A big leaping Giant Stride lesson this week! All things are lessons God would have me learn. [CE W-193:1] We will attempt today to overcome a thousand seeming obstacles to peace in just one day. Let mercy come to you more quickly. Do not try to hold it off another day, another minute, or another instant. Time was made for this. Use it today for what its purpose is. Morning and night devote what time you can to serve its proper aim, and do not let the time be less than meets your deepest need. Let's use time wisely, Alexandra and Brian miraclesarenatural@gmail.com

Our lesson today, I will step back and let Him lead the way… is the prerequisite for miracles. 2 The world is an illusion. ²Those who choose to come to it are seeking for a place where they can be illusions and avoid their own reality. ³Yet when they find their own reality is even here, then they step back and let it lead the way. ⁴What other choice is really theirs to make? [CE W-155.2:1-4] ³You walk this path as others walk, nor do you seem to be distinct from them, although you are indeed. ⁴Thus can you serve them while you serve yourself, and set their footsteps on the way which God has opened up to you, and them through you. [CE W-155.5:3-4] =========== 6 This is the way salvation works. ²As you step back, the Light in you steps forward and encompasses the world. ³It heralds not the end of sin in punishment and death. ⁴In lightness and in laughter is sin gone, because its quaint absurdity is seen. ⁵It is a foolish thought, a silly dream, not frightening—ridiculous perhaps, but who would waste an instant in approach to God Himself for such a senseless whim? 7 Yet you have wasted many, many years on just this foolish thought. [CE W-156.6-7] ============ 6 Fear is always a sign of strain, which arises whenever the will to do conflicts with what you do. ²This situation arises in two major ways: 1) ³You can will to do conflicting things, either simultaneously or successively. ⁴This produces conflicting behavior, which would be tolerable to the self (though not necessarily to others) except for the fact that the part of the will that wants something else is outraged. 2) ⁵You can behave as you think you should, without entirely willing to do so. ⁶This produces consistent behavior, but entails great strain within the self. 7 If you think about it, you will realize that in both cases the will and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in a situation in which you are doing what you do not will. [CE T-2.IX.6-7] ============= Sacrifice: …²Many have chosen to renounce the world while still believing its reality, and they have suffered from a sense of loss and have not been released accordingly. Deprivation: …³Others have chosen nothing but the world, and they have suffered from a sense of loss still deeper, which they have not understood. [CE W-155.4:2-3] ========================= 12 We walk to God. ²Pause and reflect on this. ³Could any way be holier, or more deserving of your effort, of your love, and of your full intent? ⁴What way could give you more than everything, or offer less and still content the holy Son of God? ⁵We walk to God. ⁶The truth that walks before us now is one with Him, and leads us to where He has always been. ⁷What way but this could be a path that we would choose instead? [CE W-155.12] =========== “Who walks with me?” ²This question should be asked a thousand times a day, till certainty has ended doubting and established peace. L. 156

Giant Strides, Week 8 of 11, ACIM Lesson 135, If I defend myself I am attacked, 2/24/24 Confusion of mind with the body results in a sense of vulnerability and weakness. 8 The body is in need of no defense. [CE W-135.8:1] 9 The “self” that needs protection is not real. [CE W-135.9:1] 10 Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. ²For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits, and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. ³You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. ⁴And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source. [CE W-135.10] 11 These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond with health when they have been corrected and replaced with truth. ²This is the body’s only real defense. [CE W-135.11:1-2] 2 A healed mind does not plan. ²It carries out the plans which it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own. [CE W-135.12:1-2] 13 A healed mind is relieved from the belief that it must plan, although it cannot know the outcome that is best, the means by which it is achieved, or how to recognize the problem that the plan is made to solve. ²It must misuse the body in its plans until it recognizes this is so. ³But when it has accepted this as true, then is it healed, and lets the body go. [CE W-135.13]

Giant stride Lesson 130: It is impossible to see two worlds. Perception is consistent with my desire. 2 Yet who can really hate and love at once? ²Who can desire what he does not want to have reality? ³And who can choose to see a world of which he is afraid? ⁴Fear must make blind, for this its weapon is: that which you fear to see you cannot see. ⁵Love and perception thus go hand in hand, but fear obscures in darkness what is there. [CE W-130.2] ³The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating. [CE T-4.VIII.13:3] 1. We dissociated from Love of God choosing the world time instead. 2.We dissociated from the intensity of our wish for separation (think hatred and terror) in order to make separation seem tolerable. The ego tries to sell the idea that if you follow it, you can minimize fear and maximize love within a world of separation. It wants you to can think you can adjust to separation and and be happy. ²Minimizing fear, but not its undoing, is the ego’s constant effort, and is indeed a skill at which it is very ingenious. ³How can it preach separation without upholding it through fear, and would you listen if you recognized that this is what it is doing? [CE T-11.V.9:2-3] 11 Accept a little part of hell as real, and you have damned your eyes and cursed your sight, and what you will behold is hell indeed. [CE W-130.11:1] Interested in studying with us? Email Alexandra & Brian at miraclesarenatural@gmail.com

Giant Strides, Week 6 of 11, Lesson 127, There is no love but God's... join us for this giant stride! Keynote, commentary, and reading, and exercise 127. There is no love but God’s. (Our largest stride of Giant strides) 6 Today we practice making free our minds 1.. of all the laws we think we must obey, 2.. of all the limits under which we live 3.. and all the changes which we think are part of human destiny. ²Today we take the largest single step this course requests in our advance towards its established goal. [CE W-127.6:2] What is our established Goal? Knowledge-Perception ⁶The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught.⁷It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. [CE In.1:6-7] Direct Knowledge/Grace can’t be learned True Perception can be learned. Asking and opening to Grace can be learned. Seeing love reflected in perception (miracles), can be learned by forgiving all our attack thoughts. Teach only love for that is what you are. You can practice the mechanics of the holy instant, and will learn much from doing so. ⁶But its shining and glittering brilliance, which will literally blind you to this world by its own vision, you cannot supply. ⁷You do not understand the light by which you see. ⁸And yet here it is, all in this instant, complete, accomplished, and given wholly. [CE T-15.II.9:4-8] 🌟

🌟Theme🌟 A major learning goal this course has set is to reverse your view of giving, so you can receive. ⁴For giving has become a source of fear, and so you would avoid the only means by which you can receive. (God’s joy and peace are mine) [CE W-105.3:3-4] 🌟108. To give and to receive are one in truth. "True light which makes true vision possible is not the light the body’s eyes behold. ²It is a state of mind which has become so unified that darkness cannot be perceived at all. ³And thus what is the same is seen as one, while what is not the same remains unnoticed, for it is not there. 3 This is the light which shows no opposites, and vision, being healed, has power to heal."[CE W-108.2-3] 🌟(A unified state of mind is truly giving because everyone is included in its love. ) 🌟Let’s get clear about irreconcilable opposites… The Holy Spirit contrasts opposites so as to make the choice between them obvious. Example: "The fact that truth and illusion cannot be reconciled, no matter how you try, what means you use, and where you see the problem, must be accepted if you would be saved." [CE W-96.2:1] 🌟Let’s get clear about opposites that aren’t really opposite…. The ego does not understand how to teach through genuine contrast and makes the mistake of seeing differences where there is none. Example: 108. To give and to receive are one in truth. "Vision depends upon today’s idea. ²The light is in it, for it reconciles all seeming opposites." [CE [W-108:1]...

Week 4, Giant Strides Lesson 94,110,162,237,260 I am as God Created me… ...a giant stride toward your release, and a milestone in learning the thought system which this course sets forth. [CE W-94.7:2] https://acimce.app/:W-94.7:2 In this one thought is all the past undone; ²the present saved to quietly extend into a timeless future. ³If you are as God created you, then there has been no separation of your mind from His, ⁴no split between your mind and other minds, ⁵and only unity within your own.....5 The healing power of today’s idea is limitless. [CE W-110.4-5] 2 Here is the Word by which the Son became his Father’s happiness, His love, and His completion. ²Here creation is proclaimed, and honored as it is. ³There is no dream these words will not dispel, no thought of sin and no illusion that the dream contains that will not fade away before their might. ⁴They are the trumpet of awakening that sounds around the world. ⁵The dead awake in answer to its call. ⁶And those who live and hear this sound will never look on death. [CE W-162.2] https://acimce.app/:W-162.2

²God gives me only happiness. (major premise) ³He has given my function to me. (minor premise) ⁴Therefore my function must be happiness. (conclusion) [CE W-66.5:2-4] ⁴You will listen to madness or hear the truth. ⁵Try to make this choice as you think about the premises on which our conclusion rests. ⁶We can share in this conclusion, but in no other. ⁷For God Himself shares it with us. 11 Today’s idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same, and the different as different. ²On one side stand all illusions. ³All truth stands on the other. ⁴Let us try today to realize that only the truth is true. [CE W-66.10-11] https://acimce.app/:W-66.10-11

Week 2 of 11 weeks of "Giant Strides" from the Workbook of A Course in Miracles. Lesson 61: I am the light of the world. We are all unknowingly “blazing with a light far brighter than the sun which lights the sky you see” [CE T-22.VIII.4:1], as the Text says. Our purpose here is to uncover this light and let it shine on a world that lives in a perpetual night. We can be the sunrise it has been waiting for. Indeed, that’s why we are here on earth. Perhaps we sense that we were born for a purpose. This is our purpose. Brian shared this poem at the end of the class: Like a Life-Giving Sun “You could become a great horseman And help to free yourself and this world though only if you and prayer become Sweet Lovers. It is a naive man who thinks we are not engaged in a fierce battle For I see and hear brave foot soldiers All around me going mad Falling on the ground in excruciating pain. You could become a victorious horseman and carry your heart through this world like a life-giving sun Though only if you and God become Sweet Lovers.” —Hafiz

Week 1 of 11 weeks of "Giant Strides" from the workbook of A Course in Miracles. Lesson 23: I can escape the from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. Attack thoughts: what are they all about? -The thought of separation. The imaginary foundation of sin. -Littleness -Attack & Defense are the same: ✨“When you finally realize that thoughts of attack and of being attacked are not different, you will be ready to let the cause go.” [CE W-23.7:4-5]✨ -Superior/Inferior: us & them -Projecting anger or blame -Judgement -Grievances -Suffering (weakness and lack) -Private thoughts, secrets -People pleasing, fear of consequences, wanting love and approval. -Planning (separate interests) -Sickness 🌟