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Study of the Text 12-4-12

12-4-12
2 A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct. This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of truth, and had thus perceived yourself as lacking. The idea of order of needs arose because, having made this fundamental error, you had already fragmented yourself into levels with different needs. As you integrate you become one, and your needs become one accordingly. Unified needs lead to unified action, because this produces a lack of conflict.

This paragraph begins by telling me that I have not actually separated from God by telling me I only have a sense of separation. He says that this happened when I distorted my perception of truth. So what I am experiencing as actuality is not real. I have to wonder what the world would look like if I had not distorted my perception of the truth. I would have had a happy dream, I think, and I will still have that happy dream as I allow my perception to be corrected and brought nearer the truth.

When I distorted my perception so that I could see myself as something other than one and whole this created a sense of lack. Of course it did! I had never known anything other than wholeness, and now I was less than that. This fragmentation of Self appeared as many levels with different needs. Then I began to organize these needs according to some order, fragmenting them further as I decided which was most important and which I felt more compelled to fill.

Awhile back a very large rock hit my windshield. It cause a big round crack which I have been watching as it slowly creeps across the windshield in various directions, taking on different designs as it does so. It began in a confined area with a specific shape and now there are cracks going off in different directions and each of those cracks has its own design.

I can imagine my error in thinking having similar effects. Maybe it went something like this. First I imagine a setting for something entirely different, which sets up perception because “entirely different” is not truth so I needed a way of making it all happen. Instead of creating something different, I am now using the mechanism of perception to experience it as if it is different. Maybe I could think of that as imagining it different, or as the Course says, I am dreaming.

But then I want a more intense experience, something more believable, so I distort perception until it no longer resembles the truth in any way. Now I have the seeming experience of being separate from God. That’s when it all got away from me. Like the crack in my window the fragmenting didn’t stop with the one break, but continued on and on, fragmenting over and over, making many things, many bodies, many desire and needs, until seemingly becoming endless and hopeless. I became so far from Wholeness that I cannot imagine getting back.

Good thing this was planned for and the Holy Spirit is the Voice and the guide that keeps me forever connected to God. So here I am on the outer edges of this incredibly complex fragmentation and beginning to wake up to the truth that I am not this and don’t want to hang out here as if I am. I am beginning to listen to that Voice and work my way back home. It seems like an impossible and endless journey because I see all those needs stretching before me, all those errors, some impossibly big and others smaller, some urgent and some just waiting its turn, and I cannot imagine coming to the end of them.

It is very reassuring to read that there are not really a lot of needs, nor are there levels to those needs. There is just one lack I need to correct, the belief that I have separated from God. All the distorted fragmentation is dissolved in that one correction. This is my only true goal, my real destination and I am excited to know this. As I continue this study of the text, and as I listen closely to the Voice for God, I will receive more clarity, and more instructions and guidance on how to reach my one goal.

Today the Holy Spirit has asked me to remember what everything is for. When I feel I need something, no matter how minor or how important the sense of lack is, I will remember that I have one lack only, and that this seeming need is a symbol of that one lack. A sense of separation from God is the only lack I really need correct. I am being asked today to open my mind to that simple thought and become willing to accept it.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text 12-3-12

12-4-12
VI. The Illusion of Needs
1 You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness. No learning is acquired by anyone unless he wants to learn it and believes in some way that he needs it. While lack does not exist in the creation of God, it is very apparent in what you have made. It is, in fact, the essential difference between them. Lack implies that you would be better off in a state somehow different from the one you are in. Until the “separation,” which is the meaning of the “fall,” nothing was lacking. There were no needs at all. Needs arise only when you deprive yourself. You act according to the particular order of needs you establish. This, in turn, depends on your perception of what you are.

In the beginning there was everything, and nothing was lacking. There was not even a concept of lacking, or of needs. Then came the “fall” or the “separation from God,” in which we began to imagine that things were different. We experienced ourselves in a state of separation, separate from God, separate from each other, each thing separate from us and from every other thing.

Space and time seem to exist and everything is further separated. Now I can be different from you and I can be in a different place, at a different time, and I can have some thing you don’t have. This had never been possible until now because before there was only one whole and there was no separation. Separation feels wrong and I want everything back. And it seems like that other one has it.

So, here I think I am. I am in this point in space and in this time. I am reduced to a bit of flesh and bones and further differentiated by sex, by shape, by size, and with the idea of time, by age. I see someone over there with a slimmer body, a younger body, and I feel deprived. I want what that person has. I have a whole list of preferred conditions having to do with the body, with circumstances and with relationships. In each one I seem to fall short of someone else. I have needs. I lack.

I am discontented, alone, and afraid. I want my needs to be met and yet I feel a vague discomfort about it because it seems that my needs are met often at the expense of someone else. I would think that this endless dividing of the whole would make more, but instead, it seems to produce a state in which there is only so much and I have to grab my bit before someone else does.

This incessant need to take from others what we feel we must have to be happy sometimes takes on global proportions and we have world wars, but really, we are at war in every moment of our lives. We are always jostling for a better place, a bigger piece of the pie. We see winning as the effect of someone else losing. And no matter how much we accumulate, we are left feeling needy because we don’t know what it is we lack.

Since I don’t know what I need I spend my lives assigning that role to each and every separated thing. I need a better body, a better mate, a better job, a better car, a better friend. The list is endless because no matter what I get it fails to satisfy. At some point I have to believe there must be a better way. At some point I absolutely will choose to find that better way.

This is my time. This is the time in which I realize that I am seeking for happiness and peace in the wrong places. I will never find peace through war. I cannot achieve happiness at the expense of someone else. I stopped trying to get more customers from my competitors, and started trying to find ways to help the people in my industry. I lost interest in having a fancier car, a bigger house, nicer clothes; I lost interest in things, and I have stopped needing to be superior to someone else.

I stopped trying to make more money than the other guy and started trying to do the best job I could do. I stopped being envious of the younger, slimmer body someone else has. I stopped using this body as a way to get what I thought I lacked.  I stopped using this body to reward myself or to punish myself. I stopped using this body to make myself feel better than or less than. I began to ask Holy Spirit to use this body in a way that would help us all, as a communication devise, a tool to help us awaken.

I was unhappy, not because of any actual lack, but because I had a certain perception of myself, and from that perception I decided what I needed to improve that perception. Each time I achieved something it would be at the expense of another and the guilt of taking and of further separating that which God made whole, would leave me feeling more deprived than ever. So I was doing this to myself.

The solution is full forgiveness. I start with whatever is happening in my life at the moment and I forgive it. I forgive the other person for appearing prettier, happier, richer, and more satisfied than me. I forgive myself for wanting what they have, and for coveting what I seem to lack. I forgive myself for the war I am waging within my own mind. I forgive myself for believing I am separate, separate from everyone and everything else, separate from God.

Without this sense of endless neediness driving my thoughts and actions, I am open to another way. I begin to see things differently. Instead of looking at a competitor I see a man who is confused, just like I used to be confused. He thinks he needs my customer in order to be happy and so sees me as the source of his discontent. He and I want the same thing. We both want to be happy, to be peaceful and to feel safe. I used to be confused about what would help me achieve those goals, and so I understand his confusion. I forgive us both.

The more areas to which I apply this in my life the more peaceful and happy I become. This is because forgiveness removes the barriers to our wholeness. As I forgive the false needs I placed on the body I am content with it. I don’t need it to be the way I receive attention or the way I punish myself for my perceived sins. I forgive myself and forgive my body, and that war is over. Without war there is peace.

As I forgive my relationships and I forgive myself for using these relationships as a way of getting more of what I think I need, I am free to simply love. I love the one who stands before me. This is so simple to do because I don’t need him to be anything for me, therefore he cannot disappoint me. As I get better at this and do more forgiveness work I see that no one is special. Each person receives all my love. It seems ridiculous that I have spent my life singling out individuals to love according to their ability and willingness to fulfill my needs, needs which I made up.

I want peace. I am willing to completely forgive. Holy Spirit, please help me to see clearly. Please help me when I become distracted. Please help me to wake up. I forgive myself for believing I am separate from my brothers and sisters and from God. Please help me to see where I still believe in separation so that I can let that be healed.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text 11-30-12

11-30-12
6 The miracle is a sign that the mind has chosen to be led by me in Christ’s service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow Him. All shallow roots must be uprooted, because they are not deep enough to sustain you. The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened, and thus made to hold, is one of the distortions on which the reverse of the Golden Rule rests. As these false underpinnings are given up, the equilibrium is temporarily experienced as unstable. However, nothing is less stable than an upside-down orientation. Nor can anything that holds it upside down be conducive to increased stability.

Anything from ego is a shallow root that gives me an upside down perspective. There is no way that I can make this perspective better or make it work for me. For instance, let’s say that I am unhappy because something I did has come back to haunt me. I wish I had not done it because it is now affecting my life in a way I regret. I feel foolish and helpless.

The shallow root is that I would be happy if I made better choices, and another would be that I would be happy if only circumstances were different. I try to deepen the root by berating myself. Yes, that’s right, I think it would help if I fussed at myself and pointed out my errors, even piled on some guilt. The ego reasoning is that this way I won’t make that same mistake again.

Another way of deepening both roots is to learn enough to not make that same kind of mistake again, to get wiser and smarter and more experienced so that I don’t make those kinds of mistakes. I can read self-help books and practice spiritual concepts. It will probably help but it will never work all the time because there is no way I can know all I need to know to make better decisions. I would have to know everything about the situation, now and in the future and how it will affect everyone in a chain of events. That is not possible.

Something like this actually occurred last night, except it was someone else who did something that seemed to have a negative effect on my life at this time. It’s the same either way, another person or me, and my reaction was pretty much the same except directed outward. Suddenly, I had the thought that this person could not have acted any differently. This was their script. It is the same as the many times that I seemed to have made a mess of things; I could not have done things differently either.

How silly that I would find either of us guilty. What a waste of time to try to fix the world from within the world, or to expect the other person to do that. This did not happen from within the world and so it cannot be fixed there. That is the shallow root regardless of what form it seems to take.

It might seem to be that I am sick and so I go to the doctor and start taking medicine. I look the cause of the illness up on-line and see what I need to do to prevent this happening again. I change my lifestyle. This is the same shallow root. I think the body gets sick and I think I can make things better by changing what the body does or does not do. I think the problem is in the world and I can make things better by changing the world.

So last night as the truth began to dawn upon my mind, as I realized that it is perfectly silly and useless to think that someone should have acted differently than they did, I had to laugh at the idea of blame. How could I ever find anyone, even myself, guilty of playing out the script as it is written?  For a moment I felt as if the underpinnings of my world were loosened and I was free floating. It felt unnerving. But then as I allowed the Holy Spirit to help me see differently, my mind righted itself.

I asked what I was supposed to do in the world. If the script is written and I know it, am I supposed to just walk through my part, mouthing words? What is the point? The answer I received is that I am supposed to watch and remember. As I become detached from the meaning I have given life and stop trying to deepen shallow roots, I begin to use what is happening to remember the truth, just as I did last night.

I remembered the movie Inception. It has a lot of action, fighting, close calls, and a complex plot. When I watched it the first time, I noticed an underlying metaphysical meaning, but only in a general way. I was so caught up in the story that I missed a lot of the meaning. I watched it several times and as I did so, I lost interest in the adventure and was able to catch more of the less obvious storyline, the deeper hidden meanings.

This is how it is in life. As I take my eye off the outer story, stop paying attention to the shallow roots and stop trying to strengthen them, I am able to notice the underlying meaning. I am able to see what is really going on and work from that perspective. The first thing I had to do was to forgive the situation and the people involved. Its funny but once I forgive it I have to laugh because I can no longer see what there is to forgive.

From this more detached perspective I can ask the Holy Spirit to show me this in a different way. This works in my life just as it did in the movie, Inception. I lose interest in the cover story, the obvious plot, and I begin to notice the story behind the story. I start to remember who I really am and that the story is ancient and over long ago. I am just watching it unfold yet again, perhaps leaving bits on the cutting floor so that it becomes a shorter story, and shorter still the more awake to the truth I become.

That experience last night and many like it restore my mind to the peaceful state I have come to expect. That is no small thing in itself, but it also helps to awaken me from the belief in the story, and as it does so, it awakens the entire Sonship. Truth is spread throughout the entire mind, and this makes it easier for the next person who is ready for the truth. This is the miracle. The effects of a changed mind are the outward appearance of the inward miracle. The more willingness I give to the Holy Spirit to heal my mind, the more miracles I experience and the more abundant their effects.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text 11-29-12

11-29-12
5 Whatever is true is eternal, and cannot change or be changed. Spirit is therefore unalterable because it is already perfect, but the mind can elect what it chooses to serve. The only limit put on its choice is that it cannot serve two masters. If it elects to do so, the mind can become the medium by which spirit creates along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains its creative potential but places itself under tyrannous rather than Authoritative control. As a result it imprisons, because such are the dictates of tyrants. To change your mind means to place it at the disposal of true Authority.

What I can’t change:
I am eternal Spirit, unalterably perfect.

What I can’t do:
I can’t serve two masters.

What I can do:
I can choose the master I would serve.
1. Choose to follow God and create along the lines of spirit.
2. Choose to follow ego and retain creative ability but imprison the mind so that it can only pretend or make, but not create.

I have (or am?) this perfect, powerful, unlimited and unalterable creative mind. I can create love, and peace, and joy in as many ways as I can think to, and because I am boundless, there is no end to the ways I can imagine creation. Because I am free and have no boundaries I can even play at making something outside of creation. And this is what I have done.

I have used the incredible power of my mind to voluntarily imprison a part of it, setting up limits so that I could pretend to be other than I am. I call this part of mind, ego.  From this little bit of mind I have made a world of separation with all its effects, intended and unintended. I doubt I understood the tyrannous nature of a mind so bound, how lost I would be in it, how fearful and guilty.

Though perhaps I have for awhile enjoyed the delicious tingle of fright and the powerful surges of adrenaline. And surely, I have enjoyed the highs and lows of emotions surging through the body, the ache of sexual desire and its physical release. Can anything equal the tender regard of mother and baby, newly born? Most assuredly so, but I cannot remember what that is.

And that’s the rub. I am truly lost here in my storyland, and the guilt and fear seem all too real. For it is the nature of the experience that I be wholly and completely in its thrall, otherwise it is an idea, a concept but never fully realized. This ego is a tyrant for sure, and has no desire to die quietly, but wants to keep me engrossed with offers of more of its dubious adventures and promises of a false freedom.

The Holy Spirit speaks for God and gently leads us out of this unlikely kingdom we have made. As we listen to His loving Voice we see a glimmer of the truth, a bit of light, and we start to remember that a thousand choices offered by ego are choices between nothing and nothing. Long before the mind remembers its longing, the Heart feels it and we find a book or a teacher and we begin to make the only choice we truly have, the one between masters.

In a bid to keep our loyalty, the ego, using the only tools at its disposal (fear and guilt) warns us that we slipped away from God in the dark of night, stealing from Him what was His, leaving Him diminished. The ego says that we dare not go back. It warns that such a betrayal could not be without consequence. It’s a scary lie, but still a lie.

When we had the curious thought that we should try making a world different than truth, our loving Creator placed within the mind a reminder, a fail-safe. This Voice was placed there to comfort us when we got in too deep and experienced hurt. He placed within our mind a Light to keep the darkness from hiding our truth too completely, a Guide to bring us home when we tired of our games.

We did not sneak off from God, we did not hurt God, and we are not guilty and have nothing to fear from Love. If we are hearing that Voice and feeling its call to return home, it is only because we are through with play. We are making a choice for God, for Reality. It is time, we have decided, to place our mind under true Authority.

In making the choice for God, we are beginning to realize that the tyrant, the ego,  has no real power over us. We are the maker of the tyrant and cannot be controlled by it except if we make that choice. “This is what I have done, Holy Spirit. Please undo what I have done.” It’s that simple, and the consequences of choosing a true Master are not dire as we are warned by ego, but are glorious!

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of the Text 10-28-12

11-28-12
4 Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The miracle calls him to return because it blesses and honors him, even though he may be absent in spirit. “God is not mocked” is not a warning but a reassurance. God would be mocked if any of His creations lacked holiness. The creation is whole, and the mark of wholeness is holiness. Miracles are affirmations of Sonship, which is a state of completion and abundance.

First let me say what a delight it was to read that, “God is not mocked” is not a warning but a reassurance. It makes me laugh when I read that. I used to think of it as a warning and it was one of those phrases from the Bible that encouraged my fear of God. I mean, what was I supposed to do with that? How was I mocking Him and how was I to stop? What would He do to me if I accidentally mocked Him? Life used to be a lot scarier before I found the Course.

It also helped me to understand that my perception determines how I understand things. “God is not mocked” goes from being a warning to being a reassurance without any change to the words. The Holy Spirit helped me to see that I am not yet completely free of fear when I think of God, but I am moving in that direction. I am much closer to knowing that He is Love and nothing else, than I used to be. I have touched that love, just a gentle brush with reality, but it made a difference.

“Thank You, God, that You are not mocked.” There is nothing I can do to change the nature of God, or of His creation. I am holy because God created me like Himself. I will never be anything but holy and so, ultimately, I will return to Him. I will acknowledge my holiness and laugh at the absurdity that I could have been a body in a world of separation, that I could have suffered and died.

I was watching a clip by Jan Frazier this morning. She said a couple of things that were helpful to me. First she reminded me that there is only now. I hear this from other people too, and I think I have failed to see just how important that is. Just this moment, this is all there is. In each moment I can say the same thing. I am just beginning to understand that eternity is in this moment. She said: All that’s real is here right now.

The other thing that was helpful: No thought can cause you pain unless you’re having it right now. I had to laugh when I read that. It is so true and so obvious and yet, I never really noticed it before. Right now is the only thing that is here and if I am experiencing pain it is because of a thought I am having right now. What if I were wrong about that thought? What if it were only a matter of perception?

And if that thought is causing me pain then I must be mistaken in my perception, because God did not create pain and God will not be mocked. Do you see where this is leading me? In the moment when I acknowledge my error and truly accept that pain is not real, in that moment I am resting in the Heart of God, perfectly safe and at peace. That moment is all there is until I have a thought that is not in accord with Truth, and then I imagine myself outside God. That can’t happen, but I can think it happened, and it becomes my experience.

My heart is racing as I think of this. Will I ever awaken, I sometimes wonder. I have often awakened. I have had moments, some of them strung together to make it seem like a longer time, when I have been awakened. I knew the truth in that moment and that moment was all there was until I made another choice, but for that moment I proved that I can be in God, and am in God.

What a strange game I play as I peek into Heaven and then return to separation. Or maybe I peek from Heaven and into separation? It only seems that I live in separation because I seem to stay in that state for such a longer time, but then, time is an illusion, too. What if I already am a fully awakened and infinite being, playing at being human from time to time, and ultimately I will return my full attention to Love?

I have played at being simply human, and played at separation. Now I play at miracles. The difference is that the former takes me more deeply into the illusion, while miracles remind me of my Reality and call to me to return to Wholeness. What miracles would you have me perform today, Spirit?

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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