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Study of the Text, Chapter 8, IX. Healing as Corrected Perception, P 1. 11-8-14

IX. Healing as Corrected Perception
1 I said before that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the Answer to everything, because He knows what the answer to everything is. The ego does not know what a real question is, although it asks an endless number. Yet you can learn this as you learn to question the value of the ego, and thus establish your ability to evaluate its questions. When the ego tempts you to sickness do not ask the Holy Spirit to heal the body, for this would merely be to accept the ego’s belief that the body is the proper aim of healing. Ask, rather, that the Holy Spirit teach you the right perception of the body, for perception alone can be distorted. Only perception can be sick, because only perception can be wrong.

I can hardly write this morning, I am so . . . something. I don’t know how to explain it. I feel peaceful, and happy and something else. I just want to sit here and stare at these words and feel gratitude. Then I notice the thought that I wonder if I am being judged by someone I know, and the thought that some other person is not what he pretends to be. I know that this is the mind that desires the ego separate self trying to reestablish dominance in my mind through judgment.

Then I notice thoughts about the past and I recognize this is more of the same. The ego mind perpetuates itself through recreating the past in the present and then projecting it into the future. At first I feel afraid because I remember how easy it is to follow these mental paths and I don’t want to lose what I have this morning. But then I remember that I choose, moment to moment, what I will experience. I let go of the fear and everything rights itself.

The questions were not in words this morning, but if I had expressed them in that way, the question might have been, “How can I sustain the beauty of this perfect moment?” If there were a question at all. The ego doesn’t answer questions, it simply reinforces guilt so as to reinforce itself. When I questioned the ego thoughts, I was asking the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit always answers. It reminded me of what I am and peace was reestablished. All of this without words, but very clear, none the less.

I absolutely understand and fully accept that the body is not the source of illness and so it makes no sense to ask that it be healed. I ask, instead, that my mind be healed of the sick thoughts that have been projected onto the body. Before I left for the workshop, I noticed that I had a cyst, and that I seemed to be getting congested.

I recognized this as resistance. I did not try to figure out what in my environment caused these problems, and what medicines I needed to take. I just asked that my mind be healed of the anxiety I was feeling about the upcoming trip. The symptoms vanished overnight. The thing that used to cause confusion for me is that serious symptoms seemed different to me than the mild symptoms.

I used to let fear of the symptoms cause me to look outward for the cause and for relief. The truth became apparent to me as I continued to work with the idea of suffering, pain and sickness. Over and over I proved to myself that the cause was in my mind, therefore, the solution must also be in my mind. As I have mentioned before, I use magic if I am unable to detach from the fear of the sickness enough to allow healing. I am not guilty for that, it is just where I was at that moment and something to take to Spirit for correction.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VIII. The Body as Means or End, Paragraph 9 11-5-14

VIII. The Body as Means or End, P 9
9 The Holy Spirit teaches you to use your body only to reach your brothers, so He can teach His message through you. This will heal them and therefore heal you. Everything used in accordance with its function as the Holy Spirit sees it cannot be sick. Everything used otherwise is. Do not allow the body to be a mirror of a split mind. Do not let it be an image of your own perception of littleness. Do not let it reflect your decision to attack. Health is seen as the natural state of everything when interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, Who perceives no attack on anything. Health is the result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly. Health is the beginning of the proper perspective on life under the guidance of the one Teacher Who knows what life is, being the Voice for Life Itself.

Jesus finishes this section by stating very clearly what the body is for, and what happens to the body when we use it lovelessly. The body is for reaching our brothers so that the Holy Spirit can teach his message through us. This message is always some form of love. When I am with my coworkers, for instance, I can use this body to express kindness and understanding. I can use it to be compassionate, to bring humor to the workplace and a general sense of well being. I can overlook their errors and dwell on their kindnesses. In other words, I can use the body to teach only love.

Wherever the Holy Spirit has me take this body, I can surrender to His use. I can use it to convey His message of love when I am with family or with a customer. It is the same if I am shopping at Walmart or checking into the hotel. Always, I am sending a message, either of love or fear, from Spirit or from ego. In the mornings I receive love as I sit here reading the Course and asking for clarity. I give love as I share what I get. The words are helpful to the degree I set aside ego and allow Spirit to speak, but the intent to be a channel for love is the function I am giving the body now, and that is not lost even if my words are not perfect.

When I use the body for that exalted purpose it is perfectly healthy. When used lovelessly it is sick. My goal is to choose love every time. Jesus asks us not to allow the body to mirror a split mind. Right now my body does mirror the split in my mind. I teach love more than I teach fear so the body reflects love in the form of health more than it does sickness. However, I still use the body for attack and so it is not perfectly healthy.

Since I have become aware of the connection and since I have set the intention to use the body for love only, I am very aware of the split and also very aware of the projection of my beliefs onto the body. Here is an example. Yesterday I felt very energetic and peaceful until I had been at work for awhile. We had a meeting and I began to feel anxious about some of the things being said. There was no actual problem, but I started interpreting my brothers through the ego mind, and felt attacked.

It was not something “big” and so I was able to push it away, which is not the same as letting it be healed. So the anxiety slowly built. What I noticed is that I became enervated.  I felt so tired and lethargic and I wondered what was wrong with me. I had plenty of sleep and there was no reason to be tired. That thought stopped me because I know that how the body feels does not come from the body but from the mind. So I started watching my thoughts and I saw that I was using the body for attack and defense and it was wearing me out because it was in conflict with my function of allowing the Holy Spirit to use it for His message of love.

Having noticed this, I saw it happen a couple of other times during the day. I would get nervous about my trip, worrying I might not have enough money or trying to fit more into the day in preparation for being gone for several days, and I would start to feel drained again. Ha! I think I’m on to something, here. After watching and allowing correction during the day, by that evening I felt wonderful. I felt joyful and energetic. I got everything done that I wanted to do. I had some lovely thoughts to remind me of my purpose. My body reflected this change of mind as I allowed love to flow through it.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VIII. The Body as Means or End, Paragraph 8 11-4-14

VIII. The Body as Means or End, P8
8 You might well ask how the voice of something that does not exist can be so insistent. Have you thought about the distorting power of something you want, even if it is not real? There are many instances of how what you want distorts perception. No one can doubt the ego’s skill in building up false cases. Nor can anyone doubt your willingness to listen until you choose not to accept anything except truth. When you lay the ego aside, it will be gone. The Holy Spirit’s Voice is as loud as your willingness to listen. It cannot be louder without violating your freedom of choice, which the Holy Spirit seeks to restore, never to undermine.

I bet lots of people have had that question. If the ego is not real, why do I hear it so persistently? Why is it so loud? Why does it never seem to go away? The answer is that if I hear the ego it is because I want to hear the ego. When I no longer want the ego, it will be gone. It is so simple. I am God’s Son and what I desire exists for me, even if it is something that is not real.

When I first accepted this must be true, I felt depressed instead of happy. The reason I felt that way is that I felt like I was fighting myself and losing. I couldn’t seem to want to put the ego aside. I would think I wanted to be free, but then I would go on thinking ego thoughts and believing them. It was very discouraging, but I believe what the Course says and so I kept at it.

The reason this is possible and the reason it is simple is that we have the Voice for God in our mind. It is not as loud or insistent as the ego because it is always respectful of our freedom of choice. But it is very persistent, and continues to gently remind us of our true self. I have slowly learned to tune out the ego and listen, more often, to the Holy Spirit.

What started out as a hope then became something more than hope, is now a certainty in my mind. I am God’s Son and I will accept this identity fully, and I am doing it now. Every time I notice the desire to be angry, to blame, to experience guilt or think I am in pain, and I realize this is not true nor is it what I want, I am choosing to lay the ego aside. I ask for the Atonement and I ask Holy Spirit to decide for me, and the ego fades away to reveal something of my Self. As I do this, I begin to remember that God is my desire.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: VIII. The Body as Means or End, Paragraph 7 11-3-14

VIII. The Body as Means or End, P 7
7 A learning device is not a teacher. It cannot tell you how you feel. You do not know how you feel because you have accepted the ego’s confusion, and you therefore believe that a learning device can tell you how you feel. Sickness is merely another example of your insistence on asking guidance of a teacher who does not know the answer. The ego is incapable of knowing how you feel. When I said that the ego does not know anything, I said the one thing about the ego that is wholly true. But there is a corollary; if only knowledge has being and the ego has no knowledge, then the ego has no being.

Oh my! I never thought of sickness and the ego like this before. When my body is sick it is like I asked the body how I feel. The body can’t tell me how I feel because it is a simple learning device. It is like asking my pencil what I feel like writing, or asking my car where I feel like driving. I used to say things like, “I check in with my body to see what it needs.” That’s just funny, really. This is just more ego confusion. Whatever my body “tells” me is just a message from me to me through this device I call my body. Why not just skip the middle man?

Sickness is not something that just happens to the body and the body doesn’t decide if it is sick or not. Sickness is a deliberate choice to use the body as a defense against God. I make the choice to use the body as a symbol of my defense against God. I choose sickness and use the body to express that sickness. Then I pretend to myself that it just happened to me, and I use it to convince myself that I am weak, fragile and the furthest thing from the divine being the Course talks about.

So this morning I woke up feeling stiff and achy. What could be the cause? I worked extra hard both during the week and on the weekend and I haven’t been taking my body for its daily walks with the regularity it needs. This is the way I used to interpret the sensations in the body. Now I am willing to withdraw my projections and own my decision to pretend I am a victim of my work schedule and time constraints.

I don’t need to project onto this body the fears, guilt, and resentments of life in my story. I can stop asking the ego, which doesn’t know anything, what is going on. I can stop using the body to defend against love and give my willingness to know what I am, and to express that instead. I am not forced by circumstances into any amount of work, or bound by the laws of the world in any way. I am the one who decided on the circumstances and made the laws of the world.

As Jesus says, the ego has no knowledge so the ego has no being. This morning, at least, I am sane enough to stop taking advice from imaginary sources, and to ask Reality how I feel. I do this as I ask the Holy Spirit to decide for me how I feel, to decide for me what I think about this, to decide for me what I am to do, to say, where I am to go. I am not surrendering anything of value when I do this, because the ego is nothing and nothing is not valuable. I can let go of any remaining resistance to full surrender because I remember now that this is my true will. I am not giving anything up; I am embracing what I really am.

Jesus, this all seems so clear and even self-evident as I sit here with you. Please help me to remember it as the day goes on and the distractions of life attract my attention. Please help me to remember what I am when the ego mind vies for my attention. When I project onto the body and experience discomfort, remind me that this comes not from the world, but from the confused mind, and help me remember that the body is not me, but only a useful tool. Help me remember that I don’t need or want to defend against my loving Father and I don’t want to use sickness to hide from my holy Self. Thank you.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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