Before beginning our new special theme, I would like to review each of the special themes that we’ve already contemplated.

What is Forgiveness? Forgiveness is recognizing yourself as the unaffected Self. Therefore, “what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred.” Forgiveness “looks, and waits, and judges not.”

What is Salvation? Salvation is healing by “failing to support the world of dreams … it lets illusions go. By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust. And what they hid is now revealed …”

What is the World? It is a “false perception” where “mechanisms of illusion … go to find what has been given them to seek.” Yet, “all perception can be given a new purpose. … Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete.”

What is Sin? Sin is ignorance or outward focus. “Sin gave the body eyes… The body is the instrument the mind made in its efforts to deceive itself. … Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined issuing from thoughts that are untrue.”

What is the Body?

“The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts.”

When I say that you are life-awareness-presence, you are able to pause the thinking, look and see that is true. To deny that you are life-awareness-presence is ignorance too insane to actually believe. The ego may be able to ignore this fact by attracting attention to thought, but it cannot hide this fact if one redirects attention toward the Self.

However, belief in the body as what you are distorts the fact that you are life-awareness-presence. Although you are able to look and see that life-awareness-presence is what you are, the belief that you are the body makes it seem like the body is primary and life-awareness-presence is secondary. It makes it seem like the body was born, and then life-awareness-presence arose as a byproduct of the body’s birth. It also enables you to imagine that when the body dies, life-awareness-presence dies too.

Is it true that life-awareness-presence is a byproduct of the body? Does life-awareness-presence exist because the body breathes, the heart pumps blood and the brain functions?

Does life-awareness end when the bodily functions cease?

Close your eyes and look to see what claims life-awareness-presence as “mine.” What says “my awareness”? Is it the body or is it the mind?

What says “my body”?

If you watch subtly, you will find that the mind is the one that imagines the body is primary and life-awareness is secondary. Thought says this is true.

Does the fact that thought says it’s true make it true? Is thought a reliable source?

Contemplate this throughout the day today.

God is my refuge and security.

Our special theme says, “The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts.” And then it goes on to say, “For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love.”

Here’s another way to say this: The mind feels safe within the perception of individuality. The mind is terrified of no sense of individuality.

However, are you the one that thinks this way? Are you the mind or are you the life-awareness-presence that is aware of the mind?

What is your truth?

The lesson says, “I will identify with what I think is refuge and security.”

If you think the mind is your refuge and security, then you will identify with thought, and because thought identifies with the body, you will identify with the body too.

However, if you feel your refuge and security lie with the unaffected Self, you will identify with it, and because you identify with it, you will not identify with thought.

Contemplate this today too.

Here is a summary of the questions you will contemplate throughout the day today:

1. Is thought a reliable source?
2. Which is my refuge and security, thought or unaffected life-awareness-presence?

If you have 30 minutes for meditation today, I recommend this meditation again today:

AWA Description Z

What is Sin?

Our special theme says, “There is no sin. Creation is unchanged.”

What is creation?

You are creation. What you are is what A Course in Miracles means by the word, “creation.”

Let’s revisit yesterday’s analogy:

At the surface of the ocean, waves appear. Each wave is temporary, like the body and the personality. The water in the waves appear to be affected by the weather, just like you seem to be affected by the world and the mind’s thoughts. However, the water that is part of the wave isn’t really affected. It may sometimes appear calm and sometimes appear highly agitated, but it is always water. It doesn’t become blood or seaweed. It is forever unaffected by the weather.

At the same time, at the depth of the ocean, the water is untouched by even the appearance of being affected. The weather at the surface does not reach the depths at all.

In the same way, your true Self is not affected at the surface, where there is the appearance of affected. And the appearance of affected does not exist at all within the depths of your Self. At the depth, there is no judgment, no duality, no ignorance and no outward focus.

As this analogy makes clear, both at the surface and at the depth, you remain what you have always been, life-awareness. You have never not been life-awareness, and you shall always be life-awareness.

Let me remember God created me.

Today, let’s contemplate what “I” and “me” really mean. Typically, when the mind uses these words, it refers to itself. It refers to thought as “I” and “me.”

However, that is not what “I” and “me” really mean. “I” and “me” are pronouns used to refer to one’s self, and thought is not a self.

When the mind uses “I” and “me” to refer to itself, it is a misuse of those terms. When we believe thought is “I” and “me,” we are confused about what we are.

Ramana Maharshi said:

That which rises as “I” in this body is the mind. If one inquires as to where in the body the thought “I” rises first, one would discover that it rises in the heart. … Even if one thinks constantly “I,” “I,” one will be led to that place.

If you have 30 minutes for meditation today, I recommend this meditation:

Self-Inquiry Meditation

What is Sin?

Our special theme says, “There is no sin.” That means, there is no judgment. There is no duality. There is no ignorance. There is no outward focus.

Is that true?

Yes. That is all true for the true Self.

It is very difficult to explain how there is no judgment, duality, ignorance or outward focus for the true Self while also admitting that attention goes out to judgment and duality while ignoring truth.

Let me use an analogy:

The best analogy I know is the analogy of the ocean. At the surface of the ocean, waves appear. Each wave is temporary, like the body and the personality. The water in the waves appear to be affected by the weather, just like you seem to be affected by the world and the mind’s thoughts. However, the water that is part of the wave isn’t really affected. It may sometimes appear calm and sometimes appear highly agitated, but it is always water. It doesn’t become blood or seaweed. It is forever unaffected by the weather.

At the same time, in the depths of the ocean, the water is untouched by even the appearance of being affected. The weather at the surface does not reach the depths at all.

In the same way, your true Self is not affected at the surface, where there is the appearance of affected. And the appearance of affected does not exist at all within the depths of your Self. At the depth, there is no judgment, duality, ignorance or outward focus at all.

Our function now is to return the unaffected attention, which has been at the surface, to the depths of the Self, so it may know itself as it has always been.

Let me remember that there is no sin.

Today we contemplate the depths of the Self. We realize that awakening is realization of the depth as our truth. We accept that at the depth, there never has been judgment; there never has been duality; there never has been ignorance; and there never has been outward focus. The depth of the Self has always been only aware of itself.

If you have 30 minutes for meditation today, I recommend repeating this meditation from yesterday:

AWA Description Z

What is Sin?

Our special theme asks, “How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin?”

Let’s contemplate this question using some of our alternative terms:

How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of judgment?

How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of duality?

How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of ignoring truth?

How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of outward focus?

We can answer, “No longer will I play that game.” It is within our power to stop playing the game now. We have the practices that point away from games and towards truth. To stop playing the game, we simply need the desire to live from those practices instead of from old conditioning that is not in harmony with what we want now.

Let me remember that my goal is God.

Today is another opportunity to contemplate what we really want.

Spiritual practice can be forgotten when we are distracted by the personality mind’s “little senseless aims.” However, when we continuously contemplate what we really want, we are naturally drawn to the spiritual practices that lead to Self-realization. We are naturally drawn to those practices, because they are the way to complete our heart’s one true desire.

If you have 30 minutes for meditation today, I recommend this meditation:

AWA Description Z