Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.
What makes this world seem real except your own denial of the truth that lies beyond? What but your thoughts of misery and death obscure the perfect happiness and the eternal life your Father wills for you? And what could hide what cannot be concealed except illusion? What could keep from you what you already have except your choice to see it not, denying it is there?
The Thought of God created you. It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from it an instant. It belongs to you. By it you live. It is your Source of life, holding you one with it, and everything is one with you because it left you not. The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. Eternity and everlasting life shine in your mind, because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you.
Who would deny his safety and his peace, his joy, his healing and his peace of mind, his quiet rest, his calm awakening, if he but recognized where they abide? Would he not instantly prepare to go where they are found, abandoning all else as worthless in comparison with them? And having found them, would he not make sure they stay with him, and he remain with them?
Deny not Heaven. It is yours today, but for the asking. Nor need you perceive how great the gift, how changed your mind will be before it comes to you. Ask to receive, and it is given you. Conviction lies within it. Till you welcome it as yours, uncertainty remains. Yet God is fair. Sureness is not required to receive what only your acceptance can bestow.
Ask with desire. You need not be sure that you request the only thing you want. But when you have received, you will be sure you have the treasure you have always sought. What would you then exchange for it? What would induce you now to let it fade away from your ecstatic vision? For this sight proves that you have exchanged your blindness for the seeing eyes of Christ; your mind has come to lay aside denial, and accept the Thought of God as your inheritance.
Now is all doubting past, the journey's end made certain, and salvation given you. Now is Christ's power in your mind, to heal as you were healed. For now you are among the saviors of the world. Your destiny lies there and nowhere else. Would God consent to let His Son remain forever starved by his denial of the nourishment he needs to live? Abundance dwells in him, and deprivation cannot cut him off from God's sustaining Love and from his home.
Practice today in hope. For hope indeed is justified. Your doubts are meaningless, for God is certain. And the Thought of Him is never absent. Sureness must abide within you who are host to Him. This course removes all doubts which you have interposed between Him and your certainty of Him.
We count on God, and not upon ourselves, to give us certainty. And in His Name we practice as His Word directs we do. His sureness lies beyond our every doubt. His Love remains beyond our every fear. The Thought of Him is still beyond all dreams and in our minds, according to His Will.
The Following is Forwarded from Pathwaysoflight.org
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Lesson 165
"Let not my mind deny the Thought of God."
This lesson gets to the core of what A Course in Miracles is all about. Jesus brought the Course to us because we have denied What we are and Where we are. We are denying that we are in Heaven now. We are denying that we are a Thought in the Mind of God. As the first sentence says, "What makes this world seem real accept your own denial of the truth that lies beyond?" This lesson and the whole Course is there for us to help us change our mind about this denial. This lesson and the whole Course is there for us to help us change our mind about what we desire.
When we desire the truth, we will receive it. When we desire to see illusions, we will see that. All through the Course, Jesus tells us again and again that the desire to see a world of separate bodies only brings us illusions of limitation, pain and death. He helps us see that this is not what we really want. He helps us remember that the truth lies beyond the illusions of separation.
As we stick with the Course day by day, our minds are slowly changed. We are led to let go of what we thought was real. We are led to see all the forms of separation for what they really are, which is a defense against God. We are led to open our minds to the truth that we are in Heaven now and never left. We are led to understand that it is only our wanting separation that continues to make the forms of separation we see appear real. Jesus tells us, "Ask with desire." (5:1) We always get what we want in our heart of hearts.
Holy Spirit, I open my mind to You. I want Your healing Light, Your healing peace, Your healing understanding. I want to let go of denying the truth. I open my mind to Your thoughts. I let Your thoughts comfort me and heal my mind of all false images. I will let my mind be healed today and accept the truth. The truth is I am still in God and of God. All is one in God.
As I continue to work daily with the Course, my values are changing. As I realize that something I value is bringing me pain or sadness or fear, I let it go. More and more I realize that all I really want is to remember God's Love for me. No substitute will ever satisfy me. I am doing less looking for love in all the wrong places. Life is much simpler now. There is less efforting. Less energy is put into trying to make the circumstances of the moment fit my image of what they should be to make me happy.
Glimpses of the happiness available to me in God shows me that all the forms of this world cannot come close to offering me the happiness I really want. Nothing in this world can offer me that happiness. Likewise, nothing in this world can keep me from it. It is only my mistaken idea that something in this world offers me something I want that interferes with my awareness of the peace and joy already given me by God.
I am deeply grateful to know that the Holy Spirit is always in my mind, ready to lead me Home to the Heaven of God's Love. My only job now is to practice listening to His guidance. In any moment that I feel apprehensive or uncertain, I will use that as a reminder to turn to Him for His guidance and His vision. He will show me with certainty what is truly valuable and show me the valuelessness of the empty images that I have mistaken for reality. This is my path to peace and certainty. It is my path to eternal Life. It is my path to freedom.
The above comments reflect my process as well and help me to articulate it. Sometimes I become discouraged by my apparent lack of progress and forget to see how far I have come. I see now, that I am experiencing denial of the truth and allowing it to hide from me God's perfect Will for me.
I really appreciated the passage from today's lesson that reassures us that sureness is not required, only desire. I tend to forget that and start thinking that because I doubt, I cannot have it. My desire is strong and with each lesson I do and with each small success, it becomes stronger.
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