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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Alan Cohen
Read between
June 12 - June 30, 2020
Fear hurts and love heals. All else is detail.
Boil every choice down to what heals versus what hurts, answer fear with love, and you will find the peace you seek.
The images we impress upon our mind, especially when accompanied by emotion, yield the same experience whether they are true or fictional.
“The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth”
There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level.
Be not content with littleness . . . Yet what you do not realize, each time you choose, is that your choice is your evaluation of yourself. Choose littleness and you will not have peace, for you will have judged yourself unworthy of it . . . It is essential that you accept the fact, and accept it gladly, that there is no form of littleness that can ever content you . . . For you will be content only in magnitude . . .
When the world does not understand, accept, or support you, you do not walk alone. And if you should lose faith in yourself, God still has faith in you.
Albert Einstein is said to have noted, “Reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one.”
You will never find peace by blaming external people and events for your misery, or by giving them credit for your salvation. You are doing it all to and for yourself.
“What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent”
It was not the act that hurt, but your interpretation of the act. Just as you chose an interpretation that hurts, you can choose one that heals. “I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt”
The key to overcoming sin is to change your thoughts about the past so they do not encroach on the holy present moment.
“All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing”
If we wish to be like God and experience the deep soul satisfaction that godly beings enjoy, we need to sharpen our forgetting skills.
When you change your thoughts about the past, you change your thoughts about the future, and thus you create a better future.
More accurately, the ego’s preoccupation with control keeps you unaware that something wonderful is already happening.
Mark Twain reportedly said, “Comparison is the death of joy.”
His verdict will always be “thine is the Kingdom,” because He was given to you to remind you of what you are.
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.
Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are.
You are God discovering yourself through your beloved.
Never wrestle with a pig,” goes an idiom attributed to George Bernard Shaw. “You’ll both get dirty and the pig likes it.”)
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, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you.
He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your mind from everything that hides His face from you.
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. This is where your true authority lives. “My Father gives all power unto me”
Money blesses you when you receive it, and it blesses you and the recipient when you give it. It is life-giving.
No matter what has happened or is happening with your human partner, you have a Divine Partner who will guide you at every turn and make your relationships on Earth like those in heaven.
Use everything you have in the service of Spirit, and Higher Power will take care of the details.
The only question worth asking about any act is, “Does this bring more joy into the world, or does it diminish joy in the world?”
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 . . .
When your arms and shoulders are taken up carrying a cross, you can’t give the love you are capable of sharing when they are free. Self-imposed suffering is not a gift to the world. It renders you less capable of loving, not more.
This is, after a fashion, what God is saying to us: “Would you please just quit having to be right about what is wrong, and come home?”
Faith is more powerful than action because action is a tool of faith. Action without faith is impotent. When your actions are in harmony with your faith, you are in integrity with yourself and you will achieve your goal.
Belief in love is the most effective faith, because God is love. When you love sincerely, the power of the entire universe is behind you.
The Holy Spirit is the part of your mind that remains connected to the Mind of God even while another part of the mind is immersed in the illusion of separation.
Everything you need to know is given freely, seeded within you. Seek not outside yourself.
Joy is the result of choosing joy.
If Advanced Intelligence cannot get your attention through subtle contrasts, it will use more blunt contrasts as educational tools.
It is not God’s plan that makes life hard, but human resistance.
Grace is the state of being in which we are loved unconditionally and all that we need is provided for us by the benevolent hand of God.
Love is where you are because love is what you are. Your blessings proceed from heaven without interruption.
By grace I live. By grace I am released.
It means that you ask Spirit to help you move beyond perceived obstacles. “I will step back and let Him lead the way” (W, Lesson 155). If there is something you need to know or do, you will be told.
If you let the day encroach before you connect with God, you will relegate God to second (or third or fourth or fifth or last) place in your life. Your spiritual connection is more important than anything else you do.
Identify with the witness rather than the doer. The more you gain perspective, the more leverage you will find to make healthy choices.
Without judgment or resistance, shine light on the ways you distract yourself from experiencing inner peace. Awareness is the beginning of healing.
Letting go of upset feels a lot better than holding on to it.
We choose upset because we find it more attractive than peace. Events don’t make us upset. We make ourselves upset and then designate events as the cause. We could just as easily—far more easily —choose peace. “I choose the joy of God instead of pain” (W, Lesson 190).
Upset is a lens we choose to filter experiences. You participate in what disturbs you. The ego’s world is built on grievances, so it can and will use every little thing it sees as grounds for grievance. It believes that whining is winning, while you are really losing. The Spiritual Eye sees through a different lens. It sees everything as grounds for gratitude, the shortest route to success and fulfillment.
When the value you perceive in wellness exceeds the value you perceive in upset, inner peace shall be yours.
