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Study of Text, C 14: I. The Conditions of Learning, P 3. 2-3-17

I. The Conditions of Learning, P 3

3 Seeing is always outward. Were your thoughts wholly of you, the thought system you made would be forever dark. The thoughts the mind of God’s Son projects or extends have all the power that he gives to them. The thoughts he shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made are his beliefs. And it is these, and not the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love. They will not be taken from him. But they can be given up by him, for the Source of their undoing is in him. There is nothing in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane and leads to nothing. Yet in him who made this insane logic there is One Who knows it leads to nothing, for He knows everything.

Journal
Jesus is explaining to us that the world we made does have its own logic but it is logic that leads us nowhere. He also helps us to understand that we believe in what we made and we are choosing to defend it. If that were all we had to go on, then what we made would remain true to us and we would be stuck with it forever. But because we have the Truth in our mind, the Holy Spirit Who knows everything, we have a way out of our self made world.

I was talking to someone this morning who is a Republican and a staunch supporter of Trump. He explained that he does not agree with everything Donald Trump does, but he had to vote for him. His religious beliefs do not allow him to vote for anyone who would promote abortion or same sex marriage. I could have pointed out some things that I suspect this person is concerned about now that the election is over and action is being taken.

I could let his fears give me this little opening and maybe convince him to see things my way. As I noticed these thoughts in my mind, I mentally stepped back. Even as we spoke, I opened my mind to Love. It was a bright light in my mind that exposed the fear there. Fear wants company. It wants others to join it. It wants to be right. It wants to win.

Pausing for that moment gave me the chance to choose love rather than fear. I let him talk. When his fear started to express itself, I helped him to see that his only job is to accept the Atonement for himself. Not in those words exactly, but in a way that he could understand. I reminded him that bodies can die but he cannot because he is not a body, he is spirit. Though we have very different religious views, this was something he could understand and accept.

The situation this morning is an example of what Jesus is telling us. The ego mind wants divisiveness. It wants fear and guilt, and it wants to be right. I saw that in my mind and I rejected it. I asked, instead, for another way to see, and the Truth in my mind came forward at my request. In that moment I was a miracle worker.

Principles of Miracles, P 26
26 Miracles represent freedom from fear. “Atoning” means “undoing.” The undoing of fear is an essential part of the atonement value of miracles.

I could have stayed with the fear and my friend and I could have battled to see who could find the most fearful thoughts and for whose perception was “right.” But by the grace of God, I had a moment of sanity and chose to Atone and so for that moment at least, I freed us both from fear.

It was also that indirect proof that Jesus is telling us about. I proved that I was blessed by blessing this brother of mine with love rather than fear. I brought us both to a place of peace and the peace of God is the only goal we need have.

The peace of God is everything I want. The peace of God is 
my one goal; the aim of all my living here, the end I seek, 
my purpose and my function and my life, while I abide 
where I am not at home. Lesson 205

And that peace is to be found within, not without. Within is where God placed our certain way home, right next to the dream we scripted, right next to where It was needed. As it says in this paragraph, God will not take our dream from us, but we will choose to give it up. This morning I made that choice, and may I continue to do so from now on. Thank you, God, for placing the Source of undoing in my mind.

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Study of Text, C 14: I. The Conditions of Learning, P 2. 2-2-17

I. The Conditions of Learning, P 2

2 Indirect proof of truth is needed in a world made of denial and without direction. You will perceive the need for this if you realize that to deny is the decision not to know. The logic of the world must therefore lead to nothing, for its goal is nothing. If you decide to have and give and be nothing except a dream, you must direct your thoughts unto oblivion. And if you have and give and are everything, and all this has been denied, your thought system is closed off and wholly separated from the truth. This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream is sacred to you. That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream.

Journal

This paragraph made me cry, first for the insanity of it, then that my Creator placed the Holy Spirit in me where I placed the dream. My way out is assured. We made the world we see and we hold it dear regardless of the pain and suffering that is its effect. We made it in such a way that we could believe in it and so it seems very real to us.

We made it from our thoughts and it is in allowing those thoughts to be changed that we will extricate ourselves from the dream as we are ready. But because of the power of our thoughts, this dream is not just precious to us, it is logical and seems to make sense and so even as we begin to awaken from it, it is very confusing.

The ego mind argues against awakening using its insane logic to keep us engaged in the stories. Holy Spirit is helping us to see that logical or not, it leads to nothing. At first when I began to study A Course in Miracles, I believed what I was reading, but I did not practice it all the time. When I did practice it, I did so only partially. There would be circumstances that I held apart from my practice.

For instance, I held some grievances that I justified and would not let go. I would say that it was impossible, that I was trying and couldn’t, but that is never true. If we keep an idea it is because we want that idea. We believe it holds some value for us and we cannot afford to let it go. Somewhere along the line as I became more committed to this path, I let go of the idea that I couldn’t and simply accepted I didn’t want to. Then I was ready to want the change. I have never released a grievance that I regretted losing.

It took me a long time to fully accept what Jesus is telling us here. This world and the thoughts that made it are completely insane. There is no part of it that is wholly sane. Every ego thought in my mind is affected by this confused and hurtful perception. Now that I understand this, I don’t have any thoughts I am not willing to question.

I still get confused at times because instead of being the observer and staying detached, I get caught up in the story itself. But even in my confusion I know what I want. I want the peace of God and having that one invariable goal is like having an anchor that keeps me from drifting too far afield. I always, sooner or later, come back to my only goal. I no longer question the insanity of the world we made, nor do I pretend I have no control. This is making a huge difference.

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Study of Text, C 14: I. The Conditions of Learning, P 1. 1-30-17

I. The Conditions of Learning, P 1

1 If you are blessed and do not know it, you need to learn it must be so. The knowledge is not taught, but its conditions must be acquired for it is they that have been thrown away. You can learn to bless, and cannot give what you have not. If, then, you offer blessing, it must have come first to yourself. And you must also have accepted it as yours, for how else could you give it away? That is why miracles offer you the testimony that you are blessed. If what you offer is complete forgiveness you must have let guilt go, accepting the Atonement for yourself and learning you are guiltless. How could you learn what has been done for you, unknown to you, unless you do what you would have to do if it had been done for you?

Journal
An example of this is my relationship with my ex-husband. We had a very contentious marriage and the break-up was even worse in some ways. I spent a long time looking at each unforgiven thought about him and forgiving it as quickly and as completely as I could. Eventually, I had forgiven him, myself, and the situation. I knew it was forgiven when I offered him a miracle.

We still worked for the same company, and sometimes found ourselves, of necessity, working together. This time we were at an awards banquet and for a few minutes everyone else from the company had left the table to do other things. Out of nowhere I heard myself telling him that I was sorry for my part in our problems.

For so many years I had not considered me to be a problem. He seemed so obviously guilty, you see. ~smile~ It wasn’t until I said those words that I knew they were true. The miracle for him was in hearing them said. I saw his antagonism, whatever was left of it, simply melt away. It happened right there before my eyes. I knew that I must have accepted the Atonement for my grievances because I saw myself sharing that blessing with him. How could I have shared it if I had not received it?

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Study of Text, C 14: Teaching For Peace, Introduction. 1-25-17

Chapter 14: TEACHING FOR TRUTH
Introduction
1 Yes, you are blessed indeed. Yet in this world you do not know it. But you have the means for learning it and seeing it quite clearly. The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily and as well as does the ego, except that His conclusions are not insane. They take a direction exactly opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego’s logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. And having seen them, we have realized that they cannot be seen except in illusions, for there alone their seeming clearness seems to be clearly seen. Let us now turn away from them, and follow the simple logic by which the Holy Spirit teaches the simple conclusions that speak for truth, and only truth.

Journal
I laugh every time I read this sentence. “The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily and as well as does the ego, except that His conclusions are not insane.” Did he mean it to be kind of funny? Anyway, Jesus talks about the ego’s insanity often. It is insane thinking because it is opposite to reality. The definition for insane is, “lacking reasonable thought,” or “exhibiting a severely disordered state of mind.”

I know someone who is considered to have a mental disorder, so you can say he is insane. He hears voices that are not there. He sees things that are not there. He imagines that he is threatened by different conspiracies. He absolutely believes these things and to him they are as apparent as the sun coming up in the morning. He thinks that those of us who doubt him must be insane or at the very least conspiring to make him doubt the obvious.

This is what is happening to us all. We are hearing voices, too. I can be doing anything and there is a voice in my head that tells me stories or gives me meanings to what is going on around me. The stories are rehashes of the past, often changed a bit so that I feel better about the past. Or they are stories projected into the future based on the stories from the past.
Sometimes it just narrates my life, as if I would not be aware that the sky is a pretty shade of blue unless the voices in my head told me so.

This voice will judge everything going on around me, deciding what it means, based on… well, that’s hard to say. One moment it is based on something from the past or something read in a book, or heard on TV. Or, who knows. It offers one meaning and then in the next moment, offers another. Its ideas are disordered, and if I listen and believe them, and, Heaven forbid, act on them, I will often find myself in trouble. And the chatter never stops.

I followed these ideas in my mind for a long time. Once I began to understand the insanity of doing this, I started questioning that voice. The book by Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul, helped me to notice the insanity of listening to these voices, and now I have a quieter mind than I used to. The chatter isn’t quite as insistent as it used to be and often when I notice some particularly insane idea I am able to laugh at it, rather than believe it.

As I question the voice of the ego and with the Holy Spirit’s help, I let many of the crazy thoughts go. I am becoming aware of not just moments of blessed silence, but also thoughts I think with God. The ego thoughts were always about a personal self and defending that self from other personal selves. Now, much of the time, I am aware of a sense of union with others, and of love without cause, simply there, and of peace.

God created us like Him, in His Image and with all the power and the glory that is God. He gave all of Himself to us in our creation. To believe that the world is out to get us, and that we are endangered to the point that our life is spent making up of defense and attack strategies, this is surely insane.

The ego uses its twisted logic to make all this seem reasonable but it cannot make it sane. I have a choice. I can continue to follow the insane logic of the ego, or I can choose to see the clarity of the logic of the Holy Spirit. The ego uses logic to bring us through suffering to death. The Holy Spirit uses logic to bring us to union, to love and peace, to Heaven. I am learning to choose the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit to untangle the mess the ego left behind in my mind. Yes, it is another voice, but it is a sane Voice and it is my chosen Voice.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, C 13: XI. The Peace of Heaven, P 10. 1-20-17

XI. The Peace of Heaven, P 10

10 Can God’s Son lose himself in dreams, when God has placed within him the glad call to waken and be glad? He cannot separate himself from what is in him. His sleep will not withstand the call to wake. The mission of redemption will be fulfilled as surely as the creation will remain unchanged throughout eternity. You do not have to know that Heaven is yours to make it so. It is so. Yet to know it, the Will of God must be accepted as your will.

Journal
What stood out to me in this paragraph is that I cannot be lost in my dreams because the call to awaken is in me. How can I be separate from something that is in me? So regardless of how dark my dream becomes, or how lost I feel, I am perfectly safe. I will wake up and I will remember what I am. I will know Heaven and I will know my Divinity.

I will also experience pain suffering and death until I do wake up. That, too, is a fact, and it is the reason I choose to do this work. It feels hard sometimes, upsetting, especially at the beginning when my world as I knew it was turned upside down, and it feels incredibly frustrating and disappointing when I resist it. But I will not veer from my path. I will continue the work until it is done. I must because now that I have begun to listen, I hear the Voice calling me home. I can no longer ignore it.

And what is all this work I do to return to my natural state, to know who I am? It is whatever it takes for me to remember and accept that the Will of God is my own. I am given 365 lessons, pages and pages of explanatory text, and many processes and personal guidance, all to help me make that transition. Not to change myself, just to become willing to accept my Self. All God wants for me is my happiness, and my job seems to be to realize that I would rather be happy than be right. Oh, my dear God, I surrender! And I will keep surrendering until there is no thought in my mind of resistance.

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Study of Text, C 13: XI. The Peace of Heaven, P 9. 1-19-17

XI. The Peace of Heaven, P 9

9 You will learn salvation because you will learn how to save. It will not be possible to exempt yourself from what the Holy Spirit wants to teach you. Salvation is as sure as God. His certainty suffices. Learn that even the darkest nightmare that disturbs the mind of God’s sleeping Son holds no power over him. He will learn the lesson of awaking. God watches over him and light surrounds him.

Journal
Another wonderfully encouraging and comforting paragraph from Jesus. Our salvation is assured; it is inevitable. Nothing can prevent it. The question I ask myself is, how long do I want to hold out against salvation? What do I think I am holding onto that is worth this effort? Recently, I was given a visual that is helping me to see differently.

I have this picture in my mind. I really wish I could draw or paint so that I could put it on canvas or at least on a piece of paper. But no matter how clear the picture in my mind, the one my hand draws looks more like a stick figure. ~smile~ I see this vast light which represents for me the Christ Mind, or Awareness. It is what I am. And from this brilliant, indescribably beautiful light there is a single point of awareness extending outward.

That point of awareness is I, experiencing myself as Myron. It is extending out, but in no way unconnected to the Christ Mind. From that extension, that singular point of awareness, I experience Myron and her story, but at the same time, I know myself as Christ. But here is what happens. As I watch my projection of the Life of Myron, I get so engrossed in it that I forget that I am just watching. I become, in my experience of it, Myron.

Evidently, I am tired of the show and ready to wake up because… well, here I am studying A Course in Miracles, and remembering that I am not Myron. So now I am aware that I am watching the show, but still falling into the show and forgetting. My practice right now is that when I start to tumble into it and feel myself losing touch with reality again, I envision myself looking over my shoulder, and seeing that I am still one with All That Is. I see that I cannot be Myron, because I am simply extending from the Christ Mind, not disconnected from it.

Then I close my eyes a moment to shut out the show, and I open my heart to feel the love that flows from and through the Christ. It feels warm and safe and I feel supported, so that when I open my eyes I can remain more the observer than the participant. This has been truly helpful. For instance, last night my daughter called me with disturbing news. Her father is unable to take care of himself now and wants to come live with her and her husband.
My daughter is very distressed by this and feels trapped with no options.

Her dad is mentally disturbed. Their house is very small; her marriage very new. I can feel her misery and hopelessness. I feel myself falling headlong into the story. What happens when I fall into the story is I start to believe in it. I start looking for solutions in the story. If only I could find a way for her dad to be on his own, a cheap place for him to live nearby but not in my daughter’s home, then all would be better.

I don’t know if this could work. How could he pay for it? Could they take on that expense? I know I can’t. I start to feel panicky. What if she thinks I should take him in? After all, it’s my fault that he is her father. I cannot abide the thought. I feel guilty for my refusal, though no one has suggested this, I still feel guilty because I know I would refuse. I feel guilty that I cannot accept him. What if I need to do this to heal the relationship? What if my very salvation depends on this?

My mind is spinning with guilt and fear and confusion. I feel resentment and hatred for her father. I feel resentment and rage over the situation. This is what happens when we forget that we are the writers of the script and the director and the audience. So what I did was stop the chatter. I realized that right now in the only moment there is, nothing is happening. I remember that this is a story that I did not write alone. We are all in it together and I am responsible for only my part of it. I realize that the only thing that is happening in this moment is that I asked the ego what it all means and I got an ego answer.

I ask for another way to see and I am told to look over my shoulder. I see, with great relief, that I am still what I have always been. I am still part of the Christ Mind, extending itself to this point of awareness. I look to my right and I see the point of awareness that I know in my story as my sweet daughter, and we smile at each other. I look to my left and I see the point of awareness that in the story is her father, and we smile at each other. It is my self looking at my self and I feel the love of Christ enfolding me and I know I am safe, and with me my daughter and her father as well.

There is still a situation to be dealt with in this story we are experiencing together, but now I am clear that the solution does not come from Myron, but from the Holy Spirit Who speaks for God in my mind. I ask Him for His interpretation of the story and for His guidance. I absolutely trust in the answer, that it will come as needed and that it will be for the good of all. The peace of God is all I want and right now I have it. I trust I will continue to seek only that.

God watches over us and light surrounds us.

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Study of Text, C 13: XI. The Peace of Heaven, P 8. 1-18-17

XI. THE PEACE OF HEAVEN, P 8
8 The communication link that God Himself placed within you, joining your mind with His, cannot be broken. You may believe you want it broken, and this belief does interfere with the deep peace in which the sweet and constant communication God would share with you is known. Yet His channels of reaching out cannot be wholly closed and separated from Him. Peace will be yours because His peace still flows to you from Him Whose Will is peace. You have it now. The Holy Spirit will teach you how to use it, and by extending it, to learn that it is in you. God willed you Heaven, and will always will you nothing else. The Holy Spirit knows only of His Will. There is no chance that Heaven will not be yours, for God is sure, and what He wills is as sure as He is.

Journal
What I understand from reading this paragraph is that God is communicating with us and that communication never ends. He placed a communication link within us, joining our mind to His and it cannot be broken. I am not aware of this constant communication, primarily because I choose not to listen. Not listening does not in anyway affect the communication, but it does cost me dearly.

Jesus says that it is God’s Will that His peace flow from Him to us. This reminds me that communication is not about words. In fact, words limit communication. It is not about explaining things or convincing us of something. I think the communication we get from God is the flow of love, the flow of peace and joy. I think that is the only form of communication with meaning.

My life has been a real roller coaster ride lately. I have experienced situations that leave me feeling angry and depressed and very discouraged. Then I have experienced that flow of love and joy and a peace that is beyond expression. Right now I feel the flow of love in me and through me. I would love to tell you what I did to make that shift, but the only thing I had any part in was my persistent desire to see differently. Anything that happened after that had nothing to do with Myron.

I think this joy and peace that I feel right now is at least a trickle if not a flow of the love that God communicates to us all the time. It makes me cry to think of it, to think of the love that God has for me, and to think of my continued refusal to fully open to it. I was explaining someone’s bad behavior to a mutual friend the other day. I talked about how hard it is for that person to receive our love because he doesn’t feel worthy of it. Getting something he thinks he does not deserve scares him and he fights against it.

Maybe I am doing the same thing. Maybe accepting the unconditional, unfailing love that flows to me from God feels like a theft, taking something I don’t deserve, and shouldn’t have. Maybe I can one day disregard this ego assessment, and trust that I belong to God and He knows me, and loves me, so I must be worthy. Maybe I will stop resisting and blocking the peace of God and simply accept my inheritance as His Creation. What I am doing with that love and that peace that I have accepted is to extend it to my brothers and sisters as best as I can, and that I do extend it further convinces me that I do have it.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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