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Pause to Encourage

by Mary Gerard Lenihan

The Pause Practice holds possibilities! One possibility in the Pause is encouragement. We never know just how lifted up we can be until we lift up someone else. Who doesn’t need encouragement? Who cannot benefit from being encouraging?

To “encourage” is to literally instill courage in another. A student was feeling disheartened the other day because her goals appeared to have fallen apart in her hands. She was given the space to simply be with her experience, to pause. In the pause she shared that new possibilities were showing up in her mind; life wasn’t over after all.

Encouragement creates an environment of connection. We realize that we are all in this together. What I like about practicing Pause to encourage, is that I don’t have to figure out ahead of time how I am going to encourage someone. Rather, I find myself simply raising someone’s spirits in some way that is spontaneous and enjoyable… all in moment. And don’t you love when out of the blue someone raises your spirits in an unexpected way? This happens at Job Corps all the time. The other day I walked into a Pause class and one of students had a beautiful smile on her face — what a lift!

Pause to encourage yourself too. Discouragement is like forgetting the light is on — encouragement can always be found in your Inspired Mind — where the light is. Imagine walking into a light-filled room with your eyes closed, feeling around your closet and looking for your white shirt. Hmm. Instead of rumbling around in the dark closet, falling into the closet, knocking things over, getting hit on the head by junk falling off the top shelf, tripping over the stuff at your feet, busting your toe on the edge of the chair as you walk out with what you are guessing is your white shirt — only to find that you grabbed your plaid pajama top! Clear up the confusion . . . Pause. Choose to use the light that is fully at your disposal in your Inspired Mind! Flip the switch ON. How? Pause, and Let your Inspired Mind step forward.

One thing is sure — every time I am at the St. Louis Job Corps campus, I see someone encouraging another. And in this, I pause.

Pause to encourage another. Pause to encourage yourself. Otherwise:

Something gets left undone that needs to be done. Someone is left unloved who needs to be loved.

Learn about the practice of Pause. Visit:  PauseForInspiration.org. Mary Lenihan is the Co-Founder of Pause For Inspiration, a nonprofit public charity.

Mary Gerard Lenihan, is from St. Louis, MO. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Website: http://www.pauseforinspiration.org    Find the 4 Decisions pocket-sized cards: Kids Can Pause, Parents Can Pause, Teachers Can Pause. Also a new book, “Kids can Pause for Help …and Parents too!  Get to Know Your Helpful Self”

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Freeing the Children

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

Like so many of you, I was shocked and deeply saddened to see little children torn out of their mother’s and/or father’s arms and put into cages. “What have we become?” I thought. ”How low can we go? When is enough, enough?”

I was haunted by my thoughts about these children. I kept imagining how alone and afraid they must feel. I expected to see thousands of people in the streets protesting this action, but to my great surprise, that didn’t happen. I went to a vigil to bring attention to what to me was an atrocity. The vigil was sponsored by a large, local church and less than a hundred people showed up. Again, I was shocked and dismayed. Have we so insulated ourselves that even this doesn’t get through?

I felt that I had to take my sadness into meditation, a place where I often go to ask Mother Shekhina (a.k.a. Holy Spirit) for an answer to something I just can’t wrap my mind around. I hope the answer I got will help those of you who are also struggling to understand this seemingly inhumane and un-American turn of events.

Barbara,

“The immigrants at the border are an illusion. Unfortunately, it is an illusion that many share and so it seems real.

In the illusion, the children being taken away from their parents and put into cages are the symbol of our own abandonment and helplessness when we were children. For many of us, they are a symbol of being imprisoned in a childhood where there was neglect, lack, and little to no love. Most importantly, they are a symbol of our separation from God and all that is holy, pure, and innocent. It strikes a chord so deep in our own wounding that we cannot (and should not) turn away, but we want to turn away because it is so very painful.

Look on this as an opportunity to heal your own childhood wounds, whatever they may be. Let the pain come up and surround it with love. Tell that child within over and over: “I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you” (The Ho’Oponopono prayer). By doing this, you are giving the child a voice and thanking it for allowing you to receive healing. You are asking it to forgive you for ignoring it, and you are loving it with all your heart and soul (literally). When you heal this child, you heal the world.

Now, from this place of love, send love to all children and do whatever you may be guided to do in the world with love, not with attack or anger. Love is the balm that heals all wounds no matter how deep. No one needs to tell you what love is because you know in your heart what it is. Books, songs, poems, can but point the way. You know and you have always known. So go forth in and with love. That is the answer. Love will always and forever be the victor.”

In my book: Finding Your Self in the Mirror: Awakening Through Mirror Affirmations for the 365 Lessons of A Course in Miracles, I give affirmations and a text quote for each of the lessons of the Course. Following that model, I would like to end this article with the affirmations and text quote that are in my book for ACIM Lesson 46: God is the Love in which I forgive. I hope by using these affirmations you will strengthen your own healing and the healing of all God’s children:

1.  I am willing to release my illusions of guilt and blame.

2.  I am willing to see things differently.

3.  I see with the light of God.

4.  With the Love of God, I forgive my brother.

5.  With the Love of God, I forgive myself.

6.  With the Love of God, I love myself.

7.  God is the Love in which I am blessed.

“Perhaps you do not see the need for you to give this little offering. Look closer, then, at what it is. And, very simply, see in it the whole exchange of separation for salvation.” (T-21.II.6:1-3)

Rev. Barbara Goodman Siegel O.M.C., is author of “Finding Your Self in the Mirror: Awakening Through Mirror Affirmations for the 365 Lessons of A Course in Miracles.” She also is a Pathways of Light minister living in St. Louis, Missouri. Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  Web: Barbaragoodmansiegel.com

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Way Back to God Is to Practice Forgiveness

by Rev. Savina Cavallo, O.M.C.

Forgiveness is the central idea and message of A Course in Miracles. I have been reading the book, practicing its principles for 12 years now. Forgiveness as the Course teaches it has been a challenge for me to understand and apply.

Forgiveness is defined as follows: “Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin.” (W-pII.1.1:1-3)

And sin is defined as a false idea about God’s creation.

In order for me to really understand its meaning, I had to write down this definition and read it repeatedly, and really take it in. I asked Spirit to help me practice this, for it’s completely different to what I’ve always believed forgiveness to be.

Forgiveness was about me being a victim of someone or something. It was the belief that someone had done something bad to me, and by forgiving, I was pardoning them. But this still made them guilty and what they did real. And me their victim.

According to the Course, only illusions (what is not truth) need to be forgiven. To make it simple, this world is not real, it is an illusion made up and experienced because I believe (at a subconscious level) that I am separate from my Creator. Most of what I perceive is really coming from my own mind, my beliefs and what I hold as true. 

When I began to really apply this new way of seeing the world, as a dream, and seeing myself and others as innocent (over and over….it’s a practice), the sense of being a victim and making others bad started to loosen. I feel more compassion and am not as swift to judge anymore as I used to.

To be honest, I still read the definition of forgiveness to remind me of its true meaning because I forget and fall back to thinking someone is guilty of what I believe they have done to me. And, since my desire and only real goal is to return to God, and forgiveness is the way my mind returns Home, I’m all in with this!

Rev. Savina Cavallo is a Pathways of Light minister living in Sunrise, Florida.
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  Website: http://www.savinacavallo.com

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Our Powerful Thoughts

by Rev. Maria Kingsley, O.M.C.

It is curious that we do not understand that we have amazing abilities that have come with this physical existence and are always available.

In the Urtext of the Course (T-6 A 3) Jesus tells us:

“You have been chosen to teach the Atonement precisely BECAUSE you have been extreme examples of allegiance to your thought system, and therefore have developed the capacity for allegiance. It has indeed been misplaced … You cannot doubt the strength of your devotion when you consider how faithfully you observed it.”

We are indeed extremely faithful to our way of thinking. We seem to be unable, at times, to see it in any different way. Yet, we want to look at how we got there so we can follow a better model.

My own experience has brought me to tears at times when I tried to change how I responded to situations and people. I did not know how to change my extreme resistance to be on time, for example, to get going, to move forward. And every time I failed to change it, I would fall into depression and severe judgment of myself for the failure. There was something deep within me that I had given power over my responses and yet I could not get to it and felt powerless to change it.

Over time I learned that my ‘allegiance’ was not to myself but to fear, and the fear was directly related to the thought of death. I assumed that my Father would kill me, or any equivalent thereof, if I did not somehow comply with His expectations. This generalized to all people and the world, and so, later on in life, I could not remember that I made that decision or conclusion, but followed that same impulse. I tried to please other people and felt that that was what was expected of me. The power of my thoughts were so great, pleasing the ego and the world, that I could not find my way out of that thought system.

The funny thing was that I did not recognize that I was fighting for my life because the ego somehow made me feel safe when I followed my fear. I could not see how I had somehow encouraged that thought to have power over me. It took me years to see this clearly. I continued to think it was my weakness, my fault, or I had to do something different, learn more, find out more of what I should do.

Our thoughts are indeed very powerful, and we usually cannot remember what made us decide that they are actually the truth. We have a powerful allegiance to what we made true in the past, usually as children with our wonderful imagination, but we have forgotten what we made up or pretended the truth to be.

In my case, I associated all the expectations of my Father to mean that I had to try to appease Him, or else I would be ‘toast’ (the ego is never specific as to what may actually happen, it’s just fear). Something bad was going to happen even though it never really did happen. It seemed to happen to my sisters and others around me, but somehow I was spared, or so I thought. I thought my responses to what seemed to be a dangerous environment (after WWII in Germany) were working: I was hiding out, I did not want to be noticed, I tried to be good and nice, I tried to stay within certain limits etc. and yet all of this kept me as a prisoner and chained to my thought system. I was adamant that this kept me safe, and I felt safe but not free. I could choose the ego thought system, but if I tried to get out of that, I had no power at all.

Lesson 333 tells us this about conflicting thoughts:

“Conflict must be resolved. It cannot be evaded, set aside, denied, disguised, seen somewhere else, called by another name, or hidden by deceit of any kind, if it would be escaped. It must be seen exactly as it is, where it is thought to be, in the reality which has been given it, and with the purpose that the mind accorded it. For only then are its defenses lifted, and the truth can shine upon it as it disappears.”

And so I had to see that I have evaded the issue by thinking I can control my life. I’ve denied that there is something wrong with my approach. I’ve disguised the real issue of death and never really looked at what I was afraid of. I’ve seen it all as my Father’s problem who is asking too much of me. I called it my safety when it was my prison, and I never escaped the fear.

I have given great power to the ego. I once saw this demonstrated in a vision of the ego being fed so much that it became this gigantic big fat worm 100 feet long, not moving much but feeding on my fear. Yet, back then, I did not know how to stop feeding this huge slug. I thought fear would keep me safe. I thought my hiding and pretending would keep death away, unpleasantness away, conflict avoided, but that never worked.

I gave the ego power to protect me. I didn’t know what I was doing, because I did what I thought my mother did (using fear and feeling helpless) when she protected herself from my father. But it didn’t work.

It never did work — until I realized and finally knew that I’ve been avoiding death or judgment (same thing to me).  I’ve been afraid of being killed, and yet, here I am, living. I will live even beyond death. There is no death, and I am always safe, even if I die and the body has served its purpose. Wow, what took me so long?!

I know this insight, finally, was the result of much honesty with myself, my feelings, and the teachings of the Course. I picked up A Course in Miracles originally because I liked the thought that I was innocent. Yes, I am innocent, but at first, the ego interpreted that to be another part of me. There was still that little me who I knew had done stupid, silly, bad things and so I could not reconcile my true innocence with my self. Slowly, I had to find the connection between my little self and my True Self, and feel that Oneness.

And so I forgive myself for being a foolish little girl, and fearing something to be Who I truly am. I have asked the ego to do a task for me that it cannot do and will never do. Instead, I ask the Holy Spirit, my True Self, to take care of me, and I can trust that perfectly. Death or ‘being killed’ is not something to fear. Discomfort, uncertainty, pain, worry and doubt are all tools of the ego not to be trusted.

The allegiance I choose now is to Love. Love is Life itself, and there is nothing to fear. I need be neither careful nor careless of my thoughts because I ask and listen to Guidance. I am so grateful to know that, and so I continue to move forward into more freedom and more certainty and more joyful Loving and seeing only Life all around me.

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

© 2019, 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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