Day 127

Today's Lesson:

There is no love but God's.

Love is one. It has no separate parts and no degrees; no kinds nor levels, no divergencies and no distinctions. It is like itself, unchanged throughout. It never alters with a person or a circumstance. It is the Heart of God, and also of His Son.

If love could make distinctions between one kind of love and another, it could be bestowed on one and withheld from another. It would have to judge between the righteous and the sinner, and perceive the Son of God in separate parts.

Love cannot judge. As it is one itself, it looks on all as one. Its meaning lies in oneness. And it must elude the mind that thinks of it as partial or in part. There is no love but God's, and all of love is His. There is no other principle that rules where love is not. Love is a law without an opposite.

Love's meaning is our own, and shared by God Himself. For what we are is what He is. There is no love but His, and what He is, is everything there is. There is no limit placed upon Himself, and so are we unlimited as well.

Seek not within the world to find your Self. Love is not found in darkness and in death. Yet it is perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear love's Voice. Today we practice making free our minds of all the laws we think we must obey; of all the limits under which we live, and all the changes that we think are part of human destiny. Today we take the largest single step this course requests in our advance toward it established goal.

If we achieve the faintest glimmering of what love means today, we have advanced in distance without measure and in time beyond the count of years to our release. We will together, then be glad to give some time to God today, and understand there is no better use for time than this.

For fifteen minutes twice today escape from every law in which we now believe. Open our minds and rest. The world that seems to hold us prisoner can be escaped by anyone who does not hold it dear. Withdraw all value we have placed upon its meager offerings and senseless gifts, and let the gift of God replace them all.

God Himself will place a spark of truth within our minds wherever we give up a false belief, a dark illusion of our own reality and what love means. He will shine through our idle thoughts today, and help us understand the truth of love.

We give thanks today that we are spared a future like the past. Today we leave the past behind us, nevermore to be remembered. And we raise our eyes upon a different present, where a future dawns unlike the past in every attribute.

At least three times each hour today, we are to think of someone who makes this journey with us, and who came to learn what we must teach. And as he comes to mind, give him this message from your Self:

I bless you, brother, with the Love of God, which I would share with you. For I would learn the joyous lesson that there is no love but God's and yours and mine and everyone's.

Miracles I'm noticing:

As I read through today's lesson I was reminded of all kinds of things. First of all I remember what my teacher Isis has said about the lessons in A Course in Miracles. When I have been happy with my incremental progress in learning and applying these lessons, she has reminded me that incremental progress is measurable in time only - making a decision to jump in with both feet and just being the lessons makes measurement unnecessary. To choose today's lesson wholeheartedly means creating a future irrespective of the past. When we can see that there is only one kind of Love, we don't have to mess around with romantic love, love of our cars and pizza, love of our pets our children our co-workers. We can just know that there is no love but God's and be done with the incremental stuff.

I'm also reminded of people like Hitler and how it may seem difficult to love people like that. However, we see examples of people who persevered into history because they did not let Hitler's wrath get them down, despite all the rotten circumstances of their lives. I think of Viktor Frankl and Anne Frank as just two examples. They certainly understood that the love of God wins out over the wrath of humans and their stories live on today.

Today's text tells us that to the ego, love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching. I think about how much we resist the notion of love and work together in the same sentence. The text goes on to say that everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love. Think about that as it relates to work. We never complain about our salary until we don't feel appreciated. Then we believe they don't pay us enough to put up with what we have to put up with. It's because we are searching for love. The text goes on to say that the ego cannot love, so the search is inevitable. It will seek and not find. This means that we have a choice to make: love or our ego. They cannot co-exist. The ego will distort love, and teach that love really calls forth the responses the ego can teach. We will be on a treadmill, then, and will never find what we really seek.

The Holy Spirit offers us the Love of God, which promises that if we seek we will find. If we believe what we seek for is outside ourselves, the search will be futile, for we will be seeking it where it is not. The Holy Spirit remembers for us where our home is, and will guide us there because that is His mission. By guiding our brothers home, we are following Him.

That makes the decision such an easy one! Relinquish the ego and follow the Spirit. It's like any human dilemma we face. Eat healthier - just stop eating the jelly doughnuts and eat an apple. Get on the treadmill instead of watching TV. Stop smoking - just quit lighting up. Sure, these are simple - but we've told ourselves they're not easy so our egos can be right.

Today I choose the Love of God for myself and my brothers. When I see everyone in the Love of God, there are no distinctions, no classes, no genders, no separation. We are one in the Love of God. That realization is surely a miracle!