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 Great I Am is just another name for Holy Spirit. It is the last stop in duality before the Absolute. It is the anandamaya kosha, the bliss layer, the final observer before All That Is. I am That I Am equals grace, the holy instant, the moment before revelation, a state of duality as close to non-duality as we can come before God lifts us back Home. The Home we’ve never left, which is beyond understanding in time, but fully understood in Eternity. And here we are, no longer you and me, but Us, happily undone, beyond words, thoughts, pictures, images, fevered imaginings … the spreading starts, the mind opens … my sense of purpose strengthens and clarity burns off the blur of temptation: the only script now is the Holy Spirit’s gifts of forgiveness and salvation. By grace I live. By grace I am released … God Is.
LESSON 169
By grace I live. By grace I am released.
Grace is an aspect of the Love of God which is most like the state prevailing in the unity of truth. It is the world’s most lofty aspiration, for it leads beyond the world entirely. It is past learning, yet the goal of learning, for grace cannot come until the mind prepares itself for true acceptance. Grace becomes inevitable instantly in those who have prepared a table where it can be gently laid and willingly received; an altar clean and holy for the gift.
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.
We have perhaps appeared to contradict our statement that the revelation of the Father and the Son as One has been already set. But we have also said the mind determines when that time will be, and has determined it. And yet we urge you to bear witness to the Word of God to hasten the experience of truth, and speed its advent into every mind that recognizes truth’s effects on you.
Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being, He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him. We say “God is,” and then we cease to speak, for in that knowledge words are meaningless. There are no lips to speak them, and no part of mind sufficiently distinct to feel that it is now aware of something not itself. It has united with its Source. And like its Source Itself, it merely is.
We cannot speak nor write nor even think of this at all. It comes to every mind when total recognition that its will is God’s has been completely given and received completely. It returns the mind into the endless present, where the past and future cannot be conceived. It lies beyond salvation; past all thought of time, forgiveness and the holy face of Christ. 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 beyond experience we try to hasten. Yet forgiveness, taught and learned, brings with it the experiences which bear witness that the time the mind itself determined to abandon all but this is now at hand. We do not hasten it, in that what you will offer was concealed from Him Who teaches what forgiveness means.
All learning was already in His Mind, accomplished and complete. He recognized all that time holds, and gave it to all minds that each one might determine, from a point where time was ended, when it is released to revelation and eternity. We have repeated several times before that you but make a journey that is done.
For oneness must be here. Whatever time the mind has set for revelation is entirely irrelevant to what must be a constant state, forever as it always was; forever to remain as it is now. We merely take the part assigned long since, and fully recognized as perfectly fulfilled by Him Who wrote salvation’s script in His Creator’s Name, and in the Name of His Creator’s Son.
There is no need to further clarify what no one in the world can understand. When revelation of your oneness comes, it will be known and fully understood. Now we have work to do, for those in time can speak of things beyond, and listen to words which explain what is to come is past already. Yet what meaning can the words convey to those who count the hours still, and rise and work and go to sleep by them?
Suffice it, then, that you have work to do to play your part. The ending must remain obscure to you until your part is done. It does not matter. For your part is still what all the rest depends on. As you take the role assigned to you, salvation comes a little nearer each uncertain heart
that does not beat as yet in tune with God.
Forgiveness is the central theme that runs throughout salvation, holding all its parts in meaningful relationships, the course it runs directed and its outcome sure. And now we ask for grace, the final gift salvation can bestow. Experience that grace provides will end in time, for grace foreshadows Heaven, yet does not replace the thought of time but for a little while.
The interval suffices. It is here that miracles are laid; to be returned by you from holy instants you receive, through grace in your experience, to all who see the light that lingers in your face. What is the face of Christ but his who went a moment into timelessness, and brought a clear reflection of the unity he felt an instant back to bless the world? How could you finally attain to it forever, while a part of you remains outside, unknowing, unawakened, and in need of you as witness to the truth?
Be grateful to return, as you were glad to go an instant, and accept the gifts that grace provided you. You carry them back to yourself. And revelation stands not far behind. Its coming is ensured. We ask for grace, and for experience that comes from grace. We welcome the release it offers everyone. We do not ask for the unaskable. We do not look beyond what grace can give. For this we can give in the grace that has been given us.
Our learning goal today does not exceed this prayer. Yet in the world, what could be more than what we ask this day of Him Who gives the grace we ask, as it was given Him?
By grace I live. By grace I am released. By grace I give. By grace I will release.
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.
Beloved forms arise in my mind: my cats, my self, my family and friends. They hover in mid-air but a moment … and then their covering, the body, seems to inflate, then softly burst open like dandelion fluff.
The body pops off and We remain. There is no death, no grief. There is no loss, no disappearance. The covering has released and Here We Are, Together, undone and unborn. Always were, always have been, just “underneath” a silly disguise we donned purposely to see if we could be what we are not, to reign a while separate from our Father.
Having realized that is impossible, having asked to awaken and receive what is already given, the forms disappear back into the nothingness from which they came and the Sun Shines On as It has always done, though I forgot a little while.
LESSON 168
Your grace is given me. I claim it now.
God speaks to us. Shall we not speak to Him? He is not distant. He makes no attempt to hide from us. We try to hide from Him, and suffer from deception. He remains entirely accessible. He loves His Son. There is no certainty but this, yet this suffices. He will love His Son forever. When his mind remains asleep, He loves him still. And when his mind awakes, He loves him with a never-changing Love.
If you but knew the meaning of His Love, hope and despair would be impossible. For hope would be forever satisfied; despair of any kind unthinkable. His grace His answer is to all despair, for in it lies remembrance of His Love. Would He not gladly give the means by which His Will is recognized? His grace is yours by your acknowledgment. And memory of Him awakens in the mind that asks the means of Him whereby its sleep is done.
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?
It is a new and holy day today, for we receive what has been given us. Our faith lies in the Giver, not our own acceptance. We acknowledge our mistakes, but He to Whom all error is unknown is yet the One Who answers our mistakes by giving us the means to lay them down, and rise to Him in gratitude and love.
And He descends to meet us, as we come to Him. For what He has prepared for us He gives and we receive. Such is His Will, because He loves His Son. To Him we pray today, returning but the word He gave to us through His Own Voice, His Word, His Love:
Your grace is given me. I claim it now. Father, I come to You. And You will come to me who ask. I am the Son You love.
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 mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep. God creates only mind awake. What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was … Illuminated Mind … Radiant Mind … Illuminated Mind … Radiant Mind … Luminous, Radiant Mind.
LESSON 167
There is one life, and that I share with God.
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 an opposite to God does not exist. There is no death because the Father and the Son are One.
In this world, there appears to be a state that is life’s opposite. You call it death. Yet we have learned that the idea of death takes many forms. It is the one idea which underlies all feelings that are not supremely happy. It is the alarm to which you give response of any kind that is not perfect joy. All sorrow, loss, anxiety and suffering and pain, even a little sigh of weariness, a slight discomfort or the merest frown, acknowledge death. And thus deny you live.
You think that death is of the body. Yet it is but an idea, irrelevant to what is seen as physical. A thought is in the mind. It can be then applied as mind directs it. But its origin is where it must be changed, if change occurs. Ideas leave not their source. The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God.
Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator. It is the belief conditions change, emotions alternate because of causes you cannot control, you did not make, and you can never change. It is the fixed belief ideas can leave their source, and take on qualities the source does not contain, becoming different from their own origin, apart from it in kind as well as distance, time and form.
Death cannot come from life. Ideas remain united to their source. They can extend all that their source contains. In that, they can go far beyond themselves. But they can not give birth to what was never given them. As they are made, so will their making be. As they were born, so will they then give birth. And where they come from, there will they return.
The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist, because it has no source. For mind creates all things that are, and cannot give them attributes it lacks, nor change its own eternal, mindful state. It cannot make the physical. What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep.
The opposite of life can only be another form of life. As such, it can be reconciled with what created it, because it is not opposite in truth. Its form may change; it may appear to be what it is not. Yet mind is mind, awake or sleeping. It is not its opposite in anything created, nor in what it seems to make when it believes it sleeps.
God creates only mind awake. He does not sleep, and His creations cannot share what He gives not, nor make conditions which He does not share with them. The thought of death is not the opposite to thoughts of life. Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly, but yet within themselves, for they are everywhere.
What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was.
Let us today be children of the truth, and not deny our holy heritage. Our life is not as we imagine it. Who changes life because he shuts his eyes, or makes himself what he is not because he sleeps, and sees in dreams an opposite to what he is? We will not ask for death in any form today. Nor will we let imagined opposites to life abide even an instant where the Thought of life eternal has been set by God Himself.
His holy home we strive to keep today as He established it, and wills it be forever and forever. He is Lord of what we think today. And in His Thoughts, which have no opposite, we understand there is one life, and that we share with Him, with all creation, with their thoughts as well, whom He created in a unity of life that cannot separate in death and leave the Source of life from where it came.
We share one life because we have one Source, a Source from which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect. As we were, so are we now and will forever be. A sleeping mind must waken, as it sees its own perfection mirroring the Lord of life so perfectly it fades into what is reflected there. And now it is no more a mere reflection. It becomes the thing reflected, and the light which makes reflection possible. No vision now is needed. For the wakened mind is one that knows its Source, its Self, its Holiness.
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: 
Having realized that is impossible, having asked to awaken and receive what is already given, the forms disappear back into the nothingness from which they came and the Sun Shines On as It has always done, though I forgot a little while.