Together, We Light the Way

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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.

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

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.

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

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

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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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://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

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