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Study of Text, C 15: VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God, P 3. 2-15-18

VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God, P 3
3 All separation vanishes as holiness is shared. For holiness is power, and by sharing it, it gains in strength. If you seek for satisfaction in gratifying your needs as you perceive them, you must believe that strength comes from another, and what you gain he loses. Someone must always lose if you perceive yourself as weak. Yet there is another interpretation of relationships that transcends the concept of loss of power completely.

Journal
I remember one time when I was a young woman and dating, I had an electrical problem at my house. I jokingly said that maybe I needed to trade my pipefitter boyfriend for an electrician boyfriend. But really, is this a joke? I’ve had three marriages in my life and in every single one of them, I was looking for something from these men that I thought I needed. I felt that I was weak in certain areas and needed something from someone I saw as strong.

I didn’t love myself very much and I wanted them to make me feel like I was loveable. I wanted them to make me feel valuable and special. I wanted security and stability in my life and I thought they could provide it. I wanted someone to keep me company and relieve my boredom, and someone to be there for me when I felt down, someone to take my side, to defend me.

You might wonder what is wrong with this attitude as it is very common, even considered normal. But as Jesus says in this paragraph, “If you seek for satisfaction in gratifying your needs as you perceive them, you must believe that strength comes from another, and what you gain he loses.” If the giving and taking are balanced, the relationship seems to work, but inevitably, the balance shifts back and forth, and someone begins to feel like they are coming out on the losing end and then there is a power struggle.

When relationships are looked at with complete honesty, they begin to look more like bargains than like love, and bargains can be broken when one party or the other feels they are giving too much and not receiving enough in return. If one believes that this neediness is love, then love seems like a pretty iffy proposition.

This is not the powerful unconditional love that Jesus talks about in A Course in Miracles. He is going to explain to us in this section that there is another way to have a relationship, one in which there is sharing rather than taking and holiness is shared and thus strengthened. How lovely to think of a relationship in which nothing is needed from the partner, and everything is shared freely, lovingly and gratefully with no thought of scarcity or loss.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Manual for Teachers: 6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 4. 2-14-18

6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 4
4 It is the relinquishing of all concern about the gift that makes it truly given. And it is trust that makes true giving possible. Healing is the change of mind that the Holy Spirit in the patient’s mind is seeking for him. And it is the Holy Spirit in the mind of the giver Who gives the gift to him. How can it be lost? How can it be ineffectual? How can it be wasted? God’s treasure house can never be empty. And if one gift is missing, it would not be full. Yet is its fullness guaranteed by God. What concern, then, can a teacher of God have about what becomes of his gifts? Given by God to God, who in this holy exchange can receive less than everything?

Journal
When someone’s body is sick I know that the only thing that happened is that the mind is confused. In its confusion, it projected its guilty thoughts onto the body. When I pray for them, I am asking the Holy Spirit to heal the mind. Once this is done, the healing is guaranteed because the Holy Spirit never fails at His function.

The only thing left for me to do is to trust. It can be a temptation to worry that I don’t see progress, but that is like a prayer that says please maybe heal this one. That is not a prayer I want to say. The prayer I want to say is one of absolute certainty that the one who is experiencing a sick body is mistaken and that mistake is easily corrected.

When I doubt the Holy Spirit, I ask for correction of my mind that is now the one confused. I have learned to accept that the prayer is always answered and when it is accepted is not my concern. It is really just a matter of faith, faith in my brother, faith in myself and faith in God. That doesn’t mean that ego thoughts will go away. But with practice, I have learned that I don’t have to believe in the ego fears and doubts.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 15: VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God, P 2. 2-13-18

VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God, P 2
2 You have so little faith in yourself because you are unwilling to accept the fact that perfect love is in you. And so you seek without for what you cannot find without. I offer you my perfect faith in you, in place of all your doubts. But forget not that my faith must be as perfect in all your brothers as it is in you, or it would be a limited gift to you. In the holy instant we share our faith in God’s Son because we recognize, together, that he is wholly worthy of it, and in our appreciation of his worth we cannot doubt his holiness. And so we love him.

Journal

Jesus knows that we don’t have a lot of faith that perfect love is in us, so he offers us his perfect faith in us. What a good brother he is! He reminds us that all our brothers receive the same gift. They have perfect love in them, too. And so we must have faith in them as well. This was always hard for me before. There was always someone I didn’t trust, that I could not accept as having perfect love.

I would see that one person or those few people and my sight was arrested at their bodies. I saw their ego personality and their ego actions and that was as far as I could get. But something happened recently, and my mind shifted. Suddenly, I could see how everyone is holy. Now I can’t un-see it.

We are just consciousness, or awareness, or All That Is, or Christ, whatever term you like. The consciousness that I am is not like the consciousness you are. It IS the consciousness you are. The body and the personality, these are just the ego construct that each of us develops as we live in the world, and this is what makes us appear different. But that difference is artificial. What we are beneath that artifice remains as it always was, and it is exactly the same in every one of us. And it is very holy.

Think of ego bodies as containers of different shapes, sizes, and colors, each unique in its form. But inside each container is the essence of what animates it, and that essence is not different from container to container. It is from the same infinite pool, poured into the different containers. And when the container is no longer needed it is discarded, but the essence of who we are remains as it always has been, unaffected by the container that once held it.

So now, when I am tempted to judge the container, I find it is not possible for me to see that one as different or separate from me. I am part of God and I am very holy and so is everyone else. No matter what is happening in this dream, I cannot forget that. I cannot forget that the one who seems separate from me is really… well, me, us, the Son of God. In every case. No exceptions.

That is me over there, acting like a fool. Haha. Sometimes it is me over here acting the fool. But our actions change nothing. We are just one great Whole acting as if we are not. There is no one to judge, no one to blame. There is just the One. Yes, I see your body over there doing its thing, but I recognize your holy self and I love you.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Manual for Teachers: 6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 3. 2-12-18

6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 3
3 It is not the function of God’s teachers to evaluate the outcome of their gifts. It is merely their function to give them. Once they have done that they have also given the outcome, for that is part of the gift. No one can give if he is concerned with the result of giving. That is a limitation on the giving itself, and neither the giver nor the receiver would have the gift. Trust is an essential part of giving; in fact, it is the part that makes sharing possible, the part that guarantees the giver will not lose, but only gain. Who gives a gift and then remains with it, to be sure it is used as the giver deems appropriate? Such is not giving but imprisoning.

Journal
Our part in healing is to know the truth about them without being influenced by appearances. Then we are done. It is not our part to look for results. It is not our business how the gift is accepted. Knowing the truth about someone in the face of the false image of sickness requires faith, and watching to see how the gift is accepted is a lack of faith. It is like praying for certainty and in the next breath praying for doubt. Or praying for reality in one breath and in the next, praying for an illusion.

What I have noticed for myself is that fear gets in the way sometimes, and when it does, I begin to doubt. Jesus has asked me to step out of the boat and walk to him over the water. I get right out of that boat and I am traipsing across the water just fine. Then I start to look around and see what I’m doing, fear sets in and I doubt I can do what Jesus asks so I sink.

When someone sends me a prayer request they sometimes give me a lot of detail as to what is going on in their life. I understand that they are afraid but I know that they don’t need to be. I completely disregard what they think is happening and I know only what is true for them. But when it is someone I know well, like one of my children or a good friend, I can get sucked into the story and begin to feel the fear that they feel. Fear just clouds the mind and makes it hard to remember the truth.

Those are the times when I have to back up and ask for correction for myself. My mind has become confused and I need the Holy Spirit to heal it. I trust the Holy Spirit to always heal because that is His function. I have faith in Him so I experience healing and I can go back to truly praying for that loved one. I can again see him or her with clarity; completely disregarding the images my eyes show me. And if they are not ready to accept the gift of healing, that is OK. It is there waiting for them when they are ready. That part is for them to do, not me.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 15: VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God, P 1. 2-9-18

VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God
1 It is impossible to use one relationship at the expense of another and not to suffer guilt. And it is equally impossible to condemn part of a relationship and find peace within it. Under the Holy Spirit’s teaching all relationships are seen as total commitments, yet they do not conflict with one another in any way. Perfect faith in each one, for its ability to satisfy you completely, arises only from perfect faith in yourself. And this you cannot have while guilt remains. And there will be guilt as long as you accept the possibility, and cherish it, that you can make a brother into what he is not, because you would have him so.

Journal
It is impossible to use one relationship at the expense of another and not to suffer guilt.
I’m not sure how this works. Perhaps Jesus is talking about leaving a relationship because another seems like it would be better. Sometimes relationships fall away naturally, and sometimes it is necessary to leave a relationship, but this idea that the problem is his or hers and the solution is a different his or her, is never going to work. When I have a problem in a relationship, I look within for the source of that problem, so that I can allow my mind to be healed.

Or maybe taking sides in relationships, using a friend to reinforce your side of an argument with another friend. I used to do that. When I failed to forgive a grievance, I had to justify that failure and so I would gather friends who would agree with me. This would help me shore up my side of the story and that made it easier to go on pretending that I was innocent and the other person was guilty. After a while, I realized that I just felt guiltier and eventually learned to look within for the problem and solve it there.

Maybe it could mean playing favorites, preferring one relationship over another. I used to think that preferring one relationship over another was perfectly normal and unavoidable, that I would just naturally like being with some people more than others. What I have discovered is that I can actually enjoy each relationship equally if I give that relationship to the Holy Spirit. As more false beliefs are corrected, I have fewer preferences, and I tend to enjoy each person because I am not projecting on them like I used to.

And it is equally impossible to condemn part of a relationship and find peace within it.
This took a long time for me to learn. At first, I had no idea it was even a problem. It never occurred to me that I could love and accept all of the relationship. When I was married to an alcoholic, I loved many things about that relationship, but his drinking was something I could not love. That certainly made sense to me. Who would love that?

But what if I could have loved all of the relationship? If I loved completely without exception, my actions and reactions would have been different. I would not have doubted this Son of God. I would not have resented him. He would have felt only unconditional love coming from me. I wonder how different the relationship might have been if this was the case? Maybe my unconditional love might have been the support he needed to make a new choice for his life. But for sure, I know that there is no peace in conflict.

Under the Holy Spirit’s teaching all relationships are seen as total commitments, yet they do not conflict with one another in any way.
I now have friends with all sorts of personalities and beliefs, and these friendships take different forms, but none of them conflict. I can be with them one at a time and what we do and how we interact will be different. I can be with several of them all at once and enjoy the differences without choosing to favor one or the other. There was a time when I couldn’t do that. The change is that I give my relationships to the Holy Spirit now. The specialness is being removed for me and the relationships just naturally transform as I transform.

Perfect faith in each one, for its ability to satisfy you completely, arises only from perfect faith in yourself.
I don’t have perfect faith in my relationships because I don’t have perfect faith in myself. But I also know that this is changing. As I write about this, I am examining my relationships and myself. I am noticing how different they are now than they used to be and I see that this change correlates with changes within myself. I am becoming more certain of myself as I release more ego and thus identify more closely with my true self.

And this you cannot have while guilt remains. And there will be guilt as long as you accept the possibility, and cherish it, that you can make a brother into what he is not, because you would have him so.
And there you go; guilt raises its ugly head again. So much of my inner work revolves around guilt. Why do I not have perfect relationships? It is because I don’t have perfect faith in my brothers and sisters. And why is that? It is because I don’t have faith in me. And why is that? Because I believe I am guilty. In this particular situation, the guilt is taking the form of wanting my brother to be something that I would prefer.

I want to change this. I want to let go of preferences. I choose to become fully accepting of all things. Instead of judging circumstances and people (including myself) I choose to simply accept it all as it is. If something or someone seems to be out of alignment with God’s creation, then let me love it back into alignment rather than trying to manipulate and change for the purpose of making myself more comfortable in my judgments. With the Holy Spirit’s guidance and help, I can do this. I know I can because I have done it. I am learning to make that choice every time. I am learning to master that decision.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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