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Study of Text, Chapter 9, V. The Unhealed Healer, P 2. 2-23-15

V. The Unhealed Healer P 2
2 I have repeatedly said that beliefs of the ego cannot be shared, and this is why they are unreal. How, then, can “uncovering” them make them real? Every healer who searches fantasies for truth must be unhealed, because he does not know where to look for truth, and therefore does not have the answer to the problem of healing.

Journal
All my beliefs in guilt, fear, and suffering are illusions. None of these are in God so they do not exist except in my imagination. The stories that represent these beliefs are no more real than the beliefs. So what is the point of digging around in the story to find the “cause” of my unhappiness?

A good therapist can help me do this, but there would be no point. Finding the origin of the story within the story is a monumental waste of time. Only if my unhappiness was the result of the story would that would be the solution. What I know is that the story is the result of the thought, not the other way around, therefore, the solution is to accept correction for the thought. From a healed mind, comes a healed world.

I cannot find the truth in my stories. They are the effect of the unhealed mind for the most part, and are always the out-picturing of thoughts in the mind. If the picture is one of chaos, then it is not the story that caused the chaos, but the thoughts that are represented in the image. It is a simple thing to know if my mind has been making images based on beliefs that are not true. Am I at peace? If not, then I need to accept the Atonement and allow the mind to be healed.

“My thoughts are images I have made.”

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I am Sustained by the Love of God

Lesson 50

I am sustained by the Love of God.

Here is the answer to every problem that will confront you, today and tomorrow and throughout time. In this world, you believe you are sustained by everything but God. Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols; pills, money, “protective” clothing, influence, prestige, being liked, knowing the “right” people, and an endless list of forms of nothingness that you endow with magical powers.

All these things are your replacements for the Love of God. All these things are cherished to ensure a body identification. They are songs of praise to the ego. Do not put your faith in the worthless. It will not sustain you.

Only the Love of God will protect you in all circumstances. It will lift you out of every trial, and raise you high above all the perceived dangers of this world into a climate of perfect peace and safety. It will transport you into a state of mind that nothing can threaten, nothing can disturb, and where nothing can intrude upon the eternal calm of the Son of God.

Put not your faith in illusions. They will fail you. Put all your faith in the Love of God within you; eternal, changeless and forever unfailing. This is the answer to whatever confronts you today. Through the Love of God within you, you can resolve all seeming difficulties without effort and in sure confidence. Tell yourself this often today. It is a declaration of release from the belief in idols. It is your acknowledgment of the truth about yourself.

For ten minutes, twice today, morning and evening, let the idea for today sink deep into your consciousness. Repeat it, think about it, let related thoughts come to help you recognize its truth, and allow peace to flow over you like a blanket of protection and surety. Let no idle and foolish thoughts enter to disturb the holy mind of the Son of God. Such is the Kingdom of Heaven . Such is the resting place where your Father has placed you forever.

Journal

I am not going to list all the ways in which I try defend myself. Jesus has done that and I am fully aware of my own favorite methods. These are the words I want to contemplate this morning.

“Only the Love of God will protect you in all circumstances. It will lift you out of every trial, and raise you high above all the perceived dangers of this world into a climate of perfect peace and safety. It will transport you into a state of mind that nothing can threaten, nothing can disturb, and where nothing can intrude upon the eternal calm of the Son of God.”

Can you imagine being in a situation that in the past would have caused great anxiety, and now, because you know that you have nothing to fear, you know that you are sustained, not by anything in the world, but by the love of God, you are perfectly calm, peaceful and confident. Can you imagine never being disturbed by what you see or what you hear?

This lesson is explaining to us in simple easily relatable terms that we don’t have anything to worry about because, in spite of appearances we are not in the thick of the battleground, but above it. Where we are, we are perfectly safe. We don’t feel like this is true because we seem to be in this world, in this story, and very much a part of it. We are not.

The only way we are going to know we are not is to start thinking as if we are perfectly sustained by the love of God. In doing so we will discover for ourselves that the world was just a thought in the mind that ended when we decided to stop thinking it. We start with a hope that this is truly the way out, and with a little willingness and a little trust, we begin to back out of the illusion.

Once we understand that this is what Jesus is doing for us, that he has a plan to gently extricate us from the dream state in which we are entangled, we can see where the lessons are taking us. He begins with the meaningless lessons in which he shows us that nothing in the world means anything in and of itself, and that we give it the meaning it has. We are not, after all, helpless victims to the world.

He helps us to see that the meaninglessness of the world came from our meaningless thoughts because the world is the effect of our thoughts. He then points out that meaninglessness is scary and that is why we are afraid, but that we don’t have to worry because God did not create a meaningless world, and we have real thoughts, thoughts with all meaning because they are the thoughts we think with God.

He then spends some time on lessons that help us to see that even though our thoughts are meaningless, they still are powerful because of what we are as God’s Son. He explains that our thoughts become images that we make and that is what we imagine is the “real” world, but is not. He tells us that we made the body’s eyes, not to see, but to report to us what we made with our thoughts.

He reinforces this by explaining to us that all thought produces form at some level. None of our thoughts are neutral, we are always making images that we then believe in. Not only that, but our minds are joined and so we are having a shared delusion, not only in what we make, but how we see what we make. Now that we have a clear understanding of what is actually happening, Jesus gives us a lesson to help us reverse our thinking. In Lesson 20 we make a commitment to this reversal when we declare that we are determined to see.

He goes on to encourage us to understand that we are hurting ourselves and that we can stop. He explains that it is our attack thoughts that are attacking us. He reminds us that we don’t understand anything and that we don’t perceive our own best interests so maybe we should resign as our own teacher and accept his instruction and the Holy Spirit’s help in changing our minds.

In the next lessons we dedicate ourselves to seeing, really seeing, rather than image making we call seeing. We state that above all else we want to see, we want to see differently. Then another bombshell, God is in everything I see. This lesson explains everything, every idea before and after. If I only believed and remembered this in every circumstance, never making an exception, how would that change my behaviour, my words, my thoughts, my sense of reality?

And not only that, but God is in everything I see because God is in my mind. From this lesson we learn that there is a new way we can project. Instead of projecting to rid ourselves of the thoughts we are afraid of or ashamed of, we are going to find what is true in our minds, and project that. We will then join with what we see rather than keeping it apart from us.

Slowly, Jesus takes us from the idea that we are a victim of the world we see, to the truth that we are the maker of that world and that we can change what we see as we learn to recognize our holiness. Our mind is part of God, how could we be anything but holy. But to accept our holiness we must stop looking at the world we made as if it is reality, realize it is just an effect of our confused ego thoughts projected outward, and that as we get in touch with our true thoughts, we will see that there is nothing our holiness cannot do. Our holiness will save us.

As Jesus tells us that God is with us, that He is our strength and our vision, that He is the Mind with which we think, the Love in which we forgive and trust, we are being led to realize there is nothing to fear. How could there be anything to fear. We are part of God, He is in us and we are in Him. There is no way to separate us except in the strange dreams we make, and dreams are not reality. All that we do, we do through God. All that is done outside God is not real, only fantasy, because in reality nothing can be done outside of God.

This first foundational section ends by telling us that we are never alone. God speaks to us all through the day and we can learn to hear only His Voice. And now we are told that we are sustained by the Love of God. Looking back over these lessons, it is easy to see how gently we have been led to this understanding. Can I now accept that I have been trying to sustain myself as if I were actually the image I made to experience the idea of not-God?

Will I be willing to see this differently, to know that I am safe because I am still where I have always been; I am now and always will be in the mind of God. I have had a long run at this play acting and I am so deeply engrossed in the story that I have come to believe in it, but I am ready to return to true creation instead of this image making I have done so long.

So I will remind myself often today that I am sustained by the Love of God. I have nothing to fear because I am sustained, not by my own feeble machinations, but by the Love of God. I will see the world as I made it, of course, but I now know that what I see is not real. I will give my willingness to see through the images to the truth, to see not what my eyes show me, but to see with vision what is actually there. My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy. There is nothing my holiness cannot do. God goes with me where ever I go. His Voice speaks to me throughout the day and His Love sustains me. I need nothing else.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 9, V. The Unhealed Healer, P 1. 2-18-15

V. The Unhealed Healer
1 The ego’s plan for forgiveness is far more widely used than God’s. This is because it is undertaken by unhealed healers, and is therefore of the ego. Let us consider the unhealed healer more carefully now. By definition, he is trying to give what he has not received. If an unhealed healer is a theologian, for example, he may begin with the premise, “I am a miserable sinner, and so are you.” If he is a psychotherapist, he is more likely to start with the equally incredible belief that attack is real for both himself and the patient, but that it does not matter for either of them.

Journal
When I was in college, I had a breakdown, which I think of as so much ego pain and suffering that I broke under it. I went for therapy and in the process, the therapist helped me to see that all my problems were my mom’s fault. My ego self was enormously relieved. Here I thought I was the one who was responsible and had no way of changing it, so I was doomed. Then this lady helped me to see that, yes, I was screwed up and had made some terrible mistakes, but then she showed me how it was caused by my mother’s behavior. The relief I felt was very temporary because nothing was solved. She encouraged me to shift the blame so that I didn’t feel quite so guilty, or at least that I was not born flawed. However, now the problem is real and there is no solution.

I got through the rough spot, and went on thinking I was damaged but surviving, taking solace in that I was able to cope and even improve my ego. Of course at the time I didn’t know that there was anything but the ego. In perfect timing I found A Course in Miracles and I learned about the ego and that I am not that. I learned about forgiveness and through forgiving myself I was able to forgive my mother for what she had not done. It is funny when I think about it now, but not so much while it was happening. From my present perspective I can see that the therapist was an unhealed healer, doing the best she could under those circumstances. I doubt I could have heard anything else at that time in my life anyway, so she was the perfect solution for me at that time. She relieved the pressure long enough for me to survive the pain and reach a level of spiritual maturity that made real healing possible.

If a friend or a student comes to me with a problem, and I try to help them find a solution within the story, I am making the same mistake. I am making the problem real and then trying to help them change the problem so it is not so painful. For instance, a friend had a relationship problem and wanted me to look at it with her. I did so, and I could see that there were some basic communication skills that would help solve this problem. I did share that information with her, but if that was all I had done, I would have been helpful only in the short course of things. Instead I helped her to see her projections and we talked about withdrawing those projections and allowing her mind to be healed so that she could perceive the situation differently. This helped her to see that it was not a real problem, but simply a misperception. I did not add to her fear that the problem was real, but helped her to see it was just an error in thinking that was easily solved.

There was a time I could not have done this because I had unhealed relationship issues of my own. When a friend asked me to help her with her relationship problem, I could see myself getting sucked into the story because it was too similar to the story I had going. I believed her problem was real because I believed my problem was real. I could not offer her help because my mind was clogged with unhealed beliefs and so I could not receive guidance about what to say. I suggested someone else who could help her. I then asked the Holy Spirit for help in healing my mind of these misperceptions so that I could be helpful in the future and with some work, this was done. That way when someone else came to me I was a healed healer and could be truly helpful.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 9, IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgivness, P 12. 2-17-15

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 12
12 Behold, my child, reality is here. It belongs to you and me and God, and is perfectly satisfying to all of us. Only this awareness heals, because it is the awareness of truth.

Journal
In the end this is all that forgiveness does. It allows the truth to be true in our minds. We choose to be aware that there is only God and we are part of His Mind. I can choose to allow the sense of Oneness that we are all a part of, and when I do the world as I have known it falls away for the moment. This happens when I give myself to this writing in the quiet of the early morning. I feel the connection with Spirit, with Jesus.

It happens when I set aside all else and join with a student to do our course together. It is sharing from the heart, and joining in purpose that brings the truth into awareness, and with truth, joy. Sometimes it happens at random moments as I set aside whatever the ego mind was focused on and allow myself to join with… well, with anything, and in that joining, comes the sense of being one with everything.

In those moments, what have I forgiven? I have forgiven the belief that I could be alone, separate, not part of all that is. I have forgiven the very idea of separation in whatever form I imagine it. I have forgiven the idea that I could ever be separate from my Source. I don’t yet stay in this purified awareness, but each time I experience it, even for a brief time, I yearn for its return. It is my desire that brings it to me, but my desire is not always for peace.

It is astounding to me that I still choose the illusion at all, and yet I spend a lot of time there. I believe a fear thought and I am right back in the muck of separation beliefs. I become angry or frustrated over the smallest things, and I have lost the awareness of the presence of Love that had been mine just a moment before. These things don’t just happen. They require my active decision to place my awareness on them rather than on reality. This is what I forgive. And the return to peace is what forgiveness brings me.

I become angry about a situation, I place blame on a brother and hold a grievance, I become afraid of the future or regretful of the past. These are all ways in which I avoid reality. None of these behaviors or feelings in any way affects reality, but they affect my experience of it. Regardless of my experience, though, reality remains reality and is always available to me. Forgiveness has revealed to me my desire for reality. Now I am only learning to master this choice. I do so every time I realize I have chosen illusion over truth and choose again. 

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Study of Text, Chapter 9, IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgivness, P 11. 2-16-15

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 11
11 The impossible can happen only in fantasy. When you search for reality in fantasies you will not find it. The symbols of fantasy are of the ego, and of these you will find many. But do not look for meaning in them. They have no more meaning than the fantasies into which they are woven. Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful, but no one calls them true. Children may believe them, and so, for a while, the tales are true for them. Yet when reality dawns, the fantasies are gone. Reality has not gone in the meanwhile. The Second Coming is the awareness of reality, not its return.

Journal
It can be hard to remember that this experience we are having is a fantasy, an illusion, a dream. It is hardest to believe this when things are going badly. When we are afraid it can be very hard to pull the mind away from the story long enough to allow the Holy Spirit to purify our thoughts. But this is the time when it is most helpful to ask that the mind be healed. As we do this, we are remembering that the only thing that matters in this world is that we use the story to learn it is yust a story.

It can be very exciting to realize that we are at this moment a part of the second coming. This is what we are doing as we study the Course and put it into practice in our lives. For eons of time we have had the experience of being unreal, but reality did not cease simply because we ignored it. The second coming is the awareness of reality. We will stop ignoring reality as we remove our attention from the illusion.

This is no small thing that we do. As I go through the day I will have many false thoughts and many illusory experiences. I can indulge all of this, throw myself into the story, and pretend that it is reality. I can feel excitement, boredom, fear, love, depression, all the emotions that are fed by the story. I can live a life without purpose.

Or, I can remember today that I am ready to wake up. I am ready to truly seize the day, to use each opportunity to see differently. I can give my confused thoughts to the Holy Spirit and ask Him to show me a truer perception. Every time I do this I feel more like the eternal Divine Being that I am. Each time I do this, I heal the mind that we all share and each one of us comes closer to the moment of awakening. That is living a life of purpose. 

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Study of Text, Chapter 9, IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgivness, P 9. 2-12-15

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 9
9 The ego literally lives on borrowed time, and its days are numbered. Do not fear the Last Judgment, but welcome it and do not wait, for the ego’s time is “borrowed” from your eternity. This is the Second Coming that was made for you as the First was created. The Second Coming is merely the return of sense. Can this possibly be fearful?

Journal
I am ready for the last judgment, or at least I am ready to be ready. This is why I pay attention to my thoughts and to the world I have brought into manifestation. I want to see what it is that I still value in the world, and what it is in my mind that still needs to be healed. I am slowly forgiving myself for my projections, and in doing so I am releasing this tight grip I have on guilt. This is what I mean when I say that I accept the Atonement in a situation. I want to allow the belief in guilt to be removed from my mind, at least in a particular case, so that I can come that much closer to releasing the belief in guilt altogether, as that is my real goal.

This will prepare me for the Last Judgment, because as long as I still see myself as guilty, I will be afraid of it. In doing this, I am learning that the Holy Spirit could only judge me as innocent, because, in spite of my fear, and in spite of appearances, I am innocent. There is nothing I can imagine that will change His judgment of me. In forgiving myself, I am not doing it so that I can stand spotless before God. I am already spotless. I am forgiving myself of the belief that I need forgiveness. If I cannot see my own innocence, I cannot see myself standing before Innocence, and will continue to put off the Last Judgment.

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Study of Text, Chapter 9, IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgivness, P 8. 2-11-15

IV. The Holy Spirit’s Plan of Forgiveness, P 8

8 If you have no idea what is happening, how appropriately can you expect to react? You might ask yourself, regardless of how you may account for the reaction, whether its unpredictability places the ego in a sound position as your guide. Let me repeat that the ego’s qualifications as a guide are singularly unfortunate, and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a teacher of salvation. Anyone who elects a totally insane guide must be totally insane himself. Nor is it true that you do not realize the guide is insane. You realize it because I realize it, and you have judged it by the same standard I have.

Journal
I am convinced that the ego is a poor guide and I have learned to vigilant for the ego’s attempts to be the guide. I have learned to discern the difference between the ego’s guidance and the Holy Spirit’s guidance. I still hear the ego and I still follow ego sometimes, but I regret it when I do and I always change my mind. It came as a little surprise, however, when I read the last two sentences. I have always realized the ego was insane? I thought I just learned that. I guess I was hiding that from myself because I wanted to keep playing its game.

Actually, I guess the only reason I ever listen to ego even for a brief time is that I am being offered some bit of the game that still amuses me, or that still holds some value for me. Here is something I am noticing; the more I release the idea of guilt, the less interest I have in the ego thought system. What seems to follow naturally is that fear then begins to fall away. Let’s see, if I choose Holy Spirit as my guide, I will respond appropriately, teaching love and helping my brother to wake up, or at least certainly not holding him back.

If I choose Holy Spirit as my guide, I will live a happier life, free of regrets and disappointments. I will be peaceful and filled with joy regardless of what seems to be happening in the story. If I choose Holy Spirit as my guide, guilt will cease to attract me and fear will fall away. Or I can choose ego as my guide and keep the status quo. I can go on pretending to be master of my miserable little universe, making images that I pretend are creations, born of the twisted desires of an insane mind, and suffering the consequences, And all the while I can pretend I am the victim and this was done to me.

Hmm. Join God in unending blissful creation, or join ego in pain, suffering and death. Which one will I choose today?

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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