Reflections 281 to 294
281/ Presence Is
2nd August 2025
“We are very, very small, but we are profoundly capable of very, very big things.” Stephen Hawking.
Where the ego perceives one person as a replacement for another, the Holy Spirit sees them joined and indivisible. (ACIM, T-18.I.2:2)
***
Lesson 281. I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts (ACIM, W-281). Yesterday: I practised the lesson throughout the day (“what limits can I lay upon God’s Son”) but, when I got the lesson up on my laptop screen for my final fifteen-minute practice in the evening, I didn’t recognise it and had to check it was the right one. I never really connected with the lesson, even though I had looked at it multiple times. Today: I felt a bit gloopy when I read through this lesson but, as I concentrated on it, the lesson felt profound. I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts - which is clear and obvious - and yet underneath my thoughts I can also think with God.
In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved. In conflict there can be no answer and no resolution, for its purpose is to make no resolution possible, and to ensure no answer will be plain. A problem set in conflict has no answer, for it is seen in different ways. And what would be an answer from one point of view is not an answer in another light. (ACIM, T-27.IV.1:1-4)
A Course in Miracles tells us that we are in conflict. This much is certain.
However, A Course in Miracles also tells us that every problem that makes up the conflict can be answered now. There is no other time than the present. Now is where the problem arises and the solution occurs.
It is impossible to solve the problem where the answer cannot be. One illusion cannot solve another illusion, and the past and the future are just illusory states of a mind that is split.
At least, this is what we are told, but we have to find it out for ourselves.
Being in, and staying in, the present moment is awakening. The mind is alive to the fullness of a mind that just knows.
And this means knowing our true Identity, which is presence itself. Presence Is, and is what we are.
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282/ Healthy Mind
3rd August 2025
“If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t more people happy?” Thomas Jefferson.
Your private world is filled with figures of fear you have invited into it, and all the love your brothers offer you, you do not see. (ACIM, T-13.V.5:7)
***
Lesson 282. I will not be afraid of love today (ACIM, W-282). Yesterday: The lesson was clear - I can be hurt by nothing except my thoughts. How true this was. I could feel it happening in small, unmistakeable ways although, when it did occur, an awareness that is beyond thought just observed and quietly did nothing. Today: This lesson ends by asking us not to be afraid of truth today, and so love and truth are clearly interchangeable. And it is also clear that fear is the barrier to love’s presence; as I was sitting with the lesson earlier, I could feel how this barrier would engulf me like a shroud of fog and then dissipate just as quickly.
The only way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends without your help, but you are needed that it can begin. Accept the miracle of healing, and it will go forth because of what it is. It is its nature to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and received. No one can ask another to be healed. But he can let himself be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. (ACIM, T-27.V.1:1-7)
A Course in Miracles tells us that health is always the witness unto health. This means that the fearful cannot heal and the miracle becomes impossible.
The holy instant is where the miracle abides. No fear can ever abide in the holy instant because there is only perfect peace. Fear always disappears in the presence of love.
We therefore need to love without attack. True love means perfect health and this is in the mind.
The body has become the symbol of our fear. By nature, it is prone to disease and, sooner or later, it will ‘die’. This means the body disappears from the mind while the mind continues, as it always has.
And so, to be healthy, we have to train the mind. This means practising forgiveness.
Forgiveness and miracles are intertwined. Both undo fear so that the Thought of Love becomes alive.
4th August 2025
“Sometimes it’s not the people who change, it’s the mask that falls off.” Haruki Murakami.
Deny your own Identity, and you will not escape the madness which induced this weird, unnatural and ghostly thought that mocks creation and that laughs at God. (ACIM, W-191.3:1)
***
Lesson 283. My true Identity abides in You (ACIM, W-283). Yesterday: The lesson asked us not to be afraid of love and said that fear was merely a mistake. Meanwhile, an acquaintance had told me about three alpacas that she keeps in a field and one of them was called Dudley, and so I went to have a look in the afternoon. They didn’t come to the gate when I arrived but I could see them looking up at the far side of the field with ears pricked. Dudley might have been a bit fearful but I felt very loving. Today: If my true Identity abides in God, then it’s probably correct to say that my small identity - the ‘me’ with all its foibles and uncertainties - is really just a slice of make-believe. The body sitting at this desk does not exist and isn’t here.
Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud, obscuring voice whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness. Pain compels attention, drawing it away from Him and focusing upon itself. Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means to make the body real. What shares a common purpose is the same. This is the law of purpose, which unites all those who share in it within itself. (ACIM, T-27.VI.1:1-6)
A Course in Miracles asks us to become a witness to the miracle and not to the laws of sin.
Witnessing the miracle means a change of perception, simply because the laws of sin relate to perceiving as a body. In reality, there is no body but only truth.
The body appears to hold all of our memories and hopes but, within itself, it doesn’t mean a thing. What we use the body for is simply a decision - we are the decision maker in whatever we do.
The mind is therefore what drives the body. The mind can perceive the body for good or for bad.
Except, of course, the mind is split and so needs the healing. Without the split, there is no body.
And this means we are a witness to either truth or illusion. The mind either sleeps or is being awake.
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5th August 2025
“People only ask questions when they are ready to hear the answers.” John Irving.
The Holy Spirit is God’s Answer to the separation; the means by which the Atonement heals until the whole mind returns to creating. (ACIM, T-5.II.2:5)
***
Lesson 284. I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt (ACIM, W-284). Yesterday: The lesson was all about recognizing my Identity - the one that abides with God. It always amazes me how the ego (my small identity) totally misperceives everything. All I know is that, if I practise forgiveness, then things never quite turn out the way I might expect them to. Today: I found it hard to sit with this lesson, feeling restless. In the back of my mind, I was challenging what the lesson was telling me - that I can change my thoughts. It was as if I was telling myself that it is impossible and why would I even want to try?
What could you choose between but life or death, waking or sleeping, peace or war, your dreams or your reality? There is a risk of thinking death is peace, because the world equates the body with the Self which God created. Yet a thing can never be its opposite. And death is opposite to peace, because it is the opposite of life. And life is peace. (ACIM, T-27.VII.10:1-5)
A Course in Miracles tells us that the dreams we have at night, and what we do during the day, are all the same. In our nighttime dreams, we might be the victim but during the day we could be the victimiser. It seems as if night and day are disconnected but they are not. It is all one big dream.
We are not asked to awaken suddenly, with a jolt and a loud scream, but quietly and with a sense of ease. A Course in Miracles leads us from dreams of terror to gentler dreams and it is this that is the process of awakening.
The world, then, just reflects all the dreams that are going on in our minds - and this means all of them, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Look outwards and we get a sense of what is inward; look inward and we get a sense of what is outside. Everything we see is really just our unconscious manifesting itself.
Except really it is all a dream because none of it is true. There are no inner and outer worlds where things happen in the blink of an eye. There is only the one reality and this is joyful and full of peace.
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285/ And so it Is
6th August 2025
“Change yourself and you have done your part in changing the world.” Paramahansa Yogananda.
Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. (ACIM, T-21.in.1:7)
***
Lesson 285. My holiness shines bright and clear today (ACIM, W-285). Yesterday: The lesson was about choice, and “electing” to change all thoughts that hurt. The amount of thinking I do made this feel impossible but, thanks to YouTube, I have been listening to ACIM podcasts where speakers prove it is possible (with practice). Their experiences are my motivation to keep practising. Today: I woke up this morning and had a strong sense of how words are just symbols of symbols. I thought to myself that, if I said a prayer (which has been my habit for quite a while) the words would be irrelevant. It’s the heart that matters.
The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There is no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream in which it acts as if it were a person to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by other bodies, born into the world outside the body, lives a little while and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies dying like itself. (ACIM, T-27.VIII.1:1-3)
And so it is. We are not the dreamer, but the dream.
The dream began and the dream will end. It began with a thought of attack and will end with a Thought of peace. Nothing could ever change eternity. It is impossible.
A Course in Miracles highlights that eternal life is what we are. If we think we are the body, then we are dreaming a dream about a figure caught up in a dream.
The question should arise, then, as to how we should awaken from this dream? A Course in Miracles provides the answer and this is forgiveness.
Forgiveness simply does nothing because there is nothing to do. We are as we have always been.
What we are is Christ, without the body. And so it is.
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286/ Timelessness Is
7th August 2025
“Let your curiosity be greater than your fear.” Pema Chödrön.
It is as certain you will fear what you attack as it is sure that you will love what you perceive as sinless. (ACIM, T-23.in.2:4)
***
Lesson 286. The hush of Heaven holds my heart today (ACIM, W-286). Yesterday: My wife spent the morning at the local information centre with a new volunteer whom she hadn’t met before, and was telling me how they just didn’t get on. I wondered how I would have felt if it had of been me? The ego did ramp up its voice a little later, as I thought about it, and so I practised forgiveness to counter my capacity to make up scenarios. Today: Have just been reading in the Text about the changeless dwelling place within, and so this lesson makes perfect sense to me. However, my first fifteen-minute practice did feel like quite a long time. Tiredness seemed to be blunting any chance of peace.
Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time. (ACIM, T-27.VIII.6:2-5)
A Course in Miracles does not expect us to leave time forever, but it does want us to become aware of the timeless nature of the mind.
Timelessness does not exist within anything. It just is and so we just need to stop trying to find it. Timelessness is beyond all thought - this is a given. Stop thinking and we find it immediately.
Forgiveness undoes all the analysis, all the ruminating and all the compulsion - in fact, all it is doing is undoing what never was and never will be. Timelessness is stillness and it is also called Heaven
Erin Michelle Galito channels Jesus in the video below. Jesus reminds us that we are the mind and not the body. The world is just a dream and it the mind that is dreaming the dream. Only the mind can decide whether it wants to remain asleep or to awaken. Heaven awaits this simple decision.
287/ One Voice
8th August 2025
“You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.” Golda Meir.
Would God leave anyone without a very present help in time of trouble; a savior who can symbolize Himself? (ACIM, M-23.7:4)
***
Lesson 287. You are my goal, my Father. Only You (ACIM, W-287). Yesterday: The lesson had a beautiful theme - “the hush of Heaven holds my heart today”.When things do go wrong - and something did go wrong when I pulled the chord on a client’s lawn mower and the handle snapped off - it’s important to ask the Holy Spirit for guidance. This I did and things didn’t seem quite so bad because the right course of action just came through. I felt a little better. Today: “You” and “my”, within the context of the title of this lesson, suggest a subject and an object. Nothing, though, could be further from the truth. There is just oneness and, as I practised a few moment ago, I heard lots of voices running through my mind which suggested otherwise.
The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done. It does not add, but merely takes away. And what it takes away is long since gone, but being kept in memory appears to have immediate effects. This world was over long ago. The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them and loved them for a little while. (ACIM, T-28.I.1:1-7)
A Course in Miracles tells us that the Holy Spirit makes use of memory - but not of past events. The Holy Spirit’s use of memory means a present state and time is therefore excluded.
The present moment connects us to a higher power. It is vast and expansive and quite without judgement. There is no past that arises from an identity; rather, our Identity is one of love.
The split mind’s use of memory is to ensure that we do not suffer future hurt. What we think within becomes projected out, and the world we see is a projection of that thought.
The Holy Spirit knows that everything is perfect - there are no divisions, there is no time and what we are is entirely one with God. It is impossible for a physical reality to exist within this oneness.
And this is why we need to be present to the one Voice. Essentially, the Voice is one of perfect peace and it lies below all the other voices that love to drown It out.
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288/ Free and Open
9th August 2025
“And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?” Khalil Gibran.
Only love is strong because it is undivided. The strong do not attack because they see no need to do so. (ACIM, T-12.V.1:1-2)
***
Lesson 288. Let me forget my brother’s past today (ACIM, W-288). Yesterday: The lesson implied that we should only seek God, and yet the instructions to the Workbook state that it matters less if we forget to practise than if we remember to practise and then don’t. I can happily say that I did forget for a block of time but, the instant that the memory of the lesson returned, I read it again immediately. Today: This is a pleasantly simple lesson to practise. It just seems clear that, at any moment that I am thinking about anyone, it is always with a past association. I can therefore use the lesson to get to bring my associations into the present moment.
Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone else’s dream. The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the dreamer is. It teaches you there is a choice of dreams while you are still asleep, depending on the purpose of your dreaming. Do you wish for dreams of healing, or for dreams of death? (ACIM, T-28.II.4:1-4)
A Course in Miracles states that the world is causeless, as is every dream that anyone has dreamed within the world. The world is just an effect of a state of mind that has fear at its base.
The miracle merely establishes that we dream a dream, although its content cannot be true. We are the author of everything we do, although what we do is always fiction and not a fact.
The world, the people around us and those we think about - all reflect our inner condition. And while the end of dreaming is the end of fear, the point is to witness the dream with a peaceful mind.
The world we see is now becoming the real world, although it still both a symbol and a perception.
The meaning we give the world is also changing, as we look with the Holy Spirit and not the ego.
And the body is still dreaming the world, except the mind is free and open, and not closed and held.
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289/ The Little Gap
10th August 2025
“A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.” Chinese Proverb.
Everything is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the mind. (ACIM, T-6.V-A.1:3)
***
Lesson 289. The past is over. It can touch me not (ACIM, W-289). Yesterday: The lesson was “let me forget my brother’s past today” and, as I would skim-read it, I quite often put a “not” into the sentence. For me, the title was easy to misread simply because my mind constantly seems to be judging. Today: The lesson is about a present world and one that is free of past associations - a world that is looked on now. Having just sat with the lesson, it was very apparent how much visual imagery associated with the past kept popping into my mind. However, when I did concentrate on a present world, a warm glow would come over me.
When you accept a miracle, you do not add your dream of fear to one that is already being dreamed. Without support, the dream will fade away without effects. For it is your support that strengthens it. (ACIM, T-28.III.1:6-8)
A Course in Miracles tells us that the cause of any pain we have is due to our separation from God, and it is never because of the body which is only pain’s effect.
Equally, the end of dreaming means the end of fear - it is impossible that love could ever exist within the world of dreams.
And the miracle really does nothing because all minds are joined - there is only one mind and that mind is perfect. Our apparent separation has induced a state where fear is so prevalent that bodies have become part of the dream. This is the fear that the miracle takes away.
The purpose of the Workbook is therefore to cancel out the little gap that has forced the chasm between each and every one of us. When the gap goes then freedom returns.
The gap is really just a just thought and this thought is one of separation. It is no more than a tiny cloud shielding us from the sun.
However, remove the cloud and the sun starts blazing. The miracle is when the little gap has gone.
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290/ Symbol of Separation
11th August 2025
“Remember that consciousness is power. Tomorrow’s world is yours to build.” Yuri Kochiyama.
Few appreciate the real power of the mind, and no one remains fully aware of it all the time. (ACIM, T-2.VI.9:3)
***
Lesson 290. My present happiness is all I see (ACIM, W-290). Yesterday: I could have spent a few days with this lesson (“the past is over. It can touch me not”). It essentially told me that, if I let go of the past, then I am going to see the real world - a world of love and light. Every lesson is entirely honest but, with this one, I really appreciated the honesty. Today: I began my meditation on this lesson by sending out thoughts of irritation towards a gardening client, and that was how it ended. And my eyes were also feeling blurry, which meant it was quite a relief to close them for fifteen minutes. The theme of this lesson was both needed and required.
Accepting the Atonement for yourself means not to give support to someone’s dream of sickness and of death. It means that you share not his wish to separate, and let him turn illusions on himself. Nor do you wish that they be turned, instead, on you. Thus have they no effects. And you are free of dreams of pain because you let him be. (ACIM, T-28.IV.1:1-5)
The body is a symbol within the dream. It is the symbol of pain, loss and separation.
A Course in Miracles tells us that, between minds, there is only truth. If there is a sense of unease, it is part of the dream; it is a hallucination and a fantasy of what is not there.
Our choice, then, is to support the illusion or to let it go - and whether we see fantasy or truth is always a decision in the mind.
Really, it is all about desire. How much do we want the peace that we feel we haven’t got? Are we content with dreams or are we determined to awaken?
Success can only be achieved by a mind that has persevered past all the temptations.
The Buddha was tempted by Mara; Jesus was tempted by Satan. In truth, it is all the same and A Course in Miracles calls it the ego. The ego loves to taunt the symbol of the separation.
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291/ Awaken to Presence
12th August 2025
“The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” George Orwell.
Healing is release from the fear of waking and the substitution of the decision to wake. (ACIM, T-8.IX.5:1)
***
Lesson 291. This is a day of stillness and of peace (ACIM, W-291). Yesterday: The lesson told me that “my present happiness is all I see”. It was a useful lesson to ponder as I returned to look after my mother for a few days, and also to stay on the farm where I grew up. There are so many past associations here, so many memories, and my cousin is also with us for a couple of nights; just like all of us, he needs a lot of love. Today: This lesson asks me to receive the Thoughts of God instead of the thoughts that I have made. Clearly, stillness and peace doesn’t belong to this thing called ‘Mark’ but to something much greater and much higher.
God is the Alternate to dreams of fear. Who shares in them can never share in Him. But who withdraws his mind from sharing them is sharing Him. There is no other choice. Except you share it, nothing can exist. And you exist because God shared His Will with you, that His creation might create. (ACIM, T-28.V.1:6-11)
A Course in Miracles tells us that we need to forgive the dreamer. Regardless of what one person is doing to us, we want to perceive how that person is caught up in a dream.
We separate the dreamer from dream through forgiveness, enabling our release from fantasy. And this is our practice - share the dream and we are lost in it; step out of the dream and we awaken.
Forgiveness therefore does nothing. It simply waits and listens and has utterly no judgement at all.
It also means we need a huge amount of patience. We are so used to striving, achieving and getting what we want. The point is to slow down and be aware of what we are thinking.
The awareness that we need is achieved through an inner stillness. It is quiet and entirely peaceful.
And this is the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t have a form; the Holy Spirit is. It doesn’t analyse; the Holy Spirit accepts. The Holy Spirit isn’t apart from us; it is alive and we just need to awaken to its presence.
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13th August 2025
“Do all the good you can and make as little fuss about it as possible.” Charles Dickens.
Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful and the holy. (ACIM, T-1.VII.2:1)
***
Lesson 292. A happy outcome to all things is sure (ACIM, W-292). Yesterday: The lesson was a reminder to be still and peaceful throughout the day. Thank goodness, then, for the timer on my phone. Every hour, I had to remember that I shouldn’t be rushing around like a headless chicken. The lesson acted as a balm to the bustle of life. Today: I have just sat with this lesson for fifteen minutes and it felt quite an effort. Maybe I am tired or it might be that this chair just isn’t comfortable? Either way, my mind feels cloudy and I need a strong cup of coffee.
This world is but the dream that you can be alone, and think without affecting those apart from you. To be alone must mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot but be sick. This seems to prove that you must be apart. Yet all it means is that you tried to keep a promise to be true to faithlessness. (ACIM, T-28.VII.5:2-5)
To be faithful means that God asks for nothing, and likewise with His Son. Nothing is lacking and there is no separation.
To be faithless means that the Son has made a simple error. The Son now perceives himself as an individual, and everything and everyone has to be different in some way.
A Course in Miracles rectifies the error, and the error is one of simplicity and childish innocence.
Being faithful therefore teaches us that our inner and outer worlds are completely interconnected. What we are is the one mind, and this is unified and whole.
Being faithless is as if we are children playing with toys. We love the mouse but are scared of the rat.
And all parents just want their children to be safe. With God, He is the Father and His Son is secure.
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293/ Night and Day
14th August 2025
“There is no past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present.” James Joyce.
The only aspect of time that is eternal is now. (ACIM, T-5.III.6:5)
***
Lesson 293. All fear is past and only love is here (ACIM, W-293). Yesterday: The lesson was a reminder that a happy outcome is always assured, even though I might not have felt this with both heart and soul. However, it was encouraging - we are all perfect in the Mind of God. Today: This lesson states that love remains the only reality there is, and its Source is all around us. Everything else has to be superficial and transient. There is no opposite to love and, if we think there is, our mission is to discover that we are wrong.
It is not love that asks a sacrifice. But fear demands the sacrifice of love, for in love’s presence fear cannot abide. For hate to be maintained, love must be feared; and only sometimes present, sometimes gone. Thus is love seen as treacherous, because it seems to come and go uncertainly, and offer no stability to you. (ACIM, T-29.I.7:1-4)
A Course in Miracles tells us that we have two ways of thinking, but only one of them is real.
The thought system of the ego holds us in a vice of fear. We can soothe, ignore or distract its lurking presence but it will never go away.
The thought system of the Holy Spirit is limitless and loving. Accept it fully and the mind is always peaceful; if we don’t, even by small degrees, its power diminishes and it fades into the background.
The near-death experience also makes us aware of the power of our thinking. As reality dawns on the unclouded mind, we find it is the difference between night and day.
David Williamson’s near-death experience showed him that he was a glowing orb of light. His mind was free. He saw that everything he feared had now become love. He was free of the hate that had gripped his body, was at peace and felt infinitely more alive than he had ever been in human form.
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294/ A gentle Smile
15th August 2025
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust.
The memory of God is shimmering across the wide horizons of our minds. A moment more, and it will rise again. (ACIM, W-pII.in.9:5-6)
***
Lesson 294. My body is a wholly neutral thing (ACIM, W-294). Yesterday: I was fitting a battery into the remote control for my mother and, at the same time, my wife sounded furious on the end of the phone. And then my timer went off, reminding me to look at the lesson - “all fear is past and only love is here” - and so this is what I did… as soon as it was appropriate. Today: This lesson tells me that it is impossible for the body to be God’s Son. This is a statement of fact. We learn that the body is simply neutral and will be cast off when its purpose has been served. And, in the meantime, we just do our best within the dream.
There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent. There is nothing to be feared. There is no way in which a gap could be conceived of in the Wholeness that is His. The compromise the least and littlest gap would represent in His eternal Love is quite impossible. For it would mean His Love could harbor just a hint of hate, His gentleness turn sometimes to attack, and His eternal patience sometimes fail. (ACIM, T-29.I.1:1-5)
A Course in Miracles tells us that the fear of God is the greatest obstacle that we have to surmount.
The gap we perceive between the self we think we are, and the love we really are, is that fear. It is symbolised by the body but is contained within the mind.
And, as stated in today’s lesson, the body is neutral. Neutrality can have no effect. Only the thought that caused it can have the effect.
The thought is one of separation and sadness. It is ephemeral and has no form. It is merely an idea.
And the mind is not at peace. The thought of separation is like a tiny bird flying across the sky.
Forgiveness allows the bird to fly into the heavens. We accept the Love of God with a gentle smile.
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