Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Remembering Christ Is Within

…give the Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you. Let yourself be healed completely that you may join with Him in healing, and let us celebrate our release together by releasing everyone with us. Leave nothing behind, for release is total, and when you have accepted it with me you will give it with me. All pain and sacrifice and littleness will disappear in our relationship, which is as innocent as our relationship with our Father, and as powerful. Pain will be brought to us and disappear in our presence, and without pain there can be no sacrifice. And without sacrifice there love must be.

You who believe that sacrifice is love must learn that sacrifice is separation from love. For sacrifice brings guilt as surely as love brings peace. Guilt is the condition of sacrifice, as peace is the condition for the awareness of your relationship with God.

As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long will you perceive yourself as lonely and deprived.

Say to your brother:

I give you to the Holy Spirit as part of myself.
I know that you will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison myself.
In the name of my freedom I choose your release, because I recognize that we will be released together. (T-15.XI.3;4:1-3;5:1;10:4-7)

When we believe the body is our identity, we have chosen limitation and lack and denied the eternal, infinite and unlimited Love that we are. We sacrifice reality and choose illusionary substitutes instead. This choice leaves us feeling incomplete and searching for our completion. But the truth in us is already complete. We only need to let go of our belief that we have separated from the Love that created us and that remains our Reality.

When we look upon a brother as a body, we are demanding of him the same sacrifice we have demanded of ourselves. We are using this image of our brother to confirm the image we believe about ourselves to make separation appear real.

The truth is that in the oneness of Love, every brother is part of us. As we practice giving all our perceptions of our brother and the world to the Holy Spirit, He will teach us to see with Christ’s vision. The awareness of the innocence of Christ will be reborn and we will be set free from the mistaken belief that we are limited and separate. Our relationship with our brother and our Father will be restored to the Reality of Heaven.

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Bringing Fearful Unconscious Choices to Be Healed

Heaven is the decision I must make.

Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding, to be judged again, this time with Heaven’s help. And all mistakes in judgment that the mind had made before are open to correction, as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed, because their nothingness is recognized.

The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as is the ending of the fear of hell, when it is raised from its protective shield of unawareness, and is brought to light. Who can decide between the clearly seen and the unrecognized? Yet who can fail to make a choice between alternatives when only one is seen as valuable; the other as a wholly worthless thing, a but imagined source of guilt and pain? Who hesitates to make a choice like this?

We recognize we make a conscious choice between what has existence and what has nothing but an appearance of the truth. Its pseudo-being, brought to what is real, is flimsy and transparent in the light. It holds no terror now, for what was made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate, demands obscurity for fear to be invested there. Now it is recognized as but a fool­ish, trivial mistake. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 138, W-pI.138.9;10:1-4;11:2-5. See also ACIM Lesson 138 Insights.)

The decision to believe separation is real is hidden in part of our mind that we made unconscious. The world seems real to us only because we are unaware of our decision to believe illusions are real. Thus we don’t question all the things we experience in the world — conflict, uncertainty, vulnerability, guilt and fear. There seems to be no resolution to any of the problems we experience. Sometimes we manage to find a substitute illusion that seems more acceptable or even desirable. But the underlying cause remains unresolved because we have made it unconscious.

The first step in making the decision for Heaven is to bring the decision for separation and opposition into our conscious awareness. We cannot make another choice when we do not recognize the choice we already made and hid in our unconscious mind. As we let the Holy Spirit teach us His healing lessons by raising our unconscious choices to conscious awareness, we free ourselves to choose Heaven in place of the hell of separation. A “life” of conflict is replaced by deep peace that cannot be disturbed.

Today we choose the Holy Spirit’s lessons by letting Him judge all our perceptions on our behalf. He will help us recognize what is false and nothing, with no value. Heaven becomes the obvious choice because it is everything we want. We become willing to accept the Truth of What we are.

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Christ’s Vision Reveals Our True Self

What could be secret from God’s Will? Yet you believe that you have secrets. What could your secrets be except another “will” that is your own, apart from His? Reason would tell you that this is no secret that need be hidden as a sin. But a mistake indeed! Let not your fear of sin [separation] protect it from correction, for the attraction of guilt is only fear. [Fear] is the one emotion that you made, whatever it may seem to be. This is the emotion of secrecy, of private thoughts and of the body. This is the one emotion that opposes love, and always leads to sight of differences and loss of sameness. [Fear] is the one emotion that keeps you blind, dependent on the self you think you made to lead you through the world it [ego] made for you.

Your sight [Christ’s vision] was given you, along with everything that you can understand. You will perceive no difficulty in understanding what this vision tells you, for everyone sees only what he thinks he is. And what your sight would show you, you will understand because it is the truth. Only your [true] vision can convey to you what you can see. It reaches you directly, without a need to be interpreted to you.

…no two brothers can unite except through Christ, Whose vision sees them one.

Where Christ has entered no one is alone, for never could He find a home in separate ones. (A Course in Miracles, T-22.I.4:1-5:5;7:6;8:6. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The sight of differences — different times, different places, different shapes and personalities — is a sure sign that we are believing in a false image of ourselves, made by the ego to make separation seem real. This belief has made a secret world, hidden from God. For if God’s Love were to enter this world it would disappear into the nothingness from which it came. The ego’s world of separation cannot exist in the oneness of Love.

The ego’s image of a body offers a substitute for vision. But like everything else the ego makes, it can only “see” within the limits of the world of separation. The body’s vision excludes awareness of our true Self. Though we chose the ego’s seeing, Christ’s vision remains in our mind, ever present and ready to show us our true Self, united with our brother. In the holy relationship, we choose Christ’s vision as our interpreter, which shows us our brother and our Self are one and the same.

Today we remind ourselves frequently to ask, “How would the vision of Christ perceive this situation?”

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

Goals that are meaningless are not attained.

Yet searching is inevitable here. For this you came, and you will surely do the thing you came for. But the world can not dictate the goal for which you search, unless you give it power to do so.

Be glad that search you must. Be glad as well to learn you search for Heaven, and must find the goal you really want. No one can fail to want this goal and reach it in the end. God’s Son can not seek vainly, though he try to force delay, deceive himself and think that it is hell he seeks. When he is wrong, he finds correction. When he wanders off, he is led back to his ap­pointed task.

No one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. You will find Heaven. Everything you seek but this will fall away. Yet not because it has been taken from you. It will go because you do not want it. You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 131, W-pI.131.2:1;3:1-3;4-5. See also ACIM Lesson 131 Insights.)

Everyone in the world is searching to fill a perceived emptiness. This emptiness is not clearly defined in our thinking because there is nothing in the world that will fill it. We feel this emptiness because the world was made to hide from what we truly want to find. It was made to deny Love, which is our Source and our Creator. While we follow the ego’s direction, our search will always be futile because what we truly want cannot be found in a world that denies it.

The urge to search comes from the recognition that we are in an alien world we do not truly want. We want to be the Love we were created to be. We want the peace that comes with the oneness of Love. We want the joy that comes with joining with the eternal extension of Love.

Though the world is the denial of Love, we have the Holy Spirit in our mind to guide us back to the full remembrance of the Love we are. As we learn to turn away from the ego and turn to the Holy Spirit for guidance, we learn that there is nothing in the world we really want. As the value we give the world recedes in our mind, Love draws us to Itself. It is inevitable that we remember we are Love because it is the remembrance of changeless Truth. The dream world no longer interests us and we awaken to Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Learning to See from the Right Perspective

Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes that will not disappear if seen aright.

Pain is but witness to the Son’s mistakes in what he thinks he is. It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed; for attack on what is wholly unassail­able. It is a nightmare of abandonment by an Eternal Love, which could not leave the Son whom It created out of love.

It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harm­lessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness. (W-pI.190.1:1-4;2:3-5;5)A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 190, 

Pain is always associated with belief in being a separate identity, disconnected from our Creator. The ego’s principle image for our separate identity is the body. When we identify with the body, we perceive from the wrong perspective of being separate. This perspective could only be believable in a dream of separation. This perspective must be undone for us to be pain free and at Home in the joy of God. 

Whether we experience emotional or physical pain, healing comes by changing our perspective from being a separate identity to being Love in the oneness of Love. From within the dream, we cannot find this perspective. This is why we must practice letting the Holy Spirit direct all our perceptions. As we are willing to turn them over, the Holy Spirit will give us His perspective from the point of view that knows only Love is real. There is nothing else to see, nothing else to know. This practice leads us out of the pain of separation back to the joy of being part of the continuous extension of Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Happy Blessing of Forgiveness

Anger must come from judgment. Judgment is
The weapon I would use against myself,
To keep the miracle away from me.

Father, I want what goes against my [true] will, and do not want what is my will to have. Straighten my mind, my Father. It is sick. But You have offered freedom, and I choose to claim Your gift today. And so I give all judgment to the One You gave to me to judge for me. He sees what I behold, and yet He knows the truth. He looks on pain, and yet He understands it is not real, and in His understanding it is healed. He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today. I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your Own. And He will speak for me, and call Your miracles to come to me.

Listen today. Be very still, and hear the gentle Voice for God assuring you that He has judged you as the Son He loves. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 347, W-pII.347. See also ACIM Lesson 347 Insights.)

The ego is the denial of God’s Will. When we choose the ego as our guide, we are asking for what is not our true will, which is God’s Will. God’s Will for us is perfect Love, given His Son in His Creation. When we deny the Will we have been given, we are choosing fear in place of Love. Fear can only seem to exist in a dream that blocks awareness of Love’s presence. By definition, a dream is not real, though it seems real within the dream.

God’s grace is that, despite our denial of Love, His gift of Love remains ours eternally. We need only wake up from the dream to remember the Will we share with God. By letting the Holy Spirit judge all things on our behalf, the illusions of the dream are happily forgiven. This practice, hour by hour, minute by minute, restores us to our true Will. It restores us to the Heaven of eternal Love that is our Home.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Becoming Aware of Love’s Presence Everywhere

The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them… He resolves the apparent conflict they engender by perceiving conflict as meaningless. I have said before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is, and it is meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want you to understand conflict; He wants you to realize that, because conflict is meaningless, it is not understandable. As I have already said, understanding brings appreciation and appreciation brings love. Nothing else can be understood, because nothing else [but Love] is real and therefore nothing else has meaning.

If you will keep in mind what the Holy Spirit offers you, you cannot be vigilant for anything but God and His Kingdom. The only reason you may find this hard to accept is because you may still think there is something else. Belief does not require vigilance unless it is conflicted. If it is, there are conflicting components within it that have led to a state of war, and vigilance has therefore become essential. Vigilance has no place in peace. It is necessary against beliefs that are not true, and [vigilance] would never have been called upon by the Holy Spirit if you had not believed the untrue. When you believe something, you have made it true for you. (A Course in Miracles, T-7.VI.6:1,3-7;7:1-7. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The Course repeatedly points out that illusions are meaningless. This fact is the basis for all forgiveness. Only Love is real so it does not need forgiveness. But our belief in illusions blocks our awareness of the eternal presence of Love. These are the barriers to Love’s presence that need to be identified and let go.

Our belief in the reality of illusions is what makes the world seem real to us. We need to be vigilant to identify the illusions we believe in. The practice of bringing these false perceptions to the Holy Spirit to receive His reinterpretation clears the blocks to the awareness of Love’s presence. It will clear the fear and guilt that darkens our world by hiding the Light of Love that is everywhere to be seen.

Holy Spirit, guide my mind today. Show me the vision of Love’s presence beyond the illusions of the ego, for I would remember the Love I am.

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