A Course In Miracles – San Jose Karl J Vidt, ACIM Student/Teacher

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ACIM T-15.XI Christmas As the End of Sacrifice

December 13, 2016 7:30 pm ⋅

December 13, 2016

By believing our idea that we are separate, we have believed that we must sacrifice something for love and happiness.  Yet, love and happiness are impossible in the presence of sacrifice.  Reality is all about love and peace.  There is nothing in reality besides love and peace.  We are integral with all of reality as we are created.  And the Course teaches us nothing else exists.  If we sacrifice anything at all of love, we deny part of ourselves and who we are.  We have been learning that our true essence is whole, complete and limitless.  We have been learning that the love and peace we seek is within us.  We have been learning that we need not look outside ourselves for anything real for it is already within us waiting for us to recognize its presence within us.  The Course gives us this tip:

Do not try longer to keep apart your thoughts [sacrifice and separation] and the Thought that has been given you.  When they are brought together and perceived where they are, the choice between them is nothing more than a gentle awakening, and as simple as opening your eyes to daylight when you have no more need of sleep.  T-15.XI.1:5-6

The awareness of what we are seeking that is within us is as simple as waking from a dream.

Our true essence is a light that burns without ceasing.  This light shines as brightly as we allow it to be seen.  We may hide it “under a bushel” as we deny it, or let it shine brightly as we accept the reality of who we are.  Lesson 61 in the Workbook of the Couse teaches us, I am the light of the world.  What could be more empowering that this?  Yet we continue to deny the awareness of its power by thoughts of darkness.  We are the light shining in the darkness for all our brothers and sisters to follow out of darkness to the awareness that they are of the same light.  Our brothers and sisters are also the same light that guides us out of darkness into the awareness of the light within us.

The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness.  See it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come.  The Christ Spirit comes demanding nothing.  No sacrifice of any kind, of anyone, is asked by The Christ Spirit.  In the Christ’s Presence the whole idea of sacrifice loses all meaning.  For the Christ Spirit is Host to God.  And you need but invite the Christ Spirit in Who is there already, by recognizing that the Christ Spirit’s Host is One, and no thought alien to Oneness can abide with the One there.  Love must be total to give the Christ Spirit welcome, for the Presence of Holiness creates the holiness that surrounds it.  No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of Christ, for the Host is as holy as the perfect Innocence which the Host protects, and Whose power protects the perfect Innocence – our true Self.   T-15.XI.2:1-9

We are the Christ Spirit in our Oneness as we are created, recognizing our wholeness, completeness and limitlessness.  We have never left the Mind of our Creator as the Mind of the Creator has never left us.  Only the simple mistaken thought that we need sacrifice to get love has blocked the awareness of the total love within us.  The Christmas season symbolizes the awakening to the awareness of this love that is a light eternally shining within us.

This Christmas give the Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you.  Let yourself be healed completely that you may join with Spirit in healing, and let us celebrate our release together by releasing everyone with us.  Leave nothing behind, for release is total, and when you have accepted it with me you will give it with me.  All pain and sacrifice and littleness will disappear in our relationship, which is as innocent as our relationship with our Creator, and as powerful.  Pain will be brought to us and disappear in our presence, and without pain there can be no sacrifice.  And without sacrifice, there love must be.   T-15.XI.3:1-6

Choose to accept your healing now and celebrate our release from sacrifice and fear.  We find love it its place and rejoice in the joy we find there.

Posted in: ACIM Ch. 15 – The Holy Instant, Uncategorized

ACIM T-14.IX The Reflection of Holiness

June 7, 2016 6:00 am ⋅

abstract background withe sea sunriseJune 7, 2016

We are Holy. There is no exception. There is no changing this. We cannot lose or harm our Holiness. This is inherent in our whole being. But we can hide our Holiness from our awareness simply by denying it. For when we deny it we hide it. Our free will permits us to do this, though we cannot change the fact that we are Holy. So what have we done? We have believed that we are unholy and thus hidden our true nature from our awareness. We cannot know we are holy while believing we are unholy. We cannot align our minds with two contradicting beliefs at the same time. We choose to believe truth or illusion. It doesn’t change the truth about us, but it does affect how we see ourselves.

There is a way out of this insanity. Simply bring our mistaken beliefs to truth with the guidance of Spirit. Spirit is within us holding all that we really are ready for our choice to recognize the truth about us. There is no need to prove our holiness for our holiness is truth and truth needs no proving. Truth merely needs recognition. Once we let go of our attachment to the unholiness we believe about ourselves, our holiness rises within our minds and is recognized for the truth it is. There is great joy in the recognition of our holiness. We are whole. We are complete. Peace is within us. All that is good and true about us is waiting patiently beneath the surface of our mistaken beliefs we hold so dear. We needn’t get rid of them. We needn’t do anything to prove them wrong. We simply need to bring it all to truth and allow Spirit to undo what needs undoing and allow what is true to shine brightly in its light.

Truth releases us from the limitations of our mistaken beliefs merely by being truth. Nothing false can remain in the presence of truth. Anything not true simply fades to nothing when brought to the light of truth. This process – the At-One-ment – is so gentle, we need only whisper and its power will come rushing to our aid and support. We cannot fail in this if we will just ask for Spirit’s guidance. We carry this truth within the depths of our being, yet we hide it from ourselves. Let the truth be hidden from ourselves no longer. We still are holy for the Presence that dwells within us is Holiness.

In the temple, Holiness waits quietly for the return of them that love it. The Presence knows they will return to purity and to grace. The graciousness of the One will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss with the immortal assurance of their Creator’s Love. There, fear of death will be replaced with joy of life. For the One is life, and they abide in life. Life is as holy as the Holiness by which it was created. The Presence of Holiness lives in everything that lives, for Holiness created life, and leaves not what It created holy as Itself.  T-14.IX.4.1-7

Once we bring our unholiness to Holiness, we feel the joy of Heaven rising within us shining away all doubt about who we really are. Peace wells up within us and we see our own Holiness reflected in all we lay our eyes upon. Now we recognize the Divine being we are and have always been. Open your spiritual eyes and see your Holiness reflected there. This is truth.

Posted in: ACIM Ch. 14 - Teaching for Truth, Uncategorized

ACIM T-25.V The State of Sinlessness

October 19, 2010 10:16 am ⋅

October 19, 2010

Imagine a mind free of attack thoughts and free of guilt thoughts.  This mind sees clearly.  It recognizes the holy in all it sees.  It recognizes the Oneness in all of creation and recognizes itself in all it encounters.  Peace of mind, joy, love, and serenity are the thoughts of that mind.  This state of sinlessness is surely the state of being.  Is this what we are seeking for ourselves?  If so, it already is ours.  It is there within us waiting for us to recognize it and be it.

When we look upon each other with eyes of separation, we see what appears to be “something else” and therefore fear what we think we see.  In a state of separation thinking we attack or defend against what we fear.  What we really end up doing is attacking ourselves or defending against ourselves.  On one level we see this “something else” as our enemy.  Yet we are also aware that at another level we recognize this “something else” as ourselves and the Christ within.  This dichotomy causes a conflict in us as we begin to consider our self and the Christ within our enemy.

This conflict is intolerable to us, so we reinforce the separation we think we see and deny the real Self and the Christ within we see in another.  In this way we defend the separated self we made up and make our real Self, the Christ within, and God the “enemy”.  Hence attack and guilt set us in a state of “sinfulness”, the thought that we are anything other than who we really are.  We have given power to our mistaken thoughts that we are separate, solely by believing those thoughts.  And so we have given power to that which is powerless.  We have placed our belief and trust in thoughts that are illusion.  If we really think about it, illusion or nothing cannot have power, yet we have given it power in our life.

In the state of sinlessness there is no reason to see each other, the One Child of God, as anything other than what we really are.  In the state of sinlessness, we relinquish all the thoughts that tell us we must attack, defend against, and make guilty our brother, our sister.  Once we relinquish this need, the veil we have been using to cloud our vision falls away and we see the Truth of who we really are reflected back to us in each other.  The Christ within us shines through eyes of love that look back at us, full of the knowledge of the grace of God.  This is our natural state of being, the state of sinlessness.  Are we ready to Be in it?

Posted in: Uncategorized

ACIM T-22.II My Sister’s/Brother’s Sinlessness

December 8, 2009 8:39 pm ⋅

December 8, 2009

We are at a very important juncture on our spiritual journey back to the awareness of the Realm of God within us.  Our experience will tell us much about where we are at.  Are we experiencing joy?  Or are we still experiencing misery?  Perhaps we have made changes in our lives and how we think about things and others.  We may have experienced happiness when we made those changes.  But did that happiness remain or did it sink again into misery after a time?  These are our indicators.  What we experience tells us so much about the path we are on and the choices we have made.

God’s Will for us is joy.  God wills nothing else but joy for each and every one of us.  When we are present with the Realm of God within us, we will experience joy.  And it is a joy that does not fade.  It is a joy that we feel with every fiber of our being and know that it is from God and embodied in Truth.  Whether or not we experience joy is determined by what we place our faith and belief in; Truth or illusion.

Illusion, no matter what form it takes or what form we give it will always bring us misery in one way or another.  One may seem less worse that another, but lasting joy will never be its experience.  Letting go of our attempts to “figure it out ourselves” and staying still, listening to the Voice for God within us will begin to allow the Realm of God to well up within us.  That Voice will guide us in recognizing Truth and letting illusion fall away. We begin to see things in a more God-like way, understanding the difference between Truth and illusion.

As we begin to shift our belief and faith to Truth, we begin to see and understand our own divinity within, the true nature that God created.  We see our true Self, connected with each and every one and one with God, too.  In our act of faith that we are who God tells us we are, is a peace and joy that cannot be matched.  We recognize our sinlessness and we recognize the sinlessness of each other.  This act of recognition is salvation.  It is the salvation from the life of misery we experience when we believe in an illusion about ourselves and each other that we made up or believed because someone else told us it was so.  Allow God to show you the Realm of God within you.  It’s already there and just waiting to be recognized.

Posted in: ACIM Ch. 22 – Salvation and the Holy Relationship, Uncategorized