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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: III. The Holy Encounter, P 2. 8-5-14

III. The Holy Encounter, P 2
2 To fulfill the Will of God perfectly is the only joy and peace that can be fully known, because it is the only function that can be fully experienced. When this is accomplished, then, there is no other experience. Yet the wish for other experience will block its accomplishment, because God’s Will cannot be forced upon you, being an experience of total willingness. The Holy Spirit understands how to teach this, but you do not. That is why you need Him, and why God gave Him to you. Only His teaching will release your will to God’s, uniting it with His power and glory and establishing them as yours. You share them as God shares them, because this is the natural outcome of their being.

The only way I will ever be perfectly happy and perfectly peaceful is if I unite my will with God’s Will. The way I accomplish this is to notice what I want instead of God’s Will and then ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind, that is to accept the Atonement for that error in thinking. This is the Holy Spirit’s job, and only what I learn from Him will release my will.

When the Atonement has been accomplished there will be no experience except joy and peace. The only thing that blocks this is the wish for some other experience. What experience could I want that is more important to me than uninterrupted peace and perfect joy? The perplexity that I feel when I think about that occurs because I am confused about what makes me happy.

I think if I were thinner and never had to worry about how what I eat affects my body, then I would be happy. So I think the experience I need is to be thinner and how could that keep me from experiencing joy? Being thinner won’t keep me from peace and joy, but the belief that I need this experience to be happy is the problem. Deciding I know how to order my thoughts about this is the problem. Fully surrendering the perceived need and my solution is the answer.

I think I need the experience of being loved and respected by my children. Being loved and respected is not the problem. Believing that this is an experience I must have to be happy is the problem. I look constantly for signs that I have what I need, and when they express their love and respect, I am worried I will do something to change their minds. If I don’t see proof of love and respect, I feel sad and unworthy, or resentful and angry.

Just using these two simple and common examples, I see that the belief I need certain things in the world to happen, and that I can somehow accomplish these things on my own, are the very things that are blocking my joy and happiness. These beliefs represent my willfulness, my belief that I want the experience of a personal will rather than that I share the Will of God.

Asking that the Holy Spirit correct my perception about these desired experiences is the solution, because in doing so I am choosing to abandon the idea that I have a personal will and that it is important to me. I don’t know what I need or how to get it. The Holy Spirit does know and will teach me if I ask, and if I let go of the belief I already know the answer.

I am going to attach an entry from Chapter 5 to this because it relates to what I am learning here.

V. The Ego’s Use of Guilt, Paragraph 7
7 Irrational thought is disordered thought. God Himself orders your thought because your thought was created by Him. Guilt feelings are always a sign that you do not know this. They also show that you believe you can think apart from God, and want to. Every disordered thought is attended by guilt at its inception, and maintained by guilt in its continuance. Guilt is inescapable by those who believe they order their own thoughts, and must therefore obey their dictates. This makes them feel responsible for their errors without recognizing that, by accepting this responsibility, they are reacting irresponsibly. If the sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself, and I assure you that it is, then the responsibility for what is atoned for cannot be yours. The dilemma cannot be resolved except by accepting the solution of undoing. You would be responsible for the effects of all your wrong thinking if it could not be undone. The purpose of the Atonement is to save the past in purified form only. If you accept the remedy for disordered thought, a remedy whose efficacy is beyond doubt, how can its symptoms remain?

I often say that I accept 100% responsibility for the world I see. By that I mean that no one or nothing else is the reason the world appears to me as it does. I am not sick because of germs and I am not broke because I don’t make enough money. It is my thoughts alone that bring the appearance of lack and sickness into the world.

Here Jesus is talking about responsibility of a different order. Now that I accept responsibility for the world I made, I must accept that I cannot undo it on my own. That is not my responsibility. I accept that I am not a victim of the world, that my thoughts made what I see, then I decide I don’t want this anymore and I ask for the Atonement for it.

That is the way it is intended for me to act on my error. Notice the error and ask for and accept the Atonement, that and nothing more. What sometimes happens is that I fall back into the old ego habit of trying to correct my error through re-ordering my thoughts. I try to think of different ways to see it.

For instance, if I think that I am angry with a co-worker, and then I realize that my anger is causing me to be unhappy, the solution would be to ask for the Atonement for the angry thoughts. I would ask Holy Spirit to correct my perceptions. The error would be to try to correct my own perception by trying to think different thoughts about the coworker, or to try to force the thoughts out of my mind, or to think of excuses for the coworker, reasons he is such a jerk.

All of the solutions that involve correcting my own perception will just lead me deeper into guilt because I am using the ego mind to find the solution. The ego mind wants to be the thinker of the thoughts, but my thought was created by God. Listening to and believing in the thoughts I think with ego are guilt inducing because they seem to be in opposition to God.

The Atonement on the other hand, is a true solution. When I ask for and then accept the Atonement in any situation, the mind is ordered because it is returned to its original state, which was created by God, therefore there is no guilt. Without guilt, I am at peace and I am happy. Peace and happiness is how I know I am listening to the Voice for God. Feelings of guilt and unhappiness are how I know I am listening to and believing the ego.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: III. The Holy Encounter, P 1. 8-4-14

III. The Holy Encounter
1 Glory to God in the highest, and to you because He has so willed it. Ask and it shall be given you, because it has already been given. Ask for light and learn that you are light. If you want understanding and enlightenment you will learn it, because your decision to learn it is the decision to listen to the Teacher Who knows of light, and can therefore teach it to you. There is no limit on your learning because there is no limit on your mind. There is no limit on His teaching because He was created to teach. Understanding His function perfectly He fulfills it perfectly, because that is His joy and yours.

I was telling a friend recently, that sometimes I almost know what I am. And then sometimes, I feel like Myron, this body, this personality, and that I feel like a beginner. I feel like I am in first grade and will never get to second grade. But how could that be true? No matter what I feel like I must be as God created me. I must be what God Wills for me.

What I see is that the only difference between the two states, feeling like I am the Will of God and feeling like I am my ego self, is the teacher I am listening to. When I feel lost or hopeless the only thing wrong with me is that I am listening to and believing the ego thoughts in my mind. The truth doesn’t go anywhere just because I am not paying attention to it.

I will have enlightenment if enlightenment is what I want. I will have it because it is always there waiting for me and because I have the Holy Spirit Who was made for this. He teaches perfectly and continuously because it is His function. He teaches joyously and I can learn joyously, as well. As I remind myself of the truth and turn my face toward the light, the very idea of failure becomes ludicrous. I remember to ask that my perception be corrected, and I see that was the only problem, my perception was out of alignment with the truth.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: II. The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom, P 8. 8-2-14

II. The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom P8
8 To what else except all power and glory can the Holy Spirit appeal to restore God’s Kingdom? His appeal, then, is merely to what the Kingdom is, and for its own acknowledgement of what it is. When you acknowledge this you bring the acknowledgement automatically to everyone, because you have acknowledged everyone. By your recognition you awaken theirs, and through theirs yours is extended. Awakening runs easily and gladly through the Kingdom, in answer to the Call for God. This is the natural response of every Son of God to the Voice for his Creator, because It is the Voice for his creations and for his own extension.

The Holy Spirit awakens us through acknowledging the Kingdom of which we are a part, and when we acknowledge this we bring it to everyone because to acknowledge the Kingdom is to remember that we are everyone, and are all part of the Kingdom. This acknowledgment, this remembrance of the truth, is how we wake up.

I think of awakening as the noticing of what is not the Kingdom and letting it go. Actually, this part of the process is in preparation for awakening, but awakening, I think, is what comes after we do the work. I ask Holy Spirit to heal my mind. I ask him to correct perception. I feel a shift in the way I view things, a change in the beliefs I have held. It feels like the world changes.

This step by step process of removing the blocks to my awareness seems to be necessary. One day, though, I will be ready to acknowledge what has always been here, what all the little shifts have been pointing to. Then the world will fall away. I love that Jesus says, “Awakening runs easily and gladly through the Kingdom, in answer to the Call for God.”

Right now it still feels hard sometimes, and it seems to occur in fits and starts. Looked at from the view point of time and space it is hard to imagine this ease and gladness, and hard to imagine everyone responding to the Call. In a room with 100 people, I might be the only one who hears this call, I think.

But my vision is narrow and my understanding very small. I trust that Jesus is the Atonement and that I need only listen for my call and acknowledge it. My acknowledgment will be the call to someone else who is ready to hear it. It is enough that I understand this part and answer this part. I don’t need to understand more than that to do my part.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8, II. The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom P 7. 7-31-14

II. The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom P7
7 When I said, “All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His,” this is what I meant. The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because its extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all things because it created all things. By creating all things, it made them part of itself. You are the Will of God because that is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you are like Him. You are part of Him Who is all power and glory, and are therefore as unlimited as He is.

I am part of God and are therefore as unlimited as He is. This is what the Course has been trying to tell me all along. It is helping me accept the truth that I am not what I seem in this experience of separation. The reason it is taking so much work for me to accept this is that there is such a huge difference between what I imagine myself to be and my reality.

I actually talked about this very thing this morning when I wrote in my journal for the Daily Lessons. Today’s lesson says that I can call upon God’s Name because it is my own as well. This is what I wrote about it.

I noticed that not only did it say that I could call on the Name of God, but that I can do this because it is my name as well. I noticed that second part today when in the past it didn’t mean anything to me, because today I am more willing to accept my Divinity than I have been before.

This lesson is not just saying that it is always possible to call for help when I need it. It is reminding me that I am God’s Son. Our Name shares the same power because gave me His Name in my creation. I am literally, very literally part of God. Through creation I am an extension of God because that is what creation is, an extension of All That Is. When I call on the name of God, I am calling on my innate power through calling on God, or to say it another way, through remembering what I am and claiming my inheritance.

I’m giggling because this brought to mind a cartoon show I used to watch with my daughter. I don’t remember what it was called, but in a desperate moment the hero would stand tall with his sword reaching to the sky and say in a loud strong voice, “I am the power!” Well, when I call on the Name of God, that is what I am doing. I am calling on the truth and claiming my power as God’s Son. What is the ego beside that!

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8, II. The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom P 6. 7-30-14

II. The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom P6
6 The Holy Spirit’s teaching takes only one direction and has only one goal. His direction is freedom and His goal is God. Yet He cannot conceive of God without you, because it is not God’s Will to be without you. When you have learned that your will is God’s, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without you. This is freedom and this is joy. Deny yourself this and you are denying God His Kingdom, because He created you for this.

Up until now I could not read this paragraph without feeling a twinge of fear and then guilt for the fear. I was afraid of the idea of surrendering to God. There was too much fear and guilt in my mind to be comfortable with the idea of God and I being inseparable. It was just a twinge because I felt fearful that I didn’t want it and so I quickly denied it even in my own mind.

Now I am aware of a twinge of fear but I know it is not me that feels this fear. It is the ego, the part of the mind that believes in separation. I still identify with that part of the mind a bit, but not so much as before. I can now detach myself from it to some degree, and so while I am aware of the ego thoughts and beliefs, for the most part I don’t believe them.

When a separation belief does hook me, I am also aware of what is happening and choose to allow my mind to be corrected, usually pretty quickly. Soon, I think, I will no longer have any use or desire for ego thinking and it won’t happen anymore. Won’t that be nifty! What will it feel like to know the freedom of being one with God? No more insanity. No more fear or guilt. I will continue to master my decision to choose God rather than ego as my true identity.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: II. The Difference Between Imprisonment, P 6. 7-29-14

II. The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom P6
6 The Holy Spirit’s teaching takes only one direction and has only one goal. His direction is freedom and His goal is God. Yet He cannot conceive of God without you, because it is not God’s Will to be without you. When you have learned that your will is God’s, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without you. This is freedom and this is joy. Deny yourself this and you are denying God His Kingdom, because He created you for this.

Up until now I could not read this paragraph without feeling a twinge of fear and then guilt for the fear. I was afraid of the idea of surrendering to God. There was too much fear and guilt in my mind to be comfortable with the idea of God and I being inseparable. It was just a twinge because I felt fearful that I didn’t want it and so I quickly denied it even in my own mind.

Now I am aware of a twinge of fear but I know it is not me that feels this fear. It is the ego, the part of the mind that believes in separation. I still identify with that part of the mind a bit, but not so much as before. I can now detach myself from it to some degree, and so while I am aware of the ego thoughts and beliefs, for the most part I don’t believe them.

When a separation belief does hook me, I am also aware of what is happening and choose to allow my mind to be corrected, usually pretty quickly. Soon, I think, I will no longer have any use or desire for ego thinking and it won’t happen anymore. Won’t that be nifty! What will it feel like to know the freedom of being one with God? No more insanity. No more fear or guilt. I will continue to master my decision to choose God rather than ego as my true identity.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: II. The Difference Between Imprisonment, P 5. 7-28-14

II. The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom P5
5 We have said that the Holy Spirit teaches you the difference between pain and joy. That is the same as saying He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom. You cannot make this distinction without Him because you have taught yourself that imprisonment is freedom. Believing them to be the same, how can you tell them apart? Can you ask the part of your mind that taught you to believe they are the same, to teach you how they are different?

Ego taught me that winning is joy. I learned the lesson well. I was very competitive and I worked hard at winning. I didn’t think about how I made the other person feel as I crowed over my victory. It just seemed perfectly normal to be this way. I justified my behavior as I reasoned that I deserved my win because I worked hard for it.

I reasoned that someone had to win and someone had to lose. Better it was me that won. I believed that if I didn’t win I was not as worthy as the winner. I believed I achieved worthiness according to how well I did in comparison to how poorly others did. When I won, I would feel that adrenalin rush and this is what I called joy. The rush would fade all too quickly and then I would feel let down and so I would go looking for the next victory.

I saw the victories as freedom. If I won often enough and if the stakes were high enough I would be free of this unsettling feeling that I was missing something important. I tried for more money to buy more and better things than my neighbor. I tried for being the best at my job so I looked better than other employees. I tried for the better husband; I took credit when my children won, proving I must be the better parent. I thought that these wins freed me from the nagging feeling that I was unworthy.

Actually, what I discovered is that I can’t win enough, or be better than others often enough, or make enough money or buy enough stuff, to prove my worthiness. I wound up making my own prison of frantic striving and never arriving. I made the prison, stepped into it, and pretended it was my grand achievement. I had to work constantly to keep the whole thing in place, but all that work kept me from questioning my choices, and questioning my plan for happiness and freedom.

Once questioned though, it became apparent that I was failing to accomplish my goals. Yes I won often, but it never made me happy and it never convinced me of my worthiness. All the time, the joke was on me. I was already worthy and joy is my natural state. I don’t have to do anything to acquire freedom and joy, because it was given to me in my creation, never to be lost no matter how confused I became about it.

In fact, all that striving just convinced me I was unworthy. Why would I need to try so hard if I was already worthy? All that winning actually made me feel more separate and alone than ever. And of course, if I think that I must prove my worthiness and strive for my freedom in every moment, I exhaust myself. I am the hamster running on the wheel and getting nowhere, because there is nowhere to go.

Here is what I have discovered about being free and being joyful. I have remembered the truth as I have joined with my brother rather than competing against him. I am free of the constant struggle and the inevitable let-down. I am free of the belief that I need to earn what was given me by my creator. I am free of the crash that comes after the adrenal wears off. I am free of the suffering that is inevitable as I further separate myself from my brother and so separate myself from God.

I have discovered that I am joyful as I take my brother’s hand in mine and share in each victory over ego. I am joyful in each moment, actually, as I accept the truth that we are all innocent and brilliant and perfect, and because this is how we are created, nothing can change this. I am free from change and I am free in my joy. This is true until I slip back into ego again, but now I can’t stand to be there for long, and I know the way out. Oh, freedom! Oh, joy!

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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