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Forgiveness Is a Gift to Myself

by Rev. Dan Strodl, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

For most of my life, I lived in a world of fear, anxiety and separation. I couldn’t go through the day without resentment towards someone or something. The ego was alive and thriving. I didn’t know what peace was. I knew something was wrong. Could this be what my life was for?

When I found A Course in Miracles, I knew there was something there for me. I was ready to nurture my spiritual side. Forgiveness is a major theme in the Course, but it took a while for me to understand what that meant. I always thought forgiveness was about letting another person off the hook. But, now, I see forgiveness is about letting myself off the hook.

“What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?” (W-pI.122.1:1-6)

I knew that the Course’s forgiveness was what I needed and, so, I made letting go of judgments a daily practice. Slowly, my life began to change. When I noticed a grievance coming up in my mind, I gave it to the Holy Spirit for healing. My grievances were weakening and I felt more at peace.

Little grievances (e.g. people dropping litter, or not thanking me when I held the door open for them, noisy neighbors at night, etc.) lost their ability to trigger me. Big grievances (specifically, being scammed out of my life savings and my son cutting me out of his life) took a lot longer to let go of. But, with diligence, they lost their power to take away my peace for long.

My forgiveness practice is, first, to notice a judgment, step back, quiet my mind and, then, give it to the Holy Spirit for healing. I am so grateful that the Holy Spirit is always there, ready to take my grievances and heal my mind.

I had an experience, recently, which I’d like to share with you. Miracle Network had a well-known Course teacher booked for an online workshop. As the date for the workshop got close, people from all over the world were signing up, the numbers grew and grew — more than we’ve ever had before on an online event. I was anxious about something going wrong and, so, I had the Internet upgraded to 5G so we would stay stable. I also increased our capacity to 500 participants, and arranged practice sessions with the team to work out how we could manage questions and comments for so many people. There was nothing else that could possibly go wrong, so I relaxed.

And, then, 30 minutes before the workshop was due to begin, I received an email from our speaker to say he had the flu and couldn’t attend. YIKES!!! I was thrown into fear. I couldn’t believe it! Everything was falling apart! So, I took it to Holy Spirit and asked, “What should I do?”  What came to me was: “All is well. So, that’s what I did, and everyone was so understanding. We arranged a new date and offered a refund (which only one person took up). People were wishing our speaker well and sending him blessings. Surprisingly, I didn’t have any grievances or judgments! It was all taken from me and I was peaceful.  Ahhh… the gifts of forgiveness.

Rev. Dan Strodl is a Pathways of Light minister and publisher of Miracle Worker magazine in London, UK. His email is: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Visit Miracle Network online at www@.Miracles.org.uk

© 2021, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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What Does Healing Look Like to You?

by Rev. Peggy Rivera, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

I have recently given some thought to what other people’s expectations of healing are, and I wondered if people think of healing as purely about the physical body, or if mental emotional healing is enough. I think many times the perception of healing expectations is mostly about the physical. And there is nothing wrong with wanting our body to be healed.

After all the Course says God made us perfect and so I for one want to be perfect. But it also says in the Course that all healing is in the mind. When it is the mind that thinks it can be sick, then the mind is sick. So, our perception of what the body is for and what our true Self is needs correction.

During the process, if we need to take medicine or some other physical treatment, we should do that. Jesus said that alternative treatments contribute to magical thinking but fear is the greatest obstacle to healing so it is better to find comfort in physical means than to perpetuate fear.

In Text 2.IV.5:1 Jesus said, “The children of God are entitled to the perfect comfort that comes from perfect trust. Until they achieve this, they waste themselves and their true creative powers on useless attempts to make themselves more comfortable by inappropriate means.” (T-2.III.5:1)

To alleviate this fear, Jesus has said that it is better to take alternative substances that help you feel better as long as you are still seeking to develop trust. These substances are magical statements that re-enforce the belief that the body makes its own illness. So it is better to find comfort in alternative treatments while you are trying to heal. Fear sets you up to miscreate and so it is better to offer yourself comfort on the physical level for a time.

What needs to be healed is the idea that you can be sick reinforcing the thought that you can create what is not real. Identifying with the dream of bodies keeps us planted with the laws of the physical Universe. Our true self is of Spirit and cannot create any form of sickness. So, one of the key’s to healing is learning to trust Him.

“All healing is essentially the release from fear. To undertake this, you cannot be fearful yourself. You do not understand healing because of your own fear.” (T-2.IV.1:7-9)

Sometimes when I thought of the statements in the Course that talk about how we created our own illness, it really bugged me. I thought that there is no way I would create this asthma, etc. Why would I do that?

On an earthly level I believe that is true.But when you think about it from a spiritual point of view, it makes total sense because it is not my individual personality that is doing the creating. It doesn’t happen in my conscious thoughts. It happens from a separated concept out of guilt. In our separated individualized self we try to claim our power and feel guilty because we think we are trying to usurp the power of God. Although that was only in a moment, it was corrected immediately.

But God left with us a Comforter, the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that teaches us that we are not the body as we have been believing, but we are the thoughts of the changeless, all loving mind of God. In him we have our being.

This helps me realize that we do not create our own illness from our personalities but when we thought we separated, the guilt that we accepted created a thought system of punishment for ourselves — even individually.

But the Holy Spirit was given to us to show us how to find our way back out of the chaos. He teaches us that by Grace we are saved and that we are always loved, no matter what we think. He shows us how to see things differently. We then can have the knowledge to see things differently.

Jesus said, “You are the Kingdom of Heaven but you have let the belief in darkness enter your mind and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let banish the idea of darkness.” (T-5.II.4:1-2)

We see how it is so important to change our thoughts to Love and forgiveness for ourselves and each other. That is how we are of one mind. When we attack others, we are attacking the Sonship because it keeps us on the defensive.

When I ask Holy Spirit to help me see things differently, I feel so relieved when I sit quietly and listen and see the images that are sent to me. I often see things that happened to me in the past and I can say, “Thank you, I forgive you and I forgive myself.” As I learn to realize that when I hold no grievances then no grievances are held against me. I feel free and I feel fearless. I think that on a personal level as each one of us learns more and more about letting go of old pain and forgiveness, we all become happier and healthier. We can more easily accept the Love God showers upon us.

Being able to just be Love is very healing. Does it always result in physical healing? I don’t think we can say for sure. I think that you cannot really separate our thoughts from our physical experience. There are times when you may feel attacked by someone else unjustifiably and wonder why you are being picked on. But we then have to realize that the person who is attacking is outside of Love and he is desperately needing Love. That is when asking for the Holy Spirit’s help to see differently is very helpful.

That is when we can mentally remember the truth about them and, in our prayers, we lift them up. After a while we start feeling that release and it begins to lose power over us. That is how we can assist each other in our healing. That to me is what is meant by, “We all heal together.”

That is why I think healing is different for all of us but we are all on the same path. Each experience may seem to have a different origin like say a baby born sick maybe with cancer or something like that. I really would feel pressed if I thought that baby could create its own illness. So, when we realize that it is not the individual personality that creates illness but the entire thought system of separation that keeps us all bound in this perpetual cycle of birth and death, where we seem to be innocent victims that we need to overcome.

When we learn that we are all Love, we are all equal and without guilt, we become free.

Rev. Peggy Rivera, O.M.C., is a Pathways of Light minister living in Palm Bay, FL Email:7seas@bellsouth.net
Web: http://www.revprivera.lifeministries.com

© 2021, 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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There Must Be Another Way!

by Rev. Barbara Adams, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

As a child and teenager, when I would to go to Confession at my hometown church, I would first do a mental inventory. I’d try to figure out how I had sinned so that when I knelt down in that dark box and waited for the male figure on the other side to slide open the little door, I’d have something to say.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned. It’s been (x) weeks since my last Confession. Father, I… (This is where I had to list all of my sins.)

I’d say something like: “I lied to my mother three times and I disobeyed her twice.” I totally made up these “sins” so that I’d have something to say!

Part and parcel of the experience was the ever-present scent of candles burning within the sacred space, which the devout had lit in hopes of having their intentions being put on the fast-track to the heavens. The smell of hundreds of little flickering lights had seeped behind the curtain to, I’m sure, remind me that I was in a holy place and that I’d better be good!

“Is there anything else?” the priest seated on the other side of the translucent divider would ask.

“No, Father.”

“For your penance, say five Hail Mary’s, and five Our Fathers.”

“Yes, Father.”

Then, the ordained holy many would pray over me to absolve me of my (made up) sins.

The little door would slide closed. I’d get up off my knees, open the heavy velvet curtain and walk up to the altar railing, kneel down again, bless myself and recite my amends.

“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou among women and blessed is the fruit of Thy Womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

“Hail Mary…”

After completing my assignment, I’d feel cleansed and would hot-tail it out of church into the bright sunlight. I’d breathe a sigh of relief knowing that I had survived that ordeal… until the next time.

What I learned from that early religious experience was that I had been instructed to feel guilt, to search my mind for artifacts of guilt, sometimes for things that I hadn’t done. Even if I had not sinned I felt compelled to make something up so that I could feel the requisite guilt. I had to tell some mysterious, authoritative man sitting in a little box about it, and then wait for him to tell me that I was OK.

With all the mandates, rules and guidelines for obedience, I carried the feeling within me of living in that dark little box with the specter of guilt choking me for most of my life. Orthodoxy can do that to innocent minds. “Slam!” The door would shut closed and I’d find myself in the dark, smelling the incense of damnation.

There Must Be Another Way!

YES! There is! Why isn’t it making headlines, I ask myself? How come people haven’t heard about it? Why are we suffering when there’s no need to?

I find out that guilt doesn’t have to be a package-deal with one’s beliefs? But we have to be ready to completely change the way we perceive ourselves, others and the world. Not to mention Heaven. And yes, hell, yet another name for guilt and fear.

The other way isn’t just one way. There are many paths and one must choose that which calls to them that resonates with their spirit.

My better way is A Course in Miracles. The Course first caught my attention in 1996 when I picked up my sister’s ACIM book. The Introduction hooked me, and I quote it here verbatim from the Combined Volume, Second Edition, published by the Foundation for Inner Peace:

“This is a course in Miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

“This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.” (T-in.1-2)

You want to know what first caught my eye in this beautiful introduction? The statement, “The opposite of love is fear.” That is pretty darn powerful. Had I been asked, “What is the opposite of love?” prior to reading that line I would have answered: “Hate. Guilt!” But, as I came to learn, hate and guilt are based on fear. So is envy, spite, jealousy, judgment, animus, ridicule, bullying, discrimination, anger, resentment, abuse, repugnance, attack, repulsion, abandonment, enmity, hatred, hostility, loathing, antagonism, rancor, revenge, shame, disgust, aversion, animosity, grievance, revulsion, scorn, war. And yet the list is not complete. But how easily these synonyms came to mind. My challenge back then? Would words and actions, which compliment LOVE burst forth as easily?

I knew that I had found my path away from fear and toward a remembrance of Divine Love. But it would take me another sixteen years until my Course teacher and I would find each other. It was then that I was invited to recognize the presence of my Inner Guide.

No more little dark boxes with heavy curtains separating me from the Divine.

No more a need for another person to tell me that I am pure, holy, and innocent.

No more living in fear and guilt.

I Am as I Am, the embodiment of my Source.

I Am as I Am, the expression of my Creator’s Love.

I Am as I Am, a channel of God’s Peace.

And, so it is.  Amen.

Rev. Barbara Adams, O.M.C., MS Ed, is a Pathways of Light minister living in Webster, New York. Email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) 585-633-8769 Web: http://www.peaceandharmonyministry.org

© 2021, 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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Thanksgiving Declaration

by Rev. Maria Kingsley, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

I Am the Change
which I’ve been looking for.

I Am the Healing
which I’ve been asking for.

I Am the Abundance
which I’ve prayed for.

I Am the Love
I’ve been calling for.

I Am the Ease
with which I had hoped
to walk through life.

I Am the Friend
I’ve been wishing for.

I Am the Kindness
I’ve expected to see.

I Am the Beauty
I’ve tried to express.

I Am the Safety
I’ve wanted always.

I Am All that and more,

When I allow all things
to be as they are.

When I step back and
let me be led.

When I choose love
instead of fear.

When I forgive
and see only innocence.

My Greatness is of my True Self

My Glory is
untouchable and eternal.

My Joy is
undisguised and blissful.

My Divine Nature
offers total Peace.

I thank you, Divine Spirit,
for all your gifts to me.

For my eternal Presence
in Your Heart,

For sharing all Your Power,
And Walking with me
wherever I choose to go.

Your Love protects and guides me.

All I need to do is follow
Your bright Light.

And so I will. And so I do.
And so It is. Amen

Rev. Maria Kingsley, O.M.C., is a Pathways of Light minister in Tucson, AZ. Email:
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

© 2021, 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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