Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Forget the Past to Remember Eternal Love

The past is over. It can touch me not.

Unless the past is over in my mind, the real world must escape my sight. For I am really looking nowhere; seeing but what is not there. How can I then perceive the world forgiveness offers? This [real world] the past was made to hide, for this [is] the world that can be looked on only now. It has no past. For what can be forgiven but the past, and if it is forgiven it is gone.

Father, let me not look upon a past that is not there. For You have offered me Your Own replacement, in a present world the past has left untouched and free of sin. Here is the end of guilt. And here am I made ready for Your final step. Shall I demand that You wait longer for Your Son to find the loveliness You planned to be the end of all his dreams and all his pain? (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 289, W-pII.289. See also ACIM Lesson 289 Insights.)

The ego teaches that the lessons of the past are essential for our “survival” in the present. Thus all our interpretations are projections of our past learning. These projections hide the presence of Love’s oneness in the eternal now.

As we learn to forgive, to let go of the past, the Light of Love is revealed now. The sense of potential threat that memories of the past engender fades away, making way for the experience of God’s perfect peace and joy.

All our attempts to project the past on the present have no effect on the presence of Love. They only hide it from our awareness. As we accept our unity in this Love, we know we are perfectly safe. We are loved and join in Love’s extension. Fear of death is replaced by the joy of living in Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Choosing Holy Spirit’s Lessons in Forgiveness

Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean and what their purpose is. Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for. We do not know. Let every image held of everyone be loosened from our minds and swept away.

Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone. Now do you know him not. But you are free to learn of him, and learn of him anew. Now is he born again to you, and you are born again to him, without the past that sentenced him to die, and you with him. Now is he free to live as you are free, because an ancient learning passed away, and left a place for truth to be reborn. (A Course in Miracles, T-31.I.12-13. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The ego has its own curriculum. Its lesson plan has one goal — to teach us that we are separate from God, alone and destined to die. Death is the ultimate image that seems to confirm that separation is real. This lesson ultimately brings with it guilt, for it teaches that we have been successful in denying God, His Creation, His one Son. This is perceived as an attack on God and projects on God the fearful retribution with which the ego would respond to attack. Thus the effect of the ego’s lesson is guilt.

Yet only the oneness of God’s Love is real. The ego’s lessons could never be true. The instant the ego’s curriculum was accepted, God responded with the Holy Spirit, Whose curriculum teaches the opposite lesson. The Holy Spirit’s lesson plan teaches us to see the reality of Love’s oneness. It teaches us to look beyond the appearances of the ego-made world to the changeless oneness of Love. Every perception of separation is a call to remember Love.

The Holy Spirit helps us answer this call with Love. What the ego used to reinforce guilt, the Holy Spirit uses to heal our misperception and remember we live in Love. When we accept the Holy Spirit’s curriculum, the goal of our learning is shifted from guilt to innocence, from death to the Life we live in Love, from limitation to the all encompassing oneness of our true Self as God’s one Son. In each moment we choose which curriculum we want to learn.

We choose the Holy Spirit’s curriculum by offering all our perceptions to the Holy Spirit with willingness to learn the Holy Spirit’s lessons in Love. We choose this curriculum today.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Choosing Right-Minded Perception

Spirit is the Thought of God which He created like Himself. The unified spirit is God’s one Son, or Christ.

In this world, because the mind is split, the Sons of God appear to be separate. Nor do their minds seem to be joined. In this illusory state, the concept of an “individual mind” seems to be meaningful. [Mind] is therefore described in the course as if it has two parts; spirit and ego.

Spirit is the part that is still in contact with God through the Holy Spirit, Who abides in this part but sees the other part as well.

The other [ego] part of the mind is entirely illusory and makes only illusions.

Right-mindedness listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ’s vision sees the real world in its place.”

Wrong-mindedness listens to the ego and makes illusions; perceiving sin and justifying anger, and seeing guilt, disease and death as real. (A Course in Miracles, C-1.1:3-3:1;4:1;5:2;6:1)

If we align with the ego, we are in the wrong mind; we believe we have separated ourselves from our Creator and Source. Our belief makes this separated world seem real to us. The ego’s filters block the unity of Love from our awareness by only accepting what aligns with our beliefs.

Yet denial cannot make real. Though we may be wholly engaged in the illusions made by the ego’s denial, the unity of Love continues on unabated and eternally. Our right mind remembers this. The Holy Spirit is in our right mind to guide us out of wrong-mindedness and back to the recognition of reality of unified Love. With the Holy Spirit’s help, we learn to forgive the misperceptions and false beliefs and accept the Life we live in Love.

Today we choose right mindedness by stepping back from our perceptions and welcoming the Holy Spirit’s vision of Love’s oneness.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Accepting Holy Spirit’s Help to Forgive

A therapist does not heal; he lets healing be. He can point to darkness but he cannot bring light of himself, for light is not of him. Yet, being for him, [light] must also be for his patient. The Holy Spirit is the only Therapist. He makes healing clear in any situation in which He is the Guide. You can only let Him fulfill His function. He needs no help for this. He will tell you exactly what to do to help anyone He sends to you for help, and will speak to him through you if you do not interfere. Remember that you choose the guide for helping, and the wrong choice will not help. But remember also that the right one will. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God. As you awaken other minds to the Holy Spirit through Him, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world. But the laws you are obeying work. “The good is what works” is a sound though insufficient statement. Only the good can work. Nothing else works at all. (A Course in Miracles, T-9.V.8. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

As long as we identify with the ego, we cannot heal ourselves. We need help. We need a Guide from outside the ego thought system to guide our healing. The Holy Spirit is always ready, willing and able to guide us to the healing that frees us from the ego’s lies and returns us to the full remembrance of the Self God created One with Him.

The fastest way for us to return to the Heaven of God’s Love is to diligently choose the Holy Spirit as our Guide, moment by moment. We start the day by dedicating it to letting Holy Spirit heal our misperceptions. Throughout the day, as we become aware of any disturbance of our peace, we pause and ask Him to help us perceive as He perceives.

As we welcome His guidance and apply it in our lives, we learn to forgive. Circumstances that once triggered fear, anger or guilt diminish. Lack of peace is dispelled more quickly and the Love, joy and peace of God bless our minds more and more. We teach healing through demonstrating our own healing by accepting Holy Spirit’s Help.

We dedicate today to this practice.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Receiving and Giving All of God’s Gifts

A major learning goal this course has set is to reverse your view of giving, so you can receive. For giving has become a source of fear, and so you would avoid the only means by which you can receive. Accept God’s peace and joy, and you will learn a different way of looking at a gift. God’s gifts will never lessen when they are given away. They but increase thereby.

As Heaven’s peace and joy intensify when you accept them as God’s gift to you, so does the joy of your Creator grow when you accept His joy and peace as yours. True giving is creation. It extends the limitless to the unlimited, eternity to timelessness, and love unto itself. It adds to all that is complete already, not in simple terms of adding more, for that implies that it was less before. It adds by letting what cannot contain itself fulfill its aim of giving everything it has away, securing it forever for itself. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 105, W-pI.105.3-4. See also ACIM Lesson 105 Insights.)

In the ego thought system of separation, to give is to lose what is given. This belief makes us afraid to give because we believe we no longer have what we give away. The ego perceives only images which are limited by definition. Consequently it believes it loses the form it gives away. The most it can hope for is for the receiver to respond with a gift of equal or greater value. This expectation imposes a debt on the receiver which ego fears may not be paid in full. This is why ego-based giving always seems to entail risk of loss and carries guilt with it.

The only gifts we can truly give without limit are the gifts we receive from God. God knows no limits. He gives His Love, peace and joy eternally and without limit. The nature of these gifts is to extend themselves just as God extended them to His Son. To accept these gifts, we must extend them without limit. Without extending them, we cannot know we have His gifts of Love, joy and peace. Here is the key difference between the ego’s giving and the giving of God’s gifts. The ego limits its gifts. God’s gifts know no limits. He has given us all of Himself eternally.

Today we remind ourselves frequently, “God has given me all of Himself. All His Love, joy and peace are mine to give.” As we look upon a brother, we mentally say to our brother, “God has given you all of Himself. All His Love, joy and peace are yours.”

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Choosing the Reality of God’s Love

Reality observes the laws of God, and not the rules you set. It is His laws that guarantee your safety. All illusions that you believe about yourself obey no laws. …[Illusions] must be neither cherished nor attacked, but merely looked upon as children’s toys without a single meaning of their own. See one [meaning] in them and you will see them all. See [no meaning] in them and they will touch you not.

Appearances deceive because they are appearances and not reality.

Appearances can but deceive the mind that wants to be deceived.

Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be except a happy dream? It asks you but that you forgive all things that no one ever did; to overlook what is not there, and not to look upon the unreal as reality. You are but asked to let your will be done, and seek no longer for the things you do not want. And you are asked to let yourself be free of all the dreams of what you never were, and seek no more to substitute the strength of idle wishes for the Will of God.

…[salvation] but asks forgiveness be the substitute for fear. Such is the only rule for happy dreams. …They offer him no single thing that he could ever want. He is delivered from illusions by his will, and but restored to what he is. What could God’s plan for his salvation be, except a means to give him to Himself? (A Course in Miracles, T-30.IV.4:1-2,9-10;5:1;6:1;7;8:6-7,11-13. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

Everyone wants love and peace. Everything we do is motivated by this desire. Even murder is motivated by the desire to get rid of what is judged to be preventing the achievement of peace. All fear, ranging from a little irritation to murderous rage, is based on the perception of separation and differences that interfere with our happiness and peace of mind.

But these differences are empty images, made by the ego to make differences and separation appear to be real. Yet appearances are not real, by definition. They are substitutes which cannot offer the reality of Love’s oneness. When we identify with the ego, the thought system of separation, we have chosen to be deceived. It is the effect of wanting more than all the Love of God, to have something we can claim as ours alone. Yet this wish denies everything that is Real (God’s Love), leaving us with nothing.

Today we ask the Holy Spirit to heal our fear-based thoughts and show us the reality of Love that is everywhere to be seen.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Christ’s Vision Undoes the Dream of Fear

We have a mission here. We did not come to reinforce the madness that we once believed in. Let us not forget the goal that we accepted. It is more than just our happiness alone we came to gain. What we accept as what we are proclaims what everyone must be, along with us. Fail not your brothers, or you fail yourself. Look lovingly on them, that they may know that they are part of you, and you of them.

This does Atonement teach, and demonstrates the Oneness of God’s Son is unassailed by his belief he knows not what he is. Today accept Atonement, not to change reality, but merely to accept the truth about yourself, and go your way rejoicing in the endless Love of God. It is but this that we are asked to do. It is but this that we will do today.

I will accept Atonement for myself,
For I remain as God created me.

We have not lost the knowledge that God gave to us when He created us like Him. We can remember it for everyone, for in creation are all minds as one. And in our memory is the recall how dear our brothers are to us in truth, how much a part of us is every mind, how faithful they have really been to us, and how our Father’s Love contains them all. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 139, W-pI.139.9-10;11:3-6. See also ACIM Lesson 139 Insights.)

We seem to be in the world because we chose to believe that we succeeded to separate from God. The Atonement undoes our mistaken beliefs in separation from God and all His Love. It clears away the barriers that prevent us from seeing our brothers as united with us in Love’s oneness. But we can undo our mistaken beliefs and once again accept the knowledge that we remain Love as God created us.

Our mission now is to accept the reality of Love in our brothers. We do this by letting the Holy Spirit heal our fear-based judgments. This is our only meaningful purpose because it undoes our meaningless illusions and restores our awareness to our true Self, Which is Love and nothing else.

Our prayer today: Holy Spirit, I release all thoughts that disturb my peace to you. I am willing to accept your vision of the Love of Christ in their place. I am willing to remember Who I am.

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