Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Learning to Love Without Limit

Forgetfulness and sleep and even death become the ego’s best advice for dealing with the perceived and harsh intrusion of guilt on peace. Yet no one sees himself in conflict and ravaged by a cruel war unless he believes that both opponents in the war are real. Believing this he must escape, for such a war would surely end his peace of mind, and so destroy him. Yet if he could but realize the war is between real and unreal powers, he could look upon himself and see his freedom. No one finds himself ravaged and torn in endless battles if he himself perceives them as wholly without meaning.

God would not have His Son embattled, and so His Son’s imagined “enemy” is totally unreal. You are but trying to escape a bitter war from which you have escaped. The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom rising unto Heaven. Gladness and joy belong to God for your release, because you made it not. Yet as you made not freedom, so you made not a war that could endanger freedom. Nothing destructive ever was or will be. The war, the guilt, the past are gone as one into the unreality from which they came.

In Heaven is everything God values, and nothing else. Heaven is perfectly unambiguous. Everything is clear and bright, and calls forth one response [extension of Love]. There is no darkness and there is no contrast. There is no variation. There is no interruption. There is a sense of peace so deep that no dream in this world has ever brought even a dim imagining of what it is. (A Course in Miracles, T-13.XI.1-2;3:7-13. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

Central to the lessons of A Course in Miracles is the fact that the world of form that we experience is an illusion. This seems to be in direct conflict with what we perceive in the world. This is because we perceive what we believe in, whether or not it is true. The Course provides us with lessons to learn to distinguish the true from the false, the real from the unreal.

The ego defends against these lessons because if we fully accept them, the ego would disappear and we would know that we are free to Love without limit. This is our true freedom, for we were created as Love’s extension and our one function is to extend the Love we are.

Our acceptance of the Love we are frees us from all conflict and doubt. The oneness of Love is conflict free. The changelessness of Love eliminates all uncertainty. We dwell in perfect peace and share God’s joy in the free giving and receiving of Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Key That Ends Conflict

The idea for today [There is no will but God’s] can be regarded as the central thought toward which all our exercises are directed. God’s is the only Will. When you have recognized this, you have recognized that your will is His. The belief that conflict is possible has gone. Peace has replaced the strange idea that you are torn by conflict­ing goals. As an expression of the Will of God, you have no goal but His.

There is great peace in today’s idea, and the exercises for today are directed towards finding it. The idea itself is wholly true. Therefore it cannot give rise to illusions. Without illusions conflict is impossible.

There is no will but God’s. I cannot be in conflict.

…some related thoughts:

I am at peace.
Nothing can disturb me. My will is God’s.
My will and God’s are one.
God wills peace for His Son. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 74, W-pI.74.1:1-2:4;3:2-9. See also ACIM Lesson 74 Insights.)

All the appearances of conflict in the world are not God’s Will. In fact, conflict is the effect of the ego’s opposition to God’s Will. The ego, the belief in separation, is the idea of conflict. But on the first page of the Course we are told that only Love is real. Thus conflict cannot be real.

Our resistance to accepting God’s Will as ours comes from the ego idea of sacrifice. The ego warns us that we will have to give up the ego’s fantasies if we accept God’s Will as ours. It tries to convince us that the forms it offers us — special relationships, status, pretty things and myriad other forms — have value. Yet their seeming value comes only from our belief in them.

The moment we remove our belief, the meaninglessness of the empty forms becomes clear. There is no value there. To give these up is to give up nothing. To accept God’s Will as ours is to gain everything that is real. This is the desire of our true Self — to remember Who we really are.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Welcoming Our Will United with God

Help [your brothers] by offering them your unified mind on their behalf, as I am offering you mine on behalf of yours. Alone we can do nothing, but together our minds fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts. By not being separate, the Mind of God is established in [our minds] and as [our mind]. This Mind is invincible because it is undivided.

By the belief that your will is separate from mine, you are exempting yourself from the Will of God which is yourself. Yet to heal is still to make whole. Therefore, to heal is to unite with those who are like you, because perceiving this likeness is to recognize the Father. If your perfection is in Him and only in Him, how can you know it without recognizing Him? The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself. There is no separation of God and His creation. You will realize this when you understand that there is no separation between your will and mine. Let the Love of God shine upon you by your acceptance of me. My reality is yours and His. By joining your mind with mine you are signifying your awareness that the Will of God is One.

Our union is therefore the way to renounce the ego in you. The truth in both of us is beyond the ego. Our success in transcending the ego is guaranteed by God, and I share this confidence for both of us and all of us. (A Course in Miracles, T-8.V.1:5-8;2:3-12;4:2-4. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

Our belief that our will is separate from God makes us unaware that we already have all His Love, joy and peace. It is His Will that we are one with Him and share all His attributes. It is only a belief that has hidden our true Self from our awareness. This belief has made a dream that we think is real. In that dream we are alone, vulnerable, without Love, afraid and guilty. It is a dream of hell that seems to be inescapable.

But we are assured that we have a Friend Who is ready and willing to join with our mind to bring us to the remembrance that what God wills for us is real and ours now. We are the Love that seems to be absent in the world. We are not weak, for all of God’s strength is ours. We are not alone, for we are united in the loving Mind of God. This Friend is available to us in every instant, ready and willing to help us let go of beliefs that interfere with our awareness that we are safe and whole in the Mind of Love.

Let us walk together with our Friend today, welcome the fusion of our minds and learn of the Self God wills to be one with Him.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Forgiveness Is the Key to Christ’s Vision

Without forgiveness I will still be blind.

Sin is the symbol of attack. Behold it anywhere, and I will suffer. For forgiveness is the only means whereby Christ’s vision comes to me. Let me accept what His sight shows me as the simple truth, and I am healed completely. Brother, come and let me look on you. Your loveliness reflects my own. Your sinless­ness is mine. You stand forgiven, and I stand with you.

So would I look on everyone today. My brothers are Your Sons. Your Fatherhood created them, and gave them all to me as part of You, and my own Self as well. Today I honor You through them, and thus I hope this day to recognize my Self. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 247, W-pII.247. See also ACIM Lesson 247 Insights.)

Christ’s vision sees only the innocence of God’s Love in everyone. This is why Christ’s vision depends on our forgiveness, on letting go of our belief in images of separation. The world we experience is the projection of the ego’s choice to deny Love and make separation appear real. As long as we believe in the ego’s projections of separation, we are blind to God’s gift of His perfect Love.

Our true Self, Which is united with all in the oneness of God’s Love, is unknown to us. We need the help of the Holy Spirit to see past the ego’s images to Love’s innocence. Our part in forgiveness is to be willing to turn over all our perceptions in the world to the Holy Spirit. He will teach us to recognize the images as meaningless and to see the changeless Love that lies beyond them.

The ego does not know how to teach us to see Love’s innocence because it is the opposite of Love. It cannot teach what it denies. But we have a Helper Whose mission it is to help us remember our true Self, Which is Love and nothing else.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Remembering Who We Are

The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you cannot lose your soul and there is no gain in the world, for of itself it profits nothing. To invest without profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost to you is enormous. For this investment costs you the world’s reality by denying yours, and gives you nothing in return. You cannot sell your soul, but you can sell your awareness of it. You cannot perceive your soul, but you will not know it while you perceive something else as more valuable.

What is one cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial of the separation is the reinstatement of knowledge. At the altar of God, the holy perception of God’s Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it, and the spirit of God’s Son shines in the Mind of the Father and becomes one with it. Very gently does God shine upon Himself, loving the extension of Himself that is His Son. The world has no purpose as it blends into the purpose of God. For the real world has slipped quietly into Heaven, where everything eternal in it has always been. There the Redeemer and the redeemed join in perfect love of God and of each other. Heaven is your home, and being in God it must also be in you. (A Course in Miracles, T-12.VI.1,7. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

What we believe in, we perceive as true. If we believe in the ego choice for separation, we are investing in an illusion, which gives us nothing real in return. An investment that returns nothing is a total loss. But what could never be real has no effect on reality. This is the grace of God that guarantees that we retain all the value that God gave us in our Creation has His Son. We need only awaken from the ego’s dream of deprivation to remember that we still are God’s Son and all that He has given remains ours eternally.

The Holy Spirit’s mission is to gently and lovingly guide us to awaken from the dream of isolation and loss. He does this by helping us forgive our mistaken beliefs. When all these beliefs have been forgiven, the real world of God’s Love is revealed. We remember Who we are. We stand at the gate of Heaven, where we are welcomed as God’s Son, His eternal extension of Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Holy Spirit’s Happy Lessons

The world is an illusion. Those who choose to come to it are seeking for a place where they can be illusions, and avoid their own reality. Yet when they find their own reality is even here, then they step back and let [reality] lead the way. What other choice is really theirs to make? To let illusions walk ahead of truth is madness. But to let illusion sink behind the truth and let the truth stand forth as what it is, is merely sanity.

This is the simple choice we make today. The mad illusion will remain awhile in evidence, for those to look upon who chose to come, and have not yet rejoiced to find they were mistaken in their choice. They cannot learn directly from the truth, because they have denied that it is so. And so they need a Teacher Who perceives their madness, but Who still can look beyond illusion to the simple truth in them. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 155, W-pI.155.2-3. See also ACIM Lesson 155 Insights.)

To believe that we are anything but the infinite, unlimited, timeless Love of God is insane. But our belief that we are separate from Love makes the world we see seem more real than the truth. The choice to be in the world is the choice to deny our true Self and our unity with our Creator. Because of this belief, we need help from a Teacher Who is not deceived by our mistaken belief.

In truth, we are already Love. But we have taught ourselves to deny it so we need to be taught how to let go of this denial. This is the Holy Spirit’s teaching mission. The first step in this process is to teach us that what we have chosen is not bringing us what we really want. Instead of Love, peace and happiness, our choice has brought us fear, conflict and depression. The ego tries to hide these consequences by giving us images that seem appealing on the surface. They seem to give us what we think we want, but soon are recognized to be at best temporary and ultimately empty.

With the Holy Spirit’s help, we forgive these mistaken images as we learn they offer nothing that we really want. With this recognition, our minds open to see past the empty images with the Holy Spirit’s help. Now the Light of Love shines brighter in our mind. We experience deeper levels of peace and increasing happiness. These changes motivate us to practice more, letting the Holy Spirit show us the truth beyond the illusions and learn His happy lessons.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Coming Home to Love

No one can escape God’s Final Judgment. Who could flee forever from the truth? But the Final Judgment will not come until it is no longer associated with fear. One day each one will welcome it, and on that very day it will be given him. He will hear his sinlessness proclaimed around and around the world, setting it free as God’s Final Judgment on him is received. This is the Judgment in which salvation lies. This is the Judgment that will set him free. This is the Judgment in which all things are freed with him. Time pauses as eternity comes near, and silence lies across the world that everyone may hear this Judgment of the Son of God:

Holy are you, eternal, free and whole, at peace forever in the Heart of God. Where is the world, and where is sorrow now?

Have you yet learned to stand aside and hear the Voice of Judgment in yourself? Or do you still attempt to take His role from Him? Learn to be quiet, for His Voice is heard in stillness. And His Judgment comes to all who stand aside in quiet listening, and wait for Him. (A Course in Miracles, M-15.1:2-12;2:10-13)

The ego is terrified of God’s Final Judgment and wants us to fear it as well. This is because God’s Final Judgment ends the separation, which eliminates the ego. The ego tells us the Final Judgment is death and oblivion. But in truth, it is Life. It comes as we accept our oneness with God’s Love. It reunites us with the Life we share with God.

We prepare our mind to welcome God’s Final Judgment through forgiveness. It is our belief in guilt that makes us fear His Judgment. When we forgive ourselves for our errors in perception and accept the Holy Spirit’s loving correction, we accept God’s Final Judgment with joy and gratitude. It is our coming Home to Love.

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