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

This is the fifth review in the workbook. GOD is but Love and therefore so am I. Love is our true Self. Fear is a symptom of the imagined separation of our ego. Will we identify with the Christ and be His eyes, His hands, His voice, and thus communicate Love to our brothers and sisters? We give the miracles of Love and overcome fear. Fear is a stranger in the Self of our Love. These Podcasts are a continuation of our review and will be for the next few days.

"God is but love, and therefore so am I." This is the statement which brackets the two "Thoughts of the Day " that we review for the next ten days in this FIFTH REVIEW of Lessons #151 through #170. This review asks us to be more attentive to the Conversation we have with our Creator. Do we have the space to listen? It is interesting how we distract ourselves into a lot of meaningless things that waste our time and distract us from our Divine Connection. When we connect with Love, we also connect with God's Perfect Happiness. This is our Self-Identity. So we are realizing our higher Self. We can be free of the ego whne we realize this statement: "God is but love, and therefore so am I." I am the God in me. This is a true statement that we can and must realize.

The ego has everything upside down. The ego thinks that attack is justified and "love" is our enemy. Fear is accepted as real, and our defenses are necessary to keep us safe. Love does not justify the defenses we make. Love is safe, and we never need to attack. The idol that we call "love" is merely fear and attack that is never justified. When we see the illusion of this justification then we can remove the cruelty from our own hearts. Love is never threatened, therefore never in need of defense. Can we love ourselves and our brothers as One? In this there would be no more attack and anger and cruelty.

The Grace accessible to us now is concerned with the work of inner correction, with miracles, with the acceptance and the dissemination of FORGIVENESS. We are dedicated to Forgiveness as the means to clear our minds and prepare the table of our "inner altar" to receive God's final step of Grace. The Grace is already with us, and it has accompanied us our whole life, even when we were not aware of it. Forgiveness brings miracles, and miracles bring our awareness closer to the Grace. And when this is strong enough, and complete enough, God will take the final step to complete the Grace given to us in Absolute terms.

The Grace of God is always here, but we have made ourselves "absent" through our attack thoughts, fears, guilts, insecurities, grievances, and negative emotions. These break our communication with our Creator. But we can restore this communication channel through complete forgiveness. Forgiveness is a simple admission of our mistake, and an invocation to our Creator to "transmute" our errors to total "neutrality." (We have no judgments or guilt about our mistakes.) In this empty space, God can communicate again with His / Her Creation. We can receive the Grace that God has in store us. We prepare ourselves with complete forgiveness—accepting the Atonement for ourselves—and our Creator will restore our channel of communication with Him / Her.

DO we deny HEAVEN? It seems like Heaven evades us. Why? If Heaven is here NOW, and it has already been given to us by our Creator, then it is by our own choice and "denial" of it that we do not experience Heaven. This is the theme of this Lesson #165 today. Our acceptance of the Heaven already given to us is all that is required on our part. We do not first need to have "an experience of Heaven" before we accept it. This is what the ego does to justify it's "denial." It says, "Because I do not feel that Heaven is here now, it must not be here (denial)." We count on God, and not upon ourselves to give us the certainty of the experience of Heaven. But first we must stop denying that Heaven exists for us. We must accept Heaven (the Thought of God) as our rightful inheritance.

Do we connect with our Source on a daily basis? We have a function to know who we are as God created us. "Now are we ONE with Him who is our Source." The Christ will receive this connection to God for us, being in constant Communion with His Father, therefore, we listen to the Christ to make this contact with our Source. We are now as God Created us. We can be aware of this today, and all sorrow can be over. Suffering can come to an end. We are given Christ's Vision today, ONE with our Source, seeing our Divine Reality. We can be free of the ego's overlay that fogs our true vision. God is in everything I see. God is in my mind which is the Mind of God through which Christ's visions sees.

What is the most firm belief that we do not bring to question? "Death is inevitable." This thought forms the conerstone of our "temple built to death." It is the basis for all sorrow in the world. It brings about pain, sickness, old age, and the eventual demise of the body. It is the ego's main premise, and from this thought all fear springs. This is the thought that the Christ is here to question and to heal. Can we, will we, do we ever question and change this thought? And would we put our WHOLE BEING into the truth of this Lesson? As Students of ACIM we are being asked to do so. Is this the day you will "give up the belief in death?" We are as God created us as Spirit, and we have a function God would have us fill here in a Body. It is our Job to fulfill it, should that take more years than we thought. There is no Death. The Son of God is Free.

Our Home is Love, and in this Home there is no fear. Fear is a Stranger to Love. Why would we not abide in the truth of the Love that we are? Why would we not give up our justifications for anger, fear, and insecurity? Fear is a "stranger" to Love which is our Home. Love is a stranger to fear. The two are mutually exclusive. Yet, Love does not "battle" with fear. It sees it as Sourceless, and therefore, unreal and non-existent to Truth. Fear is a aberration of sorts, a "departure" from the Happiness this is Love's true gift to us.

Have we received Christ's Vision of our innocence? Do we maintain our Life free of problems? Or... are we giving reality to our imposed limitations? No One can give what he has not received, but what bloks us from receiving God's Infinite Love and Supply? We can be receiving and giving simultaneously. The more Peace we receive the more we give it away. The more Healing we receive the more Wholeness and Grace we give to others. Giving and eceiving are one in truth. Christ's Vision pictures Heaven. What God created perfect can be reflected in our world in that "Heavenly State of Being." We receive this Vision and then Give it. Our Sinlessness is guaranteed by Christ's Vision.