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Mind is ever active and awake, and without the tool of the workbook lessons of A Course in Miracles and the personal acceptance of the active presence of Jesus as my savior, there is no way to return an undisciplined mind to the experience of single source.
The workbook lessons, thoughts‐as‐power, thoughts‐as‐strength, thoughts‐as‐light are a genuine personal relationship with Jesus and every lesson re-enters into that single relationship as a new word spoken with my savior.
Each lesson entered into, performs, carries out an exercise whereby I am returning the power of my mind to listen; “ Stand you still awhile, and tremble not.” an attitude of open‐mindedness, which occupies no space but which, in a sense, creates a new space in the very 'place' in which it is carried out.
Determination and perseverance, with the ideas of the workbook are my key to see the nightmare of time and space into a new bright realization through the act of forgiveness.
No matter what the condition, situation, event, or relationship is that brings me to opening the workbook and reading the lessons.
The strength of the lessons is not just a saying, but also a gathering, a doing, an action of application to the condition in which I find myself. There is anticipation for whatever the lesson and its application will reveal as originating from a single source “God in action through His Son.”
The morning star of this new day looks on a different world where God is welcomed and His Son with Him. We who complete Him offer thanks to Him, as He gives thanks to us. The Son is still, and in the quiet God has given him enters his home and is at peace at last.
Each day the Teachers of God appear in the role of being responsible for the figures in the dream. Each one appears and fulfills this role as it is given for the day exactly as it comes and goes.
Nothing to question, each instant a recognition that all is just an appearance.
My function is to remember that I am an appearance in a dream to be the witness that all appearances have already appeared again and again, and will appear untill I see its nothingness.
Appearances deceive because they are appearances and not reality. Dwell not on them in any form.
And so we find our peace. We will accept the function God has given us, for all illusions rest upon the weird belief that we can make another for ourselves.
Our self-made roles are shifting, and they seem to change from mourner to ecstatic bliss of love and loving. We can laugh or weep, and greet the day with welcome or with tears.
Our very being seems to change as we experience a thousand shifts in mood, and our emotions raise us high indeed, or dash us to the ground in hopelessness.
They but obscure reality, and they bring fear because they hide the truth. Do not attack what you have made to let you be deceived, for thus you prove that you have been deceived.
Attack has power to make illusions real. Yet what it makes is nothing. Who could be made fearful by a power that can have no real effects at all? What could it be but an illusion, making things appear like to itself?
Look calmly at its toys, and understand that they are idols which but dance to vain desires. Give them not your worship, for they are not there. Yet this is equally forgotten in attack. God's Son needs no defense against his dreams.
His idols do not threaten him at all. His one mistake is that he thinks them real. What can the power of illusions do?
Appearances can but deceive the mind that wants to be deceived. And you can make a simple choice that will forever place you far beyond deception.
You need not concern yourself with how this will be done, for this you cannot understand. But you will understand that mighty changes have been quickly brought about, when you decide one very simple thing; you do not want whatever you believe an idol gives.
For thus the Son of God declares that he is free of idols. And thus is he free.
When everything falls apart, and I feel the ground beneath me disolve it is then that I look with gentleness and clarity at myself. I see that old pattern taking seemingly charge. It is my thoughts that imprison, and my thoughts that set me free.
These thoughts are only images not a solid immovable personality as if I were Michelangelo chiseling myself out of marble
It is that instant to remember happily:"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.
Forgive your brother all appearances, that are but ancient lessons you have taught yourself about the sinfulness in you. Hear but his call for mercy and release from all the fearful images he holds of what he is and of what you must be.
He is afraid to walk with you, and thinks perhaps a bit behind, a bit ahead would be a safer place for him to be.
Can you make progress if you think the same, advancing only when he would step back, and falling back when he would go ahead? For so do you forget the journey's goal, which is but to decide to walk with him, so neither leads nor follows.
Thus it is a way you go together, not alone. And in this choice is learning's outcome changed, for Christ has been reborn to both of you.
His is the only way to find the peace that God has given us. It is His way that everyone must travel in the end, because it is this ending God Himself appointed. In the dream of time it seems to be far off.
And yet, in truth, it is already here; already serving us as gracious guidance in the way to go.
Let us together follow in the way that truth points out to us. And let us be the leaders of our many brothers who are seeking for the way, but find it not.
The workbook lessons of A Course in Miracles are not a vacation from irritation, Working with the energies of all situations, seeing what arises as inseparable from the awakened state, is my purpose and function.
Fear is a universal experience, Even the smallest insect feelks it. I wade in the tidal pools of the ocean and put my finger near the soft open bodies of sea anemones and they close up.
Everything spontaneouly does that. It's not a terrible thing that I feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is a part of being in this dream of self-awareness, fear is a natural reeaction to move close to the truth.
Love of the truth puts me on the spot. This is where gentleness comes in. When things are shaky and nothing is working, I realize that I am on the verge of something new. And I think I be a good friend to myself, and everything will turn friendly.
Lead not your little life in solitude, with one illusion as your only friend. This is no friendship worthy of God's Son, nor one with which he could remain content. Yet God has given him a better Friend, in Whom all power in earth and Heaven rests.
The one illusion that you think is friend obscures His grace and majesty from you, and keeps His friendship and forgiveness from your welcoming embrace. Without Him you are friendless. Seek not another friend to take His place.
There is no other friend. What God appointed has no substitute, for what illusion can replace the truth?
Who dwells with shadows is alone indeed, and loneliness is not the Will of God. Would you allow one shadow to usurp the throne that God appointed for your Friend, if you but realized its emptiness has left yours empty and unoccupied?
Make no illusion friend, for if you do, it can but take the place of Him Whom God has called your Friend. And it is He Who is your only Friend in truth.
He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only He to Whom they have been given can make sure that you receive them. He will place them on your throne, when you make room for Him on His.
Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world. I would fulfill my function that I may be happy.
Space/time is the great illusion. In its wake comes the inevitable belief that, to be safe, one must control the unknown. This strange belief relies on certain steps which never reach to consciousness.
From A lazy-mans guide to enlightenment)
We are equal beings and the universe is our relations with each other. The universe is made of one kind of entity: each one is alive, each determines the course of his own existence.
That is really all you need to know to understand this book or write your own. Everything I say has its roots in that first paragraph, and it is possible to resolve any question by going back to it and thinking it through for yourself.
The universe is made of one kind of whatever-it-is, which cannot be defined. For our purpose, it isn't necessary to try to define it. All we need to do is assume that there is only one kind of whatever-it-is, and see if it leads to a reasonable explanation for the world as we know it.
The basic function of each being is expanding and contracting. Expanded beings are permeative; contracted beings are dense and impermeative.
Therefore each of us, alone or in combination, may appear as space, energy, or mass, depending on the ratio of expansion to contraction chosen, and what kind of vibrations each of us expresses by alternating expansion and contraction. Each being controls his own vibrations.
A completely expanded being is space. Since expansion is permeative, we can be in the "same space" with one or more other expanded beings. In fact, it is possible for all the entities in the universe to be one space.
We experience expansion as awareness, comprehension, understanding, or whatever we wish to call it. When we are completely expanded, we have a feeling of total awareness, of being one with all life.
At that level we have no resistance to any vibrations or interactions of other beings. It is timeless bliss, with unlimited choice of consciousness, perception, and feeling.
Space is a level of experience that any of us can reach, but it is difficult to talk about on our present plane precisely because it is unlimited. It is that which chooses limits and makes definitions.
We might say: all experiences are available to the One Mind, and the One Mind is all of us or any of us at the highest level of expansion.
Or we might theorize: God could not create anything more limited than Himself that would persist, but if He duplicates Himself, He can enjoy a persistent universe. Each entity, therefore, is a duplicate of God, "made in His image."
Is there a place we can learn to be peaceful, a boot camp for spiritual warriors. Well I see this dream of mine as a great and wonderful opportunity to practice peace in all the agonies of space and time.
The opportunities never sees to exist, like a roller coaster ride the requist for peace is ever present, there is no reprieve to take a breath and to say I quite!
What a relieve that nothing but simply nothing is wrong in whatever way or shape. that this is the place I remember my purpose and function as the journey that is not a path but a single memory.
The Holy Spirit is the perfect teacher. He uses only what your mind already understands to teach you that you do not understand it.
The Holy Spirit can deal with a reluctant learner without going counter to his mind, because part of it is still for God. Despite the ego's attempts to conceal this part, it is still much stronger than the ego, although the ego does not recognize it.
The Holy Spirit recognizes it perfectly because it is His Own dwelling place; the place in the mind where He is at home. You are at home there, too, because it is a place of peace, and peace is of God.
You who are part of God are not at home except in His peace. If peace is eternal, you are at home only in eternity.
A greatly and wonderful reassuring idea that is given in lesson 42, like in any second in which my mind wanders to another space or time I am denying where I am.
There is no condemnation in him. He is perfect in his holiness. He needs no thoughts of mercy. Who could give him gifts when everything is his? And who could dream of offering forgiveness to the Son of Sinlessness Itself, so like to Him Whose Son he is, that to behold the Son is to perceive no more, and only know the Father?
In this vision of the Son, so brief that not an instant stands between this single sight and timelessness itself, you see the vision of yourself, and then you disappear forever into God.
I recently read an interesting book called: "When things fall apart" which is what they do. And that falling apart is the way, the truth and the live. Fear is a natural reaction for getting closer to the truth.
In our beloved course in miracles in lesson 48 it gives this idea:
"The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are trusting in your own strength. The awareness that there is nothing to fear shows that somewhere in your mind, though not necessarily in a place you recognize as yet, you have remembered God, and let His strength take the place of your weakness. The instant you are willing to do this there is indeed nothing to fear."
Whether I call it dead or live each instant is a rebirth.
Somewhere in this story it deepened to me how oke it is that things fall apart. They cannot not!
The journey of enlightenment is not about finding perfection and bliss a hopeless cycle that goes around endlessly.
To be in a constant acceptance no matter the form is a full time job and takes all my attention, and the wandering off is a happy realization that I have returned right there and then.
Right in the chaos of every day's existence lies awaiting a gentleness, a kindness to myself.
My passage through time and space is not at random. I cannot but be in the right place at the right time.
