Ask: How do you respond to calls for Love?

        “One of the fundamental premises in ACIM is.… All is either an expression or extension of love or a call for love. Those calls for love are the business side of life. I thought you might expound on how you respond to those calls in your life…”—EFS

 

Obviously, I do not see things as I used to. If an upset appears in this mind, ego is no longer here for more than a moment to give it meaning, significance, or value—to make it real. Upsets in others do not upset me and upsets in this mind quickly disappear. So, there is no longer a need for a practice to bring Love to mind. But I can answer how I responded before the shift in consciousness.


A Course in Miracles teaches that there are two orders of thought, Love (Spirit) and the call for Love (ego). It discusses this in the context of relationships with others. The Course advises that to not reinforce ego in you and another, respond to a call for Love—display of ego (upset)—with Love (Spirit). Because the Course also says my one responsibility is to accept the Atonement for myself, I understood that I only had to respond to my own ego, my own upsets. Another’s upset is their business, not mine. If someone was upset and I felt no emotional charge, I was not making it about me, I was not giving it meaning, I was already detached, so there was nothing to be done but observe and offer understanding and comfort to them. My detached compassion usually mitigated the other’s upset—unless they wanted me to be upset, too!


But if I felt upset for my own reasons or because of someone else’s upset, then I knew ego in this conscious awareness was projecting meaning and making the situation seem real. I came to understand “what isn’t Love is a call for Love” as “what isn’t Love reminds me to turn to Love (Spirit)” in my own mind. A “call for Love” was an opportunity to “choose once again” and turn away from the upset in this mind and turn toward Spirit in this mind instead. I used centering thoughts like, “Only God is Real” or “Only the Truth is true” or “God (or Truth) is wholly untouched by this (what was appearing)” to shift my mind away from ego’s meaning-making (reality-making). When this was successful, my upset would disappear, I would detach from whatever appearance seemed to cause the upset, and if another was upset, too, I stopped feeding into their upset.


This was how I used the painful aspects of illusion to remember Truth. 

>>>> 

If you have a question the answer to which you feel may be helpful to others, send it to Liz@acimmentor.com and indicate that you want it answered in this newsletter/blog.

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