Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Transforming Division into Unity

I am the holy Son of God Himself.

Here is your declaration of release from bondage of the world. And here as well is all the world released. You do not see what you have done by giving to the world the role of jailer to the Son of God.

Deny your own Iden­tity, and this is what remains. You look on chaos and proclaim it is yourself. There is no sight that fails to witness this to you.

Deny your own Identity, and you will not escape the madness which induced this weird, unnatural and ghostly thought that mocks creation and that laughs at God.

Yet what is it except a game you play in which Identity can be denied? You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everyone set free. In this one truth are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything, the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 191, W-pI.191.1:1-3;2:3-5;3:1;4. See also ACIM Lesson 191 Insights.)

In this world there are many factions of people who believe that their perceptions are truth and everyone else’s are false. This is a game the ego plays to reinforce belief that separation is real. Yet this belief denies that only Love is real. Being the denial of Reality, the belief in differences and separation must be false. All perceptions based on this false premise must also be false.

The focus of this lesson is to offer us truth to replace the false idea of being a separate identity. This truth, wholly accepted, brings the end of conflict and differences. It transforms our perceptions of division and conflict into the recognition of our unity in Love.

As we remind ourselves today, “I am the holy Son of God Himself” we remind ourselves of our true Identity. We are eternal Love and nothing else. We share God’s peace and joy. We see no cause for conflict because we see everyone as one with us in Love. We lay down the false, separate identity and release ourselves from the world of limitation. We extend the Love we are to every brother without reservation. We remember we are one Self, united with our Creator.

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Choosing Unity Instead of Conflict

There is no conflict, for my will is Yours.

How foolish, Father, to believe Your Son could cause himself to suffer! Could he make a plan for his damnation, and be left without a certain way to his release? You love me, Father. You could never leave me desolate, to die within a world of pain and cruelty. How could I think that Love has left Itself? There is no will except the Will of Love. Fear is a dream, and has no will that can conflict with Yours. Conflict is sleep, and peace awakening. Death is illusion; life, eternal truth. There is no opposition to Your Will. There is no conflict, for my will is Yours.

Forgiveness shows us that God’s Will is One, and that we share [His Will]. Let us look upon the holy sights forgiveness shows today, that we may find the peace of God. Amen. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 331, W-pII.331. See also ACIM Lesson 331 Insights.)

It seems hard to accept the fact that this world is only a dream. It is based on the false belief that Love could leave Itself. This belief came from the wish for specialness, to have some aspect of God’s Love to claim as its own alone. God’s Will is that Love is one and indivisible eternally. Special love could not be granted for Love to remain Itself.

The insistence on having special love could only seem to be accomplished in a dream. This dream shows us the catastrophic consequences of choosing lovelessness. It seems to satisfy the wish for specialness, but is a dream world of lack, loss, pain, fear and death. The attraction of specialness inevitably brings with it these consequences.

We have taught ourselves that this world is real. It is time to undo this lesson. We want the peace of God. We want to remember His eternal, changeless Love for us, His one Son. We want the happiness that is God’s Will for us. We want to remember His Will is ours, one and the same.

The wish for specialness takes many forms in the world. Forgiveness is the way we let go of specialness to remember our true Will. This is the lesson Holy Spirit offers us in every instant. Today we offer ourselves this reminder, “Holy Spirit, I choose your lessons in forgiveness today. Help me forgive my misperceptions. I want to let go of mistaken beliefs that stand between my awareness and the Reality of the Love I am.”

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Choosing to Serve God’s Plan of Awakening

My body is a wholly neutral thing.

I am a Son of God. And can I be another thing as well? Did God create the mortal and corruptible? What use has God’s beloved Son for what must die? And yet a neutral thing does not see death, for thoughts of fear are not invested there, nor is a mockery of love bestowed upon it. [The body’s] neutrality protects it while it has a use. And afterwards, without a purpose, it is laid aside. It is not sick nor old nor hurt. It is but functionless, unneeded and cast off. Let me not see it more than this today; of service for a while and fit to serve, to keep its usefulness while it can serve, and then to be replaced for greater good.

My body, Father, cannot be Your Son. And what is not created cannot be sinful nor sinless; neither good nor bad. Let me, then, use this dream to help Your plan that we awaken from all dreams we made. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 294, W-pII.294. See also ACIM Lesson 294 Insights.)

Each time we choose the Holy Spirit as our Guide for what to think, say and do, we serve God’s plan for the world’s awakening from the dream of sin and death. In every moment we choose between being truly helpful as Love’s expression in the world or choosing with the ego to increase the fear and guilt in the world. It is a simple choice but one with a profound effect on our experience.

When we choose with the Holy Spirit, we experience increasing peace, joy and Love. Choosing to judge as the ego judges increases our sense of anxiety, loss, fear and guilt. The illusions the ego offers are made to disguise its underlying denial of Love. Our choice to believe the ego’s illusions are true deceives us into believing our individuality in the form of bodies is real.

The Course curriculum teaches us to recognize our self-deceptions and learn that they do not serve us. They hide the Reality of the Love we are from our awareness. Today we open our mind to the Holy Spirit’s loving lessons for we would remember that only Love is real. We want to remember the gifts of peace and joy that are God’s gifts to His Son.

© 2020, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Teaching What We Want to Learn

Projection means anger, anger fosters assault, and assault promotes fear. The real meaning of the crucifixion lies in the apparent intensity of the assault of some of the Sons of God upon another. This, of course, is impossible, and must be fully understood as impossible.

Assault can ultimately be made only on the body. …Yet if destruction itself is impossible, anything that is destructible cannot be real. Its destruction, therefore, does not justify anger. …If you respond with anger, you must be equating yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely.

If you react as if you are persecuted, you are teaching persecution. …Rather, teach your own perfect immunity, which is the truth in you, and realize that it cannot be assailed. …You are merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less extreme temptations to misperceive, and not to accept them as false justifications for anger. There can be no justification for the unjustifiable. Do not believe there is, and do not teach that there is. Remember always that what you believe you will teach. Believe with me, and we will become equal as teachers. (A Course in Miracles, T-6.I.3:3-5;4:1,3-4,7;6:2,4,7-11. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

In every moment we teach with our thoughts, words and actions. What we teach is determined by what we believe we are. If we believe we are a body, we teach that separation and destructibility are real. But we are not a body.

The Course emphasizes this idea with 21 lessons that direct us to repeat this idea many times a day. It is one of the hardest truths for us to accept because we have so strongly tied our identity to the body. if we are not a body, the ego tells us we are nothing. Yet the Course is teaching us it is the body that is nothing. The Spirit we are as an extension of God’s Love is everything, for only Love is real.

This radical shift in self-identification needs to be done gently and patiently with vigilant practice under the Holy Spirit’s guidance. The ego cannot and will not lead us out of our misidentification. But the Holy Spirit knows our true Identity. He is not deceived by the ego. But He does see our self-deceptions that produce our misperceptions. He will lead us out of this confusion if we are willing to question all our perceptions and offer them to Him for His loving correction. This practice leads us to remembering our true Identity as Love and nothing else.

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

Let us this day accept forgiveness as our only function. Why should we attack our minds, and give them images of pain? Why should we teach them they are powerless, when God holds out His power and His Love, and bids [our minds] take what is already theirs? The mind that is made willing to accept God’s gifts has been restored to spirit, and extends its freedom and its joy, as is the Will of God united with its own. The Self which God created cannot sin, and therefore cannot suffer. Let us choose today that [this Self] be our Identity, and thus escape forever from all things the dream of fear appears to offer us.

Father, Your Son can not be hurt. And if we think we suffer, we but fail to know our one Identity we share with You. We would return to It today, to be made free forever from all our mistakes, and to be saved from what we thought we were. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 330, W-pII.330. See also ACIM Lesson 330 Insights.)

Let’s practice this prayer today, remembering that nothing can really change our true Identity as Love’s extension. When we notice that our mind has wandered into thoughts of limitation and lack, we can choose to step back and return to our true Identity as Love…

We remember to choose peace…(pause)…  We remember that God’s Love is always with us, every moment……

We remember that we have all the help we need to return to the one Identity we share with our Father……

We let Holy Spirit’s thoughts fill our mind…… we open and are willing to receive…… We are willing to be free forever from all our mistaken thoughts……

We allow a return to our true Identity as Love……  We give thanks that we always have the help we need……

© 2020, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Practice That Returns Us to Love

You see what you expect, and you expect what you invite. Your perception is the result of your invitation, coming to you as you sent for it. …Two ways of looking at the world are in your mind, and your perception will reflect the guidance you have chosen.

When you want only love you will see nothing else. The contradictory nature of the witnesses you perceive is merely the reflection of your conflicting invitations. You have looked upon your mind and accepted opposition there, having sought it there. But do not then believe that the witnesses for opposition are true, for they attest only to your decision about reality, returning to you the messages you gave them. Love, too, is recognized by its messengers. If you make love manifest, its messengers will come to you because you invited them.

The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. You can decide to see it right. …You cannot really give anything but love to anyone or anything, nor can you really receive anything but love from them. (A Course in Miracles, T-12.VII.5:1-2,6;8;9:1-2,4. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

Because only Love is real, we can only really give or receive Love. But we have chosen to accept a guide in our mind that denies Love and so we see a dream world of separation and lovelessness. Fortunately we have the power of decision to choose the Guide to Love Who will lead us through the confusing quagmire of opposition in our mind.

To heal our mind, we need to choose the Guide to Love in our mind every day, all day. The practice of questioning the meaning of everything we perceive and asking for the Holy Spirit’s reinterpretation will ultimately lead us back to the full remembrance that only Love is real.

Our perceptions in the world will be increasingly less captivating. Their seeming importance fades as we focus more consistently on the presence of Love’s Light in our mind. The peace and joy that come with giving Love precedence in our mind motivates us to choose Love more and more. This practice returns us Home to Love.

© 2020, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Letting Truth Heal Our False Perceptions

The ego’s fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of that wish. For it is that wish that seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body that was made to imprison it.

A person says something you do not like. He does something that displeases you. He “betrays” his hostile thoughts in his behavior.

You are not dealing here with what the person is. On the contrary, you are exclusively concerned with what he does in a body. You are doing more than failing to help in freeing him from the body’s limitations. You are actively trying to hold him to [his body] by confusing it with him, and judging them as one.

…every grievance that you hold insists that the body is real. It overlooks entirely what your brother is. It rein­forces your belief that he is a body, and condemns him for it.

…while the body stands at the center of your concept of yourself, you are attacking God’s plan for salvation, and holding your grievances against Him and His crea­tion, that you may not hear the Voice of truth and welcome It as Friend.

The light of truth is in us, where it was placed by God. It is the body that is outside us, and is not our concern. To be without a body is to be in our natural state. To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves as we are. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 72, W-pI.72.2:1-4;3:4-4:4;5:6-8;7:4;9:1-4. See also ACIM Lesson 72 Insights.)

The appearance that we are a body seems to be an indisputable fact. What the body sees and touches, the pain it experiences and its ultimate end in death “prove” that it is real. But a proof based on a false premise leads to a false conclusion. The body is no more than a projection of the false belief that separation is real.

Our unquestioned belief that separation is real blinds us to the reality of our oneness in Love. Yet the Light of truth remains in our mind. In every moment we can call upon the Holy Spirit to shine the Light of truth on our perceptions to heal our mind. With His help we will remember our natural state at one with the Love of God, perfectly safe and in peace.

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