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Study of the Text, B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 6. 1-24-14

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 6
6 There can be no conflict between sanity and insanity. Only one is true, and therefore only one is real. The ego tries to persuade you that it is up to you to decide which voice is true, but the Holy Spirit teaches you that truth was created by God, and your decision cannot change it. As you begin to realize the quiet power of the Holy Spirit’s Voice, and Its perfect consistency, it must dawn on your mind that you are trying to undo a decision that was irrevocably made for you. That is why I suggested before that you remind yourself to allow the Holy Spirit to decide for God for you.

I have been living under the misconception that it is up to me to decide what reality is. I have only two options, I can believe the ego version of reality or I can believe what I hear from the Holy Spirit. But regardless of which I choose to believe, I do not affect reality and only the Holy Spirit speaks the truth. I don’t get to decide what is true, only if I want to believe the truth. Reality is not up for grabs.

Seriously, I am tired of choosing insanity. I am ready to awaken from the dream and live consistently from the truth. I can do this and it is simple to do so. As soon as I recognize that I have chosen the wrong voice, and this is when I am not wholly at peace and in joy, I choose again. I choose the truth by allowing the Holy Spirit to decide for God for me. I really don’t need to make it any more complicated than that, and the desire to do anything else is just a delaying tactic.

This morning I have felt mildly anxious about the weather. Should I go to work or stay off the icy streets? Are they really icy, or did the weather man over state the situation? It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but the ego makes it a big deal. Using the ego mind, I go back in time to other times we had bad weather and use that experience to make this decision.

This is not all that helpful because that time was not exactly like this time and that time I made the decision based on shaky evidence as well. I am dragging the past into the present, which guarantees the future will be the same as the past. This is not what I want to do anymore. This is not joyful or peaceful and so it is not reality regardless of how deeply involved I become in the ego thinking about it.

The ego mind takes into consideration what my boss will think, and soon I find myself having this imaginary conversation with her in which I defend my decision and soon I notice I am angry with her. She hasn’t said a word actually, and I don’t know what she would say. I just project my anxiety onto her and make her guilty, and base my decision on this highly suspect information.

I am projecting and then perceiving wrongly. I am reinforcing the belief in separation and in the belief in attack as defense. I am teaching myself that I am vulnerable and need defense and that my brother is my enemy. This is not joyful or peaceful, so I am not living in reality, even though I am using the ego mind to make it seem real.

Did I say I was mildly anxious? By now the anxiety level is rising considerably.  This is just an example of how I think I can affect reality. I hear all this stuff going on in my mind and I believe what I hear. I believe that I am a victim of the weather and an uncaring boss and that my very life is in danger if I make the wrong decision.

The Holy Spirit waits patiently for me to turn to Him to hear the truth. Finally, I ask Him to decide for God for me, and I get on with my morning writing and posting. I wonder how the story will end. When I got to this journal on the Text, I saw what a good example my earlier anxiety was for this very paragraph. That happens a lot. My life gives me an opportunity to practice what it is that I am to learn today. So I started writing about it.

When I got to the part about my imaginary argument with my boss, my phone beeped and I saw I had a text from her. It said that the bridges were closed and she wasn’t going to work until it was safe. By now I was no longer anxious because I had asked to know the truth rather than to pretend to make up my own reality, and it just made me smile to see how simply and perfectly the story unfolded without my interference.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 5. 1-23-14

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 5
5 The way out of conflict between two opposing thought systems is clearly to choose one and relinquish the other. If you identify with your thought system, and you cannot escape this, and if you accept two thought systems which are in complete disagreement, peace of mind is impossible. If you teach both, which you will surely do as long as you accept both, you are teaching conflict and learning it. Yet you do want peace, or you would not have called upon the Voice for peace to help you. Its lesson is not insane; the conflict is.

It seems self evident to state that the way out of two opposing thought systems is to choose one and relinquish the other, but if you are trying to do this, you probably have noticed that while the concept is simple, it is not always that easy. Using the same power of creation that is our inheritance we have made a complex illusion and we have done an excellent job of hiding the path out. Knowing the day would come when we were ready to go home, the Guide was given us by our Father. It is in the mind patiently waiting on our call for help.

Lesson 22 in the Workbook says we can escape from the world we see by giving up our attack thoughts. Then it gives us the steps that take us out of the illusion. We have only two things to do; recognize the attack thoughts in our mind, and want to let them go. This is something we can all do. It requires only willingness, and our willingness will increase as we use it.

The only reason any of us are still in the illusion is because we are conflicted about what we want. We want peace, but at the same time we want to attack ourselves and others. How can we be at peace if we are at war? Have you ever gone to bed at night feeling disappointed in yourself that you did not remember to do your lesson that day, or that you were harsh with a co-worker? That is an attack thought and you are at war with yourself.

Before I became vigilant for these attack thoughts I often didn’t recognize that they were attack thoughts. When I did see an attack thought I didn’t correlate it to the way I felt. For instance, it felt perfectly natural to me to judge myself. If I didn’t remember to do my Lesson I never considered any reaction other than judgment and self condemnation.

I started and stopped the Lessons many times over the years because of this behavior. I would get to a lesson that I felt resistant to and would “forget” to do it, or would not do it very well. I would judge myself for it and would fear I could never do this and so was condemned to repeat this life over and over and never get out of it. I was conflicted because I knew I wanted to wake up, but I also wanted to avoid the lessons that scared me.

It was a miserable place to be. Truly it is like a war is being waged in my own mind. The way I handled it was to stop doing the lessons, then my desire to wake up would kick in and I would start over. No wonder I spent years being depressed. Who wouldn’t be under these circumstances?

Because I am ready to wake up, I kept doing the Lessons, and asking that my mind be healed. At first the conflict was intense because I wanted to avoid waking up almost as much as I wanted to wake up. However, I would watch my thoughts and with the little willingness I had, I would ask for healing. As I did this my willingness grew and my mind became less conflicted. I learned not to judge the thoughts I found there and that made the process easier. Eventually I could ask with conviction that the Holy Spirit undo what I had done.

I am certain that it is not necessary to take as long as I did to reach that level of conviction. I did it one very small step at a time, and it seems it was necessary for me to do it that way at that time. After all, if I could have done it differently, I would have. But I have since discovered that I can stop chipping away at these obstacles to love’s presence with a toothpick, and just blast them out of my path with a strong desire to be free of conflict.

So now I notice attack thoughts based on beliefs such as lack, loss, neediness, fear, guilt, pain, suffering and death, and instead of asking that my mind be healed of the particular form of that thought, I ask that my mind be healed of the belief driving that thought. For instance, I notice that I am afraid of not having enough money to pay a bill. Instead of asking that my mind be healed of that thought, I recognize that the thought represents fear of loss and lack, and I ask that my mind be healed of the belief in lack and loss.

I couldn’t do that before because I could not believe it was possible to not experience that fear. But chipping away at the many different forms that thought took, and experiencing the healing that came with my sincere desire to be free of a certain thought, I am now ready to know that I can be free of the belief in lack and loss. I am still in conflict because I am still unwilling to fully release the belief in lack and loss, and I still want peace.

I am not as conflicted though, because I have proven to myself over and over that letting go of that belief is an attainable goal, and so my desire for peace is much stronger than it used to be.  Now when I notice a thought of loss or lack, I am excited to find it because looking at that thought with the Holy Spirit is my out and I know that I want out. I ask that I be healed of the belief in lack and loss that sourced that particular thought. It is so much easier now to let go.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 4. 1-22-14

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 4
4 Upside down as always, the ego perceives the first lesson as insane. In fact, this is its only alternative since the other possibility, which would be much less acceptable to it, would obviously be that it is insane. The ego’s judgment, here as always, is predetermined by what it is. The fundamental change will still occur with the change of mind in the thinker. Meanwhile, the increasing clarity of the Holy Spirit’s Voice makes it impossible for the learner not to listen. For a time, then, he is receiving conflicting messages and accepting both.

I accept that the ego is insane and so I accept that “to have, give all to all” must be true as it is the opposite of what the ego tells me. The ego insists that to have I must take, and I must defend what I take.  At first, I accepted the Holy Spirit’s lesson in blind faith and without a lot of enthusiasm because I didn’t really believe it. But because I was willing to believe it, the Voice for God became stronger in my mind, my willingness grew, and so did my understanding. As my understanding grew, so did the motivation for change.

Here is an example of how this works in my life. I teach, facilitate, counsel, and perform weddings and other functions as a minister. I do this on Friday evenings, Saturdays, Sundays and Monday evenings. I also work full time during the week. The ego mind sometimes insists that I am giving too much of my time and that it is exhausting me.

If I listen to that old line, I start to feel tired and think I should cut back on what I do in my ministry. But I don’t do that because I recognize the ego voice when I hear it and I no longer trust it. Instead I ask Spirit what it is He would have me do and then I do it. What happens is that I take the next call and teach the next class. As I do this my energy rises to meet the need and I am infused with peace and happiness.

I love what I do and it is never a burden. It is only the ego that thinks to give is to lose. I have learned that I will feel tired if I listen to the ego and energetic if I listen to Spirit. It has become clear to me that it is not what I do that makes me tired, but rather it is what I believe that saps my energy, just as it is that accepting the Holy Spirit’s lesson to give all to all fills me with energy.

I am still allowing my understanding to expand around this idea. It is so completely opposite to what I have taught myself through the ego that I still default to ego thinking that I am poor indeed and must hoard the little I have. The conflicting messages are not as disruptive as they used to be, though, because while I still hear the ego, I hear the Holy Spirit more clearly, and I am increasingly willing to believe only that Voice. I have discovered that listening to ego leads to chaos and depression, while listening to Spirit leads to peace.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text A. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 3   1-21-14

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 3
3 The first step in the reversal or undoing process is the undoing of the getting concept. Accordingly, the Holy Spirit’s first lesson was “To have, give all to all.” I said that this is apt to increase conflict temporarily, and we can clarify this still further now. At this point, the equality of having and being is not yet perceived. Until it is, having appears to be the opposite of giving. Therefore, the first lesson seems to contain a contradiction, since it is being learned by a conflicted mind. This means conflicting motivation, and so the lesson cannot be learned consistently as yet. Further, the mind of the learner projects its own conflict, and thus does not perceive consistency in the minds of others, making him suspicious of their motivation. This is the real reason why, in many respects, the first lesson is the hardest to learn. Still strongly aware of the ego in yourself, and responding primarily to the ego in others, you are being taught to react to both as if what you do believe is not true.

Having does appear to be the opposite of giving to us who still believe in separation. I give freely and in my sanest moments I give without a thought of loss. But I am not yet always sane and sometimes I give but it is out of sacrifice and in fear. I always support those whose words of wisdom support me. I do this out of love and appreciation. I do it so that they will be able to continue to give their time and effort to helping us wake up. But when I am afraid of loss, even these gifts are given grudgingly.

When this happens, when I forget Who my Source is and I begin to believe in loss and lack, I don’t try to fix that feeling by adjusting my finances, by cutting out nonessentials and deciding who I can afford to support and who I have to take off my list. Instead, I search my mind for signs of confusion about lack and loss. I ask the Holy Spirit for help to see clearly, and I ask for and accept the Atonement for my mistaken beliefs.

If appearances indicate lack or loss in my life, it is not because I am giving too much away, it is because I have forgotten who I am. The error needs correction on the level of cause. What I have discovered is that when I fall into the ego belief of lack, fear arises and acting from that fear I begin to project my “problem” on the world. I start to think the problem is that I am too generous or too carless with my money. I begin to resent the ones who are the beneficiaries of my gifts, as if they are the cause of the change in my mind.

If I continue to give out of a sense of obligation without allowing my mind to be healed, the problem will just get worse because I am conflicted. I am motivated to give out of fearlessness not because I have all, but because I am all. But I am also motivated to give out of obligation, which is fearful, stemming as it does from the belief I am limited and giving depletes me.

This is equally true when giving takes other forms such as giving my time and effort, my affection and trust. I have an unlimited supply of everything because I am unlimited. However, when I identify with the body/personality, which is the personification of limits, I become uncomfortable with giving, believing it is the same as loss. The solution is never going to be to further limit my giving which will serve to further convince myself that I am limited. The solution is to allow the mind to be corrected. This can be a very simple process.

Sometimes I will have some personal project I want to complete and I will feel conflicted about my obligations. Something that was a joy just moments ago begins to feel like a burden. Instead of giving into that feeling, I recognize that I don’t know what is important for me to do, and I don’t know what should happen in this situation. I gladly step aside and trust the Holy Spirit to arrange things for me. Sometimes the most amazing things happen, but always I am instantly at peace and somehow time stretches to accommodate my needs.

The only reason it seems hard to understand that “to have, give all to all,” makes sense is because we forget who we are. We are All and we give only to ourselves even as the part of our selves we give to seems separate from us. Within the parameters of separation, giving creates a loss, but we are not that. We are not separate and as we learn to teach wholeness, we learn to believe in wholeness.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 2. 1-20-14

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 2
2 All good teachers realize that only fundamental change will last, but they do not begin at that level. Strengthening motivation for change is their first and foremost goal. It is also their last and final one. Increasing motivation for change in the learner is all that a teacher need do to guarantee change. Change in motivation is a change of mind, and this will inevitably produce fundamental change because the mind is fundamental.

My motivation for everything was to be happy and I used to think my happiness was predicated on winning. I wanted to make more money than others. I wanted others to look on me with envy and wish they were like me. When I was a teenager I would fantasize coming back to my old neighborhood as a famous and rich person and everyone would see me and wish they had been my friends while they had the chance. Mostly they would wish they were me.

This desire to win showed up in all sorts of ways. I would want to be the one to win the argument. I wanted to win the argument more than I wanted to love the other person or to be happy. More to the fact, I thought being happy meant winning the argument. I wanted my child to be the smartest and most attractive. I wanted my husband to be the envy of all my friends. I was the center of the universe and I thought that everything revolved around me. What I wanted was the only thing that mattered, and I thought I knew what I wanted.

I still want to be happy. But now my motivation for happiness has changed. I am no longer motivated by the desire to win because I see that winning doesn’t provide true happiness. If I win, I may feel a momentary surge of adrenaline but that’s all. It quickly wanes and as the pendulum swings back, I feel the loss of that adrenaline surge as loss of happiness. What I have discovered is that the loss goes much deeper than no longer feeling the brief elation of winning.

In order for me to win, someone else had to lose. I discovered that this was the problem; the reason happiness evaded me no matter how many times I won. I had discovered a new motivation. I wanted to know I was One again. I wanted to remember my true nature, to join with my brothers and so know I was One with my Creator. I wanted to wake up from this sad dream of separation.

At first, I tried to cling to my old motivation while embracing my new motivation. I would win and feel momentarily elated, and then I would feel bad because winning meant losing. I couldn’t have both the win and the happiness. I started to look at things differently and I realized that the joy I felt in joining was so much more satisfying and long-lived than the happiness of winning. In fact, winning no longer felt happy to me when it meant my brother had to lose.

Everything changed when my motivation changed. I lost my interest in competitive games. I lost interest in making the most money and in winning arguments. I lost interest in arguments altogether. Instead of trying to win an argument, I became interested in what we had in common. I began to want for my brother what I wanted for myself, and seeing him happy made me happy. When my motivation changed my life changed in a fundamental way. The change was in my mind, and the change of mind created a change in behavior that changed my life.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text,B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It, Paragraph 1. 1-17-14

B. To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It
1 All who believe in separation have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. They believe in attack and rejection, so that is what they perceive and teach and learn. These insane ideas are clearly the result of dissociation and projection. What you teach you are, but it is quite apparent that you can teach wrongly, and can therefore teach yourself wrong. Many thought I was attacking them, even though it was apparent I was not. An insane learner learns strange lessons. What you must recognize is that when you do not share a thought system, you are weakening it. Those who believe in it therefore perceive this as an attack on them. This is because everyone identifies himself with his thought system, and every thought system centers on what you believe you are. If the center of the thought system is true, only truth extends from it. But if a lie is at its center, only deception proceeds from it.

Because I believe in separation I have a basic fear of relation and abandonment. I see that this is true and as long as I continue to believe in this I will teach it through my behavior and through my thoughts. This will reinforce the belief for myself and for others. However, knowing that this belief is in my mind, and knowing that I want my mind to be healed is helpful. I can watch my mind for thoughts that reflect these beliefs and ask for healing.

The whole point of this life is to use it to wake up from the belief in separation, so I don’t want to teach separation through teaching retaliation and abandonment. In order to stop teaching it, I must first realize when I am doing it. So I stay vigilant for this kind of thinking and its projections.

One example I can think of is the belief I sometimes have that someone I care about does not love me. For instance, I will start to miss my daughter and realize I haven’t heard from her in a while. I will text or call and maybe she won’t answer her phone or the text. Then I might start to worry that she is mad at me about something I said or failed to do. I start to think that she is too sensitive and it’s easy to offend her. If I stay with this long enough I will begin to resent her.

If I question this, I see that the only thing that happened is that I miss my daughter and she did not return my call. Everything else is something that I thought based on the belief in abandonment. I believe I can be abandoned and so I project a story of abandonment. I don’t even need the abandonment to actually happen; I can simply perceive that it happened. If I stay with the story soon I am projecting guilt onto her and if I don’t stop my crazy thinking I might start to plan my retaliation. “Fine, if she doesn’t want to talk to me, I don’t want to talk to her.”

Fortunately, I am not that insane anymore, but I can still torture myself with unquestioned beliefs for a long time before I come to my senses. If I don’t allow my thinking to be corrected, I am probably going to teach abandonment and retaliation in some way even if it is subtle. My mom used to be really fond of doing this through martyring herself and expecting us to accept the guilt for her suffering. I catch myself doing this sometimes, too, just mentioning casually that I had been concerned when I didn’t hear back from her right away.

When I hear myself say that kind of thing, I know that I have fallen for the ego again. I don’t want to teach this, but I will do so until I accept healing for the belief driving it. I cannot be abandoned, and therefore I never need to retaliate. There is a lot of ego resistance to this lesson. I cannot break this ugly cycle from within the belief system, but I can accept help from outside it. That is why I have the Holy Spirit, and I call on Him to correct my thinking and to undo what I have done.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, A. To Have, Give All to All, Paragraph 6. 1-16-14

A. To Have, Give All to All, Paragraph 6
6 This is a very preliminary step, and the only one you must take for yourself. It is not even necessary that you complete the step yourself, but it is necessary that you turn in that direction. Having chosen to go that way, you place yourself in charge of the journey, where you and only you must remain. This step may appear to exacerbate conflict rather than resolve it, because it is the beginning step in reversing your perception and turning it right-side up. This conflicts with the upside-down perception you have not yet abandoned, or the change in direction would not have been necessary. Some remain at this step for a long time, experiencing very acute conflict. At this point they may try to accept the conflict, rather than take the next step towards its resolution. Having taken the first step, however, they will be helped. Once they have chosen what they cannot complete alone, they are no longer alone.

Jesus says that what he is telling us is going to conflict with the upside- down perception we have not yet abandoned. So I am looking at what it is I think now. My thinking is no longer completely upside down, but even the thinking that I have abandoned for the most part, shows up in certain circumstances.

Upside-down thinking: I am a body and the body is real. The body and many things in the world determine my destiny and affect my everyday life in ways I cannot control. I am alone in the world, and even when I try to join with others there is an element of fear and uncertainty because of the inevitable competition that arises when one believes they are separate. There is only so much love, and so much things and I have to get mine regardless of what is left for others.

The thinking toward which I am being led: The body and the world are an illusion, the effects of wrong-minded thinking. I am neither a body nor am I in a body. I am one with all there is and one with God. I am powerful beyond measure and perfect in every way. I am part of God and in God and therefore eternal and safe. There is no loss nor lack and therefore no need for competition. No matter how much I give, I can never be without. There is no separation, my brother and I are one with each other and therefore I can only give to myself. I can know these things are true only as I give all to all.

In other words, I know who I am by stepping into who I am.

That’s about it in a nutshell. It is easy to see that while I hold onto any vestige of my upside-down thinking, the truth is going to seem like nonsense. And that is at best, because it is also going to seem threatening. When I felt like there was only a very limited amount of anything, I clung to what I had and sharing felt like a sacrifice. The idea of giving all to all was just crazy.

When I look back on my overly long journey through this Course, I am amazed that I ever made it this far. I was so afraid of everything and guilt was my constant belief. I was guilty in my mind for everything and the guilt I couldn’t bear, I projected onto others. No one was safe from my attacks. I was that afraid.

However, in spite of my fear and guilt, I turned in that direction. I turned and stayed turned. For a long time, that was all I could do. But I was not alone and my Help was constant and strong, and eventually, I become more consistent and stronger. I am not through yet. I still believe in me a bit.

Eventually that “me” will fall away. I don’t know when and it is not my job to do anything about that. I am in charge of my journey in that every step of the way is a choice I make, but I am not generally aware of the part of my mind that makes this decision. For now, my awareness is primarily focused on Myron and her story, and that is where I see the effects of my change of mind and so am motivated to continue my awakening, receiving help and guidance to do what I cannot do alone.

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