Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Teach Only Love

Holy Spirit through Robert:  As you go through your day, hold the focus that everyone you meet is your brother, your family. Join with the Love in them. As you join in the Love that you are, you remember your Self. Each one you meet reminds you of your Self. This is how you teach only Love. This is how you welcome Love. This is how you know you are Love. If you see anything in a brother other than Love, you are seeing a false image.

As you practice welcoming your brothers, whether it seems like someone you have never met in the world or a long time friend, you are welcoming your Self and you are welcoming God for They are one and the same. This practice is what time is for. It is a practice of happiness and peace, for there is no greater joy than remembering What you are. In the acceptance of your oneness in Love is the full release from all conflict and the experience of abiding peace.

Welcome your brother today and be happy.

Holy Spirit through Mary:  You are Love now. Love is not off in the future because there is no future in truth. There is only now and in the present moment is where you find your Source, the Love that you still are.

You are only Love now. As you open to your true Self, this is what you learn. As you are willing to let go of the false ideas that you could ever be something other than Love right now, you are gently brought to the awareness of the truth.

You are only Love right now and Love sees that only Love is real. Now is the time to accept the truth. Now is the time to accept Reality. You can do it. Just be willing to forgive, or let go of what was never real. Practice letting go today. Practice true forgiveness today.

You are of the Father and so is everyone you see or even think of. You can loose the world from what you thought it was. You can free yourself from the prison house of illusions of separation. Trust in your true Self to return you to the truth. Let go and let yourself be carried to the truth.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Strengthen Your Mindfulness and Practice Stepping Back

Robert: We have gotten to the finishing details for the renovation of the house. But there still appears to be much to be done to prepare the other buildings and clear out unneeded stuff. Sometimes I see my mind flooded with questions. I recognize this as the ego’s attempts to take over and run the show. The ego’s approach is always complicated and difficult, but it need not be. I ask for Holy Spirit’s help to guide my mind in every moment.

Holy Spirit through Robert: This is an opportunity to strengthen your mindfulness and practice stepping back. Pay attention to the thoughts in your mind to discern if they are thoughts that bring you peace or confusion, certainty or uncertainty. When you recognize the thoughts in your mind are not peaceful, step back and remind yourself that these are not your thoughts. You do not need to believe them or value them. They just represent the ego thought system of separation.

Do not attempt to stop the thoughts but do step back and as you recognize them, offer them to Me. Open your mind to My perception. I will show you the thoughts that need your attention in the present moment and show you which thoughts to disregard as meaningless. You have made it clear overall that your desire is to serve My plan of awakening. You have accepted that part of that plan is moving to Florida. You do not question that. You can learn to have that same certainty with the seemingly little questions and doubts that pass through your mind. There is no order of difficulty.

When you experience uncertainty, it is because you are reserving some decisions for yourself alone. I am never uncertain. You can know my certainty by stepping back and letting go of trying to hold some areas for you alone to rule. One of the ways that you confuse yourself is through trying to plan ahead and make decisions for the future when its not time to make those decisions. Trust that your future is safely in My hands.

I want only perfect happiness and perfect peace for you. That is the future I have prepared for you. Let the future rest in Me. It may help you when a question arises to ask Me, “Does this question need to be answered now? Does this need to be decided now?” You will find that much of your uncertainty will disappear, for the questions that pass through your mind are ego diversions that shift your attention away from the present moment. The more you practice letting Me participate in all your decisions, the simpler your life will be. Rest in Me and I will carry you gently Home.

Holy Spirit through Mary:  One thing that can help you during this time of transition is to remember that everything you see through the body’s eyes is an illusion. All the separate things you see are but images that come from the ego thought system, which is based on the belief in separation.

Think of yourself as pure, formless Spirit looking through a virtual reality suit, seeing what is not really there. This will help you not take the world so seriously. This will help you detach enough to hear My Voice and feel My peace.

As you open your mind to Me more and more, you will trust that everything is all right, no matter what the images in the illusory dream story show you. You are still Spirit, perfectly safe in the Mind of God and have never left. God’s one perfect Son cannot be harmed in truth. Truth is true and nothing else is true.

Practice giving all your thoughts to Me. Let Me wash them clean. Let Me show you what is truly helpful in your process of waking up from the dream. Let Me be your constant companion all through the day. Let Me take all your worries and concerns. Let Me give your mind a rest. Place your trust in Me instead of the world. Let Me do My job through you. Be open and listen.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Reverse the Thinking of the World Entirely

Robert:  Today we read the section on faithfulness in the Manual for Teachers. What stood out to me was, “To give up all problems to one Answer is to reverse the thinking of the world entirely.” This is the ultimate goal of awakening. It is why diligent mindfulness is an essential practice to be aware of when I am attempting to solve problems on my own and make the world the way I think it should be.

Thinking I am on my own is the root problem. It plays out in myriad ways in my life experience. Mistakes happen. Things seem to get lost or misplaced. All these kinds of experiences are just outer manifestations or effects of an inner decision to believe I am alone and on my own. The moment I am willing to accept my Self and What I am, all these effects will disappear. In oneness nothing can be misplaced. Nothing can be lost. There can be no harm because there is no other to harm or cause harm.

Clearly this is not what I experience in this dream I call my life. But the assurance is there that I can have this experience. I just need to be willing to give up the wish to be on my own. So the Course is patiently bringing to my attention the things that show I am indeed wishing to be on my own. It seemed that being on my own would be interesting and intriguing and fun. I could be the master of my universe and play God. But believing I am separate from God means I am separate from all power. So it becomes like a 90 pound weakling trying to battle against the world that seems to be outside. The result is a lot of frustration, fear and pain.

The Course is helping me see that this is the effect of wishing to be separate and alone. It is helping me stop deceiving myself that there is any value in being on my own and alone. Gradually I am more and more willing to bring problems to the one Answer. The fact that I still experience the effects of separation thinking shows that I still have areas in my thoughts that I reserve for myself alone. But that’s okay. I am learning and I am teachable.

The Holy Spirit has complete trust that I will let go of my wish to be separate. And as it said in the section on Patience in the Manual for Teachers, “Patience is natural for those who trust.” So I have gratitude for when I have been willing to give a problem to the Holy Spirit for Him to solve and I am willing to practice doing it more. The goal of Heaven is worth the effort.

Holy Spirit through Mary:  Sometimes you trip yourself up by trying too hard. You get into a place of efforting and pushing. When you notice that occurring, practice stepping back. Practice joining with Me. Let go of what you think you know about whatever you are doing or thinking. Move into a place of letting go and letting God. Just stop. Take a deep breath and leave a clear and open space in your mind for God’s peace to enter. Let your mind soak in this peace. Let it wash that which is not helpful away. Let it clean the dark places of your mind. Let peace do its healing work. Give your mind a rest. Surrender to mind healing. Let the inner Comforter bring you to a place of clarity and understanding. In this state of mind, what is needed in the moment will show up in your mind. Peace and understanding go together and are never found alone.

With every “problem” that shows up in your life, practice this stepping back. Practice getting off the ego’s merry-go-round and joining with Me a while. When you are willing to join with Me, you will receive a change of mind. The confusion will clear. As you are willing to accept peace instead of the ego’s mindless thoughts, you will be shown in the moment how to be truly helpful. You will receive clarity and certainty. Practice today and everyday. It is the way you return to your right mind, your true Self.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Let Yourself Feel Deep Peace

Holy Spirit through Mary:  Let today be a gentle day by letting in the thought of gentleness. The feeling of gentleness will come with it. Let today be a peaceful day by letting in the Holy Spirit’s gift of peace. Give yourself the time to fully receive the gift of peace. Allow yourself the time to feel Holy Spirit’s peace fully. Let it sink in deeply.

Allow yourself to feel deep peace. Let it flow through every tired place to give you deep rest. Let it bring you to a place where your mind is truly quiet. Then continue to let deep peace lead you through your day. This is how you step back and let the Holy Spirit lead the way. This is how true inspiration comes in how to be truly helpful in each moment.

Let your receiving of the gift of peace be like a mental “car wash,” washing away all untrue thoughts. You want to return to your Self. This is how to do it. You have many layers of egoic thinking that you are still hanging on to. As you devote your time to accepting Holy Spirit’s gift of peace, gradually these layers of habitual thinking are washed away. Then you realize that your true Self was there all along. Allowing peace to do its cleansing work is the means by which you come Home. How long it takes is up to you. Every moment you are choosing between the conflicting thoughts of the ego and the peaceful thoughts of the Holy Spirit.

Some days you may take three steps forward and two steps back. The Holy Spirit has infinite patience and He is always there to fill your mind with peace as you are willing to lay down the heavy burden of the ego thought system. With empty hands you now can receive the Holy Spirit’s gift of peace as you are willing.

Let today be a day of gentleness and peace. Practice stepping back and welcoming the peace and gentleness of the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit through Robert:  Rest in Me. Unrest is the effect of defending against your Self, against Love. Rest in Me. Rest in Love. We are the same. Rest comes with accepting your Self as you were created. Rest comes with accepting God’s eternal, changeless gift of Himself. To see another as different from you disturbs your rest because it is unnatural and a defense against your Self.

The body’s eyes can only show you differences. When you believe what the body’s eyes show you, you will not find rest. Rest comes with recognizing that you are one with all that is real. There is nothing else. Do not believe the thoughts that pass through your mind. While you seem to be in a body seeing through the body’s eyes, there seem to be all manner of disturbances to your peace. The thoughts you are aware of are part of the world of the body and separate images. They are not true.

The practice of stepping back from every thought, every image the body shows you, and asking Me to interpret on your behalf will help you disconnect from your identification with a false image of yourself. With My help, every image, every event you seem to experience, will be used to undo the ego. But if you close your mind to Me, these events and images strengthen your identification with the ego. I cannot choose to step back for you. That is a decision you must make. The moment you are willing to question a thought or an image and open to My perception, My help is yours. My help is offered in every moment, but you must open yourself to accept it.

Let me be your Friend. Walk with Me. Bring all your troubled thoughts to me and I will give you rest. In time, this practice will bring you to a full recognition that we are One and the same. We are one Self, united with our Creator. We are Love and nothing else. I walk with you in perfect happiness and peace. Let Me share My happiness with you and rest in My peace.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The World Is a Defense Against Remembering Love

Mary:  I really relate to Myron’s posting about resistance to remembering the truth. It seems like I have so many excuses, so many things “happening” in my life that need attention. But the truth is the world is a defense against remembering Love and Love’s oneness.

Separation still seems so real and it only seems real because of my resistance to allowing the truth to return to my mind. In truth there is nothing but Love’s Oneness. There is no form. There is no world, there are no differences. There is no time. It’s all made up as a defense against God’s eternal Love. It seems like I have so many good excuses not to remember that only Love is there.

Forgiveness, or handing over all these thoughts that seem to be a steady flow to the Holy Spirit to be undone, in truth is my only function while I am still believing in dreams. Today is another opportunity for me to forgive or let go of my grip on the “reality” of these dreams. Only by handing all these thoughts over to the Holy Spirit and not deciding what anything means on my own will peace return to my mind.

There will still be things “to do,” but with Holy Spirit I won’t take this world so seriously. I will feel lighthearted and happy instead of heavyhearted and unsafe. I will experience peace instead of worrying about how all the details will be accomplished. As I am willing to go to the Holy Spirit with all things, not reserving some problems to solve on my own, I will be relieved of the heavy burden that comes with joining with the ego thoughts of separation. Again today, I have a choice. Do I want to be right or happy? Am I willing to join with the Holy Spirit all through the day? The level of peace I feel will let me know how much I am joining with Holy Spirit.

Robert:  Every cause has an effect. This is true in the oneness of Heaven as well as in the dream of separation. This week it appeared that the effects of someone else’s choices was affecting me. Immediately the ego interpreted that as me being a victim of someone else, bringing up defensiveness and irritation.

My job as part of the atonement is to follow Holy Spirit’s lead in everything. When I make judgments and interpretations about what a situation or someone’s behavior means on my own, I am not following Holy Spirit. My judgments interfere with my willingness to receive Holy Spirit’s guidance. When I align with the ego thought system, I want to correct someone else’s ways, point out their errors or get them out of my life like I would discard a used tissue. This is not a happy way to be and definitely not peaceful. From the perspective of the dream it seems like a balancing act between seeing past form and behavior to the reality of Love or enabling what appears to be destructive behavior.

In looking back at my life I see that I have made choices that brought me pain, fear or unhappiness. The Holy Spirit did not try to soften the pain, fear or unhappiness. They were simply the effect of my choices. These effects eventually motivated me to find a better way. So while I wallowed in ego driven choices, the Holy Spirit continued to see my innocence and know that in truth I had not changed my reality. The Holy Spirit did not give up on me but remained ever present, ready and willing to offer help when there was a willingness to receive it.

The Holy Spirit gives help that is truly helpful and it doesn’t always look the way I would like the help to look. I may have wanted to be happy while still making choices that denied the Love that I am. Were the Holy Spirit to have softened the unhappy consequences of my choices, I would have thought I could keep making ego driven choices and be happy. In Love, the Holy Spirit let the consequences be as they were so that I could learn that I did not want what I thought I valued. This brought me to willingness to let go of valuing what brought the unhappiness and learn from Holy Spirit where my true happiness lies.

This brings me back to the situation where I perceived someone’s choices being self-destructive. It is not my job to soften the consequences of anyone’s choices. It is my job to follow Holy Spirit’s guidance in every moment. To do this truly, I must clear my mind of all judgments. I must see neither guilt to be punished nor harm to be defended against. In other words, I must remove my barriers to Love and the Holy Spirit will guide me to be truly helpful. To the ego the guidance may appear to not be compassionate. But that is simply because the ego confuses sympathy with empathy. The ego always looks at form and disregards content.

It is not my concern what someone else thinks of my choices and decisions. It is my concern to be vigilant to remove all barriers to Love and let the Holy Spirit express through me in forms in this world that are truly helpful. So today is another day to practice vigilance for all judgments and offer them to the Holy Spirit. I am willing to open my mind to His Light so that the faulty basis for judgment can be illuminated and shined away. Then I can be truly helpful.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Will I Allow Myself to Remember the Truth Today?

Mary:  Will I allow myself to remember the truth today? Or, will I get lost in illusions, deciding what things mean on my own? Today, will I step back and let the Holy Spirit lead me or will I think that I really am a separate person with a separate mind and body and interests of my own?

Today I have a choice. Lesson 152 tells me the power of decision is my own. Either I will open my mind to the truth that I am Love’s extension, or I will think that I am a body that is vulnerable in a world of time and space. Either I will give up self deceptions or keep them. Today I have another opportunity to let go of the insanity of the ego… let go of thinking that a world of separation is real.

In Lesson 152 I am given a helpful way to let my mind be healed today: “In patience wait for Him throughout the day, and hourly invite Him with the words with which the day began, concluding it with this same invitation to your Self. God’s Voice will answer, for He speaks for you and for your Father. He will substitute the peace of God for all your frantic thoughts, the truth of God for self deceptions, and God’s Son for your illusions of yourself. (ACIM W-pI.152.12)

Reading this lesson this morning really helped me with all the concerns I had that were swirling in my mind. I realize now that I have a choice. I can worry about all the things that don’t seem to be going like I think they should. Or I can step back in trust and allow the truth that only Love is real to return to my mind.

I can hand over my current story to the Holy Spirit and let the Light of truth shine away the darkness in my mind. I can allow the peace of God to fill in the empty space as I allow my mind to be cleaned of all false ideas. Today I have a choice. I will know which choice I have made by the level of peace and happiness I feel. The power of decision is my own. Am I willing to be right or happy?

Robert:  With the belief in being separate comes the belief in vulnerability and weakness. The body is the chief instrument for making separation appear real and seems to demonstrate weakness in many ways. It is also the principle target for the projection of guilt. And guilt demands punishment so the body experiences pain in many forms. That is what the belief in separation thinks the body is for.

But the body can be given a new purpose. Given to the Holy Spirit, the body’s purpose becomes to be an instrument of forgiveness and extension of Love in the world of form. Since form has no meaning of its own, we each give forms our own meaning. So I cannot look at a form and think I know what it means for anyone else. That means I cannot decide on my own what form will serve as an expression of Love. But the Holy Spirit knows.

I need only be willing to stay in peace and follow the Holy Spirit’s lead in every moment. The Holy Spirit, my Self, will guide me to use form in the world as a means for healing and forgiveness. This only happens if I make no decisions on my own. When I accept the power of decision as my own it does not mean I decide on my own what everything means. It means I choose my Self instead of the thought of separation. From that choice the extension of Love is inevitable because my Self, our Self, is Love and can only extend Love.

Today I will be vigilant to decide for the one Self that joins us all in perfect happiness.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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In My Defenselessness My Safety Lies

Mary:  This morning we were guided to reread ACIM Lesson 153, “In My Defenselessness My Safety Lies.” It was the perfect lesson to help me see where I am placing defenses that I had not recognized.

The realtor told us that we needed to have the facilities ready for showing by June 1st or at the latest June 15th. I am now recognizing that I have used this “deadline” as a goal instead of Holy Spirit’s goal of making choosing peace prominent in my mind. This property will sell when the time is right. Putting pressure on ourselves to make this deadline is not helpful.

Where am I placing my trust? Am I placing my trust in the Holy Spirit or on a deadline set by the realtor? Once more, I am willing to step back and let all the concerns in my mind be washed away by the Holy Spirit. I am willing to accept Holy Spirit’s gift of peace. I choose to let go of control. I choose to let God be my strength.

This morning I choose to allow the Holy Spirit to gently wash away all the fear thoughts in my mind. I allow my mind to purified of the ego’s insane ideas. I let myself remember that in truth, God is. Love is. There is nothing else.

I am in Heaven with all my brothers. This truth alone is eternal. I will let myself remember the truth today. Deciding anything on my own just brings more fear and guilt. Today is a day of practice. I will practice letting Holy Spirit guide my mind. I will give all those fearful thoughts that there is not enough time and remember that the Holy Spirit knows better than I do. Everything is in perfect order. Today is a day of letting all thoughts that are not of the Holy Spirit go. In my defenselessness my safety lies.

Robert:  This lesson reminded me how engrained my tendency is to plan on my own. I seem to be more willing to listen to Holy Spirit’s guidance for grand plans. But I want to fill in the details. But I see that this is just a subtle way of distracting myself with tangents that lead away from and delay Holy Spirit’s plans. It is a way of not relinquishing control. I tell myself I am following Holy Spirit’s lead while I follow the diversion of the “details” I have overlaid on His lead.

If I truly want to follow Holy Spirit’s lead, I cannot reserve some of the planning for myself. When I plan on my own, I am defending my separateness, diligently trying to make it real. This could never be Holy Spirit’s plan. The total relinquishment of control is terrifying to the ego because it is very clear that this would be its end. But the total relinquishment of control to Holy Spirit’s guidance is actually the means to reach perfect happiness. It is the way Home.

So today I will practice letting Holy Spirit sweat the small stuff, remembering it’s all small stuff.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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