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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VIII: The Problem and the Answer, P 9. 12-8-15

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 9

9 Ask anything of God’s Son and his Father will answer you, for Christ is not deceived in His Father and His Father is not deceived in Him. Do not, then, be deceived in your brother, and see only his loving thoughts as his reality, for by denying that his mind is split you will heal yours. Accept him as his Father accepts him and heal him unto Christ, for Christ is his healing and yours. Christ is the Son of God Who is in no way separate from His Father, Whose every thought is as loving as the Thought of His Father by which He was created. Be not deceived in God’s Son, for thereby you must be deceived in yourself. And being deceived in yourself you are deceived in your Father, in Whom no deceit is possible.

Journal
Jesus says that when I believe something about our brother that is not true, then I believe the same about myself, and I am deceived in my Father as well. If I look at a sick brother and believe in his sickness, then I am deceived in him. If I hear him say something that seems misguided and believe in his confusion, then I am deceived in him. He is the Son of God and thus he has the truth in him and all else is an illusion. Let me see the truth rather than the illusion.

What I see in my brother I will see in myself. If I believe in sickness, for instance, it is inevitable that I will experience sickness because what I believe, is true for myself. If I think that someone attacks me, I believe in attack. I will then defend myself, and inevitably attack others. This is how we maintain the illusion, by believing in it.

Since I am created by God and thus forever a part of God, when I see something in my brother or myself that is not God, this is perceived in my mind as an attack on God. It feels like I am pulling myself out of God all over again. Or it feels like I redefining God, making Him something I want him to be, it feels like I am making myself creator of God. This necessarily triggers fear and guilt.

What a perfect reading for me this morning. I read a posting on Facebook that I strongly disagreed with. It felt like an attack on me because I saw it as an attack on my beliefs. Even as these thoughts were appearing in my mind, I knew they were nonsense. First, I saw that I had a strong personal opinion that I was defending as a truth. I saw the error in that. I don’t really know anything, and my assumptions are not the truth, so why would I want to defend them?

Second, I am not my beliefs, so why was I seeing this seeming attack on my beliefs as an attack on me? Obviously, I really do believe I am my beliefs. I let myself feel this reaction fully without trying to cover it up with the spiritual truths that I have learned. I noticed how fiercely I defended myself and how much rage was hiding behind the veil my spiritual ego uses to pretend it is a nice ego, too nice to be enraged.

I tried to push the attack thoughts aside. I tried to say that now that I see them, I can reject them and they will be gone. But they just kept popping up in words that sounded different, but were equally deceptive. This felt scary to me because what was I to do if I couldn’t let this go? Reading this paragraph helped a lot. I don’t want to be deceived in my brother, in myself or in God. I don’t want to believe that deception is in my brother or me and I certainly don’t want to believe it is in God.

I asked the Holy Spirit to heal my mind. I accepted the Atonement in this situation. Another way to say it is that I forgave myself and my error. I forgave my brother and my fear that in my ignorance I had offended God. The Holy Spirit wiped my mind clear of the offense. The facts are still there. I read what this person wrote, but there is no need for it to be different. There is nothing in me that wants to respond or correct or convince. In this situation, I am not deceived in my brother. As it turned out, the error was in my mind, not his, and it has been undone. I am free.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 11, VIII.The Problem and the Answer, P 8. 12-4-15

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 8

8 Beautiful child of God, you are asking only for what I promised you. Do you believe I would deceive you? The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. Believe that the truth is in me, for I know that it is in you. God’s Sons have nothing they do not share. Ask for truth of any Son of God, and you have asked it of me. Not one of us but has the answer in him, to give to anyone who asks it of him.

Journal
Sometimes I wonder how it is that I can ask for an answer to a problem and seem not to receive an answer. Jesus says that this cannot happen, so I think it is that I am asking the wrong question or that I don’t want the answer, or maybe I have decided how the answer must come and in what form.

When I was having so much trouble seeing my co-workers with Christ Vision, I kept asking for help. I said that I wanted my mind to be healed. I asked for my mind to be healed because I understood that the problem was in my mind, not in the workplace. But I still wanted them to be different. I wanted them to change to people I could like and enjoy working with.

So you see, the hold-up in getting the answer was my confusion about what I wanted. Eventually, I was able to let go of the confusion and to simply desire a healed mind. Miraculously, I began to enjoy my co-workers. They were just the kind of people I like to work with. And of course they are. They, as I know them, are just an illusion and an illusion I called forward. When I released that illusion, I experienced them in a new way.

Here is another example. I have a friend who drinks a lot. I think that she is on the edge, teetering between being a heavy drinker and being an alcoholic. It worries me, and it also makes me uncomfortable. Having lived with and around alcoholics I know how destructive this behavior is. It also brings up unpleasant memories for me.

My prayer for this situation was that her mind be healed. Ha ha. But I really did believe that the problem was out there in her behavior. I am not ever totally insane anymore so I asked the Holy Spirit to clarify this for me. I saw that the problem I have is twofold. First I don’t want all that unhealed and unforgiven past coming up to haunt me again. It is not healed because I don’t want to forgive it.

The second part is that I see her has having a problem, as being unhealed. This may be true in the story, but in my mind there was no distinction. She was my friend the alcoholic, or something near it. I saw her as damaged and possibly on her way to ruination. So, in essence, my prayer was something like this. “God, here is your alcoholic child. Heal her.” I wanted God to agree with my assessment of my friend and then do something about it.

I imagined God smiling gently and waiting for me to ask a reasonable question so He could answer it. Eventually I did so. I asked that my mind be healed. I chose to accept the Atonement for my self, forgiving the past so that I could see the present more clearly. I asked for help to see my friend in all her beautiful glory instead of this dark image I had made. As for what I could do in the story, I asked to be given the direction and words that would be helpful should that moment ever occur.

God always answers. I must ask a clear, reasonable question and I must be willing to hear the answer.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11, VIII.The Problem and the Answer, P 7. 12-3-15

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 7

7 Little child of God, you do not understand your Father. You believe in a world that takes, because you believe that you can get by taking. And by that perception you have lost sight of the real world. You are afraid of the world as you see it, but the real world is still yours for the asking. Do not deny it to yourself, for it can only free you. Nothing of God will enslave His Son whom He created free and whose freedom is protected by His Being. Blessed are you who are willing to ask the truth of God without fear, for only thus can you learn that His answer is the release from fear.

Journal
I am teaching myself to ask for the truth without fear. I watch my mind as I ask for healing and I notice if the asking is coming from fear or from love. If I see that I am asking with fear, I stop and think about being that little child approaching her Father with absolute trust knowing He loves her and wants only her good. I pause long enough to get that feeling, the openness and acceptance, the trust and love both given and received, just in the way it was when I was very young.

When I was a little child I asked my parents for what I wanted never considering that maybe this was not an appropriate thing to ask for, or that they would not want to give to me. I never asked myself if I deserved to receive. It never occurred to me that I would have to “pay” in some way to receive what I asked for.

I didn’t wonder how they could give me what I wanted, how it would come to me; I just asked and trusted. There was no fear in my asking. This is the attitude and the feeling that I am recovering. I am learning how to become as a little child again, and approach my Father with child-like innocent expectation. In doing this fear of God is falling away and joy is taking its place.

The ego mind is very distrustful of this openness and wants to close off again in the old defensive posture. It remembers how the world taught it to be suspicious and wary of other’s motivations and wants to protect against this. But I know that the ego defended against ego, and that while the ego mind thinks of itself as savior, it is actually the cause of what it would save me from. I am willing to know that I need no defense against God and so I continue my practice and allow my mind to be healed as I do so.

Holy Spirit, please help me today to be as a little child, open, trusting and joyful.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11, VIII.The Problem and the Answer, P 6. 12-2-15

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 6

6 The Holy Spirit will give you only what is yours, and will take nothing in return. For what is yours is everything, and you share it with God. That is its reality. Would the Holy Spirit, Who wills only to restore, be capable of misinterpreting the question you must ask to learn His answer? You have heard the answer, but you have misunderstood the question. You believe that to ask for guidance of the Holy Spirit is to ask for deprivation.

Journal
I am drawn to that last sentence. I believe that to ask for guidance of the Holy Spirit is to ask for deprivation. Could that be true? I remember when I first started working on special relationships, especially those with my children. It took a long time for me to accept that the Holy Spirit wasn’t asking me to give up love when He asked me for those relationships.

I felt like Abraham offering the sacrifice of his son on the altar. When I told Him about my fear, He told me that He just wanted to take the elements that were not love, such as neediness, and that He would give the relationship back to me purified. At first it was hard to accept because I didn’t know how to truly love, so I was afraid of what it would mean for the relationship to change.

I have asked for help with body issues and noticed thoughts that indicate I believed that He wanted me to sacrifice. Maybe this pain or this sickness is to help me in some way. Maybe I am to remain sick for some good I don’t understand, as if God would teach through pain. So I would look in the world for an answer, the right doctor or the right medicine.

Then there are the more subtle fears. If I ask the Holy Spirit for everything, where does that leave the self? What would the self that I have thought of as me do if it did not make decisions? Do I want to abandon this little self I made? Would that be the ultimate sacrifice? I am learning to let that idea go.

First I am learning that I don’t want to make plans or decisions on my own. I am learning to ask for guidance in all things, and to wait for that guidance. I practice this as often as I can, and in so doing, I am learning that doing all things with God is not a sacrifice. In fact, I am learning that I don’t even know what would make me happy, much less how to achieve it so I need help.

Ultimately, and I am beginning to understand this, I am learning that there is no “by myself.” How could I do anything by myself if I live in God, and if I am one with God? How could I make decisions on my own when there is nothing but God? So what is happening when I think I am deciding on my own? I am dreaming. That’s all, just dreaming.

Giving up the dream is no sacrifice. I am giving up an illusion of separateness in favor of my divinity. I am giving up nothing so that I can remember that I have everything. All these little forms of surrender are important only in that they remind me that I can trust God, and they remind me of my reality. As I surrender the little self, the Holy Spirit gives me everything in its place, but I won’t recognize it as everything if I cling to the notion that the ego is valuable to me. I’m letting that go.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VIII: The Problem and the Answer, P 5. 12-1-15

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 5

5 You may complain that this course is not sufficiently specific for you to understand and use. Yet perhaps you have not done what it specifically advocates. This is not a course in the play of ideas, but in their practical application. Nothing could be more specific than to be told that if you ask you will receive. The Holy Spirit will answer every specific problem as long as you believe that problems are specific. His answer is both many and one, as long as you believe that the One is many. You may be afraid of His specificity, for fear of what you think it will demand of you. Yet only by asking will you learn that nothing of God demands anything of you. God gives; He does not take. When you refuse to ask, it is because you believe that asking is taking rather than sharing.

Journal
If I ask, God gives, and He doesn’t give in the way that we do. He does not give to get, He gives to share, and that means nothing will be taken from us in the giving. This makes it perfectly safe to ask. He even answers specific problems even though He knows that we have only one problem appearing as many. He answers the problem we believe we have until we learn that all problems are one problem with one solution.

What more could we ask? What are we waiting for? He is asking us to practice this, to put it to the test and let the results convince us. What would you ask for if you knew you would be answered, and that the answer would cost you nothing? I was thinking about this and I wondered why anyone would hesitate. What would I fear would be taken from me if I asked for what I want? Jesus gave me a specific need to look at so he could help me understand this.

I have the possibility of retirement looming ahead. It is getting closer and so is no longer just a vague idea to look forward to, but a reality coming soon. This is something I want, but at the same time, I am afraid of it. I won’t have much money and that is the problem that I am most concerned about. I notice that sometimes when it comes to mind I remember that all my needs are met because all my problems are answered.

But then other times I listen to the ego and the ego says that there is no way for this to happen. It says that I should have prepared better, saved money, invested. It says that I will get what I deserve and that ain’t much. I am not becoming as a little child, asking as a child would ask, with happy anticipation of a loving answer. I am asking out of fear and little expectation of a generous answer, but rather a meager answer based on my perceived guilt.
In order to ask differently, with confidence and with an open heart ready to receive, I will have to give up my specialness. I will no longer be the one who did not plan and so is guilty. God will not take this from me, but on the other hand, He cannot give me what I do not think I deserve and so do not really want.

The first thing I am asking for is a healed mind. I ask that I be healed of the belief I am guilty about my failure to plan for the future. And now that I think about it, guilt wants to attach to the idea that I think I should plan for the future when the Course tells me that a healed mind doesn’t make plans.

Could I give up all this guilt? Could I at least accept the Atonement for this particular form of guilt in this particular circumstance? If this is the sacrifice asked of me, the sacrifice I am afraid of, then clearly I have been afraid of nothing. Freedom from guilt would not be a sacrifice. And obviously, I believe I have specific problems. So I will use those perceived needs to teach myself trust and acceptance, and eventually, that all needs are one need and that need is answered.

Thank you, Brother, for this clarity. I am opening to a new way of perceiving this future. I am asking for help to remember my purpose and to release my fear. God wants me to ask and He wants to answer. I want to receive and receive fully. Help me to do so.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VIII: The Problem and the Answer, P 4. 11-30-15

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 4

4 No one can withhold truth except from himself. Yet God will not refuse you the Answer He gave. Ask, then, for what is yours, but which you did not make, and do not defend yourself against truth. You made the problem God has answered. Ask yourself, therefore, but one simple question:

Do I want the problem or do I want the answer?

Decide for the answer and you will have it, for you will see it as it is, and it is yours already.

Journal
It seems the answer is always available to us because the answer has already been established and is ours. The only way we could not be aware of the answer is if we deliberately choose the problem over the answer. I have been asking myself what are the problems I am choosing to keep when I could have the answer instead. Obviously, they are the problems I still have.

I still look in the mirror and see an image of a chubby woman and that feels like a problem to me. The image is of my own making, a projection of the beliefs in my mind. I see it as a problem, and yet, if the image is a representation of my beliefs, and if my beliefs can be changed, why am I holding onto this problem image? I must be defending myself against the truth. This is true of all the problems I perceive in the world.

All of them are the same problem. They are just different forms of the one problem; I think I am separated from God. What am I afraid of? Not enough money? Not enough love? Sickness? Loss of some sort is always involved in my fears. All of those fears are really the fear that I am separated from God. Could loss of anything be found in God? Could even the idea of loss and lack be found in God? All forms of loss have something to do with the body. Could a body be found in God?

These are problems that I made and the solution to those problems, the one problem, was given in the instant it was needed. It is in my mind waiting for me to want it. For right now I am still looking at my problems as if each one was discreet and allowing myself to find the answer. But each time I do so, I remind myself that it is just a form of the one problem and the answer is for all forms of that problem. In this way I am learning not to defend against the answer and that I don’t even want to defend against it, because it is a defense against God. I am learning that I want God.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VIII: The Problem and the Answer, P 3. 11-24-15

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 3

3 You do not know the meaning of anything you perceive. Not one thought you hold is wholly true. The recognition of this is your firm beginning. You are not misguided; you have accepted no guide at all. Instruction in perception is your great need, for you understand nothing. Recognize this but do not accept it, for understanding is your inheritance. Perceptions are learned, and you are not without a Teacher. Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your willingness to question everything you learned of yourself, for you who learned amiss should not be your own teacher.

Journal
I think that surely I have learned this and surely I believe it and even want it to be true. Then I see that I am defending myself, and in doing so I am defending the right to be my own teacher. Why would I do that? I know it has only brought me suffering in the past so why would I want to do it again?

I also know that following Spirit instead, brings me joy and peace. You would think that the contrast alone would be enough to convince me of the teacher I want.  And yet, I still listen to the ego and the ego is nothing, so I don’t just follow the wrong teacher, I follow nothing. In doing so, I make more of nothing, but it is a nothing that I believe in and so it is true for me, and thus it is painful to me.

This morning while doing my lesson I wrote about defending myself at work. I saw myself doing it and regretted it right away. I asked the Holy Spirit to undo this need to defend myself, and at the same time, I saw my reluctance to let that go. I opened my mind to Spirit as I asked for clarity about this. Why do I think I need to defend myself?

Here is what He showed me.

I saw fear in my mind. I made of myself something that is not real and therefore is not eternal. This thing I made, this separate vulnerable self is in constant danger of not existing because it doesn’t. And yet, I made it and want it and so I must defend it all the time. How exhausting! I want to know my real self, and I want to let this little self disappear from my mind.

I become confused about what I am defending. It is not really my place within the company I am defending. That is just an image I made of the desire to exist as a separate self with a will apart from my Creator. If everyone at work valued me above all others and couldn’t imagine the company surviving without me, I would still not feel safe, because the idea of vulnerability would not have been healed. It would just show up differently.

These stories of Myron are not the problem; they are the effect of a mistaken belief in a self that is apart from God. The solution is to stop asking the self that is the problem for the solution. The ego self will only look for solutions within the images it makes. It will never offer a solution for the source of those images because that would end it. I am asking for salvation of a teacher that doesn’t want me saved.

Thank you, Holy Spirit.

I surrender as my own teacher and I ask that my mind be healed of all the false thoughts I have accepted in the past. I want to wake up from this dream of separation and I will never do that if I keep asking the ego mind to be my teacher. I surrender! I surrender not in fear and not with a sense of loss, but in laughter and joy! I surrender, Holy Spirit. Please teach me. I will try to stay out of the way.

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