that our true value lies in the Love we are.

By being willing to step back from valuing the valueless — the images of the world — we open our minds to receive the gift of Heaven. Heaven offers us the oneness of Love. There is nothing else for us to receive or give. It is the reality of our true Self. The Holy Spirit will help us see past the smokescreen of the world to the true value of changeless Love everywhere. We open our minds to His gift by choosing not to value the valueless.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Accepting Holy Spirit’s Correction to Unify Our Mind

Correction is not your function. It belongs to One Who knows of fairness, not of guilt. If you assume correction’s role, you lose the function of forgiveness. No one can forgive until he learns correction is but to forgive, and never to accuse. Alone, you cannot see [correction and forgiveness] are the same, and therefore is correction not of you. Identity and function are the same [Love extends only Love], and by your function do you know yourself. And thus, if you confuse your function with the function of Another, you must be confused about yourself and who you are. What is the separation but a wish to take God’s function from Him and deny that it is His? Yet if it is not His [function] it is not yours, for you must lose what you would take away.

Correction must be left to One Who knows correction and forgiveness are the same. With half a mind this is not understood. Leave, then, correction to the Mind that is united, functioning as one because it is not split in purpose, and conceives a single function as its only one. …In His acceptance of this function lies the means whereby your mind is unified. His single purpose unifies the halves of you that you perceive as separate. And each forgives the other, that he may accept his other half as part of him. (A Course in Miracles, T-27.II.10;16. See also ACIM Text Q & A.)

God is Love and nothing else. Love’s only function is to extend Love. Love cannot be divided. When we identify with the ego thought of separation, we are choosing to judge against Love’s oneness. It is this error in thought that must be corrected. The part of our mind that believes separation is real is incapable of correcting this error. This is why correction is not our function as we perceive ourselves.

Correction and forgiveness are the same because, through forgiveness, we heal the mistaken perceptions of separation, our barriers to Love’s presence. This healing comes when we accept the Holy Spirit’s perception of Love’s oneness in place of our perceptions of separation. The practice of bringing all our thoughts of separation to the Holy Spirit and accepting His vision of unity in their place is how we forgive and let go of the dream of separation. This is how we heal our split mind and accept our oneness with Love, our true Self.

Today we practice accepting the Holy Spirit’s correction of our perception that we may let go of our barriers to Love.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Our Resurrection from Fear to Love

The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life [God/Love] is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell. Love is no longer feared, but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world. Christ’s face is seen in every living thing, and nothing is held in darkness, apart from the light of forgiveness. There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it.

These things await us all, but we are not prepared as yet to welcome them with joy. As long as any mind remains possessed of evil dreams, the thought of hell is [perceived as] real. God’s teachers have the goal of wakening the minds of those asleep, and seeing there the vision of Christ’s face to take the place of what they dream. The thought of murder [separation] is replaced with blessing. Judgment is laid by, and given Him Whose function judgment is. And in His Final Judgment is restored the truth about the holy Son of God. He is redeemed, for he has heard God’s Word and understood its meaning. He is free because he let God’s Voice proclaim the truth. And all he sought before to crucify are resurrected with him, by his side, as he prepares with them to meet his God. (A Course in Miracles, M-28.2;6)

The resurrection is available to everyone, but we have to be willing to give up our dreams of specialness and separation. We have to learn that all the images in our dream world have no value. Our wish to be special denies the resurrection; it denies our unity with our Creator.

As we learn to recognize that the images of the world have no meaning of their own, we make way for the Holy Spirit to use them on behalf of our awakening. Images of fear and guilt, attack and judgment, become recognized as calls for Love. As we accept Holy Spirit’s help we are able to answer calls for Love with Love. With Love, we see only innocence. With Love we see our unity with the Love that is in everyone.

Every thought that denies this unity must be brought to the Holy Spirit in our minds to be released. When we have released all our investment in the dream of separation, we have accepted our resurrection. We see every brother as one with us in Love. We remember that we remain one in the Heart of God.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Awakening to Love’s Presence

The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack [to reinforce separation], which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful [full of guilt] it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use [the body] to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all.

Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. God’s teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God’s teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God’s teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs. (A Course in Miracles, M-12.5:1-6;6:1-11)

Unity is of the mind. The part of the mind that believes separation is real is sick (insane). It is the sick mind that imagines a world of separation with separate bodies where harm and loss seems to be possible. It is the sickness of the mind that must be healed. The mechanism for this healing is true forgiveness — letting go of belief in separation.

The Word of God, the Holy Spirit, teaches us to see past the illusions of the sick mind. While we identify with the sick mind (ego), it seems that God’s Voice is asking us to sacrifice the valuable. So we need to be taught that we have mistakenly given value to nothing. God’s Voice teaches us to recognize that what we value in the world is meaningless and nothing.

As we accept His lessons, we naturally lay down false values and welcome God’s gifts which are already ours. We are able to overlook the figures in the dream because we know they are illusions. This process of letting go of false values is our journey of awakening to the awareness of Love’s presence.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Choosing Lessons in Happiness

The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free, because you will not listen to it. It is not your will to be imprisoned because your will is free. That is why the ego is the denial of free will. It is never God Who coerces you, because He shares His Will with you. His Voice teaches only in accordance with His Will, but that is not the Holy Spirit’s lesson because that is what you are. The lesson is that your will and God’s cannot be out of accord because they are one. This is the undoing of everything the ego tries to teach.

The ego tries to teach that you want to oppose God’s Will. This unnatural lesson cannot be learned, and the attempt to learn it is a violation of your own freedom, making you afraid of your will because it is free. The Holy Spirit opposes any imprisoning of the will of a Son of God, knowing that the Will of the Son is the Father’s. The Holy Spirit leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard or look beyond everything that would hold you back.

When you have learned that your will is God’s, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without you. This is freedom and this is joy. (A Course in Miracles, T-8.II.3:1-7;4:1-4;6:4-5. See also ACIM Text Q & A.)

Everyone wants to be happy. But if we identify with the ego, we are seeking happiness where it cannot be found because the ego is dedicated to seeking and not finding. The ego is the denial of our true Will, where happiness can be found.

When we identify with the ego, we are afraid of our will, which is God’s Will. God seems to be demanding that we give up our happiness because the ego insists our happiness can be found in specialness and separation. The ego is a liar.

But we have another Teacher in our mind Who knows our true Will and will help us remember and accept it. The goal of this Teacher is to lead us to lasting happiness. The lessons of our inner Teacher help us learn to overlook the ego’s false images to see the truth of the Love and joy of God that is our natural condition. His lessons in forgiveness remove the ego’s imprisoning veil of separation and free us to be what our true Will wills us to be.

Today we choose lessons in forgiveness because we choose to be happy.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Using the Holy Relationship to Awaken

You who hold your brother’s hand also hold mine, for when you joined [in a holy relationship with] each other you were not alone. Do you believe that I would leave you in the darkness that you agreed to leave with me? In your relationship is this world’s light. And fear must disappear before you now. Be tempted not to snatch away the gift of faith you offered to your brother. You will succeed only in frightening yourself. The gift is given forever, for God Himself received it. You cannot take it back. You have accepted God. The holiness of your relationship is established in Heaven. You do not understand what you accepted, but remember that your understanding is not necessary. All that was necessary was merely the wish to understand. That wish was the desire to be holy. The Will of God is granted you. For you desire the only thing you ever had, or ever were.

Each instant that we spend together will teach you that this goal is possible, and will strengthen your desire to reach it. And in your desire lies its accomplishment. Your desire is now in complete accord with all the power of the Holy Spirit’s Will. (T-18.III.4:1-5:3)

A relationship is made holy by the desire that it be holy. Being holy means knowing oneness. Heaven is the oneness of Love.

In this dream of separation we cannot comprehend oneness. But the desire to be holy (whole) opens the door to let our inner Teacher teach us of our oneness. The choice for a holy relationship becomes the Holy Spirit’s classroom. If we already knew all the lessons in a classroom, we wouldn’t need to be there. By choosing the classroom of the holy relationship, we have chosen the means to awaken from the dream of specialness.

The holy relationship may sometimes seem very unholy as the ego’s conflicting goals come to the surface. Our desire to have the relationship be holy opens the door for the Holy Spirit to use these times of conflict as teaching opportunities. Thus the relationship dedicated to holiness has the purpose of leading us out of the dream and back to the holiness of Heaven, our true Home.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Choosing to Serve Love’s Purpose

The Father keeps what He created safe. You cannot touch it with the false ideas you made, because it was created not by you. Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. What is immortal cannot be attacked; what is but temporal has no effect. Only the purpose that you see in it has meaning, and if that [purpose] is true, its safety rests secure. If [that purpose is not true], it has no purpose, and is means for nothing. Whatever is perceived as means for truth shares in its holiness, and rests in light as safely as itself. Nor will that light go out when [the means] is gone. Its holy purpose gave it immortality, setting another light in Heaven, where your creations [extensions of Love] recognize a gift from you, a sign that you have not forgotten them.

The test of everything on earth is simply this; “What is it for?” The answer makes it what it is for you. It has no meaning of itself, yet you can give reality to it, according to the purpose that you serve. (A Course in Miracles, T-24.VII.5:1-6:3. See also ACIM Text Q & A.)

When we identify with the body as what we are, we are serving the ego thought system. All the images of the world come with the ego. It doesn’t seem like we have anything to do with “natural” disasters, a terrorist attack or someone winning a lottery. Yet all these things are part of the ego’s imagery of separation and specialness. They seem real only because we believe we are the ego. Belief makes appearances seem real but has no effect whatsoever on Reality. Only the oneness of Love is real and Love is as changeless as God.

Love’s extension, God’s Son, is in us all as one. The purpose of His Son within us is to extend Love and nothing else. When we identify with this purpose, we see Love everywhere. Love joins with Love automatically. If we are uncertain about the answer to the question, “What is it for?” we can ask, “What is Love’s purpose for this?” Love’s purpose is always to show us Its unity, changelessness and safety in the Heart of Love.

When we choose to serve Love, we serve the Truth in us and Truth shines away the ego’s false images. Today we choose to serve Love’s purpose.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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