Realizing God's Will Is Oneness

Search

Advanced Search

Click link to go to:
Together We Light the Way Index

Releasing Ego Mind

Sometimes when I meditate, I hear conversations in other languages or see pictures of unusual sights, like old sailing ships crossing the oceans or far away planets.  Sometimes a series of rapidly passing, but fleeting instants pass through my mind.  Often I can hardly remember these when I am finished, other times they are so vivid they seem “real.”  Years ago I would have been astounded, even impressed.  Today, I see these are just scenes from the one ego mind that I have tapped into.  Just because the visions look exotic or sound interesting doesn’t mean they are any more real than my own study where I work at home.

When I was younger I used to get caught up in psychic phenomenon and endless curiosity about past lives.  I thought these were spiritual pursuits.  That was before I became a serious ACIM student.  Now these pursuits are not terribly helpful to me.  I see them as just other expressions of the ego mind.  And I want to be done with learning more about the ego mind and the serial adventures of the body, as the Course describes our various physical lives.  If they have any importance at all, it is only of self-forgiveness for thinking that they have any importance.

Today, I care not for placing importance on looking at past, present and future and how these measurements can possibly affect me.  What difference?  All of time is of the ego mind.  When I sit in meditation, I sometimes have that period when the ego mind lays itself before me, like a great temptation of its power and importance.  It calls for recognition of its value, to see and hear beyond my own seeming personal space.  Its lure is a belief that knowing future or wider events and circumstances positively affects my life in some way.  I used to believe this was true and engaged in many “what if’s?”  I felt I needed to know outcomes in advance so that I could feel secure.  I needed to feel that I was in control.  What folly!  I turned from my seemingly separate ego mind to the equally unreal one ego mind for answers, no matter whether that answer came from myself or others.  There are no answers there in the one ego mind, just greater numbers of illusions.  I see now that it all means nothing.

Now when I see these “visions,” I let them go by.  I place no importance on them other than opening my mind to other levels of consciousness to release them to Holy Spirit.  These images are not of God.  The experience of God goes beyond them.  Yes, Holy Spirit uses them as He uses all we have made, but in a different way.  Holy Spirit helps us see the unimportance of the world rather than its importance.  Only Holy Spirit can show us the spiritual mind, the One Mind we share with God.  Only Holy Spirit can show us the difference between the ego mind visions and the visions of the Mind of God.  Holy Spirit teaches us discernment as we listen to His Voice for God.  He shows us truth and we recognize it and its importance.  What is of time we give to Him for healing, we do not try to use it for our advantage because there is no advantage in it.  Why trade one illusion for another?  Is another really better?  No, advantage does not come in modifying behavior to gain a seemingly better outcome of another illlusion.  Advantage comes in giving up illusions altogether. 

We cannot live with one foot in each world, unreal and real.  It is not possible.  I have tried and I know it doesn’t work.  We cannot serve two masters.  The Course is uncompromising on this point.  We serve the ego mind or the Mind of God with our choices.  Of course, the ego mind is unreal but our thoughts and actions belie this truth.  We often value the unreal and believe in its separate existence.  We seek answers and comfort for the body and the body life even though we know at another level that none exist.  We can only release the ego mind with the help of Holy Spirit.

Today, I choose to focus on the truth of the One Mind we share with God.  I let Holy Spirit show me its truth because I cannot find it with my ego mind.  I let go of attachments to past, present and future outcomes and let Him guide my way.  Only this brings me true security as I let go of the false security of trying to retain control over circumstances and events of my life.  Only Holy Spirit can take me past the ego mind temptations to recognizing The Thoughts of God where my true existence rests in perfect peace.  Today, I am grateful for the awareness of Holy Spirit at work in my mind for my highest good and for the highest good of all, which is the same.  I trust in Him in all matters and as I let go of the burden of control, I find true peace and true rest in all things important, that of God.

© 2004, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this post.

Printable Page

Posted by Rev. Barbara Kraetsch.

Peace First

Last week I was summoned to jury duty in the county where I live.  I had some misgivings about being called to this service.  Yes, one must do their duty as a citizen, but all the issues of sitting in judgment of another person disturbed my mind.  Years ago, when I was in the practice of law, I wanted to be called for jury duty because I was curious about how the process operates from inside the jury room.  At this point in my life, I was not sure how I felt about having to listen to evidence in the court room and then make a formal legal decision about guilt.  For you see, I was called to a criminal case.  As I sat in the jury assembly room at the beginning of the first day, I told Holy Spirit that I left it entirely in His hands as to whether I should be chosen.  Of course, I was chosen because this opportunity for practicing peace in the ego world was mine.

Serving on the jury brought to mind years of challenging experiences in deciding to study law, law school, clerking, practicing law, clients, cases, colleagues, political ventures, and the list goes on and on.  My life flashed before me.  While I did not know any of the lawyers, I had attended law school with the judge on the case.  I guess Holy Spirit wanted to make sure the practice opportunity would not include just strangers!

I listened intently the first day of the trial, to the lawyers and witnesses.  I tried to keep an open mind and not let my knowledge of the process influence my thoughts.  This was very difficult.  By the time I drove home that evening, I felt disturbed and sorry I hadn’t said that I could not do this, that I could not sit in judgment of another’s guilt.  I am not so sure, anyway, that the court would have accepted my line that I made up the whole story to keep myself in illusion.

After the trial finished, we began jury deliberations.  The other eleven persons insisted that I be the jury foreperson as I had been a lawyer.  I told them I didn’t fancy myself any super-juror and perhaps one of them might be better suited, but I felt guided to go with the request and lead the group using my facilitator training.  We deliberated almost 6 hours on the three counts and found the defendant guilty on all three.  That night I had to attend the funeral for a 20 year old suicide, my sister-in-law’s nephew, but that is another story.

By Saturday morning, my level of peace was greatly disturbed.  I was in touch with the idea that I had made up this ego drama to convince myself of the reality of illusion - all concocted to rob me of my peace.  I was called to judge guilt for charged crimes in the ego world and I did.  And yet the defendant’s reality is that of Son of God, and how can I judge him.  He was not acting peaceful, he was acting in the ego delusion of drunken rage, aggression, threats, weapons.  I kept thinking that as I joined in this story with him, seeing it as real and with consequences, I am in the sickness of illusion with him.  And now, my ego wants to join in the illusion of guilt, having played the ego game for several days.  Now I am guilty for having seen guilt in him.  But what to do?  Now we are both Son of God believing we live in an ego world along with all the other players.

How to reconcile acting in the ego world and yet see innocence in my mind became imperative.  On Saturday I was not able to function well because I was so disconnected from peace.  I participated in the Saturday morning teleconference of the Pathways Joining with Holy Spirit Service and that helped me.  I then took Saturday afternoon to meditate, read from ACIM, reviewed Course 910, Living in the World While Waking Up (one I had taken several years ago, and an excellent course), and wrote extensively in my journal with guidance from Holy Spirit.  I followed the advice written on a course worksheet entitled “Peace First” that is included with many of the Pathways ministerial courses.  I put reconnecting with peace first and uppermost in my mind.

Over the course of the afternoon, I came to the awareness that Holy Spirit had great purpose in the circumstances and events that truly showed me places in my mind that needed healing.  I came to see that I want no other gods before me - gods of pain, guilt, rage, despair, grief, judgments, legal definitions - ego gods that ego adores.  I came to realize my great need for healing because I was cowering before false gods.  I practiced refocusing on truth.  I asked for higher perspective, for healing, for return to peace.  Over and over I asked, and I was answered with the promise that if I refuse to worship false gods, they will disappear out of the nothingness from which they came, no matter how the form appears to me.  I must overlook the gods of chaos and focus on the One God and His Voice which constantly tell us the truth.

By the end of the day I recognized that God gives us the strength to walk past our little gods in peace.  We have no strength on our own to do this for the ego world falls in worship at the gods it has made, crying out in fear and anguish and appeasement, calling endlessly for love and never receiving what it longs for because it has genuflected at the altar of false gods.  Ego will cry in the wilderness of falsity and delusion until its tears are spent, and still there is no peace.  Only when the mind calls on the strength of the One God can it leave the desert thirst for love and drink at the fountain of eternal love which never runs dry.

It may take hours in coming to this point, hours of willingness and practice, hours of giving over and opening to truth, hours of listening and writing, but I can come here to feel God is with me and that is all that counts.  It is only when I get here that I see my brother is here with me, holy, pure, loved, innocent unharmed, unhurt in any way.  He is here with God as well, free to be himself, his True Self.  I affirm this truth for us, for him and for me.  We are one in God and with God in truth and that is all that counts.  That is all that is important.  There is nothing else that means anything.

I still have much to say about this, and I will take the opportunity to do so in time.  I wanted to share with my readers this particular essence of my experience.  Peace is ours.  It my seem lost at times but it really isn’t.  We can reconnect with our peace if we are willing.  It may take some time and effort but we can emerge once again from the nightmare of suffering into another dawn of peace.  We can come once again to the awareness of our existence as Beloved Child of God, of God, with God, feeling loved, happy and knowing all is truly well.  But we must make peace a priority and refuse to try to function without it.  I learned that peace is always possible and that it is truly my choice.  I made it my choice.  I share the blessings of that choice with you.

 

© 2004, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this post.

Printable Page

Posted by Rev. Barbara Kraetsch.

Sharing Peace and Joy

When I offer peace and love to others, I am not giving from ego.  My ego personality offers criticism, judgment, bossiness, control, conditional “love” and acceptance only with stringent requirements.  When I am lost in ego forgetfulness, I offer some projection of my own level of self unacceptance.  I see only snappish sparring of ego temperaments over trivial matters such as household maintenance, when and what to eat, whose chore this is and its timely completion, or endless other unimportant details.  The ego wants to keep me caught in a web of pressures to accomplish according to some unobtainable standard and then forcing these pressures onto others.  This is not sharing.  This is demanding, and being demanding is divisive.

When I offer peace and love, I share from my abundance of Self awareness.  There are no demands, no requirements, and no standards.  My Self awareness just gives of itself.  I need to be in Self awareness to be this giving and sharing because peace and love certainly don’t flow from my ego awareness.  I am learning to flow more from Self awareness because I am willing to practice it.

As I practice connecting with the Source of Peace and Joy within, I become more aware of this presence and how I relate to others from this awareness.  I am beginning to notice, right when I am acting rather than later, where my thoughts are originating.  As I practice awareness I can see clearly that when I act from ego thoughts, I am not at peace and I project not being at peace to others.  I am not always sure how I’m projecting this, but I know that I am because of reactions in those around me.  When I act from thoughts of peace and joy, I see that people react to that in a different way than when I am not filled with inner peace.  Circumstances just seem to go more smoothly when I am peaceful, probably because I don’t make mountains out of dust specks and I lay down my prickly cactus exterior.

I no longer criticize myself so harshly for times when I am not at peace.  I see my thoughts and want to correct them because they are, after all, just mistakes in thinking.  At these times, I am thinking the ego/body life is real and its me versus the other person or me versus the world.  I feel separate and can’t see the connection we all share.  When I realize this state of mind, I want to release it and return to peace because this is where I can find and share my joy.  There is no other way to offer peace and love except to connect with the One Source within.  After a while it does become habit to observe my level of peace and to gently reconnect with it on an ongoing basis, instead of getting caught in the ego game of self-condemnation.  This is simply a happy way to live.  I am peaceful and the people around me share in that in some way.  The degree of their acceptance of my peace offering is not up to me, but I know my offering always makes a difference.

Life is made up of these little differences, peaceful responses to peace or unpeaceful responses to unpeace.  It is our choice which awareness we live in.  We thrive in peace but we don’t always choose it.  We instead choose chaos in that crazy ego way - the ego just doing “that thing” that it does.  It makes no sense because it has no meaning.  The ego is just trying to survive in the mad, topsy-turvy world it made up.  The truth is, we don’t have to live in this world.  We can choose differently.  We can offer peace and joy when we accept they are ours and they are given to everyone.  And because they are given to all, we cannot be without them.  It’s just not possible to be lacking them.  When we share peace and joy, we know this is true.

I ask Holy Spirit to help me know peace and joy and how to share these gifts of God.  The more I ask, the more answers I receive, and the less I am confused about what being loving and peaceful means.  I offer peace and joy as Holy Spirit shows me, and He always shows me in ways that I can understand and use.  As I grow in Self awareness, this comes about more quickly and easily than it once did.  I used to ponder for long stretches about what it meant to be truly peaceful and loving.  Now I see that I have no true answers on my own and so I no longer ask ego mind for any.  Now I ask for truth and truth is given me.  In this there is peace and joy enough for me and to share with my brother.  There is enough for all.

© 2004, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this post.

Printable Page

Posted by Rev. Barbara Kraetsch.

Page 15 of 21 pages ‹ First  < 13 14 15 16 17 >  Last ›

<< Back to main page of Realizing God's Will Is Oneness

Featured Store Items

Spiritual Counselor Training — based on principles of A Course in Miracles, including ordination. More….

24 ACIM Practitioner courses including 50-page study guide, CD's or MP3s, with facilitator. More….

Healing Inner Child 8-week program will help you nurture your inner child, connect with your Higher Self and heal relationships.

Listen & Receive 30-Day Home Study Learn to receive insight for your life in a form that is perfect for you …heal fears, find joy & peace. Learn more.

Hey, Holy Spirit, It's Me Again by Rev. Myron Jones. An indispensible guide for anyone on the path of ACIM with insights on the 1st 90 lessons. More…

True Forgiveness by Rev. Jennifer McSween. The Proven Path from Pain to Power and personal happiness in 5 Simple Steps. Learn more.

From the Christ Mind Book II scribed by Darrell Morley Price. A great supporting supplement to A Course in Miracles. We highly recommend it. More….

Forgiving Kevin Audio book by Rev. Larry Glenz. A moving and inspiring true story of a father/son relationship that withstood seven years of addiction, recovery, and relapse. More….

Healing Family Relationships Applying the Principles of A Course in Miracles audio book by Rev. Myron Jones. Learn how family relationships offer fertile grounds for forgiveness and healing your judgments of the world. More.