Please take time this morning to read, “What is Forgiveness,” to contemplate Lesson 228, and to spend time in meditation. If you have 40-minutes for meditation and would like a gentle audio to guide you, I recommend this meditation for today:

Am I the Body?

God has condemned me not. No more do I.

You are not what you think you are. What you are is so much grander than that which can be conceived by the human mind. Just as you cannot cling to one rung of a ladder and move up the ladder, you must let go of the conception of yourself as a separate identity in order to learn the truth of your being.

You can readily see how you identify yourself by making a list of “your” attributes. It might look something like this:

I am young (or I am old).

I am smart (or I am not very bright).

I am attractive/not attractive.

I am frugal/a spendthrift.

I am punctual/always late.

I am kind/mean.

I am spiritual/fun at parties.

Just looking at the list reveals the triviality with which we regard ourselves. If we knew ourselves as the great truth, the insignificance of these little conceptions would be especially apparent.

We talk often about how our true nature is changeless and eternal. Look at the list you have compiled and ask yourself whether the characteristics of truth can be found within it. Are any of the items on your list subject to change or extinction?

Don’t you find that the things on your lists all have opposites? Indeed, haven’t you ever felt you were just the opposite of the attribute you give to yourself at this time? That is, if you believe you are attractive, wasn’t there a time when you felt unattractive? If you believe yourself to be smart, wasn’t there a time when you felt like you weren’t very bright? In fact, isn’t it your experience of feeling the opposite at one time or another that leads you to choose the attributes you now use to describe yourself? Said another way, how can you know you are smart (or why would you identify with being “smart”) if you never felt not so bright? How can you know you are attractive or why would you identify with “attractive,” if there was never a time when you felt unattractive?

Regardless of whether you identify with “good” attributes or “bad” attributes, can you see that the tendency to identify with any attribute distracts from discovering the truth of what you really are?

Today, look to see where/when you identify with a particular attribute and ask yourself why it is important to you to be perceived in this way? Ask yourself whether you are willing to be perceived in the opposite way? If not, why not?

By learning to see our self describing attributes as mere preferences as to how we like to think of ourselves or how we would like to be seen by others rather than facts, we begin the process of letting go of the idea of ourselves as persons or body-mind-personalities and we make room for true Self inquiry.

Today, make room for the understanding that “my mistakes about myself are dreams. I let them go today. And I stand ready to receive Your Word alone for what I really am.”

Please take time this morning to read, “What is Forgiveness,” to contemplate Lesson 227, and to spend time in meditation. If you have 30-minutes for meditation and would like a gentle audio to guide you, I recommend this meditation by Michael Langford and Karen Worth:

AWA Description G

This is my holy instant of release.

Our primary practices, awareness-watching-awareness and forgiveness are both ways of removing attention from thought.  Removing attention from thought is our holy instant of release.  But, why is our primary practice for release removing attention from thought?

First the “What is Forgiveness?” section of ACIM explains, “Forgiveness recognizes what you thought… has not occurred.”  Second, our release comes from what ACIM calls perfect communication or what we call awareness-watching-awareness. When we become still and turn within through awareness watching awareness, we bring ourselves into perfect communication with our beingness, which shares its essence with God and our brothers. Thus by removing our believing attention from our thoughts and turning to awareness watching awareness, we transcend private thoughts in favor of perfect communion with everything.

“This is the recognition that all minds are in communication.  It therefore seeks to change nothing, but merely to accept everything [forgiveness].”  But our “private thoughts break perfect communication.”  We justify and defend “private thoughts” and yet “wonder why it is that [we] are not in full communication with those around [us], and with God [truth] who surrounds all of [us] together.  It is impossible to recognize perfect communication while breaking communication holds value to you.  Ask yourselves honestly, ‘Would I want to have perfect communication, and am I wholly willing to let everything that interferes with it go forever?’”

The willingness to practice forgiveness and awareness-watching-awareness represents the single will that governs all thoughts.  As ACIM Chapter 16 advises, “In your practice, then, try only to be vigilant against deception, and seek not to protect the thoughts you would keep unto yourself.  Let the Holy Spirit’s [or Inner Wisdom’s] purity shine them away, and bring all your awareness to the readiness for purity…Thus [will you be made] ready to acknowledge that you are host to God [truth], and hostage to no-one and nothing.”

We protect our thoughts by indulging them. We want to ensure that we are vigilant in applying the practices of both forgiveness and awareness-watching-awareness. When you find yourself upset, ask yourself whether you are justifying or defending your thoughts or whether you are engaging in forgiveness through self-inquiry, rest-accept-and-trust, and right reasoning. It is only by practicing forgiveness that we make ourselves ready for perfect communication or clarity when we practice awareness-watching-awareness.

Please take time this morning to read, “What is Forgiveness,” to contemplate Lesson 226, and to spend time in meditation. If you have 30-minutes for meditation and would like a gentle audio to guide you, I recommend this meditation by Michael Langford and Karen Worth:

AWA Description F

My home awaits me. I will hasten there.

There is no reason for us to hold onto unhappiness of any kind. Only our own ideas and the value we give them create unhappiness.

What ideas are you giving value to that create your unhappiness?

Do you think things should be different than they are? Is there an ideal perfection that is not being met? Is someone acting different than you want him/her to act? Should you have something that you do not have? Is your mind full of self-condemnation, or is it highly critical of another?

When you are unhappy, pause and look. What idea is currently present and currently valued as true? Do you value this idea more than the opportunity to know the freedom of truth realization? Or are you willing to release this idea and any value you’ve given it in order to be one step closer to total freedom?

Please take time this morning to read, “What is Forgiveness,” to contemplate Lesson 225, and to spend time in meditation. If you have 30-minutes for meditation and would like a gentle audio to guide you, I recommend this meditation by Michael Langford and Karen Worth:

AWA Description E

God is my Father, and His Son loves Him.

Today’s tip begins, “Father, I must return Your Love for me.”  This, the desire to give God back the love that He gave us, may seem difficult because God can seem to be abstract, but the truth is, God is Love, and as NTI 1 John 4 points out, “Love is everything.  The thoughts of everything are these:  acceptance, joy, gratitude, peace and welcome.” With these thoughts we can return our mind to God. NTI 1 John 1 says, [This return comes] “in a moment of peace when God is your only desire.”  We give love back by giving attention to life-awareness by gratefully spending time in awareness-watching-awareness meditation.  God, as awareness, exists within you.  Experience that, accept that God is and you are one with that.

NTI 1 John 4 continues, “When any thought does not feel like love, you may put it aside as false. Love is all that there is.  Thoughts that are not Love are thoughts such as these: lack, limits, competition, victimhood, personhood, strife, and fighting, sickness, death, rage, and sorrow, helplessness, hopelessness, control and loss.  These are thoughts that imply separation, and separateness is illusion.”  Next time you believe a brother has hurt you, stop, look and see, has awareness been hurt?  We know that we are all a part of Love, or awareness-life-presence, and whether it is apparent or not our brothers’ interests are the same as ours and that is to know ourselves as the awareness-life-presence, or the Love that we truly are.

Please take time this morning to read, “What is Forgiveness,” to contemplate Lesson 224, and to spend time in meditation. If you have 30-minutes for meditation and would like a gentle audio to guide you, I recommend this meditation by Michael Langford and Karen Worth:

AWA Description D

God is my Father, and He loves His Son.

“Father” and “Son” are symbols. Like all symbols, they can have multiple meanings. For our purposes now, it is helpful to see life-awareness as Father and presence as Son.

Some people make the mistake of seeing the personality-mind as Son. The personality-mind is a temporary effect in presence, but it is not what you are. When one sees the personality-mind as Son, one remains stuck with the misperception that s/he is the personality-mind. In addition, the personality-mind isn’t “wholly beneficent.” When people feel that it should be, it can lead to additional guilt and unworthiness.

Focus your attention on presence (present awareness) now. Notice presence is simply aware without any involvement in the world or in thoughts. Presence is “wholly beneficent and free from guilt.” Presence is the awareness that lights up everything perceived and experienced. Without the awareness of presence, there would not be perception or experience. Said another way, nothing could exist without presence.

Presence is what you are. Presence is the Son of life-awareness.

Now focus your intuitive attention on life-awareness (activating cause), which is the foundation and essence of presence. Notice how life-awareness and presence are one. Life-awareness is the light of presence in the same way that presence is the light of the world. Just as nothing manifest could exist without presence, presence exists because of the loving and ongoing gift of life-awareness.

Today’s lesson says, “I am weary of the world I see.” Does this thought come from presence? Or is presence the silent witness of this thought? Who (or what) are you?

Please take time this morning to read, “What is Forgiveness,” to contemplate Lesson 223, and to spend time in meditation. If you have 30-minutes for meditation and would like a gentle audio to guide you, I recommend this meditation by Michael Langford and Karen Worth:

AWA Description C

God is my life. I have no life but His.

The ego is the thought that I am my own entity. It is the thought that I have life and I have awareness, but I am the entity; the life and awareness that I have are my possessions. They are “my life” and “my awareness.” It is also the thought that life and awareness other than my life and my awareness are separate from the life and awareness in me. It’s as if I have a bottled up source of life and awareness that exists in the body, which is my container.

Self-inquiry questions these basic ego assumptions.

What is the “I” that is its own entity? Of course, there is the appearance of the body. If one does not look deeply one may point at the body and say, “I am my own entity.” But does the body make these claims? What is the “I” that claims to be its own separate entity?

When one pauses to look more deeply, one will find that the mind is the “I” that claims to be its own entity.

Is it true that the mind is its own entity? Does the mind possess life and awareness as it claims or is living-awareness aware of the mind? Does thought possess life and awareness or is living-awareness (as presence) aware of thought?

Once you have distinguished between thought and awareness-life-presence through the previous inquiry, focus attention on presence (present awareness). Is presence what you are? Can you separate yourself from present awareness or is that you? Does presence make any claims of possessing life and awareness or is it simply permeated with life-awareness? Can presence be separated from life-awareness?

Contemplate the life-awareness that permeates presence. This requires intuitive contemplation of that which cannot be seen but can be realized. It has no personality. It has no sense of self. It is before presence, which does have a non-personal sense of “I am,” but life-awareness does not have a sense of “I am.” It is the life-awareness energy of presence, just as electricity is the energy that lights a light bulb.

With contemplative attention on life-awareness, the essence of presence, ask:

Is this life-awareness separate or different from the life-awareness in any other presence? (This is similar to asking, “Is the electricity that lights the bulb in this lamp separate or different from the electricity that lights the bulb in that lamp?)

Do you find that there is one source that permeates presence with life-awareness or are there different sources?

If there is one source that permeates presence with life-awareness, and if presence is life-awareness, and presence is what you are, can you say that you are your own entity? Or, are you the essence of your source, which is also the essence of all things?

Please take time this morning to read, “What is Forgiveness,” to contemplate Lesson 222, and to spend time in meditation. If you have 30-minutes for meditation and would like a gentle audio to guide you, I recommend this meditation by Michael Langford and Karen Worth:

AWA Description B

God is with me. I live and move in Him.

You are everything. Everything is you. There is nothing that has ever or could ever exist that could be different in essence from what you are. This is why we know God by turning within. This is why mere willingness to see is all that is required to know our Self and to know God.

Self, consciousness, God, the flow-of-life, awareness-life-presence are not separate things. To think of your Self as separate is to create another barrier between your willingness and your knowledge.

Contemplate life-awareness throughout the day today. Notice it is inseparable from presence and it is the source of presence. Without life-awareness, presence could not be.

Notice life-awareness everywhere. Realize life-awareness is God, and that since you are always with and within life-awareness, you are always in the presence of God.

Today we recognize life-awareness is that which we are and is that which God is. In awareness-life-presence, I live and move and have my being.

Lesson 221. Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still.

Our format for part two of the ACIM workbook lessons is this:

1 – Each day read and contemplate the “special theme” that we are currently working with. The first one is, “What is Forgiveness?”

2 – Contemplate the day’s workbook lesson.

3 – Spend time in meditation.

4 – Recall the day’s workbook lesson hourly.

5 – Spend at least a brief time with the workbook lesson and/or meditation before going to bed at night.

I invite you to listen to an audio on the theme, “What is Forgiveness?” If you cannot listen this morning, listen later in the day, in the evening before going to bed or within the next day or two.

Audio-What is Forgiveness?

Please take time this morning to read “What is Forgiveness?” from the ACIM Workbook, to contemplate Lesson 221, and to spend time in meditation. If you have 30 minutes for meditation and would like a gentle audio to guide you , I recommend this meditation by Michael Langford and Karen Worth:

AWA Description A

Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still

It feels as if the new set of workbook lessons are taking us to newer and greater heights of a direct experience where, because we have been faithful in our practices, we will be able to perceive the next holy part because it is our will. The introduction says, “And you could have never come this far unless you saw, however dimly, that it is your will.”

This lesson is a prayer. It speaks to my desire for peace to my mind through the channel of stillness. How holy it seems to wait for the promised experience in joined silence.