Come to Yourself Daily: Lesson 113 (Review Lessons 95-96) - 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. Hello and welcome to lesson 95 in A Course in Miracles. Today's lesson is I am a complete soul united with my Creator I am a complete soul united with my Creator. If you're following along in the text, you'll see that I have changed the wording of the concept, as written in the book. That is because I don't want to create any confusion between how I use the term self, which is to describe a public persona or ego. And the way that the text is using the word self, which is more synonymous with the word soul. So I am a complete soul united with my Creator. Today's lesson is simply a reinforcement and a reminder that we are complete. From inception, our soul is complete our soul is without imperfections. Our soul does not need to be fixed, our soul cannot make mistakes that need to be corrected. All of those beliefs that somehow there is fault within us that needs to be changed or modified, or corrected or enhanced, is all based in the public persona. It's all based in our ego. It's all based in this false reality. The real reality, the true reality from spirit has been the beings that we were created by spirit to be spirit doesn't make mistakes. The Creator doesn't make mistakes. Spirit will not create a being with faults, with holes, with something deficient. We are the soul and we are complete in we are perfect and we are invulnerable. That is who we are. So anytime we get caught up with feeling bad and feeling that there's something wrong with us, and therefore, that we don't fit, or that we don't belong, or that we're separate somehow, from anyone in anything in this universe, that is the ego that is not spirit, that is not who we are. And that's the lesson we're working on today. It's to constantly remind ourselves, to let go of these thoughts of imperfection, to let go of these thoughts, that there's something wrong that we need to feel bad about or embarrassed about or fix that because all of that is what leads to guilt and shame and fear. Instead, we need to believe in live as complete beings, a unique soul created by spirit, to be a manifestation of the love, and the positive, peaceful, calm energy in this world. That's what we're going to do today. So every hour on the hour now I understand even just me saying that sounds daunting. But I really want you to give it a try. So whether you set an alarm today, or you're just mindful that every hour on the hour, I want you to take a moment. And I want you to say to yourself, I am a complete soul, united with my Creator. I'm at one with every aspect of that creation. And I'm limitless in power in peace. I am a complete soul, united with my Creator at one with every aspect of creation and limitless in power and in peace. I also want to point out that that mantra today is extremely inclusive and designed to be so by calling spirit a creator. Often that resonates with other people's religious beliefs and traditions and helps you unify these concepts for yourself. It makes them familiar and it makes them comfortable. So we're saying I'm a complete soul. I'm united with my Creator. I'm at one with every aspect of creation meaning I'm connected to everyone and everything. And I'm limitless in power and in peace. Limitless and power means there is nothing that I cannot do. I am one with spirit I am created by spirit I am created in spirits image. There is nothing that I cannot do. I just have to believe that it's all that is based on we have to remove those limiting thoughts that our ego and no public persona has put in our head. You're capable of anything. You're limitless in power. And you're also limitless in peace, meaning, you have the unfettered capacity, to forgive and to love. The only thing that stops us from doing that is fear fear of being hurt, fear of rejection. So if you remove that fear, if you recognize that that fear doesn't exist, it is false, then you can love and forgive everything. And there's no limit to the peace that you'll feel. Hi, it's Gretchen. Welcome to lesson 96. In A Course in Miracles. Today's lesson is salvation comes from the soul. Salvation comes from the soul. You could also use the word freedom instead of salvation. Remember, we defined salvation as complete freedom from fear and anxiety. It is living your life in calm and peace and joy because you live from love. So it is freedom from the false reality and living your life from spirit and from the true source. All of that is how we define salvation. So salvation comes from the soul. Today's lesson is the first time we start to discuss the concept of free will. We absolutely have free will. We have a mind created by spirit that is designed to help us process and perceive everything in our universe. The issue is that, in that process and perception, we often encounter these thoughts of attack in fear of the unknown and anxiety. And if we forget who we are, then we begin to adopt our fears as the foundation from which to base our decision making from our fears become the basis of how we perceive the world around us. That is also a demonstration of free will. Our mind can choose to live from fear and forget that we are connected with spirit. And that the true source and foundation of life is love. We can also then choose to change that decision, and relearn how to live our life connected to spirit. That is what freewill is. It is that decision. And that conscious mindset shift that we're going to focus on today. If you want to change, if you want to remove fear from your life, if you want to start basing your life and your decisions and your perceptions, from love, if you want to reconnect with spirit than live from the source, it is a conscious choice. You have to make in you have to affirm daily. We've spent years living the other way. So this isn't going to be an automatic, okay, I've changed my mind. And now everything's perfect. You are going to have to consciously choose to do this every single day, every hour, until it becomes your way of life. Until it becomes the first choice your mind makes rather than something you have to identify you did that you don't want to do and you want to change your mind and you want to learn from spirit. Instead of it being a five step process. It'll be the only step in your process. But that takes time. So we also want to start practicing. How does that begin? It begins with a conscious choice. It begins with finding a way to send to yourself in any given moment, so that you can make that choice to operate from love instead of fear. So whatever situation that you're experiencing, are confronted with. You can use this practice to send to yourself, remind yourself that you want to operate from spirit in this instance and not how you normally or how you have in the past and you want to make it New decision, a new choice to operate from spirit in this moment and make a decision, base your actions and base your perception of the situation on love versus fear. So the practice sessions for today is, again, every hour on the hour, we're really trying to enforce this way of living your life. So it has to be repetitive, it has to be habitual. So every hour on the hour, you're gonna say this concept to yourself. Salvation comes from the soul. Its thoughts, our mind to us. Salvation comes from the soul. Its meaning the soul meaning spirit, that's it's. So it's thoughts are mind to us. So what we're saying yourself in that moment is salvation comes from me connecting with my soul. And I'm going to use my souls thoughts and perceptions which are connected to spirit. In order to navigate the situation, I'm going to use those thoughts in order to perceive what's currently going on. If you do this every hour on the hour, you actually will operate from love, at least in one decision, usually the one that immediately follows you doing this practice, but that's enough, right? It's about creating that habit. It's about finding that practice that helps you center. So you're going to just take a deep breath, you're gonna use kind of like a quick fix mindful meditation, through using those words, to connect to spirit, remind yourself who you are. One limitless, powerful soul who can operate and navigate every situation from love, and that does not have to be afraid of anything. And then you're going to address what's in front of you for the following hour. The more you do this, the more you don't have to take that moment to center yourself, the more you are just centered in every interaction that you have. So practice this today. See how it changes your attitude. See how you feel at the end of the day. See if your energy levels are, are higher. See if your energy levels are higher. See if you're calmer at the end of the day. See if you sleep better that night. All of these changes you may experience but more importantly, every hour that you do this quick meditation, you should feel a sense of calmness come over you and you should feel yourself operating at a higher level today. Enjoy your practice today. And join us for the session tomorrow.