Realizing God's Will Is Oneness

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Learning the Importance of Seeing Only Love

What can be said to those who grieve themselves and others without being aware of it?  Those who stumble forward without looking where they are going or why.  What can be said except, “I love you.”  Nothing.  But this is hard to say sometimes.  It is much easier to say “I don’t like or approve of what you are doing,” in some fashion.  At times it is much easier to say that you don’t like someone rather than that you love them.

Into every life comes people who seem more of a challenge to love.  Here the ego is in full voice saying this person is separate, distant in values, different in habits and thinking, doing hurtful things.  We listen and believe.  It is a habitual reaction to the projection of our own fear of rejection.  We reject first and blame the other person.

Some years back one of my sisters and her family were on an extended visit at my home.  I felt resentful and angry that they didn’t offer me as much help as I wanted in maintaining the house and yard while they were here.  On their last night I had a special dinner and invited other family to say good-bye.  Before dinner I had a prayer circle to say grace and offer thanksgiving.  My sister’s husband laughed during this and encouraged his daughters to do the same.  I felt rejected and offended.  It seemed like the last straw on the pile of inconsideration.  At that time, I didn’t see that I had been secretly rejecting them first with my inner anger.  This event was just a further extension of the game of separation.  At that time, I was not a Course student, and did not see how I made and contributed to the separation story.

I stewed for a few months after they left and then wrote them a letter saying how offended I was at their behavior.  I felt relieved at the time that I had spoken my mind in a very nice way I thought.  You see, this was one of my first ventures into speaking up about what I perceived as boorish behavior.  They sent a letter of apology, of course, but I know they said to other family members they would not feel comfortable staying at my home again.  Since then, some of them have, but some of them haven’t.

Now, with the help of Holy Spirit I see it all so differently.  I wrote the story of their visit with my perceptions.  If I needed some help, why didn’t I just politely ask for some.  I tried to do everything myself to feed my resentment so that I could secretly complain to my husband and another sister.  My first reaction was not to say that I loved them and needed a little help in a relaxed and peaceful manner.  I am sure they would have jumped right in.  No, my first reaction was to criticize and complain about their behavior.  I was listening to the ego voice.  Now, after being a Course student for some time, I look back and see the progress in my attitudes and beliefs.  How much happier and more peaceful I would have been during their visit if I had not been trying to be right, but was listening to the voice of Holy Spirit instead. 

Woring with ACIM, one can truly learn to say, “I love you,” as the first reaction.  Yes, it is possible, and so practical as well.  Everything goes better with a good helping of the recognition of love as the only reality present.  As I look back and see the love that was present then, instead of focusing on the upset of the last night, I see that there is no danger now in laying down any defenses to love.  I can extend love to them and do extend love to them, as I know they do to me.  I can reach out and say to them that I love them and am happy to see the love.  I can explain that I see differently now than I did then, and how much it means to me to see differently.  This is my reaction now, to see love, and I am grateful for it.

What do I say to myself for stumbling about then, grieving myself and others without knowing it because I wasn’t carefully looking where I was going or why?  Why, of course, I say “I love you.”  Criticizing or berating myself doesn’t help.  Lack of forgiveness doesn’t help.  Ruminating over past mistakes doesn’t help.  Sometimes it can be easier, but it doesn’t help.  Sometimes I seem the most difficult person in my life to love.  Seeing and acknowledging only the love present helps.  Love was present and is present.  I see now there is nothing to forgive my family and nothing to forgive myself.  I can be happy extending love to them and to myself, and extending it in all ways.  I hear Holy Spirit calling me to write another letter.  This one filled only with the recognition and acknowledgment of love always present.

© 2005, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Barbara Kraetsch.

Holy Spirit’s Curriculum

In the sum of a person’s life there are many experiences of all types.  These range from feelngs of sadness to joy, feelings of displeasure and feelings of unbridled contentment.  What do they mean in the end?  What were they for?  Only Holy Spirit has the meaning for them.  For some these candles of experience gently light the way to greater vision.  For some these candles light a fire of flames so bright they can be confusing.  Are they flames of new vision or so real they burn?

The other day I attended a meditation service given by another minister.  During it we were guided to go twenty years in the future to meet our Future Self and receive a message.  When I anticipated this experience, I expected to meet a wise and wonderful self full of peace and bliss.  Instead I met with sadness and confusion.  It was most puzzling to me but I went with it.  We were to travel to a future home.  I saw my current home which was filled with overwhelming sadness, and I was overcome by the sameness of it.  I had expected change.  After the meditation, we went through several other processes to come to a descriptive statement about self.  As I let Holy Spirit guide me, I was amazed that from the words of sadness and confusion describing the experience, came a most beautiful affirmation of it being my function to question sadness and confusion in order to lead my mind to its sameness in God.

For these last few days, I have been open to the healing that Holy Spirit brings me in looking at sadness and confusion.  It was almost as if deeper layers of ego beliefs were brought to the surface now instead of over the next twenty years.  It was like a confused thought cluster being brought to the surface of my mind for healing in order to let go of seeing form as real.  My ego thought system cajoles me into thinking its time for a holiday, time to take a break from looking at the layers of sadness and confusion.  It says sweetly, give it to me, I’ll take care of it,  I’ll hide it deeper where we won’t have to look at it.  Of course, this is a holiday of hell and of no help whatsoever.

As deeper layers of false but entrenched beliefs come to the surface, it can be disconcerting and temporarily painful.  The ego loves to hide the unforgiveness, confusion and guilt that is the result of accepting it as real.  And when this comes up for healing, it is not so pleasant to look at and experience, and can at moments feel overwhelming.  It is at these moments that I must really look at the stubborn ego and pride that I made real for myself over eons of time.  But if I don’t let the sadness bubble up, look at it and own it, I cannot let it go completely.  Holy Spirit does bring beliefs to my attention so that I can stand in the fire with them and Him so that they can be burned away.  If I am willing to look without judgment at what I see and feel, giving all to Holy Spirit, then the conditions of my mind can be changed.  The deeper levels that were hidden to me can come to light and disappear in truth.  The ego wants to hold onto grievances forever, holding them to me with the glue of guilt.  Only Holy Spirit can undo this and clean my mind of all traces of belief in separation.

Others in the group meditation all had a lovely trip.  I joked that I was the only one that needed to go to the bad trip tent with Holy Spirit, but in fact I am quite grateful that I experienced deeper layers of my unhealed mind.  Holy Spirit never says to me that my mess is too messy for Him.  When I look at my experiences with Him instead of ego, there is always true help.  Holy Spirit tells me to come on into the healing tent where my life experiences, with all their feelings, can be let go of with ease.  The healing tent shows me the truth that comes from looking at everything with Holy Spirit in a light-hearted way.  I made the judgment that illusion is real, but what I made has no force and Holy Spirit undoes it.  As I honestly admit that I hide ego junk in my mind, but am grateful when it is shown to me, I allow Holy Spirit to do His healing work freely.

My life is my cirriculum, the circumstances where I practice letting go of the barriers to love.  I used to think the cirriculum to learn was the words and concepts in ACIM.  I see now that it is not just the words but also the circumstances of my life.  It is in my relationships with self, others and things where I learn to let go of the barriers to the awareness of love’s presence.  The story of my life is my cirriculum to remember love.  As I embrace the cirriculum, I see it’s for my benefit and my healing.  It is not fearful, nor too stressful, and not suffering and sacrifice.  It is a blessing in disguise of illusion.  As I learn to let go of my rigid ego expectations and beliefs by remembering to admit I have no answers and ask for help, I feel peace and acceptance.  Hiding never helps because its a game of separation.  Opening to what is and placing it unashamedly on my inner altar unifies.

Yes, I am grateful to be shown sadness and confusion in my meditation.  It is a golden opportunity to practice giving it to Holy Spirit for healing.  All mistaken thinking can be let go when I admit my mistake without judgment and surrender it to The Healer.  The sum of all the experiences of my life, and all their feelings, add up to my healing journey.  Holy Spirit sometimes gently lights my way and sometimes I seem to stand in the fire with Him.  The happy news is that only the illusion is burned away.  I am not burned in the flame, I am saved.

© 2005, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Barbara Kraetsch.

Only Love Is Real

Sometimes there are parts of life that seem bleak.  Of course, there are those times we all don’t feel loved or appreciated.  There are times when we don’t seem to have it all together and even small problems seem daunting, things just aren’t going our way.  These times seem different from others when we feel happy and life is smooth sailing.  Why do some days we wake up happy and some days sort of feeling off-kilter from which we can’t seem to recover?  For some the days of feeling all is not well stretch into a period of time which seems to grow bleak and unbearable, and that is primarily what they focus on.  For some, the unbearable life is ended.

Yesterday at my weekly prayer group, someone mentioned a nearby high school where a sophomore cheerleader had very recently commited suicide.  Someone’s daughter knew the cheerleader’s younger sister.  We prayed and sent love and light to all involved.  The mention of her suicide brought to mind the funeral I had attended last spring for my sister-in-law’s nephew, a nineteen year old’s suicide.

What impressed me so much at that time was the minister’s message to all the young people present.  The parents’ minister from their church would not officiate at the funeral because of the suicide.  The “fill-in” minister spoke to the hearts of the young people, offering a beautiful message of hope, understanding and encouragement to go beyond grief to healing and looking at the purpose of life - which is love.  He was very wise.  Afterward I told him how much he had helped the family and all the young people present by his inspired message about the importance of remembering love.  He had focused on the love of the young man’s life, family and friends, not the tragedy.

The young people seemed so hungry to make sense of their friend’s death.  It was unexpected and puzzling to them.  But, some of us make the ego so real and feel so tormented by it that we simply can’t stand it and want out.  Now!  Right now!  Some remain living in body but feel dead when they have lost hope, and feel only sorrow.  What difference about whether the body moves or not, rages or not, arms itself with weapons to kill or carries flowers of grief.  What is real?  Not all the coffins and flowers at funeral homes crowded with mourners, not the feelings of despair, grief, abandonment and guilt, and not the questions that seem to have no answers.  What is real?  Only the love present is real.

In the face of seeming tragedies, the product of despair, what can we affirm as real?  Only love.  That is all.  The only thing real about the young man’s life and funeral was the love of all the teens and twenty-somethings for their friend who died so suddently.  The love of his parents, brother, family, and friends.  And the love for them.  As the family and friends of the young man were led to remembr love instead of despair, their lives were forever changed.  I know the family has been compelled to face their own beliefs of the meaning of life.  No doubt the young man’s death compelled many young people to look at the meaning of life and the meaning of love.  The young man helped many to remember to open their minds to God’s presence.  Instead of being condemned that day, his life was honored, his love remembered.

As I and others spoke words of encouragement and comfort to all the family I know so well, and as I watched the procession of young people pay their respects, listened to the eulogies and minister, I was taken with the awareness of Love’s Presence in the room.  It was powerfully affecting.  It was healing.  As I look back at the event, I always look at the reality of the love present.  I do not remember the grief and tears as much as the overwhelming presence of love and appreciation of love.  I had spent holiday dinners with this young man.  He was loving and loved.  His presence of love made a difference.  Sometimes we cannot understand these bleak times of ego despair.  Perhaps he heard the Call of Love so strongly he felt he had to go.  I cannot understand and there is no need to try.  I content myself with knowing and remembering only love.

I send the same remembering to all my brothers and sisters, young and old, who attack the body/ego for the last time of their body life.  As I remember the love in one, I remember it in all.  I remember their true Identity with them now.  We are one in Love.  That is all that is important.  And I know that my remembering love helps, extending love helps.  Extending love always helps.

I write this to honor every life.  No matter the circumstances or events, every life is filled with love.  In remembering only the love, we honor our brothers and sisters in Christ.  We can honor those departed and the living in body equally.  No matter what illusion of sorrow or despair seems present, let us honor every life by remembering that only the love about them is real.  All are one in God.  Today I am called to remember to honor oneness of love in all true living things.  Please join with me in honoring the oneness we share with true life.

© 2005, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

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Posted by Rev. Barbara Kraetsch.

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