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Study of Manual for Teachers 7-15-12

7-14-12
4. FORGIVENESS - THE FACE OF CHRIST

1 Forgiveness is for God and toward God but not of Him. It is impossible to think of anything He created that could need forgiveness. Forgiveness, then, is an illusion, but because of its purpose, which is the Holy Spirit’s, it has one difference. Unlike all other illusions it leads away from error and not towards it.

It seems that forgiveness, like the miracle is an illusion, but it is an illusion that leads away from illusions. It took me a very long time to understand forgiveness as the Course teaches it. My mind kept going back to forgiveness as I have always understood it. This meant I had to first see that someone or something was wrong, and then try to forgive it. It was an endless cycle of going nowhere. Finally, in frustration, every time I said forgiveness, I reinterpreted it to mean undo.

Finally I see that I had no problem understanding the word or the new definition, I simply didn’t want to accept it. Now that I want forgiveness for myself and for everyone else, I can’t imagine returning to forgiveness to destroy. When I do have that desire to see someone as guilty and me as the benevolent dispenser of forgiveness, I laugh at the idea because it’s so silly. That’s the thing about the ego and all it tries to do, its just silly. It only seems awful when I believe it.

My friend, Barbara, wrote something that helped me tremendously. She said that it is our mind’s job to bring us disturbing thoughts. As soon as I read this, I shifted in my understanding. This is how it works. I notice a thought that my friend promised to be here and didn’t show up and that was just plain rude. Then the story grows as more thoughts appear. I am a busy person, and I made a place for her in my schedule. She may as well have said that I am not very important to her, that she has no respect for me. The ego will continue to add to the story as long as I am interested.

If I believe what my mind tells me I will begin to feel angry at my friend. I will start to doubt my own worth. I will become depressed. I will hate the way I feel, and will decide this, too, is the work of my friend and will resent her for that. I will either have to change my friend, or get rid of her.

I can call her and explain how much she has hurt me and how she should never do that again. As long as she understands her culpability, I will be willing to forgive her and give her another chance. If I don’t think I should be the one to do all the work, or if she doesn’t see reason I am left with the only other option, which is to get rid of her as a friend so she can’t hurt me anymore.

Or I can forgive her. I can recognize that the ego is just, once again, doing its job and bringing me disturbing thoughts. I can return my mind to sanity as I realize that nothing God created could ever need forgiveness. I realize that the only thing that happened is that my friend didn’t show up.  Everything else was just a thought in the mind to which I gave meaning. I can just watch the parade of thoughts as they pass me by. They cannot disturb me unless I engage them. Forgiveness is such a simple and perfect solution.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 7-14-12

7-14-12
10 The miracle forgives; the ego damns. Neither need be defined except by this. Yet could a definition be more sure, or more in line with what salvation is? Problem and answer lie together here, and having met at last the choice is clear. Who chooses hell when it is recognized? And who would not go on a little while when it is given him to understand the way is short and Heaven is his goal?

I was at a wedding rehearsal last night. I had never met anyone there before I arrived. The couple had another minister lined up and he cancelled at the last minute, which is why I was in this situation. At any other time in my life I would have been very uncomfortable. I have never understood the rules of socialization.

I never knew what to say to people I don’t know, how to get a conversation started, and always imagined I was the only one who felt like this. This would make me feel less than, and in my uncertainty and discomfort I would begin to compare and project because this is what the ego mind does.

But a lovely thing happened on my way to awakening. I stopped caring about the “rules” of social behavior, about how I appear to others, about how I compare to other people. I stopped caring about myself. I stopped needing to fill the conversational void. I began to be interested in everyone else, but with no need for them to respond.

The groom’s parents are Pentacostal and the bride’s parents are Catholic. In the past, that alone would have made me uncomfortable because their religious beliefs preclude women as ministers. I would have felt judged and would have responded defensively, even if it were only in my mind. All this judgment and defense would have left me nervous and wishing I was someplace else.

When I noticed all this last night I saw these thoughts go through my mind, but since I didn’t invite them to stay, I saw everything through a different filter. It’s hard to explain in words, but I just found that I liked everyone. I noticed all sorts of delightful things about them. I wondered how the parents felt about the wedding being outside their respective churches and if there was tension between the parents since they did not socialize at all. But I did not pick up any of it because I only noticed and did not judge it.

The ego condemns. It sees everyone as a potential enemy, and is constantly on the defense.  The miracle forgives. It sees only Christ everywhere it looks and so has no need to defend, and without a need to defend, there is no attack.

If I had seen the parents as my enemy, judging me and wishing I were someone else, I would have been defensive, and in my mind, at least, I would have attacked them as being judgmental and harsh (which is exactly what I would have been doing to them) and this would have influenced my behavior with them. Everyone would have sensed this undercurrent and the experience would have been very different.

Through the miracle of forgiveness, none of this happened. I enjoyed them, and I was not the least uncomfortable. I noticed some of those old thoughts, as I said, but I didn’t believe them and so I did nothing to hold them in my mind, and they passed through without lingering. I am grateful for the miracle and grateful to Jesus for teaching me.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 7-13-12

7-13-12
9 Your questions have no answer, being made to still God’s Voice, Which asks of everyone one question only: “Are you ready yet to help Me save the world”? Ask this instead of what the ego is, and you will see a sudden brightness cover up the world the ego made. No miracle is now withheld from anyone. The world is saved from what you thought it was. And what it is, is wholly uncondemned and wholly pure.

A Course in Miracles has helped me to understand that I have two voices, two choices. One of those is the ego, and the Course helps me to understand how the ego works and how to recognize it. The Course also helps me to see that I don’t want to listen to the ego voice. It tells me that I can look with the Holy Spirit at the effects of believing what the ego tells me, and I can allow the Holy Spirit to correct each wrong-minded belief. All of this is for the purpose of undoing what I have made, which is my part in the salvation of the world.

But it is also telling me that I don’t need a definition for the ego. I don’t need to know what it is or where it came from. I don’t need to know why it was ever made. All of these questions assume the reality of the ego and provide more distractions from my real work, which is to learn to listen to the other Voice.

The Holy Spirit wants our help in saving the world. The way we do this is to undo the ego beliefs through watching our mind for thoughts that express that belief and allowing Him to correct those thoughts. We do this until the truth begins to dawn upon our mind. Then it seems we continue to do it, only now we understand the purpose and we do it with much more ease and conviction because we are no longer confused. We are no longer conflicted about what we really want.

Another change that occurs at this point is that we now understand that none of this is personal. It is not about waking up the individual, though in time, that is what appears to be happening. Thoughts are not unique to the one who seems to be forming them, and in fact, that one is not forming the thoughts. That feeling is just a conceit of the ego.

In actuality we are just becoming aware of thoughts. All thoughts are recycled thoughts. These thoughts occur in the mind, and when we think we “thought” about something, we actually just noticed a thought. Understanding that the thoughts are impersonal helps us to realize we have no reason to feel guilty for them. What a relief that is!

When we ask that our minds be healed, that a certain thought be corrected, we are actually asking this on behalf of the Sonship, and the healing occurs in the Sonship. So while from the point of view of the individual it appears as a personal journey of enlightenment, it is actually the mind accepting healing for itself through this mechanism.

Perhaps you are good at multi-tasking, or have at least multi-tasked upon occasion. Well what we are doing now is multi-tasking on a scale that is inconceivable to us at this time. Imagine a mind so vast and so powerful that it thinks of billions of stories all at the same time. It watches these stories to see what happens when a certain set of beliefs are accepted as truth. It immerses itself in each story all at once. Now that is multi-tasking on steroids!

My explanation is just a story designed to help me understand and accept that nothing is as it seems, but it is a helpful story. Though I must deal with what is in front of me and let all the rest simply be, understanding that this is not really about healing Myron but about healing the Sonship, helps me detach from the story and become the observer of the story. This is much less painful than believing the story is real and that I am truly guilty and suffering for my sins.

Knowing I am not guilty for my thoughts allows me to go more deeply into mind- healing because I am no longer afraid of what I will find. Instead of believing that what I find in the mind defines me and so condemns me, I now understand that what I find is simply another belief that I am ready to bring to the Holy Spirit for healing. This understanding ends resistance to the process.

What am I saving the world from? I am saving it from my definition of what it is. I am saving it from the meaning I gave it. I am grateful to Jesus for providing, through A Course in Miracles, the understanding that this needs to be done, and that this is my function. I am grateful to the Course for teaching me how to do this.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers7-12-12

7-13-12
8 This was the ego-all the cruel hate, the need for vengeance and the cries of pain, the fear of dying and the urge to kill, the brotherless illusion and the self that seemed alone in all the universe. This terrible mistake about yourself the miracle corrects as gently as a loving mother sings her child to rest. Is not a song like this what you would hear? Would it not answer all you thought to ask, and even make the question meaningless?

What the ego was… do we really need to look for examples in our lives? We have lived with this for eons as seen from the illusion of time. I think of who I have hated; people who have offended me, attacked me (even if it were only in my thoughts) those who didn’t agree with me and support me, people who cut me off in traffic, people I don’t know, people I love. No one avoids my rage, though I try to disguise it as annoyance, disappointment, even sadness. I try to hide it behind sick humor. I try to excuse it as natural, and deserved.

Every time I hate, I seek a likely target, and I withhold my love, attention, my care, my words. I look away, I whisper a secret wish of retribution. I gossip cruelly. My failure to communicate, that is to fully love, to join as one in my heart, is an attack against myself and I deflect it onto my body as sickness, pain, suffering and death. I express it as lack and loss and my story takes a down-turn which I blame on someone else.

And no one suffers my insults and my hatred as much as do I, for all that I project onto others is also held within, where denied, it does it’s foul work in secrecy. And what is done in the darkness cannot be healed, so it is myself I hurt truly, though it may look like the attack is directed outward. This is all only a terrible mistake, and with willingness, easily corrected. It doesn’t require anything on my part other than the honest and complete desire to be healed. The healing mechanism was put into place by God, and we know It as the Holy Spirit; our Comforter, our Guide, our Corrector, our Healer.

Yesterday was a very interesting day. I travel by car in my work, and I work outside for the most part. Yesterday it rained off and on all morning so I got wet, and although the temperature up until now has been so high that getting wet would have been a blessing, the rain brought lower temperatures and so I got chilled instead. Not to mention, I looked like a drowned rat.

Then I got completely rained out as the rain turned into thunder storms and became torrential. Everyone had to turn on their flashers just to be seen by the one driving behind them. So I didn’t get to see all my customers and will have to figure out a way to fit them into my already tight schedule. Just as I was trying to fit in one more customer, my stomach rebelled against something I ate and the rest of the day was spent driving from gas station to gas station, hoping to make it to the next public restroom in time. This went on until I got to the hotel.

My stomach was finally settling down by this time so I cautiously tried a bit of supper. No more eating gas station food for me, so I went across town to a nice restaurant and the food was really good, though it went down somewhat uncertainly. I’m driving back to the hotel on the interstate when I notice my car is pulling to one side and wonder if I am getting a flat. By the time I am able to pull off the interstate at an exit, my tire is shredded and I’m driving on the rim.

Its not a good neighborhood, but I’m in a parking lot of a medical clinic and there are people around. Thanking God for AAA, I call for help. I feel bad for whoever responds because it is still raining. Help should arrive in 30 minutes to an hour, I’m told, so I read a bit and play solitaire on my Kindle. Time slows down; cars begin to leave the lot, its getting dark outside and its still raining.

Now here is the interesting part of today. I am still content. I am at peace. I am not upset and have not been upset all day. Nothing has disturbed my peace in spite of all the circumstances that seemed to have gone wrong. I’m watching an interesting movie and wondering how it will all end. Last week if this had all happened in one day I would have been crying by now, worried and feeling sorry for myself. Looking at what is happening in my life, it seems like nothing has changed, but looking at my response to what is happening, everything has changed.

I had one iffy moment. The final car pulls up next to me and a doctor rolls down his window enough to talk. He is concerned about me being out here by myself. He says that this is a bad neighborhood and hopes I have help coming soon. He seems concerned as well that I don’t seem to be joining him in his fear. Probably thinks I am a simple-minded tourist from the country where we only worry about wild boars or alligators.

I reassure him that the wrecker should arrive any moment (surely, any moment) and with a last pitying look, and directions to the nearest hospital, he drives away. I look around and see how alone I am. I notice the clinic has a pharmacy and think how attractive a target that would be for someone looking for a fix. I checked to be sure my doors are locked. I remember action-adventure shows where the hero makes his escape on a mere rim after his tire has been shot away by the bad guy, and wonder if that only works in Hollywood.

Yikes, my peace has been ruffled. Now I have a choice. I can follow the ego’s story and see where that leads me, or I can stay with the peace of God that passes all understanding. It’s a close call there for a bit; I’ve, over eons of time, have gotten addicted to drama. I had been texting my kids off and on while I waited, and I started to text the doctor’s warnings, then stopped. Why would I do that? Do I want to wallow in fear and anxiety for a while? Do I actually miss that? Do I want my children to join me there?

I think not. The mind brings me thoughts of disaster. It always will because that is its job. I see them. I measure my belief in them by my emotional response, and when I realize that there is something to be healed, I ask for healing. Otherwise I let the thought pass on through. That’s when the apologetic wrecker guy showed up to change my tire. I drove from there to the nearest Walmart to get a new tire, but of course, by this time the tire department was closed.

I noticed the thought that the wrecker should have come within the one hour time allotted him, instead of the more than two hours it actually took and I could have gotten a new tire. But, really? He should have? Evidently not, since he didn’t. That’s reality. So I went to the hotel, and enjoyed a hot shower and a good night’s sleep.

I suppose I will always experience ego thoughts as long as I am “here” but as long as I know that “here” cannot actually exist and that I am not this body and this story, they cannot affect my peace. And when I forget, or become enamored of a dark thought, I can easily return to sanity. I have been given the key to Heaven, and it is my desire for only God. I always have only two choices; it is God, or it is ego. Today, I accept God.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 7-11-12

7-11-12
7 What is a miracle? A dream as well. But look at all the aspects of this dream and you will never question any more. Look at the kindly world you see extend before you as you walk in gentleness. Look at the helpers all along the way you travel, happy in the certainty of Heaven and the surety of peace. And look an instant, too, on what you left behind at last and finally passed by.

The miracle is part of the dream, but it is the corrective device given us to undo the dream. Once we are awake we won’t need miracles, because there will be nothing to undo, nothing that needs a miracle. But for now the miracle is essential. Miracles facilitate a change of mind, which of course is the only change we need. Once the mind changes, the world reflects that change. There is no point in trying to change the world to convince the mind to change because it doesn’t work that way.

However, as the mind changes the world seems to provide all the help we need to complete that change. I looks as if the right people, the right books, the perfect ideas are placed in our path so that they will be there as we need them. It reminds me of those video games my kids play. As they move deeper and deeper into the game all sorts of tools appear. The higher the level they achieve the more tools and the more powerful the tools.

This help appears as we are ready for it. It will do no good if we don’t understand that it is a tool, or that it is for us. But it will absolutely be there when we need it. All we have to do is accept it. It helps very much if we simply play the game without feeling guilt for every wrong turn. If my kids felt guilty every time they chose the wrong path or every time their character was killed and they had to start again from level 1, they would quickly stop playing the game and find something else to do. When we feel guilty about the dark thoughts in our mind, or our failure to accept healing the first time we ask, then we get discouraged from playing, too.

Fear is also a deterrent. If my kids were truly afraid at every turn in the game, if they believed the bad guy jumping from behind the bush was going to cause them real harm, they would find a friendlier game to play. If I become afraid to make a mistake or I believe there are real and painful consequences when I fail to accept my help and my miracle, I would become discouraged and maybe get stuck in place, unable to move back and afraid to move forward.

The thing that helped me with fear is the understanding that it is not real. It can’t be real because fear is not in God.  I made it up. This understanding has not completely ended fear in my mind, but it has helped tremendously and I fully expect a miracle to heal my mind completely as I am ready. In the meantime I have no guilt about the fear. That wasn’t always true, but it is now and, oh my, what a difference that makes.

I can’t believe how easy it was to step out of guilt. I kept teaching this, but failing to accept it fully for myself. But as the Manual for Teachers says, the teachers of God are not perfect, but they teach perfection over and over until they learn it. I had learned it, but failed to realize the game was over, so I needed a tool, a helper to shake me awake. Because I was ready, the helper appeared.

Now when I have a thought that says I am vulnerable, have been attacked, or am in danger of being attacked; that I am a victim to circumstances or persons; that I am lonely, afraid, in pain, or suffering in any way, I see the thought for what it is, an impersonal call for healing, and I gladly offer it to the Holy Spirit to receive that miracle on behalf of the Sonship. This is how the miracle works to undo the dream.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 7-10-12

7-10-12
Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God’s Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the Ego? Who has the need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?

The ego seems so very real that it is hard to imagine life without it. At first I didn’t understand the mechanism that allowed me to experience the impossible. Then, through A Course in Miracles, I learned how it works and that I didn’t want it anymore. I learned to let it go. It seemed to take a very long time because I had to come to that conclusion myself, and I did not entirely want to do that, even when my memory of something else began to awaken. I said to myself that it was too scary, too hard, but what I really meant was “I am not sure I want to.”

The small gentle steps I took as I learned to trust the Voice within helped me choose again. The daily lessons, those clever clever lessons, undid wrong minded thinking and then gave me something else. From there I practiced watching what was going on in my mind so that I could choose what I wanted to believe based on what brought me peace, and what brought me closer to God. The Holy Spirit healed what I truly no longer wanted.

Guilt is the heavy chain that seems to bind me to the world and the ego, but it only imprisons a willing inmate. It is an illusion that binds me, and I can walk out of the chains as if they don’t exist, because they don’t, and discover I am no longer bound, because I never was.

The Holy Spirit told me that there is no such thing as pain and that it is only my belief in pain that creates the sensations of pain that I feel. I made up pain and apply it as desired. How strange. I kept reminding myself that this was the truth. Every time I felt pain I remembered that there is no pain, that it is only a thought in my mind that I feel. I watched pain dissolve as I let the belief be healed. When I pick it up again, I remind myself of the truth again.

Guilt is the same thing. Guilt is just something I made up and decided to use as if it were real. But pain and guilt are part of the ego which does not exist except in my memory. This morning I woke up to a dream in which I was watching myself apologize for some part of my story. I was younger and was talking to my daughter who morphed into my mother. I listened to her sadness and regret and I knew she was wrong about being guilty.

I tried to take her hand to reassure her, but she didn’t want to be interrupted in her guilty story. I woke up knowing that she represents me as the Myron who believed in guilt and wrapped herself in it like it was her protection. She had no intention of giving it up no matter how many lessons she did or how many times Jesus told her she was innocent. How strangely we act when we believe in the ego, and believe we are something we could never be. But in my dream was the watcher, the one who recognizes guilt, but knows only innocence. It is she I have learned to identify with.

No matter how strongly we believe in the impossible, we cannot make it real. It can affect us only if we believe in it. How real can an affect be if the cause is unreal? That is the answer to the illusion. Is my experience real? Is it God? Pain is not God so pain is not real. Fear is not God, so fear is not real. Guilt is not God, so guilt is not real. If it is not real then I can let go of it. I can give that belief to the Holy Spirit, be healed and the experience of the unreal will cease. The only power these things have in my life is my belief that they are real.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 7-9-12

7-9-12
4 We cannot make a definition for what the ego is, but we can say what it is not. And this is shown to us with perfect clarity. It is from this that we deduce all that the ego is. Look at its opposite and you can see the only answer that is meaningful.
5 The ego’s opposite in every way,-in origin, effect and consequence-we call a miracle. And here we find all that is not the ego in this world. Here is the ego’s opposite and here alone we look on what the ego was, for here we see all that it seemed to do, and cause and its effects must still be one.

While Jesus offers no definition for the ego, he tells us that it is the opposite of a miracle. The miracle is the way to God, and the ego is the way we defend against God. The miracle is the effect of Love and the ego is the effect of separation from Love. The miracle brings certainty, peace, and joy, where the ego brings only darkness, which appear as fear, guilt, anger, shame, jealousy and competition, sickness, suffering and death. The effect of the ego is insanity and the effect of the miracle is a return to sanity.

Each day as I, moment by moment, made my choice, I have seen the effects of those choices in my life. I have watched my life become more peaceful and happier as I more consistently chose God and therefore received the miracle of the healed mind. I protect my choice moment by moment as I continue to choose for God.

I used to think that a judgmental thought made me a judgmental person, and therefore a “bad” person, a person who needed to be fixed. Then I would worry the thought until it became the center of my attention and the proof I was still unworthy to be my Self. By the time I gave it over to the Holy Spirit, I was desperate to be rid of it, and went as humble supplicant in hope of relief. I learned to trust the process, but I held onto the belief that each new dark thought was proof I was still unworthy. That was the ego at work.

Now my attention is briefly caught by a dark thought and I remember that I am not my thoughts. They come to my attention and I realize I am not interested and they leave. I no longer feel guilty that I noticed a judgmental thought, just uninterested, or if I notice an attachment to it, I simply offer it to Holy Spirit and anticipate my healing. No fear. No guilt. No doubt. No confusion about who I am. That is the miracle.

My life is a miracle.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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