Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

Tweet

Subscribe

View all articles • Article index

The Power of Our Mind to Love

There is another way of looking at the world.

Today’s idea is an attempt to recognize that you can shift your perception of the world in both its outer and inner aspects.

…when any situation arises which tempts you to become disturbed…, say:

There is another way of looking at this.

Remember to apply today’s idea the instant you are aware of distress.

I could see peace instead of this.

The idea for today begins to describe the conditions that prevail in the other way of seeing. Peace of mind is clearly an inter­nal matter. It must begin with your own thoughts, and then extend outward. It is from your peace of mind that a peaceful perception of the world arises. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 33, W-pI.33.1:1;3:2-4;4:1. 34.1:1-4. See also ACIM Lesson 33 Insights.)

The world we perceive is a reflection of our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. The ego wants us to believe that the “outside” world is separate from us and out of our control. Its illusions are quite convincing.

A Course in Miracles is teaching us about the power of our mind. Our mind shares the power and strength of God. It is capable of creating by extending Love as an extension of God’s Love. But the power of the mind can be misdirected when we align our thoughts with the ego, believing we are a separate identity.

This mistaken belief hijacks the power of the mind and uses it to make illusions that stand as a barrier against our awareness of the power of God’s Love to extend without limit. Love’s extension continues whether we are aware of it or not. But our alignment with the ego puts us in a dream world that could never exist in the oneness of Love.

The level of peace in our mind is a key symptom of where our thinking is. Perfect peace is an attribute of Love, our true Self. Anything that disturbs our peace is a sign that we are believing the lies of the ego are true. Whenever a disturbance occurs, we can redirect our thoughts by reminding ourselves that we want to see the situation differently and remember we can see peace instead.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this copyright notice and website address are included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Accepting the Life We Live in God

There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and our own as well. God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past death, and see the life beyond.

Our Father, bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything. We live and move in You alone. We are not separate from Your eternal life. There is no death, for death is not Your Will. And we abide where You have placed us, in the life we share with You and with all living things, to be like You and part of You forever. We accept Your Thoughts as ours, and our will is one with Yours eternally. Amen. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 163, W-pI.163.8:5-9:8. See also ACIM Lesson 163 Insights.)

We rest in peace when we accept without reservation that God’s Will is our will. It is God’s Will that we share His eternal Life. The Source of all Life cannot make death. A body that appears to live and die is only an image made by the ego as a substitute for our true Identity as the Son of God, changeless and eternal.

When we accept God’s Will as our will, we accept the safety of His changeless Love, the innocence of Love’s harmlessness and the joy of eternally extending Love. This is our natural state. Only in dreams does death seem possible. But what never lived cannot die. It can simply cease to seem to be when we awaken to the truth that we have one Will, one Thought, which we share with God.

We choose to be God’s messenger’s today by using Christ’s vision to see the truth of Love in every brother, united in our one Self. Thus we will remember the life we share with God.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this copyright notice and website address are included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

The Power of God Is in Us

[Trust] is the foundation on which [teachers’ of God) ability to fulfill their function rests. Perception is the result of learning. In fact, perception is learning, because cause and effect are never separated. The teachers of God have trust in the [real] world, because they have learned it is not governed by the laws the world made up. It is governed by a power that is in [the teachers of God] but not of them. It is this power that keeps all things safe. It is through this power that the teachers of God look on a forgiven world.

When this power has once been experienced, it is impossible to trust one’s own petty strength again. Who would attempt to fly with the tiny wings of a sparrow when the mighty power of an eagle has been given him? And who would place his faith in the shabby offerings of the ego when the gifts of God are laid before him? (A Course in Miracles, M-4.I.1-2)

When we perceive the world as a body, there are myriad reasons to feel unsafe, weak and vulnerable. But this perception comes from believing illusions are real and that we are separate from the only real Source of strength — our Creator. The correction of this misperception comes with accepting our true Self’s vision.

Our true Self does not believe we are separate from our Creator. It remembers we are Love, all that is Real. With the strength and power of God in us, there is nothing to fear. God is invincible and so is our true Self. No harm can come to what God created changeless as Himself.

Trust comes to us as we accept our true Self as our Identity and disown the false identity made by the ego. In truth, we walk with God, sharing all His Love, His strength, His peace and joy. We will remind ourselves often of this today.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this copyright notice and website address are included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

From Double Vision to True Vision

The Holy Spirit looks through me today.

Christ asks that He may use my eyes today, and thus redeem the world. He asks this gift that He may offer peace of mind to me, and take away all terror and all pain. And as they are removed from me, the dreams that seemed to settle on the world are gone. Redemption must be one. As I am saved, the world is saved with me. For all of us must be redeemed together. Fear appears in many different forms, but love is one.

My Father, Christ has asked a gift of me, and one I give that it be given me. Help me to use the eyes of Christ today, and thus allow the Holy Spirit’s Love to bless all things which I may look upon, that His forgiving Love may rest on me. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 295, W-pII.295. See also ACIM Lesson 295 Insights.)

In the world we have two ways of seeing. What the body’s eyes see are images of separation — forms that have meaning only because we have given them meaning by our belief. We also have spiritual vision which A Course in Miracles calls Christ’s vision or the vision of the Holy Spirit. This vision sees only the reality of Love’s oneness. It is this true vision that shows us the presence of Love everywhere. It disregards the images of the body and what it sees. It is this vision that redeems the world for it sees the world as Love and nothing else.

The way we free ourselves from the limitations of the body and what it sees and redeem the world is to give priority to our inner Spiritual vision. This shifts our attention from believing in illusions to knowing the truth that unifies us in God’s Love.

Today we ask the Holy Spirit to help us bring His vision into clear focus. We want to remember the truth. With this dedication the images of the world diminish in importance. We become increasingly certain of our safety in the ever present Love of our true Self.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this copyright notice and website address are included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

How to Feel Blessed by Blessing

The truth maintains that giving will increase what you possess.

…things but represent the thoughts that make them. And you do not lack for proof that when you give ideas away, you strengthen them in your own mind.

Ideas must first belong to you, before you give them. If you are to save the world, you first accept salvation for yourself. …Now you can perceive that by your giving is your store increased.

Protect all things [ideas] you value by the act of giving them away, and you are sure that you will never lose them. What you thought you did not have is thereby proven yours. Yet value not its form. For [form] will change and grow unrecognizable in time, however much you try to keep it safe. No form endures. It is the [loving] thought behind the form of things that lives unchangeable.

Give [Love] gladly. You can only gain thereby. The [loving] thought remains, and grows in strength as it is reinforced by giving. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 187, W-pI.187.1:8;2:3-4;3:1-2,5;4;5:1-3. See also ACIM Lesson 187 Insights.)

Only Love, which has no form, is real. But we perceive ourselves in a world of form. Due to this self-imposed limitation, Love is represented by forms in the world. The Love behind these forms endures forever, though the forms may fade or change.

We learn that we have Love by giving Love. The form in which It is given varies according to the situation in which It is given. It may appear as a smile to someone we walk by on the sidewalk. It may be expressing appreciation for a store clerk’s service. Longer term relationships may be expressed as a life-long dedication to extend Love to each other.

All of these forms can change, including the form of life-long relationships. What remains eternal and unchanging is the Love behind the form. All these Thoughts of Love given freely bless us in the giving, for they remind us that we have the Love we are extending. We remember the blessings we have by appreciating and giving Love in the world.

Every day we have the opportunity to be blessed by blessing.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this copyright notice and website address are included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Learning to Live in Love

Yet if you are as God created you, you cannot think apart from Him, nor make what does not share His timelessness and Love. Are these inherent in the world you see? Does it create like Him? Unless it does, it is not real, and cannot be at all. If you are real the world you see is false, for God’s creation is unlike the world in every way. And as it was His Thought by which you were created, so it is your thoughts which made [the world] and [your thoughts] must set it free, that you may know the Thoughts you share with God.

Release the world! Your real creations [extensions of Love] wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, [or] the Son begin as something separate from Him.

There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 132, W-pI.132.11-13. See also ACIM Lesson 132 Insights.)

Only Love is real and only Love creates by extending Itself. These facts are the core upon which the message of A Course in Miracles is built. By believing in a world of bodies and images of separation, we are denying the truth by believing in the lies of the ego, which itself is a denial of Love.

We release the world by denying the lies of the ego and accepting the reality of Love and only Love. We have become so engaged with the ego’s illusions that it seems impossible that anything but fear and guilt, pain, sickness and death are real. Evan death does not seem to be an escape. The ego would have us believe that our guilt will pursue us beyond the death of the body.

But there is a way out, which the ego will never teach us. To find our way out, we must realign our allegiance from the ego to the Voice for God in our mind. It will teach us that we are not the image of a body; that we remain as God created us. When we are willing to let the Holy Spirit direct our thoughts, He will patiently and lovingly teach us to recognize the lies of the ego for what they are. He will teach us to overlook the lies and see the eternal presence of Love in which we live in perfect safety and timelessness. We will learn to see that Love in every brother and ourselves.

Today we practice asking frequently,

Holy Spirit, show me how you would see this. Help me to respond to this perception with Love, for I would remember Who I am.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this copyright notice and website address are included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Reclaiming the Power of Our Mind

The acceptance [that] sickness [is] a decision of the mind, for a purpose for which it would use the body, is the basis of healing. And this is so for healing in all forms. A patient decides that [sickness is a decision of the mind] is so, and he recovers. If he decides against recovery, he will not be healed. Who is the physician? Only the mind of the patient himself. The outcome is what he decides that it is. Special agents seem to be ministering to him, yet they but give form to his own choice. He chooses them in order to bring tangible form to his desires. And it is this they do, and nothing else. They are not actually needed at all. The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, “I have no use for this.” There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once.

What is the single requisite for this shift in perception? It is simply this; the recognition that sickness is of the mind, and has nothing to do with the body. What does this recognition “cost”? It costs the whole world you see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it is. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea. (A Course in Miracles, M-5.II.2-3)

Elsewhere in the Course we are told that the ego tries to discredit the power of the mind. It attempts to make the body the central figure in its world. The ego assigns attributes of the mind to the body to make the body seem to be capable of making decisions on its own and subject to external forces.

A Course in Miracles is teaching us to reclaim the power of our mind which is an extension of the Mind of God. Our true Self is united with the Mind of God and shares all Its power, Its strength, peace and Love.

As we practice opening to the Holy Spirit’s lessons, we learn to recognize the insignificance of the body. Because the body is an illusion made by the ego, it has no value of its own. Its only seeming value comes from our belief in it.

As we withdraw from believing the body is our identity, the shadows the body seems to cast on our existence fade. The Light of the Love we are shines the shadows away. When we have wholly accepted our true Self as Mind at one with God, we are free of the limitations of the body image. We remember that we are eternally at Home in the Heaven of God’s Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this copyright notice and website address are included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Page 308 of 850 pages ‹ First  < 306 307 308 309 310 >  Last ›

<< Back to main page of Daily Inspiration.

Has this page been helpful to you?
Your contribution to support this site is greatly appreciated. To make a tax deductible contribution with a credit/debit card, click here.
Click here to donate from your PayPal account.
Or send a check to Pathways of Light, 12530 Lions Chase Court, Huntley, IL 60142.