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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VI. The Treasure of God, Paragraph 2. 9-16-14

VI. The Treasure of God
2 The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true. I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours to make. If it were, you would have destroyed yourself. Yet God did not will the destruction of His creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from yourself but from your illusion of yourself. He has saved you for yourself.

Clearly, I can accept what I experience with the body’s senses as true, or I can accept that Jesus is right and this is an illusion. I can accept that I am spirit, that I am the Son of God and all that implies, or I can accept the ego version of myself as the real me. It is up to me. Those are the only two choices I have and the one I choose will not change anything God created, but it will determine my experience.

How do I stop beholding the world? That seems impossible at first, but this is what I understand about it now. I behold the world when I see guilt, when I am afraid, when I feel confused, alone or unhappy. I see the world when I look with the body’s eyes and believe what I see is the truth. I stop seeing the world as I realize my error and ask that my mind be healed. Then what I “see” will be different.

The circumstances may or may not change, but how I see them will change. For instance, I used to think that when my grown children didn’t call me or come to see me it was because they didn’t love me. I thought they judged me for not being a very good mother, and that they held my mistakes against me. I would feel sad and lonely and hopeless because I couldn’t imagine how to fix this. Every problem they had seemed to be my fault because I had not done a better job raising them. I constantly looked for reassurance from them that I was loved and forgiven by them.

Slowly, over time, my mind was healed and I began to see things differently. When they fail to call or come see me, I assume they are busy living their lives and that makes me happy. I have forgiven myself and so I don’t see their actions as a condemnation. I don’t feel guilty so I don’t perceive their actions as proof of my guilt. Now when I notice I miss them, I call them or invite them over. If they are busy then I do something else. It is the same circumstance, but my experience of it is completely different.

Before when I believed in my guilt I saw the world the ego made, and it was painful. Now that more guilt has been removed from my mind, I see the love that was there all the time. I see more of the real world than I did before. I guess you could say that the veil is thinner now. I see the ego world but I also see through it to the truth. What if they really did hold my mistakes against me and resented me? I could still see through their behavior to the truth.

When someone is living an ego belief in blame and guilt they are suffering. They are suffering because they are confused and cannot see that they are loved. If my kids blamed me and thought I was the cause of their unhappiness I could see it as if they were punishing me, or I could see it as the call for love it is. I could also remember that this is all just a story and that when the soul sheds the body, it sheds the story as well. Behind the story are beautiful souls. We are not really against each other, but for each other. We are living the life that will help us all wake up and that is all that is happening here.

The perception that leaves me feeling bereft of love and guilty for my mistakes is beholding the world. The perception that leaves me feeling grateful and compassionate is beholding the truth. When I behold the world, I lose sight of God. When I believe in the world of the ego, I believe that God is like the ego and so I no longer know God. But God didn’t change and He didn’t go anywhere. As my mind heals and I see the real world more clearly, I also draw closer to God.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VI. The Treasure of God, Paragraph 1. 9-15-14

VI. The Treasure of God
1 We are the joint will of the Sonship, whose Wholeness is for all. We begin the journey back by setting out together, and gather in our brothers as we continue together. Every gain in our strength is offered for all, so they too can lay aside their weakness and add their strength to us. God’s welcome waits for us all, and He will welcome us as I am welcoming you. Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer.

We are in this together. We are joining with Jesus and we are waking up. As we go along, we gather more and more of us. We do this through our words, our writing, and our actions. It happens even without the words and actions; it happens as we heal our mind. My mind is healed and so the mind is healed and every part of the mind experiences the healing in some way.

We cannot always see this in the world, but it is happening. I touch people I have never even met and probably never will. I affect the lives of people I see every day. It might seem like a small thing to me, a smile or kind word, but someone is changed because of it. Then there are the ones who are touching greater numbers of people, the celebrities like Oprah and Jim Carey who influence thousands of people. Social media has become an important platform for this gathering, spreading the word faster and farther than ever could have happened before.

Every contribution, small and large adds strength to all of us. We are truly in this together in every sense of the word. We are waking up and in the process we are helping others to wake up until finally we are awakened as one. This is no small thing. In fact, it is the only thing that matters.

I look like I am going to work, selling chemicals, visiting friends, helping people, writing, trying to lose weight, shopping. I have a story about all of this, but all the while I use these things, these activities, as a way to wake us all up. Even when I get so involved in them that I start to think they are goals within themselves, I pull my mind back to what matters.

I start to think my job is the way I provide for myself and that I have to defend it against others who would take it from me. Then I laugh because I remember that my job is just a back-drop for my real goal. I ask the Holy Spirit to help me remember the truth, to remember my true purpose.

I try to lose weight and I notice how others are doing it and think about trying this pill or that eating plan. Then I come back to my senses. The body and its size and shape are the effect not the cause. The cause is a belief in my mind that is being projected as a body. I ask the Holy Spirit for help in seeing this situation as it truly exists. I ask Him what He wants me to learn from this situation.

I think I want to do something and then I remember that I don’t want to make any decisions on my own. I ask for guidance and the mind is healed of an old belief. All those who are ready to accept that healing are healed with me. It is in little ways like this the mind is healed. It is like a tiny earthquake in the mind, a little tremor that passes through and everyone feels it and is affected by it in some way. Did I ever think there was me and then there was you? Did I see someone else and really believe they were someone else?

The world seems to be filled with interesting and sometimes fun distractions. It sometimes seems the world is a very serious place that needs my constant attention. But the world is nothing. I won’t get confused about that again. Nothing about the world is important other than how I can use it to show me what yet needs to be healed in the mind so that I can choose the healing.

I will continue to do the things that I must do. I will go to work, but I will use work to help us wake up. I will take care of the body, but I will use the body to help us wake up. Jesus has welcomed us to this journey and God welcomes us home. I will not tarry for anything in the world.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: V.The Undivided Will of the Sonship, Paragraph 6. 9-12-14

V. The Undivided Will of the Sonship P 6
6 The ego’s way is not mine, but it is also not yours. The Holy Spirit has one direction for all minds, and the one He taught me is yours. Let us not lose sight of His direction through illusions, for only illusions of another direction can obscure the one for which God’s Voice speaks in all of us. Never accord the ego the power to interfere with the journey. It has none, because the journey is the way to what is true. Leave all illusions behind, and reach beyond all attempts of the ego to hold you back. I go before you because I am beyond the ego. Reach, therefore, for my hand because you want to transcend the ego. My strength will never be wanting, and if you choose to share it you will do so. I give it willingly and gladly, because I need you as much as you need me.

Jesus is so certain of me that when I think of it I cry. I feel certain of me, too, because I am willing to share his certainty. Jesus knows because he has transcended the ego and so has Knowledge now. I trust him and he trusts me so I trust me as well. I trust myself even when I am confused. I trust me even when I slip back into ego thinking. I trust me even when I feel helpless and hopeless. Because I trust myself, I always rise from the ego pit into the light and I do so quickly.

I do reach for your hand, Jesus, and I do this as often as I need to. You are my elder brother and my partner, and my aide as I do this. I look to you as the model I would follow, your teachings as the standard I would achieve in my life. I will transcend the ego because you did. I will transcend it because that is my purpose as it was yours and is everyone’s. I dedicate this day toward that goal.

Thank you for showing me the way, and for being my ever present helper, and for lending me your strength. I cannot express my gratitude because I just don’t have the words.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: V.The Undivided Will of the Sonship, Paragraph 5. 9-11-14

V. The Undivided Will of the Sonship P 5
5 Would you know the Will of God for you? Ask it of me who knows it for you and you will find it. I will deny you nothing, as God denies me nothing. Ours is simply the journey back to God Who is our home. Whenever fear intrudes anywhere along the road to peace, it is because the ego has attempted to join the journey with us and cannot do so. Sensing defeat and angered by it, the ego regards itself as rejected and becomes retaliative. You are invulnerable to its retaliation because I am with you. On this journey you have chosen me as your companion instead of the ego. Do not attempt to hold on to both, or you will try to go in different directions, and will lose the way.

I am very aware of ego retaliation. I used to think that when I would slip back into ego it meant that I was weak and vulnerable and that my best efforts came to naught. I believed this because that’s what the thoughts in my mind were saying to me. When that happened I felt like a failure and that I couldn’t do this. That left me in an impossible place since I couldn’t go back to complete ignorance and yet couldn’t go forward. It was hard because I had not yet detached from my ego identity enough to realize that I am not that defeatist voice I was listening to.

It’s different now even though I still notice the ego thoughts in my mind and sometimes get hooked by them. When I experience a significant shift in my thinking, I especially get bombarded by ego thoughts. This is the ego part of the mind trying to pull me back into the story. It tries anything and everything to get me interested. It says others are guilty, I’m guilty, I’m never going to succeed, I’m a failure, I’m overworked and put upon.

I still hear all that nonsense and sometimes listen and believe for a little while, but I never fall for it like I did before. Yesterday the ego tried again and I felt bad about myself for a few minutes, then turned away from it. I cannot yet avoid the ego voice completely, but I can choose the voice I would believe. I made a deliberate choice to remember the truth. I gave the ego thoughts to Holy Spirit and asked that they be removed from my mind. Each time I do this, I become more certain of my true identity and the ego hold on the mind loosens some more.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8, V. The Undivided Will of the Sonship, P 4. 9-10-14

V. The Undivided Will of the Sonship P
4 When you unite with me you are uniting without the ego, because I have renounced the ego in myself and therefore cannot unite with yours. Our union is therefore the way to renounce the ego in you. The truth in both of us is beyond the ego. Our success in transcending the ego is guaranteed by God, and I share this confidence for both of us and all of us. I bring God’s peace back to all His children because I received it of Him for us all. Nothing can prevail against our united wills because nothing can prevail against God’s.

In this section, Jesus is really making it clear that together we will transcend the ego. It is very simple, really. Jesus transcended the ego and now helps us to do what he has already done. He has total confidence in us because he knows we will succeed as he did. I used to doubt myself, but Jesus held steadfast in his certainty and so he knew for me what I doubted. Now I have no doubt whatsoever that I will return my mind to God because I have joined my will with his and nothing can prevail against us because nothing can prevail against God.

While I still become distracted and still get hooked by ego sometimes, I never lose sight of the goal. I might become angry with someone, but I never want to stay angry. I never argue for my anger. I might make the other one guilty in my mind, but I change my mind. Even while I am temporarily angry, I am asking that the belief my brother is guilty be removed from my mind. This is how it is for me now. I look forward to the day the desire to blame cannot even find a foothold in my mind, no matter how tenuous.

I don’t doubt that day will come because I don’t doubt God. I don’t doubt the Holy Spirit. And I don’t doubt Jesus’ plan of Atonement. I don’t even doubt myself anymore. Jesus transcended the ego and through joining my will with his, he will transcend it again through me. And in perfect timing he will do so through each of us until, as one, we will return to our Father.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: V.The Undivided Will of the Sonship, Paragraph 3. 9-9-14

V. The Undivided Will of the Sonship P 3
3 God’s Oneness and ours are not separate, because His Oneness encompasses ours. To join with me is to restore His power to you because we are sharing it. I offer you only the recognition of His power in you, but in that lies all truth. As we unite, we unite with Him. Glory be to the union of God and His holy Sons! All glory lies in Them because They are united. The miracles we do bear witness to the Will of the Father for His Son, and to our joy in uniting with His Will for us.

A whimsical story of awakening.

I smiled as I read this. I had a vision of a toy I had as a child. It was a colorfully painted egg nested in another egg, which was nested in a third egg. This is how I envision us right now. We are in the third egg. We imagine we are all alone in the egg and alone within the egg. We think that all that exists is in this egg.

There is a Voice, though, that whispers to us of something greater, something glorious. This Voice is waking us up to a different reality, one in which we are not separate. As we start to wake up, the shell of the egg becomes thinner to us and we understand there is something outside the egg and want to join with that. We are calling the second egg, Jesus.

Like newborn chicks everywhere, we are pecking away at the shell that seems to keep us separate from Jesus. We do this as we question the belief that we are separate. We do it every time we doubt the ego beliefs in our mind and every time we use the stories of our lives to cast doubt on our separateness.

As we start to feel that we are joined with all the others within this egg, the shell begins to crack and more light pours in and more of us are now pecking away at the shell. Soon we begin to realize that we are one with Jesus as well and the shell of our separate existence from each other and from Jesus falls away.

From this more enlightened place, we realize there was not actually anything keeping us apart and keeping the light out except for our desire to be separate. It was all in our mind and with the help of our brother, Jesus (who already knew this) we open our hearts to the truth without fear and with total acceptance. As the final shell dissolves, we see that we are united, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: V.The Undivided Will of the Sonship, Paragraph 2. 9-8-14

V. The Undivided Will of the Sonship P 2
2 The undivided will of the Sonship is the perfect creator, being wholly in the likeness of God, Whose Will it is. You cannot be exempt from it if you are to understand what it is and what you are. By the belief that your will is separate from mine, you are exempting yourself from the Will of God which is yourself. Yet to heal is still to make whole. Therefore, to heal is to unite with those who are like you, because perceiving this likeness is to recognize the Father. If your perfection is in Him and only in Him, how can you know it without recognizing Him? The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself. There is no separation of God and His creation. You will realize this when you understand that there is no separation between your will and mine. Let the Love of God shine upon you by your acceptance of me. My reality is yours and His. By joining your mind with mine you are signifying your awareness that the Will of God is One.

Jesus is asking me to understand how important it is that I recognize that there is no separation between his will and mine. I think his wording here is very important. He did not ask me to accept his will or to change my will. He simply pointed out that our will is the same and that it is necessary that I accept this.

The reason I must accept something that is already fact is that I have made up a will to take the place of my true will. This is my ego will, my separate will. It is not truly my will, but it is the will I am pretending is true. To have an experience of separation I had to will it and this is the will I am using now as if it were the truth.

Jesus is actually reminding me that I have a true will and that I want this will, and he is encouraging me to accept it now. He explains that I need to accept my true will because it is only through doing so that I can return to creation and remember God. Here is how my mind interprets this paragraph.

Jesus: Honey, you are dreaming of being separate and being a body that is not joined with anything. You are dreaming of having emotions and of being guilty and afraid and in danger. You have enjoyed your dream and sometimes scared yourself with your dream, but Life is waiting for you. There is so much more to experience, so much more to be. Wake up now and join with me. This is what you yearn for now. You are tired of your stories and you are tired of pretending to be separate. But more than anything you want to recognize God as you have before, to be one in Him again.

Me: I don’t know how to know God and I can’t imagine how to be one in Him. I know you have said that I already am and always have been but I can’t remember that, and I don’t know how you think I can go from this experience to God.

Jesus: You feel very far from God right now. I understand that. You cannot bring yourself to access the memory of your oneness with Him. The idea of joining your will with God’s Will vacillates between disbelief and fear. But that’s ok. You know me now and you know my love for you and you feel safe with me, and so you can accept that our will is joined. In fact, you really want to do that and have been opening yourself to that for awhile now. It is through this step, this acceptance of our joint will, that you will be able to take the next step.

Me: Ok, so you are saying that I am not really living a life right now, but am dreaming of something different in which I am alone and not connected to everything. And you say that this dream isn’t anything like my real life, and that I can have my real life back just by wanting it. You already did it and you know the way Home so all I have to do to return Home is to accept that you and I share the will to return to God. I just have to accept that your will and my will are the same. This is a step I can take and want to take.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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