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April-June, 2023

Spirit and the Brain

by Rev. Larry Glenz, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

When I was an athlete in high school and college, my coaches often stressed a concept that is best expressed in a quote attributed to Henry Ford:

“If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

As a younger man, I did not necessarily believe that to be true. But I wanted to know how to get myself to believe I can. That statement began to resonate in my brain and heart from the repetition of being told that by my coaches over the years. Then later, I became a high school coach of football, wrestling and lacrosse. I repeated that statement many, many times to hundreds of players.

As a Course student, I have found that the statement has spiritual truth. I have been devoted to A Course in Miracles for almost 30 years. The Workbook of ACIM teaches in the earliest lessons:

• “I do not understand anything I see.” (W-3)

• “My thoughts do not mean anything.” (W-10)

• “My thoughts are images I have made.” (W-15)

“My thoughts” referred to here, are my ego thoughts. That is not really thinking; it is image making. And it is all illusion.

The repetition of the Workbook lessons, day after day, year after year, trains my mind to be in alignment with God’s Mind. My mind wanders back to the ego often but my dedication to the Workbook lessons brings me back to Holy Spirit. With Spirit, my thoughts create a meaningful world. And I can train my mind by handing my thoughts to Spirit to decide for me.

Now how does the world of science support this idea of training the mind through the repetition of positive thoughts? Well, there seems to be some important validation in the study of the brain.

I have learned that the base of the brain has something called the Reticular Activating System or RAS. This Reticular Activating System works with what the body’s brain is focused on and, like a search engine, projects out those thoughts as images.

If the RAS is focused on loving thoughts, that is what the brain will show us — the experience of more love — the so called “Happy Dream.” But if my thoughts are fear-based, the RAS searches for and filters only fearful images to me. It doesn’t judge. It just shows you more and more of what you are focused on — either loving or fear-based thoughts.

I am certainly not an authority on brain science, but it seems to me that focusing on the thoughts of Spirit will program the brain to love. And ego thinking brings more and more fear-based thoughts. As I understand it, the RAS filters out everything else but what you are focused on.

If I think I can, the RAS receives those thoughts and sends successful, loving outcomes. If I think I can’t, the RAS shows me more examples of why I can’t. The RAS filters out everything else but my focus. For me, it seems science is validating the power of turning to Holy Spirit with my fear-based thoughts.

In truth, I don’t need science or anything in the world to validate the power of Holy Spirit in my mind. It is my experience that great strength comes from turning over my thoughts to Spirit. That is truly all the validation I need. And I am grateful for the training I have received from my devotion to A Course in Miracles.

Rev. Larry Glenz, O.M.C., is a Pathways of Light minister living in Long Beach, NY. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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April-June, 2023

Mindful Morning In and Out of Time

by Rev. Bill Poppa, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

“Nothing is ever lost but time, which in the end is meaningless. For it is but a little hindrance to eternity, quite meaningless to the real Teacher of the world. Yet since you do believe in it, why should you waste it going nowhere, when it can be used to reach a goal as high as learning can achieve?”  (T-26.V.2:1-3)

“To you who still believe you live in time and know not it is gone, the Holy Spirit still guides you through the infinitely small and senseless maze you still perceive in time, though it has long since gone. You think you live in what is past. Each thing you look upon you saw but for an instant, long ago, before its unreality gave way to truth. Not one illusion still remains unanswered in your mind. Uncertainty was brought to certainty so long ago that it is hard indeed to hold it to your heart, as if it were before you still.” (T-26.V.4:1-5)

I wake up this morning. I am free of thought. Everything I look upon is new. There is no past.

I walk into the kitchen to make coffee and it is as if I am doing it for the first time. I know how to do it. The smell of the coffee grinds is a surprising gift. I am grateful I am making coffee. It is the perfect thing to do. It is the only thing to do. When I close the top of the coffee maker, the smell of the grinds diminishes then is gone.

Before I turn to walk away, I hear a sound. It is a meow. I turn. I see a cat sitting on the kitchen floor looking directly at me, her eyes slightly closed adjusting to the light. As our eyes meet, her mouth opens slightly. Another sound, a gentle whisper.

I reply, “Good morning, Ada.” I know her name. Another miracle. She slowly stands up and walks back into the darkened room from which she came. Like the smell of the coffee grinds, she appears and disappears.

I go to sit on the porch. It is the perfect thing to do. It is dark, then light. A squirrel is walking across a telephone line. Where is he going? It doesn’t matter. He is perfect. He reaches the pole. He turns and walks a line that leads through a cluster of trees, disappearing from sight. He is seen, then unseen. He comes from nothing then returns to nothing.

Suddenly I feel myself rocking. It is gentle and rhythmic. How long have I been moving back and forth? It doesn’t matter. Time is an illusion. My body is in motion, back and forth, swaying with the dawn of the day. It is perfect.

I hear a ding. I look to my left and a phone is sitting on the wicker stand next to me. I know it is a text. How do I know?  I just do. Another miracle. I pick up the phone. The message says,

“Thank you. I’ll have out of town guests on Sunday so I will see how things go!”

I think, what a perfect message. I wonder who it is? I look back at the string to get a context to this perfect message. I see it is the mother of my daughters. She is responding to my invitation to join a breakfast planned with my siblings and both my daughters. I remember, there is a wedding. It is in the future. There is a plan. A wedding.

Now I am aware of time. There is no time, now there is time. It is great.

I stand up. I am aware I have things to do. I have someone coming to visit this evening. We are going to watch a movie. Oh yes, it’s called A Beautiful Mind. I remember it is a beautiful film.

I think, “I have things to do.” Shopping, cleaning. I remember I promised a friend I would review a preliminary transcript on a book he is writing. I am back in time. It is perfect. It is great.

I still feel light even though thought of time is now in my awareness. The illusion of a future does not interrupt my peace. I don’t really believe in the future. I am simply aware of a plan put in place now. It is a perfect flow.

“It is evident that the Holy Spirit’s perception of time is the exact opposite of the ego’s. The reason is equally clear, for they perceive the goal of time as diametrically opposed. The Holy Spirit interprets time’s purpose as rendering the need for time unnecessary. He regards the function of time as temporary, serving only His teaching function, which is temporary by definition. His emphasis is therefore on the only aspect of time that can extend to the infinite, for now is the closest approximation of eternity that this world offers. It is in the reality of “now,” without past or future, that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. For only “now” is here, and only “now” presents the opportunities for the holy encounters in which salvation can be found.” (T-13.IV.7:1-7)

Rev. Bill Poppa, O.M.C., is a Pathways of Light minister living in New Orleans, LA.
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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April-June, 2023

Joy and Peace

by Rev. Joyce Peebles, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

The text tells us light, joy and peace abide in me. I came to admit that I did not believe these words. To “spiritual people” they sound good and thus I enjoyed saying them. Yet the problem remained that I could not believe them entirely.

Due to my split mind, I am engaged in a daily struggle to see myself as an ego body or as pure spirit.

Jesus has instructed us that this body, the world and our special relationships are all made to conceal the beliefs in sin, guilt and fear. I know this is true from observing my projections. Too often I see my brother as my enemy; conflict, competition and strife are present. Now I understand it is the belief in guilt in my mind that is the cause of my upsets.

A quote from the Song of Prayer says, “Praying for others, if rightly understood, becomes a means for lifting your projections of guilt from your brother, and enabling you to recognize it is not he who is hurting you. The poisonous thought that he is your enemy, your evil counterpart, your nemesis, must be relinquished before you can be saved from guilt.” (-1.3.1:4-5)

I am literally making the projections I desire to see. I am responsible for what I see. Every minute of every day I decide to see my brother and myself as innocent or guilty. I cannot see my brother as different from myself. Therefore, if I perceive attack and conflict in my projections, I doubt that light, joy and peace abide in me.

In lesson 93, Jesus asks us to do something that many find too difficult. We are asked to spend the first five minutes of every waking hour to say “ Light and joy and peace abide in me.  My sinlessness is guaranteed by God.”  Jesus would not ask me to declare the truth of my innocence every hour unless He was retraining my mind to actually believe it.

The resistance to doing this simple request was great! It meant looking at the belief that I am guilty. He also tells me I have self-hatred from this belief.

In Chapter 13 Jesus tells us, “You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your hatred and realize its full extent. You may also think that it would be easy enough for the Holy Spirit to show it to you, and to dispel it without the need for you to raise it to awareness yourself.” (T-13.III.1:1-2)

The Holy Spirit works with each of us where we are. It is self-deception to think of ourselves as further along spiritually than we actually are. My self-deception has often prevented me from acknowledging these gifts of joy and peace.

In Lesson 104 we are told, “Yet must there be a place made ready to receive His gifts. They are not welcomed gladly by a mind that has instead received the gifts it made where His belong, as substitutes for them.” (1:4-5)

It has been a process to become aware that I have an investment in guilt and observe my self-hatred for desiring these shabby gifts. They resulted in a fearful, uncertain, victimized individual. I had to admit I saw value in guilt.

ACIM has helped me to see how I have used guilt to keep me from the Love I really want. There was hope, however; for I was not abandoned. I heard that persistent Voice imploring me to see my brother and thereby myself as non-guilty.

The Voice reminded me that if someone I perceive is not giving love, they are asking for it. I became willing to surrender and see with the Holy Spirit’s eyes. There are hours, sometimes days when I choose to suffer by ignoring that Voice, but I always come back to wanting peace.

The Holy Spirit never demands and cannot take away my desire for conflict, strife, guilt or suffering until I decide I no longer want these. How long I value the valueless is up to me alone. I stay in the prison of my own making for as long as I desire.

The key out of hell is to let go of my special, ego self. When I see myself upset during the day, I tell myself I have chosen to reject Love by not remembering my Real Self.

I feel gratitude I have at least a limited understanding of the battle for sanity in my Mind. How happy I am is totally dependent on a decision in the mind. Joy and peace are not something I earn; they are simply uncovered once my false thoughts are out of the way.

Rev. Joyce Peebles is a Pathways of Light minister living in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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April-June, 2023

Puzzled

by Rev. Paula Richards, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

One of the best things about the used bookstore near me isn’t the books. It isn’t the lovely couple who own it or the warm, welcoming space they’ve created. It’s the puzzles. Row upon row of used jigsaw puzzles that you can rent for a full month.

Not everyone enjoys doing puzzles. I happen to love it if there is a pretty picture and not just some mind-boggling challenge. I don’t feel the need to prove myself in that way. But, as I sat the other evening, pouring out the contents of another 1,000-piece puzzle box, I couldn’t help wondering what the fascination is with cutting a photo into many pieces only to put them back together again. Why would anyone do that? It somehow felt important to have an answer.

I asked Holy Spirit to explore this with me because I suspected that puzzle-making might be a metaphor for life. A Course in Miracles tells us over and over that we are whole, complete, and perfect, that we are One. But we are experiencing ourselves as billions of separate individuals trying to rejoin, to see where we fit into the bigger picture. Again, why would we do that?

When I was care giving for my mom, her dementia created a lot of confusion and unpredictability. I would often find solace in making a puzzle. With each piece that I connected, it felt as though I were bringing order to the chaos. There was a peacefulness in knowing that, with persistence, I would ultimately be able to complete the scene. I enjoyed experiencing the photo more intimately by focusing on the size, color, and shape of each individual piece and taking time to see where and how it fit in. The finished puzzle size was also larger and grander somehow than the photo on the box.

Is our human experience like making a puzzle? Are we learning, through loving, how to bring order to the chaos? Are we developing a faith that, with persistence, we will ultimately experience the truth that we are One with our Creator? Are we using time to experience the characteristics of each individual, getting to know each part of ourselves more intimately? Are we seeing how we interconnect and fit into the larger whole? Through experiencing what it’s like to be what we are not, are we expanding in our capacity to love, discovering that the whole is, indeed, greater than all its parts?

Beyond puzzle-making, why do we choose to do anything that we do? Paint a picture? Try a new food? Move across the country? Why did we choose to have this human experience? Maybe we don’t need a reason for what we choose to do. Perhaps the only answer to “why we do what we do” is that, in our God-given power and freedom, we wanted to.

Rev. Paula Richards, O.M.C., is a Pathways of Light minister from Green Valley, AZ. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address): SpiritRisingMinistries.com Phone: 508-517-9361

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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