One of my favorite Bible scriptures is Psalm 118:24:

This is the day the Lord has made;
We will rejoice and be glad in it.

The emphasis on “is” is not mine; it is the Bible’s emphasis. This scripture points to celebrating what is—whatever is—now. It is the Loving All Method.

There is a story about a Canaanite woman in the Bible at Matthew 15. Here’s that story:

Then Jesus went out from there and departed to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to Him, saying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter is severely demon-possessed.”

But He answered her not a word.

And His disciples came and urged Him, saying, “Send her away, for she cries out after us.”

But He answered and said, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Then she came and worshiped Him, saying, “Lord, help me!”

But He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”

And she said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”

Then Jesus answered and said to her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

According to NTI, Jesus at first refused this woman’s request because, “My purpose is not of the world.” NTI Revelation, Chapter 1 says:

Guidance comes to you for one purpose and that is to lead you from the world. There may also seem to be another purpose, which is happiness within the world. The two purposes are not the same. Do not be fooled by the similarities in their sound. One purpose leads to death, while the other, most surely, leads to Life and knowledge of Life.

Do we think we need things to be a certain way in order for us to be happy? Are we using spirituality in order to attain a certain set of circumstances? Or are we interested in truth?

The Canaanite woman in this story is a symbol for the desire to use spirituality to obtain the circumstances we want in the world. Inner spiritual wisdom does not guide us when our purpose lies with circumstances of the world. Inner spiritual wisdom remains quiet when the world is our purpose.

When the Canaanite woman said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table,” a change in purpose is symbolized.

Have you ever watched a dog eat crumbs that fall from the table? It always amazes me to watch them. Even when the dog is big and the crumb is very small, the dog eats the crumb with complete joy, as if it is an entire juicy steak.

What is the change in purpose symbolized by the Canaanite woman’s comment about the dogs eating crumbs from the table? It is a change from wanting things to be a certain way to loving what is as it is. It is a change to this way of seeing:

This is the day the Lord has made;
We will rejoice and be glad in it.

In the story, Jesus heals the woman’s daughter when her purpose changes. That doesn’t signify that things will work out our way if we practice Loving All. If that were true, we would probably continue to use spirituality to get what we wanted. It signifies that a change in our way of being is a change that is fed into the creative principle, a change that results in grace. (Reference the tips for ACIM Workbook Lessons 346 and 348.)

The simple lesson for us is to be in joy with whatever is—with whatever we are doing and with whatever is happening now. Joy (the Loving All Method) will have a positive effect, even if the positive effect is simply that it becomes easier and more natural to be happy.

Today’s reading is the heart and soul of purification. Learn to live today’s reading, and you will be purified.

Here are some key points to remember from today’s reading:

• You must trust Me above all that you think and hear and see. You must put Me above your self and your world. – I cannot tell you the number of times I remembered this idea and followed it in order to let go of something my sense of self clung to. Remembering this gave me the strength and willingness to let go when the resistance to letting go was great.

 

• The sorting of thoughts is the work that must be done. This is the moment-to-moment choice you must make: Where will you put your faith? – I asked myself this question over and over again during the purification process. “Where will I put my faith? With the teachings and inner guidance or with what I have always believed?” This was a necessary question for me, because if I did not pause to ask this question, the conditioning of prior believing pulled me along with it; but if I paused and asked this question, I found the willingness to make a new and different choice. This is how the brain is reprogrammed, by making appropriate new and different choices consistently.

 

• Let Me help. Depend on Me. Put yourself in My hands, and I will tell you where to look. – We do not sort thoughts with our habituated, conditioned mind. It would lead us to make the same habituated, conditioned choices. We must lean on intuition to determine the thoughts we are to keep and the thoughts we are to let go of. Knowing is within us, but it isn’t the conditioned mind.

 

• There is nothing that is to remain hidden in your mind as the work of sorting is done. – I followed this guidance by bringing everything to my journal to be looked at with Holy Spirit. I never hid anything from my journal, no matter how secretive I thought it was and no matter how bad I thought it made me look. You are under no obligation to share your secrets with others, but you must be willing not to hide them from yourself—from the light and love of your awareness and inner clarity—because it is this light that heals and makes them benign.

 

• I offer more than comfort in a world of fear. – Again, I cannot tell you the number of times I remembered this. I trusted this sentence whenever my sense of self wanted to trust fear. Fear gave the order to ignore intuitive guidance—fear promised I would feel comfortable if I listened to it—but I knew if I listened to fear, I stayed in fear’s world. By listening to it now, I may be comfortable again for a time, but fear will come around again. To transcend fear completely, ignore fear and follow intuition.

NTI Matthew 14 begins by saying:

John the Baptist was beheaded out of fear, and so it is your fear you must be aware of.

In the opening of NTI, we were told that John the Baptist represents conscience. Conscience leads to higher spiritual intuition, which awakens us. It is fair to say that fear will fight intuition for control of our soul (although intuition does not fight back).

When we listen to fear, we repress intuition. When we listen to fear, it is as if intuition is beheaded. If we want to move through purification and awaken to true perception, we need to learn that fear is nothing but emotional energy caused by negative fantasies. It is literally our negative imagination and nothing more than that.

We learn this lesson by choosing not to listen to fear—by following intuition instead—and then by seeing that in the end, everything worked itself out. Fear was and is nothing.

This is why the last line of today’s reading says:

You must choose Me over [fear] to know it is nothing to keep you from Me.

(Consider printing this tip for easy reference later.)

Here is a story from the Bible:

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying:

“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

The meaning of this parable is that we have choice.

Obviously everyone reading this tip has interest in awakening, but in order to go all the way and awaken, more is needed than interest. Last year we started Gentle Healing with 66 people in the Sanctuary (& many others who were unable to attend the meeting live.) By the end of the first year, there were about 25-30 people attending meetings in the Sanctuary (& probably half of the original number who participated without attending meetings.)

I noticed that our numbers were up again at the first meeting for Year 2. There were 40 people in the Sanctuary. How many of us will make the choice to stay and commit to the daily reading, contemplation, writing, meditation and practice, as well as sharing or teaching about our process and clarity? How many of us will make the choice to give it our all, just like an Olympic athlete gives all for the sport?

Giving all includes letting go of our self. There’s just no way we can transcend the ego and continue to listen to our every thought, follow our every desire and avoid everything we want to avoid too, because our thoughts, desires and fears are the ego. The ego is those thoughts.

That means, if we are committed—if we want to be the good soil that the seeds fall on—we are willing to make an ‘about face,’ turn completely around from our ways and our habits, and be led by inner intuition instead of by our thinking and personality conditioning.

I’ve mentioned that I was in the Air Force. Of course, the first phase of a military career is basic training; you might know it as “boot camp.” In basic training, we learned to march in formation, and we learned that specific turn-around step called ‘about face.’ That step did not come naturally for most of us. At first, we would wobble, stumble and turn around too far or not far enough. We had to practice and try again, but by the end of basic training, we could all do the ‘about face’ with ease.

You will have the same experience with this ‘about face’—turning around from your ways and habits to be led by intuition instead of by your thinking and personality conditioning. You will wobble, stumble and turn too far or not far enough. But if you are like the good soil, you will practice and try again, and at some point, following intuition will be easy for you. You will feel at ease with intuition, meaning that you will know inner peace.

One debate that comes up repeatedly in spiritual circles is whether we are to put effort toward awakening or not. Some teach that extreme effort is needed. Some teach that effort needs to be avoided because it comes from the ego. I have always thought that the debate stems from different interpretations of the word “effort.”

NTI Matthew 13 says:

It is through your choice, but not through your effort, that the kingdom of Heaven is given, for the kingdom of Heaven must be a gift given by the Father to you. Choose to be ready to receive the gift. In this way, it is like yeast. The yeast represents the choice, but the rising of the dough is the gift born of that choice. … Through your consistent choice, I will give you My gift. For I cannot give against your choice…

(Note: The last part of this excerpt is from tomorrow’s reading.)

Contemplating this excerpt may help you resolve the debate about effort or no effort in your own mind. Ask the inner Teacher to help you realize clarity.

Today’s reading is about death and life. One might say it teaches why we die and how we can gain eternal life, but those words are not the correct expression of the teaching. Those words are not the correct expression of the teaching, because that which dies cannot gain eternal life, and that which has eternal life cannot die.

In short, we are confused about what we are.

Humans tend to believe that we are individual body-mind-personalities in a world filled with other body-mind-personalities. This is the belief in separation. But as NTI points out, “The Spirit of God is one,” and “What is one cannot be separate and live.”

Let’s imagine that a person takes a knife and begins to dissect a living body. (I know, it’s not pretty to imagine this, but stay with me. I have a point to make.) The person cuts open the body cavity and takes the internal organs out of the body, and places them in separate places on a large table. Will those separated organs live?

Of course, the answer is ‘no.’ As NTI says, “What is one cannot be separate and live.”

When we believe we are individual body-mind-personalities in a world filled with other body-mind-personalities, we metaphorically cut up the Spirit of God in separate pieces, placing each piece in a separate location. (For example, this is me, here. That is John, over there.) Like the organs separated from the body, these separated beings cannot live.

“But the good news is that separateness is but illusion, and so death is illusion too.”

It’s not the separate body-mind-personality that lives. It’s the truth that lives, and it lives because separation has never occurred. “This is the truth I would have you learn.”

Humans identify with the body-mind-personality they appear to be. Typically when humans become involved in spirituality, they think they are on a path that will lead to ‘me’ being eternal. But ‘me’ is like a separated organ lying on a table. It has no hope of being eternal.

The spiritual path isn’t a means to eternal life for ‘me.’ The spiritual path is the means to discovering that I am not ‘me.’ It is the means to waking up from the idea that I am ‘me.’ And in this awakening, we realize what we truly are and that is eternal. The temporary body-mind-personality will come to an end, but the Spirit of God (life) continues, and I am that.

At a deep level, we all know this is true. This is what my dad explained to me on a hike in Southern Missouri. (Reference the tip for ACIM Workbook Lesson 358.) However, to the degree that we are identified with the body-mind-personality, we don’t want the truth to be true. That’s why NTI says:

If you choose to be blind, you will be blind, but blindness is your choice. I come to help you see, if you are willing. There is so much I want to show you! I want to show you the truth of who you are, the sweetness of your freedom and the glory of Heaven! But you must choose to open your eyes. I cannot do that for you.

The body-mind-personality is a temporary manifestation. Like a beautiful flower, it will die. However, just as we can enjoy beautiful flowers, we can love body-mind-personalities. It is our joy to do so! But loving something and thinking it is ‘me’ is not the same thing. We are here to “find the truth, and your truth will be you.”

Today’s reading promises a movement from the way we see now, to a new way of seeing, to truth realization. What we need to do to proceed is let go of our current way of thinking. The inner Teacher will help with that, if we are willing.

In the Year 1 tip based on ACIM Workbook Lesson 362, I shared this excerpt from Floyd Henderson’s book, The Final Understanding:

So many take their favorite teaching method and its teachings as the final step, adopting a religious or spiritual persona and fixating in that role for the remainder of the manifestation…doing spiritual stuff and eating spiritual stuff and wearing spiritual stuff and—in all of their spiritual doingness—living in what they take to be a most non-natural, supernatural, “elevated,” “higher” (and yes, “separate and different”) manner.

NTI addresses this same stumbling block in one of my favorite paragraphs in the entire book:

The search for truth is not truth itself, so do not stop there. Many have heard this call to search and have accepted it, but they have stopped, thinking themselves complete. You are not complete until you are Truth, so do not stop at the call. It is your beginning, but it is not your end. To find the truth, you must walk until your end.

This is what was so important about the last section of A Course in Miracles Workbook for Students. We learned that there are two awakenings, awakening to unity consciousness and then awakening beyond unity consciousness, beyond the pure I Am presence, beyond subject awareness. It is so important to know “keep going.” Even when you think you are complete, keep going. We are blessed to have this knowledge.

Today’s reading cautions us “not to judge the symbols. Do not look for truth there.” This is the same as the teaching from NTI Revelation, Chapter 1, which says, “Do not idolize anything within the world or any symbol or any thought that is sent to lead you from the world. Hold to them as they are useful, but let them go when their usefulness has past. You are to keep moving by letting go until you find yourself with nothing left to hold onto.”

In other words, the spiritual path can be a final obstacle that we get stuck on. Our favorite spiritual teacher can be a final obstacle that we get stuck on. Our favorite scripture or spiritual teaching can be a final obstacle that we get stuck on. Even our own clarity can be a final obstacle that we get stuck on. We want to avoid these common ego traps, which are a lot like quick sand. First we get stuck, and then we are sucked in and swallowed.

That’s why one of Awakening Together’s five core values is:

We affirm one true Self as the only truth. We live this value by embracing what is helpful on the path of awakening without idolizing any spiritual doctrine as truth.

We are here to become empty of everything, “to keep moving by letting go until you find yourself with nothing left to hold onto.”