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Love in your mind produces love in your life. This is the meaning of Heaven.
Fear in your mind produces fear in your life. This is the meaning of hell.
it. To say, “God, deliver me from hell,” means “God, Deliver me from my fearful thinking.” The altar to God is the human mind. To “desecrate the alta...
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Closing our hearts destroys our peace because it’s alien to our nature. It warps us and turns us into people we’re not meant to be.
Freud defined neurosis as separation from self, and so it is. Our real self is the love within us. It’s the “child of God.” The fearful self is an impostor. The return to love is the great cosmic drama, the personal journey from pretense to self, from pain to inner peace.
I’d get myself into some terrible mess, and I’d remember that all I needed was a miracle, ‘a shift in perception’. I’d pray, “God, please help me. Heal my mind. Wherever my thoughts have strayed from love—if I’ve been controlling, manipulative, greedy, ambitious ...
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“Again—nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth.”
When Michelangelo was asked how he created a piece of sculpture, he answered that the statue already existed within the marble. God Himself had created the Pieta, David, Moses. Michelangelo’s job, as he saw it, was to get rid of the excess marble that surrounded God’s creation. So
The perfect you isn’t something you need to create, because God already created it. The perfect you is the love within you. Your job is to allow the Holy Spirit to remove the fearful thinking that surrounds your perfect self, just as excess marble surrounded Michelangelo’s perfect statue. To
You aren’t who you think you are. Aren’t you glad? You’re not your grades, or your credentials, or your resumes, or your house. We aren’t those things at all. We are holy beings, individual cells in the body of Christ. A
‘We awaken from the dream that we are weak, and accept that the power of the universe is within us.’
The ego doesn’t come up to us and say, “Hi, I’m your self-loathing.” It’s not stupid, because we’re not. Rather, it says things like, “Hi, I’m your adult, mature, rational self. I’ll help you look out for number one.” Then it proceeds to counsel us to look out for ourselves, at the expense of others. It teaches us selfishness, greed, judgment, and small-mindedness. But remember, there’s only one of us here: What we give to others, we give to ourselves. What we withhold from others, we withhold from ourselves. In any moment when we choose fear instead of love, we deny ourselves the experience
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“Dear God, my desire, my priority is inner peace. I want the experience of love. I don’t know what would bring that to me. I leave the results of this situation in your hands. I trust your will. May your will be done. Amen.”
In Zen Buddhism, there’s a concept called “zen mind,” or “beginner’s mind.” They say that the mind should be like an empty rice bowl. If it’s already full, then the universe can’t fill it. If it’s empty, it has room to receive. This means that when we think we have things already figured out,
we’re not teachable. Genuine insight can’t dawn on a mind that’s not open to receive it. Surrender is a process of emptying the mind.
In the Christic tradition, this is the meaning of “becoming as a little child.” Little children don’t think they know what things mea...
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It is a shift not so much in an objective situation—although that often occurs—as it is a shift in how we perceive a situation. What changes, primarily, is how we hold an experience in our minds—how we experience the experience.
A miracle is not a rearrangement of the figures in our dream. A miracle is our awakening from it.
In asking for miracles, we are seeking a practical goal: a return to inner peace. We’re not asking for something outside us to change, but for something inside us to change. We’re looking for a softer orientation
Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes.
tool for changing the world is our capacity to ‘change our mind about the world.’
Our self-perception determines our behavior. If we think we’re small, limited, inadequate creatures, then we tend to behave that way, and the energy we radiate reflects those thoughts no matter what we do. If we think we’re magnificent creatures with an infinite abundance of love and power to give, then we tend to behave that
“To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All the rest must be forgotten.” We
Every situation we find ourselves in is an opportunity, perfectly planned by the Holy Spirit, to teach love instead of fear.
Whatever energy system we find ourselves a part of, it’s our job to heal it—to purify the thought forms by purifying our own. It’s never really a circumstance that needs to change—it’s we who need to change. The prayer isn’t for God to change our lives, but rather for Him to change
Forgiveness is “selective remembering”—a conscious decision to focus on love and let the rest go.
We ask Him to save us from our tendency to condemn. We ask Him to reveal to us the innocence within others, that we might see it within ourselves.
“Dear God, I surrender this relationship to you,” means, “Dear God, let me see this person through your eyes.” In accepting the Atonement, we are asking to see as God sees, think as God thinks, love as God loves. We are asking for help in seeing someone’s innocence. I
“Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan for salvation.
darkness we let blind us to another’s perfection also blinds us to our own.
What we think of as people’s guilt is their fear. All negativity derives from fear. When someone is angry, they are afraid. When someone is rude, they are afraid. When someone is manipulative, they are afraid. When someone is cruel, they are afraid. There is no fear that love does not dissolve. There is
A miracle is always available in any situation, because no one can decide for us how to interpret our own experience.
Miracle workers, says the Course, are generous out of self-interest. We give someone a break so we can stay in peace ourselves. The
ultimately all the fear and guilt comes back at us. If we judge another person, then they’ll judge us back—and even if they don’t, we’ll feel like they did!
There is practically a mania these days for blaming the events of our childhood for our current despair. What the ego doesn’t want us to see is that our pain doesn’t come from the love we weren’t given in the past, but from the love we ourselves aren’t giving in the present.
When our darkness is brought to light and forgiven, then we
can move on.
The process of miraculous change is twofold: I see my error or dysfunctional pattern. I ask God to take it from me.
The first principle without the second is impotent. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, “your best thinking got you here.” You’re the problem but you’re not the answer.
A Course in Miracles says that the most effective way to teach a child is not by saying ‘Don’t do that,’ but ‘Do this.’ We don’t reach the light through endless analysis of the dark. We reach the light by choosing the light. Light means understanding.
narcissism
we’re not in a relationship to focus on how well the other person is learning their lessons, but rather to focus on learning our own.
which he told of seeing a newspaper article about an abused baby being taken away from his mother. As a police matron tried to take the baby, he kept struggling to remain in his mother’s arms. Although his mother was the one who beat him, she was the one he knew. He was used to her. He wanted to remain in familiar territory.
A brother who is in error, says the Course, calls for teaching, not attack.
enlightened marriage is a commitment to participate in the process of mutual growth and forgiveness, sharing a common goal of service to God.
Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and abilities were used in a way that served others. We’re compensated by grateful looks in people’s eyes, whatever material abundance supports us in performing joyfully and at
high energy, and the magnificent feeling that we did our bit today to save the world.
What you want to do is not the important question. The question to ask is, “When I do anything, how should I do it?” And the answer is, “Kindly.”
Miracle-workers are not in business only to make money; they’re in business to inject love into the world.
A Course in Miracles teaches us to ‘avoid self-initiated plans, and to instead surrender our plans to God.’
