Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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The Antidote for Fear and Guilt

[“I am spirit”] identifies you with your one Self. It accepts no split identity, nor tries to weave opposing factors into unity. It simply states the truth. Practice this truth today as often as you can, for it will bring your mind from conflict to the quiet fields of peace.

You are the spirit lovingly endowed with all your Father’s Love and peace and joy. You are the spirit which completes Himself, and shares His function as Creator. He is with you always, as you are with Him.

He will offer all His strength to every little effort that you make. Give Him the minutes which He needs today, to help you understand with Him you are the spirit that abides in Him, and that calls through His Voice to every living thing; offers His sight to everyone who asks; replaces error with the simple truth.

He will speak to you, reminding you that you are spirit, one with Him and God, your brothers and your Self. Listen for His assurance every time you speak the words [“I am spirit”] He offers you today, and let Him tell your mind that they are true. Use them against temptation, and escape its sorry consequences if you yield to the belief that you are something else. The Holy Spirit gives you peace today. Receive His words, and offer them to Him. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 97, W-pI.97.1:1-4;2:2-4;4:3-4;8:2-5. See also ACIM Lesson 97 Insights.)

Peace comes from accepting the fact that we are Spirit. Spirit is one. There is no conflict in this oneness, for as Spirit, we are united with our Creator.

All conflict, fear and guilt come from believing we are something other than Spirit. Reminding ourselves that we are Spirit is the antidote for the ego’s false belief that we are limited to a body, separate and alone, vulnerable to opposing forces that can hurt or destroy. As we accept that we are Spirit, we are released from identifying with limitation. The reality that we are eternally Love in the Mind of Love supplants the illusion of lovelessness that the ego has made.

As we look at another and affirm in our mind “You are Spirit,” we are teaching ourselves that we are Spirit. It is in the acceptance of this fact that we remember our true Self. We remember that we are at Home in Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Claiming Love’s Blessing by Giving It

When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an opportunity to bless him. His need is yours. You need the blessing you can offer him. There is no way for you to have it except by giving [the blessing]. This is the law of God, and it has no exceptions. What you deny you lack, not because it is lacking, but because you have denied it in another and are therefore not aware of it in yourself. Every response you make is determined by what you think you are, and what you want to be is what you think you are. What you want to be, then, must determine every response you make.

You do not need God’s blessing because that you have forever, but you do need yours. The ego’s picture of you is deprived, unloving and vulnerable. You cannot love this. Yet you can very easily escape from this image by leaving it behind. You are not there and [the ego’s picture] is not you. Do not see this picture in anyone, or you have accepted it as you. All illusions about the Sonship are dispelled together as they were made together. Teach no one that he is what you would not want to be. Your brother is the mirror in which you see the image of yourself as long as perception lasts. And perception will last until the Sonship knows itself as whole. You made perception and it must last as long as you want it. (A Course in Miracles, T-7.VII.2-3. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

We cannot want specialness, to have something for ourselves alone, without perceiving ourselves as deprived, unloving and vulnerable. To have something only for ourselves, we must deny it from everyone else. This is a denial of the oneness of God’s Love which is given equally to all. This denial makes us unaware of the limitless Love we already have.

We bless a brother be seeing past the ego’s picture of him to recognize the Love he is beyond the image of a separate individual. This recognition comes as we accept the oneness of God’s Love in ourselves. The blessing of Love we give a brother comes from our acceptance of the Love in ourselves.

If we find it hard to extend Love’s blessing to another, it is because we are cherishing an image of ourselves that sets us apart from others. We can let this false image go by offering our perception of an image of a separate brother to the Holy Spirit. He will help us see past the false image to the reality of the Love that is our brother along with us.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Being the Love We Were Created to Be

Little children recognize that they do not understand what they perceive, and so they ask what it means. Do not make the mistake of believing that you understand what you perceive, for its meaning is lost to you. Yet the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning for you, and if you will let Him interpret it, He will restore to you what you have thrown away. Yet while you think you know its meaning, you will see no need to ask it of Him.

You do not know the meaning of anything you perceive. Not one thought you hold is wholly true. The recognition of this is your firm beginning. You are not misguided; you have accepted no guide at all. Instruction in perception is your great need, for you understand nothing. Recognize this but do not accept it, for understanding is your inheritance. Perceptions are learned, and you are not without a Teacher. Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your willingness to question everything you learned of yourself, for you who learned amiss should not be your own teacher. (A Course in Miracles, T-11.VIII.2:2-3:8. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The forms we see through the body’s eyes have no meaning of their own. What we perceive is simply a projection of our beliefs reflected back to us to make the world seem real. We interpret what we perceive based on what we have taught ourselves in the past. But what we learned is only a self-deception. What deceives cannot be real. Only truth does not deceive. Only truth is real.

Meaning, then, does not come from the forms we perceive but from the meaning we assign to them through our interpretation. If we want to free ourselves from the limitations of the world, the fear, guilt and lack of Love, we need to stop interpreting anything on our own. Our own interpretations will always be mistaken because they are based on self-deceptions.

God has given us a Teacher of truth Who does not deceive. The practice of bringing all our interpretation to our inner Teacher for reinterpretation will teach us to see beyond the empty shells of form to the eternal presence of Love. We will learn to see that only Love is real. The forms will fade in importance. The desire of our true Self to see and teach only Love will take priority. This priority will set us free to be the Love we were created to be.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Finding Heaven’s Open Door

Think not that you can set a goal unlike God’s purpose for you, and establish it as changeless and eternal. You can give yourself a purpose that you do not have. But you can not remove the power to change your mind, and see another purpose there.

Change is the greatest gift God gave to all that you would make eternal, to ensure that only Heaven would not pass away. You were not born to die. You cannot change, because your function has been fixed by God. All other goals are set in time and change that time might be preserved, excepting one. Forgiveness does not aim at keeping time, but at its ending, when it has no use. Its purpose ended, [time] is gone. And where it once held seeming sway is now restored the function God established for His Son in full awareness. Time can set no end to its fulfillment nor its changelessness. There is no death because the living share the function their Creator gave to them. Life’s function cannot be to die. It must be life’s extension, that it be as one forever and forever, without end.

How lovely is the world whose purpose is forgiveness of God’s Son! How free from fear, how filled with blessing and with happiness! And what a joyous thing it is to dwell a little while in such a happy place! Nor can it be forgot, in such a world, it is a little while till timelessness comes quietly to take the place of time. (A Course in Miracles, T-29.VI.3:4-4:11;6. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

Nothing is permanent in the ego’s dream of separation and death because nothing in the dream is true. God’s grace did not permit belief in lies to be permanent. God’s gift of change kept Heaven’s door open in our mind to welcome our return the moment we are willing to forgive the belief in separation. Forgiveness is the means to let go of barriers we have made against awareness of Love’s eternal presence.

The Holy Spirit offers us the gift of forgiveness in every moment. We need only welcome the gift by offering our perceptions to the Him for His kind and gentle correction. Forgiveness reveals Love’s innocence beyond the images of fear and guilt that we have believed were true. With the Holy Spirit’s help, we can exchange the changeable belief for the certainty of God’s changeless Love. This is our function. It is the only meaningful purpose in the world. This purpose leads us to the open door of Heaven where Love welcomes us Home.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Disown Falsity to Accept Eternal Love

I have disowned the truth. Now let me be as faithful in disowning falsity. Whatever suffers is not part of me. What grieves is not myself. What is in pain is but illusion in my mind. What dies was never living in reality, and did but mock the truth about myself. Now I disown self-concepts and deceits and lies about the holy Son of God. Now am I ready to accept [the Son of God] back as God created him, and as he is.

Father, my ancient love for You returns, and lets me love Your Son again as well. Father, I am as You created me. Now is Your Love remembered, and my own. Now do I understand that they are one. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 248, W-pII.248. See also ACIM Lesson 248 Insights.)

Grief, fear and guilt are the inevitable effect of believing we have lost the innocence and changelessness of the Love we are. We were created by Love as Love and remain eternally in the changeless Mind of Love. In changelessness is perfect peace. This is our natural state.

If we seem to suffer, experience loss or feel vulnerable to attack, we have disowned the Love we are. We have claimed a separate identity as our own. This identity is not real. But we will experience it as real because of our belief in it. These negative emotions signal that we need to heal our mind of the false belief that denies the truth of What we are.

We have been given a Healer in our mind Who is ever ready to bring us the vision of the Self Love created, perfectly safe in Its strength and changelessness. Today we choose to accept this Help, for we would suffer no longer. We want the peace of God. We accept the Help we have been given to find our way Home to Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Replacing Hate and Fear with Love

There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent. There is nothing to be feared. There is no way in which a gap could be conceived of in the Wholeness that is His. The compromise the least and littlest gap would represent in His eternal love is quite impossible. For [a gap] would mean His Love could harbor just a hint of hate, His gentleness turn sometimes to attack, and His eternal patience sometimes fail. All this do you believe, when you perceive a gap between your brother and yourself.

The gap between you and your brother is not one of space between two separate bodies. And this but seems to be dividing off your separate minds.

There is a wariness that is aroused by learning that the body is not real. And there are overtones of seeming fear around the happy message, “God is Love.”

Yet all that happens when the gap is gone is peace eternal. Nothing more than that, and nothing less. Without the fear of God, what could induce you to abandon Him? What toys or trinkets in the gap could serve to hold you back an instant from His Love? Would you allow the body to say “no” to Heaven’s calling, were you not afraid to find a loss of self in finding God? Yet can your self be lost by being found? (A Course in Miracles, T-29.I.1:1-6;4:1-2;8:6-9:5. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

Separation, especially a mind with private thoughts it shares with no one, is essential to the ego. The body was made by the ego as a shield to protect the private mind. In the ego’s dream, bodies can meet while still protecting the private thoughts of separate minds.

The free flow of Love within the unity of Love’s oneness shared with all that is seems to be blocked by the body. The body seems to firmly protect belief in the gap that separates us one from another and from God. Our allegiance to the ego and the body sacrifices the eternal Love that is God’s gift to His Creation. In this dream Love is replaced by hate and fear. Yet this dream has no effect on our true Self, Which remains eternally linked with changeless Love.

Our identification with a separate identity makes us afraid of accepting Love wholeheartedly. The ego tells us this would be a sacrifice. In truth it is the ego that demands sacrifice of our true Identity. It demands sacrifice of Love. When we accept that we are Love and nothing else, the idea of sacrifice is dispelled. Our brother becomes our dearest Friend, for we share one Self, united in God’s Love.

Today we ask the Holy Spirit’s help to overlook the ego’s interference with the changeless flow of Love and remember the one Mind we share in God.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Christ in You Sees Only Truth

The Christ in you is very still. He looks on what He loves, and knows it as Himself. And thus does He rejoice at what He sees, because He knows that it is one with Him and with His Father. Specialness, too, takes joy in what it sees, although it is not true. Yet what you seek for is a source of joy as you conceive it. What you wish is true for you. Nor is it possible that you can wish for something and lack faith that it is so. Wishing makes real, as surely as does will create. The power of a wish upholds illusions as strongly as does love extend itself. Except that one deludes; the other heals.

There is no dream of specialness, however hidden or disguised the form, however lovely it may seem to be, however much it delicately offers the hope of peace and the escape from pain, in which you suffer not your condemnation. In dreams effect and cause are interchanged, for here the maker of the dream believes that what he made is happening to him.

Where could your peace arise but from forgiveness? The Christ in you looks only on the truth, and sees no condemnation that could need forgiveness. He is at peace because He sees no sin. Identify with Him, and what has He that you have not? He is your eyes, your ears, your hands, your feet. How gentle are the sights He sees, the sounds He hears. How beautiful His hand that holds His brother’s, and how lovingly He walks beside him, showing him what can be seen and heard, and where he will see nothing and there is no sound to hear. (A Course in Miracles, T-24.V.1:1-2:2;3. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

What do I really want? We answer this question in every moment. If we want a special identity, different from anyone else, we will seem to have it, but only in dreams. Only the oneness of Love is real. Love gives equally to all. When we choose specialness, we blind ourselves to Love’s oneness. Separation and oneness cannot co-exist.

The dream of specialness is fraught with conflict because it is maintained through condemnation. Seeing anyone or anything as different condemns them to the dream of lovelessness along with ourselves. We cannot find peace in this dream.

Peace comes through forgiving the wish for specialness. Forgiveness opens our mind to the vision of Christ, our true Self. He is the Self that remembers our unbreakable unity with our Creator. This Self sees everyone as one with us. There is no conflict nor condemnation in Love.

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