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The Face of God Is in Everyone

Rev. Gail Hamley

With the recent ups and downs of the financial market, job losses, home losses and general chaos that seem to be taking place in the United States, how does one overcome this illusion? ACIM tells us “not by force or anger, nor by opposing them in any way.” The Course continues, “You are the strong one in this seeming conflict.” (p. 478) That’s all very nice and I certainly do want to be strong, but with everyone around me complaining, criticizing and make strong judgments, sometimes it is difficult to cultivate that strength.

But Spirit hears every question and every prayer so I got an opportunity to practice being strong in a very significant way recently. My workplace was reflecting the general chaos of our country: There was upheaval in management, the finances, near dissolution, transition of senior management, lay-offs, not to mention the political and resulting emotional turmoil. I remained calm through all of this. I knew that because I am a student of the Course, I have been and continue to be groomed to see above and through the illusion. “God is here,” I would remind myself.

But when it came to laying people off, I was shaken. Now this is not a new task. As a human resources manager, I have had to fire, lay-off, counsel and do whatever it takes to get results in the workplace. But I guess I was fooling myself into thinking I was not being affected by all of the changes going on all around me. All of the meetings I had to attend where names were chosen and, ultimately, I was the one who prepared the documents and delivered the message. It caught up with me and I was shaken.

In meditation on the evening of the first lay-off, I found myself buzzing and my mind was crazy. Yet, I knew this was exactly what I needed to do. I asked the Holy Spirit to help me. Before I got the prayer out, I calmed down. Yes, it was that quick and because it was so quick I was reminded about what is True! I read, “For in his sight your loveliness is his salvation, which he would protect from harm. And you will be your brother’s strong protector from everything that seems to rise between you both. So shall you walk the world with me…” So in these times of chaos, I realized that this is the moment I have been prepared for.

Recently, I sang a Navajo song at a Peace prayer ceremony called “Walk in Beauty.” To walk in beauty means to be in harmony with nature and the earth, to be in peace with our brothers and our sisters and to be in alignment with our Creator. Isn’t this what Jesus is telling us? To walk in beauty is to walk the world with Jesus.

When I don’t react to what is going on around me, I become a messenger of God. It isn’t easy to lay people off. But now I am steadfast in knowing that the face of God is in that person and the face of God is in every part of their lives and in mine. No harm will come to us. Miracles are both beginnings and endings and they don’t show up the way we think they will. I may not be able to change what is happening. But I can change my perception to see the face of God and walk in beauty. That’s the way Jesus walked. And He is my Teacher.

Rev. Gail Hamley is a Pathways of Light minister living in Tustin, California.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Graduation Party

Rev. Melinda Kurka

It is so easy to get all wrapped up in our everyday life, with its problems and all the things needing to be done. Sometimes we get so busy, we forget how truly blessed we are. Then suddenly, something happens to remind us of how far we have come on our spiritual voyage and what a miracle that journey has been. That is exactly what happened to me a few months ago, and it happened at a graduation party for my husband’s nephew, Stephen. 

The party was held on Sunday at my brother-in-law’s house in Kent, Ohio, about a 45 minute drive from our place. The month was early June, the time for graduation parties, and the day was clear and warm. Their yard was stunning with iris’s, peonies and day lilies in bloom. The food was terrific and, as usual, I ate way too much. Afterwards, I just wandered around talking to family and friends I hadn’t seen for a while.
 
Then the big meal caught up with me and I decided to sit down for awhile. There was a vacant chair next to Bob’s cousin Mike, so that was where I parked myself. Mike began telling me that he and his wife had just moved so they could be closer to the church that they are very involved in. The cross he was wearing was quite unique and looked to be hand-made. As I admired it, he told me about a talk he recently gave regarding his former drug use and how turning to God had saved his life. “You and I have a great deal in common,” I told him. Mike looked at me in surprise. “I didn’t know you had a drug problem,” he said. “I didn’t. I am a recovering alcoholic.” He had no idea. I went on, “I also had a serious nervous breakdown eleven years ago. I was as lost as you were. And just like you, faith in God has saved my life.”

I was aware that he had a drug problem as a younger man, but until he started sharing details with me, I hadn’t known the extent of the problem. His drug of choice had been heroin. At one point, he sank so low that he was robbing people for money to pay for his drug habit. In one month, Mike told me, he had spent $38,000 on drugs. “At that point, I didn’t care about who I hurt or what I did. I just had to have that fix,” he stated.

I didn’t go into quite as much detail as he had about my own addiction, but I did tell him that I was very secretive about my drinking. I had never gotten a DUI or lost a job, but I was a full-blown alcoholic regardless. It started me thinking about all the times I would rush the kids to bed so I could drink myself into oblivion. I would spend the whole next day anticipating drinking that night. It was the only thing that made the hurt inside go away for awhile. I became a genius at hiding the bottles, so no one knew how much I was drinking. My husband worked nights, so he really had no clue. Anyway, as Mike and I continued talking, he told me he had tried to commit suicide twice and showed me the scars on his wrists. “I tried twice as well. I was a cutter,” I told him and showed him the scars on my arms. He told me that he found God while in a jail cell, waiting for an arraignment hearing. Someone had left a Bible in there and when he picked it up, it just happened to open to a verse that spoke to his heart (imagine that). “That was the beginning for me,” he said. I replied that driving the car one afternoon, I suddenly started talking to God. “Please help me find peace. I need peace. I just can’t go on living like this.” A few days later, I met up with a woman named Amy, who recommended that I buy the book, A Course in Miracles. That was my beginning.

Eleven years later, here I am, a new Minister through Pathways of Light. Healing physically, mentally and spiritually has taken an immense amount of work on myself. I am a more healed, balanced, peaceful person than I have ever been my whole life. Part of what helped me was working with a good psychologist. That helped me understand why I felt the way I did. But, somehow, it never helped me get rid of the pain — the fear, guilt, grief and anger inside. It has been the spirituality, developing a relationship with the Divine that has allowed me to make peace with and let go of that pain. Letting go of hurt from the past has felt like bricks coming off my back. What a terrible load I had been carrying most of my life.

Does this mean that I am totally healed, that I am on the verge of enlightenment? No. I still have issues I am dealing with. I am still an imperfect human being. However, I now have a lifeline to hold onto. That lifeline is the love of the Divine and it is the most important thing in my life. With my hand in God’s, I continue to heal. I am returning home where I belong.

Bob’s cousin and I both survived through faith in God, the Divine Source. It was the only thing that could give us the courage, love and hope we needed to begin healing; the only thing that gave us a reason to live. He found God in a traditional Christian Church. I have found God through a non-traditional, spiritual approach which has unfolded with A Course in Miracles at the core and Native American Spirituality, Buddhism and Taoism mixed in. It doesn’t matter. There are many paths to God. We each need to find the path that is right for us.

The Love of God is the miracle that heals us, as soon as we are ready and willing to open our hearts to that Love.

Rev. Melinda Kurka is a Pathways of Light minister living in Lodi, Ohio.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice and website address are included.

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Specialness — A Disguised Gift of Fear

Tomas Vieira

Whenever we try to be special, to get something from someone, or harbor an attachment to an outcome or thing, we will experience pain and suffering and usually cruelty towards the other party and self.

Recently, I was trying to make myself ‘special’ to someone when I realized that the more I tried, the worst I felt. Trying to be special always involves seeing yourself and the other as individuals, different; more special than others. This immediately produces fear because the hidden belief behind specialness is that we are alone and need to get and protect what we want, though this agenda is often hidden beneath the driving desire to win over the other. The exhilarating emotions of trying to be special, the fantasies that play-out in the mind all disguise a growing fear of loss.

This growing fear eventually surfaces as a need to defend against that fear. The ego, being insane and working from its mantra of seek and do not find, then begins to subtly judge (or attack) the other in the absurd notion that finding fault in him/her will somehow protect them from the very fear that began within their own ego mind.

Typical of the ego, it makes up a fear and then sees (projects) it outside in the other and justifies attack as a means of defending a potential loss. This can manifest as seeing fault in another and trying to correct them. So back to my story, I was actually trying to hurt someone I cared deeply for. Is this madness or what?

There is no way out of here. The paradigm is now a closed circle. We (ego) begin by seeing the fault outside, then by making it real in the mind, we follow with attack which leads to defense from the other which seemingly confirms the initial fear and generates more fear and round and round we go! The internal altar of worship to God has been displaced by the idol of fear.

A Course in Miracles in Lesson 170, titled ‘There is no cruelty in God and none in me’ clearly explains this mistaken belief.

1. “No one attacks without intent to hurt. This can have no exception. When you think that you attack in self-defense, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty. You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom. And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion from fear.

“How thoroughly insane is the idea that to defend from fear is to attack! For here is fear begot and fed with blood, to make it swell and rage. And thus is fear protected, not escaped.”

The lesson goes on to explain the ultimate fear behind this is the fear of God Himself; the fear of a God of vengeance who is after us for our ‘sins.’ We still believe that we are guilty and, conscious or not, every time we attack or defend, we generate guilt and believe God will persecute us. This of course is ridiculous as this seeming life is just a dream, one that is over already. All we have to do is wake up to who we are to see that we are already home, safe, beloved.

I only discovered my mistake when I came to my knees begging for the peace of God. I was so over myself and prayed for right-mindedness. I prayed for the correct perception so that I could return to peace. Having turned my life over to the Peace of God, I was shocked to find that here was the ego again, trying to hurt me.

And then I saw it clearly! I saw how the ego in its deception used the desire for specialness to make up fantasies which, if followed through, would have turned out to be conditions for a future generation of pain, suffering and sacrifice.

Love is free and limitless, given freely without restriction or expectation. We all know sexual love and emotional love but know nothing of Conscious Love; the Love that is given solely to mirror back the perfection of the other. Conscious Love is about practicing giving is receiving; this is the only way we can know this experientially. There is no room for ‘getting’ here. Conscious Love does not see error and abandon a brother. It seeks not to correct error thereby compounding the mistaken belief that we are separate individuals. Conscious Love does not judge and does not seek to place limits on self or others. In the mirroring back of the perfection of the other is our memory of Who and What we are restored.

Having already learned and practiced this with Nouk, I was dumbstruck to find myself lapsing back into specialness. I supposedly teach this stuff!!

When we lapse into specialness, we are unable to see the beauty and perfection of our brother, thereby increasing the fear in us that we are alone and isolated, with a vengeful God after us.

As the Course states, at any instant we can be reborn and given life again. All we need do is forgive ourselves for the mistake we made and ask the Holy Spirit to shine away what was never there! Here’s to the end of specialness.

Australians Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira are the authors of best-seller Take Me to Truth, Undoing the Ego. Initiated by A Course in Miracles, their seventeen year spiritual awakening journey led to the almost total deconstruction of their lives and belief systems before emerging from the process together. The result is this profoundly practical guide that clearly defines the blocks and the stages involved in apiritual awakening.
Web: http://www.takemetotruth.com

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Cyclone of Love

Laurent Elie Levy

The last 4th of July weekend was a gift for me, as well as for many of us who attended the intensive retreat held at Pathways of Light that weekend. The foundation for the weekend’s teaching was NTI, which is a nick-name for The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament. Regina Dawn Akers, my partner, is the scribe of this “yellow book.” Together, we taught and shared clarity we’ve received from Holy Spirit through NTI. NTI is such a profound and loving piece of art that helps its readers awaken to the truth of who we are. It really is a joy and an honor to gather around this living book. The whole weekend was filled with amazing moments of realizations, great “Aha’s”, lots of Light, and lots of Love.

During one break, my eyes, filled with awe, met with Mary’s, which were also filled with tears of awe. We felt such gratitude for what was happening in the room. That Sunday, at the end of the teachings, I had the chance to speak with Mary and share my gratitude for the way the workshop had been divinely taken care of by Holy Spirit. While we were talking, I remembered a message that Regina received from Holy Spirit last year, which was titled “The Cyclone of Love.” In this powerful and loving message, Holy Spirit mentioned in a clear and encouraging way that which happens when two or more gather in His Name, in the name of their true purpose. I shared a few words from that message with Mary, who asked me to write an article about this ‘cyclone of love’ that we both felt that weekend. I gratefully agreed to do so… and, well, dear ones, here it is.

Regina and I joined together in purpose a little more than a year ago. Both our lives led us to meet each other (at a wonderful gathering called “Camp for Miracles”, by the way) and realize even more that what we wanted above all else was to be led in all things by the Holy Spirit, and thus, let go of all fears. This is the reason for our joining, for which I am still very grateful. Regina has been writing messages with Holy Spirit, her Right Mind, for quite some time now, and that culminated in the scribing of NTI, which took her about a year to do. When we met, the Holy Spirit gave her a series of very helpful messages intended to help us in our joined purpose. We were prompted to teach those messages as soon as we received them, so that we could truly learn them.

The particular message called “Cyclone of Love” is one where Holy Spirit asked us to be aware and grateful for what we create together when we join in purpose. Although it speaks to the two of us, the message is for all of us. Any joining in purpose has a great, great potential to awaken the mind further. Here is an excerpt from “Cyclone of Love.”

“I want you to notice the clarity the two of you are coming to together through your relationship and your conversations. Notice what you are creating because it is creation. You have spoken of the cyclone of fear and hate, and this is the cyclone you first became aware of together. But now the two of you are coming together to create another force… an opposite spinning… and this is the cyclone of love. I am giving you help, but you are taking what I have given and creating through it. Do not let your eyes not see this. For in seeing what you create… in recognizing it as creation… you extend that creation further into the mind.”

In this paragraph, Holy Spirit invites us to be grateful and aware of what we create together when we join in such a way. Let us speak a little about gratitude.

Gratitude is a very powerful force that is available to us always. Whatever we feel grateful for will expand in our mind and experience. This is a law. Many spiritual paths talk about this and call it a “manifesting tool.” And indeed, it does manifest. However, in our particular path of awakening, since we don’t know what is in our best interest, we leave the object of manifestation in the Hands of the Holy Spirit, Who knows what we need and when we need it in order to let go of ego. That is our only goal. But we can still use the power of the mind to manifest more letting go, and more trust, which is highly needed. So we use gratitude. And we are invited to be grateful for clarity, and thus have more of it. As we know, being grateful for everything is the ultimate mindset we want to cultivate. When we are grateful for everything, we do trust everything, and we do know that all is God and that all is coming to help us awaken. Gratitude brings more gratitude. Trust brings more trust.

That’s why Holy Spirit wants us to be grateful for what we create together when we join in purpose like we did for the workshop at Pathways of Light (or in any other gathering in “thy Name”). Again, what we are grateful for will naturally expand. So it is a direct invitation to remember to always feel gratitude for moments of clarity, for miracles, for “Aha’s”… those drops of Heaven that come to greet us, as I like to call them. In this way, we will just experience more of these holy moments.

Gratitude creates a spinning force: a cyclone. When Holy Spirit mentions the cyclone of fear and hate, he refers to the seeming unconscious trap that the world is in. The “sleepy Son,” Who is still grateful for his sleepiness, creates separation and extends his belief in separation in one mind. For that experience of separation to continue, He must dwell on…or be grateful for… the building block of that experience, that which makes this experience possible, which is judgment. And, as the natural result of judgment, the Son of God experiences fear and hate. We must have been constantly grateful for that loop of judgment and fear in order for us to have these experiences of separation. At some point that loop, or cyclone, must be reversed if we want to awaken to our Truth. And Holy Spirit tells us that joining with our brother and focusing our attention on this joining, by being grateful for the effects of this joining (the feelings of love, the clarity, the miracles, etc…) creates an opposite spinning force. It creates a cyclone of love that will further extend the awakening of the Mind of the One Son.

One part of this message that left me curious for awhile is what Holy Spirit meant when He said, “Notice what you are creating together, because it is creation.” And the clarity that I received was that we “recreate” Christ every time we join in this way. (Of course, Christ doesn’t need to be recreated, but I find this symbol very helpful in keeping me focused on the positive spinning force.) As I imagine it, each time we join in a holy relationship, we give birth to a “baby Christ”, a we-ness, that is the witness of our joining. This “we-ness,” or togetherness, symbolizes what we truly are. And being aware of it, being grateful for it, will actually nurture it, helping the “baby Christ” grow and grow. As I look at it this way, I realize that “we-ness” is much closer to my True Identity than this body-personality I call mine. And transferring my focus to we is a powerful way to slowly dis-identify from “me”, from “Laurent”, and identify with the joined and growing “we-ness” that Regina and I “create” together, which some have called “Ginaurent” or “Laurengina.”

Imagining in this way brings a smile to my face, but it also sparks honest realization and awareness. That “baby Christ,” which only lives through our nurturing it, is the doorway to Oneness. By focusing on our clarity and awareness of love…the cyclone of love that is symbolized by the “baby Christ”…clarity and awareness of love expands. Why not take advantage of Who we are and our ability to extend and manifest, and use it for our Holy Purpose, seemingly creating togetherness, until we all realize that oneness was there all along?

I love this idea.

So when two or more gather in “thy Name”, let us feel appreciation and awe for the True Power that is being evoked and enacted. Let us be aware and feel gratitude for what is occurring when we join together in purpose.
Here’s another excerpt from “Cyclone of Love”:

“Remember that all things are ideas…And each idea comes from a motive or source. As you look at the ideas that are created through the two of you, do you see also their source? And when you see their source, do you see what you are creating together? Take time to be grateful for this, for this is not a little thing. Much more is happening than appears to be happening on the surface. Continue in your devotion together.”

A Course in Miracles tells us that a “miracle may touch many people you have not even met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware.” (T I, 1, 45) We don’t know the effects of actions within the mind. However, being aware and grateful for the cyclone of love, which we create through joining, results in more effects of love for everyone. (i.e., light, peace, love, gratitude, clarity) It extends an awakening Light into the Mind that we all are in ways we can’t even conceive of. That gives us reason to get quite excited about joining, don’t you think?

It is through our willingness and true desire that we make the most of the holy encounters God provides for us along the way. When we remember what we want the most, which is re-identifying with “we-ness” and its peace, instead of sticking to the “me” and its fears, we can easily choose again and keep our attention focused on the Love that we create together.

This 4th of July weekend at Pathways of Light was filled with these great moments for us all. I felt so very blessed to be a part of it, as well as a happy witness of this cyclone of Love. And let me use this opportunity to thank you so dearly, Mary and Robert, for making all this, and so much more, possible. Remember the words of Spirit: “…this is not a little thing.”

Laurent Elie Levy and Regina Dawn Akers live in North Carolina. This article and other messages are posted at: http://www.reginadawnakers.com
Regina Dawn Akers is the author of the book, The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament: A Course in Understanding and Acceptance (NTI).

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice and website address are included.

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