Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Remembering Only Love Is Real Brings Peace

When you try to bring truth to illusions, you are trying to make illusions real, and keep them by justifying your belief in them. But to give illusions to truth is to enable truth to teach that the illusions are unreal, and thus enable you to escape from them.

Be willing, then, to give all you have held outside the truth to Him Who knows the truth, and in Whom all is brought to truth. Salvation from separation would be complete, or will not be at all. Be not concerned with anything except your willingness to have this be accomplished. He will accomplish it; not you. But forget not this: When you become disturbed and lose your peace of mind because another is attempting to solve his problems through fantasy, you are refusing to forgive yourself for just this same attempt. And you are holding both of you away from truth and from salvation. As you forgive him, you restore to truth what was denied by both of you. And you will see forgiveness where you have given it. (A Course in Miracles,T-17.I.5:4-5;6. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

When our peace is disturbed by anything, it is because we believe what is perceived is true and real. The world we perceive is the effect of our belief that we have succeeded in separating from God and His Love. It is our belief in the fantasy of a world that makes it seem true, though it is nothing but illusion. Through belief we attempt to make illusion real. We have taught ourselves to believe that the impossible is possible.

We need to be taught to unlearn this belief. The Holy Spirit is the Teacher God has given us to bring illusion to truth, to teach us that illusion is nothing and truth is everything. Truth is very simple: It is the oneness of Love and nothing else.

There is no conflict in Love’s oneness, no possibility of loss, no guilt nor fear. In the oneness of Love, there is only joy and peace. As we are willing to bring all our perceptions to the Holy Spirit to receive His healing vision, we experience God’s peace and joy more and more. Appearances in the world are less disturbing as we learn that appearances are never true. Only Love is real.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Falling in Love with Love

Today accept God’s peace and joy as yours. Let Him complete Himself as He defines completion. You will understand that what completes Him must complete His Son as well. He cannot give through loss. No more can you. Receive His gift of joy and peace today, and He will thank you for your gift to Him.

Begin today by thinking of those brothers who have been denied by you the peace and joy that are their right under the equal laws of God. Here you denied [peace and joy] to yourself. And here you must return to claim them as your own.

Think of your “enemies” a little while, and tell each one, as he occurs to you:

My brother, peace and joy I offer you,
That I may have God’s peace and joy as mine.

Thus you prepare yourself to recognize God’s gifts to you, and let your mind be free of all that would prevent success today. Now are you ready to accept the gift of peace and joy that God has given you. Now are you ready to experience the joy and peace you have denied yourself. Now you can say, “God’s peace and joy are mine,” for you have given what you would receive. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 105,W-pI.105.5;6:2-7:6. See also ACIM Lesson 105 Insights.)

Everything we perceive in the world is a form defined by limits. Even our ideas expressed in words are only symbols, still defined by limits. Anything we “give” in this context is limited by form.

This is the opposite of how God defines giving. God is Love and Love is eternal, changeless and without limit. The nature of Love is to extend Love to Love. God’s gift of Love obeys His law of giving. Giving and receiving are the same. By His giving all His Love to His Creation, His Love is automatically returned because that is the law of Love.

In the world of form, it is impossible to recognize giving and receiving are the same. When we give a form away, it seems that we no longer have it. But when we give Love, we experience Love simultaneously. Giving Love is how we experience having Love.

As we let the Holy Spirit help us see past the form of our brothers to the Love He is, the Love we are naturally joins with the Love in our brother. We experience the joy and peace of our oneness with our brother. We fall in Love with the Truth in our brother and it brings joy and peace to our hearts.

This is what forgiveness, letting go of belief in the forms of the world, offers us. Today we would forgive our brother of the images we have made of him that we may join with him in God’s peace and joy.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Learning the Lesson of Love’s Oneness

This day is holy, for it ushers in a new experience; a different kind of feeling and awareness. You have spent long days and nights in celebrating death [separation]. Today you learn to feel the joy of life [Love’s oneness].

Today it will be given you to feel a touch of Heaven, though you will return to paths of learning. Yet you have come far enough along the way to alter time sufficiently to rise above [time’s] laws, and walk into eternity a while. This you will learn to do increasingly, as every lesson, faithfully rehearsed, brings you more swiftly to this holy place and leaves you, for a moment, to your Self.

Nothing is needed but today’s idea [Into His Presence would I enter now] to light your mind, and let [your mind] rest in still anticipation and in quiet joy, wherein you quickly leave the world behind.

From this day forth, your ministry takes on a genuine devotion, and a glow that travels from your fingertips to those you touch, and blesses those you look upon. A vision reaches everyone you meet, and everyone you think of, or who thinks of you. For your experience today will so transform your mind that it becomes the touchstone for the holy Thoughts of God. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 157,W-pI.157.1:4-6;3;4:3-5:3. See also ACIM Lesson 157 Insights.)

The world we experience with the body teaches us that separation is real. We have dedicated our time to learning and relearning this lesson to make the world seem real. Now it is time to make a new dedication to learn a different lesson — the holy lesson our true Self would have us learn. This lesson is completely opposite to the ego’s lesson of separation. 

Learning this holy lesson also requires dedication and practice. This practice brings us into alignment with the Will of our true Self, which is the Will of God. The power and Love of God support this practice, guaranteeing that we will learn the lesson that we are eternally in God’s Presence. Each time we practice this we gain a greater sense of the joy of being at Home in God.

This lesson needs to be repeated again and again until the old lesson of the ego has been fully let go. Each time we practice and experience a touch of Heaven, we bring the experience back with us and see the world a little differently. As we bring this vision to the world, our healing extends to all. This is our ministry as we practice entering into the Presence of our true Self.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Treasure Beyond Measure

I am one Self, united with my Creator.

Serenity and perfect peace are mine, because I am one Self,
completely whole, at one with all creation and with God.

Salvation comes from my one Self.

From my one Self, Whose knowledge still remains within my mind,
I see God’s perfect plan for my salvation perfectly fulfilled.

I am spirit.

I am the Son of God. No body can contain my spirit,
nor impose on me a limitation God created not.

I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation.

What can my function be but to accept the Word of God [God’s Plan],
Who has created me for what I am and will forever be? (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 113,W-pI.113:1-2;114:1-2. See also ACIM Lesson 113 Insights.)

To choose the body, an image of separation as our identity is to choose limitation. The ego’s purpose for the body is to limit the Son of God and limit Love. This could never be accomplished in truth because Love is limitless and unchangeable.

By identifying with a limited image of our self we make ourselves unaware of the Love we are. Yet our true Self is still with us and available the instant we choose to deny the ego’s denial of Love. That choice is the acceptance of our Self as God created It. His plan for our salvation is to lead us back to the full remembrance that we remain as He created us — whole, complete and unified with our Creator, all That is Real.

God has given us a Guide to lead us out of the chaos, guilt and fear inherent in the ego thought system. Being willing to accept His guidance requires that we are at least willing to question everything we believe about the world. With this opening, we can be taught to recognize the Real from the unreal. Once recognized, we naturally choose the Real, for the unreal is seen as valueless. The Real is recognized as a treasure beyond measure, for it is God’s perfect Love.

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

Forget not once this journey is begun the end is certain. Doubt along the way will come and go and go to come again. Yet is the ending sure. No one can fail to do what God appointed him to do. When you forget, remember that you walk with Him and with His Word upon your heart. Who could despair when hope like this is his? Illusions of despair may seem to come, but learn how not to be deceived by them. Behind each one there is reality and there is God. Why would you wait for this and trade it for illusions, when His Love is but an instant farther on the road where all illusions end? The end is sure and guaranteed by God. Who stands before a lifeless image when a step away the Holy of the Holies opens up an ancient door that leads beyond the world?

Let us wait here in silence, and kneel down an instant in our gratitude to Him Who called to us and helped us hear His Call. And then let us arise and go in faith along the way to Him. Now we are sure we do not walk alone. For God is here, and with Him all our brothers. Now we know that we will never lose the way again. (A Course in Miracles,C-ep.1;4:1-5)

The Course is offering us a means to heal our minds through a complete reversal of what we have thought is true. Theoretically this reversal is as simple as turning a light switch on. Yet few of us find it that easy. We have invested deeply in believing that we are a separate identity, defined by a body, in a world populated by images of separation.

Letting go of that image seems to be life threatening. The ego shrieks, “Don’t go there!” It sees this reversal as death, for it is the end of the identity the ego has convinced us is real. Thus a simple change of mind becomes a complicated journey of letting go bit by bit of the mistaken beliefs that hide the truth of our real Identity from our awareness.

Progress may seem slow and the ego uses this seemingly slow pace to tell us the journey is hopeless. Despair is its tool to interrupt our willingness to leave the past behind. Yet we have a mighty Companion Who walks with us and supports us every step of the way. At the journey’s end we have lost nothing and remembered that we have everything given us by our Creator.

The seemingly long process of letting go of false beliefs accelerates each time we let the Holy Spirit shine away the shadow of an illusion. Lessons learned generalize as they are recognized as applying to many mistaken ideas. These false ideas fall away naturally as we continue to learn the Holy Spirit’s lessons by our willingness to be taught.

Today we hold out our hands offering the gift of willingness to the Holy Spirit, for we would return Home to the joy and peace and Love of God.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Freedom Comes with Releasing the Past

You consider it “natural” to use your past experience as the reference point from which to judge the present. Yet this is unnatural because it is delusional. When you have learned to look on everyone with no reference at all to the past, either his or yours as you perceived it, you will be able to learn from what you see now. For the past can cast no shadow to darken the present, unless you are afraid of light. And only if you are would you choose to bring darkness with you, and by holding [the past] in your mind, see it as a dark cloud that shrouds your brothers and conceals their reality from your sight.

This darkness is in you [your mind]. The Christ as revealed to you now has no past, for He is changeless, and in His changelessness lies your release. For if He is as He was created, there is no guilt in Him. No cloud of guilt has risen to obscure Him, and He stands revealed in everyone you meet because you see Him through Himself. To be born again is to let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the present. The cloud that obscures God’s Son to you is the past, and if you would have it past and gone, you must not see [the past] now. If you see it now in your illusions, it has not gone from you, although it is not there.

The miracle enables you to see your brother without his past, and so perceive him as born again. His errors are all past, and by perceiving him without [his errors] you are releasing him. And since his past is yours, you share in this release. (A Course in Miracles,T-13.VI.2-3;5:1-3. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The continuation of guilt and fear in our minds depends upon bringing the past into our present awareness. Yet the past is over and does not exist now. Judging the present based upon perceptions from the past makes us blind to what is real now.

Only Love is real, therefore only Love is now. To perceive anything else is to perceive an illusion that is not really there. To free ourselves from the past, we must relinquish all judgment. Without the unreal past, we have no basis for judgment. To attempt to judge based on illusions from the past is insanity. To return to the sanity that accepts the reality of Love, we must turn all our judgments over to the Holy Spirit and let His Light shine away the dark shadows of the past.

As we see our brothers through the Holy Spirit’s vision, we see him as he is now — Love and nothing else. This vision mirrors back to us the truth of the Self we are. When we see our brothers truly, we see our Self truly. We remember we are Love and nothing else.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Forgetting the Past; Remembering the Truth

To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All the rest must be forgotten. Forgiveness is a selective remembering, based not on your selection. For the shadow figures you would make immortal are “enemies” of reality. Be willing to forgive the Son of God for what he did not do. The shadow figures are the witnesses you bring with you to demonstrate he did what he did not [in Truth]. Because you bring them, you will hear them [experience them as real]. And you who keep them by your own selection do not understand how they came into your mind, and what their purpose is. [The shadows of the past] represent the evil that you think was done to you. You bring them with you only that you may return evil for evil, hoping that their witness will enable you to think guiltily of another and not harm yourself. They speak so clearly for the separation that no one not obsessed with keeping separation could hear them. They offer you the “reasons” why you should enter into unholy alliances to support the ego’s goals, and make your relationships the witness to [the ego’s] power. (A Course in Miracles,T-17.III.1. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The truth of What we are as God’s one Son is changeless. That is why anything that appears to happen in the dream of separation never really occurred. It is this that makes release from the dream of fear and guilt possible. When we stop bringing memories of past “hurts” to the present in our minds, we will remember God. We will remember that we are the Self God created one with Him.

This is why forgiveness is the lynch pin of the Course’s curriculum to heal our mind. We forget the past by letting the Holy Spirit teach us what to remember. He will teach us to remember the truth of Love and let go of the mistaken beliefs that make illusions seem real. This is our path to release from fear and guilt and return to Love.

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