This holy instant would I give to You. Be You in charge. For I would follow You, certain that Your direction gives me peace.

Today’s lesson, and the lesson for every day until the end of this year, is the beautiful declaration that you will follow God. You have decided to step back, to merely follow and not lead. It goes so beautifully with the DVD I was watching today ‘A Gathering Of Unchained Melody: I Will Step Back And Let Him Lead The Way‘. You can watch this DVD at http://www.themasterteacher.tv/members/videos/MMF-02.htm. If you have trouble using this link, simply login and try anew. Signing up for this website is free and it gives you unlimited access to all the DVD’s that are available on lessons from A Course In Miracles.

The incredible quote from the DVD is this:

“Walk safely now, yet carefully, because this path is new to you. And you may find that you are tempted still to walk ahead of truth, and let illusions be your guide. Your holy brothers have been given you, to follow in your footsteps as you walk with certainty of purpose to the truth. It goes before you now, that they may see something with which they can identify; something they understand to lead the way.

It goes before you right now. Ok? You are at the journey’s ending. Can you tell? If you kept stepping back, suddenly you find yourself surrounded by a light that allows you to leave the continuum in which you thought you were present. Ok? Step back, step back now:

Yet at the journey’s ending there will be no gap, no distance between truth and you. And all illusions walking in the way you traveled will be gone from you as well, with nothing left to keep the truth apart from God’s completion, holy as Himself. Step back in faith and let truth lead the way. You know not where you go. But One Who knows goes with you. Let Him lead you with the rest. Listen.

When dreams are over, time has closed the door on all the things that pass and miracles are purposeless, the holy Son of God will make no journeys. There will be no wish to be illusion rather than the truth. And we step forth toward this, as we progress along the way that truth points out to us. This is our final journey, which we make for everyone. We must not lose our way. For as truth goes before us, so it goes before our brothers who have been following us.”

You let the light guide you. You don’t try to get ahead of it and to stay ahead of it, you don’t try to do things of your own accord; you simply wait and ask and then you proceed. You let the Holy Spirit lead you, you let God take over. And what comes out of your mouth might surprise you, it may cause mayhem and uproar; let it. This is your undoing. It’s all too easy to give into this world, to concede to getting old and dying, because it seems to be the easiest way out and you have simply given up.  But the light is here, it is always with you. Don’t forget now what you have been shown. You are responsible. You owe a great debt to your brother, you owe him the truth. Give him what you have been offered, and be you uncompromising in your declaration. Let your world fall apart, it will reconfigure in a brand new continuum. Let all things be new, that you may be new. It is the time of rebirth and it is happening in you.

And if I need a word to help me, He will give it to me. If I need a thought, that will He also give. And if I need but stillness and a tranquil, open mind, these are the gifts I will receive of Him. He is in charge by my request. And He will hear and answer me, because He speaks for God my Father and His holy Son.

Sickness is but another name for sin. Healing is but another name for God. The miracle is thus a call to Him.

Wow. Great lesson for today. The titles of the lessons are incredible and speak to you of things beyond your understanding. A Course In Miracles is not like any course in the world, your understanding is not required. It is only the little willingness to let the words speak to you, to let an ancient knowing and sense of peace rise to the surface. Beyond all your worries, all your plans and thoughts, lies the knowledge of your oneness with God. It is this you ask to experience today.

Father, You promised You would never fail to answer any call Your Son might make to You. It does not matter where he is, what seems to be his problem, nor what he believes he has become. He is Your Son, and You will answer him.  The miracle reflects Your Love, and thus it answers him. Your Name replaces every thought of sin, and who is sinless cannot suffer pain. Your Name gives answer to Your Son, because to call Your Name is but to call his own.

The fact is, God is with you now. He has always been with you. Reading the lesson for today, letting it sink into you, you can feel that healing is but another name for God. Healing is available to you right here and now. Simply ask for it and let God show you the way. You are not a body, you are free. Your mind is all-powerful and what you ask for you receive. This season let the memory of Jesus return to your mind, let His message resound in you and allow it to be extended through you. Jesus is you. You are resurrected with Him. He is with you now, leading you every step of the way, telling you that His experience is yours. You were born in a manger and are now standing up and declaring your saviorship. It is your function. All that is left for you now is to give your experience away, to share your Awakening. There are those that are waiting for you to fulfill your function. Their salvation is yours. Shine your light today, don’t hide it under a bushel. Let it shine from the mountaintop. Wherever you go, whatever you seem to be doing, your light takes care of everything, because it is the light of God.

My eyes, my tongue, my hands, my feet today have but one purpose; to be given Christ to use to bless the world with miracles.

Father, I give all that is mine today to Christ, to use in any way that best will serve the purpose that I share with Him.  Nothing is mine alone, for He and I have joined in purpose. Thus has learning come almost to its appointed end. A while I work with Him to serve His purpose. Then I lose myself in my Identity, and recognize that Christ is but my Self.

Today you declare that you give everything to Christ to be used for His purpose. What a joy. By giving yourself away, by being in full service, you discover that there is where your happiness lies. How can you be truly helpful? What is it that you can do or say that keeps your contact with your Creator open and clear in your mind? Your gift to your brother is your gift to yourself. You are put to work in God’s service and your awareness of your inheritance becomes clear in your mind. You recognize your true Identity in God and then lose yourself in it. Only to be found anew, to be reborn in Christ. It is the happy recognition that there is nothing outside of you. The Voice you listen to is Yours. The Christ you recognize is your Self.

Judgment and love are opposites. From one come all the sorrows of the world. But from the other comes the peace of God Himself.

Simply in the title of this lesson are all things given you. Just take a moment, read it, let the words sink in. These words work in you, they are the truth and are immediately recognized. They need no explanation. You only have to get out of the way and these words find, without any effort, the place in you where holiness resides.

Judgment and love are opposites. From one come all the sorrows of the world. But from the other comes the peace of God Himself.

I can only speak from my own experience that these words immediately realign me in the most amazing way. I let them work in me, they do their job perfectly, and I am instantly renewed. Now the rest of the lesson is an extra bonus. My mind is open, I am awakened, and every single word speaks to me in a whole new way. This is why it’s called A Course In Miracles. This book is not of this world, you are not of this world. It has come to take you Home.

Forgiveness looks on sinlessness alone, and judges not. Through this I come to You. Judgment will bind my eyes and make me blind. Yet love, reflected in forgiveness here, reminds me You have given me a way to find Your peace again. I am redeemed when I elect to follow in this way. You have not left me comfortless. I have within me both the memory of You, and One Who leads me to it. Father, I would hear Your Voice and find Your peace today. For I would love my own Identity, and find in It the memory of You.

Lesson 349

Today I let Christ’s vision look upon all things for me and judge them not, but give each one a miracle of love instead.

So would I liberate all things I see, and give to them the freedom that I seek. For thus do I obey the law of love, and give what I would find and make my own. It will be given me, because I have chosen it as the gift I want to give. Father, Your gifts are mine. Each one that I accept gives me a miracle to give. And giving as I would receive, I learn Your healing miracles belong to me.

Everything you encounter, everything that seems to happen to you, is a perfect set-up for your awakening. Make no mistake; once A Course In Miracles is in you hand and you start reading it and applying the workbook lessons, the Holy Spirit will use all things for a speed-up. Miracles are abound, they are the devices for shortening time. You are on the Kings Highway now, on the express lane out of time. And it’s rolling up behind you.

All that is required, is a little willingness. You are not expected to know everything, because everything is known for you. You are not asked to judge your brother, but only to love him and to see him as he truly is. The only true judgment is that your brother is God’s holy Son, and in that you recognize yourself. The last Judgment is up to God and all He ever tells you is, ‘This is my beloved Son, with Whom I am well pleased.’ You have a miracle of love to offer today to everyone you meet, to every situation you encounter. Give the miracle and experience the receiving of it simultaneously. It is only in the action of giving that you recognize that you only give to yourself. It is only in recognizing your brother as the holy Son of God that you remember that you are as God created you.

Our Father knows our needs. He gives us grace to meet them all. And so we trust in Him to send us miracles to bless the world, and heal our minds as we return to Him.

Anger must come from judgment. Judgment is the weapon I would use against myself, to keep the miracle away from me

Today’s lesson is so great. Read the title and the message is perfectly clear.

Judgment is the weapon I would use against myself, to keep the miracle away from me.

There it is. You can no longer fool yourself that your judgments are about someone else, they really do only affect you within your own mind. You use judgment to defend yourself against the miracle. You have gotten so used to judging that you don’t even realize the pain it is causing and how wrong you are. It says it beautifully in the Manual for Teachers, How Is Judgment Relinquished?:

Remember how many times you thought you knew all the “facts” you needed for judgment, and how wrong you were!  Is there anyone who has not had this experience? Would you know how many times you merely thought you were right, without ever realizing you were wrong? Why would you choose such an arbitrary basis for decision making?  Wisdom is not judgment; it is the relinquishment of judgment. Make then but one more judgment. It is this: There is Someone with you Whose judgment is perfect. He does know all the facts; past, present and to come. He does know all the effects of His judgment on everyone and everything involved in any way. And He is wholly fair to everyone, for there is no distortion in His perception.

Today you are looking at your judgments and your addiction to it. You love to judge. You separate yourself from that which you judge and you give an opinion that has nothing to do with reality. You don’t have to do it anymore.  You can’t do it anymore. There is nothing outside of you. When you hurt your brother, you hurt yourself. When you judge your brother, you judge yourself. And you will do it until you can no longer stand the pain of your judgment. The power of your mind gives you every opportunity to stop what you are doing at any moment and to see things differently.

Father, I want what goes against my will, and do not want what is my will to have. Straighten my mind, my Father. It is sick. But You have offered freedom, and I choose to claim Your gift today. And so I give all judgment to the One You gave to me to judge for me. He sees what I behold, and yet He knows the truth. He looks on pain, and yet He understands it is not real, and in His understanding it is healed. He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today. I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your Own. And He will speak for me, and call Your miracles to come to me.

Listen today.

Be very still,

and hear the gentle Voice for God assuring you

that He has judged you as the Son He loves.

Today I learn the law of love; that what I give my brother is my gift to me

This is Your law, my Father, not my own. I have not understood what giving means, and thought to save what I desired for myself alone. And as I looked upon the treasure that I thought I had, I found an empty place where nothing ever was or is or will be. Who can share a dream? And what can an illusion offer me? Yet he whom I forgive will give me gifts beyond the worth of anything on earth. Let my forgiven brothers fill my store with Heaven’s treasures, which alone are real. Thus is the law of love fulfilled. And thus Your Son arises and returns to You.

How near we are to one another, as we go to God How near is He to us. How close the ending of the dream of sin, and the redemption of the Son of God.

It’s really an eye-opening experience when you recognize that everything you do, every thought you have, affects everyone and everything. That all things are connected and are one. There is no such thing as a private thought, there is no such thing as you apart from everything else, there is no such thing as you wandering alone in a world of chaos.

The human mind-set is one of separation. It is the fixed belief that you are alone, with no connection to people around you unless you specifically single someone out for friendship or relationship. You pick and choose who you want to connect with, and you avoid anything that disrupts your idea about yourself. It is painful. You are alone in all the universe. And you inevitably come to a point where this pain becomes unbearable. This is where you turn to God, this is where you ask for help.

Your salvation lies in the fact that you are one with everything, whether you recognize it or not. All things are connected and they are connected in you. This is how God created you. Not as the person that you think you are, that which you call ego with a name, but as pure mind at one with God, created in His likeness. You recognize this oneness through service to your brother, by giving to whomever you meet. Someone is suddenly made glad by the simplest offering you make and you instantly recognize this joy and feel it in you. This is a real experience. Now you know that nothing is outside of you. Now you are awake.

I am affected only by my thoughts

The lesson for today is amazing, incredible. It is your way out. In all the stories that you have told yourself, all the different scenarios in which you operate, it is good news to hear that you are always only affected by your thoughts.

It needs but this to let salvation come to all the world. For in this single thought is everyone released at last from fear. Now has he learned that no one frightens him, and nothing can endanger him. He has no enemies, and he is safe from all external things. His thoughts can frighten him, but since these thoughts belong to him alone, he has the power to change them and exchange each fear thought for a happy thought of love. He crucified himself. Yet God has planned that His beloved Son will be redeemed.

It is so easy to gloss over this lesson, to see it as just a lovely concept but with no reality. But it is a fact that every moment you are affected by what you think. As much as you want to blame the guy out there for what you feel, the only thing you have any real control over is what you are doing in your mind. It has nothing to do with anybody else. A thought about something is as powerful as the actual happening.  Thinking you have lost someone or something evokes an emotion, whether it is actually happening or not. You are in a dream and you see what you believe and you believe in what you see. But it is always only your thoughts that affect you and you can change your mind about yourself and the world you see. You can turn your will and your life over to God this instant, and everything will change accordingly. It is really that simple.

Your plan is sure, my Father,–only Yours. All other plans will fail. And I will have thoughts that will frighten me, until I learn that You have given me the only Thought that leads me to salvation. Mine alone will fail, and lead me nowhere. But the Thought You gave me promises to lead me home, because it holds Your promise to Your Son.

I choose to see my brother’s sinlessness

Amidst all the senseless stories that are expressed in this world, it takes vigilance to stand still and decide to apply the lesson for today. You have used your mind in such a way that there does seem to be a world outside of you, with people who act in a way that has no bearing on you. It is an illusion. Turn on the tv, the news, and it is filled with stories about someone or something. What you believe is up to you. Will you crucify your brother based on a story or will you choose to see his sinlessness, to see your brother as he is created in God’s likeness? It does take a mindtraining, for a moment, to see things differently. The lesson for today is the beacon, the lifeline, the truth that sets you free. Because as you see your brother you see yourself.

I choose to see my brother’s sinlessness.

Forgiveness is a choice. I never see my brother as he is, for that is far beyond perception. What I see in him is merely what I wish to see, because it stands for what I want to be the truth. It is to this alone that I respond, however much I seem to be impelled by outside happenings. I choose to see what I would look upon, and this I see, and only this. My brother’s sinlessness shows me that I would look upon my own. And I will see it, having chosen to behold my brother in its holy light.

What could restore Your memory to me, except to see my brother’s sinlessness? His holiness reminds me that he was created one with me, and like myself In him I find my Self, and in Your Son I find the memory of You as well.

Thanksgiving

Praying to Christ in anyone is true prayer because it is a gift of thanks to His Father. To ask that Christ be but Himself is not an entreaty. It is a song of thanksgiving for what you are. Herein lies the power of prayer. It asks nothing and receives everything. This prayer can be shared because it receives for everyone. To pray with one who knows that this is true is to be answered. Perhaps the specific form of resolution for a specific problem will occur to either of you; it does not matter which. Perhaps it will reach both, if you are genuinely attuned to one another. It will come because you have realized that Christ is in both of you. That is its only truth.

Today is Thanksgiving, a time you spend with family and friends. It is a good moment to look around you and be grateful for all that you have been given, it is also a good moment to go inward and remember your purpose. As you look around the room, around the dinner table, it is your decision to recognize the Christ in you and those you meet. As you recognize the Christ in whomever is sitting next to you, you recognize the Christ in yourself. What a gift. The beauty is in its simplicity. Salvation is not hard. Awakening is the simple recognition that there is nothing outside of you, nothing that can distract you from the knowledge that you are as God created you. Stand in this knowledge today, in the awareness of your Holiness, and give yourself away. There is no greater gift to give this Thanksgiving day.

I will not hurt myself again today.

Let us this day accept forgiveness as our only function Why should we attack our minds, and give them images of pain? Why should we teach them they are powerless, when God holds out His power and His Love, and bids them take what is already theirs? The mind that is made willing to accept God’s gifts has been restored to spirit, and extends its freedom and its joy, as is the Will of God united with its own. The Self Which God created cannot sin, and therefore cannot suffer. Let us choose today that He be our Identity, and thus escape forever from all things the dream of fear appears to offer us.

Father, Your Son can not be hurt And if we think we suffer, we but fail to know our one Identity we share with You. We would return to It today, to be made free forever from all our mistakes, and to be saved from what we thought we were.