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Study of Text, Chapter 10, II. The Decision to Forget, P 1. 5-13-15

II. The Decision to Forget
1 Unless you first know something you cannot dissociate it. Knowledge must precede dissociation, so that dissociation is nothing more than a decision to forget. What has been forgotten then appears to be fearful, but only because the dissociation is an attack on truth. You are fearful because you have forgotten. And you have replaced your knowledge by an awareness of dreams because you are afraid of your dissociation, not of what you have dissociated. When what you have dissociated is accepted, it ceases to be fearful.

Journal
I don’t think about it often, but once in awhile I have the disturbing thought that maybe I chose to be something else because I didn’t like what I was. I think, “Why would I have left Heaven if Heaven is wonderful?” I don’t let myself dwell on this too much because it feels a little scary to me. Now it seems that Jesus is confronting this idea. He is also explaining why I have this mostly unacknowledged fear.

He is telling me that I am afraid, not of what I have dissociated, but that I did dissociate in the first place. I decided to forget what I am and where I am, and that decision scared me. It is frightening to me because it is an attack on the truth. This is a relief because it means I don’t have to be afraid of what I forgot. I am not really afraid of my true nature, and thankfully, I am not really afraid of God.

In my fear, I replaced the truth with illusions and that is where I am now, dreaming of something to distract me from my unease. But I can stop any time I want to. I don’t have to keep up this distracting story because there is nothing to fear. This is why Jesus spends so much time in the Course reassuring us that God loves us and that we love Him. I chose to forget and now I must choose to remember. As Jesus talks to us about our true nature and the nature of God, I feel a memory beginning to make itself known to me.

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Study of Text, Chapter 10: THE IDOLS OF SICKNESS, I. At Home in God, P 4. 5-12-15

I. At Home in God P 4
4 You will remember everything the instant you desire it wholly, for if to desire wholly is to create, you will have willed away the separation, returning your mind simultaneously to your Creator and your creations. Knowing them you will have no wish to sleep, but only the desire to waken and be glad. Dreams will be impossible because you will want only truth, and being at last your will, it will be yours.

Journal
I feel like saying, “the trick is,” to desire to be at Home in God you have to desire it wholly. Of course it is not a trick, it is simply necessary. I cannot be at Home in God if I am not the same as God. I cannot keep anger, fear, guilt, sadness, blame, suffering and death and expect to be in God. These are not God and so they cannot be in God. I must leave them behind to return to God.

It would not seem to be such a difficult choice and yet, here I am with my grievances. Everyone in my life, even those most “special” to me, the ones I claim to love more than myself, become repositories for my guilt. I could easily release guilt and fear as well, but I hold onto it as if it is my very salvation. I have whittled this stuff down as I have looked at it with Spirit, but I have not released it entirely, and I cannot enter the Kingdom with even a very little of what is not God.

Today, as I write this, my lesson is, “I loose the world from all I think it is.” This lesson tells me that there is no world. The world I think I see is just an out-picturing of my desires. It is a great big theater that is always showing, The World According to Myron.” I re-write the script as my mind is healed because the world is nowhere except in my mind.

It is nothing except my thoughts and my thoughts change when I change my mind about the source of those thoughts. When I choose to think with the ego mind I will have an ego experience. I cannot bring the ego into the Kingdom, so I remain in the world I made up until I change my mind. When I decide to think the thoughts I think with God, my dream becomes a happy dream and the world reflects that change until it disappears.

It is all up to me. It is my dream and I must decide the direction that dream will take. As I change my mind, the dream changes and it is better. But do I want a better dream? Or do I want the Kingdom? Do I want to return to eternal bliss and to full creation, or do I want to play around in the muck some more? If I choose to relinquish the ego mind completely, in that very moment, I will remember everything! It is just that simple.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: I. At Home in God, P 3. 5-7-15

I. At Home in God
2 You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality. Is it your decision to do so? You recognize from your own experience that what you see in dreams you think is real while you are asleep. Yet the instant you waken you realize that everything that seemed to happen in the dream did not happen at all. You do not think this strange, even though all the laws of what you awaken to were violated while you slept. Is it not possible that you merely shifted from one dream to another, without really waking?

Journal
This morning, I lay in bed thinking about my dream. I remembered it clearly, but I did not for a moment become confused about it. It was a dream I had while asleep, and while it sure seemed real, now I am not asleep and I know it wasn’t real. It was kind of interesting to think about but I am not going to suddenly believe it actually happened.

How do I know for sure it wasn’t real? For one thing, it violated all the laws of the world. In it gravity was only a suggestion and easily ignored. I was driving a car and then I was still moving along, but there was no car. I was me, then I was someone else.

Jesus is asking me to consider this: what if I didn’t really wake up at all? What if I just went from one dream to another? I am pretty certain now that this is all that happens. I am dreaming right now as I write in my journal. How do I know I am dreaming even while I tell myself I am awake? My experience of being awake ignores all the laws of Heaven.

In this story I am separate from my brothers; I am not perfectly happy: I suffer and I die. None of this makes sense in Reality, so I must be dreaming. Have you ever experienced lucid dreaming? A lucid dream is any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming.

Several years ago I had a very bad dream, a terrible nightmare. Since then I have had that dream try to replay, but when it does, I either wake myself up or I redirect the dream. I say no, and the dream changes. That is an example of lucid dreaming. I have also had a simple awareness that what is happening is a dream. I have told myself in my dream that I am just dreaming.

This is beginning to happen in my waking dream, that state that I call life. I am dreaming this story of Myron and it is becoming a lucid dream. Not all the time, but sometimes. And if it is happening sometimes, I know that it will begin to happen all the time. I encourage that progression as I practice the Course.

Doing the Lessons this year is extremely helpful. I seem to have shifted into a sharper clarity and the lessons are clearer and more meaningful than ever before. Reading “The End of Death” by Nouk Sanchez has helped a great deal. Now I am also reading “A Course of Love” and that is helping as well. The Holy Spirit is leading me to whatever will help me realize that I am dreaming and it is time to wake up.

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Study of Text, Chapter 10: THE IDOLS OF SICKNESS, I. At Home in God, P 1. 5-6-15

Chapter 10: THE IDOLS OF SICKNESS
I. At Home in God
1 You do not know your creations simply because you would decide against them as long as your mind is split, and to attack what you have created is impossible. But remember that it is as impossible for God. The law of creation is that you love your creations as yourself, because they are part of you. Everything that was created is therefore perfectly safe, because the laws of God protect it by His Love. Any part of your mind that does not know this has banished itself from knowledge, because it has not met its conditions. Who could have done this but you? Recognize this gladly, for in this recognition lies the realization that your banishment is not of God, and therefore does not exist.

My ACIM group and I were discussing our creations, and as most of us do, wondering about them. In one section of the Course they are referred to as our Extensions. So we decided that since God is Love and He created us through extending Himself, we are Love and we created through extending ourselves. Our creations must be Love also.

To be honest, it is hard to relate to this because I don’t know what I am, really. I can say I am Love, but what does that mean? I have read in the Course that my creations love me and I love them, and this touches something in me and feels true. It makes me want to remember them and return to them. But as long as I am attached to the illusion I made, which is the opposite of Reality in every way, I cannot know my creations because I would reject them as I do all of Reality.

To reject is to attack and Jesus says that it is impossible to attack what I created. This is why I cannot know my creations now. My creations are perfectly safe because they are part of me and it is not possible for creation to be harmed. Just as I cannot harm my creations, God cannot harm me. This alone, if I could completely accept it, would undo guilt in my mind, and undo the fear of God, which keeps us bound to this illusory state.

It is important for me to know that I but do this to myself. I choose what I believe, and I have chosen a belief that I am banished from God. The reason it is important to know that I did this to myself, is that as long as I think God banished me I will be reluctant to accept that He loves me. I will remain afraid that I did something unforgivable and the idea of returning to God will be a fearful thought in my mind. The truth is, God could not have banished us, and therefore we are not banished. We only dream of banishment. It is time to wake up.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: THE IDOLS OF SICKNESS, Introduction P 3. 5-5-15

Introduction P3
3 God does not change His Mind about you, for He is not uncertain of Himself. And what He knows can be known, because He does not know it only for Himself. He created you for Himself, but He gave you the power to create for yourself so you would be like Him. That is why your mind is holy. Can anything exceed the Love of God? Can anything, then, exceed your will? Nothing can reach you from beyond it because, being in God, you encompass everything. Believe this, and you will realize how much is up to you. When anything threatens your peace of mind, ask yourself, “Has God changed His Mind about me?” Then accept His decision, for it is indeed changeless, and refuse to change your mind about yourself. God will never decide against you, or He would be deciding against Himself.

Journal
I, as Myron, cannot actually wrap my mind around the idea that I am like God, and part of God. But I, the I that is not the ego, is beginning to accept this. No matter how much sense this paragraph makes, the thinking mind can only understand the concept, but cannot know it. I am beginning to know it because I open my heart to it. I step back as a thinker and I allow the Holy Spirit to awaken me. I am beginning to remember.

I still fall back into the ego. In fact, I feel like I jump back and forth all the time. But I know something monumental is happening. I read a paragraph like this and I believe what it says and I feel joy rising up in me. I go into the world and I fail to live it, but I am aware of it and that awareness changes everything. I get angry, but only briefly. I get worried or upset, and then I laugh at myself. So I know the healing is taking place.

I love the idea that today I am going to question anything that I allow to rob me of peace. “Has God changed His Mind about me?” That is all I need to do, I just question and choose to be wrong about whatever it is I brought into my life that threatens my peace of mind. Because I know now that I am the cause of all that happens in my world, I know that I am the one that chooses against it. Then the Holy Spirit can then undo what I have done.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: THE IDOLS OF SICKNESS, Introduction P 2. 5-4-15

Introduction P 2
2 God created nothing beside you and nothing beside you exists, for you are part of Him. What except Him can exist? Nothing beyond Him can happen, because nothing except Him is real. Your creations add to Him as you do, but nothing is added that is different because everything has always been. What can upset you except the ephemeral, and how can the ephemeral be real if you are God’s only creation and He created you eternal? Your holy mind establishes everything that happens to you. Every response you make to everything you perceive is up to you, because your mind determines your perception of it.

Journal
I am as God created me, and I am this eternally without exception. I am like God because God created me like Him. Nothing that is unlike God exists. “Nothing beyond Him can happen, because nothing except Him is real.” So all the things I see and do and believe cannot be real if they are unlike God. I must be dreaming, living an illusion.

Because of what I am as God’s Son, I can choose to experience even that which is not real. If I am experiencing something, it is because I chose to do so.  My holy mind establishes everything that happens to me. My responses to what happens to me are determined by my perceptions and my perceptions are determined by my mind. I am completely responsible in every way for all that I see and how I see it.

Perhaps at one time this would have felt oppressive. I do remember feeling overwhelmed at times and asking Holy Spirit to help me. Two things happened that helped me to see it all differently, and to accept the responsibility that is clearly mine. The first was that I realized I am responsible for the world I see, but I am not guilty for it.

The only reason I was running from the responsibility, trying to project it onto others is because I thought I was guilty. It was the guilt that was oppressing me, not the responsibility. Once I realized that I could not be guilty, and could accept at least to some degree that I am the completely free Son of God and can have any experience I want, I felt the burden of guilt lift and I could breathe again.

Once I was not afraid of my responsibility I could see that this knowledge was my salvation. If I am responsible for everything that means I can change my mind and undo what has been done. If my holy mind established everything I presently see, it can establish that which I now prefer to see. I do this through the Holy Spirit in my mind.

And that brings me to the second really important understanding. I do not heal my mind; the Holy Spirit does that on my behalf. I have an essential role to play, and that is to understand I need healing and then to desire and accept that healing. The rest is accomplished without my help. I think of this as setting aside all thinking, all active participation. I sit quietly in God and invite healing to take place. I open to healing and I allow it to happen.

It sounds so easy, and it is easy. Yet, I still see lots of resistance. I see the ego mind trying to take a bigger part. I see fear that nothing this easy could be valuable. I see myself choosing to stay in the story, find a solution there, being the one who succeeds. But I also see myself returning, over and over, to that quiet place in my mind, inviting the truth to join me there.

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Study of Text, Chapter 9, VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 11. 4-29-15

VIII. Grandeur versus Grandiosity, P 11
11 Yet if truth is indivisible, your evaluation of yourself must be God’s. You did not establish your value and it needs no defense. Nothing can attack it nor prevail over it. It does not vary. It merely is. Ask the Holy Spirit what it is and He will tell you, but do not be afraid of His answer, because it comes from God. It is an exalted answer because of its Source, but the Source is true and so is its answer. Listen and do not question what you hear, for God does not deceive. He would have you replace the ego’s belief in littleness with His Own exalted Answer to what you are, so that you can cease to question it and know it for what it is.
Journal
I don’t know what to say about this. Jesus wants me to ask the Holy Spirit what I am and to believe His answer rather than my own. I cried as I read this. I cried because I want the answer. I want to know what I am. I cry that I am not the little self that the ego wants me to believe in. In fact, I am something else altogether, something very different. Mostly I cry because I am afraid to ask. What if I don’t hear anything at all?

Jesus told me to ask anyway, and suggested I simply allow the answer to come as it will and when it will. He said to open my heart to the answer and then step away from both question and answer. Step away and trust. I trust that the answer will be exalted because of its Source and that it will be true, because of its Source. I trust that I will receive an answer because it is my true desire to know my Self.

I see the wisdom in stepping aside now that the question has been asked. It is still too easy for me to slip back into the ego thinking mind and that is not going to bring me an answer. It will only interfere with it as the ego adds its own confused thoughts. I know the concept of what I am, but what I want is a true knowing, not just an idea I am willing to embrace, but a knowing that goes all the way to the Heart, to the center of my being. I gladly release the personal self I made so that the Self can take its place. I am willing, and where my will is not strong, I am willing to be willing

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