THE GIFTS OF GOD — Sondra Ray and Markus Ray on A Course in Miracles

The Gift of Lillies instead of the condemnation of thorns is our choice to give our brother. Will we hold his errors against him? Or will we offer him the absolution of forgiveness, for thus it will be given to us as well? We are standing before the gates of Heaven with this choicebefore us. Will we enter the gates in this lifetime? Or would we rather keep our grievances toward ourselves and others, and thus stand outside of Heaven, in the hell of our own stubbornness? Will we hold tight to our judgments and condemnations? We must decide. We can waste time, thinking we cannot decide. In this procrastination is the heavy burden of hell kept nigh for us to shoulder. But we can lay this burden down in the forgiveness that is given us as the means to erase the past, and walk with holy gratitude into the reality of our Present. We can do this. We give absolution and forgiveness to our brothers in order to receive it for ourself. No one is "crucified" alone; and no one enters the gates of Heaven by himself. We bring everyone through this lovely gate together. The Law of Total Inclusion applies. HUGS, M&S

This new Chapter 20 is THE VISION OF HOLINESS. Can we enter into a new phase of our acceptance of miracles in our life? This begins the Holy Week of receiving the boon of the Resurrection. Who is it accomplished? There is our "brother" behind the veil of our grievances, our fear, anger, resentment, who is also the Christ. Can we see his true Self? This would be the result of total forgiveness, the Atonement. Can we accept it? Without it would we continue to blame and hurt ourselves, leaving the "stranger" outside of us, in a world of fear, suffering and death. It is up to us to choose the Lillies of Resurrection instead of the thorns of the crucifixion. This is not a hard choice to make, unless we still want to think we "know better."

In this last part of the Obstacles to Peace, the “Fear of God" is surmounted by our total forgiveness of our brother. This also includes ourself. But we cannot have the liberation from our secret "grievances" toward ourselves without relinquishing the grievances we hold toward another. The resurrection is invited by this letting go of all judgments and attack thoughts. There are none we choose to hold toward our brother, and there are none he has about himself (or us) that can not be absolved. We both stand before God in the Holy Innocence in which we were created. We stand with the Christ, and we choose to see the Christ in our brother we look upon, no matter what we “think he did to us.” As we stand with our brother before our Creator in this "lifting of the veil" of illusions, we are awakened to the Truth of complete Atonement, and the entry into Heaven. This is the whole purpose of our journey here on earth. AMEN.

The fear of God is strongly linked to our identification with the body, and our desire to get out of the body. We say we want "life," but we are attracted to the "release" of death. We do not see how insane this is. What we think of as our "fear of death" is actually our attraction to it. We are obsessed with our own suffering which we bring upon ourselves. The Resurrection established the Christ. He is rejoicing in the liberation from illusions. There is no death. "I am spirit" is a statement our our truth. Can we embrace this fact and be free? The signposts of our Joy in Spirit are there. We can let go of this lower confusion of the ego, and make these steps toward the Spirit, Who we love. Our True Self is beyond the "obstacles to peace" that are fading away as we look upon their unsubstantiality. AMEN.

TGOG 2024; 7-21; TEXT 19; SEC IV; THE OBSTACLES TO PEACE #6

We look today at the "unconscious death urge." This is another term we use to describe the Third Obstacle to Peace, "The Attraction of Death." We dedicate this Podcast to eternal Life. This is governing our Minds, now. No one can "die" unless he chooses "death." "What seems to be the "fear of death" is really it's attraction. We are also attracted to guilt, fear, anger, pain, and the suffering of conflict. These negative emotions will eventually make us sick and bring on death. Do we really want that? Part of our ego mind does want it. It is a mad belief that "death: is some kind of release from all the "problems" we manufactured in our life. We do not want to be responsible. We are actually "arrogant" to lean toward "death." The ego "kills" what it says it "loves." All of this is insane. This Podcast liberates us from the attraction of death.

Why are we actually "attracted to pain?" We "think" that our Self-Identity is so wired together with the body, we forget that we are Spirit. This Spirit is always in a state of grace, always in a state pf Peace and Joy, always ONE with its SOURCE. The second we forget this and "think" we actually are a body, separated from it's Source, we invite in the duality of Life vs. Death. Now what we have identified our "self" as the body, it has a shelf life and we think "death is inevitable." This causes not only pain and disease in the body, it produces fear, guilt, and anger in the mind. Then we are "all fucked up," as they say. Removing this false "identification with the body," we can restore our proper alignment: Spirit - Mind - Body. Then the pain we attracted before is over. There is only Joy, far greater than any gratification of pleasure we pursued before. And now we can use the body indefinitely as a "communication tool" to transmit this Joy to all our brothers and sisters.

The Obstacles to Peace need to be overcome. This is the second obstacle, The belief that the body is valuable for what it offers. We are attached to the body, and we "identify" with it, and make the mistake of associating the body with our Self. We see death as the final "freedom" in this thought system of suffering, and we equate Atonement with "murder." Love is associated with the "fear of death.” If love is the release of all suffering, and we believe the final release is death, then we are afraid of this "death” simultaneously. I would follow then, that fear and love are inevitably together. This mortal thought system has fear as its basis. It clings to the "feast of fear and guilt" in which belief in the body as our Identity can engage. We surmount this obstacle in the Heaven of our real Sacred Home, in our Holy Relationship with the immortal and unlimited Christ in us. There is no death, and Life is in a state of absolute Peace and Joy.

The Attraction of guilt is the ego's chief desire to deny Love. The ego, based on fear, makes guilt "real." The messengers of our perception are sent out to find some error, some mistake, some "sin" to feel guilty about. Either guilt is taken in and used to make us miserable, or it is projected outward onto someone else in order to diminish the guilt we feel in ourselves. Love, on the other hand, welcomes all and forgives all errors. It does not see mistakes of the ego real, and there is a glad reunion of us and our brothers at the heavenly table of total forgiveness. We can apply this forgiveness to those to whom before we held many grievances. Now we can see them in a different holy light, one in which their loveliness is obvious, and their "sins" are forgotten, being long, long ago in a past that is no longer here. Now they are invited in to our most sacred garden, at a feast of beauty beyond measure, to join us in a glad whisper of rejoicing.

The First Obstacle to Peace is the "Desire to get rid of peace." It's hard to believe we are so addicted to anger and conflict, but we are. And the when Peace comes to us, we actually feel uncomfortable because it is not the struggle we are used to, and we "want to get rid of it." This Section IV of Chapter 19, The Attainment of Peace, does very well explaining our "blocks" to realizing peace. When we take a close introspection of our minds and its devious shenanigans, we see that the ego does not want peace. It wants "the fight," and eventually the "rest" of death, which is not real rest at all. We can all benefit from studying this Section IV quite carefully so we are not fooled by the ego's wily tactics.

Markus Ray delivers a general talk on ACIM in the Happiness & Longevity Training in Latvia. Translated in Latvian, this is for anyone who has been studying A Course in Miracles for some years now, or even for someone who is just introduced to it. What are the two thought systems that confront us when studying ACIM? These are made clear in this lecture: The ego's thought system versus the Holy Spirit's Thought System of our God Created Self. We all have free will to choose which we want to use. Markus makes it very clear how to shift from one into the other. Join him in this bottom line talk that could very well inspire you to pick up A Course in Miracles and make it a cornerstone of your spiritual practice and awakening of your inner life.