April 4, 2017

The holy instant is offered to us by Spirit – by our Higher Holy Spirit Self – to remind us of who we are.  It reminds us of our holiness and completeness.  It reminds us of the Love and Peace within us that has never abandoned nor forsaken us.  We have always been and will always be the Divine Creation we are.  We are One with the Creator and have always been so, thus we are our own and each other’s Creators.  When we realize that love is all there is and that there is nothing else real, we remember every one of us is love and nothing else.  All that is not love is not.  Though we seem to see something other than love, that which does not appear as love just is not real – and thus illusion.  In the holy instant, we look beyond the appearances of illusions and learn to see love beyond all appearances.

Look within, with Spirit eyes, and allow yourself to really see beyond all illusions.  The holy instant, given us to correct our misperceptions, is the path we seek to the awareness of our true Self.  In this miracle, we allow the healing of our minds into Oneness.

We always choose between truth and illusion; between the real At-One-ment that would heal and the egoic thought system’s “atonement” that would destroy our awareness of the Oneness we are.  The power of Oneness and all Its Love, without limit, will support us as we seek only our place in the plan of At-One-ment arising from Love.  Be an ally of Oneness and let go of the egoic thought system’s illusions that tempt you so.  The promises it offers you are merely illusions and will keep you in denial of the awareness of your divine essence.

Seek and find Oneness’ message in the holy instant, where all illusions are forgiven.  From there the miracle extends to bless everyone and to resolve all problems, be they perceived as great or small, possible or impossible.  There is nothing that will not give place to Oneness and to Its Majesty.  To join in close relationship with Oneness is to accept relationships as real, and through their reality to give over all illusions for the reality of your relationship with Oneness.  The truth lies there and nowhere else.  You choose this or nothing.   T-16.VII.11:1-4, 6-7

This chapter ends with a prayer often referred to as the Lord’s Prayer of ACIM.  Forgiving our illusions, our misperceptions, and letting go of our attachment to them is the beginning of the end of illusions.  Aren’t you tired of all those conflicting and confusing illusions running amok in your mind?  Release them and step into the holy instant waiting to carry you into the awareness of your true Divine Self in Oneness.

Forgive us our illusions, Source, and help us to accept our true relationship with You, in which there are no illusions, and where none can ever enter.  Our holiness is Yours.  What can there be in us that needs forgiveness when Yours is perfect?  The sleep of forgetfulness is only the unwillingness to remember Your forgiveness and Your Love.  Let us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Child of God is not Your Will.  And let us receive only what You have given, and accept but this into the minds which You created and which You love.  Amen.   T-16.VII.12:1-7

March 28, 2017

The section of the Course we are reading addresses special relationships and how our use of them deny us the awareness of our Divine nature and the Oneness we are.  Our use of and attachment to special relationships keeps us focused on all our past hurts and resentments and denies us the peace and love of the present moment.  This is not to say we should avoid relationships altogether.  The relationships we encounter on our journey are purposeful to us as a learning experience in letting go of our attachment to our past and allowing our relationships to be healed through forgiveness and thus be made holy.  We might actually welcome relationships into our journey as a learning experience.  Perhaps some of the relationships we enter are too abusive to safely continue in, but Spirit will guide us in these decisions if we will allow our minds to open to Its guidance.

Look within for Spirit’s guidance in each relationship.  Are we willing to let go of the past hurts and brokenness we have burdened them with?  Out attachment to our past, that we bring forward to the present, is what makes our relationships “special” through all the conditions we place on the other in those relationships to atone for our past mistakes.  The other in our relationships need do nothing to heal our relationships.  It is our mind, our egoic thought system, that needs to release its need to control and blame the other.  We may, at any time we choose, release our egoic control on our mind and allow ourselves to enter the holy instant with Spirit.  We cannot underestimate the intensity of the egoic thought system’s obsession with every aspect of our past that troubles us.  Its obsession keeps us distracted from the awareness of our Oneness quite successfully through the denial of our divine essence.  However, at any moment we can choose to release our fixation on our past and, instead, ask ourselves what we can learn in this relationship.

The past is gone; seek not to preserve it in the special relationship that binds you to it, and would teach you salvation is past and so you must return to the past to find salvation.  There is no fantasy that does not contain the dream of retribution for the past.  Would you act out the dream, or let it go?   T-16.VII.4:1-3

The lessons in each relationship we encounter have great value for us if we will allow Spirit to enter our mind’s thought system.  As Spirit enters our thoughts about any given relationship, we will find the holy instant there and the wisdom we seek in healing.  Once we allow healing into a relationship, that relationship may continue or it may dissolve as its lesson is finished.  In all this, our inner Higher Holy Spirit Self will guide us if we will remain aligned with It.  In this state of awareness, we will reconnect with our peace of mind, our completeness and our wholeness.

Against the ego’s insane notion of salvation, the Holy Spirit gently lays the holy instant.  We said before that the Holy Spirit must teach through comparisons, and uses opposites to point to truth.  The holy instant is the opposite of the ego’s fixed belief in salvation through vengeance for the past.  In the holy instant, it is understood that the past is gone, and with its passing the drive for vengeance has been uprooted and has disappeared.  The stillness and the peace of now enfold you in perfect gentleness.  Everything is gone except the truth.   T-16.VII.6:1-6

Enter the stillness of the Divine within you.  Here is your holiness.  Here is your completion.  Here is your peace of mind and the abundance of love.  Let go of all the thoughts that limit your awareness of who you really are as you learn the lessons perfect for you in the healing of your “special” relationships.  Each relationship has a holy purpose.  Allow yourself to see each one’s lesson as you enter the holy instant and the awareness of Paradise now.

March 21, 2017

Are we ready to step into Paradise – Heaven on earth?

Across the bridge, it is so different!  For a time the body is still seen, but not exclusively, as it is seen here.  The little spark that holds the Great Rays within it is also visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness.  Once you have crossed the bridge, the value of the body is so diminished in your sight that you will see no need at all to magnify it.  For you will realize that the only value the body has is to enable you to bring your brothers and sisters to the bridge with you, and to be released together there.   T-16.VI.6:1-5

We have the power of choice.  We have the power to choose where we align our thought system.  As much as we believe we are controlled by things outside of us – things beyond our control – that much will we deny the reality of who we really are.  It is in our power to allow our minds to be guided by our Higher Holy Spirit Self and find we are bringing our brothers and sisters with us to the holy instant and the awareness of the Paradise we are.  No one can keep us from the awareness of our Divine nature but our own choice to deny it.  We deny it by believing we are separate and limited.

This bridge is simply a transition in the perception of reality.  On this side, everything we see is grossly distorted and completely out of perspective.  What is little and insignificant, we magnify, and what is strong and powerful we cut down to littleness.  In this transition, there is a period of confusion, in which we may experience a sense of disorientation.  But, though it feels disorienting, we need not fear it, for it means that we have been willing to let go of our hold on the distorted frame of reference that seems to hold our world together.  Our distorted frame of reference actually makes our world appear chaotic.  As we allow our minds to transition across the bridge, what has appeared big and significant fades and what has appeared weak and powerless increases in our awareness as we recognize the strength and power hat lie within our true nature.  We grow in this awareness as we allow our relationships to heal by recognizing we are all joined in Oneness.  We reawaken our Oneness as we bring each other and are brought by each other across the bridge to the awareness that we are in Divine Paradise even as we remain in this world we perceive.  Now, we perceive this world as it really is, not with the distortion of perceived separation.

Does this seem difficult, if not impossible?

The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you: Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still attracts you, enter with Spirit into a holy instant, and there let Spirit release you.  Spirit needs only your willingness to share Its perspective to give it to you completely.  And your willingness need not be complete because Spirit’s is perfect.  It is Spirit’s task to atone for your unwillingness by Its perfect faith, and it is Its faith you share with Spirit there.  Out of your recognition of your unwillingness for your release, Spirit’s perfect willingness is given you.  Call upon Spirit – your Higher Holy Spirit Self – for Heaven is at Its Call.  And let your Higher Holy Spirit Self call on Heaven for you.   T-16.VI.12:1-7

Allow your mind to step up to and on the bridge, for it is ready for you.  Make no delay as you and all your brothers and sisters are ready to cross into the awareness of Heaven on earth.  Time is kind, and if you use it on behalf of reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in your transition across the bridge to eternity.  We will not be hurled into a reality we are not ready for.  Spirit will temper our transition in time as we allow our mind to let go of its allegiance to our egoic thought system and thus rejoin the Mind of the One we never really left.  Are you ready?  Then be willing, even just a little, to allow your Higher Spirit Self to guide you across this bridge to Paradise.

March 14, 2017

This next section of the Course continues to teach about the healing of our “special” relationships.  In our effort to find love in our relationships we make “special”, we actually deny love for ourselves.  This seems upside down or even insane and the Course would agree.  We get all tied up in our search for love when the love we seek is already within us waiting to be recognized.  Rather than seeking love in joining, we seek love in separation.  We are created One with all creation.  We are One with each other – no exceptions.  And we are One with our creator.  Nothing can change that for that is who and what we are.  We are One – whole complete, limitless and eternal.  However, we have chosen to believe that we have a separate individual identity that is uniquely ours that begins at birth and perhaps ends at death.  How is that eternal?  The Course tells us this about Love:

Love is freedom.  To look for it by placing yourself in bondage is to separate yourself from it.  For the Love of God, no longer seek for union in separation, nor for freedom in bondage!  As you release, so will you be released.  Forget this not, or Love will be unable to find you and comfort you.   T-16.VI.2:1-5

Do we really seek freedom in our relationships?  Do we give freedom in our relationships?  I think, if we are truly honest with ourselves, we want our own freedom but are unwilling to grant the same freedom to others we are in relationship with.  Perhaps it would be helpful to look at this a bit differently.  What is real – eternal – in our relationships?  When we enter a romantic relationship, we have certain expectations of our partner.  Ideally those expectations are loving, mutual and reasonable.  We have decided to journey together in this world as we learn to recognize and live the truth about who we really are – our One Divine Self.  We are learning to recognize the Love – freedom – we really are and see it in all those we encounter in this world.  We are learning to recognize we are all One.  We are learning to recognize the eternal and the temporary in our relationships.  We are learning what has true value and let go of the rest.  There is no need to call out our faults and mistakes.  Our direction is to turn toward what we recognize as true and eternal and release the rest.  Aligning our minds with reality and eternity puts us in alignment with love and freedom – who we really are.  We then can easily release any idea that is not in this alignment.

As we journey in this temporal world learning to see ourselves for who we truly are, Spirit offers us many opportunities to experience the Divine essence of who we are.  Spirit provides us with the holy instant where all that is not real drops away and we experience a moment of true peace and love.  In that instant our “special” relationships are healed – made holy – just so we can experience reality and eternity.  Any importance of the temporary fades for this instant and we experience only what has true value.  This is Spirit’s most helpful aid in protecting us from our attraction to what has no value in our relationships.  The holy instant helps us recognize what does and doesn’t have value in our relationships.  If we are open to Spirit’s guidance we will make the choices that lead us to the awareness of our Divine nature and who we really are.  This is the choice for completion – the choice for freedom and Love.

The Great Rays evident in the holy instant will guide us in the discernment of what has eternal value.  In the light of the Great Rays what has no value in eternity disappears.  And what does have eternal value glows vibrantly with the light of the Great Rays leaving no doubt that Love and freedom are real within us.  Let the Great Rays guide you to the bridge to the real world even as we remain in this temporal world to be truly helpful.

March 7, 2017

In all things, do not mistake form for reality.  Do not mistake the temporal for the eternal.  In an effort to establish a “separate” identity, we have denied the truth about who we really are.  We adopt a separate identity when we choose to enter this physical world of form.  We identify as this body and the past experiences this body has had in this world.  Perhaps we even carry past life identity into this identity we have made for the journey in this dimension.  The relationships we enter into on this journey are learning experiences in this dimension.  It is our choice whether to use them to learn and support a separate identity or an identity that joins us in union with each other in Oneness.  When our relationships support separate identities, we support separation and non-completion.  But when our relationships embody joining and union, we support Oneness and completion.  We are already and have always been complete.  We have merely lost sight of the reality of our Oneness and our completeness.

The relationships we make “special” involve some sort of dysfunction in how we perceive them and what we expect from them.  The dysfunction is of our own making through our unreasonable expectations.  I may expect another to make me happy.  Yet, they cannot make me happy, no matter how hard they try, for my happiness can be found only within me.  In the same way, I may expect another to “complete” me.  In the same way, they cannot complete me for I am already complete and that completion may be found only within me when I recognize that I am One with all others in that completion.  Recognizing Oneness just as we are in completion is the healing of our “special” relationships into holy relationships.  This shift in thought is forgiveness, healing, and the miracle we offer each other in this world of form.  Our spiritual purpose in this world is to allow our thoughts to heal and shift to support the realty of our divine nature within.  Our purpose is to allow the divine light within us to shine from within to illuminate the world of form we are journeying in.  The Course tells us we are the light of the world.  This light has the power to heal if we will recognize it and let it shine.

Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in ritual, remember love is content, and not form of any kind.  The special relationship is a ritual of form, aimed at raising the form to take the place of the One at the expense of content.  There is no meaning in the form, and there will never be.  The special relationship must be recognized for what it is; a senseless ritual in which strength is extracted from the death of the One, and invested in the One’s killer as the sign that form has triumphed over content, and love has lost its meaning.  Would you want this to be possible, even apart from its evident impossibility?  If it were possible, you would have made yourself helpless.  The One is not angry.  The One merely could not let this happen.  You cannot change the One’s Mind.  No rituals that you have set up in which the dance of death delights you can bring death to the eternal.  Nor can your chosen substitute for the Wholeness of the One have any influence at all upon it.  T-16.V.12:1-11

Love is our true essence and it is eternal.  Love is life.  Because life is eternal, there is no beginning or end to life.  Beginnings and endings only occur in the idea of separation.  Death is merely the end of our belief in separation, the end of our function on our journey in this world of form.  It is possible to walk with our Mind in Oneness and eternity and our body in this temporal world as we are truly helpful to each other.  This is our function as miracle workers.

See in the special relationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods before the One, and by worshipping them to obscure their tininess and the One’s greatness.  In the name of your completion you do not want this.  For every idol that you raise to place before the One stands before you, in place of what you are.   T-16.V.13:1-3

Recognize the light and love within you that is your completion.  Choose completion over whatever else you have chosen in your allegiance to separation.  Let the light of Love and Completeness shine from within your divine nature and heal your special relationships making them holy as we dwell in Heaven on earth.  Choose the awareness of your completeness.  Choose to be who you really are.  Doing so changes the world you see.

February 21, 2017

We continue looking at the special relationship.  The special love relationship is the one that is the most deceiving.  We must first realize that all special relationships involve a great deal of pain.  If we are experiencing pain in any relationship, we can be sure that there is some aspect of specialness to that relationship we need to look at.  If there is pain, healing is needed.  Anxiety, despair, guilt and attack all enter into a special relationship, yet there are also periods where they appear to be gone and we have a sense of temporary peace for a time.  But the sense of peace is at best temporary without a real healing of the relationship taking place.  Whatever form pain takes in a special relationship, they are all an attack on the self to make the other feel guilty.  In this aspect, we always sabotage our special relationships, making them blow up in our face.  We will always find disappointment in special relationships.

Very simply, the attempt to make guilty is always directed against God.  For the ego would have you see God, and God alone, as guilty, leaving the Us open to attack and unprotected from it.  The special love relationship is the ego’s chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven.  It does not appear to be a weapon, but if you consider how you value it and why, you will realize what it must be.   T-16.V.2:1-4

The special love relationship is the ego’s most treasured gift, having the most appeal to those unwilling to relinquish guilt.  The “dynamics” of the egoic thought system are clearest here.  The fantasies that center around the special love relationship are often quite overt.  Here they are judged to be acceptable and even natural.  No one considers it bizarre to love and hate together, and even those who believe that hate is sin merely feel guilty, but do not correct it.  This is the “natural” condition of the separation, and those who learn that it is not natural at all seem to be the unnatural ones.  For this world is the opposite of Heaven, this world being made to be its opposite, and everything in this world takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true.  In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as union.  Here, where the illusion of love is accepted in love’s place, love is perceived as separation and exclusion.

It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish for special love from God, that the ego’s hatred triumphs.  For the special relationship is the renunciation of the Love of God, and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness that God denies.  The reality of Love is in union, but the effect of special love is separation.  No one can have union and separation together.  They are polar opposites and thus special love blocks our awareness of Heaven where real Love is all.

To everyone Heaven is completion.  There can be no disagreement on this, because both the ego and the Holy Spirit accept it.  They are, however, in complete disagreement on what completion is, and how it is accomplished.  The Holy Spirit knows that completion lies first in union, and then in the extension of union.  To the ego completion lies in triumph, and in the extension of the “victory” even to the final triumph over God.  In this it sees the ultimate freedom of the self, for nothing would remain to interfere with the ego.  This is its idea of Heaven.  And therefore union, which is a condition in which the ego cannot interfere, must be hell.   T-16.V.5:1-8

The egoic thought system’s triumph over God is its triumph over your awareness of who you really are.  The special love relationship is its way to keep us aligned with the mistaken idea of separation, keeping us from the awareness of our completion.  It is our choice for completion, whether now or later, to leave the special love relationship behind and enter into the awareness of Heaven on earth and the awareness of who we really are.  Make your choice sooner rather than later and step into the awareness of your completion;