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Gentle Healing Lesson 168, Text, Manual for Teachers. 10-7-19

LESSON 168
Your grace is given me. I claim it now.

God loves us and will love us forever. He gives us His grace and it is ours as soon as we acknowledge it.

“And memory of Him awakens in the mind that asks the means of Him whereby its sleep is done.”

This is what we are doing as we study A Course in Miracles. We are asking how it is we can wake up. The Voice for God answers us through this Course and through any other path that we take. He answers us in our dreams and in our waking hours. We only have to ask. I think that sometimes I have failed to hear the answer because I was asking the wrong question and so I did not recognize the relevance of His answer. Sometimes I don’t recognize the answer because it was not the one I wanted to hear. Sometimes it is because I am listening to my thinking mind instead.

Today we ask of God the gift He has most carefully preserved within our hearts, waiting to be acknowledged. This the gift by which God leans to us and lifts us up, taking salvation’s final step Himself. All steps but this we learn, instructed by His Voice. But finally He comes Himself, and takes us in His Arms and sweeps away the cobwebs of our sleep. His gift of grace is more than just an answer. It restores all memories the sleeping mind forgot; all certainty of what Love’s meaning is.

The study and practice of A Course in Miracles is not going to awaken me, this is done through the Grace of God. What the study and practice of ACIM does for me is to prepare my mind for grace. It is to clear away the ego thinking enough so that I am fully willing to accept this precious gift of God. Grace offers us the complete restoration of our mind. There will be no more fear, no more guilt, no more confusion, pain, or suffering. We will know our Self and thus know our unity in God.

“Our faith lies in the Giver, not our own acceptance.”

This is very good news, indeed. Even my acceptance is fully supported. I used to think that it was going to take forever for me to wake up because I was inconsistent in my work and there just seemed to be so much within my mind that needed to be healed. I would ask for guidance and then I would not accept that guidance. How would I ever awaken? But Jesus says that I don’t have to my faith in myself. I can trust the Giver. I know that I have faith in the Holy Spirit. Now I will extend that trust to know that He will find means to give me what I need to lay down my mistakes and accept grace. I am reminded now of a line from a song by Bob Marley.

“Don’t worry about a thing, every little thing is gonna be alright”

Regina’s Tips
Regina shares an interview with Steve Ford in which he describes his awakening experience. You may want to read it. I know that not everyone has the same experience, but the point I got from it was there needs to be a sincere desire and then God leans to us and lifts us up. This is what the lesson is telling us.

Regina says: As Steve points out, it may not work if we ask today for God’s grace of awakening, because it may be the ego that is asking. If one feels completely ready for the death of the ego, the time is right. If the ego wants awakening for itself, the time is not right.

So, what do we do with today’s lesson? My recommendation is a day of deep contemplation and sincere prayer. …Get as deep into your sincere heart as you can today, and pray the prayers that are sincere for you.

Text
X. the Time of Rebirth, P 6
6 As host to the ego, you believe that you can give all your guilt away whenever you want, and thereby purchase peace. And the payment does not seem to be yours. While it is obvious that the ego does demand payment it never seems to be demanding it of you. You are unwilling to recognize that the ego, which you invited, is treacherous only to those who think they are its host. The ego will never let you perceive this, since this recognition would make it homeless. For when the recognition dawns clearly, you will not be deceived by any form the ego takes to protect itself from your sight. Each form will be recognized as but a cover for the one idea that hides behind them all; that love demands sacrifice, and is therefore inseparable from attack and fear. And that guilt is the price of love, which must be paid by fear.


Journal

In the last paragraph, I looked at how we have entangled love with fear, guilt, and sacrifice. This paragraph is asking us to look at the ego as the cause of this confusion. We have guilt in our mind, both conscious and unconscious and the ego offers us a way to avoid looking at it. We project the guilt onto someone else and the ego mind insists this is a viable solution. It absolutely doesn’t want us to know this doesn’t work.

The ego wants us to think we need it because if we discover that it is unnecessary and even destructive to us, we will not continue to host it. We invited the ego into our minds and it is up to us to choose differently. The way we do this is to question the ego thoughts by looking at them with our right minds. It is really simple to do this. Everything is either love or fear and if the thought we have is not love we can look at it with the Holy Spirit and decide if we really want to keep it.

We have made it easy to look at our thoughts by making them images that are seen and felt. Remember Lesson 15?

My thoughts are images I have made.

It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing. 2 You think you think them, and so you think you see them. 3 This is how your “seeing” was made. 4 This is the function you have given your body’s eyes. 5 It is not seeing. 6 It is image making. 7 It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions.

So, here are our thoughts, appearing as images so that we can look at them and see what it feels like to believe these thoughts and see the effects of our beliefs. Here is an example of how this worked for me in the past.

Toward the end of my marriage, I began to see my husband as the cause of my unhappiness. The ego part of my mind was always eager to project the cause of my misery onto him. When I looked with the ego at the relationship, I saw ample proof that he was the problem. It all seemed so obvious to me. It was right there in front of my eyes.

Later when I began to heal that relationship, I asked the Holy Spirit to look at it with me. I was reminded that what was before my eyes were illusions. These images were really a projection of my beliefs. If he seemed to attack me with his behavior, it was because I felt guilty and accepted the ego’s solution of projection. I wanted to see him as guilty to relieve my own guilt.

When I withdrew my projection and accepted correction, my image changed. I saw him as simply living his script as it was written and I recognized there is no guilt in this. I was doing the same thing. Our scripts are the images of the beliefs we came to undo. How could either of us be guilty for this? With no need to rid myself of guilt, there was no need to make him guilty.

Doing this with my thoughts for many years has healed my mind. I still have a few thoughts that try to return, and I deal with them as I have in the past. But I am no longer willing to host the ego. Sure, it is still there because I am still here, but I pay little attention to it other than to stay vigilant for beliefs that still hook me even momentarily. The ego is now my servant rather than the other way around.

Manual for Teachers
Chapter 1. WHO ARE GOD’S TEACHERS?
1 A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else’s. Once he has done that, his road is established and his direction is sure. A light has entered the darkness. It may be a single light, but that is enough. He has entered an agreement with God even if he does not yet believe in Him. He has become a bringer of salvation. He has become a teacher of God.

How interesting this is! To be a teacher of God, I only have to make a deliberate choice in which I don’t see my interests as apart from someone else’s. I don’t have to do this all the time nor do I even need to be aware of the choice. Just that I did it once, ignited the light in my mind. I think of this as being the spark of truth that lit up and made itself known in some small way. Or I could see this as the Holy Spirit Who is now alerted to my readiness to be guided Home.

Jesus also says that when this happened, I entered an agreement with God and this would be true even if I did not yet believe in Him. I have always believed in God so that part didn’t apply to me. I misunderstood Him and sometimes I was angry with Him, and always a bit afraid of Him, but I always believed. But I find myself wondering when was the first time that I made a deliberate choice in which I don’t see my interests as apart from someone else’s.

Whenever it was without knowing it in my conscious mind, I had placed my feet on the path to be a bringer of salvation. That idea when first read frightened me. What a responsibility that is! I didn’t feel like a good student much less a good teacher, and now I was to be a bringer of salvation? Well, the thing is, once a single light is ignited in the mind, it begins to burn ever brighter and with more light, there is less darkness and the ego fears and insecurities are burnt away. I realized at some point that this is not the little ego me Jesus talks about. The Holy Spirit did all the heavy lifting and in doing so awakened me. He only needed my permission and that moment of choice was the permission He was waiting for.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Lesson 167, Text, Manual for Teachers. 9-30-19

LESSON 167
There is one life, and that I share with God.

“There is no death because what God created shares His Life. There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist. There is no death because the Father and the Son are one.”

“All sorrow, loss, anxiety and suffering and pain, even a little sigh of weariness, a slight discomfort or the merest frown, acknowledge death. And thus deny you live.”

“Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator. It is the belief conditions change, emotions alternate because of causes you cannot control, you did not make, and you can never change. It is the fixed belief ideas can leave their source, and take on qualities the source does not contain, becoming different from their own origin, apart from it in kind as well as distance, time and form.”

“Death cannot come from life. Ideas remain united to their source.”

What all this is telling me so far is that death in all its forms cannot be real because I have not separated from my Source and I cannot be different than my Source. So, if I think I am sick or suffering in any way, I must be dreaming because it cannot happen. The solution to death and the effects of believing in death, is to remember who I am and where I exist. Once again, all ideas of suffering are the result of not believing that I am as I was created. God is Life and therefore so am I and Life cannot be death. As Jesus says, “As they were born, so will they then give birth. And where they come from, there will they return.”

“The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist, because it has no source. For mind creates all things that are, and cannot give them attributes it lacks, nor change its own eternal, mindful state. It cannot make the physical. What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep.”

This paragraph is very important. It is from reading this that I realized that not only am I not this body, I am not in this body. I am dreaming of bodies. This changes everything. It is the reason that very often now I can be at peace even when the dream has taken on a nightmarish quality. I can often watch while people I love seem to suffer and not be afraid for them. They are safe because they are among the Sons of God and danger does not exist in them. Yes, I am still a mind asleep and sometimes I get caught in the dream and forget the truth, but I also have periods of time now when the dream is lucid and I understand what is happening. Jesus says that mind is mind, awake or sleeping. I am not what I seem to make while I believe I sleep.

“God creates only mind awake.”

What this means is that I cannot create a mind asleep because I can only create as God creates. He did not give me mind asleep and so I cannot create mind asleep. He did not create death and so I cannot die or live death thoughts. I can only dream these things. And then Jesus says something else interesting. He says:

“Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly, but yet within themselves, for they are everywhere.”

This give me an inkling of what we are. I am among the Thoughts of God. I have the power to extend forever changelessly. I am everywhere. Holy cow! When something like this comes into my awareness, I feel my heart expand and love overcome me. Sometimes it leaks out of me as tears of joy and I think I remember something of this though I cannot envision it. But it also scares me just a little and the fear closes off my heart. It’s OK, though, because it always comes back.

“It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was.”

And this passage evokes tears of relief and gratitude and I know this is true. I don’t remember it but I have absolutely no doubt that it is true and I long to return to that awakened state.

Regina’s Tips
Today’s workbook lesson defines death as an idea, and nothing more. It says this idea “underlies all feelings that are not supremely happy.” That is because happiness is a natural characteristic of life aware of itself. Whenever we are not supremely happy, our attention is distracted from our truth as life.

Let’s practice in this way today. Whenever you notice that you are not happy, take these steps:
1 – Look briefly to get some clarity regarding the specific feeling of unhappiness. (e.g., In the example above, the unhappiness was specifically a feeling of loss.)

2 – Look at the specific feeling, and notice it is a form of the wish for something different. You might ask yourself, “Do I think I would be happier if this was different than it is?” If the answer is yes, it is the wish for something different.

3 – Shift your attention to notice and appreciate awareness-life-presence for a few moments. During this time, let go of your thoughts about the situation related to your unhappiness. Give full, restful attention to noticing awareness-life-presence as it is.

4 – Next, look with reason to see if the specific feeling of unhappiness is a fact that was noticed in awareness-life-presence or just a thought in the mind. (For example, if the feeling is rejection, is there any rejection found in awareness-life-presence or is awareness-life-presence the same as it always is? If the specific feeling is guilt, is there any guilt found in awareness-life-presence? Etcetera.)

5 – With the recognition that there was no affect on awareness-life-presence, say to yourself, “There is one life, and that I share with God.”

Text
X. the Time of Rebirth, P 5
T-15.X.5. It is not necessary to follow fear through all the circuitous routes by which it burrows underground and hides in darkness, to emerge in forms quite different from what it is. 2 Yet it is necessary to examine each one as long as you would retain the principle that governs all of them. 3 When you are willing to regard them, not as separate, but as different manifestations of the same idea, and one you do not want, they go together. 4 The idea is simply this: You believe it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God. 5 This is the choice you think you have, and the decision you believe that you must make. 6 You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact that sacrifice gets nothing. 7 Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. 8 Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice. 9 And it is this that you must look upon; sacrifice is attack, not love. 10 If you would accept but this one idea, your fear of love would vanish. 11 Guilt cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. 12 For if there is sacrifice, someone must pay and someone must get. 13 And the only question that remains is how much is the price, and for getting what.

Journal
What I understand now about fear is that no matter what form it takes, it is just the belief in fear. I still look at the forms as they show up in my life, but I don’t try to figure anything out. I used to try to see where that fear started. Was it when I was a child or maybe in a past life something happened that planted that fear in my mind? But now, I know that doesn’t matter.

The only time the belief in fear can be healed is right now and it is not done through therapy or understanding of the fear. It is done as I realize that fear is not real and is just a sensation in my body that occurs with the belief in it. Situations might trigger fear, but the fear was already there or there would be nothing to trigger. I have to decide to believe the truth, and that truth is that no matter what happens in the story, I am safe because I am innocent. I am as God created me.

4 The idea is simply this: You believe it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God.
This is why we don’t feel safe. We believe that God is not on our side, that he wants sacrifice from us. I can remember as a child trying to bargain with God. I would make outlandish promises to him if he would do some good thing for me. I believed that he did not particularly want me to have a good thing, either because he was not especially interested in my wellbeing or because I was not deserving of it.

Perhaps that is why I started studying the Course. Maybe there was still some of that frightened little girl in me that thought all this work was the sacrifice God wants of me in order to give me a good and happy life. But to be happy I had to grow up. I had to realize that the study of the Course was not to placate an uncaring or angry God; it was to mature my mind and to show me how I was hurting myself so I could stop. God has never wanted my sacrifice.

7 Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. 8 Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice.
I could read that God loves me all day but if I believe that love and sacrifice go together, I would never be able to trust God because I could not trust love and God is Love. I grew up with this confusion as did we all. I experienced it in Catholic school and I experienced it at home. The implication I got in both environments was that sacrifice was a commodity that I could trade for love.

My parents often used either fear or guilt to control my behavior. If I was a good girl, I was loved. I understand that kind of parenting. It comes from fear, but fear teaches fear and guilt teaches guilt and it all calls for sacrifice. When I was married sacrifice was an assumption of love. I did things he liked and he loved me. He did things I liked and I loved him.

We each had to sacrifice what we wanted in order to please the other. If the balance was disturbed so was the relationship. This kind of relationship is fear-based and this kind of tradeoff is not love. It is attack. 10 If you would accept but this one idea, your fear of love would vanish.

How can we love one another when there is so much sacrifice, fear, and guilt in our relationships? How can we even know what love is when we have added these unnecessary beliefs to love? We must let these ideas die a natural death as we do our forgiveness work and learn to give love for love’s sake instead of using our relationships as a way to get.

12 For if there is sacrifice, someone must pay and someone must get. 13 And the only question that remains is how much is the price, and for getting what.

Manual for Teachers
Introduction, Paragraph 4

4 This is inevitable. There is no escape from it. How could it be otherwise? Everyone who follows the world’s curriculum, and everyone here does follow it until he changes his mind, teaches solely to convince himself that he is what he is not. Herein is the purpose of the world. What else, then, would its curriculum be? Into this hopeless and closed learning situation, which teaches nothing but despair and death, God sends His teachers. And as they teach His lessons of joy and hope, their learning finally becomes complete.

What a relief it is to read in paragraph 4 that there is a way to break the cycle of teaching what is the cause of our suffering.
Into this hopeless and closed learning situation, which teaches nothing but despair and death, God sends His teachers.
Helen, through her willingness to do the work given her and thereby bringing A Course in Miracles into the world, is an outstanding example of this. Regina Dawn Akers, Nouk Sanchez, and others are examples of this. As I have studied and practiced the Course, I have accepted that my role is one of teacher, and so I am an example of this.

We all are teachers of God as we allow our mind to be healed, and to the degree to which we allow that healing. All of us reading this are at least sometimes teaching for God because our mind is at least partially healed through our practice and our willingness. And as we teach, in whatever way our curriculum leads us, our healing becomes more and more complete.

I want to be a more consistent teacher for God and so I am going to keep my reminder handy: My every word, thought and deed is teaching me and everyone else. Is this what I want to teach? I am going to be especially vigilant to notice what I am actually teaching others and myself.
It is not really hard to do this. Are my words and my thoughts congruent? Am I saying that I am at peace while I try to smother the anxiety I feel as I think time is slipping away from me? (I’m laughing because I couldn’t immediately think of an example or how to say this and so I asked
Holy Spirit for something, and I was surprised by that last sentence. Evidently, I had been hiding this from myself.)

So, let me rephrase that. Are my words and thoughts and feelings congruent? My feelings will often help me become aware of the belief that is the source of the thoughts, words, and actions. My words are not always the measure of what I am teaching myself. Holy Spirit, please help me stay aware of the beliefs that are driving my life so that I can ask for healing where needed.

I will remember my gratitude today that as I teach my lessons of joy and hope my learning is becoming complete. Thank you, God.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Lesson 165.  9-29-19

I skipped this lesson so I am making up for it now.
LESSON 165

Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.

Journal
“The Thought of God created you. It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from it an instant. It belongs to you. By it you live. It is your Source of life, holding you one with it, and everything is one with you because it left you not. The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. Eternity and everlasting life shine in your mind, because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you.”

I know that the Thought of God is not just me thinking about God. It is the Creative Force that is Life. I could not have lost that or I would not live. It remains with me even in my dreams of separation. All the things that the Thought of God gives me, care, protection, happiness and love, are still there for me and if that is not my experience it is because I have turned away from them. My attention is on the ego’s gifts of pain, suffering and death. As I have released more and more of the ego beliefs, my experience is closer to my reality.

“Sureness is not required to receive what only your acceptance can bestow.”

It’s a good thing this is true. When I started asking for healing, I was not entirely certain I wanted it. I wanted to be free of the effects of choosing ego, but I sometimes still wanted to feel like a victim or unfairly treated. I often wanted to keep pointing at my brother as the guilty one so as to obscure my part. But that I asked, meant that I was answered. And, as I was able, I accepted the answer even if I had to do so a little at a time.

“Ask with desire.”

When I first began this journey, I asked out of desperation for a better life. It took a while before that asking changed to one of true desire. Now my heart longs for the memory of Self and the memory of the oneness of God. Now the answers come quicker and I embrace them faster and more completely.

“Now is all doubting past, the journey’s end made certain, and salvation given you. Now is Christ’s power in your mind, to heal as you were healed. For now you are among the saviors of the world.”

This isn’t 100% true for me 100% of the time, but it is truer for me than it ever has been, and true enough for me to know that the journey’s end is imminent. Abundance dwells in me and what deprivation is left in my mind is being undone even now as I write about this. It cannot cut me off from God’s sustaining Love.

“We count on God, and not upon ourselves, to give us certainty. And in His Name we practice as His Word directs we do. His sureness lies beyond our every doubt. His Love remains beyond our every fear. The Thought of Him is still beyond all dreams and in our minds, according to His Will.”

Regina’s Tips

Today’s workbook lesson encourages us to practice with hope, because hope counteracts doubt.

What if we replaced every thought of doubt with a thought of hope? For example, we could replace, “I do not want truth enough” with “I must want truth more than I think, because spirituality is an ongoing focus in my life.”

Which do you think benefits the purpose of awakening more: negative thoughts of doubt or positive thoughts of hope? Which do you think benefits the ego more?

Let’s do two things today:

1 – Pay particular attention to discover the thoughts of doubt that you listen to. Look at those thoughts with reason, meaning notice that those thoughts serve the ego and discourage spiritual aspiration. Look for reasonable thoughts of hope to replace them with, thoughts that encourage you instead of discouraging you.

2 – Continue to notice awareness-life-presence. Throughout the day, each time you remember, take a moment to notice that you are aware and you exist. Even when you are distracted from awareness-life-presence by doubt, you are still aware and you still exist. Doubt does not change the truth; it only denies it.

My Thoughts

One of my common doubt thoughts was that I do not practice well enough or long enough to realize truth. That is no longer true for me. I have noticed the Holy Spirit’s nudge from time to time to give more time to meditation. It feels more like a strong desire to meditate or just an awareness that I am not as happy when I don’t give time for meditation. It is not that same feeling of dread that I used to have when I thought I was slacking off and my laziness or inability to do this right was going to keep me in hell. I am grateful for these gentle reminders.

© 2019, 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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Gentle Healing Lesson 166, Manual for Teachers, Text.  9-26-19

LESSON 166
I am entrusted with the gifts of God.

God has given us everything. The reason we are not aware of His gifts is because we do not see that our will is one with His. We made a world of our own with a separate will. The world is not real and neither is separate will.  “…but every mind that looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators; or in one, himself alone. But never in one God.”

While we believe in our own separate will and while we prefer it to our true will which is one with God’s Will, we will believe that accepting God’s gifts will be capitulation. It would be a denial of the little self. And so we suffer and think the suffering is a small price to pay to preserve the world we made.

We are so confused. We are afraid to give up the world we know for the world that is our Home but is no longer in our conscious memory. We think we want to be human because we have forgotten what it is like to be Divine Beings. But even in this amnesiac state in which we find ourselves, God goes with us. We are lost in our own senseless wandering mind, but not lost to God who knows us and loves us.

No matter how tragic the story and now much we seem to suffer, we remain as we were created, we remain eternal and perfect. We are literally choosing to replace reality with this imagined world. We defend against Heaven and refuse to see the evidence that proves we are not what God created.

Here is something I wrote a short time ago. I said that I must be closer to awakening, to accepting the truth. I say this because I utter the truth such as I am as God created me. I am an eternal and divine being. I am in God and of God right now. And this time when I remind myself of the truth, I feel a frisson of fear pass through me. It’s hard to put into words. Maybe like, how could that be? What would that be like? I feel a desire to remain small because I know smallness and I don’t know greatness. After the fear passes, I smile because I am not interested. I know that shudder of fear is the ego and I am not the ego.

That fear passed and I became ready for the Christ to help me perceive my Self and to know my Self. I laugh at the perception of myself as small and insignificant, as fearful and guilty. I now know that I am not this body image and this sad little story. I know what is not true about me and I am letting the memory of what is true come in its own time. I simply stay open and receptive and trusting.

“God’s Will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His Will. There was a need He did not understand, to which He gave an Answer. That is all. And you who have this Answer given you have need no more of anything but this.”

People often wonder how it is that God could not know of our plan to lose our Self and choose an alien will with which to do this. If we are in God, and God is in us, then how could He not know about our life here and our fears and guilt? I like to remember that God does not believe, God knows and what He knows is eternal and unchangeable. If God knew of the world then the world would be eternal and unchangeable. Not something to wish for, is it?

I don’t know God the Father, and so I cannot know the actual answer to that question of how it is that we can be part of God and yet He not be aware of the world we made. The closest I can come is to think of our experience here as a dream. I am in God and part of the mind is dreaming. God knows that the dream is interrupting our communication and thus interrupting our joy and peace,  and so He placed His Voice within us so that we could awaken when we were ready. His Voice is the answer to our suffering.

“The gifts you have are not for you alone.”

The Voice for God is bringing us back to an awakened state so that we can remember who we are. But as we receive this call to awaken, we must also share it. We must learn to give. We become the teachers of God who help our brothers awaken with us. And how do we do that?

“Teach them by showing them the happiness that comes to those who feel the touch of Christ, and recognize God’s gifts. Let sorrow not tempt you to be unfaithful to your trust”

This is my commitment and I live up to it as much as I am able. When I fall short of being the living proof of what Christ’s touch can offer everyone, I correct my course and continue to walk the path. He has shared His joy with me and now my job is to share it with the world. That is my mission.

Regina’s Tips
NTI teaches that the ego began with the wish for something different than what is. Because that is the basis of the ego, that is a key element of the ego thought system. If you pay attention to your mind, you will see that this idea shows up in one form or another multiple times each day.

Today we will shift our attention from unhappiness to happiness, from the wish for something different to appreciation for the magnificent treasure that is always present.

Each time you notice the wish for something different in your mind today, pause. Shift your attention to awareness-life-presence, and spend a few moments appreciating it. Be as vigilant in this practice as you can be. I say this, because the wish for something different is a strong habit; it could occur many times during the day without you noticing it.

For example, the wish for something different may show up as the wish for more time to get things done, or as the wish for fewer things to do. It may show up as the wish for less traffic or a shorter line at the grocery store. It may show up as the wish that someone around you were different than he/she is. It may show up as the wish that you were different or that your body was different. It may show up as the wish that the world was different than it is.

Pay attention today for the wish for something different in whatever way it shows up in your thoughts, and then shift attention to notice the treasure. Let yourself feel appreciation for awareness-life-presence. Follow that by slowly saying to yourself, “I am entrusted with the gifts of God.”

My Thoughts
My mind is focused today on choosing to remember and love through my highest Self and to see myself as God the Son. It is also focused on my responsibility to share what I am given through the way I live my life. It has taken me a minute to shift my mind to another way to do this. I can also focus my awareness on the mind that wants to think things should be different.

I see the value in changing my mind about that. Thinking things should be different in my life is a reflection of the original tiny mad idea in which I wanted reality to change. So in a sense, my wish for something to be different is the same as the original wish I had for things to be different. Every day is Groundhog Day, and though the form is different, the basis of the form is the same, let today be different than reality.

So today, I will pay special attention to the desire for things to be different. I started out feeling a little frazzled so I stopped to examine my thoughts. I saw that I felt like Monday’s are too full and that I would not have time to get everything done. So, I wanted that to be different. I let that thought go by deciding that today is perfect as it is and I will get done what I get done. Interestingly enough, everything is getting done that I had planned and I am at peace while it is all happening. It just took a simple change of mind.

Text
X. The Time of Rebirth, P 4
4 It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make the time of Christ be now. It is possible to do this all at once because there is but one shift in perception that is necessary, for you made but one mistake. It seems like many, but it is all the same. For though the ego takes many forms, it is always the same idea. What is not love is always fear, and nothing else.

Journal
I know that Jesus is right when he says that it is in our power to make the time of Christ to be now. I also know that I couldn’t do that all at once, not that it wasn’t possible but that I couldn’t do it. From a new perspective, I see how simple it really is. I recognize now that when I felt guilty for some parental error it was no different than when I felt guilty for an angry word, or that I seemed never to learn. That guilt is no different than if I had been a dangerous pedophile or a murderer. In our world of differences, there seems to be many kinds of guilt and some seem worse and some seem to hold greater importance. But that is not true. Guilt is guilt no matter what form it takes.

This same idea holds true for any other form of fear. Fear of heights is no different than fear that I will be late for the show. No matter how different it feels to me, it is just fear. Anger is another form of fear and anger that it is raining on the day I wanted to walk outside is no different than anger that a marriage failed or someone stole from me. If it is not love, it is fear.

I make a choice for Christ each time I reject the belief in fear in whatever form it takes in the moment. That is what I did and it brought me to the place I am now. It is possible to skip all the little steps I took to get to this place, but I didn’t do it that way. From this present perspective this kind of makes me laugh at how much time it took me to recognize what was right in front of me all along.

How much less painful it would have been to simply accept that if it wasn’t love it was fear and then decide I wasn’t interested in the fear. If I refuse to accept fear the only thing left is love.

Manual for Teachers
Introduction P 3
M-in.3. The curriculum you set up is therefore determined exclusively by what you think you are, and what you believe the relationship of others is to you. 2 In the formal teaching situation, these questions may be totally unrelated to what you think you are teaching. 3 Yet it is impossible not to use the content of any situation on behalf of what you really teach, and therefore really learn. 4 To this the verbal content of your teaching is quite irrelevant. 5 It may coincide with it, or it may not. 6 It is the teaching underlying what you say that teaches you. 7 Teaching but reinforces what you believe about yourself. 8 Its fundamental purpose is to diminish self-doubt. 9 This does not mean that the self you are trying to protect is real. 10 But it does mean that the self you think is real is what you teach.

I see that I am always teaching what I think I am, what I believe about myself and what I believe about you in relation to me. What I say may not be congruent with what I believe, but that will do nothing to change what I believe. This self I teach, and through teaching, constantly reinforce, may not be real, but if it is what I teach it becomes very real to me.

Here is an example, as I understand this. For a long time, I believed that I was a victim of the world I see. Because this was the belief in my mind, this was the interpretation I gave everything that happened to me. For instance, I did not know how to mother my first two children and did not do it well. I felt deeply ashamed and guilty, and I told myself that this was not my fault.

This was the story I told myself. My mother was a poor role model, so I was a victim of my circumstances, and of her failure as a mother. I needed to reinforce this story if I was going to believe it and convince others it was true, so I found a therapist who told me the same story. And I collected friends who were willing to witness to my victimization.

To appear even more innocent (to myself and others) I added martyr to my image as I made excuses for my mom, “she was just doing the best she could” stories. But though my words seemed charitable, they had nothing to do with what I believed, so what I was really teaching was that I was a victim, and she was guilty of victimizing me, but I was a charitable person so I was going to “forgive” her. Of course, this is not true forgiveness but rather “forgiveness to destroy”.

All the time I thought I was protecting (or maybe hiding) this image of myself through projecting blame; I was teaching victimization and learning victimization. And so, many victim stories followed. I was building this image of myself as a helpless victim with layers and layers of stories of being victimized. I often said I did not want to be a victim, and as I learned some psychology, I used different words that sounded good, but those words were hollow because I believed I was a victim and so this is what I taught.

And of course, every victim needs a victimizer so I collected those as well, and reinforced through my relationships with them that they were victimizers. What a sad and self-defeating cycle this is, and yet it is the cycle we all live in one form or another until we choose differently through choosing a different teacher. Now that I have chosen a different Teacher, my life is different so I am teaching differently.

My life doesn’t teach victimization because I can’t imagine ever again believing in victimization. The idea feels absurd to me now. My teaching in this is congruent with my beliefs and actions and so that teaching is the same in a formal situation that it is in what my life teaches. I recently let go of the belief in guilt and because this is recent, guilt thoughts still show up sometimes and my actions and words are not as free of guilt as they will be soon.

It is like I have cleaned my house, but once in a while, I notice something out of place or cobwebs I had missed, dust bunnies under the couch. I simply clean them away and enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. It is like that with guilt thoughts for me. A simple cleaning up of any fragments of the old belief. So, I am not yet teaching innocence perfectly, but will be as this process continues. As I teach myself that I am no longer interested in guilt, I teach others the same thing, and as I teach them, I reinforce the lesson for me.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Lesson 164, Manual for Teachers, Text.  9-25-19

Lesson 164
Now are we one with Him Who is our Source.

“What time but now can truth be recognized? The present is the only time there is. And so today, this instant, now, we come to look upon what is forever there; not in our sight, but in the eyes of Christ.”

I am one with God. Right now. Not at some later time, am I one with God. Not after I have done something to make this happen, or come to deserve this through effort on my part. The work and effort I put into this is merely to bring me to the point of acceptance. I am already and always have been one with God and so I am That in this present moment. Not through my eyes, but through the eyes of Christ I see this.

“Christ answers for you, echoing your Self, using your voice to give His glad consent; accepting your deliverance for you.”

Jesus says that Christ answers for me, echoing my Self. I am for a moment confused by this. How is Christ and Self different? I think I understand, though. Christ refers to the Sonship as a whole, the entirety of the Sonship. Self is that entirety but also is part of that entirety. So, I can say Self is Christ, but my Self is a part of Christ. The part that is most important, that really matters in this, is that my voice (my Self, evidently, and not my self) must give consent but the Christ will accept my deliverance for me. So my awakening is done by the Christ as my Self gives consent for it.

We will not judge today. We will receive but what is given us from judgment made beyond the world.

We do have a part in this. This part seems to be up to the ‘me’ that I most identify with. For a long time, this meant the self that appears to be residing in the world of time and space in this body. I don’t identify with this self nearly as much, hardly at all, but it is the self I am experiencing and to some degree still identify with.

So Myron practices non-judgment all the time. I am always aware of the tendency to judge both other people and myself, to judge situations, to have preferences because that is a judgment as well. When I notice this, I realize I am not interested in that anymore. I believe that I can stop judging people and myself. I believe that because I see how I have changed in that way. I just don’t have the desire to judge as often as I used to.

Maybe this personality I am using in this incarnation will always have preferences and maybe it will always have a tendency to judge. I don’t know. But I have seen that those judgmental thoughts and desires are lessened and that they don’t impact me the way they used to. I prefer vanilla ice cream over chocolate, but I will eat either or neither without caring very much.

Open the curtain in your practicing by merely letting go all things you think you want.

This is my constant practice. I let go all things I think I want. That brings up a question in my mind. What things do I still want? Those things obstruct what I could have instead, the remembrance of my oneness in God. I want my children to be safe. I want them to live happy lives. I want them to outlive me. The first thought is that there is nothing wrong with wanting this for them. It is the loving thing to do, and how could I want otherwise?

And yet, I have seen that wanting this for anyone is suffering. They have their script to play out and it is not likely to be any different than mine. It will look different, but it will still reflect the unhealed mind and so it will have its share of suffering and it will go where it goes. Wanting it to be different will not make it different and will only cause me suffering.

Knowing this has not completely alleviated the suffering I have experienced because to some degree I resist this knowing. But I am practicing acceptance. I think of something painful that could happen to one of my children and if I follow that thought I find myself in a story and all stories lead to suffering. However, if I have that thought and I am not interested in it, the thought falls away and I have just grown in willingness and understanding. And I can’t ignore the fact that what I want for them doesn’t change what they get so the whole exercise in wanting is a waste and helps no one.

Let not today slip by without the gifts it holds for you receiving your consent and your acceptance. We can change the world, if you acknowledge them. You may not see the value your acceptance gives the world. But this you surely want; you can exchange all suffering for joy this very day.

Text
X. The Time of Rebirth, P 3
3 We who are one cannot give separately. When you are willing to accept our relationship as real, guilt will hold no attraction for you. For in our union you will accept all of our brothers. The gift of union is the only gift that I was born to give. Give it to me, that you may have it. The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. And by your acceptance of it, you offer it to everyone.

Journal

I suppose that I must have accepted my relationship with Jesus as real since I talk to him all the time and ask him for help and advice when that is needed. I take what he says in the Course very seriously and I strived to meet the goals he has placed before me until I had done so. It sometimes felt difficult but in retrospect, I would always understand it was only my resistance that made it feel hard. And I saw that it was never a sacrifice. He is a good friend, a good elder brother.

Now I look for him everywhere and in everyone, not the human form he took, of course, but the Christ he is. If I don’t see the Christ in someone, I know that I have blinded myself with ego thoughts and judgments, so I ask for correction and I ask for Christ’s Vision. It is a gift that is readily given to me as soon as I truly want it. That is why I ask for correction first. If I keep the judgment, I will not truly want to see differently. I cannot judge and see with Christ’s Vision. I cannot be in union with someone I judge. I cannot be free until I am in union with all. With a mind free of dark thoughts I will naturally seek union and naturally offer it to everyone.

Manual for Teachers
Introduction P 2
M-in.2. To teach is to demonstrate. 2 There are only two thought systems, and you demonstrate that you believe one or the other is true all the time. 3 From your demonstration others learn, and so do you. 4 The question is not whether you will teach, for in that there is no choice. 5 The purpose of the course might be said to provide you with a means of choosing what you want to teach on the basis of what you want to learn. 6 You cannot give to someone else, but only to yourself, and this you learn through teaching. 7 Teaching is but a call to witnesses to attest to what you believe. 8 It is a method of conversion. 9 This is not done by words alone. 10 Any situation must be to you a chance to teach others what you are, and what they are to you. 11 No more than that, but also never less.

Jesus begins by telling us that to teach is to demonstrate. I can teach kindness and love and union all day long but if I then live a selfish, fearful life in isolation, I have demonstrated the opposite of my words. This demonstration is more powerful than anything I simply say or write. I cannot demonstrate the characteristics that are in alignment with my true nature simply by believing I should. I have to release the belief that I must defend and attack, judge and hold grievances. As I do this, I am learning to be a teacher of God rather than a teacher of ego.

Jesus emphasizes that we teach and we do so all the time. We cannot avoid teaching because our words, actions and even thoughts are teaching whether we want them to or not. Jesus says we can use the Course to learn to teach what we want to learn. I want to learn love and peace and joy. I want that to be my life, and therefore, that is what I teach as much as I can. If I see myself drawn to a grievance or a desire to defend, I feel it as if it was a sickness and I reject it as quickly as I can because I have learned to be free and I can’t give that up.

10 Any situation must be to you a chance to teach others what you are, and what they are to you. 11 No more than that, but also never less. This passage intrigues me. My actions and words will reveal what I am rather than what I want people to think I am. I get that because I have experienced it with other people. I have seen Course teachers say one thing but then in unguarded moments they showed me that they didn’t live what they teach. I have done the same thing, I am sure. Sometimes we believe something to be true but we don’t yet know it and so it isn’t really ours yet. The Course teaches us how to achieve purification so that what we believe becomes what we know and then we will be consistent in what we teach.

The second part of that sentence says that we teach others what they are to us. Without even realizing it, I used to teach the people in my life that they were of use to me. I used them as a source of entertainment when I was bored. Sometimes, I used them to vent my frustrations. I used them to convince me I was loveable and then I used them to prove I was unlovable. It was the same with worthiness. I used others to prove whatever it was I chose to believe about myself. I used them to receive the darkness I couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge as mine, projecting my stuff onto them and pretending that it had nothing to do with me. There is no way to avoid doing these things until the mind is healed. Thank God, for A Course in Miracles.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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