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Mindful Morning In and Out of Time

by Rev. Bill Poppa, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

“Nothing is ever lost but time, which in the end is meaningless. For it is but a little hindrance to eternity, quite meaningless to the real Teacher of the world. Yet since you do believe in it, why should you waste it going nowhere, when it can be used to reach a goal as high as learning can achieve?”  (T-26.V.2:1-3)

“To you who still believe you live in time and know not it is gone, the Holy Spirit still guides you through the infinitely small and senseless maze you still perceive in time, though it has long since gone. You think you live in what is past. Each thing you look upon you saw but for an instant, long ago, before its unreality gave way to truth. Not one illusion still remains unanswered in your mind. Uncertainty was brought to certainty so long ago that it is hard indeed to hold it to your heart, as if it were before you still.” (T-26.V.4:1-5)

I wake up this morning. I am free of thought. Everything I look upon is new. There is no past.

I walk into the kitchen to make coffee and it is as if I am doing it for the first time. I know how to do it. The smell of the coffee grinds is a surprising gift. I am grateful I am making coffee. It is the perfect thing to do. It is the only thing to do. When I close the top of the coffee maker, the smell of the grinds diminishes then is gone.

Before I turn to walk away, I hear a sound. It is a meow. I turn. I see a cat sitting on the kitchen floor looking directly at me, her eyes slightly closed adjusting to the light. As our eyes meet, her mouth opens slightly. Another sound, a gentle whisper.

I reply, “Good morning, Ada.” I know her name. Another miracle. She slowly stands up and walks back into the darkened room from which she came. Like the smell of the coffee grinds, she appears and disappears.

I go to sit on the porch. It is the perfect thing to do. It is dark, then light. A squirrel is walking across a telephone line. Where is he going? It doesn’t matter. He is perfect. He reaches the pole. He turns and walks a line that leads through a cluster of trees, disappearing from sight. He is seen, then unseen. He comes from nothing then returns to nothing.

Suddenly I feel myself rocking. It is gentle and rhythmic. How long have I been moving back and forth? It doesn’t matter. Time is an illusion. My body is in motion, back and forth, swaying with the dawn of the day. It is perfect.

I hear a ding. I look to my left and a phone is sitting on the wicker stand next to me. I know it is a text. How do I know?  I just do. Another miracle. I pick up the phone. The message says,

“Thank you. I’ll have out of town guests on Sunday so I will see how things go!”

I think, what a perfect message. I wonder who it is? I look back at the string to get a context to this perfect message. I see it is the mother of my daughters. She is responding to my invitation to join a breakfast planned with my siblings and both my daughters. I remember, there is a wedding. It is in the future. There is a plan. A wedding.

Now I am aware of time. There is no time, now there is time. It is great.

I stand up. I am aware I have things to do. I have someone coming to visit this evening. We are going to watch a movie. Oh yes, it’s called A Beautiful Mind. I remember it is a beautiful film.

I think, “I have things to do.” Shopping, cleaning. I remember I promised a friend I would review a preliminary transcript on a book he is writing. I am back in time. It is perfect. It is great.

I still feel light even though thought of time is now in my awareness. The illusion of a future does not interrupt my peace. I don’t really believe in the future. I am simply aware of a plan put in place now. It is a perfect flow.

“It is evident that the Holy Spirit’s perception of time is the exact opposite of the ego’s. The reason is equally clear, for they perceive the goal of time as diametrically opposed. The Holy Spirit interprets time’s purpose as rendering the need for time unnecessary. He regards the function of time as temporary, serving only His teaching function, which is temporary by definition. His emphasis is therefore on the only aspect of time that can extend to the infinite, for now is the closest approximation of eternity that this world offers. It is in the reality of “now,” without past or future, that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. For only “now” is here, and only “now” presents the opportunities for the holy encounters in which salvation can be found.” (T-13.IV.7:1-7)

Rev. Bill Poppa, O.M.C., is a Pathways of Light minister living in New Orleans, LA.
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice and website address are included.

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Joy and Peace

by Rev. Joyce Peebles, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

The text tells us light, joy and peace abide in me. I came to admit that I did not believe these words. To “spiritual people” they sound good and thus I enjoyed saying them. Yet the problem remained that I could not believe them entirely.

Due to my split mind, I am engaged in a daily struggle to see myself as an ego body or as pure spirit.

Jesus has instructed us that this body, the world and our special relationships are all made to conceal the beliefs in sin, guilt and fear. I know this is true from observing my projections. Too often I see my brother as my enemy; conflict, competition and strife are present. Now I understand it is the belief in guilt in my mind that is the cause of my upsets.

A quote from the Song of Prayer says, “Praying for others, if rightly understood, becomes a means for lifting your projections of guilt from your brother, and enabling you to recognize it is not he who is hurting you. The poisonous thought that he is your enemy, your evil counterpart, your nemesis, must be relinquished before you can be saved from guilt.” (-1.3.1:4-5)

I am literally making the projections I desire to see. I am responsible for what I see. Every minute of every day I decide to see my brother and myself as innocent or guilty. I cannot see my brother as different from myself. Therefore, if I perceive attack and conflict in my projections, I doubt that light, joy and peace abide in me.

In lesson 93, Jesus asks us to do something that many find too difficult. We are asked to spend the first five minutes of every waking hour to say “ Light and joy and peace abide in me.  My sinlessness is guaranteed by God.”  Jesus would not ask me to declare the truth of my innocence every hour unless He was retraining my mind to actually believe it.

The resistance to doing this simple request was great! It meant looking at the belief that I am guilty. He also tells me I have self-hatred from this belief.

In Chapter 13 Jesus tells us, “You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your hatred and realize its full extent. You may also think that it would be easy enough for the Holy Spirit to show it to you, and to dispel it without the need for you to raise it to awareness yourself.” (T-13.III.1:1-2)

The Holy Spirit works with each of us where we are. It is self-deception to think of ourselves as further along spiritually than we actually are. My self-deception has often prevented me from acknowledging these gifts of joy and peace.

In Lesson 104 we are told, “Yet must there be a place made ready to receive His gifts. They are not welcomed gladly by a mind that has instead received the gifts it made where His belong, as substitutes for them.” (1:4-5)

It has been a process to become aware that I have an investment in guilt and observe my self-hatred for desiring these shabby gifts. They resulted in a fearful, uncertain, victimized individual. I had to admit I saw value in guilt.

ACIM has helped me to see how I have used guilt to keep me from the Love I really want. There was hope, however; for I was not abandoned. I heard that persistent Voice imploring me to see my brother and thereby myself as non-guilty.

The Voice reminded me that if someone I perceive is not giving love, they are asking for it. I became willing to surrender and see with the Holy Spirit’s eyes. There are hours, sometimes days when I choose to suffer by ignoring that Voice, but I always come back to wanting peace.

The Holy Spirit never demands and cannot take away my desire for conflict, strife, guilt or suffering until I decide I no longer want these. How long I value the valueless is up to me alone. I stay in the prison of my own making for as long as I desire.

The key out of hell is to let go of my special, ego self. When I see myself upset during the day, I tell myself I have chosen to reject Love by not remembering my Real Self.

I feel gratitude I have at least a limited understanding of the battle for sanity in my Mind. How happy I am is totally dependent on a decision in the mind. Joy and peace are not something I earn; they are simply uncovered once my false thoughts are out of the way.

Rev. Joyce Peebles is a Pathways of Light minister living in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice and website address are included.

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Puzzled

by Rev. Paula Richards, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

One of the best things about the used bookstore near me isn’t the books. It isn’t the lovely couple who own it or the warm, welcoming space they’ve created. It’s the puzzles. Row upon row of used jigsaw puzzles that you can rent for a full month.

Not everyone enjoys doing puzzles. I happen to love it if there is a pretty picture and not just some mind-boggling challenge. I don’t feel the need to prove myself in that way. But, as I sat the other evening, pouring out the contents of another 1,000-piece puzzle box, I couldn’t help wondering what the fascination is with cutting a photo into many pieces only to put them back together again. Why would anyone do that? It somehow felt important to have an answer.

I asked Holy Spirit to explore this with me because I suspected that puzzle-making might be a metaphor for life. A Course in Miracles tells us over and over that we are whole, complete, and perfect, that we are One. But we are experiencing ourselves as billions of separate individuals trying to rejoin, to see where we fit into the bigger picture. Again, why would we do that?

When I was care giving for my mom, her dementia created a lot of confusion and unpredictability. I would often find solace in making a puzzle. With each piece that I connected, it felt as though I were bringing order to the chaos. There was a peacefulness in knowing that, with persistence, I would ultimately be able to complete the scene. I enjoyed experiencing the photo more intimately by focusing on the size, color, and shape of each individual piece and taking time to see where and how it fit in. The finished puzzle size was also larger and grander somehow than the photo on the box.

Is our human experience like making a puzzle? Are we learning, through loving, how to bring order to the chaos? Are we developing a faith that, with persistence, we will ultimately experience the truth that we are One with our Creator? Are we using time to experience the characteristics of each individual, getting to know each part of ourselves more intimately? Are we seeing how we interconnect and fit into the larger whole? Through experiencing what it’s like to be what we are not, are we expanding in our capacity to love, discovering that the whole is, indeed, greater than all its parts?

Beyond puzzle-making, why do we choose to do anything that we do? Paint a picture? Try a new food? Move across the country? Why did we choose to have this human experience? Maybe we don’t need a reason for what we choose to do. Perhaps the only answer to “why we do what we do” is that, in our God-given power and freedom, we wanted to.

Rev. Paula Richards, O.M.C., is a Pathways of Light minister from Green Valley, AZ. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address): SpiritRisingMinistries.com Phone: 508-517-9361

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice and website address are included.

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The Three R’s: Reset, Renew and Remind

by Rev. Vicki Evans, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

One of the most beautiful lessons that I learned through my journey at Pathways of Light is that I always have the opportunity to choose my path; dwell on the past, or move forward into peace and joy with Holy Spirit. Reset every morning — no need to regret or ruminate yesterday. This has become my mantra.

I want to be the tide that moves forward collecting shells of experience by latching on to activities that contribute to my goals and create waves of purpose. In the past I can think of so many times when I would ruminate on my thoughts over and over in my mind in hopes of grasping a perspective that I could make sense of in my false state of ego. Sometimes that circulating of mind thoughts would take the form of going over my encounters and almost rating them on a scale of 1 to 10. I was thinking from a state of worry instead of self-trust.

Knowing that I have a lifelong partner in Holy Spirit and my own Internal Wisdom, I now live in the joy of awakening when I choose the path of peace. I can always trust myself to be my authentic self in any situation to revitalize myself in a state of Love, not ego.

Instead of going over scenarios to evaluate if I was good enough or did enough, I can move on to the next encounter with hopeful anticipation of a new experience that I can remember with joy instead of worry and regret. The next step in my revelation is that I want to put this learning into practice daily through resetting my focus and mindset each morning. I want to give myself the grace to move forward from worry, guilt, rumination, or rewriting the script from the previous day.

This self-fulfilling practice allows me to renew myself and my mind every day! I feel like there is so much more precious time in each day if I follow my commitment to myself to live in the moment and grasp the joy of a reset and renewed mind! If I find that I wake up to a challenging morning and attempt to go back to my old mind games, I now have created a toolbox to use as needed. I visualize a glass box with coping skills of meditations that I can listen to from my POL classes, mantras that I have created with a few words that I see in my mind and say to myself as needed such as Revitalize and Renew, No regrets!

Another tool in my toolbox is keeping a box of activities written on a small piece of paper that I have created to reach for whenever I feel muddled and cannot move forward into action. Some of my action ideas are taking a walk, writing a Haiku poem, writing a kind journal letter to myself that includes two ways that I have moved forward in my healing each day. I now look for activities or new experiences by saying “yes” to going out or participating in even small activities. Every day is a chance to try again.

As I went along the path of writing this article, I was given a mental image of a third word that I can add to Reset and Renew, and that word is Remind. I want to hold onto these 3 R’s and Remind myself that I am Love, not ego. My choice to move forward each day to reset and renew along with Holy Spirit can create my life of purpose, Love, and Peace — a fusion of all the awesome teachings of Pathways of Light!

Rev. Vicki Evans is a Pathways of Light minister living in Dallas, Texas. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice and website address are included.

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