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Study of Text, Chapter 12: !V. Seeking and Finding, P 3. 2-12-16

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 3
3 It is surely obvious that no one wants to find what would utterly defeat him. Being unable to love, the ego would be totally inadequate in love’s presence, for it could not respond at all. Then, you would have to abandon the ego’s guidance, for it would be quite apparent that it had not taught you the response you need. The ego will therefore distort love, and teach you that love really calls forth the responses the ego can teach. Follow its teaching, then, and you will search for love, but will not recognize it.

Journal
And so now we see why it is that the ego will not lead us to love. It has no recognition of love, and no response for love. If we accepted love as it truly is, we would abandon ego’s guidance because it could not help us. The ego has a prime objective and that is it is to continue its existence. It will never help us do something that would make it useless to us. The ego will never lead us to love, even if it could, because we would no longer need the ego.

Love as seen through the Holy Spirit and what passes for love as perceived through ego is radically different. So much so that it leaves me wondering how I could have bought into ego’s perception of love for so long. Yesterday, I became open to seeing love in everything and it was a lovely day.

This morning, I woke up to hear the ego mutterings of gloom and doom. Suddenly, instead of experiencing the love of God, I was looking at people in my mind as enemies or potential enemies, and setting up defenses. Made me wonder what I had been dreaming all night to leave me so ego driven this morning.

The truth is, though, that the ego is our default mind here in egoland. We have to remain vigilant for the ego thinking in our mind and deliberately choose God. As I lay there working out strategies to get life lined up the way I thought I needed it, to get people to do what would be best for me, I realized how insane this was. I saw the contrast between how this makes me feel and how I felt yesterday.

I was having trouble shifting gears, so I reached over to my iPod and put on a meditation I have been using with a Pathways of Light course on accepting Holy Spirit’s help. This meditation reminded me that there are no private thoughts. I realized immediately that all these “I need” thoughts are personal to me, and so are not real thoughts. This reminded me that my belief that I need people for the purpose of fulfilling my needs is a block to my awareness of love’s presence.

The distress I had been feeling, and the need to defend myself faded away as I chose the Holy Spirit’s guidance over the ego’s guidance. I felt peace flood my mind and I felt the sluggishness of the moment before dissipate as I became energized and happy to start the day. Thank You, God. I love You God.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 12: !V. Seeking and Finding, P 2. 2-11-16

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 2
2 The search the ego undertakes is therefore bound to be defeated. And since it also teaches that it is your identification, its guidance leads you to a journey which must end in perceived self-defeat. For the ego cannot love, and in its frantic search for love it is seeking what it is afraid to find. The search is inevitable because the ego is part of your mind, and because of its source the ego is not wholly split off, or it could not be believed at all. For it is your mind that believes in it and gives existence to it. Yet it is also your mind that has the power to deny the ego’s existence, and you will surely do so when you realize exactly what the journey is on which the ego sets you.

Journal
When I look at the ego with detachment, I see how it searches frantically for love that it is determined not to find. It makes up ideas of what love is and how it is to be achieved. These ideas do not bring me to love, but only to disappointment and confusion. The ego then blames the object of the love and encourages me to keep looking until I find the right person, and then I will have love.

I used to feel so inadequate and was so needy that I was always seeking someone to make up for what I thought I lacked. I was never without a boyfriend or husband. Each time I thought I had finally found “the one” that was going to complete me, that was going to give me what I needed. Each time I was disappointed and would discard that one and keep looking.

Finally, I found A Course in Miracles and I stopped looking for the special relationship I thought I needed and began to heal my mind instead. I began to see how my search for love was never going to work because I kept looking outside myself, and that is not where I would find it. I learned to look within and as I released each belief that was blocking my awareness of loves presence, I found love. Imagine my surprise to discover I am love itself.

I still become confused about that sometimes, but once that idea takes hold in the mind, there is no going back. I am beginning to see love everywhere I look. It seems that everything is love. Love is the substance of creation. Now when I don’t see love, I know I am perceiving through the ego mind again, and I place another errant thought on the altar.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: !V. Seeking and Finding, P 1. 2-10-16

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 1
1 The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching. It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love. Yet the ego, though encouraging the search for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: “Seek and do not find.” This is the one promise the ego holds out to you, and the one promise it will keep. For the ego pursues its goal with fanatic insistence, and its judgment, though severely impaired, is completely consistent.

Journal
The ego mind believes in the search for love, it just doesn’t know what love is. As long as I use the ego mind to do my thinking, I do not know what love is. So I search endlessly and of course since I don’t know love, I have no way of finding it. The ego goes on insisting that the search simply isn’t complete and I need to keep looking.

I’ve been married and divorced three times. Each time I found a new “love” I thought, “This is it! This is the one!” As if love could be contained only in a single person meant just for me. As if I could not have love unless I found this one special person. And even when I followed the ego’s dictates and found that love object, I was always disappointed, because that one did not live up to the ego expectations.

As far as I can tell, the egos idea of love is a bargain made between two people in which there is an agreement to limit love. If God is love then it is an agreement to limit God. Love then becomes an impossibility if not an outright attack. This doesn’t seem like love to me so much as it feels like guilt, and guilt feels like fear.

Some relationships seem to offer love more than others, but even in these there is a bargain struck. “You be the person I think I need you to be, and I will feel loved,” is the basis of the contract. When that ceases to happen, the feeling of “love” turns into hate. Even if the bargain seems to be holding, there is an undercurrent of anxiety. What if there is betrayal? What if there is abandonment? Love that can be lost is a source of fear. Is love fear?

There is love that is real and perfect with no fear or guilt attached to it. This love has no object; it isn’t special to one or the other. This love is complete as it is, and is not contained within one relationship, and denied to another. It does not begin, nor does it end. It simply is, eternally. The ego can only read about this love, it cannot understand it. It certainly cannot offer it and so it keeps the mind busy looking for love that isn’t love.

I can imagine love that is not special to any one person. I can even imagine loving everyone equally. I haven’t done this yet, but I have made inroads and I have tasted this, and so I can imagine it. But I cannot yet imagine love that has no object to attach itself. I hear the words and understand the concept of love that is just love without a need to be directed toward anything or anybody. But I can’t seem to get past the idea to the actual experience of that.

Perhaps I simply have not risen through this dense state of form to the point that I can imagine formlessness. My mind still attaches to the idea of there being a “what” I love or “who” I love, or at least that I could love every thing and every one. But to simply love, to be love, that love is all that is, so that there could not be anything else. That evades me.

What a thought, though! That seems to be what Jesus is teaching us. God is in this chair, this pencil, this person. God is in everything I see because God is in my mind. Love is in this chair, this pencil, this person. Love is in everything I see because love is in my mind. Love is in my mind. Love is my mind. Love is.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, Chapter 12: !. The Investment in Reality, P 10. 2-9-16

III. The Investment in Reality, P 10
10 If you will recognize that all the attack you perceive is in your own mind and nowhere else, you will at last have placed its source, and where it begins it must end. For in this same place also lies salvation. The altar of God where Christ abideth is there. You have defiled the altar, but not the world. Yet Christ has placed the Atonement on the altar for you. Bring your perceptions of the world to this altar, for it is the altar to truth. There you will see your vision changed, and there you will learn to see truly. From this place, where God and His Son dwell in peace and where you are welcome, you will look out in peace and behold the world truly. Yet to find the place, you must relinquish your investment in the world as you project it, allowing the Holy Spirit to extend the real world to you from the altar of God.

Journal
Normally I don’t have any trouble recognizing where the attack originated. Sometimes though I get confused and think that I am being attacked by someone or something outside myself. I overhear someone at work criticizing something I did and maybe I will think that this person is my enemy. Maybe I will think I need to do something about this. Maybe I should work harder, maybe do or say something that sways their opinion of me. Maybe I should get to the boss first with my side of the story.

Eventually, hopefully soon, I come to my senses. All perception of attack is in my own mind and nowhere else. I take these dark thoughts and these dark feelings to the altar and lay them there so the light of truth can do what light does to darkness. The ego tugs at my coattail trying to pull me back into the story. This time, it says, I cannot afford to overlook this attack. Look, it says, at how real it is. Hear it, it says, with your own ears. Everything, it says, depends on a perfect defense.

I will watch my mind for attack thoughts today with more vigilance than ever before, because today I am more interested in being invested in reality than in defending against the imagined enemies I have projected. I quickly and gladly place these perceptions on the altar. I surrender them to the Holy Spirit in absolute confidence that He will dispel them and extend the real world to me.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 12: !. The Investment in Reality, P 9. 2-8-16

III. The Investment in Reality, P 9
9 The world you perceive is a world of separation. Perhaps you are willing to accept even death to deny your Father. Yet He would not have it so, and so it is not so. You still cannot will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is not a world of will because it is governed by the desire to be unlike God, and this desire is not will. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless “laws,” and without meaning of any kind. For it is made out of what you do not want, projected from your mind because you are afraid of it. Yet this world is only in the mind of its maker, along with his real salvation. Do not believe it is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing where it is will you gain control over it. For you do have control over your mind, since the mind is the mechanism of decision.

Journal
As long as I keep insisting that the world exists outside my mind, I will have no control over it. I can save money and invest wisely and still wind up broke. I can exercise and eat right and take excellent care of myself and still get sick and die. I can raise my children right and give them all the love and care I can, and they can still make bad decisions and bring suffering into their lives. I have no control over a world that exists outside my mind.

When I realize that nothing exists outside my mind, I regain control because I do have control of my mind. I control my mind through making different decisions. The world I see in my mind was sourced through decisions to imagine myself as separate from God and so to be unlike my self. That gave me an interesting and often awful experience, and now I am ready to change my mind and remember who I really am.

I can do this because while I have this chaotic world in my mind, I also have the means for salvation in my mind. It is there for me to choose anytime I want to. I began making this choice for salvation slowly, one situation, one problem, one thought at a time. I allowed the contrast in the effects of my choices to convince me this is what I want. I continued this process until it became a habit and until it became my one goal.

I still forget that the story is the projection of the thought in my mind and that both cause and effect remain in my mind. I become entranced by the story and I believe in the story, and the anxiety of knowing that something is very wrong grows in me until I snap out of it and remember that all this is only happening in my mind. I am hallucinating. I am dreaming. But in choosing to become aware of my holiness I am saved from my dreams, and I am waking up.

There is no world. There is no “out there” for me to see. There are no eyes that actually see because there is no body. Hey, Mulder, the truth is not out there. It’s in here. Ha ha.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 12: !. The Investment in Reality, P 8. 2-5-16

III. The Investment in Reality, P 8

8 I said before that God so loved the world that He gave it to His only begotten Son. God does love the real world, and those who perceive its reality cannot see the world of death. For death is not of the real world, in which everything reflects the eternal. God gave you the real world in exchange for the one you made out of your split mind, and which is the symbol of death. For if you could really separate yourself from the Mind of God you would die.

Journal
The world we made is a projection from the split mind. As Jesus has been explaining to us, it is a reflection of our untrue thoughts. It is representative of the ego thought system. Though we are conflicted about it, we hate the thought system that opposes our reality and so frightens us. We project it outward in a failed attempt to get rid of it. This is the world we see and think of as reality. We then pretend the problem is out there and we suffer eons of time in useless attempts to fix it.

The real world is a gift from God. It comes from our true nature, our Self as created by God. There is no conflict, no separation, no suffering and no death. There is only beauty, love and peace. There is only unity. There is only a reflection of God. We will experience the real world. Can you imagine it?

No one will ever consider doing anything unkind to another because they will know there is no “other” only another part of the one Son. No one will be sick, no one will lack for anything, there will be nothing to fear, and guilt will be unheard of. No one will get old and die. It will be a world of form and so not reality, but it will be a beautiful reflection of love in form.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 12, II.The Investment in Reality, P 7. 2-4-16

III. The Investment in Reality, P 7

7 If only the loving thoughts of God’s Son are the world’s reality, the real world must be in his mind. His insane thoughts, too, must be in his mind, but an internal conflict of this magnitude he cannot tolerate. A split mind is endangered, and the recognition that it encompasses completely opposed thoughts within itself is intolerable. Therefore the mind projects the split, not the reality. Everything you perceive as the outside world is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation. Yet consider what has happened, for thoughts do have consequences to the thinker. You have become at odds with the world as you perceive it, because you think it is antagonistic to you. This is a necessary consequence of what you have done. You have projected outward what is antagonistic to what is inward, and therefore you would have to perceive it this way. That is why you must realize that your hatred is in your mind and not outside it before you can get rid of it; and why you must get rid of it before you can perceive the world as it really is.

Journal
Jesus has done a really good job of explaining how it is we have made this world as it is. To recap this as I understand it, the mind is split because it believes two opposing thought systems. The mind finds this intolerable and so projects the split. We have projected what we hate and what feels hostile to reality, and so the projected world we experience is hostile.

In the meantime, reality remains in the mind, but we are so intent on our projection, so involved with it, that we have become identified as it. We have lost touch with our real mind because all our attention is on maintaining our projection. A Course in Miracles is helping us to remember that the hatred and the danger we perceive is not really out there. It is in our mind and this is where it must be relinquished if we want to see the real world.

Today’s lesson is very helpful for this purpose at it reminds us of our true self. Our mind is part of God. We are very holy. As I remind myself of this today, I am choosing to relinquish attack on an outside force that doesn’t really exist outside the mind. Instead, I am choosing to accept my true nature, the real me.

For instance, there is someone in my life that seems to be hateful to others a lot of the time. Interestingly enough, she thinks I hate her. This makes sense in light of what Jesus is explaining here. She is projecting hatefulness from the mind and seeing it in others, and seeing it projected back onto her.

I told her that I did not hate her, but it felt wrong in my own ears and yet I know I don’t hate her. I actually appreciate her in spite of my frustration with her. What has actually happened is that what I see when I look at her is the split mind, the part of the mind I hate. I don’t hate her or her actions; I hate that part of my mind.

So now I know what to do with this confusion in my mind. Using today’s lesson, I am withdrawing my projections onto her and I am choosing to focus on the truth in us both. I think I hate, but my mind is part of God’s. I am very holy. I don’t feel holy, I feel hateful and guilty for being hateful, but this can only be the split mind and I am tired of defending it. Instead, I am going to let it go.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.