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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 1. 6-20-14

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 1
1 The Holy Spirit will always guide you truly, because your joy is His. This is His Will for everyone because He speaks for the Kingdom of God, which is joy. Following Him is therefore the easiest thing in the world, and the only thing that is easy, because it is not of the world. It is therefore natural. The world goes against your nature, being out of accord with God’s laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in everything. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By demonstrating to yourself there is no order of difficulty in miracles, you will convince yourself that, in your natural state, there is no difficulty at all because it is a state of grace.

Ah, I begin to see why miracles are important. It is through miracles that I express love and it is through accepting that there is no order of difficulty in miracles, I convince myself that in my natural state of grace, there is no difficulty at all. Following Holy Spirit is easy and the only thing that is easy because He speaks for the Kingdom of God and so is not of this insane world.

When I was new to this, my thought was that it sure seems hard to follow the Holy Spirit. It seemed to take great vigilance and it often seemed, at least at first, to go against my own desires and my own safety. Something in me wanted to follow Spirit, and something in me warned me against this urge. But slowly, over time, I have more and more often turned away from the voice of doom, and followed the Holy Spirit. The results have proven to me that I can trust the Voice for God.

I have also learned through the experience of breaking free of the ego’s hold on my mind that it really is easy to follow Spirit. The Holy Spirit is consistent and gentle, and always leads me to joy and peace. The ego, on the other hand, is so erratic and unreliable that I never know where I will end up when I follow it. It’s hard for me to believe I have wasted so much time listening to its counsel when it has so often guided me down the path of confusion and pain.

The Holy Spirit wants only joy for me and knows how to lead me to joy. The ego is not interested in joy. It wants to win. It wants to be right. Clearly, it has no idea how to achieve even these little goals, and when it does manage to win or to be right, the price is often steep, and there is little satisfaction, and no joy.

I want joy. I know that the only way to achieve joy is to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I notice in my life effects that do not come from following that guidance and realize I have slipped back into ego. I may not have a clear indication of when or how this happened and I have learned not to be too concerned about it. 

Figuring out how it happened is often the way ego entangles me and distracts me from what is important. I simply ask for healing and trust that if there is something I need to be aware of, it will be shown to me. As I turn more often from ego to Holy Spirit, my trust in my Guide grows, and the ease of following Spirit becomes obvious.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X.The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 8. 6-19-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 8
8 Miracles are in accord with the Will of God, Whose Will you do not know because you are confused about what you will. This means that you are confused about what you are. If you are God’s Will and do not accept His Will, you are denying joy. The miracle is therefore a lesson in what joy is. Being a lesson in sharing it is a lesson in love, which is joy. Every miracle is thus a lesson in truth, and by offering truth you are learning the difference between pain and joy.

Jesus says that I am confused about what I am, and that is true for sure! I am confused about my will which I think is different than the Will of God. Since I am the Will of God, this leaves me confused about what I am. God’s Will is joy and love and peace. Because I think I can have a will that is different from God, I deny myself joy and love and peace.

As I allow my mind to be healed, the truth returns to me. This is a miracle. Actually, this is THE miracle from which all true effects extend. As I am healed and I begin to remember what I am, I naturally share what I know, and this sharing is love and love is joy. Through the miracle of a healed mind, the difference between pain and joy which was once obscure to me now becomes clear.

I used to think that pleasure was deciding for myself what I am. I used to think pleasure was successfully defending my right to be different from my brothers and from God, which meant that I must defend against them so that I could maintain my own separate will. I can remember feeling a surge of adrenaline when I seemed to win against another, and believing that was joy. But it was just adrenalin after all, and when it receded all I had left was my fear and guilt.

I still get confused about what I am, and think that it makes me happy to decide on a personal will, but I soon remember that this can’t be right. I cannot overcome what I am, which is the Will of God. No matter how sick or tired I make the body, I have proved nothing. I am not the body. I am the Son of God, His holy Will. No matter how impoverished I seem to be, I change nothing because I was created with everything and I cannot overcome God’s Will that I be everything.

Through the miracle I have discovered that I don’t want to overcome God’s Will. I was created in love and truth and joy and that is all I am. As I accept the miracle of a healed mind, I accept that I am as I was created and I rejoice in that truth! If I become confused today, I ask for the Atonement. I want to remember only what is true.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 7. 6-18-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 6
7 Even the relinquishment of your false decision-making prerogative, which the ego guards so jealously, is not accomplished by your wish. It was accomplished for you by the Will of God, Who has not left you comfortless. His Voice will teach you how to distinguish between pain and joy, and will lead you out of the confusion you have made. There is no confusion in the mind of a Son of God, whose will must be the Will of the Father, because the Father’s Will is His Son.

Repeatedly, we are being told that we did not create ourselves, and do not have the power to do so. In this way only, we are different from God. Because we did not create ourselves, we cannot be anything that is not God. There is a clear difference between making and creating, and a clear difference between what is real and what is believed.

I seem to suffer from the confusion in my mind. This confusion is something I made and because I made it, I believe it. Because I believe it, it is true for me. But it is not truth.  There is no confusion in the mind of God’s Son because there is no confusion in God. I can pretend to be confused and convince myself that I am, but I cannot be confused because there is no confusion in the mind.

I remember the first time I read the first two sentences of this paragraph. I felt tremendous resistance to the idea that my decision-making prerogative is not accomplished by my wish. I felt frightened, actually, like the big bad god was only playing with me, pretending to let me decide on things but was going to crush me under his will when he got bored with me.

Through the slow but steady healing of my mind I understand enough now to know that there is no separation between the Son and the Father. We share the same Will. The only will that is endangered is the ego will, which is not actually a will, but a wish. The ego is screaming and jumping up and down at the thought that I might not be interested in playing it’s game of deciding which illusion I like best. But interestingly enough, I can barely hear it’s antics.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 6. 6-17-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 6
6 The Holy Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as you are. God Himself trusts you, and therefore your trustworthiness is beyond question. It will always remain beyond question, however much you may question it. I said before that you are the Will of God. His Will is not an idle wish, and your identification with His Will is not optional, since it is what you are. Sharing His Will with me is not really open to choice, though it may seem to be. The whole separation lies in this error. The only way out of the error is to decide that you do not have to decide anything. Everything has been given you by God’s decision. That is His Will, and you cannot undo it.

I feel like a fool as I sit here asking to wake up, trying to align my will with God’s Will. I spend the day looking at false thoughts in my mind and letting go of the belief in guilt, and asking for Christ’s Vision as I interact with my brothers. And all the time, this is done. I am asking for what is already mine. It could not be otherwise because it is the Will of God. My confusion lies in the belief that I have a will separate from the Will of God, that there could ever exist anything that is not the Will of God, and that I have somehow undone His Will.

Here is what I think right now. I keep asking for what I already have because this is the way I convince myself I don’t have it. This is just another ego strategy for keeping the illusion going. It has occurred to me lately that I can’t believe I still entertain ego thinking when even as I do it, I know it can’t be right.

I can’t believe I get sick when I know that the body cannot sicken and die unless that is my desire. I know this is true. And yet, I choose sickness, and craziest of all, I go to the doctor or take medicine even though I know that the cause is in my mind, not in the body. I know that I chose the sickness and I know that the medicine is not the cure, and still I pretend I can’t stop getting sick and I pretend the medicine helps.

I know that we cannot return our full awareness to the Kingdom with guilt in our mind. I do not doubt this for a moment. But then I turn around and project blame on some hapless person just dreaming their dream, or I decide I am just so guilty for something I thought or something I did years ago that now I have to be depressed about it. I do this, and at the same time, I know it’s crazy.

When I was a child I would play at being a princess and while I was doing this I believed I was that princess. I was so caught up in the story, the world around me ceased to exist. The little girl I was didn’t exist for me. But no matter how long I played this game, and how completely lost in the play I was, nothing changed. I pretended to be a princess and in my mind I was a princess. But no amount of pretending changed who I was, and I didn’t have to do anything to restore me to the little girl I was. I just stopped pretending to be something else.

That is all that is happening now. I am pretending to be something I am not. And now I am pretending I can’t stop, that there is something else I must do to fix this. I know this is the ego mind that resists waking from the dream. I know that I am not lost or condemned. I know that I do not have a will separate from God.

I know that this separation idea is all done and complete, and always has been. I am not confused. There is nothing for me to decide on, and nothing for me to do other than to accept that there is only God’s Will and I am part of it. I will wake up when I stop pretending that I can’t.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 5. 6-16-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 5
5 The Holy Spirit always sides with you and with your strength. As long as you avoid His guidance in any way, you want to be weak. Yet weakness is frightening. What else, then, can this decision mean except that you want to be fearful? The Holy Spirit never asks for sacrifice, but the ego always does. When you are confused about this distinction in motivation, it can only be due to projection. Projection is a confusion in motivation, and given this confusion, trust becomes impossible. No one gladly obeys a guide he does not trust, but this does not mean that the guide is untrustworthy. In this case, it always means that the follower is. However, this, too, is merely a matter of his own belief. Believing that he can betray, he believes that everything can betray him. Yet this is only because he has elected to follow false guidance. Unable to follow this guidance without fear, he associates fear with guidance, and refuses to follow any guidance at all. If the result of this decision is confusion, this is hardly surprising.

I can understand why it is that we want to be weak. We used our strength to do the impossible and in doing so we have become convinced that we have attacked God. It seems our strength has betrayed us and left us fearful and guilty. Now we just want to keep our head down. If we think our guilt is noticed, we want to point God toward someone else. Being weak and frightened seems to be a better option than being strong and allowing that strength to lead us into more trouble. It seems that being week is better than being found out by God.

Since we believe that we betrayed God and over and over we betray our brother, we naturally believe everything is betraying us. Certainly when we follow the ego, we are betrayed. The ego, that little chatter box in our head, is constantly guiding us to do things that wind up getting us even deeper into trouble. It constantly warns us of trouble and encourages us to defend ourselves.

Here is an example. I wanted to spend more time with my daughter. The ego advised me to be careful about that. It went something like this: She has her own life, and if you impose too much, she will start to avoid you. She is very kind and will spend time with you but will come to resent you. She already has to give time to her father who is very needy, a good mother wouldn’t add to her burden. If she spends Saturday with her dad and Sunday with you, when will she have any time to herself?

So I seldom called to ask for her company and she stopped calling me. The ego congratulated me on being strong and independent. Then the ego said that she was selfish and thoughtless for not calling me. The ego said that she didn’t love me or respect me, and that must mean I was not a good mother and started reminding me of all the things I did wrong. Then the ego pointed out that she was ungrateful for all I did for her. It was her fault I felt like this.

At this point, realizing that I had been following an insane guide, I shook off the ego and asked Spirit what I should do. I immediately picked up the phone and started a conversation with my daughter. As it turned out, she was feeling abandoned by me, and was hurt by this. When I tried to explain my reasoning, she wasn’t going for it. Since ten we have moved past this and now enjoy each other’s company nearly every week.

Here is the thing, we have been choosing ego as our guide and since ego is an unreliable guide, we have come to distrust all guides. The only reason this whole situation with my daughter did not spin completely out of control is that I have been slowly learning that I can trust the Holy Spirit to be my Guide. When I realized what I was doing and turned to Him for help, He guided me to approach the situation in love rather than from fear. I stopped thinking about how I could defend myself to how I could love my daughter and myself.

Like many other things in life, betrayal is just a thought in the mind. It is a belief and it is a false belief. It started with the belief we betrayed God when we decided to see what separation would feel like. Now that we believed in betrayal, we began to see it everywhere. Betrayal is not real, but we believe it is and what we believe is real to us. Since we made betrayal, we now must allow it to be undone for us, along with the other things we decided to believe, like guilt, fear, suffering and death.

Just as I did with the situation with my daughter, we must step out in faith, going against the ego belief in fear and guilt, and trust the Holy Spirit will not betray us. If we will do that, if we will turn to Him for guidance, He will teach us that He is trustworthy and will not lead us astray. He will lead us to let go of our belief in betrayal, and all the other lies we learned from listening to ego. We only have to take the first tentative step toward Him and He will leap to our assistance! He will prove Himself a good and reliable Guide.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 4. 6-13-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 4
4 That is why you need to demonstrate the obvious to yourself. It is not obvious to you. You believe that doing the opposite of God’s Will can be better for you. You also believe that it is possible to do the opposite of God’s Will. Therefore, you believe that an impossible choice is open to you, and one which is both fearful and desirable. Yet God wills. He does not wish. Your will is as powerful as His because it is His. The ego’s wishes do not mean anything, because the ego wishes for the impossible. You can wish for the impossible, but you can will only with God. This is the ego’s weakness and your strength.

I wish for lots of things. Right now this moment I wish I could stay home from work. I wish I could have slept longer. I wish I weighed less. I wish I were retired. I wish I could win the lottery. That is just a quick list of the thoughts in my mind under the heading of things I wish. What is so impossible about them? I may never win the lottery, but it is possible. I can’t get up later today, but I could tomorrow. Otherwise, all of them seem possible to me.

When I look at these things closer what I see is that I want to be happy. I want to be happy and I think the way to do it is to have more time for myself with more money to spend and a smaller body to do these things. It is impossible that I get these things and then find I am happy. That is the impossible part. I could have them and discover that there are other things I want and so I am not happy. I know this would happen because it has before… actually, all my life.

Nothing I get really makes me happy. I might be happy for a little bit, but then I discover something else is needed to keep me happy. No thing I buy and no change in circumstances brings perfect happiness. If I get something spectacular, such as when I had my children, all of whom still bring me happiness, they came with problems and fears as I realized how unprepared I was to be a mother and as I anticipated problems. So even in that perfect moment, I was not happy.

In the world of time where we find ourselves at this moment, there is no happiness. There is only fear and guilt and moments of less fear and guilt. I have thought that my wishes fulfilled would bring me joy, and each time I got my wish, I discovered I was wrong. Obviously, I don’t know the difference between pain and joy, because I keep asking for things that I think will bring me joy and I wind up in pain.

When I ask for ego wishes to be fulfilled, I ask for pain. Now that I understand this, I can ask for something different. What if I asked Holy Spirit for joy? What if I asked Him to teach me the difference between pain and joy, and to show me how to ask for joy? Rearranging my story isn’t doing the trick; that is just more wishing. How do I get in touch with my will, the one I share with God? This is what I want. This will bring me joy.

I am being reminded of the times I do this, the times I will instead of wish, the times my will is in alignment with God’s Will. I think of how peaceful I feel and how joyful. This can happen in the middle of whatever ego stuff is hitting the fan. I just suddenly remember truth and I am the clock in the storm, ticking away, completely unaffected by what is happening around me. Calm. Peaceful. Happy.

Holy Spirit, thank you for reminding me that I can do this and what it feels like. Help me remember this today. I woke up thinking how crazy the day is going to be as I try to fit too many things into too short a time. I don’t wish to go back to bed or for today to meet my expectations. What I will is that God’s Will be done and that I relax into that Will. I ask that I not miss this opportunity to surrender into perfection and allow it to sweep me into joy.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7:X.The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 3. 6-12-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 3
3 The Holy Spirit will direct you only so as to avoid pain. Surely no one would object to this goal if he recognized it. The problem is not whether what the Holy Spirit says is true, but whether you want to listen to what He says. You no more recognize what is painful than you know what is joyful, and are, in fact, very apt to confuse the two. The Holy Spirit’s main function is to teach you to tell them apart. What is joyful to you is painful to the ego, and as long as you are in doubt about what you are, you will be confused about joy and pain. This confusion is the cause of the whole idea of sacrifice. Obey the Holy Spirit, and you will be giving up the ego. But you will be sacrificing nothing. On the contrary, you will be gaining everything. If you believed this, there would be no conflict.

I know someone who thinks that what makes her happy is to decide for herself about everything. She thinks she knows what is best for her and even when she knows she doesn’t know what is best, she thinks that she should decide what she is going to do. She is obstinate about making decisions on her own even when they fly in the face of common sense.

She thinks that being the one that decides is what makes her happy. There is underlying belief that this is what makes her safe, even though she sees this is not always true. Doing what she wants to do is more important to her than living. Even though she may not say this to herself, it is more important to her than Awakening.

I’m looking at this behavior in her because it is so clearly unreasonable that I can use it to understand what Jesus is telling me in this paragraph. This woman will not give up the “right” to direct her life in the way she wants, even though the directions she has been given are for her own good and to keep her body alive. Obviously, she believes that to follow guidance rather than decide for herself would be a sacrifice so great that she would rather die than do it.

She is not guilty for this. It is simply the part she came to learn and teach. This stubbornness has been part of her personality all of her life and so it seems that it is a core issue for her. I’m looking at this from outside, so to speak, so I may be wrong as far as what it means to her, but I can use it for my own understanding regardless.

From my point of view her life is a lesson in the value of surrender. I look at her and I see what not surrendering costs and I am strongly motivated to look at what I hold onto. What do I value above God? What in my life do I think is so important that I would hold onto it even if it meant staying in the illusion?

I see that I still cling to certain special relationships. I have a hard time simply surrendering them to Spirit and letting Him sort them out. I seem to believe that a sacrifice would be asked of me, that putting my relationships in His hands would be like Abraham putting his son on the altar, thinking he had to sacrifice his son’s life to God.

According to the Bible story, Abraham’s hand was stayed at the last moment. What if I trust my special relationships to God and there is no stay of execution? I don’t really believe this, but part of my mind does. I know it does because I haven’t surrendered fully. I, like this woman in my life, believe that I know what is good for me. I believe that deciding what to do with my relationships is better than surrendering them to Holy Spirit and letting Him heal them.

I have surrendered many beliefs to the Holy Spirit, and always I have been rewarded with the joy of a healed mind. Today, I give my willingness to let my special relationships go into His hands. I will let Him direct me. I have enough trust now to do this, not as a sacrifice, but in trust that the Holy Spirit knows better than me what I need.  I now believe that deciding for myself is pain and letting Holy Spirit direct me is joy.

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