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April-June, 2011

Lesson 45: God Is the Mind with Which I Think

by Rev. Gail Hamley

Recently I recalled a moment in time when I was sitting next to my father.  He was talking and I sat in awe of his knowledge and all that was in his mind.  In contrast, I searched my seven year old mind and found it blank.  I wanted to be like my dad. Many times this memory has come to me throughout the years.

When Jesus said to be “as little children,” did he mean to have a mind like a blank slate as mine seemed on that day? Years later as I was instructed in AA to be mindful of my thoughts and to turn any negativity into positive thoughts, I was appalled at how my thoughts had become so negative. Certainly my life reflected this negativity. I began to turn them around and magically my life began to change, too. Often I have felt separated from God in my life and the “getting back” to God seemed like a journey without end.  Often I could not even find the beginning to get on the journey!

When I read and practiced Lesson 45: “God is the Mind with which I think,” I was struck by the Truth and simplicity of it. There is no journey to begin and no end. We are One, so there is no place to go. The Lesson says we are a Thought in the Mind of God and Thoughts do not leave their Source. I felt the magnificence of this statement. 

So, the Lesson continues, the mind with which I think is also the Mind of God. But where do I put my focus? If it is the outer ever-changing world, I am distracted from the Thoughts of God, not that they aren’t still always there, it is that I am only distracted. My focus is submerged in a world of unreality. When I contemplated the words ‘thoughts do not leave their source and I am a thought in the Mind of God,’ I felt this Oneness that I have periodically experienced in meditation. There is not anything about me nor anything around me that is not One with God. 

Native Americans refer to God as Creator and treat all things with deep respect: The rocks, water, air, animals, one another as living parts of our reality. My heritage as Turtle Mountain Chippewa has given me this understanding, yet as I contemplated this lesson I realize how easy it is to continue to think I am separate. 

Today I can accept that there is no separate part of me from Creator/God. What is it I truly desire? I still desire to be like my father. Only this time I have a new understanding of who my real Father is. I can release all the cluttered thoughts of the world and choose again. I can silence the unreal and “try to think of Light, formless and without limit, as I pass by the thoughts of this world. And do not forget that they cannot hold me to the world unless I give them the power to do so.” (Lesson 44)  The thoughts I thought with God are still with me, unchanged. “Here is your mind joined with the Mind of God. Here are your thoughts one with His.”

© 2011, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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