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April-June, 2021

About My Thoughts

by Rev. Maria Kingsley, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

Lesson 10: “My thoughts do not mean anything.”

I’ve noticed how the thoughts I observe in my mind are first searching for meaning, then it seems I accept the meaning that is offered. This is always based on past experiences and what my little mind will do is try to fit it into some known box to somehow make sense of it. This is rather funny, or silly, when observed from an objective point of view.

What I want to do with thoughts as they come up is this: I realize that they are random but fitting into my made-up world view of what I’ve decided things mean or are. This usually comes from past learning as a child or young adult. These ‘world views’ in my mind are fantasy, imaginations of what it all could mean.

The problem, however, is that I believe that they are true and are hard facts of life, and I follow them in my life again and again, often without realizing I’ve made them up. And even when I recognized that I’ve made them up, I somehow feel good that ‘this is just the way I think.’ I somehow feel good and secure in that sense of ‘me.’

We constantly are looking for an identity, and our thoughts that we set up as reality try to give us a feeling of ‘this is who I am’. I often find it difficult to identify with my True Self, because the ego will come in and tell me that I’m really not that great … look at my life, it’s not that wonderful!

In this 10th Lesson, I am told that what I think I think is not actual reality. Indeed, it is lacking reality. The Lesson states that “the presence of these ‘thoughts’ means that you are not thinking … and so your mind is really blank.” (W-pI.10:3:2-3)

And this is an uncomfortable thought as well: I pride myself of all the thoughts I have and want them to be real. To think I am not really thinking, and my mind is blank, feels like an assault. Yet I know it is not, of course. It’s all related to who or what I Am.

The Lesson ends with: “This idea will help to release me from all that I now believe.” Do I have the courage to release all my beliefs? Is that what I want?

Indeed, it does take courage from an ego perspective to let go of all our beliefs. We do cherish what we believe because it makes us feel safe and ‘right.’ We hold on to such thoughts because we believe they protect us from harm or loss.

We defend our beliefs because they fit into some kind of box that we’ve made up in our little mind in the absence of a greater view or understanding.

As children we used our concrete thinking to make everything that was happening around us related to us, to me, to be caused by me or to affect me personally.

As adults, we want to look at that and see whether those views or thoughts or boxes are really still helpful.

As children, we had to find a way to make sense of senseless behavior by parents or others around us. We could not blame anyone but ourselves and so we needed to somehow feel secure. But it never really did that. We never really felt safe because we made up some scenario that would fit, based on bits and pieces of perceptions here and there, from this person and another, and put it together to fit our acceptance.

Right or wrong, good or bad, we swallowed our own stamp on the interpretation of events around us.

These perceptions live on within us as energies that prompt actions and unconscious pop-up thinking. And it seems this is where many people run up against a wall — they cannot find the belief that caused the energy or vibration that now acts from the subconscious, from the background within us. And yet, they are knowable.

It takes vigilance and focus on our actions and thoughts, and an observance. The desire to find the origins of our thinking will come to us, especially when we fervently ask the Holy Spirit for help.

In this process we need to remember that what is in our mind has not led us to safety. It has not really helped or brought us what we are longing for consistently. Often this is not difficult to see because the body will reflect incorrect thinking in ways that we perceive as pain or discomfort of various types.

The body is our barometer and pointer but it takes a curious mind to find its core issue.

And so, the Lessons go on to tell us that “My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.” This becomes very difficult to truly accept by the ego. And indeed, Lesson 12 states: “I am upset because I see a meaningless world” and Lesson 13: “A meaningless world engenders fear.”

Yet we do not need to be in fear because, as I tell myself when fear comes up, “God is still in charge!” This gives me comfort because, now God is truly in charge, not my small ego. To rely on safety from the ego is indeed fear provoking.

So, let us use this upset of the ego to recognize that we have been way off in our thinking. We have not used Love as the basis of our thinking. We have used judgment and fear that have driven us to do and act and condemn others and ourselves.

When I now observe my thoughts, I don’t always catch that they are just made up. But more and more I can observe that my thoughts pop up from seemingly no-where, but they come from my beliefs I have given energy to in the past.

I don’t need to follow them; I can let them go and tell myself, “God is still in charge.”

This is very helpful to me right now. And my body seems to respond to this by relaxing and feeling good. Fear is not a helpful guide but Love and Joy are. Feeling Love and Joy protects me in all that I do throughout the day. I feel safe and comforted.

Rev. Maria Kingsley is a Pathways of Light minister living in Tucson, AZ. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Mail: P.O Box 35122 Tucson, AZ 35122 Phone: 520-780-0170 Web: Maria-Kingsley.comMaria-Kingsley.com

© 2021, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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April-June, 2021

The Enemy Within

by Rev. Gina Lucia, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

I must say I’ve never in my lifetime seen such a “collective” opportunity to really go within and look at where perception is coming from. The entire world has the opportunity to do so. Are we up for the journey? Have we begun? Are we still asleep? Would we rather just stay that way? Has fear paralyzed us? I firmly believe that if we haven’t awakened yet, the collective pull will keep challenging every aspect of our waking mind.

“Many stand guard over their ideas because they want to protect their thought systems as they are, and learning means change. Change is always fearful to the separated, because they cannot conceive of it as a move towards healing the separation.” (T-4.I.2:1-2)

The body’s mind is only capable of recycling thoughts, feelings, memories, emotions, all from its stored past. That’s where perception arises, from our own life script experiences, the mind of the matrix. “Understand that you do not respond to anything directly, but to your interpretation of it. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response.” (T-12.I.1:4-5)  Over and over every day, we are scripting our future, more of the same.

If we find ourselves in a state of “resistance,” we are most likely not trusting in God, that still small Voice of our Inner Truth, Inner Guidance. “Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes.” (T-12.I.3:3-4)

I return time and time again to the Course’s teaching, “The ego speaks first, and the ego speaks loudest.” I constantly put myself in check, listening to my own ego chatter. It takes discipline to have a daily practice of aligning with the higher part of my mind, where I can hear the Voice for God.

As we view the landscape of the world, in one facet, it appears to be so polarized, yet such an opportunity for unity. “The ego made the world as it perceives it but the Holy Spirit, the reinterpreter of what the ego made, sees the world as a teaching device for bringing you home.” (T-5.III.11:1)

May we all join together in His Love. Where are we standing? The collective ego sure has a polarizing script in action. There seems to be an appearance to stand with fear, and hate, or to stand with unity, and love. The rubber band is being stretched apart further than ever before, to the point of snapping. Every aspect of one’s beliefs are being asked to question. There’s a huge spotlight shining on everything unlike Love.

Each one of us on this planet is being asked to question everything. A stand in unity, with each other, is needed now more than ever. We’re going to need to be
empowered at a much deeper and sacred level than we have ever been before.

We cannot do this alone. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to enter into our minds, into our beliefs, our relationship to everything.

Follow your heart, listen to your gut. The gut has an independent nervous system separate from the body, hence the term, “my gut feeling.”

“Nothing can reach Spirit from the ego, and nothing can reach the ego from Spirit. Spirit can neither strengthen the ego nor reduce the conflict within it. The ego is a contradiction. Your self and God’s Self are in opposition. They are opposed in source, in direction and in outcome.” (T-4.I.2:6-10)

We are all in this together. What an opportunity we have in life now to really look at what keeps us separate from each other, from our Creator. We can ask ourselves, “What am I co-creating in my life? Am I joining the ego or co-creating with God?”

In my life there are times when I feel like a swinging pendulum on a clock. I liken it to literally walking between two worlds (ego thinking). I stop, ask Holy Spirit to reinterpret. I realize I always have a choice. I must have decided wrongly, because I’m not at peace. This recognition alone brings me to a place of balance, knowing the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my mistaken decisions, if I will allow Him.

The narrative this past year has completely given me the opportunity to look at everything that externally has rocked my world, and look within myself. Can anything really exist at all without informational content? We are programmed to see everything in the physical world. After all, we wouldn’t know anything existed unless there were information on it. It’s feedback looping.

“All of your present functions are divided and open to question and doubt. This is because you are not certain how you will use them, and are therefore incapable of knowledge. Perception did not exist until the separation introduced degrees, aspects and intervals. Consciousness, the level of perception, was the first split introduced into the mind after the separation, making a mind a perceiver rather than a creator. The ego is the questioning aspect of the post- separation self, which was made rather than created.” (T-3.IV.1:2-5, 2:1, 3:1)

So the mind will stand confused, for the ego is capable of asking questions but not of receiving meaningful answers. Perception always involves some misuse of the mind because it brings the mind into areas of uncertainty. Hence, ego thinking can be equated to a constantly changing script. Thinking with God brings peace, certainty, unity and Love. No miscreation exists. We are always choosing between two thought systems, Love or fear.

We need each other now more than ever. Forgiveness is key. Forgive that shadowy figure in front of you. Forgive you. Go within, ask yourself, “Is there something I’m harboring in my own mind about my self projected onto my brother? Am I projecting a blind spot in my own mind about myself?”

Forgive the “enemy” outside, for it is a projection of something hiding within your own mind that is a shadow aspect of the enemy within. Bring the darkness to the Light.

“Alone we can do nothing, but together our minds fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts. By not being separate, the Mind of God is established in ours and as ours. This Mind is invincible because it is undivided.” (T-8.V.1:6-8)

Be the Light.

Be the Love.

Receive and extend.

Having faced my only enemy, which is within, I am now FREE to walk in God‘s Light…  and there is nothing more to say.

Rev. Gina Lucia is a Pathways of Light minister living in W. Sacramento, California. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

© 2021, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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April-June, 2021

Spirit Always Answers My Prayers

By Daniel Cratcha, Ministerial Candidate

My Dad passed in 2016. It was a “complicated” relationship and we struggled to communicate. Since I started living ACIM, I have come to view him very differently, in a much more loving and nonjudgmental way. A couple of weeks ago, I started thinking more and more about him. I missed him, I wanted to see him, I wanted to feel him. I prayed to Spirit for assistance.

The day after I started asking Spirit for help, my daughter, who enjoys going through old family photos, sent me one to identify, a young male toddler in what seemed like a very old picture. I had no idea and sent it to a cousin a few days later in the hopes she might identify the boy.

“That’s your Dad. My Mom had the same picture. Isn’t he adorable?”

Wait…what!? Oh, my goodness! I looked again at the picture. How had I missed it?

A beautiful little boy, a mischievous grin on his face, my Dad beaming up at me! My prayer was answered to a tee. I saw my Dad, I felt my Dad. I saw my Father, I felt my Father. Thank you, Dad, thank you Spirit, thank you Father. Thank you for showering me with Love, for this wonderful glimpse of Heaven. 

Spirit always answers my prayers, even when I was so busy looking for some sign of Dad that when Spirit put him right in front of me, I missed him. I stepped out of the present into a nonexistent future. Spirit has told me many times. When I stay in the present, when I am calm and still and truthful, I will always understand, even if He has to tap me on the shoulder occasionally.

Daniel Cratcha is a student in the Pathways of Light Ministry Program. He
lives in Fairport Harbor, Ohio. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

© 2021, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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April-June, 2021

Healing Prayer

by Rev. Michael Atkins, Ordained Ministrial Counselor

My Beloved, Who is always
with me, hear my prayer.

I call to You from my heart,
which I share with You,
knowing You cannot fail to hear me.

I quiet my mind and lay down all
my defenses, as I welcome the
Holy Spirit within me now…

I ask that the Light of Love
guide me in all that I do…

Speak to me Father,
Help me hear Your Voice…

Open my mind, open my heart,
and open my eyes…

Help me to accept whatever
it is that confronts me today…

and help me to give it to
You in response…

Help me to recognize that my true
function in this world
is only to heal and
be healed through my forgiveness
of what could never be.

Let me remember that
Love is what I am and that
Love is all I have to give,
for Love is all there is…

And let me be grateful
that God created me like Himself,
happy and at peace, in perfect
unity with all that exists

so that Love is all that
I can ever know

and all that I can ever truly share.
And so it is, and so we say, “Amen.”

Gratitude Prayer

Heavenly Father, we thank You
for all that You share with us.

You have given us all You are.
We lack nothing,
for You are everything.

Your perfect Love holds us all
forever safe in Your everlasting arms,
for there is no opposite to Love.

You alone are the Source of all Life.
All Creation is blessed by Your
Perfection, for by the grace of God
does every part contain the whole.

And so we thank You, Father,
that we find our Self in You.
We reach out to one another today
through the faith and Love that You
have given us to share to find that we
stand together in the Light,
forever free and at peace.

Rev. Michael Atkins, O.M.C., is a Pathways of Light minister in Georgetown, Texas. Email:mea35tx@hotmail.com

© 2021, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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