A little more learning from A Course

Always walk through Life as if you have something new to learn and you will.
-Vernon Howard

More from ACIM's final lessons.

Once again I rushed through the lessons for holiday reasons.  I want to clasp their meaning so I put them here.

The Terminolgy

Before I begin I want to clarify some confusion that may arise from the  terminology.  As I have stressed before...terms, words, descriptors  are just pointers that do not adequately describe what something 'is'.  Getting hung up on the words can therefore limit the Beingness of something and thus our true understanding of it. 

We are conditioned to think in such limited terms.  We see God as this paternal figure in the sky and thus limit Him in that way.  We use the pronouns Him...to limit him to a gender or human form probably because it is less threatening for us to do so.  We therefore limit the term "Father" ...when a father is a "creator" .  God is the Creator of all things...is how I see God.  I do use the "Him" and the "Father"  because it is familiar with my upbringing but again these are just words.

A Course in Miracles is full of masculine terminology, using 'brother' and brotherhood' , 'Son 'etc....why I am not sure other than it is trying to reach human understanding in a patriarchal mindset.  Don't get hung up on that...see "brother' as just a word used to express 'human' and brotherhood as 'humanity.   Son is all God's human creation.  It helps. Women and children are included, no less or no more significantly than man.

'Christ' is a big one people may have trouble with and therefore deem this text to be sacra religious. The text and lessons keep referring to all of us as Christ when we become fully awakened.  It took me a long time to figure that out .  It is not saying we are Jesus.  Jesus was the  Messiah of the Christ. It is saying that we are One with Jesus when we become awakened to the truth of who we are..."God's creations'. I see "Christ" as consciousness...the unified consciousness. It is this that Jesus taught when He said the "Kingdom of Heaven is within". The truth is within us...this consciousness is within us.

Not Preaching anything!  Just Learning!

I am not asking you to read A Course...to believe any of it or what I say here.  I am just writing down some wisdom I have gained from it. If it is not for you , it is not for you.  As I finish the lessons for the third and possibly final time, however, I want to ensure I have gained all that was meant to be gained from this text before I put it away. 

Like everything I approach, I do so with an open mind...I read, I study and then I evaluate its effect on me.  Did it resonate?  Did I "feel" it? Does it seem like truth? The answer to these questions is, "Yes it resonated , made sense and seemed like truth.  And I feel it was speaking to me and all humanity. It feels 'right' to me as I begin awakening."

Love these words from Lesson 352.

Judgment and love are opposites.  From one come all the sorrows of the world.  But from the other comes the peace of God Himself.

Let's look at this statement in more detail.  Judgment and Love are opposites? 

Well judgment ...the duality of our perceptions...this need to determine good or bad, right or wrong, ugly or beautiful etc makes us resist life and keeps us in a mental prison of fear. We retract with judgment.Thus creating sorrow and our version of "suffering". Now remember suffering/"dukkha" is not necessarily pain...it is resistance of pain because we judge it as something to be avoided.

Love on the other hand is freedom.  We expand with Love. Love is acceptance of Life as it is...therefore it is an acceptance of what God offers us. This brings peace.

Lesson 353
Nothing is mine alone....Then I lose myself in my Identity, and recognize that Christ is but my Self.

This lesson speaks to  the Greater Self over the little "self". The Greater self encompasses all humanity to which A Course refers to as 'Christ'.  Christ represents all of us...one united 'brotherhood' of man (though the terminology is masculine it is meant to include women and children) which Jesus was the messiah of. I think of it as united consciousness. So we join with one another...we join Christ in this mission to awaken the world...in so doing we lose this little version of 'self' for the greater Identity of Self.  Yoga also refers to Self.

Lesson 354
I have no self except the Christ in me
Again we are taken back to this united consciousness in this lesson.  The only true Identity we have is the Christ in us.  We are all children of the Creator-God and we stand together in peace.

Lesson 355
There is no end to all the peace and joy, and all the miracles that I will give, when I accept God's Word.....
I see this to mean that when we accept God's Word, His will for us...Life as it is...we will 'awaken'...we will find true peace and joy.  The miracle refers to this awakening to the  Truth of who and what we are  and the freedom from our mental egoic prisons  it will offer us.

I am sure my treasure waits for me, and I need but reach out my hand to find it. It is very close. I need but wait an instant more to be at peace forever. The Lesson goes on to say that this treasure, this Truth, waits for all of us and we are so very close...we are actually touching it and it is but an instant away from us. We just have to wake up to see it and experience it. We are so close to God.

Lesson 356
Healing is but another name for God,
Knowing God is everything...it heals all wounds and puts away all illusions.

Lesson 357
Truth answers every call we make to God, responding first with miracles, and then returning unto us to be itself.
The truth of who we are and what Life is beyond all our conditioning ...will answer us ....when we seek God.  We will see this truth in miracles (in healing, in understanding, in recognizing...and in our ability to forgive ourselves and each other for our confusion up until then)

Forgiveness, truth's reflection, tells me how to offer miracles, and thus escape the prison house in which I think I live.
The miracle we offer is our forgiveness...it is the most healing thing we can give and receive because it means we put aside our illusions and see the world, ourselves and God for What It really is.

"Behold his sinlessness, and be you healed."
This is the only true healing.

All is well!