Miracles News

Tweet

July-September, 2016

On High

by Rev. Michael Graves, O.M.C.

I freed myself
and learned to fly,

My outstretched wings
against the sky.

“I’m free” I shout
as I sail and soar,
bound by the chains
of fear no more.

Come fly with me
release your fears,
let go your doubts
and dry your tears.

Life’s so much larger
seen from on high,
and so much smaller
if you never try.

So take the risk and
leave life’s nest,
to learn and grow
and be your best…

That others still afraid to fly
might see the world with you on high.

Rev. Michael Graves, O.M.C., is a Pathways of Light minister living in Beaumont, California.  Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address): newbeginningslifeservices.com

© 2016, 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.

Tell a Friend

Printable Page

---

Tweet

July-September, 2016

Sick Leave from God

by Rev. Barbara Goodman Siegel, O.M.C.

I am involved with a group in St. Louis, Missouri that is practicing the “Choose Again” method developed by Diederik Wolsak. This is a process for looking at one’s upsets and core beliefs. It is based on the principles of Attitudinal Healing and A Course in Miracles.

There are six steps involved in this process that is to be used whenever one is upset. The purpose of this article is not to explain how the steps work, but to share one of the processes I did over an upset in the hope that it might help someone else see what is truly going on when anger and attack are allowed to have their way with our minds.

Briefly, the story behind the upset was that I had joined a not-for-profit organization that had a gym; I found I wasn’t utilizing it, and I went into the facility and signed a cancellation agreement. I happened to go at lunch time and the sales staff was out, but the receptionist said she believed there was a 30-day charge which I fully expected.

After the 30 days had passed, the monthly charge for the membership appeared on my charge card. I called and talked to a sales representative and he said that it was not just 30 days, but that the resignation becomes effective on the last day of the following month and, since I signed the agreement on the 5th of the month, I would be charged for that month and the next month — a total of 56 days.

In my mind, the fact that this membership was with a not-for-profit organization made the length of time required before cancellation particularly egregious. I told the salesman that this seemed pretty out of line especially for a not-for-profit organization. He said that it was stated on the resignation agreement which I signed. (I did find it in very small print.) I interpreted his attitude as condescending, arrogant, inflexible and dismissive. He couldn’t have hit more buttons to ignite my temper if he had tried.

I went into full attack, telling him that he was totally out of integrity, and while I didn’t swear, I am sure I said other things to try and cut him down to size before I righteously said: “good bye!” and hung up on him. Okay, this gives you enough of the story. Now, for the results of my angry attack.

After my temper cooled down, I felt terrible and knew that I needed to use the Choose Again process. The first step of the process is to realize you are upset and, the second step is to accept it is all about you. The third step is to focus on the feeling. What I was feeling was guilt! I lost my temper, was rude, attacked and even hung up on another person. The fourth step is to remember the feeling.  It felt as though I had forgotten everything I ever learned from all my training and work in ACIM. I felt I was a failure. I was ashamed and embarrassed. I was disappointed and disgusted with myself.

Now, I was ready for the fifth step, “What was the core belief (judgment) that this upset had triggered?” My answer was that I am worthless. I can’t control my ego. I am a fraud. I am unworthy of being a voice for God or a vessel for His Light. I am a failure and He should just pass on me and find someone else to represent Him.

Thank goodness there is a sixth step! The sixth step says that I need to embrace the truth of who I really am and see that this ego evaluation isn’t true. What I saw as truth was that if God withdrew His Light from everyone who failed or, as the Course would say, made an error, there would be no light left in the world — all would have ended a long time ago. Even Jesus had lost his temper! The truth is that I am God’s eternal, holy child — innocent and pure and loved. This mistake does not change that and I do not need to prove my worth.

Lesson 193 of ACIM states: “All things are lessons God would have me learn.” This incident was a great lesson! I saw how attack made me feel separate and alone. I saw that my ego is triumphant in my guilt. I heard my higher Self tell me: “Release the guilt and hold the lesson. As long as you hold guilt, shame, and unworthiness, you are lost to God. God needs you back. It is like you are on sick leave. Let the sickness go and go back to work where you are needed and loved.”

Thank you Mother/Father God for standing by me in all I do. Thank You for Your Love and faith in me. You always wait patiently, knowing I will find my way back into Your loving arms. I am so happy to rejoin with You and with my higher Self. I learned what attack, anger, and ultimately guilt does and this is not what I want to give to the world. This was a valuable lesson and I am grateful for it. With God’s help, I will remember this lesson when I am tempted to let attack replace peace and I will share it with my brothers that they might see their forgiveness in me.

Rev. Barbara Goodman Siegel is a Pathways of Light minister living in St. Louis, Missouri. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

© 2016, 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.

Tell a Friend

Printable Page

---

Tweet

July-September, 2016

Rules for a Happy Day

by Rev. Myron Jones, O.M.C.

My favorite time of the day is early in the morning before anyone wakes up. I start my day before I even get out of bed. I lie there a moment and think about God. I let appreciation and gratitude flow over me and then I surrender my self to Him. I offer my body, mind and soul to my Maker, and I ask Him to use me to help us awaken.

Then with coffee in hand, I sit on my patio, weather permitting, and in my sanctuary otherwise, and I decide what kind of day I would like to have. I don’t ask the ego this question. I get still, listen to the great variety of birdsongs in my yard, and I wait for inspiration. Nearly always, I know that I want a happy day.

Sometimes other words come to me as well. Today, what came is that I will appreciate this day. I will appreciate the people I work with, the customers I am going to see, the many brothers and sisters I will meet in my travels as I drive from town to town. I will be deeply appreciative of it all, the driving, the weather, the meals I will eat, each thing I do and see.

As these ideas came to me I began to feel overwhelming gratitude, and so I know I will have a day of appreciation and gratitude. This day will be given me if I make no decisions on my own. And really, I can’t make decisions on my own. For decision to have power, it must be made in union. So the only real question is, what will I make the decision with, ego or Holy Spirit?

I know the day I want to have. I want a happy day, a day filled with appreciation and gratitude. So, if I have something else show up in my day, then I know I must have made a decision with the ego. That’s okay, I can back up and undo that decision. In the Rules for Decision, Chapter 30 of the Text, we are given simple step- by-step instructions for making this correction.

Here is an example of how this works for me. Just this morning, as I write in my journal, I began to feel anxious. This is not part of the day I decided on, so I sat with it a moment. I let Holy Spirit guide me through the process. I am anxious because my Internet is not working and I am going to have to figure out a way to post my daily lesson and this journal entry.

I was happy a moment ago, and now I am not. So I must have joined with the ego and together we looked at the situation and decided what it meant. I have no Internet and so I can’t finish my morning work. This is bad. Then having judged the situation, I ask what it is I should do. The ego says I should go fool with the cables and try to make it work, but I have already done that and nothing I did worked. There is no reason to repeat the process.

The ego says I am so unlucky (unworthy) to live in an area where we don’t have good Internet service. Those guys don’t know what they are doing and if I call again I will be here all morning getting nothing done and miss work. I can’t do that. It’s hopeless. I feel discouraged and frustrated. Nothing ever goes right for me.

Well, you get the picture. The ego always sees everything through a glass darkly. It offers solutions that don’t work and its main purpose is to find someone to be guilty, me, the cable company, my work, bad luck, unworthiness, it doesn’t matter who or what is guilty as long as guilt is involved.

So what I want to do is listen to the Holy Spirit, to let Him tell me what to do. I hear Him say that it is going to be fine, not to worry. But the problem is, I have already decided what the situation means and it is not a pretty picture. How is sitting here doing nothing going to help? How can I not worry, for goodness sakes!

That’s the problem with asking the ego for an interpretation. Once I decide what is wrong according to the ego, the Holy Spirit’s answer won’t make sense to me. It won’t answer the question as I saw it. But all is not lost. I can cancel out the ego decision by saying that I have no question. I forgot what to decide. Yes, that’s exactly it! I forgot to decide to ask Holy Spirit to join with me, and so ego popped up to quickly take over.

So now that I have canceled out my previous decision, I ask the Holy Spirit to interpret the situation for me and I step back to let that happen. I am still for a few moments as I allow my mind to be put at ease. I begin to feel gratitude that without the distractions of the Internet, I have had time to do quite a lot of writing. This writing is very healing for me and probably will be for others. I feel grateful for that. I also begin to feel trust rise up in me and I know that what needs to be done will be done.

It is not always that easy. Sometimes I have a situation that triggers a fear in me and the fear gets away from me before I can make a quick reversal. When that happens it is sometimes hard to let go of the decision I made with ego and accept the Holy Spirit’s help. There is a process for this, too.

First I have to approach it gently because otherwise I will feel coerced. I’m already feeling trapped by the ego which tends to offer conflicting answers and which always increases guilt and fear. If I am not careful, the Holy Spirit’s help will feel confusing and like an attack and I will become angry.

So I begin simply. At least I can decide that I don’t like how I feel now. There, that was easy and also true. So it will be a simple thing to decide that I hope I have been wrong. And that makes sense, too. If I feel unhappy with my present choice then I naturally hope I am wrong about it. I need to get to this point because until now I have thought it was important that I be right about my decision about the situation. But deciding that I am not happy and that it would be better if I was wrong, I feel ready to move forward.

Having come this far, I can, in perfect honesty, say I want another way to look at this. Whew! Now I have changed my mind about the day. I started out wanting a happy day, a day of appreciation and gratitude, and somehow let my mind get stuck on the idea that I needed to be right when I am wrong. But now I am changing my mind. I am open to something else, to another, happier way to see this.

With an open mind, maybe not completely convinced, but willing to be shown, I say, “Maybe there really is another way of looking at this. What can I lose by asking?” This is the way I undo a wrong decision, change my advisor from ego to Holy Spirit, and go back to having the happy day I had asked for. Sometimes if the fearful thought has a strong enough hold on me, I might have to repeat this, but always it brings me back to peace.

I have been doing this practice for over a month now. I do it every single day and work with it during the day as needed. I am so thrilled with the results that I am offering a three day workshop in July, based on the Rules for Decision. I want everyone to have the chance to learn about, and practice together, these rules for a happy day. I want everyone to know the freedom and peace that I am gaining from this study.

If you think you would like to do this with me, visit my website for details. http://www.forgivenessisthewayhome.org

Rev. Myron Jones, O.M.C., is a Pathways of Light minister living in Westlake, Louisiana. Read her inspiring Healing Journal articles on the Pathways website. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Web: http://www.forgivenessisthewayhome.org  www.facebook.com/myronacim Twitter: https://twitter.com/RevMyronJones

© 2016, 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.

Tell a Friend

Printable Page

---

Tweet

July-September, 2016

The Excitement of Letting Go

by Rev. Larry Glenz, O.M.C.

One year ago I was asked if I would be willing to sell the rights to my book, Forgiving Kevin, to an independent filmmaker.  It is a story of my son’s heroin addiction and ultimately his fatal overdose.

I was surprised and honored by the proposal but was not sure I wanted to allow our story to be changed in any way. Someone other than me would write the adapted screenplay.  That idea made me a bit uneasy to be sure.

I took the issue to Holy Spirit and felt a clear message come to me.  “Say yes to the movie proposal, then let go of it.”  I was excited that Holy Spirit would be using our story to help others.  Nevertheless, my family and I had some concerns about the veracity of the movie. 

I have read the adapted screenplay and realize there are differences from the book. I have had the opportunity to go over the script with the writer and had many comments and suggestions. But I feel that my instructions from Spirit were clear, “Say yes and let go.”  I need to trust that advice.

People ask me all the time, “How is the movie going?”  I continue to answer truthfully, “It’s moving forward.”  Former players from my many years as a high school lacrosse coach have become important investors in the project without any request from me. 

The project has a life that is independent of me.  I am actually relieved that none of its progress depends on my efforts.  I have been guided to “let go” and simply enjoy watching the process unfold.

The raising of capital is still taking place and is reaching its goals. The cast of the movie will be determined once the final budget is set.  Plans are being made to shoot the film this summer.  I will be asked to be a consultant but truly will have no decision-making power.

I know that the book alone has been reaching people who need a message of love, forgiveness, and a connection to their Higher Power.  I receive many email messages and have met with many people who are suffering from having a loved one with the disease of addiction.  I have had many invitations to speak to high school, college, and middle school audiences about our story of heroin addiction and how it affects a family.

This experience of meeting so many people that are affected by the heroin epidemic has been an eye opener. The opportunity to help others who are suffering has certainly helped me heal from my own personal sorrow of losing Kevin to an accidental drug overdose.  I can feel Kevin’s arm around me as I tell our story.

Putting Holy Spirit in charge of all of this takes the pressure off me. It is in His hands and I have no doubt that it will turn out to be a film that helps people — maybe many people. It is Spirit’s job to direct this project to heal our brothers.  A well-made motion picture is an exciting way to do that.

I can’t wait to see the good that comes from this.

Rev. Larry Glenz, O.M.C., is a Pathways of Light minister living in Long Beach, New York. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). To read more about the movie production in progress and view a video by Larry Glenz about the purpose of the move project, go to: http://www.forgivingkevin.com

© 2016, 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.

Tell a Friend

Printable Page

---

Back to main page of Miracles News.

Has this page been helpful to you?
Your contribution to support this site is greatly appreciated. To make a tax deductible contribution with a credit/debit card, click here.
Click here to donate from your PayPal account.
Or send a check to Pathways of Light, 12530 Lions Chase Court, Huntley, IL 60142.