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Study of the Text, Chapter 8, IV. The Gift of Freedom, P 8. 9-4-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom P 8
8 Freedom is the only gift you can offer to God’s Sons, being an acknowledgement of what they are and what He is. Freedom is creation, because it is love. Whom you seek to imprison you do not love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison anyone, including yourself, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. When you imprison yourself you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification is with the Father and with the Son. It cannot be with one and not the other. If you are part of one you must be part of the other, because they are one. The Holy Trinity is holy because It is One. If you exclude yourself from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated. You must be included in It, because It is everything. Unless you take your place in It and fulfil your function as part of It, the Holy Trinity is as bereft as you are. No part of It can be imprisoned if Its truth is to be known.

When I think of freedom, I think of being free of the belief in me. I am not this body of Myron and as long as I believe that is what I am, I will feel imprisoned and I will imprison others in their body/personality. I imprison myself when I judge my actions and think my actions define me. Last night I was thinking about this and asked the Holy Spirit to help me detach from this story and see it as the illusion it is.

This story of Myron is a great opportunity to learn what it is I came to learn. It can be painless if I remember that I am not the story. When I think about something I did that was unkind and I feel ashamed, it is because I believe I am my actions. I don’t have to suffer shame, and I will not suffer shame if I detach from the story.

One time when I was a young woman my mom called to tell me she had burnt herself badly. I hardly reacted to her story at all because, though she didn’t know it, I was really high on some drug or another. To this day, even as I write this, I feel awful about it. My mom was always there for me and so many times I was absent to her when she needed me. When I think about it I feel ashamed and regretful. I cry and wish I had behaved better.

There was a lesson in this story of Myron, but the self imposed guilt that I continue to harbor even to this day prevents me from accepting my true self. The guilt ties me to the idea of Myron and I can’t experience the brilliance of the Self that I am. If I cannot see past the guilt in my mind to the truth of my being, then I will not be able to do so for others either. And it works the other way as well. If I refuse to look past the guilt I see in others, I will not be able to see them as they are.

I want desperately for my mom to be here so that I can hold her and tell her how sorry I am for all the times I failed to be the daughter she needed. I want her forgiveness. But really, it is my own forgiveness that I need. No doubt she forgave me the instant it happened, just as I forgive my own children everything. But I am so attached to “Myron” and her story that I can’t forgive me. I think I am that person who failed to love in that moment. And that is painful to think about.

As long as we continue to see ourselves as the character we play in the story and fail to see that we are the watcher of the story, we will suffer and we will block the vision of ourselves as one with God. We are part of the Holy Trinity. We are the Son. That is our truth, and so we cannot really be the person we are playing in this particular story.

If I am not really Myron, then there is no reason to feel guilty about anything that happened in the story of Myron and Mom. If I am not really Myron then Mom was not really Mom either. We were just both dreaming of separation and watching it played out on the screen of our mind. There was a lesson to be learned, but it was not a lesson in guilt. Quite the opposite. Perhaps I can release myself from the prison of that guilt now so that I can take my proper place in the Holy Trinity and remember what I am. It is bereft without me.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8,IV. The Gift of Freedom, P 7. 9-3-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom P 7
7 If your will were not mine it would not be our Father’s. This would mean you have imprisoned yours, and have not let it be free. Of yourself you can do nothing, because of yourself you are nothing. I am nothing without the Father and you are nothing without me, because by denying the Father you deny yourself. I will always remember you, and in my remembrance of you lies your remembrance of yourself. In our remembrance of each other lies our remembrance of God. And in this remembrance lies your freedom because your freedom is in Him. Join, then, with me in praise of Him and you whom He created. This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with all His creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. Because it is acceptable to Him it is the gift of freedom, which is His Will for all His Sons. By offering freedom you will be free.

I don’t think I have ever really understood the concept of free will. At first, I thought it was some kind of boon that I was free to decide between unlimited options, even though I didn’t understand the far-reaching consequences. I was like a child let lose in place with many sharp objects among the toys.

As I began to understand how little I know and how much I have hurt myself in the past with my choosing, and as I began to understand that exercising my “free will” was keeping me in hell, I became afraid of it. “You decide for me, God,” was not a prayer of thanksgiving as it should have been, but a prayer of fear, asking to be relieved of free will because I didn’t know how to use it.

Now I am beginning to understand that what I thought of as free will was my will imprisoned. When I imagined I could will for something outside God, I entangled my will with idle wishes that hurt me. Could it be freedom to be separate from my true nature, to be separate from absolute and unending peace and joy? Is it freedom to be separate from unlimited strength and power? Is it freedom to be fragile and weak and to suffer and die?

Now I seek true freedom as I disentangle my mind from the separation idea. I ask frequently, “What am I?” Slowly, my mind is opening to the reality of my being. I am being revealed to my self. I have periods of time when I almost know what it is to be spirit rather than body, to be one rather than separate. I feel like Jesus is my beloved brother and gratitude overcomes me as I think of that. I feel joined with all my brothers, and they feel precious to me. My will is free to remember what we all are to each other and so to remember God.

Then the ego mind tries to reassert itself and I sink back into the story I made up. This is very uncomfortable because in those time when I am tasting my freedom, I am. I am so much closer to knowing my free will, then I am back into ego and I am Myron. It is starting to feel claustrophobic. Maybe I am reaching the tipping point and soon my will will be completely free.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: IV.The Gift of Freedom, Paragraph 6. 9-2-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom P 6
6 Nothing God created can oppose your decision, as nothing God created can oppose His Will. God gave your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honour of His. If you want to be like me I will help you, knowing that we are alike. If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching. How else can it be, if God’s Kingdom is freedom? Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of any kind, and the perfect equality of all God’s Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one mind over another. God’s Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the only lesson I came to teach.

Wow! Did you read that last sentence? “This is the only lesson I came to teach.” I am going to pay close attention to this paragraph. I have always loved the sentence where Jesus assures me that he will help me be like him and if I want to be different he will wait for me to change my mind. That has brought me so much comfort. It made me realize that it is inevitable that I will be like Jesus (because we are alike) and he is not going to give up on me. He is just going to wait patiently until I am ready to wake up.

I feel like the only lesson Jesus came to teach is that we are part of God’s Kingdom and that is our freedom. We are all equal. I am equal to Jesus and I am equal to the Holy Spirit. How else could it be since we are all equal parts of the one Whole? There will never be a time when we will be coerced by Jesus or by the Holy Spirit because that is just not possible. If it were possible then I would not be free and God’s Kingdom would not be free because I am God’s Kingdom.

I have often had the thought that I want someone to just heal me and get it over with. “Jesus, just shake me awake, would you?” But that can’t happen because it would prove that I am not free to wake up on my own. It would make me something I am not. It would make Reality something it is not. Jesus will teach me but only I decide if I want to learn.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: IV.The Gift of Freedom, Paragraph 5. 9-1-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom P 5
5 Healing reflects our joint will. This is obvious when you consider what healing is for. Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome. Separation is overcome by union. It cannot be overcome by separating. The decision to unite must be unequivocal, or the mind itself is divided and not whole. Your mind is the means by which you determine your own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. My decision cannot overcome yours, because yours is as powerful as mine. If it were not so the Sons of God would be unequal. All things are possible through our joint decision, but mine alone cannot help you. Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. I cannot will what God does not will. I can offer my strength to make yours invincible, but I cannot oppose your decision without competing with it and thereby violating God’s Will for you.

I am glad that Jesus reminds us that healing is the way the separation is overcome, and that separation is overcome by union. In other words, we must unite. We unite with our brothers and we unite our will with God’s Will. Sometimes this is done in a single prayer. When I am angry with someone, I ask that my mind be healed of this wrong-minded belief. In this prayer I am asking that the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence be removed from my mind. This joins me with God. At the same time it makes it possible for me to join with my brother, which joins my will with God’s Will.

For this to be effective, my uniting must be unequivocal. If I am forgiving my brother (forgiving my projections onto him) I must do so with no caveats. Here is an example. In the past I have held a grievance against a fellow worker. When I became uncomfortable with my judgments, I asked that my mind be healed. I really wanted to be free of my discomfort, but I didn’t want to let him off the hook. I wanted him to change. There was no real joining intended in that request.

Then I finally reached the point that when I said I wanted to be free of my judgment, I meant it, but when he did something else, I saw his behavior this time as different than it was before, so I went right back to judging and to my own discomfort. I had to recognize that these were just different forms of the same problem and I let go of them so that I could be at peace. Every time I see him now, I ask the Holy Spirit if there is forgiveness to be done. I want our joining, and the only way I can have it is if my desire is unequivocal, no exceptions.

And that is just the one person. I cannot enter the presence of God if I attack His Son. This, too must be an unequivocal decision on my part. I must be willing to give up judging everyone including myself. That seems like a tall order sometimes, but it is my only real choice. Nothing else will restore my mind to God; nothing else will return my will to God’s Will. Nothing else will heal.

Jesus tells us that our mind is the means by which we determine our own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. Returning to God is simply a matter of deciding to do so. But again, the decision must be unequivocal. This means I must decide against anything that would keep me in the illusion. That is why I ask for mind healing all day long. It is the reason I ask the Holy Spirit to remove from my mind the thought that is blocking my return.

Only I can decide for God, this cannot be done for me. Once I make that decision, the Holy Spirit becomes the mechanism that makes it possible. But only after I decide. Jesus says he cannot overpower our will because it is not God’s Will that we be forced into peace and happiness. It is always going to be our choice. It would seem like an easy choice and I have often thought I made that choice only to discover there was still something I wanted more than Heaven.

What helped me get this far is that I have so much help. Jesus offers me his strength to make mine invincible. He says he I can imagine holding his hand and then he assured me this would be no idle fantasy. He said he is with me always. He says he will help me or he will wait until I am ready for his help. The Holy Spirit responds quickly and fully to my slightest invitation. I have unseen help and present help. How could I fail except it be my decision to do so.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: IV.The Gift of Freedom, Paragraph 4. 8-29-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom P 4
4 Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? For unless you do, you will not receive it. If you want to have it of me, you must give it. Healing does not come from anyone else. You must accept guidance from within. The guidance must be what you want, or it will be meaningless to you. That is why healing is a collaborative venture. I can tell you what to do, but you must collaborate by believing that I know what you should do. Only then will your mind choose to follow me. Without this choice you could not be healed because you would have decided against healing, and this rejection of my decision for you makes healing impossible.

These are the ideas that stand out to me in this paragraph. If I want peace, I must want it equally for everyone else. That idea is more important than I first thought. There is still a tendency in my mind to see others as separate from me. For instance, when I read about someone in town getting robbed, I feel empathy for them and the one who did the robbing. I pray for their peace of mind. I pray that my mind be healed of the beliefs that create that kind of thinking. 

When I read about someone being hurt in another country, I don’t experience the same degree of empathy. They seem far away and I don’t relate to their lives. And yet, they are part of me. And, no matter how different on the surface, they want the same things I want. They want to be happy. They want peace. In other words, they want salvation, just as I do.

I ask that my mind be healed of the belief that I am separate in any way from anything I see. We are all part of the One Self, and what I want for any part of the Sonship, I want for all of it, or I don’t want it for myself. And if I don’t want it for myself and everyone else, then I will not have it. Peace is not forced on me. I must want it in order to have it. To have peace I must want it and I must give it.

The next idea, which is related, is that I must accept Guidance from within. I must ask the Holy Spirit to guide me so that I can both recognize and desire peace. For such a long time I thought peace was something I had to steal from someone else. For me to gain, often I saw it as necessary that someone else lose.

I obviously didn’t know what peace was and I had to learn. The Holy Spirit has helped me with that. When I am not at peace, I ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of wrong-minded thinking. I would ask that He remove from my mind the thoughts that were blocking my peace. I must truly want the healing or I will not understand the guidance when I receive it.

That brings us to the next idea, one we have been touching on. Healing is a collaborative venture. This is my part: I must want the healing more than I want the problem. I must ask for the healing and be willing to accept it. The Holy Spirit then does His part and heals my mind. He removes from my mind all that blocks the healing. This works every time as long as I am doing my part.

Where it can get clogged up is when I want to feel better and I want to be at peace, but I also want to hold onto my grievance, my fear or my guilt. In this case, I might want peace, but I am not meeting its conditions, and so I don’t really want it. What I want is my problem without the consequences, and of course this is not a real request. To receive the answer to the prayer for peace, I must truly want peace above all else. Then it is mine.

I have learned to trust the Holy Spirit. He knows what it is that I need to be happy. He knows me much better than I do. I accept His judgment and lay aside all I thought I knew and then the healing is done. As long as I believe I know what I need, my mind will not accept His Answer.  I won’t even understand the guidance. It won’t make sense to me. But as soon as I decide that I don’t know anything except that I want peace for myself and everyone else, it is done. It is always up to me.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 5,VII. The Decision for God, P 6. 8-28-14

VII. The Decision for God, P6
6 Decision cannot be difficult. This is obvious, if you realize that you must already have decided not to be wholly joyous if that is how you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that you actively decided wrongly, but can as actively decide otherwise. Be very firm with yourself in this, and keep yourself fully aware that the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless within you because God placed it there. Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace. Say this to yourself as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:
I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.
I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.
I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.
I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.
I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me.

This prayer is the foundation of my spiritual practice. It is the way I return my mind to God as He gave it to me, the way I remove what was added. The Answer to this prayer is in my mind. It always responds to a sincere desire to be healed, and the healing occurs. I say that I remove what has been added, but the way I do that is to desire that it be removed. The actual removal is accomplished through the Holy Spirit That was given to us for this purpose.

I have been thinking about retirement a lot lately, maybe because I turn 65 tomorrow. I have this thought that I need to get my house paid for so that I can afford to retire so I have been looking at ways I can accomplish this. There is nothing wrong with doing this, especially if it is guidance of how to do something that needs to be done.

Where I wander off the path is when I allow the ego to entice me into obsessing over it and moving into fear. We are the Sons of God and there is no fear in us, but we can believe there is much to fear and it seems to be so. This is what has been happening to me. I have gone from something that started off as a simple thought in the mind and has ended up being a source of fear.

This morning I am going to use the power of my decision to accept the Atonement in this situation. This is the way Jesus wants me to use my illusion to allow it to be undone for me. The Atonement is his plan for our salvation and if I am going to use this book as my guide to awakening, then I must make use of the Atonement principle. Anyway, it is easy and effective and nothing else I have tried even works.

“I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.” I decided to think thoughts that are not true and that is why I am not at peace. I didn’t lose my peace somewhere like a misplaced book, I lost it on purpose. I actively decided against it through choosing to believe what is not true. I have not lost my peace because I am in danger of living on the streets or of working many more years than I want.

I am anxious because I chose to believe I am victim to the situation in which I find myself rather than the maker of it. Nor is anyone at work, or anyone I help financially responsible for this situation. I am completely responsible for everything I see. If something is wrong, then my thinking must be wrong because that is the source of my world as I see it. If I am not at peace, it must be that I have decided wrongly. I have chosen to think with ego rather than with God.

“I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.” Since the problem is a result of my own decision, then the solution is to think differently. This is the most valuable lesson I ever learned. In the past I always tried to find someone or something else to blame. All my attention was fixed on preserving my false innocence through projecting blame.

All the time I really was innocent, but failed to see it because I believed I was guilty. Guilt has no place in this, and without guilt the process is simple and goes without a hitch. Now I understand the difference between guilt and responsibility, I gladly accept responsibility so that I can do something about my error and know that I am free. I decided wrongly when I decided that I am unhappy because of circumstances and the people who are to blame for these circumstances.

“I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.” The reason this is hard to do is because I tend to forget the goal. I start to think that the goal is to pay off my house and to retire. The goal is peace. The reason I want to pay off my house is because I think that will bring me peace. The reason I want to retire is because I think I must in order to feel peaceful.

But I am wrong about that. I must decide for God rather than for ego if I want peace. I must let go of those ego beliefs and trust that God does have my best interests at heart and that He knows better than I do what it is that will bring me peace and joy. I must surrender my own plan and accept His.

“I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.” There is no reason for guilt because nothing has really happened. I have made a wrong decision and if I let the Holy Spirit undo it there will be no consequences to that wrong decision. Nothing in this world is real and so nothing matters except as I give it value, and then it matters to me, but is still not real.

After suffering from my mistaken thoughts for so long, it is hard to believe the answer was so simple, but past experience has proven it is so. I have decided to listen to the ego mind with its false reasoning, and to believe what I thought. Now I ask the Holy Spirit to remove those thoughts from my mind. I am not at all concerned with the ego belief that someone, either me or someone else, must be guilty. Guilt is irrelevant. I can afford to ignore that thought and simply allow myself to be at peace and happy, and I have the means to do that.

“I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me.” Holy Spirit, please remove these false thoughts from my mind. Choose for God for me. I am ready to be accept the Atonement and to be at peace.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: IV.The Gift of Freedom, Paragraph 3. 8-27-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom P3
3 You were in darkness until God’s Will was done completely by any part of the Sonship. When this was done, it was perfectly accomplished by all. How else could it be perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to unite the will of the Sonship with the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father’s Will myself. This is the awareness I came to give you, and your problem in accepting it is the problem of this world. Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I am the salvation of the world. The world must therefore despise and reject me, because the world is the belief that love is impossible. If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are denying the world and accepting God. My will is His, and your decision to hear me is the decision to hear His Voice and abide in His Will. As God sent me to you so will I send you to others. And I will go to them with you, so we can teach them peace and union.

I don’t know why exactly, but this paragraph makes me cry when I read it. I think my reaction is one of gratitude. I feel so grateful to Jesus for what he did for us all. I am still choosing some silly grievance or another over salvation and I have the advantage of Jesus having already accomplished salvation, then sending me this Course to help me accept his gift. How did he do it? How did he come to be aware of the Father’s Will for himself? I can’t imagine.

But I do have help, lots of it, and I must be able to do this because I am like Jesus. I do my part the best I can. I notice those silly grievances and let them go as quickly as I am able. I decide against them. I decide for God. Really, this is all I have to do to complete my part. I accept the Atonement for all wrong minded thinking that I notice, mine or anyone else’s. This is the plan Jesus set out for us so we could join him in rejecting the world, which is accepting salvation.

I reject the world each time I reject guilt and fear, and in rejecting the world, I save the world. All of my life I felt lost because I couldn’t see a purpose to my life. I thought everyone else had a purpose because they seemed content, and I seemed the only one who’s life had no meaning. Then I found A Course in Miracles and I knew this was my purpose. I was to join Jesus in saving the world. So when I read the last two sentences I really cried.

“As God sent me to you so will I send you to others. And I will go to them with you, so we can teach them peace and union.”

I am joining with Jesus for the purpose of releasing the world of the separation idea, the belief that love is impossible. I am accepting my part as I allow the Holy Spirit to undo what I did, to remove from my mind the belief in guilt and fear. I am doing my part as I allow Jesus to send me to others. He knows where he needs me and what he needs me to say and do and be. I just have to follow and I am learning to do that without resistance. And, thank God, he goes with me and teaches through me as I get my ego out of the way.

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