February 19, 2019

Have you ever heard someone say, “Thou protesteth too loudly?” It’s usually in response to a very vigorous defense of something one does not want to admit may not be true or real. When we have given our allegiance to our own egoic thought system, we want to vigorously defend any questioning of whatever thought we have aligned with. We don’t really care whether our thought is wrong or right, we just want to insist it’s right no matter what. We’ve invested our worth in it being right. We are reluctant to consider any questioning of our thought at all. This is the way we persist in the world of separation. We have become invested in the world of separation and are reluctant to even entertain the thought that this may not be real – that it may be an illusion. We are afraid that questioning this illusory thought may weaken us. And so, we see ourselves as being weak.

In this seeming weakness our egoic thought system wants defenses to justify what goes against the truth, flies in the face of reason and makes no sense. This is an invitation to insanity, to save us from the truth. We would thus be saved from what we fear – truth. Our egoic thought system’s belief in separation needs great defense, and at enormous cost. All that Spirit offers must be defended against and sacrificed. The idea of separation is carved into a block out of our own peace and laid between us and the return of peace.

Yet how can peace be so fragmented? It is still whole, and nothing has been taken from it. See how the means and the material of evil dreams are nothing. In truth you and your another stand together, with nothing in between. Oneness holds your hands, and what can separate whom Oneness has joined as one with Oneness? It is your Source Whom you would defend against. Yet it remains impossible to keep love out. Source rests with you in quiet, undefended and wholly undefending, for in this quiet state alone is strength and power. Here can no weakness enter, for here is no attack and therefore no illusions. Love rests in certainty. Only uncertainty can be defensive. And all uncertainty is doubt about yourself.   T-22.V.3:1-12

Fear is weak – little and meaningless. Fear is insignificant before the quiet strength of those whom love has joined! Fear is our “enemy,” – a frightened mouse that would attack the universe. How could it succeed? Its feeble squeaks boast of its omnipotence and would drown out the hymn of praise to its Source that every heart throughout the universe sings as one forever. Which is stronger? We and our friend are not joined together by this mouse, but by Oneness. Can a mouse betray those Oneness has joined?

If you but recognized how little stands between you and your awareness of your union with each other! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body’s eyes it looks like an enormous solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet within you is a Force that no illusions can resist. This body only seems to be immovable; this Force is irresistible in truth. What, then, must happen when they come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended from what is quietly passed through and gone beyond?   T-22.V.5:1-7

Set aside your belief in separation. Look beyond what appears to be a huge blockade to the freedom of love and peace beyond. The blockade is not real, it is an illusion made from our belief in separation. As we look beyond that illusion, the blockade fades to nothingness. We see our companions as they truly are – One with us and each other. Joy rises in our hearts as we hear the ancient hymn of peace and love that wells up within our minds reminding us of who we really are. Only our unwillingness to overlook what seems immovable and impenetrable and forgive each other our misperceptions that hinder our awareness of the peace, love and joy of the Oneness we really are. Be willing and realize the truth about yourself and all the universe where all is well.

February 12, 2019

We may wonder how many branches in the road we must encounter on our journey. And how many times we must make that decision about which road to take. Perhaps we are coming again and again to the same branching in the road. Perhaps we have made the same choice time and again to take the road of separation and come back to the same branching, even though it may seem to be a different branching. The whole purpose of coming this far is to decide which branching we will take now. The way we came no longer matters, for it can no longer serve us. When we reach this far, we can no longer make the wrong decision, although we can delay. There is no part of our journey that seems more hopeless and futile than standing where the road branches, and not deciding on which way to go.

The first few steps along the correct way we chose may seem hard. And we may think we can still go back and make the other choice. This is not so. A choice made with the power of Heaven to uphold it cannot be undone. Our way is decided. There will be no part of Heaven and Truth withheld from us if we acknowledge this.

We stand with each other, here in this holy place, before the veil of separation that hangs between us and Truth. Let the veil be lifted! Raise it together, for it is nothing but a veil that stands between us. One of us alone will see it as a solid block, and not realize how thin the veil is that separates us. It is almost over in our awareness, and peace has reached us even here, before the veil. Think what will happen after the veil is lifted. The Love of Truth will light our faces, and shine into a darkened world that needs the light. And from this holy place Truth will return with us.  We will become Truth’s messenger, returning Truth to Itself.

Think of the loveliness that you will see, who walk with Truth! And think how beautiful will you and another look to the other! How happy you will be to be together, after such a long and lonely journey where you walked alone. The gates of Heaven, open now for you, will you now open to the sorrowful. And none who looks upon the Truth in you but will rejoice. How beautiful the sight you saw beyond the veil, which you will bring to light the tired eyes of those as weary now as once you were. How thankful will they be to see you come among them, offering Christ’s forgiveness to dispel their faith in sin.   T-22.IV.4:1-7

As we journey together, we will each gently see each other’s mistakes corrected for each other. For in another’s sight our loveliness is their salvation, which they would protect from harm. We will be each other’s strong protector from everything that seems to rise between us. We shall walk the world with Truth, whose message has not yet been given everyone. We are here to let this message be received. The offer is still open and it waits acceptance. It is received from those who have accepted it. Into our joined hands is it safely given, for those of us who share it are its willing guardian and protector. The awareness of Grace is given all of us who share this Love. We realize it is ours forever. All barriers, obstacles and veils that seem to block our awareness of Truth and Love fade in the sharing of this Love. We need simply to let it shine from within us for it to make its message of hope, freedom and release from suffering apparent to everyone who needs this miracle to free them.

How easy is it to offer this miracle to everyone! No one who has received it for themselves could find it difficult. For by receiving it, they learned it was not given them alone. Such is the function of a holy relationship; to receive together and give as you received. Standing before the veil, it still seems difficult. But hold out your hand, joined with another’s, and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and another, and the holy Self you share together.   T-22.IV.7:1-8

Look within to your relationships and accept their holiness, offering the miracle of freedom and hope to all the world. Take the hand of another and step on the correct road to the awareness of your wholeness in Light and Love.

January 29, 2019

We have discussed reason in the previous chapter and earlier in this chapter. Reason is an incorruptible tool that is already within us and is protected from the egoic thought system we made up to support the idea of separation. Reason will guide our mind to correct thinking if we will turn our attention away from our egoic thought system to the Vision within us, for reason and the egoic thought system cannot coexist in our awareness. Reason’s goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious. We can see reason. This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of vision that has meaning. Vision is literally sense. For it is plain, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. Vision, as Reason, can be understood. And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their separate ways.

The ego’s whole continuance depends on its belief you cannot learn this course. Share this belief, and reason will be unable to see your errors and make way for their correction. For reason sees through errors, telling you what you thought was real is not. Reason can see the difference between sin and mistakes, because it wants correction. Therefore, it tells you what you thought was uncorrectable can be corrected, and thus it must have been an error. The ego’s opposition to correction leads to its fixed belief in sin and disregard of errors. It looks on nothing that can be corrected. Thus does the ego damn, and reason save.   T-22.III.2:1-7

Reason understands that sin is not real except that it can serve as a block to the awareness of the peace that surrounds us always. Reason makes way for peace and brings us to a state of mind in which healing can be given to us. Our belief in sin is a block, set like a heavy locked gate across the road to peace. No one who looks on it without the help of reason would dare try to pass it. The body’s eyes perceive it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet reason sees through it easily, because it is an error. The form this blockade takes cannot conceal its emptiness from reason’s eyes. Reason, when we choose to see it, always looks beyond the appearance of whatever stands in the way to our own awareness of peace in our lives.

Our egoic thought system is attracted only to the form of error. It does not recognize meaning or see whether or not meaning is even there. Everything we see with the body’s eyes is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the whole would give. Yet mistakes, regardless of their form, can be corrected. Our egoic thought system is invested in keeping those mistakes seeming real to reinforce the blocks to peace it has placed in our minds.

Reason will tell you that the form of error is not what makes it a mistake. If what the form conceals is a mistake, the form cannot prevent correction. The body’s eyes see only form. They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. And they were made to look on error and not see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly?   T-22.III.5:1-8

Take a moment. Stop and consider this. The body’s eyes are part of the world of form. Reason will show us vision – a way of seeing beyond the appearance of the world of form. The world is temporary. It will change, it will erode, it will always change its appearance. Mo two of us will ever perceive the world the same. Vision shows us what is permanent and unchangeable beyond what the body’s eyes see. Take a moment and ask your Higher Holy Spirit, your Higher Power within you, for guidance in seeing with your Vision to see beyond the appearance of what you currently see. This is the divine guidance – the divine Vision we seek. This is where the truth about who and what we really are lies. Open your mind to this shift in perception and step into the peace and love that is your natural state of being.

January 22, 2019

What is our perception of ourselves, each other and the world we see? What we see reveals what we think about ourselves and each other. Our view of ourselves, each other ad the world reveals whether we are “seeing” through the lens of separation or the vision of Oneness. The lens of separation shows us the misery, judgement and unhappiness we have projected on the world. The vision of Oneness reveals the love and peace that is the realty condition of all that is real. Releasing the need to be separate from each other opens our minds to the reality and fullness of love and peace present in Oneness.

Look closer at the world you think you see and that you believe is real. This world appears to have power. Yet it appears to have any power only because we have placed our faith and belief in the idea of separation and the thoughts supported by that belief. This belief takes us captive. This belief limits our freedom, our limitlessness and our wholeness. No longer need we hold these beliefs to be true. Our inherent wholeness in our Oneness shines with the light of the Great Rays of Love and Peace. These Great Rays cannot be extinguished. They are the truth of love and peace dwelling within our true nature. All limitation and unworthiness fades away in this great light within us. And we need simply accept that which is already ours.

Only our thoughts in separation have been impossible. Freedom from these limiting thoughts cannot be impossible. It is impossible to look upon each other as enemies and recognize them for who they really are. Yet it is possible to recognize them for what they are in Oneness. What Oneness has given to our holy relationship is recognized there. We receive from others what Oneness has given them for us just as they receive the same from us. No more does the “special relationship” made in separation have any reality for us at all.

Beyond the body that you interposed between you and another, and shining in the golden light that reaches it from the bright, endless circle that extends forever, is your holy relationship, beloved of Oneness. How still it rests, in time and yet beyond, immortal yet on earth. How great the power that lies in it. Time waits upon its will, and earth will be as it would have it be. Here is no separate will, nor the desire that anything be separate. Its will has no exceptions, and what it wills is true. Every illusion brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked and disappears. For at its center Oneness has been reborn, to light Its home with vision that overlooks the world. Would you not have this holy home be yours as well? No misery is here, but only joy.   T-22.II.12:1-10

All you need do to dwell in quiet here in Oneness is share this holy vision. Quickly and gladly is this holy vision given anyone who is but willing to see another sinless. And no one can remain beyond this willingness, if you would be released entirely from all effects of sin. Would you have partial forgiveness for yourself? Can you reach Heaven while a single sin still tempts you to remain in misery? Heaven is the home of perfect purity, and Oneness created it for you. Look on your holy friend, sinless as yourself, and let them lead you there.   T-22.II.13:1-7

Accept your home in Heaven on earth as you allow your relationships to be healed and recognized holy. Every moment, every situation, every encounter, is an opportunity to recognize each other’s sinlessness and offer the miracle of healing and receive it yourself. As each relationship is transformed to holiness, we step into the awareness of who we really are.

January 15, 2019

What are we willing to choose, misery or joy? This is a choice between ourselves and an illusion of ourselves. What is our true desire? Sure, we all want joy, and no one wants misery. Yet we tend to be unwilling to completely let go of the familiar misery to step into joy. Joy and misery cannot co-exist. If we don’t know what to let go of, let go of everything.  What is real will remain. What is misery will fade into nothingness. When we truly let go of everything, joy will rise in the place misery was. Attaining joy, love and peace is possible.

This is a crucial period in this course, for here the separation of you and the ego must be made complete. For if you have the means to let the Holy Spirit’s purpose be accomplished, they can be used. And through their use will you gain faith in them. Yet to the ego this must be impossible, and no one undertakes to do what holds no hope of ever being done. You know what your Creator wills is possible, but what you made believes it is not so. Now must you choose between yourself and an illusion of yourself. Not both, but one. There is no point in trying to avoid this one decision. It must be made. Faith and belief can fall to either side, but reason tells you misery lies only on one side and joy upon the other.   T-22.II.6:1-10

When you make this choice, do not forget that you are also making this choice for your brother, your sister, your friend. We are all One and so we cannot leave each other behind. Joy is not just for the few, but for all and cannot be realized or recognized in separation. It is recognized in joining. It is recognized in Oneness. True joy is shared by all of creation. True joy is meaningless unless we recognize it in all. Offer each other joy. Joy is limitless and permeates everything – all reality. The deepness of joy is unfathomable. It is either wholly true or wholly false and thus is either experienced wholly or not at all. We have been waiting to choose between the joy of Heaven and the misery of hell. Until we choose Heaven, we are in hell and misery.

There is no part of Heaven you can take and weave into illusions. Nor is there one illusion you can enter Heaven with. A savior cannot be a judge, nor mercy condemnation. And vision cannot damn, but only bless. Whose function is to save, will save. How Spirit will do it is beyond your understanding, but when must be your choice. For time you made, and time you can command. You are no more a slave to time than to the world you made.   T-22.II.8:1-8

It is your choice and no one else’s. It is not another’s choice that you reluctantly go along with. It must be your free choice. Your friends are waiting for you to make that choice and begin to see their holiness along with your own. Release the blocks to the flow of love in all your relationships, allowing healing, and transforming all to holy relationships. Here we enter the gates of Heaven. Here we leave behind even the concept of hell. Joy is our holy destiny. Make the choice to let go of every barrier to the flow of that joy now.

December 11, 2018

Over the course of our lives we have been receiving messages of healing from Spirit and each other. We may not have understood these messages, but they have spoken to us on a different level. Viewing the world from our egoic thought system invested in separation we do not see or understand reality. And we do not seem to understand real communication at the level of truth because our attachment to separation blocks communication from our awareness. Yet, truth and understanding and communication are present within us. The Course tells us we must become as little children to begin the journey back to the awareness of who we really are.

So in each holy relationship is the ability to communicate instead of separate reborn. Yet a holy relationship, so recently reborn itself from an unholy relationship, and yet more ancient than the old illusion it has replaced, is like a baby now in its rebirth. Still in this infant is your vision returned to you, and this infant will speak the language you can understand. This infant is not nurtured by the “something else” you thought was you. This infant was not given there, nor was received by anything except yourself. For no two people can unite except through Christ, Whose vision sees them one.   T-22.I.7:1-6

This child will teach us what we do not understand and make it plain. For this child will speak the ancient language within us. This child will need no interpreter to us, for it was we who taught them what they know because we knew it. They could not come to anyone but us, never to “something else.” Where Christ has entered no one is alone, for this child could never find a home in those who believe they are separate. We must be reborn into our ancient home, seeming new and yet as old as Creation, a tiny newcomer, dependent on the holiness of our relationship to let Them live.

Communication must have been restored to us as we join, for we could not do this through our bodies. What has joined us? Reason will tell us that we must have seen each other through a vision not of the body, and communicated in a language the body does not speak. Nor could it be a fearful sight or sound that drew us gently into joining as one. Rather, we saw in each other a perfect shelter where our Self could be reborn in safety and in peace. Our reason tells us this; we believe because it is the truth.

Here is the first direct perception that you can make. You make it through awareness older than perception, and yet reborn in just an instant. For what is time to what was always so? Think what that instant brought; the recognition that the “something else” you thought was you is an illusion. And truth came instantly, to show you where your Self must be. It is denial of illusions that calls on truth, for to deny illusions is to recognize that fear is meaningless. Into the holy home where fear is powerless love enters thankfully, grateful that it is one with you who joined to let it enter.   T-22.I.10:1-7

Open your mind to the holiness that is already within you. As we allow the little child within us to teach us and remind us of the ancient holiness we are, we will begin to understand what we have blocked form our awareness. We will understand the ancient language of our holy relationship and understand truth once again. The path to healing our relationships is already deep within us waiting for us to open ourselves to the massages we want to hear and understand. Communication, not of the body, but of Spirit is ready for us to accept and embrace. Allow that little child to rise in you and learn.

December 4, 2018

We are often at cross purposes with ourselves. This seems impossible and one might even think it insane, but we do engage in insanity when we lose sight of who we really are and identify with the idea of separation. The Course has taught us we are holy and divine as we are created. We are whole and complete. We are peace and love embodied in this world. Yet our actions and beliefs contradict who we really are. We already have everything we need, yet we believe we lack. We listen to our egoic thought system only because it is louder and supports our misconception of who we are. We have the capacity to Reason correctly. We have the capacity to see with the eyes of our One Mind rather than the body’s eyes. What will it take for us to make the shift to rely on the holy guidance within us?

Your sight was given you, along with everything that you can understand. You will perceive no difficulty in understanding what this vision tells you, for everyone sees only what they think they are. And what your sight would show you, you will understand because it is the truth. Only your vision can convey to you what you can see. It reaches you directly, without a need to be interpreted to you. What needs interpretation must be alien. Nor will it ever be made understandable by an interpreter you cannot understand.   T-22.I.5:1-7

We have become so attached to the ways we have always seen the world in this lifetime that we have blinded ourselves to reason and reality. We have blocked our awareness of the free flow of communication between ourselves and Source and each other. Communication still flows freely, but we have ignored it for so long we have become impervious to it. This free flow of communication is a part of our holy relationships with each other. The natural state of our relationships is holy – nothing else. Anything less than holiness is made up, manufactured by the distorted beliefs of our egoic thought system that is invested in perpetuation separation.

It’s time to let go of the desire for separateness. It does not serve us well. Joining ourselves in Oneness is the return to the awareness of our true being. True lasting joy and peace are there in the awareness of Oneness. We start the return journey to our awareness of this bliss with a simple willingness to be guided there by the reason and knowledge within us. Spirit within us is ready and waiting to guide us there. We will make mistakes along the way, but the reality of who we really are and the willingness to return to that awareness will always bring us back to focus on the reality of who we are. Take a moment to forgive yourself. There’s no need to berate or punish yourself for past mistakes. They are over. They are done and in the past. They have no place in the present where we are now. Let the past be past and step into the awareness of the present moment where we are as we are and always have been. Allow your relationships to be transformed into the holy relationships they are. The world will be transformed as we allow our relationships to be transformed. We will begin to see a new understanding in our restored awareness. Choose your reawakening and know each other as you really are.

November 27, 2018

The healing of our relationships is the center of our wholeness. Our natural state of being is wholeness. We are unblemished, free of any sin. Any idea that says otherwise is simply mistaken and is born out of the mistaken idea that we believe we are separate from each other and from Oneness. The holiness of our relationship forgives us and our friend, undoing the effects of what we both believed and saw. When we see our relationships healed, seeing them holy once again, we return to the awareness of who we really are. This simple inner shift is our salvation. It is so simple and easy that we may wonder why we didn’t make this shift sooner. Yet, if we have delayed it, what better time is there to make this shift than now? What if we were to look toward what we share rather than our differences? It may seem small, but it opens to a vast difference.

A holy relationship starts from a different premise. Each one has looked within and seen no lack. Accepting his completion, they would extend it by joining with another, whole as themselves. They see no difference between these selves, for differences are only of the body. Therefore, they look on nothing they would take. They deny not their own reality because it is the truth. Just under Heaven do they stand, but close enough not to return to earth. For this relationship has Heaven’s Holiness. How far from home can a relationship so like to Heaven be?   T-22.in.3:1-9

This holy relationship can and will teach great things. It contains all the power of the universe. And the appearance of differences are transformed to vision where we now see what joins us rather than what divides us. Great joy rises in this transformation. Peace flows like a river throughout all the world in this transformation. Let each of us be joined in this holy relationship – the golden circle where we recognize our One Holy Self in eternity.

We discussed Reason in the previous chapter and that Reason remains within our mind protected from any distortion. Reason holds the real purpose of our relationships. It holds the remembrance of the holiness of our relationships. It holds the means by which our relationships can be transformed to their original holy nature, letting go of all the distorted values we believed they were tainted with. We have been looking through the body’s eyes, which cannot see truth. We have denied our Vision which shows us our relationships transformed. It shows us the truth that we are joined, not separate. It shows us the Holy nature of Oneness that we are.

Your sight was given you, along with everything that you can understand. You will perceive no difficulty in understanding what this vision tells you, for everyone sees only what they think they are. And what your sight would show you, you will understand because it is the truth. Only your vision can convey to you what you can see. It reaches you directly, without a need to be interpreted to you. What needs interpretation must be alien. Nor will it ever be made understandable by an interpreter you cannot understand.   T-22.I.5:1-7

Let this sight rise in you, for it is already yours. Let it rise in our holy relationship where we are joined as One. Truly see with the Vision that is ours for eternity. All distortion is now gone. And Holiness is seen everywhere as our Holy Vision transforms all the distortions we have ever seen in this world. Here is the simplicity of our salvation made real.