Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Call Upon God’s Strength Through the Day

My present happiness is all I see.

Unless I look upon what is not there, my present happiness is all I see. ²Eyes that begin to open see at last. ³And I would have Christ’s vision come to me this very day. ⁴What I perceive without God’s Own Correction for the sight I made is frightening and painful to behold. ⁵Yet I would not allow my mind to be deceived by the belief the dream I made is real an instant longer. ⁶This the day I seek my present happiness, and look on nothing else except the thing I seek.

With this resolve I come to You, and ask Your strength to hold me up today, while I but seek to do Your Will. ²You cannot fail to hear me, Father. ³What I ask have You already given me. ⁴And I am sure that I will see my happiness today. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 290, W-290. See also ACIM Lesson 290 Insights.)

Waking up to God’s gift of happiness takes vigilance. The ego’s chatter can seem to wear us down and try our patience. That’s just what the ego wants. For it is terrified at the prospect of our awakening to God’s Love and happiness; it would be the end of the ego.

When we feel impatient, worn down by the constant vigilance needed, it is time to call upon God for His strength. He offers it without limit. In fact, His strength is already ours. Asking for His strength to support us expresses our willingness to accept His gift. His strength holds us up through our times of weakness when we forget we are His Son and share His strength.

Today let’s join together to call upon God’s strength to see with Christ’s vision. His strength supports us in the recognition of the Love that unites us with every brother and our Father. We are truly united in Love.

© 2021, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Accepting Our Oneness with God

…what you need are intervals each day in which the learning of the world becomes a transitory phase; a prison house from which you go into the sunlight and forget the darkness. ²Here you understand the Word, the Name which God has given you; the one Identity which all things share; the one acknowledgment of what is true. ³And then step back to darkness, not because you think it real, but only to proclaim its unreality in terms which still have meaning in the world that darkness rules.

Use all the little names and symbols which delineate the world of darkness. ²Yet accept them not as your reality. ³The Holy Spirit uses all of them, but He does not forget creation has one Name, one meaning, and a single Source which unifies all things within Itself. ⁴Use all the names the world bestows on them but for convenience, yet do not forget they share the Name of God along with you.

God has no name. ²And yet His Name becomes the final lesson that all things are one, and at this lesson does all learning end. ³All names are unified; all space is filled with truth’s reflection. ⁴Every gap is closed, and separation healed. ⁵The Name [Identity] of God is the inheritance He gave to those who chose the teaching of the world to take the place of Heaven. ⁶In our practicing, our purpose is to let our minds accept what God has given as the answer to the pitiful inheritance you made as fitting tribute to the Son He loves.

Father, our Name is Yours. ²In It we are united with all living things, and You Who are their one Creator. ³What we made and call by many different names is but a shadow we have tried to cast across Your Own reality. ⁴And we are glad and thankful we were wrong. ⁵All our mistakes we give to You, that we may be absolved from all effects our errors seemed to have. ⁶And we accept the truth You give, in place of every one of them. ⁷Your Name is our salvation and escape from what we made. ⁸Your Name unites us in the oneness which is our inheritance and peace. ⁹Amen. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 184, W-184.10–12;15. See also ACIM Lesson 184 Insights.)

The daily practice of taking time to open to the presence of God within us is the key to awakening from the ego’s dream. The dream was made to hide the inheritance that God gave His son in His creation. Everything that God is, our true Self is. Our true Self shares His Identity—His perfect Love and undisturbable peace.

We are so accustomed to the ego’s dream of separation that we do not question its reality. it takes willingness and practice to step away from the dream and rise above it where the atmosphere is quiet, filled with the changeless Love and the peace of God. If we let ourselves rise to this, our natural environment, we can return to the dream, bringing with us the awareness that this world is not our Home. We bring greater certainty that we share the Identity of God. The world becomes increasingly less captivating with this daily practice.

© 2021, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Change of Mind That Heals

I loose the world from all I thought it was.

What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs? ²And what can save the world except your Self? ³Belief is powerful indeed. ⁴The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth.

Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his mind, and all his thoughts change with it. ²Now the source of thought has shifted, for to change your mind means you have changed the source of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think. ³You free the past from what you thought before. ⁴You free the future from all ancient thoughts of seeking what you do not want to find.

The present now remains the only time. ²Here in the present is the world set free. ³For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world.

There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. ²Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. ³Ideas leave not their source. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 132, W-132.1:1-4;2:1–3:3;5:1-3. See also ACIM Lesson 132 Insights.)

It seems that we are constantly changing our mind. First we like one thing, then we tire of it and want something else. But according to the Course, this is not a change of mind at all. It is only a change about which illusion we prefer. The ego is capricious and is always sending us on fruitless searches for what it tells us would make us happy or safe. Yet its offerings never satisfy because they are only fantasies. All we really want is to know we have the Love God gave us when He created His Son.

A true change of mind occurs when we change our allegiance from the ego to our true Self, the Son of God. Our true Self is eternally joyous, peaceful and loving. As we let God’s Voice teach us to see past the ego’s false offerings to the presence of Love in us and everywhere, we are free. The freedom we demonstrate brings freedom to the world.

We choose to listen to God’s Voice today and let Love be free to bless our world.

© 2021, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Choosing the Role God Has for Us

⁵It is not our part to judge our worth, nor can we know what role is best for us; what we can do within a larger plan we cannot see in its entirety.

Whatever your appointed role may be, it was selected by the Voice for God, Whose function is to speak for you as well. ²Seeing your strengths exactly as they are, and equally aware of where they can be best applied, for what, to whom and when, He chooses and accepts your part for you. ³He does not work without your own consent. ⁴But He is not deceived in what you are, and listens only to His Voice in you.

It is through His ability to hear one Voice which is His Own that you become aware at last there is one Voice in you. ²And that one Voice appoints your function, and relays it to you, giving you the strength to understand it, do what it entails, and to succeed in everything you do that is related to it. ³God has joined His Son in this, and thus His Son becomes His messenger of unity with Him.”

²It is this Voice which speaks of laws the world does not obey; which promises salvation from all sin, with guilt abolished in the mind that God created sinless. ³Now this mind becomes aware again of Who created it, and of His lasting union with itself. ⁴So is its Self the one reality in which its will and that of God are joined. (A Course in Miracles, W-154.1:5;2:1–3:3;4:2-4. See also ACIM Lesson 154 Insights.)

The ego has an agenda. Everything it directs us to do is dedicated to the pursuit of guilt. It disguises this pursuit in appealing forms that seem like something we would want. Yet they all reinforce the seeming reality that separation actually happened. The ego always directs us on meaningless pursuits that offer us nothing, for they are all illusions.

The Holy Spirit has a different plan for us. It is a plan given him by God to awaken us lovingly and gently to our Home in the Heaven of His Love. This is the plan our true Self treasures. All we really want is to know the Love God has given us. For this we need only be willing to let His Voice be our Guide.

Today we ask the Holy Spirit to guide all our words, thoughts and actions, for we want to awaken to Love.

© 2021, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Seeing the Glory of Love in Our Brothers

⁷If you can see your brother merits pardon, you have learned forgiveness is your right as much as his.

Look on your brother with the willingness to see him as he is. ²And do not keep a part of him outside your willingness that he be healed. ³To heal is to make whole. ⁴And what is whole can have no missing parts that have been kept outside. ⁵Forgiveness rests on recognizing this, and being glad there cannot be some forms of sickness which the miracle must lack the power to heal.

God’s Son is perfect, or he cannot be God’s Son. ²Nor will you know him, if you think he does not merit the escape from guilt in all its consequences and its forms. ³There is no way to think of him but this, if you would know the truth about yourself.

⁴I thank You, Father, for Your perfect Son, and in his glory will I see my own.

⁵Here is the joyful statement that there are no forms of evil that can overcome the Will of God; the glad acknowledgment that guilt has not succeeded by your wish to make illusions real. ⁶And what is this except a simple statement of the truth?

Look on your brother with this hope in you, and you will understand he could not make an error that could change the truth in him. (A Course in Miracles, T-30.VI.4:7;8:1–10:1. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

God makes no exceptions. He extends all that He is to the Son He created like Himself. The ego demands that God withhold a little from some to give more to another, thus making specialness. The world we experience is the effect of the ego’s demand for exceptions. In the ego’s world nothing can be the same. Uniqueness and differences are esteemed and competed for.

None of this can be accomplished in God’s oneness. Thus this world is nothing more than a dream that seems to make the impossible true. To see a brother as different from us is an attack on his integrity in the oneness of God. Likewise it is an attack on our own oneness in God.

Though we may not perceive it as an attack, seeing our brother as a different identity brings guilt with it. Unconsciously we know that we are denying our brother his birthright as the Son of God. Likewise we are denying our own birthright.

We forgive this guilt as we learned that beyond all the forms in the world lies the eternal, changeless oneness of God’s Love in which we live. None of the appearances of differences change what God created one with Him. This recognition is the justification for forgiveness. We have not succeeded in excluding God from the world in truth. We have only hidden God behind empty idols of separation.

Today we ask the Holy Spirit to help us see the glory of God’s Love in our brothers and thereby recognize It in ourselves.

© 2021, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Remember to Call for Holy Spirit’s Help

I need but call and You will answer me.

I am not asked to take salvation on the basis of an unsupported faith. ²For God has promised He will hear my call, and answer me Himself. ³Let me but learn from my experience that this is true, and faith in Him must surely come to me. ⁴This is the faith that will endure, and take me farther and still farther on the road that leads to Him. ⁵For thus I will be sure that He has not abandoned me and loves me still, awaiting but my call to give me all the help I need to come to Him.

Father, I thank You that Your promises will never fail in my experience, if I but test them out. ²Let me attempt therefore to try them, and to judge them not. ³Your Word is one with You. ⁴You give the means whereby conviction comes, and surety of Your abiding Love is gained at last. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 327. See also ACIM Lesson 327 Insights.)

God gave us His Voice to guide us on our return to our Home with Him in Heaven. But we must be willing to listen. That is the last thing the ego would want us to do. It bombards us with myriad distracting thoughts that keep us preoccupied with the thought system of separation.

We can break free from the ego’s imprisoning thoughts, but it takes vigilance and practice. We need to be vigilant to recognize fear-based thoughts and ask the Holy Spirit to heal them. This is a daily minute-by-minute practice. The more we recognize thoughts that disturb our peace and ask the Holy Spirit for His help to see the truth beyond the ego’s perceptions, the more peaceful our lives will be. We will increasingly experience the Love we are and the Love that joins us with every brother.

As we begin this practice, we may only occasionally remember to ask the Holy Spirit’s help. Each time we remember to accept His help teaches us that we can count on His answer to our call. Our confidence in His guidance grows. Success motivates willingness. We remember more and more frequently to ask for Holy Spirit’s guidance. It is worth the practice.

© 2021, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Willingness to Learn from the Holy Spirit

It is your Father’s holy Will that you complete Himself, and that your Self shall be His sacred Son, forever pure as He, of love created and in love preserved, extending love, creating in its name, forever one with God and with your Self.

⁵God created One Who has the power to translate in form the wholly formless. ⁶What He makes are dreams, but of a kind so close to waking that the light of day already shines in them, and eyes already opening behold the joyful sights their offerings contain.

Forgiveness gently looks upon all things unknown in Heaven, sees them disappear, and leaves the world a clean and unmarked slate on which the Word of God can now replace the senseless symbols written there before. ²Forgiveness is the means by which the fear of death is overcome, because it holds no fierce attraction now and guilt is gone.

⁵Only forgiveness can relieve the mind of thinking that the body is its home. ⁶Only forgiveness can restore the peace that God intended for His holy Son. ⁷Only forgiveness can persuade the Son to look again upon his holiness. (A Course in Miracles, W-192.1:1;3:5-4:2;5:5-7A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 192, )

Forgiveness is the key to happiness and peace of mind. It sees past the images of the world—the forms that seem to come and go, bringing moments of pleasure that can quickly turn into fear and pain. Forgiveness reveals the changeless Love that unites us with every brother held safely in the mind of Love.

No matter how enticing the images of the world seem, they represent a barrier the ego conjures to hide the truth of Love’s presence. Love has no form. Being the denial of Love, the ego can offer only meaningless forms as a substitute for the truth. Our belief in them makes them seem real. Because of this investment in the ego, we need help from beyond this world to recognize the ego’s delusions for what they are.

The Holy Spirit is God’s Answer to our mistaken belief in separation. He communicates with us in forms we can understand to help us recognize the forms in the world stand for nothing in truth. We cannot learn this without His help. Our willingness to learn from the Holy Spirit is all that is needed for us to let Love step forward from behind the ego’s veil.

We welcome the Holy Spirit’s lessons by stepping back from our engagement in the world. We pause and focus on the peace of God within us. We relax and let peace grow stronger in our awareness. As we let peace fill our mind, the Holy Spirit speaks to us and offers His vision to see the presence of Love beyond the images of separation.

Today we practice attending to the Holy Spirit’s lessons.

© 2021, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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