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Study of the Text 10-19-12

10-19-12
45 A miracle is never lost. It may touch many people you have not even met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware.

I write a lot and it is posted and reposted, and published in more than one place. Most of my writing teaches through describing my experiences. Sometimes I hear about a miracle that was triggered by my story, but most of the time I don’t know who is touched by something I wrote.  The same is true of anything I might say. How do I know who might be affected or how.

I was caught in the trap of thinking someone’s thought error was the cause of my discomfort. A friend made a gentle but true statement and though it took me a few minutes, it started the healing process in my mind. Unless I told him about it he would not be aware of the miracle his words created.

I don’t judge the effectiveness of the miracle. I trust Jesus who is in charge of the Atonement, and trusting him, I don’t look for proof. In fact, there may not be any proof for me to find. Not all miracles manifest in form. I remind myself that miracles occur because the mind is healed. The healing of the mind is the miracle, and the appearance of a miraculous change in the world is a side effect and not important to the miracle.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 10-12-12

10-12-12
44 The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and acceptance of His Atonement.

I used to be very confused about what this meant. I knew that Christ was my true identity, but mostly that was a learned response. I was not actually aware of it. I didn’t feel like Christ. And certainly, if I saw accepting his Atonement as having undone the ego, I didn’t qualify for that either. And yet, sometimes, and more and more often, I experienced the miracle of a healed mind, and slowly and then more frequently the effects of a healed mind.

So I gathered from this that when I was aware of Christ within and when I accepted His Atonement, I experienced miracles. Over a period of time, I began to realize that although I would slide back into forgetfulness, the miracle was not lost. Once my mind was healed it stayed healed. I never lost anything. It only seemed I had lost it because my attention was sidetracked from the truth to the ego. If I lost what I had gained each time, I would never wake up.

Jesus, what do you want me to know about this principle?

There is no moment when Christ is not your Self. There are only moments when you choose to be unaware of your Self. Don’t be concerned about this. It is unimportant, and changes nothing. Your practice is enlighting your mind and it will unfold perfectly. Allow yourself to be in each moment, and to feel what comes up to be felt. Trust the process. Trust Me.

The ego mind tries to reassert itself but this can never happen. You do not walk backwards on this path. What is happening is that unhealed thoughts are coming to your awareness and sometimes you experience moments of confusion. The ego tendency to guilt and fear arise and you momentarily turn toward that.

Look at this with Me when it happens so that I can teach you it is meaningless. Fear is a response you taught yourself; in God’s Kingdom it does not exist, so it does not exist. This is what you will learn as you continue to bring your thoughts to me for purification.

Jesus, I notice that even when I am in this uncomfortable state of confusion I don’t believe in it. Behind the confusion is the certainty that it is not real and it will pass, that You will heal this, too. But I still have all the feelings of being lost, of being afraid or angry or whatever the situation brings up.

Yes, this is what happens when you believe the fear thoughts. Just as the miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and the acceptance of His Atonement, fear is an expression of identifying with ego and accepting its thought system of separation. You feel battered by these expressions of fear; anger, anxiety, frustration and all the others.

You feel this way because you have told yourself that you should not feel them, and yet they are inevitable when you experience yourself as separate. Your upset is the result of believing you have sinned. You have not, but because you believe you have and because you are afraid of seeing yourself this way, the ego mind creates a fog of confusion and you feel like you don’t know what is happening.

The way to break this cycle is to realize that anything you feel is acceptable. You cannot be guilty because you were not created guilty. You cannot be guilty any more than God could be guilty because you are His extension. Feel whatever you feel, and without guilt confusing the issue, you will quickly recognize it for what it is and move through it. You already have learned to laugh at your false beliefs once you remember your self. I am only telling you how to do it faster and with less discomfort. 

Yes, I can see what you mean, Jesus. I love you and appreciate you so much. I love my life now that I understand what it is for. I invite your help the next time I do this.

What you said makes perfect sense. It is not the negative emotions and the false beliefs that make me suffer, but rather the belief they should not be happening and the belief that having them means I am a sinner. I didn’t realize that this was the belief I was holding. I am happy to have that belief healed for me and for all of us.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 10-11-12

10-11-12
43 Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness.

Miracles are mine when I am ready for them. I prepare my mind by noticing what needs correction and asking the Holy Spirit for that correction. This goes on all day long. I don’t go mining for ego thoughts. This has never been necessary. I just pay attention and ask for healing when I notice a need.

If it is not something from my mind, there are plenty of examples in books, movies, conversations with friends, the news and, of course, politics. What a great year this is for cleaning out the mind! You can’t go an hour without being reminded that people believe they are separate and have separate goals. They often believe that the only way they can be happy if they win and do not often see that winning at the expense of others is not really winning. Election time is a perfect example of the separation idea.

I get to see what I believe in as I read or hear the election talk. Do I believe that I know what should happen and who should win the election? Do I believe in a world that hangs in the balance of an election? Do I believe my point of view is the right one and that I am somehow harmed if my imagined needs are not met, and my favored candidate does not win?  I can talk a good talk, but do I notice my stomach knotting, my muscles tightening? Do I feel the urge to put my two cents in?

Even if I am not noticing any of those things, even if I see each candidate as a child of God, doing what they came here to do, playing the part we all need them to play in the grand scheme to experience separation and then awaken from that dream, even then, there is much for me to forgive. If someone else is having a bad dream about the election and I notice, it is my job to heal that thought in the mind.

I love that there is only one mind. How efficient it is that we can heal anything we notice. If you notice I am confused you can ask the Holy Spirit to heal your mind of that belief. It’s all the same. I have in my mind everything you have in your mind. We, each of us, have the responsibility and the opportunity to heal the mind that we are.

If I notice someone is confused and thinking with the ego, it is completely unnecessary for me to point this out to them and suggest they do something about it. I can just ask the Holy Spirit to heal that in my mind. It does not matter which direction the healing is coming from. If someone asks for help in seeing differently, I can offer words, but I will still ask that my mind be healed. If I am particularly attuned, my words will lead them to the Holy Spirit within and they can get the help they need.

No matter how I go about it, my job is to desire a healed mind and be willing to do my part. I notice what needs healing and ask for the healing. I really mean it. I want the healing more than I want the error. That’s it. That’s all I have to do. This is how the mind is purified, how it becomes ready for the miracle. It is so simple and so absolutely necessary if I want the miracle. I don’t have to do anything else because the miracle does not need my help. It simply arises from a mind that is ready for it.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 10-10-12

10-10-12
42 A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack.

Why do I feel alone? Why do I feel deprived and as if I lack something? I used to believe it was because I wasn’t deserving of friends or lovers. They didn’t want me. Do you see how I perceived my loneliness to be someone else’s fault? If they would just like me I would be happy. When I felt deprived of money it was because someone wasn’t paying me enough, or hiring me, or because my parents didn’t raise me right. Believing my unhappiness was caused by someone or something else over which I had no control set up an endless cycle from which there was no escape.

A Course in Miracles told me that I am not a victim of the world I see and that the secret to salvation is that I but do this to myself. It took me a long time to be willing to believe this. I had always thought that projecting my guilt onto something else was my salvation. It took a giant act of faith to become willing to consider that there was an alternative and then to step into that alternative.

Peter walking on water has always been a powerful symbol to me because I don’t swim, and have had a frightening moment of near drowning. If Jesus, himself, was standing on the water outside the boat and holding out his hand to me, I would still be afraid to get out of the boat. This is what it felt like to begin the process of giving up projection. Projection was my boat and Jesus was telling me I didn’t need it. He was holding out his hand to me, and I was sure that if I stopped projecting I would drown in my guilt.

Through the study of his words in the Text, I slowly became convinced that projection was not in my best interest, and that when seen clearly, it didn’t make sense. If I am unhappy because of some one else, then I could never be happy because I could never control that one. Lord knows I had tried often enough. I tried using guilt and fear to get my husband to do what I thought I needed him to do. I tried it on my kids.

In my own mind I was so clearly right, or at least entitled, and yet they persisted in living their own lives in their own way in spite of how much they were hurting me when they did. Seeing this thought process now I can’t believe how deeply I bought into it, and yet that is the way I lived my life, and never questioned it before the Course.

When I began to question this insane way of living, I still had to become convinced that it would work. I started off small with little things. I would bring a thought of deprivation to the Holy Spirit. I would tell him that I couldn’t see any way this was my fault and that it sure seemed like this guy needed to change his ways in order for me to be happy. At first I would put that thought on the altar only to snatch it back. How could this be my guilt? How could taking responsibility for it lead to my happiness? Surely it would only condemn me.

But eventually, I became willing to give it a try, not because my sharp intellect discerned the truth of the Course, but because life was too painful to continue on as it was, and something in me was drawn to A Course in Miracles. I felt the truth before I understood it. Once I set those thoughts on the altar and walked away from them, the healing began.

The miracles began as my mind was healed. I experienced peace of mind that was not dependent on my life circumstances. I began to hear the Voice of God in my mind, and I learned to heed It rather than the ego voice. I began to understand that the guilt I had always felt and that made me feel so isolated and abandoned did not come from something happening to me. The guilt came from the belief that I was separate from God and out of His favor.

This guilt and subsequent fear was so great that I kept trying to get rid of it. I projected it away from myself and onto the world I made just for that purpose. So I was not guilty for something I did. I did something because of the guilt I felt. The guilt came first, and the story was my projection. Just to be sure, within the story I created characters onto whom I could project blame. Surely with all these layers of projection I could distance myself from the awful guilt I felt and see myself blameless, and yet, I only felt trapped.

But God’s love for me has no bounds and He would not leave me in this hell of guilt and isolation I made for myself. He gave me the Holy Spirit to guide me out of my confusion. He helps me back out of my stories and to let go of the guilt that made them. As soon as I loosen my grip on my beliefs, the Holy Spirit takes the guilt from me and I am left in peace. Lifetime after lifetime of hiding from God, of living in fear and smothering in guilt, and then, nothing. No guilt or fear. My mind is clear and it is as if nothing happened. It is a miracle.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 10-9-12

10-9-12
41 Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. They thus correct, or atone for, the faulty perception of lack.

In every case the miracle helps to reestablish wholeness in my mind. The belief in separation has had a grip on my mind for eons of time and I need help in letting the idea go. The Holy Spirit is that help, and the miracle is the mechanism for doing this. When I ask for healing and it is done, but not by me, I know that I am not alone. I am not separate but a part of a whole.

It is the belief in separation that accounts for every thought of lack. I used to think there were so many things I couldn’t do because I lacked the will power to make them happen; to be a better person, to resist that second piece of cake, to consistently choose God, are examples. I thought the weight of the world was on me and I could never live up to that responsibility.

A Course in Miracles taught me that I never bear anything alone, that my will is the will of God and therefore undeniable. This certainty occurred as I practiced turning my mind to the Holy Spirit. I gave my permission, and the Holy Spirit within me healed me. I began to realize the reason my will seemed so weak is that I was trying to work through a separated and small will, when all the time I had one will that I share with God. The miracle has awakened my memory of that will. In it is all power because it is not separate.

From within God, my true home and my reality, there is no lack. I learn this is true as I do my practice. I try it out on ideas one at a time. I used to worry all the time about money and I began to toy with the idea that my God is an abundant God and that He shares. It was a new idea for me and eventually led to my current understanding that it was only the belief I could be separate from reality that generated the feeling I could have needs at all.

I used to long for love but only felt loved at times. I yearned for a love I could depend on and that would not come and go. I learned through my practice that l felt lack of love because I didn’t remember that I am wholly love and therefore wholly loved. I thought I was separate and I had to deserve love from other separate beings. I often judged myself unworthy of their love and was afraid to even think about God’s love except in the most general way. If I didn’t deserve the love of the one standing next to me, how could I imagine I deserved God’s love?

I learned to be the love I wanted. I learned that in joining with the Holy Spirit my mind could be miraculously healed of the thoughts of unworthiness. I learned that in joining with the Holy Spirit my mind was miraculously healed of the idea that there was some separate person to love, some separate God who could withhold love. I understand that, as I am one with the Holy Spirit (and this has been proven to me over and over through the miracle of healing) I am one with everyone else and with God.

What could I lack if I am one with everything? How could I lack if I am part of all there is? I protect my new understanding, my new experience of oneness, with my vigilance. If I see someone “else” as sick or wanting in any way, I have embraced the belief in sickness, which is the belief in lack. My mind begins to slip back into the old belief in separation. But through my vigilance I notice the thought and the discomfort it brings, and I ask the Holy Spirit to come into my mind and undo what I have done. I ask for the miracle and the miracle corrects my perception. I remember I am part of a whole and in that whole there can be no lack.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 10-8-12

10-8-12
40 The miracle acknowledges everyone as your brother and mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God.

Ultimately, when the truth is accepted as true by everyone and there is no need for miracles, we will know ourselves as One with God. For now, while most of us are still confused about our identity, we need help. The miracle, by its nature, acknowledges our connection. The miracle calls for the joining of minds.

I spent the day yesterday with my family. I performed the wedding ceremony for my daughter, Sheryl, and her fiancé Barry. It took place at my home and for hours things were pretty hectic. The entire wedding had one week’s planning, but in spite of the short time involved, came together very well. However, there were moments that could have been very upsetting, but were accepted with fair ease and much grace.

Sheryl wasn’t the first nervous bride and I could have easily been drawn into that energy. Certainly in the past I would have. She forgot to buy hose and someone needed to do that. The cake didn’t come out as ordered and she thought that the perfect cake was very important. She felt like she had suddenly, overnight, become too fat for the dress that was a perfect fit just a couple of days before. She decided to iron her son’s shirt and smashed her finger opening the ironing board.

I watched myself deal with each emergency with calm. Wow! Even a year ago I would have been in the “let mom fix this” mode and would have been so overwhelmed and nervous myself, that I would have made things worse. I would have escalated the tension in the house if I had done that. I am so grateful for the miracle of a healed mind. I gave my mind to the Holy Spirit and the miracle of peace was His gift.

If the ego had been in charge, Sheryl and I would have fed the tension and anxiety. With Holy Spirit in charge, we joined in one purpose, the extension of love during this special occasion. I doubt my daughter had any idea of the miracle that was occurring, but that didn’t matter. I was in love with her, with Barry, with the little girls running around underfoot getting into everything, with the dozens of folks doing their part to bring this off for Sheryl, to make this day as lovely for her as possible.

Love was the purpose, and this was the point of joining for Sheryl and me. This was our shared purpose. This was where we met, Jesus, Sheryl and me. In this joining the miracle took place. When the wedding was over, Sheryl said it had been perfect. All the worry and stress she had felt before was forgotten, along with the injured finger, the unruly kids, the concern about how she looked, the cake that didn’t meet her expectations.

What was left was an overwhelming sense of love. She was basking in it, receiving and giving in equal measure. This is the memory she will take with her from her wedding day. Love is the purpose; it is always the purpose no matter what seems to be happening. In joining in that common purpose we experience the miracle and we see on each other the mark of God.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 10-4-12

10-4-12
38 The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles. He recognizes both God’s creations and your illusions. He separates the true from the false by His ability to perceive totally rather than selectively. 

My understanding of the Holy Spirit has shifted and changed over time, as has my understanding of my true Self. Of course my understanding or my misunderstanding, as the case may be, does not change reality so, in the end, it does not really matter.  It is helpful for me to know that the Holy Spirit is the Voice for God that was placed in my mind to help me wake up.

The Holy Spirit has a function that is especially useful to me in my sleeping state. He both perceives and knows. He understands how I think and yet he knows the truth. He is the perfect answer to my quandary. When my mind gets tangled in ego thoughts I call on the Holy Spirit to correct my perception. He brings my thinking into alignment with truth, which is the miracle.

I cannot do this myself because I work from within a closed system. I can only trade one perception for another. Within the dream there is not knowledge so I have nothing to which I can compare what I think and thus judge how closely my thoughts come to the truth. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, works within the system, but also has the advantage of knowing what is outside the system. He can do for me what I am temporarily unable to do for myself.

What the Holy Spirit is and how it all works is of little concern to me. I know that I can ask the Holy Spirit for correction, for help, for guidance, or for comfort and I am answered. I have a specific process I use that I know from my experience is effective in healing my mind.  I know what to do and that it works. I have seen that I don’t heal myself, and I have seen that I must desire the healing before it can take place. Through my willingness and the action of the Holy Spirit, I have experienced the miracle of a healed mind and the miraculous effects of a healed mind.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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