Willingness is the state of wanting to awaken to truth and being mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ready to do it, even if learning must occur in the process. Willingness is the birth (the beginning) of awakening.

Let’s look more carefully at what willingness is. Let’s begin with the First Principle of God, which is pure, absolute truth. Somehow a motion evolved in the First Principle of God, which created the Second Principle of God. There are stories that try to explain this motion. NTI Romans 2 says it was an idea asking, “What if nothing was as it is?” Kabbalah teaches that the First Principle wanted to create a vessel to receive its love. That vessel is the Second Principle. A Course in Miracles  simply calls it “a tiny mad idea.”

All stories are for the mind. They help it to imagine that it understands. I think we are more enlightened when we realize we do not understand, and we are perfectly okay with that. So, I think it is more truthful to say:

Somehow, a motion evolved in the First Principle of God, which created the Second Principle of God. The Second Principle of God is ‘I am’ consciousness, the first sense of self. For that reason, it is often called the Self. It is a subject without an object—the ability for ‘awareness of’ without anything to be aware of.

Therefore, the next motion that occurred was the creation of the Third Principle of God, which is a process through which objects can be created. Through the interaction of ‘I am’ consciousness with the creative principle, the Fourth Principle of God is created.

The Fourth Principle of God is consciousness appearing as something (many things) other than consciousness. In Kabbalah, there is a story about how the vessel (‘I am’ consciousness) exploded into many tiny pieces. That story points to the ego, which appears as many individual aspects of “I am,” each one seeing itself as separate and independent.

Willingness—the state of wanting to awaken to truth and being mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ready to do it—is the next motion in this process. It is a natural occurrence through which the “many” aspects of consciousness begin their return to one unity consciousness. From unity consciousness, an even stronger pull coming directly from the source calls ‘I am’ back into the First Principle of God.

If you examine this process carefully, you will see that willingness is not something that belongs to you, an individual. Willingness is a call coming from the nature of God. In that way, willingness is  God, and it calls to you, because it is your time to return to the realization of Self.

What about the billions of others who do not feel the call to awaken?

Willingness lives in them too, like a dormant alarm. The gravity of the return force will eventually activate the willingness in every aspect of consciousness.

When you realize that a return is happening—it is in motion—and all will be pulled into it in their time, you realize the nature of your own call to awaken as a powerful, natural force.

Today’s reading teaches us how to cooperate with this call—with the natural return action—instead of resisting it. It likens learning to cooperate to a dance. Sometimes we step in one direction, and sometimes we step in another direction, but through the total motion of the dance, we twirl and sway our way into unity consciousness.

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In NTI Galatians 1, Jesus said:

I am the Way and the Life. I come to you on this day to clear up your confusion, … It is nothing and can be easily laid aside when you see the simplicity of love as I offer it to you.

Today’s reading tells us:

… the simple way to know love and extend love within the world is to:

Focus on your willingness …

Willingness is the state of wanting to awaken to truth and being mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ready to do it, even if learning must occur in the process.

Willingness is the birth (the beginning) of awakening.

The opposite of willingness is resistance. Therefore, resistance can be defined as not wanting to awaken to truth. Another way to say that is:

Resistance is attachment to the world.

NTI Galatians 4 pointed out that the world is a false god. Therefore, the question that we need to ask ourselves is this:

Which do I prefer, a false god or the supreme and ultimate reality?

NTI Galatians comes to us as the voice of Jesus. It harnesses the essence of his experience as a human who awakened to truth. Based on his experience, belief in the world is a primary obstacle to truth. Willingness to transcend the world is the key to awakening.

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. ~ John 16:33 (NIV)

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Today we return to the story of Abraham and his wife, Sarah. As you know, Abraham represents willingness. Sarah represents belief in the world. It’s important to realize that both Abraham (willingness) and Sarah (belief in the world) are in your mind now. The story about Abraham and Sarah is a story about you.

In the story, God promised Abraham that he would have offspring as numerous as the stars. However, years past without a child being borne, so Sarah took matters into her own hands. She asked Abraham to sleep with her slave, Hagar, and she adopted the child when it was born.

That didn’t work out like Sarah expected. Since Sarah was unable to nurse the child, the boy bonded with his natural mother, Hagar. Also, Abraham loved his son, Ishmael. Sarah became jealous.

And then one day a miracle happened. Sarah, an old and previously barren woman, gave birth to a son, Isaac. Isaac’s birth was different than Ishmael’s birth, because it occurred in spite of the physical laws of the world—laws that would have made a birth impossible if the world and its laws were constant and real.

This story indicates that truth is supreme. When we believe the world is supreme, like Sarah did when she asked Abraham to sleep with Hagar, we make a mistake. By believing the world is supreme, we reinforce our belief in it. However, if we are willing to see that the world is illusion and only truth is supreme, evidence of this fact will come into our experience. We will learn this truth directly for ourselves, just as Abraham learned it through Isaac’s birth.

One word of caution: It isn’t for us to decide how we will learn that the world isn’t real. Our role is to surrender and follow intuition in faith. As we do that, the evidence that is most helpful will come. We will see for ourselves that the world is not real and truth reigns supreme.

As we learned on Day 66, faith is:

• trusting the healing process
• having confidence in a benevolent power beyond what your senses or mind can know
• accepting that all is well under all circumstances, regardless of the appearance

Side comment: Muslims and Jews remain divided today over differences of opinion regarding which son was the son promised by God in his covenant with Abraham. Muslims say that the first-born son, Ishmael, was the promised son. Ishmael is believed to be the beginning of the Arab lineage. Jews say that Sarah’s son, Isaac, was the promised son. Isaac is believed to be the beginning of the Jewish lineage.

Careful consideration of the Bible shows that Abraham loved both sons equally, and God looked over and cared for both sons equally. To use the story to support division is listening “through the ears of judgment,” taking the “message of freedom” and making “of it a slave.”

God promised offspring as numerous as the stars. That offspring represents awakening. God’s promise is still being fulfilled through the Muslims, Jews and all of mankind. For example, Rumi was a Muslim. Jesus was a Jew. And then there was Buddha, Lao Tzu, and others who were neither.

The story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac is to be taken figuratively, as are all stories. Figurative interpretations are used by inner wisdom to point toward truth. Interpretations laid upon the literal almost always point to belief in the world and further entrapment in separation.

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Today’s reading begins by reminding us not to judge ourselves. It says:

You can misunderstand My message when you listen through the ears of judgment. You can take my message of freedom and make of it a slave. In this way, My message is lost to you.

I ask you to lay down your judgment and listen to Me with clarity.

A good coach must show us what we are doing wrong so we can improve. Without that helpful guidance, we can’t make progress.

Imagine how useless a golf coach would be if he didn’t point out the error in your golf swing!

The same applies to the spiritual path. In order for a coach or teacher to be truly helpful, that coach must point out our errors. When we see that our mistakes are pointed out to help us improve, we listen with clarity. When we judge ourselves for the mistakes we make, the teacher’s helpfulness is lost to us.

Today’s reading points out that the world is a false god that we make and worship. The purpose of this false god is to tell us that we are separate. It could also be said that the world is made to give us a sense of self or a distinct feeling of “me.” The world does this through people, places and experiences, and through the differences found in each.

The world is an effective false god because it tempers its own message. If the experience of separation were overpowering without any sense of community or communion, we would reject the world entirely and awaken immediately. The reason we linger within illusion is because there is enough community and communion to keep us interested.

In other words, the sense of communion in the world isn’t a sign of an awakening world. The sense of communion is a trick to keep us mesmerized by a world that is made to be different from truth.

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Today’s reading references the story of Abraham. Abraham is believed to be the father of both the Arab and Jewish nations.

According to the Bible, God made a covenant with Abraham. He told Abraham in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” Abraham was worried because he was childless and did not have an heir. His wife, Sarah, was barren, and both Abraham and Sarah were old. According to Genesis 15, God said to Abraham:

Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.

NTI Galatians interprets that story by saying that Abraham represents birth. One definition of “birth” is “the beginning or coming into existence of something.”

According to NTI Galatians, Abraham represents the birth of Light. Light is the symbol for truth realization, so Abraham represents the birth of truth realization.

Comparing Abraham’s offspring to the stars, which cannot be counted, signifies an infinite awakening—a total awakening to truth, with no part of consciousness left out of it.

The total awakening of consciousness is an interesting promise, but the promise becomes more interesting when you realize that Abraham represents willingness.

You see, Abraham was a man who heard the Voice for God and followed it where it led, even though it meant uprooting his family and servants from the place where they lived and leading them into the desert toward an unknown promised land.

Abraham is just like willingness. It is our willingness that listens to inner spiritual wisdom and follows it, even though that means letting go of familiar beliefs and attachments and walking through purification toward an unknown experience called “awakening.”

Willingness is the state of wanting to do something and being mentally, emotionally and/or spiritually ready to do it, even if learning must occur in the process. Our willingness is the birth of awakening.

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NTI Galatians comes to us from awake consciousness as the voice of Jesus. It harnesses the essence of his experience as a human who awakened to truth and shares the simplicity of awakening from his point of view. As NTI Galatians 1 said:

I am the Way and the Life. I come to you on this day to clear up your confusion, for there have been many thoughts that have confused you until now. Do not fret over your confusion. It is nothing and can be easily laid aside when you see the simplicity of love as I offer it to you.

Yesterday’s reading spoke of a belief. It said:

I know well of this belief, for I experienced it once myself. But I have been made free by My own choice to release the belief that isn’t true.

Today’s reading tells us what that belief is:

You believe in separation.

It also points out the way to let go of that belief and awaken to truth:

Through acceptance, not judgment, the Light of Heaven is yours.

This isn’t the first time that we’ve been told judgment (or declaration) is the cause of illusion and acceptance (or Loving All) is a means to awaken.

As you contemplate today’s reading:

1. Reference Day 138 and Day 157, and then realize that we are being told that letting go of judgment and accepting what is as it is is the simple way to awaken.
2. Consider how you fall for the deceit that judgment is sometimes justified, a deceit that declares illusion real.
3. Ask yourself if you’d rather feel righteous in a world that is made to be different from truth, or if you prefer to awaken and realize truth as it is.

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Speaking of those who have awakened to the First Principle of God, NTI 1 Corinthians 16 said:

One who knows wholeness after experiencing the lack of wholeness knows illusion is no substitute for truth. He shall not choose illusion again.

But, being one mind with all that he thought was separate, he shall remain as a memory to call the mind that sleeps into wakefulness, that all that is whole may know Itself as one and whole again.

When I received NTI Galatians, inner wisdom came to me as the voice of Jesus.

As A Course in Miracles Clarification of Terms  says:

The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God.  So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God.  The man was an illusion, for he seemed to be a separate being, walking by himself, within a body that appeared to hold his self from Self, as all illusions do.  Yet who can save unless he sees illusions and then identifies them as what they are?  Jesus remains a Savior because he saw the false without accepting it as true.  And Christ needed his form that He might appear to men and save them from their own illusions.

Through the Creative Principle, consciousness can appear as the re-enlivened form of a master who no longer exists. It’s as if the breeze of wisdom blows through a memory and temporarily re-envokes a familiar form.

Why?

As the Clarification of Terms  explains:

… time needs symbols, being itself unreal.

Jesus no longer exists, since Jesus was a temporary manifestation in time. However, because awakening occurred through that form, the form continues to be used by consciousness. A personification of reality is helpful for as long as we see ourselves as persons.

NTI Galatians came in Jesus’ voice. When NTI Galatians says “I” or “Me,” it refers us to the memory of Jesus. It directs our attention to one who experienced humanness as fully as we experience it now, and then transcended the beliefs and perceptions that we experience to realize truth without compromise. This memory is helpful, because if one human can awaken to reality, another human can do it too. The human is not limited, because identification with a human is a temporary cloak, and the consciousness that shines through the human is altogether unlimited.

A Course in Miracles Clarification of Terms  says:

There is no need for help to enter Heaven for you have never left.  But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs of your Identity, which God alone established in reality.  Helpers are given you in many forms, although upon the altar they are one. …

Is [Jesus] God’s only Helper?  No, indeed.  For Christ takes many forms with different names until their oneness can be recognized.

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As the scribe of NTI, I became afraid when I wrote NTI 2 Corinthians 12. I was afraid to see that I was beyond the body-mind-personality. Beyond the mind meant “God” to me, and attempting to see that I am “God” felt like blasphemy. Therefore, I was not ready to discover that I am beyond the mind.

Some of that fear lingered the following day when I sat down to scribe NTI 2 Corinthians 13, so inner wisdom met me where I was and brought me forward from there. It’s as if I was standing in a realm surrounded by the unknown (beyond mind), and I was clinging to a pole that represented the known (concepts). Inner wisdom was able to get me to let go of that pole with one hand and show some willingness to move away from the pole.

When today’s reading starts, the scribing is more closely related to the fear I experienced the day before. However, the scribing begins to move away from the pole with this phrase:

I have told you that your mind is tricky, …

Upon hearing that, I opened up again. I loosened my grip on familiar concepts, I became willing to listen to inner wisdom, and I became willing to follow it again.

The scribing in NTI 2 Corinthians 12 and 13 do not go where inner wisdom wanted to take me at the time. I was not ready for beyond mind. If I had followed inner wisdom and went where it wanted to take me, I would have had a direct experience of the non-affected Self. I would have realized I am not in the world; the world is in me. I would have seen everything that NTI 2 Corinthians attempted to teach.

I did not become willing to look in that direction until The Teachings of Inner Ramana  were scribed three years later. However, inner wisdom did not abandon me just because I was not ready. It did not scold me. It continued to work with me by leading me toward truth in a way I was willing for. It gave me whatever wisdom I would accept, and it continued walking with me in the direction of truth.

Inner wisdom will do the same with you. You can trust it to walk with you towards truth at a pace that you will accept. It will not go faster or slower. You are the pacesetter.

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Today’s reading represents inner spiritual wisdom’s first attempt at leading me through Self-inquiry. When I scribed NTI 2 Corinthians 12, I had never heard of Self-inquiry or asking the question, “Who am I?” This is the first time that arose for me, and to be honest, I wasn’t an open student. I let inner wisdom guide me through the first few questions, but when I hit the threshold of the unknown, I became afraid. I quit looking. I ran to my mind and concepts I had learned through A Course in Miracles. I abandoned genuine scribing and wrote down words that made me feel comfortable. Those words are still a part of NTI.

When you read NTI 2 Corinthians 12 today, you will come to this sentence:

You are an aspect of thought within the Mind of God.

That sentence and everything that follows for the remainder of the chapter was written out of fear. You can tell that’s true if you look carefully. It defines “you” as an “aspect of thought.” NTI has never defined you as an “aspect of thought” before. That would equate you to the body-mind-personality as if that is what you are. That is not what you are. That was written because I was too afraid to look beyond my identification with the body-mind-personality.

Feel free to skip today’s reading. Instead, let me lead you through Self-inquiry as it could have happened if I wasn’t afraid that day.

16-minute audio

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Yesterday’s reading began:

The question that you always ask is: How are you to live in the world without being a part of the world?

Today’s reading continues to answer that question. Today’s reading emphasizes that the way we are to live in the world without being a part of it is to live with a rested mind. It says:

Resting is the realization that confusion rules the world. And it is also the decision not to be ruled by confusion anymore.

One who lives with a rested mind is also the empty shell. They are synonymous.

How do you rest the mind?

You rest the mind by:

• Letting your spiritual aspiration be the guiding principle in your life.
• Staying focused within; instead of relying on thinking, let inner wisdom be the author and director of your role in the world.

As we learned on Day 122, the mind will try to regain command and control. Thinking will become loud. You will feel the emotional energy associated with the points of experience in thought. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It simply means that the mind doesn’t want to be dethroned. When the mind acts up, rest as deeply as you can. Rest-accept-trust is  healing. You set yourself free and serve the greater good by choosing to live with a rested mind.

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