Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Choosing the Holy Spirit’s Lessons in Love

To perceive errors in anyone, and to react to them as if they were real, is to make them real to you. You will not escape paying the price for this, not because you are being punished for it, but because you are following the wrong guide and will therefore lose your way.

Your brother’s errors are not of him, any more than yours are of you. Accept his errors as real, and you have attacked yourself. If you would find your way and keep it, see only truth beside you for you walk together. The Holy Spirit in you forgives all things in you and in your brother.

The Holy Spirit forgives everything because God created everything. Do not undertake His function, or you will forget yours. Accept only the function of healing in time, because that is what time is for. God gave you the function to create in eternity. You do not need to learn [to create, extend Love], but you do need to learn to want it. For that all learning was made. This is the Holy Spirit’s use of an ability that you do not need, but that you made. Give [learning] to Him! You do not understand how to use it. He will teach you how to see yourself without condemnation, by learning how to look on everything without it. Condemnation will then not be real to you, and all your errors will be forgiven. (A Course in Miracles, T-9.III.6:7-7:4;8. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

We do not need to learn what we already know. Our true Self already knows that we are Love and nothing else, for that is what God created His Son to be. But we do need to learn to let go of the denial of what we know. This denial makes the world of illusions seem real. The ego teaches that lack of Love, fear and guilt are real. We cannot use the teacher of illusions, which could never be true, to learn the truth.

But God has given us an inner Teacher Who is not deceived by the ego’s lessons. As we follow the Holy Spirit’s teaching, we learn to overlook the ego’s false images. The Holy Spirit’s vision looks past the illusions of form to the Love that unites us eternally with our Creator. We want to learn this lesson because it is the way to happiness, peace and the Love we are. Holy Spirit’s lessons free us from fear and return us to Love.

© 2020, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Reclaiming Our Sanity in God’s Mind

Peace be to you who have been cured in God, and not in idle dreams. For cure must come from holiness, and holiness can not be found where sin is cherished. God abides in holy temples. He is barred where sin has entered. Yet there is no place where He is not. And therefore sin can have no home in which to hide from His beneficence. There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide.

This is the thought that cures. It does not make distinctions among unrealities. Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where the need for healing is. This is no magic. It is merely an appeal to truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever. It is not a thought that judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real.

There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. The mind that brings illusions to the truth is really changed. There is no change but this. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 140, W-pI.140.5;6;7:3-5. See also ACIM Lesson 140 Insights.)

The world we experience with a body is a projection of the ego belief that separation is real. All we are experiencing is illusionary images made by the ego to hide the truth that separation is impossible. Only the oneness of God’s Love is real.

Accepting the reality of God’s Love is the means to heal the split mind’s denial of truth. Love’s oneness heals the split mind’s belief in lack of Love. When Love is accepted, guilt is released and therefore the cause of sickness is let go. Focusing our attention on fixing the body with external forms keeps the split mind in charge. The ego thought system is a closed loop that denies the truth.

This is why we need to accept God’s help through His Voice to learn how to see the truth of Love beyond the world’s forms. We choose God’s Love today, for we would return to the sanity of God’s Mind.

© 2020, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Being of One Mind

Perhaps you do not realize that [a healed mind] removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As [limits] are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes.

Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again mis­placed yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick.

Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:

I have forgotten what I really am, for I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defense against the truth. But I am not a body. And my mind cannot attack. So I can not be sick. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 136, W-pI.136.18:1-2;19-20. See also ACIM Lesson 136 Insights.)

To be truly helpful, we need to prefer truth over illusion. Believing the body and the world are real is a choice against truth. It is a preference for illusions of separation rather than the oneness of God’s Love. Our right mind knows and accepts only oneness. Dreams of separation only occur in a split off part of the mind, which chooses against truth.

As we affirm that we are here only to be truly helpful, we open our minds to the truth Holy Spirit teaches. When we choose Him as our Guide, God’s Love becomes our sole motivation. We want only to be Love and give Love.

With this practice, judgment is recognized as meaningless except to distinguish between the reality of Love and the unreality of any appearance of limitation or lack of Love. Under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, the body becomes a means to teach only Love and awaken to the Love we are. Our identification shifts from focus on the body to our true Self in the one Mind of Love.

© 2020, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Accept No Substitutes

You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains. There are no satisfactions in the world.

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. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 133, W-pI.133.2;13;14:1. See also ACIM Lesson 133 Insights.)

When we identify with the ego as what we are, we choose limitation. We feel incomplete because we are denying our only completion, which comes from our unity with God. To fill the perceived void, the ego offers illusionary substitutes which seem to be valuable. Yet because they are illusions, they are truly valueless.

No images in the world will truly comfort us because only our eternal unity with Love satisfies. Love is our only need. But God has already given us all of His Love, all that is Real. We only seem to need Love when we deny we have It by choosing the ego. The lack of Love we feel is dispelled when we choose not to value the valueless and welcome the only real value. No more do we choose against Love, but now welcome It as our true Identity. We are accepting the Gift that has always been ours.

© 2020, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Accepting Our True Function

Your Father loves you. All the world of pain is not His Will. Forgive yourself the thought He wanted this for you. Then let the Thought with which He has replaced all your mistakes enter the darkened places of your mind that thought the thoughts that never were His Will.

This part belongs to God, as does the rest. It does not think its solitary thoughts, and make them real by hiding them from Him. Let in the light, and you will look upon no obstacle to what He wills for you. Open your secrets to His kindly light, and see how bright this light still shines in you.

It is God’s Will your mind be one with His. It is God’s Will that He has but one Son. It is God’s Will that His one Son is you.

Forgive all thoughts which would oppose the truth of your completion, unity and peace. You cannot lose the gifts your Father gave. You do not want to be another self. You have no function that is not of God. Forgive yourself the one [function] you think you made. Forgiveness and salvation are the same. Forgive what you have made and you are saved. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 99, W-pI.99.7:3-8:5;9:2-4;10. See also ACIM Lesson 99 Insights.)

Our dark thoughts come from the split mind that believes separation is real. They are not our real Thoughts because they deny the truth that only Love is real. They deny the Light of Love.

Our only function is to extend God’s Thought of Love. This extension occurs naturally from our right mind, which is one with God’s Mind. But the denial of Love in our split mind makes the appearance of lovelessness seem real, bringing with it all the pain and suffering, fear and guilt we experience in the world. Yet this appearance cannot be real and is therefore nothing more than an illusion.

To fulfill our true function, we need to bring all our dark thoughts that deny Love to the Holy Spirit to receive His loving correction. Hiding these dark thoughts only perpetuates the ego’s dark stories. The practice of bringing all our thoughts of fear and guilt to the Holy Spirit is the means to save ourselves from our mistaken beliefs. With the Holy Spirit’s help, we learn that these beliefs are meaningless and have no effect because they are not real. As we forgive the false beliefs, we recognize that God’s Will is ours; our only function is to Love and be Loved.

© 2020, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Foundation of Awakening to Love

Nothing in madness is dependable. It holds out no safety and no hope. But such a world is not real. I have given it the illusion of reality, and have suffered from my belief in it. Now I choose to withdraw this belief, and place my trust in reality. In choosing this, I will es­cape all the effects of the world of fear, because I am acknowledg­ing that it does not exist.

Whatever I see reflects my thoughts. It is my thoughts that tell me where I am and what I am. The fact that I see a world in which there is suffering and loss and death shows me that I am seeing only the representation of my insane thoughts, and am not allowing my real thoughts to cast their beneficent light on what I see. Yet God’s way is sure. The images I have made cannot prevail against Him because it is not my will that they do so. My will is His, and I will place no other gods [thoughts] before Him. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 53, W-pI.53.3:3-7;5:2-7. See also ACIM Lesson 53 Insights.)

Our only real thoughts are the Thoughts we share with God. Therefore they must be Thoughts of Love and nothing else. The world we experience through the body’s senses represent the insane thoughts of separation made by the ego. They are insane thoughts because they oppose the Reality of Love’s oneness.

It is helpful to remember that these insane thoughts are not ours because we are not the ego. Believing that these insane thoughts are real is nothing more than a mistake. But mistakes can be undone with the Holy Spirit’s help. And when they are, the effects of the mistakes disappear for they were never real. Letting go of our mistaken beliefs is the foundation which we can build upon to awaken to the real Thoughts we share with God.

As we practice following the Holy Spirit’s guidance, we learn to recognize mistaken beliefs and let them go. Our world is increasingly lit by the Light of God’s Love within us and the shadows of fear fade into the nothingness from which they came. We remember our true Self, the Son of God.

© 2020, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Happy Dream of Complete Forgiveness

You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No other cause it has, nor ever will. Nothing more fearful than an idle dream has terrified God’s Son, and made him think that he has lost his innocence, denied his Father, and made war upon himself. So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear, unless a gentler dream preceded his awaking, and allowed his calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice that calls with love to waken him; a gentler dream, in which his suffering was healed and where his brother was his friend. God willed he waken gently and with joy, and gave him means to waken without fear.

Accept the dream He gave instead of yours. It is not difficult to change a dream when once the dreamer has been recognized. Rest in the Holy Spirit, and allow His gentle dreams to take the place of those you dreamed in terror and in fear of death. He brings forgiving dreams…. The dream of guilt is fading from your sight, although your eyes are closed. A smile has come to lighten up your sleeping face. The sleep is peaceful now, for these are happy dreams. (A Course in Miracles, T-27.VII.13;14:1-4,6-8. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

What the Course calls the real world is a dream of complete forgiveness. The images in this dream serve only to remind us of the Love that surrounds us and is in us. It is a happy dream because the barriers to Love’s presence have been let go.

This dream is fully under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. With Him we perceive only Love or calls for Love that are answered with Love. Fear has faded away for we have let go of the ego’s demands for separation and specialness.

We wish only to acknowledge the Love in every brother and ourselves. We are ready to accept God’s Will for us that we remain united with Him eternally and without limit. We accept His welcome in peace and joy.

© 2020, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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