Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Finding Our True Completion

For this world is the opposite of Heaven, being made to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as union. Here, where the illusion of love is accepted in love’s place, love is perceived as separation and exclusion.

It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish for special love from God, that the ego’s hatred triumphs. For the special relationship is the renunciation of the Love of God, and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness that He denied. It is essential to the preservation of the ego that you believe this specialness is not hell, but Heaven. For the ego would never have you see that separation could only be loss, being the one condition in which Heaven could not be.

To everyone Heaven is completion. There can be no disagreement on this, because both the ego and the Holy Spirit accept it. They are, however, in complete disagreement on what completion is, and how it is accomplished. The Holy Spirit knows that completion lies first in union, and then in the extension of union. To the ego completion lies in triumph, and in the extension of the “victory” even to the final triumph over God. In this it sees the ultimate freedom of the [separate] self, for nothing would remain to interfere with the ego. This is [the ego’s] idea of Heaven. And therefore union, which is a condition in which the ego cannot interfere, must be hell. (A Course in Miracles, T-16.V.3:6-5:8. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

Union is hell to the ego because the ego’s false idea of separation cannot exist in union. The ego sees union as annihilation. When we accept the oneness of Love as our reality, the ego no longer seems to exist. To protect its “existence,” the ego offers special relationships as a substitute for the reality of Love’s oneness.

Special relationships offer a fantasy of completion that may seem to satisfy because they fill in what we perceive is lacking when we believe we are separate from God. If we accept the ego’s offerings in special relationships as what we want, we are deceiving ourselves with fantasies. The sense of lack or emptiness we feel cannot be satisfied with fantasies. Only the unity of Love will truly restore our wholeness. Only in this unity is completion true.

Holy Spirit, help me see through the eyes of Love today. Help me recognize illusions for what they are. With Your help, I choose the truth of Love rather than illusions. With Your help, I will remember Heaven.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Shifting from Separation to the Oneness of Love

Look on your brother with the willingness to see him as he is. And do not keep a part of him outside your willingness that he be healed. To heal is to make whole. And what is whole can have no missing parts that have been kept outside. Forgiveness rests on recognizing this, and being glad there cannot be some forms of sickness which the miracle must lack the power to heal.

God’s Son is perfect, or he cannot be God’s Son. Nor will you know him, if you think he does not merit the escape from guilt in all its consequences and its forms. There is no way to think of him but this, if you would know the truth about yourself.

I thank You, Father, for Your perfect Son,
and in his glory will I see my own.

Here is the joyful statement that there are no forms of evil that can overcome the Will of God; the glad acknowledgment that guilt has not succeeded by your wish to make illusions real. And what is this except a simple statement of the truth?

Look on your brother with this hope in you, and you will understand he could not make an error that could change the truth in him. It is not difficult to overlook mistakes that have been given no effects. (A Course in Miracles, T-30.VI.8:1-10:2. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The ego is the belief that it is possible for separate parts, disconnected from each other, to exist. This is the world we see while we identify with a body as our self. We see it only because we have made illusions seem real through our belief. But illusions cannot have real effects. Healing comes when we welcome the Holy Spirit’s vision that shows us only the oneness of Love is real. This vision makes whole the fragmented parts the ego would show us.

With the Holy Spirit’s teaching, we learn to see past the veil of illusions to the truth in our brother. Through this vision we learn of the truth in ourselves. The Love that we are automatically joins with the Love that is our brother. We shift from the ego’s dedication to division to the Holy Spirit’s conviction that we remain one in the Love that God created us to be.

Today we choose to accept Holy Spirit’s vision and remember our true Self.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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How to Accept a Miracle

Illusions will not last. Their death is sure and this alone is certain in their world. It is the ego’s world because of this. What is the ego? But a dream of what you really are. A thought you are apart from your Creator and a wish to be what He created not.… We name it [the ego] but to help us understand that it is nothing but an ancient thought that what is made has immortality.”

What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something.

The ego’s opposite in every way,—in origin, effect and consequence—we call a miracle.

What is a miracle? A dream as well. But look at all the aspects of this dream and you will never question any more. Look at the kindly world you see extend before you as you walk in gentleness. Look at the helpers all along the way you travel, happy in the certainty of Heaven and the surety of peace. And look an instant, too, on what you left behind at last and finally passed by.

This was the ego — all the cruel hate, the need for vengeance and the cries of pain, the fear of dying and the urge to kill, the brotherless illusion and the self that seemed alone in all the universe. This terrible mistake about yourself the miracle corrects as gently as a loving mother sings her child to rest.

The miracle forgives; the ego damns [judges].… Who chooses hell when it is recognized? And who would not go on a little while when it is given him to understand the way is short and Heaven is his goal? (A Course in Miracles, C-2.1:1-6,10-11;2:1;5:1;7:1-8:2;10:1,5-6)

How do we accept a miracle? By choosing the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of our perceptions. His interpretation overlooks the form to the content of all that we perceive. Illusions have no content. And so the Holy Spirit does not see them, although He recognizes what we believe we see. He offers instead the vision of all that is real — Love and nothing else.

Perceptions we interpret as fearful the Holy Spirit sees as calls for Love and answers them with Love. The ongoing practice of choosing the Holy Spirit as our interpreter of every perception sets us on the path of awakening to the fact that we are in Heaven now. There is nowhere else to be. We free ourselves to be the Self, the Son that God created.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Awakening from Guilt to Love’s Innocence

The ultimate purpose of projection is always to get rid of guilt. Yet, characteristically, the ego attempts to get rid of guilt from its viewpoint only, for much as the ego wants to retain guilt you find it intolerable, since guilt stands in the way of your remembering God, Whose pull is so strong that you cannot resist it. On this issue, then, the deepest split of all occurs, for if you are to retain guilt, as the ego insists, you cannot be you. Only by persuading you that it is you could the ego possibly induce you to project guilt, and thereby keep it in your mind.

Yet consider how strange a solution the ego’s arrangement is. You project guilt to get rid of it, but you are actually merely concealing it. You do experience the guilt, but you have no idea why. On the contrary, you associate it with a weird assortment of “ego ideals,” which the ego claims you have failed. Yet you have no idea that you are failing the Son of God by seeing him as guilty. Believing you are no longer you, you do not realize that you are failing yourself. (A Course in Miracles, T-13.II.1-2. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

When we believe we are a body with a unique identity, we are believing we are not our Self. We have disowned our true Self and chosen instead to believe we are a made up identity. This belief must be carefully defended because if we let it go, it will seem to be our death. This belief has made us unaware of the eternal Self God created one with Him.

Identifying with a separate self image brings with it intense guilt because it believes it has attacked God, our Source. It is this deep-seated guilt that is intolerable. It must be hidden to protect what we believe we are. This is the purpose of projection — to convince ourselves that the guilt is in others, not ourselves. Yet the source of the projection remains in our mind, retaining the guilt by hiding it from our awareness.

The antidote for this cycle of guilt and projection is to offer all our projections to the Holy Spirit for His reinterpretation. With this practice, the Holy Spirit will teach us to recognize the truth of our oneness in Love that has been hidden by the projected guilt. We will learn to see that only Love’s innocence is real.

We are not separate but one Self in the unity of Love. This Self is eternal and cannot die. The “death” of the ego’s substitute self image is simply the recognition that this substitute is not real. It is impossible that our true Self could ever be anything but eternal Love. The release of the false self image awakens us to the memory of our oneness in God.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Learning to Seek Only the Valuable

Each choice you make brings everything to you or nothing. Therefore, if you learn the tests by which you can distinguish everything from nothing, you will make the better choice.

First, if you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is valueless. A temporary value is without all value. Time can never take away a value that is real. What fades and dies was never there, and makes no offering to him who chooses it. He is deceived by nothing in a form he thinks he likes.

Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. We will attempt to reach this state today, with self-deception laid aside, and with an honest willingness to value but the truly valuable and the real. Our two extended practice periods of fifteen minutes each begin with this:

I will not value what is valueless, and only what has value do I seek, for only that do I desire to find. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 133, W-pI.133.5:3-6:5;13. See also ACIM Lesson 133 Insights.)

While we believe that the world we experience through the body is real, our mind is split between conflicting goals. The goal of the part of our mind that believes there is value in separation, the ego, seeks to deceive by making images that seem to confirm separation is real.

The other part of our mind, our true Self, has one goal only — to be and extend Love. This part of our mind remembers our unbreakable connection with our Creator. It knows It needs nothing, for it already has and is eternal Love. Only Love is real. We are in need of nothing else.

To claim the Truth of What we are, we need to stop valuing the valueless constructs of the ego thought system. We need to stop valuing the valueless. When we no longer deceive ourselves into valuing what has no value, it is easy to choose the only thing that has value — to accept God’s gift of all of Himself, His Love, His peace and His joy.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Inviting the Return of the Memory of God

[We] invite the memory of God to come again… in all the seeming happenings throughout the day.

[We say:]

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.

When you are tempted, hasten to proclaim your freedom from temptation, as you say:

This thought I do not want. I choose instead __.

…let Him teach you what to do and say and think, each time you turn to Him. He will not fail to be available to you, each time you call to Him to help you.… [We are] allowing Him to teach us how to go, and trusting Him completely for the way each practice period can best become a loving gift of freedom to the world. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson Review 6, W-pI.rVI.1:4;2:2;3:3-5;6:1-3;7:2-4. See also ACIM Lesson Insights.)

The memory of God is eternally in our mind. It is only our belief in separation that makes His memory unknown to us. The world we see seems to be there only because we believe it offers us something of value — a separate, unique identity we can call our own. The cost of believing in this false identity is lack of Love and the absence of peace and lasting happiness. The body is the central image that seems to make separation real. It stands as a barrier that hides the memory of God.

Learning that we are not a body helps us disconnect from the body as our identity. Without this mistaken identification, the mind is open to the memory of God where our true Self dwells in His love, peace and joy. Without the limitation of a body identity, we are free to be as God created us. The practice of dismissing the ego thoughts of separation and choosing to remember the loving thoughts we think with God sets us free.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Answer to Our Misperceptions

The Holy Spirit teaches you to use what the ego has made, to teach the opposite of what the ego has “learned.”

All abilities should therefore be given over to the Holy Spirit, Who understands how to use them properly. He uses them only for healing, because He knows you only as whole. By healing you learn of wholeness, and by learning of wholeness you learn to remember God.

The ego always seeks to divide and separate. The Holy Spirit always seeks to unify and heal. As you heal you are healed, because the Holy Spirit sees no order of difficulty in healing. Healing is the way to undo the belief in differences, being the only way of perceiving the Sonship as one. This perception is therefore in accord with the laws of God, even in a state of mind that is out of accord with His. The strength of right perception is so great that it brings the mind into accord with His, because it serves His Voice, which is in all of you. (A Course in Miracles, T-7.IV.3:3;4:1-3;5:2-7. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

Giving credence to what the body perceives is the temptation to believe separation is real. The body can only perceive differences. Yet there are no differences in the oneness of God’s Love. Believing in differences makes us unaware of God’s Love and our true Self, which is eternally one with God. We have taught ourselves to believe in the impossible. Because only Love is real, believing differences are real is believing in what could never be true.

The Holy Spirit is God’s Answer to our misperceptions. The Holy Spirit offers a curriculum of Love given Him by our Creator. Through the practice of asking the Holy Spirit to interpret all our perceptions, we learn to recognize that there are no differences. We learn to see past the images of differences made by the ego to the Holy Spirit’s vision of the oneness in Love. These are the lessons that free us from the ego’s dark lessons to awaken to our true Self, eternally at Home in Heaven.

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