Messages of Encouragement 2011

This is the archive of MoE postings during 2011.  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.

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

Brian Longhurst

January 5^th 2011

Dear Friends,

There is a lot of discussion about the upcoming, rapidly approaching winter solstice for 2012, its possible implications for mankind, and life as perceived and experienced in time and place.  Because the material universe is not solid, not real, but appearing to its observers according to the state of perception of those observers, the effects of the galactic, stellar and planetary alignments that are calculated, by the compilers of the ancient, Mayan calendar and other, present-day astronomers, are likely to vary as those diverse states of belief, perception, consciousness, awareness vary.

That may seem like a rather controversial suggestion to any who read it from a time and place centred perspective.  Such a viewpoint might say, ‘Well, if there are going to be alignments and those alignments are going to have an influence on this planet and its inhabitants, that is what will be experienced by its inhabitants, full stop.’

But that is far from the complete picture.  Those who choose to see with right-minded vision see positive outcome from whatever ‘turns up’.  That right-minded vision comes from right-minded thinking, which is positive, constructive energy, radiating out into the world around them — and beyond — from their point of origin in the mind of the thinker, and affect the world around them, and beyond.  The classic example of this is Jesus, who saw only wholeness in his fellows, and extended that wholeness to those who perceived themselves as crippled, diseased, blind, possessed. 

Such vision is freely available to us, but for the asking.  We all know the effects such positive — actually, right-minded, and ultimately, as in his case, Christ-Minded — thinking, understanding, knowing, seeing had on what everyone else around him perceived as imperfection.  He went further calming a tempest, and telling his friends:

For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.  Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. (Mk. 11:23, 24)

I have not one shred of doubt that, if enough people had enough faith, and prayed, believing, the hurricanes, tornadoes, ‘twisters’ that regularly strike various parts of the world, wreaking destruction and heartache, would be disarmed in a moment.  Now is the time on the cosmic clock for the emergence of faith to take hold in the mind of the fragmented Sonship, as he begins to remember his true Identity.  Assuredly many, many people do pray, earnestly, when a hurricane is heading their way.  But how much are their prayers fear-, desperation-, negative-thought driven? 

Yet, we all can intuit that Jesus’ words to the storm that threatened to sink the boat he was in with his disciples on the Sea of Galilee were not driven thusly, but from the certainty of knowing beyond all doubt that his words — an expression of the state of faith of his mind and inner being — would achieve their intended effect.  Further, after he walked on the stormy water toward the disciples’ boat, and calmed the storm, the record says: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went (Jn. 6:21), even though they were still hours of rowing from the shore a moment before.

‘Oh, fine,’ says a voice from the back, ‘so, we just think positive thoughts and miracles will happen, then everything will be hunky-dory.’  Yet right-minded thinking can immediately discern that such is but a continuance of negative, ego thinking holding sway.  Put another way, that a choice has been made to follow — or continue following — the wrong script.  When we are in a pit of misperceiving, we perceive only with our flawed, body’s senses, rather than discern with our true, right-minded, spiritual vision. 

ACIM reminds us that we see what we choose to see, and if we have chosen — at some deep, unconscious level — to follow ego’s script, our vision will be, or remain, ‘double’, or flawed in favour of the illusion instead of seeing past that illusion to the Truth of Eternity that is with us at every instant.  Time can be used either to continue that misperceiving, or to choose anew and begin the upward Path toward the Light that will, if we so desire, illumine our mind and restore our true vision.

Such a change of mind does take time to become installed and fully operational in our way of seeing ourself, our life and the events unfolding in it and around us.  It is likely to be forestalled myriad times in a day because we have been so inured in upside-down, separation thinking for so long.  This is why we need Help from One Who is truly able to help because He has been empowered by God to provide us with this Help. 

We could say to Self, the Spirit of Truth, when we catch ourself allowing ego’s script to dictate our thinking, perceiving, believing, ‘Thank You, Holy Spirit, for healing my mind’.  Or, any mantra, such as ‘I Am that I Am’, or reminder that we find helpful in getting us back on track towards true vision.  But being aware that that Help is with us, always, and all we have to do is ask, is immeasurably beneficial to our inner peace.  Saying ‘Thank You, Holy Spirit...’ may not seem the same as asking, but Thank You is acknowledging the Help Self gives before we ask.  He knows our willingness to receive the Help that He provides, because He sees into our heart, and whether or not that willingness is there that enables us to receive it.

Every moment, miracles are happening in our life, of which most of us are not consciously aware.  Those miracles are enabled by every loving, blessing, caring, giving, compassionate thought we have.  Every negative, ego-scripted thought we allow is a block to our awareness of, and benefitting from, those miracles, and of the awareness of Love’s presence.  If we but choose to see with the True Vision of Self, that enables Self to perform these miracles exponentially more, producing one of the most exciting miracles of all: the collapsing of time, so that less time is needed — fewer incarnations — to restore us to wholeness.

Whatever appears to happen outwardly need not affect our inner focus.  Jesus tells us in ACIM:

 When you react at all to errors (or ‘mistakes’, or misperceptions), you are not listening to the Holy Spirit.  He has merely disregarded them, and if you attend to them you are not hearing Him.  If you do not hear Him, you are listening to your ego and making as little sense as the brother whose errors you perceive. (T-9.III.4)

When we surrender our life, thinking, believing, seeing, experiencing into the care of the Holy Spirit, our True Self — as distinct from, or instead of, our little, upside-down thinking/believing/perceiving, limited, illusory, false identity, persona, mortal, ego self — He can begin the process of restoring our thinking, believing, experiencing, true vision, empowerment.  Although time is a device of ego, Holy Spirit can, and does, use it to lead us, one comfortable step at a time, toward the Light.  Ego may demand ‘instant fixes’ to our problems, but the speed of the Holy Spirit’s ‘fix’ of our misperceptions depends upon our readiness to receive and accept unto ourself His Answer. 

His Answer is our release from ego misperceptions, which are the cause of our fear, guilt, shame, self-hate, separation, mortality...  Although we may perceive ourself as being ready for an instant, total, Holy Spirit fix, complete release from all gloom into the Light, only He knows all our accreted karmic entanglements, brokenness, unforgiveness, grievances, guilt, fear, from untold other incarnations.  The fact they are hidden from our conscious awareness is indicator enough of their magnitude, and our state of unreadiness to have them brought to the surface of our awareness for release. 

And, in case we choose to deny the existence of such accretions, it is worth contemplating why we are not aware of being in the perfect peace, joy, love of Heaven if we truly have no such burdens.  They are hidden from our awareness because we are loved and protected from the awfulness that we have dreamt up by what, believing we are separate from God, we have placed upon ourself.

When we are ready for each forward step, He, the Voice for God, the Spirit of Truth, our holy Self will effect the progress, the release that each step led by Him can bring.  But always, we must be willing to receive that release, that gift, that gradual increase in the Light that such release allows, and its commensurate dispelling of the darkness.  This requires faith, trust, willingness to be obedient to His Will — which is one with God’s Will — and steadfast commitment.  Partial commitment will afford partial results, partial, compromised release, and in effect, that is no release at all, for only complete release is true release; all else is illusion, self-deception.

If we believe the universe, with its galaxies, stars, planets, and perceived alignments are all ‘out there’, when, in truth they are in the separated, split-off-from-Eternity part of our mind, all part of the ruse — the game of pretend that we are not Who, What or Where we really are — then we will believe they can affect us in some way beyond our control.  Most of us will not have gained sufficient trust in Self to allow ourselves to be released from the self-deception of time and place by 21/12/12, so will believe such alignments can, and probably will, affect us, in some way that remains unknown to us until the crucial moment arrives.

It is that seeming unknown that causes ego-script-following minds to be fearful.  Trust in a trust-worthy Guide releases us from fear of the unknown, because that trust allows us to receive the Light of awareness of our invulnerability regardless of whatever appears to be happening in the illusory ‘out there’.    It also allows Him to remind us that He is empowered to use all ego devices (including celestial alignments) to our benefit and that of our brothers, rather than our apparent detriment. 

Jesus knew this of a certainty beyond all doubt, and it was this that enabled him to accept the cross.  He knew a) that he was not a body, and therefore innocent, sinless, invulnerable; not susceptible to the pain that the false burden of unconscious guilt causes us to experience, and b) that his resurrection would get the attention of his brethren, win their trust to follow him throughout the Jesus measure of meal, and therefore be prepared (willing) to watch and wait for his return to their awareness.  For some, that return would be during the second measure of meal, or second watch, and for others, during the third:

Blessed are those servants, 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 (or, measure of meal), and find them so, blessed are those servants. (Lk. 12: 37-38) 

Blessed indeed are those ‘servants’ (those who espouse themselves to Jesus and the GRP), because ‘sitting down to meat’ means ‘supping’ or having spiritual fellowship, communing, at a level of mind far above and beyond time and place consciousness, because such communing is in the Kingdom awareness, and the Kingdom is eternal.  It is our Home, and such supping is preparing us for our return Home.

No-one knows (unless it has been revealed to them by divine revelation) what will transpire at, or result from, the winter solstice 2012.  But if we choose to follow Holy Spirit’s script, and eschew ego’s script, we have the advantage of not being dragged down into a pit of fear, doubt, uncertainty, speculation (only ego speculates), and instead, having the confidence that — whatever may appear to happen outwardly, in the consensus reality of ego-mind — Holy Spirit works for our highest good in everything. 

The more fragments who choose Holy Spirit’s script, the more can be included in, and contribute to, the highest good of all, because they include themselves, rather than the only alternative, which is self-exclusion.  God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit never exclude us.

Love and blessings for fulfilment of our highest aspirations in 2011,

Brian Longhurst

Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting ourself in the hands of God, at his disposition, and listening to his voice in the depths of our hearts. ~ Mother Theresa

January 12^th 2011

Dear Friends,

We are bombarded from every direction by false messages from ego, hell-bent on persuading us that lies are the truth.

I had an email on Monday this week, with a link to a website with an article headed:

Forgive and forget?  Not if you know what's good for your marriage

Holding a grudge can actually help keep bad behavior in check, study suggests

This article goes on to suggest that if a spouse forgives a marital misdemeanour by their partner, this can fuel the transgressing spouse into further lapses from seemly behaviour, and those who stayed unforgiving will curb their partner’s unserviceable conduct.

What this shallow perspective is missing is that this unforgiveness interaction is motivated by fear on both sides, and fear is the cause of all decay — a precursor of ‘death’ — including of relationships.  Research of this type — which, when seen in the light of true, eternal, spiritual discernment is, immediately, intuitively recognised as spurious — is usually undertaken by ‘experts’; academics from august institutions of higher learning.  In fact, research into almost everything to do with time and place is undertaken by such bodies.  It appears ego has all exits barred.  

And until the eternal perspective is given its rightful place in such research, findings will continue to promulgate the misperception that time and place, and all the upside-down-ness of it, is reality.  Happily, the writing is on the wall for that ego-led expedition into the wilderness, because quantum-physicists are now aware that time and space is an illusion.  They may not know what to do about that yet, because it means pretty well all text books will need rewriting.  An onerous task, to be sure, but it will contribute mightily to leading the fragmented Sonship back out of the wilderness.

Meanwhile, back to the original topic... Many relationships in time are between people of disparate awareness of truth and falsehood.  One partner may be some steps ahead on the Path to spiritual wakefulness — let us call them party A, and the other deeply unconscious of anything to do with eternal truth, living by ego’s script of expediency motive, according to whatever is happening at the moment — let us call them party B.  Deciding on behaviour according to such a script can only lead to uncertainty and dysfunction within the relationship, because ego-led decision-making and behaviour is de-structive.

This puts great strain on the relationship from the perspective of party A, who sees instinctively how things should be if the relationship is to remain healthy, happy and fulfilling.  Many such imbalanced relationships break down because the strain is too great.  Yet, such imbalanced relationships are, when seen from the perspective of Holy Spirit, great and priceless opportunities for both, and have been agreed to be entered into ‘afore time’ (i.e. before the parties involved incarnate), at least by party A.  This is because A already knows, in their pre-incarnation state, that to help another is to help oneself, because giving and receiving are the same in eternal reality.

The chances are that A will already know B, the party A has chosen/decided/agreed to help, from association in former incarnations.  A will also be aware that there are some issues to be resolved between them, so that healing can be accomplished.  Because love is who and what we truly are, and A knows that giving is an indivisible aspect of loving, A cannot resist the commitment to help B, even though A knows it will be very, very difficult to achieve this in the state of forgetfulness that comes with the territory of time and place. 

In many cases the attempts bear little fruit, at least in the initial stages after the commitment has been made.  This is most likely to happen when A is distracted from the memory that Help is always available from Self.  That Help is only accessible when we go within, because that is the dwelling place of Self.  Without that Help success in healing the issues involved in the brokenness is much less likely.

‘M’, who emailed me the article, could be considered ‘A’, and her husband, ‘B’.  When we first came in contact 5 or 6 years ago, M was a seeker after spiritual truth but her husband, ‘H’, was, and still is, deeply engaged within the illusion.  She found this very hard to cope with and unburdened herself to me by email, seeking some more focused guidance.  As a result of my decades-long journey toward the Light with Jesus, and my now active study of Gary Renard’s book, The Disappearance of the Universe and ACIM, I was able to offer this, always asking for inspiration from Jesus and/or the Spirit of Truth as I responded to her cries de coeur.

At first, little progress seemed to be achieved, so great was the disparity between the couple, and H’s belittling of M’s spiritual seeking, and his disparaging, fear-driven reaction to her attempts at staying on the path to the Light she was so eager to follow, that she was often close to despair, even though she is a very strong, positive spirit.  I seriously wondered if I could really be of any help for quite a while, but was reminded that Jesus had been infinitely patient with me for decades; had never given up on me. 

My motivation is to become like him (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. 1 Jn. 3:2), and so I thought, ‘If Jesus can be infinitely patient with me, who am I to abandon another who is calling for my help?’  I then realised that as long as I call on his and the Holy Spirit’s Help, I could and would continue for as long as M needed my support and encouragement.  Jesus’ help for me has never wavered, and so I resolved, with this Help, to emulate him as best I could.

The exchanges of email have continued during the intervening years, and a trusting, caring, loving rapport has developed.  In that time I have come to realise that this has definitely not been a one-way relationship.  Every time M wrote asking for input on whatever was the issue of the moment, I asked for guidance in responding, and found myself writing things that brought sharply into focus the Principles of Life of the Father (PLFs) and things of which, until the moment they emerged through my keyboard, I had had no conscious awareness.

Jesus reminds us that we learn by teaching, and this enabled me to attest absolutely to this truth.  At first I was inclined to see M’s cries for help as a chore, but remembering how Jesus has been infinitely patient with me helped me to ‘keep on keeping on’ with M, and instead of remaining a chore they became a joy, because I knew the Help was with me and I would be learning, growing in understanding, patience; loosening my mind from hard-held preconceptions; remembering to surrender and allow in the Light.  Seeing M grow in self-love, self-acceptance, confidence, wisdom, patience in handling the relationship with H has been a joy and a reward to me beyond description.

With the article M sent, she wrote: 

Some days I just shake my head with disbelief.  He actually thinks this is a great article.  I was slightly annoyed by the end of the article but more annoyed when he stood by what it said... telling me he doesn’t really understand why I NEED his forgiveness anyway since I have already forgiven myself so easily. 

 It’s just one of those out of the blue ego-running-scared attacks.   Tiresome.

I did not pick up any angst in her message, more, that it was simply observational; sharing the view about the insanity of worldly perceptions and confusion about what is real.  A real transformation from a few years previously.  Extracts from my reply are pasted here: 

I know you actually know the right-minded response to this matter, but it will be good for us both (and, ultimately, H) to go through this together.  So, here goes.

This article is, as you rightly say, ego-sponsored, and is operational purely at the time and place (t&p) consciousness level; an ego attempt at a) keeping the slumberers confused and b) keeping them focused at the superficial, t&p level, and thus, preventing them becoming aware of the within, where their true Self abides.

This article is speaking only of ‘false forgiveness’.  True forgiveness (see below) sees there is no time and place, that nothing that appears to be happening when observed/experienced with our bodily senses is real, because it is not eternal, and only Eternity is real.

H is not ready for Reality yet, and to try and force a sleeper into wakefulness before he is ready, finished with believing in dreams as reality, serves neither them nor those who try to wake them.  This message was given to Olga Park in 1948:

‘…Guard thy tongue: especially to strangers to this way of life and the knowledge and wisdom of the spirit.  Give place to the views of others, even though you know them to be in error.  Send forth a prayer for such, that they may come to the fuller knowledge and the clearer sight.’

Their move toward waking will be helped by those around them who are more nearly awake, or waking, simply recognising what is happening and lovingly allowing it, knowing it is an illusion, and therefore does not matter.  Meanwhile, they can remember that the Holy Spirit, Who abides in the mind of us all, and is the 'Matrix of Oneness' between all the apparent fragments, is the true communication link, as indicated here:

Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body only as a means of communication.  Being the Communication Link between God and His separated Sons, the Holy Spirit interprets everything you have made in the light of what He is. (ACIM T-8.VII.2)

So, that means you can communicate with the real, right-thinking part of H’s mind through, or via, the Holy Spirit.  This is silent, and does not require the bodily presence of H.  In fact, it is better for him not to be bodily present, because it is likely to be a distraction, while you are communing with the real H, which is one and the same as your true, eternal Self. 

Here is another quote from ACIM for this situation:

The Communication Link that God Himself placed within you, joining your mind with His, cannot be broken.  You (H, in his ego-dominated mind, along with most of the rest of humanity at present) may believe you want It broken, and this belief does interfere with the deep peace in which the sweet and constant communication God would share with you is known.  Yet His channels of reaching out cannot be wholly closed and separated from Him.  Peace will be yours because His peace still flows to you from Him Whose Will is peace.  You have it now.  The Holy Spirit will teach you how to use it, and by extending it, to learn that it is in you.  God willed you Heaven, and will always will you nothing else.  The Holy Spirit knows only of His Will.  There is no chance that Heaven will not be yours, for God is sure, and what He wills is as sure as He is. (T-13.XI.9)

So, if you commune with H via Holy Spirit, on behalf of H, without involving him at his Earth-mind conscious/bodily level, HS will use your gifts of love, blessing, true forgiveness to help H's awakening and remembrance of Who he really is, when the time is right. 

If this does not produce an instant fix/transformation of H's Self-awareness, that is not important.  What is important is that all your loving offerings will benefit him, some of which benefits you will experience, sooner or later, in this circuit of the carousel, and others which will help him immeasurably in the longer term, reducing the number of further sojourns in time he would otherwise need to take.  Of equal importance is the fact that all your loving, blessing, forgiveness gifts to H (via HS) will definitely, unavoidably, immeasurably benefit you, releasing you both from the karmic entanglement. 

The key is to leave all to/with HS, and not look for results, and then get discouraged if none is outwardly discernible.  Transforming effects/results are in process immediately, because time does not exist for HS, and it is of no consequence to reality if we are unaware of them with our bodily senses. 

There; you knew all that, didn't you? J  But it is an interesting, beneficial exercise for you and for me to go through it again, as a reminder and to concretise the reality in our mind. 

Since this was prompted by an article about forgiveness, here is a reminder of what ACIM teaches us about it:

False forgiveness is when the ‘sin’ is acknowledged and then forgiven.  However, the flaw in this misperception is that by acknowledging the ‘sin’, we give it reality.  This is a ploy of ego mind, which wants us to be, and remain, bogged-down in a false world of sin.

True forgiveness...  here, the words of Jesus from the Course are the most serviceable to our forming a clear and uncluttered understanding:

(True) Forgiveness recognises that what you thought your brother did to you has not (actually) occurred.  It does not pardon sins and (therefore) make them real.  It sees (instead, that) 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 then lets it go.  What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God. (My parenthesised words, underlining, emboldening and italics.) (ACIM Workbook, page 401.)

The restoration of the Sonship to Its true estate of oneness is only possible through universal forgiveness.  Then will all grievances, judgement, fear, guilt, anger, hurt and death be seen for the misperceptions that they are, and forgotten in an instant.  We are at the beginning of the fulfilment of this restoration, right now.

I give you: True Forgiveness J

Brian Longhurst

Disappointment can come only to those who make appointments with the future.

January 19^th 2011

Dear Friends,

In chapter 1 of SYFK I wrote: 

...I had had a terrible, breath-taking, heart-stopping fear of death during much of my teen years.  The word ‘death’, it seemed to me, indicated the complete end of life and consciousness, bringing only darkness, silence, emptiness, nothingness.  Forever.  This frightened me so badly I had palpitations, my palms sweated, my vision blurred every time I thought about it... 

Fear of ‘death’ — darkness, emptiness, nothingness — is fear of a symbol of what seemed to happen at the moment of separation, 14 billion years ago, according to cosmologists.  This is when, in linear time terms, the Son of God — created in the likeness of his Father Creator, and therefore perfect, sinless, all-knowing, all-empowered-by-Perfect Love — dreamt for an instant that he had left Home.  In this tiny instant it appeared he had left the Source of all Light, of Life, of Perfect Love; Papa God.

It appeared he had journeyed to a ‘far country’.  The country was ‘far’ because it was away from Home — the Light of Life — and was, therefore, darkness, emptiness, nothingness; the absence of Light (and therefore, life and love).  ‘Hold on,’ says ego, ‘time and place, Earth, the solar system, billions of galaxies, are not darkness, emptiness, nothingness.  What about the trillions of stars lighting the universe, the brilliant array of magnificent life forms, our sun providing light and life; the fantastic achievements of man?’

This is an upside-down, egocentric perception, like saying ‘The sun has gone behind a cloud’.  The so-called physical universe is not out there at all.  There is no ‘out there’ because ‘out there’ is outside, away from, God.  Or it would be if it were possible to be outside, away from, God, which, of course, it is not. The physical universe, all of it, is in the part of the mind of the Son that perceives itself as separated, sojourning in that far country. 

We have to get away from the misperception that our mind and our brain are one and the same thing.  Brains are in skulls, and decay with bodies; mind is everywhere, unlimited, eternal.  A miniscule part of upside-down, split-off-from-truth mind uses brains to operate the puppets we call bodies.  Unless, until, we turn over the puppeteering to our true, eternal Self.  Then everything changes for the better; not just for the individual, but for the whole Sonship... then a body becomes a communication mechanism for healing the broken Sonship and returning Home to Papa. 

Time and space are figments of the imagination of that split-off mind, and are part of the dream.  Dreams are not real and so the universe is not real.  When we wake from a dream we realise this, however real it appeared to be while we were experiencing it.

Solar bodies do not produce the Light that is indivisible from, synonymous with, Life and Perfect Love; that Light is brighter than all the innumerable stars in billions of galaxies, is eternal, living and loving, and the life-forms of Earth are not the Life that they signify.  The forms come and go in the blink of an eye, but the Life, of which all are indivisible parts, is eternal, and returns, is restored to Eternity, to our Source.  That Light is us, Papa’s eternal Son, in his oneness in his Father Creator, from Whom it is impossible to be separate, though it is possible to imagine it being so. 

Fear of death is inevitable all the while we believe, and thus, perceive ourselves as separate, because death is a symbol of that separation.  Before the separation God’s Son knew (and still does in his right-minded state of Being; his true, Christ Self) his eternal reality.  Jesus was, is, the template of that state of being, but it was not his bodily form that is that template.  It was/is his awakened, all-knowing, all-loving mind that is our exemplar from God. 

His body, just like all the rest of us, the fragmented Sonship, was simply a communication mechanism for delivering his message of the truth that will set us free — once we decide to accept his message as our truth.  We can safely do that because the truth he came to bring, to live, to demonstrate, is Eternal Truth; the Truth of God, the Creator Spirit.  It is Love

It is not just Jesus who is a messenger.  We are all messengers.  Just like Jesus, the message we each deliver is the message we believe.  What we believe, we perceive; so says Jesus in ACIM.  If we believe in death, then that is the message we deliver, and so the message is promulgated from generation to generation.  And has been from the start of the separation, because to accept the separation is to accept death as our reality. 

Now, however, Jesus reminds us — at the start of the fulfilment/completion measure of meal, through his handbook for the awakening he entitled A Course in Miracles — that we have available to us the Voice for God — the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Breath; our True, Eternal Self — to Whom we can listen as an alternative to the voice we have mostly been listening to since the separation; the false, counterfeit, upside-down opposite of our true Self.

This Voice has always been with us, but because we have been listening to the voice that believes the separation is real — the voice of judgement and unforgiveness — this has misled and confused us, and drowned-out from our awareness the still, small Voice for God within.  Jesus heard, listened to and followed this Voice, and he came at the start of the second measure of meal to manifest and anchor that Voice in time and place so that we could hear It also, if we are willing to listen 

The first record we have of this is in Jn. 20:22, when he appeared to the disciples in the upper room during the evening of the day of his resurrection: ...he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.  The next record is from Acts, chapter 1, also shortly after the resurrection, when the disciples were still in Jerusalem and he appeared to them again:

And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.  For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence ... ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you...  

This coming upon them took place at the event called Pentecost, 50 days after the resurrection, as described in Acts chapter 2.  The disciples were greatly empowered by this wondrous experience, performed many miracles and spoke with the authority of the Spirit of Truth.  In due course all this was lost to the awareness of subsequent generations of most of the followers of Jesus because an institution grew up following from those early days and years, and became engulfed in distracting detail at the time and place level of consciousness; taken over by ego, instead of remaining focused on the eternal Principles of Life of the Father.  Truly spoken are the words ‘The devil is in the detail.’

But it is impossible for the Son of God to not be the Son of God, regardless of his dream of separation from his Father and himself, broken into fragments of self-disempowered littleness; one, appearing as many in the valley of death.  And the leavening, the uplifting, the healing of the split-off mind of the Son is taking place.  The ‘dead’ inhabitants of that valley are being resurrected, restored to Life. 

If God is another term for, and the Source of, all Light/Life/Perfect Love, then dreaming of separation from Him is dreaming of separation from Life, or said another way, of death.  We perceive our existence in time and place as life, but Jesus knew this was not true when he said: Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. (Lk. 9:60)

In chapter 10 of SYFK I have written of experiencing four ‘tapestry of fragments’ events, all of which were synchronistic, though I did not realise this until some time later.  The third event is described in these extracts:

. . . In the third tapestry fragment, I had got into bed and was settling down for sleep.  As I lay there with the light extinguished I suddenly became aware that there was the figure of a man standing at the foot of the bed.  This startled and somewhat unnerved me because the figure was in silhouette form and was totally black.  There was absolutely no light at all, of any kind, emanating from this form.  It was like a black hole in a way, utterly bereft of any indication of the light of life.  In my experience, this signalled a presence from the realms of darkness, and I was not eager for an encounter of that ilk.  This form was very tall; I would say at least 6 feet 6 inches (2 metres).  As I took in this apparition, a voice which I knew to be Papa spoke from what I assumed at the immediate moment was where the mouth of the apparition would be, but realised, as I considered this later, was actually above and behind the head of the form. 

The words spoken were, ‘Man, the Temple of God.’  Nothing else . . .

. . . As I lay there considering this, suddenly Papa spoke again, this time from beside the bed, to my left, about at my waist level but at the height of a standing person.  This time He said, ‘The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple.’  (Mal. 3:1: Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.) . . .

(Then) ...He spoke for the third time, ‘I will come unto him and will make My abode with him.’  (Jn. 14:23: Jesus answered and said unto 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.) . . .

. . . my conclusion about it from the advantage of minute examination over time is that the black form was a representation of the temple without the presence of Him with Whose occupancy it would ultimately be filled.  It was a symbolic representation of the temple vacated by its rightful occupant, the Son of God, who believes he has separated himself from his Father Creator — an upside-down perception if ever there was one!  Without the life, the light of the Creator, there would be, there can only be, emptiness, nothingness, darkness, an absence of anything, including, and especially light, because light and life are synonymous.  If one can envision any part of God’s Creation from which the Creator Spirit is (or could be) absent, assuredly this form was it.

 Nothingness.  Only a ‘black hole’ in the form of man but utterly devoid of beingness.  A form, one might say, awaiting re-occupation by the Source of All, the very spirit, or essence, of Life Itself; all-knowingness; perfect love; creativity in all its boundlessness.  Here was a demonstration of the truth revealed in ACIM that the world, the physical universe, our bodies, and indeed, all that is of time and place — and is therefore destined to ‘pass away’ — are not created by God, the Creator Spirit; that all that is of time and place is a dream of separation from Him, and that Jesus is, by his Great Rescue Programme, leading us back to Papa; that when we have been ‘made ready’, or prepared — by the retraining and correcting of our misperceptions of our true reality, so long held by the apparently split-off-from-Truth, separated part of our mind, or ego, and restored to our true, Christ-Minded, thinking and knowledge — we will be re-unified to oneness of the Sonship in the Father Creator.

Now is the moment for us to re-attune with the Voice for God within, and be restored to remembrance that eternal Life, Light and Perfect Love is who and what we are, right here, right now, uninterruptibly.

Love, Life, Light,

Brian Longhurst

 When you exercise your freedom to express yourself at the lowest level, you ultimately condemn yourself to live at that level.

                                                                    Zig Ziglar

January 26^th 2011

Dear Friends,

We can retrain our mind away from ego-driven belief/perception (linear time) back to Holy Spirit-guided remembrance of truth/knowledge — the holy instant of Now/Eternity — and that will gradually be restored into dominance in our thinking, awareness, understanding, experiencing.

‘Right,’ says ego, ‘but that is 1) brainwashing, 2) handing over our freedom of thought to the control of another.  Further, 3) it will require us to give up plenty; all that we have fought/worked so hard to achieve, obtain, accomplish in this world — all for something that lies ahead, maybe.  4) Better to stick with what we know, right here, right now.’

Wrong, on all counts.  Let us look at each of these suggestions from ego’s script: 1) We have been brainwashed already, into believing a single lie.  That lie is that we are separated from God.  Believing that one lie has led to all the other lies, misperceptions, misery, fear, guilt, scarcity, grievance...  Continuing to believe that one lie is a guarantee of continuing misperceptions, all as listed above, plus myriad, endless others, including death. 

2) Handing over our freedom of thought to ‘another’ — the Spirit of Truth — is actually restoring freedom of thought to our True Self, away from utterly alien, upside-down thinking that is not, ever was nor could be our own thinking.  This is because we are God’s Son, created in His perfect likeness of Mind as well as Spirit.  This True Self is our Son of God Self, or Christ, with Whom we are linked while appearing to function from ‘outside Heaven’ by the Voice for God, or the Holy Spirit.

Spirit is Holy (whole) because it is of God, Who is whole, or complete. We can rightly refer to Spirit as Holy, or whole, because that is It’s permanent, unchangeable state.  Our state.  Hence, our True Self, or Self with an initial capital, as distinct from our illusory, temporal (non-eternal), persona, ego-puppeteered, little self, with a lower-case initial.

3) We gave up plenty — everything, in fact, when we decided to journey into a far country — including Life, Love, Light, Peace and Joy, all of which deserve an initial capital because all are true and real, and can only be experienced as eternal, unceasing, unchangeable, because that is what they are.  Everyone knows that is impossible in the dream of time and place, by definition.  Everything we think we have here is a poor substitute for what is really, rightfully, freely ours; forever. 

And nothing we think we have here is actually ours.  Ask anyone who has just laid aside his body J.  Those who are attached to the glitter and glamour of time and place will, assuredly, be drawn to come back to try to experience it again.  And again.  And again.  Until they realise that all such are ego-devised traps to keep us on the not-so-merry-go-round.  It will, inevitably, pall, because it is not true; not our true reality, and requires sacrifice — sacrifice of everything that is truly, rightfully ours: Life, Love, Light, Peace and Joy.  These things, which are really but one thing, bring us completeness, wholeness, holiness, oneness.

Restoration to oneness, wholeness, completeness, calls for no sacrifice.  As Jesus asks in ACIM, ‘Is it sacrifice for an adult to give up children’s toys?’  Jesus told the rich, young ruler who asked what he must do to inherit eternal life, Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and come and follow me.  The record states that the young man went away sorrowing, for he was very rich.  What the record does not say is that he thought very carefully about what Jesus had said to him, did come back and did follow Jesus. 

And Jesus’ admonition to sell everything is not necessarily to be taken literally, but rather, to make the things, the treasures, the idols of this world meaningless; to see them for what they are, rather than be taken in by them.  Where our treasure is, there will our heart be also.  If our treasure is of Earth we have to defend it (against moth, rust and bankers thieves) and that becomes so all-consuming we have little time for what calls for absolute commitment if we are to succeed: seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Mt.6:33).  His counsel doesn’t stop there, for he then tells us that if we make that our first commitment, all we have need of shall be added to us. How comforting is that?  Unless we don’t believe Jesus.

Giving up nothing is no sacrifice.  Since treasures of Earth, along with all else of time and place, are but illusion, they are truly nothing.  Worrying about nothing seems, even to an upside-down mind, foolish; a waste of time.  Giving up worrying about nothing is a great relief and release of a self-imposed burden that can weigh us down, ruin our peace of mind, relationships and health. Just as ego would have it.

4) Sticking with what we ‘know’ is actually sticking with what we believe.  And if we believe a misperception, we do not, cannot, know it, because a misperception is not real, and it is impossible to know unreality.  It is possible to know only truth, and only truth is eternal.  To say we know a thing that is only of time and place is to mistake knowledge with belief and perception.

How do we think remembrance of the wholeness, truth and reality of Eternity — and the living, extending and sharing of it with his beloved brethren in the Sonship — came back to Jesus?  Not, assuredly, by magic, nor by studying with the Essenes or any other sect.  What could they have taught him? 

Jesus tells us in ACIM that he came back to awareness of truth by listening to the Voice for God, the Spirit of Truth within, and choosing to believe and follow His leading back to Self (Christ) realisation.  Is there one amongst us who believes he can be restored to oneness by any other method?  Since Self is Who we really are, being restored to Self is hardly likely by choosing to listen to a voice that has convinced us we are who we are not. 

Since Jesus clearly knows something most of us have not yet remembered, it seems sound sense to believe him, since he has more than demonstrated his credentials, his trustworthiness.  He tells us: If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (Jn. 8:31, 32).  If it worked for him, and we are his brothers, and he tells us it will work for us if we are willing to believe him and follow him, then, assuredly it is worth trying.  And sticking at it, since he obviously stuck at it, and it got him Home.

Unforgiveness and judgement are two sides of the same coin. They are burdens we lay upon ourself that weigh us down, imprison us in littleness, limitation and fear, and impact our peace of mind, which then reflects in our bodily wellbeing. When all is forgiven we are released from the yoke of ego’s grievous burden that holds us captive in the perception that time and place are reality, separating us from inner peace, wholeness, Life, Love, Light — God.  It is not God who releases us, because He has never held us captive, but our own unforgiveness binds us, and forgiveness frees us from our own imprisoning:

Can you to whom God says, “Release My Son!” be tempted not to listen, when you learn that it is you for whom He asks release? (T-31.VII.15:5)

The truth is that forgiveness makes us free:

The world is not left by death but by truth, and truth can be known by all those for whom the Kingdom was created, and for whom it waits. (T-3.VII.6:11)

If we think we leave the world by death, clearly this is a misperception, because all we have done is leave behind our Earth body but not our Earth mind.  So, we find ourself in an etheric counterpart of Earth, in a state of perception that simply reflects the state of mind we were in by the time we left behind our ‘little pile of clay’.  That is not Heaven.  It is the other side of the carousel of birth and death.  And, since we have not left the Earth behind, we will find ourself drawn back to it, and take another body; reincarnate.  So will that cycle continue, until we eventually see through the charade and decide it is time to awaken to eternal reality. 

Then, the student will be ready and the teacher will come.  Jesus is our teacher, as also is the Spirit of Truth, acting in concert, as one.  They are already with us, waiting with infinite patience until the student is ready.  Then will They make Their presence known to us; or, more accurately, we will begin to become aware of Their presence within us, and start to listen to Them.  Meanwhile, ego has a cunning plan to stop us from hearing Them: guilt, unworthiness, fear.  Here is some sound, encouraging, inspiring counsel from Jesus:

As you look upon yourself and judge what you do honestly, you may be tempted to wonder how you can be guiltless.  Yet consider this: You are not guiltless in time, but in eternity.  You have “sinned” in the past, but there is no past.  Always has no direction.  Time seems to go in one direction, but when you reach its end it will roll up like a long carpet spread along the past behind you, and will disappear.  As long as you believe the Son of God is guilty you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to death.  And the journey will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it is. (T-13.1.3)

And for our further reassurance:

Salvation does not ask that you behold the spirit and perceive the body not.  It merely asks that this should be your choice.  For you can see the body without help, but do not understand how to behold a world apart from it.  It is your world salvation will undo, and let you see another world your eyes could never find.  (T-31.VI.3:1-4)

And even though our journey home is now underway, alongside the Path ego has set its pitfalls.  A major one that has duped adherents to the so-called Christian belief system is that because Jesus’ resurrection was of his body, therefore it is our bodies also that will resurrect, and with which we will enter the Kingdom.

But all that is of time and place is unreal, including Jesus’ and our bodies.  Since the physical world is not real, communicating reality in an unreal world can only be by symbols.  His bodily resurrection was a symbol he used to communicate with his disciples at a level they could understand at the time.  Therefore, we can now, with his help in ACIM, and by choosing to listen to the Voice for God, see past the symbol to the spiritual reality of which he came to remind us: that we are God’s one, beloved, eternal Son, created in His likeness.  God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship (attune, or commune, i.e. enter into oneness with) him in spirit and in truth. (Jn.4:24.)

Any who might still feel ego’s thought system drawing us from the Path toward those pitfalls (and don’t we all, to one degree or another? J) may be helped by this:

There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness.  Can a world which comes from this idea be real?  Can it be anywhere?  Deny illusions, but accept the truth.  Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world.  Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released. (W-132.13)

Our friend the Teacher (John of Patmos, ‘the disciple Jesus loved’) said to me in 1994:

...I know I do not need to caution you to be constantly on guard against the wiles of the enemy (ego), or to maintain your armour of defence against the darts of destruction.  You know that the cloak of the Lord's protection — living in Him and always keeping your heart and life open to His presence — is the whole armour and that no further contortions of mind or body are needful for such protection.  The greatest threat of breach to such armour is complacency...* 

Thank you, Papa, for being with us as we sit down to ‘meat’ with Jesus, and rejoice that he comes forth to serve us (see Lk. 12:37-38),

Love, always,

Brian Longhurst

* For the whole message see Diary of a Christ Communicant entry dated November 20^th 1994

February 2^nd 2011

Dear Friends,

Most humans think we need to pray for, or about, something.  That is usually for things to change in the without.  But the without — the ‘physical universe’, including our bodies — is not eternal; all the evidence we need to know that that which appears to be of time and place cannot be real, because only Eternity is real.  So, on the one hand that is asking God to make an illusion real.  Only Truth can be real, and God only Knows Truth.  

To Him, illusions do not exist, so such entreaty is asking God to make the untrue truth; a fruitless endeavour.  On the other hand, God has already given His beloved Son everything — at his creation — so asking Him to give us what we already have (but have blinded ourself to) is clearly nonsensical.

Jesus knew this, and that is why he repeatedly gave thanks when he performed a miracle.  His words at the raising of Lazarus from the ‘dead’ tell us much about this:

Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.  And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. (Jn. 11:41, 42.)

It is entirely safe to assume that even when he was not heard to utter words of thanksgiving, the gratitude was always in his heart.  God does not need to hear us spouting words of thanks, for He sees our heart (it is His dwelling-place), and knows our sincerity.  He does not know our insincerity, because for Him it does not exist.  Anything that is not of Heaven does not exist for Him, and if it does not exist for Him, it does not exist.  Full stop. 

But whether or not we are sincere in our gratitude, He knows that we are not lacking in anything, even when we perceive ourself as lacking.  If He Knows we are lacking nothing — because He has given us everything — and if we perceive ourselves as lacking, who, pray, is right? He does not need our thanks, but we do need to give it, because it gets us back into the awareness that He has given us everything.  

Without that awareness we will remain in the perception of lack — lack of wholeness, peace of mind, wellbeing, Love, joy, His presence in our life (and He is everything)...  So that will be, and remain, our experience, until we awaken to the point of remembrance that we already have everything.  Lack is the wellspring of fear.  When we are awake to the awareness of our oneness in Papa, we awaken to the awareness of everything being ours, so we cannot experience lack, which means we cannot experience fear.  It is a certainty that we all want that.  Only ego — nothing — stands in our way.

Since we already have everything, freely — ‘without money and without price’ (Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Isa. 55:1) — what are we expecting of Papa when we ask Him to give us what He has already given us?  We may say, well, He hasn’t given me abundance, and I am poor. Or, I am afflicted with ill health.  ‘Everything’ means everything.  What can be missing from everything?  

It would not be everything if there was something missing.  And why would Papa withhold anything?  Because we are ‘sinners’?  As quoted last week from ACIM T-13.1.3: You are not guiltless in time, but in eternity.  You have “sinned” in the past, but there is no past.  If there is no time and place — because it is but a figment of our imagination rather than a creation of God — assuredly there can be no past or future.  Why would God want, or need, a past or a future when all is perfect now?  A past would imply imperfection, moving toward perfection; that would mean God is not perfect now, and is working on it.  Hardly a God in which we could have absolute confidence!

Only in our perception is anything withheld from us, but it is not withheld from us by Papa.  We are playing the game called self-disinheritance.  But it is only a game of pretend.  It is not possible to actually disinherit ourself from our Father.  That may seem like a possibility here in the world of make-believe, but in reality, such an idea could not exist because in the Eternity of Heaven, only Love is real, and the Father Loves His Son and the Son Loves his Father.  No alternative to that is possible other than in fantasy, and Heaven is not fantasy — unless we believe it so, and thus make it so for ourself.  Does that make it so in truth?  Making up what is unreal is mythology, and mythology is about myth.

So, are we saying that prayer is unnecessary, because we already have everything, so there is nothing to pray for?  What we are saying is, when we are awake, there is no waking to be done.  But when we are asleep, and dreaming of lack, we are wasting our time by asking/praying for what we already have but are unaware of.  We will do better to ask for Help in waking to the awareness that we already have everything. 

If a child asks for an apple and the parent has already given him an apple, but the child has his eyes closed, so is unaware that he already has an apple — even though the parent keeps telling him he has an apple — the child may believe he cannot open his eyes to see the apple.  So, rather than keep asking for what he already has (everything) he will do well to ask for Help opening his eyes, so he can become aware of what is already his.   

This way he is acknowledging he perceives a lack, that this is in error, and seeks Help in correcting the error of perception. Then, rather than doubting that he is in error, or that Help is freely available to him, he can give thanks for the Help that is available to him, thus signifying his willingness to receive that Help and accept it unto himself.  Let us, then, approach prayer from the position of knowing we already have everything, and giving thanks for it.

Recent editions of ACIM have incorporated two pamphlets dictated by Jesus to Helen Schucman after the completion of the rest of the original version.  One of these is entitled The Song of Prayer, with three sections: Prayer, Forgiveness and Healing.  This is a profoundly helpful study document for true seekers after Oneness with God.  In the section on Prayer, Jesus says:

Prayer is the greatest gift with which God blessed His Son at his creation.  It was then what it is to become (again, when we are restored to oneness through the At-Onement process); the single voice Creator and creation share; the song the Son sings to the Father, Who returns the thanks it offers Him unto the Son.  Endless the harmony, and endless too, the joyous concord of the Love They give forever to Each Other... 

... it is not the form of the question that matters, nor how it is asked. The form of the answer, if given by God (this is not implying that God may or may not decide to answer.  Rather it is reminding us that if we are following ego’s script, rather than the Holy Spirit’s, the answer we receive is unlikely to be from God), will suit your (specific, perceived) need as you see it.  This is merely an echo of the reply of His Voice. The real sound is always a song of thanksgiving and of Love.

You cannot, then, ask for the echo.  It is the song that is the gift. Along with it come the overtones, the harmonics, the echoes, but these are secondary.  In true prayer you hear only the song. All the rest is merely added.  You have sought first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all else has indeed been given you. (see Mt. 6:33).

It is impossible to say that some parts of this exquisite sharing by Jesus are more important than others, because it needs to be taken in its entirety for the fullness of its profound, life changing meaning to be effective; yet, for me the next paragraph is one on which particular consideration is of the utmost worth.

The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you need.  To ask for the specific is much the same as to look on sin and then forgive it (i.e. affirming/making ‘real’ our lack).  Also in the same way, in prayer you overlook your specific needs as you see them, and let them go into God’s Hands.  There they become your gifts to Him (thereby we are releasing them from our ill-conceived grasp), for they tell Him that you would have no gods before Him; no Love but His. (For in upside-down land we make gods, or idols, of fear, sickness, scarcity, error, judgement, grievance, envy...  Of course, ego says this is not so; yet do we not spend so much of our life focusing upon, in servitude to, such, instead of upon love, peace, joy, goodwill, blessing, forgiveness...?)  What could His answer be but your remembrance of Him? (And thus, our release from forgetfulness of our true reality in Him)...  God answers only for eternity.  But still all little answers (i.e. answers to our concerns of time and place matters) are contained in this.

Prayer is a stepping aside; a letting go, a quiet time of listening and loving.  It should not be confused with supplication of any kind, because it is a way of remembering your holiness (wholeness).  Why should holiness (i.e. Papa’s perfect Son: us) entreat, being fully entitled to everything Love has to offer?  And it is to Love (i.e. Papa) you go in prayer.  Prayer is an offering; a giving up of yourself to be at one with Love.  There is nothing to ask because there is nothing left to want.  That nothingness becomes the altar of God (on which we lay our specific needs as we see them, and let them go into God’s hands, along with our idols of doubt, fear, judgement...).  It disappears in Him.

This is not a level of prayer that everyone can attain as yet.  Those who have not reached it still need your help in prayer because their asking is not yet based upon acceptance.  Help in prayer does not mean that another mediates between you and God.  But it does mean that another stands beside you and helps to raise you up to Him.  One who has realized the goodness of God prays without fear. And one who prays without fear cannot but reach Him.  He can therefore also reach His Son (our brother), wherever he may be and whatever form he may seem to take (this, Jesus demonstrated by his miraculous healings).

 Praying to Christ in anyone is true prayer because it is a gift of thanks to His Father.  To ask that Christ be but Himself is not an entreaty.  It is a song of thanksgiving for what you are.  Herein lies the power of prayer.  It asks nothing and receives everything.  This prayer can be shared because it receives for everyone.  To pray with one who knows that this is true is to be answered (if this is true [has one amongst us ever known Jesus to lie?] assuredly, it is worthy of pause for careful consideration).  Perhaps the specific form of resolution for a specific problem will occur to either of you; it does not matter which.  Perhaps it will reach both, if you are genuinely attuned to one another.  It will come because you have realized that Christ is in both of you.  That is its only truth.

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

Communion = common union.  This always leads to the re-cognition that we are one, and this union, we have in common.

Peace be with us all,

Brian Longhurst

While Love is the Master of Truth, fear is the master of illusion

Michael Roads

February 9th 2011

Dear Friends,

Many times have we observed that time and place are illusion; that this cannot but be so because only Eternity can be real; that one is form, always changing, decaying, dying, while the other is unchanging and unchangeable, incorruptible Spirit, which is perfect Love, Life, Light, all of which terms are indivisible because they describe the qualities of the Creator, Who is One.

Jesus teaches that we can choose Eternity or the illusion of time and place; that we cannot choose both, because they are mutually exclusive — although most of the fragmented, upside-down Sonship of God actually believe they can, and try to, have both.  Here is what Jesus says about this:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Mt. 6:24.)

Here, in our make-believe world, we seek answers concerning time and place matters, fondly — yet only half — believing they will bring us the truth of Creation and of our Being, when truly this seeking brings us only ever-distracting information, leading us on a wild goose chase to nowhere; nothing.  Is not wild goose chase an apt term for seeking to make reality out of unreality?  What we claim to be seeking is the truth, but only God is the Truth and He is not to be found in the without, of the time and place universe, which is a fig-leaf for our guilt, fear and shame; a bolt-hole in our attempt to hide from Papa.

For clarity, Jesus also tells us in ACIM that it is not possible to obtain knowledge about unreality because unreality does not exist.  That it appears to exist because we have chosen to believe a phantasm is real does not make it real.  So, we spend our time gathering, not knowledge, but information about unreality, and believe/perceive it to be knowledge. Yet that information — which is really perception — keeps changing, from one generation to the next; quicker and quicker, as time moves inexorably toward its end.   

Only reality is real, and reality is unchangeable and eternal.  When we choose the reality of Eternity as our truth, then we can experience It and know it.  And that knowledge will never change, but it will empower us in ways of which the world knows nothing, just as it did our brother Jesus.

He says, ...Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all things shall be added unto you (Mt 6:33), but this is, for the vast mass of the fragmented Sonship of God, the last thing they seek, and the reason is fear.  Who chooses to seeks what they fear?  An upside-down, misperceiving mind fears God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Truth of Eternity (All Are One and the Same) because it has elected to believe that we will be judged, found wanting and condemned to eternal, unspeakable punishment. 

All, in spite of Jesus telling us:

Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom (Lk. 12:32),

I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. 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. (Jn. 12: 46, 47). 

He said many other things which bear witness to these statements, including:

I and my Father are one (Jn. 10:30) and

...he that hath seen me hath seen the Father (Jn. 14:9).

If Jesus and his (and our) Father are one, and Jesus came not to judge the world — even if we don’t believe him — but to save it, how can any of us who profess belief in him (and that the scriptures are the infallible word of God) also believe God is to be feared because He is going to judge and condemn us?

There are two Jesuses in the Bible.  One is the real Jesus; a light to the world, the unconditionally loving, truly forgiving, caring, compassionate, understanding brother of us all, who judges us not; the anointed messenger of the unconditionally loving Creator Spirit, Who knows only Truth, which is Perfect Love, Life and Light, and therefore can have no condemnation.  How, why, could, would He condemn His beloved Son for dreaming a dream of unreality, which He knows is unreal, because He knows reality is unchangeable, benign, perfectly loving?

The other Jesus is made up by split-off, divided, confused, separated minds, under ego’s control; devised to confuse his brothers, cause them to doubt him and themselves, and judge and condemn each other, with the intent of keeping all imprisoned in guilt and fear.  These two Jesuses have been jumbled together over time by those who assumed authority over the eternal souls of the children of Earth without having the Light of spiritual discernment, so misinterpreted the real message of Jesus, muddling it with their own ego-judgements of ‘truth’.  If we ask, the Spirit of Truth will shine the Light of Eternal Truth into our mind, enabling us to distinguish the real Jesus from the made-up one.

Here is what Jesus said to me about this in 1995:

…Be not surprised that many souls are lost,* for the light of my spirit was deliberately snuffed out from the Church of Earth by those who sought riches of Earth before riches of eternity. But it is not possible for the Father’s purposes to fail, and the light shall be shone in the dark places until all the shadows of death and fear shall have fled away. Rejoice greatly at this, my beloveds, and sing the New Song, that my little ones may hear, and dance the dance of freedom. That which I have purposed in you shall prosper according to the wisdom of the Father. Be not anxious for any detail; all is well.

*It should be noted here that this is not indicating that such souls are 'lost' for all eternity, but simply that they have lost their way on the Path back Home to Eternity, or Heaven.

This characterises the world of duality, whereas God’s creation is undivided; one, in which is no judgement, no separation, no choice between Light and the absence of light, because Light — which is Love and Life also, inseparably — is real, true, eternal.  Light, Love and Life are also joy beyond measure, or anything imaginable in time and place.  Joy that has no degrees or levels; is only absolute, complete, total.  Misery, an aspect of the duality of time and place, is another word for joylessness.

All the while we continue to believe the falsehood that we are separate from God, that will be our experience, and that falsehood will be what we live, project, teach.  Yet, here is some powerful and empowering straight talk from Jesus about reality and unreality in these extracts from chapter 21 of the Text of ACIM, that can help persuade those who are ready to be persuaded, that they can choose to open their true vision to the truth of Eternity:

Projection makes perception.  The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that.  But though it is no more than that, it is not less...  It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside (projected) picture of an inward condition.  As a man thinketh, so does he perceive.  Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world.  Perception is a result and not a cause... Everything looked upon with (true, spiritual) vision is healed and holy.  (This is how he looked upon his brethren in the long ago, and healed them.  We can, and will, do the same; he told us so.)  Nothing perceived without it (i.e. with bodily sight) means anything.  And where there is no meaning, there is chaos... (As even our bodily senses tell us!)

Never forget the world the sightless “see” must be imagined, for what it really looks like is unknown to them...

How foolish is it to attempt to judge (ego’s preserve) what could be seen (with our true vision) instead.  It is not necessary to imagine what the (real, Kingdom of Heaven on Earth) world must look like.  It must be seen (with our true vision) before you recognize it for what it is...  Judgment will always give you false directions, but vision shows you where to go.  Why should you guess?

There is no need to learn through pain.  And gentle lessons are acquired joyously, and are remembered gladly.  What gives you happiness you want to learn and not forget...

The blind become accustomed to their world by their adjustments to it.  They think they know their way about in it.  They learned it, not through joyous lessons, but through the stern necessity of limits they believed they could not overcome.  And still believing this, they hold those lessons dear, and cling to them because they (believe they) cannot see.  They do not understand the lessons keep them blind.  This they do not believe.  And so they keep the world (ego’s upside-down world of judgement, fear, scarcity, guilt and death...) they learned to “see” in their imagination, believing that their choice is that or nothing...

Thus they define their life and where they live, adjusting to it as they think they must, afraid to lose the little that they (think they) have.  And so it is with all who see the body as all they have and all their brothers have... And they adjust to loneliness, believing that to keep the body is to save the little that they (think they) have.  Listen, and try to think if you remember what we will speak of now.

...perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a song whose name is long forgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered.  Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of melody, attached not to a person or a place or anything particular.  But you remember, from just this little part, how lovely was the song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and listened with you. (Kleenex, anyone?)

The notes are nothing.  Yet you have kept them with you, not for themselves, but as a soft reminder of what would make you weep if you remembered how dear it was to you (can we yet say I remember?).  You could remember, yet you are afraid, believing you would lose the world you learned since then (can we yet say not any more; thank You, Papa?).  And yet you know that nothing in the world you learned is half so dear as this (Amen!).  Listen, and see if you remember an ancient song you knew so long ago and held more dear than any melody you taught yourself to cherish since. 

Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything you see, and yet somehow familiar (because Truth is eternal and cannot be forgotten, because we know It, and knowledge is never lost), is an arc of golden light that stretches as you look into a great and shining circle.  And all the circle fills with light before your eyes.  The edges of the circle disappear, and what is in it is no longer contained at all.  The light expands and covers everything, extending to infinity, forever shining and with no break or limit anywhere.  Within it everything is joined in perfect continuity (including all the seeming fragments of Papa’s beloved Son).  Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside, for there is nowhere that this light is not (and we, also, are the Light; Jesus tells us so).

This is the vision of the Son of God, whom you know well (because this is Who we Are J).  Here is the sight of him who knows his Father.  Here is the memory of what you are; a part of this, with all of it within, and joined to all as surely as all is joined in you.  Accept the vision (it is ours) that can show you this, and not the body.  You know the ancient song, and know it well.  Nothing will ever be as dear to you as is this ancient hymn of love the Son of God sings to his Father still.

(My emboldening and some italic, for emphasis)

The ‘ancient hymn’ and the ‘New Song’ are one and the same.  It is ‘ancient’ because it has always been since God created His one Son; yet as it is restored to our memory after being so long forgotten, it seems like a New Song. Here’s to the end of littleness and limitation, and the singing of the ancient hymn/New Song. 

Brian Longhurst

My holy brothers, think of this awhile; the world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents your thoughts. And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind, and choose the joy of God as what you really want.

(From ACIM W.190)

February 16th 2011

Dear Friends,

According to Jesus forgiveness is the key to the door that opens to freedom from the otherwise endless cycle of birth and death, time and place, and the Way Home to the Heaven of oneness with our brothers in the Sonship of God.

But if we by now are ready and willing to accept that time and place is illusion, and only Eternity is real, why do we need to keep practising forgiveness, since we accept that nothing that appears to happen, or have happened in time is real?  In truth we do not need forgiveness, but in illusion it appears that we do. 

We, the Son of God — one, appearing as many separated fragments — are at varying stages between deep immersion, or slumbering, in the dream that we are apart from God and each other, and wakefulness to full remembrance of Who we really Are.  Jesus is the prime — literally perfect — example of the reality of Being to which we are all, inescapably, unavoidably, unstoppably, returning.  But until we have completed the journey and are, like Jesus, fully awake to that remembrance, we still remain, at least in part, within the illusion. 

The dream is the consciousness of fear, which entails doubt, and wakefulness is the state of all-knowingness, which entails certainty.  And that knowing is that Perfect Love – God – is all there is.  So if we have any fear and doubt, we are not yet fully awake, and therefore are not yet fully free from illusion. 

It is one thing to believe and accept the truth of Eternity, but until we no longer just believe it but know it of a certainty beyond doubt, and are experiencing only that as our reality, there is still some undoing of ego to be done before it is fully dispelled from our unconscious mind. This is the place Jesus was at when he walked the Earth, and being like him is our goal, objective, destiny.

Most would still say, This is impossible, unachievable; and of ourself it would be so.  We cannot escape from time and place under our own steam, but we can do so by asking for and being willing to accept the Help of One Who Knows the truth, and is thus empowered by that knowledge to help us.  Jesus and the Holy Spirit are thusly empowered, and will always, immediately, unfailingly, help us, lead us out of illusion, waken us from the dream, to the truth.  Ego will pooh-pooh this, and there are two reasons for this. 

First, ego — the engine of the dream — being of time and place, and therefore, illusion, knows nothing at all, and can only experience doubt and fear.  Knowing nothing, it doubts everything and fears truth because truth is unknown to it, and in egoland, the unknown is fearful. 

Second, the only existence and power ego can have over us is what we, in our state of forgetfulness, give it. Ego wants us to continue believing that it, masquerading as our little, limited, finite, fearful, doubting, temporal self is who we really are, and that that false self is in control of its destiny.  As soon as we rumble the deception, its game is up.

So ego does not want us to remember the truth because that means the end of ego.  It will always, therefore, use every trick to steer us away, distract us, from truth, or light, and remain stuck in the darkness of ignorance.  Only ego could dream up a saying such as Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise. And only forgetfulness of our true Self could allow us to believe such has one iota of merit.  Knowledge is bliss because it means we have remembered we are Papa’s beloved Son, and are free from ego’s yoke of fear, doubt, guilt, decay and death.

Prayer and forgiveness are, according to Jesus in The Song of Prayer, sisters in our rescue from temporal make-believe back to eternal reality; duality back to oneness. He tells us that forgiveness offers wings to prayer, so that we can rise up from fear-based prayer — pleading, entreating, supplicating — through several stages of understanding about prayer to its ultimate, eternal state:

...the single voice Creator and creation share; the song the Son sings to the Father, Who returns the thanks it offers Him unto the Son.  Endless the harmony, and endless too, the joyous concord of the Love They give forever to Each Other...  

He says also: The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you need.  

He tells us that prayer is eternal — because it is a song of love between Creator and created, and that love is eternal — but forgiveness is temporal because it is only in time and place that forgiveness is needed.  When all is forgiven, we are released from ego’s illusory yoke — the only thing keeping us from rising up to our freedom in the truth.

Meanwhile, he tells us that forgiveness has been turned on its head by ego and we thus see what is nothing more than error, within a dream of unreality, as something real: sin, causing the false perception that we are guilty and therefore worthy of punishment.  This fills us with fear, keeping us under ego, or antiChrist, control.  He speaks of the need to forgive ourself; of false forgiveness, which he terms ‘Forgiveness-to-Destroy’; and true forgiveness, which he terms ‘Forgiveness-for-Salvation’. 

Prayer and forgiveness, both, he says

...must come to hold you up and keep your feet secure; your purpose steadfast and unchangeable.  Behold the greatest help that God ordained to be with you until you reach to Him.  Illusion’s end will come with this.  Unlike the timeless nature of its sister, prayer, forgiveness has an end.  For it becomes unneeded when the rising up is done. Yet now it has a purpose beyond which you cannot go, nor have you need to go. Accomplish this and you have been redeemed. Accomplish this and you have been transformed. Accomplish this and you will save the world.

He tells us that no ‘gift of Heaven’ has been misunderstood more than forgiveness, because, as distorted by ego’s script, which portrays illusion as reality, it looks on dreams of errors, mistakes, misperceptions and gives reality to them, burdening us with guilt. Then, ‘Forgiveness-to-Destroy’ ‘graciously’ deigns to forgive the ‘sinner’.  But the sin remains because it has been made ‘forever real’ by, or within, the misperception, so the false forgiveness is of none-effect.

Yet, with the Help of the Spirit of Truth within us, errors-within-the-dream can merely be looked upon with Christ’s true vision, which sees only the reality of Eternity. He urges us to overlook the error so that we don’t make it real, and in that view what we perceive with our bodily senses is then seen, known to have never happened because things temporal are nothing; a game of make-believe.  He says this, Christ’s true vision, is a gift from God that will enable us to return to Him in peace.

Of the need to forgive ourself, he says it is actually impossible to forgive another, because, of course, there is, in truth, no other; that, within the game of make-believe, Papa’s Son has fragmented into myriad ‘others’ so that our imagined sins and guilt can be projected onto them, and thus those sins be seen outside ourself.  Otherwise, the burden of guilt and fear would be beyond our ability to bear.  Nevertheless, he says, forgiving another is...

...the only happy dream in all the world; the only one that does not lead to death. Only in someone else can you forgive yourself, for you have called him guilty of your sins, and in him must your innocence now be found.  Who but the (seemingly) sinful need to be forgiven?  And do not ever think you can see sin in anyone except yourself.

He goes on to say that we but deceive ourself perceiving ‘our’ sins in another, and that if they were actually there, we would forever be the other’s prisoner unless he freed us.  But by seeing that we have projected them onto him, we can forgive, and thus free, ourself and him together...

Forgiveness, truly given, is the way in which your only hope of freedom lies.  Others will (appear to) make mistakes and so will you, as long as this illusion of a world appears to be your home.

Yet God Himself has given all (the fragments of the Sonship) a remedy for all illusions that they think they see.  Christ’s vision does not use your eyes, but you can look through His and learn to see like Him. ... His the eyes that look past error to the Christ in you.

Ask, then, His help, and ask Him how to learn forgiveness as His vision lets it be. You are in need of what He gives, and your salvation rests on learning this of Him...

Jesus gives us a foolproof way of detecting, knowing whether the form of forgiveness we employ is true or false.  He says that if it does not lead away from anger, condemnation and comparisons (judgements), it is false, and will keep us trapped in the karmic entanglements of the carousel of birth and death.

You do not want to stay in slavery. You do not want to be afraid of God. You want to see the sunlight and the glow of Heaven shining on the face of earth, redeemed from (the illusion of) sin and in the Love of God...

Then, he says... 

... Your wings are free, and prayer will lift you up and bring you home where God would have you be.

Of true forgiveness, or ‘Forgiveness-for-Salvation’, Jesus tells us 

It does not ask for proof of innocence, nor pay of any kind. It does not argue, nor evaluate the errors that it wants to overlook...

...Forgiveness has a Teacher Who will fail in nothing.  Rest a while in this; do not attempt to judge forgiveness, nor to set it in an earthly frame.  Let it arise to Christ, Who welcomes it as gift to Him.  He will not leave you comfortless, nor fail to send His angels down to answer you in His Own Name.

...He stands beside the door to which forgiveness is the only key.  Give it to Him to use instead of you, and you will see the door swing silently open upon the shining face of Christ. Behold your brother there beyond the door; the Son of God as He created him.

His Voice will teach you what forgiveness is, and how to give it as He wills it be.  Now can He make your footsteps sure, your words sincere; not with your own sincerity, but with His Own.  Let Him take charge of how you would forgive, and each occasion then will be to you another step to Heaven and to peace.

“What should I do for him, Your holy Son?” should be the only thing you ever ask when help is needed and forgiveness sought.

...When someone calls for help in any form, He is the One to answer for you.  All that you need do is to step back and not to interfere.  Forgiveness-for-salvation is His task, and it is He Who will respond for you.

That response, if truly His — and it will be if we have truly, sincerely desired and asked that it be — will be through our heart.  Then we will know by how we feel — at peace — that it is Him, and not the pedlar of deception that leaves us feeling confused, doubtful and guilty.

However long, however many incarnations it took him whom we know as Jesus to move from the place of ego’s false, upside-down perception to seeing the truth of Eternity is surely a cause for wonderment.  But that he achieved this, by the Help of the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter, and is now here to help us arrive at that goal is cause for not just more wonderment, but gratitude and celebration beyond anything the world of dreams can comprehend.

Here’s to eternal, inner peace, through forgiveness,

Brian Longhurst

When you bless a brother, you bless Me.

~Papa

February 23rd 2011

 Dear Friends,

‘Prayer is an attunement, not a pleading.’  

These words were spoken to me by a Christ Server from the Realms of Light as Theresa and I sat down for, and were about to bless, our evening meal, a few weeks after we were married in 1969. 

Because the Son of God dreamed he has left Home and journeyed to a far country, ‘upside-downland’ in which everything is the opposite of his true Being, he perceives himself as fractured, dividing into ever-increasing numbers of fragments, each perceiving itself as different and separate from the rest and from its Source.  This pantomime, this tragicomedy of errors and misperceptions has him appearing to be in outer (spiritual) darkness, deep wilderness, full of fearful shadows, such that Peter writes, ... your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour (1Pt. 5:8).

I wonder if he was listening to the Spirit of Truth when he wrote those words.  Or if another wrote them over his name!

So the fragments seem to be far from Home, so far from the Light that is not only their Home, but also Who and What they actually Are.  In this world of opposites we are perceived by ourselves and our brothers as little, limited, vulnerable, guilty, mortal; so far seem we from Papa, so hopeless our lot, so remote our prospects of peace that pleading, entreating, supplicating is about all most of us can muster in our vain attempts at communing with our Source.

This is an indicator of how much we are in need of mind-retraining, for none of this is how Jesus sees us.  He sees us as whole; the Light of the world; equal with himself in every respect except our perception of ourself and our brothers.  Is he fantasising or are we?  If he is fantasising, how was he able to accomplish the things that have caused so many to perceive him as exalted; ‘special’; the one and only Son of God?  If he is the Son of God and he tells us we are the Light, should we not believe him?

Indeed, it is — according to Jesus — belief that is the fulcrum of our perceived difficulties.  He tells us we can, and shall, do the works he did and greater works, if only we can believe.  Instead, we believe another script, which tells us we are unworthy, sinners, there is no health in us.  If we believe that, it should come as no surprise that ill-health, dis-ease afflicts us, or seeks to afflict us, at every turn.  The endless array of deadly pathogens, plants, animals... and brothers... are perceived as outside ourself and we must defend ourselves against them; that new and more pernicious diseases and ‘enemies’ are appearing from ‘nowhere’ with increasing frequency.

Yet none of this fearful upside-downland is God’s creation, for how can Perfection create imperfection?  How can Love create fear?  How can Perfect Love send sickness, disease and death to torment us?  It is not God, but our misperceptions that are the source of all around us that we believe is harrying us.  Who can imagine Jesus coming down with the ‘flu?  Or any other malady?  And why is that hard to imagine?  Because, intuitively, we know he was impervious to such.  Why was he?  Religionists say because he was/is the Son of God.  The Bible tells us that we, also, are Sons of God, so we should be, and can be, impervious also.  If only we can believe.

The difference between Jesus and most of his brethren is, he believed it, knew it, and most of the rest of us don’t.  He knew it of himself and he knew it also to be the truth about us.  For Jesus there was, and is, no such thing as sickness or limitation, because sickness and limitation are symbols of belief in separation from the Light.  He was not separate from the Light.  He brought the Light with him from Its Source, into the darkness and shone away the darkness by his presence.  There is no affliction or limitation in Light; only love, peace, joy, wholeness, limitlessness.  All that is ours.  Freely.  Now.  Eternally.

There is no future, just as there is no past.  There is only now.  We imagined the past and gave it reality by believing it.  But if there is no past for God, and His Son is like Him, there can, in truth, be no real past for us either; only a dream.  God does not dream, so dreams cannot be real.  There is no future because all, in God’s perfect creation, is accomplished; all is, already, now, so there can be nothing yet to come. 

There is only completion, perfection, wholeness, oneness, in the Holy Instant of the eternal now.  Completion cannot exclude perfect love, peace and joy, or it would not be complete. If we believe in a future we believe in a dream in which completeness does not exist.

All that is asked of us is that we believe and open our arms, our hearts, to receive the truth about ourself and accept it unto ourself.  The great thing about believing is that we don’t have to, or need to, know or understand first.  That is a ‘lie of satan’.  Believing first requires faith and trust that God, Jesus and the Spirit of Truth are trustworthy, know the truth, have only the best interests of us all at heart and do not make mistakes because They know everything, are perfect and are fully empowered to ‘deliver us from evil’. 

They can do that with ease because in truth — and truth is all They know — there is no evil.  It is for Them, as we Brits say, a doddle. 

It is our insistence on first knowing, understanding, that is blocking us from experiencing, and thus knowing, the truth.  It is our willingness first to believe and trust, that authorises Them to perform our deliverance and then will we come to see, know and understand, because Their deliverance will restore us to the Light, which is Truth, and therefore reveal to our sight the knowledge that has always been with us. 

By our faith in Them They can and will restore us to the Light effortlessly, because, like Them, we are the Light.  The restoration is accomplished by our allowing Them to remove the veil we have placed over our heads, like a sack.  Sacks greatly impede vision.

What stands in the way of our willingness?  Unbelief in reality and belief in dreams of fear.  Jesus knew this and in order to get us to believe what, to our upside-down perception — our sack-distorted sight — is unbelievable, he had to demonstrate his empowerment to heal and restore us to wholeness.  That pesky sack has caused us to believe miracles are impossible; that we need a pill, or a scalpel, or a needle to relieve our dis-ease; that we must labour and toil against adversity, and fight enemies, to obtain, retain and maintain our meagre survival and existence.

In truth it is our mind that needs healing, for that is all that is sick.  It is the split-off-from-truth part of our mind — ego — not God, that has made bodies.  Only what God created is real, so bodies are not real and attempting to heal unreality is a fruitless task.  A symptom may appear to be healed by a pill, potion or scalpel, but like the body itself, such healing is but a momentary illusion and can have no lasting effect if the cause has not been healed. 

And even if such healing lasts for the remainder of that act, unless the cause has been healed, a symptom arising from that unhealed cause will, assuredly, require, and show up in, a subsequent act.  And the cause lies in a sick, or unhealed, mind.  And minds survive bodies, carrying their sickness with them into the next body they make.  For the next body is made for the same reason as the previous one: to provide opportunity for healing that same, sick mind.

But with our limited, bodily senses we cannot see our mind, and if Jesus had travelled around Palestine healing minds, who would have believed him?

So he reached the people at a level they were able to perceive and couldn’t deny (though, of course, many who didn’t witness his miracles couldn’t believe, including Thomas Didymus), by restoring departed souls to bodies, exorcising earth-bound spirits, walking on water, and yes, dispelling the misery of malady-symptoms from distressed bodies.  By these mechanisms he was able to demonstrate and establish his credentials.  This was essential in order to achieve what he had come to do: win the trust, belief, love, devotion of myriad souls, not just there and then, but permanently.

These love-motivated deeds would then enable the accomplishment of his long-term objective, which was, and remains, the healing of the mind of the Son of God, from its seemingly fragmented state, and its restoration, resurrection back to wholeness, oneness.  He knew that, in linear time terms, this was a long-term project — though in eternity it is nothing — and that he could not remain with a body much longer.  Indeed, there was no need for him so to do because he was going to call down the Spirit of Truth to be with us in time and place:

It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you... I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.  Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak. (From Jn. ch. 16)

He left, to the bodily perception of his brothers, but has never left us in spirit, and never will:

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

Indeed, what he still had to say to us, the ego-script-following children of Earth were nowhere near ready to ‘bear’, and most still are not ready to bear.  What was still to be said is now available to us in ACIM.  Most souls in the Earthly life are — in these early stages of the third measure of meal — not yet ready outwardly. But the GRP is moving unstoppably along across the vast front of humanity, not just those in the Earth, or the etheric counterpart of Earth, but, most importantly, from — and directed from — those in the Realms of Light. So, the souls of many, many more are ready than ego-controlled appearances indicate. 

Those appearances manifest in the institutions of Earth, including the Laodicean church (see Rev. ch. 1), big business, high finance, the media, governments, etc.  But none of those institutions has any more power over us than we are willing to assign to them, and the disintegration of that power is progressing at an accelerating rate as people become empowered by the truth.  More and more incarnate souls are already, with increasing earnestness, seeking after truth (the truth of eternity, as brought to us by Jesus, not the ‘truth’ as brought to us by the BBC, Rupert Murdoch, the Vatican or CNN).

And those who, during the last two-thousand years (the second, or ‘Jesus’, measure of meal), over multiple cycles of birth and death, have come to honour Jesus and espouse their lives to him and his GRP, are reincarnating in this and subsequent generations.  The third measure of meal has been prepared for them, with ACIM and thousands of other books, films, websites, harbingers, arising in power and influence to remind such souls, each on their own particular Kingdomly mission, who they really are and why they have come. 

Such souls are the leaven that is being carried forward from the second measure of meal into the third, fulfilment, measure, to leaven it, ‘until the whole is leavened’.

Jesus knew all this before Abraham incarnated to kick off the three measures of meal Great Rescue Programme.  He gave this message to Olga Park on January 17^th 1965, on or about the onset of the third measure:

 In the midst of the Earth ariseth my city

       after the fashion of the Heavenly,

Wherein the multitude of them that love me and keep my words

Minister unceasingly to the sick and fainting spirits of men.

The call goeth out continually, Come, O come ye to the waters

Everyone that thirsteth.  Buy milk and wine without money and without price,

And nourish your souls, and rejoice in health and joy;

For it is my Father’s good pleasure to bestow upon you

       the freedom of the city.

Here is freedom from sickness: whosoever will, let him be free.

Here are riches of wisdom and power: whosoever will, let him be rich.

Here is knowledge: whosoever will, let him know the secrets of God

       and the power and perfection of His laws.

Here is fulfilment: whosoever will, let him enlarge his capacity

       and his influence.

Here is Peace: whosoever will, let him meditate therein.

Grace be with you.

Thank you, Jesus; we gladly receive your grace, and accept it unto ourself.

Brian Longhurst

"Wholeness is a reality revealed by Love. Separation is a concept sustained by ignorance"

- Michael J Roads

March 2nd 2011

Dear Friends,

We — Christ — are the Word of God.  The Spirit of Truth is the Voice for God, That re-minds us Who we Are.  Christ, the Word, is whole because It is the Word of God.  The Word and the Light are one and the same.  We are the Light; Jesus tells us this.  If we welcome the Light back into our being we welcome wholeness and will be healed because the Light will illuminate our mind, which we have veiled from the Light by our belief in separation from the Light, placing us in (spiritual) darkness.   The Light is not the light of the Sun.  The Light is Life, which is Love, which is God; and the Son is like the Father.

The fragmented Sonship reels from the effects of this self-inflicted separation, which, inevitably impacts upon bodies we make and adopt as our limited, temporal, false identity.  Because we believe that false identity is who we are, we then adopt all its frailties, which manifest in sickness and dis-ease.

We then want healing for sick bodies but are, at the same time, fearful of being ‘holy’ all the while we see it as religious piety instead of the wholeness of Being that it actually is. 

In November 2008 Papa said to me:

...Enter in, enter in; attune with Me with rejoicing, waking to the fullness of your glory and your oneness in Me.  You are in Me and I am within you; there is mutuality in our Love, which We extend to each other continually.  In that extending is the ecstasy of My creation, which is you.  Only in you is My ecstasy, My joy, My fulfilment, My completion.  When you deny yourself, you deny Me.  This is your only blasphemy.

Wow! Papa.  This is some revelation.  It changes my perception, brings me up short.

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?

No, I don’t, Papa; I wish to be real.

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.  All else is a distraction, a diversion away from the truth of Who you ARE...

Welcome Home, My beloved.  The banquet awaits.

Healing is about wholeness, and wholeness is rejoining our apparent separation from its ever-greater numbers of fragments.

While we believe we are, and therefore appear to be, limited, we have no awareness of our reality.  The Voice for God is with us; within us, to re-mind us of our true Being, our true Self.  Seeming to be limited causes us to feel we are incomplete.  We look for completion in another; a soul-mate, a group of like-minded people who share a belief-system, a hobby, an interest.  Seeking completion in something or someone ‘out there’ does not make us complete, or whole, because seeking is an affirmation of our belief in our incompleteness.

Neither Jesus nor the Voice for God tells us we are incomplete.  Only ego does that.  If we are listening to that voice we will keep on searching in the without but never find wholeness.  Wholeness is within us already, as it has always been; just as Jesus tells us.  Wholeness is the same as holiness, but ego has persuaded its followers that holiness is a false attitude of piety and is to be avoided at all cost, because our peers will despise our ‘holier than thou’ attitude.  Jesus was holy because he was whole.  This meant he knew that he was one with God, the Source of Completion, Who was within him.  Jesus was holy but not ‘holier than thou’. 

He was humble but Self-assured because he knew Who he was.  Ego, in the form of the religious authorities, mistook this for arrogance.  Humility is peaceful, content and joyful because it is our true nature, in which there is nothing to defend or justify.  It expresses what we really are: full, complete, lacking in nothing, requiring nothing because we already have everything.  This is spontaneously, intuitively convincing, so no big display is needed. 

Arrogance is a vain attempt to establish self-assurance, but leaves us empty, lonely, fearful; seeking recognition and approval, but never finding it. We have no need for this because our true worth is already established in the Mind of our Creator.  Arrogance masquerades as humility, but is immediately seen through as counterfeit.  It is artificial, contrived; doubt pretending to know; not who we really are.  When we remember we are but one, to whom can we boast of counterfeit worth?  Wholeness needs no pretence.  Arrogance is pretence at being what we are not.

Completion, wholeness, is possible not by seeking, but by remembering and accepting that we are already whole; that Papa’s Son, the Christ, has never not been whole.  During the awakening process, experiencing wholeness can, at best, be intermittent, but we can choose to believe and accept the truth that wholeness is ours, even though we are not — yet, uninterruptedly — experiencing it.

This then places us in the position of being able to repudiate ego’s attempts to persuade us that appearances of littleness, limitation and death — separation — are reality.  By choosing to believe the truth, that wholeness of Being is both what we have and what we are, it is inevitable that awareness of it becomes increasingly our experience, until it is our complete experience and we know, of a certainty beyond all doubt, that this is eternal, unchangeable reality, the Truth of Eternity. When it is both our truth and the Truth of Eternity, we know we are one with God; complete.  Just like our template, Jesus. 

Choosing and accepting wholeness and repudiating separation enable the At-onement process to collapse time for us, so that the experience of it can become our reality immeasurably sooner than could otherwise be possible. 

If we experience sickness/dis-ease and want healing, we can only truly receive it by willingness to accept wholeness.  Wholeness is of the mind, healed, restored from fragmented, split-off-from-truth ego mind to the oneness of Christ Mind.

As mentioned recently, Jesus tells us in The Song of Prayer, true prayer is a continuous at-one-ment between Father Creator and created Son:

...the single voice Creator and creation share; the song the Son sings to the Father, Who returns the thanks it offers Him unto the Son.  Endless the harmony, and endless too, the joyous concord of the Love They give forever to Each Other...  

He says also: The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you need...

...and let our prayer, therefore, not be for healing of bodies made sick by unhealed minds, but a joyous harmony, in recognition of the reality of our already perfect, unchangeable, eternal oneness with Papa.  Then, we are in a state of resonance with the wholeness, the completeness that Creator and created simply, as one, ARE.  All ideas to the contrary then simply have no meaning, no reality, no existence.

Further on in this same booklet, part 3, entitled Healing, he says:

Healing the body (in its maker’s state of perceived separateness from his Creator) is impossible, and this is shown by the brief nature of the “cure.” The body yet must die, and so its healing but delays its turning back to dust, where it was born and will return.

However, he goes on to say:

The body can be healed as an effect of true forgiveness.  Only that (true forgiveness) can give remembrance of immortality, which is the gift of holiness (= wholeness, let us not forget) and love. Forgiveness must be given by a mind which understands that it must overlook all shadows on the holy face of Christ, among which sickness should be seen as one (of the shadows). Nothing but that; the sign of judgment made by brother upon brother, and the Son of God upon himself. For he has damned his body as his prison, and forgot that it is he who gave this role to it. 

What he has done now must God’s Son undo. But not alone. For he has thrown away the prison’s key; his holy sinlessness and the remembrance of his Father’s Love. Yet help is given to him in the Voice his Father placed in him. The power to heal is now his Father’s gift, for through His Voice He still can reach His Son, reminding him the body may become his chosen home, but it will never be his home in truth. 

Distinctions therefore must be made between true healing and its faulty counterpart. The world of opposites is healing’s place, for what in Heaven could there be to heal? As prayer within the world can ask amiss and seeming charity forgive to kill, so healing can be false as well as true; a witness to the power of the world or to the everlasting Love of God.

In comic parlance, we must recognise that the knee-bone is connected to the thigh-bone.  In other words, if we seek healing, let us keep in mind that the body has arisen from the sick, incomplete, upside-down, back-to-front part of the mind of the Son of God; the part that perceives itself as fragmented, separated from its Self, Christ, and its Source, God.  A healed knee-bone is useless with a fractured thigh-bone, and will not remain healed for long without that upon which it depends for mobility first being healed. 

The healing of our mind is achieved for us by the Voice for God.  This works by the process of true forgiveness, in which we steadfastly choose His Help to re-cognise and re-mind ourself that all of time and place is an illusion; that nothing outside our Self is real or ever happened, because Papa has but one Son, Christ, and we are Him.  So we can forgive all that appears to have happened or be happening for which we have felt a seemingly justifiable grievance and judgement (but would only be justifiable if it had really happened) against our illusory, little self or another illusory fragment of our one, unified, true Self; Christ, the eternal, perfect Son of the eternal, perfect Father.

Further on in section 3 he says: 

Think what it means to help the Christ to heal!  Can anything be holier than this? ... Do not ask partial healing... You are as dear to Him as is the whole of His creation, for it lies in you as His eternal gift. ... Do not forget the gratitude of God. Do not forget the holy grace of prayer. Do not forget forgiveness of God’s Son.

... You have understood that you forgive and pray but for yourself.  And in this understanding you are healed.  In prayer you have united with your Source, and understood that you have never left...

And then, Papa takes up the Call:

Come unto Me, My children, once again... arise and lay all dreaming down forever... Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing...

He comes for Me and speaks My Word to you. ... My arms are open to the Son I love, who does not (yet) understand that he is healed...  Be still an instant... there is a Voice That speaks to you of Me.  Hear This an instant and you will be healed.  Hear This an instant and you have been saved.

Help Me to wake My children from the dream of retribution and a little life beset with fear, that ends so soon it might as well have never been.  Let Me instead remind you of eternity, in which your joy grows greater as your love extends along with Mine beyond infinity... Listen, My Child, your Father calls to you.  Do not refuse to hear the call of Love.  Do not deny to Christ what is His Own.   Heaven is here and Heaven is your home.

... How lovely are you, Child of Holiness!  How like to Me!  How lovingly I hold you in My heart and in My arms...

So now return your holy voice to Me. The song of prayer is silent without you... Do not abandon Love. Remember this; whatever you may think about yourself, whatever you may think about the world, your Father needs you and will call to you until you come to Him in peace at last.

Can there be one amongst us who could doubt the source of such majesty, such grace, such heart-melting call for restoration to wholeness?  Click here for the whole Song of Prayer.

We hear Your Call and are coming Home, beloved Papa,

Brian Longhurst

Where there is wisdom there is

silence and humility.

                                                ~ Jesus

March 9th 2011

Dear Friends,

When we look at the world of illusions we have made, they appear to our sight.  This is because we who have made them are the Son of God, so great ingenuity has been accessible, and engaged, in their fabrication.  But our sight is flawed because the illusions we have conjured — including the bodily senses with which we perceive them — are the opposite of reality.  Reality is Light (because Light, Life, Love, Truth, God are one and the same); the opposite is absence of Light, which we term darkness.  If we are not in the Light, we are in darkness.

Of course reality cannot have opposites, so any such perceived opposite cannot actually be real, cannot be true.  As Paul (Saul of Tarsus) would say, we look through a darkened glass.  In more modern parlance, one might say the illusion — or deception — is accomplished by use of smoke and mirrors.  It is a self-imposed deception, self-imposed darkness, in which shadows seem real.  All the while we choose to believe those shadows are real, so will they be our reality, because what we believe, we see.  Such is the power of the Son of God to deceive himself.

When you made visible what is not true,

what is true became invisible to you.

(ACIM T-12.VIII.3:1)

To God they are not true or real.  He does not see them because they do not exist.  He sees only what is true.  From His perspective what is real, what is true, is eternally, unchangeably so.  What is constantly changing is, then, the opposite of reality, and dies; ends.  Quantum physicists now are aware that the end of the physical universe is inevitable according to a process they call entropy.  Q.E.D.  How can Perfect Love create other than what is of His perfect, eternal nature?

The following communing from February 11^th 2011 says it ‘perfectly’ J :

Papa, thank You for creating Your Son in Your likeness...

...I can create only in My likeness, for all is Holy.  Holy is whole, and wholeness is complete; perfection.  There is nothing yet to do.  All is complete, accomplished, and that which is complete is whole; is one.  My creation is My extension, My offspring, My Son; like his Father in every detail, eternally.

We, Your Son, are no more human than butterflies are caterpillars.  He had a mad moment of believing what he is not — a limited, finite being.  But he is metamorphosing back to his true, soaring, limitless, infinite reality.

I create by extending Myself.  This is the only way creation is possible, because I Am all there Is.  There is nothing else, so there is nothing else with which to create.  There is only My Self with and from Which to create, so I extend My Self.  I extend My Self in you, Beloved, so you are like Me in every respect, aspect, detail.

I Am Perfect Love, and therefore you, My Son, are Perfect Love also.  This is your True Being.  So Be it.

Perfect Love is eternally, unchangeably Who I Am, and so Perfect Love is eternally, unchangeably, Who you are.  There is nothing else for you to be, for that is all there is.  There is nothing else to be, for to be is the eternal present, the everlasting gift that I keep giving; and, because you are like Me in every way, you keep giving.

Like Me, you give by extending your Self, Which is Perfect Love.  Because you are Perfect Love, you cannot change, forever, for if you could change from Perfect Love you would become imperfect, and imperfection cannot be eternal, so would come to an end – would cease to Be.  That would mean that All That Is would cease to Be, because you are like Me and I Am like you.  Then there would be nothing, and nothing cannot have Being.

From whatever angle one looks at it, only that which is eternal can Be; if ‘it’ is not eternal, it cannot Be.  By definition, nothing of time and place can be real.  Only spirit is real and eternal.  That is Who and What we are.

So, how do the fragments of the one Son of God become one again?

Needless to say, it — the At-onement, the restoration to oneness — is all in, and about, the mind.  Spirit is unchangeable and unaffected by the dream of separation, but mind is — demonstrably — able to perceive Self as other than Self; Papa’s one, perfect, all-empowered, eternal Son.  In the dream, or illusory, state It is making believe that It is little, fractured, separated, disempowered, mortal, fearful, confused, guilty... Even in the Bible accounts of Jesus (which have been so distorted by ego-mind tampering) it is highly evident that he was none of those things. 

Even those who seem so tightly held in ego’s thrall are destined to become like him (whether they like the idea or not J) because that is the true Being of every fragment.  All appearances to the contrary are nothing because they are but a dream from which it is inevitable all will wake and remember that they have always been, and could never, in truth, not be like Jesus.  This, because he was/is one in Christ, and we all are one in Christ, ‘having a day off’, so to speak.

Jesus, totally mindful of our need for all the help we can get in understanding what is what in the restoration, so we can the better co-operate with the process, has given us this very precise explanation of the relationship between Mind and Spirit in the section of ACIM entitled ‘Clarification of  Terms’:

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 (ie, the Mind of God or the Mind of Christ). Spirit is the Thought of God (Christ) which He created like Himself.  The unified spirit is God’s one Son, or Christ.

In this world, because the mind is split, the Sons of God appear to be separate.  Nor do their minds seem to be joined.  In this illusory state, the concept of an “individual mind” seems to be meaningful.  It (mind) is therefore described in the course as if it has two parts; spirit (Christ Mind) and ego.

Spirit is the part that is still in contact with God through the Holy Spirit, Who abides in this (Christ) part but sees the other (ego) part as well... 

So, it is minds that dream of separation/fragmentation, that are, right now (because now is all there is) in the process of resurrection, rising up, leavening, waking from their slumbers. Bodies have no place in the resurrection because they do not exist in eternity.  Their role is in time and place only, and their only purpose is as a communication device, to deliver the message, the Call, for the reunification of separated minds back to oneness.

To orthodox Christians, especially at this time of Lent, which this year begins today, March 9th, the idea that bodies have no place in the resurrection is an apostasy, particularly since Jesus’ body resurrected from the dead, or ‘sleep’ as Christian tradition has it.  But Jesus’ mind was already resurrected — Before Abraham was, I am. (Jn. 8:58) — and needed no further raising up.  He had come to raise the minds of his beloved brethren with him in the Sonship — us — from our slumbers, and we all know that it is our mind that wakes from a dream. 

Because we were, and mostly still are, in a dream, he had to reach us within our dream.  To do that he needed to communicate with us using the device that we all use and are familiar with in the dream: a body, because we believed, and still most of us do, we are a body.  He planned the crucifixion and the resurrection to get our attention, big time.  It would have accomplished nothing if he had not raised his body on that first Easter Sunday, for with what would he have communicated with his followers? 

He had to convince them of what they had been unable to accept on the numerous occasions he told them beforehand was going to happen. What they (we all) needed to be convinced of is that death is not real, and that we all, along with him — I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:  And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? (Jn. 11:25, 26) — are indestructible, eternal, the Light, the Life. So he had to demonstrate this with the communication device with, or through, which they were familiar; his body. 

The fact that he, in the form they recognised, was able to appear in the locked room with them (Jn. 20:19) assuredly demonstrated that the form was no longer a physical form or body such as we all use to communicate with each other.  Yet he still had to show himself to them sufficiently in form to convince them who he was, and that he was empowered with all power in Heaven and Earth, so that they, and we — all who will — can trust him in what he says about truth, and therefore be willing to follow him as he leads us Home.

He also said he had many things to tell them that they were not yet ready to ‘bear’.  Some of us, two-thousand years later, are now, more or less, ready to bear what he has to tell us — the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth — but the vast majority are still slumbering too deeply to hear, or bear, the truth.  In ACIM Jesus tells us he needs our help for the completion of the At-onement, for none is to be left out of the Sonship, otherwise It would not be complete, so could not be fulfilled.  Those who are ready and willing to commit to this undertaking cannot do it of themselves, even as Jesus was not able of himself. 

But by our commitment, we will be, we are, empowered by the Spirit of Truth That lives within our mind and is our connection to God while we dream of being separate from Him.  By our willingness to accept this undertaking, the veil we have placed before our vision is lifted, and the Light within us, and is Who/What we are, becomes visible to us again, one step at a time, as we are able to receive it.  Our willingness enables the removal, the shining away, of the blocks to our awareness of the Love, the Life, the Light, the Truth that — just like Papa — we are.

In ego society, where faith and trust — in ourself and our brothers — are scarce commodities, we are cautious about lowering our guard, our defences, in intercourse with our fellow travellers on life’s path.  We feel keeping a safe distance or keeping separate from others is a sound judgement, at least until we can judge that they are safe to associate with.  Yet how many times does that prove to be an error of judgement?  So the separation continues all the while trust is lacking. 

But when we entrust our wellbeing into the care of the Holy Spirit, or Jesus, They bring us into contact with like-minded souls, and we can tell immediately, intuitively, that here is a trustworthy, guileless brother because the Light in our mind, that is our mind, reveals this to us.  We do not need ‘proof’; why would we need proof for what we know to be true?  So, with such kindred spirits we become of one mind, one desire: The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, right here, right now. 

We can be on another continent and be of one mind, so clearly, bodies are irrelevant other than to communicate what is in the mind while we still seem to be stuck in a body.  And, as the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon all mankind (Joel 2:28) continues and increases, so shall we all become of one mind; Christ Mind, raised up, restored to oneness, to Kingdom awareness, until the whole Sonship is leavened.

All this is inevitable because in truth it has already happened.  How, then, could the Great Rescue Programme be other than infallible and unstoppable?

Alleluia!!

Brian Longhurst

The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit accepts.

ACIM T-11.V.13:1

March 16th 2011

Dear Friends,

The Great Rescue Programme of Jesus, which is the final — six-thousand-year, three measures of meal — phase of what he describes in ACIM as the Atonement*, is all about healing the fragmented Sonship of God, by restoring seemingly separated minds back to oneness.  All who appear to be here in time and place, and therefore not where we belong — in the eternity of Heaven — are here either to heal broken relationships or to help their brothers to move through the healing process.  

And as we progress through the healing, so do we realise that we can help brothers who still perceive themselves as separate, and are experiencing brokenness within themselves and in their relationships with others.  Brokenness might be defined as holding a grievance, judging, accusing, condemning, unforgiveness for some perceived wrongdoing...  Behind all this is an underlying, pervading sense of guilt, which is mostly unconscious, but spills out into conscious awareness at any opportunity, all of which are contrived because none has any foundation in truth or reality.   

Wholeness is our true, natural estate, which like our Father Creator, is perfect, unconditional Love.  It does not require a PhD to work out that the two states of mind are opposite and mutually exclusive.  In the cycle of birth and death, some of those with whom our relationship of oneness in the fraternity of the Sonship may appear broken will, at any one moment, be incarnate, while others may be discarnate.

Ego and its constructs would have us believe that commun(icat)ion with a brother, once he has left his body behind, is impossible.  And if it were possible, it is forbidden by God; trafficking with the devil, and will result in fearful punishment.  Once the understanding that it is minds that communicate with each other, not bodies — though bodies may be utilised in such communication where they are accessible to each other; but it is clearly evident that it is minds that are the origin of such communicating, and its directing force — the absurdity of such a doctrine becomes apparent.

For whether with a body or no, minds remain; they do not decay with the deceased body.  The mother of a very dear friend — ‘J’ — recently passed away rather suddenly and J, although a long-term student of ACIM, felt devastated by this loss, and asked us to pray for her and her departed mother.  As I attuned to the soul of J’s mother, instantly she was there, and I was blessed to commune with her, receiving words of reassurance from her for passing along to her grieving daughter.

It should come as no surprise that this was of great comfort and uplift to J, and she, herself, has subsequently become powerfully aware of her mother being close by, palpably expressing her loving blessing and presence to J, who, at least partly resulting from the reassurance my communing with her mother and the message conveyed by it, is now experiencing her mother’s contact direct. Her mother recently told her that her passing was a breeze, as easy as falling off a log. J still grieves, but the awareness of, communing with, her mother is massively helping the processing of the grieving through to its ending and her release from it.

The idea that this is in any way in conflict with the reality of Eternity and Jesus’ Great Rescue Programme for us all is clearly from ego-mind, upside-down thinking.  And now, as our hearts go out to the thousands – possibly tens-of-thousands – in Japan, how greatly such awareness could benefit them in their despair, grieving and for many, no doubt, their anger at God for this apparent destruction.

Ego does not want us, Papa’s fractured Son, to know the truth because that is the end of ego.  Its script is in the language of fear, so death is fearful and communication with the ‘departed’ is, by its perceptions, an unknown quantity, and the unknown is fearful.  Ego: 2, its prisoners: nothing.  But all that is now in its death throes, as the truth emerges in the leavening, and thus, the healing, the restoration, the uplifting, the resurrection to oneness of the mind of Papa’s beloved Son. 

This healing is not by doing anything, but by our willingness to allow the Spirit of Truth, our higher Self, to undo, and thus dispel, shine away ego’s lies from our mind; for in truth, we are already whole.  If a fully-sighted person places a veil before his eyes, he will appear to be blind.  But when that veil is removed, lo and behold, suddenly, he is restored to full vision, and it is then realised that he was never actually blind at all.

We all have loved ones in the etheric realms.  The idea that all such are in an unknown, unknowable, unreachable place is a heavy and utterly needless, self-imposed burden.  Self-imposed because we have allowed ourself to believe another’s false doctrine instead of going with our instinct.  Whoever believes God places such burdens upon us may serve himself well to re-examine his belief system.  The usual, doctrine-devised answer to this is, But how can we know, how can we be sure contact from/with the departed — loved ones or other — is not an attempt at entrapment from the realms of darkness?

This can best be answered by Theresa’s and my own experiences over more than four decades.  Olga Park, our totally Christ-committed spiritual mentor — who had had many decades of contact with Jesus and others from the ‘invisible’ realms, all under Christ authority — inculcated into us the crucial, essential importance of placing ourselves under Christ protection in all such communication.  She counselled us to say to any such visitors about whom we might be unsure, If you come in the name and authority of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, you are welcome; if not, I command you in his name and by his authority to depart and never to return.

This served us well. Totally well.  It protected us by, and empowered us with, Christ empowerment.  Here, in this quote from chapter 6 of Synchronicity, for Goodness’ Sake (SFGS) is a good example.  At the time of the experience, in 1974, we were renting a flat in a Georgian mansion that had some very negative psychic energies:

When our older daughter was just three she woke up one night screaming in terror.  I raced to her bedside and cradled her in my arms to calm her down.  She was eventually able to tell me, in response to my asking what was the matter, that an ugly, frightening old woman had come and was saying horrible things and threatening her with harm.  I told her that the Lord Jesus was our friend and protector and that he had power over such as this unwelcome visitor. 

Calling on his name and authority, I commanded the old crone to go, and never to return.  This calmed our daughter and she — who could see the old crone, though I could not, although I could certainly pick up the negative vibes — assured me that she had indeed departed.  I told her that at any time unfriendly spirits might come calling, all she had to do was reach out her hand, call out to Jesus to hold it and ask him to guard and protect her, and that he would instantly be there, and she would have nothing to fear.  Within minutes she was asleep again and there were no more such visits from the old hag.

In the more than 5 years since SFGS has been freely available on the HTG website, which has received hundreds of thousands of hits, from far more than a hundred countries, only one person has responded saying he who manifested to me in January 1967 (see SFGS chapter 2) was not Jesus of Nazareth, because I did not ‘test the spirit’ (1 Jn. 4:1).  I assured her that when one is visited by the living Jesus, in his glory, no such testing is required; there is not a shred of doubt as to the identity of such a visitor.

Further, the fact that he spoke to me the same words he spoke to John of Patmos as recorded in Rev. 3:20 (which I had never before read or heard at that time) was, along with the overwhelming, rapturous power of his Love and the radiant glory of his vision, more than adequate demonstration of the identity of this visitor: Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.  For, not only did he speak the words to my ears, he imparted the full and complete understanding of them to my soul at the self-same moment.

Sadly, this decrier of the authenticity of Jesus’ visitation is, as yet, lost in the consciousness of fear resulting at least in part from an encounter with one she described as Satan, and has taken refuge in the very church of Laodicea for whom Jesus spoke those words more than 19 centuries ago.  A better refuge, by far, would, assuredly have been If you come in the name and authority of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, you are welcome; if not, I command you in his name and by his authority to depart and never to return.  Our prayers and blessings are sent out to her every day.

Jesus himself communed not just with Papa but also with departed souls — Moses and Elijah, that we know of, and who is to say there were not others? — from the Realms of Light; he rebuked and cast out possessing souls from the realms of darkness and he called back departed souls to their bodies.  If he had restricted himself to the letter of the Mosaic Law none of these things could have happened.  Yet he did these things not to defy God, but to bring glory to His Name.  He is quoted as saying Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. (Mt. 5:17)

We construe from his message in ACIM that this would not be by following the exact letter of the laws as set out in the Old Testament, but by re-interpreting them for us.  Clearly they can do with some re-interpreting!  There is reference to this re-interpreting in Regina Dawn Akers’ book The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament, which itself shines the Light of Eternal Truth into many areas that are obscure, and open to misinterpretation, in the New Testament. 

Healing of broken relationships with departed souls is just as important as with those still appearing with a body.  Of course ego does not want any healing from the brokenness of separation, so it plays into its hands to have the fragments believe communing with discarnate souls is against God’s laws.  In that misperception, to do so, or attempt to do so will bring His punishment upon us, so the idea is fearful to us.

Jesus, our template, did it, so we can do it, and we are protected from inadvertently communing with lost, predatory souls from the lower astral realms by placing ourself under Christ protection in all such endeavours.  This can enable us to open not only to the unlimited, blessed fellowship of our loved ones in spirit but also to send our love, blessing, forgiveness to those with whom there has been a rift.  They may now be disembodied but we remain in that rifted state of relationship with them until it is healed.  It is up to us how long, how many more cycles of birth and death, it takes. 

The healing, which, without commun(icat)ion with them would not be possible, is of inestimable benefit to us and them.  There is a comprehensive, detailed, written example of this in SFGS, Part Two, Vignette 19, entitled Ted’s Passing, Rescue and Going Forward.  The relationship between us and Ted, which had been broken for many years, has been blessedly, completely healed by this commun(icat)ing. 

There are those, still labouring under ego-devised doctrines and dogmas, who believe all such commun(icat)ing is either impossible or a fearful sin; a breach of God’s laws that will bring divine retribution.  On the contrary, it is a blessed, joyful, uplifting, Kingdomly thing that can bring healing and peace beyond imagining.

To those who say, Okay, I would like to try this, but how can I? I am not psychic, I say: Theresa and I are not very psychic, but we are very willing for Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit to show us whatever will be helpful to our forward progress on the journey Home to Papa, fully restored — with all the rest of the fragments — to oneness in the Sonship of God.  It is this willingness for healing of broken relationships that will enable it.  And trust.

Love and endless blessings in our one purpose: the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, as it is in Heaven.

Brian Longhurst

*The term Atonement, as used in orthodox Christian religion, and pronounced a-tone-ment, implies sacrifice, which is just what ego wants; but as used by Jesus in ACIM, and pronounced at-one-ment, means ‘making at one’ and definitely does not imply sacrifice.

The ego cannot oppose the laws of God any more than you can, but it can interpret them according to what it wants, just as you can.

Jesus, in ACIM: T-5. V.6:1

March 23rd 2011

Dear Friends,

All the broken fragments of the Sonship of God are one, and the restoration to that oneness — and thus, our completion and happiness — is key to our awakening from the dream of separation and fear.  It is therefore imperative to the earliest possible success of our intent that we co-operate with all opportunities for healing that are presented to us.  As stated last week, ego does not want that healing, so will do all in its power to keep us from any and all opportunities. 

If we desire to co-operate with the Spirit of Truth in healing the brokenness, it will not serve us well if we block awareness of such opportunities that may already be there for us but to which we have blinded ourself.  We have all had untold numbers of dream incarnations in which to fall unwitting prey to ego ensnaring us in karmic entanglements.  Without Holy Spirit’s help we become more tangled and knotted each time (unless and until we stop following ego’s script and start following Holy Spirit’s script).  This means there are very likely to be discarnate souls with whom there are opportunities (i.e. need) for healing to take place.

We can only go one step at a time, following Holy Spirit’s lead (when we deliberately, consciously, steadfastly ask Him to take the helm of our life), so any with whom we have a broken relationship (size definitely does not matter in this instance!) and who have left their body behind, we can ask Holy Spirit — or Jesus, They function in complete unison — to help us restore such relationship(s) to wholeness.

Commun(icat)ing with our discarnate brethren can actually be much easier than with those who are incarnate.  This is because, for those who have passed and are aware that they have left their body, there is no doubt in their minds that at the very least, survival of the earthly life is reality, so there is no protestation that it cannot be so.  First hurdle cleared!  Further, they are aware of the sincerity — or otherwise — of our hearts and our speaking, so pretence, which is so widely practised when incarnate souls communicate with other incarnate souls, is eliminated from the endeavour. 

We may not experience their presence with our bodily senses — which are ego-derived, to blind us to, and distract us from, our true, spiritual vision.  But we can be sure that they are aware, unencumbered, of the intent of our commun(icat)ing with them, because that intent is in our heart-mind, the vibes of which they can receive loud and clear, and which we cannot disguise to them.  So, we can open our heart-mind to them, ask their forgiveness for what in reality never happened, forgive them similarly — and ourself — and say, just as we can to an incarnate brother:

And now we are released into innocence, and join with the Holy Spirit in Peace and joyous Oneness with our beloved brother Jesus, in Papa.

I bless you, bless you, bless you for restoration to fullness of remembrance of who you really are.  You are Christ, pure and innocent.   Papa’s Son is guiltless and sin does not exist.

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

Last week’s MoE, about healing relationships with our brothers who have laid aside their bodies and are thus in the etheric counterpart of the Earth ‘physical’ brought enquiries for further information on this subject.  One was from Keith, whose mother ‘died’ in an accident 37 years ago, when he was 6.  His message and my reply are posted on the Forum page, but it contains some information that I hope others not visiting there may also find helpful and informative, so its essence is copied here:

I agree with what you are saying. I have exactly the same opinion as you.

This is a sure sign of the healing of the split mind of the Sonship back to wholeness, or oneness.

I have a couple of questions though...  You mention we are protected from spirits of the lower realms:

This is entirely true, IF/WHEN we place ourself in the protection and guidance of Jesus and/or Holy Spirit.  They are, I hardly need mention, empowered for our protection, but we must ask for it, otherwise They cannot give it because we are at free will.  If we choose/ask for Their protection, it is ours.  Not choosing/asking for it means that is our choice also — i.e. not to have Their protection. 

This is all so perfectly obvious, but ego does not want us to see/understand the obvious, so the vast majority of the fragments remain utterly blind/ignorant of these basic, fundamental realities, or PLFs (Principles of Life of the Father).  Jesus is changing all that, with his Great Rescue Programme.  Several Alleluia Choruses, please Mr. Handel.

I have a potential theory, which may be totally wrong. Please correct me if it is. I wondered if, as we know this existence is illusory, aren’t all of them?

This has to be so because only that created by Papa and His Son are eternal; anything not eternal has not been thusly created, so is not, cannot be, real.  However, the split-off part of the Son’s mind is capable of making illusions, and is free to believe they are real.  Indeed, they do seem very real to their maker, though all such are temporal, which is the proof they are not actually real.

I mean, if people reach the end of this life with no spiritual progress being made, do they, in their confusion at still being in existence, simply create a new existence for their still fragmented part to exist in? 

Yes.  For many, they don’t even know they have laid aside their body, so their etheric surroundings are just as they expect them to be, which is to them a replica of their Earth-physical environment.  It remains that way until they realise what has happened.  Then it changes in accord with their progress in, or degree of, understanding.

That environment may be comfortable enough for many, but for others, such as those who have been tortured and brutally murdered, untold numbers of such terrified souls remain stuck in that moment of terror for an indeterminate period.  I don’t know if you have read my book, Synchronicity, for Goodness’ Sake (SFGS), but a few good examples of this are to be found therein .

There are a number of further examples cited, but these 4 should give you an insight into this.  The worst horrors the upside-down, ego-driven Son of God can devise all need healing, and the karmic entanglements they cause need releasing.  Just because, in linear time (which is but an illusion), such events are in the ‘past’ does not mean they are ‘over’ for those still stuck in the terror of the experience, which can continue to be their experience as long as they believe it is real and thus remain stuck in it. 

This is why we serve the Kingdom Programme very well by praying for the release/awakening of souls — or brothers, one and all — stuck in such moments of awfulness.  I have no idea how many there are stuck in such terrifying conditions in the etheric realms, but my feeling is that there are untold millions.  The world at large has no idea about all this, and this is just how ego wants it. 

It is not how Jesus wants it.  All this must come to the surface and be healed before it can be released.  Vignette 2 in SFGS will go some distance to explaining this. We all can help, simply by becoming aware and desiring to help.  Jesus/Holy Spirit will take over from there on in.  All we have to do thenceforward is co-operate with Their lead.  All this is explained in depth in SFGS.  Reading the whole story will be more beneficial, of course, than just a few snippets. 

Or do they gravitate to other levels according to the vibratory rate of their soul at the point of death? — levels which are already in existence due to others of the same vibrational rate already being there.

 Birds of a feather flock together is the answer to this.  One ‘individual’ fabricates his own ‘reality’ but where a number of discarnate souls are of a like (mis)understanding, they will experience a consensus ‘reality’.  Just as we are doing here in the so-called ‘physical’.  Of course, there is no such thing as physical, and we, who believe we are here with a body are no more here than those who perceived themselves to be here in former (linear) times, and are unaware they have laid aside their ‘physical’ bodies, carrying on as they are accustomed.  This is described in Part 2 of SFGS, Vignette 14.

I would assume that ALL of them are illusory until we process ourselves through spiritual development and become one, transcending the body, becoming one in Heaven with God with no need for ANY illusory existences?

This is it, in a nutshell, and shows just how much we have to awaken from.  Jesus makes it plain in ACIM that we need to know what we are ‘up against’ in order to awaken from it.  There is much more to ‘it’ than what appears to be happening in this ‘present’ moment.  We have ALL brought karmic entanglements with us into ‘this’ act (incarnation), from ‘previous’ acts, and carry the seed memory of it deep in our unconscious mind.  Anyone who thinks he can ‘go it alone’ in escaping the maze he has established around himself is whistling Dixie. ‘Dixie’ is ego’s tune.

And does that mean that my mum may think she’s in Heaven because it's beautiful and she never skipped Sunday school?

This is exactly so (illusorily speaking!)  We must keep in mind the definition of ‘Heaven’ as eternal reality; full and uninterrupted wakefulness to the ineffable truth of our Self and our Father.  Anything less is not eternal, so is not Heaven.  It is the etheric counterpart of Earth, which has varying degrees of illumination, from absolute darkness and unspeakable fear (the basement flats, so to speak, of Papa’s House) ‘up’ through gradual increase in light.  See Vignette 27 in SFGS for more on this.  

If it does, How long would she stay there?

Such a place as you describe your mum possibly being in (along with incalculable numbers of others) is referred to as ‘the Summerland’ in Anthony Borgia’s book Life in the World Unseen. We have to keep firmly in mind that time is an illusion.  So, it may seem like a ‘short time’ — weeks, months, a few years, a few decades, or a ‘long time’ — many decades, or centuries, or millennia, from an Earth-mind perspective. 

But in truth — which we must keep on reminding ourself  is the eternity of Heaven — it is ‘no time’ because there is no time; only the Holy Instant of the eternal NOW.  All else is a momentary flash, a phantasm, a mad moment.  Nothing.  Thanks be to God, and to our beloved brother, Jesus, for bringing us to the truth, so we can dispel all illusions.

And would anyone tell her that she hasn't quite, er, made it?  

Yes, but only when she is ready to hear it.  Remember, just as Jesus, and untold others from the ‘Penthouse Suite’ of Papa’s House (i.e. Heaven) who are fully awake, visit us who perceive ourself in a ‘physical’ body, and They are gradually, gently, lovingly waking us across a broad front by a myriad Kingdomly mechanisms, so are They visiting the Summerland and helping all its inhabitants who are ready to move ‘onwards and upwards’. 

Or does she just wait there until one day she’s sucked back into the great delusion; here?   

‘The cycle of birth and death’ is a good term to explain this.  Let us take an example, such as your mum (actual or otherwise) and let us call her ‘Mary’.  When Mary leaves her body behind, she finds herself in a sunny, pleasant place — Summerland; ‘the afterlife’, as many might call it.  Here, she relaxes, gets her bearings, meets up with many old friends and loved ones, and ‘chills out’ for a while (remember, this ‘while’ is actually no time, however long it may seem). 

She may meet with Jesus — if she truly desires so to do — or others from the Penthouse, and come to many new, greater understandings about who she really is, where she really is, how to go forward to the eternity of Heaven (the Penthouse, in our little analogy). 

But it will not be possible for her to move direct from Summerland to the Penthouse without reincarnating.  Why?  Because she is, like most of the rest of us, not yet fully awake.  She has some unresolved ‘issues’, deep in her unconscious, accrued from myriad ‘former’ acts, all needing to be outworked, healed, forgiven.  The only place one can awaken from a dream is from within the dream.

This is where my own mother, Betty, is at on the path of progress.  She told me she is planning her next act, and we even know who she has chosen as her next mother.  That is likely to be in the coming 10 or 15 years of illusory, linear time, but in truth, is no time. She is reincarnating after only, say, ‘30 years’ because she is so eager to complete her awakening, having missed some opportunities last time.

That dream is time and place, and is comprised of the cycle of birth and death, though it might help the understanding if the words and rebirth are added, because we keep going round and round, from one persona to the next.  Each persona is an opportunity to go forward on the path to wakefulness, though as yet, the vast majority of fragments are completely unaware of this, so miss most of the opportunities for progress they call into their presence.  That is why it is called the cycle...  I call it the carousel, or the not-so-merry go round. 

It is here, within the dream of bodies, that we must learn, remember, that we are NOT a body, and forgive ourself and our brothers for perceiving ourself and them as bodies, when in truth, we are Christ, Papa’s one, perfect, innocent, eternal Son, created in the likeness of his Father: Spirit.  Then we will have awakened from the dream, get out of gaol, pass Go, collect £200, and arrive Home; courtesy of Jesus.  Three cheers for Jesus!!!...

My brain’s overheating! I feel I have learned so much, yet I still have so many questions...

Don’t I know just how you feel!  This is what Papa said to me about this in May 1996: 

Beloved Papa, Heavenly Father, Creator Spirit: there is so much I don't understand about You, the nature of Life, Consciousness, Peace and on and on.  (As I began to form these words in my mind I saw Papa, standing, as a ‘Fatherly figure’. He put His hands on His hips, threw back His head and roared with laughter!)

My son, the Keys to the Kingdom lie not in answers but in faith, trust, commitment, obedience to My word.  Because you are My children I love you and you are responding, making yourself available by faith and obedience, to be drawn by My love.

I make the rules — you don't; indeed you cannot because by your own acknowledgement you don't understand.  All I require of you is commitment to Me and I will fulfil your heart's desire for righteousness, justice, goodwill; let not your desire, which I know is an unquenchable flame within you, ensnare you into the belief that you must accomplish it.  I will accomplish it for you because of your desire and your commitment.  And answers shall be the result, not the cause, of your fulfilment, of your desire...

Keith, what you have asked here is of immeasurably greater importance than most of humanity has the foggiest idea.  Thank you from my heart for providing this opportunity to share some of this, the journey on which Jesus has been leading me, and has provided this priceless legacy, the only value of which is in the sharing.  My prayer is that these seeds may find some fructifying soil in which to grow and bear much fruit for the Kingdom purpose.

However daunting the task ahead for us all may seem, only ego wants us to be daunted.  Jesus and the Spirit of Truth (our true Self) are not daunted and know there is no true cause for us to be daunted, because They are empowered to accomplish the disentanglement and healing for us, and will do so without breaking into a sweat, if we will allow Them.  The only question is, with whom shall we attune our mind?

Love and endless blessings,

Brian Longhurst

The Holy Spirit, like the ego, is a decision.  Together they constitute all the alternatives the mind can accept and obey.  The Holy Spirit and the ego are the only choices open to you.  God created one, and so you cannot eradicate it.  You made the other, and so you can.

Jesus, in ACIM. T-5.V.6:6-10

March 30th 2011

Dear Friends,

We are totally safe within Papa.  Who, or what, would assail us There?  That is Where we are.  There is nowhere else.  He loves His Son.  He created him perfect.  We are His Son.  Any idea to the contrary is not an idea of God, so is not perfect, and therefore not worth keeping.  The idea that He would expel His Son from Heaven, when he is perfect, makes no sense, so the idea is made up, and that which is made up is not real, so does not exist.

All this points to one conclusion: we have made up everything that is not of Heaven.  Earth is not Heaven; time and place is not of Eternity. We are pretending what is not real is real, and this is based on the misperception that it must be so because ‘God created Heaven and Earth’.  Yet, if Heaven is perfect, what is not of Heaven cannot be perfect.  Who but those who dream an insane dream could seriously believe God would create imperfection?  An imperfection where everything can only appear to live by the death of other living things? And where every living thing grows old, withers and dies?

Something that is not who we are has persuaded us that it is who we are.  All the while we believe it, our true Self remains quiescent to our awareness, and we perceive ourself as alone, separate, isolated, fearful, different, guilty; and like everything else in this fantasy, mortal.

None of this is true.  Not now; not ever.  Yet we will remain in such a perception all the while we doubt the truth.  Doubt is the opposite of certainty.  Doubt is the great dismantler of faith, which is the only way we can be restored to the certainty of Truth.

...you are not sufficiently vigilant against the demands of the ego to disengage yourself (from it).  This need not be.

Jesus, in ACIM, T-4.IV.6:4,5.

Doubt is not easy to dispel when we are inured to it.  It is a certainty that if we are in doubt, we are engaged in the demands of ego, because ego knows nothing and doubts everything.  It can only be thus because ego is a made-up idea of separation from God, so has to be the seeming opposite of God.  If it was not the seeming opposite of God/Heaven/Eternity, it would be like God, so would not be separate from Him.  If it were like God/Heaven/Eternity, that would be our experience; but it is not our experience, so clearly it cannot be other than an illusion, an unreality.

On the other hand, the Spirit of Truth, the Voice for God, knows everything and doubts nothing; another indicator that ego is the opposite of God.  God is Truth, so ego must be a lie.  Holy Spirit, Who speaks to us of our true, eternal Being — Christ, Papa’s Son, created in His perfect likeness — will grow our faith, if we ask Him, and faith will dismantle doubt.  But we have to hold fast to faith, trusting that it will endure, and bring us, restore us, to Sight — true eternal, spiritual vision — if we are willing to be steadfast.  Again, Holy Spirit will Help us, strengthen us in this — if we ask.

I have been prompted to consider two words in this week’s MoE:  Firstfruits and purification.

1 Corinthians 15:20 says: ... now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.  Then, in verse 23 it says: ... Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming. 

Words are symbols, and we each apply to them meaning according to our own understanding of those symbols.  There is much orthodox church doctrine and dogma attached to quotes such as these about Jesus, and accepting the interpretation of the words of an institution that has only a narrow, limited or incorrect level of comprehension means we are restricting ourself to that level.

Orthodox religious interpretation of these words is focused on, and limited to, the resurrection of Jesus’ body from the dead, so the inference drawn is that our bodies will be resurrected from the grave at some indeterminate, future, second coming event — if we accept Jesus as the propitiation of our ‘sins’.  But greater understanding of the resurrection is available to us by choosing to listen only to the Voice for God, the Spirit of Truth, our Higher Self.  When we ask, this Inner Voice shines into our mind the Light of Spiritual Truth, thus increasing our discernment of that Truth.  

He reinterprets the limited/limiting perceptions of our Earth-mind understanding that arise from æons of listening to the upside-down voice of separated-from-God mind (ego).  With the aid of His Light we could expand our understanding of these words as follows:

... now is Christ risen from the dead  This actually means Jesus — who was awake to oneness with Christ Mind.  Christ is, like His Father, pure Spirit and has never been born or died, being in eternal oneness in Papa, so could not rise from the dead.  It is, therefore, the mind of he who incarnated as Jesus, that was restored, raised up/resurrected, leavened to oneness with Christ Mind. 

But this resurrection took place long before he incarnated as Jesus.  His bodily resurrection simply symbolises that real resurrection, because symbolic representations of mystical, esoteric reality are all his followers were able to comprehend at that time — and still, mostly, are.  The real resurrection of he whom we know as Jesus took place, in linear time terms, before Abraham, thus enabling him to plan, implement — and ultimately, fulfil — the 6,000-year long Great Rescue Programme that began with Abraham, in full communion with the Spirit of Truth.

...and become the firstfruits of them that slept.  Obviously, ‘them that slept’ does not refer just to those who have laid aside their earthly bodies, but to all of us, throughout the history of the separation.  This must include those of us who believe ourselves to be with a body in 2011, along with all who are yet to incarnate due to the forgetful nature of their Being, and are thus, still, spiritually sleeping.

Then, in verse 23 it says: ... Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming. The preceding clause implies that the rest of us (that slept) would follow on from Jesus (not Christ), the firstfruits, but this clause states unequivocally that we will follow Jesus’ lead in the awakening, resurrecting of our minds to full oneness with/in Christ Mind.  Yet its last three words — at his coming — have still been misconstrued as meaning Jesus returning to Earth in a second advent in bodily form.  These extracts, straight from the horse’s mouth — ACIM Workbook, page 449 — bring much needed clarity, certainty of knowing, and dispelling of doubt:

What Is the Second Coming?

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 forgiveness rest upon all things without exception and without reserve.

It is the all-inclusive nature of Christ’s Second Coming that permits it to embrace the world and hold you safe within its gentle advent, which encompasses all living things with you.  There is no end to the release the Second Coming brings, as God’s creation must be limitless.  Forgiveness lights the Second Coming’s way, because it shines on everything as one.  And thus is oneness recognized at last...

The Second Coming is the one event in time which time itself can not affect.  For every one who ever came to die, or yet will come or who is present now, is equally released from what he made.  In this equality is Christ restored as one Identity, in which the Sons of God acknowledge that they all are one.  And God the Father smiles upon His Son, His one creation and His only joy.

Pray that the Second Coming will be soon, but do not rest with that.  It needs your eyes and ears and hands and feet.  It needs your voice.  And most of all it needs your willingness.  Let us rejoice that we can do God’s Will, and join together in its holy light.  Behold, the Son of God is one in us, and we can reach our Father’s Love through Him.

These words clearly indicate that it is of the mind that the term ‘Second Coming’ speaks. Yet these words speak not just of this event, but equally of the resurrection, or raising-up, or restoration to wholeness, to sanity, of Papa’s Son.  This means that the resurrection and the second coming are one and the same event, esoterically, mystically speaking.  They appear, to the slumbering mind, that one is an historical event and the other a ‘future’ event.  But past and future are part of the illusion of time and place in which we have engaged the mind of Papa’s Son.  Neither exists in Eternity, but only the Holy Instant, the eternal present; Now. 

The resurrection of Jesus’ body from the crucifixion was never intended to be more than a symbolic demonstration of an immeasurably greater spiritual truth; and spiritual truth is eternal, outside time, which does not exist.  This symbolic gesture of Jesus, who said to me of the resurrection and its precursor, the crucifixion, ‘I did it to get your attention’, can be seen, with the Light of Discernment shone into our minds by the Voice for God (if we are willing to ask, believing) was an outward demonstration, or prophecy, of a greater, hidden, or esoteric, truth that is now being revealed to us.

The resurrection and the second coming are one and the same event.  Jesus has never left us: lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. (Mt.28:20) The real event, of which we have been  perceiving merely the outward symbol that we celebrate at Easter, is happening NOW, in the minds of us all.  ...there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. (Mt. 10:26)  This in no way diminishes Jesus and what he did in the long ago; rather, it increases, exalts and honours him, demonstrating his true position as the firstfruits, that we all may follow the Light that he came to bring into a dark and fearful dream.

Now, purification.  Jesus tells us: Miracles are everyone’s right, but purification is necessary first. (ACIM, T-1.I.7).  This purification becomes possible by committing ourself to the dispelling of ego from our mind.  Ego is the impurity that keeps the pure truth from our sight, by distracting us from our true, spiritual vision with bodily, sensory perceptions of an unreal world. It is the Holy Spirit’s job to accomplish this purification, because we don’t know what to do or how to do it.  Our part in the process is to surrender control of our life to Him (our True Self), and adopt — and maintain — a willingness to follow His lead.

Purification is not a fearful process, except to ego.  It is a joyful release from darkness and misperception into the Light of eternal Truth and Life.  It restores us to a state of right mindedness, a precursor to miracle-mindedness.  Jesus says of this: Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness (ACIM, T-1.I.43) 

Increasing numbers of the fragments of the Sonship are now, at this pre-ordained moment in the leavening process, moving, or waking, into a state of miracle readiness.  Ego keeps us from this, and in a state of spiritual darkness, by judgement and unforgiveness of ourself and our brothers.  Holy Spirit reverses this process by the mechanism of True Forgiveness.  Here is what Jesus tells us about this:

(True) Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and (thus) 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 (who, in his right mind wants to hang onto what is not real, and therefore has no meaning?). What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God...

(ACIM, W. page 401)

To purification and resurrection J

Brian Longhurst

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.

Jonathan Swift

April 6th 2011

Dear Friends,

Miracles are a state of mind

Everything that happens in this dream of time and place is an opportunity for us to remember Who we really are and progress on our journey Home to Papa.  If we are following ego’s script, many — some may even say most — of those opportunities turn up heavily disguised as adversity.  The objective of ego is to confuse us, mislead us, keep us in the consciousness of fear; play tricks on us to keep us convinced that we are a body and live but for a moment in time on a speck of dust called Earth in a vast, unfathomable universe; maintain the perception that we are little, limited and vulnerable.   

Indeed, that sense of vulnerability is carried to its extreme with the perception that we are mortal; that we are going to die, and that this is inevitable.  Not only so, but there is every chance the rocky road to dissolution will be strewn with misfortune, sickness, tragedy, most of this inflicted upon us by another, or chance, or indeed, by God.

Of course none of this is true but appears so only if we are following ego’s script.  Jesus knew none of it was true, including the bit about the ultimate lie of dying.  Sceptics might suggest that Jesus’ resurrection was the ultimate sleight of hand, but in truth it is dying that is the ultimate prestidigitation, because it has almost all of us believing that the impossible is an inescapable reality.  And so will it remain as our perception until we stop believing it to be so — just like Jesus stopped.

The trick is to look past the illusion.  This is not possible unless, or until we are prepared to accept that the illusion might be just that, and that there is another script, another Voice that we can freely choose to be our guiding Light.  Then, we have opened a door in our mind to that other possibility, and our willingness to listen and learn will begin to show us, reveal to us, that all is not as it has so long seemed.  Such a change of perspective brings us nearer to a state of miracle-readiness. 

Our friend, Keith, about whom I wrote two weeks ago, has, in the last year or two, undergone just such a change of perspective and is now becoming attuned to the Spirit of Truth, seeing past the ego’s fabrications. He tells his story of a miraculous healing that came about as a result of his willingness to listen to the Voice for God.  He has kindly allowed me to share it here, for the encouragement of all who are ready to accept that outer appearances are always illusory, and the truth, the Kingdom of Heaven, our only Home, is within us all:

I took hammer drill damage to my right ear in 1998. It left me with tinnitus, an 'incurable' ringing in my ear, plus about a 50% loss of hearing in that ear. I got used to it and accepted it. It even became useful: as a shift worker I could go to bed in a noisy house, at odd times, and know that by lying on my good ear, other noise was subdued and I could get to sleep!

Keith told me that some years ago he began studying quantum physics.  Then, more recently, he began studying ACIM, and found that what he had come to understand from his quantum physics studies was in accord with what Jesus tells us in ACIM.  That really blew him away, and he has been fully committed to studying its teachings and meditating upon them ever since.  Keith takes up the story again:

Meditation and Healing

On this particular afternoon in Feb 2010 I meditated as usual, visualising myself expanding out to be bigger than the universe as I often did (this he had found possible as a result of his resonance with the quantum physics ideas, and what, by this time, he was gleaning from his early studies of ACIM). During this particular session I felt like I had been flooded with energy, as if energy had been rained down on me. It was amazing! I then went to bed that night as normal.

The next thing I knew was when I was woken up in the early hours by an intense, uncomfortable, almost painful pulling, pushing, clunking, clanging and twisting inside my head, but connected to my ears. The inside of my head felt ENORMOUS! It was as if giant cogs were being separated, rotated, and locked back into each other. Suddenly the pain in my ears ended, there was a high pitched ringing, and I must have drifted off back to sleep.

When I woke up I didn't remember the incident for about a minute, until I noticed that I had no ringing in my ear, plus I could hear the TV on downstairs... normally! I think I must have 95% hearing back in my right ear. I didn't ask for the healing. I certainly didn't expect it! I definitely thank God for it though! 

I then started to make myself bigger than the universe more regularly during meditations, reducing it to a mere tiny speck. (Since Jesus reminds us that the ‘physical’ universe is in the split-off-from-truth part of the mind of the Son of God, the part that is making believe he is not what he is, and Keith now understood this, it is not so hard to accept this as entirely possible.)

By seeing ourselves as only bodies we create a state of dis-ease

Quantum Physics teaches that in order to exist at all we have to exist everywhere, as part of everything. The act of observation of the particles causes separation and solidity of what is actually all one entity. By constricting ourselves into these tiny bodies we restrict our spiritual growth, making ourselves un-natural, small, dense, and destined to suffer and die. We create a state of ‘dis-ease’ for ourselves.

By opening up and expanding we enable our atoms to claim their natural and actual state as part of the universe which speeds up the oscillating of the particles, increasing the vibrational rates to ones closer to our natural state as spirit in Heaven. This is what makes room for the miracle of God to enter into our being.

Our Core Essence: The Miracle of God

In fact what happens is that God does not 'enter our being' at all; the meditation and expansion removes the solidity of the human form, which acts as a block to what always has and always will be there as our core essence, the miracle of God. It's like opening the door to our reality (or, one might say, the truth of our oneness in the Universal Reality, or God). The denser a material is, the lower its vibrational frequency will be. Therefore it stands to reason that the higher the frequency we can attain (by attunement of our mind, or at-one-ment, with the Universal Reality — Papa) the less dense we become, transcending matter, to become our natural selves, as spirit (i.e. in the likeness of the Creator Spirit).

If I get stuck in left brain… busy doing something or other, my tinnitus can come back, but only very slightly. As soon as I notice I simply expand myself out in my mind, which generates a physical feeling! As I expand, the tinnitus dissolves. I now use it as a reminder to keep myself conscious at all times. It is proof to me that the more I can keep my atoms and particles consciously expanded as part of all there is, the higher my frequency will be, the closer I will be to God and spirit, and the effect is better health for my body. Brilliant! Praise God!

I keep an email diary to myself, Brian. I know that if anything were to happen to me, at least there would be a record for my kids to read. I added this to it today, regarding my miracle cure from tinnitus. I think it's just all becoming much clearer due to our discussion about time, for which I am most grateful...

I had a revelation at 5 O'clock this morning in bed.

It was that the giant cogs I saw being separated, rotated and locked into new positions in my head during my miracle cure from tinnitus were simply my mind’s interpretation of the restructuring of my genetic makeup. The process of acceptance of my reality didn't give me something I needed; it merely led me backwards to my natural state of health (or, wholeness), as God intended, as I have always been (and as, in truth, we all are).

I saw it like this:  

Imagine you have a never ending wall in front of you, going on forever to your left and right. For thousands of years you've been running into the wall with your eyes shut trying to get ahead, and it hurts! You get injured, sick, and create difficulties, only to keep on running into the wall again.

Then, one day, suddenly, you see a door. At first it seems too incredible to imagine it's always been there, but it has! So you put your faith in it, open it, and move through it to the other side of the wall. Now you've moved ahead.... with no pain or suffering from running into the wall. 'That was easier!' you think.

On the other side, a few steps ahead, is another wall. You run at it and slam into it a few times, still determined to suffer a bit, until you remember the door in the previous one. This time you look for it. You find it because your eyes are now open, so now you know that if you walk through it you reduce (and ultimately, eliminate) your chance of suffering, moving forwards without resistance to what always has been, and always will be, there. You move through to the other side.  

This time there is another wall, but something is different... This time you're already looking for the door!

What I am saying is that life is a series of opportunities to move ahead spiritually. If you resist you create dis-ease. If you go with the flow, open your eyes and your heart and accept your reality as part of God, then your body can do nothing but automatically adjust to the state of peace by reflecting your new mentality as good health.

I now realise more fully that I didn't have a miracle at all. I AM THE MIRACLE!! We all are, & always have been!  Our natural state of perfection is only masked by the mental blocks causing the dis-ease and pain. What happened to me, and thousands of others, is an undoing of damage done by ourselves; an automatic release. It is a progressive undoing towards our natural state with God, as one in spirit.

Quantum physics proves that time runs backwards in the world of sub atomic particles. It seems ironic that in our rush to progress within a physical life we stand still without ever really changing. The only thing that seems to move ahead is time itself. Only once you're on the path do you really start to move forwards, in spirit, which is actually a move backwards, or undoing, towards our perfect reality within God.

Ego’s response to such, predictably, would be, ‘It’s all very well for people like Keith to have such amazing experiences, but nothing like that ever happens to me, so what am I supposed to do about this so-called spiritual awakening malarkey?’ The answer to this is that in the eternal reality, we are one, and that one is the all-empowered Son of God.  The whole ‘separation idea’ is to appear to not be what we are.  So, we appear to be limited (when in truth we are limitless), mortal (when in truth we are immortal) guilty ‘sinners’ (when in truth we are innocent), etc., etc. 

In our seemingly fragmented state we all appear to bring different qualities/gifts/potential to our sojourn in time and place.

Everything is according to our desire. If we desire spiritual awakening earnestly enough, the Holy Spirit, Who knows us better than we know ourself — because He knows the eternal truth about us — will restore to us whatever potential will serve that desire and enable its fulfilment. If we do not have the desire He will honour that, and our potential will, in accord with our self will, like a seed, remain dormant, inactive, but not lost; simply awaiting the moment it is called upon to germinate and grow.

Ultimately, even though we may appear to have accessible to us only certain, limited qualities/gifts/potential that are serviceable to our awakening to the Kingdom of Heaven within us, all that Papa is He gave freely to His One Son at his creation.  And all that is still freely ours, just as it was Jesus’, because we are co-equal with him in the Sonship.

To empowerment in our oneness,

Brian Longhurst

Changing vision from the ego’s perspective to that of Spirit’s is the beholding of a wholly sinless and innocent world. 

Seeing a sinless world, the love God has for us becomes us.

Jon Mundy in Living a Course in Miracles, page 153.

April 13th 2011

Dear Friends,

If we have not wakened fully to the remembrance of our true Self by the time we come to the end of each sojourn in time, we have to reincarnate in order to provide ourself with another opportunity to progress along the Path to our ultimate Destination.  This is not a punishment by God for our sins, though we may, at some unconscious level, see it as a self-punishment for falling short of the mark (sinning).  Then, it may be so hard to bear all the guilt this engenders that we then project the blame onto anyone else. 

When we are teenagers, there is a tendency to blame our parents for having been born, little knowing (or remembering) that it is we who choose our parents, whereas we conveniently perceive it as their fault for bringing us into this world.  And, when that excuse no longer washes, we blame God.  After all, He is a useful scapegoat, who seems incapable of answering back, or defending Himself against such attack.  All characteristic ego stuff, which most of us by now can readily recognise, even if we haven’t quite got the hang of undoing that pesky critter and releasing ourself from its sneaky, yet seemingly vise-like hold on us.

Ego is, or would be, were it to be real, the opposite of God.  God is Life, so ego is death.  God is All-Knowing, All Wise, so ego is all forgetful, all confused.  God is Peace, so ego is conflict. This all means that, until we choose to exclusively follow the script of the Spirit of Truth — just as did our template, Jesus — to get us out of this fine mess we have got ourself into, we remain confused into believing that we are a false, fragmented identity; an ego device to ‘prove’ time and place, and bodies, are real.  This places us in an illusory state of mortality, confusion, conflict and forgetfulness.

Because death is the inevitable, ultimate ‘proof’ of ego’s script being ‘real’, which we have swallowed hook, line and sinker, we have to keep going round and round on the carousel of birth and death. Until, of course, we abandon our chosen path of forgetfulness.  When we play make-believe, we have to forget who, what and where we really are, otherwise we cannot believe what we have made.  If we don’t believe what we have made, the game is over and we cannot play it any longer.

The natural corollary from this is that when we stop believing what we have made, the pretend game is over and we have come to our Self, remembered who, what and where we really are, and woken up to the reality of our eternal Being in Papa.  Therefore, one could say that ‘forgetfulness’ is the name of the game.  This is not just the kind of forgetfulness, or absent-mindedness, experienced by people as they move through middle age toward old age.  This is total forgetfulness; forgetfulness of our true, effulgent, all-empowered, eternal Being; Christ.

This is the forgetfulness that is manifest in a newborn baby, who, outwardly, remembers, knows nothing; how to walk, speak, eat, sit up — everything.  That is, however, only at the outer level, which can meaningfully be described as the without, which is, of course, the opposite of the within.  If we choose not to go within, then the only alternative is to go without.  And that is precisely what Papa’s Son has chosen to do.  However, the newly reincarnated soul has not, in truth, lost contact with his real Self, as is the case with us all, because this is impossible. 

But, like the rest of us, he is pretending, playing the game of make-believe that he is not who he really is.  Convincing, isn’t it? J.  So much so that he has to make everything up, with help from his parents and others around him, all of whom have equally made everything up. But not convincing to the Spirit of Truth, the Voice for God, Who dwells within us, has never forgotten who we are, and is here to constantly remind us, being the Link to our real, Christ Self, all the while we keep up the pretence. 

Meanwhile, the newborn, having entered into forgetfulness, has to start again from absolute zero.  Nevertheless, we can engage in mind-to-mind communion with the mind of a new-born baby, just as we can — if we so desire — with any other fragment of the Sonship, whether in an adult body, or discarnate, or still in the womb.  And why would this not be so?  Each is a soul; none of us is a body.  We can commune with all living things because all living things have awareness, and awareness is of mind, and all mind is one Mind; the Mind of God.  Only our belief in separation and our unbelief in oneness prevent this.  Nothing else.

If we think we are a body we have forgotten who we are and where we are, along with all the other fragments, and we engage in all manner of endeavours that have nothing whatsoever to do with who we are.  As Jon Mundy says in Living a Course in Miracles:

There are no doctors, no captains, no reverends and no governors in Heaven.  There are also no Methodists, no Buddhists, no Hindus, no Muslims and no Jews.  There are no ideologies, no philosophies or belief systems.  That’s all stuff we made up.

We think we need all those outer identities, job titles, appurtenances because we are pretending to be little, vulnerable, lacking, and these props will support us, prop us up, contribute to the false identity we have adopted in this confused state of mind, and thus, strengthen it, make it more real.  But when we add unreality to forgetfulness, we still have forgetfulness.  Only when we add remembrance of eternal truth (the only truth there is) to forgetfulness will we be restored to reality, to who we are.  And the forgetfulness will be forgotten.

Some may think, ‘Well, I have gained some wisdom from the experiences of this incarnation, so I will be further ahead for the next, and if I keep growing in wisdom each time, eventually I will get to the place where I won’t need another circuit on the carousel.’ This is true, but ego is working against our progress, and with ego’s rules stipulating the requirement of returning to total forgetfulness at each point of reincarnation, this will take many more circuits than is necessary.

This means we have to start not from where we left off last time around — a few paces ahead — but from back to zero, requiring a substantial recapitulation each time.  And, if our parents or others around us are not able to help us speed up that recapitulation process — because they are equally in a state of forgetfulness — and ego is working to distract us every moment from the Path Home, this recapitulation may take many decades.  This is likely to mean we barely get back to where we were at the end of the previous circuit.   

That means, from the eternal perspective, we are not progressing at all, even though it may seem from our limited time and place perspective that we are.  This scenario implies that at best we are taking two steps forward and one step back at each circuit.  For many it will be two steps forward and two steps back, or even one step forward and two steps back.  This is going nowhere, fast.  But we can, in a heartbeat, change all that, by choosing to stop following ego’s script and instead choose to listen to our Higher Self, the Voice for God.

Ego will try to persuade us that this is all very well, in theory, but is actually pie in the sky, because we may have tried listening to the voice of Reason but with so much going on in this hectic life, we don’t seem to be able to get tuned in to It.  And even when we do get tuned in from time to time, the signal is so weak and there is so much static, it is a hopeless endeavour.  But none of those ‘glass half empty’ arguments matters one jot to the Holy Spirit.  All that matters to Him in his role of leading us back to Truth is, What is your desire?

Those are the first words Jesus spoke to me, in 1966.  I now know of a certainty that without the desire, we cannot escape the cycle of birth and death, but all that is asked of us is a little desire, a little willingness.  As soon as we ask Self to take the helm of our life, and are, truly, willing to surrender it to Him, He will do so.  It matters not at all that we may be unaware of the handover — and the benefits that will accrue from it — as a palpable experience.  Yet, I feel sure there are those amongst us who will have very real awareness of this handover process, and at least some of its benefits, right away. 

But for those of us who don’t, this absolutely does not mean it has not happened. These words from Jesus tell us how it is from the perspective of Eternity: 

My son, it is to the act of Asking, Seeking, Knocking (ASKing) that your Heavenly Father, Papa, responds freely, lovingly, immediately, with His giving (and no-one will ASK unless he desires).  It is not according to your faith but your desire that He responds.  It is according to your faith that you are able to receive His giving.  Your faith is something that Papa will grow in you as you ask.  The more you ask, believing — having faith — the more you will receive and you will grow in your expectation of receiving that which He is always giving.  You expect the sun to rise every day because it always does.  That is faith.  Easy.  As you ask more and more of Papa, believing He is giving it, so will your faith in receiving grow until it is as your faith that the sun will rise.

It is by/with this faith that I came into the Earth life, believing that Papa would give all that I asked.  These things which I did shall you do — and receive — also, and greater things than these.  Believe and you shall receive.  Ask, believing.  It is Papa’s good pleasure to give to His little ones — all of them, including you.  He will give you wholeness of body, mind and soul.  Only believe.  You know He is giving you the Kingdom.  Can you celebrate with dancing and with singing if you are a crock?  All is well.  Be thou whole.

If you do not receive immediately (or are not aware of having done so) it is more to do with your growth in faith (or the lack of it) than Papa’s giving.  Be at peace and let your certainty be that He is giving so that your faith in receiving may grow. All is well my son.  Rejoice, for the Kingdom is at hand.

(From Diary of a Christ Communicant, May 4^th 1997)

There are those who say Jesus awakened from the dream of separation and forgetfulness to full remembrance of his Christ Self during that incarnation.  This is not supported by the evidence.  He is recorded as saying: Before Abraham was, I am. (Jn 8:58).  This clearly indicates he had awakened to full remembrance of his true Being before Abraham.  Had this not been so, how could he have planned and implemented the six-thousand-year-long Great Rescue Programme that started with Abraham?

Do we really want to continue in forgetfulness, confusion, fear, when all that is asked of us is a little willingness in order to escape from it? No-one said getting Home is easy, but it is doable.  Jesus did it and he is, as already stated, our template.  So choosing to become like him may still seem to take a long time, but it is going to make the journey immeasurably more enjoyable, and when one is having fun, time flies.

See you on the Road J.

Love and blessings, every step of the Way,

Brian Longhurst

The Son of God could never sin, but he can wish for what would hurt him. And he has the power to think he can be hurt. What could this be except a misperception of himself? Is this a sin or a mistake, forgivable or not? Does he need help or condemnation?

                                                                               Jesus, in ACIM T-25.III.9

April 22nd 2011

Dear Friends,

I have been busy the last days getting my book ready and formatted for publication, so it was not possible to prepare my usual Wednesday Message of Encouragement (MoE).  There has been so much synchronicity involved in the events that have led to my writing getting into print that I feel prompted to share some of it with you.

Throughout the decades of my journey with Jesus he has said to me many times, ‘Freely have you received, freely give’, and this has gladly been my approach to sharing the events, inspiration and revelations that this journey has brought to me.  In the 1990s and early noughties (the first decade of the new century) I realised that there had been so many blessings that if I came to the end of my sojourn in time as Brian without at least making the effort to share some of them with my brothers in the Sonship, I would be left with an overriding sense of profound regret at a lost opportunity.

So, in the early noughties I began writing the story, and felt the title Synchronicity, for Goodness’ Sake (SFGS) was apposite, at least unless or until I was guided/inspired otherwise.  However, Jesus had also told me over the years that the devotional Service of Mystical Communion with Christ (SMCC) in which I had been instructed by Olga Park in 1967, and which Theresa and I, and others, had subsequently practised, and the messages of enlightenment and guidance I (and others) received as a result of this practise, was ‘an operation of hiddenness’; that when the time was right it would become ‘an operation of openness’.

This is in accord with the PLF that governs the emergence of new life from a seed.  In February 1992 the Teacher said to me:

The seed has fallen upon fructifying soil.  It has entered into the dark and secret place wherein it has imbibed of the waters of life.  These waters have caused its own life to be stirred into an unfolding of its purpose from deep in its own within.  Thus has the seed germinated and grown in the secret place.  In due time shall the seedling emerge from the secret place into the open and shall put forth branches and leaves and flowers and fruit.  Therefore I counsel you, that your life be in harmony with the Spirit within, that you may be protected from those who would peck at the tender shoots and who would burrow within your structure and weaken and distort your growth. 

Jesus told me that the switch-over from hiddenness to openness would be by circumstances not of my choosing, and that when it happened, I would know of a certainty that it was the time.

In the small hours of June 5^th 2005, my 61^st birthday, I was wakened by the Inner Voice speaking to me what I later entitled ‘The Caterpillars and the Butterfly’ and subsequently subtitled ‘An allegory of human spiritual life’.  This was so clearly and powerfully impressed into my mind that when I got up a few hours later I was able to type it out verbatim.  I emailed it to a few people, including Owen Waters, who administers a website called Infinite Being, without any explanation about how it came to be written, or even who had written it. 

Within a few hours Owen emailed back saying how good it was, and could he please use it as one of his weekly articles that he emails to a sizeable mailing list. I had had no thought that he would respond in this manner, but as soon as I got his reply I ‘knew’ that this was the moment of the switch-over from hiddenness to openness.  I of course said go ahead, and in the exchanges that followed I happened to mention I had written a manuscript of my experiences, and was intending to publish this on a website in due course (this happened about 7 or 8 months later, after I went to night-school to learn how to develop and install a website!).

To my amazement and delight Owen said he would gladly tell recipients of the allegory article that this was written by me and that I had also written a manuscript of the experiences of my journey with Jesus, and anyone who was interested, I would gladly email it to them free.  During the days that followed the emailing of this message to Owen’s mailing list I was inundated with messages saying how enlightening the allegory was, and how it had helped provide a much clearer understanding of who Jesus really is, and our relationship to him; and further, would I please send them the manuscript.

This I gladly did, and received many messages back expressing deep gratitude for it.  Many shared mystical experiences they had had.  Correspondence evolved and I began sending occasional articles I was prompted from within to write, and accompanied by a few entries from the records of the messages from Jesus and others in the Realms of Light, which I dubbed Diary of a Christ Communicant (DCC). 

By the time I finally got the website up and running in early 2006, I was finding that the articles were flowing from within such that this became a weekly feature, even though I had never had such an intention.  By this time, I was realising that if the Spirit of Truth is in charge, it is best to go with the flow.  Indeed, Jesus had warned me on a number of occasions over the years to be ready for anything at a moment’s notice, so if this was the way things were heading, who was I to stand in the way?

The website took shape and I uploaded the manuscript under the title initially selected. Things continued and progressed for several years and there were correspondence from people around the world.  The web stats indicated that there were thousands of hits on the Honest2goodness (HTG) site each month from well over 100 countries.  Many hits were from countries that were unidentifiable by the stats compilers, so I assumed this would be countries like China, Saudi Arabia etc. 

I have long since decided that monitoring web stats was the Holy Spirit’s job, not mine, so have not checked them for several years now.  Jesus told me my job was to deliver the message and not to concern myself over how it is received; that this was his job, along with the Holy Spirit.  I was entirely relieved at this; it took all responsibility for it and how it might increase out of my hands!

Over the years a number of people asked me if I had ever thought of having SFGS published, and I replied with what Jesus had told me about freely giving as I had freely received.  Then last June we had friends visiting from Vancouver. 

Peter knew all about my writing but when he indicated he didn’t know something that was in the book I was surprised and asked if he had read it. He said he had read snippets here and there, but reading off a website, or a computer monitor was not convenient; he told me people like to hold a book in their hands, pick it up, read some, and later, read more, wherever they might be; that this is not possible online.  His point came across loud and clear.  I printed a copy for him to take back to Vancouver and he told me he read it on the plane, with great enthusiasm, and said I really needed a publisher. 

I had assumed that the Holy Spirit would be firing people up to read it off the website or download it and print it out to read elsewhere.

I had experienced how difficult it is to get a publisher to publish a book by an unknown author when we tried to get Theresa’s book Seeds of Redemption published, but it was becoming clear that the Holy Spirit was moving things along, and it now seemed it was time for SFGS to be brought into print format.  So I said to the Holy Spirit, ‘Over to You.  If You want this to get published, so be it.  I leave it in Your hands.’ 

Then on September 13^th 2010 as I sat at my computer there appeared on the monitor a blog from Julie in San Antonio, Texas.  I had never heard of her and knew nothing about her, but I thought, if this has appeared out of nowhere – the Holy Spirit doing a spot of hacking – it must be because He wants me to read it.

I resonated so powerfully with what Julie had written that I was immediately impelled to email her.  I ‘never’ do that!  But I couldn’t resist the inner impulsion, so emailed her saying I was so resonant with what she wrote that I felt as if I had known her ‘forever’, and included the extract from SYFK where Jesus manifested to me in his glory in 1967, by way of some intro to Julie about where I was ‘coming from’.  Shortly afterwards Julie mailed back expressing the same feeling about a long-term connection between us.  We arranged a Skype meeting and she said to me ‘Have you ever thought about having your book published?’

I told her what I had said to everyone else about freely giving, and that this is what I had been doing, on the HTG website.  She said, ‘I just wondered, because a very dear friend in Boston has recently been guided to start a company to publish just the sort of work that you have written.  We are going to Boston in November to see him. If you don’t have any objection, I would like to speak with him about you and your writing, and will let you know what he says.’ 

I said, ‘If you feel prompted to do that, who am I to stand in the way?’  Clearly, it would not be serviceable to block Spirit prompting, moving things along according to His perfect timing for revealing the Path at my feet, one step at a time. Shortly after that, Julie told me she had spoken to her friend in Boston and he had said he was definitely interested in proceeding with publication.  Theresa and I were invited to Boston for Thanksgiving and to stay with Ted and Vicki Poppe.  Ted had been guided  from Spirit to start the publishing venture and even given the name for the enterprise: Diamond Clear Vision.

When Julie had asked if I had ever thought of having SFGS published and I told her about freely giving, I was suddenly reminded that back in the mid 1970s I had earnt a great deal of money, but circumstances outside my control meant I never received what was rightfully mine.  Then, about twenty years later Jesus said to me, ‘That which is rightfully yours has not been lost to you.  I have received it into my care, and when the time is right I will restore it to you with my interest.’  I realised he was speaking of the earnings from the mid 1970s. Here was an example of how time means nothing in Eternity.

From time to time I had pondered his words about restoring it to me with his interest.  How would he do this?Would we win the lottery?  When would he do it?  Did he literally mean money?  Or was that his license for meaning ‘Heavenly reward’?  Money is not a primary motivation.  It is an ego distraction, to keep us focused in the without. 

Jesus tells us: ...take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? ...for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.  But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you (from Mt. 6), and in Mt.16: For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

Ted told me he ‘knew’ he had to publish this work as soon as he read one single paragraph in the manuscript in which Jesus had said to me on the first occasion of his speaking to me in 1966:

You have come into this world bringing with you potential for accomplishing certain things. My purpose is to assist you and guide you in discovering what your potential is so that it might be developed and fulfilled in your earthly life. Consider this carefully, my son, so that you may become aware of this and grow in your understanding of it, that in the fullness of time you may bear much fruit according to that inward desire and potential.

Since last November there has been much focus on the preparation for print publication.  I have been prompted to add from the DCC records several new Vignettes in Part Two and to generally tidy up the manuscript and provide more details about some of the events recounted.  It is not that the events changed, but one’s understanding of the meaning behind the events grows over time, and so I have been able to share some more of that enhanced, clarified understanding. 

One of the most synchronistic events that took place during this preparation stage is that the title has been changed.  It emerged during discussions that practically everyone felt the title was not ‘powerful enough’ and did not do justice to the message.  No-one had wanted to tell me because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings! J.  Meanwhile, my friend Michael Roads, author of Through the Eyes of Love (books one and two, plus a third on its way), who had read the manuscript, wrote so positively of his feeling about it that I sent what he had written to Ted.

As soon as Ted read what Michael had written, he said that was the only comment needed for the back cover.  Furthermore, Ted felt the ‘chills’ when he came to the part of the comment that read ... Seek ye first the kingdom of God, becomes truly meaningful as you follow Brian and Theresa on a journey taking them ever deeper into that very kingdom.  He said, ‘Brian, I hope you don’t think I am off my trolley, but I think that contains the correct title for your book.  Seek ye First the Kingdom... says it all.’

Well, as soon as he said that, Theresa and I got the chills too!  So did everyone else any of us mentioned this to.  All agreed it is the powerful title it needs.  And when combined with the inspired cover design that goes with it, created by Lana Carolan, who is an inspiration in herself, it all just falls into place.  I very much felt the Spirit of Truth was in charge of all these activities preparing the book for publication.  I certainly asked Him to be, and ultimately it will be the reader who perhaps can best decide for him- or herself.

I am very pleased to say that everything went to the printer yesterday. In discussion with the publisher, Ted Poppe, he has generously offered a very enticing discount to any who may be prompted to order the book prior to its official publication date.  Full details of the offer and how to order will be made available soon.  Meanwhile, I am very happy to attach an illustration of the cover.  Perhaps it might help you to decide about ordering.

I finally wish to say what a joy it has been writing these MoEs over the last few years, and interacting so blessedly with so many of you, whom I truly deem to be Friends.  It is my profound hope that this will continue for some considerable time to come.

Peace and joy be with us all as we travel the ‘journey without distance’ together to the Kingdom of Heaven within us all,

Brian Longhurst 

It is almost Easter, the time of resurrection. Let us give redemption to each other and share in it, that we may rise as one in resurrection, not separate in death.

Jesus, in ACIM. T-19.IV.D.17:4

April 27th 2011

Dear Friends,

Ego has tried continually to derail Jesus’ six-thousand-years long Great Rescue Programme, right from ‘day one’.  Day one began operations at the Earth-life level of experience with Abraham, at the dawn of the Arian Age, four thousand years ago. He was to engender a race of people into which Jesus could incarnate two thousand years later, to inaugurate the second phase of the Programme.  There had to be established a race of people who would be willing, at least to a degree sufficient to enable the progress of the Programme through its first phase. 

That phase had to have a race of people with a structured monotheistic system of prayer and God-seeking activity, as a platform from which phase two — ‘the Jesus measure of meal’ within the context of his parable of the three measures of meal (Mt. 13:33) — could be launched.  Needless to say, phase two was initiated by the incarnation of Jesus, his life, teaching, crucifixion, resurrection, calling down of the Spirit of Truth upon the Earth and establishing of a following that would continue throughout that second, two-thousand years phase.

The initiation of phase one, the Abraham measure of meal, required a soul who was first, able to hear the Voice for God, and second, willing to follow the instructions, guidance, direction given by that Voice.  Abraham, or Abram as he was originally known, was such a soul.  But he and his wife, Sarah, or Sarai as she was originally known, were unable to have children, so the prospect of a line, or race being established by him seemed remote, to say the least.

Yet, as Jesus reminds us in ACIM, there is no order of difficulty with miracles, and although Abraham was by now 100 and Sarah 90 years old and it had long since ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women (Gen.18:11), she nevertheless conceived by Abraham and gave birth to Isaac, just as the Voice had told him.  Next hurdle crossed.  But, good as Abraham’s gift for hearing the Voice for God may have been, that era, and the peoples of the region, and his background, were firmly established in ego’s mindset of sacrifice to appease the wrath of the multifarious gods to which obeisance was deemed advisable, or even mandatory.

Old habits die hard, and much as Abraham revered the God who spoke to him and guided his life, unlike Jesus, ego was not entirely off Abraham’s radar.  And he got it into his head that God wanted to test his faith in Him by ordering him to sacrifice the life of his beloved son Isaac.  The good news was that it did demonstrate Abraham’s faith in what he believed was God’s Voice, even unto a commitment to kill and offer his one, beloved son as a burnt offering to God.  The even better news was, of course, that Abraham’s intent was diverted, by divine intervention, at the last moment. 

Quite a drama. But he who was in charge of the GRP — and would incarnate as Jesus two-thousand years later — empowered with all power in Heaven and Earth, was not about to allow what was, assuredly for him, a trifling attempt by ego to defeat the Plan by bringing to an end the race into which he would incarnate at the start of the Piscean Age to initiate the Second, or Jesus, measure of meal. 

At that time, Abraham had not heard what was to be recorded multiple times throughout later parts of the Old Testament as God making statements such as: For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. (Hos. 6:6).  So Abraham, being on a slightly oscillating frequency, inadvertently got tuned in to ego, which never gives up trying to protect its existence, and this, at least to all outward appearances anyway, nearly put the kibosh on the GRP. 

Or so ego thought, knowing and understanding nothing of the infallible and unstoppable Call from God for the restoration of His slumbering, apparently fragmented Son, back to full wakefulness and remembrance of his indivisible oneness in his Father Creator. We can now state with absolute authority that God does not require, and never has required, sacrifices or burnt offerings.  It could not be plainer than this, from Jeremiah:

...your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto me. (6:20)

For 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. (7:22, 23)

...and when they offer burnt offering and an oblation, I will not accept them (14:12)

They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind (19:5)

As stated on previous occasions, this, and more from Bible scriptures, completely negates the contrived, false, unauthorised-by-God-or-Jesus Christian Church doctrine that Jesus was sent by God (or volunteered) as a once and for all blood sacrifice to God to assuage His wrathful, vengeful frame of mind for the ‘sins of the world’.  This, and everything to do with sacrifice and suffering ‘for the good of the soul’ is not from the Voice for God, but from the voice of the opposite of God — ego.  This is made very comprehensively and unequivocally clear by Jesus (does anyone know this better than he?) in ACIM. 

He chose to demonstrate the illusory nature of make-believe’s trump card — death — in a drama so intense that it would get our attention and hold it, getting us to actually listen to him so that he could tell us the truth and we would have good reason to believe him.  The fact that ego-mindedness caused most of us to misconstrue his demonstration and interpret it as a God-intended sacrifice (just to continue the old, wrong pattern in a new form) was of no consequence to Jesus, who knew perfectly well that this would happen, because he knew that this is the nature of ego. 

All the while the fragmented Sonship was listening to ego’s voice he would be tricked into following its script.  But the empowerment of the Plan and its CEO were always going to be able to thwart ego’s disorganised, haphazard, willy-nilly, opportunistic endeavours.  Jesus had the advantage over ego of a) having all the resources of Eternity at his disposal — an immeasurably greater capability than ego’s puny, time and place shambolic efforts, and b) he knew the end from the beginning.  So he was, and is, completely at peace within himself.

It’s rather like us watching the recording of a rugby match when we already know the result.  The opposing team may look threatening, and appear to have the advantage at various stages of play, but because you know the final score you can watch without anxiety that your team might lose.  From inception of the GRP, before Abraham, he whom we know as Jesus was always standing at the end of time, looking on at the replay, knowing the outcome.  This is why he is completely unflappable.  His Plan, the GRP, is totally organised in every detail, and cohesive; ego’s is reactionary and uncoordinated.  The result is inevitable; no contest.

Jesus is not contesting anything because there is nothing (ego) to contest.  He simply proceeds, one step, one phase at a time, and all is unfolding perfectly.  This is for our benefit, not his, because we have blinded ourself to the Light of Eternal Truth, so we have to journey in blind trust, one faltering step at a time.  This is why it is of such comfort and benefit to hold his hand every step of the Way.  And now, as the third and final, completion, fulfilment phase — the Kingdom measure, which equates with the Aquarian Age — gets into its stride, it becomes possible, even for us who only begin to waken, to see the unfolding process.  And marvel — and rejoice — at its perfection.

It is hard to miss the similarity of the start of the first measure of meal and the second: the sacrifice of the one person without whom the whole GRP would come to nothing.  Ego came, so it must have thought, within a whisker of succeeding — at the early stage of the Abraham measure — in conning Abe into thinking he had to kill Isaac.  Nevertheless, the score was GRP one, ego nothing. 

That didn’t stop ego wreaking murder and mayhem throughout the whole Arian Age.  But the GRP continued unruffled, unflinchingly focused on its objectives, even though hardly any of the fragments had even the foggiest idea that there was a GRP in progress. 

How easily do we still get distracted by ego’s illusory prestidigitations.  And before we know it, if we are not very careful, we are back in deep wilderness again.  This indicates the benefit of steadfast, one-pointed focus on the Path, staying close to the Shepherd so he doesn’t have to keep rescuing us from one pit or another.

Did ego think it had gained a massive victory at the crucifixion?  If ego knows nothing of Eternity, (which it doesn't) and knew nothing of the GRP (which it didn't; I know this because Jesus told me back in the 1970s that this is why the details were kept from the children of Earth, so it could not get leaked out to the ‘enemy’), it seems likely that this would have been so.  Its celebrations could have been only very short-lived.  And it continued its relentless destruction and attacking throughout the Piscean Age.  Outward appearances would be cause for many to doubt the benign nature of God — if He existed at all.

But again, none of those outward appearances detract from, or interfere with the GRP, which proceeds inexorably to its completion.  Were it not so, our escape from the spiritual darkness of time and place back to the Light of Eternity would be impossible.  And for the encouragement and uplift of any who doubt or are fearful, here are words from Jesus to inspire and remind us all who and where we all really are:

Hear, then, the one answer of the Holy Spirit to all the questions the ego raises: You are a child of God, a priceless part of His Kingdom, which He created as part of Him.  Nothing else exists and only this is real.  You have chosen a sleep in which you have had bad dreams, but the sleep is not real and God calls you to awake.  There will be nothing left of your dream when you hear Him, because you will awaken.

Your dreams contain many of the ego’s symbols and they have confused you.  Yet that was only because you were asleep and did not know.  When you wake you will see the truth around you and in you, and you will no longer believe in dreams because they will have no reality for you.  Yet the Kingdom and all that you have created there will have great reality for you, because they are beautiful and true. (ACIM, T-6.IV.6)

We do ourself a great disservice by thinking we are little and the universe is big; that our mind is our brain and we are trapped, limited, in a little pile of clay.  Is there one amongst us who believes this applies to Jesus?  He tells us we are like him; identical in fact, and that the only difference ‘twixt us and him, which is a temporary misperception, and even now in the process of being corrected, is that we do not believe it.  He does not believe it either.  He knows it.  Reality for us is what we believe to be reality.  Such is the power of the mind of God’s Son.   

We chose to believe unreality is reality, and so it became, for us, reality.  But we are — because we are Papa’s Son, imbued with inviolable free will — free, at every moment, to change our mind about what we believe.  We can believe in death and fear and guilt and sickness and misery and powerlessness if we so choose.  Or we can choose to believe the truth.  Jesus came to help us decide for truth, which will, assuredly make us free.

Love and endless blessings,

Brian Longhurst

The crucifixion cannot be shared because it is the symbol of projection, but the resurrection is the symbol of sharing because the reawakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its Wholeness.  Only this is knowledge.

Jesus in ACIM, T-6.I.12

May 4th 2011

Dear Friends,

In chapter 27 of Matthew’s Gospel it states that at the moment Jesus’ spirit departed from his body: ... behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.

The veil was a thick cloth, woven in blue, red and purple, and divided the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place, or Holy of Holies.  Symbolically this represented the apparent separation between God and mankind, so its rending also was symbolic of the end of that separation.  Sceptics would argue that this event did not actually occur; that it was simply poetic hyperbole by the writers, to ‘prove’ a particular belief. 

The fact is, it doesn’t matter whether it ‘happened’ at the ‘physical’ level of manifestation or not, because everything at the so-called physical level of manifestation is not real, but merely a symbol itself.  A symbol of the self-elected separation of God’s Son from his Father.  This is not a separation of anything but the mind of the Son (or at least, a part of his mind), since he could never actually be separate from his Father.  This is because, as Jesus explains in ACIM, God’s Son is an idea in the Mind of God, and an idea never leaves its source, even though it can be extended from its source.

This is like ripples on a pond, extending outward from its source, or cause — throwing a stone into the water.  Without the original cause (the stone) there could be no effect — the ripples extending outwards from the cause.  God is the Cause; His Son is the effect.

So, the ‘tiny, mad idea’ the Son had, of momentarily thinking, wondering what being ‘away from Home’ might be like could only appear to happen in, or to, a part of his mind, split-off from his whole mind, turned upside-down, back-to-front and insane.  All the while, in reality, it was impossible for him to actually leave his Source because the PLFs simply do not enable this since the PLFs are immutable.  If the effect was separate from the cause, there could be no effect.  If there was never a stone thrown into the pond, there could be no ripples.  Without the Father, there could be no Son.

One of the crucial intentions of Jesus’ incarnation, to initiate the second measure of meal and its leavening, was the calling down into the Earth of the Spirit of Truth.  Or more specifically, into the lives and minds of those who were closest to him. This was like a ‘seeding’ of the leaven, that would, as the GRP proceeded to unfold, result in the leavening, or raising up of the slumbering mind of the fragmented Son back to full wakefulness and remembrance of his Oneness in his Source, Papa.  It is not by chance that he taught the parable that begins Behold, a sower went forth to sow; he was that sower. 

Jesus manifested to me in the 1980s and spoke those very words, with a knowing, puckish, radiant smile filling his countenance, as if to say, ‘One day you will come to remember the import of these words and their symbolic meaning.’  Now, as I write these paragraphs, their full import is being restored to my remembrance.

It is worth noting that the last thing Jesus said before departing from his body on the cross was, It is finished. This meant that he had accomplished all that was intended, all that he came to do.  What he had come to do was prepare the world — his brothers in the fragmented Sonship — to receive the Holy Spirit into their awareness.  The Holy Spirit, the Voice for God, the bridge between the Father and the Son who had entered a state of imaginary forgetfulness about his true Self, or Christ, had never left because Papa created Him to be with His Son from the start of his self-imposed exile.  What had left was our awareness, our remembrance of Self.

Jesus’ Teachings, Life example, miracles, were outward displays, demonstrations by his life, of the inner reality, the Light, the Truth, the Love, the Peace that we all are, in our brotherhood with him as Papa’s eternal Son. In order to prepare the world (originally in the form of his disciples) an initiating, or seeding, event preliminary to Pentecost took place three days after the rending of the veil, when Jesus first appeared to the disciples after his resurrection: And when he had said this (”Peace be unto you...”), he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost (John 20:22)

The confused, bewildered mind of the fragmented Sonship had closed itself off to the Light of the Holy One (symbolised by the Holy of Holies, or Most Holy Place, in Solomon’s Jerusalem Temple) by the veil he had drawn over his vision, causing him to believe he was separated, unaware of the Light that is his Father and by extension, his Self.  That veil only has as much reality, as much power to blind us, as we accord it.  But to Jesus it had no power at all, and its rending demonstrated this; whether physically or metaphorically makes no difference because all the events and objects were and are outer symbols of an immeasurably greater reality behind them all.

The fact is, the Sonship was blind and deaf to the Spirit of Truth — and mostly still, outwardly, is — so Jesus’ intent was to first call It down upon the Earth (at Pentecost, after he had completed the preparation for that event and was able to say It is finished and then Receive ye the Holy Ghost).  Thereafter, during the leavening GRP process, It could extend until the whole fragmented Sonship is raised up to awareness of It within. 

Then each fragment can be led from within back to true Vision — as symbolised by the rending of the Temple veil, and the dispelling of the illusory separation of the Most Holy Place (Papa) from the Holy Place (the Sonship).  

The Son of God perceives himself separated from, blind to and bereft of God, but is actually as close to Papa as it is possible to be.  This is symbolised in the Jerusalem Temple by the design having the Holy Place (the Son) appended to — an extension of — the Most Holy Place (the Father).  The rending of the veil — a gift provided by the life of Jesus, the ‘firstfruits’ of the At-One-ment — symbolises the removal of the illusion of separation and enables the restoration of true vision, and thus, awareness of our oneness, to the whole Sonship. 

Of course, ‘veils’ and all other forms of impediment to our true vision are merely shadows, and have no reality at all.  On the day Prince William married Catherine Middleton I received an email from our friend Keith, who has a remarkable gift of mystical, enlightening vision of spiritual truth and reality through the study of quantum physics.  What was revealed to him, and he has kindly shared, is so profoundly illuminating that I have obtained his permission to share it.  A few of you will have also received this from Keith, but it is so deserving of a wider readership that it is lovingly offered here: 

Dearly beloved...

We are gathered here today (Keith has a sense of occasion commensurate with the event taking place in London☺) to try to understand the relationship between what is unreal, yet so difficult to dismiss, and what is real, yet seemingly difficult to remember. I have always prayed to understand, and to be able to explain to brothers and sisters who may have doubts, exactly what I have always known. Until 2 days ago I was missing one final piece of the puzzle......

In ACIM Jesus talks a lot about himself, and us all, being the Light; about how we see and move in shadows, and about how we constrict ourselves into tiny, illusory bodies.  We know and accept that we are the Light, which is understandable because in a world without duality (Heaven/Eternity — our true and only Home) there can be only Light. Darkness cannot dispel light, only the other way round.

However, because I feel so driven to make a connection between everything celestial (eternal) & everything physical (temporal), I’ve always tried to understand, yet had a real problem with ‘darkness’ and ‘shadows’. As usual, the problem was that I was looking externally, thinking that maybe the shadows were a metaphor for our miscreation, or that we cast shadows of fear and separation onto the world. . . The problem was that I was trying to work it out with my usual 3D perspective. Once I accepted that what was needed was a change in my point of view, I realised that we are also (or, have made ourself) the Shadows! Quite literally!

When you look into the world of sub-atomic particles the smallest particles known to man are the basic building blocks of what we call life (in the illusory world of time and place). The smallest is nothing more than an empty ball, orbited by even smaller balls which are the very first example of the separation of energy into positive and negative particles; the birth of Duality! We are that energy, so it stands to reason that this is the primary point of miscreation into the world of (apparent) solidity.

The positive and negative (good and evil) particles seem to be the powerhouse for the particle they orbit. The particle they orbit, being made of nothing but shadow, and containing nothing, merely displays 3D spherical images on its surface. Quantum physicists call this the ‘Holographic principle’, because the particles are both hollow and graphic.

The scientists know that the Holographic principle means that in reality we (the fragments) are an illusory existence, which is created and projected onto the shadowy fabric of the ‘physical universe’ from elsewhere. They conclude that all ‘living intelligent information’ (US, the singular Son of God) which ‘can never be destroyed’, exists outside our (apparent) Universe in a realm they call the ‘Event Horizon’ (Heaven) and that the physical Universe is actually ‘a reflection of that intelligence, and therefore within it’, (My Self is ruler of The Universe. Lesson 253, ACIM) and that the ‘information’ is beamed (from our [split-off] mind) onto the particles to (fabricate) this world we (believe we) exist within. These scientific theories are in exact alignment with what we are taught in ACIM.

Anyway, back to my troublesome shadows.... as I said, I had a real problem with these, but if you swing your perspective around, you see that the amassing of billions upon billions of the particles would create shadows from each one onto the next, and onto all others surrounding all of them, & like layering images drawn on tracing paper, the images get more and more dense, hiding more and more internal light, thereby creating the illusion of solidity, & subsequently masking the interconnection in light between us all.

Now we can see that without our deluded projections onto these particles, there would be nothing but Light & Unity. The dividing of our mind(s) into positive and negative, or ‘good and evil’, creates all density, opposites, shadows, & (spiritual) darkness.

So the phrase Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death (from Psalm 23) becomes another classic example of the Truth! If we dissect it slightly you’ll see:

Yea though I walk (seeming to be separate from what we walk toward) through the valley (which is US...the pinch point where the Universal intelligence which we are splits to fabricate form, duality, & the illusion of this existence from a fragmented viewpoint) of the shadow (caused by the amassing of what seem to be particles) of death (the imagined result of our journey into unreality) I shall fear no evil.... (because it really never happened).

Picture your physical self divided into left and right hemispheres: Light and absence of light, good and evil. To your right is the never ending reality of our existence as one in Totality & Eternity. To your left is the physical World & Universe of solidity & separation.

We are the creation of form in the middle through which we come (by the leavening process of the GRP) to understand, or remember, our own creation, to recognise our own Truth of Being & return to our reality. We are in both worlds at the moment: citizens of Eternity, sojourning in time. Let’s celebrate that fact and give thanks that it is illusory, that darkness (shadows) will be abolished, and that Light will shine for us again as we learn to remember.

Amen.

Rather synchronistically, for some years Theresa and I have used the term ‘Shadows of Light’ to describe our appearance in time and place, where we, and everyone and everything in general appear as shadows, causing the appearance of spiritual darkness, when in truth, behind, or masked by those shadows, we are  — all — Beings of Light.

May awareness that we are Love and Light flow and grow in us until we appear no more as shadows, but solely as the Light we truly all ARE,

Brian Longhurst

Jesus is our template and we are destined to become like him.  If we are to become like him we have to begin to think like him.  Presumptuous?  Why?  How can it be presumptuous to think like who we really are?  How do we start thinking like him?  First, by stopping thinking thoughts of littleness, fear, guilt, shame, mortality...

BVL

May 11th 2011

Dear Friends,

At the end of last week’s MoE I was prompted to write:

Jesus is our template and we are destined to become like him.  If we are to become like him we have to begin to think like him.  Presumptuous?  Why?  How can it be presumptuous to think like who we really are?  How do we start thinking like him?  First, by stopping thinking  thoughts of littleness, fear, guilt, shame, mortality...

With our Earth- or ego-mind seeking controversy, the suggestion that we are destined to become like Jesus may appear to invite argument, debate, repudiation, not to speak of doubt and fear.  But this does not refer to us abandoning our present persona in favour of the persona of another.  Jesus incarnated as the embodiment of Christ, Who is our true and only Self; our eternal, unified Being.  This is why Jesus is our template.  He came to re-mind us, and lead us in the restoration to remembrance of our true Self. 

Jesus is recorded as saying, at the end of the Last Supper, before he and the disciples left the upper room to go to Gethsemane, where he knew he was about to be arrested: ...the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me. (Jn. 14:30).  That prince is, of course, ego.  There is nothing of ego in Jesus, and by the end of the Aquarian Age, when the third measure of meal is fully leavened, there will be no more ego in any of the fragments of the Sonship of God; all will have been re-unified to wholeness, oneness of Being, courtesy of the template.

In the 7^th principle of miracles — as set out in chapter one of ACIM — he says: Miracles are everyone’s right, but purification is necessary first.  Ego mind is fearful of the second clause of this statement because it perceives purification as judgement, punishment, retribution for ‘sins’; payback time.  This is a subterfuge to cover up the real fear, which is ego’s, not ours.  That fear is of its own demise, which will not be mourned.  Rather, it is to be celebrated because it heralds the end of the cycle of birth and death and the resurrection of the Son of God — us — to eternal Life.

Purification is, therefore, not to be feared, because it is simply the removal of the disguise, the role, the persona we have adopted in our game of make-believe, so that we can re-present ourself as who we really are.  Without this purification we are stuck in the masquerade of death.  Purification is not a fearful experience to our Self, but a release, an unburdening.  We come from the Light; we are the Light but have been hiding in the dark, an entirely alien place.  That is what is fearful.  To be led from the darkness, restored to the Light that is our true Being is not fearful but joyful.

Many years ago Jesus said to me, ‘When all around you is chaos and disarray, then rejoice, for the Kingdom is at hand, even at the doors’.  Now is the chaos time.  Any who doubt it need only watch the news to dispel such doubt.  This too shall pass.  There is an old saying that it is always darkest just before the dawn.  Dawn is breaking now on a New Day upon which the sun (Son) will never set.  It is inevitable that all the fragments of the Sonship will experience and be part of that New Day because the truth of our Being is that we are that New Day, together, as one, with Jesus.

The Purpose of God truly moves forward and nothing anybody thinks, says or does can hasten or stop it. However, by truly seeking and earnestly desiring the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, the individual can and does move into resonance with the Great Rescue Programme, and in that sense, he can hasten it — for himself — by reducing the number of further incarnations that would otherwise be necessary for his awakening.

Then, as he begins to radiate that newly restored state of Kingdomliness from within himself outwardly — not by acts of proselytising but simply by living his new, emerging, growing remembrance of his true Being — so those around him who are, themselves, ready for spiritual awakening will be affected by the change of vibration and begin, also, to seek. So does the Programme, the Purpose, which is always moving forward, working out, draw us into Itself.  It is as Jesus explained to me in a January 1995 Communion:

...In your mind and heart you may wish to be operating at the highest level of aspiration and spiritual awareness.  This is understandable when Earth is in darkness and you wish to be one, again, with the Light, and when you are passionate in your desire to shine the Light of spiritual reality in the Earth-life affairs of man, to hasten an awakening. 

You also know, for I have assured you many times, this will not hasten the unfoldment of the programme for raising-up the children of Earth.  Your prayers and love and attunement will help you, and will help all for whom you pray, and will add to the transforming Light.  But the season is pre-determined, even as are the seasons of the year.  All that you do in my name and with commitment to me and the Kingdom in your heart will contribute sunshine to the days, even though it will not change the seasons; therefore, keep on with goodwill. 

Have no fear.  Be of good cheer.  Relax and enjoy each and every day.  All is well.  Walk with me.  Talk with me.  Breathe with me.  Live with me.  Let the Kingdom envelop and surround and permeate your being.  I will expand your influence among the children of Earth.  This is possible by your commitment. It is like a dynamo generating Light energy, which draws the little ones to the Light. Joy be with you all.

In Owen Waters’ book The Shift; the Revolution in Human Consciousness, he says:

In physics, chaos is a phase that occurs during transformation.  You can resonate a container of water with sound waves that generate a balanced, symmetrical pattern on the surface of the water.  Then, if you turn up the frequency a little, chaos will ensue.  The neat pattern on the surface of the water will become choppy and discordant.  However, when you turn the frequency up still more, a new pattern emerges, one which is even more complex* and beautiful.

The chaos was a temporary phase between one natural state of harmony and its transformation into a higher form.

It is much the same with the transformation of humanity through The Shift.  The frequency associated with the Old Reality has already been increased.  The old pattern has been disturbed and is beginning to go away.  In its place is a choppy pattern which is searching for its new form.  Discords abound at a personal and social (and international) level as old wounds arise seeking attention and resolution.  As the frequency rises even more, the chaotic outbreaks on the surface of life will settle into a new pattern, one which is even more complex and beautiful.

* In this context, ‘complex’ should be understood as intricate, as distinct from complicated as in confusing, though to the upside-down mind, slumbering in a dream of spiritual darkness, clarifying Light can appear to be confusing, at least until the slumberer begins to come to his Self.

What Owen has written gives tangible meaning to Jesus’ words, ‘When all around you is chaos and disarray, then rejoice, for the Kingdom is at hand, even at the doors’.  It is ego’s intent that our focus be kept upon the chaos and disarray, perceiving that as the reality.  But the chaos appearing at the surface of the container of water is not the water, and does not alter its fundamental nature, which will manifest a new, harmonious resonance as it aligns with the higher frequency.

The higher frequency for humanity, and for all life on Earth, which has a common Source, even now is being outpoured from the Source — and amplified by the activity of the GRP — as prophesied 28 centuries ago by Joel:

And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit. (Joel 2:28, 29)

That outpouring of spirit from God is, one hardly need mention, at an exponentially higher frequency than the Earth-mind consciousness of Homo sapiens — which is a disguise, a blinker/blinder, donned by Papa’s Son for his game of pretend at being little — is able to receive with the faculties it has adopted for perceiving only three-dimensional illusions, thus shutting itself off from awareness of the Source. But Homo sapiens is not who the Son of God (us) is.

The chaos will, inevitably, come to the end of its cycle as the new frequency resonance establishes its supremacy in the heart, mind and soul, first, of all who are immediately willing to receive it, and then of those less willing, but who will eventually be drawn by its transforming, leavening, upraising, resurrecting power as manifested in their brethren.  Until the whole is leavened, and Homo sapiens is metamorphosed into his true, reunified Being as Christ, Papa’s beloved, eternal Son.

In August 1991 I received this message from the Realms of Light:

Little Ones: In these times the confusion is greatest as the old order crumbles and Earth-mind man reels to and fro.  The energies are concentrated at all levels and intensified as the programme focuses upon the "final assault" on antiChrist.  Fear not, it is not a "full frontal" assault as in warfare of Earth, but an infiltration of energy as cracks appear in the system — and believe me, there are plenty of those.  The energy shall thus gain entry and transform from within.  It is like cancer in reverse.  The system shall not be aware of its defences being "breached" and shall continue as traditionally.  But changes will begin to happen from within, and great surprise and wonderment shall come upon the inhabitants of the citadel*.  

New awareness shall be the order of the day.  This is real, tangible, transforming activity.  Be aware of the new energy — take no notice of the old; it shall be astonishing but let not your equilibrium be disturbed by it.  Focus, we counsel you, upon this for your own benefit and upliftment. 

All is well.  We are closer to you all than you know, and the banner of Christ Jesus is the cloak also by which we are all enfolded and protected.  We go forward to a certain victory.  Praise be to Almighty God and His blessed Son.  Amen.

* This refers to the ‘citadel’ of ego-minded thinking and its recalcitrant ways in the Earth.

If we are heading toward the Light, which is love, peace and endless joy — our true estate — beyond the tawdry, transient pleasures of Earth, it will serve us well to focus upon the Light, and not allow ourselves to be distracted by the chaos.  That does not mean we deny what is taking place, as a result of the transmutational chaos event, in a self-deluding manner.  Being aware of its raging turmoil does not mean we have to listen to it, be taken in by it; rather, we can observe it, yet remain steadfast in the certainty that it is not our reality, but a necessary upheaval that heralds the transformation to the Kingdom wavelength. 

The Chaos time is a sign of the certainty that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, even at the doors, and in that context, rather than allowing it to drag us down in despair, we can rejoice at what it portends.  Not knowing when or how it will end need not be cause for despondency either.  Ego projects into the future by interpolating from the past.  Quantum physicists now know, just like Jesus, that there is no past or future, but only the constant, eternal moment of now — the Holy Instant. 

Basing predictions of doom for what does not exist on what never happened is like building a house on a sandy foundation — it will collapse — rather than a rock.  Staying close to One Who knows the end from the beginning, and Who is reliable and trustworthy, is a safer alternative.

Love and Light,

Brian Longhurst   

If you point out the errors of your brother’s ego, you must be seeing through yours, because the Holy Spirit does not perceive his errors.

Jesus, in ACIM, T-9.III.3:1

May 18th 2011

Dear Friends,

After recently suggesting that we start thinking like Jesus by first stopping thinking thoughts of littleness, it seems logical that the next step is to consider how Jesus actually thinks.  Well, we have a pretty good idea how he thinks if we study ACIM, but when we are facing everyday events here in time and place, we might ask ourself, ‘How would Jesus respond in our circumstances, in today’s world?’ 

If we do this from a perception that Jesus is separate from us we might feel we could only be guessing how he would think regarding any of the daily situations we face.  In 1968 he said to me: ‘I am attuned to all mankind all the time; there is never a moment when I am not with you all.  All that is needed to complete the contact is for you to attune with me and I am there, with you, at any time.’

This seemed to be a principle, along the lines of 2-way radio links.  If party ‘A’ (Jesus) is at one end, listening to a transmission from party ‘B’ (you or me) on a given frequency, he can hear party B without any trouble.  If he wishes to respond and be heard by party B, all he needs to do is open his microphone with transmitter attuned to the same frequency, and speak, and party B will be able to receive from, as well as transmit to, party A.  But Party B must have his receiver attuned to the transmissions from Party A.  This is where most two-way communications between us and Jesus (and/or the Spirit of Truth) break down. 

Jesus is transmitting to/commun(icat)ing with us at every moment.  Why?  Because he loves us totally, perfectly, unconditionally and wants to help us waken from the dream of separation.  Because we have been duped into believing he ‘will come to judge the quick and the dead’ and find us wanting, unworthy sinners, we shut down our receiver; so fearful are we of hearing dire warnings of the terrible retribution that awaits us for falling short of the mark.  

Even though many of us now are waking to the remembrance that this is not true, old habits are just that: habituated.  Many — most, even — of the ACIM students with whom I am in fellowship still exhibit symptoms of this negative self-perception.  Guilt, shame, doubt, fear...  We know those feelings, judgements are entirely contrary to everything Jesus teaches us in ACIM about true perception, but they are deeply embedded in our unconscious mind, ingrained over countless incarnations.  We speak of true forgiveness as the escape route from this, but how often do we exclude ourself from forgiveness?

 What Jesus said to me in 1968 was a profound lesson for me in understanding the ways in which commun(icat)ion between souls can take place: get on the same frequency.  This is, in human soul terms, sharing the same desires.  The stronger the desires, and the greater the commitment of those souls to these desires, the stronger will be the connection between them.  Therefore, the more truly one seeks after God and the more earnestly one desires the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, the stronger will be the soul-to-soul contact with others of like desire and commitment — including Jesus. 

This is not exactly rocket science; if we can accept that everything functions according to principles, or laws, it helps us to accept that not only can we speak/commun(icat)e with Jesus, but he can — and does — speak/commun(icat)e with us.  Why would he not?  He loves us.  It helps if we can accept that, and that he is as true a friend as any could ever hope for.  But it doesn’t end there.  He wants us to be his friend on equal terms, and to the same level we can imagine he is to us.  This is where most two-way communications — actual or potential — between us and Jesus (and/or the Spirit of Truth) falter.

Last weekend, as I walked in the nearby Cotswold hills on a sunny spring morning, with sheep grazing in the fields, spring wildflowers in bloom and birdsong filling the air, my heart light and joy-filled, I turned my thoughts to him in gratitude and enquiry about how he actually thinks about the multitudinous aspects of life in today’s frenetic world.  Instantly he was there with me, in me, all around me, radiating, bursting with joy at our joining in friendship. 

I knew his joy was at my loving him and my gratitude for his friendship, and also that here is a brother with whom he can share his love, wisdom, practical help and guidance.  Love and friendship can only be complete, consummated in reciprocity. 

I almost always carry a small notebook and pen on my hill-walks, for jotting incoming inspiration, and happily I had not forgotten it that day. No words can describe the awareness and experience of his vibration, so uplifting, exalting and joy-inducing is it.  Happily, the feeling it imbues never fades and can be restored to mind and soul completely, in a flash, years later as one recalls the occasion.  Regrettably, the clarity and detail of the thoughts and words of inspiration and guidance cannot — at least, not for me anyway J — so the notebook is an utterly invaluable aide-memoire for them.

Our walk together was so full of elation at simply being (together), of one heart, mind and Life, that there was much jocundity and laughter, even during the moments of quiet between the exchanges that took place between us.  But he, of course, knew what had been occupying my thoughts during recent days, and so, new ideas about it would suddenly fly into my mind.  These were not part of the conscious interaction between us in the conventional, conversational manner, but would suddenly appear in my mind, during or between the jubilant communing. 

I was reminded of what Jesus tells us in the ACIM pamphlet The Song of Prayer.  In this, he counsels us that prayer at its highest level is nothing to do with entreaty or petition, but more a song of Love between us and Papa, in which He expresses His joy in us, and we respond with our joy and gratitude for the fact that He has (already) given His Son everything.  Then, as an echo of that song, we find the answer to any aspect of our life that is troubling us simply appears, either as an inspired new understanding, or by the matter simply ceasing to exist for us, fading to the nothing that we then see it always was.

The ideas would simply, suddenly, be there; new thoughts that our joy of togetherness appeared to be spontaneously engendering in my mind.  Knowing the clarity of understanding they were bringing would slip away if I did not note them down, I would have to keep stopping, say to him, ‘Hold on a minute’ while I extracted notebook and pen from pocket to record them.  They came in the form of little, imaginary, comic scenarios.  For example:

Can we imagine Jesus dashing off to the doctor for his winter ‘flu jab?  The idea is preposterous, is it not?  Yet how many of us do this every autumn, almost as an automatic reflex, without thinking, as the seasons turn.  This begs two questions: 1) Why can we not imagine him doing this? and 2) Why do we do it?  Clearly, the answers, like the questions are polar opposites.  He knew, and knows, of a certainty beyond all doubt, that he was (is) whole; that he is safe, invulnerable, innocent; that dis-ease is part of the game of pretend, a joke at which we forgot to laugh, just like, and part of, all the other illusions of time and place that occupy our attention. 

Jesus is attuned to truth and reality, which is love, peace, joy, wholeness.  Eternally.  Fear, dis-ease and death do not exist for him because they are not true and therefore are not — cannot be — real, and he knows it.  He does not believe it so it is not on his radar.  Just like his Father.  And ours.  He does not believe in illusions so they have no reality for him.  Because most of us have allowed ourselves to be taken in by the illusion of upside-downness, in which everything appears to be the opposite of reality, we believe it and it is that belief which makes it real for us. 

By thinking like Jesus we can begin to see like him and then we will be able to act like him; and then we will become like him.  Meanwhile, we are told — by governments and by the medical establishment and the drug companies, all of which want to keep us in the consciousness of fear — that we must have a ‘flu jab or we might get the next mutation of the ‘flu virus and this could kill us.  And, because we believe it — and ONLY because we believe it — it could happen.  But the flaw in that misperception is that, as Jesus told us in the long ago, death also is an illusion, and if only we can believe him we will never die.  Just like him. J

But what does that really mean?  Everyone knows we are born, grow old and die.  Not true, and never has been.  This is a misperception.  We are Papa’s Son and we are like Him.  That is how He created us.  Why would He, Who is all knowing, all loving, all wise, all caring, create His beloved Son to get old and suffer disease, and wither and die?  The idea is poppycock. He has never been born and assuredly, will never die.  Everyone knows God is eternal; even those who don’t believe in Him know that J. 

We, like Papa, have never been born and will never die.  Like Father, like Son.  Will we believe Jesus or will we continue to believe the false witness of our bodily senses?  False witness?  It seems so real, but if our bodies are made up as our masquerade costume for participating in the game of make believe, then all their attributes must be made up also.  So if they are not true they must deceive us. 

When we have had enough of the game of pretend and awaken from it, we no longer need the masquerade costume, so we leave it behind.  But that can only be when we have fully wakened.  Until that happens we keep trying on different costumes, one after another.  That is not dying.

The other flashes of comic awareness about how would Jesus function in this world were equally fantastical.  We can each ask ourselves, of some of our own habituations, ‘Would Jesus do this?’  And if the idea of him doing it is immediately perceived as absurd, we could serve ourself well to ask if we really need to do it.  For example, would Jesus subscribe to a newspaper? What appears to us ‘out there’ is reported as news.  Yet, what never happened in reality is nothing, and who wants to read about nothing, when it is simply nothing more than part of the game of unreality?  Certainly, we can easily discern from this that Jesus would not. 

The real news is not in the paper or on the TV.  Most of that is ‘bad news’; characteristic of the world of duality. The good news — the only news worth listening to — is within; brought to us not by some ‘mammon of unrighteousness’ commercial sponsor but by the Voice for God.  We can trust that voice and know that what He brings to us will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, for that is all He knows.

The Holy Spirit can only lead us in meaningful progress on the Path Home one step at a time all the while there remains any fear in us, and He knows our fears better than we do, even though He knows they are but imagined.  So, for example, because He knows that if we have a history of health issues and believe an annual ‘flu jab will bring us peace of mind, we can ask ourself, ‘Would the Holy Spirit want us to be filled with more fear, doubt induced, by stopping having the vaccination just because we know Jesus wouldn’t need it, and we are destined to become like him?’

Thus, the process is a one step at a time order of progress.  First, we start to think like Jesus.  This gradually engenders confidence in those thoughts as the Light of Truth they shine into our mind begins to make more sense than our old, upside-down, fear-driven thoughts.  This brings us to the place of growing in belief, faith and trust.  This leads us to the next step of wanting to act like him and this in turn completes the transformation to our becoming like him.

Jesus and the Spirit of Truth, like Papa, want us to be happy.  They know that if we are fearful of the Light, having been pretending we are in the dark for so long, They lead us back to the Light lovingly (is there any other way?), gently, tenderly, caringly; at a pace with which They know we are comfortable.

Endless blessings for joy, peace and love,

Brian Longhurst

Have no fear.  Be of good cheer.  Relax and enjoy each and every day.  All is well.  Walk with me.  Talk with me.  Breathe with me.  Live with me.  Let the Kingdom envelop and surround and permeate your being. 

Jesus

May 25th 2011

Dear Friends,

The three-dimensional consciousness of time and place is not just different and separate from Eternity, but is Its opposite.  This means that our perceptions, thinking, understanding and behaviour are all influenced by what is effectively the reverse of our true reality; an upside-down state of being that is dysfunctional, destructive, deceitful, duplicitous, devious and, of course, non-sustainable.  Its foundations are entirely flawed.

Having entered into a state of forgetfulness of who we really are, most of us are children within the context of eternal reality and how to function here in time and place in harmony — as one — with our true Being, as God created us. No wonder Matthew’s gospel says:

At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted (i.e. undergo a change of mind, heart and attitude), and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Mt. 18:1-4)

How easy it is to read a statement like this and say to ourselves, ‘Yes, what a true saying’, and then not take on board the depth of meaning it has for ourself.  The Victorians had a saying that children should be seen and not heard.  Yet children are in so many ways closer to the Kingdom than so many adult attitudes to life.  Because this time and place experience is based on upside-down premises, all contrary to our true Being, we are confused about our identity.  It stands to reason that if we are unsure about who we are, we will be unsure about how to be(have). 

We want to be open, honest, straightforward in our intercourse with our fellows, but fear prevents this, because not only do we not know (have forgotten) who we are, we don’t know who anyone else is either. This causes us to often be defensive, guarded, even devious in our dealings with our fellows.  Is there one amongst us who believes this was how Jesus interacted?  Is there one who would wish him to have done?  Is there one who, himself, truly wants to be devious?  Devious = untrustworthy.  Do we not all want to be perceived as trustworthy?  We believe Jesus to be trustworthy, but how could we entertain such a belief if he behaved as we so often feel driven to behave? 

‘Yes, but it was because we knew — or suspected — the other fellow was trying to take unfair advantage of us that we had to be defensive, guarded, devious in our approach and response to him.’  This is the (upside-down) reasoning.  It pervades this world at every level, from the school playground to international relations, where duplicity rules in the game of treachery called ‘Do unto others before they do unto you’, and its partner, ‘Thou shalt not be found out’.  How far is that from Jesus’ admonition to do unto others as you would be done by?

It all seems an inescapable loop, a vicious cycle, dragging us down further into the slough of despond.  It is no wonder depression, despair, suicide across all age groups, including teenagers, are rising.  But can, or will, our secular or sectarian leaders show us a way out of this downward spiral to oblivion?  How can they when they are part of it, caught up in institutionalised dysinformation?  This may seem harsh, but there is a sound reason for such an observation.

In Heaven, our true, eternal and only Home, where we belong, and where we are one, sharing, giving and co-operation are terms that help us gain a greater understanding of, and resonance with this state of Mind and Being, because they are motivated by Love.  In the upside-down, back-to-front world of time and place, acquisition and competition are the foundation stones of daily life.  These are the opposites of our true Being, and they are motivated by fear.  Secular corporations and sectarian institutions alike function on these dual wavelengths of acquisition and competition.

Fear is the opposite of love, and fear has no place or meaning in our true Home, so it is hardly surprising that we are bewildered here, compounded by unwillingness to seek the Help of One Who knows how to extricate us from this fine mess we have got ourselves into.  We are fearful because we are alone in a far country where everything is alien to us, so we are concerned about security and scarcity.  This is also hardly surprising since we come from a Place of eternal, absolute safety and abundance, to their very opposites.

So we distract ourself with focusing our energies on acquisition.  Acquiring food, money, ‘stuff’.  When just about everyone else is also focused on acquisition, acquiring can get harder and harder, so we have to devote increasing amounts of time and energy to this facile endeavour. 

But it still gets harder, and fear that we may not get our share first engenders, and then promulgates, competition; the rat-race.  But that only makes the game of acquisition harder still, so we then feel we have to employ deviousness to get our share because someone else might get it and then we will starve, because there isn’t enough for us all.

It is not hard to see where this is taking us: downwards, on the slippery slope to oblivion.  And that is exactly where the fragmented Sonship appears to be going, and is very close to its perceived destination.  For those with no awareness or acceptance that the Voice for God — the Holy Spirit — is with us, along with Jesus, who states: All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth (Mt. 28:18), this is a fearful time in the history of humanity.  Yet, as stated recently, Jesus tells us ‘When all around is chaos and disarray, then rejoice, for the Kingdom is at hand, even at the doors’.  Herein lies hope.

People need hope, and are desperately searching for something to give them hope.  Google ‘Jesus’ and it brings up 390 million results in 0.06 seconds!  People definitely want to know about Jesus J.  They ‘know’ there is more to him than they can glean from institutionalised religion and they intuit that he knows something they have forgotten.  Those who have tried the institutionalised religion route and found it took them to a dead end haven’t necessarily given up – especially if they are beginning to hear the still, small Voice for God calling from their own within.

And happily, there are ever-increasing numbers of websites, books (including, of course, ACIM) and other sources of information about the GRP accessible to true and earnest seekers after the truth of their Being.

Jesus called-down the Spirit of Truth upon the world (at Pentecost, at the beginning of the second — ‘Jesus’ — measure of meal), and thus has established, or anchored It/Him here in time and place.  Now, we, his brothers in the Sonship who are aware of the events unfolding at this, the beginning of the third — ‘Kingdom’ — measure can share, spread, extend the Spirit outwards to our brothers in the Sonship.  How can we do this? By simply being Who we really are, and allowing the Spirit of Truth within us to radiate out, this will happen because this is His Nature, just like His Creator.

Fear causes tension and this manifests in many ways in our vehicle of expression, all of them negatively impacting our health and wellbeing.  One of the primary manifestations of fear in our mind is shallow breathing, meaning we starve ourself of oxygen, making straight thinking difficult.  Just at the point of waking one morning last summer 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.

This means not trying to stop the random thoughts that come in, but allow them, step back from them, observe them, as I do; impassively.  This is possible because I know they are not real.  How can one engage and wrestle with what is not real; what does not exist?  You, also, know they are not real, because they are from an unreal source; ego.  You made it up.  It is not a creation of Papa, so has no reality, is not who you are, or even a part of who you are.  It seeks reality in your mind only by your acknowledgement of it, and thus, your giving it life and meaning. 

But you are safe, secure, innocent, at Home; certain, immortal, indestructible, peaceful, joyful.  Remind yourself of this as often as you feel a shred of doubt or uncertainty.  If that is multiple times a day, or an hour, or even a minute, so be it.  You know the meaning of and the need for steadfast one-pointedness.  You know where your treasure is, and this is where your heart is also.  Steadfast one-pointedness of commitment to reminding yourself will retrain your mind to be there with your heart.

Then you will be functioning as One.  An invincible, all-empowered Force for Good; for the Kingdom; for dispelling darkness with Light; replacing despair, not just with hope but with Certainty; confusion with Truth; fear with Love; forgetfulness with Remembrance; blindness with Sight; illusion with Reality; ignorance with Knowledge.

Beloved Holy Spirit, I know that, I feel it, I intuit it.  Thank You for reminding me and giving such wonderful, empowering affirmation.  You are a real battery recharger.  I love You and I love our communing, our joining in oneness. 

As you know, Theresa and I have been discussing whether You, as the Breath of God, breathe on us, as the wonderful hymn entreats, or breathe in us, as somehow seems more efficient.

I breathe on you always, unceasingly.  It is your choice to breathe Me in, inhale Me.  This is acceptance.  As with all Papa’s gifts, they are yours, freely.  It is your choice, as always, whether you accept them unto, or, in this instance, into yourself.  As you know, ‘hale’ means whole, well, strong and healthy.  So, to in-hale the Breath of Life is to take in, to receive unto yourself, wholeness, strength, health, well-being.

Breathe Me in until you are completely filled and have become fully Identified with Me, just as Jesus/Yeshua did.  Then we are One.  Envision breathing in the Light.  You are bathed in the Light; you ARE the Light.  You have denied your Self.  It is now time to accept, allow your Self again.  By excluding the Light from your awareness you seem to be in (spiritual) darkness.  This is not actually so.  By breathing in the Holy Breath you breathe in the true and only Life – Eternal Life – and Life and Light are one.  Life and Light are also Perfect Love. 

This you imagine you have also denied yourself, so in the Earth life consciousness you are bereft of Perfect Love, Which always has inner Peace and Joy, stillness, all-knowing as integral aspects of Its unbounded Being.  Hence the benefit of breathing and allowing; for once again you restore to yourself your Self, Who Is all of This.

In a sense, breathing out is not of any great concern because breathing in the Light automatically dispels the darkness you have believed you were in.  But nevertheless you will serve yourself well not to dismiss it as unimportant or irrelevant.  The act of breathing out is, and can be acknowledged as the departure, the relinquishing, the expelling of belief in the old order, time and place order; confused thinking, and allowing its replacement — as you breathe in — with remembrance of True, Whole, One Self. 

Once you have completely breathed out all belief in the old order, and re-filled your being by breathing in the Light, the Truth, the Remembrance of the Oneness, you will do as Jesus did: breathe upon your brethren the Holy Breath of Life, that they may be revivified by remembrance of their Life eternal.

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.

To true Being,

Brian Longhurst

No-one can know the Bible, or ACIM, from just one reading; and no-one can remember who he really is from just one prompting.

June 1st 2011

Dear Friends,

There is no Light in the place of perceived separation from God.  How can there be?  The Source of all Light is Papa, and this is extended by Him to His Son, created in His likeness; so the Son is also that same Light.  But when we perceive ourselves as separate from that Source and even from our true Self, this causes us to believe our sight — our true, spiritual vision — is veiled from the Light, rendering us completely blind to eternal reality.

Our body, a shabby substitute (‘a little pile of clay’, Jesus calls it in ACIM) for our true Being, is a symbol of our self-imposed littleness, frailty, vulnerability, mortality, none of which is true or real because it is unlike — opposite in fact — our true, eternal, glorious, radiant Christ-Self.

All of which we have awareness with our bodily senses is not real and this includes the light of the sun.  This light, discernible to our bodily senses as ‘physical’, is comprised of particles dubbed photons.  But photons are not eternally unchangeable, so they cannot be real, and like everything else in time and place, including the source of those photons, disappear.  The light of the sun — which, of course, we see as outside ourself, 'confirming' our littleness, and that there is no Light in us — is a substitute for the Light of Life, which is eternal and unchangeable. 

This Light is us.  Jesus tells us this, so we can know it is true, even if, by following ego’s script for an upside-down, make-believe existence, we have blinded ourself to the truth of our eternal, effulgent Being.

This Living Light — which is not physical (quantum physicists are now aware that nothing is physical, and all that seems to be is only perceived as so being) but pure, everlasting, unchangeable spirit — is Who and What we ARE.  Just like Jesus.  It cannot be otherwise because we are one, with him, in the Sonship of the Light.  I saw this when he manifested to me in his true, radiant glory in January 1967, and again, when I saw him fastening the escape ladder to the floor of ‘bedrock hell’ (see http://www.honest2goodness.org.uk/Part_2_Vignettes.htm#23.____The_Master_in_bedrock_hell_fastening_the_escape_ladder_to_the_floor for details).  This is also described in Revelation 21:23-25.

So, dear friends, you are the Light of the world (just as Jesus tells us in Mt. 5:14).  You are the same as Jesus.  Jesus is the saviour of the world and therefore you also are the saviour of the world.  He states this plainly in ACIM; that the world cannot be saved without our input, our involvement, because we are all, eternally, indivisibly, one.  And so, unless and until we choose to join with him, the Sonship is incomplete, and therefore, not saved, or saveable.  ‘Heaven forfend!’ says ego.  ‘What arrogance, what apostasy, what heresy, claiming equal stature with Jesus.  There will be retribution for this blasphemy.’ 

These are the words, the perception, of littleness; blindness, deafness to our true Self, engendered by fear of the Light that we are.  This Light of Eternal Truth is not doctrines and dogmas of a moribund institution, but living, shimmering, radiant Light. We have been so long in the dark that we are afraid of the Light that will show us the Truth of our Being.  Yet, saving the world, transforming the world — our brothers and ourselves from darkness to Light — is our only purpose for being here.  All else is merely preparation for this purpose. 

It does not matter, and it makes no difference ‘how long’ that preparation seems to take, for time is not real, and is not of the essence.  Only a little willingness is of the essence. 

But, because time is not real, it can be manipulated, just like all illusions.  In fact, this is a sure way of distinguishing between truth/reality and illusion: illusion can be manipulated, and happens all the time in confused minds, whereas truth/reality, which is eternal and unchangeable, cannot be manipulated. So, the time we take preparing for our saving mission can be extended if we choose to delay it, or collapsed if we choose to commence without unnecessary delay. 

Delaying — which can only be motivated by fear, doubt, uncertainty, none of which form any part of our Being, though ego works ceaselessly to convince us they are part of who we are — extends our experience of this ‘vale of tears’, whereas commencing foreshortens it.  Not by us ‘dying’ — which ends nothing, changes nothing, foreshortens nothing, because it is only our mind that can change and needs changing.

If  — when — we change our mind, and choose to commence our true role as saviour of the world, nothing outwardly may appear to change, but that is of no consequence, because there is no without, other than illusorily.  And since illusion is not real, looking to see change in what is not there is somewhat of a distraction, causing us to miss what is actually there and actually changing, which is, of course, our mind.  It is within where the change – of mind – takes place. 

That is radical.  It is 180 degrees.  A complete turnaround, an about-face; what Jesus meant when he said ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’.  That is what ‘repentance’ means: turning round and being restored to full, loving, eternally-living relationship with Papa. Until we ‘come to ourselves’ and turn around 180 degrees from facing the darkness, and face toward the Light of the Kingdom, which is Papa and our true Self, how can the free gift of Wholeness and Life (which are indivisibly one) that He constantly proffers be ours until we are willing to gladly receive and accept it unto ourself?

It is like a lost and lonely, fearful child sitting in a darkened room watching (and becoming totally absorbed in his mind, into) a DVD — of the unKingdomliness that besets this world — on an endless loop, when by a simple willingness to turn round from watching the projection and open the door, the glorious Light of Day, which has always been there for him, awaits his presence.  Without our willingness to accept the Light of our Creator, in Whose likeness we are created, and which likeness is our true Being, we are in the dark because without the Light we are darkness.  Nothingness.

This was graphically illustrated to, and experienced by, me back in the mid 1990s.  Here are some extracts of what I have written about the event:

...I had got into bed and was settling down for sleep. As I lay there with the light extinguished I suddenly became aware that there was the figure of a man standing at the foot of the bed. This startled and somewhat unnerved me because the figure was in silhouette form and was totally black. There was absolutely no light at all, of any kind, emanating from this form. It was like a black hole in a way, utterly bereft of any indication of the light of life. In my experience, this signalled a presence from the realms of darkness, and I was not eager for an encounter of that ilk... As I took in this apparition... Papa spoke from... above and behind the head of the form:

... Man, the Temple of God. Nothing else... I realised that the apparition was not an actual human but a representation of one, rather like a cardboard cut-out or a mannequin; utterly lifeless. If this form was intended to be a representation of man as the temple of God (1Cor 3:16: Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?), it did not seem like the kind of representation I would have anticipated. Where was the light; where was the animation, the life, the livingness? This was devoid of all. ...

As I lay there considering this, suddenly Papa spoke again, this time from beside the bed, to my left, about at my waist level but at the height of a standing person. This time He said, The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple. (Malachi. 3:1: Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.)

This time, there was no sense of darkness and nothing unsettling. On the contrary, this left me feeling completely comfortable and at peace, and at the same time with a sense of excitement because I knew, at the soul-knowing level, that there was going to be a third message, creating a trilogy which would bring meaning to the whole experience...  (After a pause) He spoke for the third time, I will come unto him and will make My abode with him. (Jn. 14:23: Jesus answered and said unto 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.)

...(Clearly,) the black form was a representation of the temple without the presence of Him with Whose occupancy it would ultimately be filled. It was a symbolic representation of the temple vacated by its rightful occupant, the Son of God, who believes he has separated himself from his Father Creator — an upside-down perception if ever there was one!

Without the life, the Light of the Creator, there would be, there can only be, emptiness, nothingness, darkness, an absence of everything, including, and especially, light because spiritual Light and eternal, spiritual Life are synonymous. If one can envision any part of God’s Creation from which the Creator Spirit is (or could be) absent, assuredly this form was it. Nothingness. Only a ‘black hole’ in the form of man but utterly devoid of beingness. A form, one might say, awaiting re-occupation by the Source of All, the very Spirit, or Essence, of Life Itself; all-knowingness; perfect love; creativity in all its boundlessness...

This is how it is for us while we continue to believe our game of pretend is reality. But now is the time of the fulfilment of Malachi’s prophecy, written some 400 years before Jesus incarnated.  It is worth noting that He (Papa), says He will come quickly.  Of course that can mean anything when perceived from a linear-time perspective; and for those who are fearful of this prospect, the hope is that it will be later rather than sooner, because they believe (incorrectly) that when He comes, it means trouble, big time. 

But as Jesus reminds us in ACIM, infinite patience brings immediate effects.  This means that if we believe, and await His coming in joyful (not fearful) anticipation, his words from Luke’s Gospel will apply: Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching (i.e. waiting): 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. (Lk. 12:37, 38).

Even the most sceptical soul will be hard-pressed to see this as something to dread.  My own experience of this (which can be read by following this link and commencing at paragraph 3) was joyful to say the least.  The second watch has now ended and we are at the beginning of the third watch (or third measure of meal, using Jesus’ other parable with the number three in it).  Even for those who are unable to bring themselves to watch and wait in eager anticipation, but rather prefer to hide in dread, be assured, there is NOTHING to fear but fear itself (and that is an illusion J). 

No-one will be excluded from the banquet feast to celebrate the marriage (union) of Heaven with Earth, save by themselves, and that will be but a delay, not a shutting out.  And since delay is of time and time is an illusion, even (temporary) unbelievers have something they also can celebrate! 

As Jesus reassures us: fear not, all is well,

Brian Longhurst

When a mind has only light, it knows only light.  Its own radiance shines all around it, and extends out into the darkness of other minds, transforming them into majesty. 

(Jesus, in ACIM-7.XI.5:1,2)

June 8th 2011

Dear Friends,

On December 17^th 1995 I recorded the following Diary of a Christ Communicant entry:

I have been aware of two men from the Jacobean era dressed in Cavalier style, who were startled by sudden awareness of my presence at the contemplation of the Holy Symbols.  They became more and more interested and drawn by the words and spirit Light and structure of the Service, and have now been moved to ask the Lord (upon my prompting) to help them go forward.  They have become aware of the IPS and are eager to commit their lives to the Lord’s Great Rescue Programme (GRP), from non-meaningful — though not evil — pastimes.

Lord Jesus, I give thanks for the rescue of our two new friends, now coming into the Light after ‘centuries’ of aimless wandering.

My son, I rejoice with you that two of my flock have been found and brought home from the wilderness.  You observe rightly, that many souls know not how to find the Light, even though they do not belong in darkness.  But who is to show them the path?  It is for this reason — the bringing of the Light to all in darkness — that this ritual service has been brought into being.  Have I not said that you are beacons of my Light, shining in the darkness?  This is no accident and you have been chosen and prepared for this work.  For would not you also be wandering aimlessly had you not been guided in the Way by your beloved godmother, agent of my purpose? 

Be not surprised, therefore, that many souls are lost*, for the light of my spirit was deliberately snuffed out from the Church of Earth by those who sought riches of Earth before riches of Eternity.  But it is not possible for the Father's purposes to fail, and the light shall be shone in the dark places until all the shadows of death and fear shall have fled away.  Rejoice greatly at this, my beloveds, and sing the New Song, that my little ones may hear and dance the dance of freedom.  That which I have purposed in you shall prosper according to the wisdom of the Father.  Be not anxious for any detail, all is well.

*It should be noted here that this is not indicating that such souls are 'lost' for all eternity, but simply that they have lost their way on the Path back Home to Eternity, or Heaven.

The New Song is the Song of Prayer (which was extensively written about in the February 2^nd and March 2^nd 2011 MoEs), which is at-onement with Papa; and at-onement with Papa is Wholeness.  The echo of the Song of Prayer/at-onement can but lead to wholeness.  The old song/dirge is about fear and dis-ease.  The New Song is about Love and Oneness.  When this is our steadfast, committed desire/focus/intent, the old song of fear and dis-ease simply ceases to have any meaning, and ultimately, any reality for us.  This is thinking, believing, seeing, speaking, acting, becoming like Jesus.  It is a progressive, learning process, which, like learning anything, requires practise, commitment. 

Why would we want to become like Jesus?  Another question answers that: Do we want to be free from fear and dis-ease?  How about mortality?... Limitation? We cannot become like Jesus without first desiring, without motivation.  Freedom from fear, dis-ease, mortality, limitation seems like adequate motivation to even the most ardent sceptics — if only they could believe.  Believing, having faith in such lofty ideals seems pie in the sky at the beginning, but what is the alternative?  Staying stuck in the ‘certainty’ of these prospects, none of which is actually true, unless we believe it so.

Truth is true whether we believe it or not.  Illusion is not true whether we believe it or not; but if we believe it, it seems to be true to us because that is our choice.  And we get what we choose.  That is true for truth as well as illusion.  So, it makes inestimably more sense to choose truth than illusion.

Fear clutches at us, while Love, with its witnesses, Peace and Joy, awaits our re-cognition with open arms.  When we welcome Love back into our life we welcome freedom.  Freedom from fear and limitation.  This enables the return to us of awareness of inspiration from the Holy Spirit, Who dwells in our mind.  The inspiration has always been there, but fear shuts off our awareness of it, filling us with doubt — and its first cousin, scepticism — instead.  When we welcome inspiration from the Spirit of Truth we are welcoming a re-connection with our true Self, of Whom we need have no fear.  Yet unfounded fear of Self is ubiquitous in this world of spiritual darkness.

If we are able to see, and move, past that fear to the point of asking Holy Spirit/Self to inspire us, to shine the Light of Eternal Truth into our mind, to enlighten it, and dispel the darkness and confusion that following ego’s script has placed there, that Light can then come into our awareness.  Fear, doubt, scepticism are ego’s defenses against the Light, preventing our awareness of It.  We must be willing to receive and accept It unto ourself, by faith and trust. 

As our enlightenment grows, so does our confidence in it — like a snowball rolling down a hill — along with opportunities for sharing with/extending to our brothers.  It is within this enlightenment back to the Truth of our Being that we become one again, as the fragmented Sonship is healed, restored to Wholeness/Holiness.

We, who perceive ourself as a body, are, in truth, no more ‘here’ in time and place, at this ‘time’ (2011) than any of those who seemed to be here in former eras.  We believe they are ‘dead’ and we are ‘alive’.  Yet, those who have ‘left behind their Earth body but not their Earth mind’ (as Jesus once said to me) believe themselves still to be here, as indicated in this experience when Steve and I met for one of our mid-week glass of ale and kingdomly fellowship events:

... Steve and I went to a hostelry at Tewkesbury, a charming, riverside town in north Gloucestershire with roots back to Roman times. There are many Tudor, Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian buildings in the town and it has a rather timeless aura about it...

Later, as we stepped outside to make our way home, Steve told me he could see the street packed with souls from Edwardian, Victorian, Georgian, Tudor and all ages, each going about his business, completely oblivious to the presence of the people from all the other eras, walking right through each other. He could see the present day events, with electric street lights, Tarmac road; cobble-stone paving and gas lamps; unpaved, unlit street, all superimposed upon each other.

Clearly, they were still acting out the conditions of their earthly lives many years and even centuries after they have departed their earthly bodies...

All those souls were, no doubt, walking, unseeing, right through us also, even as we would be walking through them.  To them, we were not there.  So what is the common factor?  Belief.  They believed they were still here; we believe we are still here.  Who is to say who is correct, or otherwise?  The reality is, none of us is here, nor ever has been.  We simply believe we are.  But that is an ego perception.  Theresa and I have been aware of souls from the Stone Age still going about their business in the woodlands and meadows of the Cotswold Hills, oblivious to our presence, believing themselves still to be here. 

All that appears to be of time and place happened all at once, not in linear time, and all is — in the eternal moment that is Now — over, including us, because none of it has ever happened at all, other than in a momentary dream, by Papa’s Son, of separation from his Home in his Father in Heaven.  Such can only seem to be as a dream, a fantasy, so the possibility of it being real is out of the question.

Jesus and the Spirit of Truth want to help us awaken from this dream that keeps replaying, keeps projecting onto our confused minds.  Why would They not?  Because we are wicked, worthless sinners, like we have been told for so many centuries?  None of that ‘old song’ is true, and now is the time to shrug off that burdensome yoke.  Jesus and Holy Spirit want to help us because we are beloved of Them.  Do we not want to help those we love and see in difficulty; especially when we know we can help them easily.  Jesus and Holy Spirit can help us easily, if we are willing to be helped.

They cannot help us without our willingness because we have free will.  How reluctant are we to ask?  Part of us believes They want to help, but another part believes we mustn’t ask; They are too busy with more important matters.  This is baloney.  Some years ago this was my perception.  But eventually I found that by asking Holy Spirit’s help with ‘little’ matters, not only did He immediately help, but it grew my confidence not only that He could help, but that He would help, and that I was able to receive that help, if I was willing to trust Him and try asking for help.  This took me to the place, one step at a time, where I was able to count on the certainty that He would help.

I used to get indigestion at bedtime.  It became such that I realised this was nothing to do with what, or how much, I had eaten, so I knew it was in my mind.  I decided to ask Holy Spirit to help, thinking, ‘This is only a little thing, so it is not asking too much; and also, it is a good opportunity to see not only if He will give the help, but if my faith and trust is sufficient to enable me to receive that help.’  So, on the first occasion, I asked, and instantly I felt the indigestion vanish.  The rapidity shook me and also delighted me.  I tried this again the next night and the same result occurred.  It happened every night after that, until it no longer remained my experience.

I knew this was Holy Spirit demonstrating His willingness to help us in handling life in time and place at any level, and that not only was I grateful to Him, He was grateful to me for allowing Him the opportunity to show just how much He loves us and totally wants to help us.  That, in turn, helped me to realise that there is no large or small order of difficulty in miracles, but it is according to our faith that we are able to experience them.  As Jesus said to me in May 1997: ...As you ask more and more of Papa (and/or Jesus/Holy Spirit), believing He is giving it, so will your faith in receiving grow until it is as your faith that the sun will rise...

In spite of this there are still multiple occasions, more or less daily, when I forget to ask the help of Jesus and or Holy Spirit.  But they are diminishing.  And I am remembering more and more last thing at night before sleep, and first thing in the morning on waking, to attune with Papa, give thanks for His Love and blessing, bless the world and any individuals called to mind, forgive the world, myself and any individuals called to mind, and commit the day or night ahead into His precious, Loving care.

Asking for help doesn’t need to be a conscious process every time when we have faithfully, steadfastly committed ourself to that intent.  In due course, it simply becomes who we are; part of our very Being.  Papa knows our heart and mind; He knows if we have placed ourself into His loving, blessing care, because that places us in the oneness in Him.  But gratitude for that help reminds us of the Source of our safety, wellbeing, blessedness.  And it helps with maintenance of spiritual humility J.

Blessings for awareness of the Peace, Joy and Love that are with us always,

Brian Longhurst

Prayer is an attunement, not a pleading.

June 15th 2011

Dear Friends,

In a Communion service in August 1991 I suddenly found myself, in the psychic consciousness, in a plane flying over the dockland area of east London during World War II.  I was looking down through the open bomb bay.  This is what I wrote:

I saw the “blitz” of the dockland area of the east end of London as from one of the planes, during World War II.  The Earth was in chaos, with buildings ruined, smoke, dust, rubble and confusion.  Yet the planes had not wrought it; it was self-inflicted!  The ‘planes’ were there to ‘bomb’ the Earth with Light!  How well this characterises the actualities of Earth-life, where we are causing all the chaos and confusion ourselves, and the Christ-servers in Spirit (‘above’, hence the aerial view to which I had been made privy) are bombarding us with the Light, to bring Kingdomly order out of the chaos.  This was a salutary lesson for me to not always assume that things are as they first appear.

The following week I was told, "We're stepping-up the ‘bombing’ campaign!"

That was 20 years ago, and the signs of the Light breaking through the darkness are showing up everywhere, with greater frequency and luminosity.  This is the cause of the chaos time that we are in as the Shift, the awakening, takes place and gathers momentum.  Chaos is inevitable with those who have been deeply slumbering and are now being bombarded — lovingly, excitedly, joyfully, strategically — with the Light of eternal reality.

This process is not something that is happening to us, being inflicted upon us.  It is something to which we are all called to participate.  And our participation is not optional, whether we consciously, out of ego-induced fear, resist it, or gladly, joyfully embrace it.  This is because it is the transformation back into oneness, or restoration to our true, unalterable, eternal Being. With our non-participation — which is impossible — the Atonement cannot be completed.  We may, punily, try to hide, deny, reject this process, but this is, and can only ever be out of fear, and is of time and place only.  As Jesus said to me on August 31^st 1997: 

...the power of spiritual truth is the great leveller and will bring all things and all people to the place where they belong.  This is inevitable and inexorable.  It is Almighty God, so nothing can resist it indefinitely, though many try.  All opposition (or, resistance) is, by nature, of time and place operation only, so must come to an end.  Papa does not intervene because it is His law not to but also because He does not need to.  What He does do and what I do with Him coincidently is to outwork the Great Eternal Plan.

Thus the little ones of Earth, with time and place perception, perceive the time and place operation, which is discord, disarray and destruction according to the disharmonious ray of the ‘Prince of time and place’.  ‘He’ dresses things up in masquerade costume and my little ones perceive glister and glamour.  This achieves its objective of deception and distraction.  But my Father works, and I work, for the eternal objective of life abundant and life everlasting, filled with joy, full measure, pressed down... 

This is why I say, have no thought nor concern for the enemy's plan; it is of none-effect save deception and corruption.  Focus rather upon Eternity; there shall all your visions be fulfilled.  I am able; all is accomplished.

Also, on April 23^rd 1995 he said:

My son, as the Kingdom purpose goes forward and becomes more manifest in the affairs of the children of Earth, so you will see the unfolding events at the Earth-life level becoming overshadowed by the Power of Heaven.  This, as you begin to experience, is power to accomplish all things according to the Will of our Father...  It can not be resisted although many shall try; their efforts shall be as nothing, for the hand of the Holy One is mighty to bring all things into accord with the Word of Life.

You shall see many signs and wonders and shall know of a certainty that the Law and the Prophets shall be fulfilled.  This is the wholeness and perfection of the Father Creator, that even as the Word goes out in the beginning, so shall it return in completion of that whereunto it has been sent. 

It cannot fail, for it is the Creative Word; perfect, whole, ever-becoming unto perfect fulfilment.  Be at peace in this awareness.  The marriage of Earth with Heaven has taken place; from the marriage shall be born much fruit to the Glory of the Great Husbandman.  Praise be to Almighty God.

As mentioned two weeks ago, Jesus reminds us that we, along with him (because we are like him, one with him in the Sonship, however much we may resist the truth of this reality) are not just the Light of the world but the saviours of the world.  Ego would have us believe such a suggestion is arrogance in the extreme, but that is its effort to hide the truth from us and keep us on the carousel.  Do we believe Jesus was/is arrogant? 

There is no need of arrogance when one knows the truth.  Arrogance is bluster to cover fear and ignorance.  This is what he reminds us of in ACIM: God’s Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the only lesson I came to teach. (T-8.VI.6:8).  It is inevitable that the resistance of ego to this reality will fail and we shall remember the truth.  The only issue is when, not if.  That depends upon our willingness to choose with the Spirit of Truth in accepting that of our (ego)self this is impossible, but when we choose to hand over the reins to Him, He will perform it for us. 

This is one of the hardest things to accept after being inured in the ego perception that we must accomplish our ‘salvation’ for ourself.  This is, literally, impossible, because the ‘self’ we perceive as being responsible for our salvation is little, lost, confused as to its identity, believing it is a separate persona in a separate body.  All these perceptions are temporal, but salvation — i.e. restoration to remembrance of our reality as one in the Sonship of God — is of eternity.  Temporal cannot understand eternal, so the concept — of ‘do-it-yourself-salvation’ — is out of the question.    

Jesus has been telling me since the 1960s that he will perform my restoration to my true Being for me.  Although I was profoundly grateful for all that he said and all that he accomplished for me during the ensuing years, and I knew I couldn’t do it, somehow the reality of what he kept saying didn’t really sink in until after the turn of the century.  We may think we are unflinching followers of Jesus, but that does not mean ego has no part in us. And ego keeps head below parapet, not wishing to be recognised as other than who we perceive ourself to be, or the game would be up.

Look at Peter, to whom Jesus said, when he tried to persuade him not to go to the cross, Get thee behind me, Satan (the destroyer, ego): thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. (Mt. 16:23). By ‘men’, of course, he meant ego-dominated humanity.  It is hard to think of a more devoted, committed follower of Jesus than Peter, but clearly he did not understand Jesus’ mission at all.  Right along with most of the rest the disciples and of humanity for the subsequent two millennia.

If we believe Jesus was/is arrogant we still have a few misperceptions to iron out.  If we do not it means we have a degree of trust in him as our teacher.  But as we have seen with the example of Peter, there is a difference between willingness to believe — or trust — and understanding.  Yet, if we are willing first to trust, then understanding will follow as day follows night, because by trusting Jesus/Holy Spirit They will, by our trust, be able to bring us to understanding.  Without trust we deny ourself that help and we are, illusorily, on our own, bereft of Their succour.

We are, and must be, along with our brother Jesus, the saviours of the world because the world is a projection from our own mind.  This is not the apparent, ‘persona mind’ of each of us as separate individuals, but of the split-off-from-Truth mind, which Jesus dubs ego, that is collective to us all, and under which domination individual personae, mostly blindly, unknowingly function, mistakenly believing that this is who we are.  That will remain the case until we see past the illusion, that we have been hoodwinked, and choose to switch to the other Channel: Holy Spirit Mind. 

This Channel broadcasts only truth because that is all It knows.  The other channel broadcasts only lies, division, distraction, often camouflaged but always temporal, always changing, and therefore confusing because it is nothing masquerading as something.  Yet always remaining elusive.  Like apparent peace, abundance, wellbeing; here today — maybe, for some — gone tomorrow.  Elusive because we seek in the wrong place for it: out there instead of within.

We are the saviours because we, alone, have the power to change our mind and tune in to the Right Channel — our true Self — thus becoming one with all-Knowingness, which is the truth.  Only truth can be known.  Illusion can be believed and thus, perceived, but since it is not real, it cannot be known.  How can one know what does not exist?

Saving the world is not about changing the world — because the world is of the without and does not exist in reality; it is but an illusion, existing only in ego-mind.  Saving the world is about changing our mind — which is within, the only reality — about the world.  When we see the world as our true Self sees it, we will be healed, saved, transformed, leavened, resurrected, and the world we have believed in, perceived, made ‘real’ will no longer be our reality because time and place — including the world — will have been replaced as our reality by the only true reality: Eternity, of Which we are an indivisible, inseparable part.

Saving the world is about being a ‘right thinker’.  Thinking like Jesus.  This is our creation-right and our inescapable destiny.  The sooner we start — and we start simply by DESIRING — the sooner we begin to progress and to experience the benefits of that progress.  And the sooner we can begin to meaningfully help our brothers to progress.  And, of course, since, by helping our brothers we help ourself (because... you got it: we are all one), so we journey Home in fellowship; a much better way to travel than alone.  Truly, a win-win opportunity.  How characteristic of Papa J.

Desiring to think like Jesus will (if we are sincere in our desire!) immediately avail us of the all-empowered Help from him and the Holy Spirit.  Thereafter, by progressive stages — at a pace with which our comfort will always be paramount (what else might we expect from the Comforter!) — we begin to actually think, then believe —> see —> act —> become like him. 

Thinking like him means we do not judge anyone or anything.  ‘Judge’ in this context implies ‘condemn’, because we can observe — without judgement — a person to be a blessing in our life, or a warm, sunny day, filled with birdsong to be contributory to our contentment (though if it is primary thereto, we still have some issues for clarification!).  We can also observe, if we so choose, that bad weather, unruly behaviour, cancelled flights, the passing of a loved one... are not upsetting to our equilibrium.

Forgiveness is about what we think, and therefore, believe.  If we think/believe unforgiveable things are really happening, forgiveness will not be possible without help to see past that misperception to a re-cognition that it is all a dream.  We will then find forgiveness is not only possible but much easier, until it becomes unnecessary because we end up with no unforgiveness, no grievance left in us.  Just like Jesus!  Amazing, is it not, how it all comes full circle back to him as our example, our template?  Thanks to his example we can know, of a certainty beyond all doubt, that release from ego is possible, however hard it may seem in the early stages of the process.

His words to John of Patmos I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore... (Rv. 1:18) are true not just of himself but of us all, and are now in process of becoming our experience as the Great Rescue Programme moves inexorably and unstoppably toward its completion in this, the third measure of meal, in which the whole is leavened.

Joy, Peace and Love, full measure, pressed down,

Brian Longhurst

If you want to be like me I will help you, knowing that we are alike. If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching. How else can it be, if God’s Kingdom is freedom?

Jesus in ACIM, T-8.IV.6:3-5

June 22nd 2011

Dear Friends,

Inner peace is, of course, of the mind.  It is possible only when we come to know, of a certainty beyond all doubt, that we are safe; that, to use a phrase Jesus has spoken to me many hundreds of times over the decades: ‘All is well’.  I was comforted greatly every time he said it, but when, outwardly all did not appear to my awareness as being well, it was not difficult, after the uplift of the moment had passed, to become surrounded again by all the illusory appearances of things not being as well in my world as no doubt they were in his.

Nevertheless, I was always profoundly grateful, not just to hear him speak those three words, but all the hundreds of thousands of other words of uplift, encouragement, enlightenment, guidance he has spoken to me since I first started to become aware of his speaking back in 1967. But words are empty unless we can experience the reality they symbolise.  Jesus was in a place very different from my experience; struggling to make an honest living in a world that increasingly manifested Jesus’ description of it: ‘the mammon (meaning money, or riches) of unrighteousness’. 

I wanted to experience the reality that clearly was real to him, even when he walked the Earth in the long ago.  I knew, intuitively, from the beginning of my journey with him, that ‘his world’ — the world, or, more accurately, realm, of uninterruptible, endless Love, Peace and Joy — was real; was, in fact, immeasurably more real than the world I was experiencing.  I knew also that this is achievable in time and place, not just Eternity — though experiencing it in time and place would inevitably lead us to Eternity, our true and only Home — because he said ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven’.

The seeming odds stacked against it when I looked around me caused me to wonder how it could be possible, even though I knew of a certainty that it was not just possible, but inevitable.  Yet, on the few occasions I shared my committed belief that it was possible and would become our experience here in time and place, the scepticism — often tinged with pity, incredulity, scorn — with which my observations were met, even by so-called committed believers, caused me to realise it was wiser to keep such observations just amongst the very few I knew shared my certainties.

And, of course, I gladly, joyfully shared with Jesus himself.  He was my oasis in what was largely a spiritual desert, or wilderness, that I encountered in the world around me.  Every time I communed with him he restored, shored-up my inner knowing that the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth simply had to be an achievable reality.  It was like a roller-coaster ride, where the world around me, with which I had to interface through work, was the troughs and communing with Jesus was the peaks.  It was a powerful incentive to keep on returning to that inner sanctuary for fellowship — and its attendant uplift — with him.

Of course he knew this, just as he knows it to be the truth for all his lost, lonely, fearful, guilt-ridden brethren in the fragmented Sonship.  Hence his words from Rev. 3:20: Behold, I stand at the door (of our heart/mind/life), and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup (fellowship, commune, lovingly, peacefully, joy-inducingly, caringly, helpfully, comfortingly, restoratively, upliftingly, enlighteningly) with him, and he with me. This he longs, yearns to do with us all, without exception.  He knocks ceaselessly, and will continue so to do until we hear his speaking and open to him.

He will never tire of knocking, speaking, loving, calling to us to ‘come up higher’.  He will never lose his infinite patience with us.  Why is this?  How can it be when we so easily become impatient with ourself, and our brothers?  Because he sees and knows only the truth of our Being, whereas we still see the illusion, the game of pretend, the masquerade costume we have donned for a span, and believe is our real self.  And we judge so harshly, so seriously.  Do we believe this is Jesus’ attitude toward us?  If so, we are listening to the wrong voice, following the wrong script.

If not, we are on the way Home, but still have some pitfalls to avoid.  Indeed, until we are all the way Home the wayside is littered with pits, many so well disguised that we do not see them until we find ourself in them.  Even others we do not realise we have fallen into until we try to get out of them, so subtle are they.  But none of this is of the slightest concern to Jesus or the Holy Spirit because They know that the pits are not real other than to our imagination; that They are able to correct our misperceptions and restore our vision to equal clarity to that of Jesus; that in truth we are already Home, having never left.

As we come to trust Holy Spirit/Self more and more, and increasingly believe our God-empower-ment lies in our at-onement with(in) Him — our true, eternal Being — so do miracles of awakening and healing of our mind take place. With this our confidence grows and the time lapse between desiring and experiencing these miracles shrinks, until there is no time-lag at all.  These miracles are sudden new awarenesses, remembrances, realisations of the truth of Eternity.  

These are mystical experiences because they are from the Spirit of Truth and beyond the understanding of the ego-dominated, split-off-from-Truth part of our mind, which is very literal in its interpretations of symbol, parable and allegory.  These new awarenesses come in an instant and suddenly we know, of a certainty, with that inner knowing that never entertains a moment’s doubt, what book-learning can never teach us. I had such a realisation a few days ago as I walked in the Cotswold Hills, concerning ‘the bride of Christ’. Revelation 21:2 says:

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Orthodox religion interprets this as a spirit apparition, somewhat like the ‘clouds of Heaven’ floating down to Earth from the sky, with, perhaps, the souls of the departed who are ‘saved’, accompanied perhaps by angels.  The reality, I was suddenly aware is, to outward perception, much more mundane, yet no less wondrous, glorious and alleluia-inducing. Here’s how it is:

Jesus came to anchor the Holy Spirit in time and place, first, by breathing Him onto the disciples after his resurrection, when he appeared to them in a locked room and said “Peace be unto you...”  And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost” (Jn. 20:22), and subsequently, at the event known as Pentecost (see Acts chapter 2).  Over the centuries since then untold millions of souls have come to love Jesus and espouse their lives to him and his Great Rescue Programme (GRP). 

Most of these souls have reincarnated an indeterminate number of times during that two-thousand year period, spending time in the etheric counterpart of Earth between incarnations, learning more and more about the GRP.  There are far fewer impediments to the comprehension of just what the GRP entails when unburdened by the dense filter of body and brain, and all the ego-brainwashing that blocks our awareness of Love’s presence here in time and place.  Under Christ’s loving guidance and tutelage they have been prepared, over numerous circuits of the carousel, as a bride adorned for her husband.

Now, as we enter the third measure of meal and its leavening gets increasingly underway those souls are incarnating again.  Some came earlier, to prepare the way for those who would follow.  Olga Park was just such a soul.  It was a long and lonely, pioneering road for her, other than for her communing with Jesus and others from the Realms of Light similarly espoused to Jesus and his GRP. For few and far between were kindred spirits with whom she could fellowship at the Kingdom level of awareness in the Earth life 100 years or so ago. 

Others who followed are now adult and beginning to remember more and more of the truth of their Being as the Light shines ever brighter, shining away all the shadows of death and fear.  Yet others ‘adorned’ — prepared, made ready — as a bride for her husband are now newly incarnate and soon-to-incarnate in the coming years and decades.  These are the Crystal (Christ-all) children; spiritually aware, wise, discerning, radiant.

The holy city, new Jerusalem is nothing to do with buildings.  As with all cities, it is the citizens that comprise a city.  That they need buildings, for shelter etc. in time and place, is entirely incidental.  Without the citizens there is no need for buildings.  It is these Citizens of Eternity, restored, or being restored to remembrance of their Being that are coming down from God out of heaven; not as ethereal phantasms, in clouds, but incarnating, bringing with them their remembrance of Home, of their preparedness, their ‘adornment’ for their husband. 

That adornment is not from book-learning but from remembrance of eternal, spiritual truth.  This is happening because now is the ‘time’, the moment, pre-ordained by the Creator Spirit, Who is calling His Beloved Son Home.  This process is unchangeable by the confused, fear-driven will of the seemingly-separated, fragmented Son.

So is time inexorably collapsing, being seen for the illusion it is, and thus having less and less meaning or restriction for more and more of the fragments of the Sonship as we remember who we are, just as was the case with Jesus.  This will continue to seem extremely unlikely for many, because we have believed the illusion of time for ‘so long’, and it is very difficult to let go.  But Holy Spirit accomplishes this miraculous transformation — healing — of our split mind from misperception back to true vision one step at a time, as fast as we can comfortably make the shift. 

The time lag between choosing wholeness through true forgiveness (and relinquishing grievances) — of ourselves and our brothers —  and that becoming our experience, our reality, diminishes in direct proportion to our FTOC until there is no more lag because for us time has ceased to be and we have become like Jesus.  It is our mind that becomes enlightened/illuminated because that is the dwelling-place of the Spirit of Truth and He is the Light.  And so, it becomes our mind with which we begin to see and have true vision, whole (holy) vision, as entirely distinct from our bodily, ocular sight.

True vision is knowing.  Knowing is of the soul and has nothing to do with the intellect.  No thought processes are involved with enlightenment because time and other illusions are not involved.  How can illusions be involved with the awakening to reality? How can time be involved in Eternity?  As Jesus reminds us in ACIM, we are refreshed, restored by being Awake, not by sleeping.  This is because being Awake means we are at peace, and having surrendered everything into the care of Self — Who is all-knowing, all-empowered for good  — we can know (of a certainty beyond all doubt; that’s what knowing is) that all is well.

When we slumber and dream of unreality, we are in a state of doubt, confusion, uncertainty.  This is the opposite of knowing, and the absence of knowing means the absence of peace.  Uncertainty causes tension, which is enervating, exhausting, tiring, depleting, fearful.  When we do not know that all is well, we perceive ourself as not being well.  Appearing to not be well means we appear to be ill.  Jesus knew this was not true and his seeing, knowing his brothers were whole was so powerful, so certain that their misperception of themselves was displaced by the vision of wholeness that he extended to them.

It is plain to see how we have slid down the slippery slope to arrive at the place we appear to be at.  Let us join together as One, with Jesus and the Spirit of Truth, to reverse this misperception.  We chose this experience.  Now is the time to choose anew.  Let us ensure we decide with the Help of One Who KNOWS that all really IS well.

Love and blessings for inner peace and joy,

Brian Longhurst

Please note: Theresa and I will be away for a few days, so there will be no MoE next week, but by the Grace of God there will be the following week.

Creator Spirit, by whose word,

the Earth to Light and Life is stirred,

Come visit here, each seeking mind,

and pour Your grace on humankind:

From (belief in) sin and sorrow set us free

and make us temples worthy thee.

Click on the above words to hear Bentley Kalaway sing this Song of Prayer.

July 6th 2011

Dear Friends,

In the spring of 1968 Jesus said to me, ‘I am attuned to all mankind all the time; there is never a moment when I am not with you all. All that is needed to complete the contact is for you to attune with me and we are together, at any time.’

At that time, and for decades afterwards, I knew hardly anyone else who communed consciously with Jesus and heard his speaking, although there were, and have been throughout the centuries, those who were in conscious communion with him. In the last few years I have come into contact with scores who are in conscious communion with him.  It is evident that this number is increasing every moment at an exponential rate as the yoke of control and fear imposed by institutionalised religion that has burdened the fragmented, bewildered Sonship of God is recognised for its unserviceableness and shrugged off.

One such conscious communicant is Tom Carpenter, and he, with his wife Linda, has written a wonderful book entitled Dialogue on Awakening. These dialogues recorded between Tom and Jesus took place around twenty years ago.  Tom has grown exponentially in his awareness of his true Being since then, but there is so much inspiring and soul-searching-and-unfettering material in it that I feel prompted to share just a few snippets from chapter one:

...you know yourself as either asleep or Awake, and there is but a single idea which stands between the two.  Dismiss the thought of separation from your mind and you will find yourself Home again.  Remember only that your mind has never existed apart from the Mind of God. Accept wholly that your mind is a part of the Mind of God and that it is expressive of the whole Mind of God. There is nothing else you need concern yourself with. All other issues will naturally fade away as you accept this one thought.  

This so often — unnecessarily — fails when ego-mind holds sway in the insistence on an instant result, and when it does not occur instantly, the person gives up in disappointment.  Commitment, a very scarce commodity in egoland, is an invaluable asset.

The state of your Being remains forever unaltered. That is why it is easy for me to assure you that the reconnection you seek will come, and this quandary that seems to be overwhelming you at the moment will fall away. You have never changed. You are as the Father created you, but you just haven’t let yourself remember it. You may also be very thankful that there is nothing you can do to change it. What could you fear if you kept repeating to yourself, “There is nothing I can do to alter my Being”?  Your mind is powerful enough to keep your attention from it, but it has absolutely no power to change it.

What happens to this limited mind when we return to our natural, unlimited state?

It does its natural thing; it extends itself.  It expresses itself, it expresses the Self, and there is no difference. At this moment, you express yourself as being an identity which you see as being exclusive. But expressing your natural Self is an identity which sees no exclusivity; it simply expresses truth.

...You will reach a point when truth is.

...you do not see or recognize yourself as being totally Awake. That is the illusion. 

What can we choose to do that would best aid in the Awakening process?

There is only one choice for you to consciously make and that is the choice to recognize your Being, to “wake up” to your whole Mind.  ...As I have said many times before, you are Awake.  You think you are dreaming, and that is the illusion.  If you can grasp the idea that the reality of you already is, and already is expressing, then it will be significantly easier for you not to feel an ego need to direct this activity.

...Let me restate that there is only one thing to remember and that is you are already Awake ... you simply refuse to believe it.  And it is in this refusal that you remain in the domain of limitation.

If you concentrate on the awareness that you are already fully Awake and there is nothing you can do to change that reality, that what you are trying to come to is the recognition, the remembering of that reality, then you will approach choices and circumstances in quite a different light.

...what you picture as the world of death and what you now conceive of as the world of physical life is no different (all perceptions to the contrary are misperceptions).  What you perceive as the world of life versus the world of death bears no relevance on your waking up. The waking up process takes place in your mind, and that mind is with you in either event. Strange as it may seem to you at this moment, the options and choices that you have available to you in this realm (as distinct from the ‘life after death’) make it far easier for you to choose to be Awake.

(Emboldening and some italic added by me, for emphasis.)

There is so much more that I felt prompted to share here, but that last snippet reminds me of an experience that affirms what I recently mentioned about us all being the saviours of the world.  This does not mean that any one of us must single-handedly take on that role, but when we begin to remember and accept our true, unlimited state of being, we will actively want to participate in the saving process.  Only our belief in the illusion of limitation denies our acceptance of this truth.

Theresa and I recently attended a ‘Five-Day Intensive’ entitled Unconditional Love – the Place of Miracles by Michael Roads.  During this 5-day event participants were led by Michael into a series of ‘Inner Experiences’ in which the attendant group is invited to close their eyes, relax and enter into their own beautiful, landscaped valley, where all is peace, love and joy.  There, they can encounter whoever ‘shows up’.  This might be departed loved ones, or still-incarnate souls with whom we might have some outer conflict — major or minor.  We are invited to join with such visitors for a healing, loving, sharing, joining experience.

There is a pool, into which a waterfall flows, but the pool and waterfall is Light, and when we enter the Light washes away the cares, the hurts, the pain, the fear, and inner peace, joy and unconditional love become the experience.  I had no-one particular in mind who I wanted to turn up.  Instead, to my surprise, I found myself in a sphere of Light, about the size of a small car, speeding through a large, dense forest at about the speed of a sprinting man.  This went on for quite a long time — maybe a minute or two; time is illusory, especially in a non-physical experience. 

I expected to arrive at a clearing in the forest, but this did not happen and the experience eventually faded out.  Then I found myself back in the lawned area of the valley, near the pool of Light.  A number of children — perhaps about twenty — appeared.  I opened my arms and my heart and they came racing to me, clambering right into me as my heart opened and expanded to receive them.  There was great love, joy and excitement.

Then, when it seemed all were ‘aboard’, a little boy of about three came stumbling/racing up, calling out, ‘Don’t forget me; don’t leave me out’, and into my heart he climbed with all the other children.  That little boy was me!  Then, as I pondered this later, I realised that all the other children were ‘me’ from other incarnations.  They appeared as children because spiritually, that is what we, who are not yet conscious of being Awake, are.  This was a healing, rejoining, reunifying of aspects of Self that have been appearing as fragmented, broken ‘masquerade-costume’ personas, the ‘present’ one of which appears in form as ‘Brian’.

The scene then changed and these children/aspects of Self were playing joyfully in the pool of Light and standing under the waterfall of Light, taking/receiving ‘Showers of Joy’ which were, at the same time, healing.  In due course Michael announced that it was now time for event participants to leave our valleys and return to our bodies in the event room.  As I began the return journey the children were a little reluctant to come with me because they were so happy playing in the pool.  However, as I reminded them that we were all now ‘re-joyned’ as one, they left the pool and came racing up to accompany me to the gate that led out of the valley.

As we walked toward the gate I became aware of untold numbers of African children amongst the trees that lined the edge of the valley.  All these children have been killed/died in the multitudinous wars raging around Africa in recent times, and still continuing in many countries. It brings new meaning to the term 'the dark continent'. 

These children — ranging from age about six to about twelve — have been forced into the fighting and killing.  The Love in that valley was so great that the fear and hatred that festers in their souls was sublimated by It and they were drawn to It.  They were still trepidatious about coming out from the woods and joining us because trust is still an issue in them after all they have experienced, but the look on their faces (seared into their souls — and mine!) was a combination of, ‘Please can we join you?  Will it really be safe to join you, as it appears to be?  We are so desperately in need of love, comfort, succour, nurturing, LOVING, and we can see the Love radiating from you and in this beautiful place.’

But they were still tinged with doubt, uncertainty.  I assured them they would be safe if they felt able to emerge from the dense woods, which was a place they could hide in from more of what had been their wretched, terrified lives.  But I felt that remaining focused on the reunifying process with the aspects of Self was the priority of the moment, in order not to become distracted and somehow ‘lose contact with the process’. So I paused, looked deep into their souls and promised them I would not, could not, forget them; would be back for them very soon, and would bring help with me for them. 

I have been back twice now, first, the next morning to assure them I had not forgotten them and would never abandon them.  The second time, the following day, I went back and was aware that there were also thousands of girls there.  They had been hiding further back in the woods on the two previous occasions.  These girls, all pre- or barely-adolescent, as far as I could see, had been brutally raped and otherwise abused, and murdered.

I had promised these children I would be back for them and would bring them help to take them to a safer place; a place of Light, Love, Peace, Joy and healing of the terror, fear, hatred, killing, abuse, murder that was all they had known.  Yet the fact was, although I had total, unswerving commitment to help them, rescue them, bring them to Love, I had no idea whether I was empowered sufficiently for such a mammoth task. 

Indeed, I knew that of myself I definitely could not accomplish this.  Nevertheless, having made an absolute commitment to them, I had no intention of not going back.  As I returned to them that third morning, the relief on their faces that I had not abandoned them was enough to melt the hardest heart.  As I approached them to show them my love and benign intent, suddenly, Jesus was there, coming from behind me toward them.

As I became aware of this I realised that all that was needed of me was to reassure them, demonstrate to them that they are loved, unconditionally.  This placed them at ease and receptive to loving help; indeed, eager for it and aware that it was possible, available, when until these encounters they were unaware of any hope at all.  This establishes a preparedness in their hearts and minds (as is the case with any who are in desperate need of succour, or rescue from grim and terrible experience) to receive the help.  Without that it would not have been possible for them to be aware of Jesus’ presence, because fear obscures the awareness of the Realms of Light.

The previous two encounters with them had enabled that preparedness, and their becoming aware of Jesus.  Needless to say, I was profoundly grateful that he had come, because until that moment I hadn’t a clue how to proceed from there.  How characteristic of him to turn up at precisely the appointed moment!  He squatted — to be at eye level with the children — and opened his arms, wide enough to engulf the world, and these blessed children came rushing out from the woods, into those all-loving, all-embracing arms and heart.  They knew they were now safe and LOVED; that there would not, could not be any more terror, emptiness, loneliness, uncertainty. 

It was a priceless, precious moment, which I will never forget.  To know there has now been established this ‘bridge’ between this dark place from where these precious souls have come, to the Light, to release, relief, and across which an indeterminate, limitless number of others will now be able to follow, is a great treasure, a ‘pearl of great price’.  Days later I realised that the journey through the forest in the sphere of Light was, in some way of which I was unaware, to establish a connection with those African children who were hiding there.

I have a feeling that there must have been around half a million of these, our brothers in the Sonship of God.  There are untold millions more, from every continent, lost, terrified, hopeless, helpless.  Jesus would not leave one of us — you, me, them — without succour, help, rescue.  We do not have to be fully Awake, Self-Realised, to offer our assistance and thus each be, along with him, saviours of the world. 

There are those who would say, ‘How can I be a saviour of the world?  I have not been authorised or empowered for such.’  The only authority and empowerment required are desire, willingness and love for our fellows, our brothers.  Jesus and/or the Spirit of Truth, our real Self, will accomplish all the rest for us.

Love, joy and inner peace bless us all,

Brian Longhurst 

Instead of asking God to send you someone wonderful,

ask God to help you realize that you are

someone wonderful.

July 13th 2011

Dear Friends,

We are already well into major transformational times.  One would have to be deeply slumbering to not have noticed.  There are many prognostications about much greater change yet to come, but the predictions that the form those changes will take varies very widely.  There are those who say the world will reverse its polarity, that all the world is experiencing now — wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, famines, droughts, giant hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons — will increase in frequency and severity.  There are many perceptions to support such forebodings.

However, there are other factors that are not included in all these, and they are of far greater significance than the limited, ego-driven mind is able to recognise.  What we perceive with our sensory awareness is a direct reflection of our own thoughts.  As Jesus says: It is not possible for you to experience anything in your physical life that is not encompassed within your thought patterns, and: There is nothing in your world that is not made and put there as a result of your own thinking.*  In other words, the chaos we see in the without is a direct reflection of the chaotic state of the self-limiting mind of the mass of humanity – the fragmented Sonship of God.

This clearly indicates that mankind seems to be on the wrong path for our spiritual growth and wellbeing.  We are on the path to annihilation.  We are poisoning ourselves with the food we eat; we are destroying our environment at breakneck speed; we run our lives, our business, industry, commerce, cultures from the spirit of reckoning based on acquisition and competition — very largely adversarial, contra to our true nature of trust, sharing and co-operation; we are medicating ourselves to death; we even use deodorants loaded with aluminium — known to be a contributory factor in dementia — which is then directly absorbed through our skin...  Can one amongst us deny this is all insanity?

There is hardly an aspect of today’s ‘modern’ world that is sustainable and will not result in our demise as a species, along with the rest of the life forms on Earth.  Good job, then, that we are eternal, immortal, magnificent Beings of Love and Light.  We are not a body, we are not a ‘species’; we are pure, all-knowing, all-empowered Spirit.  Ego will say, ‘Fine, Sunshine; good speech.  Shame it is too late; shame you are a voice in the wilderness, crying out against the wind and to deaf ears and blind eyes.’  Yet, unbeknown to ego, Jesus’ words in the synagogue, quoting from Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel (gospel means good news) to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the (spiritually) blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised... (Lk. 4:18)

did not apply just to his Earth-life mission two thousand years ago; they apply to his six-thousand-years long Great Rescue Programme (GRP), which moves right now into its final, completion, fulfilment stage.  It makes not a scrap of difference that he is not with a body to speak these words over the BBC, CNN or Al Jazeera.  He has brothers, messengers, harbingers, heralds who have, during at least the last two thousand years, espoused themselves to him and the GRP.  Many thousands are already incarnate and delivering this message. 

Millions more — the Bride of Christ (see Rev. 21:2) — are incarnating now and in the decades immediately ahead, to carry the reality behind those prophetic words forward into reality, right here in time and place.  All are under Christ authority and empowerment; even those who are not consciously aware of it.

This is of no consequence because the mission of each is decided aforetime, meaning before they incarnate.  That mission, or birth vision, is embedded in the seed memory of their mind — as with each of us — and they are, even if presently unaware of it, being guided, led, helped, protected by their loved ones, guides, inspirers from the Realms of Light from getting too far off track.  The seed memory will germinate and emerge into their conscious mind and life pattern at the appropriate moment because they have agreed that it be so, and those in charge of it are authorised by their Christ commitment and empowerment to enable it.  

This power is Love, and is immeasurably greater than any force little-self persona minds think they can call upon.  It is unlimited, completely independent of time and place events and pressures; it works from the within, unnoticed and undetectable by limited, separated, confused minds.  That power is available to every fragment of God’s Son, at any and every moment.  All we need is to attune with it, with what is rightfully ours because it was freely given to us at our creation by our Creator.  As stated in “Seek ye First the Kingdom...”

By faith, trust, believing and earnestly desiring the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, we create a tiny, yet spiritually radiant and powerful microcosm of that reality — Heaven — here, in our earthly lives. The Kingdom of Heaven, whether on Earth or in the spirit realms, is not a structure; it is a state of awareness of a reality which becomes our reality when we make the conscious choice to live in harmony, at one, with the qualities that make the Kingdom of Heaven what it is: a way of living and being in which souls radiate who they really are, brothers in the Sonship of God. Beloved, now are we the sons of God … (1Jn. 3:2).

This links us with the Source of that Love and with all others who have Awakened, or are waking to Its reality in their own within.  It makes no difference whether or not we have conscious awareness of that link.  Our Earth-mind consciousness is pitifully limited in comparison with our true, all-knowing, all-empowered, all-Loving reality, so to use it as a device for assessing our state of Being is folly, devised to delude us from the truth of Who we really Are.

When Jesus said, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth (Mt. 28:18) he was not exaggerating.  He also said: If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. (Mt. 17:20).  Of course few believe this or take it literally today (they probably didn’t then, either J) but which is easier – to resurrect oneself from being crucified or to move a mountain? 

In truth, neither one is more difficult than the other because there is no death; this is true for us all, not just Jesus, and since mountains are no more real than death, they can be just as easily removed as death — if only we can believe, or have faith as a grain of mustard seed, and remember our true Being. It is cause for reflection that our faith appears to be less than a grain of mustard seed!  Jesus remembered his true Being and his all-empowerment and did not — had no intention to — give up on his brethren in the Sonship of God after his ascension.  He said:

I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (Jn. 14:2,3)

This has nothing to do with adherence to religious doctrines and dogmas; it is to do with having a committed desire to awaken from the dream of limitation to remembrance of and restoration to the Truth of our eternal, radiant, perfectly loving Being.  Jesus knows that this is the truth not just of himself but of and for us all.  Now is the time for that Awakening.  Now is the time of our restoration to oneness; the end of the separation consciousness.

Jesus is well aware that there have been innumerable cycles of building up civilisations over hundreds of thousands of years and then their demise, only to go through the cycle — and cycles within cycles — again and again.  This is characteristic of upside-down, ego thinking.  We each go through such cycles on the micro-scale with every incarnation into a new persona ‘masquerade costume’, entering into forgetfulness on each occasion. 

We adopt the self-destruct mode that is passed down from generation to generation: eating unhealthy, poisoned food; drinking chlorinated (a known carcinogen) water; thinking judgemental thoughts that simply revert straight back to us, attacking our heart (the seat of our soul); assimilating self-administered aluminium through our skin... so it goes on.

Myriad mini-cycles form macro-cycles.  But all this is changing because one amongst us remembered who he really is, thus being restored to all power in Heaven and Earth, and was able to say enough is enough and actually be able to do something about it.  And, in spite of the vast mass of humanity — including institutionalised, Laodicean religion — knowing nothing about it, he is doing something about it.  That something is infallible and unstoppable and has all the resources of Heaven at its disposal.  That is what is happening, unfolding from the within into the without, right now, in our very midst.

Jesus told me 20 or more years ago, ‘People need a jolt.’  He is not averse to giving, or allowing, us one, though in truth it is we who engineer that jolt by the law of cause and effect.  What form the jolt, or jolts will take depends on to what we have attuned the focus of our mind.  If we are attuned to the Light, the jolt will be Light.  If we are attuned to confusion the jolt will be confusing.  If we are attuned to darkness (the absence of spiritual Light) the effect/jolt will be darkness, and absence of Light is likely to be fearful.

But Jesus and his GRP will not leave one of us comfortless, and the GRP caters for the rescue of every fragment of the Sonship of God.  Those who are enlightened by the Light that is now exponentially increasing Its shining in time and place will become as Jesus; Christ-empowered, able to perform miracles, to move through, or between, dimensions and thus appear and disappear to those who remain aware only of three-dimensionality.  This, and immeasurably more, will be perceived by those who remain limited in awareness as ‘signs and wonders’.

Such will help to gradually convince more and more sceptics — ‘unbelievers’ in anything beyond the so-called ‘physical’ — that they were mistaken, and help them to move from unbelief to belief in eternal reality, and that they are an inseparable, indivisible part of it.  This will take several further incarnations, or cycles of birth and death, for many, but this is of no concern to those who are leading the process because they are well aware that time is an illusion.

This GRP is a transformational process and is entirely able to accommodate all possibilities, probabilities.  What ego sees as disaster, calamity, Jesus, the Spirit of Truth and all who are aware of the Light see as opportunity to transform adversity into fulfilment.  In simple terms it is summed up by the statement ‘You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs’.  Humanity has been stuck in a shell of unawareness of his own reality.  Now that shell is cracking and new Life is able to emerge and grow into the Glory that we all, without exception, truly are and always have been.

Let us all open our hearts and minds to receive peace and joy, allowing them to dispel all fear as we choose Love and Light, our true Being, once more,

Brian Longhurst

 *From Dialogue on Awakening by Tom and Linda Carpenter

If we are immersed in fear, it means we are trusting in our own strength and not in the strength of God.  We have no power

except what God supplies us.

July 20th 2011

Dear Friends,

In Luke chapter 16 Jesus says:

He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.  If therefore ye have not been faithful 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?

Many may observe that these words are particularly applicable in today’s world.  It is hardly surprising he also said: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth. Fear, today, drives humanity; fear of scarcity.  Now another famine is arising in the horn of Africa, threatening the existence of ten million; another demonstration of man’s belief in scarcity which manifests itself all around us, engendering more fear and its sidekick, guilt; the not-so-merry go round, keeping on turning.  It will continue turning until we choose to stop it by remembering it is in our mind, and change it.

The ‘meek’ are faithful in the small, apparently insignificant things of life.  But as they say in Scotland, ‘Many a mickle makes a muckle’, meaning a lot of a little makes a lot.  And if we are faithful, meaning honest, trustworthy, caring — to ourself and our brothers — in the little things, like being good to our word, we are the kind of people who will incline toward faithfulness in the greater things, because at some level we have chosen to be that way.

Jesus continues by saying that if we have not been trustworthy, ‘faithful’, in the things of time and place — which in truth are not ours, because nothing of time and place, whether it seems to be ours or another’s, is real — how can we expect the things of Eternity, the ‘true riches’, to be committed into our care?

As much of the world has become more abundant in temporal things, so there has become a general sidelining of some other words of Jesus, from Matthew chapter 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.

Things that will lay up treasures in Heaven for us while we appear to be here in time and place are trustworthiness, forgiveness and not holding grievances, loving and honouring our brothers — including the things that moth and rust corrupt that they perceive as theirs — just as we would want them to honour us.  By so doing, we are placing ourself in the position of being in alignment with, attuned to, the treasures of Heaven, and that is where our heart, then, will be also.

In today’s upside-down, untrusting, grasping, fear-of-scarcity world, whose two great commandments for life are: ‘Do unto others before they do unto you’ and ‘Thou shalt not be found out’, and whose mantra is ‘Every man for himself, and devil take the hindmost’, the idea of treasures in Heaven is a pipedream. But ‘Heaven’ is not ‘up there’, in the future (if we are lucky and play our cards right); it is here, now, within us.  It is to this reality that we must awaken.  By forgetting this, the bewildered Son of God appears to slide further and further from the Light and deeper and deeper into the dark place known as fear, dis-ease, mortality.

Many earnest seekers after truth — the treasures of Heaven — are deeply distressed by the apparent slide of humanity toward oblivion.  But as discussed last week, all is within the care of him who is all-empowered in Heaven and Earth; all is within the scope of the Great Rescue Programme (GRP) to transform chaos, bewilderment and fear into the all-knowingness of the Kingdom reality. 

This does not mean we will serve ourself or our brothers well by adopting an uncaring, inconsiderate attitude toward our brothers or the environment.  That would be to abandon our commitment to being faithful and just in the little things, and that add up to being ‘faithful’ in the greater things, effectively restoring us to our rightful estate as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, irrespective of appearing to be in time and place. 

Aligning our lives, our hearts, our minds with him who is all-empowered for the good of all places us within the aura of that all-empowerment-for-good.  Assuredly that is a better place to be than outside it, as is the apparent choice of so many, who, as they see what they thought was theirs by right sliding from their grasp, become more desperate to cling to it, even if by dishonourable means.  Truly that is the slippery slope; unserviceable to ourself and to our brothers, for if we dishonour a brother — such as by taking what is rightfully his, out of fear of scarcity (often thinly disguised as greed) — we dishonour ourself.

Those who have been faithful in the least are better placed to hold fast to the true riches in the chaos time the world is now experiencing, and more open to receiving his needs when he asks for them of Him Who is able and more than willing to freely give...

For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.  ... what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?  ... how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?   Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. (i.e. the rules of engagement upon which Creation infallibly functions: cause and effect.) (Mt. ch. 7).

The Kingdom of Heaven will not magically appear to those whose minds are not attuned to it.  This is not because God is judging them and finding them guilty and denying It to them.  It is because the Kingdom of Heaven is a state of Mind that affects, determines our state of Being.  We create the Kingdom of Heaven in our own mind and that calls it forth into our presence.  That state of Mind was given to us at our creation, and is always with(in) us.  We can choose to remember this as our truth and it then becomes our reality because we have accepted it as such. 

But we are at free will to deny it to ourself, so that we are unaware of that reality.  Such is the power of the mind of the Son of God, even when he is playing make-believe that he is away from Home, in a far country, limited, confused, fearful, mortal.  In this state it all seems so real that many wonder, ‘What can I do to help when the odds seem so overwhelming against turning the tide of increasing calamity?’  In his book The Shift Owen Waters cites the power of positive, heart-centred, unconditionally loving thought and intent by one person being sufficient to counterbalance the despair and negative thought/intent of many thousands.

This process increases logarithmically as the degree of enlightenment, or unconditional love, brings the heart-power of positive thought/intent into operation to counterbalance despair and negative, destructive, self-serving thought of many millions.  The greater the degree of enlightenment the greater the offsetting benefit.  So, just one who has remembered his true God-Self, as is the case with Jesus, is easily powerful enough to effect the spiritual transformation and reunifying of the group-mind of the fragmented Sonship.  No wonder Jesus says in ACIM that it takes only one brother to bring about the salvation of the entire Sonship.

We can all participate in this heart-powered, loving transformation and upliftment of ourself and our brothers in the Sonship to the Kingdom within, regardless of where we are on the journey Home.  Every engagement in such endeavour by one of us brings us all nearer our Destination.

This is because we are all, in truth, one, even though we appear to be many.  That is an illusion, and illusion can have no impact upon reality.  This transformation does not happen by changing the illusion.  How can nothing be changed?  It is happening by changing the minds of the fragmented Sonship so that they remember their oneness.  In ACIM Jesus calls this bringing illusions to the truth. This happens at Source by intent and the intent is expressing, extending unconditional Love.  Unconditional Love is what we all are.  Forgetfulness of this truth is merely a temporary aberration, which is shone away by Love, which is the same as Light and Truth. 

No action is required because there is nothing to do.  Everything is already done; now all that is needful is our remembrance of our wholeness, our oneness, which dawns upon us when the Light shines into our mind, restoring the Truth of our Being to our awareness.  As Jesus re-minds us in ACIM:

... When you search for reality in fantasies you will not find it. The symbols of fantasy are of the ego, and of these you will find many. But do not look for meaning in them. They have no more meaning than the fantasies into which they are woven. Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful, but no one calls them true. Children may believe them, and so, for a while, the tales are true for them. Yet when reality dawns, the fantasies are gone. Reality has not gone in the meanwhile. The Second Coming is the awareness of reality, not its return.

Behold, my child, reality is here (it has never left, other than to our perception). It belongs to you and me and God, and is perfectly satisfying to all of Us. Only this awareness heals, because it is the awareness of truth. (T-9.IV.11,12)

(My emboldening and some italic, for emphasis)

Some may say, ‘This is all very well, and I am prepared to go along with it, but what about all the rest of humanity, who continue to act out ego’s script?  What can I do to help them?  I don’t want to just sit idly by while they continue their wandering in the wilderness, especially when they are behaving in ways that are unserviceable to the rest of us.’  In response to this widely held perception, Jesus has some more revealing counsel, some of which may seem beyond belief at first; but careful, deeper, sincere consideration will bring greater insight into, and understanding of, his words:

The alertness of the ego to the errors of other egos is not the kind of vigilance the Holy Spirit would have you maintain...

   To the ego it is kind and right and good to point out errors and “correct” them... Errors are of the ego, and correction of errors lies in the relinquishment of the ego.  When you correct a brother, you are telling him that he is wrong.  He may be making no sense at the time, and it is certain that, if he is speaking from the ego, he will not be making sense.  But your task is still to tell him he is right.  You do not tell him this verbally, if he is speaking foolishly.  He needs correction at another level, because his error is at another level.  (But) He is still right, because he is a Son of God (in his true Self, a magnificent, eternal Being of Love and Light!).  (It is) His ego (that) is always wrong, no matter what it says or does...

When a brother behaves insanely, you can heal him only by perceiving the sanity in him.  If you perceive his errors and accept them, you are accepting yours.  If you want to give yours over to the Holy Spirit, you must do this with his...

To perceive errors in anyone, and to react to them as if they were real, is to make them real to you.  You will not escape paying the price for this... because you are following the wrong guide and will therefore lose your way.

... The Holy Spirit in you forgives all things in you and in your brother (how can it make any sense for us, then, to not forgive a brother for a perceived error?).  His errors are forgiven with yours (because we are all one, NOT separate)... Any attempt you make to correct a brother means that you believe correction by you is possible, and this can only be the arrogance of the ego.  Correction is of God, Who does not know of arrogance.

... Do not undertake His function, or you will forget yours (forgiveness)... The Holy Spirit (our true Self within)... will teach you how to see yourself without condemnation, by learning how to look on everything without it.  Condemnation will then not be real to you, and all your errors will be forgiven.

(ACIM, From T-9.III. My emboldening, underlining and some italic, for emphasis)

Wholeness (holiness) is already ours and always has been.  We entered into forgetfulness to play a game of make-believe.  Now we are awakening to remembrance of our Self, which is indivisible oneness in Papa.  Now is the time of celebration and of thanksgiving.

Endless blessings for Love and Light,

Brian Longhurst

There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father.  Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love. Forget your dreams of sin and guilt, and come with me instead to share the resurrection of God’s Son. And bring with you all those whom He has sent to you to care for as I care for you.

(Jesus, in ACIM C-5)

July 27th 2011

Dear Friends,

One of the many signs that the apparently slumbering, fragmented Sonship of God is waking up to remembrance of the truth of Being is the dramatic increase in the number of people who are now choosing to describe themselves as being ‘spiritual’ in favour of ‘religious’.  Others ask, ‘What is the difference between religious and spiritual?’  To me, the difference is that spirituality is about love and freedom, whereas religion is about fear and control.  No guesses needed, then, as to which has its foundation in the eternity of Heaven and which is founded in time and place. The inference to be drawn, that spirituality and religion are opposites, is not hard to arrive at.

Further observations suggest that religion is about division, separation, exclusion.  People say, ‘I am a Christian’, or ‘I am a Muslim’, or a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jew... the list is a long one.  In so many cases there is a perceived need to proselytise, to persuade those from another ‘faith’ — or no faith — to join their faith, or sect.  And failure to persuade is often judged as the other party being, or remaining, a ‘lost soul’, who is condemned to eternal damnation.  Is this what they believe those they claim to follow — Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Siddhārtha Gautama, Moses... — want? 

If so, it must mean they believe that all those enlightened beings, presumably all in Heaven, are at loggerheads, each claiming to be the only true messenger from God.  If they are at loggerheads, they cannot be — by any definition of eternity — in Heaven.  The absurdity of such a possibility is surely enough to cause exclusivist, duality-minded religionists to think again.  Yet they would say that all such souls save he that they follow must either have changed their mind and become followers of their leader or God will have cast them into hell.  Truly, such a God must be fearful indeed.  Is this what all these enlightened messengers from God taught?

Assuredly, a more likely prospect is that all these enlightened messengers are together, in perfect unity, love, peace and joy, working ceaselessly, harmoniously, as one, for the awakening of the misperceiving souls remaining in the illusion of exclusion and separation.  Here is what Jesus tells us in A Course in Miracles (ACIM) about the relationship between himself, us, and Christ:

The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God...  he saw the false without accepting it as true.  And Christ needed his form that He might appear to men and save them from their own illusions.

   Is he the Christ?  O yes, along with you...  And when you join your will with his, your sight will be his vision, for the eyes of Christ are shared.  Walking with him is just as natural as walking with a brother whom you knew since you were born, for such indeed he is. 

Is he God’s only Helper?  No, indeed.  For Christ takes many forms with different names until their oneness can be recognized...   

(From ACIM, C-5. My emboldening and some italic, for emphasis)

The term Christ is generally believed to derive from a Greek form of the Old Testament term Messiah, meaning deliverer, but there is wide variation of understanding as to a more specific definition.  Christ also is taken to mean anointed or anointed messenger, or emissary.  It is more widely understood as meaning Son, or Expression, or Extension, of God. Within the usage of the term in ACIM it is intended to convey the meaning the Son of God.  Therefore, since God is pure, infinite, eternal, empowered-by-Love Spirit, so must His Son also be.

Since Jesus assures us that we are one with him in the Sonship of God, and that this is our true estate, bodies — and everything that seems to bear witness to separation — clearly are not pertinent to our true Being. Few would disagree that Jesus knows more about eternity than most of the rest of us. Many in this world are curious, but at the same time fearful, about him, because of the false creeds and dogmas about him coming to judge the ‘quick and the dead’ even though he is recorded as saying: ...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. (Jn. 12:47). An ‘Alleluia’ or two seem apposite here. J  

Clearly, a Jesus who is claimed to be coming to judge us is not the real Jesus, but one fabricated by ‘an enemy’.  In his parable of the tares Jesus says: 

The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed (the Truth, the Living Word) in his field (the world):  But while men slept (and dreamt of separation), his enemy (ego) came and sowed tares (false doctrines, creeds, dogmas) among the wheat, and went his way.  But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.  So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?

He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?   But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.  Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them (dispel the darkness of the false teachings in the Light of eternal Truth): but gather the wheat (awakened souls) into my barn (the Kingdom of Heaven). (Mt. 13:24-30). 

An enemy of Christ is referred to in the Bible as AntiChrist.  Since Christ and unconditional, perfect Love are synonymous, and fear is the absence of Love, any who make up and promulgate doctrines, creeds, dogmas claiming Jesus is coming to judge us are against, or anti, Christ. Truly, there have been many tares sown amongst the good seed.  Happily, now that it is the time of harvest, these tares — false teachings — are being dispelled by the outpouring of the Light of Spiritual Truth that is now shining with ever-increasing brightness, until all the ‘tares’ are removed and disintegrated by Its luminosity.  

These ‘tares’ have caused countless souls, slumbering and dreaming of separation, to proclaim themselves ‘Christian’, or devotees of Jesus, believing that this will bring them salvation from judgement.  But how can they be saved from judgement by devoting themselves to a judgemental Jesus?  If Jesus was judgemental our judgements in his name would be justified, but he states unequivocally that he did not come to judge, but to save (from judgement).  The real Jesus is fully en-Light-ened, and Love and Light are indivisible.  Love does not judge; Love forgives, and heals. 

He reminds us: Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged (the record does not show Jesus as saying this judgement is, or will be, by God — as misconstrued by institutionalised religion — but, as is now becoming widely understood, by our own judgemental, unforgiving attitudes): and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again (again, not by God, but by our ego-self) (Mt. 7:1,2), and, ...condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven (Lk. 6:37).    

There is no shortage of those who observe that religionists — of many professed faiths — are among the most judgemental, condemning, exclusivist, unforgiving souls.  How, one is prompted to wonder, can this lead to Peace, Joy, Love — the three key qualities of eternal life; the Kingdom of Heaven?  Most will, if pressed, accept that the enlightened ones they claim to follow advocate peace, joy, loving the Creator Spirit and our neighbour as ourself, yet at the same time many adherents to religious creeds exhibit behaviour and attitudes that are polar opposite to the teachings/teachers they profess to revere.  This is insanity; an overthrow of reason.

It is not — cannot be — proclaiming oneself ‘Christian’ that will bring salvation from judgement, but choosing, desiring, aspiring, committing, earnestly and wholeheartedly to be Christ-like.  Jesus, our template for being Christ-like, did not judge, and said so, counselling us to be likewise, and to forgive.  There are passages in the Gospel records that contradict that, but Jesus was not dualistic in his understanding.  If he had been he would not have been enlightened, and could not have performed miracles or resurrected himself from the execution to which he submitted himself. 

As stated here on previous occasions, and also observed by many students and scholars of the Bible, it has been tampered with over the centuries.  This is still happening* with modern translations, where adding or deleting words changes original statements completely about.  In all too many instances this has occurred out of a deliberate intent to alter the original meaning to fit ego, or anti Christ agendas.  There has been no lack of such agendas over many centuries within the Laodicean, or institutionalised church.

Any who find this hard to believe might care to check out the history of the Church, with its burnings at the stake and other torture and mayhem, schisms, lies, infighting, persecutions and cover-ups — all in the name of Jesus.  It is hardly surprising that the vast mass of humanity does not want to hear about Jesus, who has been tarred with the same brush as those who claim to be his followers but in truth are not.

Being, or aspiring to be, Christ-like is our salvation from judgement and condemnation, because Christ does not judge or condemn.  Being Christ-like is perceived as presumptuous by religions that tell us we are unworthy, sinners, and that only the blood sacrifice of Jesus can save us, if we state with our mouth and believe in our heart that he is the one Son of God and that he died for our sins. The MoE dated April 27^th 2011 clarifies the case against this misperception.  Being Christ-like may seem difficult to a mind labouring under the yoke of ego, but in truth it is easy, natural, because that is Who we ARE.

Denying this is accepting our masquerade as littleness and limitation as our truth, and will continue so to do until we remember that it is not, never has been and need no longer be believed as our truth.  We are like Jesus and it is our inescapable destiny to remember this and be restored to this truth.  He tells us this, and that all that is required of us is to believe it.  Not asking a lot, is it? J

With him accepted as our brother, trustworthy friend and guide to eternity, we can walk the walk, because simply talking the talk does not get us Home. We can walk the walk because he will be walking beside us, upholding, strengthening, uplifting, reassuring, enlightening, loving, encouraging, bringing remembrance to us that we both have and are Peace, Joy and Love.  These three words are initially capitalised because they are not of the world of time and place, but of Heaven.

There is no equivalent to these states of Being to be found by seeking them in the without, which can offer nothing but a cardboard cut-out, feeble substitute for Them, and provides but a temporal, transient, passing replacement for what is, in truth, eternal.  Yet They are closer to us than hands and feet, closer than every next breath; closer even, than our own heartbeat.  Surrendering our ego-leasehold over our life to Jesus and/or the Spirit of Truth opens the door of our inner Being to awareness of Them, and They become our experience, our truth.  Forever.

In ACIM Jesus shares with us that he listened to the Holy Spirit and followed Him (instead of ego) and that This led him Home; that if we are willing to follow his lead This will get us Home also. This qualifies him to be our leader and companion on that same journey without distance. If we are willing to follow him we will be on the fast track Home, saving an indeterminate number of further circuits of the not-so-merrygoround.  Since there is nothing to lose, and everything to gain — literally — it seems like a logical, sensible, reasonable thing to do. 

My own testimony is that I have been journeying with Jesus — consciously since the 1960s, and he told me in November 2008 it has actually been much longer than that: ‘since before Abraham’ — and it has been an immeasurably uplifting, enlightening, inspiring, protecting, reassuring journey.  It has not always been comfortable, but has never been boring.  I have never doubted that, even though I did not know where I was going, he definitely did, and he told me that he would reveal all, when the time was right, for each revelation, each piece of the jigsaw, to be put in place. 

This, he did — and continues to do — just as he promised, and the timing has always been perfect.  Joy, Peace and Love have not been in my constant awareness but I have had sufficient experience of Their reality to know, of a certainty beyond all doubt, that They await us all as we follow his/Holy Spirit’s lead Home in faith, trust, obedience (to the Voice for God within us, our true Self) and commitment. 

A toast to Love, Peace and Joy — our true Being,

Brian Longhurst

 *See Message of Encouragement dated November 22^nd 2006 for details of a crucial example.

You’ve heard that God is in us; but greater is this: “We are in God.”  So, how can we fail?

August 3rd 2011

Dear Friends,

If we think judgemental or any other negative thoughts it is an indicator that at some deep, mostly unconscious, level we harbour a sense of guilt. As Jesus reminds us in ACIM, there is, in truth, but one error and one solution. The error is that we believe (again, for most of us, at some deep, unconscious level) that we have left our Home in God and that He will see this as an attack.  Assuredly, Jesus knows more about what we dub unconscious mind, with its dark and fearful secrets, than any of us who are not fully Awake.  This is because he has remembered his oneness in God, Who knows everything, so he, also, knows everything.

He explains this better than I can, so here is what he says about it in chapter 5, section V of ACIM:

Listening to the ego’s voice means that you believe it is possible to attack God, and that a part of Him (ourself) has been torn away by you (into a place apart, separate from Him). Fear of retaliation from without follows, because the severity of the guilt (at this erroneous belief, hidden away, deep in our unconscious mind — so fearful is it — that we have done this dreadful thing to God) is so acute that it must be projected (‘It wasn’t me, Guv, it was him, Guv!’).

Whatever you accept into your mind has reality for you.  It is your acceptance of it that makes it real...  This is because the mind is capable of creating reality or making illusions.  I said before that you must learn to think with God.  To think with Him is to think like Him.  This engenders joy, not guilt, because it is natural.  Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking is unnatural.

(My emboldening and italic, for emphasis)

Of course, few fragments in the slumbering Sonship would admit to believing they are a part of God and have torn themselves away from Him.  But such a denial would be only with the conscious mind.  Very few of us indeed have the faintest idea what is going on in their unconscious mind, so to ascribe verity solely to conscious mind awareness would be to err. 

So, we may serve ourself well to at least go along for the ride with what Jesus has to say, since even the most fervent agnostic would be hard pressed to dispute that Jesus probably knows more about us than we are consciously aware of.  After all, if we are for the high jump, we have nothing to lose; and if we don’t believe in the high jump, then there is nothing to lose either.  A win/win situation. J

Guilt feelings engender fear.  Not surprising really, if, at some level, we think God is going to punish us, because if He is going to punish us, it must be so terrible as to be unthinkable.  After all, we have been taught for many centuries that His wrath knows no bounds.  Hence the thought being consigned to, buried, hidden away in our unconscious.  Sweep it under the rug, and maybe no-one (including, hopefully, God) will notice.  A rather forlorn and preposterous hope if we have any sense of God as being all-knowing; a good indicator that if we are listening to ego’s script we will do well to switch scripts, pronto. 

Before we go any further, for any in doubt, God is not going to punish us.  Any of us.  All doctrines, creeds and dogmas to the contrary are mistaken.  The only punishment we will ever receive is self-administered, and even if it appears to be administered by a brother, we have called that punishment into our presence because we believe, at some level, that we deserve it.  This is what the belief in guilt does to us. It is simply cause and effect:  believe we are guilty and we believe we should be punished, so we unconsciously call it to ourself.  There are myriad ways we can do this; addictions, attachments, expectations — all fear driven — are but a few, yet all from one cause.

Would we punish our children for having a dream?  A nightmare?  Would we not, rather, comfort them and assure them it was only a dream; that dreams are not real, so there is nothing to fear; that they are safe, at home, where they belong.  Dreams are nothing, and as soon as we realise this, awaken from our slumbers and remember who and where we are, the dream is gone from our memory because the reality is so utterly, indescribably, ineffably sublime.

Meanwhile, until we choose, unequivocally, to awaken from our dreams, guilt and its offshoot, fear, continue to hold us in their thrall.  So instead of continuing to sweep them under the carpet (our unconscious mind), where they remain, festering from one incarnation to the next, endlessly, worsening, we could bring them out and examine them.  We can do that much more easily if we are reassured by the idea that it is all nothing but a dream.  When we muster the courage to do it, since most of what lies at the back of our fear is abstract, it may help to use allegory, to get a handle on what seems to be happening.

Guilty feelings and judgemental thoughts are negative psychic (soul) emanations that we project out into the universe, like ripples on a pond.  These ripples reach whoever and whatever appears to be in their path, especially, of course, those to whom they are directed.  Because such emanations are negative, they are discordant, chaotic, destructive, and affect the pattern of energy on which the person or object encountered is vibrating.  Like a ship in stormy water, it can suffer damage or even sink, or be swept to destruction on the rocks, by the chaos. 

Needless to say, when the vast mass of humanity is radiating soul emanations that include hopelessness, frustration, anger, despair, hate, fear, guilt, grievance  its effect on the environment around us is highly impactful (soul energy is immeasurably more powerful than is understood by Earth-mind consciousness).  This can be readily observed in the severe disarray in the global weather pattern. This also demonstrates that what we send out reflects right back to us.  This is inevitable because all that appears separate is, in reality, connected.  Failure to recognise that truth does not make it untrue.

We are like a film projector, projecting our guilt, judgements, fear onto the other person, or the world at large (the screen) and that projection is then reflected straight back to us, just as happens at the cinema. It is from our upside-down mind that we have made the projection, and it is our upside-down mind that receives back that reflected perception. The projection is not photons so it is not reflected back to our eyes, but straight to our mind (not brain).  It is the judgement that we have projected that we perceive, and we mistakenly believe what is reflected back to us originated from the other person, or the world at large.

So we perceive them in the manner that we have actually pre-judged them to be.  The pre-judgment, or prejudice, has arisen from the conditioning that is passed from generation to generation by ego misperceptions of reality.  Thus, people appear to us in the form of our thoughts: guilty, and therefore, ‘worthy’ of our condemnation.  Here, we must remind ourself of the reason for the projection: we believe we have attacked God, and that a part of Him (ourself) has been torn away by us (into a place apart, separate from Him). The fear and guilt are so acute, so terrible that they must be projected.

We are at free choice to continue believing those around us (next door or on another continent, it makes no difference because distance, separation, does not exist, other than in the perception of the beholder, as quantum physicists now realise) are guilty, and that is likely to happen all the while it is seen as serving a ‘useful’ purpose.  But if we are trying to find peace, how can the blame game achieve that?  Quantum mechanics recognises that we affect everything according to the way we see (or perceive) it, so if we see ourself as guilty (even unconsciously) our brother will appear to our perception as guilty.  Not a good recipe for inner peace, joy and love.

What we perceive when we project guilt and fear (even though, unrecognised by our upside-down, misperceiving mind, they are reflected straight back to us, their source) as judgement is our way of transferring the ‘worthiness of punishment’ away from ourself.  Yet, what we are perceiving is not the reality of that person at all; it is the apparent form of our guilt projected onto them.  So, by judging them according to our perception — which is false — we are actually judging, and condemning ourself.  Yet even that is, of course, false, because what we seem to have projected onto them is not who or what we really are either. 

In a night-time dream, we project an image of our own body, as well as those of others, into the scene we are conjuring in our mind.  None of those bodies is real.  We have made them up to act out the masquerade of the dream.  So is it in what we mistakenly refer to as our waking life.  It is not our true waking life.  As Jesus reminds us in ACIM, 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.  

Our reality is not in the dream, which comes to an end, as with all things temporal, and we Awaken to our true Self, our true Being; eternal, safe, innocent, pure Love, Peace and Joy, just like Papa.  It is the sleeping part of our mind that dreams of guilt, fear and mortality; all things in opposition to Who, What and Where we eternally, unchangeably are.  That split-off part of our mind is not in a body but is dreaming of bodies, projecting them onto the screen of its misperceiving consciousness, making up fables about them, just as we seem to do in our night-time dreams.

All this seems to be real because we believe it to be real.  It is a mistake to underestimate the imaginative capability of the mind of the Son of God, even a part of His mind that seems to be split-off from His Awake, all-knowing Christ Mind.  This is seen during night-time dreams, where we project bodies that are not real, but seem real, within our sleeping mind.  All form separate parts of the one illusion.  But this illusion, this one and only dream, is coming to its end.  Within the closing phases of the dream are perceptions that it will end in cataclysm. 

But as we near the surface, the end of our dreaming, we are able to change the course of that dream, just as some are able with lucid night-time dreaming.  Thus can we turn a nightmare into a happy dream.  If that is our desire, we will serve ourselves well to focus upon Peace, Joy and Love, which is the truth of our Being, and eschew thoughts of fear, guilt, mortality, calamity, destruction.  They do not exist because they are not eternal, unchanging and unchangeable.  Who, in his right mind, would focus on what does not exist when he can focus on what is true, what is real, what is eternally joyful, peaceful, loving?

There are those who would say, ‘But what can I do, alone, when billions are in despair, starving?’  We are not alone; we are one, inextricably, indivisibly connected.  When we send out, extend loving, peaceful, joyful, forgiving, blessing thoughts from the centre of our Being, those thoughts — having healing, creative substance and power immeasurably greater than the destructive power of fear, guilt, grievance and judgement — turn, transform darkness into Light.  

This is easily possible because darkness does not exist of itself; it is simply the absence of Light, and has no power or effect on anyone or anything, other than what we ascribe to it.  Our loving, peaceful, joyful, blessing, forgiving thoughts are Light, and they shine away the darkness because the Light they engender will heal our mistaken ascription of power to (spiritual) darkness.  That Light illuminates our True Vision.  That Light is our Self, remembered.

Endless blessings for restoration to remembrance,

Brian Longhurst

Thank you, Holy Spirit, for shining the Light of eternal truth into my mind, that I may see with true vision the glory that, as an indivisible part of Papa, I Am.

August 10^th 2011

Dear Friends,

As our slumbers get shallower, so we move nearer to Home.  Of course we have always been There, never separated from It, but while we have been dreaming of playing make believe that we are in a far country, we got carried away by the intensity of the game, and forgot, just for a moment, Who, What and Where we are.  We seem to have been away, in our state of imagined forgetfulness, for such a long time that we find it hard to break the acquired habit and remember how wonderful Home is.  But we made up time as part of the game, and in truth we haven’t been away at all.

Meanwhile, to help with remembering, we can serve ourselves very well by reminding ourselves of the qualities that are Home Life, and rehearse those qualities of Being, so that as we Awaken to the realisation of our God-Self, we will feel at Home right away and a seamless, painless transformation from forgetfulness to remembrance can take place.  This will hasten the end of any doubts or confusion about our true nature.  Indeed, the practising will actually be contributory to the Awakening process because even the ‘acting as if’ makes us feel much more comfortable within, and good about, ourself, so it has two key benefits:

Firstly, it makes our apparent sojourn in time immeasurably less arduous and immeasurably more joyful.  Secondly, it collapses time, so we end up Awake sooner (Alleluia!), with fewer harrowing experiences and fewer circuits of the carousel of birth and death.  We appear to be in a linear time process, the path of our earthly life seeming to unfold before us, one minute, hour, day, month, year at a time, with things ‘happening to us’, out of the blue.  But that is not the real story; it is part of the make-believe game we have been playing.

The real story lies quietly behind that, never far from us, but easily overlooked if we are readily distracted from inner awareness by the goings on without.  At this phase in the outworking from within of the Great Rescue Programme, in which the old order of perception, belief, understanding is inexorably giving way to the ‘new’, the outer goings on are becoming increasingly chaotic.  The clamour for our attention, the intent to keep us confused, uncertain, fearful becomes ever more frenetic.

We can allow ourself to be distracted by what seems to be happening to us, but in fact we are making up ourself, or we can practise for our Awakening to Inner Peace, Joy and Love, our true Self.  So, what exactly does this mean?  What do we do?  Therein lies a cryptic clue, because Awakening is not at all about doing; it is about Being.  God Announced Himself to Moses as ‘I Am’.  He also reminds us that He created His Son in His own likeness.  Therefore, we also are.  The only thing that comes remotely near to ‘doing’ in this journey Home is to remember that we ARE Home.

Easy enough to say, but less easy, so it seems, to be, with all those pesky distractions clamouring for our attention, telling us we are a body.  Even closer to us than that is the illusion that we are an identity other than our true Self.  This false identity has us believing we are little, limited, mortal.  And that’s just for starters.  Once we have got that charade crammed into our distracted mind, along comes the next salvo: we are alone; we have to fend for ourself; we are sinners, unworthy, there is no health in us; life is fraught with hazard... and so it goes on.

To try and make our brief moment in time more enjoyable we strive to get a greater share of the finite pie, with ever more bodies (the population of Earth has nearly trebled in my lifetime) competing for their slice of that pie; so the possibilities for distress continue to accrue.  So it seems.  All that is in the without.  But there is no without; there is only within.  Home — eternity, the Kingdom of Heaven, reality, perfect Peace, Joy and Love — is within.  The difference between the within and the without is time, where everything is constantly changing.  In the within there is only Here and Now; perfect, unchanging, Oneness.

Everything else... well, we made it all up, and it is all based on our belief in our false identity.  In a November 2008 communion here is what Papa had to say about this:

... Enter in, enter in; attune with Me with rejoicing, waking to the fullness of your glory and your oneness in Me.  You are in Me and I am within you; there is mutuality in Our love, which We extend to each other continually.  In that extending is the ecstasy of My creation, which is you.  Only in you is My ecstasy, My joy, My fulfilment, My completion.  When you deny yourself, you deny Me.  This is your only blasphemy.

Wow! Papa.  This is some revelation.  It changes my perception, brings me up short.

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?

No, I don’t, Papa; I wish to be real.

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.

But while I seem to be in, or with, a body, my brothers will see me as Brian…

Let that serve its purpose then, that you may use that illusion to bring to your brothers the truth of Who you are, that they may be re-minded of Who they all are.  This illusory self can be restored to oneness, and thus disappear back into Me, forever.  It has a purpose only in time, never in Eternity.

Welcome Home, My beloved.  The banquet awaits.

The blasphemy is against our Self — our God-Self — our only real Being, by a determination to see our Self as other than, less than the unchangeable, eternal Truth.

Oneness is always with us.  Every moment is nothing but an opportunity to enter into the perfect Joy, Peace and Love that is Oneness.  Any other perception, or interpretation, of any moment is a distraction, delaying our restoration to our God-given inheritance.  We can only enter into It because it is within us.  Opportunity, in upside-downland, can so often show up heavily disguised as adversity.  Yet whatever shows up is not ‘happening to us’; we have called it into our own presence, to remind us Who we really are.  It is always the perfect gift at the perfect time. 

If we perceive it only as adversity we are missing the opportunity.  Each opportunity is a gift and if we remember by and to Whom the gift is called forth, we can, rightfully, give thanks for the perfection of the gift, instead of being distressed by the apparent adversity.  By our attitude of thanksgiving we place ourself on the frequency of Self, aka the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter.  The job of the Comforter is to comfort us.  He does this by shining the Light of the Truth of Being into our mind, so that we can see — and thus know — the Truth, and that sets us free. 

Without that Light we see shadows, illusions, and these confuse us because in that shadowland they seem real.  Yet when the Light is shone, all those shadows, those misperceptions, are immediately dispelled by Truth, and we then see clearly, and know, of a certainty, that there is nothing to fear because illusions are nothing.  As Byron Katie says, “I discovered that when I believed my (ego, shadow-) thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment.” 

Every opportunity to enter in and commune is one more step forward on the journey Home.  There is no gap, no distance, no separation between us and our Source.  We only perceive a gap when we are looking with ego’s eyes.  But we are not ego.  Ego is something we made up and in our confusion (and when we look without, we will see the chaos and confusion we have made all around us) have allowed ourself to believe this phantasm is who we are.  This phantasm cannot go within because the within is real, and ego has no reality.  Within is a phantasm-free zone.  

Within is where we find Self, and Self speaks only Truth because Self is the Truth of our Being.  It cannot be otherwise because our unchangeable, true Being is Oneness in God, our Home. Every time we seize the opportunities that we keep calling into our presence, and experience a reminder of our Self, we feel uplifted, inspired, enlightened, joyful, loving, peaceful and this exposure to our true state of Being causes us to feel impelled to share, to extend, to radiate it out to all living things around us.  This includes those with whom we may have been feeling a sense of grievance.

As Jesus reminds us in ACIM,  

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.

(W-68.1) 

Grievances and judgements are the same thing: misperception of ourself and our brothers.  Forgiveness dispels these unnatural states of mind.  Forgiveness is immeasurably easier when we take that opportunity — so often showing up disguised as adversity — to go within, call upon Self, the Comforter, to shine the Light into our mind.  This not only dispels the shadowy misperceptions so that we can see the truth that the opportunity has brought us, but because we now are able to see clearly, we find that clarity has brought us the inestimable bonus of inner peace.  

Forgiveness brings us peace because it relieves us of the self-imposed burden of separateness, enabling healing and wholeness to be restored to us.  We cannot be restored to wholeness alone, isolated, because we are incomplete in our fragmented, separated, unnatural state.  Each of us is an integral, indispensible part of the Sonship and the Sonship is only complete in its true state of Oneness. Grievance and judgement are what keep the Sonship fragmented, broken, hurting. Forgiveness instantly effects healing and restores the seemingly fragmented Sonship to wholeness.  When the Sonship is restored to wholeness, we have the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. 

The Kingdom of Heaven — Wholeness, Oneness — is already here, on Earth, in the midst with us but we do not see it if we are attuned to brokenness.  Practising, ‘acting as if’ gets us back on the frequency of Wholeness/Oneness, and this brings awareness of the Kingdom into focus for us. 

Choosing to see past the adversity, the illusion, to the unchanging reality; asking the Comforter for help to restore our Vision so we can see truly; forgiving ourself and our brothers for what none of us has ever done; responding to a call for love (even when that call manifests itself as attack) with love; PCB’ing (Praying for, Committing into Holy Spirit’s care and Blessing) our brothers... all are good forms of practice for our Awakening to Oneness. 

And as we all know... practice makes perfect. 

Love, 

Brian Longhurst

When they attack you and you notice that you love them with all your heart, your Work is done.

Byron Katie

August 17^th 2011

Dear Friends,

As discussed recently, we are the Light of the world and also the saviours of the world.  Each and every one of us.  As we move back into a state of remembrance of this truth of our Being, so we create a microcosm of that reality in our within, which radiates out into the world around us.  Every living thing radiates the vibration of its state of being because that is the essential nature of Life. 

It is impossible to not do so — not that we would want to not extend the Light to our brothers — so magnificent is it to our awareness.  This remembrance establishes an activated centre, or nucleus, of the Kingdom of Heaven within us — because we are the Kingdom of Heaven.  This, of course, goes wherever we go, and people around us sense that elevated vibration; and if they resonate with it they will be attracted to us, its source.   

Contrariwise, those who are not ready for it, and are deep in the slumbers of ego-mindedness, and are, themselves projecting negativity, judgement and grievance, will be repelled by the exalted Light energies, because they are so accustomed to darkness that the Light of spiritual truth is uncomfortable for them.  This is true also for other life forms that make up the fabric of this illusory world of duality.  Duality is made up, so is not real, but all the while it appears to be real and we believe it is real, that will be our awareness, experience and ‘truth’.

Duality appears to be made up of opposites. This can only be possible in illusion because in reality — God, Heaven, Eternity — there can only be perfection, changelessness, Oneness.  None of these qualities can have opposites or God, Heaven and Eternity would not be what They Are.  Obvious examples of duality are light/dark, hot/cold, good/bad, up/down, male/female...  Yet none of these is real because only unchangeableness can be real. 

What is perceived (not seen/known, as with true Vision) as good by one will be perceived as bad by another, and what appears as male in one moment (incarnation) appears as female in another moment.  What appears as up from one perspective is perceived as down from another.  Nothing is fixed, permanent, unchangeable in illusion.  God, Light, Perfect Love (as distinct from ‘romantic, conditional love’), Life, Peace, Joy — all the qualities that comprise the Eternity of Heaven — are permanent and unchangeable.

This, then, suggests that if we truly seek after God and earnestly desire the Kingdom of Heaven — right here within our appearance in time and place, and thus, through steadfast, unwavering commitment to this goal, activate/awaken/establish a centre, or nucleus, of the Kingdom of Heaven within us, from which we radiate it out into the world around us — that will become our experience.  How, then can this work, when all around us are wasps, fleas, scorpions, judgements, grievances, wars, accidents, dis-ease, mothers-in-law J...?

The more we experience the eternal Kingdom realities of peace, joy, love — freedom from the constant changes and uncertainties of duality — the more we will desire to share our reality with our brethren.  This happens at two levels: speaking of our reality with those who are ready to receive the words and what they represent, and simply by being who we now realise we are — radiant beings of Light and Love.  With this Light/Love — our true Being — we irradiate those who are not yet ready to hear the words. 

This does not require any speaking — unless our Inner Guide gives us words to speak — because that irradiation will inspire and uplift the recipient at an unconscious level.  It may be unconscious, because at the conscious level the recipient is unable to accept such beneficence (so inured is he in unconscious feelings of guilt, unworthiness and grievance), but at some level it is received and is never lost.  When the right moment arrives — whether in this incarnation or subsequently — the recipient will become aware and the transformation that inexorably began at the moment of the irradiation will move forward toward completion of its benign purpose. 

If we are attached to seeing results of our irradiating with our sensory perceptors we will often be disappointed because such results are at the soul/mind, not the bodily, level.  Such attachments keep us in our own shadow and the Light within us does not — because it is our choice for it not to — express, reach out, extend its transforming power upon ourself and upon our brother, who is but a reflection of ourself.  If we choose to radiate the Christ Light that is within us it is because we remember that that is Who we are and we will see in our brother only the truth of his Being, which is also Christ, reflecting the Light we have shone upon him.   

That Light is so bright that it shines away the illusory shadows that previously we have perceived as who he was.  This is how it was with our template, Jesus, when he appeared to be with a body.  The body was an illusion, just as with us all, but it was all most of his brethren, deeply lost within the illusion, were able to perceive.  Nevertheless, so bright was his Love/Light that many who encountered him experienced it so powerfully at the heart/soul level that it was able to dispel the veil they had placed in front of their mind, and reveal to it the truth of his Being, and get them on the road to remembrance of their true Being. 

Hence, the healing they experienced.  Thus he told them to go their way and ‘sin’ no more, lest a worse thing befell them.  What he was effectively saying to them was, Do not forget, again, Who you really are, or you will attract back into your presence some equally unserviceable condition.

Of course Jesus saw bodies with his bodily senses — he took a body so he could communicate the truth of Eternity to his lost, bewildered brethren, and they also could see, hear, follow and communicate with him — but he knew those bodies were not what was the reality behind them.  And it was only that reality that he accepted as, knew was, the truth of their Being.  There was duality going on all around him; at least that is how it appeared to those who believed, and thus, perceived it so.   

Oppression by an occupying power, poverty, unfair tax burdens, intrigue, conspiracy, brigandry, kidnap, murder, war, false imprisonment, religious hypocrisy, disease and immeasurably more were amongst the forms the illusion took on in Palestine, as elsewhere.  Not a lot, outwardly, has changed.  But none of this was the focus of Jesus’ attention and its illusory existence was nothing to him because he knew it was not real.  Only by our focus upon it do we give it reality. 

If we all stopped focusing upon the unreality of the world we see, and alternatively, steadfastly focused upon the truth of peace, joy, love, the real world — the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth — would arise in our vision and the world made by the split-off-from-Truth part of our mind would be gone back to the nothingness from which it arose, leaving our split mind healed and restored to wholeness.  This is the ultimate, unavoidable, inescapable reality that awaits us all.  It is inevitable because it is the truth.

Even though to the vast majority of the fragmented Sonship it is not visible to their mistaken perception, it is happening, and has already happened at the metaphysical level.  The metaphysical always precedes the manifestation to physical discernment.  This is beautifully expressed by Jesus in a message to Olga Park in January 1965:

In the midst of the Earth ariseth my city

     after the fashion of the heavenly,

Wherein the multitude of them that love me and keep

          my words

Minister unceasingly to the sick and fainting spirits of men.

The call goeth out continually, Come, O come ye

     to the waters

Everyone that thirsteth.  Buy milk and wine without money

     and without price,

And nourish your souls, and rejoice in health and joy;

For it is my Father’s good pleasure to bestow upon you

     the freedom of the city. (The city of Peace)

Here is freedom from sickness: whosoever will,

     let him be free.

Here are riches of wisdom and power: whosoever will,

     let him be rich.

Here is knowledge: whosoever will, let him know

     the secrets of God

     and the power and perfection of His laws.

Here is fulfilment: whosoever will, let him enlarge

     his capacity and his influence.

Here is Peace: whosoever will,

     let him meditate therein.

Grace be with you.

All this is ours, right now, and always has been, if only we are willing to place upon Papa’s altar in our hearts the idols of grievance, judgement, sickness, guilt, fear, shame, limitation, mortality... thus enabling us to receive in their place the truth of our Being that it is His good pleasure to restore to our awareness.  Relinquishing these, and all the idols we have chosen to have as gods before Him enables us to know our true Self again, and until we know our Self we cannot know Papa, because our Self is One in Him.

Willingness to place them on the altar is all that is required of us.  Nothing else.  They are our gift to Papa.  He will gladly receive them and in their place freely restore to our awareness His good gifts of Love, Peace and Joy.  Eternally.  No strings.  Ego will say, ‘Oh yes, we give God our trash and He gives us eternal Life, Love, Peace and Joy.  Why would He do that?  What an insult to God. He must be as mad as you are.  There has to be a price, a sacrifice, a retribution.’  Rhubarb.  All His gifts to us are already ours, given freely at our creation; and what God gives, He never takes away.  He created us like Himself, out of Himself, and He is Love.  That is His gift.

Love — perfect Love (not counterfeit, trade-off, special love) — is freely given, and He is totally willing to remove all the shadowy idols we accumulate as tawdry substitutes for our oneness in Him.  Since they are nothing, they are nothing to Him, so do not exist, other than in our game of make-believe.  How can nothing be an insult?  We have nothing to give Papa in exchange for His Love except our Love for Him, and that is all He wants of us.  In truth, He has it, unceasingly.  Now is the time for our waking to and acceptance of that reality.

All the while we are attuned to duality we are subject to its laws because we made those laws; the laws of good and evil, right and wrong, love and fear, positive and negative, highs and lows.  We radiate out these conflicting vibrations and this attracts conflict.  Disease, pestilence, disaster — which we made in our confusion about Who we are — seem to attack us, the crops we grow for food and our environment in general.  None of this is happening to us; we have called it all into our presence because we believe, at some level, we are guilty and deserve punishment.

Once we relinquish all those false — mostly unconscious — beliefs in favour of truth and revert to irradiating ourself, our brothers, our world with the singularity of our Being, our Oneness in the Holy One (remembering that ‘Holy/Holiness’ means ‘Whole/Wholeness’) the wholeness of the Kingdom starts to become our experience, right here in time and place.  How does this manifest itself?   

Forgiveness becomes easier, since all we previously perceived as happening to us, we now realise we called into our presence; the perfect self-assessment opportunity to remember the truth of Self, until we eventually realise there is actually nothing to forgive.  All the while we miss that opportunity to remember the truth, we will keep calling further opportunities — so often perceived as adversities — to ourself, until we finally, inevitably, remember.  The choice is always, freely, ours.

Conflict and confrontation (trademarks of duality) diminish, fade away from our experience on the roads, in the supermarket, in our relationships; susceptibility to getting stung, being accident-prone, home being infested by invertebrates, nuisance calls, molestation, mugging, heart-disease (attacking our heart with anger, judgements, grievances etc) all taper away commensurately with their increasing insignificance to us.  We become less suspicious, more trusting — of ourself and our fellows — more confident, happier, optimistic. 

We become less troubled by the illusions of conflict and mayhem around the world; not because we have lost our compassion but because we realise we are all invulnerable Beings of Light and all contrary perceptions are not real.  Instead of getting upset at all the violence and injustice, and our wishing we could ‘do more, give more to help’ we now realise that PCB’ing (Praying for, Committing into the loving, all-empowered care of the Spirit of Truth/Jesus and Blessing) is the most meaningful, palpable, effective way in which help, succour, relief from the dream of distress and danger can be given. 

This is because our PCB’ing is giving our Son-of-God power to the Holy Spirit to use on our behalf for such assistance where it is needed, in a manner known by Him to be most serviceable in each situation.  This does not mean we no longer feel a desire to support worthy causes of our choice, but it does mean we need not feel guilty if we cannot afford to give as much or as often of our seemingly meagre resources seem to allow.  And we can say to ourself, knowing it to be true, ‘There’s plenty more where that came from’; for Heaven is all about abundance.

Perhaps the most peace-imbuing benefit is the awareness, the certainty of knowing beyond all doubt that we are loved, protected, empowered and are waking to the truth of our Being, leaving behind doubt, confusion, fear, guilt, conflict; we are going Home to Papa, Where all is Love, Peace and Joy.

Love, Peace and Joy,

Brian Longhurst

Do not be discouraged that the revelation is

imperfect in the beginning. Great things shall you

do if your faith in me holds fast.

Jesus

August 31^st 2011

Dear Friends,

We either believe we are a body or that we are spirit.  We cannot be both.  If we believe bodies are our reality, we cannot but believe death is also an indivisible part of our reality.  If we recognise that we are eternal living spirit, how can death be part of our reality?  Clearly, if we recognise we are eternal living spirit, we are confused in our thinking, our vision, if we perceive ourself as mortal, that we will die.  To do this allows fear to remain part of our consciousness.  Our vision is double; we are not seeing straight.

By focusing within, communing with Papa — or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit — our spirit vision, our real sight, gradually opens, under the able control of the Spirit of Truth, our true, all-knowing, all-empowered-by-Love Self.  Thus does this dream world of duality-distorted perception — of ‘good and evil’ — lose its hold on our awareness, and disappear from our sight. How ‘long’ this seems to take is entirely our choice.  Our degree of motivation to awaken from the illusion of duality determines the rate of progress.

Some may ask, “But what is wrong with the good bit of ‘good and evil’? All we need to do is get rid of the evil bit and all we will be left with is good.  That must be desirable, surely?”  The answer to this is that good is a perception, a judgement, implying there is a state of otherness than good; it is, therefore, a judgement, a comparison, a choice. ‘This person, situation, experience (or whatever) is good, more desirable, compared with that person, situation, experience (or whatever).’  This is a misperception, leaving us, keeping us, trapping us in duality.  Duality is founded in choice and judgement and cannot exist without them.

Duality is a state of mind contra to, or not in at-onement with, the Mind of God, of Jesus, of the Spirit of Truth, and therefore, of our Self, our own true Being. The Mind of God is whole, complete, undivided.  This is reality.  How can there be a choice when Papa’s Son has Everything, or a judgement when all there is is perfection?  There can only appear to be a choice between reality (everything, Love, Life, Truth, perfection, eternally) and unreality (scarcity, fear, death, imperfection, fleetingly), within a state of self-delusion and make-believe.

There is, and can be, nothing outside, or other than, reality, because, by definition, it would be unreal, and therefore, have no existence.  God’s creation is like Him; He can only create in His own likeness, because He is perfect; no-one can realistically imagine God creating anything imperfect.  Why would He do that?  His one Son is His perfect creation, and we are His one Son.

We are now at the place in the game of make-believe where we are beginning to realise that the game is coming to its end; that the time is up.  Our inner awareness, inner recognition, inner remembrance is being restored to us.  It was never withheld from us; the game was our free choice.  But the game is an illusion, being played out in an unreal state of consciousness that we have dubbed time and place. The inescapable truth about time is that it is not eternal.  Therefore, the inevitable conclusion is that it concludes; it ends. That conclusion is arriving now; we are in the midst of this event, or, more correctly, this realisation, this remembrance.

It is this remembrance that is restoring us to the reality of our true, eternal Being, our oneness in God, or our God-Self, in which the indivisibility of the Son from his Father is restored to our awareness.  But all the while we allow the outer clamour of our self-made illusion to distract us from seeking within, our vision remains double, or defective, or functioning in duality-consciousness, so we cannot see with our true, flawless, single, inner eye, which is our Christ-Mind awareness.  Jesus explained this to us two thousand years ago:

The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye (i.e. vision) be single (in purpose), thy whole body (state of being, awareness) shall be full of light.  But if thine eye be evil (defective, double, flawed, dual), thy whole body (consciousness) shall be full of (spiritual) darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! (Mt. 6:22-23).

A crucial part of the game is that the One Son — us — pretends to be many.  But that which is created One is forever, unalterably, One.  There cannot be two, or more, ‘Ones’!  But within the illusion, the One Son was able to dream, or fantasise being many, separate, fragmented parts.  We all know that fantasy can appear to stretch, distort reality/truth, but only within fantasy; the truth remains unchangeably true, and the One, eternal Son remains, in truth, the One Son, eternally.

The fantasy of separation and fragmentation could only appear real by the Son voluntarily (who would impose it upon him!?) entering into a state of forgetfulness of his one, only, true Identity.  This forgetfulness is the state of the separated, split-off-from-Truth part of his mind.  As the Awakening progresses his mind is healed and restored to remembrance of the indivisible Oneness of the apparently myriad individual persona identities.

This is why true forgiveness of all seeming grievances is essential to the restoration process.  For, all the while a brother is perceived as having ‘sinned’ against (lied, cheated, stolen, murdered...) us, we will have a ‘valid’ reason for not wishing to be restored to (remembrance of our) oneness with him.  But fantasy does not alter the reality that all the wholeness, the oneness is, like a hologram, in all the parts, all the fragments.  Each of us fragments is the Light because the wholeness is the Light.  So, how does the separation ‘work’ and how does the fragmented Sonship get restored to oneness; how does forgetfulness get restored to remembrance?

If time and place is an illusion (it is), none of us is here, any more than a body we see in a nighttime dream is ‘there’.  That body has been projected from our mind onto a ‘screen’ and reflected back into our perception, appearing real to us within the dream.  But when we wake up in the morning, we realise the body we saw in the dream was not a ‘physical’ body, however real it seemed to be, because it was only in a dream.  Now let us take this up a step.  Our individual bodies are not real, and neither are our individual minds. 

The one Mind of the One Son is not in a body, but eternally unified in spirit, described best by Jesus in ACIM as follows:

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 (ie, 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.

(C-1.1)

This Mind of the Son, forever One in the Mind of God, is not a body; it is not in a body, nor is it in time and place.  How could it be in a state, or place that is not real, does not exist?  The One Mind is in Eternity, where It remains forever; unchangeably, indivisibly One.  Except that in a tiny instant the Son had the momentary thought of wondering what it would be like to be away from God.  That moment was over the instant it happened, but so powerful is Its creative energy that part of it seemed to enter a dream state, in which it seemed to be split off from the oneness of the Whole Mind.

That dream state is already over but the split-off part seems to be stuck in this state, from which it appears to be incapable of escape.  It is a kind of Catch 22 state, where judgements, grievances, guilt and fear hold it in its vise-like grip and the imaginary events of the dream keep repeating themselves.  Here is what Jesus says about this in ACIM:

Each day, and every minute in each day, and every instant that each minute holds, you but relive the single instant when the time of terror took the place of love.  And so you die each day to live again, until you cross the gap between the past (our illusory existence in separation, division, incompleteness, confusion) and present (the ‘always-now’ of Eternity), which is not a gap at all (other than in our dream of separation).  Such is each life; a seeming interval from birth to death and on to life again (reincarnation), a repetition of an instant gone by long ago that cannot (in reality) be relived.  And all of time is but the mad belief that what is over is still here and now.

Forgive the past and let it go, for it is gone.  You stand no longer on the ground that lies between the worlds (the dream world of fear, guilt, judgement, grievance, mortality... and the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, where all illusions are forgiven and released). You have gone on, and reached the world that lies at Heaven’s gate.  There is no hindrance to the Will of God, nor any need that you repeat again a journey that was over long ago.  Look gently on your brother, and behold the world in which perception of your hate has been transformed into a world of love.

(T-26.V.13,14)

This seemingly split-off, separated part of the Mind of Christ, the Son of God, is not in time and place — how can it be, since there is no such thing?; there is only here (Heaven, Eternity) and now (always) — but is projecting a phantasm within itself of an impossible state called separation, in which it appears to be all that it is not and never can be.  That unreal state is not wholeness, oneness, but fragmented, ever-dividing; not love-ful but fearful; not knowing but doubting; not joyful but sorrowful; not changeless perfection and contentment but fluctuating, searching, confusion, uncertain, questioning; not Light/Love/Life but darkness, fear, mortality...

This all seems inescapable, and within itself and of itself this carousel of seeming birth, separation, loneliness, guilt, fear and seeming death would keep on revolving indefinitely.  But the one, true Identity of Papa’s Son, though momentarily forgotten, is not lost, and could never be.  And the veil of pretence that appears to hide It from his/our sight is already ‘rent in twain’.  The projector that beams the dream of fragmentation is powering down because the Light of remembrance is shining ever more powerfully into his/our mind. 

This Light, which is Life, Truth, all-knowing, all-Loving is healing, awakening, restoring the divided mind to wholeness. The divided part of the Christ Mind, or ego, resists this healing process, but when we get to the place where we can re-cognise that all we have dreamt is nothing, that nothing has happened outside Heaven, we see that there is no cause for grievance, hate, attack, judgement, so we can let it all go, just as we let go a meaningless nighttime dream in the morning.

Until we reach that place of re-cognition, we have the tool of true forgiveness, in which we can practise forgiving our brother for what in reality (a reminder to us that what seems to have happened is not reality) has never actually happened; that it was a projection of made-up events from within the confused, dreaming, split-off part of Christ Mind.  Just as happens in a nighttime dream.

There is nothing to do, only to remember.  In Dialogue on Awakening, a book by Tom and Linda Carpenter, Jesus explains it this way:

Let me refresh your memory as to some of the things that you are not.  You are not confusion, you are not anger, you are not fear.  But when these things, these thoughts or feelings are in your conscious mind, then they will, in fact, be experienced.  Please do not understand or interpret this as being a negative thing or another reason to judge yourself as being lacking.  More clearly understand that all things that come to you are coming to you in direct response to what you have requested.  You have requested them by allowing them to be in your mind.

So I say again, there is nothing to change but your mind.  It will be most helpful for you to remember that this change is not one which results in efforting on your part to do something or think something that is other than that which already exists in your Mind.  What already exists there is being covered up by an illusion of who you think you are.  So don’t undertake this process of changing your mind with an attitude that says, “I must become something.”  Approach it more directly with a secure knowing on your part that the change is merely bringing you back into a realignment with what you have always been.  Think of it, if you will, as a process of bringing yourself out of a state of amnesia.

(My underlining, for emphasis)

Endless blessings for restoration to our true estate of Love, PEACE and Joy

Brian Longhurst

My son, draw closer to Me.  Open yourself to receive My love more.

Papa

September 7^th 2011

Dear Friends,

Jesus does not mince his words.  He tells it like it is, and because he speaks only truth, we will either like it now, or we will come to like it later.  Some of his teaching in ACIM seems very hard and can offend the sensibilities of those of us still yoked to a heavy investment in ego’s script.  But one thing is for sure; he does not say things to confuse, but to enlighten us, and if we are not yet ready to hear/accept some of the things he says, the moment will, inevitably, arrive when we will understand, and we can then be grateful that he is stretching, exercising our mind beyond the comfort level of our ‘old order’ (fear) thinking. Then will our comfort level be immeasurably greater.

In true, unchanging, Christ-Mind fashion he is as he was two thousand years ago.  In chapter 6 of John’s gospel he speaks of being the bread of life, sent down from Heaven, and if we eat of this bread we shall live forever; that unless we eat of his flesh and drink of his blood, we can have no life in us.  Few would believe these words are meant literally.  Who knows what his original words/terms were to get across the mystical intent he was intending to convey, and how they may have been lost or distorted in translation?

Nevertheless, the record shows that many of his followers murmured amongst themselves that this was a hard saying for them to accept, and subsequently... From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. (vs. 66)

Another thing of which we can be sure is that everything he shares with us about ourself, God, truth, eternity, our role in the Awakening of the fragmented Sonship to our Oneness with him in God is for the common good of the whole Sonship.  However much (or little) we may understand at one time, as we remain steadfastly committed to awakening to the truth of our Being, so will our step by step enlightenment continue, and our understanding grow.  So it is worth our while accepting what we can understand, or resonate with, feel at peace within about, spiritually strengthened by, confident in. 

That growth further increases our confidence that we are on the right track.  In contrast to his telling us what is right and true — however hard to accept or understand some of it may seem initially — ego’s script offers us pap that may seem easier to accept by an already-confused mind, but which contradicts itself and leads to deeper penetration into the wilderness of... well, bewilderment.  Happily, Truth will out, and is eventually irresistible — however ‘long’ it may seem to take — even to the most resisting mind.    

This may cause a sense of further confusion as we begin to start listening to Jesus and/or the Voice for God — our higher Self — if the voice of our ego is still causing us a feeling of resistance to the Light within us.  Hence the importance of keeping in mind how to discern the difference between the two voices.  The strident, clamorous voice of our ego may seem to satisfy us in the short term, but never leads to, or instils in us a state of inner peace.   

The still, small Voice within always speaks the truth, in a way or manner that we can either understand immediately, or is intended to get us thinking outside the box in which we have incarcerated our mind, to lead us toward an expanding understanding that will bring us Inner Peace, Joy, Love; and that means freedom, God-Self empowerment — just like Jesus — escape from the carousel of birth and death.

Here are some quotes from Jesus in ACIM, chapter 10, section V in which he does not mince his words.  To ego-yoked minds some of this may seem hard to accept, while other may be received as joyously inspiring, uplifting and affirming.  But none is intended to engender less than greater enlightenment, understanding and remembrance of our one, true Identity, and help us escape from our self-made illusions of limitation:

Many are afraid of blasphemy, but they do not understand what it means. They do not realize that to deny God is to deny their own Identity, and in this sense the wages of sin is death. The sense is very literal; denial of Life perceives its opposite, (duality, separation, mortality), as all forms of denial replace what is (eternity) with what is not (the illusion of time and place). No one can really do this, but that you can think you can and believe you have is beyond dispute.

~

You may believe that you judge your brothers by the messages they give you, but you have judged them by the message (by unconscious projection) you give to them (and is reflected back from them, causing the ego-confused mind to perceive its origin being in them). Do not attribute your denial of joy to them, or you cannot see the spark in them that would bring joy to you. It is the (your) denial of the spark (in them) that brings (you) depression, for whenever you see your brothers without it, you are denying (the presence of) God (in them, and thus, in ourself).

~

Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken (about our identity).  Yet this can be corrected and God will help you (but we must ask for His help, and then BELIEVE, or we cannot receive it, because our unbelief blocks our receiving the help), knowing that you could not sin against Him.

~

Your Father has not denied you.  He does not retaliate, but He does call to you to return.  When you think He has not answered your call, you have not answered His.  He calls to you from every part of the Sonship, because of His Love for His Son...  Look with peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing into your heart in gratitude for your gift to Him.

~

You are not sick and you cannot die.  But you can confuse yourself with things that do (outer forms, bodies, that we have made).  Remember, though, that to do this is blasphemy, for it means that you are looking without love on God and His creation (us), from which He cannot be separated.

~

If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering.  Yet to do this you must acknowledge Him as your Creator.  This is not because you will be punished otherwise.  It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father is the acknowledgment of yourself as you (really) are (in our unlimited, eternal grandeur).

~

You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God, in His Love, would not have it so....  God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him.  That was the condition of His Son’s creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God.  To know that is sanity.  To deny it is insanity.  God gave Himself to you in your creation, and His gifts are eternal.  Would you deny yourself to Him?

~

If God knows His children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive them as guilty.  If God knows His children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere (ego will not like this hot potato, for acceptance of it blasts a big hole in its defences J).  If God knows His children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed.  All of these illusions, and the many other forms that blasphemy may take, are refusals to accept creation as it (actually) is (not the hell on Earth with which we have supplanted It).  If God created His Son perfect, that is how you must learn to see him to learn of his reality.  And as part of the Sonship, that is how you must see yourself to learn of yours.  

~

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.

And this from T-11.1.10:

You are afraid to know God’s Will, because you believe it is not yours. This belief is your whole sickness and your whole fear.  Every symptom of sickness and fear arises here, because this is the belief that makes you want not to know.  Believing this you hide in darkness, denying that the Light is in you.

To our split-off-from-Truth mind these will be perceived as hard words to accept and apply in our lives, and will cause many who want to follow the Light of Eternal Truth only upon ego’s terms (an impossibility) to ‘go back and walk no more with him’.  So be it. It matters not at all, for in due season the Awakening comes to every fragment of the Sonship, because that is the truth of his Being, however far he may seem to be from the Light at the moment.

A few decades ago there arose a concept termed ‘tough love’, to try to restore reason to recalcitrant teenagers.  What Jesus says is not tough, though it may seem that way to an upside-down, recalcitrant mind.  Love — real, unconditional, perfect Love — is not tough because it always extends truth.  Sometimes that truth may seem hard to swallow, but if we are willing to swallow it — which we can do if we trust its source — we find it rests very easily within us once we have digested and assimilated it.   

Pap — the falsehoods of ego — on the other hand, may seem easier (for fearful, confused-by-absence-of-the-Light-of-spiritual-discernment, lonely souls) to swallow, but will provide little sustenance, and shortly leaves its consumer hungering for something more substantial.  Not all Jesus’ words are hard; ‘strong meat’, as described in chapter 5 of Hebrews.  Here are some sweetmeats from chapter 11 of ACIM to balance the intake and assist the digestion:

The laws of the universe do not permit contradiction.  What holds for God holds for you.  If you believe you are absent from God, you will believe that He is absent from you.  Infinity is meaningless without you, and you are meaningless without God.  There is no end to God and His Son, for we are the universe.

~

God has given you a place in His Mind that is yours forever.  Yet you can keep it only by giving it (to our brothers who perceive themselves as being without it), as it was given you... Love does not limit, and what it creates is not limited.  To give without limit is God’s Will for you, because only this can bring you the joy that is His and that He wills to share with you.  Your Love is as boundless as His because it is His. (Let us therefore remember this Love is ours to give, and freely give it.)

~

O my child, if you knew what God wills for you, your joy would be complete!  And what He wills has happened, for it was always true.  When the Light comes and you have said, “God’s Will is mine,” you will see such beauty that you will know it is not of you.  Out of your joy you will create beauty in His Name, for your joy could no more be contained than His.  The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven, and into the Presence of God.  I cannot tell you what this will be like, for your heart is not ready.  Yet I can tell you, and remind you often, that what God wills for Himself He wills for you, and what He wills for you is yours.

~

Only God’s Comforter can comfort you.  In the quiet of His temple (our own within), He waits to give you the peace that is yours.  Give His peace, that you may enter the temple and find it waiting for you.  But be holy (wholly) in the Presence of God, or you will not know that you are there.  For what is unlike God cannot enter His Mind, because it was not His Thought and therefore does not belong to Him... All your brothers must enter with you, for until you have accepted them you cannot enter.  For you cannot understand wholeness unless you are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded if he would know the Wholeness (Holiness) of his Father.

~

In your mind you can accept the whole Sonship and bless it with the Light your Father gave it.  Then you will be worthy to dwell in the temple with Him, because it is your will not to be alone.  God blessed His Son forever.  If you will bless him in time (ourself and all our brothers), you will be in eternity.  Time cannot separate you from God if you use it on behalf of the eternal.

(My emboldening and some italic, for emphasis)

A Course in Miracles is full of truth.  To ego, much of it will be an irritant; to our soul and our sincerely seeking mind it will be healing balm.

Love and blessings for Peace within,

Brian Longhurst

An error can never become true however many times you repeat it. The truth can never be wrong, even if no one hears it.~

Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi.

September 14^th 2011

Dear Friends,

We may think seeing only the face of Christ in our brother(s) is very difficult because when our perception of him is with our bodily senses, the images we receive are clouded by so many ego issues.  But we are not seeing him when our receptors are bombarded by what appear to be all his ego issues.  We are seeing our own ego issues, because we have projected them onto him from ourself, as our ego mind’s denial that they are ours. 

After all, no-one wants to admit (even to themself) they are guilty, fearful, judgemental, hold grievances; and especially in today’s degenerating society there is no lack of evidence of the rapidly developing — dare I say exploding? — blame culture.  And that evidence is merely the tip of the iceberg.  We all are that iceberg.  Far more projection goes on below parapets, within our fear-filled, guilt-laden unconscious mind than can be consciously discerned; so terrible is it that we cannot, dare not, countenance it. 

Lack of conscious awareness does not mean such projections are not happening; nor does it mean they are not immeasurably more effectual than ego-mind wants us to know.  If we knew how damaging, how destructive, how far-reaching is the influence of such dark emanations we would have a tiny glimpse of how powerful the mind of the Son of God really is, even in its fragmented, confused, upside-down, back-to-front state.  And if we could see, for one instant, how they are reflected right back to/upon us, there would be a whole lot of mind-changing going on.

Because whether we project, radiate, emanate, extend — the terminology is incidental — guilt, fear, judgement, grievance, condemnation, hate or Love, peace, joy, blessing, all are simply reflected back to us from our brother.  Awareness or unawareness of, belief or disbelief in this makes no difference; the truth is true, reality is real irrespective of our recognition of it.

Most of the fragmented Sonship remains within the made-up belief, and thus, perception, that his unwitting projections are those of the brother he has judged, and not his own, so eager is he to disinherit them.  For so great is our guilt and fear that, if they are ours, we must be worthy of judgement and dire punishment. 

This, and the consequences of such ubiquitous misperception, will remain with us until we recognise the falsehood of it, and choose the truth of eternity as our reality.  This seems hard, but is actually immeasurably easier than our confused mind believes, because we are the truth (just like Jesus) and that is the reality of our Being.  And what ego also does not want us to know is that when we extend love, peace, joy, blessing, goodwill to our brother — regardless of outward appearances that he is our ‘enemy’ — they equally are reflected right back to us.  Awareness of this would, assuredly, cause even more rapid mind-changing.

Of course, unawareness remains — for the moment — the order of the game, and thus, for most, the game continues.  True vision, spiritual discernment, are scarce commodities when we believe we are confined to, imprisoned in, a limited, fragile, mortal body with but five sensory faculties to tell us what is happening, and those senses are devised specifically to prevent, or at least distract, us from knowing the truth, the reality of our Being.  Because we have inviolable free will, no-one, not even God or Jesus, can force the truth upon us.  We have to be willing to accept the truth, and when all our senses are telling us the opposite, this calls for faith.

Faith, trust, obedience to an imaginary Higher Being, belief in the intangible, unprovable is for sissies, weaklings, losers.  I want proof.  So says our ego.  And here is where we are, as always, at free choice as to what to believe.  Happily, truth needs no defences, no proof, no justification; it simply IS.  There, within us, always; not making a song and dance but waiting, quietly, with infinite patience for us to respond to its presence.  Because it is quiet and its Voice is soft and gentle, most of us find it hard to hear against the strident, raucous clamour of ego’s distractive construct: the without.

Here we all are, here it all is.  Look at it; get a telescope, a microscope, open your eyes and ears; engage brain and intellect and you have at your disposal all the proof you need of the reality of time and place.  Persuasive, isn’t it?  Real-seeming, isn’t it?  If we believe we are a body.  But bodies are a fleeting shadow and then they are gone.  And what remains?  Our mind and our spirit.  This is the truth, the everlasting truth of our Being, our real Self; Christ, Papa’s beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased, in whom He sees only the truth of our Light, our Love, our limitlessness.

We must first be willing to have a little faith, a little willingness to believe that there IS a still, small Voice within us, and a little motivation to be still; to go within, just as Jesus counselled us two thousand years ago.  Given that little faith, willingness, motivation, trust, which is all the Spirit of Truth, the Voice for God within asks of us, He will instantly respond.  But we must be willing also to begin this journey back to Oneness on His terms and conditions, and abandon ego’s demands for an instant fix.  The Spirit of Truth is timeless but leads us purposefully, beneficently, one step at a time. Not because He is doddery and infirm but because we are — spiritually. 

Back, then, to the plot:

The way to stop believing the ego issues are our brother’s is to recognise and accept the process that is actually taking place.  This means that we must acknowledge that we are projecting our own, illusory, issues ‘out there’.  Once we stop projecting illusions of guilt, fear and judgement they will stop being reflected back to us because there will be nothing to be reflected except the truth of our Being, which is Christ, which is Love, which is truth, peace, goodwill, blessing, beneficence.  This is then what we will see in our brother and recognise as the truth of his Being and ours, showing us unequivocally that we truly are one in Christ, the Son of our Father Creator.

The fast track to accomplishment of this transformation from flawed vision to true vision is true forgiveness, because by this releasing-from-karmic-entanglements process we acknowledge — re-mind ourself — that there is actually nothing to forgive, in our brother and in ourself.  This requires nothing on our part except motivation, commitment, steadfastness, because at first it seems very hard.  This is inevitable to a mind whose thinking has been so deeply ensconced in upside-down, illusory, time and place concepts.  

None of these can be real because they are unstable, keep changing, decay and disappear.  How can such concepts and percepts have any foundation in reality, when reality is the opposite of all such false beliefs and perceptions, is eternal and therefore does not, cannot, change, for if it could change it must have not been real in the first place?  How can such judgements, grievances, condemnations, divisive thoughts and attitudes belong to us, our true Self?  We are the Christ, the radiant, inextinguishable Light that is God’s Son.  That Light, imbued in His Son at his creation, is the essence of our Being because Light is Love, Truth, Peace and Joy, all indivisibly.

Orthodox Christians, who do not accept that divided, separated mankind, reunified as one, is the Christ, the Son of God, saying that Jesus alone is the one and only Son, nevertheless acknowledge that by loving him and following him it is our destiny to become like him, by emulating him:

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.   And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself (i.e. aspires so to do; the real purification is undertaken for us by the Holy Spirit, if we are willing to co-operate with Him), even as he (Jesus) is pure. (1 Jn. 3:2,3)

Whether we are an ‘orthodox Christian’, or in any other manner acknowledge Jesus as being the Light, and that it is therefore desirable to emulate him, or simply recognise that doing unto others as we would have them do to us, reason tells us that judgements, grievances, condemnations and divisive thoughts and attitudes cannot bring us (back) to the Light.  Whether we are ready to acknowledge it or not, that Light is within us.  It always has been and can never not be because it is who and what we are.  All appearances to the contrary are masquerade costumes we have donned for the game of make-believe.

The Light radiates, extends out from us and there is nothing that can stop it.  But in our game of pretending to be what we are not we can fantasise that we have placed shrouds of littleness and limitation over ourself.  Thus can we believe — and hence perceive — that the Light is covered, invisible, not present within us, and therefore, to our self-imposed limitation of awareness, there appears to be no Light in us. 

This is, for most of humanity, the belief in which we proceed from one incarnation to the next, seeking in the without for something credible, something of worth, in a vain attempt to give ourself some feeble, transitory, crumbling worth.  So, we adopt a doubly-false identity, to lead us further into the wilderness.  First, we allow ourself to be deluded into the perception that we are John, or Mary, male or female.  Our reality is that we are neither.  Male and female are parts, roles that we play to demonstrate, give ‘reality’ to our game of pretend. 

Male and female are not just a misperception that we call a body; they are an adopted state of mind devised to cover, to disguise the truth of our Self, and demonstrate our division, our separation, our limitation; to make the unreal real.  We are not a part, nor are we apart.  We are whole and we are one.

Next, in our double-identity role-play to keep us in the wilderness of forgetfulness, we adopt the role, play the part of butcher, baker, candlestick maker; servant, master, hero, martyr; success, failure, idol, idoliser.  There are many, many roles to play on this world we have made as our stage.  Some years ago, when my dad was drawing to the end of his sojourn in time, and he was spending a few days with us, he and I took our dog for a walk in the local city greenspace. 

As we walked and engaged in easy conversation, I suddenly became aware of my grandfather, whom we knew as Poppa. My dad (‘Pop’) knew of my awareness of our discarnate loved ones, and although he experienced no such awareness himself, did not question it in me.  I said to Pop, ‘Your dad is here’.  Immediately, Pop waved his hand in the air in salutation and said, ‘Hi, Dad’.  Instantly, Poppa lovingly responded — I heard him clearly, though Pop did not, so I conveyed his reply to Pop — ‘I’m not your dad anymore.’ 

This caused Pop considerable confusion and he said, ‘Well, if you’re not my dad anymore, what are you?’  Poppa’s reply, in which I was aware of the smile that infused his countenance, came immediately: ‘I am a fellow traveller on the journey back to eternal reality.’  He knew this would give Pop plenty to think about. 

When Pop laid aside his body a few years later they were quickly restored to loving fellowship in the etheric counterpart of Earth, and Pop’s progress on his own journey back to eternal reality has been proceeding well.  Further, his more careful planning of his next incarnation, under wise counsel from loving souls, including Jesus, from the Realms of Light, is further facilitating his Awakening sooner, rather than later.   This will ensure a collapsing of time for him , saving him an indeterminate number of further incarnations into the wilderness of forgetfulness, conflict and confusion.

We are all on this same journey, and it will serve us all well if we are willing to seek and respond willingly to that wise counsel.  I can attest, from many decades of personal experience, that there is no wiser counsellor than Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life, to transform us, awaken us, lovingly, gently, caringly, to the remembrance that we all, also, are the Truth and the Life.

Love and endless blessings,

Brian Longhurst

PS:  Theresa and I will be away next week, so there will be no MoE; but by the grace of God, there will be the following week.

Because you only experience those things which are in your mind, when you have accepted Reality, it is all you will experience.

Jesus, in Dialogue on Awakening, by Tom & Linda Carpenter

September 28^th 2011

Dear Friends,

The switchover from duality (separation) perception to singularity (Oneness) awareness seems like a big switch and most of us experience moments — some of them prolonged — of doubt, fear, uncertainty and severe testing of our faith and trust in the benign, Loving nature of our Creator during the process.  And, of course, faith in the emerging, growing awareness of our own True Being. This is hardly surprising, considering we have been upside-down in our perceptions, understanding, beliefs; and since they seemed so real, did our best to accept and make them our truth. 

To begin to realise they are a cockamamie nonsense can be a considerable cause of disorientation, as we undergo in our mind a phase of oscillation between reality and illusion, between our old, ego-thought system and awakening to remembrance of the truth of our Whole Mind.  This transitional phase requires many adjustments to transform us from the perception that our identity is that of a separate persona (‘John’, ‘Mary’ etc.) to the Self Realised state of our True Being — right along with Jesus — as the Christ, the reunified one Son of the Father Creator.

Many of those we know (and love) who are growing in commitment to the journey Home as delineated by Jesus, in ACIM and many other outlets, and have taken/are taking the decisive step to embrace the changes that eschew ego’s script and espouse that of the Voice for God are experiencing some severely disruptive, disturbing events, feelings, emotions, changes in their outer, time-and- place lives and relationships.  This can be deeply, profoundly distressing, and calls upon all our resources of faith, trust, obedience — to our inner guidance — and commitment (FTOC).  

Ego does not let go its hold on us easily, knowing that a bumpy ride will shake numerous fragments off the Path and into its pits that line the Way Home.  Many, nascent in their journey, unsure of the Path, set out in faith, but fear and doubt — that great dismantler of faith — weakens their commitment and they fall by the wayside, prey to ego’s attack.  Yet none of this disturbs Jesus’ equilibrium, for he knows the end from the beginning, and sees clearly that all shall reach our one and only Destination, safe and sound. He knows of a certainty, as we also are coming to know, that nothing that is not of God’s benign, Loving Will is, nor can it be, true, and shall pass.

We all experience such wobbles, to a greater or lesser degree; some of us experience them every day, and can be duped — from the illusory perspective of having fallen into one of ego’s many pits — into thinking that it is our guilt, our unworthiness that is the cause of such fearful experiences.  This is where steadfastness, holding fast, is called for and pays inestimable, limitless dividends.  In June 1991 our beloved friend, ‘the Teacher’ (John, the beloved disciple, author of the 4^th Gospel and Revelation) said: 

All is well; all is according as the Lord of Life would have it.  His programme goes forward and we go forward with it.  Of course there are and will be steps to be taken which will be painful because they will bring souls from where they (believe they) are, in less than ideal, Kingdom conditions, to where they begin to desire to be — from darkness into Light.  The leaving behind of the paraphernalia of the darkness seems to be a painful separation at the time but as continuing forward progress is made, so the casting off of that which is recognised as no longer needful is less anguishing.

I counsel you and all troubled by distressing Earth-life circumstances: Hold fast to that which you know to be true, right and of eternal values; such shall stand you in good stead and serve you well as strength and support.  Do that which you perceive necessary; let love, compassion, caring, kindness, goodwill and resolve guide your thoughts and actions at all times, especially of decision.

And let your heart and mind be aware of those in the Realms of Light who care also for you.  You (all) who travel the Earth-life path are not alone.  We are ever close to you.  All is known from the beginning and serves its purpose in the going forward.  Peace be in your hearts.  I bless you always.

In 1978, when we were experiencing troubling events and I had a moment of wondering if I could stay the journey, Jesus immediately spoke, saying:

Do you think you can abandon the Path you chose long ago?  The only alternative is to revert to the ways of unrighteous mammon.  You know in your heart of hearts that this would be anathema to you. Hold fast; I am with you always.  I can be your staff to assist you in the steep places, but I cannot be your feet.  You must take the steps and I will be your guide and shall never forsake you.

He, and others under Christ authority from the Realms of Light, has spoken often over the decades of ‘holding fast’.  In these turbulent times of chaos — personal and universal — I share a couple more extracts here from the Diary of a Christ Communicant records.

This, from October 1992:

 ...I started to get illumination concerning the collapse and disintegration of the old order and how we must cleave to the new order manifesting from the within — our own within — to counterbalance effects of the negative, destructive forces of the old as it impacts upon our earth-life circumstances in its disintegrating activity.

At the consecration of the Fruit of the Vine, the Master said, ‘This is the cup of my salvation.’

Beloved Master Jesus, all around and in my own life circumstances disintegration brings anxiety and stress.

Turn within and hold fast, my son, to that which you have received, that which you know, that which is new, that which is alive, that which grows; the new order of enlightened being and living, for it is restoring, life-giving, uplifting and renewing to the souls of all who will receive of it.  The Kingdom of God reality moves forward and comes into the lives of the children of Earth also.  And it comes to bring joy and fulfilment for all who will espouse it, without price.  It seems to little ones of Earth-life perspective that there is a great price — great loss and sacrifice and pain and suffering, and that this is God’s punishment for their sinful waywardness.  But I say to you, my son, this is not the Way of the Father. 

He desires only to comfort and nurture His little ones and give of His bounty.  The apparent sacrifice and loss is in giving up the ways of the mammon of unrighteousness, wherein the children of Earth have been ensconced.  It is the separation process that causes pain, for the little ones desire to hold onto that which is not eternal.  As that which passes away separates from their attachment so does anguish and pain ensue, caused by their vain attempts to hold on.  And when these little ones awaken to that which the Father freely gives to them — eternal life — and all the good things which accompany it; and which they need not grasp onto, for it is theirs truly and freely, with plenty for all; and that it shall always be theirs, and that no-one can take it away from them, then shall they gladly let go of all that has brought them pain and suffering, and they shall realise that such has not been the Father’s doing, but rather their own lack of at-onement with the Father.

I am the guide of all who are ready to give up that which they think they have because they are holding onto it, and who are willing to open their hearts, their hands, their lives and receive that which is rightfully, eternally theirs.

Peace, be still, and learn of me.  All is well.

And this, from November 1992:

...Beloved Lord Jesus, this has been a blessed experience, with the Inner Plane of Love, Joy, Peace very close, as if I am almost part of it and it part of me.

Spoken truly, beloved... for of a truth this is where you belong, this is where you are from and this is now where you are, and shall increasingly be henceforward.  And as you go forward from this place so shall your singleness of vision increase and draw the earthly sight into oneness with it so that the two gradually become one vision.

As this happens so shall your understanding and awareness of the realities of the Father’s creation increase and the Laws and Principles by which it operates and the simplicity of the plan for the children of Earth become ever more known to, and understood by, you.

Doubt not that this shall be, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom, and nothing is hidden that shall not be revealed, even unto the least of the children of the Kingdom...  I shall be with you at each step, that ye falter not, neither stumble and fall.  Hold fast, Little One, and this vessel shall come to no ill in the tempest, but shall safely arrive at its ever-intended destination.

Peace, be still, and rejoice; for joy and fulfilment are at hand.  All is well.

We do well to allow ourself to effect this switchover from duality to singularity one step at a time, and with Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit placed firmly at the helm, with our self-limited persona identity standing well back, in receptive mode for all guidance.  Many of us are now aware, or becoming aware, that the Holy Spirit, described by Jesus in ACIM as the Voice for God, is our Link, during the dream of time and place, to our true Being as Papa’s one Son, the Christ.  The Link is, like God and Jesus, within us, indivisibly, inseparably in our Heart-Mind, and there is, in reality, no difference between our true Being and the Spirit of Truth.

Many of us are progressing well in our communing with the Holy Spirit in our mind.  This frequently takes the form of a dialogue between our limited-self mind and Holy Spirit Mind.  Depending upon our state of receptiveness during such moments, much illumination can take place.  If none appears to be the case, it would be an error to believe that to be so.  For the Voice for God operates outside time, and may, if we have placed too many blocks to receiving enlightenment at that moment, deliver the response at another moment, and perhaps in a manner other than words. 

Ego would have us believe that an apparent lack of response at the moment is because either there is no-one there to answer us, or that we cannot receive the answer because we are guilty, unworthy; sinners, incapable of receiving such majesty in our fallen-from-Grace state.  Poppycock.  Surrender, allowing, acceptance, letting-go of attachment to results enable the channels to open to the flow of inspiration in our communing, for the Light of Discernment of eternal, spiritual truth to flood in and illumine our mind to greater awareness, greater remembrance, one step, one moment at a time.

Theresa and I have been aware for some while that experiencing such communing as a dialogue, though highly serviceable to our progress, inevitably brings us at some point to the awareness that it functions within our perception of being separate; ‘little, limited self’ endeavouring to communicate with a Mind that is other than our own.  An example might be, ‘Holy Spirit, can You help me (little self) progress more meaningfully, with fewer toe-stubbings along the Way?’  This is an acknowledgement (albeit, erroneous) that Holy Spirit is other than, separate from, who we are.  Holy Spirit is thus ‘You’, second person pronoun. 

In truth, Holy Spirit is first person pronoun: ‘I’, because there is no difference, no distance, no separation; we and Holy Spirit are One, indivisibly.  So, Theresa started changing the Identity title, in her communing, from Holy Spirit (H.S.) to Holy Self (also H.S.).  Holy and whole are the same, so from re-minding ourself that one is Holy Self, we can envision our Being as Whole Self.  As our mind is led, by our Holy Self, through the step by step process of healing, being restored to wholeness, so do we awaken to the remembrance of our Whole Self, our True Being, forever, unalterably One, in God.

Love and endless blessings for our journey Home together, to Oneness,

Brian Longhurst

My job is to lead you back to God

(Jesus)

October 5^th 2011

Dear Friends,

As mentioned on previous occasions, many people are curious about Jesus and at the same time fearful about him.  Curious, as indicated by the fact that, during this pivotal phase of the unfolding Great Rescue Programme, in which the fragmented Sonship is moving away from institutionalised religion, more and more are moving toward spirituality. 

Institutionalised religion is about control and fear — one could even say control by fear — and spirituality is about Love and freedom.  The word Love is shown with a capital L to indicate it refers to Perfect, unconditional Love, the Love of God, of Christ and of all who are in a state of one-mindedness with Them, as distinct from ‘romantic love’ which is limited, exclusive, and therefore, conditional. 

At a deep level in the heart-mind of us all we ‘know’ Jesus represents something that we all are seeking: the Truth of our Being.  Hence, our ‘curiosity’.  We have, over centuries, and indeterminate numbers of masquerades in time and place, sought to know him through ever-squabbling, corrupt, murderous, ever-dividing (through schisms), judging, un-Christ-like religion, and it has brought us to this pass.  That, because we have not followed his counsel to seek the Kingdom (i.e. our True Being) within ourself.  And, if we play the percentage game, how many of us even have the faintest idea what that means?

Hence, fearful (about Jesus) because for many centuries the (Laodicean) institutionalised Christian Church has told us that we are sinners and he is coming (again) ‘to judge the quick and the dead’.  However much increasing numbers of us are consciously waking to the realisation that this is a calumny of monstrous proportions (I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. Jn.12:47), we cannot tell the unconscious impact this has had upon our psyche, from one incarnation to the next. 

But we need not delve very far below the ‘veneer of civilisation’ to discern that the collective mind of humanity is in a dark place.  Assuredly we delude ourself further if we believe such ego-inspired, upside-down dogmas have not contributed substantially to this impacted state of our illusory being.

Jesus does not want us to continue in a state of worshipful devotion to him, which is where the ‘second-measure-of-meal’ religious constructs would have us remain.  This is because we go forward into the fulfilment, third, final measure of meal, in which the Son of God is restored to full awareness and experience of his God-filled, God-Realised state.  This is effected by Jesus preparing us for remembrance of our likeness to him; of our Holy, Whole, God-Self. 

Hence the fading out, in synchrony with the passing of the Piscean Age, of the second, Jesus, measure of meal in which Jesus was worshipped as the Christ, God’s only Son.  He is that, along with us, his brethren in the Sonship, and he wants us to ‘come up higher’, to his level of Being, where we rightly belong.  He wants us to remember our true Being as one with, equal to, his God-Realised state of Being.  He is unequivocal in ACIM that awe should be reserved solely for our Creator, and that we should rightfully, simply honour him (Jesus) as our Brother who is helping us to remember our equality with him.

In chapter 15 of John’s gospel he is recorded as saying:

If ye keep my commandments (i.e. follow his counsel), ye shall abide in my love (many of us may think we are abiding in a state of love, but unless/until we [truly aspire, commit, to] live in a state of oneness with his counsel we cannot abide in — that is to say, experience, know, Be — the Love that he is, which is identical to the Love of the Father; i.e. ineffable, rapturous, all-encompassing ecstatic Joy); even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.  These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full (i.e. complete, unwavering, eternal).

This is my commandment (i.e. counsel, advice, strong recommendation; for love cannot be ‘commanded’), That ye love one another, as I have loved you.   Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends (or, spiritual brothers, equals within the Sonship of the Father); for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

In ACIM Jesus reminds us that it takes but one fully Awake Son of God to save all the rest of the apparently fragmented Sonship from what would otherwise seem to be an endless series of rides on the carousel of birth and death.  It doesn’t take two guesses at who such a fully Awake Son might be, but exactly how will this astonishing feat be accomplished?  Not, for sure, by being a required, once and for all blood sacrifice as propitiation for our sins to assuage the wrath of an angry God. 

The absurdity, the impossibility of a God being at once unconditionally loving and so consumed by hate of His Children’s (apparent) sinfulness that He would require such a brutally executed sacrifice to dampen down His wrath — an oxymoron if ever there was one — beggars belief.  Truly we can give thanks that the epoch (the second measure of meal) in which such a perception held sway is now behind us, and fading from our awareness as we move ever forward into the New Dawn and our Awakening to the Light of Eternal Day.

Without the Holy Spirit to shine the Light of eternal Truth into our upside-down, separated, fragmented, guilt- and fear-filled minds, it would not be possible for us to understand the Truth.  So, hearing, seeing, reading the Truth, such as is expressed in A Course in Miracles, would have little or no effect on our slumbering minds.  Reading, or hearing the words — and even knowing the definition of the words — does not instil understanding of their meaning when strung together into sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books. 

This, because such are put together in a way to convey meaning that is essentially mystical, spiritual, esoteric, and points to the fact that the only reality is Eternity, and all our conditioning in time and place is toward accepting that time and place is reality.  If we have chosen the latter as reality, we have excluded the former from being our reality; the two are irreconcilable.

How the rescue, the salvation, by but one Awakened Brother, of all the rest of his identity-confused brothers is possible — indeed, inevitable — is by calling down the Holy Spirit into the world.  This was the purpose of Jesus’ incarnation. All else for which Jesus is renowned — the miracles, the crucifixion, the resurrection — were to get our attention; to establish his credentials; to demonstrate that he knew something the rest of us clearly did not; to indicate he was worthwhile listening to, so that we would take notice of him and at least some of us would aspire to follow him (... keep my commandments...) and thus, become like him. 

This, so that... ye shall abide in my love... and ...that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full (i.e. complete, unwavering, eternal).  It is noteworthy that by abiding in his Love our Joy is full.  When we ‘fall in love’ we experience great joy, but the joy of which Jesus speaks is of a dimension — spiritual, mystical — far, far beyond time and place, ‘Earth-mind’ comprehension.  Such Love and Joy are hand-in-glove, along with Peace, and all indivisible from each other.

Jesus incarnated to be an embodiment, or manifestation, of the Holy Spirit, or Spirit of Truth, or, in other words, to bring the Spirit of Truth into the dimension to which his slumbering brethren have limited themselves, so that he could demonstrate Reality to us, right here in unreality. When he had completed his bodily mission and was ready to return to Reality he said to the disciples: “Peace be unto you... ”  And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.”  (Jn. 20:21,22).

The first time I encountered the Holy Spirit, in October 1997, He said to me “I am the Spirit of Truth; the Holy Breath”.  So clearly, if Jesus was the embodiment of the Holy Spirit, breathing on the disciples was imbuing them — or at least preparing them for being imbued — with the Spirit of Truth.  The ‘full Monty’ event then occurred some 50 days later, as recorded in Acts, chapter 2.

Here is what Jesus himself says about the Holy Spirit, in ACIM part 6 of the section entitled Clarification of Terms:

6. 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.  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 (for those of time and place consciousness but who espoused, or joined, their lives to Jesus, the embodiment of Holy Spirit, the Holy ‘Breath’ of God) to accept Him and to hear His Voice.  His is the Voice for God, and has therefore taken form (as Jesus, and in truth, us all).  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.  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 (i.e. our part in our restoration to Oneness).  The Atonement principle was given to the Holy Spirit long before Jesus set it in motion.

The Holy Spirit is described as the remaining Communication Link between God and His separated Sons.  In order to fulfill this special function the Holy Spirit has assumed a dual function.  He knows because He is part of God; He perceives because He was sent to save humanity.  He is the great correction principle; the bringer of true perception, the inherent power of the vision of Christ.  He is the light in which the forgiven world is perceived; in which the face of Christ alone is seen.  He never forgets the Creator or His creation.  He never forgets the Son of God.  He never forgets you.  And He brings the Love of your Father to you in an eternal shining that will never be obliterated because God has put it there.

The Holy Spirit abides in the part of your mind that is part of the Christ Mind.  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 (regardless of our unawareness of that reality).   Your brother (Jesus, and/or, indeed, any who remember their part in the At-onement) calls to you (i.e. ALL of us) 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 (the redemption or restoration cannot be complete without the inclusion of all the fragments of the Sonship).  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.

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

Love, Joy and Peace in our oneness,

Brian Longhurst

“Thank you, Jesus, for helping me

to see, and love, all my brothers

as I see and love you.”

October 12^th 2011

Dear Friends,

When I first heard that everything in time and place is upside-down I had trouble accepting that this could possibly be so; that we have misunderstood much about Reality seemed entirely plausible — since time and place manifestly is not eternity — but surely, not all.  Yet the more we consider this, and the implications of it, the more inevitable becomes the conclusion that this is correct.  One of the key reasons the slumbering Sonship does not see eternal truth (the only truth there is or can ever be) is that — having limited his discernment capability to only what the bodily senses show him, he then relies on intellect to interpret those perceptions — he is hopelessly distracted by detail.

As previously observed, ‘the devil is in the detail’, but Papa is in the principle.  Jesus introduced me to his term Principles of Life of the Father (PLFs) back in the 1960s, and has used the term on numerous occasions since, to bring to my attention that God’s Creation (Eternity) functions according to immutable Laws, or Principles, and these Principles govern everything in Creation and the functionality of creativity.  Hence Its perfection and immutability.  Most of humanity is so mesmerised by details that the PLFs escape their attention, and so their lives lurch and whirl from one distraction (or should that be destruction?) to the next.

But the details that distract, divert, sidetrack us from the Truth of our Being do not have their cause in the PLFs and the reason this is incontrovertibly so is that the PLFs are of Eternity, but the distracting details are of time and place, and therefore, cannot have their causative origin in Eternity.  That, one might observe, is a PLF. J 

Thus, with attention riveted to details — and a determination to comprehend them by examining them in ever-more detail, in the sad, mistaken belief that this will enable the bigger picture to be seen and understood — does the involvement with, the focus upon, details further and ever further obscure our true vision of the PLFs.  It is a case of inability to see the wood for the trees.

Visionaries, including Einstein, have surmised for centuries — even millennia — that the physical universe is an illusion, yet mainstream science continues to believe that if they can only a) see further and further out into the depths of macro space and b) further down into the micro space of sub atomic particles, they will determine our origins, and the origin of all life and creation.  All this, and the trillions committed to such endeavours, without taking a step back and pausing to consider that life, or rather, Life, is not physical; that we are not a body.  Any who do take such a step are rapidly cast out as freaks, renegades, trouble-makers, boat-rockers, lunatics, heretics etc. 

Such a pause and a step back from the detail might enable an alternative perspective to heave into view that would bring the stepper into atonement with inspiration, leading to greater insight and discernment of the PLFs behind, or governing, the matter at hand.  But this calls for the missing ingredient in consensus reality: faith; a belief in what can neither be discerned with the bodily senses nor rationalised with the intellect. 

This is because both bodily senses and intellect are faculties specifically devised to mislead, divert, distract us from the truth, so that we can continue believing that the illusion of time and place, with its myriad distracting details, and all that seems to be of it — i.e., temporal — is reality.

Faith is a taboo word in the hardcore realm of material science.  This is a realm that calls for proof, not faith.  Here is one of the prime indicators that the belief in time and place being reality is upside-down. Science, rationale, ego all say, ‘Show me and then I will believe; I need proof.  How can I believe what my senses and my intellect tell me isn’t true, isn’t real?’ That is the nub of what is keeping us limited, vulnerable, mortal; trapped in a body that gets old and sick and dies; doubting, judgemental, confused; fearful, guilty, lonely — all the things that are the opposite of our Source, Being, Reality.

It is our very unwillingness to believe that places a veil, a block, a barrier in front of our (true) vision.  Our eyes, and other bodily senses, are all part of our costume to help us believe in our masquerade of littleness.  They are self-devised (for, assuredly, our Creator, He Who created us in His Own, unlimited likeness would not cloak us in limitation) to show us — ‘prove’ to us — that all we perceive by them as being ‘out there’ is reality, and thus endlessly distract us from discovering, remembering our unfettered reality that has forever been within us.

Until we are willing first to believe, in faith and trust — blind trust, not because God demands that of us, or that He blinds us; we have veiled our own sight — we will never truly see.  We have to be willing to believe first and then we will see, because it is our very unbelief that has placed the blocks, the barriers, the veils before our true, soul, Whole Self, spirit vision.  Our bodily sight is not our true vision because we are not a body; our spiritual sight is our true vision because we are eternal, immortal spirit; Christ, Papa’s beloved Son.

But in what, or whom, must we place our faith, in order for the veil (that causes our sight to be flawed, double, upside-down) to be lifted and our vision restored to its true, whole, limitless, single, all-seeing and thus, all-knowing state?  The Church, in all its multifarious, schismatic manifestations would have us believe in what they tell us, with all its conditionality.  Governments would have us place our trust in them, to deliver us from all evil.  Science would solve all our ills.  All sound sadly hollow and untrustworthy, within the only context that ultimately matters: Eternity/God. 

This is because That/He is our Source, our Destiny, our Home, and most of us are ill-prepared for that destination when we place a preponderance of our trust in institutions, or indeed, anything else temporal.  As Jesus said to Olga Park in 1948, ‘...the spirit of reckoning standing in the place of faith’.

Surely, then, we must commit, endeavour, aspire to trust first in our Source.  But we seem to be so separate from Him, and know so little about Him.  Who says so?  This, assuredly, is what the voice in our head — rationale, based on past experience and doubt, otherwise known as ego — has been telling us since the dawn of time.  In fact, this very voice caused time to dawn and become our belief, our experience, our ‘reality’.

That voice, which is an alien voice, is mistaken in its entirety.  Time to listen to another Voice.  That Voice is also in our head... well, mind, actually.  Unlike that other voice — which is raucous and arrogant to cover its doubt, guilt and fear — this quiet Voice is not alien.  It is our own Voice.  It is the Voice for God. 

There are those who believe this Voice could not be our own Voice and the Voice for God; that this would be equating our self with God, a heresy. Indeed, that would be a heresy.  But to equate our Self with God would be Truth indeed, for Papa’s Son is created forever, unchangeably in His likeness, and our Self is that one, beloved Son, the Christ.  

To confuse what we have so long believed to be our self with our true, unlimited Self is to be confused indeed.  But that is all in the past — if/when we are willing to let it be so, to consign it there as an act of our forever-free choice.  That voice is an interloper we have literally dreamed up, and has only the power over us that we ascribe to it.  In Reality it has no power at all.  Thank God. 

We will serve ourself well to reacquaint ourself with our Self, and to be willing to be still and listen to our Holy Self.  But how can this be done, in a clamorous world?  Jesus told us two thousand years ago:  But thou, when thou prayest (i.e. commune), enter into thy closet (our own inner Being, away from the frenetic, outer world), 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 (with remembrance of Self) openly. (Mt. 6:6.)

That interloping voice, that would have us believe it is who we are, will say, ‘But I am fearful of God; I am unworthy of His love, and am afraid to get His attention, lest He judges and punishes me.  In fact, I feel He is already punishing me, with all the fears and woes with which I am beset. I would rather continue trying to hide away from Him for as long as possible, here in time and place, where I can ignore Him with all these distractions; pretend, even, that He doesn’t exist, and hope against hope that He is ignoring me.’ 

Fine.  No worries, as our Australian cousins would say.  Papa is completely unconcerned.  That’s the way it is with Truth and unconditional, Perfect Love. So, let’s ignore Him as long as possible.  A few years; a few decades?  But as we get inexorably nearer to what we perceive as our inevitable ‘death’, that deceiving voice will keep reminding us that our approaching judgement and punishment is looming ever closer.  And the falsely-founded fear and guilt become less and less able to be ignored.  This is how it is for the vast mass of the fragments of Papa’s beloved Son. 

This is not our truth, though we have believed it (or some variation of it) for how many masquerades?  And continuing in that belief will ensure an indeterminate number of further illusory turns on the carousel of birth and death.  All the while we think/believe we are that interloping voice in our head, that judges, compares, questions, doubts, fears, harbours shame, guilt, envy, we can never know Inner Peace; the Peace of God, that is beyond the comprehension or experience of the author of that other, interloping voice.

This Peace is nothing to do with our Earth-mind comprehension of the word — most often used to imply cessation of hostilities in yet another conflict.  It is an absolute tranquillity, stillness, inner calm, serenity.  Words can never describe Papa’s Peace.  Only when we have experienced it — even if for just a tiny moment — can we know, of a certainty beyond all doubt, that it means all is totally, unalterably well; that we are safe, loved, accepted, blessed, nurtured; that there is nothing we need, for we both have and are everything, forever.  This is what being created in the Likeness of Papa means.

There is nothing about the script of the bogus voice that is representative of our true nature.  In fact, that voice is, simply, nothing.  We have paid court to it for too long, and now its time is up.  Within us, closer than hands and feet, is our God-given Voice for Truth.  God-given means it is ours.  What God has given can never be taken away.  We can believe it has been withdrawn from us because we are ‘unworthy, sinners, who have fallen from God’s Grace because of our sinfulness’.  But belief and fact are not always in synchrony, and they certainly are not in this instance. 

We have not fallen from Grace because we have not ‘sinned’.  A momentary dream is not real and therefore cannot be a sin. When we believe illusion it remains but a belief, and misplaced belief soon becomes doubt, uncertainty, confusion.  When we believe the Truth, Truth’s silent witnesses attest to Its Reality, and belief rapidly transforms into knowledge.  Truth’s silent witnesses include Peace, Joy, Comfortableness and an inner certainty of Knowing.  Then are we, once more, aware that we are Awake and have always been.  What seems like the long, drawn-out, painful experience of linear time will be seen to have never been.

Then will Jesus’ words in Tom and Linda Carpenter’s wonderful book Dialogue on Awakening be seen, be known to be our truth:

‘As time does not exist in Reality, the moment you thought you went to sleep and the moment that you must choose to Awaken will be the same moment.’

Peace, Joy, Love are ours.  We seem to have thrown them away.  By faith, trust, forgiveness of our misperceptions, a little willingness to surrender self back into the trustworthy care of our Whole, Holy Self, the Voice for God, the Comforter, we can receive and accept All unto our awareness again.

Endless blessings for our re-joining,

Brian Longhurst

The condition that blocks your vision of the Kingdom reality is not imposed upon you, or upon anyone else.  The Kingdom is there for all to see, out in the open.  The barrier to the vision is self-imposed by the children of Earth.

Jesus, 28.2.88

October 19^th 2011

Dear Friends,

There is an ancient Buddhist saying that states: 

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.  After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

Many of us have the idea that after our spiritual enlightenment, or Awakening, everything in our life will suddenly, miraculously change, and all in the garden will be rosy. Everything does suddenly, miraculously change, but not in our outward circumstances.  Awakening, or, more accurately, remembering that we are already Awake, and always have been, is a process that takes place in our within; in our mind. 

The only way to ensure outward change will be meaningful and fulfilling is to first change our mind about the world we see, and this will enable the outer world and our inner world, or state of Being, to be harmonised.  It may well follow that events and circumstances will change in our outward experience, but the cause of any such changes will be effected automatically, without the need for input of any limited-self determination.   Our enlightenment is the process whereby the self-imposed blocks that limit the awareness of our true Being, or Whole Self, are laid aside, abandoned dispelled.

This is not something that is done to us by God, or any ‘other’ being outside ourself.  It is our own choice, to co-operate with our already-Whole Self — the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Breath, the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit, the ‘X Factor’  — Who is our indivisible connection with all the fragments of the Sonship and with Papa.  This universal, Whole, Holy Self is always with us, and will remove the blocks, open the door (see Rev. 3:7) that we have closed to our right mind, thus allowing the Light to shine into our seemingly split-off mind and enlighten it, heal it, once we are willing to allow this, authorise the process, accept it, surrender self-control to Self-release; self-imprisonment to Self freedom.

This causes, enables us to see the world differently.  This is because the world we see is a projection of our misperception of reality.  It is a misperception because we are seeing everything upside down.  This is what happens with projection.  A slide transparency or film shows upside down when projected through a lens onto a screen, and only appears to be the right way up when we turn the slide or film upside down to project it.  This is the way it is in what seems to ego-mind perception to be the real world.  It appears to ego as the real world because it is an ego projection of separation, which is ego’s domain.

We are reminded in ACIM that every loving thought, every blessing, every kindness is Real and lasts forever because its Source is God, but everything else that appears real, such as war, cruelty, scarcity, greed, death... only appears real because we believe it and judge it so.  Such is, therefore, a misperception by an upside-down mind, based on past experience, which we have dreamt up.  When we choose to believe, remember, accept that there is no past, because the only Reality is Eternity, which is forever NOW, all that is not Real — the ‘past’ — is recognised as having never happened and ceases to be part of our experience.

This will not happen instantly in terms of our made up device known as linear time, but if we are steadfast in our commitment to, belief in, desire for seeing only the real world and the Truth, the Oneness of our Being, then the unreal world begins to fade from our awareness and the real world of love, peace and joy arises before us, filling our vision. What is left in our experience then is every loving thought, blessing, kindness, selflessness.  Nothing else.  There IS nothing else, because all else we have merely dreamt, and is not Real.  This ‘real world’ is the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth; Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

What appears to be happening in the outer world does not have to affect our inner kingdom, but what is happening in our inner kingdom always affects the outer world.  If our inner kingdom is in disarray (misperceiving mind), full of negative thoughts of despair, fear, guilt, judgement — all the usual suspects — we are projecting all that into the outer, whether we are consciously aware of it or not.  If our inner Kingdom (right, Holy Spirit-attuned mind) reflects the state of our True Being — Love, Peace, Joy, Blessing — we cannot help but share, extend that state of Being outwards to all our brothers, without exception (just like Jesus J).

Our mind is cause, the world is effect.  Change our mind (cause) and we change the world (effect).  Chopping wood, carrying water can seem like drudgery to the unenlightened mind.  But to the fully enlightened mind, being nailed to a cross is nothing other than an opportunity to get the attention of as many brothers as are willing during that second measure of meal (the Piscean Age), and demonstrate that ego’s tawdry trump card — ‘death’ — is nothing but a prop within the game of make-believe. 

And at the same time, such a mind will be neither troubled nor afraid, but rather, loving all and blessing all — including the hammerers of the nails — as it continues uninterruptedly to forgive the illusion and thus make it what it is: nothing.

During the second measure of meal, the Jesus measure, this was perceived as the ultimate sacrifice, required by God as a blood offering, a ransom to buy back the souls of sinful mankind from damnation. Then, the resurrection of his body was construed as a demonstration that Jesus was different from the rest of us; special, God’s only begotten, sinless Son.  The second measure is now behind us and has fulfilled its objectives of getting our attention and persuading untold millions (some incarnate and some discarnate at any one moment) that Jesus was worth listening to and following.

The resurrection was never intended to show Jesus as being different, but rather, that there is no such thing as death — if only we can believe — not just for him, but for us all, because we are all the same; all One.  This is made plain by his statement: He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do... (Jn. 14:12).  The resurrection, not of bodies, but of our minds from fear back to Love, darkness to Light, ‘death’ to Life, dreamland to Wakefulness, could not be an exception in this key statement, or, assuredly, he would have said so.

And now we are moving rapidly beyond the second measure consciousness into the third, fulfilment, Awakening measure; the measure in which comes acceptance of our Oneness, Wholeness, eternalness, unlimitedness, gloriousness beyond imagining as the/our Truth.  This is the moment, the measure, in which old order thinking and perception — the world the confused, fragmented, split-off part of the mind of Papa’s Son made — gradually fades and the real world, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, comes ever more into our awareness as our true vision is restored to clarity of focus.

We have the power and free will to make the right choices — for God — in this duality consciousness, but ego is very devious.  To confuse the fragments into believing they have made a choice for God, ego has devised a construct that seems to be a mechanism for choosing, and getting Home to, God, but in fact is a cul-de-sac that further confuses, diverts and distracts its followers away from God by false and contradictory doctrines and dogmas.  This construct is so flawed and corrupt that it keeps dividing against itself in an ever-greater number of disagreements and schisms. 

Many of these divisions are about petty irrelevances that are nothing to do with the declared intent of this construct — the salvation of the ‘lost souls’ of mankind — but serve ego’s objectives perfectly: getting our attention away from the Truth (our Truth) of Eternity.  As stated in Gary Renard’s book, The Disappearance of the Universe, Being without the power of God, all your mind can do is seemingly divide and subdivide, and then attempt to glorify the result.

According to the internet there are approaching forty-thousand different so-called Christian sects in today’s world and this number is very far from static, as less than twenty years ago there were estimated to be around half that number.  Divide and subdivide is ego’s mantra.

Ego divides and keeps dividing because it knows nothing.  A mind that knows nothing questions debates, speculates and hypothesises, formulates uninformed opinions about everything, so its perspective is constantly changing, and mistrustful.  When such activity is undertaken standing on one’s head — i.e., seeing everything upside-down — a distorted perspective is inevitable.  The device made for this distracting-from-Reality, mind-contorting activity is the intellect. 

In egoland intellect is highly revered and prized.  It causes speculation and hypothesising to be confused with knowledge, and, as Jesus is recorded as saying: they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. (Mt. 6:7)  This is clamour, where everyone wants to be heard at once, but no-one is listening.  Sounds like today’s world, doesn’t it!? J  As Jesus said to me years ago, Where there is wisdom there is silence and humility.

Intellect is ego’s attempt at knowledge, but knowledge applies only to what is true, and what is true is Eternity.  Ego knows nothing of Eternity, so endlessly debates.  Holy Spirit knows because Holy Spirit is of Eternity, and when we ask Holy Spirit about Reality He will tell us.  Holy Spirit functions within the Principles of Life of the Father (PLFs) and does not engage with detail.  He will constantly endeavour to steer the enquiring mind toward PLFs and away from detail (‘the devil is in the detail’!). When we understand the PLFs we know. 

Knowing requires no thought processes, no debating, no hypothesising.  Knowledge is of God, and like God, simply IS.  Hence, Be still, and know that I am God (Ps. 46:10).  How can we know God — and thus, know the Truth — unless we are willing to tune-out our frenetic, doubting, fearful mind and tune in to the Voice for God?  To make this change, this switch of attunement does indeed require change; a change of mind.

We need to allow change because our perception has been so distorted.  Change causes disturbance of our old-order understanding, which is based on past experience, and is ego-controlled.  Change can be chaotic and cause us to be fearful.  This is why it is imperative for our peace of mind to place all change in the able care of Holy Spirit, and/or Jesus, and TRUST.  What appears to our ego-mind as chaos is restructuring, retuning.  For that retuning to become permanent we have to be willing to allow Holy Spirit to bring up out of our unconscious mind ego-stuff, guilt-stuff, misperceptions, dark-stuff, fear-stuff, so that He can illuminate it, and thus dispel it and free us from it. 

Holy Spirit will correct our misperceptions if we TRUST Him and remain steadfast in that trust, especially when what we believed was our ‘world’ appears to fall apart around us.  The world — the ego-made world — is falling apart on an unprecedented scale around us right now.  Jesus said to me many years ago, When all around you is in chaos and disarray, then rejoice, for the Kingdom is at hand, even at the doors.  When we see, focus upon the chaos it engenders fear.  When we choose for our vision to be of the Kingdom we can and will know, experience peace, right in the midst of apparent (i.e. illusory) chaos.  That, assuredly, is just cause for rejoicing. 

If we are willing to accept, ALLOW, welcome Holy Spirit-led change and hold fast when the tempest it seems to bring looks as if it is threatening to swamp our boat and drown us ...the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple... (Mal. 3:1)  He has in Reality, been with us all along, but our awareness of that Truth will be sudden as we change from resistance to that awareness to welcoming it.

As my dear friend John H would say, ‘Change is inevitable; growth is optional’.

To welcoming change,

Brian Longhurst

My son, in the order of the universe, humility is more in harmony with the Father Creator than presumption.

 Jesus, 6.3.88

October 26^th 2011

Dear Friends,

Trying to understand the outer world/universe (macro and/or micro) in order to understand the inner Reality is a hapless, fruitless task because the outer is the illusory product of a deranged, upside-down mind, and therefore can have no rationale.  It is devised to lead such seekers on a wild goose chase, to divert us and our seeking from our own within.  We have become so diverted that most of the fragments have never even heard the idea of themselves having a within.  And most of those who have heard the term still have no idea how to enter in, or experience little, intermittent success when they try.

Yet this is the only escape route out of our self-made carousel of birth and death.  How could there be another?  The Kingdom of Heaven is within. It is not without.   Heaven is Joy, Peace and Love; having everything, lacking nothing.  Forever, uninterruptibly.  Unimaginable?  Laughable? A fool’s errand?  Such negative thoughts indicate the distance from the Light our wandering into outer darkness appears to have taken us.  Such denial of our Reality does, itself, prevent us from awareness and experience of the glorious, wonderful truth. 

And the further we get off track, chasing wild geese, in outer darkness, without a Light to lighten that apparent darkness, the more unimaginable the truth of our Being seems. Why, then, continue in the determination to seek the answers where they cannot be?  If we focus our mind in (spiritual) darkness (the without) we become blind; if we focus our mind in the Light, our (spiritual) vision is restored.  As Jesus says in ACIM: When you made visible what is not true, what is true became invisible to you. (T-12.VIII.3:1).

The degree of our clarity in hearing, or discerning the answers to our asking, seeking, knocking depends upon our willingness to receive and accept the answers in faith.  Not just faith in the ability of the Giver of the answers but in our ability to receive.  Our faith and belief in our limitedness and unworthiness has been cultivated and nurtured over æons and is impossible to dislodge without Help.  Doubt about our ability or worthiness to hear blocks the response from our awareness.  We are so accustomed to being given false answers by a false guide that we demand proof before being willing to accept the answer. 

But the Truth of Eternity requires no proof, any more than Love can be proved, because, like Love, It simply, IS.  When we are ready, we will accept it for what it is, in trust, and then will we have allowed our vision to be healed, enabling us to see the Truth.  Until we are ready — by having a little willingness — the cataracts of doubt, fear, uncertainty, guilt prevent the Light of Truth from reaching our inner vision.  The little willingness opens a chink in our defenses against the Light, so that it streams in, illuminating the Truth of our Being that has always been there but ignored.

In Genesis, chapter 2 it speaks of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but states... of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. This is, perhaps, one the most misunderstood passages in scripture.  ‘Surely’, ego slyly asks, ‘it is desirable that we have knowledge of good and evil, so that we can learn to distinguish between the two and choose good, rejecting evil?’  A shortcut to the answer to this is to ask ourself if we believe there is good and evil to choose between in the Eternity that we know as the Kingdom of Heaven. 

The possibility is so absurd that it requires no consideration, and therein lies the answer.  Heaven, Eternity, could not be Heaven or eternal if it was not perfect, unconditional Love, with nothing else from which to choose.  Choice means comparison, means judgement.  When everything is perfection and perfection is everything there is nothing to choose between.  In time and place there is Light and dark (good and evil, one might say), but in Eternity there is only Light, or ‘good’.   

As time draws toward its end and our Awakening to Eternity, Self Realisation, begins to rouse us from our slumber, we are now in the place of being able to choose between Light and darkness.  But this time our choice must be unequivocal.  How can we be restored to the Reality, the  Oneness of Heaven if we equivocate between the Real and the unreal?

One of the many misperceptions of our game of pretend is that we are able, competent to choose, unaided by our Guide to Eternity, between good and evil.  What our Guide is telling us, if only we are willing to hear Him, is that we are neither capable/competent of choosing in our present state of mind (check out the history books, or the 6 o’ clock news for verification) nor do we need to choose, because He, our True Self, is both capable of choosing and has chosen for us. 

He is capable of choosing wisely, correctly because He is our connection to God and knows the Truth, and has chosen for us because He Loves us.  Let us therefore join with Him to make certain the Destination of our journey.

In Heaven where all is good, perfect Peace, Love, Light, Truth, there is no alternative, so it is not seen as ‘good’ because good can only be seen as good if it is compared with other than good, just as ‘up’ can only be perceived as up if there is a ‘down’ with which to compare it.  This is duality, and there is only Singularity, Oneness, in Heaven.  So, to say God is good, or Heaven is good is a misperception.  In truth, it suffices to say God IS, or Heaven IS, or Eternity IS, or I AM. 

Meanwhile, as we appear to be in duality, in a state of separation, where change, within an ever-changing perception, is inevitable, including as we begin to rouse to wakefulness and remembrance of unchanging Reality, our inner peace remains elusive.  Unattainable, in fact, without Help.  By placing control and direction of seeming change in the absolute care of the Voice for God within us — our Holy Self — we can be at peace, releasing ego-engendered fear, even while change is taking place in our illusory duality experience.

The Awakening, or, more accurately, the process of remembering that we are already Awake, is an unfolding, step by step event.  It does not have to be, but because of our fear of the Light, having been in the dark so long, the progress, in linear time terms, seems to be that way.  This makes it less stressful to our confused minds.  Two thousand years ago and during the interim period people were much more under the control of the religious establishment than today, as well as the brutal control of political power structures, so their ability to hear the Truth was more limited. 

Today there is much more freedom of thought and technology for its dissemination in most parts of the world, so we are able to handle increasing awareness of Reality as it unfolds for us.  This is not just because of more freedom and technology, but because Jesus told the disciples at the Last Supper: I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (Jn. 14:2,3). 

This preparation has been proceeding during the last two millennia; it has been a gradual leavening, or raising up, or enlightening of the minds of countless millions who have, during that epoch, espoused their lives to his and his Great Rescue Programme (GRP).  This espousal has been happening, and continues to happen, in ever-increasing numbers.  Although people have been giving up religion, they have not been giving up the real Jesus, who they have been coming to know, love and understand far more during the intervals between incarnations. 

This is because there is immeasurably less resistance to the Truth in the ‘mansions’ of the etheric counterpart of Earth than in the Earth ‘physical’.  People hear about Jesus during their incarnate state, but there has been little to help them understand him and his objectives from institutionalised religion because, as Jesus said to the religious authorities of his time on Earth: ...ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. (Mt 23:13). 

Orthodox religious authorities still, today, deny the accessibility of the Realms of Light to their adherents that in truth is readily, freely available to us all.  That accessibility is far greater today than ever before, as the marriage (union) of Heaven and Earth continues to move into consummation, and the two become one, and the world is subsumed into Heaven and ceases to exist as a separate entity.  Those institutions that continue in this authoritarian denial will find themselves increasingly marginalised as the Awakening progresses. 

However, a word of caution: Unless we place ourself in the care and protection of Jesus, the chief executive officer of the GRP — he who has all power in Heaven and Earth (Mt. 28:18) and/or the Holy Spirit as we seek communion with the ‘invisible realms’ — we cannot be sure we are protected from inadvertent, unwitting communion with the lower astral realms (the realms of darkness) from which many dark experiences can emanate, including possession by earth-bound spirits.  Today’s world is rife with such possessions.

Denial of such communing accessibility with the Realms of Light can only lead those who accept this prohibition to directing their faith more and more into other channels.  The only alternative channel to the fulfilment that is eternity being seen as ‘just a distant, far off, inaccessible possibility’ is time and place, and this can be seen to be happening as billions of fragments of the Sonship place ever-increasing trust in the advances of science, technology, medicine as the providers of solutions to all our ills.  This, without discerning that we have but one ‘ill’ — our belief that we are separate from our Father Creator, Papa.

There is a series of programmes on British television at present entitled Brave New World, fronted by Stephen Hawking.  This series presents some of the current scientific breaksthrough that are benefiting our bodily health (e.g. treatments for cancer, brain disorders etc) and other aspects of the illusory life in time and place.  Many of these are helpful in the short term, but if we place our faith in them at the expense of, or as a substitute for, our faith in the Truth of our Being as the unlimited, eternal, all-empowered, all-knowing Son of God, that Truth will remain hidden to us; not by God, but by our own misperception of Reality keeping us focused on unreality.

It is not science that is, or will be, our release into empowerment, but our remembrance of our Sonship.  This is the power that was demonstrated in only microcosm by Jesus, and which calls for faith in our God-Self — Christ — within, not by how we can manipulate an illusion.  Such manipulation is but a diversion from our Truth and will continue to keep us falsely limited.  Faith, Trust, Obedience (to our Inner Truth) and Commitment to that Truth (FTOC) and forgiveness for our misperceptions about what has never, in Reality, ever happened, are the shortest, quickest, and ultimately, only route Home to Wholeness and unlimitedness in God.

To ego this is seen as arrogant and implausible; but we have the example of it being true in Jesus, so we can have faith in its veracity.  Inner Peace, along with Joy, are indivisible aspects of our true, eternal Being, which is Love — just as demonstrated in Jesus, and just like our Father Creator.  Without at-onement with Peace we are not, cannot be, at ease; we are in a state of dis-ease.  Dis-ease will continue to manifest itself in what our original cause of dis-ease — our belief in separateness — has led us to perceive that we are: a body.

Because of the ingenuity of the distorted belief system of the ego, dis-ease — and all the other problems of time and place, otherwise known as the consciousness of fear — will continue to find different forms of expression, keeping split-off minds focused on the illusion and never eliminating the infinite array of potential for disease.  Only by focusing on Light, which is Love, will we find Peace, and in Peace disease ceases to be part of our awareness.

Love and blessings for Inner Peace and Joy,

Brian Longhurst

…constancy and reliability is the stuff of which the Kingdom is made (because Love is constant and reliable); it is pure, it is strong, it is sure, it will never fail — you or anyone.

The Rector, 27.3.88

November 2^nd 2011

Dear Friends,

Awakening to the Truth of our eternal, all-empowered-by-unconditional-Love Self, at-one in the Creator Spirit, Papa, is not a game, to be played at frivolously, if we want to get Home with the least delay possible.  We have been playing a game for æons and it has not proved to be much fun.  But just because the Awakening to remembrance of our True Being is a multi-incarnation process, and will proceed most effectively and efficiently if our approach to it is serious — as in, committed, focussed, steadfast, as distinct from po-faced — does not mean it cannot be fun, rewarding, joyful. 

This is possible because by such an approach, our Companions of the Way are/will be Jesus and the Spirit of Truth, Who have a sense of humour, fun and joy far beyond anything this world is capable of.  Not only so, and far more importantly, They are constant, reliable, all-empowered, trustworthy and loving.  They are totally all of these qualities, but our ability to experience them all and the degree of our ability to experience them depends on our degree of commitment and willingness to open ourself to Them. 

To the degree we are fearful of opening ourself to Their Love and dependable guidance and protection, we are blocking the ability to receive and accept unto ourself all that They have, and long to give.  Our game of pretend has so confused us, turned us on our head, that we no longer know which way is up, so that trust, surrender and defenselessness seem foolhardy to us.  But now we are being lovingly, gently brought toward the Light, we can begin to discern the Truth of our Being, reflected in our brothers as the illusion that they are our enemy begins to be shone away. 

This becomes more and more the reality for us, even in the dream of time and place, commensurate with our willingness to see past our misperceptions of ourself and our siblings in the Sonship, and forgive ourself and them for what in Truth has never really happened.  This instantly enables the ‘garbage’ we thought was piling up around and in us to be removed, dispelled, recycled by the great Refuse-Disposal Officer in our mind, so we can think and see straight once more.  This is what happens when we are willing to be restored to Reality.  As Jesus reminds us in ACIM:  

The world is not left by death but by truth, and truth can be known by all those for whom the Kingdom was created, and for whom it waits (with infinite patience). (T-3.VII.6:11)  

As recently stated, change, in a constantly changing perception, is inevitable, and ego is fearful of change.  Fear engenders, or generates chaos, and time and place is the consciousness of fear.  This is because time and place is the opposite of Heaven — where all is perfect, certain, unchangeable Peace, Joy, Love, safety — so it is axiomatic that the opposite will be fear, and that constant change will be fearful because it is not understood, and everything seems uncertain, and will be perceived as chaos.  Check the news for details (if you dare J).  Chaos then engenders yet more fear.    

This is the endless loop that keeps us trapped in time and place, going round and round on the carousel of birth and death.  Or it would, were it not for the cavalry riding to our rescue in the form of Jesus.  Chaos is always present in time and place but is exponentially on the rise as the Great Rescue Programme gathers momentum.  There are two directions change can move toward in a duality realm: in a downward spiral to destruction and oblivion, which is where ego is pushing us, or in an upward spiral toward the Light, Truth, Wholeness, Oneness, which is where Jesus/Holy Spirit Self is unfalteringly leading us. 

In our confused state of mind it can be very difficult to discern in which direction the chaos we perceive in change is taking us because we cannot see the big picture.  This takes us back to the essential value and importance of FTOC (Faith, Trust, Obedience and Commitment) again.  All change is fearful to ego because it has no Light of discernment and does not know in which direction that change is moving, other than to what is perceived as chaos.  But when we direct our FTOC toward Jesus/Holy Spirit, we don’t need to be fearful because we can be certain beyond all doubt that the change is moving us toward the Light.  

Clearly then, Holy Spirit-led change, which appears temporarily as chaos — because at its commencement we do not initially have sufficient Light to discern the direction of travel — is not bad news, as ego would have us believe.  Lack of adequate Light may cause a conditioned reflex of fear and doubt, so accustomed are we to change bringing more chaos, but if we have committed our journey and our protection into Holy Spirit’s care, we can be certain that the direction will be upwards toward the Light.  It will not then be long before we start to become aware of the Light. 

It will not be unfiltered at first, because if it appeared to us at this nascent stage of our Awakening in all its effulgence it would be too powerful for our vision, so long have we been in darkness.  But there will be little signs and indicators: comfortableness, bordering on peace, within our heart and mind; synchronicities; people coming into our presence with whom there is an uplifting resonance; events that we simply, intuitively know are not only for our benefit, but also for all others involved... the list keeps on growing as our FTOC holds fast, and our willingness to stay with it strengthens and remains steadfast, ensuring our full restoration to en-Light-enment. 

The apparent chaos and our attendant, conditioned fear arising from change, when led by Holy Spirit, will end rapidly — as rapidly as we are willing to surrender our ego-engendered fear in exchange for trust in Him and His love for us — as we allow His Light-directed change to envelop us.  The more we become accustomed to His trustworthiness and reliability, the quicker the chaos and fear give way to Light, Peace, Joy, until there is no time lapse at all.   

Theresa and I no longer simply believe this, but know it, because we are experiencing the collapse of time between fear/chaos and release to Peace and Joy, and we are seeing that collapse take place with increasing numbers of other dearly loved, trusting fragments of the Sonship.  Surrendering fear for FTOC enables Holy Spirit to transform our ever-changing, chaotic, uncertain lives into at-onement with Christ Mind and thus, full acceptance of our True Being, our God-Self, right here in time and place.  We can know the certainty of this because we have Jesus as our forerunner, who demonstrated its reality for us. 

This is how the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, the real world of peace, harmony, balance, love and joy will manifest — is manifesting — into our awareness.  It has always been here, in the midst, but we have been attuned to darkness, fear, guilt, shame, doubt...  How could we hope to be aware of It when we have been facing — and heading — the wrong way? 

The Kingdom of Heaven comes into our awareness by our remembrance of our oneness and our desire for separation to end and oneness to be restored as our Reality.  Such an idea is preposterous without the key ingredient in the mix, the leaven that will raise us all — once more — to that state of Being.  That ingredient is true forgiveness; a willingness to let go of grievances.  Here is some of what Jesus tells us about grievances in ACIM Workbook Lesson 68: 

Love holds no grievances. 

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 grievances denies he was created by love...

... 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 grievances will forget who they are, as it is certain that those who forgive will remember.

Would you not be willing to relinquish your grievances if you believed all this were so?  Perhaps you do not think you can let your grievances go.  That, however, is simply a matter of motivation... 

We cannot do this without Help, but that Help is at hand, waiting with infinite patience for us simply to call upon it, without money and without price (see Isaiah 55:1).  The resistance that we all feel is our ego-mind.  We can allow it to hold sway, keeping us in the misery of doubt, uncertainty about anything except death, or we can go ahead and call upon that Help. 

Oneness is not just with those souls, our brothers in the fragmented Sonship, who appear to be with a body at this moment.  Indeed, tens of millions of fragments incarnate each year and tens of millions lay aside their body each year, so where would one start and where would be the cut-off point?  Further, since neither time nor bodies are real, to bring either into the equation would be to confuse it unnecessarily.  The ‘Earth-physical’ is but one side of a ‘two-sided coin’.  The other side (if you will allow the pun) is ‘the other side’, so to speak; meaning the etheric counterpart of the Earth-physical experience. 

This is the equally illusory ‘place’ almost all souls go when they have come to the end of a sojourn in the Earth-physical, appearing to be with a body.  Those who are fully Awake, and have taken a body, to be a Messenger of Truth to help their brothers, will return from whence they have come: to the Realms of Light, or Heaven or Eternity, in which no form, or body, or any other limitation is required.  Those who are unprepared for their transition from a body they have believed for a span is their identity, will retain an etheric counterpart of their body, which seems to them just as their physical body appeared when they were with it. 

The etheric counterpart of Earth has numerous ‘levels’ or ‘mansions’.  None of these is actually ‘real’, but are states of mind, of perception held by those who perceive themselves to be in such a place, according to their level of awareness.  Some are dark and fearful — hell to those who seem to dwell there — and others are increasingly lighter, according to the place of remembrance of their true Being they are at.  Above all these — not in any ‘geographical or altitudinal’ sense, but in terms of full, complete, unencumbered en-Light-enment — is the Heaven of Eternity; the Realms of Light.   

Here, in complete oneness with/in the Creator Spirit, The Source, God, Papa, dwell those who have fully remembered Who they really Are.  He whom we know as Jesus is just such a One. There are those who say he is paramount amongst all the Sons of God.  Such perceptions have no meaning in the Oneness.  All are equal in the sight of our Father, and all who have remembered their oneness in Him.  Jesus’ job is the restoration of all the fragments — who perceive themselves and all their fellows as separate — back to oneness with him in Papa. 

If we would be part of that restoration, our desire and commitment can only be absolute, not partial.  All, with a body, or in any mansion of the etheric counterpart of Earth, or the Realms of Light, are one in the Reality of Eternity, where ‘levels’ do not exist.  There is no difference between those who believe they are with a body and those who we with bodies perceive as ‘dead’.  They are no more (or less) dead than we are.  They are our brothers in Papa’s eternally-living one Son, Christ.  It is an unserviceable artifice to perceive any such as somewhere else, or gone, or separate.  There is nowhere to go.  Such perceptions perpetuate the myths of separation and death. 

This does not mean we should all suddenly start attending séances or the spiritualist church.  Why would we need that?  All our brothers are in our mind — right along with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and Papa — just as we are in theirs.  There we can commune with them and share, extend our Love and forgiveness, and receive their Love and forgiveness.  Such communing is not possible from within the illusion of separation, but is natural from within the Reality of Oneness.  To exclude one is to exclude all; for we are all one. 

Love and endless blessings for restoration to Oneness, 

Brian Longhurst 

Remember always that seeking the Kingdom of God and his righteousness requires not for you to “do” anything but that you accept the Father’s desire to give the Kingdom...

Jesus, 10.04.1988

November 9^th 2011

Dear Friends,

Jesus first appeared to me in his glory back in 1967.  Here is an extract from what I wrote about the experience, the full details of which are given in chapter two of my book:

... suddenly he was there... in the midst of an aura of golden, living sunlight, which radiated out from him more than an arm’s length in all directions...

As I became aware of his presence he began to move toward me. It was not a walking movement. He seemed to be above the floor a few inches, and he glided. The movement was relatively slow, certainly unhurried, but as he drew nearer he began to speak... The words that he spoke were, I discovered later, from Revelation chapter 3 vs. 20: Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

...His aura of golden, living sunlight ... enveloped me, and the feeling of Love — of agapé — to my being was so intense, so powerful, so uplifting to my spirit that I felt as if my heart had grown to the size of a football and was going to burst out of my chest cavity. This feeling of all-pervasive, all-inclusive Love was complete, permeating not just my body but my entire aura in an orgasm of the soul, immeasurably more intense than any such physical experience...

His presence was visible in the midst of the light of his aura, which was at least as bright as the sun but did not hurt my eyes at all. With me now fully enveloped by his aura, he stopped. His eyes were radiating the all-knowing wisdom of the ages, and Love; personal Love as well as universal, unconditional Love. I knew he Loved me personally, in a way and with a Love that is utterly beyond any love I had ever known, heard about or experienced in this world.

He embraced me; not with his physical arms but with every part of his being ― with his total, unconditional, intimate, penetrating, all-encompassing, all-pervasive Love. I was a quivering jelly. Not from fear (how could fear exist in such an exquisitely beautiful, magnificent encounter?) but from being overwhelmed by the power of his Love... I remember reading at some later date, in the book of Revelation, chapter 1 vs. 16, …and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength, and saying to myself, ‘That is an exact and perfect description of his appearance.’

Many are fearful of the prospect of Jesus’ appearing to them.  I wish to do everything in my power to disabuse all who might be fearful, nervous, uncertain of encountering him, of any cause for such apprehension.  I can say this unequivocally because I know of a certainty beyond all doubt exactly what his glory and empowerment is.  It is unconditional, perfect, all-encompassing, healing, restoring Love.  All doctrines and mythologies about him coming to judge the quick and the dead (and if we have fallen short of the mark we are for the high jump) are artifices of the consciousness of fear.

Jesus is like his Father: Love.  Nothing else, because there IS nothing else.  God is Love, and God is all there is, so there is nothing else to be like.  We are like Jesus; he is our brother.  We have the same Father so how could we not be like him?  We are Love.  Nothing else at all.  There is nothing else.  Here are some inspired words from Paul about the qualities of Love:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not Love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal (i.e., nothing).   And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not Love, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing.

Love suffereth long, and is kind; Love envieth not; Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Love never faileth:  (1 Cor. 13: 1-8)

Happily, we both have and are all those things Paul says about Love, so we have nothing to fear, except fear itself; and fear is nothing.  It does not exist.  We made it up as a crucial part of our game of pretend that we are what we are not.  If we ARE Love, then in the game of pretend, we have to pretend we are the opposite of Love.  The opposite of Love is fear.  Happily, what is all-encompassing cannot have an opposite, other than in a game of pretend.  To believe a lie about ourself, we have to be willing to forget who we are.  Insane, isn’t it? J  Happily (again) Sanity is at hand, and is in the process of restoring us to Itself.

In the opening sentence I said Jesus appeared in his glory.  There is but one word that completely describes and summarises that glory.  You guessed it: Love (as stated above, and repetition is so beneficial to our remembrance!).  It was/is his Love — nothing else — that filled me, overwhelmed me, inspired me, won my undying, eternal devotion, trust and yes, Love for him.  Some might say, ‘What about his trustworthiness, his humility?’  Interestingly, neither of those qualities is mentioned in Paul’s soliloquy.  Yet these two qualities imply, and are attributes of, unconditional Love.  A capital L is used for this Love to differentiate it from romantic or conditional love.

God IS Love.  Love is everything.  It is glorious.  Without Love we are as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, as is everything we endeavour as a substitute for simply Being Love.  How many ways do we seek a substitute for glory out in the world?  Some seek it in money, some in sporting, academic or artistic — even military (there has been, and remains, no shortage of despotic, power-crazed, murderous dictators) — prowess.  All such endeavours are a vain attempt at replacing the glory that is already, irrevocably ours, and is far, far, far beyond any worldly endeavour at glory. 

There is nothing wrong with seeking glory in the world, but if we use it as a substitute for seeking restoration to remembrance of our true and only glory, such endeavours will ultimately not serve us well, and certainly will not get us Home.  Home is not somewhere else; it is within us.  There is nowhere else.  It is in our mind.  But we have engaged our mind with ‘a far country’, pretending to have emigrated, ‘out of our Mind’.  We appear to be well and truly stuck abroad, and without Help finding our way back would be very difficult.  We are in sore need of someone coming to save us.

Jesus shines the Light into this seeming enigma, clarifying it for us and making it easy for us all to comprehend:

Salvation is nothing more than “right-mindedness,” which is not the One-mindedness of the Holy Spirit, but which must be achieved before One-mindedness (one and the same as Christ Mindedness) is restored.  Right-mindedness leads to the next step automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack (and uniformly with forgiveness), and therefore wrong-mindedness is obliterated. The ego cannot survive without judgment, and is laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only one direction in which it can move. Its direction is always automatic, because it cannot but be dictated by the thought system to which it adheres.

(ACIM, T-4.II.10)

We don’t have to go anywhere, or do anything to be healed, restored to Wholeness/Holiness of Mind, other than allow our True Self — Who has never left us or Heaven, and therefore, is our immovable link to Home — to restore us to our Self.  This requires a spot of housecleaning.  We have opted for our dwelling place to become, at best, muddled and at worst, squalid.  The seventh Principle of Miracles (ACIM T-1.I.7) states: Miracles are everyone’s right, but purification is necessary first.  Many are fearful of the word purification because it has incorrectly become associated with punishment, burning in the fires of hell...

It is, in fact, as far from that idea as possible, because purification is a process that relieves us of judgements, grievances, misperceptions such as guilt, fear, shame, mortality; all the qualities that make up what we have chosen to believe in our masquerade of littleness and limitation, thus keeping us in hell.  Purification is not painful, but is a joyful, releasing, cleansing, uplifting process because it lifts from us grievous burdens that are so terrible that we try to eject them by projecting them onto our brothers. 

Projection does not, cannot achieve its objective because our brothers are, if seen as bodies, an illusion, a symbol of our belief in separation, just as is our own body.  Bodies are a device to persuade ourself that we are separate from each other and our Home in the Mind of God.  Projecting our grievances, guilt, judgements onto a perceived brother actually worsens our illusory condition because we are one, only appearing as many.  So we are projecting our misery onto ourself.  Projection, therefore, further cements our misperception of self as guilty, blameworthy, lonely, unlovable.

If we would be purified, relieved of our phantom burdens to which we have yoked ourselves, let us, instead of projecting our apparent guilt, judgements, grievances — thus prolonging the sense of separation —  rather, extend Love (after all, that is what we are), peace, joy, blessing.  We are the Light of the world; let us shine It, to help our brothers to see the Way Home, and thus, gladly join us as we journey There.  This is how Jesus puts it:

The difference between the ego’s projection and the Holy Spirit’s extension is very simple.  The ego projects to exclude, and therefore to deceive.  The Holy Spirit extends by recognizing Himself in every mind, and thus perceives them as one (that’s all of us; no exceptions whatsoever).  Nothing conflicts in this perception, because what the Holy Spirit perceives is all the same (that’s all of us; no exceptions whatsoever J). 

Wherever He looks He sees Himself, and because He is united (and thus reunites us all because He is in us all) He offers the whole Kingdom always.  This is the one message God gave to Him (for us) and for which He must speak, because that is what He is (and thus, we are). The peace of God lies in that message, and so the peace of God lies in you.  The great peace of the Kingdom shines in your mind forever, but it must shine outward to make you aware of it.

(ACIM  T-6.II.12.  My emboldening and italic, for emphasis.)

It has been our unwillingness to acknowledge the Truth of our Self — all part of the game of make believe that keeps us on the carousel of birth and death — that prevents our awareness of our true state of inner peace.  We can change all that in an instant by reclaiming our creation-right as the Light of the world, which is Peace, Joy and Love, and consciously choose to shine that Light outward to our brothers.  By so doing we will see the Truth of their Being also as the Light, and therein see our oneness.  This will reveal our glory, which is just the same as Jesus’ glory, because we are one with him in glory.

Love,

Brian Longhurst

Please note: Theresa and I will be engaged with visitors for a few days next week, so there will be no MoE, but by the Grace of God there will be one the following week. 

By the one-pointed commitment of you all, the programme of manifesting that which our Lord and Master Jesus has built in Heaven shall go forward to fulfilment and establishment in the Earth also.

(The Teacher, 17.04.1988)

November 23^rd 2011

Dear Friends, 

In recent days I have been prompted with a series of questions and answers regarding Reality and unreality/Eternity and time and place.  Because for many of us our perspective on this is easily blurred — even if we believe we are clear on the whats and the whys — and because this is such a deep subject for our self-limited minds to absorb comprehensively, it seems apposite to share these here, because repetition is vital to our assimilation of eternal Truth.   

Q:  Why are we ‘here’ in time and place? 

A:  Because we believe we are here.  The mind of the Son of God is so powerful that it can make ‘real’ — to its own perception — whatever it believes is real. 

Q:  What is the purpose of our believing we are here? 

A:  The original idea was wondering what it would be like to branch out on our own, away from Home, Heaven, Eternity, the Creator Spirit, the Source of All, our Heavenly Father, ‘Papa’.   

Q:  How does this work? 

A:  Although it is actually impossible to be away from our Source because we are an integral, indivisible part of Him, and He is everywhere, the mind of His Son is empowered with all the power of his Father, so the Son could believe he had separated from his Source, in the same way that a dream can seem very real and believable while we are having the dream.  Only when we wake from our slumber do we realise that what we thought was real was actually nothing more than something we made up while sleeping.  The ‘reality’ of the dream is dispelled as soon as we wake up.   

Q:  How can we be sure time and place isn’t real, when it seems so utterly real? 

A:  Since Papa is the Source of all Light, and IS the Light (which is synonymous with unconditional, Perfect Love), the Son could only seem to be away from Home by placing himself in what appears to be a state of forgetfulness of who he really is.  Since he is the Light, just like Papa, his self-induced state of voluntary forgetfulness of the Light causes what seems to be an absence of Light, or darkness.  

Darkness doesn’t actually exist, because only what Papa IS — or created as an extension of Himself, in His exact likeness — can exist, or have Reality.  Darkness is an apparent absence of Light.  There could only appear to be an absence of Light to the Son if the Son covered, or veiled, his awareness of Self, his True, eternal Being.     

Since he was imbued at his creation with all power and freewill, he could easily pretend that this could happen.  But if he perceived himself in complete darkness this would be overtly unserviceable — and much too scary — and make his game of make-believe unbelievable.  So, to keep up the pretence he had to fabricate a substitute for Light.  This substitute could not be the Real Light, because then he would be at Home, and the object of the game was to be away from Home.  God, Home, Reality is pure, Living Spirit, which IS Light.   

There is no matter, no particles in Light.  How can there be particles in Oneness?  It is a contradiction in terms.  So the son imagined, or dreamed what could only be a substitute for Light that is separate particles — photons.  In the dream of separation this substitute could only be separate particles because wholeness cannot exist in illusions; only in Reality.  Photons are not Light; Light is Life, benign and Life-extending.  The substitute for Light may appear to be life-giving in the illusion of time and place; indeed, time and place could have no appearance of reality without it, but it is actually harmful because of the array of different rays its source radiates.   

The true, eternal Light is pure Spirit, not discernible to illusory, bodily sight, which is devised for seeing only illusions.  Unlike photons, true Light does not travel because it is everywhere, being Life, being the Source of All: God.  Photons cannot be that Light because they travel, they are separate and they are particles, none of which states can exist in Reality.  

True Light has nowhere to go to and nothing to do, since it is already everywhere and always has been because time and distance do not exist in Reality.  Like its Source, It simply IS.  In fact, photons, along with all particles cease to exist as a result of a condition known as entropy.  That which is Real — God and His Son and all Their creations — are like Themselves; eternal, unchangeable, perfect.  Forever and ever.  Amen. 

Q:  There are those who believe time and place cannot be all bad.  What is the answer to this?

A:  To make the game of pretend seem bearable there has to appear to be some good strewn amongst the darkness.  It is darkness because Light has been excluded from the thought of separation.  Even photons are not available, to make the illusion of Light, to any point of perception at every moment because our stage backdrop — Earth — veils our substitute for true vision (bodily sight) from the source of the photons as it revolves.  In like manner, because separation is duality consciousness — ‘good and evil’ — we all experience moments of pleasure and moments of pain.   

But the moments of pleasure never last because nothing is, or can be, permanent in duality.  Some of us experience near whole incarnations of pain and suffering and some experience near whole incarnations of ease and pleasure.  Howbeit, one incarnation is but a fleeting shadow before the next, in which we will call into our presence other opportunities in our search for Truth and happiness.  Yet Truth and happiness are not to be found in time and place because Truth is eternal and happiness is in our mind, not in temporal experience.  As the Buddhist saying has it, ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.’   

Enlightenment, which means eternal, uninterruptible peace and happiness, is a state of mind, regardless of what is ‘happening’ without.  Time and place, and all that appears to be of it, are an illusion, and the suffering that seems to be part of it is only suffering, or painful (physically, mentally or emotionally) if that is how we have chosen to perceive it.  If that is how we have chosen to perceive it, that is how we will experience it.  As Pursah says to Gary Renard in his book The Disappearance of the Universe (DU):  

The world feels solid to you because fear binds you to 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 J (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. 

What seemed to be happening to Jesus was not reality to him because he had remembered, and therefore knew, who he was and that his Reality, his True Being, could not be attacked; that it is immortal and invulnerable, just as is ours, because in Reality, we are One. 

Q:  So, why do we choose to experience pain and suffering if it is not real? 

A:  Because we — Papa’s one Son, fragmented, separated and appearing as many — have chosen to play a game of make-believe that we are not who we are.  We are safe, loved, loving, eternal, innocent pure, all-empowered spirit, exactly like Papa.  We are pretending we are the opposite of all that: separate, fragmented, confused, lonely, mortal, split off from Truth.  But the cause of all this is that in our upside-down, back-to-front game we believe we have attacked God by ripping ourself away from Him, able to live separately from Him, and thus making Him incomplete, dispensable.   

Herein lies the cause of our distress: guilt.  If we believe we are guilty of this great ‘sin’ against God, we believe He will be after us and will punish us, so we are fearful.  Fear is the absence of Love and so seems to be Its opposite, just as darkness is the absence of Light, and thus appears to be its opposite.  But Love — and Light — is all-encompassing, so cannot have an opposite in Reality; only in fantasy, a dream, a game of make-believe.  If we are fearful we cannot know or experience peace, which is our state of Being in our Oneness in Papa.  

Q:  Okay; so how do we get out of this game of make-believe and back Home to Reality? 

A:  First we have to accept/believe that time and place is not reality.  If we are unable to accept that, we will be unable to escape from it because we are stuck in the misperception that it is ‘real’, and reality is inescapable.  (This is the best possible news because it means Heaven is inescapable.)  A good start would be to stop watching the news or reading the papers.  They are peddlers of fear, labouring under ego’s yoke.  At the same time, stop believing we and our brothers are guilty. Guilt keeps us in the thrall of fear, preventing us from experiencing, and thus knowing, the reality of Peace.  

To stop feeling guilty we have to stop judging ourself and our brothers, and let go of grievances.  Judging our brothers is projecting our (misperceived) guilt onto them in an endeavour to get rid of it.  But this cannot work because by attempting to project it, first, we are acknowledging that it has reality for us, and second, it is reflected straight back to us because our brothers are a reflection of how we perceive ourself.   

If we perceive ourself as guilty (which is a mostly unconscious state of mind), this is how we will perceive our brothers, and this will emerge from our unconscious to our conscious mind on occasions when we allow our buttons to get pushed by someone or something ‘out there’.  To stop judging we must replace that mindset with a forgiveness mindset.  This will not be achieved unless, or until, we have an absolute, resolute desire for such a mind retraining and are steadfast in our commitment to it.   

The rewards for this are magnificent: peace, joy, happiness, loss of tension, guilt, fear, misery; improved health and sense of wellbeing and increasing empowerment and miracles... the list keeps extending as we move through the transformation process.  This process is made immeasurably easier by a willingness to accept that time and place is an illusion, and that therefore nothing, including our brothers’ and our own bodies, are real.  We do not believe bodies, and everything else we perceive in nighttime dreams, are real because we wake from those dreams and realise that that, and all encountered within it, was a state of unreality.   

But our waking from nighttime sleep and dreams is not a True Awakening.  Waking from a night of sleep and dreams simply takes us between one level of unreality and another.  Any state of awareness that includes duality — here and there, up and down, you and me, male and female, night and day, good and evil, pleasure and pain... it’s a very long list — is, assuredly, unreal, because Reality is Oneness, inseparableness, uninterruptible Peace, Joy and Love (only experiencible in the absence of guilt and fear).   

We have our priorities in reverse order if we believe we must get rid of guilt and fear and then will be able to experience uninterruptible Peace, Joy and Love.  Such order-reversals are characteristic of the upside-down thinking of ego-yoked minds.  Getting rid of guilt and fear is the Holy Spirit’s job, and He is very, very good at it — when we allow Him.  By focussing on guilt and fear in a misperceived attempt at dispelling them we are giving reality to what is not real, thus making it inescapable (remember, Reality is inescapable J).   

Our role in the process is to focus steadfastly, unshakeably on the Light, which is Love, Truth, Reality, which is our True Being, because Papa’s One Son is created in His own likeness.  Uninterruptibly; forever.  This focus is enabled, facilitated by forgiving our brothers and ourself for what in Reality has never happened.  Repeatedly reminding ourself that nothing in duality/time and place every time our buttons get pushed — even if only a little bit! — has ever really happened makes forgiveness easier; and easier; and easier.  And we have Help.  Call upon It; that’s what It (Holy Spirit, our True and only Real Self) is (not ‘there’ but) here, within us, for.  As Jesus says in ACIM: 

To give this gift (of forgiveness, and thus, our restoration to Oneness, Wholeness/Holiness) is how to make it yours. (T-31.VIII.8:6) 

Love, Peace and Joy is ours, now, because there is only the eternal Now.  Let us receive and accept unto ourself this, our True Reality, with rejoicing and thanksgiving, 

Brian Longhurst   

My son, you are right to observe that Life is not forceful, does not “fight” for a place by opposing and defeating contrary vibrations and forces… And Life, my son — what is it?  Is it not the Essential Being of God the Father, which is Love?

Jesus, 24.4.1988

November 30^th 2011

Dear Friends,

We think our body experiences pain but according to Jesus in A Course in Miracles our body feels and experiences nothing of itself; that it is entirely neutral, and is ‘there’ (illusorily speaking) only to do our bidding.  The ‘our’ referred to is our mind.  Our mind can either be attuned to the Voice for God, our true Self — in which case it will know it is innocent and therefore be at ease with itself and unable to experience pain and suffering  — or attuned to the voice of ego.  There are no other alternatives.  Ego says we are guilty, so we believe we deserve pain.  Our upside-down mind tells our body to deliver what we deserve. 

Many may think, ‘Well, I am still partly attuned to ego but am moving into at-onement with Self, so at least I am heading in the right direction.’  Of course this is very good news for the Sonship of God, but that is not reason to lower our guard.  Here is what our friend the Teacher said about this on November 20th 1994:   

I know I do not need to caution you to be constantly on guard against the wiles of the enemy (ego), or to maintain your armour of defence against the darts of destruction.  You know that the cloak of the Lord’s protection — living in him and always keeping your heart and life open to his presence — is the whole armour and that no further contortions of mind or body are needful for such protection (an oblique reference to Ephesians 6:11-17).  The greatest threat of breach to such armour is complacency. 

Thus shall the practise of this (communion) ritual serve you well in reminding, renewing and restoring you in Christ humility, love, desire to serve.  And thus shall the desire of your heart be fulfilled in joyous fellowship of Heaven.  And thus shall there continue to be much rejoicing in Heaven, echoing and reverberating in the ‘caverns’ of Earth, as such become illuminated with the Light of the Kingdom, banishing away the darkness forever.  

His speaking of caverns of Earth refers to our separated minds as they open to the Light of eternal Truth, which is given in response to our truly seeking and earnestly desiring It.  Although our progress along the Path is in itself cause for rejoicing, it is only when we have completely Awakened to Who, What and Where we are in the reality of Eternity that we can be sure to be completely free from ego’s pitfalls, which line the edges of the Path Home.  If we leave the Path we are in pitfall territory and ego is so subtle in its ways of deceiving us that we can find ourself in a pit before we even realise what has happened. 

I now share what Jesus said to me on August 10^th 1997, as further guidance in guarding against pitfalls.  There had been some wondrous events happen during the communion service and I told him that the glory of these events was all his.  This is how 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, the gift of His Glory and so, in that sense, it is mine, as it is yours also, according to His eternal principles.  Let neither false humility cloud the reality, for nothing can progress in such, due to loss of sight of the path (Home), nor let pride overtake you, for of yourself none of these things can be.  I tell you truly therefore, let true humility and thanksgiving be in your heart, for Papa loves you so and it is His great desire and good pleasure to bestow upon you more wondrous and awesome gifts than you can receive or comprehend at this time. 

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.   

All his words apply for us all, without exception, but I have emboldened the words that are especially pertinent to this writing about being watchful for ego’s pitfalls; for pride ranks high up amongst them, and false humility is the other side of the same coin.  It is easy to allow pride in material, temporal accomplishments to overtake us, but if they have no value in Eternity, that is a pitfall, devised to keep us trapped in the duality of time and place. 

Everyone in time and place is here either to call into their presence further opportunity to attune, be restored to oneness, with the Voice for God, our Higher Self, and thus receive help to awaken from the dream of separation, or is here as a messenger for that Voice. At this stage of the leavening of the final measure of meal, more and more incarnate souls are becoming aware that they are here to be messengers for the Voice, for the Truth of Eternity.  In truth, we are ALL such messengers, though most are not yet aware of this reality.   

The time for remembering, for restoration to that awareness, is scheduled for us all and this is infallible and unstoppable, because it has already happened.  Jesus is, along with our Higher Self, standing at the end of time, seeing all events, all awakening, and knows everything about us all.  If They know all this, it is, and can only be, because all is already accomplished in and by the GRP.  Most of us are not yet aware of this because we are still slumbering and dreaming of separation.  

From within the dream, with ego clutching us in its (illusory) vise-like grip, this all sounds very much like pie-n-the-sky, but as mentioned before, we have Help, freely, lovingly, immediately available.  These words of encouragement from Jesus tell it straight:   

When you unite with me you are uniting without the ego, because I have renounced the ego in myself and therefore cannot unite with yours.  Our union is therefore the way to renounce the ego in you.  The truth in both of us is beyond the ego.  Our success in transcending the ego is guaranteed by God, and I share this confidence for both of us and all of us.  I bring God’s peace back to all His children because I received it of Him for us all.  Nothing can prevail against our united wills because nothing can prevail against God’s.  (ACIM, T-8.V.4 My emboldening, underlining and italic, for emphasis.) 

Ego resistance to this, masquerading in our split-off-from-Truth mind as ourself, will be fierce, unrelenting, causing confusion, doubt, fear, anger, unforgiveness, because accepting Jesus’ invitation to unite with him is the beginning of the end for ego.  But this acceptance is not like standing up before a crowd and making a declaration of belief in some warped, self-depreciating dogma that something intuitive within us knows is not right.  It is a private event between us and Jesus, one-on-one.  The only witnesses are Peace, Joy, Perfect, all-embracing, enfolding Love, and Truth.  

Once we make that choice to unite with him, ego is locked out because ego and Jesus are mutually exclusive, thus protecting us from ego. It is worth keeping uppermost in our mind that ego has only as much power over us as we ascribe to it.  Fear knocked at the door; faith answered and there was no-one there.  When we are completely committed to our Awakening, ego resistance to Truth can be counterbalanced and dispelled by persistence, which the Holy Spirit will raise up in us in response to our sincere desire for it. This will bring us to a new, inspired and inspiring perspective, a new view of Who we are in which forgiveness releases us into Peace, Joy, Love. 

Those who are Awake are now able to share the view with Jesus and Holy Spirit.  We are all freely invited to join Them at any and every next moment. That viewing point is magnificent beyond all description.  And the most magnificent thing about it, to those of us who hunger and thirst in the wilderness of duality, of time and place, is that it is true, real, eternal unchanging. That view is Now; the eternal moment; the Holy Instant.  It has no past and no future because they are of time and place, but Eternity is Now because there is nothing else.  

So we can meaningfully say, believe and ultimately experience and know, that if some things from our past that appear to have been very real, and are disturbing, preventing our experience of inner peace, ‘They never happened, because there is only Now’.  Jesus tells us in ACIM that only loving thoughts, feelings and experiences are real because they are from Love and only Love is real, and therefore, timeless.  So, although they seem to have been in our past, they are never lost and are thus always with us, contributing to the healing of illusory brokenness and reuniting us in oneness with brothers we previously perceived as our enemies, but now see are our friends. 

Thoughts, feelings and experiences that seem to be judgemental, divisive, accusative are, on the other hand, not real, so cannot be part of the Holy Instant, the eternal Now.  They can, therefore, only belong to the past, which ego-yoked, separated minds keep replaying on an endless loop to blind us to awareness of the Holy Instant of Now.  But the past, like ego, does not exist, so by choosing to unite with Jesus in the Holy Instant of the eternal Now, the ego-contrived aspects of our mind — the past — are dispelled, leaving us only with what is real as our experience, awareness and Knowing.  

Most of us cannot imagine what being in a disembodied, whole/holy state in Eternity, Heaven, could be like, with nothing to do, nothing to think about (Loving is not thinking, it is Being), nothing to fear, nothing to ponder — since when we Know everything, because we are, in Papa, everything, there is nothing to ponder.  Ego takes advantage of our self-imposed ignorance by implanting the suggestion that if that is what Heaven is about, it must be boring.  But during an orgasm one does not need nor have any desire for pondering, or wondering about past or future.  There is only Now during the moment! J   Yet bodily orgasms last only a few moments, and the after-effects of wellbeing, being ordered from illusion, are also destined to fade.  Then the world of doubt, fear, uncertainty returns to haunt us.  

In our true and only state of Being — oneness in Papa (Who IS Perfect Love) — where all is complete, perfect, we, Papa’s Son, are in eternal, uninterruptible ecstasy.  That ineffable bliss is akin to a moment of bodily orgasm, but endless, universal — not localised — and of a magnitude and intensity far, far, far, incomparably greater than the greatest moment that is capable of being experienced by engagement in bodily activities, which can produce but the tiniest, palest, momentary imitation of the eternal ecstasy of union in God.  Such union brings the real meaning of Joy, and is indivisible from heavenly, eternal Peace and Love.  

Joy, Peace and Love are our true and only states of Being.  Forever.  All littleness, limitation, transitoriness, guilt, fear, judgement, doubt, grievance, insecurity are gone and forgotten, as the nothing they all were — because we simply dreamed them.  That is what separation from Papa is.  Or would be were it possible. It is not possible, though we are at freewill to believe it is possible and by thus believing, to experience it as so.  

The Power of belief is so great that by believing we are guilty we can experience pain, fear, doubt, mortality...  When we remember our innocence in and as Christ, we know guilt is made up, an impossibility, so pain cannot be part of our experience as Papa’s beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased.  It is not just how far we have progressed spiritually but how absolute is our desire and commitment to forgiveness of what has never happened that will determine our release from pain and suffering to unending Joy. 

Endless love and blessings,   

Brian Longhurst 

…be not anxious for the fulfilment of the Kingdom Purpose, for it is as certain as the dawn; nay, more certain than that.  For this Dawn shall be such that darkness shall come no more amongst the sons and daughters of God.

Jesus, 1.5.1988

December 7^th 2011

Dear Friends,

Time and place (t&p) is all about forgetfulness.  We experience it because we have chosen to forget reality and to believe something that appears to be its opposite.  How can reality have an opposite?  There can only be one reality and that has to be eternity, or we are all in a muddle. J.  All else can only be make believe.  Yet t&p seems pretty convincing, doesn’t it?  And we cannot simply give it up and set it aside just because we arrive at the place of readiness to see and accept the logic. 

Our mind is confused between the two seeming, yet conflicting realities: eternity, which somehow seems, intuitively, to be ‘there’, somewhere, like a will o’ the wisp, and t&p, which is so ‘in our face’ it seems unavoidable and inescapable. 

We want to believe in eternity, because the alternative — nothingness; oblivion, the end of life, of being — is not a happy thought.  Indeed, any who deny it is a scary thought are in denial indeed.  On the other hand, the idea of eternity, which we can readily equate with Heaven, is a truly happy prospect — though to ego it is a dreadful thought and it will use every trick in the book to convince us of its impossibility, because we are guilty and therefore God is going to punish us with an eternity of hell. This absurdity it would have us believe.   

So, for most of the fragmented Sonship, there is oscillation between desperately wanting Heaven to be real, and for us to have a place there, and the seemingly inevitable sentence of ageing, sickening and dying.  This is a characteristic, dualistic state of conflicted mind.  Here is what Jesus says about this:

Time and eternity are both in your mind, and will conflict until you perceive time solely as a means to regain eternity. (ACIM, T-10.I.1:2.  My emboldening, for emphasis.)

This leaves no room for doubt that there is no possibility of peace of mind if we are trying to serve time and eternity, because they are diametrically opposed, creating inevitable conflict, the very destroyer of peace.  Happily, Peace, the Peace of God is indestructible — or what kind of God, Heavenly Father, Papa, would He be? J.  Yet a conflicted mind can believe, and thus perceive and then experience as ‘reality’ the fear, doubt, pain and suffering of t&p. And we ask, “Who can ‘afford’ to stop working, to buy food, pay the mortgage...?  And how can we prevent that from entrapping us in t&p?”  

In numerous places and in numerous ways throughout ACIM Jesus makes it clear that we do not have to do anything differently from what we have been doing — because the Kingdom of Heaven is not out there, but within us; therefore, doing is immaterial, but Being is everything.  Rather, he counsels us to simply start seeing things differently; to not set out to change the world, but to change our mind about the world. 

When our desire is one with that of the Spirit of Truth, then we manifest that Truth, that Reality, just as did Jesus.  Then we are one with our true, eternal God-Self.  Then, as with Jesus, like whom we are inescapably destined to become, all power in Heaven and Earth is ours.  Just as it has always been; only we forgot.  Now is remembrance time.

So, we do not have to stop whatever makes up our day, neither do we have to give up anything we cherish in order to Awaken from the dream of separation, until we arrive, by loving, gentle, caring leading to the place where we remember that there is nothing in t&p that has any eternal — and thus, real — interest or value.  As Pursah says to Gary Renard in his book, The Disappearance of the Universe: 

Take heart, dear brother. The Course (ACIM) is set up so you can live what you thought was your life and gradually attain your salvation at the same time. Go at your own pace. That way you won’t feel like anything is being taken away from you, and you can realize for yourself (when we are comfortably ready and willing) that the world has no value.

Still, however grand, noble, desirable this may sound, in ego’s seeming thrall of guilt and fear and self-doubt... well, doubt about just about everything... many still find the question staring them in the face: How can this make any difference, when the world is in such a mess?  Because it is our minds that are in such a mess, and that is what is making such a mess of the world. 

But we are only dreaming the world and none of it is real anyway!  Okay, but we are having a bad dream, and who wants a bad dream when, just by changing our mind we can change the dream from a nightmare to a happy dream?  And, having changed the dream to happy, we are then ready to Awaken to the happiness of eternal Joy, Peace and Love that is Reality.  Let us turn to Jesus again for some insight into this, for who knows better than he?

What has no meaning cannot be perceived.  And meaning always looks within to find itself, and then looks out. All meaning that you give the world outside must thus reflect the sight you saw within (our mind); or better, if you saw at all or merely judged against (which is what ego draws us into, without meaningful thought or considering ALL the facts, if we are under its subtle, crafty spell).  Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations that show you all the fearful outcomes of imagined sin into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them.

(From T-20.VIII.10. My emboldening and some italic, for emphasis.)

His words are not trite, glib, idealistic platitudes, but statements of immutable law; the law of God.  Our inability to comprehend that does not render it otherwise.  Yet, for most of the fragments, our vision is blocked by fear and anxiety, some, most or even all the time, indicating apparent hopelessness.  Worse, when we are so inured in angst and fear we can become hardly aware of it; like constant background noise, one can tune it out, thus unwittingly continuing the game of pretend without even being aware of it. 

But this does not mean it has gone, has ceased gnawing at our very awareness of the truth of Self, inexorably leading to some form and level of sickness manifested by our dis-ease.  If we are not experiencing inner peace, angst and fear is the only alternative, because t&p is the consciousness of fear.

Rather than despairing of ever achieving release, and experiencing inner peace, we can ask the Holy Spirit to give us inner peace, and release to Him grievances and unforgiveness in exchange.  For without forgiveness and letting go of grievances we are blocking our own awareness of the Peace of God that is already within us. 

Ego will not like this and tell us that when we do not experience an instant fix it is because it does not work.  In truth, the Holy Spirit does give us instant release into Peace, because there is, for Him, only the Holy Instant of Now, and He always responds immediately to our sincere prayers and requests for help.  It is our fear and angst, and lack of TRUST that block our channels of receptivity, keeping us unaware of the Reality of His Help, which is always there for us.

There is a way around this, and that is not to give up, but to keep on keeping on.  Having once asked for the Peace of God (we only need to ask once because He is neither deaf nor senile) we can give thanks for His free gift of the Peace of God, which passeth understanding, as often as we remember, and/or feel the absence of, and the desire for, it.

Practising giving thanks and adopting a receptive attitude of mind serves us to an extent that is far, far beyond measure.  It is a vital and indescribably beneficial act of mind retraining that will clear the blocks we have unwittingly placed in the way of our awareness of the constant presence, not only of the Peace of God, but also of Its inseparable companions, Love and Joy.

By committing ourself unequivocally to Awakening we can share/extend the Love — which is one and the same as the Light of Eternal Truth — that our Wakened Self really IS, with our brothers in the seemingly fragmented Sonship, to illumine their minds to their already Awakened state.  For we are all, as one, Awake already, and have always been. A momentary dream, over the instant it began, but which we keep reviewing, is veiling our sight from this, our only reality. 

Thus can they and we, together, be restored to the Wholeness/Holiness/Divinity of Being that is our Oneness in the Life of the Creator.  How can there be conflict (within or without) when there is Love?  How can there be fear when there is safety?  How can there be dread when there is Joy?  How can there be need for endless, continual change when there is Perfection?  All that is needful is our re-cognition of the Truth of Eternity for it to be instantly restored to our awareness.

All this — everything, in fact — is ours, Now.  We do not need to strive for it, work for it, earn it, hope for it... even reach for it.  It is already ours; freely, lovingly, immediately.  All that is asked of us is our willingness to receive it again, and accept it unto ourself, after seeming to have thrown it away.  What child, after a spat, or misunderstanding with a parent, has not imagined leaving home, running away to somewhere different, somewhere better?  But when the darkness and the hunger — not just for food but for the warmth, the safety and the unconditional love — set in, how inviting is home, and the irresistible pull to return there!

Heaven, eternity, freedom, all-power, all-knowing; this is our Creation-right.  Who amongst us will deny the truth of this?  Who amongst us does not desire it?  Will we continue to seek the Light where there is none?  As Jesus says:

Can you find light by analyzing darkness, as the psychotherapist does, or like the theologian, by acknowledging darkness in yourself and looking for a distant light to remove it, while emphasizing the distance? (T-9.V.6:3)

He goes on to say, later in that same section of chapter 9:

A therapist does not heal; he lets healing be. He can point to darkness but he cannot bring light of himself, for light is not of him. Yet, being for him, it must also be for his patient.  The Holy Spirit is the only Therapist.  He makes healing clear in any situation in which He is the Guide.  You can only let Him fulfill His function (if we allow Him, by asking — and thus, authorising, giving Him power in our life, to transform it; for He cannot violate our God-given free will — and TRUSTING Him).  

He needs no help for this.  He will tell you exactly what to do to help anyone He sends to you for help, and will speak to him through you if you do not interfere. Remember that you choose the guide for helping, and the wrong choice will not help. But remember also that the right one will. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God. As you awaken other minds to the Holy Spirit through Him, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world. But the laws you are obeying work.

(My emboldening and some italic, for emphasis.)

Now is the time to turn to the Light of Life and Love, which is God, Whose dwelling place is within us, even as ours is within Him.

Endless blessings for the Peace, Joy and Love that is Oneness,

Brian Longhurst  

... the revelation of the Glory of God goes forward a little here, a little there.  And so it must needs be, that you may assimilate and grow in the knowledge and wisdom and not suffer indigestion from too much intake all at once.

Jesus, 29.5 1988

December 14^th 2011 

Dear Friends,

As mentioned on previous occasions, each incarnation is but a fleeting shadow.  It seems that we are with a body in time and place, and that others, from ‘earlier times’ have passed away, and are ‘gone’.  But vast numbers of the fragments of the Sonship of God who have laid aside their earthly body are unaware of having done so, and perceive themselves as still being ‘alive in a body’, and continue on as such in the etheric counterpart of Earth physical. 

Their etheric bodies appear as ‘real’ to them as ours do to us.  There is no difference between those souls believing themselves still to be ‘here’ and the rest of us who also perceive ourselves as here. 

In truth, we are no more here than they are.  It is all about perception; or, more accurately, misperception.  We believe those who were incarnate in the 16^th, or any ‘former’ century, are ‘gone’ and they think we in the illusory 21^st century are ‘in the future’.  That is why they, generally, do not have awareness of us nor we of them. That is artificially placing time in a linear context, but in reality, there is, and can only be, now; the eternal always.   

Nevertheless, since our perception of time and place is as an unfolding, progressive, linear event, starting at ‘the beginning’ and moving moment by moment toward ‘the end of time’, the Holy Spirit, our true, holy, eternal Self is working with that perception to lead us, one step at a time, toward wakefulness. 

From His perspective — eternity — we are already Awake; God’s one Holy, perfect, limitless, innocent (guiltless) Son never left Home, never separated from his Creator nor fragmented himself into an ever-more-divided number of limited, guilty, fearful, fragile, mortal parts.  If His perspective is correct, then any alternative must be incorrect.  If ours is correct, His must be incorrect; for conflicting perspectives cannot both be correct.    

If the time and place perspective is correct, there can be no eternity, no God (for God must be eternal if He IS at all), Jesus submitting to crucifixion was a waste of time and effort and his resurrection must be a fabrication.  If it was a fabrication, why would those who don’t believe it make it up?  It would be counter intuitive and self-defeating.  But they didn’t make it up; they simply reported, recorded what they saw and believed.  After all, they had had years of witnessing Jesus perform what others believed they could not.   

But, far more important, if the Holy Spirit’s perspective is correct — and holds out nothing but Loving, Peaceful, Joyous prospects, forever and ever (sounds like good news to me J) — would any sane person choose to cling to a perspective that holds out only uncertainty, doubt, guilt, fear, ageing, sickness and death?  Not only all those sorry prospects, but also seeing so many of our fellows in the same plight as being wrong, guilty; that they are our enemies and likely to at least do us down, make us wrong, judge us, attack us and even kill us.  Unless we kill them first — all in self defence, of course. 

That is why Caiaphas wanted an end to Jesus: self defence.  What had Jesus ever done to Caiaphas?  But to Caiaphas, Jesus threatened his whole belief system and way of life — along, as he saw it, with the whole Jewish nation — so it was expedient to have Jesus done away with.  Out of sight, out of mind. 

If we have any feelings toward another other than love, peace and goodwill, then we have a broken relationship, because within the Kingdom of Heaven there is, and can be, only love, peace and goodwill, since in the eternity of Heaven we are One.  There is but one true purpose to be served in time and place and that is healing broken relationships.  This is because all the while we perceive brokenness we cannot remember our true Being, which is wholeness, oneness, innocence, Light and Love. 

Judgement casts a shadow over relationships, preventing us from seeing the truth in our brothers that is a reflection of the truth in us.  However, if we choose to see the Light of Christ in our brothers that vision is enabled by the Christ Light in us shining away the shadows that previously hid from us the truth of Christ in our brothers.  Here is how Jesus stated it at the Last Supper: 

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.  (Jn. 14:23)   

And in a prayer to Papa later the same evening:   

...Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;  That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.   And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; (Jn. 17:20-23) 

If we are unable to see the Christ Light in another it is not because it is not there, but because we have not shone our Christ Light, which is Love, upon him.  If we desire to shine that Light upon him but find ourself unable to experience it, it is because we believe there is still darkness — guilt — preventing us from seeing the Light.  Only by remaining steadfastly committed to that desire, and forgiving our brothers and ourself for what has never really happened (because all but Heaven is a dream) will the darkness and blindness be shone away, and our true vision restored.  

That darkness, or absence of Light, is not real because only Light is real and Light and Love are the same.  The darkness is, therefore, a misperception.  Misperceptions are of the past because only truth is in the eternal Now.  The past can be something we believe happened between us and our brother at some illusory prior moment, causing us to perceive our brother as wrong, guilty, worthy of our judgement and holding a grievance against him. 

That perception may not have arisen during our ‘current’ incarnation, or act; indeed, it is possible to experience an instantaneous negative reaction to one never previously encountered in the present act.  But, as stated above, an act is but a fleeting shadow, and one shadow overlays another as a continuous series of shadows.  They are shadows because we have veiled the Light of Christ, our true reality, from our awareness as we play the game of pretend.  When that Light is restored to our vision, no more shadows remain; they are shone away by the truth of the oneness and innocence of our Being. 

This may seem so profoundly complex and convoluted to those still perceiving illusion as reality that it is impossible to work our way through it.  This can leave us in a state of grave concern about our prospects for salvation, or escape from the carousel of birth and death.  Here, recent communing with Holy Spirit/Self offers encouragement by shining some Light upon the illusion: 

Holy Spirit, I feel as if I am moving nearer to oneness with You, yet I am aware that ego is alongside the path, always seeking to divert me from my destination. 

Of course this is so – or appears to be so from persona Brian’s (pB) perspective.  But ego is not real, other than as much as pB accords it reality.  However, you need have no fear about this, for as you know, it is fear that gives reality to ego, and fear is not real, appearing to be the opposite of Love.  But since Love is all-encompassing, eternally, it can have no opposite.  Thus, if fear is not real, neither can ego be. 

So, allow yourself space – cut yourself some slack – for I assure you, all is according to desire, and not according to concern.  

Well, it is a massive relief to know that.  This is a vital new remembrance for me which I shall immediately adopt as a mantra. 

Then allow it to bring you peace, easement, relaxation.  All is well.  Allow it to be your reality, not just words, platitudes.  They have not been spoken as such, but as solid, palpable reassurances of reality.  All IS well, truly.  So, abandon your concerns; focus on your desire for the Kingdom.  Concerns separate from the Light and block fulfilment of desires. 

And two days later: 

Holy Spirit, I am opening up to awareness of how key statements of eternal truth, or PLFs, are ‘doorways’ that open into aspects of the reality of Eternity, the Kingdom of Heaven within us, where all is Peace, Joy, Love, and all truly is well.  “All is according to desire, and not according to concern” has opened just such a crucial door for me. 

This statement is true, always, but those who still allow themselves to be controlled by fear choose concern to be the deciding factor in their experience.  So the crucial factor determining desire, is whether you are willing to choose and allow Love and Freedom, or fear and limitation to be the governing factors in your awareness, your experience, your reality. 

I choose Love and Freedom for all to be the determining factors of my desire, for I have seen what fear and self-limitation do to people’s minds.  They hide, cover, veil, distort the Truth, and the absence of truth means lies, deception, just as the absence of Light means darkness, misperception. 

So, let your Light so shine before men, that they may rejoice in true desire for freedom from limitation, and glorify your Father in Heaven.  This is the certain, unavoidable destiny of all parts of the seemingly fragmented Sonship; for wholeness, which is holiness, is all there is. 

Desire determines outcome.  If your desire is for Light, which is Truth, so be It.  That is what inevitably comes to you, from your own within, because It is always there.  And, once you come to awareness of It, you cannot contain It, because It is uncontainable. J. You simply have to share It, extend It, give It away, so that all have It, because all are One in truth. 

I am desiring, choosing not to be fearful of going within to commune with Self. 

Herein lies freedom; herein lies Peace; herein lies Joy, wholeness, oneness and Love, all knowledge, wisdom and understanding.  Therefore, rejoice! for the Kingdom truly is within you.  

Here is what Jesus says about Love and fear in ACIM: 

You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was given you. Each is a way of seeing, and different worlds arise from their different sights. See through the vision that is given you, for through Christ’s vision He beholds Himself.  And seeing what He is, He knows His Father.  Beyond your darkest dreams He sees God’s guiltless Son within you, shining in perfect radiance that is undimmed by your dreams.  And this you will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift of love to you, given Him of the Father for you. 

The Holy Spirit is the light in which Christ stands revealed.  And all who would behold Him can see Him, for they have asked for light (and our requests are always answered).  Nor will they see Him alone, for He is no more alone than they are.  Because they saw the Son, they have risen in Him to the Father.  And all this will they understand, because they looked within and saw beyond the darkness the Christ in them, and recognized Him.  In the sanity of His vision they looked upon themselves with love, seeing themselves as the Holy Spirit sees them.  And with this vision of the truth in them came all the beauty of the world to shine upon them.

(T-13.V.10,11.  My emboldening and some italic, for emphasis.) 

The emotion we made — fear — clings to us only as long as we allow it. For we are not its slave, as it appears, but its master.  But we must assert our mastery over it by a willingness for our true Self, the Spirit of Truth, to take charge of our mind.  Ego would have us believe this means losing our power over our life and destiny.  But it is ego to which we have surrendered the power over our life and destiny, and it has taken it, surreptitiously pretending to be who we are.  Now, we can claim it back as our God-given right and once more, just like Jesus, be truthfully able to say: All power is given unto me in Heaven and in Earth. (Mt. 28:18.)  Only believe, and the Kingdom is NOW; miracles are NOW.   

As Gary Renard says in The Disappearance of the Universe: 

...Most people would hesitate to give up the world, but would they be so hesitant if they were given a clear taste of the alternative?  Given an authentic spiritual experience, they would find the material world a cruel joke compared with what’s available. 

Here’s to the abandonment of fear and the reclaiming of Love, 

Brian Longhurst 

…we share with you the joy of Oneness with the Father’s good Will — to bring the Kingdom of Peace, love, righteousness and harmony-with-Him, the Creator Spirit, into the lives of all mankind.

Christ-servers in the Realms of Light, 5.6.1988

December 21^st 2011

Dear Friends, 

Esoteric is a term generally understood to mean hidden, secret, available only to the select few, and its antonym, exoteric, to be available to, or understood by, a wider public. 

Since the dawn of time — the apparent separation of God’s Son from his Father and from himself, by fragmentation — that which has been perceived by the vast mass of humanity as esoteric could be referred to as eternity, or spiritual truth, mystical, metaphysical reality.  By the same token, exoteric would be that which is out in the open for all to see: the so-called physical world and universe, ‘out there’. 

There can, assuredly, be few today who have not given at least some pondering to the obviously climactic times and events taking place around the world before our eyes.  Where will it lead?  What will be the outcome of these tumultuous upheavals, where everything seems to be getting turned on its head.  Even the prognostications of the north and south magnetic poles reversing is, according to NASA — and, no doubt, other scientific studies — showing many signs of taking place at this time of writing, and some are suggesting that this is occurring also with the sun.   

I have heard it said that if this happens there will be no electricity, meaning no computers, no cars (because no electrical spark to ignite the fuel in the engines), no surgical procedures or anything else that depends on electricity to keep it operational, though no verification of this seems available, and it appears somewhat unlikely to me; but I am far from expert in such matters.  One thing of which we can all be sure, however, is that ego-driven intellectual mind will speculate, hypothesise, philosophise — and agonise — about all such ‘Earth changes’, even to the point of frenzy.   

We will serve ourselves well, therefore, to ask ourself, is this what God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit want, or is it what ego wants?  Under which yoke do we wish to place ourself?  One which assures us inner peace, or one which assures us fear?  According to the One Who assures us of inner peace, it is not the world which we need to change, but our mind about the world.  Whatever turmoil appears to be taking place ‘out there’ is but a reflection of what is taking place in our upside-down, distorted minds. 

If our minds are, as Jesus tells us in ACIM, upside-down, then everything getting turned about means we will find ourselves right-side up.  But this can only take place by our willingness to co-operate with, accept, surrender to, have faith in, this process.  We can only do that if we are willing to trust that all is in the able hands, the care, of One Who is empowered by perfect, unconditional, benign Love. Love can, of course, only be benign, and if it is unconditional, it must be unconditionally benign.  That means that Love does not judge, condemn or punish.   

Most of humanity believes, at some level, that God will judge us and punish us for our ‘sins’, or falling short of the mark expected of us by Him.  That is quite a good reason to try hard to persuade ourselves that there is no God ☺.  This, in a vain attempt to convince ourselves there can be no judgement, condemnation or punishment.  However, this is a fear-based form of argument, and fear is the domain of ego.  We are not ego, we are Christ, God’s beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased.  Here is what Jesus says about this: 

This is God’s Final Judgment: “You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am your Father and you are My Son.”

 (ACIM, Workbook, page 455.  My emboldening/underlining, for emphasis.) 

If we are forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, clearly there must be a fundamental flaw in any fear-based argument. The flaw is that we have not sinned.  We have dreamt of sinning; of being apart from Papa.  And being apart from Papa, were it to be possible — which, of course, it is not, and the very idea is absurd — could only mean darkness, guilt and fear.  We seem to be experiencing this, but it is not real.  Only Heaven, eternity, is real.  This, from Jesus again, is powerful and empowering in reassuring us and helping us decide to whom we will serve ourself well to listen:   

There is no life outside of Heaven.  Where God created life, there life must be.  In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. At best it seems like life (a very pale, sickly, fleeting imitation!); at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven.  Illusions are but forms.  Their content is never true.

(ACIM, T-23.II.19.  My emboldening and italic, for emphasis.) 

Jesus does not mince his words.  Thank God.  Word-mincing indicates lack of certainty, and certainty can come only with Knowledge.  Leaders in this world of dreams mince their words, and he is not of this world; no more are we.  If he was like them we would have as much justification in not believing him as we have for not believing them. ☺. 

As mentioned before, we are now in the chaos time, when all that was believed to be reality, the accepted, consensus order of things is undergoing change, upheaval, transformation.  Chaos causes destructuring (you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs), but, much more importantly, following the destructuring always comes an opportunity for restructuring, to something better, more serviceable to all affected.  This two-phase process is taking place right now at the personal, interpersonal and global level.   

Ego, to put it mildly, does not like change, even though it is the cause of constant, chaotic, destructuring change, and most of us don’t want change because the outcome is unknown, and the unknown is cause for doubt, uncertainty and fear.  So, we tend to see change as frightening, as adversity.  But what so often turns up disguised as adversity is actually opportunity; opportunity to transform adversity into fulfilment (OTAF).  

We have two ways of perceiving change: as destructuring, and thus, fearful, or as opportunity for restructuring.  If we are listening to ego’s script for what ‘At best seems like life’ all we are likely to perceive is destructuring and that is most likely to be our experience.  But if we choose to listen to Holy Spirit’s perfectly loving, all-knowing script for how to return to the reality of Life, and commit ourself to trusting and following His script, we can be certain that the destructuring will be swiftly followed by His restructuring, and that is certain to rapidly become our experience, because that has been our choice.

This will get our life onto a meaningful, purposeful, uplifting, Love-inspired, Love-inspiring, joy-filling course toward the Light of eternal truth, which will, as Jesus assures us, set us free.  Theresa and I have witnessed the destructuring of the lives and relationships of numerous people in recent time.  Those who were oblivious to the Voice for God, or were unwilling, unable, unready, too fearful to follow His Way, are still experiencing destructuring, often in the form of one crisis leading to another as they flounder, unseeing of the Light that shines in the very midst of the chaos, to guide us unerringly to safety, freedom and wholeness. 

And yet, joy of joys, we have also been blessed to witness destructuring swiftly change to restructuring of the lives of those who held fast, steadfast and one-pointed in their faith, trust, obedience and commitment to listening to the Voice for God, lovingly speaking and guiding from their own within.  Such instances have magnificently demonstrated and fulfilled the certainty that adversity (destructuring) is the perfect thing, that we call into our presence for transforming into fulfilment — the restructuring of our lives and redirecting of them toward the Light. 

If we are fearful of the Light — because our sight is so adjusted to the illusory dark, the Light is too bright for our sight to discern what It reveals — we will cleave to what is familiar, even if it means continuing toe-stubbing, stivering blindly, unknowingly from one uncertainty, one crisis, one difficulty to the next.  So, we keep focused on the chaos and the destructuring, aware only of that, and thus, convinced that is all there is.  Is it any wonder there is increasingly so much suicide, so much despair?  

And yet, the chaos and destructuring is all part — an essential part — of the Great Rescue Programme (GRP), the transforming, healing and restoration back to Oneness of the fragmented, split-off-from-Truth part of the mind of Papa’s beloved Son.  That upside-down, fragmented mind is a construct, albeit a completely flawed structure.  It is inevitable that it will crumble and fall, disintegrate, for as Jesus reminds us: ...if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.  And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. (Mk. 3:24,25.)  

That construct has to be allowed to destructure itself.  That process is not of God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit, for They do not intervene.  Neither need They, for it is merely an inevitable outcome of the fact that it is divided against itself.  Rather, They simply go with the flow, allowing it, knowing that the restructuring that is the GRP replaces it.  Here is how it was explained to me by a Christ-server from the Realms of Light in an August 1991 communion:  

In these times the confusion is greatest as the old order crumbles and Earth-mind man reels to and fro.  The (restructuring) energies are concentrated at all levels and intensified as the programme focuses upon the “final assault” (the leavening of the third measure of meal, until the whole is leavened) on antiChrist (ego).  Fear not, it is not a “full frontal” assault as in warfare of Earth, but an infiltration of energy (Life/Light/Love/Truth) as cracks appear in the system — and believe me, there are plenty of those.  The energy shall thus gain entry and transform from within.  It is like cancer in reverse.  The (ego devised and driven) system shall not be aware of its defences being “breached” and shall continue as traditionally.  But changes will begin to happen from within, and great surprise and wonderment shall come upon the inhabitants of the citadel.     

New awareness shall be the order of the day.  This is real, tangible, transforming activity.  Be aware of the new energy — take no notice of the old; it shall be astonishing but let not your equilibrium be disturbed by it.  Focus, we counsel you, upon this for your own benefit and upliftment.   

All is well.  We are closer to you all than you know, and the banner of Christ Jesus is the cloak also by which we are all enfolded and protected.  We go forward to a certain victory.  Praise be to Almighty God and His blessed Son.  Amen. 

Ego-yoked minds are nervous, fearful about putting their trust in Jesus because of unconscious — and even, in many instances, conscious — guilt and indoctrination by false teachings about him coming again to judge the quick and the dead.  So, as they see the ‘citadel’, the bastions of the old, ego-construct crumbling, ‘destructuring’, they are bereft of anywhere or anyone to turn to for comfort and reassurance that ‘All is well’.  There is one, true, ever-present Comforter all can turn to for Comfort such as this world cannot offer.   

One major comfort immediately available to us all is that institutionalised teachings about the Second Coming of Christ and its dire predictions of wrath, vengeance, judgement, condemnation and terrible punishment contain many misperceptions.  Here is what Jesus, untouched by the church, says about it:   

The First Coming of Christ is merely another name for the creation, for Christ is the Son of God.  The Second Coming of Christ means nothing more than the end of the ego’s rule and the healing of the mind.  I was created like you in the First, and I have called you to join with me in the Second.  I am in charge of the Second Coming, and my judgment, which is used only for protection, cannot be wrong because it never attacks.  Yours may be so distorted that you believe I was mistaken in choosing you (that’s ALL of us, without exception).  I assure you this is a mistake of your ego.  Do not mistake it for humility.  Your ego is trying to convince you that it is real and I am not, because if I am real, I am no more real than you are.  That knowledge, and I assure you that it is knowledge, means that Christ has come into your mind and healed it.

(ACIM, T-4.IV.10.  My emboldening and some italic, for emphasis)  

Christ has indeed come, already, into our mind and healed it, but our awareness of that reality is still dawning upon us as we Awaken from the dream of separation to Its eternal reality. 

Love and endless blessings for peace and joy at Christmas, and fulfilment of all our highest endeavours for the Kingdom through 2012 and beyond, 

Brian Longhurst

…all the mysteries of the universe are yours for the asking; our Heavenly Father has not deliberately hidden them from His Little Ones.  They are only mysteries in the minds of mankind because mankind has been looking in the wrong place and in the wrong way, or not at all.

Jesus, 12.6.1988