Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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The Holy Relationship in Practice

The holy relationship is the expression of the holy instant [seeing as Holy Spirit sees] in living in this world. Like everything about salvation, the holy instant is a practical device, witnessed to by its results. The holy instant never fails. The experience of it is always felt. Yet without expression it is not remembered. The holy relationship is a constant reminder of the experience in which the relationship became what it is. And as the unholy relationship is a continuing hymn of hate in praise of its maker, so is the holy relationship a happy song of praise to the Redeemer of relationships.

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. Be comforted in this; the only difficult phase is the beginning. For here, the goal of the relationship is abruptly shifted to the exact opposite of what it was. This is the first result of offering the relationship to the Holy Spirit, to use for His purposes. (A Course in Miracles, T-17.V.1-2. See also ACIM Text Q & A.)

When we offer our relationship to the Holy Spirit to use for His purposes, it becomes a holy relationship. Its goal is holiness — full acceptance of our oneness in Love. This acceptance has to be learned. All the guilt that we carry consciously and unconsciously must be forgiven.

Each belief in guilt harbored in our mind blocks awareness of our holiness. A relationship dedicated to learning of our holiness is holy in its purpose, but does not start as holy in its day to day experience. But as we continue to practice learning Holy Spirit’s lessons, the holy relationship becomes our classroom to learn to look past the barriers to Love’s presence through forgiveness.

For a special relationship built on fear and guilt, the change to the Holy Spirit’s purpose can be disorienting. What seemed to hold the relationship together no longer fits the new purpose. So we need to learn how to see the relationship through Holy Spirit’s vision. It is the dedication to this practice that makes the relationship holy in its intent, even though old habits may spring up as lessons to learn to let them go. We dedicate today to learning Holy Spirit’s lessons in true vision.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Our Brothers Offer the Gift of Release Now

“Now” has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds [the ego] of past hurts, and it reacts to the present as if it were the past. The ego cannot tolerate release from the past, and although the past is over, the ego tries to preserve its image by responding as if it were present. It dictates your reactions to those you meet in the present from a past reference point, obscuring their present reality. In effect, if you follow the ego’s dictates you will react to your brother as though he were someone else, and this will surely prevent you from recognizing him as he is. And you will receive messages from him out of your own past because, by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to let it go. You thus deny yourself the message of release that every brother offers you now.

Unless you learn that past pain is an illusion, you are choosing a future of illusions and losing the many opportunities you could find for release in the present. The ego would preserve your nightmares, and prevent you from awakening and understanding they are past. Would you recognize a holy encounter if you are merely perceiving it as a meeting with your own past? For you would be meeting no one, and the sharing of salvation, which makes the encounter holy, would be excluded from your sight. The Holy Spirit teaches that you always meet yourself, and the encounter is holy because you are. The ego teaches that you always encounter your past, and because your dreams were not holy, the future cannot be, and the present is without meaning. (A Course in Miracles, T-13.IV.5;6:5-10. See also ACIM Text Q & A.)

The ego has a clever scheme to keep us hooked in its thought system of separation. By teaching us that the past is real and with us now, it makes the present moment invisible to us because we’ve covered it with past memories. We then interpret everything we perceive in terms of the past. This means we see nothing as it is now as long as we subscribe to the ego’s scheme.

It’s time to unsubscribe. The ego does not offer us an unsubscribe link. But the Holy Spirit offers us an alternative that renders the ego scheme inoperative. By letting ourselves open to the Holy Spirit’s vision, we learn that the past is not with us. The past is over and cannot affect us at all unless we choose the ego’s scheme.

As we accept the Holy Spirit’s vision, we see our brothers truly. We freely join with them, for they are part of our one Self. In the joining, we receive our brothers’ gift of release from the separation scheme to remember that we are one in God’s Love.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Our Return to Love Is Guaranteed

The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No one is afraid of them when he perceives he made them up. The fear was held in place because he did not see that he was author of the dream, and not a figure in the dream. He gives himself the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. …The miracle does nothing but to show him that he has done nothing. What he fears is cause without the consequences that would make it cause. And so it never was.

This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream’s alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. [Miracles] are the glad effects of taking back the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released because the mind acknowledges “this is not done to me, but I am doing this.” And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of the world undone. (T-28. II.7:1-5,10-12;12)

While we believe the body is our identity, the world seems very real. The one thing that seems guaranteed is that the body will die. There is nothing here that would convince us that this experience is just a story, an illusion of separating from our Creator.

This is why the Holy Spirit was given us to bring a vision to our minds from outside the belief in a world of separation. His mission is to bring us miracles that will show us that what seems so real has no real cause and thus did nothing to change the truth that we are God’s one Son, innocent, whole and unchangeable.

In every moment the miracle of the Holy Spirit’s lesson is available to us to show us the purity of the one Self we share with all that lies beyond the veil of false perception. We always have a choice between believing in the dream of being separate and accepting the freedom the Holy Spirit’s vision offers us.

The first step is to learn and remember that we are the dreamer, not the dream. We are not victim of the dream. We can choose an alternative dream offered by the Holy Spirit which will lead us to see a forgiven world. When our forgiveness is complete, our Creator will carry us across the little gap between the dream and the Reality of our oneness with our Creator. We are guaranteed to find our way Home, for it is God’s Will that we remain one with Him.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Accepting Holy Spirit’s Vision

Those who accept the Holy Spirit’s purpose as their own share also His vision. And what enables Him to see His purpose shine forth from every altar now is yours as well as His. He sees no strangers; only dearly loved and loving friends. He sees no thorns but only lilies [of forgiveness], gleaming in the gentle glow of peace that shines on everything He looks upon and loves.

You have the vision now to look past all illusions. It has been given you to see no thorns, no strangers and no obstacles to peace. The fear of God is nothing to you now. Who is afraid to look upon illusions, knowing his savior [brother] stands beside him? With him, your vision has become the greatest power for the undoing of illusion that God Himself could give. For what God gave the Holy Spirit, you have received. (A Course in Miracles, T-20.II.5:3-6;7:1-6. See also ACIM Text Q & A.)

We have the means to bring peace to the world. Through the Holy Spirit we have the vision to recognize illusion as illusion and know the truth that Love is all that is real. When we accept Holy Spirit’s vision, what we perceived as cause for guilt or fear fades as we welcome the Light of Love.

On our own, believing we are separate, this vision is impossible. But when we accept the Holy Spirit’s help, this vision is inevitable. The Holy Spirit’s purpose is to transform every perception we offer him to true perception, which sees only innocence and oneness. It sees no cause for guilt or fear.

We dedicate today to accepting Holy Spirit’s help to transform our mistaken perceptions. For we would be savior to ourselves, our brothers and the world, according to God’s plan.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Bringing Peace to the World

The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them. There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will see you know not what you are. It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is. When every concept has been raised to doubt and question, and been recognized as made on no assumptions that would stand the light, then is the truth left free to enter in its sanctuary, clean and free of guilt. There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:

I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself.

Yet in this learning is salvation born. And What you are will tell you of Itself. (A Course in Miracles, T-31.V.17. See also ACIM Text Q & A.)

We are not only clueless in Seattle, we are clueless in the world. We have no idea of what our true Self is. In fact, our true Self cannot be reduced to an idea or concept. Our true Self is Spirit, a beingness that has no limit and cannot be symbolized, only experienced.

The teaching of

A Course in Miracles

is directed to help us let go of the concepts or images we have given meaning in the world, including our self-image. As we let the Holy Spirit help us recognize that what we believe about our self is not true, we clear away the barriers that hide our true Self from our awareness. This is what forgiveness is for.

We cannot find peace in the world. We find peace in the truth of knowing our Self as God created us. With that knowing, we bring peace to the world as we practice seeing the true Self in our brother by remembering we are one in Love. This practice is our only meaningful function in the world.

Today we are given another day to practice bringing peace to the world by remembering our Self.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Release from the Dream of Death

…the idea of death takes many forms. It is the one idea which underlies all feelings that are not supremely happy. It is the alarm to which you give response of any kind that is not perfect joy. All sorrow, loss, anxiety and suffering and pain, even a little sigh of weariness, a slight discomfort or the merest frown, acknowledge death. And thus deny you live.

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.

Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator.

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.167.2:3-7;3:6-11;4:1;6:7;9. See also ACIM Lesson 167 Insights.)

The Course tells us what it would feel like if we were wholly true to our Self — supreme happiness and perfect joy. It also points out some of the feelings which come from not being true to our Self, some of which are so common in our experience that we don’t realize they are signals of Self denial. Based on these signals, most of us probably spend most of our time in Self denial. Fortunately Self denial only makes us unaware of our one Self, but does not change It at all.

The fact that thoughts cannot leave their Source is the basis for healing this mistaken denial. The first step to healing denial is learning that we don’t like what we experience in denial. The next step is to learn that what we have been denying ourselves is what we truly want. We want to know supreme happiness and perfect joy. We want peace. We want to know that we are love, loving and loved.

These characteristics of our true Self are guaranteed because of the irrevocable law that ideas cannot leave their source. And the Source of our one Self is the changelessness of God. The fact that our true Self remains Love as Love created It is the justification for forgiveness that will release us from the dream of Self denial.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Greatest Gift We Can Give Ourselves

A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time’s limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love’s awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings.

A miracle inverts perception which was upside down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to the truth. Now is forgiveness seen as justified. (A Course in Miracles Workbook “What is a Miracle, W-pII.13.1;2:4-5. See also ACIM Lesson 341 Insights.)

Anything that disturbs our peace must be based on a false perception that we mistakenly believe is true. When we bring our perceptions to the Holy Spirit with willingness to receive His perception in its place, we are welcoming the miracle. We are willing to see that our perception is not true. When what we believe is true is recognized as false, we freely let it go — we forgive.

The Holy Spirit’s gift of the miracle shows us that what we believed happened did not really occur except in a fantasy that is not real. It is this process that will free us from the fantasy world of fear and guilt to return to our eternal, changeless Home in Love. There is no greater gift that we could give ourselves. We are worth the practice.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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