You may not realize what you gave up when you preferred a dream of death over a reality of Eternal Life.

You may have forgotten the utter magnitude of the love of God for you, and which you share with Him.

You have blocked from your awareness the divine, miraculous power that you have to create anything.

You may not recall just how beautiful and joyous and free you are, liberated from ego and death and dreams of dying.

Only because you have for so long tarried in a world of obstacles and defeat, do you think this is your normal allotment. You are sure that you barely deserve anything greater, knowing not exactly what is on offer.

If you could remember the tremendous gifts which will return to you as you awaken, you would not hesitate to let go of your use of the ego and would quickly leap for the offer.

God is offering you an absolute unlimited smorgasbord of orgasmic happiness, which nothing in this world can even begin to compare with.

You literally are on a path to receiving everything in place of nothing, and all the pitiful gifts the ego offered you will quickly be shown to be barely worth anything at all.

Come get your inheritance!

One of the difficult things about trusting Holy Spirit is the idea of 'showing up' empty handed and not knowing what the heck to do, and yet things still working out 'in the moment'.

Usually our minds are filled with all kinds of predictive, planning thoughts which try to know, beforehand, what needs to be known in order to do whatever it is that needs to be done, at the time. And we won't budge if we don't know what's going to happen first, because we're afraid.

When Holy Spirit asks me to write my book for example, I hesitate with thoughts like "I don't know what to write" or "what will I write about". And then Holy Spirit will keep on reminding/suggesting, "book, book, book". And I will keep on protesting mentally, "what shall I do". What He really wants me to do is to just stop the mental chatter and sit down and start writing AND THEN in the moment, in the flow, in the spontaneous present, HE IS THERE, and He helps me write.

So then it ends up being, I didn't need to know, by myself, what to do beforehand, because by `just doing it` was an invitation to Spirit to join with me in the PRESENT and support me and help me spontaneously and unrehearsed.

Going to do something when you have to put aside all notion of knowing what it is you will do, and all plans, and all sense of "I can only do this IF I know what will do"... its very exposing. It makes me feel empty-handed and blindfolded and clueless. It doesn't exactly support a concept of ego confidence. It's more like, I have to `just do it` anyway with a tremendous call to have COURAGE and FAITH and TRUST.

So when Holy Spirit is urging you to do something, I think we have to remember to trust that He WILL be there in the moment with us and He WILL be helping us and he WILL be working through us. It's like you have to take the leap first AND THEN the wings appear. You act 'as if' you will have all the support in the world and then it shows up.

This is difficult to learn, because I'm so used to ... hah... being in control. Lol, (thanks HS for that insert). So used to being in the drivers seat and relying on prior learning (the past) and thinking (lol) that I can only do anything if it's been premeditated and planned out. This is an ongoing lesson for me and probably for many people, because the ego is basically the thing that comes between surrender/letting go and being too afraid to make a move when you can't yet see the safety net - a safety net that you don't even really NEED when Holy Spirit goes with you. "If you knew Who walks beside you on the way that you have chosen, fear would be impossible" - ACIM

The ego doesn't understand how to put trust/faith/spirit first and to expect support from outside of itself. It doesn't know how to let itself be abundantly supported or to be included in a bigger plan not of its own making. Holy Spirit has a plan. But it calls for us to step OUT of our own plan and our own controls - letting go of controlling all outcomes - so that we can step into the spontaneous flow of Spirit directing us and moving through us and healing through us. Which reminds me of this wonderful ACIM quote:

"I am here only to be truly helpful.

I am here to represent Him Who sent me.

I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do,

because He Who sent me will direct me.

I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.

I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal." - ACIM

To just show up, ready, willing, available, to be directed and used by Spirit, with no prior agenda, with perfect willingness and readiness, as an agent of God, without necessarily knowing or needing to know who/what/where/why/how ... that's what I/we need to get to. To go around doing God's will, working miracles, healing people, teaching and inspiring people, being moved by Spirit and supported in 'supernatural' ways. We need to learn to trust in Spirit's support and that, if we leap first, then we will find the power to fly.

This is the title of ACIM lesson 125. The essence here is to realize that everything you give, you receive, because giving and receiving are one. Per the golden rule, whatever you "do to another", you literally and directly and personally do to yourself. Anything at all that comes out of you, goes back into you.

This is the law of God, and it is inescapable. But it seems to be very difficult to recognize this law is in effect. It seems possible that you do something to another and experience none of the consequences. That somehow there is a separation between what applies to the giver and the receiver.

The body in particular makes it seem possible to do something to another while escaping the effects. One body can seem to hurt another, and yet come away with no apparent harm. This violates the law of God and seems to suggest the golden rule does not apply. But the laws of God always apply.

If you were aware that anything you do is done to BOTH yourself and others, you would be very careful in choosing what to do. If when you poked another's body, you felt a poke of your own body, you would hesitate to poke them. If you attacked their body and immediately felt the hurt and impact and effects of the attack, you would instantly recoil and reconsider your actions.

If it were impossible for you to do something to another without it also being done instantly to you, you would realize that you cannot do anything harmful without hurting yourself. You would literally find it insane to suggest that you WON'T be hurt when you hurt someone else. You would know this is not true, and that you are guaranteed to suffer when you inflict suffering.

The motivation this gives you then is the clear sanity that, in order to be happy and loved, your only option is to give happiness and love to others. If for an instant you choose to give hurt or to make guilty, you know that you will instantly feel awful and would be quick to stop yourself. If the very dagger with which you attempt to pierce the heart of a brother literally sticks into your own body, you would stop in your tracks.

In truth, when you are more aware of reality, you actually are in touch with this law. It may not appear to apply at the physical level, but it does apply at the level of mind. Any seeming psychological state of attack which you think you project onto another, you do not escape. Any angry attempt to make another guilty reinforces your guilt. Any desire to be murderous and hurtful threatens you and instills fear.

v There IS no escape from the golden rule. The ego counsels that you can easily escape it, even that you can commit the most horrendous attack and come away without remorse or damage. That you can get away with murder. But the only way you would seem to convince yourself that you've done this, is to be in denial.

It requires you to separate yourself off, dis-associate from your brother, form a separate identity which is different and at war, believe that your brother is in no way part of yourself, isolate and imprison yourself in the body, and then perhaps be convinced that your actions won't hurt you. Only by severing yourself from the sonship could you possibly convince yourself that this would work, but at the cost of making you imprisoned and alone.

In truth, your real nature is that you are one with all others. That we are all joined together in sharing as a single family of equality. I am you and you are me and we are each other.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

Everyone is everyone. We are each individually the whole sonship. Everyone else is a part of your self. Not one single thing can occur against a single individual without it happening to the whole. When one suffers, the whole suffers, because the whole is in every part. We have a holographic relationship and this is the will of God.

The fact is then that if we fall into the ego delusion that we are separate from each other, we will then automatically believe that we can indeed attack without being attacked. And so begins the spiral down the slippery slope to hell in which you believe and then perceive that you are justified in murder, capable of revenge, and can get away with it unaffected. This state of mind itself is mental illness, suffering, self-attack, self-abuse, and self-destructive.

The simple truth then is that everything you give, you are included in the receipt of. Anything you do, you do to yourself. Anything you give or radiate or share or express, is being expressed toward you as well. It may seem on the physical level that something has to leave and travel and be sacrificed and lost, in order to be given or done to another, but in truth you always keep what you

give, because sharing is reality and not separation. To receive what you give is the golden rule and the inescapable law of God. It is functioning even when you don't believe it is functioning. It is functioning when you believe you are getting away with separating yourself off from receiving. It is also the secret of salvation, in the recognition that if you are suffering, you must have done this to yourself. You must have given suffering and then received it, believing that you would escape the receipt.

If you are suffering, you have attempted to attack the sonship. Not just yourself, but everyone. But just as every attack thought, and attitude, angry guilt-mongering, or outright violence, is always an attempt to give yourself death. It makes you unhappy to make others unhappy. It hurts you to hurt them. You cannot escape this. Anything you do to attempt to destroy a son of God will have self-inflicted repercussions. And as such, if you are not at peace, you must have made a wrong decision.

To find salvation therefore we have to learn the simplicity of lesson 125 - that at all times, what I am giving I am receiving. If I do not like what I am experiencing, I must recognize I have chosen it and have given it, and have therefore received it. And I have done this to myself. I must be mistaken if I have given myself suffering, and I made the decision myself, but I want to choose otherwise because I want to be at peace.

This is all tied together. It is the one law of God that everything is always shared, everyone is always included, and you will never escape the consequences of your giving. If want to stop suffering, learn to stop making others suffer. If you want to be happy, give happiness. If you want to feel loved, learn to love. You will heal as you let the Holy Spirit teach you to heal. And you will find God in your brother as you learn that your brother is a part of your shared identity in Christ.