Your grace is given me … my heart starts filling with love like a helium balloon … in no time, I am with the Heart and it is Full … full with One Life, full with One Love, full with Unified All expanding forever in directionless everywhere … it’s like I’ve popped out of myself and into Everything Else which is ever-extending Well-Beingness … the Truth is True.
LESSON 179
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(167) There is one life, and that I share with God.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(168) Your grace is given me. I claim it now.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
Let’s practice together! Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube. Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice.
If I let not my mind deny the Thought of God, then I will become aware of the gifts of God with which I am entrusted. Say not “no” to God. Stop saying “no” to God. Yes, we have no bananas. No, we have the Big Banana! Always have, always will. Willingness is the key — being willing to plug my will into His Will and zzzzz the dream flatlines and Reality Shines. God is but Love, and therefore so am I 🙂
LESSON 178
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(163) Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(164) I am entrusted with the gifts of God.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
Let’s practice together! Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube. Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice.
Death is just an imagined black sheet over Light. We tossed it around a thought of ourselves to fence God in to individual lots (separate bodies). And we gave this black sheet properties of heaviness and hardness so the darkness seems impenetrable and factual. But in the eternal Now we are the Light we’ve always been. Changing the mind is like emerging from under the black sheet of brick and mortar and discovering the coverings were fantasy–our own dark fantasy.
LESSON 177
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(163) There is no death. The Son of God is free.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(164) Now are we one with Him Who is our Source.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
Let’s practice together! Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube. Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice.
There is an internal rush which leads to an eternal stillness. There is a rainbow-arc bridge elevating the formless me, the thought of me, upward. There is the breath and me as wave-form, a vaporous and then invisible rolling wave from toe to crown … a Cuban-motion-bodyless body-rolling-mermaid-in-the-sky … then–a great sense of pleasure, a spiritual orgasm, anandamaya kosha, an opening, a letting go, a no-more-me-All-of-We. But, as Frank Sinatra sang, “The best is yet to come” 🙂 … I am as God created me … God Is.
LESSON 176
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(161) Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(162) I am as God created me.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
Let’s practice together! Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube. Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice.
Love is a circle. I give the miracles I have received, and I receive the miracles that I give — if I am willing to accept Love. Yes, I very much am willing to accept Love. At first, accepting Love/receiving miracles felt uncomfortable and undeserved. That is all the past; receptivity feels natural now.
Home is Love and Love is Home. When I seem to leave Home by dreaming I have separated from God, I feel fear. Feelings are not facts, therefore fear is not real. Nothing unreal exists, nothing Real can be threatened. Herein lies the peace of God. God is but Love, and therefore so am I 🙂
LESSON 175
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(159) I give the miracles I have received.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(160) I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
Let’s practice together! Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube. Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice.
As I disregard the personalities, and concentrate on the Light within the cloak of individuality, the Sameness is obvious. Each seemingly separate Light expands until we all intermingle and there is only All of Us. Giving and receiving become the very same thing — loving/extending/expanding. And entering into His Presence is something that happens so naturally that it’s more of an un-happening of the busy doingness of the ego mind. What seemed hard is easy. What seemed painful is peaceful. What seemed like many is One.
LESSON 174
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(157) Into His Presence would I enter now.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(158) Today I learn to give as I receive.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
Let’s practice together! Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube. Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice.
A previous meditation returns to me this morning. My mind fills with, “I will step back and let Him lead the way” and the presence of Jesus is here now. He gently pushes my shoulder so that the chronically forward motion of my torso, leaning in towards others, relaxes back into my chair.
My heart expands widely, East and West. “God is but Love, and therefore so am I” feels like a heart opener, a heart softener. “My mind holds only what I think with God,” also arises (from Review IV) … yes, this opens the mind, and “God is but Love, and therefore so am I” opens the heart. As a lucid dreamer, with the body as my classroom, it seems as if my mind and heart are even more open, willing and available for Guidance than ever.
The feeling is like a healthy, robust, white, fluffy cloud, springy and cheerfully floating … and this cloud-me has the ability to rise into the heavens or float among us with equal ease. It’s not the foggy-blocking-out-God-cloud … it’s a bridge-between-the-body-and-Spirit cloud … sort of angel-like in its undifferentiated Lovingness. The cloud quality also has a soaring angel wingsness to It. As if energy has effortlessly lifted my arms out to either side, fully extended through the fingertips, and my arms are resting on clouds rather than holding themselves up: The Yoga of A Course in Miracles 🙂 This would be an opening of the heart chakra. Namaste.
LESSON 173
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(155) I will step back and let Him lead the way.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(156) I walk with God in perfect holiness.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
Let’s practice together! Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube. Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice.
A Door swings open and there is no danger. As Rumi said,
“I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I’ve been knocking from the inside.”
Something tickles and laughter bubbles up inside me. There was never anything to fear or be outraged over or grieve … everything I believed were cartoon figures in a movie, projections on a screen. Flesh and blood is no more than paper and crayons. We are not real. God is Real, and we are of Him. There is nothing else to do but receive and accept His Love — which naturally leads to emanating His Love and knowing Love is us, not the body, ego mind or belief in personal identity.
LESSON 172
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(153) In my defenselessness my safety lies.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(154) I am among the ministers of God.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
Let’s practice together! Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube. Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice.
All things are echoes of the Voice for God … these review lessons provide an echo with the reprise, God is but Love, and therefore so am I. I let the words reverberate through my mind, desiring to do what Jesus requests in the the Introduction: to go beyond the words to the Source of their meaning. A soft white light appears in my mind … it pulses, growing larger, then smaller, almost like a lighthouse beckoning. I know something … it’s on the tip of my mind … this light is what’s real and all else is actually fog … I know it, but don’t know it … there are some troubling things on my mind–and I am willing to know this trouble is temptation to believe in what’s false, to believe in separation. I honor my feelings by giving them to Jesus. I tell Him, “I’m willing! I’m willing to see Peace instead of this, I’m willing to recognize What I already am.” It is time to trust and Know.
LESSON 171
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(151) All things are echoes of the Voice for God.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
(152) The power of decision is my own.
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.
Let’s practice together! Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube. Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice.
One moment I’m looking at the world through my window: squirrels, chipmunks, lawn chairs, grass, trees, blue sky, fluffy clouds, and the next it is as if I pressed the pause button on my television remote control. The scene outside my window is in freeze frame–nothing moves. And I have the distinct impression I could walk around the scene, as if it were a Hollywood set, and see what’s behind it. Everything has gone two-dimensional, and duality is suddenly obvious, ha ha.
The appearance of the world as solid block, impenetrable and beyond surmounting has shifted, in an instant. Yesterday’s lesson said, “The Son of God has merely disappeared into his Father, as his Father has in him. The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state.” This is the inverse of the Course concept that the ego fears death because when we Waken it will disappear back into the nothingness from which it came. What’s happening now is an opening–an entry through the little gap–and here space and time collapse … “The miracle shortens time by collapsing it, thus eliminating certain intervals within it.” Aha!
LESSON 170
There is no cruelty in God and none in me.
No one attacks without intent to hurt. This can have no exception. When you think that you attack in self-defense, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty. You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom. And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion and from fear.
How thoroughly insane is the idea that to defend from fear is to attack! For here is fear begot and fed with blood, to make it grow and swell and rage. And thus is fear protected, not escaped. Today we learn a lesson which can save you more delay and needless misery than you can possibly imagine. It is this:
You make what you defend against, and by your own defense against it is it real and inescapable. Lay down your arms, and only then do you perceive it falses.
It seems to be the enemy without that you attack. Yet your defense sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable. For love now has an “enemy,” an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are.
If you consider carefully the means by which your fancied self-defense proceeds on its imagined way, you will perceive the premises on which the idea stands. First, it is obvious ideas must leave their source, for it is you who make attack, and must have first conceived of it. Yet you attack outside yourself, and separate your mind from him who is to be attacked, with perfect faith the split you made is real.
Next, are the attributes of love bestowed upon its “enemy.” For fear becomes your safety and protector of your peace, to which you turn for solace and escape from doubts about your strength, and hope of rest in dreamless quiet. And as love is shorn of what belongs to it and it alone, love is endowed with attributes of fear. For love would ask you lay down all defense as merely foolish. And your arms indeed would crumble into dust. For such they are.
With love as enemy, must cruelty become a god. And gods demand that those who worship them obey their dictates, and refuse to question them. Harsh punishment is meted out relentlessly to those who ask if the demands are sensible or even sane. It is their enemies who are unreasonable and insane, while they are always merciful and just.
Today we look upon this cruel god dispassionately. And we note that though his lips are smeared with blood, and fire seems to flame from him, he is but made of stone. He can do nothing. We need not defy his power. He has none. And those who see in him their safety have no guardian, no strength to call upon in danger, and no mighty warrior to fight for them.
This moment can be terrible. But it can also be the time of your release from abject slavery. You make a choice, standing before this idol, seeing him exactly as he is. Will you restore to love what you have sought to wrest from it and lay before this mindless piece of stone? Or will you make another idol to replace it? For the god of cruelty takes many forms. Another can be found.
Yet do not think that fear is the escape from fear. Let us remember what the text has stressed about the obstacles to peace. The final one, the hardest to believe is nothing, and a seeming obstacle with the appearance of a solid block, impenetrable, fearful and beyond surmounting, is the fear of God Himself. Here is the basic premise which enthrones the thought of fear as god. For fear is loved by those who worship it, and love appears to be invested now with cruelty.
Where does the totally insane belief in gods of vengeance come from? Love has not confused its attributes with those of fear. Yet must the worshippers of fear perceive their own confusion in fear’s “enemy”; its cruelty as now a part of love. And what becomes more fearful than the Heart of Love Itself? The blood appears to be upon His Lips; the fire comes from Him. And He is terrible above all else, cruel beyond conception, striking down all who acknowledge Him to be their God.
The choice you make today is certain. For you look for the last time upon this bit of carven stone you made, and call it god no longer. You have reached this place before, but you have chosen that this cruel god remain with you in still another form. And so the fear of God returned with you. This time you leave it there. And you return to a new world, unburdened by its weight; beheld not in its sightless eyes, but in the vision that your choice restored to you.
Now do your eyes belong to Christ, and He looks through them. Now your voice belongs to God and echoes His. And now your heart remains at peace forever. You have chosen Him in place of idols, and your attributes, given by your Creator, are restored to you at last. The Call for God is heard and answered. Now has fear made way for love, as God Himself replaces cruelty.
Father, we are like You. No cruelty abides in us, for there is none in You. Your peace is ours. And we bless the world with what we have received from You alone. We choose again, and make our choice for all our brothers, knowing they are one with us. We bring them Your salvation as we have received it now. And we give thanks for them who render us complete. In them we see Your glory, and in them we find our peace. Holy are we because Your Holiness has set us free. And we give thanks. Amen.
Let’s practice together! Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube. Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice.
The feeling is like a healthy, robust, white, fluffy cloud, springy and cheerfully floating … and this cloud-me has the ability to rise into the heavens or float among us with equal ease. It’s not the foggy-blocking-out-God-cloud … it’s a bridge-between-the-body-and-Spirit cloud … sort of angel-like in its undifferentiated Lovingness. The cloud quality also has a soaring angel wingsness to It. As if energy has effortlessly lifted my arms out to either side, fully extended through the fingertips, and my arms are resting on clouds rather than holding themselves up: