My Dad’s passion was photography, and his favorite subject matter was ugly courthouses, thunderclouds, scenic landscapes, and Art Deco architecture. Whenever we were on vacation he would always have two cameras hanging around his neck.
~Featured Article The Essential Dark By Patricia Pearce y Dad’s passion was photography, and his favorite subject matter was ugly courthouses, thunderclouds, scenic landscapes, and Art Deco architecture. Whenever we were on vacation he would always have two cameras hanging around his neck: one for prints, the other for slides—and a camera bag full of film and assorted lenses slung over his shoulder. In our basement, in a room that doubled as the laundry room, he had his darkroom. It was a magical place, and I loved to watch him making his prints there in the soft red glow of the safelight that hung high up on the wall. I would watch as he carefully positioned a negative in the enlarger and then for a few seconds flashed the enlarger’s light through it, casting the image onto the photo paper on the platform below. I can still see how he would cup his hands under the enlarger’s lens, leaving just a slit between them, so he could sweep more light onto areas of the image that were a bit underexposed. It always looked like he was creating with moonlight. The Need for the Negative All of this has been coming to my mind recently. Maybe my Dad’s spirit has been visiting me to remind me about the process of creating with light, and that an essential step is having a good negative to work with. Because in this collective moment, boy do we have a good negative to work with. Here’s the thing. The only Reality is Love, and for many of us the aperture of our awareness has been opened sufficiently to know that. We can clearly see that Love is universal, that nothing is or ever could exist apart from it, and that everything is a whole, a unity, a vast web of reciprocity. And yet, what we see playing out on our national stage at the moment is Love’s exact opposite. Grievance. Division. Greed. Blame. Attack. Revenge. Domination. Exclusion. All the concepts and patterns that take shape when the mind believes its fictitious story of separateness. This inversion of Love has seemingly now become all-powerful, commandeering and plundering our commons to satisfy its own ego drives. Even though all of this is factually occurring in our collective dream, it helps to remember that none of it is real. Rather, it is an enactment of a falsehood, a fantasy in the mind which, having no basis in Reality, cannot endure. Many of us recognize that we are in the midst of a collective awakening to the reality of Love and the truth of Oneness. So how is it that we find ourselves in the midst of such a glaring display of reality’s opposite? Well, my Dad would say it’s all about the need for the negative. Love’s Exposure A photographer (literally “one who writes with light”) doesn’t freak out when she develops her film and discovers that the image she photographed has been rendered in its inverse. She doesn’t try to destroy the negative, nor does she despair that it is evidence that her subject matter has been overcome by the “forces of darkness.” In fact, the starker the contrast the better, because she knows that only a sharp negative will produce a clear photo. All she needs to do now is shine light through it. It dawned on me the other day that the reason we find ourselves in this moment of Love’s inversion isn’t because our awakening is stalling out, or that Love is on the wane. Quite the opposite. It is because consciousness has seen the reality of Love so vividly that, like the film exposed to the light, it has created the sharp negative it needs to make the reality of Love visible in this world of form. The Darkroom Work We are in the darkroom now, and we are all participants in this play of Light that is bringing the reality of Love into form on this physical plane. Some of us are providing the negative; others are shining the Light. Both are needed. The negative is in place now, and it’s our turn to allow the Light of Love to shine through us in every moment. To meet every stranger with kindness. To hold every trauma in tenderness. To shower every circumstance with generosity. To bathe every space with beauty. To dissolve every fear with joy. We are able to do this because we have seen these same “negative” patterns in ourselves, and rather than trying to banish or do battle with them we have illuminated them with Love. In the process we have abandoned the idea of judgment and withdrawn our belief that any of these inversions of Love are who we truly are. Joining together we amplify our Light. As we allow the Light of Love to shine through us into this “negative moment,” we come to know ourselves AS that Light. We come to know our true Self, our divine Self, as Love. All the while we are creating a representation of a reality that will take our breath away, a masterpiece unlike anything we have ever seen~~~https://acourseoflove.org/the-embrace-112-cocreating-our-new-earth/~https://acourseoflove.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Rodrigo-P.-Cayres-12.jpg~The Embrace #112: Co-Creating Our New Earth~World peace? A new era of cooperation among all nations? The eradication of poverty? Millions of us have had such hopes and aspirations only to be pulled back to “reality” on hearing the latest news of ongoing warfare, souring relations between countries, or the rise in homelessness and poverty.
~Featured Article Co-Creating Our New Earth By Rodrigo Cayres orld peace? A new era of cooperation among all nations? The eradication of poverty? Millions of us have had such hopes and aspirations only to be pulled back to “reality” on hearing the latest news of ongoing warfare, souring relations between countries, or the rise in homelessness and poverty. And we are right to believe that those issues will never be resolved. A healthy dose of skepticism over the prospect of seeing an end in sight to those issues is needed so we can open up to a new thought. Rather than focusing on fixing the old, we are ready to consider something truly new. For 1,500 years, brilliant and well-meaning people proposed innumerous solutions to fix unending issues with the geocentric system, until a new thought was contemplated by the likes of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton: Earth is not the center of the universe, and the planets revolve around the sun. In view of all this, it’s not necessary to feel depressed or despondent. I hear Jesus saying, “Be encouraged rather than discouraged” that we are ready to accept that the current model of the world is unfixable. What to do when we find ourselves in a situation beyond repair? Start anew. Or when we cannot fix what was done? Create anew. Or as Jesus would tell us, “paint a new picture.” The current world has to “disappear” so that a new world can arise, just as a caterpillar must disappear before the butterfly can emerge. Beyond the disappearance of the old world lies the birth of a new Heaven on Earth. The current world's issues cannot be resolved because such a world’s foundations are the sands of specialness, fear, and the illusion of separation. It’s centered on the personal self—the body-mind that seems to give us an identity. The New Earth’s foundations are the rocks of oneness, love, and the awareness of a shared being. But it would be unhelpful to think that a New Earth can be created by a few leaders, or that it requires careful planning for outer changes. Here we need to stay grounded in causes rather than attempt to work with effects. As Jesus put it in The Age of the Heart, “People will stop waging war, not as a result of a series of agreements or treaties, but as a natural manifestation of the new universal consciousness… This need not wait. It is something that you, yourself, must manifest in the world now.” (The Age of the Heart, Ch.11: A New Heart) Wouldn’t it be a waste of energy to try to change what appears on a screen where the images are projected by a data projector? We need to change the data, the inner contents, before we can see real changes reflected on the screen. “The thought system of the truth realizes that the external world is but a reflection of the internal world.” (A Course of Love, T3:18.10) We go within to find the causes of what we see in the world. It’s time to look with loving awareness into our own inner conflicts, self-judgment, the shame and guilt we feel about certain incidents in the past, the lack of communication between mind and heart, the disconnect between the human and the divine in us, the restlessness of mind, the addiction to thinking and doing, the sense of unworthiness and inadequacy, the imbalance between the masculine and feminine energies within us, and so on. “The power of love is the cause and effect that will change the world by returning you, and all your brothers and sisters, to who they are in truth. This cannot be done from without but must be done from within. It is the transformation that is caused within that will affect the world without.” (A Course of Love, D:Day10.33) The emerging New Earth is no utopia. But thinking that a change of political parties, world leaders, or the collapse of a dictatorial regime is going to bring about world peace is utopian. Current methods of dealing with world issues do not work because they only deal with symptoms without addressing their cause. “The arising of a new heaven and by implication a new earth are not future events that are going to make us free. Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free. A new heaven and a new earth are arising within you at this moment, and if they are not arising at this moment, they are no more than a thought in your head and therefore not arising at all.” (A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, Ch.10) Peace in the outer world is the effect of dwelling in inner peace. The New Earth starts from within by returning awareness to the shared being that gives us a real identity—an identity that is timeless and universal. This call to live from the truth of who we are goes to everyone, not just to a selected few. This is an invitation for us all to co-create our New Earth. Our true Self is naturally free from fear, as it does not know death, disease, or decay. Rather than a temporary feeling, love is then realized as the ongoing awareness of us all sharing a common source, which places us in the condition of siblings equally gifted with the opportunity to experience the formless Self, which is pure presence, in physicality as individual expressions, much in the same way that light is dispersed through a prism to express its individual colors. But make no mistake, ending inner conflicts and having greater awareness of love’s presence in us are not enough in and by themselves to create a New Earth. The need for sharing in unity and relationship with others whose awareness is expanding cannot be overemphasized. Hear these words of wisdom: “You may live a more peaceful and meaningful life, but you will not become the savior I ask you to be, or the architects of the new world of heaven on earth that I call you to create.” “When you fully realize that sharing is necessary you will have entered the dialogue. When you have fully surrendered to the fact that you can’t come to know on your own you will have entered the dialogue.” (A Course of Love, T3:14.1; D:Day15.1) “You are here to make one another known and in so doing to know oneness. . . .Realize how necessary dialogue is. Many resist this stage of development because they feel they have achieved inner knowing. . . .They have achieved a goal consistent with their concept of inner knowing and mistaken this as knowing the Self. Movement is necessary to know the Self. . . .The easiest way of all to slip from knowing to not knowing is through stagnating in a 'known' place. . . .Entering the dialogue keeps you in constant contact with the unknown and with unceasing coming to know.” (D:Day15.15-18) Thus inner peace, which surpasses all thinking, and love, which surpasses all feelings, are the root causes that will give rise to our New Earth. Together we are discovering how to recognize genuine peace and love, embody them in daily life, and stabilize or sustain this embodiment when faced with perceived challenges or opposing forces. “Alone we can do nothing, but together our wills fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts.” (A Course in Miracles – Original Edition, T-8.V.36) Sustaining awareness of love’s presence is not about rejecting or hiding what is yet to be returned to love. It’s about embracing all that we see in us now, including all our seeming imperfections, trauma, pain, anger, and the like. Being at peace even with conflict and embracing with compassionate awareness all aspects of our being human will bring forth the inner alchemy—the transmutation of loveless energies back into love. “Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another the most varied opinions can be reconciled – thus one of the most important tasks for humankind today and in the future is that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of development is empty.” (Rudolf Steiner) As John Lennon and Yoko Ono put it in Imagine, we hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one~~~https://acourseoflove.org/the-embrace-111-paint-a-new-picture/~https://acourseoflove.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Mari-Perron-3.jpg~The Embrace #111: Paint a New Picture~I’d bet more than a few of you remember The Great Recession. It had been a rough couple of years before we even landed there. My dad’s health started to decline in 2006. At the same time, my pregnant daughter had moved home.
~Featured Article Paint a New Picture By Mari Perron with Jesus would bet more than a few of you remember The Great Recession. It had been a rough couple of years before we even landed there. My dad’s health started to decline in 2006. At the same time, my pregnant daughter had moved home. Two weeks after my dad died, in early 2007, she delivered my first grandson, Henry, and there was great poignancy in that time too, although it helped that I could hold him and walk with him and cry over him as much as I needed to. We had closed the coffee shop (in more debt than when we started) and were just getting by when the recession hit. We almost filed for bankruptcy – twice. Many of my friends were in trouble as much as we were. My “ACOL reading friends” were wondering, as was I, where the abundance was. It’s hard not to do that, when you’re hurting. I speak here of some of this and the “awful job” I’ve taken out of necessity. I was writing with no expectation that Jesus would answer. Maybe he came again because I started with, “I need help.” His answer? Paint a New Picture My dearest friend and collaborator, feel your heart, and the heaviness of your chest, all the strain running through your body, head to foot. You desire more than anything to be in that place that will not require you to compromise yourself after a lifetime of compromising, but alas, you haven’t yet landed there, and you are upset about this…about the compromises you feel forced into making because you don’t get a break in this time you label one of collapse. And so, you and your little band of friends, who are not so few as you imagine, and among which I am one, are, you might say, early painters of the new picture. How can you paint this new picture from a place of health/wealth/success that looks like the picture that has been being painted for generations? Your next question might be how any attention to the new can be given while you’re consumed by meeting the bare minimum needs of your physical life? You might ask if I am meaning that you become content and even happy with your low station in life. If I am saying that no help is coming. You must remain indigent, reliant on others, and still somehow stand above the fray. And I will tell you – Paint the new picture. Paint the picture without worry about those on whom you rely, for those on whom you rely are not those you think they are. Paint the picture and you will experience the freedom of it, a freedom without compromise. Paint the picture, and the old picture will begin to fade… Oh, Jesus, I get you, and I don’t. Is this really the way it must be? Another idea, a direction that is direction only, another thing that can only be “gotten” at some level that none of us know much about? You each know far more than you think you do. Quit thinking. This does not feel as if it takes any burden from us, even if it’s a blessing. My body feels heavy with another idea of significance that is so unclear. I am happy that you have given me no feeling of being way off track. I really am. But I want more. Is there no more you can give, and I don’t mean in the old way (much), only in the way of lightening the load so that we can begin. You see, you do mean to ask for help in the old way, the way that has miracles of load-lightening events coming to you from the heavens. The old rescuer ideas. Instead invite me into your work, into the painting of this new picture, into deeper friendship and collaboration so that old lines aren’t redrawn. You have said so many times that you don’t know what the new way is, only what it isn’t. This is enough to guide you… Beware of wanting the old ways, that’s all I’m saying. If you want the freedom of the new, if you want liberation for yourself and the generation coming behind you, if you want release from tyranny and to be no one’s child, or slave to any task master, then you are going to have to do things in a new way. You’re going to have to come to see yourself as creators. This is the beginning. Paint the new picture. Embrace the partnership. Follow your gut. Paint the picture of such freedom that no compromise is possible. Is this just a fancy way of saying change your ideas and you’ll change your life? It kind of sounds like that, but you know me, and that I’m not much into that, but will feel I must be off on a new mission if you want me to be. You have got to knock off that old way of thinking. I am no should sayer. I am not your Father. I will never tell you that you must anything. Do not give those qualities to me and don’t desire them from anyone else. Don’t you see that what has arisen has arisen from this very kind of desire? What “must” I do to be happier, healthier, wealthier? Isn’t this the common question? With the common emphasis on “tell me what to do.” Then someone tells you what you should do and the whole cycle repeats itself… the cycle of wrong and right ways, of experts and seekers, of should sayers and rebels. You have asked. I am your friend. I know you intimately. I know your friends intimately. The whole stringy, straggly, bunch of you are so close – so close to my heart – so close to finding your own way, so close to true altruism of spirit, to the kind of giving of yourselves, giving yourselves over to vision that the world needs. What is freely given is not this thing of gift as you perceive of it, not a bestowing on one of one gift and on one of another, not so much a thing of destiny or of one being an artist and one a writer and on and on. Those all are parts of life that are there and yet looked at inaccurately, particularly in the idea of bestowing. Gifts or talents are not there in form, but only in experience. When you come to me, when you ask, you reveal yourself to me in your own way. You tell me of what’s concerning you as you see it. I may see it quite differently. Like any friend, you honor me with your story, and by sharing matters of your heart. Like any friend, brother or sister, I have every inclination to help and not to hurt. All friends ponder the difference of what advice they can give, or what assistance, or how much truth they can tell to fit the circumstance of their friend. You have worried that you’re not good about this and that you overstep your bounds at times. When you do this and call this worry, you are only looking at it from an angle that doesn’t serve you well, because like all things you call “worry,” you then relegate it to a place where you both think of it too much and avoid the sort of alchemy of wisdom-making that is inherent within your internal desire. This is akin to this thorny issue you are putting before me. You have asked for help. How much help do I give? This is thorny even for me, prickly for every relationship of love, as there is a balancing of freedom with what can be given in times of need. There is the old saying “teach a person how to fish,” and this is not quite like that, but it has elements of it only because you have not fully embraced your freedom and your power, which is why I tell you to Paint the Picture and to trust that I will be beside you, aiding you in ways that make it easier for you, but without treading on your freedom while it is so nascent within you. I see intercession as a way of putting a buffer between you and your struggles rather than ridding you of them. Oh, please, please, come back from wherever you’ve gone if you can. I miss you, I’m awaiting you, I’m holding my breath for your return, I’ll do whatever little I can to help you, but what can I do but ask, plead, beg, that you please, please turn away from whatever dark notions of yourself have made you cold and like stone to me, and open your heart again to the love that I want so desperately to give and to feel again coming from you, because you are not, not lost, not this stone, those cold eyes aren’t yours, whatever you’re in the grips of isn’t you. So, what happens when you are asked a thing as hard and as simple as opening your heart to love, or letting a vision you already possess flow through you into expression? What happens is that you wrestle to the ground your own fears, you dismantle your walls, you rise like a feather on the wind – or you don’t. Note: This exchange between Mari and Jesus happened in 2009~~~https://acourseoflove.org/the-embrace-110-burning-coal/~https://acourseoflove.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Raul-Carus-2.jpg~The Embrace #110: Burning Coal~When a piece of charcoal burns, what is around it will also ignite, but only if it has the right composition. If what surrounds a glowing coal is made of wood, paper or phosphorus, it will certainly catch the flames.
~Featured Article Burning Coal By Raúl M. Carús hen a piece of charcoal burns, what is around it will also ignite, but only if it has the right composition. If what surrounds a glowing coal is made of wood, paper or phosphorus, it will certainly catch the flames. On the contrary, if it is made of stone, metal or sand, it will remain unburnt. But no matter whether it burns or not, the charcoal will continue glowing. Don't worry about what's going on around you. Burn. Keep the flame of Love alive in you. For, although the people you meet will burn only if they are ready for it, it will be much easier for them to do so if they have a burning coal nearby. However, do not ask them to do the same. Don't force them to burn. Doing so would be exhausting and counterproductive. Anyone who tries to light a piece of stone wastes time and burns his fingers. Offer them your warmth without forcing them to accept it. Whether they catch fire or not depends solely on them. Take care only to be on fire, with simplicity and without arrogance. Do not try to set anyone on fire but yourself. You may think that rejection, anger, rigidity or violence make you strong and that understanding, closeness, tenderness or affection weaken you. But it is exactly the opposite: nothing makes you stronger than Love. So, what can I do if I am surrounded by unconsciousness? Burn. What if my father acts irresponsibly? Burn. What if my life turns to be extremely difficult? Burn. What if I have been robbed? Burn. And if I am slandered? Burn. What if I am stalked by death? Burn. What if madness assaults me? Burn. And if everything collapses? Burn. The best present you can give the world is your own awakening. So keep your coal burning and don't worry about anything else. The way to light the way is to shine a light and hold it high for whoever wants to follow. Should you agree with all this, do the following today: if you perceive hostility, return affection; if you notice aggression, return kindness; if you think you are being attacked, respond with appreciation; if you see darkness, shed light~~~https://acourseoflove.org/the-embrace-109-the-sure-path-to-god/~https://acourseoflove.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Sebastian-Blaksley-1.jpg~The Embrace #109: The Sure Path to God~Very early in the revelation of Choose Only Love, Jesus tells us that he wants to show us a sure path to happiness and fulfillment. This, in his words, consists of “loving all that arises” in our present human lives.
~Featured Article The Sure Path to God By Sebastian Blaksley ery early in the revelation of Choose Only Love, Jesus tells us that he wants to show us a sure path to happiness and fulfillment. This, in his words, consists of “loving all that arises” in our present human lives. That is, bringing love to all we experience. To leave no room for doubt, he lists what that “all” means: images, feelings, memories, emotions, thoughts, sensations, etc. As I received that revelation, I realized that the somewhat exhaustive description of what the “all” means had a clear purpose—to understand in a simple way that the sure path to happiness is to embrace, honor, integrate, and love every aspect of our humanity in every moment. This is not a simple description of one spiritual path among many. It is, rather, the hallmark of “The New.” In The Age of the Heart, the voice of Christ says that feelings and everything that concerns the heart, including intuition, are finally going to be honored—that is, integrated into our individual consciousness in order to unite our divinity with our humanity. Ultimately, union means the union of body and spirit, humanity and divinity, Heaven and Earth, time and eternity, the abstract and the concrete. It makes sense, at least to me, for if the new is the state of union, it is necessary that it begins by reuniting what is closest to us: ourselves. According to the revelation received from Jesus, the new will always have the charisma of an embodied spirituality, that is, one in which our "human self," with all the nuances that human experience entails, is integrated, accepted, blessed, included, and loved. And as an effect of this, all is transmuted into perfect love. How else can I integrate, accept, bless, include, and love others and everything else if I do not do so with all that I am in each present moment? Is it possible to love all things if I do not love myself in all that I am, without leaving any of my humanity aside? I share these questions because they help me to visualize the path. And I feel that perhaps they can help others as well. When asked consciously, they act in me as signposts to the truth of what the incarnation of Christ in each of us means. They remind me of what I am: the living Christ who lives in me—human-God, body-spirit, earth-sky, the part and the whole. I am one, first with all that I am being, and then with all else. In that order. Spirituality with a body is spirituality "from below," one in which our earthliness is intrinsically linked to our heavenliness. The revelation tells us that our humanness, with all that it entails, is an expression in form of formless spirit, which is why it is worthy of being loved, honored, and respected as sacred. This includes every thought, emotion, sensation, and all the many other things that are part of the holy humanity that we are. The knowledge I share here has led me to become aware of the multiple mechanisms that we so often use as individuals and as a universal family to "spiritually by-pass." This refers to the tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks, both individually and collectively. Spirituality is not the only thing that can serve to "bypass" our present human experience. Entertainment, work, addictions, relationships, and much more can have the same purpose: to avoid connecting with the heart and instead attaining an "ideal self" which may seem very beautiful, holy, and elevated, but will never be real and therefore true. Consequently it will not be the holy expression of the love that we are. Isn't the mechanism of "spiritual bypass" a way of denying who we are? Let us connect this with the statement that our Divine Mother gives us when she tells us that we cannot love what we do not see, if we do not love what we do see. And what else do we see first but our present human experience? When we speak of spiritual bypass, we are talking about a spirituality "from above"—one that totally or partially denies our humanity by not lovingly embracing and integrating it as it is right now, in each present moment. This can be accomplished not only through practices, rituals, and belief systems, but also in spiritual communities. Throughout history there have been, and continue to be, many "religious" or "spiritual" groups whose goal is, essentially, to withdraw from or overcome the world by reinforcing a feeling of religious identity. There are also other types of withdrawal. Although withdrawal may have the intention of not leaving aside our divine aspect, it often ends up generating a state of dissociation, a condition of division and exclusion, which finally becomes a lack of love. In short, trying to escape from what is not necessary or possible—from the varied human experience—leads us to continue living in a state of separation, which is far from love. This is why, as our Divine Mother tells us in one of the dialogues, that a spirituality based on the firm rock of truth and love is one in which one lives with one's eyes on Heaven and one's feet on the ground. Spirituality “from below” honors life as it is here and now in all its forms of expression, without judging anything but loving everything and everyone. Without excluding anything, but embracing all—all—all in the love we are. Giving space to what is just as it is. Without pretending it to be different. A spirituality like this allows each of us to be fully as we are without trying to be an ideal self not based on reality—one in which humanity is finally recognized as the holiness, beauty, and magnificence it truly is. This is, to a large extent, the path of the new. I feel that when A Course of Love that tells us that the new is love extending into creation, it is referring to some degree to what is shared here. Accordingly, I now understand the following: it is by loving everything that arises in me, allowing everything I feel, think, and experience to show me the truth of what I am, that the incarnate Christ manifests from me in all its glory, beauty, and holiness. And by doing so, I live in the happiness and fullness of the children of God, which consists of being as we were created to be, that is, the embodied Christ. This understanding is what I wish to share with you, my dear reader, with all my heart~~~https://acourseoflove.org/the-embrace-108-dance-me-through-the-panic/~https://acourseoflove.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Allan-Ishac.jpg~The Embrace #108: Dance Me Through The Panic Till I’m Gathered Safely In~In the fall of 2022, I had just finished the spiritual adventure novel that I spent 10 years writing. I had a wonderful agent who was sending the finished manuscript to publishers, and we were both optimistic that a publishing house would acquire it.
~Featured Article Dance Me Through The PanicTill I’m Gathered Safely In* By Allan Ishac n the fall of 2022, I had just finished the spiritual adventure novel that I spent 10 years writing. I had a wonderful agent who was sending the finished manuscript to publishers, and we were both optimistic that a publishing house would acquire it. A week after he started mailing out the book, I came down with Covid. I quickly developed breathing difficulties and sleep problems, followed by extended bouts of anxiety. Within weeks I started feeling lethargic, uninspired, anti-social, agoraphobic, and depressed. Then, my entire life began to unravel. My physical health began to fail. I lost my mental acuity, writing ability, a vibrant social network, sexual desire, several longtime friends, my enthusiasm for life, and all my passions and interests. I went through much of my savings, too, along with the financial resources to pay the rent on my longtime New York City apartment. In desperation, I tried everything I could to restore my vitality and get upright again: first, with the psychedelics MDMA and ketamine, then anti-depressants, alternative healing therapies, EMDR, electrical impulse stimulation, and brain-restoring diets. I saw a traditional therapist and multiple psychiatrists, watched Jonah Hill’s “Stutz” film a handful of times, read books about depression and mental disorders, listened to related podcasts, wrote in a journal, and meditated, meditated, meditated. Despite all that, the near constant panic continued to consume my days and destroy my nights. I have heard three a.m. called “the hour of the wolves,” and I understand. I was howling and hurting every night; the despondency and resignation leading to thoughts of an early exit. Luckily, none of the remedies I tried worked... because none of them were supposed to work. Had any of my sought after “cures” magically pulled me out of my deep funk, if I had found relief in any of those potions or professionals, I would have surely fixated on them for my salvation, following yet another futile, thousand-year path to an illusory promised land that doesn’t exist. I look back on my life now and realize that I spent most of it taking every possible detour to avoid what Jesus and Spirit gently ask of us—to give up our death-grip on control and allow them to take our hand and guide us with their infallible, ever-present love. I spent almost a year in that living hell, certain that I was permanently stained and ruined. I lost faith in the teachings of A Course In Miracles to bring me solace. Any hope that my novel—the book I came to write—would get published, also seemed forever dashed. Then, mysteriously, the unbearable blackness began to lift. My energy came back, my interests were reignited, and my commitment to ACIM mind-training returned, along with my network of mighty companions. I picked up my novel again (which had not been sold) and understood that the insights I received during my revealing inner journey needed to find their way into the book. I spent three months revising the manuscript, decided that I loved the story and its message too much to let it languish, and set out to self-publish it. That novel, The Mystic In The Mews, the first spiritual adventure story inspired by A Course In Miracles, came out in June. The past year no longer feels like a curse to me; a miserable, capricious, nasty turn of life. While I still feel some hesitancy going public with my apparent impotence in the face of being wrenched from all I thought was essentially, indispensably “me,” I also know that my journey was not unique or uncharted. In fact, it is written about in all the great mythologies; a necessary odyssey that is made through the “Valley of the Shadow of Death,” through our personal dark night of the soul, to return to all that is valuable, to what truly matters, to the blessed heart of things. The16th-century, Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross was the first to use the term “dark night of the soul.” It is often described as a rite of spiritual passage marked by disorder, paralysis, and breakdown. One definition describes it as a period of final "unselfing"—an extremely difficult and painful period ultimately leading to liberation and absolute clarity on a meaningful life purpose. The great Sufi pioneer and poet Inayat Khan wrote insightfully of this paradoxical experience: "There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were everything is lost, and all seems darkness... then comes the new life and all that is needed." It turns out that the hero—and we are all the heroes of our unique stories and personal legends—only becomes one after facing the fire-breathing dragons and vicious vipers standing watch over the angelic heroine, the holy treasure, the hidden gold. The hero must rise above the worldly battleground and prevail; a classic metaphor for confronting, then transcending, our mad, ego-driven impulses. When one reads about the hero’s journey, it can sound brave, noble, even exciting. Stories of righteous warriors, Jedi knights, and guardians of the galaxy prevailing against a relentless, multi-headed, cosmic collection of wicked villains and deplorable bad guys are often compelling and powerful. It’s not until you’re in it that you realize the journey into the deep dark, into the realm of one’s snarling, snapping inner demons, does not feel brave, heroic, or courageous at all. It is marked by crippling confusion, grueling trials and, at least for me, terror. During an arduous year that I am now sincerely grateful for, I stumbled through the thorny brambles of my life and came out cut and bruised, but not broken. Spirit was always there, opening me to a merciful healing through forgiveness and acceptance that could never have happened without that blessed, brutal journey. If I had not lost everything, I would never have found the only thing that matters. My Self. *The title of this article is taken from a lyric from Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me To The End of Love~~~https://acourseoflove.org/the-embrace-107-overcoming-bitterness-finding-forgiveness/~https://acourseoflove.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/The-Embrace-107.jpg~The Embrace #107: Overcoming Bitterness, Finding Forgiveness~Old resentments make us feel bitter, and bitterness can make the most beautiful people appear ugly. Resentment toward others is the opposite of forgiveness. It blocks the free flow of Divine Love in all directions.
~Featured Article Overcoming Bitterness, Finding Forgiveness By Jeanne Jess ld resentments make us feel bitter, and bitterness can make the most beautiful people appear ugly. Resentment toward others is the opposite of forgiveness. It blocks the free flow of Divine Love in all directions. The ego loves being right, as we all know. Being right is more important than being happy and at peace, as the ego teaches. I was there, more than I would like to admit. I was so good at judging others! Blaming others! I was good at the wonderful game of playing the poor victim. How my ego loved to get all that attention from others in the role of victim. Sooner or later, all that anger and bitterness brought more issues and losses into my life, and left no room for love. Bitterness, with vengeance justified and mercy lost, condemns you as unworthy of forgiveness. The unforgiven have no mercy to bestow upon another. That is why your sole responsibility must be to take forgiveness for yourself. (A Course in Miracles, TX 25.86) Then one day I realized: I have to make a new choice if I want to experience true love. It was time for me to “wake up,” stop the blame game, and lay aside that old victim role once for all. This is when I was ready to write a new script for my life and open up to God’s love. Bitterness is to your heart what the ego has been to your mind. It is the one false idea that has entered this holiest of places, this abode of Christ, this bridge between the human and the divine. It exists not in some but in all, as the ego has existed not in some but in all. Like the ego, it has not caused you to be unlovable or unrecognizable. But it has become, like the ego, so much a part of your reality that it must, like the ego, be consciously left behind. (A Course of Love, T3:6.5) You know those moments when someone says a few words that shake you awake? When a few words stay with you forever? I will always remember that unique meditation teacher who told me: “That is right, it seems unfair, I hear you. But did you ever ask if maybe you did something similar to them in one of your past lifetimes? Therefore maybe all of these situations had to do with some old karma?” In that moment I was speechless. His words had answered my lifelong question about why certain things with certain people had happened in my life. His suggestion was just one of many possible answers to the question of why certain things happen in our lives. I do not claim this to be necessarily true. But somehow his answer allowed me to step into acceptance of what happened. I was finally able to let it go. From that new place of acceptance, I was able to forgive others and to forgive myself. Of course, I did not do these steps alone, I did them with the help of my Holy Spirit and the steps of the atonement. Today I no longer feel the way I felt in the past. Yes, I really feel peace, and those memories have somehow changed. I came to realize that when I was young I spent years blaming those people. But with this new suggestion from that teacher, and with those steps of the atonement from A Course in Miracles, something really changed, and I feel very grateful for it. Was it old unconscious guilt from previous lifetimes that made me attract those people to attack and hurt me when I was a kid? Maybe. I learned that the ego uses unconscious feelings of guilt—due to our false belief in separation from God—to make us feel unworthy of God’s love and blessings. Guilt makes us feel unworthy of all good things in life. It creates the self-sabotage patterns we sometimes have. The ego tries everything to hinder us from accepting our true divine oneness. This is how I understood another level of the teachings of Jesus, and I feel grateful for these precious steps of healing. Whereas before I was only reading about the steps of atonement, I now began to apply them to all kind of similar situations in my daily life. The more I do them, the more I observe a feeling of inner peace in my heart. Bring bitterness no longer to the dwelling place of Christ and we will seal the place of its entrance with the sweetness of love so that bitterness will be no more. (ACOL, T3:6.6) Sometimes it is truly like a miracle happening, even the same day~~~https://acourseoflove.org/the-embrace-106-dont-just-think-peace-feel-it/~https://acourseoflove.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Evalyn-Sorrentino-2.jpg~The Embrace #106: Don’t Just Think Peace—Feel It!~Years ago I was amidst a group of people surrounding a person who was a bearer of great light. Throngs of people surrounded her. I spent personal time with her opening homes for new mothers and their babies who had AIDS.
~Featured Article Don’t Just Think Peace—Feel It! By Evalyn Sorrentino ears ago I was amidst a group of people surrounding a person who was a bearer of great light. Throngs of people surrounded her. I spent personal time with her opening homes for new mothers and their babies who had AIDS. She was humble. She was strong. She was a beacon of light, never judging anyone and seeking only equality for herself and others. She took no advantage of being this person. If someone wanted to treat her differently than the others, she would refuse their gift and instead would be asking that the same kindness be extended to everyone, or not at all. I literally felt something from her preceding her physical presence in my company so I would know she was coming. I wondered why few, if any, others could feel the samething? Feelings are constantly emanating toward and from us. Very few people recognize these powerful body sensations because most people live in the world of their thoughts, which places them in the future or the past in thoughts, thus avoiding the present, where the peace and its sensation is. Unless we feel peace, we cannot feel the acrimony of our conflicting thoughts. Until we feel the acrimony generated by thoughts, emotions, judgments, and beliefs, we cannot really want peace because we think peace and fool ourselves. It is essential to feel peace~~~https://acourseoflove.org/the-embrace-105-entering-the-awakened-world/~https://acourseoflove.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Patricia-Pearce-2.jpg~The Embrace #105: Entering the Awakened World~Many years ago I had a dream that shed light on the awakening process that is taking place on this planet. Since it has been such a touchstone for me in this time of collective turbulence and fear, I’d like to share it with you.
~Featured Article Entering the Awakened World By Patricia Pearce any years ago I had a dream that shed light on the awakening process that is taking place on this planet. Since it has been such a touchstone for me in this time of collective turbulence and fear, I’d like to share it with you. I have been taken into the future. I look around, and see that the Earth is flourishing and the people are living simply and in harmony with nature. I can feel that the world is at peace. Ecstatic, I say to myself, “Yes! We did it! We humans did it! We made the shift in consciousness!” As I walk around I come to a circle of children seated on the grass. Sitting with them is a woman wearing a gown and kufi made of embroidered fabric, clothing that conveys both earthiness and wisdom. I realize she is their teacher. The children are reading for her short pieces they have written. As one boy reads his, something in it suggests judgment. The teacher gently tells him that in Eudomy, and this I realize is the name of this place, there is no judgment. The Land of Truth When I woke from the dream, its feeling of peace and wellbeing lingered with me, and I was intrigued by the name of the land where Earth is thriving and all living beings are at peace: Eudomy. What was the dream telling me with this name? I began to listen in for its meaning. The Greek prefix eu- means true, right or good, while dom, which comes from the Old English, refers to a state of being, such as freedom, or an area of jurisdiction such as a kingdom—the area in which a king has jurisdiction. So Eudomy is a realm or state of being in which truth and goodness have jurisdiction. The name Eudomy also suggests eudaimonia, a Greek word referring to the state or condition of “good spirit,” often translated into English as “happiness.” This, according to Aristotle, was the highest human good. Getting to Eudomy This state of wellbeing and a world of peace is what so many of us long for, and sense is on our collective horizon. So the question becomes, how do we get to this state of being in which truth and goodness have jurisdiction? How do we come into the land of Eudomy? Thankfully, the dream makes it quite clear: Eudomy becomes our reality when we recognize that judgment doesn’t exist. If you look around the world today you will see judgment running rampant. In fact, judgment has become so extreme that it has clouded our ability to see the humanity in one another. But in a way that makes perfect sense. As we are on the cusp of this new level of consciousness, the patterns of the old are becoming amplified, burning themselves out in a sense, becoming so hyperbolic that we can finally choose to leave them behind. Judgment is at the core of the dualistic mind. It is one of the cornerstones of the consciousness of separateness that has given rise to so much devastation and suffering on this planet. In fact, we have been so convinced that judgment is real that we have assumed it to be an essential attribute of the Divine. If you look closely you will see how much our god-concept was built upon this foundation of judgment. And yet, as the dream was revealing, judgment has never actually existed except in our imagination. As we are becoming increasingly aware—and the unbridled spread of conspiracy theories demonstrates this for us—the human mind is capable of imagining many things and taking them to be real, when in fact they are not. Living in Eudomy In the dream, one of the things that moved me was the teacher’s loving response to the young boy when he was beginning to venture into judgment in his writing. She didn’t judge him for judging, or tell him that in Eudomy we don’t judge because judgment is bad—which would itself be a judgment. Rather, she simply sees his judgment for what it is—an innocent mistake that, even though he was able to imagine it, is not real and never could be. Allow these words to land in you: there is no such thing as judgment. Can you begin to feel the relief and liberation that realization brings? Can you begin to feel a new world dawning from this awareness? Since having that dream several years ago, I have become aware of all the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, ways judgment shows up in the world around me and in my own imagination. And when it does, like that young boy, I am learning 1) to not judge it and 2) to trust that is it simply an innocent error in my mind. I can also feel how both of these dream characters live in me, the young boy who is able to conceive of judgment and the wise Teacher who knows it isn’t real. I find that welcoming them both and allowing them to be in a trusting relationship within me, just as they were in the dream, is the way to experience inner peace. The New Earth Arises from a State of Being Although in this moment of so many intersecting global crises we might be tempted to believe that we need to go out and construct the land of Eudomy with our effort and dedication, that isn’t the way it works. The New Earth arises naturally from our state of consciousness, from our awareness of the unreality of judgment, of the universality of Love, and of our union with All That Is. In other words, Eudomy isn’t the product of our effort but the expression of our true being. Nor is Eudomy a place “out there” or off in the “future.” It exists within us and has always existed within us, even when we were asleep and dreaming our dream of separateness, judgment and fear. What a gift it is to be alive on this planet at this moment of historic awakening, when consciousness is stirring from its fearful, judgmental dream and coming to know itself as the radiant expression and extension of Love~~~https://acourseoflove.org/the-embrace-104-the-power-of-love/~https://acourseoflove.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Glenn-Hovemann-2.jpg~The Embrace #104: The Power of Love~Recently I participated in a one-day mini-retreat at Wild Grace Community. We were each asked to make a little presentation. It occurred to me to explore the “power of love,” which Jesus mentions in both A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love (four times in each) but uses 36 times in the seven-volume Choose Only Love.
~Featured Article The Power of Loveand How to Bring It to Daily Life Compiled by Glenn Hovemann ecently I participated in a one-day mini-retreat at Wild Grace Community. We were each asked to make a little presentation. It occurred to me to explore the “power of love,” which Jesus mentions in both A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love (four times in each) but uses 36 times in the seven-volume Choose Only Love. As I looked further, how he uses the phrases present a compelling path. In addition, on the very same day I had edited a section of another not-yet-published book received through Jesus, tentatively entitled “The Consciousness of Resurrection,” which seemed perfectly on point. Here is the gist of what I shared in the retreat. From Choose Only Love: This is a call to allow the explosion of the power of love that you are. You who read these words are ready to let the love that you are manifest. Do not choke it off. Be pulled by the wings of the spirit of God. BkI:3.IV.4 Begin to remember the irresistible force of love. Begin to remember, now, the strength of the pure love that embraces the universe. Begin to remember how attractive is God's power. Stay with those memories. Carry them in the silence of your heart. Become one with them. Join with the power of love. Fulfill yourself in it. Let its immeasurable, unfathomable force penetrate you and transform your mind and heart with the ecstasy of peace and truth. BkII:4.IV.1 The power of your will is immense, even immeasurable. You fear it above all fears. The power of your will is the power of God, which is the power of love. Because you feared it, you chose to enslave it to reduce its power. You wished to subdue and control the power of your will. When you were repeatedly told to "let yourself be loved," it was meant to trust and "let yourself go," as your will permits. BkII:11.I.4 Do not look for power of any kind—just let yourself be loved. The power of love has nothing to do with what the old world called love. Rather, the power of love resides in its sweetness, in the softness of its words, in the delicacy of its gaze, in the transparency of its being, in its perpetual benevolence. BkII:15.II.7 By remaining in the silence of your heart you are the perfect expression of the power of love. BkIV:17.V.8 Remember that we are not advocating the non-expression of feelings, emotions, or thoughts; we are advocating the power of love and its necessary relationship with truth. To live in truth is to live consciously in the truth of everything that is happening in your inner world. The Kingdom consists of ideas, memories, thoughts, desires, emotions, feelings, intuitions, and many other things. It is the realm to which the consciousness of every place, time, and circumstance must be brought for the alchemy of your soul to be completed. BkIV:18.III.2-3 Outside of love there is no power possible because outside of love is nothing. Remember, only love is real. Therefore, only the power of love is real. BkIV:21.III.12 Creation exists because of the power of love. The power of life that you see is the power of God manifested in form. BkIV:21.III.13 You have replaced the power of love with the power of anger, which is nothing but fear. That apparent ego power, which is all that you associate with violence, aggression, anger, and many other different forms of fear, is the substitute for love. Fear seems powerful but is not. Your weakness is evident, and that is what you fear most. Thus you fear fear. In other words, you are not afraid of fear because of its power but because of its weakness. Fear weakens. BkIV:21.IV.2-3 The fear of the power of love is so great that it is buried in your mind and heart, and is the fear of not knowing what to do with power. BkIV:21.IV.8 The power of love cannot be used. It can only serve the cause of love. It cannot be for anything else. BkIV:21.IV.11 Once you recognize and accept the absolute inoffensiveness of God's power, you begin to feel comfortable with it as your own power. BkIV:21.IV.13 or those who have lived for so long without the joy of living, the power of love has become a mystery, even though it is the best known power in the universe. BkV:4.I.4 Those who live in God have nothing to fear. They can afford to be happy and live happily in love because they know they have a loving mother who watches over them as no other mother can or ever will. They know the power of love. They accept it and rejoice in it. BkV:4.I.8 The power of love is beyond all human understanding. Its force cannot be overestimated. BkV:12.IV.18 When your being remains in the peace of Christ, you remain within the transforming power of love because love resides in peace. Outside of peace you cannot access the treasures of love because out of peace is nothing. BkV:20.III.5 he creative power that resides in you is of such magnitude that if you do not first let go of the fear you have of what you are—that is, of the power of love—then you will be unwilling to create anything. Remember, you had the experience of trying to create an identity for yourself, and it seemed to turn against you. BkVI:6.III.7 Love is powerful, as is truth. They are a unit. Many underestimate that power or think of it infrequently. Thus they either feel helpless or seek to create other sources of power. To be aware of the power of love and truth is to honor God for what God is and to love yourself for who you are. You are the living expression of that power. You are the effect of that joint power. BkVI:8.III.12 Loving is not about doing this or that, or acting in any particular way, but about being authentically yourself in union with God. BkVI:18.II.15 God's plan is to live His life in you. This is the same as saying that His will is that you participate in His life. There is no other way to do it but to allow the flow of the power of love that God is to be received, accepted, and to pass through. BkVII:12.III.7 The power of the miracle has spilled over you. The power of love has touched your heart. You have found Grace and holiness. Every fiber of your being has been embedded in the divine essence that travels in my voice, as if it were a breath of love that moves human wills to love more. BkVII:14.III.11 And from the forthcoming book “The Consciousness of Resurrection": Now it remains for us to know how to put into practice in daily life what we are remembering here, while experiencing earthly life. There appear to be countless ways, spiritual techniques, medical treatments, scientific trends, belief systems, and the list goes on. There are countless alternatives available. Ask yourself: Which of all those paths allows you to live in the fullness of the risen love? The answer: all of them and none, at the same time. What is meant is that a full life, which is the expression we use here to define the state in which you live in perfect harmony with the will of God, and therefore in the fullness of love, is achieved by reason of your willingness to do so, and not because of the ritual or technique itself. Nothing external can produce any real effect on you; you are the sole creator of your experience. As inside, so outside. Actually, there is no such thing as inside and outside, but only the reality of the soul expressing itself in its beautiful vastness. When you wholeheartedly decide to find the truth, you find it. You do so whether you set out to find it through reading inspired books, through religious practices, joining groups, or even doing nothing at all. What makes you find is not the path itself, but your purpose. As you can see, everything is resolved in the field of free will, in the disposition of each of the sons and daughters of God. Once you sincerely decide to live in the truth, things begin to move in favor of that purpose regardless of the degree of awareness of this determination. The universe will conspire in favor of your disposition. It always does. There have been plenty of examples in your life that have confirmed this for you, eloquent confirmations. What is revealed here can be generalized to everything that comes from the free decision of the soul. Radiant and graceful heart, this work is saying unequivocally that you can remain united in resurrection, which is but the awareness of being the risen from love, all the days of your life on Earth, just as in Heaven. Why not live in the truth of who you are and enjoy the life-giving energy of love? You do so every time you think loving thoughts and cultivate noble feelings, whenever you deliberately decide to walk away from what is not true and to live in the light of wisdom, and when you immerse yourself in prayer or in a silence without judgment~~~