Miracles News

May-August, 2025

Guideposts

by Rev. Joyce Peebles, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

A Course in Miracles describes the dream we experience as a journey that never was in reality. In a sense, there is a journey we take to wake up from this dream. It’s the shortest journey you will ever take, and it takes the longest time to get there. It’s the one that starts in your brain and goes to your heart.

We were taught in school to study and accumulate a lot of information that will help us accomplish our chosen occupation. This information is useless unless we use it to get the job done. As Course students, we can read the Text, do the Lessons and have an intellectual understanding that stays in our head. To wake up, this information needs to travel to our heart. How do you know that this is happening? The Course gives us some guideposts or landmarks along the way. The following is a list of some of these guideposts or landmarks: (they are not in any particular order).

#1. A new beginning is established, and you learn you can pick the day you want. “Healing occurs as a patient begins to hear the dirge he sings, and questions its validity. Until he hears it, he cannot understand that it is he who sings it to himself. To hear it is the first step in recovery.” (P-2.VI.1:5-7). In Chapter 30, see The Rules for Decision, which gives you step by step instructions on how to have the day you desire. There are instructions on how to let the Holy Spirit make decisions for you and how to create new habits.

#2. You recognize the purpose of the daily lessons. While going through each day, you understand there is a Love beyond the dream that you are connected to which is always there. The lessons teach you to discipline your mind, which helps bring real vision. As the years go by, the Lessons have a new meaning to you.

#3. A serene forehead. About twenty years ago I went to see someone who was reputed to be able to access my akashic records. I asked him what it was I was supposed to be learning in this lifetime. He got quiet and came back with something that surprised me. His answer was to learn to be calm. To my knowledge this man knew nothing about me or ACIM.

Years later I read, “Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? Yet that is what time is for; to learn just that and nothing more.” (T-15.1:1-2)

#4. You laugh more often. The ego would have you believe you are supposed to suffer for your sins. The Holy Spirit tells us we only suffer because of this belief in guilt. In reality it is God’s Will we be happy; thus, you find yourself smiling and laughing more often as the burden of guilt fades. You discover suffering is causeless and serves no purpose.

Lesson 129 is: “Beyond this world there is a world I want.” We can smile and be happy once we realize this world is not real and was not meant to make us happy but keep us stuck in fearful beliefs. We learn to be calm and happy as the Holy Spirit teaches us to interpret our circumstances differently.

#5. Your dream becomes a forgiving one. Forgiveness is how the ego thought system is undone. You ask for help from the Holy Spirit and take responsibility for making up the life script you are presently in. The one you forgive is you, for believing you are anything other than what God made which is perfect Love, total innocence. “A concept of the self is made by you. It bears no likeness to yourself at all. It is an idol, made to take the place of your reality as Son of God.” (T-31.V.2:1-3)

The Course teaches us to forgive the images we think we see until we realize there is nobody “out there” to forgive.

#6. Where before you saw guilt, you now see a call for love. At first you think it would be compassionate or kind to overlook the sins of your brother. Then it is revealed that the problem is not your brother. It is the belief in sin and guilt which you have projected onto your brother. His call for love is your call for love. You really want the relief of being innocent, which was impossible with your belief in guilt. The image you seem to see is a projection of your beliefs. The Holy Spirit shows you that the exact same spark of Divine Light is present in both you and your brother.

#7. You recognize the valuable from the valueless. You give up the ego’s toys. These include manipulation, judgment, anger, depression, etc. The list is long. These toys have not brought you joy. They have not served you well and you want to give them up. We used these toys as maladaptive defenses to cling to a self-concept of a weak and limited body. The world and body were made as a place to hide from a fearful God. You come to understand that the only valuable things are those that are eternal. Eventually your special relationships are transformed into holy relationships.

#8. You cease to become offended and stop thinking of yourself as a victim. When you know yourself to still be with God, complete, lacking nothing, you are not open to criticism. The Holy Spirit has shown you that this script was written by you, there’s nobody to blame. Everything you are experiencing you have asked for, it’s all a learning classroom.

#9. You notice that fear is falling away. This happens gradually till one day you notice that what upset you before no longer does. For example, your children do not need to act in a certain way for you to be happy. You understand that you do not know what is best for anyone or what anything is for. An acceptance of what is occurs. You trust life to unfold, knowing all is for your own good.

#10. For the limitations of this article, the last point I want to mention is what Jesus calls the branch in the road. “When you come to the place where the branch in the road is quite apparent, you cannot go ahead. You must go either one way or the other. For now if you go straight ahead, the way you went before you reached the branch, you will go nowhere. The whole purpose of coming this far was to decide which branch you will take now.” (T-22.IV.1:1-4)

You understand when you come to a branch in the road because a change in your thinking is required. For example, making the decision to stop judging your brother and instead see the Light in him consistently.

Rev. Joyce Peebles, OMC is a Pathways of Light minister. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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