Simultaneous

  

There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that anything could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the laws of God; not as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it, but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error is the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error.

       There is another purpose in the world that error made, because it has another Maker Who can reconcile its goal with His Creator's purpose. 

In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. 

Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it must be, and light the body up instead of it. 

The lamps of Heaven are not for mind to choose to see them where it will. If it elects to see them elsewhere from their home, as if they lit a place where they could never be, then must the Maker of the world correct your error, lest you remain in darkness where the lamps are not.

Potential

Your learning potential, properly understood, is limitless because it will lead you to God.

You can teach the way to Him and learn it, if you follow the Teacher Who knows the way to Him and understands His curriculum for learning it.

The curriculum is totally unambiguous, because the goal is not divided and the means and the end are in complete accord.

You need offer only undivided attention.

Everything else will be given you. For you really want to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the decision of God's Son. His learning is as unlimited as he is.

Potential

Potential ( Joel Goldsmit )

Everyone on earth has, potentially, the same consciousness as Jesus Christ. —are we willing to put in the hours of devotion; are we willing to make the effort required to train ourselves to be conscious of the presence of God, instead of seeking some form in which God is to appear.

Searching

Yet searching is inevitable here. For this you came, and you will surely do the thing you came for.


But the world can not dictate the goal for which you search, unless you give it power to do so.


Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one that comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want.


Be glad that search you must. Be glad as well to learn you search for Heaven, and must find the goal you really want.

No one can fail to want this goal and reach it in the end. God's Son can not seek vainly, though he try to force delay, deceive himself and think that it is hell he seeks.

  When he is wrong, he finds correction. When he wanders off, he is led back to his appointed task.

Perfection

We share one life because we have one Source, a Source from Which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect. 

As we were, so are we now and will forever be. 

A sleeping mind must waken, as it sees its own perfection mirroring the Lord of Life so perfectly it fades into what is reflected there. 

And now it is no more a mere reflection. It becomes the thing reflected, and the light which makes reflection possible. 

No vision now is needed. For the wakened mind is one that knows its Source, its Self, its Holiness.

Escape

Atonement teaches you how to escape forever from everything that you have taught yourself in the past, by showing you only what you are now. 

Learning has been accomplished before its effects are manifest. Learning is therefore in the past, but its influence determines the present by giving it whatever meaning it holds for you. 

Your learning gives the present no meaning at all. 

Nothing you have ever learned can help you understand the present, or teach you how to undo the past. 

Your past is what you have taught yourself. Let it all go. 

Do not attempt to understand any event or anything or anyone in its "light," for the darkness in which you try to see can only obscure. 

Put no confidence at all in darkness to illuminate your understanding, for if you do you contradict the light, and thereby think you see the darkness. 

Yet darkness cannot be seen, for it is nothing more than a condition in which seeing becomes impossible.

Consciously

This is the question that must be asked: "Where can I go for protection?" 

"Seek and ye shall find" does not mean that you should seek blindly and desperately for something you would not recognize. 

Meaningful seeking is consciously undertaken, consciously organized and consciously directed. 

The goal must be formulated clearly and kept in mind.

  Learning and wanting to learn are inseparable. 

You learn best when you believe what you are trying to learn is of value to you. 

However, not everything you may want to learn has lasting value. 

Indeed, many of the things you want to learn may be chosen because their value will not last.

Tricks

You must look upon your illusions and not keep them hidden, because they do not rest on their own foundation.

In concealment they appear to do so, and thus they seem to be self-sustained.

This is the fundamental illusion on which the others rest.

 For beneath them, and concealed as long as they are hidden, is the loving mind that thought it made them in anger.

And the pain in this mind is so apparent, when it is uncovered, that its need of healing cannot be denied. Not all the tricks and games you offer it can heal it, for here is the real crucifixion of God's Son.

Freedom

Free will must lead to freedom. 

Judgment always imprisons because it separates segments of reality by the unstable scales of desire.

Wishes are not facts. To wish is to imply that willing is not sufficient. 

Yet no one in his right mind believes that what is wished is as real as what is willed. 

Instead of "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven" say, "Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven," and you have said, "I know what I am and I accept my own inheritance."

Everything is an idea

Everything is an idea.

How, then, can giving and losing be associated?

This is the invitation to the Holy Spirit. I have said already that I can reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you, but I can bring Him to you only at your own invitation. 

The Holy Spirit is in your right mind, as He was in mine. 

The Bible says, "May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus," and uses this as a blessing. 

It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as I thought, joining with me in Christ thinking.

Meaning

Everything that is of God can be counted on, because everything of God is wholly real.

  Healing can be counted on because it is inspired by His Voice, and is in accord with His laws.

Yet if healing is consistent it cannot be inconsistently understood. Understanding means consistency because God means consistency.

Since that is His meaning, it is also yours.

Your meaning cannot be out of accord with His, because your whole meaning and your only meaning comes from His and is like His. God cannot be out of accord with Himself, and you cannot be out of accord with Him.

You cannot separate your Self from your Creator, Who created you by sharing His Being with you.

Acceptance

If you do not know what your reality is, why would you be so sure that it is fearful?

The association of truth and fear, which would be highly artificial at most, is particularly inappropriate in the minds of those who do not know what truth is.

All this could mean is that you are arbitrarily associating something beyond your awareness with something you do not want.

It is evident, then, that you are judging something of which you are totally unaware.

You have set up this strange situation so that it is impossible to escape from it without a Guide Who does know what your reality is.

The purpose of this Guide is merely to remind you of what you want. He is not attempting to force an alien will upon you.

  He is merely making every possible effort, within the limits you impose on Him, to re-establish your own will in your awareness.

The Word

Here is the Word by which the Son became His Father's happiness, His Love and His completion. 

Here creation is proclaimed, and honored as it is. 

There is no dream these words will not dispel; no thought of sin and no illusion which the dream contains that will not fade away before their might. 

They are the trumpet of awakening that sounds around the world. 

The dead awake in answer to its call. And those who live and hear this sound will never look on death.

What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you?
If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy.

But because it is meaningless, you are impelled to write upon it what you would have it be. It is this you see in it. It is this that is meaningless in truth. Beneath your words is written the Word of God. The truth upsets you now, but when your words have been erased, you will see His.

Falsehood

"By not carrying out a truth to the end , I limit it - and any limitation of a truth provides an expanse for falsehood"

As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with transitory states by definition false.

And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind; in all awareness and in all response.

This is the all-inclusiveness which sets the truth apart from falsehood, and the false kept separate from the truth, as what it is.

Is it not strange that you believe to think you made the world you see is arrogance? God made it not. Of this you can be sure.

What can He know of the ephemeral, the sinful and the guilty, the afraid, the suffering and lonely, and the mind that lives within a body that must die?

You but accuse Him of insanity, to think He made a world where such things seem to have reality.

  He is not mad. Yet only madness makes a world like this.

Thomas Merton Inspires Me

- Our real journey in life is interior;

It is a matter of growth, deepening,
and of an ever greater surrender
to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts.
Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.

-

Life is this simple:
We are living in a transparent world,
and God shines through in every moment.
This is not just a fable or a nice story;
it is living truth.

If we remember God, abandon ourselves to God,
and forget ourselves,
we may see this truth:
God manifests everywhere, in everything.
We cannot be without God.
It’s impossible.
It’s simply impossible.

Clouds

From where you stand, you can see no reason to believe there is a brilliant light hidden by the clouds. 

The clouds seem to be the only reality. They seem to be all there is to see. 

Therefore, you do not attempt to go through them and past them, which is the only way in which you would be really convinced of their lack of substance. 

We will make this attempt today.

After you have thought about the importance of what you are trying to do for yourself and the world, try to settle down in perfect stillness, remembering only how much you want to reach the light in you today, - now! 

Determine to go past the clouds. Reach out and touch them in your mind. 

Brush them aside with your hand; feel them resting on your cheeks and forehead and eyelids as you go through them. Go on; clouds cannot stop you.

Traveller

Leave, then, your needs to Him. He will supply them with no emphasis at all upon them. 

What comes to you of Him comes safely, for He will ensure it never can become a dark spot, hidden in your mind and kept to hurt you. 

Under His guidance you will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is ever on the journey's end, which is His goal. God's Son is not a traveller through outer worlds.

However holy his perception may become, no world outside himself holds his inheritance. 

Within himself he has no needs, for light needs nothing but to shine in peace, and from itself to let the rays extend in quiet to infinity.

Whenever you are tempted to undertake a useless journey that would lead away from light, remember what you really want, and say:

The Holy Spirit leads me unto Christ, and where

else would I go? What need have I but to awake in Him?

A prayer from Thomas Merton

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road although I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

All my brothers are special. 

If they believe they are deprived of anything, their perception becomes distorted. 

When this occurs the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships.

Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. 

The miracle calls him to return because it blesses and honors him, even though he may be absent in spirit. "God is not mocked" is not a warning but a reassurance. 

God would be mocked if any of His creations lacked holiness. 

The creation is whole, and the mark of wholeness is holiness. 

Miracles are affirmations of Sonship, which is a state of completion and abundance.