Merely by being what it is, does truth release you from everything that it is not.

Time and time again I receive the only message possible that truth is true and nothing else is true.

All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that all this is not true.

To those unhappy learners who would teach themselves nothing, and delude themselves into believing that it is not nothing, the Holy Spirit says, with steadfast quietness:

The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there.
Let Me make the one distinction for you that you cannot make, but need to learn.

Your faith in nothing is deceiving you. Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs.

You will find no deception there, but only the simple truth. And you will love it because you will understand it.

Could you but realize for a single instant the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in you, can bring to all the world, you could not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean to receive the image of the holiness that heals the world.

The image of holiness that shines in your mind is not obscure, and will not change. Its meaning to those who look upon it is not obscure, for everyone perceives it as the same.

All bring their different problems to its healing light, and all their problems find but healing there.

“The universe of learning will open up before you, in all its gracious simplicity.

The focus and aim of the workbook lessons is to be aware that happiness and joy take origin only in the inner life. That “To Know Yourself” requires courage and willingness to question every value that I hold. No belief is neutral. Every one has the power to dictate each decision you make. For a decision is a conclusion based on everything that you believe. It is the outcome of belief that leads to an awareness of yourself.It is impossible to evaluate a believe system from within. Its range precludes this. You can only go beyond it, look back from a point where harmony exists and see the contrast. Only by this contrast can the ego structure be judged as not wanted any longer. A simple question yet remains, and needs an answer “Do I like what I have made? “


NOW’ is the only dimension of time to engage myself with its practical action…

The workbook of A Course in Miracles is the model and pattern of the undoing of the denial of myself as God created me, an awakening as creative action, light, power, an instant of communication with my savior, listening/speaking experience that actually comes across like a storm, to overwhelm and transform silently as awakening from the sleep of death.

Using the lessons is my personal responsibility, an active act of changing mind through the Holy Spirit’s presence, as constancy, continuous in time, a dynamic experience in which:



With truth before me, I will not look back, the happy learner meets the conditions






We cannot gain access to the answer of the meaning of self, unless in a moment of darkness-despair-loneliness, its seeming gravity as the laws of objective cause and effect overtakes us, and we are perplexed, fearful, devoid of meaning about our purpose and function in this world.


I yearn for a new birth or for a brief respite from my conflictual self-identity in knowing the answer that echoes the call since beginningless time by all awakened minds “Surrender the Idea of a Separate Self!”

Challenging

Each Day is a challenge. An adventure sometimes it is sweet, sometimes it is bitter.

To be fully aware and awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest of my comfort zone.

Each instant new and fresh being in no-mans land. Nothing to hold on but the comfort of the lessons that direct and guide in the drama of seeking for a frame I know and want to return to.

Let it go say the lessons from 1-50 stay in that empty space, a split second again and again, catch again in gentleness the thoughts that race away and smile and know all is well in the Kingdom

Its never to late, a new instant is born, like the tide it waits for no one, God ever renews and gives ...LET ME BE AWARE EVER MORE!

Beliefs will never openly attack each other because conflicting outcomes are impossible.

But an unrecognized belief is a decision to war in secret, where the results of conflict are kept unknown and never brought to reason, to be considered sensible or not.

And many senseless outcomes have been reached, and meaningless decisions have been made and kept hidden, to become beliefs now given power to direct all subsequent decisions.

Mistake you not the power of these hidden warriors to disrupt your peace. For it is at their mercy while you decide to leave it there.

The secret enemies of peace, your least decision to choose attack instead of love, unrecognized and swift to challenge you to combat and to violence far more inclusive than you think, are there by your election.

Do not deny their presence nor their terrible results. All that can be denied is their reality, but not their outcome.

Compasion

In the lessons of A Course in Miracles as awakening beings, we discover that compassion for ourselves is the only aim.

As a single universe of cause and effect it is my awareness of myself in all facets of my emmotional response to the happenings that come and go in which I either find myself or loose myself.

Being compassionate starts and end with being compassionate with all those unwanted parts of myself, all those seeming imperfections I have given names.

(The lifting of the veil) To look upon the fear of God does need some preparation. Only the sane can look on stark insanity and raving madness with pity and compassion, but not with fear.

For only if they share in it does it seem fearful, and you do share in it until you look upon your brother with perfect faith and love and tenderness.

Before complete forgiveness you still stand unforgiving. You are afraid of God because you fear your brother. Those you do not forgive you fear. And no one reaches love with fear beside him.

This very moment is the perfect teacher

For warriors or teachers of God there is only the ever increasing awareness of the 'NOW'. And at the same time the awareness how immediatly the 'NOW' is over and gone.

But no despair is needed as like the tide in the ocean my mind moves again to that precious instant in which al is as it is. and I remember !

I will not run from the thoughts that rise and fall but watch in total affection remembering the line in one of the lessons:" Gentleness created me gentle, Kindness created me kind.

I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts.


Father, Your Son is perfect. When I think that I am hurt in any way, it is because I have forgotten who I am, and that I am as You created me. Your Thoughts can only bring me happiness.

If ever I am sad or hurt or ill, I have forgotten what You think, and put my little meaningless ideas in place of where Your Thoughts belong, and where they are.

I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts. The Thoughts I think with You can only bless. The Thoughts I think with You alone are true.

I will not hurt myself today. For I am far beyond all pain. My Father placed me safe in Heaven, watching over me. And I would not attack the Son He loves, for what He loves is also mine to love.

Each day, each instant is my journey of inspiration of working with the energy of all situations, seeing whatever arisis as inseparable from my awakened state.

Constellation

In the belief of space ‐time I am nothing.

Seemingly a complex constellation of ideas of limitation, preferring discomforts and indescribable labors rather than transform my own symbolic objective organization,

a tightly woven web that could be likened to the intricacy of a labyrinth. The legend presents me with Ariadne's thread as the means of getting out of the labyrinth‐ whereas it is in fact nothing else then the labyrinth itself.

Space/time, a field of circumstances and forces meeting and working out a resultant progression whose course it measures and repeats, a tiny tick of time which is over and gone.


“There is no world,” but only interpretations about it, and no world left over once all interpretations are subtracted.

When in a single instant the dependence on God is seen and declared, time became for all timeit is the application of miracles, which are Christ controlled. The other two are voluntary aspects of miraclemindedness are up to you”.

The First 50 Days

The First 50 Days are accomplished. The first 50 lessons of the workbook of ACIM has again been an active and deeper realization of a frame of ideas that will ever more be a scaffolding to return to when the bombardment of past ideas rises back into my awareness.

Each days lessons re-enforces again the simplicity of acceptance of powerful ideas that are already at work in every aspect of time and space, but it is soooo helpful if I am aware of its timeless presence.

So that I can be its extension.

Each individual somewhere in time must begin to see there is another way. A time comes in your life when you finally get it... when, in the midst of all your fears and insanity, you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out— ENOUGH!



It is time for the old to be released and yet every human being fights this experience of his own consciousness and wastes it by returning to do it all over again, in the mistaken belief that now he can do it better.


What can be necessary to find truth, which remains perfectly obvious, but to remove the seeming obstacles to true awareness? The workbook lessons of A Course in Miracles are designed to bring these hidden obstacles back into the awareness of an individual through the action of applying the power of mind, an action of forgiveness.


Forgiveness is the physical healing of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think. Consciousness is the power to be aware of itself in its true nature this power must be direct, self-fulfilled and complete to be whole. This perfect and natural condition of consciousness is the immediacy of communication in the certainty that all Power comes from God.

The shortest lesson

Lesson 48 " There is nothing to fear" has little room to play a game of hide and seek. Its ideas are simply an expression to breathe a sigh of relief.

The idea for today simply states a fact. It is not a fact to those who believe in illusions, but illusions are not facts.

Even when Jesus entered behind closed doors at Easter:
He spoke these two simple words" Fear Not"

Not a lenghty discusion as to the why's and not's of the idea of fear but a direct instruction. Oh Boy how easy does it get when I want that peace of mind. That touch of another world.

Fear not to recognize the whole idea of sacrifice as solely of your making. And seek not safety by attempting to protect yourself from where it is not. Your brothers and your Father have become very fearful to you.

And you would bargain with them for a few special relationships, in which you think you see some scraps of safety. Do not try longer to keep apart your thoughts 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.

Recognition

Each lesson brings again ideas to my awareness how fragile is that pattern of my thinking, how aware I am again and again as in lesson 26

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability." that in every aspect in every second I am vulnerable.

But here is the word that will always be a guidance and direction, a help ...the word is recognition. Without recognition I am stumbling groping for an answer, while all answers are immediatly present, in that quantum field of unlimited possibilities.

The recognition of your own frailty is a necessary step in the correction of your errors, but it is hardly a sufficient one in giving you the confidence which you need, and to which you are entitled.

You must also gain an awareness that confidence in your real strength is fully justified in every respect and in all circumstancesGod is your safety in every circumstance.

His Voice speaks for Him in all situations and in every aspect of all situations, telling you exactly what to do to call upon His strength and His protection.

There are no exceptions because God has no exceptions. And the Voice Which speaks for Him thinks as He does.

White sand

In all my travels around this dream of mine, I now declare, nowhere are the beaches as white and clean as in Australia.

In Europe where the sardine in a tin syndrome on the beach is still greatly popular, sand is rather the color grey or brown.

And rubble ever present.

How else can it, when thousands try to fit on a stretch of sand designed for hundreds

AGH the beaches of OZ nothing like it, it heaves my heart to look at them again and feel those delicious grains between my toes when I step on that white splendor. The waves clean and mighty rolling on and on.

In India recently Sonja and I discovered early in the morning that the beach edge is the toilet for the whole village, who could possibly go in the water after that, even if it is a dream....

I must confess the images of India are still haunting me, the dream is powerfull  indeed:

What is there God created to be sick? And what that He created not can be? Let not your eyes behold a dream; your ears bear witness to illusion.
 
They were made to look upon a world that is not there; to hear the voices that can make no sound. Yet are there other sounds and other sights that can be seen and heard and understood.
 
For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and what they see and hear they but report. It is not they that hear and see, but you, who put together every jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of evidence, and make a witness to the world you want.
 
Let not the body's ears and eyes perceive these countless fragments seen within the gap that you imagined, and let them persuade their maker his imaginings are real.

The Games

At the moment thousands as participants and spectators. are gathered for the winter Olympics in Canada. And millions upon millions from around the world are glued to the TV to watch these games

All these athletes brought together for 2 weeks, to join and celebrate their sportmanship, to demonstrate their skills

Four years of training and daily dedication will see a few with gold, silver, and bronze medals and many dissappointments and hopes shattered because it is all so unpredictable. That split decision at a start, the weather, an emmotion rising out of nowhere, a turn gone wrong, and the clock ticking that terrible seconds of time. 

But when I look at that commitment, the daily execises, the hardship endured I marvel at what man can and will do for that experience that is priceless, or is it?

Where are the medal winners from yesteryear? Are they still in the glorious instant of finding the reward?  There are no answers, but that I wittness to that tremendous display of power of decision that drives each individual on to achieve a moment of greatness, and all spectators are aware of this happening and rejoice, after all glory is glory for everyone

These young people are dedicated because it has a total value to be the best there is, it is worth the daily  action and application to give all they have and no matter the medals that action is never lost.                                                                       

To share is to make alike, or to make one.

What a gem this lesson 45 is ....

Under all the senseless thoughts and mad ideas with which you have cluttered up your mind are the thoughts that you thought with God in the beginning. They are there in your mind now, completely unchanged.

They will always be in your mind, exactly as they always were. Everything you have thought since then will change, but the foundation on which it rests is wholly changeless.


It is this foundation toward which the exercises for today are directed. Here is your mind joined with the Mind of God. Here are your thoughts one with His.
 
The word foundation is a tremendous idea it is so solid in what it represents in our mind, no-one does not feel the strenght of the idea of foundation..in chapter 24-3 it gives us teachers this power and light to declare and receive:
 
"Without foundation nothing is secure. Would God have left His Son in such a state, where safety has no meaning? No, His Son is safe, resting on Him.
 
It is your specialness that is attacked by everything that walks and breathes, or creeps or crawls, or even lives at all. Nothing is safe from its attack, and it is safe from nothing.
 

Light reflects life,

Put out your hand, and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it.

Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes, and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see.

A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams.

Some sentences in the lesson 44  like today hit me far and square between the eyes: "You do not see outside yourself, nor is the equipment for seeing outside you. An essential part of this equipment is the light that makes seeing possible. It is with you always, making vision possible in every circumstance."

This assertive ideas that is given me has no room for manipulation, it is a fact and a joyful one indeed. Finally the mind no longer looks for a way out, to fragment or to re-arrange but rests in the ideas in great comfort and peace.

Mind as the mechanism of decisions knows where it is at home

In God you cannot see.

Recently I flew from India to London and on to Australia. I am a little shaky, the sounds, sights and smells are so overwhelming different in all three places ...

for instance the sounds of the birds in India in mainly crows, not my most favorite sound, big black birds diving and squaking away on and on.

In London the birds make very little sound yet at a temperature of 1c and sleet falling they sit there shivering on braches for the weather to improve, and a few daring worms to come up from the ground to pick on.

In Australia the sound of birds is one of abundance, a cascade of cheerfulness and dive bombing of colors and sizes into the grasses and water holes.

After last nights delicious storm everything is damp for them. So today's lesson 43 " God is my source. I cannot see apart from him." I am the seeing and the seer.

No matter the spaces of this dream I embroider the forms into it I am its cause and effect, only in that immediacy I am no longer concerened about the form, but only the action of my mind whiuch I will not arrest.

Lesson 43."You cannot see apart from God because you cannot be apart from God. Whatever you do you do in Him, because whatever you think, you think with His Mind. If vision is real, and it is real to the extent to which it shares the Holy Spirit's purpose, then you cannot see apart from God."

In any glance that I find my eye resting on here in Australia, they are the comforts of a space that fits me like a glove, its greenery is so kind of spectacular of India and the frozen state of London that here it all moves and caresses like: " God is my source. I cannot see apart from him>

The hush of Heaven

There is a hush in Heaven, a happy expectancy, a little pause of gladness in acknowledgment of the journey's end. For Heaven knows you well, as you know Heaven.

No illusions stand between you and your brother now. Look not upon the little wall of shadows. The sun has risen over it. How can a shadow keep you from the sun?

No more can you be kept by shadows from the light in which illusions end. Every miracle is but the end of an illusion. Such was the journey; such its ending. And in the goal of truth which you accepted must all illusions end.



The little insane wish to get rid of Him Whom you invited in and push Him out must produce conflict. As you look upon the world, this little wish, uprooted and floating aimlessly, can land and settle briefly upon anything, for it has no purpose now.

Before the Holy Spirit entered to abide with you it seemed to have a mighty purpose; the fixed and unchangeable dedication to sin and its results. Now it is aimless, wandering pointlessly, causing no more than tiny interruptions in love's appeal.


This feather of a wish, this tiny illusion, this microscopic remnant of the belief in sin, is all that remains of what once seemed to be the world. It is no longer an unrelenting barrier to peace. Its pointless wandering makes its results appear to be more erratic and unpredictable than before.

Yet what could be more unstable than a tightly organized delusional system? Its seeming stability is its pervasive weakness, which extends to everything. The variability the little remnant induces merely indicates its limited results.


How mighty can a little feather be before the great wings of truth? Can it oppose an eagle's flight, or hinder the advance of summer?

Can it interfere with the effects of summer's sun upon a garden covered by the snow? See but how easily this little wisp is lifted up and carried away, never to return, and part with it in gladness, not regret.

For it is nothing in itself, and stood for nothing when you had greater faith in its protection. Would you not rather greet the summer sun than fix your gaze upon a disappearing snowflake, and shiver in remembrance of the winter's cold?

The Lessons 36-40 on Holiness

The Holy Lesson 39: " My holiness is my salvation.

If guilt is hell, what is its opposite? Like the text for which this workbook was written, the ideas used for the exercises are very simple, very clear and totally unambiguous.

We are not concerned with intellectual feats nor logical toys. We are dealing only in the very obvious, which has been overlooked in the clouds of complexity in which you think you think.

How darn and utter comforting to read these lines in the beginning of lesson 39, no nonsense, no way to deny the clarity of the timeless ideas that are awaiting my usages.

Your holiness is the answer to every question that was ever asked, is being asked now, or will be asked in the future. Your holiness means the end of guilt, and therefore the end of hell. Your holiness is the salvation of the world, and your own. How could you to whom your holiness belongs be excluded from it? God does not know unholiness. Can it be He does not know His Son?

I simply love the directness of these ideas that are experienced for me as a comfort of the highest proportion. No matter the form of my dream, I turn to another moment a voice directing me as myself to say: " Here it is. The other world is right here and now in lesson 39.

In Auroville where we stayed the teachings of The Mother are now so reinterpreted and watered down, that I thought it a bit sad for a moment.
But then I rememberd that here message like any message of truth can never be lost ...its power is ever present.

Reflections

Of all the images I have seen in this past month in India, all the symbols of the Hindu Gods, the Budha and all their Temples errected for their Masters over the last 1000 years or more, it is a staggering awareness for me how man devotes such energies on caring for the unknown.

And still it is that, that drives him on to go on, and in India, the ceremonies, the bells, the washing of statues, the fire blessings,  it all gives man a purpose a reason to exist

Each day thousands of flowers are woven to hang around statues, when Sonja and I bought one evening a string each and brought them to our nose, the seller was afghast.

The Gods for which they where intented do not need a smell, so we did not dare place them around our neck .......and say we are Gods.

In all the squalor of India that so many live their is always a temple being build to honor some God, each house has a small corner to bow before, or place incense or flowers.

Not that this is any different from my childhood home where the statues of Jesus, Mary had a special place in the best room and a little oil- light flickering in front of it.

Its the same idea in a muliple forms

Outside Varanasi about 18 km is a round temple where Budha gave his first sermon to his 5 disciples, now when I sat there on the edge and watched the monks from Thibet with their praying beads go round and around mumbling the prayers, I thought 'My God' What is the difference with my workbook lessons?

Somewhere I saw the flash of the history of man in his acknowledgement of some thing greater then anything he imagines and endlessly repeating his desire for contact

Last Day in India

Yesterday we where well enough we thought to venture outside a riksha-ride with Dirk to a coffee shop ..Yes Mumbai is more western then any place in India.

This trip a short one Dirk held out 30 rupees to the driver and was given back 21 rupees, as that was the fair, we where week with laughter on the foot path as we at last realized how much the rest of India had charged us for similar trips like 30-40-50-60-or 80 rupees.

I know we cannot be ripped off but it still was giving us much hysterics thinking about it. In Mumbai the rikshas have meters a must of the government.

The coffee shop was great for Dirk but we could not manage a cappucino and those that know us will be amazed. We went back to bed and Dirk went to the Taj Mahal..

We ventured out a few hours later and did manage some shopping, cannot keep a shopper down for long

Dirk took the train and told us when he returned that the wagons are for woman and man as you are so packed together like sardines that you could not possible be having man and woman together in one wagon.

When I said to Dirk "Why did you not buy first class? He said" That was first class"

So our journey is ending today ..I am of to London and Sonja and Dirk on to New Zealand.

It has been a hell of a ride the agony and exctacy of India are pictures in our minds of such wide variety of experiences that has given the ideas of our most loved message A Course in Miracles a whole new perspective and humbleness to see how many many forms this dream is presenting to include.

With Love To All

India

Well we are in Mumbai in a nice appartment ...but all I have seen so far is me bed and the bathroom ...India got me well and good ..but this morning it looks rosier Sonja came out of here bedroom with a mozzie bite on her eye not a pretty picture, and she is feeling better as well some sniffles some coughs but oh well its all India .......

Images of India

India

We arrived in Mumbai and our first day here was spend for me mostly in the bathroom ...India at last got me well and good in that my body feels like been beaten bbadly
Sonja also is resting today as she is coughing, at least we are in a comfy appartment and lying down is the highlight of Mumbai so far ..

Our much planned shopping expedition has`to wait ..After Varanasi, Mumbai is a haven of cleanliness, no cows to dodge in the streets or the amazing amount of poop everywher

We are here in a very nice area of Mumbai but so far the pine trees outside my room are the only vista today