A Course In Miracles Lesson 96

A Course In Miracles lesson 96 states: Salvation comes from my one Self.

How can a whole self also be fragmented into separate parts?  How can we be both good and bad at once?  It is not possible to be both.  But it is possible to experience both in the form of illusion.  If we undulate between feeling strong sometimes and weak other times, we can know from today’s lesson that only one of these states is true reality.

Dual thinking is the cause of inner conflict.  Inner conflict is the cause of all external conflict.  What we experience inside is what we bring to us.  What we experience inside becomes our life and is demonstrated in the outside world.  There is no outside world without the inside state of our being.  Which means, there is only inside.  There is only one reality, one self, from which all experiences come.

On a core, cellular level you know what you really are.  You know you are fundamentally good.  You know that life is fundamentally good.  It is not possible to NOT know this about yourself.  You know.  But it is possible to choose to turn away from what you know and to induce upon yourself a forgetfulness.

You can not be anything other than the whole, unified wellness of Creation because Creation created you like Itself.  What you think you have done that is bad has not really happened in the true scheme of things.  We are learning that in this world, all that happens fades away to nothing and nothing in this world can continue to be condemned.

Feeling like a bad person is an unbearable self-identification.  It hurts because it is not true.  What is true feels right and good.  Error and illusion feels painful.  You will never be able to think of yourself as both good and bad, connected and excluded because only one of those states is actually the truth.  You can not be lost and found at once.  And the truth is, you can not ever be lost.  You are only and always one unified self in the Unified Field.

Try as you might to maintain a “bad person” identity, your true, real, good nature will eventually rise to the surface.  What is will always eventually be known.  What is true can not be hidden forever.  What is is forever what it is.  Permanence is found in energy, not physical matter.  Physical matter is a temporary dream journey of illusion we are destined to wake up from.

To end the suffering in your mind, you must stop trying to hold both truth and illusion as equals.  Illusions are only possible because of the nature of truth.  Truth hosts illusions and holds space for our freedom to choose error and the freedom to choose correct thinking.  Lies and deceptions need no attention.  They fade in strength of their own accord.  But what you experience in your split mind will feel very real and very intense.  That intense feeling does not make it real.  It only makes it painful.  Pain is not an accurate indicator of reality.  Pain is a very convincing argument to the body of its realness and authority, but make no mistake, pain comes from the illusion side of the split mind.  

True reality would never hurt you.  True reality does not get angry with you for errors you have made.  There are no acts of revenge coming from the true self.  All vengeance comes from the split mind, the ego identity whose only aim is to achieve what can not ever be achieved- permanent death.  If the ego succeeds in killing your body through violence or substances, you will discover you are energy consciousness and you will carry on in your joyous exploration of ever-expanding life.  But you do not have to die to learn of your true nature.  You can choose that part of you now.

Pain comes from the illusion side of the mind.  Pain holds great authority over the body because the body is designed to feel.  That is what the body’s function is.  Who designed our bodies?  We did.  You, yourself manifested the dream you are currently living.  How?  With the power given to you by That which created you.  From the freedom of that indescribable gift, we have set forth into an exploration of the impossible, an exploration of isolation from our origins.  We have that much power.  We have the ability to induce amnesia of our true self because we were created free.  Free to choose what is real and what is an illusion.

A Course In Miracles Lesson 96 asks us to be at peace with the mistakes we have made.  Be at peace with not having known better sooner.  You are always only ever doing what you were built to do- learn, grow, and improve.  The problem we face from the illusion side of our mind is not real.  Those problems are conjured thought experiments of the impossible.  If a problem is not real, it can not be resolved because there is nothing to resolve.  To try to fix an illusory problem would be like trying to pull something out of a dream and have it in your waking life.  Perhaps a sweater, a picture, or a bowl of ice cream?  Try as you might, you will never make the dream time a real place where real things exist.

The energy and state of experience you have in a dream is the only real thing about that dream.  Energy is what is real.  This life is like a dream.  Place attention on the quality of interactions between people to locate a lasting sense of well-being.  Connection to personalities, connection with the energy of others is the path to lasting wellness.

Living in the split prevents the ability to really think at all.  Since a split is impossible, the mind is really only in a state of blankness, a meaningless freeze.  In a state of dissociation, there is no real thinking, only confusion. A Course In Miracles Lesson 96 asks us to give no more time or energy to the notion of separation.  There is no way to ever resolve a senseless or meaningless problem.  An experiment of no consequence does not need our attention.

Decide to know that you are good.  Knowing you are good is a decision you make, it is an effort you choose to put forth to counter the logic of the split mind.  At the top of every hour, for 5 minutes, attempt to choose your whole mind.  Set an alarm to ring every hour.  Stop what you are doing and sit quietly.  Recall thoughts that lead to the awareness of your guaranteed goodness.  Your true nature has been guaranteed forever by That which created you.  

The situation we have gotten ourselves into needs help getting out of. Having leaped into the experiment of the impossible, we have fallen completely asleep and we now believe the dream is all there is.  We can not wake ourselves up from inside sleep.  But we can guide ourselves up into a lighter sleep rather than a deep one.  From a lighter sleep, it will be much easier for help to reach us and wake us up.  Who or what is that help?  The love and compassion of true reality.  

As often as you can remember today, at the top of every hour, guide your thoughts out of their dark density, and rise up to the surface so that you can be reached and pulled out.  Today we are waking up.  You may find your mind wanders and forgets.  You may get caught up in a state of grocery shopping or another activity.  No matter.  You will eventually return to today’s lesson and remember.  That one moment will produce a powerful shift of incalculable value. We can not fail in this endeavor today because it is the natural and inevitable process of reality to wake from illusion.  When you face a challenge today, tell your hectic mind that the problem it is facing is solved when you remember your whole mind.

You are one whole self, united always with Unity Itself.