Lesson 46, God is the Love in which I forgive.

Day 2 with Lesson 45. God is the Mind with which I think.

Some twenty years ago I committed to a thirty day stay at Endeavor Academy. It was an intense spiritual experience.  I had a mystical Light experience as I was waking up in the morning.  I am convinced that this experience was due to the continual immersion in the spiritual culture.  I am equally convinced that, even though I was totally immersed in this environment, my mind was immature for the experience.  I believe that is why I had a profound mystical experience before I had awakened to a new day, before I had a chance to dress myself with my personal identity.  The Holy Spirit was able to facilitate communion with God at a depth within me beyond illusion.  ACIM lesson 45 explains “Under all senseless thoughts and mad ideas with which you have cluttered up your mind are the thoughts which you thought with God in the beginning.”

My real thoughts, the  thoughts I think with God were available to me because the thoughts of the world were not cognitive in the early hours as I woke up.  My beliefs didn’t tell me what was possible with God.  I didn’t have to go past all the unreal thoughts that covered the truth in my mind and try and reach the eternal like the workbook lesson asked us to do because I was already in my Right Mind.

Lesson 45 is trying to take us to a state of mind where the thoughts we have are the same ones that are in God’s Mind. Today’s lesson tells us “As you are part of His Mind, so are your thoughts part of His Thoughts.

When we attempt to practice today’s lesson we attempt to leave the unreal and seek for the real because my real thoughts are in my mind and I would like to find the real thoughts that are there in my mind completely unchanged, exactly as they always were. “Here my mind is joined with the Mind of God. Here my thoughts are one with His.”

As Jacquelyn told us in lesson 44, awareness watching awareness is a means to awakening to reality. It conditions our minds so that we can realize aspects of reality which are our real thoughts.  The ones in Our Mind.

In order to get where Jesus wants us to go, in order to find reality, we need to be well practiced in our awareness watching awareness.  We need to “approach it as you would an altar dedicated in Heaven itself to God the Father and the Son of God.”

I believe I was able to avoid my sense of guilt and unworthiness because I wasn’t able to reject the Holy Spirit’s idea that God was within me.  I hadn’t become cognitive yet of the conditioned thoughts that because God is good, I must be guilty and therefore God could not be in me. I didn’t reason I must be separate from God.  I was innocent to these types of misperceptions as I awoke with God that morning.

To do this lesson, to reach your real thoughts we must go where they are: in our Holy Mind. We will not allow our judgements of ourselves to preclude us from doing what God would tell us is possible because this possibility rests on the foundation that my God Thoughts are the thoughts which I thought with God in the beginning. They are there in my mind now completely unchanged and they will always be in my mind, exactly as they always were.

Lesson 45,God is the Mind with which I think.

Day 3 with Lesson 44

As we learned in our first two days with Lesson 44, we are focused on the aspect of reality known as awareness. Because awareness is an aspect of reality, focusing on awareness is a means of awakening to reality.

As I reflected this morning on what I might share with you in regard to this, our third day with Lesson 44 and as many days furthering our practice of awareness watching awareness meditation, I came across the perfect message in an email from Father Richard Rohr. Father Rohr is a Franciscan Friar and writes extensively on what might be termed Christian Mysticism. Father Rohr and the teachers he quotes have, not surprisingly, come to the same conclusions about the nature of God/Awareness/Reality as have the Eastern Mystics. Through our dedication and devotion to our daily lessons and through our awareness watching awareness meditation, we are beginning to have a direct experience of this same Truth. I have reprinted Father Rohr’s email below for your contemplation.

Oneness
Friday, March 29, 2019

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, and one love. —Meister Eckhart

Today we continue reflecting on what David Benner calls “spirit-centered awakening.” Again, he offers excellent insights:

The cosmic self reminds us that oneness with God is not intended to be a private experience. Because all people live and move and have their being in God (Acts 17:28), it is not just me and God that are one. Even beyond this, because everything that exists is held in the unity that is Christ (Colossians 1:15-17), everything that exists is one in Christ. The old joke about the mystic who walks up to the hotdog vendor and says, “Make me one with everything,” misses the point. I am already one with everything. All that is absent is awareness. This awareness is the gift of the cosmic self.

. . . This is not life in a psychotic fog of enmeshment. It does not involve a regressive return to a developmental state before differentiation of self from others. Instead, it involves transcendence through awareness that the apparent separateness of the one from the many is an illusion. Slowly we begin to see that both the one and the many are held together in the One—the Eternal Godhead. And as we come to know our self within this One, we also come to know our oneness with all that is held by the One. . . .

Awareness allows us to know this reality, and our cooperation with the Spirit allows this awareness to become transformational.

This knowing is often called enlightenment because it involves seeing what is [with the eyes of the heart]. . . . The eyes with which we see are the eyes of the One. . . .

To be one with everything is to have overcome the fundamental optical illusion of our separateness. We establish boundaries to try to reinforce individuality, but what we get is isolation and alienation. We think we have bodies instead of being our bodies, and the result is alienation from our bodies. We distinguish between our self and the natural world, and we end up exploiting the environment from which we feel estranged. We think we are separate from other people, and the result is a breach in our knowing of our underlying shared humanity. Boundaries disrupt the flow of participative energy between elements of creation that can be distinguished but that are intimately interrelated. Raimon Panikkar captures this well: “I am one with the source insofar as I too act as a source by making everything I have received flow again.” To realize that we are already one with everything is to have restored the flow of creation and allowed ourselves unqualified participation in the life of God. (Father Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation).

Day 2 with Lesson 44

Yesterday, we saw that “light” and “awareness” are synonymous in Lesson 44. If you read Lesson 44 with this realization, it speaks clearly. For example, the lesson says “light and life must go together, being but different aspects of creation.” In this sentence, “creation” is a term used to mean the ‘totality of reality’. It doesn’t refer to form. It refers to the cumulative aspects of reality, such as life (isness), awareness (light), intelligence (knowledge) and love (embracing-allowance).

In Lesson 44, we are focused on one of those aspects, light (awareness). We are told, “In order to see (true vision), you must recognize that light is within, not without.” In other words, we don’t see by sunlight or light bulb. Seeing isn’t with the eyes at all. We see with awareness. As Michael Langford says in The Most Direct Means to Eternal Bliss, “Awareness is not thought. Awareness is that which is aware of thought. … Awareness is not emotions. Awareness is that which is aware of emotions. … Awareness is not the objects seen by the eyes. Awareness is that which is aware of the objects seen by the eyes.”

This is why Lesson 44 says, “An essential part of this equipment is the light that makes seeing possible. It is with you always, making vision possible in every circumstance.”

Again, in Lesson 44 we are focused on the aspect of reality known as awareness. Because awareness is an aspect of reality, focusing on awareness is a means of awakening to reality. Therefore, as we practice awareness-watching-awareness as our means of meditation for Lesson 44, we are indeed “attempting something very holy.”

Lesson 44, God is the light in which I see

Lesson 43. God is my Source. I cannot see apart from Him.

A Course in Miracles is an interesting mix of psychological and Christian terms. What we want to do in reading the Course is not to allow the words to get in the way of understanding. Let’s look at some of the words in this lesson.

Perception is the process of recognizing and interpreting sensory stimuli. (www.simplypsychology.org). This very simple definition of perception makes it clear that perception would have no function in the Absolute or God. The realm of the Absolute is the “realm of knowledge” and is beyond interpretation. The definition of perception is also helpful in seeing how this lesson fits with what we have been learning about our purpose in this world of sensory stimuli (a thing or event that evokes a reaction).

As the lesson tells us, “in salvation, which is the undoing of what never was, perception has a mighty purpose.” Again, depending on your religious background or other experiences the word “salvation” might seem heavy or daunting or confusing. It need not been seen that way. Salvation is defined by Google Dictionary as “the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.” Indeed, the lesson itself tells us that salvation “is the undoing of what never was.” As we saw in our Tip for lesson 36, “It is essential that error be not confused with ‘sin,’ and it is this distinction which makes salvation possible.” Thus, we are merely being taught that it is our interpretation of what we experience that corrects the error (or misperception) of separation.

This is the “Good News.” This is our purpose. The lesson continues:

Made by the Son of God for an unholy purpose, it must become the means for the restoration of his holiness to his awareness. Perception has no meaning. Yet does the Holy Spirit give it a meaning very close to God’s. Healed perception becomes the means by which the Son of God forgives his brother, and thus forgives himself.

Again, the word “forgiveness” carries different connotations and overtones depending on one’s life experiences. Lesson 134, “Let me perceive what forgiveness is,” makes it abundantly clear that forgiveness is releasing error/misperception/belief in separation and, instead, recognizing our holiness/wholeness/Oneness.

It is sin’s unreality that makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. It does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly, with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth. And there they disappear entirely. Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks straight through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies, but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, “My brother, what you think is not the truth.”

As our lesson for today tells us:

You cannot see apart from God because you cannot be apart from God. Whatever you do you do in Him, because whatever you think, you think with His Mind. If vision is real, and it is real to the extent to which it shares the Holy Spirit’s purpose, then you cannot see apart from God.

What we are consistently being asked to do is to look upon the world and see that the separation it would show us is not the truth. We are asked to recognize our holiness and the power that lies within our creative attention.

During this lesson’s practice sessions, we are asked to allow related thoughts to come to us. The lesson says, “Any thought related more or less directly to today’s idea is suitable. The thoughts need not bear any obvious relationship to the idea, but they should not be in opposition to it.”

We have seen this practice of ‘allowing related thoughts’ a few times now. This is a very helpful practice in remembering the Truth.

We all have the ability to listen to thoughts that reflect truth and point toward truth. When we allow thoughts into our mind that are related to the workbook lesson, we are tuning into that ability. The more we tune into that ability, the easier it is to access those thoughts.

Imagine it this way: You know from NTI Ephesians that we receive thoughts rather than think thoughts. Imagine thoughts flying through the air with darker (more untrue) thoughts being at a lower, heavier vibration level and with true thoughts being at a higher, lighter vibration level. Both types of thoughts are flying by, but your receiver (the mind) is tuned at a level that picks up on the heavy, more dense thoughts. Because it is so used to the density of these thoughts, it doesn’t even notice the lighter ones.

During these practices, you are learning to retrain or retune your receiver so that it notices and becomes accustomed to the lighter thoughts. Your mind is becoming sharper/more sensitive (more discerning) so that it notices the difference between the lower vibration and higher vibration thoughts, and then tunes itself to pick up the higher vibration thoughts and pull them in so you can cast attention on them.

In the Course, listening to the higher vibration thoughts is commonly called listening to the Holy Spirit or the right mind. This is the training we go through as we allow related thoughts into our mind during these practices.

Lesson 42. God is my Strength. Vision is His gift.

Jesus is teaching by means of a cause and effect relationship: “Vision must be possible. God gives truly.” And here is another cause and effect teaching from today’s lesson: “God’s gifts to me must be mine, because He gave them to me”

My thoughts after making up a few of these causal ideas on my own was, what a wonderful way to express. Wonder if I could share Galatians through the cause and effect relationship?

Here is NTI Galatians  1:

God is the simplicity of Love, I am blessed.

God is my truth. I’m no longer willing to resist

God is in in depths of my heart. I’m no longer tempted by doubt thoughts.

God is the truth. I release all beliefs that aren’t true.

NTI Galatians 2:

God is without ambiguity. I am no longer confused.

God is without judgement. I release my beliefs in separation.

God is the Light by which I see. I surrender my judgements.

NTI Galatians 3;

God is the Light. Willingness lights my way to Him.

God is the Light. He is our joy and our focus.

God freed me. I no longer need to judge.

God knows my willingness. I am healed and free.

God knows of my willingness. The darkness of confusion is lifted.

NTI Galatians 4

God has a message. God’s message is love and freedom.

God can’t judge. He knows not of separation.

I have no false idols. Only one true God.

God’s Love rules. The world is an illusion.

God knows my faith. The world is shown for what it is, unreal.

NTI Galatians 5

God is in my mind. I am free.

God is in my thoughts. He is my belief and my present experience.

God is my truth. My experiences are of love and absolute freedom.

I am coming to know God. I am opening to the possibility that the truth may be true.

God is my Light. He is the willingness in my mind.

God is the call I hear. I am eager to reunite with awareness.

God is my Calling. The call is the spark of Light that links us.

God transforms my mind. My perceptions of myself as an individual becomes less dense.

I am God focused. I feel more and see more.

I am God focused. The Light expands in my mind.

Through God you are everything. Everything is Love.

God knows I love my brother as myself. God recognizes me in my brother.

God is in me. God is in my brother.

God beckons me to repent because I remember what I truly want.

NTI Galatians 6:

God reminds me forgiveness is extension of love in the world. Return your mind to truth.

God is my truth. God is my Source.

I am returned to God. I am returned to my willingness.

God is my purpose. Awareness is the means to know that.

God is my willingness. God heals all wounds.

ACIM Lessons 42:

God is my Strength. Vision is His gift.

Tip for Lesson 41, God goes with me where ever I go. 

In this workbook lesson, Jesus begins to teach awareness-watching-awareness meditation (beyond thought). He also says that we will go into more detail about this kind of practice as we go along, and we will. At our next Gentle Healing group, we will read very specific (very helpful) instructions for this type of practice. Next week, we will spend 3 days with Lesson 44 and two days with Lesson 45 in order to slow down and put extra emphasis on brief periods of awareness-watching-awareness practice. 

Lesson 40. I am blessed as a Son of God.

“I am blessed as a Son of God
I am happy, peaceful, loving and contented.

I am blessed as a Son of God
I am calm, quiet, assured and confident.”

Did you do today’s lesson the way Jesus asked you to?  Did you repeat the idea, I am blessed as a Son of God, and then add several of the attributes you associate with being a Son of God, applying them to yourself?

Were these attributes difficult for you?  If so, was the difficulty you found due to correlating the Son of God to yourself?

NTI Galatians 5 tells us, “You do not know who you are, but you are opening to the possibility that truth may be true. This is to create an opening in your conscious awareness through which Spirit can flow as you.” And NTI Galatians 1 began by saying, “I come to you on this day to teach you the joy of who you are and to teach you the glory and the truth that is forever and forever true.”

Did you have a different evaluation of yourself?

In ACIM, Chapter 9, The Two Evaluations, we are told:

His [the Holy Spirit’s] evaluation of you is based on His knowledge of what you are, and so He evaluates you truly. And this evaluation must be in your mind, because He is.  The ego is also in your mind, because you have accepted it there. Its evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit’s, because the ego does not love you. It is unaware of what you are, and mistrustful of everything it perceives because its perceptions are so shifting. The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst.

But Jesus continues and says the Holy Spirit does know you as a Son of God: “He is not deceived by anything you do, because He never forgets what you are.  He judges every belief you hold in terms of where it comes from. If it comes from God, He knows it to be true.  If it does not, He knows that it is meaningless.”

So the Holy Spirit knows knows the truth, and the truth is that the attributes that we associate with being a Son of God do in fact, apply to ourselves.  And that is why NTI Galatians 5 admonishes us to, “watch your mind, for it is only your own thoughts that may enslave you. Whenever you do not feel free, you are believing illusions. There is a direct correlation between your thoughts and beliefs and your present experience.”

I am blessed as a Son of God

I am joy, glory, truth and free. The attributes that the Holy Spirit knows to be true are true and nothing but unaware thoughts could keep me from experiencing these holy attributes in myself.