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Study of the Text II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 9 11-29-13

II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 9
9 Thoughts begin in the mind of the thinker, from which they reach outward. This is as true of God’s Thinking as it is of yours. Because your mind is split, you can perceive as well as think. Yet perception cannot escape the basic laws of mind. You perceive from your mind and project your perceptions outward. Although perception of any kind is unreal, you made it and the Holy Spirit can therefore use it well. He can inspire perception and lead it toward God. This convergence seems to be far in the future only because your mind is not in perfect alignment with the idea, and therefore does not want it now.

This first sentence explains how we made the world we see. First we thought of it, then the thoughts took form. This is the way God made us as well. We know from the previous paragraph that God’s Thoughts remain in His mind, and so we know that this is true of our thoughts as well. What we made as the world is in our mind, just as we are in God’s Mind.

Because our mind is split we both think and perceive, and perception follows the same rules as does thinking. The world we made is a perceived world. It is not real because it is not created, but made up of impossible thoughts. Still, because we made it, the Holy Spirit can use it. The way He uses it is to help bring our thinking into alignment with truth. He inspires our perceptions and therefore turns them toward God.

Last night when my daughter was getting ready to leave the house I asked her if she remembered her phone. She tends to forget things. She said she had it and drove off. I found her phone on the kitchen table. I expressed out loud to those still at the house that this girl tests my faith. Every time she leaves I worry because she seems to be so unaware. I meant it as a joke, but it didn’t feel funny to me when I said it out loud. I immediately regretted my words.

Here is how the Holy Spirit inspires my perceptions and turns them toward God.

The Holy Spirit showed me that the reason I felt bad about what I said is that it is an attack on my daughter. I see her as less than what she is. I overlook her holiness and see her behavior instead. When I asked for help the Holy Spirit inspired my perception, and I was able to see my daughter as the brilliant being she is. What is her story of forgetfulness next to the truth of her holy Self?

Then the Holy Spirit helped me to see my guilty feelings differently as well. I saw that I did not ever mean to attack my daughter. The attack was a projection of my fear for her. We looked at the fear together and I was reminded that fear is not real, but something we made up through our faulty perceptions.

This helped turn my perceptions away from the darkness to the light. The Holy Spirit gave me a vision of my daughter and I sitting together enjoying the story of Susan and Mom. This story is better than anything on TV, and just as unreal.  We are not guilty because nothing is really happening. Our stories cannot alter what God created.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 8. 11-27-13

II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 8
8 God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. The Holy Spirit enables you to perceive this wholeness now. God created you to create. You cannot extend His Kingdom until you know of its wholeness.

Very clearly we cannot be apart from or different from, God. He created us by extending His Thought, that is, He created us by extending Himself and, therefore, we are like God. We are powerful creators just as is God. This powerful creative ability is what allows us to make the world we see in all its complexity. Because we did not create in the way of Creation (through extending our Thought) what we made is not truly created, but in making it, we used the same power that we would use in creation.

When God created us He extended His Thought, but He also held His Thought within His Mind. This is why we can never truly be separate from God. We are not only like God, we are in God. Being in God, we are perfectly protected and are in no danger from our illusions. We can dream of being separate and in danger, but clearly that cannot actually happen. Because we are in God, it is clearly possible and perfectly safe to awaken from this dream.

Our made world is a world of separation where we each seem to be discrete, and unconnected, and yet, that is obviously not possible. We are part of each other and part of God and still within God, One Whole Self. The belief that we are separated from each other and from God is the only thing holding us in our illusion and holding our illusion together.

Let go of that thought and we wake up to our true Self and know ourselves in God. We return home to discover we never really left, we were just dreaming of being separate. We wake up to our Father and to our true creations. It really is that simple. We imagine we are in this world of pain and sorrow and that it is worth all the suffering because it keeps us safe from a vengeful God.

And yet, we are all the time in God. If He were truly vengeful we would already be destroyed. We are like children afraid of the monsters in the dark. We sit with our eyes tightly closed and imagine that we are safe because we don’t see the monster. All the time, there is no monster, just the imagined shadows of our fear.

Do I truly believe that I am safe at home in God, and that I only imagine this world? I asked myself that as I wrote what came to me this morning, and I heard only whispers of dissent. The ego is afraid, but I am not the ego and its voice is fading from my mind.  Then the ego asks if I believe my son is not real, and reminds me of his upcoming surgery.

Will I be so certain he is not real when he is under the knife and in danger? I ask the Holy Spirit about this, and He reminds me that my son is very real and he is with me in God. It is the story of his suffering that is the illusion. I ask that my mind be healed of the lingering belief in the illusion.

I imagine myself in that situation, sitting in the waiting room with my son’s fiancée and I feel the fear in the clinching of my stomach and the tightening in my chest. I feel it moving up my throat and making a lump there that I can barely breathe around. I feel the fear melting out of me as tears.

I watch this happen knowing that this is exactly what needs to be healed. It comes up so that the Holy Spirit and I can look together, and together, agree that this cannot be. How can a Thought of God be endangered? I used to ask for help then put up a wall against that help. It seemed so wrong, so disloyal, to not be afraid for my son.

I look at that wall with the Holy Spirit and together we agree that it is unnecessary, and that Love is not fear. I watch as the wall crumbles before my eyes. The ego tries to worm its way into this moment with Holy Spirit, asking what we are to do next to achieve this healing, and I am told that my part is done. The Holy Spirit will do the rest. I am to rest in Trust and allow it to happen.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 7 11-26-13

II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 7
7 The perfect equality of the Holy Spirit’s perception is the reflection of the perfect equality of God’s knowing. The ego’s perception has no counterpart in God, but the Holy Spirit remains the bridge between perception and knowledge. By enabling you to use perception in a way that reflects knowledge, you will ultimately remember it. The ego would prefer to believe that this memory is impossible, yet it is your perception the Holy Spirit guides. Your perception will end where it began. Everything meets in God, because everything was created by Him and in Him.

My perception is my way of seeing things. It is how I interpret what I see and hear and think. My perception was informed by influences from my childhood and it varies even now according to my mood and which book I have read lately. At its best, my perception will only be an opinion formed outside of knowledge. There is no perception in God. There is only Knowledge that does not change. God does not perceive, He knows.

It seems such a huge gap, this perceiving that I do and the absolute knowledge of God. The ego would have me believe that there is no way to bridge that gap, but there is a way. The Holy Spirit is the bridge between perception and knowledge. As I willingly offer the Holy Spirit my thoughts for reinterpretation, He corrects them so that they are closer to knowledge.

As I have done this my thinking, my perceptions, have shifted to something that more accurately reflects knowledge. While it is not knowledge it is so much closer to knowledge that an ancient memory has begun to stir within me. As this memory grows and comes more into focus, I begin to remember who I am.

I am meant to recover this memory and I am meant to do so now! This is the secret that ego would keep from me. It would have me work toward awakening as long as I keep it as a distant possibility. I can even think of it as an inevitability as long as it still seems far away. This is why, as I approach awakening, the ego points out my errors, dredging up long forgotten sins to show me how unworthy I am.

It distracts and discourages. But now I remember that the ego has no power over me. It is not my master, but only an idea in my mind, an idea I formulated and therefore one that I can choose against. The Holy Spirit has corrected my thinking about the ego and so I am closer to being in alignment with knowledge than before. I am not so easily fooled now, and can even laugh to realize that I was only being fooled by myself.

At one time I would have been greatly discouraged by the ego thoughts that arise in the mind. I would have thought that their presence meant I was failing to awaken, and that I was so far from awakening that it felt hopeless to me. Now I see the thoughts and realize that any reaction to them, any feeling of anxiety, indicates that I am experiencing the remnants of a belief I no longer want. I turn to the Holy Spirit for healing.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 6 11-25-13

II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 6
6 How else can you find joy in a joyless place except by realizing that you are not there? You cannot be anywhere God did not put you, and God created you as part of Him. That is both where you are and what you are. It is completely unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change it now or ever. It is forever true. It is not a belief, but a Fact. Anything that God created is as true as He is. Its truth lies only in its perfect inclusion in Him Who alone is perfect. To deny this is to deny yourself and Him, since it is impossible to accept one without the other.

I cannot imagine how Jesus could state the truth any more clearly than he has done so here. In the world there is only temporary happiness, or rather there are moments when we forget that we are not happy. There is no joy in the world. Our moments that seem the most joyful, falling in love, the birth of a child, seeing a grandchild for the first time, these moments are examples of what we call joy. And yet, they are tinged with fear. We fear falling out of love or losing the one we love. We fear for our children and grandchildren. There is no joy in the world that is pure.

The only way to find joy is to realize we are not in this world. We are where God put us and He put us with Him. In God we are purely joyful with nothing to tinge that joy. There is no loss or fear in God. And in God is where we are. It is not where we are going or where we hope to be one day. It is certainly not a place we get to by dying. Jesus is very clear about this. God created us like Him and in Him and that is unalterable.

Pretending to live in a strange world does not make it happen. We dream of life and death, but we only Live. To stop this absurd dream we need only to awaken to the simple fact that we cannot be what God created not. It is not possible to undo what God has done. We can, however, undo what we have done simply by desiring it to be undone.

For myself, I am noticing those times when I am uncertain or confused about what I want. My desire to abandon my imaginative play must be unqualified. If I value anything in the illusion then I will keep the illusion. If I reserve the right to judge then I have chosen the illusion. If I reserve the right to see myself as less than or better than someone else, I have chosen the illusion. So I watch my mind for the things I still think I want, and I realize that I do not want them. They are sharp edged toys that hurt me and I don’t want to play with them anymore.

The other thing I do is to remind myself of Who I am and What I am. I do this often. I remember that my mind is healed and Whole now! This is not something I have to earn or a goal I seek. It is the truth right now! I am God’s child, His holy Son, His perfect creation. Everything else is just part of the illusion, nothing, the remnants of a dream I have awakened from. I have lost interest in fixing the dream. What is the point? And when old habits lure me back into the dream, I shake myself awake again. I will not deny myself, and I will not deny God.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 3,Part 2 11-21-13

II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 3 Part 2
3 Yet projection will always hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its only purpose is to keep the separation going. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel different from your brothers and separated from them. The ego justifies this on the grounds that it makes you seem “better” than they are, thus obscuring your equality with them still further. Projection and attack are inevitably related, because projection is always a means of justifying attack. Anger without projection is impossible. The ego uses projection only to destroy your perception of both yourself and your brothers. The process begins by excluding something that exists in you but which you do not want, and leads directly to excluding you from your brothers.

I am going to buy a new car, an activity I don’t look forward to. I feel at a disadvantage in this situation. I am not good at looking at all the aspects of a situation and pinpointing the ones that really matter. I am not good at thinking on my feet. I need time and solitude to sift through the facts and then allow the solution to rise to the surface. Being a sales person myself, you would think I would be able to handle the situation with another sales person better, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

As I was sitting here thinking about how to write about projection, my mind wandered to the dreaded car-buying project. I began to pay attention to my thoughts and saw a lot of projection going on. I was feeling judgmental and resentful of car salesmen. I was thinking of defense strategies.

I see that I feel I lack the skills to do this job well, and this makes me feel vulnerable and weak. I don’t like feeling this way so I projected onto some unknown sales person. I made the sales person the problem and then started planning my defenses against him. I noticed that I was beginning to feel angry and resentful of someone I have yet to meet. I start by thinking I have a problem, and end up making some man my enemy. Right from the comfort of my home. Jeez.

Looking at this I see that my first error was in losing my sense of purpose. Is it my purpose to get a good deal on a car? Or is it my purpose to awaken? How can I use this experience to help me and everyone else awaken? Certainly it is not going to help my cause to separate myself from my brother through projection. Awakening doesn’t occur through making separate, and placing blame.

Not only did my exercise in projection make me feel separate from this person I have not even met, it made him seem like an enemy and me feel like a helpless victim. Even more important, these projections reinforce the belief in separation and the belief that I need to defend myself in this way, that is, projection protects me. If I believe this, I am not going to be interested in letting this device go.

As I have become aware of how important it is that I let go of the whole idea of projection, I have become vigilant for projection thoughts in my mind. It seems that projection is pervasive in my thinking. This does not mean, however, that I cannot stop. It has become just as much a habit for me to stop when I notice that I am projecting. I stop and ask that the Holy Spirit heal my mind of this kind of thinking.

At first I did this because I knew I was hurting myself. Now I do it because I really want to experience unconditional and universal love. I want to remember what it feels like to know that I am one with everything and everyone. I want to remember my Father as I knew Him before I dabbled in the separation game.

These desires dwarf the belief I need to feel savvy on the car lot, and that I need to leave the winner. In fact, the very thought makes me laugh. I’m through making plans on my own. I remind myself this morning that it is all an illusion and why would I want to fix the illusion. I turn my attention back to the truth and the only thing that matters. I surrender the whole process to the Holy Spirit and invite Him to use this body as His channel in this situation as in any other.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text,II. the Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 3. 11-20-13

II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 3
3 Yet projection will always hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its only purpose is to keep the separation going. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel different from your brothers and separated from them. The ego justifies this on the grounds that it makes you seem “better” than they are, thus obscuring your equality with them still further. Projection and attack are inevitably related, because projection is always a means of justifying attack. Anger without projection is impossible. The ego uses projection only to destroy your perception of both yourself and your brothers. The process begins by excluding something that exists in you but which you do not want, and leads directly to excluding you from your brothers.

This is so simple that I am astounded that it took me so long to work it out. For years I have been first learning what projection is, then learning to notice it when I projected. After that I had to understand that I don’t need projection and finally that I don’t want projection. The only reason I ever believed that I needed and wanted projection is that I thought it protected me.

At his workplace someone I know was very angry with another person. I saw so clearly what was happening. This person was angry because he was fearful. He was afraid of losing what he values in the world, and because he puts such a heavy emphasis on these things, he was fearful indeed. He cannot face his fear, and is not ready to do anything about fear itself, so he projects.

He sees others at fault and decides they are the reason he is endangered and this allows him to be angry instead of fearful, which is more comfortable for him. Now, in his mind, there is nothing for him to do. He sees himself as blameless. Sadly, though, he is also now helpless. It is all someone else’s fault and so there is little he can do to fix the problem.

Additionally, he has now made enemies out of his brothers. He makes a habit of this (as do most people) and so everyone becomes his enemy, if not now, then potentially. He has surrounded himself with enemies and so where can he feel safe? Who can he trust? His wife might stray. His children might betray his expectations for them. His employees might be disloyal and certainly, eventually will disappoint. There is no refuge in his life.

Understanding the cost of projection, I cannot imagine returning to projection as my defense against life. Now when I project I see it quickly and I see it for what it is, and I quickly withdraw my projections. I am not interested in finding someone to blame, but want only to know that my mind is healed and whole right now and everything else is just an illusion of my own making. This is the solution, the protection that I had been seeking and not finding through projection.

Is it hard to let go of my projection? It used to be very hard sometimes because I was so afraid to let go of the idea that I needed a scapegoat. I thought that someone else to blame would leave me blameless, but I was wrong about that. In fact, I am blameless regardless of what I do, and I don’t need someplace to put blame because there is no blame to displace.

It was hard at first because I was so afraid of my own culpability, so guilty in my mind that I was terrified to stand naked without my projections. I was sure that I would be punished and suffer for my guilt. I was afraid that God would see the darkness on my soul and would never forgive me, so I tried to throw it on someone else and make him look guilty instead.

This was my hidden agenda, buried deeply within my mind so that I could pretend I was but an innocent victim of the world. Looking at it now I can only laugh. That God would create an innocent victim is so ridiculous I had to be insane to have believed it, and really, I didn’t believe it. I refused to look at it, but in my heart I knew this couldn’t be true and my subterfuge simply increased my guilt and fear. What a relief it is to have finally let this go! 

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 2, 11-19-13

II. The Alternative to Projection, Paragraph 2
2 What you project you disown, and therefore do not believe is yours. You are excluding yourself by the very judgment that you are different from the one on whom you project. Since you have also judged against what you project, you continue to attack it because you continue to keep it separated. By doing this unconsciously, you try to keep the fact that you attacked yourself out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe.

One of the ego’s most cherished “gifts” is judgment. While I listen to the ego I believe I not only can judge but that I should judge. The ego says it is not only my right but also my responsibility. Putting aside for the moment how unqualified the ego is to judge, let’s look at what happens once I judge.

I have been trying on the idea that my mind is healed and whole right now. Right now! That there is nothing else for me to do, and that, really, there never was anything for me to do. I am already what I seek, and that everything I have been judging against was just an illusion, and who needs to fix an illusion?  The ego has a lot of judgment about that. In fact, the ego is jumping up and down in judgment!

I’ve been studying the ego for over 30 years so I know the ego when I hear it. I know all its tricks and all its arguments. I know it so well that I am sick to death of it. But until the last couple of years, I have never seriously considered peeling it off of me. Now that I have decided that I am through with it and that I won’t let it lead me into death before I can do that, the ego is pulling out all the stops to keep me glued to its tired old stories.

The ego can only exist in the dark. If it is brought into the light it loses its glamour. It’s like a disco I used to work at that looked exciting and even beautiful at night with all the lights dimmed, and the globe in the center of the dance floor flashing on and off, confusing the eye. But when the place closed, all the customers were gone, and the lights came on, it was exposed for the shabby place it really was.

So this is what I am doing with the ego. I am turning on the lights. I am exposing it for what it is. In its desperation to keep me in the blame game the ego has been bringing out all the old guilt scenarios it can find in my mind, the ones I claimed to have forgiven and left behind. It is bringing them out in the hopes that some of them still have some charge.

Here is an example. I notice a memory of my daughter and I having an argument. She is a young woman and is in trouble. I have no idea how to help her or even if I can. This is all that is happening. My daughter is having a moment in her story and I am supposed to play a part. As I review this memory the ego gave me I feel compassion for my daughter and compassion for the clueless and frightened mother I was at that time.

This is not the reaction the ego was hoping for. The reaction it wants is shame and guilt. It wants to reinforce separation and the need for it. And this is exactly the reaction it got at the time this incident occurred. At that time the ego told me I must judge this situation and act appropriately according to the judgment, and not knowing any better, this is what I did.

This is how the ego wants it to work. As that young mother I had no idea how to help my daughter. When I looked at her I felt helpless and I hated that feeling. I thought helpless meant that I really was the worst mother ever. I thought of all the mistakes I had made as a mom and how that made me guilty for the problems she was having now. It was awful, excruciating, really, and I didn’t think I could stand it so I threw it out of me onto her, and then I wiped my memory of that act. There, it is all her fault. This is projection.

Then, nanoseconds later, I looked at my daughter and I saw that while I was very afraid for her she seemed very calm, even unconcerned. I judged her for this, deciding that she was so immature she didn’t even get how much trouble she was in. She was so selfish and self-centered that she didn’t care what she was doing to me or what it would cost me. I become very angry with her and said something harsh to wake her up to her behavior, to make her want to change. I was desperate, and then afterwards I was ashamed.

In my judgment I saw her as wrong and selfish. I made her separate from me. This act of making separate (because I believed I could really do that) caused me to feel guilty though I didn’t consciously understand that making separate always increases guilt. The increasing guilt caused my anger to escalate and my projection onto my daughter was escalated as well. I saw the whole thing as a selfish act by a self-centered girl.

My thoughts went like this. “She doesn’t care for me at all and only wants to use me to get her out of trouble again. I should just leave her to stew in her own juices.” In my desperation to avoid blame, I put the blame on her and that act made me feel even worse. In trying to defend myself, to keep myself safe, I attacked her and in attacking her, I attacked myself.

This is the ego’s idea of a gift. No thank you. I don’t want judgment, and without judgment there is no guilt, and without guilt there is no use for projection. So here I am looking at this memory and the ego is having a tantrum because I am thinking that nothing really happened here. My daughter was having a moment of drama in her story. I had my own moment.

It was just a story, an illusion, a dream. If it had happened at night, and I had awoken with the memory of it in my mind, I would not have tried to fix it. The story of my daughter in trouble and me not being all that helpful is a dream that is happening in the day. Why would I want to fix a dream? My daughter and I are innocent dreamers, healed and whole and perfect. Nothing to fix.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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