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Study of the Text, Chapter 9, II. The Answer to Prayer, P 2. 12-23-14

II. The Answer to Prayer, P 2
2 Let us suppose, then, that what you ask of the Holy Spirit is what you really want, but you are still afraid of it. Should this be the case, your attainment of it would no longer be what you want. This is why certain specific forms of healing are not achieved, even when the state of healing is. An individual may ask for physical healing because he is fearful of bodily harm. At the same time, if he were healed physically, the threat to his thought system might be considerably more fearful to him than its physical expression. In this case he is not really asking for release from fear, but for the removal of a symptom that he himself selected. This request is, therefore, not for healing at all.

I completely understand this paragraph and totally accept it. The logic is absolutely clear; if I ask for something, but am afraid of it, then I don’t really want it. However, I have noticed that sometimes it is hard to see that I am asking for something and at the same time afraid I will receive it. I think I really want the healing, and can’t understand why I don’t receive it.

I had a problem at work last week and I was angry about it. I don’t like that feeling anymore and I know it is not in alignment with my goal of awakening to project onto my brother. So I asked for the Atonement in this situation. As I learned from Nouk, “Holy Spirit, please help me to forgive myself for using my boss to attack myself and to separate from your Love as my Holy Self.”

I had to work at this for awhile because I kept going back to thinking how wrong he was. I felt threatened by him and so I was afraid to give up my belief that he was attacking me. After all, how could I defend myself if I turned my back on his attack? This is an example of asking for healing, but being afraid of the healing, and so not really wanting the answer. After a day and a half of returning to Spirit with renewed desire to be healed, I felt like it was undone.

Then I went back to work. As soon as I saw him, I was upset again. Holy cow! Was I ever going to be free of this? I asked the Holy Spirit to look at this with me again, and to give me some clarity about it. The thought that came to me was that this could not possibly be his fault because it is my story. I made this story through my desire to be seen as unfairly treated, and separate from my brother. How could it be his fault?

I know this is true. I have no doubt that it is true. And yet, here I was watching the ego mind busily assassinating my brother and stealing my peace. As the day wore on, I felt worse and worse. Looking at my mind I realized I felt guilty and afraid because I was not accepting healing. I know it is not the Holy Spirit ignoring me, so it must be me not really wanting the healing.

Again, I spoke to the Holy Spirit. I knew guilt is not real and that I was making that up. I knew that I want to awaken more than I want this man to be guilty. I saw that I was obviously, for awhile, afraid of the answer. But I wanted the answer and so I asked for healing again, this time for the guilt and fear in my mind. I asked Him why I felt to so bad and had so much trouble letting this go when it was so clear to me how I made this image from a desire based on a false belief.

What He showed me is that I asked for healing and healing was accomplished in that moment of asking. He showed me that the ego does not want to let go of the grievance and so my ego mind keeps offering it to me. The ego says that I am guilty for not being free of this situation. It says that I am guilty for feeling guilty. I was mesmerized by this circular thinking. The Holy Spirit told me to look away.

That was that! As soon as I looked away, I was free of the guilty feelings and free of the desire to project it onto someone else. Sometimes it is that simple. I refocused my attention on what is true rather than looking at the illusion of guilt. Now the thought that I was wronged comes into my mind at odd times, but I am not attracted to it, and so have no emotional reaction. I just quietly hand it over to the Holy Spirit and enjoy the peace of mind that is my right.

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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 9, II. The Answer to Prayer, P 1. 12-22-14

II. The Answer to Prayer P1
1 Everyone who ever tried to use prayer to ask for something has experienced what appears to be failure. This is not only true in connection with specific things that might be harmful, but also in connection with requests that are strictly in line with this course. The latter in particular might be incorrectly interpreted as “proof” that the course does not mean what it says. You must remember, however, that the course states, and repeatedly, that its purpose is the escape from fear.

What I pray for now is that my mind be healed. No matter what the seeming need, the solution is that my mind be healed of the mistaken thoughts, the beliefs that are not true. In a healed mind, I find the answer to all my challenges. Having used this approach for awhile now, I understand about fear being a block to the prayer. I have seen fear in my mind that I will lose something of value, even as I asked that it be removed. This is not a true prayer. The Holy Spirit does not answer my words, but my heart.

The solution to this quandary seems, at least in my case, is to be clear that when I don’t receive the answer I expect, it is not the Course, nor Jesus nor the Holy Spirit that has failed to answer. It is always me that has failed as a questioner. I ask the Holy Spirit to give me clarity about the situation. I ask Him what He wants me to see. I become as willing as I can to receive His answers. I ask that He remove from my mind the impediments to my acceptance.

In the end, it is always fear and guilt that block me. I am afraid that allowing more of my “personal” freedom to be eroded will be a loss. What I have is very limited and often painful, but it is something I know, and while I don’t actually trust it, sometimes I am reluctant to chance anything else. It is hard for me to envision a future in which I am aware of myself as Love, a future that is perfectly joyful and completely safe. And yet, that future is here now, waiting for my acceptance.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 14. 12-19-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 14
14 Remember, then, that God’s Will is already possible, and nothing else will ever be. This is the simple acceptance of reality, because only that is real. You cannot distort reality and know what it is. And if you do distort reality you will experience anxiety, depression and ultimately panic, because you are trying to make yourself unreal, When you feel these things, do not try to look beyond yourself for truth, for truth can only be within you. Say, therefore:
Christ is in me, and where He is God must be, for Christ is part of Him.

The first sentence sums up the section perfectly. God’s Will is already possible. We don’t have to do anything to make that true; it simply is. All we have to do to experience reality is to accept it. We accept reality when we stop trying to make it something else. We distort reality when we believe the ego thoughts in our mind. When we forgive those thoughts we reveal the truth and know reality.

When we believe the ego thoughts we suffer because when we distort reality, we feel like we are trying to make ourselves unreal. This sense of unreality leads to depression, anxiety and ultimately panic. Jesus says when this happens we should not look beyond ourselves for truth, but to look within. He doesn’t mean to look within at the ego thoughts to make sense of things, but to look within for the Christ, for God. That is where we find reality.

In our confusion it is hard to believe that Christ is in us and that if Christ is in us, God must also be in us. But this is what Jesus is telling us. Our true nature, our reality is that we are in God and God is in us. We cannot lose ourselves, but can only lose the awareness of our Self. This reality can go nowhere and can not be changed. It remains as it was created. But to not know it is to suffer.

This is why we are here where we are now, studying A Course in Miracles, following our path Home. We are awakening to this truth, to reality. Every day when I pick up the Course and read my paragraph, I ask within for guidance. I ask for clarity. I ask that I be led Home through these words and through the experience of these words.

I am looking at a book, but it is a book we wrote with Jesus, and as I read it, I am not asking anyone else what it means. I am looking within to the Truth that is in my mind, the Truth that was placed there for this purpose. As I hear the Voice for God, the memory of my Self returns to me.

Sometimes I find a dark unexplored corner in my mind and briefly I am afraid. I wonder if the truth is true or if I am crazy to believe this stuff I read in the Course, but what I cannot deny, what is indisputable is the Voice that speaks to me. That Voice is always there, gentle but convincing.

It gives me Its thoughts, thoughts I cannot find in the ego thinking mind. I hear that Voice and I hear it within me, and I know I am not the ego self. I know I am part of the Christ Mind. And if Christ is in me, then God, Which is in Christ, is also in me. I can rest in that knowledge and be at peace. That is the reality, the only reality.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 13. 12-18-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 13
13 God in His devotion to you created you devoted to everything, and gave you what you are devoted to. Otherwise you would not have been created perfect. Reality is everything, and you have everything because you are real. You cannot make the unreal because the absence of reality is fearful, and fear cannot be created. As long as you believe that fear is possible, you will not create. Opposing orders of reality make reality meaningless, and reality is meaning.

God created me devoted to everything, then gave me what I am devoted to so that I would be created perfect. Reality is everything, I have everything and so I am real. I made up things outside of reality, but the absence of reality is not possible and I became afraid. Fear is not reality and so in making something outside of reality I was no longer creating.

As long as I believe fear is possible I am trying to believe in opposing orders of reality and that is clearly not possible. Either one is true or the other is true. They cannot both be true. Would I choose to believe in something other than God and remain bound, trading Reality for the illusion of pain, suffering and death as if they were reality?

To return my mind to Reality, it is clear that I must stop trying to believe in what is not real. It is insanity to devote myself to the impossible job of giving meaning to the meaningless. As I devote myself to only what is real, to Love, to God, what I have done outside of Reality is undone and I return my mind to sanity. Every time I notice meaningless thoughts in my mind, I ask the Holy Spirit to remove them because I want only what God gave me in my creation. The illusion is unraveling.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 12. 12-17-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 12

12 Any attempt to deny what is must be fearful, and if the attempt is strong it will induce panic. Willing against reality, though impossible, can be made into a very persistent goal even though you do not want it. But consider the result of this strange decision. You are devoting your mind to what you do not want. How real can this devotion be? If you do not want it, it was never created. If it were never created, it is nothing. Can you really devote yourself to nothing?

Jesus says that to deny what is must be fearful. When I deny what I am, I deny what is. I was reading from the Daily Lessons the section called “What am I?” This is a beautiful section and I am going to read it frequently now because I think I may be ready to believe it. Among other things, it says that we are the holy messengers of God who speak for Him, and carrying it to everyone whom He has sent to us, we learn that it is written on our hearts.

When I feel afraid or sick, when I am in pain, or angry, when I succumb to guilt and doubt, I deny what is. When I treat anyone badly, I am not being messenger for God and thus I am not learning what is written on my heart. I deny both of us the truth that brings us to the awareness of Heaven. This includes the clerk at the store, the fellow shopper who is blocking the aisle, the driver who won’t use her turn signal.

In this world of separation with its levels and its orders of difficulty, it seems like some errors are big or important and other things hardly matter. But that is not so. It is the same error that I feel anger and resentment toward my boss and that it consumes me for two days, as it is that I was impatient with the store clerk who was moving slowly and talking to a fellow clerk while I was running late. They are the same thing because the only thing is happening is that I am either devoted to God or to ego, devoted to what is, or devoted to nothing.

In this Christmas season I have some very clear opportunities to teach love or to teach fear. Even when I am not actively involved in Christmas shopping, making arrangements for holiday visits, or worrying about my budget, many others are and this can make them anxious. People drive too fast or carelessly because they are devoted to nothing and are fearful, even panicked. You can see it in their pinched expressions, worry lines, and tense bodies.

My function is to remember my true devotion, to be a messenger of God, teaching love, teaching everyone what they are, and so learning what I am. And when I forget, when I get caught up in the illusion, my function is to forgive myself as soon as I notice that I am devoting myself to nothing. When I think of this, I get excited! Today is not just another day at work, another day navigating the crowds, the heavy traffic. It is a day of remembering and a day of teaching. Today I am God’s messenger.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 11. 12-16-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 11
11 You do not recognize the enormous waste of energy you expend in denying truth. What would you say of someone who persists in attempting the impossible, believing that to achieve it is to succeed? The belief that you must have the impossible in order to be happy is totally at variance with the principle of creation. God could not will that happiness depended on what you could never have. The fact that God is Love does not require belief, but it does require acceptance. It is indeed possible for you to deny facts, although it is impossible for you to change them. If you hold your hands over your eyes, you will not see because you are interfering with the laws of seeing. If you deny love, you will not know it because your cooperation is the law of its being. You cannot change laws you did not make, and the laws of happiness were created for you, not by you.

How is it that I deny the truth and insist that I can be happy only if the truth is not true? I do this when I desire sickness, when I desire to be unfairly treated, when I desire to be right at the expense of another. Why would I desire these things when they are so clearly the cause of my unhappiness? And yet I must desire them because they show up as my life.

I was angry with someone recently and I spent two days arguing for my anger, insisting that he be wrong and that his actions were hurting me. In my mind I was insisting that the only way I could be happy is if he sacrificed his perceived needs on my behalf. It took nearly two days for me to get past this idea, to move my hands from in front of my eyes so that I could see. What a waste of energy that was.

How could my happiness depend on what another person does or does not do? How could my happiness depend on getting my way at the expense of another? How could my happiness depend on what happens in a dream? Would God put my happiness out of my reach? Would he make happiness something elusive, something that is only sometimes possible?

Here is what I discovered when I finally remembered that I wanted to see. I decided that all of my previous goals that involved a need to have something happen were unimportant compared with the goal of knowing God. I let it all go to the Holy Spirit for purification. I let Him heal my mind. I stopped interfering with love and accepted it. Happiness happened.

The situation itself remains unresolved at the moment. The ego mind wants to revive the issue and it brings love into question at times, but I am not interested. I am aware of those thoughts and when one snags my attention I ask that the Holy Spirit remove it from my mind. There is a song I listen to every night as I go to sleep.

It repeats over and over the words, “thank you,” and, “your love is pouring down.” As the song repeats these words, I imagine that His love is pouring down on me, washing away the doubts and uncertainties that may have plagued me during the day, healing all that is not truth in my mind. I am filled with gratitude.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 10. 12-12-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 10
10 When you ask the Holy Spirit for what would hurt you He cannot answer because nothing can hurt you, and so you are asking for nothing. Any wish that stems from the ego is a wish for nothing, and to ask for it is not a request. It is merely a denial in the form of a request. The Holy Spirit is not concerned with form, being aware only of meaning. The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for anything, because there is complete communication failure between them. Yet you can ask for everything of the Holy Spirit, because your requests to Him are real, being of your right mind. Would the Holy Spirit deny the Will of God? And could He fail to recognize it in His Son?

When I ask for anything that would support the ego thought system and thus maintain the dream state, I am asking for something that would hurt me and since I cannot be hurt I am asking for nothing. This would not be a true question, and it would not even be a question from me, but from the ego.

Here is an example of how I saw this work a couple of days ago. I had a very chaotic day at work. Nothing went right. I had to wait for customers at each stop and this put me behind on my schedule at a time when I could not afford to be behind. A lot of things went wrong, little mix ups, miscommunications, and the lot. By the end of the day I realized that my chaotic thinking had made a chaotic day and so I asked for clarity.

I used Lesson 325, the keynote, to salvation to help me see what happened. This lesson tells us how we make the day we experience. We have a desire and from that desire we make an image of what the desire would look like. Then we project that desire and look on it as if it was real and we defend it. So I asked the Holy Spirit to show me the desire that sourced this chaotic day,

It all began because I was disgruntled with work, with the company I work for and with my boss. I felt underappreciated and unfairly treated. This feeling was my request. Holding this belief in my mind and believing it is what started the whole thing. My desire, based on this belief was to be unfairly treated, and to see myself in a job that made me miserable.

From this desire I made an image of how this could be true. This image could have appeared in many ways but the image I made for that day was to have a chaotic day of late meetings and everything going wrong. I got a clue during the day when after one particularly difficult experience I had the thought that this was just not fair. I have noticed since I started using Lesson 325 as a practice that I have a lot of experiences stemming from the request to be unfairly treated, and to be a victim. So I knew, in a general way what was going on, but it took me awhile to let go of my victim stance and ask for clarity.

This desire to see what it feels like to be unfairly treated and to be a victim is not a real question because it hurts me. It is an effort to make the world real. The ego answers it readily because making the world appear real is its goal. That is why it took me a whole day to get clear on it. All the circumstances I had projected outward confused me temporarily and I believed in them and defended them.

I had thoughts like, “This is so unfair,” and “I wish I could retire and not have to do this job anymore.” Those thoughts were in defense of the idea that my experience is reality, I really am a victim, and the answer is to change the world. I had a desire, I made an image of that desire, I projected the image and then I believed in it and defended it.

But I also have true thoughts in my mind and even while all this was happening, I was aware of those thoughts as well. It felt frustrating because I was asking for conflicting solutions. I was asking the ego to fix this problem and I was asking the Holy Spirit to heal my mind. Conflict is suffering, and boy, was I suffering! It wasn’t until I was clear about what I really wanted that I got relief.

When I finally set aside the desire to be unfairly treated and made a different choice, that is that my mind be healed, the Holy Spirit answered my request swiftly and completely. When I asked for my mind to be healed, I was asking a real question, one that leads me to an awareness of love’s presence. This is a question from my right mind and the answer is the Will of God so it cannot fail to be answered.

It became clear to me that my job is not my problem and retirement or another job is not the answer. There is only one problem and one solution and the circumstances in my life represent either the problem or the solution, depending on what I want. The problem did not begin in the world and the solution is not there. It began in my mind with a desire to be unlike God, and the solution is in my mind as well. It is the Holy Spirit, and the remembrance of what I am.

I notice that the ego really wants me to hold onto the idea that this situation is real and that the answer lies in changing the world, and if I hope to be happy I better do that. But I am placing my trust in God. Today, I ask only that I experience peace and joy. That is my desire and it is the Will of God so I will expect a sure and ready answer.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.