Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Neutralizing the Ego’s Defenses

The Holy Spirit is not delayed in His teaching by your mistakes. He can be held back only by your unwillingness to let them go. Let us therefore be determined… to be willing to forgive ourselves for our lapses in diligence…. This tolerance for weakness will enable us to overlook it, rather than give it power to delay our learning. If we give it power to do this, we are regarding it as strength, and are confusing strength with weakness.

When you fail to comply with the requirements of this course, you have merely made a mistake. This calls for correction, and for nothing else. To allow a mistake to continue is to make additional mistakes, based on the first and reinforcing it. It is this process that must be laid aside, for it is but another way in which you would defend illusions against the truth.

Let all these errors go by recognizing them for what they are. They are attempts to keep you unaware you are one Self, united with your Creator, at one with every aspect of creation, and limitless in power and in peace. This is the truth, and nothing else is true. Today we will affirm this truth again, and try to reach the place in you in which there is no doubt that only this is true.

I am one Self, united with my Creator, at one with every aspect of creation, and limitless in power and in peace. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 95, W-pI.95.8-10;11:2. See also ACIM Lesson 95 Insights.)

The ego feeds on guilt. It constantly searches for justification of guilt. This is because its seeming existence depends on keeping guilt in the mind, tying our perceptions to the past. Without the past, the ego would not seem to exist, for only the oneness of Love is now.

We need to practice applying the Course in our lives because we have a long-established habit of dwelling on the past, looking for guilt. This habit comes from our allegiance to the ego. Habits can be broken. But diligence is required to interrupt the habitual scripts that deny the truth, and turn to the Holy Spirit for a new vision that recognizes the innocence of Love’s oneness everywhere. This practice will help us identify with the one Self we are, united with our Creator.

The ego has a defense against this practice. It takes awhile to replace the old habits which have ruled our minds. We often have lapses in our practice. The ego uses these lapses to reinforce guilt, pointing out our weakness and inconsistency.

This is a time for us to redouble our practice by reminding ourselves that, in truth, we are one Self, united with our Creator. We need to let go of the lapses by recognizing that they cannot change the truth of what we are. The lapses have had no effect and are therefore not justification for guilt. Thus we neutralize the ego’s defense and continue on our journey of awakening with the Holy Spirit.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Recognizing Our Perfection in Love

…your life is not a part of anything you see. It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness, within the Holy, holy as Itself. In every­one and everything His Voice would speak to you of nothing but your Self and your Creator, Who is one with Him. So will you see the holy face of Christ in everything, and hear in everything no sound except the echo of God’s Voice.

And then we watch our thoughts, appealing silently to Him Who sees the elements of truth in them. Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back again as clean ideas that do not contradict the Will of God.

Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as mir­acles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son, as proof of His eternal Love. And as each thought is thus transformed, it takes on healing power from the Mind which saw the truth in it, and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. All the threads of fantasy are gone. And what remains is unified into a perfect Thought that offers its perfection everywhere. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 151, W-pI.151.12;13:3-4;14. See also ACIM Lesson 151 Insights.)

An early Workbook lesson tells us that God is in everything we see. Because God is All That is with no limits, He has no form. The forms we see through the body’s eyes do not show us God. God (Love) cannot be seen with the body’s eyes, just as His Voice cannot be heard with the body’s ears.

But God’s Voice can be heard in our mind. As God is everywhere, His Voice is everywhere to be heard if we but listen in our mind. His Voice speaks to us throughout the day. It offers us true vision that looks past forms to the Love that unifies us with our brothers and with God.

While we perceive ourselves to be in a world of form, we need help to recognize the presence of God’s Voice speaking to us from beyond the images of the world. His Voice is there to be heard. We need only be willing to let our thoughts be purified of mistaken beliefs in separation so that we may recognize the miracle of Love’s oneness that is ever present to be received. We practice pausing frequently today to welcome the Holy Spirit’s help with recognizing the truth of our perfection in Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Learning and Teaching Only Love Is Real

What you call upon in [your brother] you call upon in yourself. And as you call upon it in them it becomes real to you. God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they but they are not less than He is. Would you know what this means? If what you do to my brother you do to me, and if you do everything for yourself because we are part of you, everything we do belongs to you as well. Everyone God created is part of you and shares His glory with you. His glory belongs to Him, but it is equally yours. You cannot, then, be less glorious than He is.

Because the Sonship must create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to your wholeness because each part is whole. Wholeness is indivisible, but you cannot learn of your wholeness until you see it everywhere. You can know yourself only as God knows His Son, for knowledge is shared with God. When you awake in Him you will know your magnitude by accepting His limitlessness as yours.

Very simply, the Holy Spirit teaches you to awaken others. As you see them waken you will learn what waking means, and because you have chosen to wake them, their gratitude and their appreciation of what you have given them will teach you its value. (A Course in Miracles, T-9.VI.3:3-10;4:4-8;5:2-3. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

We perceive others as being what we believe about ourselves. As we accept the Holy Spirit’s perception in place of our own, we see the Holy Spirit in our brothers which shows us the Holy Spirit in ourselves.

By letting the Holy Spirit guide all our perceptions, we teach our brothers that the Holy Spirit is in them. Thus we teach both our brothers and ourselves the truth that only Love is real. In this lesson we learn of our oneness together as God’s one Son. This joining awakens us to the truth of What we are — perfect Love in the Heart of God’s Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Thoughts That Heal Our Mind

Healing is a thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and lets God go out into them and through them. Only the healed mind can experience revelation with lasting effect, because revelation is an experience of pure joy. If you do not choose to be wholly joyous, your mind cannot have what it does not choose to be. Remember that spirit knows no difference between having and being. The higher mind thinks according to the laws spirit obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God. To spirit getting is meaningless and giving is all. Having everything, spirit holds everything by giving it, and thus creates as the Father created. While this kind of thinking is totally alien to having things, even to the lower mind it is quite comprehensible in connection with ideas. If you share a physical possession, you do divide its ownership. If you share an idea, however, you do not lessen it. All of [the idea] is still yours although all of it has been given away. Further, if the one to whom you give it accepts it as his, he reinforces it in your mind and thus increases it. If you can accept the concept that the world is one of ideas, the whole belief in the false association the ego makes between giving and losing is gone.

Let us start our process of reawakening with just a few simple concepts:

Thoughts increase by being given away.
The more who believe in them the stronger they become.
Everything is an idea.
How, then, can giving and losing be associated? (A Course in Miracles, T-5.I.1-2. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

 
The thoughts of our true Self are in line with the laws of God. Our true Self knows only oneness in the Love of God. The thoughts of our true Self are shared with God.

The lower mind is the part that accepts the ego thought system which denies oneness. The idea of separation makes sharing impossible. This is why the ego always perceives giving as loss. Nothing is shared in the ego mind.

The forms we perceive in the world do not seem to be effect of thoughts. These forms are just mental images which we believe are real. This mistaken belief makes it seem that we must defend what we think we have to protect against loss. Yet what we think we have is an empty illusion. Its seeming value comes only from our belief.

Our release from this fearful state of mind comes from the Holy Spirit, Who guides us to recognize the difference between images we made by belief and the reality of our oneness in Love. He guides us to let go of false beliefs and welcome our true Self in God. This is how we heal our mind from false perceptions and learn to recognize the face of Christ in everyone.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Demonstrating the Love We Are

Let us but learn this lesson for today: We will not recognize what we receive until we give it. You have heard this said a hundred ways, a hundred times, and yet belief is lacking still. But this is sure; until belief is given it, you will receive a thousand miracles and then receive a thousand more, but will not know that God Himself has left no gift beyond what you already have; nor has denied the tiniest of blessings to His Son. What can this mean to you, until you have identified with Him and with His Own?

Our lesson for today is stated thus:

I am among the ministers of God, and I am grateful that I have the means by which to recognize that I am free.

The world recedes as we light up our minds, and realize these holy words are true. They are the message sent to us today from our Creator. Now we demonstrate how they have changed our minds about ourselves, and what our function is. For as we prove that we accept no will we do not share, our many gifts from our Creator will spring to our sight and leap into our hands, and we will recognize what we received. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 154, W-pI.154.12-14. See also ACIM Lesson 154 Insights.)

There is only one Will we can share and that is the Will of God. The ego seems to have a will of its own. But all the ego really has is wishes to be different and separate from the Love of God. These wishes produce illusions which seem real because we believe they are true. It is this belief that gives us the illusion of having a will we call our own. This will of our own cannot be shared. Only through joining as one is anything shared. But separation is the will not to join.

To share the Will of God is to join in Love and share It. Because sharing is an attribute of Love, we can only experience Love by sharing It. We all have had at least a momentary experience when we felt Love and the desire to express it, perhaps with a hug or a smile. In that expression, we demonstrate that Love is in us. As we remove the barriers to Love’s presence in our minds, we experience increasing blessings as we are more and more inspired to give Love and teach ourselves that we have Love.

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

I ask Your blessing on my sight today. It is the means which You have chosen to become the way to show me my mistakes, and look beyond them. It is given me to find a new perception through the Guide You gave to me, and through His lessons to surpass perception and return to truth. I ask for the illusion which transcends all those I made. Today I choose to see a world forgiven, in which everyone shows me the face of Christ, and teaches me that what I look upon belongs to me; that nothing is, except Your holy Son.

Today our sight is blessed indeed. We share one vision, as we look upon the face of Him Whose Self is ours. We are one because of Him Who is the Son of God; of Him Who is our own Identity. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 269, W-pII.269.1-2. See also ACIM Lesson 269 Insights.)

We have imprisoned ourselves in an illusionary world of separation. The key that opens the prison door is forgiveness. The means to forgive is the Holy Spirit’s vision which shows us our misperceptions and helps us see past them to the truth of Love’s reality.

The prison we have made is an illusion. We need the illusion of forgiveness because it dissolves the illusion. The single purpose of forgiveness is to end all illusions. When forgiveness is complete with no exceptions, it is no longer needed. Illusions are over and we remember we are united as God’s one Son, complete and whole, at Home in His Love. Nothing else exists.

Today we ask to receive the blessing of Holy Spirit’s sight to heal our misperceptions and see the face of Christ everywhere.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Extending the Experience of the Holy Instant

The holy relationship is the expression of the holy instant in living in this world. …The experience of [the holy relationship] is always felt. Yet without expression it is not remembered.

The holy relationship, a major step toward the perception of the real world, is learned. It is the old, unholy relationship, transformed and seen anew. The holy relationship is a phenomenal teaching accomplishment. In all its aspects, as it begins, develops and becomes accomplished, it represents the reversal of the unholy relationship. Be comforted in this; the only difficult phase is the beginning. For here, the goal of the relationship is abruptly shifted to the exact opposite of what it was. This is the first result of offering the relationship to the Holy Spirit, to use for His purposes.

You and your brother stand together in the holy presence of truth itself. Here is the goal, together with you. Think you not the goal itself will gladly arrange the means for its accomplishment? (A Course in Miracles, T-17.V.1:1,4-5;2;14:1-3. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The holy instant is an experience in which the ego’s veil of separation has been dropped. It is a moment of experiencing the oneness of Love without interference from the ego belief in separation. It is often accompanied by feelings of joy and peace that is description. It is a phenomenon that we will remember though the feeling of the experience can fade.

The holy relationship is dedicated to experiencing the oneness of Love that is experienced in the holy instant. This goal is reached by letting go of the ego constructs that interfere with our awareness of our oneness. Thus the holy relationship is a learning opportunity under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

As the holy relationship begins, old habits of thought still influences our perception. These old habits look for guilt because they serve the ego’s purpose. Under the Holy Spirit’s tutelage, we learn to recognize these misguided thoughts as not serving our holy purpose and let them go. We forgive our misperceptions and learn to see past them to our unity with our brother in Love. Each time we do this, the experience of the holy instant comes more clearly into focus.

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