A universal assembly for true discernment
Aug 10, 2017 ~ Daily Contemplation ~ ACIM Workbook Lesson 202 ~ Review of Lesson (182) I will be still an instant and go home
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
(182) I will be still an instant and go home.
Why would I choose to stay an instant more where I do not
belong, when God Himself has given me His Voice to call
me home?
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
Review instructions: Spend at least 15 minutes in the morning and at least 15 minutes in the evening contemplating the lesson for the day. You might use that time to review the original lesson in the Course, to review the original tip, to write in your journal or to move into awareness-watching-awareness meditation using the idea for the day as your ‘anchor thought,’ a thought that helps you transition from attention on thinking to attention on awareness.
To keep your mind focused on today’s idea and to help absorb the idea fully, repeat it to yourself at least once hourly.
In addition, use today’s idea as much as is needed as a transition from ego thinking to spiritual intuition. For example, you can say, “This thought I do not want. I choose instead ______. And then repeat the idea for the day, and let it take the place of what you thought.” Next, ask spiritual intuition for guidance that suits the moment. (Click here to review Inner Ramana’s instructions about surrender.)
Today’s review idea:
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
I will be still an instant and go home.
Workbook Lesson 182 said, “When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice. So poignantly He calls to you that you will not resist Him longer. In that instant He will take you to His home, and you will stay with Him in perfect stillness, silent and at peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt, sublimely certain that you are at home. Rest with Him frequently today.”
Let’s make stillness a more important part of our lives. When you notice that you are ‘killing time’ with unimportant activity, drop the distraction and spend time in quiet stillness instead. Choose to do nothing. Sit outside and be aware with nature, or close your eyes and spend time in awareness-watching-awareness meditation. Let’s make it our goal to fall in love with quiet time, time to do nothing but be awareness.
Link to the original tip for this idea.
Listen to this recording
You can learn more about Nirmala and his teachings on his website, which contains several free ebooks, articles, videos and audios.
Aug 9, 2017 ~ Daily Contemplation ~ ACIM Workbook Lesson 201 ~ Review of Lesson (181) I trust my brothers, who are one with me
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
(181) I trust my brothers, who are one with me.
No one but is my brother. I am blessed with oneness with
the universe and God, my Father, one Creator of the whole
that is my Self, forever One with me.
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
The last twenty lessons have been foundational. Because of that, we will spend a full twenty days reviewing those twenty lessons. We want to absorb those lessons to the point that they become our automatic response to the world, the thinking mind, and negative emotional experiences.
That’s why the review instructions say, “Besides the time you give morning and evening, which should not be less than fifteen minutes, and the hourly remembrances you make throughout the day, use the idea as often as you can between them.”
In fact, referring to the importance of these twenty lessons, the review instructions go on to say, “Each of these ideas alone would be sufficient for salvation, if it were learned truly. … Each contains the whole curriculum if understood, practiced, accepted, and applied to all the seeming happenings throughout the day. One is enough. But from that one, there must be no exceptions made.” However, we will use them all and “let them blend as one, as each contributes to the whole we learn.”
In addition to the structured instructions given in the first paragraph of the review instructions (and repeated in the second paragraph above), you are asked to use the day’s idea whenever you are tempted to speak, act or think from ego. The review instructions say, “Permit no idle thought to go unchallenged. If you notice one, deny its hold and hasten to assure your mind that this is not what it would have. Then gently let the thought which you denied be given up, in sure and quick exchange for the idea we practice for the day.”
For example, you can say, “This thought I do not want. I choose instead ______. And then repeat the idea for the day, and let it take the place of what you thought.”
This thoughtful remembrance of the day’s idea is not the end of your response to temptation. After gently shifting with the heart from the ego-based thought to the review lesson, you will experience at least an instant of relative quiet. We are asked to use that moment of quiet to ask spiritual intuition for guidance that suits the moment.
In fact, the review instructions say, “To Him I offer this review for you. I place you in His charge, and let Him teach you what to do and say and think, each time you turn to Him.”
This is a good time to review Inner Ramana’s instructions about surrender.
As we go through this review period, I will begin each tip with a summary of these review instructions. I will also provide a summary review of the idea for the day along with a link to the original tip for that idea. Beyond that, you will be left to inner guidance, “allowing Him to teach us how to go, and trusting Him completely for the way each practice period can best become a loving gift of freedom to the world.”
Today’s review idea is:
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
I trust my brothers, who are one with me.
When most of us read the word “brothers,” we immediately think of the body-minds of others. The body-mind is not what our brothers are. This is also why we do not need to replace the word “brothers” with “brothers and sisters.” When we contemplate this lesson, we are not looking at a body-mind; we are looking at sexless awareness-life-presence. “Brothers” in this idea is a symbol for that which is beyond changing form, for that which is constant.
As you contemplate the idea for today, contemplate awareness-life-presence, which is what our brothers are and what we are.
Link to the original tip for this idea
Facilitated by Rev. Jacquelyn Eckert & Connie Poole
Listen to this recording
Regina Dawn Akers guides a group of committed students who would like to make consistent, gentle progress toward genuine peace, joy and love. This group meets weekly and all members are committed to specific assignments and practices between group meetings. Everyone who is willing to make a commitment to healing/awakening is invited to join this group.
The reading tonight was Chapter 12 from The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
Homework for the upcoming week:
Homework Assignment A: Workbook lessons 201-207. Practice daily awareness-watching-awareness meditation for 15-20 minutes each day. Practice the “Loving All” Method.
Homework Assignment B:Read “The Most Direct Means to Eternal Bliss,” Chapter 7, sentences 10 – 52, all of Chapter 8. You will find them at this link: http://albigen.com/uarelove/most_rapid/contents.htm
Homework Assignment C: Watch ‘Meditation: Being Aware of Being Aware is the Highest Meditation’ with Rupert Spira. It can be found in the Gentle Healing Playlist on our YouTube Channel.
Aug 8, 2017 ~ Daily Contemplation ~ ACIM Workbook Lesson 200 ~ There is no peace except the peace of God ~ Day 2 of 2
Seek you no further. You will not find peace except the peace of God. Accept this fact, and save yourself the agony of yet more bitter disappointments, bleak despair, and sense of icy hopelessness and doubt. Seek you no further. There is nothing else for you to find except the peace of God, unless you seek for misery and pain.
This is the final point to which each one must come at last, to lay aside all hope of finding happiness where there is none; of being saved by what can only hurt; of making peace of chaos, joy of pain, and Heaven out of hell. Attempt no more to win through losing, nor to die to live. You cannot but be asking for defeat.
Yet you can ask as easily for love, for happiness, and for eternal life in peace that has no ending. Ask for this, and you can only win. To ask for what you have already must succeed. To ask that what is false be true can only fail. Forgive yourself for vain imaginings, and seek no longer what you cannot find. For what could be more foolish than to seek and seek and seek again for hell, when you have but to look with open eyes to find that Heaven lies before you, through a door that opens easily to welcome you?
Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places and in alien forms that have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here. But it is given you to find the means whereby the world no longer seems to be a prison house or jail for anyone.
Freedom is given you where you beheld but chains and iron doors. But you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape. You will be bound till all the world is seen by you as blessed, and everyone made free of your mistakes and honored as he is. You made him not; no more yourself. And as you free the one, the other is accepted as he is.
What does forgiveness do? In truth it has no function, and does nothing. For it is unknown in Heaven. It is only hell where it is needed, and where it must serve a mighty function. Is not the escape of God’s beloved Son from evil dreams that he imagines, yet believes are true, a worthy purpose? Who could hope for more, while there appears to be a choice to make between success and failure; love and fear?
There is no peace except the peace of God, because He has one Son who cannot make a world in opposition to God’s Will and to his own, which is the same as His. What could he hope to find in such a world? It cannot have reality, because it never was created. Is it here that he would seek for peace? Or must he see that, as he looks on it, the world can but deceive? Yet can he learn to look on it another way, and find the peace of God.
Peace is the bridge that everyone will cross, to leave this world behind. But peace begins within the world perceived as different, and leading from this fresh perception to the gate of Heaven and the way beyond. Peace is the answer to conflicting goals, to senseless journeys, frantic, vain pursuits, and meaningless endeavors. Now the way is easy, sloping gently toward the bridge where freedom lies within the peace of God.
Let us not lose our way again today. We go to Heaven, and the path is straight. Only if we attempt to wander can there be delay, and needless wasted time on thorny byways. God alone is sure, and He will guide our footsteps. He will not desert His Son in need, nor let him stray forever from his home. The Father calls; the Son will hear. And that is all there is to what appears to be a world apart from God, where bodies have reality.
Now is there silence. Seek no further. You have come to where the road is carpeted with leaves of false desires, fallen from the trees of hopelessness you sought before. Now are they underfoot. And you look up and on toward Heaven, with the body’s eyes but serving for an instant longer now. Peace is already recognized at last, and you can feel its soft embrace surround your heart and mind with comfort and with love.
Today we seek no idols. Peace can not be found in them. The peace of God is ours, and only this will we accept and want. Peace be to us today. For we have found a simple, happy way to leave the world of ambiguity, and to replace our shifting goals and solitary dreams with single purpose and companionship. For peace is union, if it be of God. We seek no further. We are close to home, and draw still nearer every time we say:
There is no peace except the peace of God,
And I am glad and thankful it is so.
Aug 7, 2017 ~ Daily Contemplation ~ ACIM Workbook Lesson 200 ~ There is no peace except the peace of God ~ Day 1 of 2
Seek you no further. You will not find peace except the peace of God. Accept this fact, and save yourself the agony of yet more bitter disappointments, bleak despair, and sense of icy hopelessness and doubt. Seek you no further. There is nothing else for you to find except the peace of God, unless you seek for misery and pain.
This is the final point to which each one must come at last, to lay aside all hope of finding happiness where there is none; of being saved by what can only hurt; of making peace of chaos, joy of pain, and Heaven out of hell. Attempt no more to win through losing, nor to die to live. You cannot but be asking for defeat.
Yet you can ask as easily for love, for happiness, and for eternal life in peace that has no ending. Ask for this, and you can only win. To ask for what you have already must succeed. To ask that what is false be true can only fail. Forgive yourself for vain imaginings, and seek no longer what you cannot find. For what could be more foolish than to seek and seek and seek again for hell, when you have but to look with open eyes to find that Heaven lies before you, through a door that opens easily to welcome you?
Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places and in alien forms that have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here. But it is given you to find the means whereby the world no longer seems to be a prison house or jail for anyone.
Freedom is given you where you beheld but chains and iron doors. But you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape. You will be bound till all the world is seen by you as blessed, and everyone made free of your mistakes and honored as he is. You made him not; no more yourself. And as you free the one, the other is accepted as he is.
What does forgiveness do? In truth it has no function, and does nothing. For it is unknown in Heaven. It is only hell where it is needed, and where it must serve a mighty function. Is not the escape of God’s beloved Son from evil dreams that he imagines, yet believes are true, a worthy purpose? Who could hope for more, while there appears to be a choice to make between success and failure; love and fear?
There is no peace except the peace of God, because He has one Son who cannot make a world in opposition to God’s Will and to his own, which is the same as His. What could he hope to find in such a world? It cannot have reality, because it never was created. Is it here that he would seek for peace? Or must he see that, as he looks on it, the world can but deceive? Yet can he learn to look on it another way, and find the peace of God.
Peace is the bridge that everyone will cross, to leave this world behind. But peace begins within the world perceived as different, and leading from this fresh perception to the gate of Heaven and the way beyond. Peace is the answer to conflicting goals, to senseless journeys, frantic, vain pursuits, and meaningless endeavors. Now the way is easy, sloping gently toward the bridge where freedom lies within the peace of God.
Let us not lose our way again today. We go to Heaven, and the path is straight. Only if we attempt to wander can there be delay, and needless wasted time on thorny byways. God alone is sure, and He will guide our footsteps. He will not desert His Son in need, nor let him stray forever from his home. The Father calls; the Son will hear. And that is all there is to what appears to be a world apart from God, where bodies have reality.
Now is there silence. Seek no further. You have come to where the road is carpeted with leaves of false desires, fallen from the trees of hopelessness you sought before. Now are they underfoot. And you look up and on toward Heaven, with the body’s eyes but serving for an instant longer now. Peace is already recognized at last, and you can feel its soft embrace surround your heart and mind with comfort and with love.
Today we seek no idols. Peace can not be found in them. The peace of God is ours, and only this will we accept and want. Peace be to us today. For we have found a simple, happy way to leave the world of ambiguity, and to replace our shifting goals and solitary dreams with single purpose and companionship. For peace is union, if it be of God. We seek no further. We are close to home, and draw still nearer every time we say:
There is no peace except the peace of God,
And I am glad and thankful it is so.
Our current goals:
We pause before beginning our next review period in order to clarify the goal and intensify our motivation for it.
“There is no peace except the peace of God. Seek no further. … This is the final point to which each one must come at last, to lay aside all hope of finding happiness where there is none; of being saved by what can only hurt…”
What is the peace of God? It is identifying with awareness-life-presence instead of identifying with the individual body-mind. Awareness-life-presence is where we are all the same. It is our truth.
Today’s lesson tells us, we “can ask as easily for love, for happiness, and for eternal life in peace that has no ending. Ask for this, and you can only win. To ask for what you have already must succeed.”
That is “the good news of the kingdom of God.” The good news is that you already have and are what you seek. (Luke 4:43)
Take a moment to turn your attention to awareness. Notice it is here now. It is infused with life. It is peace. And it is your presence.
“The kingdom of God is within you.”
(Luke 17:20 21 KJV)
Today’s lesson points out that Heaven is accessed “through a door that opens easily” to welcome us. That door is your awareness. Awareness is the doorway to infinite awareness, which is absolute truth.
Our spiritual practice is two-fold:
In other words, our path is letting go of the temporary and embracing the eternal.
Although we ignore the world when we are in awareness-watching-awareness meditation, we welcome the world when we are not in meditation. We have gratitude for the opportunities it gives us to practice forgiveness, and we appreciate awareness-life-presence as it is reflected in the world.
“Now the way is easy, sloping gently toward the bridge where freedom lies within the peace of God. … Only if we attempt to wander can there be delay and needless wasted time on thorny byways. … Today we seek no idols. Peace can not be found in them. The peace of God is ours, and only this will we accept and want. … For we have found a simple, happy way to leave the world of ambiguity, and to replace our shifting goals and solitary dreams with single purpose and companionship. For peace is union, if it be of God. We seek no further. We are close to home, and draw nearer every time we say:
There is no peace except the peace of God,
And I am glad and thankful it is so.”
