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October-December, 2016

Shifting My Vigilance

by Rev. Myron Jones, O.M.C.

I have been using the idea of being vigilant for my thoughts and giving them to the Holy Spirit for healing. I have been doing this for a long time now and it is a good practice. I notice my thoughts, give them to the Holy Spirit, and accept His correction. Simple and effective. Something I have been guided to add to my practice is to pay more attention to my tendency to try to heal myself.

I have always been about making things happen. I do, I fix, I work. I set goals and meet them. Now I am trying something different. I am watching. I watch Myron. I watch her behavior. I notice her thoughts. I let go of any desire to fix anything. Does her behavior stem from a true belief or from an ego belief? Is her thought a true thought or an untrue thought?

Sometimes this new practice is hard for me to do. I have always been a “git her done” kind of gal. Show me a problem and I’ll find a solution. When my kids came to me with a problem I would say, “OK, let’s look at our options.” I would find options or create options where none were obvious. Then I would get to work implementing them. In the illusion this seems very sensible and seems to often be effective. But sometimes, even in the illusion, it doesn’t work.

When my son was very sick, I looked at the options and was pretty pushy about him trying each and every one of them. Each time he would try something, seeing this doctor or that one, trying a new diet, a new healer, whatever I could come up with, I would feel relief. It was temporary relief because it disappeared when the option didn’t work. After awhile I realized that I wasn’t really trying to help him as much as I was trying to relieve myself of the panic of not being able to fix this. My whole world was based on the belief that, if I tried hard enough, I could fix it.

For a long time I was enamored with the idea of controlling my world through positive thinking. I tried to keep only strongly positive ideas in my mind. I had to finally admit is that this is not possible. It seems that ideas simply appear and the more I try to rid myself of them, the more entrenched they become. I realized that I don’t really know what I want, so even when this powerful mind I use brought into my life what I thought I wanted, it did not make me happy.

Years of being vigilant for my thoughts and beliefs has helped me to be very aware of the ego at work. Giving these thoughts to the Holy Spirit for correction has been a very helpful healing process. As a result, my mind is clearer than it was before, which is making it possible for me to see that sometimes I am unwittingly allowing the ego to hijack my process. In my plan I have two jobs. I pay attention to my thoughts, noticing if they are true thoughts or untrue thoughts. When I notice that they are not true thoughts, I ask the Holy Spirit to correct them. Easy, right? That’s all I have to do; the Holy Spirit does the rest.

I am beginning to notice that sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of ego thoughts I am discovering. I also feel overwhelmed by the realization that I can’t seem to do anything about them. I have a thought and give it to Spirit and, before you know it, the thought is right back. I feel ineffective and guilty. How do I keep them gone? What’s wrong with me? Some days I will seem to be in constant judgment. I will have mean thoughts. I will feel my reluctance to let go of something that is obviously keeping me in the ego storm. These are the things that panic me.

I think the bad feelings when I made the discoveries of ego thinking and ego behavior came from my belief that I had to do something about it and I couldn’t, really. And when I tried, that was just me repeating the original error and trying to take over as God which, of course, increased my feelings of guilt.

I asked the Holy Spirit for clarity about this and He helped me to see that I was trying to assume His job and that is why I felt overwhelmed and frightened. He reminded me that I don’t know what anything means and have no way to judge what I am seeing. He encouraged me to just watch without trying to put my own understanding on what I see.

Doing this, I am beginning to feel gratitude for my little discoveries instead of feeling dismay as I used to. What do I do about the discoveries? Nothing. I desire that my mind be healed. That’s all. As I practice this, I notice I am not feeling overwhelmed or discouraged as I so often did in the past because I am not taking the Holy Spirit’s job onto myself.

Sometimes nothing seems to be happening, but I remember that I want to wake up and so I will. Now it is just time to trust, even if I don’t understand what is happening. Regina Dawn Akers has this teaching that is about rest, accept and trust. That’s what I’m doing. The ego, of course, says that I am lazy and ineffective and that if I don’t do something about my behaviors and thoughts, I am doomed. But the ego is wrong and, while I can’t shut it up, I don’t have to believe it.

So what does this look like in my life? Well, here is an example. I am very afraid of heights and recently something triggered this fear. I noticed the fear thought and asked the Holy Spirit to heal my mind. I also noticed that the fear thought didn’t seem to be going away. I worried about that. I felt guilty about it. I fretted and tried harder. Now it was all I could think about and was driving me crazy. Now, not only was I mired in fear, but also in doubt and confusion.

Finally, I just gave up. I told the Holy Spirit that I surrendered this to Him, that I had no idea what to do with it. I told Him that I give Him all the willingness I have to let go, and that I was also willing to stay in the fear if that is what I needed to do right now. I admitted that I didn’t know what any of this meant and I had no idea what would be the most helpful outcome at this time. Then I went to sleep. When I woke up the fear was gone.

What did I do to finally overcome the fear? Nothing. I did my part in noticing the fear and in desiring correction. Then I surrendered the solution to the Holy Spirit where it belongs. I need do nothing, and when I choose to do something anyway, it just gets in the way. I am learning that when I cannot seem to extricate myself from an ego storm in my mind that it is better not to fight it. I just rest in it; no fighting, no inner argument with it, no efforting. I just sit there with it, waiting to see what the Holy Spirit would do with this problem.

At first it seemed hard, but really the only part that is hard is convincing myself to give up control and the desire to judge the outcome. After that, it is the easiest and most peaceful solution I can imagine. I am learning to shift my vigilance to remembering that I need do nothing.

This is a prayer that came to me. I think it is appropriate to my new practice:

Holy Spirit, I ask that you be with me all day today, helping me to keep my focus on what is true. When I allow my mind to wander into illusions of what might have been, or what I fear is to come, please remind me of the moment I am in now and that this is the only moment there is. It is in only this moment that I can choose again. As I go through my day acting and reacting, please help me to bring my attention to my lesson, understanding that the body and the world are just the classroom for the lesson. I often forget that this is true and begin to act as if the purpose of life is to change the classroom. Help me to keep the purpose of life clearly in the forefront of my mind.

This morning it is quiet and easy to feel Your ever present help. I can rest in You, and feel deep gratitude for that rest. As others join me in today’s story I become distracted and feel like I have lost my contact with You. Please help me to see that this is not possible. Help me learn to rise above the battleground and to be aware of You within me all during the day, no matter who joins me or what dramas distract me. Help me to see the dramas as lessons rather than distractions. Amen

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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