Together, We Light the Way

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: IV.The Gift of Freedom, Paragraph 4. 8-29-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom P 4
4 Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? For unless you do, you will not receive it. If you want to have it of me, you must give it. Healing does not come from anyone else. You must accept guidance from within. The guidance must be what you want, or it will be meaningless to you. That is why healing is a collaborative venture. I can tell you what to do, but you must collaborate by believing that I know what you should do. Only then will your mind choose to follow me. Without this choice you could not be healed because you would have decided against healing, and this rejection of my decision for you makes healing impossible.

These are the ideas that stand out to me in this paragraph. If I want peace, I must want it equally for everyone else. That idea is more important than I first thought. There is still a tendency in my mind to see others as separate from me. For instance, when I read about someone in town getting robbed, I feel empathy for them and the one who did the robbing. I pray for their peace of mind. I pray that my mind be healed of the beliefs that create that kind of thinking. 

When I read about someone being hurt in another country, I don’t experience the same degree of empathy. They seem far away and I don’t relate to their lives. And yet, they are part of me. And, no matter how different on the surface, they want the same things I want. They want to be happy. They want peace. In other words, they want salvation, just as I do.

I ask that my mind be healed of the belief that I am separate in any way from anything I see. We are all part of the One Self, and what I want for any part of the Sonship, I want for all of it, or I don’t want it for myself. And if I don’t want it for myself and everyone else, then I will not have it. Peace is not forced on me. I must want it in order to have it. To have peace I must want it and I must give it.

The next idea, which is related, is that I must accept Guidance from within. I must ask the Holy Spirit to guide me so that I can both recognize and desire peace. For such a long time I thought peace was something I had to steal from someone else. For me to gain, often I saw it as necessary that someone else lose.

I obviously didn’t know what peace was and I had to learn. The Holy Spirit has helped me with that. When I am not at peace, I ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of wrong-minded thinking. I would ask that He remove from my mind the thoughts that were blocking my peace. I must truly want the healing or I will not understand the guidance when I receive it.

That brings us to the next idea, one we have been touching on. Healing is a collaborative venture. This is my part: I must want the healing more than I want the problem. I must ask for the healing and be willing to accept it. The Holy Spirit then does His part and heals my mind. He removes from my mind all that blocks the healing. This works every time as long as I am doing my part.

Where it can get clogged up is when I want to feel better and I want to be at peace, but I also want to hold onto my grievance, my fear or my guilt. In this case, I might want peace, but I am not meeting its conditions, and so I don’t really want it. What I want is my problem without the consequences, and of course this is not a real request. To receive the answer to the prayer for peace, I must truly want peace above all else. Then it is mine.

I have learned to trust the Holy Spirit. He knows what it is that I need to be happy. He knows me much better than I do. I accept His judgment and lay aside all I thought I knew and then the healing is done. As long as I believe I know what I need, my mind will not accept His Answer.  I won’t even understand the guidance. It won’t make sense to me. But as soon as I decide that I don’t know anything except that I want peace for myself and everyone else, it is done. It is always up to me.

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