XI. The Test of Truth, P 4
4 You who have not yet brought all of the darkness you have taught yourself into the light in you, can hardly judge the truth and value of this course. Yet God did not abandon you. And so you have another lesson sent from Him, already learned for every child of light by Him to Whom God gave it. This lesson shines with God’s glory, for in it lies His power, which He shares so gladly with His Son. Learn of His happiness, which is yours. But to accomplish this, all your dark lessons must be brought willingly to truth, and joyously laid down by hands open to receive, not closed to take. Every dark lesson that you bring to Him Who teaches light He will accept from you, because you do not want it. And He will gladly exchange each one for the bright lesson He has learned for you. Never believe that any lesson you have learned apart from Him means anything.
Journal
A Course in Miracles is a lesson we are to learn, but if we have not brought all our dark lessons to the light within us, we will need more help. We are given this help as the Holy Spirit. We can bring those dark lessons to Him. It is His function to take from us what we do not want. He exchanges these dark lessons for bright lessons.
This is the part that fascinates me. Jesus says that He gives to us each bright lesson He has learned for us. Interesting that it is phrased in that way. So clearly, Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit. He says: “And so you have another lesson sent from Him, already learned for every child of light by Him to Whom God gave it.” So this seems to say that the Holy Spirit has learned the lessons for us. No wonder Jesus says in another place in the Course that the Holy Spirit is hard to understand. Just as I think I have pinned down an idea of what the Holy Spirit is, I see that I don’t really know.
The important part for me to know, however, is that the lessons I am trying to learn have already been accomplished and through the Holy Spirit, I can simply accept them. In fact, anything I learn on my own is useless, and only what I accept from the Holy Spirit is real. Once again I am surprised by the simplicity of salvation. Somehow, the ego mind has trouble believing that something simple can also be powerful.
Once again I see that my only part in this is to accept that I want His lesson instead of mine. The other day, I realized that I was not happy. I wasn’t really sad, but it was like I had a dampening field around me that prevented me from feeling joy. With this realization came the desire to feel otherwise, and from that desire came the answer. I received a clear thought that all I needed to do was to believe what Jesus was telling me about myself.
I had fallen into the habit of looking at all I have failed to accomplish rather than being in gratitude for all that I have accomplished. I had started comparing myself to others and thinking that I was not the teacher they were, or that I was not the light they were. I started thinking about how many times I had to learn the same lesson before I stopped slipping back into the ego. I saw that slowly many of those thoughts had slipped into my mind and stolen my joy.
So I shifted my thinking. Right that moment I made a decision to accept the Holy Spirit’s bright lesson rather than the dark lesson the ego had been teaching me. I started focusing on the truth about myself. I am the light of the world. I completely disregarded any ego “proof” that I was something else. I placed my awareness on my holy mind, rather than my ego mind.
I guess the ego mind realized I was serious about this shift and so tried to join me in it. I saw thoughts to prove that I am good and smart and helpful. But I ignored this, too. Anything I teach myself (that comes from the ego mind) is meaningless. If I look to proof found in my story that I am what I was created to be, then I would also find proof there that I am not. I simply accept that I am still as God created me and that is a brilliant and perfect Thought in His Mind.
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