Come to Yourself Daily: Lesson 111 (Review Lessons 91-92) - A Course in Miracles

Come to Yourself Daily is excited to guide you through A Course in Miracles, the groundbreaking text that launched the New Age thought movement. 

If you would like to follow along with the text, you can find a FREE online version from the publisher here: https://acim.org/acim/workbook/introduction/en/s/401?wid=toc&fwv=true.  Or you can purchase a hard copy from online retailers (just make sure you are getting the original BLUE cover versions published by the Foundation for Inner Peace). 

This podcast is not a reading of the text. Gretchen will guide you through the lessons by providing context, examples, exercises, and insights into how you can make the most of these lessons and transform your life into one that is grounded in love, peace, and happiness.

No more resolutions…it’s time to focus on your evolution. Changing WHY you live changes HOW you live.

A Course In Miracles (First Edition – Three Volume Set) is the edition Gretchen is using as the reference material for this podcast.

Gretchen O'Neal is a spiritual accountability and empowerment coach. She holds a Master's Degree in Transpersonal Psychology with a focus in Applied Spirituality and owns and operates www.cometoyourself.com. Come To Yourself provides unbiased, easily accessible information from the top scholars in the fields of transpersonal psychology and consciousness studies, coupled with personal insights from successful artists, musicians, and business professionals to anyone looking to start their spiritual journey to discover and serve their soul's mission in life 

Music: "What One Has Done Before, One Now Does For You Once More" from States: Vol. 1, written and performed by Robin Lynn.  All rights reserved and used with permission.

Transcript

Gretchen ONeal: 0:00

Hi, everyone, welcome back to A Course in Miracles. Today we start a 10 day review of the last 20 lessons, you will see that we do this quite often in this course, this is not only just to review and refresh the concepts, but to use this review period to teach you how to apply them. So, like in school, we would call this period the practical application period. Whereas the other lessons, we're just learning the theory. So during the review of part three, we're going to spend two extended sessions each day, you can do one in the morning and one in the evening. And in the sessions, you're going to review the first of the two concepts in the morning. And the second of the two concepts in the evening, you're gonna review this in the typical format that we use of a mindful meditation, you can either choose to repeat the concept to yourself, and just let your mind go and see what messages you receive. Or you can use the pre recorded podcasts which I will put at the end of each review lesson for the day, so that you don't have to go back and download them or find them, they will be part of this podcast. And you can use that as your morning in your evening review. Throughout the day, however, I would like you to take the two concepts that are being reviewed for the day. And if you need to write them down quickly, so that you have them at the ready throughout the day, I highly recommend doing that. But during the day, back to our every hour on the hour, I want you to look at the two concepts I want you to say them to yourself. That's all that's required. This isn't about doing an individual meditation each hour, I just want you to repeat the concept. Reason being, we are trying to train the mind to operate from soul. And from spirit versus from the self. Your conscious waking mind has spent all of your life focused on operating from the self from those false perceptions from living in that untrue reality. We now want to train the conscious mind your waking mind, to operate from soul to get its cues from love and from spirit. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to remind yourself every hour of these concepts that puts them in the forefront of your mind. That makes them a focal point of your waking consciousness all throughout the day. So this is also a training ground here. So please don't ignore this part of the review. Please take the time each day. To do this repetition every hour. The easiest way to do it is to write the two concepts down, put them on your phone, you can set an alarm on your phone every hour to look at that note, or you can remind yourself to look at it you can post it on your computer screen where you're going to see it all day, I just want you to make an active effort to put this in your waking mind for the rest of the review period. So for the next 10 days, this is the goal. A morning meditation and an evening meditation focused on one of the concepts that you were viewing for the day. And then during the middle of your day, every hour, I want you to simply repeat the concepts, put them in the forefront of your consciousness, and let them live there for the remainder of your day to day. Enjoy this review period, really work on actively living from your soul for the next 10 days. Take note of the changes that you experience. And definitely take note of your overall mental state. Are you happier? Are you more at peace? Are you calmer? Be mindful of those changes as well. Have a wonderful review period. And again, the podcasts for today's to review lessons will follow. Have a great day. Hi, I'm Gretchen and welcome to lesson 91 in A Course in Miracles. Today we're starting part three of the course and this section is going to focus primarily on understanding the difference between In the self, and the soul, and understanding how to make the transition from living, from the self, from your ego from your public persona, and beginning to understand how to connect and live from your soul, how to live from that source with spirit, and how to ultimately really learn how to live your life from love. So today's lesson is, miracles are seen in the light, miracles are seen in the light. I think it's important that we define these terms, again, from the previous lessons. So let's start with what is a miracle. As we discussed a miracle is that shift in your perception, from operating and basing your life from a point of fear, to learning how to live your life from love. It's the epiphanies and the knowledge and the understanding that comes when you begin to live your life from love. When you start to feel that release from pain, and anxiety, and you start to feel more calm and peace, and you recognize those individual moments where that shift from living from fear, to living from love made a change in your life made you feel something different. That is the miracle. It is those individual moments of acknowledgement and understanding that you then hopefully internalize and begin to make part of your regular existence. Now defining light, light is fundamentally your soul. It has perception and vision, from that soul level. That is the light that is you shining, from your acknowledgement and connection of spirit out to the rest of the world. And that light is not only creating true vision, and a new true reality for you, but hopefully illuminating the truth for others around you. So miracles are seen in the light. Miracle seen in the light means that your understanding that these shifts, that these changes in your life from living from fear to living in love can only occur. If you operate at the soul level. You can't have that miracle, you can't have those epiphanies. If you're not living in the light. If you are not shining from your soul. That is the only way these things occur. So it's not that the miracles don't exist, they're there. This knowledge is there for everyone. It doesn't go away. It's not limited. But if you don't live in proceed from the soul level, you'll never see it. You're in darkness, there is no light shone on these miracles for you to then see and understand and adopt. So I just mentioned darkness, what is darkness. Darkness in this sense, is not recognizing that possibility in yourself that you can live from a soul level if you choose and it's a choice. If you choose to remain in your current reality, this false reality living from the ego, living in your public persona living in your body. Rather than focusing and living from your soul, then you are choosing to remain in darkness. And you are not acknowledging that there is another way that there is a possibility that exists where you can live in light and live in love and be a witness and adopt these miracles on a regular basis in your life. So you must anchor yourself in your soul and spirit in order to see this. In prior lessons, I've hinted at this section, I've hinted that there was going to be a time where we would have more in depth discussions related to the self versus the soul. I pointed to the article that exists on our website at come to your self.com called self soul spirit, where you get a nice introduction to what each one of these concepts are in spirituality and how to recognize the difference. This section in this course is devoted to really understanding that there is a distinct difference between your soul and yourself. and that it is imperative, in order for you to truly live in peace, to release the self, to understand that it is not required in your life, to understand that your soul is invulnerable, that you cannot be harmed. And therefore there's no need to have this self to protect your body. Because you're not going to live from your body anymore. You're gonna live from your soul. And that is infinite. And that is the ultimate consciousness. And that is how you find peace. So we are now going to start to learn how to make that shift, how we're going to shift our sight, from our physical eyes in our body as being the source of perception, to being our soul, as the source of perception, we understood from the first part, that what we are currently perceiving through our eyes is not real, it has no meaning. It is anchored in our perception filters that are based on fear and protection of our Corporal body. It is showing us a false reality, where we feel attacked in harmed, and we are tense and anxious. And we need to learn to divorce our main source of sight from those eyes. And instead, learn to see from the soul level. So in order to do this, we have to start by recognizing that many of you may not feel strong enough to make this shift. There is a reason why people choose to live from the self is familiar, sweat, you know, it's what a lot of other people are doing. So it feels comfortable. A lot of people are resistant to any kind of change in your life, let alone a change like this, which is asking you to question everything that you believe. It requires strength. To make this shift, you have to stay the course, you have to feel confident and continue with the work, despite the challenges that you personally may experience that you may experience from others. And you need to find where you're going to anchor this strength, where is this going to come from for you. So we need to identify that we're strong enough to make this shift. You can let go of everything that you thought was real. And you can embrace the unknown. Without fear. You're strong enough to be on this journey to walk this path. And to learn how to see and to think and to live from your soul. That strength is going to come from your connection with spirit. We've been working in the past two sections on mindful meditation, and learning how to open yourself up to those messages into that connection in that common piece that Spirit brings. And that's just about acknowledging Spirit in your life. That's just about acknowledging that connection. So the lessons and the exercises in this section, are really going to focus on making that connection strong and clear. And something that you can constantly go back to when you have your moments of doubt. When you need to anchor yourself in the strength, that this is the way this is how you find peace and release from fear in your life. This connection, this understanding that you need to operate from love and from your soul is what is going to take you forward. So we're going to try three exercise periods today. Each one is going to be around 10 minutes each, but they're going to be a little different. So for the first session today, I want you to do a little bit of a cause and effect exercise. This is so you can begin to cement this concept for yourself. You're going to begin the exercise by saying miracles are seen in the light the body These eyes do not perceive the light. But I am not a body. What am I? Miracles are seen in the light. The body's eyes don't perceive the light. But I am not a body. What am I that cause and effect statement is challenging you to journey inward? To answer that final question. What am I? How am I to see myself? How can I replace that image of myself as a body in my mind, and begin to see myself as a soul? How do you do that? Well, the way that you do that is to ask Spirit for guidance and help, spirit will communicate with you. And we'll replace that image with how you should see yourself moving forward. And it won't be your physical reflection. It may come to you as characteristic thoughts, it could come to you as just an overwhelming feeling that you recognize as yourself. In indigenous traditions, the shaman would do this meditation with a member of the tribe and their spirit totem would come to them in the form of an animal or in the form of some other mystic being. And that is how they began to adopt the vision of themselves moving forward, so that they were constantly recognizing that they were not their physical body. But instead, that they were this ultimate form of connective energy. That's what allowed them to remain connected to the earth, and to the animals, and to spirit, and everything. All the energy in the world. The way that you stop feeling separate the way that you ultimately understand your connection. And your purpose in this life, and in this realm is to stop seeing yourself as just a corporal body. Stop identifying yourself as your physical form. And begin identifying yourself from your spiritual essence from your soul, from your lifeforce. And that is what we're getting to with these exercises, that is the beginning of this process for you. So this exercise this questioning this asking spirit, what am I and sing what images come to you in this meditation, this is something that I want you to repeat, until you have an answer that you truly understand, is your image of yourself. So I'm not saying repeat this repeatedly today. And by the end of the day, you'll have it, many of you will, it depends on how resistant you are to change. But if you don't have it today, I urge you to continue this one exercise every day until you do. Make this the focus of your daily meditation. And until you start seeing an image that is not your body, but instead your essence. So that's going to be the first exercise period that you have today. For your second exercise period. I want you to focus on connecting to the strength, I want you to have that affirmation that you are strong enough to do this work, and that you are strong enough to start making this connection and living from the soul level. And even if you don't believe you have doubts, you might and I feel that the second exercise period should be used just to affirm yourself and your strength. So I want you to enter your mindful meditation. And I want you to say powerful affirmations to yourself. So for example, you could say I am not weak, but strong. I am not limited, but unlimited. I am not an illusion, but a reality. I am not doubtful, but certain. I am not helpless, but all powerful. I cannot see in darkness, but I can see in the light I want you to affirm for yourself, that you are strong, that you are able that you are unlimited and powerful. And you understand, and you have no doubt in your mind that this is the way forward for you. This is how you live in peace. This is how you banish fear and anxiety from your life. And you are determined in your focus to stay this course and get there. That is what I want you to do for your second exercise session today. And then for the third session, I want you to go back to the original exercise of deepening your connection to soul and finding that image of yourself that is not your body. This is a lot of work that you're beginning in this section. But this is really the pivotal work, this is how the miracle is seen. So if there is any part of this course that you really need to make sure that you are fully present for it is this part. So take as long as you need with each lesson, do not rush this, okay, these podcasts are staying up indefinitely, you're not going to miss anything. So if you need to spend days or weeks or a month on one lesson, do that for yourself. This is life changing in every meaning of that phrase. And I want you to be present for that. And I want you to embrace that. And I want you more than anything to feel confident in that change. So this is not a race, take the time to do what you need to do for you. And get the most out of this course. Hello, and welcome to lesson 92. In A Course in Miracles. Today's lesson is miracles are seen in the light, and light in strength are one miracles are seen in the light, and light and strength are one. So from the previous lessons, we understand that light is pure vision from the soul. So instead of using our eyes, in our mind of our physical body, to think and to perceive, we're going to use our soul to think and perceive. And our soul is directly connected to spirit. So in actuality, we're seeing with the light from spirit. And we're using and basing and anchoring ourselves in the strength from spirit. So light and strength, in that sense, are one. And we need both in order to see and adopt and understand the miracles. So what is the strength of spirit that underlies the light. When we've discussed that before the strength of spirit is love. It is infinite, perpetual, unconditional love. And let's think about this for a minute. Love doesn't focus on the physical form, right? Our physical eyes and our false perception. Focus on the body, the body of our self and the body of others. But love focuses on the spirit and the essence in the soul of a person and focuses on our own soul. When you look at something from love, you don't see and focus on its deficiencies, right you don't focus on its weaknesses. You don't pick it apart. Love forgives any deficiency. Love doesn't see deficiency. Love is looking for the truth in the soul of a being. Love is looking to connect to the inner essence of something. Love doesn't care what the outside looks like. Love doesn't care what the body's capable of. That is what we all ultimately are searching for from others in our life, right? We want that unconditional love. We want to be loved. No matter what Who we are, what we look like in what we do. We want someone to love us. And we want to love ourselves beyond our weaknesses, beyond what we perceive as false. Beyond our physical deficiencies, we don't want any of that to matter. We seek out this feeling all the time. The problem is, is we don't recognize that the feeling is already within us. That feeling and that love is the strength of spirit, it is already within us. And if we operate from that strength of spirit, then we have that ability to no longer perceive weakness in ourselves and in others. So we're strong when we live, and we perceive, and we think, from Spirit, because then we are grounded in doing all of that from love. So we need to recognize that the self is weak. The self is nothing but a manifestation of focusing on weaknesses. That's all the self is it focuses on what's different. It focuses on being separate. It focuses on fear and attack, and lack and scarcity. The self is focused on limitations. And understand that that completely make sense because the self was designed to protect the corporate body. So it's designed to seek those things out and try to make sure that they don't exist, try to fix them, try to protect from them. Right, it's like our own personal security guard that's designed to look around the fortress and find the holes and the weaknesses and the points of penetration, and try to shore them up in some way, or put a wall in front of it. That's what the self is the self is not where we want to live our life from. It's just unfortunately, the trap that we fall into in our society, we believe that is all we are. We want to live from the soul. Our soul is strength. Our soul is based in love. So it focuses on what it focuses on forgiveness. It focuses on connection. It focuses on abundance, and peace and balance in an infinite possible universe. Love is focused on everything that we want, everything that brings us balance. Love is the source of strength. And that means we have to operate at a soul level, we can no longer operate from the self. So that's what we're doing today, we're going to focus in two sessions, I'd prefer you do one in the morning, and one in the evening. And these are going to be long, I want you to if you can set aside 15 to 20 minutes of time on this. And these sessions could bring up some deeper emotional feelings, potentially some emotional traumas. So I would prefer if you can find the time to do this where you know, you're not going to have to interact with other people for a good hour. So after, okay, this is not the kind of work that you want to squeeze in today, okay, this is something that you want to dedicate time for. So for your sessions, I want you to reflect on the weaknesses of the self. I want you to reflect on what you've identified as your personal weaknesses. And I want you to really connect for yourself that it is the self it is that ego that brings these weaknesses up. This is It's focused, the self is focused on identifying these weaknesses. And I want you to make that causal connection. That because you're focused on your physical body and because you're focused on your public persona, that is what brings forward and makes prominent in your life this concept of you having weaknesses, other people having weaknesses, the separation and you need to feel like you have to separate yourself from others for to feel safe. Because you don't want to feel that pain and that anxiety and fear in your life. I want you to put this all together for yourself. I want you to focus on that, I want you to understand that it is from living your life, from your public persona, from living your life from your physical self, that you're finding and feeling this pain, then I want you to start to reflect on the moments in your life that you have lived from love, that you have felt love, and that you have given love. And I want you to go a little deeper and not just focus on times when you have said, I love this person, or I love that person. I want you to think about those moments of true unconditional love. For a lot of people, they've experienced that with their children, they've experienced that with their animals. They've experienced that from their partner, or from their parents. But those moments when somebody or something made you feel that you were loved for who you really are. And it didn't matter what you look like. And it didn't matter what you were physically capable of. And it didn't matter if you were different. You were just loved. And you gave that love back. And I want you to think about how that really made you feel. Were you at peace? Did you have joy? Were you calm and balanced. And then you can even take it a step further and say, even in those moments, if I felt fear, the fear was about losing that feeling. It was about losing that connection. It wasn't about being afraid of the connection itself. The fear was based in what happens if this goes away. And that's based in ego and self again. When a soul connects to another soul can never lose that connection. It's infinite, it's constant is perpetual. So you're not connecting. In that moment, you have to understand all you're doing is acknowledging the connection that already exists. Is that epiphany, it's that miracle. You're seeing it, the light has shone on it. But that connection is always been there and will always be there. It's not going anywhere. It was just your acknowledgment that made it new. That's all. So these exercise sessions today may feel really heavy. But understand these sessions are going to be very positive. You are finding your way out of fear. And you are attaching yourself to memories in milestones and experiences that will anchor you and strengthen you to keep pushing for more of those. You want more miracles. You want more acknowledgments of the connections and love that exist in your life that have always been there. But maybe your self was blinding you to them. Maybe your ego is making you afraid to trust them. So these sessions are about awakening. And that's why I want you to make sure that you give them the proper time today. Be kind to yourselves today. Be open to change. Join us for our sessions tomorrow.