Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Accepting Love’s Presence Without Limit

False healing merely makes a poor exchange of one illusion for a “nicer” one; a dream of sickness for a dream of health. This can occur at lower forms of prayer, combining with forgiveness kindly meant but not completely understood as yet. Only false healing can give way to fear, so sickness will be free to strike again. False healing can indeed remove a form of pain and sickness. But the cause remains, and will not lack effects. The cause is still the wish to die and overcome the Christ. And with this wish is death a certainty, for prayer is answered. Yet there is a kind of seeming death that has a different source. It does not come because of hurtful thoughts and raging anger at the universe. It merely signifies the end has come for usefulness of body functioning. And so it is discarded as a choice, as one lays by a garment now outworn.

This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us. But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again. (A Course in Miracles, S-3.II.1-2)

The introduction to A Course in Miracles states, “The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance.”

True healing comes with true forgiveness — the release of barriers to Love’s presence. Sickness is a manifestation of our denial of Love, unforgiveness. As we let go of that denial through true forgiveness, Love’s presence returns to our awareness. The barriers to Love are laid down and the Light of Love shines on what we see. We see past the separate forms of the world and welcome Love’s kind vision. With this practice, our hearts are open to the unity of the Love we share with everyone eternally.

Calls for Love are joyfully answered with extensions of Love. The wish to separate is replaced by our innate will to join in oneness. As we progress in this journey of awakening to Love, peace and happiness become our daily experience. When true forgiveness is complete, we have accepted Love’s presence without limit.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Key to True Healing

For he has damned his body as his prison, and forgot that it is he who gave this role to it.

What he has done now must God’s Son undo. But not alone. For he has thrown away the prison’s key; his holy sinlessness and the remembrance of his Father’s Love. Yet help is given to him in the Voice his Father placed in him. The power to heal is now his Father’s gift, for through His Voice He still can reach His Son, reminding him the body may become his chosen home, but it will never be his home in truth.

Distinctions therefore must be made between true healing and its faulty counterpart. The world of opposites is healing’s place, for what in Heaven could there be to heal? As prayer within the world can ask amiss and seeming charity forgive to kill, so healing can be false as well as true; a witness to the power of the world or to the everlasting Love of God. (A Course in Miracles, S-3.I.3:5-5:3)

True forgiveness is the key to healing. It undoes the belief that we are a body, capable of separation, and guilty because of that perceived separation. Pain, fear and guilt are all signs that we have identified with a false, separate image of what we are. This identification imprisons us in a limited body with eyes made to see only illusions. Because of this identification, this belief cannot be undone without help. By the grace of God, we have been given the Help we need to be called upon in every present moment. It is God’s Voice, eternally in our mind, ready to help the moment we are willing to accept it.

If our body is in pain, it may be helpful to use a physical means to relieve the pain or “cure” the body’s illness. The Course acknowledges that we may need physical means to help the body because healing solely through a change of mind might be perceived as fearful. But we must recognize that this does not heal the cause. We still remain imprisoned in our mind by the mistaken belief that we are separate from God.

True healing comes as we turn away from belief in the body’s perceptions and give our attention to the vision of Christ which will show us our innocence. It will show us that nothing has really happened to change the eternal Love we were created to be. Rather than deny that the body experiences pain, we ask for help to forgive our decision to be separate from God, to see with Christ’s vision.

For most people this is a process with many steps that lead us to greater and greater confidence that we are Love. We give diminishing credence to experiences in the world. Our mind moves away from fear and guilt toward greater peace. We are freeing ourselves to accept our oneness with God and accept His gift of peace, joy and Love.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Seeing the Reality of Eternal Innocence

Do not mistake effect [sickness] for cause, nor think that sickness is apart and separate from what its cause must be. [Sickness] is a sign, a shadow of an evil thought [the cause] that seems to have reality and to be just, according to the usage of the world. It is external proof of inner “sins,” and witnesses to unforgiving thoughts that injure and would hurt the Son of God. Healing the body is impossible, and this is shown by the brief nature of the “cure.” The body yet must die, and so its healing but delays its turning back to dust, where it was born and will return.

The body’s cause is unforgiveness of the Son of God. [The body] has not left its source, and in its pain and aging and the mark of death upon it this is clearly shown. Fearful and frail it seems to be to those who think their life is tied to its command and linked to its unstable, tiny breath. Death stares at them as every moment goes irrevocably past their grasping hands, which cannot hold them back. And they feel fear as bodies change and sicken. For they sense the heavy scent of death upon their hearts.

The body can be healed as an effect of true forgiveness. Only [true forgiveness] can give rememberance of immortality, which is the gift of holiness and love. Forgiveness must be given by a mind which understands that it must overlook all shadows on the holy face of Christ, among which sickness should be seen as one. Nothing but [a shadow]; the sign of judgment made by brother upon brother, and the Son of God upon himself. For he has damned his body as his prison, and forgot that it is he who gave this role to it. (A Course in Miracles, S-3.I.1-3)

The body is an ego construct made to reinforce the belief in being separate from God’s Love. It denies the Son of God’s eternal unity with his Creator. As part of the ego’s belief in death (separation from the Source of all Life) sickness seems to make the belief in separation real. All this cannot be true because only Love’s oneness is real.

This is a central message of the Course. It is so important that Review VI of the Workbook lessons directs us for 20 days to affirm the thought, “I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.” This thought, fully accepted, would free us from the body’s limits and unify our minds with the Mind of God. We would remember that we are united as God’s one Son, the extension of His Love. This is true healing, for Love sees no sin. It sees only the innocence of Christ as real.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Freedom to Be Love

Do not confuse [Christ’s] function with your own. He is the Answer. You the one who hears.

And what is it He speaks to you about? About salvation and the gift of peace. About the end of sin and guilt and death. About the role forgiveness has in Him. Do you but listen. For He will be heard by anyone who calls upon His Name, and places his forgiveness in His hands. Forgiveness has been given Him to teach, to save it from destruction and to make the means for separation, sin and death become again the holy gift of God. Prayer is His Own right Hand, made free to save as true forgiveness is allowed to come from His eternal vigilance and Love. Listen and learn, and do not judge. It is to God you turn to hear what you should do. His answer will be clear as morning, nor is His forgiveness what you think it is.

Still does He know, and that should be enough. Forgiveness has a Teacher Who will fail in nothing. Rest a while in this; do not attempt to judge forgiveness, nor to set it in an earthly frame. Let it arise to Christ, Who welcomes it as gift to Him. He will not leave you comfortless, nor fail to send His angels down to answer you in His Own Name. He stands beside the door to which forgiveness is the only key. Give it to Him to use instead of you, and you will see the door swing silently open upon the shining face of Christ. Behold your brother there beyond the door; the Son of God as He created him. (A Course in Miracles, S-2.III.5:8-10;6-7)

Just listen. That’s our part in the process of forgiveness. The practice of pausing and stepping back from our perceptions and judgments is the key to bringing inner peace to our lives. It disengages from our involvement in the world so we can open our minds to the inspiration of Christ. Now we are receptive to His teaching of forgiveness.

The ego does not know how to forgive because it is afraid of Love. It is the Love in us that sees the innocence of Love in others. It sees past the forms of the world and joins with the only reality that is Love.

The means we use to disengage from our experience in the world does not matter. But it is important that we be willing to accept the possibility that our perception may be mistaken. This is the willingness the Christ Mind needs to bring us Its way of seeing.

It is Christ’s vision that shows us a forgiven world. It shows us that we are forgiven and teaches us that we are God’s Son, His extension of Love. It teaches us that Love’s innocence is ours and we are free to be as Love created us.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Practicing Forgiveness-for-Salvation

Are you not weary of imprisonment? God did not choose this sorry path for you. What you have chosen still can be undone, for prayer is merciful and God is just. His is a justice He can understand, but you cannot as yet. Still will He give the means to you to learn of Him, and know at last that condemnation is not real and makes illusions in its evil name. And yet it matters not the form that dreams may seem to take. Illusions are untrue. God’s Will is truth, and you are one with Him in Will and purpose. Here all dreams are done.

‘What should I do for him, Your holy Son?’ should be the only thing you ever ask when help is needed and forgiveness sought. The form the seeking takes you need not judge. And let it not be you who sets the form in which forgiveness comes to save God’s Son. The light of Christ in him is his release, and it is this that answers to his call. Forgive him as the Christ decides you should, and be [Christ’s] eyes through which you look on him, and speak for [Christ] as well. He knows the need; the question and the answer. He will say exactly what to do, in words that you can understand and you can also use. Do not confuse His function with your own. He is the Answer. You the one who hears. (A Course in Miracles, S-2.III.4-5)

It is essential that we understand our role in Forgiveness-for-Salvation. Our part is to ask for Guidance and be willing to hear Christ’s Answer. And if His Answer directs us to do or say anything, follow this Guidance.

Sometimes the answer may simply help us see the innocence that Christ’s vision sees. The change of mind this vision brings may be all that is needed. Other times we may be directed to say and do something that helps to bring forgiveness to our brother and ourselves in a form that we can understand while we believe we are in a world of separation.

Our role in forgiveness is always to follow the Voice for Love within, not decide on our own. The practice of stepping back, asking for help and doing as we are guided is the journey that leads us up the ladder of prayer to the full continuous communion with our Creator that is our natural state.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Choosing the Forgiving Eyes of Christ

You child of God, the gifts of God are yours, not by your plans but by His holy Will. His Voice will teach you what forgiveness is, and how to give it as He wills it be. Do not, then, seek to understand what is beyond you yet, but let it be a way to draw you up to where the eyes of Christ become the sight you choose. Give up all else, for there is nothing else. When someone calls for help in any form, He is the One to answer for you. All that you need do is to step back and not to interfere. Forgiveness-for-Salvation is His task, and it is He Who will respond for you.

Do not establish what the form should be that Christ’s forgiveness takes. He knows the way to make of every call a help to you, as you arise in haste to go at last unto your Father’s house. Now can He make your footsteps sure, your words sincere; not with your own sincerity, but with His Own. Let Him take charge of how you would forgive, and each occasion then will be to you another step to Heaven and to peace. (A Course in Miracles, S-2.III.2-3)

It is very important to realize that we do not understand how to forgive for salvation, and it is not our job. Our role is to recognize calls for Love, then turn them over to Christ’s vision with willingness to receive it. It is His vision that will show us what to think, say or do that brings us release from unforgiveness and recognizes that only Love is true.

The importance of stepping back from our fearful, guilty, judgmental and conflicting perceptions cannot be overstated. We cannot correct these perceptions on our own. We need to step back from them and ask for the help of Christ’s vision. This is the prayer that will set us free from the ego’s hell made by belief in separation. If we try on our own to figure out how to forgive, we are only interfering with Christ’s vision. We are playing the ego’s game to keep us stuck in guilt.

Our prayer throughout today is to ask the Holy Spirit for help to see with Christ’s vision. We choose the eyes of Christ instead of the ego’s eyes with its projections of guilt. Christ’s eyes show us the reality of Love’s innocence. With His vision we learn how to be truly helpful.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Reuniting with Our True Self

All forms forgiveness takes that do not lead away from anger, condemnation and comparisons of every kind are death. For that is what their purposes have set. Be not deceived by them, but lay them by as worthless in their tragic offerings. You do not want to stay in slavery. You do not want to be afraid of God. You want to see the sunlight and the glow of Heaven shining on the face of earth, redeemed from sin and in the Love of God. From here is prayer released, along with you. Your wings are free, and prayer will lift you up and bring you home where God would have you be.

Forgiveness-for-Salvation has one form, and only one. It does not ask for proof of innocence, nor pay of any kind. It does not argue, nor evaluate the errors that it wants to overlook. It does not offer gifts in treachery, nor promise freedom while it asks for death. Would God deceive you? He but asks for trust and willingness to learn how to be free. He gives His Teacher to whoever asks, and seeks to understand the Will of God. His readiness to give lies far beyond your understanding and your simple grasp. Yet He has willed you learn the way to Him, and in His willing there is certainty. (A Course in Miracles, S-2.II.8;S-2.III.1)

If any sign of comparison, condemnation or anger (including a sigh of discontent) lingers after we have attempted to forgive, we have forgiven-to-destroy. True forgiveness brings with it a sense of release and peace. This is why the practice of true forgiveness leads us to the peace of God.

With the Holy Spirit’s help, we learn that what we thought was cause for guilt is not true, for it caused no change in the eternal Love of God and His Creation. True forgiveness reunites us with our true Self, the one Son of God that unites us with everyone. In truth there is no other; only Love is real.

The ego cannot teach us this, for it is afraid of Love’s oneness. But we have been given an inner Teacher Whose purpose is to guide us back to the full remembrance of the Love we are eternally. His lessons return us to the Life we live in God in perfect peace and joy. He teaches us Forgiveness-for-Salvation.

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