Day 170: There is no cruelty in God and none in me.

On the evening of today's lesson, I had a confrontation with a friend, which resulted in the end of our friendship.  This blog comes a few days after that night.  Over the course of these last few days, the whole situation has eaten away at me.  Finally, as I sat down to write, the healing thoughts came.  I realized that I first needed to address my friend directly.  Below is what I wrote to him:

I am writing to make amends.  I am writing to apologize for my actions over these last couple weeks.  I realized tonight upon reflecting on what happened that I did not behave as a friend, as a Brother to you.  I should have acknowledged your feelings rather than deny your right to feel the way you did.  I should have said, "I'm sorry, I did not intend for you to feel that way."  Instead, I became defensive, and I judged.

When we spoke later on, I had mistaken my own judgment for concern.  But you were right.  I was being judgmental.  I had taken what you had told me in confidence and strung it together to defend my own point of view.  For that I am truly sorry.  It was not my place to name your issues, or to even claim you had any.  As a friend, as a Brother, I should have simply listened.  It was not my intent to attack you; but unfortunately, that's precisely what I did, and without my awareness that I had done so.

One thing I stand by is this: You are a good person.  This I know.  I never doubted that, and I never meant to imply that I thought anything less of you.

I hope you will forgive me for placing undue judgment on you.  I hope you will forgive me for becoming defensive and attacking back.  I hope you will recognize my good intent and that I did not mean to hurt you.  I am sorry that I did.

In the spirit of the holiday, I want to let you know that I am grateful you came into my life, no matter how brief our friendship was.  I wrongfully thought that it was you who needed me.  I realize now that it was I who needed you, to learn from my own misgivings, and to better understand what being a true friend means.

How perfect this lesson was for me today.  There is no cruelty in God and none in me.  Cruelty, in any form it may take - be it judgment, defensiveness, or attack - is all the same.  To be cruel is to withhold Love.  It goes against our very nature, for we are Love.  This was why I had been at odds with myself.  This is what had been eating away at me.  I had betrayed my own nature.

The beauty here lies in the act of forgiveness.  Forgiveness in action is always a miracle at work.  Forgiveness is how we heal, and how we return from a false state of cruelty to our True state of Love.  To make amends is to forgive ourselves, and in doing so we forgive our Brothers and Sisters as well.

So if you're having trouble sleeping, if you're feeling down and out of sorts; ask yourself if there is someone you have not forgiven.  Make amends, and heal the wound.  That is where you will find Peace again.  That is where you will be welcomed back into your Heart, for only Love can dwell there.  It is the only Truth of Who We Really Are.  There is no cruelty in God and none in me.  Remember this today.

Until tomorrow,
Journeyman

Day 169: By grace I live. By grace I am released.

Our meditation for today is this:

By grace I live.  By grace I am released.
By grace I give.  By grace I will release.

Below is an excerpt from the workbook of A Course in Miracles further explaining our lesson for today:

Grace is acceptance of the Love of God within a world of seeming hate and fear.  By grace alone the hate and fear are gone, for grace presents a state so opposite to everything the world contains, that those whose minds are lighted by the gift of grace can not believe the world of fear is real.

Grace is not learned.  The final step must go beyond all learning.  Grace is not the goal this course aspires to attain.  Yet we prepare for grace in that an open mind can hear the Call to waken.  It is not shut tight against God's Voice.  It has become aware that there are things it does not know, and thus is ready to accept a state completely different from experience with which it is familiarly at home.

Grace is our final destination, the last step taken along the path of Salvation.  Grace lies within all of us, but it cannot be fully realized until we dispose of all the garbage in our minds.  This is our "release," and the release which we then give to others through our graceful actions.  This is our healing process.  In healing the mind, we heal the world around us.  Forgiveness is the way by which we heal.  Forgiveness is the mending of a mind that has become split in its belief of separation.

In our lesson today, the Course advises that we ask God for a glimmer of the Grace awaiting us.  Though this sublime state is yet to come to us in its entirety, we can sample the experience of it now.  Doing so makes the healing process easier, as we bring a bit of Grace with us to light the way to its Source.

If we think of life on earth as preparation for something Grand, we are thinking in accordance with the principles of Atonement.  A Course in Miracles describes the Atonement as a chain of forgiveness, leading the way to our Salvation or full realization of Who We Really Are.  Each circumstance that presents itself to us is an opportunity to practice what we inherently know - that We are All One, that We are Divine Children of God, that We are Eternal, and that Love is All There Is.  This is how we prepare ourselves to wipe our eyes clean of the world we once saw and behold Heaven in its place.  This is how we ready ourselves for the Day of Grace, which comes to each of us in time as we complete our path along the Atonement.

We must be prepared, but the beauty of time is that we have all we need to get there.  The end is certain.  God will welcome us Home again.  But He waits for us to make the choice to align our will with His.  Must we continue to choose against it and keep wreaking havoc upon our planet?  When will we wake up?  After we exhaust our resources?  After we drop a few more nuclear bombs?  After we decimate the globe?  Let's not wait until we have no choice to make, for although there is a limit to the degree which we can miscreate, we need not go that far.  Let us turn around now and face the Light.  Let us See the path of Truth before us and take our steps in faith, knowing one day Grace will fill our hearts and all we see forever.

Until tomorrow,
Journeyman

Day 168: Your grace is given me. I claim it now.

Of today's lesson, A Course in Miracles says the following:

Today we ask of God the gift he has most carefully preserved within our hearts, waiting to be acknowledged.  This the gift by which God leans to us and lifts us up, taking salvation's final step Himself.  All steps but this we learn, instructed by His Voice.  But finally He comes Himself, and takes us in His Arms and sweeps away the cobwebs of our sleep.  His gift of grace is more than just an answer.  It restores all memories the sleeping mind forgot; all certainty of what Love's meaning is.

God loves His Son.  Request Him now to give the means by which this world will disappear, and vision first will come, with knowledge but an instant later.  For in grace you see a light that covers all the world in love, and watch fear disappear from every face as hearts rise up and claim the light as theirs.  What now remains that Heaven be delayed an instant longer?  What is still undone when your forgiveness rests on everything?

When we think of Grace, we do not think of struggle.  We think of ease, of comfort, of beauty and of elegance.  Such a word seems contradictory to the ways of this world.  But Grace is not of this world.  It is God's Gift from Heaven, and any grace experienced here is but a taste of what awaits us.

Grace is ours to claim, for it is our birthright.  Grace brings with it Peace and Joy and Love and Safety - all things one imagines that come naturally in Heaven.  Grace is the Light of God, and we see it evidenced in the simplest things in Life.

For instance, just today, during an after school workshop that I teach, the children were infused with a creative energy the likes that I had never seen in them before.  While in the process of improvising scenes for a play that they are writing, a certain joyful essence overtook them.  When they performed what they had written for their peers, the students watching sat in gleeful anticipation upon the edges of their seats.  They had a mighty task this day, and in the course of just a couple hours they had written ten new scenes.  I am confident this would not have been possible if it were not for God's Grace.

For Grace to bless us at our workshop on this day, we had to be collectively aligned and open to receive it.  The kids I teach are wonderful.  They've instilled within the group a sense of Trust, a sense of Safety, and a sense of Unity; for they truly understand the meaning of Ensemble.  Were it not for these established guidelines, we could not have accomplished what we did today.  That was Grace in action here on earth.  That was my taste of Heaven for today.

I pray that you receive your Gift of Grace which has been sent to you this day.  Be open to receiving it, and do so by placing yourself in a position where you can give to others.  That is how God's Grace will make itself known to you.  Claim it now, for it is yours, and Heaven sits by patiently for you to come and taste it.

Until tomorrow,
Journeyman

Day 167: There is one life, and that I share with God.

Just as there is only One Love and One Energy which we All share, there is only One Life that is shared by us and God.  The form it takes may differ, but the substance is the same.  Our lesson on this day begins as such:

There are not different kinds of life, for life is like the truth.  It does not have degrees.  It is the one condition in which all that God created share.  Like all His Thoughts, it has no opposite.  There is no death because what God created shares His life.  There is no death because the Father and the Son are one.

One Universal Law that is reflected both in this world and in Heaven is that Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.  It simply changes form.  We are Beings of Energy, therefore we can neither be created nor destroyed.  Our bodies are the forms our energies have taken presently, but when we lay our bodies down, our forms will change again.

What is Creation, then?  If everything is Energy, and Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, how did we come to be?  We speak often of the notion that we are as God created us.  But in fact we always have been, and always will be.  What we mean then by Creation is expansion of this unifying Energy.  God created us by His expansion of His Love.  We have been imbued as well with the ability to create.

Love.  Life.  Energy.  Truth.  God.  They are all synonymous.  They are simply different ways to speak of the same thing.  There is no denying the existence of these entities.  We have never known them not to have existed.  Is there any reason to believe that they will ever cease to be?  Sure, they have been hidden through the course of time.  We bury love for one another, fearful it will make us weak.  We slaughter our own bodies, hiding in the carnage any evidence for Life.  Potential energy becomes disguised while it awaits to bloom.  Truth becomes polluted by the little lies we tell.  And God is called a grand hallucination while we claim that He has failed to offer proof of His existence.

But God is all around us; the evidence, quite literally, is Everywhere.  Truth will always find a way, no matter how we try to hide it; Truth will never alter and will always be consistent.  Any Physics professor will tell you that potential energy is just as powerful as is the energy we see in motion; it is only a matter of time before that energy is activated.  Following every death, there is rebirth; a decaying body will supply the soil for another life to grow.  And Love, as we know, cannot be contained forever; invisible though it may be, its bonds are palpable.

So what is death then, but a dark fairytale that we tell ourselves?  Perhaps it is our crude attempt to offer definition to the Truth of Life.  If Life is all we know, then how can we be sure that we know it at all?  We therefore invent death to juxtapose all that Life is, so we see it from a place where we can know what it is not.  If that is our rationale for all the cruelty we've imposed, then don't you think it's time that we chose Life instead of death?  We've seen enough "destruction," and we've seen enough rebirth to know that Life is everpresent, everlasting, and that destruction is not possible.  Why should we then dwell within this dream for any longer?  Let us wake to our One Truth that there is but One Life we share, and that we share it All with our One God, Who is our Source of Everlasting Energy and Love.

Until tomorrow,
Journeyman

Day 166: I am entrusted with the gifts of God.

Entrust (from http://dictionary.reference.com/)

1. to charge or invest with a trust or responsibility; charge with a specified office or duty involving trust: We entrusted him with our lives.
2. to commit (something) in trust to; confide, as for care, use, or performance: to entrust a secret, money, powers, or work to another.

Let us consider the above as we reflect upon our meditation for today:

I am entrusted with the gifts of God.

A Course in Miracles introduces today's lesson with the following:

All things are given you.  God's trust in you is limitless.  He knows His Son.  He gives without exception, holding nothing back that can contribute to your happiness.  And yet, unless your will is one with His, His gifts are not received.  But what would make you think there is another will than His?

What we can deduce from this is that when we commit our will to God's, we will be able to recognize all the Gifts that He has given us.  These Gifts carry with them a responsibility, a special purpose to which we have been charged.  Can you guess what that responsibility may be?

The Course has emphasized many times that giving and receiving are one in Truth.  We have been entrusted, then, to give the Gifts of God which we receive.

What Gifts do you believe these are?  Certainly they cannot be of temporary value; and everything of this world, as we know, is temporary.  What can they be then?  Love?  Joy?  Life?  Harmony?  Immortality?  Peace?  Compassion?  Power?  Strength?  Yes, all these things and more are Gifts that God has given us.  All these things and more are ours already, if we have the Sight to See them.  If we commit our will to God's, which simply means that we begin to See each other as We Really Are - One with Him and One with one another, as sinless and as Pure as God created us - then we will have received His Gifts as ours.

As God has given all His Gifts to everyone already, how are we to pass them on as we have been entrusted? Our gift becomes the Gift of Vision, the Gift of Remembrance of Who We Really Are.  When we turn our Brothers and Sisters toward the Light that shines within themselves, they will then receive the Gifts that God has given all of us.

Forgiveness is the key to Seeing this Light within ourselves and one other.  Amid the violence and the greed and the evils of this world, how else are we to perceive each other as sinless but through Forgiveness?  If we can just take stock of all the Holy Gifts that await us, we will set our destination firmly in our minds, and thus align ourselves along the path of our Salvation through Forgiveness.  To know that we can never die will help us on our way, for this is proof that nothing of this world could ever harm us.  No harm, no foul, right?  So let's forgive each other for the missteps we have made, and recognize that though things may appear quite dark indeed, it all is an illusion.  For nothing here or anywhere could take away the Life, the Love, the Peace, the Strength, the Joy, or any Gift from God with which we are entrusted.

Until tomorrow,

Journeyman

Day 165: Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.

As A Course in Miracles tells us, an idea never leaves its source.  Who are we then?  From where do we come?  The answer here is simple, yet we have denied the Truth about ourselves for so long that we have forgotten Who We Really Are.  Simply put, we are ideas in the Mind of God.  His Thought created us, and as such, we have never left Him Who is our Source.  Our lesson for today elaborates:

The Thought of God created you.  It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from it an instant.  It belongs to you.  By it you live.  It is your Source of life, holding you one with it, and everything is one with you because it left you not.  The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love.  Eternity and everlasting life shine in your mind, because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you.

If God is All There Is and All There Ever Will Be, and we are His creations, then we must also Always Be.  Let us put it a little more logically:

• God is Eternal.
• We are the Thought of God.
• Thoughts never leave their source.
• Therefore, we are Eternal with God, Who is our Source.

Think about that for a minute.  We are Eternal Beings.  Really let this idea sink in.

Immortality is something we, as humans, tend to glorify.  And indeed it is glorious.  Perhaps our fascination with the concept is because it is reflective of our True Nature.

So what does Eternal Life mean?  Well, for starters, as we know, it means that we can never die.  Death, then, is only an illusion.  But death is such a fundamental aspect of this world.  Everything a part of it must die.  The world itself, then, must be an illusion.

To deny the Thought of God is to believe that the illusions of this world are the truth.  But if the Truth is that we are Eternal, then this world cannot exist.  How can we reconcile this?  We can't, of course.  We must believe the Truth or else believe in its false opposite.  But as long as we are living in this world, how can we come to See what is familiar to our eyes as only holograms within a vivid dream?  We begin by our acceptance of the Truth of Who We Are.  We need not understand it all completely.  That will come in time, and when True Understanding comes, that will mark the end of time.  The death of this world is the birth of our awareness of our Everlasting Home in Heaven.

Let us accept, then, Who We Are today.  As ideas in the Mind of God, we have been given Everlasting Life!  This is a day of celebration.  Let us no longer deny the Truth of our Glorious Nature.  The more we come to understand this, the more we'll recognize the world's illusions as they are.  Rejoice in the knowledge of Who You Are today.  We will live forever, for we are One with God Who is our Source.

Until tomorrow,
Journeyman

Day 164: Now are we one with Him Who is our Source.

The Course begins describing today's lesson with the following: "What time but now can truth be recognized?  The present is the only time there is."  It is Now that we must recognize that We are One with God.  Let us not wait for tomorrow.  Likewise, let us not delude ourselves that we were once connected but no longer are a part of Him.  We remain as God created us, and He created All of us as One to share Eternal Life with Him.

I have a friend who seems to carry with him lots of anger.  He is single, and he longs to meet someone who will love him.  I get the sense that he feels threatened in the presence of a healthy couple, because it just exacerbates the fear that he's alone.  As a result he closes off, hiding his anger underneath the walls he builds around himself.  From time to time this rage seeps out, in simple things - like when in traffic or while sending a passive-aggressive text.

Well, tonight I had a fall-out with this friend.  It unsettled me, because I know that he has a good heart.  But he shields it under lock and key and distances himself.  When he sees the love two people share he starts to feel excluded.  Yet in those moments, he has failed to recognize the Truth of Who He Is.

The love a couple shares is but just one expression of God's Love, and His Love is the only one there is.  We tend to seek so desperately for someone who will love us, but in so doing we forget that we are Love ourselves.  There is no part of us that is unworthy of God's Love, and there is no part of us that He does not give all His Love.  The Truth is that we are never alone, but if we close our hearts we will perceive ourselves to be.  If we seek our validation from outside sources, we will only feel separated and, in turn, alone.

To See ourselves as One is to dispel the fear that we are disconnected from each other.  To See ourselves as One is to remember that our Source created us as Whole with Him.  To See ourselves as One is to know Who We Are and that no matter what we may perceive, we can never be alone.  For within our hearts the Love of God shines brightly, Everlasting.  All we need to do to feel His presence there with us is to close our eyes and look inside, and we will find His hand upon our soul.

Tear down today the walls that you have built around yourself.  You have nothing to fear; you have no need for anger; for we are One with Him Who is our Source.  The time is Now that we remember this, for Now is all there is, and all there ever will be.  Unlock your heart and throw away the key.  The Loving Hands of God are there to catch you.

Until tomorrow,
Journeyman