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January-March, 2007

Changing the Purpose of the Body

by Rev. Linda Wisniewski

In my childish fantasy world, there’s a part of me that still believes I could ward off sickness, pain and suffering by being a “good” Course student. 

‘If only I study hard enough, do my daily lessons ‘religiously,’ nothing bad will ever happen to me.” So when I get sick like I just did with a sinus infection, does that mean I am doing something wrong; that I’m bad; I’ve sinned and deserve to be punished?

I know, having been a diligent student of A Course in Miracles for the past four years that this is not true, even though in my ego thought world it seems true. After all, isn’t the ego thought system designed to make us all believe we are guilty and deserve punishment? Doesn’t it make us believe, as we learned when we went to our childhood religious classes, that God is watching our every action, judging us to be naughty or nice and meting out punishment accordingly?

In my religious school, I was told that to earn God’s blessings, we had to suffer to prove our love. Thankfully, the Course is showing me that all this magical thinking is “insane” and its purpose is to keep us from the truth of knowing God as only Love and that as God’s children we are as He is. We do not have a separate identity from Him.

So then, why did I get sick once again? What’s it all about? I’m learning first of all that in my little mind I can’t answer this on my own. For every time I try to answer from this little place, the answers make me more confused and “crazy” and more “sick.” So I am learning to take everything to Holy Spirit and ask, “What is this for?”

I am learning that everything — and the Course means everything — we experience in the dream provides us with an opportunity to forgive. It’s only through forgiveness that we can awaken from the dream and remember we never left our Home with our Heavenly Father. So what opportunity is this episode of sickness bringing me to forgive?

As I took this to Holy Spirit, I was helped to see how I use sickness to create a special separate identity in the dream world I created. This dream world was created because my big grandiose ego believed it could create a better world than the world God created. Now what would be better than the creation of love, peace, and joy? Well, in its grandiose thinking this one insane thought believed creating its own body was better. It thought:  “Oh my, now in my own little separate body, I can have my own separate identity. When things seem to get hard and yucky, and I feel unloved because I am not getting enough attention or feel overwhelmed and am being attacked, I can escape by creating sickness. Then others will notice me again and will bring me chicken soup and presents and I will feel loved again. Oh, won’t that make me feel special! Or, if I am beginning to feel overwhelmed by all the work I created for myself to do to give me a sense of my own importance, I could escape from it all by again creating sickness and get away from it all. I then could hide out and get away from all these people who are making me sick in the first place.”

Sickness, I falsely believe, allows me to escape a world I created to get away from God who I also believed I wanted to escape from.

But I am also seeing that in this grandiose thought system which creates all this specialness, I am keeping myself separate from my Self and keeping my Self from experiencing the grandeur of my Oneness in God. This Grandeur comes from joining with my true Father and taking my place as His Christ Child with all my Brothers. And God in his Wisdom gave his Children freedom to choose between their grandiose childish fantasies they believed they created or forgive these fantasies and with the help of Holy Spirit replace them with the truth.

As I took my fantasies of the specialness I created from sickness and asked Spirit to help release them and see the truth, I observed a lot of fear, i.e. resistance coming up. A part of me which still wanted to hold on to making the body real was afraid that if I gave it up, I would die and that would be the end of me. Was I really ready to fully surrender the belief that I am a body?

I am learning that Holy Spirit is patient and gentle and understands our fears, resistance and ambivalence. After all, what child who creates a magical world wants to give it up? Who wants to have their bubbles of magical thinking burst? So Holy Spirit showed me that what I needed to forgive was the attachment, the value I gave to my body and sickness. Holy Spirit showed me that I could still choose to remain in the dream and in my body but to use it for a different purpose, a holy purpose.

I could use the body as a communication device through which to extend God’s love, peace and joy. I also had the experience lately to see in the dream how this could work.

Recently, I was asked to perform a wedding after the judge who was supposed to perform this wedding suddenly died. Two days before the wedding, I came down with a sinus infection and could hardly talk and was continuously sneezing and coughing. I was fearful that I too wouldn’t be able to perform the ceremony for this couple who experienced their own panic when this other officiant passed away a month before their wedding. I became frantic.

However there was a part of my mind that remembered that on my own, I could do nothing and that Holy Spirit was there to help me to see this differently. Holy Spirit told me to be still, surrender and do nothing. As I became still, I heard His gentle Voice whisper, “You are not performing this wedding. God is. It is God’s Voice and Love extending through your body that will bless this Holy Union. It is His Words and His Blessings that will join this couple in marriage; just step back and let Him do it and extend through you.”

As I heard this, I found myself able to relax into peace and my fear thoughts calmed down. During the ceremony, even though I still felt dis-eased, I didn’t cough or sneeze once, and the voice that came through was loud and clear and powerful. My body was being used for a holy purpose to extend God’s blessings and love through me.

I am coming to understand that everything, even sickness comes as an opportunity to practice forgiveness and each time we do, God blesses us. Each blessing serves to awaken us and help us remember, as Dorothy did in the Wizard of Oz, that it is only a dream and in truth we never left home.

I am also realizing that in my childish fantasies of believing that sickness gave me a special identity, I made myself little and lived from this little place. I see now I can ask Holy Spirit to replace this and help restore me from this little, if grandiose, identity to my grandeur in God and live from expansion and not contraction.

Now instead of judging myself for creating sickness, I can rejoice in having another opportunity to forgive and awaken. After all, isn’t this serving God’s plan for awakening and faithfully fulfilling my function?

Rev. Linda Wisniewski is a Pathways of Light minister living in Plymouth, Wisconsin.

© 2007, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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January-March, 2007

Healing Messages from Rev. Veronika Wilcox

by Rev. Veronika Wilcox

Steady Practice

Once I attended a master class for violin as a listener. The lecturer was a Russian violinist. He told the Australian students that the Russian students practised about twelve hours a day! Laughter was the answer.

It seemed too incredible to those students who seemed to practise only about three hours on an average. When I was a student I practised six hours a day for years.

Last Sunday I heard a very good cello student play beautifully. His whole life is focused on learning his instrument well so that he can express himself through it. This reminds me of spiritual practice. It seems to be little known that this too needs concentrated effort in order to have results, that is, that the Higher Self finds a purified vehicle in me to express Itself through me.

I just read The Russian Pilgrim. It is a wonderful story of dedication to the inward prayer of the heart. He started off by saying his short prayer a thousand times, then three thousand times and then six thousand times. What discipline! Yet this is not difficult if I thirst for the living waters — the presence of God in my life.

A Course in Miracles is also a training to replace wrong-mindedness with right-mindedness. And believe me this takes perseverance too. But it is worth it because peace and joy start to become steady guests instead of worry and stress. Amen.

Busy, Busy, Busy!

I have noticed that everyone I meet and everyone I know is very busy. I know that in this world it is looked upon as a virtue to be busy. My sons are busy, my friends are busy and even the spiritual minded friends are busy. I just love it how Jesus says for us to seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and that then the rest will be given unto us.

When I first decided to test this statement, I was amazed how well everything in my life fell into place. Trusting Jesus who lived all he taught, is the way to go for me. Believing that I can reverse this and say that I first need to attend to all my daily duties and then (maybe!) make time for God, is putting the cart before the horse. Will you also want to put Jesus’ advice to the test and be blessed? Amen.

Crossroad

I am standing in the middle of a crossroad. One goes into the past, the other one goes into the future. What am I to do? Where am I to go? There seems to be nothing else to choose from.

I watch my thoughts and notice that they are like two dogs on a leash. One pulls me back into the past. I tug at the leash to make it come back into the NOW. The other rushes off into the future to make me dream about the future. Again, I notice it and tug at the leash to make this dog come back into the NOW too. Why look for roads which either pull me back or take me away into dreamland? What is wrong with the NOW? Is it because it seems to be stationary?

I like to compare the NOW to a boat. The boat remains the same. It is comfortable and slowly moves along the current. I have the boat steered by Holy Spirit Who knows the way and I can relax and be assured that all is well in the NOW moment. Amen.

Blame

Whenever I notice that the blame game is going on in me, I know that it is ego using everybody and everything to blame them for my loss of peace and happiness. It can be husband, friend or the weather or anything else. The name doesn’t really matter.

The next step is to try to fix whatever is disturbing. I might even try prayer to get things to fit my way of thinking. Still no peace!

Then the bells ring and the memory of the truth returns. I need to go within to find the problem and the Answer.

The problem is now released and goes up into the Light and the Answer comes from above and is the peace of God which comes from acknowledging and accepting Oneness — the Atonement. Amen

Rev. Veronika Wilcox is a Pathways of Light minister living in Bega Valley, Australia.

© 2007, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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January-March, 2007

I Want the Peace of God

by Rev. Michael L. Ciavarella

This article was inspired by Lesson 185 in A Course In Miracles, Workbook for Students.

I don’t want a house anymore. I want the peace of God. That’s all I really want. And yes. I am sincere in this desire. It is not simply words to say. It is what I really want. It is what everyone really wants, isn’t it?

I don’t want a house anymore. Oh, it would be nice to have a house, but holding a desire like that is, in the long run, buying into the illusion. It is a compromise that would spoil the whole need for my wanting the peace of God and that’s what I really want.

I don’t want a house anymore. Besides, wanting the peace of God is truly home anyway. Isn’t that where we reside? This world is all smoke and mirrors. This is just a dream — an illusion of what we think would bring us peace and happiness. All the while, our peace and happiness resides with God. I want the peace of God. That’s where I’ll find home.

I don’t want a house anymore. What a poor substitute for what God has created for us. There’s no place like home and I’ll not find it here. A home of concrete and wood cannot take the place for the awesome mansion that God has prepared for me. Jesus told us that there are mansions that are prepared for the Sonship. No home that some brother prepared in this world can hold a blessed candle to even a shack that God may have created. I want the peace of God.

I don’t want a house anymore. That would be a special relationship with brick and mortar or wood and aluminum. Why would I want to carry on a special relationship when I can have the genuine article made by my own Father? Even the wanting is a special relationship with my desire. No. I want the peace of God and nothing more.

I don’t want a house anymore. I want the peace of God. I surrender my desires and my will to the Holy Spirit. He is the one that is pointing out the error of my ways. He is the one that is leading me to my real Home. I offer my mistaken thought pattern to Him; allow Him to heal my thoughts and desires; allow Him to put me into the path that will ultimately bring me to an awakened place and find that I have never left my Father’s arms and the Home He has made for me.

I don’t want a house anymore. In fact, there is nothing this world offers that I want anymore. I’ll tell you what I really want. It is not a special relationship. It is not something that will support the illusion. It is something of real substance. It is something that holds all of the meaning of the universe and more. I want this more than life itself. I want the peace of God.

No. I don’t want a house anymore.

Rev. Michael L. Ciavarella is a Pathways of Light minister living in Sioux City, Iowa. Read more of his inspiring Healing Journal articles on the Pathways of Light web site.

© 2007, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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January-March, 2007

Beautiful Dreamer

Rev. Mary Manke

Beautiful Dreamer
Walk in the Light,
Be at my side now,
It’s no longer night.

You dreamt of division,
At war with the One,
Because you’d forgotten
Where Life had begun.

Carry this message,
To those who dream on,
There is no darkness
For those who choose dawn.

Waking only seems empty,
If you dream you’re alone,
But I Am still with you
And We’ll carry on.

Beautiful Dreamer
Dream not apart,
I Am still with you
And we share One Heart.

Rev. Mary Manke is a Pathways of Light minister living in Wautoma, Wisconsin. Read more of her inspiring Healing Journal articles on the Pathways of Light web site.

© 2007, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this copyright notice and website address are included.

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