Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Accepting Holy Spirit’s Guidance

No one can doubt the ego’s skill in building up false cases. Nor can anyone doubt your willingness to listen until you choose not to accept anything except truth. When you lay the ego aside, it will be gone. The Holy Spirit’s Voice is as loud as your willingness to listen. It cannot be louder without violating your freedom of choice, which the Holy Spirit seeks to restore, never to undermine.

The Holy Spirit teaches you to use your body only to reach your brothers, so He can teach His message through you. This will heal them and therefore heal you. Everything used in accordance with its function as the Holy Spirit sees it cannot be sick. Everything used otherwise is. Do not allow the body to be a mirror of a split mind. Do not let it be an image of your own perception of littleness. Do not let it reflect your decision to attack. Health is seen as the natural state of everything when interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, Who perceives no attack on anything. Health is the result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly. Health is the beginning of the proper perspective on life under the guidance of the one Teacher Who knows what life is, being the Voice for Life Itself. (A Course in Miracles, T-8.VIII.8:4-9:10. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

When we believe we are a body, we are identifying with an image of littleness and limitation. We are identifying with the ego. We need to let go of believing we are this mistaken identity. Healing comes when we accept that we are the one Self God created us to be.

To free ourselves from the limited identity we have accepted, we need to be willing to listen to the Voice of the Holy Spirit. We believe what we perceive is true. The Holy Spirit recognizes what we perceive but does not believe our interpretation of it. Thus He can teach us to reinterpret our perceptions through His vision of the truth. With His help, we will exercise our freedom of choice and choose to accept the eternal Love we were given in our Creation. We will claim Love’s strength as our own and let go of the limited little self-image the ego made.

Today we practice opening our mind to receive the Holy Spirit’s perception throughout the day. We frequently pause and ask the Holy Spirit, “How would you see this situation? What is your interpretation of this perception?” The more we remember to ask these questions and accept His answers, the happier, more loving and peaceful our day will be.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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We Are at Home in the Arms of Love

It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not understand. No one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for truth to him has become what he wants it to be. If you are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help as what it is, it is because you are unwilling to give help and to receive it. To fail to recognize a call for help is to refuse help. Would you maintain that you do not need [help]? Yet this is what you are maintaining when you refuse to recognize a brother’s appeal, for only by answering his appeal can you be helped. Deny him your help and you will not recognize God’s Answer to you. The Holy Spirit does not need your help in interpreting motivation, but you do need His.

Only appreciation is an appropriate response to your brother. Gratitude is due him for both his loving thoughts and his appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing love into your awareness if you perceive them truly. And all your sense of strain comes from your attempts not to do just this. How simple, then, is God’s plan for salvation. There is but one response to reality, for reality evokes no conflict at all. There is but one Teacher of reality, Who understands what it is. He does not change His Mind about reality because reality does not change. Although your interpretations of reality are meaningless in your divided state, His remain consistently true. He gives [His interpretations] to you because they are for you. Do not attempt to “help” a brother in your way, for you cannot help yourself. But hear his call for the Help of God, and you will recognize your own need for the Father. (A Course in Miracles, T-12.I.5-6. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

Under the Holy Spirit’s direction, our experience in the world is a classroom for lessons in awakening to Love. The ego’s purpose for the world is to teach us to deny Love. As long as we subscribe to the ego’s purpose, we will be on a constant search to find Love, peace and happiness. But we will never find them because the ego’s plan is always to direct us to search where they cannot be found.

If we want to be happy and know we are loved, we need to choose the Teacher within Who knows where to find it. His lessons are in front of us in every moment. But it is only by choosing the Holy Spirit as our Guide that we will recognize His lessons that teach us only Love is real. His lessons release us from the pain of feeling lack of Love and return us to awareness that we already are the Love we seek. He is ever ready to show us the opportunities for our own healing in our brothers’ calls for Love. He teaches us that we are at Home now in the Arms of Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Healing by Using the Body to Express Love

The body is in need of no defense. This cannot be too often emphasized. It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it to roles it cannot fill, to purposes beyond its scope, and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish.

The “self” that needs protection is not real. The body, value­less and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be per­ceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over.

Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in [the mind] the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source.

These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond with health when they have been corrected and re­placed with truth. This is the body’s only real defense. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 135, W-pI.135.7:1-3;8:1-2;9;10:1-2. See also ACIM Lesson 135 Insights.)

The body is the manifestation of the ego’s wish to limit the mind to an identity separate from the oneness of Love. The ego needed to build a wall around this separate self to “protect” it from Love. If Love’s oneness were accepted, the ego’s choice to deny Love would be recognized as a meaningless fantasy that could have no effect on the Mind of Love. So the ego’s purpose for the body is to hide from Love.

Perceiving ourselves as lacking Love is painful. It denies What we are. This pain is manifested in the body as vulnerability, sickness, pain, fear and guilt. All this comes with assigning the body the role of protecting a limited self from the unlimited Love of our true Self.

When we accept the Holy Spirit’s purpose for the body, it is used on behalf of extending Love to the world. When we accept that the mind is not limited to the body, we become open to the Holy Spirit’s perception. We welcome His lessons in Love. As we let the Holy Spirit express through the body, the body is healed. It is no longer used to maintain the illusion of a separate self. It is used to bring healing to the world by using it to express the oneness of Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Law That Guarantees Freedom from the Ego

Ideas leave not their source. The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its central­ity in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God.

The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist, because it has no source. For mind creates all things that are, and cannot give them attributes it lacks, nor change its own eternal, mindful state. It cannot make the physical. What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep.

What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 167, W-pI.167.3:6-11;6;9. See also ACIM Lesson 167 Insights.)

In the dreams we experience while the body sleeps, we are unaware of the world we experience when the body is awake. But the body itself is just an image in another dream of time and space, separate from the eternal reality of Love’s oneness.

The images of the world seem so vivid and solid that we believe they are real. This is the ego’s slight of hand to convince us that separation is real. But the ego itself is only a thought of being separate. All the ego’s thoughts remain part of the thought system of separation, because thoughts cannot leave their source nor have attributes different from their source.

This is good news. It means that the ego’s illusionary thoughts have no effect whatsoever on the Thought of God that created our true Self. Our true Self shares all the attributes of God because this Thought has not left Its Source. This guarantees that we remain forever united with the peace, joy and Love of God.

The purpose of the Course is to teach us that we are not the ego and do not truly want to identify with it. No matter how wild the ego’s dreams may seem, we still remain as Love created us.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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How to Bring Peace to the World

When you have looked upon your brother with complete forgiveness, from which no error is excluded and nothing kept hidden, what mistake can there be anywhere you cannot overlook? What form of suffering could block your sight, preventing you from seeing past it? And what illusion could there be you will not recognize as a mistake; a shadow through which you walk completely undismayed? God would let nothing interfere with those whose wills are His, and they will recognize their wills are His, because they serve His Will. And serve it willingly. And could remembrance of what they are be long delayed?

You will see your value through your brother’s eyes, and each one is released as he beholds his savior in place of the attacker who he thought was there. Through this releasing is the world released. This is your part in bringing peace. (A Course in Miracles, T-22.VI.7:1-8:3. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

Complete forgiveness brings peace to the world. This is why forgiveness is our only function. Judgment always brings conflict with it because it is based on the belief in being separate. Conflict is impossible in what is one and the same throughout. There are no differences in God nor His Son, Who remains forever one with Him.

For forgiveness to be complete, we must relinquish all our judgments to the Holy Spirit. He will judge truly on our behalf. The Holy Spirit’s judgment sees all things as real or unreal, Love or a call for Love. There is no other choice. From our perspective as a separate identity, our judgments are based on the false premise that separation is real. These judgments will always be wrong because they are based on a lie.

Today we do our part to bring peace to the world by putting Holy Spirit in charge of all our interpretations. Thus we will recognize illusions for what they are and look past them. We will learn to recognize Love and calls for Love. With this clear vision, we will be messengers of Love and peace in the world.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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How to Learn That We Are Only Love

…to teach is to learn, so that teacher and learner are the same. It also emphasizes that teaching is a constant process; it goes on every moment of the day, and continues into sleeping thoughts as well.

To teach is to demonstrate. There are only two thought systems, and you demonstrate [teach] that you believe one or the other is true all the time. From your demonstration others learn, and so do you. The question is not whether you will teach, for in that there is no choice. …You cannot give to someone else, but only to yourself, and this you learn through teaching. Teaching is but a call to witnesses to attest to what you believe. …Any situation must be to you a chance to teach others what you are, and what they are to you. No more than that, but also never less.

It is the teaching underlying what you say that teaches you. Teaching but reinforces what you believe about yourself. Its fundamental purpose is to diminish self-doubt. This does not mean that the self you are trying to protect is real. But it does mean that the self you think is real is what you teach. (A Course in Miracles, M-in.1:5-6;2:1-4,6-7,10-11;3:6-10)

In every moment, we teach (demonstrate) what we believe is true. When we are disturbed by a situation or the actions of someone, we teach ourselves that we are vulnerable and separate. This is because we are believing in a false identity that is separate and alone, at the mercy of outside forces beyond our control. This is the condition of everyone in the world while they believe they are a body with a separate identity.

The Course is teaching us that we are not separate; we are not a body. This is the thought reversal that will free us from the world of fear and guilt. Only bodies seem to hurt or be harmed. As we disconnect our identity from the body and accept our one Self, we free ourselves from fear and guilt. Our true Self is Love and nothing else. Because Love is one, it cannot harm or be harmed. It shares the eternal innocence of our Creator.

Today we ask the Holy Spirit to guide our thoughts that we may teach only Love and learn that we are only Love.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Healing Through Seeing Truly

You cannot forget the Father because I am with you, and I cannot forget Him. To forget me is to forget yourself and Him Who created you. Our brothers are forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of me and of Him Who created me. Through this remembrance, you can change their minds about themselves, as I can change yours. Your mind is so powerful a light that you can look into [their minds] and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours. … want to share my mind with you because we are of one Mind, and that Mind is ours. See only this Mind everywhere, because only this is everywhere and in everything. It is everything because it encompasses all things within itself. Blessed are you who perceive only this, because you perceive only what is true.

Come therefore unto me, and learn of the truth in you. The mind we share is shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly they will be healed. Let your mind shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them make them aware of the light in them. This light will shine back upon you and on the whole Sonship, because this is your proper gift to God. He will accept it and give it to the Sonship, because it is acceptable to Him and therefore to His Sons. This is true communion with the Holy Spirit, Who sees the altar of God in everyone, and by bringing it to your appreciation, He calls upon you to love God and His creation. You can appreciate the Sonship only as one. This is part of the law of creation, and therefore governs all thought. (A Course in Miracles, T-7.V.10:1-6,9-12;11. See also ACIM Text Made Simple.)

When we remember that only Love is real, we see only Love. There is nothing else to see. The singular purpose of our life is to remember and see only Love. This dispels the ego’s denial of Love.

While we identify with a separate self image, we need help to let go of thoughts of separation. This Help is eternally with us in our mind. It is both the Voice for God and the Voice for our one Self, for this Self and God are one. The more we practice paying attention to this Voice, the ego’s voice recedes more and more into the background. The ego’s voice seems loud only because of our allegiance to it.

If we want to find peace and happiness, we must redirect our allegiance to the Voice of our one Self. This is what it means to be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. Our allegiance to the oneness of Love welcomes Its Light and shines away the dark thoughts of the ego which fade into the nothingness from which they came.

Let us join together in declaring our allegiance to the Voice of Love that we may remember only Love is real.

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