Please take time this morning to read, “What is Salvation,” to contemplate Lesson 232, 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 J

Be in my mind, my Father, through the day.

Throughout this section of A Course in Miracles Workbooks for Students, we are using this process:

1 – Each day read and contemplate the “special theme” that we are currently working with. Currently that theme is, “What is Salvation?”

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.

Maybe you’ve remembered to follow all five steps in this current process, maybe you’ve forgotten part of it, or maybe you decided to skip part of the process because you thought it wasn’t important for you. Today is an opportunity to recommit to the entire process that is requested in this section of the workbook.

Today’s lesson begins with a prayer and then exhorts us to “practice the end of fear. Have faith in Him Who is your Father. Trust all things to Him. Let Him reveal all things to you, and be you undismayed because you are His Son.”

What does it mean to practice the end of fear?

Both parts of this lesson say essentially the same thing—give the same directive—rest. Rest the desire and the need to know. Rest the imagining and the railing against things as they are. Rest the movement and the motion and the objections—rest and be that which you are, which is the essence of All That Is—which is God.

Marianne Williamson famously paraphrased the Course to say, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” Why should this be so? It is this power, this creative ability, which holds the key to our release. This is why salvation is a promise premised upon resting “the mind that still was one, but failed to recognize its oneness.” We rest the mind that “did not know itself, and thought its own Identity was lost.”

The mere (but absolute) recognition of the Truth of Being is the final thread in the story that has captivated us for far too long. It is the equivalent of a mother’s call at the end of a long, full day of play: “come home.” It is but this we resist and protest against by insisting that the play continue, by insisting upon our ignorance and powerlessness.

You are that. That Which Was and Is and Will Always Ever Be. To recognize this Fact is to recognize the Alpha and Omega and to rest in Being in All that Is. This is Salvation.

So as regards motivation, ponder the truth of what you know. See how you deny it. It matters not why; the whys of which you are aware are in themselves meaningless. What matters is that you see their ephemeral nature – the wispy mists of nothingness that would keep you from your God–and simply brush them away to swim in remembrance.

Forgive yourself by believing your self no longer. Listen not to the tales told by the confused mind. See illusion for what it is and turn within by resting in heart, free from thought and want and time. This is where salvation lies, laid bare by your desire to find her.

Today, let’s practice the end of fear by remembering our desire for salvation and recommitting to practicing the workbook lessons in the way the workbook asks us to.

Today we begin a new special theme, “What is Salvation?” Salvation is an idea that has no meaning in truth. Awareness-life-presence is unchanged, so it does not need salvation.

At the same time, attention, which is the moving aspect of presence, has the ability to taste anything it dips into. Since it has dipped deeply into thought, emotion and appearance, it has become confused about what it is. It is like sunlight that shines through a stained glass window. It has taken on the appearance of red and green and blue. However, attention has identified with the appearance, thereby forgetting that it has no color at all.

Salvation is undoing this misidentification. The means of salvation is “failing to support” the misidentification. We do that in two ways:

1. Forgiveness. Instead of believing thought, emotion and appearance, and instead of acting based on belief, we watch thought, emotion and appearance without acting from it. We abide as presence. When we are not able to do that easily, we use inquiry or another forgiveness tool to help us see through and detach from mistaken beliefs.

2. Awareness-watching-awareness meditation. Instead of going out into appearance, attention is brought back to its source. When attention pays attention to presence, it sees that it is one with presence and the same as presence. It therefore remembers itself as presence and drops the confusion that it is appearance.

Father, I will but to remember You.

Have you ever heard someone say, “I don’t feel bad for him because the predicament that he finds himself in is of his own making.”  Wait a minute, isn’t that true for all of us?  The predicament or the appearance is that we seem to have lost our way.  Salvation is the means of being saved from harm at our own hands or better said; being saved from harm or lack of peace due to misidentification.

How have we misidentified?  We believe ourselves to be separate persons with separate interests.  How do we rectify this misidentification?  How do we heal the lack of peace that we feel?

As our new theme, “What is Salvation,” tells us, it is an undoing. Salvation or healing is “failing to support the world of dreams and malice.  Thus it lets illusions go.  By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust.  And what they hid is now revealed…” We stop supporting the world of dreams and malice when we stop giving it our believing attention.

Gina Lake says in her book, “In The World, But Not Of It, “Once there is some space between thoughts and some capacity to witness thought, the illusion begins to break down, and your divine nature begins to shine through.” To awaken we stop believing and stop acting on our thoughts, emotions and appearances.  We want our focus to abide with presence.  This is called forgiveness.

We must make our unconscious beliefs conscious through inquiry or another forgiveness practice and disengage from our mistaken beliefs. Again, Gina Lake counsels, “The more beliefs you have that are uninvestigated and unconscious, the more identified with them you’ll be, and the more they’ll affect your emotional state, your behavior, and consequently, your life.”

When our attention is brought to its source, it pays attention to presence instead of appearances. Appearances can begin to lose their attraction and we can remember ourselves as presence.  The reward is peace, contentment, gratitude, love and joy.  This is called awareness-watching-awareness.

Forgiveness and awareness-watching-awareness demonstrate “Our will but to remember our Father.” We seek the fulfillment of knowing our Self. That is our true desire.

Today, we remember this again.

If you have 30-minutes for meditation today, and you would like a gentle audio to guide you, I recommend this meditation:

Desire for Truth

Please take time this morning to read, “What is Forgiveness,” to contemplate Lesson 230, 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 I

Today is our last day with the special theme, “What is Forgiveness?” If you have time during the day today, listen again to the audio teaching on “What is Forgiveness?”.

Now will I seek and find the peace of God.

Today’s workbook lesson says, “In peace I was created. And in peace do I remain. It is not given me to change my Self.”

Peace is what you are.

Yesterday, we learned that Love is what we are (and God is). Today, we learn that Peace is also what we are. What does that tell us about our relationship with Peace?

The common thread is that you need not seek for the attributes of “God,” for you are that. This common thread reveals the otherwise hidden meaning behind and beyond the teachings of A Course in Miracles. You do indeed experience that which you bring to any teaching, experience, thought, interaction. Thus, to rest within is the highest form of teaching, of learning and of practice.

Seek within for the peace that you are. How on heaven or earth could you fail to find that which is within you? Surely you see that to deny its presence is merely a denial of truth. Anyone who really looks, anyone, will experience the peace of God or True Nature. This is true regardless of what activities you have been engaged in, what thoughts you have been believing, regardless of …. Well, this is true regardless of all else, because this is Truth. Because it is Truth, it is ever present and changeless.

What this means is, if you are not experiencing the peace of God, you are choosing something else. To acknowledge this fully is no small accomplishment. Indeed, to acknowledge this fully is to claim the peace of God. It is to claim the Truth of Being. Once acknowledged, what other choice would you make?

It may seem difficult to acknowledge that if you feel anything other than peace, it is only because of your choice to do so. You know from past experience that this is so. This “difficulty” also, however, reveals the hidden power contained within the statement. Who would avoid this understanding but the one who would be undone by it? What other reason could we possibly have for its avoidance?

Today, as you practice awareness watching awareness, ask to be shown peace and the source of peace. Such a sincere request must, by its very nature, be met. Notice it is perfect peace. Thoughts change, and thoughts come and go, but the awareness they arise in is perfectly open, changeless peace.

Also, as you watch awareness today, notice that you are not thought. You are the perfectly open, changeless peace that thought arises in. If an emotion arises, notice you are not emotion. Like thought, emotion comes and goes; emotions change. But you are the awareness that is aware of emotion. You are the perfectly open, changeless peace that emotions arise in.

To seek and find the peace of God is merely to seek our Self. To know the peace of God is to identify with our ever-present Self, instead of identifying with the moving show of thought.