tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21940169695752995932024-02-08T11:23:48.160-08:00Raj Channeled Material & ACIMThis blog is dedicated to Raj Pur channeled material through Paul Tuttle. Also there will be ACIM material such as lessons from ACIM workbook.Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.comBlogger142125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-157392336980038422010-09-16T10:24:00.001-07:002010-09-16T10:24:54.656-07:00Message from the Divine! Raj<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">You must make roon for the constant flow, for the constant source that IS constant to be FELT by you. Do whatever it takes to establish this as a habit, not by a sheer act of will, but rather as an act of willingNESS. </span> <br />
<div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"> Really, that is all it takes. It is that simple. Willingness to pause from the knee jerk habit and listen as if for a song you know you really do know. In each and every interaction, the song is playing. Do you hear it? Do you let it comfort and soothe you? Are you relaying it's harmony and melody to all around you?</div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px;">I say this because it is in the willingness to embody…to receive and embody this resonance, that you broadcast it. And why do you do this? To be, as I said last time, a spokesperson for God? No. You do this because it is utterly natural to you to do this. And it's receipt and it's broadcast constitute LOVE. Then life becomes not a flat character play, where the words and actions are the focal point, but a living, breathing, vitally alive experience of participation, we will say, with this resonance…AS you witness to it.</div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px;">So how do you do this? …the mind wants to know, to plan, to strategize here <img align="middle" src="http://www.nwffacim.org/tgp/images/emoticons/smile.gif" />. It is simple. You pay attention. You are willing to let your attention be trained by the Holy Spirit what to pay attention to, and how to pay attention. As you do, the Holy Spirit expands your innate capacity to feel Reality. Like an accordion, it, your attention, spreads out. It feels spacious. One could say, infinite.</div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px;">We are not talking about in meditation here, though you are all used to this expansive feeling in that instance. We are talking about EACH moment you are in, including reading this right now. </div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px;">As you are willing for the Holy Spirit, which as I have said is nothing more than your right mind, to inform you-as in information for the more that is present as that moment that thinking has habitually categorized and tucked neatly away as: "Oh, I know what this is!"….as you do this, as you are willing to be shown and schooled in not just how but to actually DO IT, you will find your attention to be gathering "other" information. </div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px;">You will also find that this other information is not information to file away, to compare and contrast with other bits of information. It is instead a nourishing experience in and of itself. It is information not about something or something else, but is itself, an experience of that one or that thing that is quite a bit more direct than you have found yourself experiencing in the past, prior to this, prior to the willingness to partner with and lean into this constant association with the Holy Spirit. It is in this union, in this willingness for union, that the unification of your mind, your whole mindedness, has a chance of asserting itself, which I said last time NEEDS to happen. </div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px;">It is inevitable that the Reality that confronts you everyday will be seen, experienced and recognized. The Holy Spirit, felt tangibly, offers a bit of grace and ease with this transition. Cultivate the active willingness for this partnering and become accustomed to the feel, the Presence that not only comforts, but informs, what is right in front of you.</div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px;">It is in this active, alive, constant feeling of being sourced, that your true nature and identity reveals itself to you…not as a thing, but as a verb…a constant present presence that witnesses, embodies and expresses LIFE.</div><div style="font: 12px Helvetica; margin: 0px;"><br />
</div>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-8426593114727715392010-08-21T20:52:00.000-07:002010-08-21T20:52:08.882-07:00RAJ/Jesus Explains Healing and Physical Regeneration<div><h2 class="uiHeaderTitle"><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino;">RAJ/Jesus Explains Healing and Physical Regeneration</span></h2></div><div class="clearfix"><div class="uiHeaderSubActions rfloat"><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">QUESTION: Boy, I don't need to ask anything because everything has been so marvelous for me this last year and a half. And it seems that all I need to do is to wish for something and it's there before I even know about it. And physically, I'm having a little bit more problems. I can usually be able to help with a tooth that is hurting or something else. But I have problems with my eyes and I can't seem to get too much help on that. And I am wondering, are we just going to continue the way we are, or what do I do? Do I just accept it?</span></div></div><span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">ANSWER: Absolutely not! Never just accept limitation, whether it is physical or in terms of a relationship or finances, etc. Again, "It is the Father's Good Pleasure to give you The Kingdom." Absolutely none of what constitutes your perfection in all areas is withheld from you. It is your birthright to be experiencing It.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">Now, and this is important for everyone, do not let your frustration at not experiencing it occupy your thought to the point that you are distracted from giving permission for your perfection to be experienced; giving permission for your healing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">Now, I simply encourage you, each night, just before you fall asleep, to ask your Healing Team, to address the issue with your eyes, ask for a Healing Session during the night, while you are sleeping. Then, during the daytime, when you feel yourself being bothered relative to your eyes, or even if just the thought comes to you, acknowledge that perfect vision is your Birthright.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">Remind yourself that it is the intent of your body to identify the presence of you, perfectly! That it is therefore the intent of your eyes to perform their function, perfectly. That is their intent. That is their inclination, and by acknowledging it, you engage in a little bit of re-programming of your mind-sets in acknowledging that it is your birthright to experience your perfection, physically.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">And indeed, it is the intent of your body to identify you perfectly. You are beginning to come into alignment with the Truth. At least relative to a your thinking, you are coming into alignment with the Truth. And that is what allows for the penetration of the Truth to occur and regenerate. Now it is absolutely appropriate to any of you to assume that because you are a certain age, simply means you have traveled around the Sun a certain number of times.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">It is absolutely inappropriate for you to believe or accept the idea that because you are a certain age, there are certain things you must just accept: That you must just realize that you can't do what you used to do and that you shouldn't even bother to try anymore.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">The fullness of the Expression of God that constitutes your identity and your individuality and your existence is as fresh and new today as it was when you were two hours old. God isn't running down. God's Self-Expression isn't becoming weakened. God Is still Omnipotent, And Omnipresent. And any limitation that one is feeling is invalid and illusory.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">But one does, through the use of Imagination, begin to embrace mis-taken concepts. And then, that one begins to behave according to the concepts. All age problems are not old age problems. There are teenagers who are suffering from being teenagers. And there are those who are in there forties, who are suffering from "mid life crisis," and there are those who are 24 or 25 who are not yet feeling a strong sense of their presence and substantiality.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">They're not, in their mind, quite grown up and they're not kids anymore. And that is a problem, an age problem. But whether you are 14, or whether you are 80, are whether you are 40. In other words, whether you have traveled around the sun 14 times or 80 times, having experienced a little bit of space travel, you are always the full representation of Mind, the full representation or manifestation of God expressing HimSelf/HerSelf.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">The Creation of God that constitutes your conscious experience of Being, is forever new and forever vital. And those who, getting into their "twilight years," which is just another ridiculous concept, who put off living because there's not enough time left to complete any of it, will find themselves, after they have passed on, as I said yesterday, with the same opportunities to continue to engage in Life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">And I will tell you, you will not suddenly find yourself to be a babe again, with what might seem to be a natural feeling of having a whole life ahead of you with freshness. You will find yourself experiencing yourself just as you were before you passed on. And then you will say, wow, I'm not going to postpone living any more. Why didn't I realize that 20 years ago, when I was 60.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">The moment you begin to say, "I guess I'm just going to have to put up with my limitations," again, whether you're 60 or 20, you are simply succumbing to a mis-perception, an aberration of Awareness. And if you indulge in it, you begin to undermine your sense of your own integrity, both physically and mentally. And you begin to squelch the Life Force within you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">The Life Force is there. The ideas come to engage in Life, but then the intellect and the conditioning comes in and says, "Well, I never saw anybody else do this. Of course Aunt Agnes would slide down a bannister at 85 years old, but she was eccentric." I'll tell you, Aunt Agnes was engaging in life and that's why she had the spunk. Because she didn't squelch herself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">Remember that. If the Father has withheld nothing of What He Is from His Self Expression, meaning you, then the vitality and vigor of Life are forever present for you to embody. And generally speaking, as a youngster, you dared to embody it without hesitation. But as you became educated and you learned how to be intelligent, you reasoned yourself right out of the spontaneous willingness to be the embodiment of Life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">And that is what I am here to encourage you to stop doing. Stop withdrawing the permission to experience your perfection, your wholeness and your vitality no matter what age you are.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">Now, if you were to pass on at this very instant, you would find yourself still appearing just as you appear. Believing what you believed just a moment ago, except that where you experienced some doubt as to whether you will exist at the moment after death, that ignorance will be annihilated by the fact that you find yourself still existing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">And so the fear of death will be gone. That is the one belief that is altered, annihilated by virtue of the experience of passing on. Now if this were to happen at this moment, you would find others who went on before you, if they had not reincarnated in the meantime, those who you remember as being elderly, who are not manifesting elderlyness, you will find that they have experienced regeneration of their bodies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">It is because they gave up the inclination to just accept where they were. They gave up the inclination to just put up with old age and because also, they had the example of others who went before them who were manifesting more youth, who were physically regenerated.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">Now at the moment, you don't have many examples of physical regeneration. There are healings here and there with young people and it is easy to say, well is because they are young and their body has an active immune system. And also, perhaps, they were more spiritually alert and that allowed for regenerative healing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">But those are all just excuses, for not embodying regenerative processes right now. And I cannot say it too often, Now is the accepted time. Don't wait to engage in Waking Up after you pass on, don't wait to engage in re-embracing Life after you have passed on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">Start giving permission today! No matter what your seeming age, give permission for the perfect Self Expression of the Father/Mother God, to be embodied right where you are. Give permission for the ever new expression of the Father that appears as you to be physically embodied. Let the perfection of your Being come forth. And I will encourage all of you who have a meta-physical studious orientation, not to turn this into an intellectual process of work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">I encourage you with a certain abandonment and freedom and lightness, to just give permission to yourself to let what the Father Is, fill you and become embodied for no good reason at all other than it expresses that which is essentially natural and normal to divine existence which is the only existence you have to experience, unless you choose to abide in your faulty imagination. And then you will seem to experience less, in that which is Divinely Natural.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">Your Birthright doesn't have to be earned. You do not have to become worthy of God's Love. And you do not have to become worthy of His Will for you, which is for you to experience yourself in your right Mind with a clear undistorted perception of your perfect body and with the capacity to recognize your world as God is Being It, rather than as your limited perception allows you to see It.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">Literally, we are not talking about something that you must gain, that is not natural to you and which therefore requires some practice or exercise, some spiritual exercise or some practice of spiritually correct thinking, in order for you to gain this thing that is not fundamentally natural to you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">The children who are being born today, are being born into an environment and a social setting that is far more spiritually enlightened than society of a thousand y ears ago. How is it that they are able to cope without having had to go through all of the last 1000 years and the social changes that were worked through, by those who were making the social changes?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">It is because they don't come in with pre-conceptions. And they simply embrace what Is. They give permission for there to be cars and airplanes, they give permission for there to be not only color television, but little tiny color televisions, with VCR's that fit in the palm of your hand. They don't have to go through getting used to the wonders of radio and talking pictures, and the development of color film, and the development of black and white TV, etc., in order to be able to embrace this marvel of technology called a portable, handheld color TV, VCR. Likewise, it truly is unnecessary for everyone to go through meta-physical processes of intellect and reasoning in order to deserve to see perfectly. . . or in order to deserve to experience physical regeneration. There simply needs to be the child like willingness to give permission to embrace what is already your Birthright to be experiencing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">And this is the part of the process of yielding, yielding into your Birthright. Everyone is going to yield into the experience of reality, or the Kingdom Of Heaven. Everyone simply needs to say, Yes! to their fulfillment, and fulfillment does include the experience of regeneration and healing whether you're 80 or 40, or 25, or 14.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">And that's the Truth.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">QUESTION: Thank You.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia,palatino; font-size: small;">ANSWER: You are indeed, welcome.</span><br />
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<em><span style="font-family: times new roman,times; font-size: small;">~excerpt from Gathering with Raj in Carmel 1990</span></em>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-60623985813916081092010-08-16T13:43:00.000-07:002010-08-16T13:43:31.630-07:00RAJ Q&A VERMONT 1992<span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>RAJ Q&A VERMONT 1992 </strong></span></span><div dir="ltr"><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>QUESTION:</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>I have a contrasting feeling about that.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>For the last year I have been discovering the person inside of me.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And the comfort of being with a group of people who I know are seeking that divinity, does not mean so much of sharing and but listening and of observing myself, and the gentle nature that I feel from being around people in less loquacious ways.</strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Raj, my question in my search during this last year, and all of the wonderful things that I have discovered that makes me feel a part of the universe, and of the word “service” has emerged a number of times, and the feeling of service has emerged, and as I listen to definitions of service and exploring what it might mean and how I might be as a person in service.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And incidentally, the Mother Theresa film this evening I feel...</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>I have applied to the Peace Corp and this is a dream that I have had since 1962, to be a part of that.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And so my question to you is:</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>if you see me in that role?</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And if I feel it’s a logical extension and I would simply like some collaboration that you might give me on that path of service?</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And maybe if it’s not the Peace Corp, it’s something else.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>But I would like some direction about the meaning and your interpretation of being of service.</strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>ANSWER:</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>I will say first of all that it is a marvelously congruent next step for you.</strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Service... Servant...</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>If you wish to serve your fellow man, you had better not try to serve your fellow man, else your fellow man will eat you up.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>You will sacrifice yourself.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>You will be what you serve.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>If you wish to be of service to your fellow man, you had better be in touch with what you Are.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>I will soften that a little bit.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>If you wish to serve your fellow man, then I encourage you to desire to be in touch with your Self, with a capital “S”.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>I encourage you to daily say, “Today I will make no decisions by myself.”</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>I encourage you to join, not with your fellow man whom you would serve, but to join with that ballast in you that keeps you in balance.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And that ballast in you is the Holy Spirit (the disowned part of yourself that is held in trust, while you think that you are just an ego).</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>When you lean into, and depend upon, and yield to the Holy Spirit, you are integrating your limited sense of yourself with the wholeness of what you Are.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And the wholeness of what you Are is not in anyway separate from everything else.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And so in that experience of your wholeness you literally feel your oneness with everything.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And without a false sense of separation that creates fear, there is the peaceful perspective of that which is utterly appropriate in your actions.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And when you behave in the world from that place, everyone will say you have served them.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>If you try to serve your fellow man without doing this, your fellow man will recognize your willingness to give your power away, and they will take charge of you, and you will be the puppet at the end of the strings that are attached to their fingers.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And then you will say in all misery, “There must not be a God, because when I have decided to express love to my fellow man, I have just been used.”</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>That’s because the fundamental, basic, initial, connectedness with your Being, and the joining with the Holy Spirit that that means, didn’t occur first, providing the ballast or balance that allows you to be truly appropriate in transformational ways.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>This might sound like a complicated task, or a big hurdle to be able to get over, and maybe it will take you more time to get over it than you have before you should tackle joining the Peace Corps.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>No.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Join it, today, tomorrow, while you are in the groups.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Be with your fellow man and woman with the desire to know what the Father’s Will is, with a desire to have a perspective that is not based on what you perceive their needs to be, but based upon what you feel impelled by the Holy Spirit to do.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Your desire to participate in the Peace Corps, came as a result of listening.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>It is an evidence of emerging clarity.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And so, it is appropriate for you to take that step.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>But just remember each step of the way, listen to the Holy Spirit.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Paul would become apparently utterly useless if he was really trying to help you, and if you became the focal point, and if he cared what you thought about his “help.”</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>But his attention is with me, and he is expressing what is unfolding in his conscious experience as a result of that listening.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And then, you might say, that as a result of that you feel unity, you feel touched, you feel heard, you feel embraced, and you are likely to say that Paul is very helpful.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And yet as I said earlier, he has been out of control for ten years, and has no sense of having accomplished a task of being helpful.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Because, if you want to know the truth, he doesn’t even have any idea of why what I might be saying to you would be helpful.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>But it doesn’t change the fact that he is experiencing meaningfulness within himself, and everyone else is experiencing meaningfulness, and therefore there is fulfillment—obvious fulfillment.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>I have said it before and I will say it again:</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>The most direct route to your fellow man is right through the center of your Being.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>So if you want to help your fellow man, go into that place in you where you can experience your divinity, and in that experience have the inescapable recognition that your experience of your divinity proves the divinity of your fellow man.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And then, just as with Mother Theresa, you may look at anyone in any apparent condition and see the Christ.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And in seeing the Christ, be that act of love that I have described as the recognition of that which is Real, with a capital “R”, in each and everything—which is transformational, which is the leaven that leavens the whole lump.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Enjoy this new adventure, but don’t become so excited with its novelty that you stop experiencing it from your best centered, connected place.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>That’s the end of the answer.</strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>QUESTION:</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>I have a follow up on that.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>There seems to be a conflict between being so self-centered, and then being interested in other people.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And you described my problem very clearly in your answer to me.</strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>ANSWER:</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>That was a description of the solution.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>QUESTION:</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Well, it’s also the problem.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>All right I’ve written it down, so I’ll review what you said as my solution.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Thank you.</strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>ANSWER:</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Indeed, you have illustrated a wonderful point.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Everyone, at sometime or another, arrives at a point of saying in all frustration and despair, “I can’t do this.”</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And you judge yourself and you feel miserable and your words have stated the problem.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And then in the moment of your deepest despair you realize that that statement is the answer—“I can’t do this.”</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And you feel the relief that you don’t have to continue trying to do what you can’t do.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>The realization that you really can’t do it is a revelation that you had been bound by your concepts to do something that it was not reasonable for you to do, and your conditioning continued to tell you that it was reasonable.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And the moment you say, “I can’t do it,” and you feel the relief of it, your world that expected you to do it, or supported your belief that you ought to be able to do it, will reconfigure and no longer support your belief that you ought to be able to do it.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And it will confirm that you cannot do it, and that the world doesn’t expect you to do it.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>It is a truth, “To thine own self be true, and it must”—it doesn’t say it might or it ought to—“it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>What is the gift you have to give?</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>What is the gift that any of you have to give?</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>You exist.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>There is a reason for your existing.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>The reason for your existing is to make the gift of who you Are—the Individualized, but unlimited expression of God.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>How can you make the gift of your Self if you don’t know who you Are?</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>It is selfish to make a gift when your hands are empty.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>It is selfish to ignore yourself for the sake of others and their perceived needs, which they will be most happy to convince you of and prove to you are real—for which there is no solution.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>They will be happy to convince you of that.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>You know why it is selfish to serve others?</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Because in ignoring yourself you don’t make the gift of you, and it would seem that some aspect of God is unexpressed.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>You are withholding God from expression when you are trying to be what someone else needs you to be.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And yet, if you do care enough to be what the ego calls selfish and you do yield enough, you do sacrifice the masks and the misperceptions and the false definitions of yourself, and you do begin to feel who you essentially Are, which means to feel the presence of God.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Then what will happen where you are is the Movement of God.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And it will be congruent and it will be transformational and everyone will say, “You have been most helpful.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>You have changed my life.”</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And you will say, “But I didn’t do anything.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>I don’t know why you would say that.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>But I am very happy for you.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And I thank you for loving me in your expression of gratitude.”</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 14pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>The ego is a hundred and eighty degrees out of sync, that’s why it’s a liar and the father of the lie.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>It says the exact opposite of the truth.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>And it says to be loving you must extend yourself to others at your own expense.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Martyrdom is the sign of great spirituality.</strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong> </strong></span></span><span style="color: #002060; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong>That’s the end of the answer.</strong></span></span></div></div>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-55367478028225671952010-08-12T11:19:00.000-07:002010-08-12T11:19:47.098-07:00"You are the only dynamic point of transformation that exist."Do you know that you are a more efficacious voice for transformation in the world than any book, teaching, philosophy or religion? In fact, you are the only dynamic point of transformation that exists!<br />
<br />
Teachings and thought systems have not the capacity to embody Love, and only Love embodied is transformational. How to be the presence of Love cannot be taught. Therefore, all that any religious or spiritual teaching worth its salt can do is point you in the direction of that inner point of honest struggle and decision, wherein you yield to God - where you do more than say, "Thy will be done," and actually set aside your own in favor of His.<br />
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Do not ask any book or teaching to reveal God to you. It is impossible. To revere a document or a set of words will only distract you from the reverence due the altar in your heart where We await you, and your freedom from illusion, too. It is so easy, but preoccupation with external props can make it difficult if they are used improperly. Do not make gods of them and bow to them. Do not revolve your life around their words, but let the words inspire you to go within. From there release the words that helped you to that inner place, and open up to Him in all simplicity, humility. Don't hold Him to the words that brought you to the point of feeling His sweet love for you, just as you would not hold Him to the suffering it sometimes takes to bring you to your knees and open up your heart.<br />
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Whatever brings you to that place within where all the bullshit stops, be grateful for. But do not idolize the means by which your honesty came into play and opened up the door to your Inheritance. Once opened, you will be the Love that can't be taught, and transformation will occur, for you will be about your Father's business, hopelessly original in everything you say and do and be.<br />
<br />
Rajpur<br />
KingstonPhoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-68916836165529872782010-07-07T08:03:00.000-07:002010-07-07T08:03:43.056-07:00ACIM Lesson 188 "The peace of God is shining in me now.<h3>Lesson 188<br />
(beginning day 188)<br />
</h3><b>The peace of God is shining in me now.</b><br />
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Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home.<br />
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This light can not be lost. Why wait to find it in the future, or believe it has been lost already, or was never there? It can so easily be looked upon that arguments which prove it is not there become ridiculous. Who can deny the presence of what he beholds in him? It is not difficult to look within, for there all vision starts. There is no sight, be it of dreams or from a truer Source, that is not but the shadow of the seen through inward vision. There perception starts, and there it ends. It has no source but this.<br />
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The peace of God is shining in you now, and from your heart extends around the world. It pauses to caress each living thing, and leaves a blessing with it that remains forever and forever. What it gives must be eternal. It removes all thoughts of the ephemeral and valueless. It brings renewal to all tired hearts, and lights all vision as it passes by. All of its gifts are given everyone, and everyone unites in giving thanks to you who give, and you who have received.<br />
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The shining in your mind reminds the world of what it has forgotten, and the world restores the memory to you as well. From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. To you, the giver of the gift, does God Himself give thanks. And in His blessing does the light in you shine brighter, adding to the gifts you have to offer to the world.<br />
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The peace of God can never be contained. Who recognizes it within himself must give it. And the means for giving it are in his understanding. He forgives because he recognized the truth in him. The peace of God is shining in you now, and in all living things. In quietness is it acknowledged universally. For what your inward vision looks upon is your perception of the universe.<br />
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Sit quietly and close your eyes. The light within you is sufficient. It alone has power to give the gift of sight to you. Exclude the outer world, and let your thoughts fly to the peace within. They know the way. For honest thoughts, untainted by the dream of worldly things outside yourself, become the holy messengers of God Himself.<br />
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These thoughts you think with Him. They recognize their home. And they point surely to their Source, Where God the Father and the Son are One. God's peace is shining on them, but they must remain with you as well, for they were born within your mind, as yours was born in God's. They lead you back to peace, from where they came but to remind you how you must return.<br />
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They heed your Father's Voice when you refuse to listen. And they urge you gently to accept His Word for what you are, instead of fantasies and shadows. They remind you that you are the co-creator of all things that live. For as the peace of God is shining in you, it must shine on them.<br />
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We practice coming nearer to the light in us today. We take our wandering thoughts, and gently bring them back to where they fall in line with all the thoughts we share with God. We will not let them stray. We let the light within our minds direct them to come home. We have betrayed them, ordering that they depart from us. But now we call them back, and wash them clean of strange desires and disordered wishes. We restore to them the holiness of their inheritance.<br />
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Thus are our minds restored with them, and we acknowledge that the peace of God still shines in us, and from us to all living things that share our life. We will forgive them all, absolving all the world from what we thought it did to us. For it is we who make the world as we would have it. Now we choose that it be innocent, devoid of sin and open to salvation. And we lay our saving blessing on it, as we say:<br />
<br />
<br />
The peace of God is shining in me now.<br />
<br />
Let all things shine upon me in that peace, And let me bless them with the light in me.<br />
<br />
<h3><center><br />
</center></h3>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-50348026235347184202010-07-06T07:22:00.000-07:002010-07-06T07:22:37.978-07:00ACIM Lesson 187 "I bless the world because I bless myself."<h3>Lesson 187<br />
(beginning day 187)<br />
</h3><b>I bless the world because I bless myself.</b><br />
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No one can give unless he has. In fact, giving is proof of having. We have made this point before. What seems to make it hard to credit is not this. No one can doubt that you must first possess what you would give. It is the second phase on which the world and true perception differ. Having had and given, then the world asserts that you have lost what you possessed. The truth maintains that giving will increase what you possess.<br />
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How is this possible? For it is sure that if you give a finite thing away, your body's eyes will not perceive it yours. Yet we have learned that things but represent the thoughts that make them. And you do not lack for proof that when you give ideas away, you strengthen them in your own mind. Perhaps the form in which the thought seems to appear is changed in giving. Yet it must return to him who gives. Nor can the form it takes be less acceptable. It must be more.<br />
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Ideas must first belong to you, before you give them. If you are to save the world, you first accept salvation for yourself. But you will not believe that this is done until you see the miracles it brings to everyone you look upon. Herein is the idea of giving clarified and given meaning. Now you can perceive that by your giving is your store increased.<br />
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Protect all things you value by the act of giving them away, and you are sure that you will never lose them. What you thought you did not have is thereby proven yours. Yet value not its form. For this will change and grow unrecognizable in time, however much you try to keep it safe. No form endures. It is the thought behind the form of things that lives unchangeable.<br />
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Give gladly. You can only gain thereby. The thought remains, and grows in strength as it is reinforced by giving. Thoughts extend as they are shared, for they can not be lost. There is no giver and receiver in the sense the world conceives of them. There is a giver who retains; another who will give as well. And both must gain in this exchange, for each will have the thought in form most helpful to him. What he seems to lose is always something he will value less than what will surely be returned to him.<br />
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Never forget you give but to yourself. Who understands what giving means must laugh at the idea of sacrifice. Nor can he fail to recognize the many forms which sacrifice may take. He laughs as well at pain and loss, at sickness and at grief, at poverty, starvation and at death. He recognizes sacrifice remains the one idea that stands behind them all, and in his gentle laughter are they healed.<br />
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Illusion recognized must disappear. Accept not suffering, and you remove the thought of suffering. Your blessing lies on everyone who suffers, when you choose to see all suffering as what it is. The thought of sacrifice gives rise to all the forms that suffering appears to take. And sacrifice is an idea so mad that sanity dismisses it at once.<br />
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Never believe that you can sacrifice. There is no place for sacrifice in what has any value. If the thought occurs, its very presence proves that error has arisen and correction must be made. Your blessing will correct it. Given first to you, it now is yours to give as well. No form of sacrifice and suffering can long endure before the face of one who has forgiven and has blessed himself.<br />
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The lilies that your brother offers you are laid upon your altar, with the ones you offer him beside them. Who could fear to look upon such lovely holiness? The great illusion of the fear of God diminishes to nothingness before the purity that you will look on here. Be not afraid to look. The blessedness you will behold will take away all thought of form, and leave instead the perfect gift forever there, forever to increase, forever yours, forever given away.<br />
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Now are we one in thought, for fear has gone. And here, before the altar to one God, one Father, one Creator and one Thought, we stand together as one Son of God. Not separate from Him Who is our Source; not distant from one brother who is part of our one Self Whose innocence has joined us all as one, we stand in blessedness, and give as we receive. The Name of God is on our lips. And as we look within, we see the purity of Heaven shine in our reflection of our Father's Love.<br />
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Now are we blessed, and now we bless the world. What we have looked upon we would extend, for we would see it everywhere. We would behold it shining with the grace of God in everyone. We would not have it be withheld from anything we look upon. And to ensure this holy sight is ours, we offer it to everything we see. For where we see it, it will be returned to us in form of lilies we can lay upon our altar, making it a home for Innocence Itself, Who dwells in us and offers us His Holiness as ours.<br />
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<h3><center><br />
</center></h3>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-66649105310909971172010-07-05T08:24:00.000-07:002010-07-05T08:24:50.414-07:00ACIM Lesson 186 "Salvation of the world depends on me."<h3>Lesson 186<br />
(beginning day 186)<br />
</h3><b>Salvation of the world depends on me.</b><br />
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Here is the statement that will one day take all arrogance away from every mind. Here is the thought of true humility, which holds no function as your own but that which has been given you. It offers your acceptance of a part assigned to you, without insisting on another role. It does not judge your proper role. It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven's peace.<br />
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Let us not fight our function. We did not establish it. It is not our idea. The means are given us by which it will be perfectly accomplished. All that we are asked to do is to accept our part in genuine humility, and not deny with self-deceiving arrogance that we are worthy. What is given us to do, we have the strength to do. Our minds are suited perfectly to take the part assigned to us by One Who knows us well.<br />
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Today's idea may seem quite sobering, until you see its meaning. All it says is that your Father still remembers you, and offers you the perfect trust He holds in you who are His Son. It does not ask that you be different in any way from what you are. What could humility request but this? And what could arrogance deny but this? Today we will not shrink from our assignment on the specious grounds that modesty is outraged. It is pride that would deny the Call for God Himself.<br />
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All false humility we lay aside today, that we may listen to God's Voice reveal to us what He would have us do. We do not doubt our adequacy for the function He will offer us. We will be certain only that He knows our strengths, our wisdom and our holiness. And if He deems us worthy, so we are. It is but arrogance that judges otherwise.<br />
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There is one way, and only one, to be released from the imprisonment your plan to prove the false is true has brought to you. Accept the plan you did not make instead. Judge not your value to it. If God's Voice assures you that salvation needs your part, and that the whole depends on you, be sure that it is so. The arrogant must cling to words, afraid to go beyond them to experience which might affront their stance. Yet are the humble free to hear the Voice which tells them what they are, and what to do.<br />
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Arrogance makes an image of yourself that is not real. It is this image which quails and retreats in terror, as the Voice for God assures you that you have the strength, the wisdom and the holiness to go beyond all images. You are not weak, as is the image of yourself. You are not ignorant and helpless. Sin can not tarnish the truth in you, and misery can come not near the holy home of God.<br />
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All this the Voice for God relates to you. And as He speaks, the image trembles and seeks to attack the threat it does not know, sensing its basis crumble. Let it go. Salvation of the world depends on you, and not upon this little pile of dust. What can it tell the holy Son of God? Why need he be concerned with it at all?<br />
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And so we find our peace. We will accept the function God has given us, for all illusions rest upon the weird belief that we can make another for ourselves. Our self-made roles are shifting, and they seem to change from mourner to ecstatic bliss of love and loving. We can laugh or weep, and greet the day with welcome or with tears. Our very being seems to change as we experience a thousand shifts in mood, and our emotions raise us high indeed, or dash us to the ground in hopelessness.<br />
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Is this the Son of God? Could He create such instability and call it Son? He Who is changeless shares His attributes with His creation. All the images His Son appears to make have no effect on what he is. They blow across his mind like wind-swept leaves that form a patterning an instant, break apart to group again, and scamper off. Or like mirages seen above a desert, rising from the dust.<br />
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These unsubstantial images will go, and leave your mind unclouded and serene, when you accept the function given you. The images you make give rise to but conflicting goals, impermanent and vague, uncertain and ambiguous. Who could be constant in his efforts, or direct his energies and concentrated drive toward goals like these? The functions which the world esteems are so uncertain that they change ten times an hour at their most secure. What hope of gain can rest on goals like this?<br />
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In lovely contrast, certain as the sun's return each morning to dispel the night, your truly given function stands out clear and wholly unambiguous. There is no doubt of its validity. It comes from One Who knows no error, and His Voice is certain of Its messages. They will not change, nor be in conflict. All of them point to one goal, and one you can attain. Your plan may be impossible, but God's can never fail because He is its Source.<br />
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Do as God's Voice directs. And if It asks a thing of you which seems impossible, remember Who it is that asks, and who would make denial. Then consider this; which is more likely to be right? The Voice that speaks for the Creator of all things, Who knows all things exactly as they are, or a distorted image of yourself, confused, bewildered, inconsistent and unsure of everything? Let not its voice direct you. Hear instead a certain Voice, which tells you of a function given you by your Creator Who remembers you, and urges that you now remember Him.<br />
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His gentle Voice is calling from the known to the unknowing. He would comfort you, although He knows no sorrow. He would make a restitution, though He is complete; a gift to you, although He knows that you have everything already. He has Thoughts which answer every need His Son perceives, although He sees them not. For Love must give, and what is given in His Name takes on the form most useful in a world of form.<br />
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These are the forms which never can deceive, because they come from Formlessness Itself. Forgiveness is an earthly form of love, which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still. Salvation of the world depends on you who can forgive. Such is your function here.<br />
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<h3><center><br />
</center></h3>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-53133498897239817252010-07-04T09:51:00.000-07:002010-07-04T09:51:57.320-07:00ACIM Lesson 185 " I want the Peace of God."<h3>Lesson 185<br />
(beginning day 185)<br />
</h3><b>I want the peace of God.</b><br />
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To say these words is nothing. But to mean these words is everything. If you could but mean them for just an instant, there would be no further sorrow possible for you in any form; in any place or time. Heaven would be completely given back to full awareness, memory of God entirely restored, the resurrection of all creation fully recognized.<br />
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No one can mean these words and not be healed. He cannot play with dreams, nor think he is himself a dream. He cannot make a hell and think it real. He wants the peace of God, and it is given him. For that is all he wants, and that is all he will receive. Many have said these words. But few indeed have meant them. You have but to look upon the world you see around you to be sure how very few they are. The world would be completely changed, should any two agree these words express the only thing they want.<br />
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Two minds with one intent become so strong that what they will becomes the Will of God. For minds can only join in truth. In dreams, no two can share the same intent. To each, the hero of the dream is different; the outcome wanted not the same for both. Loser and gainer merely shift about in changing patterns, as the ratio of gain to loss and loss to gain takes on a different aspect or another form.<br />
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Yet compromise alone a dream can bring. Sometimes it takes the form of union, but only the form. The meaning must escape the dream, for compromising is the goal of dreaming. Minds cannot unite in dreams. They merely bargain. And what bargain can give them the peace of God? Illusions come to take His place. And what He means is lost to sleeping minds intent on compromise, each to his gain and to another's loss.<br />
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To mean you want the peace of God is to renounce all dreams. For no one means these words who wants illusions, and who therefore seeks the means which bring illusions. He has looked on them, and found them wanting. Now he seeks to go beyond them, recognizing that another dream would offer nothing more than all the others. Dreams are one to him. And he has learned their only difference is one of form, for one will bring the same despair and misery as do the rest.<br />
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The mind which means that all it wants is peace must join with other minds, for that is how peace is obtained. And when the wish for peace is genuine, the means for finding it is given, in a form each mind that seeks for it in honesty can understand. Whatever form the lesson takes is planned for him in such a way that he can not mistake it, if his asking is sincere. But if he asks without sincerity, there is no form in which the lesson will meet with acceptance and be truly learned.<br />
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Let us today devote our practicing to recognizing that we really mean the words we say. We want the peace of God. This is no idle wish. These words do not request another dream be given us. They do not ask for compromise, nor try to make another bargain in the hope that there may yet be one that can succeed where all the rest have failed. To mean these words acknowledges illusions are in vain, requesting the eternal in the place of shifting dreams which seem to change in what they offer, but are one in nothingness.<br />
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Today devote your practice periods to careful searching of your mind, to find the dreams you cherish still. What do you ask for in your heart? Forget the words you use in making your requests. Consider but what you believe will comfort you, and bring you happiness. But be you not dismayed by lingering illusions, for their form is not what matters now. Let not some dreams be more acceptable, reserving shame and secrecy for others. They are one. And being one, one question should be asked of all of them, "Is this what I would have, in place of Heaven and the peace of God?"<br />
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This is the choice you make. Be not deceived that it is otherwise. No compromise is possible in this. You choose God's peace, or you have asked for dreams. And dreams will come as you requested them. Yet will God's peace come just as certainly, and to remain with you forever. It will not be gone with every twist and turning of the road, to reappear, unrecognized, in forms which shift and change with every step you take.<br />
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You want the peace of God. And so do all who seem to seek for dreams. For them as well as for yourself, you ask but this when you make this request with deep sincerity. For thus you reach to what they really want, and join your own intent with what they seek above all things, perhaps unknown to them, but sure to you. You have been weak at times, uncertain in your purpose, and unsure of what you wanted, where to look for it, and where to turn for help in the attempt. Help has been given you. And would you not avail yourself of it by sharing it?<br />
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No one who truly seeks the peace of God can fail to find it. For he merely asks that he deceive himself no longer by denying to himself what is God's Will. Who can remain unsatisfied who asks for what he has already? Who could be unanswered who requests an answer which is his to give? The peace of God is yours.<br />
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For you was peace created, given you by its Creator, and established as His Own eternal gift. How can you fail, when you but ask for what He wills for you? And how could your request be limited to you alone? No gift of God can be unshared. It is this attribute that sets the gifts of God apart from every dream that ever seemed to take the place of truth.<br />
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No one can lose and everyone must gain whenever any gift of God has been requested and received by anyone. God gives but to unite. To take away is meaningless to Him. And when it is as meaningless to you, you can be sure you share one Will with Him, and He with you. And you will also know you share one Will with all your brothers, whose intent is yours.<br />
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It is this one intent we seek today, uniting our desires with the need of every heart, the call of every mind, the hope that lies beyond despair, the love attack would hide, the brotherhood that hate has sought to sever, but which still remains as God created it. With Help like this beside us, can we fail today as we request the peace of God be given us?<br />
<br />
<h3><center><br />
</center></h3>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-47027931428029926122010-07-03T09:11:00.000-07:002010-07-03T09:11:06.453-07:00ACIM Lesson 184 "The Name of God is my inheritance."<h3>Lesson 184<br />
(beginning day 184)<br />
</h3><b>The Name of God is my inheritance.</b><br />
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You live by symbols. You have made up names for everything you see. Each one becomes a separate entity, identified by its own name. By this you carve it out of unity. By this you designate its special attributes, and set it off from other things by emphasizing space surrounding it. This space you lay between all things to which you give a different name; all happenings in terms of place and time; all bodies which are greeted by a name.<br />
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This space you see as setting off all things from one another is the means by which the world's perception is achieved. You see something where nothing is, and see as well nothing where there is unity; a space between all things, between all things and you. Thus do you think that you have given life in separation. By this split you think you are established as a unity which functions with an independent will.<br />
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What are these names by which the world becomes a series of discrete events, of things ununified, of bodies kept apart and holding bits of mind as separate awarenesses? You gave these names to them, establishing perception as you wished to have perception be. The nameless things were given names, and thus reality was given them as well. For what is named is given meaning and will then be seen as meaningful; a cause of true effect, with consequence inherent in itself.<br />
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This is the way reality is made by partial vision, purposefully set against the given truth. Its enemy is wholeness. It conceives of little things and looks upon them. And a lack of space, a sense of unity or vision that sees differently, become the threats which it must overcome, conflict with and deny.<br />
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Yet does this other vision still remain a natural direction for the mind to channel its perception. It is hard to teach the mind a thousand alien names, and thousands more. Yet you believe this is what learning means; its one essential goal by which communication is achieved, and concepts can be meaningfully shared.<br />
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This is the sum of the inheritance the world bestows. And everyone who learns to think that it is so accepts the signs and symbols that assert the world is real. It is for this they stand. They leave no doubt that what is named is there. It can be seen, as is anticipated. What denies that it is true is but illusion, for it is the ultimate reality. To question it is madness; to accept its presence is the proof of sanity.<br />
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Such is the teaching of the world. It is a phase of learning everyone who comes must go through. But the sooner he perceives on what it rests, how questionable are its premises, how doubtful its results, the sooner does he question its effects. Learning that stops with what the world would teach stops short of meaning. In its proper place, it serves but as a starting point from which another kind of learning can begin, a new perception can be gained, and all the arbitrary names the world bestows can be withdrawn as they are raised to doubt.<br />
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Think not you made the world. Illusions, yes! But what is true in earth and Heaven is beyond your naming. When you call upon a brother, it is to his body that you make appeal. His true Identity is hidden from you by what you believe he really is. His body makes response to what you call him, for his mind consents to take the name you give him as his own. And thus his unity is twice denied, for you perceive him separate from you, and he accepts this separate name as his.<br />
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It would indeed be strange if you were asked to go beyond all symbols of the world, forgetting them forever; yet were asked to take a teaching function. You have need to use the symbols of the world a while. But be you not deceived by them as well. They do not stand for anything at all, and in your practicing it is this thought that will release you from them. They become but means by which you can communicate in ways the world can understand, but which you recognize is not the unity where true communication can be found.<br />
<br />
Thus what you need are intervals each day in which the learning of the world becomes a transitory phase; a prison house from which you go into the sunlight and forget the darkness. Here you understand the Word, the Name which God has given you; the one Identity which all things share; the one acknowledgment of what is true. And then step back to darkness, not because you think it real, but only to proclaim its unreality in terms which still have meaning in the world that darkness rules.<br />
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Use all the little names and symbols which delineate the world of darkness. Yet accept them not as your reality. The Holy Spirit uses all of them, but He does not forget creation has one Name, one meaning, and a single Source which unifies all things within Itself. Use all the names the world bestows on them but for convenience, yet do not forget they share the Name of God along with you.<br />
<br />
God has no name. And yet His Name becomes the final lesson that all things are one, and at this lesson does all learning end. All names are unified; all space is filled with truth's reflection. Every gap is closed, and separation healed. The Name of God is the inheritance He gave to those who chose the teaching of the world to take the place of Heaven. In our practicing, our purpose is to let our minds accept what God has given as the answer to the pitiful inheritance you made as fitting tribute to the Son He loves.<br />
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No one can fail who seeks the meaning of the Name of God. Experience must come to supplement the Word. But first you must accept the Name for all reality, and realize the many names you gave its aspects have distorted what you see, but have not interfered with truth at all. One Name we bring into our practicing. One Name we use to unify our sight.<br />
<br />
And though we use a different name for each awareness of an aspect of God's Son, we understand that they have but one Name, which He has given them. It is this Name we use in practicing. And through Its use, all foolish separations disappear which kept us blind. And we are given strength to see beyond them. Now our sight is blessed with blessings we can give as we receive.<br />
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Father, our Name is Yours. In It we are united with all living things, and You Who are their one Creator. What we made and call by many different names is but a shadow we have tried to cast across Your Own reality. And we are glad and thankful we were wrong. All our mistakes we give to You, that we may be absolved from all effects our errors seemed to have. And we accept the truth You give, in place of every one of them. Your Name is our salvation and escape from what we made. Your Name unites us in the oneness which is our inheritance and peace. Amen.<br />
<br />
<h3><center><br />
</center></h3>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-56999199806384981192010-07-02T08:18:00.000-07:002010-07-02T08:18:10.189-07:00ACIM Lesson 183 "I call upon God's Name and on my own."<h3>Lesson 183<br />
(beginning day 183)<br />
</h3><b>I call upon God's Name and on my own.</b><br />
<br />
God's Name is holy, but no holier than yours. To call upon His Name is but to call upon your own. A father gives his son his name, and thus identifies the son with him. His brothers share his name, and thus are they united in a bond to which they turn for their identity. Your Father's Name reminds you who you are, even within a world that does not know; even though you have not remembered it.<br />
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God's Name can not be heard without response, nor said without an echo in the mind that calls you to remember. Say His Name, and you invite the angels to surround the ground on which you stand, and sing to you as they spread out their wings to keep you safe, and shelter you from every worldly thought that would intrude upon your holiness.<br />
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Repeat God's Name, and all the world responds by laying down illusions. Every dream the world holds dear has suddenly gone by, and where it seemed to stand you find a star; a miracle of grace. The sick arise, healed of their sickly thoughts. The blind can see; the deaf can hear. The sorrowful cast off their mourning, and the tears of pain are dried as happy laughter comes to bless the world.<br />
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Repeat the Name of God, and little names have lost their meaning. No temptation but becomes a nameless and unwanted thing before God's Name. Repeat His Name, and see how easily you will forget the names of all the gods you valued. They have lost the name of god you gave them. They become anonymous and valueless to you, although before you let the Name of God replace their little names, you stood before them worshipfully, naming them as gods.<br />
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Repeat the Name of God, and call upon your Self, Whose Name is His. Repeat His Name, and all the tiny, nameless things on earth slip into right perspective. Those who call upon the Name of God can not mistake the nameless for the Name, nor sin for grace, nor bodies for the holy Son of God. And should you join a brother as you sit with him in silence, and repeat God's Name along with him within your quiet mind, you have established there an altar which reaches to God Himself and to His Son.<br />
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Practice but this today; repeat God's Name slowly again and still again. Become oblivious to every name but His. Hear nothing else. Let all your thoughts become anchored on this. No other word we use except at the beginning, when we say today's idea but once. And then God's Name becomes our only thought, our only word, the only thing that occupies our minds, the only wish we have, the only sound with any meaning, and the only Name of everything that we desire to see; of everything that we would call our own.<br />
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Thus do we give an invitation which can never be refused. And God will come, and answer it Himself. Think not He hears the little prayers of those who call on Him with names of idols cherished by the world. They cannot reach Him thus. He cannot hear requests that He be not Himself, or that His Son receive another name than His.<br />
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Repeat God's Name, and you acknowledge Him as sole Creator of reality. And you acknowledge also that His Son is part of Him, creating in His Name. Sit silently, and let His Name become the all-encompassing idea that holds your mind completely. Let all thoughts be still except this one. And to all other thoughts respond with this, and see God's Name replace the thousand little names you gave your thoughts, not realizing that there is one Name for all there is, and all that there will be.<br />
<br />
Today you can achieve a state in which you will experience the gift of grace. You can escape all bondage of the world, and give the world the same release you found. You can remember what the world forgot, and offer it your own remembering. You can accept today the part you play in its salvation, and your own as well. And both can be accomplished perfectly.<br />
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Turn to the Name of God for your release, and it is given you. No prayer but this is necessary, for it holds them all within it. Words are insignificant, and all requests unneeded when God's Son calls on his Father's Name. His Father's Thoughts become his own. He makes his claim to all his Father gave, is giving still, and will forever give. He calls on Him to let all things he thought he made be nameless now, and in their place the holy Name of God becomes his judgment of their worthlessness.<br />
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All little things are silent. Little sounds are soundless now. The little things of earth have disappeared. The universe consists of nothing but the Son of God, who calls upon his Father. And his Father's Voice gives answer in his Father's holy Name. In this eternal, still relationship, in which communication far transcends all words, and yet exceeds in depth and height whatever words could possibly convey, is peace eternal. In our Father's Name, we would experience this peace today. And in His Name, it shall be given us.<br />
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<h3><center><br />
</center></h3>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-3391006523142189922010-07-01T07:53:00.000-07:002010-07-01T07:53:35.321-07:00ACIM Lesson 182 "I will be still an instant and go home."<h3>Lesson 182<br />
(beginning day 182)<br />
</h3><b>I will be still an instant and go home.</b><br />
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This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called you to return, although you do not recognize the voice, nor what it is the voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again.<br />
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No one but knows whereof we speak. Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to occupy their time, and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but a dream. Yet who, in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self-deception, would deny he understands the words we speak?<br />
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We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home. He goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind. He does not understand he builds in vain. The home he seeks can not be made by him. There is no substitute for Heaven. All he ever made was hell.<br />
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Perhaps you think it is your childhood home that you would find again. The childhood of your body, and its place of shelter, are a memory now so distorted that you merely hold a picture of a past that never happened. Yet there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father's house, and knows that He is alien here. This childhood is eternal, with an innocence that will endure forever. Where this Child shall go is holy ground. It is His Holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one.<br />
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It is this Child in you your Father knows as His Own Son. It is this Child Who knows His Father. He desires to go home so deeply, so unceasingly, His voice cries unto you to let Him rest a while. He does not ask for more than just a few instants of respite; just an interval in which He can return to breathe again the holy air that fills His Father's house. You are His home as well. He will return. But give Him just a little time to be Himself, within the peace that is His home, resting in silence and in peace and love.<br />
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This Child needs your protection. He is far from home. He is so little that He seems so easily shut out, His tiny voice so readily obscured, His call for help almost unheard amid the grating sounds and harsh and rasping noises of the world. Yet does He know that in you still abides His sure protection. You will fail Him not. He will go home, and you along with Him.<br />
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This Child is your defenselessness; your strength. He trusts in you. He came because He knew you would not fail. He whispers of His home unceasingly to you. For He would bring you back with Him, that He Himself might stay, and not return again where He does not belong, and where He lives an outcast in a world of alien thoughts. His patience has no limits. He will wait until you hear His gentle Voice within you, calling you to let Him go in peace, along with you, to where He is at home and you with Him.<br />
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When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice. So poignantly He calls to you that you will not resist Him longer. In that instant He will take you to His home, and you will stay with Him in perfect stillness, silent and at peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt, sublimely certain that you are at home.<br />
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Rest with Him frequently today. For He was willing to become a little Child that you might learn of Him how strong is he who comes without defenses, offering only love's messages to those who think he is their enemy. He holds the might of Heaven in His hand and calls them friend, and gives His strength to them, that they may see He would be Friend to them. He asks that they protect Him, for His home is far away, and He will not return to it alone.<br />
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Christ is reborn as but a little Child each time a wanderer would leave his home. For he must learn that what he would protect is but this Child, Who comes defenseless and Who is protected by defenselessness. Go home with Him from time to time today. You are as much an alien here as He.<br />
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Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing, and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence. Christ has called you friend and brother. He has even come to ask your help in letting Him go home today, completed and completely. He has come as does a little child, who must beseech his father for protection and for love. He rules the universe, and yet He asks unceasingly that you return with Him, and take illusions as your gods no more.<br />
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You have not lost your innocence. It is for this you yearn. This is your heart's desire. This is the voice you hear, and this the call which cannot be denied. The holy Child remains with you. His home is yours. Today He gives you His defenselessness, and you accept it in exchange for all the toys of battle you have made. And now the way is open, and the journey has an end in sight at last. Be still an instant and go home with Him, and be at peace a while.<br />
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<h3><center><br />
</center></h3>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-13648857112530574972010-06-30T08:24:00.000-07:002010-06-30T08:24:58.874-07:00ACIM INTRODUCTION Lesson 181<h3>Introduction to Lessons 181 - 200<br />
(beginning lesson 181 study material) <br />
</h3>Our next few lessons make a special point of firming up your willingness to make your weak commitment strong; your scattered goals blend into one intent. You are not asked for total dedication all the time as yet. But you are asked to practice now in order to attain the sense of peace such unified commitment will bestow, if only intermittently. It is experiencing this that makes it sure that you will give your total willingness to following the way the course sets forth.<br />
<br />
Our lessons now are geared specifically to widening horizons, and direct approaches to the special blocks that keep your vision narrow, and too limited to let you see the value of our goal. We are attempting now to lift these blocks, however briefly. Words alone can not convey the sense of liberation which their lifting brings. But the experience of freedom and of peace that comes as you give up your tight control of what you see speaks for itself. Your motivation will be so intensified that words become of little consequence. You will be sure of what you want, and what is valueless.<br />
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And so we start our journey beyond words by concentrating first on what impedes your progress still. Experience of what exists beyond defensiveness remains beyond achievement while it is denied. It may be there, but you cannot accept its presence. So we now attempt to go past all defenses for a little while each day. No more than this is asked, because no more than this is needed. It will be enough to guarantee the rest will come.<br />
<h3>Lesson 181<br />
</h3><b>I trust my brothers, who are one with me.</b><br />
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Trusting your brothers is essential to establishing and holding up your faith in your ability to transcend doubt and lack of sure conviction in yourself. When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by what you have perceived in him. You do not look beyond his errors. Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to your awareness of the Self that lies beyond your own mistakes, and past his seeming sins as well as yours.<br />
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Perception has a focus. It is this that gives consistency to what you see. Change but this focus, and what you behold will change accordingly. Your vision now will shift, to give support to the intent which has replaced the one you held before. Remove your focus on your brother's sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in you. And you will not transcend their sight and see the sinlessness that lies beyond.<br />
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Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such little focuses give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent. We instruct our minds that it is this we seek, and only this, for just a little while. We do not care about our future goals. And what we saw an instant previous has no concern for us within this interval of time wherein we practice changing our intent. We seek for innocence and nothing else. We seek for it with no concern but now.<br />
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A major hazard to success has been involvement with your past and future goals. You have been quite preoccupied with how extremely different the goals this course is advocating are from those you held before. And you have also been dismayed by the depressing and restricting thought that, even if you should succeed, you will inevitably lose your way again.<br />
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How could this matter? For the past is gone; the future but imagined. These concerns are but defenses against present change of focus in perception. Nothing more. We lay these pointless limitations by a little while. We do not look to past beliefs, and what we will believe will not intrude upon us now. We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within.<br />
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We recognize that we have lost this goal if anger blocks our way in any form. And if a brother's sins occur to us, our narrowed focus will restrict our sight, and turn our eyes upon our own mistakes, which we will magnify and call our "sins." So, for a little while, without regard to past or future, should such blocks arise we will transcend them with instructions to our minds to change their focus, as we say:<br />
<br />
<br />
It is not this that I would look upon.<br />
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I trust my brothers, who are one with me.<br />
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And we will also use this thought to keep us safe throughout the day. We do not seek for long-range goals. As each obstruction seems to block the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an instant from the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and uncorrected will remain.<br />
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Nor do we ask for fantasies. For what we seek to look upon is really there. And as our focus goes beyond mistakes, we will behold a wholly sinless world. When seeing this is all we want to see, when this is all we seek for in the name of true perception, are the eyes of Christ inevitably ours. And the Love He feels for us becomes our own as well. This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves.<br />
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The world which once proclaimed our sins becomes the proof that we are sinless. And our love for everyone we look upon attests to our remembrance of the holy Self which knows no sin, and never could conceive of anything without Its sinlessness. We seek for this remembrance as we turn our minds to practicing today. We look neither ahead nor backwards. We look straight into the present. And we give our trust to the experience we ask for now. Our sinlessness is but the Will of God. This instant is our willing one with His.<br />
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<h3><center>(end lesson 181 study material)</center></h3>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-70786990328374982042010-06-29T08:48:00.000-07:002010-06-29T08:48:29.433-07:00ACIM REVIEW Lesson 180<h3>Lesson 180<br />
(beginning lesson 180 study material) <br />
</h3><b>God is but Love, and therefore so am I.</b><br />
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By grace I live. By grace I am released.<br />
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God is but Love, and therefore so am I.<br />
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There is no cruelty in God and none in me.<br />
<br />
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-15175826417184758652010-06-27T08:33:00.001-07:002010-06-27T08:33:59.807-07:00ACIM REVIEW Lesson 178<h3>Lesson 178<br />
(beginning day 178)<br />
</h3><b>God is but Love, and therefore so am I.</b><br />
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Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.<br />
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God is but Love, and therefore so am I.<br />
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I am entrusted with the gifts of God.<br />
<br />
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-349446122454965292010-06-26T07:56:00.001-07:002010-06-26T07:56:28.523-07:00ACIM REVIEW Lesson 177<h3>Lesson 177<br />
(beginning day 177)<br />
</h3><b>God is but Love, and therefore so am I.</b><br />
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There is no death. The Son of God is free.<br />
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God is but Love, and therefore so am I.<br />
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Now are we one with Him Who is our Source.<br />
<br />
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-43944252125764900582010-06-25T16:28:00.000-07:002010-06-25T16:28:36.320-07:00ACIM Lesson 176 "God is but Love, and therefore so am I."<h3>Lesson 176<br />
(beginning day 176)<br />
</h3><b>God is but Love, and therefore so am I.</b><br />
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Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.<br />
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God is but Love, and therefore so am I.<br />
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I am as God created me.<br />
<br />
God is but Love, and therefore so am I..Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-65369107960757115782010-06-24T06:32:00.000-07:002010-06-24T06:32:57.185-07:00ACIM Lesson 173 Review<h3>Lesson 173<br />
(beginning day 173)<br />
</h3><b>God is but Love, and therefore so am I.</b><br />
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I will step back and let Him lead the way.<br />
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God is but Love, and therefore so am I.<br />
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I walk with God in perfect holiness.<br />
<br />
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-12637464722994006612010-06-23T18:30:00.001-07:002010-06-23T18:30:47.737-07:00ACIM Lesson 172 "God is but Love, and therefore so am I.<h3>Lesson 172<br />
(beginning day 172)<br />
</h3><b>God is but Love, and therefore so am I.</b><br />
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In my defenselessness my safety lies.<br />
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God is but Love, and therefore so am I.<br />
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I am among the ministers of God.<br />
<br />
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-40389011220360042822010-06-22T09:18:00.000-07:002010-06-22T09:18:30.546-07:00ACIM REVIEW Lesson 171 "God is but Love and therefore so am I."<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><b>Lesson 171<br />
“God is but Love, and therefore so am I.”</b></span> <br />
<div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
[151] “All things are echoes of the Voice of God.”</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><b>“God is but Love, and therefore so am I.”</b><br />
</span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">[152] “The power of decision is my own.”</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><b>“God is but Love, and therefore so am I.”</b></span></div>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-88676835045673007462010-06-22T09:13:00.000-07:002010-06-22T09:13:02.822-07:00ACIM REVIEW V "God is but Love, and therefore so am I."<div align="center"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: medium;">REVIEW V</span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">We now review again. This time we are ready to give more effort and more time to what we undertake. We recognize we are preparing for another phase of understanding. We would take this step completely, that we may go on again more certain, more sincere, with faith upheld more surely. Our footsteps have not been unwavering, and doubts have made us walk uncertainly and slowly on the road this course sets forth. But now we hasten on, for we approach a greater certainty, a firmer purpose and a surer goal.<br />
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Steady our feet, our Father; let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still, and speak to us. We have no words to give to You. We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours. Lead our practicing as does a father lead a little child along a way he does not understand. Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.<br />
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So do we bring our practicing to You. And if we stumble, You will raise us up. If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering. We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back. Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You. And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us.<br />
<br />
This is the thought which should precede the thoughts that we review. Each one but clarifies some aspect of this thought, or helps it be more meaningful, more personal and true, and more descriptive of the holy Self we share and now prepare to know again:</span></div><div align="center"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia;">“God is but Love, and therefore so am I.”</span></b></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">This Self alone knows love. This Self alone is perfectly consistent in Its thoughts; knows Its Creator, understands Itself, is perfect in Its knowledge and Its love, and never changes from Its constant state of union with Its Father and Itself.<br />
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And it is This that waits to meet us at the journey’s ending. Every step we take brings us a little nearer. This review will shorten time immeasurably if we keep in mind that This remains our goal, and as we practice it is This to which we are approaching. Let us raise our hearts from dust to life as we remember This is promised us, and that this course was sent to open up the path of light to us, and teach us, step by step, how to return to the Eternal Self we thought we lost.<br />
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I take the journey with you. For I share your doubts and fears a little while, that you may come to me who recognize the road by which all fears and doubts are overcome. We walk together. I must understand uncertainty and pain, although I know they have no meaning. Yet a Savior must remain with those he teaches, seeing what they see, but still retaining in his mind the way that led him out, and now will lead you out with him. God’s Son is crucified until you walk along the road with me.<br />
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My resurrection comes again each time I lead a brother safely to the place at which the journey ends and is forgot. I am renewed each time a brother learns there is a way from misery and pain. I am reborn each time a brother’s mind turns to the light in him and looks for me. I have forgotten no-one. Help me now to lead you back to where the journey was begun, to make another choice with me.<br />
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Release me as you practice once again the thoughts I brought to you from Him Who sees your bitter need, and knows the answer God has given Him. Together we review these thoughts. Together we devote our time and effort to them. And together we will teach them to our brothers. God would not have Heaven incomplete. It waits for you as I do. I am incomplete without your part in me. And as I am made whole, we go together to our ancient home, prepared for us before time was and kept unchanged by time, immaculate and safe, as it will be at last, when time is done.<br />
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Let this review be then your gift to me. For this alone I need; that you will hear the words I speak and give them to the world. You are my voice, my eyes, my feet, my hands, through which I save the world. The Self from Which I call to you is but your Own. To Him we go together. Take your brother’s hand, for this is not a way we walk alone. In him I walk with you and you with me. Our Father wills His Son be One with Him. What lives but must not then be one with you?<br />
<br />
Let this review become a time in which we share a new experience for you, yet one as old as time, and older still. Hallowed your name. Your glory undefiled forever. And your wholeness now complete, as God established it. You are His Son, completing His<br />
extension in your own. We practice but an ancient truth we knew before illusion seemed to claim the world. And we remind the world that it is free of all illusions every time we say,</span></div><div align="center"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia;">“God is but Love, and therefore so am I.”</span></b></div><span style="font-family: Georgia;">With this we start each day of our review. With this we start and end each period of practice time. And with this thought we sleep, to waken once again with these same words upon our lips to greet another day. No thought that we review but we surround with it, and use the thoughts to hold it up before our minds, and keep it clear in our remembrance throughout the day. And thus when we have finished this review, we will have recognized the words we speak are true.<br />
<br />
Yet are the words but aids and to be used, except at the beginning and the end of practice periods, but to recall the mind, as needed, to its purpose. We place faith in the experience that comes from practice, not the means we use. We wait for the experience, and recognize that it is only here conviction lies. We use the words, and try and try again to go beyond them to their meaning, which is far beyond their sound. The sound grows dim and disappears as we approach the Source of meaning. It is Here that we find rest.</span>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-47505267348353515132010-06-21T09:28:00.000-07:002010-06-21T09:28:38.234-07:00ACIM Lesson 170 "There is no cruelty in God and none in me."<div align="center"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><b>Lesson 170<br />
“There is no cruelty in God and none in me.”</b></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
No-one attacks without intent to hurt. This can have no exception. When you think that you attack in self defence, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty. You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom. And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion and from fear.<br />
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How thoroughly insane is the idea that to defend from fear is to attack! For here is fear begot and fed with blood, to make it grow and swell and rage. And thus is fear protected, not escaped. Today we learn a lesson which can save you more delay and needless misery than you can possibly imagine. It is this:</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><b>You make what you defend against, and by<br />
Your own defence against it is it real<br />
And inescapable. Lay down your arms,<br />
And only then do you perceive it false.</b></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">It seems to be the enemy without that you attack. Yet your defence sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable. For love now has an enemy, an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defence against the threat of what you really are.<br />
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If you consider carefully the means by which your fancied self-defense proceeds on its imagined way, you will perceive the premises on which the idea stands. First, it is obvious ideas must leave their source. For it is you who make attack, and must have first conceived of it. Yet you attack outside yourself, and separate your mind from him who is to be attacked, with perfect faith the split you made is real.<br />
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Next are the attributes of love bestowed upon its enemy. For fear becomes your safety and protector of your peace, to which you turn for solace and escape from doubts about your strength and hope of rest in dreamless quiet. And as love is shorn of what belongs to it and it alone, love is endowed with attributes of fear. For love would ask you lay down all defence as merely foolish. And your arms indeed would crumble into dust. For such they are.<br />
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With love as enemy must cruelty become a god, and gods demand that those who worship them obey their dictates, and refuse to question them. Harsh punishment is meted out relentlessly to those who ask if the demands are sensible or even sane. It is their enemies who are unreasonable and insane, while they are always merciful and just.<br />
<br />
Today we look upon this cruel god dispassionately. And we note that though his lips are smeared with blood and fire seems to flame from him, he is but made of stone. He can do nothing. We need not defy his power. He has none. And those who see in him their safety have no guardian, no strength to call upon in danger, and no mighty warrior to fight for them.<br />
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This moment can be terrible. But it can also be the time of your release from abject slavery. You make a choice, standing before this idol, seeing him exactly as he is. Will you restore to love what you have sought to wrest from it, and lay before this mindless piece of stone? Or will you make another idol to replace it? For the god of cruelty takes many forms. Another can be found.<br />
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Yet do not think that fear is the escape from fear. Let us remember what the course has stressed about the obstacles to peace. The final one, the hardest to believe is nothing, and a seeming obstacle with the appearance of a solid block, impenetrable, fearful and beyond surmounting, is the fear of God Himself. Here is the basic premise which enthrones the thought of fear as god. For fear is loved by those who worship it, and love appears to be invested now with cruelty.<br />
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Where does the totally insane belief in gods of vengeance come from? Love has not confused its attributes with those of fear. Yet must the worshippers of fear perceive their own confusion in fear’s enemy; its cruelty as now a part of love. And what becomes more fearful than the heart of Love Itself? The blood appears to be upon His Lips; the fire comes from Him. And He is terrible above all else, cruel beyond conception, striking down all who acknowledge Him to be their God.<br />
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The choice you make today is certain. For you look for the last time upon this bit of carven stone you made, and call it god no longer. You have reached this place before, but you have chosen that this cruel god remain with you in still another form. And so the fear of God returned with you. This time you leave it here. And you return to a new world unburdened by its weight; beheld not in its sightless eyes, but in the vision that your choice restored to you.<br />
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Now do your eyes belong to Christ, and He looks through them. Now your voice belongs to God, and echoes His. And now your heart remains at peace forever. You have chosen Him in place of idols, and your attributes, given by your Creator, are restored to you at last. The Call of God is heard and answered. Now has fear made way for love, as God Himself replaces cruelty.</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
<b>Father, we are like You. No cruelty abides in us for there is none in You. Your peace is ours. And we bless the world with what we have received from You alone. We choose again and make our choice for all our brothers, knowing they are one with us. We bring them Your<br />
salvation as we have received it now. And we give thanks for them who render us complete. In them we see Your glory, and in them we find our peace. Holy are we because Your holiness has set us free. And we give thanks. Amen.</b></span>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-79912672314663543052010-06-19T13:57:00.001-07:002010-06-19T13:57:37.686-07:00<div align="center"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Lesson 168<br />
“Your grace is given me. I claim it now.”</span></b></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
God speaks to us. Shall we not speak to Him? He is not distant. He makes no attempt to hide from us. We try to hide from Him, and suffer from deception. He remains entirely accessible. He loves His Son. There is no certainty but this, yet this suffices. He will love His Son forever. When his mind remains asleep, He loves him still. And when his mind awakes, He loves him with a never-changing Love.<br />
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If you but knew the meaning of His Love hope and despair would be impossible, for hope would be forever satisfied; despair of any kind unthinkable. His grace His answer is to all despair, for in it lies remembrance of His Love. Would He not gladly give the means by which His Will is recognized? His grace is yours by your acknowledgment. And memory of Him awakens in the mind which asks the means of Him whereby its sleep is done.<br />
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Today we ask of God the gift He has most carefully preserved within our hearts, waiting to be acknowledged. This the gift by which God leans to us and lifts us up, taking salvation’s final step Himself. All steps but this we learn, instructed by His Voice. But finally He comes Himself and takes us in His Arms, and sweeps away the cobwebs of our sleep. His gift of grace is more than just an answer. It restores all memories the sleeping mind forgot; all certainty of what love’s meaning is.<br />
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God loves His Son. Request Him now to give the means by which this world will disappear, and vision first will come, with knowledge but an instant later. For in grace you see a light that covers all the world in love, and watch fear disappear from every face as hearts rise up and claim the light as theirs. What now remains that Heaven be delayed an instant longer? What remains undone when your forgiveness rests on everything?<br />
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It is a new and holy day today, for we receive what has been given us. Our faith lies in the Giver, not our own acceptance. We acknowledge our mistakes, but He to Whom all error is unknown is yet the One Who answers our mistakes by giving us the means to lay them down, and rise to Him in gratitude and love.<br />
<br />
And He descends to meet us as we come to Him, for what He has prepared for us He gives and we receive. Such is His Will because He loves His Son. To Him we pray today, returning but the words He gave to us through His Own Voice, His Word, His Love:</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
<b>“Your grace is given me. I claim it now.<br />
Father, I come to You. And You will come<br />
To me who asks. I am the Son You love.”</b></span>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-76605684361813078092010-06-18T13:03:00.000-07:002010-06-18T13:03:09.594-07:00ACIM Lesson 167 "There is one life, and that I share with God."<div align="center"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Lesson 167<br />
“There is one life, and that I share with God.”</span></b></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
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.<br />
There is no death because what God created shares His Life.<br />
There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist.<br />
There is no death because the Father and the Son are One.<br />
<br />
In this world there appears to be a state that is life’s opposite. You call it death. Yet we have learned that the idea of death takes many forms. It is the one idea which underlies all feelings that are not supremely happy. It is the alarm to which you give response of any kind that is not perfect joy. All sorrow, loss, anxiety and suffering and pain, even a little sigh of weariness, a slight discomfort or the merest frown, acknowledge death. And thus deny you live.<br />
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You think that death is of the body. Yet it is but an idea, irrelevant to what is seen as physical. A thought is in the mind. It can be then applied as mind directs it. But its origin is where it must be changed if change occurs. Ideas leave not their source. The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God.<br />
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Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator. It is the belief conditions change, emotions alternate because of causes you cannot control, you did not make, and you can never change. It is the fixed belief ideas can leave their source, and take on qualities the source does not contain, becoming different from their own origin, apart from it in kind as well as distance, time and form.<br />
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Death cannot come from life. Ideas remain united to their source. They can extend all that their source contains. In that they can go far beyond themselves. But they can not give birth to what was never given them. As they are made, so will their making be. As they were born, so will they then give birth. And where they come from, there will they return.<br />
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The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist because it has no source. For mind creates all things that are, and cannot give them attributes it lacks, nor change its own eternal, mindful state. It cannot make the physical. What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep.<br />
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The opposite of life can only be another form of life. As such, it can be reconciled with what created it, because it is not opposite in truth. Its form may change; it may appear to be what it is not. Yet mind is mind awake or sleeping. It is not its opposite in anything created, nor in what it seems to make when it believes it sleeps.<br />
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God creates only mind awake. He does not sleep, and His creations cannot share what He gives not, nor make conditions which He does not share with them. The thought of death is not the opposite to thoughts of life. Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly but yet within Themselves, for They are everywhere.<br />
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What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was.<br />
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Let us today be children of the truth, and not deny our holy heritage. Our life is not as we imagine it. Who changes life because he shuts his eyes, or makes himself what he is not because he sleeps and sees in dreams an opposite to what he is? We will not ask for death in any form today. Nor will we let imagined opposites to life abide even an instant where the Thought of Life Eternal has been set by God Himself.<br />
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His holy home we strive to keep today as He established it, and wills it be forever and forever. He is Lord of what we think today. And in His Thoughts, Which have no opposite, we understand there is one life, and that we share with Him, with all creation, with their thoughts as well, whom He created in a Unity of life that cannot separate in death and leave the Source of Life from where it came.<br />
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We share life because we have one Source, a Source from Which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect. As we were, so are we now and will forever be. A sleeping mind must waken as it sees its own perfection mirroring the Lord of Life so perfectly it fades into what is reflected there. And now it is no more a mere reflection. It becomes the thing reflected, and the light which makes reflection possible. No vision now is needed. For the wakened mind is one that knows its Source, its Self, its Holiness.</span></div>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-18436832608214533402010-06-17T12:20:00.000-07:002010-06-17T12:20:42.046-07:00ACIM Lesson 166 " I am entrusted with the gifts of God."<div align="center"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><b>Lesson 166<br />
“I am entrusted with the gifts of God.”</b></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
All things are given you. God’s trust in you is limitless. He knows His Son. He gives without exception, holding nothing back that can contribute to your happiness. And yet, unless your will is one with His, His gifts are not received. But what would make you think there is another will than His?<br />
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Here is the paradox that underlies the making of the world. This world is not the Will of God, and so it is not real. Yet those who think it real must still believe there is another will, and one that leads to opposite effects from those He wills. Impossible indeed; but every mind that looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators; or in one, himself alone. But never in One God.<br />
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The gifts of God are not acceptable to anyone who holds such strange beliefs. He must believe that to accept God’s gifts, however evident they may become, however urgently he may be called to claim them as his own, his being pressed to treachery against himself. He must deny their presence, contradict the truth, and suffer to preserve the world he made.<br />
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Here is the only home he thinks he knows. Here is the only safety he believes that he can find. Without the world he made is he an outcast, homeless and afraid. He does not realize that it is here he is afraid indeed, and homeless too; an outcast wandering so far from home, so long away, he does not realize he has forgotten where he came from, where he goes, and even who he really is.<br />
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Yet in his lonely, senseless wanderings God’s gifts go with him, all unknown to him. He cannot lose them. But he will not look at what is given him. He wanders on, aware of the futility he sees about him everywhere, perceiving how his little lot but dwindles as he goes ahead to nowhere. Still he wanders on in misery and poverty, alone though God is with him, and a treasure his so great that everything the world contains is valueless before its magnitude.<br />
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He seems a sorry figure, weary, worn, in threadbare clothing, and with feet that bleed a little from the rocky road he walks. No- one but has identified with him, for everyone who comes here has pursued the path he follows, and has felt defeat and hopelessness as he is feeling them. Yet is he really tragic when you see that he is following the way he chose, and need but realize Who walks with him and open up his treasures to be free?<br />
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This is your chosen self, the one you made as a replacement for reality. This is the self you savagely defend against all reason, every evidence, and all the witnesses with proof to show this is not you. You heed them not. You go on your appointed way, with eyes cast down lest you might catch a glimpse of truth, and be released from self-deception and set free.<br />
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You cower fearfully lest you should feel Christ’s touch upon your shoulder, and perceive His gentle hand directing you to look upon your gifts. How could you then proclaim your poverty in exile? He would make you laugh at this perception of yourself. Where is self-pity then? And what becomes of all the tragedy you sought to make for him whom God intended only joy?<br />
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Your ancient fear has come upon you now, and justice has caught up with you at last. Christ’s hand has touched your shoulder, and you feel that you are not alone. You even think the miserable self you thought was you may not be your identity. Perhaps God’s Word is truer than your own. Perhaps His gifts to you are real. Perhaps He has not wholly been outwitted by your plan to keep His Son in deep oblivion, and go the way you chose without your Self.<br />
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God’s Will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His Will. There was a need He did not understand, to which He gave an Answer. That is all. And you who have this Answer given you have need no more of anything but this.<br />
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Now do we live, for now we cannot die. The wish for death is answered, and the sight that looked upon it now has been replaced by vision which perceives that you are not what you pretend to be. One walks with you Who gently answers all your fears with this one merciful reply, “It is not so.” He points to all the gifts you have each time the thought of poverty oppresses you, and speaks of His Companionship when you perceive yourself as lonely and afraid. </span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Yet He reminds you still of one thing more you had forgotten. For His touch on you has made you like Himself. The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God. He has reminded you of all the gifts that God has given you. He speaks as well of what becomes your will when you accept these gifts, and recognize they are your own.<br />
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The gifts are yours, entrusted to your care, to give to all who chose the lonely road you have escaped. They do not understand they but pursue their wishes. It is you who teach them now. For you have learned of Christ there is another way for them to walk. Teach them by showing them the happiness that comes to those who feel the touch of Christ and recognize God’s gifts. Let sorrow not tempt you to be unfaithful to your trust.<br />
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Your sighs will now betray the hopes of those who look to you for their release. Your tears are theirs. If you are sick you but withhold their healing. What you fear but teaches them their fears are justified. Your hand becomes the giver of Christ’s touch; your change of mind becomes the proof that who accepts God’s gifts can never suffer anything. You are entrusted with the world’s release from pain.<br />
<br />
Betray it not. Become the living proof of what Christ’s touch can offer everyone. God has entrusted all His gifts to you. Be witness in your happiness to how transformed the mind becomes which chooses to accept His gifts and feel the touch of Christ. Such is your mission now. For God entrusts the giving of His gifts to all who have received them. He has shared His joy with you. And now you go to share it with the world.</span>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2194016969575299593.post-18612425137153515182010-06-16T11:02:00.000-07:002010-06-16T11:02:16.456-07:00ACIM Lesson 165 Let not my mind deny the Thought of God."<div align="center"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Lesson 165<br />
“Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.”</span></b></div><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
What makes this world seem real except your own denial of the truth which lies beyond? What but your thoughts of misery and death obscure the perfect happiness and the Eternal Life your Father wills for you? And what could hide what cannot be concealed except illusion? What could keep from you what you already have except your choice to see it not, denying it is there?<br />
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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 mind because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you.<br />
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Who would deny his safety and his peace, his joy, his healing and his peace of mind, his quiet rest, his calm awakening, if he but recognized where they abide? Would he not instantly prepare to go where they are found, abandoning all else as worthless in comparison with them? And having found them, would he not make sure they stay with him and he remains with them?<br />
<br />
Deny not Heaven. It is yours today but for the asking. Nor need you perceive how great the gift, how changed your mind will be before it comes to you. Ask to receive and it is given you. Conviction lies within it. Till you welcome it as yours, uncertainty remains. Yet God is fair. Sureness is not required to receive what only your acceptance can bestow.<br />
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Ask with desire. You need not be sure that you request the only thing you want. But when you have received you will be sure you have the treasure you have always sought. What would you then exchange it for? What would induce you now to let it fade away from your ecstatic vision? For this sight proves that you have exchanged your blindness for the seeing eyes of Christ; your mind has come to lay aside denial and accept the Thought of God as its inheritance.<br />
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Now is all doubting past, the journey’s end made certain and salvation given you. Now is Christ’s power in your mind to heal as you were healed. For now you are among the Saviors of the world. Your destiny lies there and nowhere else. Would God consent to let His Son remain forever starved by his denial of the nourishment he needs to live? Abundance dwells in him, and deprivation cannot cut him off from God’s sustained Love and from his home.<br />
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Practice today in hope. For hope indeed is justified. Your doubts are meaningless, for God is certain. And the Thought of Him is never absent. Sureness must abide within you who are host to Him. This course removes all doubts which you have interposed between Him and your certainty of Him. We count on God, and not upon ourselves, to give us certainty. And in His Name we practice as His Word directs we do. His sureness lies beyond our every doubt. His Love remains beyond our every fear. The Thought of Him is still beyond all dreams, and in our minds according to His Will.</span>Phoenixinspirithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02984166056445042119noreply@blogger.com0