Am I a Body or Spirit?

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As students of A Course In Miracles we are asked to consider our True Identity.

We are born into a body, in a particular family of certain circumstances but seeking the answer to the age old question:  Who am I?  We learn (gradually) we are NOT who we THINK we are!

The Course tells us we are Spirit and little by little we come to understand that YES, that is true, our (eternal) spirit does reside in our body for now but the time will come when we will leave the body, thank it for its service and move on.  We are really caretakers (or not) of our soul that is currently inhabiting this body!

The more and more we REMEMBER we are in fact SPIRIT, the more peace we will have.  When the body has a problem, which it will, it is a chance to say:  NOPE – NOT ME!

Of course we take care and “fix” the body and do whatever we can to stay in the world and learn lessons that are sure to come.   A elderly friend became sick recently and the sickness was such that she decided NOT to “fix” her body!  That was courageous but I know the time will come when I will make that same decision.  I will know what’s right when that time comes and I will leave knowing I did the right thing.

Workbook lesson 199. I am not a body. I am free, is a wonderful lesson to explore the feelings of not being the body.  You can go to http://www.acim.org and click on lessons and then close your eyes and listen quietly to let it sink in.

Remember, you are a decision making Mind!  You have the power to choose!  You have two choices:  Love or Fear.  You can listen to the ego’s fear or listen to the Holy Spirit’s grace and faith.

Isn’t it great to know you have a CHOICE!  That is why you are not a victim.

http://www.facim.org – Lesson 199:  “I am not a body.  I am free.  I hear the Voice That God has given me, and it is only This my mind obeys.”

Elusiveness of Peace and Joy

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The Elusiveness of Peace and Joy!

Do you want peace and joy?  Of course you do.  As least you think you do until you have a judgment or an upset that you won’t let go of.   You are sure something was done to you and you are right and the offending party should go to hell.  Or places like that.   OK – maybe you are right but do you want peace and joy?  You can’t have it if you want someone to go to hell or hold onto an upset that you will not consider in another way.

I know someone who is holding onto a grievance.  He was actually attacked, pushed up against a fence and would have been hit if someone had not interfered.  Why did the perpetrator assault him?  He had responded to an insult with his own insult and that angered the attacker and so he took matters into his hands, literally.  Who started it?  It doesn’t matter.  What matters is how we now find the peace that eluded us the first moment we reacted.  That will be the subject of another article and an important one for now, let’s look at where we find ourselves and how can we choose another way back to the peace we want.

We have not found peace by remembering and replaying the event because we are stuck in our belief system and we are sure we are in the right.  But are you happy being in the right?  Would you rather be right or happy?  Now when we see that person or think of them we are unhappy.  Ask yourself: Do I want peace and joy?

If the answer is YES, then decided to STOP the set belief in your mind (just for a moment) and choose another way to look at this?  Say:  “OK – I’ll look at this another way for the sake of my own peace.”

*“Begin to think of that (person) brother who has been denied by YOU the peace and joy that is his right under the equal laws of God.  You have denied them to yourself and now you claim them as your own. Think of this brother a little while and tell him in your mind:

My brother peace and joy I offer you,

That I may have God’s peace and joy as mine.”

We don’t think that just because we have denied peace and joy someone else that in so doing we are in effect really denying them to our self.  If you hold hate or a grudge in your mind, you are the one HOLDING the hate and the grudge in yourself.  You are the sufferer.  Do you think your brother is suffering?  We don’t know but we do know you are.

Would you rather say to that brother?

My brother, misery and suffering I offer you

That  I may have the ego’s misery and suffering as mine.

Which version do you choose?  If the word God bothers you, take it out.  God won’t care.  That mystery is love and love never condemns.  It doesn’t know how to.  Make a copy of the pledge and paste it around the house.  Take yourself on as a student and train yourself to accept that peace and joy is your inheritance and that you are worth it.

* This quote comes from the spiritual book, A Course In Miracles, Workbook lesson 105 God’s Peace and Joy are Mine.  Visit  www.acim.org  go The Workbook lessons and then when the lesson comes up, click on “hear” and listen to the entire lesson and close your eyes.   Choose peace!

Hint: When you give you also receive!

 

The Light Has Come

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The Metaphysical/Spiritual book called A Course In Miracles contains a workbook that offers a lesson for each day.  The lessons are offered online so you do not have to buy the book to get started.   http://www.acim.org – see directions below.

You can start the lessons anytime you want but be sure to start at lesson #1, as they follow a mind training process that is powerful and helps us see through the world and the illusions that make us sad, angry, depressed, anxious, happy at times, sadness over death, destruction, injustice and more.  I believe the Course has brought many back from the brink hopelessness because it did for me.

Would you like to forgive the world?  It may not seem that you need to but the world has a way of showing us what we dislike as well as what we like.  The world is dualistic.  It contains the opposites that we then judge as good or bad!  We gradually give the world up by forgiving seeing it for what it is and in doing so we become the Light that is our true identity!

Today, March 16th is the 75th day of the year and today’s Lesson 75. The Light Has Come.

The lessons can be read online and they have been recorded so you have the option of sitting back and listen to the lesson being read to you!

“The Light Has Come.”

Go to http://www.acim.org

click on Online Lessons

click on Workbook table of Contents and

Choose 75!    Enjoy being in the Light!  Listen to a lesson any time you want!

 

New Years Promise

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January 3, 2017!!

What a trickster time is!

“For what is time without a past and future?  It has taken time to misguide you so completely, but

it takes no time at all to be what you are. Begin to practice the Holy Spirit’s use of time as a

teaching aid to happiness and peace.  Take this very instant, now, and think of it as all there is of

time.  Nothing can reach you here out of the past, and it is here that you are completely absolved,

completely free and wholly without condemnation.  From this holy instant wherein holiness was

born again you will go forth in time without fear and with no sense of change with time.” 

The above quote is from A Course In Miracles, Chapter 15. The Holy Instant, Section I. The Two Uses of Time, p.9. 2-7.

The ego uses time to age us (we think we are bodies); heap regret and guilt; plant the seeds of self doubt and or grandiosity; keep us in fear of the future by reminding us of the dreaded past and we are suffocated by grievances we have promised never to overlook or forgive.

But, when we choose to use the Holy Spirit’s practice of accepting the holy instant as soon as we become upset and remember “God Is” present at this very moment – our mind is free.  Sometimes when I am aggravated, beyond words I repeat “God Is” quickly, about 10 to 20 times!  It shifts me from the ego to the Holy Spirit, from Hell to Heaven.  Does it last – no!  But gradually, little by little, I have Faith that I am ascending the ladder and One Day, One Fine Day,  I will reach True Perception and the Real World.

My New Year’s Resolution….. To use the Holy Instant and remember when upset, to STOP and take that very instant and think of it as being “Out of Time”- no past, no future, just God Is, God Is, God Is!  This is what the Course calls the Atonement: Remembering that the “seeming” separation from God is an illusion!  Not True!

Bless you in 2017 and for that matter – for eternity!

For more information about the Course check the following websites:

http://www.facim.org

http://www.acim.org

http://www.miraclecenter.org

http://www.circleofa.org

 

 

 

 

 

Where is inner peace these days?

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When we look out at the world, the problems, the Presidential Election, no matter which one you like or dislike…..and we wonder……where is the PEACE?

Peace cannot be found in the world.  Well you say, what about the quiet stream and the birds singing and the flowers and the walk in the woods.

Yes, some remnants of peace can be found in the world BUT…..for how long?  Snippets at a time.

Then what about your thoughts as you sit by the steam?  What are you thinking about?  When you took the kids fishing and OH….and that son is now dead.  Where is the peace?

Peace can only be found when we FORGIVE EVERYTHING and FORGIVE OURSELVES from thinking I am a separate little EGO and instead remember:

“I could choose peace instead of this”  Then the thought doesn’t matter.  Yes that son is now dead but A Corse In Miracles says there is no death in this world.  This world is not REAL.

Yes, this world has betrayal, upsets, fun, danger, competition and strife but the only way to BE in the WORLD but NOT of IT is to remember with the help of that tiny small voice found only inside:

RISE above the BATTLEGROUND……this is NOT ALL THERE IS.

PEACE is within and what is found within is that still small voice that reminds you there is TRUTH and it is not here. This is not real.  God IS

Peace can be found in a Spiritual Path….that is where GOD IS.

There are thousands….and they all say “The Son of God is innocent”

One path to Peace is: A Course In Miracles  –

http://www.facim.org  (Ken Wapnick books and tapes found here)

http://www.acim.org

http://www.miraclecenter.org   (You can find a list of world wide study groups on this website)