A baby just like you by John Denver. Written by John Denver for his son Zachary at Christmas. Click link to listen.

Merry Christmas.

The season is upon us now
A time for gifts and giving
And as the year draws to its close
I think about my living

The Christmastime when I was young
The magic and the wonder
But colors dull and candles dim
And dark my standing under

Oh little angel, shining light
You’ve set my soul to dreaming
You’ve given back my joy in life
You’ve filled me with new meaning

A savior king was born that day
A baby just like you
And as the Magi came with gifts
I’ve come with my gift too

That peace on earth fills up your time
That brotherhood surrounds you
That you may know the warmth of love
And wrap it all around you

It’s just a wish, a dream I’m told
From days when I was young
Merry Christmas little Zachary
Merry Christmas ev’ryone

It was a cold winter’s night that was so deep, exactly like tonight.

O Come All Ye Faithful by Anne Murray:

O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant.
O come let us adore Him.
O come let us adore Him.
O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.

Born this happy morning.

God’s answer is some form of peace. All pain
Is healed; all misery replaced with joy.
All prison doors are opened. And all sin
Is understood as merely a mistake.

Okay, I have a really good story in connection with this lesson. I’m laughing like crazy.

Enzo went missing again yesterday for 24 hours and all I did yesterday was wait around, call for him, take long walks with a coffee cup and a fork (the sound of which he recognizes as me, and usually comes running) trying to locate him. No such luck. I even drove my car up and down the road thinking he might be able to recognize the scent of the tires (because it was snowing and I figured he lost the scent of his trail)

Mostly I was worried because:

A. I’m a nut case
B. the immense amount of snow

So all day long I did nothing but look out the damn window like a lost puppy dog. When it comes to this cat … I’m totally insane, I know it.

So around 7pm last night, I finally calmed down. In a flash of recognition I realized that all my worrying was not going to bring the cat home and it was only wrecking my day along with my peace of mind.

So I got a fire going (with a flick of the switch), and settled in with a coffee and Carlos Castaneda who is always terrifically amusing to me. Turns out, it was the perfect remedy because his stories are always about animals being Spirit guides.

So, that was the first miracle. A form of peace. I actually forget about my worrying as I entered into the story. Don Juan is so hilarious. He is a tough, uncompromising teacher, my favorite kind of teacher.

“Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan” is definitely the best in the series because it contains all of Don Juan’s lessons from the other books … all nicely packaged in this one book.

It’s got everything. This one line was cracking me up for 10 minutes. Carlos Castaneda is a know-it-all and never listens and never learns and he thinks he is better than Don Juan, and that Don Juan is just an old stupid Indian. And Don Juan asks if he thinks they are equal and Carlos says “yes, of course we are equals” even though he was quietly thinking to himself: “no, I am better than you because I am a university student, a man of the sophisticated Western world and superior to an Indian.”

And Don Juan says: “No, we are not equal. I am a hunter and a warrior, and you are a pimp.”

LOL.

So, anyways. I’m reading, reading, reading. Still thinking about Enzo a tiny bit, but no longer obsessed. And then there is the Christmas tree with more gifts from my mom ….

I decided to open ONE MORE. No harm in that, right?

So I open a gift. It felt like a wood sign. It was a cutting board in the image of a cat. OMG. I nearly choked from laughing so hard. It was made in Vermont and it is the exact sillouhette image of Enzo.

Hilarious. God’s answer is always some form of peace.

My mom is an angel.

I opened it exactly after I read the part where Don Juan tells Carlos Castaneda that plants are alive and can feel, and that Carlos needs to learn how to talk with plants and treat them as their equals, mostly as an exercise to get rid of his own self-importance.

So there I am laughing like crazy. Without thinking about it, I start talking to the wood cat as if it was Enzo. I felt joy and peace. That crazy wood cat had the same effect on me as the real thing! I couldn’t stop laughing. I was giggling like crazy.

That’s today’s lesson! God’s answer is some form of peace!

His answer might not come in the form you expect, but it will leave you feeling peaceful and happy. In that way, you will know it was God’s answer. All pain is healed. All misery replaced with joy. All prison doors are opened. And all sin is understood as merely a mistake.

And 20 minutes later, I heard a real cat crying. And there is Enzo at the front door like nothing at all happened.

I just opened a Christmas gift from my mom - the sweetest little angel with a great reminder: Make every day count.

I am snowed in and bored and there was no one here to stop me. LOL.

My mom is the greatest. We do this every year. She sends Christmas gifts and I promise not to open them, but then i can’t help myself! I’m like 3-years old around brightly colored wrapping paper.

Anyways. This little angel brightened my whole day, so the timing is perfect.

Make every day count.

No call to God can be unheard nor left
Unanswered. And of this I can be sure;
His answer is the one I really want.

There is a bumper sticker/sign that says God answers all prayers:

Sometimes He says YES!
Sometimes He says NO!
And sometimes He says YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!

(to order one for yourself, click on the photo)

And that’s today’s lesson: HIS ANSWER IS THE ONE I REALLY WANT.

I don’t care if the answer is a “yes” or if it’s a “no” or if it’s a “maybe” or if He laughs His head off at me. I don’t care. His answer is the one I really want.

He knows what is best for me.

I have no idea what I need.
I have no idea what I want.
But God knows! He knows the whole plan! And I trust Him.

If I ask for something and I don’t get it straight away, I don’t sweat it. I don’t continue to ask like a bratty child. I don’t beg like a beggar. If I was meant to have the thing I prayed for, He would have given it to me immediately.

Either I’m not ready for it (like the child who asks for a knife) or it will delay me, or He’s got something better for me.

I trust God. His answer is the one I want.

“My Father, all I want is what You offer me, in just the form You choose that it be mine. Let me remember all that I do not know, and let my voice be still, remembering.”

Ha!

Let me remember all that I do not know, and let my voice be still, remembering.

In other words, let me not continue to pray/beg/plead in different words so I can get my way.

The choice is between MY WAY vs. GOD’S WAY.

I choose God’s Way.

One prayer is sufficient. He answered it already.

God answers all prayers.

“Father, let me not forget Your Love and care, keeping Your promise to Your Son in my awareness always. Let me not forget myself is nothing, but my Self is all.”

Truth answers every call we make to God,
Responding first with miracles, and then
Returning unto us to be itself.

Today’s lesson, if you haven’t noticed already, is a repeat of yesterday’s lesson. The miracle IS the call to God and this is the reason why truth answers EVERY call we make to God with miracles.

Because the miracle is the turning your attention and focus toward God. Being with God, communing with him, being in that space, forgetting about your problems, and talking with God is the miracle.

In God consciousness, miracles happen naturally.

AND THEN … truth returns unto us to be itself.

See that? Part two. You call God up by turning to Him and truth answers every call you make by first responding with miracles (admit it, when you get quiet to talk with God you immediately feel relaxed and better, that’s a miracle) and then truth returns itself into your mind to be itself.

The whole thing is accomplished!

Now, please go open your book and read Lesson 357. It will astonish you in its simplicity. Plus ADDED BONUS: it tells you how to be healed.

I got a great message yesterday from a guy named Steve and while responding to his email I was reminded of the immediacy of what is being offered here by Jesus. Just know yourself as light, and you will be light!

For privacy purposes, I will not post his message, but I will post my response:

Hi Steve!

Thanks for writing to me.

Before I even got to the sentence that you wrote you probably think
too much I thought too myself “wow, this is all just a little too
complicated for me!!”

LOL. It’s all good.

Honestly, I don’t know how it works. Personally, I think each of us is
asked to take that leap of faith and stand in a place of certainty,
perhaps before true certainty arrives. I write in my book Gorgeous for
God about how everyone has experienced the light - those moments when
you have no problems, when you are first in love, when everything is
happy and peaceful - and so I KNOW you have experienced that place
the Course promises: where there is only love. But the difficulty is
almost no one knows how to stay in that place, in that frequency, in
that energy, in God consciousness. They immediately dip back down into
lower frequencies where there is pain, suffering, sorrow and
limitation and time and space.

So A Course in Miracles is a systematic mind training. You are
training your mind to stay in God consciousness, to stay in that place
where there is only love. Carlos Castaneda talks about this as
assemblage point where a teacher or warrior (or yourself) has the
ability to shift you into a high consciousness where the world
disappears but always always always always that point shifts back to
its original location because of bad habit, laziness and routine. So,
you have to keep shifting the point, and when it slides back again to
time and space and limitation and doubt, you shift it again. It slides
back. You shift it again. All day long you keep catching yourself when
you are sliding, and you get back on the mark with God. You keep doing
this.

The is The Work.

This is accomplished through the practice of the workbook lessons, and
through the simplicity of your own willingness.

You are all light. This I know to be true. I am here to remind you of
this fact. I am here to save time. The Master Teacher said this to me
one time, and it was revolutionary in my mind when he said it. He
said: This one over here, she is all light. There is no darkness in
her.

and even though i think at the time he was making it up, and didn’t
really mean it, it actually changed me, because I started to think of
myself that way. I would wake up in the morning and say “I am all
light” and I literally could feel all my cells vibrating as I thought
it!!

And very shortly after this it became true and I really experienced
myself as having no darkness in me and as not being an ego anymore,
but simply being all light. And in this recognition, I realized
everything is all light and there is no darkness anywhere.

you would probably enjoy my book if you like the audios. It’s got all
my stories. LOL. A tell-all book.

Yes, I will continue with the audios. I am going to do a radio show
starting in January, and hopefully radio interviews.

i am happy to receive this message from you.

Love, lisa

PS:

The ego. LOL.

Whenever someone says the word ego in a sentence or uses the word ego
in an email, my mind kinda goes blank. Sorry!!!

My advice to whatever questions are in that paragraph concerning the
ego is this:

take the word “ego” right out of your vocabulary. Just stop using the
word. You’re not an ego. Your brother is not an ego. You’re the light
of the world. To look at the ego and try to figure it out - or to call
yourself one - is a massive delay tactic. So the easiest thing is to
just to wipe the word and idea from your vocabulary altogether.

Every time you start to think about yourself:”I am an ego”, just go,
no, I am the light of the world.

Any time you think your brother is an ego, stop yourself and go, no,
he’s the light of the world along with me.

And remember from the Course: what is not love is a call for love (and
there’s no ego involved in that).

I love you.

lisa

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

Ha! I burst out laughing when I got to this third line!!! The miracle is thus a call to Him. How about that? The miracle is not something you wait for. The miracle is given immediately when you turn your attention to God. That is the miracle! It is not piles of money appearing in your mailbox and it is not seeing your body transformed.

A miracle is a correction, meaning by the time you remember to turn your focus to God, you have already shifted your consciousness. The shift in consciousness IS the miracle.

Turning towards God IS the transformation. You are healed instantly in the same second that you take your focus away from your problems and start thinking about God. That’s the miracle. That’s the shift in consciousness that is required and necessary.

Sickness is but another name for sin. You are sick when you are thinking about your problems.

In classical Greek, sin means “to miss the mark” or “to miss the target” which was also used in Old English archery.

In the biblical Hebrew, the generic word for sin is het. It means to error, to miss the mark. It does not mean to do evil.

So if your goal is God, then a perfect bulls-eye would be constant love, joy, peace and happiness. And if you are feeling any emotion other than perfect joy, all it means is that you missed the mark. Your aim was too high or too low, and chances are you were being lazy and sloppy. As with archery, practice makes perfect. Anyone can do it. It’s not like open-heart surgery designed only for the select few. Anyone can take a handful of darts (a handful of real-life problems and situations) and perfect their focus and aim.

You keep practicing and practicing, until finally one day, you hit a bulls-eye every single time. You never miss. In every situation, it’s God, God, God. It’s Love, Love, Love. It’s Give, Give, Give. You remember your wholeness and perfection and Identity in God in every situation. It’s easy to do if you are practicing every day, and putting in the effort. You don’t just hit it once, you hit it EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Father, the miracle reflects Your Love.
Your Name - God - replaces every thought of sin, and who is sinless cannot suffer pain.

I read constantly, practically every genre, from chick-lit to classics, from cookbooks to philosophy, from Carlos Castaneda to Schopenhauer, from Laurie Colwin to Harry Potter and I know I’m constantly saying “I love this book!” but I do have a very favorite author who has a special place in my heart and that is Leo Tolstoy.

He wins the big prize.

The translator of Tolstoy’s work “The Kingdom of Heaven in Within You” says it best: “Tolstoy’s genius is beyond dispute.”

Here are two of my favorite works:

What I Believe by Leo Tolstoy, published 1886

The Kingdom of Heaven is Within you by Leo Tolstoy, published 1894

Here is from the Introduction of What I Believe (which at 55 years of age, he would have written in 1883):

I am fifty-five years old and, with the exception of the fourteen or fifteen years of my childhood, I  have been until recently a “Nihilist” in the proper signification of that term.  I have not been a Socialist  or Revolutionist, but a Nihilist in the sense of being completely without faith. 

Five years ago I began to believe in the doctrine of Christ, and in consequence a great change has  been wrought in me.  I now no longer care for the things that I had prized, and I have begun to desire  things concerning which I had formerly been indifferent.  Like a man who, going out on business, on his  way suddenly becomes convinced of the futility of that business and turns back; and all that stood to the  right now stands to the left, and all that was to the left is now to the right; his wish to be as far from  home as possible is changed to the desire of being as near home as possible – so, I may say, the whole  aim and purpose of my life has been changed; my desires are no more what they have been.  For me,  good and evil have changed places.  This experience came through my apprehending the doctrine of  Christ in an altogether different way, and seeing it in quite a new light. 

It is not my intention to interpret the doctrine of Christ, but simply  to relate how  I came to  understand the simplest, clearest, and most intelligible point in that doctrine; and how, when once I had  clearly grasped His meaning, it gave a new direction to all my thoughts.   

A free 90-page pdf file of “What I Believe” and “The Kingdom of God is Within You” is available online.

There is no end to all the peace and joy,
And all the miracles that I will give,
When I accept God’s Word. Why not today?

Why not today?

Years ago I was asked to give everything away in exchange to receive everything.

Matthew 19:21:

“Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”

This is a scary thing to do. It confronted me with all my worst fears and showed me that I believed in the world (even though I used to go around saying “there is no world!”) and that I thought my safety depended on me providing for my needs. Up to that point I thought “yes, I am doing everything that is asked of me, look at me, I’m giving all to all” (while still wondering why miracles were not occurring)

Be honest. Are you giving all, or are you saving up stores for your safety?

The reason Jesus asks his disciples to give everything away and follow him (and not turn back to pick up a sweater or kiss their wife - Mark 13:16) is not because he was trying to be mean or make them poor but rather …. because he was trying to show them the complete unreality of the world.

Jesus is not asking you to give all to all because he believes in sacrifice. He’s asking you to give all to all so that you can see where your safety lies, so that you can witness the Laws of God operating.

This world is not real. You cannot know this until you have given everything away and seen (with your own eyes as a direct experience) that different laws are operating in an invisible realm that have been available to you all this time. But you cannot know about these Laws until you loosen your tight grasp on the world you made.

Yes, it’s terrifying.

But look at this lesson! It’s extraordinary! It’s magnificent! You have a TREASURE that waits for you, and all you need do is but reach out your hand to find it. Even now your fingers touch it! It is very close.

But in order to reach out your hand and touch it, you gotta stop clenching your hand in a fist. You can’t touch something with a hand that is tightly closed. You must loosen it up, stop clinging.

Either you believe what this lesson is promising or you don’t and are still holding back, just a little, waiting for proof.

But the treasure is waiting for you! Right now! This minute! All you have to do is reach out your hand and accept your inheritance.

There is no end to all the peace and joy, and all the miracles that I will give.

What’s the key to this lesson? THAT I GIVE, WHEN I ACCEPT GOD’S WORD.

When I have accepted God’s Word, giving becomes natural and easy because I believe what He is saying to me. And as I give, the miracle occurs.

Most people - and I’m speaking here from my own very personal experience - spend all their time waiting for a miracle to be given to them and then they say will practice giving! But first! They are waiting TO RECEIVE. They are praying, hoping, wishing, and saying they are trying the best they can, and they are waiting for a miracle to improve their life.

People say: ‘I will give when I receive. I will give when I have more. What I have now I need for myself.”

I’m here to tell you … you will be waiting a very very very very very very very very very long time.

You give first, and then you receive. That’s how that works. I’m telling you directly. There should be no ambiguity after reading this lesson about how the miracle works. You give, and then you receive.

The miracles happens instantly and naturally when you give, because the miracle is contained in your giving.

I love it. Lessons like these activate me.
I give all the time because I’m selfish and I want everything!!
The joy that comes from the action of giving is extraordinary! This is the end of waiting! Ha! I’m telling you, you will be laughing your head off.

All those years of waiting for a miracle to occur (what’s in it for me?) and now you see why it wasn’t working. Because you were waiting instead of giving.

When you give, the flood doors open.

We stand together, Christ and I, in peace
And certainty of purpose. And in Him
is His Creator, as He is in me.

I feel this lesson more profoundly than probably any other lesson lately. I stand together with Christ in peace and certainty of purpose. Nothing upsets me. It’s an amazing thing. I’m happy all the time. Things still seem to come at me or chaos seems to swirl around me (close by, but never touching me - like a tornado that you can see off in the distance which you know is going the opposite direction so you need not worry) … and I am unaffected by everyone and everything because my total focus is on the Kingdom of Heaven. I stand with Christ, in peace and certainty of purpose.

I really love Deepak Chopra’s book The Third Jesus.

The very first sentences suck you right in:

“Jesus Christ left behind a riddle that two thousand years of worship haven’t solved. The riddle can be stated in one sentence: Why are Jesus’s teachings impossible to live by?”

I’m laughing like crazy. This is the whole riddle! Why are Jesus’s teachings impossible to live by?

What is so difficult about loving your neighbor and your enemy as yourself, about giving all to all, about practicing non-judgment, and having love be your ONLY emotion. What is so difficult?

I admit, these teachings are RADICAL.

Who does this? Who lives by Jesus’s teachings in all circumstances, no exceptions?

More from Deepak Chopra:

“Jesus didn’t want to keep the mystery of God-consciousness to himself. He constantly held out his vision to others, and he had a sense of urgency that was unmistakable. Life was going to be completely overturned, not in the distant future but very soon.”

From 2 Corinthians 5:17:

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things become new.”

From Deepak:

“No more radical blueprint has ever been offered, and the first miracle in Jesus’s story is that anyone believed him … It is easy to see why the new world Christ envisioned was so quickly abandoned after he died. It had to be modified by the realists. No one could carry out the divine plan as articulated by Jesus, because everyone else was too deeply enmeshed in the old world.”

Amazing. Here we are 2000 years after the crucifixion and resurrection of a man whose sole function was to bring the awareness and truth of God to as many as would accept it … and the question now is: WILL YOU CARRY OUT THE DIVING PLAN AS ARTICULATED BY JESUS?

This means, obviously, you will have to leave the old world behind. I love that Deepak uses the word “deeply enmeshed in the old world.” That’s a great way to put it. You will have to be uprooted. It’s probably going to seem a bit disruptive as your roots are yanked out.

But you must be taken out of the world you live in to have any idea what Jesus is talking about. You can only understand his message when you are standing with him in the new world.

This is today’s lesson:

We stand together, Christ and I, in peace
And certainty of purpose. And in Him
is His Creator, as He is in me.

I have no self except the Christ in me. I have no purpose but His Own.

Amazing. You are what Christ is but you can only know this if you are standing with him, an if you share His function. There you will find the peace and certainty that is promised to you. You cannot find it alone, and you cannot find it while you are fulfilling other functions or other goals. You cannot find it while you are upset about things in time and space. If you want what is being offered - love, joy, peace undisturbed, and miracles every moment of the day - you must leave your familiar surroundings (your habits, your routines, your usual ways of thinking and reacting) and follow a very radical path.

It’s not for the faint of heart.

But it IS the adventure of a lifetime, if you choose to take the journey.

Merry Christmas.

Here is another book I really love.

If you click the cover, you can read the whole thing free online although I really suggest you buy a hardcover copy for yourself because this book is a classic and a keeper, the kind of book you’ll want to read again and again because it’s so inspiring.