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.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Sunday, July 01, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, June 01, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, May 14, 2012
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.
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Making Explicit the True Meaning of Forgiveness
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.
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 the postings from Monday 9 April through Monday 30 April, 2012.
4/9
You cannot forgive a person, place, or thing. You can forgive only a thought, based on your individual belief system that made the person, place, or thing in the first place.
Forgive what you have made and you are saved. Forgive yourself the thought He wanted this for you. Forgive all thoughts which would oppose the truth of your completion, unity and peace. ACIM, Lesson 99
4/10
In a body in time and space, I tend to make decisions between this and that, hot or cold, peace or conflict, good or bad.
When I choose one over the other in this duality, I am actually bargaining, although I find that when I choose the positive over the negative, I call it Forgiveness.
Bargaining is not Forgiveness. When I stand in a place in my mind, a state of mind of the peace of God, the body and time and space slip away and my dream is replaced by the experience of true Forgiveness, letting go of what never was, resting in God.
4/11
In A Course in Miracles, Jesus refers to often to “God’s plan.” This is not some plan, like World Peace; rather, God’s plan is for each of us to learn to forgive our worldly thoughts.
Salvation (Forgiveness) must reverse the mad belief in separate thoughts and separate bodies, which lead separate lives and go their separate ways. It is your function that you find it here, and that you find it now. Lesson 100
4/12
Obviously, our biggest obstacle to Forgiveness is our identification with our bodies and our thought/images projected from our tiny brains. Jesus tells us, repeatedly, in His Course in Miracles:
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Garfield pretty much sums it up in this cartoon:
http://www.garfield.com/comics/vault.html?yr=2012&addr=120405
4/13
We grow up thinking that our eyes can see and our brains can think. As Jesus makes so clear in His Course in Miracles, this is ludicrous. We make the mistake of investing in this illusion.
And the words “ludicrous” and “illusion” come from the same Latin root, ludere, meaning to play a game. The dream is ludicrous because it’s absurd, and to invest in it is a misleading impression of reality. It’s a deadly game. We can learn to put our toys away.
Forgiveness means to give up the illusion, seeing through it with vision.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of seeing for the limits of the world. Arthur Schopenhauer.
4/14
I walk into a darkened movie theater, sit down, and face a blank screen. The projector comes on, and I enter into the drama of the images on the screen, forgetting where I am, following the images cavorting across the screen, entering fully into the story.
At the end, the lights come on, the credits roll, the screen goes blank. The projector goes off. I stand up and walk out. This is a moment analogous to Forgiveness, letting it all go.
Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. ACIM, T-21.Intro.
That change, that shift, is forgiveness.
4/15
In this world we are encouraged by advertisers to trade stamps for merchandise, to redeem pieces of paper for worldly treasures.
This is a helpful analogy for our redemption. We can redeem our attachment to ego thoughts, and in this act of Forgiveness is our redemption.
There will be great joy in Heaven on your homecoming, and the joy will be yours. For the redeemed son of man is the guiltless Son of God, and to recognize him is your redemption. ACIM.Chapter13.ll.9
4/16
Michael Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to a Three-Peat, winning NBA Titles in ’91, ’92, and ’93. Then he abruptly retired to play professional baseball for two years. When he returned in ’95, he had a difficult time regaining his former top-level playing style, until, one day he said to himself, “I’m going to let the game come to me.” He then led the Bulls to another Three-Peat in ’96, ’97, and ’98.
A friend of mine expressed Jordan's insight this way: “I‘m going to participate fully, remembering that I need do nothing.” In other words, once I, my ego-personality, gets out of the way, I can be guided to do the next thing.
Getting out of the way is an act of forgiveness.
This is one way it is expressed in A Course in Miracles, I will step back and let Him lead the way. Title, Lesson 155.
4/17
In his poem, Revelation, Robert Frost (1874-1963) begins:
We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
Our ego personality constructs, or makes, an identity, apart from the awareness of God’s presence, and we defend it with our meaningless thoughts.
In His Course in Miracles, Jesus expresses it this way:
You have built your whole insane belief system because you think you would be helpless in God’s Presence, and you would save yourself from His Love because you think it would crush you into nothingness. Chapter 13.Section 111.4
Frost finishes the first stanza with these two lines:
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.
And from the Course:
For He will heal every little thought you have kept to hurt you and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God. 7
And when we allow this cleansing to occur, it is an act of forgiveness, and we experience our restoration, our resurrection.
4/18
We tend to believe that our eyes can see and our brains can think. This cherished belief imprisons us.
Samuel T. Coleridge (1777-1834) coined a wonderful phrase that describes being lifted out of this belief:
. . .a willing suspension of disbelief.
While we believe in the reality of the body’s eyes, we disbelieve in the Reality of God. For us, it is always either/or. Coleridge, the Romantic, trusted that poetry could free us, having the power to “awaken the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom.”
Our willingness to suspend our disbelief in God is an act of forgiveness.
4/19
We are such creatures of habit, always tending to believe in the world we project through our body’s eyes. This habit seems ordinary, customary, normal, automatic, "autonomic," natural, universal, and my favorite, taken for “granite,” whoops, taken for granted.
These habits prevent us from receiving God’s gifts of joy and peace, our natural inheritance.
They come to you from God, Who cannot fail to give you what He wills. Yet must there be a place made ready to receive His gifts. They are not welcomed gladly by a mind that has instead received the gifts it made where His belongs, as substitutes for them. ACIM, Lesson 104.1
Forgiveness is letting go of these substitutes, making ready a place in our minds to receive God’s gifts.
4/20
Since the ego always speaks first, we tend to judge a brother, automatically, seeing him as an “enemy.”
Recognizing this, Ho’oponopono, a great Hawaiian healer, practiced forgiveness, using these four simple statements, and these correspond perfectly with passages in A Course in Miracles, Lesson 105, God’s peace and joy are mine.
“I’m sorry.”
Think of your “enemies” a little while, and tell each one, as he occurs to you: My brother, peace and joy I offer you.
“Please forgive me.”
Thus you prepare yourself to recognize God’s gifts to you, and let your mind be free of all that would prevent success today.
“I love you.”
My brother, peace and joy I offer you, that I may have God’s peace and joy as mine.
“Thank you.”
Then bless your brother, thankfully.
In this manner, Ho’oponopono cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients--without ever seeing any of them. He simply studied an inmate's chart and engaged in this process, over and over.
4/21
A little film clip on forgiveness has gone “viral” on the internet. Shawne Duperon, a six-time Emmy Award Winner, produced this clip, featuring a man, Gary Weinstein, who lost his wife and two sons in an auto accident caused by a drunk driver. This clip shows, movingly, Gary’s True Forgiveness, echoing this passage from Lesson110, I am as God created me, in A Course in Miracles.
If you remain as God created you, appearances cannot replace the truth, health cannot turn to sickness, nor can death be substitute for life, or fear for love. All this has not occurred, if you remain as God created you. You need no thought but just this one, to let redemption come to light the world and free it from the past. 3
As Gary, remaining as God created him in his mind, experiencing his true Self, recognizes on the clip, he is truly “the boldest man on the planet.”
To view a trailer for the film and donate to Project Forgive, visit http://www.projectforgive.com.
4/22
In one of his early Lessons in His Course in Miracles, Jesus characterizes the ego’s voice as a raucous shriek. His intent in His Course is to slow us down, so that we can learn to reverse our thinking. The title of Lessons 201-220 is I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
. . .”still.” Hmmmm. Stop a moment. Does that mean, I continue to be as God crated me, or does it mean I am the “stillness” of God’s creation?
The answer is “yes,” and I stopped for a moment.
And in this recognition, all is forgiven.
4/23
Very often in His Course in Miracles, Jesus uses contrast to help us learn to reverse our thinking. For example, the body’s eyes see only their projections, darkness, while seeing with vision enables us to see our peaceful state of mind, light.
The light that makes true vision possible is not the light the body’s eyes behold. It is a state of mind that has become so unified that darkness cannot be perceived at all. Lesson 108.2
And seeing with light is an act of forgiveness.
4/24
I woke up this morning, trying to remember a dream. It seemed that it was painful, but I just couldn’t find it. While reading Lesson 107, Truth will correct all errors in my mind, I came across this sentence:
And so errors disappear to nothingness, returning whence they came. From dust to dust they come and go, for only truth remains.
And I realized that not finding the dream provides me with a perfect analogy. The dream was to my waking up as my errors, my illusions, are to my awakening mind. . .for only truth remains.
This is an act of forgiveness.
4/25
Often, sitting quietly, thoughts will come to mind, and I know that I am being receptive to God’s Voice, the Holy spirit.
When I grab a notebook and write down these thoughts, I am amazed at the fluidity of receptivity finding expression.
If you will listen with an open mind, then you will hear the mighty voice of truth, quiet in power, strong in stillness, and completely certain in Its messages. Lesson 106.2
These messages are a result of forgiveness, making a place in my mind receptive to the Holy Spirit’s Voice.
4/26
The ego’s voice is very loud. In fact, Jesus in His Course in Miracles, uses the metaphor of thunder.
Listen and hear your Father speak to you through His appointed Voice, Which silences the thunder of the meaningless. Lesson 106.2
The noisy mind chatter is thunderous.
And Joel Goldsmith (1892-1964) wrote a book entitled, The Thunder of Silence (1961). In this case, thunder refers to the wonder of the silence.
The metaphor of thunder in both cases is apt when I remember that the word “astonish” comes from the Latin, tonare, meaning “to thunder.”
Silence is astonishing in reference to noise, and noise is astonishing in reference to silence, and in both cases, experiencing silence is an act of forgiveness.
4/27
At lunch today, I overheard this curious sentence: “If you are climbing a ladder and let go, you will spring into Heaven.”
What? It was only later that I got it when I realized it was an analogy, after all, literally, I saw myself crashing to the ground.
The ladder is analogous to our logical, step-by-step, conceptual mind that perpetuates our world made by our thought/images projected from a part of our mind that has no source in reality. So, when I let go of these thoughts, I do spring into Heaven, the only part of my mind that is real.
The transition into Divine sonship brings about that change from faith in the visible to faith in the Infinite Invisible, in that which can never be seen, hear, tasted, touched, smelled. Joel Goldsmith, The Thunder of Silence, p. 21.
Letting go of the ladder is forgiveness.
4/28
I am sitting here on my couch, early in the morning, reading Joel Goldsmith, and I marvel that I am experiencing the peace of God because of Grace. This passage inspired that thought:
Our spiritual adoption comes through a conscious activity within our own consciousness and at a time when we are prepared for that transition, because the transition from humanhood to spiritual sonship is made only by Grace. The Thunder of Silence, p. 19
By Grace, my wife, Christine, and I came across A Course in Miracles in the fall of 1985, and we crossed the threshold of Endeavor Academy on August 7, 1997.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That Saved a wretch like me./
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see.
By the grace of God, we learned to forgive.
4/29
When I sit down at the computer and place my hands on the keyboard, my index fingers, automatically, rest on the home row, largely because of the raised dots on the “f” key and the “j” key, and now the entire keyboards is available to me simply by touch.
This is a helpful reminder that we can sit down, take a breath, and go home, resting in the peace of God, and now all His bounty is available to me in my stillness.
I will be still an instant and go home. Title, Lesson 182.
In this moment of stillness, all is forgiven, all that never was.
4/30
In His Course in Miracles, not only does Jesus use impeccable prose to direct our personal transformation, he also writes sheer poetry. For example, here is a passage from Lesson 109, I rest in God. Please read it slowly, savoring the “s” sounds.
You rest today. And as you close your eyes, sink into stillness. Let these periods of rest and respite reassure your mind that all its frantic fantasies were but the dreams of fever that has passed away. 5
Here Jesus uses a poetic device called consonance, the repetition of consonant sounds. The medium is the message. We are being hushed to rest in God, reassured, shhhh, echoing the song,
Hush little baby, don’t your cry/Momma’s goin’ to sing you a lullaby.
In our resting is forgiveness.
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 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.
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 the postings from Monday 9 April through Monday 30 April, 2012.
4/9
You cannot forgive a person, place, or thing. You can forgive only a thought, based on your individual belief system that made the person, place, or thing in the first place.
Forgive what you have made and you are saved. Forgive yourself the thought He wanted this for you. Forgive all thoughts which would oppose the truth of your completion, unity and peace. ACIM, Lesson 99
4/10
In a body in time and space, I tend to make decisions between this and that, hot or cold, peace or conflict, good or bad.
When I choose one over the other in this duality, I am actually bargaining, although I find that when I choose the positive over the negative, I call it Forgiveness.
Bargaining is not Forgiveness. When I stand in a place in my mind, a state of mind of the peace of God, the body and time and space slip away and my dream is replaced by the experience of true Forgiveness, letting go of what never was, resting in God.
4/11
In A Course in Miracles, Jesus refers to often to “God’s plan.” This is not some plan, like World Peace; rather, God’s plan is for each of us to learn to forgive our worldly thoughts.
Salvation (Forgiveness) must reverse the mad belief in separate thoughts and separate bodies, which lead separate lives and go their separate ways. It is your function that you find it here, and that you find it now. Lesson 100
4/12
Obviously, our biggest obstacle to Forgiveness is our identification with our bodies and our thought/images projected from our tiny brains. Jesus tells us, repeatedly, in His Course in Miracles:
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
Garfield pretty much sums it up in this cartoon:
http://www.garfield.com/comics/vault.html?yr=2012&addr=120405
4/13
We grow up thinking that our eyes can see and our brains can think. As Jesus makes so clear in His Course in Miracles, this is ludicrous. We make the mistake of investing in this illusion.
And the words “ludicrous” and “illusion” come from the same Latin root, ludere, meaning to play a game. The dream is ludicrous because it’s absurd, and to invest in it is a misleading impression of reality. It’s a deadly game. We can learn to put our toys away.
Forgiveness means to give up the illusion, seeing through it with vision.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of seeing for the limits of the world. Arthur Schopenhauer.
4/14
I walk into a darkened movie theater, sit down, and face a blank screen. The projector comes on, and I enter into the drama of the images on the screen, forgetting where I am, following the images cavorting across the screen, entering fully into the story.
At the end, the lights come on, the credits roll, the screen goes blank. The projector goes off. I stand up and walk out. This is a moment analogous to Forgiveness, letting it all go.
Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. ACIM, T-21.Intro.
That change, that shift, is forgiveness.
4/15
In this world we are encouraged by advertisers to trade stamps for merchandise, to redeem pieces of paper for worldly treasures.
This is a helpful analogy for our redemption. We can redeem our attachment to ego thoughts, and in this act of Forgiveness is our redemption.
There will be great joy in Heaven on your homecoming, and the joy will be yours. For the redeemed son of man is the guiltless Son of God, and to recognize him is your redemption. ACIM.Chapter13.ll.9
4/16
Michael Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to a Three-Peat, winning NBA Titles in ’91, ’92, and ’93. Then he abruptly retired to play professional baseball for two years. When he returned in ’95, he had a difficult time regaining his former top-level playing style, until, one day he said to himself, “I’m going to let the game come to me.” He then led the Bulls to another Three-Peat in ’96, ’97, and ’98.
A friend of mine expressed Jordan's insight this way: “I‘m going to participate fully, remembering that I need do nothing.” In other words, once I, my ego-personality, gets out of the way, I can be guided to do the next thing.
Getting out of the way is an act of forgiveness.
This is one way it is expressed in A Course in Miracles, I will step back and let Him lead the way. Title, Lesson 155.
4/17
In his poem, Revelation, Robert Frost (1874-1963) begins:
We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
Our ego personality constructs, or makes, an identity, apart from the awareness of God’s presence, and we defend it with our meaningless thoughts.
In His Course in Miracles, Jesus expresses it this way:
You have built your whole insane belief system because you think you would be helpless in God’s Presence, and you would save yourself from His Love because you think it would crush you into nothingness. Chapter 13.Section 111.4
Frost finishes the first stanza with these two lines:
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.
And from the Course:
For He will heal every little thought you have kept to hurt you and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God. 7
And when we allow this cleansing to occur, it is an act of forgiveness, and we experience our restoration, our resurrection.
4/18
We tend to believe that our eyes can see and our brains can think. This cherished belief imprisons us.
Samuel T. Coleridge (1777-1834) coined a wonderful phrase that describes being lifted out of this belief:
. . .a willing suspension of disbelief.
While we believe in the reality of the body’s eyes, we disbelieve in the Reality of God. For us, it is always either/or. Coleridge, the Romantic, trusted that poetry could free us, having the power to “awaken the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom.”
Our willingness to suspend our disbelief in God is an act of forgiveness.
4/19
We are such creatures of habit, always tending to believe in the world we project through our body’s eyes. This habit seems ordinary, customary, normal, automatic, "autonomic," natural, universal, and my favorite, taken for “granite,” whoops, taken for granted.
These habits prevent us from receiving God’s gifts of joy and peace, our natural inheritance.
They come to you from God, Who cannot fail to give you what He wills. Yet must there be a place made ready to receive His gifts. They are not welcomed gladly by a mind that has instead received the gifts it made where His belongs, as substitutes for them. ACIM, Lesson 104.1
Forgiveness is letting go of these substitutes, making ready a place in our minds to receive God’s gifts.
4/20
Since the ego always speaks first, we tend to judge a brother, automatically, seeing him as an “enemy.”
Recognizing this, Ho’oponopono, a great Hawaiian healer, practiced forgiveness, using these four simple statements, and these correspond perfectly with passages in A Course in Miracles, Lesson 105, God’s peace and joy are mine.
“I’m sorry.”
Think of your “enemies” a little while, and tell each one, as he occurs to you: My brother, peace and joy I offer you.
“Please forgive me.”
Thus you prepare yourself to recognize God’s gifts to you, and let your mind be free of all that would prevent success today.
“I love you.”
My brother, peace and joy I offer you, that I may have God’s peace and joy as mine.
“Thank you.”
Then bless your brother, thankfully.
In this manner, Ho’oponopono cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients--without ever seeing any of them. He simply studied an inmate's chart and engaged in this process, over and over.
4/21
A little film clip on forgiveness has gone “viral” on the internet. Shawne Duperon, a six-time Emmy Award Winner, produced this clip, featuring a man, Gary Weinstein, who lost his wife and two sons in an auto accident caused by a drunk driver. This clip shows, movingly, Gary’s True Forgiveness, echoing this passage from Lesson110, I am as God created me, in A Course in Miracles.
If you remain as God created you, appearances cannot replace the truth, health cannot turn to sickness, nor can death be substitute for life, or fear for love. All this has not occurred, if you remain as God created you. You need no thought but just this one, to let redemption come to light the world and free it from the past. 3
As Gary, remaining as God created him in his mind, experiencing his true Self, recognizes on the clip, he is truly “the boldest man on the planet.”
To view a trailer for the film and donate to Project Forgive, visit http://www.projectforgive.com.
4/22
In one of his early Lessons in His Course in Miracles, Jesus characterizes the ego’s voice as a raucous shriek. His intent in His Course is to slow us down, so that we can learn to reverse our thinking. The title of Lessons 201-220 is I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
. . .”still.” Hmmmm. Stop a moment. Does that mean, I continue to be as God crated me, or does it mean I am the “stillness” of God’s creation?
The answer is “yes,” and I stopped for a moment.
And in this recognition, all is forgiven.
4/23
Very often in His Course in Miracles, Jesus uses contrast to help us learn to reverse our thinking. For example, the body’s eyes see only their projections, darkness, while seeing with vision enables us to see our peaceful state of mind, light.
The light that makes true vision possible is not the light the body’s eyes behold. It is a state of mind that has become so unified that darkness cannot be perceived at all. Lesson 108.2
And seeing with light is an act of forgiveness.
4/24
I woke up this morning, trying to remember a dream. It seemed that it was painful, but I just couldn’t find it. While reading Lesson 107, Truth will correct all errors in my mind, I came across this sentence:
And so errors disappear to nothingness, returning whence they came. From dust to dust they come and go, for only truth remains.
And I realized that not finding the dream provides me with a perfect analogy. The dream was to my waking up as my errors, my illusions, are to my awakening mind. . .for only truth remains.
This is an act of forgiveness.
4/25
Often, sitting quietly, thoughts will come to mind, and I know that I am being receptive to God’s Voice, the Holy spirit.
When I grab a notebook and write down these thoughts, I am amazed at the fluidity of receptivity finding expression.
If you will listen with an open mind, then you will hear the mighty voice of truth, quiet in power, strong in stillness, and completely certain in Its messages. Lesson 106.2
These messages are a result of forgiveness, making a place in my mind receptive to the Holy Spirit’s Voice.
4/26
The ego’s voice is very loud. In fact, Jesus in His Course in Miracles, uses the metaphor of thunder.
Listen and hear your Father speak to you through His appointed Voice, Which silences the thunder of the meaningless. Lesson 106.2
The noisy mind chatter is thunderous.
And Joel Goldsmith (1892-1964) wrote a book entitled, The Thunder of Silence (1961). In this case, thunder refers to the wonder of the silence.
The metaphor of thunder in both cases is apt when I remember that the word “astonish” comes from the Latin, tonare, meaning “to thunder.”
Silence is astonishing in reference to noise, and noise is astonishing in reference to silence, and in both cases, experiencing silence is an act of forgiveness.
4/27
At lunch today, I overheard this curious sentence: “If you are climbing a ladder and let go, you will spring into Heaven.”
What? It was only later that I got it when I realized it was an analogy, after all, literally, I saw myself crashing to the ground.
The ladder is analogous to our logical, step-by-step, conceptual mind that perpetuates our world made by our thought/images projected from a part of our mind that has no source in reality. So, when I let go of these thoughts, I do spring into Heaven, the only part of my mind that is real.
The transition into Divine sonship brings about that change from faith in the visible to faith in the Infinite Invisible, in that which can never be seen, hear, tasted, touched, smelled. Joel Goldsmith, The Thunder of Silence, p. 21.
Letting go of the ladder is forgiveness.
4/28
I am sitting here on my couch, early in the morning, reading Joel Goldsmith, and I marvel that I am experiencing the peace of God because of Grace. This passage inspired that thought:
Our spiritual adoption comes through a conscious activity within our own consciousness and at a time when we are prepared for that transition, because the transition from humanhood to spiritual sonship is made only by Grace. The Thunder of Silence, p. 19
By Grace, my wife, Christine, and I came across A Course in Miracles in the fall of 1985, and we crossed the threshold of Endeavor Academy on August 7, 1997.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That Saved a wretch like me./
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see.
By the grace of God, we learned to forgive.
4/29
When I sit down at the computer and place my hands on the keyboard, my index fingers, automatically, rest on the home row, largely because of the raised dots on the “f” key and the “j” key, and now the entire keyboards is available to me simply by touch.
This is a helpful reminder that we can sit down, take a breath, and go home, resting in the peace of God, and now all His bounty is available to me in my stillness.
I will be still an instant and go home. Title, Lesson 182.
In this moment of stillness, all is forgiven, all that never was.
4/30
In His Course in Miracles, not only does Jesus use impeccable prose to direct our personal transformation, he also writes sheer poetry. For example, here is a passage from Lesson 109, I rest in God. Please read it slowly, savoring the “s” sounds.
You rest today. And as you close your eyes, sink into stillness. Let these periods of rest and respite reassure your mind that all its frantic fantasies were but the dreams of fever that has passed away. 5
Here Jesus uses a poetic device called consonance, the repetition of consonant sounds. The medium is the message. We are being hushed to rest in God, reassured, shhhh, echoing the song,
Hush little baby, don’t your cry/Momma’s goin’ to sing you a lullaby.
In our resting is forgiveness.
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
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