Now we are one with Him Who is our Source.

Judgment requires time. We evaluate the present by comparing it to the past in anticipation of the future. Today is better than yesterday which bodes well for tomorrow.

Today, A Course in Miracles invites us to let judgment go, and discover in the Holy Instant our natural relationship with Christ.

How holy is your practicing today, as Christ gives you His sight and hears for you, and answer in your name the Call He hears! How quiet is the time you give to spend with Him, beyond the world. How easily are all your seeming sins forgot, and all your sorrows unremembered (W-pI.164.3:1-3).

Lesson 164 is a good example of how A Course in Miracles sometimes uses highly poetic language to draw our attention away from the world, and guide our practice to a place that does not rely on formal application (say this, do that, for this allotted number of minutes, et cetera). It’s kin to a spiritual pep talk. It trusts us with the invitation to go beyond both body and world.

There is a silence into which the world cannot intrude. There is an ancient peace you carry in your heart and have not lost. There is a sense of holiness in you the thought of sin has never touched (W-pI.164.4:1-3).

It is okay to let those words move us; they are offered the way they are for that very purpose. It is okay to hold a lofty goal for the day – to remember Christ, to feel Christ as near as your very self, and to remember the Call of God to shared Divine Stillness.

We want to enter the day’s prayerful spaces with confidence. Not with greed – not with a desire for personal accomplishment. But with the quiet assurance that we are still as God created us (e.g., W-pI.162.6:3), and that awareness of God’s Love is our birthright (In.1:7).

Nor do we pray for ourselves alone.

We stand forgiven in the sight of Christ, with all the world forgiven in our own. We bless the world, as we hold it in the light in which our Savior looks on us, and offer it the freedom given us through His forgiving vision, not our own (W-pI.164.7:5-6).

The title of this lesson makes clear its ultimate objective: the memory of our perfect unity with God, our Creator. When this unity is recalled and known, then time ends and the world is saved because nothing happened. If that is too big a metaphysical pill to swallow, consider simply accepting – however briefly – the end of suffering and the beginning of eternal joy.

This is the promise A Course in Miracles makes: that we will remember we are not separate from either Creator or creation, and that in that memory the grace and peace of Christ will become us, allowing us to heal every mind that yet believes it is separate and alone.

Truly, if we are ready and willing, today will be the day we return home.

←Lesson 163
Lesson 165→

There is no death. The Son of God is free.

Bodies die. This is true for bees, elephants and human beings. It’s true for clouds and planets. It is even true of the universe. The one thing upon which the living can depend is the arrival of death. It is, as Emily Dickinson called it, “the postponeless Creature.”

Oddly, this lesson makes only one reference to bodies and that one is to the metaphorical body of the examplar Son of God (W-pI.163.4:4). Indeed, A Course in Miracles here is far more concerned about our response to physical death than to actually disproving it.

What can we infer from this?

For one thing, if you say “there is no death” to most people they are going to mount a nontrivial argument, pointing out all kinds of medical, biological, chemical data that “proves” death is real. Conclusion? Of course death is real. Only fools argue otherwise.

The course appears uninterested in that argument. It just doesn’t take it up. Why? Because to the body, death is always going to appear real. Bodies die – that is why ego wants us to associate with them, to become identified as a specific body. So long as you believe the body is your home, then death is going to be be a viable threat. There is no logic that undoes this.

So the lesson is less interested in a full-frontal assault on death, and more interested in getting us to notice the many forms death takes: anger, anxiety, sadness and doubt, among others (W-pI.163.1:2). And it emphasizes that all of these reflect our confused worships of death as “savior and as giver of release” (W-pI.163.1:3).

In other words, being in a body is stress-inducing, and we perceive death as our salvation from all that because it ends all that. And yet, suggests the course, all “that” is just death with a different name, and it has a singular goal that remains hidden from us: by recasting death as savior, it testifies that God is dead.

Here is the opposite of God proclaimed as lord of all creation, stronger than God’s Will for life, the endlessness of love, and Heaven’s perfect, changeless constancy. Here is the Will of the Father and of Son defeated finally, and laid to rest beneath the headstone death has placed upon the body of the holy Son of God (W-pI.163.4:3-4).

Essentially, the lesson is suggesting that we are wilful co-conspirators with ego in replacing God with death (W-pI.163.5:4). Suffering in myriad forms must follow.

Go along with the lesson for a minute. Okay – I’m not going to get into the finality of death, the obviousness of it, et cetera. I’m going to ask a different question: is God dead? Could God be dead?

I encourage you to ask that question and to give yourself space in which to hear the answer. Is God, in fact, dead?

I suggest that the answer is no. God is not dead. We may not yet have lost our fear of death, we may not yet understand how there can be no death, and we may not even know with perfect certainty God’s reality but of this we can be sure: God is not dead.

Look around you. Life is everywhere. It is in the trees and the birds who are in the trees. It is in the sunlight streaming onto each blade of grass, it is in every neighbor whose face you see and whose voice you hear, and it is in you, too, for you are here, now, indisputably.

If we give attention in a non-dramatic, sustainable way to life we will begin to see a process – a vast process – that transcends its various parts. It’s not about the blades of grass or the neighbors. A chickadee is life, yes, but life is so much vaster than the chickadee because it includes galaxies and nutrinos and oceans.

This vastness transcends us, as well. There are limits to our senses and our cognitive abilities. Life transcends our capacity for expression and comprehension. In this, it resembles – indeed, becomes coherent with – God, as the beautiful prayer at the end of this lesson makes clear.

We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything. We live and move in You alone. We are not separate from Your eternal life (W-pI.163.9:2-4).

This lesson does not want to persuade us by logic. It wants to show us the futility of believing God can be dead, and it wants to show us that we have become unwilling agents of that particular lie. It takes very little effort to see that God is not dead, and that we are ourselves gently set in the life we share with our living God and with all living things that collectively are Creation (W-pI.163.9:6).

Don’t worry about death today. It’s not our concern. Rather, look to the life that you are given – right here, right now – and to each shining example of this life, each one of which has no function but to remind you that you live as your Creator lives. We celebrate life and not death today, and give thanks that it is so.

←Lesson 162
Lesson 164→

I am as God created me.

This is the hallmark mantra of A Course in Miracles. As the lesson makes clear, the student who knows this is true and does not forget it, has become “his Father’s happiness, His Love and His completion” (W-pI.162.2:1).

Who among us does not long for this moment of self-recognition?

There is no dream these words will not dispel; no thought of sin and no illusion which the dream contains that will not fade away before their might. They are the trumpet of awakening that sounds around the world. The dead awaken in answer to its call. And those who live and hear this sound will never look on death (W-pI.162.2:3-6).

Heady stuff! But what does it mean exactly?

Here is the thing: at this juncture of our practice, it does not matter what it means. What matters is our willingness to say it, which in turn reflects our openness to its truth. It may not yet be what we know, but it can be. Thus, it is our practice that confirms the truth. Therefore, our goal is to make this phrase a foundation of our practice. It is that essential.

But we can say a few things, perhaps, that might shed some light on a phrase that might otherwise seem to good to be true, or too metaphysically obscure.

To assert that we are God’s creation is a statement about our self, as we understand that self, and about God, as we understand God. We might not understand much about self and God, but we do understand a little. We are studying and practicing the course because we are serious about peace and happiness, for ourselves and others. We reject any definition of God that excludes love.

Therefore, even if we struggle to believe it, the statement that we remain as God created us emphasizes the depth of our faith and our hope. We are allowed to take comfort in that! We are allowed to recognize that whatever victories ego ekes out in its war against joy, it has not succeeded in obliterating joy, which lives on in us.

Knowing then that joy is alive in us, even if only as a frail spark, enables us to give attention to that spark – to nurture it, fan it and offer it up to others.

Take another look at Lesson 139, which functions as a companion lesson to this one: “I will accept the Atonement for myself, / for I remain as God created me” (W-pI.139.11:3).

The word “remain” helps us here. It makes clear that yes, ego has mounted a full-scaled assault on our happiness and peace, but it has not suceeded. God’s Will cannot be undone. Ignored for a while, yes. Resisted for a while, sure. But it cannot be killed or ended by ego. Dreams cannot touch the mind that dreams them. Therefore, the end game of this illusory conflict between God and ego, ego and self, is always the demise of ego and the end of fear.

“I am as God created me” might also be stated as “Love prevails.” Or more simply yet, “Love is.”

You are as God created you. These words dispel the night, and darkness is no more. The light is come today to bless the world (W-pI.162.6:3-5).

We take heart today. Perhaps the peace and happiness to which the course points still feels far off. Perhaps it seems too idealistic, too naive or even too difficult. Fair enough! But today is not a day for judging. Today is a day for trust, and for seeing what that trust brings to us. Over and over let us declare this truth about ourselves, and discover as we do that we say it with God and for God.

←Lesson 161
Lesson 163→

Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.

Salvation is collaborative, relational. Without our brothers and sisters, we cannot be saved, and if we cannot be saved, then salvation is a lie. God’s power is a joke, and Jesus a deluded fanatic. And A Course in Miracles even more so.

In your heart, you know this is not so. You may be confused and unsure about the truth of God, Jesus and ACIM, it may yet not be your personal path, but it doesn’t deserve to be scorned and discarded.

Today’s lesson is a deep exercise of open-mindedness and willingness. Thus, it is an exercise in personal vulnerability. Without any supernatural drama whatsoever, we have to give attention to the brother or sister we hate, and be willing to see Christ in them.

This means we have to be willing to be wrong! It means that we have to own our confusion. We have to be able to say “I know nothing” and then be taught by a Teacher other than our own self. Anything else would leave the underlying hate intact, an unacceptable result.

The savior’s vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself . . . It cannot judge because it does not know. And recognizing this, it merely asks, “what is the meaning of what I behold?” Then is the answer given. And the door held open for the face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks, in innocence, to see beyond the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear against the vision of Christ in you (T-31.VII.13:1, 4-7).

For this to happen, we have to notice the way in which our current mode of understanding is premised on specifics. People are attractive or unattractive; this job is more culturally valuable than that one. People in this neighborhood are more trustworthy than those in this other neighborhood. I like purple and yellow but not red. Men should behave this way, women another. Et cetera.

We see specifics, and we value them according to a belief system that we rarely investigate. We just assume the world is the way it is, and the self too. Don’t its many differences and distinctions prove this? And yet look at the suffering this world includes? Is there not another way?

One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth (W-pI.161.4:1-3).

This does not make sense to us. It might seem like a good idea, or a future ideal. It might makes us feel good to say it. But it’s not how we live.

This lesson aims to change that, not by arguing that its wrong, but by going into it as deeply as possible. You and I have hate in our hearts. Specificity is its hallmark (W-pI.161.7:1). Okay, says A Course in Miracles, then let’s use that. Let’s look in a very literal way at one brother – his outfit, his appearance, the tenor of his voice, his behavior, what is admirable about him, what is not.

Then think of this: What you are seeing now conceals from you the sight of one who can forgive you all your sins; whose sacred hands can take away the nails which peirce your own, and lift the crown of thorns which you have placed upon your bleeding head (W-pI.161.11:5).

We ask a blessing of this brother, that we might see him “with the eyes of Christ” in order to behold our own “perfect sinlessness” (W-pI.161.11:7). We are asking our brother and sister – who we have set in a body and judged against, over and over and over – to show us another way of seeing. The blessing – the way of seeing the other not as a body, and free altogether of judgment of any kind – is a light in which we both are healed.

This is the savior’s vision: that he see his innocence in all he looks upon, and see his own salvation everywhere. He holds no concept of himself between his calm and open eyes and what he sees. He brings the light to what he looks upon, that he may see it as it really is (T-31.VII.11:5-7).

Asking a brother or sister to bless us is really asking them to show us who we are in truth. Being willing to see our brother or sister as our own self is what we are in truth. In the context of the world and of bodies, it is an exquisite symbol of joining that undoes our erroneous thinking by dissolving its foundation: that the world is real and we are bodies.

. . . in Christ’s vision is [our brother’s and sister’s] loveliness reflected in a form so holy and so beautiful that you could scarce refrain from kneeling at their feet. Yet you will take their hand instead, for you are like them in the sight that sees them thus (W-pI.161.9:3-4).

Is it clear? We merely ask Love to remind us we are Love Itself. Our willingness to ask – which is our willingness to be wrong about all our ideas and beliefs, bar none – opens the door to a grace and peace that truly transcends understanding.

Today we give attention to each other, grateful that are savior is near at hand and easy to recognize. Humbly we approach one another, seeing only Love, which is born of the willingness to see nothing else. And where Love is invited, Love enters, and makes welcome unto all.

←Lesson 160
Lesson 162→

I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.

This lesson suggests that we are willing aliens in our home home. Fear arrives, asserts itself, argues it is what we are in truth, and we believe it. And believing it effectively makes it real. And so we believe we are lost – to our home and to our own self, whom we have rejected at fear’s insistence.

Fear is the foundation of ego. It threatens attack and demands defense. It allows no peace but forever generates conflict, insisting that we have not brothers but at best temporary allies and at worst blood enemies who must be killed if we are to live.

Fear’s message is terrifying, and we have fallen for it. Look around and behold the world that fear has made – does it not include war? Nuclear weapons? Dying coral reefs and starving children? Isn’t happiness made of shifting sands?

The miracle teaches us that none of this happened. Fear did NOT render us homeless. We only dreamed that it did. And though the way back to happiness and peace may seem difficult, our return is sure.

Yet is your Self as certain of Its Own as God is of His Son. He cannot be confused about creation. He is sure of what belongs to Him . . . He does not know of strangers. He is certain of His Son (W-pI.160.7:4-6, 8-9).

We experience this certainty as our own when we seek it in our brothers and sisters. That is the theme of this current block of lessons: we are each the other’s savior.

You will not remember [Christ] until you look on all as He does. Who denies his brother is denying Him, and thus refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come (W-pI.160.10:4-5).

Today’s lesson becomes a happy mantra offered in gratitude. We are home, sure of what we are, and confident in our Creator’s love. Fear is alien to us – a way of seeing that we no longer accept because Christ’s vision has taken its place.

When we hold this idea in our mind, then it becomes easier to look as Christ looks and to see what Christ sees. This is reminiscent of Lesson 75.

Today the real world rises before us in gladness, to be seen at last. Sight is given us, now that the light has come (W-pI.75.4:4-5).

Gratitude and willingness join forces to clarify our mind, rid it of fearful thoughts and fantasies, and bring forth the light in which we the real world greet us as saviors, one and all. We are telling the truth about our self today, and live in its healing light.

←Lesson 159
Lesson 161→

I give the miracles I have received.

We can only give what we have – this makes sense to all of us. I can’t give you a slice of pie if I don’t have a pie. Also, if I want pie, then I have to keep the pie for myself. But A Course in Miracles upends this familiar logic, arguing that giving a thing away is how I receive it. Gifting it is “proof that what you have is yours” (W-pI.159.1:8).

This logic leads naturally to one of the sweetest and most instructive paragraphs in all the Text, Workbook and Manual for Teachers.

You understand that you are healed when you give healing. You accept forgiveness as accomplished in yourself when you forgive. You recognize your brother as yoursef, and thus do you perceive that you are whole. There is no miracle you cannot give, for all are given you. Receive them now by opening the storehouse of your mind where they are laid, and giving them away (W-pI.159.2:1-5).

To think this way – which is to become ready, willing and able to open the storehouse of our mind and share its contents without qualification or condition – is to see not with the body’s eyes nor the world’s logic but with Christ’s vision, which both sees and obeys only truth.

Christ beholds no sin in anyone. And in His sight the sinless are as one. Their holiness was given by His Father and Himself (W-pI.159.4:4-6).

We do not presently see this way, yet we can learn to. Our learning is accomplished by our willingness to see our brothers and sisters as our equals, and to recognize in all of us our shared desire for peace and happiness. We don’t want to be victors, we don’t want to be masters, and we don’t want to be better. We recognize in those desires only cause for suffering, and we want something else now. We want the other way.

Thus, we see our fundamental equality, and seeing it naturally dissolves our desire to be separate. My sister’s happiness is my own; my brother’s peace is mine. What else can it mean that we can only give the miracles we have been given?

So tentatively we perceive the peace and happiness that is our inheritance of creations of a loving God, and as we do, that happiness and peace naturally extends itself. It is less like we are entering a storehouse and discovering treasure, and more like we are dusty windows being cleansed so a living light can stream through them and reach the world.

Happiness and love are extension; that is what they are. They can’t be possessed or kept to oneself.

Thus, what we are discovering is not something about the discrete self – my spirituality, my wellness, my growth. Rather, it is the discovery that what we share transcends and thus undoes the illusion of being a discrete self in the first place. Christ’s vision does not acknowledge separation.

Christ’s vision is the holy ground in which the lilies of forgiveness set their roots. This is their home. They can be brought from here back to the world, but they can never grow in its unnourishing and shallow soil (W-pI.159.8:1-3).

Thus, our ministry (e.g., W-pI.157.5:1) becomes the work of becoming messengers of love – carrying “lilies of forgiveness” from the real world back into the nightmare of separation, where they might gently transform the world into the happy dream in which God is remembered and the grounds for separation (and dreaming itself) are dissolved.

And what we give away becomes our own, and its bounty is increased a thousandfold. We become the Christ who dreams of a forgiven world, gently helping guide it from dreams of death and pain to dreams of life and healing. This is our calling, and every moment of every day – every relationship, no matter how apparently trivial or brief – becomes the means by which we remember together our “unlost and everlasting sanctity in God” (W-pI.159.10:8).

←Lesson 158
Lesson 160→