Making Explicit the True Meaning of Forgiveness: My Facebook Statuses for July, 2012

Two, or three, years ago, I set up a Facebook account, but I never really did much with it, until Sunday 8 April, Easter Sunday, auspiciously, when it occurred to me that I could post a Status statement on Facebook, daily.  This would enable me to express myself regarding the meaning of forgiveness, and spread the word about the incredible event coming up in the fall, International Forgiveness Week and Weekend of Perfect Peace, September 14-23, 2012, at the Healing Center of Endeavor Academy, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin.

It was clear to me that each day I could make explicit the meaning of forgiveness in a pithy statement, and at the same time, encourage readers to send in their statements expressing their forgiveness experiences.

We will collect these statements and make them available during the Event, as well as possibly publish them in a book.

Please write about your experience of forgiving thoughts in 600 words, or less, and Submit Your Essay, using this link:
http://www.forgivenessweek.org/writing.php


It was also clear to me that on the first of each month, I would post a blog containing the statements from the preceding month.

These are my Status postings for July, 2012.


7/1
In Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” after staging a play within the play, Prospero says these lines:

Our revels now are ended.  These our actors,
as I foretold you, were all spirits and
are melted into air, into thin air.
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
the solemn temples, the great globe itself,
ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve.
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
leave not a rack behind.  We are such stuff
as dreams are made on, and our little life
is rounded with a sleep. Act 4, Scene 1

Of course, this is a powerful analogy.  For the players on stage, the play within a play has disappeared; for the spectators in the audience, the play, too, will fade away.

What the members of the audience may also believe is that that the dream they are living, the world they are seeing with the body’s eyes, will also disappear, and their lives will end in death, “rounded with a sleep.”

For us, though, we know that there is no death, and this passage from a Lesson in  A Course in Miracles triggered this memory of “The Tempest,” countering its sentiments.

Lesson 162, I am as God created me.

This single thought, held firmly in the mind,
would save the world. From time to time we will
repeat it, as we reach another stage
in learning. It will mean far more to you
as you advance. These words are sacred, for
they are the words God gave in answer to
the world you made. By them it disappears,
and all things seen within its misty clouds
and vaporous illusions vanish as
these words are spoken. For they come from God. 1

7/2

While reading Lesson 157, Into His Presence would I enter now, I came across this sentence.

Today it will be given you to feel
a touch of Heaven, though you will return
to paths of learning. 3

And the image of a signpost came to mind, a sign pointing the way.

And then I thought of all the books I had read, all the people I had met, all the workshops I had gone to, all the therapy sessions along the way.  Although, in retrospect, they were not the answer in themselves, they were simply pointing me in the right direction.  I was moving along the right path.  I was learning as I went. 
Everything is used.

And I am still learning.  I am now being led by the Course and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and Master Teacher to an experience beyond learning.

Today it will be given you to feel
a touch of Heaven, though you will return
to paths of learning. Yet you have come far
enough along the way to alter time
sufficiently to rise above its laws,
and walk into eternity a while.
This you will learn to do increasingly,
as every lesson, faithfully rehearsed,
brings you more swiftly to this holy place
and leaves you, for a moment, to your Self. 3

And in my gratitude is my salvation.

7/3

We saw the most extraordinary movie last night, simply entitled “Café” (2010), directed by Marc Erlbaum.  Almost the entire movie takes place in a café.  I do not want to give the movie away.  I simply want to put it in the context of A Course in Miracles.

One of the characters, Craig, is working on his laptop, when its screen suddenly goes blank, and then a girl appears, telling him that he is an “avatar,” and everything around him does not exist, except as a “programmed reality.”

This, of course, is exactly where Jesus begins His Lessons.

Lesson 1, Nothing I see means anything.

As the movie goes on, there are so many difficult relationships and situations, and tragic events, that you wonder how it can all possibly be resolved.

At the end, the “programmer” informs Craig that if he is willing to let it all go and die to the “programmed reality,” the illusion, he will save it all.  For us this means to unite with his True Self and experience his second coming.

For every one who ever came to die,
or yet will come or who is present now,
is equally released from what he made.
In this equality is Christ restored
as one Identity, in which the Sons
of God acknowledge that they all are one.
And God the Father smiles upon His Son,
His one creation and His only joy.
9.  What is the Second Coming? 4

No Spoiler Alert necessary; I am going to stop here.

7/4

How automatically we tend to stamp figures in our dreams with our projections.  How quickly we characterize them:  enemy, friend,  number 1 enemy, best friend, tolerable, intolerable, and so forth. 

I just came across for the first time the meaning of the word “character.”

Roman artisans, highly skilled in working with some kinds of metal, developed a special tool for stamping and marking.  The name of this tool passed through Old French into English as “character.”

Medieval courts used a character to brand a convicted lawbreaker so that person could never again pass as an upright citizen.  The letter A was burned upon a woman guilty of adultery; the letter M marked a murderer; and the letter T was burned upon the forehead or shoulder of a thief.  By the sixteenth century, “character” had come to stand for the sum total of one’s qualities. (What’s In A Word? Webb Garrison (Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville, TN, 2000), p. 37.

Thank God, Jesus designed His 365 Lessons in A Course in Miracles, so that we can learn to forgive the “characters” that we have stamped in our dream.

Each lesson has a central thought, the same
in all of them. The form alone is changed,
with different circumstances and events;
with different “characters” and different themes,
apparent but not real. They are the same
in fundamental content. It is this:
Forgive, and you will see this differently.Lesson 193. 3:3-7

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

7/5

In one of his “The Infinite Way Letters, 1959,” Joel Goldsmith talks about “personalizing errors.”

In our unenlightened state, seeing only the appearance, we may judge of one, “You are a killer,” of another, “You are a thief,” of another, “You are an adulterer,” or of yet another one, “You are disagreeable;” and in doing this we are bearing false witness against our neighbor because God is our neighbor.

“Personalize” comes from the Latin, “per,” meaning through, and “son” meaning sound.  In the ancient Greek theaters, actors wore wooden masks, so that sound could be amplified throughout the amphitheater.  So, when we personalize errors, we are putting a mask on our own projections, stamping them, characterizing them them, as “killer,” “thief,” “adulterer.”  Goldsmith urges us not to defend ourselves from the projections of our carnal minds, but rather, recognize their non-existence.

The carnal mind is not something to be fought, overcome, risen above, or destroyed:  It is simply to be recognized as nothingness, never personal.

7/6

I am in the world, and not of the world; you are in the world, and not of the world.

It is quite possible, right now, to sit back, breathe in and breathe out, and experience being not of this world.
I love the metaphors that Jesus uses to describe e this state:

silence
ancient peace
sense of holiness
rewards
your treasure
your rest

There is a silence into which the world
can not intrude. There is an ancient peace
you carry in your heart and have not lost.
There is a sense of holiness in you
the thought of sin has never touched. All this
today you will remember. Faithfulness
in practicing today will bring rewards
so great and so completely different from
all things you sought before, that you will know
that here your treasure is, and here your rest.
Lesson 164.4

7/7

While reading Lesson 185, I want the peace of God, I came across this sentence:

To mean you want the peace of God is to renounce all dreams.  5

This reminds me of an article in the newspaper in which the writer was extolling the virtues of daydreaming.  He said that while he was on his way to work in the morning, he imagined running the Boston Marathon, closing in on a runner at the end and passing him.  The man he passed was Bill Rodgers who won the Boston Marathon four times.

The writer said he walked into work highly motivated.

This is clearly a dream within a dream, and it provides a useful context for this passage, demonstrating that choosing one illusion over another can only be escaped by truly wanting the peace of God, stepping out of the dream, entirely.

To mean you want the peace of God is to
renounce all dreams. For no one means these words
who wants illusions, and who therefore seeks
the means which bring illusions. He has looked
on them, and found them wanting. Now he seeks
to go beyond them, recognizing that
another dream would offer nothing more
than all the others. Dreams are one to him.
And he has learned their only difference
is one of form, for one will bring the same
despair and misery as do the rest.

7/8

This morning, early, after my shower, sitting on my couch with a cup of coffee, I felt utterly peaceful, just gazing through the windows, seeing through the appearance of the trees and bird feeders and cloudless sky, and I said to myself, “This is all there is, this moment, being present.”

What time but now can truth be recognized? Lesson 164.1

(Seeing through the eyes of Christ is truth; seeing through the body’s eyes is false).
The present is the only time there is. 

And so today, this instant, now, we come
to look upon what is forever there;
not in our sight, but in the eyes of Christ.
He looks past time, and sees eternity
as represented there.

(“Re-presented,” the ego always sees first through the body’s eyes; the eyes of Christ see truth presented, again.)

He hears the sounds
the senseless, busy world engenders, yet
He hears them faintly.
(I am in the world, yet not of the world, and in this state of mind, the sounds of the world are heard faintly).

For  beyond them all
He hears the song of Heaven, and the Voice
for God more clear, more meaningful, more near.

And now, sitting quietly, I am receptive to hear the Holy Spirit, speaking to me all through the day.

7/9

“How does one become a butterfly?”  she asked pensively.  “You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.” (Bill and Judy Guggenheim, Hello from Heaven)

When I read this, my first thought was this:  the first 7 Lessons of A Curse in Miracles represent the caterpillar.

Nothing I see means anything.
I have given what I see all the meaning it has for me.
I do not understand anything I see.
These thoughts do not mean anything.
I am never upset for the reason I think.
I am upset because I see what is not there.
I see only the past.

The first paragraph of What am I? represents the butterfly.

I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole,
shining in the reflection of His Love.
In me is His creation sanctified
and guaranteed eternal life. In me
is love perfected, fear impossible,
and joy established without opposite.
I am the holy home of God Himself.
I am the Heaven where His Love resides.
I am His holy Sinlessness Itself,
for in my purity abides His Own.

The Guggenheims follow the caterpillar/butterfly quotation with this paragraph, in which I substitute in my mind, “this book” as A Course in Miracles.

If you are willing to read this book with an open mind and an open heart, you will  completely eliminate your fear of death.  As a caterpillar once limited to the ground, you will undergo an inner transformation and become like a butterfly free to soar.  This new freedom will allow you to live your life fully and joyously, with a sense of peace.

7/10

In His Introduction to the Workbook of A Course in Miracles, Jesus tells us that its purpose is to train your mind in a systematic way to a different perception of everyone and everything in the world. 4

One way He does this is to slow us down by posturing our voice to read His words.  He puts words together in such a way that our voice assumes a particular posture to read them, as we read silently, or out loud. 

|For example, please read this sentence in Lesson 185, I want the peace of God.

He wants the peace of God,
and it is given him.  For that is all
he wants, and that is all he will receive.

First, this is written in blank verse, the accent on every other syllable,

He WANTS the PEACE of GOD

And, “that” is accented each time, and “that” is followed by a caesura, a break, or a pause, indicated by this symbol: //.  Please read the passage gain, becoming aware of your posture. . . of your voice, that is.

He wants the peace of God,
and it is given him.  For THAT // is all
he wants, and THAT // is all he WILL receive.
And he will receive it because he WILLs it.

When you see what Jesus is doing in just two sentences, you can marvel at how He manages to slow us down throughout His Text and Workbook, enabling us to step out, for a moment, from our habitual, automatic, unconscious way of perceiving, giving us an opportunity to train our minds, systematically, to  “a different perception of everyone and everything in the world.”

7/11

One of my favorite ways to look at “mind” is to say that part of it splits off, allying with the ego, looking through the body’s eyes, making up a false, illusory world.  While all the time, it could decide to unite with the Self, melting into the peace of God, looking through the eyes of Christ. 

I just came across a great simile to describe this split-mind, a bat, in this poem “Mind,” by Richard Wilbur (b. 1921).

I just love it because I grew up with the expression, “Bats in a belfry,” describing our insane mind, usually accompanied by pointing a circling index finger next to the head.

Mind in its purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.
It has no need to falter or explore;
Darkly it knows what obstacles are there.
And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar
In perfect courses through the blackest air.
And has this simile a like perfection?
The mind is like a bat.   Precisely.  Save
That in the very happiest intellection
A graceful error may correct the cave.

At the end of the poem, I was thrown for a moment, by the word, “error,” meaning a deviation from accuracy, a mistake.  It comes from the Latin, errare, to wander.

But, then I realized, that deciding to unite with the Self makes the world, the “cave” disappear, and this is only an “error” from the point of view of the egoistic mind, and in fact, it is a wandering into truth by the Grace of God.

7/12

William O. Douglas (1898-1980) was a Justice on the Supreme Court from 1939-1975.  In looking back at his life, he wrote:

During moments of sadness or frustration, I often think of the time when I was seven years old when my mother told me about my father’s illness and death.  His last words to her before going into a fatal operation were these:
“If I die, it will be glory; if I live, it will be grace.”

I marveled at how this echoes A Course in Miracles.

. . .it will be glory.

Our Father, bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything. We live and move in You alone. We are not separate from Your eternal life. There is no death, for death is not Your Will. And we abide where You have placed us, in the life we share with You and with all living things, to be like You and part of You forever. We accept Your Thoughts as ours, and our will is one with Yours eternally. Amen. Lesson 163.9

. . .it will be  grace.

Your grace is given me.  I claim it now.
Father, I come to you.  And You will come
to me who ask.  I am the Son You love.
Lesson 168.6


7/13

You are as God created you; and the reference to “you” is mind, consciousness, awareness.  And your mind is the mechanism of decision, deciding in every moment to see through the body’s eyes, or see through the eyes of Christ.  “Decision” comes from the Latin, decidere, meaning to cut  away, as in incision, incisor.  When you decide for the body’s eyes, you cut away any awareness of Christ’s vision; when you decide for Christ’s vision, you cut away any awareness of the body’s eyes.

This all came to mind when I read this passage from “The Shift” by Jim Self.  This is a beautiful, incisive, look at the results of deciding for peace and love.

Choice creates opportunity.
Opportunity allows for well-being.
Well-being awakens happiness, openness and the inner smile within the Heart.
From your open heart, your single purpose is within your grasp. p. 28

7/14

After reading a passage in A Course in Miracles, I had this thought, “You CAN take it with you;” obviously, this plays on the common phrase, “You can’t take it with you,” meaning material things into Heaven.  However, you CAN take Heaven with you as you walk into the world.

Here’s the passage.

What time but now can truth be recognized?
The present is the only time there is.
And so today, this instant, now, we come
to look upon what is forever there;
not in our sight, but in the eyes of Christ.
He looks past time, and sees eternity
as represented there. He hears the sounds
the senseless, busy world engenders, yet
He hears them faintly. For beyond them all
He hears the song of Heaven, and the Voice
for God more clear, more meaningful, more near.
Lesson 164.1

Sitting here, peacefully, breathing in and breathing out, I can stand up, take the next step, and carry this peace into the world, receptive to the Voice for God, letting the light do the work.

7/15

 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Matthew 6:19-21

This has come to us over the centuries to remind us to focus on the truth behind the curtain of this illusory world. 
This passage came to mind when I read this in A Course in Miracles.

This is the day when vain imaginings
part like a curtain, to reveal what lies
beyond them. Lesson 164.5:1

Open the curtain in your practicing
by merely letting go all things you think
you want. Your trifling treasures put away,
and leave a clean and open space within
your mind where Christ can come, and offer you
the treasure of salvation. He has need
of your most holy mind to save the world.
Is not this purpose worthy to be yours?
Is not Christ's vision worthy to be sought
above the world's unsatisfying goals?
Lesson 164.8

In His incomparable “How To” Manual, Jesus provides the opportunity for us to practice, moment by moment, HOW to keep our treasures foremost in our mind.

Obviously, this is the same Jesus, speaking to us 2000 years ago, and whispering in our ears now, right now.

7/16

The Thought of God protects you, cares for you,
makes soft your resting place and smooth your way,
lighting your mind with happiness and love.
Eternity and everlasting life
shine in your mind, because the Thought of God
has left you not, and still abides with you.
Lesson 165.2

Just after reading this, I marveled that I came across a passage that gives personal, specific references to the Thought of God.

God allowed me to feel His presence—whether by the warmth that filled my belly like hot chocolate on a cold afternoon, or that voice, whenever I found myself in the tempest of life’s storms, telling me (even when I was told I was “nothing”) that I was something, that I was His, and that even amid the desertion of the man who gave me his name and his DNA and little else, I might find in Him sustenance, simply feeling his breath, heartbeat, presence. (John W. Fountain, The God Who Embraced Me, This I Believe, Jay Allison, Dan Gediman (Picador, New York, 2006), p. 69

7/17

There is great excitement in the scientific community because of the recent discovery of the “God Particle.”  In quantum physics, this discovery is heralded as a great breakthrough, providing evidence for what Peter Higgs theorized in 1964.

Apparently, the “God Particle” explains the origin of mass.  Here is a description by Karl Giberson. 
The Standard Model explained the origin of mass as the result of a field existing everywhere -- a sort of universal fog through which moving particles have to plough. This fog -- if it exists -- impedes moving particles, like millions of tiny arms reaching out and grabbing at the particles as they pass. The slowing created by this creates the phenomenon of mass.

Enter the Higgs Boson. Fields in physics have particles associated with them and the existence of the particles provides evidence that the fields are real. After several months of peeking its head around corners at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, the particle has been definitively sighted. (“God and the God Particle,” Huff Post Religion, July 9, 2012.)

To read more, please go to my blog post by clicking on the link, below:

http://www.throughamirrorbrightly.blogspot.com

7/18

I like this passage by James Van Praagh, a medium.

You see, when people shed their physical bodies at death, their spiritual selves see life from a whole new perspective.  It’s as if they’ve had Lasik surgery—they can finally do without their glasses and can see more clearly.  Spirits understand why certain situations had to happen, what they had to learn from them.  They also realize how they could have skipped certain mistakes by not letting their egos get in  the way.  After passing into the light, spirits are eager to share their new found knowledge with the living.
 
It’s a lot about being responsible for your thoughts and choices. Your thoughts have power.  The life you are living right now is the result of your thoughts.  Thoughts are energy—they are real things.  It is because of the power of our thoughts that spirits encourage us to forgive even when it’s the hardest thing to do and to push through your fears.  Our spiritual friends want us to contribute to life, to be happy and  to finish any unfinished business before we reach the time when we step through the threshold of light and return home. (Unfinished Business, HarperOne, New York, NY., 2009), pp. 2,3

This reminds me of this passage from the Bible.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to f ace:
Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.  1Corinthians 14:12

Thank God for A Course in Miracles.  We have learned to “see life from a whole new perspective,” here, now; we have learned to experience the light, yet remain in our bodies, as we live out our time on this earth, guided by the light.

7/19

Master Teacher of Endeavor Academy often called us “Associations.”  I realized that he was characterizing us by the way we think.  We, habitually, automatically, free associate as we picture a world made up of our thought-images.

My thoughts are images that I have made.
Title, Lesson 15

Temple Grandin shows us, exactly, how this occurs in her mind in slow motion.

Because I have autism, I live by concrete rules instead of abstract beliefs.  And because I have autism, I think in pictures and sounds.

Here’s how my brain works:  It’s like the search engine Google for images.  If you say the word “love” to me, I’ll surf the Internet inside my brain.  Then, a series of images poops  (OK, I can’t help it; that’s a typo, but I can’t change it because it’s perfectly appropriate, and besides, I can see Master Teacher laughing.) into my head.  What I’ll see is a picture of a mother horse with a foal; or I think of “Herbie, the Love Bug;” scenes from the movie Love Story; or the Beatles song, “Love love, all you need is love. . .” (“Seeing in Beautiful, Precise Pictures,” This I Believe, Picador, New York, 2006), p. 87

The first step in letting thought-images go is to recognize their occurrence, right, here, right now.

7/20

I  have always loved this passage in A Course in Miracles because it helps me quiet my busy mind.

The miracle comes quietly into
the mind that stops an instant and is still.
It reaches gently from that quiet time,
and from the mind it healed in quiet then,
to other minds to share its quietness.
And they will join in doing nothing to
prevent its radiant extension back
into the Mind Which caused all minds to be.
Born out of sharing, there can be no pause
in time to cause the miracle delay
in hastening to all unquiet minds,
and bringing them an instant's stillness, when
the memory of God returns to them.
Their own remembering is quiet now,
and what has come to take its place will not
be wholly unremembered afterwards. Chapter 28.1.11

And then I came across this passage by Deborah Hall, a psychologist, in her essay, “The Power of Presence,” and it provides a powerful juxtaposition.

Presence is a noun, not a verb; it is a state of being, not doing.  States of being are not highly valued in a culture that places  a high priority on doing.  Yet, true presence of “being with” another person carries with it a silent power—to bear witness to a passage, to help carry an emotional burden, or to begin a healing process.  In it, there is an intimate connection with another that is perhaps too seldom felt in a society that strives for every-faster “connectivity.” (This I Believe, Picador, New York, 2006), p. 101

7/21

When I read this passage in “My Personal Prayer Book,” it reminded me of a practical distinction that Jesus makes in His Course, pointing out the difference between “making” and “creating.”

O Lord! Forgive my foolish pride that seeks to enhance my images.  I posture and pretend in order to impress people I fear will reject me.  Really, God, these efforts are just lies—exaggerations and illusions I foolishly make and then desperately try to maintain.  I’m tired of acting this way, Lord.  I’m tired of being afraid of being found out.  Set me free to be who I truly am.  I am willing to gain the peace of mind that truth will bring.  (Christine A. Ballman, Margaret Ann Huffman, Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL., 2009), July 12.

And this passage from the Course.

The mind can make the belief in separation very real and very fearful. It is powerful, active, destructive and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Look at your life and see what you have made. But realise that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation is a lie. Your creation by God is the only Foundation that cannot be shaken, because the light is in it. Your starting point is truth, and you must return to your Beginning. Much has been seen since then, but nothing has really happened. Your Self is still in peace, even though your mind is in conflict.
Chapter 3.VII.5;1-8

Only the oneness of knowledge is free of conflict. Your kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from beyond this world. Only in this world is the idea of an authority problem meaningful. The world is not left by death but by truth, and truth can be known by all those for whom the Kingdom was created, and for whom it waits. 6:8-11

7/22

I am going to juxtapose two wonderful passages, one from the Bible, and the other from A Course in Miracles.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. 1 Corinthians 13:11-13

The wearying, dissatisfying gods
you made are blown-up children's toys. A child
is frightened when a wooden head springs up
as a closed box is opened suddenly,
or when a soft and silent woolly bear
begins to squeak as he takes hold of it.
The rules he made for boxes and for bears
have failed him, and have broken his 'control'
of what surrounds him. And he is afraid,
because he thought the rules protected him.
Now must he learn the boxes and the bears
did not deceive him, broke no rules, nor mean
his world is made chaotic and unsafe.
He was mistaken. He misunderstood
what made him safe, and thought that it had left.
Chapter 30.IV.2

I can get pretty intense about my slippage into the dream, forgetting who I AM, and so I find it helpful to realize that I can learn to have a playful attitude about my childish ways of looking at the world; I can LIGHTen up and stop taking it so seriously.

7/23

I have performed many wedding ceremonies, and one of my favorite passages in the ceremony is this one.

Love would set a feast before you, on a table covered with a spotless cloth, set in a quiet garden where no sound but singing and a softly joyous whispering is ever heard. This is a feast that honors your holy relationship, and at which everyone is welcomed as an honored guest. And in a holy instant grace is said by everyone together, as they join in gentleness before the table of communion. And Christ will join you there as long ago He promised and promises still. For in your new relationship, is Christ made welcome. And where Christ is made welcome, there He shall be. Chapter 19.IV.A.16

This came to mind when I read this passage in A Course in Miracles.

Grace becomes inevitable instantly in those who have prepared a table where it can be gently laid and willingly received; an altar clean and holy for the gift. Lesson 169.1:3

My only function is to prepare a place in my mind to receive the Word of God by the grace of God.

7/24

Over 400 years ago, Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets.  In Sonnet 55, he predicted that his rhyme would outlive “gilded monuments” and “sluttish time.”  Here is the first quatrain.

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this pow’rful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time. 1-4

He is confident that this sonnet will immortalize his beloved.

Since Shakespeare has lasted this long, it makes me wonder just how long Jesus’ unworldly masterpiece, A Course in Miracles, making explicit the immortality the True Self, will last.  It will last forever because of content alone, and in addition, almost 20% of His Text and 75% of His Workbook are rendered in blank verse.

Here, for example, is just one of His Sonnets.

This world you seem to live in is not home
to you. And somewhere in your mind you know
that this is true. A memory of home
keeps haunting you, as if there were a place
that called you to return, although you do
not recognize the voice, nor what it is
the voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel
an alien here, from somewhere all unknown.
Nothing so definite that you could say
with certainty you are an exile here.
Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not
more than a tiny throb, at other times
hardly remembered, actively dismissed,
but surely to return to mind again.
Lesson 182.1

To read my blog post on “prose and Poetry in A Course in Miracles,” please click on the link below:

http://throughamirrorbrightly.blogspot.com/2007/12/prose-and-poetry-in-course-in-miracles.html

7/25

While reading an essay by Robert Kurson in “The Book that Changed my  Life,” I came across two paragraphs that totally amazed me because they captured the common, ordinary, universal way of thinking in the human condition.

During a series of insomniac nights as a college sophomore, I pondered what it meant to be dead.  The idea of not existing, and worse, not existing forever, was terrifying in ways daytime thoughts never can be.  Would it be silent?  Cold?  Lonely?  It seemed too much for the mind to grasp.  I got to wondering how people walked around every day with equanimity when such a gargantuan and terrible and inescapable fate awaited. (Gotham Books, New York, NY, 2006) p. 93

I kept reading his essay, thinking that he would make a breakthrough that would free him of his fears, but, alas, he found only a way to justify his fears, actually finding solace in knowing that he would die.

I read Ernest Becker’s “The Denial of Death” three times that year.  I found answers to nearly every question I can think to ask about being human and about being in the world.  In it, I found explanation for why men do what they do.  It may sound odd to suggest that there is comfort to be found in a book about knowing our own mortality, but that is the beauty of Becker, and his gift is to show us that it is the beauty of ourselves.  p. 94

After reading this, I resisted the urge to run and take a shower, and instead, I read these passages from Lesson 163, There is no death.  The Son of God is free.

Death is a thought that takes on many forms,
often unrecognized. It may appear
as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt;
as anger, faithlessness and lack of trust;
concern for bodies, envy, and all forms
in which the wish to be as you are not
may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are but
reflections of the worshiping of death
as savior and as giver of release. 1

Our worshipping of death is an obstacle, defending us against God.

What would you see without the fear of death?  What would you feel and think if death held no attraction for you?  Very simply, you would remember your Father.  Chapter 19.IV.D. 1

7/26

Describing the human condition as a “trial” is an excellent metaphor, and this is its origin.

Among the most vexatious problems for farmers in the Middle Ages was the separation of trash and impurities from the fruits of harvest.  Grain was sifted and blown to remove chaff, while wool was handpicked to rid it of burrs and other impurities.  From the colloquial Latin word “trier” (to sort), any act of separating good from bad was termed a “trial.” (Webb Harrison, What’s In A Word?, Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville, TN., 2000), p. 41

Jesus uses “trial” in His Course in Miracles to describe the duality.

There is no pain, no trial, no fear that teaching this curriculum can fail to overcome.  The power of God Himself supports this teaching, and guarantees its limitless results. Chapter 14.V.6:6,7

You have no problems that He cannot solve by offering you a miracle.  Miracles are for you.  And every fear or pain or trial you have has been undone. Chapter 14.XI.9:2-4

Jesus tells us that seeing life as a duality is seeing life with your mind asleep.

Let us today be children of the truth,
and not deny our holy heritage.
Our life is not as we imagine it.
Who changes life because he shuts his eyes,
or makes himself what he is not because
he sleeps, and sees in dreams an opposite
to what he is? We will not ask for death
in any form today. Nor will we let
imagined opposites to life abide
even an instant where the Thought of life
eternal has been set by God Himself.
|Lesson 167.10

7/27

In Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to “turn the other cheek.”

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Matthew 5:39

This can be easily misunderstood, for example, there is a lot of bullying going on in the schools today, and turning the other cheek may suggest a kind of passivity in facing a bully.

But the power of what Jesus is advocating becomes clear when you read this passage from His Course in Miracles.

You make what you defend against, and by
your own defense against it is it real
and inescapable.  Lay down your arms,
and only then do you perceive it false.
|Lesson 170.2

You make what you defend against, and this is the evil; it’s simply a thought.  And by not resisting it, you have an opportunity to see it for what it is and let it go.  In our defenselessness, we can let it go, forgive it.

It seems to be the enemy without
that you attack.  Yet your defense sets up
an enemy within; an alien thought
at war with you, depriving you of peace,
splitting your mind into two camps which seem
wholly irreconcilable. 3

By “laying down my arms,” I am surrendering my false thought-image, the bully standing there, and I can now experience peace.

7/28

Brian Castner, a Marquette University graduate, just published a book entitled, “The Long Walk:  A Story of War and the Life that Follows.”  He served as an Air Force EOD specialist (explosive ordinance device) for eight years, 1999-2007.  Here is his vivid description of the preparation for the Long Walk.

Armor on, girded with breastplate and helm and leggings and collar.  Eighty pounds of mailed Kevlar.  No one can put on the bomb suit alone:  Your brother has to dress you, overalls pulled up, massive jacket tucked earnest in his careful thoroughness.  One last check, face shield down, and then into the breach alone. No one takes the Long Walk lightly.  Only after every other option is extinguished.  Only after robots fail and recourses dwindle.  The last choice.  Always.
This passage came to mind when I read this paragraph in His Course in Miracles, where Jesus assures us that He is walking with us, always.

I take the journey with you. For I share
your doubts and fears a little while, that you
may come to me who recognize the road
by which all fears and doubts are overcome.
We walk together. I must understand
uncertainty and pain, although I know
they have no meaning. Yet a savior must
remain with those he teaches, seeing what
they see, but still retaining in his mind
the way that led him out, and now will lead
you out with him. God's Son is crucified
until you walk along the road with me.
|Review V.6

I juxtaposed these two passages to demonstrate that the road we walk without  inviting Jesus to walk with us is just as dangerous as the Long Walk to disarm an EOD.  It is a hyperbolic comparison, meaning an excessive exaggeration, but a walk no less perilous than the Long Walk.  After all, Jesus does tell us that we crucify ourselves, if we don’t walk with Him.

7/29

Jesus is so precise in his use of words in His Course in Miracles.  Just look at the root meanings of these three words and see how He uses them to communicate fully in the passage that follows.

“Intent,” purpose, from the Latin, intentus, a stretching out, to lean toward

“Dedication,” set apart, from the Latin, dedicare, consecrate, proclaim, affirm

“Attain,” to succeed in reaching, from the Latin, attainder, to come up to, reach, and my favorite, ENDEAVOR

Our next few lessons make a special point
of firming up your willingness to make
your weak commitment strong; your scattered goals
blend into one “intent.” You are not asked
for total “dedication” all the time
as yet. But you are asked to practice now
in order to “attain” the sense of peace
such unified commitment will bestow,
if only intermittently. It is
experiencing this that makes it sure
that you will give your total willingness
to following the way the course sets forth.
Introduction to Lessons 181-220

Obviously, being attentive to words is just a step, and it’s a step in the right direction, leading to the experience. 

Jesus goes on to say:

Words alone cannot
convey the sense of liberation which
their lifting brings. But the experience
of freedom and of peace that comes as you
give up your tight control of what you see
speaks for itself. 2

7/30

I just love reading personal accounts of individuals being touched by God, demonstrating the truth of what we are, expressing what it is like just beyond the thin veil of illusions we have made.

I was alone upon the seashore as all these thoughts flowed over me, liberating and reconciling; and now again, as once before, in distant days in the Alps of Dauphine, I was impelled to kneel down, this time before the illimitable ocean, symbol of the infinite.  I prayed as I’ve never prayed before, and knew now what prayer really is:  to return from the  solitude of individuation  into the consciousness of unity with all that is, to kneel down as one passes away, and to rise up as one imperishable.  Earth, heaven, and sea resounded as in one vast world encircling harmony.  It was as if the chorus of all the greats who ever lived were about me.  I felt myself one with them, and it appeared as if I heard the greeting:  “Thou too belongst to the company of those who overcome.”  (Richard Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness)

7/31

In a book by Guy Finley, entitled The Seeker, The search, The Sacred, he lists three stages of the journey to awakening that seem to characterize, as well, the steps that Jesus uses in His Course in Miracles.

Discrimination:  the ability to discern what is true from what is false.

Intention:  the will to act upon and clarify one’s discoveries.

Illumination:  the realization of a new order of being freed from the bondage of self-induced limitations.

And then Finley nicely illustrates them.

Discrimination:  One day in the midst of that misery born of being in some kind of abusive relationship, a new idea enters into this woman’s mind.  A simple truth rocks her world:  patterns can’t change themselves!  Now she knows that to remain where she is guarantees she will remain a victim.

Intention:  She must act!  An inescapable intention is born that gives birth to a glad day when she walks out.

Illumination:  A short time later, over a quiet cup of tea, a Light appears in her mind.  It comes in the form of a simple, but grand realization:  Only when one is comfortable, content with being alone, can one be true to another.  (WeiserBooks, San Francisco, CA., 2011), pp. XX11,XX111

A miracle is a correction. It
does not create, nor really change at all.
It merely looks on devastation, and
reminds the mind that what it sees is false.
What is a Miracle. 1:1-3

The "God Particle" is the Thought of God

There is great excitement in the scientific community because of the recent discovery of the “God Particle.”  In quantum physics, this discovery is heralded as a great breakthrough, providing evidence for what Peter Higgs theorized in 1964.

Apparently, the “God Particle” explains the origin of mass.  Here is a description by Karl Giberson.
 
The Standard Model explained the origin of mass as the result of a field existing everywhere -- a sort of universal fog through which moving particles have to plough. This fog -- if it exists -- impedes moving particles, like millions of tiny arms reaching out and grabbing at the particles as they pass. The slowing created by this creates the phenomenon of mass. 

Enter the Higgs Boson. Fields in physics have particles associated with them and the existence of the particles provides evidence that the fields are real. After several months of peeking its head around corners at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, the particle has been definitively sighted. (“God and the God Particle,” Huff Post Religion, July 9, 2012.) 

I am chuckling at the irony that a particular particle would be singled out and named the “God Particle.”  All sub-atomic particles are created by God extending.

I am not a body.  I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
Review VI. Intro. 2:3-5

God created me, not as a body, but as the extension of His Thoughts; I am a Thought of God.

The statement “God created man in his own image and likeness” needs reinterpretation.  “Image” can be understood as “thought,” and “likeness” as “of a like quality.”  God did create spirit in His Own Thought and of a quality like to His Own.  There is nothing else.  Chapter 3.V.7:1-4

The reference for the Thought of God, for the likeness of God, is sub-atomic particles. These particles provide the underlying structure of the universe.  These particles take different forms, e.g., flowers, trees, tables, bodies, because of different frequencies.

As a Thought of God, “I” can operate at a light, high frequency, or at a dense, slow frequency.
It is all a matter of awareness.

I can become aware of being a Thought of God by sitting here quietly, breathing in and  breathing out, grounded, present.  Or, I can allow my thoughts to take me into a denser, lower frequency—Thought or thoughts, my choice.

The Thought of God created you.
It left you not, nor have you ever been apart
from it an instant. It belongs to you.
By it you live. It is your Source of life,
holding you one with it, and everything
is one with you because it left you not.
The Thought of God protects you, cares for you,
makes soft your resting place and smooth your way,
lighting your mind with happiness and love.
Eternity and everlasting life
shine in your m mind, because the Thought of God
has left you not, and still abides with you.
Lesson 165.2

The Thought of God is our Source, our Self, our Holiness, our Life.  Experiencing this frequency is our awakening.

There is one life, and that I share with God.  Title, Lesson 167

There  are not different kinds of life, for life
is like the truth.  It does not have degrees.
It is the one condition in which all
that God created share.  Like all His Thoughts,
it has no opposite.  1

We are all “God Particles,” the Thoughts God Who is our Source.

Making Explicit the Meaning of Forgiveness: My Facebook Statuses for June, 2012

Two, or three, years ago, I set up a Facebook account, but I never really did much with it, until Sunday 8 April, Easter Sunday, auspiciously, when it occurred to me that I could post a Status statement on Facebook, daily.  This would enable me to express myself regarding the meaning of forgiveness, and spread the word about the incredible event coming up in the fall, International Forgiveness Week and Weekend of Perfect Peace, September 14-23, 2012, at the Healing Center of Endeavor Academy, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin.

It was clear to me that each day I could make explicit the meaning of forgiveness in a pithy statement, and at the same time, encourage readers to send in their statements expressing their forgiveness experiences.

We will collect these statements and make them available during the Event, as well as possibly publish them in a book.

Please write about your experience of forgiving thoughts in 600 words, or less, and Submit Your Essay, using this link:
http://www.forgivenessweek.org/writing.php


It was also clear to me that on the first of each month, I would post a blog containing the statements from the preceding month.

6/1

Greg Allman, 64, of The Allman Brothers Band, has just published his memoir, “My Cross to Bear.”  In an interview, he talks about his problems with drugs, alcohol, and relationships (7 divorces).  He still thinks every day about his brother, Duane, who was killed in a motorcycle accident on 29 October 1971, and once in a while he can feel his presence.

“I can tell when he’s there, man,” Allman said.  “I’m not going to get all cosmic on you.  But listen, he’s there.”

He went on to express how his recent trials (a liver transplant) caused him to turn his life over to God. 

I just said, “Man, I ain’t drivin’ this mule no more. I’m not in the driver’s seat, you take the wheel.  Take it where it’s supposed to go.” 

He goes on to say, “And every time something changes and everything goes just fine.  Everything works out.”

Again, in the vernacular, he is echoing Lesson 155, I will step back and let Him lead the way. 

6/2
One of my practices that is very helpful to me while reading A Course in Miracles is to pay very close attention to the reference for each word.  For example, take a word as simple as the pronoun “you.”  Each time I come across it, I ask myself, what is the reference?  Generally, there are three possibilities:

1.     “You,” the mechanism of decision
2.      “You,” who has decided to be in alliance with the ego
3.      “You,” who has decided to be in union with the Self, the Holy Spirit, Jesus

So, let’s practice on this paragraph:

My holy brother, I would enter into all your relationships, and step between you (deciding to be in alliance) and your fantasies. Let my relationship to you (mechanism) be real to you (mechanism), and let me bring reality to your perception of your brothers. They were not created to enable you (deciding to be in alliance) to hurt yourself through them. They were created to create with you (deciding to be in union). This is the truth that I would interpose between you (deciding to be in alliance) and your goal of madness. Be not separate from me, and let not the holy purpose of Atonement be lost to you (deciding to be in alliance) in dreams of vengeance. Relationships in which such dreams are cherished have excluded me. Let me enter in the Name of God and bring you (deciding to be in union) peace, that you (deciding to be in union) may offer peace to me. Chapter 17.111.10

Dear Reader, may you (deciding to be in union) now experience peace.

6/3
The mind training offered by A Course in Miracles enables us to reverse our thinking.  Here is one way of expressing this reversal.  When I am in alliance with my ego, I let the situation determine my goal.  When I am in union with the Holy Spirit, my goal determines my situation.

Now, for each of us we can bring up our pet grievance, but right now I am going to keep it simple.

When I am in alliance with my ego, an extremely hot and humid day (situation) can determine my negative experience. (goal) 

When I am in union with the Holy Spirit, my peace of mind (goal) determines my response to the heat. (situation)

(In case you think this is a Duh! example, please consider that Christine enjoys the heat and humidity).

Here’s Jesus, taking my hand,  instructing me:

Without a clear-cut, positive goal, set at the outset, the situation just seems to happen.  The value of deciding in advance what you want to happen is simply that you will perceive the situation as a means to make it happen.  Chapter 12.VI.3:1, 4:1

6/4
I suspect that the true meaning of “salvation” has become rather obscure, especially when it is associated with Jesus being our savior with bleeding palms outstretched, “dying for our sins.”. 

Here is the real Jesus, expressing the meaning of salvation in one sentence in His Course in Miracles.

Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true.  Lesson 152.3

The true meaning of salvation turns on the word “recognition” from the Latin, cogito, meaning, “I think.” 

The ego always speaks first, and when I am in alliance with my ego,   I am making up a false world of time and space.  And when I “recognize,” or think again, I unite with my Self, experiencing truth, and in this shift, I am saved from my thoughts having no source in reality.

Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true. 

6/5
While reading Lesson 151, All things are echoes of the Voice for God, in A course in Miracles, I came across this sentence:

You have often been urged to restrain from judging not because it is a right to be withheld from you.   You cannot judge.  You merely can believe the ego’s judgments, all of which are false. Lesson 151.3

So, all along, I misunderstood judgment, thinking that I should restrain myself from judging my brother’s behavior, a pretty much impossible task.  I always thought that’s what Jesus meant in Matthew 7: 

“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” 1  All along I have been using the wrong reference for judgment.

However, Jesus makes it clear what judgment really means.  Whenever I believe what my body’s eyes show me is true, I am in judgment.

You do not seem to doubt the world you see. You do not really question what is shown you through the body's eyes. Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger, when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! How can you judge?  2

Jesus makes it clear that when I decide to let go of my alliance with my ego seeing through the body’s eyes, I can unite with truth.

Let the Voice for God alone be Judge of what is worthy of your own belief. He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body's mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers' touch reports of him. He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God's Son. He recognizes only what God loves, and in the holy light of what He sees do all the ego's dreams of what you are vanish before the splendor He beholds. 7

Whenever I trust my body’s eyes to show me reality, I am judging. 


6/6
I was in a bookstore yesterday, and while browsing, I came across the novel, “The Hunger Games,” by Suzanne Collins.  I had seen the movie, and I was curious about the writing.

In the first few pages, the narrator, Katniss, talks about her younger sister, Prim, telling us that some time ago, she brought home a stray cat, but it was scrawny, its belly swollen with worms, and his coat was crawling with fleas,” and she tried to drown it, but Prim’s crying saved it.  After that, Buttercup would hiss at her.  She went on to say that, recently, when she cleaned a kill, she would feed Buttercup the entrails.  After that, he stopped hissing at her.

Now, this next passage cracked me up:

“Entrails.  No hissing.  This is the closest we will ever get to love.”

Now, that pretty much sums up the bargaining that takes place in the world, in the duality, choosing the positive over the negative, all in the name of forgiveness.

“Entrails.  No hissing.  This is the closest we will ever get to. . .forgiveness.”



6/7
Yesterday, I was reading one of my favorite cartoons, “Pickles” by Brian Crane.  In this cartoon, the humor often turns on the domestic squabbles between Pearl and Earl.  My son, Stephen, kidding me about my “domestic squabbles” with Christine, sometimes calls me “Pickles.”

Well, this time Earl is trying to pass off his weed patch as a garden, and his wife calls it a “mess.”

He tries to counter with this:

“As Henry David Thoreau said, ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.’”

To which Pearl responds, “Yeah, and I see a husband who’s full of baloney.”

I had never heard this Thoreau quotation before and thought it rather  profound.  Then, I heard it echoed in this passage from Lesson 153, In my defenselessness my safety lies.


We would not let our happiness slip by
because a fragment of a senseless dream
happened to cross our minds, and we mistook
the figures in it for the Son of God;
tts tiny instant for eternity. 8

. . .the fragment of a senseless dream.

Oh, what a pickle we’re in.



6/8
Forty years ago today, June 8, 1972, this iconic, Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph was taken in Vietnam by Associated Press photographer, Nick Ut.  It  shows crying children, including 9-year old Kim Phuc, center, running down the street, and she was wailing, “Too hot!  Too hot,” following a napalm attack on their village.

She was naked because blobs of sticky napalm melted through her clothes and layers of skin like jellied lava.

Thirty percent of Phuc’s body was scorched by third-degree burns.  “Every morning at 8 o’clock, the nurses put me in the burn bath to cut all my dead skin off,” she said.

Obviously, her life has been difficult, even aside from the burns.  She was forced to drop out of medical school by communist authorities because of the propaganda associated with the “napalm girl.”

Now, Kim Phuc, 49, is living in Canada with her husband and two sons.

She is a living example of forgiveness.

She says, “I’m so thankful that I can accept the picture as a powerful gift.  Then it is my choice.  Then I can work with it for peace.”

6/9
When we are in alliance with our ego, it is our plight to walk through the world defensively, fearful of what may occur in the next moment, forgetting that the world we made up is our own projection, an illusion.  “Illusion” comes from the Latin, ludere, meaning “to play, to mock.” 

Now, what we do in alliance with the ego doesn’t seem very playful, but it is a mockery of what is real.  We are simply playing childish games.  This is ludicrous.  (Please note the prefix, lud.)

In his letters to the people of Corinth, St. Paul says:


When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.  1 Corinthians 13:11

And in His Course, Jesus says:


We will not play such childish games today.
You who have played that you are lost to hope,
abandoned by your Father, left alone
in terror in a fearful world made mad
by sin and guilt; be happy now. That game
is over. Now a quiet time has come,
in which we put away the toys of guilt,
and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin
forever from the pure and holy minds
of Heaven's children and the Son of God. Lesson 153.13


6/10
It is most helpful to me to recognize that the word “illusion” comes from the Latin, ludere, meaning to play to mock.  It is helpful in two ways.

First, I can recognize that the negative aspects of this game I am playing when I ally with my ego, identifying enemies, and going after them with pointed sticks, like a child is simply that, a game.

Secondly, I am grateful to see that when I unite with my Self, putting away childish toys, that I am saving my Self from my self.  That is, I can recognize that I am “in” the world and not “of” the world, enabling me to still be playful, but not taking my projections quite so seriously.  And now I can play with insouciance, a light-hearted unconcern.


Salvation can be thought of as a game
that happy children play. It was designed
by One Who loves His children, and Who would
replace their fearful toys with joyous games,
which teach them that the game of fear is gone.
His game instructs in happiness because
there is no loser. Everyone who plays
must win, and in his winning is the gain
to everyone ensured. The game of fear
is gladly laid aside, when children come
to see the benefits salvation brings. 
Lesson 153.12





6/11
In A Course in Miracles, it is astonishing to see how masterfully Jesus blends form and content, medium and message, sound and sense.  Just listen to the repetition of the “s” sounds in this passage:


And in defenSeleSSneSS we Stand Secure,
Serenely Certain of our Safety now,
Sure of Salvation; Sure we will fulfill
our choSen purpoSe, aS our miniStry
extendS itS holy bleSSing through the world.
Lesson 153.9

The repetition of the “s” sounds reassures us, hushing us, stilling us, quieting our narrative voice, enabling us to experience our serenity and our security.

And all the time, the rhythm is, primarily, a gentle slack STRESS, 5 sets per line.  This is called blank verse, the “blank” referring to non-rhyming poetry.



And IN de FENSE less NESS we STAND se CURE,
se RENE ly CER tain OF our SAFE ty NOW,
SURE of sal VA tion; SURE we WILL ful FILL
our CHOSE en PUR pose, AS our MIN i STRY
exTENDS its HO ly BLESS ing THROUGH the WORLD.

This rhythm, like our softly beating hearts, slows us down, enabling us to be receptive to the Voice for God.

(Please note I said “primarily” slack STRESS; in line 3, /SURE of/ is a variation, indicating certainty.)



And now you can read the passage, again, experiencing the perfect blend of sounds and sense.


And in defenselessness we stand secure,
serenely certain of our safety now,
sure of salvation; sure we will fulfill
our chosen purpose, as our ministry
extends its holy blessing through the world.

(For more information on blank verse in the Course, please go to my web site:  www.throughamirrorbrightly.com and click on “The Rhythm and Reason of Reality.”)

6/12
There can be no doubt that Shakespeare was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write his 37 plays, primarily in blank verse, and 154 sonnets.

There can also be no doubt that echoes of Shakespeare reverberate throughout A Course in Miracles.  For example, look at this passage:


So is the story ended. Let this day
bring the last chapter closer to the world,
that everyone may learn the tale he reads
of terrifying destiny, defeat
of all his hopes, his pitiful defense
against a vengeance he can not escape,
is but his own deluded fantasy.
Lesson 153.14.3,4


This clearly echoes Macbeth’s soliloquy, bemoaning the tragedy of his life:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. Act 5, Scene 5:19-28.

Notice that Jesus also refers to an ego-driven life as a “tale.”

This is such a powerful juxtaposition because, for us, it is a reminder that we are ministers of God and that, unlike Macbeth, we can experience the truth, recognizing the unreality of the dream. 

It is powerful, right now, to imagine that Jesus is now speaking to Macbeth.


God's ministers have come to waken him
from the dark dreams this story has evoked
in his confused, bewildered memory
of this distorted tale. . .(Told by and Idiot) God's Son can smile
at last, on learning that it is not true.
5,6



6/13
Some 30 years ago, somewhere in the middle of 4 years of psychoanalysis, I had these two types of recurring dreams:  stuck dreams and gliding dreams.  In the stuck dreams, I would be walking up stair steps and come to a wall, or try to fit through a trapdoor and get stuck; in the gliding dreams, I would be in some sort of craft, without instruments, just gliding over the tree tops.

The other night, I had a dream that was an unusual combination of both.  In the beginning, I was a stuck, trying to walk up a hill in chest-deep snow in sandals and finally my foot was mired in the mud, and I simply could not take another step; to my right were two couples, friendly and laughing, and I asked them if they knew a way out of here, and suddenly, all of us were gliding in some sort of craft, and I was laughing, and loving it.

I see this dream as a direct result of the mind-training of A Course in Miracles, and for me, it is a parable:  When I am stuck in my alliance with ego thoughts,  I can stop, be still and trust that I can glide out of it by listening for the Voice for God.

In stillness we will hear God’s Voice today
without intrusion of our petty thoughts,
without our personal desires, and
without all judgment His Holy Word. 
Lesson 125.2:1

6/14
I have said so many times, “Thank God for the Course.”  Yesterday was one of those days.  It started out with our car’s starter mal-functioning, then having it towed to a mechanic, and then the estimate, and then all sorts of things happened that took me out of my peace, to say the least.

So, at one point, I sat down and slowly read Lesson 155, I will step back and let Him lead the way, and I found this passage particularly helpful.

And now He asks but that you think of Him
a while each day, that He may speak to you
and tell you of His Love, reminding you
how great His trust; how limitless His Love.
In your Name and His Own, which are the same,
we practice gladly with this thought today:
I will step back and let Him lead the way,
For I would walk along the road to Him. 14

Ah, peace, and then the day went on, and I was back and forth, peaceful and frustrated.

Then, I realized that for a good part of my life, I didn’t even realize that I had a way out, that there was an alternative to my dreaming, that I could actually step out of duality. 

This passage reminded me of that long period of time.

Others have chosen nothing but the world,
and they have suffered from a sense of loss
still deeper, which they did not understand.  4:4

And then I felt such gratitude, a warmth infusing my chest, making way for peace, again.

6/15
Once again, I find it most helpful to look at the references for the words Jesus uses in His Course in Miracles.  Look at this passage from Lesson 157, Into His Presence would I enter now.


From this day forth, your ministry takes on
a genuine devotion, and a glow
that travels from your fingertips to those
you touch, and blesses those you look upon.
A vision reaches everyone you meet,
and everyone you think of, or who thinks
of you. For your experience today
will so transform your mind that it becomes
the touchstone for the holy Thoughts of God. 5

. . .will so transform my mind. . .

For me, the reference to mind is consciousness, awareness.

“I,” is synonymous with mind, consciousness, the mechanism of decision.

Our consciousness is always deciding either to ally with the ego, or to unite with the Self, and the ego always speaks first.

When I enter the presence of God, I am shifting, converting, transforming from my alliance with the ego to my union with my Self.  I then become the “touchstone” for the Thoughts of God.

A touchstone is a “black siliceous stone used to test the purity of gold by the color of the streak produced by rubbing it with gold.”


Power is awareness, Self, Life, God, whatever name you give it.  It is the foundation, the ultimate support of all that is, just like gold is the basis for all gold jewelry.  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I AM THAT, p. 30.

So, a thought is either pure gold when we decide for union, or fool’s gold when we decide for alliance.

6/16
Last night I came across a book in the library, “In the Spirit of T’ao Ch’ien,” a book of poems by four American poets.  Apparently, T’ao Ch’ien (365-427 C.E.) is a major figure in the Chinese poetic tradition.

Anyway, I came across this passage by Charles Rossiter.


That renowned scholar
with all his books
thinks he’s important,
three degrees, two cars,
six figure income.
He forgets
his body’s got nine holes
just like the rest of us.

. . .nine holes?

It took me a moment, and then I counted them up.

Go ahead, count ‘em.

See….I had never thought of that before.

That cracked me up.  Then, I put it all in perspective when this passage from the Course came to mind:


I am not a body.  I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
Lesson 199

6/17
I don’t think that I could sit down and watch one minute of a professional golf tournament, but a quotation from Tiger Woods in the newspaper today caught my eye.

“You have to stay patient, stay present, and just make a lot of pars.”

That echoes one of my favorite sentences:  I am “in” the world and not “of” the world. 

So, while I am in the world, in the right state of mind, present, serene, I will simply do the next thing as it unfolds, like shooting pars.

I recently read for the first time, this quotation from Emerson.


It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of his solitude.


Into Christ’s Presence will we enter now,
serenely unaware of everything
except His shining face and perfect Love.
Lesson 157.9





6/18
Here is a poem by the poet, Antler.  I invite you to read it within the context of this sentence from A Course in Miracles:

The savior’s vision serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts, and prepared to look upon only what the present holds. 

SAFE FOR NOW


Blue spruce so covered with snow
The tree seems more show
    than tree
While behind the snowy branches
Near the trunk
    halfway up
A cardinal perches
Watching deepening snow
    droop the boughs
Till they’re snowed over
Forming a windproof airspace
    inside
As far as the snow drifted in
While light still filters through
    deep blue
Peaceful, still,
As wind roars outside
    and snow plummets
Making the cardinal feel
Safe for now from the blizzard.


The savior’s vision serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts, and prepared to look upon only what the present holds.  And the door is held open for the face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks, in innocence, to see beyond the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear against the vision of the Christ in you. Chapter 31.Vll.13

The sight of Christ is all there is to see.  The song of Christ is all there is to hear.  The hand of Christ is all there is to hold.  There is no journey but to walk with Him.  Chapter 24.V.7

6/19
While reading this poem by Denise Levertov (1923-1997), I imagined that she wrote it, sitting at her desk, looking out of her window, experiencing a very peaceful, serene, state of mind.


In Summer


When the light, late in the afternoon, pauses among
the highest branches of the highest trees,
they stir a little as if in pleasure.  Light and a passing breeze
become one and the same, a caress.  Then the lower ranches,
leaves or needles in shadow, take up the lilt
of that response, then green with its hint of blue forming
what, if it were sound, could be called
a chord with the almost yellow of those
the sunlight tarries with.

What she is “seeing” is a reflection of her peaceful state of mind, having let go of, forgiven, all projections obscuring this peaceful state.



Christ's vision is a miracle. It comes
from far beyond itself, for it reflects
eternal love and the rebirth of love
which never dies, but has been kept obscure.
Christ's vision pictures Heaven, for it sees
a world so like to Heaven that what God
created perfect can be mirrored there.
The darkened glass the world presents can show
but twisted images in broken parts.
The real world pictures Heaven's innocence.
Lesson 159.3


6/20
I have always loved this poem by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963).


The Red Wheelbarrow


so much depends
upon


a red wheel
barrow


glazed with rain
water


beside the white
chickens

Of course, the poem turns on the word “depends,” from the Latin, dependere, meaning to hang.  Our well being hangs on our capacity to shift, miraculously, from seeing with the body’s eyes to seeing with Christ’s Vision.  In his poem, Williams simply, profoundly, sees the scene before him, objectively, without past associations, or future concerns.  He sees it as it is.


Christ's vision is the miracle in which 
all miracles are born. It is their source, 
remaining with each miracle you give, 
and yet remaining yours. It is the bond 
by which the giver and receiver are 
united in extension here on earth, 
as they are one in Heaven.  Lesson 159.4

In A Course in Miracles, a miracle is defined as “a shift in perception,” a shift from seeing with the body’s eyes to seeing through the eyes of Christ.  The word, “miracles,” comes from the Latin, miraculum, meaing object of wonder. 

And this is the best part:  the word, “wonder,” comes from the Sanskrit, meiros, meaning to smile and smego, to laugh.  When you experience a miracle, you sit and smile.


You are indeed essential to God's plan. 
Without your joy, His joy is incomplete. 
Without your smile, the world cannot be saved. 
While you are sad, the light that God Himself 
appointed as the means to save the world 
is dim and lusterless, and no one laughs 
because all laughter can but echo yours.
Lesson 100.4

6/21

Yesterday morning I showed up at the Cheese Factory Restaurant at 7:30 to do one of my jobs:  stocking, putting away the Sysco delivery.  But Sysco had not yet arrived, being two hours late.

I grabbed the Course and went outside and sat on a bench in the lovely garden, listening to the birds, watching the breeze stir the trees, while reading Lesson 158, Today I learn to give as I receive.

A friend walked up, and I said to him, “I am sitting in this peaceful garden, and cursing Sysco.”

I return to reading the Lesson, and this passage stood out:

See no one as a body.  (Particularly, a Sysco driver).  Greet him as the Son of God he is, acknowledging that he is one with you in holiness.  8

There we are.  I look up and feel peaceful.  Now I can see the light reflected in his image in my mind.  In the next moment, I may revert to my grievous thoughts and see only darkness in him.

And so it goes, back and forth, moment to moment.

But, at least, I know that what I see in him I am putting there.



6/22
Of course, there is no world, but there does appear to be a world projected by the body’s eyes, while all the time there is only the world seen through the eyes of Christ.

Jesus uses rich metaphors to carry us beyond the false world to the true world, and that is the root meaning of metaphor, “meta,” beyond, and “phor,” to carry. 

Look at the metaphors Jesus uses to carry us beyond our false, projections in Lesson 159, I give the miracles I have received


treasure house


golden treasury


the center of redemption


the hearth of mercy


Christ’s Vision is the holy ground in which
The lilies of forgiveness set their roots. 


a garden


the store of miracles


the everlasting sanctity of God




6/23
Prominently displayed on the front wall of the Session Room at Endeavor Academy in the Wisconsin Dells is this passage from A Course in Miracles.


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.  Chapter 21.ll.2

This came to mind when I came across this passage in a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are.


At the end of a long life dedicated to teaching mindfulness, the Buddha, who probably had his share of followers who were hoping he might make it easier for them to find their own paths, summed it up for his disciples this way:  “Be a light unto yourself.”  Intro., xvii

This echoes what Master Teacher said one time in Session:

“I will stand here for a moment, so that you can catch your true reflection.”

I am so grateful for Master Teacher, brightly shining, demonstrating to us that our awakening is solely our responsibility; no one can do it for us.


6/24

I like this:

A student once said:  “When I was a Buddhist, it drove my parents and friends crazy, but when I am a buddha, nobody is upset at all.”

This reminds me of one of my favorite lines:

“Let the light do the work.”


And you who bring the light will come to see
the light more sure, the vision more distinct.  Lesson 157.7

“I” don’t have to do anything, except get out of the way.  By being present, experiencing the light, I am receptive, listening, and I trust I will be guided.  For example, I find that when I am in a serious conversation with someone, I focus on listening to them, and often I find myself saying, “It just came to me to say…,” and I trust that, although “I” had no idea what to say.

Not my will but Thine.


The part that is listening to the Voice for God is calm, always at rest and wholly certain.  It is the only part there is.  We will approach this happiest and holiest of thoughts with confidence, knowing that in doing so we are joining our will with the Will of God.  Lesson 49.2,3


6/25
Janus, the two-faced Roman god, is a perfect metaphor for consciousness, particularly when Janus is represented as a coin.

If you look at the coin, facing you on edge, it represents “you,” consciousness, the mechanism of decision, deciding either to ally with the ego mind, or to unite with the Self.  Allying with the ego, you will see with the body’s eyes; uniting with the Self, you will see through the eyes of Christ.

In alliance with the ego, Janus experiences this projection:


I am a stranger here.  A stranger to himself can find no home wherever he may look, for he has made return impossible. Lesson 160.5

And, he can count on the miracle.

In union with the Self, Janus will experience this reflection:


His way is lost, except a miracle will search him out and show him that he is no stranger now.  The miracles will come.  For in his home his Self remains.  And it will call Its Own unto Itself in recognition of what is Its Own.  Lesson 160.6


6/26
I walked out of a movie theater last night and realized, again, why the mind training offered by A Course in Miracles is “required.”  We so easily enter into the dream, thinking it is real, just as I entered so easily into the movie, forgetting that it was not real.  While watching the movie, I immediately got caught up in the drama taking place on the screen, responding to events unfolding as if they were real, booing and hissing and laughing, completely forgetting that I was sitting in a movie theater.

I forgot that those were actors in makeup, outfitted by costume designers, speaking lines from a script, surrounded by camera men, guided by a director.

At the end of the day’s shooting, they removed the makeup, changed clothes, and walked out of the sound stage, stepping back into their lives.

We do the same thing every morning when we wake up from a sleeping dream, take a shower, put on our clothes, and resume our drama, reciting our scripts, stepping into the waking dream. 

How easily we forget that the images we are projecting out there are no different than the projector spitting out images on the screen in the movie theater.  Our programming, our conditioning, is so powerful, so unconscious, that we desperately need to wake up.  Jesus, of course, offers us a way.

This is a course in miracles.  It is a required course.  Only the time you take it is voluntary.  Text.Intro.1:1-3

(My friend, Judy Kelley, read this Status and kindly sent me a paragraph describing her experience, enriching what I just expressed:

I once saw the play,  Jesus Christ Superstar. I walked out of the auditorium  feeling very moved by the story, the music, the drama. Then, as I walked through the theater bar on the way to the parking garage, I saw Jesus and Judas (the actors who played them) sharing a drink at the bar. So COOL! A perfect juxtaposition of the dream of the world and the reality of heaven. I thought... this is what's real, forgiveness, love. Such a relief!)

Thank you, Judy! 

6/27
While reading a book entitled, “Angels All Around,” by Lynn Valentine, I came across a very comforting passage by Cynthia Manke, and I mean comforting in the sense of the Latin “com” meaning with and “fort” meaning strength.


When I was only six years old, I was outside riding my bike when a bright light appeared in front of me, causing me to stop.  I stared into it and began to make out a figure within it.  Then facial features came into focus.  He smiled at me. 


“Do not be afraid,” he said. “There is nothing to fear.  Never fear anything.”


It was the purest love I had ever known, and it was more than something I felt on the inside.  It covered me and permeated me, running over me and through me at the same time.


When my father died, I was deeply hurt.  But then I remembered the angel’s words to me, and the same feeling that I had experienced when I was only six years old returned.  I felt total peace, total love, and total acceptance in exactly the same way I had felt it back then.  I realized then that my father was feeling that same total peace, total love and total acceptance that I had found in the light so many years ago.


So now I pass along the story to you.


Pass it on.

There is no death.  The Son of God is free.   Title, Lesson 163

6/28
Here I am determined to write a Facebook Status every day, and I became curious about the meaning of Status.  It comes from the Latin, “stare,” meaning to stand.  Now, it does not mean for me anything in reference to my social standing.  What comes to mind for me is summed up in this declaration by Martin Luther (1483-1546), bravely declaring to his accusers, “Here I stand.  I can do no other.”

In 1517, he had nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of a church, declaring his protestant views, thereby starting the Protestant Reformation.

Summoned by Pope Leo X to either renounce, or reaffirm them, he stood up and declared:

“Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe no wise to do anything against conscience.  Here I stand.  I can do no other.  God help me.  Amen.”

On May 25, 1520, there was issued the Edict of Worms, declaring Marin Luther an outlaw.

Now, I do not write these Statuses to be an outlaw; rather, I brought up Luther because of the connotation of standing squarely on my two feet, grounded, balanced, present, mindful, receptive to what comes to mind. 

6/29
Philip Chard, a prominent psychotherapist in Milwaukee, writes a column in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, entitled, Out of my Mind.”  A recent column is entitled, “Seeking serenity is nothing to fear.” 

His client, Karen, working in a very hostile, uncomfortable, work environment, found herself detaching from it, and slowing down and finding peace of mind.

“After work, she would often sit on her porch, sometimes for hours, reading, listening to music or watching dusk turn to night.”

Predictably, her behavior began to worry her family and colleagues.  She said she was fine.

“But they didn’t buy it.  Her laidback soul was an oddity.  For a young and capable person to be so tranquil appeared disconcerting, if not ominous.  In hopes of assuaging their concerns, she agreed to a mental checkup from ours truly.”

He goes on to say, “What struck Karen most was the lack of life perspective and kindness in her colleagues.  In fact, she had simply deviated from what is considered normal in our culture—frenetic activity, obsessive connectedness, hurry sickness, intense competition, materialism and tunnel vision.”

Reading this column, I was amused at the reaction of her colleagues and friends and family, having experienced that myself, as I slowly and steadfastly began to retrain my mind by means of A Course in Miracles.  Obviously, Karen is on the right path, and she is opening her mind for receiving the grace of God.


Grace becomes inevitable instantly in those who have prepared a table where it can be gently laid and willingly received; an altar clean and holy for the Gift.  Lesson 169.1




6/30
In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,  Mark Antony, after stirring the mob to mutiny in his funeral oration, is told by a servant that Octavius and his army have come to Rome to support him, and he says:


He comes upon a wish.  Fortune is merry,
And in this mood will give us anything. Act 3, Scene 2

This came flooding into my mind when I read this sentence in Lesson 161, Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.


The purpose of all seeing is to show
you what you wish to see.  All hearing but
brings to your mind the sounds it wants  to hear.  2

It is hard to believe that this world we make up through our body’s eyes is actually a wish fulfilled.  Yet, we see it because we wish to.  Antony wishes for war, and he will get war.

This is preposterous until we realize that the wish is the result of an habitual way of seeing, automatic, unconscious, conditioned, normal, natural, universal.

By simply becoming aware of t our wishing, we can learn to look at it, see it for what it is, and let it go, thereby allowing something else to enter in, choosing to see  through the eyes of Christ, wishing for peace instead of war.

Making Explicit the Meaning of Forgiveness: My Facebook Statuses for May, 2012

My Facebook Statuses enable me to express myself, daily, regarding the meaning of forgiveness, and spread the word about the incredible Event coming up in the fall, International Forgiveness Week and Weekend of Perfect Peace, September 14-23, 2012, at the Healing Center of Endeavor Academy, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin.

http://www.forgivenessweek.org/writing.php



5/1
The clock on the wall is slicing the day into seconds and minutes and hours,

tick-tock, tick-tock.

It is not so.

I am as God created me before time was, now walking in this world, and after my time on earth is over. 

Yet, time does have a purpose; it can be used to help us escape time.  What seems to happen here can be utilized to transform our minds to timelessness.

Here is Jesus expressing this in Lesson 110, I am as God created me.

It is enough to let time be the means for all the world to learn escape from time, and every change that time appears to bring in passing by.  2

Letting go of time is an act of forgiveness.



5/2
Whether, or not, I truly forgive is tricky.  Sometimes I may just magnanimously let someone off the hook.  But then I am the one hooked by my misunderstanding of forgiveness.

It is always a matter of forgetting and remembering.  When I remember that I am as God created me, then I can forget what never occurred.

Since you are as God created you, then there has been no separation of your mind from His, no split between your min and other minds, and only unity within your own.  Lesson 110.  4.

Forgetting is forgiving.


5/3
When we realize through forgiveness that we are “in” the world, and not “of” the world, we are living an allegory.  An allegory is a representation of seeing spiritual meaning in concrete, or material, form.

Through the mind training of A Course in Miracles, we live, allegorically, knowing that while we are in the world of hell projected through the body’s eyes, we can remember that we are as God created us, complete, and healed and whole, and seeing with the eyes of Christ.  We can become aware moment to moment of spiritual reflections in the material form.

Open your eyes today and look upon a happy world of safety and of peace.  Forgiveness is the means by which it comes to take the place of hell.  In quietness it rises up to greet your open eyes, and fill your heart with deep tranquility as ancient truths, forever newly born, arise in your awareness. Lesson 122.8


5/4
Yesterday, a friend called and asked me to help her look at something really bothering her.  After we talked for awhile, she said, “Thank you,” and we hung up.

The content of the conversation doesn’t matter; it is always a matter of experiencing peace, or conflict, either/or, and, of course, the conflict is of our own making, and the sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can let it go.

In fact, she called me back fifteen minutes later, and she said, “You can forget that we ever had that conversation.”

I cracked up, and said, “Now, THAT is forgiveness!”  By forgetting what never occurred, we leave a place for something else to enter in, remembering the truth of what we are, the holy sons of God.

Be grateful God has saved you from the self you thought you made to take the place of Him and His creation.  Lesson 123.2


5/5
I cannot believe that both things happened on the same day.  Yesterday, I suffered two huge disappointments that involved money.  Again, the content does not matter, but for awhile I went into a spiral.  I felt it in the pit of my stomach; my mind chatter started racing.

I asked for help.

And sometime later these two thoughts came to me, “What does ‘this’ have to do with the fact that I am as God created me?” 

“Why should I let ‘this’ take me out of my peace?”

‘This’ is of my own making and has no source in reality.

Now, I take the next step, and do what I am guided to do, and I will ask for help to step, insouciantly, (with light-hearted unconcern), knowing that these worldly occurrences are ephemeral, meaning “lasting for a day,” while I am eternal.

At one with God and with the universe we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us.  Lesson 124.1




5/6
Yesterday morning, I woke up, looked at my clock, 6:50, and realized that the alarm would go off in 10 minutes.  I sat up for a moment, noticed how utterly dark it was; there was no traffic, and no birds were singing.

Still, the clock said 6:52.

Christine rolled over and said, “What are you doing?”

I said, “It’s time to get up.”

She said, “That’s crazy, my clock says 4:00.”

Then I remembered that I had re-set the clock last night…wrongly.

So, these are the elements for a big, fat analogy.

My clock represents my false self trusting the body’s eyes, no matter what.

Christine’s clock represents my true Self, no matter what else is going on in my physical world, it is unfailingly trustworthy.

Now, this is a heavy burden to bear, Christine, but your voice represents God’s Voice speaking to me all through the day, bridging the gap between my body’s eyes and the vision of Christ.  (OK, now let the analogy go, Christine, particularly the next time we have a disagreement.)

It is quite possible to listen to God's Voice all through the day without interrupting your regular activities in any way. The part of your mind in which truth abides (true Self) is in constant communication with God, whether you are aware of it or not. It is the other part of your mind (false self) that functions in the world and obeys the world's laws. It is this part that is constantly distracted, disorganized and highly uncertain.  Lesson 49.1


5/7
I came across this quotation the other day while leafing through a book entitled, “Moments Bright and Shining,” a collection of quotations published in 1979 that I found in Goodwill.

Be sure to keep a mirror always nigh,
In some convenient, handy sort of place,
And now and then look squarely in thine eye,
And with thy Self keep ever face to face.

John K. Bangs

This is a helpful reminder that we are always only looking into a mirror, and the reflection we see is our choice, and obviously, it is good to remember to choose brightly.

After reading this poem, I came across this passage in A Course in Miracles, Lesson 124, Let me remember I am one with God, echoing it perfectly.

We feel Him in our hearts. Our minds contain His Thoughts; our eyes behold His loveliness in all we look upon.  All this we see because we saw it first within ourselves.  You will see Christ’s face upon it, in reflection of your own.  Lesson 124.4

5/8
This paragraph in the Workbook of A Course in Miracles sums it all up for me, Lesson 125, In quiet I receive God’s Word today, paragraph 2.

This world will change through you.
(The world is a projection of my false self, or a reflection of my true Self.)

No other means can save it, for God's plan is simply this: The Son of God is free to save himself,
(To be saved means letting go of, i.e., forgiving, thoughts from the false self that have no source in reality.)

given the Word of God to be his Guide,
(The Word is that I AM God’s perfect son.)

forever in his mind and at his side to lead him surely to his Father's house.
(My Home is the state of mind of the peace of God.)


by his own will, forever free as God's.
(My will and God’s are the same.)


He is not led by force, but only love.
(There are only two emotions, love and fear, and fear does not exist.)

He is not judged, but only sanctified.
(To judge means to stand in fearful duality and choose this over that; to sanctify means to make holy by standing with Christ in the peace of God.)


5/9
This has always been one of my favorite poems, and now, coming across it again this morning, I particularly love the I Am, indicating that the narrator is in full awareness that he is God’s Son, shining in the reflection of His Love.

Limited

I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation.

Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.

(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.)

I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: "Omaha."

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)


As my friend, Maureen, would say, “The poem turns on irony.”  The poem turns on the contrast between the false self, believing in the reality of Omaha, and the true Self, I AM, knowing full well his immortality.

5/10
More than ever, Lesson 49 of A Course in Miracles is so important to me, God’s Voice speaks to me all through the day.  I find that listening to hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit is, particularly, brought into practice when I sit down to write, as is occurring right now.  (The word, occur, comes from the Latin, cur, meaning “run to meet.”)  I am running towards His Voice.

The thing is, I don’t actually hear a Voice, as much as I experience thoughts/ideas coming into my mind.  I remember years ago in graduate school, reading an essay about Jean Piaget (1896-1980), the Swiss psychologist/epistemologist.  It was entitled, “The Having of Wonderful Ideas.”  That captures my experience.

And yesterday I came across this passage in a book by Echo Bodine, a Medium, entitled, “Echoes of the Soul.”  This is my experience.  Please remember, she is referring to “guides,” and I am referring to the Holy Spirit.

The first time I heard my guides, I was washing dishes.  A very soft voice, rather like a thought, said, “My name is Theodore—but you can call me Teddy.”  Then a female thought came:  “my name is Anna.”  These “voices” didn’t sound very different from my thoughts.  From that point on I kept the radio off in the house and in my car just in case they wanted to talk to me.

Lesson 125, In quiet I receive God’s Word today.


5/11
I have been sailing along rather well for some time, and in the past ten days, I experienced three jolts that, temporarily, brought me to a stop.  It does not matter the content, but in each case I felt it in the pit of my stomach, and I felt sad, disappointed, angry, and so forth.

In each case, though, I was pulled out of a funk by receiving this thought, this idea, “Why would I allow “this” to prevent me from experiencing the peace of God?”  “This” occurred in time and space, yet I AM God’s Son, timeless. 

And in remembering this truth of what I AM, I found myself standing in a place of peace.  This image just came to my mind.  It is like standing on a  bridge  over a highway, watching the cars speed by, going in opposite directions.  The cars represent the illusion of time and space, while the bridge represents reality, timelessness.  It is all a matter of remembering.

And soon after, I came across this passage in A Course in Miracles.

What better way to close the little gap between illusions and reality than to allow the memory of God to flow across it, making it a bridge an instant will suffice to reach beyond?  Chapter 28.1.15



5/12
Frequently, you will hear someone say, “I forgive so-and so for such-and such.”  This is most often experienced as an act of charity; “I can afford to give this gift to him, or her, and I am a good guy.”

That would be like waking up from a sleeping dream, and saying, “I forgive the guy who did such-and-such to me.”

Our “waking” dream is no different from our sleeping dream, SINCE we are looking through the body’s eyes and seeing projections, false beliefs, of our brain having no sourced in reality.  The real alternative is to see with vision, the eyes of Christ.

Forgiveness is recognizing that “it” never occurred at all, and that I AM safe at home in Heaven as God created me.

In silence, close your eyes upon the world that does not understand forgiveness, and seek sanctuary in the quiet place where thoughts are changed and false beliefs laid by.  Lesson 126.10


5/13
The metaphor of “voice” is most useful throughout A Course in Miracles.  Right now, as you are reading this sentence, a voice in your head is narrating it.  No problem.  That’s just what we do, as we move through the day.  It is always a question of which “voice,” that of the ego, or that of the Holy Spirit?

That is why it is helpful to look at words that contain the Latin root, dicere, meaning "to speak:"  dictate, predict, contradict, edict, dictionary, addict.

For example, sometimes when I experience a contradiction, I am hearing the ego’s voice speaking against the truth.  And sometimes it’s simply the ego voice contradicting itself.

Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. Lesson 152.2

An addict declares this is what I want no matter what.

Meanwhile, I am so grateful that God’s Voice is speaks to me all through the day.  Title, Lesson 49.

He who would still preserve the ego’s goals and serve them as his own makes no mistakes, according to the dictates of his guide.  Lesson 133.10


5/14
Sunday morning I was working my usual shift, cooking at the incredible Cheese Factory Restaurant in the Wisconsin Dells.  This restaurant is incredible, not only because of the food and the atmosphere, but also because it offers a great opportunity to learn to forgive your brother as we all work together toward the single purpose of offering everything to our customers. 

You can imagine what is involved in making the restaurant work.  It requires the orchestration of the cooks and expeditors and servers and bussers and hosts and preppers and dishwashers and soda jerks and silverware rollers.

The amazing thing at the Cheese is to see the perfect orchestration during our busiest times.  Obviously, it can be trying at times, and at one point yesterday, after several cooking mix ups, I heard someone say, “This is really starting to be a problem!”  When I turned to look at her, she was pointing at her nose, her right index finger touching the tip, thereby taking full responsibility for her upset.

Now, THAT’S true forgiveness.


5/15
Reading today’s Lesson 135, If I defend myself I am attacked, I came across this passage and found myself smiling because of a memory, actually laughing.

And herein lies the folly of defense; it gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. 1

I am remembering years ago when I was a senior in college.  I was the right defensive end on our undefeated football team.  During the week in our practice scrimmages, I would irritate the hell out of the opposing quarterback.  When he came towards my end on a quarterback option play, I would penetrate a couple of yards, square off, fully balanced, and simply  wait for his next move.

Now, I was supposed to move one way or the other, and that movement would determine whether he would run inside, lateral to a back running outside, or pass.  Since I was simply holding my ground, ironically defenseless, he did not know what to do.

I was a walking oxymoron, or as he said after one practice, a “moron,” because I was a defenseless defensive end.

To finish this unusual analogy, my safety, indeed depends on my defensiveness, and my safety routinely rushed in and tackled the quarterback.



5/16
Less than three weeks ago, Christine and I became involved in a business opportunity.  We anticipate that our investment will yield a substantial return in a short period of time.  In fact, we think that by Labor Day, ironically, with very little labor, and a lot of fun, we will see significant results.

This morning upon awakening, this sentence came in:

YOU CAN STILL GO TO GOD HAVING MONEY IN YOUR POCKET; IT ALWAYS DEPENDS ON WHERE YOUR INVESTMENT IS.

The first part of the sentence suggests dualistic thinking, having money or not having money, keeping you in the world, but the second part moves you beyond duality to being depending on God, anchored in God, the only true investment, our only treasure.

And here is Jesus echoing this, exactly, in the Text of His Course:


I once asked you to sell all you have and give to the poor and follow me.  This is what I meant:  If you have no investment in anything in this world, you can teach the poor where their treasure is.  The poor are merely those who have invested wrongly, and they are poor indeed!  Chapter 12.111.1

In this context, “poor” has nothing to do with money; it has everything to do with investing wrongly in the body’s eyes and brain.  The right investment is in God.


5/17
I have always loved hearing Jesus say this in His Course in Miracles.


If it helps you, think of me holding your hand and leading you.  Lesson 70.9

Yesterday, a friend told me of a time when Jesus stepped in and did a lot more than hold his hand.

He said that he had become sober, attending AA Meetings, and he was reading the Course.

Upon awakening one morning, all of a sudden he heard Jesus yelling in his ear:

“PRE POST TEROUS!  PRE POST TEROUS!”

He realized that Jesus was making clear the meaning of his preposterous life, telling him that real Life is before, PRE, and after, POST, this earthly, illusory existence on this land, TEROUS, and during it, “if” you are in the right state of mind; and if you are not, you are utterly, painfully ridiculous.

And now his healing began.


Healing but removes illusions that have not occurred.  Just as the real world will arise to take the place of what has never been at all, healing but offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas, which dreams embroider into pictures of the truth.  Lesson 137.5

5/18
While reading a book entitled, “Angel Voices “ by Karen Goldman, I came across several passages that brought to mind Jesus summarizing His Introduction to His Course in Miracles, enabling the reader to begin reading His Course, experiencing the heart of it.


Nothing real can be threatened;
Nothing unreal exists;
Herein lies the peace of God.

I found myself juxtaposing passages from the angel book with His summary.


Nothing real can be threatened.


We are creatures of love, and this is our birthright and our calling.  We can learn to exist beyond the trap of our mortality.  We are meant to transcend  our skin and feel the fires of Heaven glowing within us; to know the  healing waters of joy and compassion that flow simultaneously through everything known and unknown, cleansing everything.  We witness miracles of creation and dissolution, exploding in every atom of space all around us. . .to produce miracles of sanity and hold jewels of freedom in our hands.  We can know intimately that which was never born and will never die as the foundation of all things known.

Nothing unreal exists.


As mortals, we have forgotten which part is the dream being dreamed and which is us.  We have temporarily given ourselves into the hands of this dreaming and have forgotten tow wake up.


The materialist has forgotten he is Spirit, and sees only the obvious—the outer shells of things.  He uses only his physical eyes, living identified with the physical.


Herein lies the peace of God.


In Spirit are all the expansive feelings—love, happiness, joy, ecstasy.  To go toward Heaven is to expand.  Not to limit, but to become Free.


5/19
While reading a newspaper this morning, I was struck by seeing this title: 


Paralyzed woman uses her mind to control her robotic arm.

The article goes on to say:

 “Using only her thoughts, a Massachusetts woman paralyzed for 15 years directed a robotic arm to pick up a bottle of coffee and bring it to her lips with the help of a tiny sensor implanted in her brain.  The sensor, about the size of a baby aspirin, eavesdropped on the electrical activity of a few dozen brain cells as she imagined moving her arm.  The chip then sent signals to a computer, which translated them into commands to the robotic arm.”

From a physical point of view, this is a tremendous achievement and gives hope to paralytics. It also reinforces the commonly mistaken idea that the body’s eyes can see, and the brain can think. 

This presents the paradox of walking through the world in a body.  What we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is “not” real; what we cannot perceive with our senses “is” real—love, peace, joy, union, truth, freedom, truth, serenity.  We remain as God created us, in spite of physical evidence to the contrary.

Fortunately, it is as simple matter of forgiving what is “not” real, and melting into the experience of what “is” real.

As Jesus says in His Course:


Today accept the truth about yourself, and go your way, rejoicing in the endless Love of God.  Lesson 139.9

5/20
As we walk through this world, well aware that we are not of this world, we keep running across the universal assumption that what the body’s eyes see is real. 


This is the depth of madness.   Yet it is the universal assumption of the world.  What does this mean except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true?  Lesson 139.6

One way to see through this madness is to note how many words are used that are synonymous with “universal.”  Here are a few:

automatic, habitual, regular, natural, normal, familiar, comfortable, customary, ordinary, persistent, consistent, unconscious, repetitious, addictive, chronic, patterned, programmed, inveterate, hypnotic, taken for granted, obsessed

For several minutes let your mind be cleared of all the foolish cobwebs which the world would weave around the holy Son of God.  Lesson 139.12

If you can come up with another synonym, Dear Reader, please send it along.

5/21
Not only is Jesus a master in expressing the truth in words whose content is enough to wake us up, but he also arranges His words on the page in sheer poetic form.  Here, for example, are ten lines of blank verse from Lesson 140, Only salvation can be said to cure.  Blank verse means 5 sets of iambs, slack STRESS, marching stately across the page.

The HAP py DREAMS the HO ly SPIR it BRINGS
are DIFF erent FROM the DREAM ing OF the WORLD,
where ONE can MERE ly DREAM he IS a WAKE.
The DREAMS for GIVE ness LETS the MIND per CEIVE
do NOT in DUCE a NOTH er FORM of SLEEP,
so THAT the DREAM er DREAMS a NOTH er DREAM.
His HAP py DREAMS are HER alds OF the DAWN
of TRUTH up ON the MIND. They LEAD from SLEEP
to GEN tle WAK ing, SO that DREAMS are GONE.
And THUS they CURE for ALL e TERN i TY.

And thus Jesus postures our voice to speak His words, the medium being the message.

To see the full extent of blank verse in His Course, in both the Text and the Workbook, please click on this link:

www.throughamirrorbrightly.com

then click on “The Rhythm and Reason of Reality.”

5/22

While reading Review 1V, in A Course in Miracles, a memory came to mind when I read this passage.


So do we start each practice period in this review with readying our minds to understand the lessons that we read, and see the meaning that they offer us.  4

Over fifty years ago, while I was teaching English in a junior high school in Westport, Ct., I met a man, Jack Davis, who was a Special Education teacher in a nearby district.  We became best friends, and he would often say, “I stay ready, then I don’t have to get ready.”  I always found this to be particularly profound.

Now, that was twenty years before I came across the Course, and he wasn’t trying to be “spiritual,” rather, as a black man in white America, he was simply, profoundly, being “street smart,” staying ready for anything that might occur while walking down the street.

For me, now, I want to stay ready to be receptive only to the thoughts that my mind holds with God and not be deceived by thoughts having no source in reality.


Your self-deceptions cannot take the place of truth. No more than can a child who throws a stick into the ocean change the coming and the going of the tides, the warming of the water by the sun, the silver of the moon on it by night. So do we start each practice period in this review with readying our minds to understand the lessons that we read, and see the meaning that they offer us. Review 1V.4

Thank you, Jack.

5/23
Not long ago, my friend, Maureen, was helping me navigate my Facebook page, and all of a sudden, she said, “What’s your favorite work of art? I would like for you to have a graphic for a background for your Facebook page.”

I sat there stunned for a moment, unable to think of anything, when, suddenly, I thought of Michelangelo’s David, and soon it became my graphic.

In 1501, at the age of 21, Michelangelo began carving from a huge lock of marble his 17-foot statue.  He captures David, the young shepherd boy, in the moments just before his battle with Goliath, against whom he appears to have little chance.  Yet, his David is poised, his weight on his back leg,   perfectly balanced, calm, peaceful, and well, “staying ready,” gazing, steadfastly, over his left shoulder at Goliath.

Here is a description by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574).

Nor has there ever been seen a pose so easy, or any grace to equal that in this work, or feet, hands and head so well in accord, one member with another, in harmony, design, and excellence of artistry.

I first became aware of David at Kalamazoo College in an Introduction to Art class, during my freshman year, and he helped me learn to be calm and ready just before all of those football games and all the times I ran the 120 yard high hurdles and 220 yard low hurdles, and the quarter mile. At 5-9, 165 pounds, I, too, was going against all odds.

5/24
At the heart of A Course in Miracles, of course, is forgiveness.  And it is a bit tricky to understand its true meaning.  Paying attention to common phrases helps me; e.g., “What’s it for?  It’s for giving away.”  The key is the referent for “it.”  “It” is anything unreal, a fantasy, a dream, an illusion,  anything  believed to be real in reference to the body’s eyes and brain.

When I am in a state of mind of peace, it is possible to recognize the difference between what is real and what is unreal, because in that moment I am  seeing a true reflection, seeing through “it” with vision, not with my body’s eyes. I am experiencing salvation.

All this came to mind when I read this passage in the Text.

When you become disturbed and lose your peace of mind because another is attempting to solve his problems through fantasy, you are refusing to forgive yourself for just this same attempt. And you are holding both of you away from truth and from salvation. As you forgive him, you restore to truth what was denied by both of you. And you will see forgiveness where you have given it. Chapter 17.1.6

5/25
The NBA semifinal games are now being played.  Reading USA Today’s Sport’s Section, I came across this passage about Kevin Grant, 23:

The Oklahoma City Thunder’s 6-9, 235-pounder offers everything you’d want in an NBA superstar:  ball handling and shooting skills, playmaking ability and defense, unselfishness and teamwork.
He also brings the intangibles, the mental toughness…

And this is what caught my attention:

. . .the elusive feel for what needs to be done at any given moment.

I remember having this “elusive feel” playing football in college.  The play would begin, and then it was over.  I couldn’t remember what happened in between, but usually it was the right thing.  I was “in the zone.”  The point is that it was done without thinking.

In the context of A Course in Miracles, this reminds me of the holy instant.

The holy instant is this instant and every instant.  Delay it not.  For beyond the past and future, where you will not find it, it stands in shimmering readiness for your acceptance.  The holy instant is a time in which you receive and give perfect communication.  Chapter 15.1V.1

Play a sport.  Dance.  Sing.  Write.  Draw.  Play an instrument.  Be free of thought.  Receive.

5/26
While reading a passage in the Text of A Course in Miracles, I experienced this great image coming to mind. 
I imagined a person standing in my yard during the evening, his back to the west, and his long shadow falling in front of him.  I realized that if I were to see only the shadow, it would be like seeing my own projections through the body’s eyes; however, if I remembered to see a reflection of my Self, I would be seeing with the person with vision.

The shadow figure enters more and more, and the one in whom it seems to be decreases in importance.  Chapter 17.111.3

Forgiveness is a selective remembering, based not on your selection.  For the shadow figures would make immortal are “enemies” of reality.”  Be willing to forgive the Son of God for what he did not do.  Chapter 17.111.1

It also took me back to my Jungian days:

If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day. Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, 1938.


5/27
Newspaper editors are pretty clever wordsmiths when it comes to article titles.  Here’s one;

“Fear of spiders?  You can escape that web. 
‘Exposure therapy’ trains the brain.”

And it goes on to say:  People undone by arachnophobia holding a huge hairy tarantula in their bare hands?  No worries, not after a single brief “exposure therapy’ session changes the brain’s fear response.  “Exposure therapy’ gets its name from exposing a patient to what he fears.  Immediately after, an MRI scan showed the b rain regions associated with fear decrease in activity when people saw spider photos.

After reading this, I thought, hmmm, all we need is a class designed to expose people to their fears. Since there are only two emotions, fear and love, they will turn to love.  Simple.

But the article goes on to say: Immediately after, an MRI scan showed the brain regions associated with fear decreased in activity.

So, there’s the problem; it’s not so simple after all.  ‘Exposure therapy” simply exposes the contradiction in duality, within the realm of the ego, and the brain registers less fear, as opposed to more fear.  The alternative is to step out of the duality completely.

Bringing the ego to God is but to bring error to truth, where it stands corrected because it is the opposite of what it meets. It is undone because the contradiction can no longer stand. How long can contradiction stand when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in light is not attacked. It merely vanishes because it is not true. Chapter 14.1X.2

5/28

When I say to myself, she did “this” to me, but I am going to take a deep breath and forgive her, I am engaging in “eccentric folly” as Jesus says.  My  false self is making up what “she did,” simply with thoughts having no source in reality, making “it” totally illusory; “it” never really occurred.

That is why I just love this passage from Lesson 134, Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. 


Forgiveness does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly, with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth.  And there they disappear entirely.  6


5/29
Jesus designed His Course for our mind training, so that we can reverse our thinking from seeing with the body’s eyes to seeing with vision.

In His Introduction to Review lll, He makes it clear that this reversal will not be achieved by “ritual,” but only by our “willingness.”


Learn to distinguish situations that are poorly suited to your practicing from those that you establish to uphold a camouflage for your unwillingness.  Review 111.3

Our willingness leads to forgiveness.


5/30
A Course in Miracles offers an incredible curriculum that leads to salvation.  “Curriculum” comes from the Latin word, currere, meaning to run a course.

We can learn by running this course how to be saved from our thoughts that have no source in reality, and by letting go of these thoughts, we leave open a space for something else to enter in, the truth.

To train for the 400 meter race, you run a course, a 400 meter track.  Training our minds, like training our bodies, requires exercise, practice, discipline.


These practice periods are planned to help you form the habit of applying what you learn each day to everything you do.  Review 111.10

Forgiveness requires rigorous practice.


5/31

A friend was really happy because of something that occurred earlier in the day, and she said to me, “I didn’t do it; it just got done.”

I love to hear a basic principle of A Course in Miracles expressed in the vernacular.  For example, here is this great passage from the Course.


What would You have me do? 
Where would You have me go? 
What would You have me say, and to whom? Lesson 71.9

This is in the spirit of asking for help, and in this receptive state of mind, we experience not doing it, it just gets done, trusting, Thy Will be done, Thine not mine.

Vision of a Ho-Chunk Healer

 

It is inevitable that this Ho-Chunk medicine man, this healer, is finally sitting here on this riverbank by the still waters listening to the Big Voice.  Ho-Chunk means “People of the Big Voice,” or “People of the Sacred Language.”  Simply adorned in the garb of his people, an eagle feather secured in his otter skin headband, his long gray-white hair in a single braid falling over his right shoulder, clothed in a soft shirt, he is peacefully smoking his pipe, experiencing the peace of God.

    It is inevitable that it comes to this because, finally, there is only the Great Voice speaking to us.  That is the only thing that is real.  It was there at the beginning, present during the long descent through time, and is speaking to us here and now.  This peaceful healer demonstrates that it is possible to use time, even the great length of time represented by the sandstone cliffs carved by glacier-fed streams, to discover the Great Voice speaking to us right now all through the day.  Even through the great Diaspora of his people, meaning their breaking up and scattering, it is possible to use time to discover the presence of the Great Voice, closer than the sound of a heartbeat.

    This healer is silhouetted by the sandstone cliffs formed millions of years ago during a period of glacial melting that took place not far from here, an area now known as Portage.  Trillions of gallons of water trapped behind a huge ice dam forced its collapse and plummeted through this region, carving out these magnificent cliffs.

    Subsequently, for thousands of years the Ho-Chunks naturally gathered here to live near these healing waters.  They enjoyed abundant hunting, gathering and farming.  Then, starting in the early 1800’s, the great Diaspora began as the U. S. Government forced them to relocate in Iowa, then Minnesota, then along the Mississippi, then to South Dakota.  Throughout eleven removals the Ho-Chunks continued to return to Wisconsin.  Finally, when it was apparent that the Nation was determined to be in Wisconsin, they were able to purchase 40-acre homestead lots and farm and assimilate.  Their longing to return home made their return certain, just as our longing to return Home to God makes the outcome certain.

    And now we return to the peaceful healer sitting on the riverbank, representing the inevitability of the Great Voice speaking to us all through the day no matter what appears to be going on in time.  This inevitability is expressed differently in different traditions, and the healer, listening to  David’s 23rd Psalm would nod and smile in complete recognition of the Sacred Voice.  The medicine man in the green pastures of his quiet mind is sitting by the still waters. 

    He would also smile in recognition, hearing Jesus say these words in His unworldly masterpiece, A Course in Miracles.

Let us come daily to this holy place, and spend a while together. Here we share our final dream. It is a dream in which there is no sorrow, for it holds a hint of all the glory given us by God. The grass is pushing through the soil, the trees are budding now, and birds have come to live within their branches. Earth is being born again in new perspective. Night has gone, and we have come together in the light.


The darkness of the great Diaspora is gone, and we have come together in the light, listening to the Voice for God.  Experiencing the light, his mind is healed, and what he sees outside is a reflection of the light within.  His peacefulness comes from knowing that he is always only looking into a mirror.  What he sees is mirroring his peaceful mind, and that is rendered in the painting so beautifully by the thirteen flowers pushing through the soil by the still waters, framed by the sandstone cliffs and trees and blue sky and white clouds. 

    Arty Senger painted this panorama from the same quiet place, hearing the still, small Voice for God, just like the healer.  She conceived of this painting from the same quiet place the healer is experiencing because their minds are joined in the Oneness of God’s mind, listening to the Voice of the Holy Spirit.  The painting is a pictorial demonstration that what is seen outside is a manifestation of what is within.  When we look at the painting we are looking into the mirror of her mind.  It is her gift to be able to illustrate, particularly, the images in her mind as these thirteen flowers:

Harebell, Common Blue Violet, Hoary Puccoon, Pink Lady’s Slipper, Giant Blue Hyssop, Blue Flag Iris, Wild Geranium, Columbine, Canada Anemone, Whorled Milkweed, Large-Flowered Trillium, Black-Eyed Susan, and Common Dandelion.  During her long painting career, it has always been her gift and her joy to paint flowers.

    And then we have the magnificent ivory-billed woodpecker.  News of his sighting broke while she was painting this mural.  It is perfect that he is now in the painting because it is such a testament to God’s Love that this bird, not having been spotted for over 60 years and assumed extinct, should appear again now.  It has a 30-inch wingspan and a jackhammer beak.  Audubon called it the “great chieftain of the woodpecker tribe,” and others called it the “Lord God bird” because when people saw it, they said, “Lord God!”

    As we gaze into Arty’s painting we are given the opportunity to still our minds and come to hear the Great Voice telling us that Truth is true and nothing else is true.

    It is inevitable that this painting is being displayed, for a moment, in this Chapel in the Wisconsin Dells, resting on this hillside, overlooking the splendid sandstone cliffs and the healing waters, now opens the doors of the RiverView Room to offer a peaceful place to still your mind and see the reflection of God’s Love.

    And now, it is most appropriate to stop and listen to Jesus speaking to us His Course in Miracles,  two passages from Lesson 125, In quiet I receive God’s word today.


Let this day be a day of stillness and of quiet listening. Your Father wills you hear His Word today. He calls to you from deep within your mind where He abides. Hear Him today. No peace is possible until His Word is heard around the world; until your mind, in quiet listening, accepts the message that the world must hear to usher in the quiet time of peace.

Today He speaks to you. His Voice awaits your silence, for His Word can not be heard until your mind is quiet for a while, and meaningless desires have been stilled. Await His Word in quiet. There is peace within you to be called upon today, to help make ready your most holy mind to hear the Voice for its Creator speak.

Thank you, Father.