Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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The Role of Judgment in Mind Healing

We said before that the Holy Spirit is evaluative, and must be. He sorts out the true from the false in your mind, and teaches you to judge every thought you allow to enter it in the light of what God put there. Whatever is in accord with this light He retains, to strengthen the Kingdom in you. What is partly in accord with it He accepts and purifies. But what is out of accord entirely He rejects by judging against. This is how He keeps the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified. Remember, however, that what the Holy Spirit rejects the ego accepts. This is because they are in fundamental disagreement about everything, being in fundamental disagreement about what you are. The ego’s beliefs on this crucial issue vary, and that is why it promotes different moods. The Holy Spirit never varies on this point, and so the one mood He engenders is joy. He protects it by rejecting everything that does not foster joy, and so He alone can keep you wholly joyous.

In the mind of the thinker, [the Holy Spirit] is judgmental, but only in order to unify the mind so it can perceive without judgment. This enables the mind to teach without judgment, and therefore to learn to be without judgment. The undoing is necessary only in your mind, so that you will not project, instead of extend. (A Course in Miracles, T-6.V.C.1;2:3-5. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The ego established judgment as a tool to maintain the appearance of separation. But all judgments directed by the ego are projections of what we believe is true about ourselves. Being projections, the ego’s judgments appear to be about something outside ourselves. But projections always have a source, which is beliefs held in the mind that projects. Thus any judgment of an “other” is also a judgment against the ego self that is projecting. This process keeps the ego in place, for it retains the guilt in the mind that projects.

The Holy Spirit gives judgment a difference purpose. He uses it to undo the ego thought system. The ego’s judgment is always based on the simple evaluation of whether or not it is real. Only Love is real. A thought that is not an extension of Love is not real and therefore of the ego. If we let Him, He will help us purify our thoughts by showing us what is real and what is not real.

As we accept His lessons and learn to distinguish between real and unreal, we undo the ego. Thoughts recognized as unreal are freely dismissed as meaningless. Sometimes our thoughts are a mixture that partially extend Love but include remnants of belief in separation. The Holy Spirit purifies these thoughts by dismissing the unreal and bringing fully into our awareness the reality of Love.

Our role in awakening to Love’s reality is to put the Holy Spirit in charge of evaluating all our thoughts. The purified thoughts He returns to us will guide us in being truly helpful by extending Love in the world in forms that bless and heal.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Miracle Frees Us from the Ego’s Dream

…in forgiving dreams is no one asked to be the victim and the sufferer. These are the happy dreams the miracle exchanges for your own. It does not ask you make another [dream]; only that you see you made the one you would exchange for this.

The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No one is afraid of [dream] when he perceives he made them up. The fear was held in place because he did not see that he was author of the dream, and not a figure in the dream. He gives himself the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother.

This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream’s alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. [Miracles] are the glad effects of taking back the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released because the mind acknowledges “this is not done to me, but I am doing this.” And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of the world undone. (A Course in Miracles, T-28.II.5:6-7;7:1-5;12. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

When we dream at night, it seems as though we have nothing to do with the dream we experience. Yet it is possible to become aware that we are the dreamer and with that awareness, change the dream. This is called lucid dreaming, which can be used as a tool to heal unconscious fears and guilt.

The Course tells us that what we experience in the world when the body is awake is just as much a dream as our nighttime dreams. It also tells us that we can become aware that we are dreaming when we seem to be in a body walking about in a world of other bodies. This lucidity is key to the healing of our mind because it puts us in control of the dream.

Our dreams are no longer frightening when we realize that we can change them because we are in charge. Dreams only seem to happen to us because we have accepted the ego’s image of our identity, which denies our eternal unity with God’s Love.

Fear, Love’s opposite, is always at the core of the ego’s dreams. But we can change our mind about our identity. We can choose to identify with our true Self, God’s Son, Love’s extension. Because we have become so entranced with the ego’s dream, we need a means to step back from it. This is the miracle, given to us when we are willing to accept the Holy Spirit’s vision of Love’s innocence. This vision shows us our true Identity. We no longer identify with our body as our identity and remember that we are not the victim of outside forces. We recognize the dream of separation has no effects. We choose the Identity of our true Self as perfect Love, safe in the heart of God.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Power of True Perception

The world you see is an illusion of a world.

The body’s eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt.

The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception. It will not endure. But for the time it lasts it comes to heal. For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning, with the end to lead to oneness far beyond themselves.

This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear.

O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to meet Him where His altar is. (A Course in Miracles, C-4.1:1;2;3:2-7;6:1;8:1)

The key to forgiveness and healing is recognizing that the thoughts in our mind make the illusionary outer world we perceive. If what we perceive is not eternal, it must be false perception. Instead of perceiving the eternal created by God, we are perceiving an external world of changing illusions which hide God’s changeless Love from our awareness.

We can change our minds about what we want to perceive. Instead of aligning with the ego’s wish for separation to be real, we can align with the Holy Spirit, our true Self. Our true Self is aligned with the Will of God. Its only function is to co-create with God by joining Him in extending Love.

This change occurs in our mind and changes the world we perceive. The seemingly real images of the world are overlooked revealing the oneness of Love the world has hidden. The seeming chaos of the world is more easily dismissed as powerless when it is recognized that it does not represent God and His Reality. It merely represents a wish to deny Love.

When we choose the Holy Spirit’s vision, we choose to accept Love’s Reality. Now we recognize that we are one with every brother. Conflict is impossible. Peace and happiness reign in our world of true perception. We have remembered our Home in Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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We Are Never Alone

Steady our feet, our Father. Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still, and speak to us. We have no words to give to You. We would but listen to Your Word, and make it ours. Lead our practicing as does a father lead a little child along a way he does not understand. Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.

So do we bring our practicing to You. And if we stumble, You will raise us up. If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remember­ing. We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back. Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You. And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Review V, W-pI.rV.In.2-3. See also ACIM Lesson 171 Insights.)

We are never alone. God is with us, no matter where we believe we are. He can be counted on to give us His strength, His Love and His guidance through His Voice, because it is His Will. Even though we may wander in the wilderness of the ego’s belief in separation, God is with us, ready to comfort us with His Love and peace. We need only be willing to receive the gift He has already given.

This prayer reminds us of God’s Love and opens our mind to accept It. It lets us know that even though we may feel guilty for our wandering misperceptions, His Love never changes. We need not worry about what to say or do. We need only let Him guide us in the way to perfect peace and happiness. We need only accept His Will for us.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Our Heart’s Desire Is to Remember Love

Father, I will but to remember You.

What can I seek for, Father, but Your Love? Perhaps I think I seek for something else; a something I have called by many names. Yet is Your Love the only thing I seek, or ever sought. For there is nothing else that I could ever really want to find. Let me remember You. What else could I desire but the truth about myself?

This is your will, my brother. And you share this will with me, and with the One as well Who is our Father. To remember Him is Heaven. This we seek. And only this is what it will be given us to find. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 1, W-pII.231. See also ACIM Lesson 231 Insights.)

Everyone in this world is seeking for happiness and peace. Under the ego’s direction, we look for these in the form of things we possess, relationships, a safe environment, status, etc. These forms are illusionary substitutes for the Love of God we have forgotten is already ours.

Sometimes the substitutes bring temporary satisfaction. But because these substitutes are unreal, satisfaction never lasts. And so we try again but never really find, because the ego’s goal is always to seek but not find the eternal Love that is already ours. The ego believes that if we remember His Love, the ego will be dispelled. It is correct about this, for the ego is the denial of Love.

Because our true Will is to remember God’s Love, we will never be satisfied with anything less. The way to remember our Father is to forgive, or forget, all that the ego has tried to convince us to believe. Each time we let the Holy Spirit help us see past the images of the world to the Presence of Love, we take another step toward remembering our Father.

Today we practice walking with the Holy Spirit as our Guide. We welcome His help to perceive all things through Christ’s vision because our heart’s desire is to remember God’s Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Christ’s Vision Sees Our True Self

What has been given you? The knowledge that you are a mind, in Mind and purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid, because you were created out of love. Nor have you left your Source, remaining as you were created. This was given you as knowledge which you cannot lose. It was given as well to every living thing, for by that knowledge only does it live.

You have received all this. No one who walks the world but has received it. …Experience [revelation] cannot be shared directly, in the way that vision can. The revelation that the Father and the Son are one will come in time to every mind.

Yet there is no step along the road that anyone takes but by chance. …We but undertake a journey that is over. Yet it seems to have a future still unknown to us.

Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which fig­ures come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appearances that does not change. The script is written. When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 158, W-pI.158.1;2:2,7-8;3:3,6-7;4. See also ACIM Lesson 158 Insights.)

Our true Self knows It is Mind, within the Mind of Love. It does not see Itself as a body or limited to a body. Our Self knows It shares the limitlessness of the Love that created It.

Having chosen to identify instead with a body made by the ego, we are unaware of our true Self. We give credence to what the body’s eyes show us, making us blind to the only Reality that is Love. The vision of Christ is the means to see past the body to the undivided, unlimited Love that is our Source of Life.

We open to Christ’s vision by offering our perceptions to the Holy Spirit for reinterpretation. He brings us the vision of Christ to see the truth beyond the illusions of the world. This is our practice for today.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Translating What the Body Sees

Father, Christ’s vision is Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body’s eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world! Yet how much more will I perceive in it than sight can give. The world forgiven signifies Your Son acknowledges his Father, lets his dreams be brought to truth, and waits expectantly the one remaining instant more of time which ends forever, as Your memory returns to him. And now his will is one with Yours. His function now is but Your Own, and every thought except Your Own is gone.

The quiet of today will bless our hearts, and through them peace will come to everyone. Christ is our eyes today. And through His sight we offer healing to the world through Him, the holy Son whom God created whole; the holy Son whom God created one. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 270, W-pII.270. See also ACIM Lesson 270 Insights.)

What we see with the body’s eyes is like what we hear when someone is speaking a foreign language. We hear the sounds, but do not understand what they mean. To understand we need a translator. Likewise we do not understand what the body’s eyes see. We need to refer everything we see to the Translator in our mind, Christ’s vision. This vision translates by showing us what lies beyond the surface images in the dream.

To our true Self, the images have no meaning of their own, but the Love that is beyond the images is all meaning. When the images appear to be fearful or guilty, Christ’s vision sees them as calls for Love and offers Love’s vision to translate the calls for Love. This translation inspires us to respond with Love in a form that is meaningful in the dream.

Today we dedicate to letting all that we see be translated through Christ’s vision.

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