September 25, 2018

Faith and belief are tools that can be used to support separation or healing. We have believed we are limited to support our choice of separation. We can use the same faith and belief – guided by Spirit – to support the return to the awareness of our wholeness and limitlessness and Oneness. The guidance of Spirit is the key that makes the difference. Our journey to separation is taken alone, for it is guided by our egouc thought system, which has no real power. Our journey to joining is taken with all the support and guidance of Oneness and Spirit. Once we choose the journey to Oneness we cannot fail in that journey. We may take some off course junkets, but we will eventually get to our chosen destination as we allow our minds to be guided by Love and Peace.

Those who would free each other from the body can have no fear. They have renounced the means for sin by choosing to let all limitations be removed. As they desire to look upon each other in holiness, the power of their belief and faith sees far beyond the body, supporting vision, not obstructing it. But first they chose to recognize how much their faith had limited their understanding of the world, desiring to place its power elsewhere should another point of view be given them. The miracles that follow this decision are also born of faith. For all who choose to look away from sin are given vision and are led to holiness.   T-21.III.8:1-6

What are you willing to choose? Faith in limitation or faith in limitlessness. It is our choice to make whenever we choose. Though we may think the opposite, there is no sacrifice in aligning with Oneness and limitlessness, where aligning with limitation sacrifices everything real and true. Are you willing to give up sacrifice? We think we want our own little world where no one can touch or affect us. This world is very limited and small. Yet it has no power and cannot protect us from sacrifice. We give up so much for this limited world that results in misery and loneliness. Joining in Oneness with all of Heaven is truly the end of misery and limitation.

Our faith in sacrifice has given us the sight we see from our body’s eyes. It is so limited. The world we see is a distortion of reality. Our egoic thought system is incapable of perceiving what the body’s eyes see correctly. Its sight is forever skewed and distorted. It’s no wonder we are miserable and lonely. We do not see each other as we really are from this perspective. We have blocked the vision of holiness that permeates everything real. Wouldn’t you rather see the light of holiness than suffering and loneliness? We can redirect our faith and belief to align – just a little – with the holiness we are. We can be willing to see through the light of our holy eyes, unclouded by misperception and the belief in separation.

The body was made to be a sacrifice to sin, and in the darkness so it still is seen. Yet in the light of vision it is looked upon quite differently. You can have faith in it to serve the Holy Spirit’s goal, and give it power to serve as means to help the blind to see. But in their seeing they look past it, as do you. The faith and the belief you gave it belongs beyond. You gave perception and belief and faith from mind to body. Let them now be given back to what produced them, and can use them still to save itself from what it made.   T-21.III.12:1-7

Turn to the Spirit and what is holy in you. Look beyond the appearance of the world that is so distorted and allow your light of vision to rise within you. Sprit will guide you in aligning your mind with the light of holiness. Your sight will be transformed, and your vision of the world will be made new. No more need you dwell in darkness, when the light that dispels all darkness is within you as it has always been. Say yes to the light of holy vision.

September 18, 2018

The appearance of our relationships is revealing in that they indicate whether we are attuned to reality or the illusion of separation. While we are aligned with the illusion of separation, our relationships are bargains agreed to for the purpose of limitation of some sort. Though they appear as a union, they are adjusted unions that have some sort of condition set upon them. One or both parties to an adjusted union will have some payment or sacrifice they must make for the union to continue. When one violated the bargain, the union ends or is renegotiated, often with a “payment” for one or both parties. How often have we experienced this kind of bartering in our relationships? We may use the excuse of “fairness” to rationalize these union negotiations. The result is that the union has a cost to us and we pay that cost to preserve the union and its purpose. However, the cost is really truth. When we ask Spirit – the Spirit within us – to heal our relationship, we accept the idea of making room for truth in our relationship. Our egoic relationships have the purpose of separation, where truth’s purpose is joining – Oneness. Whether we recognize it or not, we have faith in the purpose we have chosen. And where we place our faith our power is given.

It has been said that faith can move mountains. Our faith has the power to keep us limited, captive to our own beliefs, in chains and enslaved to our own convictions. Yet, our faith ca also free us from our self-imposed captivity, from our own self-enslavement and limitations. In Oneness we have all the power of our Source. Yet when we place our faith elsewhere, such as separation, we use that power to deny ourselves the awareness of our freedom and divine nature. What faith we give to separateness we take away from holiness. And faith is such that it cannot be divided between two opposite ideals. We choose where we put our faith and the world we see reflects that choice.

Faith and belief and vision are the means by which the goal of holiness is reached. Through them the Holy Spirit leads you to the real world, and away from all illusions where your faith was laid. This is Spirit’s direction; the only one Spirit ever sees. And when you wander, Spirit reminds you there is but one. Spirit’s faith and Its belief and vision are all for you. And when you have accepted them completely instead of yours, you will have need of them no longer. For faith and vision and belief are meaningful only before the state of certainty is reached. In Heaven they are unknown. Yet Heaven is reached through them.   T-21.III.4:1-9

It is impossible that we don’t have faith, but we do choose where or in what ideal we place our faith. Faithlessness is not a lack of faith but faith in nothing or unreality. Faith in separation is simply faith in nothing – unreality, for we are One in reality. Faith given to unreality does not lack power, for by it we believe we are powerless. Thus, we are faithless to ourselves, but strong in faith in our illusions about ourselves. For faith, perception and belief we made, as means for losing certainty and finding separation.

The Holy Spirit has a use for all the means for sin by which you sought to find it. But as Spirit uses them they lead away from sin, because Spirit’s purpose lies in the opposite direction. Spirit sees the means you use, but not the purpose for which you made them. Spirit would not take them from you, for Spirit sees their value as a means for what It wills for you. You made perception that you might choose among your sisters and brothers, and seek for sin with them. The Holy Spirit sees perception as a means to teach you that the vision of a holy relationship is all you want to see. Then will you give your faith to holiness, desiring and believing in it because of your desire.   T-21.III.6:1-7

What do you really want? The reawakening of our awareness of the wholeness, completeness, peace and love that we are in Oneness is the only thing we really want. We want to live in the awareness of the real world and live fully in our divine nature, seeing holiness in all that is around us even when it doesn’t seem to be there. We want the wisdom to look beyond the appearance of the world we see and see holiness there. Our Higher Holy Spirit Self, already within us, is there to guide us as we reset our faith in what we want. Make the choice to allow Spirit to guide our purpose and open our eyes and return to the awareness of the certainty of reality.

September 11, 2018

What if we have everything we need within us? What if we lack nothing? What if the world we really want is all there is and the world we see is really a distorted insane perception of the real world we want? Wholeness, completeness, peace and love are within our reach. They are right in front of us waiting for us to recognize them. The light of reality is within us and wanting us to let it shine brightly from our soul. The darkness in which we seem to be surrounded is merely an illusion – an incorrect interpretation of our reality. What will it take for us to be willing to release our attachment to what we think we see and allow something else to rise in its place? Our happiness relies on this willingness. Our peace of mind relies on this willingness. Stepping into the world already within us relies on this willingness. It is ours in an instant if we decide we want it enough to let all else go. The Course tells us:

Be willing, for an instant, to leave your altars free of what you placed upon them, and what is really there you cannot fail to see. The holy instant is not an instant of creation, but of recognition. For recognition comes of vision and suspended judgment. Then only it is possible to look within and see what must be there, plainly in sight, and wholly independent of inference and judgment. Undoing is not your task, but it is up to you to welcome it or not. Faith and desire go hand in hand, for everyone believes in what they want.   T-21.II.8:1-6

In the holy instant we are transformed. Our mind awakes to the reality right before us. It is a holy instant because all unreality disappears for that instant and we have suspended judgement for just that instant. We have allowed vision to surface in our minds, enabling us to see clearly what is already there. No amount of effort, schooling or compromising will get us to this holy instant. Only a complete surrender of all our attachments to our own misperceptions we hold so dear. Do these misperceptions serve us at all? They only serve to keep us locked into a miserable pattern of misperceived judgements that keep us from recognizing the peaceable world within us.

We deny the real world within us by our wishful thinking that there is something outside us that will bring something better to us. This denial is so powerful it hides a peaceful and loving world from our minds. It is so powerful it blocks our holy vision, for we cannot see a false and a real world at the same time. We choose, then, what we see by where and with what we align our minds. Which thought system do you prefer? Rightmindedness – the Mind of Oneness, or wrongmindedness – the egoic thought system rooted in the belief in separation. What we believe we will see, right or wrong.

Yet the truth is you and your friend were both created by a loving Creator, Who created you together and as one. See what “proves” otherwise, and you deny your whole reality. But grant that everything that seems to stand between you and your friend, keeping you from each other and separate from your Creator, you made in secret, and the instant of release has come to you. All its effects are gone, because its source has been uncovered. It is its seeming independence of its source that keeps you prisoner. This is the same mistake as thinking you are independent of the Source by which you were created and have never left.   T-21.II.13:7-6

Look at each other and allow yourself to see each other as the holy and complete Ones you already are. Don’t let their appearance in this world fool you. We are all really holy and we are all really One, joined in Oneness as we are created. Allow your holy vision to rise and be guided by your higher Spirit Self. Truth is within you. Allow your mind to recognize that truth and let it show you the way to the recognition of reality. It is not hard, though it may seem impossible right now. Start with just a little willingness to be shown a different way and see the world transformed before your very eyes. This little willingness is our responsibility. Say “yes” to it now.

September 4, 2018

Since we entered this world we have been looking for something, for meaning and for peace and love. Have we found it yet? Where are we looking? Perhaps we are making it much more difficult than we need. Perhaps we are looking in all the wrong places when what we are looking for is right in front of us and we refuse to see it. The Course has repeated how little is asked of us to learn the lessons of this course. It is the same small willingness we need to have our whole relationship transformed to joy; the little gift we offer to Spirit for which we are given everything; the very little on which salvation rests; the tiny change of mind by which our mind is transformed. This transformation is so simple that it cannot fail to be completely understood. We can reject or deny it, but it is not ambiguous. If we choose against these lessons now, it will not be because the message is obscure, but rather that this little cost seemed, in our judgment, to be too much to pay for peace.

This is the only thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain and the complete escape from sin, all to be given you. Say only this, but mean it with no reservations, for here the power of salvation lies:

•  I am responsible for what I see.
•  I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve.
•  And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked.

 Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you. Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear.   T-21.II.2:1-7

The transformation of our mind, and thus our world, is really very simple. Yet, we are the ones who make it difficult and sometimes seemingly impossible. We have become so attached to the world we think we see and our own mistaken perception of it that we resist letting go of it. We believe in our perception of this world so strongly that it blocks all other ideas that conflict with it. It is our fear of the unknown that keeps us clinging to that which is familiar to us, even if it makes us miserable. In reality, it is impossible that we are driven by events outside of us. Yet, we think we are. It is also impossible, in reality, that happenings that come to us are not our choice. Yet, we think it so. Our power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which we seem to find ourselves by chance or accident. There are no accidents, for we are responsible for our view of the world. We are responsible for our sight – how we see the world.

If we suffer, we decided separation was our goal. Be happy, and we give the power of decision to the One Who must decide for Oneness for us. This is the little gift we can offer to the Spirit within us, and even this Spirit gives to us to give ourselves. For by this gift we are given the power to release each other, that they may give salvation to us.

Begrudge not then this little offering. Withhold it, and you keep the world as now you see it. Give it away, and everything you see goes with it. Never was so much given for so little. In the holy instant is this exchange effected and maintained. Here is the world you do not want brought to the one you do. And here the one you do is given you because you want it. Yet for this, the power of your wanting must first be recognized. You must accept its strength, and not its weakness. You must perceive that what is strong enough to make a world can let it go, and can accept correction if it is willing to see that it was wrong.   T-21.II.4:1-10

We all have the power to see. We can see an illusion of the world – a distorted and convoluted perception. Or, we can choose to see with Holy Vision, as Spirit guides us. With this guided vision, the world is transformed before us. It is transformed to a world of peace, love and joy. In this real world we are complete, whole, limitless and free. It is a world we rest in. Which world do you want? We are already in the real world – the transformed world – yet it looks like something else. It is our responsibility how we see the world. It’s our choice. Accept the gift of Vision the Holy offers you. This is your home, and this is your salvation.