Dear Spiritual Family,
As we focus on another Sunday together, our thoughts and our heartfelt prayers turn to the people of Los Angeles County and the extremely difficult circumstances that so many there are moving through. We also come together in gratitude for the thousands of firefighters and others who have answered the call to do all in their power to save lives and property. We see the Light of God enfolding all.
We’ve often heard and perhaps said ourselves, “It’s hard to say goodbye.” But what about the goodbyes that we can say and mean that, though they may be difficult, are so worth the intention and the discipline to let go of?
As the New Year begins to unfold, what things might come to mind for you that you would find helpful in saying goodbye to? Some are obvious – habits that don’t serve our mental, physical, or emotional well-being and lower states of consciousness such as anger, hatred, and fear are also obvious ”goodbyes” that can restore a sense of balance and spiritual integrity.
At the core of letting go of what doesn’t serve us to reclaim our God-given Power, is the made-up self or in the language of A Course in Miracles, the “ego.” It is this passage in Chapter VIII of the Text that inspired today’s message:
“Do not be afraid of the ego. It depends on your mind, and as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel it by withdrawing belief from it. Do not project the responsibility for your belief in it onto anyone else, or you will preserve the belief. When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego’s existence you will have laid aside all anger and all attack, because they come from an attempt to project responsibility for your own errors. But having accepted the errors as yours, do not keep them. Give them over quickly to the Holy Spirit to be undone completely, so that all their effects will vanish from your mind and from the Sonship as a whole.”
As God created us, we are egoless. We are Divine Beings. We are the Christ of God. And as we say, in essence, “goodbye” to what we think justifies our upset, our anger or hatred, our criticism or bitterness, we are free to know the Truth of our Oneness – “the Sonship as a whole.”
To make this effort is everything. And the Holy Spirit, as related in the quote above, is always there to play Its part. An intention of this order beckons the Highest in the Universe to help us realize the Christ within all – simple, yet so worth our very willingness to try.
We Love You,
Rev. Steve and Mary