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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VII.The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 2. 5-2-14

VII. The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 2

2 When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an opportunity to bless him. His need is yours. You need the blessing you can offer him. There is no way for you to have it except by giving it. This is the law of God, and it has no exceptions. What you deny you lack, not because it is lacking, but because you have denied it in another and are therefore not aware of it in yourself. Every response you make is determined by what you think you are, and what you want to be is what you think you are. What you want to be, then, must determine every response you make.

I love the clear and easy stuff from the Course, which is what we have here. When my brother acts insanely (attacks) I have an opportunity to bless him. I need to bless him because I need the blessing myself, and giving it is the only way I can receive it. That is so clear and so unequivocal. He emphasizes that by saying: “This is the law of God, and it has no exceptions.”

No matter what my brother does or says, he is asking for my blessing whether he understands this or not, and he probably doesn’t. If he is attacking it is because he is afraid and feeling defensive. He thinks he must protect himself, and asking for a blessing is the furthest thing from his mind. Therefore, it is up to me, being the saner one at the time, to understand what he needs and give it to him. 

How do I bless him? What does that look like? The form changes according to circumstances, but the content remains love. It can be as simple as a smile, or a nod of understanding. I can say to an angry brother that I can see how upset he is. I can give him my attention. When someone is grieving, I can hug her and offer my condolences.

Even if the attack is directed at me, I can be defenseless and I can ask the Holy Spirit what response is most loving in this situation. Here is an example. I wrote something and shared it on a forum. Someone reading it attacked the content. I felt the attack as if it were personal and asked the Holy Spirit to heal my mind.

From that place of clarity I realized that my words had triggered something in the other person and I felt compassion because I know how that feels. I thanked the person for sharing her thoughts and feelings. Sometimes it might be more appropriate to just let it be. What is never helpful is to argue or become defensive.

What I give, I receive and I don’t need to teach myself defensiveness. I already know that posture too well. What I want is to teach forgiveness and innocence because that is what I most need to learn. I let what I want to be determine my response.

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

Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VII.The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 1,Continued. 5-1-14

VII. The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 1 Continued
1 Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother you will feel deprived, because denial is as total as love. It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part. Nor is it possible to love it totally at times. You cannot be totally committed sometimes. Denial has no power in itself, but you can give it the power of your mind, whose power is without limit. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone for you. Reality cannot be partly appreciated. That is why denying any part of it means you have lost the awareness of all of it. Yet denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as well as negatively. Used negatively it will be destructive, because it will be used for attack. But in the service of the Holy Spirit, it can help you recognize part of reality, and thus appreciate all of it. Mind is too powerful to be subject to exclusion. You will never be able to exclude yourself from your thoughts.

This is what I want to contemplate today:

“Denial has no power in itself, but you can give it the power of your mind, whose power is without limit. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone for you.”

Again and again in the Course Jesus reminds us of the power of our mind. Here he says it is unlimited. This is so hard for us to comprehend. We have denied this power so thoroughly that we can’t say no to chocolate, or we procrastinate to the point we cause our self grief and think there is nothing we can do about it. We fall in and out of love and hurt each other and it seems just to happen to us. We feel like we have no power over our lives at all. And yet, Jesus says we have unlimited power. So we must be doing this to ourselves.

We are talking about the power of denial, specifically. We are told that denial has no power of itself, but the unlimited power of our mind lends it power, so much so that what we deny is no longer true for us. If we deny reality, then reality is gone. At least it is gone from our awareness, just as we desired. That is why we can live as if we have no control over what we eat, that we cannot help being addicts, that we just stumble into and out of relationships and don’t know how it happened.

We do all of this to ourselves and then we deny any knowledge of how it happened and through the power of our minds we believe the lie. It becomes true for us and we are left helpless victims of circumstance. It’s the craziest thing! As insane as this is, backing out of it is no simple thing. We must overcome our own desire and choose to see differently.

We must first understand how it could have happened and then accept that, weak as we seem, we must actually be powerful beyond limit. We must put aside our fear of this power and embrace the idea as something we love and want. That is all we have to do because the rest is done for us, but lord knows, that’s enough.

This would be impossible if we did not have so much help. We accomplish this one step at a time, and I find it very helpful to take the step of realizing that, “Reality cannot be partly appreciated.” Knowing this I have stopped believing that I can love some and hate others and still know Reality. I no longer believe that I can forgive some and hold others imprisoned in my grievances, or that I can hurt someone without hurting myself.

Knowing this one thing helped me to see that awakening is possible after all. There is nothing to decide other than that all of God’s creation belongs to Him. If I want to remember the Kingdom and know myself beside Him there, I must appreciate, equally, all that He created. Nothing can be left out, nothing can be seen as less than, and nothing can be seen as condemned. All must be forgiven and accepted. You cannot get any simpler than that.

I don’t give my blessing begrudgingly anymore. I want my brothers to be innocent, because I understand now that I am only as innocent as they are. I wholeheartedly want them forgiven because their forgiveness is my forgiveness. I am learning to use the unlimited power of my mind to return myself to sanity and to make myself ready for our return to God.

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

Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VII.The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 1. 4-30-14

VII. The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 1

1 Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother you will feel deprived, because denial is as total as love. It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part. Nor is it possible to love it totally at times. You cannot be totally committed sometimes. Denial has no power in itself, but you can give it the power of your mind, whose power is without limit. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone for you. Reality cannot be partly appreciated. That is why denying any part of it means you have lost the awareness of all of it. Yet denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as well as negatively. Used negatively it will be destructive, because it will be used for attack. But in the service of the Holy Spirit, it can help you recognize part of reality, and thus appreciate all of it. Mind is too powerful to be subject to exclusion. You will never be able to exclude yourself from your thoughts.

There are three things that stand out to me in this paragraph. First there is the sentence, “You cannot be totally committed sometimes.” I think that this sentence is responsible, more than any other, for changing my attitude toward the work we do on this path. I realized at once that my commitment, my dedication, my devotion must be complete. A Course in Miracles is not something I can do when I am in the mood. Forgiveness is not something I do for some and not for others. I must be totally committed all the time or I am not committed at all.

When I divorced my last husband I realized that my commitment to forgiveness means that I cannot throw a relationship away and just start over with someone else. All relationships must be healed, and so I did that. I forgave him and I forgave myself. It took me thirteen years to know that this relationship was completely healed, but that doesn’t matter. Forgiveness is the right use of time.

I may not be quick to forgive, but I always forgive. I understand the purpose of relationships. I know what I am to do with them. If someone at work gets on my nerves, I ask for the Atonement in that situation. If a customer upsets me or a situation with the customer triggers fear in me, I know what to do with that. I ask for the Atonement in that situation and I accept the Atonement. There might be action to take for the story’s sake, but the purpose is forgiveness.

If I experience guilt, that is if I see myself as guilty or someone else as guilty, my purpose is to forgive this. There are no exceptions. No one stands guilty and outside God, and this is what I am teaching myself, and through teaching guiltlessness I am learning that guilt has never existed except in my mind. It is a belief that I made real for myself through the power of my belief.

As I learn to make no exceptions to forgiveness, I am being released from the belief in guilt. Every time I make an exception, every time I believe that some action or thought is unforgivable, whether in myself or someone else, I reinforce the belief in guilt. This is why I must be totally committed all the time. Otherwise I will spend my time dancing back and forth between belief and disbelief, getting nowhere.
Fear is another false belief that I have made very real for myself. My commitment is to back out of that belief. The Holy Spirit does this for me, but only with my permission. As I cling to some particular fear that feels more real to me than another, I keep fear itself in place. It doesn’t matter what form the fear takes. It could be a fear of heights, a fear of poverty, a fear of relationships; it is just fear appearing as a story in my life and so they are all the same, and the solution is the same.

I accept the Atonement in each seemingly different problem. Through accepting that the solution to each problem is the same regardless of the form it takes, I teach myself that there is only one problem. I also teach myself that there is a solution and that I can and will accept the solution. This lesson is not learned if I make exceptions, so I must be totally committed all the time.

I may come back to this paragraph tomorrow.

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

Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VI.From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 13. 4-29-14

VI. From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 13

13 In this depressing state the Holy Spirit reminds you gently that you are sad because you are not fulfilling your function as co-creator with God, and are therefore depriving yourself of joy. This is not God’s choice but yours. If your mind could be out of accord with God’s, you would be willing without meaning. Yet because God’s Will is unchangeable, no conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirit’s perfectly consistent teaching. Creation, not separation, is your will because it is God’s, and nothing that opposes this means anything at all. Being a perfect accomplishment, the Sonship can only accomplish perfectly, extending the joy in which it was created, and identifying itself with both its Creator and its creations, knowing They are One.

Our sadness, our guilt, fear, anger, all the emotions we experience, seems to be in reaction to something that is happening in our lives. The truth is that our “lives” are the projection of our beliefs. The belief comes first, then the story that seems to explain the belief. So when I am sad it is not because I feel lonely that no one is visiting me or calling me. I believe that I can be alone and I quickly make a story of being alone which explains the feeling to me. Then the ego says, “Oh, that’s why I am sad.” In this way I keep myself from knowing that I am sad because I am not fulfilling my function as co-creator with God.

The next time I feel sad, I am going to remind myself that there is no story to explain that sadness. There is only one reason I am sad. I long to be my Self. I miss God and I miss my real Life. All the sad stories in the illusion are just reflections of that one thing. I want to return to my place as co-creator with God. I will remind myself that I am making up all these stories. The truth is very simple. There is God, there is His creation, the Sonship, and there are my creations, and They are One. All of this other stuff that seems to exist is just part of a dream of separation and will disappear as soon as I am through with it.

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

Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VI.From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 12. 4-28-14

VI. From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 12

12 Allowing insanity to enter your mind means that you have not judged sanity as wholly desirable. If you want something else you will make something else, but because it is something else, it will attack your thought system and divide your allegiance. You cannot create in this divided state, and you must be vigilant against this divided state because only peace can be extended. Your divided mind is blocking the extension of the Kingdom, and its extension is your joy. If you do not extend the Kingdom, you are not thinking with your Creator and creating as He created.

I want to be one with my Creator. I want to create as He creates. I want to think as He thinks. I want to be joyful as He is joyful. I want to be peaceful as He is peaceful. I can have all of this, but only from a state of mind that is conducive to this and the only state of mind from which this is possible is one of wholeness.

I can have something else because of the power of my mind. It cannot be real, but I can have it and it will appear real for me. But if I do have it, it will keep me from having what I truly want. Wanting something else disrupts the oneness of mind from which all things God are extended and so through my desire for something different, I have deprived myself of everything worth having.

The solution to this quandary is in my mind. The Holy Spirit will correct all my errors and return my mind to Wholeness if I want Him to do so. Just as I had to want something else for it to be manifested, I must want wholeness for me to become aware that I have it, that I am it. If I say I want wholeness but am unwilling to meet its conditions, then I don’t really want it.

An example of this process in action would look like this. I am annoyed with a man at work. I have projected onto him and judged my projections. This decision has strengthened my belief in, and need for, separation. I cannot know wholeness because I think I need separation and my desire for it made it seem real to me. I keep this in place through what I decide is justified anger.

I notice that my decisions in this matter cost me my peace and I decide I want peace more than I want judgment and anger. I ask the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking and heal my mind. Suddenly I see what happened, what it was in myself that needed healing and that I chose to project rather than to face.

In withdrawing my projections from this man and allowing them to be healed, I have brought my mind into alignment with truth. I am able to experience unity with this brother of mine rather than separation. I am reminded of wholeness and my desire for a permanent state of wholeness increases. I continue this process and with each choice for wholeness, I become more willing for wholeness, and more certain that sanity is wholly desired.

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

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