A Course in Miracles

On Monday, I once again picked up my mother's old copy of A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson. The cover is faded. The pages are yellowed. I've grown up with this book floating between shelves and and bedsides, and I need to read it now, to embrace inner peace and faith and calm. Anxious thoughts, judgmental thoughts--these ones swell in our minds and often overwhelm us. We look in the mirror and criticize and seek to change what we see. We plan. We look for control everywhere.
But we can't be in control. The more we try to control, the more out-of-control we feel. Trust me. I know this from experience, from trying to control what I look like, from digging holes for myself with self-imposed rules and self-limiting beliefs. Where has all this gotten me?  I'm disconnected. It's hard to connect to yourself when you're too busy worried about what's going to happen next or what's already happened. (I need to work out. I ate that, and I regret it. So-and-so is so much prettier. I have so much work to do. What if they don't like me? The list of thoughts is endless.)
The fitness industry is huge. Massive. And there's nothing bad about fitness. I think that everyone can find a way to move that is beneficial for them. Some people may like walking or swimming . . . yoga ....dancing. . . running . . . whatever works for you, that's great. But we're so busy thinking about the physical that we often neglect our minds. We focus on the parts that are tangible and work on them until we feel like they're "perfect." Often, we never reach this place of "perfection" because the standard for perfect is elusive and always changing, but we try. What about working on our spiritual and mental health, though? I know that this sort of talk won't appeal to everyone, but if the idea of spiritual work speaks to you, then maybe these thoughts will be helpful. <3

Image from Quotefancy

What I've learned from A Return to Love and A Course in Miracles so far is that we can act from a place of fear or from a place of love. Fear is where our ego leads us; fear is clinging to labels, to anxieties, to prejudices. Love, on the other hand, is releasing control, opening our minds, and freeing ourselves from our limiting beliefs. Love is having compassion for ourselves and for others. Love is participating in "the greater good." It is proactively working to make the world a better place for everyone, through actions big and small. Love is difficult, at first, because we're conditioned to act from fear, and in order to act from love, we often need to embrace vulnerability and accept the discomfort of "not knowing." 

"All healing is essentially a release from fear."

-A Course in Miracles

I'm still new to A Course in Miracles and the other spiritual readings I'm embarking on (Pema Chodron, Eckhart Tolle, etc.), but I'm trying to embrace this whole idea of "shifting perception from fear to love." I'm tired of living in fear, and love is, at its essence, the truth of the world, so why not pursue it? Why not act from it? Let's heal--ourselves, others, the world--and release fear to embrace compassion!

<3 Frances