Showing posts with label Daily reflections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daily reflections. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Seventy seven, Perfect moment when time has no meaning.


Day Seventy seven
Perfect moment where time has no meaning.

“The basic decision of the miracle-minded is not to wait on time any longer than is necessary. Time can waste as well as be wasted. The miracle worker, therefore, accepts the time-control factor gladly. He recognizes that every collapse of time brings everyone close to the ultimate release from time, in which the Son and the Father are One. Equality does not imply equality now. When everyone recognizes that he has everything, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary.” ACIM.T-1.V.2:1-6

The end to time will be when everyone loves everyone all the time. That is a definition of salvation. Until the end of time comes, we continue to find ways of connecting with one another which we sometimes refer to as the “meeting of the minds.” Another phrase for “meeting of the minds” is  “kindred spirit ship.” 

A “perfect moment” which A Course In Miracles calls the “Holy Instant” is when we connect with another person to let them know what they mean to us.

What do other people mean to you? Are they your enemy, the means to your satisfaction, an object to be used for good or evil or are they part of your own being, a part of the Divine Spark, the Ground of Being, the Life we all share together?

When we recognize that the inherent worth and dignity of every person is a worth and dignity we all share, we hasten the end of time for it is coming to this recognition which is the purpose of life.

The purpose of life is to remember from what we have come and to what we yearn to return. When we all have returned to that from which we have come, time will end because it will have no more meaning.

Today, I will quiet myself, look past the endless chatter in my mind and relax into the Oneness of my Being. I will look for this non anxious presence in other people and try to connect with it. I will, in a loving way, communicate to another how much they mean to me and relax into a joint awareness of a holy presence which we all share and eventually will become aware. I will aspire to experience a perfect moment which is our natural inheritance where time has no meaning..

Monday, February 24, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Seventy six, No longer choosing to play the victim.


Day Seventy six
No longer choosing to play the victim.

“The emptiness engendered by fear must be replaced by forgiveness.” ACIM.T-1.IV.4:1 “Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned the belief in deprivation in favor of the abundance they learned belongs to them.” ACIM.T-1.IV.4:8

We always have a choice between the path of the ego and the path of the spirit. The path of the ego involves separation, locality, fear, guilt, anger, resentment, loneliness, and death. The path of the spirit involves joining, Oneness, love, forgiveness, peace, joy, safety, and eternal life. What would you have?

Life on the path of the ego is made up of scarcity and deprivation where we struggle to get more. Life on the path of the spirit is made up of abundance and wholeness where we are content and secure.

The path of the ego is seductive offering false promises from multiple idols which contribute to our forgetting God. Sometimes we even dismiss God thinking that God is too good to be true or we have been taught that God is judgmental and will punish us. This judgmental and punishing God is a false God promoted by clergy who would control and exploit those who believe their lies and foolishness.

The path of the spirit is offering the true God of universal and unconditional love. Access to the awareness of this Divine Spirit is through forgiveness wherein we are willing to give up making other people and things responsible for our unhappiness. We come to realize that the power of salvation lies in our own decision making mind. We can choose the lies of the ego or the promises of the spirit.

Today, I will take several moments when I am upset, fearful, angry, resentful and ask myself if I am going to make this person or this situation responsible for my unhappiness. Becoming aware of the stupidity of this attack, I will laugh, and turn away, and rise above, and praise God for my ability to choose forgiveness rather than to feel like a victim.

Sunday, February 23, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Seventy Five, The restoration of my birthright.


Day Seventy five
The restoration of my birthright.

“Darkness is the lack of light as sin is the lack of love. It has no unique properties of its own. It is an example of the ‘scarcity’ belief, from which only error can proceed. Truth is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no needs of any kind. The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you; or rather, to restore it to your awareness. You were given everything when you were created, just as everyone was.” ACIM.T-1.IV.3”1-7

Sometimes we feel and think that we are in the dark, or that other people or circumstances are keeping us in the dark. We intuit that there are things we should know that we don’t know, that the truth is not being told or made clear. We sense that there is a hidden agenda, that we are being manipulated, that there are covert schemes and strategies influencing our lives in ways that are nefarious. We worry whether we are being cheated on, betrayed, marginalized, silenced, exploited, taken for granted.

We may be led to believe that we are giving our consent to these schemes but the consent we give is not informed consent, but rather disingenuous. We have learned that the ego lies. The path of the ego is constructed of conniving, deceit, and exploitation.

We engage in games of cops and robbers, cat and mouse, where we attempt to ferret out the truth and play NIGYSOB, Now I’ve Got You, You Son Of A Bitch. Is this how we want to live our lives on the path of the ego playing games?

We come to the point where it dawns on us that there must be a better way. And what is that better way? We go in search and the search takes us to many places and on many journeys which if we are patient and persevere all wind up eventually in the same place. That place where the spiritual life takes us is to the Atonement, the rejection of the separation and the acknowledgment and acceptance of the Oneness from which we have all separated.

Today, I will give up living in the darkness of the ego and move toward the light. I will turn away from the sins of the ego which sow separation and divisiveness and move toward an alliance with the Oneness of God. I will willingly remember and restore an awareness of my birthright, which is Love.

Saturday, February 22, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Seventy four, The appreciation in which I can rest.


Day Seventy four
The appreciation in which I can rest.

“Your mind can be possessed by illusions, but spirit is eternally free. If a mind perceives without love, it perceives an empty shell and is unaware of the spirit within. But the Atonement restories spirit to its proper place. The mind that serves spirit is invulnerable.” ACIM.T-1.IV.2:8-11

As Carl Jung taught us, the psyche has a shadow side. Every person has one. Usually the shadow is unconscious and is made up of illusions like a bad dream which we unknowing project onto the world. Usually these projections are what we fear and hate the most.

Holden Caufield, in The Catcher In The Rye, called it the “Big Lie”. The Big Lie is the illusion that the ego would have us believe is real. The Big Lie excludes Unconditional Love and is based on fear and guilt and tells us we live in a world of “one or the other” and we “give to get.” Everything is conditional and is a zero sum game based on scarcity. If a person believes what society has told them, they live in an empty shell and are unaware of the holiness beneath it which is their natural inheritance.

Once a person sees through the game, though, and realizes there must be more, and that there is a better way to live and move through life, they come to understand the Oneness from which we have separated ourselves and see the ground of their being which pervades all of life in a cosmic harmony. Once this enlightenment occurs, the mind, the psyche is invulnerable.

Today, I will reflect on my experience and look behind the curtain of the Big Lie. I will settle into the Ground of Being and let the idols of the ego go. I will realize that the ego hell that I have been taught I am living in is not real. I will appreciate that the Oneness of my being is invulnerable and in this appreciation I will rest in peace and bliss..

Friday, February 21, 2020

Daily Relections, Day Seventy three, The thing I have forgotten: holiness.


Day Seventy three
The thing I have forgotten: holiness

“Holiness can never be really hidden in darkness, but you can deceive yourself about it. The deception makes you fearful because you realize in your heart that it is a deception, and you exert enormous efforts to establish its reality.” ACIM.T-1.IV.2:1-2

The mission of the UU A Way Of Life blog is to sanctify the world by helping people become aware of their holiness, but the carrying out of this mission engenders fear in people who have a stake in maintaining the world of the ego.

Holiness is innate and we pay lip service, some of us, to the principle that every person has inherent worth and dignity, but judgment is a major part of the activities of the days of most of us. We become upset, angry, resentful, and harbor grievances in many of our interactions and overlook or dismiss the divine spark of holiness that is always hidden in everyone. We look for ways to justify our judgment so we can diminish our fear of our wrongdoing in justifications and rationalizations.

What we fear the most in ourselves we project onto others. Because we have kept the holiness hidden within ourselves, we have difficulty seeing it in others. It takes enormous energy and conscious effort to maintain and uplift the lies of the ego and its false promises of happiness.

Today, I will pay attention to my fears and come to an understanding of where they come from. Once I get past these fears, I will recognize and acknowledge Love which is my natural inheritance that I have forgotten. I will give thanks for the peace and joy that ascends into my awareness which I experience.

Thursday, February 20, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Seventy two, Telling secrets is a path to liberation.


Day Seventy two
Telling our secrets is a path to liberation

“The escape from darkness involves two statges: First, the recognition that darkness cannot hide. This step usually entails fear. Second, the recognition that there is nothing you want to hide even if you could. This step brings escape from fear. When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be willing to enter into communion but will also understand peace and joy.” ACIM.T-1.IV.1:1-5

So much of our perceptions and feelings are shame based. We live in great fear that what we believe is our innate defectiveness and inadequacy will be discovered. We learned as children that we must behave properly so that people will approve of us and not punish or reject us.

As we mature, we realize that this false facade, this fake self, takes great effort and stress to maintain. At times anxiety and depression overtake us, and we “break down,” and find ourselves doing things we would not do, and not doing things that we think we should do. Freud called this behavior, “acting out.” Our symptomatic and dysfunctional behavior is generated by unconscious thoughts and feelings that we are not consciously aware of. This leads to confusion and distress.

To look into the unconscious is scary and is often avoided, but when we become curious about what makes us tick and are willing to examine our lives, we begin to realize that there really is nothing we want to hide any longer and we decide to live our lives in more transparent and open hearted ways. It is in exploring the unconscious that we come to realize that there was nothing to fear to begin with and a great peace and joy ascend into our consciousness.

Today, I will identify a few of my secrets and identify someone I can tell them to. This unburdening will provide a liberation and relief that generates peace and joy that the risk of disclosure comes to be seen as very worthwhile. I will come to understand that telling my secrets is the path to liberation.

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Seventy One, Living faithfully does not guarantee success.


Day Seventy One
Living faithfully does not guarantee success.

“That the miracle may have effects on your brothers that you may not recognize is not your concern. The miracle will always bless you. Miracles you are not asked to perform have not lost their value. They are still expressions of your own state of grace, but the action aspect of the miracle should be controlled by me because I am aware of the whole plan. The impersonal nature of miracle-mindedness ensures your grace, but only I am in a position to know where they can be bestowed.” ACIM. T-1.111.8:1-5

We never know where our intentions of Love may land or the effects they may have. Mother Teresa said one time that she and her sisters of Charity were called to be faithful not successful. She would leave success in God’s hands.

It is hard to give up attachment to results. We want to feel that we are in control, that we have power and influence, that your actions and work count for something. The joke is, “If you want to hear God laugh, tell God your plans.”

Unconditional Love, the Grace that is referred to above, is a free gift, no strings attached. Jesus is telling us in this passage that our only job is to Love and we need to leave the rest to HIm. He knows the plan He tells us, we don’t.

To love without attachment to results seems almost super human; it certainly is not the way of the ego. To love without attachment is the way of the spirit which is called amazing grace.

Today, love unconditionally with no strings attached. You are no longer giving something to get something. You are simply giving and turning the results over to your Higher Power. You are intent on living your life faithfully and not necessarily what the world would see as successfully. Living your life faithfully will always bring a grace of its own, a grace we often don’t see,  no matter what.

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Seventy, What is the way to the Kingdom?


Day Seventy
What is the way to the Kingdom?

“‘No man cometh unto the Father but by me’ does not mean that I am in any way separate or different from you except in time, and time does not really exist. The statement is more meaningful in terms of a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. You stand below me and I stand below God. In the process of ‘rising up,’ I am higher because without me the distance between God and man would be too great for you to encompass. I bridge the difference as an elder brother to you on the one hand, and as a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I render complete because I share it.” ACIM.T-1.II.4:1-6

There are many paths to the Oneness with God: Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Earth Centered religions, Humanism, Philosophy, Psychology, etc. Jesus tells us that He is the same as us. The only difference is that He is enlightened, what some faith traditions name an “enlightened master” and as such is a guide, an older brother, whose teachings and example we can use as a bridge to shed our egos and achieve Oneness with the Ground of Being.

We can learn a lot from Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tse, Osho, and many prophetic witnesses to the realm of the Spirit which is our first and last home.

Most of us struggle to remember that Oneness from which we separated ourselves and emerged into this illusionary world of the ego. It is a world of hell we have entered when we left the Kingdom. Jesus and the enlightened masters teach us about our true home and how to return there.

When Jesus says that no person returns to the Father except as He has done, He is not meaning that He is the only way, but that the way, giving up the world of the ego and choosing the way of the Spirit, Love, is the only way.

Separation will not get us there, but joining and becoming One with the Body of Christ is a possible path which Jesus has taught us if only we will learn and practice the lesson.

Today, I will reflect on Jesus’ statement that the way to the Kingdom is to “love as I have loved,” and will ask, when I am called on to make a decision which will be several times today, “What would love have me do?” WWLD

Monday, February 17, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Sixty nine, Renewing faith in the kingdom of the Spirit.


Day Sixty nine
Renewing faith in the kingdom of the Spirit.

 “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..” ACIM.W-169.14:1-6

Every now and then, if we are alert to it, we get a glimpse of the transcendent. We intuit that there is something beyond. In A Course In Miracles such glimpses are called “Holy Instants.”

When we experience a Holy Instant we are touched by grace and we feel blessed. The peace and bliss may be momentary or several seconds or perhaps even a few minutes. When we experience this grace, we know what lies beyond and our life begins to change. A mature innocence begins to emerge and as Jesus said, unless you become as little children you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

Today, I will take some time to reflect on my experience of Holy Instants I have experienced. I will express gratitude for the awareness they have provided that there is something more and a better way than what the path of the ego has to offer. I will renew my faith in the kingdom of the Spirit.

Friday, February 14, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Sixty eight, Experiencing a taste of Oneness


Day Sixty eight
Experiencing a taste of Oneness.

“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.” W-169.10:1-2

God is……………. and what more can be said? The Tao Te Ching states “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things.” And the best response to such an idea is laughter. We are so foolish having the tiny mad idea that we are separate from the Divine.

We, humans, arrogant, prideful, narcissistic think we can name God. We think we can label the absolute, the ground of our being, the force, and in doing so control and manipulate what we call God.

A person asked one time, “Do you believe in God?” The wise sage said, “What god is it that you are speaking of?”

God is not something or somebody in which one believes. God is something a person either knows and is aware of or doesn’t. The verse from A Course In Miracles tells us that there is no need to explain, to justify, to describe what it is not possible to explain, justify,  and describe. We either know or we don’t and those that know have no need to describe God while those who don’t know can talk about it for hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, whole lifetimes.

God is not external to us. God is not “out there.” God, if you experience God at all, is in your heart and mind. God is a verb which you experience not a noun that can be objectified.

Today, I will take several moments throughout the day to just be still. I will take some deep breaths, relax my muscles, and just melt into existence. If you can “freeze” you can set your body aside and expand your consciousness and perhaps, if grace arises, you will get a little taste of Oneness.

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Sixty seven, What is the right path to follow?


Day Sixty seven
What is the right path to follow?

“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.” ACIM.W-169.9:1-2

God, eternity, Oneness always was, is now, and forever shall be. There is no time in the Oneness of the Spirit.

When we were born and became socialized and conditioned into the ego world of separation, we forgot this metaphysical truth. We became distracted by and encouraged to pursue the idols of the ego world. We were taught that the idols of the ego world would make us happy if only we could acquire them. And so we craved, we aspired, we went on on a wild goose chase seeking for Love, satisfaction, and fulfillment in all the wrong places.

There may have been times when we achieved and acquired some of these idols, and there were times of hedonic adaptation when we discovered that the idols were not soul satisfying and then we had the crazy idea that it was not the acquisition of the idols themselves that didn’t satisfy but that we didn’t have enough and so we got on the treadmill of attempting to acquire more.

This craziness of pursuing and acquiring the wrong kind of things we thought we loved became futile and we finally hit bottom and it dawned on us that we, maybe, have been on the wrong track for all or most of our lives. We realized that there must be a better way and we turned our lives onto a different direction in our search.

In our search in a new direction we became seekers for what some call “the absolute,” “the ground of our being,” and we call here, “the Oneness” of which we, and everything is a part.

Today, I will take several moments during the day to remind myself that I am in the world but not of the world. I will ask myself whether acquiring things suggested by the ego will really make me happy. I will ask, “What would Love have me do?” I will follow my intuitive sense of what Love is suggesting is the right path to follow.

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Sixty six, Liberated from the prison of the ego


Day Sixty six
Liberated from the prison of the ego

“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.” W-169.8:1-3

What is heaven like? What is the world of the Spirit? It always was, is now, and ever shall be. Eternity, after all, is eternity. It’s a hard idea for our little minds to grasp.

And yet this passage from A Course In Miracles, it tells us that God is…….. Always was……….Always will be. God is “accomplished and complete.” God has no need for time and time means nothing to God. With the revelation time for us is ended and “released to revelation and eternity” where time stands still and is no more. Time has no meaning in revelation. There is no time. There is no time like the present and there is nothing else.

Life is like a hologram according to A Course In Miracles which teaches that what seems to be each part encompasses the whole. And so, we, in the world of the ego seem to make a journey which is already done. We are here to become conscious of the world of the Spirit which has always existed and continues to exist even as we ignore it and forget it.

These metaphysical ideas are very hard for the mind to grasp and yet we sense their truth.

Today, I will take several moments and surrender my ego to God. I will willingly turn my will over to my Higher Power. I will “let go and let God” as they say in Alcoholic Anonymous. In this surrender to the Will of God comes great freedom to be who we are created to be, no longer captured and constrained by the chains and prison of the ego. We are liberated at last to rest in joy and bliss of the revelation.

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Sixty five, Harmony with all that is.



Day Sixty five
Harmony with all that is.

        “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 this 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.” ACIM.W-169:3:1-6.41-3

Are we ready to learn? Are we open to hearing the Voice of God? Neale Donald Walsch, in his Conversations With God books, tells us that God is talking to us all the time. It is us who are not listening.

When we do listen and we hear God’s voice we experience grace. We describe a “grace filled moment” when our hearts and minds are touched by a transcendent experience which is unfathomable and unspeakable. This grace sometimes brings tears of joys and peace to our eyes and we feel ourselves resonate with something so much greater than ourselves.

Can we force grace? Is it a commodity that we can buy or an experience that can be produced upon demand? No, grace is not a commodity that can be possessed. It is an experience that comes from surrender to the greatness of God’s creation. This experience has been described in the hymn, “Amazing grace.”

Today, I will be open to listening for God’s voice. In order to do this, I must clear my mind and heart from the clutter of the ego. I must go within and wait patiently and listen quietly for the hum of the cosmic vibration that engenders harmony with All that Is. You, too, can hear God’s music if you tune in to the right frequency.

Monday, February 10, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Sixty four, Remembering Love's presence


Day Sixty four
Remembering Love’s presence

“It matters not when revelation comes, for that is not of time.” ACIM.W-158.11:1

Revelation, of course, is not of time. Time stands still. Revelation is timeless. Becoming one with the All is not bound by time.

Time is an illusion which we project onto our experience and allow it to constrain us, restrain us, and stress us. Time is a major tool of the ego to keep us under its spell. The revelation of God knows nothing of time and is not bound by it in any way and, in fact, knows nothing of it. Time does not exist in the Oneness.

And so, revelation, when we experience it knows nothing of time and is not influenced by it nor constrained by it in any way. Revelation can occur when it will. The Buddhists say, “It is what it is.” God tells Moses, “I am that I am.”

The best we can do as human beings is to be open to revelation and accepting of it by sheding the things of the ego. When we remove the barriers and blocks to our awareness of Love’s presence, love’s presence appears to us with a glorious experience of peace and bliss.

Today, I will continue to spot and disregard the things of the ego: fear, guilt, resentment, grievance, and instead focus on love, forgiveness, compassion, and sharing. I will remember the presence of God in my life and not allow myself to get distracted by the idols of the world.

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Sixty three, Are you ready to accept Oneness?


Day Sixty three
Are you ready to accept Oneness?

“The revelation that the Father and the Son are one will come in time to every mind. Yet is that time determined by the mind itself, not taught.” ACIM.W-158.2:8-9

Nonduality is a hard concept for the Western mind to understand. We are raised to see the world in terms of separation or subject/object duality. We understand, on the path of the ego, through the mechanism of comparison and contrast, the ying and yang, which we take for granted in our perceiving and miss the whole.

A Course In Miracles assures us that awareness of the Oneness will come to every mind and in this awareness lies the belief among the Universalists that everyone is saved in the end and will be in heaven. This awareness is achieved through acceptance and need not be taught or learned. The question becomes when will the mind be ready?

Readiness is a matter of choice. Do we choose the path of the ego or the path of the spirit? Do we choose the path of fear and guilt and attack, or the path of love, forgiveness, and peace? Once we know we have a choice, we are in control of our destiny.

Today, I will remind myself several times that I am a part of a transcendent mystery. I will accept that other people and other things are not responsible for my unhappiness. The responsibility for my happiness is mine alone. In this understanding, the path to peace and bliss reside.


Saturday, February 8, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Sixty two, Choosing the path of the ego or the path of the spirit?


Day Sixty two
Choosing the path of the ego or the path of the spirit?

“Only the healed mind can experience revelation with lasting effect, because revelation is an experience of pure joy. If you do not choose to be wholly joyous, your mind cannot have what it does not choose to be. Remember that spirit knows no difference between having and being.” ACIM.T-5.I.1:3-4

Which do you choose: the path of the ego or the path of the spirit? The path of the ego brings fear, guilt, and grievance, and the path of the spirit brings love, forgiveness, and joy. When put in stark terms, it seems like an easy choice for the spirit but our conditioning and socialization into the world of the ego makes it hard for us to remember the world of the spirit from which we came and to which we can return.

The key to whether we experience fear or love is innocence. The innocence we experienced with our birth is an innocence born from naivete. Being babies, toddlers, and young children we have to be taught what evil is, born from the ego. As we go through life we lose our innocence of childhood and must regain it by remembering our birth right which is love. Jesus said that unless we become like little children we can’t enter the kingdom of heaven. It is this innocence of maturity that he is describing.

Revelation, becoming one with God again, is a choice, a choice many people have forgotten they have. When we join with others to remember our Oneness with God, a healing occurs which is experienced as great joy which can also be called bliss. The key point here is that people have a choice. Do we choose the path of the ego or the path of the spirit? When we choose spirit, peace and joy is experienced. This peace and joy is not about what we do, but who we are.

Today, I will remind myself that I have a choice between the path of the ego and the path of the spirit. The path of the ego will bring me fear and guilt, and the path of the spirit will bring me love and forgiveness and peace. At any given moment which do I choose?

Friday, February 7, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Sixty one, Clearing the way for amazing grace


Day Sixty one
Clearing the way for amazing grace

“God has kept your Kingdom for you, but He cannot share His joy with you until you know it with your whole mind. Revelation is not enough, because it is only communication from God. God does not need revelation returned to Him, which would clearly be impossible, but He does want it brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual revelation; its content cannot be expressed, because it is intensely personal to the mind that receives it. It can, however, be returned by that mind to other minds, through the attitudes the knowledge from the revelation brings.” ACIM.T-4.VII.7:1-5

Sometimes people will tell a story about how their life was changed by a near death experience where they glimpsed heaven and returned with their consciousness changed and their lives will never be the same again. People listening to this kind of story can perceive that the person’s life has changed and yet the listener can only guess at what the teller’s experience has been like.

Similarly, people have revelatory experiences which they may attempt to describe to others but this attempt to convey the experience is difficult and rarely understood by the listener and so often the teller stops telling others and just keeps such experiences to oneself.

While the revelatory experience is kept to oneself, the person’s attitude toward life, the way the person conducts oneself and interacts with others is different and people around this person sense this. Often the other recognizes that something is different in a positive way, and the positive attitude has a calming and warming effect that is extremely pleasant. There is no fear, no tension, and a kind of relaxation that is soothing.

Revelatory experiences change people from fear, guilt, anger, resentment in the world of the ego to Love, forgiveness, peace, and bliss in the world of the spirit.

Revelatory experiences are nothing the individual can control. All the individual can do is remove the obstacles and obstacles of the ego to make way for the awareness of Love’s presence which is always with us, but, in the world of the ego, forgotten. All we can do is make way for the awareness of God. The revelation is experienced as an amazing grace.

Today, I will clear the way by removing the idols of the ego for the awareness of Love’s presence in my life. I will take several moments throughout the day to ask the Holy Spirit to help me be willing to do God’s will and open my heart to God’s amazing grace.

Thursday, February 6, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Sixty, The power of choice.


Day Sixty
The power of choice.

“Against this sense of temporary existence (offered by the ego) spirit offers you the knowledge of permanence and unshakable being. No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. How can its (the ego’s) meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God?” ACIM.T-4.III.3:6-8

We know in our unconscious that we have come from God and it is in God that our real home is to be found. It is a matter of remembering and returning. The socialization and conditioning of the ego does not constitute our real home. The world of the ego is a classroom which provides us with learning which has made the unconscious conscious.

Through the socialization and conditioning process by the world of the ego we have lost our innocence and naivte, and through pain and suffering, fear and guilt, resentment and attack, we come to realize the hell which the world of the ego has made for us and which for a long time has seemed so real.

Having served the idols of the ego we have in our despair come to realize that there must be a better way, there has to be more than what the ego has offered us and so we begin to search, and the search takes us within, back to the altar of our essence, our very being, and the world of the spirit is revealed to us and now we know that we have a choice. We can choose the world of the ego or the world of the spirit. Would we have guilt, fear, anger and attack or forgiveness, peace and Unconditional Love? Our power resides in our ability to choose. We realize that we have free will to choose the world of the ego or the world of the spirit..

Today, I will take several moments and reflect on my ability to choose the path of the ego or the path of the spirit. Do I want to attack or love? Do I want fear and guilt or love and forgiveness?

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Daily Reflections, Day Fifty nine, Thought system or a way of life?


Day Fifty nine
Thought system or way of life?

“Knowledge is the result of revelation and induces only thought.” “Knowledge comes from the altar within and is timeless because it is certain. To perceive the truth is not the same as to know it.” ACIM.T-3.III.5:10,12-13

Some people say they believe in God and others say they don’t believe in God and whether people say they believe in God or don’t believe in God, their statements beg the question of what god it is that they do or don’t believe in.

To know that one is One with God is a knowledge which has nothing to do with perception. This knowledge comes from an experience within. This knowledge some people call “grace” because it does not depend on any external perception but rather on an experience of deep Love and peace.

This experience of Love and peace is timeless because it does not depend on the perception of any external event. This experience is all encompassing and is transcendent because it is not of this ego world.

Francis David, the Unitarian pioneer, said we need not think alike to love alike. David is pointing to the difference between thoughts and beliefs and internal experience. This idea of being in Love together is fundamental to the Unitarian Universalist faith tradition. At its core, Unitarian Universalism is a mystical faith which depends not on a thought system but on a way of life.

Today, take several moments during the day and shut off the mind and go within. Go to the altar which is the ground of being and experience the timeless Love and peace. The more one does this, the more the experience of Love becomes one’s experience of life.

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Daily Reflection, Day Fifty eight, Human being or human doer?


Day Fifty eight
Human being or human doer?

“I said before that only revelation transcends time.” ACIM.T-2.V.10:5

We say, “Where did the time go?” “It seemed like time stood still.” “It seemed like I was somewhere out of time.” “I felt timeless.” We are describing an altered state of consciousness where we lose our sense of ego boundaries. We experience ourselves as pure spirit without a body. We are pure being.

If you are a Buddhist, you would call this state of mind “bodhi” or enlightenment, if an Hindu you would call it “moksha” or freedom or “sahaja samadhi” or ongoing oneness, if a Sufi you would call it “baqa” or abiding in God, if a Christian you would call it deification or union with God. These are the descriptions of the mystical experience of spiritual awakening.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning and if one were to engage in such a search where would one look? The path of the ego takes us outward in search of external things while the path of the Spirit takes us inward in search of union with the Transcendent.

Today, I will take several moments to relax and look within for the “no mind.” I will clear away the clutter of external cares and concerns which the ego populates my consciousness with. I will relax into the Oneness of timelessness and just be. After all, I am a human being not a human doer.

Print Friendly and PDF