Holiness Revisited

From ACIM text 14.IX and X:
>The Presence of Holiness lives in everything that lives, for Holiness created life, and leaves not what it created holy as itself.

>In this world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you to all around you. You can reflect Heaven here. Yet no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God’s reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself.

>God is no image, and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely reflect truth, for they are truth.

>The reflections you accept into the mirror of your mind in time but bring eternity nearer or farther. But eternity itself is beyond all time. Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its reflection in you. And you will turn from time to holiness, as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside.

(note about the mirror: people familiar with the Bible, will recall St Paul’s mirror images; but note here that the point is to let God shine brightly, almost the opposite of what Paul was saying)

My morning ACIM study again touched the topic of holiness. My lesson today overlaps because it mentions truth: I will be still and listen to the truth.

I admit to Jesus what is really in my mind at the worldly level. I recognize my hatred of various people from my past and how disrespectful of my current boss I secretly am. Well, nothing stays secret. It leaks out in pointed comments; of which I am ashamed and feel guilty and consequently afraid. As I admit my true feelings, I once again return to the self hate. I once again feel the ego’s utter hatred of God. I bring these thoughts to the light of the Holy Spirit instead of keeping them in my secret darkness.

Jesus, in ACIM, teaches that the hatred is of the ego and doesn’t really exist as the ego doesn’t exist. I always get to choose what voice I want to listen to: the ego’s hateful spewing or the quiet Voice of the Presence of holiness within. It strikes me that the listening to The Voice and the turning to holiness is a life or death matter. I must choose The Voice, accept the holiness and only see holiness in others as well. This choice and practice means life.

If I cry out, “Oh God, why have you forsaken me?” it is my desperate cry because I feel powerless over the pus-filled and putrid ego which normally fills my consciousness. If I whisper, “Into your hands I commend my spirit,” it is my utmost and heart-felt surrender to Love; compunction at its finest. I need help and help is here. It still means that I must give up every ego thing in order to reflect the peace of heaven. This is the way to God consciousness; THE one thing I want.

So, I worked out on the machines for 2 hours and then ran for 90 minutes. I think my ankle will be fine for the marathon in 2 weeks and I am starting to look forward to the trip.