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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Alan Cohen
Read between
March 6 - April 6, 2023
Your wholeness is intact, and your worthiness was never in question. You do not have to compete to prove yourself, for you have unique gifts that no one else can deliver. The judgment you have been running from will never come.
“Hurt people hurt people,”
No one connected to his true Self would think of hurting someone else.
Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Teresa never made evil their enemy. They didn’t fight people. Instead, they made a stand for kindness and equality, and subsequently advanced society in ways that angry people could never achieve. For them, peace was not simply the goal. Peace was the road to all worthy goals.
“Then if you, even with your human frailties, love your son so much that you would never punish him so severely, then imagine how much more your Heavenly Father loves you and would never take delight in your suffering.”
If sin were real, we would have all cancelled ourselves out of existence a long time ago.
sin and punishment have no place in a universe founded in love.
The Course tells us that any illness and any pain, physical or emotional, is our way of holding someone else guilty for hurting us.
The experience of joy is your God-given right, a sovereign domain you alone command.
People can try to remove your happiness. They can threaten you; criticize you; insult you; tell lies about you; try to frighten, intimidate, or punish you; and do bad things to your body. But they cannot remove your peace unless you give them that power.
“in my defenselessness my safety lies,”
It’s your movie. Change the script.
There are many benefits you might have gained, or still might gain, from someone who challenges you.
Everyone helps us. Some help us by being kind, and some help us by acting unkind, so that we may choose kindness no matter what they do.
You will never gain by blaming others for your loss. You will always gain by honoring others for their contribution. This reversal of perspective is the most helpful shift in perception you will ever achieve.
When you accept 100 percent of the responsibility for the choices you have made, you gain 100 percent of the power to make new and better choices.
There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you.
The belief that someone else can complete you implies that you are incomplete. This erroneous self-image is the root cause of all emotional pain because it is untrue. You are not incomplete, and no one can complete you. You are eternally, unassailably, undeniably whole.
The fatal flaw in the “you complete me” formula is that if someone has the power to complete you by doing what makes you happy, he or she has the power to render you once again incomplete by withdrawing the behavior that validates you.
You recognize that your source of happiness resides inside you, and you can choose to feel good regardless of your partner’s behavior.
One way you can cultivate a holy relationship is to release your insistence on the form you believe your partner’s behavior should take, and support him on the path of his choice rather than the one you expect.
Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one,
To heal your relationship, seek, find, and focus on aspects that support a version of the partner you prefer. Quit harping on his or her faults, reward desirable traits, and potentiate the behaviors and relationship you desire. Dale Carnegie advised, “Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.”
You cannot control the behavior of others, and you cannot dictate the choices they make. But you have total control over which aspects of them you are selecting to magnify in your experience.
All relationships are given as blessings to expand love in your life. If you do not perceive the blessings, it is only because you have been focused on the shortcomings.
Stuff exists for your sake, not you for it.
Beating yourself up physically or emotionally saps love from the world.
Treating yourself gently, gracefully, and respectfully brings more light to humanity.
The only question worth asking about any act is, “Does this bring more joy into the world, or does i...
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Death forces us to confront the mortality of the body and inquire more deeply as to who we truly are and what we are here for.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
A Course in Miracles embraces the best elements of Christianity, along with themes enunciated by prophets, healers, and sages of all religions, as well as those who teach awakening outside the context of religion.
Although Jesus delivered a pure healing message, the religion that grew up in his name has often been infused with fear, guilt, threats, punishment, and mass murder. Countless atrocities have been committed in the name of Christ, the fear of hell causes innocent souls to tremble, and the injunction to sacrifice has supplanted passion and joy.
A Course in Miracles acknowledges and celebrates the God in all people, no matter their faith.
When you slumber at night, your soul goes back to God, and you are renewed as an innocent divine being. In deep sleep you are at peace. Then, when you open your eyes, you slip back into the identity of a body.
All acts of compassion bring the world closer to heaven.
Stop doing what hurts you and start doing what heals you.
You don’t deserve to suffer. No one does. When this truth sinks into your psyche, you will arrive at the tipping point of your spiritual journey,
The world becomes a place of hope, because its only purpose is to be a place where hope of happiness can be fulfilled. And no one stands outside this hope . .
The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross.
Jesus never asked us to go on the cross with him and he did not die for your sins.
He is the model of a man who recognized his innate divinity, the same godliness you own.
Love does not kill to save.
The right-thinking mind regards pain and difficulty as a call for kindness and compassion.
The will of God is entirely, utterly, eternally, only love.
Mind creates experience. All of life is mind over matter.
You are not in the world. The world is in you. Everything that seems to be in the world is in your mind. There is nothing outside of you.
All the authority you will ever need is seeded within your soul. Look there and nowhere else.
The method does not bestow the healing. The belief does.
Course in Miracles tells us that we have the capacity, the power, and the right to be healed if we so choose.
