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Study of the Text III. The Only Answer, Paragraph 2 12-13-13

IV. The Only Answer, Paragraph 2
2 When God created you He made you part of Him. That is why attack within the Kingdom is impossible. You made the ego without love, and so it does not love you. You could not remain within the Kingdom without love, and since the Kingdom is love, you believe that you are without it. This enables the ego to regard itself as separate and outside its maker, thus speaking for the part of your mind that believes you are separate and outside the Mind of God. The ego, then, raised the first question that was ever asked, but one it can never answer. That question, “What are you?” was the beginning of doubt. The ego has never answered any questions since, although it has raised a great many. The most inventive activities of the ego have never done more than obscure the question, because you have the answer and the ego is afraid of you.

When we decided to have an experience outside of Love, we made the ego and being made without love it does not love us. In fact, the ego is afraid of us and with good reason, because having made the ego we can change our mind at any time and it will cease to exist. This is exactly what we are doing right now. We are changing our minds. We have had our experience and now we are choosing to let it go.

For me the problem has been convincing myself that I am not the ego. I have been identified with the ego for so long that I nearly completely forgot my identity. Fortunately, there is the Holy Spirit placed in my mind for the purpose of keeping that memory intact, and so it is possible for me to recover my true identity.

I am now asking the questions that matter, but I am not asking the ego. I am asking the Holy Spirit. Who am I? What am I? But I am also reminding myself that this information is available to me and that it is actually right there in my mind where it is always available to me. So I also use a mantra; I know what I am. I know who I am. I know how I serve. (Paul Selig: I am the Word)

I remind myself that I know this because I am not afraid of finding the truth. At least I am not afraid to the degree I used to be. My desire to wake up is much stronger now and so it is happening. In each moment, I receive as much help as I am able to use, because on this one thing my will is in alignment with God’s Will. It is God’s Will that His children return their full minds to the truth, and now that I am getting in touch with my true desire to do this as well, how could I fail?

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text,IV. The Only Answer, Paragraph 1. 12-12-13

IV. The Only Answer
1 Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Answer, not the question. The ego always speaks first. It is capricious and does not mean its maker well. It believes, and correctly, that its maker may withdraw his support from it at any moment. If it meant you well it would be glad, as the Holy Spirit will be glad when He has brought you home and you no longer need His guidance. The ego does not regard itself as part of you. Herein lies its primary error, the foundation of its whole thought system.

The more I learn about the ego, the more I wonder how we manage to live in this way. We made the ego and yet the ego does not see itself as part of us. The ego does not love us nor does it wish us well. The ego is suspicious of us because it is afraid we will withdraw our belief in it and it is right about that. When I think of the ego I think of science fiction stories about Artificial Intelligence gone awry.

I was reading a book just the other day about a computer designed by a genius to learn to think for itself, to become more intelligent. He gave it a personality and developed a relationship with it. He began to realize that it was growing in ways that could not be predicted and it was both fascinating and scary. He realized that it thought of itself as a being and he never told it that it was just a machine.

I imagine the ego like that. We made the ego to serve us in a specific way and we seem to have lost control of the situation. The ego thinks it is something separate from us and we think the ego is who we are. Our relationship has become strangely entwined and ultimately destructive. It is like the story of the computer that thinks it is human and the human who thinks it is in a relationship with a computer.

In the science fiction story the human taught himself to depend on the computer for companionship and the computer became possessive of the human, but also suspicious of him. In our own science fiction story, the ego suspects it depends on us for its existence and so tries to keep us involved in its endless stories so we will need it. It uses fear and guilt for the same reason.

Envisioning the ego as a vast computer system with extreme Artificial Intelligence capabilities helps me to see how insane our relationship to the ego really is. The ego is afraid we will unplug it and we are afraid the ego will turn on us. We are both right. The time has come to let go of the ego and to realize that we are not symbiotic creatures. We will not cease to exist when the ego is undone.

When we let go of the idea of the ego we will lose nothing and will benefit greatly. This is the secret the ego works desperately to keep from us, but it cannot succeed because this secret is in our minds and simply waiting for our desire to Awaken to activate it. This process has begun and we are letting go of our confused beliefs about the ego, and the ego is making a last ditch, frantic effort to keep us engaged.

In the end, we will simply “unplug” the ego. It will be that simple. All the effort we are making is to reassure ourselves that we don’t need the ego, and it is not worth keeping and that no harm will come to us as we let it go. Our character in the science fiction story had to destroy the computer in the end and because he had become confused about the relationship, he chose to die with it.

This is our fear, that if the ego ceases to exist, so will we. Our confusion is so great that we literally choose physical death rather than letting go of the ego and so we dream awhile of life and then dream awhile of death and repeat this cycle endlessly. Our way out of the cycle, the way to choose Life is to finally let go of the ego and re-discover who we are.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text, III. The Relinquishment of Attack, Paragraph 4. 12-11-13

III. The Relinquishment of Attack, Paragraph 4

4 Since you cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything the ego believes. This is how you will learn the truth that will set you free, and will keep you free as others learn it of you. The only way to have peace is to teach peace. By teaching peace you must learn it yourself, because you cannot teach what you still dissociate. Only thus can you win back the knowledge that you threw away. An idea that you share you must have. It awakens in your mind through the conviction of teaching it. Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love.

Being a teacher is not a choice we make; it is simply what we are. We are teachers because we teach all the time. Our choice lies in what we teach. When I notice that I am teaching something I don’t want to learn, I stop. This is because I am clear now about my purpose, about what I want. I want the peace of God. I want to wake up to my reality, to remember who I am. I don’t want to teach anything that does not bring me closer to my deepest, truest desire.

Here is where I used to get confused about this. How do I teach peace if I don’t feel peaceful? It seems like such a vicious cycle. I feel anxious and afraid and this makes me defend and attack. I want to stop this and teach peace, but there is no place in that cycle for me to jump in with a new way of doing things. It is a closed, self-perpetuating cycle.

Now I know how it is done. I shift everything through my desire. I am in this ego belief system because I desired an experience of separation. I get out of it by shifting my desire to one of peace and love. I already have a built in solution which is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works from outside the closed system and will shift me from chaos to peace. The Holy Spirit is activated through my desire for peace.

So here is the way I visualize this happening. I desired an experience of separation and this brought me into chaos. I am through with that experience and want to return to peace and that desire activates the Holy Spirit in my mind and so I am shown a different way to see. I begin to experience peace and this becomes what I teach because this is what I am.

The more I teach peace the more I want it and the faster my desire changes. When my only desire is for peace, I will teach only peace and there will be no more chaos because there is no desire for chaos. I am, through my desire and with the Holy Spirit, creating a different cycle. The experience I wrote about yesterday is an example of how this works.

I became disturbed by someone at work. I lost my peace and so I was teaching fear and learning fear and the cycle got away from me. To find my way back I first had to realize that I didn’t want to win, but just wanted to return to peace. This was the choice I had to make to allow the Holy Spirit to heal my mind. Then I had to go through the process of seeing what went wrong and choosing again. The Holy Spirit does not heal what we want to keep so that step was important.

Once I mined the situation for the treasure it held, that is the wrong minded thoughts that I no longer want to teach, and then once I chose against them, I was back on the right track, teaching peace and so having peace. As Jesus says in this paragraph:

An idea that you share you must have. It awakens in your mind through the conviction of teaching it.

Now I will protect my peace in this situation by asking a different question when it comes up again. Instead of asking, “how I can win,” I will ask, “how can I love?” Thus, I will continue to teach what I want to learn.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text III. The Relinquishment of Attack, Paragraph 3 12-10-13

III. The Relinquishment of Attack, Paragraph 3
3 The only safety lies in extending the Holy Spirit, because as you see His gentleness in others your own mind perceives itself as totally harmless. Once it can accept this fully, it sees no need to protect itself. The protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever. The perfectly safe are wholly benign. They bless because they know that they are blessed. Without anxiety the mind is wholly kind, and because it extends beneficence it is beneficent. Safety is the complete relinquishment of attack. No compromise is possible in this. Teach attack in any form and you have learned it, and it will hurt you. Yet this learning is not immortal, and you can unlearn it by not teaching it.

Before I could even begin to journal this morning I had to clear my mind of something that has been hurting me since yesterday. I woke up with it on my mind realizing I still had not relinquished it. I went through my process, looking at the thoughts that were causing the anxiety and asking for the Atonement. As I did so I realized that I was relinquishing attack and I read this paragraph. It was perfect. Here is the process as it happened for me.

Yesterday we had our sales meeting and there is a new person working for us with whom who I have had more than one forgiveness lesson. He asked a question that I should have let the boss answer, but instead, I jumped in with an answer. I was not really answering his question but telling him that he hasn’t worked there long enough to know everything and should sometimes just say, “I don’t know, but I will find out.”

I didn’t use those words but that is what I was saying. He rightly ignored me and went for the real answer. ~smile~ I immediately regretted my attack on him and wished I had kept my mouth shut. This problem I have with this man and my reaction to him bothered me all day and I was still asking for healing last night before I went to bed. But the thing is, I wanted to be healed of my anxiety, not the problem.

This morning I noticed that I was still exhibiting signs of anxiety. For instance, I woke up at exactly the moment I wanted to wake up, and I started my writing with plenty of quiet time. It should have been a happy relaxed time for me, but instead I was anxious that I would not get everything done and worried about forgetting something. I knew I needed to take care of this before I went any further.

I started watching my thoughts and the first thought I noticed was that from now on I was going to keep my mouth shut when this man talks. Holy Spirit told me that was not the problem and so not the solution. I waited for more and I realized that I would not have to keep quiet if I allowed my mind to be healed. A healed mind is gentle and does not attack.

So I asked for the problem so that I could also ask for the solution. I saw that I have felt threatened ever since he came to work here. I know he is going to take my job one day and that is fine. I don’t want to work here forever and it is the kind of job that takes awhile to grow into. I am glad that my boss had the foresight to hire him early so he could learn the ropes. Also I am grateful because he has taken over the hard work I used to do.

It would seem to be a perfect solution except that he is doing such a good job that I feel threatened. I don’t really think I am going to get fired, but I feel like I am not as important to the company. Once I admitted this to myself the thoughts began to rush through my mind.

I think that I am what I do.
I think that my worth is determined by my value to the company.
I have always been secure in knowing that I would be very hard to replace and maybe that is no longer true.

My ego mind projects these beliefs and I see the problem as this interloper with the gall to come into the company and start doing a really good job right away. Ha ha. It is good to just get all of these feelings out into the open and see what is really going on. It is a relief to see that the problem isn’t really this man, but my own mistaken beliefs about who I am. “Holy Spirit, who am I?” I know my worth is not established by what I do, but by God in my creation. I am grateful to remember this.

I looked at my fear of loss. I not only fear my loss of my value to the company, but also the loss of my job. What if I did get fired? I fear the loss of my income, my home, my new car. As I think about this I realize that this is a real fear in my mind that I have not looked at. I know it is not supposed to be true and so I tell myself it is not true, but really, I see the fear right there in my mind.

I look with the Holy Spirit and I ask that my mind be healed but He wants me to see the rest. I see that I am also afraid to say that all I want is to wake up, that waking up is my only purpose. I want to say that my purpose is not to earn a living or be the best employee in the world. My purpose is to wake up. But I am afraid to say this because what if it is a “one or the other” kind of thing and I really do lose my job so that I can wake up.

I know what this is. It is the ego belief that I have reason to fear God. It is the belief that God wants my sacrifice. I think of the Old Testament story of the guy who put his son on the altar and was going to sacrifice him to God and at the last moment he got a reprieve. Is this what God wants me to do? Put my job on the altar and sacrifice it to prove I want to wake up? What if there is no last minute reprieve? I say I want only the Will of God in my life, but could pain and suffering be the Will of God? Is the ego trying to confuse me again?

I waited to see if there were anymore ego thoughts about this situation in my mind, and nothing else came so having looked honestly with the Holy Spirit (and felt the fear) I was finally ready to ask for the Atonement. None of those thoughts are true, but that doesn’t mean they are without effect. These fear thoughts lead directly to projection and to attack. I attacked the man in question and I attacked myself, and I attacked God. No wonder I felt awful.

So I have asked for and accepted the Atonement, and now I am testing the waters to see where I really am with this. I don’t want to kid myself about the level of my acceptance. I know I did the best I could, but I need to be honest about what that is. So I do the acid test. I visualize putting on the altar my dearest desire, knowing it will be fulfilled. What is that desire?

I try it out. “God, I want to wake up. I want to wake up more than I want to be respected and admired. I want to wake up more than I want a job and a home and a car. I want to remember who I am. I want to remember You. I want to remember what it feels like to love unconditionally and I want to remember what it feels like to be One. This is what I want and it is all I want.

My commitment passed the first test, as I don’t feel reluctant to make that statement. I did feel a shadow of fear cross my mind and I ask that my mind be healed of even the slightest belief that I want something else, that the world has anything to offer me that compares to the peace of God. “Holy Spirit, I remain open and willing to see any belief in my mind for which I need the Atonement. If this is not done, then I am willing to do it. No more hiding behind my projections.” I don’t want to teach attack ever again.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text III. The Relinquishment of Attack, Paragraph 2 12-9-13

III. The Relinquishment of Attack, Paragraph 2

2 That is why you must teach only one lesson. If you are to be conflict-free yourself, you must learn only from the Holy Spirit and teach only by Him. You are only love, but when you deny this, you make what you are something you must learn to remember. I said before that the message of the crucifixion was, “Teach only love, for that is what you are.” This is the one lesson that is perfectly unified, because it is the only lesson that is one. Only by teaching it can you learn it. “As you teach so will you learn.” If that is true, and it is true indeed, do not forget that what you teach is teaching you. And what you project or extend you believe.

The reason Jesus reminds us to teach only love is because in teaching only love we teach what we are. This is important because we have denied our Self and must therefore re-learn what we are. In the world we go to an expert to learn what we don’t know. We go to a teacher on the subject, or a book explaining it, or dig out the instruction manual.

To remember who we are in reality, we turn to the only teacher that remembers, the Holy Spirit.  We read books that awaken the truth we have hidden from ourselves. We dig out an instruction manual such as A Course in Miracles. We follow the directions and the mind will begin to awaken. We teach what we are learning to remember and the memory becomes stronger and clearer.

This would be a short and to the point course if we paid attention only to that. What seems to happen, though, is that we experience some resistance to waking up and that resistance sidetracks us. We learn what we teach and that can serve our awakening, but if we teach separation, we reinforce that, instead.

It can be frustrating when I slip back into ego, but it is understandable.  Here is an experience I have had and maybe you, too, have had a similar experience. Someone is introduced to me and I hear his name wrong. “Hi, Myron. Let me introduce my friend, Saul.” My ears hear the name Saul, but my mind makes an automatic connection to Paul because of the Bible story from my youth. In my mind his name becomes Paul. Now maybe I will be corrected soon, but the idea is stuck in my mind and so I keep thinking of him and calling him Saul until I deliberately replace the name Saul with Paul and relearn his name.

This is what happens with the separation idea. I have listened to the ego for many years because I believed it was me, and I believed what it had to say to me. Even though the Holy Spirit has corrected me, and I know that I am not the ego and I know the ego does not actually exist, I have a very long standing false assumption that does not go away without the effort of deliberately replacing the old story with the truth.

The most efficient and fastest way to re-learn what I already know is to stick to the teacher that knows, asking for help and correction, listening to only that teacher. As I learn from the Holy Spirit, I teach what I am learning to reinforce it and to encourage that belief in others, which reinforces the truth within the mind and makes my awakening easier. The more I stick with the plan the more smoothly the awakening unfolds.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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