Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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The Path of Light That Leads to Joy

The ego does constant battle with the Holy Spirit on the fundamental question of what your function is. ²So does it do constant battle with the Holy Spirit about what your happiness is. ³It is not a two-way battle. ⁴The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond. ⁵He knows what your function is. ⁶He knows that it is your happiness.

…God has given you your function. ²We have seen that there are only two parts of your mind. ³One is ruled by the ego, and is made up of illusions. ⁴The other is the home of the Holy Spirit, where truth abides. ⁵There are no other guides but these to choose between, and no other outcomes possible as a result of your choice but the fear that the ego always engenders, and the love that the Holy Spirit always offers to replace it.

Thus, it must be that your function is established by God through His Voice, or is made by the ego which you have made to replace Him.

²Think also about the many forms the illusion of your function has taken in your mind, and the many ways in which you tried to find salvation under the ego’s guidance. …⁸Yet the ego is the only alternative to the Holy Spirit’s Voice.

You will listen to madness or hear the truth. (A Course in Miracles, W-66.2;7:1-8:1;9:2,8;10:1. See also ACIM Lesson 66 Insights.)

The ego offers many illusions to distract us from realizing the price we pay for wanting specialness. The ego has nothing real to offer and so its offerings are nothing. But by accepting the ego’s offerings, we become unaware of all that is real. We sacrifice everything to gain nothing of real value.

But by the grace of God, we are not left without help to escape from the ego-made world. The Holy Spirit can communicate to us through the confusion we have accepted by our wish for specialness. His message is that our true happiness is our reality. Our only function is to share the Love we are and this sharing brings indescribable joy.

Right now, in this instant, we can choose to follow the Holy Spirit’s lead. We need only to follow the path of Light He offers us. It leads us Home.

© 2022, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Putting Holy Spirit in Charge of Our Life

⁴The very fact that the Will of God, which is what you are, is perceived as fearful, demonstrates that you are afraid of what you are. ⁵It is not, then, the Will of God of which you are afraid, but yours.

Your will is not the ego’s, and that is why the ego is against you. ²What seems to be the fear of God is really the fear of your own reality.

⁵You have set up this strange situation so that it is impossible to escape from it without a Guide Who does know what your reality is. ⁶The purpose of this Guide is merely to remind you of what you want.

²When I said that the Holy Spirit’s function is to sort out the true from the false in your mind, I meant that He has the power to look into what you have hidden and recognize the Will of God there. ³His recognition of this Will can make it real to you because He is in your mind, and therefore He is your reality.

⁷Reality is the only safety. ⁸Your will is your salvation because it is the same as God’s. ⁹The separation is nothing more than the belief that it is different. (A Course in Miracles, T-9.I.1:4–2:2;3:5-6;4:2-3;7:7-9. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The Holy Spirit is literally our lifeline. He is our eternal connection with the Source of all Life. There is no Life except the Life we live in God.

What we think of as life is a dream which we populate with myriad figures and images over which we seem to have no control. Yet these appearances are projections from our split mind. They represent what we believe we are. But belief does not make reality; it makes a substitute for reality which stands as a barrier to awareness of the Reality we live in God.

Our belief makes the dream seem out of our control. But we can change our belief with the help of the Holy Spirit. When our belief changes, the dream changes. As we accept the Holy Spirit’s guidance our dream progresses from fearful toward happy and loving. When we have fully accepted the Love that God Wills for us, we stand at the gate of Heaven, where God welcomes us Home. We accelerate this journey by vigilantly paying attention to His guidance.

 

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Choosing the Path to Joy

A happy outcome to all things is sure.

God’s promises make no exceptions. ²And He guarantees that only joy can be the final outcome found for everything. ³Yet it is up to us when this is reached; how long we let an alien will appear to be opposing His. ⁴And while we think this will is real, we will not find the end He has appointed as the outcome of all problems we perceive, all trials we see, and every situation that we meet. ⁵Yet is the ending certain. ⁶For God’s Will is done in earth and Heaven. ⁷We will seek and we will find according to His Will, which guarantees that our will is done.

We thank You, Father, for Your guarantee of only happy outcomes in the end. ²Help us not interfere, and so delay the happy endings You have promised us for every problem that we can perceive; for every trial we think we still must meet. (A Course in Miracles, W-292. See also ACIM Lesson 292 Insights.)

A Course in Miracles offers us a path to joy. It is very simple and straightforward. We need to let go of our wish for specialness, to be separate and different. God created His Son joyous because His Son remains one with Him. He shares all of His joy.

The ego is the wish to define joy as specialness. But specialness has a price. To be special requires that one have more than another. If this were true, guilt would be justified. For specialness to occur, sacrifice is required for one to have more than another. In effect, the wish for specialness is the denial of true happiness.

Today we choose to follow the Guide to joy. As we are willing to offer our perceptions to the Holy Spirit for His gentle correction, we will see Love’s presence beyond the separate images of the world. And joy is an attribute of Love. The appeal of Love will inspire us to lay down the mistaken wish for specialness. We choose the path to joy today.

© 2022, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Learning to Trust Love’s Vision

You see the flesh or recognize the spirit. ²There is no compromise between the two. ³If one is real the other must be false, for what is real denies its opposite. ⁴There is no choice in vision but this one. ⁵What you decide in this determines all you see and think is real and hold as true. ⁶On this one choice does all your world depend, for here have you established what you are, as flesh or spirit in your own belief. ⁷If you choose flesh, you never will escape the body as your own reality, for you have chosen that you want it so. ⁸But choose the spirit, and all Heaven bends to touch your eyes and bless your holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more except to heal and comfort and to bless.

Salvation is undoing. ²If you choose to see the body, you behold a world of separation, unrelated things, and happenings that make no sense at all. ³This one appears and disappears in death; that one is doomed to suffering and loss. ⁴And no one is exactly as he was an instant previous, nor will he be the same as he is now an instant hence. ⁵Who could have trust where so much change is seen, for who is worthy if he be but dust? ⁶Salvation is undoing of all this. ⁷For constancy arises in the sight of those whose eyes salvation has released from looking at the cost of keeping guilt, because they chose to let it go instead.

Salvation does not ask that you behold the spirit and perceive the body not. ²It merely asks that this should be your choice.” (A Course in Miracles, T-31.VI.1:1–3:2. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

In the process of waking up to the truth of What we are, we seem to have dual vision. The split mind identifies with the body and the images it sees in the world. It depends on this way of seeing to maintain its seeming existence.

The part of our mind that knows Love’s oneness sees only Itself everywhere. To awaken from the dream of separation, we need prefer Love’s vision over the what the body’s eyes seem to see. When we recognize that we are responding to what we perceive through the body, we pause and ask for help to see past the perception to the spirit that is the oneness of Love. By choosing to accept this help, we forgive the world for what we thought it was. We welcome the Light of Love.

As we emphasize seeing through the forgiving eyes of Love today, we take great strides toward awaking from the dream.

© 2022, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Means to Awaken to Love’s Oneness

³The Holy Spirit is the Mind of the Atonement. ⁴He represents a state of mind close enough to One-mindedness that transfer to it is at last possible. ⁵Perception is not knowledge, but it can be transferred to knowledge, or cross over into it. ⁶It might even be more helpful here to use the literal meaning of transferred or “carried over,” since the last step is taken by God.

The Holy Spirit, the shared Inspiration of all the Sonship, induces a kind of perception in which many elements are like those in the Kingdom of Heaven itself:
²First, its universality is perfectly clear, and no one who attains it could believe for one instant that sharing it involves anything but gain.
³Second, it is incapable of attack and is therefore truly open. ⁴This means that although it does not engender knowledge, it does not obstruct it in any way.
⁵Finally, it points the way beyond the healing that it brings, and leads the mind beyond its own integration toward the paths of creation. ⁶It is at this point that sufficient quantitative change occurs to produce a real qualitative shift. (A Course in Miracles, T-5.I.6:3–7:6. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The Holy Spirit is in the mind of every Son of God, without exception. His presence unifies the oneness of the Sons of God. It is a reminder that God sees all His Sons as one.

We have bought into the belief that separation is real. This belief leads us to perceive separate Sons of God. It is only our own projection of the belief in separation that makes “others” appear to be different and separate from ourselves. The Holy Spirit recognizes this misperception but does not believe it. This is why He is the means to awaken us to the one Mind we share with every brother and with God.

Today we dedicate to holding our mind open to the Holy Spirit’s inspiration. Through accepting His inspiration, our thoughts, words and deeds will awaken us to our unity in the oneness of Love.

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How to Have Happy Dreams

The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings are different from the dreaming of the world, where one can merely dream he is awake. ²The dreams forgiveness lets the mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep, so that the dreamer dreams another dream. ³His happy dreams are heralds of the dawn of truth upon the mind. ⁴They lead from sleep to gentle waking, so that dreams are gone. ⁵And thus they cure for all eternity.

Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. ²For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. ³Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. ⁴Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. ⁵It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. ⁶And that is cure indeed. ⁷For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.”

“…find the source of healing, which is in our minds because our Father placed it there for us. ³It is not farther from us than ourselves. ⁴It is as near to us as our own thoughts; so close it is impossible to lose. ⁵We need but seek it and it must be found. (A Course in Miracles, W-140.3:1–4:7;8:2-5. See also ACIM Lesson 140 Insights.)

We can never be without the Holy Spirit’s help. But we can make ourselves unaware of it. The ego busies our mind with myriad endless thoughts that we give meaning by our belief in them. It sends us on fruitless searches to find happiness in forms that have nothing to give. None of the ego’s offerings are real; but our willingness to believe in them stands as a barrier against awareness of the Holy Spirit’s presence.

Beyond these dreams lies the Voice for God, always ready to offer us the only real gift there is. We welcome His gift by quieting our minds. In peace His Voice is heard for we have set aside the chaos of the ego’s thoughts. In peace we meet the condition of awareness of Love’s presence, for peace is an attribute of Love.

We remember the Holy Spirit’s presence by pausing to connect with the peace within. In this peace we see the Love that has always been there, hidden by our belief that separation is real. In peace we see past illusions and dream a happy dream of Love. From this dream we easily awaken to our Home in Heaven.

© 2022, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Importance of Forgiveness

The Holy Spirit mediates between illusions and the truth. ²Since He must bridge the gap between reality and dreams, perception leads to knowledge through the grace that God has given Him, to be His gift to everyone who turns to Him for truth. ³Across the bridge that He provides are dreams all carried to the truth, to be dispelled before the light of knowledge. ⁴There are sights and sounds forever laid aside. ⁵And where they were perceived before, forgiveness has made possible perception’s tranquil end.

²The Holy Spirit understands the means you made, by which you would attain what is forever unattainable. ³And if you offer them to Him, He will employ the means you made for exile to restore your mind to where it truly is at home.

From knowledge, where He has been placed by God, the Holy Spirit calls to you, to let forgiveness rest upon your dreams, and be restored to sanity and peace of mind. ²Without forgiveness will your dreams remain to terrify you. ³And the memory of all your Father’s Love will not return to signify the end of dreams has come.

Accept your Father’s gift. ²It is a Call from Love to Love, that It be but Itself. ³The Holy Spirit is His gift, by which the quietness of Heaven is restored to God’s beloved Son. (A Course in Miracles, W-pII.7.1:1-5;3:2–5:3. See also ACIM Lesson 281 Insights.)

By giving our allegiance to the ego, we accept its means to make a world of separation appear real. In truth this is never attainable; but it seems accomplished in dreams. The ego’s thought system does not provide a means to wake up from its dream.

To awaken to the reality of our Home in the Heaven of God’s Love, we need to call upon the Holy Spirit. He knows how to give the means made by the ego a new purpose. Under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, every perception, every experience, is used as a teaching opportunity. If we accept His help, we learn the lesson of Love’s oneness in place of the ego’s belief in separation.

When we accept these lessons, the Course calls it forgiveness. This is the lesson we must learn to awaken to our eternal Home in Love. With the Holy Spirit as our Guide, every day provides steps to heal our minds of mistaken beliefs and remember God as our Creator.

© 2022, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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