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Study of Text, Chapter 11: II: The Invitation to Healing, P 4 8-31-15

II. The Invitation to Healing, P 4
4 Healing is a sign that you want to make whole. And this willingness opens your ears to the Voice of the Holy Spirit, Whose message is wholeness. He will enable you to go far beyond the healing you would undertake, for beside your small willingness to make whole He will lay His Own complete Will and make yours whole. What can the Son of God not accomplish with the Fatherhood of God in Him? And yet the invitation must come from you, for you have surely learned that whom you invite as your guest will abide with you.

Journal

I have absolutely learned that if I invite the ego as guest, it does abide with me, and it brings all sorts of bad advice with it. Yesterday was miserable in a way, but wonderful in another way. Here is what happened.

First, I got an ear infection and went to the doctor for magic. When I asked why this showed up, (I haven’t needed antibiotics in a very long time) I had the thought that lately I have been very resistant to hearing what is going on in my classroom. There has been a lot of conflict, and while I have watched my mind and asked for healing, I have also wished that I did not have to be there, hearing that. That is not a very helpful prayer because nothing is healed. I was listening to the ego, which often suggests I run, and failing to listen to the Voice for God.

I decided that I would look very closely at what is going on and how I am responding to the situation. I gave my small willingness to see this differently. I did this in two ways, one by feeling what I felt without aborting that feeling when it got uncomfortable, and the other was to use Lesson 325 to get to the source of what was happening. Here is how it unfolded.

I thought about my boss giving me another job to do just as I was walking out. I noticed I felt discouraged and I noticed I wanted to see others wrong for this. I asked that my mind be healed of the belief that I am unfairly treated. But this morning my willingness to have only the thoughts I think with God in my mind was great. So I did not push it away as a done deal when I asked for healing. I thought about the extra job and let my feeling flow freely. I wanted to just sit down and cry. I wanted to run away. Ok, that needed more work!

So I asked Jesus what I should do now. He told me to use Lesson 325 to see how this situation occurred in my life. I know that this is my story and I write the script, but that concept gets lost when I let the ego run things. I could see why this would be helpful at this time. So here is the part of the Lesson I used.

LESSON 325

All things I think I see reflect ideas.

1 This is salvation’s keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own. From insane wishes comes an insane world. From judgment comes a world condemned. And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world comes forth, with mercy for the holy Son of God, to offer him a kindly home where he can rest a while before he journeys on, and help his brothers walk ahead with him, and find the way to Heaven and to God.

So what I did was take the idea that I am overburdened at work, and that work has become a place I try to avoid because of the level of conflict, and using this lesson I traced down how this happened. One thing I know right from the start, even if I avoid the knowledge sometimes, is that there is nothing in my world that I do not want. See Lesson 152, The Power of Decision.

So now I am only looking to see how this situation wound up in my script. What was I trying to do?

What I see reflects a process in my mind
No matter who seems to be causing the conflict, how far I try to distance myself from that one, no matter who seems to be doing things to me, what I see is a reflection of a process going on in my mind. The ball is back in my court!

which starts with my idea of what I want.
This is so important! I think it should have been capitalized, italicized, quote makes around it, an exclamation point behind it. Whatever is going on in my world is something I want! It seems crazy and ridiculous, but Jesus is someone I can trust and certainly I cannot trust the ego. So I am going with this. I remind myself that he started this paragraph by telling me that this is the keynote to salvation.

So I had an idea of what I wanted and using a process in my mind, I got that idea into the world. How did I do this?

From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires
Wait! The thing I see and experience in the world is the image I made up. Let’s back up and see what it is I desired. Well, it is helpful that I have the image to look at. I am in a situation where there is a lot of conflict and I seem to be pulled into it on a regular basis. I also seem to have more to do than I am willing to do. So, what is it that is really desired? From what did I source this image of conflict and work?

I was able to get to it by using some of the ideas that Jesus has taught me to look out for. I tried out one of them by saying it out loud. “I am being unfairly treated.” I felt a lump form in my throat. It is unfair to ask the oldest person there, who has been the busiest person, to do more. So I think that the desire I wanted to picture is that I am unfairly treated.

I made up an image of what this might look like. I could be overburdened at work. That would make a good image of someone being unfairly treated. It would come from someone I don’t want to see in a bad light, someone I would regret adding to his own considerable burden, so I would feel more trapped than ever in this image of being unfairly treated. Not only was I given too much work, but unfairly enough, I was left without recourse. Good job so far, in making an image that gave me just what I wanted.

The second thing I was looking at is the conflict itself. This one was harder for me because I was in real denial about what I wanted from this image. I had that little willingness, though, and Jesus had my back, and the Holy Spirit was adding His Will to mine. So I thought about the situation and let myself feel the rage and the guilt and then I looked at what I hoped to gain from this.

I was shown that when the two people involved asked for my input, I felt admired and respected. I felt special. God will not make me special, so I made an image of Myron being very special. The old problem of Authorship. Who’s my daddy? Is it the ego? Or is it God? I wanted specialness more than I wanted God. No wonder I didn’t want to see that. So that is why this whole story got into my world. It is was just another image of specialness.

judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find.
Well, I obviously judged both these desires as valuable since I gave up my peace to have them. I also sought them out. First I used a process in my mind to give them an image that would convince me they were true, and then I made myself available to them, so that I could have the experience.

These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own.
Though I pretend I have no such power, of course I do. I projected these images outward so I could have a real experience of being unfairly treated and of being special. I looked at the images, called them real, and guarded them. I have been in this experience for too long, and the reason is that I was guarding the process from my own mind. I was reinforcing this amnesia by making others the guilty party and me this helpless victim.

From insane wishes comes an insane world. From judgment comes a world condemned.
This is all that has happened. I have been living in an insane world, pretending to be its victim, pretending I had nothing to do with it, and all the time it came from my insane wishes. Then I judged everyone and everything and so I have made an image of an insane world and condemned it with my judgment.

And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world comes forth, with mercy for the holy Son of God, to offer him a kindly home where he can rest a while before he journeys on, and help his brothers walk ahead with him, and find the way to Heaven and to God.

Thank God I have an answer to what I have done. A way to undo it. I can forgive myself and forgive what I have made. I can see the process that made it, take responsibility for it, and allow the Holy Spirit to lay His Own complete Will next to my small willingness to be healed, and so to make mine whole.

 

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