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Study of the Text, V, Healing and the Changelessness of Mind. Paragraph 7. 4-2-14

V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind. Paragraph 7
7 The unhealed healer wants gratitude from his brothers, but he is not grateful to them. That is because he thinks he is giving something to them, and is not receiving something equally desirable in return. His teaching is limited because he is learning so little. His healing lesson is limited by his own ingratitude, which is a lesson in sickness. True learning is constant, and so vital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in one instant and change the world in the next. That is because, by changing his mind, he has changed the most powerful device that was ever given him for change. This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as God created it, but you think that you have changed it as long as you learn through the ego. This places you in a position of needing to learn a lesson that seems contradictory; - you must learn to change your mind about your mind. Only by this can you learn that it is changeless.

I am going to frequently remind myself that it is only my mind I heal and only through changing my mind will I return to my Self. This does not mean that I can change the world or change my mind. It means that when I change the world nothing happens. For instance, if I want to lose weight and I change my diet, nothing has actually happened even if I lose weight.

I have actually only changed an illusion (the diet) to change an illusion (the body). Another way to think of this is: I pretended to have a fat body and pretended to make a thinner body and pretended to effect this change by manipulating the illusion through eating differently. Now I pretend that my manipulation gave me the thinner body I claim to want. I did a lot of nothing about nothing.

What if instead of trying to play around in the illusion, I change my mind about what I want? I may still be only changing the illusion, but in using my mind to do this rather than manipulating the illusion, I am reminding myself of who I am. I am learning to remember that my mind is powerful.

This is what Jesus says about changing the mind: “…a Son of God can recognize his power in one instant and change the world in the next. That is because, by changing his mind, he has changed the most powerful device that was ever given him for change.” When I read those words today they brought tears to my eyes. It is like suddenly remembering something wonderful and feeling the emotion of that memory.

But here is the truth. I don’t really have to think back to find a time when I changed the world through changing my mind. I do this all the time. Most of those times it is in very small increments and so I don’t realize what I have done right away. Only later do I notice how much my world has changed. But every time I change my mind, in that instant the world changes, not just for me, but for all of us.

Lesson 190 says there is no pain. When I first read this I was at a loss as to how this could be true because I seemed to have pain, and it felt very real. As I continued to study and practice the lesson, I let go of what I believed about pain and changed my mind. I accepted that there is no pain. Even when I felt pain, I accepted there is no pain. I refused to be distracted by appearances, which are only illusions.

The pain I had been dealing with vanished. It took many moments of working with that idea for me to come to full acceptance, but in that moment of full acceptance the world changed. Pain was no longer something I felt in my body, but was simply a projection from my mind, and could be alleviated through changing my mind. I continue to master that choice to believe the truth rather than appearances.

Jesus did this and his accomplishment was our accomplishment. All I had to do was to accept it. I just had to talk myself into believing it. In my acceptance of his accomplishment it became easier for the next person to do so. And of course, I am not the only one to accept the truth, which made it easier for me to do so in my turn. We all benefit from every small shift in the mind.

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

Study of the Text, V, Healing and the Changelessness of Mind. Paragraph 2. 4-1-14

V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind. Paragraph 6
6 Fear does not gladden. Healing does. Fear always makes exceptions. Healing never does. Fear produces dissociation, because it induces separation. Healing always produces harmony, because it proceeds from integration. It is predictable because it can be counted on. Everything that is of God can be counted on, because everything of God is wholly real. Healing can be counted on because it is inspired by His Voice, and is in accord with His laws. Yet if healing is consistent it cannot be inconsistently understood. Understanding means consistency because God means consistency. Since that is His meaning, it is also yours. Your meaning cannot be out of accord with His, because your whole meaning and your only meaning comes from His and is like His. God cannot be out of accord with Himself, and you cannot be out of accord with Him. You cannot separate your Self from your Creator, Who created you by sharing His Being with you.

I probably don’t understand everything there is to understand in this paragraph. What I do understand is that as I let go of fear, I become a consistent healer. I will be happy and free and I will share this with others because we are one mind. Our mind will become happier and freer. All of this happens because I am created by God and am part of Him, and healing and consistency and understanding are part of God so they are part of me.

What makes my heart sing is the last sentence.

You cannot separate your Self from your Creator, Who created you by sharing His Being with you.

If I seem to doubt and be uncertain, if I seem to be an inconsistent healer, if I seem fearful and guilty ever again, I know that I must be dreaming. None of this is in God and therefore none of this can be in me. That is the simple truth and that is fact. Everything else is an illusion and aside from asking for Atonement when I become confused, there is no reason for me to give any of the dark thoughts my attention. I cannot separate my Self from my Creator, Who created me by sharing His Being with me. I am indeed, holy and complete and it is not possible for this to change.

“Jesus, come with me today in all my doings and remind me to disregard appearances when they seem to grab my attention.”

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, V, Healing and the Changelessness of Mind. Paragraph 5. 3-26-14

V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, Paragraph 5
5 The Holy Spirit does not work by chance, and healing that is of Him always works. Unless the healer always heals by Him the results will vary. Yet healing itself is consistent, since only consistency is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free are whole. By accepting exceptions and acknowledging that he can sometimes heal and sometimes not, the healer is obviously accepting inconsistency. He is therefore in conflict, and is teaching conflict. Can anything of God not be for all and for always? Love is incapable of any exceptions. Only if there is fear does the idea of exceptions seem to be meaningful. Exceptions are fearful because they are made by fear. The “fearful healer” is a contradiction in terms, and is therefore a concept that only a conflicted mind could possibly perceive as meaningful.

Jesus seems to be telling me that healing is consistent because it is of God. If there is fear there will be exceptions and so inconsistency. If I experience inconsistency in my healing then I would be a fearful healer and that is not possible because it is a conflict in terms. What could that mean? Fear is one thing and healer is something altogether different. I might as well say it is a black white picture. That would make as much sense.

And yet, I heal and sometimes I fall into fear and I don’t heal, because I heal through God and God is not fear. Here is what I think: When I heal there is no doubt or fear in my mind. I am a healer. When I am afraid, I doubt and so no healing occurs. I am not a healer. Only one of those statements is true even though there is the appearance of both. I know that there is nothing to fear. I know this is the truth and so I must be a healer. Therefore, when I see the appearance of a fearful healer, I am looking on nothing.

When I see the appearance of anything less than the truth, I know it cannot be true or real. I disregard the appearance of what cannot be. I turn toward the truth and look on what is real. I focus my attention on what I am, not what the ego would have me be. I forgive the appearance of fear, and I forgive myself for my temporary distraction. I remain innocent and fearless and free. I remain a healer.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: V.Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, Paragraph 4. 3-28-14

V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, Paragraph4
4 Healing only strengthens. Magic always tries to weaken. Healing perceives nothing in the healer that everyone else does not share with him. Magic always sees something “special” in the healer, which he believes he can offer as a gift to someone who does not have it. He may believe that the gift comes from God to him, but it is quite evident that he does not understand God if he thinks he has something that others lack.

I am healed as I allow myself to be healed. It is as simple as that, and it is unfailing. I desire to remember who I am through forgetting who I thought I was, and it is done. I am strengthened each time I allow any healing at all, because each time I allow healing my mind is illuminated to the degree I am ready. As I remember who I am I accept the strength of God that is mine.

Magic always tries to weaken, because magic tries to convince me that I am less than what I am. I take medicine and I must believe that the power to heal lies outside my mind; therefore my mind must be weak. I solve my financial problems through shifting around the elements of the illusion so that I now prefer the way they appear, and I have convinced myself that the illusion is more powerful than mind.

Regardless of the form it takes, all problems are one problem and there is only one true solution. That solution is the Holy Spirit in my mind. As I call on that solution, my memory returns and I know who I am. This is strength. Attempting to solve my problems any other way, robs me of the memory of the strength available to me so it weakens me.

The solution may call for action in the world, but that action will be dictated from the Source of all Strength and so will not weaken. Believing that my solution comes from something outside me shifting and changing, weakens my trust and that makes the appearance of weakness. Of course, I cannot, as God’s Son, be weakened. But I can be confused and believe that I am weakened and what I believe is true for me.

As a healer I am calling on the strength of God and the Knowledge of God that is within me and part of me, but if I believe that it is in me alone, I am truly confused. In my confusion I forget who I am and I lose the certainty that allowed healing to occur through me. Even if the healer is aware that the healing is coming through her, she is still confused if she believes this makes her special.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, V, Healing and the Changelessness of Mind. Paragraph 2. 3-26-14

V. Healing and the Changelessness of Mind, Paragraph 2

2 Only minds communicate. Since the ego cannot obliterate the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to create, it can only teach you that the body can both communicate and create, and therefore does not need the mind. The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind, and is therefore self-sufficient. Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning, since you can act in accordance with what you do not believe. To do this, however, will weaken you as a teacher and a learner because, as has been repeatedly emphasized, you teach what you do believe. An inconsistent lesson will be poorly taught and poorly learned. If you teach both sickness and healing, you are both a poor teacher and a poor learner.

I read this paragraph and thought I understood it, then I was guided to read again more carefully.

Only minds communicate. Obviously I have no idea what true communication is because I thought it was what we do when we talk to each other. On more careful examination of this idea I see how flawed it is. What I say to you may or may not be true and even if it is true it may or may not be truth. In other words, I may be saying what I believe is true, but be wrong about it. Or I may be saying what I have convinced myself is true when all along I am really hiding the truth even from myself.

Perhaps what I am saying is for you alone. My words to your ears. In this case it is not true communication because it is limited and it separates. Limitation and separation have no place at all in the Kingdom. Words can be symbols for the truth but always, even under the best of circumstances, they will fall short of true communication. When we speak to each other, body to body, it is only vaguely similar to communication.

The impulse to communicate is the impulse to create. What passes for most communication is chatter. We speak on the surface of things because we cannot find words for what really matters and yet that impulse to communicate remains. So we try. We want to communicate, we want this very badly and we try to communicate even when it is very hard to do.

Have you ever tried to express something important and just couldn’t find words for it? I have had a few mystical experiences and I don’t know if words exist that could allow me to describe what actually happened and how it affected me. Yet I try anyway. I feel a strong need to communicate this and so I give them words even though the words only serve to diminish the experience.

In our true state communication is forever unbroken. What is known by one is known by all. We don’t need to fumble for words and disingenuousness is neither possible nor desired. How deeply freeing and satisfying it must be to truly communicate.

Communication is also the impulse to create. This is the reason we long to communicate and that we do so even when communication is so severely limited. We are creators and the impulse to create is not diminished because we are pretending to be something else. While we are in denial about our true nature we cannot create, but the impulse remains and so we try. We struggle to communicate, and we make as a poor substitution for creation.

The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind, and is therefore self-sufficient. The ego can do nothing about the impulse to communicate and the impulse to create so it tries to convince us that this is the purview of the body, and we accept this without question. We believe that we can only communicate through speaking words. We believe that we can only create with our hands.

In accepting these limitations, we are accepting the ego belief that we do not need the mind, and that separation is real and we are bodies. How very small we make ourselves and our world. In believing that the body is sufficient unto itself, what we think no longer matters to us, and all is about behavior. We have taught ourselves to believe the unbelievable, that as long as we don’t act on our dark thoughts, they don’t really matter, and only behavior counts.

Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning, since you can act in accordance with what you do not believe. I remember the first time, as a young teenager, I learned the hard lesson that people don’t always say what they believe. I walked up to a group of girls at school and one of them said to me that I looked really nice in my new outfit. Later I discovered that she really meant that she thought my outfit was pretty awful.

People’s actions are not always congruent with their thoughts. Sometimes it is deliberate as it was with the girl in my class, and sometimes it is unconscious. Sometimes it is meant to hurt, but often it is meant to hide what we think of as our awful secrets, or to put on a front designed to convince others that we are what they expect us to be.

We want to be liked and loved, and yet we don’t feel likable and lovable. We notice the dark thoughts in our mind and think we will never be accepted if people know what is going on in there. We imagine that our ego is more awful than everyone else’s when actually we all share the same ego.

This is one of the reasons I often share my ego thoughts as teaching examples. I will no longer hide behind appropriate behavior. I will expose the ego thoughts that would otherwise keep me in the belief that we are different. To be a good teacher and a good learner, I must be consistent in what I teach. This means a change must occur at the level of the mind, not at the level of behavior.

All of my life I had tried to bring my behavior into accord with what was expected of me. I wanted my behavior to teach what I was, even though it was not the truth. Then I learned to allow my mind to be healed knowing that behavior is always informed by the mind. A healed mind teaches healing consistently, thus assuring that I am a good learner and a good teacher.

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