Issue #101

What’s New in August 2023

Featured Article

Our Direct Relationship with God

By Alice Friend

 

We can all have a direct relationship with God. We each have an experience of the Divine in our human relationships. Jesus always claimed this for Himself and we can do the same. And the goal of having direct relationship with God is clearly revealed in A Course of Love, Choose Only Love and A Course in Christ.

But what does it mean? How does it feel?

We do not need anything outside ourselves to bring the direct experience of God into our hearts. We no longer need intermediaries (and never really did need them) to tell us what God says. We have the inner-hearing ability ourselves. It’s all within us, and the experience is always a heart-centered one.

The “ears of my heart,” the eternal heart within my temporary physical one, hears my Creator communing with me. Is this the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit? God tells me, “yes.” Holy Spirit and God are united. Of course!

Come with me now and let’s play with time. Let’s time travel back 2000 years and eavesdrop on Jesus standing among olive trees, wild rosemary, and thyme bushes in a garden at dawn, talking with God. The “channel” between them completely open, free, and lucid. Jesus is inviting God to guide and help him to know what and how to say and feel for the day ahead. Through the inner language of the soul, God accompanies Jesus and they unite in Divine Love. All is available and freely revealed. Giving and receiving are the same in Love. Jesus becomes God and God becomes Jesus, knowingly. There is no separation. Feel the holy union taking place in that garden. Feel the inner dialogue between them. Feel the peace, love, joy, and total faith moving automatically through the body and mind of Jesus in this holy union.

Is this not familiar to your soul? To witness this joining with Jesus and God is also to witness your own union with your Maker. It gives permission to be completely uninhibited in a direct personal communion with the Divine. Jesus sets the example, being fully who He is so I, too, can be fully who I Am—the I Am is the Holy Union, the Holy One that communes with my Self.

Communing with God is my birthright, natural and joyous. It is always filled only with pure, clear love. It is Love that I am communing with, and it is direct and unimpeded. It is my personal experience and built-in as an eternal part of myself (“I am as God created me”).

How can anyone, any organization, or anything outside tell me it is wrong to talk directly with God? How can anyone tell me that to do so is forbidden because I am a woman? How can any source outside of me place their authority over the Author of my life? God is my Creator, my Author, and we are one. The communication between us is built into my being and all beings.

Many years ago I asked God who or what is the anti-Christ. I received an immediate answer: “The anti-Christ is anyone or any organization that denies you are Christ.” In other words, any source that would deny me having a direct relationship with the Christ I Am. So simple and so true.

When I read spiritual books, I know whether the author is writing from his or her direct experience with God, with Love. Love’s messages are familiar to my soul. They bring forth the awareness of my own Christ Self. As it says in Choose Only Love, “The living Christ that lives in you is what keeps you united with God. The living Christ that lives in you is the relationship you have with your being and its source, being both your being and your source, since they are of the same nature.”

Direct communication with the Divine is true wisdom and guidance. It is tender, sweet, yet strong in its power and the presence of Love. Often the words from small children can awe me when I hear uncensored and loving wisdom coming from them. They know. They have brought their knowing with them—until they forget and doubt it.

Many years ago a client came to me for a “reading” with my guide, Golden Flame. She asked why she could not have a healthy, loving romantic relationship. She asked why she was always wanting to change whoever she was with. This was the answer: “Deep within us there seems to be an empty space that we think can be filled with a romantic relationship. Think of this space having a shape much like a puzzle piece that only the perfect shape of that one puzzle piece can fill. When you have a relationship you try to force and mold the other, in vain, to fit that empty space, and it never does fit perfectly. When you fill that empty space with your loving relationship with God, it fits perfectly, and you do not feel that emptiness any more. It is then that you can have healthy human relationships because the most important one has been filled and there is a completeness inside you. All other relationships come from that One.”

Even though that answer was for someone else, it was also for me. I have never forgotten it.

Our uninhibited, trusting, joyous, loving relationship and dialogue with God is already within us all. When we have the faith to use this Holy Communion we are blessed, feel that life is easier, and have a deep peace that goes beyond human understanding.

Without doubt we all have a direct relationship with God. It is ours to experience, and to celebrate.

Glenn Hovemann

Alice Friend lives in Southern Spain with her beloved husband, Rod. They both love and study A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, and Choose Only Love. In partnership with God she is the author of A Course in Christ, Mary Magdalene: A Force of Love, and the Holy Spirit Wisdom Cards. She can be reached at acourseinchrist@gmail.com