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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: I.The Direction of the Curriculum, Paragraph 1. 7-2-14

Chapter 8: THE JOURNEY BACK

I. The Direction of the Curriculum, Paragraph 1

1 Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is. This is the prerequisite for knowledge only because those who are in conflict are not peaceful, and peace is the condition of knowledge because it is the condition of the Kingdom. Knowledge can be restored only when you meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God, Who makes no bargains. It is merely the result of your misuse of His laws on behalf of an imaginary will that is not His. Knowledge is His Will. If you are opposing His Will, how can you have knowledge? I have told you what knowledge offers you, but perhaps you do not yet regard this as wholly desirable. If you did you would not be so ready to throw it away when the ego asks for your allegiance.

First, I appreciate that Jesus is pointing out to us that knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. I was confused about that at first. I thought it was all about learning new stuff. It was only much later that I realized that peace was my goal. I am learning this course because I want peace. Before I could understand this, I had to learn to value peace.

Now I understand that peace is the condition of the Kingdom. As the Course tells us, if we want the Kingdom we must give up conflict for all time. There is no compromise in this. Since peace is the condition of the Kingdom, we cannot bring conflict into the Kingdom. Therefore if conflict is in the mind, we cannot be in the Kingdom. It makes perfect sense when I think of it like this.

Knowledge is the Will of God, and if I seem to be opposing His Will, that is if I am entertaining conflict in my mind, then I cannot have knowledge. In the ego world, we learn knowledge. This is not really knowledge, this learning we do. It is merely the gathering of assorted perceptions that we call knowledge. In reality, knowledge is not something learned; it is something revealed when I remove the block that keeps it from me. Lack of peace, which comes from conflict, is the block that must be removed.

I have learned a lot about the value of peace, and I have learned that I want the Kingdom. But I have not realized that it is all that I want. I know that I have not made this total commitment yet, because I still sometimes toss it away in favor of the ego’s meager offerings. I think the peace of God is all I want and then the ego thought that more money, weighing less, getting my way, being appreciated, etc, etc, etc, would be really nice. And off I go in search of a better illusion.

But here is the thing. I don’t really believe that anymore. The ego still attracts my attention, and sometimes I get distracted, but I never lose sight of my only purpose. The peace of God may not yet be all I want, but it is all I want to want, and I never forget it. Thank you, God for that!

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 7. 7-1-14

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 7

7 You cannot deny part of truth. You do not know your creations because you do not know their creator. You do not know yourself because you do not know yours. Your creations cannot establish your reality, any more than you can establish God’s. But you can know both. Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him. But you must also know all He created, to know what they have shared. Without your Father you will not know your fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are as like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know, then, the Sons of God, and you will know all creation.

This is the clearest Jesus has been about our creations. God created us through sharing His Being with us. We created our children through sharing Our Being with them. I don’t even know what to say about that. To accept this, I must fully accept my Divinity. I am not a smaller child-like version of God. I am like God.

This is done. I am created and the nature of my creation is certain and cannot change. My creations share that certainty and changelessness. But I don’t remember this. I have blocked it from my mind with thoughts of separation. To remember any of it, I must remember it all. I must remember God, and my brothers as my brothers, all of them, leaving none out, seeing none as unworthy. I must remember my children. It is a complete package or it remains lost to me.

The way I remember is through sharing. I was created through the sharing of God, and I created through the sharing of My Self, so this is how I will regain my memory. The only thing stopping this is that I am still trying to pick and choose parts of the Sonship to accept and with whom to share. I cannot quite bring myself to accept this one person at work. I find a young woman I know to be unworthy of my acceptance. I doubt this one who calls himself a teacher.

Until I am willing to know each and every brother as part of the Sonship, perfect and holy and free of the stain of sin, I will not know my Self. Until then, I deny myself unbroken communion with my Creator and my creations. I am not here by accident. I chose it and I choose it again and again all through the day each time I refuse to acknowledge even a single person as part of my Whole Self.

I will probably not spend the day in perfect sharing of my self with other aspects of my self. I will probably condemn one person or another for some little error they make. I may use some precious brother as a scapegoat for the unwanted dark bits of myself, and projecting them onto that one I separate out for that purpose, pretend he is the guilty one, not me. But if I do, I pray that I remember the horrible cost of doing so, and change my mind. I pray that the Holy Spirit will correct my perception and heal my mind.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 6. 6-30-14

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 6
6 Out of your natural environment you may well ask, “What is truth?” since truth is the environment by which and for which you were created. You do not know yourself, because you do not know your Creator. You do not know your creations because you do not know your brothers, who created them with you. I have already said that only the whole Sonship is worthy to be co-creator with God, because only the whole Sonship can create like Him. Whenever you heal a brother by recognizing his worth, you are acknowledging his power to create and yours. He cannot have lost what you recognize, and you must have the glory you see in him. He is a co-creator with God with you. Deny his creative power, and you are denying yours and that of God Who created you.

God created me to be a co-creator with Him. The me I speak of here is the true Self which is one with all aspects of Itself. Speaking more clearly, the “me” spoke of here is the Sonship as a whole. We remember ourselves as co-creator as we remember our Oneness. Because this is true, it is just as important that my brother wake up as it is that I wake up. We must know ourselves as whole again.

I wake up my brother by recognizing the truth of who he is. I recognize his worth as an aspect of the Sonship. I do this without regard to appearances. I disregard them because they are not real. The mirrors in a fun house at the carnival might fascinate me, but I am not going to weep because one shows me a distorted vision of myself. Neither will I be misled because the world shows me a distorted vision of my brother.

If my brother is temporarily duped by the fun house mirror effect, I can enlighten him by being clear sighted and not being fooled by the effect myself. I will then acknowledge only his real self. At some point he will notice that I see something he does not see and his mind will open to another vision. This process may be a verbal one, but not necessarily.

My continued faith and trust in him may well be all that is needed to awaken the truth in his mind and help him cultivate his own trust, no matter how weakened it might be. As I help him to recognize his own glory, I am convinced of mine. What a perfect and elegant plan the Atonement is.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7, XI. The State of Grace, P 5

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 5

5 When a mind has only light, it knows only light. Its own radiance shines all around it, and extends out into the darkness of other minds, transforming them into majesty. The Majesty of God is there, for you to recognize and appreciate and know. Recognizing the Majesty of God as your brother is to accept your own inheritance. God gives only equally. If you recognize His gift in anyone, you have acknowledged what He has given you. Nothing is so easy to recognize as truth. This is the recognition that is immediate, clear and natural. You have trained yourself not to recognize it, and this has been very difficult for you.

Oh my gosh! I want this so much! I want my mind to return to its natural state of light. I want it to be only light. I want to shine that light into every other mind and to transform them. I understand that to know my own light, I must be willing to acknowledge that light in everyone else. Since God gives equally, I will see in another what I believe is in me. And what I see in another will witness to what is in me. I want this!

I understand that to have this, to have the light and be the light and see only the light everywhere I look, I must be willing to relinquish everything that is not light. Yesterday I saw myself choose darkness more than once. And it was over such petty stuff! What was I thinking? On the other hand, I noticed when I did it. I asked that my perceptions be corrected.

Holy Spirit, I am willing to see the effects of the darkness I still hold onto so that I can finally realize that I don’t want it. I am willing to see those effects and to give them over to you. I really do want to awaken from this dark dream and return to light. I understand that to be in the light and to be the light requires total commitment. I am dedicated to this purpose. I am devoted to this practice. I am ready.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7, XI. The State of Grace, P 4

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 4
4 I call upon you to remember that I have chosen you to teach the Kingdom to the Kingdom. There are no exceptions to this lesson, because the lack of exceptions is the lesson. Every Son who returns to the Kingdom with this lesson in his heart has healed the Sonship and given thanks to God. Everyone who learns this lesson has become the perfect teacher, because he has learned it of the Holy Spirit.

As I read this I felt my heart swell and tears come to my eyes. I (and you) have been chosen to teach the Kingdom to the Kingdom. We didn’t wind up here by accident. We didn’t just happen to study the Course. Life is not random. We are not purposeless. Somehow this is very important to me and I am deeply touched by it. The ego is lying when it says that I am both arrogant and wrong when I think I am a teacher of God.

What I think is key is the next sentence. “There are no exceptions to this lesson, because the lack of exception is the lesson.” This is the truth for all of us. This is our sole purpose right now. We are to give over to the Holy Spirit all the darkness in our mind. As this is done, we will light the world with truth and bring everyone to the Kingdom. We may be given words to say and things to do, but the healing of our own mind is the true lesson we share with all our brothers, along with the recognition that they too are holy. All of us. No exceptions.

It is a glorious profession! And beautiful to think of and to contemplate. At first, however, it seems like the actual process of allowing the light to shine is difficult and tedious, and not a little daunting. But as more and more darkness is removed from the mind, even the day to day work of watching the mind and choosing to release the ego beliefs becomes a real delight. Not even the temporary lapses into ego can dim the joy of this work.

I know what it is that swells my heart as I read this paragraph. It is gratitude.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7, XI. The State of Grace, P 3

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 3

3 Consider the kingdom you have made and judge its worth fairly. Is it worthy to be a home for a child of God? Does it protect his peace and shine love upon him? Does it keep his heart untouched by fear, and allow him to give always, without any sense of loss? Does it teach him that this giving is his joy, and that God Himself thanks him for his giving? That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, any more than you can make yourself. It has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing. Yet when they deny Him they do not know this, because they deny themselves everything. You who could give the Love of God to everything you see and touch and remember, are literally denying Heaven to yourself.

This is another reminder of what Jesus tells us in other places in the Course; we but do this to ourselves. We were created by God from God, and so have everything. Our natural environment was created for us and is in God. But we are choosing to experience something different, which is OK with God, but our choice to have an experience unlike God is painful.

We made the choice. This world and everything happening in it is our own doing. As long as we continue to make this choice, which we do minute by minute, we will deny our true Selves. I cannot experience myself as small and lacking, as pain filled and suffering, as lonely and deprived, and still know I am Divine, lack nothing and could never suffer.

The moment my full memory of the Kingdom returns, the story of time and space disappears. There are only two environments from which to choose; there is Heaven and there is here. They are diametrically opposed and cannot exist, even in our mind, in the same instant. How extremely odd it is that we must be coaxed back into Heaven. We are being offered the opportunity to come out of our present state of amnesia and remember who we are and what we are and where we are. This is not being done against our will. We want this.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 2. 6-23-14

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 2
2 Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is not in a state of grace, he is out of his natural environment and does not function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment that he has made. He therefore cannot adapt to it, nor can he adapt it to him. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is with God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond anything he can make.

Being with God is the only state that is natural to us and the only state in which we will not experience strain. I thought about the idea of strain and I realized that this was true. I strain to be happy, seeking more money, satisfying relationships, a better body. It is incredible the amount of time and effort I have put into these things in the past hoping something would make me happy.

The sentence that says it all for me is: “There is no point in trying.” This is where I am right now. There is no point in trying to make myself happy through earning more money or going on another diet or getting people to like me. None of this makes me happy. I might get a brief sense of satisfaction, but then I think of something else I believe I need and happiness bursts like a soap bubble when you try to catch it.

So I surrender. I surrender not in the sense of giving up, but I surrender to grace. I will still earn money and ask for guidance in my relationships. I will still watch what I eat and take vitamins and maybe I will even exercise this body if I absolutely have to. But I will not look to these things for happiness. They will just be things I do, not the answer to my quest for peace and joy and love.

It takes a lot of vigilance to notice when I have reverted to being in charge of my happiness through manipulating the world. It is all I have known while in the illusion and I do it unless I deliberately choose not to. I have been doing a lot of computer work the last few days and my hand has started hurting when I type.

The thought in my mind is that I am not happy because my hand hurts. Then the ego mind starts looking for solutions, and this leads to looking for targets onto which I can project the blame for my predicament. The situation gets complicated really fast and impossible to solve to my satisfaction. Just this one small thing causes life here to be a strain, and my day has hardly begun.

I ask Holy Spirit how to see this differently. He reminds me that there is no point in trying to use the world to be happy and no point in trying to manipulate the world to make myself happy. It will just increase the strain. Instead, He directs me toward my purpose. I remember that there is no pain.

I remember that it is not the Will of God that I suffer and so I cannot suffer. (As I type this, the pain in my hand increases exponentially and I see my resistance, but as soon as I see it, I let it go and the pain fades away.) This is my purpose, to use the world to allow the world to be undone. There is an environment in which I can live without strain, but to return to that environment, I must first give up the one I made to take its place.

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