I just had to write a post today, February 29th…since it is leap day!  First of all, I love how this day is so mysterious and only comes every few years, kind of like Brigadoon (in the musical) which only appears for one day every hundred years, then disappears again.  Most importantly, leap day is the perfect reminder that we can LEAP straight into Heaven right now, this very day.  As Jesus reminds us in the New Testament, "Behold, this day you shall be with me in Paradise."  And so it is!  Here is a short article I wrote last fall pointing the way to this immediate experience of Homecoming through the action of true teaching. Enjoy!

To Teach is to Demonstrate

This is a key idea from Jesus in our Manual for Teachers of A Course in Miracles. He reminds you also that you are teaching all of the time and, in fact, are always only teaching yourself because mind is singular.  So the only questions then are, what are you demonstrating consistently and so, what are you teaching yourself?  And is your teaching giving you the desired experience of deep peace, joy without opposite, total release, and the shining realization of your true Self beyond the objective world of time and space? 

First let’s take a closer look at the actual idea of teaching to clarify it’s true purpose and your real function as an emerging Teacher of God. "It is important to remember that the transformative learning process is not an accumulation and exchange of information between teacher and student.  All true learning is a form of conversion or revelation…All to the final understanding that you are and always have been the perfect joy and happiness of eternal universal mind." -Out of Time Journal, Endeavor Academy

This recognition is very helpful because it shifts the perspective of teaching from one of gathering perceptual information to use in the future, to a PRESENT action of mind extending that yields an immediate EXPERIENCE, where teacher and learner discover they are not separate and are joyfully released from all self-limiting definitions and grievances as well as being freed from the past and future. In this way, teaching is a manner of remembering the Truth through receiving it from God and GIVING it away, so it increases in your awareness. This true moment of teaching and learning is a Holy Instant, or in quantum terms…the particle of false self-identity dissolving into the wave of  singularity…where there is no separation, no world…only God Creating You perfectly NOW in the Light of pure Love forever.

This Holy Instant is the experience that all true teaching reveals and it is simpler than you think!  It all begins with a moment of honesty and self-inquiry, and the rest is a miracle. The following passages from Jesus in the Manual for Teachers are certain to open the door of awareness for a new experience to dawn on you, washed clean of all past ideas. Now you can remember fully the true nature of your Function here, and disappear with me beyond the veil into the heart of God:

 "To teach is to demonstrate.  There are only two thought systems, and you demonstrate that you believe one or the other is true all the time.  From your demonstration others learn, and so do you.  The question is not whether you will teach, for in that there is no choice.  The purpose of the Course might be said to provide you with a means of choosing what you want to teach on the basis of what you want to learn.  You cannot give to someone else, but only to yourself, and this you learn through teaching. Teaching is but a call to witnesses to attest to what you believe.  It is a method of conversion.  This is not done by words alone.  Any situation must be to you a chance to teach others what they are, and what they are to you. No more than that, but also never less." 

And so, the necessity to listen to God’s Voice and depend on Him to teach through you becomes apparent as you take an honest survey of your mind and your world. Our gratitude becomes all encompassing as we realize we are not a useless victim of the world we see, but that we have a real purpose now…a teaching function given us from out of time to be a witness to the truth of Heaven, here and now. As we deny our own denial of God and only forgive, love and bless all that we made, our whole mind changes and so too does our experience of who we are. We are called now to be the Voice of Christ and remain in the constant awareness and certainty of our One Self, united in the perfect love of our Creator…no teacher, no learner, no separation, no world.

"Into this hopeless and closed learning situation, which teaches nothing but despair and death, God sends His teachers.  And as they teach His lessons of joy and hope, their learning finally becomes complete."

 It is just the beginning…this is the advent of a great awakening…your awakening.  Heaven is Here and Now!

HERE I am:)  I was gone for a while…but now I am back!  It took some deep digging, but at last I found my login and password for my blog, so now I can finally share with you an article I wrote for the new year, which was published in a January newsletter dedicated to A Course in Miracles.  Lots more great stuff to come…so stay tuned!   With all my Love and Gratitude, Kristen

As the New Year dawns on the horizon of consciousness, it brings with it ideas of new resolutions, new beginnings and re-birth.  Yes…hope springs eternal!   However, perhaps it also brings to mind a depressing sense that you have been doing the same thing over and over again.  That try as you may, the promises you make to yourself at the beginning of each new year, each new day, each new relationship, or each new job never quite bring the desired  outcome or experience hoped for at the outset.  You know, the proverbial "hamster on the wheel" syndrome, the old grind…the "causal loop" of space-time.  Even when you do experience what you think are positive changes in your life, it only takes a moment of turning on the news, reading the papers, or driving to work to dash your sparkling optimism to dust.  After all, how can you live as an island of happiness and fulfillment in a world of nightmares that is literally blowing itself up, starving itself to death and basically falling apart and destroying itself faster than any of our limited "solutions" can hold it together?  It surely is obvious that nothing here lasts.  So what then is to be our new re-solution?

Perhaps what you have been asking for and promising yourself has just been too limited!  In fact, isn’t it time to stop rearranging and substituting the FORMS, and ask for a whole NEW perspective…a TOTAL "makeover"…a REAL solution?  As Jesus so beautifully states in our Course in Miracles, "You do not ask for too much, but for far too little."  So here we are again, a shiny new year upon us…a brand new moment…a true crossroads and potential turning point in the mind.  What a perfect opportunity to ask for want you REALLY want…something beyond what you have ever experienced here in limitation.  It is time now to let the light in and uncover what keeps you in chains, so that yourself and your whole world can finally be free.   Here is the secret for your rebirth as a whole NEW You….at peace, joyful and eternally alive.  It is ALOT simpler than you think!

Thankfully, we have an ever-present guide, who has already been through all of this.  At the merest invitation, with your littlest gesture of willingness…He will literally rush to you, take you by the hand and lead you straight through all of your fearful illusions and self-doubt to the blazing light and Love beyond.  So the first step is very simply… ask Him for HELP and be willing and open to receive! The answer will never come in the form you expect.  So be still a moment and listen to the resurrected Voice of Jesus Christ, speaking to you of your own re-birth, reminding you of the message you asked to receive at this appointed time:

"YOUR resurrection is your re-awakening. I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your mind of what is already in it. God placed it there Himself, and so it is true forever. I believed in it, and therefore made it forever true for me. Help me to teach it to our brothers in the name of the Kingdom of God, but first believe that it is true for you, or you will teach amiss."  -Ch 6, The Message of the Crucifixion

"There is a course for every teacher of God.  The form of the course varies greatly.  So do the particular teaching aids involved.  But the content of the course never changes.  It’s central theme is always, "God’s Son is guiltless, and  his innocence is his salvation." It can be taught by actions or by thoughts; in words or soundlessly; in any language or in no language; in any time or place or manner. It does not matter who the teacher was before he heard the call. He has become a savior by his answering.  He has seen someone else as himself.  He has therefore found his own salvation and the salvation of the world.  In his rebirth is the world reborn."  -Manual for Teachers, Who are God’s Teachers?

So how, you may ask, do I actually EXPERIENCE what has just been offered me?  First of all, you need a total shift in perspective…a miracle!  Also, you need a continuously new way to look at and experience time and…everything.  Jesus gives you very specific and practical instructions throughout the Course to catapult you into this new, bright awareness.  Here are some key ideas to  help you experience this amazing thought reversal, revealing the shining reality of the REAL YOU.

"Miracles are both beginnings and endings, and so they alter the temporal order. They are always affirmations of rebirth, which seem to go back but really go forward. They undo the past in the present, and thus release the future."  -Miracle Principle 13

"The Holy Spirit teaches thus:  There is no hell.  Hell is only what the ego had made of the present.  The belief in hell is what prevents you from understanding the present, because you are afraid of it.  The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven as the ego drives to hell.  For the Holy Spirit, Who knows only the present, uses it to undo the fear by which the ego would make the present useless.  There is no escape from fear in the ego’s use of time.  For time, according to it’s teaching, is nothing but a device for compounding guilt until it becomes all-encompassing, demanding vengeance forever.  (SOUND FAMILIAR??)

The Holy spirit would undo all of this NOW.  Fear is not of the present, but only of the past and future, which do not exist. There is no fear in the present when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without it’s shadow reaching out into the future.  Each instant is a clean, untarnished birth, in which the Son of God emerges from the past into the present.  And the present extends forever.  It is so clean and free of guilt that nothing but happiness is there. No darkness is remembered, and immortality and joy are now.  This lesson takes no time.  For what is time without a past or a future?  It has indeed taken time to misguide you so completely, but it takes no time at all to be what you really are. 

Begin to use the Holy Spirit’s use of time as a teaching aid to happiness and peace. Take this very instant, NOW, and think of it as all there is of time. Nothing can reach you here out of the past, and it is here that you are completely absolved, completely free and wholly without condemnation.  From this holy instant wherein holiness was born again you will go forth in time without fear, and with no sense of change with time. In this redeeming instant lies all of Heaven."
-Ch. 15, The Two Uses of Time

How Simple is that!  It only takes your desire and a little willingness to try it out, to practice and apply it, and you will see that it is true.  Everything your heart desires is already yours…and now the key is in your hands.  Indeed, there is every reason to be grateful.  Meet this New Year…this new YOU in joyful anticipation, and if you ever need a good dose of certainty, you are welcome to borrow it from Jesus…or from me!  Just as promised, you are not now nor ever have been left comfortless. 

"This is the time in which a new year will be born from the time of Christ. I have perfect faith in you, to do all that you would accomplish. Nothing will be lacking, and you will MAKE COMPLETE, and NOT destroy. Say, then, to your brother:

So will the year begin in joy and freedom. There is much to do, and we have been long delayed. Accept the holy instant as this year is born, and take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening. Make this year different, by making it ALL THE SAME. And let ALL your relationships be made holy FOR you. This is OUR will. Amen."

-Jesus Christ, Ch. 15, Christmas as the End of Sacrifice