November 27, 2012

This week we will be talking about healing and what healing really is.  I think healing is one of the most misunderstood concepts in spirituality.  The Course tells us that miracles are the means, the Atonement is the principle, and healing is the result.  It goes on to clarify that healing is not a miracle, healing is a result of miracles.  The Course tells us there is no such thing as a miraculous healing!  We must remember that a miracle is a change in our thoughts to a more correct way of thinking.  Healing is moving, as a result of a change in thought in alignment with the principle of Atonement, into a state of Grace, a state of Oneness with God and all of creation.

We have mistakenly thought that spiritual healing is a physical healing.  We spiritual beings living from the mistaken idea that we are physical human beings want to focus on the physical world, the world of illusion, the temporal world and make it all that reality is.  The physical world has a purpose as a learning device that is used to teach us who we really are.  It is used to teach us what is real and what is made up and to help us choose reality in the place of non-reality.  We discussed last week that the body merely houses the altar of our Divine reality within us.  The body is weak and can be destroyed, but our Divine Presence cannot be hurt in any way.  We are One with God.  Everything God is, we are and are One with, impervious to anyone or anything that would harm or damage us. This is our strength.  This is our reality.  But somehow we have lost touch with it and forgotten it whether to a lesser or greater degree.

The miracle, guided by spirit, is the opening of a little willingness of our mind to think we might be something other than the flesh and blood human being we appear to be.  We can be just a little willing to think that all the ideas we hold so dear about our identity may just be mistaken.  We might somehow be something infinitely greater than our split mind can fathom at the moment.  We plant, within our consciousness, the seeds of the desire of awareness of who we really are.  We allow Spirit to guide our decisions, to guide our sight, and guide our hearing.  The allowance of this shift of perception propels us into the miracle Spirit holds for us, bringing a glimpse of the Oneness that is our natural state of being.

Arriving at the full awareness of who we really are and resting in that infinite peace, love, and joy is the healing Spirit has waiting for our acceptance.  As we arrive in the awareness of that Divine healing, some change may or may not appear in our physical life.  A physical healing might occur.  Or it might not because that physical condition may be a learning device for another one who is on their path to remembering who they really are.  Refrain from letting any appearance of anything get in the way of our spiritual vision, that sight which God gave us at our creation.  Real healing is of the mind and sprit, not anywhere in the physical world.  However, that healing of the mind and spirit will certainly transform the appearance of the world as we see it with our spirit eyes.  Forgive, release all attachment, and let Spirit guide every decision and thought in you life.  The peace, love and joy of God are within you waiting to be released to shine brightly.  Be the light that you already are.

November 20, 2012

At this time of Thanksgiving, I am so grateful to know that we cannot defile our holiness.  We cannot do anything to change who we really are.  We cannot think anything that can touch our inherent Divinity which we were created as.  All we are capable of in our effort to separate from God and the awareness of who we really are is to hide our wholeness from our consciousness.  And even for this, God has given us a remedy, a way to return, a way to remember who we really are and return to that awareness whenever we choose to do so.  Many of us wait until we are hopelessly frustrated and cannot see a way our of our self-created perception of our world and life.  We may even reach the crash and burn state of thinking where we cannot even make up any perception that works for us.

When we are ready to allow our perception to change, God has the Atonement waiting for us.  It’s already within us, the answer to all the problems we think we have.  The Atonement lies deep within us at the altar of our being waiting to ride the light that will shine forth if we will just let it shine.  We’ve expended a great deal f effort to keep the lamp of our soul closed.  It wants to open and illuminate our lives, but we continue to hold it closed.  Our true essence is a light and love that cannot be extinguished.  Bit it is our task to let it shine, to remove the shutters and shades that keep it locked inside our bodies trying to prevent it form being seen.

Our true will is to be in the full awareness and peace of who we really are.  Yet, we continue to suppress our true will and keep the truth hidden.  We expend great effort to achieve this result.  But there will come a time that this effort is intolerable.  Eventually each of us will come to a conclusion where we realize bit by bit there must be a better way.  This is the turning point that ultimately leads to the reawakening of spiritual vision, that vision that is and always has been within us, just unrecognized and unused.  As spiritual sight awakens within us physical appearances become less and less important.  We experience the miracles within us and our perception changes to raise the appearance of our would to a higher level.

The light of the Atonement illuminates the altar within and lets its light shine from deep within us.  We see ourselves, each other, God, and the world in a different light.  We see everything with spiritual sight.  We now perceive all of Creation differently.  We become aware of the divine purpose of every little thing in our experience.  We begin to see how we are all One in this grand Presence of the One.  Learn to look upon the world as a means of healing the separation.  Sprit will guide our sight if we are willing.  The Atonement is our guarantee from God that we will ultimately succeed.  Be willing to succeed and we will be successful.  Let it be so.

November 13, 2012

We have the ability and power to do whatever Spirit asks of us.  We are God’s creations and thus are One with God.  All God is we are.  The miracles we are asked to perform are natural to God’s creations.  So what’s the hitch?  Why do we doubt?  Why are we afraid?  We are all God created us to be!  But we do doubt who we are and we fear to even try to be what God created us to be.  We have spent a lifetime building the idea and belief that we are separate from God and denying the reality of our Divine Self, who we really are.  What went wrong along the way?  We simply made a mistake.  We simply thought incorrectly.  No worry, there’s a fix.  There’s a way back.

Being in the midst and awareness of miracle mindedness takes a commitment of our belief in our true nature.  We must believe that we are One with God.  We must believe that we are One with each other, that we are all as we are created.  It’s a tall order as we embark on this journey back to the awareness of who we really are.  This journey without distance we have set our mind on.  The journey doesn’t even require we totally believe before we begin.  Spirit asks we be just a little willing to believe we are who we really are.  This will get us started.  Be willing to learn the lessons Spirit places in our path.  Each lesson has a core of love in it.  Each lesson has good in it if we will just let Spirit reveal it to us.

We tend to want to defend ourselves from many things and from many ideas that we think can harm us.  In reality we cannot be harmed.  Nothing harmful can befall us.  What appears to be harmful is merely an illusion, a mistaken thought.  However, while we are in this mindset of separation for this temporary time on our journey, we have the one useful defense thought at our disposal.  This is the Atonement.  The Atonement is the idea that we are all One and One with God.  “At-One-ment.”  This idea is actually a Truth, but for now it is an idea we can carry with us on this journey.

We can begin to entertain the idea that we are One with God, and that this is our natural state of being.  As we begin to place our faith in and believe this idea, we will feel the Presence of God welling up in us.  We will begin experiencing the peace, love, and joy of God deep within us.  We will begin to realize it has always been there, merely suppressed, hidden, and forgotten.  We have learned to be in denial of who we really are.  But, the Atonement is the only useful use of denial, the denial of separation.  Let the light of Spirit shine from deep within and let it shine away the doubts and fears that have accumulated over the course of our journey to this point.  God has a plan for us to return to the joy and peace of the awareness of who we really are.  This is our destiny.  This is our Divinity.  Let it be so.

November 6, 2012

This section talks about how separation came to be and what it really is, though it is not real.  To understand separation, we need to understand something about who we really are and at least be willing to entertain that truth.  We are God’s creation, an extension of God.  We are created with all that God is within us.  That creation is the essence of our being.  We have all the power of creation that God has.  And we hold, in partnership with God and each other, all the power and love of the universe.  In a nutshell, we are created perfect.  And there is no emptiness in us.  As God created us, we also have free will to create as God does.

The ability to create is inherent in all of us, and cannot be lost.  However the ability to create can be used inappropriately when we project rather than extend.  This inappropriate use of extension, or projection, happens when we believe there is some emptiness or lack within us that we think we can fill with our own misperceived ideas rather than truth.  This belief that we have any kind of lack or that we have needs that must be filled from outside ourselves is the cause of our idea of a separate self that we see as lacking.  None of this existed before separation and it certainly doesn’t exist now even, though it seems very real to us.  God’s creation is always whole and perfect and it cannot be otherwise.  But we can think and believe it otherwise and be thrust into a world of illusion and fear.

Look at the 4 steps outlined in paragraph 2 of this section and see how we have led ourselves to a misperceived existence of separation, unaware of who we really are because of a simple error of perception.  We have simply believed an untrue thought and built our illusory world on that thought and all the other misperceived thoughts since that first one.  We are simply dreaming a dream in a spiritual sleep from which we haven’t awakened.  Perhaps it’s time we awaken from that dream

The Atonement is the escape for this misperceived illusory world we seem to be caught in.  It is the awakening from the dream f this world we have mistakenly made up.  The dream certainly seems to be real and not made up, but we have not been looking at it from an awakened spirit mind.  We’ve been looking through the distorted lens of separation and thus fear.  Miracles are the release from this world of illusion.  They are freely given to us, in fact are always within us.  These miracles show us a new thought, a correction of thought that opens our spirit vision and shows us the reality of who we really are.  The awareness of our connection to God through extension brings an awareness of peace deep within us.  It brings the extension of Love flooding through us in such abundant waves it cannot be contained or held on to, but floods forth to all we encounter and beyond.  This is all within each and every one of us.  This is the Divine core of our being.  It can never be lost or taken away.  The truth abbot ourselves is there for the seeing.  Open your eyes, that you may see.  You will find the truth about yourself and rejoice in that truth.