Daily Inspiration for Living A Course in Miracles

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Opening to the Vision of Truth

The idea for today [My only function is the one God gave me] reaffirms your commitment to salvation. It also reminds you that you have no function other than that. Both these thoughts are obviously necessary for a total commitment. Salvation cannot be the only purpose you hold while you still cherish others. The full acceptance of salvation as your only function necessarily entails two phases; the recognition of salvation as your function, and the relinquishment of all the other goals you have invented for yourself.

Today’s idea offers you escape from all your perceived difficulties. It places the key to the door of peace, which you have closed upon yourself, in your own hands. It gives you the answer to all the searching you have done since time began. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 65, W-pI.65.1;3:2-3. See also ACIM Lesson 65 Insights.)

The world we experience and see through the body’s eyes is a made up-virtual reality. By definition, a virtual reality is an illusion of reality. It is a substitute for the true Reality that is ours as God’s Creation. This virtual reality only seems to affect us if we believe that this substitute is real. Given this belief, we react to all that seems to happen in this substitute reality as if it were real.

We have been given a function by our Creator that will help us withdraw our belief in the substitute reality. This function will relieve us of all the conflict, guilt, fear and loneliness that is inherent in the substitute reality. The function is very simple. It is to let go of identifying with the false reality and be willing to accept our true Reality instead.

We accept the function given us by God by offering all our perceptions to the Holy Spirit with willingness to have our illusions of purpose be replaced by Truth. We need to be vigilant in the practice of turning over our perceptions to the Holy Spirit, Who will purify them and return to us the vision of Truth that looks beyond the substitute appearances of the world.

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

It is essential that error be not confused with sin, and it is this distinction that makes salvation possible. For error can be corrected, and the wrong made right. But sin, were it possible, would be irreversible. The belief in sin is necessarily based on the firm conviction that minds, not bodies, can attack. And thus the mind is guilty, and will forever so remain unless a mind not part of it can give it absolution. Sin calls for punishment as error for correction, and the belief that punishment is correction is clearly insane.

Sin is not an error, for sin entails an arrogance which the idea of error lacks. To sin would be to violate reality, and to succeed. Sin is the proclamation that attack is real and guilt is justified. It assumes the Son of God is guilty, and has thus succeeded in losing his innocence and making himself what God created not. Thus is creation seen as not eternal, and the Will of God open to opposition and defeat. Sin is the grand illusion underlying all the ego’s grandiosity. For by it God Himself is changed, and rendered incomplete.

The Son of God can be mistaken; he can deceive himself; he can even turn the power of his mind against himself. But he cannot sin. There is nothing he can do that would really change his reality in any way, nor make him really guilty. (A Course in Miracles, T-19.II.1:1-3:3. See also ACIM Text Q & A.)

The ego’s seeming existence is founded on the false belief that mistakes cannot be corrected. This is the ego’s substitute for the reality of God’s eternal Love. By making mistakes uncorrectable, the ego seems to make itself eternal. This is nothing but the ego’s grand illusion.

The release from the guilt built into the ego thought system cannot be found in the ego. It is designed to be self-perpetuating. But guilt only persists as long as belief is invested in the ego’s lies. We have a Teacher Whose sole purpose is the teach us to recognize these lies for what they are. As we are willing to let our thoughts be purified by the Holy Spirit’s vision, we learn to recognize the ego’s deceptions for what they are.

Today we focus on holding our minds open to the Holy Spirit’s perception of our thoughts, feelings, experiences and interpretations as we go through our day. This is how we let our minds be purified of self-deceit that makes guilt seem real and welcome the truth that we remain Love as Love created us.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Receiving the Holy Spirit’s Gifts of Release

To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All the rest must be forgotten. Forgiveness is a selective remembering, based not on your selection.

The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old, the world you see without forgiveness. The great Transformer of perception will undertake with you the careful searching of the mind that made this world, and uncover to you the seeming reasons for your making it. In the light of the real reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will show you that there is no reason here at all. Each spot His reason touches grows alive with beauty, and what seemed ugly in the darkness of your lack of reason is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity could be without a hidden spark of beauty that gentleness could release.

All this beauty will rise to bless your sight as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally transforms vision, and lets you see the real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos, removing all illusions that had twisted your perception and fixed it on the past. (A Course in Miracles, T-17.III.1:1-3;II.5:1-6:2. See also ACIM Text Q & A.)

It is not our responsibility to root out the hidden memories that foster our judgments and guilt. It is our responsibility to offer all our thoughts of judgment, guilt and fear to the Holy Spirit with willingness to let Him uncover for us the mistaken beliefs that deny us the vision of the loveliness of God’s Son. The Holy Spirit will show us that our mistaken beliefs are based on nothing and have no substance. As we receive His vision, we freely release mistaken beliefs and the fearful, guilty shadows of these beliefs fade into the nothingness from which they came.

Today we practice bringing our judgments and fears to the Holy Spirit, with willingness to receive the His gift of release.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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I follow in the way appointed me.

I have a special place to fill; a role for me alone. Salvation waits until I take this part as what I choose to do. Until I make this choice, I am the slave of time and human destiny. But when I willingly and gladly go the way my Father’s plan appointed me to go, then will I recognize salvation is already here, already given all my brothers and already mine as well.

Father, Your way is what I choose today. Where it would lead me do I choose to go; what it would have me do I choose to do. Your way is certain, and the end secure. The memory of You awaits me there. And all my sorrows end in Your embrace, which You have promised to Your Son, who thought mistakenly that he had wandered from the sure protection of Your loving Arms. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 317, W-pII.317. See also ACIM Lesson 317 Insights.)

What is the way appointed us? It is the way of Love. It is the path of removing the barriers to Love’s presence. It is a journey of forgiveness, of letting go of mistaken beliefs that we could change ourselves from being the Love that we were created to be.

We are not alone on this journey. We have a Guide, given us by our Creator, to lead us through the wilderness we have dreamed as a substitute for our Reality in Love. On our own we do not know the way out of the wilderness, but our Guide lights the way. It is this way that leads us back to the joy and Love of Heaven, our Home. We choose to follow this Guide today to fill the role appointed us.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Remembering the Joy of Heaven

Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. But though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you it is important. [The world you see] is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. Perception is a result and not a cause. And that is why order of difficulty in miracles is meaningless. Everything looked upon with vision is healed and holy. Nothing perceived without it means anything. And where there is no meaning, there is chaos.

Damnation is your judgment on yourself, and this you will project upon the world. See it as damned, and all you see is what you did to hurt the Son of God. If you behold disaster and catastrophe, you tried to crucify him. If you see holiness and hope, you joined the Will of God to set him free. There is no choice that lies between these two decisions. And you will see the witness to the choice you made, and learn from this to recognize which one you chose. The world you see but shows you how much joy you have allowed yourself to see in you, and to accept as yours. And, if this is its meaning, then the power to give it joy must lie within you. (A Course in Miracles, T-21.in.1-2. See also ACIM Text Q & A.)

The Course tells us that vision does not come through the body’s eyes. Vision is of the mind because it is seen through the purity of God’s Son. Vision sees only innocence and Oneness. It looks past form to the Light of Love that is everywhere, for only Love is real. Because joy is an attribute of Love, when we see with vision, we see a world of joy.

If we are not supremely happy, then we have chosen to believe in a barrier that blocks the joy that vision would show us. This is why forgiveness is the key to happiness. Forgiveness removes the barriers to recognizing Love’s presence.

We always have an immediate indicator that tells us whether we are choosing vision or the blindness caused by the belief in separation. If the world we see is not joyous, we have chosen against the joy of God. We have chosen against our true Self and replaced it with a false self-image. But we can make another choice. The Holy Spirit is ever present to help us forgive and choose Christ’s vision.

Today we will accept Holy Spirit’s vision to help us let go of the false images we have made and remember the joy of Heaven.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Putting God in Charge of Our Thoughts

You think that death is of the body. Yet [death] is but an idea, irrelevant to what is seen as physical. A thought is in the mind. It can be then applied as mind directs it. But its origin [the mind] is where [the thought] must be changed, if change occurs. 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.

Let us today be children of the truth, and not deny our holy heritage. Our life is not as we imagine it. Who changes life because he shuts his eyes, or makes himself what he is not because he sleeps, and sees in dreams an opposite to what he is? We will not ask for death in any form today. Nor will we let imagined opposites to life abide even an instant [in the mind] where the Thought of life eternal has been set by God Himself. (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 167, W-pI.167.3;6;10. See also ACIM Lesson 167 Insights.)

Let us put God in charge of our thoughts. As we are vigilant only for God and His Kingdom, we feel God’s grace. We remember we are being carried. We remember we have only one real purpose — to return our minds to the real Life we live in God.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. http://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Forgiving Specialness to Remember Heaven

[Your brother] is your savior from your specialness. He is in need of your acceptance of himself as part of you, as you for his. [Both you and your brother] are alike to God as God is to Himself. [God] is not special, for He would not keep one part of what He is unto Himself, not given to His Son but kept for Him alone. And it is this you fear, for if [God] is not special, then He willed His Son to be like Him, and your brother is like you. Not special, but possessed of everything, including you. Give [your brother] but what he has, remembering God gave Himself to you and your brother in equal love, that both might share the universe with Him Who chose that love could never be divided, and kept separate from what it is and must forever be. (A Course in Miracles, T-24.II.10. See also ACIM Text Q & A.)

While we believe that our identity is defined by what makes us unique and different from everyone, we will fear God’s Love, which is the same everywhere, always. Maintaining a separate identity requires that we distinguish ourselves from everything else. Anything that seems to threaten our distinction is perceived as an attack that must be defended against. The constant need to compare ourselves is tiring, for every comparison brings attention to our need to defend. The ego cannot tolerate oneness.

This need to perceive differences blinds us to the Love in our brother that is the same Love in us. It blinds us to the Love of God that is everywhere to be seen. Christ’s vision would show us the gift of Love our brother has to offer us. Christ’s vision comes as we forgive the need for specialness. It removes the blindfold that defends against the truth that we remain the same Love that God is. It allows us to welcome the gift of Love our brothers offer us and experience God’s joy as our own, together with our brothers.

Today we welcome the Holy Spirit’s help to see through the eyes of forgiveness, that we may remember Heaven.

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