I have made it a habit to read "Imitation of the Christ" at least a page, especially when in chaos/confusion. It never fails to have a balming effect on the mood BEARING WITH THE FAULTS OF OTHERS

UNTIL God ordains otherwise, a man ought to bear patiently whatever he cannot correct in himself and in others. Consider it better thus -- perhaps to try your patience and to test you, for without such patience and trial your merits are of little account. Nevertheless, under such difficulties you should pray that God will consent to help you bear them calmly.
If, after being admonished once or twice, a person does not amend, do not argue with him but commit the whole matter to God that His will and honor may be furthered in all His servants, for God knows well how to turn evil to good. Try to bear patiently with the defects and infirmities of others, whatever they may be, because you also have many a fault which others must endure.
If you cannot make yourself what you would wish to be, how can you bend others to your will? We want them to be perfect, yet we do not correct our own faults. We wish them to be severely corrected, yet we will not correct ourselves. Their great liberty displeases us, yet we would not be denied what we ask. We would have them bound by laws, yet we will allow ourselves to be restrained in nothing. Hence, it is clear how seldom we think of others as we do of ourselves.
If all were perfect, what should we have to suffer from others for God's sake? But God has so ordained, that we may learn to bear with one another's burdens, for there is no man without fault, no man without burden, no man sufficient to himself nor wise enough. Hence we must support one another, console one another, mutually help, counsel, and advise, for the measure of every man's virtue is best revealed in time of adversity -- adversity that does not weaken a man but rather shows what he is.

The Seventeenth Chapter

MONASTIC LIFE

IF YOU wish peace and concord with others, you must learn to break your will in many things. To live in monasteries or religious communities, to remain there without complaint, and to persevere faithfully till death is no small matter. Blessed indeed is he who there lives a good life and there ends his days in happiness.
If you would persevere in seeking perfection, you must consider yourself a pilgrim, an exile on earth. If you would become a religious, you must be content to seem a fool for the sake of Christ. Habit and tonsure change a man but little; it is the change of life, the complete mortification of passions that endow a true religious.
He who seeks anything but God alone and the salvation of his soul will find only trouble and grief, and he who does not try to become the least, the servant of all, cannot remain at peace for long.
You have come to serve, not to rule. You must understand, too, that you have been called to suffer and to work, not to idle and gossip away your time. Here men are tried as gold in a furnace. Here no man can remain unless he desires with all his heart to humble himself before God.

Affirmations for a New Me

In the infinity of life where I am,
all is perfect, whole, and complete. My life is ever new.
Each moment of my life is new and fresh and vital.
I use my affirmative thinking to create exactly what I want.
This is a new day. I am a new me.
I think differently. I speak differently. I act differently.
Others treat me differently.
My new world is a reflection of my new thinking.
It is a joy and a delight to plant new seeds,
for I know these seeds will become my new experiences.
All is well in my world.

Balance - Louise Hay

In this world ruled by technology we find ourselves out of balance at times. We lose track of our daily routines when things change, people are constantly coming and going, and our duties become priority over our well-being. I would like to take this time today to rebalance ourselves together.

If you were struggling with balancing your life in the past, we can come together now, crafting a life that will nurture, nourish, and support you. Somewhere in all the stress, noise, and to-do lists, there is still space for you. There is always time to nourish your body with good food, exercise and play, and still make it through your work day and fulfill your many obligations.

My philosophies of life are very simple. What we give out, we get back, and every thought we think is creating our future. We create every so-called illness in our body and we have the power to change our thoughts and begin to dissolve it. Above all, love yourself. It makes you feel good. When we really love ourselves everything in our life works.


Through balance, we strengthen our immune system, keep our bodies happy and healthy, and find time to love ourselves while satisfying the needs of the life that surrounds us without neglecting our own needs. It helps to have a routine, but when that’s just not possible we can just set reminders to pause when we are free to do a 10 to 15 minute exercise, meditation, or do mirror work to remind ourselves that we love ourselves or just recite our favorite affirmations. Just take the time to do something that makes you happy, both inside and out.

Learn for yourself when the best time work and play fit into your life and consider your loved ones being a part of that. Prioritize yourself. Without your health and well-being, you would not be able to accomplish the things you seek to accomplish throughout the day. Open yourself to love and inspiration. Write things down when they come to mind so that you don’t forget them. Take the time to become organized. It will open your work space and help thoughts to flow freely. Train the mind to believe that there is always time available to you. To say “There is never enough time in the day” is to make it so. Instead, affirm: 

There is ample time and opportunity for creative expression in whatever area I choose. Each moment of the day is special to me as I follow my higher instincts and listen to my heart. I am at peace with my world and affairs. I am capable and organized. My efficiency is more than ample to get any job done. Everything you need comes to you in perfect time, space and sequence.

Our purpose in life is to be happy. This can best be achieved by nurturing and nourishing the entire body. Body, mind, and spirit work together as a whole. With good nutrition, positive thoughts, meditation and prayer we find ourselves closer to Life.

And so it shall be.

Take the time to enjoy these little suggestions for finding balance in your life. Remembering you more often will give you a refreshed sense of well-being and time will flow more freely. Things will seem less chaotic as the focus of your daily life returns to you rather than your surroundings.

Life loves you, and so do I!,

LOVE IS ALL THAT WILL FILL OUR EMPTINESS

“You need not concentrate on where to find love, for love will find you. You need not concentrate on giving love, for you cannot give what you do not yet know, and when you know it you need not give it, for it will extend from you naturally in miracles called love. Love is all that will fill your emptiness, and all that will never leave you empty again as it extends from you to your brothers and sisters. Love is all that will not leave you wanting.” (ACOL, C:11.17)

Jesus makes statements in A Course of Love that indicate that we would take him more seriously in regard to the primacy of love if he gave it some new and different name. He says that we have been hearing for so long that love is the Answer, and because of this long history, we don’t take the assertion seriously enough.

But love is the Answer. And when we pay attention to all that Jesus says, and we look to our heart for verification, we know without a tedious telling. Our heart knows that love will give us everything that we have ever wanted. And when we are on our deathbed, we will know that the only thing that matters in the whole wide world is love.

How do we experience love more deeply? We relax “into” our heart. We stop some of our egoic machinations, many of them, and we wait for a warmer feeling to arise. Our love does not need to be a struggle. We do not need to try to force ourselves to love people that we really don’t much care about. We will care about everyone when we listen to our heart. We will not necessarily associate closely, if certain others are a danger to us, but we will not find ourselves in a hate relationship either. Our lives will be filled with giving and receiving, receiving and giving, and in this new venture we will recognize what we did not before: that giving and receiving are two parts of the same dynamic. And the dynamic gets its impetus from love.

We will stay in a condition of constant and continual wanting as long as we refrain from loving full out. Love answers all our needs, and we recognize that while we may have wants that are not satisfied, we have no needs that are not satisfied.

Imagine that love is a something “out there” that you have never heard of. A feeling, an emotion, of warmth and compassion, a joyous feeling that makes all things One with us. We share in love, as we share in imagining that this new thing is a discovery of enormous proportions. Let this new thing speak to you of what your heart has long sought to give. Now we know how to receive, and the fact that love is not new to us is an advantage. Heretofore we just did not understand well enough to act on the promptings of our heart, the prompting to love.

Now we do.

Courtesy: celiaelaine.wordpress.com

I AM HERE ONLY TO BE TRULY HELPFUL

I AM HERE ONLY TO BE TRULY HELPFUL. I DO NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT WHAT TO SAY OR WHAT TO DO, BECAUSE HE WHO SENT ME WILL DIRECT ME.

“I am here only to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Him Who sent me.
I do not have to worry about what to say or what
to do, because He Who sent me will direct me.
I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing
He goes there with me.
I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal. (T28)”

Affirmation: “I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do.”

Reflections:

1 – What Am I to Do?

One of you who reads this blog frequently finds a favorite post by typing into a search engine the question, “What am I to do? Where am I to go?” Today’s passage just happens to be a precise answer to this question, a question that affects all of us to one degree or another. We are here to represent God; that is the spiritual answer. But not all who read this blog are ready for such spiritual talk. It is enough to know that those of us in the secular world, as well, can see that we do receive guidance about what to say or do next. This guidance can be very precise: Turn left at the next corner, even. Of course, if we are unbalanced, everything can seem to be a sign. But if we are reasonably well put together, our guidance will come in rational ways, though we will need to enlarge what we think of as “rational.”

2 – Lovely Prayer

The passage for today is a lovely prayer, set in the form of a blank verse poem. The “He” and “Him” referred to in the poem mean the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Universal Inspiration, the part of us that is in communication with the Father, with God. ACIM uses the triume God as a part of its theology: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But we are all the Son or Daughter, in a departure from traditional Christianity. We all have the Christ Self within as part of the inner Being whom we are.

3 – Holy Spirit

Two of the most beautiful lines are Lines 3 and 4, in which we are assured that the Holy Spirit will guide us. We do not have to reach ahead to the future, wondering what to do. We will be told in the present. If there are plans that need to be made, we will be told of them at the point of need. There is no need to worry. This lack of a need to worry is powerful incentive to let the Holy Spirit makes decisions for us. If we turn over our judgment to Him Who knows all circumstances–past, present, and future–the cause of worry is negated. We have previously shown a lack of trust in the universe when we have worried. We have shown a lack of faith. But we do not have to stay in this state of unrest. We can move with a surety that is not of this world. We can move in God’s grace.

4 – Guidance

We will follow guidance to go wherever in this world we are led to go. This is truly being led by the Holy Spirit, and it may not take what is commonly known as blind faith. We will know inwardly and with assurance what pathway is best, and where that pathway is physically located. We will go with knowledge that we are there with the Holy Spirit.

5 – Our Brother’s Keeper

We are also our brother’s keeper. “I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal,” which is the last line, is an assurance that our relationship to our brother is where healing lies. This points out a frequent emphasis in this blog, that our holy relationship to our brother/sister is our means home to God. Here is the healing. And we heal him/her as surely as we heal ourselves. This is the means that A Course in Miracles is using to save us time. Each of us will save a thousand years as the world reckons. The world is old and worn down, very weary. It is a place of joylessness, but we can turn it into a place of joy. (These are paraphrases from ACIM.)

6 – Study the Poem

If we study this poem, we will have its blessing, for it is indeed dense with meaning. Let the Holy Spirit speak to us as we read.

Prayer:

Dear Father,

Thank you for helping me to make decisions through the Holy Spirit. Let me realize that I do not have to worry about what to say or do, because I will be guided. This is Your promise.

Help me to be helpful to others in my daily life. As I am healed, I will be better able to effect healing in others through Your grace.

Be with me this day. I ask You to give me good energy as I walk through the day. Give your blessing to my brothers and sisters as well as to myself. May I follow the guidance that I receive. May I not be stubborn in my own alienated will.

Courtesy: Celiaelaine.wordpress.com