Surrendering is always a great way to let go, give up ego resistance and settle into being guided. It allows you to admit to the truth and stop pretending. It's a way to dissolve denial and get to the real root cause behind things. It helps you to sink deeper into the Holy Spirit and allow yourself to be helped. It entails giving up on trying to do it all yourself, trying to fearfully depend on your own strength, and builds trust.
Without surrendering ego activities, you will remain "in control" and clinging tightly to problems and upsets, thinking that the more you do this the more you will avoid further suffering. But it works the opposite way. The more you try to control, the less control you have. Everything falls through your fingers when you try to grab it. You have to let it go. You then can gain everything by holding onto nothing.
As I surrender to the Holy Spirit and let go, I feel myself being willing to drop egotism, drop controls, drop the fight, and that puts me in a position of being open to support. The Holy Spirit can't do or take anything from you against your will. But in order to become able, you have to show a little willingness. And that means being willing to admit the truth, which in turn means surrendering or letting go of the ego facade, bravado, prowess, fake strength and "total independence."
It is natural for you to be completely 100% dependent on God. This doesn't mean you have no free will. It means you trust and will in accord with His will. You want what He wants because you know it's for your best, and He wants only good for you. You are a co-creator with God. The ego sees surrendering as death. It doesn't want to drop defenses. It doesn't want to let anything go. Attachment and possession are its motto, which keeps you bound to stress and fear and problems. Let all that fucking shit go.
It can literally be as simple and easy as saying over and over again, "I surrender", "I let go". Just say it or think it to yourself. The less time you leave in-between each repetition the more effective it is because it keeps you from drifting back off into problem solving. Usually now when I do this Holy Spirit steps in and starts healing me very quickly, and it was by doing this that I developed trust in Him to come into me and help me.
By surrendering, you open up to receiving. It's kind of like a willingness to let everything go to shit, which at first seems like it's going to be a terrible move and life will suck. But the truth is that when you let it all go you transcend the shit and it no longer seems important to do anything about it at all.
Especially if you are afraid, if you are fearing and worrying and doubting and are riddled with uncertainty, you need to surrender that shit. It means you're relying heavily on your own little ego self which is totally inadequate and is not the source of certainty or strength. Certainty (fearlessness) is an attribute of Knowledge, which is of God/Love. You can't experience certainty by "going it alone". You can only be fear-free by being joined with God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, higher-self, love, whatever you want to call it. Dependency on God is freedom.
The instant you start to surrender and let go you'll feel relief from the fear/anxiety. As soon as you surrender you'll start sighing, as an expression of how you admit that what you've been doing isn't working. It seems like a disappointment to admit that the ego's strategies are all bullshit. That your best "I can do it myself" reliance/independence simply is not working. Admitting to failure is a great step toward surrendering because it admits the truth, and that means opening a window for truth (healing) to access you. All your strategies suck. and aren't working. Let go and let God.
Surrendering will make you happier. Surrendering will bring you peace. Surrendering will make you calmer and less stressed out. Surrendering will open you up to spiritual healing and miracles. Let Holy Spirit manage the body. Let God in. Receive love. Be healed.
An idea that keeps coming back to me lately is that everything that's happening in the world is absolutely chosen, deliberate and intentional. It's the idea that we're all powerful creators, powerful choosers, and we simply keep on making poor decisions. We keep making, i.e. creating, mistakes.
I keep seeing this idea of everything flowing outward from us, of everything coming from us, and absolutely nothing happening to us from the outside. Only the stuff that we broadcast gets projected out there. So it's all us, 100%... whatever we dream up we manifest, and we put out there in the dream.
In this idea there is absolutely nothing happening in the opposite direction. There is nothing flowing inward from outside. There's nothing happening to anyone. There's nobody doing anything to anyone. There's only stuff coming out from you. So you are the source of everything. You shine like a light, you radiate reality, you extend your self.
So in this idea, it's not at all got anything to do with bad stuff happening to anyone or people being victims or stuff seeming unfair or random chaos or bad luck or anything like that. There's only people choosing, choosing, choosing, choosing, choosing all the time. Broadcasting, extending, projecting, shining, outward outward outward. That's all that's going on behind the illusion of appearances.
It's all coming from a high place and going out. And there is no going in. But the thing is we keep choosing mistakes. We keep literally 'making' mistakes. We keep making situations which look like examples of not choosing. We keep making situations where it seems like we're victimized. We keep making situations where it's set up to look like stuff is happening that we're not choosing, even though we're choosing that too. We're pretty clever at choosing, that we can even choose what seems like complete opposite of having a choice. We can put on a really great show and everyone will fall for it, thinking that we really didn't choose this. Fooled you though.
All is choice.
So really it's just that we keep pushing ourselves off the horse. We keep tipping the bike over. We keep crashing the car. We keep steering badly. We keep making these choices for having no choice. We keep deciding to seem to not be deciding. And we keep wanting to not want stuff. But at all times, absolutely all times, we are still in touch with that freedom of choice.
AND we can choose again at any time. AND we can become so pure and clear in our choosing that we stop choosing mistakes and only choose things which reflect the totality of our freedom and choice. We choose choosing. We align with alignment. We stay on the bike and stop inventing stories about how someone else made us swerve and hit a fence. It's all coming from us.
This is the divine 'play', if you will. The big story. The cover-up. The performance, which the Son of God is playing at over and over. Experimenting with death, even though He can't die. Toying with destruction, even though He is always creative. Pretending to not be Himself. Avoiding having His cover blown. But eventually He'll give up the toys and simply return to a state where He doesn't make these mistaken choices on His own, and simply admits that this is all a big farce. That it's not really real, and that it's always been just an illusion that stuff happened against His will. It's not really true, is it.
It's not REALLY possible to choose to be void of choice. Its not really possible to die. It's not really possible to have other people choose for you. It's not really possible for other people to be responsible for what you experience. It's not really possible to have stuff happen to you. That's what we need to own up to and admit to. The power of our choice. The absolute unshakeable FREEDOM that we always have and always will.
So what are we going to choose today? Are we going to choose the illusion of having no choice? Are we going choose to seem like we have no say, that we're powerless? Or are we going to choose to admit to eternal life, to God's Will, and to absolute divine immortality? Because that's the truth of what we are, behind these ego facades of victimhood and stuff happening on its own.
Can you feel the sheer POWER of being the chooser of everything? And guess what happens when you admit to choosing everything? You choose EVERYTHINGNESS - i.e. God.
Choose again.
"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds it from awareness like a shield held up to obscure the sun."
"It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms"
"All forms of sickness even unto death are physical expressions of the fear of awakening."
"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result."
"The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it."
"And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself."
"You who believe you can condemn the Son of God to this ARE arrogant."
"The arrogance of sin, the pride of guilt, the sepulchre of separation, all are part of your unrecognized dedication to death. The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would KILL it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience."
"Death, were it true, would be the final and complete disruption of communication, which IS the ego's goal."
"Those who fear death see not how often and how loudly they CALL to it, and bid it come to SAVE them from communication. "
"For death is seen as SAFETY, the great dark savior from the light of truth, the answer to the Answer, the silencer of the Voice that speaks for God."
"Yet the retreat to death is NOT the end of conflict. Only God's Answer is its end."
"My brothers, children of our Father, this is a DREAM of death."
"In its exaltation (the body), you COMMANDED it to die, for only death COULD conquer life. And what but insanity could look upon the defeat of God, and think it REAL? "
"Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction."
"What seems to be FEAR of death, is really its ATTRACTION."
"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do. Remember, though, that to do this IS blasphemy"
"Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator."
"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."
"No-one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No-one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No-one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. No one dies without their own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose."
"Would you not rather live than choose to die? Living is joy, but death can only weep. You see in death escape from what you made. But this you do not see; that you made death, and it is but illusion of an end. "
"Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as you are not may come to tempt you."
"Here is the Will of Father and of Son defeated finally, and laid to rest beneath the headstone death has placed upon the body of the holy Son of God."
"Unholy in defeat, he has become what death would have him be. His epitaph, which death itself has written, gives no name to him, for he has passed to dust. It says but this: "Here lies a witness God is dead." And this it writes again and still again, while all the while its worshippers agree, and kneeling down with foreheads to the ground, they whisper fearfully that it is so."
"The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it. For it implies that God was once alive and somehow perished, killed, apparently, by those who did not want him to survive. Their stronger will could triumph over His, and so eternal life gave way to death. And with the Father died the Son as well."
"There is no death, for death is not Your Will."
"But if he chooses death himself, his weakness is his strength."
"For death is not of the real world, in which everything is eternal."
"How can some forms of murder NOT mean death? Can an attack in ANY form be love? What FORM of condemnation is a blessing?"
"Men are afraid of blasphemy, but they do not know what it means. They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death. The sense is very literal; - denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT."
"Sickness and death entered the mind of God's Son against His Will."
"If the intent is death, what matter the form it takes? Is death in any form, however lovely and charitable it may seem to be, a blessing and a sign the Voice for God speaks through you to your brother?"
"Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to communicate, and the unnatural intent to murder and to die. "
"For the wages of sin is death, and how can the immortal die?"
"Death is a human affirmation of a belief in fate."
"You but choose whether to go TOWARDS Heaven, or away to nowhere."
"Death cannot be escape"
"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."
You are an immortal being but you keep trying to prove you're not.
In sickness we attempt to prove we can be hurt.
In fear we attempt to prove we can have reason to be concerned.
In suffering we attempt to prove something can happen to us.
In death we attempt to prove we are not immortal at all.
In sin we attempt to prove we are not innocent.
In guilt we attempt to prove we are capable of malfunctioning.
In all our "human" ways, our egoic ways, we simply keep trying to prove and demonstrate that "it is true" that we're not immortal.
That is what this whole world is about. That is why we made it. It is a dream of MORTALITY. A dream of death. A world where the immortal beings come to pretend to suffer a while, wither and die, to prove they are not immortal. To destroy God's immortal Son.
"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."
"You look for permanence in the impermanent, for love where there is none, for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death."
"For even though it was a dream of death, you need not let it stand for this to you."
"And I behold the world that Christ would have me see, aware it ends the bitter dream of death; aware it is my Father's Call to me."
"My brother, child of our Father, this is a dream of death. "
We made this world in an attempt to prove there IS no eternal life. That we CAN be hurt, attacked, threatened, even destroyed. This whole place is one big lie. It's a huge cover up. Immortal beings attempting to die. Invulnerable beings attempting to be victims. Eternal beings suggesting their continuation is threatened.
All we need to do is own up to who and what we really are.
"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."
"You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do."
"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."
"For you will remember His guiltless Son, who did not die because he is immortal."
"What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect. "
"For separate fragments must decay and die, but wholeness is immortal. It remains forever and forever like its Creator, being one with Him."
"But it can unite only with what ALREADY is at peace in you, immortal as itself."
"its likeness shines with its immortal Love."
"The graciousness of God will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss, with the immortal assurance of their Father's Love."
"You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now.""But the guarantee of your continuity is God's, not the ego's. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. Accepting the Atonement teaches you what immortality IS, for by accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless.""In immortality you live forever. Would you not return your mind to this?"
"Are you a Spirit, deathless, and without the promise of corruption and the stain of sin upon you? "
"No trace of anything in time can long remain in minds that serve the timeless."
Most people have an idea of what duality means. Usually a world of many separate things. Separate objects, separate bodies. A count beyond one.
This however isn't a full enough definition. Duality is also a matter of NOT SHARING. It's a state of mind in which you do not want to be joined with, share with, or have relationship with, anything or anyone. It's also a state of selfishness, therefore, because it opposes sharing. It produces isolation and disconnection. The ego thought system - the world of duality - is all about selfishness.
"Selfishness is of the ego" T-7.IX.1:4
If duality really means selfishness, what is the opposite of selfishness? It is sharing. But this requires that there be someone or something to share WITH. It cannot mean that there is only you there, or only God. It also requires that in absolute reality, in God, there must be something other than JUST God, such as your brothers, to share with. For example:
"You dwell in the Mind of God with your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone." T-11.I.1:6
"Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself." T-11.I.5:7
God wanted to share himself. In fact we're also told that SHARING is the natural inherent property of reality.
"Nothing real can be increased except by sharing. ³That is why God created you. ⁴Divine Abstraction takes joy in sharing. ⁵That is what creation means." T-4.VII.5:2-5
We're told in ACIM itself, putting aside all interpretations by other well-meaning teachers and students, in Jesus's words, that God did NOT will to be the "only thing that exists". He did not will to be alone. He willed that there be ANOTHER, and CREATED at the very least one son.
He even goes on to say that God not ONLY willed to create at least one son, this son ALSO has the ability to create its own sons.
"God would not have us be alone because _He_ does not will to be alone. ⁷That is why He created His Son, and gave him the power to create with Him. ⁸Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God Himself, as holy as He is." T-8.VI.8:6-8
Note also that it clearly states that God has SONS, not just one.
"The creations of every Son of God are yours, since every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole." T-7.IX.5:3
"The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are as like the Sons as they are like the Father. ¹¹Know, then, the Sons of God, and you will know all creation." T-7.XI.7:10-11
It's quite simply stating that God not only created many children, but that even those children in turn go on to create more children. The Sons of God form the sonship, which shares the One Mind of Christ. And collectively as the One Son, we all co-create with God to produce our own creations.
This is in fact why Jesus refers to us as having BROTHERS. The term brother means an equal sibling of the same parent. Because God did not will to be alone, and did not will us to be alone, he created MANY OF US, so that we would have permanent brothers IN heaven forever.
"Return with me to Heaven, walking together with your brother out of this world and through another, to the loveliness and joy the other holds within it." T-18.I.12:4)
"Here stands your brother with the key to Heaven in his hand, held out to you. T-24.II.7:6"
There is also a holy trinity in reality. God the father, the Sonship as the One Son comprising many sons and their creations, and the Holy Spirit. These are not conceptual or ego inventions, they are permanent.
"The Son of God is part of the Holy Trinity" T-3.II.5:4 "Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for your creation." T-8.VI.5:3)
The Holy Spirit is also a permanent eternal creation who will continue to exist along with the many sons even AFTER the atonement.
"When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed there will be no Call to return. ⁶But what God creates is eternal. ⁷The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy." T-5.I.5:5-7
So what we have now is in fact a more fleshed out picture. Heaven, God's reality, comprises God, the Holy Spirit, the Sonshsip, which form the trinity. And the Sonship includes many sons, and many creations of many sons, who are also brothers. By the way there are angels as well, created by God.
Now, such a picture does not sound remotely like "non-duality." Someone came up with non-duality as an antithesis to duality, purely as a conceptual idea. It's an attempt to try to explain what the course is saying. Except that, it doesn't quite fit.
It fits in the sense that it may describe God himself, IF God were alone and willed to be alone. As a LOGICAL DEVICE, opposite to "many" means "one", a count of one. This is what non-duality logically means. There are many flaky and wishywashy definitions out there which have tried to glue toegether pieces of the course to make it fit with this, but the PUREST form of non-duality is that "there is literally only God."
This obviously does not FIT with what ACIM says, because it's told us that God is a creator, that he has created at least one child if not many, and that his child has has its own children. Not to mention also the holy spirit being created, and the trinity existing. All of this is not properly encompassed by the concept of non-duality.
Some people like non-duality ideas because they seem to suggest the antithesis to "separateness". As if it is the opposite of ego, the opposite of separation, and the way to undo all trace of the separation from God. But this is VERY BASIC logic and highly inaccurate in its representation of what JESUS ACTUALLY says.
The purest non-duality does not support God being a creator, or God sharing, or God having relationships, or God having even ONE son, or of God creating the Holy Spirit, or of YOU existing, or of you having any creations. It doesn't even allow for heaven to exist. All it does is reduce God to a singular blob, a very lonely isolated blob, which sits there all by itself doing nothing. That is NOT what God is like according to ACIM itself.
The problem is that many people have latched onto this non-duality "concept" and have tried to FORCE the course to fit into it, because they don't have a better OR more accurate model. And in many cases also because they don't recognize the shortcomings of this concept.
It's easy for anyone to say, well, if I get rid of all the separations which implied "many things", then I will get down to "one thing", and this is oneness, and it must be what reality is like. Except that, it isn't. Not by a long shot.
Not according to what Jesus has said about God ADDING to himself, and SHARING himself, and having REAL relationship with his Son, and HAVING a son, and CO-CREATING with him. Jesus's definition of ONENESS is not what you think it is. It is not the everyday definition. It's more to do with a SHARED WHOLENESS between two beings.
"This may appear to contradict the statement “I and my Father are one,” but there are two parts to the statement in recognition that the Father is greater. T-1.II.4:7
The urtext had a much fuller statement about this:
"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."
In fact we are told countless times that God is GREATER than us. We are supposed to have AWE of him, as his son. That God is the FIRST cause, and we are CO-creators as secondary causes. That "I am forever an effect of God". The whole notion of equating yourself with God is nonsense because this is what the whole authority problem is about. You are NOT at the same level or role as he is.
Urtext: "Revelation is NOT reciprocal. It is always FROM God TO man. This is because God and man are NOT equal."
"God’s accomplishments are not yours, but yours are like His. ⁶He created the Sonship and you increase it. ⁷You have the power to add to the Kingdom, though not to add to the Creator of the Kingdom." T-7.I.2:5-7
There are so many aspects of ACIM that fly in the face of pure nonduality, and are contrary to the traditional idea of "oneness". It is NOT CORRECT to claim that ACIM is a non-dualistic teaching. And it is NOT correct to project an idea of "oneness" onto its statements. To be "one with" does not ERASE the fact that there are two things sharing that oneness. Heaven is all about sharing between many things, which is the opposite of many things which don't share.
In fact even individuality is an inherent part of reality. You HAD an individual existence as a soul BEFORE the separation from God ever came along. Individuality isn't even the problem. It's the unwillingness to SHARE that is the problem - selfishness is the problem. Not whether you HAVE a self.
"God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy.T-4.VII.5:1
Here ACIM has explicitly stated that God created a PLURAL OF BEINGS, in reality, who EACH had everything INDIVIDUALLY - as individuals, and who WANT TO SHARE so that THEIR collective joy increases. That is not in any stretch of the imagination a state of non-duality, or of "its all one thing", or "its all God".
What's needed is a much more accurate concept that maps to what ACIM actually says, and which supports and INCLUDES all of what it says, without trying to screen out stuff on the basis of making teh concept MORE right than the text. ACIM is a kind of "trans-duality", in which God has created many things which ARE still one. That the one and the many are coexisting through sharing. And that this is NOT duality, nor ANYTHING to do with the ego.
Heaven is in fact a holographic system. It is how God thinks. His whole creation and thought proceeds along holographic principles - where every part (son/creation) contains and IS the whole. This is NOT the same as duality. You have to open up to the idea that the many AND the one can COEXIST. That
the one IS many, and the many ARE one. This is stated here: "The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. T-16.II.3:3
"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. T-9.VI.3:5 "Every child of God is one in Christ, for his being is in Christ as Christ’s is in God." T-12.VI.6:1
"God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ²All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. T-6.II.8:1-2"
Perhaps we can be willing to stop talking about ACIM as if it's some kind of non-duality teaching when it is utterly riddled with statements to the contrary. God is a creator and has a FAMILY in reality. And you are part of that family. And God LOVES YOU personally and EQUALLY.
"You cannot enter into real relationships with any of God’s Sons unless you love them all and equally. ²Love is not special. ³If you single out part of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on all your relationships and making them unreal." T-13.X.11:1-3
"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return." T-1.V.4:1)
Btw these are ALL quotes from FIP 3rd edition. Put aside what other well-meaning people have told you and listen to what JESUS is telling you.
You always perceive in people what you CHOOSE to see in them.
If you CHOOSE to be upset and angry, it CHANGES how people look. It makes them SEEM like they are attacking you. And because of this change in YOUR perception - your filtering - YOU think that you are justified in this anger or upset "because of" what they so obviously are doing. But they only APPEAR to be doing this stuff because YOU are looking through a dark filter of unlove. It filters OUT the love and prevents you from seeing love IN the person, or something about them that is loveable.
When you CHOOSE to stop being upset with them, to like them and to love them, which your are perfectly free and capable of doing, this "fog of unlove" is lifted from YOUR mind and you see the person WITH love. This radically changes how they APPEAR to you. Or rather, what you see IN them. Whatever you perceive people as "being like", they only appear to "belike" that because YOU are CHOOSING to see them that way. How you see them and how they appear has NOTHING to do with them or what they’re doing.
If someone is upset with you, angry at you, saying they don’t like you, the only reason they don’t like you is because they are CHOOSING not to like you. Here’s the trick... if they would CHOOSE to like you, THEY WOULD LIKE YOU. This sounds so obvious but it’s true, because per the secret of salvation, anything that person doesn’t like about you is a result of THEM CHOOSING NOT TO. Whatever they think is "wrong" with you, they ONLY SEE because THEY choose to put that there. They think they are locked into this perception with no choice. They don’t realize if they would simply CHOOSE differently, they COULD choose to LIKE YOU, and would instantly warm up to you.
It sounds too obvious to be true, but this is how it works. You are NEVER justified in being angry at someone because that simply means, you are CHOOSING not to love them. The ONLY reason you don’t like someone is because you haven’t decided to like them, for whatever scapegoating mileage you’re getting out of that. YOU have the power to love everyone. YOU have the freedom to choose to love everyone. Because there is NO REASON NOT TO. The only time you find a reason not to, is when YOU have slipped into ego, YOU are attacking, YOU are projecting, an d YOU are accusing your brother of your own sins.
You are never upset for the reason you think. It is NEVER "because of" people, the world, the body, the environment, or anything other than YOU. You using your free will to CHOOSE TO BE UPSET. You are not at the effect of anyone. You are CAUSAL. Whatever you choose, you cause. You are a creator. If you do not LIKE what you are causing, that’s on you. But disassociating ownership for that responsibility is ego.
You don’t like xyz person because you decided not to like them. They now look like enemies because you WANT to see them as enemies. Your desire to hate them MAKES THEM appear to be unlovable. The only reason they appear unlovable is not because of THEM, it’s because of YOU. If you would decide to love them, they would stop looking like monsters. Set them free of your tyranny.
You are annoyed about xyz situation because you have not yet CHOSEN to be happy. You like being unhappy. When you decide to be happy you will love it.
You think you can’t love xyz person because of "what they are like", because YOU are choosing to be an asshole. There is NO REASON to be unloving. All the reasons we have, we make up. Just as there is no reason to be afraid and all fear is made up.
If I don’t like something, is the problem the THING I don’t like, OR ME choosing to be "not likey"? And while I’m busy pointing out the flaws and sins of others, which I ONLY SEE because I PUT THEM THERE through unlove, I might want to look closer to home at why *I* am being sinful towards them. MY problem causes THEM To look like THE problem.
Everyone is holy and innocent and deserves to be loved fully. If I’m not doing that, *I* have a problem. I need to choose again. The only way a sworn enemy becomes a beloved friend is by choosing to LOVE them, sooner or later. You are free to choose when to change your mind.
"The holiest of all the spots on Earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love."
"The power of decision is my own."
Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you BE this, if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this, "Choose once again if you would take your place among the Saviors of the world, or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there." For He HAS come, and He IS asking this.
How do you make the choice? How easily is this explained! You ALWAYS choose between YOUR weakness and the strength of Christ in you. And what you choose is what you think is real. Simply by never using weakness to direct your actions, you have given it no power. And the Light of Christ in you is given charge of everything you do. For you have brought your weakness unto Him, and He has given you His strength instead. Trials are but lessons which 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 which what you chose before has brought to you.
In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again." 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 altars unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you. His holiness is yours because He is the ONLY power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is the Self that God created as His ONLY Son. The images you make can not prevail against what God Himself would have you be.
Be never fearful of temptation then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ's strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, and disappears before His holy sight. The Saviors of the world, who see like Him, are merely those who chose His strength instead of their own weakness, seen APART from Him. They will redeem the world, for they are joined to all the power of the Will of God. And what they will is ONLY what He wills.
Learn, then, the happy habit of response to ALL temptation to perceive yourself as weak and miserable with these words:
"I am as God created me. His Son
can suffer nothing. And I AM His Son."
Thus is Christ's strength INVITED to prevail, replacing all your weakness with the strength that comes from God, and that can NEVER fail. And thus are miracles as natural as fear and agony APPEARED to be before the choice for holiness was made. For IN that choice are false distinctions gone, illusory alternatives laid by, and nothing left to INTERFERE with truth.
You ARE as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, REGARDLESS of the images you see. What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive YOURSELF defenseless and in hell. Yield NOT to this, and you will see ALL pain in EVERY form WHEREVER it occurs but disappear as mists before the sun. A miracle has come to heal God's Son, and close the door upon his dreams of weakness, opening the way to his salvation and release. Choose once again what you would have him be, remembering that every choice you make establishes your own identity as you will see it, and believe it IS.
Deny me not the little gift I ask, when in exchange I lay before your feet the peace of God, and power to bring this peace to everyone who wanders in the world, uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear. For it is given you to JOIN with him, and through the Christ in you unveil his eyes, and let him look upon the Christ in him. My brothers in salvation, do not fail to hear my voice and listen to my words. I ask for nothing but your OWN release. There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven. To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before.
But this a vision is which you must SHARE with everyone you see. For otherwise you will behold it not. To GIVE this gift is how to make it yours. And God ordained, in loving kindness, that it BE for you. Let us be glad that we can walk the world, and find so many chances to perceive another situation where His gift can once again be recognized as ours. And thus will all the vestiges of hell, the secret sins and hidden hates be gone, and all the loveliness which they concealed appear like lawns of Heaven to our sight, to lift us high above the thorny roads we travelled on before the Christ appeared.
Hear me, my brothers, hear and join with me. God has ordained I cannot call in vain. And in His certainty I rest content. For you WILL hear, and you WILL choose again. And in this choice is everyone made free. I thank You, Father, for these holy ones who are my brothers as they are Your Sons. My faith in them is Yours. I am as sure that they will come to me as You are sure of what they are, and will forever be. They will accept the gift I offer them because You gave it me on their behalf. And as I would but do Your holy Will, so will they choose. And I give thanks for them.
Salvation's song will echo through the world with every choice they make. For we are one in purpose, and the end of hell is near. In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother who would join with me in reaching past temptation, and who looks with fixed determination toward the light that shines beyond in perfect constancy. Give me my own, for they belong to You. And can You fail in what is but Your Will? I give You thanks for what my brothers are, and as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny, scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell, and giving thanks to You.
And now we say "Amen." For Christ has come to dwell in the abode You set for Him before time was, in calm Eternity. The journey closes, ending at the place where it began. No trace of it remains. Not one illusion is accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness still remains to hide the Face of Christ from anyone. Thy Will is done, complete and perfectly, and all creation recognizes You and knows You as the only Source it has. Clear in Your Likeness does the Light shine forth from everything that lives and moves in You. For we have reached where all of us are One, and we ARE home where You would have us be.
Today we will anticipate the time when dreams of sin and guilt are gone, and we have reached again the holy place we never left. Merely a tiny instant has elapsed between eternity and timelessness. So brief the interval there was no lapse in continuity, nor break in thoughts which are forever unified as one. Nothing has ever happened to disturb the peace of God the Father and the Son. This we accept as wholly true today.
"We thank you, Father, that we cannot lose the memory of You and of Your Love. We recognize our safety, and give thanks for all the gifts You have bestowed on us, for all the loving help we have received, for Your eternal patience, and the Word Which You have given us that we are saved."
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."
Forget not once this journey is begun the end is certain. Doubt along the way will come and go and go to come again. Yet is the ending sure. No-one can fail to do what God appointed him to do. When you forget, remember that you walk with Him and with His Word upon your heart. Who could despair when hope like this is his? Illusions of despair may seem to come, but learn how not to be deceived by them. Behind each one there is reality and there is God. Why would you wait for this and trade it for illusions, when His Love is but an instant farther on the road where all illusions end? The end IS sure and guaranteed by God. Who stands before a lifeless image when a step away the Holy of the Holies opens up an ancient door that leads beyond the world?
You ARE a stranger here, but you belong to Him Who loves you as He loves Himself. Ask but my help to roll the stone away, and it is done according to His Will.
We HAVE begun the journey. Long ago the end was written in the stars and set into the Heavens with a shining Ray that held it safe within eternity and through all time as well. And holds it still; unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable.
Be not afraid. We only start again an ancient journey long ago begun that but seems new. We have begun again upon a road we travelled on before and lost our way a little while. And now we try again. Our new beginning has the certainty the journey lacked 'til now. Look up and see His Word among the stars, where He has set your Name along with His. Look up and find your certain destiny the world would hide but God would have you see.
Let us wait here in silence, and kneel down an instant in our gratitude to Him Who called to us and helped us hear His Call. And then let us arise and go in faith along the way to Him. Now we are sure we do not walk alone. For God is here, and with Him all our brothers. Now we know that we will never lose the way again. The song begins again which had been stopped only an instant, though it seems to be unsung forever. What is here begun will grow in life and strength and hope, until the world is still an instant and forgets all that the dream of sin had made of it.
Let us go out and meet the newborn world, knowing that Christ has been reborn in it, and that the holiness of this rebirth will last forever. We had lost our way, but He has found it for us. Let us come and bid Him welcome Who returns to us to celebrate salvation and the end of all we thought we made. The morning star of this new day looks on a different world where God is welcomed and His Son with Him. We who complete Him offer thanks to Him, as He gives thanks to us. The Son is still, and in the peace that God has given him enters his home and is at peace at last.