June 1, 2013
by Jerry Alatalo
It seems that June is busting out all over. We hope that everyone is enjoying the warmer weather and the growth of all the varieties of beautiful plants that Mother Earth so generously provides us with.
We take a moment to thank the Creator and Mother Earth for all blessings of food and sustenance and ask that the abundance be shared equally by all.
This short post will delve into A Course In Miracles a bit. The writings contained in the book are some of the most powerful, profound and beautiful that this man has ever come across. If we set goals as writers, the goal of creating work which rises to the heights that ACIM does certainly would allow for some very serious terrain for climbing.
For some reason we become like iron filings to magnets when it comes to material such as this. ACIM has resonated deeply with many millions of men and women, I suppose, because it is simply and obviously, truth. So we will tell you that if you have not read this, what many consider a direct communication from Jesus Christ, there is safety in saying some benefit would be derived from doing so.
So I am A Course in Miracles pusher, pitchman and proselytizer. I am trying to get people hooked, sell the product and convert the masses like some TV evangelist. For those of you who have not read ACIM any one of these thoughts may have been your first reaction when learning what this post was about.
This is understandable as many of you have read tons of posts while here in the blogosphere and are very familiar with those writings which are trying to “save the world” or create a “heaven on Earth” or as the contestants at the beauty pageants have said for decades now, bring “world peace”.
First let me say that I am very thankful to have somehow found the opportunity to share ideas and thoughts with others. Perhaps you feel the same way that things happen in our lives that, after they occur, we turn around to the point in our lives before the occurrence, stop and reflect. We turn our attention away from the details of our lives and we look at the bigger picture.
During these reflective times we imagine all the possible options and actions and directions which are available and possible for us when we move forward. We search and list and draw maps of the potentials of each optional decision. Hopefully we come to the point where we will make the best choice.
The choice to get addicted to alcohol or drugs would seem one where there was not enough attention given to possible consequences of our choices.
On the flip side those who search and find what it takes to defeat their addiction have gone deeply into the process of weighing the consequences of either continuing to drink or take the drugs. Those who make the changes because of their soul-searching many times go on to help others deal with their addictions with varying degrees of success.
It is my guess that we all know of cases where people have either drank themselves to death or the abuse of drugs has ended lives. These are a person’s soul choices and my best guess is that when they cross over to spirit and witness the review of the life they lived, that soul will have feelings of sadness for the consequences of his addiction and death on his family and friends.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that my sharing this information from ACIM will result in this period of the inevitable life review being one where there were feelings of gladness because of the positive consequences of the small action. There is one passage where Jesus points out that our expressions of love to our fellow brothers and sisters are then transmitted to an extent that we would be astonished to know.
When we smile at the checkout woman, say a kind word to a passerby or any of a thousand other small, free actions we know not the amount of love which we will create in the world. Let us think on this. Is it possible that with the simple action of looking the checkout gal in the eye and smiling that you have saved her life? God knows we have all had our days of darkness, days of depression. This woman, before you smiled at her, may have contemplated suicide. Your simple act literally saved her life as she now knew that there was even one fellow human being in this world who cared about her.
There is no difference of scale or intensity to love. Just as you saved the life of the woman at the checkout with the real transference of love there is the possibility of saving many millions of lives on this Earth now and into future generations. In either case, whether it be an individual occurrence or on a planetary scale, it is still the power of love that is the real substance responsible for the good changes.
Passages from A Course In Miracles.
How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. Only unwillingness to learn it could make such an easy lesson difficult.
How hard is it to see that what is false cannot be true, and what is true cannot be false? Why, then, do you persist in learning not such simple things?
There is a reason. But confuse it not with difficulty in the simple things salvation asks you to learn.
It teaches you but the very obvious. The lessons you have taught yourselves have been so over-learned and fixed they rise like heavy curtains, to obscure the simple and the obvious.
Say not you cannot learn them. You who have taught yourselves the son of God is guilty, say not that you cannot learn the simple things salvation teaches you.
Yet you will learn them, for their learning is the only purpose for your learning skill the Holy Spirit sees in all the world. His simple lessons in forgiveness have a power mightier than yours, because they call from God and from yourself to you.
The certain outcome of the lesson that God’s son is guilty is the world you see. It is a world of terror and despair.
The outcome of the lesson that God’s son is guiltless is a world where there is no fear, and everything is lit with hope, and sparkles with a gentle friendliness.
The soft, eternal calling of each part of God’s creation to the whole is heard throughout the world this second lesson brings. Without your answer is it left to die, as it is saved from death when you have heard its calling as the ancient call to life, and understood that it is but your own.
God’s perfect son remembers his creation. But in guilt he has forgotten what he really is.
Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of evil or 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 he is 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.
Let us review again what seems to stand between you and the truth of what you are. For there are steps in its relinquishment.
The first is a decision which you make. But afterwards, the truth is given you. Be very still for an instant.
Nothing will hurt you in this holy place to which you come to listen silently, and learn the truth of what you really want. No more than this will you be asked to learn.
But as you hear it, you will understand you need but come away without the thoughts you did not want, and that were never true. He asks and you receive, for you have come with but one purpose; that you both may learn you love each other with a brother’s love.
…You see the flesh or recognize the spirit. There is no compromise of the two.
If one is real the other must be false, for what is real denies its opposite. There is no choice in vision but this one.
What you decide in this determines all you see, and think is real, and hold as true. On this choice does all your world depend, for here you have established what you are, as flesh or spirit in your own belief.
If you choose flesh, you will never escape the body as your own reality for you have chosen that you want it so. But choose the spirit, and all of Heaven bends to touch your eyes, and bless your holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more except to heal and comfort and bless.
Salvation does not ask that you behold the spirit and perceive the body not. It merely asks that this should be your choice.
It is your world salvation will undo, and let you see another world your eyes could never find. Be not concerned how this could ever be.
The veil of ignorance is drawn across the evil and the good, and must be passed that both may disappear, so that perception finds no hiding place. How is this done? It is not done at all.
What could there be within the universe that God created that must still be done? Only in arrogance could you conceive that you must make the way to Heaven plain. The means are given you by which to see the world that will replace the one you made.
Your will be done! In Heaven as on Earth this is forever true. It matters not where you believe you are, or what you think the truth about yourself must really be.
It makes no difference what you look upon, nor what you choose to feel or think or wish. For God himself hath said, “Thy will be done”. And it is done to you accordingly.
One vision, clearly seen, that does not fit the picture as it was perceived before, will change the world for eyes that learn to see, because the concept of the self has changed.
Are you invulnerable? Then the world is harmless in your sight. Do you forgive? Then is the world forgiving, for you have forgiven its trespasses.
And so it looks on you with eyes that see as yours. Are you a body? So is all the world perceived as treacherous, and out to kill.
Are you a Spirit, deathless, and without the promise of corruption and the stain of sin upon you? So the world is seen as stable, fully worthy of your trust; a happy place to rest for a while, where nothing need be feared but only loved.
Who is unwelcome to the kind in heart?
And what could hurt the truly innocent? Thy will be done, you holy child of God.
It does not matter if you think you are in Earth or Heaven. What your father wills for you can never change. The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as love itself. And you are worthy that your will be done.
Learning is change. Salvation does not seek to use a means as yet too alien to your thinking to be helpful, nor to make the kinds of change you could not recognize. You cannot give yourself your innocence, for you are too confused about yourself.
But should one brother dawn upon your sight as wholly worthy of forgiveness, then your concept of yourself is wholly changed. And as you gave your trust to what is good in him, you gave it to the good in you.
And this will be your concept of yourself, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see. For you will not interpret what you see without the aid that God has given you.
And in his sight there is another world. Have faith in him who walks with you, so that your fearful concept of yourself may change.
And all this shift requires is that you be willing that this happy change occur. No more than this is asked.
Hold out your hand, that you may have the gift of kind forgiveness, which you offer one whose need for it is just the same as yours. And let your cruel concept of yourself be changed to one which brings the peace of God.
All that is given you is for release; the sight, the vision and the inner guide all lead you out of hell with those you love beside you, and the universe with them.
And to each one has he allowed the grace to be a savior to the holy ones especially entrusted to his care. And this he learns when first he looks upon one brother as he looks upon himself, and sees the mirror of himself in him.
And in this single vision does he see the face of Christ, and understands he looks on everyone as he beholds this one. For there is light where darkness was before, and now the veil is lifted from his sight.
What is temptation but the wish to stay in hell and misery? Who has learned to see his brother not as this has saved himself, and thus is he a savior to the rest.
The holy ones whom God has given each of you to save are everyone you meet or look upon, not knowing who they are; all those you saw an instant and forgot, and those you knew a long while since, and those you will yet meet, the unremembered and the not yet born.
****
Bob Seger “In Your Time”
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