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Study of the Text, Chapter 5,VII. The Decision for God, P 1. 8-21-14

Chapter 5, VII. The Decision for God
1 Do you really believe you can make a voice that can drown out God’s? Do you really believe you can devise a thought system that can separate you from Him? Do you really believe you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can? You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your cares upon Him because He careth for you. You are His care because He loves you. His Voice reminds you always that all hope is yours because of His care. You cannot choose to escape His care because that is not His Will, but you can choose to accept His care and use the infinite power of His care for all those He created by it.

The ego mind does believe it has made a self separate from God. That is why the ego is so afraid. But I did not. I am still as God created me. The only reason I am ever afraid is because sometimes I still believe I am the ego. I identify with ego and so think that what the ego believes is true for me. I have this voice in my head that is demanding I believe it and it seems so very loud that I tell myself I can hear nothing above its clamor.

But that isn’t true. I can hear silence. I can hear God’s Voice. I see now that I have always been making a choice about what I would hear. I used to think I could not hear His Voice, but what was really happening is that I was listening to ego so that I couldn’t hear His Voice. Acknowledging this as true is very freeing, because now that I am willing to admit this is true, I can change my mind. Now instead of telling myself that I can’t hear His Voice, I can tell myself that I have chosen to listen to ego, but now I want to hear God.

For the last two days, that Voice has been telling me something of who I am. It started when I read in Lesson 190 that it is me who has the power to dominate all things I see by merely recognizing what I am. As I perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept my holy will as theirs. Since I have been allowing Him to show me that this is true, I feel like I have turned a corner so to speak.

Everything seems different now. It also seems very new, like when a plant first peeks out of the ground. I must be careful and care for the plant until its roots are firm in the ground and it has some growth. Then I need only weed around it and water it from time to time. That’s how it feels with this new realization. It has just peeked out and it is still fragile and needs my care so it does not get trampled by the careless thoughts of the ego, and so it doesn’t die from lack of attention.

Yesterday I had a very busy day. Outside of a shake in the morning and a bit of popcorn as a snack, I had not eaten all day. I was starting to get hungry and when I pulled up for gas I had the thought of going in to get a cupcake. I thought about how tasty that would be and a familiar longing for some sugary confection came over me. I recognized it as the ego body appetite wanting to be filled.

In the past, I have often fed those body appetites and thought I didn’t have any choice. I would crave some food, usually sugar, and then I just couldn’t help myself. Even when I swore I wasn’t giving in to that craving I would do it anyway and so I convinced myself I was out of control and it wasn’t my fault. I was a victim to my appetites. Now I am not saying there is anything wrong with eating a cupcake. It is not true, however, that I have to eat a cupcake.

When I felt that old urge, I also felt fear because in the past I believed I was subject to my appetites. Yesterday, I heard another Voice and this one asked that I question that belief. (It all happened very quickly and I am putting words where there were none at that moment, but this is what it felt like.) I remembered that I dominate all things because of what I am.

I asked the Holy Spirit what it is that I am. I was reminded that I am a divine being, that I am God’s own Son, that I am a perfect creation of a perfect Creator. I remembered that all things must bow to my will because this is true. The urge to feed my appetite disappeared without even a whimper. It bowed to my will. The choice to eat a cupcake or not to eat it is not earth shattering in and of itself. But the decision to acknowledge the power of my decision is.

Today, I feel more like what I am than I did before that moment at the gas station. I know that all this time I was not subject to my appetites; I was using them to drown out the Voice for God. I was using them to separate myself from God, through separating myself from my true nature. I was in charge all the time. I was just using my power to pretend that I was powerless. I pretended to device a thought system of powerlessness that separated me from God, but it was nothing, just smoke and mirrors. I cannot undo what God has done, and what God has done is available to me at any time.

I am fully protected even from my vain imaginings. He loves me and His love protects me. “You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast your cares upon Him because He careth for you.” I can pretend to escape His care, but it is just pretense. I am learning to accept His care through accepting what I am. In so doing this for me, I do it for us all.

I wrote down today’s lesson (233) so that I could remind myself all day that this day is dedicated to hearing only His Voice and following His guidance without reserve. How perfect is the above quote. I can afford to put aside my ego drive to be in charge because He careth for me. I am safe in following Him because I am safe in Him.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: IV.The Gift of Freedom, Paragraph 1. 8-18-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom
1 If God’s Will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you experience only this you must be refusing to acknowledge His Will. His Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever. When you are not at peace it can only be because you do not believe you are in Him. Yet He is All in all. His peace is complete, and you must be included in it. His laws govern you because they govern everything. You cannot exempt yourself from His laws, although you can disobey them. Yet if you do, and only if you do, you will feel lonely and helpless, because you are denying yourself everything.

I have been out of peace since yesterday. I have a very full schedule for a couple of months and I have been anxious about getting everything done. I am afraid I will run out of time or forget to do something. It is an old story for me, this battle with time. The problem is not time. The problem is that I am refusing to acknowledge God’s Will. It is not that I lack peace, because it is not possible that I be outside peace. To be outside peace I would have to be outside God and there is no “outside God” for me to be.

Peace is the law of God and I cannot exempt myself from it. However, I can disobey God’s laws and as Jesus says, when I do I feel lonely and helpless. I feel this way because I have denied myself everything. This is exactly how I feel when I become anxious about time. I feel lonely and helpless. If I allow myself to stay in that state very long, I get panicky as the ego mind adds more and more upsetting scenarios.

So yesterday afternoon, this anxiety reached a level I could not ignore. I started taking care of a few things, fiddling with the scheduling, writing myself notes. I was busy, busy in the world trying to fix the effects of my problem. All I did was move things around. As I read this morning’s paragraph, I remembered that the source of all problems is in my mind, not in the world. The world is just a picture of the problem in my mind. It is an enactment of my thoughts and beliefs.

I don’t need that old story about time running out. Time is not my enemy. Actually, time is the tool that I am using to heal my mind, so it is my friend. I am happy to release the notion that there is never enough time. I asked the Holy Spirit to remove that old story from my mind and free me of its affects. I don’t want it and I don’t need it.

As I did this I realized that I am not behind on anything. I had a couple of things I actually needed to do this weekend, and they are done. The anxiety is about what I will need to do in the future, so I am worrying about what has not happened and may never happen. That’s just crazy. I also realized that I have a long weekend coming up and that I can use it to catch up. As soon as I let go of the problem created by my thinking mind, answers began to show up without my effort.

The thing that I want never to forget is that I don’t actually “lose” my peace; I push my peace away. It is a deliberate act on my part. Loss of peace is always the refusal on my part to acknowledge God’s law, which is complete peace and joy. I am like a recalcitrant child, refusing to be happy, choosing misery instead, just because I can. Always, I come back to that simple sentence in the Course, “You but do this to yourself.” I am equally free to surrender to His law and accept that I have everything because I was given everything.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: III.The Holy Encounter, Paragraph 8. 8-15-14

III. The Holy Encounter, P 8
8 Power and glory belong to God alone. So do you. God gives whatever belongs to Him because He gives of Himself, and everything belongs to Him. Giving of yourself is the function He gave you. Fulfilling it perfectly will let you remember what you have of Him, and by this you will remember also what you are in Him. You cannot be powerless to do this, because this is your power. Glory is God’s gift to you, because that is what He is. See this glory everywhere to remember what you are.

Power and glory belong to God and so do I. I belong to God. I love to think that. I belong to God. Because it is His nature to create by giving Himself, He gave me everything that belongs to Him and it is my function to do the same, because it is the function He gave me. In fulfilling my function, I will know what I have and what I am. It won’t be just words and concepts, but will be what I know.

In addition, I am told that I am not powerless to do this because He gave me His power also. Finally, I am told that Glory is God’s gift to me, and that to remember what I am I must see this glory everywhere. I restated everything this paragraph said because I wanted to be sure I understood it.

It was hard for me to get what Jesus was telling me, and I’m not sure why. He seems to be telling me that God creates by giving all of Himself to His creations and that I am to do that as well. I think the reason I had trouble understanding at first is that I was thinking of myself as the ego self, as if he were talking to Myron the character in my story.

The ego personality cannot imagine what to do with those words. It has no idea how to give all of itself. Giving even a bit of itself often seems like a burden, and generally it gives only because it expects something in return. However, as I realized that this was not instructions to the ego, but to my true self, it began to make sense.

I don’t remember what this feels like, but the memory is in my mind somewhere, so I can retrieve it. I can find that memory as I let go of the little self I made to take the place of my true self. Jesus reminds me of my power and glory and this is something else I don’t remember, but it is incentive to do the work necessary to reach the truth in my mind.

First I know I have the power to do so, and I want to know my glory. I am also given a clue as to how to begin this search. I am to look for the glory everywhere, because if it is anywhere, it is everywhere. Not just in some people or in special places, but everywhere. I put this into practice in very simple and practical ways.

When I see that I am looking with my ego at another ego, I remember that this can’t be right and I ask that the Holy Spirit correct my perception. I ask to see the glory that is right before me. I ask for vision. I make no exceptions. I leave no one out. And I don’t tilt my head at just the right angle, squint my eyes and hold my tongue just right.

I don’t try to see glory through these eyes the ego made. I simply request that the glory that is of God be revealed to me. I give my willingness to see it. This must work because I am simply following the instructions I have been given and because I have been given the power to do this. Actually, I know this works because I have experienced it to some degree. Now I am willing to see as God sees. I open my heart to this. I am willing to put aside all other goals the ego has offered me.

So what does this have to do with the holy encounter? I understand now that it is the holy encounter. I encounter a brother and choose to disregard his appearance and truly see him. I see into him. And the glory I see there is reflected back to me, as I realize that he is the mirror in which I see myself. It is an amazing thing to glimpse my holiness in this way, and the reason I am willing to accept this as my function, and to look into everyone rather than looking at them.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, Chapter 8: III.The Holy Encounter, Paragraph 7. 8-15-14

III. The Holy Encounter, P 7
7 You can encounter only part of yourself because you are part of God, Who is everything. His power and glory are everywhere, and you cannot be excluded from them. The ego teaches that your strength is in you alone. The Holy Spirit teaches that all strength is in God and therefore in you. God wills no one suffer. He does not will anyone to suffer for a wrong decision, including you. That is why He has given you the means for undoing it. Through His power and glory all your wrong decisions are undone completely, releasing you and your brother from every imprisoning thought any part of the Sonship holds. Wrong decisions have no power, because they are not true. The imprisonment they seem to produce is no more true than they are.

In choosing separation we made a wrong decision, but God does not will that we suffer for it. He wants only our happiness and so has given us the means to correct our error. This original error is repeated over and over in our lives, appearing in different forms, but it is all the same error.

The ego is always trying to find ways to correct my errors or to project them onto others in an attempt to make me feel safer, but I am not meant to correct my errors alone because I am not alone. That is just another mistake. I have been given a Corrector and the way to make use of that gift is to turn my guilty thoughts over to Him to be undone.

I made mistakes when I was raising my children and for a long time I suffered for those errors. But then I learned that I have a Holy Spirit that undoes this error and ends my suffering. When I have guilt thoughts about parenting, I remember that God does not will I suffer for that error and I ask the Holy Spirit to remove from my mind the belief that I am forever imprisoned by a wrong decision. I ask that He release me from my fear by undoing my decision.

I made mistakes in my relationships, and mistakes as a teacher of God. I made wrong decisions many times, and all these wrong decisions were a reflection of the decision for separation. But none of these decisions, not the original error or any of the reflective errors is real and so they have no real power and are easily undone by One Who was created for that purpose. As I allow the Holy Spirit to undo these wrong decisions that I seem to make daily, I am allowing Him to correct the original error and free us all from our belief in guilt.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8, II. The Holy Encounter P 6. 7-31-14

III. The Holy Encounter, P 6
6 The Kingdom cannot be found alone, and you who are the Kingdom cannot find yourself alone. To achieve the goal of the curriculum, then, you cannot listen to the ego, whose purpose is to defeat its own goal. The ego does not know this, because it does not know anything. But you can know it, and you will know it if you are willing to look at what the ego would make of you. This is your responsibility, because once you have really looked at it you will accept the Atonement for yourself. What other choice could you make? Having made this choice you will understand why you once believed that, when you met someone else, you thought he was someone else. And every holy encounter in which you enter fully will teach you this is not so.

Two very important ideas got my attention in this paragraph. The first is that to achieve the goal of the curriculum, I cannot listen to the ego because the ego doesn’t know anything. It is my responsibility to look at what the ego would make of me and accept the Atonement for myself instead. I am convinced of this having done just that for several years.

I continue to be vigilant for the thoughts and beliefs that the ego mind offers. I pay attention to my feelings and my actions and words so that I can be aware of what they tell me about my beliefs. It is easy to mistake understanding a concept for healing. I can say all the right words, and I can understand intellectually, and even accept intellectually, what A Course in Miracles is teaching me. However, unless I am living them, they are just information.

How do I know if I am living what I am learning? I just look at my life. How do I feel? Am I peaceful and happy? If not, then I need to pay closer attention. I need to become aware of what thought I am accepting as true that is really an ego thought, and then accept the Atonement for that mistake. In accepting the Atonement, I am asking the Holy Spirit to remove from my mind the thought that is not in alignment with the truth.

The second thing that caught my attention was the sentence:

Having made this choice you will understand why you once believed that, when you met someone else, you thought he was someone else.

First Jesus very clearly states that we are not separate. The lady who took my breakfast order this morning is not someone else. She is part of my own Self. The body she is employing for this separation story is designed to keep the secret that she is me, but I am not fooled. At least, I am not fooled right now. We are not truly separate, just as we are not truly the body device we use in this story of separate beings having separate experiences.

I say that I am not fooled right now because I am sitting alone in my hotel room, listening to Spirit, feeling His closeness, remembering what I am. Then I leave the room and I meet many people coming and going during the day and I get caught up in the story, and I forget my unity with all that is.

But I never completely forget anymore. During the day I will suddenly remember, as I speak to a customer, that we are not separate. Or I will catch a glance of someone on the street and I will remember the truth for that instant. Or driving alone in my car I will know for that brief time that I am not really alone and never could be.

Oh, to know this as my experience all the time! To never forget! To never be confused again! This is why I study A Course in Miracles, why I commune with Spirit, why I am vigilant for every thought that would take me from my goal. I want to feel the perfect peace, the absolute joy of knowing what we are. I can peak behind the veil, and experience this joining at least to some extent, as I allow it to happen in each holy encounter. Today, I would enter fully into each holy encounter so that I can have the full experience of our oneness. I ask for help to remember my purpose.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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