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Study of the Text A. To Have, Give All to All, Paragraph 3   1-13-14

A. To Have, Give All to All, Paragraph 3

3 I have said that the Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracles. He always tells you that only the mind is real, because only the mind can be shared. The body is separate, and therefore cannot be part of you. To be of one mind is meaningful, but to be one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body is meaningless.

It is obvious that when the Course says that we are One, it does not mean we share one body. It would clearly be a meaningless statement. I didn’t put it together like this, though, and realize that logically, it follows that the body is meaningless. But of course it is. I often say that the body is not real, and while that is true, it is hard for my thinking mind to make sense of that idea. The body feels very real and even Jesus says that we are not to deny that we think we have a body.

What is easier for my mind to grasp is that the body is meaningless, since what cannot be shared is meaningless. The ego “me” is meaningless for the same reason; it cannot be shared. Neither one can be who I am. This weekend I had a shaky moment when I felt this more deeply than I have before. I had the thought that I could not go back to living a meaningless life and that was followed by the understanding that what I really meant was that I could not stand the thought that I am meaningless. The question, of course, is who is the “I” that is meaningless.

I think what happened is that I brought into question the meaning of the ego, and the ego responded with fear. The ego does not want to be seen as meaningless because then why would I continue to be interested in it. I was upset because, in a moment of profound confusion, I identified completely with the ego and so it felt like I was saying that I am meaningless. Questioning the ego at this basic level will continue to elicit fear as long as I am vacillating between identities.  I appreciate this reminder from Jesus that the body cannot be part of me.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text A. To Have, Give All to All, Paragraph 2   1-10-14

A. To Have, Give All to All, Paragraph 2

2 God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of what you think you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist. The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into a learning device. Again as always, He reinterprets what the ego uses as an argument for separation into a demonstration against it. If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this.

The body is not a creation of God and so it is not real. We made the body to prove separation. Obviously we do not share one body and so we can say, “I am separate from you and therefore separation is real.” As long as I believe I am the body, I am living proof that I made something unlike God. This is the way the ego establishes it’s self as our god and keeps us enthralled to it.

It is also the reason for the deep well of unconscious guilt that makes us afraid to face God whom we believe we dethroned when we made bodies and identified with them as self. But all this is undone with the simple realization that the body does not exist. It cannot exist because God did not create it. If it does not exist, we cannot be guilty for making it, which means we are, after all, still as God created us, and so innocent of any wrongdoing.

We made the body to prove separation, but as with anything we made, the Holy Spirit can reinterpret it and use it to demonstrate against separation. Here is how this works. I become sick and it seems that germs or environmental factors caused it. My brother is not sick and so I have use the body to prove that I am separate from him. I have also proven that the body is stronger than the mind because it can be affected by something outside the mind and the mind cannot do anything about it.

If we are ready to know the truth, we can ask the Holy Spirit for correction. We can ask Him to reinterpret what we made and undo what we have done. As the mind is healed of the belief in sickness, pain, suffering and death, the body (which is just a projection of the mind) begins to reflect the healed thoughts and so the mind proves to be stronger than the body. As the healed mind projects a healed body we begin to remember that mind is cause and body is simply an effect.

Because Jesus knew the body was nothing, just a thought in the mind, he was able to “heal” many and just as easily brought bodies back from the dead and “resurrected” his own body. He showed us that it is the mind that causes everything we see. If we see suffering and death, the mind must be sick and in need of healing (forgiveness), rather than the body. The body must simply follow along because, without the mind it is nothing and doesn’t even exist.

This is good news because while we cannot be one body, we absolutely can be, and are, one mind.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text,A. To Have, Give All to All, Paragraph 1. 1-9-14

A. To Have, Give All to All
1 When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever. Perhaps you think this is accomplished through death, but nothing is accomplished through death, because death is nothing. Everything is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the mind. The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who are life. If we share the same mind, you can overcome death because I did. Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not deciding at all. Like any other impossible solution the ego attempts, it will not work.

I really didn’t fully understand this until recently when I started reading excerpts from a new book by Nouk Sanchez, The End of Death, and attended her workshop. I don’t know why I didn’t really get it because Jesus is very clear. He says that death is not real, doesn’t help, certainly doesn’t wake us up. He says that death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not deciding at all. It is an ego attempt to solve a problem and he emphasizes that it will not work.

Back in the bad old days I used to suffer from depression and I held tightly to the idea of suicide as my way out when I couldn’t take it anymore. Obviously I never got that desperate but I got close. My mind was a huge knot of conflicted thinking, and I didn’t know what to do about it so I thought that dying would solve the problem without solving it. Then later I understood from doing the Course that suicide wouldn’t help anyway because death would not alleviate my problems and I would still have to face them.

Then as my mind was healed more and more, the depression fell away and I no longer looked for a way out. Without the suffering of depression driving my thoughts, I realized I was afraid of the death of the body and went through a period of healing until that was no longer an issue either. At that point I thought I had solved the whole death issue. I could die without fear, but could also stay here and do my work.

What I was left with was a desire to be here as long as I needed to complete my part in the Atonement and then the body would die and if I still had more to do I would come back in another body-story to work some more. But if I finished with my part and didn’t need to return, which was my plan, I would die and then I would work from the other side to help others.

The one thing all my plans had in common was death as a resolution, a solution to my pain and suffering. I don’t know how I overlooked the obvious for so long. Clearly, death is not a solution. Life is the solution. Now my focus is on awakening, not at death or after death, but now. I am still doing the same thing as far as being vigilant for ego thoughts and allowing my mind to be healed, but now I have withdrawn this false value in death as some kind of solution.

Another thought from this paragraph that caught my attention is that just as death is nothing, the body is nothing. The body doesn’t live, nor does it die. The belief that it does is just part of the illusion. When I am strongly identified with the ego and thus the body, I think that this story of Myron is my life. I think I am living it. This cannot be so, because as Jesus says, “it cannot contain you who are life.”

Sometimes in my writing I say that I am in this body, but that is not actually true. I cannot be in the body because that would require that I literally be separated, split off in some way from my vast and holy Self. I can imagine this, but I cannot be this. So once again I see that I am not what I seem; I am so much more. The body is simply an idea in the mind and nothing else. The life the body lives is simply an idea in the mind and nothing else. The death of the body is simply an idea in the mind and nothing else.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit, Paragraph 4. 1-8-14

V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit, Paragraph 4

4 The Holy Spirit never itemizes errors because He does not frighten children, and those who lack wisdom are children. Yet He always answers their call, and His dependability makes them more certain. Children do confuse fantasy and reality, and they are frightened because they do not recognize the difference. The Holy Spirit makes no distinction among dreams. He merely shines them away. His light is always the call to awaken, whatever you have been dreaming. Nothing lasting lies in dreams, and the Holy Spirit, shining with the Light from God Himself, speaks only for what lasts forever.

I value knowing the Holy Spirit doesn’t itemize errors because knowing this, when I hear that voice telling me all I have done wrong I know it is not Holy Spirit so it must be ego. I value knowing that the Holy Spirit always answers. If I don’t hear His answer it must be because I am listening to the ego instead.

Every once in a while I will fall into complete confusion. This always happens when I allow fear to take over my mind. When Toby was in the hospital is an example. I was so afraid for him that my mind was stunned. I knew I was thinking wrong, but for a while fear kept me from seeing clearly. I couldn’t discern truth from fantasy.

The saving grace for me was that I knew what was happening. I knew I was thinking with the ego, so I was able to eventually pull my attention away from fantasy and allow myself to be guided to truth. But that experience reminded me of what it is like to be lost in my fantasies. It also reminded me that the Holy Spirit always listens and always answers, but it is completely up to me to decide to hear Him.

The experience I had at that time seemed very big to me, very important. It seemed different than my normal, everyday moments of temporary confusion such as when someone at the office triggers an ego response from me and for a moment I think they are the enemy. But they are not different. They are exactly the same.  The Holy Spirit doesn’t see a big error or a small error, he simply sees error which he corrects, and we accept according to our willingness.

Categorizing and sizing my mistakes is an error I still make. Some just feel bigger or more important to me, even though I understand that this could not be true. My thoughts are true or they are not. That makes sense to me, but it doesn’t yet always feel that way. The Holy Spirit doesn’t suffer from that confusion. He knows that an error is simply a lack of love and that the solution is always love. One problem, one solution. Simple. No matter how it seems to me in my story, the Holy Spirit has but one goal, and that is to awaken me.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit. Paragraph 3   1-7-14

V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit, Paragraph 3
3 A wise teacher teaches through approach, not avoidance. He does not emphasize what you must avoid to escape from harm, but what you need to learn to have joy. Consider the fear and confusion a child would experience if he were told, “Do not do this because it will hurt you and make you unsafe; but if you do that instead, you will escape from harm and be safe, and then you will not be afraid.” It is surely better to use only three words: “Do only that!” This simple statement is perfectly clear, easily understood and very easily remembered.

My mind is finally becoming simple. I would never have believed that this was a good thing, but really it is. My thinking processes are simplified. My prayers are simplified. It is the ego that chooses complexity and it is only when I am especially identified with the ego that I become mired in that complexity.

Here is an example. My son is recovering from back surgery and is supposed to be very careful not to jar his spine until the fusion is strong. Yesterday his dog jumped on him and he flinched. He was afraid he had damaged the surgery, but as the pain resided he felt like it would be OK.

When I heard about this I felt fearful for him. I had a lot of thoughts about what he should be doing and what he should avoid, and this was painful because I couldn’t do anything about them. If I were with him I would probably have driven him nuts and caused him to be more afraid. As I watched these thoughts about how he could protect himself, I had the thought that I wish I could put him back in the womb. This woke me up to what I was doing and I tried to stop the flow of ego defenses.

It was hard for me to stop the ego fear thoughts once they got going. I flailed around for another way to think, another way to see this. I tried to focus on the positive, or not to think at all. I knew my thinking was screwy, but now that I was in the fear thoughts, I became confused about how to extricate myself.

But my true desire is to have a healed mind and though it is not yet my only desire it is my strongest desire, and it was answered.  One thought emerged from the jumble of thoughts. I don’t know how to achieve peace right now but I want peace. Then I remembered a very simple prayer. I said, “Here I am, God. I rest in Your certainty.” I remembered Lisa Natoli’s advice to be still and just let God be God. I stood there in my desire to be healed and let peace flow through me.

It was so simple as I stopped trying to figure it all out. The ego always has a plan for whatever I want to do, and that plan will be complex, because the complexity hides the ego’s ultimate goal. Above all, the ego plan will be designed to ultimately fail. The ego is designed to seek but not find because it is the design that insures the ego continues to exist. God’s plan always works. I had to go back to resting in God a few times, but then it was done.

Here is another example. When I began to understand that to enter the Kingdom I had to let go of the idea that my brother was guilty, I often became confused. I was looking at his behavior and seeing guilt, knowing that I had to forgive what I saw and see him as innocent. What a mess my mind was as I tried to do that! The ego took me round and round as I tried various ways to see him without guilt.

Then, as my desire to see innocence grew greater than my desire to place blame, the whole thing simplified. I suddenly realized that my brother is innocent. He is never guilty no matter what I show myself with my eyes. He starts out innocent and he remains innocent. If I see something else, I must be confused.

It was complicated before because I started out with the belief that my brother was guilty. Then the ego presented me with an array of solutions, none of which worked because the original premise was faulty. But I stayed stuck in the ego thinking for a long time because, first, I wanted someone to be guilty, and then, because the ego plans were so byzantine that I couldn’t extricate myself. What saved me was simplicity itself. There was nothing to solve because there was no problem.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit. Paragraph 2   1-6-14

V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit, Paragraph 2
2 How can you wake children in a more kindly way than by a gentle Voice that will not frighten them, but will merely remind them that the night is over and the light has come? You do not inform them that the nightmares that frightened them so badly are not real, because children believe in magic. You merely reassure them that they are safe now. Then you train them to recognize the difference between sleeping and waking, so they will understand they need not be afraid of dreams. And so when bad dreams come, they will themselves call on the light to dispel them.

This one makes me smile to read it. My Father is making sure I know that I am only dreaming of bad stuff, and that I am safe right now even while I dream. He is making sure it is done gently. I am learning to recognize the difference between sleeping and waking. I am learning to call on the light to dispel my dreams.

I am taking Lisa Natoli’s 40 day course and I posted part of my writing from my journal because it applied to day 5. I also wrote part of it for my teaching on Awakening Together. So it came from what I am learning through Lisa’s course, Chapter 14, and Chapter 6. More and more I am seeing how everything I am learning from the many sources provided to me is all the same. Jesus has found many ways to help me see that I am dreaming, that I am safe, and that I can call on the light to wake up.

This is what happened. I have felt very drawn to the idea of awakening. This is why we are here and this is what we are to do, so I have to wonder why it is that I resist the idea even as I feel its draw? I was talking to Jesus about it, and asking him what to do about this. I told him I just don’t know how to awaken from the dream of separation. I know how to work toward it, removing blocks, changing my mind, but how do I take that step of letting go of the story of separation altogether.

This is the message he gave me. “Here is a tip Sister. Don’t believe in your story of not being able to wake up. You are waking up. Nothing can change that. If you have a story of not waking up and don’t like that story, you can make up a different one.”

Ha! I didn’t know if he meant that or if he was just teasing me. But then I realized that he meant me to do it. I saw what I had not embraced before. My life, my thoughts and the beliefs that generate them are not the deadly serious stuff I had always assumed they were. They are just stories and I wrote them. Ha! Can I just write new ones? Why not?

I’m trying that. I’m not consistent yet, but I’m working at forming a new habit. When I have the thought that maybe I’m nuts for thinking I’m waking up and that story begins to spin out in my mind, I start writing the story over from the perspective of someone who is awakening. I’m trying this now to see how it works.

I’m doing this for other stories, too. Yesterday after I made my commitment to stand with God and surrender self, I experienced an ego backlash. It was subtle at first and I didn’t realize what was happening until it was out of control. Now, I seldom watch much TV, maybe a show or two at the end of the day. Yesterday, right in the middle of the day I watched a show. I thought it was odd even while I did it and then I watched another. I wound up doing this until bedtime. This never happens. I just don’t do that.

There was a little voice in my head that was trying to clue me in on what was happening, and there was another voice that was trying to encourage me to feel guilty for wasting time. I felt enervated, very lethargic. It was like my mind was mired in molasses as I tried to ignore both voices.  Now I know it doesn’t matter if I watched TV, or did the work I had planned to do, but what did matter was the underlying reason I did it and the story I was telling myself about being guilty for doing so.

This is such an old story for me, the one of telling myself that I am guilty. Sometimes it is difficult to wrench my attention away from my guilt stories. This happened last night. It started as an ego backlash from my strong commitment to be lived, to trust and to surrender. I couldn’t write another version of the story because I was stuck in the belief I really was guilty.

Then I flashed on our second day of lessons. I remembered what Lisa said. Undoing is nothing more than the willingness to stand still and let God be God. So that’s what I did. I said, “Here I am God.” And I stood there with the expectation that he would do his thing, and He did. “Thank you, God.” At that point it was easy to weave a new story.

I can always do this. I can ask myself, what would this story look like if I knew guilt is not real? And I start thinking about it from that perspective. Two things are happening. One, it pulls me out of the guilt and reminds me of the truth, and two, it helps me to realize that I have a choice about the stories I tell myself, Also, it helps me see they are just stories, not the truth and not to be taken seriously.

When I woke up I felt invigorated and ready to get busy, but I also felt concerned that I had wasted so much time yesterday that I could never get everything done, and I didn’t even know where to start. This is just another way to say I am guilty and am being punished for my sin of wasting time.

As I began to sink into guilt again, I remembered that if I don’t like my story I could tell another one. Telling the story from a more healed mind, I remembered that Jesus said that he would arrange time for me if I gave it to him. This is what I did. And I asked the Holy Spirit what He would have me do, no planning on my own. I was certain that I would have a productive day and what needed to be done would be done. Isn’t that a better story? It is a story from an awakening mind.

So now I have two very helpful tools. If I get stuck in the guilt and can’t see my way out I know what to do. I can stand in God and allow Him to heal me. And when I am telling myself a sad or angry story, any story that is not true, I can write a new story. I can tell this story as if I know who I am and I am joyful in that remembrance. I’m going to make a practice of telling new stories, truer stories, so that it becomes second nature to do this.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit. Paragraph 1   1-3-14

V. The Lessons of the Holy Spirit
1 Like any good teacher, the Holy Spirit knows more than you do now, but He teaches only to make you equal with Him. You had already taught yourself wrongly, having believed what was not true. You did not believe in your own perfection. Would God teach you that you had made a split mind, when He knows your mind only as whole? What God does know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His children are wholly joyous. Giving His joy is an ongoing process, not in time but in eternity. God’s extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, “My children sleep and must be awakened.”

When my kids were little they would play pretend. I knew their games were not real. They didn’t become the cop because they played that part, any more than they would become the robber because it was their turn to take that part. I would not sit them down and tell them there was something wrong with them because they were pretending to be something they were not.

After a time I would call them in and sometimes one or the other would still be attached to the game she was playing, and when I tried to talk to her she would stay in her role. It made it impossible to communicate. I would have missed her and want to cuddle and ask about her day, but, she would try to arrest me for robbing the bank. I would have to break the hold her imagination had on her before we could communicate with each other.

My relationship with God is not a whole lot different.  I’m pretending to be something I’m not, and lost in my role as I am, communication with my Father is blocked. Nothing is harmed, not me or God or our relationship. The blocks are not permanent and are being removed now. It is God’s desire to extend Himself as Joy and Love and our imaginative play keeps us from receiving as fully as He gives.

We are asleep to our reality, and dream of illusions in which there exists a gap between us. God communicates oneness and love, but we fail to recognize it because we dream of fear, guilt and defenses. We have gotten lost in our role, but God knows who we are and He knows how to awaken us from our dreamy play. We are learning that it is our truest desire to remember. That is our part. So simple.

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