Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Choosing Heaven Instead of Hell

My holy brother, think of this awhile: The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents your thoughts. And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind, and choose the joy of God as what you really want. Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable, forever and forever. And would you deny a little corner of your mind its own inheritance, and keep it as a hospital for pain; a sickly place where living things must come at last to die?

Pain is illusion; joy, reality. Pain is but sleep; joy is awakening. Pain is deception; joy alone is truth.

And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; we choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven. Let our gratitude unto our Teacher fill our hearts, as we are free to choose our joy instead of pain, our holiness in place of sin, the peace of God instead of conflict, and the light of Heaven for the darkness of the world. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 190, W-pI.190.6;10:4-11:2. See also ACIM Lesson 190 Insights.)

The world is a mirror of our thoughts and beliefs. If we believe we are separate, alone and disconnected from the limitless strength and Love of God, we perceive a fearful world of pain, loss and death. This perception is built upon a self-deception, a belief that could never be true. Having accepted this deception, there seems to be no way out of the dream of an endless cycle of pain and death. The way out of this dream cannot be found within the dream, which is self-maintaining.

In this insane dream, we are out of our right mind. But our right mind still contains the Teacher Who is ever present, ready to guide us on the path of awakening. With our Teacher’s help, we can learn to recognize the illusions of the dream for what they are. When illusions are recognized for what they are, they are easily dismissed, revealing the eternal presence of changeless, unchangeable Love.

Today we choose to welcome our inner Teacher’s kindly lessons which remind us that we remain God’s one Son, His extension of perfect Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Welcoming Light with Christ’s Vision

The Holy Spirit asks of you but this; bring to Him every secret you have locked away from Him. Open every door to Him, and bid Him enter the darkness and lighten it away. At your request He enters gladly. He brings the light to darkness if you make the darkness open to Him. But what you hide He cannot look upon. He sees for you, and unless you look with Him He cannot see. The vision of Christ is not for Him alone, but for Him with you. Bring, therefore, all your dark and secret thoughts to Him, and look upon them with Him. He holds the light, and you the darkness. They cannot coexist when both of You together look on them. His judgment must prevail, and He will give it to you as you join your perception to His.

The single vision which the Holy Spirit offers you will bring this oneness to your mind with clarity and brightness so intense you could not wish, for all the world, not to accept what God would have you have. (A Course in Miracles, T-14.VII.6;7:7. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The Holy Spirit cannot come where He is not welcome. As we practice bringing all our thoughts to Him with willingness to receive His help, His Light will shine away the darkness of belief in separation. Separation denies the Light of Love’s oneness. In every moment we have a choice. Do we want to maintain the illusion of a separate self with its private domain? Or would we welcome the Light that will show us the limitless Love that unites us with God’s oneness?

Today we dedicate to the practice of pausing to welcome the Holy Spirit to join His Vision with ours. With Him we will see past the ego’s dark shadows to the living Light of Love that shines in every brother. This is the one Self we are as God’s one Son. Here we find peace and safety. Here we find joy and the continuous flow of Love to Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Accepting God’s Answer to Separation

The Holy Spirit cannot speak to an unwelcoming host, because He will not be heard. The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice grows faint in alien company. He needs your protection, only because your care is a sign that you want Him. Think like Him ever so slightly, and the little spark becomes a blazing light that fills your mind so that He becomes your only Guest. Whenever you ask the ego to enter, you lessen His welcome. He will remain, but you have allied yourself against Him. Whatever journey you choose to take, He will go with you, waiting. You can safely trust His patience, for He cannot leave a part of God. Yet you need far more than patience.

You will never rest until you know your function and fulfill it, for only in this can your will and your Father’s be wholly joined. To have Him is to be like Him, and He has given Himself to you. You who have God must be as God, for His function became yours with His gift. Invite this knowledge back into your mind, and let nothing that obscures it enter. The Guest Whom God sent you will teach you how to do this, if you but recognize the little spark and are willing to let it grow. Your willingness need not be perfect, because His is. If you will merely offer Him a little place, He will lighten it so much that you will gladly let it be increased. And by this increase, you will begin to remember creation. (A Course in Miracles, T-11.II.5-6. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

In the same instant that God’s Son accepted the ego thought of separation, God gave us the Holy Spirit to help us know that we remain as God created us. The Holy Spirit is ever-present in our mind, no matter how far we seem to wander into the depths of belief that separation is real. We are unaware of the Holy Spirit’s presence only because we welcome the ego’s thought of separation in our mind. We are entertaining the ego as our guest in our mind. The attention we give the ego diminishes our awareness of the Holy Spirit. Only this attention gives the ego the appearance of reality. Being the denial of truth, the ego is not real and is therefore nothing.

As the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit’s function is to teach us that we remain unified with our Creator. We are still Love and nothing else. The changelessness of Love makes us invulnerable to harm. Whenever we give our attention to the Holy Spirit instead of the ego, we open the door to the Holy Spirit’s comfort. We welcome the Holy Spirit as our Guest instead of the ego. By choosing to accept the presence of the Holy Spirit in our mind, we demonstrate our willingness to learn that we are united with all in the Love of God.

Our prayer today: Holy Spirit, guide my thoughts today. For I would remember that I already have the eternal gift of God’s Love. I need nothing, for God has given me all of Himself. There is nothing else. In gratitude I accept His gift.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Prayers of Our Heart

To say, “Of myself I can do nothing” is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power. The image you made of yourself has none. The Holy Spirit knows the truth about you. The image you made does not. Yet, despite its obvious and complete ignorance, this image assumes it knows all things because you have given that belief to it. Such is your teaching, and the teaching of the world that was made to uphold it. But the Teacher Who knows the truth has not forgotten it. His decisions bring benefit to all, being wholly devoid of attack. And therefore incapable of arousing guilt.

Never forget that the Holy Spirit does not depend on your words. He understands the requests of your heart, and answers them. Does this mean that, while attack remains attractive to you, He will respond with evil? Hardly! For God has given Him the power to translate your prayers of the heart into His language. He understands that an attack is a call for help. And He responds with help accordingly. God would be cruel if He let your words replace His Own. A loving father does not let his child harm himself, or choose his own destruction. [His child] may ask for injury, but his father will protect him still. And how much more than this does your Father love His Son? (A Course in Miracles, M-29.4:2-12;6)

The ego is the denial of the Truth. Consequently it does not know the truth of What we are. The ego does not know what strength is because it denies Love, the only Source of strength. This is why the world is full of defenses. Having bought into the ego’s image of what we are, devoid of strength, it is inevitable that we we would feel a need to defend against an outside world.

But God has given us His Teacher Who knows the truth of What we are as God created us. He knows that we share God’s invulnerable strength. This Teacher is ever present in our mind, ready to teach us that we are still God’s Son, with all His strength, joy, peace and Love. Our hearts are constantly praying to remember What we are. Feelings of inadequacy, depression, guilt and anger are recognized by our Teacher as prayers for help.

Our hearts know that we need to remember that we remain as God created us. If we are willing to open our minds to the Holy Spirit’s loving lessons, we will learn to recognize the ego’s false images as meaningless and ineffectual. We will experience the blessing of God’s Love surrounding us. We will feel His comfort and His strength. His joy will inspire us to teach only Love and learn that we are Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Path to Living in Joy

Today’s idea is merely another way of saying “Let me not wander into temptation.” The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. [The world] is the temptation to abandon God and His Son by taking on a physical appearance. It is this the body’s eyes look upon.

Nothing the body’s eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself. Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception, the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recognition of salvation.”

…every time you choose whether or not to fulfill your function, you are really choosing whether or not to be happy.

Let me not forget my function.
Let me not try to substitute mine for God’s.
Let me forgive and be happy. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 64, W-pI.64.1-2;4:4;6:2-4. See also ACIM Lesson 64 Insights.)

We give the world the Holy Spirit’s purpose by practicing bringing all our perceptions to Him for His interpretation on our behalf. We need to do this practice diligently because we have been accustomed to accepting the ego’s purpose for the world. With the ego as our guide, the world confirms the ego belief that we are separate, isolated and lacking Love.

When we let the Holy Spirit be our Guide for all our perceptions, the world becomes a practice in forgiveness. We learn to see past our brother’s bodies to the one loving Self we share with everyone. It becomes a spiritual recognition of our wholeness in Spirit. When we reach the point where we make no exceptions to the Holy Spirit’s perceptions, the ego fades into the nothingness from which it came. We no longer support the belief in separation. We accept the Love we are and live in a state of joy at Home in Heaven.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Our Resurrection into Love

…this course was sent to open up the path of light to us, and teach us, step by step, how to return to the eternal Self we thought we lost.

I take the journey with you. For I share your doubts and fears a little while, that you may come to me who recognize the road by which all fears and doubts are overcome. We walk together. I must understand uncertainty and pain, although I know they have no meaning. Yet a savior must remain with those he teaches, seeing what they see, but still retaining in his mind the way that led him out, and now will lead you out with him. God’s Son is crucified until you walk along the road with me.

My resurrection comes again each time I lead a brother safely to the place at which the journey ends and is forgot. I am renewed each time a brother learns there is a way from misery and pain. I am reborn each time a brother’s mind turns to the light in him and looks for me. I have forgotten no one. Help me now to lead you back to where the journey was begun, to make another choice with me.

You are my voice, my eyes, my feet, my hands through which I save the world. The Self from which I call to you is but your own. To Him we go together. Take your brother’s hand, for this is not a way we walk alone. In him I walk with you, and you with me. Our Father wills His Son be one with Him. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Review V, W-pI.revV.4:4-7:5;9:3-8. See also ACIM Lesson Insights.)

Christ calls to us from our one Self, God’s Son. This Self is the truth of What we are. The identity we believe we are, housed in a body, is a false façade made by the ego to make separation appear real. It is this false image that we have come to believe is us from which we must be saved.

Our true Self calls to us offering to teach us how to see past the false image and return to our true Identity in Love’s oneness. It will teach us that no image can replace the formless, eternal, unlimited Love that we are. It will teach us to see past images and behavior of other bodies to the Love that is eternally present. It is time to let go of painful, limiting old beliefs that bind us to the hell of separation.

We have the Help we need to turn away from those beliefs to the truth in us, our one Self. Within our one Self is our brother, who successfully walked the journey we must walk from belief in a world of separation to acceptance of our Reality in Love. This is our resurrection. This journey is shared by everyone. As we offer our hand to our brother to guide him as we are guided, we become part of the great awakening that returns us to Heaven together.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Moving from Darkness into God’s Light

God is the light in which I see.

You cannot see in darkness, and you cannot make light. You can make darkness and then think you see in it, but light reflects life, and is therefore an aspect of creation. Creation and darkness cannot coexist, but light and life must go together, being but different aspects of creation.

In order to see, you must recognize that light is within, not without. You do not see outside yourself, nor is the equipment for seeing outside you. An essential part of this equipment is the light that makes seeing possible. It is with you always, making vision possible in every circumstance.

…leave behind everything that you now believe, and all the thoughts that you have made up. Properly speaking, this is the release from hell.

…sink into your mind, letting go every kind of interference and intrusion by quietly sinking past them. Your mind cannot be stopped in this unless you choose to stop it. It is merely taking its natural course. Try to observe your passing thoughts without involvement, and slip quietly by them.

Try to think of light, formless and without limit, as you pass by the thoughts of this world. And do not forget that they cannot hold you to the world unless you give them the power to do so. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 4, W-pI.44.1:2-2:4;5:4-5;7:2-5;10:2-3. See also ACIM Lesson 44 Insights.)

The Light of God reveals only the truth because only what is of God is true. The ego is the decision to abandon God and make a private world. But without the Light of God, the ego’s private world dwells in darkness. All that we seem to see with the ego through the body is just made up images. They are not real and are therefore not true. We only seem to see the world of separation because we have invested our belief in it.

We free ourselves from the hell of the ego’s denial of Love by withdrawing our belief in it. Through this practice we release our false identity as a separate self. We free ourselves to identify with our true Self, united with God’s eternal Love. We move out of the darkness into God’s Light and see the truth of our reality in God’s Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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