Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Accepting Holy Spirit’s Plan for Our Happiness

Your present trust in [the Holy Spirit] is the defense that promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy that constantly increases, as this life becomes a holy instant, set in time, but heeding only immortality. Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that only your defenses would conceal.

Without defenses, you become a light which Heaven gratefully acknowledges to be its own. And it will lead you on in ways appointed for your happiness according to the ancient plan, begun when time was born.

We will be sure that everything we need is given us for our accomplishment of this today. We make no plans for how it will be done, but realize that our defenselessness is all that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty.

For you can not conceive of all the happiness that comes to you without your [self-initiated plans]. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 135,W-pI.135.19;20:1-2;26:2. See also ACIM Lesson 135 Insights.)

When we try to make plans on our own, we call upon our experience and learning from the past as a guide to make plans that will help us have a happy and safe future. It is based on the idea that the past will repeat itself. It leaves no room for the present, which is where our true Self resides in the peace of God. Thus our self-initiated plans block us from receiving God’s gift of joy and Love that is eternally present now. These self-initiated plans are defenses against the Truth.

But we have a Guide Whose function is to lead us to the certainty of changeless Love and joy beyond description in the world. His purpose is to use our dreams for the purpose of healing the part of our mind that believes in a self separated from Love’s oneness. The Holy Spirit recognizes the illusions we believe are real but knows they are not true. He uses the illusions we believe in for the purpose of healing our mind instead of the ego’s purpose to hide from Love.

In the dream of time, plans are needed. But if we would free ourselves from the limitations of the dream, we must hold our minds open to the Holy Spirit’s plans in each moment. The more we practice asking for and accepting Holy Spirit’s plan day by day, the happier our life in the world is. We are led lovingly to remember our true Self, which is eternally present in the Heaven of God’s Love.

Today we practice pausing to receive Holy Spirit’s inspiration that we would remember the certainty of Heaven is ours.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Reclaiming Our Immortality in God

It is essential for your progress in this course that you accept today’s idea [I am not a body. I am free], and hold it very dear. Be not concerned that to the ego it is quite insane. The ego holds the body dear because it dwells in it, and lives united with the home that it has made. [The body] is a part of the illusion that has sheltered [the ego] from being found illusory itself.

The Holy Spirit is the home of minds that seek for freedom. In Him they have found what they have sought. The body’s purpose now is unambiguous. …Without the power to enslave, [the body] is a worthy servant of the freedom which the mind within the Holy Spirit seeks.

You are God’s Son. In immortality you live forever. Would you not return your mind to this? Then practice well the thought the Holy Spirit gives you for today. Your brothers stand released with you in it; the world is blessed along with you, God’s Son will weep no more, and Heaven offers thanks for the increase of joy your practice brings even to it. And God Himself extends His Love and happiness each time you say:

I am not a body. I am free.
I hear the Voice that God has given me,
and it is only this my mind obeys. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 199,W-pI.199.3;6:1-3,6;8. See also ACIM Lesson 199 Insights.)

The immortality of God’s Love is already our true Identity as His Son. But by identifying with the ego, we have chosen to deny the Love that is our true Identity. The ego made the body as a substitute identity to imprison our mind in a dream that makes separation, limitation and lack of love seem real. It seems to achieve this purpose only because we believe in it.

The practice of today’s idea helps us disengage from our belief in the ego as our identity and focus on our true Identity in the Mind of Love. We are reclaiming our immortality in God.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Distinguishing the Unreal from the Real

Appearances deceive, but can be changed. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all, and if you fail to see beyond appearances you are deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and capable of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that makes it real, and keeps it separate from all appearances. [Reality] must transcend all form to be itself. It cannot change.

Your brother has a changelessness in him beyond appearance and deception, both. [Changelessness] is obscured by changing views of him that you perceive as his reality. The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health, his perfect freedom from all forms of lack, and safety from disaster of all kinds. The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be changed.

What is temptation but a wish to make illusions real? …Temptation, then, is nothing more than this; a prayer the miracle touch not some dreams, but keep their unreality obscure and give to them reality instead. (A Course in Miracles, T-30.VIII.1;2:3-6;4:1,4. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

Only the oneness of God’s Love is changeless. Thus only Love is real. The forms in dreams of separation are simply temptations to perceive the forms as real and not look past appearances to the changelessness of Love.

We have a simple test to discern the real from the unreal. If something can change, it is not real. Looked at honestly, the entire physical universe seen in the dream cannot be real because it is constantly changing. Today we practice distinguishing the unreal from the Real.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Remembering Our Perfect Safety in God

Today’s idea, [God is the Mind with which I think] holds the key to what your real thoughts are. They are nothing that you think you think, just as nothing that you think you see is related to vision in any way. There is no relationship between what is real and what you think is real. Nothing that you think are your real thoughts resemble your real thoughts in any respect. Nothing that you think you see bears any resemblance to what vision will show you.

You think with the Mind of God.… As you are part of His Mind, so are your [real] thoughts part of His Mind.

We will not let the thoughts of the world hold us back. We will not let the beliefs of the world tell us that what God would have us do is impossible. Instead, we will try to recognize that only what God would have us do is possible.

We will also try to understand that only what God would have us do is what we want to do. And we will also try to remember that we cannot fail in doing what He would have us do. There is every reason to feel confident that we will succeed today. It is the Will of God.

…tell yourself gently:

My real thoughts are in my mind. I would like to find them.

Under all the senseless thoughts and mad ideas with which you have cluttered up your mind are the [real] thoughts that you thought with God in the beginning. They are there in your mind now, completely unchanged. They will always be in your mind, exactly as they always were.

Here is your mind joined with the Mind of God. Here are your thoughts one with His. …this is no idle game, but an exercise in holiness and an attempt to reach the Kingdom of Heaven. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 45,W-pI.45.1;2:1,8;4:4-6;5;6:3-4;7:1-3;8:2,8. See also ACIM Lesson 45 Insights.)

We are not the ego. But when we believe the ego is our identity, we believe the ego’s illusions are our real thoughts. Identification with the ego brings with it the entire world of separation. The ego’s “senseless thoughts and mad ideas” hide the real thoughts we share with God. We really want to find the real thoughts we share with God because we want to remember that we are perfectly safe and at Home in the Love of God.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Shifting from an Unholy to a Holy Relationship

The holy relationship is the expression of the holy instant in living in this world.

The holy relationship, a major step toward the perception of the real world, is learned. It is the old, unholy relationship, transformed and seen anew. The holy relationship is a phenomenal teaching accomplishment. In all its aspects, as it begins, develops and becomes accomplished, it represents the reversal of the unholy relationship.

You have received the holy instant, but you may have established a condition in which you cannot use it. As a result, you do not realize that [the holy instant] is with you still. And by cutting yourself off from its expression, you have denied yourself its benefit. You reinforce this every time you attack your brother, for the attack must blind you to yourself. And it is impossible to deny yourself, and to recognize what has been given and received by you.

You and your brother stand together in the holy presence of truth itself. Here is the goal, together with you. Think you not the goal itself will gladly arrange the means for its accomplishment? (A Course in Miracles, T-17.V.1:1;2:1-4;13:1-14:3. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

The holy instant is a moment in which we have accepted the Holy Spirit’s vision of oneness. We have been willing, if only for an instant, to set aside our judgments and our insistence in maintaining separation. Though we may return to identifying with a separate identity in the dream of separation, the experience of the holy instant remains with us. The memory of this experience fades as we again become engrossed in the dream.

The application of the experience of the holy instant to an unholy relationship shifts it to the goal of holiness, oneness. This is a complete reversal of the goal of the unholy relationship. The relationship as it is no longer meets this goal of holiness.

Yet under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, this relationship newly dedicated to holiness is now a classroom to practice recognizing our unity with our brother instead of seeing our brother as different and even an adversary. The Holy Spirit uses this classroom to help us break the habit of believing in separation. He teaches us to see the truth of holiness in our brother and let go of our judgments that separate us.

Gratitude for the truth in our brother grows stronger as we recognize more and more that our brother is one with us in God’s Love. Today let us choose to accept the Holy Spirit’s help to look upon the loving Truth in our brother.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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We Share One Identity

You live by symbols. You have made up names for everything you see. Each one becomes a separate entity, identified by its own name. By this you carve it out of unity. By this you designate its special attributes, and set it off from other things by emphasizing space surrounding it. This space you lay between all things to which you give a different name; all happenings in terms of place and time; all bodies which are greeted by a name.

This space you see as setting off all things from one another is the means by which the world’s perception is achieved. You see something where nothing is, and see as well nothing where there is unity; a space between all things, between all things and you. Thus do you think that you have given life in separation. By this split you think you are established as a unity which functions with an independent will.

Use all the little names and symbols which delineate the world of darkness. Yet accept them not as your reality. The Holy Spirit uses all of them, but He does not forget creation has one Name [Identity], one meaning, and a single Source which unifies all things within Itself. Use all the names the world bestows on them [only] for convenience, yet do not forget they share the Name [Identity] of God along with you. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 184,W-pI.184.1-2;11. See also ACIM Lesson 184 Insights.)

Symbols represent a thing but are not the thing itself. For example, the word “pencil” symbolizes a thing we use to write with. But the word is not the thing. The world of separation we see shows us myriad forms. There are so many forms that we need to spend many years in school learning the names (symbols) for these forms so we can communicate with others who have learned these same symbols.

Yet these names seem to give meaning to forms that are only illusions. An illusion is unreal. But by naming the form we think it has meaning. This is the great deception of the ego thought system. It is self-deception because we have taught ourselves to believe that the names we give the forms make the forms real.

To free ourselves from the limitations of belief in separation, we need to learn that the forms are meaningless. We have been given the Holy Spirit as our inner Teacher to bring us God’s lessons in freedom. As we let the Holy Spirit guide us, we will learn to use the symbols of the world for communication while remembering symbols are not real. Our one Reality lies in our unity with our Creator. We are all united in the oneness of Love.

Today we hold our mind open to the Holy Spirit’s vision that helps us recognize the reality of Love beyond the symbols of the world.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Finding Certainty Now

There is a way of finding certainty right here and now. Refuse to be a part of fearful dreams whatever form they take, for you will lose identity in them. You find yourself by not accepting [dreams] as causing you, and giving you effects. You stand apart from them, but not apart from him who dreams them. Thus you separate the dreamer from the dream, and join in one, but let the other go. The dream is but illusion in the mind. And with the [right] mind you would unite, but never with the dream. It is the dream you fear, and not the mind. You see [the mind and dream] as the same, because you think that you are but a dream. And what is real and what is but illusion in yourself you do not know and cannot tell apart.

Like you, your brother thinks he is a dream. Share not in his illusion of himself, for your Identity depends on his reality. Think, rather, of him as a mind in which illusions still persist, but as a mind which brother is to you. …Your mind and his are joined in brotherhood [oneness]. His body and his dreams but seem to make a little gap, where [your dreams] have joined with his.

And yet, between your minds there is no gap. …Therefore release him, merely by your claim on brotherhood [oneness], and not on dreams of fear. Let him acknowledge who he is, by not supporting his illusions by your faith, for if you do, you will have faith in [your illusions]. With faith in yours, he will not be released, and you are kept in bondage to his dreams.”

…if you see there is no truth in [your dreams], his dreams will go, and he will understand what made the dream.

The Holy Spirit is in both your minds, and He is One because there is no gap that separates His Oneness from Itself. The gap between your bodies matters not, for what is joined in Him is always one. (A Course in Miracles, T-28.IV.2:1-3:3;3:6-4:1;4:3-5;6:6-7:20. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

There can be no certainty in illusions, for they have no meaning in truth. We need to learn that the images we see in the dream of a world of separation are not real. The certainty behind the constantly changing images is the eternal Love of God. His changeless Love is in every brother as it is in us. It is This that is the one Self that God created as His Son.

Here is the certainty of changeless, eternal Love. We find this certainty by letting go of our faith in dreams of fear and separation. The Holy Spirit in our minds is our Guide for learning to distinguish between dreams and the Reality of Love’s oneness. In every moment of every day we make the choice between faith in dreams and accepting the Holy Spirit’s confidence in the certainty of Love.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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