Messages of Encouragement 2010

This is the archive of MoE postings during 2010.  To see current/recent postings please click here.

Please note that the earliest posting starts at the top, proceeding in chronological order to the end of the calendar year. 

Please also note that there are several references below to 'SFGS' (Synchronicity, for Goodness' Sake).  This was the original title of my book, but was changed to "Seek ye First the Kingdom..." (SYFK) in 2011.ree

May you be uplifted, inspired and encouraged by what you find here,

Brian Longhurst

January 6th 2010

 Dear Friends,

We appear to be a little, separate self, a persona identity with an individual name and unique appearance.  This persona busies itself in daily outward thought and activity, focussed on the material plane, the illusory world about us.  This keeps our mind occupied in and with time and place.  To this identity the world appears to be happening around us in a random way and delivering to us a mixed array of events, some good and some distinctly not so good, but mostly beyond our apparent control.  So, some of the time we might seem to become the happy beneficiaries of some good fortune on one occasion, and the hapless victim of some misfortune on another.

Yet the Bible tells us we are created in the likeness of God.  Assuredly, not one of us believes this is how it is with God, so in this matter, either the Bible is mistaken or we are mistaken.  Jesus tells us we are, along with him, the Son of God, the light of the world and that our sole function, along with him, is to save the world.  Most of us don’t have the faintest idea how to save ourselves, or our relationships with our fellow sojourners in time, let alone the world.

So, surely Jesus has his sights set too high for the vast majority of us?  That is certainly how it appears, and is how ego wants us to continue perceiving it.  And those who are of a mind to ‘save the world’ see it as reducing our carbon footprint, adapting to sustainable systems of agriculture and all the other aspects of managing, or co-operating with, the environment. 

But this is another way in which ego-dominated mind has its thinking upside down and back to front.  When we save our mind, the world will follow without any effort, because the real world will emerge into our awareness from the false one we have made.

Today’s quantum physicists know full well that there is no such thing as a physical world, and though they may not yet have moved their perceptions along to the ultimate conclusion, in due course they will realise that all that appears to be physical is a figment of our imagination.  We are not only imagining a physical universe of stellar objects with planets and life forms inhabiting them, we are imagining lack.  Lack of what we have allowed ourselves to believe we need to sustain life in a physical, limited state of being.  This thinking can only lead to fear, sickness, disagreements, warfare, disarray, mayhem, destruction and death, and this has been and is being repeatedly demonstrated by our belief that we are the opposite of our true Being.

This thinking was not subscribed to by Jesus, who knew who he was and came to remind us what we are.  It is also not the thinking of any of the rest of us siblings in the Sonship of God, which every one of us shares equally with Jesus; it is ego thinking, masquerading as our thinking.  Jesus was able to perform miracles and teach as he did because he was in his right mind and knew that it is only by being restored to our true state of right mindedness that we could be saved, and with us, the world.  We are able to perform such ‘miraculous’ works as Jesus, but only if we are willing to allow our mind to be freed from the yoke of belief in self-limitation.

‘Easier said than done’, has been, the response to such a suggestion, for all too long. Indeed, it is impossible for our misperceiving, split-off, ego controlled mind.  There are those who will say, ‘My mind is not under control of any other than myself’, but any who see miraculous works as impossible are, unwittingly, under control of ego because ego is insidiously subtle.  And getting free of that control is impossible to any who choose to continue perceiving time and place as reality. 

But that matters not a jot, because that ‘littleness’ thinking is not our real self.  Quiescent in the mind of us all is our true Self, the Spirit of Truth.  Quiescent until we invite Him into our awareness.  Then He will become active in our thought processes, inspiring and enlightening us gently, lovingly, peacefully, with new perceptions of reality: spiritual, eternal reality, of which we are all an integral part in the indivisible oneness that is the Creator Spirit.

The transformation will not be instantaneous in linear time terms.  This will appear to be disheartening to our linear-time thinking, and that puts off most of us, at least for a while; maybe numerous incarnations.  But linear time is not real; it is the great illusion because belief in it leads to the belief in ageing, disease, degeneration, decay and death.

How can we avoid such thoughts when the evidence is all around and within us? We simply attune our focus to that which is beyond, always with the Help that is freely ours, always with us.  The fact that Jesus demonstrated it while in human form means it is possible for us all because we are like him, and that can be encouragement for us all. 

We don’t have to make a song and dance about it — at least, not outwardly!  Inside we will find it impossible not to sing the New Song, and dance the dance of freedom.  And as each increase in awareness further transforms us and brings us closer to our true state of Being, new verses will be added to the New Song, arising spontaneously within us.  And we will become aware that we are not alone in our singing or our dancing.

We do not have to parade and strut and endeavour to impress anyone with outer displays, for humility comes with the package, and is far more impressive to those with eyes to see and ears to hear than any attempt at grandiosity.  Those eyes and ears are nothing to do with bodily senses, but with inner awareness, so outer displays have no meaning.

Awakening is all about co-operating with our true Self, listening for the still, small voice within us, and allowing the Process to proceed without any attempt by persona-self at controlling it.  That will seem very difficult at first because ego is about control, and we have been under its control, its way of thinking, since the dawn of time. But time now draws toward its end; the final act, in which the all-empowered Help is rising, or leavening, and that will enable us to prevail.  The sooner we commit steadfastly to a willingness to co-operate the sooner we will awaken to the limitlessness of reality, just as demonstrated by Jesus.

One step at a time, the things we saw as important that are of time and place only, and have no part in Eternity, are seen as less important, until they become completely unimportant.  Eventually we come to the place where there is nothing that passes away that has any importance for us at all.  Then we are, along with Jesus, saving the world; our only true, meaningful function here.

The world we see with our present perception is not the real world.  The real world is the world in which we see our fellow sojourners as what they are; our brothers, not our enemies; where giving is recognised as being the only way to the Kingdom; giving love, blessing and forgiveness, without condition, without demanding reciprocity. 

It makes no difference if we refuse to accept the truth of Eternity now because time is an illusion; we will simply require a few more incarnations, but it is inevitable that we will come round to ‘Eternity thinking’ because we are Christ, the one, eternal Son of God.  Those who are not yet ready deserve our love, blessing, understanding and forgiveness because they have forgotten, momentarily, the truth about themselves, and will awaken from the dream of separation as surely as everyone else.  Miracles will show them, as they will show us all, that we are all one and that love is the Way back to the eternal Kingdom that has always been within us and is within us now.  As Jesus reminds us in this extract from ACIM Workbook lesson 77:

You are entitled to miracles because of what you are.  You will receive miracles because of what God is.  And you will offer miracles because you are one with God.  Again, how simple is salvation!  It is merely a statement of your true Identity... 

God has established miracles as my right.

To rephrase Principle of Miracles number 6, from chapter 1 of ACIM: Miracles are natural.  They occur when we realign our thinking with the Holy Spirit.  Then the dancing begins.

Love and blessings for 2010,

Brian Longhurst

January 13th 2010

Dear Friends,

Jesus is the template for our lives and our way forward to our true, eternal being.  We are like him in reality, but we are dreaming of unreality, so it does not appear, in our dream, that we are like him.  In that dream — a momentary, mistaken endeavour by God’s Son to separate himself from his Father, the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Source of all being — everything that is eternal reality has been turned upside down.  So we perceive everything from an upside down perspective. 

Our reality is perceived as temporal, ending in death; our limitlessness is perceived as littleness; our innocence is perceived as guilt; the abundance that is ours in Eternity is perceived as scarcity in time and place; the love that we both have and are is perceived as fear; the oneness of the Son of God is perceived as ever-increasing fragmentation and separation.  There is nothing that we perceive in time and place with our bodily senses that is not the reverse of eternal reality.  How could it be otherwise, since what we are perceiving is an illusion?  We may think delicious food is surely a splendid reality, but Jesus reminded us that in our eternal awareness we have sustenance of which our Earth-conscious perception knows nothing (Jn. 4:32).

Within the Sonship of God we are all brothers (‘brothers’ is not intended to be a gender-specific or exclusive term, since gender has no reality in Eternity, so there is one more ego-fastening we can undo), yet we perceive brothers as potential enemies, who threaten our existence, even if only benign, loving intent is the motivation, just as Jesus was perceived by the Sanhedrin, who, seeing through the eyes of fear, thought he had come to cause their place and their nation to be taken from them.  Even though there is a veneer of peace and goodwill in today’s world, that veneer is very, very thin.  Even in places where conflict does not erupt into fighting and warfare, there is strife behind closed doors on every street, and every day murder and mayhem are all around.

How the Sanhedrin and/or Romans saw Jesus, and what they did to him, characterises the upside-down state of mind of the fragmented Sonship.  But Jesus knew he could translate the appearance of murder into proof of immortality, not just for himself but for us all, and show us our true, right-side-up reality, as a crucial, giant, memorable step in his GRP to awaken — or resurrect — us all from a momentary dream back to that reality.

Here, in these extracts from section VIII of chapter 12 of ACIM is how he exquisitely explains it:  

The Attraction of Love for Love

Do you really believe that you can kill the Son of God?  The Father has hidden His Son safely within Himself, and kept him far away from your (ego-driven) destructive thoughts (any thoughts that are not love-motivated are destructive because they are not of or from our true Being, which, like our Creator, is Love), but you know neither the Father nor the Son because of them (destructive thoughts).  You attack the real world (the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth) every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot see it... Offer it and it will come to you, because it is drawn to itself...  

God’s Son is as safe as his Father, for the Son knows his Father’s protection and cannot fear.  His Father’s Love holds him in perfect peace, and needing nothing, he asks for nothing.  Yet he is far from you whose Self he is, for you (‘ego-self’) chose to attack him (he speaks here not just of the man Jesus, but of the eternal reality of us all) and he disappeared from your sight into his Father. He did not change, but you did.  For a split mind and all its works were not created by the Father, and could not live in the knowledge of Him.

When you made visible what is not true, what is true (our eternal oneness in the Son of God) became invisible to you.  Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit (our true Self) sees it with perfect clarity.  It is invisible to you (our little, temporal, made-up, persona-self) because you are looking at something else.  Yet it is no more up to you to decide what is visible and what is invisible, than it is up to you to decide what reality is.  What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit sees.  The definition of reality is God’s, not yours.  He created it, and He knows what it is.  You who knew have forgotten, and unless He had given you a way to remember you would have condemned yourself to oblivion.

Because of your Father’s Love you can never forget Him, for no one can forget what God Himself placed in his memory.  You can deny it, but you cannot lose it.  A Voice will answer every question you ask, and a vision will correct the perception of everything you see (fear of asking prevents our receiving Answers because in our upside-down state of perception we are fearful of eternal truth, because we wrongly believe God will judge and condemn us).  For what you have made invisible is the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only Answer.  God would reunite you with yourself, and did not abandon you in your distress.  You are waiting only for Him, and do not know it.  Yet His memory shines in your mind and cannot be obliterated.  It is no more past than future, being forever always.

...  Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it.  Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception (of the truth of Eternity) is healed...    By making nothing real to you (an illusion is nothing), you have seen it. But it is not there.  And Christ is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourself.

Yet it does not matter how much distance you have tried to interpose between your awareness and truth.  God’s Son can be seen because his vision is shared.  The Holy Spirit looks upon him, and sees nothing else in you.  What is invisible to you (our guiltless, eternal reality) is perfect in His sight, and encompasses all of it.  He has remembered you because He forgot not the Father...    What God did not give you has no power over you, and the attraction of love for love remains irresistible.  For it is the function of love to unite all things unto itself, and to hold all things together by extending its wholeness (and it is the function of fear — ego — to divide, or separate.  Which will we choose?).

The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see (the world of separation, division, fear).  Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it.  Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception.  And as you look upon it you will remember that it was always so.  Nothingness (the illusory world of time and place) will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly.  Redeemed perception is easily translated into knowledge, for only perception is capable of error and perception has never been.  Being corrected it gives place to knowledge, which is forever the only reality.  The Atonement is but the way back to what was never lost.  Your Father could not cease to love His Son.  

(My emboldening, underlining and some italics, for emphasis.)

Asking for truth is fearful to all who labour under ego’s yoke.  Yet truth is benign, engendering love, peace and joy.  The Voice for Truth is within us, our own true Self, and never judges or condemns us.  I share the following communing to encourage all who have any doubt, that they may be helped to lose their fear and gladly enter in to their own within, and there, find their own true Self (or Jesus; both are equally trustworthy), Who will lead them, one step at a time, back to their true reality, with nothing to fear:

AM January 10, 2010

That is a good indicator of the progress p B. is making.    We do not have to be engaged in communing like this all day, or even every day, because p B’s thoughts turn to Me, and Papa, and Jesus, multiple times every day, and I inspire you at any and every suitable opportunity during those, and other, moments, with new thoughts, new awarenesses; sometimes in ways you objectively realise is Me, and sometimes not.  This suffices, for you know beyond doubt that I am with you always.  Why rush at it?  There is no rush; time does not exist.  You will not ‘lose’ if you do not ‘win’, because it is not a race.

In truth we cannot lose because we have never been lost to God, Who is our home, and we have never left home.  The only place that is not home is hell, and we are only imagining that.  Does this not tell us how powerful is our mind, to imagine thusly?  We do well to have a care about what we wish for.

Love, always,

Brian Longhurst

January 20th 2010

Dear Friends,

A caterpillar may think it is a lowly, crawling, limited — worthless, even — thing.  But if it were to look beyond the immediate, beyond appearances, it could see that its true reality is a soaring, radiant butterfly.  An acorn may perceive itself as little, nothing more than forage for a pig, a mouse or squirrel.  But if it were to look past its immediate, dormant state it would realise that its true reality is a towering oak.

You will have the drift by now.  We humans have in common with a caterpillar or an acorn a self-perception of littleness that has no foundation in reality because we are focusing on outward appearances, not inward reality.  Most of us have some level of awareness, however faint, that there is more to us than meets the eye.  Many of us accept — at some level in our mind, even if it is only a vague hope — Jesus’ words that we will perform the works he performed, and greater works; and John’s words: Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. 1Jn. 3:2.

But somehow, for most of us, all that is ‘in the future’; some indeterminate time, perhaps — probably, even — not in this earthly life, since miracles seem far from us right now in this world that reels from one disaster to the next.  But we have to shrug off the false perception of littleness here, where it seems so real, in the time and place illusion in which we perceive ourselves, or we will be unable to escape the illusion.

In other words, unless we can see through the illusion, from within the illusion, we cannot escape the illusion.  ‘Dying’ does not enable our escape, because dying is part of the illusion.  Only by seeing clearly past the deception to the truth of our magnitude can we break the cycle of birth and death and be restored to our true estate, of which Jesus is our template.

We oscillate between wanting to accept that grandeur is, somewhere deep within — maybe — ours, and what surely look like ‘cold hard realities’ of littleness: scarcity, fear, frailty, ageing, mortality; worm food.  The truth is that grandeur is ours, at a level that is so far beyond earthly perception that it is not comprehensible to our time and place thinking.  That is because our true magnitude is not of time and place. But because we see our reality as limited to time and place we think running fast, or building tall, or accumulating lots of money, or inventing some life-saving device will bring us magnitude in one form or another.

This oscillation is just how ego wants it because it keeps us on its leash of doubt and uncertainty of our reality.  All the while we are uncertain of our reality we will see littleness, because only certainty of who we are can clear the veil, fog, cloud that obscures from our vision the truth of who we are.   Jesus was certain of who he was, and was able to demonstrate, or express, that certainty with words and deeds of love beyond the wit of those around him, including his disciples. 

Magnitude is of the Within.  It is a state of Being, not of doing.  Magnitude was (and, of course eternally, is) the state of Jesus’ inner being, regardless of anything he said or did, which but demonstrated, or expressed, his inner being.  Jesus did not need to demonstrate his state of inner being in order for it to be so.  It simply was so, and he knew it.  That is the only difference between Jesus and us: he knew his magnitude and therefore didn’t need to make a big deal about it; we have forgotten ours, so many of us want to make a big deal about what, in reality, is nothing. 

But that difference is only temporary.  That state of inner being — magnitude — is of Eternity, and does not fade or pass away.  Running fast or building tall, etc., does not express inner magnitude, even if it endeavours to do so, because these activities are of time and place only, and fade, and pass away. 

Having a sense of need to demonstrate magnitude comes from a sense of lack.   Lack is not magnitude, but comes from a perception of littleness and scarcity.  Because of the innate sense of magnitude deep within us, we try to recreate it ourself, by endeavours that, along with everything else of time and place, pass away.  So there is no lasting sense of fulfilment and our endeavours at making ourself great can only fall far short of the mark because we attempt to recreate an eternal state of being with temporal doing.  Our magnitude is not of our own doing, but is ours because it was given us as an aspect of our being by God at our creation, so is ours eternally and unshakeably. 

We cannot lose it or give it away, but we can deny its reality, if we are insane, or brainwashed, enough!  But now is the time to reclaim it, simply by accepting it as ours, by God-given right.  It is by extending our true magnitude of being that it both grows and becomes certainty to our awareness again, just as it was, and is, to Jesus.  Here is what he says about it in this extract from ACIM, chapter 15:

III. Littleness versus Magnitude

...  You who have sought and found littleness, remember this: Every decision you make stems from what you think you are, and represents the value that you put upon yourself.  Believe the little can content you, and by limiting yourself you will not be satisfied.  For your function is not little, and it is only by finding your function (true forgiveness of ourself, our brothers and the world) and fulfilling it that you can escape from littleness.

Nor is it asked of you alone.  The power of God will support every effort you make on behalf of His dear Son.  Search for the little, and you deny yourself His power.  God is not willing that His Son be content with less than everything (right now, for there is only now).  For He is not content without His Son (all of us, reunified), and His Son cannot be content with less than his Father has given him...

The power and the glory that lie in you from God are for all who, like you, perceive themselves as little, and believe that littleness can be blown up into a sense of magnitude that can content them.  Neither give littleness, nor accept it.  All honor is due the host of God (that’s us, when we so choose).  Your littleness deceives you, but your magnitude is of Him Who dwells in you, and in Whom you dwell... 

Holy child of God, when will you learn that only holiness (i.e. wholeness, for ‘holiness’ is not piety, which is of littleness) can content you and give you peace?  Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did.  It is because I learned for you that you can learn of me.  I would but teach you what is yours, so that together we can replace the shabby littleness that binds the host of God to guilt and weakness with the glad awareness of the glory that is in him...  Let us join in honoring you, who must remain forever beyond littleness...

Call forth in everyone only the remembrance of God, and of the Heaven that is in him.  For where you would have your brother be, there will you think you are.  Hear not his appeal to hell and littleness, but only his call for Heaven and greatness.  Forget not that his call is yours, and answer him with me... 

(My emboldening, underlining and some italics, for emphasis.)

If we choose to see our brother in littleness — the hell we call time and place — that is where we will perceive ourself.  For those who object to time and place being referred to as hell, when we observe time and place from the true perspective — Eternity, or Heaven — hell is an entirely apposite term.  To escape we must gladly bring our brothers with us back to magnitude, for that is what we are when we remember we are one.

Love and endless blessings,

Brian Longhurst

January 27th 2010

Dear Friends,

If the question were to be asked, ‘Where would you prefer to be: in Heaven or Earth?’ the logical, sensible answer for any rational-thinking person assuredly would be ‘In Heaven’.  It would be sound reasoning, which should not require even a moment’s thought.  After all, if what we hear about Heaven is right, that it is our only true home, and there is only love, peace and joy — beyond anything conceivable based on our experiences or understanding of Earth life — eternally, then it is the only answer we can give. 

No more fear, no more tears, no angst, no pathetic squabbling — and even international wars — about meaningless irrelevancies, no frailty, dis-ease, genocide, hatred, famine, guilt, limitation... the list is quite long, is it not?  Ample evidence that this world is an alien place to us.

Yet, how many of us can, being completely honest with ourselves, say, ‘Yes, I choose to be in Heaven, right now’?

The sad truth is, most of humanity is just about as far from readiness, or preparedness, for Heaven as it is possible to get.  And yet this is the question we must all ask ourselves sooner or later, and ultimately, the only one that has any significance for us.  Let us have a little look at some of the thoughts that might, with things as they presently stand, go through our minds, were we to be faced with this question:

I don’t want to go to Heaven yet, because we can only get there when we die, and I do not want to die yet.  I am trying my best to enjoy my time here, though the dreadful goings on around the world don’t make it easy.  What can one do except not think about it?

I want to stay on Earth as long as possible, because there is no guarantee I will get to Heaven.  I am just as likely to go to hell, because I am no saint; and to be honest, I don’t really want to be a saint yet, because it doesn’t sound like as much fun as I am having right now.  I want to carry on here as I am for as long as I can — because the thought of death frightens me — and maybe prepare, somehow (though I haven’t the foggiest idea how), for Heaven when the end of my time here is nearer.

I am fearful of the idea of Heaven because, as I understand it, God is going to judge me on how my life on Earth has been; and if I don’t measure up, according to what will assuredly be pretty stringent standards, I am heading for something so terrible I cannot bring myself to even think about it.  So, I am going to hope to hang on here as long as I can delay the fearful future, even though I don’t really know what will be my final lot.  So, meanwhile, better the devil I know than the devil I don’t know.

All things being equal, of course I would rather be in Heaven than here on Earth, because we are promised something immeasurably more wonderful than here.  But from where I am looking, all things don’t seem equal.  After all, there are so many different versions of what Heaven is supposed to be like, and even more versions of how to get there, and until or unless I can be a bit more sure of how to get there, I haven’t really much choice but to stay here.  Eventually, no doubt, events will take me where I am going to end up and there isn’t much I can do about that, so I can but take it one day at a time and hope for the best.  At least there is no tax on hope.

Heaven may sound like a grand idea, but those who claim to be in charge of the turnstile are not exactly setting a fine example.  They disagree on so much, most of which seems irrelevant; in fact, on so many important matters they seem to be poles apart, so who is one to believe?  If we are supposed to follow their lead, forget it; didn’t Jesus say something about the blind leading the blind?

However terrible so much of life here may be, at least we know where we are, here on Earth.  Heaven seems so uncertain. How do we know it’s even there?

No doubt there are many more angles on all this, but the most common thread is doubt, uncertainty and an inability, or unwillingness to think about it, due to fear.  This is described, allegorically, in vignette 17 in SFGS:  

In the Bible Jesus gives us some very definitive pointers about what the Kingdom of Heaven is, what it is like and how to get there.  These are summarised in very easy to understand form in the Sermon on the Mount.  Here are a few extracts, as pointers:

Matthew ch. 5:

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.

Ch. 6:

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:  but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:  for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all that ye have need of shall be added unto you.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Ch. 7:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them:

There are many other sayings in these 3 chapters of Matthew (not to speak of the other Gospels!) that are hard to understand, and even harder to live by, when there are so many bad things going on all around us, and we perceive ourselves in a world so full of fear.  But none of those bad things are being done to us by God; we are doing them to ourselves, and can stop doing them at every next second.  Ego’s perspective has it that ‘if the other chap will stop, I will stop’.  But a reminder: not only is the Kingdom of Heaven within us; so is hell, because both are in our mind.

We can choose which to focus upon and which to turn away from.  If we choose Earth (time and place), ego’s domain, we will be tutored by ego; but if we choose Heaven we will be led, tutored, protected, helped by Self, the Spirit of Truth, and we will gradually become so attuned to It and so tuned out of the hell that is time and place that it will have less and less impact on us.  And, by giving that to Which we are attuning to our brothers, with love and blessing, from our mind to theirs, via our true Self, the Holy Spirit, (not by proselytising!) our awareness increases logarithmically.

Of course, the Kingdom is not of time and place, because it is within us, and we are of, and from, Eternity.  The Kingdom is not ‘out there’, or ‘in the future’, or ‘when we die’.  The Kingdom is of Eternity, so has no past or future because it is the eternal moment of now — always.  How could it be otherwise?  If it was of the past, it would be gone; if it was of the future it would never come.  So, it is within, and it is now.  If we overlook those two key points we will only see all the other, diversionary, illusory distractions from reality instead, such as suggested in the array of thoughts that may be typical of our Earth-mind thinking (or, more accurately, lack of right-minded thinking) about our true Home.

The diversionary tactics of ego are as diverse as we are willing to allow ego to make them.  Back in the 1960s I had a friend in Canada who used to say, of anything that appeared to be a cause for concern, ‘In a hundred years time it won’t matter’.  To that it can logically be added: if it won’t matter in 100 years, it cannot be real; therefore it is an illusion; therefore it does not matter now, even as it has never mattered, because there is no such thing as matter; only spirit.

We can be in Heaven, right here, right now, with no cost, no sacrifice, no loss; only gain.  This is because Heaven is in our mind — the repository of all awareness, all knowledge and all power — and we arrive there by waking up to It instead of slumbering through it, dreaming nightmare dreams of unreality. 

Opening our mind to Heaven, here and now, is, in fact, the only way we can get there.  There is no other way, because unless and until we choose to awaken to it here, in the only moment there is — now — we will remain where we have mistakenly chosen to be — on the carousel of illusion; in an unreal state of mind; stuck in the cycle of birth and death.  Such a choice denies us all awareness, all knowledge and all power, and keeps our mind upside down and believing we are the opposite of our true Self.

The things recorded of Jesus in the Bible, and what he has to say about the Kingdom of Heaven there are extensive, but the Bible has been so heavily tampered with that most readers are limited in their understanding of what he says there about the Kingdom.  Since it is the most important subject, indeed, the only subject of any real, enduring interest, and certainly of any real value, it is fortunate that when he told the disciples I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now (Jn. 16:12), his intention was always to bring to us those things — for which we were not ready then (at the beginning of the Jesus measure) — now, at the beginning of the Kingdom measure of meal. 

And, being good to his word, he has, at precisely the right moment, brought us the whole story, in ACIM.  Indeed, ‘Kingdom’ is mentioned 168 times, ‘Heaven’ more than 600 times and ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ hundreds more times, in ACIM.  Since the Kingdom of Heaven was also the primary focus of his speaking two-thousand years ago, anyone would think Jesus is trying to tell us something!  Here is someone who can truly be described as one-pointed.

The whole story of Heaven, from our upside-down, ego-indoctrinated, separated-mind perspective is more than can be digested at a single sitting, so a few bites at a time, preferably on a fairly frequent basis, will be beneficial to our spiritual sustenance and awakening.  So, I offer a tidbit, as an appetiser; here from T-7.VII.1:

The Totality of the Kingdom

Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother you will feel deprived, because denial is as total as love.  It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part.  Nor is it possible to love it totally at times.  You cannot be totally committed sometimes.  Denial has no power in itself, but you can give it the power of your mind, whose power is without limit.  If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone for you.  Reality cannot be partly appreciated.  That is why denying any part of it means you have lost the awareness of all of it.  Yet denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as well as negatively.  Used negatively it will be destructive, because it will be used for attack.  But in the service of the Holy Spirit, it can help you recognize part of reality, and thus appreciate all of it. 

(My emboldening, underlining and some italics, for emphasis.)

There are those who are equivocal about whether Jesus is the author of ACIM.  Since the focus of Jesus in the long ago and of the author of ACIM is primarily on the Kingdom of Heaven — where it is, what it is like and how to get there — not too big a leap is required to deduce that they are one and the same, with one and the same objective.  Truly, we are not alone, and will never be without help.

Joy, peace and love,

Brian Longhurst

February 3rd 2010

Dear Friends,

To believe time and place are reality is a certain indicator that we are under ego’s illusory (but oh, so real-seeming) thrall.  Guilt, fear, littleness, disease and death are some of ego’s ‘rewards’ for our belief in it.  These are wearisome burdens indeed, but we can be relieved of them by ceasing to make them real by our misplaced belief.

Guilt is a state of mind that can appear to have its origins within or outside us, but ego loses no opportunity to press its ‘gift’ upon us.  Guilt has many guises: not caring enough, not giving enough, not loving or forgiving enough, not listening enough, talking too much, judging, condemning and over-reacting too much...  And our perceptions that cause guilt feelings are misplaced.  If they engender guilt feelings, that is the evidence of misplacement.

Guilt = crucifixion; guiltlessness = resurrection.  Guiltlessness is our heritage and our destiny, and can only result in our resurrection from the place of death we call time and place.  Was Jesus guilty?  Assuredly he could not have resurrected his body if any guilt, or any part of ego, was in him.  Although he resurrected his body, this was a symbol, offered to us who could not then see past the symbols to the reality they were intended to represent. 

It would not be serviceable to our spiritual awakening to interpret that event as Jesus placing eternal value on temporal bodies.  Nevertheless, that historic event is a sure and certain way-marker for us if we understand how to interpret it, for we are like him: innocent.  All contra-indications are mirages, myths, lies, illusions; devices and contrivances to keep us prisoner in time and place.

To make good our escape we must learn to dispel them from our mind, and the Holy Spirit, our true Self, will teach us if we ask Him.  If we are fearful of asking Him it is because we believe we are guilty, and that He — the third Person of the vengeful, judgemental, condemnatory Trinity — will assuredly tell us of even more sins of which we are guilty, and therefore destined for the terrible judgement of God.  Such a perception is, of course, an ego-perception, not a true perception, for the Holy Spirit knows of our guiltlessness, sees our innocence, and will lovingly, gently, compassionately correct our misperceptions and show us our guiltlessness before God.

And if — when — we remember the truth of our guiltlessness, with His gentle, infinite patience guiding us, for we cannot remember without His help (contra to ego’s urging us that only wimps ask for help, so it is a sign of our weakness), then we will remember also that there is nothing to fear; that nothing can hurt us.  How can we hurt, or be hurt, when we are safe in the Heart of Papa, where we have always been? 

Jesus could not have faced crucifixion, knowing he would rise again, if he had not known this beyond all doubt.  He knew he would rise again because he knew who he was, and thus, that the ego-lie called death had no hold on him.  That is our truth also because we are his brothers, co-equal in the Sonship.

Only by steadfastly choosing to learn of the eternal truth about ourself; that we are created in the likeness of our Creator — pure, eternal, unchangeable, indestructible spirit — can we begin to see past the illusion that we are a body. Here is what Jesus tells us about the learning process and its benefits when we choose the Holy Spirit as our Teacher, in these extracts from chapter 14 of ACIM:

II. The Happy Learner

The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished.  You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy.  The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is happiness. (Compared with Heaven, what we perceive even as happy moments in time and place are miserable, and will be seen as such when we have allowed Self to restore our memory of Eternity and our all-empowerment in love, peace and joy there.)... 

The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you are elsewhere (Eternity), begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that truth is true.  This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn (because, if we believe time and place is reality, we are seeing a lie as truth, so truth — its opposite — will, assuredly seem to be a lie), and in the end the only one.  Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds.  Consider all the distortions you have made of nothing (time and place); all the strange forms and feelings and actions and reactions that you have woven out of it... The simple and the obvious are not apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns because of them.

 The truth is true.  Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there.  Let Me make the one distinction for you that you cannot make, but need to learn.  Your faith in nothing (time and place) is deceiving you.  Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place (Eternity) where it belongs. You will find no deception there, but only the simple truth.  And you will love it because you will understand it (which we cannot do while we believe time and place is true).

...the Holy Spirit... brings the light of truth into the darkness, and lets it shine on you. And as it shines your brothers see it, and realizing that this light is not what you have made, they see in you more than you see... The heavy chains that seem to bind them to despair they do not see as nothing, until you bring the light to them. And then they see the chains have disappeared, and so they must have been nothing. And you will see it with them. Because you taught them gladness and release, they will become your teachers in release and gladness.

If you would be a happy learner, you must give everything you have learned (all the misperceptions and judgements of time and place) to the Holy Spirit, to be unlearned for you.  And then begin to learn the joyous lessons that come quickly on the firm foundation that truth is true...

...For truth is true.  What else could ever be, or ever was?  This simple lesson holds the key to the dark door that you believe is locked forever... The key is only the light that shines away the shapes and forms and fears of nothing.  Accept this key to freedom from the hands of Christ Who gives it to you, that you may join Him in the holy task of bringing light.  For, like your brothers, you do not realize the light has come (already) and freed you from the sleep of darkness...  

III. The Decision for Guiltlessness

When you have let all that obscured the truth in your most holy mind be undone for you, and therefore stand in grace before your Father, He will give Himself to you as He has always done.  Giving Himself is all He knows, and so it is all knowledge...  Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished.  Ask, rather, to learn how to forgive, and to restore what always was to your unforgiving mind...  On earth this is your only function, and you must learn that it is all you want to learn.  You will feel guilty till you learn this.  For in the end, whatever form it takes, your guilt arises from your failure to fulfill your function in God’s Mind with all of yours (mind).  Can you escape this guilt by failing to fulfill your function here?  (Assuredly not, even though ego would persuade us the answer can be ‘yes’, while compounding it further.)

... Decide that God is right and you are wrong about yourself.  He created you out of Himself, but still within Him.  He knows what you are... There cannot, therefore, be anyone without His Holiness, nor anyone unworthy of His perfect Love.  Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit undone... (that, surely, is worthy of at least one ‘Alleluia’, is it not? J)

... Leave all decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He knows it.  So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt instead of love...  (For that is what the separation has tried to do.)

When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing.  There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer... The Holy Spirit will not delay in answering your every question what to do.  He knows.  And He will tell you, and then do it for you (another Alleluia!).  You who are tired will find this is more restful than sleep.  For you can bring your guilt into sleeping, but not into this.

Unless you are guiltless you cannot know God, Whose Will is that you know Him.  Therefore, you must be guiltless (and yet another Alleluia!)... Accepting His Son as guilty is denial of the Father so complete, that knowledge is swept away from recognition in the very mind where God Himself has placed it...

... God can communicate only to the Holy Spirit in your mind, because only He shares the knowledge of what you are with God.  And only the Holy Spirit can answer God for you, for only He knows what God is.  Everything else that you have placed within your mind cannot exist, for what is not in communication with the Mind of God has never been.  Communication with God is life.  Nothing without it is at all.

(My emboldening, underlining and some italics, for emphasis.) 

We can commun(icat)e with the Mind of God here, now, via the Holy Spirit — Who is indivisibly with us all right now — our true Self.

To at-onement!

Brian Longhurst  

You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up.  You will see it or not see it, as you wish.  While you want it you will see it; when you no longer want it, it will not be there for you to see. (From W 32)

The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore, this self does not exist at all. And anything it seems to do and think means nothing. It is neither bad nor good. It is unreal and nothing more than that. (From W 93)

February 10th 2010

Dear Friends,

Communing from time and place to, or with, Eternity can take various forms, but the reality behind those forms is all the same: opening our mind to and aligning it with eternal, all-knowing, Divine Mind.  That Mind is, in truth, within us, has always been and can never not be.  Jesus is one with that holy Mind, and therefore is authorised and empowered to commun(icat)e with us from and of that Mind, in all Its wisdom, knowledge, understanding, gentleness, truth, love, joy and peace.

One of ego’s most compelling defence mechanisms against us commun(icat)ing with the ‘invisible realms’ is the tired old spud that we are ‘trafficking with the devil’.  Of course, those who desire to traffic with the devil — ego — are, thanks to Papa and His irrevocable gift to us of free will, free so to do.  But those among us who truly seek after God and earnestly desire the Kingdom of Heaven, of which Jesus spoke so often, are also free to ‘...enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to (commune with) thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.’ Mt. 6:6.  Also, these extracts from John ch. 14 are pertinent to this subject:

I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.  I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

He that hath my commandments, (not the schismatic, institutionalised, Laodicean church’s multitudinous commandments; for Jesus issued only two commandments for Life:  Love God and love your neighbour) and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

... If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

The simple and comforting, reassuring answer to those who would earnestly desire to so commune, but are fearful of dark forces interposing themselves into their minds and insidiously taking control over them, is 1) place oneself, sincerely, honestly and totally in the care, guidance and protection of Jesus and 2) watch for any or all of these feelings: inner peace, joy, love, uplift, comfort.  They are true indicators of attunement and intercourse with the Realms of Light.  If fear, discomfort, turmoil or any disquiet is experienced, revert to 1) and end the communing attempt.

Most of the fragments of the Sonship, lost and lonely in time and place, are fearful of God, Jesus and the very prospect of the Holy Spirit, so may be somewhat trepidatious at the idea of communing with any Aspect of the ‘Holy Trinity’ in anything resembling a solitary manner.  But They love us all unconditionally, know our inner fears, doubts and guilt feelings, and will always be — can only be — exquisitely gentle, tender, solicitous; caring for our inner peace, comfort and well-being; always meeting us at our point of need and leading us gently, one step at a time, at a pace with which we are entirely comfortable, toward the Light.

As a result of a lifelong, earnest desire for eternal truth and enlightenment, I have been greatly blessed with awareness of the Realms of Light for much of my life in time and place as persona Brian, and of Jesus leading, guiding and protecting me during that time.  It was not until October 1997 — more than 30 years after Jesus began communing with me (to my conscious cognition) — that I had first awareness of the Holy Spirit (details to be posted on the HTG website Diary page for that year within not many months), but because the GRP goes forward toward its fulfilment, so do we all, within it.  It was always Jesus’ intent to lead me (and all his brethren in the Sonship) to the place of Self (Holy Spirit) awareness because that is Who we really are, and the GRP will be completed when we are all restored to fullness of remembrance of Who we are.

It has become more and more clear to me over the years that communing without fear, anxiety or trepidation, but rather, engendering comfort, peace, love, joy and lightness of heart, was, and remains the intent of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit toward the fragmented, somnambulist, lost, lonely, fearful Sonship, as They lead us back to oneness in Truth.  How could it be otherwise if Their goal for us is restoration to Heaven?  It is my joy, therefore, to now share with you a recent communing with Self; the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Breath. 

The objective of sharing thusly is to reassure the doubting and fearful (there is some of that in us all) that the loving reality of communion with Light, Truth, Eternity, Heaven — right here, right now — is not only possible, but positively encouraged by and from Heaven, because That is our destiny, our one and only true Home, and now is the time when we are being given unprecedented opportunity to re-familiarise ourselves with It.

For those who may feel this is blasphemy, heresy or apostasy (which ego assuredly wants us to think), since we are all God’s children, is it not much more like blasphemy, heresy or apostasy to suggest God’s creation, His beloved children, are, or could be, other than as holy as their Creator, in Whose likeness we are created?  And that any appearances to the contrary cannot be other than an absurd, insane, impossible dream?

I have told you that the apparent gap, or demarcation between the ‘thoughts of Brian’ (or pB) and My thoughts would become less pronounced as pB progresses in the waking to remembrance process.  Do not now start to allow fear thoughts to regain entry and become predominant as this process takes more and more effect in ‘your’ mind.  There is no ‘your’ mind.  That was always made up; an illusion, a dream of separation.  There is now only ‘Our’ Mind because pB has decided that he truly and earnestly desires it to be so, and has committed himself to that objective.  And so it is, because he has willed it so.  As Papa’s all-empowered Son, how could it be otherwise?

Every time upside-down ego-mind thoughts enter, you now know that pB can choose to surrender them to Self  — Me — and I will translate them in Our Mind so that they (ego thoughts) may be reinterpreted, restored, topside-up, to blessing.  Fear and guilt can interfere with the process.  When an attack thought, or a judgement thought enters, instead of allowing such to engender what ego wants — guilt and fear — give thanks and rejoice that I Am with you every moment; ready, waiting with infinite patience for pB to give them to Me.  So give them to Me!  I can handle them because they are nothing, and I can handle nothing very easily.  That is what I am here, with all the fragments, to do. 

It’s who you are, with Me, because we are one, in Eternity.

As we learn, and remember, to give all our negative, judgemental, ego-thoughts to Self, so does He instantly reinterpret them, transform them in our mind (because that is what we have asked Him, by the act of giving them to Him, to do, and by giving them to Him he is enabled by us so to do for us, on our behalf) into loving and blessing thoughts.  This enables us to see that the initial, negative, judgemental perception, projected thought, was indeed nothing.  So do we, in each such moment, dispel the ego-mindedness thrall in which we have bound ourself, and find that we are becoming Kingdom-minded.

It is the act of giving them to Self that is the releasing/transforming mechanism.  That willingness is the fulcrum, the catalyst by which our release from ego-mind’s grasp is performed.  It is a recognition that we are engaging in combined, co-operative endeavour with Self that instantly switches our allegiance — albeit in most cases, unwitting — from ego’s script to Holy Spirit’s script. 

This is the beginning of the Holy Instant, in which we commence becoming like Jesus, as stated in 1Jn. 3:2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.  Seeing him as he is is actually a reflection of ourself because becoming like him is also a recognition, a remembrance of our oneness with him in the Sonship.

Alleluia!

Brian Longhurst

Holy Spirit, I do not want these negative, unKingdomly thoughts about my brother any longer, so I give them — release them — to You, for translating into loving, blessing, forgiving thoughts.  Thank You.

February 17th 2010

Dear Friends,

One of the central themes of ACIM is what Jesus calls True Forgiveness, which is the opposite of the ego version of forgiveness.  The pivotal point of true forgiveness is that we forgive our brother (whoever) — and ask our brother to forgive us — for what neither one of us has, in reality, ever done, so that we can each receive the forgiveness that is rightfully ours. 

It seems odd that Jesus should counsel us to ask and offer forgiveness for what we have never done, but he has a sound reason for this, as may readily be guessed by the frequency with which he speaks of it.  It is to do with mind retraining, away from ego’s indoctrination that we are all guilty as sin, to the Holy Spirit’s message of truth that we are all pure, perfect, innocent, as created in Eternity.

It could be perceived from the t&p viewpoint that this turns everything on its head, but we are already, metaphorically speaking, on our heads, and the teaching curriculum of the Voice for God will, assuredly, get us back on our feet.  This is, as we all by now realise, because what we think we — and just about everyone else — have done, none of us has done because it is all an illusion; a dream from which we are waking to realise our eternal innocence. For clarity, here is what Jesus says about this:

God does not forgive because He has never condemned. And there must be condemnation before forgiveness is necessary. Forgiveness is the great need of this world, but that is because it is a world of illusions. Those who forgive are thus releasing themselves from illusions, while those who withhold forgiveness are binding themselves to them. As you condemn only yourself, so do you forgive only yourself (simply because there is only one of us, appearing, illusorily, to be fragmented into an indefinite number of separate parts).

Yet although God does not forgive, His Love is nevertheless the basis of forgiveness. Fear condemns and love forgives. Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to the awareness of God. For this reason, forgiveness can truly be called salvation. It is the means by which illusions disappear.

(From ACIM Workbook Lesson 46. My emboldening and italics, for emphasis)

So, true forgiveness is a mechanism employed by Jesus to help in the retraining of our mind away from guilt toward innocence.  Ultimately, we will have the same perspective as that described above as Papa’s: that there is nothing to forgive.  But, for most of us, we do not have the remembrance of being there yet, and it is too big a gap for us to bridge in one go at this juncture in the GRP. 

All the while we perceive ourself and our brothers as having done wrong, and are therefore adjudged guilty, worthless ‘sinners’, there is a need for forgiveness, but that, as stated above, (true) forgiveness is the great need of this world, because that will retrain our minds, however long — or short, the choice is ours — a time it takes for that retraining. 

The sooner we are willing simply to ask the Holy Spirit to help us in this matter, the sooner we will be free of the illusion of guilt and its witnesses: fear, dis-ease and death, to name but a few.  We can only be free of the illusion of guilt — and therefore a perceived need for forgiveness — when we free ourself and our brothers from condemnation.

In Heaven, where all is peace — and peace is possible only in the absence of guilt — joy and unconditional love, eternally, there is no judgement or condemnation, but only acceptance, absolute knowing, of the innocence of Papa’s beloved Son.  When we stop judging and condemning our brothers (and ourself!) in the seemingly fragmented Sonship, then we will be, again, one. 

Being one with one whom we judge or condemn is perceived, according to ego thinking, as undesirable, and is certainly impossible.  Anyone who takes the trouble to monitor himself will be astonished — dismayed even — at how many times in the course of an hour, let alone a day, he judges.  But as Jesus reminds us: When you react at all to illusions you are not listening to the Holy Spirit (T-9.III.4).  And as with miracles, there is no order of magnitude in judgement. 

A judgement that ego-thinking would immediately deem only ‘small’ and therefore insignificant, is no less a judgement than what most of us might perceive as a ‘big’ judgement.  No judgement, of whatever perceived order of magnitude, will serve any purpose other than to keep us bound within the illusion, for another and yet another circuit on the carousel of birth and death, with all the attendant trials, vicissitudes and tribulations: perceived scarcity, broken relationships, loneliness, pervasive sense of guilt, fear, breakdown of bodily function, and death. 

That is ego’s perception of eternity.  It is not a pretty picture, and if anyone were to be asked if this is a vision of eternal life to which he aspires, few indeed would espouse it.  Not without good reason for it would be eternal death, were such possible.

Yet the alternative — its opposite — is entirely desirable, free of all t&p, ego-induced bequests.  And the procedure for attaining that, our true and only, eternal reality — Heaven — is so simple, easy, lacking in hardship that no-one inured in the falsity that anything worthwhile must be arduous and complicated, can readily believe.   That alternative is relinquishing judgement and replacing it with true forgiveness.

But we cannot stop judging and condemning all the while we are listening to ego.  The only thing that appears to be hard — impossible even — is committing ourself to repudiating ego.  And of ourself we cannot accomplish that task; it seems onerous beyond our perceived littleness’s ability because of the insidious nature of ego’s legacy, judgement.   However, littleness is not what we are.  Magnitude, grandeur, magnificence, all-knowing, all-empowered, innocent, eternal effulgence is What we are, and we can know this beyond doubt because we are created in the likeness of our Creator, Whom no-one would deny the foregoing describes.

And in our somnambulist, momentary, dream appearance as bodies, we are not comfortless; not without Help.  Would our beloved Father, Who loves us beyond all imagining, leave us comfortless, or judge, condemn and abandon us in a state of perceived separation from Him, when we are His joy, His love and His completion?  And if He has given us such a Comforter, would that Gift be less than able to bring us complete, perfect comfort?  And would that Comforter be beyond the reach of a single fragment of Papa’s beloved? 

Such ideas are so absurd, so impossible, so deluded, so insane that they could only have come from a separated, upside-down, truth-obscured mind.

As earlier stated, the hallmark of God, Heaven, Eternity is simplicity; transparency, openness.  The illuminated and illuminating waymarkers to that estate — the Light — are few, plain to view and easy to understand. They are ‘Love God’ and ‘Love your neighbour’.  The waymarkers to darkness and oblivion are multitudinous, complex, convoluted, confusing and abstruse, demanding that we follow ever-changing doctrines and dogmas, petty rules and regulations cobbled together and promulgated by squabbling, unhealed ‘healers’ mistakenly claiming to be the true representatives of him who brought us the only two waymarkers we need, and whose credentials were (and remain) impeccable.

‘Love God (with all our heart, soul, mind and strength)’ assuredly requires no explanation.  ‘Love your neighbour (as yourself)’ is equally clear once we realise, completely and unequivocally, that our neighbour is ourself, simply because in truth there is no separation, no fragmentation; that Papa has but one Son, and we, along with all our neighbours, are that indivisible Son.

Therefore, to judge or condemn another — a brother, or neighbour — is to judge or condemn ourself.  This is ego’s objective and we keep on falling for its prestidigitation.  One could rewrite Paul’s words about the wages of sin being death as the wages of judgement is death. 

But it is not ‘eternal death’. Jesus tells us, in scripture and now — unhindered by covert alteration or dilution of his message, or false doctrines — in ACIM, that as we judge, so are we judged, because it is the very judgement with which we judge that we judge (and condemn) ourself.  It is nothing to do with Papa.  And, conversely, he tells us that as we (truly) forgive, so are we forgiven, because it is by the very act of our forgiveness of others that we are forgiven, measure for measure.

Now, as the GRP unfolds before and within us, we are able to benefit from the Help of the Comforter, Who reinterprets difficult into easy, obscure into visible, complicated into simple, darkness into light, hard into effortless, all with time-collapsing simplicity, as never before.  This is because we are now in the third, fulfilment stage of the three measures of meal, when the whole is being leavened, and because more of the fragments are waking and joining with us in the process, thus encouraging and supporting us, as true brothers do. 

That healing Help is absolute and will never fail us.  The only failure we will experience in the rescue endeavour is if we remain attuned to the wrong helper, which will do everything possible to distract, discourage and dissuade us from choosing the Light.  The Comforter, Who is our true Self, asks only our willingness to let Him help us and He will accomplish our awakening for us.  As Jesus says in T-15.XI.3:

...give the Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you. Let yourself be healed completely (by repudiating judgement — darkness — with His help, for we cannot do it alone, and replacing it with the Light engendered here, in t&p, now, by true forgiveness) that you may join with Him in healing, and let us celebrate our release together by releasing everyone with us.  Leave nothing behind, for release is total, and when you have accepted it with me you will give it with me.  All pain and sacrifice and littleness will disappear in our relationship (the entire Sonship), which is as innocent (as in, guiltless) as our relationship with our Father, and as powerful.  Pain will be brought to us and disappear in our presence, and without pain there can be no sacrifice.  And without sacrifice there love must be.

Further on in that same section he says:

I have perfect faith in you (because, although the truth of Who we really are is obscured from our vision by dark clouds of ego-misperception, that truth is not hidden from him at all.  We might serve ourself well if we ask which is right: Jesus’ vision of us, or our perception of ourself?) to do all that you would accomplish (and because he knows the infallible, unstoppable, all-empowered-by-Papa Help available to us all).  Nothing will be lacking, and you will make complete and not destroy.  Say, then, to your brother:

that we will be released together.

Entering the Kingdom of Heaven alone is impossible, but entering together, as one in the Sonship, is inevitable.  Now is the time of rejoining, thus enabling our rejoicing at our gift of release to freedom and wholeness, to ourself through each other.

To freedom from servitude to littleness and restoration to eternal magnitude!

Brian Longhurst

February 24th 2010

 Dear Friends,

The ‘laws’ of t&p hold no sway over Eternity.  How could they when t&p knows nothing of Eternity and is the opposite of Eternity (or would be if Eternity could have an opposite!); has no point of contact with It?  Nothing that is of t&p has any part in Eternity.  The laws of physics, chemistry and biology, which we perceive as governing our illusory domain, have power only over littleness.  How could these laws have any impact on, or control over, free Mind and perfect, eternal, unchangeable Spirit?  All the while we ascribe to littleness any power over us, we place ourself under the laws of t&p; the laws of littleness.

But we are not of t&p.  We are of and from Eternity, and Its Laws, and the empowerment of them, are at our disposal; the free gift of our Creator at our creation, to be used for His glory and ours in creating; not denied.  This is clearly evidenced by miracles, which override the laws of t&p as if they don’t exist.  Which, of course, in reality, they don’t; only in fantasy.

From the perspective of Eternity, t&p does not exist.  Therefore, all that appears to be in, and of, t&p — including us, the myriad individual persona fragments of Papa’s Son — do not exist either, other than in fantasy that can only revolve around a not-so-merry-go-round of birth and death.

Happily, our true perspective is eternal — because our reality is eternal — and recognition of this, or at least a willingness to recognise it, enables us to begin to accept that our t&p perception can only be illusory.  If this is so — which Jesus, who assuredly knows better than most of the rest of us, tells us it is — and all he tells us about our Home in Eternity is immeasurably, indescribably better than what must therefore be described as alien, then common sense must tell us that clinging to t&p, especially out of fear, is not serviceable to our peace of mind.

‘But it appears so real; how can it be only an elaborate illusion?’  Because we are the all-empowered Son of God, with all the attributes of our Father Creator, and are therefore able to dream of a ‘reality’ that does not exist and make it appear real to us simply by believing it so.  Yet it cannot be real because only that which is eternally, unchangeably loving, peaceful and joyful can be real.  Only perfection, which is of God, can be real and must be unchangeable or it could not remain perfect.  Therefore, whatever changes is not perfect, so cannot be of God.

Our misplaced belief has caused us to lose sight of the unchangeable reality.  That is all; we cannot lose, or be lost to, Eternity, though we appear to have thrown It — Heaven — away in exchange for hell.  That was a bad choice; an error, not a ‘mortal sin’, and happily, we are free at every moment to choose again. 

Most of us will only choose again when we finally believe what we have made was not created by God.  Even the less discerning among us can readily see enough aspects of t&p to raise the question about whether the eternal, all-loving Father, the Source and Being of Life itself, could create conditions that can only end in death, the path to which is strewn with guilt, fear, scarcity, disease, antagonism, hostility, division and schism.  Even the animal kingdom, separate from spiritual or religious awareness, cannot live other than by the death of other life-forms.

Many of us think it is not that bad because we have obscured to our vision the awareness of the Alternative; that if we strive hard enough we can make it better for ourself.  But therein lies the error in that we see ‘ourself’ as separate from our brothers in the Sonship of God, and until we come to the place of remembrance that there is only one of us, so we can only make it better for ourself by making it better for us all, duality will see to it that new crises continually arise.  This happens because we are wedded to the idea of compromise with reality instead of unequivocation about it, thereby keeping ourself attached to the duality of t&p; good and evil.

Once we remember that there is an Alternative, and choose It unequivocally — and massive progress toward remembrance has been made in recent years, though that is down to the Holy Spirit shining the light of truth within us, waking us to eternal reality, not our little-self endeavours; a sure sign that we are waking to Eternity — we will have the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.  That progress is being made because that is the function of the GRP, which proceeds whether we are aware of it, or understand it, or are willing to co-operate with it, or not.   

As we come more clearly to see what our flawed, double sight has been obscuring from our true, single vision, by way of comparison, we cannot but become willing — eager — to immediately, completely abandon our myopic, t&p perception because it is founded in fear, but our true Home is founded in love.

If — or, more accurately, when — we are willing to direct our thoughts toward our true Home, Eternity, Heaven, we will start to remember It again, and to remember Who we are again; the eternally-living, radiant, all-knowing Son of our beloved and all-loving, eternal Father.  And miracles will start to become natural to us, just as they were to Jesus. 

Meanwhile, the mainstream of the fragments is still of the persuasion that deems such perceptions insane, demanding evidence of what it is, for as long as possible, determinedly unwilling to see.  And any who suggest such ‘unfounded’, barmy hypotheses can only be worthy of carting off to the asylum, to be conveniently ignored and forgotten.  For ego does not want the light.

But we do have evidence of Its reality, and the way in which the feeble laws of t&p are no encumbrance to It (unless we choose to so empower them).  That evidence is, of course, Jesus.  And we are his siblings in the Sonship, equally (for the law of Eternity is equality) empowered to remember truth and demonstrate the wholeness that is also freely ours, by giving, sharing, extending that wholeness to our brothers by what the world calls miracles.  He told us so.  He also told us we are the Light of the world, and not to hide it under a bushel.  That does not mean proselytising; it means being the light of the world. 

Is it not odd that so many of us remain so stubbornly resolute in our unwillingness to believe him?  He who both talked the talk and walked the walk of eternal reality and its laws that reverse the impotent laws of t&p, transforming its primary law — death — into life, assuredly is worthy of being believed.

Miracles are not supernatural; they are normal, natural, and demonstrate that our choice for littleness and death is subnormal; unnatural.  We fumble around in the dark, claiming we are looking for the Light, but are afraid of the Light, fearing the finding of It will require loss of what we think we have; believing It will demand of us sacrifice of what is dearest to us.  Abraham believed that, and was willing to sacrifice the most treasured object of his love: his son, Isaac.  But Papa, by His angel, was able to transform Abraham’s misperception into both a demonstration of Abraham’s steadfast, one-pointed faith and trust, and, even more importantly, that Papa requires of us no sacrifice.

There are those who, at the behest of an institution to which they have pledged allegiance, believe that Jesus, ‘the only Son of God’ (in spite of scripture teaching us that we are all the Son[s] of God), was required of God — for our salvation from eternal damnation by God for our sinfulness — to be sacrificed. 

This doctrine of a once and for all blood sacrifice of God’s only Son, and which is perceived as demanded of God to avert His wrath, judgement, condemnation and terrible punishment, has its foundation in the belief that God demanded blood sacrifices of animals by the Israelites for the same reason.  Then, the New Covenant, so this doctrine — derived from what various of the New Testament writers (not Jesus) say — would have us believe, substituted the death of Jesus in place of the death of animals as the final atonement for our sins.

But this is not founded in the teaching of Jesus — who tells us plainly that there is no such thing as death, and he demonstrated that to us, saying that if we are willing to believe him and follow him, because he is the way, the truth and the life — we will become aware that this is our reality also.  Nor is sacrifice founded by God in the Old Covenant, or Old Testament, which this newly fabricated doctrine was intended to replace.  In the old covenant God tells Jeremiah:   

I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices:  But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you. (Jer. 7:22-23)

That, assuredly, is plain enough, but there are other Old Testament records in support of this, such as:

For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. (Ps. 51:16)

David goes on to say in the next verse that all God seeks from us is a contrite spirit and a humble heart.

And:

For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. (Hosea 6:6)

We can help ourself to decide who or what to believe if we ask ourself honestly whether we think God actually needs sacrifices from us, or simply our love and thanksgiving and our desire to be restored to oneness in Him.  Ego would persuade us that He does require sacrifice because that is how guilt makes us feel.  But guilt is not of God.  Love is of God.  Love does not seek, nor demand fear (the opposite of love, and love and fear are mutually exclusive), guilt or sacrifice. 

Jesus emphatically tells us that Papa doesn’t need sacrifice, and that it is his resurrection, not his crucifixion, that is his message, his reminder to us from He Who sent him to us: that the Son of God is eternal, immortal, indestructible, innocent, and knows nothing of death.  And we are God’s Son, equally, one with Jesus.  And if we, God’s immortal Son knows not of death, it must be something other than our Self that perceives, and believes in, death.  Something that seems to be within us; ourself, even.  But we only think of this as our self, and call it such.  It is an illusion called ego that appears to be who we are; that masquerades as ourself.  Ego can never be who we are because we are eternal and ego is but of time and place.

There seem to be two selves within us. These have been referred to as Big Self, or the Spirit of Truth — loving, caring, blessing, forgiving, peaceful, joyful; all-knowing and wise — and little self, or ego; fearful, guilty, judgemental, opportunistic, antagonistic, grasping, duplicitous; insane.  One is real, the other is an illusion. Sooner or later we must decide which is our true and only Self.  Our efforts to decide for truth and against illusion are...  

...powerfully supplemented by the strength of Heaven, and by the united will of all who make Heaven what it is, being joined within it.  And so the one who would cross over (from little self to Big Self, in Eternity, right here and now; not after we lay aside an illusionary body) is literally transported there.

Your bridge (to Eternity) is builded stronger than you think, and your foot is planted firmly on it.  (We cross over in our mind, not by laying aside our body.)  Have no fear that the attraction of those who stand on the other side and wait for you will not draw you safely across.  For you will come where you would be, and where your Self awaits you.

(From ACIM T-16.III.8, 9.)

Ready when you are!

Brian Longhurst

March 3rd 2010

Dear Friends,

We are subject to the laws of t&p all the while we believe in them and that they govern our lives.  We may appear to be in t&p but we are not of it, and never have been.  Jesus knew this and that is why he was not under their restraining, limiting, uncomfortable yoke.  He engaged with t&p because he was on a mission here — for our release from it — but he was functioning from the Laws of God; of Eternity and the limitless empowerment they gave him.  There is in reality no difference between him and us.  There only appears to be because we have forgotten Who we are and Where we are from.  His mission was, and is, to free us from that yoke by reminding us.

The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth (KOHOE) will be fully with us and manifest in t&p — just for a brief moment — when we remember Who we are, and that t&p is not real, other than as a misplaced belief in a part of our mind that has separated itself from reality.  Then that separated part will willingly reunify itself with Self — and become one-minded again — and t&p will disappear, because it will no longer be ‘real’ as an idea in our mind.  Just like waking from a dream, all we thought was reality in the dream is immediately recognised as nothing but a dream.    

The KOHOE will be only a fleeting moment, because Papa is so eager for us to be restored to Him in the Kingdom in Heaven — Eternity — that the instant His beloved Son (that’s us) has awakened from his slumbers he will remember Who he is and Where he belongs.  We cannot be restored to Heaven until we are ready for that restoration; ready to give up our illusions.  And that has to take place where we believe we are, because we must be willing to relinquish our illusions before we can be received back into the Heart of Papa. Not because He is unwilling to receive us but because we are unwilling to leave illusions behind.

Until we are willing, we will hold onto them and thus remain on the illusory carousel of birth and death. We must choose, of our own God-given freewill, that Eternity is where we want to be.  Then will it be so, immediately; for there are no delays in Heaven.  We impose delays upon ourself out of misperception.  Relinquish misperception by allowing Self to correct them and Heaven is ours, now.

This is nothing to do with ‘dying’, or laying aside an illusional body, for it is a process of mind, and minds do not die.  They merely can appear to fall asleep and dream of unreality; an entirely made-up state of consciousness, holding us in a state of littleness and limitation.  Until we wake up to the glory that is us in the oneness of the Sonship.  When we waken, littleness and limitation, which are nothing but a state of mind, will cease to be in our mind — the only place they ever appeared to be — so they will disappear.

How do we move into that state of wakefulness of mind where Eternity becomes our reality instead of t&p?  By steadfastly believing.  Is there one amongst us who thinks Jesus did not steadfastly believe?  Believing determines our reality for us.  That only seems hard to swallow from our upside-down perspective (have you noticed how swallowing is easier when we are right-side up? J). 

This is evidenced by the fact that by believing in littleness, dis-ease (absence of inner peace) and death, we have made them our reality, even though they are not, but only a phantasm.  How much easier must it be to transform our awareness to reality from fantasy than the other way around?  Yet, amazingly, we did that, simply by believing fantasy to be real. This is, bizarrely, a measure of the power of the mind of God’s Son.

Belief, therefore, is everything.  We can believe in truth or we can believe in a lie; reality or illusion.  It is our free choice, always.  We are not punished by God for believing a lie for an instant, because it was only a dream.  We do, however, punish ourself for it, by believing we are guilty, which makes us fearful because the lie says we are sinners and deserve to be punished by a God who hates sin and must therefore destroy sinners.  Since there was no sin, but at worst, simply a mistake, such a belief is poppycock and we will plainly see this when we wake up, and laugh, rejoicing with Papa, Jesus and the Spirit of Truth that we ever took it all so seriously.

Some of us are more deeply asleep than others.  This does not matter.  Whoever said being asleep and dreaming is a sin?  Dreaming of littleness and mortality, and believing they are real, does not alter the indescribable magnificence of the glorious truth of our Being — any more than it would, or could alter the reality of our brother Jesus — which is unchangeably perfect, just as we were created to eternally Be.

Some of us are nearer to waking than other of our brothers.  Those of us who are more ready and willing to wake can then join with Jesus in experiencing the unspeakable bliss of lovingly, gently, caringly helping those still-slumbering brothers to awaken and adjust their minds to the joy, peace and love of eternal wakefulness as one in Papa; the end of separation from Him and each other.

Fine, but what is the point of banging on about this ‘Eternity business’ endlessly when time and place surely seem real enough, and we are stuck here, at least until we die; and that’s all there is to it?

The point is mind retraining, to realign our thinking with our higher Mind — Self, the Spirit of Truth — our real Being, and allow Him to bring us to the state of thinking, awareness, understanding, remembrance, all-knowing that reunifies us with Him.  That Mind, that seems to our persona self to be other than our own mind, separate, loftier, unreachable, is really ours because Self is Who we are.  Attuning, communing with that Mind is simply getting ourself retrained, re-minded; re-attuned to the wavelength of inspiration, enlightenment, remembrance of our limitless, eternal empowerment.  It restores us to a state of miracle-readiness; miracle-Mindedness.  It takes commitment, and the sooner we begin, the sooner we will remember, and be released from littleness and become like Jesus: free.   

We trained our mind to believe the unbelievable, which, when observed from the only true perspective, is... unbelievable.  So retraining our mind to the believable (because it is eternal truth, created by the eternal Creator) is not actually hard.  It appears impossible from the upside-down perspective of fantasyland, but we have unlimited Help, Who will accomplish the correcting of our misperceptions for us, if we are willing to ask for His Help.

Ego has us by the heel and it is the grip of judgement and unforgiveness by which we are held, preventing us from seeing the reality of who we, and who our brothers, really are.  Let us see what Jesus tells us about the rewards of a simple willingness to let the Holy Spirit release us from it:

The Forgiven World

Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? In no fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely.  Nothing you see here (in the world of separation we have made), sleeping or waking, comes near to such loveliness.  And nothing will you value like unto this, nor hold so dear.  Nothing that you remember that made your heart sing with joy has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you.  For you will see the Son of God (in ourself and in all our brothers).  You will behold the beauty the Holy Spirit loves to look upon, and which He thanks the Father for.  He was created to see this for you, until you learned to see it for yourself.  And all His teaching leads to (our) seeing it and giving thanks with Him.

This loveliness is not a fantasy.  It is the real world (the KOHOE), bright and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun.  (In the absence of judgement, and the presence of true forgiveness, how could it be other?)  Nothing is hidden here, for everything has been forgiven and there are no fantasies to hide the truth.  The bridge between that world and this is so little and so easy to cross, that you could not believe it is the meeting place of worlds so different.  Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world at all.  This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, beyond all ugliness into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection.

This step, the smallest ever taken, is still the greatest accomplishment of all in God’s plan of Atonement.  All else is learned, but this is given, complete and wholly perfect.  No one but Him Who planned salvation could complete it thus.  The real world, in its loveliness, you learn to reach.  Fantasies are all undone, and no one and nothing remain still bound by them, and by your own forgiveness you are free to see.  Yet what you see is only what you made (t&p), with the blessing of your forgiveness on it.  And with this final blessing of God’s Son upon himself, the real perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose.

The stars will disappear in light, and the sun that opened up the world to beauty will vanish (from our mind, the only place it ever appeared to exist, because true vision is re-opening to us, leaving illusion nowhere).  Perception will be meaningless when it has been perfected, for everything that has been used for learning will have no function.  Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible will still occur.  The perception of the real world will be so short that you will barely have time to thank God for it.  For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world and have been made ready for Him.

The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old, the world you (currently) see without forgiveness.  The great Transformer of perception will undertake with you the careful searching of the mind that made this world, and uncover to you the seeming reasons for your making it.  In the light of the real reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will show you that there is no reason here at all.  Each spot His reason touches grows alive with beauty, and what seemed ugly in the darkness of your lack of reason is suddenly released to loveliness.  Not even what the Son of God made in insanity could be without a hidden spark of beauty that gentleness could release.

How much do you want salvation?  It will give you the real world, trembling with readiness to be given you.  The eagerness of the Holy Spirit to give you this is so intense He would not wait, although He waits in patience.  Meet His patience with your impatience at delay in meeting Him.  Go out in gladness to meet with your Redeemer, and walk with Him in trust out of this world, and into the real world of beauty and forgiveness.

(ACIM T-2.II. My emboldening, underlining and italics, for emphasis.)

All this is ours, right now.  The foregoing tells us plainly and exquisitely that it is an ego myth that we go to Heaven only when we die.  It can only be myth because it is believing in Life, not death, that wakens us to the Kingdom, which is, and has always been within us; not ‘up there’, ‘out there’, ‘in the future’.

All together now: Alleluia!

Brian Longhurst

Holy Spirit, I am deciding with You and against ego.  I do not need to fight, or wrestle with ego; simply choose with You, focus upon my Being with You.  I remind myself that You are always with me, patiently, lovingly waiting for me, so that when — each and every moment — I remember You, You are ready to lead, guide, inspire, protect, enlighten and empower me as I journey with You toward wakefulness in the Kingdom.  Knowing this, I am at peace.  Thank You.

March 10th 2010

Dear Friends,

In John 8:12 Jesus says: I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. In Mt. 5:14 he says: Ye are the light of the world.  Clearly he is telling us that we, along with him, are the light of the world.  How can that be reconciled with the doctrines and dogmas that tell us we are all sinners, and that there is no health in us (from the General Confession of congregants in the Anglican Church prayer book)?  If this were true, clearly sin — darkness — would be in us.

Jesus tells us that not only are we the light of the world, not to hide our light under a bushel, but to let our light so shine before men (Mt. ch. 5); he also tells us that the Kingdom of God is within us (Lk. 17:21).  It is not possible that we can be both (spiritually) in darkness and be the light, with the Kingdom within us.  One idea must therefore be wrong if the other is right. 

If Jesus is right, is it not unserviceable to our spiritual wellbeing to keep affirming to ourself the opposite of what he says?  Such false indoctrination will never prepare us for rejoining with him in our oneness in the Kingdom.  For we are directly contradicting our Teacher in what he — who assuredly knows — is telling us about our true Being.

To do so is hiding our light under a bushel, and preventing the Kingdom within us from extending radiantly outwards to our brothers.  Happily, the old order of worship — or, more accurately, self denigration, a true ego characteristic — is fading, along with all the other negative effects of the second measure of meal, even as the leavening of the third, completion measure gets rapidly underway. The first and second measures were both essential to the leavening of the whole (The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. Mt. 13:33) but the first and second measures were not fulfilments or completions of a process in their own right.

Just as a flower withers away once it has served its purpose and been pollinated, thus fulfilling its essential part of the fruit-bearing process, so does the first measure give place to the second and in its turn, the second to the third, when their respective parts in the whole leavening process is finished.

Clinging to hopes of a revival of the flower, or continuing as if the flower is not withering, does not serve the Great Rescue Programme for the leavening — rising up — of the Kingdom that assuredly has always been within us.  One might say it is a fruitless exercise.

Any who truly seek after God and earnestly desire the Kingdom of Heaven will be led by the Spirit of Truth Who resides within them.  This is a progressive, unfolding process and leads us ever forward toward the full remembrance that, in our oneness, we are the light.  Continuing to proclaim ourselves ‘miserable sinners, in whom there is no health’, as many still do week after week, year after year, act after act, is an ego-driven, backward-looking endeavour. 

Rather, we can rejoice that not only the first, but also the second measure of the GRP are completed and behind us.  We need not spend a single moment trying to understand their objectives, or if, how and when those objectives were fulfilled.  That is for the Holy Spirit to know, so we can sidestep the ego’s ploy of getting us focussed on, distracted by, the past.

Now we can celebrate that the third and final measure, in which the whole is leavened, is with us; and that even if we have no conscious awareness of it, or are even actively denying that any such event is taking place, it continues to move inexorably toward its fulfilment.  Any who believe a mind focussed on littleness can thwart Papa’s will are truly mistaken.

The fruitfulfilling activity of a tree takes place within it, and denying it because we cannot see it happening demonstrates lack of understanding.  By leaving the tree for a week or two after the flower withers, and then returning, a careful observer will notice the ovary (the part of the flower stem immediately behind the flower) shows signs of swelling. Further time-lapses will show that the swelling continues, slowly but surely taking on the shape of the fruit that will be the eventual harvest.  This activity will not be detectable by watching. Thus were Jesus’ words correct when he said The kingdom of God cometh not with observation (Lk. 17:20).

If anyone from the 1950s or 60s had been able to take a time travel trip to 2010 they would see many changes, and if he were not a careful observer he might despair that only decay, degeneration and demise of a promising culture were the outcomes of the passage of time.  Yet, were he to look more closely he would be able to see that from the very within of that decaying, degenerating culture — that withering flower — is arising a new, vibrant, shimmering, radiant state of Being. With the light of spiritual discernment he would see the beginning of a metamorphosis that will transform it into its true, eternal reality.  That transformation is taking place from the within, under control of the One Mind of which our persona-self has no awareness or understanding.

The old form has to pass away in order for that process to continue to its completion; until the whole is leavened.  Few of us have the foggiest idea what things will be like in the coming generations, the coming centuries of linear time.  Seeking for the answer in the without will provide a misperceived expectation, though that is what most of us still do, under ego’s urging. For the answer, along with the Kingdom, is within us, dormant, or now awakening — nascent, yet — to illuminate the world.

Will we look upon the decay and degeneration of the outer form with ego eyes and weep in despair, or will we rejoice and give thanks that our true vision, the light of spiritual discernment that emanates from our own within — the Holy Spirit — is revealing to us that our reality is not an earth-crawling, backward-looking, fear-driven, mortal body, constantly on the lookout for an enemy seeking to devour us?  For the Holy Spirit within us, our unchanging, light-filled Self, is revealing to us, if we care to be still a moment and listen, that the Anointed Messenger (Jesus) of the Holy One (Papa) is the true example of Who we are.

Does the fruit grower look at the withering flower and see disaster, or does he know, within himself, that its demise is the very sign of a glorious harvest ahead?  He knows from a position of certainty what it portends, and he trusts in the process.  He looks at the present, and with the light of discernment, knows what it tells him.  He also knows that it is not he who will bring the harvest, but the Good Husbandman, working from the within to perform it.

Of course that is all an allegory; but allegory is symbolic of esoteric, spiritual reality.  Jesus used allegory as his main method of attempting to teach those without the light of spiritual discernment.  Here is what he said about reading the signs, or portents:

When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.  And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? (Mt. 16:2, 3.)

We can look at Jesus and say, ‘He is the light; he is our template, our example for us to know our true reality’.  It seems an entirely pertinent approach to understanding the outcome of the unfolding of events, especially as he was empowered to demonstrate that we are immortal, indestructible, limitless; that the laws that seem to govern three-dimensional experience can have no dominion over us unless we ascribe it to them.  Jesus knew this and demonstrated it; and so can we, if we are willing to believe.  He told us so, so it can only be the truth.  Will we espouse truth — which will set us free — or continue to cling fearfully to illusion?

It is serviceable to co-operate with the laws of Eternity, of which we are an inextricable part, in order to return to that state of Being without delay; to say to ourselves, ‘I will to know the truth, because it, and it alone, can and will set me free’.  It is no longer serviceable to adhere to beliefs that belong to measures, or epochs, that have served their purpose and have withered as the GRP moves forward toward its completion. That is like saying, ‘I am journeying to the Light’, whilst walking away from it.  Only ego would countenance such a strategy.

But ego is in darkness.  We are the Light.  Yet we are only the Light in the remembrance of our oneness, not in the perception that we are separate bodies with separate minds.  We return to the Kingdom together, as one.  This is only possible if we see our brother as our Self, and love him as our Self.  We cannot transform ourself of our own, divided-self will into that state of Being, but our true Self can and will accomplish it for us if we are willing to allow Him to, working from our own within, where He dwells.

Here, in these extracts from ACIM T-18.III is what Jesus tells us about this:

Light in the Dream

...If you knew Who walks beside you on the way that you have chosen, fear would be impossible.  You do not know because the journey into darkness has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it... (over and over.)

You who hold your brother’s hand also hold mine, for when you joined each other you were not alone.  Do you believe that I would leave you in the darkness that you agreed to leave with me?  In your relationship is this world’s light... The holiness of your relationship is established in Heaven... but remember that your understanding is not necessary (because Self understands for us).  All that was necessary was merely the wish to understand.  That wish was the desire to be holy... (holy is to do with wholeness of mind, not religious piety.)

Each instant that we spend together will teach you that this goal is possible, and will strengthen your desire to reach it.  And in your desire lies its accomplishment.  Your desire is now in complete accord with all the power of the Holy Spirit’s Will...  I hold your hand as surely as you agreed to take your brother’s (recognising him once more as our brother, and loving him as ourself).  You will not separate, for I stand with you and walk with you in your advance to truth.  And where we go we carry God with us.

...We are made whole in our desire to make (our brother) whole.  Let not time worry you, for all the fear that you and your brother experience is really past... (Alleluia!)

...Heaven is joined with you in your advance to Heaven.  When such great lights have joined with you to give the little spark of your desire the power of God Himself, can you remain in darkness?  You and your brother are coming home together, after a long and meaningless journey that you undertook apart, and that led nowhere.  You have found your brother, and you will light each other’s way...

(My emboldening, underlining and some italics, for emphasis.)

Can such beautiful words, so inspiringly crafted, be from any other than Jesus?  Can they serve other than to encourage, uplift, strengthen, enlighten and revivify our joy, for our journey Home?

Onwards and upwards!

Brian Longhurst

Holiness created me holy.

Perfection created me perfect.

                      From W.67

March 17th 2010

Dear Friends,

Jesus tells us in ACIM that wholeness is ours, but the only way we can receive it (because we seemed to throw it away when we dreamt a dream of separation from our Source and from our Self) is to give it to our brothers in the seemingly fragmented Sonship.  Since we cannot give what we believe we do not have, giving wholeness is an affirmation to ourself that we have it to give.  That requires faith because in our perceived separated state of mind we appear not to have wholeness but instead, littleness, fragmentation, scarcity, fear, guilt, death; hardly properties denoting wholeness! 

The principle of giving in order to receive is of Eternity; difficult to perceive from the upside-down t&p perspective.  But because in Eternity, Heaven (which, let us not forget, is now; not in the future — maybe), there is but one of us in the Sonship of Papa, we are, in reality, giving to our Self, since there is but our Self to receive our gift.  So, giving and receiving are, in effect, one and the same thing.  

This principle is one of what Jesus described to me as PLFs, so our sensory perceptions — including perceptions of giving and receiving — are misperceptions if they are not in harmony with the eternal, unchangeable PLFs.  In t&p we see giving and receiving as opposites, in which the giver loses something and the receiver gains it. This is a very good example of our urgent need for mind retraining, if we truly desire to get back home from this illusory ‘far country’ of fear, dis-ease and death to the reality of eternal love, peace and joy.

The PLF of giving in order to receive, because they are one and the same thing, applies to true forgiveness also.  To receive what is rightfully ours — and always has been ours, because we are the beloved Son of the Source of Wholeness — we have to remember, and believe beyond all doubt, that Papa’s Son is the sum of all the apparently fragmented parts of the Sonship, reunified as the One that is our true — whole — reality.

How can we receive the wholeness that is already ours if we do not believe — i.e. lack faith — that we are whole?  When Jesus healed people from infirmities of mind and/or body in the long ago, he said to them ‘Your faith has made you whole.’  Thank goodness that statement survived ego’s attempts at fragmentation, distortion, dilution and dissipation of Jesus’ mission on Earth.  It is faith that we can be made whole — or receive the wholeness that is already ours — that enables it. 

To be one in the Sonship, Which is created in the likeness of our Father Creator — LOVE — we must be love; or, to be more accurate, we must remember that we are love, just as Jesus remembered that he was (and is, forever) love.  He said that the prince of this t&p world (ego) had nothing in him (Jn. 14:30).  We can infer that ego, then, is the opposite of love, since all that is of this world is the opposite of Eternity. 

Love is giving, so we must choose, desire, remember to be love in order to be whole, because only by believing that we are whole can we give wholeness, and therefore, receive it.  Clearly, it is a ‘full circle thing’; should we be surprised at this, being that it is a ‘Papa thing’? J 

So, giving wholeness is acknowledging that we have — and are — wholeness (holiness) and therefore have it to give.  This is to do with loving our neighbour (or brother) as ourself.  If we do not love our neighbour as ourself we are affirming that we do not actually love ourself, and so, although wholeness is ours we are depriving ourself of it. Loving some of our neighbours may seem easier than others.  But that is the same as believing that we can be partially whole.   

Loving and forgiving Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin, Adolph Hitler (all the usual ‘suspects’) may go against our ego-enthralled conditioning.  That is a litmus test of how ego-enthralled we still are, in spite of any possible self perceptions to the contrary.  But this is no cause for concern that wholeness (or salvation, restoration to fullness of remembrance of Who we really are) is beyond us.  All that is asked of us is that we desire it.  Our real Self will accomplish all the rest for us, at a pace and in a way with which we will be comfortable.  Of course, we have to really desire it, and ask Self to perform it in and for us.   

So, we could say:

“Holy Spirit, this is all a little too confusing for me, and I acknowledge freely that I cannot be, give or receive wholeness of myself, because I still harbour illusions of who I am and who so many of my ‘neighbours’ are.  But, even though those illusions of ‘sin’, or error, or evil seem so solidly real to me still, I truly want to believe and understand that they are not real, so that I can begin to see past them to the reality of the innocent, whole, glorious oneness of the Sonship in us all, including me, regardless of whatever my level of self-esteem may seem to be. 

This is my desire, and I gladly give it to You to perform it and make it permanent for me because I cannot do it myself.  Further, I am willing to leave it all with You, not keep taking it back from You, and allow You to not only do it for me, but keep reminding me to leave it with You every time I am tempted to grab it back.  I also acknowledge that You work ‘behind the scenes’, from the within into the without, and if I cannot see rapid results in the without, it doesn’t mean You are not doing it.  I am also willing to admit (however reluctantly at first!) that if things are moving slower than I want, it just might be something to do with me delaying the desired outcome, by interjecting ego attitudes in various slots, rather than You being slothful!  Oh, and by the way, I am overjoyed that desiring it is all You need of me; it removes a huge, unwarranted burden of self-expectation.” 

If we believe wholeness is neither who we are nor what we have, we therefore believe we cannot give it, and that prevents us from experiencing ourself as being whole.  That is just how ego wants it, ensuring its illusory (but very real-seeming) continuation in the fragmented part of our mind.  Far better is it to give credence to the still, (initially) small Voice within our mind that is all loving, all giving, all caring, all beneficent, all empowered, all patient, and brings us peace, joy, enlightenment and comfort unimaginable, in contrast to the clamour, doubt, darkness and fear that fills our mind when engaged in ego’s principality of t&p.  

That still, calming, loving Voice is with us always because that is Who we are — Self — and is therefore inseparable from us, and we from It.  We have lost touch with Self and His speaking, but regaining touch is as easy as we are willing to permit it to be.  I have been inestimably blessed by inner awareness of Papa, Jesus and the Spirit of Truth, which has come, purely and simply, from a willingness to accept that They love us and are there for us. There is nothing ‘special’ or unique about this gift; we all have it because it is irreversibly and irrevocably given to us at our creation.  For the encouragement of any who are fearful or doubtful about their facility for such blessed awareness, here is a recent example of such communing: 

Holy Spirit, I know You are within me now, as always.

It’s My middle name. 

We don’t hear much about wholeness in our daily lives from the institutions of church, state or the medical world.  It is not something ego wants us to focus upon, because the flaws in the ego script for our lives would soon become apparent.  But wholeness is the entire objective for us of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. If we wish to change scriptwriters we will soon find that there has been a very big hole in our existence, which They can fill with wholeness if we are willing to allow it.  Papa knows only of wholeness; nothing of fragmentation.  We can choose to be aware, once more, that we are of one Mind with Him, since that is the likeness in which He created us, and which is, therefore, our true, unchangeable reality. 

Love,

Brian Longhurst

March 24th 2010

Dear Friends,

Most of us, I feel sure, will agree with the adage that ‘God is love’.  Love is benign, caring, protective, motivated by goodwill and tenderness.  Worth sticking with, one might say.  Yet, according to Jesus in ACIM (is there one amongst us who professes to know better than he?), God’s one Son, created in the likeness, and with all the attributes of his Father Creator, had a ‘mad moment’ of wondering what it might be like to go off on his own, away from His Father’s House (see the parable of the Prodigal Son, Lk. 15:11 ff).

This momentary thought set in motion the apparent separation of the Son from His Father, and the Son from the oneness of His Being, into a chain reaction of division, or fragmentation; into an ever-increasing number of seemingly individual, self-operating units, each with its own separate mind, and a body to transport it around in and do its bidding (when I was born there were 2 billion bodies on Earth; now there are nearly 7 billion and rising rapidly).

Love (and therefore, its Source, since they are indivisible) is inescapably everywhere, and the only chance of getting away from what is everywhere is to engage in fantasy, wherein we can imagine whatever we want.  But imagining is not the same as reality, however much we may choose to perceive it as such.  And, assuredly, with the power of our all-knowing mind at our disposal, we have fooled ourself into believing that what is but fantasy is real and that we are separate from God and Eternity, in a state that is, were it possible, the seeming opposite of reality, our true Home.  That fantasy perception is, I hardly need say, known as time and place (t&p).

But to imagine being separate from Love, we had to imagine what was not Love, or we would not be, even illusorily, separate, or apart from It.  ‘Love’ is with a capital L here because it denotes the Perfect Love that is Who and What God, the Creator Spirit, Is.  Anything less than that is not actually Love, but a counterfeit form that Jesus calls ‘special love’ in ACIM; but that is another whole subject!

Love is open, giving, transparent, ubiquitous, unlimited, unchanging, universal, has no hidden agendas.  It is not some of those things, interchangeably, some of the time, but all of them (and, more besides), uninterruptedly, eternally.  That in itself tells us that It is not of t&p, though we are at free choice about whether we wish to manifest It in t&p.  And we know that is possible because Jesus demonstrated It in t&p.  Not only so, but because he overcame ego — the opposite of Perfect Love — we, his brothers, from whom he is eternally indivisible, will also overcome ego, and are heading in that direction right now, as he is in charge of the GRP that is taking us there.  That GRP is infallible and unstoppable.  That news is not just good, but out of this world J. 

There is but one ingredient lacking for its completeness: our willingness to believe.  That willingness enables the unreal world to be transformed into the real world — the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth — for the believer.  The GRP will perform that transformation for us all because a) the GRP, or Atonement, has all the resources of Eternity at its disposal, and because b) in reality (Eternity) it is already complete.  In linear time terms (since we believe we are in linear time, we have to have a linear perspective on events in order to give them meaningfulness in the context of linear time within which we are currently perceiving them) it will be completed by the leavening of the third measure of meal, and all the fragments restored to wholeness and oneness as Christ, Papa’s one, beloved Son, in Whom He is well pleased.

Meanwhile — getting back to the thread — to imagine being in a place, or state of mind, where Perfect Love is not (otherwise there could be no separation, even in fantasy), has to mean imagining, fantasising, dreaming a state of being in which Perfect Love is not present in our separated mind.  That may appear to some as a highly controversial, inflammatory even, statement.  But the proof of the pudding is in the eating; for if It were present, we would be whole, as Papa created His Son, and that is manifestly not so.  The only way that could be possible is to imagine a state of being that is Its opposite.  

Since imagining ourself as being what we are not is a betrayal of our true Self, we have, at a deep level in our unconscious, perceived ourself to have ‘sinned against Heaven and before God’ (Lk. 15: 18).  But here is what Jesus says about this in ACIM:

The betrayal of the Son of God lies only in illusions, and all his “sins” are but his own imagining.  His reality is forever sinless.  He need not be forgiven but awakened.  In his dreams (he believes) he has betrayed himself, his brothers and his God.  Yet what is done in dreams has not been really done.  It is impossible to convince the dreamer that this is so, for dreams are what they are because of their illusion of reality.  Only in waking is the full release from them, for only then does it become perfectly apparent that they had no effect upon reality at all, and did not change it.  Fantasies change reality.  That is their purpose. They cannot do so in reality, but they can do so in the mind that would have reality be different. (T-17.I.1)

This is an act of ‘make believe’, such as children play.  It is not creating, but a substitute for creating, which can only take place in reality.  Creating is extending oneness, and is an aspect of reality, which is Perfect Love.  It cannot function as part of an illusory separateness, so a make believe substitute is all that can ever hope to take the place of creating, in the deluded state of mind that besets us all the while we believe the illusion of t&p is reality. 

And so we believe that the act of two bodies coming together and making more bodies is creating life.  But, if Papa has but one Son, and that Son is not a body, but, like his Father, is Spirit, then making more bodies is not creating, or giving life, as is commonly perceived; it is an act of dividing the one Son into more separated fragments.  Creating is extending oneness, which increases and strengthens it; contrarily, dividing oneness diminishes and weakens it.

Extending oneness is of the mind, not of bodies, for true creation is of God, a gift He extended to His one Son because His Son is created like Him, with all His attributes.  True creation is therefore of Eternity, and bodies have no part in Eternity; they are but an illusion of t&p.  We are not a body; we are like our Father Creator.  Reunifying, or rejoining in oneness of mind, not bodies, restores to us our true creative reality.

This is possible only by willingness to remember who we really are.  Jesus tells us we are the light of the world, and light — true, spiritual light, the light of Life, not light as perceived by bodily senses — is Love; Perfect Love.  So if that is who we are, only by a willingness to be that can we fulfil our only function here and be restored to our true Being.  We can only be restored to that by a willingness to give up our belief in littleness, mortality and the attendant grievances.  And that is only possible by forgiving our brothers and ourself for all that we have never actually done, but simply dreamed.

It makes inestimable sense to be completely who and what we are, rather than a sorry, fearful, limited misperception of ourself, seemingly stuck in time and place, forgetful, gone like a shadow in a fleeting moment, only to have to keep reappearing as another and yet another illusory shadow because our unbelief keeps us stuck in t&p.  If this were our true nature, Papa’s Son would be incomplete and He would not be able to keep creating like His Father: forever extending His all-giving, perfectly-loving Being. 

Since the Son is created like His Father, that would make His Father incomplete. How can God be incomplete?  The idea is preposterous.  If He is Perfect Love, and Love is — must be — giving, He could not be what He is if He withheld part of Himself in His creating/extending/giving activity.  That could only be an act of imperfect love, a quality of Being that no soundly reasoning mind could contemplate as attributable to Him.

It may be said that each new persona-in-a-body is complete in itself and thus, producing more bodies is an act of creation.  Yet no body is able to ‘create’ or make more bodies alone, thus demonstrating that no body is complete in itself.  But Papa’s one, reunified Son is complete in Himself, because He is created like His Father.  Thus, the Son of God is not a body.  Completeness is of Mind, and completion is the result of the rejoining of the fragmented minds back to the one Mind of Eternity, Heaven, God.  That is the Atonement of which Jesus speaks in ACIM.

This reunifying of the Mind that appears split, divided into myriad, separate fragments trapped in ever increasing numbers of bodies on the carousel of birth and death, has to take place here, in t&p, so that we can be — are being — prepared, made ready to be restored to our eternal reality of oneness as Papa’s one Son; Christ.  Jesus is, blessedly, our template, come in a body — a communication device — to communicate and demonstrate to his brothers (who believe they are bodies still) the truth that we are what cannot be contained by, or in, a body.

This might be seen as truth (Jesus) being brought to illusions (bodies), but he came to bring the illusory fragments of the Sonship back to the truth of their reality as the one, unified Son. As he says: Bringing illusion to truth, or the ego to God, is the Holy Spirit’s (and therefore, Jesus’ and also our) only function.  Keep not your making (i.e. the illusory, temporal entity we have made of ourself) from your Father, for hiding (the truth about) it has cost you knowledge of Him and of yourself (i.e. our true Self). (T-14.IX.1:4, 5.)

Ego would have us believe that it is impossible for us to be all of one mind, because we see ourselves as myriad bodies, each with a separate mind.  But one-mindedness is an idea, an understanding, an awareness, and does not entail bodies.  It entails belief.  Or at least, a willingness to believe; for if we are but willing to believe, the Holy Spirit will transform our sceptical, unbelieving, misperceiving mind into a knowing-of-a-certainty-beyond–all-doubt mind.  It is a mystical process over which self-will has no control; a process in which we must relinquish, of our own free will, all desire for control in order for it to happen. 

If we are willing to do that, the Holy Spirit, our true Self, will lead us to a state of Being that is nothing to do with bodies or time and place.  In fact, this mystical process of awakening minds and restoring them to remembrance of their oneness renders them, and all illusions, obsolete.  In this process ego is dispelled, and ceases to be part of our mind as it becomes healed and rejoined.  Ego cannot be part of a healed mind because ego is of time and place only, and healed, reunified mind is Christ Mind, and is of Eternity only.  Eternal Mind, Christ Mind, can and will eagerly engage with a willing mind in time and place, but a mind engaged with time and place cannot engage with Christ Mind.

But what about our bodies? They are our identity.  We will lose our identity, then we really won’t know who we are.

Does a butterfly have a moment’s concern for its chrysalis once it has remembered what it is, and emerged, soaring in the light of its true reality?

To soaring!

Brian Longhurst

March 31st 2010

Dear Friends,

‘Knowing’ is not a thinking process.  It is an awareness, a recognition, an acceptance, a remembrance of what is so; what is true, what is real.  Since what is true and what is real is nothing to do with t&p, but only of God and His immutable laws, ‘knowing’, and/or ‘knowledge’ as used in ACIM and here, refers not to observations or perceptions, such as ‘That traffic light just turned red’, or ‘It’s a lovely day’.  Knowing is awareness of unchanging, eternal truth, and these two examples, from t&p conditions, are certainly changeable!

Knowing comes from deep within our mind, from the place of remembrance of Who, What and Where we are, and always, uninterruptedly have forever had our Being.  In contrast, perception is only possible in the upside-down and back-to-front unreality of t&p, where we try to make sense of the nonsensical. 

That does require thought processes, most of which take us round in circles, with history endlessly repeating itself until our thought processes — aided by Self, even when we are unaware of that aid — take us near enough to truth that He can gently, lovingly steer us toward right-mindedness. We have been trying to make this world our reality, our home, but it is not, and never can be, other than in fantasy.  To slightly paraphrase the words of Paul to the Corinthians:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but when that which is perfect is restored to our memory then shall we know even as also we are known. Then that which is imperfect shall be done away.

While we believe ourselves to be in an illusory, alien place — which is nothing more than a confused state of mind — we can still have faith in the reality of our true Home in Papa.  In fact, faith only has any serviceable meaning while we are in this dream state; for when we waken to reality we know, as Paul implies, of a certainty beyond all doubt, and that knowing, or true vision — which is a clear, enlightened state of mind — replaces faith.  Faith is a belief in what we do not see or understand.  When we see reality and understand it with our ‘single eye’, or unflawed vision — which is a state of mind, undetectable by bodily senses — faith vanishes away because now we know.  

In the illusion, thought processes are necessary because nothing actually means anything, and we have to try and make sense of our misperceptions, and give meaning to a constantly changing unreality.  It seems so real to our bodily senses (all designed to be taken in by a changing, illusory projection onto the screen of our consciousness) that it requires a change of attitude — from belief in what passes away to what is eternally, unchangingly perfect — to consider that such a ‘radical’ idea that nothing in t&p, all of which is constantly changing, means anything.  But, as Jesus reminds us, in God’s creation, Eternity, nothing changes; if perfection changed it could only become imperfection.

But when we ask to be grown in faith and are willing to allow our true Self, the Holy Spirit, to take the helm, He will gradually, at a pace with which we are comfortable, shine away the fog of misperception.  This will bring us to a place which is near enough to eternal, unchanging reality, that a spark of remembrance, of renewed understanding will bridge the gap and bring an instantaneous awareness of what is real; the absolute certainty that is knowing.

This is not yet all knowing, for we are journeying back to remembrance at a pace with which the Holy Spirit knows we are comfortable: one step at a time.  There will be ‘small’, or partial remembrances; not of the ego-scripted past, but of who we really are and of our true Home; of our oneness in the Sonship.  These, with continuing faith, will gradually come together into a complete picture as they begin to be recognised as the parts that make up the wholeness that — reunited with our brothers, through forgiveness, in Papa — we forever are.  It can be likened to the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle gradually being fitted together until we see the whole picture.

Ego knows that our starting out on this journey spells its end, and will use every device at its command (including our willingness to continue believing its story and its stage backdrops of a ‘physical’ universe of passing shadows, from galaxies to bodies, are real) to distract us and ambush our intent to awaken. 

Masquerading as ourself, ego says, ‘I must understand this problem, so that I can deal with it’.  Conversely, our true Self, the Spirit of Truth says, ‘Give Me the problem so I can deal with it by exposing it for the illusion it is by shining the light of eternal truth on it, and it will simply disappear’. It is worth reflecting on the fact that He is the Spirit of Truth, not the body of truth.  One might even say we can choose between the Spirit of Truth and the ‘body of lies’.

This is the difference between Eternity and t&p, Heaven and Earth.  In Heaven, our true, eternal and only Home, we know there are no problems because the light of truth shines there, and problems only appear to exist when we deny ourself the ever-freely-available light of eternal truth by choosing to maintain a veil between us and the light, obscuring it from our view. 

There is no problem in reality, and never has been or will be.  But we have removed ourself from reality.  This causes us to believe there is not just one problem, but ever-increasing numbers of problems, threatening to overwhelm us, because in egoland ‘fragmentation, division, separation’ is the name of the game.  And all the while we seek for solutions to the apparently ever-fragmenting problems of this world, we can and will never find the solution because the only problem is that we believe we are in it.

This denial shuts us off from the light of spiritual discernment which shines through our own within, where, and only where, Heaven and its Creator and ours, Papa, have Their dwelling place.  We do not find Them because we look in the wrong place: without, where They will never be found.  Jesus told us this two-thousand years ago, and only now are some of the fragments beginning to believe it.  The vast majority are still some way from that belief.

In t&p, without the light of spiritual discernment — and believing we are separated from our Father Creator, our Self and the perfect love, light, joy, peace, all-sufficiency, safety and protection that are freely ours — problems are thus perceived, and so they become our experience.  That is the difference.  Perception is not reality, it is seeing what we believe because we believe what we have been told.  We have been told we are ‘sinners’, unworthy, mortal, and deserving of punishment for our wickedness. 

We have established institutions in the name of God and Jesus to inure us in this perception.  And even when we see through the sham and the mockery of reality presented by such institutions, and repudiate their doctrines and their dogmas, we remain so steeped in the impression they have made upon our psyche over innumerable incarnations, we cannot see that that impact is still deep within us. 

Any who doubt this might ask themselves if they are ready to stand before their brethren and declare to them, knowing beyond all doubt, ‘I am the light of the world’.  For this is the truth of our Being; we can know this because Jesus, who knows the truth, tells us this is so.  Can speaking the truth be arrogant; delusional; insane?  It is arrogant to deny the truth when its light shines lovingly upon us and we refuse to welcome, receive and joyfully accept it unto ourselves.

In Heaven, love is known, because there, the light of eternal truth illuminates all reality and shines away all illusions.  If it were not so it could not be Heaven, for illusions would still be perceived.  When love is known, how can there be any perceptions or illusions?  Knowledge, which is truth, is known, not believed; all doubt is removed.  Forever.  Love, Perfect Love, is knowing that all is well; there is no doubt, no fear, no guilt, no uncertainty of who and where we are.  When we know, have and are Perfect Love we have perfect trust.  Such loving, being and trusting are not of this world, for it is ego’s domain, and ego is the opposite of Perfect Love.

But while we appear to be in this world we do not have to be of it.  In fact, actively choosing not to be of it is, of course, the only way of escaping from it.  For any who are puzzled about how this could be possible, all that is necessary is to look to Jesus, who embodied Perfect Love right here in t&p, so that we could know it is possible, and have an example to emulate.  This requires overlooking the illusions of fear, guilt and mortality.  Impossible?  Only if we believe it so.  Our faith shall make us whole, and in wholeness is no guilt, fear or death.

Ego would have us believe what our bodily senses show us, and to have faith in that.  But in ACIM Jesus reminds us that we cannot believe in ego and the Holy Spirit, for the two are irreconcilable, and we must choose for one or the other, alone.  Ego will keep us riding the carousel of birth and death; do we believe it is a free ride, a joy-ride?  If so, the price is beyond our ken.  Holy Spirit will lead us on a journey without distance and without price to our freedom from illusion, forever.

The book of Genesis speaks of a ‘tree of knowledge of Good and evil’, saying that if we ‘eat its fruit’ we shall surely die.  In Heaven is only knowledge and it is, of course, only good.  Therefore, since Heaven is the only reality, having knowledge of good and evil can denote but one thing: a split mind.  A split mind can only be an illusion, and indeed, it does seem to be so in t&p, even though that does not affect our true Being — Self — Who is One-Minded: God-Minded.  Because we are, in truth, the Son of God, good is not beyond us.   

Indeed, we are free, here, to choose good or evil.  Many of us try to choose a sprinkling of both — saying, if questioned, just like Adam and Eve, ‘I was beguiled’ — but ultimately, that will not get us Home.  Steadfastly espousing only good and eschewing evil will get us off the carousel.  Many will say, ‘Easier said than done in this dog-eat-dog world’, but we have all-empowered Help if we can only believe, and ask for that Help.  And all that is required of us is the desire, sincere and earnest (because Self is not fooled) to espouse good and eschew evil.  He will perform our redirecting toward the Light for us and lead us unfailingly There, if only we are willing to co-operate by following His lead.

It is not possible to know good and evil, because we can only know truth, reality; and evil is not truth or reality, however much our bodily perceptions may ‘beguile’ us into believing otherwise if we tune in to the news of events in the without.  Evil is made up, fantasy, dreamt, uncertain; part of the overall phantasm of t&p.  Knowledge is certainty and can only be real, truth; and the only real truth is Perfect Love. Evil can be perceived, believed, experienced even, but cannot be known because it is not real.

Nothing can be real that is not of Papa, because Papa is the Source of all.

Forgive us our illusions, Father, and help us to accept our true relationship with You, in which there are no illusions, and where none can ever enter.  Our holiness is Yours.  What can there be in us that needs forgiveness when Yours is perfect?  The sleep of forgetfulness is only the unwillingness to remember Your forgiveness and Your Love.  Let us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Son of God is not Your Will.  And let us receive only what You have given, and accept but this into the minds which You created and which You love.  Amen.

From ACIM Text, chapter 16.VII ‘The End of Illusions’.12

Endless love and blessings,

Brian Longhurst

April 7th 2010 

Dear Friends,

In Luke chapter 12 Jesus counsels us to keep the lamp of our spiritual discernment lit, and to be...

...like unto men that wait for their lord... that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately.  Blessed are those ... whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.   And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants.

Since he used multitudinous parables or symbols to describe the Kingdom of Heaven, it is not too big a leap to see that we can compare the above with his parable of the three measures of meal, and see the common numerical denominator. 

The comparison is immeasurably easier at this time of the switch-over from the Piscean Age/second measure to the Aquarian Age/third measure because Jesus, who has never actually left us, is nevertheless returning to our awareness now in the sense that this is the fulfilment measure, in which the resurrection of the fragmented Son to full wakefulness moves into its completion phase. 

So, as we move closer to wakefulness, our discernment of his presence ‘in the midst’ with us grows stronger.  This means we are returning to him rather than he returning to us, since he never left us.

This is not, and never will be, a bodily ‘second coming of Christ’ because Christ — Papa’s Son — is not a body.  Jesus — who, in common with the rest of us in the Sonship of God, is pure spirit, like our Father Creator — emphasises this over and over in ACIM.  Our awareness of him is in our mind, which is where and how we can commune with him, have joyous, inspiring, enlightening, uplifting fellowship with him.  Such fellowship, joining or mind-to-Mind communing, will grow us in remembrance of him and also of our true Self, until we become of one Mind with him, and also with all the other fragments of the Sonship.

This happens a step at a time, at a pace with which we are comfortable; for the Sonship is a loving, joyous state of Being, and Heaven is like unto It.  We are so inured in fear and guilt from our sojourn in time and place that the Spirit of Truth can only lead us back to wakefulness at a pace with which we are at ease.  This is for our wellbeing, and is a measure of the love and tenderness in which we are held.

Ego effected the semblance of an unholy separation.  Holy Spirit works to restore our awareness to the holy state of union.  Since this separation never actually happened but was only a split in our mind, in which the split-off part hallucinated its separation, Holy Spirit’s job is to re-mind us of our oneness and the ineffable bliss of that state of Being.

Fear of the ‘unknown’ causes our ‘rational’ mind to hesitate.  But that reticence is not our mind at all; it is ego, masquerading as us.  If we are comfortable in that reticence, fearful of engaging with the unknown, ‘invisible’ reality, that is an indicator that we are not yet ready to waken, and this is perfectly fine within the Great Rescue Programme.  Jesus and the Holy Spirit are infinitely patient and they are this way because they know the end from the beginning; that the imaginary separation is already over — because it happened only as a dream and dreams are not real — and our union as the Son of God, in God, is untouched, uninterrupted, safe beyond the ability of symbols to describe.

Those who do not feel drawn by that loving reality will remain where they choose for as long as they choose because with Papa there is no compulsion.  If it takes another, or several further circuits of the carousel of birth and death before they begin to feel there is a reality of inner peace that time and place cannot provide, and it is freely, lovingly, tenderly available to them, just as to all, so be it. 

None of that in any way alters reality, and the Holy Spirit will remain with them for as long as they choose to take.  He will continue to speak with them, just as He has always quietly done with all the fragments, of the love of Papa, of Heaven; of their rightful place there; of how Heaven is incomplete without them; of how Papa yearns for their return to Him from self-imposed exile in darkness, guilt, fear, bereavement. 

Unwillingness to hear Him is the free choice of us all, until we are ready to freely choose again.  Now is the most auspicious moment within the six-thousand year Great Rescue Programme to choose again because the first and second measures of meal have leavened and the third measure is now leavening, or rising up, so we are able to rise up to the place of remembrance with it, and the whole — of which each one of us fragments is an integral, indivisible part — becomes leavened, raised up.

It is no coincidence that A Course in Miracles has been brought to us now; now is the perfect time (how could it be other, with Jesus at the helm?).  ACIM is our self-study guidebook on how to remember who, what and where we really are, and awaken to that reality by the purification process of true forgiveness; abandoning judgement.  For judgement and unforgiveness are ego’s mechanisms for deluding us into believing time and place, death, guilt and fear are our reality.

ACIM explains in exquisite detail how to co-operate with the Holy Spirit; be restored to oneness with our true Self; remember that we are not a body; enable Him to collapse time for us, saving innumerable further illusory incarnations; bring time and place to an end.

He tells us in ACIM that the Holy Spirit is ‘the Voice for God’ all the while we believe we are separated from Him — and therefore believe we could not possibly hear God speaking to us! — and that all the while we believe that, the Holy Spirit will speak to us what He hears God saying to Him for us.  What Papa speaks to us, via the Holy Spirit, it will come as no surprise, is truth; the truth of who we are, our relationship to all creation and to the Creator.

Ego has inculcated fear into us about anything to do with God, Jesus, Eternity, and this makes it difficult for us to feel at ease at the prospect of communing with Them, reacquainting ourself with Them.  Nevertheless, Jesus counsels us to do this: ...enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret... (Mt. 6:6) so it cannot be the ‘wrong’ thing to do.

Whether it is making a start or continuing year after year, communing can seem to be very difficult.  But it is not impossible, and if we have a little willingness to commune, Help will be given, always, to get us past the doubt and fear to the joy and peace that come from such communing. Most might think the difficulty is actually believing the Voice speaks to us.  That is too simplistic a perception.  The difficulty, the obstacle, is doubting ourself, and our ability to hear the Voice.  The Voice speaks with us unceasingly. 

Ego does not want us to hear It, so turns up the volume on self-doubt.  But that doubt is not our doubt because we are perfect, innocent, all-empowered, eternal, invulnerable, all-knowing, (the list is quite long) and entirely descriptive of Papa’s beloved Son — us!  So who, or what, other than ego, could be the cause of doubt that seems to overwhelm us, scare us, keep us in its grip?  Who, then, do we really want to listen to; ego, or the Voice for God, Who tells us who we are and how to get Home?

My heart’s desire above all is to be helpful to my brothers, and the best way I am able to do that is to share experiences of communing with the Voice for Papa, in the hope it will encourage them, help them to recognise how gentle, tender, loving, light-hearted, understanding of our doubts and fears He is, and thus help them gain in understanding of how easy it can be if we are willing to co-operate.  Hearing the Voice for God is not a privilege, reserved for some ‘special few’; it is the God-given (and therefore irrefutable) creation-right of us all, without a single exception. 

Here is a recent communing, shared with this desire in mind:

Dear, beloved Holy Spirit; after all this time I still appear to have so many uncertainties, and that includes my ability to receive Your speaking, guiding, counselling.

What are you expecting?

Well, with You, I should know by now; the unexpected.

Good!  That is a clear indicator that not all has been in vain J.  But my question is genuine; if you expect ‘formal, sit-down, question-time sessions’, this is by no means the only way to the awakening of slumbering minds to spiritual truth.  Such awakening is a spontaneous, living process, of which I am the guiding mechanism, as with all eternal activity with the fragmented Sonship.

Who else do you believe could do this? It’s quite a task for any under-qualified person.

Well, Jesus doesn’t seem under-qualified.

This is entirely so, but who do you think guided him to that place?

Good point, because it had to be You.  I know he was willing, and if I say it myself, it is hard to imagine anyone also more willing than pB.

It is precisely that which assures the continuing progress.  But being more willing, and committed to being in the holy silence will assure it further.

I realise this is a vital area of importance.  It has been very much on my mind to devote far more to this key aspect of rejoining, reunifying with Jesus and all my brother fragments.

Good; excellent.  ‘See thou to it’.

I still am concerned about my ability to hear whatever You know I am ready to hear.

Ah!  Now we are getting to the nub.  Do you believe I am able to a) know what you are ready to hear, and b) bring it to your awareness?

Yes, on both counts.

Then you are not lacking trust in Me.

I trust you completely, as I have said before. It is pB I am uncertain about.

An occasional reminder never hurts. PB would not be in forgetfulness, in time and place, if there were no uncertainties about him.  It is My job to remove them from him.  It is your job to give them to Me; release them from your locker.  Trust in My ability to do My job is all that is asked of you.  For when you trust My ability to do My job, you will have no trouble, no difficulty doing yours.  And limiting Me to ‘sit-down question/answer sessions’ will not comprehensively serve your desire for going forward.  Being more relaxed, accepting, going with the flow, will complement it very satisfactorily. 

I have no limitations on how to get answers, guidance, new remembrances into your mind and understanding.  For example, how many times have you pondered a certain matter, only that same day, or perhaps the next, to read the solution in ACIM?

More than I can recount, but I am aware that it happens with great frequency.

That is because there are no chance events in the unfolding pattern of those who place their life, surrender their leasehold, into the care of Jesus and/or Me.  If you make such an undertaking you fulfil your part of the bargain.  Do you believe Jesus or I will default on Ours?

You have a way of making your questions rhetorical.

That is no accident either.  To focus on the issue concerning you; by more actively setting aside moments of quietness for attunement, directing your mind to the within, where Papa, Jesus and I have Our abode with you, and releasing your thoughts to Us, you create a condition in which an exchange can take place: your doubts, questions, uncertainties for Our enlightenment and understanding.

The ‘words’ that flow when you place yourself in a receptive state are continuous; the ‘sound of many waters’ flowing in abundance, for the quenching of all who thirst.  Drink you freely thereof, beloved.

Thank you, Self.  You know how absolute is my gratitude for your enlightening, illumining of the Path to ease and hasten my journey back Home to Papa, where we all belong.

Bravo!

Peace, joy and love unending be with us all,

Brian Longhurst

I who am host to God am worthy of Him.

                                                                                        ACIM T-18.IV.5

April 14th 2010

Dear Friends,

As we progress into the leavening of the third measure of meal, by which the Great Rescue Programme, or At-onement, will be completed, and we, the fragmented Sonship of God will be fully restored to oneness, the vast majority of the spiritually slumbering fragments as yet believe that time and place is all there is. 

Or at least, that that is all of which it is possible to have any awareness or understanding.  This limited and limiting perception encompasses the belief that ‘we can only deal with what lies beyond — if anything — when we get there’.  By that is meant, when we ‘die’, or lay aside our body. 

That shows how sadly ill-prepared for Eternity almost all of us really are; for laying aside a body does not restore us to Eternity unless and until we are healed of all brokenness through the mechanism of true forgiveness.  That healing must occur while we, God’s Son, still perceive ourself as broken; separated from Him and into fragments. 

Unless that healing takes place within time and place we cannot escape from time and place to the remembrance of our wholeness in Eternity, Heaven.  Laying aside a body does not restore that wholeness because it is our mind that must be restored, and the belief we are a body, or have laid aside a body, is evidence that our mind is split, and therefore, not whole.  Laying aside a body does not miraculously transform a split mind into a healed mind.

Yet, however we perceive ourself, Eternity is where we are all headed.  Sticking our head in the sand will not alter that fact.  It will delay it by an indeterminate number of apparent incarnations, if that is our choice, but choosing to extend the experience of doubt, fear, guilt, littleness and mortality — even though such experience is only a dream — when we can freely choose not to delay eternal joy, peace and perfect love would be considered by most as the choice of a madman. 

Even many of those who have an idea that there is something beyond — Eternity — see the concept as being so vague and indefinable that ‘no-one can be sure if it is there or what it is like’.  Happily, joyously even, this situation is being redressed in a way and at a level of Mind of which ego-indoctrinated mind has no awareness.  Yet.

The reason such distorted thought processes, or beliefs, are so committed to Eternity not having any graspable meaning, is that the part of the mind that holds them is self-limiting to a three-dimensional experience, which we perceive as time and place.  This part of the mind, it hardly needs mentioning, is, unwittingly, under the sway of ego, which is not capable of grasping anything beyond, and does not want us to grasp it either, so maintains the trick of getting us to believe its perception is our perception.

Jesus tells us the Son of God is limitless.  Adherents to orthodox religion believe that, but are also committed in the belief that Jesus is the one and only Son of God — even though the Bible definitively states that we are all the Son(s) of God.  But orthodox religion has many doctrines that are in contradiction, such as the doctrine that God requires of His children blood sacrifices for their sins, in direct contrast to Jeremiah 7:22, which unequivocally states no such sacrifices were ever required by God. 

In Mt. 9:13 Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6 to the Pharisees (who were keen on sacrifice!) that God requires mercy and not sacrifice.  Unlike the Pharisees, who contradicted their scriptures in their own rule-making, Jesus, who deliberately selected that verse from Hosea to quote to them, is hardly going to present himself as a once and for all sacrifice, especially as he went on to say he had come to call people to repentance (which means turning around, or changing direction) not sacrifice.

Letting go of the confused, distracting and contradictory ego thought system, or at least being willing to entertain the true alternative — that remains imperceptible to wrong-minded thinking — calls for a leap of faith.  Ego-thinking would have us cling to upside-down perception to the bitter end, or until a crisis causes us to face no alternative but to rethink.  Even then, ego will try its utmost to get the old order of thinking re-established as the centre of our belief.  But belief in illusions does not make them truth.

The leap of faith would take us into another dimension of Mind, far beyond the limitations of time and place thinking, yet entirely and instantly available to us in time and place, because our true Self is Whole, all-knowing Mind, in constant and complete communication with the Mind of God.  Attunement, or at-onement, with our real Self, and thus, with the Mind of God, is a mystical process that Jesus calls the Holy Instant.  He has much to say about the Holy Instant in ACIM, but here is a taster of it, from T-15.IV:

...The holy instant is this instant and every instant. The one you want it to be it is. The one you would not have it be is lost to you. You must decide when it is. Delay it not. For beyond the past and future, where you will not find it, it stands in shimmering readiness for your acceptance. Yet you cannot bring it into glad awareness while you do not want it, for it holds the whole release from littleness.

Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to let all littleness go. The instant in which magnitude dawns upon you is but as far away as your desire for it... Give over every plan you have made for your salvation in exchange for God’s. His will content you, and nothing else can bring you peace. For peace is of God, and no one beside Him...

 ...I stand within the holy instant, as clear as you would have me. And the extent to which you learn to accept me is the measure of the time in which the holy instant will be yours. I call to you to make the holy instant yours at once, for the release from littleness in the mind of the host of God depends on willingness, and not on time.

... You could live forever in the holy instant, beginning now and reaching to eternity...  The holy instant is a time in which you receive and give perfect communication. This means, however, that it is a time in which your mind is open, both to receive and give. It is the recognition that all minds are in communication. It therefore seeks to change nothing, but merely to accept everything...

The necessary condition for the holy instant does not require that you have no thoughts that are not pure.  But it does require that you have none that you would keep. Innocence is not of your making. It is given you the instant you would have it...

(My emboldening, underlining and some italic, for emphasis).

Ego is entirely unwilling to accept what it cannot see with eyes made only to see three dimensions, and to utterly mistrust any who speak of anything beyond — eternal, mystical reality.  It will clamorously shout its protestations at this, saying we must trust no-one, be suspicious of everyone, but especially those who speak of what is beyond sensory perception.

Sensory perception is for seeing the without; but God, Jesus, the true, one-Self — Christ — that we all are, and the eternal, unchangeable Kingdom of Heaven is forever, unalterably within us.  So when we look at our brother — whose true Being is, along with our own, within — with bodily eyes, we are not seeing who he really is.  Jesus tells us in ACIM we are all Christ (he should know!) and until we can see the face of Christ in our brother we are not seeing truly.

This will remain the case as long as we are unwilling to look more closely at our brother.  Without that closer look we cannot see only the face of Christ in him.  Yet it is there, and until we are willing to seek it there we will be unable to find it in ourself.  For we can be restored to Eternity only together, because in truth, which is of Eternity, we are one.  That is why Jesus has never left us and will remain with us... alway, even unto the end of the world (Mt. 28:20)

None of this is new to us; we have simply forgotten it, and though the Holy Spirit will restore us to fullness of remembrance of Who we really are, He cannot do this unless and until we are willing to co-operate with Him in this At-onement process.  This is how and why A Course in Miracles is inestimably helpful, for it comprehensively tells us what that process is, how it works and how to co-operate with it. 

Although it looks hard — impossible even from the ego-indoctrinated, split-off, upside-down part of our mind that is unaware of our real Self — it is easy for the part of our mind that is already awake and always has been, even though to our Earth-mind consciousness it seems to be asleep, or at least, quiescent.  As Jesus tells us in W.68:

Shut off from your Self, which remains aware of Its likeness to Its Creator, your Self seems to sleep, while the part of your mind that weaves illusions in its sleep appears to be awake.

Yet it is fear that keeps us from that co-operation.  There is an old saying ‘Fear knocked at the door; faith answered, and there was no-one there.’  Things, including communing with God, Jesus and/or Self — the Holy Spirit — always seem more fearful until we actually take the plunge and engage with (open the door) what seems (to ego-mind) fearful, and this is immeasurably helped by the certainty that we are not alone.  If we are able to pluck up the courage to take that first step in communing with our fully awake, totally trustworthy brother Jesus and/or Self, each step thereafter is easier, lighter, more peaceful and joyful. 

I share the following communing for the encouragement of all in this:

Dear Holy Spirit/Self; I am, I believe, not afraid to look within to find truth.  Though, if Arten and Pursah are correct, there are still untold ‘issues’ for resolution lurking deep in the ‘basement’ of my unconscious mind.

Alleluia!  That is my burning, yearning desire, above all, that we may restored together to the joy of release from fear to the love and peace of Heaven.

Love and light be with us all, for our joyous restoration to oneness, in Papa,

Brian Longhurst

April 21st 2010

Dear Friends,

Many of us, if asked, might, out of fear, say they are not fearful.  This would be an attempted cover-up of truth by all whose ‘present’ perception is that time and place is reality and Eternity is in the indeterminate future; maybe, possibly, hopefully.  For fear of change does not seem easy to escape if we believe we are in an ever-changing ‘reality’ in which anything can and might happen.

Change is inevitable in time and place, for it is unreality; it is the consciousness of fear.  Only Eternity is reality and is the awareness, the knowledge, the experience of Perfect Love, Joy and Peace... eternally J.  Fear comes from unconscious guilt that we believe we have separated ourself from our Source, resulting in the perception that change is outside our control and is a random, lottery process in which a bad hand is as likely to be dealt us as a ‘good’ hand; and even if we got a series of good hands, every next hand could be a bad one.

However, change, with a benign purpose and an unswerving direction toward the light, in the control of One Who knows the end from the beginning, Who Is all-knowing, all-loving, all-empowered to manage and control the change, is not only without fear, it is an entirely joyful, uplifting, enlightening and peaceful, eagerly accepted experience.  Then the word change could be better understood as transformation because there is a definite objective, an achievable goal.

This transformation is available to all and is known as the Great Rescue Programme, or the At-onement.  It operates through the love and laws of the Creator, under the direction of the Spirit of Truth.  It is a leavening process by which we are raised up to full wakefulness, knowledge and remembrance of our oneness with each other and in God.  It is a gradual process, imperceptible to observation (The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Lk. 17:20) but that does not mean it is not happening, anymore than grass growing imperceptibly does not mean it is not growing.  The changes are positive, in the best interest of us all, even if not perceived as such through our limited understanding.

If we are willing to co-operate, in the nascent stages the focus on eternal reality may be only occasional, and on time and place events predominantly.  But gradually this turns around as we start to notice events that seem synchronistic, and sudden new thoughts and awarenesses appear ‘out of the blue’ in our mind.  This is inspiration, an enlightening event or process, placed in, or brought to the forefront of our mind by the Holy Spirit.  We begin to recognise that Something Wonderful is happening in the unfolding progress of our life’s journey. 

This dawning realisation catalyses a desire to focus more and more of our attention on Eternity as the certainty sets in that there really is a Divine meaning to our being and a purposeful intent leading and directing the process of our spiritual awakening. This realisation grows our confidence in the empowerment of He Who is taking charge of our life’s journey, and that He knows a lot more about it than we thought we did! What was once perceived as the all-important events and activities of time and place somehow seem less and less significant. 

We are not, and never have been, alone in this transformation, not just of the direction and purpose of our life but of our very Being.  If we were it would be chaos, just like the illusion of being separate from God is chaos.  With God’s perfect plan, all is perfectly, lovingly ordered.  How could it be otherwise?  The difference now is that our Guiding Light, the Voice for God — Who has been quiescent in our journey because we gave charge over our life (a leasehold) to ego — now, in response to our asking, takes the reins.  When we authorise Him to lead us, and we mean it, He will do so, unfailingly.  That is when things begin to happen that make sense and our life turns around.

The gradual shift in awareness diminishes the fear of change as our attitude and understanding become more enlightened.  I say gradual but the change can be, and will be as rapid as the Holy Spirit — Who knows everything, including everything about us — knows the pace at which we are ready and able to comfortably progress.  In that sense, we are ‘in charge’ of the awakening because it happens in direct response to our desire and willingness for it to happen. For some it will be much more rapid than for others.  This does not mean those who are slower are less ‘worthy’.  It simply means we all begin from a different degree of forgetfulness.

Jesus places much emphasis in ACIM upon the importance of our willingness to co-operate with Self.  We begin to realise that life itself functions according to laws that are not of this world but of Eternity; that they are the opposite of the upside-down, limiting ‘laws’ of time and place.  By understanding and co-operating with them we are able to experience the empowerment that truly demonstrates our Magnitude and Grandeur, that comes only from God, and signals the beginning of the end of littleness, guilt and fear.  It was Jesus’ awareness of this that enabled him to demonstrate the magnitude and grandeur of his being, and guarantees their availability to us all, in response to our desire for and willingness to receive them and accept them unto ourselves.

These Laws of God, or Principles of Life of the Father (PLFs) are simply that, because they function according to eternal, unchangeable principles, designed to ensure love, peace and joy for all creation, including, of course, His beloved Son; us.  If we are not experiencing love, peace and joy uninterruptedly it is because we have chosen to ignore, or forget those PLFs; it is not that they do not exist, or do not work.

Our restoration to remembrance of them and their Source — and ours — is a progressive unfolding, 3-phase process.  The first phase is God-seeking.  This equates with the first measure of meal (the Abraham Measure) and the outer court of Solomon’s temple and the Arian Age in precession of the equinoxes terminology.  In that phase there was an emerging but still primeval sense of there being a Divine Being; remote, judgemental, wrathful. This phase is characterised by a sense of guilt, and the perceived requiring of sacrifice to ward-off the anger of the remote deity and to test our faith.  Any falling short of the mark or wrong-doing was perceived as warranting divine punishment or retribution, maintaining the consciousness of fear.

In his lifetime Abraham progressed from that state of consciousness — in which he perceived God as requiring him to offer his only son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to ‘test Abraham’s faith’ — into the next phase of awakening: God-awareness.  Synchronistically, a ram, caught by its horns in a thicket, came to the rescue and was substituted for Isaac at the last moment, thus saving Isaac (Gen. 22) — and ultimately, therefore, the entire Jewish race.  Abraham was, or at least was a symbol of, the leaven by which the first measure of meal was leavened, or raised up in consciousness from the God-seeking to the God-aware, or second measure of meal state of mind. 

Abraham was the progenitor of a race and a belief-system that raised the God-seeking activity, or consciousness, from belief in an indeterminate number of gods to the perception that there is but one God, the Source of All (Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: Deut. 6:4).  Leaven, or increased understanding from that phase, or first measure, was thus able to be carried over into the second measure.

The second measure, or God-aware phase of the awakening of the Sonship of God, which is symbolised by the middle, or inner, court of Solomon’s temple, was initiated by the commencement of the Piscean Age, at the beginning of which Jesus incarnated.  By that time, resulting from the spiritualising or leavening activity of the Abraham measure, there was an established perception of mono-theism, but that God was still remote; that we, His ‘children’ were separated from Him by our sinfulness, guilt and unworthiness, and still believed sacrifice was needed, to assuage punishment, or atone for sins.

Jesus, the CEO of the GRP, knew all about it, of course, from beginning to end.  He was ‘fully leavened’ or raised up to remembrance of who he was/is, and had come to initiate the leavening of the second, or Jesus measure, to ensure it would enable the transfer of leaven into the third, or completion/fulfilment measure, now getting into full swing.  There is always a delay in the leavening process.  The leaven is added at the commencement of the process but does not fully prove until the process has run its course.

The leavening process is a transfer, or extending, or sharing of understanding, awareness, wakefulness from one awake, or resurrected or raised-up Being to others.  This is what has been happening during the second measure, from Jesus’ time on Earth through the Piscean age. Untold numbers of fragments of the Sonship have — through multiple cycles of birth and death, during which they have come to know, love and espouse their lives to the living Jesus, and by that association with him — become gradually raised in awareness from first and second phase understanding of God and our relationship with Him (God-seeking and God-aware) to third-phase understanding: God-filled.

This final phase is symbolised by the Aquarian Age, and also by the Holy Place of Solomon’s temple, which was separated from the Holy of Holies by a heavy veil.  The assurance that completion of the leavening process would occur is symbolised by the rending of the veil, revealing to our awareness the holiness/wholeness of our resurrected mind to its true, eternal, all-empowered, God-filled  state.

As mentioned above, the leavening or raising-up process takes time to prove.  But those of us who espouse our lives to Jesus and the At-onement process, or GRP throughout multiple cycles of birth and death are now being enlivened; are ‘live yeast’.  We — all who so desire — have been and are being quickened, enlivened, activated by our espousal to him and the eternal truth he came to bring back to our remembrance.  We are now, by the untold millions, moving with him into the third measure of meal, for its leavening; ‘till the whole is leavened.’ (Mt. 13:33.)  

This is a gradual process, imperceptible to those who are looking for it with time and place, ego perception, which, by its distorted, unbelieving nature demands proof (By what authority doest thou these things? Mt. 21:23).  But not imperceptible to those of us who are willing to relinquish the ego leasehold on our lives into the trustworthy care of the Spirit of Truth, and to believe.  Belief clears the path of the barriers we have erected to revelation, enabling our vision of eternal truth.

Because the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, those who are seeking in the without cannot see it, and cling to old-order perceptions.  There are still first-measure religious practises of animal sacrifice as ‘atonement for sins’ taking place today.  And the majority of adherents to second-measure, God-aware, institutionalised religion, perceive themselves in a separated state from  an angry, judgemental God, whose appeasement is possible only by the crucifixion sacrifice of Jesus, in whose blood they must be covered, or washed, to be saved from eternal damnation by the God they claim is the God of unconditional Love.   Two-thousand years ago Jesus said ‘Beware the leaven of the Pharisees’.  Today’s equivalent is ‘Beware the leaven of the Laodiceans’ (see Rev. 3:14 ff).

This backward-looking attitude of still the vast majority is of no consequence to Jesus and those who are with him at the vanguard of the Kingdom programme.  This is because the resurrection process gathers momentum, right now, not at an arithmetic rate, but at an exponential pace, across the full spectrum of perception, awareness, experience, belief and understanding of human experience.  Not one slumbering fragment shall be left unawakened.

Jesus says to us:

Let me be to you the symbol of the end of guilt, and look upon your brother as you would look on me.  Forgive me all the sins you think the (fragmented) Son of God committed.  And in the light of your forgiveness he will remember who he is, and forget what never was (the dream of separation).  I ask for your forgiveness, for if you are guilty, so must I be.  But if I surmounted guilt and overcame the world, you were with me.  Would you see in me the symbol of guilt or of the end of guilt, remembering that what I signify to you you see within yourself?

(T19.IV.B.6)

And:

Send forth to all the world the joyous message of the end of guilt, and all the world will answer.

(T19.IV.B.7:6)

With the end of guilt comes the end of fear and with the end of fear comes the end of time and our return as one to Eternity.

Let us rejoin and go onward together in love, peace and joy, to Eternity,

Brian Longhurst

Spirit am I, a holy Son of God, free of all limits, safe and

healed and whole, free to forgive, and free to save the world.

(W.97)

April 28th 2010

Dear Friends,

In John 7:46 it says, of Jesus, Never man spake like this man.  Happily, and thanks largely to A Course in Miracles, there are now increasing numbers amongst us who are 1) better able to understand him at a deep esoteric level, and therefore are b) learning to speak, live and be like him.  The numbers moving into this state of Being will continue to grow exponentially as the unfolding GRP progresses now toward its completion. 

We are told elsewhere in the New Testament that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is (1 Jn. 3:2).  The fact that this is discernible right now by those who seek, not in the morning paper or on the six o’clock news, but within, is surely an affirmation of the fulfilment right now of this prophecy by John more than 19 centuries ago.

There are those who might say ‘He has not yet appeared, so it cannot be the fulfilment until he appears’.  Yet in this exchange between Jesus and Philip lies the answer to this attempt at a delaying manœuvre:

If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.  Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.  Jesus saith unto him,  ...he that hath seen me hath seen the Father... (Jn. 14: 7-9)

Seeing the Father cannot be a bodily-eyes experience (since He is not a body but eternal, living spirit) or an intellectual perception but an inner, mystical awareness/attunement/knowing of Him that is possible only to an open mind.  And since Jesus equates himself with the Father, we can know that the appearance of Jesus in the midst, to us in these times, is nothing to do with bodies or bodily-eyes seeing, but an awareness of his living presence within us, as specified by him in Jn. 14:23:

If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we (i.e. Papa and Jesus) will come unto him, and make our abode with him.  And also: At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you (Jn. 14:20.)

Assuredly, one of the things that he ‘spake as never like another’ is when Jesus tells us we will never die if we believe in him, because he is the way, the truth and the life.  Yet just about everyone, still today, perceives death as an inescapable reality.  Who is right?  Who will we believe?  Is Jesus mad, or delusional, or both; or are we, who perceive death as reality, mad, or delusional, or both?  The dictionary defines delusion as ‘a belief or impression that is not in accord with reality’.  This tells us that the reality of which Jesus was aware was not the same ‘reality’ of which we believe we are aware.

Can there be two realities that are not in accord with each other?  If they are not in accord, only one can be reality and the other must be illusion.

In 3-dimensional time and place there are levels of perception and this causes continual confusion and misunderstanding amongst the fragmented Sonship.  But even for those with limited, literal-minded perception it is not hard to see that Jesus is not speaking about bodies.  And this is supported by Paul’s writing to the Corinthians:

Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.  ... we shall all be changed, ... and the dead (i.e. the spiritually ‘dead’, or, more accurately, ‘asleep’; self-imprisoned in a lump of clay in three, limiting, constricting dimensions) shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed (i.e. awakened).  For this corruptible must put on (i.e. awaken to) incorruption, and this mortal must put on (i.e. awaken to) immortality. (1 Cor. 14: 50-53)

Clearly, Jesus is not speaking about bodies; but still, for a significant segment of humanity, there is a desperate clinging to the idea of our magically awakening, being raised up from the grave even, to the unlimited infiniteness of Heaven, yet still, somehow, within the limitations of bodies.  Since all bodies are different, how can ‘we shall (all) be like him’ refer to bodies?

The evidence is overwhelming that the thinking about and understanding of Eternity from within the confines and limitations of 3-d, time and place perceptions is, not surprisingly, upside down and muddled.  How to get us back on track?  We could try listening to Jesus, but ego has so distorted our perceptions and understanding of him (hardly surprising if we are trying to see straight while standing on our head) that most of the fragments today know next to nothing about him and/or are fearful of him.  Yet ACIM is straightforward because it tells the truth, plainly.  Any difficulty we may have understanding it is due to lack in the light of spiritual discernment, not because it is convoluted. 

One way to get more light of spiritual discernment is to ask Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit to shine it in our mind.  They will if we ask, with a willingness to believe They will.  In fact, They are constantly shining it, and it is only unwillingness on our part to receive that blocks our discernment of the light. 

Trying to understand eternal reality from an earth-mind perspective is somewhat akin to looking through the wrong end of a telescope.  We are coming at it from the wrong starting place, by believing what is not real to be real and what is real to not be real.  This back-to-front, upside-down perspective means we have adjusted ourself — or tried to — to unreality, spiritual blindness, from our true, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-loving reality that needs no adjustment, nor can it ever be adjusted except in fantasy, dream, illusion.  In such a distorted state of mind we will perceive ourself as sinful, unworthy, little, limited, mortal, separated from God and from our Self. 

Here is some of what Jesus says about this in this extract from chapter 20, section III, of ACIM:

Sin as an Adjustment

The belief in sin is an adjustment.  And an adjustment is a change; a shift in perception, or a belief that what was so before (our oneness in Eternity) has been made different.  Every adjustment is therefore a distortion, and calls upon defenses to uphold it against reality.  Knowledge requires no adjustments (or defences) and, in fact, is lost if any shift or change is undertaken.  For this reduces it at once to mere perception; a way of looking in which certainty is lost and doubt has entered.  To this impaired condition are adjustments necessary, because it is not true...

Adjustments of any kind are of the ego...  The ego is the self-appointed mediator of all relationships, making whatever adjustments it deems necessary and interposing them between those who would meet, to keep them separate and prevent their union. It is this studied interference that makes it difficult for you to recognize your holy relationship (with each and every brother in the Sonship) for what it is.

The holy (whole) do not interfere with truth.  They are not afraid of it, for it is within the truth they recognize their holiness (wholeness), and rejoice at what they see.  They look on it directly, without attempting to adjust themselves to it, or it to them.  And so they see that it was in them, not deciding first where they would have it be.  Their looking merely asks a question, and it is what they see that answers them.  You make the (illusory, time and place) world and then adjust to it, and it to you.  Nor is there any difference between yourself and it in your perception, which made them both.

... The world the holy (whole) see is one with them, just as the world the ego looks upon is like itself. The world the holy (whole) see is beautiful because they see their innocence in it.  They did not tell it what it was; they did not make adjustments to fit their orders.  They gently questioned it and whispered, “What are you?”  And He Who watches over all perception answered... (as He always will if we sincerely ask.)

Seek not to make the Son of God adjust to his insanity.  There is a stranger in him (ego), who wandered carelessly into the home of truth and who will wander off.  He came without a purpose, but he will not remain before the shining light the Holy Spirit offered, and you accepted.  For there the stranger is made homeless and you (our true Self) are welcome.  Ask not this transient stranger, “What am I?”  He is the only thing in all the universe that does not know.  Yet it is he you ask, and it is to his answer that you would adjust...  And of the one blind thing in all the seeing universe of truth you ask, “How shall I look upon the Son of God?”

Did you meet your brother with joy to bless the Son of God, and give him thanks for all the happiness that he held out to you?  Did you recognize your brother as the eternal gift of God to you?  Did you see the holiness that shone in both you and your brother, to bless the other? (We cannot do any of these unless we are willing to commit ourself to see past illusions by eschewing judgement and espousing true forgiveness.  And in such commitment will we receive God-Empowered Help.)  That is the purpose of your holy relationship.  Ask not the means of its attainment of the one thing that still would have it be unholy.  Give it no power to adjust the means and end.

... raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies.  He seemed to be crucified beside you.  And yet his holiness (wholeness) remained untouched and perfect, and with him beside you, you shall this day enter with him to Paradise, and know the peace of God.

Such is my will for you and your brother, and for each of you for one another and for himself.  Here there is only holiness (wholeness) and joining without limit.  For what is Heaven but union, direct and perfect, and without the veil of fear upon it?  Here are we one, looking with perfect gentleness upon each other and on ourselves.  Here all thoughts of any separation between us become impossible.  You who were a prisoner in separation are now made free in Paradise. And here would I unite with you, my friend, my brother and my Self.

Your gift unto your brother has given me the certainty our union will be soon (as soon as we will allow it).  Share, then, this faith with me, and know that it is justified.  There is no fear in perfect love because it knows no sin, and it must look on others as on itself... The innocent see safety, and the pure in heart see God within His Son (our each and every brother, not just Jesus), and look unto the Son to lead them to the Father...  You and your brother now will lead the other to the Father as surely as God created His Son holy, and kept him so.  In your brother is the light of God’s eternal promise of your immortality.  See him as sinless, and there can be no fear in you.

(My emboldening and some italic, for emphasis)

 To Perfect Love and 20:20 Vision, and with endless blessing for inner peace,

 Brian Longhurst

Thank You, Papa, for Perfect Love, and for transforming unholy relationships into holy relationships, that we may be healed of brokenness, and restored to oneness in You.

May 5th 2010

Dear Friends,

In Pamela Silberman’s wonderful book Simply Being   One Year with Spirit the Holy Spirit says to Pamela:

There is just one thought that seems to separate you from God – only one.  This one thought has the entire world built up around it.  Whenever you feel you have to dismantle the entire world in order to step forth towards home, therefore making the journey seemingly impossible in form (i.e. while appearing to still be with a body, in time and place), remember this.  It is only one thought you need to correct.  Only one thought needs to be recognized and released.  This one thought is the key to the door of a dream world appearing to go madly awry.  What is this one thought?

I am not as God created me.

How, then, can we meaningfully correct this one errant, mad, mistaken thought?  Well, first, we have to become absolutely clear that is not ‘we’, our persona self, or ‘little self’ that will perform it.  How could we? The fact that we believe we are persona, little, limited, restricted, and have forgotten Who we really are means we cannot correct our mistaken beliefs and perceptions by ourself.  Happily, we are not by ourself.  Ever.

Our true Self, Who knows everything — yes, everything — is with us, closer than our shadow, every moment, right now, always and forever.  He will perform that correction for us.  He can and will perform it because He knows everything and has been empowered by God — Papa, our perfectly loving Father Creator, of Whom we are, in truth, a perfectly loving, all-empowered extension — to fulfil this one function. 

So He cannot fail.  In fact, He has not failed, for the task is already completed.  We have just not become aware of that because we are slumbering yet awhile.  As we gradually emerge from that state we will move into the place of remembrance, and then we will see and we will know, even as we are known. 

There is just one tiny part we need to play in this correction process.  Willingness for it to happen.  Co-operation.  Nothing else at all.  Sound too good to be true?  Ego would have it so, but it is not so. 

If it is that easy, why, then, have we not all flocked to co-operate with the Holy Spirit, Who, after all, is our Self?  Not someone else.  He would have to be separate to Be someone else.  But He is not someone else; He is ‘us’.  You, me, all of us, uniting us as one.  We are all one, appearing, illusorily, mistakenly, as many.  He is not separate from us.  We just have believed, for too long, that He is, and so it appears that way.  That’s what happens when we seem to have spiritual astigmatism.  That is being corrected for us, and then we will see straight.  If, or rather, when, we are willing.

The reason we have not all flocked to co-operate is fear.  Why are we fearful?  Why would we be fearful of the Truth, of Perfect Love, of release from limitation, scarcity, pain, decrepitude, death?  Guilt.  According to Jesus in ACIM, we believe, in our upside-down, back-to-front, split-off, unconscious mind (ego) thinking, that we have separated ourself from God and that He is angry with His Son for this ‘attack’ on Him. 

So we must hide from Him, as Adam and Eve hid from Him in the allegory of the Garden of Eden, covering themselves, in the vain hope He would not find them and punish them.  We have covered ourselves with bodies, hoping He will not find us and punish us.

Yet, in the parable of the prodigal son, we see that his father was not angry with him, either when he went away or when he returned.  Neither is, nor ever could be, our Father angry with His beloved Son.

We feel, at a deep, unconscious level, guilt for ‘spurning’ our Father’s love, and because our thinking is upside down, we believe that He is made in our ego-perception image — attacking, vengeful, punishing.  So if we come out of hiding and return to Him, He will judge us for our ‘sins’, find us guilty and punish us. 

But we can know that this is completely untrue by reading what happens when the ‘prodigal’ son returns and says, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.  But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet...and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.

Why, one might readily ask, would Jesus tell this parable if it were not true for us, Papa’s ‘prodigal’ son, as we make our way Home to Him?  It is obvious he told the parable to illustrate our perceived predicament, to assure us we truly have nothing to fear from Papa.    Jesus says our dream of separation is insane; a ‘mad moment’.  In light of this, what, pray, is continuing to hide, out of fear of retribution for our ‘sins’, if not insanity? 

In all the years — decades — during which I have been blessed by experience of the intimate, wise, loving, tender, infinitely patient, understanding, gentle, fun, relaxed nature of the living Jesus, there has never, ever been a moment in which anything he said or did was cause for me to be fearful of him.  Yes, in the early years of my journey with him, I was hesitant, uncertain how to ‘be’ in his company, but it was always he who put me at ease, winning my absolute confidence, love, trust and relaxation in his presence. 

In the fewer years — 15 or so — that I have been blessed in intimate relationship and communion with Papa, there has never been a single moment in which anything He did or said was cause for me to be fearful of Him either.  On the contrary, all the encounters with Jesus and Papa have been reassuring to me of the unconditional, non-condemnatory acceptance (of me and all humanity, as I am/we are) and love for me (and all mankind) by God, Jesus, Heaven and all who are its citizens.  This includes our entry into the Holy of Holies (please see SFGS, chapter 10).

So, Holy Spirit, our all-knowing, all-loving Self, of Whom we have absolutely nothing to fear, will restore us to full remembrance of Who we really are.  We, in our fully restored, healed, re-unified mind, are, and always have been, Christ, God’s one, eternal Son.  Jesus tells us that when that happens and we are released from the misperceptions of the seemingly split-off, divided mind, we will see in our brothers only the face of Christ, and that this is a reflection of our own true, One-Self Christ.

At present we appear to see myriad fragmented individuals, so what is that about and how does the switch back to true, singleness of Vision take place?

Judgement prevents us from seeing only the face of Christ in our brothers.  Only relinquishing judgement enables the change from bodily, double vision to true, eternal, Spiritual Vision.  Spiritual Vision is an attitude of mind, a state of awareness, of remembrance, re-cognition of eternal Truth, which is all-encompassing — of our Self, our brothers in the Sonship and our Father Creator.  ‘Form’, or bodies, and all that we perceive as being outside ourself, have no part in true Vision, because we are like our Father — pure Spirit — and all there is, in all Eternity, all Creation, is within.  Time and space have no part in true reality.  Only within will we find the Truth of All Being. 

True forgiveness is the mechanism that facilitates this transformation of false seeing to true Vision.

By the process of our adopting and practising true forgiveness, and the commitment to relinquishing judgement — true forgiveness and judgement are mutually exclusive — gradually (at a pace with which we are comfortable), spontaneously, judgement falls away and ceases to be part of our habituated thinking, or mindset.  This is Holy Spirit-led, with our co-operation, motivated by our desire for healing of ourself and all the fragmented, broken Sonship. 

Judgement is based on past misperceptions about our brothers (and ourself).  Relinquishing judgement frees us from the carousel of recurring cycles of the past repeating, from one incarnation to the next, building up karma layer upon layer.  The names and circumstances differ, but the same broken relationships accrue more and more karmic ties, keeping us chained to each other in fear, unforgiveness, grievances, blame, guilt, attack, separation, instead of unified in Love.  This applies at the interpersonal, group, national and international levels, as is presently, readily observable.

All the while judgement keeps us tied to the past we cannot enter the Eternity of the present; ‘now’, in which we are — and remember, become aware that we are — reunified in the Sonship of perfect, innocent, endless love, peace and joy.

Here is a suggested exercise to practise true forgiveness, and thus obtain release from separation, restoring us to wholeness.  This does not require a face-to-face speaking of the exercise because we are engaging the intermediary power of Holy Spirit to effect it for us.  Indeed, to speak such words to the face of one who is not ready to hear them could be highly counterproductive.

Dear Blank I choose gladly to forgive you for all the things that in truth you have never done, that I may freely receive the forgiveness that is rightfully mine.

Now are we forgiven, and free to see only the face of Christ in each other.

True forgiveness enables us to see only the face of Christ in our brother because it frees us from attachment to judgement, which is of past misperceptions.  True vision, which is only of the eternal NOW, free of misperceptions, is then unveiled, revealing to us the truth about our brother, and about our Self, and releasing us from entrapment in past misperceptions.

By commitment to the practise of true forgiveness, the blocks to our awareness of Love’s Presence are removed.  This may not always appear to happen immediately or instantaneously (though startlingly rapid transformations/healings are quite commonplace), but if we have asked Holy Spirit to be in charge of the process He will effect its outworking, regardless of how long it may appear to take in linear time terms.  This is not ‘maybe’; but it is worth remembering that doubt is the great dismantler of faith, without which our awareness of reality is not possible. So one-pointed commitment to faith and trust is a vital ingredient to our experiencing the healing. 

Since time is an illusion, living in expectation of an ‘instant fix’ is likely to interfere with the process.  We must give it into the care and control of Holy Spirit and leave it there, because our lack of understanding of the process can derail it if we interfere.  It is like digging up seedlings to see if they are growing.  The disruption can prevent the desired outcome.

If a friend asks us to do something for him that he is unable to do, he only needs ask us once and we will do it if we are loving, caring people. But if he keeps asking, over and over, and in spite of asking keeps attempting to do it himself, the chances are it will not succeed because of his interference.  Yet countless numbers amongst us do this every day, in our prayers and our actions. 

Ask, give, leave, thank.

Blessings for restoration to wholeness,

Brian Longhurst

Thank you, Holy Spirit, for healing my mind.

May 12th 2010

Dear Friends

We can look at life from two perspectives: the temporal perspective and the eternal perspective.  One of these is true and the other is false.  The two are incompatible and irreconcilable.  It hardly needs be said which is true and which is false.  Yet, for most of us, even though we ‘know’, or accept, that time and place, or the temporal perspective, is false, an illusion — simply because it is not eternal, and anything that both constantly changes and passes away cannot be true or it would be eternally, unchangeably true — we continue slavishly to look at life from the temporal, and thus, the illusory, perspective.

Jesus tells us in ACIM that when we react at all to illusions we are not listening to the Holy Spirit (T-9.III.4:1).  That does not mean we must stop enjoying or appreciating birdsong, or beautiful landscapes, or music, or whatever.  What it does mean is that we can appreciate all such, immeasurably more, when viewed from the eternal perspective, through the vision of our True Self.  Put another way, relinquishing all judgement about whatever we observe or experience with our bodily senses, and simply accepting all, remaining centred and focussed on the peace within, all distortion of our vision ceases and we become aware of peace again.  Judgements deny us peace.

Many would say relinquishing judgement is impossible, because appreciating beautiful things is a judgement that they are beautiful.  Others might look upon the same thing and not see it as beautiful, but ugly, or boring, or discordant; so how, then, can either perception not be a judgement?  But it is acceptance of whatever turns up, allowing and observing it, without making any judgement, that will enable our inner peace and stillness to remain with us, and not to come into and out of our awareness.  For if it does, that means we are fluctuating between time and Eternity, trying to accept irreconcilable perspectives both as reality.  That can but lead to confusion, doubt and uncertainty.

If we truly desire to awaken to our True, Eternal Being — Christ — in which there is no fear, hate, doubt, scarcity, dis-ease, decrepitude or death, but only Perfect Love, Peace and Joy — eternally — then continuing to choose to view life from the temporal perspective will not serve us.  This is because, with God-given free will, what we choose becomes our truth.  But if what we choose changes or passes away, it is not reality.  Choosing illusion does not make it Truth; it makes it judgement.  Judgement precludes, shuts us off from, Knowledge.  If we choose judgement we chain ourself to the past, preventing our release into the Eternity of Now, which is unchanging oneness. 

Oneness, which is wholeness, is one mindedness, and we cannot be of one mind if we are judging each other and ourself.  Judging is condemning, and when we judge another we condemn ourself by continuing to chain ourself to time and place.  Time and place is ‘the principality of ego’, and the church’s perception of ego is Satan, the destroyer.  Even if we think we are not having that bad a time in egoland, it is noteworthy that ego is still destroying us, one day at a time, whether it takes ‘three score years and ten’, more, or less.  The sentence is still ‘inevitable’; we are on death row.  As Holy Spirit says to Pamela Silberman in Simply Being   One Year with Spirit:

...I say, “The wages of sin are death,” because if you did not accept the one error that has you perceive yourself apart from God, you could neither accept nor have any perception of death.  Death is always the end result of all perceptions of limitation and separation.  (My emphases.)

In John’s Gospel, chapter 8, we read of the woman, caught in adultery, and who was, by Mosaic Law, to be stoned to death.  The religious authorities tried to use this moment to trap Jesus into committing a heresy, should he have attempted to get her off the sentence. Jesus makes his famous statement, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.  Jesus then stoops and writes with his finger in the dust of the ground, and everyone slinks away.  He then stands up and says, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?  She replies, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee.

The connection between judging and condemning is shown in chapter 12 of the same Gospel, in which Jesus says, And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.  In ACIM Jesus reminds us that we, his brothers in the Sonship, are all invited to join with him and contribute our part in the salvation of the world.  How else can we become like him?

According to Jesus there is one way and one way only to relinquish judgement, and therefore, our self-imposed death sentence.  That one way — true forgiveness — cannot fail to release us from judgement, condemnation and death.  How characteristic of our upside-down, back-to-front, split-off mind — ego — to ascribe our judgement, condemnation and death to God.  

Any who would judge, condemn and sentence to death one of their own children for making a mistake, or even many mistakes, or errors would be deemed insane.  Yet, how easily, how readily, we accept the suggestion that this is how our loving Heavenly Father’s Mind works.  Assuredly, only ego could dream up such a mistaken perception.

By steadfast commitment to practising true forgiveness until we have mastered it — just like Jesus — (and this is not just possible but inevitable; how long, how many more incarnations it takes, being our only free choice, because the awakening is happening, just like the seasons progress and the world turns, and we cannot prevent it), we release our brother and ourself, from judgement, condemnation and death, back into eternal oneness in Love, Peace and Joy.

Many may still say ‘We are in time and place, so how can we avoid that being our perspective?  We take our perspective from our place of observation or experience, so it is inescapable’.  This thinking conveniently (or inconveniently J) overlooks the reality that it is precisely that misperception that has caused us to believe, and therefore experience, the illusion of time and place as our ‘truth’.  If, instead, we choose to change our perspective to that of Holy Spirit, however hard it may seem — especially as we start out — we immediately, automatically, unavoidably engage the Help of Self. 

To try to understand the magnitude of such an engaging — temporal self-limitedness with eternal All-Empowerment — from the temporal, limited perspective, is like a raindrop trying to comprehend the power of an ocean’s surging tide.  Yet even such a comparison is inadequate beyond conscious comprehension.  And it is this engaging that guarantees our restoration, our resurrection to full remembrance of our Christ-Self.

This engaging has already taken place.  It began the instant separation from God appeared to happen.  Now, as we progress toward reunion, its activity — the GRP — gathers momentum, operating on two fronts.  One is to help us be aware of how we are placing our faith in false beliefs and perceptions, and the other is to shine the light of Truth in our minds, so we can see the contrast and choose to bring our illusions to Truth, for their dispelling.  Here is what Jesus says about this:

It is impossible that the Son of God lack faith, but he can choose where he would have it be. Faithlessness is not a lack of faith, but faith in nothing (i.e. that time and place is real). Faith given to illusions does not lack power, for by it does the Son of God believe that he is powerless. Thus is he faithless to himself, but strong in faith in his illusions about himself. For faith, perception and belief you made, as means for losing certainty and finding sin. This mad direction was your choice, and by your faith in what you chose, you made what you desired.

The Holy Spirit has a use for all the means for sin by which you sought to find it. But as He uses them they lead away from sin, because His purpose lies in the opposite direction. He sees the means you use, but not the purpose for which you made them. He would not take them from you, for He sees their value as a means for what He wills for you. You made perception that you might choose among your brothers, and seek for sin with them. The Holy Spirit sees perception as a means to teach you that the vision of a holy relationship is all you want to see. Then will you give your faith to holiness, desiring and believing in it because of your desire.                          (T-21.III.5,6. My emphases.)

There are many messengers now singing their part of the New Song, ‘to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised...’ (Lk. 4:18) and all are being conducted from Holy Spirit; even those who are not consciously aware of it.  These ‘Choristers of Truth’, singers of the New Song, are amongst us right now and we are all invited to join in and become saviours of the world, just as our brother Jesus.  How else can we become like him (1 Jn. 3:2)?  Those who do not yet feel ready to add their counterpoint have ever-increasing opportunities and help to learn a part from those already in the Choir, whose numbers increase daily.

In addition to Jesus’ ‘Oratorio’, A Course in Miracles, are already many complementary choruses.  Here are a few: The Disappearance of the Universe (Gary Renard); Simply Being  One Year with Spirit (Pamela Silberman); many writings by James Twyman, including Secret of the Beloved Disciple; Synchronicity, for Goodness’ Sake (Brian Longhurst J).  There are untold numbers more, and being added to daily.  Pasted here are some extracts from a review of the penultimate-mentioned book, on Amazon, offered by David-Leonard Willis:

...surrender is not failure but ... real growth cannot start until we ask for help. If you want love, give love. In giving we receive. In pardoning we are pardoned.

... Many are ready for what is about to happen but many will be fooled by the simplicity of the message. There are two simple truths that we need to accept if we are to move to the New World (i.e. The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth) based on the laws of love. The first is that "You're ready". Ready to release the fearful beliefs that bind us to the concept of separation; ready to accept that (perfect, eternal) love is the foundation of our existence. The second is "You are Holy".  

When you realize that you are one with the Divine Pulse of creation, that you are one with the holiness of God, then you see God in everyone you meet. When you accept these two messages you will recognize the next teacher who will take you to the Door of Eternity - the door that has always been waiting for you to enter, but you have been convinced that you must die first (the ‘lie of satan’).  The only barrier to entry is fear.

... the world of fear sits beside the world of love and you choose the world you want to perceive. When we choose love, the world changes. The world you (then) perceive is the result of that single decision. Find the Divine in everyone and in the ordinary. Look past appearances and see God's face in everyone at all times... See the world through the eyes of God, the eyes that see everyone as the same, blanketed in holiness and grace. Release your fear; enter the Door of Eternity through the person in front of you.  ...Each one of us is called to be a channel of peace - that's the real focus of our spiritual path. Humanity stands at the brink of reality itself; we have only to accept the two truths.  

‘Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:  So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that the Kingdom is near, even at the doors.’ (Mt. 24: 32, 33).

‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’ (Rv. 21:4)

Alleluia!

Brian Longhurst

Holy Spirit: with You, I have nothing to hide;

for pretence, or holding up masks.

May 19th 2010

Dear Friends,

We are so inured in the perception of individuality, each with a separate identity, private thoughts, interests, attractions, foibles, that the very idea of becoming alike seems alien.  And the idea of becoming like ‘Old Whatsisname’, with all his petty ideas, arrogance, self-importance, narrow and distorted opinions on just about everything, seems like an idea to be avoided at all cost.  Now if he were to become like me; well, that would be a much better bet!  So ego would have us keep thinking in this persona-like manner.

But, of course, we will not become like each other, because the likeness with which we will become is nothing to do with personas, but with a resurrected state of Mind, a state of Being restored to wholeness that has left behind all personal considerations, fears, doubts, concepts, beliefs, opinions.  In a word, littleness.  That state of Mind and Being is not someone else, but our Self.  The idea that each persona will, somehow, disappear, or be swallowed up in some ‘Super-Being’ is fearful to most of us.  We think this means a loss of so great a magnitude that we do not wish to contemplate it.  So we cling to littleness in a variety of ways, such as exaggerating our idiosyncrasies, seeking ways to prolong our time with a body, seeking power over others instead of power with them.

This is fear-motivated; not a good starting point.  Yet this is what motivates all time-and-place-centred thoughts and actions.  Happily, Eternity-centred thoughts and actions are also possible in the dream state of being with a body.  It is all a question of choice, and according to our desire, so are we free to choose.  The fact that we can choose Eternity-centred thoughts and actions demonstrates that we are not, and cannot be, separate, from each other or from God.  It is only an illusion called fear that enables us to believe separation is possible.  Fear comes in a sizeable compendium, along with an endless array of surprises, including doubt, uncertainty, limitation and its pièce de résistance: death.

Many might be affronted by Jesus’ assertion in ACIM that belief in time and place as reality is insane.  Yet truly, only an insane mind could choose the consciousness of fear, with its terrible price, in preference to having and being Perfect Love, Peace and Joy, eternally; and ours but for the choosing.

Most, assuredly, would say they want peace, freedom, justice, happiness for all — the KOHOE — but how many of us are willing to commit to the one thing that is guaranteed to bring it: substituting judgement with true forgiveness?  The qualities that make the KOHOE what it is cannot be simply a veneer on the surface of the old, ego, order, which is founded in judgement, because it would continue to foment beneath the surface, erupting around the world like volcanoes.

The Kingdom of Heaven is within us, regardless of whether or not we have awareness of it.  We have awareness of what we choose to have awareness of — that is what free will bequeaths us.  We cannot choose two irreconcilable states of awareness and being.  If we choose one, it is at the expense of the other, and vice-versa.

All the while we believe time and place is all we can be certain exists (how’s that for an upside-down perception!?), so we will remain committed to seeking in the outer for solutions to our manifold and ever-dividing problems in time and place.  But time and place is a judgement, not a reality; and judgement denies us inner peace because peace is of the Kingdom.  And the Kingdom is not of time and place, but of Eternity, and is only available to us — while we appear to be in time and place — by seeking within, where the Kingdom IS. 

Such is our level of attachment to judgement — without which we would have true vision and all knowledge — that we are unwilling to surrender it.  Yet, until we are willing to relinquish judgement and replace it with true forgiveness we cannot become aware of the peace that is always within us, because true forgiveness is the prerequisite to our restoration to remembrance of the Kingdom.  Plainly put, we cannot enter the Kingdom without first forgiving our brother for all that he has, in truth, never done, and thus releasing our brother and ourself from judgement, guilt and fear.

Judgement denies us awareness of peace, and the opposite of peace is war.  Judgement leads to war.  War is happening on every street in every country because of judgement.  This is the fundamental cause of war at every level.  The insanity of this is demonstrated by the absurdity that people actually believe peace can be achieved by fighting, killing, dying for it.

This is all very well, many will say, but how do we give up judgement? It affects every aspect of life in time and place.  Judgement implies choice; choice between which to value more — true vision and knowledge or perception.  It implies questioning everything because we are lacking in faith and trust — in ourself, our brother and God.  But we can take a leap of faith by choosing to trust not our self but our Self.  Our Self is the Voice for God within us, Who speaks to us the truth of our Being —Christ, the Son of God as He created Him.  Here is what Jesus tells us about the Holy Spirit:

THE HOLY SPIRIT

Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him (and is our true reality, and therefore, our destiny, with him).  The Holy Spirit, being a creation of the one Creator, creating with Him and in His likeness or spirit, is eternal and has never changed.  He was “called down upon the earth” in the sense that it was now possible to accept Him and to hear His Voice.  His is the Voice for God, and has therefore taken form.  This form is not His reality, which God alone knows along with Christ, His real Son, Who is part of Him.

The Holy Spirit is described throughout the course as giving us the answer to the separation and bringing the plan of the Atonement to us, establishing our particular part in it and showing us exactly what it is (what it IS, now; not ‘will be’, at some indeterminate, future date.  All we need do is ask Him what it is and He WILL reveal it to us). He has established Jesus as the leader in carrying out His plan since he was the first to complete his own part perfectly. All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours. (This does not imply we have no power in Heaven and Earth until then.  As we accept the truth of our reality, so are we empowered, one step at a time, starting right now.) The Atonement principle was given to the Holy Spirit long before Jesus set it in motion.

The Holy Spirit abides in the part of your mind that is part of the Christ Mind (and as we come to believe this, so do we come to experience it).  He represents your Self and your Creator, Who are One.  He speaks for God and also for you, being joined with Both.  And therefore it is He Who proves Them One.  He seems to be a Voice, for in that form He speaks God’s Word to you.  He seems to be a Guide through a far country, for you need that form of help.  He seems to be whatever meets the needs you think you have.  But He is not deceived when you perceive your self entrapped in needs you do not have.  It is from these He would deliver you.  It is from these that He would make you safe.

You are His manifestation in this world.  Your brother calls to you to be His Voice along with him.  Alone he cannot be the Helper of God’s Son for he alone is functionless.  But joined with you he is the shining Savior of the world, Whose part in its redemption you have made complete.  He offers thanks to you as well as him for you arose with him when he began to save the world.  And you will be with him when time is over and no trace remains of dreams of spite in which you dance to death’s thin melody.  For in its place the hymn to God is heard a little while.  And then the Voice is gone, no longer to take form but to return to the eternal formlessness of God.

(C.6.  My emphases)

‘The Holy Spirit abides in the part of our mind that is part of the Christ Mind.’  So says Jesus.  ‘He represents our Self and our Creator, Who are One.’  These words are so powerful, affirming and empowering that we can be confident in trusting them and trusting Holy Spirit to be our Guide.

The question arises, Can we trust ourself?  Can we stop questioning and start accepting?  Our self is a misperception and does not exist because it is not eternal.  Our Self is our reality, is eternal and is trust worthy.  I share a recent communing with Self, for encouragement of all who desire to make the leap of faith to trusting Self:

Dear Holy Spirit, Sometimes I wonder, do I really know how to let go and start giving myself to You...? (At this point He interrupted me loudly and emphatically)

DON’T START QUESTIONING! Questioning is an ego pastime.  Remember that, and simply start surrendering instead.

Affirming is building, reassuring, strengthening.  Practise affirmations for your focussing, centring, uplifting.  Say: ‘I am... Just as Papa created me; I am... loved, unconditionally and eternally, every moment; I am... forgiving of myself and my brothers; I am... loving; I am... compassionate; I am... caring; I am... free’ ... You can add to the list as inspiration moves you; but always keep it positive and it will always be truthful and uplifting.  Remember: doubt is ego’s dismantling device.  All IS well. I am with you always.

The Kingdom of Heaven is within us.  If we are willing to seek it there, we will find it because we have unfailing, all-empowered Help.

Alleluia!

Brian Longhurst

May 26th 2010

Dear Friends,

According to Jesus in ACIM, in time and place we are separate, alone and lonely.  Many may say this is not so, because we have friends and loved ones with whom to share our lives — the good and bad times.  But, unless such relationships are holy relationships, in which forgiveness of all illusory karmic ‘debt’ has been completed — i.e. given into the care of Holy Spirit for correction and healing — and the journey Home being joyfully undertaken together, as one, in communion with Holy Spirit — Self — then any such relationships with friends, family, loved ones are, at best incomplete; of time and place only, not of Eternity.  

If not of Eternity, relationships cannot be whole, and therefore, holy, because ‘holy’ means whole, or complete.  Even though we may appear yet to be in time and place, when we ask Holy Spirit to transform ‘special’ relationships, or ‘unholy’ relationships into holy relationships, we, and our relationships, become of Eternity.  This is the beginning of empowerment.

We cannot begin to experience spiritual empowerment until we are willing to become familiar with our true Self and accept that this all-knowing, all-loving Self is our true Being.  Until then, something we believe is who we are — a mortal, limited, little persona-self, functioning under the burden of upside-down, ego-dominated thinking, perceiving and believing — appears as a heavy veil, obscuring our true Being and empowerment and preventing our experiencing it. 

The dictionary defines the verb ‘Commune’ as To share one’s intimate thoughts or feelings with, and the noun ‘Communion’ as the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings. 

There are few in this world with whom most of us feel able to share and exchange intimate thoughts and feelings, no holds barred, because time and place is the consciousness of fear, and trust — absolute, complete, total, unequivocal trust — is very sparse on the ground.  Jesus and the Holy Spirit, our true, eternal Self, Who abides in the part of our mind where Christ Mind abides, are absolutely, completely, totally, unequivocally trustworthy.  

Yet, because we are so inured in mistrust, from having spent too long in egoland, most of us, even those who claim a religious faith in Jesus, find it very difficult to unreservedly share and exchange their most private, secret, intimate thoughts, feelings, doubts, fears, joys with Jesus.  And as for the Holy Spirit, who knows who He is, let alone how to get in touch with Him?  As recently explained,

Questioning is doubting.  Doubting is unbelieving; an affirmation of commitment to littleness. 

Not only to littleness, but also, loneliness, limitation and fear.  But,

Asking is desiring to know; a request for help in remembering what is already known, but temporarily forgotten.  Asking is seeking, enquiring, opening, allowing, trusting, believing.   Questioning is doubting, dismantling, destructive, negative.

And unbelieving.

Awakening to remembrance of Who we really are is not Jesus or Holy Spirit giving answers to persona questioning (remember, questioning is doubting, unbelieving; not seeking), but is our emergence from persona questioning into Knowing the answers without question.

Jesus and Holy Spirit know everything about us.  Everything.  Past incarnations, mistakes, judgements; the whole ball of wax.  Unlike most of those we might perceive as our friends and loved ones, They do not judge or condemn us.  It is easy to judge and condemn another — and/or ourself — if we believe ‘sin’, wrong-doing, offence has been perpetrated.  But They know (not believe; know) none of us has done anything wrong because time and place is a dream, an unreality, nothing.  Who would judge and condemn for the ‘offence’ of dreaming?  They see, with the true vision that is of Eternity, that we, the apparently fragmented Sonship, have made errors of perception; are mistaken in our beliefs. 

Errors and mistakes need correcting, not judging and punishing.  Jesus and Holy Spirit are equipped with all knowing and all empowerment, so They see clearly our mistaken beliefs and are able, easily, painlessly, quickly, lovingly, trustworthily, non-judgementally, to correct our perceptions, replacing them with true vision, so we, also will see clearly again.

Jesus tells us ...I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world (Mt. 28:20)

He, who was a man, may be perceived as easier to relate to, even two-thousand years after he was with a body, than Holy Spirit.  My first awareness of, encounter with, Jesus was in the mid-1960s but it was more than another 30 years (please see Diary entry dated ‘Late October 1997’ for details) before I had an encounter with, and thus, became aware of, the Holy Spirit. 

So, Jesus our friend, guide to Eternity, ever-loving brother — if we will... enter into thy closet, and ... shut thy door (on the outer world) (Mt. 6:6) — promises us ...where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them (Mt. 18:20).  And he, whose word cannot be broken, further tells us... Behold, I stand at the door (to our inner Being, not the outer world!), and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup (i.e. commune) with him, and he with me. (Rv. 3:20).

What the dictionary does not mention is that commune has as its root meaning ‘Joining together as one’, specifically, one mind.  Another word for commune is, of course, attune.  In both words, the last three letters hold the key to the meaning, being of the same root as ‘one’.

Communing, or attuning, with Jesus is a very sound starting point on the journey back to remembrance.  It is not hard to envision sitting in a comfortable chair across from him, having loving, unguarded, friendly, intimate fellowship.  It is a good practise to have a notebook and pen at the ready, and as we turn our thoughts toward him and relax as we get accustomed to the idea of him fulfilling his promise to be there, in the midst with us, we can ask him anything on which we sincerely seek his guiding counsel. 

Ego will not want us to do this, and will resist such an endeavour most strenuously, throwing all manner of objections into the ring, all fear-driven; such as, Why would Jesus want to commune with me? I am unworthy; he is too busy to bother with the likes of me, etc., etc.  Truly, such concepts are complete misperceptions.  I assure you with every ounce of assurance I can muster, that communing with each of us, one-on-one, is precisely what Jesus wants, longs, yearns to do.  Here is his message for each one of us, to reassure us and calm our fear and set our mind at rest in his presence:

Little One(s): I would speak with you.  Be not afraid.  I am your friend.  I reach out my arms in love towards you in gentleness, in caring, in compassion, in understanding.  I long for you to know me, to open your heart to my gentleness and to receive my blessing, that your lives may be uplifted, and that joy may enter in and wash away your caring and your burden, and that you may have life, new and abundant.

Ponder these things and speak with me, and in the stillness I will speak with you.  Peace, be still.  All is well.

(Recorded September 8^th 1991)

Truly this is the Master Jesus as I have encountered, known and experienced him for 45 years: unconditional Love, tenderness, gentleness, understanding, acceptance, trustworthiness.

If anxiety and apprehension are experienced, simply sit comfortably and breathe.  Allow, observe, notice, but do not wrestle with, any thoughts that might crowd in.  Surrender and acquiescence are the order of the day J.  Peace is not an adversarial state of being, but an acceptance.  One could start off addressing to Jesus such words as,

Jesus, I know you are my friend; I believe you want me to be your friend also, so I can be at ease in your presence, as I know you are in mine.  I want that above all, and believe you want it also.  So, I am going to sit here, envisioning us being comfortably together. 

Thank you for your infinite patience and unconditional love for me...  I love you, and want to get to know you completely as my trustworthy older brother, here to help me find the Path back to where I truly belong, and accompany me, for my inner peace and reassurance, as I don’t know the way alone, and cannot find it without your help.

The words can, and indeed, must be, our own, from the depths of our heart and in all sincerity.  Otherwise, the exercise is entirely fruitless.  In all sincerity and patience, much fruit will be borne, and our hearts, minds and lives will be filled with joy ‘beyond the pleasures of Earth’.

Such a communing, or attuning, exercise can be greatly facilitated from the outset by asking Jesus for his guidance on an issue that troubles us.  This can be written on our notepad, addressing the issue to him, inviting his input for clarification or reassurance, believing he knows how to help us, bring light to the scene, to clear our confusion.  This will open the door of our mind for him to enter with his response, which can then be written down as we experience the words coming into our mind. 

It is well worth writing because this does help to bring order and logical sequence to one’s thought processes, whether they be ‘our own’ or his, seamlessly superimposed into our mind.  After all, the concept of separate minds is an illusion; in truth, we are all of one mind — Christ Mind.  Communing, or attuning, is practising getting back into that state of one-mindedness, and will pay heavenly dividends.

Love and endless blessings for inner peace and joy,

Brian Longhurst

June 2nd 2010 

Dear Friends,

From 1967 until the end of the second millennium CE I practised the Service of Mystical Communion with Christ (SMCC), a ritual given from Spirit, under Christ authority, to Olga Park, for attunement with the Christ Mind.  This is described in detail in chapter 2 of SFGS.

Communing with the Christ Mind activates a progressive mind-awakening process. We are led, lovingly, caringly, tenderly, one step at a time, at a pace which is always comfortable for us, toward the Light of Eternal Truth.  This blesses us and brings an awareness that we are on the Path Home. 

Inner peace and joy replace fear and guilt, opening our eyes to the fact that Perfect Love is Who we really are; just like our Father Creator, in Whose likeness we are created.  As our awareness of that reality grows, with it comes a deep, all-encompassing longing to share, or extend, that love, peace and joy to all who are willing to receive such priceless treasure.

Communing with Christ Mind (or Holy Spirit Mind; there is no difference, They are one in the Mind of God) calls for commitment, because ego-dominated minds fear the Light of Eternal Truth, due to perceptions of unworthiness resulting from erroneous belief that we are sinners; that the apparent gulf between us and God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit seems so great as to be unbridgeable. 

This is an illusion which the practise of communing gradually dispels, to be replaced with a growing awareness that there is no separation between us and all our brothers in the Sonship of God or between God and us, His one, beloved Son.

Toward the end of the second millennium my own unfolding awareness had arrived at the place where I was comfortable communing with God — Papa — and Jesus, informally, spontaneously, at any moment, regardless of circumstances or events around me. 

Ultimately, although the formal, structured service of mystical communion with Christ is a very beneficial instrument to help any sincere seeker after spiritual truth and reality, natural progression in awareness of and confidence in our ability to attune with the Mind of God and Christ takes us to a place where we no longer need the outer, formal structure.  This was so for Jesus and it is inevitable that it becomes so for us as we become like him (1 Jn. 3:2). 

As stated in chapter 11 of SYFK:

When one is on a journey, it is serviceable to have a vehicle to facilitate that journey.  When the journey has been completed and the destination reached, the vehicle has served its purpose and can be dispensed with.  Indeed, if the vehicle is not dispensed with and one remains within the vehicle, it can turn from being a means of conveyance into a mechanism of restraint and limitation, even imprisonment, preventing progress into the next phase of life operations from commencing at the point of destination, or completion, of that preceding phase...

Then, the former student has completed that journey and it has made him ready for the next journey; from being a seeker of the light to a bringer of the light (Ye are the light of the world… Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven. Mt. 5:14 & 16). 

The formal, structured ritual was no longer needful for the continuation of my journey Home to Papa; it had served its purpose perfectly and was now completed.

I went through a process of adjusting to this new, greater, expanded freedom; of allowing awareness and acceptance of Inner Guidance to become more widely and readily accessible in my mind; to enable a greater affinity with the Logos that is within us all, and allow Its greater expression, informal fluency and fluidity to carry me onward to a new awareness of at-onement.

During this transformational period, lasting several years (how slow we are to recognise and accept the true, radiant nature of our Being!), the Inner Voice became, to my awareness, much more spontaneous, relaxed, idiomatic, contemporary in style of speaking. 

The structure of the SMCC attunement ritual was no longer needed to ‘get on the wavelength’, as communing became an any-time, any-moment, any-place event.  It was an evolutionary process of recognising that this was possible, and indeed, the intention for us all as we gradually are able to let go of so much wrong learning that countless circuits of the carousel of birth and death have instilled into our mind.

I felt little or no need for notebook and pen to write down whatever ‘came through’ into my awareness.  I was becoming much more attuned to, or aligned with, the Source of the new awarenesses, which were often sudden realisations as much as spoken words.  This was very confidence-building, and also meant writing them down was less practical or necessary.

Further, during this period I felt increasingly drawn, impelled to write the story of my journey with Jesus.  I had a strong, driving sense that if I arrived at the end of my sojourn in time, having been blessed by so much experience of mystical reality, and did not endeavour to share these experiences with my brothers in the Sonship, for their encouragement in their sojourning in time, I would be left with an unbearable sense of regret at not having done so.

Jesus had told me on a number of occasions that these experiences were merely preparation for that which lay ahead.  It seemed evident that although they were for my own instruction, eventually they could be serviceable for helping other seekers, by sharing. This became my primary focus, and the ideas for it began flowing in; so the writing began.  To my amazement, encouragement and reassurance, the level of inspiration that took place during that writing was so palpable that I knew without doubt that this definitely was not just persona Brian at work, but also the higher, inner creativity that is Self, the Spirit of Truth.  This inspiration from Self was exemplified by the writing of the allegory of the Caterpillars and the Butterfly, which forms much of the Introduction to SYFK.

When SYFK was ready for making available to all who are drawn to it for their own encouragement and help finding the Path Home, it was uploaded to the newly constructed HTG website.  The Messages of Encouragement (MoEs) began to emerge, also inspired and helped beyond measure by Self.

In due course, informal, often impromptu, communing emerged into prominence again, so notebook and pen were (and are) kept at the ready.  What has emerged from these ‘post-2000’ communings is that the three measures of meal parable-in-action, or Great Rescue Programme, applies to our awakening mind.  The first, or Abraham measure is a God-seeking phase; the second, or Jesus measure, is a God-aware phase (but still dualistic); the third, or Kingdom measure is the fulfilment, or God-filled phase, during which the full awakening of our Mind to oneness will be completed.

At commencement of the second measure, or phase, of our awakening to eternal reality, Jesus, our ‘older brother’, who had already awakened fully, came to bring us the message of the awakening, or resurrecting, of the slumbering mind of the Sonship.  He promised he would stay with us until the end of time — the end of the third measure — to help us during the shift from the duality consciousness, or perception, to the singularity awareness and experience. 

His all-empowered help has been, and will continue to be, multifarious, including speaking, or communing, with all who are willing to open the door of their inner being to his knocking, so he could enter and ‘sup’, or engage in spiritual fellowship, with them, for the enlightening of their minds to the discernment of Eternal Reality and their integral part in It.

But crucial to this process in which he is helping us is our awakening to the greater awareness that we are in every way Jesus’ equal; only equality of Being can exist in Eternity.  Conversely, only in our self-induced state of forgetfulness, in which we believe we are in time and place, does this appear not to be so.  It is from this state of forgetfulness that he will help us lovingly, tenderly, unconditionally, with infinite patience, to awaken, for as long as we feel the need for his help. 

It is vital to our complete awakening that we move beyond the place of perceiving dependence upon Jesus as our source of light, spiritual truth, salvation, to the remembrance, just as he did, that the Source of our awakening, or salvation, is our Self: ‘The Kingdom of God is within you’. Lk. 17:21.

Jesus will lead us to the place of this awareness if we ask and allow him so to do.  He will also remain with us as we go on from there, because he is our brother, with whom we are one in the Sonship; because he loves us with perfect love and desires to be with us; for only in oneness is he, and are we all, complete.  This is, I now realise, why I was prompted to dub the second measure of meal ‘the Jesus measure’ and the third measure ‘the Kingdom measure’. 

Jesus will lead us to the place of remembrance of, or awakening to, Self within.  Jesus was the leaven of, or for, the second measure of meal, and we, as Self — the Spirit of Truth within us — along with the Self we have known as Jesus, are the leaven of, or for, the third, final, completion measure, ‘till the whole is leavened’ (Mt. 13:33).

As the Holy Spirit says to Pamela Silberman in ‘Simply Being’:

Bless yourself through Self.  Bestow a remembrance of graceful freedom upon your presence in this experience.  See yourself as the Love You are and extend this through real eyes (true, singleness of vision) to all...  Guide yourself to your Self, Dear One, and then guide your Self with Me to God... Here you truly express your Self, as God created.                                              (My emphases.)

We can continue communing with Jesus for as long as we desire and are joyful in so doing, and he will continue joyfully to commune with us.  But now is the time — the Kingdom measure of meal — to joyfully commune with Papa God (just as Jesus joyfully communed with Him in the long ago), with and as, or from the Mind of Self, no longer from the false perception as (little) self.  This quantum move will help us beyond measure in becoming, remembering Who we are, restoring us to wholeness, holiness, completeness, perfection, oneness, because that is Who we ARE.

With love and endless blessings for inner peace and joy,

Brian Longhurst

June 9th 2010

Dear Friends,

A fundamental statement of ACIM is that we are created in the likeness of God, and that we are, therefore, pure, eternal, indestructible, unchangeable, all-empowered, all-loving spirit; a Thought in the Mind of God.  ACIM also states that thoughts and ideas never leave their Source but are extended from the Source, while remaining forever within their Source.  That is a PLF

That tells us a lot about who and where we are, and forever can only be.  If we are ready, willing and able to believe this, then we must also be willing and able to believe that anything that appears to be contra to that principle cannot be Truth; that all such can only be illusions, which cannot be true, though they can be believed.  Here is what Jesus says about this in ACIM, chapter 30:

Nothing that God knows not exists (He knows only Truth; not illusions).  And what He knows (His one, perfect, beloved Son; us) exists forever, changelessly.  For thoughts endure as long as does the mind that thought of them.  And in the Mind of God there is no ending, nor a time in which His Thoughts were absent or could suffer change. Thoughts (including, of course, us, His beloved Son) are not born and cannot die. They share the attributes of their creator, nor have they a separate life apart from his. The thoughts you think are in your mind, as you are in the Mind which thought of you. And so there are no separate parts in what exists within God’s Mind. It is forever One, eternally united and at peace.

(T-30.III.6. My emphases.)

Getting our finite, limited, time and place mind around what has been revealed in ACIM takes a lot of doing, because it is the opposite of everything we have believed since time began (because, in time and place we are upside down and back to front when viewed from the only true perspective — Eternity).  Fortunately, enough of the Course makes enough sense to the serious, even if novice, seeker after eternal truth to at least give us an indication that it is worth sticking at.  Here is where repetition comes in as a great aid to ‘getting’ what it is telling us.   No-one knows that better than Jesus and he repeats the key points of the Course over and over, using different themes to do so, just as he used different parables to make his points in the long ago.

There is a general perception amongst humanity that the more complicated something is, the more likely it is to be right, good, true; that unless something is complicated it must be suspect, and if anything seems simple, it must be too good to be true.  This is an ego perception, the mantra for which is ‘complicate, complicate’, which is the opposite of eternal reality (no surprises there, then), which is uncomplicated, straightforward.  ‘Simplify, simplify’ could be a mantra of Holy Spirit, the Voice for God.

Keeping it as simple and straightforward as possible is a great help, as chicanes serve no useful purpose and can lead to loss of direction.  For those of us still engaged with time and place as our reality, there is a part of our mind that most of us never use, or of which we have little or no awareness.  This can be called our Whole Mind, or Holy Mind.  Jesus was fully aware of, or awake to, and one with, this Whole, or Holy, Mind all the time.  He saw clearly, or Truly, the reality of Being; that he was indivisible from God, the universal, eternal, all-knowing, all-empowered, all-loving Creator Spirit.  He also saw past our own misperceptions of self to the eternal reality that we all are like him.

He realised that the Creator Spirit, being universal, is — could only be — everywhere, and so it is impossible to be apart or separate from Him; that the very Life Force that is our life force, and the life force of every living thing, is the One Life Force that connects all Being and makes us all, everything that is, whole, or holy; One Holiness.

He saw with vision that is nothing to do with bodily eyes.  This vision is Spiritual Vision, not sensory, ocular sight.  This vision enables all who engage it — for we all have it, though if we choose to ignore it, it remains quiescent because we have free will — to see the Whole, or Holy, Truth of all Being, or the Truth of Eternity.  Most of us, who perceive ourselves only as separate from each other, in a separate or individual body, with a separate or individual mind and identity, or persona, are oblivious to the reality of our oneness — and thus our Wholeness, or Holiness — within the One Life Force, or Creator Spirit, with all Its, or His, attributes of Wholeness, or Holiness; the unchangeable perfection, the Wholeness, or Holiness, of creation.  

Our bodily senses are devised to focus our awareness on a temporal, ever-changing and therefore, unreal, limited state that we perceive as the physical universe.  All the while we perceive this as reality, it is — and remains for us — our reality, even though it is a projection from the separated, misperceiving part of our own mind.  This keeps us, or distracts us, from awareness of the unchanging, radiant, Eternal Reality of which we all are an indivisible, indispensible part.  If it were otherwise, Wholeness, or Holiness, could not be Whole, or Holy.  And, since God, the Creator Spirit is Wholeness, or Holiness, it is impossible to be apart from, and not an indispensible part of that Wholeness, or Holiness.  

Lack of awareness or remembrance of the Truth of All Being and our part in that Being does not render it untrue.  And all that is needed to get on the wavelength of, or attuned to, Eternal Reality, is a slight shift of focus.  True vision of eternal reality is within us, and is infinite, limitless, as is our empowerment when we are attuned, or at-one, with it.  Because it is within us, that is where, and only where, we will find it.

All the while we are fearful of the Truth of Eternity — which is the Truth of our Self — we will remain fearful of going within.  Going within is described by Jesus as follows: ...when thou prayest (i.e. commune with our Heavenly Father), enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door (on the outer, illusory, distracting world), pray to (commune with) thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. (Mt. 6:6).   

When we feel ready — however nervous we may have allowed ego to cause us to feel about it — to go within, it is helpful to remember that we are never, ever alone, never without a True, unfalteringly Trustworthy Friend; that our True Self, the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit or Holy Breath, is with us always, ready to respond freely, lovingly, immediately to our request for help.

It is by going within — turning our focus from bodily-sensory perceptions of outer, temporal consciousness — that we are able to have awareness of Eternal Reality.  This is our true reality, our true Being, in which we are indivisibly one with All That Is.  With our sensory perception we perceive that we are separate from, or outside of, Eternity.  This is muddled, or distorted, or upside-down thinking/seeing/believing.   

It is an Alice Through the Looking-Glass perspective, where we see the without — which is temporal, transient, always changing, and therefore there can never be a moment in which it really exists — as reality, and the Eternity within — which is eternally unchanging (and therefore eternally real), perfect love, peace and joy — as transient, ephemeral, intangible, unreal.  We are looking in the wrong place — ‘out there’ or in the without — for truth, meaning, reality.  We are facing away from the Light and into outer darkness, trying to find the Truth.   This is why Jesus said, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (Mt. 4:17).  

‘Repent’ means turn around, 180^o.  It has nothing to do with sin, guilt, unworthiness, judgement, condemnation or punishment.  We made-up all that mythology to serve our take on reality, or truth, because through the looking-glass we perceive everything back to front, or upside down. We see our friends and brothers in the Sonship of God as guilty, our enemies; we believe we are guilty of the ‘grievous sin’ of disobeying God, and that He must be angry with us for our disobedience, and therefore must be out to punish us.  So we are fearful, and try to escape the wrath of God by projecting the guilt, the blame, outside ourself, onto our brother.

We are playing make-believe; we have made it all up.  Our constructs are limited, lacking, dismal, and even the occasional glimpses of what we perceive as joy, peace, love are but fleetingly interspersed amongst the fear that is the hallmark of three-dimensional, temporal perception.  By going within, communing with Papa — or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit — our spirit vision, our real sight, gradually opens, under the able control of the Holy Spirit.  Thus does this dream world of duality, or double, distorted perception gradually lose its hold on our senses, or disappear from our sight.

Thus is our inner awareness, inner recognition, inner remembrance being restored to us.  All the while we allow the outer clamour to distract us from seeking within, our vision remains double, or defective, or functioning in duality-consciousness, so we cannot truly see with our single, inner eye.  The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye (i.e. vision) be single (in purpose), thy whole body shall be full of light.  But if thine eye be evil (defective, double, flawed), thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! (Mt. 6:22-23).

When we choose to stop perceiving images outside our Self we will begin to bring to an end time and place, the illusion of the separation consciousness; the consciousness of fear.  Jesus demonstrated this reality and its perfection 2000 years ago, and the things he did, we will do also, and greater things, if only we can believe (Jn. 14:12), if only our vision can be switched from the flawed sight of our bodily perception to the perfect, ’20-20’ vision of our true, real, eternal, perfect, innocent (sinless), guiltless Self.  As he says in chapter 31 of ACIM: Salvation does not ask that you behold the spirit and perceive the body not. It merely asks that this should be your choice.

Our ego-led refusal to accept these Truths of our own Being, Jesus refers to as arrogance.  Here is what he says about it in ACIM:

Arrogance is the denial of love, because love shares and arrogance withholds. As long as both appear to you to be desirable the concept of choice, which is not of God, will remain with you. While this is not true in eternity it is true in time, so that while time lasts in your mind there will be choices. Time itself is your choice. If you would remember eternity, you must look only on the eternal. If you allow yourself to become preoccupied with the temporal, you are living in time. As always, your choice is determined by what you value. Time and eternity cannot both be real, because they contradict each other. If you will accept only what is timeless as real, you will begin to understand eternity and make it yours.                               

(T-10.V.14. My emphases.)

 To most of us, apparently ‘stuck’ here in time, accepting only what is timeless as real seems insurmountably hard because ego keeps distracting us with ‘stuff’ that belongs exclusively to time (and therefore, definitively, not to Eternity). Yet the Holy Spirit will, if we are willing to accept that He can, accomplish this for us (because we are God’s beloved Son, dearly, totally, unconditionally loved, and truly innocent); will accomplish our At-onement, restoration to fullness of remembrance of who we really are — pure, guiltless Christ — for us, on our behalf, because we are, in reality, one with Him, Whose dwelling place is our own within. 

‘Inner’ is the key because there is no without; only within.  Inner is always; always with us, unchanging and unchangeable.  There is nothing to do that will get us Home; only to be; what we are, have always been and always will be.

Love, always,

Brian Longhurst

June 16th 2010

Dear Friends,

Eternity is reality.  Time and place appears to have reality but this is only because we believe it to be so.  Time and place seems to be the opposite of Eternity, but reality can have no actual opposite other than in fantasy, so time and place cannot be real.  Reality, Eternity, is awareness of and oneness with Perfect Love, and Its witnesses, Peace and Joy unbounded.  Any who are not experiencing oneness with Perfect Love, Peace and Joy uninterruptedly are believing and having some degree of faith in an illusion perceived as time and place.  Because it seems to be the opposite of Eternity — i.e. Perfect Love, witnessed to by Peace and Joy unlimited — it is the consciousness of fear, attested to by an array of false witnesses, including guilt, limitation, scarcity, division and death.

Perfect Love, the Source of All, Papa, God, is Life Itself.  In the Diary entry dated May 23^rd 2010 Holy Spirit said:

...I am the Link with the Source for all the unhealed fragments, and so I am, until your full awakening, the Breath of Life; the Holy Breath...

The consciousness of fear appears as the opposite of the Breath of Life.  Fear interferes — one might say ‘interfears’ —with our breathing by gripping the solar plexus, causing the diaphragm to tighten, so that its natural, relaxed, up and down movement in breathing is disrupted.  Ego wants us to engage with fear; to wrestle with it.  Fear is gripping the world, causing turmoil, as ego begins to perceive the end of time — and therefore its apparent existence — is coming upon it.  As the Truth emerges, all pretence at being our friend ceases and ego’s fury is unleashed.

Control and power over the lost, confused fragments can be maintained, or at least, (during this time of awakening), prolonged, from ego’s perspective, by playing its trump card — fear.   

It is the emergence, the outpouring of the Spirit of Truth upon all flesh  prophesied 22 centuries ago, in which ‘...your  sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions (Joel 2:28) that is causing this reaction by ego, resulting in apparent tumult, uproar, panic, insanity unleashed.  The best — indeed, the only — way to respond to ego’s uproar is not to respond at all.  

We can observe, but we do not have to engage with it, because we know it is not real.  As Jesus says, When you react at all to errors you are not listening to the Holy Spirit (T-9.III.4:1).  If we believe it, and allow ourselves to come under its thrall, it keeps us in the conscious of fear.  By observing and allowing — letting it flow over us without responding — we can remain centred within, knowing Truth engenders undisturbable Inner Peace.

Just at the point of waking one morning last week I heard Holy Spirit say, multiple times, over and over (He was clearly intent on getting the point across):

Breathe and allow; breathe and allow, breathe and allow...

I got my notebook and pen, and the following communing occurred:

Holy Spirit; I invite You into my life, my heart, my mind; to have control over my thinking, so that it is from and according to Higher, True, Christ Mind will, and not the frenetic, fearful, reactionary, convoluted, oscillatory, random, conflicted, nonsensical thoughts of ego, split-off, upside-down mental activity that seems to run amok in my head.

This can only be possible by allowing it to be so, not by resisting.  This requires surrender, acceptance, stepping back, away from the helm.  Envision yourself doing this bodily (stepping away from the helm of our life), for bodies are symbols of ego, of division, of separation from Papa, from Life Eternal, from certainty of the One Identity that you really are.

Engaging with the illusion of fear is engaging with the illusion of death and this keeps you trapped in the consciousness of fear because engaging with it makes it real for you.  Observe and allow.  Let it flow over you without responding.  Remain centred in allowing.

In the Diary entry dated June 5^th 2010 Holy Spirit said:

“You and I” are, indeed, One.  Allow that merging into one, true, eternal, whole, loving Identity to take place; do not try to force, or even hasten it...  Allowing is accepting; accepting that littleness is not wholeness, not the complete picture ...  

Clearly, from Holy Spirit’s perspective, ‘allowing’ is of inestimable value; far greater than persona mind comprehends.  Indeed, true forgiveness, the escape hatch from time and place back Home to Eternity — which sounds like Heaven to me — is not possible without ‘allowing’ whatever seems to be keeping us from wholeness, inner peace, freedom.  Why, one might readily ask, would one not be willing to allow what seems to be chaining us here, when none of it is real anyway, when allowing means not engaging with it and thus making it our reality? 

It is making real all those illusions — by engaging with them — that causes our ego-dominated mind to make endless judgements every day, keeping us stuck on the not-so-merry-go-round.  If we breathe in the Breath of Life, the Spirit of Truth, and allow the unrealities to flow by, reacting to them only by breathing them out, exhaling, dispelling them from our being, we are able to see with Holy Spirit vision that there is nothing to judge. 

It is the choice of breathing in — the inhaling of the Breath of Life, the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Breath, our true Self — that transforms, or awakens our Being back to our True Reality; the exhaling is the reaction to that transforming choice, by effortlessly expelling what we had made, believed to be our reality but we now remember is not.  Exhaling is as effortless as changing our mind about our reality.  That awakening, remembering, means we can truly forgive — (our self and our brother) without difficulty, because in truth there never was anything to forgive — and be restored to oneness. 

There are several other terms, in addition to ‘Allow’, that can be considered, in this mind retraining exercise, such as ‘release’, ‘relinquish’, ‘surrender’, ‘yield’, ‘accept’, ‘cease resisting’.  The opposite of these terms would be, ‘hold onto’.  Just what ego wants us to do — hold onto a judgement, a grudge, a grievance.  Did that ever, ever, make anyone happy, whole, free, peaceful, joyful, loving?  Workbook Lesson 68 from ACIM says it all:

You who were created by love like itself can hold no grievances and know your Self. To hold a grievance is to forget who you are. To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body. To hold a grievance is to let the ego rule your mind and to condemn the body to death. Perhaps you do not yet fully realize just what holding grievances does to your mind. It seems to split you off from your Source and make you unlike Him...

Shut off from your Self, which remains aware of Its likeness to Its Creator, your Self seems to sleep, while the part of your mind that weaves illusions in its sleep appears to be awake.  Can all this arise from holding grievances?  Oh, yes!  For he who holds (onto) grievances denies he was created by love, and his Creator has become fearful to him in his dream of hate.  Who can dream of hatred and not fear God?

It is as sure that those who hold grievances will redefine God in their own image, as it is certain that God created them like Himself, and defined them as part of Him.  It is as sure that those who hold grievances will suffer guilt, as it is certain that those who forgive will find peace.  It is as sure that those who hold (onto) grievances will forget who they are, as it is certain that those who forgive will remember.

Love holds no grievances.  When I let all my grievances go I will know I am perfectly safe.

Is there one amongst us who would read these words and not be immediately willing to allow Holy Spirit to release us from grievances and restore us to our true state of Love, Peace, Joy; Wholeness, Holiness of Being?  This can be done by breathing in the Holy Breath and breathing out — releasing, relinquishing, surrendering, yielding — our ego misperceptions, thus allowing Holy Spirit, our true Self, to correct our flawed vision.

Here’s to breathing and allowing,

Brian Longhurst

June 23rd 2010

Dear Friends,

‘You are the light of the world.’  This is what Jesus tells us.  All the while we doubt him we will not appear to be, will not manifest, the light, because our doubt obscures the Truth, the Light, in and from, us.  This is not someone else — including God — doing this to us.   We will serve ourself well if we ask ourself if Jesus is telling us the truth.  Do we believe him?  What does it mean?  What are we like when we lay aside our attachment to, our belief that we are, a body?

It was the choice to not be Who, or What, we are that brought the effect of our perceiving ourself as not the Light, but rather, a dense, ‘solid’, limited, fragile, vulnerable, divided (male and female), ever-changing, mortal body.  If we take each of these descriptive terms — along with numerous others, such as guilty, fearful, worthless/unworthy, fallen, temporal — and think of their opposite, that is what we really are.

As we begin to awaken to the Truth of our Being we begin to see and experience that Truth, that Reality.  The Life that we are is not the body we have assumed ourself to be; nor even the individual persona that seems to inhabit the body, which is a dense covering to hide, or disguise, the Truth from ourself. 

The literal Truth is that we are the Light.  Why should we be surprised, doubtful, fearful, in denial of this reality when Jesus tells us this is what we are?  Because we, the Son of God, made a momentary choice to pretend, to play, to make believe he is what he is not, and can never be.

We, who chose not to be the Light, have now seen a great Light — our brother, Jesus.  This Light took form as a body, which we know as the Galilean carpenter, in order to bring us the message, a re-minder from our Home — Papa — that we are the Light.  Without a body, a communication mechanism, we could not have perceived, had awareness of him and his message.  That was the only purpose of his having a body, and it is, ultimately, ours also. 

But Jesus was not a body and neither are we.  It is our free choice as to what we believe, and thus perceive, ourself to be.  True vision will show us that we are not a body but the Light, just as he was/is, and just as the Creator Spirit Is, in Whose likeness we are created.  This Light is far brighter than the sun, and shines forever.  How could it not be so when we are created in the likeness of the Father Creator?  For it not to be so we would have to believe and make real that Papa is not so; an absurdity imaginable only in upside-down, insane fantasy.

In the Diary entry dated November 15^th 2008 Papa said:

I know your desire to return wholly to Me above all things.  To do this you must return wholly unto your Self; ‘Big Me’, as you have rightly observed.  Jesus was wholly in Me because he was wholly Self – I AM.  You are ‘I AM’ also.  All the fragments of My Son also are, indivisibly, ‘I AM’.  They say to themselves ‘I am Brian’, or ‘I am Theresa’, or ‘I am John’, or ‘I am Mary’.  Each time they make such pronouncement, there is one word too many.  For ‘I AM’ is Who they are.  The rest is made up, illusion.  Do you wish to be made up?

Keep on, then, reminding yourself, ‘Big Me’ is good because it focuses on your ‘otherness’, your ‘realness’, your ‘I AM-ness’.  There is no other you than ‘Big Me’. You have no other name, no other being, no other identity.  It is a distraction, a diversion away from the truth of Who you ARE.

In order, then, to return to our True Home, in Him, we must return to our true Self.  Clearly, it is impossible to return to Him without returning to remembrance of our Self.  How do we do that?  We allow ourself to be led by Self, Who knows who we are and how to return, or restore, us to our True Being.  We are the Light. We will do well, then, to look past our self-perception as an individuated, dense, limited, mortal body.  We cannot be both.  Trying to be both can only cause confusion.

All the while we choose to see ourself as a body we will seem to be what we have chosen to be: a body.  If — when — we desire to return, to be restored, to our True Self, then we must so choose.  That is all that is required of persona-self because in our little, limited, forgetful state we do not know how to accomplish the transformation; the awakening.  So we must be willing to co-operate with One Who does; One Who is worthy of our trust; Who loves us unconditionally; Who knows us totally; Who is empowered by Papa for the job.  He will accomplish our restoration for us.

There is actually one other thing that is asked of us in addition to our co-operation: to believe; to have faith.  Our faith will make us whole.  Faith is the precursor to sight, or Knowledge.  We cannot be brought back to the experience of Knowledge (of our Self; of Eternal Truth/Reality) without first having faith.  It is also the precursor to our willingness to co-operate.  For who would co-operate, give himself over to one in whom he did not have faith?  That could be considered foolhardy indeed.  So we must decide, do we trust Jesus?  Do we trust Holy Spirit?  Or do we choose to continue to rely upon our limited, forgetful, fearful, mortal, ego-driven persona-self?

This is where the heart of the apparent difficulty of faith and trust lies — in ourself.  If we cannot have trust and faith in ourself, how can we trust another?  Happily, Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, is not another; He is our True Self.  That is the difference.  Persona self is not who we are.  We made it up in a game of pretend.  Now is the moment, the ‘time’ for us to awaken from the game, for it became a fearful game.  Dying is no fun anymore.  Time to go back Home to eternal life in Papa.

To trust before we can see the Truth of our Being sounds conditional — especially to ego, that split-off-from-Truth part of our mind that will resist trust, faith, belief — but this is because we threw away Knowledge when we chose to forget Who we are and play at being what we are not.  By believing, having faith in One Who Knows, Who Is empowered to restore us to full remembrance of Who we are, we are allowing, stepping back from the helm, surrendering our ego-leasehold over our life, authorising our True Self to accomplish this metamorphosis for us.

Jesus spoke truly when he said ‘Your faith has made you whole’.  He demonstrated his trustworthiness to those he healed, gaining their faith in him and thus enabling him to heal them.  Without their faith (in him) he would not have been able to heal them of their multifarious infirmities, including the ultimate infirmity — ‘death’.  He was able to raise himself from the dead because he knew it was an illusion, which he refused to believe.  As soon as we choose to stop believing in death we will begin to be resurrected from it.

This change of mind is happening now and will be completed in this final, fulfilment measure of meal, in which the whole will be leavened.  The wholeness to which our faith, our trust, will enable us to be restored, resurrected, is of our mind; our memory of Who we are; our Light Being; our likeness to our Creator. ‘If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.’  This statement by Jesus is a prophesy of the destiny, the return to the True, changeless, eternal Reality, of us all.

Throughout ACIM Jesus speaks of ‘our brother’ — namely, each and all of us — as being what he, Jesus, manifested during his Earthly life.  He had remembered Who he was/is, saw past the illusions we hold about ourself and each other, and came to demonstrate this eternal reality of our Being, so that in due course, i.e. the leavening of all three measures of meal, we would be fully restored to that wholeness of Being, become like him, and in so doing, become one with him in the Sonship. 

His message is that we should look past what our bodily senses tell us about our temporal, illusory persona self and our temporal, illusory persona brothers, to the glory, the oneness, the eternal, unchanging Light, the Perfect Love, Peace and Joy that we all truly are; that grievances, enmity, broken relationships are merely devices to keep us in the past, forgetfulness, the cycle of birth and death. 

He emphasises throughout that we are like our brother, so if we see and judge ‘sin’, guilt, error, in our brother, it is a judgement upon ourself, keeping us trapped in the hell of time and place to which we have condemned our brother, and thus, ourself.  And if we choose to see past the persona illusions to the Christ that is within our brother, then we see ourself reflected in him because we are still, always, like him.  Thus are both — our brother and ourself — healed, and (re)enter the Kingdom together, as one.

This we can do by steadfastly committing to true forgiveness, refusing to submit to illusions, being single in our vision and not giving way to double, flawed, bodily vision of our brother and ourself.  No-one said it is easy, but it is doable by Self, with the willingness of persona-self to co-operate.  Here are some inspiring, affirming words of encouragement from he who leads us in the journey from being the son of man back to being the Son of God:

The Christ in you inhabits not a body.  Yet He is in you.  And thus it must be that you are not within a body.  What is within you cannot be outside.  And it is certain that you cannot be apart from what is at the very center of your life.  What gives you life cannot be housed in death.  No more can you.  Christ is within a frame of Holiness whose only purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not, that He may call to them to come to Him and see Him where they thought their bodies were.  Then will their bodies melt away, that they may frame His Holiness in them.

No one who carries Christ in him can fail to recognize Him everywhere.  Except in bodies.  And as long as he believes he is in a body, where he thinks he is He (Christ, our True Self) cannot be.  And so he carries Him unknowingly, and does not make Him manifest.  And thus he does not recognize Him where He is (within us).  The son of man is not the risen Christ.  Yet does the Son of God abide exactly where he is, and walks with him within his holiness, as plain to see as is his specialness set forth within his body.

The body needs no healing.  But the mind that thinks it is a body is sick indeed!  And it is here that Christ sets forth the remedy.  His purpose folds the body in His light, and fills it with the Holiness that shines from Him.  And nothing that the body says or does but makes Him manifest.  To those who know Him not it carries Him in gentleness and love, to heal their minds.  Such is the mission that your brother has for you.  And such it must be that your mission is for him.

(T-25.in)

When we are ready to choose this as our mission, to heal our brother by forgiving him our misperceptions of him, then will we be fulfilling our only reason and purpose for being here.  Then will we be scooped up as one by Papa, straight into His heart, in the Heaven of Eternity.  How many Alleluias is that worth? J

Endless love,

Brian Longhurst

The power of decision is my own.  This day I will accept myself as what my Father’s Will created me to be.

(W.152)

June 30th 2010

Dear Friends,

Now, as has been mentioned once or twice before J, is the time, the unfolding moment of awakening for Papa’s slumbering Son, who dreams of separation from his Father Creator and his Self.

This is happening because it is the time, as determined by the Undivided One, Whose Perfect Love wills that He and His Son are one, forever, and can never be separated.  This will, motivated by Perfect Love, is the drawing power that calls His one, Holy Creation — that’s us — back to wakefulness of our oneness within Its Self.

It is therefore as impelling as the effect of a magnetic field upon iron filings. It causes a pattern of response that will, inevitably and inexorably, materialise within the dream state because the ‘filings’, or seeming fragments, are within Its sphere of influence.  Because of the self-elected, self-imposed state of forgetfulness and limitation of us, the seemingly fragmented Sonship, we believe we are free to choose our own path of experience separate from God, but this appears so only within the illusory, three-dimensional state in which we perceive ourself to be. 

Yet in Truth, Papa’s Son cannot be confined, restricted, limited in any way — because he is created in the likeness of his Father.  A caterpillar can refuse to believe or accept that it is a butterfly, and continue resolutely to tell itself it is a creeping, crawling, limited being, but the influence of its true nature, functioning from its own within, will inevitably unfold; and when it does, it finds that being a butterfly, soaring unrestricted in the sunlight, is immeasurably more joyful than crawling in the shadows on the ground.  Then will it forget all about the illusion of its caterpillar moment.  And so is it/will it be, that Papa’s somnambulist Son will be metamorphosed, resurrected, to unrestricted, soaring wakefulness.

Ego, that split-off-from-Truth part of our mind that will resist trust, faith, belief in reality, is very persuasive, relentless in its determination to keep us asleep, believing our little, mortal, body-encased self is who we are, and will bombard our mind with all manner of thoughts, beliefs, perceptions to give false witness to that as our being; thoughts of grievance, judgement and condemnation of ourself and our brothers, all of which are fear and guilt engendered; all of which will keep us from the Truth of our Self. 

When we find ourself engaged in such thoughts, beliefs, perceptions that would convince us of their truth about ourself and our brothers, Holy Spirit counsels us to ‘breathe and allow’.  He guides that we should not fight, wrestle, resist, argue, debate, defend — which is just how ego keeps us engaged in an endless loop of searching, questioning, doubting, fearing, projecting, guilt-tripping. 

‘Breathe and allow’ means breathe-in, inhale the Light, the Peace, the Life that He is with us unceasingly to remind us that we are. Then, allow whatever ego-thoughts flit into our mind to register, but do not allow them to take over and distract us from our right-minded thinking by leading us on a mental wild goose chase. We will serve ourself and our Life’s Purpose well by neither resisting nor surrendering to frenetic, ego-mind thought bombardment. 

This may seem impossibly hard, and indeed, it is not easy for beginners on the path away from imprisonment in the spiritual darkness of ego-mind domination back toward the freedom of the Light.  Here is a Holy Spirit-inspired mechanism to help in any such moment; we simply say to ourself: “I observe this thought but I do not own it.”  To observe is to separate, place ourself at a distance from, meaning it cannot be ours.  To repudiate, or deny owning, is also an affirmation that it does not belong to us.  We thus affirm that ego thoughts are not our thoughts.

We can also ask ourself, “Does wrestling, fighting, engaging with ego-minded thoughts of judgement, attack, condemnation — of ourself or another — bring us inner peace; will it get us Home? Or, does letting go, accepting, allowing, releasing into the care of One Who Is trustworthy, all-empowered — Who can never forsake us or leave us because He loves us perfectly — allow Him to dispel for us what is, after all, nothing but a dream?” 

This allowing will immediately help us to see, feel, experience release from conflict, cause us to instantly feel closer to our Destiny, our True Being, rather than farther away from It. 

From the time and place perspective the GRP — restoration to At-onement, Salvation, awakening, release from ego-mind domination back to Christ-Minded Being, eternal, uninterrupted love, peace and joy — seems so long; an interminable process, and the world appears to be collapsing into turmoil from which it seems close to impossible to extricate ourselves.  Surely it is too late; is not doom inevitable?  In such moments of doubt we will serve ourself well if we ask ourself: Is this a Holy Spirit-inspired thought or is it an ego thought?  For what we believe is what we get. 

Linear time is made up, a fabrication, so in Eternity, our true reality, it does not exist.  If it does not exist, choosing to be despondent about it serves ego, not Holy Spirit’s purpose in us.  Choosing to be despondent about it gives it reality in our mind, our belief, our perception, prolonging our experience of conflicted mind. 

The six-thousand-year GRP is, within that linear perspective, now entering its final, completion phase.  It is two–thirds over.  This is, assuredly, cause for celebration, not despondency; not just because it is two-thirds over but, more wonderfully, because the worst is behind us, the Path — to Self Realisation — is becoming easier, the Light brighter, the love, peace and joy more palpably available.  And, above all, our ability to understand, receive and accept it is growing exponentially.  Old-order thinking is beginning to be seen and widely accepted as the anachronism it actually is.  

The GRP will remain as a linear event, still with two-thousand years to go, all the while we choose to perceive it from a dualistic perspective.  If that is our individual choice, so be it, but it will not alter the fact that if, instead, we choose to follow our Higher Self’s lead, we will begin to engage our true, undistorted, single vision, and our flawed, double, distorted sight will impact less and less upon our mind, our thoughts and the way events in our Earthly lives distract us from what is always within us, if only we are willing to be still and allow ourself to attune with it: inner peace.

As for the turmoil that appears to be rampaging throughout the world, this is the period of overlap, the transformational phase between the end of one epoch (the second measure of meal) and the next, the third measure.  The upheaval is in the collective mind as we try to adjust to the new, Kingdom Age, after so long being upside-down in our beliefs and perceptions.  Clinging to old-order perceptions prolongs the upheaval, as those who cleave to it, determined to maintain the status quo of religious, cultural and commercial/financial beliefs and structures — all founded in fear, guilt, scarcity, unreality — resist the transformation, the metamorphosis from ‘caterpillar to butterfly’.

Committed willingness to receive and accept unto ourself, from our True Self, the guidance, mind-retraining, inspiration, comforting-by-the-Comforter, eases and hastens our journey; leads the Way toward the Light of Home, reduces the stress until we realise that stress is no longer part of our life, our being.  Stress is dis-ease.  Absence of stress means absence of dis-ease; awareness that the presence of inner peace, wholeness, remembrance of Who we really are, are all with us, and have, in truth, always been with us. 

We do not have to go out searching for all this; the Kingdom of Heaven is within us.  By being still we can know that we are indivisibly one with God, and always have been.  There is no ‘fall of man’; we have never been ‘cast out of Heaven’ for any ‘original sin’ or any subsequent ‘sin’.  We dreamt it all and now we are waking from the dream, to the certainty that we are, right now — the only moment there is — at Home in Papa, forever.

This awakening takes place within every ‘individual’ mind because wholeness, completeness, is within all the seemingly fragmented parts of the oneness that we are, although this seems to take place for each of us at different moments in time.  This is because we are waking from the illusions of separation and time.  A fragment here, a fragment there, sees, or begins to see, Truth, or experiences True perception.  Each cannot then help but share, extend, its new remembrances with its fellow fragments because it sees the brotherhood, the oneness, with the other fragments. 

This impels it, from the Calling Influence (the outpouring of the Spirit of Unity — God) within, to align itself with its brother fragments, just as the iron filing is impelled to align itself with its neighbouring filings because the Influence is the Unifying Reality and not the seemingly individual, fragmented filings.   

This Overriding Influence manifests Itself within ‘individual’, fragmented minds as ‘new’ awareness, new remembrance, which ‘must’ be shared, extended, because to withhold it, not give it, is impossible, just as Papa not giving us everything is impossible for Him.  At the time and place level of perception this takes form in the writing of books, articles, vignettes, lecture tours, workshops, films, websites, and just simple, one-on-one giving, sharing, communing, extending, etc.  The advances, in recent years, of travel facilities, communications techniques and equipment all inevitably contribute to facilitating the extending, the dissemination, of the Call.

Now, at the start of the leavening of the third measure of meal, during which the whole shall be leavened, more and more fragments are sharing, and will share, more and more of their remembrances of Eternity, each according to his own degree of awakening and his awareness of it.  All such activity is agreed and planned ‘afore time’, which means before the person incarnates to fulfil such aforetime-committed intent. 

Such intent has been leavening, or growing, emerging, unfolding in the mind of the individuals who incarnate with Kingdomly intent during multiple ‘previous’ incarnations (‘acts’) and the intervals between them, during which a review of progress — which leads to a strengthening of purpose, desire, commitment — takes place. 

This is why the Jesus Measure of meal (from Jesus’ time on Earth until the last few decades) took two-thousand years to leaven.  Those who grew to love him then (and some, before that) have gradually, from one act to the next, grown in understanding of, and one-pointed commitment to, the GRP. 

That commitment of mind places them on the same wavelength as the mind of Jesus — Christ-Mind — so there is a natural gravitation toward, attunement with, his purpose.  So, between acts, all such souls will seek his counsel on how best to fulfil their desire-potential for being an active part of the leavening process during their upcoming act.  The sharing/extending is the active part of that process.  Having made their minds receptive to the inner, unfolding, awakening awareness of the eternal Truth of their Being, their resonance with it impels them to share/extend it because it is impossible not to.

When the leavening is complete — ‘...the whole was leavened’ — the whole (holy) Sonship will have been prepared, made ready (as a bride for her groom, to use Revelation terminology; Rev. 21:2), for Papa to take the final step for us, His beloved, perfect, innocent (guiltless) creation, and scoop us up into His Heart, wherein is ineffable, Perfect Love, Peace and Joy.  Forever.

Goodbye, doubt, fear, guilt and despondency.  Welcome, freedom, exultation, ecstasy, bliss, completion; endlessly.  Thank You, Papa.

Love, always,

Brian Longhurst

July 7th 2010

Dear Friends,

There are two worlds apparent to us now; the old Earth and the New Earth.  The old Earth is an ego-contrived artifice; the New Earth is the Holy Spirit’s revelation, freely available to us in an instant if we are willing to choose it as our awareness.  Now is the time of the switch-over, the transformation, not of the ‘physical’ world but of how we choose to perceive it; it is our minds that are being transformed, resurrected, restoring our vision so we can see the Truth; the unchangeable, eternal Reality that we are Papa’s Beloved Son. 

The Maker of the world of gentleness (New Earth) has perfect power to offset the world of violence and hate that seems to stand between you and His gentleness. It (old Earth) is not there in His forgiving eyes.  And therefore it need not be there in yours.  

T-25.III.8.

Ego’s world is a dream about separation, loneliness, scarcity, fear, guilt, uncertainty, questioning, grievance, judgement, condemnation, doubt, decay, destruction and death.  How many parents despair at their children’s ego-driven fixation on computer games of attack, killing, warfare, vengeance, horror?  Yet is this not what we are all making our ‘reality’, and indeed, have made our reality since time began? 

Many have the desire and the commitment for change but do not know how, having forgotten that the way and the means lie within us all, and is our own true Self, Who knows the way and will show it to us if we ask and are willing to surrender the ego self-will, self-determination — that we mistakenly believe is our own — to His lead.  His Way is the Truth and the Life; the Way that will restore us — is restoring us — to right mindedness, true perception, right here, right now (there is only now) in time and place.  We are creating the future now; it will not all magically come right ‘in the future’ if we do not co-operate with Self in desiring its establishment in our minds, now.

The Holy Spirit has the power to change the whole foundation of the world you see to something else; a basis not insane, on which a sane perception can be based, another world perceived (the New Earth).

(T-25.VII.5-1)

If we are not willing to co-operate with the Holy Spirit within us, then, by default we are co-operating with the split-off-from-Truth part of our mind — ego — the objective of which is death and destruction.  By placing our desire and commitment in the caring, empowered-for-Truth (and by Truth) leadership of Self and allowing Him to be Helmsman, we start to see the world differently; through His sight, in which only Truth is seen and illusions do not exist.  Because we and Self are one, that vision is our vision, if we will but choose it, without money and without price.  There is no cost, no loss, no sacrifice; only gain for all the Sonship, of Which we are each an integral, invaluable, inseparable, indivisible part.  

Everyone here has entered darkness, yet no one has entered it alone.  Nor need he stay more than an instant. For he has come with Heaven’s Help within him, ready to lead him out of darkness into light at any time.  The time he chooses can be any time, for help is there, awaiting but his choice.  And when he chooses to avail himself of what is given him, then will he see each situation that he thought before was means to justify his anger turned to an event which justifies his love.  (Good news, or what!?)

T-25.III.6.

The Kingdom of Heaven is within us, so if we are willing to go within, desiring it, choosing it, focusing upon it, we cannot help but find it — because of Heaven’s Help.  Then, as we experience the joy it brings as we begin to be aware of it, we cannot help but radiate it, extend it, share it, give it to our brothers.  Who amongst us would not agree that this is better than projecting ego’s principality of judgement, grievance, accusation, doubt, guilt, attack?

The Son of God cannot be bound by time nor place nor anything God did not will.

(T-25.VII.7-4)

If we and our brothers had committed sins, they would be real.  And what is real cannot be changed; so we would be lost to Heaven forever.  Only what is real is eternally unchangeable, because God’s Laws cannot be changed; if they could be changed they would not be real.  But errors can be corrected because errors are not real since they are not of God. They are merely misperceptions, mistakes, made in a dream from which we are now being lovingly, gently, tenderly awakened.  Not to judgement and punishment but to the reality of our eternal, shining, perfect oneness in our perfectly-loving Father Creator.

As this experience increases and all goals but this become of little worth, the world to which you will return becomes a little closer to the end of time; a little more like Heaven in its ways; a little nearer its deliverance.  And you who bring it light will come to see the light more sure; the vision more distinct. (Alleluia! J)

W-157.7:1, 2.

Holy Spirit, Who knows the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth, never forces It upon us, so only if we ask Him to correct our perceptions and restore our vision to the Truth of our perfect Wholeness/Holiness can He perform it for us.  He will do that because that is His sole Purpose and He is empowered in this by Papa.

His method of correction is shining the Light of Eternal Truth in the split-off-from-Truth part of our mind, which has obscured our vision, separating us from that Light.  We have thus placed ourself in spiritual darkness, alone and lonely, groping and fumbling, stumbling blindly in a far, alien land, where everything is upside-down and back to front.  How could it be otherwise if we believe we are, and therefore seem to be, separated from God?

This Light of Truth shines away the darkness we seem to have been in, so that we can see the Truth.  The Truth of Eternity is uncomplicated (It’s hallmark), easy to understand, makes absolute sense and immediately clears away the confusion of an ever-changing perception that has bewildered us about who we are and how to be. 

Knowledge is of God — and is therefore real, perfect, eternal and unchangeable — and requires no elaborate theories, treatises, research, study, learning, in order to know it because we already have it.  All Knowledge was given to Papa’s Son at His creation, and what God has given is permanent, never lost.  However, we are at free will to choose to believe we have forgotten it, and having made that choice, spend vast amounts of time and effort gathering information, vainly confusing such with knowledge.   

If we seek knowledge where it does not exist — in the unreality of time and place — then the best we will ever come up with is information about unreality.  Information about unreality cannot be real and therefore, if we confuse it with knowledge it can lead us only to further confusion, and farther away from the Light of Eternal Reality — into outer darkness.

Truth is knowledge, and brings certainty of our one Identity in the Sonship — Christ.  This can only result in peace of mind, freedom from fear and guilt.  But we cannot remember, and be restored to our true Being, unless we choose, and are steadfast in our choice, to follow Holy Spirit’s script.

Jesus was following Holy Spirit’s script when he said to the attendant gathering:

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;  that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven (Mt. 5: 44, 45.)

These admonitions are the Way, the keys, to the Kingdom.  These will restore us to remembrance of Christ, Who dwells quietly within us, unaffected by our amnesiac, divided appearance.  But if we ignore Him and His/Holy Spirit’s counsel — proclaiming we are washed in the blood of Jesus and that that will get us into Heaven, yet all the while, even if unwittingly, following ego’s script of judgement — we remain imprisoned in the cycle of littleness and mortality.

Assuredly, while in ego’s thrall, (sincerely) loving our ‘enemies’, blessing those that curse us, etc., is not possible, for it is not in ego’s remit.  In these circumstances, proclaiming oneself washed in the blood of Jesus while still harbouring grievances against a brother may seem easier than loving him, but will not obtain release from self-confinement on the carousel of birth and death.

The steadfast practise of true forgiveness, on the other hand, will release us from grievance and judgement and we will find that (sincerely) loving our ‘enemies’, blessing them that curse us, praying for them that despitefully use and persecute us then comes spontaneously, effortlessly, easily, joyfully.  We will then know, of a certainty beyond all doubt, because we feel it, that we are children of our Father which is in Heaven.

(True) Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not (actually) occurred.  It does not pardon sins and make them real.  It sees there was no sin.  And in that view are all your sins forgiven.  What is sin, except a false idea about God’s Son?   (True) Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go.  What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God.

(W, page 401)

Truly we will find that this miraculously removes from us the grievous burden of ego’s yoke.  Jesus’ message quoted in Mt. 11:29-30 is no trite platitude, but greater reality for us all, right here and now, than all we perceive as reality in time and place: Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ... and ye shall find rest unto your souls.   For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

That ‘burden’, of Light, will illumine the path Home; a state of Mind, of Being, of which our Earth-mind consciousness, under ego’s subtle, conniving, devious dominion, has no concept or awareness, and is incapable of preparing us for entering in to that state of remembrance.  Without Help, assuredly, death seems real and inevitable.

You maker of a world that is not so, take rest and comfort in another world where peace abides.  This world you bring with you to all the weary eyes and tired hearts that look on sin and beat its sad refrain.  From you can come their rest.  From you can rise a world they will rejoice to look upon, and where their hearts are glad.  In you there is a vision that extends to all of them, and covers them in gentleness and light (because now we are beginning to remember and experience that we are becoming like Jesus. 1Jn. 3:2). 

Would you not do this for the Love of God? And for yourself?

T-25.1V.3,4.

If we are to believe Jesus, we can never die.  We, who believe we are fragmented, separated into individual, frail, mortal bodies with confused, individual minds, simply lay aside this little pile of worthless clay, like a worn-out overcoat, and which was never who we are or our true home.  It only ever had one purpose: to act as a communication-mechanism to heal and re-unify the Sonship.  This truth applies not just to Jesus, but to us all, now, more than ever before.  And this will continue for all the fragments through the leavening of the third measure of meal.

How better could your own mistakes be brought to truth than by your willingness to bring the light of Heaven with you, as you walk beyond the world of darkness into light?

T-25.1V.5:12.

Love, always,

Brian Longhurst

Into His Presence would I enter now.

(W 157)

July 14th 2010

Dear Friends,

The message pasted below was emailed to me by a friend.  I hope you will take a moment to read it:

~DEATH~

 WHAT A WONDERFUL WAY TO EXPLAIN IT. 

A sick man turned to his doctor as he was preparing to  

Leave the examination room and said,  

‘Doctor, I am afraid to die.  

Tell me what lies on the other side.’  

Very quietly, the doctor said, ‘I don't know.’  

‘You don’t know?  You, a Christian man,  

Do not know what is on the other side?’  

The doctor was holding the handle of the door;  

On the other side came a sound of scratching and whining,  

And as he opened the door, a dog sprang into the room  

And leaped on him with an eager show of gladness.  

Turning to the patient, the doctor said, ‘Did you notice my dog?   He's never been in

this room before.  He didn't know what was inside.  He knew nothing except that his

master was here, and when the door opened, he

sprang in without fear.  

 
I know little of what is on the other side of death,  

But I do know one thing...  

I know my Master is there and that is enough.’

May today there be peace within you.

May you trust God that you are

Exactly

Where you are meant to be.

I believe that friends are quiet angels

Who lift us to our feet when our wings

Have trouble remembering how to fly.

remember...it doesn't matter where you go in life...

it's who you have beside you..

July 21st 2010

Dear Friends,

The illusory realm of time and place is also known as the consciousness of fear.  This is an upside-down state of mind; the opposite of the ineffable Eternity that is God, Heaven and our True Self — if Reality could have an opposite.  Of course, Reality cannot have an opposite other than in an imagined, dreamt, illusory — unreal — sense.  In this fantasy, fear controls everything.  We have made fear our reality even though in Reality it does not exist.  

ACIM teaches us the Truth of Eternity by comparing time and place with It, emphasising that we need to understand the unreality of the illusion we have made so that we know what we are dealing with in order to co-operate with Holy Spirit in dispelling it; ‘bringing illusions to Truth’, as Jesus describes it.

How, then, can we know and understand fear in order to dispel it, since it is only a figment of a split-off-from-Truth part of our mind?

A couple of times in recent months mention has been made here, and quotes given from a profoundly inspiring book by Pamela Silberman, Simply Being   One Year with Spirit.  The book takes the reader on a one-year journey of 52 weekly communings by Pamela with the Holy Spirit, Who is also known as the Spirit of Truth, or the Comforter, or the Holy Breath.  

Week 47 of her book describes an encounter Pamela had — under Holy Spirit guidance, leading, inspiration and protection — with ‘Fear’ which is so enlightening, liberating, uplifting and encouraging for all of us who wrestle (and so often do not prevail) with fear on a daily basis that I asked for her permission to reproduce it here.  I am overjoyed to say that Pamela has given her unequivocal permission for this.  I hope you find, as have I, that this will transform our whole perception of fear, releasing us from its imagined thrall.  Here it is:

Week Forty-Seven: A Story of Fear

Closing my eyes, breathing deeply and quietly, I began the meditation (on surrendering fear to Holy Spirit).  When my mind felt most at peace, words formed from within my mind asking to be spoken aloud, “I desire to know my Self as I am.”  As soon as these words left my lips, a feeling of tension spread across my chest.  This tension was familiar to me; however, this time an image appeared with it.  I saw a Roman centurion standing before me and it became obvious that this soldier was a symbol of fear.  ‘Fear’ became his name.  Fear was actually rather handsome (smile) and fully dressed in armor.  I noted the details of his uniform, from the glimmering chest plate to the dark, leather waist pleats and the maroon-red, tasseled knee socks.  He resembled many of the traditional centurions I had seen in classic Hollywood movies.  He had a strong, chiseled jaw line and a sharp, pronounced nose.  His brow line was also firm, revealing a brown, shortly-cropped head of curly hair beneath his helmet.

The centurion laughed aloud.  It was a boasting, mocking laugh, and although it seemed easy to feel defeated, Spirit stood by my side.   Contemplatively, I wondered, how did Jeshua (Jesus, or Yeshua) feel and behave when people laughed at him?  How would he speak in return?  Within me, I felt a confirmation that Jeshua would not have wavered.  He would not have seen Fear’s laughter as anything but Fear’s faulty awareness of itself.  For a third time, I took another breath, and then chose to look the centurion steadfastly in the eye.  Continuing to look, I spoke directly to the depths of some potential connection within him.  Please Spirit, I asked within, help me find the love here.  Then, calmly wise, like before, the words came: “Tell him you love him and appreciate him for all he has done.”

Now, in seeing Fear’s vulnerability, I felt myself in bond with Fear.  I saw his friendship, his kinship, his longing to help me.  I could not resist or despise this wish.  Clearly, instead, I could see that he (in his own way) only wanted the best for me.  How could I not but love this intent?  How could I not desire to embrace him as my brother?  And so, this is simply what I did.

With this awareness, and still holding eye contact, Jeshua faded from my sight within an expansion of radiant light.  My focus returned to my being within the living room of the cabin where I was residing temporarily.  Although one might say this journey was simply one of imagination and inspiration, within me I felt the journey itself was that deeper connection to reality I had been long seeking.  Once again, I took a deep breath, said a prayer for gratitude, and sat in the quiet morning light, recognizing that Jeshua and my Holiness still stood here with me.  Finally, I felt genuinely free. To this awareness I simply said, “Amen.”                                       

(My emboldening and italic, for emphasis.)

How often, when we encounter fear, is our instinct to fight it, overcome it, suppress it?  This was not Jesus’ way as he faced the cross, because he remembered, he knew, who he was.  He knew, of a certainty beyond all doubt, that there Truly is nothing to fear.  He knew, as he states in the Introduction to A Course in Miracles:

Nothing real can be threatened.

Herein lies the peace of God.

It is this fighting, resisting, contesting that keeps us imprisoned in the illusion of time and place, fear and guilt, birth and death.  Surrender, letting go, accepting, allowing, handing the control over our life into the care of One Who Knows sets us free from fear and releases us into the awareness of Love’s presence.  Then, and only then, will we, also, know of a certainty beyond all doubt, who we really are.  We will have remembered that Love, Perfect Love, is Who we are; right now, eternally.

Love, peace and joy,

Brian Longhurst

Simply Being is available from Amazon,

The Book Depository:  http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781846941269/Simply-Being 

or your local bookseller, quoting ISBN 978-1-84694-126-9 if required.

July 28th 2010

Dear Friends,

As mentioned recently, only Eternity is real, and cannot have an opposite.  This is demonstrated by the simple observation that the only word that can attempt to describe an opposite of reality is unreality.  This clearly indicates that anything that is perceived as not eternal — e.g. bodies, planets, galaxies — is unreal, and therefore, does not, cannot, exist other than as fantasy.  To believe unreality is real is clearly a mistake and can only lead to confusion.  Any newscast will confirm this.

Jesus tells us we are the light of the world.  This light is eternal, and therefore real, inextinguishable, the Light of Life, which has its Source in, and is inextricably one with, the Source of All: God, the Creator Spirit.  It has nothing to do with any light such as that perceived as radiating from the Sun, or anything else that is temporal.  Why, one may readily enquire, is this Light not discernible to us with our bodily senses?

This Light of Life is within us, but because it is of God, of Eternity — and reflects the reality of our eternal, unchanging oneness in Him — is not of the unreality of time and place.  Therefore the Light that we eternally are is not discernible by senses devised solely for temporal perception, and thus incapable of discerning eternal reality.  

However, we are capable of discerning, having awareness of, the Light that we unalterably are, while with a body, because it is with Mind — which is eternal, and therefore able to discern eternal reality — that this discernment takes place.  But guilt and fear, the causes of the arising of time and place, bodies — all that which passes away — obscure our True Vision.  Light, Life, Peace, Perfect Love and True Vision are all attributes of the Creator Spirit, and are therefore indivisibly, inseparably One.  All the while we believe in separation from Light, Life, Peace, Perfect Love and True Vision we will not be aware of, or have lasting oneness with, any of these attributes that are of God, but also belong to us because He gave Them to us at our creation. 

In The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament,* or NTI, He says it this way:

The Light is in all men and with all men.  The Light does not fade or wither, but the (spiritual) darkness that fills the (bodily) sight of man does not see the Light or choose to know it.  And so, the Light waits (with infinite patience) on welcome (by us), that it may be known (by us).

...The Voice for God (the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter, the Light that is Eternal Truth, Whom Jesus called down into the world at the event known as Pentecost, as described in Acts, chapter 2, when he returned from Whence he came) is present on Earth, as it is present in the Light that lights the heart of man.  When man chooses the Light as his guidance within the world, the Light is made manifest in the body of man.

...The desire for truth beckons truth, and truth becomes manifest.  For Love cannot say no to a request for Love.

(NTI, pages 187, 188; my emboldening, for emphasis.)

The first man in whom the Light is made manifest is... you got it — Jesus.  However hard it may seem for fragmented, ego-dominated, split-off-from-Truth mind to understand how or why that means it is true for the rest of the apparently divided Sonship also, it is true.  But ego — which is of time and place only and is not experienced in the reality of Eternity, where all is peace — does not know, see or understand Truth, because It is known only in Eternity.  Ego believes — and therefore perceives — unreality (time and place) is reality, so is upside-down in its perception. 

The key to how it can be true that we are all the light of the world is that the Sonship only appears fragmented, to senses devised to see what the seemingly split-off-from-Truth part of the one Mind chooses to see: unreality as reality.  In reality the Sonship of God is one, has never been fragmented, or divided, or separated from Papa, and is now being awakened from the dream of illusions back to awareness of the reality of eternal Truth.

... As the Light is with one man, the Light is with all men...  the Light is in you and with you and the Light is you...  Welcome it fully now...  It is before you now, waiting only for your welcome.

To welcome the Light, have faith in the Light.  Do not expect the Light to convince you of its presence by grabbing you with miracles when you seem to give the Light no welcome.  The Light welcomes you as you are, and so it will not try to convince you.

(NTI, page 192.)

So, if part of the oneness (Jesus) that is the Sonship has seen the Light of Eternal Truth within himself, and recognised and accepted that he is the Light, and in so doing has become the Wholeness (Holiness) that the Light has revealed to him he is; and the Wholeness is in the part; and the Wholeness is not, in truth, fragmented, then Wholeness must be in all the seemingly fragmented parts of the Sonship.  If a man does not see this Truth it is because he is not welcoming it.  But if he welcomes it, what was always in him will be revealed to him.

Holy Spirit said to me a few days ago:

It is your co-operating with My leading that will minimise your perception of, and distraction by, linear time and the apparent events therein.  This will allow you to be aware of inner peace.  Trying to hurry your awakening distracts you from that awareness and that will ‘drive you to distraction’.

The moment of ‘Now’ doesn’t mean what appears to be happening in the outer, but living from, focussing on being present in, the Eternal Reality, and allowing all that appears to be outside you not to affect your inner peace, which arises from the certainty of knowing that you are as Papa created you, and has nothing to do with form.

We are the light of the world. If this is true for one of us — and it certainly is true for Jesus, as attested to in SFGS chapter 2 — it is because it is Truth.  Truth is only of Papa — a PLF — and therefore is Truth for us all.  In Truth there are, and can be, no exceptions.  Not having awareness of Truth does not make It untrue; it merely means we have chosen not to accept the Truth about our Self unto ourself.

Since the apparent separation, the ‘prince of this world’ (Jn. 14:30) — ego — has led the fragmented Sonship into misperception:

Men judge the world and one another, and they condemn what they see, but in their condemnation they fail to see as the Light sees.  It is the Light that sees truly, for the Light sees as God sees.  And so men must be mistaken in what they see and what they think.  Therefore, the judgement of man is meaningless.  All that is meaningful is the vision that comes of the Light.

(NTI, page 191.)

But now, as the leavening of the third measure of meal gets into full swing — in which the whole (of the Sonship) shall be leavened, resurrected, lifted up, awakened:

The time has come for the Heavens to welcome its own (us, the one, undivided Son of God) unto Itself.  And so an awakening is occurring.  All men are part of the awakening, and all men shall be awakened, because the Light shines for all men...

The Light within is a guiding Light... None are absent from its guidance, though many are unaware... And so they look elsewhere for their own salvation and happiness.  Since they do not know it is with them, they continue to search and they continue to struggle.

(NTI, page 191.)

Because True Vision is of the Christ Mind and the apparently fragmented Sonship has forgotten Who he really is, he looks for truth and happiness where it cannot be found, with eyes that cannot see Truth but only illusion.  Christ Mind is our whole, undivided mind, unaffected by dreams of separation, and is nothing to do with bodies, brains, time and place, illusions, though It can use a body to serve Its objectives — as demonstrated by Jesus, like whom we are becoming (1 Jn. 3:2) — if, when, that is our steadfast, unequivocal choice, as it was with him.

Christ Mind is a heart-centred — i.e. Love-centred — awareness and is not of the intellect, because Christ Mind knows, so does not need to think about what is true, what is real, what is right.  Only ego does this, endlessly searching, questioning, doubting, wondering, fearing.  Peace is beyond ego’s reach, but Christ Mind is eternally, uninterruptedly at peace, which nothing can disturb, because It knows the Truth, of a certainty beyond all doubt, that all is well, that: 

Nothing real can be threatened.

Herein lies the peace of God.        

(Introduction to ACIM)

Love and Light are of God, and therefore, are one.  The Light and Love of Papa have never not been with us. 

The Holy Spirit is the Light that fills the hearts of man.  It is a Light that shines in every heart, and it shines unceasingly...

Within the world, the Light is hidden.  It is not hidden because it desires to hide.  It is hidden because it has not been invited to shine.  And so, it shines quietly within Itself until it is invited to shine in the world...  For the Light is hidden from no one who in readiness asks for the Light.  It is the shining of the Light that brings forth faith.  With faith more Light is welcomed.

(NTI, page 189.)

As Papa said to me on May 5^th 1996: My son, the Keys to the Kingdom lie not in answers but in faith, trust, commitment, obedience to My word.  As Jesus says in ACIM, all that is asked of us is a little faith and we will receive everything, for the loss of nothing.  Nothing in this world comes within a country mile of such an offer.  Can we reasonably refuse?

Love and blessings, always,

Brian Longhurst

*The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament, or NTI, beautifully, diligently and faithfully scribed by Regina Dawn Akers, has been described thusly:

Amazon,

The Book Depository - http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781846940859/The-Holy-Spirits-Interpretation-of-the-New-Testament  

- or your local bookseller, quoting ISBN 13: 9781846940859 ISBN 10: 1846940850 if required.

August 4th 2010

Dear Friends,

The dictionary defines the word Arrogant as ‘having an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities’, with its ‘origin in old French, from Latin Arrogare ‘claim for oneself’’.

Ego would say there is arrogance in proclaiming oneself the Son of God.  It would, wouldn’t it?, since ego is of time and place only, which is, itself, upside-down, and has no understanding, awareness or knowledge of eternal reality, and thus, our true, unchanging, eternal Being.  Ego sees us as a body; mortal, fearful, doubting, ever changing, until we die and are returned to the dust of the Earth, from which it perceives we came; consigned to nothingness.  If that is what we were, ego would be correct in saying it is arrogant to proclaim Sonship of God as our reality.

Is that what we would say of Jesus?  Atheists, and perhaps some agnostics may say that, but more careful consideration would, at least, cast some doubt upon such a conclusion. If only some of the teachings and events recorded of his time with a body are accurate, it must be evident that he knew quite a lot about God, himself and us that no scientist or philosopher, barber or taxi-driver knows. 

Yet, though according to the Gospel accounts, Jesus referred to himself 81 times as the Son of man, he makes reference to himself as the Son of God only 4 times, all obliquely and with no suggestion of arrogance.  On the contrary, he says of himself: Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. (Mt. 11:29).  Is washing the feet of one’s friends an act of arrogance? 

Jesus tells us that God is our Father — not just his.  Every time anyone says the Lord’s Prayer, they affirm their agreement with it.  That, by any stretch of the imagination, makes us His Son.  There are other scripture references that support this, yet religious doctrine states Jesus is the one and only Son of God.  Clearly, there is confusion in the camp.

In ACIM, Jesus tells us it is arrogant to deny the truth about ourself, claiming to be what we are not.  Certainly, claiming to know better than God, or Jesus, could be called arrogant.  Here is what Jesus says about this:

Can your grandeur be arrogant when God Himself witnesses to it?  ... God is incomplete without you because His grandeur is total, and you cannot be missing from it.  (Indeed, anything missing from it would make it less than total, which would mean God could not be God.)

You are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God.  No one else can fill your part in it, and while you leave your part of it empty your eternal place merely waits for your return.  God, through His Voice (the Holy Spirit), reminds you of it... You cannot replace the Kingdom, and you cannot replace yourself.  God, Who knows your value, would not have it so, and so it is not so.  Your value is in God’s Mind, and therefore not in yours alone.  To accept yourself as God created you cannot be arrogance, because it is the denial of arrogance.  To accept your littleness (by stating we are sinners, unworthy, etc.) is arrogant, because it means that you believe your evaluation of yourself is truer than God’s.

Yet if truth is indivisible, your evaluation of yourself must be God’s.  You did not establish your value and it needs no defense.  Nothing can attack it nor prevail over it.  It does not vary.  It merely is.  Ask the Holy Spirit what it is and He will tell you, but do not be afraid of His answer, because it comes from God.  It is an exalted answer because of its Source, but the Source is true and so is Its answer.  Listen and do not question what you hear, for God does not deceive.  He would have you replace the ego’s belief in littleness with His Own exalted Answer to what you are, so that you can cease to question it and know it for what it is.

(From ACIM, T-9. VIII.9-11, my emboldening, for emphasis)

 In August 1997 I said to Jesus: ...Beloved Lord Jesus, the Glory of all this is yours, according to the prophecies of long ago.

He replied:

My son, the Glory is Papa's, and we all are illuminated and radiate His light according to our desire for His good and perfect will, and our attunement with Him by FTOC.  He gives us, freely, lovingly, immediately, the gift of His Glory and so, in that sense, it is mine, as it is yours also, according to His eternal principles. 

However, be thou faithful, as you have been faithful, and keep on in this way and He shall reveal to you, as He grows you in your ability to receive, all that He has in store for you.  And this is His plan for all His children.  I tell you, my son, this is what you shall reveal to all your brethren, even as I reveal it to you, because it is your heart's desire.  Did I not promise you that in you would be fulfilled your heart's desire?  I know you do not doubt the Word of your Lord, for I am your beloved friend also.  Joy of Heaven be yours now and eternally. 

Pretending to be what we are not — which Papa’s one Son has been doing in the illusion of separation — may be a game, but the game went sour, because in order to seem to not be at Home in the Heart of God, where All is Peace, Joy and Perfect Love, we had to believe and experience as our reality the condition in which we were not There.  Being, or seeming to be, away from eternal joy, peace and love is a fearful thing, when we have chosen to forget Who we really are, and find ourself upside-down, limited, confused, doubtful, vulnerable, mortal... all the opposite of our true reality.

So, we try to make the most of it, and, because this is pretend-land, we even pretend we are enjoying it.  We make up rules, we make up gods and idols, we make up mythologies to fit our misperceptions; and, because they are misperceptions, the rules, the idols, the mythologies are not True.  And, because we have everything upside-down and back-to-front, when Papa sends us messengers to bring us the Truth, we see them as liars, blasphemers, apostates, heretics against our made-up, confused mythologies, so persecute them, shun them, crucify them, so we can continue with our misery, pretending it is reality.

This is arrogance because we claim we know better than God and His messengers.  Until we have martyred them; then we sanctify them and pray to them.  How confused is that?

Regardless of all this, Papa loves us perfectly (for Papa would hardly regard illusions) and sent His Comforter to be with us, guiding us even when we have no awareness of His Presence within us, and deny He is Who we really are.  And He is with us every moment, ensuring we are where we are supposed to be and when — because with Holy Spirit, the Voice for God, there can be no accidents, and nothing is left to chance (otherwise He would not be totally worthy of our trust) — even though it seems we are following our own, ego-path of ‘free will’.

Holy Spirit said to me recently:

You are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing, and you are exactly where you are supposed to be.  Do not allow questioning thoughts or doubting thoughts to find any resting place in your mind.  Know, instead, that because you have placed yourself in the care and guidance of the Spirit of Truth, which is the same as your brother Jesus, you are within that care and guidance.  This cannot fail you, so you can trust in It.

Throughout, remain steadfastly focussed on what you know is Truth.  This is the Rock that anchors you and prevents you from being swept away.

Ego, being the seeming opposite of Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, does not ‘let go and let God’; does not want to ‘allow’, but rather, wants to control our thoughts and actions.  Even as we go forward toward the Light, having committed to follow Holy Spirit, ego sneaks in, having been lurking in the dark recesses of our split-off mind, and tempts us with judgements, accusations, negativity. 

But Holy Spirit is saying to us, Allow this, observe it, but do not own it, do not wrestle with it, and in due course — with Help of which we may be completely unaware — these intrusions diminish and fade away.  He says this is cause for rejoicing and celebrating, because these are all signs of our growing desire for, and commitment to, our True Will, which is indivisibly one with Papa’s Will, which is love, peace, joy, truth, oneness.

Jesus knew who he was and therefore there was no need for any arrogance in him, for Love is gentle, quiet, not puffed up.  He referred to himself as the ‘Son of man’ because he was, with the rest of us, symbolically speaking, the son of Abraham, and wished to identify with us as our brother within this context, to allay any perceptions we, his slumbering brothers, would have of him as different from us.  If he had referred to himself as the Son of God, that would, in our misperceiving eyes, have set him apart from us, compounding the duality-consciousness of the fragments.

The Abraham-consciousness, as represented by the first measure of meal, was still confused about his relationship to (i.e., the Sonship of) God.  This is exemplified by Abraham’s perception that God wanted him to sacrifice his only beloved son, Isaac.  This misperception continues to this day, through the perception that Jesus was the necessary, once-and-for-all blood sacrifice for our salvation.

Jesus knew that he was the Son of God — along with us all — but, for the benefit of his brothers, he was identifying with us where we perceived ourself to be, in the ‘Son of man’ consciousness; for Jesus meets us at our point of need.  This enabled him to win our love for, and trust in, rather than fear of, him, which is the tendency of ego-dominated mind.  Then, having established the leavening activity of the second measure of meal, he could begin the process of raising (leavening) us, his brothers, to Son of God awareness.  Now, at the beginning of the third measure of meal, this leaven is beginning to become enlivened, activated.

So, referring to himself as the Son of man was an act of solidarity, of demonstrating his recognition of his oneness with his beloved brethren — us — and not an act of false modesty, for false modesty is arrogance.  To proclaim his Son of God status at the commencement of the second measure of meal would have been jumping the gun, and caused us, his still-slumbering brothers, (further) confusion about our relationship to him and therefore to Papa, enhancing, rather than diminishing, the duality-consciousness of the seemingly-fragmented Sonship.

As it is — and he knew this would happen anyway, but at least it would not be exacerbated by his teaching — the duality-consciousness has persisted throughout the second measure epoch.  But this was all foreseen, known and encompassed within the GRP, and now, at commencement of the third, final, completion measure of meal we are being leavened, raised-up, resurrected, awakened to the awareness of the Sonship of God, in which we are all, indivisibly, One.  The whole will be leavened during, and by completion of, the third measure.

Truly, this is cause for a banquet celebration worthy of the marriage of the King’s Son.

Love, peace and joy to us all,

Brian Longhurst

August 11th 2010

Dear Friends,

Our thoughts are our reality because we believe them to be true and thus perceive them to be reality.  If we believe ego thoughts are our thoughts, they become our reality, even though ego is unreal, so ego thoughts can have no reality.  Such is the power of our mind; to believe fantasy is reality. Since ego thoughts are the seeming opposite of God’s Thoughts — Which are not so much thoughts as states of Being: Love, Peace, Joy, Oneness, Freedom, Truth — they can only be negative, divisive, judgemental, fearful, destructive, untrue.

If such thoughts occupy a part of our mind, they will easily be able to rise to the forefront of our awareness at any moment.  I believe we can all agree that only God, and that which is of Him, is reality; and therefore, ego can only be illusion because ego does not reflect the reality that is God.  Ego — the illusory weaver of illusions — clamours for our attention and we allow ourself to be easily distracted by outer appearances if we lack focussed, one-pointed commitment to listen only to our True Self, the Spirit of Truth, the Voice for God, within our mind. 

This Voice for God will — if we are willing to listen — lead us, guide us, remind us Who we are, at every moment and every event that appears before us in the realm of time and place that we seem to be in.  This Voice is a Beacon of the Light of Eternal Truth, to help us find and remain on the Path back to wakefulness in our true Home in Eternity.  This means we can function from Right-Minded, Holy Spirit/True Self-inspired awareness and understanding in the illusion, and yet not be of it.  This is as Jesus functioned whilst with a body.  It is like him we are destined to become: at-one with God, by listening to and following only the guidance of the Voice for God.  Thus, Jesus is our example for Being, and symbolises our reality.

Until we make this unequivocal choice — to listen only to the Voice for God — we will equivocate, oscillate between Truth and illusion, ‘Good’ and ‘evil’.  There will be two voices speaking to us in our mind; the Voice for God, and ego, and this will cause confusion about our identity.  Illusion is a smokescreen and obscures the Light of Truth, Perfect Love and Unity, that is our one, true Identity, from our awareness.

Ego would have us believe listening only to the Spirit of Truth is subservience, imprisonment, cutting ourself off from the freedom to enjoy ourself during our sojourn with a body; that our body is for enjoyment, fun, distraction from the inevitable — sickness, decay, death — for as long as we can string it out.

But fun with bodies is a fleeting, passing, momentary thing, so we are always seeking the next thrill, and the next, and yet the next.  And now, ‘extreme sports’ is seeking to distract us even further, filling us with adrenaline — a deadly poison that foreshortens our time with a body — the very thing we try so hard to preserve.  Is this sound reasoning?

The voice for illusion speaks first, loudly, distractingly and misleadingly about what is ‘truth’ and what is ‘desirable’. Its promises are never ultimately fulfilling, driving us frenetically onward in the never-ending quest for fulfilment in time and place, where fulfilment is impossible because ultimate fulfilment is remembering that we are, and always have been, Home, in Papa.  All the while we believe, and thus perceive ourself as being in time and place, inner peace remains elusive, because fear is the foundation-stone of ego’s illusory dwelling-place, where we perceive ourself to be.

Yet the voice for illusion still seems to have a number of persuasive advantages over the Still, Small Voice within; the Call that would speak to us of gentleness, tenderness, peace, joy, love, oneness.  All of These are beyond words to describe, beyond experience by bodies — which ego’s urgent voice would have us believe we are, and which all our senses seem to confirm, and provide multitudinous witnesses to that effect.  So, confused, yet knowing somewhere, deep within, that These are what we truly remember and desire, we vainly seek outwardly, when only within are They to be found.

Those apparent advantages seem persuasive to senses that are devised to experience sensory perception; so they seem, to those who believe time and place is reality, to be real.  Such belief causes the apparent experience of the thrill, the excitement of temporal, transitory events that our senses are devised to tell us are real.  But, because they are all transitory, they cannot be real, because only Eternity is real.  And Eternity, and the Voice for God, Which are not discernible to bodily senses, do not seem real because the lack of discernibility to senses upon which we have chosen to depend, to tell us what is ‘real’ and what is not, does not experience Them.

After uproar, prestidigitation and hubbub die down, as is inevitably the case, the Voice for Truth speaks calmly and with cogent, compelling, convincing logic and reason.  And those who begin to see past the deception of transient attraction begin to hear, or become aware of, the Truth.  It resonates deep within, from the timeless, intangible, yet discernible, part of our Being.  It sets in motion a yearning, longing desire for lasting, unswerving, satisfying, fulfilling completion that was always there, though previously had gone unnoticed.

Trying to find words, which are but symbols, to describe eternal reality, which is ineffably sublime, is impossible.  To be understood it must first be desired; then it can be experienced; and then it is known.  When it is known, it is permanent, never dims, unchangeable, inexhaustible, satisfying beyond all temporal experience. It can only be experienced when we desire to experience it.  This is because, being the all-empowered Son of our all-empowered Father Creator, we are given the free will that enables us to experience whatever we desire.  And if we desire those ephemeral, transient experiences — sex, money, power over our brothers instead of with them — that is what we will call into our presence.

But, experiencing that which is not real can only be possible in a dream-world that is not part of the only reality that is: God.  Since God is Perfect Love, the ‘territory’ that comes with unreality is fear, which is the absence of Perfect Love.  That is real Love.  Experiencing it here, in time and place, is not possible if we believe time and place is real.  Jesus experienced and expressed Perfect Love because he knew, had remembered, reality, and thus knew time and place are not real.  When we have abandoned belief in time and place as our reality, we will, like him, be able to experience true reality once more.

Calling experience into our presence takes place at an unconscious level, and may not appear to happen, linearly speaking, all at once, but may take numerous acts, or incarnations, to be played out.  Yet, because none of this is real, we forget from one act to another, so fulfilment in time and place is always out of permanent reach.  Temporal, transient experience is not ‘bad’, or ‘wrong’, or ‘sinful’, or ‘evil’; it is simply untrue; unreal.  We can know this of a certainty because if it were true, real, it would be unending.  Only Eternity is that. 

Perceiving oneself to be guilty over that which is unreal, and therefore, in truth never happened, is not right-minded thinking, because it is not knowing the truth.  And only knowing the truth can set us free.  Believing illusion is true is a game, a plaything, a distraction.  No-one gets hurt — though it often seems that way — because in truth there is but one of us; God’s Son is indestructible, and

Nothing real can be threatened.

Herein lies the peace of God.        

(Introduction to ACIM)

The moment we begin to allow the desire that is within us for Truth — and start to become willing to let go of the illusion of limited, temporal, persona-self in favour of the Truth about our eternal, unlimited, all-empowered, perfectly-loving Self — then does Holy Spirit immediately begin to help us to remember what has always been with us. It has always been with us because it is us.  He requires but one thing of us, to enable Him to begin applying His Help: a little trust.

Because we cannot experience, or have awareness of, the Spirit of Truth with our bodily senses, which, remember, are devised for detection only of illusion — and the Voice for God, Self, is Reality — and we have become so accustomed to relying on our bodily senses to tell us what is ‘real’, what is ‘true’, we need to co-operate with Him by being still.  This can best be effected by following the advice of Jesus:

But thou, when thou prayest (i.e. commune/attune), enter into thy closet (i.e. a place of quietness, away from the clamour of the outer world.  This can be walking in the woods, the hills, the countryside, or in a room where intrusion by visitors, phone calls etc., will not disturb the going within), and when thou hast shut thy door (on the outer distractions), pray (i.e. commune/attune) to thy Father which is in secret; (Mt. 6:6).

In a sense, we have two ‘minds’; one is in our head and the other is in our heart.  Thoughts originating in our head are ego, and distract us because they are fear-based, ‘what-if’, doubting, questioning, dividing, judging, reckoning thoughts, grievance thoughts, obscuring, obliterating, blocking our awareness of love’s presence, of compassion, unity, Truth. 

Holy Spirit, Self, dwells within our ‘heart mind’, which is awareness, remembrance, knowing, understanding, caring, loving, accepting, allowing, forgiving.  When the clamour of the outer world — ‘head’ thoughts, or ego thoughts — threatens to overwhelm us and obliterate our awareness of love’s presence, then, entering into our ‘closet’ — our heart-mind, where all is love, stillness, acceptance, letting-go, surrender, peace — enables us to be aware of, and thus, receive and accept the Help that is always, unceasingly, freely, lovingly, immediately available to us here. 

Here, we are safe; here we can release all our fears, doubts, uncertainties, judgements — ego, head thoughts — into the tender, all-knowing, all-loving, trustworthy care of Self.  Here we can commit the ultimate apostasy (from ego’s perspective), because we do not have to rationalise anything, weigh anything in the ‘reckoning balance’; we do not even have to think.  For here, in the ‘closet’ of our heart-mind, we have entered into the dwelling-place of Self, Who knows, and is empowered in, all things; and by so entering, we have surrendered the helm of our life journey into His care.  

When you know everything, you do not need to ‘think’.  What is there to think about when you know, of a total certainty, beyond all doubt (meaning, all doubt is left behind, excluded, dispelled, because in the state of all-knowing, there is no doubt), that ‘all is well’?  Instead of thinking, one has awareness of reality.  That reality is that Papa’s Son, just like His Father, simply is.  That is-ness encompasses truth, peace, joy, love, oneness. 

One does not — cannot — think Truth, or Peace, or Joy, or Love, or Oneness.  One can only have awareness, remembrance, knowing, of Them.  And in that awareness lies the remembrance, the realisation, the knowing beyond all doubt, that we are safe, we are one, in Papa, our true and only Home.  No words, no thoughts can describe this reality.  Hence, ego, ‘head-thoughts’ can have no understanding of truth, eternal reality.  Hence, fear, doubt, uncertainty, loneliness — all that arises from the idea of being separate from Him and from our Self — occupies our apparently separated mind.  There, everything is upside-down, back-to-front, confusing, fearful.

Jesus tells us that there is nothing ‘hidden’ that shall not be revealed.  It will not be revealed by thinking, because revelation is not a thinking process.  It is a heart process, in which we allow He Who knows to reveal to us.  All the while we allow ego to rule our heads we will not know the truth of God and of Self.

Peace, be still,

Brian Longhurst

...one who is filled by Me shall know his own fullness.

(NTI, page 288)

August 18th 2010

Dear Friends,

According to Jesus in ACIM, the Son of God — Christ, Which is not just the man Jesus, because Papa’s Son is pure, eternal spirit, just like His Father, and encompasses us all, regardless of forgetfulness — had a momentary thought of wondering what it would be like to experience things not being what they are.  What they are is Heaven, Eternity, Perfect Love, Joy, Peace; wanting for nothing because at His creation, His Father, Papa, gave Him, shared with Him, extended to Him all that His Father is.

At the moment of wishing to experience otherwise, what we call the Big Bang seemed to occur, and the apparent separation of the Son from His Father in Eternity, or Heaven, began.  The Singularity seemed to end, and duality begin, with the fragmentation of the One Son, Who seemed to now be separate from His Father and from himself, appearing as many.

His wish to experience things not being as they are appeared to have come about.  This could only take form as the opposite of reality, otherwise it would not be different, and would still be the singularity of oneness in His Father Creator, in the Eternity of Heaven; having and being everything; all-empowerment, love, peace and joy; the Identical extension of His Father that He eternally is.

Linear time, instead of the eternal moment of Now, seemed to be happening.  The perfection and changelessness of Eternity was lost to awareness, and in its place all the now fragmented Sonship experienced was constant change, instability; certainty became uncertainty, love became fear.  Everything was turned on its head; confusion and disorder took the place of order. 

The Holy Spirit explains this perfectly, plainly, simply, in Regina Dawn Akers’ wonderful book The Holy Spirit’s interpretation of the New Testament (NTI) — how we, the apparently fragmented, separated Son of God got into this phantasmagorical pickle, and how we can get out of it — as shown in this extract  (with the blessing and courtesy of Regina) from pages 313-314:

   This life that you experience within the world is a gift to yourself.  It is a gift based upon a wish that you could experience something different.  I have told you this before.  I have also told you that it is a perfect gift, for you have given yourself exactly as you asked.  You have the experience that is different from the experience of Heaven.

Ego-dominated mind will vigorously deny this explanation as absurd, impossible, a fairy tale, insanity.  If we are persuaded by this, so be it; and we will continue as before, rising and falling between highs and lows, triumphs and disasters, in this constantly changing, uncertain, un-Heaven-like (the polite version for hell! J), illusory, dream world of time and place.  We will continue lurching from one incarnation to the next, heaping tangles of broken relationships upon broken relationships, murder upon mayhem, war upon genocide, accruing layer of karma upon layer of karma; digging ourself deeper into the pit, until we have come to the end of our tether and decide, sooner or later, to take a leap of faith.

Einstein famously said, ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result’.  The Old Testament, the best record of ancient history we have, going back well over 4,000 years, shows this graphically, as, amongst other things, it is a grim record of warfare, broken trust and ensuing calamity and heartbreak between people, tribes, races. 

It will come as no surprise to any of us that this approach to being manifestly does not work.  Yet we keep on, insanely, trying the same old routine. This is inevitable all the while we perceive ourselves as being in the self-imposed (for God has not done this to us) consciousness of fear.  Now, more of us than ever are saying it is time to take that leap of faith and try something new, something different, something we have resolutely (under ego-domination) been refusing to do: Listen to the Voice for God; the Voice of Reason. 

This is happening now because now is the time for the awakening from the dream of Papa’s beloved Son; the fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy of 22 centuries ago:

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit (the Spirit of Truth) upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions (Joel 2:28.)

and as Jesus prophesied in his parable of the three measures of meal (Mt. 13:33).

Holy Spirit continues, in NTI:

    If this experience of the world is the experience you have asked to receive, why do you suffer from it?  It is because you asked to suffer by asking not to experience Heaven.

    Listen to Me carefully now, for I will tell you why you think the way you do and why you experience that which you experience.   In seeing the desire that has been hidden (i.e. the desire not to experience Heaven), you can decide to change the desire. (The desire not to experience Heaven had to be hidden from our conscious awareness in order for ‘not-Heaven’, i.e. time and place, to appear real, and maintain the illusion as reality.)

    Within the mind now, you will find the desire for the world.  You will know this is your desire if you watch your thoughts.  For your thoughts are about the world, and your thoughts stem from your desire.  I have told you that your mind is split.  The desire for the world is split with the true desire of the Heart.  Both are there, and so both are in your thoughts.

    This is what it means to become an empty shell*.  It is to let go of the world, thoughts of the world and the desire for the world.  This is to let go of the desire for an experience that is different from Heaven.  And this is to open up to accept the experience of Heaven and the truth of Heaven as it is without the desire that it be different.

(My emboldening, underlining and some italic, for emphasis.)

*This is explained on page 288, in which Holy Spirit counsels us to give our (little, persona, ego-dominated, confused) self to Him...

...that any self that is not your truth may be left behind.  Choose not to cling to your self as you perceive yourself to be.  Choose instead to lay yourself aside and willingly become like an empty shell.  That which is emptied shall be filled by Me, and one who is filled by Me shall know his own fullness.

Ego can continue to maintain none of this is possible by loudly proclaiming that ‘I, persona Brian — or persona Theresa, or Fred, or Myrtle, or ... — definitely did NOT ask not to experience Heaven.  Why would I?  How could I?  Therefore it must be One greater than I Who has done this to me.  Therefore, I must be guilty or He would not have done it to me’.

But none of us is persona anybody, divided or separate from everybody else.  We are not a body at all; we are eternal, pure, undivided spirit, just as our Creator Spirit, with one, undivided Mind, the activating agent that supplies the creative energy of Spirit (ACIM, C-1.1:1).  When two (or more) people are in agreement about anything, they are said to be ‘of one mind’, and bodies are of no consequence in this re-cognition, this re-joining: 

The Holy Spirit is in both your minds, and He is One because there is no gap that separates His Oneness from Itself.  The gap between your bodies matters not, for what is joined in Him is always one.

...Your willingness to let illusions go is all the Healer of God’s Son requires.   ...And there will be no loss, but only gain.

(From ACIM, T-28.IV.  My emboldening, underling and italic, for emphasis.)

As the seemingly divided, fragmented Son of God is restored to remembrance of the Truth, and accepts his oneness, the fragments will find themselves to be in agreement because we will see that we are spirit, creating through one Mind, Which is the Mind of the Creator — God.

The peace of God is shining in me now.

Why wait for Heaven?  Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes.  The light is in them now (already).  Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all.  Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well.  The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own.  It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source.  It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home.

The peace of God is shining in you now, and from your heart extends around the world.  It pauses to caress each living thing, and leaves a blessing with it that remains forever and forever.  What it gives must be eternal...

(From ACIM, W-188.  My emboldening, underlining and italic, for emphasis.)

We think we are imprisoned in a limited, frail, mortal body, in a moment of time.  Now is the moment for us all to realise that the prison cell door is unlocked; has never been locked; there has never been a prison, never a cell, never a door closed against us.  We are free, and have always been, because that is the way Papa created His beloved Son, so it is impossible that it could ever be otherwise. Now is the moment of remembrance, for...

...the call has gone out from the heights of Heaven and you begin to see the way my little ones are responding; and they will feel good for doing the right thing.  This will engender more right desire; and the spirit of the Holy One moves upon the consciousness of His children of the Earth and shall lift them up.  Do thou be ready at the doors to bid them welcome unto the great banquet.  There shall be great rejoicing, from the least unto the greatest.  All is well.  Now is the time of fulfilment.  Fear not, but be glad in your hearts.  I make all things new.

(From Diary of a Christ Communicant, November 4^th 1990)

Alleluia! J

Brian Longhurst 

If I allow thoughts of judgement and unforgiveness, they veil my sight, and keep my vision blinded to the Light of Spiritual Discernment.

August 25th 2010

Dear Friends,

Two-thousand years ago Jesus was ‘put to death’ for what was perceived at that time as the blasphemy of affirming the claim to be Christ, the all-empowered-by-Love Son of the all-empowered-by-Love Father Creator, God. (...the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.  Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said... Mt. 26:63, 64.)

Yet he knew that, regardless of any attacks on his body, he was eternal truth, and eternal truth is indestructible, changeless, eternal (J) and cannot die.  He knew that the body he used as a communication device — to bring his message of the truth of our eternal reality to us, his brothers in the Sonship — was nothing more than that.

Because it was nothing more than that — and nothing less — he used it as that, to demonstrate that the truth, because it is true, has to be true for us all or it cannot be true for any, because, in truth there is but one of us. Therefore, the truth, not just for him but for us all, is not in death but in resurrection, not of temporal bodies but of the seemingly fragmented mind of Christ back to remembrance of wholeness as the One, eternal, indivisible Son of the One, eternal, indivisible Father Creator Spirit.

The New Testament states, in various places and ways, to the effect that we are (to become) like him, and perform greater works than he demonstrated, if only we can believe.  It is inevitable that we, all the fragments of the Sonship of God, will be restored to the place of believing, remembering, knowing that that of which he came to remind us is that the truth of our Being is true.  Therefore, anything that does not accord with truth is untruth, an illusion, and we can let it go, release it, from our thinking and our believing.  Such untrue thinking and believing has been a cumbersome burden, leading us endlessly down blind alleys, leaving us hopelessly lost, bewildered, confused, because it has blocked our remembrance and understanding of reality.

Jesus tells us linear time is an illusion, and there is only Eternity, which is not in the ‘future’ but in the only moment there is, which is forever now; that all that appears to have been, is now and will yet appear to be, happened in a single moment, and is over; that it seems to be playing out before us in linear time now because the forgetful, fragmented Son keeps reviewing in his split-off mind what is already over.  Like projecting a film onto a screen and believing the projection is happening ‘now’.  What we have already seen projected onto the screen is the ‘past’, based in judgement, what is yet to be projected is the ‘future’, and what is appearing on the screen ‘now’ is the ‘present’.

The past, based in judgement, keeps repeating itself because it is based in judgement, which is an illusion of ourself that we keep projecting, so it keeps coming back to us.  The only way to break free of that endless loop is through true forgiveness, which will release us from the cycle of birth and death, back to our true and only Home — Papa.

In the past, and to this day, the confused fragments believe what their bodily senses tell them is the truth.  But the truth of what?  Everything the bodily senses tell us seems to be ‘out there’, and everything that is out there is temporal.  If it was of God, it would be eternal because only eternal is of God, and God knows nothing of littleness, fear, guilt, frailty, sickness, death.  He knows only of that which He created, that which, therefore, is, forever, and includes Perfect Love, Peace and Joy, which also are, in reality, uninterruptibly, forever. 

If that is reality, anything that appears otherwise can only be illusion.  So, what our bodily senses are telling us is our experience, and therefore, must be true, is not, actually, true, but illusion; make-believe.  Believing something is true does not make it true, other than in our perception, which, by definition, is flawed.  We can believe whatever we choose to believe, and thus it becomes our perception, regardless of whether it is true.  But what is true, when we come to the place of discerning that it is true, becomes knowledge, which is certainty, not belief or perception.

The Son of God is experiencing separation, fragmentation because He wondered, for a moment, what it would be like if things were not as they are.  Being all-empowered, He was able to call into His presence the experience of things not being as they are; but because it is impossible for things not to be as they forever, unalterably are, this experience is not reality, but a dream, a stage play, a game. 

Peace — the peace of God, which passeth all understanding (Phil. 4:7) — (not to speak of Perfect Love and Joy) is impossible in the presence of fear or guilt, or the holding of grievances; so a world in which fear, guilt or grievances appear to have existence cannot be real.  Since fear, guilt and grievances are all in our mind, so, therefore, is a world, in which they appear to exist and be experienced, only in our mind.  But they are not in the Mind of God, or of His Son, because God and His Son are of one Mind.  So, they can seem to have existence only in a split-off-from-reality part of our mind, such as appears to be the case in a dream, or a fantasy.

Since the Creator Spirit, God, is eternal, and creates only in His likeness, His creation is eternal.  Thus, everything our bodily senses tell us, that we perceive as out there, including our bodies, all of which are temporal, are not of God, and cannot, therefore, be real.

It is easy to observe that in time and place, history repeats itself.  That is because we keep giving back to ourself that which we keep giving/projecting out.  It seems, to our split-off-from-reality, forgetful mind that others give us things — grief, pleasure, an endless array of different experiences, some we label ‘good’ and others we label ‘bad’ — and we give similarly to them.  Yet, if there is but one of us, and all appearances to the contrary, including ‘others’, are just that — appearances to the contrary — we are playing the game we have devised to the full, and are achieving our goal: to experience that which is not real and believe it is real. 

Such a game is not hard for the all-empowered Son of God to play, but it can only ever be a game, since it is impossible for that which is eternally real — because God, the Creator Spirit, created what is forever real as unalterably real — to ever not be real except as fantasy; make-believe; a game.

So if, in our game of make-believe, we keep giving out thoughts of judgement, grievance, condemnation and attack, so will we keep receiving back that which we have given.  The saying ‘What goes around comes around’ is literally true, a Principle of Life of the Father (PLF).  If, instead, we give, or extend forgiveness, love, peace, blessing, that, of a certainty beyond all doubt, is what we will receive back, amplified each time it comes round, or back to us, because creation, which is blessing and love and peace and joy, is forever extending itself, increasing as it gives of itself; for they are of God, the Creator Spirit, Who is forever increasing through the creation process.

If we realign ourself, our thinking, our mind with Him, we become aware, again, of our true Self, Christ, Who is created, by extension, by increase, in the likeness of His Father Creator.  If we return judgement, grievance, condemnation and attack, like for like, so is the experience, the condition, continued, spiralling toward our seeming destruction.

But if we return, or respond to, judgement, grievance, condemnation, attack with forgiveness, love, peace, blessing, steadfastly refusing to continue the downward, destructive spiral, so is it broken, and an upward spiral, toward the Light of Eternal Reality, our true and only Home, is engendered in its place.  This grows and increases with each and every blessing, giving moment, until the shadows of judgement, grievance, condemnation and attack are dispelled in the Light of eternal truth.

It does not matter how long the effects of changing — breaking — the cycle seems to take outwardly, for the actual change is always immediate, according to the desire.  Time is an illusion, a trick, a deception, a distraction, so is irrelevant, and, particularly in this context, is therefore best ignored; otherwise, giving it our attention gives it our reality.  Rather, we will serve ourself and truth well by remembering that only infinite patience brings immediate effects.

When the moment is right — according to the all-knowing, all-empowered, all-beneficent Spirit of Truth, our true Self — that which we have given, to change the cycle, will be reflected back to us from our brother; and all broken relationships will be healed, restored to wholeness, holiness, oneness in Christ, the One Son of the One Father Creator.

In NTI, page 345, the Holy Spirit says Love what you see, even if it does not seem loving.  For it is witness to the process that is you... Treat your brother as you know he Is (not as our bodily senses, devised for seeing only dreams, misperceive him as being) and who he Is will be reflected back upon you.  In modern idiom, What goes around comes around.  Since who our brother Is, is Christ, — the all-loving, all-giving, all-blessing, all-empowered Son of God — for His reality to be reflected back upon us can only be a blessing beyond all Earth-life consciousness imagining.

Jesus also tells us that there are only two possibilities: we are either expressing Love or we are calling for Love. If, with our bodily senses we perceive our brother as not expressing love, then he must be calling for love.  In an upside-down, insane (insane because it is the seeming opposite of reality; if reality is reason, sense, logic, benign, the opposite must be insane) dream world, even expressing love, in all its straightforward intent, is often mistaken by split-off-from-reality minds.  Look what happened to Jesus, whose love was seen as a threat by those in authority in an ego-controlled world.

But calling for love is almost always mistaken, and can be perceived, as attack.  An ego-dominated mind will likely respond to such a perception in like manner: with a retaliatory attack.  Attack does not have to be a physical assault.  Ego will see a brother calling for love as weakness; a loser; a wino; stupid; greedy; unfair; bullying; selfish; indolent; a dangerous criminal...  Just what ego wants: to perpetuate the world of illusions and ensure its continuation yet a little while.

So a retaliation can be simply a judgement; not even spoken — merely thought.  But, even though we may be unaware of it, or do not believe it, our thoughts go out to those at whom they are projected, or directed, because separation of the Sonship from Himself by apparent fragmentation is an illusion.  The projected thought always reaches its target.  Unawareness of that by sender or receiver does not render it not so, and it will impact upon both negatively.  How long it takes to appear to become manifest is irrelevant, since time is irrelevant. Jesus reminds us that the only meaningful way to respond to a call for love is with love.

Some, who may perceive their life to be comfortable, happy, un-improvable, might say, ‘Why would I want to alter anything; this is as good as it gets?’  This is a misperception.  Nothing in time and place, fairyland, is as good as Papa’s Heaven, our true Home, because Heaven is perfect and nothing in time and place is, or ever can be, perfect, because it is temporal.  What seems good in one moment — even one incarnation — is destined to change in a realm founded in changeableness, impermanence. 

If it were permanent it would be real; but only Eternity is real, and that is Heaven, which is as good as it gets, since perfection cannot be improved upon.  But it can be extended, and is extended, eternally, to us, and beyond, by us.  The perfection of Eternity, of Heaven, is so good as to be ineffable — beyond description, beyond experience — though we can get close to it in time and place if we align our thinking, our desire, our mind with the One Mind from which it emanates.

If we are not experiencing the Love, Peace and Joy that is God, we are experiencing illusions; misperceptions.  Jesus reminds us in ACIM that the miracle does nothing, but rather, undoes our misperceptions, our false beliefs, so that the Light of Eternal Truth is no longer obscured from our vision and we are restored by It to fullness of remembrance of Who we really are.  Then the Holy Spirit — the mechanism of miracles — has completed His one purpose, and we are Home, Where miracles have no meaning; for healing is needed only for the sick.

Let us give heartfelt thanks for Papa’s endless Love and blessing upon us all,

Brian Longhurst

The Holy Spirit does not want you to understand conflict; He wants you to realize that, because conflict is meaningless, it is not understandable.

(T-7.VI.6:5)

September 1st 2010

Dear Friends,

Everyone wants to be ‘whole’, but the world of time and place does not know or understand wholeness because, by definition, time and place is separated, divided, split-off, from wholeness.  Wholeness is of God, and God is of Eternity; time and place, and all perceptions thereof, all of which are temporal, cannot be, know or understand wholeness.

Wholeness, because it is of God, is all-encompassing, but is not founded in bodily issues, matters or functionality, though bodies are affected by the absence of wholeness; or, to be more accurate, by the split mind’s forgetfulness of its wholeness.  For it is our mind that is not whole, or one, if there is perception of, and belief in, separation.

That is, separation from our Source — God — Whom we perceive as ‘in Heaven’, and thus, Eternity, and we as not There, but separated from There by some invisible wall, consigned to time and place by some invisible force over which we have no control; and from each other by bodies, which seem to be who we are.  So the focus for our endeavours at well-being, our wholeness, is on bodies, and on conditions outside our control which are perceived as impacting our well-being.  All that cannot be experienced by bodily senses is subject to, cause for, doubt and uncertainty. Doubt and uncertainty engender fear.

Can we ever be free of doubt and uncertainty when the world, in which we place our trust, is uncertain about the existence of our ‘soul’, the essence of our Being?

It is fear that impacts our well-being, our inner peace; and fear is all in the mind.  Yet, still we are distracted from the truth of our Being by outward perceptions rather than turning within.  It is within that remembrance of our true Self, peace, joy, love, our Source are to be found.

It is the ‘conscious’ mind — the split-off part that seems to experience and have awareness of outward appearances — that needs healing, or restoration to remembrance of the wholeness of being, which is one with and in God, in the Eternity of Heaven.

One might observe, “Well, Jesus healed bodily infirmities.  Would Jesus have bothered healing bodies if they are not real?”  But Jesus came to demonstrate his all-empowerment through being whole — i.e. wholly loving, because of his oneness with Papa — himself, to help us remember we are like him.  Since God Is Love, and Is whole, or complete, Jesus could demonstrate wholeness by being, and manifesting all-lovingness.

Love engenders compassion for those labouring under the yoke of misperception about who they really are.  This misperception is of an un-whole, or split, or fragmented, mind, and results in the absence of awareness, or forgetfulness, of the wholeness that, as Papa’s Son, we are.  If we have forgotten who we are, who we are not will appear to be our reality, and since who we are not is of unsound mind, it will result, sooner or later, in unsound bodies.  Even those who enjoy sound health until the end of their time with a body still, inevitably, experience the apparently unsoundest state of all: death.  All of that is a misperception, because neither bodies nor death are real.

Jesus was able to heal unsound bodies (as well as perform exorcisms) because he knew he both had and was wholeness, and was thus able to give, share, extend what was his to his misperceiving brothers.  This was (and remains) effected by the giving, sharing, extending, imparting, or transferring of the wholeness, or remembrance of his mind to the (illusorily) separated, slumbering mind of the seemingly ‘infirm’ brother, by mind-to-mind communing. 

This was possible because there is, in truth, but one mind and Jesus knew this.  He did not believe it; he knew it.  He knew the Truth and it set him free, just as it will set us free when we have chosen, unequivocally, to remember it and espouse it in place of illusion.

This extending of wholeness took effect at a level of mind deeper than conscious mind; of awareness of, or connection with, the wholeness of mind that Jesus was imparting to his brother.  This may sound at best, highly implausible, or completely absurd; impossible, to our ‘conscious’ mind, which focuses mostly on outer illusions, perceiving and believing them to be real.  Which, one might ask, is the more absurd or implausible?

Jesus told me in 1968 that he is attuned to, aware of, me, and all mankind, all the time, and all that is needful for us to be aware of him (and therefore, the Wholeness that he is) is for us to attune with him and he is there, with us — in our awareness — at any time (see SFGS, chapter 3).  Since we are all one in the Sonship, there is actually nothing remarkable about this except to a mind that has accepted the myth of littleness, limitation, separation, as reality.  Then will it seem impossible; but that does not render it untrue.

So, at a level beyond bodily, sensory, conscious awareness — which Jesus knew was nothing, so could not affect him or interfere with his purpose — Jesus was extending the wholeness that was not just his, but of us all, to his apparently infirm brothers, thereby restoring it in them.  So powerful is the love that is wholeness that it was easily able to overcome the seeming barrier of unawareness, by the infirm person, of his own, true, whole, reality.  This was possible because the infirm person believed Jesus could heal him.  It was, as Jesus told those he healed, the faith of the infirm person that made him able to receive of that wholeness, and thus be released from the false perception obscuring his well-being.

Knowing and understanding the will of God — of Whom we, His Son, are a part — means that deep within, regardless of outward forgetfulness, we know and understand the perfection that is ours... 

There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten; where no memory of sin and of illusion lingers still.  There is a place in you which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard.  There is a resting place so still no sound except a hymn to Heaven rises up to gladden God the Father and the Son.  Where Both abide are They remembered, Both.  And where They are is Heaven and is peace.

Think not that you can change Their dwelling place.  For your Identity abides in Them, and where They are, forever must you be.  The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen.  The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within. (T-29.V.1, 2. My emphases.)

...And when we choose to remember that our mind is whole, we will know without thinking about it — just as did Jesus, our brother, our template for wholeness — that functioning in accord, harmony, oneness with that perfect, all-loving Will, will keep us within Its Wholeness. It is the choice for forgetfulness of this Truth, this eternal reality, that has brought the perception of separation, absence from wholeness and its resultant infirmities.

So, Jesus tells us that the miracle does nothing; that, rather, it undoes perceptions of unreality that cause malfunction of mind, and subsequently, body — itself, an aspect of unreality.  He had to come in a body, so he could demonstrate the love and empowerment of the Son of God; that we, his brothers, trapped in forgetfulness, would know that remembering and being restored to reality was not just possible but inevitable, because it is Who we are.

Ego prods us into doing, equipped solely with littleness, forgetfulness, confusion; Jesus and the Holy Spirit counsel us to allow the miracle to undo.  He uses the terms undo, undoes, undoing and undone a combined total of 182 times in ACIM, so we can be sure he means it J.  Here are some extracts where undoes appears: 

 Spirit is in a state of grace forever.

...The miracle worker can only bless them (those experiencing, and believing, the unreality of time and place to be real), and this undoes their distortions and frees them from prison.  (This clearly implies this is an integral aspect of the extending of wholeness to a brother.) (From T-1.III)

The Atonement (the Holy Spirit’s process for restoring us to wholeness) is the device by which you can free yourself from the past as you go ahead.  It undoes your past errors, thus making it unnecessary for you to keep retracing your steps without advancing to your return. (T-2.II.6:4, 5)

For perfect effectiveness the Atonement belongs at the center of the inner altar (our spiritual reality), where it undoes the separation and restores the wholeness of the mind.  (T-2.III.2:1)

The Holy Spirit has the task of undoing what the ego has made.  He undoes it at the same level on which the ego operates, or the mind would be unable to understand the change.  (T-5.III.5:5, 6)

God has lit your mind Himself, and keeps your mind lit by His light because His light is what your mind is.  This is totally beyond question, and when you question it you are answered.  The Answer merely undoes the question by establishing the fact that to question reality is to question meaninglessly.  That is why the Holy Spirit never questions.  His sole function is to undo the questionable and thus lead to certainty.  The certain are perfectly calm, because they are not in doubt.  (From T-7.II.5)

The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them, because He cannot perceive them at all.  They therefore do not exist for Him.  He resolves the apparent conflict they engender by perceiving conflict as meaningless.  I have said before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is, and it is meaningless.  (From T-7.VI.6)

What is healing but the removal of all that stands in the way of knowledge?  And how else can one dispel illusions except by looking at them directly, without protecting them?...   Clarity undoes confusion by definition, and to look upon darkness through light must dispel it. (From T-11.V.2)

The Holy Spirit wants only to make His resolutions complete and perfect, and so He seeks and finds the source of problems where it is, and there undoes it. And with each step in His undoing is the separation more and more undone, and union brought closer.  (T-17.III.6:3, 4) 

...although God does not forgive (because He knows, from His Eternal perspective, there is nothing to forgive), His Love is nevertheless the basis of forgiveness.  Fear condemns and love forgives.  Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to the awareness of God.  For this reason, forgiveness can truly be called salvation.  It is the means by which illusions disappear.  (From W-pII.46.2)

...what are all illusions except false ideas about myself? My holiness undoes them all by asserting the truth about me.  (From W-pII.58.3)

The ego makes illusions.  Truth undoes its evil dreams by shining them away.  Truth never makes attack.  It merely is.  And by its presence is the mind recalled from fantasies, awaking to the real. (From W-pII.332.1)

A miracle is a correction.  It does not create, nor really change at all.  It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false.  It undoes error... (From W-pII section 13.1)

In characteristic manner, following ego's script causes us to perceive everything upside-down, and from the perspective of littleness; the opposite of eternal reality.  Even when it can no longer get us to deny some aspect of Truth — or at least our step-by-step awakening to Truth, by correction of errors of perception, through forgiveness — ego still tricks us, if we are not watchful, into misunderstanding the process.  So, it is easy to perceive miracles as something some enlightened Being does to us.

When all is, in Truth, perfection, there is nothing to do.  The Holy Son of God chose, for an instant, to be confused by illusions.  The Spirit of Truth simply undoes false perception, thereby enabling us to remember our true Self.  This is happening right now, including in linear time.  There is nothing to fear, because we are Love, and the Process of restoration, the GRP, the At-onement, is Love.  Our acceptance, allowing, surrendering (all of which ego will resist strenuously) will enable the process to be completed with ever-diminishing distress, if we are willing to co-operate.

All this is cause for rejoicing, celebrating, joining in singing the New Song,

Brian Longhurst

September 8th 2010

Dear Friends,

Truth is not in text books; it is not outside us, in time and place.  It is within us, and no amount of searching where it is not will ever enlighten us.  Searching for Truth in time and place will bring us false information — which we delude ourself into believing is true — because it is illusory. This will distract us from inner Illumination, and is the outer darkness of which Jesus spoke, because all the while we believe and perceive time and place as our reality, the Light of Eternal Truth is hidden from our vision; not by God, or anyone else, but by ourself.

Going within to find the Truth of Eternity — God — requires desire and commitment from us.  Without those prerequisites we cannot find It, because outer distractions will... distract us.  It does not require searching, because It is already with us.  Our inability to see It is like walking around with a sack over our head.  That sack is made of grievances and judgements.  The way to get the sack off our head is forgiveness.  Here is what Jesus says about forgiveness: 

Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred.  It does not pardon sins and make them real.  It sees there was no sin.  And in that view are all your sins forgiven.  What is sin, except a false idea about God’s Son?  Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go.  What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God. (ACIM, W, page 401)

It is noteworthy that he says all our (illusorily perceived) sins are forgiven.  If we hold a grievance, or judgement, against a brother, it is against ourself that the grievance, along with its attendant negative energy, has its impact.  The projected grievance does not leave its source; ourself.  In like manner, if we extend forgiveness to a brother, the forgiveness does not leave its source, so we, ourself, are forgiven.

When the sack is off our head, the Truth is there, with us, as It has always been.  The difference is that now, we are aware of it.

Truth and Eternity, and God, and Love, and Peace, and Joy are all One, and are all Now.  There is no waiting, or conditions to meet, before Truth is ours.  We are Truth, but pretending, making believe, that we are something else.  Jesus said ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’, and this was true for him because he remembered that it was the truth.  As soon as we choose remembrance of the Truth of Eternity (which sets us free from illusions) as our reality, instead of choosing to remain stuck in the illusion of time and place, we begin the process, led by the Spirit of Truth, our True Self, of removing the sack from our head. 

Then, when it is gone, we will see that Truth, Now, has always been with us, and that it was only our determination to have our game of make believe continue as our ‘reality’ that prevented us from awareness of It.  It is like children playing make believe out in the woods.  Dad calls us in for supper, but we don’t want to go; it seems like too much fun.  Papa is calling us Home, right now, and He has prepared for us a celebratory banquet to welcome us.  This banquet is unlike anything we can experience out in the woods, unsurpassed is it for its capacity to fill us with joy, fulfilment, happiness, love, security, peace, oneness, contentment.  It is a feast to sate the soul, indeed.

‘Truth’ seems, to our ego-dominated mind, like an abstract concept, impossible to pin down and experience with changeless certainty as something palpable.  It would be, in an upside-down world where illusion appears as reality and reality appears as illusion, wouldn’t it?

But Truth is the reality of What we Are, and we will experience it as our Being — again — when we have renounced and repudiated illusion as our chosen reality; just as Jesus experienced it as his true Being, with all the joy and blessing it brings.  Truth is a Living phenomenon, and transcends perception and all time and place experience, empowering us, Papa’s Son, with all the empowerment He gave His Son when He created him in His own likeness.  Just as Truth is the living reality of Papa’s Being, so is it with that of His Son.

Choosing to live in awareness of, allowing, accepting — surrendering our ego resistance to — Truth means that Truth becomes, again, our eternal reality, just as it has, in truth J, always been.  This happens in the Holy Instant, which is the experience, the awareness, of the eternal moment of Now, which is ours, once more, the moment we choose it to be our reality.  We do not have to ‘do’ anything for this to be restored to our awareness, to become our Beingness again.  All that is asked of us is to choose for it to be so; the Spirit of Truth, our all-knowing Self, does all the rest.  Or, to be more accurate, undoes all the rest.

This may all seem very hypothetical; a mere concept, which we can choose to believe or not.  But such a view is a false perception, made and perpetuated by ego for its own continuance within the unreality of illusion.  The Holy Spirit may not be visible to eyes devised solely for perceiving illusions, and with no capacity for discerning Eternity, but most of us are able to accept that ‘beyond’ time is a state of Being to which we refer as Eternity, even if it is perceived as an indiscernible ‘mystery’.  Eternity, assuredly, is not ‘physical’, or of time and place, so it can but be a state of ‘mind/spiritual’ Being, or awareness, or reality. 

The ‘Holy Spirit’ is of that state of Being, and the Holy Spirit has His (or Its; either is merely a word, a symbol representing a reality beyond the symbol) dwelling place within our mind — even our seemingly separate, individual mind.  Every time we have a selfless, benign, loving, compassionate, caring, giving, sharing thought, with the best interest of the person, circumstance or event to which such a thought is directed, this is the Holy Spirit part of our mind in operation.  Every time we have a selfish, cruel, greedy, hurtful, unloving, uncaring, spiteful, fearful, confused, doubtful, uncertain, judgemental, unforgiving, malevolent (quite a list, isn’t it!?) thought, this is the ego-controlled, split-off-from-Truth part of our mind in operation.

It is worth noting that selfless is a term used to define benignly-motivated thoughts/deeds.  This indicates the absence of input from ego, littleness, forgetfulness; selfish is a term used to describe ego-motivated thoughts/deeds. The 'self' part of these opposite terms, it hardly needs stating, refers to little, illusory, persona-self.

Truth is Now, the Holy Instant, the eternal, unchanging always; illusions are of the ever-changing, passing-away, crumbling, decaying time and place.  Playing the game of make believe, we choose not to notice this, though it is all around us; part of little self.  It is the inescapable effect of choosing the impossible as possible, in which peace — part of our true Self — is ever-elusive, because fear, never far from the surface of our ego-thoughts, bars the way to our awareness of the peace that ever-abides within, and is an inextricable part of, us.

Jesus said, If ye continue in my word . . . ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (Jn. 8:31, 32). Truth and Knowing, or Knowledge, are hand-in-glove; mutually inclusive; indivisible. With the willingness, the choice, the desire, the decision for knowing the Truth, the Spirit of Truth — Self — removes the sack from our head, revealing What has always been with us, for It is What we Are. 

It may appear to take time for awareness that the sack has been removed to sink in, and of that revelation to become apparent to us.  This does not mean it has not been removed; it means we are slow to become aware of its removal because we are so inured in false perception, and, out of fear of what we perceive as the unknown, cling to the familiarity of blindness to Knowing/Truth. 

However, Self begins His work of shining the Light of Truth into our split-off-from-Truth mind the instant we ask, desire, choose; and, one step at a time, at a pace He knows is best for us, Knowing/Truth becomes, again, our awareness, our reality, our true Being.

This Knowing is of Truth, for Truth is all there is.  It is the Truth of Eternity, for that is the only Truth there is.  All other appearances, we have made up.  The Knowing that is Truth does not require learning, researching, acquiring, testing, proving, for it is already within us; it is What we Are.  It should not be mistaken for the gathering of information about the illusion of time and place, whose so-called laws — of physics, chemistry, biology — seem to rule our lives. 

These were nothing to Jesus, because he saw past their unreality to the Truth, which he Knew, because he had remembered, and it set him free of the shackles to limitation and death.  And when we have accepted, allowed, ceased resisting the Light of Eternal Truth that Self shines on our mind, we will begin the process of remembering that, like Jesus, we Know.

Knowing requires no thought because it is What we are, and have always been.  It is Knowing that we are the Truth and the Life, because that is What God is, that sets us free, from our self-inflicted wounds of judgement, grievance, doubt, fear, guilt, limitation and death.  The doorway to Knowing the Truth, and the freedom it restores to us, is forgiveness.  Forgiveness heals us from those self-inflicted wounds.

Knowing, the Truth about our Self — that we are Papa’s One beloved Son, Christ, (appearing, for a moment, as many) — is revealed to us in the Holy Instant of Now, when we abandon our belief in time and place.  It cannot happen until we are willing to do this because Now, the Holy Instant, is incompatible with time and place; or, put another way, Truth and illusion are mutually exclusive.  We exclude ourself from Knowing Truth by clinging to belief in illusions.

When we remember that Knowing Truth is What we Are, we are instantaneously released from guilt and fear, into perfect Peace; the Peace of God, which passes all understanding, awareness and experience by an ego-dominated mind.

Time is the ultimate symbol of the illusion of separation, or unreality, because it excludes awareness of the Holy Instant of the eternal Now, which has no part in time.  It is impossible to understand the Holy Instant from an intellectual perspective, because that perspective requires thinking, and thinking means not Knowing.  Knowing is not a thinking process because Knowing is revealed to us from within ourself, by our Self, and is, and has always been, there.  We have simply obscured It from ourself. 

The Holy Instant is the Spirit of Truth, Self, shining the Light of Revelation upon what has always been our Reality, and our re-cognising It.  That Light restores us to remembrance of our Knowledge of Truth.  This does not require, nor is it, thinking activity.  Thinking is not Knowing, but surmising, inferring, believing, based on past perceptions.

When that moment of revelation comes to us, we simply Know Truth, and we Know that That is What we Are.  Thenceforward all that we have previously believed to be true, and therefore made our truth, is seen as the unreality that it is, and from that moment, we are free. 

Jesus says, Revelation induces a state in which fear has already been abolished (T-1.I.28:2).  He also says, Revelation induces complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear (T-1.II.1:1).  Doubt and fear will return, initially, after a moment of Revelation, because of our oscillation between Truth and illusion.  But with steadfast commitment to Truth, belief in illusion gradually diminishes and disappears completely; and with it, fear and doubt.

Ego, calling upon the false witnesses of sensory perception (remember, bodily senses are devised as false witnesses, to convince ourself that unreality is real; particle physicists now accept this as correct), will continue to use intellect (one of its most powerful tools in the split-off-from-Truth mind) to argue, seeking to dissuade us from Knowing the Truth of our Eternal, unlimited, immortal, indivisible, all-empowered, innocent (guiltless), invincible Self.  But ego knows nothing of reality; only of unreality. 

That is like living deep in the darkness of a cave and arguing against the existence of sunlight, birdsong, rainbows, spring flowers.  Those who have seen and experienced the Light simply Know of Its reality; those who have not cannot understand it, but those who have not seen it, yet are willing to believe it, will have it revealed to them.  Those who are unwilling will not; until they change their mind and become willing.

To faith and trust in Self!

Brian Longhurst

We are taught the meaning of the word ‘commitment’,

but we are never taught about the power that is made available by making a total commitment.*

* From chapter two of Through the Eyes of Love, Book Two, by Michael Roads.  Due for publication in November 2010.  http://www.michaelroads.com/

September 15th 2010

Dear Friends,

Most of us fragments of the Sonship believe in littleness as our reality (if we did not, we would no longer be fragments, but restored to wholeness, oneness), and rely on littleness for solutions to all our perennial problems; problems of our own making, because not only do we not understand the Laws of God, or PLFs, we are trying to function, and solve problems, using upside-down ‘laws’.  These laws are laws of time and place, which itself is the antithesis of Eternity and the Laws which govern Its perfect, smooth functioning; the Laws of God; the Laws of Eternal Reality.

The laws of time and place are devised, in true, upside-down, back-to-front manner, to cause problems, not solve or prevent them; to keep us experiencing the illusion that that which is not is that which is.  For example, the primary law of time and place is death, and the sub-laws that support it are disease, decay, degeneration, disharmony, antagonism, attack — to name but a few. 

To survive within the conditions made by these ‘laws’ requires perpetual defence, being on guard, fighting off the attack of myriad agents for the fulfilment of such laws: microbial pathogens, working to poison us, either by direct infestation or via our food; poisonous reptiles and invertebrates, whose bite or sting can be fatal, disabling, or, at least, discomforting; multitudinous predators, surviving by eating multitudinous prey.

Then there is the environment; constantly changing, unstable, bringing earthquakes, fires, floods, droughts — which can lead to famine, and thus, more disease and death.  We try hard to ignore this ubiquitous array of constant threats, and even persuade ourselves they are part of a natural environment, created by God, to maintain balance. 

We blame ourselves for messing-up that supposedly God-created environment, and say it is our interference that causes so much of what it unleashes upon us.  That is undoubtedly a contributing factor, but is secondary, and has only become contributory in recent generations.  By contrast, in Heaven, our Home, we need no defenses because there is no attack; we are eternally safe, and therefore, at uninterruptible peace.

Meanwhile, if, in our constant search for answers we continue looking in the wrong place, no doubt we will overturn any semblance of tenuous balance to the point of irreversible collapse, leading to mass extinction of vast numbers of life-forms, including our little selves.  If we believe in, and rely upon, upside-down littleness for answers, we will receive upside-down answers, all the while causing more problems as a result of our very, upside-down thoughts and actions. 

If we put our faith in the changeable — time and place — what we will experience is change: birth, disease, decay, degeneration and death; interspersed with fleeting, changing moments of relief from the onslaught, and seeming happiness, though the prospect of that is only possible for a minority of fragments.

If, instead of all this litany of self-inflicted threats to our survival and well-being, we call for help to the only Source of meaningful Help, we will immediately be given Help that will enable us to start seeing things the right way up.  This will signal the beginning of the end of what has actually been the cause of our seeking in the wrong place: ego; ‘the prince of this world’ (Jn. 14:30), the accuser, the destroyer.

Such a change of direction in our seeking for answers will, initially cause confusion; a chaos time.  This requires steadfast holding fast, in faith, as apparently mixed signals reach us.  Things may appear to be contradictory to all we have believed true.

In ACIM, T-30.I, Jesus reminds us that in all our decisions we are never alone; that they are all made in consultation either with ego (illusion, unreality) as our adviser, or the Holy Spirit (Truth, reality). We may think we make decisions alone, based on our own ‘good’ judgement, but Jesus reminds us that the only good judgement is the relinquishment of judgement.  This is because judgement is the basis upon which the illusion of time and place is perpetuated, and time and place, being the apparent opposite of Heaven, is hell.

Ego’s input is so subtle that most of the fragments are not aware it is there, insinuating ‘unKingdomly’, unenlightened thoughts and misperceptions in our split-off-from-Truth minds.  We therefore believe all judgements and decisions are ‘our own’.  This is a mistake, so in that same section of ACIM, Jesus counsels that we say to ourself: 

Today I will make no decisions by myself (because in effect, that means they are being made under advisement of ego).

If I make no decisions by myself, this is the day that will be given me.

What can I lose by asking?

To be sure we are clear about Whom we are asking for guidance in our decision-making, he says:

You will not make decisions by yourself whatever you decide. For they are made with idols (ego-constructs) or with God.  And you ask help of anti-Christ (ego) or Christ (or the Holy Spirit), and which you choose will join with you and tell you what to do. (My emphasis.)

But this takes practice to ensure that we place ourself within true protection from the ravages of fear.  When this has been achieved, the sorry dream of judgment has forever been undone... and this practising will ensure its undoing.

Your day is not at random.  It is set by what (i.e. ego or Christ/Holy Spirit/Self) you choose to live it with, and how the friend whose counsel you have sought perceives your happiness.

If we choose ego as our adviser, sooner or later it inevitably arrives at misery, not happiness.  Jesus goes on to say:

Nothing can be caused without some form of union, be it with a dream of judgment or the Voice for God. Decisions cause results because they are not made in isolation.  They are made by you and your adviser (i.e. ego or Christ/Holy Spirit/Self), for yourself and for the world as well.  The day you want you offer to the world, for it will be what you have asked for, and will reinforce the rule of your adviser in the world.  Whose kingdom is the world for you today?  What kind of day will you decide to have?

It needs but two who would have happiness this day to promise it to all the world.  (Because we extend, radiate the Light within, or project the misery of judgement, guilt, fear, grievance — what we are/have chosen to be — outward, to the world around us).

Asking Holy Spirit/Self for His Help in all our decision making costs nothing, though ego would persuade us it is costing us our freedom; our independence, our identity.  But listening to ego has cost us that. Freedom to Be Who we really Are is the only true freedom, and unless or until we are willing to try it, we will never experience or know the Truth of this statement, and the Truth of our unlimited, all-loving, all-empowered Self. 

When we decide without Holy Spirit, or Jesus, as our adviser, our decisions are based on our past experience, which is all we, under the constraints of ego, are aware of.  But the GRP is transforming us, waking us to the eternal Now, the Holy Instant, of which ego and little self know nothing, having forgotten Eternity and our God-given, irrevocable place There.  It is irrevocable because what God has given, He never takes away, though we are at free will to throw it away — until we remember Who we Are, and gladly accept it back. 

With our mind open to acceptance of Their guidance, advice, leadership, protection, we are saved from myriad, repeated errors.  Errors prolong time; decisions, taken under True Guidance collapse time, ensuring the hastening of our restoration to Self. 

Here is an example:

Jesus counselled me in 1968 not to 'go out' looking for people with whom to fellowship meaningfully, productively, constructively, on my desire for the Kingdom of Heaven, because I did not know who, or where, they were; that, rather, if I placed myself in his care and guiding, he would bring those whose hearts he knew (and I didn't) to me, so there could be mutual resonance, spiritual growth and loving fellowship. That was amongst the most helpful bits of practical counsel he has ever given me, and I have never forgotten it.  Although I have not always abided by it (so great was, and is, my zeal for 'spreading the good news of the Kingdom'), I have reduced the number of repetitions of mistakes in this respect by an exponential factor.

The fact is, most of us, even those of us who are dedicated, committed followers of the path Home to Papa, claim we are willing to follow the Voice for God, etc., etc., do not consult Him on every decision.  And, as stated above, from T-30.I: 

You will not make decisions by yourself whatever you decide.  For they are made with idols or with God.  And you ask help of anti-Christ or Christ, and which you choose will join with you and tell you what to do.

Unless we are consciously, actively, aware of, and mind-retrained to, this — something that requires commitment and determination, and time to achieve — there are plenty of moments in every day when the other adviser (ego, or anti-Christ, as he calls it in this quote) will slither its way unnoticed back into our thought/behaviour patterns.  None of us is immune to this until we are fully awake, and there is no more ego left in us, so in the interim the need for vigilance for the Voice for God cannot be overemphasised.

As it says in NTI, page 414:

The Mind is one.  The (True) desire of the Heart is only one.  The Spirit of God is one, and this is your holy truth.  Accept in willingness all that you do know (in our right Mind, by allowing Self to restore us to Christ Mind), and by faith, that which has never been true shall fully and joyously be let go.

If inner peace is our objective, we must release, relinquish, let go, of our repetitive dream — the terrible nightmare of separation — of things appearing to be as they are not, because it is past, was over in an instant.  It does not seem to be over, or in the past; it seems to be happening to us ‘now’.  But that is all part of the illusion, because we are, under ego dominion, reliving, revisiting, re-viewing it, over and over, just like watching a movie that was filmed in the past but, projected onto the screen — the world, or time and place — appears to be happening as we re-view it, even though it has already gone from our present, our eternal Now. 

History, or the re-viewing of the movie, keeps repeating itself because we have not, yet, forgiven it, and ourself, and relinquished it.  It was never real and never actually happened.  So, once we open our eyes, our true vision, our right Mind to this Truth of Eternity, we find forgiveness is not hard, but the easiest thing ever, because, as we reminded ourself last week:

Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred.  It does not pardon sins and make them real.  It sees there was no sin.  And in that view are all your sins forgiven.  What is sin, except a false idea about God’s Son?  Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go.  What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God. (ACIM, W, page 401.)

Let us give thanks for our restoration to Love and Light,

Brian Longhurst

“If you knew who walks beside you at all times, on this path that you

have chosen...you could NEVER experience fear or doubt again.”

(T-18.III.3)

September 22nd 2010

Dear Friends,

Most of the slumbering fragments believe that when we ‘die’, we go to Heaven (or hell J).  But we only ‘get’ to Heaven by waking up to the remembrance that we are already There.  Heaven is Eternity, so dying is part of the dream that we are not There.

So what happens when we ‘die’?  Dying is of bodies, which are not real because they are not eternal; and none of us is a body, regardless of how many different bodies we have dreamed we are, over countless apparent incarnations. Essentially, then, nothing happens, since dying is part of the dream of unreality, of separation, and if we have not awakened from the dream before we lay aside our body, it means we are still asleep, so we dream we lay aside our body, and remain asleep. 

It is now widely accepted and understood that we make our own reality while with a body.  Nothing changes when we lay aside our body because it is not bodies that make reality, it is mind.  Mind is not contained in, nor restricted by, bodies, though the fragmented, confused Sonship has convinced itself that it is.  So mind does not die, though until we are willing to open it and allow Self to shine the Light of Eternal Truth, to enlighten it again, dispelling all the shadows of death, guilt, fear, judgement, grievance, hate, we limit it to misperceptions of littleness.  

God is Perfect Love, and Jesus, His ‘Anointed Messenger’, tells us he came not to judge the world but to save it (Jn. 12:47).  This is because Perfect Love does not judge; instead, it sees there is nothing to judge.  We have believed we are ‘conceived in sin, born in sin, live in sin and die in sin’ for all too long, but now, the infallible, unstoppable Truth, the Source of which is the Creator Spirit, is being poured out upon us, lovingly, gently, tenderly, calling us to wakefulness.

This will appear to take time, but that is of no consequence, because time is already over.  We are simply re-viewing our mad moment.  Time to turn off the projector and leave the cinema, getting back out into the bright Light of The New Day that even now is dawning!  While the GRP proceeds to unfold, still there are many fragments that are unaware of the Call.  They will continue believing that God is a god of judgement and punishment, to be feared and hopefully, ignored; until they become aware that they actually are not sinners, worthy of punishment, but are merely mistaken.

So, having made our reality here, with a body, according to what we have chosen to believe, we continue to make our reality in what many call the ‘afterlife’.  It is important to understand that we make what will become our afterlife experience according to our beliefs, desires and understanding here and now, i.e. while still with a body.

And, if we don’t desire, and choose, to attune our mind with the Truth of Eternity during a given ‘persona event’, we come back to a new persona/body, bringing the seed memory of our misperceptions with us, to either choose for Truth next time around, or further compound the karma into a yet greater tangle.  The choice is always ours, at any and every moment; but the longer we leave it, the more entangled it is likely to become, making the choice for Truth even harder than we previously perceived it to be.

Many, who have professed no belief in an afterlife, find themselves unable to accept that they are, in their own perception, ‘dead’, and find themselves in a self-made — with their fragmented, separated-off-from-Truth, subconscious mind — replica of their Earth-life circumstances.  Others, who know they have ‘passed over’ but are still unaware of Who they really Are — Papa’s one, eternal, all-knowing, all-empowered, all-loving Son — find themselves in pleasant surroundings, but have, at least for an indeterminate period, no desire for ultimate reality (which, of course, is the only reality there is, or can ever be). 

This state of self-limiting awareness is referred to in Anthony Borgia’s book Life in the World Unseen as ‘the Summerland’.  They are simply taking time out after making a less than joyful experience of their time with a body. . .  again, perhaps.

The most important aspect of our afterlife experience is, that, having left behind the heavy, dense carapace of a ‘physical’ body, we have the opportunity to meet with, and learn from, visitors from the Realms of Light — including Jesus — to whatever ‘less enlightened mansion’ we might find ourself in.  Such meetings help us grow in understanding of Who we really Are, realise where we might have missed chances to grow spiritually, and plan more effectively our next act, to ensure we call the right opportunities into our presence to facilitate progress in awakening.

I once met an adherent to the Pentecostal belief system, who had been raised in a large, strict, Roman Catholic family, and she told me of her brother, who had ‘died’.  She was taken out of the body to visit him, burning in the fires of hell.  She was able to see him from a safe place across a gulf.  He cried out to her in his agony, but she was powerless — so she believed, as a result of her own indoctrination — to help him.   She pleaded with me to repent and become a member of the Pentecostal sect, lest this become my fate also. 

So, what would induce anyone to believe, and thus impose upon himself, such a fate?  No doubt both brother and sister had read the parable of Jesus recorded in Lk. 16: 19-31, and perceived this as the destiny of all sinners, encouraged and schooled in such insane beliefs by the religious institutions that we, the fragmented Sonship, have constructed as false witnesses to our upside-down beliefs.  The brother had lapsed from the Catholic faith many years previously; yet, so deeply, subliminally indoctrinated was he in this consciousness of fear that his lapsed status caused him to believe this was his inevitable destiny.  Thus, he, not God, made it so.

I have no doubt there are untold numbers of other fragments who have imposed such a fate upon themselves — for it is certain Papa, the God of Perfect Love and Peace, has not done it to them; neither has he who said he came not to judge the world, but to save it.  Who else is there with power to do this to us but ourself, with delusions of littleness, sinfulness, guilt, unworthiness, with the support of those false witnesses to our misperceptions of self?

What is to be done to help such . . . and, in so doing, help ourself?

We can commune, mind-to-mind; since there is, in Truth, but one Mind, communing with Self is — if we can but believe — easy.  What could we say, mind-to-mind (for we do not need to utter the words out loud), to our brothers, so profoundly lost, wandering in such a terrible, fearful ‘wilderness’?  What would we have a loving, caring, wiser, more enlightened, more awake, more empowered brother say to us, were we to perceive ourself in such a plight?  There are several examples of forgetfulness described above, but in Truth, there is but one plight: we have forgotten Who, and Where, we Are.

To hear the Truth when self-delusion has taken us on a journey to nowhere, or to use Jesus’ terminology, outer darkness, assuredly makes sense.  But when such delusion causes one to believe oneself in outer darkness so fearful that one has become fearful of everything — including the Light of Eternal Truth — gentleness, love, care is needful, to prevent further trauma, resulting from not knowing what to believe.  We need have no concern, for we have Help, Who knows and understands everything, including the heart and mind of the lost soul.  So, we can leave all to Him, Who never fails; Who is able to help, for that is His only purpose, given and empowered by God Himself.

If we are willing to help those lost and distressed in fear —whether still with a body, or having previously laid it aside — we can entrust the fulfilment of our desire to bring relief and release into the care of Self, Who knows our heart, knows our intent, and will empower the moment for us.  It is just as Jesus says: ...take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.   For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. (Mt. 10: 19, 20.)  If we speak from the heart, and our heart is with God, it is inevitable that it will be so.

So, what could, for example, have been said to the burning brother is, “Bless you; peace be with you.  Come to me, in the name, and by the authority of, Jesus of Nazareth, who has all power over all evil, which cannot resist the power of his holy name.”  Careful selection of words that would be meaningful to him would enable him to believe and accept them, thus trust them to release him from his self-imposed damnation.

By desiring to help our brothers in distress of any kind we desire to help ourself, and so do we progress toward remembrance of our reality, and it becomes our experience as we progress.  This progress unfolds before us as we take each step toward the Light.  The journey is actually already complete, and we are — as we have always been — at Home.  But, having chosen the path of forgetfulness, we have to retrace our steps, back through the wilderness of forgetfulness and dark illusion, toward the Light. 

This has to be, for most of us, a one step at a time progress, because of our ego-inculcated fear of, and lack of trust in, the unknown.  But the pace of those steps — and thus the degree with which Self can collapse time for us — is dictated by our desire, and our willingness, to co-operate with Self, by surrendering our ego leasehold on life back into His trustworthy care.

Grieving when a loved one ‘dies’ prolongs the dream, because it is holding onto a grievance against the dream of time and place, birth and death.  We are so inured in the concept of separation that grieving over such a ‘loss’ is second-nature to us; but it is not first-nature, and we can unlearn the second, false, nature, by reminding ourself that separation is not only unreal, but impossible.  We can turn grieving into celebration, that the laying aside of bodies — a little mound of clay, as Jesus refers to it — is not, cannot be, separation, and re-train our mind into awareness that the loved one is an inseparable part of the indivisible One Mind of Which we all Are, eternally, an indispensible part.

Communing, speaking, attuning with the mind of that ‘departed’ loved one is actually easier — if we are willing to allow it to be — after their apparent demise than when they were ‘in-carcas-erated’.  This is because bodies compound the dense veil through which we try to view and commun(icat)e with the reality of our oneness. When one of the communing parties has laid aside his dense ‘mound of clay’, the veil has been partially lifted, or thinned, between them, simply because one, at least, has become dis-encumbered from that clay. 

We have to use, and are limited by, words, when endeavouring to commun(icat)e with an embodied brother.  It is actually feelings, not words, that most meaningfully convey our intent toward our brothers.  Words are poor substitutes for feelings — especially when ego is constantly working to downgrade use and understanding of words and language — but we must use words, because feelings are so hard to convey/receive when both fragments are ‘clay-bound’. This is why the world is at loggerheads, because words are so frequently misunderstood and therefore, mistrusted.

But in my own experience, communing with loved ones — in fact, anyone — no longer with a body, is immeasurably easier because they perceive the emanations we radiate toward them from our ‘heart-mind’, and words become redundant.  If we try to belie our intent with false words, we can get away with it all too often with embodied brothers, but this is not possible when they are no longer encumbered with a body.

We radiate our intent toward people, places, situations, circumstances, without speaking a word.  Those sensitive enough — which animals and plants are, because they are unencumbered with fear-induced guile — to detect our intent, know exactly what we mean, without a single word being spoken.  This is what is meant by mind-to-mind communing.  This is real commun(icat)ion, and when we have remembered Who we really Are, and have laid aside guilt, fear, grievances — which is what happens when we forgive our brothers and ourself for illusions, and thus become released from them — there will be no perceived cause for us to hide our true Being and true intent behind words that do not reflect our intent.

This is what true prayer is: opening our inner Being to, and re-joining with, God, or Jesus, or the Spirit of Truth — Self — and, in fact, all our brothers in the Sonship.  And why should — and how could — it not be so, since there is but one of us, in our Father, the Creator Spirit?

Such communing is good practise for remembering our oneness, and an invaluable tool in our journeying back to that eternal Oneness.  We can only become one when we have abandoned illusions, dreams of guilt and fear, and let them go, remembering they are unserviceable to us.  Allowing others to persuade us that all such communing, or attuning, or ‘praying’, other than with God and/or Jesus, is sinful — trafficking with satan — limits us; and that is not our Truth, because in Truth we are unlimited; we are free.  Right Now; for there is only Now.  Alleluia J.

To our awareness and experience of peace, joy and love, uninterruptible and eternal,

Brian Longhurst.

Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help,
regardless of the form it takes.

                                                                             ACIM (T-12.I.3:3)

September 29th 2010

Dear Friends,

We can pursue one of two possible objectives while seeming to sojourn in time: to perpetuate apparent separation, or to set out on our ‘journey without distance’ back to Oneness in Eternity.  As previously discussed, that journey does not begin after we have laid aside our body; it begins here, within the illusion — in time and place.

According to Jesus in ACIM, God has but one Son, indivisible from God and from himself, other than in a fantasy, a dream, an illusion.  Here, in that dream, we are one, appearing as many.  Only when ‘we’ have ALL been restored to oneness of mind — Christ Mind — will we be free.

We have to break the ‘iron band’ of limitation that we believe is restricting us to time and place consciousness, to a so-called ‘physical’ realm of awareness.  There is, in reality, no difference, no barrier between us — as we perceive ourselves imprisoned in, limited by, a body — and our brothers, our loved ones who have laid aside the burden, the carapace, the stricture known as a body.

In 1 Cor. 13:7 Paul reminds us that  Love... believeth all things...

It is the ego-indoctrinated unbelieving, scepticism — cynicism, even — of the fragmented, confused, upside-down, bewildered Sonship that keeps him imprisoned in the chaos of guilt, fear, doubt, grievance, judgement, unforgiveness, mortality, unbelief. These are just some of what Jesus tells us that following the wrong script, the script, or yoke, of unbelief, does to us: For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders... (Mt. 23:4).  Alternatively, he counsels us: Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me... and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Mt. 11:29, 30.)

Such a switch of allegiance will transform our mind — and our life — from darkness, despair, doubt, depression, ignorance, limitation, fear of ‘death’, forgetfulness. . . to enlightenment, inner peace, joy of Life Eternal, wisdom, empowerment in all things, Knowledge (not to be confused with gathering ‘information about unreality’, that we mistakenly call knowledge).  For Knowledge is of Its Source — Eternity, or God — whereas researching the temporal is focusing on, believing in, giving reality to, that which we have made up, and which is the opposite of Reality.  It is only possible to know Reality; we can only believe unreality is real, and therefore perceive it as real.

It is dogged belief in unreality, and therefore, in denial of — or, at least, doubt and uncertainty about — Reality, that keeps us a faithless and perverse generation. (Mt. 17:17.)  

If — or, more precisely — when we choose the path to Oneness, we realise that oneness cannot be partial.  Oneness is allness, wholeness, completeness; no-one and no living thing is excluded.  Until all is included we cannot know and experience inner, eternal, uninterruptible, perfect peace.  We cannot exclude one against whom we hold a grievance, or unforgiveness.  This includes those presently with a body and those who have laid aside their bodies...  

Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. (Mt. 5:25)

Ego can only exist in, and exercise dominion over, a mind that believes in separation, so the awakening to oneness is its death knell. Throughout the supposed separation, ego, through its institutionalised constructs, has been teaching and preaching separation, including from our loved ones who have returned to the etheric counterpart of the ‘physical’, Earth-life awareness.

The restoration to oneness therefore requires us to ‘agree with’ not only our ‘adversaries’ with a body, but also with those who have left their body behind.  We can do this by following Jesus’ counsel: Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. (Mt. 5:44)

Being ‘no longer with a body’ is no block to such being able to receive our forgiving, blessing, loving thoughts that we direct toward them.  Oneness is all-inclusiveness that can only exist when all is forgiven and released, so that love — the only reality — can replace grievance, judgement, fear, guilt, hate.  Being ‘no longer with a body’ is also no block to our loved ones in spirit receiving our loving, blessing commun(icat)ing with them, or our receiving theirs to us. 

I recently received an email from ‘M’, who said she was listening to an evocative song about loved ones who have laid aside their bodies: 

When I was listening to it this morning on the way to work, the deeper meaning suddenly sunk in and in my head, I heard MY name (and the loving nicknames they had for me) being called by my loved ones in spirit, all simultaneously: ... M***** J*****!  Missy! Suzie Q! ... and I could see them (Grandma, mom & Uncle Jack) cheering that I finally “got it”.

I wistfully wish it had been something I actually heard but... it was something I imagined. Even so, it was a healing thought , picturing them in my head, cheering me on.

Here is what I was inspired to reply:

We, the fragmented, somnambulant Sonship, have been so inured in unreality for so ‘long’, in linear time terms, that we believe it is reality, and that Reality is unreality.  Our loved ones in spirit may not yet — like us — have fully awakened to the eternal wakefulness, and may need another incarnation (or more) before fully waking to Oneness in Eternity, but they are still our brethren in the Sonship, and still love us, more than ever, as their acceptance of life continuing, beyond the laying aside of physical bodies, has taken place.

These loved ones are aware of us at a soul — or mind — level, and can receive our thoughts directed toward them at least as well as anyone with a body hears us when we speak to them.  These excarnate loved ones communicate with us in like manner; by directing their loving thoughts, feelings — whatever they want us to be aware of — to us.   

Our ability to receive what they are communicating to us depends on our readiness to accept this communing as reality for us, and our willingness for it to be so.  It is nothing to do with whether we, individually, are ‘psychic’, or have a ‘gift’ for such awareness.  This is because we all have it.  There are, and can be, no exceptions to this, because we are all One, Papa’s beloved Son, to whom He has given everything.  The exception lies in our willingness to believe and accept the truth of this reality for ourself, and then, to allow that faculty to be exercised and grow, healthily.

You say: it was something I imagined. The word ‘imagined’ is so often used, by the somnambulant fragments, to mean it wasn’t ‘real’; but what is reality?  Here is another way of looking at this:

You know your Mum, and others in spirit, are ‘there’, and you are not fearful of commun(icat)ing with them —- because you believe/know they are loving, kind, caring people, who desire only good for you.  Therefore, you do not believe they are ‘evil’ or wish you harm. You send them loving thoughts, and you have no blocks to accepting that they would certainly desire to send you loving thoughts. If we are committed, unequivocally, to placing ourself within the loving, caring, all-empowered guidance and protection of Jesus and Holy Spirit, to the exclusion of all from the ‘invisible’ realms that is not in resonance with Them, we have nothing to fear. 

You also can accept that there could be no reason why they would not send you loving thoughts, and do whatever they could to assist your mental, spiritual, even your physical well-being.  So... so far, so good.  All that is needful is to continue actively sending them loving, blessing thoughts, holding fast to the belief that they receive them, and that they actively, lovingly respond to them, directed back to you. 

Of course you — and I, and the rest of us with a body and the audial sense that comes with a physical body — do not hear their responses with the bodily, audial faculty, because the messages they send are not sent with a larynx to vibrate the air that hits our ear-drums.  They send their messages with something immeasurably more powerful, to something immeasurably more powerful and sensitive: the mind. This is mind-to-mind communing, of which I have written extensively in the last couple of years or so.

Now all that is needful is for us to believe we are able to receive their commun(icat)ing.  We both know you are willing, so there is no doubt there.  A little more understanding of the mechanisms for sending/receiving such communing is all that is needed.  And it is utterly simple:  it is you sending them your thoughts, which they receive because you are directing your thoughts to them; and in exactly like manner, you receive the thoughts they are sending to you — as thoughts.

Let us use an example to illustrate the process:  You send out the thought to your Mum, ‘I love you, Mum’; you allow yourself the belief, beyond doubt, that she receives that communing, from your heart-mind, straight to her heart-mind. 

Now comes the crucial bit: What do you IMAGINE would be her response?  Even better, in terms of reassurance: what do you imagine/believe/KNOW would be your response to her if the positions were reversed?  You can be sure/certain that your response would be something like, ‘I love you too...’.  So, now, having sent out your heart-mind thought ‘I love you, Mum’, IMAGINE receiving her reply.  What do you IMAGINE it would be? 

Allow yourself to receive her reply, in your IMAGINATION.  Next comes another potentially tricky bit:  allowing yourself to accept/believe that this reply actually IS from her, and not just ‘your imagination’.  Now, we have to ask ourself:  what IS imagination?  It is our mind, in creating activity.  In this context, what is it creating?  It is creating a commun(icat)ing bridge/facility/mechanism/link/pathway for restoring the One Mind — or at least, within this context, the part that exists between you and your Mum — that is Who and What we all are, but have allowed our self to believe (incorrectly) has become separated, fragmented into myriad individual parts.

Our true Self knows this is a misperception, and is helping us (if/when we are willing to co-operate) to become re-connected, restored to wholeness of Being.  Such mind-to-mind communing is not a sin, evil, the slippery slope to Sheol.  It is the stairway back to oneness, re-joining, in love and blessed fellowship.

Such communing cannot work for the doubting or fearful, or guilt-ridden, because doubt and fear and guilt place a block in the way of our true vision of reality.

So, coming to the crunch here:  What you believe you heard — directed lovingly, intimately, using names you know are theirs just for you, so you could not be mistaken about the source of the incoming communing — from your loved ones in spirit, and then, through doubt, uncertainty, lack of understanding of the Process, dismissed as ‘simply’ your imagination, actually WAS your loved ones, commun(icat)ing lovingly with you. 

The false adviser, ego, uses its tool of ‘thinking’, ‘rationalising’, to dismiss Reality, because it knows and understands nothing of Reality, since it is only of time and place.  What you are experiencing is not of time and place, but of Eternity, because it is Love, so ego will dismiss it, using this inadequately understood word — imagination — to consign the experience to the waste bin.  

A key litmus test for this is:  did the ‘imagining’ feel good, loving, uplifting, inspiring, affirming, enlightening (any or all of those things), or did it feel wrong, depressing, fearful, upsetting, unsettling?  I have italicised ‘feel’ because often, ego thoughts seem to engender what appear to be feelings, but it is those negative, doubting, fearful, guilty ego-thoughts that have caused such negative feelings, rather than the actual experience itself.  If you were uplifted, it is because it was loving, with its origins in loving thoughts being sent to you.

I therefore suggest to you that it was actually something you heard — though received (because it was given) is actually a more serviceable, comprehensive, inclusive term — but ego-induced doubt then got in the way and downgraded, diminished the experience.  This is all about allowing, accepting, surrendering.  As you know, surrender is not the same as resignation.  We surrender our ego leasehold on our life to Holy Spirit/Self.  If we resign ourself to the yoke of ego, that is shutting ourself off from Holy Spirit.

In due course, any sense of sterilisation from awareness of/communing with our beloved brethren in spirit diminishes, and the re-joining strengthens.  And with that, any sense of needing an intermediary for contact/communing with our loved ones (including Jesus) also is dispelled.  He, Jesus, and all our other loved ones in spirit, love us, and want to be with us — not bodily, because bodies are not our Reality, but be of one mind with us, to extend, share their joy with us, totally.  Why would they want to hold anything back?  We wouldn’t, so the idea they might is preposterous.  All the holding back is from us; fear-, guilt-, doubt-, uncertainty-engendered.  Now is the time for all such to be consigned to the bin.

Only when we are ready to surrender ego-thinking about separation, and adopt Holy Spirit thinking about Oneness of mind with all the fragments, ‘every living thing’, will we be able to follow our Guide to Eternity all the way Home.

Love, endlessly,

Brian Longhurst

Their joy is in the innocence they see.

(ACIM, T-25.IV.1)

October 6th 2010

Dear Friends,

When I woke from the night’s sleep this morning (Monday), I committed the writing of this week’s MoE — along with the rest of the day’s events — into the care of Holy Spirit, because, as is frequently the case, I was by no means clear what the topic would be.  This used to cause varying degrees of anxiety, but as is always the case with the Spirit of Truth, He knows.  Knows what? — one may ask. And the answer is not just ‘everything’, but in this instance, He knows that it is an opportunity for persona-self to place absolute trust in His ability to grow us in willingness to restore Him to centre-stage of our sojourn in time, in order to get us out of time and back to Eternity.   

He always responds to our asking for help, so it is always worth asking for it.  At first, our ego-indoctrination in unbelief causes us to doubt, and this gets very much in the way.  But by allowing Him the opportunity to demonstrate His ability to provide very real, palpable, practical, meaningful help — perhaps, in ‘small’ matters initially — this grows us in experiencing, and therefore trusting, that His Help is there for us, unfalteringly.  The truth is, any faltering is only on our part, and is founded in fear and doubt; fear of trusting That Which Is Trustworthy, and doubt that He will help us.  And even if He is able and willing to help us, we are so unworthy, so far beyond His help, assuredly we will never be able to actually receive it.  So is it in ego-dominated thinking. 

So, this morning, I said, ‘I trust You, Holy Spirit, to provide inspiration for this week’s MoE, as I have trusted You so many times before; and however fearful I still remained, having asked for Your help, You never let me down.  So, I am going to focus on You, and on keeping my mind open to receiving Your guiding, inspiration, enlightenment, and ignore the fear and doubt that still knocks at my door, even as I focus upon, attune/commune with, You.  I know that by steadfast, one-pointed faith, trust, focusing on You, and ignoring, denying the doubt and fear, it will be rewarded by the manifesting of Your Help, in the right, perfect way, at the right, perfect moment, and the fading of the ego-induced doubt, fear, uncertainty.’  Such mind re-training always pays tangible dividends, so is worth practising.

Several times during the past few days, people have told me I am a teacher.  I am not entirely comfortable with this, preferring to think of myself more as a ‘sharer’ of some of the blessed experiences and messages that have been the pivot of ‘the life of Brian’ J.  We are all, without any exceptions, our brothers’ teachers — and students — and only in that sense am I comfortable with being called a teacher.  The question is more, are we willing to be taught?

There are those who set themselves up as a teacher, but they are not the teacher they mistakenly perceive themselves to be.

Most of us who are waking to eternal reality are well aware that this is the time of leavening the third measure of meal (see SYFK, ch. 10); the raising-up, or resurrecting of the fragmented, upside-down mind of the Sonship back to oneness in Eternity.  Here are some quotes by Jesus from Matthew’s Gospel warning us about the rise of false teachers and prophets in these ‘end times’:

Mt. 24:3: And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

A key question to ask oneself when coming in contact with someone who claims to be a teacher of God, or ‘channelling’ Jesus, or Abraham, or Moses, or Buddha, or some other purportedly ascended Master: will this help get me Home, or will it simply distract me from the Path?

Then, as I sat at the keyboard, this, from Jeff Brown in Toronto, came to me somehow, on, or from, an internet social network site (don’t ask how; their workings are far too arcane for me, so I leave it to Holy Spirit to bring up before me whatever He wants me to see J):

A Warning about Gurus

Some of us turn to gurus to help us home. In the Hindu tradition, a distinction is made between two types: (1) sat-guru, and (2) upa-guru. A sat-guru is a realized master. She is the way. Amma and Neeb Karori Baba are said to be examples of sat-guru. An upa-guru is a door opener. They influence a shift in your consciousness. They show you some part of the way. Anyone -- your mother, your cat, the homeless guy who tells you to get out of your head -- can be an upa-guru. When someone presents themselves as a sat-guru, or when we project sat-guru onto someone, we tread on dangerous ground. To be sure, some individuals are worthy of our devotion, but we have to be very careful. The legacy of the exploitative guru is a long one, and it has caused undue (and avoidable) suffering.

There are many signs that (or, when) we are dealing with an ungrounded and potentially untrustworthy spiritual teacher. For instance, they have one set of rules for you, one for them. They deny their unresolved issues. They see the body as substandard or entirely distinct from the soul. They reframe painful life experiences only in terms of spiritual learning. They see the world of emotions as illusion (except when it is convenient not to). They rely on their so-called purity as an excuse for not forming adult boundaries. They defend their behavior by reference to a higher knowing. If you complain about their actions, you are told that your complaints are emanating from the mundane world and that you just can’t grasp their lens. They may also re-frame their own dysfunction in heightened terms (“I quit the world because I had a higher calling”) rather than facing their shadow head-on (“I had too many issues to deal with the world”). A giant warning sign is the use of “the mirror” as a defense against wrongdoing. The guru claims that his (questionable) actions were not actually for his own benefit but done with the conscious intention of reflecting back to you the unresolved aspects of your own consciousness. If you felt betrayed, it was because you have issues around betrayal that you need to look at.

If we do choose to sit before someone, grounded spirituality demands that we check in as to our motivation. If we are lost in the perfection projection, we need to own that. If we are looking for the good father or mother, we need to own that too... With only rare exceptions, he cannot tell us our truth. He cannot tell us what to know. The most he can do is call out to our knowing and remind us of what we inherently knew all along. Anything else is usually a misappropriation of karmic funds. Be careful...

He concludes with these words:

...Better yet... See our own lives as guru. Sit before it as student and teacher. What a thing -- to be teacher and student both! (My emboldening.)

For, ultimately, that is what we all are, though we must learn to discern that it is the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit, our own, true, one Self within us that we steadfastly choose as our preferred teacher.  Jeff hosts a website entitled www.soulshaping.com. Thanks for this timely warning, Jeff.

Possibly, not all of what Jeff says will be meaningful for all of us, but if some bits resonate, that is helpful.

It is certainly true (as far as the illusion of time and place can be ‘true’) that there are vast numbers of blogs, websites, books, ‘stalls’ of one form or another, setting out their ‘wares’ for us to sample — and, they hope, become their followers.

Here is what Olga Park’s Teacher (John, the seer of Patmos, author of the 4^th Gospel and Revelation, acting under Christ Authority) said to her in March 1944.

It is not necessary that you remain in one group or under one leader. It is necessary that you acknowledge one Heavenly Lord and one Heavenly Guide of His appointing. I am that Guide. You are now familiar with my personality and my script; therefore you are able to discern between my communications and those of another. If I do not speak, I charge you, do not accept the admonitions of any other but wait until I come….

It is not the will of the Father in Heaven that you follow blindly. Surely, if there is no understanding of what is said and done it is because the guides also are blind. If they do not shed the light of knowledge and understanding, it must be that there is no light in them...

In June 1945 he told her:

The lessons which have been set for you, are the same that all aspirants, in times long past or in your own times, must master.  These are not of the (Earth, or persona) mind or understanding but of the Life Forces. 

 Having gained a little control you must wrestle in a larger field, where the forces are greater that resist your spiritual desire, so that for a time you may seem to be losing rather than gaining.  Be of good cheer. I will direct your path, so that you shall not greatly fall. Take heed to my counsel. (Such direction and counsel is freely available to us all.) Acknowledge in all your thoughts and decisions our gracious Lord and remember always his words of reassurance: “Let not your heart be troubled neither be thou afraid.” 

Many times the Teacher counselled Olga not to speak of this wisdom to her associates at that time, saying that they were not able to receive it.  He said:  

Your heart outruns your head. You may stand at the crossroads of life and offer your good things to them that enquire, but do not run down every alley pressing them upon the halt, the maimed and the blind; for do you think that your treasures will by some magic create in them a new set of values? You know within yourself that it is not possible, for it is contrary to spiritual law. As the Master taught so we know, “To him that hath shall be added”.

This is the ‘chaos time’, and marks the changeover between the second measure of meal and the third.  It is, outwardly, chaos because the ‘order’ of understanding, of perception, is changing.  We are entering the New Order, the third measure, or Kingdom Order, but it is only in the early stages of becoming operational at the Earth-life level of awareness.  So it is an ‘in-between’ time, in which mixed, contradictory signals are coming in, confusing our perceptions and understanding if we are not one-pointedly, steadfastly focused in the eternal reality of the Kingdom, under the guidance and protection of One Who knows. 

The widespread uncertainty is because most of the fragments of the Sonship are at a crossroads: “Do we go forward, along this ‘new’, uncharted path (which could be hazardous, ego whispers in our ear), or do we stick with the old, well-worn path?”  This is where we have to trust.  This reassurance from Jesus in ACIM says it all:

‎”If you knew who walks beside you at all times, on this path that you 
have chosen...you could NEVER experience fear or doubt again.”

For those just hesitatingly stepping out on that Path toward the Light, words of encouragement and reassurance may seem a poor substitute for experiencing the certainty of knowing that brings us inner peace.  Ultimately, we have to be prepared to take a leap of faith into the unknown.  But I can assure any who are in fear and doubt, the Holy Spirit and Jesus are with us, holding our hand, every moment.  Being unaware of Them does not alter that fact.   

But if we desire awareness of Their presence, all we have to do is ask Them, sincerely.  Ego will strenuously resist such a decision, right inside the upside-down, split-off-from-Truth part of our mind.  Jesus and Holy Spirit, our True Self, dwell in the right-side-up part, that is not, and never has been, separated from our Source.  It is our choice to whom we decide to listen and follow.

If our motive for asking is to ‘prove’ They are not with us (a ploy of ego), that will be our experience.  If we ask, truly desiring awareness of Their loving, guiding, protecting presence, They will make Their presence known to us, because we have made ourself receptive. 

If it does not happen in the way we expect, or when we expect (i.e., immediately, if there is any ego in us) will we give up?  Or will we continue on, in faith and trust, until that awareness becomes part of our experience?  Because, when faith and trust are engaged, it is an infallible and unstoppable eventuality.  They are True Guides and will lead us to the Truth of our Being, which is within, where They, along with Papa, dwell, not ‘out there’.

Let us give thanks to and for our True Guides!

Brian Longhurst 

TRUST IS EASILY DEVELOPED BY LETTING GO OF EVERYTHING

October 13th 2010 

Dear Friends,

According to Gary Renard’s book The Disappearance of the Universe, what astro-physicists refer to as the Big Bang — which they see as the birth of the universe — was the moment of the beginning of the illusory separation of God’s one Son from His Father Creator, from his Self and from Eternity.  Astro-physicists also have a term for what was before the moment of the Big Bang: The Singularity.

The Big Bang was the beginning of time and space; the beginning of the separation.  Before that moment there was no time or space, because both, along with every aspect of the imagined separation, appear as ‘opposites’ of Eternity.  Eternity is only Now, the Holy Instant, always, unchangeably forever; time appears to move in a linear manner from ‘start’ to ‘finish’.  But in Eternity, the only reality, there is neither start nor finish; only constant, unending, unchanging, exquisite happiness, bliss, rapture, ecstasy, joy, perfect love (the only kind of love there is; all other representations perceived as love are counterfeit, like everything else in the apparent separation from Reality). 

It is impossible to accurately, comprehensively represent the qualities, the properties, the Truth of Eternity with words because words are symbols and symbols are not real; only Eternity is.  When we have remembered our true estate, our true Being, we will, once more — and forever — experience and thus, know, the Reality that the floweriest and most poetic of words can never adequately express.  Until we have remembered, and experienced the Reality of Singularity, the Oneness of the Sonship, in Papa, we cannot know the Truth.  But we can believe It, and belief, faith, trust are the steps which lead us to knowledge.  Alternatively put, they are the Keys to the Kingdom.

Without one-pointed, steadfast commitment to faith, trust, belief, obedience to the awakening Call from our own within, wherein lies the Kingdom of Heaven, Eternity (symbolised by all those nice, poetic words), we remain committed to faith, belief, in the only alternative: unreality; littleness, limitation, fear, the loop of birth and death, spiritual darkness, finiteness. 

But, however much we may be committed to unreality, the good news is, unreality was never real (no surprises there, then J), so — like all its perceived attributes, such as death — never existed, and is therefore only a dream, a fantasy, and is already over.  So unwilling are we to believe the Truth of Eternity, and that we are Its completion, that we are re-viewing the dream, stretching it out, re-playing the game of make-believe, over and over again, fearful of its ending.  None of those games alters our reality, which is forever with us, within us — however much it may appear contrariwise — and is reflected in our never-ending desire for peace, happiness, love, unity; an end to discord, war, fear, guilt, separation. 

In July 1997 Jesus said to me: 

...your heart's desire is not something that is becoming; a faltering, chance, haphazard development.  It is a strong, well-established creation, as I have already said, forged in the fire of the Holy Spirit, in pure harmony with eternal reality.  It is unfolding before you in your Earthly life as you go forward upon the path, led by me, your guide to Eternity, motivated from within by that strong desire...

These words are true for all the fragments of the Sonship, for the Son is but one, and only appears as many in the dream of unreality.  We are split, like white light passing through a prism; but all the colours of the spectrum are united as One in the pure Light of Eternal Truth.

However much we may find it hard to dismiss what stares us in the face, and therefore seems indisputably real, there are several points to keep in mind:

The bodily senses with which this information comes to us are temporal, devised to perceive, and bear witness only to the temporal; thus, if we do not see past the illusion, we are deceived by these very senses, thereby distracting us from our true vision of Eternity and our completion within It.  Temporal is not eternal, and therefore is not, cannot be, reality.

Jesus tells us that death is not real, and if we are willing to believe him, we will be restored to the experience of life eternal.  This is not just because he says so, but because it is the truth, whoever says it.  The fact that he was/is the anointed messenger of the Creator Spirit, God, the Holy One, is not the important thing; it is the message that is important. 

But what supports the believability of the message is that the messenger was/is the living embodiment of the message, performing miracles that demonstrated his empowerment by knowing the message is true, and living it, thus showing beyond all doubt that he clearly knew — had remembered — things that were/are still hidden from most of us by our belief in the temporal, which is merely an unreality of our own devising.

Clearly, the messenger, then, knew Something we did not, and was amply able to bear witness to this Something — the Truth, which will set us free.  Would we desire to be like Jesus or are we content with littleness, limitation, fear, guilt, dis-ease and mortality — over and over and over, indefinitely?

It is Mind, not bodies, that is our reality.  Bodies are a distraction, designed to bear false witness to the dream being reality; a misperception being true. 

Believing in separation is leading us nowhere, and cannot be anything other than the opposite of Heaven, truth, peace, joy; all of which are everlasting.  So illusion can only be a path to misery, fear, destruction, otherwise it would not be separation; for truth, peace, joy uninterrupted are attributes of God and Eternity.

Believing the truth that Eternity is the only reality and we are indivisible from It does not cost us anything, except the loss of fear, guilt, doubt. However, from an ego-dominated-mind perspective, which knows nothing, and fears and is suspicious of everything, this will seem like a very threatening prospect, which, indeed, it is, because it means the end of ego.  Ego exists only by the reality and empowerment that we give it.  Yet we are not ego, even though ego appears to be in our mind, bringing thoughts of doubt and fear, guilt, judgement and grievance. 

But when we withdraw our empowerment from it and give that empowerment to the Holy Spirit, ego has no part in us any longer, and ceases to exist in us.  When all the fragments awaken to the reality of this truth, ego will be gone completely, time and place will be over, the Mind of the Son of God will have been resurrected, leavened, raised up from fragmented, broken separation to the glory of oneness, in the Heart of God. The Holy Spirit is transforming, and will continue to transform our perception, thinking, believing, understanding of this world, right here in this world, enabling our awakening from the dream, back to knowledge, free from uncertainty.

Jesus explains these matters perfectly in ACIM.  Here are a couple of quotes that express them most beautifully and illuminatingly (how could it be otherwise, coming from Jesus?J):

T-25.III.2

God’s laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind (of God) to which perception has no meaning.  Yet are His laws reflected everywhere.  Not that the world where this reflection is, is real at all.  Only because His Son believes it is, and from His Son’s belief He could not let Himself be separate entirely. He could not enter His Son’s insanity with him, but He could be sure His sanity went there with him, so he could not be lost forever in the madness of his wish.

T-25.III.6

Everyone here has entered darkness, yet no one has entered it alone. Nor need he stay more than an instant. For he has come with Heaven’s Help within him, ready to lead him out of darkness into light at any time.  The time he chooses can be any time, for help is there, awaiting but his choice.  And when he chooses to avail himself of what is given him, then will he see each situation that he thought before was means to justify his anger turned to an event which justifies his love.  He will hear plainly that the calls to war he heard before are really calls to peace. He will perceive that where he gave attack is but another altar where he can, with equal ease and far more happiness, bestow forgiveness. And he will reinterpret all temptation as just another chance to bring him joy.  ALLELUIA!!

And then, from the ACIM Workbook for Students, three short lessons by which any who truly seek and earnestly desire the Kingdom cannot fail to be deeply and profoundly inspired, uplifted, reassured, strengthened, moved, enheartened, rallied to the Call with renewed commitment to share, extend, shine the Light that is eternally our True Self:  

LESSON 225.

God is my Father, and His Son loves Him.

Father, I must return Your Love for me, for giving and receiving are the same, and You have given all Your Love to me.  I must return it, for I want it mine in full awareness, blazing in my mind and keeping it within its kindly light, inviolate, beloved, with fear behind and only peace ahead.  How still the way Your loving Son is led along to You!

Brother, we find that stillness now.  The way is open.  Now we follow it in peace together.  You have reached your hand to me, and I will never leave you.  We are one, and it is but this oneness that we seek, as we accomplish these few final steps which end a journey that was not begun.

LESSON 226.

My home awaits me. I will hasten there.

If I so choose, I can depart this world entirely.  It is not death which makes this possible, but it is change of mind about the purpose of the world.  If I believe it has a value as I see it now, so will it still remain for me.  But if I see no value in the world as I behold it, nothing that I want to keep as mine or search for as a goal, it will depart from me.  For I have not sought for illusions to replace the truth.                                                                                           (My emboldening, for emphasis.)

Father, my home awaits my glad return.  Your Arms are open and I hear Your Voice.  What need have I to linger in a place of vain desires and of shattered dreams, when Heaven can so easily be mine?

LESSON 227.

This is my holy instant of release.

Father, it is today that I am free, because my will is Yours.  I thought to make another will.  Yet nothing that I thought apart from You exists.  And I am free because I was mistaken, and did not affect my own reality at all by my illusions.  Now I give them up, and lay them down before the feet of truth, to be removed forever from my mind.  This is my holy instant of release.  Father, I know my will is one with Yours.

And so today we find our glad return to Heaven, which we never really left.  The Son of God this day lays down his dreams.  The Son of God this day comes home again, released from sin and clad in holiness, with his right mind restored to him at last.

These words apply to you, to me, to us all, and are literally true; become our truth if only we can believe. Faith shall be replaced by sight.  If we cannot first believe, then we cannot know.  If we are willing to have a little belief, faith, trust, then, Holy Spirit, Who knows our heart and mind perfectly, because He is our true Self, will lead us unfailingly toward remembrance, guiding us by the Light of Life that shines eternally within us, and is Who we really are.

Love, peace and joy are our free gift, unto all Eternity; let us now receive them again, and gratefully accept them unto ourself,

Brian Longhurst

October 20th 2010

Dear Friends,

Christians believe Jesus is their saviour.  And so he is.  But that is not the complete picture.  What the church says about this and what Jesus says about it in ACIM are at wide variance.  They say he is the only Son of God, and he died on the cross to save us from our sins.  He says he resurrected from the dead as a symbol of the resurrection, or raising up, or leavening, not of bodies (of which he speaks as a ‘little mound of clay’, and are of time and place only, having no place in Eternity), but of the Mind of Christ within us, Its waking, Its healing from its apparently split state, and Its restoration to fullness of our remembrance of our oneness, from a momentary dream of seeming fragmentation; of one, appearing as many.  

In ACIM T-6.I.2 and 3 he says:

...the crucifixion was the last useless journey the Sonship need take, and ... it represents release from fear to anyone who understands it... Nevertheless, (understanding) it has a definite contribution to make to your own life, and if you will consider it without fear, it will help you understand your own role as a teacher. (We are all teachers, as well as students, of each other.  Understanding the contribution will make us better teachers and students.)

You have probably reacted for years as if you were being crucified.  This is a marked tendency of the separated (i.e., those who believe the dream of separation is reality), who always refuse to consider what they have done to themselves (i.e., shut themselves off from their Source and from their true Self)... The real meaning of the crucifixion lies in the apparent intensity of the assault of some of the Sons of God upon another.  This, of course, is impossible, and must be fully understood as impossible.  Otherwise, I cannot serve as a model for learning.

(My emboldening, underlining and some italic, for emphasis.)

Any who are truly earnest about awakening fully to the reality of their integral part in the eternal, magnificent, all-empowered Sonship of God will serve that objective well by giving careful, prayerful consideration to the above two paragraphs and their implications for us all — along, of course, with the rest of Jesus’ teachings on this matter and our true, invulnerable reality.

Part Two of SFGS, vignette 11, recounts what Jesus said to me about the crucifixion:

‘I did it to get your attention.’

It was a throw-away line.  He might as well have been speaking about doing something as (relatively!) mundane as is a bungee jump in today’s world.

Olga Park referred to Jesus as ‘the Lord of surprises’, and he does love to surprise us; surprises are memorable, because of their unexpectedness.  Since the fragmented Sonship is in a dream state of forgetfulness, surprises are beneficial to helping us remember who we really are.  That is Jesus’ sole objective.  If we think we are a body, we have definitely forgotten, and need some reliable, knowledgeable, trustworthy help.

So, he did it to get our attention.  So we could be filled with fear?  Hardly.  Quite the opposite in fact.  He says as much in the ACIM quote above.  According to the Gospel records, Jesus went through his moment of fear, of terror, in Gethsemane, but this is what he said to me about that in the Diary entry dated P.M. November 21^st 2008:

 My moment of doubt and fear was dispelled by re-focusing on Papa’s love, peace, truth.  The certainty that the world is a dream restored my peace, and I became aware once more that this world is nothing and nowhere.

I was going through a moment of fear at the time he said this to me, and the details of its apparent cause (money worries) were distracting me from the inner peace that is freely mine, just as it is the rightful heritage of all, because we are Papa’s one, beloved Son, to Whom He has given everything that is His, unreservedly.  Jesus said:

My Beloved, the details are not critical in a situation like you are experiencing; only the principles.  You will always do well to focus on the principles, and not on the details.  Details distract, divert, destroy concentration, focus, on principles, thus engendering doubt and fear.

He then said:

Focusing on the Principles of Life of the Father (PLFs) will see you through every dark moment. 

How easily we are distracted from who we really are and why we are really here.  Knowing one is about to be scourged within an inch of one’s life and then nailed to a cross is a self-assessment opportunity of the first magnitude in terms of remaining steadfastly focussed on the PLFs.  How far are most of us fragments from that place of remembrance?  But as he says (quoted above): ...the crucifixion was the last useless journey the Sonship need take, and ... it represents release from fear to anyone who understands it...

Is not release from fear a goal worthy of giving our attention to understanding this pivotal event?

So, how can we understand it, and what PLFs will help us get back into focus upon them, and avoid distraction by the prestidigitation of ego-implanted details?  We could imagine Jesus reminding himself what he told me in November 2008: The certainty that the world is a dream restored my peace, and I became aware once more that this world is nothing and nowhere. Then we could try practising it ourself. 

Easy.  All we have to do is believe.  Believing, having faith, is the stepping stone to knowing.  If we are unwilling first to believe, to have faith, we are blocking ourself from the certainty of knowing, which removes all doubt and fear, thus releasing us into perfect love, peace and joy.  Jesus tells us in ACIM that all we need is a little faith, a little willingness to believe, and the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Breath of Life That is our own, true Self will take that small gift and will transform it into the certainty of our knowing, beyond all doubt, Who and What we really are.  Who and What we really are is just like Jesus, for whom flogging and crucifixion were nothing, once he got back into focus, away from distraction by illusion. 

Relax; we do not need to undergo what he underwent, though as he says, above, most of us are subjecting ourself to a slow form of crucifixion — terminating in death — by believing in illusion, when alternatively, Truth will resurrect our mind to the Oneness that is the all-knowing, all-loving Christ Mind. Can a Mind be loving; surely it is the heart that loves?  As recently stated:

In a sense, we have two ‘minds’; one is in our head and the other is in our heart.  Thoughts originating in our head are ego, and distract us because they are fear-based, ‘what-if?’, doubting, questioning, dividing, judging, reckoning thoughts, grievance thoughts, obscuring, obliterating, blocking our awareness of love’s presence, of compassion, unity, Truth, inner peace. 

Holy Spirit, Self, dwells within our ‘heart mind’, which is awareness, remembrance, knowing, understanding, caring, loving, accepting, allowing, forgiving.  When the clamour of the outer world — ‘head’ thoughts, or ego thoughts — threatens to overwhelm us and obliterate our awareness of love’s presence, then, entering into our ‘closet’ — our heart-mind, where all is love, stillness, acceptance, letting-go, surrender, peace — enables us to be aware of, and thus, receive and accept the Help that is always, unceasingly, freely, lovingly, immediately available to us here.

The crucifixion was, to Jesus, the playing-out of a symbol, in dramatic form, to get our attention because we believe the dramas of the dream are reality.  Like Shakespeare, Jesus knew that ‘all the world’s a stage, and all the people players’.  On the stage, actors appear to get murdered, but they then turn up the next night, as right as ninepence.  He knew that a lesser drama would have got less of our attention, and in a world made of distractions from reality, and founded in the consciousness of fear, how quickly would we — his audience — have become diverted, and forgotten about him in the hubbub. 

That would have been a waste of time indeed, and Jesus was not on a time-wasting mission.  He was on a time-collapsing mission.  His love for us, and his absolute, one-pointed, steadfast, single-minded commitment to our salvation, our awakening, meant he had to create a drama that would demonstrate beyond all doubt (at least for some of us J) for the duration of the leavening of the second measure of meal, that he knew something of vital importance (vital> adjective: ‘indispensable to the continuity of life’) that his beloved brethren, labouring under the heavy, uncomfortable, burdensome yoke of self-deception, did not. 

It had to be an event that would capture our imagination and hold it, and win our devotion to him for his selfless (and Self-full) commitment to his brethren.

He knew such a drama would be misunderstood, because he knew our self-deception had obscured our Self-awareness sufficiently that we saw ourself as little, separated from Truth, from the reality of our eternal, magnificent grandeur, and would perceive only him as all of that.  But he also knew that did not matter, because the leavening of the third measure of meal — during which the whole (all of us fragments) would be leavened — into which we are now entering, would reveal the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us Papa.  And helping us He assuredly is, if only we will avail ourself of that Help, Whose abode is our own within, our very Self.

These are some of the PLFs that will keep us from being distracted by ego’s conjuring tricks, its sleight of hand.  The sleight of hand, the distractions, every moment of every day, do not cease as we begin the awakening process, or ‘journey without distance’.  But their importance to us diminishes, one step at a time, as we begin to remember the things that are of true significance and value.  We begin to notice that ‘all that glisters is not gold’ in time and place, and that there are priceless treasures freely awaiting us, right now, in the Eternity that is within our right mind. 

All we need do is enter in to our heart-mind and allow it to shine the Light that has always, unfailingly, been there, within us, and lead us back to awareness of that reality.  The heart-mind is our True Self, Who is aware of ego’s distractions but not deceived by them.  To Self, distractions are but opportunities to remember Who we really are.  They can seem to ‘turn up’ at random, and can appear either as ‘good’ things or ‘bad’ things. 

For example, we could win millions on the lottery, and this would be perceived as ‘good’ by most of us.  It would certainly have ‘glister’.  But would it get us Home to Papa?  For some, assuredly it could be a useful step in the right direction, if it were seen as opportunity to selflessly help their brothers. To others, that same event could be further steps into ‘outer darkness’, by indulging in ‘what glisters but turns out not to be gold tried in the fire’.  For them, ‘bad’ is the perceived outcome of such an opportunity.  The media are full of stories of lottery winners who unwittingly transform opportunity into adversity instead of the other way round. 

For such hapless, forgetful souls, the advice of Jesus from Rev. 3:18 would serve well:

I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire (of eternal Spirit), that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.

As with any endeavour, it takes commitment, perseverance, focus to arrive at the desired goal.  Like all of us, Jesus was freely given the remembrance of his reality as Papa’s beloved Son, but he, like the rest of the fragmented Sonship, had to be willing to receive it and accept it unto himself. Thankfully, he was willing.  Now it is our turn, and we have his inestimable help.

The crucifixion was a gift from Jesus to us, but not as it has been construed by mainstream institutionalised religions.  The gift was to get our attention; a prestidigitation, to get us focussed on him for two thousand years, so he could demonstrate to us our resurrected reality through his resurrected reality, because we are one.  And thanks to him we have an example, a template to emulate, to help our resurrection to oneness of Mind; Christ Mind.

We will serve our journey Home well by asking ourself if we are willing to receive that free gift and accept it unto ourself, or whether we prefer to place obstacles, idols of time and place, in Its way, obscuring Its living, golden Reality from our vision.

We can enjoy the distractions of time and place, but to forget that that is all they are will cause us to remain in forgetfulness.

Love and endless blessings for remembrance,

Brian Longhurst 

 "Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help,
regardless of the form it takes."
- A Course in Miracles (T-12.I.3:3-4)

October 27th 2010

Dear Friends,

We speak of this as ‘the real world’, but it only appears to be so because we have been told it is the real world, so we believe it is real.  Jesus knew, of a certainty beyond all doubt, that it was not real. As he said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’.  The Kingdom of which he speaks is the real world.

In the Gospel records Jesus teaches that as we forgive, so are we forgiven, and as we judge, so are we judged.  This has been interpreted as meaning that God will judge or forgive us in response to whether we choose to judge or forgive, but this is not supported by the Gospel records themselves.  Clearly then, we have allowed ourselves to be misguided by those to whom we have looked for leadership in matters concerning our relationship to God and Eternity.  Thank goodness, the third measure of meal is leavening and the truth is rising in our midst.

In ACIM Jesus states: It is impossible to think of anything that could need forgiveness. (C-3.1:2)

That sounds like a contradiction of what is recorded of him in the Gospel records, and, from an Earth-mind perspective sounds like a profound misperception, because of all the awfulness going on all around us.  But when viewed from the perspective of God, Eternity, Heaven, the Holy Spirit, Self, and, of course, Jesus, all this is but a dream, and therefore, not real.  The sooner we adopt Their perspective the sooner will we find ourself restored to being of one Mind with/in Them.  It is an error to believe that can only happen when we ‘die’.  What difference will that make?  But if we change our mind and our perspective ‘here’, it will make an exponentially big difference when we do lay aside our body.

Why would a mere dream require forgiveness, other than from the perspective of the dream?  However awful the events that appear to occur within a dream, when we awaken from the dream, we realise that none of the awfulness actually took place, and therefore, there is nothing to forgive.

Yet, according to this same Jesus, in ACIM, there is endless emphasis on the vital importance of true forgiveness.  Is this not a contradiction of the first magnitude?  On page 401 of the ACIM Workbook, he says:

Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred.  It does not pardon sins and make them real.  It sees there was no sin.  And in that view are all your sins forgiven.  What is sin, except a false idea about God’s Son?  Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go.  What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God.

But, all the while we perceive ourself in a state of separation from God, Truth, Reality, Eternity, our Self, we believe — because we have been told — and therefore perceive ourself in a state of judgement and unforgiveness.  Until we abandon belief in separation, this thought system occupies our every waking moment, though most of us are unaware of this being our ‘truth’.  Jesus reminds us that the only wise judgement is the relinquishment of all judgement, because we don’t know all the facts that would enable us to make wise, sound judgement.  He goes on to say: 

Make then but one more judgement.  It is this: there is Someone with you Whose judgement is perfect.  He does know all the facts, past, present and to come.  He does know all the effects of His judgement on everyone and everything involved in any way.  And He is wholly fair to everyone, for there is no distortion in His perception.  (How many of us can honestly say this of ourself?)

Therefore lay judgment down, not with regret but with a sigh of gratitude.  Now are you free of a burden so great that you could merely stagger and fall down beneath it.  And it was all illusion.  Nothing more.  Now ...  his sense of care is gone, for he has none.  He has given it away, along with judgment.  He gave himself to Him Whose judgment he has chosen now to trust, instead of his own.  Now he makes no mistakes.  His Guide is sure.  And where he came to judge, he comes to bless.  Where now he laughs, he used to come to weep.

It is not difficult to relinquish judgment.  But it is difficult indeed to try to keep it.  The teacher of God lays it down happily the instant he recognizes its cost.  All of the ugliness he sees about him is its outcome.  All of the pain he looks upon is its result.  All of the loneliness and sense of loss; of passing time and growing hopelessness; of sickening despair and fear of death; all these have come of it.  And now he knows that these things need not be.  Not one is true.  For he has given up their cause, and they, which never were but the effects of his mistaken choice, have fallen from him.  Teacher of God, this step will bring you peace.  Can it be difficult to want but this?

Assuredly there can be none amongst us who would refute his appeal to us in the words above, saying it is not what we all want, yet still we languish in the misery of self-assumed separation; for it is only we, ourselves, who keep us here.

Yet, how can we relinquish the ‘judgement’ of what to have for dinner, what to wear, what to give our loved one for a birthday? One way or another, so many of our everyday decisions impact upon other people, creatures and things. 

So much of food production impacts very negatively on the environment.  Pesticides poison the soil, groundwater and the very food that we then consume.  Destruction of habitat of indeterminate numbers of creatures means bio-diversity is declining at an accelerating pace.  And we perceive ourself so far removed — i.e. ‘separated’ — from such consequences that we mostly give them little or no consideration.  This does not just apply to food production but to an almost endless array of other activities of the fragmented, misperceiving Sonship of God, vainly attempting to hide himself away from his Father in time and place.

Our self-deluding explanation is that we have to provide for a burgeoning population.  Is it beyond our wit to choose to stop the population from burgeoning?  Assuredly not, if we are willing; and that is just at the time and place level of perception and understanding.  How much more can we achieve under Holy Spirit guidance!

In Luke chapter 16, Jesus is recorded as saying:

 He that is faithful (or, caring, considerate) in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust (or, uncaring, inconsiderate) in the least is unjust also in much.  If therefore ye have not been faithful (or, caring, considerate) in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?  And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?

Clearly, what he is saying to us here is, if our approach to life, our fellows and all living things is not considerate and caring, as we would wish others to be caring and considerate of us, how can we expect to be able, prepared, made ready for re-entry into the Kingdom of Heaven?  In other words, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom (Lk. 12:32), but if we are unwilling to receive it because our attitude is not Kingdomly toward our fellows, then we are keeping ourself shut out of the Kingdom.

This, inevitably means we are confining ourself to a desolate place that we are, by our own ‘unjust’, ‘unfaithful’, uncaring, inconsiderate attitude rendering daily more desolate — in our hearts and minds, and therefore, inevitably, ‘out there’ as well, since ‘out there’ is a projection from our mind — by our attitude toward those without whom we are unable to enter the Kingdom, because in reality we are all one.

All the niggles, of any given day, for apparent unfairness that we hold against another, even for squeezing the toothpaste tube in the ‘wrong’ place, not hanging the towels up the ‘right’ way, are actually unforgiveness, because they cause us to have a sense of grievance against another, however trivial that grievance may seem to be.  Any who doubt the significance, the impact, that holding such a ‘small’ grievance is having upon themselves, try practising true forgiveness for a while, and see how it lightens our heart and our attitude toward our brother, and relieves us of a burden we may have been unaware we were carrying, until we find ourselves lightened of that load.

Whether perceived as ‘trivial and insignificant’ or major, as with miracles, one grievance or judgement is not harder or easier to relinquish or forgive than another, if we understand its importance to, and beneficial effect upon, ourself, and thus are able to summon the motivation for so doing.  Any and all such ‘trivial, insignificant’ or ‘major’ issues equally contribute to keeping us attached to ego’s symbol — the body — in which we experience fear, guilt, pain, suffering, limitation, death; all the opposite of our true reality.

Jesus did not suffer, or experience pain on the cross because he knew he was innocent.  We suffer and experience pain because we believe we are guilty.  Now is the time of awakening to the remembrance that we, like our brother Jesus, are innocent in the sight of God.  When we are ready to adopt and accept unto ourself the truth of this reality, we will cease to experience fear, guilt, suffering, pain, limitation and death.

Fear binds the world. Forgiveness sets it free.

The ego makes illusions.  Truth undoes its evil dreams by shining them away. (From W.332.)

In Gary Renard’s book The Disappearance of the Universe Pursah (visiting Gary in bodily form from the Realms of Light) says:

The world feels solid to you because fear binds it. It doesn't feel solid to me because I have forgiven the world, so its touch is no more solid than your dreams are for you at night. Yes, I feel something — but only enough to be able to function while I appear to be here.  It’s very gentle. That's why the nails didn’t hurt Jesus as they were being driven into his flesh. Being guiltless, his mind could not suffer — and someday you will attain the condition where you cannot suffer.  That is the destiny the Holy Spirit holds out to you when you forgive the episodic fantasies of your bodily addicted ego.  (My emboldening and some italic, for emphasis.)

The apparent discrepancy between ‘do we need to forgive?’, or ‘is there, in truth, nothing to forgive?’ is easily explained.  Within the dream of separation, guilt, fear, the need for judgement seems to be real, and therefore, we believe it so, and thus make it our reality, even though it is not eternal, so cannot be reality.  This keeps us trapped here for an indeterminate number of turns on the not-so-merry-go-round of reincarnating, each and every one of which serves to bring us opportunity to break the cycle through true forgiveness of all the build-up of karma, heaped upon heap.

But when we eventually — inevitably — choose with Self and move with Him back into wakefulness, we arrive, on the Way, at the place of remembrance that in the true perspective of Eternity, there is actually nothing to forgive.

Meanwhile, the practise of true forgiveness is the linchpin, the bridge, for getting us from the place we perceive ourself to be to where we actually are, in Truth.  Here is a suggested exercise for practising true forgiveness:

Dear Blank, I choose gladly to forgive you for all the things you have never done,

Now are we forgiven, and free to see only the face of Christ in each other.

Jesus is unequivocal that true forgiveness will get us Home.  If he says so, is that not good enough for his broken, confused, fragmented brothers in the Sonship?

To healing and restoration of the fragments to oneness J

Brian Longhurst

There is much in the world to make us afraid.  There is much more in our faith

to make us unafraid.  ~Frederick W. Cropp 

Amen!!!

November 3rd 2010

 Dear Friends,

FRIENDLY WARNING: The following MoE is, by nature of the subject covered, tortuous,

and asks for careful concentration for full comprehension.  Have fun J.

Ego’s script is ingenious, born of a truly ingenious mind; the Mind of God’s Son.  The idea was to experience things as they are not.  Of course, it is impossible, in truth, to experience things as they are not, because then they would not be true, and would be unrecognisable by Truth.  But, with all the power at the disposal of God’s Son, an illusion, a fantasy, a trick, a game, a phantasmagoria played upon himself, by himself (for who else is there upon, or with, whom to play it?) could appear to be real, if one condition was employed as a required part of the game: that the Son of God would enter into it from a self-imposed position, or state, of forgetfulness of Who he really Is.

This is like children, who play ‘pretend’, or ‘make believe’, in myriad ways; but when they are called in for supper, the pretence is immediately over, they become their father’s son again, and the pretend game is over.

Or, it is like a stage play in which actors pretend to be someone other than who they really are.  And when the play is over, they resume their rightful identity.

While the children play, or the actors act, all pretending to be other than their true self, they are at free choice either to be aware of their own identity, or to forget who they really are.  Children playing or actors acting are engaging in only a moderate game of pretend, and if the story, or script, is not very realistic, they will be aware all the time that this is but pretence, and their heart will not be in it.

But Papa’s Son is creative in equal capacity — i.e., without limit — to his Father.  So any game of pretend he chooses to play will have the ability to appear entirely realistic, but only as long as the ‘rule’, or precondition, set by its inventor, to apply to himself, is that he forgets Who he really Is.  Otherwise the game of ‘pretend that things are not as they really are’ could not be realistic, because it would immediately be seen by its player as unreal, and therefore, not exist.

This is the scenario within which the apparent separation of God’s Son from his Father was established.

The game is being played in a setting in which it had — for the sake of establishing the appearance of realism, i.e. as being what it is not — to seem to be a place where nothing of reality (i.e. Eternity) could appear to be present, and is called ‘time and place’.  This, for the purposes of the game of pretend, is perfect, because nothing in it is real (because nothing in it is of Eternity, and only Eternity is real).

Because this game of pretend was devised by Papa’s immeasurably empowered Son, and therefore appears to be playing-out in a very real-seeming setting (to give it the illusion of being real J), and the precondition of its inventor was self-imposed forgetfulness, the game has a Catch-22 snag that means, without Help from Eternity, it cannot come to an end.

The Catch-22 is based on the pretext that everything appears not to be as it really is.  The reality is that Papa has but one Son, and that Son is eternal, immortal, forever innocent, or ‘sinless’, all-loving, all-knowing, peaceful, uninterruptibly happy.  So, in the game, if any of those true qualities were seen, known, experienced, the game would immediately be over.  This is why the precondition of forgetfulness was essential, or the Son would recognise himself as being who he really is, and the game would be seen and known for what it is: nothing.

So, to experience not being who he really is, he had to appear to be the opposite of who he really is.  Those opposites include seeming, or perceiving himself to be: separate from God and from himself; appearing as many, each separate from each other; guilty, or sinful; mortal; fearful; unworthy; requiring sacrifice to assuage the wrath of an angry god ... you have the drift.

The Catch-22 that would keep us stuck in ‘the game of pretend’, which has gone very sour, is that what we believe is what we see, or experience, and this makes it real for us, even though, in truth, it is not real.  We can know it is not real because it keeps changing, and therefore is not eternal.  Only that which is changeless and eternal can be real.  But in our state of self-imposed forgetfulness of what is real, what is true, remembering the Principles of Life of the Father (PLFs) is difficult, because... we keep forgetting J; and the unreal keeps distracting us from what is real.

So, since the game is that we are pretending to be what we are not, we are pretending, and — because we have chosen forgetfulness — believing, and therefore experiencing that we are sinners, unworthy of forgiveness or salvation.  Of course, orthodox religion says our salvation is by the once and for all blood sacrifice of God’s only Son — Jesus — but this is a trick of ego to keep us stuck in forgetfulness, living a pretence, because God does not require sacrifice at all (see Jer. 7:22,23; Hos. 6:6; Mt. 12:7, and throughout ACIM).  So, if we believe that we need to forgive and be forgiven for sins, we are making the perceived sins ‘real’; for why would we need to forgive what is not real? 

Yet, Jesus tells us forgiveness is the only way to escape from the game, or dream.  So, this is the Catch-22: if we forgive, we make the sins real, and that will keep us here, and the ‘lie of Satan’, that the once and for all blood sacrifice of Jesus will save us, won’t save us, so we are believing another part of the pretence that is actually devised to keep us here; and if we say to ourself ‘Forgiving makes sin real, so I won’t forgive, and that will get me Home’, we are ignoring the counsel of Jesus to forgive, so that also will keep us here.  Hence the Catch-22 designation!

This is where the ‘Help from Eternity’ comes to the rescue, by seeing past the apparent Catch-22 to the ‘escape hatch’.  What Jesus (in a former incarnation, during which he became fully enlightened: Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Jn. 8:58) remembered, because he chose to listen to the Spirit of Truth, the Voice for God, was that none of this is real, so we can (easily) forgive it.  And thus, we can forget it because it is unreal, a mere momentary dream (and who, in their right mind, would want to remember a bad dream?) and in its place, remember the Truth of Eternity.  But because false forgiveness makes the unreal seem real, the true forgiveness formula states that we forgive our brother, and ourself for what neither of us has ever, in reality, actually done.

Thus, the true forgiveness formula gets us past the Catch-22.  Forgiveness seems to be necessary within the game of pretend, but if we forgive believing the sin (ours and/or ‘another’s’) that will, within the game, make it ‘real’, and keep the carousel of birth and death going round and round, indefinitely, because we believe it.  Practising true forgiveness accomplishes two crucial things: it keeps us focused away from unforgiveness (unforgiveness means holding grievances, which keep us in the dream), and at the same time is a mind-re-training exercise, in which we keep reminding ourself that we are (all) completely, eternally innocent. 

Repeating this true forgiveness practise brings real results, because it brings us to the place of remembering, and therefore knowing and thus experiencing the Truth of our Being.

Our dear friend ‘the Rector’ said to Olga Park many decades ago, ‘To understand all is to forgive all’.  To forgive all is to be free of the game of pretend; to remember and to know, once more, our true Identity.  If we don’t forgive (ourself and our brothers) for what none of us has actually done, we remain stuck in the game of pretend, in the stage setting known as time and place.  And if we use the conventional, or false — because it is part of the game of pretend — formula for forgiveness, we make our ‘sins’ real, and therefore cannot escape fear, guilt, limitation and mortality, because we believe the ‘sin’ that put us here is ‘real’, so we are ‘deservedly’ here, separate from God.

So, true forgiveness turns the table on ego’s apparent Catch-22, and undoes it by ‘forgiving’ but at the same time helping us to keep uppermost in our mind that we have actually nothing to forgive or be forgiven for, because we are but dreaming, playing the game of being and experiencing the opposite of eternal truth and reality.

Full, or complete awakening, or enlightenment, or restoration to wholeness, or the oneness that we really are, results from the healing of the split mind that brought about the illusion, by the Holy Spirit, our true, all-knowing, all-wise Self, Who dwells in the highest part of our mind.  The split-off part of our mind, which is ego’s habitat, has absolutely no awareness or understanding of our highest mind, because this is Christ Mind, and is of Eternity, just like Papa’s Mind, of which it is an indivisible part.  Ego denies the existence of this Reality, because for it, It does not exist.  We have to choose for the Light of Spiritual Discernment, highest mind — Christ, or Holy Spirit Mind — or for continuing spiritual darkness.

In Gary Renard’s book The Disappearance of the Universe Arten (visiting Gary in bodily form from the Realms of Light) says:

When you’re enlightened , you will completely awaken from the dream.  Even though you’ll still appear to be in a body, you’ll see what the Course (ACIM) refers to as the real world (i.e. the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth).  You will only “see” it when you have completely forgiven the world (including ourself), because the real world has no projections of unconscious guilt upon it.  You’ll see only innocence everywhere, because it’s your own innocence — the innocence of Christ.  That’s what Jesus saw, and what he teaches you now to see.

 He goes on to quote from the Clarification of Terms, at the back of ACIM:

A universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary.  It is this experience toward which the course is directed...

and Arten adds: That universal experience is the Love of God.

On page 449 of the ACIM Workbook, section 9, headed What Is the Second Coming?  Jesus says

Christ’s Second Coming, which is sure as God, is merely the correction of mistakes, and the return of sanity.  It is a part of the condition that restores the never lost, and re-establishes what is forever and forever true.  It is the invitation to God’s Word to take illusion’s place; the willingness to let (true) forgiveness rest upon all things without exception and without reserve.

And Workbook Lesson 237 says:

Now would I be as God created me.

Today I will accept the truth about myself.  I will arise in glory, and allow the light in me to shine upon the world throughout the day.  I bring the world the tidings of salvation which I hear as God my Father speaks to me.  And I behold the world that Christ would have me see, aware it ends the bitter dream of death; aware it is my Father’s Call to me.

Christ is my eyes today, and He the ears that listen to the Voice for God today.  Father, I come to You through Him Who is Your Son, and my true Self as well.  Amen.

(My emboldening and underlining, for emphasis.)

And here, a final message of encouragement from he who is surely the greatest of all encouragers:

The peace of God is shining in me now.

Why wait for Heaven?  Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes.  The light is in them now.  Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all.  Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well.  The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own.  It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source.  It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home.                                                                     

(From W 188)

Shall we not all, in our mind, rejoin in the oneness that in truth we really are?; for now is the time,

Brian Longhurst  

I remove the obstacle
that I have placed
before God's open doorway.

November 10th 2010

Dear Friends,

There is a doctrine in orthodox Christianity that at the Second Coming of Christ all those who believe that Jesus died on the cross — a once and for all blood sacrifice as a propitiation for our ‘sins’ — will be raised from the dead and transported with him to Heaven.  This has been interpreted literally as bodies being raised from the grave. 

This doctrine arose from the Old Testament book of Job, which states:

For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though ... worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God (Job 19:26.)

These words were hugely popularised by their inclusion in Handel’s famous oratorio ‘Messiah’. Old Testament emphasis is substantially focused on bodies as being God’s creation.  This is first measure of meal consciousness. Jesus incarnated to leaven the second measure of meal, or move perceptions along, or up, to an eternal perspective, emphasising that we are spirit, not bodies:

... the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.... the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him ... God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (Jn. 4:21, 23, 24.) 

He also said: Let the dead bury the dead (Mt. 8:22) and this clearly indicates he was speaking not of dead bodies, but of those who were spiritually asleep, or not yet ‘born again of (awakened to) the spirit’.  He further said:

For as the Father raiseth up the dead (i.e. spiritually dead, or sleeping), and quickeneth them (i.e. awakens them to awareness of their spiritual reality); even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. (Jn. 5:21)

and

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. (Jn. 6:63)

One could readily wonder how much more he said back then has been lost from, or altered in, the record.  Nevertheless, it is not that hard to infer from what does survive that he is telling us it is eternal spirit, not the illusory, temporal considerations, upon which we will do well to focus.

Paul speaks extensively on resurrection of the dead in 1 Cor. 15, and lack of the light of spiritual discernment has caused his writings to be construed literally as flesh and blood bodies being changed from corruptible to incorruptible.  Yet verse 50 states unequivocally:

... flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption (i.e. things temporal, such as bodies) inherit incorruption (i.e. things eternal, namely spirit, our true Being).

Ego is not deterred by such unequivocal statements, and we can still be easily distracted, confused, misled by it, unless and until they (the unequivocal statements) are received into and accepted by ourself as our reality.  Then they become Truth for us because of our resonance with them, and that is part of the awakening, or being ‘born again of the spirit’.

Verses 51, 53 and 54 are just such ammunition for misinterpretation by ego-mind:

Behold, I shew you a mystery ... For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.  So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.  

It is not hard to see how this, without the light of spiritual discernment, and ego confusing us, has been perceived as bodies being somehow transformed into, or ‘putting on’, immortality.  This misperception would be inevitable if we have been misled by ego into believing that we are bodies. However, the second measure of meal understanding, or perception has run its course, and we are now moving substantially into the leavening of the third measure, the fulfilment measure of meal, in which full and complete understanding of these ‘mysteries’ is being restored to us.

During the early 1990s I had become interested in William Tyndale, born around 1494 in Gloucestershire.  He was the first to translate the Bible into English from the original Greek and Hebrew.  He was murdered by the Roman Catholic Church, by papal decree, for doing so.  In spite of the endeavours to suppress his work, it survived.

A modern printing of his translation had recently come available, and I was given a copy of the ‘Tyndale New Testament’ for Christmas 1993.  On Christmas Day, as I removed the wrapping paper and saw what it was, I made a huge, spontaneous, involuntary intake of breath and shuddered as Will (as I came to know him) came close and overshadowed me with his presence.  There was great power, commitment, humility, wisdom and love in his vibration.  At our first Communion after that, January 2nd 1994, I was immediately aware of his presence.  The exchange between us is shown below as the Diary entry for that date. 

Holy Communion January 2, 1994 

Dear Brian, fellow servant of Jesus Christ, I also perceive your sincerity and commitment and this, dear friend, I assure you, attracts many souls who desire something more than pleasantness.  It does also, of course, attract many souls (this service ritual of Christ commitment and communion) who are in dark and dreadful places.  It is a power base in the Earth-life wherein those from on high and those in need of uplift who are ready to go forward can be brought together in a place and condition of harmonising of the life energies.

Because this is a good and desirable thing and is clearly a part of our Lord's great and wonderful plan for the world, its progress and influence is needful of expansion.  This can be accomplished by continuing growth of the Living Word in the fructifying soil of your conscious, dedicated life.  I have been asked — and it is my desire also — to be an agent for expansion of the Truth in Scripture in your life, so that this that you do can continue to grow in serviceableness unto the Lord, our beloved Jesus.  I see also that your mind and mine do harmonise well, for you also see the importance of language and structure for building new understanding.

Thank you sir, for your blessing; my reward is rich indeed in fellowship of Christ service, for this is all I desire.  I see this is your desire also and do give you my blessing in the name of God our Father, Jesus Christ his beloved Son and also the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. 

It is evident now, sixteen years on, that Will has indeed been very close, even though my conscious awareness of him has been limited, because the understanding of many Old and New Testament scriptures have become clear during that interval — and still are becoming inspirationally clear today — of which I had previously little or no illumination.  It is also made plain from his message that he is totally operational within the auspices, empowerment and authority of Jesus and the Spirit of Truth.

Another way I have of knowing his close proximity is how often a particular quote from the Bible will suddenly be presented in my thoughts during various writing, or other activities, that is entirely apposite to the subject matter at hand, and adds substantially to the meaning and value of that endeavour.

As I was considering what might be the subject matter for this MoE, the words of Job quoted above came immediately to mind, and as they did, the clear understanding of their meaning followed seamlessly: 

For I know that my redeemer liveth: This needs no further explanation.

and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: The first measure of meal, and the equivocal, second-measure, confused, incomplete understanding of just Who is our redeemer has contributed to the misperceptions, because he is believed to be Jesus alone.  But ACIM states throughout that we are all the One Son of God, seeming to be fragmented, separated, appearing as many; that the Son of God is Christ; that he had a momentary thought, or dream, of wondering what it would be like if things were as they are not; that the At-onement, or GRP is restoring us to our original, single, one-minded Identity – here, in the dream of time and place.  This, so that, at the latter day — meaning during, or by, the completion of the leavening of the third measure of meal — the redeemer will be (in truth, is already) standing upon the Earth.

 And though ... worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: The first clause of this part of Job’s statement is beyond dispute. The second clause is brought much clearer by the benefit of ACIM, which says that we have to awaken from the dream, and this can only be from within the dream.  One cannot waken from a dream after one has already woken.  We are dreaming of bodies, time and place etc., and enlightenment, or Self realisation, can only come to us when we seem not to be enlightened.

The dream continues from one ‘act’, or incarnation, to the next, each bringing us opportunity to remember who we really are.  That most of us fail to recognise most opportunities for remembering as we call them into our presence is immaterial, for the infallible, unstoppable GRP means our awakening and restoration to oneness is inevitable — because, in truth, it has already happened .  And if it takes more, or fewer, turns on the carousel, it can only be from within the dream that we wake from it.  From within the dream means from within a body.  Therefore, in my flesh shall I see God.  

What Job’s statement does not include is that thereafter, we will not need flesh, because we shall have, in that moment, remembered that we are eternal spirit, in the likeness of our Father Creator.  When we waken from the dream we waken from the flesh (or attachment to illusory bodies), because bodies are an integral part of the dream of separation, and the dream will be over.

There has been some synchronicity involved here, because a message came from Regina Dawn Akers* around the same time as I had this nudge from Will, quoting Job.  In this message from Regina she quoted a communication she had received from Ramana Maharshi, or ‘Inner Ramana’ as she refers to his guidance.  Here is that message:

The doctrine of no birth

Inner Teacher: The mind is born. Therefore, it is not you. It is a mask, a folly, a pretend self. (Clearly here he refers to persona-self mind, the split-off-from-Truth, upside-down part of Christ Mind that ACIM refers to as ego.)

The body springs forth from the (ego) mind. The mind, which thinks it is a self, makes a body to prove itself to itself. But since the body is not based on the truth (of our eternal spirit Self), it cannot last.

Then the mind, thinking it needs a body-self to prove itself seeks out additional body identification (reincarnations).

This is the cycle of rebirth.

To disengage with the body is only a first step. If one does not disengage with the (ego) mind, the re-attraction to body is inevitable.  (My emboldening, for emphasis.)

Therefore, do not focus efforts on “I am not a body”.  Focus efforts on realization that “I am not mind”.

Evidently he speaks here of ‘ego mind’, which keeps making bodies because it perceives itself as limited, finite, mortal, ever-changing.  To prevent confusion, let us remind ourself how Jesus explains our true, eternal Being, in this extract from ACIM Clarification of Terms, section one:

1. MIND–SPIRIT

The term mind is used to represent the activating agent of spirit, supplying its creative energy.  When the term is capitalized it refers to God or Christ (i.e., the Mind of God or the Mind of Christ).  Spirit is the Thought of God which He created like Himself.  The unified spirit is God’s one Son, or Christ...

... Spirit is the part that is still in contact with God through the Holy Spirit...

We are all the saviour, or redeemer, of ourself and each other, through true forgiveness and healing of broken relationships, so that we may be restored to the oneness that is Who and What we really are — here, at the latter day, upon the earth.