worry;

Guilt: The “gift” that keeps on giving until…..

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Guilt: The “gift” that keeps on giving until…..

The bad news: guilt never gives up.

The good news: you have the power to stop it.

Have you noticed that guilt just doesn’t go away? You observe it but it creeps back again and again and you continue to deny it and let it go but there it is, back again. “I thought I forgave that.” Guilt is the leaky faucet. You think you’ve turned it off but it drips, drips in the background of your thoughts. Where is it coming from? It seeps under the surface like an oil slick on a beautiful beach. Guilt is the energizer bunny with an eternal battery that never runs down and in fact continues to be energized until you look at it with the love, your inheritance, in your mind.

ACIM Workbook Lesson 4. These thoughts do no mean anything.

We believe the thoughts that run through our mind and 99.999% come from the ego (the false self) and that is why they don’t mean anything. But we believe these thoughts. The ego’s job is to keep you from Love and in a state of constant guilt. It feeds guilty thoughts at every opportunity and never wants you to turn against it. We have a split mind. You choose which split, which side to listen to and believe. We can choose between the ego’s ranting and judgments or choose to listen to the voice of peace within (the right mind) the quiet voice of the Holy Spirit that is always available.

Judgment is the origin of all guilt. Our first judgment was a selfish one according to A Course In Miracles; we separated from God at the moment of the “Big Bang” in choosing the ego. It turns out that was a “mistake” (really never happened) because when we chose the ego, we threw God away. But…..it never happened because it is not possible to separate from the God; the God written about in A Course In Miracles that is.

We believe the ego and think we have separated and that is at the crux of our pain and anger. We blame God for the separation instead of ourselves.  We made up a false “god”, a punishing, warring, petty vindictive god who angrily threw Adam and Eve out of the garden. Ask yourself: Would a loving God do that?   The ego set itself on the ‘god’ throne and we listen to it and obey it. Guilt was born. We are bereft, thinking we threw away our innocence and will never get it back. We either accuse and blame ourselves or project blame onto others, i.e. those guilty and sinful ones. The ego keeps rubbing the guilt wound with self-doubt, blame, selfishness and shame.

Guilt is insatiable. You are its hostage until you decide to be Host to God instead. We need loving help in looking at it.   The Course tells us to hold the hand of love that comes from your right mind i.e. Jesus or the Holy Spirit and say “Please look at this guilty thought with me because I want to see it differently.” Visualize a tight grip on a warm hand. When we hold love’s hand and listen, a thought of understanding will come. Maybe tears will come but those tears will dissolve the “blocks to the awareness of love’s presence” that the introduction to the Course describes. Believe and trust that forgiveness will come. We need to forgive ourselves for the separation from God……which never happened because it is IMPOSSIBLE! The thought of Truth will be gentle and embracing.

When a guilty through crosses your mind, say: “This thought does not mean anything. The past is over; I have no need of this. I am One with God.”   This is a critical conscious decision; a statement of choice that you will no longer listen or believe the ego. You are a “Decider”, a Holy Son of God and you have the power to no longer let the ego abuse you. You are Host to God and not hostage to the ego.

If you haven’t started them, I recommend the Course In Miracles Workbook lessons. The first lessons deal with letting the past go; focusing on the thoughts that bring pain and realizing they are not of God. There is a lesson for each day and the introduction to the workbook will help you begin.

It is a wonderful adventure. Just do a lesson each day and if you don’t understand it – keep going – don’t let the ego sabotage you. If you don’t understand a lesson, just keep going because the “light” will dawn eventually.

The Love within you will defeat guilt. It is a power within that is your natural inheritance.   Accept God’s peace and joy as yours. Your salvation is up to you.

www.acim.org  (history and what it says)

www.miraclecenter.org   (to find a study group near you)

Experience the mystery of God!

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“The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the source of all true art and science. He whom this emotion is a stranger who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, can’t know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive form, this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religion.” Albert Einstein

The time has come to liberate ourselves from the ego and experience God!  God is Love the exact opposite of the ego.

How many of us blame things on God? For example we say that something that happened must have been God’s Will or God’s Plan? Even the Insurance Industries describe disasters as “An Act of God”!  Is an earthquake, a forest fire or a hurricane an act of God?  We could blame an earthquake on the shifting of tectonic plates or forest fires and hurricane’s on Global Warming BUT that would mean pointing the finger at ourselves.

Some people don’t like to mention God these days because that mystery, whatever it is, now seems to be out of favor like an old computer or girdles.   Only the people who are politically on the far right or are religious fundamentalists get to believe in God.   But, I’m a liberal, I’m on the left and I believe in God!  I know other liberals who believe in God aka the Creator, Yahweh, a Supreme Being, or the Great Mystery.  Atheists don’t think there is such a thing and they may be right but I bet when push comes to shove and they are in trouble they say “God Help.”

In The Course In Miracles,  Manual for Teachers,  20. (pg. 51) What is the Peace of God, states: “It has been said that there is a kind of peace that is not of this world.  How is it recognized?  God’s peace is recognized at first by just one thing: in every way it is totally unlike all previous experiences.  It calls to mind nothing that went before.  It is a new thing entirely.”   The past just slips away and in its place is everlasting quiet.  Only that.”

Our busy ego mind does not like quiet.  Are you aware that your mind is always running on some life theme, a problem or fear of the future?  The Manual goes on to say “God’s peace can never come where anger is, for anger must deny that peace exists.  Who see’s anger as justified in any way proclaims that peace is meaningless and must believe it cannot exist. Therefore, forgiveness is the necessary condition for finding the peace of God.”

This is probably why people don’t think God exists.   We enjoy our anger too much to forgive.  If we enjoy the anger we won’t forgive so our minds are busy hating and never quiet enough to allow the experience of God, which the ego mind does not want you to have anyway.  So it keeps the anger going and the idea of forgiveness never enters and our chances of experiencing the quiet which allows the peace of God is hijacked!  We don’t think God exists.  We do not have to allow or give the ego thoughts that kind of power.  When the thought comes just say “that is not what I choose to think.”  ” I no longer want to hate and be angry.”  Or This I do not choose!

We can give up anger if we want to.   We can and will have the experience of the peace of God if we are willing to do that.  When we give up anger we are forgiving, letting go and choosing peace.  We give up attacking, judging or condemning  and we experience the quiet mind and the peace of God.  Replace attack and judgment with love.

We can *silence the ego and the Course indictes that we can  because it states:  “How is the peace of God retained once it is found?  Returning anger in any form will drop the heavy curtain once again and the belief that peace cannot exist will certainly return.”  So this indicates that we can and will experience God, as we work on giving up anger, and sure enough when anger returns we will feel that heavy curtain again.

“Stop for a moment now and think of this: Is conflict what you want, or is God’s peace the better choice which gives you more? A tranquil mind is not a little gift. “The memory of God comes to the quiet mind.” 

We need to decide to forgive everyone and everything including the world!  “Forgive the world and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real.”  God created you and you are as real and as eternal as He!  Yes, bodies die but never the eternal spirit that you share with God, as his Son.   God did not create the ego, the false self, He created His Son as Spirit like Himself.

His, God’s Will is without opposite.  His Will is yours.  “The mighty Will of God Himself is His gift to you.  He does not seek to keep it for himself.  This is your heritage.  God’s peace is the condition for His Will.  Attain His peace, (let go of anger and forgive) and you remember Him.”  And you will experience the “radiant beauty” Einstein suggested in the above quote.

*One way to silence the mind is to do the Workbook lessons.  This self study program helps identify the ego and leads you to the mind you share with God.

You are LOVED!!

A Course in Miracles – Manual for Teachers,  #20. What is the Peace of God. Page 51

http://www.acim.org

http://www.facim.org

http://www.miraclecenter.org

 

Open Your Mind: Open Your Heart

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Does an open heart, open the mind or does an open mind, open the heart?

Maybe it doesn’t matter which one happens first, but for me, when I’m waiting in line at the market feeling anxious because the line is slow, my mind is locked, closed and my heart constricted. That is why having a practice in watching the mind helps because when aware of the “agitation” I can say “I want to see this differently” and with that I am open to the Souls who share the line with me and let go and relax. I can see the silliness in spending energy on something trivial like agitation. I want and choose peace, inner peace. The Course In Miracles tells us the goal of the Course is inner peace and the workbook lessons certainly guide us in helping to look at the blocks we have put up to keep peace away, and as it turns out LOVE too. The ego is the culprit but it is ONLY a thought.  The ego has a game plan:  Keep You Upset, guilty and miserable!  It is JUST a thought and PLEASE do not believe it.

Monitoring your thoughts and mind is the key to freedom: How do YOU feel? Are emotions in charge of you or are “YOU” in charge of them via your Mind?  We have to look at the emotions not to indulge or believe them but when we ” look”, which is part of the forgiveness instructions, in What is Forgiveness link below, they dissipate like smoke on a windy day. We no longer live from them or let them run aka ruin our lives unless it serves us somehow.   There are those who like an emotional state of anxiety and fear because they think it keeps them motivated but it is not good for the health of the body, which we need in order to go through the lessons we came here to learn and it is also not good if inner peace is our goal.

We don’t have to believe our thoughts just because we think them. An example is my boss told me he’d like to see me in his office for a meeting the next day at 2 pm. I hadn’t a clue what it could be about but I can tell you thoughts ran rampant through my mind, and they were not all good thoughts. What could it be? Maybe I’d be fired or asked to resign! Well, it turned out I received a compliment and a promotion! All that energy spent in worry, fear of the future, fear of the past! Everything but: “Right Now, all is well.” Ahhhh…..right NOW….all is Well. This instant is the only time there IS! Everything else is my projecting into the future and the ego fear running amok.

As students of the Course we are told we are the Christ, a Holy Son of God and Jesus our elder brother will guide us, if we take his hand and invite him in. Share all your emotions and thoughts with your elder brother. He awaits your invitational prayer – this is one I use:

“Jesus Christ, Holy Son of God, Dear elder brother, please guide my heart and mind and help me look at and remove the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is my natural inheritance, as I journey to the Home and Father, I never left.”

I try to repeat this whenever I am upset about something and especially when I can’t sleep at night because I’m ruminating about a worry; a meeting I dread; a bill to be paid; someone I need to forgive but don’t want to. Unlock your mind and look at all those thoughts with your loving elder brother; let him give you a thought to replace the ones you think are true…..and your Heart will Open.

Click on these links and click on the arrow, “play” and have it read to you – close your eyes.

ACIM: Introduction https://acim.org/acim/what-it-says/

Workbook Lesson 185. W. pg. 348. I want the peace of God. https://acim.org/workbook/lesson-185/

What is Forgiveness –W. pg. 401 https://acim.org/workbook/what-is-1/

You are worth it because you are LOVED!