Lately I’ve Been Thinking About A Reviewing of a Course In Miracles, Part Two

  • No one will ever fulfill all the demands of special love… everyone must fail. No human can fully satisfy us when we are actually seeking what only God can provide. Yet we keep looking. This is an addiction. The ego’s motto is “seek but do not find.
  • The real purpose of relationships is to let them be used by the Holy Spirit for the healing of our minds. Is your relationship for making your ego more comfortable or for transcending it?
  • A healthy relationship is the purifier. The healthy, holy relationship is a tool and classroom for healing.
  • The simplest level is a casual encounter… but they are not chance encounters.
  • The second level of teaching is a more sustained relationship for a time.
  • The third level of teaching occurs in relationships which, once they are formed, are lifelong.
  • Gratitude is a precursor to abundance. Gratitude allows things to be received.
  • The ego, the Course says, decides what it wants to be true and then only sees any evidence that supports its view, rejecting anything that goes against that.
  • God wills that we have everything. The problem with going for the lesser gifts, however, is that they delay us.
  • The ego’s job is to maintain and compound our guilt.
  • Anger is profoundly disempowering and dishonoring of ourselves. Neither suppression or expression of it is of any value.
  • If you get angry: a) forgive yourself b) take responsibility for it c) express in prayer to see the situation differently d)
  • Ask to see peace instead of attack. Say: “I could see peace instead of this”
  • Once your dark side has been acknowledged and with a “little willingness” (text 380) offered to the Holy Spirit for correction, the rest is up to the Spirit, who will undo what never was.
  • The past can have no hold over us unless we bring it with us. The CIM offers us a way of letting our past go, through forgiveness.
  • Every moment in our lives is the perfect opportunity for us to make a new start. Each new moment can symbolizes rebirth!!
  • Romantic relationships are regarded as the ultimate prize, the goal for which we seek. By idealizing the special relationship, we romanticize what is the biggest weapon in the ego’s arsenal. It is the most devious device.
  • Fundamentally using someone to meet our needs is stealing from them. Many subtle bargains are then struck in the name of love: often we are giving to get. This is not love at all but manipulation and theft. We are seeing them as a body at worst and probably focused on certain body parts. This is actually a subtle attack on them… which is another thing that will make us feel guilty. Our relationships begin as special… our function is to turn all o them over to the Holy Spirit to be used for his Purposes.
  • Everything that happens to us can be used either by the ego for our crucifixion or by the Holy Spirit for our salvation.
  • The CIM is written on two levels:

Level One: contrasts the reality of truth and oneness of Heaven with the illusionary nature of the physical world of time space and bodies. It is the metaphysical truth.

Level Two: It is the practical level of dealing with the world on a day to day basis. It is the level of dealing with the split mind. ego is wrong mind / holy spirit is right mind. It is where we need to do the work.

  • The lowest level of prayer is where you give God your shopping list… makes you out to be a helpless victim.
  • The highest level is not even asking for help in solving situations in the world. It is better to ask him to restore you to your right mind.
  • About repeating ourselves: The CIM says that if we have made a wrong decision about ourselves in the past, we will be presented with opportunities again. “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 you chose before” (text p. 666)
  • Here is a beautiful passage( from the text pp 666-7) “HE WOULD NOT LEAVE ONE SOURCE OF PAIN UNHEALED, NOR ANY IMAGE LEFT TO VEIL THE TRUTH. HE WOULD REMOVE ALL MISERY FROM YOU WHOM GOD CREATED ALTAR UNTO JOY. HE WOULD NOT LEAVE YOU COMFORTLESS, ALONE IN DREAMS OF HELL, BUT WOULD RELEASE YOUR MIND FROM EVERYTHING THAT HIDES HIS FACE FROM YOU”
  • The Holy Instant is a moment in which we briefly leave the past and our normal thought processes and experience something “outside the box” of normal consciousness. The experience can be one of bliss, love, light peace and oneness. “Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? (Text 301) In Holy Instants, the answers are already there waiting
  • When you afraid of anything, you are acknowledging its power to hurt you.”

Hoping this helps you to learn the Course better.

Love, Sondra

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