“There’s no place like home.” Dot from Kansas repeated that mantra over and over again while clicking her sparkly red heels together, and in the end she finally woke up on the other side of that rainbow and realized that she had never left home and it was all just a crazy dream. The “Great and Powerful Oz” turned out to be some bro’s ego trying to play God, and once everybody shook off their poppy coma and looked behind the curtain, they realized that what they thought they somehow lacked was within them all along.

Sound familiar?

A Course in Miracles is based on a similar psychospiritual philosophy (btw, I tried to make that all one word and the ego mind disguising itself as autocorrect kept trying to make it two words: psycho spiritual, lol – which is probably exactly how the ego would describe it. I swear to God you can’t make this stuff up.)

Anyway, let’s just say that the Course is a psychological and spiritual thought system, which presents reality very differently than the way in which the world has been taught to think about and believe that it works.

Before I continue, a brief fyi: I am a teacher who swears. My style is irreverently reverent and spiritually sassy, and my language unapologetically reflects the blue shades of colorful.

One of the major themes of A Course in Miracles is that, essentially, we – meaning, you, me, everyone we know, and literally everyone who ever existed or ever will exist, because of another thing that it teaches, which is that we are all one mind – have within us this inherent Divine  power of bringing thought into form and making it our experience.

Not only that, but it teaches that we made up the world of form with our powerful thoughts! Which, fyi, also means other “worlds” – aka planets, life forms, etc. So if you are like me and vibing the Trekkie / Jedi thing and can’t wait to belly up to that Star Wars bar and hang with all of our ET bros – you might be stoked. But it’s still completely trippy, right?

I mean literally, as in, we made the Cosmos? I can hardly even do math. And yet the Course tells us,

“Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact.”

The Course further states  that there are no neutral thoughts, meaning that everything we think about – especially if we think about it a lot – is out there workin’ it trying to make itself into reality.

As the Course tells us,

“There is no more self-contradictory concept than that of ‘idle thoughts.’ What gives rise to the perception of a whole world can hardly be called idle.”

Word.

In other words, it pretty much says, Dude, everything you are allowing yourself to think about is like using the power of GOD to make sh*t happen.

Because that is where our power actually comes from. It flows directly through us right from God in a very similar way to how a pregnant mother’s blood flows right through the umbilical cord to her baby.

So… if God is the most powerful and creative force in the realm of All That Is (He’s like, literally and figuratively The King of All That) and we are His creation, what else would be flowing though us except the Power of God? It’s like, if you’re parents are superheros, it’s kind of a given that you are going to have a superpower. So, the power of manifesting into our experience what we hold in our minds is our superpower. And like any self-respecting superpower, it can be used constructively or destructively.

We may think we know all this. I have been studying metaphysics since I was learning my ABCs and have been a student of A Course in Miracles for like 17 years.

But knowing stuff intellectually does not make it operational on the level of the mind, and even when it is, it doesn’t stay in that mode unless one remains conscious of it.

If you are not consciously directing what your thoughts are bringing into your experience, you are unconsciously doing so. If you don’t like what the experience is, it’s time to clean house on what you are holding in your mind.

So, here’s homegirl’s little story. (P.S. I struggle with the ego-mind telling me it’s a “first-world problem”. Well, whatever, ego. If we’re picking the ant poop out of the pepper it’s technically a false-world problem, since, as A Course in Miracles teaches us, in the real- world home we never left there are no problems. So there.)

In the world I believe I am in at the moment, my home has been the same apartment in the beautiful town of Newburyport, Massachusetts for 11 years. I have experienced a lot of great things while residing in this space – including becoming a psychotherapist, coach, and teacher of A Course in Miracles – and my happy little ACIM group has grown up there.

I have loved a lot about being here, and have become very attached to the space – like we do here in the world. But despite that, in the past several years, my heart has also been pulling me toward a new worldly home. Not far, actually, only about 25 miles away, to Portsmouth, NH.

I adore that city for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that the state license plates even say, “Live Free or Die”, which totally represents Spirit vs. ego if you ask me, and would be an awesome subtitle to A Course in Miracles.

So, for several years, every single time I am in that city, I’ve said, “I love it here so much, I need to live here. I have to live here. I am so excited for when I live here! I can’t wait to live here!” Over and over.

I have it on my intention list. It’s on my treasure map. I’m envisioning myself being there all the time.

Do you see where this is going?

So, “out of the blue” (not) I found out a couple of weeks ago that I have to move. Shock.

Except I was shocked.

 

And my immediate reaction was total and complete fear, that I didn’t want it to happen, that it isn’t the right time, I’m not ready, and that it was not my decision or in my control because I didn’t choose it.

But that was bullshit. I did, and it was.

I wanted it like it was my fricking job. I chose that sucker like a boss. A HUGE part of my conscious mind had been putting this endeavor in the works for years. Constant thoughts hammering the same idea.

It’s as if the spirit part of my mind could see that I was setting up a conflict where I was keeping myself stuck out of fear, and has now helped me to overcome that by removing the obstacle of staying in my apartment so that I can move forward.

As A Course in Miracles says,

“Only the Holy Spirit knows what you need… In time, He gives you all the things that you need have, and renews them as long as you have need of them.”

(Which, as of now, officially no longer includes my apartment lease.)

It’s really interesting to be in the awareness of watching the process unfold, because if any part of this actually has been the ego mind that has been summoning me to move to Portsmouth, now it’s of course certainly telling me all of the bazillion reasons why I won’t be able to. It’s going all Flying Monkeys up in my grill right now, bullying me with various you-should-have’s in reference to the past, you can’t’s in the present and  you’ll-never’s regarding the future.

But I know what mine is to do here. It is to surrender the whole situation to Spirit – to call on my Inner Glinda and stay in the bubble of Trust, focused on the Truth. And the Truth is that my home is not here in this world.

My real home is remembering who I am as a beloved child of God. Click To Tweet

As Pure light. It is state of endless, perfect, all-encompassing Love. Changeless, timeless, blissful. Problemless, rentless, tornadoless. It is the Peace of God. That’s my Kansas.

I don’t know at the moment where I will end up living, and the ego mind wants me to be freaking right the f*ck out about that, and then make my own decisions from that place of panic. Like Dorothy, when the hot-air balloon took off without her – fearing that I’ll never be home again.

Sheesh, what a one-note buzzkill that ego-mind is.

And yet, what A Course in Miracles is telling me is the opposite. It says things like,

“Once you accept His plan as the one function that you would fulfill, there will be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not arrange for you without your effort. He will go before you making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. Nothing you need will be denied you. Not one seeming difficulty will but melt away before you reach it. You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill.”

And what is that function?

As A Course in Miracles reminds me, “Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world. I would fulfill my function that I may be happy.”

This means forgiving all fear I have about my living situation, or the belief that I have to resolve it alone. It means I choose to live in trust. To ask, why would Spirit’s plan fail me? That makes no sense. If I have been guided this far to do therapy and coaching, and teaching and writing blogs and leading workshops, Spirit does not need me to be overly focused on and distracted by stuff like where am I gonna live.

It is the ego’s plan of fear, scarcity, doubt, and thinking that we have to solve all of our own worldly problems – or that we even can – that keeps failing us.

Trust is the first characteristic of a Teacher of God, according to A Course in Miracles’ Manual for Teachers.

Trust, like that which a kid has for his Superhero Dad, because He has, ummm, superpowers, and because HE LOVES ME – and all my 7-billion brothers and sisters who are all me – LIKE CRAZY.

Trust, down deep in my soul, that I am already home.

As Jesus states in A Course in Miracles,

“You have very little trust in me as yet, but it will increase as you turn more and more often to me instead of to your ego for guidance. The results will convince you increasingly that this is the only sane choice that you can make. No one who learns from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs additional convincing.”

Amen, Bro. Can I get a witness?

So, that’s what I’m doing. You could say I’m literally movin’ on up – into a Place of Trust in my Father’s metaphorical House, which has many mansions, one of which is meant for me to make my new crib in while I appear to be here, continuing to do my work of remembering the way back to my real home – the one I never left.

In the meantime, Miracle Street, Portsmouth.

Welcome home.

Thank you for being on this homeward-bound journey with me today. If the post has made you think differently about what you are creating with your thoughts, or where you are locating yourself, please leave me a comment below.

And for all my awesome Homies, the Teachers of God Foundation has a new offering that is kicking off this month, entitled The Presenter Series. It is a year-long deep dive into four topic areas featuring 12 teachers of A Course in Miracles, of whom I am very honored to be one. If you haven’t heard about this program, please click here to learn more and get on the waiting list for registration.

There’s no place I’d rather be than home with you. I love you.

Kelly

Rev Kelly Russell

Transformational Coach & Psychotherapist