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

Heaven is within us now. Why wait for it to embrace our hearts? Today it can be ours. Can we allow this awareness to engulf our minds? We are the Sons and Daughters God Loves. What are we waiting for? Let us accept our Divine Reality today, without delay. 

The nature of our holiness is JOY. The two go together. Pain suffering, loss, sickness, have nothing to do with Love. JOY and all forms of suffering are mutually exclusive. In fact, they are defenses against Love. When they are present, they indicate the absence of Love. They are surely a "call for Love." Forgiveness is called upon to meet them. Silence and Stillness are the first responses in the face of them. Allowing forgiveness to blanket these cries for help is a practice we would do well to perfect. In this extension, our holiness shines bright and clear today.

We can change our minds. The mind we have been using attracts pain and suffering. Our negative thoughts make up sickness, suffering and death. We are the cause of our own demise. By the same token, we can elect to change all the thoughts in our subconscious mind that hurt us. "I rule my mind that I alone must rule," is Lesson #236. Because we rule the mind, we can change the thoughts we think with it. Making our mind one with God's, only loving thoughts are true. Only joyful experiences are God's will for us. 

Who are we? We are Sons and Daughters of God. We are One in this shared Identity. This is not an "image of ourself" we have made, but rather a blessing of God laid opon us forever and ever. We are The Son He Loves. What else then, could we extend to our brothers and sisters. Can we put away all grievances, attack thoughts, fear, guilt, or anger in order to accept your True Self? We must. And we can. It is already given to us to claim. Why not today? 

Why would we be afraid of our own Identity? Obviously we have made up a false self whom we think is "us," and it scares the bejeebies out of us to give it up. We are more concerned with the "benefits" of maintaining this false self than the actual reality of Who we are as God Created us to be. Love is who we are in the absolute sense. This Self is immortal, boundless, unlimited, at one with all of Creation, and forever Free. This is LOVE. This is who we are....not the "fear self" we made up. 

We seldom see that sickness is brought about by thought forms. These thoughts are not God's Thoughts of perfect happiness. In fact, sickness is a defense against this truth. Being "hurt" is preceded by thoughts that deny our Divine Connection with Pure Joy. The Bliss of God is our natural state of being. Separation from this state of being is what we are attempting to heal with A Course in Miracles. We can turn things over to the Holy Spirit when we see the way out of our sickness is not a way we have made up to keep us there. 

Who God created limitless is free. And we are that. So how could we be limited by anything? The language of these words from Jesus in ACIM are beyond anything uttered in the English Language. They are evolving us upward. We have to take pause, and let these words sink into our soul. We need to apply the Lessons to our everyday life and adapt upwards. Let us go up the ladder of holiness together. 

There is no freedom but now. There is no real bondage other than the prison we impose upon ourselves. When we realize we are part of Creation, we are free. The "laws" of fear, guilt, and anger are vengeful dreams that punish and bind us to death. Creation's immortality is free already here for us. Our liberation is now. There is no postponement of total freedom for us, promised by Creation. It is here already.  

Who but ourselves can we bind with thoughts of limitation? And could God be limited to a body that lives for awhile then dies? We are Sons of God who are boundless, unlimited. Let us not be merely entities of mortal flesh that enevitably come to an end. Rather are we beings of the spirit that have immortality at our core. 

This Lesson helps us put our foot down and not listen to all the senseless rules and regulations by which we bind ourselves in life. We are under no laws but God's (Lesson #76). This is the lave of Love—what do I have to give? Giving is the only law under which I am governed. Let's find what we have to give and put our joy into that. It is something of the Spirit that brings us pure Joy.