Review Lessons:
I will there be light
There is no will but God’s.
One important thing I have realized is that COMMUNICATION SOLVES ALL PROBLEMS.
Recently I was talking with a friend who is in a chaotic situation with other people involved, and she is trying to see that this situation is not real. She is saying “these people are not real, this situation is not real, and I don’t have to do anything.”
But … that’s not it!
You are responsible for everything you see.
The world is not real in its totality and that’s the reason you can be truly helpful. You don’t ignore it, you don’t turn your back, but rather you become fully activated, listening to instructions, doing whatever needs to be done. This shortens time.
“Waiting” for a miracle will take forever.
But you have been given a tremendous gift: God is speaking to you.
He will tell you exactly what to do in every situation. He is speaking. Are you listening?
In Chapter 1 in the original manuscript of a Course in Miracles, Jesus says: Listen, Learn and Do.
In the original manuscript, Jesus says something very important that got deleted when the book was published: “The real members of my party are ACTIVE workers.”
“Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share my (Jesus) inability to tolerate lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is Listen, Learn and DO. This means:
“Listen to my voice, learn to undo error and do something to correct it.
The first two are not enough. The real members of my party are ACTIVE workers. The power to work miracles belongs to you. I will provide the opportunities to do them, but you must be ready and willing.”
If you come upon a hungry child, feed him. It’s that simple. You don’t say the child is not real. You open your mind to true communication and you became entirely responsible and then the “miracle” presents itself.
Some people might say: but I don’t have time to take care of a child, and I don’t want to get involved with that person, and I don’t feel like having a conversation because it’s too awkward.
And so you wait and wait and wait for a “miracle” to happen.
As if events, situations and people are separate from you. It’s much faster to get into the practice of talking to God. There is nothing outside of you. The only “miracle” that happens is a change in your own mind. God will tell you exactly what to do in this day, so that your problem is solved in this day. God doesn’t hold back. He’s not testing you or your patience. He simply wants to give.
But you need to be listening and following His instructions.
Two years ago I came upon 4 abandoned kittens, who I could see hadn’t eaten in days. My first response was: Oh shit. I can’t take care of 4 cats. But I listened. And I was told exactly what to do: call the vet. The vet said she doesn’t take cats, but I still just listened. I sat on the phone and didn’t respond, because in truth … I didn’t have a response. The vet kept talking, and mid-sentence she changed her mind. She said: okay, well, i don’t ever do this, but bring them over. I’ll keep them for a week and try to adopt them. And if they are still here in a week, I’ll call the Humane Society and they’ll come pick them up.
So I brought them to the vet, where they were fed and looked after for a week. During the week, i went to the vet every single day to visit them. I fell in love with 2 of them. Really, I fell in love with all of them, but 2 in particular I could see needed to be together. And so I made a decision to take those 2 cats – and they have been the absolute best thing that has ever happened to me – and that day the vet called me and told me the other 2 cats were adopted into good homes.
Just like that.
But I didn’t say: the cats aren’t real.
I saw them as very real, and I saw they needed help, and I listened to instructions that were coming into my mind and I followed through with actions.
And the problem was solved within a week. Actually, the problem was solved within a couple of hours. Whereas if I had left those kittens up on that hill to die of starvation (saying they weren’t real), I’d most likely still be carrying the idea of those 4 baby kittens who needed my help in my memory 2 years later.
Do you see why you can’t ignore a problem if you see it? You’ll still be carrying the guilt that you didn’t help. You might not be the person to ultimately solve the problem, but you will get instructions that will help you find other people who can help solve the problem. You are not alone. Helpers are all around.
Listen, Learn, and Do.
I will there be light.
Light shall be my guide today. I will follow it where it leads me, and I will look only on what it shows me. This day I will experience the peace of true perception.
There is no will but God’s.
I am safe today because there is no will but God’s. I can become afraid only when I believe there is another will.
Do you see what this is saying? It’s amazing. There is a solution to every problem. You don’t ignore problems, you simply open your mind up to remembering there is only the Will of God.
Your practicing is geared toward learning to listen to the Voice of God.
Sometimes the OVERALL SOLUTION is not always evident. My experience is that you get step-by-step instructions. Baby steps. One foot in front of the other. With those cats, it didn’t immediately occur to me to call the vet or to bring them home. My immediate thought was to get them food and feed them. So I walked home, got in my car, drove to the store, bought cans of cat food and brought it back to them. Then I sat on that hill and listened, and I was told what to do.
And I followed through with action.
That’s the main thing. Don’t just pray. Do what you are being asked. Follow through. You might have to do something that you don’t really want to do – like talk with a brother, or drive somewhere when you’d rather sit at home, or do something you don’t want to do.
But in those moments, I remember my morning prayer:
I am here only to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Him Who sent me.
And then everything becomes easy and effortless.
I hope you have a great day.
Facebook comments:
Great post Lis
Just saying that something I see/think is not real, to me, is the wrong use of denial.
There’s a difference between designating something as ‘not real’ and recognizing something is meaningless. It’s the difference between wishfull thinking and miracle mindedness.
Discovering the meaningless of what I see/think has meaning, healing.
I think saying that something I already see/think is meaningfull (so meaningfull that I don’t want to see it anymore!) is unreal is a kind of defense, a guilty and fearful reaction to mistake, and an attempt to deny the God given power of my mind.
I think somewhere in ACIM it talks about first we see a forgiven world, then there is the disappearance. If that’s true then bypassing meaninglessness for disappearing seems like trying to escape my own thoughts without forgiving them. Could be that’s what makes them seem so real…
thank you so much! i love the remembering of follow simple direction. i really want to serve and undo and love. all the support is a miracle to me. my friend left two messages for me…love is real she said…love is real.
cool pamela!
I’ve found that without intense personal participation, which is imposible without responsibility, the Course can get reduced from miraculous to magic.
For me, this was the trap of all the cool concepts I really liked in the Text. Yet without directly confronting the crap of my mind/experiences there was no healing, and without being mistaken there was no forgiveness, so without a ‘real-time’ application of the lessons there was no shift understanding, just conversation. Just a bloated sense of self, full of the belief that I knew what words like love, light, healing and awakening meant within an unchanged mind.
It was like an addiction. Oh, “The Golden Arch”! Yeah, gimme some of that. And “The Forgotten Song” that’s about ‘me’ too! I know this stuff! Meanwhile I was just full of the ‘hot air’ or my own concepts, all of which served as a verification/justification of ‘me’ – the ego being ‘real’.
In other words, for me at this point it’s like, yeah sure, love is real. And yeah, there is only love. So, big deal. Other than a quick buzz I get from basking in the reflection of my own idea of that, which is like vainly staring at myself in the mirror, how does that help or heal?
i get that too and i hate all the love and light talk if it is not realized in me. that’s how it was the other day… even though i could see there was no problem, the crap in my head was so loud and i do want to face it directly and not from a hard, war place but a true understanding so healing can take place. sometimes i feel like there is a right and a wrong way to say what i am experiencing in this format, like i will get busted from the course police… and for me i am lucky if it just comes out to get looked at. i thank you for your insight. the course is amazing and so consistant.
No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them,
for not looking is the way they are protected.…We are ready
to look more closely at the ego’s thought system because
together we have the lamp that will dispel it…we must look
first at this to see beyond it, since you have made it real
(T-11.V.1:1,3,5).
The task of the miracle worker thus becomes to deny the
denial of truth (T-12.II.1:5).
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and
find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built
against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is
necessary to seek for what is false (T-16.IV.6:1-2).
Hi Pamela,
I think “light” and “love” talk is better looked at metaphoricly anyway, rather than taken literally. But I think all talk should be. In other words, in order to use light talk you have to define it. Personally I find light can be expressed just as well simply as knowledge, rather than some metaphyiscal experience or vision. And love can better be said as acceptance, rather than some emotional pleasure. Knowledge and acceptance are always available and always with us, while metaphysical visions and experiences and emotional states come and go like any other phenomenon.
Ya know, light, like in the old cartoons when somebody has an insite they get a lightbulb over their head?
Or even the old angelic painting with halos?
But the cool thing for me, about what you were saying about your experience, was that you saw to include the problem into the lesson, rather than applying the lesson to the problem. To me that’s a key undestanding. On the other hand, without the “crap in your head” would that have happened? So we ending up having to be grateful for our crap!
Once it was explained to me like this – Now that we’ve decided to heal, everything in the universe, which we projected outward in the first place, notices something (The Great Reversal?) is finally happening, and comes joyfully flying towards us, to be foregiven.
thank you al and ej…i appreciate your lillies!