The Eternal Now

March 17, 2016February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

THE ETERNAL NOW: IT’S HERE! IT’S HERE!

Graphic by Deposit Photos

Article by Rev Reja Janaki Joy Green*
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Regardless of whether the body appears to be getting out of bed in the morning,
going home at night, or sitting reading a book, it is unavoidably now.
The fact that it is always now never can be changed.
It is impossible to make it be not-now.

Dziuban, Peter Francis Consciousness Is All: Now Life Is Completely New (p. 114).
Blue Dolphin Publishing, Inc. Kindle Edition.

When we were younger, my twin sister used to say that being with me is like looking at the sun. She was implying, in a not too veiled way, that I am an intense person and sometimes it is uncomfortable to be with me. I took it as a compliment.

I suppose I recalled the memory of this observation just ‘now,’ because I am venturing to write about a subject that is, for the most part, ignored—much like the fact that we are all going to die some day.

To visit the NOW might be like looking at the sun for some people. If we are going along, living our lives based on an imagined past and an inevitable future, the Present Moment of NOW might be viewed as something that would only gum up the system.

In fact, it stops the system.

Thus, when an idea challenges our reality, there is fear. We may not know how we got to this life, but we have developed ‘by now’ a way of coping with where we find ourselves. We have mitigated the fear of the unknown by building beliefs about what is so. These are the beliefs that are sacrosanct and not to be questioned, because to question these beliefs is to question our sanity.

However, you are reading these words. Something peeked your interest and brought you here. There are no accidents. When a person comes into our lives, or a book, a song, a movie—we have the opportunity to see it as a gift from our Soul, and pay attention.

There are no accidents in salvation. Those who are to meet will meet because together they have the potential for a holy relationship. They are ready for each other.

~ A Course in Miracles Original Edition [ACIM OE M], Manual for Teachers #3. Par 1

Every decision we have ever made has brought us to this MOMENT.

For me, right NOW, the moment is a beautiful March morning on my loft in which I have time to type and share my thoughts.

If you stop a moment to take notice, right NOW, you too can describe the MOMENT for you.

Yet it is always and forever, NOW. And that’s a beautiful thought. It doesn’t have to produce fear. There is strife only when we hold onto anything. In the letting go and accepting what is, there is PEACE.

In the ACIM Study Group I attend, which has been meeting every Sunday for several years here in Omaha, Nebraska, there is a gentleman who reminds us often of something he learned from his experience. He tells us the key to Peace, or to any difficult situation, is ‘Surrender’. This gentle person had a shift in consciousness and experienced himself as Pure Conscious Awareness. He ‘knows’ It is what HE IS NOW, what I AM NOW and what YOU ARE NOW. It never changes. When we surrender to what is, there is PEACE.

Be still and KNOW—God. [Love, Peace, Joy]

Years ago, many of us took the Werner Erhard Seminar Training [E.S.T.] and I often recall that the bottom line was, after two weekends of sitting in a hotel ballroom on a fold-up chair with very little food or sleep — “What IS, IS. And what isn’t, isn’t.”

How profound is that! Perhaps we could go further and ask ourselves these questions: Are we aware of this moment? Is the moment NOW? Is the moment HERE? Can we change this moment of NOW to not be the moment, to not be NOW, or to not be here?

Which brings us to the main focus of this essay: It’s HERE – It’s HERE.

As little girls, my twin sister and I had devised a game at the same time, yet unbeknownst to each other. When one of us shared with the other what we were doing, we were both stunned. We had each felt that the experience was our own discovery.

The process was to stare at an object, any object, and say to ourselves, “It’s here. It’s here.”

Soon, we were acutely aware of the moment of time in which we were looking at the object. The object faded from our attention, which was now placed in the present moment. Our full attention was on Presence, i.e. Pure Conscious Awareness.

And this was fine, for a while. It was fine until we tried to stop the game, and discovered “it’s here”. Ok. Well, that is all good, but now I want to get back to other things, and “it’s here.” Cool. I get it. Time to return. “It’s here.” Yikes. This is a tiny bit scary. I can’t seem to stop this presence. “It’s here.” But won’t it stop at some point? Won’t I find the end? “it’s here.” Isn’t there a place outside of Presence, outside of the NOW? “It’s here.” But now it seems like a dream I can’t wake up from. “It’s here.” When I do seem to wake up, I’m still here! It’s beginning to feel like a light show, or a kaleidoscope that keeps opening and opening and opening and never, ever stops! “It’s here.” There is no end! There will never, ever be an end! It is eternal! I have touched the face of infinity! The NOW has never started and it will never end. “It’s here.” Let me out!!

Even though it took quite a bit of words to describe this process, the experience itself took less than a minute. Time was ‘there’, as usual, with one minute seemingly coming after the other, and then it wasn’t. Or rather, it was there all at once. It was there AND not there. It was All AND Nothing. It was the Alpha and Omega.

Eventually, at some point, my sister and I had to force ourselves to forget what we were doing. By ‘now’, we were terrified. We were like a caged animal, trapped in a never-ending dream. With each attempt to escape, we were faced with another instance of the Moment, which we resisted. And it was this resistance that caused our pain and suffering.

Instead, we could have asked ourselves if there were actually something to resist or fear? Could we surrender to the truth of this experience? Could we accept what Is, Is, and what isn’t, isn’t? Could we open to the knowing of Who We Are as Pure Conscious Awareness, which will never die, and extends Itself forever?

[Lesson 67] Love created me like Itself.

I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols nor raise my own self-concepts to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like Itself.

~ ACIM OE Workbook Lesson 84 Review of Lesson 67

What could this ‘knowing’ mean for us?

Could it mean that nothing we have ever done in ‘time’ has changed Who We Truly Are?
We give all the meaning our experience has. What if we found the courage to experience the essence of Pure Conscious Awareness? What would that be like? How would it inform our perceptions and our experience here in ‘time’?

What actually gives meaning to our experience if not the ground of BEING, which is Pure Awareness?

Only when I align my True Self with Pure Conscious Awareness am I able to open to the idea — I AM the Perfect, Sinless, Child of God.

This is Forgiveness [opening to that which is REAL, here and now]. This is Salvation [opening to that which is REAL, here and now]. This is the Atonement [opening to that which is REAL, here and now].

There is no other path. And so we celebrate what IS—Love IS! God IS! We ARE!

As we learn in A Course in Miracles:

⁵¹ The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described, and it cannot be explained. I can make you aware of the conditions of truth, but the experience is of God. Together we can meet its conditions, but truth will dawn upon you of itself.”

~ ACIM OE Text CH 8 VI

In this beautiful MOMENT of NOW, shall we open to Who We Are and will forever BE. Can we open to knowing that these words I am typing are from the very center of my Being, which is your Being as well?

There is ONE Extension of the One Creator and Thou Art That!

And so it is!
AMEN ♥

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*Reverend Reja Joy Green is one of the founding members of the Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]; She is the CIMS webmaster, eMagazine editor and producer of the Daily Lesson Mailings [example of mailings]. Rev. Reja Joy facilitates the Course in Miracles study group in Omaha and is ordained as a Community Miracles Center minister. Rev Reja Joy facilitated the 2013 free ACIM DAILY Lesson Conference Calls along with Rev. Pamela Whitman.

As a registered Yoga Instructor, Rev. Reja Joy teaches through her RejaJoy-Yoga-Studio from the perspective of A Course in Miracles and hosts several social media groups for those who share this journey. Rev. Reja Joy currently resides with her loving husband Chris Green in Omaha, NE.

Course in Miracles Society (CIMS) is an international group of Course students and teachers organized to discover, authenticate and propagate the divine teachings of A Course in Miracles. As students, we seek to increase our knowledge of Jesus’ words and to deepen our experience of his teaching. As teachers, we work to circulate the message of A Course in Miracles throughout the world by our words, by our deeds and by the example of our lives. Jcim.net

Vital Message of Forgiveness

May 28, 2015February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

VITAL MESSAGE OF FORGIVENESS

Graphic by ©Deposit Photos

Article by Rev Reja Janaki Joy Green*
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AUDIO of ARTICLE [mp3]

Recently I’ve been asked, by many students of A Course in Miracles, for my response to a recent mass email from the author, Gary Renard, with the title: “A Vital Message From Gary Renard About The Editing Of A Course In Miracles”

My friends were curious to see how I would respond, especially since I am one of the co-founders of Course in Miracles Society [CIMS] and publisher of A Course in Miracles – Original Edition [ACIM OE], both of which were among the targets of the email from Gary.

It seems that the purpose of Gary Renard’s email was to respond to the remarks about the Original Edition and about the Foundation for Inner Peace[FIP] made by Rev. Tony Ponticello, at the recent 2015 ACIM Conference in New York City.

A friend had forwarded to me a second email she had received from Gary Renard with the subject, “Join Gary in England, and Save Money Before June 1^st”, and wrote:

“Joy,

When you go to his website, he has a link that’s called: Gary Renard on the Urtext
I think it is basically a copy of the mass-email.

I have such mixed feelings about someone who so poorly represents the Course… by purporting to love the Course and be the person who will show us how we all can come to know our True Selves and live on this Earth.

The catch-22 of being required to see Gary as someone calling out for Love without actually telling him he is ‘in error’ is really mind-blowing!

It is a strong lesson indeed!”

How to respond? How to answer this conundrum for myself? And yet to respond to this seeming attack feels like nothing less than a call to JOY! In fact, I told my husband that it feels as if it were related to the very reason for my Soul journey, actually for Our journey as the SonShip, in this illusory time and space.

If not now, when, oh Holy Child of God?

Along those lines, it also feels as though it is an opportunity to demonstrate the theme of the past Conference, which was: “The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a PRESENT LOVE.” ACIM OE CH 26, X 82

Just now, I was preparing the Early Mailing of the Daily Lessons and Text Readings for May 18^th and reviewing the TEXT selection of the day for an opening QUOTE, when the choice made itself known. Many of the paragraphs caught my attention, as they usually do, and yet this one brought tears to my eyes.

²⁷Now has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of past hurts, and it reacts to the present as if it were the past. The ego cannot tolerate release from the past, and although the past is no more, the ego tries to preserve its image by responding as if it were present. Thus it dictates reactions to those you meet now from a past reference point, obscuring their present reality. In effect, if you follow the ego’s dictates, you will react to your brothers as though they were someone else, and this will surely prevent you from perceiving them as they are. And you will receive messages from them out of your own past because, by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to let it go. You thus deny yourself the message of release that every brother offers you now. ACIM OE CH 12 IV

Why did I choose this paragraph? In fact, why did I choose this entire section, “Healing and Time”? Why was this the message that tugged at my heart in relation to the controversial comments by Rev Tony Ponticello and Gary Renard?

I believe that the drama of this controversy, and the messages in this section of the text, epitomize the message of A Course in Miracles. It demonstrates a challenge and a decision that I think we are ready for. Perhaps that is why Rev Tony Ponticello took the bold move to say words, he admitted later, would ‘Rile up the crowd’ and get a discussion going. Perhaps “All things are Lessons God would have me learn.” Lesson 193

The paragraph begins with,

²⁶ “Now has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of past hurts, and it reacts to the present as if it were the past.” ACIM OE CH 12 IV

Why does the Now have no meaning to the limited thought system? What does the Now hold that makes it of no use to the ego, except to remind us of the past? Could it be that it holds— “NOTHING?” And yet could it also be that it also holds —“EVERYTHING?!” The Now is empty of the past and the future, and yet it holds the essence of our BEING. In this chapter, we read:

³⁰ “It is in the reality of now, without past or future, that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. For only now is here, and it presents the opportunities for the holy encounters in which salvation can be found.” ACIM OE CH 12 IV

The Now “presents the opportunities for the holy encounters in which Salvation can be found.” That’s why it is important to our Souls and demeaned by the ego. It is in the Now that we have the opportunity to release our illusion of separation and find our salvation.

If the ego is a thought of fear, born of separation and time, where is it, once the light of Truth and Love shine within the ‘Present Moment of Now’? There is no wonder the ego gives the Now no meaning. In the Now, if we don’t drag-in the past, the ego dissolves back into the nothingness from which it came. That’s exactly why the ego is attached to the past.

²⁶ “The ego has a very strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that your questioning might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the past and in the end believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful.” ACIM OE CH 12 IV

In the ego thought system, who needs the present when we can dredge up the past and make it continuous with the future?

²⁶ “For the ego uses the present only as a brief transition to the future, in which it brings the past to the future by interpreting the present in past terms.” ACIM OE CH 12 IV

I remember clearly the E.S.T. training I took three and a half decades ago, in which the trainer wrapped his foot under the rung of a chair and walked across the stage, dragging the chair. He was demonstrating how we hold onto the past and drag it with us into the present.

Thus, when we condemn a brother for doing anything, we are holding him to the ‘past’, whether it is something that occurred thirty years ago or last week.

And yet the message of the Course is that we are ONE SELF, united with our creator. To condemn a ‘part’ is to perpetuate the separation by seeing our brother as separate, and to see only the past is to lose sight of the only time there is. The ego uses the past to avoid the present at all costs.

When the ego emphasizes our guilt, it is making certain that the future will repeat the past, so we can avoid the present. How crazy is that!

²⁶ “You will remember that we said its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past and thus avoiding the present. By the notion of paying for the past in the future, the past becomes the determiner of the future, making them continuous without an intervening present.” ACIM OE CH 12 IV

What then are we making REAL for ourselves, when we recreate scenarios of the past, which weren’t real then and are equally unreal, in this moment of Now?

²⁷ “In effect, if you follow the ego’s dictates, you will react to your brothers as though they were someone else, and this will surely prevent you from perceiving them as they are. And you will receive messages from them out of your own past because, by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to let it go. You thus deny yourself the message of release that every brother offers you now.” ACIM OE CH 12 IV

In the beginning of paragraph 27 we learn,

²⁷“The ego cannot tolerate release from the past, and although the past is no more, the ego tries to preserve its image by responding as if it were present. Thus it dictates reactions to those you meet now from a past reference point, obscuring their present reality.” ACIM OE CH 12 IV

At the 2015 ACIM Conference, there was a moment when Gary Renard and his wife were at the water fountain at the same time my husband and I were there. Gary seemed to recognize us and quickly grabbed his wife’s hand and began to run down the hall.

³⁰““The Holy Spirit teaches that you always meet yourself and the encounter is holy because you are.”
“The ego teaches that you always encounter your past, and because your dreams were not holy, the future cannot be, and the present is without meaning.” ACIM OE CH 12 IV

That moment was a chance for a holy encounter, and yet we missed our chance.

Later, in one of the presentations, the participants were asked to hug one another, and take three deep breaths. We were then asked to look into one another’s eyes, while getting in touch with who we are and who our brother is. The person behind me had Gary Renard as a partner and when the Presenter asked for volunteers to share their experience, she raised her hand. She shared how their bodies made a tent as they hugged and how they were unbalanced and almost fell over as they teetered. Later, at the end of the presentation, I turned around and found myself facing Gary Renard. I was aware of the temptation to perceive conflict and aware of the previous person’s sharing and even so, in that instant, there was only Love. We hugged closely and both of us melted, as I whispered, “I love you, Gary.”

Love is the only answer, as He tells us,

⁹⁰“A little knowledge is an all-encompassing thing. If you are grateful to each other, you are grateful to God for what He created. Through your gratitude, you can come to know each other, and one moment of real recognition makes all men your brothers because they are all of your Father. Love does not conquer all things, but it does set all things right.” ACIM OE CH 4 VII

Now I know why the last line of that original paragraph27 made me cry. Gary has offered me the message of release. He has given me the chance to release the past and open to the Now, in which “we can come to know each other.” He is my brother, because he is of our Father, and what is left of our past is but a blessing. ♥

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*Reverend Reja Joy Green is one of the founding members of the Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]; She is the CIMS webmaster, eMagazine editor and producer of the Daily Lesson Mailings [example of mailings]. Rev. Reja Joy facilitates the Course in Miracles study group in Omaha and is ordained as a Community Miracles Center minister. Rev Reja Joy facilitated the 2013 free ACIM DAILY Lesson Conference Calls along with Rev. Pamela Whitman.

As a registered Yoga Instructor, Rev. Reja Joy teaches through her RejaJoy-Yoga-Studio from the perspective of A Course in Miracles and hosts several social media groups for those who share this journey. Rev. Reja Joy currently resides with her loving husband Chris Green in Omaha, NE.

Our Creations

April 1, 2014February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

OUR CREATIONS

by Reja Janaki Joy Green*
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Ah that word ‘Creation’ again. It has plagued Course students for decades. We think we know what it means and then we lose it again.

On the M-F ACIM TEXT Conference Call today we read the following. [By the way, the call is free and open to everyOne. More info is here: http://www.jcim.net/acim-conference-calls/]:

Chapter Eight The Journey Back VI. The Power of Joint Decision http://www.jcim.net/acim_us/TxtChap-8-6.php

⁴⁵ “You want your creations as He wants His. Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for your creation. They do not leave you, any more than you have left your Creator, but they extend your creation as God extended Himself to you. Can the creations of God Himself take joy in what is not real? And what is real except the creations of God and those which are created like His? Your creations love you as your Soul loves your Father for the gift of creation. There is no other gift which is eternal, and therefore there is no other gift which is true”. ACIM CH 8 VI

So we might question, “What are our CREATIONS?” Can we ‘see’ them. Can we take joy in them if they are not ‘real’? Ah perhaps that’s the key. Are they ‘Real’?

We perceive what is transient and finite. And we are learning that only what is Eternal is True and stems from Knowledge. So it would seem that the beauty of our ‘creations’ on this plane is merely an illusion. How could they be TRUE if they are perceptions.

And thus, in this Dream, it would seem we are learning that creation is impossible and that this world is an illusion.

Or is it?

I’m thinking that we might not be able to ‘understand’ what is meant by ‘our creations’ but we may very well ‘experience’ what is meant by them.

We read in today’s TEXT reading segment about ‘experience’:

⁵¹ “The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described, and it cannot be explained. I can make you aware of the conditions of truth, but the experience is of God. Together we can meet its conditions, but truth will dawn upon you of itself. [emphasis is mine.]” ACIM CH 8 VI

Maybe we need to pause and step back to see it from outside of the usual way we think of ‘creation’ or anything-everything, for that matter.

I recall coming across this in “GOD I AM: From Tragic to Magic” by Peter O Erbe, a book that has been described as a mini-ACIM:

GOD I AM:“We should not lose heart when we are told that this world is an illusion. The tree, the lake, the lark and the sky or a crisp mountain morning-the delight of little ones chasing clumsily through meadows lift our hearts and thus point the way. The truth becomes reversed when these are seen as being apart from us.

“There is beauty here, indeed – in fact, the elation at the sight of creation seen as my Being, and not perceiving myself as being separate from it, reverses the known picture to the extent of beauty being All-There-Is. Nothing outwardly may have changed, but one’s seeing is now knowledge, not perception any more. In an instant one is transported into a higher dimension. One has come into one’s own. That now the outward scene adapts itself to one’s reality, should not come as a surprise.” Pg 161

This reminds me of Lesson 268 “Let all things be exactly as they are.” .

“1 Let me not be Your critic, Lord, today, and judge against You. Let me not attempt to interfere with Your creation and distort it into sickly forms. Let me be willing to withdraw my wishes from its unity and thus to let it be as You created it. For thus will I be able, too, to recognize my Self as You created me. In Love was I created, and in Love will I remain forever. What can frighten me when I let all things be exactly as they are?ACIM Lesson 268

We also learn in the Course that “Heaven is here. There is nowhere else. Heaven is now. There is no other time.” ACIM Manual for Teachers #24 And so it keeps dawning on me that we could awaken RIGHT NOW. Change can come in the twinkling of an eye, which is an idea expressed in this exquisite song created during those magical days at FINDHORN:

CHANGE CAN COME (Words and Music by Lark Batteau)

“Change can come in the twinkling of an eye,
In the ripple upon a lake.
Change can come in the color of a flower,
In the sparkle of morning dew.
When the Light catches you.
In that tiny moment, you are transformed.And the radiance of Christ Shines forth in reply
From within, and has made itself known,
And from the two is born A new world.

Come let us join Our many gold flickerings
And create one Light, Together, Forever.”

Orbe’s book continues on:

GOD I AM: “This is the awakening. One now sees all as it really is and the memory of one’s ‘normal’ state of mind in Social Consciousness seems like death itself. One has come home. And it is so natural. One experiencing this knows this to be the natural heritage of every soul on Earth. The thrill of joy, the excitation, and yet the absolute peace one IS, is too far beyond words. One is complete.” Pg 161 GoodReads Review

This brings to mind recounts of Near Death Experiences [NDE]: Anita Moorjani, Billy Fingers and Dr. Rajiv Parti, for example. The Dr shared that he experienced this change in perception during his NDE and when he regained consciousness he was filled with GRATITUDE! NDE Stories .

GOD I AM: “Such sight would be at a loss for words, for words for this have not been coined. One with such sight would weep with joy and utter only this: Thank you God for being God! Thank you for being the ME of me.

“Such one would see his brother as he truly is, as God created him. And if his brother be the meanest the world has known, capable of horrifying deeds – this one sees with eyes unveiled and what does He behold? He cannot share his sight in words, for there are none. In speechless wonder he beholds a radiant jewel, a beauty so divine, – his crystal SELF. He becomes witness to the living God. To him who sees with such sight, the true meaning of the Last Judgment is revealed And truly, there is such a thing as this. And He who speaks it, says: BEHOLD – MY SON IS INNOCENT! What else, I ask, could Love say to its own SELF?”

How powerful this is!

GOD I AM: “At this point we may have comprehended in depth already what this material is trying to bring to our awareness: our experience of life on Earth can be Heaven on Earth, if we allow it to be so. To allow means not to resist but to see life as a whole and not single out parts and value those as wholes in themselves. If we insist on our upside-down perception we fail our mission.

“Our brothers and the Earth itself with all its beauty are not the illusion But our perception of it is. Truth is not absent here, make no mistake, but it is certainly obscured.” Pg 161

Thank you God, for being GOD! Thank you for being the ME of me. ♥

I will let everything point the way Home! Everything can be an expression of Love – IS an expression of Love. I will be witness to the living GOD – right here and right now.

Om SHANTI!

Photo by Mitzi Condit ~ NM, USA

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*Reverend Reja Joy Green is one of the founding members of the Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]; She is the CIMS webmaster, eMagazine editor and producer of the Daily Lesson Mailings [example of mailings]. Rev. Reja Joy facilitates the Course in Miracles study group in Omaha and is ordained as a Community Miracles Center minister. Rev Reja Joy facilitated the 2013 free ACIM Daily LESSON Conference Calls along with Rev. Pamela Whitman.

As a registered Yoga Instructor, Rev. Reja Joy teaches through her RejaJoy-Yoga-Studio from the perspective of A Course in Miracles and hosts several social media groups for those who share this journey. Rev. Reja Joy currently resides with her loving husband Chris Green in Omaha, NE.

Perception versus Knowledge

March 5, 2014February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

Questions and Answers

In Light of ACIM

[as it appeared in the JAN FEB 2014 eMAGAZINE]

QUESTION: “How do we release our past conditioning which effects how we perceive everything in this world and keeps us stuck in illusion and away from knowledge?”

ANSWER: We begin with a definition of both perception and knowledge. This distinction will help us to understand the dynamics between them and their relationship to our Awakening. This Awakening is the release of our past conditioning.

Some people would define ‘perception’ as the end-result of the processing of our senses. For example, we process the feeling of the sun on our face by our sense of touch. The sun‘s rays touch our face and we process the sensation into a perception. We perceive its warmth.

Once we translate that sensation into a perception we relate it to our store of prior events which brings an understanding of what the perception is. We eventually come to comprehend that our sun which orbits our planet earth is radiating its light and warmth. However, is this later realization knowledge or ‘comprehension’?

Knowledge would likely be defined by most people as the end-result of the processing of our perceptions. In other words, we process the feeling of the sun on our face by our sense of touch into a perception. Then our mind analyzes the perception further into what we might consider as knowledge of the various attributes of the sun’s rays, the chemical processes on our skin, etc.

But, again, is this knowledge or is it merely ‘comprehension’?

In a remarkable book titled “GOD I AM: From Tragic to Magic”, channeled with the aid of Immanuel and St. Germain, scribe Peter O. Erbe writes:

“God can be known but not comprehended. Comprehension is perception with the mind. To perceive, I have to be apart from the perceived. This indicates division. Physicality is polarity. God is union, therefore not comprehensible by a polarized, that is divided, mind.”
“From within the realm of polarities we can only feel into the subject matter in a manner which induces the remembrance of an ancient knowing in our soul.” P. 17

And we find these complimentary thoughts from within A Course in Miracles:

¹² God honored even the miscreations of His Children because they had made them, but He also blessed them with a way of thinking that could raise their perceptions until they became so lofty that they could reach almost back to Him. The Holy Spirit is the Mind of the Atonement. It represents a state of mind that comes close enough to one-mindedness that transfer to it is at last possible. Transfer depends on common elements in the old learning and the new situation to which it is transferred. Perception is not knowledge, but it can be transferred to knowledge or cross over into it. It might even be more helpful here to use the literal meaning of “carried” over since the last step is taken by God. ACIM.OE.CH5.12 [bold emphasis is mine]

Perception can be lifted up and brought close to knowledge. Comprehension, of that which is perceived, gives way to that which cannot be perceived but only KNOWN. Oneness knows only Wholeness and Unity.

We are told that “From within the realm of polarities we can only feel into the subject matter…” which induces within us “the remembrance of an ancient knowing in our soul”.

From Chapter 21 of A Course in Miracles we find the following:

⁸ Listen-perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a song whose name is long forgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered. Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of melody, attached not to a person or a place or anything particular. But you remember from just this little part how lovely was the song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and listened with you. ACIM.OE.21.8

Recently in an ACIM Study Group, the discussion centered on how our perceptions stem from our prior conditioning and how very difficult it is to rid ourselves of what we have learned. This problem almost seems to be beyond healing and yet we are learning, in the Course, that healing is certain. Let’s look closely at the mechanism that is keeping us trapped within perception and away from Right Perception, which moves toward Knowing.

What is the nature of this TRAP?

“Repeated experience causes repeated judgment. This creates habits of perception. Habits of perception may be seen like grooves in the mind. The deeper the groove, the more fixed becomes our belief in what the groove contains. “ GOD I AM p.28

And the Course poignantly describes this dilemma as such:

⁶ The blind become accustomed to their world by their adjustments to it. They think they know their way about in it. They learned it, not through joyous lessons, but through the stern necessity of limits they believed they could not overcome. And still believing this, they hold those lessons dear and cling to them because they cannot see. They do not understand the lessons keep them blind. This they do not believe. And so they keep the world they learned to “see” in their imagination, believing that their choice is that or nothing. They hate the world they learned through pain. And everything they think is in it serves to remind them that they are incomplete and bitterly deprived. ACIM.OE.CH21.6

So we now see that our thoughts are trapped within the grooves of our mind, carved out by habits of perception. We could acquiesce to the way we think things are, believing there is no other choice, that it is this way or nothing. Or we could open our minds to a way to be released from bondage by believing that there is another way.

As long as we perceive ourselves within the groove, we are attached to the groove and we continue to blame the groove, viewing it as the CAUSE of our suffering.

“The form always represents the effect, not the CAUSE. Treatment of the effect, being only a symptom, can only displace or shift the symptom.” GOD I AM p. 28

A Course in Miracles describes it as such:

⁸ Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. ACIM.OE.LESSON140.8

By focusing on the ‘grooves’ of our learned perceptions, we stay stuck. More than that, we ‘stabilize’ these perceptions rather than release them. So we might ask how do we stop this vicious cycle? How do we release the habit of thinking the grooves are the CAUSE of our unhappiness and believing we are unable to behave differently and thus deepening the grooves. Are we only solidifying our perceptions by our beliefs? Can we pick ourselves up out of the grooves by our own bootstraps. In other words, REBOOT using perception?

Yes, and the answer is the KEY to Happiness -> True Perception without judgment!

“To perceive without stabilization of perception, however, it becomes imperative to abandon the judgment of that which is perceived, for it is judgment that stabilizes perception. Yeshwa’s advise: ‘Judge not by appearances’ may be understood better in this light. Evaluating, that is judging what we perceive results always in False Perception.

“The thought then, logically and consequently thought to its end, is this: where judgment is not, accusation is absent. Where accusation is not, guilt is absent. Where guilt is not, forgiveness has no purpose and a state without a need for forgiveness must, of necessity, be a state of pure Being, of innocence, a state of enlightenment.” GOD I AM p.28

What is described here is Vision which is within us for the asking, or rather for the ‘allowing’. We were given this Vision at the same ‘time’ we chose to believe in the illusion of separation. We keep the grooves strong and in place and in fact deepen them by our insistence that correction lies in our perception and therefore ‘judgment’ of the grooves. The groove is not a CAUSE of our pain. It is the effect of our thinking that we are separate from our Source and alone.

We were given the Holy Spirit [our Right Mind] which is both able to ‘perceive’ and to ‘know’ and this is the bridge.

¹²What is a miracle but this remembering? And who is there in whom this memory lies not? The light in one awakens it in all. And when you see it in each other, you are remembering for everyone. ACIM.OE.CH21.12

The MIRACLE is the Shift out of this way of ‘thinking’ and into allowing the Thoughts we think with God to enter our most Holy Minds, for they have never left it. They have only been covered up by our belief in fear, our belief in lack and our belief in the grooves! We don’t need to ‘think’ our way out of our rut. We simply need do nothing which allows Love to enter of Its own accord. The Course teaches that ‘Love waits on welcome, not on time.”

“So the answer to the question of how to leave the groove is to wake up to Reality, the very purpose of the soul’s sojourn through the world of matter.” GOD I AM. p. 29

“True Perception [Forgiveness] of this illusion will set us free from the bondage of this dream. It allows the miracle in to heal. A miracle is devoid of degrees. It cares not what we perceive our problem to be, how big or small – it matters not. For where we see many problems, it only knows of one: Separation from Oneness. And to the one problem, it can only bring one answer, provided the miracle is invited and allowed in. For what we call a miracle is nothing else but the truth rushing in if we surrender our defenses.” GOD I AM p.29
[bold emphasis is mine]

“Change can come in the twinkling of an eye.
When the Light catches you.
In that tiny moment, you are transformed.

And the radiance of Christ
Shines forth in reply
From within, and has made itself known,
And from the two is born
A new world.”

~ Words and Music by Lark Batteau [See MUSIC ARTICLE]

Truth will come rushing in when we choose Love, for that is what we ARE. With faith, we come to Know that change can truly come in the twinkling of an eye. ♥
Question and Answer segment written by Rev Reja Joy Green ~ CIMS eMagazine editor

ARTICLE on CIMS Website

Le s s o n 243
Today I will judge nothing that occurs.

¹ I will be honest with myself today. I will not think that I already know what must remain beyond my present grasp. I will not think I understand the whole from bits of my perception, which are all that I can see. Today I recognize that this is so. And so I am relieved of judgment which I cannot make. Thus do I free myself and what I look upon, to be in peace as God created us.

² Father, today I leave creation free to be itself. I honor all its parts, in which I am included. We are one because each part contains Your memory, and truth must shine in all of us as one.

ACIM.OE.WB.243

Temptation to Disbelieve

July 29, 2013February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

TEMPTATION to Disbelieve in
A COURSE IN MIRACLES

Article by Rev Reja Janaki Joy Green*
~*~*~*~*~*~

What does it really mean to be ‘tempted’?

Webster’s Dictionary defines the word TEMPT as:

Definition of TEMPT

1 : to entice to do wrong by promise of pleasure or gain
[Tempted to go off my diet!; I’m tempted to reject these ideas since they seem to be telling me that I need to relinquish even the pleasure and joy I receive from loving those in my life .]

2 a : to make trial of : test [Evaluate so as to accept or reject]
b : provoke tempt fate> [To arouse a feeling or action]
c : to risk the dangers of [Some think that wet hair tempts a cold.]

3 a : to induce to do something [The pull was tempting.]
b : to cause to be strongly inclined <was>tempted to call it quits></was>

Origin of TEMPT

Middle English, from Anglo-French tempter, tenter, from Latin temptare, tentare to feel, try First Known Use: 13th century

Whatever we value intensely in our life we seem to identify with and if it were taken from us, we feel as though our life, as we know it, were over. It no longer seems worth living. Perhaps it is a son or daughter, a spouse, a title, a job, our health which might be or has been taken from us. Now life has no meaning. “That which I deeply valued and gave my life meaning, is gone!”

We might also value JOY in our lives, feeling as though it were our only hope of survival in a world made sick by fear. And if this JOY were threatened, then we feel as though our life were threatened as well. And when the threat seems to have occurred, we feel we have to respond in some way or the JOY will be gone and so will our Joie de vivre; our reason for being here.

And the response we choose is determined by what we think is TRUE about the JOY and what we think is TRUE about ourselves.

If we feel as though our JOY is something that can be threatened, we will be enticed to give up the offending thought system so as to protect our JOY. [This is the first item in the definition of being TEMPTED.] If we feel as though we are a mortal being, finite and at the mercy of the outside world, we will believe we need to protect ourselves.

We might feel as though the Thought system of the Holy Spirit, our Right Mind, A Course in Miracles, has put us on a restrictive regime, too harsh for us to continue. Especially if the regime means we are called to give up JOY!

Yet we are taught in A Course in Miracles that “The Holy Spirit is the spirit of JOY.” A If we trust the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit, the JOY in our hearts, would it ever tell us to release it? Wouldn’t our Holy Minds tell us that the JOY we feel in our lives is as eternal as we are?

“Joy is eternal. You can be sure indeed that any seeming happiness that does not last is really fear. Joy does not turn to sorrow, for the eternal cannot change. But sorrow can be turned to joy, for time gives way to the eternal.” ACIM-OE CH 22, par 18

JOY is not only what we HAVE, as a Gift of God, it’s what we truly ARE. When we are feeling JOYOUS, we are in our Right Mind! Never would we be counseled to reject this, for this is the only reality this dream has.

The second definition of TEMPT is to ‘make trial of; to test’. And so our minds may ask, “How could this curriculum be true when it asks me to give up JOY!” We put the curriculum on trial, test it and judge it. Then we listen to the ego, which knows nothing, as it tell us we are guilty if we feel JOY. It not only tells us this untruth, but then it tells us that this is what A Course in Miracles is teaching. It cautions us that we need to exchange this restrictive thought system for what is familiar to us and less threatening, or we’ll lose everything dear to us. It suggests that we’d rather be guilty than give up JOY! And love tells us to “Hear not this now!”

When we think that our relationships are beginning to bring us pain, we hear the ego tell us to get rid of them for something that will bring us JOY. When we think that our ‘thoughts’ are beginning to bring us pain, we again hear the ego tell us to get rid of them, in exchange for what will bring us JOY.

And the Voice for Love teaches us thus:

“Now the ego counsels thus-substitute for this another relationship to which your former goal was quite appropriate. You can escape from your distress only by getting rid of each other. You need not part entirely if you choose not to do so. But you must exclude major areas of fantasy from each other to save your sanity.

“Hear not this now! Have faith in Him Who answered you. He heard. Has He not been very explicit in His answer?

“Now He asks for faith a little longer, even in bewilderment. For this will go, and you will see the justification for your faith emerge to bring you shining conviction. Abandon Him not now, nor each other. This relationship has been reborn as holy. “ ACIM-OE Ch 17, par 49

We may ask ourselves, “Can our relationship with A Course in Miracles be reborn as holy? Can we have faith, ‘even in bewilderment?’ HE asks us to “Abandon Him not now, nor each other. ”

“In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity 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.” ACIM-OE Ch 31, par 87 ♥

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William Thetford’s Final Independence

July 4, 2013February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

WILLIAM THETFORD ~ Co-SCRIBE of ACIM
April 25, 1923 – July 4, 1988

Article by Rev Reja Janaki Joy Green*
~*~*~*~*~*~

The following is an EXCERPT from the NEW REALITIES interview of Bill Thetford Sept/Oct 1984 Issue:

NR: The authenticity. . ?

WT: Well, the material was something that transcended anything that either of us could possibly conceive of. And since the content was quite alien to our backgrounds, interests and training, it was obvious to me that it came from an inspired source. The quality of the material was very compelling, and its poetic beauty added to its impact.

NR: It seems quite unusual that you, an established psychologist holding two very prestigious positions, would even consider embracing such material, considering your training and the rigid tenets within academia to which you no doubt subscribed and adhered.

WT: I think if it had not been for many of the extraordinary experiences that occurred during the summer of 1965, neither Helen nor I would have been willing to accept the material she scribed. You have reported some of those experiences in these pages in the material from Robert Skutch’s new book “Journey Without Distance, The Story Behind A Course In Miracles“. However, our experience associated with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, was not reported in “New Realities.” Perhaps as much as anything, this series of events crystallized the whole new direction that we would take.

NR: The Mayo Clinic even occurred in September and didn’t the Course begin the next month in October?

WT: Yes. I had been asked to go to the Mayo Clinic and find out why they made money on their psychological service operations, while at Columbia-Presbyterian it seemed that we were always losing money. I thought I knew the answer to that question because we saw primarily clinic patients who couldn’t afford fees, and the patients at the Mayo Clinic were middle or upper class and able to pay. Nevertheless, it seemed this was an important trip to make and I asked Helen to accompany me. Just before we took off – I think it was the night before – Helen had this very vivid image of a church, which she described to me in great detail, she even made a sketch of it. It was an old church with a number of turrets and towers. She thought it was probably a Lutheran Church. She was convinced that somehow we would see that church from the airplane window as we were about to land in Rochester. That, of course, seemed rather unlikely, since the airports I know aren’t built near churches. Anyway, we kept our attention very closely focused on the windows during landing, and much to Helen’s disappointment and distress no such church was visible. In fact, Helen was so upset at not finding her church that I didn’t hold out much hope of accomplishing our business the next day unless she could somehow be reassured. Rather desperately I suggested to Helen that we hire a taxi and see if we could find her church anywhere in the Rochester metropolitan area.

So Helen and I went church hunting. At first we thought we would confine ourselves to Lutheran churches. I think there were two of those, and neither one was remotely like Helen’s image. Then we decided that we might as well see all the other churches while we were at it. I think there were twenty-seven altogether in the environs of Rochester. And not one of them bore any resemblance to Helen’s image. Obviously, she was pretty crushed, but we pulled ourselves together in preparation for the following day’s business.

The next day after we had successfully completed our survey, Helen and I prepared to leave our hotel. I went down to the lobby to wait for her with the luggage, and noticing a newsstand I decided to get a paper. Instead, I saw a little booklet entitled, “The History of the Mayo Clinic.” Thinking it would be nice to have a souvenir of our visit, I purchased it for a dollar.

As I leafed through it very quickly, I saw a picture of Helen’s old church, exactly as she had described it with all the turrets and towers. It was even a Lutheran church. The only problem was that it had been razed and the Mayo Clinic was actually built on the former site of this Lutheran church. It was a very dramatic moment, and I was eager to share it with Helen.

When she came down, I said quickly, “Helen you really weren’t out of your mind after all. Your church was there but it’s no longer around. When you thought you were looking down on it as from an airplane you were really looking back through time.”

Helen displayed a peculiar mixture of emotions. On the one hand, relief that she wasn’t totally crazy, on the other hand, it was clear that she was doing something which she regarded as highly paranormal, and this was an area that made her very uncomfortable.

On our way back to New York, we had to change planes in Chicago. While we were sitting in the waiting room, Helen spied a young woman in the corner reading a magazine and looking vaguely unhappy in the way people frequently do when they are waiting for planes in airports. I was surprised when Helen said to me, “See that young woman over there, she’s really in serious trouble – she’s got a lot of problems.” Helen insisted that she would go over and speak to this woman. As it turned out the woman, whose name was Charlotte, had never been on an airplane before. She had flown on Ozark Airlines to Chicago en-route to New York and was in a state of panic. She knew nothing about New York. We later found out that she was leaving her husband and two young children, and was in a state of great distress.

Charlotte was booked on the same plane as we. During the flight, we sat on either side of her, holding her hand, and trying to calm and soothe her. We asked where she was going to stay in New York since she didn’t know anyone. She said that since she was Lutheran, she thought she would contact a Lutheran church and somehow they would find a place for her in the city. It was at this point that Helen and I exchanged glances. The message was clear to both of us. Helen heard her inner voice saying, “And this is my true church, helping your brother who is in need; not the edifice you saw before.” The authority of this inner voice became increasingly familiar to both of us when the Course began a few weeks later in October.

===============================

Article “Bill Thetford’s Independence Day”
https://cimsmiracles.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/bill-thetfords-independence-day/

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There is no cruelty in God

June 19, 2013February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

THERE IS NO CRUELTY IN GOD AND NONE IN ME.

ACIM LESSON 170

by Reja Janaki Joy Green*
~*~*~*~*~*~

¹ No one attacks without intent to hurt. This can have no exception. When you think that you attack in self-defense, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty. You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom. And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion and from fear.

² How thoroughly insane is the idea that to defend from fear is to attack! ACIM Lesson 170

HE tells us in this lesson that “No one attacks without intent to hurt. This can have no exception.” And yet we make exceptions almost immediately.

One exception might be a situation in which we would attack someone and feel justified. And what about ‘self defense’? Wouldn’t we, at the very least, attack in self-defense? How could we not? Doesn’t the god of fear tell us all that if we do not defend ourselves, we could be hurt? Doesn’t the god of fear tell us that our only protection and security, from a dangerous invasion and from fear, is to ATTACK in retaliation? And so we defend ourselves to keep what we have; or we attack another to get what we think we want. How could we possibly think that we could gain at another’s loss?

⁶⁰ The whole belief that someone loses but reflects the underlying tenet God must be insane. For in this world, it seems that one must gain because another lost. If this were true, then God is mad indeed! But what is this belief except a form of the more basic tenet, “Sin is real and rules the world“? For every little gain must someone lose and pay exact amount in blood and suffering. For otherwise would evil triumph and destruction be the total cost of any gain at all. You who believe that God is mad, look carefully at this and understand that it must be that either God or this must be insane, but hardly both. ACIM CH 25 VIII

A VISITOR to our ACIM Study Group recently shared that an incident had occurred in his home ACIM Study Group. He described the facilitator of his Group as very non-confrontational and accepting. And he described his group demographics as all women, except himself, who were over 60 years old.

A man, an INTRUDER, joined their group and announced that he was going to be taking over. Our VISITOR told us that this man hinted that he had a weapon.

That’s when our VISITOR made the decision, based on the inability of the Facilitator to protect the group and based on the vulnerability of the elderly women in the group, to proceed with a preemptive strike. He told the man that he was leaving and escorted him out by force. As he did so, someone had already called the police and the police took the INTRUDER away.

Our VISITOR reasoned that he was merely acting out the ‘dream’ of the INTRUDER. The INTRUDER was ‘dreaming’ that it was his job to attack the group and cause a reaction. And so our VISITOR was just giving him what he wanted. When he mentioned this, our group exploded in laughter! It seemed like a plausible scenario. The INTRUDER ‘wanted’ to go to jail!

And yet is there another way to see this?

This situation in the ACIM Study Group is a symbol for the many times we ‘see’ attack as real and our defense as justified. We judge what is real for us in any situation and then respond. HE tells us in ACIM Ch 3, VIII:

It does not matter in the end whether you judge right or wrong. Either way, you are placing your belief in the unreal. This cannot be avoided in any type of judgment because it implies the belief that reality is yours to choose from. ACIM CH 3 VIII paragraph 62

When we make a judgment from the belief that we can choose what is real in any situation, we are placing our belief in the unreal. “Nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists”, from the ACIM Introduction. We separate ourselves into separate ‘bodies’ and then protect these bodies by mitigating a perceived attack.

In our Lessons we are being taught to ‘see’ holiness in everything. We are taught in Lesson 37: “My holiness blesses the world.” In this lesson HE tells us:

This idea contains the first glimmerings of your true function in the world or why you are here. Your purpose is to see the world through your own holiness. Thus are you and the world blessed together. No one loses; nothing is taken away from anyone; everyone gains through your holy vision. It signifies the end of sacrifice because it offers everyone his full due. And he is entitled to everything because it is his birthright as a Son of God. ACIM Lesson 37

Amazing!!! No one loses. Nothing is taken from anyone. Blessing everything and everyone with our holiness, with our sight of wholeness and perfection, is our salvation. That is why our brother is our Saviour! When we bless him, no matter what he is choosing to ‘act out’ from his nightmare, we teach the meaning of love.

Your holiness blesses him by asking nothing of him. Those who see themselves as whole make no demands. ACIM Lesson 37

How could we possibly ‘bless’ this INTRUDER, in this situation? He tells us “Your holiness blesses him by asking nothing of him.” In any attack, there is an opponent which is needed for the attack to have meaning. When there is no opposition, the attack fails. It returns to the nothingness from which it came. Its seeming ‘reality’ comes only from the defense it engenders. Without a ‘defense’ it becomes impotent.

He tells us you teach the world by “your quiet recognition that in your holiness are all things blessed.” ACIM Lesson 37 What could occur that does not warrant our quiet recognition of this holiness in all things?

Yet we may wonder how could we ever see that this seeming attack warrants our quiet recognition of ‘holiness’. If we do that, won’t we open ourselves to pain and suffering? Without our defense, wouldn’t there be chaos? And He tells us without the ego all would be Love.

He also tells us that in our defenselessness our safety lies. Attack and defense are two sides of a dance that has been re-enacted over and over since the beginning of our illusory time.

He also tells us that “If I defend myself I am attacked.” ACIM Lesson 37 The situation becomes an ATTACK only if and when I DEFEND myself.

I shared the following in my article, “Avatar and ACIM”:

In the book, “Creating Miracles” written by Carolyn Miller, PhD, there are many examples of those who were in the face of imminent death and yet in that moment they experienced a clarity and a peace and a sense of unconditional love and wholeness that encompassed everything, including the perpetrator. In that moment they became ONE with the perpetrator. The would-be murderer knew that they had been forgiven and released of their guilt and in that Holy Instant they were transformed.

“The strength of right perception is so great
that it brings the mind INTO accord with His
because it yields to His pull which is in all of you.” OrEd.Tx.5.36

So, how could this ‘situation’ have been different?

What could you not accept if you but knew that all events, past, present, and to come, are gently planned by One whose only purpose is your good? ACIM L135

A man comes into the group and announces he is taking over control. The reaction by those who are in the group is one of surprise and then perhaps gaiety! “Welcome dear one!! We’ve been awaiting your arrival. How blessed we are to have you with us today.” The group knows themselves, and the INTRUDER, as whole and complete and still as God created them and from this knowledge of their wholeness they make no demands.” Out of their Knowledge of Who they are and Who the INTRUDER is, they know they need only extend their love.

The INTRUDER is totally caught off guard and then the sinlessness in him recognizes the love that is being shared with him! He opens to the shared recognition of his wholeness and his light. Isn’t that what we all want as well? Isn’t that what we are all searching for?

You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourselves and your brothers totally without judgment.

When you recognize what you and your brothers are, you will realize that judging them in any way is without meaning.

In fact, their meaning is lost to you precisely because you are judging them.

In the presence of knowledge, all judgment is automatically suspended, and this is the process which enables recognition to replace perception. ACIM CH 3 VIII paragraph 63

And so we lovingly bless this brother by seeing what is REAL in him. We need nothing from him. He need not be different. From our Wholeness we see him as Whole. We see him with the eyes of Love. And as we see him, we see ourselves. This is why we came here. This is our salvation.

Your holiness is the salvation of the world. It lets you teach the world that it is one with you, not by preaching to it, not by telling it anything, but merely by your quiet recognition that in your holiness are all things blessed, along with you. ACIM Lesson 37

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Our Attack Thoughts

February 13, 2013February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

Our Attack Thoughts Attack Our Invulnerability

BY REJA JOY GREEN*
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Recently I received a group email which was purported to be “An Actual Craig’s List Personals AD”.

The AD and my RESPONSE are below.

Craig’s list ad–Read it closely folks… a good one.

AN ACTUAL CRAIG’S LIST PERSONALS AD

To the Guy Who Tried to Mug Me in Downtown Savannah night before last.

Date: 2011-11-27, 1:43 am. E.S.T.

I was the guy wearing the black Burberry jacket that you demanded that I hand over, shortly after you pulled the knife on me and my girlfriend, threatening our lives. You also asked for my girlfriend’s purse and earrings. I can only hope that you somehow come across this rather important message.

First, I’d like to apologize for your embarrassment; I didn’t expect you to actually crap in your pants when I drew my pistol after you took my jacket.. The evening was not that cold, and I was wearing the jacket for a reason.. my girlfriend was happy that I just returned safely from my 2nd tour as a Combat Marine in Afghanistan .. She had just bought me that Kimber Custom Model 1911 .45 ACP pistol for my birthday, and we had picked up a shoulder holster for it that very evening. Obviously you agree that it is a very intimidating weapon when pointed at your head … isn’t it?!

I know it probably wasn’t fun walking back to wherever you’d come from with crap in your pants. I’m sure it was even worse walking bare-footed since I made you leave your shoes, cell phone, and wallet with me. [That prevented you from calling or running to your buddies to come help mug us again].

After I called your mother or “Momma” as you had her listed in your cell, I explained the entire episode of what you’d done. Then I went and filled up my gas tank as well as those of four other people in the gas station, — on your credit card. The guy with the big motor home took 153 gallons and was extremely grateful!

I gave your shoes to a homeless guy outside Vinnie Van Go Go’s, along with all the cash in your wallet. [That made his day!]

I then threw your wallet into the big pink “pimp mobile” that was parked at the curb ….. after I broke the windshield and side window and keyed the entire driver’s side of the car.

Earlier, I managed to get in two threatening phone calls to the DA’s office and one to the FBI, while mentioning President Obama as my possible target.

The FBI guy seemed really intense and we had a nice long chat (I guess while he traced your number etc.)

In a way, perhaps I should apologize for not killing you … but I feel this type of retribution is a far more appropriate punishment for your threatened crime. I wish you well as you try to sort through some of these rather immediate pressing issues, and can only hope that you have the opportunity to reflect upon, and perhaps reconsider, the career path you’ve chosen to pursue in life.. Remember, next time you might not be so lucky. Have a good day!

Thoughtfully yours, Semper fi,

Alex

Probably don’t have to ask you to forward this one, it is priceless!

Dearest Friend, This email is so incredibly mind blowing on so many levels. [Even if this email were not authentic, none of our thoughts are idle. They produce effects on some level. We should be asking ourselves, what DO we want to create?]

All I could think of, as I was reading it, were these words,

“In my defenselessness my safety lies.”ACIM Lesson 153

Today’s Lesson is “My holiness blesses the world.” And in the lesson HE tells us, “Those who see themselves as whole make no demands.”

In this morning’s Recorded CONFERENCE CALL I mentioned this email, just saying that I received it from a long time Student.

What came to mind was Les Miserables, where the Bishop told the police that he gave Val jean what he took but said he forgot the candlesticks.

I also remembered a story that KEN WAPNICK shares about how a robber came into his bedroom window to rob him. KEN saw him with the eyes of Christ and offered him more than he was wanting to take.

As the thief left he asked for Ken’s blessing!

“Those who see themselves as whole make no demands.”

Can we remove the idea of SACRIFICE in this world and not reinforce it. Holy Child of God, when will we learn that we are truly invulnerable and to attack our brothers in any way [even if we perceive that he is ‘attacking us’], is to attack our own invulnerability.

As the Son of God, WHO or what could BE attacked. There is nothing anyone could take from us. We are whole and complete and still as God created us. These aren’t just words. They are TRUTH. ♥

Today this was the paragraph that it was my turn to read. How synchronistic!

²There is no other way in which the idea of sacrifice can be removed from the world’s thinking. Any other way of seeing will inevitably demand payment of someone or something. As a result, the perceiver will lose. Nor will he have any idea why he is losing. Yet is his wholeness restored to his awareness through your vision. Your holiness blesses him by asking nothing of him. Those who see themselves as whole make no demands. ACIM Lesson 37

I bless you dear One, as the Son of God.

~Reja Janaki Joy Green
Omaha, NE

*Reja Janaki Joy Green [Reja_CIMS] is one of the founding members of the Course in Miracles Society [CIMS];

Proof of Heaven ~ a book review

December 6, 2012June 17, 2019Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

Proof of Heaven
A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife
By Eben Alexander, M.D.*

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Book Review by REV REJA JANAKI JOY GREEN*

In today’s world of electronic interconnectedness, it’s amazing how some ideas seem to go ‘Viral’ and others don’t.

I received word of this book via a group email from a friend Tricia Aude who was a friend of Helen Schucman and William Thetford, scribe and co-scribe respectively of A Course in Miracles and currently transcribes the messages of Jesus aka Rajpur ( Hindi for ‘place of the prince’) as He delivers them through Paul Tuttle.

Or was it a message I received from another dear friend who mentioned they have just purchased and read it via Kindle or a second friend who shared they had just finished it.

The Universe was saying, pay close attention, just as it did years ago when I kept hearing ‘A Course in Miracles’ mentioned over and over or recently when I learned of Anita Moorjani’s NDE experience. It appears that this is another one of those ‘wake up calls’ from [y/our] BEING.

And so it is!

The most significant facets of this Near Death Experience [NDE] are:

The person who experienced it was a skeptical neurosurgeon scientist.

The CORTEX of his brain was not functioning yet he experienced crystal clear clarity.

He had a complete and total recovery from E. coli meningitis, which is a medical miracle.

We may have seen television shows regarding NDE’s which often begin with phenomenal claims of other worldly experiences and end with a scientific de-bunking using medical science of the brain to prove it was ‘all in their head.’ The evidence the scientists present is offered in an effort to show that there IS no ‘scientific proof’ that these experiences were anywhere but in the physical brain. This is exactly how Eben [Dr. Alexander] thought until his own first-hand experience of an NDE.

“The more I read of the “scientific” explanations of what NDE’s are, the more I was shocked by their transparent flimsiness. And yet I also knew with chagrin that they were exactly the ones that the old “me” would have pointed to vaguely if someone had asked me to “explain” what an NDE is.”

As I began reading this book and began reading some of the doctor’s experiences during his seven day coma I noticed a skepticism that was creeping in. I was asking myself: “Does this feel true or is this just another ploy to sell books and ride on the wave of NDE curiosity?”

Although I am very open minded, I always employ my own internal ‘TRUTH METER’. I ask, “Does this resonate with the Truth I know within as the Christ?” This experience Eben was relaying was very different from the NDE’s I am used to reading and hearing about and that caused my comfort zone to be stretched. His NDE, in the beginning, wasn’t all warm and fuzzy and I wondered if it were truly REAL.

As A Course in Miracles tells us, “Nothing REAL can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the Peace of God.”

When Dr. Alexander began to speak about the REALITY of his experience, that’s when my METER registered GREEN! I was getting a sense that the reality of the Interconnectedness and immensity of Spirit that Eben experienced could never be threatened.

“The word real expresses something abstract, and it’s frustratingly ineffective at conveying what I’m trying to describe. Imagine being a kid and going to a movie on a summer day. Maybe the movie was good, and you were entertained as you sat through it. But then the show ended, and you filed out of the theater and back into the deep, vibrant, welcoming warmth of the summer afternoon. And as the air and the sunlight hit you, you wondered why on earth you’d wasted this gorgeous day sitting in a dark theater. Multiply that feeling a thousand times, and you still won’t be anywhere close to what it felt like where I was.” P.39

Dr. Eben Alexander, husband, father, neurosurgeon contracted the extremely rare condition of E. coli meningitis completely out of the blue. Only 1 in 10 Million people will do the same. He made a full recovery one month after lying in a coma, near death, for seven days. This book is his best attempt at trying to share an experience which was truly beyond words.

As the book progresses, his story becomes an exquisite tapestry. The experiences of his family and friends and doctors in the hospital, dealing with this grave E coli infection, are interwoven with a recounting of Eden’s experience as a consciousness, with no connection to the past, in a ‘place’ where words could never do it justice.

Even though it kept the attention of the reader by the vacillating between the solid world that we know and the ephemeral albeit Real world that Eben was experiencing, it wasn’t until toward the end of the book that I found myself grabbing for the tissues.

Just as we have all experienced wanting to tell everyone we know about a great book we just read or a great movie we just saw, Eben wanted to share this discovery with his friends and family and most of all with his colleagues. And that’s when he came up against ‘himself’. He saw in their eyes his own disbelief; the disbelief he had once embraced.

“I was wildly –and naively–eager to share these experiences, especially with my fellow doctors. After all, what I’d undergone altered my long-held beliefs of what the brain is, what consciousness is, even what life itself means–and doesn’t mean. Who wouldn’t be anxious to hear of my discoveries?”

“Quite a few people, as it turned out. Most especially, people with medical degrees.”

But more than just wanting his colleagues to look beyond the solid physical aspects of their experience, he also extended his Vision to our united situation on this planet. When he expressed these thoughts my heart opened with recognition and empathy:

“For all of the successes of Western civilization, the world has paid a dear price in terms of the most crucial component of existence-our human spirit.”

“The shadow side of high technology—modern warfare and thoughtless homicide and suicide, urban blight, ecological mayhem, cataclysmic climate change, polarization of economic resources—is bad enough.”

“Much worse, our focus on exponential progress in science and technology has left many of us relatively bereft in the realm of meaning and joy, and of knowing how our lives fit into the grand scheme of existence for all eternity.” P.152

“Without recovering that memory of our larger connectedness, and of the unconditional love of our Creator, we will always feel lost here on earth.” P.171

We are all so ensconced in the 3D that it seems we can’t see the forest for the trees. I began to see Eben, much as he sees himself, as another facet of our infinitude who knows now that he is “Here to Heal”. Eben recovered the memory of our larger connectedness.

“So I was communicating directly with God? Absolutely. Expressed that way, it sounds grandiose. But when it was happening, it didn’t feel that way. Instead, I felt like I was doing what we can all do right now through various methods of prayer and deep meditation. Communicating with God is the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times.”

“Omniscient, omnipotent, personal—and loving us without conditions. We are connected as One through our divine link with God.” P.161

There is a part of Eben’s life that I have not mentioned and it has everything to do with the message he received and more importantly the Being who brought the message to him. Now I leave that mystery of WHO that was for you to discover, dear reader, although the message itself is for all to know and to remember.

“You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”
“You have nothing to fear.”
“There is nothing you can do wrong.”

~*~

The following link is to a 30 minute PRESENTATION by Dr. Eben Alexander
http://bitly.com/ProofofHeaven-Alexander

Excerpts:
“The brain is NOT the cause of consciousness.”
“At the deepest level there is ONE Consciousness.”
“The Body and the physical reality is not all there is to the world.”

Morgan Freeman’s “THROUGH THE WORMHOLE” 43 minutes
http://bitly.com/Wormhole-LifeAfterDeath

~*~

*Eben Alexander, MD has been an academic neurosurgeon for the past 25 years, including 15 years at the Brigham & Women’s and the Children’s Hospitals and Harvard Medical School in Boston. Visit him at www.lifebeyonddeath.net

*Rev Reja Janaki Joy Green [Reja_CIMS] is one of the founding members of the Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]; She is the CIMS webmaster, newsletter editor and producer of the Daily Lesson Mailings. Rev Reja facilitates the Course in Miracles study group in Omaha, and at the time of this writing was in the 2nd year of the CMC Ministerial program.

As a registered Yoga Instructor, Rev Reja teaches Hatha Yoga from the perspective of A Course in Miracles and hosts several social media groups for those who share this journey. Currently she resides with her loving husband Chris Green in Omaha, NE.

Forgiveness and Blaming the Victim

June 25, 2012February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

ACIM Q&A

Forgiveness and Blaming the Victim

BY REJA JOY GREEN
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The following is a question, posed on the new blog, “From Anxiety to Love: Finding Inner Peace with A Course in Miracles“. Corinne answered this question beautifully on her blog and a followup answer by Reja is below.

Question: “I don’t understand how forgiveness in the Course is different than blaming the victim. I know that abusive people can, and have, misused the Course and other spiritual teachings to act from ego and hurt others. However, I still see in the Course amongst its teachers that the person who was hurt must then forgive by “accepting that what you thought happened, didn’t” and realizing that one “chose to hurt oneself through the abuser” and other concepts.”

Thank you so much Corinne. The explanation you’ve given on your blog which is here-> http://bitly.com/ACIMQandA-BlamingVictim will resonate with a lot of Course students, I’m sure.

What I’d love to do is hear from other Course in Miracle students on how they would answer this question as well.

I felt the challenge to ask within my Self for how I would have answered this question if it were posed to me and so this Article was born.

~*~

The first part of the question stated:

“I don’t understand how forgiveness in the Course is different than blaming the victim.”

From the wording of this first part of the question, there seems to be a perception that blame is not only possible but that blame is actually occurring in the name of ‘forgiveness’, which makes it seem as though the ‘victim’ is being unfairly treated. And from the perspective of separation, this makes sense.

However we, as students of A Course in Miracles [ACIM], are learning to choose a different kind of ‘perspective’. And it’s a perspective to be used even here in this dream of physical space; even now, in our seeming experience of linear time. There IS NO OTHER Place or Time. The perspective of the Holy Spirit, of our Right Mind, of FORGIVENESS, will bring us to an experience of Peace and JOY ~ here and now! And this is the first step toward our awakening; the first step on this journey without distance to a goal that has never changed.

The whole crux of the solution then is to understand the perspective that ACIM is teaching us. And the answer is closer to us than our breath. It is truly our own BEING. It is the Love that we ARE.

When we choose to come from our Right Mind, which is actually a definition of ‘Forgiveness’, then we are literally coming from the part of our Mind referred to as the Holy Spirit, Higher Self, or Guidance. And this MIND shows us what is REALLY going on, past the limited perception of the ego which is based on separation. And that vision is what Forgiveness truly is.

From the perspective of LOVE [aka Holy Spirit, Higher Self, Guidance, whatever you may call it], blame is impossible. It’s impossible because there is no condemnation. And there is no condemnation because there is no belief in separation. The Course asks us many times who would we attack if we truly knew the ‘other‘ as our Self?

In order for attack to even take place we must first separate ourselves from the other. We must first think that we are different from them; that they are truly separate from us and then we decide whether they deserve either punishment or forgiveness.

From the alternate perspective of UNITY, there is not only no condemnation, there is no separation between the person ‘perceiving the other’ and the ‘other’. This alternate perspective allows us to ponder the idea that what is truly going on is so much more than what our limited minds are showing us. It allows for the idea that what our limited minds are showing us is not Reality. We are not different from our brothers. We are Spirit having a human experience and we are ALL facets of the ONE.

The Course is teaching us that MINDS are JOINED; That we share One Mind with God although we have divided that One mind in separate, warring parts that do not remember their Oneness. Our thoughts create the separation and then we react to it as if it were real.

The SHIFT away from the view that perpetuates ‘separation’ to one that allows the Reality of UNITY to come forward is the MIRACLE. The Course tells us that the miracle is when we remove the blocks to Love’s awareness. The Course tells us that everything that comes from Love is a Miracle.

Now, the next part of the question tells us that the questioner admits:

“I still see in the Course amongst its teachers that the person who was hurt must then forgive by ‘accepting that what you thought happened, didn’t’….”

In this statement we first of all see that the person ‘was hurt’ and then the person who ‘was hurt’ is being told they MUST FORGIVE by denying that it happened. This truly sounds ludicrous and yet there is more here than meets the eye.

If we first look at the idea that the person is HURT, it is agreed that the appropriate reaction is NOT to deny this person’s experience. That would be something the Course calls: ‘denying the DENIAL’ and the Course urges us NOT to do this. So what is DENIAL? DENIAL is occurring when anyone DENY’S their perfection. But our healing will never occur if we continue to deny that we are in DENIAL. J

Yes, the person is hurt. Or yes, I am hurt. We should not deny that feeling. But the HEALING of the DENIAL and the pain which the DENIAL causes is what the Course is teaching us. We hurt. Yes. But in Reality we are still as God created us. We are not the weak and vulnerable and separate person our egos want us to believe we are. That concept of ourselves can cause us to feel hurt but that is not who we are.

Actually, there is nothing outside of us. In reality there is One Mind and that Mind I share with God. Everything else is a call for help and healing, whether it’s from me or from the other person. Any concept of who I am that does not include my perfection and Eternal Being, is a concept supported by my vulnerable ego and will suffer pain.

The Course tells us “I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts.” We learn this so beautifully in Lesson 281 as He teaches us this prayer:

¹ Father, Your Son is perfect. When he thinks that he is hurt in any way, it is because he has forgotten who he is. And that he is as You created him. Your Thoughts can only bring me happiness. If ever I am sad or hurt or ill, I have forgotten what You think and put my little, meaningless ideas in place of where Your Thoughts belong and where They are. I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts. The Thoughts I think with You can only bless. The Thoughts I think with You alone are true.
ACIM Lesson 281

Nothing outside of us can hurt us or change our eternal Reality in any way. The Course is teaching us that we can ALWAYS choose again when we are in pain. No one can hurt us unless we give them the power to do so. In the very last few paragraphs of the Course, we are gently reminded that:

⁸⁷ 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 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. ACIM OrEd.Tx.31.87

This is what we are learning. It is the concept that, as soon as we are feeling anything but JOY, there’s a RED FLAG that is there, letting us know that we need to ‘choose again’ and this time we choose for Reality and not what we thought was going on.

That’s where the next part of this question comes in: Once the person perceives themselves as hurt, it was thought that they must then

– “forgive by ‘accepting that what you thought happened, didn’t’….”

There’s that pesky word ‘FORGIVE’ again.

Forgive, in the Course’s use of the word, does not mean that we make some action or thought real and then forgive it so we can be absolved or the other person can feel better.

Forgive means to ‘see’ the action or thought with our Right Mind. It means to see it with the Mind of Christ. We will then know what is Really going on. What ‘didn’t happen’ is anything that could change our Eternal Reality as LOVE. Nothing can change that. When we identify with WHO we Truly ARE, nothing of substance has changed.

Yes, we make mistakes while we are coming from the perspective of separation and ego, but what is REAL cannot be changed by those mistakes. It’s as if they never happened. You thought that someone hurt you but they cannot. The only thing that can be hurt is a limited sense of who you are, which is the ego.

The Course tells us that our mission here is to demonstrate that we are not an EGO. And we demonstrate that by Knowing that no matter what anyone says or thinks or does they cannot change my Reality as a perfect Son of God nor change their Reality as a perfect Son of God.
“It didn’t happen”. 😉

The last part of this questions is:

“..and realizing that one “chose to hurt oneself through the abuser” and other concepts.”

When we use this new ‘perspective’, that we are learning as Course students, and view the ‘abuser’ we do not see anyone different from ourselves. We don’t continue to perpetuate the idea of separation which is not Real. They are the Son of God as we are. And they are either coming from Love or calling for Love, as we are. While they are calling for love, their Reality as the Son of God hasn’t change. That is their Eternal Being. It hasn’t changed even when it is not recognized by themselves or by others. The Love that you ARE waits on welcome, not on time. It will NEVER change.

Only our Thoughts can hurt us in anyway. How we ‘see’ our brother and how we ‘see’ ourselves will either be through the eyes of illusion and separation or through the eyes of Christ/Holy Spirit/Love. And this is our choice. We choose to hurt ourselves if we are choosing to ‘see’ our brother as an abuser and if we ‘see’ ourselves as someone who can be abused.

If I see someone as an abuser then I must be coming from the perspective of ‘separation’. If I am ‘hurt’ then I must be coming from the perspective of ‘separation’.

It all comes down to who I identify with and the Course is teaching us that we are LOVE. Nothing we have thought about ourselves has changed our True Identity as the Perfect Son of God. Nothing we have thought of anyone else has changed their identity as the Perfect Son of God.

When we keep coming back to Forgiveness, which is ‘seeing’ with Right Perception; with the eyes of Christ/Love, then all things fall into place. “Love doesn’t conquer all things but it does set all things right.”

Nothing REAL can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.

~Reja Janaki Joy Green
Omaha, NE

Anita Moorjani ~ Dying To Be Me … a review

June 20, 2012June 17, 2019Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

DYING TO BE ME

MY JOURNEY FROM CANCER,
TO NEAR DEATH,
TO TRUE HEALING

By ANITA MOORJANI

www.anitamoorjani.com
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

[as it appeared in the June 2012 Newsletter]

Review by Reja Joy Green

“It was as though every moment held infinite possibilities,
and where I was at that point in time was a culmination of every decision,
every choice, and every thought of my entire life.
My many fears and my great power had manifested as this disease.”

When I read this paragraph in Anita Moorjani’s book “DYING TO BE ME: MY JOURNEY FROM CANCER, TO NEAR DEATH, TO TRUE HEALING” it reminded me of what my husband and I often say to participants as we begin our presentations on A Course in Miracles [ACIM]. We express the idea that absolutely every decision they have made in their lives has culminated in bringing them to this room and to this moment. Likewise, every decision I have ever made in my life has brought me to writing this review in this moment and all of the decisions you have EVER made have brought you to this moment in which you are reading it.

It was the next sentence in that paragraph that stopped my mind for a moment:

“My many fears and my great power had manifested as this disease.”

Yes, I have learned and have experienced fear as a power capable of manifesting dis-ease. This is quite understandable. And yet the second part of this sentence was an idea that might even go unnoticed if the reader were looking from their regular, comfortable, point of view. Such a concept may not be understandable and so glossed over. “…my great power had manifested as this disease.” What did Anita mean by this? Why would our POWER manifest as a disease?

To answer this we may want to start with Anita’s experience of ‘disease’. A dear friend [Soni] and also her brother in law had contracted cancer and had perished from the disease. When this happened Anita became deathly afraid of getting sick herself and also afraid of the medical treatment when she saw how it had ravaged her friend’s body and had not prevented her death. In her study of cancer, Anita learned that cancer could come from many activities: the polluted air we breathe, the pesticides and preservatives in our food, the chemicals in the water we drink, even the negative thoughts that we think. Her fear only increased.

And then the inevitable happened. In 2002 Anita was diagnosed with cancer. Since conventional, western style medicine had not helped her friend, Anita tried alternative methods:

“I tried faith healing, praying, meditation, and energy-healing sessions. I read every book I could get my hands on about cancer, learning every possible connotation given to the disease. I worked on forgiveness therapy, and forgave everyone I knew—then forgave them again. I traveled through India and China, meeting Buddhist monks, Indian yogis, and enlightened masters, hoping that they’d help me find answers that would lead to healing. I tried being vegan, meditating on mountaintops, yoga, ayurveda, chakra balancing, Chinese herbal medicine, pranic healing, and Chi Gong. But despite all this, my cancer just kept getting worse.” (Kindle Edition, pp. 133-134).

It was at the point of imminent total organ failure, after a four year battle, that Anita’s fight was over. She completely surrendered to – what turned out to be – REALITY.

In this amazing book, DYING TO BE ME, Anita chronicles her life before her diagnosis in Part I, when she developed a limiting and fear-filled thought system based on years of harassment and abuse for being seen as ‘different’. She shares how she became completely ‘other centered’ and continually struggled to fit in and be accepted and yet the result was always a deep sense of unworthiness.

Part II chronicles her journey to death and back. Anita describes the “Near Death Experience” [NDE] itself, and what happened next. “Being healed of cancer and working to find a new place in the world has been a surprising, challenging, and exhilarating journey!

In this section, Anita describes how she felt after the NDE when she was aware of a connection with everyone in her life, including those at the hospital:

“I felt as though I were connected to them all at a deep level and knew everything they were feeling and thinking, almost as though we shared the same mind.” (pp. 83-84)

As a Course in Miracles student, reading this is a wonderful affirmation of what we are learning in the Course which teaches: ‘minds are joined’.

Part III is an expression of Anita’s understanding of “healing, the way the world is today, and how we can live as a reflection of who we really are, allowing our magnificence to shine through.”

When the end came, and Anita finally let go completely she took the leap of faith, and was buoyed up by the LOVE that she knew herself to BE. That’s when she realized,

“My many fears and my great power had manifested as this disease.” (p. 70)

Anita shares more about the Power manifesting as disease in the Question and Answer area at the end of her book:

“I had this understanding: Ooh, I see—it didn’t happen to me, because in truth, I’m never a victim. The cancer is just my own unexpressed power and energy! It turned inward against my body, rather than outward. I knew it wasn’t a punishment or anything like that. It was just my own life force expressing itself as cancer because I didn’t allow it to manifest as the magnificent, powerful force of Anita.” (p. 165)

When I read this I recalled a portion of the ACIM TEXT which teaches us:

“The mind chose to divide itself when it willed to create both its own levels and the ability to perceive, but it could not entirely separate itself from the Soul because it is from the Soul that it derives its whole power to create. Even in miscreation will is affirming its Source or it would merely cease to be. This is impossible because it is part of the Soul which God created and which is therefore eternal.” ACIM OrEd.Tx.3.45

We derive our power to create from our Soul which is eternal and to which we are eternally connected. There is only one Power and we are given free will to use that Power. When it doesn’t have an avenue of expression it will turn within.

In Anita’s NDE, she came to realize that it was her self-identity which caused the POWER to turn inward:

“I believe that my cancer was related to my self-identity, and it feels as though it was my body’s way of telling me that my soul was grieving for the loss of its own worth—of its identity. If I’d known the truth of who I actually am, I wouldn’t have gotten cancer!” (p. 180)

And Lesson 136 in A Course in Miracles tells us:

“Sickness is a defense against the truth.
I will accept the truth of what I am
And let my mind be wholly healed today.”

Time is also amazing when viewed from within the NDE.

“Time felt different in that realm, too, and I felt all moments at once. I was aware of everything that pertained to me—past, present, and future—simultaneously. I became conscious of what seemed to be simultaneous lives playing out.” (p. 67)

In ACIM we learn that time is an illusion.

“Only eternity is real. Why not use the illusion of time constructively?” ACIM OrEd.Tx.1.26

“It is in the reality of now, without past or future, that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. For only now is here, and it presents the opportunities for the holy encounters in which salvation can be found”. ACIM OrEd.Tx.12.30

Anita comes to the realization that Now is the only time there is and how it holds our ‘salvation’!

“But if all time and experience exist right now, and we’re simply moving through it as we express our magnificence in a physical world, then we have nothing to fear. We don’t have to live in anxiety about what comes next. We can recognize the energy that we’re already a part of, and we can be love in every aspect of our lives. It’s unfortunate that we keep searching outside ourselves for answers—in religion, medicine, scientific study, books, and other people. We think the truth is somewhere out there, still elusive. Yet by doing this, we’re only getting more and more lost, appearing to move from who we truly are. The entire universe is within us.” (p. 144)

And as Course students we are well aware of the dictum:

“Seek not outside yourself. The search implies you are not whole within and fear to look upon your devastation and prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are.” ACIM OrEd.Tx.29.46

“Heaven is here. There is nowhere else. Heaven is now. There is no other time.” ACIM Manual for Teachers, #24, 6

This book by Anita Moorjani is such an amazing gift of love. I am so deeply grateful for her willingness to heal others by sharing her experience of healing. Anita had tried ‘forgiveness’ as a healing method for her ‘cancer’ and it had failed. She was using the paradigm of thinking something needed to be forgiven, although forgiveness is only called for once there is condemnation.

In her NDE, Anita experienced that we are seemingly suffering from another type of cancer and that is the cancer of the mind which shows up as our condemnation of others for the evil they have done. Anita shares that in the NDE:

“There’s absolutely no condemnation in that realm, because there’s nothing to condemn—we’re all pure consciousness. On the other side, there’s total clarity about why we are the way we are and why we did anything we did, no matter how unethical it felt in life. I believe that those who hurt others only do so out of their own pain and their feelings of limitation and separation. Perpetrators of acts such as rape and murder are far removed from even having an inkling of their own magnificence.” (p. 169)

This experience of the light beyond the apparent brought Anita the realization that, there is no longer “Us and them”:

“Criminals have lost their center, and what they’re doing to others is actually a reflection of how they feel inside about themselves. We like to think of perpetrators and victims as ‘them’ and ‘us,’ but there is no ‘them.’ It’s all us!

“When we realize this, we feel only connection with everyone and everything. I understood that in the other realm, we’re all One. We’re all the same.” (p. 170)

Synchronistic-ly, today’s ACIM Lesson tells us:

“Christ’s vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body, an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings, and all events without the slightest fading of the light it sees.” ACIM Lesson 158

Anita shared in her book that she went from an ‘outside-in’ view of reality to an ‘inside-out’ view. She wrote that she used to think that the external world was real and “that I had to work within its confines”. With this view she realized she had given her power away to the outside world and that external events had the ability to control her. “Even illness was an external event that just ‘happened’ to me randomly.”

Anita then writes:

“However, after my NDE, I began to see myself as a divine and integral part of the greater Whole. This includes everything in the entire universe, everything that has ever existed and ever will, and it’s all connected. I realized that I was at the center of this universe, and knew that we all express from our perspective, as we’re each at the center of this great cosmic web.” (p. 113)

Reading these words puts me once again in touch with the essence of Who I AM.

It seems only appropriate to end this article with the very last words in Anita’s book which are the truly inspiring and always make me cry to read them.

In the Question and Answer section the Questions was:

“If there were a message or lesson from your NDE that you wish everyone could know or understand, something that you wish you could shout out from the rooftops, what would that be?”

And Anita answers with all the Love in her Heart:

“ I would want you to know that every part of you is magnificent—your ego, intellect, body, and spirit. It’s who you are—a beautiful product of this Universe’s creation. Every aspect of you is perfect. There’s nothing to let go, nothing to forgive, nothing to attain. You already are everything you need to be. It can seem so complicated, but it’s not.

“If a religion makes you feel lesser than its deities, then you’ve either misinterpreted it or it’s not doing a good job of teaching you the truth. If a guru, teacher, or master makes you feel that you aren’t “yet” enlightened and still have more to “learn,” “release,” or “let go of” before getting there, then they’re not doing a good job of teaching you who you truly are, or you’re misunderstanding them.

“Remind everyone close to you to be themselves, and tell them that you love them just the way they are! They’re perfect and so are you. There’s nothing not to love. Most suffering stems from feeling “less than.” You aren’t less than anything or anyone! You are complete.

“The only thing you need to learn is that you already are what you’re seeking to attain. Just express your uniqueness fearlessly, with abandon! That’s why you’re made the way you are, and that’s why you’re here in the physical world. (pp. 182-183)

P.S. “As though to confirm my realization, I became aware of both my father and Soni communicating to me: Now that you know the truth of who you really are, go back and live your life fearlessly!” (p. 76).

And she is!!

I believe that the greatest truths of the universe don’t lie outside,
in the study of the stars and the planets.
They lie deep within us, in the magnificence of our heart, mind, and soul.
Until we understand what is within,
we can’t understand what is without.
I share my story here in the hope of touching your heart in some way
and reminding you of your own magnificence.

~ Anita Moorjani

Near Death Experience Research Foundation [NDERF] INTERVIEW
with Anita Moorjani

Anita Moorjani was born in Singapore and then lived in Sri Lanka until she was 2 years old. An ethnic Sindhi woman from India, her family then moved to Hong Kong where she grew up speaking fluent Sindhi, Cantonese and English, as well as being conversant with a multitude of cultural idioms. She was educated in English schools in Hong Kong and later studied in England before returning to Hong Kong to take up a senior management position for a French fashion company where she traveled all over the world using her multi-cultural, multilingual background in a variety of business and social settings.

How CIMS and the Original Edition Came to Be

January 15, 2012June 18, 2019Course in Miracles Society [CIMS] 1 Comment

You actually may find the story of how an ‘early version’ of this course [ACIM] was discovered in 1999 quite interesting as it blew the Course Community wide open! For years students believed they were studying what the scribe, Helen Schucman and her co-scribe William Thetford, had written but not so.

The story of how the scribing came about is in itself quite amazing. Story of the scribing Helen was a militant atheist. She had investigated religion and finally settled on science, believing there was no God. “Helen was a clinical and research psychologist, who held the tenured position of Associate Professor of Medical Psychology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City.” About the Scribes And then she began to have psychic occurrences culminating in hearing, “This is A Course in Miracles. Please take notes.”

For 7 years she and her boss, William Thetford, took down what she was hearing from an internal VOICE which described itself as JESUS. This was embarrassing and disconcerting to Helen but on some level she knew she would take this material down. She said she wouldn’t do what it said and if it made any errors she was done!

Once it was finished Helen and Bill didn’t know quite what to do with it. They gave a copy to Hugh Lynn Cayce, son of Edgar Cayce, thinking perhaps they would publish it.

Shortly after this Helen and Bill met Ken Wapnick who thought that the manuscript should be edited further which they did. In 1975 the Course was published and copyrighted, with the acknowledgment that it had been edited by only minor changes in titles, subtitles and punctuation; in other words nothing major.

In 1992 the copyright holder started to enforce the copyright stringently and a few years later entered into a multimillion dollar law suit against a spiritual community which was ‘quoting’ the Course out of context. The spiritual community had only the lawyers who lived in the community and who offered their services Pro Bono. It was truly a David & Goliath scenario.

The spiritual community LIVED the theories of ACIM and came from unconditional love for ALL involved -> Judge, Plaintiffs, Defendants. ALL. I don’t think the Judge or anyone in the courtroom knew what hit them. It was LOVE. The copyright was overturned in 2003!!! Copyright Timeline

The most amazing part of this whole story was that during the ‘discovery’ phase of the trial, the early version manuscript given to Hugh Lynn Cayce was located, digitized and put up on the INTERNET!!

Realizing the beauty of this material and wanting to get it out into the world, a few of us formed a non-profit organization, Course in Miracles Society [CIMS] and published this manuscript under the name, “Jesus’ Course in Miracles” in 2000. Of course we were immediately presented with a restraining order and were sued as well. How Jesus Got His Copyright Back <- This link tells the story of what happened next.

We are the Course in Miracles referred to in the WIKIPEDIA article about ACIM. WIKI – ACIM Article And we are truly Non-Profit. No one at CIMS receives salaries or bonuses for what we contribute.

If the Course has crossed your Path, it’s not an accident. It’s your REALITY telling you it’s time. Check our blog out. CIMS BLOG Check out our website: CIMS Website.

There is something incredibly REAL behind the facade if you just take the time to peek in. 😉 Well….why am I not surprised the Huffington Post had this article. http://huff.to/LetLoveHostYourParty

Take care and thanks for taking the time to read this.
~ Reja
http://www.facebook.com/rejajoy
http://facebook.com/ACIM.original

Do We Need the Ego?

December 3, 2011February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

WHAT IS THE EGO is the section of the Workbook that we recently listened to in our weekly ACIM Study Group. It is read by Maz Weber-Caspers along with his own exquisite music.

Afterwards we had a discussion on the ‘Ego’ and the following question arose:

QUESTION: DO WE NEED THE EGO?

ANSWER: This is a fantastic question because it most likely stems from our prior conditioning and training which has TAUGHT us that the ego is normal and natural and very much needed for us to exist in the world. And this is true if we believe that the world the ego has created is REAL. The ego makes the world and then dictates its own reality within that world. And yet HE tells us in A Course in Miracles this is “too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away”. ♥

How willing are you to escape effects of all the dreams the world has ever had? Is it your wish to let no dream appear to be the cause of what it is you do?

No one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No one believes there really was a time when he knew nothing of a body and could never have conceived this world as real. He would have seen at once that these ideas are one illusion, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious they now appear to be. And no one can remember when they would have met with laughter and with disbelief. ACIM OrEd.Tx.27. 78

‘WHO’ then is even asking this question? Most certainly it is the one who does not remember their initial attack upon themselves and does not remember that instant when time was carved from eternity and limitation placed upon wholeness. And since we don’t remember, we continue to ask a question, predicated on our separateness: “Do we need the ego?”

We have learned that the ego is defined as a sense of ‘self’ distinguished and separated from other selves and yet the entire study of A Course in Miracles is a process of bringing us back to the Knowledge that we are not our egos and back to the Knowledge that we are not separate from one another.

From loving minds there is no separation. And every thought in one brings gladness to the other because they are the same. ACIM OrEd.Tx.22.64

He tells us that the ego stems from a sense of division. Healing our sense of separation is actually the only goal we have while we still find ourselves in this ‘world’. HE tells us that there is only one problem and that there is only one solution. The ‘problem’ is our belief in separation and the solution is the REALITY of our Oneness.

The ego is the belief of the mind that it is completely on its own. Its ceaseless attempts to gain the Soul’s acknowledgment and thus to establish its own existence are utterly useless. ACIM OrEd.Tx.4.33

When I was 19 years old I tried to do just that. I read a book called Psycho-Cybernetics and was inspired to try to change my personality. I tried to re-create myself using the ego as guide. The only thing I succeeded in doing was to lose all sense of who I was and what the world was. At the time it was frightening and yet it was a kind of liberation. I was completely in the NOW. I lost a sense of my past and very little was defined for me. And yet there was a Core of Being within my heart that was at Peace and Knew that which was Real could not be threatened. In the following quote, HE tells us that we are part of reality and all we need do is “see it as it IS.” We don’t need to struggle with concepts or ideas. We can allow Reality to BE what it IS. This is one of the most beautiful parts of the Course and one of my favorites:

The ego tries to exploit all situations into forms of praise for itself in order to overcome its doubts. It will be doubtful forever, or rather as long as you believe in it. You who made it cannot trust it because you know it is not real. The only sane solution is not to try to change reality, which is indeed a fearful attempt, but to see it as it is. You are part of reality, which stands unchanged beyond the reach of your ego but within easy reach of your Soul. When you are afraid, be still and know that God is real and you are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. Do not let your ego dispute this because the ego cannot know what is as far beyond its reach as you are. ACIM OrEd.Tx.4.15

It’s so soothing to hear HIM say, “YOU are part of reality, which stands unchanged beyond the reach of your ego but within easy reach of your Soul”. Thank God my ego has no effect on Who I truly AM. We also learn that the ego cannot know us because our true Reality is Soul. The ego cannot know what Soul is:

8 Nothing can reach the Soul from the ego, and nothing from the Soul can strengthen the ego or reduce the conflict within it. The ego is a contradiction. Man’s self and God’s Self are in opposition. They are opposed in creation, in will, and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable because the Soul cannot perceive and the ego cannot know. They are therefore not in communication and can never be in communication. Nevertheless, the ego can learn because its maker can be misguided but cannot make the totally lifeless out of the life-given. The Soul need not be taught, but the ego must. ACIM OrEd.Tx.4.8

And that is why we study A Course in Miracles. It is teaching us [and we are re-membering] that we can misguide ourselves into thinking the ego is real until the pain of that decision becomes unbearable. And then we can CHOOSE AGAIN.

Your mission is very simple. You have been chosen to live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego. ACIM OrEd.Tx.4.89

HE tells us in the Course that the ego is quite literally a fearful thought. And so we can be certain that when we choose LOVE, the fear [and the ego] return to the nothingness from which they came. And with Love in us, we have no need but to extend it.
Reja Janaki Joy Green [Reja_CIMS] is one of the founding members of the Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]; She is the CIMS webmaster & social media manager, has facilitated Course in Miracles study groups since 1983, is in the 2nd year of the CMC Ministerial program and currently resides with her husband Chris Green in Omaha, NE.

http://www.acim-original.com/ <- More information about A COURSE IN MIRACLES

http://www.jcim.net

What is Revenge?

October 21, 2011February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

WHAT IS REVENGE?

Article by Rev Reja Janaki Joy Green*
~*~*~*~*~*~

Last MAY I wrote a Facebook NOTE after the death of Osama Bin Laden titled, “HOW COULD THE DEATH OF SOMEONE HURTFUL BRING JUSTICE” You can read it here: http://on.fb.me/DoesDeathBringJustice

[I’m posting this now because it’s just as applicable to the killing of Ommar Gaddafi. ]

The following is an answer to one of the private COMMENTS to that note which was:

“Something to think about. If Osama Bin Laden was captured alive, tried and found guilty in a court of law and sentenced to life imprisonment, would that be revenge?”

Thank you for asking this. It’s great to have a question that fosters further understanding.

When I sat in quiet with today’s Lesson 126 “All that I give is given to myself” I got a sense of our intimate connection with one another. Every ONE of us is part of the Sonship and is part of the Unity which is the One Reality. If we find ourselves in this 3D dream, in a body, in a society and separate and we know that we are responsible, then we get to use the body to WAKE UP.

The Course tells us it is not productive “To deny the denial”. This sounds confusing until we replace the word DENIAL with the word DREAM. It is not productive “To deny the dream”. And it is the ‘dream’ which is the denial of Reality. We can’t deny that we think we are in here in this dream. We are dreaming if we find ourselves anywhere but in eternity. The challenge is to realize that we are dreaming and wake up! And while we’re doing that we need to stop our vehicles at red lights and go when the light turns green. We’re IN the world, but not ‘OF it’. We are getting a sense of this and so we need to accept it and begin to heal the seeming separation.

In our APRIL Newsletter we had an article written by Rob Rideout about finding ACIM while in prison. http://jcim.net/Pages/MyPathToCourse.html which helped him to heal. [Select url, right click, copy, then paste into browser.]

In our MAY Newsletter we had an article by Corinne Zupko about the anxiety and panic attacks that were healed by using the principles of ACIM.

Both of these people took responsibility for their painful life experiences and received the Lessons that those experiences were there to bring.

If Bin Laden had been captured and placed in prison, that would have been the lesson he would have been presented with to learn. He was killed. That is the actual lesson he was presented with which to learn. “All things are lessons God would have me learn”. L193

It would sound ludicrous to say being killed were a lesson presented for his learning only if you believed that death were real. If you believed that there is no such thing as ‘death’ and that only the body, which is part of the dream, ceases to be while you [Spirit] continues, then indeed that experience is a lesson.

Many people have had near death experiences in which they experienced their ‘death’ and have come back with a renewed perception of ‘life’.

Only the Loving Thoughts of God are true. Everything else is an appeal for help and healing. Bin Laden is a Child of God. That is a Loving Thought of God. He thought he was separate and had unloving thoughts. That was an appeal for help and healing. His healing would have been an ‘option’ whether he had been incarcerated or killed. That’s the only option there is.

We continue on this journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. We are here to heal. And we either chose the option now or later. The end is inevitable. And once again today’s Lesson is: “All that I give is given to myself.”

When we realize our oneness which is the atonement or healing of the separation, then we know that we can ONLY give to ourselves. We are all in this together. We are all going home where we will once again Know there is only

GO(o)d. Only Love.

Until then the journey is our path and all our experiences are the lessons. In light of all of this, the concept of ‘revenge’ is not only not applicable, it just doesn’t make sense. ♥

========================================

HEALING RELATIONSHIPS through ACIM

October 17, 2011February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

HEALING RELATIONSHIPS through A Course in Miracles

[TRANSCRIPT of Workshop given at the FESTIVAL of HEALING ARTS in Omaha NE October 15, 2011]

Hello ~ My name is Reja Joy Green and I’m with my husband, Chris Green. We are one of the founding members of COURSE IN MIRACLES SOCIETY [CIMS] a non-profit organization based here in Omaha which was formed in 2000 to publish the [at that time] newly discovered early 1972 manuscript of ACIM.

Show of HANDS, who is familiar with ACIM? For those who do not know of ACIM:

The Course is the result of the collaboration between two Columbia University psychologists: Dr. William T. Thetford and his colleague, Dr. Helen Schucman. They were both experiencing a tremendous amount of turmoil within their department and one day Dr. Thetford exclaimed, “There has got to be a better way of doing this.” To his surprise Helen said, “You are perfectly right Bill and I will help you find it.”

Shortly afterwards, in 1965, Helen experienced what she described as a Voice which spoke clearly in her mind, saying “This is a course in miracles. Please take notes.” Bill said “Well let’s take it down and if it’s gibberish, then no one needs to know.” She brought in what she had written the night before to show Bill and they both decided it was worth pursuing.

So with Dr. Thetford’s support and assistance in transcribing her shorthand notes, Dr. Schucman took down some 1,500 typewritten pages of A Course in Miracles over a period of seven years. Schucman did not claim to be the author of the material herself.

As she often explained, she heard a kind of inner dictation and she felt compelled to write it down, even though at times she disagreed with the content and resisted the process. The voice which spoke through Helen clearly identifies himself as Jesus.

This was disconcerting since Helen was born Jewish, looked into the Baptist religion and Catholicism and finally became a militant atheist.

The Course uses Christian terminology but you don’t need to be Christian to benefit from the teachings of the Course. In fact, traditional Christians often find the material somewhat startling and perhaps unbelievable. The religion of 90% of the people who initially brought forth the course was JEWISH.

The ‘original edition’ is the unabridged volume of the Course as it was completed by Schucman and Thetford in 1972 before subsequent editing by Helen and Dr. Ken Wapnick.

For more information regarding the various versions please visit this page on the CIMS “Links One” page:

Comparison between versions

Our workshop today is HEALING RELATIONSHIPS through A Course in Miracles.
SOURCE of UPSET – You Were There

* Have you ever noticed that whenever you were UPSET, every single time, with no exceptions, no matter what the circumstances and no matter what GREAT REASONS you had for being UPSET there was ALWAYS something that all the upsets had in common. Does anyone know what that was?

YOU WERE THERE! In other words ~ The one variable was-> YOU!

I’m remembering a show that used to come on Sunday Nights in the 70’s called YOU ARE THERE with Walter Cronkite!! And he always ended all his shows with: “What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times… and you were there.” LOL

There’s one thing that unites all of those UPSETS and that’s YOU. And this is good news because only by changing your MIND can you change your reactions. That’s the MIRACLE. That’s the SHIFT in perception!

“To change your mind means to place it at the disposal of true Authority.” ACIM OrEd.Tx.1.69

“I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts.” Lesson 281
“I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.” Lesson 284

NOT EVERYONE IS “UPSET”

* And have you ever noticed that there have been times when you were there…and YOU were UPSET by the circumstances but the person you were with WASN’T UPSET. What is that about? LOL!!

I remember traveling in a tiny 10 seat plane from Hyannis to NYC at night during a thunder and lightning storm. All the adults were white knuckled, trying to keep their dinner down and my son was sleeping peacefully! I kept imagining that I were he.

UPSETS ARE SQUIRRELY

*Have you ever noticed that some days there are more ‘morons’ on the roads than other days?

On one trip to work years ago I remember seeing that the roads were littered with IDIOTS! People were driving crazy!! I couldn’t believe it and then it hit me. Yesterday there weren’t ANY idiots on the road. Hummm………Very interesting.

Show of HANDS: How many people have heard of MARIANNE WILLIAMSON?

She’s written: A WOMAN’S WORTH; ILLUMINATA; THE HEALING OF AMERICA; THE AGE OF MIRACLES and more recently; “A COURSE IN WEIGHT-LOSS”. And her BEST seller is “RETURN TO LOVE: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles.”

Chapter 6 in RETURN TO LOVE is titled: “Relationships” and the subtitle is a quote from ACIM:

“The Holy Spirit’s temple is not a body, but a relationship.” ACIM OrEd.Tx.20.49

Marianne writes: “Before I read A Course in Miracles I studied many other spiritual and philosophical writings. It felt as though they led me up a huge flight of stairs to a giant cathedral inside my mind. But once I reached the top of the stairs, the door to the church was locked. The Course gave me the key that opened the door. The key, very simply, is – OTHER PEOPLE!”

She mentions next that the HEAVEN mentioned in the Course is not a CONDITION or a PLACE but the AWARENESS of our ONENESS. The Course has been given to us to heal the Mind of the erroneous idea of SEPARATION. We are not only our brother’s keeper, the Course tells us WE ARE OUR BROTHERS. Marianne begins her chapter with this quote:

“When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter.
As you see him, you will see yourself.
As you treat him, you will treat yourself.
As you think of him, you will think of yourself.
Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose sight of yourself.
Whenever two Sons of God meet,
they are given another chance at salvation.
Do not leave anyone without giving salvation to him
and receiving it yourself,
for I am always there with you in remembrance of you.”
ACIM OrEd.Tx.8.19

The most devastating pain of all is when we feel alienated and separate. But when we realize that ‘separation’ is just a fearful idea and that our Oneness is our Reality, we can then relax into our True Being. From that REALITY, nothing can hurt us. The first words that Helen took down to show Bill were:

Nothing Real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the Peace of God.

When he read these words Bill knew they had received something very beautiful and different.

We think of SELF-HELP programs as something we do to ourselves and that is true. However with ACIM we come to see that our Brothers are our Saviors. They are our TEACHERS. And awakening is a Collaborative Venture. All things are Lessons God would have me learn. Everyone is my TEACHER.

THE DISCONNECT

I use to meditate, wear mala beads around my neck, sit in full lotus doing my mantra and then get up and have a vicious fight with my sister. That relationship was my ticket HOME and I didn’t see it. It TRIGGERED something within me that was calling for FORGIVENESS which really means, RIGHT PERCEPTION. She is my TEACHER. I WAS BEING GIVEN ANOTHER CHANCE AT SALVATION but I didn’t realize it yet. Only appreciation is an appropriate response to your brother. Gratitude is due him for both his loving thoughts and his appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing love into your awareness if you perceive them truly. And all your sense of strain comes from your attempts not to do just this. Every encounter is holy and deserves our appreciation. My brother is either extending love or calling for love. There is nothing else going on. If I am in pain I am seeing something that is not there and I am calling for help and healing. If my sister is in pain, she is calling for help and healing.

No matter who is in front of us, the Course asks — Can we see the face of Christ instead of what the ego is presenting? AND wouldn’t we also want others to ‘see’ who we really are, behind our fears and behind our ego demonstrations?

Marianne Williamson writes: “There is a line in a song from the play “LES MISERABLES” that says, “to love another person is to see the face of God.” WHAT IS THE FACE OF CHRIST? READ FROM HER BOOK: “’The Face of Christ’ is the INNOCENCE and LOVE behind the masks we all wear, and seeing that face, touching it and loving it in ourselves and others, is the experience of God. It is our divine humanness. It is the high we all seek.”

A beautiful song by an ACIM troubadour Donna Marie Cary who will be at the 2013 ACIM Conference is called “Will’s Song”.

WILL’S SONG – Listen here

When you hear me laughing

Don’t always be fooled by my disguise

Don’t forget to look twice in my eyes

Hear what I’m really saying

I don’t always tell the truth

Embarrassed and ashamed of the past

Too afraid to ask for help

I need help

Won’t someone hear what I’m really saying

Will you be a light Shining through the dark

Will you be the Voice calling out

It’s OK ~ It’s Safe ~ You’re alright

Don’t forget to look twice in my eyes

It may appear I’m fighting you

I’m only tryin’ to claw my way out

Suffocating in this tomb of fear and doubt

When you hear me shout

Hear what I’m really saying

Don’t believe in what I do or say

I’m more than just the actor in the play

Look beyond and see what I truly AM

Help me remember

What I truly AM

Will you be a light Shining through the dark

Will you be the Voice calling out

It’s OK ~ It’s Safe ~ You’re alright

Don’t forget to look twice in my eyes

“Help me to REMEMBER what I truly AM.”

http://www.donnamariecary.com/

One of my favorite quotes from the Course is:

“From loving Minds there is no separation and every thought in one brings gladness to the other, because they are the same.” ACIM OrEd.Tx.22.64

ACIM teaches that Fear is nothing. Love is EVERYTHING. When you turn a light on, the darkness disappears into nothingness. The darkness was just the absence of Light. The Light is what is REAL. Love is what is real.

MY TEACHER

One time I had a horrendous fight with my sister who is definitely my TEACHER! Go figure. 🙂

By the way, the Course talks about levels of teachers: Chance encounters / Intense but short lived / and Life Long “who present unlimited opportunities for learning”. That’s my sister!

Our egos were really into it and there didn’t seem to be a way out. Each negative thought brought up more pain, more accusations, more guilt and anger. I finally remembered the COURSE and told myself “Only the Loving Thoughts of God are Real” and made the decision to ONLY let those Thoughts in. I’d kick any thought out that wasn’t in line with what God would think. And it was transformational! I no longer saw myself as hurt in anyway. I came to remember my wholeness AND I came to remember my sister’s wholeness. Her attack is a call for love as my unloving response is also a call for love. GIVE THE LOVE YOU ARE CALLING FOR! Only LOVE is REAL. What was REAL about the situation came to the foreground and all the nonsense of the ego disappeared. I knew that she loved me and that I loved her and nothing else really mattered. There was PEACE and JOINING because: “…every Thought in one brings gladness to the other because they are the same.”

I used to only be able to be around her for a few hours before our egos would engage. Recently my twin came to stay with me for a MONTH and we had a fantastic time. One day I heard her say, under her breath. “OK. What is lacking in any situation is what I have not brought to it.” a Quote from the Course!! So she was working, as I was, to see things differently and have a shift in perception which is the MIRACLE. ♥

There is only LOVE or Fear. One is REAL the other is an illusion. Jesus speaks to us of the Holy Spirit.

“Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others
and to regard everything else as an appeal for help,
He has taught you that fear is an appeal for help.
This is what recognizing it really means. If you do not protect it, He will reinterpret it.
That is the ultimate value to you in learning to perceive attack as a call for love.
We have learned surely that fear and attack are inevitably associated.
If only attack produces fear and if you see attack as the call for help that it is,
the unreality of fear must dawn upon you.
For fear is a call for love in unconscious recognition of what has been denied.
We give our thoughts all the power that they have.”
ACIM OrEd.Tx.11.10

In preparing for this workshop I was using our On-Line Searchable edition for “brother is my savior”. [The SEARCH goes through all 365 lessons, 600+ pages of the Text & Manual]. The search results were that this phrase only appears in one place! In one of the LESSONS. I saw that it was in the 200’s and knew that was toward the end of the year but didn’t notice anything in particular about it. Then I got goose bumps. I went over to my Study Guide to see what lesson everyone would be doing on the day of the workshop October 15th and it was THAT very same Lesson ~ Lesson 288, OMG I just started to cry! I love synchronicities!
Here is Lesson 288 read by maz Weber-Caspers, CIMS member & musician:

♪ ♫ LISTEN HERE – http://bitly.com/SonShipAUDIOLesson288 ♫ ♪

L e s s o n 288

Let me forget my brother’s past today.

This is the thought that leads the way to You,

and brings me to my goal. I cannot come

to You without my brother. And to know

my Source, I first must recognize what You

created one with me. My brother’s is

the hand that leads me on the way to You.

His sins are in the past along with mine.

And I am saved because the past is gone.

Let me not cherish it within my heart,

or I will lose the way to walk to You.

My brother is my Saviour. Let me not

attack the Saviour You have given me,

but let me honor him who bears Your Name,

and so remember that It is my own.

Forgive me, then, today. And you will know

you have forgiven me if you behold

your brother in the light of holiness.

He cannot be less holy than can I,

and you can not be holier than he.

~ Original Handscript of ACIM

Here’s one last song to leave with:

ECHOES IN THE SILENCE ~ Listen here

Beyond my thoughts, Beyond my dreams there is a VOICE calling.

TRUTH is what it speaks. LOVE is all it seeks.

Breaking down the walls around me.

And it echoes in the silence.

Rolling back the tides. Lighting up the night.

Opening up my eyes to LOVE.

Seeing what is REAL How it feels to know I’m only LOVE

And it echoes in the silence.

Beyond the world there is a HOME where we all live as ONE.

Angels sing a long forgotten SONG.

Singing us HOME. Can you hear them singing us HOME?

LOVE is revealed. I AM healed. Beyond the Silence.

Beyond my thoughts, Beyond my dreams.

The world I see.

And it echoes in the silence.

There are no accidents. Perhaps the Course is calling to you, beyond your thoughts, beyond your dreams. Angels are calling you HOME.

We are the Light of the World!

~Reja ૐ

Reja Janaki Joy Green [Reja_CIMS] is one of the founding members of the Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]; She is the CIMS webmaster & social media manager, facilitates a Course in Miracles study group in Omaha, NE along with her husband Chris, is an ordained minister of the Community Miracles Center and teaches Hatha Yoga.

Donna Marie Cary MUSIC

http://www.jcim.net

The Name of God

July 4, 2011February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

WHAT IS THE NAME OF GOD
and of HIS SON

Scribe’s Vision in the Cave

[Scribe’s Vision in the Cave http://www.jcim.net/Music/helen_cave.mp3 ]

Article by Rev Reja Janaki Joy Green*
~*~*~*~*~*~

A Course student recently sent ACIM Original the following question:

“The lessons for today and yesterday make reference to the name of God and the name of the Son? is it that more will be revealed, or am I missing something?”

We thank God for these questions since they are our questions as well. Since Minds are joined and HE tells us that there is only one thing going on, -MIND. IT within you and you within IT- then this question is within all of our minds, waiting to be answered by each of us, as we are all facets of the ONE.

In Lesson 183 “I call upon God’s Name and on my own.” HE tells us Paragraph 1,”God’s Name is holy, but no holier than yours. To call upon His Name is but to call upon your own.”

In Lesson 184 “The Name of God is my inheritance” HE tells us in paragraph 12, “God has no name. And yet His Name becomes the final lesson that all things are one.”

If indeed ‘God has no name’ then naturally we would ask, “How could His Name become the final lesson?”

Perhaps HE is saying that God has no name as we are ‘perceiving’ and using names, much like ‘this world does not exist’ is actually saying, ‘this world does not exist as we are perceiving and using it.’?

What if HIS NAME were truly an experience of the I AM? Not a symbol of IT but the REALITY of IT. If a NAME stands for what IT is, then the NAME is saying: TAT TVAM ASI Thou Art That

WIKI: Tat Tvam Asi (Sanskrit: तत् त्वम् असि or तत्त्वमसि), a Sanskrit sentence, translated variously as “That thou art,” “Thou art that,”…

This idea was inspired by this beautifully written an ARTICLE called “GOD IS NOT GOD’S NAME” http://www.yhwh.com/gingn.html Although the author is the first to tell us:

EXCERPT:

“The problem with God is not that He’s so far away that we can’t see Him. Rather, He is so close that we overlook Him. Our quest for God is just like fish in search of water. So don’t be surprised if you start to recognize God’s name everywhere.

Helping you do that is the purpose of this writing.

But God’s Real name is not in this document! How’s that for strange? Most of this document is about God’s personal name, which reveals His Real name, but God’s Real name can’t be written down in any book.”

ANOTHER EXCERPT:

“So there you have it. God’s personal name, as we translate its meaning in English, is “I am that I am.” Here are some other ways it has been translated:

He who is

The self-existent one

He who is ever becoming what He is

Is-ness is is-ness

The article goes on to say that it is our NAME as well.”

EXCERPTS:

“You have been created in the image of YHWH. [I AM THAT I AM].

YHWH is everywhere. Every person you see is a walking, talking YHWH! We are continually reminded of His presence by those around us. When I can recognize YHWH’s Real name, I can indeed see Him everywhere.”

[This correlates to Lesson 30: “God is in everything I see because God is in my mind.”]

“YHWH has revealed His name to us. He has given it to us to use. What is even more, He has given it to us to be!”

[Lesson 184 paragraph 9: “Repeat His Name, and you acknowledge Him as sole Creator of reality. And you acknowledge also that His Son is part of Him, creating in His Name.”]

———————————————–

So, we learn in A Course in Miracles that:

**Mind reaches to itself. It does not go out. Within itself it has no limits, and there is nothing outside it. [It encompasses everything.] It encompasses you entirely; you within it, and it within you. There is nothing else, anywhere or ever.”~ACIM original edition ch18,VII,56**

I AM THAT I AM which is the NAME of GOD as well as His SON . The “I AM” is the ALL THAT “IS”. And of beyond that, we cannot speak in words. ♥

========================================

How Could the Death of Someone Hurtful Bring JUSTICE?

May 7, 2011February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

BIN LADEN is dead and some people are rejoicing. They are hoping his death will bring a sense of justice to his victims.

Reflections: How could the ‘death’ [which is ultimately unreal] of someone bring a sense of justice? The following is a quote from the Course in Miracles [original edition] that speaks of the Holy …Spirit’s Justice which is quite different from this world’s:

“Vengeance is alien to God’s Mind because He knows of justice To be just is to be fair and not be vengeful. Fairness and vengeance are impossible, for each one contradicts the other and denies that it is real. It is impossible for you to share the Holy Spirit’s justice with a mind that can conceive of specialness at all. Yet how could He be just if He condemns a sinner for the crimes he did not do but thinks he did? And where would justice be if He demanded of the ones obsessed with the idea of punishment that they lay it aside unaided and perceive it is not true? It is extremely hard for those who still believe sin meaningful to understand the Holy Spirit’s justice.

~ A Course in Miracles – oe CH 25 IX paragraph 67

Admittedly, it is extremely hard for those who believe in SIN to lay aside vengeance, condemnation, and punishment. A Brother can be mistaken and do horrible things in this world and yet his REALITY as a Son of God [no matter WHO HE IS] will not have changed one iota. If it would be, then yours would be as well. One Truth ~ We are the Son of our Creator. And in our true Reality, we are SINLESS ~ dreaming a dream of fear.

CHAPTER 25 is such a beautiful CHAPTER. Can we read it now, keeping all our Brother’s in mind [seeming perpetrators and seeming victims]. Do we truly understand what Jesus is saying here? Can we APPLY it to our lives TODAY ~ This day in which some of God’s children are dancing on the grave of their enemy and some are seeking vengeance. When does this drama end? He tells us … here in this Chapter.

“The Holy Spirit’s problem solving is the way in which the problem ends. It has been solved because it has been met with justice. Until it has, it will recur because it has not yet been solved. The principle that justice means no one can lose is crucial to this course. For miracles depend on justice. Not as it is seen through this world’s eyes, but as God knows it, and as knowledge is reflected in the sight the Holy Spirit gives.

“No one deserves to lose. And what would be unjust to him cannot occur. Healing must be for everyone because he does not merit an attack of any kind. What order can there be in miracles, unless someone deserves to suffer more and others less? And is this justice to the wholly innocent? A miracle is justice. It is not a special gift to some to be withheld from others as less worthy, more condemned, and thus apart from healing. Who is there who can be separate from salvation if its purpose is the end of specialness? Where is salvation’s justice if some errors are unforgivable and warrant vengeance in place of healing and return of peace?”

~A Course in Miracles CH 25 X paragraphs 82, 83

http://www.jcim.net/acim_us/TxtChap-25-10.php

RESPONSE to QUESTION

The following is an answer to a COMMENT from F.Weber:

“Something to think about. If Osama Bin Laden was captured alive, tried and found guilty in a court of law and sentenced to life imprisonment would that be revenge?”

Thank you for asking this. It’s great to have a question that fosters further understanding. When I sat in quiet with today’s Lesson 126 “All that I give is given to myself” I got a sense of our intimate connection with one another. Every ONE of us is part of the Sonship and is part of the Unity which is the One Reality. If we find ourselves in this 3D dream, in a body, in a society and separate and we know that we are responsible, then we get to use the body to WAKE UP. The Course tells us it is not productive “To deny the denial”. This sounds confusing until we replace the word DENIAL with the word DREAM. It is not productive “To deny the dream”. And it is the ‘dream’ which is the denial of Reality. We can’t deny that we think we are in here in this dream. We are dreaming if we find ourselves anywhere but in eternity. The challenge is to realize that we are dreaming and wake up! And while we’re doing that we need to stop our vehicles at red lights and go when the light turns green. We’re IN the world, but not ‘OF it’. We are getting a sense of this and so we need to accept it and begin to heal the seeming separation.

If Bin Laden had been captured and placed in prison, that would have been the lesson he would have been presented with to learn. He was killed. That is the actual lesson he was presented with which to learn. “All things are lessons God would have me learn”. L193 It would sound ludicrous to say being killed were a lesson presented for his learning only if you believed that death were real. If you believed that there is no such thing as ‘death’ and that only the body, which is part of the dream, ceases to be while you [Spirit] continues, then indeed that experience is a lesson. Many people have had near death experiences in which they experienced their ‘death’ and have come back with a renewed perception of ‘life’.

Only the Loving Thoughts of God are true. Everything else is an appeal for help and healing. Bin Laden is a Child of God. That is a Loving Thought of God. He thought he was separate and had unloving thoughts. That was an appeal for help and healing. His healing would have been an ‘option’ whether he had been incarcerated or killed. That’s the only option there is. We continue on this journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. We are here to heal. And we either chose the option now or later. The end is inevitable.

And once again today’s Lesson is: “All that I give is given to myself.” When we realize our oneness which is the atonement or healing of the separation, then we know that we can ONLY give to ourselves. We are all in this together. We are all going home where we will once again Know there is only GO(o)d. Only Love. Until then the journey is our path and all our experiences are the lessons. In light of all of this, the concept of ‘revenge’ is not only not applicable, it just doesn’t make sense.

Reja Janaki Joy Green

[~ Reja is one of the founding members of A Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]
publisher of the 1972 manuscript of A Course in Miracles http://www.jcim.net ]

James Arthur Ray Sweat Lodge ~ A Spiritual Perspective

April 25, 2011February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS] 5 Comments

by Reja Janaki Joy Green*

I identify with James Arthur Ray. Perhaps that is why I am very interested in this trial. The Course tells us ~ As you see your Brother you see yourself. The forgiveness you extend to your Brother you extend to yourself.

I’m learning to see that James Ray is a Sinless child of God, whole and complete as we ALL are. He is not his ego. The people who died and were injured are not their egos. There are no exceptions to the ‘vision’ of Who we ARE. Do we identify with our egos? Oh yes. Are we at the effect of our egos? Most definitely. Is that insanity? Yes indeed.

Let’s ask this question of James and of the other participants of the sweat lodge, and of you, and me – Who ARE we? What are we doing here? If we are here to heal the seeming separation then let us heal it in *every single situation*. The Course tells us, “I will forgive and this will disappear.” And for me, ‘forgive’ here means to see with Right Perception. To forgive is to perceive myself and my Brother as we REALLY are. We are not our bodies. We are still as God created us. James is still as God created him.

The Course also tells us that the ego is quite literally a fearful thought [CH 5 VII 61 acim oe] and we are to live here in such a way as to demonstrate that we are not an ego. If we make decisions based on the ego, we will be hurt and we will hurt others, much like the person wielding the knife in the dark. And when we shine a light on ourselves we see that we are Love. That we are having a nightmare. That this whole drama is a nightmare of our making and He asks us: When, oh Holy Child of God. When will you come out of the dark and come Home.

I was just having a discussion with my husband and he asked me if he had heard correctly? At the ACIM 2011 conference Chris thought he had heard the Presenter say that it’s ok to strike back if someone were hurting you. I told him, yes, that was what the Presenter said. And then we both just shook our heads. He tells us in the Course, “In my defenselessness my safety lie” although for most Course students that’s means only if I’m not being attacked. Yet, for us it means ‘especially when we’re being attacked’.

But Chris went a step further. He said that the Course reminds us that we are responsible for everything that happens to us. Knowing that, and being Course students, how likely is it that we will create someone wanting to harm us.

But even if we do, when it happens, then as Course students we would TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. We would know that everything that happens to us comes to us as we have asked.

“I am responsible for what I see.
I chose the feelings I experience, and I decided
on the goal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me
I asked for and received as I had asked.”

CH 21 III 15 acim-oe Text Reading Online

In April’s Newsletter, we had an article “MY PATH TO THE COURSE” written by Rob Rideout. His PATH started in 1969 and culminated many years later while he was serving a prison term. He used that time to awaken from his self-imposed hell.

This experience – for James and the participants and the observers and for ALL of us, is a chance to reaffirm why we are here; the chance to take responsibility for what we have asked to come into our lives; a chance to own it and then turn it over to our Right Mind [HS] to be healed.

And then Love is the way we walk in GRATITUDE.

Sent with much Love,

~Reja ૐ

Reja Janaki Joy Green [Reja_CIMS] is one of the founding members of the Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]; She is the CIMS webmaster, has facilitated Course in Miracles study groups since 1983 and currently resides with her husband Chris Green in Omaha, NE.

Know ThySELF

January 7, 2011February 27, 2023Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

Know ThySELF
or
“Who Do You Think You Are Anyway”

By Reja Janaki Joy Green*
~*~*~*~*~*~

Socrates – (469 – 399 B.C.) of course, was the famous Greek philosopher who is attributed the quote, “Know Thyself” and was forced to drink poison for his transgression. Such is the fear and trepidation of his teaching.

What is this fear; where does it come from; and how do we dispel it?

The Course in Miracles teaches that we project outside of ourselves that which we disown and wish to get rid of and that this projection always perpetuates our sense of separation and isolation. I am not that. That is bad. That must be destroyed.

Yet in order to project something beyond ourselves we must first ‘identify’ the something, which is separate from who we are. And to do that we must first think we know who we are. Ah, and there’s the rub: Who Are We?

Know ThySelf! [Or “Who do you think you are, anyway?” ]

Every thought we have, each belief and every action we take, are all intimately related to who we think we are. If we think we are an ego, living in a body having the experience of coping in a world with other bodies, and trying to make the best of it until our time is up and we die, then this is what we will experience.

But what if we are wrong. What if we have been following a curriculum that has blinded us to the Truth of Where we Are and What we Are.

The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always and what you are forever.
It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed.
Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described, and it cannot be explained.
I can make you aware of the conditions of truth, but the experience is of God.
Together we can meet its conditions,
but truth will dawn upon you of itself. CH 8 Sec VI, 51

It only makes sense that if we have been following a curriculum that has not brought us happiness and contentment, we need to make a change. And do we have the courage to make that change and to go in a totally new direction.

If that direction threatens who we think we are, we will project our fear onto it and we will refuse to go there. But if we get a glimpse, a hint that maybe we have been wrong about who we truly are, we may just have the courage to make the shift. And this shift is as dramatic as the people in Plato’s cave who only had to turn around to see the light and not the shadows.

What if, in making that shift, there were a power available to us that were ALL Powerful. It sounds fantastic and unreal and yet what if this were truly Reality, the ultimate Reality Show and we had only to open our eyes to its Truth.

When this Power has once been experienced, it is impossible to trust
one’s own petty strength again. Who would attempt to fly with the tiny wings
of a sparrow when the mighty power of an eagle has been given him? And who
would place his faith in the shabby offerings of the ego when the gifts of God
are laid before him? What is it that induces them to make the shift? Manual for Teachers, Trust, 4

There are those who have gone through near-death experiences and have shared, as best as words could describe, their experience of who they truly ARE. Afterwards, their fear of death is non-existent since they know, first hand, there is no death. They know they are not separate and that life is Eternal.

Do we need to wait until we no longer have our bodies to come to the knowledge of who we are or can we choose now, in this incredible instant, to know ourselves as the Will of our Source.

‘Thy Will, not mine, be done’ is not a sacrifice and merely becomes a statement of truth. There is no ‘mine’. There is only the One Will, in truth. We have dreamed a dream of separation and have been wrong. We have never separated from our Source and never will. We Are the Will of God.

When we come from that Knowledge, we release all the strange beliefs in sin and separation. There is only one thing going on: Mind – You within it and it within You. What joy there is to realize the nightmare is over. You are no longer a captive in your cave. The Light has come.

And what if all we had to do to realize this power were to do nothing at all.

“A Course in Miracles” teaches us to relinquish the BLOCKS to love’s awareness. We don’t create Truth or Love, we merely uncover them. Truth isn’t something we bring to the situation. It IS the situation. Love is, God is – when we do nothing and instead choose to accept our Reality.

Some of us may remember the Erhard Seminar Training [EST] created by Werner Erhard that had a major impact on thousands of people and helped increase their conscious awareness.

In one of the exercises of the EST Training, the men were asked to pretend they were women, change their voice and recite something only a woman would say; and the women were asked to do likewise; they needed to pretend they were men.

If the person were attached to their identity as a ‘man’ or ‘woman’ they had great difficulty in doing this exercise. They became angry and embarrassed. But if the person knew that they were not their body, they delighted in putting on an outrageous performance with glee!

Another exercise was called the TRUTH PROCESS, the rumor of which terrorized the participants beforehand. During this process, there were those who fainted, or cried, or laughed uncontrollably. Some people trembled and sweated profusely. And others were filled with Bliss.

What was the process? They were asked to stand on a stage and look out into the audience
and just………. BE. That was it. No other instructions. Just BE with nothing added.

It appears that in order to just BE, you need to be clear on who you ARE. If you think it’s up to you, you may become frightened, or embarrassed; ashamed or terrorized. And yet if you KNOW that you Are pure Being itself celebrating in that knowledge, you will only know BLISS. You will look out into the audience and see only yourSELF!

In a similar seminar, the participants were asked to sit in a circle and look into the eyes of the person across from them and just be with that person, with nothing added. Many people would soon find their eyelids becoming heavy and they would fall asleep, sitting up! The mind took protective maneuvers. It went to SLEEP.

And that’s where we find ourselves: Asleep and afraid to awaken to our Joy.

Give up gladly everything that would stand in the way of your remembering,
for God is in your memory, and His Voice will tell you that you are part of Him
when you are willing to remember Him and know your own reality again.
Let nothing in this world delay your remembering of Him,
for in this remembering is the knowledge of yourself. CH.9.IX.69

* Janaki Joy Green [Reja-Joy] is one of the founding members of the Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]; She has facilitated Course in Miracles study groups since 1983 and currently resides with her husband Chris Green in Omaha, NE.

Course in Miracles Society [CIMS]

ACIM Original Edition

Tag Reja Janaki Joy Green

The Eternal Now

Vital Message of Forgiveness

Our Creations

Perception versus Knowledge

Temptation to Disbelieve

William Thetford’s Final Independence

There is no cruelty in God

THERE IS NO CRUELTY IN GOD AND NONE IN ME.

Our Attack Thoughts

Proof of Heaven ~ a book review

Forgiveness and Blaming the Victim

Anita Moorjani ~ Dying To Be Me … a review

Review by Reja Joy Green

How CIMS and the Original Edition Came to Be

Do We Need the Ego?

What is Revenge?

HEALING RELATIONSHIPS through ACIM

The Name of God

How Could the Death of Someone Hurtful Bring JUSTICE?

James Arthur Ray Sweat Lodge ~ A Spiritual Perspective

Know ThySELF

Know ThySELF
or
“Who Do You Think You Are Anyway”

THERE IS NO CRUELTY IN GOD AND NONE IN ME.

Review by Reja Joy Green

Know ThySELF or “Who Do You Think You Are Anyway”

Know ThySELF
or
“Who Do You Think You Are Anyway”