May 2, 2017

We are light.  We are love.  We are peace.  We are whole, complete and free.  This is our true essence.  This encompass who we really are.  But do we agree?  Do we feel this in our bones?  The Course tells us that we are the light of the world in lesson 61.  Yet we deny this about ourselves because we have come to believe something completely opposite. We have these characteristics within us as this is who we are, yet we have denied them by trying to make an identity for ourselves that establishes us as a unique individual separate from all of creation; something that cannot be done successfully because it denies our very essence.  We can deny our very essence as much as we want, but we cannot change it.  It remains within us waiting to be recognized again as it inevitably will be.  The Course tells us this:

The Holy Spirit wants only to make Its resolutions complete and perfect, and so It seeks and finds the source of problems where it is, and there undoes it.  And with each step in Spirit’s undoing is the separation more and more undone, and union brought closer.  Spirit is not at all confused by any “reasons” for separation.  All Spirit perceives in separation is that it must be undone.  Let Spirit uncover the hidden spark of beauty in your relationships, and show it to you.  Its loveliness will so attract you that you will be unwilling ever to lose the sight of it again.  And you will let this spark transform the relationship so you can see it more and more.  For you will want it more and more, and become increasingly unwilling to let it be hidden from you.  And you will learn to seek for and establish the conditions in which this beauty can be seen.   T-17.III.6:3-11

Our relationships are the opportunities we have to offer healing to each other.  Each one we encounter is a chance to let our light shine and see another in unity as we are one with them.  When we offer another the willingness to see the holiness within them, we offer them the miracle of healing.  The weekly thought from the Foundation for Inner Peace this week said, “The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles. Holy Spirit recognizes both God’s creations and your illusions. Holy Spirit separates the true from the false by the Holy Spirit’s ability to perceive totally rather than selectively.” (T-1.I.38:1-3)  The Holy Spirit can also be referred to as our Higher Spirit Self.  It is the essence of who we really are that has never separated from Oneness and remembers who we really are even as our egoic thought system denies who we really are.

The spark within us is strong.  Its light cannot be extinguished.  Our light remains beckoning to us even as we hide it under a bushel basket.  Our light remains lit for eternity, waiting patiently for us to open the lamp and let our light shine the way, not only for us, but for our sisters and brothers, too.  This light is the light of the miracle we offer.  This light is the light of healing that reveals the truth about who we really are to our minds that have believed we are separate.  This light is the light that enters our relationships as we allow it to heal those relationships from “special” to holy. It reveals the Oneness we are and how inseparable we have been created.  Only joining together in Oneness can bring us home to the awareness of our divine nature we all share in totality.

While the past is the justification for entering into a continuing, unholy alliance with the egoic thought system against the present, the present is forgiveness.  The present is where all the misperceptions of the past are released.  Forgiveness is the release of misperceptions.  It is the changing of our minds about who we really are.  The holiness of our creations is now clearly seen.  What thought system do we choose to align our minds with?  The egoic or Oneness?  It is our choice, totally.  And at any time, we may choose one or the other.

It is still up to you to choose to join with truth or with illusion. But remember that to choose one is to let the other go.  Which one you choose you will endow with beauty and reality, because the choice depends on which you value more.  The spark of beauty or the veil of ugliness, the real world or the world of guilt and fear, truth or illusion, freedom or slavery–it is all the same.  For you can never choose except between Oneness and the ego.  Thought systems are but true or false, and all their attributes come simply from what they are.  Only the Thoughts of Oneness are true.  And all that follows from them comes from what they are, and is as true as is the holy Source from which they came.   T-17.III.9:1-8

We make this choice for ourselves.  What do we really want in our relationships?  Do we wat to live in the shadows of the past in an illusion that is an alternative to reality.  Or do we want to accept the guidance of the higher Spirit Self within us that knows who we really are and leads us to the light that heals our relationships?  Choose to be the light you are.  Choose the love and peace you are.  Step into the light of eternity and leave the shadows of the past behind.

April 25, 2017

I find the title of this section so interesting.  The past we seem to remember really is nothing but shadows.  We don’t remember our past objectively, but remember our impressions and interpretations of the past.  We remember our perceptions of the past which are colored with a myriad of prejudices, judgements and emotions.  We remember our past, but only the bits about it that support our beliefs about ourselves, others and the world.  Do our thoughts about our past bring loving thoughts or fearful thoughts such as anger, guilt, hate, defense or some other unpleasant thought?  This tells us how attached we are to what we think about our past and whether or not we are living in the now.  Have we forgiven our past?  Are we living in the shadows of our past or leaving the past in the shadows behind us?

To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you.  All the rest must be forgotten.  Forgiveness is a selective remembering, based not on your selection.  For the shadow figures you would make immortal are “enemies” of reality.  Be willing to forgive the Our Child of God for what they did not do.  The shadow figures are the witnesses you bring with you to demonstrate they did what they did not.  Because you bring them, you will hear them.  And you who keep them by your own selection do not understand how they came into your mind, and what their purpose is.  They represent the evil that you think was done to you.  You bring them with you only that you may return evil for evil, hoping that their witness will enable you to think guiltily of another and not harm yourself.  They speak so clearly for the separation that no one not obsessed with keeping separation could hear them.  They offer you the “reasons” why you should enter into unholy alliances to support the ego’s goals, and make your relationships the witness to its power.   T-17.III.1:1-12

Our relationships tend to be unholy or special relationships when we view them through the lens of our attachment to the past.  As long as we align our minds with our past thoughts, we remain committed to separation and deny the peace and love inherent in Oneness.  We become more and more selective of the thoughts we hold about each other that we ignore the totality of each one and miss all that is real about them.  Every step taken in the making, the maintaining and the breaking off of unholy relationships is a move toward further fragmentation and unreality.  The shadow figures enter more and more, and the one in whom they seem to be decreases in importance.  How much have we denied about ourselves and each other to maintain the past in our relationships?

Time is indeed unkind to the unholy relationship.  For time is cruel in the ego’s hands, as it is kind when used for gentleness.  The attraction of the unholy relationship begins to fade and to be questioned almost at once.  Once it is formed, doubt must enter in, because its purpose is impossible.  The “ideal” of the unholy relationship thus becomes one in which the reality of the other does not enter at all to “spoil” the dream.  And the less the other really brings to the relationship, the “better” it becomes.  Thus, the attempt at union becomes a way of excluding even the one with whom the union was sought.  For it was formed to get them out of it, and join with fantasies in uninterrupted “bliss.”   T-17.III.4:1-8

We are really looking for love ad to become one with each other.  Yet we do everything we can to deny just that to ourselves.  We are seeking what we seek outside of ourselves where it cannot be found.  Love, peace and unity – Oneness – are within us, not outside of us.  Forgiveness is the transforming of our thoughts to support the reality of our divine nature.  Forgiveness releases our attachment to our past and allows our minds to be in the present moment where our wholeness and completeness is obviously present.  All that is holy and true about us is within us waiting to be revealed by Spirit within us.  Isn’t it time we begin to recognize the truth about who we are?  It’s time to let the past be in the past and realize it has no negative bearing on who we really are.  Forgive the past for it has no bearing on us except the loving thoughts that reman after we turn them over to the Spirit within.  Nothing but love and peace remain.  Choose now to release yourself from the shadows of the past and step into the present, the now.  This is our home for now and for eternity.

April 18, 2017

What is the forgotten world?  I believe it is the real world.  It is the world we closed ourselves off to when we decided to believe we were separate from Oneness.  It is the world where perception is not needed and when it is, it is very clear.  We see with our Spirit eyes and minds.  The real world is Heaven.  We realize we are One with all our brothers and sisters.  We deny no one our forgiveness, love and compassion. We recognize the Divine nature of every element of creation and rest in the awareness that there is nothing that doesn’t have a higher holy purpose.  We have remembered our own divine nature and the divine nature of all others regardless of how we or anyone else appears.  We have forgiven our misperceptions, for they are past and we have stepped into the present where all past is gone.

 This loveliness is not a fantasy.  It is the real world, bright and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun.  Nothing is hidden here, for everything has been forgiven and there are no fantasies to hide the truth.  The bridge between that world and this is so little and so easy to cross, that you could not believe it is the meeting place of worlds so different.  Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world at all.  This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, beyond all ugliness into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection.   T-17.II.2:1-6

Look on the world you see, however it appears.  Look at all of it and leave nothing hidden from your mind.  Forgive all of it.  Release it all to Spirit, the Higher Holy Spirit Self within you.  You need not explain anything, make excuses or try to defend any part of it.  The Higher Self within us will brush away all that is not real and leave what is light and true and of value in eternity.

The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old, the world you see without forgiveness.  The great Transformer of perception will undertake with you the careful searching of the mind that made this world, and uncover to you the seeming reasons for your making it.  In the light of the real reason that the Transformer brings, as you follow the Transformer, the Transformer will show you that there is no reason here at all.  Each spot the Transformer’s reason touches grows alive with beauty, and what seemed ugly in the darkness of your lack of reason is suddenly released to loveliness.  Not even what the One Child of Oneness made in insanity could be without a hidden spark of beauty that gentleness could release.   T-17.II.5:1-5

All this beauty will rise to bless your sight as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes.  For forgiveness literally transforms vision, and lets you see the real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos, removing all illusions that had twisted your perception and fixed it on the past.  The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of the One’s perfection.   T-17.II.6:1-3

We are lifted easily into our home from the forgiven world.  And there we know we have always rested in peace.  We remember this forgotten peace as we draw back the veil we used to hide our Oneness from the separation we so firmly believed.  It disappears in an instant as we align our minds with our Oneness.  All the world is transformed as we allow ourselves to see the wonder in each bit of Creation and see its inherent perfection.  Allow your Spirit eyes to see the wonder and perfection in yourself and each other as you are lifted up to higher ground where you can see.  Be free of the misperceptions of your past thoughts and remain in the present where the forgotten world is remembered.

April 11, 2017

The world we see is in our mind.  It is perceived through the lens of our thoughts and experiences.  We use our thoughts and experiences indiscriminately to make the world we see around us.  Is this world we see reality?  It is a twisted and distorted version of reality we believe is real.  Yet, it doesn’t resemble reality because we have seen it and continue to see it through the distortion of a mind that believes it is separate from Source.  One cannot see realty as it really is while believing the distorted perceptions we hold are real.

The betrayal of the One Child of Source – Us – lies only in illusions, and all our “sins” are but our own imagining.  Our reality is forever sinless.  We need not be forgiven but awakened.  In our dreams we have betrayed ourselves, our brothers and sisters and our Source.  Yet what is done in dreams has not been really done.  It is impossible to convince the dreamer that this is so, for dreams are what they are because of their illusion of reality.  Only in waking is the full release from them, for only then does it become perfectly apparent that they had no effect upon reality at all, and did not change it.  Fantasies change reality.  That is their purpose.  They cannot do so in reality, but they can do so in the mind that would have reality be different.   T-17.I.1:1-10

Our egoic thought system cannot change reality, but it can cause us to see reality distorted.  When we choose to use our power of creation in this way, we see fantasies and illusions we choose to see as reality.  Yet, it is not reality at all, just a distorted version of reality that hides reality from our minds.  We cannot give reality to fantasy, for they are completely incompatible.  However, we can bring fantasy to truth to be used to reawaken our minds to truth and the reality of who we really are.

When we maintain that there is any order of difficulty in miracles, we withhold some things from truth.  Very simply, our lack of faith in the power that heals all pain arises from our wish to retain some aspects of reality for fantasy.  If we only realized what this must do to our appreciation of the whole!  As long as we would have it so, will the illusion of an order of difficulty in miracles remain with us.  For we have established this order in reality by giving some of it to one teacher, and some to another.  And so, we learn to deal with part of the truth in one way, and in another way the other part.  To fragment truth is to destroy it by rendering it meaningless.  Orders of reality is a perspective without understanding; a frame of reference for reality to which it cannot really be compared at all.

When we try to bring truth to illusions, we are trying to make illusions real, and keep them by justifying our belief in them.  But giving illusions to truth enables truth to teach that the illusions are unreal, and thus enable us to escape from them.  We must not reserve even one thought from truth, or we establish orders of reality that must imprison us.  There is no order in reality, because everything in reality is wholly true.

Be willing, then, to give all you have held outside the truth to Source Who knows the truth, and in Whom all is brought to truth.  Salvation from separation would be complete, or will not be at all.  Be not concerned with anything except your willingness to have this be accomplished.  Source will accomplish it; not you.  But forget not this: When you become disturbed and lose your peace of mind because another is attempting to solve their problems through fantasy, you are refusing to forgive yourself for just this same attempt.  And you are holding both of you away from truth and from salvation.  As you forgive another, you restore to truth what was denied by both of you.  And you will see forgiveness where you have given it.   T-17.I.6:1-8

Bring all you hold in your mind to truth and reality.  Hold back no thoughts whatsoever.  Spirit will sort them out and reveal what is real and what is not.  Awaken!  The result will be to free our minds from the clutter of fantasies and illusions and awaken us to the peace of mind we desire.  This peace is already within us.  Release all thoughts with abandon, for nothing real can ever be lost to us.  The freedom of reality is ours for eternity.