Review Lessons:
Only God’s plan for salvation will work.
Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan for salvation.
I am grateful for these lessons every day. Some days I wake up and everything is pointless and meaningless to me, and I cannot find any joy. On these days, I feel tempted to make something happen: to insert my own will and speed up the process.
On these days “ushering in a new forgiven world” feels lonely, thankless, boring, and quite possibly a big cosmic joke on me.
But I have learned something valuable along the way: TALK TO GOD.
Forget about feeling sorry for yourself and do the #1 thing that will work: Talk to God. Ask Him what He needs. Ask to be shown the next step.
Ask:
Where would You have me go?
What would You have me do?
What would You have me say, and to whom?
Ask God what He needs you to do.
He knows.
Forget about praying or asking for things to be different. Forget about wishful thinking. Forget about positive thinking. Forget about trying “to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Forget about pretending to be happy. Forget about acting like everything is okay, when everything is NOT okay. What I am talking about is COMMUNION: talking to God and asking for clarity.
He’s got the map. He sees the whole picture. He knows the directions and the fastest routes. He’ll tell me what to do, and where to go, and what to say … IF I ASK HIM.
In moments of doubt, I talk to God. I come wholly empty handed. I have nothing to give. I have nothing to say. I am lost. It seems like nothing will ever change.
In these moments, I scrap my routine, along with every idea I think I know about anything. It is my experience that you have to be jolted out of your habits and your day-to-day schedule.
Without God, I am nothing.
You can see when something is not working. A Course in Miracles says “When miracles are not occurring, something has gone wrong.”
So, I talk to God.
I say: Okay, what now? I’m lost here. I could use some assistance. I need help. Show me what to do next, because I don’t have a clue.
And then I wait to hear an answer. I wait to hear what God has to say to me.
He gives specific answers. He tells me what needs to be accomplished, and then He tells me how to do it.
But I need to ask, otherwise I’m just flailing around in the dark.
One thing I have learned with A Course in Miracles is that it collapses time. It helps me to remember TO ASK GOD. My moments of doubt and confusion used to last for weeks and months. Now doubt and confusion lasts for 10 minutes or an hour, at most.
Doubt is not the problem. I still have it. Of course. I find myself here. That’s not the problem. Forgetting to ask God for directions and help is the problem.
Remember: there is only ONE PROBLEM and ONE SOLUTION:
S-E-P-A-R-A-T-I-O-N.
So the only problem I could ever have is that I forget to ask God. I try to solve my problems, doubt and confusion on my own, through my own will and plans. That’s what separation is. But the lessons help me to remember to talk with God.
And talking to God is the end of separation, problems, doubt and confusion.
It goes along with today’s review lesson:
Only God’s plan for salvation will work.
“It is senseless for me to search wildly for salvation. It have seen it in many people and in many things, but when I reached for it, it was not there. I was mistaken where it is. I was mistaken about what it is. I will undertake no more idle seeking. Only God’s plan for salvation will work. And I will rejoice because His Plans can never fail.”
This is extraordinary. Only God’s plan for salvation will work. My plans will fail. So I can give them all up now, and trust in God’s plan, even though I don’t know what it is.
But if I ask Him, He will tell me. What a beautiful lesson.
Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan for salvation.
“Holding grievances is an attempt to prove that God’s plan for salvation will not work. Yet only His plan will work. By holding grievances, I am therefore excluding my only hope of salvation from my awareness. I would no longer defeat my own best interest in this insane way. I would accept God’s plan for salvation, and be happy.”
Facebook comments:
thank you lisa, i really needed to hear that. yesterday, in reality, miracle after miracle was occuring and in my mind there was confusion, fear, thoughts of blame and there was this noticing that all was well and ok, beyond ok, people were willing to help me in a way that was foreign to me, although as i write this it is a remembering, a faint loving memory of nothing but love. what i have trouble with sometimes is listening. the voices in my head are so loud sometimes and i have trouble stopping. is there a one liner in the course that has worked for you during this time. i have been repeating that there is only one problem and one solution, and the problem has been solved, therefore there is no problem, and that seems to be too long for these times, something short and to the point, that stops the mind so i can redirect and get quiet. thank you agian. also, this is not just for lisa, if you have something that works for you please share. with love and gratitude.
Greetings Pamela, Good question…The first thing that comes to me…is…
“STOP IT!” Short and to the point…It covers any fear thoughts in any situation
we find ourselves it….that is not from Love.
The video with Bob Newhart was a turning point for me,
to see things differently! Love~ Debi
STOP!
DROP! BREATH!
FEEL!
ahhhhhhh!
hi pamela,
Remembering this also works for me;
The move out of judgement is always a shift into Gratitude.
so
THANKYOU
works
gx
Bless You EJ for the reminder;
I have a Father who loves me
and a Brother who will do (and does)anything I ask.
Thanks for that blast of Light!
gx
Hey Glenda,
I wouldn’t use (and does) myself. For me, He can only (un)do or have (un)done, and only one thing at that, because there is only One thing we can truly ask for, which is already accomplished for us in our Creation! In other words, what He will seem to do now (for our sakes) actually has already been done in the past, since all time is already over. Otherwise using (and does) makes Him seem like a fairy godmother or something, and He’s MUCH more real for me than that!
That may all be semantics but I never underestimate the insideousness of the ego to infiltrate communication with remnants of old guilty ways of saying things wishfull thinking ways of seeing things. I think it is important for us, as teachers of good, to continue to look for better and better ways of saying things and see things. I find that hen I do that I end up with better and more helpful things to say!
The crucial question for me though, is, is THAT actually what I’ve asked for?
If I can answer in the affirmitive, then the sh*t of my own mind that I encounter day to day must be a part of His (un)doing for me of that which I cannot seem to (un)do for myself.
I take great solace in that when I look at it rightly.
I can be glad when “crappy” stuff happens because I don’t have to double bind myself with being guilty about it because I can accept that it is part of my healing.
I don’t need to judge it as anything but healing as my part in God’s Plan for Salvation. How do I do that? ACIM’s singleness of purpose re-contextualizes my perception so that healing is the only thing ever going on.
Ya know, when I think about it, I would even venture to say that we can tell if we really did ask for THAT or not by how ‘wierd’ our lives/relationships get as the miraculous process of healing unfolds in ways I never thought healing could look like! Of course my thinking how things should look is what I’m being healed of! Ha! It says here that if there is or was a true asking, we can count on a few years of some extermely bizarre stuff
Hope yer havin’ a blast!
ej
Pamela,
I like the others say “Stop It” immediately!!! And then I breathe deeply, and remind myself that none of this is real, and then say to myself “I am the light of the world, that is my only function”. It works every time, tried and true! I had to do it three times in the past two days, this week has been challenging!
Love, Patricia
i want to say WOW and thanks to all! i did end up writing on a piece of paper, “nothing that i see or think means anything” at first there was resistance and anger about well if it means nothing why am i seeing or thinking and just wanting it to “stop” and gradually the asking my brother for the truth came in and then a shift occurred and it came, if nothing i see or think means anything then there is no problem and great peace came with that…i am grateful for all of your support. with great love, thank you
woo-hoo
nice insight pamela! with application!
including the problems that I have in to the meaningless things I see and think
smells like True Perception!
“This thought about _____this problem____ does not mean anything.
It is like the things I see in this room [or wherever you are].”
For me without having those first “undoing perception” lessons as the bedrock
of my toolkit, I’m just ‘whistling through the graveyard” as I
“rearange the deck chairs on the Titanic” and calling it
doing A Course In Miracles