Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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The One Lesson We Must Learn

Learn now, without despair, there is no hope of answer in the world. But do not judge the lesson that is but begun with this.… For from this lowest point will learning lead to heights of happiness, in which you see the purpose of the lesson shining clear, and perfectly within your learning grasp.

Who would be willing to be turned away from all the roadways of the world, unless he understood their real futility?

The learning that the world can offer but one choice [illusion], no matter what its form may be, is the beginning of acceptance that there is a real alternative instead.

There is a choice that you have power to make when you have seen the real alternatives. …the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the same illusion and the same mistake.

Forgive yourself your madness, and forget all senseless journeys and all goal-less aims. They have no meaning. You can not escape from what you [truly] are. For God is merciful, and did not let His Son abandon Him. For what He is be thankful, for in that is your escape from madness and from death. Nowhere but where He is can you be found. There is no path that does not lead to Him. (A Course in Miracles, T-31.IV.4:3,8;5:1;6:1;8:1,3;11. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

We all must reach the point at which we recognize that lasting peace and happiness cannot be found in any form the world offers. The world we experience as a body is illusion. They can never satisfy because they cannot provide the one thing that we all seek for in our hearts. We seek to know the eternal Reality of Love. This is where lasting peace and happiness are found and known.

The recognition that there is no hope to find satisfaction for our heart’s desire in the world is a turning point that offers the opportunity to let go of seeking where Love cannot be found. Our mind opens to the Holy Spirit’s lessons which lead us beyond the world to clearly know that we are Love, we are loved and we are loving.

This is the one lesson that gives meaning to our journey in the world. This learning is what time is for. It is the escape from fear and guilt and the return to the peace of God. It is a journey from despair to hope, and on to certainty that we are the Love we have sought. We are eternally at Home in God’s Love.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Let Love Be Our Guide

Nowhere in this world will you see the results of your actions as clearly as in a holy relationship. Its transformative power is literally limitless in its capability to restore Truth to your awareness. Recognizing that your brother’s interests and yours are the same releases the healing power of the miracle into both your lives. The holiness of your relationship will spread until it covers your whole life, bringing all of your relationships to Love. When Love is the purpose and foundation of all you do, life will become an expression of holiness in action, and you will offer only God’s blessings to all.

In all you do that you value, in learning what you want to learn, you demonstrate perseverance. Very little can be accomplished unless you persevere. To learn what you must learn to replace illusion with Truth, requires great perseverance exercised over a long period of time. The undoing of your mind, the false mind of separation, requires constant dedication to a single purpose. This purpose must become the guiding Light that illumines your entire life, clarifying all the factors of existence, putting everything in proper perspective. There is not your spiritual purpose and your other purposes to which you also give time and attention; there is only your one true purpose and the relationship of all parts of your life with that purpose. Eventually, everything you think, do or say must be evaluated in relation to Truth. Does it support your journey back to God, or does it hinder you? (From the Christ Mind Book II, p. 238-239)

We have dedicated eons of time to learning the ego’s thought system of separation. We have come to believe that illusions are true, bodies are real, guilt and fear are justified.

Now it is time to apply the same dedication that we applied to learning the ego’s lies to learning the Truth instead. We have taught ourselves wrongly, but we can unlearn these mistaken lessons. The dedication to following the Holy Spirit’s lead instead of the ego’s lead will clear away the darkness of the ego’s illusions and open our minds to the eternal Light of Love — the one Truth that has never changed.

Our sole purpose is to let Love be our Guide in all that we think, say and do. Unequivocal dedication to this purpose will free us from the dream of separation and return us to the recognition that we are Love and nothing else, along with every brother. It is the journey Home.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Accepting God’s Joy

“Salvation comes from my one Self. Its Thoughts are mine to use.

“Then seek Its Thoughts, and claim them as your own. These are your own real thoughts you have denied, and let your mind go wandering in a world of dreams, to find illusions in their place. Here are your thoughts, the only ones you have. Salvation is among them; find it there.

“If you succeed, the thoughts that come to you will tell you you are saved, and that your mind has found the function that it sought to lose. Your Self will welcome [your mind] and give it peace. Restored in strength, it will again flow out from spirit to the spirit in all things created by the Spirit as Itself. Your mind will bless all things. Confusion done, you are restored, for you have found your Self.

Your Self knows that you cannot fail today. Perhaps your mind remains uncertain yet a little while. Be not dismayed by this. The joy your Self experiences It will save for you, and [joy] will yet be yours in full awareness.” (W-pI.96.9:2-11:4)

Our one Self is united with every brother. This one Self is God’s one Son, His extension of Love’s oneness. This one Self remains united with God and shares His Thoughts. The Thoughts we share with God are our only real thoughts. As we open our mind to the Thoughts of our one Self, we experience the safety and certainty of God’s changeless Love and joy.

Only our belief in the ego’s hallucinations of separation makes our eternal unity with changeless Love unknown to us. The only change needed to remember we are already safe and whole is to let go of our mistaken belief that separation is real. God’s joy is already ours and needs only our acceptance to experience it.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Seeing the Holiness in Every Brother

The body is itself a sacrifice; a giving up of power in the name of saving just a little for yourself. To see a brother in another body, separate from yours, is the expression of a wish to see a little part of him and sacrifice the rest. Look at the world, and you will see nothing attached to anything beyond itself. All seeming entities can come a little nearer, or go a little farther off, but cannot join.

To accept the limits of a body is to impose these limits on each brother whom you see. For you must see him as you see yourself.

The body is a loss, and can be made to sacrifice. And while you see your brother as a body, apart from you and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him and you. What greater sacrifice could be demanded than that God’s Son perceive himself without his Father? And his Father be without His Son? Yet every sacrifice demands that [Father and Son] be separate and without the Other. The memory of God must be denied if any sacrifice is asked of anyone.

Those who would see the witnesses to truth instead of to illusion merely ask that they might see a purpose in the world that gives it sense and makes it meaningful. Without your special function [forgiveness] has this world no meaning for you. Yet it can become a treasure house as rich and limitless as Heaven itself. No instant passes here in which your brother’s holiness cannot be seen, to add a limitless supply to every meager scrap and tiny crumb of happiness that you allot yourself. (A Course in Miracles, T-26.I.1:5-8;3:7-4:6;5. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

To identify with a body is to believe we are separate from Love, the Source of Life. It is the belief that death, the ultimate image of separation, is real. This choice is reflected by our perception of our brother as limited to a body. The body is incapable of seeing the truth of our oneness with every brother in God’s Love.

But this does not mean we have lost our Identity in Love. It only means that we must choose another way of seeing that is not limited by the body’s eyes. This choice is made by forgiving the mistaken belief that we are a body, separate and alone. The Holy Spirit will guide us through this forgiveness to His vision that shows us our unity in Love that was never lost.

The choice to accept Holy Spirit’s purpose as our own opens our minds to the vision of Christ, which sees Love’s innocence everywhere. It gives the world a different purpose that leads to acceptance of our unity and dispels the sacrifice of our true Self. Choosing to accept the Holy Spirit’s purpose instead of the ego’s releases us from imprisonment in its image of separation.

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

What can I seek for, Father, but Your Love? Perhaps I think I seek for something else; a something I have called by many names. Yet is Your Love the only thing I seek, or ever sought. For there is nothing else that I could ever really want to find. Let me remember You. What else could I desire but the truth about myself?

Father, I give You all my thoughts today. I would have none of mine. In place of them, give me Your Own. I give You all my acts as well, that I may do Your Will instead of seeking goals which cannot be obtained, and wasting time in vain imaginings. Today I come to You. I will step back and merely follow You. Be You the Guide, and I the follower who questions not the wisdom of the Infinite, nor Love whose tenderness I cannot comprehend, but which is yet Your perfect gift to me. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 231, W-pII.231.1;233.1. See also ACIM Lesson 231 Insights.)

Our thoughts, words and actions in the world are based on the belief in the ego’s thought system of being separate from Love. This belief leaves us feeling a need for Love. But if we follow the ego’s directives, we seek for Love in many forms only to come up empty handed. Love cannot be found in the thought system that denies the oneness of Love.

The choice to accept God’s guidance for our thoughts, our words and our actions is the choice to remember our true Self as God created It. The thoughts of the ego are illusions, vain imaginings, which have no effect on Reality. Only our real thoughts are shared with God. These real thoughts are Love’s extension.

The dedication to following the guidance of the Infinite is the recognition that our will is the same as God’s Will. His Love is all we really want and all we really are. The practice of offering all our thoughts in the world to God with willingness to let them be replaced with thoughts of Love, peace and happiness is our journey of awakening. It is the way we remember God, we remember Love.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Accepting God’s Peace and Joy as Our Own

This is a day of silence and of trust. It is a special time of promise in your calendar of days. It is a time Heaven has set apart to shine upon, and cast a timeless light upon this day, when echoes of eternity are heard.

Today we will embark upon a course you have not dreamed of. But the Holy One, the Giver of the happy dreams of life, Translator of perception into truth, the holy Guide to Heaven given you, has dreamed for you this journey which you make and start today, with the experience this day holds out to you to be your own.

Into Christ’s Presence will we enter now, serenely unaware of everything except His shining face and perfect Love. The vision of His face will stay with you, but there will be an instant which transcends all vision, even this, the holiest. This you will never teach, for you attained it not through learning. Yet the vision speaks of your rememberance of what you knew that instant, and will surely know again. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 157, W-pI.157.1:1-3;8-9. See also ACIM Lesson 157 Insights.)

It is helpful to take time to quiet our minds and welcome the presence of Holy Spirit. Our Guide to awakening is ever present but His presence is obscured by the clutter of our thoughts in the world. Taking time to quiet our minds is like a spiritual housecleaning.

What we find when we clear away the clutter is the eternal presence of Love. In that presence, we see with the vision of Christ. We see the innocence of Love everywhere. The veil of separation dissipates as we experience Love’s oneness in the present moment.

The dream the Holy Spirit dreams for us dispels the ego’s dreams of fear and guilt. They remind us of the truth that we remain Love as Love created us. And we experience God’s peace and joy as our own.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Bridge to Heaven

The face of Christ has to be seen before the memory of God can return. The reason is obvious. Seeing the face of Christ involves perception. No one can look on knowledge. But the face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world. Whoever looks on this no longer sees the world. He is as near to Heaven as is possible outside the gate. Yet from this gate it is no more than just a step inside. It is the final step. And this we leave to God.

Forgiveness is a symbol, too, but as the symbol of His Will alone it cannot be divided. And so the unity that it reflects becomes His Will. It is the only thing still in the world in part, and yet the bridge to Heaven. (A Course in Miracles, C-3.4-5)

Seeing the face of Christ is a symbol of the perception of Love’s innocence. While we are believing in the dream of separation, we are limited to perception. Knowledge is impossible in the dream of separation because separation blocks us from the experience of Unity, which is Knowledge. Forgiveness is needed in the illusion of separation. It is the means for setting aside these illusions to allow us to perceive the truth of Love’s innocence in everyone.

The face of Christ is not perceived with the body’s eyes. It is seen in the mind that is willing to overlook the images the body sees and welcome the true perception of innocence. This process is the means to let go of our illusions.

As we accept the truth of Love’s innocence in everyone, the perception of conflict fades. The perception of differences disappears into the nothingness from which it came. When we have laid all judgments aside, we stand at the gate of Heaven where our Creator welcomes us Home. We step away from perception and into the full knowledge of our oneness in Love.

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