The first step in awakening

You dwell in the secret place of the most High.
You don’t go there Sundays exclusively.
You are there morning, noon, and night.
You dwell, you live in the secret place of the most High.
You live and move and have your being in God,
if you realize that you yourself are invisible. (Joel S.Goldsmith)

There has only been God. And I am the Created of That. And the source of my being, the source of my reality, rests in surrender into That, and That alone. (Way of Mastery)

The first step in awakening,

The Way of the Heart, is to allow into the mind the thought, the axiom, the Truth, that nothing which you are experiencing is caused by anything outside of you.

You experience only the effects of your own choice.

To use, perhaps, a simpler form of your language,

you need to come to the point where you say to yourself,

 I’ve done this to myself. I did it, I must correct it. No one is to blame.

The world is innocent.

Not my will, but Thine be done. For of myself, I do nothing. But my Father does all things through me

Imagine, then, a state of being in which you walk through this worldseemingly appearing like everyone else, and yet, you are spacious within ; you are empty within. In Truth, you desire nothing, though you allow desire to move through you, and you recognize it as the Voice of the Father, guiding your personality, your emotions, and even the body, to the places, to the events, to the people, to the things, to the experiences through which the tapestry of the Atonement is being woven, through which all of the Children of God are called home again. And you trust the complete flow of that, whether you are asked to give a speech in front of ten thousand people, or you’re asked to tell a friend the truth of your feelings, or whether or not you are, perhaps, asked to sweep the streets and live penniless. For in Truth, that mind that trusts the Source of its creation allows all things, trusts all things, embraces all things, and transcends all things.

And so, The Way of the Heart begins there. It begins by accepting the humility that you’ve created quite a mess within your consciousness. You’ve created a labyrinth and gotten lost within it, and you don’t know the way back — that of yourself, you can do nothing . For all you’ve managed to achieve is the creation of a whole lot of insane dramas that are, in Truth, occurring nowhere except within the field of your mind. They are like chimeras, like dreams. In Truth, there is no difference between a waking state, in which you would be the director of your life, and the dreams you have when the body sleeps at night. They are both the same thing.

Rest assured, then, whenever you feel frustration and anxiety, it is because you have decided not to trust the Truth. And the Truth is simply this: Only God’s plan for salvation can work for you. Your way must always fail, for your way begins with the illusory and insane assumption that you are a separate being from the Mind of God and must, therefore, direct your own course. For if you are sick and diseased and not at peace, why would you decide that you know how to create peace? It requires great humility to accept the first step of the path:

 I have done all this; I must undo it. But I have no idea how I did this.

Therefore, I must surrender to something else.

 I want to give you this thought, even as I gave it to this, my beloved brother, some time ago. And the thought is this (and I would ask that you consider it well):

What if the very life you are living, and each experience that is coming to you now, since the moment you decided, “I’ve got to awaken here” — what if everything was being directly sent to you of your Father, because your Father knows what is necessary to unravel within your consciousness to allow you to awaken? What if the very things you are resisting are the very stepping stones to your homecoming? What if you achieved a maturity along this pathway in which you were finally willing to let things be just as they are? What if the very life you are living, and each experience that is coming to you now, since the moment you decided, “I’ve got to awaken here” — what if everything was being directly sent to you of your Father, because your Father knows what is necessary to unravel within your consciousness to allow you to awaken? What if the very things you are resisting are the very stepping stones to your homecoming? What if you achieved a maturity along this pathway in which you were finally willing to let things be just as they are?

And if it was necessary to sweep the streets, you simply took a deep breath and said, “Father, you know the way home,” and therefore began sweeping. And up into the mind comes the thought,

Oh, my God, I won’t be recognized. I won’t stand out. People won’t think I’m special if I’m just a street sweeper. And you recognize, Ah-ha, no wonder my Father wants me to do this. I’ve got to flush this up so that I can look at it, dis-identify from it, and learn to be the presence of Love in the sweeping of the street.

For in Truth, I tell you, the least of these among you, according to your perception, is already equal to the greatest. And there is none among you who is less than I am.

And so, The Way of the Heart begins there. It begins by accepting the humility that you’ve created quite a mess within your consciousness. You’ve created a labyrinth and gotten lost within it, and you don’t know the way back — that of yourself, you can do nothing . For all you’ve managed to achieve is the creation of a whole lot of insane dramas that are, in Truth, occurring nowhere except within the field of your mind. They are like chimeras, like dreams. In Truth, there is no difference between a waking state, in which you would be the director of your life, and the dreams you have when the body sleeps at night. They are both the same thing.

The Way of the Heart is the final pathway that any soul can enter. There are many stages of awakening. There are many pathways that can be followed, but ultimately, “All roads lead to Rome,” so they say.

Eventually each soul must find its way into The Way of the Heart , and come back to the Truth that it’s time to take responsibility, to learn to cultivate the ability to look upon the deep and vicious blackness of what I have called ego, which is nothing more than the cesspool of denial — it is that which lacks Light — and begin to bring Light back to it by simply observing your own mind, your own behavior, your own reactions with a sense of wonder, with a sense of innocence, with a sense of childlikeness.
Excerpts: Way of the Heart: Lesson One

 Any situation that seems be a difficult one that recurs in our lives is simply a lesson in forgiveness that we have yet to accept.

 In Jesus’ words from the text:

“Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, ‘My brother, choose again.’ He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created altar unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your mind from everything that hides His face from you” (T.31.VIII.3:1-5). https://facim.org/looking-at-adversity-through-the-lens-of-a-course-in-miracles/

The truth of what we are is not for words to speak of nor describe. Yet we can realize our function here, and words can speak of this and teach it, too, if we exemplify the words in us.

When you’re truly giving, it doesn’t matter whether the person changes or not, because what giving really means in the Course is undoing the blocks within you that would interfere with the free flow of love that’s in everyone’s right mind. That’s what anything positive in this course is: undoing the blocks within ourselves. https://facim.org/excerpted-question-on-burnout-from-words-and-thoughts/