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Retroactive Forgiveness

I have talked about forgiveness more than once, but I want to revisit this idea again. Forgiveness is my purpose in life. It is what I do. Anytime I feel anything less than joy about whatever circumstances pop up, I know that I have before me another chance to forgive. It is through forgiveness that I am healed. If I have held onto a grievance, then that grievance has had time to play itself out through my body, and so when I forgive, I give my body a chance to heal. Holding a grievance affects my mind. It holds me prisoner to raging emotions; anger, fear, guilt, vengeance, despair.  Forgiveness frees me, and allows me to experience joy again.

I want to talk about retroactive forgiveness today. This is the idea that we can forgive today what has happened in the past and so be free of its effects. I have wasted a lot of time on regrets. I am sorry for things I have said and done in the past. I am burdened with grudges I hold against people for things they have done in the past. I want to clean up all of this detritus.

I have been keeping these grievances imprisoned in the dark cellar of my mind, bringing them up from time to time to reexamine; to revel in righteous anger, or to wallow awhile in guilty regrets. Now I am ready to ?clean up my act? as folks say.
Even the oldest unforgiving thought still affects my life, and so I want to be free of it. There is a most powerful passage from A Course in Miracles:    The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love. (T.26.IX.6.1) 

Forgiveness will do this for me. It will free my mind, it will create in my life the holiest of spots. Forgiveness works just as well on past regrets as it does on what is happening in my life today. It is never too late to forgive. It doesn?t matter how ancient the grievance. Nor does it matter at all how big or how small the unforgiveness. Each is just as destructive to my peace of mind. If I hold a grudge because my ex-husband said an unkind word to me, I have lost my peace. If I am angry because I think that someone has ruined my life, I have lost my peace. Either way, I have lost my peace.

To start the forgiveness process I must first understand what true forgiveness is. Most commonly we look at forgiveness as a mercy we bestow on someone who doesn?t deserve it. We say to ourselves that this person did something wrong, they don?t deserve my forgiveness because they truly wronged me, but I am a big person so I will go ahead and forgive them. It feels like I am sacrificing my own best interests so that this person can be forgiven.

I am going to use an old grievance I had held onto for a very long time as an example. Let?s look at it from the conventional view of forgiveness. About 30 years ago (yes, I have been dragging around this albatross for 30 years!) I worked for a doctor. He was a real horror to work for and eventually he just got to be too much. He was angry at me for quitting and held it against me.

While I did not like working for him, I did love working in a doctor?s office. I loved helping people, and I was good at it. When I applied for a similar job in another city, the doctor gave me a bad reference. I had done such a good job for him, and even after I quit, I came back on my own time and helped his new employee learn her job. I did not deserve the reference he gave me.  Because of the bad reference, I did not get the job I applied for, and I never tried for another job with a doctor.

Conventional wisdom holds that to forgive him for the bad reference would mean that first I recognize that he wronged me, and then I decide that, being the better person, I will let him off the hook for what he did. What happened is that I found I was not that good of a person. I resented what he said. He embarrassed me. He also kept me from a kind of job that I would have enjoyed and been good at. Every time I thought about him, I would feel a surge of anger. From time to time, I would bring out this old grievance so I could experience my righteous anger all over again. It sounds funny to say that I got something out of this-and that I somehow enjoyed my anger, but I must have because I kept doing it. For thirty years!

Whatever little satisfactions I get from replaying in my mind my little drama with the doctor, does not come without a cost. I can have my grievance, or I can have peace. I cannot have both. We tell ourselves that we can compartmentalize our anger but this isn?t true. Anger at anything, is going to spill over into other parts of our lives. If you happen to come into my life while I am reliving this particular drama, look out because the chances are good that my anger will spill over onto you. You say something to me and I snap at you. Later we are both left wondering what happened.

I have chosen for peace often enough now that I want peace all the time. I really miss my peace when I choose against it, so I want to truly forgive the doctor. I am no longer willing to give him my peace in exchange for anger no matter how righteous I think it is. Can I forgive him at this late date, I wondered? I doubt he is even alive now. But here?s the thing, it doesn?t matter when I forgive. It doesn?t matter if he is in his body to accept my forgiveness. Let?s face it; he isn?t interested in my forgiveness.

I am not forgiving him because he needs my forgiveness. In fact he lived on blissfully unaware that I harbored a grudge against him. In truth, it is only I that am prisoner to my grievances. Do I believe that he walked around burdened with this heavy guilt about how he wronged me? It is only I who struggle through life under the burden of my perceived grievances. I am not choosing forgiveness for his sake, but only for my self.

There are some things in life that seem so hard to forgive when we look at forgiveness in the way I just described. Well, no problem is so big that it can?t be solved by a good miracle, and what is more miraculous than a change of mind.

So, how do I change my mind? Before I pull anything up from the dark places in my mind to really look at it, I ask the Holy Spirit to look with me. The Holy Spirit brings light to my mind and that light shines away the darkness. If I try to look on my own, I only see what I remembered storing there. Nothing changes. I see his error, and my anger. I didn?t get vengeance in the moment and so I seek for it in my imagination. This is all I see.  With the light the Holy Spirit brings, I am able to see this differently.

Here is what the Holy Spirit showed me when we looked together. He showed me that the doctor didn?t really hurt me. He spoke some words. They were not true. That really happened, and it would be silly and ineffective to try to say it didn?t. But what he said is not what caused me pain. It is how I felt about what he said that was the problem.

There was something in his words that brought up for me a feeling of unworthiness. There was a part of me that believed I was guilty, if not of this, then of something. I didn?t want to feel guilty and unworthy, and I didn?t want to look at those feelings, so I projected them onto the doctor. There, now he is the guilty one. He is to blame for this bad feeling in me.

The problem is, as long as I think he is responsible for my feelings, I have given him all the control. He can keep me feeling bad about myself for 30 years. Forgiveness shows me that he is not guilty. He is not to blame for my feelings. Through the process of forgiveness, I am able to take complete responsibility for my feelings.

I also thought that the doctor robbed me of my future. I wanted to be part of a healing place and his bad reference kept me from doing this. The Holy Spirit also told me that I wound up exactly where I needed to be. I thought that the doctor prevented me from experiencing my destiny, but the Holy Spirit said that he put me on the road to my destiny, and that I owed him only thanks as I owe only thanks to all my brothers, without exception.

Through the process of forgiveness, I am able to give the belief system that supports unworthiness to the Holy Spirit for correction. Through the process of forgiveness, I am healed. I did not do the healing myself. All healing is of God. My part was to be willing to accept the gift of healing, and forgiveness was the way I did it. I traded my righteous anger for the peace of God. It was a good deal. I don?t miss that drama at all.

True forgiveness happens as I become willing to see this differently. I become willing to see that I chose to feel anger at his words and actions. I accept full responsibility for my own feelings and I stop trying to make them someone else?s fault. The process of forgiveness forgives, not the person or his actions, but rather it sees that it is only my perception of what happened that needs to be changed.

In the old way of perceiving forgiveness, I was making what the doctor did real, and then was trying to forgive it. It didn?t work. Through the miracle of true forgiveness, I recognize that he didn?t do anything to me, and I am forgiving the thought that he did, by seeing the situation differently.

Forgiveness is all inclusive. In order to experience the peace of God, I forgive everyone for whatever I thought they did to me. I make no exceptions. That is its beauty. I don?t have to take each instance and decide which is deserving of forgiveness. I don?t have to figure anything out. I love the absolutes, the ?nevers? and the ?always?; they take the guess work out of it. I already know that I want to forgive whatever the circumstances, I only need to bring God into the process and it is done.

So what I have learned about forgiveness is this:
1. Forgiveness is retroactive. It doesn?t matter how old the perceived wrong, it can be forgiven in the present moment.
2. Forgiveness is the way to peace. It is all inclusive and no one or thing gets left out. There is no place in my life where I will say everything else gets forgiven, but this one grievance I am holding onto.
3. Forgiveness is not about anyone else. It is about changing my own mind with the recognition that I alone am responsible for my feelings. I am always free to change my mind about how I feel about my grievances. I am always willing, with the Holy Spirit?s help, to see this differently.
4. And most important of all, I am not alone in this process. I give to it my willingness, and God does the rest. When I fail to accept forgiveness and have to repeat the process, I forgive myself and just get on with it. I do the process as often as I must in order to fully accept forgiveness.
5. And finally, as forgiveness becomes my goal, and the way I live, I live in peace.

© 2005, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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State of Fear

State of Fear

I have been reading the new novel by Michael Crichton, “A State of Fear.” The premise is that since the cold war ended, there has been a conspiracy to find new ways to keep people in a state of fear so that they can more easily be controlled. Examples would be global warming, thousands of ways we get cancer from our environment, etc.

My first thought was how easy we make it for them. We don’t need much of a conspiracy because we fall so quickly and so willingly into fear of every kind. I can’t see any way out of this except through A Course in Miracles. The hardest part of letting go of fear is that first step. I see that I am very afraid of something and I take that thought (because after all, it is only a thought even if it does seem hugely frightening) to the Holy Spirit and offer Him my willingness to see it differently. But like anything that scares me, it is hard to take my eyes off it. It is as if the boogey man will eat me up if I let my eyes stray from the danger. So sometimes I have to start out by giving the Holy Spirit what little willingness I have, and asking Him to fortify it. That works, too.

It does, indeed, seem that we live in a state of fear. Why do I so willingly accept fear each time it is offered to me? Some years ago there was a scare about apples. It was announced that apples are sprayed with something that causes cancer and people became afraid to eat them. There was a real run on organic apples in health food stores. I was getting caught up in the scare along with everyone else when someone pointed out that we need to be sane about this. He reminded us that we live longer and are healthier than people have ever been. He reminded me that I was in far more danger of being killed in a car wreck than I was of dieing from eating apples and he didn?t see me giving up driving. Why was I so willing to buy into the fear that the media was selling?

Could it be that I am responding to the deep seated, unconscious guilt that I have because I think I have sinned against God? Sin is the belief I have separated myself from God and so am no longer Love. The body is the proof that this is so and it is the way I play out sin. This state of fear I find myself in always revolves around the body. Without the body there would be no fear. Without the body, where would be my proof that I have sinned and so have something to fear?

How do I get free of this mindset? I have been taking Pathways of Light Course 915 and what I am learning is that I have a choice in the goal the body serves. The ego thought system is designed around the body serving fear, but I can choose to serve truth instead. Workbook page 419, P 2:6-7 says, ?Truth can be its aim as well as lies. The senses then will seek instead for witnesses to what is true.? One thing I have discovered is that it is very hard to seek for witnesses to truth if I keep my attention focused on lies. I don?t find truth on CNN, or watching endless replays of scary stories on the local updates. I get my news from the papers or off of the internet, and only periodically. I am then able to read only as much as I want to and am not as likely to get pulled into the drama.

In fact, I can use the news stories as practice for seeing the truth. An example of this would be instead of seeing President Bush as the antichrist trying to drag us into another Vietnam, I can see him as the holy Son of God that he is and recognize that he, like me, is just struggling to break free of the state of fear he has brought himself to.

Something else I read in Course 915, is that seeing that the separation never really happened and that our Identity in God is unchanged is what releases us from fear. The idea of Halloween is used to demonstrate how our belief in separation through bodies is just a game we frighten ourselves with. It reminded me of my child?s first participation in Halloween. She loved dressing up for Halloween, but when I put on my mask she was very frightened. I had to take it off and show her it was really me and that the mask didn?t change that. I had to do it several times before she really relaxed and was able to enjoy the fun of it.

This is what is happening to me. I wanted to play this game of being separate from God and imagining that living in a body made me separate from my brothers. It was the scary mask of pretend, but I got so involved in my play that I forgot it wasn?t real. I began to believe in the fearful idea that I could be separate from God, different from what He created me to be, and that He was mad at me for it.

The way I am learning to return to the truth is by being aware of what I am doing. I notice those thoughts that try to draw me into a state of fear. I look straight at them and ask the Holy Spirit to look with me. They seem so dark and so threatening when I look alone, but when the Holy Spirit looks with me, He shines the light of truth on them and the darkness is gone. I do this every time I am aware of fearful thoughts. It is like taking little small steps, but each step leads me out of the state of fear and into God?s loving arms.

© 2005, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Mother’s Day Sermon

MOTHER’S DAY SERMON

I was reading a list of questions and answers from kids about their mom and I loved this one. The child was asked:
What would it take to make your Mom perfect?
On the inside she’s already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.

I love being a mother. It is through being a mother that I have learned what it means to love unconditionally. There is nothing that my children could do that would make me love them any less. That is what unconditional means. I have absolutely no conditions on my love for my children. I have moments when I wonder at their sanity, moments when I would rather not be with them, moments when I don?t like what they are doing, but never a moment when I don?t love them.

Motherhood has not been a smooth road for me. I started the job when I was too young and immature. I seemed to have no natural aptitude for the work, and no training. Who would have thought that such a difficult and vital job would come with no manual and little guidance? All I had to go on was what my mom did, and she only had what she picked up from her mom.

Add to this that I and society in general, had placed some pretty unrealistic expectations on me. I was measuring myself against June Cleaver and it wasn?t a Leave it to Beaver world. I started out trying to be Beaver?s mom, but I didn?t feel like her, and I didn?t have her script writer. My kids didn?t seem to know their part either. I got really scared because I seemed to be failing and didn?t have a clue what to do about it. I did what I always did when I got scared and when I felt inadequate. I ran.

A few years later I tried again and did better because I was more mature and had begun to grow into my spiritual self-at least somewhat. I learned to love being a mom, and tried to do a really good job. I wasn?t a ?perfect mom? whatever that is, but I did the best I could. I still do. Just because my children are grown doesn?t make me less their mom. My job raising them is over, but my job of loving them continues.

I also understand that the Cleavers only live in TV re-runs, and no one does a perfect job as a parent. The most loving parents in the world make huge mistakes while raising their children. So what do we do with the mistakes? It is too late to fix them, if it were ever possible. We are left with this sometimes crushing guilt and no idea how to live with it.

Here is what th Holy Spirit helped me to understand. Just as I love my children unconditionally, my Father loves me unconditionally. God does not look at my life and think that I am unworthy because I have not lived perfectly. God does not stop loving me because I make mistakes, and that is comforting.

He helped me to understand that I am not here because I already know how to express the perfection that I was created to be, but rather I am here to learn I am God?s perfect creation. This world is my class room. I signed up for this curriculum. I am exactly where I am supposed to be, doing exactly what I am supposed to do. I am here to learn. Since everything I do teaches me something, I can?t really do anything wrong, I can only learn my lessons.

This is equally true for my children. They are here because this is the classroom they chose. I am exactly the mom they wanted, warts and all. We are here to give each other opportunities to learn unconditional love and total forgiveness. We are each others life time learning experience. We have not been thrust upon each other as some kind of Divine punishment or Divine indifference. We are with each other for a Divine purpose, a Divine purpose that we are in on and that we gladly agreed to.

Sometimes the mother who brought us into the world, is not the mother who will raise us. This is not a mistake. There are no mistakes in the Divine Plan.
...“Remember that no one is where he is by accident, and chance plays no part in God’s plan.’”  ACIM-M.26
We are always with the person we are supposed to be with. Sometimes we need to be born to someone, and that is all we need from that person. In that case, we can thank that person, even if it is only in our thoughts, for birthing us, and then move on with the rest of our lessons.  It is not necessary to see this as a loss or as an attack. We can forgive these thoughts and gain our freedom from the prison of our grievances. And believe me, our grievances do imprison us.

That?s the big picture. Now there is another level I must work on while I am here in this place that is not my home. On a day to day basis, I take action-or not, and there seem to be consequences. I am angry at my boss and so when I get home, I yell at my son. I see the look of hurt in his eyes and I feel guilty. I know that I have fallen short of being that perfect mom. I know that I have hurt the one I love.

How do I deal with that? What do I do with all this accumulated guilt? As I bury myself under more and more guilt, I feel separated from my Father and from everyone else. Because I have judged myself and believe that I am guilty, I start to believe that God has judged me and found me guilty. Thinking I am separate from God is hell. Thinking that my mistakes have made me separate from God, I think I am in hell.

But no matter how guilty and fearful I feel, there is a place in me that knows this can?t be true. God created me good, and there is no power that can undo what God has done. My little errors cannot affect God?s Work. I can only think I am flawed. But it is just a thought. It is not reality.

So, how do I get out from under the burden of guilt I have accumulated in this world? First, I realize that there is no value in guilt. I will gain nothing good by feeling guilty. Guilt is only destructive. It is the barrier that keeps me from seeing that I am His precious child. It is the barrier that keeps me from experiencing the peace and the joy that God intended for His children.

In this world, however, it is hard not to pick up guilt as we go. The trick is learning to relinquish it. Just because we accepted guilt doesn?t mean we have to keep it. What does Jesus tell us about this?  ?These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.? John 16:33 As I place my faith in Jesus, I am able to release the guilt I have used to imprison myself. I can be free. I am meant to be free. God wants me to be free. It is freedom that I came here to learn and to teach.

I have a little process I use to help me release guilt. I was at a Course in Miracles conference recently and there was a deaf student who had interpreters using sign language to help her understand what was going on. A friend showed me the sign for release. I hold out my left hand, palm up and fingers facing away from my body. I then place my right hand on my left in the same position, but palm down. Then I move my right hand across my left hand. This is sign for release. Incidentally, it is also sign for forgive.

Now when I sense feelings of guilt, or when I notice a thought that leads to guilt, I do the sign for release with the intention of releasing the guilty thought to the Holy Spirit so that He can correct it for me. I am forgiving myself. God will never take from me my guilt if I really want it. But, as soon as I am willing to release it, it is gone. Sometimes I have to do this more than once because, while I want to be free of the bad feeling, I sometimes feel reluctant to entirely relinquish my guilt. I hold stubbornly to that which causes me pain. But, as A Course in Miracles says, my tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit.

There is another part to this. To experience God?s forgiveness, I must forgive. The reason for this is because I learn what I teach. If I teach you (through my words and actions) that you are guilty, then I am teaching myself that I am guilty, too. If you can be guilty for your mistakes, then I must be guilty for mine as well. On the other hand, if I see that you are not your mistakes, that your mistakes are only something that you did, and that you are really my brother who is doing the best that he can, then I can see that I am not my mistakes and that I am doing the best that I can. If I can see that you have nothing to be guilty about, then I can believe that I have nothing to be guilty about. I can?t have one without the other. I can?t make you guilty and at the same time forgive myself.

I must forgive not only myself, but everyone else including my mother. My mom taught me what love is. She loved me completely and unconditionally. I never doubt that. But, like me, she came here to learn her own lessons.  In the course of her lessons, she taught me stuff that I have spent my life unlearning. She made mistakes, many of which affected me. I spent a lot of time being angry for some of those things, resenting my life as her daughter, resenting her for not being a better mother. Heck, I still get angry that she named me Myron!

In truth, though, she and I signed up for this curriculum. We signed up to be in the same classroom. We wanted to learn these lessons together, and what I know, is that we are exactly where we should be, doing exactly what we need to be doing. I have nothing to resent. My mom is sharing her lessons with me. I learn from her errors just as I learn from my own. There are no exceptions to this, no matter how big the error seems. I owe her only gratitude for her part in my spiritual growth, both the part that seemed painful and the part that seemed comforting.

My mom has Alzheimer. Her brain has short circuited, so I don?t know if she will understand when I tell her I love and appreciate her, and that finally I forgive us both for our errors. Probably she won?t. Love though, is never lost because Love is God, and God never changes or is lost. The love and gratitude I feel for her will be saved and will be waiting for her when she is released from her malfunctioning body. I love you Mom, and finally I understand that you are not the fallible human being I thought you were. Finally I understand that you are a perfect child of God sent to teach me that I am a perfect child of God. Thanks, Mom. 

 

© 2005, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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II’S AN INSIDE JOB

ITS AN INSIDE JOB

There was a man who was stranded on a desert island for many, many years. One day, while strolling along the beach, he spotted a ship in the distance. This had never happened in all the time he was on the island, so he was very excited about the chance of being rescued.

Immediately, he built a fire on the beach and generated as much smoke as possible. It worked! Soon, the ship was heading his way. When the ship was close enough to the island, a dinghy was dispatched to investigate the situation. The man on the island was overjoyed with the chance to be rescued and met his saviors as they landed.

After some preliminary conversation the man in charge asked the man on the island how he had survived for so many years. The man replied by telling of his exploits for food and how he was able to make a fine house to live in. In fact, the man said, “You can see my home from here. It?s up there on the ridge.”

He pointed the men in the direction of his home. They looked up and saw three buildings. They inquired about the building next to the man?s house and he replied, “That?s my church - I go there to worship on Sundays.”

When asked about the third building, the man replied, “That?s where I used to go to church.”

We laugh at this fellow because we recognize in him someone we have known, and perhaps see our self in some way. Some folks are quick to change churches if the one they are in doesn?t seem to be doing the job for them. Perhaps they are looking for the church that will make them feel safe. They want to think that salvation is within their grasp and so they go to the church that promises to deliver. They soon move on because they find that they don?t feel anymore saved at this one than they did at the last one. Well good luck to them, because they aren?t going to find what they seek in a church. Salvation is an inside job.

This isn?t something we are always comfortable looking at. We are a people looking for a quick fix in all areas of our lives. If we have a pain, we go to the doctor and get him to prescribe a pill for it. Too fat? Look for the magic diet that will take that extra weight off in 90 days, just in time for this years new bathing suits. There?s no problem finding one; every magazine on the stand promises the diet to end all diets right there within their covers. And guess what, follow their diet and you can lose weight without effort, without sacrifice, without exercise! If that isn?t easy enough, Walmart has an entire isle devoted to pills that will do the job for you, sometimes while you sleep! Depressed? No problem, there?s a pill for that, too. Child too rambunctious? Give him a pill. Doing drugs? Just say no. Life not working? Ask Dr. Phil for a quick 10 minute fix. He does it on Oprah all the time.

But guess what. There isn?t a quick fix for what ails us. I?m not going to give it to you in a 15 minute sermon, or even a two hour sermon. You can?t buy it at Walgreens and you can?t get it from a psychologist, not even a celebrity psychologist. Changing churches won?t make us feel better and neither will changing the circumstances of our lives. What is wrong in our lives isn?t out there at all.  What we see as wrong in our lives, what we see as the circumstances of our lives, is just a reflection of what is wrong in our minds. It is a reflection of our wrong- minded thinking.

I created my life as I see it today. The building blocks are my beliefs and if I don?t like the structure I have made, then I am going to have to change my beliefs. I wish there were just a shot I could take, or a magic incantation that I could utter and everything would be different. But that?s not how it works. I have wasted too much of my life trying to fix the effect, while leaving the cause in place. This makes no sense. It is time for a change that will really make a difference.

Joy and peace are the natural state of God?s children. So what happened to me? Where is my joy and peace and how do I get back to them. God, in His infinite love and mercy, placed within me a Guide Who will help me get to the life I am intended to live. Once I give up on the quick fix, and once I quit trying to build this structure from the top down, I can start my real work.

Please let me make a suggestion. If you are unhappy in your relationship, stop trying to make your partner into someone who can make you happy. If you want a strong and fulfilling relationship, your work isn?t in the other person. Begin your work in yourself. No one can make you happy and no one can make you unhappy. Happiness is a choice. Happiness is a state of being. And happiness can be achieved only within yourself. It is your thoughts that create one state or the other, so if you are unhappy in your relationship the change must begin with your thoughts.

I must be psychic because I hear a question from you. What good is changing my thoughts, changing myself, if my partner is going to remain the same? How can this change the relationship? It takes two to make a relationship, doesn?t it? Well, this is the really neat thing about it. If you change your beliefs and thus change yourself, the relationship will change.

Stop wasting your time trying to place blame outside yourself. You might build a great case for your misery being someone else?s fault, but you won?t make yourself one bit happier in doing so. You will simply reinforce the idea that you are powerless. Keep the responsibility for your happiness within you where you have absolute control. In changing your own mind and teaching yourself to live in joy and peace, you will necessarily influence those around you. Your model of self-love will touch all of us deeply. Your inner work will infect the quantum field which will create a change in the physical world. Your life will change. Your relationship will change.

This is the only way to affect real change in your life. Anything else you do will only shuffle around what is already there. You may make a different design that you prefer over the old, but eventually it will prove itself to be as comfortless as the past design.  So how do we make real change? How do we know how to change our thoughts and which beliefs will work? What if we choose new beliefs and they are as ineffective as the ones we have already tried?

This is where God comes to the rescue. This is why He placed within us His Own Voice to gently whisper to us the truth we seek. This Voice for God, the Holy Spirit, will correct our thinking and heal our minds. We only need to be willing to hear a new way. Here is our only part in the process: We need to be mindful of thoughts that do not serve us, and we need to give these thoughts to the Holy Spirit to correct. This will not happen without our active participation because God will not force our happiness on us. He will wait patiently for us to recognize that joy is our will as it is God?s Will.

Remember the passage in the Bible that says seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be open? Well notice that it doesn?t say just stand there and wait for something to happen. First we must knock because God so loves us that He honors our free will. He so trusts us that He knows it is inevitable that we will recognize our will is His Will. How much time will it take us? I don?t know. How much pain can you endure? Your pain is self inflicted, and will not be relieved until you choose differently.

This is not complicated. It is very simple. You have two voices within you. You have your ego voice. This is the voice that got you into this mess in the first place. You may want to reconsider listening to it in the future. It hasn?t worked out so well thus far. This is the voice that assures you your problems are someone else?s fault. It is enticing because it invites you to believe that the blame lies outside of you. If you lose your job, the ego?s voice comforts you with the thought that it is the economy. If you speak harshly to your children, your ego voice says that they drove you to it. It is their own fault. In other words, the problems are not yours, they are outside you where you have no control over them, there is nothing you can do to change things, so sit back, do nothing and suffer. That is your lot in life.

If you are the sort that is not willing to just sit back and take it, the ego has another story line. He tells you that you need to get off your duff and start making changes. If the people at your church don?t seem to appreciate your attitude, find another church with a more discerning membership. If your boss doesn?t like your work, find a new job. It has lot?s of advice like, eat less, exercise more, stop smoking, buy new furniture, change the color of your hair, have another drink, another toke, another relationship, a new best friend. Change the flavor, color, design of your life. Switch everything around because if it looks different, maybe it will be different.

This ego voice tells you that if your relationships aren?t working, if your partner is making you miserable, you need to fix her. Explain to her what is wrong with her; what is wrong with her behavior. Help her see the error of their ways. Make her listen to you with unfailing logic, with manipulation, with force. Make bargains with her. If you loved me, you would do this. If you want me to love you, you must do that. Oh yeah, that has worked really well in the past.

Or you can listen to the other Voice. You can bring your problems to God. You can bring your unhappiness and your lack of peace to your Father and ask for help in understanding what you need help in changing. Give Him your thoughts about work and the boss you can?t get along with. Give Him your thoughts about ungrateful children, uncooperative partners. Search your mind for the thoughts behind the emotional upheavals in your life and ask your Father for another way to see this.

How do you know which voice you are hearing? Is the voice harsh? Is it demeaning? Does the voice place blame? Does it berate, enforce guilt, and deflate your hope? Does the voice suggest you are special in ways other children of God are not? Does it tell you about your mistakes? Does it warn you of dangers and increase your fear? This is not God?s Voice.

God?s Voice is always quiet and gentle. His Voice speaks of love and brings comfort with it. He reminds you of your innate holiness and your perfection. He speaks of your brother with the reverence a blessed child of God deserves. He sees only innocence and speaks to you only of unity. He knows that all of us are special in the same way, and one is not greater than or lesser than another. He knows that you have never done anything wrong in your life; that all of your circumstances are here for the purpose of your personal growth, and He knows that you have met each challenge in the best way that you possibly could have at that moment.

If the ego?s voice seems always to be the voice that you hear first and is always the loudest voice, it is only because it speaks from a place of desperation, and out of fear and uncertainty. If the temptation to listen to that voice is strong, it is only because you have made a habit of doing so. Like any habit, it will require consistent effort on your part to make a change. If you have ever tried to break a bad habit, you know how much work is required of you. It doesn?t usually happen overnight. However, as you do the work, the rewards for your effort, the peace and joy you feel, will be the motivation to continue the work. Like any other new skill, the more often you practice it, the easier it becomes.

There are only two voices. Which will you listen to? One will bring you confusion and unhappiness; the other will bring love and joy into your life. You can have either one. You can choose the fruitless work of trying to change the effects of your thoughts, trying to change the world outside of you. Or, you can choose instead, to work with God on your inner self where the only real change can be affected. Each moment of your life provides an opportunity to choose anew.

 

© 2005, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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From 920: Being a Miracle Worker

From 920: Being a Miracle Worker

How my life is becoming less complex and agitated as I let go of the separated world belief.

Now when something seems to disturb my world, I sooner or later (and more often sooner) see the disturbance not as something to fix or to regret, but something to forgive. Recognizing that everything is for forgiveness makes all of it very simple.

I was thinking this morning that I needed something I don’t have. Then I thought that if I do indeed need this in my life, it will be in my life. I give the illusion of need to the Holy Spirit. He knows what I need, and will supply all things that will not hurt me. If there is something I need to do, I will be told.

I was thinking how this applies to my body. I have been having trouble applying this principal to my desire for a certain body image because I did not want to surrender my control of this situation. So it felt very complicated with lots of issues. I would become agitated, feeling angry and guilty, and then fearful when my attempt to control went awry.

As I begin to loosen my grip on this situation, I feel lighter. I welcome peace into my life. When I again experience the need to control the outcome, I lose my peace. It’s all a matter of trust. I’ve been thinking that I don’t trust the Holy Spirit to take care of this. What I meant was, I don’t trust the Holy Spirit to manipulate form in the way that I want Him to. I don’t trust the Holy Spirit to make form important in the way that I think it is.

What the Holy Spirit is telling me is that I can trust Him to show me that form doesn’t matter; that it is meaningless. My job is to release the need for a certain outcome.

I was thinking of a time when my little one climbed up a little too high, and when he tried to get down, his feet didn’t touch the floor. He was so frightened and panicky. I told him that it was OK, that I would catch him, and that he could just let go. He desperately wanted down, but was afraid to release his grip. It seemed silly to me because I knew how little danger he was in, but it was very frightening to him.

That’s how I feel sometimes as I learn to relinguish my illusions. But just as my child took that leap of faith and trusted me, I am learning to do the same and put my trust in God. After the first time my son trusted me and he saw that it was OK, it became easier and easier to trust me in subsequent emergencies.

Again I see a parallel here. That is just how I’ve built my trust as I’ve gone through the Course. The first time I released my grip on illusions, it felt like free-falling in space, but then everything was alright. In fact, everthing was better. With each small relinquishment it becomes easier, and as the contrast between peace and chaos becomes more obvious, my motivation becomes stronger.

© 2005, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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A LETTER TO MY FRIEND

A LETTER TO MY FRIEND

Dear Mary,

Sometimes when we are in the middle of something big, all we see are the details that are right in front of us. We can miss the big picture. For that, we need to move back, get some distance. This is very true of our lives. What is going on right now holds our complete attention. We are unable to see our whole story and how one thing led to the next and how each thing fits like a puzzle piece into the whole. I have written an imaginary story of Mary talking to Jesus at the close of her life.

“Well Mary, you said you could do it; that it wasn’t going to be too much for you. And I’ll tell you the truth, when you came to me with your intentions, some were concerned that you had bitten off more than you could chew, that you had chosen too many hard lessons for one life time. But you felt confident that you could do this and you were determined to get as much out of this life as you could.”

“Some of the others said that choosing to come as Black in this period of history wasn’t as hard as it used to be, but it was going to offer plenty of forgiveness lessons, and coming as a black woman would certainly keep you busy. But then you said you would be gay as well, and that really blew everyones mind! Too much they said, just too much. But you didn’t stop there. When they saw the family environment you chose to learn from, there was a lot of head shaking going on. But you and I agreed, Mary, that you could do this, and that no matter how you handled it, there would be so many lessons learned that it was worth it.”

“But look what you have done with that life. I could not be more proud of your work. Each thing that came at you, you used to grow and become stronger. I know how hard it seemed to you working the dense atmosphere of illusion and I know how painful it all felt. I saw that sometimes you despaired of coming through it, and often you felt like you were failing. But it was all just perfect. I kept whispering that in your ear, so you would never entirely forget. I placed angels all around you to strengthen and uphold you in even the hardest of the forgiveness lessons. From here where we were watching and supporting your every effort, there was nearly a constant chorus of ‘oohs and ahhs’ and ‘you go, girls’. No matter what the reservations were before you started, you had a regular fan club before it was over.”

“Do you see now, how perfectly orchestrated it was, Mary? You met exactly the right people at the right time. Some of them seemed unkind and even cruel, but those were the greatest of the forgiveness opportunities, and we are all in awe of how you overcame your pain to use these opportunities. Now it seems silly, doesn’t it, to be concerned at the seeming failures? You got from each encounter, exactly what you needed. There was never any danger you would fail, each person and situation was a chance to practice a process of forgiveness. There was no right or wrong, no success or failure. It was just practice time. Each time you came away with a puzzle piece in place. Hard to see that when you are in the illusion isn’t it?”

“You had hoped that you would make such progress that in the end, you would be able to share what you had learned in a more direct way, that you would be able to hear me more clearly and pass that on to others. Ah Mary, there was never any doubt. And you walked bravely through your fear into the place that allowed this to happen. When you were feeling overwhelmed by the process, did you think of Moses? I did. I thought about how he tried so hard to get out of his destiny. He thought that because he stuttered that would get him out of speaking for God.(Hah!) There was no getting out of it because beneath his fear was his comitment to the process, and the same was true for you, too.”

“So now, Mary, I, and all of us here, just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for doing your forgiveness lessons. Thank you so much for lifting yourself up, and for lifting up everyone else. We stand in awe of your accomplishments, and we thank you.”

That’s your story, Mary. I’m just passing it on to you.

Love, Myron

© 2005, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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My Story

My Story

Don?t you love running into someone else who is studying A Course in Miracles? I think that just the fact I found the Course is a wonderful miracle, so I am always interested in everyone?s story. I was attending a Unity center in Lake Charles, La. when I heard that Marge Cass, minister for The Church of the Open Road, was going to a neighboring town to try to get a Course group started. A group from our center planned to be there in support of her effort. I didn?t have an interest in A Course in Miracles, but I did like Marge very much so I wanted to be there. Since I was between jobs, I had plenty of free time.

I can?t tell you what Marge said that grabbed my attention so completely, but when I left there that night I knew I had to have that book. I didn?t know exactly how I would get it, because being unemployed also meant being broke, but I never questioned my decision. Once I got the Course, I started attending a discussion group at the Unity center. Back then, I guess this was around 1982, not many people had even heard of A Course in Miracles, at least not in Lake Charles.

Occasionally as I was reading and studying, I would feel just overwhelmed with my good luck at having found this extraordinary book, and then sometimes I would wonder why on earth I even believed it; it was such a different take on spirituality. But, I knew on a deeper level that this was exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

I was married to a man working construction and we moved around a lot for awhile, so I went long periods at a time with no contact with other Course students. I was pretty isolated in my study and I was also pretty erratic in it. I thought that in the periods when I wasn?t doing the lessons or reading the book that I was not doing anything. However, when I look back on it, I was always learning and growing. When I wasn?t consciously choosing to do it with the Holy Spirit?s help, I was making the job harder and more painful, but I was still growing spiritually.

In these years I raised my children and played out the script of my life. When my last child was getting ready to go away to school, I realized that I was about to experience a big hole in my life. What would I do without motherhood to fulfill me? I knew I had to have something important to take its place. I had been working with the Course sporadically all these years, so I decided it was time to get serious about it.

At the same time I got my first computer. I had heard about the internet, of course, and decided to see what it was all about. I was trying to decide what to look for when I went on line, and decided to see if there was anything about A Course in Miracles. (I told you I was isolated in my study!) Boy, was there ever stuff about the Course! I started checking out some of the forums because I found I was hungry for contact with other people who were of like mind. I tried some different forums, but when I found Pathways of Light, I knew I had found my home.

I soon discovered that they had a structured study program based on Course principles and I started taking them. I knew that I was serious now and I wanted something that would help me develop self discipline as well as deepen my understanding of the Course, and this study program was perfect for what I needed. I had only taken one of the courses when I knew that I would complete their ministerial program. I felt elated at the thought because I knew that this was what I was supposed to do, but I also felt frightened at the thought because it seemed impossibly arrogant of me to think I could be a minister of God. After all, I didn?t have all that good a track record in the past. I had the Course for years and I didn?t think I had made all that much progress. I think the only reason I was able to overcome my own fear was that it took me so long to complete the courses that I was able to lose sight of the fact that someday I would finish them.

Well, I did complete the courses and now I am an ordained minister with Pathways of Light. Now the Course is not something I do. It is what I am. My path to God is no longer a satisfying way to fill my empty nest; it is the purpose of my life. I keep my eyes firmly fixed on that purpose by continuing my spiritual education through Pathways and by studying the Course daily. I give a sermon at a local church every three weeks, have a study group in my home, and facilitate other ministerial students. What a wonderful life I have now!

This is my story. I would love to hear yours.

© 2005, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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