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Study of Text, Chapter 12: V. The Sane Curriculum, P 1. 2-22-16

V. The Sane Curriculum, P 1
1 Only love is strong because it is undivided. The strong do not attack because they see no need to do so. Before the idea of attack can enter your mind, you must have perceived yourself as weak. Because you attacked yourself and believed that the attack was effective, you behold yourself as weakened. No longer perceiving yourself and your brothers as equal, and regarding yourself as weaker, you attempt to “equalize” the situation you made. You use attack to do so because you believe that attack was successful in weakening you.

Journal
The idea of equalizing the situation really brought the problem of attack and defend into focus for me. I attack myself and so feel weak, and so have taught myself that attack makes weak. Now my brother and I are no longer equal, and I want us to be equal. I know that attack makes weak because I proved it when I attacked myself, so I attack the other in an effort to equalize the situation.  And of course, I reinforce the idea that attack is a viable tool.

So what does this look like in my life? Here is something that used to happen at work all the time. I never felt like I was enough, that I worked hard enough, that I did enough, that I did it well enough. I felt like my boss was a constant threat to me, because he could affect my salary and even my job itself. He seemed to have all the power. In an effort to equalize the situation I was always finding fault with him. At least in my mind, and sometimes in conversation, I would point out all his flaws.

In fact, none of this was true. I did a good job and I worked hard. He appreciated me and he was a good man. The company had many excellent policies and was generous in their pay. There was nothing to equalize and my attacks on him and the company were not warranted. Sure, he had his moments in which he reacted from his own fear, and so did I, but he was not against me. It was all a war of my own making that came from the untrue thoughts in my mind.

Here is what changed. I began to undo the idea of guilt. I stopped making myself guilty all the time. (Still a work in progress.) Without these guilt attacks on myself I stopped feeling less than. I began to understand that God is my Source in all things, that I am sustained, not by man, not by my job, not by my boss, but by God. 

As my mind healed, my self worth was no longer in question and my self attacks ended (or lessened a great deal) and so there was no need to equalize the situation. Also, as my mind healed, I stopped thinking of attack as a viable tool, and began to see love as the healing balm that soothed all upsets.

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

Study of Text, Chapter 11, IV.Seeking and Finding, P 7. 2-18-16

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 7
7 The Atonement is not the price of your wholeness, but it is the price of your awareness of your wholeness. For what you chose to “sell” had to be kept for you, since you could not “buy” it back. Yet you must invest in it, not with money but with spirit. For spirit is will, and will is the “price” of the Kingdom. Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have been redeemed. The Holy Spirit guides you into life eternal, but you must relinquish your investment in death, or you will not see life though it is all around you.

Journal
I understand the price I have paid to embrace death. I understand it perfectly. I see what it looks like in my life. I know what it costs me to let it go and why I want to do this. I stand in utter astonishment at my own stubborn insistence on holding onto the little self I made. Sometimes I scare myself with my stubbornness. What if I never let it go? What if I can’t? What if I am completely wrong about everything? This is the fear that the truth is not true.

When I became aware of what I was doing to myself and when I started letting go of the blocks to the truth, the ego pulled out the big guns. The ego voice shouted at me about doubt and fear, insisting that this was just not possible and that I obviously cannot, will not, succeed. Probably, the ego says, because it is all nonsense. Just ask anyone … anyone not in the same ridiculous spiritual quest as I am in.

These thoughts used to terrify me, but I went through them and discovered they only have power as I give them meaning. When I go through them without slowing down to stew in them, nothing happens and I continue on my way to the truth. Sometimes, though, thoughts that the truth is not true find a place in my mind to take root, and I am temporarily shaken by them. Fortunately, I am no longer interested in feeding them so the roots are shallow and the thoughts are easily uprooted.

Today, I am listening to the Voice for God tell me about life everlasting, about love without conditions, about union and joy and peace. This Voice speaks to me all through the day and every day. Today, I am listening. The ego keeps trying to pull my attention away from that Voice, but I am enthralled with the Voice for God and its sweet promises. The ego is having no luck.

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

Study of Text, Chapter 12: !V. Seeking and Finding, P 6. 2-17-16

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 6
6 Behold the Guide your Father gave you, that you might learn you have eternal life. For death is not your Father’s Will nor yours, and whatever is true is the Will of the Father. You pay no price for life for that was given you, but you do pay a price for death, and a very heavy one. If death is your treasure, you will sell everything else to purchase it. And you will believe that you have purchased it, because you have sold everything else. Yet you cannot sell the Kingdom of Heaven. Your inheritance can neither be bought nor sold. There can be no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole and all His extensions are like Him.


Journal
My first thought on reading this was to wonder what I am selling to get death? How does this work? Obviously I am selling my wholeness, but how do I do this? I asked Holy Spirit to help me understand and to alert me when I am actually doing it. Here are some things He showed me.

I have a friend in financial need. Before I decide if I can give to her I think about other people I give to and I categorize them according to importance to me. How does this buy me death? Separating out those who are important and worthy of my help is a way I make separate, and only those who know their wholeness know eternal life.

I remember last night thinking about my body as a communication device. I wondered how it is that I use it for something else, and what came into my mind is a life-time of dieting, of trying to make the body look attractive to others in many little ways. I have wanted people to look at me and think I look good, to be impressed with me.

This is not communication because it is limited in what is being communicated and to whom. I want others to know a certain version of myself, and I want to use this to keep us separate, divided in groups according to their size, shape and general attractiveness. I am willing to sell out my wholeness for the very temporary approval of others. Again, without an awareness of wholeness, there is not life.

Another one that came to me is how I might use people to meet my own perceived special needs. I might call on a friend to spend time with me because I am lonely rather than because I want to share love. I might give to my children so that they will give me something in return, such as appreciation, rather than giving from the shear joy of giving. I might be nice to a customer to gain their loyalty rather than being nice because I know them as one with me.

Giving to get is just another way to sell out my wholeness. And what do I get from all of this? I get death, because living as a separate self with all these unfulfilled needs is not life. God is Life and He gave me life in my creation. I still have it, but to know I have it, I must let go of these symbols of death, even unto the strongest symbol, the death of the body itself. You would think I would understand this since even this body death turns out to be a joke.

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

Study of Text, Chapter 12: !V. Seeking and Finding, P 5. 2-16-16

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 5
5 You will undertake a journey because you are not at home in this world. And you will search for your home whether you realize where it is or not. If you believe it is outside you the search will be futile, for you will be seeking it where it is not. You do not remember how to look within for you do not believe your home is there. Yet the Holy Spirit remembers it for you, and He will guide you to your home because that is His mission. As He fulfils His mission He will teach you yours, for your mission is the same as His. By guiding your brothers home you are but following Him.

Journal
We are not home and we sense that. We begin the search from the moment we get here. We are searching whether we know it or not, whether we look in the right direction or not. Most of us look outside ourselves for home. We look toward a partner to make us feel like we are home. We have children to give us the feeling we have a home. Or a house, and if that doesn’t work, a better house. Maybe a job that fulfills, or that makes us feel special.

But there is only one direction we can look if we want to know our home. We must look within, because that is where home is. Our confusion is within and our world is within, but so is our home. It is a delusion that we find anything outside. All is within. It seems like the world we made to fulfill our fantasy is taking up all the room and that there is a little sliver of reality in there. But that, too, is a delusion caused by our desire for the illusion.

In truth our mind is vast and it is filled with Home with just a tiny sliver of a dream state from which we are awakening. And when we do awaken, we will throw off the dream and soon it will not even be a memory to disturb the perfect peace of our holy mind. The way we awaken is to follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance in all things, and from our healed mind, we join Him in his mission and lead our brother’s out as well.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 12: !V. Seeking and Finding, P 4. 2-15-16

IV. Seeking and Finding, P 4
4 Do you realize that the ego must set you on a journey which cannot but lead to a sense of futility and depression? To seek and not to find is hardly joyous. Is this the promise you would keep? The Holy Spirit offers you another promise, and one that will lead to joy. For His promise is always, “Seek and you will find,” and under His guidance you cannot be defeated. His is the journey to accomplishment, and the goal He sets before you He will give you. For He will never deceive God’s Son whom He loves with the Love of the Father.

Journal
Perhaps like me you thought you could not really depend on the Bible quote, “Seek and ye shall find.” Years of seeking had brought me very little in the way of peace and happiness. I didn’t see where it brought me any closer to God, either. Now I know why. It was because I was asking the ego to show me the way. I was seeking happiness through the ego, and the ego’s directive is to seek and do not find.

Once I began to study the Course, all of that turned around. I was seeking through the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit loves me with the Love of the Father. The Holy Spirit wants me to find and so makes it possible for me to do so, actually assures that I will do so. Through the study of the Course I learned how to ask and was given the process that would bring me the peace and happiness I longed for.

I learned that the blocks to Love are the ego thoughts in my mind. I believe insane things and those beliefs show up as insane thoughts. I learned that I could look at those thoughts with the Holy Spirit, and in so doing I would realize their impact on me and would become willing to let them go. Once my willingness was strong, the Holy Spirit could remove them from my mind. Without so much of the insanity of ego thinking, I became happier and more peaceful.

I learned that to be happy I must be happy with my brothers and sisters. I must know my union with them. I must know that we go home as one. With the healing of my mind, this desire became stronger than my desire to be separate from them, to defend against them, and to push them away in all the many ways I did in the past. Now I cannot see anyone as separate from me.

I cannot imagine not being affected by everything that happens to any part of our one self. How could that even be? And when I forget what it means to be one, and when I think I need to get my personal needs met, or when I think I must win over someone else, I quickly and gratefully turn to the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of such insane thoughts.

Without the ego guilt and fear of the past, I realized that what I really want is God. I want to remember God and remember my Self. I want to see in God and think in God. I want to be aware of His presence in my mind, and to be aware of my presence in His Mind. I want to share all that I am with All that He Is. I want to know that I am one with God. This is what I seek now and thus this is what I must find, because I seek it of One Whose function it is to lead me to what I seek. I seek it for the entire Sonship.

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

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