Podcast on Lessons #236 & #237…

On this 237th day of the year…

Sondra Ray & Markus Ray

Washington DC 🇺🇸 USA

25-AUG-2026

MARKUS: Welcome to our podcast on A Course in Miracles. We’re so happy to have you with us. This is a lovely day in Washington, D.C., and it’s the 227th day of the year. So we’ll be doing two lessons today, two lessons. 26 and 227 because yesterday was Sondra’s birthday and we gave a free women’s day and we didn’t do a podcast yesterday on the Course. So today we opened up to chapter 23, section 1, The Irreconcilable Beliefs, it’s called.

SONDRA: And this is under the chapter, The War Against Yourself.

The memory of God comes to a quiet mind. It cannot come where there is conflict. For a mind at war against itself. Remembers not eternal gentleness.

Wow, that’s a lot to digest right there.

MARKUS: Well, those are the irreconcilable beliefs. Either your mind is in a state of peace and openness and you’re remembering God, or it’s in a state of conflict and consternation and anger and

SONDRA: And worrying about your conditions.

MARKUS: Worrying about your conditions.

SONDRA: That’s the war against yourself.

MARKUS: So that, in that kind of a mind, you cannot remember God. Because the remembrance of God is a state free of all problems. So there would be no conflict.

SONDRA: The means of war are not the means of peace, obviously. And what the warlike would remember is not love. War is impossible unless belief in victory is cherished. Conflict within you must imply that you believe the ego has the power to be victorious. Why else would you identify with it?

Surely you realize the ego is at war with God. Certain it is, it has no enemy. Yet just as certain is its fixed belief it has an enemy that it must overcome and will succeed.

MARKUS: Well, it’s certain that it has an enemy, and then it’s certain that it’s going to be victorious over the enemy. So it’s dreamed up an enemy, then it’s dreamed up a war to fight to be victorious to get over the enemy. So first it projected the enemy, then it’s in conflict, and then it... wins the war over the enemy. And that whole complex, it’s saying, is the belief in war and conflict. And you can’t have a memory of God in that kind of a mind.

SONDRA: Yeah, so when we’re worried about our conditions, that’s a war too, right? When we’re worried about all these things in our bodies and If we’re worried about business, that’s a war.

MARKUS: First we made up the problem and now we have to be victorious over the problem. So what if we didn’t make up the problem? Or what if we trace the problem back to the thoughts that made it up and we unravel those? So it’s not about a victory over the problem.

It’s about dissolving the problem by dissolving the thoughts that cause the problem.

SONDRA: Do you not realize a war against yourself would be a war on God? That’s pretty heavy. Is victory conceivable? And if it were, is this a victory that you would want? The death of God, if it were possible, would be your death. Is that a victory?

The ego always marches to defeat because it thinks that triumph over you is possible. And God thinks otherwise. This is no war. Only the mind’s belief, the will of God can be attacked and overthrown. You may identify with this belief, but never will it be more than madness. And fear will reign in madness and will seem to have replaced love. This is the conflict’s purpose. And to those who think that this is possible, the means seem real.

MARKUS: Well, I think we have to see that love, peace, and joy, which is the memory of God, right? Has no conflict in it. Has no problem in it. There’s nothing to solve in that state of awareness. Love, peace, and joy renders all your problems obsolete, you know? You don’t have any problems in that state.

So if it’s a problem... You’ve dreamed it up and you’ve made it up with thoughts and it has to be dissolved through forgiveness. It’s like you have to put it on the table of pure forgiveness and say, “Look, I had thoughts and beliefs that made this problem real and now I need to dissolve and unravel and erase those thoughts and beliefs.”

And that’s your process of atonement. That’s your process of forgiveness, right? But the purpose of that is to get you back to this state of love, peace, and joy where there’s no problems. So those are irreconcilable. Either you’re in the memory of God, which is love, peace, and joy, that has no conflict, or you’re in the memory of the ego, which is all about conflict and problems. And being victorious over your problems.

SONDRA: Yeah, so it’s helpful for me to get that any conflict I have is a war against God and myself.

MARKUS: Yeah.

SONDRA: Yeah. It’s helpful for me to hear that.

MARKUS: And even every problem you have is a war against God and yourself. Like the problem... Now, does... Does it mean that you’re not going to ever have any problems? Well, maybe if you were Babaji, you wouldn’t. Or if you were Jesus, you wouldn’t. But we’re still awakening into that state within ourselves, right?

So don’t make yourself guilty for having a problem. Now, that would be like a double whammy. It’s like you got the problem, but now you’re guilty because you have the problem. No, you have to say, well, I have the problem. I don’t know fully how I made this up, but I did make it up.

And now I want to unravel it. I want to forgive it. I want to dissolve it. And I need the Holy Spirit’s help to do that. So you don’t make yourself guilty for having the problem. But you have to be brutally honest that the problems that you have in your life are the ones that you made up.

And they’re not there beyond your... capabilities, right? You’re the one that made the problem up, and you’re the one that can dissolve the problem with the help of the Holy Spirit. So that’s kind of where we all are, right? That’s why we need the Course in Miracles, because it’s a Course in... problem solving, which is using forgiveness to do that. And the grace of the Holy Spirit and the mercy of God. Yesterday it said, God in his mercy wills that I be saved from whatever this problem is, right? You can insert any problem into that statement.

God in His mercy wills that I be saved from this pain in my back, wills that I be saved from this condition in my body, wills that I be saved from this… tendency in my business that’s not successful. Whatever it is, God in His mercy wills that you be saved from that.

Because if it’s not love, peace, and joy, it’s not God. It’s not a memory of God. They’re irreconcilable. The ego and the memory of God are irreconcilable, it says.

SONDRA: Yeah, so now we are in Lesson 236.

MARKUS: Yeah, okay, so this was what we would have read yesterday.

SONDRA: I rule my mind which I alone must rule. I have a kingdom I must rule. At times it does not see I am its king at all. It seems to triumph over me and tell me what to think and what to do and feel.

And yet it has been given me to serve whatever purpose I perceive in it. My mind can only serve. Today I give its service to the Holy Spirit to employ as he sees fit. I thus direct my mind which I alone can rule and thus I set it free to do the will of God.

Father, my mind is open to your thoughts and close today to every thought but yours. I rule my mind and I offer it to You. Accept my gift for it is yours to me. Well, that would be good to offer your whole mind up.

MARKUS: Yeah, and I think we have to see that we have free will, we have a mind, and the mind is like the captain of our ship, you know, it’s directing which way we go in life, right? It’s sort of like our command center, so to speak. All right, now, we can either give that mind over to... The God, Holy Spirit, which would be giving it over to love, peace, and joy, right? Like if we’re going to give our mind to the Divine Creator, that mind only has in it love, peace, and joy, right? So if we give our mind over to the ego, which most of us have been doing our whole life, it can sometimes... stumble upon love, peace, and joy, but in many cases it makes up problems, makes up conflicts, makes up dissatisfaction, makes up our personal lie, right? So we’re in a conflict. And now we have the rulership of our mind. That’s what this Lesson says.

I rule my mind, which I alone must rule. So we either give our mind over to the Holy Spirit, which is like saying, “I’m not going to be in control anymore. I’m going to be led. Yes, I rule my mind. But I have the free will to give my mind over to God, basically.”

I have the free will to do that. But in order to do that, I have to drop my control. I have to drop my management of my mind and say, there’s a Higher Thought here that I perhaps could not be seeing. And the Holy Spirit will reveal it to me, but I have to drop my position.

I have to drop my need to be right. I have to drop my control, right? And then you give your mind over to the Holy Spirit, and then you listen. It’s like, I will make no decisions by myself today. And then you listen for the guidance. Where would you have me go? What would you have me do? What would you have me say and to whom? And you follow that. And the Holy Spirit will give you those directions. But you first have to drop your position and give your mind over to that.

SONDRA: That would be like total surrender.

MARKUS: Okay. All right. So let’s call that surrender. But if you don’t surrender and you still have rulership over your mind... You always will have that. I rule my mind, which I alone must rule. But if you’re doing that on your own without the help of the Higher Forces, then you’re letting the ego run you, and you’re back into the dualistic world of thought, and that world can make up good solutions, bad solutions, bad situations, problems. Pains in your body, all kinds of stuff, right? Diseases and eventually death. So if you’re giving your mind rulership over to your ego, you’re going to get all the conflicting stuff.

So anyhow, read that again one more time and I think it’ll sink in a little deeper.

SONDRA: I have a kingdom I must rule.

MARKUS: This is Lesson 236. “I Rule my mind which I alone must rule.”

SONDRA: I have a kingdom I must rule. At times it does not seem I am its king at all. It seems to triumph over me and tell me what to think and what to do and feel. And yet it has been given me to serve whatever purpose I perceive in it. My mind can only serve. Today I give its service over to the Holy Spirit to employ as he sees fit?

MARKUS: Are we doing that?

SONDRA: That’s what we should be doing.

MARKUS: Okay, but you have to ask yourself when you do this lesson, are you doing that? Are you giving your mind over to the Holy Spirit? You might not be. In fact, you probably aren’t.

SONDRA: Yeah.

MARKUS: And that’s why you have the problems that you have. Because your ego is dreaming them up. But alright, so even if you have those problems, whatever they are, health problems, business problems, relationships problems, you can start right now giving your mind over to the Holy Spirit for the solutions. Alright? And that’s your miracle today.

You have to give your mind over to this… It’s really an unknown factor. When we say, well, give your mind over to the Holy Spirit, what is that? Well, we don’t know. We know the things we did that made up the problem in the first place. We don’t know the solutions.

So we’re dropping what we know and saying, “Okay, Holy Spirit, in your mercy, I know you can solve this problem and I need an answer. I need your answer, not my answer, which didn’t work, right? I need the Holy Spirit’s answer,” which could be something totally different than what we’re used to.

And so we have to be clear. Are we willing to give our mind over to this benevolent force? It may be unknown, but we also have to see this unknown is on our side. It’s benevolent to our needs. It wants only the best for us. Its will is perfect happiness for us. We have to see that.

And then we can let go. Because we trust that that Force is going to take care of us. Because its will for us is perfect happiness.

SONDRA: Okay, now we go to Lesson 237.

MARKUS: Alright, so this is today’s lesson. Today’s the 237th day of the year and this is 237th lesson.

SONDRA: Now would I be as God created me.

MARKUS: Now would I be as God created me. Now remember, in Part 1 of the Workbook... That was the only lesson repeated three times. I am as God created me. I am as God created me. And there are a couple of things about that. First, you’re sinless. No matter what mistake you made, you’re already absolved from it.

So you’re not a sinner. Yes, did you make mistakes? Sure. But those mistakes have no real effects on you anymore. You’re not a sinner and you’re absolved right now of the mistakes. They can be corrected and you can be set back on track of your True Identity right now. I am as God created me.

So this is a reiteration of that lesson.

SONDRA: Today I will accept the truth about myself. I will arise in glory and allow the light in me to shine upon the world throughout the day. I bring the world the tidings of salvation which I hear as God my Father speaks to me, and I behold the world that Christ would have me see, aware it ends the bitter dream of death, aware it is my Father’s call to me.

Christ is my eyes today, and He the ears that listen to the voice for God today. Father, I come to you through him who is Your Son and my true Self as well. Amen.

MARKUS: Okay, so what does that mean when it says, I will arise in glory and allow the light in me to shine upon the world throughout the day? So what does that mean for you, Sondra Ray? When you think about, I will arise in glory and sort of meet my Creator, what does that feel like to you?

Describe to me what that would be.

SONDRA: I think that would be my Real Self. If I was in my glory, I wouldn’t be in my ego, I’d be in my Real Self.

MARKUS: Yeah, okay. So what’s preventing you from being in your glory? Yeah.

SONDRA: Yeah, I think, well, I’ve allowed my mind to be contaminated, for example, with the medical profession in my case right now. And so I realize that’s one of the reasons I haven’t been healing myself. I’m stuck in the medical model. Instead of getting that I could just have the glory of God in my body now,

I don’t need the medical model. That’s an example in my case. And also doubt. I’ve had doubt because of that, that things weren’t healing at the level. So that is not in my glory if I’m in doubt.

MARKUS: Okay. So would you say that glory requires effort or it’s the opposite?

SONDRA: It would be the opposite. You wouldn’t struggle or you wouldn’t push yourself.

MARKUS: Yeah. And so could this glory happen instantly or does it take time?

SONDRA: It’s always there, I think. Your gloriness, gloriousness is always there. So, okay.

MARKUS: So you could, if it’s always there and it’s already there, you could enter into it in a split second, right?

SONDRA: Yeah, you could.

MARKUS: All right, so let’s just say glory is something that’s already here. You already are glorious. You know, there’s a lesson, a couple of lessons, it says... Let’s see, something like, I am the glory, The glory of my Father, which would be God, right? The glory of my Father is my own, it says. That’s like, I think, 239.

And the glory of my Father is my own. And so this glory, it’s like grace, right? Glory, grace, mercy, they all fit together. So when you enter into that glory, it’s like all your problems are now solved. They have the one answer. The one answer is your Divine Connection.

You wrote a whole book on this, the only answer. Well, The Only Answer is our relationship with the Divine Mother, Divine Father, our Divine Source, right? That’s the Only Answer. And you wrote a whole book on that. So that’s what this is saying. When you enter into that glory, your problems are solved because in that glory there are no problems. That’s what glory is.

SONDRA: I like that word glory.

MARKUS: I’m in the gloriousness of my True Self in which there are no problems. The glory would be your heavenly state. It wouldn’t be like purgatory or, oh, I can enter into glory, but I still have these problems. No, when you enter into glory, you have no problems after that. Your problems are all solved.

Because your main problem, which is your imagined separation from your Source, is solved. You are connected to your Divine Creator. Which means, alright, say you have some issue or some problem you’re still grappling with. The Answer will be given to you. All you need to say is, “Okay, Holy Spirit, this is my problem. What is the answer?What are my actions?”

And the Holy Spirit will say, “Okay, do this, do this, and do this. And your problem will be solved.” But you have to be willing to follow the directions and do the thing, whatever that is. “Alright, stop doing these destructive things and do this over here. Yeah, stop whatever it is that you’re indulging in that’s causing you a problem.”

SONDRA: Okay, I behold the world that Christ would have me see. That it ends my bitter dream of death.

MARKUS: All right. I behold the world that Christ would have me see.

SONDRA: Aware that it ends the bitter dream of death.

MARKUS: All right. So, well, why don’t we want Christ’s vision? You know, there was an earlier lesson. I think it was 223. “Let us see the face of Christ instead of our mistakes. For we who are your Holy Son are sinless.” Well, what is our block to using Christ’s vision? Why do we not use Christ’s vision?

Because it’s saying that’s our vision. That’s our true vision. Using Christ’s vision would be our true vision.

SONDRA: I don’t think most people ever think of that idea.

MARKUS: Well, yeah, but the Course is asking us to think about it.

SONDRA: I know.

MARKUS: And not just think about it, to bring it into application... Like to actually use Christ’s vision in our everyday life, in everything we do. Because if then a problem comes up, it gets instantly dissolved, right? We don’t go into... giving the problem a lot of attention and then it gains momentum and then it gains other conditions around it that make it solidified. And before you know it, we got this problem that we don’t think we can solve, right? It’s because we’ve been indulging in it for so long. We’ve given it form. We’ve given it kind of a crystallization. So before we let that happen, if we use Christ’s vision on a moment-to-moment basis, we would dissolve the things that make the problem right in the second they come up, and we wouldn’t get into the problem.

Like Taraji used to say, I loved this thing when he talked about Buddha, right?

Yeah, he said, you know, somebody went to Buddha and they say, how do you solve a problem? And Buddha said, “Well, it’s easy. I never get into one.” So it’s like we get into them, though. We kind of love our problems. And then before you know it, we’re taken over by our problems.

And then before you know it, we can’t solve the problem. And then before you know it, the problem kills us. And all right, do we want to go that route? Or would we rather nip it in the bud and deal with the negative thought as it comes up? And I think that would be easier.

So, God in His mercy wills that we be saved from our negative thoughts, and “We rule our mind, which we alone must rule.” Therefore, we can give our mind to the Holy Spirit. And then it’s like, “Now am I one with Him who is my Source” and “I am the Holy Son of God Himself.” Amen. Okay.

SONDRA: Bole Baba Ki Jai!

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A SUNDAY TALK

THE SALVATION OF MERCY

23—AUGUST—2026

with

Markus Ray

Welcome to this Sunday Talk and the Gifts of God program. I’m so glad to have you here with us today, and this week has been very deep in our look at this section, What is Salvation? And then also, this Lesson today is one of my favorites, and… “God, in His mercy wills that I be saved,” alright?

So, we have to look at a couple of things here. Like, what does the Course mean by salvation? And that could be a very activating word, you know? Because, when… I don’t know about you, but when we grew up, I was brought up Methodist, kind of in a traditional Protestant church, right?

But then there were the quote-unquote, evangelical, born-again churches, and we kind of put them down, you know? Like, oh, they’re always talking about, you know, are you saved?

Have you… let Jesus into your heart, you know? And it was a little too, I don’t know, confronting for us, you know? So, this word “salvation,” because they were always saying, are you saved? [and implying you would go to hell if you were not]. It kind of got a… pejorative meaning, you know? We didn’t like it, that we were being asked to be saved.

So, now the Course is talking about this, you know, “What is Salvation?”

And then this section, that it’s dealing with the lessons. So I think it’s important that we neutralize that word, salvation, and at least for myself, I don’t have the charge on it that I used to have.

And what’s very odd, and maybe this is part of my healing, there’s this minister, Joel Osteen, and maybe you’ve listened to some of his sermons, but he has a very popular, church in Houston, Texas.

And not just a little church, but his father was a minister, and then he got this… this, calling when his father passed away to take over the Lakewood church, right? And then, not too long after he took over, he had this vision that the church needed a bigger place to… to live, right?

So there was this old basketball stadium called the Compaq Center in Houston, and it was huge. It could fit, like, I don’t know, 30,000 people in there, right? And, he had the means to put in a bid for this Compaq Center because it was being sold. It was no longer being used for its original purpose, right? So, he thought, “Oh, what a great place to have a church. And I could fit, you know, 30,000 people in there.” So, anyhow, he had the backing, and he had the resources, and it was kind of a long haul, because the, the powers that be did not want to grant him this Compaq Center, and they didn’t want it used for that. But anyhow, he won out in the end, and… the people in the, you know, city commission finally gave in, and he was able to obtain… this Compaq Center.

And so, for many years now, he’s been, using that for his services, and he’s become very worldwide. He’s written a lot of books, he gives a lot of podcasts, and he makes these videos that are on YouTube, on his sermons, and his talks are about 30 minutes. They don’t usually go more than 29 minutes, 30 minutes, so you can listen to one, and he’s… he’s very succinct in what his subject is.

And it’s interesting because he uses a lot of the terminology, that… that kind of, you know, that those evangelical churches use.

But he, like the Course in Miracles, he redefines them in ways that he also gets the metaphysical root of it through his… his teaching, right? So, if he uses a word that’s out of the Bible, you… you get the deeper metaphysical meaning of it, and… and his…his logic is so sound that you don’t care that he’s… he’s saying, you know, accept Jesus into your heart at the end of his sermon, you know? You don’t really care about that kind of thing that used to turn me off about those kinds of churches. In his… in his way of delivering it, it’s very right on, right?

You know, so his… his messages are very consistent, I feel, with A Course in Miracles. Even though he’s not teaching the Course in Miracles, he’s… he’s teaching out of a Bible context, right? And to more of a mass… everyday person that, that appeals to, but I’ve… I’ve got a lot of respect for his sermons, and I listen to them occasionally. Sometimes SONDRA and I listen to them.

And they’re usually on some subject. Like, this week, I listened to one where he was talking about healing. And he was talking about faith needed in healing. And so, he usually gives very good examples from the Bible about what he’s trying to get across, and they make a lot of sense.

And basically, he’s saying, well, you have to want to be healed of whatever condition you have, right? And then you have to also be willing to give up your payoffs. Like, usually an illness or a condition we have has some kind of, neurotic benefit that we’re getting out of it, you know? Like, if we’re… he used the example of this crippled man that… that Jesus had healed, at this pool of Bethesda. It’s like one of his major miracles in the Bible, right?

So there was this crippled man that had been going to this pool of Bethesda that supposedly had these healing powers, right? But because he was crippled, a lot of other people would get into the pool before him, and so he wouldn’t ever get to go in the pool, because he was crippled and he couldn’t move fast enough, right? So for 38 years, he’s been going to this pool.

And, you know, thinking that, oh, well, one day I’ll be healed, and this and that. But at the same time, he developed this whole support system around him, like, people would have to carry him, people would have to make all of his meals, he could stay helpless and get taken care of. So he had all these benefits from being crippled, right?

And… and Joel was making the point that unless you’re willing to give up your benefits, like, you have a neurotic benefit for keeping an illness… you’ll not heal because you don’t want to give up those things, right? He liked being taken care of because he was crippled. He liked people catering to him because he was crippled.

So then, he tells the story of how his healing actually took place. So, the first question, that Jesus put to him when he saw him in this… in this state, right? He was at the pool, and He goes over to him, and He says, “Do you want to be healed?”

He just asked him directly, “Do you want to be healed?” And the guy was kind of shocked, like, “Well, what kind of question is that? Of course, I’m here… I’m here at this pool of Bethesda, and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be healed, and yes, of course, I want to be healed.”

Well, because Jesus was so clear, like, and He knew, He knew the… the logic of His… His words, right, and the power of his words. So, He said to the guy, “Well, do you want to be healed?” And the guy said, yes!

Well, then the next thing He said to the man was, “Well, if you want to be healed then… pick up your mat, and walk.”

And that’s all he said. He said, “Pick up your mat and walk.”

And the guy, again, was kind of shocked, right? Like, oh, “What do you… what do you mean? Well, like, I’m crippled.” But… but then the power of Jesus’ words, “Pick up your mat and walk,” and… and “Because you want to be healed, you’ve… you’ve said that… then this is the next step. You have to accept the healing and… and actually do it.”

Well, whatever force in… Jesus’ words came through, and the guy picked up his mat, and he started to walk, right? So, done deal. Now he’s healed. And… and this… this miracle had its own kind of logic, and I think we have to see that also, with the Course in Miracles, because it is… it is a Course in Healing. It’s a Course in Healing whatever we have going on in our life that is less than perfect happiness, right?

So, it’s… it’s this Course in Healing, and it’s gonna… it’s gonna give us… a direction, give us a logic… And… We have to follow it.

And we also have to be willing to give up whatever our payoff is, or our neurotic benefit, to keeping whatever that issue is that’s chronic in our life. And we have to look at, “Well… what is it that I’m hanging onto it for? What benefit do I get from this? Maybe I don’t have to work so hard, I don’t have to put myself out there as much, you know, I get to… be alone, and I’m used to being alone, and I don’t have to share my space with anyone else.”

You know, there could be many different conditions that we’re stuck in, and many different reasons why we hang on to them. So, we have to look at that whole background of that.

And… and then this word, salvation, okay? So this… this week, that was… the theme of the lessons. What is Salvation? And how do we see that? And what does salvation mean to us?

You know, is it, like, healing? Is it, like, the end of our misery? Is it something that we have to change in ourself? Is it something we have to let go of? So there are questions, questions about Salvation, and… and what actually happens in this… Salvation?

And isn’t that the… the giving and the receiving of the miracle? You know, like, the miracle, it’s A Course in Miracles, right? So we’re… we’re looking toward what… what is the miracle we need in our life?

Or, what is the miracle we’re asking for? And we have to be clear about that, what that is. And then we also have to be clear about how are we blocking it? What… what is the thing that is preventing the miracle from taking place in our… in ourself?

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A SATURDAY TALK

ENTER THE MIRACLE ZONE

22—August—2026

with Sondra Ray & Markus Ray

Washington D.C. 🇺🇸 USA

MARKUS: Welcome to this… Mantra Breathing Saturday Talk, and we’re so glad to have you with us today. This is a subject very dear to our hearts. It’s about miracles. And recently, we’ve been planning this weekend seminar in September, and we knew it was going to be on… on miracles, a combination of breathwork and a weekend on A Course in Miracles, and we used to call it Miracles for You.

And then… and then all of a sudden, kind of out of the blue, I got this… sort of intimation, Miracle Zone. This phrase came to me, Miracle Zone, Miracle Zone. Enter the Miracle Zone. TAP HERE TO EXPLORE

And what is the Miracle Zone? And so, we changed the name to this weekend because we’ve got new material and new things are coming in that we want to share, and we wanted to call it Enter the Miracle Zone.

So, between now and September 18th, when it starts, we’re going to talk more about miracles and these other… dimensions that… that the ego kind of discounts is not real, but our Higher Self knows they are very real, and I think even next week, we’re going to talk about Angelic Kingdoms.

So, we’re gonna start talking about these dimensions that are, beyond our thinking, right? So, this Miracle Zone… what is it? I mean, what is a zone? A zone is like an area, right? And it, like, this area, we call it a zone, and then usually when we’re talking about miracles… We’re talking about the mind, and we’re talking about shifts in our mind, and what is in the mind, and what… we get the results of the things in our mind, right?

So we all shared just earlier, what we would like to have happen in our life that we see as miraculous, right? And then we also shared, well, what are the thoughts that would block us receiving that? And then we all realized we have a lot of these thoughts that block this expansion into greater possibilities, right?

So, that shift out of those parts of your mind that are negative and blocking and limiting and, you know, giving you all the… “what you can’t do,” all that, that’s a zone in your mind that we focus on way too much. And then moving out of that area in our mind into this other area where there’s unlimited possibilities, we have this help of a Higher Force that’s very powerful, by the way. It’s the Force that created the whole Cosmos.

SONDRA: Okay, so we start with the thought that you yourself are a miracle, don’t forget that, and God’s thoughts are miracles, so every lesson in the Course in Miracles is God’s thought, and that’s a miracle. When you read… just reading the lesson is a miracle, so try to do that every day. Take time to do that, and you’ll have more miracles. So, miracle-mindedness is not like just having positive thoughts, or be… believing in improbable things. It means your mind is restored to the functioning that resembles God’s mind, okay? You’re getting into God’s mind, and that’s the miracle mind, okay? The ego is the opposite of miracles, right?

So… Death could even be reversed, sickness could be undone, damage could be repaired, all those things are miracles that you can have, and you have to believe it’s possible.

So, I recommend every day, when you look in the mirror, you say, “I love you,” three times, and then you say, when you’re brushing your teeth, “I can’t wait to see what miracles you have for me today.”

Sondra Goes Beyond Limitations

This is a new thing I’m trying. And it feels good to do this. You look in the mirror, brush your teeth, say, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” to yourself, “I can’t wait to see the miracles that are coming to me today.” Because then you’re opening up. But you have to open up that door, you have to open up your mind. So, you know, Jesus was operating only under God’s laws, that’s why He could… He showed that sickness… is not the authority, death is not the authority, scarcity is not the authority. And, you know, He was in that state of God’s thoughts all the time, okay?

And that’s why we need to read The Course in Miracles. It puts you in a higher frequency. Now, there’s this guy that I’ve been reading who calculates frequencies. 500 is unconditional love, but most people are only way down at 200. Well, 500 is pretty high. 600 is where The Course in Miracles is. It’s beyond unconditional love.

So if you’re reading the Course, even if you don’t understand it, you’re getting in miracle consciousness, okay? And that permeates our mind. So, that’s why we try to remember every single day we read something from the Course, okay?

MARKUS: So… And we do a podcast, and we have a program, Miracles, let’s see, what’s it called, The Gifts of God Program. Yeah. And some of you are in it. Yeah, so… You can join that if you want.

SONDRA: So, miracles don’t have to be frightening. People are kind of frightened of miracles, because it feels unfamiliar. They don’t have to be magical, they’re love expressed through the mind that’s no longer agreeing with limits.

Your old mind has limits, okay? Well, the new mind of God has no limits. So, it’s unlimited power. When you’re… when you’re dealing with God’s Mind, it’s unlimited power. And that’s more miracles for you.

MARKUS: Well, and I think the main block, and some of us, we’re very good at admitting this when we were talking earlier about the miracle we wanted to manifest. This main block that we have… is our limited thinking about ourself. You know, we call it in our work a “personal lie,” but some of you, expressed, quite a few of you expressed, well, what was the fear of getting that, or what would be blocking you from receiving this miracle that you asked for?

And many of you said, “I don’t feel I’m worthy to receive it.” Well, that’s a major personal lie. “I’m not worthy,” right? It’s like, “I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy, I don’t deserve it.” You know, and these negative beliefs we hold about ourselves, and we’re… they’re in our subconscious mind.

We’re not walking around consciously saying this to ourselves, but if we’re really honest… and we do a process like we just did, and we ask you, “Well, what’s your block?” It can come up, and that, “I’m not worthy” thought is a common one that people have.

And especially if you’re brought up in the Catholic Church, you… you have to say that quite a lot, you know, even in the rituals that they have. So, this, “I’m not worthy,” is just a thought.

But… it’s a damper. It’s a… it’s like a… a weight that holds you down from the…possibility of something greater, right? So, we want to, in this, breathe, breathe out those limiting thoughts. And that’s part of the, if not the major purpose of the miracle, is to erase the effects of misperception, or in this case, a negative thought we have about ourself that would block these new possibilities.

So, in our breathe today, we want to forgive ourselves for thinking that, of course, and we want to ask the Higher Powers that are flowing through us in the breathe to help negate and neutralize those thoughts, like, “I’m not worthy, I don’t deserve it,” you know, “I can’t, I’m… not good enough,” you know, all those kind of low-level thoughts that are holding us in this lower frequency. We want to… neutralize all those. We want to forgive them completely. So that they don’t have any power anymore to block us.

And then, it’s like, “God’s will for me is perfect happiness,” so anything you expressed of “What is gonna bring you more joy,” which everybody did. They said, “I want this, I want that, and it’s gonna bring me more joy.” You deserve to have that, and you also deserve to have the whole Cosmic Force that created the universe behind that request.

Right? So that that Force is helping you manifest that. I mean, and in a very concrete way. It’s bringing in the right relationships, it’s bringing in the right conditions, it’s bringing in new situations. You know, you’re getting phone calls from people who want to help you. You know, very concrete things start to happen where you witness this shift in your life.

And that’s where the miracle has to happen. It has to give us a demonstration of receiving these higher, higher desires. You know?

SONDRA: The Course would say you cannot perform or have miracles in a state of doubt or fear, okay? So you have to rise above doubt and fear. This is why it said miracles are normal, but purification is necessary first. So the purification we’re doing is the breathing and sharing our blocks. That’s what we mean by purification.

MARKUS: So we’re doing a bit of, mental processing when we have the sharing before we breathe. And that gets it all out on the table, and we look at it, and then when we’re doing the breathing, that’s like the letting go, that’s the cleansing, that’s getting… getting the new possibilities on the cellular level.

The full Saturday Talk on The Miracle Zone is below. We hope that you will become a Paid Subscriber and reap the benefits of the full Recordings of our Mantra Breathing Saturday Talks. And we ecourage you to participate in the MANTRA BREATHING SESSIONS Live on ZOOM every Saturday at 1PM Eastern USA Time, broadcast Live worldwide. TAP HERE TO EXPLORE and register for next Saturday’s MANTRA BREATHING SESSION from 1PM to 3PM Eastern USA time.

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Not only did I write 365 Odes to the Divine Mother, I also began painting Her in the energy of Amma, the hugging saint. I would paint these Divine Mother paintings all over the globe as well, whenever we were giving a Breathwork Training in a location on one of our tours of duty. One of the most powerful Divine Mother paintings done in Melbourne, Australia, I put on the front cover. This was only my second published book, the first being Miracles with my Master, TARA SINGH. (TAP HERE TO EXPLORE). Barbara Milbourne transcribed my hand written Manuscript into a word doc., and Lia Schultz helped me to get the formatted book together for publishing. So with a little help from my friends, this major opus of my writings was birthed into being in 2015.

Sondra Ray wrote the foreword. Here it is—

BALI BLISS

This encounter with the Blinese Dance was the first inspiration that set me on the course to scribe Odes to the Divine Mother. I had never seen such a dance that engaged me in a full experience of movement, something that went beyond just an art form. It too me into transcendental realms of mang contact with the Divine Nature of things. The dance put me in a state of receiving bliss.

I wrote 10 Odes to the Balinese Dancers in our room at the Oberoi Hotel. This is the first one.

Divine Mother of Little Dancing One

Divine Mother of this Universe, unto my eyes You spread Your small body in dance before me, as perfection in the infinite movements of a child’s heart. Your beauty rushes into me as I am transfixed, Your tiny torso the graceful tool of feminine wisdom so evolved in its offerings of sensual bliss to the male center of my total love for You.

You come unasked into my space of receptivity, never waiting for my readiness before You lay Your gifts at my feet. How could I have merited this supreme grace of Your love, given to me as though I am the one man left standing on this earth, the one blessed to receive Your innocence and joy beyond any measure of what can be seen or heard through the flesh?

Yet there You are before me in perfected body, with the poise and certainty of a God, transcendent of any age to make You as it wills, beyond time and space, beyond the meager man-made gestures that fall short in trying to reach the heights of Your Being. Civilizations come and go; eons pass to evolve a culture toward the good, but these can only watch You in Your awesome magnificence. Thousands of breaths You take in Your dance of the cosmos in front of me, each breath a million molecules of life You breathe in and breathe out; yet the whole Roman Empire could fit its entire aspirations on the millionth portion of one breath. The whole outpouring of the Western world evolved only to raise itself high enough to touch the humble grace of Your tiny feet.

Oh, Holy Mother of this little One, I am the servant of You; I am Your pen and voice that sings Your praises day and night as You weave Your Odes into me entirely. Let me surrender to You, completely my Self, to the Source of my Desire, the Source of Life. Dance this precious moment into my heart and extend it forever.

1

I Am At Your Feet

I am at Your feet, forever at Your feet. To me that is higher than Mount Everest. You are beyond the stars. Your toes are the very galaxies I cannot comprehend. To touch them is to rise higher than I have ever gone. To leave this world a moment in my contemplation of You is to travel light years past my familiar places, past the planets of this solar system, past my place on earth in this small body of flesh and bone, into another realm of Divine perfection. I cannot fathom You, but nonetheless my certainty grows of Your omnipresent existence in everything I can sense, and in everything so far beyond what I can sense. Even my thought falls short of conceiving Your immensity. I am silenced for a while in gratitude, knowing Your tender loving care surrounds me in all time and space—Your caresses upon my soul reassure my inner child, walking ahead of You, that my Mother will always be there, just a half step behind me, to guide my steps and cushion any fall. O Mother, I sing my praises to You as I enter into a New Life. Purge me of all guile, make me Your servant more and more; come into me completely and inspire my Life to be an action of beauty for You.

11

Goddess of Night

Goddess of night, You come out of blackness and blanket my world in shade, and bring Your thousand things that I love into the quiet stillness of sleep. Yet I am up in my restless rustle of somnambulism. Dimly lit from below, the bronze bust on its base casts its eerie shadow into the murky nature of my late hour observances. I feel the soft woolen fibers of the oriental carpet under my feet as I move toward the plush pillows of my divan, andplop myself down to meet my midnight meditations. I hear this hush of You, my Mother of the dark zones, which comes over me in this extended pause of my afterhours. I am the listener to an absence of my thought. It sings to me of peace and quiet, when the activity of my day all but ceases, and the ever-still nature of Your one thousand things comes rushing into me all at once. A crescendo of quietude fills my mind with the presence of each object that provides a note in the unspoken song of Your soundless nocturne. I tune myself to the vibration of darkness and feel a deep abiding gratitude arise in me. Goddess of night, You envelop the world in a peace beyond my understanding. I give my eternal thanks for this vision of holiness in the darkened house of a silent night, in this my inaudible dedication.

62

Mother of Immortality

You are the Mother of immortality. You are my Mother who imbues me with the will to live forever. You are the Life Force that never ends. You are my flesh and bone united with the spark of maleness beyond all things. You are the Love manifested and the Love not manifested. I call to You, Dear One, who is in my very breath and flowing in the blood of my veins. I cannot escape You who are the matrix of all existence. Come into my awareness more and more that I may not oppose in any way the limitless life of the here and now. You cannot give me the boon of eternal life without my first asking, so now let my request be known in the full blazing light of divine invocation. I am Your Son of the world—of the physical and the world of the non-physical. I am the one who listens for the truth of immortal life and corrects my wrong thinking that fooled me into death after death. I am the voice that surrenders to Your inspiration in the larger world. Let me not be evil by insisting that problems are real. Only Joy and Peace are my inheritance. I claim my due and decide to accept this natural gift of life that never ends. Speak through me Holy Mother of Eternal Life and make my soul true to death’s abolition. Bring to my mind only Your thoughts of immortality, and into my actions fuse the wisdom of Your daily blessings. Make my awareness of Truth complete, and my holiness the Godhead inside that brings me strength to overcome the age-old habit of dying.

I hope this is enough to inspire you to purchase this book, with full color plates. You can TAP TO EXPLORE (Available as an e-book or hardcover).

—Markus Ray—

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On this 232nd day of the year, can we invoke the Source of our Life and be in the Presence of our highest JOY? Can we forget about the past and all of its intricate twists and turns, its promises kept and unkept, its elated victories and its stinging defeats? Can we let go of our false pride and our nagging self-judgements? The PRESENT is a state of being now in which we are calmly “as we are.” And that version of our Self is enough. It is connected to every entity in the Cosmos, and every singing note of a Joie de Vivre that resounds throughout the nucleus of every atom. It is our True Self Whom God Created whole and good.

This Podcast today can help us make contact with this inner Joy. It brings us into the Present, where we and our Creator are seen, felt, and experienced as ONE.

The Lesson itself puts us in a new awarenesss of God. We must redefine, and perhaps “undefine” the word God. It has been so misused and abused, misunderstood and misinterpreted, and even used in such a way to “turn us off” from our main contact with the most Essential Source of Life Itself! This few words below help us to align with our Highest and Best Version of our SELF.

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But before we do that, we’ve been starting with a couple paragraphs from the Text. And this is from Chapter 12, the Holy Spirit’s Curriculum. And it’s Section I, The Judgment of the Holy Spirit, The Judgment of the Holy Spirit.

SONDRA: You have been told not to make error real. And the way to do this is very simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have to make it real because it’s not true. But truth is real in its own right. And to believe in truth, you do not have to do anything. Understand that you do not respond to anything directly, but to your interpretation of it. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response. That is why analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to you. If you decide that someone is really trying to attack you or desert you or enslave you, you will respond as if he had actually done so, having made his error real to you. To interpret error is to give it power. And having done this, you will overlook the truth.

MARKUS: Okay. To give it power.

SONDRA: To interpret error is to give it power. So I was thinking this also refers to conditions in the body, right? Yeah. We’re making them real.

MARKUS: I think it refers to our own case, which would include conditions in our body. And it includes relationships we have with people and their response and behavior towards us, and how we react to that, how we interpret that. So it’s on many different levels, but it’s mainly saying that our interpretations are in error and they don’t really exist. But if we respond to them like they’re... true, we make them exist.

SONDRA: Yeah, well, I think it’s hard not to make symptoms in your body unreal when they feel real. That’s the tricky part to me. And it says you should not make the error real.

MARKUS: Yeah. Well, I think we are well-versed enough in our metaphysical studies that we know that any symptom in our body is due to thoughts, right? The symptom is a manifestation of something else. It’s not the source. Like the symptom is the result, not the source. So if the error is in the source of the symptom, like we have a thought that causes the symptom, it’s easier to see, “Well, that thought is not real and therefore it’s not there.”

But when it manifests as a physical symptom, now we use the physical thing to prove that it’s there, right? So we have to backtrack and get to the point where we’re looking not at the symptom, but at the thought that manifested the symptom.

SONDRA: Yeah, well, let’s just say you have something and they say it’s just old age causing that.

MARKUS: Or it could be there’s something you don’t want to look at and that’s a bigger issue in your life and it manifests as an eye problem, right?

SONDRA: Yeah, we have that going on with somebody, one of our friends in Bali, she’s having this horrible eye thing. Yeah. And so they would say it’s because of aging that they have the deterioration of the vision. Yeah. So then to tell them that’s not real. I don’t know if they could hear that.

MARKUS: Well, yes, but I think let’s just stay with ourself, right? If we have any symptom in our body, we have to ask ourselves— “The thought I have that’s causing that symptom is _______.” It could be pressure. It could be, you know, fear of the future. It could be this thought, “Yeah, I’m getting old.” That’s a big one that people have.

SONDRA: And I think that’s the one that I’m up against at times. And how do I make that not real?

MARKUS: Well, I think you have to see that you could have the observation that you’re getting older, yes. And you are. We are all getting older, right? But do we have the pejorative things attached to that. Like, “Oh, We’re getting older, therefore we’re deteriorating and our health is going down.” You know, that’s what most people, they may not express it openly, but in their subconscious mind, they have associated with getting older with deterioration, with, you know, getting less healthy, getting more decrepit. You know, we have all those associations attached to the observation of getting older, right? So when you get older, it activates all those belief systems, right?

“Oh, I’m getting older, therefore I must be slowing down. My metabolism is changing. I’m not digesting. I have aches in my joints. You know, my body is wearing out.”

That’s a thought. “As I get older, my body wears out.” That’s a common thought people have, right? And it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy if we don’t handle those thoughts.

SONDRA: Yeah, so in other words, we should try not to believe in those thoughts, but it’s tricky.

SONDRA: Yeah, but I think we’re not in touch with some of those thoughts when we get older.

MARKUS: Well, we have to look at them.

SONDRA: The analysis of ego motivation is very complicated, very obscuring, and never without your own ego involvement. The whole process represents a clear cut attempt to demonstrate your own ability to understand what you perceive. This is shown by the fact that you react to your interpretations as if they were correct. You may then control your reaction behaviorally but not emotionally. This would obviously be a split or an attack on the integrity of your mind, pitting one level with it against the other.

MARKUS: Well, let’s just stick with this thing. “When I get older, my body deteriorates.” That is a thought. And it’s also a depressing thought. So it says emotionally it’s going to affect you. So many of us have fear, and, you know, dread associated with getting older… because we have these other thoughts.

“When you get older, your body wears out. When you get older, your metabolism slows down. When you get older, your bones get brittle. When you get older, you know, you’re more susceptible to...

SONDRA: there’s a lot of them there…

MARKUS: … bad vision. Your vision deteriorates. When you get older, your digestion doesn’t work as well.”

You know, there’s a lot of thoughts associated with getting older. Like, we don’t have the thought that you get better as you get older. We have a thought, “You deteriorate as you get older.” And that’s a very strong thought. And it’s reinforced by the medical industrial complex. You know they have all these medications for people when they get older, right? And then all that stuff is advertised on the on the media so it’s almost like we’re programmed to function within the parameters that the medical profession defines for us, and then it’s got some kind of a drug or some kind of a fix that it’s going to give you because of that thing. But it programmed you to have that thing in the first place. So it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That’s what your negative thoughts are. That’s what your beliefs are. And this is saying those are errors. And you have to correct those errors where they originated.

SONDRA: Here’s a good line: If to love oneself is to heal oneself, those who are sick do not love themselves.

MARKUS: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So we’re, you know, we’re our own worst enemy when it comes to this. Yeah. So, okay, so then let’s read this page, What is Salvation?

SONDRA: What is our Lesson today?

MARKUS: It’s What is Salvation? You read that page, and then our lesson is #231. Okay. Yeah. All right.

Salvation. What is salvation? That is the next preamble to the next ten lessons. What is salvation?

SONDRA: Salvation is a promise made by God that you would find your way to him at last. It cannot but be kept. It guarantees that time will have an end and all the thoughts that have been born in time will end as well. God’s word is given every mind which thinks that it has separate thoughts and will replace these thoughts of conflict with the thought of peace.

MARKUS: Okay, so this is a promise made by God that we will more or less connect with our Source, which is God, right? We will make this memory or this reconnection or this... remembrance of our connection to our Divine Source, and that that is salvation.

And the promise is that we will remember our God-created Self in this lifetime, and we will return to peace and end conflict in ourself.

SONDRA: The thought of peace was given to God’s Son the instant that his mind had thought of war. There was no need for such a thought before, for peace was given without opposite and merely was. But when the mind is split, there is a need of healing. So the thought that has the power to heal the split became a part of every fragment of the mind that still was one, but failed to recognize its oneness. Now it did not know itself and thought its own identity was lost.

Salvation is undoing in the sense that it does nothing, failing to support the world of dreams and malice. Thus it lets illusions go. By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust. And what they hid is now revealed, an altar to the holy name of God, whereon his word is written with the gifts of your forgiveness laid before it and the memory of God not far behind.

MARKUS: Yeah, well, this is an action, you know, of remembering the truth of who we are. And the truth of who we are always was there. Like, we’re not all of a sudden being recreated. We’re all of a sudden remembering how we already were created. So it’s like remembering who we are as God created us doesn’t require any real change in our situation. But the change is we have to stop projecting who we thought we were, but we weren’t. Right?

We thought we were an ego. We thought we were fear. We thought we were guilt. We thought we were, you know, justifying our anger. We were split in our identity. You know, we identified with this self we made up without seeing that we are the Self God created.

So that split made a conflict. And now we’re going to end that. We’re going to end that conflict. We’re going to let go of the self we made up. And then the Self God created is there. It always was there, but we weren’t seeing it because we were covering it over with this self we made up. But now we’re undoing and letting go of that self we made up—All the grievances, all the judgments, all the attack thoughts, all the conflicts, and all the split in our self. We’re letting go of all that. We’re undoing all that. And when we undo it, then this Self God created emerges, which was always there. So it’s not a new thing.

It’s not something, “Oh, we’re discovering this brand new thing.” No, we’re discovering what was always there, but we weren’t seeing it. And now that we’re not obscuring our vision of ourself with all these false... premises of who we are that the ego made up, we can see our True Self and that and then we see, “Well it was always there to see but we were we were distracted in our misperceptions of who we were.”

SONDRA: Let us come daily to this holy place and spend a while together here we share our final dream It is a dream in which there is no sorrow, for it holds a hint of all the glory given us by God. The grass is pushing through the soil, and the trees are budding now, and the birds have come to live within their branches. Earth is being born again in new perspective. Night has gone, and we have come together in the light. From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received.

The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned that time is almost over and God’s Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered. Dreams are gone. Dreams are done. Eternity has shined away the world and only heaven now exists at all.

MARKUS: Okay so the the the question is what is salvation? Salvation would be the return to heaven yeah It would be the end of the ego’s rule that made up a hell. So it would be the end of hell and the entry into heaven. And that’s like, what better thing do we have to do kind of thing, you know? It’s like the noblest cause you could dedicate your attention to would be the end of your suffering. and the beginning of your Divine Joy that’s constant… And this entry into heaven, we shouldn’t take that lightly, you know?

It’s like, what is blocking us from entering into heaven? Fear of the future?

SONDRA: Fear of God, maybe?

MARKUS: Fear of symptoms in our body getting worse? Fear of old age, we were just talking about that. Fear of death, fear of deterioration of the body and leaving the body because of that? We know some friends that are in so much discomfort and pain in their bodies that they’ve been talking about leaving it. And that’s what a lot of people get to.

They get to: “It’s so painful staying in the body.” This could be psychological too. Fear is a psychological pain, right? So they could have so much uncertainty and fear about being in the body that they would rather just leave it. Yeah. All right? And this is what people do. And then they leave the body. And maybe they didn’t complete their... whatever it was, you know… their mission of being here in this lifetime. So then they have to come back you know… maybe they didn’t forgive their parents, or maybe they didn’t forgive their ex, or maybe they’re living in a state of anger all the time, you know? There are many things that people take with them when they leave their body.

This is saying, “Well, you got to clean all this stuff up right? through forgiveness and then you have to also make this contact with the Self God created and the Self God created is in a state of constant joy, and that would be your heavenly state. And and we need to make contact with that while we’re in the body.

You know let’s forget about okay what’s going to happen 10 years from now or 20 years from now or, how long are you going to live in the body? Let’s just say the most important thing now is that we find our heavenly state. And whatever that is, our True Self. Our True Self as God created us in the heavenly state. And we should not make any delays in realizing that.

SONDRA: Okay, so lesson 231?

MARKUS: Yeah.

SONDRA: Father, I will but to remember you. This is the prayer. What can I seek for, Father, but your love? Perhaps I think I seek for something else, something I have called by many names. Yet it is your love, the only thing I seek or ever sought. For there is nothing else that I could ever really want to find. Let me remember you. What else could I desire but the truth about myself?

This is your will, my brother, and you share this will with me, and with the One as well who is our Father. To remember Him is heaven. This we seek, and only this is what it will be given us to find.

MARKUS: To remember God is heaven, it says in that first line, right? In the second paragraph.

SONDRA: Yeah, and I really shouldn’t be seeking anything else but Your Love.

MARKUS: Yeah, the love of God for his Son, and the love of God’s Son for His Father… you could almost define that as the heavenly state, when when we’re realizing it… not just talking about it as an idea right? That love will undo fear.

Like you know it says somewhere in the text, “Perfect love casts out fear. If fear exists, then there’s not perfect love.” So it’s like we have to make contact with this perfect Love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father in order to cast out the ego from our mind, you know, basically.

It’s like we have a mind, and that mind is the Mind of God, but it’s so full of other junk that we’re focused on—that’s not the Mind of God—we can’t see the Mind of God because we’re too distracted by the ego’s thought system.

This “Salvation” is when we dismantle and see that the ego’s thought system is false. It’s an illusion. It’s not real. It’s something like we were reading. The Holy Spirit undoes the error. We can’t be giving our errors reality. We have to see the error as an unreality. Even if it’s produced a symptom.

Like, okay, we were talking about people have a thought. “When I get older, I deteriorate. I get less healthy. I start to break down mentally and physically.” And then those thoughts produce aging and then the results of aging.

So we have to see that those thoughts that we had that made us age are errors.

And they’re not the Holy Spirit’s will for us. God’s will for us is perfect happiness. So that would not be part of God’s plan for us to have those thoughts. And and we have to question them and we have to correct them and we have to forgive them and we have to let them go and all that stuff, you know.

So, Father, I will but to remember you. Well, what is remembering God? Remembering God is to remember our perfection. It’s not like remember God and then get old and decrepit and kick the bucket in misery.

That would not be remembering God. And a lot of people go through that. It’s like their best years are earlier when they’re vital enough and they are pursuing their dream. But then when they get disillusioned and their dream, they never achieved it… and they’re disillusioned, then they get older, and then they think, “Oh, well, I’ll just deteriorate, and I never achieved my dream, and it’s just easier to check out.”

And then they do. And that’s a miserable way to go.

SONDRA: Yeah, and this makes me feel like I want to really experience the love of God. You know, you don’t think about that much.

MARKUS: Yeah, and I will, but to remember you, it’s like, “Okay, Holy Spirit, I’m here. I want to make my first priority the remembrance of God.”

You know, “Above all else, I want to see. Above all else, I want to see things differently.” Then the next lesson, 29, says, “God is in everything I see.” You’ve made that contact. You have that vision. “God is in everything I see because God is in my mind.”

And you’re in touch with the Mind of God because you wanted that above all else.

“Above all else, I want to see. Above all else, I want to see things differently. God is in everything I see. God is in everything I see because God is in my mind.” Well, that would be this lesson.

Father, I will but to remember you.

So if you were really seeing God in everything, you’d be remembering your Father. You’d be remembering God. You’d be in touch with your heavenly state.

Now, we’ve got to go beyond just the intellectual knowing of these Lessons into the actuality of them. So when it says, Father, I will but to remember you on this day, doing this lesson, we have to... demand of ourselves that we remember God. And that we invite in the Holy Spirit. We’re going to take our part, our little willingness, our little step towards realizing this lesson. God, I will be to remember you… and then we have to turn it over to the Holy Spirit and say, “Okay, anything in me that’s preventing this, please help me remove it. And I want to have direct contact with this connection with my Divine Source right now, right in this time, on this day, doing this Lesson,” and that’s the kind of demand that the Part II of the Workbook is giving us.

It’s like it’s giving us the miracle, but can we receive the miracle? The miracle is I can just say, “Today I want to remember my Creator. God, Father, I will but to remember you today. And it is done. We remember God.”

SONDRA: Bole Baba Ki Jai.

MARKUS: Bole Baba Ki Jai!

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Having a guru is not at all about giving your power away. Your guru will actually show you how to be in your true power. I am very fortunate to have Babaji as my guru. I also have Jesus of A Course in Miracles and Amma, the hugging Saint. She herself says that without a guru, there is not much spiritual progress. Without Him or Her, you are likely to flounder and keep on floundering.

In a moment, with the clap of the hand, things can happen with a guru! If it is your goal to attain the highest, and not settle for anything less, well then, you need a guru. Amma says, “Only a realized master can bestow the necessary grace and create the right conditions that will release your pain.”

A great Guru is irresistible. People are drawn to Him/Her like a magnet. The relationship with that guru is incomparable. He/She is necessary if you truly want to drop your hell. The guru is an intoxicant!

But being with the guru is not always so comfortable, because He or She will break your limitations. Amma says, “A Saint is a good man, always loving and always happy. A guru is not like that. He/She will do ANYTHING that is needed to crack your case! The guru is here to throw light on dimensions beyond your sensory perceptions and your psychological drama. He/She wants to help you make JOY your constant companion.”

The guru is like a road map. Amma also says this: “With the exception of a handful of persons, who have acquired higher spiritual tendencies in their previous lives, self- realization is not possible for anyone without the blessings of a guru.”

Consider the guru as the manifestation of God in this world. Consider even the most insignificant word of the guru and obey him or her. This is the real service to the guru. There is no greater austerity. The guru’s blessings are automatically poured on every obedient disciple. A Satguru possess a visible physical form as well as an invisible Spiritual presence. The invisible presence is most important.

This relationship is energy-based, not mind-based or emotion-based. The guru is the end of drama for you! He/She is the empty space—and that is the only thing that can dispel your darkness.

Babaji, The “Yogi Christ of India” Circa 1977; Haidakhan, India

Amma says that “Only someone who is awake can awaken someone in a deep sleep. To realize God, we need the help of a spiritually enlightened master.” In the guru’s presence the disciple’s qualities and talents will soon manifest. The guru will create various situations to help the disciple get rid of laziness, and latent bad tendencies. And He/She will enable him to realize the truth.

The guru will create circumstances and crush the ego and circumstances for the disciple’s spiritual growth. They call these “leelas” in India. They are “lessons” that are often difficult life situations that the guru arranges for the benefit of the students to get over major portions of their ego patterns. The guru is the way to freedom and everlasting bliss! Wouldn’t you want THAT?

The guru has only one goal: to free the disciple from sorrow and to awaken him to his real nature. The guru makes you EXPANSIVE. The guru sees in the disciple something he himself cannot see. He longs to see the disciple succeeding! Babaji has always helped me succeed.

The guru’s presence will bring out your noble qualities. The guru knows exactly what is needed for the disciple’s growth. He helps you each moment to be aware and to experience the greatness of life! To awaken fully, the Guru’s help is needed.

Why is that so? Well, for one thing, Babaji is a Maha Avatar, which is someone not born of a woman. He actually materialized that last body He had. So I met Him directly from the Source, without Him having to be born! You can’t get much higher than THAT! So this is why I am telling you that His Love is available. You can take it or not. But WHY NOT?

You can begin by reading our book about him.

BABAJI, MY MIRACULOUS MEETINGS WITH A MAHA AVATAR

TAP HERE TO EXPLORE

And… you can be serious about it by coming with us to His ashram in the Spring to India on our INDIA QUEST! We take a group every year to participate in the Divine Mother Festival there. The dates of the INDIA QUEST 2027 are April 3-18, 2027. You can look it over here: https://bit.ly/IQRay

The Dream Team for us is composed of Babaji, Jesus of A Course in Miracles, and the Divine Mother in the form of Amma, the Hugging Saint. I just wrote my last book with their instructions, guidance, and affimations to help us get over major blocks to ascending toa state of being free of all problems. My Meetings with the Dream Team is here: https://getbook.to/DreamTeam

Painting of Amma by Markus Ray; 2018

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Quan Yin’s Benevolent Beatitude of Blessing

Sondra Ray had a few things of a high artistic standard before we got together in 2008. These showed me, though she had never studied art history formally, that she had an eye for the beautiful, for the visually powerful, and the spiritually charged things in life, and yes, even for the sublime statues of Holy Beings. My experience of her in the mid 1980s showed me this side of her in the flesh, as she always was a force of nature to be reckoned with, a comet of compelling stardust to cross before my firmament of unfathomable Divine Glory. This was in her Being itself, intrinsically embedded in her very DNA.

But getting back to the “things” she had collected in her private living space, it would not be until I became her consort years later that I knew they even existed. These fine art objects were commensurate with her nature, and not one item in this collection of finely crafted acoutrements was superfluous, or without some high pedigree of holy purpose. Least of all this small sculpture of Quan Yin.

The original inspiration for this figurine resides in Kansas City, at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Who would ever have predicted its original proximity was right next to my transplanted family in this mid-western cow-town of Kansas City. Visiting my parents and sister there after our 2008 coupling brought this larger than life sized sculpture of polychromed wood from China to my attention. I had been to that museum many times before, but until my close proximity to Sondra Ray and a miniature Quan Yin in my living room, I had probably passed right by it.

Though our small figurine that we keep on our Divine Mother Altar, front and center, has its own variations and diminutive size, the scale of its Holy Presence is nonetheless larger than worlds, weilding enough power to silence even the most roving and rambunctious hearts, sitting agaze in front of her. Yuan Yin gives forth the benevolent beatitude of a brilliant blessing. And we have to recieve it—whether we are attuned to the finer things of the spirit or not. I would venture to say, we are all calmed in Her Presence.

A person in the vortex of a Quan Yin of this calibre, even the scaled down copy of Her, is “stunned into silence.” This is the whole point of her Being and Grace. The Stillness of the Peace of God emanates from Her central core. Even more so in the “larger than life” version, housed in the Nelson-Atkins Museum.

A true historical character was she? Who knows. Probably there were precedents of actual beings who became the inspiration of myths. But yet, is not the archetypical reality just as influential over our hearts and minds as any being in the flesh? The hero is one thousand-faced, as Joseph Campbell suggested, across the annals of time and space, towering to the pinacles of our imaginations, always propelling us forward, and drawing us upward to ascend into the nobleness of our highest human nature. Is it not enough that their Love and Compassion are the lofiest qualities transmitted across time and space into the core of our present incarnation? We can know them NOW in these magnificent works.

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A One-Year Serious Study of A Course in Miracles

A DAILY PODCAST

LESSON #224: God is my Father, and He loves His Son.

12—August—2026

with Markus Ray & Sondra Ray

Broadcast from Washington DC, 🇺🇸 USA

MARKUS: Welcome to our podcast on A Course in Miracles. We’re so happy to have you with us today. We’re reading a little section from Chapter 9, Section 2. THE ANSWER TO PRAYER, is that it?

SONDRA: Right.

MARKUS: All right.

Okay. So, if you want to know your prayers are answered, never doubt.

MARKUS: Yeah, is that what it says next?

SONDRA: Yeah, never doubt. Do not question. Yeah. Okay, so we want to pray to get over the fear of getting what we... you know, fear of receiving the miracle. Yeah. We let go of fear of miracles and fear of God in order to have our prayers answered. And, you know, what we’re praying for is just something that would make us better. So our prayers are okay, but we haven’t given up our doubt.

MARKUS: Yeah, and some part of us would be afraid to have... that prayer answered. Yeah, because it would be so different than what we’re used to, you know, yeah… and I think we have to stop doing that.

We have to look at our fear, and feel what it would be like in a kind of a joy that our prayer is answered. You know, like what would it feel like if we had perfect health? What would it feel like if our business is really flowing? What would it feel like if all of our relationships produced harmony? And I think we have to get in the feeling of what that would be.

And then there’s no fear. When you’re feeling the joy of all that, there’s no fear. And I think that’s in general for everyone. You have to be committed to feeling more joy in your life… because joy and fear can’t co-occupy the same space.

So this commitment to joy, I like that. Commitment to joy.

SONDRA: So I allow the Holy Spirit to undo any fear I have of miracles, or fear of God, or fear of being totally relaxed. You know, it’s kind of crazy to be afraid of the good things, isn’t it?

MARKUS: Yeah, but that’s kind of what it was saying, wasn’t it?

SONDRA: Yeah, right.

MARKUS: That you’re used to things not working perfectly. And for things to work perfectly, it would be so unfamiliar, it would bring up fear, is what it was saying, right? So, I mean, that sounds really insane. Yeah,

SONDRA: I know.

MARKUS: That’s where we sabotage ourselves. And the other thing, too, is many of the things that we pray for are states of being, or things, that maybe we’ve never had before. So it’s unfamiliar. So we’re afraid of the Unknown, right? So that’s another source of our fear is... there’s fear of the Unknown. And if we could give up the fear of the Unknown, because the Unknown contains the solution or it contains the joy. You know, the Unknown, we have a thought that the Unknown is going to bring some catastrophe. We call that catastrophic thinking. But what if the Unknown brought joy and what is known is the catastrophe? What we are already familiar with is what’s bringing the misery, right?

So we want to go into the Unknown where the answer is, where the solution is. And I think we have to be more faithful about the Unknown, more trusting, and not doubt that the Unknown has the answer. The Unknown has the... the joy.

SONDRA: Yeah, so I think we have a fear of letting go, too, which is surrender. So I want to give up doubt and fear of miracles, fear of God, fear of letting go and surrendering, and fear of the unknown, all of those fears.

MARKUS: Okay, all right. Okay. Well, today is the 224th day of the year, and this is Lesson 224.

SONDRA: God is my Father, and He loves his son.

MARKUS: God is my Father, and He loves His Son, and I am “His Son.”

Wow. So, I mean, I’m really on this day of, a special day astrologically, with the eclipse, we want to experience our true identity, which is secure, lofty, sinless, glorious,

and great.

MARKUS: Yeah. Free from guilt. Our true identity.

SONDRA: That’s what we ask for today in our health, in our business, in our life, that we can have our True Identity. And experience it. And feel it. Not just talk about it. I want to experience my true identity, which would be true. Joy and relaxation.

MARKUS: Yeah, because God’s will for me is perfect happiness. That’s very clear, right? Lesson #101. God’s will for me is perfect happiness. And, God being love is also happiness. (Lesson #103) And, My happiness and my function are one. (Lesson #66)

So it’s our function to be happy. It’s our function to be joyous. It’s our function for everything to work in our life perfectly with no glitches. And that is our identity, you know, because this, again, it’s a statement of identity. God is my father and he loves his son.

So it’s establishing that we are all sons and daughters of a divine creator. and that the Divine Creator’s will for us is perfect happiness. So there should be no reason for anything but joy.

And anything that’s not joy, we have miracles to undo it. Like we have the miracle of forgiveness to undo what’s not joy. So there is no problem. at all in us being our true identity. Actually, it’s hard to not be who we are. That’s where all the struggle and strife and misery comes in. When we’re trying to be something we’re not, that’s hard to do. And it’s also painful.

So today, let’s make this day where we stop being our false self and we decide to be our True Self.

SONDRA: Yeah, and what comes up for me is maybe I can’t do it. I want to let go of that thought.

MARKUS: Okay, that’s a good prayer… reveal what you would have me see… I’ve forgotten who I am, I’m weary, and I don’t know where I’m going, and you’re asking God to show you Who you are, and give you direction, and restore your awareness back to your True Self… and that’s the prayer. So let’s just take a couple of minutes to get in that vibration.

MARKUS: What I heard during that period was that it says, God loves his Son, right? God is my Father and He loves His Son.

So what do you think if your Father saw you struggling or being in a state that’s not happy, right? The Father would want you to have the solution, right? The Father would want to help you change that around. So it’s a matter that we all have some tendency, we all have some unwillingness, we all have some thing that we do… I don’t know, character trait or something that sabotages us, right?

And we can’t seem to maintain joy all the time. We have it sometime, but this constant joy, it seems to evade us. And then we have problems. We have situations. We have things that are painful or just, let’s just say they’re not supremely happy. And God’s will for us is for us to always be supremely happy and be in our True Identity in the heavenly state of awareness all the time.

So, all right. So why would we be unwilling to receive that help? Because God could do anything, right? Yeah. It says, don’t doubt. That’s what it said in that part in the Text. Give up your doubt. Miracles are there for you. You haven’t received them because you are afraid of receiving them. So maybe on this day, we can give up our fear of receiving miracles.

We can give up our unwillingness.

We can say, “Well, I recognize I have a tendency to sabotage myself in this way. But I’m giving that up today. And God, because God loves me, His love is much more powerful than my tendency to self-sabotage, right?

So, I think if we saw that God is my Father and He loves His Son, He loves His Daughter, He loves His Creation, and He wants His creation to be... as He created him. I am as God created me, right? That’s the Lesson spoken three times in Part One (of the Workbook).

So that would be the Will of God? The Will of God is that we be as we were created. And that would be in a state, a heavenly state of constant joy.

So, why can’t we ask the power of God today? Which today is a good day, because it’s the eclipse. It’s like when light and dark switch themselves around, you know. It’s like what was dark in our life now becomes light. And let’s just invoke that power. I invoke the power of God, the love of God. I invoke the love of God, which is what the... lesson is giving us. God is my Father and He loves His Son.

He loves me. God loves me. So God’s love will wipe away my unwillingness, wipe away my sabotage, wipe away my doubt, wipe away my lack of joy, wipe away my tendency, you know, whatever tendency I have… bad habit I have.

The love of God can wipe it away, can erase it. And I’m willing to forgive myself. I’m willing to come and say, “Look, God, I know I am my own worst enemy, and I’m the one that’s blocking it, and I’m the one that’s sabotaging the love, and I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to let your love in. God is my Father, and He loves His Son. I want to let the love in. I want to let the love of God be the miracle that erases my bad habits, you know, erases my fear, basically.

That’s what the Text was saying. God wants to give you the miracle, but you’re blocking it with the fear. Well, okay, so let’s ask God to help us handle that. It’s like we see we have the fear, we are owning the fear. We are willing to give up the fear, and we are asking for the help to erase the fear.

SONDRA: Yeah, we ask the power of God, the love of God, to wipe away our sabotage, our unwillingness, our tendency to block the healing, and we allow you, God, to erase the fear.

MARKUS: Yeah, I think that we can’t do any better than that, and that’s what this Lesson is bringing us to, is to face our fear, because that’s what we discovered is blocking it. It’s our fear and our doubt. Fear and doubt, fear and doubt, fear and doubt, right? And they feed one another.

“Oh, I doubt that it could happen.” And then, well, you get those results where nothing happened. And then you get more doubt.

SONDRA: And then you get angry at God because it didn’t work.

MARKUS: Right. And then you have fear that you can never make it. You can never have the miracle. You know. “Oh, I’ll never have the miracle.” So it’s like this is how the ego works. It wants to convince you that you don’t deserve miracles and that they’re not possible for you. Maybe for Jesus in the Bible, but certainly not you. And this is what we’re trying to break through today.

God is my Father, and He loves me. And he wants me to have miracles, which would be “get over my case!” Get over whatever it is I’m doing to sabotage my joy in life, in general, on all levels. You know, in every area of your life—your business, your relationships, your creative work, everything. Anything you’re using to sabotage yourself is not love.

And God is showing up today saying, “I love you, my child. You don’t need to have those things. Let’s get with it.”

SONDRA: And if we were our Real Self, we could have perfection in our body and perfection in our health and perfection in our business.

MARKUS: Well, let’s just say we already have the perfection, but we haven’t been allowing it. I would rather see it like the perfection is there, but we’re blocking it... It’s like a reservoir of an ocean ready to flow into us, but we got it dammed up. We can’t let it in, right? So we open the floodgate of the dam and just let it come in.

You know, I remember there were a couple paragraphs from Joel Osteen about... “the flood is coming. Let the flood in.” You know, like the flood was a good thing. The flood was a flood of God’s love that was about to come in. And we were opening the gate to let it in.

And I think that image of, you know, the miracle is there, but this little bit of fear that we maintain is blocking it. And it said the Holy Spirit would never give you something that would increase the fear. Yeah. So, let’s remove our fear of perfect happiness. Fear of miracles. Let’s remove our fear of a transformation. Let’s remove our fear of having something different that we’re not used to. Yeah. Because we’re used to our misery.

We’re not used to our Heaven on earth. Right. Let’s get used to experiencing our Heaven on earth and giving more attention to that.

SONDRA: Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

MARKUS: All right, I think that’s enough for today, don’t you?

SONDRA: Yeah, thank you. Bole Baba Ki Jai!

Warmly,

Sondra Ray & Markus Ray

The Gifts of God Program — a One Year study of A Course in Miracles is facilitated by Markus Ray and Sondra Ray. You can join anytime. Be part of “like minded people” working togther for our Self-Realization in this Life Time. Sondra Ray received ACIM when it first came out in 1976 and has been studying it and teaching it ever since. Markus Ray received ACIM in 1985 and studied for 17 years with Tara Singh, who was Ordained by the Scribe to teach ACIM in the USA and around the world. Together, Sondra & Markus have combined 90 years of experince in the study and application of A Course in Miracles. TAP TO EXPLORE

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The iPhone has revolutionized picture taking. I have nearly 30,000 images now stored up in my 3” x 6” “smart phone,” and about 3000 Videos. It’s almost overwhelming to keep track of them all. A good portion of them are of paintings—the art that has inspired me over the years. In scrolling through some of these groups of pictures and seemingly disparate collections from days gone by, I said to myself, “Where ever your cursor lands, this will be the next Art Look.”

It was not a “random” act of searching, but rather a deliberate act of “divining” to see what the “rod of revelation” would give me as tidbits of a very precise and activated Art Look—not necessarily of my preconceived making. Random is not “random,” in this case, but rather where “God would have me go.”

What would God show me in this “age of images” amidst the cache of cumulative collections of paintings and drawings I have amassed over the many years of visual storage in my iPhone? Well… here we go.

At the top of this conglomeate of compositions emerged this painting of Napoleon. Jacques-Louis David was in the thick of times, the best and the worst, of the French Revolution. He had not only a command of paint, but he had a command of the classical mode of presenting only the perfection of whatever scene or personage he was depicting. And… he had political access to the French upper class. He was in demand. We see everything in high definition, fit as a fiddle, cleaned up versions of the subject at hand—especially in this standing portrait of Napoleon in our National Gallery of Art.

I have walked by this painting a hundred times or more, and am always astounded by its presence. It is as if I could go right up to this person who swept Europe like a storm, and have some kind of meaningful exchange. He lives and breathes through David. Romaticized of course, but none the less present in all his glory. Mind you, the professional painter in this day, certainly at the level of David, was the chronicler, the journalist, and the maker of worlds. And yes, the “propagandist extraordinaire!”

Attention finds beauty everywhere. And when great facility of craft meets presence of the living moment, something incredible takes place. We have the images of the age in the age of images. Whether these be of reality or merely a sleight of hand, an “illusion of reality,” the convincing nature of the image will always turn our heads around to intrigue us. The weaver of illusions, according to prowess of craft nearly unsurpassed, can be embedded in the art itself.

Picasso did say that famous line—”Art is a lie that leads us to the truth.” Well, the exquisite “lie” is what we have before us in the image, and we must follow it down to the the ends of its earthly presence to glean the bedrock of its “more lofty truth.” Though in many eyes of the rest of European nobility, Napoleon was truly a scoundrel, he was a very adept one who had them all shaking in their boots.

It is not a random meeting I had with Napoleon over 9 years ago when we came to town, right after Mr. Trump was elected President. This portrait of Mr. Bonaparte by David put me in touch with some measure of Greatness in this town of Washington, either agreed upon or fought against, but nonetheless extraordinary in its ability to captivate and enthrall us. Here I can truly say I am seeing what it is to be American. We have access to facility. And here I am, with such facility, free of charge, to wax immortal as I desire, when the moment comes forth to spur me onward and upward in my ascent. I can gracefully saunter up to the National Gallery, on any given day, toward a moment outside of time, in an inexhaustible possibility of Art Looking.

You tell Raphael…

The Alba Madonna is in a special room in the National Gallery of Art. One has to weave through a number of other galleries to find it, but when one does… it’s like a meeting with Heaven on these earthly planes. Not to mention the perfect balance, the delicacy of line, the melding of a palette that is so harmonized in color that we scarcely could say we have ever seen something so spectrally perfect. All colors of the universe seem to be represented in the best of ways, and we can relax into a Peace of looking at this work that is far beyond our understanding, but undoubtedly palpable and present for us wholeheartedly through the grace of Raphael’s angelic genius.

On a couple of occasions, the painting was moved for whatever reason—perhaps renovations of the gallery, or on loan to another museum’s “special exhibition”—and I went through a kind of withdrawal in my deprivation of such beauty.

The babies in this picture, John and Jesus, are truly that. Their innocence and reality come forth. They are not “little men in babies’ bodies” as too often is the case in Madonna paintings by other Renaissance painters who attempted to paint Mary holding the baby Jesus. These two toddlers in this scene are the epitome of God’s gracefulness, completely convincing us of their “babyhood.” We can feel their synergy and the deep knowingness of the mission they are prepared to do together—beginning now in their absolute certainty.

You tell Raphael if you see him that this painting could go down as one of his best, though not as “well sung” in the annals of Art History as some of his Vatican scenes— like “The School of Athens,” or numerous exquisite portraits of the ruling class of his day—and such. But here we have his best brush forward in this Alba Madonna. The fact that it is round, brings all kinds of other powers to it. It transceds the conventions of the day, and enters into the realm of the sublime. It is like a vortex of miraculous manifestation, swirling in a spiral from the hand of a “painting angel,” giving us a glimpse of Life in the Heavenly Realms.

Why not? There are beings who have access to these visions beyond the good craft of their art, pushing through the transcendental portal to an application mere paint would never transmit by itself alone. The fact is their souls are there, in that Heavenly Reality of the formless, beyond the functions of the fleshly world we inhabit. They take us to where they abide, in the Spiritual Paradigm of Perfection we have never seen nor heard. Then they translate that Spritual Reality into paint. How do they do it but from the Gods Themselves?

They give us their vision, on a platter it seems, as in this case of this round impetus in the region of our Soul’s release. We are freed. We are lifted up. We are taken to heights of well-being we have hitherto never known—but now we do know. It’s right there in front of us, palpable in all its glory. A vision we can hold in our hearts and minds for the remainder of our days in this body’s life, be it ever long or short. Five seconds of seeing this “Nirvana of Visual Order” is worth one’s whole life.

Love is Forever

Right by my pics of the Alba Madonna in my 30,000 iPhotos was this snapshot of postage stamps. We have a kind of stamp that is classified “FOREVER.” This means if you purchased a stamp for 50¢s, and six months later the cost of that stamp went up to 58¢s, the stamp you bought at 50¢s would be FOREVER good to go, without any extra postage. Hence, FOREVER good in value, regardless of any postage price increases. Pretty good deal.

But now applied to this stamp LOVE, “forever” makes great sense. “Love is not love which alters, when it alteration finds.” says Shakespeare. LOVE is FOREVER, in other words, or it be a mere imposter, a substitute for the real eternal thing.

We could speculate about the time bound nature of relationships in our worldly domain, of the waxing and waning of political and influential forces, of the comings and goings of even huge empires, not more or less than the quickly fleeting changes of a fickle fashion—but when it comes to Love in the ABSOLUTE, “Love alters not with his [time’s] brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.”

Love is Forever, or it be not Love. Let’s aspire to that Love. The “FOREVER” kind.

A Contrast of Thorns and Roses

I always stop by this 15th century Italian painting of the Madonna. Not because it gives me a sublime encounter with the refined perfection of the Alba Madonna by Raphael, but because of its a daring and edgy use of an interlacing of roses, stems and thorns in the background. There is a clarity of line, and of a linear drawing mode that takes precedent over the painterly blends of chiaroscuro developed by later painters such a Leonardo, and further enhanced in the Mannerisms of Caravaggio and Tinteretto.

You can see what I mean when I said all too often the baby’s head of the Christ can suggest a more mature boy’s head on a baby’s body. This depiction is still in the time frame of a toddler, but not as gracious as Raphael’s Christ Child in the Alba Madonna. Early to mid 15th century Florence was the testing ground for the high Renaissance of the later years of the 15th century, leading into the early 16th century works of Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo, Titian, etc.

Before them we had Botticelli, Mantegna, in the mid 15th Century, and Giotto in the 14th Century. Italy was the seedbed of inovation. I suppose I like this Madonna because it would be more in keeping with the way I would paint it. It has a hint of the Northern Schools in it. The hard edged lines of the Belgian and German painters, the emphasis on a jewel like color almost compartmentalized, like stained glass windows, makes for a graphically powerful package. It is not feigning to be naturalistic. It is comfortable staying in the realms of the symbolic, the emblamatic, and even the heraldic. It uses a flattened version of layers—only three in this case: The Christ in the front; the Madonna in the middle; and the roses and thorns in the background. These layers are firmly kept and elegantly rendered to form a three tiered conjuction of the Mother and Child’s magnificence.

Peacock Feathers in our Living Room

Every living room should not be without a vase of peacock feathers. They are considered elements of immortality, because the peacock is purported to be able to eat poison and not die. There is something about that “eye” of blue on a field of brilliant turquoise in the feathers that suggests a “light at the end of our blackened tunnel,” or a beacon of hope at the end of our long haul, through the dark night of our soul. Peacocks and their feathers give us an immortal burst of spiritual light that can wrest us away from any forebodings of doom and gloom.

It’s no accident we keep these right by our Divine Mother Altar. She blesses us with immortality, and the peacock feathers remind us of this. We are happy to have them around.

The Hand of Madame Moitessier by Ingres

Ingres painted the high born and wealthy. Madame Moitessier, the wife of a Parisian financier, provided an imposing subject. This hand captures the whole stature of her poise and contenance. You need only see this hand to get her whole Presence. Such is the mastery of Ingres in paint.

Her hand is actually more beautiful than her face. She is imposing, and a bit formidable in her presence. As a man, I would not feel caressed or cuddled by her, yet something in her hand is more inviting, more facile and free, more caring and compassionate than her overall portrait in a black laced raiment.

Ingres does his usual “super detailed” perfectionism. Not that Madame Moitessier is void of elegance and beauty, but there is a “caution sign” that seems to whisper to us in the unseen details of her deportment. “Come close at your own risk.” Ingres gets this across in the most subtle of ways. I hope he got duly paid for the thing, considering his cautiously mood provoking honesty.

Have You Ever Seen Such an Orange?

I don’t know the painter, nor is it important that I do. I am not endeavoring to give you “art history.” I want to give you an Art Look. Honing your abilty to see, and to see something sublime, not merely being historically correct and well noted, requires to some degree I don’t really care about all the details—other than the ones that move you to a meeting with the actual of what is really there.

We do not need to “know” anything when we chance upon a snake. We will come to instant attention and head in the right direction. We don’t need to “know” anything when we see the bloom of a lily or smell its fragrance wafting throughout the atmosphere of our hearts. We are in the flow of its beauty and presence in our life. Instantaneously, we come upon it, and Life is ever unfolding in this fashion.

So I don’t need to “know” anything about this painting of an apostle, most likely Luke, scribing one of the gospels.

But what I do need to know is how do I feel seeing that Orange? Have you ever seen such a beautiful Orange? It almost “pops off the canvas” it is so luminous. It lights up our whole room of our heart with the warmth of Divine Love. The bull is a symbol of Luke, and the darkish, grayish umber of its hide sets off the Orange even more. And the olive green frock is the perfect compliment to the Orange. It sets it off like no other color can. Green and Orange are “Secondary Colors” with a common Yellow in between. They harmonize by virtue of this common Yellow on the Color Wheel.

Whoever painted this apostle scribing a gospel knew how color works, and made sure we “got it.” He woke up one day and said, “I am going to paint the holiness of Orange today.” And he did. And here it is.

Our Divine Mother Altar

This painting by Naga Brand gives Energy out to the Universe, and mostly to us and through us, emanating out from our Universe. It abides in our Living Room. We live in it’s Presence and are blessed by it every day. There is nothing it’s Holiness cannot do when we ask of it to set us straight.

An Altar is a Relationship you set up to make contact with your Sacred Nature. There is a Divine Connection that comes about through attention paid to an Altar. Every home should have one, in our opinion. It gets us aligned with Higher Laws. It keeps us on the way of our souls to realize the Absolute in this lifetime, including the Absolute of our own Immortal Nature.

We “sit” in front of this Altar and empty our minds of our own agendas, and ask to be shown directions for our life. “What would you have me do? Where would you have me go? What would you have me say, and to whom?” The Divine Mother usually gives us the directions we need for the day. And it is a “Working Relationship” we have with Her as a result of sitting before Her Altar.

Huichol Beaded Bull from Mexico

A few years back we were speakers on a Cruise along the Pacific Coast of Mexico with some other Immortalists. We stopped off in Puerto Vallarta for a day, and walked in the town. There was a shop that sold these Huichol Indian’s beaded works of art, mostly on wooden sculptures of animal figurines.

First the animal is carved in wood, then coated with a thin layer of beeswax. Next, carefully and painstakingly, patterns of tiny little colored beads, each not even a millimeter wide, are pressed into the soft wax in incredible rainbow patterns of intricate geometry, and cover the contours of the form of the animal. The result is what you see below. This is a Brahma Bull we brought back from Puerto Vallarta. It is a Nandi, the transport of Shiva. I have it under a picture of Amma, the Divine Mother.

We need colorful things in our life. Color “picks up our spirits,” especially color that “hits us” in the gut, and gives us an experience of the rainbow. There is something powerful about the order of color in the natural frequency of the rainbow that is very healing. These Huichol Beaded Sculptures do that. They lift our Spirits into another dimension of Joy. Just look at this Bull for a minute and see what I mean. You will be “lifted up.” I guarantee it.

Paintings of the Life Force

I am going to end with this Six Part Painting of The Life Force. You draw your own conclusions, and delve into it’s Presence and Meaning for you.

I painted it a few years ago.

May its Spiral of the Life Force give you a new birth of Freedom.

Remember, Random is not Random. Your Attention, earnestly given to this Present Moment, can find Beauty Everywhere. This Art Look was specifically composed with help of the Divine Forces—with You in mind. You are part of the Life Force as much, if not MORE, as any “work of art.” In fact, You are the “Ultimate Work of Art.” You are as God Created You, and God only creates Masterpieces. Just remember that. All Beauty resides in YOU!! You are an incarnation of Beauty Itself.

Bole Baba Ki Jai!

Love,

—MARKUS—

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What is forgiveness? So let’s start there, and then we’re on Lesson 222, it’s the 222nd day of the year, and let’s see how it flows.

SONDRA: Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not even occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin, and in that view, are all of your sins forgiven. What is sin except a false idea about God’s Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the will of God.

SONDRA: Yeah, and I wanted to be in the next level. I’ve been asking for that.

An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. The mind is closed and will not be released. The thought protects projection, tightening its change so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure, less easily accessible to doubt and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection, and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal?

MARKUS: All right so grievances, attack thoughts, judgments, uh anger, those sorts of thoughts… unforgiving thoughts it calls them, unforgiving thoughts… those keep us weighted down in the ego’s thought system, right? Because the ego is composed of such thoughts, so in order to ascend and rise up, we have to have some way of erasing those heavy thoughts.

They’re like balls and chains, you know, and they’re holding us down and they’re preventing us from rising. And if we don’t use forgiveness to neutralize those thoughts, which is what we’re doing, forgiveness is saying, “Well, I’m not judging it. I’m not judging it bad. I’m just seeing that it happened at that level. And it was a lesson God would have me learn. And I’m forgiving the whole matter. Because I see that at a higher level, it didn’t happen,” right? At my Higher Self level, those things didn’t happen; they weren’t concerns.

And if I can just see it long enough to let it go a little bit, it doesn’t weigh me down anymore. And it’s easier for me to rise in my ascension. And this is why forgiveness is the key to happiness. I mean, ultimate happiness is that you realize your true self and you ascend into your Christ self. And any unforgiving thought is going to block that rising up.

SONDRA: An unforgiving thought does many things. In frantic action it pursues its goal twisting and overturning what it seems is interfering with its chosen path. Distortion is its purpose, and the means by which it would accomplish it as well. It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality, without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view.

Yeah, well, this morning I woke up and I just remembered I had this thought, “Give up all blame!”

MARKUS: Yeah, that’s a good one.

SONDRA: Yeah, so I was trying to look at, wow, maybe these people that left, I’m kind of blaming them or something, you know, and I have to give up all blame.

MARKUS: Yeah, I think anything uncomfortable, our first reaction usually is to blame something outside of ourself for that happening, right? When really it’s some kind of unresolved thing in ourself, or impurity in ourself, that has attracted that.

And there it is. So, I mean, I think if we could just forgive ourself for doing that and forgive ourself for blaming ourself, then we can forgive other people and stop blaming them. It’s like, yeah, blame is always off the track.

SONDRA: Yeah.

MARKUS: You know, and it doesn’t get you anything. It just feeds the discontent, the uncomfortable feeling, the bad feelings. It just feeds the bad feelings.

SONDRA: Yea. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks and waits and judges not. He who would not forgive must be judging, for he must justify his failure to forgive. Oh yeah, But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth, exactly as it is.

Yeah, so you’re judging. When you’re not forgiving, you’re still judging, obviously.

MARKUS: Yeah, and we think we judge others, but they’re just the mirror of the judgment we have about ourselves. So if we have a judgment about someone else, it’s usually the deepest part of that judgment is that’s the judgment we have about ourselves.

SONDRA: Do nothing then and let forgiveness show you what to do, through Him who is your guide, your savior and protector, strong in hope and certain of your ultimate success. He has forgiven you already, for such is His function given Him by God. Now must you share His function and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God.

Okay, so now are we ready for 221?

MARKUS: No, it’s 222 today.

SONDRA: Oh, 222, right.

MARKUS: 222 is an interesting Lesson. It’s like, the first one was, Peace to my mind, let all my thoughts be still. And then now this next one is, God is with me. I live and move in Him.

Now, this lesson is very interesting because it talks about the physical nature of our being. And even though the Course says you’re not a body, we’re still living in a physical dimension and we have to take care of the body. And this lesson kind of spiritualizes the body and everything we have to do in the body. So I just want to keep that in mind.

SONDRA: Okay.

Father, we have no words except your name upon our lips, and in our minds as we come quietly into Your presence now, and ask to rest with you in peace a while.

God is with me. I live and move in Him.

MARKUS: Yeah, well, I love those lines where it says “The air I breathe, the food I eat, the water which sustains me.” You know, it’s like it’s honoring the physical dimension. It’s also saying, “Spirit, which directs my actions, offers me its thoughts.” So it’s saying that your mind is focused on spirit, but you’re also clear at every level.

Even at the body level, you’re seeing the holiness of water, you’re seeing the holiness of the food, you’re seeing the holiness of the air that you breathe. And you’re transmuting even the body level to something holy, right? And that’s what I love about this Lesson so much.

So people that want to deny the body, and they want to use that lesson, “I’m not a body, I’m free,” and they want to deny the body… it’s like they’re missing something.

There’s something about, well, “Yes, you’re not a body, but you’re inhabiting a body, and you’re using a body, and you have to treat the body in a reverential way and use it in a very holy way. So you have to take care of it in a sacred manner.”

So I think this lesson really establishes that. So read that first prayer again, that first part.

SONDRA: God is with me. He is my source of life, the life within, the air I breathe, the food by which I am sustained, the water which renews and cleanses me. He is my home wherein I live and move. The Spirit, which directs my actions, offers me its thoughts and guarantees my safety from all pain.

MARKUS: Yeah. So it’s saying, yes, you have a spirit and your mind is focused on that. And the spirit’s giving you miraculous thoughts, right? Thoughts of God. Spirit’s giving you thoughts of God.

But then you’re also using the body in the service of those Thoughts. And you’re taking good care of it with the air you breathe, the water you drink, the food by which you are sustained. I mean, those are also holy entities. And I think we have to see that… that this lesson, in particular, establishes the holiness of the body.

And yes, it’s a neutral thing. The body is a neutral thing. But you can either, like everything else, you can put the body in hell or you can put the body in heaven… and use it to serve heaven or you can use it to serve... the hell you made up. So, you have to decide. And this lesson helps you decide.

God is with me. I live and move in Him. Now “move” implies you’re in a physical dimension you’re moving around in this physical dimension. You’re doing things. You’re acting. You’re extending. You’re creating, you know. You’re moving in that holy environment. God is with me. I live and move in Him… so everything is God! The spirit is God; the mind is God; and everything in the physical universe is God, and you’re not seeing any separation.

And I think that’s the higher truth, you know.

SONDRA: So okay, anything else? No. I think, you know, it makes me want to send this to a couple people who think they’re atheists. I don’t know if they’d read it, but... Oh, well. Huh? I don’t know.

MARKUS: You can try it, but people who are convinced that there’s no supernatural power running things, I don’t know.

SONDRA: But if you’ve read this, how could you avoid it?

MARKUS: Well, that’s... between them and their creator.

SONDRA: Yeah, I know. Okay, thank you. Bole Baba Ki Jai!

Love, Sondra & Markus

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A “SUNDAY TALK”

AN AUSPICIOUS DAY:

Miracles Are Possible to Have

9—AUGUST—2026

with

Markus Ray

Welcome to this Gifts of God Sunday Talk. I’m so happy to be here, especially on this day. This is day 221 of the year, and 221 marks an auspicious, event, in my opinion. It’s when we complete Part I of the Workbook of A Course in Miracles, and we begin Part II. And I’ve often talked about this difference between the two sections.

Markus Ray giving his “SUNDAY TALK” on A Course in Miracles

And Part I is the… undoing of our ego. You know, you have to understand, if you’re a new student of A Course in Miracles, and you come into it, and it’s telling you that your thought doesn’t mean anything, and that your meaningless thoughts are showing you a meaningless world, that that’s quite a shock to your… your mental system.

And most people have never heard such things. They don’t even know there’s a distinction between your “self you made up,” called the “ego,” and this Self that God created, called your Higher Self. They don’t even know that’s a… shift or a difference, right? So, to be told that this self you made up is erroneous, and you need to dismantle it, is quite a big deal.

AN AUSPICIOUS DAY—a “Sunday Talk” by Markus Ray

And it takes 221 days to wrap your head around that, if you’re a new student, you know? And maybe some people haven’t ever even heard the importance of forgiveness in their life. And they’re just walking around, you know, carrying a lot of grievances, carrying a lot of memories from their past. Things that they haven’t let go of, and they don’t see that there’s a process of cleaning all that stuff out.

Well, okay, so Part I of the Workbook, which is 221 days, is all about that, cleaning it out, cleaning it out, dismantling the ego, seeing that, we are the cause of our suffering, taking responsibility, seeing that our thoughts produce our results, you know, those kinds of things are talked a lot about in the first section of A Course in Miracle Workbook.

But now we get to Part II, and there’s a bit of a shift. And if we’ve kept up in that period, and we’ve done the lessons, you know, diligently, in keeping with what the instructions are, we’ve probably undone enough in ourself that we can receive this new energy.

Well, what is the new energy?

You know, in the Text of A Course in Miracles, it often talks about the undoing process, you know, letting go of fear, letting go of guilt, letting go of anger, letting go of your attack thoughts, forgiving your past, all of that, talks about that. And then it says at some point, you will be almost lifted up, or given revelation by God Himself, or Herself.

And that God will take the final step in your process, right? In your process of awakening, in your process of… of, like, ascension towards your enlightenment, whatever that process is, God will take that final step.

And it says that many times… in the Text. But now, when we’re in Part II, in the introduction, it says it directly. It’s like, you… have prepared yourself enough that… you are silent enough inside. You have stopped your thought, enough, and you’re in this kind of stillness of this inner peace, right? You’re in this kind of empty zone of inner peace, where you’re… you’re just sort of letting go, and you’re not judging.

You don’t quite know what the next step is, but that’s okay. You have a good relationship with the Unknown, and okay, here you are in this kind of expectancy of something to… be shown to you, right?

And… the Course calls that revelation, and it’s not any big deal. It’s not like you have to be on some island in Patmos and getting some bolt of light from the clouds… telling you that, “Yeah, you’re the chosen one to have this revelation.”

No, everybody has access to divine revelation. But they have to be clear enough, and they have to be empty enough, or they have to have forgiven enough of their past that their past isn’t a factor, and it’s not affecting them, and it’s not intruding upon their mind in this present moment. So you’re basically empty. You’ve kind of emptied yourself out. And that’s the whole point of the First Part I of the Workbook, in… Part I of A Course in Miracles is to empty our mind out. Empty our mind out of all the junk as much as we can.

And so, it does a pretty good job of that, I think, Part One of the Course in Miracles. So now, here we are in present time today, starting this new action, right? Where we’re actually asking! It said in the introduction, and I think we have to remember this. We’re actually asking God to make that step toward us.

We’re saying, “I’m ready. I know that forgiveness is the key to happiness. I know I have to totally clean my mind of any attack thought, or any past… problem that I have, that was my responsibility, and I have to clean that up and let it go.”

And we’re all at that place. We know anything not pure joy from our past or in our present is our responsibility to clean up, forgive, and let go. We know that. So, okay, here we are. We’re in that place of, kind of, emptiness. Or silent expectancy. And now we’re actually asking the Divine Creator to give us miracles, give us the revelations, right?

So, I think that this, this is, not a small moment in our study of A Course in Miracles. It’s a very large moment. It’s almost like we’re ascending into Christ’s consciousness on this day, and we’re actually asking to be led into this consciousness. And it’s being given. It’s, like, it’s not a block on God’s side. You know, we can’t say, “Oh, God let us down.”

No, we can’t… we can’t really say that. We could say, “We still have unwillingness. We still have doubt, we still have resistance.”

Now, that would block it. We still have unforgiveness, that would block it. You know? So we do still have the possibility that we could block it, but we also know enough that we are doing that blocking. It’s not from God’s side, withholding something from us because we’re bad people, right? No, it’s not that at all. There is no punishment in the mind of God. There is no withhold in the mind of God. Any block that would prevent that flow would be from our side, where there’s something that we have to adjust, or let go of or forgive that would be the block. So, that could still be the case.

But at least we know enough that we know that’s our case, right? We know we’re responsible. So if we’re not receiving, we know that there’s something in us blocking the receiving of it. At least that’s a good place to be, which is where we are.

Now, today, the… Introduction said, you know, you’re gonna be given a thought, and then you’ll have 10 lessons, and then those short lessons will be related to that question or that theme. So today’s… theme was, “What is forgiveness?” right? We start with that. And Sondra said, “Well, well, yeah, but I thought we… I thought we, talked a lot about forgiveness in Part 1, and now you’re saying we’re gonna start talking about forgiveness again, and is this similar, or is it on another level, or just what exactly is it? Why are we talking about forgiveness again if you just said that Part I was to clear us, you know, from stuff, and now we’re talking about forgiveness, which is the clearing again?”

And I said, “Well, yes, but it’s at a much higher level.”

How it’s presenting forgiveness now is… is at a much simpler, succinct, and higher level that we’re ready to receive, right? So, the first line says, “Forgiveness is the recognition that what you thought your brother did to you never occurred.”

That’s the line. Now, that is a very powerful line.

And we have to get… how is that different than the forgiveness that it was talking about before? Well, it’s not essentially different, but it’s at a different level, all right?

So, when we’re at a certain level with forgiveness, we’re still very much preoccupied with ego concerns and, you know, how we live and move in this world, and we’re still kind of stuck there, right?

So then, alright, let’s just say you’ve got a friend, and your friend, takes advantage, or steals money, or, you know, does something hurtful, and it really happened at a certain level, right? They really did take the money, let’s just say. Now, you come to this level, and it says, “Forgiveness is recognizing what your brother did to you never occurred.” Now, you’re gonna say, how can you say that? It actually happened. They actually took the money. They stole the money.

Well, it happened at the ego level. It didn’t happen at the level of the Higher Self.

Because the Higher Self wouldn’t have been, whatever. It wouldn’t see its well-being related to, you know, financial stability or financial matters, it wouldn’t… it wouldn’t relate its safety to that. Even though, now, that could provide safety, it wouldn’t… at a higher level. There’s something higher that gives you the safety, not money, right?

So, you could say when you are in that Higher Self, that’s [money’s] not a concern. Therefore, to that Higher Self, that infraction never occurred, because it’s not an issue. Right? So, the Higher Self does not rely on money to sustain it.

Like, Lesson 50 says, I am sustained by the love of God.

Now, the love of God could manifest in good financial standing, it could manifest that, and it would manifest that, but the love of God itself is not dependent on that level, right? So when you reach this higher consciousness, or you reach this Christ’s consciousness, It’s not sustained by lower-level concerns, including money.

Not that you wouldn’t have a good flow of money if you were in the sustaining part of your Divine Creator, but you wouldn’t use that level to judge, to… feel off, to feel bad, to feel, grievances toward, right? You wouldn’t fall down into that level and form grievances. So, when it says, Forgiveness is recognizing what you thought your brother did to you never occurred, it means it didn’t occur at the higher level. It didn’t occur at your Higher Self level.

So, the real forgiveness, I mean, when you’re well practiced and when you’re adept… the real forgiveness is shifting totally out of the ego’s thought system into the Higher Self’s thought system. And in that Higher Thought system, there’s nothing to forgive, because it didn’t happen.

And I know this is… this is a big leap, but this is what Part II of the Workbook is trying to get us to now.

So we’re going from here to there.

And that’s silence, that’s… that’s like emptiness, that’s like the stillness of the peace of God. And in that reality, which is your Higher Reality, all that junk doesn’t exist there.

It doesn’t… it doesn’t go there. So that’s why it can say, Forgiveness is recognizing that what you thought your brother did didn’t occur. Well, at that level, it didn’t occur, and will never occur. Because when you reach those heights, all this other stuff down here, it becomes like it said—it’s meaningless thought. And meaningless thought will show you a meaningless world, and then that is the source of your fear, because you’re indulging in it, right? You’re… you’re still at that level. You think the meaningless thought is not meaningless. You think it’s real. And then that engenders fear in you, of course.

“Well, if my best friend stole the money… where am I safe in the world?”

Or, you know, we had this experience in South America once where, I don’t know if you’ve traveled in South America much, but the… the conditions and the rules down there are a lot different.

And, like, for instance, we flew into Venezuela one time. And then when we got to our place, we had some very wonderful people taking care of us, we noticed there were a lot of things in our suitcase missing.

Including, I had a… I had a hard drive, like, I had an external hard drive that I was using to back up our computers, right? And that was missing.

And… guess what? It was the people in the airline that stole the stuff. Because our bags had never left the possession of the airline, which meant it’s people in the airline stealing your stuff, going through your stuff, right? And that would never occur in Europe, or U.S, or most northern countries like that. You could trust you were safe. If you got your bag to the airline, you could pretty much trust that it would be fine, even if it wasn’t locked. It could get there to the next place, and it would be all good. But not in South America. You cannot make that assumption, because their standard of integrity and their standard is much different, alright?

So, this is what I’m saying. When we’re at the ego level. Meaningless thought engenders a lot of fear, and we live in this world of fear. And so Part I of the Workbook is trying to get us to see that, trying to get us to see, you know, how we make up our own fear, our own guilt, our own anger, how we make all that stuff up, and that’s what we have to let go of, that’s what we have to unravel, we have to take responsibility for, you know, and so we have 220 days of doing that.

Well, now, the first day of this New Program, and it is a New Program, it’s saying, “You know. I see you’ve worked on that.” Jesus is, like, saying, “I see you’ve worked on that, and you’ve really taken responsibility, and you’ve really unraveled, and you’ve really gone through, and you’ve made your inventories, and you’ve forgiven people, and you’ve really done the work, right? But now I want to take you to this other level, where you don’t have to be so concerned about that anymore, because at this level, none of that stuff happened. None of it. And… We want to stay up here. We want to stay in that… Awareness of our Higher Self…”

And all the protection that comes with that, right… when we have the certainty, and we have the Thoughts that are only in that Self that God created, we don’t have the fear thoughts that attracted all that crap in the first place, or we don’t have the attack thoughts that attracted all that crap in the first place. We’ve totally risen above that level, because attack thoughts, fear thoughts, guilt thoughts only exists in the ego.

They only exist in hell. They don’t exist in heaven.

And so… so Part I of the Workbook, we’re kind of always bridging. We’re always like, “Okay, here’s the hell we made up, and here’s the route to heaven, and that’s forgiveness, and we gotta go on that route, or we gotta cross over that bridge, and we are clear that that’s the bridge,” right? We have to go over, and that’s very clear to us. And we’re in the process of leaving hell behind, and going over the bridge, and getting to the door to heaven.

Well, okay, now you get to Part II, and there’s the door. And are you gonna go through? Because once you go through, you don’t have any of these concerns about down there anymore. Not at all.

It’s… You’re out of it.

You’re in the stillness of the peace of God.

You’re in the… how did it say? one of the Lessons, I am among the ministers of God. I will step back and let Christ lead the way. I will step back and let Him lead the way.

Well, you’re in the presence of those Beings. You’re in there with Babaji and the Dream Team and the Divine Mother, and you’re just there, and you deserve to be there. You’ve earned the right to go there. By doing 220 days of getting that Forgiveness is your key to happiness. And you’re certain of that.

You’re certain that forgiveness, this is a Course in forgiveness, and you’re gonna apply it, no matter what, no matter what it looks like. And now that you have that certainty, Jesus is saying, “Okay, I want to take you one more step. Come with me, and we’ll… we’ll go up another step. And in this world, all that crap never happened.”

So that’s miraculous. And then, in that space, because it’s a space of silence, it’s a space of saying, “Wow, I’m not gonna use my ego thought system anymore. I don’t know what the new one is. But I do know that that one is not the one I want, and not the one that works, and is not the one that’s gonna get me out of hell. It’s gonna keep me in hell, so I’m not gonna use that thought system anymore. I don’t trust it. I don’t trust my own thought. I’m gonna… I’m gonna leave it. And now, I’m gonna be led. I will step back and let Him lead the way, right?” That’s, like, Lesson #155, I think. And then, Into…into His presence would we enter now.

So we’re entering into this Christ Consciousness Presence in Part II, and… there’s… a gift! There’s… they call it a boon in India. It’s a boon, it’s a gift, it’s a… a divine dispensation for our due diligence, right? We’ve been duly diligent for 220 days doing the practice, and then, okay, all of a sudden, Jesus says, “Okay, come on, you guys, let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s take another step, and let’s go through the door to heaven. Let’s go through it. We’re here. We’ll walk through it together.”

So, that’s what we’re doing today. We’re walking through the door together.

And it’s not like a door you made, or a door I made, or a door even Jesus made. It’s a door God made. It’s a door God established… that every creation, everything in creation can go through this door and be in… Reality. Joy, love, peace… the gifts of God are there. And we can claim them in that… domain.

It’s a new domain for us, because why? Well, we’re used to being in the domain of hell that we made up. And now, Jesus is saying, “Okay, I know you see that, that you made that up, and it’s not really your destiny to stay stuck there. But today, on this day, we’re gonna go through this door, and we’re gonna have a new place to live.”

And that’s… that’s what this is. All of Part II is imparting to us the revelation… of our Divine Source. These are revelations, these Lessons. Like, even today, Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still, right? That’s 221, that’s the first one. Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still.

Okay, so that’s, like, that’s the two worlds. Peace to my mind. If your mind is really in a state of peace, I mean really in a state of peace, that means no conflict whatsoever, no concerns, no fears, no guilts, no attack thoughts. It’s peace… it’s basically… OMMMM… and nothing else… that would be the heavenly state.

So, Peace to my mind. And then it says, Let all my thoughts, which are your ego thoughts, be still.

They… they’re not activated anymore. They’re done. They’re stopped. You’ve ended them. They’re still. They’re not moving. They’re not manufacturing bad effects, because they’re still. You stopped them. You saw, “These are my illusions. I will not perpetuate them anymore. I will not give energy to them anymore. They’re done. And I am still.”

And that’s the purpose of meditation, by the way. The purpose of meditation is to empty your mind into the empty zone, the still place. And then in that still place, you see the Glory of the Peace of God. The glory of it. The beauty of it. The reality of it.

And the fact… then you can say with certainty, “Oh yes, forgiveness is recognizing all those things I thought my brothers did to me never occurred.”

They never occurred at this level.

But I couldn’t see it, because I wasn’t at this level. I was down in the muck with them too, with my own muck. And now, at this level, you don’t have the muck.

No muck. No muck. Clear. Still. Silent.

The stillness of the peace of God is mine. That’s a later lesson in Part II. We’re entering into the stillness of the peace of God.

So, the Gifts of God, by the way, Peace is the first one, are being given to us now, not as ideas. Not as ideas, but as actualities… actualities.

So when the Course says, Peace to my mind… Peace comes to your mind. It’s not your peace. It’s not a peace you manufactured. It’s the peace of God being given to you.

It’s the first revelation. God says, “Well, You’ve done your due diligence. You’ve stayed with it for 220 days. And now you know the pitfalls of how you fool yourself. How you put yourself in hell. You know how you do that. And you’re gonna stop doing that. And when you stop doing that, and you forgive everyone and everything, most of all yourself, you’re ready to receive this first Revelation.”

Which is just Peace.

I feel… quiet inside. Still. And I can see the beauty of creation. In everything, everywhere I look. And the truth of the Lesson is coming to me, you know, 29 says, God is in everything I see. 30 is, God is in everything I see, because God is in my mind.

You start to see God in everything you see. You start to see your mind of God’s Thoughts. My mind holds only what I think with God? All right, you start to see those Thoughts in that Mind.

My mind holds only what I think with God.

God is in everything I see, because God is in my mind. So, those are the thoughts of peace, and joy, and beauty, and love, and compassion.

Now, alright, if somebody throws something at you where they’re not in that peace of God, you can deal with it. You can say, “Oh, my brother, I see your predicament, I see your suffering in that world of the ego.”

And perhaps you can give them a higher thought to help them undo it, and take a step out of it. Like, you had to take steps out of your ego world.

You had to take many steps to get out of your ego world, and you see, it’s a journey, it’s… it’s probably the most serious, important journey you ever took in your whole life. And if some brother comes along and they say, “What do I do?” Well, you put them on the first steps to give them a new thought. “Well… Stop judging. Stop attacking. You have to decide.”

You know, I had an email today, it’s interesting, on this day of this Lesson #221, I got this email from a client we had last year… in 2025, last October, almost a year ago.

And he was going through some marital problems.

And we gave him a session, and we got down to his personal lie and everything, and we got real clear. And then we even had a session with him and his wife, who were having these arguments, right?

And we have this process we call the 8-minute process, where each person gets to talk for 8 minutes. And… not use attack thoughts, not use… “you” sentences, like, “You did this, and you did that.” Just express, “I observed this. I feel like this when I observe this, and what I need is, right?” So it’s non-violent communication.

Well, so we had them do this 8-minute process, and they fought the whole time. They were blaming and fighting and… and maintaining the war. And we said to them, “Well, you guys are attached to this war between yourselves and you’d have to decide to give up the war if you want to… heal this relationship.”

Well, so that was the truth that we made them clear about in not very long, one session, right? We got very clear, and we were clear with them.

Well, of course, when people are… given the option—you know, the ego’s rule is “To seek, but make sure it never finds what it seeks,” right? So they could say they’re trying to seek peace and harmony in their relationship, but their egos don’t want that at all. So they left us behind and went to therapy.

Now, therapy is not necessarily gonna heal you of your dilemma. It may be… It makes you, you know, reiterate what the dilemma is, but it doesn’t necessarily heal it. It doesn’t demand that you make a decision to step out of it, right? So… anyhow, they went to therapy, This was about a year ago, and we never heard from them again.

And now, today, I get an email from him saying, “Oh, We spent thousands of dollars on therapy, we’re still arguing, and by the way, you know, I went off the wagon.” He had, like, an addiction. I think he was using cocaine or something, and he went back on it and spent thousands of dollars on that, and now he’s in debt, and now he’s a mess.

So, and he said, at the very end, he said, yeah, “But I know I’m not a bad person.” Well, of course you’re not.

So I wrote him and I said, “Look, of course you’re not a bad person, you’re a God-created person, but you’re stuck in your ego dynamics of this constant conflict, right? And you two, as a couple, have not made the decision to have a conflict-free relationship. So, until you do that, no therapist can help you. So either you end it and go your own way, or you decide you want a conflict-free relationship, and you start behaving as such.”

And… and so I was just honest with him, and… that was my first… that was my first assignment on this day where I’m supposed to be in the stillness of the peace of God, right? Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still, and the first thing that comes at me is this, you know, client from the past who at least it seemed like we hadn’t helped them at the moment, but I think we did get through to him something, or he wouldn’t be writing me back, right? So, he’s reaching out, and I’m just… telling him the same truth that we told him a year ago… “You know? You guys are in a war, and you have to decide to end the war; and when you do that, maybe our work with you can be helpful, but until you do that, not even a therapist could help you, if you want to maintain this war.” So, I was just honest.

And, that was my first assignment today. So, like, the more you enter into the peace of God, it’s like your… your assignments may get a little tricky, because God’s gonna send you people that… that are not in peace, right? And you have to say something to them that may give them a little… bolt of light that could be their guiding light out of their tunnel, you know? And, so that’s what I got. I got… actually, I got a couple of those… couple of those clients today after we did our podcast.

So just because you’re in the peace of God, don’t think that everybody else around you is gonna be. In fact, you’ll be tested to see how how you can stay in that. Stay in that vibration, right? So Jesus is here to keep you in that vibration, but it’s… it’s a constant, vigilance. You know?

Somewhere in the Text, it’s talking about, these, kind of mindsets that you have to be in, and one of the things it says, “Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom,” right? So, which is basically, “Be vigilant for your Higher Self being in a state of peace,” right?

Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. Meaning, you gotta pay attention, like, when things are thrown at you, and you could very easily get caught up and come down from your peace and joy into a kind of engagement with the mess, right? No, you don’t want to do that. You want to stay up here.

People are gonna come to you with their mess. But you cannot go down into their mess. Not at all. You have to stay in your peace, in your stillness of the peace. Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still. You don’t want to have a judgment about them, or yourself, or you don’t want to go down in, you don’t want to make them wrong. You just say, “Well, I notice you’re suffering. And you’re suffering because you’re still stuck in these ego thoughts that are making a war. And a war is hurting you. And are you ready to end the war?”

You know, just be clear. And there, you’re not going down, but you’re giving… you’re giving a kind of a ladder up out of their mess, right?

So that’s, that’s something that, as miracle workers, we’re gonna be asked to do that.

There are gonna be people that come to it. They could just be friends, you know… or family members, or whatever. And it could look this way, or it could look that way.

It’s like right now, I don’t… I don’t have much contact with my sister, but I give her blessings every day. I have her picture, and think about her every day, send her blessings. I know she doesn’t want to engage with me, but that’s okay, but I can send her blessings anyway.

So I’m not gonna go down into the mess anymore, but I can keep myself high and pull that whole relationship up into that somehow. At least in my mind. We have dominion over our minds, so where we keep our mind is our business, and we have to keep it in this new place. It’s a new place—The stillness of the peace of God.

Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still. Now, when it says my thoughts, that means the ego is silenced. Completely. And you’re not gonna go back. It’s not worth it.

Somewhere, you know, it might have been Rumi, or one of these, Sufi poets, and he’s talking about this Connection to this… Divine Place. You know, where you’re really… you really see God. It’s… it’s a… it’s a revelation, it’s a real one, It’s… it’s a fact.

He said, 5 seconds of that is worth your whole life. Five seconds of that vision, if you only have it for 5 seconds, It’s worth your whole life.

Why? Because it’s Real.

And if you’ve had the experience of it. Even though it may only have been for 5 seconds, You never doubt that that’s… a possibility ever again. You say, “Wow, I had it for 5 seconds, so I know it’s real, and therefore, I’m always going to aspire to that. Because that was a peace beyond my understanding. That was a joy far beyond what I’d ever experienced. And I’m never gonna think that this lower level that doesn’t have that is the real world. No, that’s the real world, even though I may have only experienced it for 5 seconds.”

I had those moments with Tara Singh. I remember, one time we were, we were in the Poconos, you know, these are mountains in Pennsylvania. I lived in Philadelphia, so when he gave his retreat in the Poconos, it was not very far away from me, and it was beautiful. It was in this… old… manor, hotel, in the… in the mountains of the Poconos, and usually in… in September, which was when the leaves start to turn. It was just beautiful.

Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still. All of our thoughts were still, we were in that emptiness of that peace of God, and then the next thing, like, all your senses were heightened. It’s not like you’re dulling your senses, it’s like you’re heightening your senses so that they can receive something that’s really there, but normally they don’t see because they’re too preoccupied with all kinds of crap, right? So… remove all that, and then now your senses can see this something else, right?

And I saw that, and it was just… “Wow, I can’t believe it.”

And then I never forgot that experience. And then, you know, at that point, I was also… I was already pretty surrendered to Tara Singh, but after that, I knew He was my teacher, my Spiritual Master, and He could bring me to that place in myself.

And that’s worth your whole life. It’s, like, worth anything more than anything.

And so that became… he became my… my teacher on that day, you know? Like, not that he wasn’t before, but it was with certainty after that, with certainty. And… yeah, so… I think we’re… reaching this point where we’ve done enough work on ourself, we’re mature enough people, we deserve this boon from… the Higher-Ups… to live in this state. To live in this state of… perfection.

And it is perfection.

It’s like the heavenly state in the physical dimension. And not too many people realize that. What, you think one in a million? One in… 10 million. Not too many people reach that point.

Even they asked Krishnamurti, you know, Krishnamurti was Tara Singh’s teacher, and he gave talks for 60 years. And he talked to hundreds of thousands of people for 60 years. And they asked him, “Well, how many people you think you really made a difference, and they heard what you said?”

He thought about it, and he said, “Hmm… 5 or 6. 5 or 6, maybe.”

And Dr. Schucman said the same thing when they asked her, “Well, how many people do you think are really gonna get this Course in Miracles?”

She shook her head, and she said, “Bad, bad, bad. The state of the world right now, I’m not sure if anybody can get it. In fact, this may not even be for this age, this Course in Miracles. People aren’t evolved enough to even get it.”

So, there you have it. It’s like, alright. Well, when I heard that, I said to myself… because Tara Singh was one of Krishnamurti’s students, probably one of the six, right, who really heard what Krishnamurti said. And I truly believe that, because then his life work became the Course in Miracles, and he never would have met the Course in Miracles scribe if he hadn’t already been at that place.

So then his work began.

And I… and he always said to himself, “Well. I want to be that one of those six.” And he gave his whole being to it, right? When Krishnamurti told him that. And then I took that on myself. I said, “Well, okay, how many people do you think really heard what Tara Singh had to say about the Course? 4, 5, or 6.

And I always said to myself, “Well, There’s nothing better to do with my life than be one of those people,” so I gave it my all, and I think I received something, some transmission from him that made it possible.

And, I’m still in that. That’s my life’s work, so… that’s why I share. I share to honor myself, but also to honor my teacher and the lineage, and I think it goes all the way back to Krishnamurti.

And I… I don’t think, A Course in Miracles could have even come about had it not been for Krishnamurti’s work.

Because he was the first that said, “We cannot trust our thought. Our thought has produced wonderful things, you know? Wonderful, amazing things. But it’s also produced the most horrible things. And in 50,000 years of human evolution, we really haven’t progressed much at all, psychologically.”

“We need a mutation,” he said, “in our thinking.”

And what’s the mutation? Seeing that thought is inherently in conflict.

And that’s exactly where A Course in Miracles begins. My thoughts don’t mean anything.

Thought. The level of thought is meaningless. Because it’s… dualistic. It always has a conflict. It always has a good versus evil. So, okay, we’re rising above that, and… let’s begin Part II in a new vibration… where we can really receive the miracle.

So, Bole Baba Ki Jai!

And thanks for joining me for this.

—Markus Ray—

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A SATURDAY TALK

The Art of Surrender

8—August—2026

with Sondra Ray & Markus Ray

Washington D.C. 🇺🇸 USA

MARKUS: Welcome, everyone, to this Mantra Breathing session today. We’re so happy to have you with us, and this theme is very interesting, the one we’re going to talk about today, because, it can be very positive, or it can be very frightening, depending on your perspective. The theme is Surrender.

So, what… does surrender mean? What are we surrendering to? What are we jumping off the cliff into? And is the Divine gonna catch us, or are we gonna, like, sink to our demise?

So, this theme of surrender, you hear it a lot in spiritual language. And we really want to go into that, and define it, and make sure we understand, the power of it. And the benefit of it, the benefit. We want to get to the benefit of surrender.

SONDRA: Yeah. Say that, what A Course in Miracles says about surrender.

MARKUS: Okay, oh yeah. There’s… there’s a place in the, text, I think. No, it might… be a lesson in the Workbook. I can’t tell you which one it is, but it’s when you’re asking… the Holy Spirit to give you direction, right? So, you… you have kind of given up your own plan… of what you think you ought to be doing, and you arrive at this place where you admit you don’t know what you’re doing, right? But then you ask the Holy Spirit to show you.

And you have these 3 questions. 1) Where would you have me go? 2) What would you have me do… and 3) What would you have me say, and to whom? Alright?

Now, if you think about those directions, that’s a pretty thorough direction… three sentences that would get you rolling on something, right? But you have to then listen, you have to be open. Like, what is pressing in your life? What is the priority in your life? Where would you have me go? What would you have me do? What’s the first thing that you… think is the most important thing? And then, who are those people that are involved in that? And what would you say to them?

Markus & Sondra in Hearkhan, Babaji’s Home.

So, these three questions are kind of the upside of surrender, because the purpose of surrender is to give you direction, right? Give you a specific direction that’s gonna make a difference in your life for the good, for the positive, for the more effective.

So, we want to be in that energy, where we’re receiving guidance. We’re surrendering to the guidance, but we’re also receiving the guidance and getting the clarity. Like, surrender is accompanied by clarity, right? We’re not just surrendering into some abyss where we don’t know what the hell is gonna happen next. No, we’re saying, “Okay, I need some direction, I need some guidance. I’m surrendering, and now I’m going to get the guidance and the clarity.” So, the clarity is essential to surrender.

So, it’s let go and receive. I think this is… another way of saying, “I’m letting go, I’m letting a Higher Power take over, guiding me, and I’m going to receive. I let go and I receive.” Okay, I think those are the good words. So, you’re surrendering your plan to a greater plan, and a greater power.

SONDRA: And you have to have the faith, okay? So Babaji always says, faith is everything, okay? So, I’m surrendering, and I have the faith that this is going to work out. So, it’s an act of faith in a higher power, and we are giving up our own need to control everything.

MARKUS: Yeah, and I also want to… say about that power, you know, you could call it the universal intelligence, you could call it God, you could call it the supernatural. You could call it truth. You could call it, you know, ultimate guidance. But, one thing we have to remember about that power, and I think there’s no better lesson than this lesson in the Course where it says, God’s will for me is perfect happiness.

We have to remember that. It’s like, what are we surrendering into? Okay, we’re jumping into the unknown, we’re saying, “I don’t know the answer, I don’t know the direction, but I’m gonna jump into that… that… that Force,” right? That Universal Force.

But you have to also see, that Force is on your side, and that Force wants the best for you, and the will of that Force is your happiness. Your happiness. Like, things that will fall into place that better your situation, that take you forward in your life, that give you the results that produce happiness, and produce well-being and feel good. So, that’s the Will of that Force, and we always have to remember that, because a lot of us expressed, you know, we have some fears of the future.

SONDRA and I call that “catastrophic thinking.” You think something bad’s gonna happen in the future. Well, only if we’re not trusting that Force of Life whose will for us is perfect happiness. Why would something bad in the future happen if we had surrendered our will over to that Force whose Will is for our perfect happiness? It wouldn’t… we could let go. We could not fear the future. If we were certain that that force was only going to give us things that produce perfect happiness, then most of our fears are dissolved at that point. So, keep that in mind, that lesson. God’s will for me is perfect happiness.

The Force of the Universe is on my side, it’s benevolent to my needs, it’s benevolent to my well-being, and that’s what I’m surrendering to. I’m surrendering to the action of that, whatever it looks like.

Now, everybody’s gonna have their own particular situation that it applies to. It’s gonna be a little different, for SONDRA and me than it will for you, that it will for Gee, that it will for Cathy, that it will for Steve. You’re gonna have a particular thing that you’re asking for. And that’ll show up in your… in whatever it is you need, so… but the overall is that it’s gonna produce more happiness and more satisfaction.

SONDRA: Some people say, well, it’s misunderstood as giving up. Well, the only thing you’re giving up is resistance. You’re giving up resistance, and this kind of requires courage. Or you’re giving up fear, giving up guilt, and you’re giving up anger.

MARKUS: All right? Some of you said you want to let go of anger. Okay, that’s part of surrender. What are you doing? You’re surrendering over the anger to the Holy Spirit and saying, please help me dissolve this. Please help me to see this differently. Please help me to forgive whatever it is that I’m angry about. Please…Help me… help me, like, erase the… the situation.

SONDRA: And what you’re surrendering to is the flow of life itself. I’m surrendering to the flow of life. Sometimes, you know, that helps me figure, what am I surrendering to? I’m surrendering to the flow of life. I’m surrendering to the peace of God. That was our lesson today about the peace of God and the Course in Miracles.

I thought, “Oh, that helps me to know that the result I’m getting is more life and the peace of God. I am surrendering to the flow of life, and I am surrendering to all the Divine possibilities that there are out there, which would be much greater than I can create myself.”

So, you’re kind of surrendering to the Divine Will and the angels, and you’re saying yes to life, in a way, when you surrender. You’re flowing into the magic of life. So, if you can imagine that, when you’re surrendering, you’re flowing into the magic of life. I think that makes it easier for you to feel safe surrendering, and you’re gonna receive blessings, okay? You’re gonna receive the blessings, and that’s gonna be the good result.

So, David Hawkins writes about this, he’s a very powerful writer, and he said you should practice surrender every day, okay? So, what does it mean, the surrendered state? It means you’re free of negative feelings, so that you can be creative and have spontaneity, okay?

You’re letting go of negative feelings, and the energy behind something that’s negative is instantly surrendered. So, then that takes the pressure off of you, so when you surrender, you have less pressure.

And you have to want to be free of the [bad] feeling more than you want to keep it. In other words, I’d rather be free of this anger more than I want to keep it. You know, you have to make that decision, because anger is extremely destructive to your body and to others.

And it’s bad karma for you, and you know, it can really mess up your body. So, you want to give up the anger and surrender to the peace.

And then the possibilities come back in again, right? You get more new possibilities, you’re not so locked in to that, that problem.

SONDRA: Yeah, and we’ve been noticing in A Course in Miracles that it’s lately saying a lot, “Forgive, and this will disappear.” Oh, yeah. And so that’s surrender. I forgive that person, I forgive that situation, I forgive that outcome, and then it’s gonna disappear. But if you don’t forgive, and you keep your anger, it’s gonna continue in you, you know? It’s not gonna disappear. So if you want something to disappear, you have to surrender to forgiveness. Surrender to the forgiveness.

“I will forgive and this will disappear.” from A Course in Miracles

MARKUS: Anger perpetuates the problem. And when you surrender, the whole thing disappears from your consciousness. You could say forgiveness is a form of surrender. It’s like saying, hey, I’m part of this. I notice there’s a problem, and I’m there, therefore I must be connected to it, and I want to let… I don’t even know all the reasons I am connected to it, but there I am, and I’m willing to let go of my part, and I’m willing to let go of my judgments and my… my activation, right? So, you’re there, you’re saying, I’m willing to let go.

And that’s a kind of a surrender, and that’s where the forgiveness process starts. And the two lines are… and these are very good, I’ve memorized these. Any situation that’s activating you, you say:

I will forgive and see this differently. That’s the first step. You’ve got to be willing to see it differently. Not… not your way of seeing it that’s making you angry in the first place, but .… I’m gonna forgive this and see it differently, and I will forgive, and this will disappear. Like, if you’re willing to see it differently, and you’re willing to let go, and you’re willing to surrender to peace, right? God’s will for you being perfect happiness, and let go of your anger, then it’s got to change. It has to. It’s, like, automatic. Like, if you really let go of your anger, and you really take responsibility, and you say, “Okay, whatever it is, I’m still gonna lead a happy life here,” and you let go… it has to shift. It has to.

SONDRA: Yeah, and the goal of surrender would be total freedom, and you want to let go of… clinging to whatever just occurred. Something occurred you didn’t like. There is a temptation to cling to it, and be upset, and drama, and get into a drama about it.

But surrender would be… I let go of clinging to what just happened.

MARKUS: Yeah, or… or, let’s see, you want to be right, you want to get the last word, you want to get the upper hand, you want to be the one who’s telling the truth, and… and, like, sometimes that doesn’t serve you at all, it just perpetuates the back and the forth, and the back and the forth, and, you know, sometimes it’d be better to admit you’re wrong.

You know, and just let go, and say, “Well, I don’t like the way I feel, and this… this is not the result I want to create, and therefore, I must have been wrong in whatever I thought or put out there. And that will get you reset. That’ll… that’ll, like, reboot your system. That’ll reset your system. Like, if you just let go, and you say, “Okay, well, I don’t like the way I feel, and there must be something I did that made me feel this way, so I’d be better off being wrong than right, right?” Because if you want to maintain being right, you’re going to also maintain the not feeling good. So, you want to say, “Well, at least if I’m wrong, I can have a different result and feel better.” And so, yeah, so it’s not always a defeat to surrender and say, “Oh, I must have been wrong if I feel like this.”

So, you don’t even know what it is you did, but something happened, right? So, you’re letting go of that, and you’re rebooting, and you’re saying, “Okay, I want to go to ground zero and start again. I want to start this again, and just totally let go. And that is serving you more than wanting to be right, quote, unquote.

SONDRA: Yeah, so let’s have a goal of, kind of, constant surrender. Constant surrender. You’re not going to hang on to stuff at all. I’m letting go, and letting go, and letting go. So here are some prayers I wrote.

“My God, I’m willing that you make me willing, okay? Let me live a life of absolute surrender. Work it in me. Let my life be filled with you, God, and proof of what You can do. May you, Holy Spirit, have full dominion over me, in my home, in my character, in every word of my tongue, in every thought of my heart, in every feeling toward others. And may You have entire possession of me. I want to be filled with you, Holy Spirit. And so, God, I bring you my absolute surrender. I have faith. You will accept it. I accept your terms. I give myself to the will of God. Please reveal Christ in me. I live in God and for God. I allow myself to be guided by the Holy Spirit every day and every hour, and I place myself at your feet, Holy Spirit.

Those are some of the prayers that I can recite again when you lie down.

So, anything else, Markus?

MARKUS: Well, I mean, I just want to say that, I feel so grateful that you’re here, and I also feel grateful that we have some spiritual guides and masters in our life. SONDRA just wrote this book, My Meetings with the Dream Team, and those are little, affirmations that she got from her meditations with the Dream Team. Yeah, well, they’re…

SONDRA: They’re pretty powerful.

MARKUS: They’re powerful, but they’re, like, one line, two-lines. You can open the book up anywhere and just read a few lines.

And that will cause a surrender to happen in you.

But I also want to say that when… when you get words from, like, okay, let’s just say a lot of us here, we study the Course in Miracles, I have deep reverence and respect for the Course in Miracles that I know it’s always going to tell me the truth, and even if it’s something that I have to adjust myself to, and make some corrections in myself, I always trust that that guidance that comes from that is putting me on the right track, and I’m safe surrendering to that.

And I think any spiritual master who really is a spiritual master… for example, the Course is the words of the Christ Consciousness, right? So that would be a spiritual master. You’re surrendering to that Christ Consciousness. If that’s a true master, it’s gonna only tell you true words. It’s not gonna utter contradictions, right? So… so that’s one thing that I discovered in my life.

When I met up with SONDRA in the 80s, and then I started studying the Course in Miracles, and then later, I found my teacher, Tara Singh, who was teaching the Course in Miracles… that… these beings’ level, they’re doing their utmost to tell us the truth that will transform us, and therefore, it’s safe to surrender to what they’re saying, right? So, I had an experience where I met with these true beings and the true words they were saying, and I could surrender to that, because I knew it was leading me higher in my ascension, or my evolution, whatever you want to call that, my awakening, you know, my awakening to a Higher Self, these beings that I met, were aiding me in that awakening, so I developed this really deep respect and surrendered to those words, those true words, right?

So, I just wanted to read a couple little things. And you can find true words, you know, if you’re… you have the discrimination, you can find them in many places, right? So there’s this poet that I really love, his name is… Rabindranath Tagore, and he was the first Indian in the early 1900s to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was the first that they recognized, wow, India has this great tradition, right? Literary tradition. And he was a poet and a playwright, and they gave him the Nobel Prize for this little book called Jitanjali, which is a little volume of poems… poems that he wrote to his guru, right? He wrote to his spiritual master and expressing his joy of how he was awakened by his spiritual master, which is very common in India. A lot of people in India have a spiritual master, right?

So, this one… poem I read of his once, described to the T in myself how… how much gratitude I felt when I… when I met my teacher, Tara Singh, and I heard him saying these true words, right, and how much it transformed my life. So, this little poem, it’s only, like, 5 lines long, it describes my whole relationship with my teacher, Tara Singh, in, like, 4 lines, and when I read that, it was like… it was like a blast of something came into me, and I just wanted to share that, because it’s a form of surrender. When you can surrender to something true in your life, that’s… the main surrender. And then that truth starts bringing order and… and more happiness, more order, more… more clarity, more… more direction, you know, to your life.

And so, it’s important to have true words in your life, and this, this is number 4 in this little book, Jitanjali. It’s… it’s like, he’s talking to his guru, right? And he says,

Life of my Life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all my limbs.

I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth, which has kindled the light of reason in my mind.

I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart… and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.

And it shall be my endeavor to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act.

So, I read that, and I thought, oh my goodness, that describes to the T how I feel about the spiritual masters in my life, mostly Tara Singh, because I had a direct relationship with him, but I’m sure SONDRA feels the same way about Babaji.

SONDRA: If you really want to come with us to India. Oh, well, yeah. To Babaji, you’ll get every… I’ve gotten everything by surrendering to Babaji, all the miracles in my life. So we take you to India in the spring, so you might want to consider coming and surrendering to Babaji yourself.

MARKUS: Yeah, that could be, but you can also do it in his words, and in the actions that you take in everyday life. Yeah, going to India helps you get closer and closer to Babaji, but you can also make that contact right where you are, and right in this session today, while you’re breathing.

SONDRA: What are you playing for music today?

MARKUS: So, we’re gonna play, Goma today. These are songs to Babaji, by the way. Yeah, so, you can all get ready, and we’ll, we’ll get you all set up, so you want to lay down so we can still see you in the… in the camera. I’m going to be here monitoring your breathe, and SONDRA will be breathing with you, actually. She always breathes with you while… while you’re doing the breathe. And I’ll be watching you and holding the space.

And, yeah, so… Okay. Yeah, so let’s… let’s get set up. BOLE BABA I JAI!

THE BREATHE

Below this You will find the complete SATURDAY TALK for Paid Subscribers. We invite you closer into the OHANA, our Spiritual Family Who Breathes Together. Thank You for joining us in this CALL TO AWAKEN.

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—Sondra Ray—

Did you ever think you could feel good all of the time? First you have to believe that is possible. Secondly, you have to deal with the issue of sabotage. If you are NOT in peace and joy, that means you are sabotaging it. It does not mean it is impossible.

Sondra Ray at the Reagan Airport here in Washington

The issue is always the ego , which destroys peace and joy. You must DECIDE that you no longer allow your ego to sabotage peace and joy and feeling good. When you feel “bad”, that is when your “case” is coming out.

Your case is composed of negative thoughts and patterns that you are addicted to— which make up your ego. It is extremely helpful to be devoted to your spiritual practices, such as Liberation Breathing and the Course in Miracles. For example, here is an important example of a lesson: “I CHOOSE the joy of God instead of pain.”

Also, you must give up ALL forms of anger, fear, and guilt in order to feel good. These are addictions and they will not leave us easily. It won’t happen overnight. But this is the spiritual work we must do on ourselves. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you where you are haging on to fear, guilt and anger, and help you to forgive yourself for them and completely let them go. They are keeping you in a state of “feeling bad.”

Then there is the addiction to what we call your “personal lie”. That is your worst thought about yourself. Over the years I kept track of all the personal lies I heard from our clients. I think I am the only rebirther who ever did that. So these are in our book LIBERATION (Freedom from Your Biggest Block to Pure Joy)

ORDER BOOK here: bit.ly/LibRay

Believe it or not, we have now heard nearly 400 different personal lies! You must know exactly what yours is in order to let it go. Then you can start to be relaxed. Also, you need to know what other negative thoughts you are holding on to that keep you from relaxing and feeling good. Feeling good also has to do with accepting your perfection, which leads to excellence. Then you must train yourself to think with God. The Course in Miracles is the best way to learn to do that.

Staying in the present helps you also feel good. Most people are hanging on to the past and worrying about the future. That is another addiction. Past regrets and future uncertainties keep us from feeling good all the time.

One of the main ways to feel good is to realize you are safe. You won’t feel completely safe until you let go of your unconscious death urge. That is a very very deep subject and to understand what I mean, I refer you to our book—Physical Immortality: How to Overcome Death. You literally have to give up the thought “Death is Inevitable,” which almost all people think is the absolute “truth.” It is just a thought that can be changed.

ORDER BOOK here: bit.ly/ImmortalRay

It is important to understand that you could actually feel good no matter what you are doing. Instead of being overwelmed by all I am saying; consider this: If you don’t work on yourself, things could get worse. You don’t want that to happen. Instead try this Idea. “I ENJOY working on myself. It makes me feel good.”

Also Markus and I can help you a lot if you are open to a private Liberation Breathing Session. We are available to help with any problems regarding realtionships, business, and health issues. You can go here and TAP TO EXPLORE AN LB SESSION

Here are some more affirmations from my new book, My Meetings with the Dream Team. These affirmations will help you a lot: HOWEVER, if you don’t work on yourself as I mentioned above, your subconscious thoughts and patterns could sabotage these affirmations. But, here we go! —

There are many more thoughts like this in Chapter 28 of our newest book: My Meetings with the Dream Team.

Love, Sondra Ray

GET BOOK here: getbook.to/DreamTeam

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ARE YOUR READY FOR MIRACULOUS SOLUTIONS? The Miraculous is too often considered far-fetched and supernatural. It may be outside our normal expectations; but do we stop to consider that our current state of mind may be holding us back? and that we ourselves are putting self-imposed limitations on our best and greatest possibilities?

We hold onto these limitations in our mind. We are the only ones causing the log-jamb that blocks our flow, the clogged channels that threaten the clear manifestation of our best interests.

Why?

We have submerged unconscious thoughts that wreak havoc on our natural flow of our happiness and good. These are the sabotaging beliefs, negative thoughts, doubts, and limitations we inherited from our families, our conditioning, and our past. These “personal lies” represent the limiting beliefs about ourselves. They stand hidden, but nevertheless prominently affecting the results we get in life. These negative unconscious thoughts stand in contrast to the highest, elevated thoughts that can produce the flowering of our greatest potentials. How do we remove them?

Miracles are shifts away from these unconscious limiting thoughts, patterns and beliefs. They are a “changing of the mind” to affirm and realize our greatest potentials. Miracles are new thoughts we breathe into our very own cells. They erase old memories, neutralize them, and clean out the negative mental patterns that have long been the cause of all of our disappointments and malfunctions.

WORKING WITH THE RAYS™

The first step in Transformation is seeing where you are stuck, and taking time for the inner work to change your mindset, your feelings, and your approach to life. Only new thoughts and actions can manifest different results.

Sondra & Markus combine their resources together to give people true and lasting transformations and change. Spending time with them gives you the help you are looking for on your journey to a deeper awareness of Yourself and Life. Come experience this work with the Rays and be changed.

WORKING WITH THE RAYS™ consists of some basic steps:

1) Identifying the main problems/limitations in your life.

2) Identifying the thoughts contributing to your problems/limitations.

3) Creating new thoughts and approaches that produce new results.

WORKING WITH THE RAYS™ enters into the Miraculous. Why? It uses the resources you already have within yourself to begin a change. It brings about a shift that was not possible while you were so influenced by your past. It Looks, Forgives, and Lets Go of the past. It considers new possibilities that were blocked before. It removes the blocks and allows the free flow of something new to take place. Your present good is not only possible by WORKING WITH THE RAYS™, but inevitable. You come to manifest what you want with the right thoughts, words, deeds and actions made clear in this MIRACLES FOR YOU™ class.

MIRACLES FOR YOU™ is a live weekend training ONLINE in which your Inner Transformation can take place. It is a 3-day Experiential Seminar in which Self-Introspection becomes a way of life, and Miracles become natural… and they are your right to have. You are the catalyst for your own change when you are “willing to see things differently.” There is nothing your whole Self cannot do when your blocks are removed.

Join us August 21-22-23 for three days of Inner Transformation that will bring about more of your desired results in your Life. We present this LIVE Virtual Training all over ZOOM, all over the WORLD.

TAP TO EXPLORE: https://bit.ly/MFY-WORLD

MIRACLES FOR YOU

A Three-Day Online Liberation Breathing® Retreat

“Awaken the Miracle-Minded Life Within You”

Experience three transformative days of Liberation Breathing®, forgiveness, and the timeless wisdom of A Course in Miracles with Sondra Ray & Markus Ray — a journey of healing, awakening, and miracles.

SEPTEMBER 18th–20th, 2026 • Live on Zoom

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https://sondraray.com/programs-quests/miracles-4-you/#register

IMAGINE…

…waking up feeling lighter.

MIRACLES

…remove your heavy load.

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By Markus Ray

There is a rumbling, more than just a casual pull, but more like an unavoidable draw to LOOK at something of a whole continent almost ignored. An ART LOOK I never thought I would write, but here I am LOOKING again at something I avoided all too long.

Fast forward ’til now. Africa looms large, like a kind of Dark Continent of my own ignorance, and even its tribal customs and regalia freak me out. Kings and leaders with whole harems of wives, and cadres of manly ministers, are elevated in their grand tribal chiefdom to levels of unassailable predominance. It’s kind of a shocking suggestion of a male chauvinism on a scale far greater than any royal right to dominate sexually over one’s subjects.

This seems rooted in the nature of the animal kingdom itself that roves over the African plains and inhabits the forests of the most dominant male impregnators. It is rooted in survival of the fittest that favors the strongest of the species to assure the continuity of the race. Of course, we have our own versions of animal kingdom predominators in the Epstein affairs. Patriarchal control of women is not subject to a particular continent, historic era, or even specific culture or race.

But that said, some kind of undeniable nobility comes through in the African sculptures that have been around there for eons, and passed down to us in the now. As recent as 2011 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York published a book, Heroic Africans, by Alisa LaGamma, on the beauty and scope of African sculpture. It was thorough. I do not pretend to know such things, but to sense there are people, “white folks,” who do Know, somehow made the task of this ART LOOK possible, and even essential to my whole view of Art in my world. A hard edged ebony, like the darkness of the skin, the Black that is beautiful, has long evaded me until now.

I am willing to look, finally, in my unabashed innocence, at an incredible contribution. And directly “dropped down” from the predominance of Western Greco-Roman culture, the African continent is no more to be ignored, but rather considered as an indigenous contribution to my deeper understanding and acceptance of the entire human reservoir of artistic achievement.

There will be pictures, mostly of heads, sculpted and elevated in nobility. They will all be undeniably sacred in their own shockingly present way. Here we go with this preamble. THE BLACKNESS OF HUMANS WHO LIGHT UP MY WORLD. —Markus Ray, Washington DC, Friday, July 31st, 2026

BLACK GODDESSES

I suppose an inkling to write something meaningful begins with an impetus. My impetus in this case would be my direct relationships with a couple of people, African Americans, who transformed my life. One was, and is, TED NEWMAN; and though he passed into the Spirit Realms nearly 16 years ago, he still inhabits a prominent place in my heart of remarkable beings I have met and known.

The other is ASTARIUS MIRACULII, whose largeness of Being nearly defies description. Sondra Ray has known him for nearly 30 years, or more, mostly through his music. More recently we have had direct contact with him through phone conversations, as well as through exposure to the full scope of his music and offerings in the “realms of invocation” that we could have hardly fathomed before these direct conversations.

The exploration of this ART LOOK, The Blackness of Humans Who Light Up My World, was inspired by an inkling, as mentioned, when I wished to find some Black Version of the Divine Mother, with even some sexy overtone, if you will, to send to my now well-established friend, Astarius. I Googled “African Goddess” and found some things remarkable. I was taken to a site that had these carvings in wood, (perhaps only virtual, as one does not know what is “real” or “unreal” these days with Photo Shop, AI and the like). Nevertheless, I was certainly struck by their perfected Beauty. Indeed, Goddesses they are. Though carved in a kind of “middle ground” wood tone of Burnt Sienna with a tinge of Raw Umber in the shadows, they could be as beautiful as they wanted to be—altogether “Black Goddesses” in all particles of their Being (though predominantly “Brown.”)

I downloaded 25 of these remarkable carvings of the Divine Mother, African style, and set them aside, not quite knowing what was next. Then I Googled “The Most Famous African Sculptures of Royal Heads” and entered into a whole new world of heads and busts, standing figures and masks, that blew my mind. The first one that literally “gripped my soul” was this “Ife head: Brass head of a ruler, 1300–1450, brass, made in Ife, 35 cm high (© Trustees of the British Museum)”

“Ife head: Brass head of a ruler, 1300–1450, brass, made in Ife, 35 cm high (© Trustees of the British Museum)”

This is what is written about this head from a site called smARThistory.org: ( https://smarthistory.org/ife-head-ruler/ )

The finds from Wunmonije Compound were published in 1938–9 and created a sensation in the western world. It was initially assumed that these beautiful sculptures could not have been made in Africa by African artists. The life-like modeling was compared with the classical traditions of Ancient Greece and Rome. It was even suggested that these heads were evidence that Ife was the site of the legendary lost civilization of Atlantis as described by the Greek philosopher, Plato. The sculptures from Ife are now rightly seen as one of the highest achievements of African art and culture.

I had another look. Before you knew it I was collecting real life historical heads of African origin that blew my mind. An ART LOOK began to take shape. Then I chanced upon a book, a downloadable PDF, called “HEROIC AFRICANS” by Alisa LaGamma, curator of African Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, published for a show there in 2011. I was well on my way, immersed in a new art of an African nature. So began this ART LOOK— The Blackness of Humans Who Light Up My World.

TED NEWMAN’S PLACE IN MY HEART

I had just got out of Art School, for the second time, living in Philadelphia. This was 1982, forty some years ago. I was fed up with academia, though I now had my Masters Degree; I was passionate about painting, drawing… and that visual mode of self expression. Yet, I was not gregarious enough to move to New York and throw myself into the jungle of the Art World to hack out a name for myself; nor was I trained to “fit into” any kind of corporate machine that would make me a slave to the 9 to 5 world.

I was good with tools, and I could put together just about anything. I was surprisingly attracted to setting tile and marble. Building bathrooms and kitchens became my niche to earn money. In the Spring of 1983, I got a call from a gentleman in Powelton Village in West Philadelphia to set a few hundred square feet of tile in his basement. Nothing special. He was an architect, and wanted to convert his basement to a living space. So I took this on.

Powelton Village, right next to the University of Pennsylvania, was an old Victorian section of town with huge three and four story residences of the grandest Victorian nature. 100 Plus years old, many of these homes in the 1980s were being renovated. Upscale folks were buying up these old grand places and turning them into multi family dwellings.

As I was working away one day in the basement, a middle aged black man came half way down the stairs, looking like he had a cocktail on the rocks in his hand, and poked his head in my affairs. With the biggest smile of cordiality, he said, “Hi, how are you? I’m Ted Newman. I live across the street.” That was our first meeting that bonded us for life. Indeed, Ted lived across the street. It turned out, he was gay. He was the boyfriend of Calvin Hotchkiss, a very waspy executive for the Movie Department of KODAK Film Company in New York. He owned the glorious Victorian house next to Ted’s, and commuted to New York every day for his work.

Cal and Ted were inseparable. And my ex and I got to know them very well. They were “interested in the arts,” mostly in music. Ted had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera in New York. And often I would be the lucky recipient of a trip to NY with Ted to see a stunning performance of Grand Opera, at its best, at the Met. Not to mention the huge MARC CHAGALL murals in the Lobby of the Met.

Ted was the first black person I had seriously befriended. His heart was like gold. His generosity of Spirit flowed out of him like a spring of living water. And, to some incongruent surprise, he was a guard in the Philadelphia House of Correction. In other words, he worked in a prison. Cal was an executive in New York—and Ted worked in a prison—and they both had a passion for music. And the culinary arts. Ted drove a Mercedes, and Cal drove a Jaguar. They both had a flair for the panache.

Ted would have us over for dinner in his third floor apartment, and Cal would play the piano. These were grand bohemian times. I built a marble bathroom in Cal’s first floor apartment. And after that, the four of us became the closest of friends. I did some tile work for Ted as well. And for his mother, “Fats,” who was as thin as a rail and addicted to “diet pills.”

In the 1990s Cal contracted Aids, sold his Powelton Village place, and moved back to a family estate near his two daughters in Rochester. We visited him with Ted once up there, and faced the shocking facts of his rapid decline. Within a year of us finding out his situation, he was gone. Ted remained in Powelton Village as my friend until he passed around 2010, shortly after I married Sondra Ray and began my new life. He occupies a permanent place in my heart, as A Black Human Who Miraculously Lit Up My World.

Modern Carved African Goddesses

ENTER ASTARIUS

There is a Presence of Being emanating from certain individuals that creates a Energy Field of exceptional well-being. When you enter their space your are transformed by them, not by anything they are particularly doing, but rather by all the inherent qualities of their Being that rush forth and fill your field of awareness with something exceptional. You know for certain, “There is no one I have ever met like this before.” They have certain gifts that they give, certain creations that are beautiful and good, and when you receive them you feel so grateful to have blundered upon a relationship with them that your Life will never be the same. You are blessed by them, and you know it. You are blessed by them and the Divine Grace you possess now as a result of receiving them into your life, elevates you into the realms of the angelic.

When I got together with Sondra Ray in 2008 she introduced me to the music of Astarius. The main piece she played, often in trainings, was an album called “Spirit Rap.”

Kind of a Shaman, Aboriginal, Sound Healer, Incanter, Invoker, Dream Awaker, and all around “Waker-Upper,” rolled into the Power of One, Astarius and his music became the medicine for what people needed to shake, rattle and roll them out of their deep seeded complacency and conditioning—including my own—and transport them into a newer version of themselves that had access—In This Now—to more expansive and creative possibilities.

Astarius is a Master of Invocation. What does he invoke? Higher Dimensional realms that can help us ascend into our truest and more loving nature. Really. He is the second black man I have know directly who totally turned my life around.

AN HOMAGE TO BLACKNESS

I wanted to “pay homage” to Ted and Astarius through some acknowledgement of their BLACKNESS, to their African roots. Something in the visceral presence of their Blackness made itself known in the form of carved, shaped, sculpted, cast, and hand hewn busts and masks. Something in the beauty of the “head,” not disembodied, but rather whole in its complete depiction of the Divinity that they are, pays homage to these two Black Humans Who Have Lighted Up My Life, and who brought to my ART LOOK new vistas in ways that only they could bring forth.

They cracked open my world, and obliterated my own opinion of myself, my own limited definition of what I could do and not do, say or not say. They brought me forth into the Human Race, liberating me from my Caucasion race, or the Negro race, or the Chinese race, or the Arab race, or the Red, Blue, Purple, Yellow or Orange race, and even took me completely out of the Rat race. Any artificial division that kept me inadvertently “prejudiced” whatsoever, has been rendered obsolete through my association and friendship with them. And I am eternally grateful for Life having sent them into the Royal Courts of my highest good.

This mask above, of a Chokwe woman, demonstrates something, or even someone to whom I pay homage. A muti textural and omnipresent assertion of Divine Presence comes forth in the encounter with something real and unique like this mask. What may in the beginning shock us through the dumbness of our unfamiliarity, then, by the same token of being so new and different, takes us into relationships with a state of mind beyond our thinking. We suddenly find ourselves transported into the miraculous space of somewhere beautiful we have never been.

This Pwo mask from the 19th century transports us to somewhere exotic that takes us beyond mortal boundaries. It is sophisticated, not primitive. It is culturally rich, not emotionally and intellectually deprived. It is harmoniously balanced, not brandied around in the chaos of technical ignorance. It is spiritually charged in us, not figuartively innert and dead. It is intensely as alive as its maker, and as present as the person or archetype of persons we are compelled to encounter.

Remember now, this homage started out with me mousing around on Google to find African Divine Mother Godesses. O course, these carved wooden ones I found are higly idealized according to men’s erotically fanciful standards—the sexy Goddess, Black Venus Versions, that one finds in the fantasic virtual world of the internet. But there still is something direct and beautiful about them, and even wildly authentic to the real feel of the whole African art legacy and artistic outpouring.

This Nigerian Bronze Head of an Ife woman changed the whole picture of Western interpretations of the artistic prowess of the African Artisans. The skill and sophistication needed to pull off a “lost wax” casting technique, over 600 years ago, was long thought only possible from the Greco-Roman world. And the naturalism of this face was not thought possible amidst the more abstracted and severely geometrically featured heads and masks of other tribal areas of the African continent.

The geometry of the Pwo Mask above is by choice, not by lack of techinical skill, which establish its elegance and geometrical power. And in contrast, this more naturalistically rendered sculpture from Ife, Nigeria, proves… beyond a shadow of a doubt… that African artisans possesed an equal and naturalistic ability comparable to the Classical Western models of craft, long thought to be unique to European (and caucasian race) Cultures.

I have found a praising beyond my notions of high artistic accolades in the presence of these Lords of the African Continent. Sondra and I are inspired to go there in the coming year, and explore new vistas and possibilities for our work and worship. I am humbled by their attracting Power and Grace.

We are in a cross cultural time in the dawning of our human unity. There is too much at stake here. Will we “get” this necessary unification of the Human Experiment, that has been going on in an earthly fashion for the last couple hundred thousand years? Or will we fail to unite, and thus exacerbate our “divisions” through the concentration of power and control in the hands of the few, which keeps us fragmented and in a constant state of competition and conflict with ourselves?

The Blackness of Humans Who Light Up Our World is something we all need to apply to any group of people we cordon off according to race, socio-economic, educational, national, political, or religiously imposed and artificial divisions. I was fortunate to have TED NEWMAN and ASTARIUS MIRACULII to rock my world and help me get my head straight. We are more the same than we are different. Love binds us together. And art is the expression of this Love in one of the highest forms possible.

My trips to the Metropolitan Opera with TED, my totally altered state of mind listening to the Angelic Invocations of ASTARIUS, and my newly found love for African culture and sculpture, is the very Blackness I needed to Light up My World. Without this Blackness I would have remained in the Dark. They saw my shortcomings of vision and opened my eyes with grace. They forgave me for being “white,” and for discounting a whole continent of people out of my own conditioned ignorance.

To TED and ASTARIUS, and all the beautiful people of AFRICA I am yet to meet, and to the artisans of Ife, Nigeria, in a bygone and modern era, I pay my deepest homage to you for enlightening my soul that would have remained unevolved without you! Praise to the Wisest Ones on the African Continent awaiting us with open arms. Bole Baba Ki Jai! Praise to the Simple Father.

—Love,

—Markus Ray— Washington DC, 2-AUG-2026

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A “SUNDAY TALK”

“PART II OF THE WORKBOOK OF ACIM”

2—AUGUST—2026

with

Markus Ray

Welcome to this Gifts of God weekend talk, A SUNDAY TALK. And I wanted to address today, in the next few days, I think four or five days, we’re going to be starting this Section Two of the Workbook, you know, in The Course in Miracles. We’ve done like a couple hundred lessons now of Section One. Now we’re reviewing the last 20 lessons. But soon in the next few days, we start this Section Two. I think before next weekend, we’ll be starting Section Two. And I just wanted to say a few words about Section Two.

The first part of the Workbook is basically about undoing our ego self that we made up out of our separation, or our imagined separation. We don’t even know we’re separated, but we are… from our connection to a kind of Divine Source, our creative Self, right? The Self that God created and the self that we made up in separation from that Self, the Course Calls the “ego.” And part one of the Workbook is for us to really see that distinction clearly, and see the components of the ego and what is in us that produces pain and suffering and problems and sorrow.

What is it in us that’s producing that? Because we’ve made that up. We have projected that onto the life-stream through our disconnection from this Source energy, or our disconnection from this Self God created, right? So, Part One makes that distinction very clear. You have this ego self you made up and you have this God created Self that is your true and... and remarkable Self, right? So, the miracle is designed to move us from this self we made up through forgiveness, through letting go, through a process of seeing, kind of repenting and forgiving, and then transmuting. So that would be the miracle.

When we’ve cleaned it up, we’ve let it go, we’re not holding the grievances, we’re not holding the attack thoughts anymore… we’ve owned them… we’ve forgiven them… we’ve let them go, right? And now we’re closer to this waking up to our God-created Self, which is a Self of Joy. It’s a Self of happiness. It’s a Self of perfect health, perfect longevity, basically perfection. It’s a Self, free of our problems, not immersed in problems, right?

Our problems are solved when we end the separation, or this imagined separation. It even says that, you know, lesson 79 and 80, it says, “Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved.” “Let me recognize my problems have been solved.” And then you are shown in those two lessons that your only problem is your imagined separation from your Source Energy, from your Self, your true Self. Imagined separation.

It says, well, the separation is only imagined. It didn’t really happen, but you thought it did. And when you see that, and you easily forgive yourself for that, then you’re back on track. And you’ve made that contact with your Source, and you’re closer to this realization of the Self God created. And that’s what the whole purpose of the First Part of the Workbook is to do. Move us out of the self that we made into the Self-awareness of this God created Self.

Markus points our the ending of the “separation.”

And if we could get that. We’re in good shape. And I’ll tell you, if you can use the 220 days of Part One of the Workbook to accomplish that beyond a shadow of a doubt, you are light years ahead of most human beings on the planet. I mean, it’s not even a question that people consider. You know, they don’t even know that’s what’s at stake here. And the Course makes it very clear and gives us a kind of a roadmap, I would say, a roadmap navigating out of our quagmire of our ego into this higher Self. And it’s a very specific map and very specific set of Lessons or set of principles that we follow. And we’re grateful.

We’re grateful that we have that anytime. And we can review it. We can perfect it. We can go back and check ourselves and say, “Okay, did I really get that lesson? Do I really get that my function is forgiveness as the light of the world?” You know, we can go back and check. And we need to check. And sometimes like, you know, Brenda was just saying in an email today to us that she and Rasa have been studying the Course for four years now, and they’re reading certain Lessons together. And it’s almost like when they read them now, they scratched their head and said, did we ever really even read this? Like you hear things in it, even though you’ve been a student for so many years or months or decades… for Sondra and I… you still hear new things when you read the Course.

It’s like it’s a spring of living water that’s always quenching our thirst, no matter how long we’ve been with it. And that drink that we take from it is always divine and always something new, even if we’ve read it 10 times before, right? So that is a kind of miraculous quality of the Course. Now, this Part Two, when I fully saw what it was a few years back, I was just astounded. Like, how could this be in our midst? It’s like the perfect language. It’s the perfect creation, if you will, this Part Two. It’s written in such a way that is very poetic. And all the lessons, there have been some before this part two that are in this structure… all the lessons in Part Two are written in what they call in English iambic pentameter which is how Shakespeare wrote a lot of things. It’s like the perfect English. It’s like five beats, ten syllables—each lesson has ten syllables, five beats and they call that iambic pentameter.

The Directness of your Relationship with the Christ studying ACIM

And then it has a has a little paragraph prayer, actually two paragraphs. It has a little description of the lesson. Then it has a little prayer in italics. And every lesson is like that. And they’re all 10 syllables, iambic pentameter, short and sweet, half a page. There are two lessons per page. And they’re only a half-page long. And they’re just pure poetry. To me, they’re just pure poetry. And there’s probably never been anything written in the English language quite as beautiful as Part Two of A Course in Miracle Workbook.

So, we’re about to embark on that. And I thought today I would go over the Introduction to Part Two. So that we can all get kind of in the mood of this new vibration coming in. And it’s interesting that we talked yesterday in the mantra breathing about this artist we know, Astarius, who does these incantations and invocations with music that he makes. And the power of the invocation that he takes people to is quite remarkable. And probably something like you’ve never heard before.

Well, the power of the invocation of these lessons in Part Two are very similar. They take us to a place in ourselves that maybe we’ve never even experienced, you know? And because they’re so direct and so simple, it really is like sometimes I describe studying the Course in Miracles is like you’re sitting in a chair and Jesus the Christ is sitting in another chair, and you’re facing one another and you’re having a conversation. And that’s kind of what it is to study the Course in Miracles. You’re having a conversation with the Christ and He’s sitting right there in your presence and you have access to Him directly. Nobody in between, no church, no priest, no organization, no nothing, but just that one relationship you have with that Christ consciousness. And that consciousness is totally present for you 100%.

Well, that’s what Part Two is. He doesn’t talk so much about your case or your grievances or your attack thoughts, or your this or your that, or your ego traps that He’s trying to pull you out of. That’s all been done in Part One. If you paid attention, you really have done those lessons, now you’re cleared out enough. Your mind is clear and empty enough that you can receive this grace, this mercy from God, basically, from the Christ consciousness.

And that’s Part Two. It’s all grace and mercy. And I think you’re going to discover something new, even if you’ve been a student of a Course for many years, this next... this next period between now and the end of the year we’re going to be doing these Lessons in Part Two, and I think you’re going to get closer in your relationship with this Christ Consciousness, and we are going to get closer as a small group you know—like-minded people looking in a similar direction.

Not that anybody is the, quote, the teacher or above anybody else. No, we’re all looking in the same direction. We want to have this direct contact with this higher Self-consciousness in ourselves, which is there. And this Part Two of the Workbook of the Course is like the Christ in us leading us to that awareness, right? It’s direct. It’s right there. So, I wanted to look at this introduction to Part Two and see if there’s any preparation that we need to make in order to fully get out of this next action, this next action in the workbook to fully get out of it what it’s trying to give us and just make sure we’re with it, we’re on track, and we receive.

Markus Discusses Part II of the Workbook of A Course in Miracles

We receive what... are giving and we know what to give too. We receive and we give, we receive and we give, and we get in that flow. So, I just wanted to look at this Introduction. So, this is Part Two of the Workbook, Introduction.

It starts out by saying… Words will mean little now. We use them as but guides on which we do not now depend. For now, we seek direct experience of truth alone. The lessons that remain are merely instructions to the times in which we leave the world of pain and go to enter peace. Now we begin to reach the goal this Course has set, and find the end toward which our practicing was always geared.

So, a few things in that paragraph, it’s saying that words are only vehicles to this deeper experience, this deeper contact, right? The words are only to take us there to this direct experience. It says direct experience of truth alone. We don’t rely so much on the words, but we have our sights set on this direct contact beyond the words, right? The words are the vehicles, but what they’re taking us to is far more important than the words themselves. And this could also be our minds are silenced in this experience.

We don’t have much thought going on. We’re taken to a place of this sort of Divine Pregnancy of a moment, right? It’s like our whole studying up to this point, taking us to this life itself, this experience of life itself.

The lessons that remain are merely introductions to the time in which we leave the world of pain behind and go to enter peace.

So recently there was a lesson, I choose the joy of God instead of pain. I feel the love of God within me now, those lessons. I think we have to keep those in mind. The peace of God is shining in me now. Those are the lessons that represent the state of being we are in reading these Lessons in Part Two.

They’re actual. We are actually in the peace of God. The peace of God is shining in me now. I feel the love of God within me now. I choose the joy of God instead of pain. That’s the whole vibration of this Part Two that every Lesson can bring us to that now. We begin to reach the goal this Course has set and find the end toward which our practicing was geared. Well, the end is that we are aware of our own Christ Consciousness and it’s an actual thing.

It’s not just a neat place we want to go, uh, and get there. It’s like we want to realize we are there and that is us, and that is our consciousness to use.

Now we attempt to let the exercise be merely a beginning, for we wait in quiet expectation for our God and Father. He has promised He will take the final step Himself.

He has promised he will take the final step himself. Well, I think when we read each lesson in this Part Two, we have to be very much aware that this Lesson is God taking His final step toward us. So make that demand when you’re reading the Lesson. This Lesson is preparing the ground for God taking his final step toward me and giving me that certainty. And I can expect that.

God Takes the Final Step to Us

We wait in quiet expectation for our God and Father. He has promised He will take the final step Himself, and we are sure His promises are kept. We have come afar along this road, and now we wait for Him.

Well, haven’t we come on a long road? I mean, you know, Brenda and Rasa were saying this morning, we’ve been studying this for four years now, and we’re just amazed at how it’s always giving us something new.

So that’s been a long road for Sondra and me. Sondra studied the Course and she received it when it first was published in 1976. And I was from like 1985. So, it’s 40 years for me, 50 years for her. And we’re still receiving blessings from this thing. We will continue spending time with Him each morning and at night, as long as makes us happy. So, we’re doing that. We’re doing our morning meditation with the Lesson, and we’re doing our evening meditation in front of the Divine Mother altar. So, I think we’re pretty good on that. I think you guys must be too pretty good with that.

We will not consider time a matter of duration now. We use as much as we will need for the result that we desire. Nor will we forget our hourly remembrance in between, calling to God when we have need of Him as we are tempted to forget our goal.

So any upset, you know, I was rereading this lesson, All things are lessons God would have me learn. Lesson 193.

And there are two little short prayers I think we all have to embed in our consciousness. It’s for any time that anything upsetting comes into our world. Immediately you say:

I will forgive and see this differently. That’s the first. I will forgive and see this differently.

Then the second is, I will forgive and this will disappear. Those two thoughts.

If you just memorize those so they become an automatic response to anything upsetting:

I will forgive and see this differently. I will forgive and this will disappear.

I wil Forgive and see this Differently. I will forgive and this will disappear.

And let’s just keep that in mind, right? And also this week we’ve been using our iPhone to remind us, and go off every hour to think of the Lesson. We’ve been doing that more and I think we’ll continue to do that. So I would definitely employ that in your embarkation into Part Two. If you can get on this regular hourly remembrance, that would be very helpful to you.

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With Sondra Ray & Markus Ray

MARKUS: Welcome to this Mantra Breathing talk today, this Saturday talk. We’re so happy to have you with us on the first day of August, 2026. And the theme today we’re very excited about is Ascension. And we’re going to also talk about our friend, Astarius.

He’s been a friend of Sondra’s for many, many years, and he does the most amazing, music. And up until now, we knew about his album called Spirit Rap, and we’ve often played that in the Mantra Breathing.

But we were not so aware of his other albums. He has one called Ascension. And then this new one that we recently discovered, it’s called Seventh Dimensional Simultaneous Realities.

And I listened to this on a bike ride last week, and it totally blew my mind. And I even… I even, like, copied the transcript of what he was saying, and I want to your attention some of those things in… in this piece, where he’s consolidated all of his other albums in this one album.

And rather than have different cuts, like, okay, there’s… there’s this spirit wrap called this one, and then the next one, he… he goes… continuously. It’s a continuous stream of his consciousness, and I think you’ll just really be immersed in it, right?

So… Sorry, SONDRA had to take a call. So, this is called 7th Dimensional Realities, and we’re gonna play that today for you, and I just wanted to have SONDRA mention a little bit about Ascension. About Ascension, and her relationship with Astarius, and how she met him, and just give you a little background about Astarius.

SONDRA: Yeah, I’ll do that first. I was at an expo in California in the 70s, you know, and I was one of the speakers. And there’s a lot of booths, and people are selling different things, and books, and… I’m just walking down the aisle, and all of a sudden, my whole body started tingling.

And I thought, what’s going on here? I… and I looked up, and there was this booth, and there was this guy there, and I said, who are you? And I said, I want everything you have. That was my first reaction. I want everything you have to offer, because I was so blown away that just walking by him… my whole body was electrified, electrified, and ascending itself.

So, that’s how we became friends, and so I got his albums and so on, but I never got this one until Markus found it the other day. Anyway, so that’s how I met Astarius; and, recently, we’ve had some phone contact with him. We hadn’t seen him in years, right? And he used to live in San Francisco, and then… he’s now living in the Atlanta area, and recently we had some reason to call him, and we called, and we kind of rekindled our relationship. And now, every couple of weeks, we have a conversation with him on the phone.

MARKUS: And what’s amazing is… he takes our mind to a new level. He is a master of what I would call invocation, right? He can invoke… those energies, and through his words, and just the presence of his energy field. He can bring you into this other connection to your higher self. So, he, through his power of invocation… and you’ll notice this in the songs, they’re all invocations. They’re all invocations to higher dimensions, and to God, if you will, and our higher connection to those forces.

So, he is a master of invocation. And he’s kind of a cross between, like, Aboriginal, from Australia, and, like, a tribal shaman from Africa, and just this most incredible combination of things, right?

And he’s just very interesting even to look at, and he has… he often uses a didgeridoo, which the Aboriginals in Australia use, and he always has these, like, wands or staffs with some kind of elaborate crystal on the top, and he uses these wands to kind of invoke energies. So, he’s just the most amazing character, and I’ve just got to know him a little bit better recently, and I just see how amazing he is.

SONDRA: So we wanted to play this for you today, and talk a little bit about Ascension. If you don’t understand English… ustedes de Espana no importa, porque la vibration. The vibration, even if you do not understand English and all he says. His vibration will produce a healing for you in Spain.

Okay, so ascension means raising your vibrations to a new level, and that’s what he does, okay? And you go from third-dimensional reality, and you’re rising to fifth dimensional. And third dimensional is like what you see on TV, you know, all that… Conflict, trauma…

Yeah. And the fourth dimension is what we went through in the New Age, forgiveness, self-love, etc. Seeing that your thoughts produce your results.

And the fifth dimension is Christ Consciousness. So, we want to go to Christ’s consciousness, and he’s definitely in that dimension, okay?

MARKUS: And this seventh dimension is where grace… takes over. It’s like, it doesn’t rely on your actions, right? Mercy and grace are in play. So, like, in the fifth dimension, you still have to change your thoughts, and you have to forgive everyone, and you have to, like, through your own attention raise your consciousness.

But when you get to the seventh level it’s not relying on anything you do. It’s all… it’s all super Divine Grace given to you, whether you know how to do it or not, right? So that’s what’s amazing. It takes you to a place… it’s not of your own doing. It’s not of your own processing, even.

We are very good at finding the thoughts that we need to process and changing those thoughts, but that’s still at the conscious level. This is, like, a super conscious level, where it doesn’t… your evolution… doesn’t rely on your actions.

It just relies on your intention and your ability to surrender and let go, and then this other energy takes over, and you’ll definitely get an experience of this in the Breathe today, I guarantee it, because what he’s saying it’s just… you’ve never heard anybody say these things. I’m gonna read a few.

SONDRA: Well, you had something. Ascension means, eternal life attained when you bypass death. So, physical immortality would be the first step, that you give up the death urge and the thought, death is inevitable. And then, when you do that, you start ascending. If you hang on to the death urge, and you hang on to the thought “death is inevitable,” you start descending as you get older.

We’re trying to ascend and go into Christ’s consciousness, okay? And there is an example of a woman in the United States that ascended, and she… which means she didn’t die, she just dematerialized her body. She turned to light, and she reappeared to people after that.

Sondra Ray on Astarius’s Ascension Levels.

Her name is Anna Lee Skarin, so now, lately, we are starting to review her books, which I read eons ago, but now they make a lot more sense to me, okay? So, Ascended Masters, they begin life in an ordinary fashion, but they perfect themselves through spiritual practice… okay?

MARKUS: Like what we’ve been doing with breathwork, and rebirthing, and studying A Course in Miracles, etc, and going on Spiritual Quests around the world. That’s all important stuff.

And it’s all an important level in your evolution, but you reach a point where you even go above that, and that’s what we’re talking about today. This… this ascension level where we’re relying on the grace of the Masters.

It’s like we have… proved enough to the Masters that we’re serious about our… our ascension, right? by working on ourselves all these years. But now there’s a point where they have to take over and make the last step. It’s like, we still have to be attentive to our process. But we also have to understand there are steps that, we can take only with their help, and only with the grace of God.

SONDRA: And that’s what we’re going to be looking at today. So, ascension is the alternative to dying and reincarnating, and dying and reincarnating, and dying and reincarnating. And do you really want to go through a whole other birth trauma, another set of parents, another school system, another… you know…you can end that if you choose the ascension path. But you have to commit to yourself to have regular spiritual practices. That’s why we put this out every week, so you can… Bobaji, as you said, if you come here every week, bad energy can’t stick in your body, but you need to continually do spiritual practice. You can’t… if you can’t be ascending… And on a… say, okay, I’m ascending, and then just do one or two things. No, it’s a daily… attention you have to give it.

MARKUS: You have to have at least some of your day… devoted to your spiritual practice, and like, morning and evening, basically. Even if it’s only 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the evening, it doesn’t require a lot.

It’s like, it’s not about time, it’s about regularity in practice. It’s something that if you do it every day, you get the regularity of the practice, and then that’s what… that’s what helps you ascend, is that commitment and regularity.

So, I wanted to just read a few lines before we get into this, because, you’ll hear it the first time, and it’ll go in as much as it can go in. But the more you listen to it, the more it goes in.

So, I usually don’t record the playing of the music, but you can get everything we’re playing today. You just go on Astarius.com, A-S-T-A-R-I-U-S, dot com.

And you can download this, it’s like $9, I don’t know what it is, he doesn’t charge much for it, but you can download all of his albums, right?

And I recommend you do that, because if we were to record it and then send it out to you, it wouldn’t be the same quality.

But if you download it off of his website, it’ll be the same high quality that we have. So, you want to just go on Astarius.com if you want to download this, and just download it into your iTunes or your music program, whatever that is. That’s the best way to get it. And plus, it serves him, because it’s, you know, it’s giving him some revenue for his good work.

You know, so, that’s the way we would like you to get the music, is through his website. Yes, Sue, what’s your question?

SUE: What’s this one called, please?

MARKUS: This one is called 7th Dimensional Simultaneous Realities. Just remember 7th Dimensional. That’s… that’s the first word, and it’ll come right up. And, that’s on there. Spirit Rap. And then there’s Spirit Rap, there’s Ascension Rap, and then there’s 5th Dimensional realities, 6th Dimensional realities, but I would just go for the 7th one. I’ve listened to a couple of the other two. They’re not as good as the 7th. The 7th is really right on.

So I wanted to read just some of his poetry. Some of his invocations are prose, and they’re, like, paragraphs, but then he gets to this point where he rhymes his words, and they’re… they really go into you, right? So, I wanted to just read a little bit of it.

View the Entire SATURDAY TALK here: 7th Dimensional Realities

So, he’s trying to connect everyone on the planet in this energy, and take us all up together. Like, when you ascend… it’s beneficial for the rest of humanity. Like, you’re not ascending alone. You’re… you’re taking people to a higher consciousness, and it has to begin with you. It has to begin with you going to a higher consciousness, right? It’s like, when you go to a higher consciousness, the people around you benefit. Your family members, your ancestors. They don’t even have to be in a body. They could be people you knew before, and you loved them, and now they’re gone, but they’re not really gone, and as you ascend, you’re bringing all those relationships up with you. So, it’s not just for you alone in your ascension.

You’re… you’re helping yourself, your family members, your ancestors, your friends, your… community, your country, and ultimately all of humankind in your ascension.

So, yeah. So, anyhow, that’s… anything else, SONDRA?

SONDRA: Well, I think I’m excited to share this with you, and please write to me afterwards, SONDRA@SONDRARAY.COM, or on WhatsApp, and tell me your experience, okay? So, anyhow, I had a little kind of a miracle happen, because I was so grateful to, Astarius, we’ve been talking with him frequently in the last few weeks, and he gave us this kind of an invocation, right, a blessing when we talked to him last.

And I thought, oh my goodness, what can I give him back? So, you know, I write these articles called Art Look, and this next article, I never really paid much attention to African art that much, but I thought, well, that would be the greatest tribute I could do for him, because, you know, Astarius is Black, he’s Afro-American, and I wanted… I never wrote an article about African art at all. And I started mousing around, and I put in “African Divine Mother,” and see what I could find.

Markus Ray on the Ascension Process

And I found these incredible sculptures of… of the Divine Mother in kind of wood, right? That was… they were modern, and they were all about, like, African goddesses, right? And then I googled African royalty, and I came up with all these museum entries of all this incredible art from Africa over the last 500 years, and so I’m writing this article now, it’s called, what did I call it? “The Blackness of Humans Who Light Up My World.”

And so, this is gonna be my… my gift to him, when I get it finished. And… yeah, so I’ll let you guys know. I’m working on it now. But, alright, so get ready. You want to lay down. Some of you are already lying down, and… it’s helpful if you leave your camera on so we can watch you, because I watch here… I sit here and monitor the breathe, and I give, you know, I can see everybody, and kind of where they are, and what the feeling is going on around you, and I can send you energy, as we do this, right? But I need to be able to see you, if… if you don’t mind.

But if… if you don’t want to be seen, that’s okay too, but it’s helpful for me in monitoring the breathing, if I do see you. So just that in mind. So, get… get yourself ready, get your headphones set up, and… we’ll get going.

Yeah. I’m gonna end on this last part of the first section.

Within the temple of Heaven’s house. I do take love to be my spouse.

I am so in love with me, therefore, I honor the whole of my life… the pain and the joy.

I am so in love with me, therefore, I am empowered by everything. All circumstances are serving under my highest good.

I am so in love with me. Therefore, I am a blessing to everyone I meet, and they are a blessing unto me. I have joy in spite of sorrow. I have peace in spite of pain. I have faith in a great tomorrow. And sunshine throughout the rain.

I am so in love with me, therefore, I celebrate all of my contributions to life. And know that I make a monumental impact upon the expansion of life. Life is better by virtue of me. And this is true even when I stumble in human forgetfulness. The universal expanse of my being remembers for me that which I have forgotten.

I am so in love with me, therefore, I choose to remember who I really am as my own version of the Most High, and the whole universe.

I am so in love with me, therefore, I choose to see the possibility of divine redemption in every being. I have the universe’s back, and the universe has my back. I believe in myself, and I believe in you. I believe so much in myself that I offer my blessings to my Creator. I love my creative expression and bring forth delightful creations. I celebrate your creative expression and the wonderful creations you bring forth.

I am so in love with me, therefore, I am in the arms of my beloved, walking hand in hand, bringing ascension to all.

I am so in love with me, therefore I feel the presence of my lavish abundance fashioned out of the fabric of my own mind and soul. My being is one of infinite prosperity. All my wealth and riches are real in this very moment. My abundance is always immediate. And now is my access code to all wealth. I am therefore a billionaire of being, allowing my expression as a multi-billionaire.

I am so in love with me, therefore, I am source, I am substance, I am supply.

I am so in love with me, therefore I let go and let God pour forth the all-sufficiency of abundance into my life and affairs. My true nature is to always be abundant. I honor, allow, and embrace the truth of my abundant supply. The kingdom of heaven is my own. God is my source, source. God is my substance. God is my supply.

With the unified power of the One, I decree my highest good, always operating in this now. I decree grace and mercy always operating in this now. I invoke and dream awake the full reality of ascension in this now. I invoke and dream awake. With every breath that I breathe, the violet fire transmuting my whole being. I invoke and dream awake the full current of ascension in every cell of my being. I am ascended.

I am, therefore, so in love with me.

Welcome to the first moment of the best of your life. The first moment of the best of your life is an echo of eternity. The first moment of the best of your life is the memory bank of the entire journey of existence, from which you extend all the way from the beginningless beginning Into the endless end.

The first moment of the best of your life reveals the advantage within every adversity. Every moment is the first moment, because every moment is the first of its kind.

Every love is your first love. Because every love… Is the first of its kind.

So, it’s been wonderful breathing with you, being with you. You can just relax and meditate. I want to make an announcement on August 21^st, 22^nd, and 23^rd, we’re going to have an online Miracles for You Ascension Training, Ascension Training. That’s, Friday night, Saturday, Sunday.

And then on the 24th, which is SONDRA’s 85th birthday, she’s giving a free Women’s Day.

So, all you women are invited to that. It’ll be up on the website. We’ll send out some information on it.

So, that’s the news from Washington, D.C, and have a good week, and please write to us your experience of this. We want to…hear from you. How did it go?

What did you experience? What… how was it for you?

Because we may do some more, Astarius Miraculi recordings, and we want to see how it was.

So, God bless you all, have a good week, and please write to us.

Bole Baba Ki Jai!

Great being with you.

Sondra & Markus

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TAP TO EXPLORE ➞ bit.ly/GiftsOfGod

PODCAST on Lesson #212 in A Course in Miracles:

A review of Lesson #192: “I have a function God would have me fill.”

With Sondra Ray & Markus Ray

MARKUS: Welcome to our podcast today on A Course in Miracles. We’re so happy to have you with us. Today is the 212th day of the year. It’s July 31st, and this is the 212th Lesson. It’s a review. We have eight more days in the review before we start part two of the Workbook. So, last day in July, what does Lesson #212 say, Sondra Ray?

SONDRA: I am not a body, I am free, for I am still as God created me. And it goes as a review of Lesson #192. I have a function God would have me fill.

MARKUS: I have a function God would have me fill.

SONDRA: I seek the function that would set me free from all the vain illusions of the world. Only the function God has given me can offer freedom. Only this I seek and only this will I accept as mine.

MARKUS: Yeah, okay. Well, what if somebody came up to you and said, “God has something for you to do today!” How would you feel about that, Sondra Ray?

SONDRA: Well, I’d like to know what it is.

MARKUS: Yeah, but wouldn’t you kind of feel like, almost delighted that you were getting directions from such a high place?

SONDRA: Oh, yeah. If they told me what it was, I’d be very happy.

MARKUS: Well, I mean, even if they just said, “God has something for you to do,” would you say “Yes,” even if you didn’t know what it was?

SONDRA: Yeah, I think so. Why not?

Sondra & Markus sharing A Course in Miracles in Glastonbury, UK in early July, 2026

MARKUS: I mean, like, do we trust that God has our best interest in mind? Okay. And anything that He would give us to do, like, that’s what a function is. God has a function; I have a function God would have me fill, right? So I have some purpose that is Divine… that my Divine Creator wants me to do, and that’s what this Lesson is about.

So maybe we could approach it with at least a little bit of excitement that, “My goodness, we’re being given this, this, you know, wonderful thing to do with our life and it comes directly from God… and wouldn’t that make us happy?” I mean, wouldn’t it supersede all the other little goals we have that maybe we pursued and never achieved, or we achieved them and they were disappointing or, you know… this is a different kind of thing.

So, let’s approach it with a kind of a joy that we’re given this special dispensation by the Creator of the Cosmos to do some wonderful mission, or something like that.

SONDRA: That’s a good idea.

It is your Father's holy Will that you complete Himself, and that your Self (Capital S) shall be His sacred Son, forever pure as He, of love created and in love preserved, extending love, creating in its name, forever one with God and with your Self.

MARKUS: Well, stop right there. So it just said your function is to be who you are as God created you. Be like this harbinger of divine love and extend this love in everything that you’re doing on Planet Earth. Now, what if we really got that that was our goal, our function, our purpose for being here, our mission in life? What if we really got that from like six years old? I mean, our parents taught us that, that you have this reason for being here, that your Creator established, and it’s natural, it’s going to be full of the stuff that you love to do anyway, and the things that you’re good at, and you take those things that you’re good at, and you just increase your joy, and you give them to other people to increase their joy.

I mean, wouldn’t your life be a lot different if you were guided in that way from a very early age?

SONDRA: Yeah, it’d be nice, wouldn’t it?

Therefore, you have a function in the world in its own terms. For who can understand a language far beyond his simple grasp? Forgiveness represents your function here. It is not God's creation, for it is the means by which untruth can be undone. And who would pardon Heaven? Yet on earth, you need the means to let illusions go. Creation merely waits for your return to be acknowledged, not to be complete.

MARKUS: Well, there’s Creation, and Creation is perfect, and you’re part of Creation. And sometimes we slip out of that awareness into some kind of problem where we’re not aware of our perfection, right? We’re not aware that we fit within this greater plan of perfection.

And we’re not taught to focus on that, right? We’re taught kind of... our ABCs and our math and our reading and all of that. And it’s always some kind of external goal. But the underlying purpose of it is not discussed.

What if your teachers all in grade school said, “We’re going to study this stuff and the underlying purpose is for you to be supremely happy all the time, in everything you do. And if you’re not happy doing what you’re doing, you have to let go and forgive it and move on and get yourself back to what makes you happy.”

A kid could understand that. You could put that in very clear language… and we’re kind of like kids ourselves now, and we’re waking up to some simplicity that should have been given to us when we were very young. But it never was.

And so therefore we accumulated all of these wrong moves and false starts and things that didn’t work, and disappointments. So we have a lot to forgive and undo. And so as people our age, most of what we’re asked to do is to forgive the past and free ourselves from, you know, all the struggles that we went through. And not keep repeating them, you know?

So it’s kind of reparative work. But if we were taught correctly as children by some wise person, then we wouldn’t have so much correction to do. We would be in the flow of life’s perfection from a very early age. And we wouldn’t be having to forgive ourselves for so many mistakes, you know?

So this lesson could be taught in schools if you had the right teacher in the right setting. And it could be taught to people, to kids that are pretty young.

SONDRA: Because the function is forgiveness that it’s talking about, right?

MARKUS: Yes, but it’s also your function to be joyous. Yesterday, or a couple of days ago, “I choose the joy of God instead of pain.”

Like that’s also your function. And then if you’re not choosing joy and you are choosing pain, then yes, you’re function is to forgive that, and drop it and get back to joy. And that’s where a lot of people find themselves. They’re not experiencing supreme joy or happiness. They have some kind of a problem. And in that situation, of course, that would be “the hell you made up.”

And the only answer to the hell you made up is forgiveness. So then, yes, it does become your function “that God would have you fill.”

SONDRA: Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-born, it has no form at all. Yet God created One Who has the power to translate in form the wholly formless. What He makes are dreams, but of a kind so close to waking that the light of day already shines in them, and eyes already opening behold the joyful sights their offerings contain.

MARKUS: So that would be Christ’s vision, and that would be of a forgiven world. And that’s what it’s saying. Forgiveness is the closest we can come to heaven in this worldly setting that we find ourselves.

Now, I think we need to also distinguish between the world, which is a set of concepts that is projected onto... the physical stuff that we inhabit, right? So we inhabit this physical dimension in a lot of different kinds of situations, right? And then how we interpret that, and respond to that, and relate to that is by some mental structure that we’ve imposed upon it.

Now that’s what it calls “the world.” And for many of us, there’s a dualism of “sometimes that world was good for us,” and, “sometimes that world was bad for us. Sometimes we were happy in that world, sometimes we were sad in that world.” So in that world that’s dictated by the mental filter we put over it, that’s the world.

Forgiveness is the only way we can sort that out. We can sort that out with letting go of what does not produce joy… and reinterpreting and focusing on what does produce joy in ourselves and others. And that would be a forgiveness process. That would be a sorting out process. And that has to happen in our mind.

It’s not the physical stuff that changes. It’s how we use and how we see the physical stuff.

And that’s the ego’s thought system that the Course calls “the world.” We have to totally dismantle that and put a different “Christ’s vision” there, instead of the “ego’s vision.”

SONDRA: Forgiveness gently looks upon all things unknown in Heaven, sees them disappear, and leaves the world a clean and unmarked slate on which the Word of God can now replace the senseless symbols written there before. Forgiveness is the means by which the fear of death is overcome, because it holds no fierce attraction now and guilt is gone. Forgiveness lets the body be perceived as what it is; a simple teaching aid, to be laid by when learning is complete, but hardly changing him who learns at all.

MARKUS: Yeah, so the body is a tool for teaching and you can keep it as long as you have a purpose of teaching and learning. And that’s up to you. It doesn’t have an inherent shelf life. It responds to what you believe about it, and how you use it. If you use it for attack, it will be attacked.

If you use it for guilt... you will punish yourself with some kind of illness because of the guilt. So it in itself is neutral and doesn’t do anything. And that’s what I mean about the physical stuff. The physical stuff is neither heaven nor hell. But what we impose on the physical stuff is a heaven or a hell, according to our mind.

And it’s saying, “Well, You know, you can’t conceive of creation in the world,” which means your interpretation of the world with the ego and the hell you made up, you’re not going to see heaven there. You have to undo that and forgive it totally. And it’s got nothing to do with the physical stuff. It’s got everything to do with your mind, and how you’re interpreting that physical stuff.

SONDRA: What is this next line? It says, The mind without the body cannot make mistakes.

MARKUS: Well, okay.

SONDRA: It cannot think that it will die.

MARKUS: That’s what I’m talking about.

We have to see that the physical stuff is just neutral stuff. And it responds to the mental attitude we impose upon it. So if we’re imposing upon it—our grievances, our attack thoughts, our belief in death, our pain, guilt, fear, anger. If we’re imposing that upon all the physical stuff, it’s going to manifest a hell, right?

But where do you change that?

You change it in the mind, not in the physical stuff. And that’s why it says, A mind without the body cannot make mistakes. So the problem we have is we make a mistake that’s in the mind, and then the body acts it out, right? And then we think it’s the body that made the mistake, not the mind.

So we never get around to changing our mind. But now this is saying you, for a moment, separate the mind from the body. For a moment, you see the mind controls the body and the mind can look towards Spirit. And when it’s looking towards Spirit, it’s not concerned with the body.

That’s what it means. A mind without the body. You’re not concerned with the body. You’re concerned with the Spirit. And Spirit is in a state of grace. Spirit is in a state of joy. So if your mind is really focused on... on Spirit, you will be in a state of joy.

And then that joy will be imbued into the body and the body won’t get sick and you can live in that body as long as you choose. As long as you’re in this state of divine joy and you know, and outrageous sacredness.

SONDRA: What fears could still assail those who have lost the source of all attack the core of anguish and the seed of fear Only forgiveness can relieve the mind of thinking that the body is its home. Only forgiveness can restore the peace that intended for his holy Son. Only forgiveness can persuade the Son to look again upon his holiness.

So what thought do we have, where it says, It cannot think that it will die nor be a prey of merciless attack if it’s the mind is separate from the body.

So, my mind is one with Spirit. That’s all you have to do?

MARKUS: Yeah, and my mind holds only what I think with God, and “What I think with God only gives me loving thoughts and happy thoughts. God’s will for me is perfect happiness, so that doesn’t mean, “God’s will for me is perfect happiness but God gives me these terrible depressing thoughts to think about too!” No, no! God gives you only happy thoughts.

SONDRA: My mind holds only what I think with God.

MARKUS: And if I’m focused on that, then the body is going to take its own course of doing you know, the pleasant assignments that the mind gives it.

It’s not going to be doing hard stuff. It’s not going to be doing sacrificial stuff. It’s not going to be doing conflicting stuff. It’s going to be doing happy stuff. And the result of doing happy stuff reinforces the mind’s focus on the Spirit—which is only perfect happiness.

SONDRA: With anger gone, you will indeed perceive that for Christ’s vision and the gift of sight, no sacrifice was asked and only pain was lifted from a sick and tortured mind. Is this unwelcome? Is it to be feared or is it to be hoped for, met with thanks and joyously accepted? We are one and therefore give up nothing, but we have indeed been given everything by God.

Yet do we need forgiveness to perceive that this is so? Without its kindly light, we grope in darkness using reason but to justify our rage and our attack. Our understanding is so limited that what we think we understand is but confusion born of error. We are lost in mists of shifting dreams and fearful thoughts. Our eyes shut tight against the light. Our minds engaged in worshiping what is not there.

MARKUS: Well, what is not there is all of our fear, guilt, and anger that we have imposed upon the physical stuff of our life—our bodies, our relationships, our places that we live, our work, our actions.

If our mind is not focused on joy, it’s focused on depression and limitation, and fear, guilt, and anger. You’re going to make up a world that is hellish.

And this is the only decision you have to make, is to turn your mind away from identifying with the past and all the things you put your body through that were painful, right? And you think the body did that, but the body didn’t do that. The mind did that to the body.

So you’ve got to remove your condemnation of the body and also start thinking those thoughts that you think with God, not those thoughts that you think separated from God.

So we separate from joy and we make up sorrow. And then we project all that sorrow onto the body. So this is asking us to... direct our mind towards joy, which would be Spirit.

Spirit is in a state of grace forever. Your reality is only spirit. Therefore, you’re in a state of grace forever.

And God being love is also happiness. And God’s will for us is perfect happiness.

So when your mind is focused on Spirit, which would be God, you only get happiness.

You can then turn back around and look at the body and say, well, “I’m going to use the body to express happiness.” I’m not going to use it for anything else. I’m not going to use it to complain. I’m not going to use it to solve any problems. It doesn’t solve any problems. My mind solves the problem by focusing away from fear, guilt, and anger onto perfect happiness. Focusing away from the hell I made up onto the heaven that God is trying to give me here.

SONDRA: Who can be born again in Christ but him who has forgiven everyone he sees or thinks of or imagines? Who could be set free while he imprisons anyone? A jailer is not free, for he is bound together with the prisoner. He must be sure that he does not escape, and so he spends his time in keeping watch on him. The bars that limit him become the world in which the jailer lives along with him. And it is on his freedom that the way to liberty depends for both of them.

MARKUS: So our job is to free ourselves and free others around us. And in that liberation, right, that liberation then becomes our life’s work. We’re liberating ourselves and we’re liberating everyone else from this hell we made up. And and that’s natural. It’s like, it’s just going to happen if you’re truly liberated. You’re going to liberate people around you and it’s just going to happen you don’t have to do a thing. It’ll naturally unfold.

SONDRA: Therefore hold no one prisoner release instead of buying for thus are you made free the way is simple every time you feel a stab of anger realize you have hold a sword above your head and it will fall or be averted as you choose to be condemned or free. Thus does each one who seems to tempt you to be angry represent your Savior from the prison house of death, and so you own him thanks instead of pain.

MARKUS: Yeah, so anybody that plugs you in or does something that you feel is an attack on you, and you’re angry about it, they’re the very ones that are teaching you forgiveness. So the quicker you learn to drop it and not fall for it, not fall for what you think is hurt. You know, you think they’re hurting you, not fall for that. You decide to be hurt and then they act it out. So that’s where you need the forgiveness.

And, you know, everybody’s stuck here. So it’s like we’re using the wrong thought system that is not giving us joy right. And everybody’s doing that. Like, and then when you see you have a different mind that can focus in a different way on a higher reality— call it Spirit, call it Love, call it peace and joy, whatever you want to call that— you can direct your mind toward that and have a different mind when you get a little bit of liberation, You wake up and you say, “Wow, everybody’s using that mind that puts them in hell, right?”

And it’s almost impossible to escape it if you don’t have something as clear as A Course in Miracles explaining what’s needed. You have to drop that whole thought system and go for a totally different thought system. And that kind of renunciation is very rare in the world. People want to hang on to the old stuff they learned, even if it was painful.

SONDRA: Be merciful today. The Son of God deserves your mercy. It is he who asks that you accept the way of freedom now. Deny him not. His Father’s love for him belongs to you. Your function here on earth is only to forgive him, that you may accept him back as your identity. He is as God created him, and you are what he is. Forgive him now for his sins, and you will see that you are one with him.

MARKUS: Yeah, well, his sins are our sins. I mean, sins, let’s just say sin is a mistake. Like, the Course does say that the Son of God is sinless, meaning his essence has not made the mistakes, so therefore you’re sinless, therefore you’re not guilty, you’re innocent.

But now, have we made mistakes? Of course we’ve made mistakes. And are those mistakes sins? No, they’re errors that can be corrected in us. And the sooner we use the forgiveness, the quicker we can correct the errors and restore our mind back to awareness of our divine nature, right?

And when we’re aware of our divine nature through the forgiveness, the forgiveness releases us from… you know… focusing on the crap, right? It releases us from that, so we can now focus on our divine reality in a higher dimension, and we can ascend. We’re not going down, we’re going up now. When we’re doing that it’s like everything we do in life puts us closer into the heavenly state, and we’re forgiving on a daily basis, maybe moment to moment basis. It never stops, so yeah!

SONDRA: Okay!

MARKUS: All right!

Well, I think that’s all we need to say for today, and thanks for joining us.

Bole Baba Ki Jai!

GIFTS OF GOD PROGRAM

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Markus & Sondra in the Light Tunnel connecting the East to the West wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

We learn our p’s and q’s in art school and in life. We learn what gets by, and what pushes the edge of the envelope. Much of the time we “get by.” But an equal, perhaps greater part of the time we yearn to “push the edge of the envelope,” and even get away with it. This is the yearning of creativity in it’s most authentic version. What is a vision of the new that co-creates with the Unknown? This is when the art of re-creation becomes the genius of co-creation. And to go there, the artist has to face the very real possibilities of his own “nothingness.” He jumps into the abyss of the universal Unknown with the trust that something meaningful and beautiful will catch him, and a new truth will be revealed to him (or her).

I have a friend who lives in Mount Shasta. She is a dear soul. She is an artist of modest means, but has a heart that is always stretching the boundaries. She makes what she calls “Angel Cards.” I support her sometimes financially by placing an order of these cards. Some may construe them as “naïve” or childlike. Indeed they are, but this is the very beauty of them. They come from a place inside of her that is not premeditated. They are truly in the moment of co-creating with the Higher Forces in her life. Always they are surprising and unique. I love them. Lucky is he or she who receives one of these original “Angel Cards” from me, because they are “original drawings,” every one of them—one of a kind—and what I write in them is usually something I have never said before. So their whole “action in the world” rises to the level of a Co-Creation.

Does she know what the heck she will draw in the next “Angel Card?” No. Do I know what I am going to write and to whom in the next “Angel Card” I will send out? Most likely not.

I think when I am really “with it,” something comes out of me. These “Art Looks” for instance. I never know ahead exactly what I am going to say, or how I am going to say it, and thank goodness I don’t. I receive a Substack post-a-day from a gal called The Rogue Art Historian. I like her passion for art. The articles seem too long for me, and perhaps too “intellectual,” but she brings to my attention works that I may have missed, in ways that round out my observations and sense of the greatest artistic expressions of our world, and the reasons and background behind them.

Recently she sent this article out: Artemisia Gentileschi Painted Women Men Could Not Control. Artemisia painted because her father, Orazio Gentileschi, was a Italian Renaissance painter in the Mannerist period, and she grew up immersed in his workshop. She admired her father, who also had admired the genius of Caravaggio. In many ways she surpassed her father and integrated the lessons of Caravaggio in a more thorough way.

Artemisia herself was raped by her tutor, Agostino Tassi, who worked in her father’s atelier. Foreshadowing this real life rape, she painted a biblical scene in which a bathing young woman is evesdropped upon by a couple of lecherous elders of the community. As the story goes, a Hebrew girl Susanna is spied on while bathing by a couple of “dirty old men.” The men attempt to blackmail her for sex. Eventually she was put on trial for their false claims. She is proven innocent, and the elders executed for their crime.

Artemisia’s painting is a pointedly psychological work. A woman artist in a time of male domination manages to express some deep mode of feeling of vulnerabilty and apparent danger—that the deck is stacked against her, somehow. She not only in her art form must re-create a better artistic standard and prowess of techneique than her prominant male conterparts of the day, but also surpass what these men painters had established as the highest artistic norms. She was compelled to co-create a new and visceral reality of a “woman’s plight” in a predominately chauvanistic and patriarchal male world. It is interesting that she herself was raped not even a year after this painting was completed.

So much for the Naïve to the Technically Refined co-creations of Linda Marie and Artemisia. The ability to capture a current mode of feeling in the visual expressions of drawing and painting has always interested me. What am I going to dedicate my time and effort to express, which is not merely a repeat of some past artistic style or attempt to match standards with a genre that is not even mine—done better by others in a bygone day?

Recently I wanted to slow down my process, introspect more, and not pressure myself to even paint at all… as I would just repeat or re-create the images and styles of my own past gestures to express my own subject, style, and uniquely personal imagery. I needed a break for something else to emerge. I needed to go into the Unknown in order to shift my re-creation into an act of co-creation. By “co-creation” I mean to join my will of artistic action with that of a Higher Power of a pervading Life Force. In that true joining would only Co-Creation be transcendant.

This painting is for sale. Serious bids start at $10,800 USD plus crating and shipping; Send offers to immortalrayproductions@gmail.com

Paint is paint in the end. Materials become the focus of the “Spirit of Love.” Karen Eubel, one of my classmates at the Cleveland Institute of Art, once said to me, “I have yet to meet someone who really loves paint.” She was careful not to say, “who loves to paint,” but rather loves the “paint itself.” So this stuck with me. Do I love the medium itself, and all the gestures and actions required to make these materials “sing” a new song… from the rawness of their being to the miraculous relationships they end up forming on a canvas?

I still ask myself that.

I keep on keeping on. I can honestly say, “I love paint.” And I reckon I could love it even more. There is something in the act of painting, though, that can be disconcerting. Throwing oneself into the Unknown, so wholeheartedly required to come up with something totally co-creative, does not always taste like a bowl of vanilla ice cream and blueberries. There are bitter elements one all too often wants to spit out. But in the course of sticking with it, something well worth the perseverance emerges. I come out of the whole thing tastily triumphant. Maybe even a little proud of myself that I stuck it out through the yearnings to dash the whole affair into the compost heap of future re-creations.

I will leave you with a black and white version of some former co-creation. When I was completing my graduate studies in Phialdelphia, at Tyler School of Art (Part of Temple University), I was studying with Steven Greene, Frank Stella’s Teacher. He insisted on some form of serious subject matter. He told me my blunderbuss approach to blasting the whole surface of the painting with endless colored bits of collaged shapes was an “Ungepatchket.” This is a Yiddish word for everything gaudy or overly designed, having “everything but the kitchen sink” in it. My style had no discrimination. It was just a pile of unrelated elements. Basically, a heap of trash.

Well, of course that pissed me off. And I remebered what his teacher, Philip Guston had told him, “I want to paint like the first man.” That put me back in touch with my atavistic roots. Not quite like a Cave Man, or anything like that, but close. I wanted to be a man who picked up a brush, or a tool, or a bone, or a rock, and fashioned it into something useful. Granted, my anger at the time came out in a kind of personal “weaponry,” that I have since outgrown since 1982. I made a bunch of atavistic tools after that. Tools that I did not even know what they were for. Anyhow, I would draw these things as well. I did this drawing of a “Primordial Hatchett.” It won a Philadelphia Museum of Art purchase prize in a local show.

It had a Power, of course. But at that time my power was channeled into a very defensive stance of asseting myself. It was all I could do at the time, to try to be seen and heard. Not until meeting Sondra Ray, getting myself to India, studying A Course in Miracles, forgiving myself for my past, getting my mind blown by Tara Singh, and sorting out my Spiritual Life did I start to “see things differently.” That is my ongoing challenge to this day. It is a Joyous Journey that is not merely re-creational. It is not angry but peaceful and happy. It is now, as it was “back then,” deeply Spiritual. It is not a re-creation but a transcendental Co-Creation. Bole Baba Ki Jai!

That’s the News from Washington D.C.

Warmly, Markus

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