Withdraw Attention from Pseudo “Problems”

I know of your desire for true freedom, and therefore point out that your questioning must be aimed at what you believe freedom to be.

Think awhile on what seems to attract so much attention in the world. You seem preoccupied with bodies, environment, food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, competition, betterment, pleasure, attack, economic advancement, education, and striving for progress or destruction in a variety of ways. These pursuits leave the mind mired in an unnaturally stressful state that is highly busy and exceptionally unproductive.

What am I doing here? What is the purpose of any of this? Often these questions will get brushed aside by all the things you think you have to do. It is like all the “practical things” get in the way of starting to investigate these questions. The ego would have us keep those questions out of mind, because the more we start to go into the mind, the more we begin to question the beliefs that this world is built upon.

The world is a mirror of the thoughts you think you think and the identity you think you are.  You have identified yourself with the body and therefore see yourself as temporary and transitory. How can there be consistency and stability at all if your identity is in constant flux and change? And this self-concept, this “identity,” seems to change and be as unstable as the things with which it has surrounded itself. No stability is possible in an impossible situation, and this world of time and space is just that- an impossible situation.

Every day the deceived and untrained mind concerns itself with survival of the body, and the state of this mind often seems stressed and at times angry, fearful, and guilty. Though theses conditions of mind are illusions, they seem very real to a mind that believes in them.

Call forth the willingness to watch your mind for ego thoughts and let them go. It takes practice and sustained willingness to be so very attentive to the mind, that you withdraw attention from pseudo “problems” that the ego set up as distractions to peace.

A free mind is one that no longer sees itself as in a body. Let go of the belief that you are confined to a body. Let go of the belief that you have a past or a future. Only the mind can be freed and it can only be freed through the peace of forgiveness. As you answer the Call to Awaken and be glad, the Purpose of forgiveness is strengthened in awareness and the need for the concerns and the dramas surrounding the body fade away.

God is your only need. A heart made free of the pursuit of idols is a Heart which loves the Lord Thy God with all Its Being. 

Perhaps you are willing to accept even death to deny your Father. Yet He would not have it so, and so it is not so. You still cannot will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. Yet this world is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside yourself, for only by recognizing where it is will you gain control over it. For you do have control over your mind since the mind is the mechanism of decision.

The linear time-space cosmos is a game. The game is in the mind. The game cannot be forgiven or observed correctly until you realize that the game is in the mind. Economics are therefore in your mind. Sexuality is in the mind. War is in the mind. Competition, attack, defense, education, entertainment, pleasure, suffering, bodies, striving, etc. are all games that the sleeping mind is toying with. The game of time-space is only a game in the mind and has no reality whatsoever.

The only thing necessary to be free of the linear time-space game is to stop playing the game and trust the Holy Spirit for absolutely everything. Turning something over to the Holy Spirit is a leap of faith that lets go of the attempt to manage the body and the world, which is the insane attempt to maintain a self-concept image that God did not create.

Dedicate your “life” to experiencing the peace that passeth the understanding of the world. Drama is replaced by Certainty, striving is replaced by rest, depression and boredom are replaced by joy and freedom; loneliness is replaced by intimacy of shared Purpose; and you are happily in Love with God and everything and everyone.

A mistake is not a reason to give up hope in your mind-training, and neither is a seeming series of mistakes. Release all past mistakes to the Holy Spirit and come again with an open heart to the Present Moment of Innocence. I will meet you there. We have a date! It is wonderful, I assure you. You will not regret keeping this appointment.

The Power of Special Agents

How can you teach someone the value of something he has deliberately thrown away? He must have thrown it away because he did NOT value it.

My trust in you is greater than yours in me at the moment, but it will not always be that way.

God is NOT partial. All of His children have His total love, and all of his gifts are given freely to everyone alike.  God WOULD be mocked if ANY of his creations lacked holiness. Creation IS whole. Wholeness corrects for the faulty perception of lack.

You can’t behave appropriately unless you perceive accurately. Consider the Golden Rule. You are asked to behave toward others as you would have them behave toward you. This means that the perception of both must be accurate.

Since you and your neighbor are equal members of the same family, as you perceive both, so will you behave toward both. It is impossible for a Child of God to love his neighbor EXCEPT as himself.

God is not in you; YOU are part of HIM. You may will to leave Him, but then you have chosen to be in a state of opposition, in which opposites are possible. As a result, there ARE choices which you must make.

Those who are called on to witness for God NOW are witnessing for all men, as I am.

When time is abolished, and all of the Sons of God have come home, no special agents will be necessary. But do not underestimate the power of special agents now, or the great need there is for them. I do not claim to be more than that myself. No one in his Right Mind ever wants more or less than that.

Your mission is very simple.  You have been chosen to live so as to demonstrate that You are NOT an ego. I do not choose God’s channels wrongly.

Equality does not imply homogeneity NOW. When EVERYONE has EVERYTHING, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary. When the Atonement has been completed, ALL talents will be shared by ALL of the Sons of God.

Train yourself to be alert to any tendency to withdraw from your brothers. As you come closer to a brother, you DO approach God, and as you withdraw from him He becomes distant to you.

The Kingdom of Heaven IS you

You have never understood what “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” means.

The reason you cannot understand it is because it is NOT understandable to the ego, which interprets it as if something outside is inside, which does not mean anything.

The word “within” does not belong.

The Kingdom of Heaven IS you.

What else BUT you did the Creator create, and what else but you IS His Kingdom?

When you are sad, KNOW that this NEED NOT BE. Depression ALWAYS arises ultimately from a sense of being deprived of something you want and do not have. KNOW you are deprived of nothing, except by your own decisions, and then decide otherwise.

GOD HAS GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING.

If you cannot hear the voice of God, it is because you do not choose to listen. The fact that you DO listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings, and your behavior. Your attitudes are obviously conflicted; your feelings have a narrow range on the negative side, but are never purely joyous; and your behavior is either strained or unpredictable.

When your mood tells you that you have willed wrongly, and this is so whenever you are not joyous, then KNOW this need not be. Yet this IS what you want. This is what you are fighting to keep, and what you are vigilant to save.

Where you look to find yourself is up to you. You cannot change your mind by changing your behavior, but you CAN change your mind.

You can be as vigilant AGAINST the ego’s dictates as FOR them.

NOTHING You Do, or Think, or Will, or Make

Man’s original sin was judgment. That is the only sin which a pure and innocent Soul can commit. The immediate, inevitable, and unavoidable consequence of judgment is separation from the object of your judgment and from God to the degree that the Creator is also part of that which you have judged.

Judgments have a way of expanding and multiplying until separation from God becomes a real and monumental problem. A being in separation is unconscious of his Source, and therefore he will endlessly pursue the task of creating himself.

NOTHING you do, or think, or will, or make is necessary to establish your worth. This point is not DEBATEABLE except in delusions. Your worth was established by God. As long as you dispute this, EVERYTHING you do will be fearful.

You HAVE dreamed of a separated ego, and you HAVE believed in a world which rests upon it. This is very real to you. You cannot undo this by doing nothing and not changing.  

This is why I ask you to forgive, to release, and to observe the greater power of grace in order to end your long separation from God, which has made you a captive to the lowest level of reality.

Your ego is NEVER at stake because God did not create is. Your Soul is never at stake because He did. Any confusion on this point IS a delusion, and no form of devotion is possible as long as this delusion lasts.

The ego tries to exploit ALL situations into forms of praise for itself in order to overcome its doubts. It will be doubtful as long as you believe in it. You who made it CANNOT trust it, because you KNOW it is not real.

Man’s self and God’s Self ARE in opposition. They are opposed in creation, in will, and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable because the Soul cannot perceive, and the ego cannot know.

When you are afraid, be still and KNOW that God is real and YOU are His beloved son in whom he is well pleased. Do not let your ego dispute this, because the ego cannot know what is as far beyond its reach as you are. Egos can clash in any situation, but Souls cannot clash at all.

Ideas from A Course in Miracles

This is a point which many very sincere Christians have misunderstood: The Crucifixion did NOT establish the Atonement. The Resurrection did.

If the Crucifixion is seen from an upside down point of view, it certainly does appear AS IF God permitted, and even encouraged, one of His Sons to suffer BECAUSE he was good. This particularly unfortunate interpretation is genuinely tragic on a mass basis and has led many people to be bitterly afraid of God. Persecution is a frequent result, justifying the terrible misperception that God Himself persecuted His own Son.

The real Christian would have to pause and ask “how could this be?” Is it likely that God Himself would be capable of the kind of thinking which His own Words have clearly stated is unworthy of man?

In milder forms, a parent says “This hurts me more than it hurts you,” and feels exonerated in beating a child. Can you believe that the Father REALLY thinks this way?

Jesus was NOT punished because YOU were bad. It is so essential that all such thinking be dispelled. This kind of error is responsible for a host of related fallacies, including the misbelief that God rejected man and forced him out of the Garden of Eden.

The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness.

“Vengeance is Mine sayeth the Lord” is strictly a karmic viewpoint. This is a real misperception of the truth, by which man assigns his own evil past to God. The “evil conscience” from the past has nothing to do with God. He did not create it, and He does not maintain it. God does NOT believe in karmic retribution at all. His Divine mind does not create that way. HE does not hold the evil deeds of a man against even HIMSELF.

Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. Sacrificing others in any way is a clear-cut violation of God’s own injunction that man should be merciful even as His Father in Heaven is merciful. It has been harder for many Christians to realize that this commandment (or assignment) also applies to THEMSELVES.

Though Christians generally (but by no means universally) recognize the contradiction involved in victimizing others, they are less adept at ensuring their own inability to victimize themselves.

Jesus has been correctly referred to in the Bible as “The Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.” Those who present the lamb as blood-stained do NOT understand the meaning of the symbol.  Correctly understood, the symbol is a very simple parable, or teaching device, which merely depicts His innocence.

Innocence is wisdom, because it is unaware of evil, which does not exist. It is, however, PERFECTLY aware of EVERYTHING, that is true. Because the innocent heart is pure, it defends true perception, instead of defending itself AGAINST it.

Innocence is INCAPABLE of sacrificing anything, because the innocent mind HAS everything and strives only to PROTECT its Wholeness. Innocence can only honor man, because honor is the NATURAL greeting of the truly loved to others who are LIKE them.

The lamb taketh away the sins of the world only in the sense that the state of innocence or Grace, is one in which the meaning of the Atonement is perfectly apparent. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” is another way of saying the same thing. Only the innocent CAN see God.

The innocence of God is the true state of mind of His Son. In this state, man’s mind DOES see God, and because he sees Him as he Is, he knows that the Atonement, NOT sacrifice, is the ONLY appropriate gift to His OWN altar, where nothing except perfection truly belongs. The understanding of the innocent is TRUTH. That is why their altars are truly radiant.

The lion and the lamb lying down together refers to the fact that strength and innocence are NOT in conflict, but naturally live in peace.