One Will

I am inspired today by the thought that there is just One Will in Heaven. 

 

Since there is just One Will, for me to “be” in Heaven means that I must get to the point where I recognize and gratefully accept that my will and God’s Will are one and the same. If my highest desire is to return to the awareness of my oneness with God…then every day I must practice the Oneness.

In Heaven, there is just One Will. Today, I practice walking with the One Will, which is my own.

I know that my seeming preoccupation with the present, my constant busy-ness, my intent on building something, my desire for sensuality, my judgment of others, etc. –are all reflective of a will that is not mine.  These are desires to make something real that is NOT.

Father, we share the One Will.  Today, I am blessed as I practice walking in the One Will.

Today, I ask in every situation, what is Our Will in this?

What is Forgiveness?

A friend asked me the other day to define forgiveness.  Here is what I sent him.
_____________________________________________________________________
 

Hey Buddy---

I’m catching up on emails that I’ve missed the last few months and noticed I hadn’t responded to this one.  Attached is a primer I put together on practicing forgiveness.  Let me give you a definition and then explain it.

FORGIVENESS is seeing your brother as sinless because you recognize what you thought he did to you never occurred.

Consider: Your wife having a dream about you lying to her over and over again.  When she wakes, she’s upset with you.  You explain that it was just a dream. However, this doesn’t help—she is still mad at you.  You explain that she is mad at you for what happened in her dream.  You explain that it was her dream, that she made it all up, and that she is mad at you for something she made up, when nothing has happened.  And so this thing that is not real (her dream) is getting in the way of your real relationship with her because she is believing in something that is not real. 

This, in a nutshell, explains forgiveness.

The spiritual discipline I follow starts with a few fundamental premises: 

1. God is perfect, eternal, unchanging, only loving.
2. Everything God created is like God: perfect, eternal, unchanging, only loving.
3. Only what God created is real and we cannot change what God made.
4. Right now, we are home in God, but we are dreaming a dream that we are living in a world that is full of change, filled with things that are good and bad, and dealing with people, some good, some bad.
5. Because it feels real, we think this world is real. But since God does not make anything that is different from God, this world that we think we live in could not have been made by God. We are still home in God, as we always have been, just dreaming we are living in a world that is unlike God and could not possibly exist.
6. Forgiveness is the centerpiece of our awakening because it leads us to see that what we thought others did to us has never occurred.  And allows us to see everyone as God created him, innocent.

This philosophy is summed up in three short sentences, which appear at the start of The Course in Miracles.

• Nothing real can be threatened.
• Nothing unreal exists.
• Herein lies the peace of God.

Very strange, I know.  But it can bring so much peace when you realize that no one is guilty. I use these words often, “I have created this for my healing.”  It helps me remember purpose and helps me forgive the other person because it squarely puts me as the creator of my dream.

Anyway…probably more than you wanted to know,

Michael

2014 - A New Start!

It’s time.  I am ready.

Let’s dedicate 2014 to remembering who we really are by reminding ourselves daily of who our brothers and sisters really are.  When I first read The Disappearance of the Universe many years ago, the chapter on the ego’s plan for salvation didn’t resonate with me.  The promise given in the book was that after reading that chapter you would be able to see the ego at work every day.  Frankly, I didn’t get it.

But over the last six months, it has become clearer. Put simply, any time I believe, “Things would be better if only the other person would _____,” this is a definite sign that my ego is at work and forgiveness is needed.

Here’s the workbook lesson from A Course in Miracles that helped put this into perspective for me.

ACIM WB#71

The ego's plan for salvation centers around holding grievances. It maintains that, if someone else spoke or acted differently, if some external circumstance or event were changed, you would be saved. Thus, the source of salvation is constantly perceived as outside yourself. Each grievance you hold is a declaration, and an assertion in which you believe, that says, "If this were different, I would be saved." The change of mind necessary for salvation is thus demanded of everyone and everything except yourself. The role assigned to your own mind in this plan, then, is simply to determine what, other than itself, must change if you are to be saved.

Who would I want to be different?  Unfortunately, the list is endless, which tells me I have a lot of forgiving to do! But I will start with those I contact today, as the universe offers me plenty of opportunities…right now.