Today’s reading makes two primary points:

1. Past choices appear in the present, which provides the opportunity to choose differently now.
2. Through love, you shall know only love.

On Day 198, I provided a link to a message and audio called, “Is Attack Real?” When I received that message, I posted it to an online discussion group where I posted regularly at the time. A spiritual teacher had started the group, although he rarely posted there himself. The group was moderated, and every post was approved before others saw it. That day, the moderators approved my post. However, after the post was approved, the spiritual teacher who owned the group wrote a strongly worded email to the moderators and Cc’d me. He told them not to allow any more of my posts in the group. He called me a fake who made up everything I wrote because I wanted to be a famous spiritual teacher.

When I first saw his email, I felt attacked. I saw his face in my mind’s eye. It was red and all scrunched up with anger. And then I remembered the definition of love that came from the very message I had posted that day:

Love is giving through spirit to spirit that which spirit requests.

I realized that this situation appeared before me now because of past thoughts I had believed. I realized I had believed in attack in the past, so it made perfect sense that I should appear attacked now. I realized that I was simply witnessing the creative principle in process, and it was working in exactly the way it works.

What I think, I see.
What I see, I experience.

As I looked at the situation with this clarity, the image in my mind’s eye changed. Instead of seeing this spiritual teacher with an angry red face, his face softened into a smile. He stood before me in a waiter’s tuxedo holding a silver tray. He offered me a gift on a silver platter!

This teacher, through his current apparent attack, offered me the opportunity to see the creative process in motion. I had believed attack in the past, and so now attack came back to me through the creative process. Since the creative process is love, that means that I looked upon love appearing as  attack.

As I chose to see love through my understanding of the creative process, I realized this teacher offered me the opportunity to let go of the belief in attack. I chose to accept his gift. When I did, my heart filled with joy!

Through choosing to see the creative process and all of its effects  as love, I injected love into the process instead of the belief in attack, and love is what I experienced.

What I think, I see. [Attack]

What I see, I experience. [Attack]

Discernment : Take out attack; replace it with love.

Free redo : What I see, I experience. [Love]

Note: The spiritual teacher didn’t offer me this opportunity on purpose. He actually felt threatened by my post, believed his thoughts and issued an order to block all of my future posts. However, all of his thoughts came from the creative process, which included my prior belief in attack. The creative process delivered what I had asked for through my prior believing attention.

The choice to see love instead of appearance is always available to us. All we have to do is remember that any and every appearance is created through a perfectly allowing creative process, and perfect allowance is  love. Therefore, every appearance appears through love, which means it is love.

Note: If you are interested in the full story about Is Attack Possible?, listen to parts 1, 2 & 3, which are archived on this page starting at 2/28/10. You may want to listen over the next few days, since each part is 1 hour and 15 minutes long.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

Jesus once said:

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. ~ Matthew 7:12

Today’s reading explains the deeper meaning of that teaching. It says:

Therefore, give as you would receive. Give to the mind that which you would receive of spirit, for they are one. That which you give you must receive, because the mind is the spirit. The mind is the great receiver and spirit, the great deliverer. But spirit receives as mind receives, and mind delivers as does spirit.

“Spirit” is synonymous with consciousness. The “mind” is synonymous with manifestation, which includes thought, emotion, and perception.

The reading says, “mind is the great receiver.” That means that manifestation is an effect. The thoughts that come into the mind are the effect of a cause. The emotions that you feel are the effect of a cause. Everything that is perceived through the senses is the effect of a cause.

Spirit is “the great deliverer.” That means that spirit (consciousness) is the cause. To fully understand this, it’s helpful to look at yourself and your experience.

When you are worried about something, annoyed by something, frustrated by something, etcetera, what are you actually doing?

If you look very carefully, you will notice that whenever you are upset, you are giving believing attention to a thought, emotion, or perception.

What is attention?

Attention is made of consciousness. That means attention is  consciousness. Therefore, it is spirit.

When you give believing attention to a thought, emotion or perception, you enliven it with consciousness. In that way, you deliver that particular energy through the creative principle to consciousness as manifestation. The energy is reprocessed and manifests as thought, emotion, and/or perception.

Believing attention is declaration. It is  judgment. It is the mechanism that creates experience.

Believing attention comes through the combination of mind (believing) and spirit (attention), which means the two are equally part of the process and cannot actually be divided. Any apparent division in the explanation is for simplification purposes only.

One who sees himself as a person who is subject to the world and his experience reacts to thought, emotion and perception as if it is real, which is  judgment and continues the manifestation of illusory energies.

One who sees himself as the creative process chooses his way of being  (discernment) by remembering that his way of being is creative spirit.

On Day 183, we learned:

To give is to allow truth into the creative principle by not clogging the creative principle with untruth.

The purpose of consciousness now is awakening to itself as consciousness. That is the current evolutionary motion. (Reference Day 195.) One who realizes this and also realizes that he is the creative principle will be at peace in all circumstances—be empty awareness or be with a rested mind—so that the fog of illusory experience can clear, and consciousness can see itself as itself.

When one is at peace or actively resting away from believing (rest-accept-trust), one isn’t clogging the creative principle with illusory energies. That reduces distraction, which helps that one and the whole to receive insight, guidance, and to see with true perception. True perception is realizing consciousness as consciousness instead of thinking it is the many things that are perceived through the senses.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

NTI Ephesians 2 said:

In truth, you ask of your brother through your mind, and your brother answers you exactly as you have asked.

Today’s reading goes further into that idea.

It says:

When you think you are thinking alone, you are not. Your thoughts, which are heard by your brothers, are answered through them.

In that statement, “brothers” is a symbol. It would be more accurate to say that consciousness knows the energy of every image, thought or emotion that we give believing attention to, and it creates more images, thoughts and emotions from that same energy. Through our believing attention—which is declaration—we show interest in a particular energy, so consciousness delivers more of that energy. In that way, it gives us exactly what we show interest in.

This is why all things are Love. Only Love exists. Every experience that is given you is unequivocally the gift of Love given in answer to your request for Love.

Or, as inner spiritual wisdom one shared with me:

Love is giving through spirit to spirit that which spirit requests.

The question becomes:

What energy am I asking for through my believing attention?

Followed by:

What do I truly want to experience?

I used to perceive attack in the world, whether it was physical attack, verbal attack or emotional attack. One day, when I was seeing attack everywhere, I asked inner spiritual wisdom for guidance. I was taught that what I perceived as attack was actually love.

You can read the message I received from inner wisdom that day and listen to a 30-minute teaching about that message. It may help you contemplate today’s reading more deeply.

Message and Audio

Note: “Conscious” and “consciousness” as it is referred to in this message and audio refers to human conscious awareness; that is, being aware of me and others. It is the realm of duality. “Spirit” is used to refer to Consciousness as oneness.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

On Day 187 and Day 188, I shared how, as the scribe of NTI, I became afraid when inner wisdom tried to take me beyond mind through Self-inquiry. Since I was not ready to see myself as That which is beyond mind, inner wisdom shifted and took a different approach with me.

The Self-inquiry in NTI 2 Corinthians 12 went well up until this point:

What is my mind?

The answer to that is God. For only God can be Mind, which is the origin of thoughts, with thoughts being the maker or definer of you.

I would not go beyond this point, because I was identified with the body-mind-personality as me. Since I would not go beyond this point, this is where inner wisdom recalculated (like a GPS) and began leading me toward the same destination in a different way.

NTI Ephesians 2 says:

Your mind is of God. This we have already established.

That was something I was willing to accept during the Self-inquiry process—that my thoughts came from my mind, and my mind came from God. So, since I accepted this idea, inner wisdom recalculated and began leading from here. It continues by saying:

Being of God, [your mind] is the same as God.

I was not willing to accept that I am beyond mind, because to me, ‘beyond mind’ meant ‘God’, and it felt blasphemous to say, “I am God.” However, I was willing to accept that if my mind comes from God, it must be the same as God. So, inner wisdom began with what I would accept, and began leading me to see that I am the Third Principle of God.

To see one’s self as the body-mind-personality and to see one’s self as the creative process itself is a completely different perspective.

One who sees herself as the body-mind-personality lives in ignorance. She believes the world, her thoughts and her emotions. She is a puppet to the ego script while believing she is an independent person.

One who sees herself as the creative process  is no longer tethered to the world, thought and emotion. She is free of the world, instead of subject to the world. She is liberated. Instead of being a puppet, she can choose her way of being, knowing that her way of being is creative spirit.

Since I was attached to concepts, inner wisdom decided to attach a concept that was higher than ‘person,’ but less than ‘God,’ to the creative process. It called the creative principle, “Christ.” That’s because, although I wasn’t willing to accept that I am God, I was willing to accept that I am Christ, so by using that term along with my willingness to see that I am the same as God, inner spiritual wisdom began moving me away from the belief that I am a body-mind-personality by showing me that I am Christ—an ongoing creative process.

NTI Ephesians 2 says:

All that you are, you are through creation.
All that you be, you be through creation also.

That means that every body, every thought and every emotion is created through the creative principle. If you believe that you are a body, that the thoughts are your thoughts and that emotions are real, you are a puppet. You are not liberated. You are the ignorant slave of a script.

It also says:

In truth, you ask of your brother through your mind, and your brother answers you exactly as you have asked.

That means you aren’t what you appear to be. You are the creative process, and your brothers, whether they know it or not, are connected to you through the creative process, because they are the creative process too.

Regardless of whether one is liberated or a puppet to the script, one is the creative process, and creation is happening through him as it happens through all.

When we acknowledge that we are the Third Principle of God, we’ve taken a step in the direction of realizing we are the First Principle of God.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

Willingness is the state of wanting to awaken to truth and being mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ready to do it. It is a call from awake consciousness and a direct link to awake consciousness. When we focus on our willingness, we are in direct communion with awake consciousness. By communing with awake consciousness, we merge with awake consciousness. Focusing on our willingness is the simple way to awaken.

When we focus on willingness, we are consumed with one purpose. When we focus on the mind, our attention is scattered among many purposes. These many purposes are called distractions, because they all have one thing in common: they distract our attention away from our call to awaken.

When we focus on the mind and become distracted by its thoughts, we get lost in points of experience. We experience emotions that are different from truth. Forgiveness is the process of removing attention from points of experience and returning our focus to truth.

Today’s reading teaches a process for forgiveness. It is a simple process that can be used over and over. It can be used each time we find ourselves lost or stuck in an experience that is different from truth. Here’s how the process works:

1. Recognize you are experiencing an emotion that is different from truth and this is an opportunity for forgiveness.

 

2. Put the story aside temporarily in order to quiet the mind. I do this by writing the main points about the story in a journal. Writing the main points on paper helps me empty the mind—to get the story outside of me—so I can relax into a quiet mind.

 

3. Once the mind is quiet, or relatively quieter than before, turn your attention to your willingness or to your spiritual aspiration. I do this by asking myself, “What do I truly want?”

 

4. Focus on your willingness. Let attention linger there. Notice what your willingness feels like. Relax into it. Let yourself go deeper into it by being with it—by communing with it.

 

5. When you feel deeply in touch with willingness, describe the obstacle that you are ready to transcend. For example:
    
   “I am experiencing worry and fear. I am worried that I will have to fight in order to get this project completed on time, and I don’t want to fight. I am worried that I will offend people as I do what I have to do. I am worried we will not complete the project on time. I am worried that if we do complete the project on time, they will put me in charge of the process permanently and that will just create new things to worry about.”

   At this step, it’s important to stay in touch with your willingness. Emotions may arise in the body as you recount the obstacle. Allow whatever arises to be there. Do not judge yourself or the emotional experience; do not attempt to manipulate it or change it. You are in a healing space now, and whatever arises is coming up for healing. Let it be, and stay with your willingness.

6. Once you are in the healing space, any number of experiences may occur. I cannot tell you exactly how healing will happen. Trust whatever happens. Don’t think it is supposed to look a certain way or be different than it is. If you find yourself seeing the obstacle more clearly, look at it. Your clarity regarding the obstacle is a part of the healing process. If you begin to see the situation differently, accept the new point-of-view. If your feelings begin to morph into other feelings, allow them to shift and change. If you begin to realize guidance, trust the guidance. If you feel to grab a pen and journal, do that. If there is a prompt to practice inquiry, follow that prompt.

 

7. Do not try to force forgiveness, and do not try to rush through the forgiveness process. Be willing to stay with the process until you feel intuitively that it is complete for now.

 

8. Optional: I like to conclude a forgiveness process with, “Thank you.”

I recommend printing this tip for future reference.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

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.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

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)

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

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.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.

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.

Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.