Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

Tweet

Subscribe

View all articles • Article index

Choosing a Better Way

You are my goal, my Father. Only You.

Where would I go but Heaven? What could be a substitute for happiness? What gift could I prefer before the peace of God? What treasure would I seek and find and keep that can compare with my Identity? And would I rather live with fear than love?

You are my goal, my Father. What but You could I desire to have? What way but that which leads to You could I desire to walk? And what except the memory of You could signify to me the end of dreams and futile substitutions for the truth? You are my only goal. Your Son would be as You created him. What way but this could I expect to recognize my Self, and be at one with my Identity? (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 287, W-pII.287. See also ACIM Lesson 287 Insights.)

The goal of remembering our Identity in God is the goal for happiness, because God’s Will for His Son is perfect happiness. When we identify with the little self image the ego offers, our goal is unhappiness because it is the denial of our unity with God. The best the ego can offer is empty images that seem to offer temporary happiness. But because these images are not real, we soon realize that the seeming happiness they brought is based on nothing.

The ego’s answer for this dissatisfaction, which comes with this realization, is to send us on a fruitless search for some form it tries to convince us will make us happy. None of these empty images can offer us anything but the pain of loss and guilt. Eventually everyone comes to the point of no longer tolerating this pain. This is a turning point that sets us on a search for a better way.

A Course in Miracles offers us a better way. It offers us a means to forgive ourselves for choosing a false identity in place of the Identity God gave us in creating us as His Son. Beyond the image of a body is our true Self, united with all as God’s one Son.

Today let’s join together in choosing a better way, a way that leads to eternal happiness, peace that cannot be disturbed and the blessing of God’s eternal Love. Let’s choose to let the Holy Spirit help us forgive our vain imaginings and remember God.

© 2020, 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

Choosing Our True Identity

Eternal holiness abides in me.

My holiness is far beyond my own ability to understand or know. Yet God, my Father, Who created it, acknowledges my holiness as His. Our Will, together, understands it. And Our Will, together, knows that it is so.

Father, my holiness is not of me. It is not mine to be destroyed by sin. It is not mine to suffer from attack. Illusions can obscure it, but can not put out its radiance, nor dim its light. It stands forever perfect and untouched. In it are all things healed, for they remain as You created them. And I can know my holiness. For Holiness Itself created me, and I can know my Source because it is Your Will that You be known. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 299, W-pII.299. See also ACIM Lesson 299 Insights.)

The Course emphasizes repeatedly that our true Self is as holy as God because It is one with God. But in the world we don’t seem to be holy. We experience sadness, loneliness, guilt, fear, frustration, anger and loss. This experience does not come from our true Self.

It comes from identifying with the ego’s image of a little self, separate from God. It is a false image made to make separation from Love seem real. We identify with this image because we believe it offers us the specialness, the uniqueness, that allows us to claim to have something no one else has. This is the ego’s desire which it seeks to make real to the point of the appearance of death.

We do not have to accept this image as what we are. Our experiences in the world show us that we have chosen this self-image. But it is a choice we can change. We make this choice by forgiving ourselves for choosing against the Love of God. This choice had no effect on God’s eternal Will for His Son be forever united with Him. When we change this choice by letting go of the wish for separation — forgiving — we clear the way to accepting our true Self.

Today we practice choosing to forgive by letting the Holy Spirit help us see with Christ’s vision. As we accept this vision, the Light of Love dispels the guilt and shines away the fear. The veil of ego illusions lifts and reveals the presence of changeless Love everywhere.

© 2020, 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

Answering God’s Call to Love

Step back in faith and let truth lead the way. You know not where you go. But One Who knows goes with you. Let Him lead you with the rest.

We walk to God. The truth that walks before us now is one with Him, and leads us to where He has always been. What way but this could be a path that you would choose instead?

Forget not He has placed His Hand in yours, and given you your brothers in His trust that you are worthy of His trust in you. He cannot be deceived. His trust has made your pathway certain and your goal secure. You will not fail your brothers nor your Self.

And now He asks but that you think of Him a while each day, that He may speak to you and tell you of His Love, reminding you how great His trust; how limitless His Love. In your Name and His Own, which are the same, we practice gladly with this thought today:

I will step back and let Him lead the way,
For I would walk along the road to Him.
(W-pI.155.10:3-6;12:5-7;13:4-14:3)

If we want to find peace of mind, we need to stop being a know-it-all. The ego always speaks first, trying to assert that it has the right interpretation of what everything we see means. It must do this to keep us from recognizing that everything we see in the world is illusion. As long as we accept the ego’s meanings, illusions seem real.

To find peace of mind, we must step back from the interpretations of the ego to open our minds to the truth. Our true Self knows that we remain united in Love with our Creator. Only Love is real. Nothing exists outside of Love.

God has given His hand to guide us in the way of awakening. His Will for us is that we remain in Him in perfect peace, supreme happiness and Love without end. This is the truth our heart seeks to remember. God calls us to come Home to Him for our shelter, our strength and our peace.

© 2020, 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

Being God’s Messenger in the World

Would you receive the messages of God? For thus do you become His messenger. You are appointed now. And yet you wait to give the messages you have received. And so you do not know that they are yours, and do not recognize them. No one can receive and understand he has received until he gives. For in the giving is his own acceptance of what he received.

[God] needs our voice that He may speak through us. He needs our hands to hold His messages, and carry them to those whom He appoints. He needs our feet to bring us where He wills, that those who wait in misery may be at last delivered. And He needs our will united with His Own, that we may be the true receivers of the gifts He gives.

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. (W-pI.154.8;11:2-5;13:2;14)

Because God is Love, all His messages are messages of Love. When we accept His messages, our minds are lit by the Light of Love. The Light of Love shows us the presence of Love everywhere. It dispels the darkness of the ego’s loveless thoughts and perceptions of separation.

We carry His messages of Love to the world by letting Love guide our way. Our thoughts bless those we think of. We express Love in the world through kindness and helpfulness. Judgment is laid aside as the Light of Love shows us the Love in every brother. This Light helps us recognize calls for Love and we naturally respond with Love.

Today we welcome and accept God’s Love by expressing His Love in the world with thoughts that bless and actions of kindness and helpfulness. Thus we serve as messengers of God.

© 2020, 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

Awakening to Our Eternal Life in God

There is no death because what God created shares His life. There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist. There is no death because the Father and the Son are one.

Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator. It is the belief conditions change, emotions alternate because of causes you cannot control, you did not make, and you can never change. It is the fixed belief ideas can leave their source, and take on qualities the source does not contain, becoming different from their own origin, apart from it in kind as well as distance, time and form.

His holy home we strive to keep today as He established it, and wills it be forever and forever. He is Lord of what we think today. And in His Thoughts, which have no opposite, we under­stand there is one life, and that we share with Him…

We share one life because we have one Source, a Source from which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect. As we were, so are we now and will forever be. A sleeping mind must waken, as it sees its own perfection mirroring the Lord of life so perfectly it fades into what is reflected there. And now it is no more a mere reflection. It becomes the thing reflected, and the light which makes reflection possible. No vision now is needed. For the wakened mind is one that knows its Source, its Self, its Holiness. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 167, W-pI.167.1:5-7;4;11;12. See also ACIM Lesson 167 Insights.)

Our true Self is God’s one Son, united with Him in Love. In the ego’s dream of separation, our self appears as many bodies, limited in time and space. This appearance is not real, but if we believe it is, we believe we are a false self, which could never be real.

To awaken from this dream, we need a vision that comes from beyond the dream. Christ’s vision is the vision of our true Self which is awake to the eternal presence of Love. When we open our minds to this vision, we see beyond the dream to the Light of Love that unites us all in the one Self that is God’s Son. We awaken from the dream as we are willing to accept Christ’s vision.

Vision takes a willingness to step back from the conflict of the dream and reconnect with the peace of God within us. In peace we see that what we thought happened is only a dream and has no effect whatsoever on our true Self. As we practice opening our mind to His vision, fear and guilt diminish and we experience increasing levels of peace, happiness and Love. We awaken to our eternal Life in God.

© 2020, 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

Being Free in the Love of God

The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked. Attack thoughts cannot enter such a mind, because it has been given to the Source of love, and fear can never enter in a mind that has attached itself to love. It rests in God. And who can be afraid who lives in Innocence, and only loves?

The body disappears, because you have no need of it except the need the Holy Spirit sees. For this, the body will appear as useful form for what the mind must do. It thus becomes a vehicle which helps forgiveness be extended to the all-inclusive goal that it must reach, according to God’s plan.

You are God’s Son. In immortality you live forever. Would you not return your mind to this? Then practice well the thought the Holy Spirit gives you for today. Your brothers stand released with you in it; the world is blessed along with you, God’s Son will weep no more, and Heaven offers thanks for the increase of joy your practice brings even to it. And God Himself extends His Love and happiness each time you say:

I am not a body. I am free. I hear the Voice that God has given me, and it is only this my mind obeys. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 199, W-pI.199.2;4:3-5;8. See also ACIM Lesson 199 Insights.)

Our true Self is eternally attached to God in the oneness of His Love. The ego is a tiny, imaginary segment of the mind which believes it is separate from Love. To give this belief seeming reality, the ego made up a body and convinced us that the body is our identity. As long as we accept this lie as true, we will feel a sense of lack of Love.

Guilt is a companion to this sense of lack because, if we have succeeded in separating from God, we must have taken something away from God, causing Him harm. But this has only seemed to happen in the split off part of the mind that believes separation is real. The many images in this fantasy of separation represent our “attack” on the oneness of Love.

Today’s affirmation that we are not a body helps us disconnect from our attachment to the ego as our identity. As we accept that we are not a body, not an ego, we open the door to our true Mind where the Voice for God shows us that our mind remains eternally attached to God. Here we know our eternal unity with Love. We find peace here in the changelessness of Love. We find joy in the ongoing sharing of Love. We remember that we remain at Home in the Heart of God.

© 2020, 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

Our Journey of Awakening

Today I will judge nothing that occurs.

I will be honest with myself today. I will not think that I already know what must remain beyond my present grasp. I will not think I understand the whole from bits of my perception, which are all that I can see. Today I recognize that this is so. And so I am relieved of judgments that I cannot make. Thus do I free myself and what I look upon, to be in peace as God created us.

Father, today I leave creation free to be itself. I honor all its parts, in which I am included. We are one because each part contains Your mem­ory, and truth must shine in all of us as one. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 243, W-pII.243. See also ACIM Lesson 243 Insights.)

The ego always speaks first. It is quick to judge every perception following its dictates which deny the presence of Love. This is essential to the continuance of the ego’s illusion that it has successfully separated from God. As long as we put the ego in charge of interpreting everything we perceive, we are bound to its loveless world.

But we have another choice. We can put the Holy Spirit in charge of interpreting our perceptions. Because we have a well-entrenched habit of following the ego’s lead, we must be vigilant of our thoughts. We must ask of everything, “What is it for?” and remind ourselves that of our self, we do not know.

We let the Voice for God answer this question by pausing to welcome peace to our mind. His Voice is heard in a mind at peace. The Holy Spirit will show us that all things are either for extending Love or a call for Love, which is to be answered with Love. He will help us recognize these only meaningful purposes and teach us how to respond with Love. This is our journey of awakening that will return us to the full remembrance that we are Love and nothing else. We remain as God created us.

© 2020, 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 250 of 847 pages ‹ First  < 248 249 250 251 252 >  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.