Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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The Certainty of Our Return to Love

God’s teachers have learned how to be simple. ²They have no dreams that need defense against the truth. ³They do not try to make themselves. ⁴Their joy comes from their understanding Who created them. ⁵And does what God created need defense? ⁶No one can become an advanced teacher of God until he fully understands that defenses are but foolish guardians of mad illusions. ⁷The more grotesque the dream, the fiercer and more powerful its defenses seem to be. ⁸Yet when the teacher of God finally agrees to look past them, he finds that nothing was there. ⁹Slowly at first he lets himself be undeceived. ¹⁰But he learns faster as his trust increases. ¹¹It is not danger that comes when defenses are laid down. ¹²It is safety. ¹³It is peace. ¹⁴It is joy. ¹⁵And it is God.

Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait, and wait without anxiety. ²Patience is natural to the teacher of God. ³All he sees is certain outcome, at a time perhaps unknown to him as yet, but not in doubt. ⁴The time will be as right as is the answer. ⁵And this is true for everything that happens now or in the future. ⁶The past as well held no mistakes; nothing that did not serve to benefit the world, as well as him to whom it seemed to happen. ⁷Perhaps it was not understood at the time. ⁸Even so, the teacher of God is willing to reconsider all his past decisions, if they are causing pain to anyone. ⁹Patience is natural to those who trust. ¹⁰Sure of the ultimate interpretation of all things in time, no outcome already seen or yet to come can cause them fear. (A Course in Miracles, M-4.VI.1:1-15; VIII.1:1-10)

In truth, God’s Creation is the one Self we share with every brother. This Self is interested only in sharing God’s gifts freely and without limit. Any attempt to limit this giving makes our true Self unknown to us. As we learn that the interests we share with everyone is to freely give and receive God’s gifts, we become His teacher. We teach what we need to learn.

We teach defenselessness to learn that we share the invulnerability, the changelessness of God. We demonstrate patience as we remember that beyond appearances in the world, God’s Love remains unaffected by our perceptions. As we let the Holy Spirit help us let go of our mistaken beliefs, we gain certainty that no matter what the appearance, we will remember that we are God’s Son. We can count on this reality. We are guided in ways to be truly helpful. We can trust that everyone remains safe in God. Appearances in the world will fade away as we awaken to the Self God created one with Him.

© 2022, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Choosing the Holy Spirit as Our Companion

The Holy Spirit cannot speak to an unwelcoming host, because He will not be heard. ²The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice grows faint in alien company. ³He needs your protection, only because your care is a sign that you want Him. ⁴Think like Him ever so slightly, and the little spark becomes a blazing light that fills your mind so that He becomes your only Guest. ⁵Whenever you ask the ego to enter, you lessen His welcome. ⁶He will remain, but you have allied yourself against Him. ⁷Whatever journey you choose to take, He will go with you, waiting. ⁸You can safely trust His patience, for He cannot leave a part of God. ⁹Yet 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. ²To have Him is to be like Him, and He has given Himself to you. ³You who have God must be as God, for His function became yours with His gift. ⁴Invite this knowledge back into your mind, and let nothing that obscures it enter. ⁵The 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. ⁶Your willingness need not be perfect, because His is. ⁷If you will merely offer Him a little place, He will lighten it so much that you will gladly let it be increased. ⁸And by this increase, you will begin to remember creation. (A Course in Miracles, T-11.II.5:1–6:8. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

God’s only function is to extend the Love He is. As His extension, our function is the same as His. Thus our only meaningful purpose of the world is to bring the Light of Love to it. God answered our mistaken wish for specialness with the Holy Spirit to help us learn that this wish could never make Reality.

As God’s Teacher, the Holy Spirit teaches us to recognize our mistaken beliefs bring us nothing that we really want. His Voice is ever present but it can be heard only when we are willing to listen.

The journey to willingness is unique for each of us in the world. It is determined by the beliefs in separation we have accepted as true. They are the cause of everything we experience in the world. The Holy Spirit helps us heal these mistaken beliefs. As we accept this healing, we let the Light of Love in us shine brighter in the world.

For some of us the journey involves addictions that control our lives. Others harbor fear and guilt from experiences they have had in their lives. Sooner or later, everyone reaches the point where they recognize there must be a better way.

This recognition is the turning point where we become willing to accept the Holy Spirit’s help. With each acceptance, our willingness grows for the increasing happiness and peace motivates us. We become less tolerant of the ego’s misguided perceptions. The Holy Spirit becomes our preferred companion to guide us on the way of awakening to Love.

Today we practice willingness to follow God’s Voice in our thoughts and actions.

© 2022, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Joining God’s Eternal Extension of Love

Like any good teacher, the Holy Spirit knows more than you do now, but He teaches only to make you equal with Him. ²You had already taught yourself wrongly, having believed what was not true. ³You did not believe in your own perfection. ⁴Would God teach you that you had made a split mind, when He knows your mind only as whole? ⁵What God does know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His children are wholly joyous. ⁶Giving His joy is an ongoing process, not in time but in eternity. ⁷God’s extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. ⁸So He thought, “My children sleep and must be awakened.”

How can you wake children in a more kindly way than by a gentle Voice that will not frighten them, but will merely remind them that the night is over and the light has come? ²You do not inform them that the nightmares that frightened them so badly are not real, because children believe in magic. ³You merely reassure them that they are safe now. ⁴Then you train them to recognize the difference between sleeping and waking, so they will understand they need not be afraid of dreams. ⁵And so when bad dreams come, they will themselves call on the light to dispel them.

⁴The Holy Spirit makes no distinction among dreams. ⁵He merely shines them away. ⁶His light is always the Call to awaken, whatever you have been dreaming. ⁷Nothing lasting lies in dreams, and the Holy Spirit, shining with the light from God Himself, speaks only for what lasts forever. (A Course in Miracles, T-6.V.1:1–2:5;4:4-7. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The Holy Spirit does not judge our dreams, no matter how fearful, angry, guilty or sad they may be. He simply lovingly and gently calls to us to awaken. He brings His Light to shine upon the dreams which deny the eternal presence of Love’s Light. This is God’s call to awaken, for God’s Will is to share His joy and peace with His one Son.

If we are willing to listen, the Holy Spirit will teach us that what we are experiencing in the dream is not real. And He will lighten our path to awaken to the reality that we dwell eternally in the Home God created for us. Here we abide in peace and joy as we join with His eternal extension of Love.

© 2022, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Eternal Marriage

If you cannot hear the Voice for God, it is because you do not choose to listen. ²That you do listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings and your behavior.

²When your mood tells you that you have chosen wrongly, and this is so whenever you are not joyous, then know this need not be. ³In every case you have thought wrongly about some brother God created, and are perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass. ⁴Think honestly what you have thought that God would not have thought, and what you have not thought that God would have you think.

The habit of engaging with God and His creations is easily made if you actively refuse to let your mind slip away.

²There is no limit to the power of a Son of God, but he can limit the expression of his power as much as he chooses. ³Your mind and mine can unite in shining your ego away, releasing the strength of God into everything you think and do.

⁴His Mind shone on you in your creation and brought your mind into being. ⁵His Mind still shines on you and must shine through you. ⁶Your ego cannot prevent Him from shining on you, but it can prevent you from letting Him shine through you. (A Course in Miracles, T-4.IV.1:1-2;2:2-4;7:1;8:2-3;9:4-6. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

We are so engaged with the ego that we’ve married it. But the ego’s dowry is a shiny chest full of nothing, for it has nothing real to offer. It is time to dissolve the marriage on the basis of its empty offering.

It is time to be vigilant for God and His Love. His offering is everything that is real. In truth, we are eternally married to God, for what God created one cannot be divided. We dissolve our marriage to the ego by choosing Love as our Guide for our thoughts and actions, moment by moment. By this choice we acknowledge the marriage God created to be eternal and indivisible. With this practice we see the face of Christ — the face of Love — in every brother and ourselves. We choose God’s dowry, which brought us all that is Real — His eternal Love.

© 2022, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Finding Our Place of Safety and Peace

I will step back and let Him lead the way.

There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. ²You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently. ³Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. ⁴And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. ⁵Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them, as you were before.

The world is an illusion. ²Those who choose to come to it are seeking for a place where they can be illusions, and avoid their own reality. ³Yet when they find their own reality is even here, then they step back and let it lead the way. ⁴What other choice is really theirs to make? ⁵To let illusions walk ahead of truth is madness. ⁶But 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. ²The 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. ³They cannot learn directly from the truth, because they have denied that it is so. ⁴And so they need a Teacher [Holy Spirit] Who perceives their madness, but Who still can look beyond illusion to the simple truth in them.”

…there is another road that leads away from loss of every kind, for sacrifice and deprivation both are quickly left behind. ²This is the way appointed for you now. (A Course in Miracles, W-155.1:1–3:4;5:1-2. See also ACIM Lesson 155 Insights.)

The wish to be special, to have a unique identity, is a wish to avoid our true Reality as God’s Son. As His Son, we share all of His attributes. Individuality is impossible in the oneness of His Love.

The Course is teaching us the price we pay for choosing individuality over the unity of Love. Specialness introduces differences and conflict into our awareness. This conflict is the basis for all our fears and guilt because it makes harm, loss and lack seem real. Nowhere in the illusionary dream can we find lasting peace because there is no refuge that protects us from conflict.

But we have a Teacher to guide us out of our insane wish for specialness. He recognizes our insanity but does not believe it. He helps us let go of our insane beliefs by showing us that they offer nothing we really want.

All we really want is the safety, peace and comfort of the Love God has given us. It is already in us. We only need to accept It as our own. As we accept the Love we are, we become messengers of Love in the world. We learn to teach only Love and remember we are Love and nothing else.

© 2022, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Certainty of Our Return to Love

³Love is one. ⁴It has no separate parts and no degrees; no kinds nor levels, no divergencies and no distinctions. ⁵It is like itself, unchanged throughout. ⁶It never alters with a person or a circumstance. ⁷It is the Heart of God, and also of His Son.

Love’s meaning is obscure to anyone who thinks that love can change. ²He does not see that changing love must be impossible. ³And thus he thinks that he can love at times, and hate at other times. ⁴He also thinks that love can be bestowed on one, and yet remain itself although it is withheld from others. ⁵To believe these things of love is not to understand it. ⁶If it could make such distinctions, it would have to judge between the righteous and the sinner, and perceive the Son of God in separate parts.

Love cannot judge. ²As it is one itself, it looks on all as one. ³Its meaning lies in oneness. ⁴And it must elude the mind that thinks of it as partial or in part. ⁵There is no love but God’s, and all of love is His. ⁶There is no other principle that rules where love is not. ⁷Love is a law without an opposite. ⁸Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds Them both forever as the same.

Call to your Father, certain that His Voice will answer. ²He Himself has promised this. ³And He Himself will place a spark of truth within your mind wherever you give up a false belief, a dark illusion of your own reality and what love means. ⁴He will shine through your idle thoughts today, and help you understand the truth of love. ⁵In loving gentleness He will abide with you, as you allow His Voice to teach love’s meaning to your clean and open mind. ⁶And He will bless the lesson with His Love. (W-127A Course in Miracles, .1:3–3:8. See also ACIM Lesson 127 Insights.)

The world we see is constantly changing, from the cells in our bodies to the weather and world politics. All this confirms that what we are perceiving cannot be real, for only the changelessness of Love is real.

This fact is the foundation for our release from the world of fear and guilt and return to the certainty of our Home in God’s Love. We can count on His Love because It never changes. In response to His Son’s dream of separation, God gave us the Holy Spirit to lead us Home. We can call upon His help in every moment of every day.

Today we remind ourselves often to ask the Holy Spirit how He would see what we are perceiving in the dream. As we accept His vision, our misperceptions are healed. Where we saw cause for judgment and defense, we will welcome our brother to join with us in the unity of Love. Where there was conflict, there is peace. Where there was depression, there is joy. Where there was fear, we remember Love.

© 2022, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Seeing Past Projections to Love’s Oneness

Without forgiveness I will still be blind.

Sin is the symbol of attack. ²Behold it anywhere, and I will suffer. ³For forgiveness is the only means whereby Christ’s vision comes to me. ⁴Let me accept what His sight shows me as the simple truth, and I am healed completely. ⁵Brother, come and let me look on you. ⁶Your loveliness reflects my own. ⁷Your sinlessness is mine. ⁸You stand forgiven, and I stand with you.

So would I look on everyone today. ²My brothers are Your Sons. ³Your Fatherhood created them, and gave them all to me as part of You, and my own Self as well. ⁴Today I honor You through them, and thus I hope this day to recognize my Self. (A Course in Miracles, W-247. See also ACIM Lesson 247 Insights.)

Forgiveness is the central theme throughout A Course in Miracles. This lesson makes it clear that our return to awareness of our Self as Love comes only through forgiveness. This world is the effect of the ego’s demand for specialness, which rejects the oneness of Love. As long as we value any aspect of the ego’s thought system of separation, we cannot experience the full scope of God’s gift of Love. And we cannot ask the ego’s help to forgive, for it will not contribute to its own demise.

Fortunately we have Help from outside the ego’s thought system to let go of our mistaken allegiance to the ego. The Holy Spirit is our only means to achieve true forgiveness. But we must do our part. We must be willing to turn over our perceptions to the Holy Spirit for His correction. We need be willing to accept His help to heal our fear based thoughts. Together with the Holy Spirit as our Guide, we awaken to the recognition that we are one with the Love that unites us with all our brothers and our Creator.

We dedicate today to being mindful of our perceptions and offering them willingly to the Holy Spirit to receive His gift of Christ’s vision. Through this vision we see past the ego’s projections to the innocence of our brothers and our Self.

© 2022, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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