There is an old Native American saying which goes something like this..."You cannot judge another until you have walked a mile in their moccasins." Being ONE with all of our brothers, we are literally walking in each other's moccasins all the time. We are just not aware of it. However, if we are honest, we could also say we "choose" not to be aware of it. How would we live our lives differently if we knew without a shadow of a doubt that every one of our words, thoughts and deeds were in synchronization with everyone else's? I believe we would live the Golden Rule to the maximum knowing that whatever i did to a brother i did to myself. To judge a brother would be to judge myself. It would be a foolish thing to do...not because it is deemed unholy but because it makes no sense to hurt ourselves.

In our slumber, we imagine ourselves fragmented, separate from one another with an individual "i" personality, isolated and alone. We have forgotten our Truth. Yet the Truth of us has not changed because of our dreaming. It continues on and functions as ONE as it always has and is doing right at this instant. I Love Mother Teresa's words..."We belong to each other." What a beautiful expression of our Truth.

The only way for us to remember who we are is to bring all of our "seemingly" fragmented relationships back to their Singular Truth and this is accomplished by giving ALL relationships to God and by healing our mind of erroneous perceptions through forgiveness. Jesus gives us many clues and tips on the ways for this to be accomplished.

We practice by putting aside the personal "i" and embracing the eternal "I" which is whole, inclusive, complete and ONE with all of our brothers and God. We practice by turning over ALL relationships to God, for every relationship is a part of who I am. We practice by recognizing that there is but ONE solution to any and all perceived problems and that is returning the mind to God. We practice by asking for guidance from Holy Spirit and/or Jesus in every situation. We practice by making every encounter with a brother a holy encounter that recognizes our brothers as our Saviors. We practice by utilizing forgiveness in every situation where we are not experiencing perfect peace. Probably the most challenging practice of all is by putting God and our brothers ahead of any personal need and aspiration. Even as i type these words i can feel my ego's objections. LOL

I can assure you that at some point you will notice that "practice" transforms into a "devotion" and a labor of Love in which everyone benefits, but as a singular entity within God and each other. "We belong to each other." That is the way we were created and that is what we will awaken to...a sense of belonging where all Truthful wishes are fulfilled in the extension of the Love that we are. Creation has not skipped a beat in our slumber but can you imagine the experience of being a fully conscious part of it all? How amazing we are together as ONE shared Creation of God.

"Live in the Light of God's Love" was one of the very first messages I received from Holy Spirit decades ago and now i'm so grateful it is an experience integrated into everyday life...my true Life with my brothers in God. Everything is a collaboration, a collaboration of LOVE. There are no private thoughts, there are no single thoughts. Everything is shared, EVERYTHING. Our singular Relationship with God and our Brothers is key to awakening to this Truth. It allows us to KNOW that we are NEVER alone and there is not an instant we should be fearful about anything. How would we live if we KNEW this was the Truth? Well, it is. We all walk in each other's moccasins and every loving thought is TRUE.

I'm feeling called to share with you many of the lessons i've learned practicing Jesus' teachings in ACIM for over the past 35+ years.  Some of my experiences may resonate with you and others may not.  But the way i see it is that if anything I share is helpful to anyone and speeds up our journey to Peace and awakening, it is worth sharing.  If one brother is helped, we are all helped.  So as you read what I share, embrace or dismiss as you are guided to do.  I'm not looking for agreement or disagreement and I have nothing to defend. Everything I offer is extended with Love and for the purpose of being helpful. For there is one thing i know for sure and that is that we are here to be helpful to one another as we journey home together.  This particular sharing is rather long so if you decide to read it, get comfortable.  Grab a cup of coffee or a cold beer and relax into it.  As always, do what brings you peace. 

In our journey of awakening, it seems we go full circle in our return to God and to Heaven.  We began as pure and perfect Creations of God, as One with God.  It was a total and complete joining and collaboration.  Through the Creation of the Son, God becomes a Father and the singular Father/Son Relationship is established. This relationship is eternally true. It will never change nor has there ever been a moment it has not been true. 

In our slumber as seemingly fragmented pieces of the Whole, our journey becomes one of healing and forgiveness. This facilitates an experience of all relationships with right-minded perception which is a loving reflection of their original True and holy state.  At firsts glance it seems like we have three relationships...One with God, One with ourselves and One with our Brothers. And at first glance it appears like a lot of healing is needed.  Yet in truth there is only One relationship and that is the relationship we share with God through Holy Spirit. This relationship once healed, encompasses all perceived relationships since our Oneness is a shared experience and existence.  

I've shared often my experience of right-minded perception where with a healed mind, everyone and everything shows up lovely and loving.  With a healed mind, ALL is  a reflection of Love. It is impossible for it to show up otherwise.  You just bask in the Light and Love of it all.  If we perceive, or i should say misperceive, a brother as being less then perfect, we must ask ourselves...Who is in need of healing?  For a fragmented, personal nature does not exist in the Mind of God.  We are One...One for ALL and ALL for One.  The Sonship of God is inclusive and all Souls are a part of its Wholeness.  No one is left out or special.  Or you could say that we are ALL equally Loved in the Sight of the Father.  

The Father/Son Relationship is BIG BANG powerful and when we fell asleep we dreamed of fragmenting, exploding out and projecting a Universe in which to reside outside the Mind of God.  Of course it never happened, and for many of us we are now having a kind of lucid dream...being aware we are dreaming but still stuck within the dream.  God has reached out to us through Holy Spirit. It is a call to awaken and to realize we are safe and at home and nothing happened.  So here we are in the process of returning to a home we have never actually left and to a Father that still holds us safely in Its Holy Mind.  

The healing of our relationship with the Father (God) brings all of the seeming Son fragments back to its original Oneness and the KNOWING of its Perfection. Since we see each other perceptually as fragments, we seek most of the time to heal individual relationships. We lose sight of our Wholeness and the One Source of all Creation.  It "appears" certain relationships are more vital and important than other relationships.  Certain relationships may appear more difficult than other relationships, etc.  We have a kind of Spiritual Amnesia and we have forgotten our Source and our Identity as ONE Created Being.  It is challenging to see that this singular, "Atomic" relationship of Father/Son consists of the sum of its parts or the sum of its Souls. It seems paradoxical which is usually the case with non-dual Truth. This is because one cannot reconcile Truth and Illusion.  They are experienced as two distinct dimensions of Reality or Unreality. We function at one level or the other but never a combination of both.

Our mind cannot grasp this because it is blinded by the false identity we made up as an ego.  We become confused between our True identity as a Son and our imaginary identity as an ego and discerning which one is real.  In Truth we are The Body of Christ and the Christ mind remembers exactly who we are as The Son of God.  So the initial goal is to get real clear about who we truly are and then function from that identity. That identity, our true identity is a shared identity and is inclusive of our Creator and ALL of our brothers. We belong to one another and are a part of each other. There is not one thought that is not shared by the whole. This is how we need to relate to one another.  It makes the value of the Golden Rule blazingly obvious.  And it is also why we are never healed alone.   

The only way for us to remember who we are is to bring all of our "seeming" relationships back to their Singular Truth and this is accomplished by giving ALL relationships to God and by healing our mind of erroneous perceptions through forgiveness. Jesus gives us many clues and tips on the easiest way for this to be accomplished.  

One clue that was for me a real portal opening to understanding was Jesus' teaching that "the insignificance of the body must become an acceptable idea."  Let that swish around in the mind a bit.  It was like a trigger for me, and a guidepost for taking the next step.  I had to look at my relationship to my body since it is the home of the ego, the false me i made up and did not exist, yet i had held it in such esteem.  Perceptually, it is like an egoic Catch 22. In other words, because we perceive ourselves in a body, we believe it is real and because we believe it is real, we perceive ourselves in a body.  It was purposefully set up by the ego in this circular fashion so there appears to be no way out of our misperception.  The body like anything else within the dream can be used by Holy Spirit for the purposes of the Atonement or used by the ego as a block to the awareness of our Truth.  Who am I if not a body?  That is a question that can only be answered thru a healed relationship with God and a healed mind.  When we get clear on our True Spiritual Identity and its holistic nature, we can begin to function in the world but not be OF the world.  We become a passerby and everything is handled "FOR" us instead of "BY" us.  We are no longer the architect of a personalized dream but rather a collaborative spiritual entity that is eternal with no attachment to an imaginary body.  We live out of this Truth, and initially it does seem like play-acting.  But eventually, we have experiences that validate its Truth and we gain conviction and certainty about who we Truly are as the Son of God.  Only then does "the insignificance of the body become an acceptable idea" for i am no longer fully associated with and attached to that identity. It is no longer a fixed idea or a firm believe.  There now appears a space in the mind for Holy Spirit to deliver the Truth to me in a way i can understand and accept.  As we start placing our faith in our Real Identify instead of our made up identity, the curtain parts and we actually experience being that which we are...One with our Brothers and with God. Only then will we really experience the words Jesus has given us in ACIM..."I am not a body, I am free. For I am as God Created me."  No longer an abstract idea or affirmation, it transforms into a living, light-filled Truth in our everyday life. 

We practice by putting aside the personal "i" and embracing the eternal "I" which is whole, complete and ONE with all of our brothers and God.  We practice by turning over ALL relationships to God for every relationship is a part of who I am.  We practice by recognizing that there is but ONE solution to any and all perceived problems and that is returning the mind to God. We practice by asking for guidance from Holy Spirit and/or Jesus in every situation.  We practice by making every encounter with a brother a holy encounter that recognizes our brothers as our Saviors.  I can assure you that at some point you will notice that "practice" transforms into a "devotion" and a labor of Love in which everyone benefits but as a singular entity within God and each other.  We belong to each other.  That is the way we were created and that is what we will awaken to...a sense of belonging where all Truthful wishes are fulfilled in the extension of the Love that we are.  Creation has not skipped a beat in our slumber but can you imagine the experience of being a conscious part of it all.  How amazing we are together as ONE shared Creation of God.  "Live in the Light of God's Love" was one of the very first messages I received from Holy Spirit and now i'm so grateful it is an experience integrated into everyday life...my true Life with my brothers in God.  Everything is a collaboration, a collaboration of LOVE. There are no private thoughts, there are no single thoughts. Everything is shared, EVERYTHING. How would you live if you KNEW this was the Truth?  Well, it is.

There is one thing that getting older gives you and that is an opportunity to look back on your experiences and notice that most, if not all, served you in some way. It is called perspective. We can look and see what a past experience taught us and in some way moved us forward on our journey in life.

I remember one such circumstance. I'll never forget it. It was the morning i had a doctor's appointment to go over certain "test results." At the time i was in my mid-twenties and had been married five years. My husband and I had good jobs, we had saved money and owned a simple but lovely home.

We both felt it to be the perfect time to start our family.

Although i had a "good job," a career was never my intention in life. All i ever wanted was to be a wife and mother. I watched Let it to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show regularly and could not wait until the time I could kiss my "good job" good bye and start living my dream. Even though this was the mid 70's, I was never part of the Women's Liberation Movement. To be honest, I was not a part of any social movement and there were plenty at that time in history. My sole goal was to be a good wife and mother.

So the "test results" I received at the Doctor's that morning had profound ramifications on my life. You see, through some glitch in my genetic coding, I found out that I was sterile. It was not associated with any dread disease, it was just what the Doctor referred to as a curse. Yep, that was exactly the term he used. I was cursed. At the ripe old age of 25 I was experiencing a premature menopause. Without going into the ugly details, let's just say it was not a pleasant experience. But most tragic of all, it meant i would not fulfill my lifelong dream of being a mother.

You might say...just adopt a child. That was my thought too. We will just adopt children. Nope, my husband was not open to it at all...it had to be his child or no child. I could understand his right to feel that way just as i had a right to want to adopt. I was not angry with him, yet it was always the elephant in the room and it adversely affected our marriage. We could not even discuss it without us ending up fighting and not speaking to each other for days.

Since, motherhood was not on the horizon, i decided to find a job that i actually enjoyed rather than a job that was merely a means to an end. By the way, the job i had was underwriting health insurance. It was my job to look for ways to reject people from being approved for health insurance. Not a very uplifting job. So that summer, i quit. I signed up with a temporary agency and went from job to job testing the waters until i found something i liked. Little did i know, i would find the job that changed everything.

Meanwhile, back at the marriage, after countless separations we decided to call it quits. We both came to the same conclusion at the exact same time. We both wanted different things and better to cut our loses and move to the lives we both desired. We remained friends until he died about 10 years later.

The position i accepted was with a Greeting Card Company. That is a whole other blog. But for now, back my new single life. Which i'm going to skip over now to get to the point of this blog. Learning from experience.

When i looked back and was totally honest, i was not ready to be a mother. The marriage was on life support from the beginning and become a mother was just my way of hiding from the truth that i had no idea who i was and what i wanted. But my heart did ache all those years wondering "why me" Why me out of kazillon other women went thru menopause at 25. I felt cheated and robbed of motherhood.

Little did i know then but in 12 years i would meet Tom, my absolute Soul Mate, my Lover and best friend. At that time, i had a full blown fabulous career in Art Marketing. I was almost 40 and thoughts of motherhood had faded away years before. There i was enjoying my wonderful life. We had it all and we enjoyed and loved each other so much. My feelings of being cheated had transformed into only gratitude for the life i was living.

It was at that moment, out of the blue, that Tom came home one night and told me one of his sub-contractor's girlfriend was pregnant and she was giving it up for adoption. Even though he was 60 years old, had three grown children who were close to my age, he loved me so much that he did not want me to miss my chance at motherhood. He told me that if it was still something i wanted, he wanted it too and would totally commit to being a wonderful father to our child.

Initially, i was shocked. Like it said, it came out of the blue. I thought of all the women where i worked who were on long waiting lists, waiting and waiting for babies from China, Romania and other countries. Even the President of the company was waiting for a baby from England. Most had been waiting for more than 2 years. So now, this soon to be beautiful baby girl just drop from heaven? I thought about it for just 5 minutes and told Tom YES, a resounding YES, I'm in.

God knew the perfect timing for me to become a mother even though i didn't. God knew when i was ready before i knew and he also knew the perfect father for our new little Maggie. Just 3 months later at two days old, we brought her home from the hospital.

Twelve years earlier i thought my life was over, no marriage, a job i despised and no chance of being a mother. Now i had everything, everything i had ever hoped for. I had learned much during those 12 years. I discovered the profession i could be passionate about, i learned what i truly wanted in a husband and found a man that fit the description perfectly. And now i saw was the perfect time for a child. I had a career so there would never be a feeling of sacrificing anything. I could be the mother this precious child deserved.

Never fear when dreams seem delayed or postponed or even seem cancelled. Anything is possible. And God's timing is always perfect! 😍

YOU ARE WORTHY OF YOUR OWN LOVE

On just about every page of ACIM, in one way or another, Jesus reminds us that we are worthy. He tells us that our Value has nothing to do with anything we do or don't do in this world. And, that our Value was established by God in the moment of our Creation. The fact that our worth and value are mentioned so often in ACIM is because until we perceive our own value, until we love ourself, we will not be able to perceive it within our brothers. And, just as important, we will feel unworthy to hear Holy Spirit within our mind. Become your own best friend. In doing so you will become aware that you are NEVER alone for the Light that is YOU is the same Light you share with God and your brothers.  You ARE the Son of God.

The human condition is a futile struggle in trying to make something out of nothing. The tragedy is in the decision to believe that the nothing is actually something real. 

“By GIVING power to nothing he throws away the joyous opportunity to learn that nothing HAS no power.” Urtext

The only problem we ever have is believing we have a problem.  ; )