THE LIGHT OF CHRIST BURNS THROUGH THE CLOUDS OF SELF DECEPTION…

THE LIGHT OF CHRIST BURNS THROUGH THE CLOUDS OF SELF DECEPTION…

“Share your salvation now with him who stood beside you when you were in hell. He is your brother in the light of the world which saves you both.”

This makes me weep, it is so glorious. I completely love this.

The exercise in this lesson, “My grievances hide the light of the world in me”, is like the perfect metaphor for how to address every single thing in life.

All the thoughts we think we think, the perceptions we come at life with on our own, our reactions and judgments, they are the clouds. If we do this example; have a little faith that, like clouds, they only appear dark and heavy and substantial, impenetrable, when in reality, they are mist. We can always move though them to the light within.

The pivotal thing here is the faith part.

But since ‘our’ way doesn’t deliver the promises it makes, why not take the highway to light this lesson offers. Yes? 

We are not being asked to just drop back into the cosmic trust-fall unassisted. Jesus is so cool. He never leaves us comfortless. This is just one example. We all can slip back into our minds and imagine that the darkness is a cloud cover. We can sense that there is light beneath and within. We can nearly taste the mist of the clouds as they brush our cheeks, dissolving in the warmth of our touch.  We can all lighten up taking this inward journey, in trust of the light within. We can feel the light of joy due to our commitment to finding our light and love and truth. Yes?

 So the transfer of training is as simple as doing this anytime we run up against anger, frustration, sadness, weariness, disappointment and the like. Turn inward, take Jesus’ hand, turn on the Holy Spirit lantern and move past the illusion to the truth of who we really are.

From the first time I went through the lessons I felt a sense of relief and welcome when I came to this lesson’s practice. This was a light in itself for me. I followed instructions and I found peace. I immediately claimed this practice as my own and put it in my spiritual toolbox. It is an access point for me to ask for the Holy Spirit to guide me. When I use it, it works.

 I have learned that my brother is my way to salvation. As I recognize the light of Christ in him, I totally see that I too, share his innocence. It is the way of the Atonement, the miracle in action.

This is how I take my place among the saviors of the world. The appreciation I feel for this recognition, gives me no option. There is nothing else I want to do. I am the light of happiness and I light the world along with you. Thank you. I love you.  

MIRACLE IMPULSES

Your distorted perceptions produce a dense cover over miracle impulses, making it hard for them to reach your own awareness. The confusion of miracle impulses with physical impulses is a major perceptual distortion. Physical impulses are misdirected miracle impulses. All real pleasure comes from doing God's Will. This is because not doing it is a denial of Self. Denial of Self results in illusions, while correction of the error brings release from it. Do not deceive yourself into believing that you can relate in peace to God or to your brothers with anything external. (ACIM~ T-1.1)

You know what is so fun? I have been playing in the yummy freshness of this moment now. Old insights are circling back up in my mind and life with renewed aliveness and much more depth.

Let me give an example. Recently, I have been corresponding with an amazing woman; teacher of God and all around inspiring being. We’ve been addressing addiction and food/body addiction in particular. Years ago, in the beginning of my healing with A Course in Miracles, I was graced with freedom the insanity of an upside-down relationship with my body, eating and food. And actually with yours as well, I compared myself with everyone I met. That craziness was lifted and I was able to focus on the business of healing my mind.

Finding what did work for me was, at times, an absolute miracle. I would walk into a book store and find myself picking up a book that I hadn’t known I came for and no recollection as to what I had come there for in the first place. I had a sense of being in the right place at the right time that was poignant and I would buy the book without question.

Or I would meet someone that would lead to a conversation about freedom and addiction and food and weight and I would hear myself speaking from a place of true gratitude. Often in those times, if there was a particular struggle I was having with my body or cravings, as we began communicating, in that sincere request for a true answer, a specific one to my specific issue would unfold during the conversation.

I discovered quite rapidly that the more I shared my experience with healing and freedom from the body/food monkey around my neck, the less I had experienced cravings and body judgments.

So, being the junky I am, I started facilitating groups and individuals in upholding a single-pointed spiritual foundation as core sustenance, as a replacement for the obsessive focus of a body/food addiction.

I saw how my unhealed mind, having obsessed about my problems with food and weight and how to get the perfect body and what to eat, how to keep from eating too much, what combination of foods, how to work out and how often, accompanied with a commitment to feeling ashamed and guilty and deserving of punishment, yet feeling like a total victim, helpless to change, hopeless in the face of societal requirement of lovability, had kept me exactly where I was. My judgments and beliefs had made me the person I saw myself as: weak, unlovable, unworthy, a waste of skin, taking up room that a more deserving person should have.  I was wrong… that is all.

A fundamental principle in A Course in Miracles is that ideas leave not their source and that ideas increase when they are given away. We, being God’s Idea, remain in Him as He extends His love as Son. We are that Son; that very same Love. We therefore must allow our love to extend creation in order to know our Self.

We’ve all had so much appreciation for some miracle in our life that we couldn’t wait to share with everyone.

That’s how I felt. That’s how I feel, now. It’s the reason I blog.

I love God. I love Jesus. I love A Course in Miracles. I love you, my one Self.

 So anyway, I am again finding myself with this awesome opportunity to share the miracle down the body/food addiction avenue.

You know we all come to A Course in Miracles with body addictions. We mistake them for ourselves. We are wrong. That is all.

The course turns us around and points us smack in front of our mind.  We see without question that it is or identification with a false identity, in a life/death, duality based world in our mind that is the source of our pain. It trains us in a systematic way to dispel every belief you ever believed to be true, as false.

We see that our world is one of perception, but that everything that feel good comes from somewhere beyond perception, never from the thing or circumstance itself.

We come to see that learning to forgive is our most treasured tool in the reversal of a thought system based in fear back to the source of our being~ love.

Peace is the result of emptying our entire arsenal of fear thoughts onto the touchstone of forgiveness. 

We are born anew.

“Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean, and what their purpose is. Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for. We do not know. Let every image held of anyone be loosened from our minds and swept away. Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone. Now do you know him not. But you are free to learn of him, and learn of him anew. Now is he born again to you, and you are born again to him, without the past that sentenced him to die, and you with him. Now is he free to live, as you are free, because an ancient learning passed away, and left a place for truth to be reborn.” (T-31.1)

  I am going to be writing more about the healing of body appetites. It might be with this yummy woman, Lisa, I was talking about. A site about this is her idea. I am interested to see what comes forward. Grace has shown me that body appetites are misdirected miracle impulses. That in recognition of this fact, I open to act miraculously instead of ‘feed the need’,and look for magic soulions; to enliven and inspire rather than shut-off and separate into the dirge of the pleasure-pain syndrome.

I'll keep you posted as it unfolds. Thank you.

I love you! 

MIRACLES OR MAGIC?

I’m interested in one thing. PEACE! Period. It is so easy to allow ourselves to get distracted or sidetracked from the one goal to which the Course aims. PEACE. Problems solving really appeals to the strategic mind. But peace is beyond it. I know, I’m a smart gal. I have never been able to solve a problem and while being in perfect peace. Peace and problems are incongruent with each other.  Sure, problem-solving can distract, feel grandiose and even sedate the focus of attention on the pain of the problem. That is its best shot. It is not peace.

Having been that route and failed. I look for one thing and one thing only in every situation: Does it meet the test of perfect peace. I judge the answer by the way I feel. Do I feel awesome? Free? Happy and joyous? Peaceful and content? Imperturbable? Unafraid? Do I want to share and give and blend? Do I see the same all about me?

Where’s the problem now? NOWHERE!

If I am not feeling this way, I have missed the mark in my perception and I need a re-focus. Forgiveness is that refocus. I invite the Holy Spirit to show me the meaning of what I behold, and wait. Here’s what I’ve found. If I will do just that~ bring my thinking under Jesus’ guidance and wait… ‘Patience is natural to those who trust’... the serene awareness that I need do nothing, but accept what has been done for me, a blanket of peace spreads within and settles over me.

For the longest time I didn’t get this. I was looking for an answer to my problem, unwilling to let the problem go. I was only making statements of my facts and then asking the Holy Spirit to be my errand boy for the solution I thought I needed. But here’s the marker~ even when I got what I thought was the answer, it did not satisfy. Only God satisfies. Only His Peace, and only His plan for salvation.

Here’s what I have found. No methods in this world work. All methods are stepping stones when the whole problem of separation is given over to the Holy Spirit. Seen from the addicted or problem mind, they are all what the Course refers to as magic. The temptation to fix on a new healing program, add more, seemingly new information about your body type or personality type or even how you run energy is just an attempt to raise body thoughts to the level of mind. I ask myself this question: what am I looking for? Why am I searching? Searching itself is a total distraction from my function of forgiveness. Where does my certainty and safety rest? 

Everything I did before in the name of safety no longer interests me. I am safe, and I know it to be so. I have a Guide Who will not fail. And it stops there. I have the answer. It is the love I am with which I light the world.