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.

Each one of us identifies with a large number of ideas. For example:

• I am [name, age, & gender].
• I am [career or other role in life].
• I am good/bad with money.
• I am healthy/sick/in constant pain.
• I am smart/stupid.
• I am athletic/in poor shape.
• I am busy/bored.
• I am compassionate/uncaring.
• I am addicted/self-disciplined.
• I am outgoing/introverted.
• I am responsible/a procrastinator.
• I am detail-oriented/likely to make mistakes.
• I am outdoorsy/a couch potato.
• I am artistic/handy/unskilled.
• I am intuitive/confused.
• I am energetic/lethargic.
• I am blessed/unlucky.
• I am attractive/not much to look at.

I could go on all day, because we each carry so many identifications in our minds.

Today’s lesson points out that each of these mental identities condemns us to a limited view of our self. We overlook our truth and believe a limited self-identity whenever we identify with an idea, positive or negative.

If you look at the list above, you will be able to find some ideas that you identify with. However, is that what you are? For example, if you identify with smart, have you ever felt stupid? If you identify as one who is likely to make mistakes, have you ever been praised for a job well done?

It doesn’t matter what idea we identify with. When we identify with an idea, we put on blinders. We ignore our unlimited nature by thinking, “I am [this idea].”

Let’s pay attention to the ideas we identify with. When you notice an idea of identification, pause and look at it with inquiry. Is it true that you are that? Is that constant and unchanging, always you? Or is that a temporary experience that your mind has latched onto? Is it just a mental identity, or is it what you really are?

What are you? What can you find that is constant and unchanging, and clearly you? Can you find ‘you’ that is beyond all ideas?

Here is a message that I received from Holy Spirit in 2007 that further explores the point of today’s lesson:

If You Are Both

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.

What is God’s Will? God’s Will is life-awareness-presence. It is isness-being. It is existence. God’s Will is the truth of all things as they really are.

Today’s lesson says, “I thought to make another will. Yet nothing that I thought apart from You exists.”

NTI Romans calls this other will the wish for “something completely different” than reality. That would be something completely different from life-awareness-presence. If something is completely different from life-awareness-presence, it has no life. Therefore, it does not exist.

Our thoughts have no life. They are the other will. When we remove attention from our thoughts and place attention with life-awareness-presence, we “lay them down before the feet of truth, to be removed forever from my mind.”

Both of our primary practices remove attention (meaning and value) from thoughts. We practice forgiveness (inquiry, rest-accept-trust, right-reason, etc) and awareness-watching-awareness. Both are critical components of “our glad return to Heaven, which we never really left.”

Today we embrace our primary practices. We see they are both important to our “instant of release.” We are grateful to have these practices as part of our lives now.

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 lesson says, “Father, … You have given all Your Love to me. I must return it, for I want it mine in full awareness, blazing in my mind and keeping it within its kindly light, inviolate, beloved, with fear behind and only peace ahead.”

With the realization that this is what we want, we practice giving love (attention) to life-awareness by gratefully spending time in awareness-watching-awareness meditation.

The lesson also says, “Brother, we find that stillness now.”

With this in our hearts, we practice forgiveness today. If we see an idea that someone has done something to us, we pause and notice that we are not affected at all. The mind may be agitated, but we are the presence that is aware of the mind; we are not the mind. If the agitation continues to attract our attention, we use a spiritual practice to see through the illusion of being affected. With right-gratitude for this healing opportunity, we practice inquiry, rest-accept-trust and/or right-reason in order to free ourselves from the illusion of meaning when there is none.