April 26, 2016

When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer. Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard. The Holy Spirit will not delay in answering your every question what to do. The Holy Spirit knows. And the Holy Spirit will tell you, and then do it for you. You who are tired will find this is more restful than sleep. For you can bring your guilt into sleeping, but not into this.   T-14.IV.6.1-8

Wow! Is there ever a more beautiful promise? It’s not a promise for when we leave this world and our body behind. It’s a promise for now. It’s a promise that carries us until the time we leave separation and the egoic thought system behind completely. The decision is ours. It’s a decision of intention to decide with our Source – God. How tired we feel fighting our egoic thought system day in and day out when we have Spirit within us willing and waiting for the permission to guide us. And – deciding with Source is more restful than sleep. The Course so often encourages us to rest in God, to rest in At-One-ment. Only a little willingness is required. The rest comes from Spirit within us.

We do not have to make or find reality. It is here within us without our making. And reality is not without us, for we have never left it. We are in the midst of Heaven yet cannot see it because we have made our own barriers to seeing and experiencing reality. We cannot experience Reality and how much Source loves us for there is nothing parallel in the world we think we live to help us understand it. There is nothing on earth that can compare, and nothing we have ever felt, other than our Source, that resembles it even faintly. Even the most awe inspiring experience pales in the completeness of the love of the One within us. It’s time to let go of those barriers and let Love and Peace rise within us.

Our problem is not who or what we are. Our problem is that we have blocked our own awareness of who and what we are. There is a simple solution to removing the barriers to our awareness of who and what we are if we are willing to allow the guidance of Spirit to rise to our minds ad our awareness.

The children of Heaven live in the light of the blessing of their Source, because they know that they are sinless. The At-One-ment was established as the means of restoring guiltlessness to minds that have denied it, and thus denied Heaven to themselves. At-One-ment teaches you the true condition of Oneness. It does not teach you what you are, or what your Source is. The Holy Spirit, Who remembers this for you, merely teaches you how to remove the blocks that stand between you and what you know. Spirit’s memory is yours. If you remember what you have made, you are remembering nothing. Remembrance of reality is in Spirit, and therefore in you.   T-14.IV.9.1-8

As long as we hold on to the blocks to the awareness of who we are in our mind, we are blocked from our communication with our Source in the Mind of God. It is not that it is not there or not happening. We have simply blocked it from our minds. Our acceptance of our guiltlessness, both others and our own, and our decision to decide with Source as guided by Spirit bring us into the awareness of communication with Source. Communication with Source is life. Nothing without it is at all. It is our function to be in communication with Source through Spirit. Accept guiltlessness and At-One-ment, for the awareness of our true Self is there.

April 19, 2016

Our function is to grant each other the awareness of each one’s wholeness. They are, always have been and always will be whole. This is inherent in our creation and cannot be undone no matter what we think about another. This is At-One-ment. The Course says this:

When you accept another’s guiltlessness you will see the Atonement in them. For by proclaiming it in them you make it yours, and you will see what you sought. You will not see the symbol of another’s guiltlessness shining within them while you still believe it is not there. Accepting another’s guiltlessness is your Atonement. Grant it to them, and you will see the truth of what you have acknowledged. Yet truth is offered first to be received, even as the One gave it first to Us.   T-14.IV.1.1-6

Our decision to see with our spirit eyes, to allow Spirit to guide our vision, is the beginning of the return to the awareness of who we really are. Once we recognize the wholeness within each other, our own wholeness is evident. None of us has ever become un-whole. We have simply thought and believed that we are not whole. This really begins when we begin to believe that someone else is not whole. It matters not in reality what anything appears to be in the world of form. We are all whole once we look beyond the appearance of the temporal world we think is real. At-One-ment is seeing beyond what the temporal world – illusion – appears to be.

The state of guiltlessness is simply the condition in which what is not there is removed from the disordered mind that thought it was there. This is the state we must attain, and we must attain it with the One beside us. For until we do, we will think that we are separate from the One. Oneness cannot be taught. It cannot be achieved or even rationalized in our egoic thought system. Learning of Oneness applies only to the condition in which the awareness of Oneness happens of itself. We set the conditions for awareness to happen by releasing our attachment to the beliefs we hold so dear about each other. We could even call this surrendering our separation beliefs and our desire for guilt and blame. Once we have let all that obscured the truth in our most holy mind be undone for us, and therefore stand in grace before the One, we are in Oneness, we are One. Ask not for forgiveness, for that is accomplished. Ask, rather, to learn to forgive, restoring what always was to your unforgiving mind. This is At-One-ment.

Before you make any decisions for yourself, remember that you have decided against your function in Heaven, and then consider carefully whether you want to make decisions here. Your function here is only to decide against deciding what you want, in recognition that you do not know. How, then, can you decide what you should do? Leave all decisions to Spirit Who speaks for the One, and for your function as Spirit knows it. So will Spirit teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself by loving not each other, and trying to teach them guilt instead of love. Give up this frantic and insane attempt that cheats you of the joy of living with your Creator, and of waking gladly to One’s Love and Holiness that join together as the truth in you, making you one with All.  T-14.IV.5.1-6

Be Love in a loveless place and shine away all lovelessness. Be light in a place of darkness and shine away all darkness. Lovelessness and darkness fade into nothing in the presence of love and light. Grant each other the gift of the awareness of their guiltlessness, for this is our function in this world. This is our function in the At-One-ment. The joy that is within us rises from deep within us were it has always been, waiting to be set free.

April 5, 2016

One of our most mistaken thoughts is that we can make decisions on our own that affect no one but us. This is simply impossible. We are all, every one of us, within the Mind of God, the One. Every thought we think is in the Mind of the One and every thought in the Mind of the One is in our mind. Separation is impossible, so separate thoughts are also impossible. The pastor at my church gave two descriptions of God and our relationship with God in her Homily last Sunday. First was God as a huge circle and us as much smaller circles under the huge circle of God, which depicts a God separated from us with power over us. The second was God as the same huge circle and us as smaller circles within the greater circle called God, One with God and each other, all part of the One. The second illustration is, to me, what the Course tells us about ourselves. We are inseparable from the One as the One is inseparable from us.

The Course tells us this about making decisions:

Whenever you choose to make decisions for yourself you are thinking destructively, and the decision will be wrong. It will hurt you because of the concept of decision that led to it. It is not true that you can make decisions by yourself or for yourself alone. No thought of God’s One Child can be separate or isolated in its effects. Every decision is made for the whole of Oneness, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of.   T-14.III.9.1-5

We have convinced ourselves that the thoughts we think in separation have power. The only power our thoughts generated from our egoic thought system have is over our state of mind, nothing more. Separation is an illusion, so any thought rooted in separation has power only to block our awareness of who we really are; our Oneness in the Mind of the One. The effects of our thoughts simply support the sense of Oneness or the sense of isolation, fear, and unhappiness.

We need never make decisions on our own. Within us is our connection to Spirit and the whole of Creation. We need simply turn our attention within and accept Spirit’s guidance in any choice we find ourselves facing. The right and best answer is within us. It is in the wisdom we are within. We have thought we are undeserving of any gift of wholeness from the One. Yet, we are that Oneness. We are inseparable form that deserved Oneness. Accept the answers to the choices that you face from the wisdom of Spirit within you. Trust that it is there, for it is in your creation.

Would you deny the truth of the One’s decision, and place your pitiful appraisal of yourself in place of the One’s calm and unswerving value of You? Nothing can shake the One’s conviction of the perfect purity of everything that the One created, for it is wholly pure. Do not decide against it, for being of Oneness it must be true. Peace abides in every mind that quietly accepts the plan the One set for its At-One-ment, relinquishing its own. You know not of salvation, for you do not understand it. Make no decisions about what it is or where it lies, but ask the Holy Spirit everything, and leave all decisions to Spirit’s gentle counsel.   T-14.III.12.1-6

Decide now to decide with Spirit rather than in separation. Spirit is within us, so Spirit’s guidance is within us. The decision to deny guilt is the acceptance of guiltlessness. We open ourselves to the awareness of the wholeness and completeness of our being, knowing it is not ours alone but shared with the One, each other and all of Creation. Open your mind to the peace, joy and love that radiate from within you and are shared in abundance with all. This is the Oneness we are.