Forgiveness offers everything I want.

FORGIVENESS OFFERS EVERYTHING I WANT.

Forgiveness comes at the moment when your heart and your mind join together to release a grievance that you were holding. You no longer feel pain or stress about the memory of an unpleasant experience and a restorative sense of peace takes the place of the gripe. Forgiveness is all about recovering and reclaiming that part of you that you allowed to be buried under the weight of resentment. Many times we mistakenly say that we have forgiven someone but deep down inside we think ‘forgive but not forget’. This is definitely not forgiveness. Forgiveness is such a transformational act that not only has your past been healed, releasing you from the grip of a gripe, but you have insured peace for your future as well. And to top it all off, your soul, which never dies and lives in the eternal Present, really does experience life fully as a Present. What more could you ask for or want?

To give and to receive are one in truth

TO GIVE AND TO RECEIVE ARE ONE IN TRUTH.

In our world today, we have been led to believe that if we give something we lose something. We are driven by competition and always looking to social status as the utmost achievement to make us happy. We search for fulfillment in acquiring things believing that our worth is determined by what we possess. So naturally, if we derive our sense of self-worth from what is outside of us, we will feel that in giving, we lose a part of ourselves. However, the law of cause and effect teaches us otherwise, for what you give is what you receive. In fact, it is the easiest law to experience for yourself. When you let go of something, your hands will be free to receive what is to come.

Let me be still and listen to the truth

LET ME BE STILL AND LISTEN TO THE TRUTH.

It is so easy to get lost in our daily activities and not take time to simply stop, breathe and attune to our hearts, where the seat of our truth lies. We ensconce ourselves in the busyness of our thoughts, giving priority to the ‘idea’ of having so much to do while desperately wanting to keep everything under control. Caught up in this maelstrom of unnecessary noise and restlessness, we are anything but in control. We are occupied by the mind’s musings, easily distracted and ultimately the mind feels scattered. Paradoxically, life works best when we surrender the need for control and allow life to take its course. Surrendering does not mean we fall into the abyss of passivity, because to surrender requires being actively alert in listening to the heart. To quote Eckhart Tolle, “stillness speaks”. So, take time daily to observe five minutes of silence as often as possible, and succumb to your inner peace by saying: “let me be still and listen to the truth.” Your heart is guaranteed to respond.

Miracles are seen in light

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A miracle is a shift in perception from a fear-based thought to one of love. We often believe that a miracle can only be some extraordinary Biblical event such as the parting of the Red Sea. Nothing could be further from the truth. A miracle happens when in a moment of darkness you are willing to entertain the thought that there could possibly be another side to what appeared to be a seemingly insurmountable problem.

The challenge is to dare to look at something differently by opening your heart to other possibilities. If you do so, it will always lead you towards the light. The light in which miracles can be seen simply means that you can look at any problem from a different angle and thereby reach a new understanding of it. With your eyes and heart opened to new possibilities, a miracle is sure to arise.

Light and joy and peace abide in me.

LIGHT AND JOY AND PEACE ABIDE IN ME.

So often we focus on what we perceive to be our failures and the dark side of our personality. We fixate on something we dislike about ourselves and use it constantly as an excuse to flagellate ourselves. This recriminatory behaviour serves only to keep us on the wheel of suffering and always at the mercy of our judgemental ego. But what we must comprehend is that, if there is darkness within us, we must also have light. If we experience sorrow, joy is also within our reach. And when we are at our wits’ end, seemingly engulfed in chaos, know that there is a place of absolute stillness within you.

LOVE CREATED ME LIKE ITSELF

“Love created me like itself” seems like one of the many catchphrases in vogue today. It’s hard to connect to and identify with because it seems so glib. In fact, it is totally contrary to the negative self image you have fabricated of yourself which is a product of the Ego. The Ego pushes you to constantly compare yourself to others which is the self-esteem trap. According to where you deem others to be in relation to you, your self-esteem either increases or decreases and hence is never stable.

Self-worth however, is the complete opposite to self-esteem. It is not determined by comparisons. Self-worth comes from knowing that you are loveable and indisputably deserving of love. Truly recognizing and accepting that Love created you like Itself becomes your way of being in the world. When you embody the truth of who you are, you have reached the timeless dimension of Pure Love, the changeless reality.

Let miracles replace all grievances

Let miracles replace all grievances.

A grievance is really a plea for something to be different and more often than not, it is directed at other people. We tend to believe that the source of our problems is due to somebody else failing to cooperate with our objectives. A grievance can be likened to a train that takes you back and forth from point A to point B. An endless cycle that leads you nowhere except back to you and your perceived problem. On an energetic level, grievances are stored in our energy field. They act like a thick veil that impedes any light from entering. Hence the need for a miracle to replace them. We believe a remarkable, magical event defines a miracle like someone being cured of an incurable disease. But a genuine miracle actually is when we experience a shift in our perception from a fear-based thought to one of love. When we choose to give our brother/sister the benefit of the doubt instead of blaming them for any unpleasant situation we experience, a true miracle has occurred. Let the healing begin. Let miracles replace all grievances.

LET THERE BE LIGHT

I WILL THERE BE LIGHT. DARKNESS IS NOT MY WILL. I AM THE LIGHT.

When you say these words with conviction, you not only reshape your perspective on life, but you also transform how you live your life. This is truly the way forward. By willing that there be light in any given situation of conflict, you are directly commanding that understanding supersede any discord.

It is not only enough to adopt this as your daily inner mantra, but by putting it into action

you will slowly but surely transform and eradicate negative thought patterns and you literally will begin ‘to see things in a different light’. That is the path to enlightenment.

LET ME NOT FORGET MY FUNCTION. LET ME FORGIVE AND BE HAPPY.

There is a point in our life when the innocence we had as children fades away and guilt and blame take over. What came natural to us as children - spontaneous displays of affection and laughter - gets censored as we are socialized into believing that talking to a stranger is dangerous and too much laughter is not right. We are told to be ‘good’ around adults which signals to children that just being who they are is not ‘good’ enough. This is where we learn to blame others for what we believe deep down inside to be our own faults. We create a personage to hide what we think are the unlovable and unforgivable parts of ourselves, alienating ourselves from our true Being. The result is a rift between our authentic self and the personage we have created. In this space we feel lost, separated, alienated from and afraid of the world. We lose ourselves beyond recognition. It’s important to understand that we all have a shared function, which is to forgive ourselves for our believed shortcomings. Because we actually have no other choice if we wish to be happy. Once the feeling of guilt is lifted and the urge to blame diminishes, the innate happiness we were born with emerges effortlessly.

I am sustained by the love of God

“I am sustained by the Love of God.” (“God” here is not the God in the context of any religious denomination that we are all familiar with but rather is the Greater Goodness present within us that connects us to the Universe.)

This lesson from A Course in Miracles is a reminder that Unconditional Love is always available to you at any moment. Believing that you are sustained by the Love of God cannot be an intellectual endeavour but rather must be an actively felt experience. Despite the world of separation and individualism that the Ego would have you believe is the only choice, there is a true reality in which a powerful field of Loving Energy sustains everything. It is an all-pervasive, all-enveloping Energy that acts like an invisible tapestry which weaves all life forms into the fabric and links us back to the One Source. God’s Love is a shared experience and remembering and declaring that you are sustained by It calls for you to place it at the center of any and all relationships, even in brief encounters with ‘strangers’ at all times. This is the the roadmap the Course lays out for us - the surest way to feel the Love of God is through actively sharing it with others. The more you give it, the more you receive it.

This is lesson 50 from A Course In Miracles*. A Course in Miracles is a self-study book whose underlying premise is that the greatest "miracle" is the act of simply gaining a full "awareness of love's presence" in one's own life.

There is nothing to fear

THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR. JUST TRUST.

Fear is the complete opposite to trust. Trust is the absolute absence of fear. The best way I can find to describe them both is by evoking the image of a cross. The horizontal axis represents linear time and fear. We conceive time as linear, seeing the past as being to our left and the future to the right in a straight line. When we are afraid of something, we always connect it to a past situation that we feel went wrong and then project that as the outcome of a future moment. If you were to stretch your arms out and imagine being pulled to the left (past) and to the right (future) at the same time, this would prove impossible because you cannot go in two directions at once. Seen in this way, we can see how disempowering and draining fear is energetically. It clouds your perception and consequently weakens you.

The vertical axis of the cross symbolizes the Eternal Now (Present) and connects us both to Mother Earth and the Universe at the same time. Unlike the impossible simultaneous pulling in both directions on the horizontal axis, our own physical verticality is nurtured by the constant flow of teluric (earth) and cosmic energies moving synchronously. The more consciously aware we are of our connection to Mother Earth and to the Cosmos, the more rooted and stable we feel and the less tempted we are to allow fear to take hold of us. We feel more open to life’s challenges and energetically we become more focused on the Present. Trust is a natural outcome of recognizing our relationship to the Divine Intelligence that is inherent in nature and the Universe. Once that relationship is forged, trust simply becomes synonymous with an inner knowing that truly there is nothing to fear. Just trust.

This is lesson 48 from A Course In Miracles*. A Course in Miracles is a self-study book whose underlying premise is that the greatest "miracle" is the act of simply gaining a full "awareness of love's presence" in one's own life.