Miracles News

Tweet

January-March, 2005

Sin and Judgment

by Rev. James Ramelis, O.M.C.

Acting on an inspiration that I assume came from a divine Source, I have been reviewing the Workbook lessons in Part II of A Course in Miracles. I have really been savoring them and they are opening new dimensions of understanding for me. Lesson 259 — “Let me remember that there is no sin”— brought a major revelation and spiritual breakthrough. I stayed on the lesson for a few days and had tremendous feelings of relief knowing that all of my phony petty “sins” amounted to nothing at all and how we really do imagine them as keeping us from God.

The Holy Spirit reinforced my lesson at my work place on the first day I considered the lesson. I work at a prison and a young man had broken his leg playing soccer. It was a bad break. He was young and spoke little English. The young man broke down and cried bitterly. All his miseries now compounded, he lost control. Some other staff laughed and snickered at him. I said, “Hey, come on, he’s just a kid.” “He’s a child rapist,” they responded. “He deserves punishment.” A line in the lesson says “What else but sin could be the source of guilt, demanding punishment and suffering?” What an appropriate lesson in life arranged for me by Holy Spirit to reinforce the lesson in ACIM.

Applying the lesson to a more global topic, I thought about the recent presidential election and the “moral vote” that supposedly influenced it. Osama Bin Laden “punished” us for our evil ways calling us “The Great Satan” by masterminding the 9/11 attacks. Just days later, Jerry Falwell, a spiritual leader of many of the “moral” voters, went on “The 700 Club” and told Pat Robertson “the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians… the ACLU, the People for American Way, and other ‘Christ haters’ are to blame.” Pat Robertson agreed with him saying “Jerry, that’s my feeling, I think we’ve just seen the antechamber to terror.” Falwell went on, “All of them who have helped secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’” Robertson said this is only a foretaste of what is going to happen. (1)

Another applicable line from Lesson 259 comes to mind: “…and what but sin could be the source of fear obscuring God’s creation, giving Love the attributes of fear and attack.” The comments by Osama Bin Laden, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are examples of giving a God of Love the attributes of fear and attack. They reflect the mistaken belief that something other than Love could be real. Bodies do appear to attack each other with words and weapons of destruction. But this could not be real because, as the Course tells us, only Love is real. And Love only extends Itself.

The ego loves to judge and condemn, and cherishes sin. Let us remember there is no sin.

1 Quote from CBSNEWS.com, 9/15/01 and 9/18/01

Rev. James Ramelis is a Pathways of Light minister who lives in Gould City, Michigan

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

Tell a Friend

Printable Page

---

Tweet

January-March, 2005

Seeking and Finding

by Louis Bourgeois

Understanding spiritual truth within the context of the illusion requires that we embrace a paradox. In the world of form, seeking and finding are directly linked by our actions. For instance, if I feel hunger and I seek out food to satisfy this hunger, my seeking will yield a surcease to my hunger. Temporarily, at least, I feel satisfied. I am no longer hungry.

Things get a bit less simple when we enter the realm of emotion. Let’s take loneliness. If we are feeling lonely it doesn’t necessarily mean that we will feel less lonely if we take action and go to a party. Sometimes we can feel more alone amidst a crowd of people.

And here is where we begin to cross into the spiritual realm, where desire and action do not necessarily translate into success. Our core hunger, that sense of loneliness or separation, is not effectively satisfied in the world. Many a romance has foundered on the shores of disenchantment. Our core loneliness was not fixed by this romantic partnership.

Romance is by nature an impossible proposition. A deep longing for connection, for belonging, is projected onto a special other. This special other is hardly equipped to answer our call for love. He or she is gripped within their own dilemma. We are lost together, the blind leading the blind, with very painful results. For nothing is more lonely then to sleep alongside this supposed soul mate, night after night, month after month, with no true resolution to our core hunger.

Our dilemma is that we are seeking in the world what is truly not of this world. What we hunger for is heaven, our spiritual home. We are homesick for a love, a peace, which is but hinted at in this world. The more we seek, the more distant the object of our longing appears. Our lives become wearisome, adrift in a vast desert of searching. The oasis is always but a mirage.

The paradox is that it is only when we stop seeking that we truly have the opportunity to find what it was all along evading our search. For the answer to the quandary that so mystified us for so many years, perhaps even lifetimes, is inside of us. It was always here, the one place we never looked.

Often we only go within when our outer life has fallen into one form or another of ruin. Some tragedy, a certain disaster, leaves us devastated. There is no outside source of consolation. The sorrow is simply too powerful. We collapse into our grief, perhaps a deep depression. There seems to be no way out of this darkness of this time.

This experience is often named the dark night of the soul. As we venture, not by choice, into this despair, eventually, something strange begins to arise within us. We start to witness a calmness, a peacefulness, an awareness that in spite of the outward appearance of doom we’re ok. We are not really going to die, even though all earlier indicators showed no other option.

In fact, this appearance of death and destruction revealed for us that there is a part of us that couldn’t possibly die. It was beyond annihilation. As we touch this aspect of our being a glow of light begins to manifest itself. It is like a halo enveloping us, radiating not without, but within. The source seems to be somewhere deep within our mind, or perhaps even in our heart.

We are in contact with our soul. This is the aspect of our being that existed before we took on a physical existence, before we became a body. Our soul is that piece of heaven itself, seemingly splintered away from the whole. But as we make conscious contact with our soul, we come to know that this piece of the whole is really our link to the whole.

Heaven is not distant from us when we rest within the knowing of our soul. It is as if each soul is a tiny hologram of heaven, each one containing within it the whole. When we bring our awareness into this stillness, this place beyond time and space, know are touching eternity. We are home.

After having this kind of experience, that which I call an oasis experience, the thought of continuing in the world seems a bit implausible. What could be the point? It is clear now that what I am truly seeking is nowhere to be found outside of me in the world. It is right here, right now, within the stillness.

It becomes clear to us that all of the efforts for self-improvement are ridiculous. Our efforts to earn merit that would somehow pay off later in good fortune, in the guarantee of a spot in heaven, appear absurd. As if Divine Love, that radiant energy which embraces us within the stillness, could shine for one and not another. Impossible.

We come to know something that we could never have learned in the world. We are perfect, just as we are. This is how we were created. What would be to learn? What is it that we could improve? Where is it that we would travel on this journey of awakening?

There is no journey, but only an awakening. We can wait for some disaster, one version of death or another, to give us the opening to this awareness. Or we can choose, willingly, consciously, to die to our illusion that somehow, somewhere, the world is going to give this awareness to me.

We give up seeking so that we will find. We give up self-improvement that we might know, today, that we are perfect. We give up our idea that learning is going to give us what we already know. We give up our game of hide and seek. We are ready for a happier game. If we are but living within a dream, we would choose to make the dream a happy one.

So we stop. We take time out from the rituals and routines that have filled our lives. We need to find others like ourselves as, without companions, without a guide, we will not get far. For the world will always be there to call us back into the dream, the illusion that there is something outside of us to seek.

Stopping the world, or rather our participation in the illusion is an unpopular stance. We slow down and the rest of the world wants to knock us over. We are wise not to point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. This is the reason why we find others with whom we can retreat.

Taking time out to consolidate our learning is essential. Retreats have been an element of authentic awakening since the times of Aristotle and Lao Tzu. Usually a teacher, a discipline, and the companionship of others are the three elements of a retreat environment.

Ultimately the goal is not to stay in seclusion from the rest of the world. As we come to know deeply our true relationship with the Divine, we come to know our proper relationship with the world. The Divine, what Eckhart Tolle describes as the unmanifested, needs us in order to manifest. If the world is but a collective call for Love, and Heaven is the unmanifested Source of Love, what is needed is the bridge or channel between the two.

Here is our highest purpose, our true function fulfilled. In Christian terms, this would be the definition of being the Christ. The Christ is but the bridge or the channel between Heaven and earth. It is but the doorway through which Love moves from the Source to the prayer.

Walking in the world, awakened, becomes a passionate exercise in endless opportunity. Every day, in fact, each moment, arises in gratitude, as we but extend that which exists in infinite supply. In the experience of the flow of Divine energy through our hearts and our minds we know joy and peace beyond anything we could have found in the world.

We have become empty and full in a moment. Herein is our paradox revealed in its fullest glory. And we give thanks.

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

Tell a Friend

Printable Page

---

Tweet

January-March, 2005

Ocean of Love

by Rev. Petra Sundheim, O.M.C.

E- motion, energy in motion

Is like the ocean

Unruly, untamed, fearful to behold.

To impress, I stress

And push down my feelings untold

What a mess!

When those feelings, like a ball

Pop up out control

To spoil ego’s plans

For an easy sail with you.

You’re unimpressed.I

feel blue, but true

To old ways, I learned to show

Anger to keep you at bay,

Thinking it safe that way.

Instead you don’t want to play.

I am lonely again, looking for love.

I believe I am separate from you

And from God. I’m a clod!

Old ways don’t work. I ask

For a better way. The mask

I let down. Amazing! No frown!

Love greets me in a loving sea

Ready to show me “into-me-see.”

In the ocean of Love

This ego I own is but foam

On a wave I can’t save

As it blends with the all.

So I will explore the Love that I am

And plunge to the ocean depths of my Being.

Now in stillness I am seeing

The Peace that I feel when I’m really

real. Forgiving you I am forgiving me –

A much happier way to be

As I rise to the surface of the ocean

I’m learning to surf my emotion

Embracing the Now, I let it all go.

I’ve unblocked the love I can now show.

I’ve learned it’s ok to grow and truly know

Though our waves seem separate above

We are one in the depths of the ocean.

We are Love! We are Love!”

Rev. Petra Sundheim is a Pathways of Light minister living in Kalaheo, Hawaii.

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

Tell a Friend

Printable Page

---

Tweet

October-December, 2004

Hijacked!

by Rev. Myron Jones, O.M.C.

I had been so excited for a couple of weeks as I anticipated a wonderful week at Pathways. I was co-facilitating 920: Being a Miracle Worker with Rev. Barbara Kraetsch.

I was so pleased to be working with Barbara and was looking forward to seeing some old friends and making some new ones. It took some doing to get my work schedule arranged so that I could take off some time for this, especially since I was taking off a couple of extra days. I didn’t really need those extra days, but I really wanted them. I love being at Pathways, and always come back renewed and ready to tackle anything.

Besides co-facilitating my first course for Pathways (which was thrilling enough), I would also be recording a DVD. Wow! A minister of God and a star; who would have thought! With all this to look forward to, you can imagine how upset I was when the day before I was scheduled to fly out, I woke up with a sore throat. I could hardly talk. How on earth was I going to fully participate in the coming weekend if this kept up? So, I asked Holy Spirit, “What’s up with this?”

I didn’t stop long enough to listen, though. I had last minute customers to take care of, and lots to do before I left. By the middle of the day, I was feeling pretty sick and had a fever. Now I was paying more attention, but I wasn’t getting much. I mean I was asking what was going on, but I wasn’t really hearing anything. I went to the doctor and got plenty of medicine. I worried a lot. But I was still sick.

I called my mind healing partner, Loretta, and told her what was going on. I asked what she thought I should do. Loretta asked me if I was nervous about the coming weekend and I said that I was a little, but not enough to make me sick. She suggested that I journal and see if I could get an answer that way. My friend Linda, who is good at journaling once told me that three is the magic number. She said that if I am journaling to get an answer I should always write at least three pages. I guess it must take that long to let the ego voice itself so you can get to the good stuff.

I don’t have the kind of patience that it takes to do a lot of journaling, but this obviously called for extreme action, so I sat down in my favorite chair and took up pen. I asked the Holy Spirit why I was sick, and what did He want me to learn from this? This is what I got on the third page (guess you were right, Linda):

The Course says that sickness is a decision. I made a decision to be sick. I began to feel that I had to perform well because people would be expecting it of me. I didn’t tell myself that — at least not out loud — but that is what was going on in the background. And that is what was making me sick. I started off with the right idea. When I was ordained, I told the Holy Spirit that I was ready to do my work. I said that I would show up wherever He needed me and do my best to get out of His way. I would always try to be a useful channel for Him — to say or do what was needed.

That was my intention for this weekend also, but somewhere along the way I got hijacked by the ego. I began to think this was about me. With the ego involved, my joy turned to fear and anxiety. My ego was trying to get me out of this scary situation using the same method that had always worked in the past. I would get sick and not have to participate. Less would be expected of me and then there would be less chance of failure.

“So,” I asked, “What am I supposed to do now? How do I get my life back from the ego?” Knowing what not to do isn’t the same as knowing what to do. Please tell me in a clear way that I can understand what I need to know.” I knew that the answer was there waiting for me to see it.

I thanked the Holy Spirit for these useful insights, and invited Him to come into my mind and show me another way to see this. I confirmed my original intention to be useful in any way He needs me. I gave Him all my fears and uncertainties. I picked up a nearby copy of the Course and opened it at random. I was in Chapter 4 of the Text, Section 1. Paragraph 7 jumped out at me. It said, “Your worth is not established by teaching or learning. Your worth is established by God. As long as you dispute this everything you do will be fearful, particularly any situation that lends itself to the belief in superiority and inferiority.” Well, that was just about perfect for the situation, wasn’t it?

This turned out to be one of those golden opportunities. I learned a lot as I worked my way through this situation. I found that it was not as easy as I thought it would be to lay aside my ego concerns. I sacrificed my peace to my ego fears. But I knew that I was doing what I was supposed to do, so I stayed with it. After it was all over, I could see that all my fears were groundless, and isn’t that always the case? I was also pleased that I continued to seek guidance and did my best to listen.

In the future, it is my intention to divert all ego hijackings right at the beginning before the ego can get a foot in the door, because once in, the ego is harder to dislodge. I can see that if I had stopped immediately on noting my anxiety, and gone straight to the Holy Spirit with my concerns, I could have avoided most of the nervousness I felt, and would have enjoyed my week more.

Rev. Myron Jones is a Pathways of Light minister living in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

© 2004, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this copyright notice and website address are included.

Tell a Friend

Printable Page

---

Back to main page of Miracles News.

Has this page been helpful to you?
Your contribution to support this site is greatly appreciated. To make a tax deductible contribution with a credit/debit card, click here.
Click here to donate from your PayPal account.
Or send a check to Pathways of Light, 12530 Lions Chase Court, Huntley, IL 60142.