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Gentle Healing Journal Day 34 10-24-18

Journal for Day 34
LESSON 34

I could see peace instead of this.

“I could see peace in this situation instead of what I now see in it.”

What a good reminder. Yesterday, my daughter and I went to Sam’s to buy me a new phone. My kids had pitched in to pay for most of it as a birthday present. It was a little hectic. The sales person I got was in training and had to repeat the process several times because she kept making mistakes. If I had been alone, I would not have cared, but my granddaughter is 19 months old and has limited patience when she gets bored. I started feeling the stress, which showed up as a headache.

Because we needed to speed this along for my granddaughter’s sake, I had them do just the bare minimum. After we left, I began the process of setting it up and I made a mistake that I didn’t know how to undo. I started to get stressed about that but remembered that stress is a self-imposed discomfort. I stopped for a moment and just rested in God. I knew that this would all work out in the end and that I could see peace instead of this and it would work out more quickly and painlessly.

All the tension fell away and I tried a few more things. Then I decided to go back to Sam’s and get them to help me straighten it out. The young man who was there this time was knowledgeable and friendly. He is one of those people who sincerely like to help. Because I did not have all my passwords with me, he could not fix it right on the spot, but he showed me how to do it once I got home. He also gave me his cell number and told me to call him if I had any problems at all.

When I got home it took a few different tries, but I was able to get it done and remain peaceful throughout. I still have a problem but I know that the answer will reveal itself. I joke that just as I have a wonderful parking angel, I also have an electronics angel. I seem to just stumble onto whatever it is that I need, the answer showing up in the most surprising ways. The only thing that interferes is anxiety. Once I let go of the stress and call on the peace that is always within me, everything falls into place.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 33 10-23-18

Journal for Day 33
LESSON 33

There is another way of looking at the world.

“There is another way of looking at this.”

When I heard on the news that Donald Trump was our elected president, I was in shock. I couldn’t believe it. I tried to tell myself that the damage he could do was limited and that it would be OK, but with the passage of time, I was to discover that it was worse than I imagined. Children being torn from their parents were the worst so far and my constant struggle to release the anger and resentment, and let me be honest, the growing hatred I felt toward him, got trampled under this new outrage.

Even so, I knew that how I felt had to change. I was hurting myself, and all of the Sonship with my attitude. I was reinforcing rage, hatred, disdain, and disgust; I was reinforcing separation, fear, and guilt. My thoughts and beliefs affect all of my life because they are not discreet and they are not discreet to my personal story; they affect all of us. I was polluting consciousness with these beliefs and these runaway emotions.

So what I did was to ask for another way of looking at this. I realized that the only thing happening in my mind, and in my mind is where my business is, the only thing happening there is that I made a judgment. It was really that simple. I made a judgment and that judgment fueled everything else that came after. We make judgments all the time and we change our minds all the time so this should be simple and easy, I thought. But as it turned out, simple as it was, it was not so easy.

The reason it was not easy is that having made the judgment, I now believed it and when I went to the Holy Spirit, I was asking for help but asking amiss. I was asking how to forgive this terrible man because that was my judgment and so my belief about him. The Holy Spirit was answering me but I wasn’t hearing the answer because it didn’t make sense according to what I thought I knew. That is why Jesus tells us not to make a decision and then ask for help. But he knew we would and so he gave us a process to use to turn it all around. (See T 30, The Rules for Decision.)

Because of my judgment, I was suffering. This motivated me to do what needed to be done regardless of how impossible it seemed to me. I accepted that I don’t know what anything is for and that I don’t want to make decision on my own (with the ego). I willingly let go of my judgment and I asked the Holy Spirit to show me another way of looking at this. I did this because I remembered my function, my one goal and my purpose, which is the peace of God.

My anger began to fall away. It did this in jumps and starts for a while, but pretty quickly, I was feeling quite neutral about the whole thing, so that was good, but not enough. I needed to feel only love toward Donald Trump and that still seemed impossible. But in God, nothing is impossible and so I went back to the Holy Spirit and asked for a different way to see this. Again, I put aside my judgment that I could not love this man, and I opened my mind and heart to another way to see.

A true miracle occurred at that point. All separation thoughts fell away and I was filled with love when I thought of Donald, my dear brother and part of my Self. I began to pray for him every day. I prayed that he would be open and receptive to his highest guidance. I prayed for his happiness and for his peace of mind. This doesn’t mean that I agree with his policies or that I would ever vote for him, but I don’t wish him any ill will, and I love and appreciate him.

That was an attitude that I felt but didn’t understand, even myself, but there it was. Since then, I have come to see the whole situation differently. I see his part in our story as essential. He represents a part of our shared mind. He tweets his outrage at someone disagreeing with him, and I see my outrage that he didn’t agree with me, or I remember my outrage that my boss blamed me for something I didn’t do. I mean, who has not felt outrage when they felt threatened.

I have been accepting the gift of detachment lately, and this has allowed me to see things on different levels. I see how situations affect the story of Myron and how they appear on the world stage and how different they look when seen from the imagined distance of the effects on the awakening Sonship. I see my part. I see how I affect all of us through my choices.

This detachment helps me to recognize that there is always another way of looking at the world, a way that is encouraging and helpful and loving and that I can see it if I choose to. I can see through fear or I can see through love and this is true in every circumstance. How I choose to see is going to help lift us all out of suffering or it will bring us all deeper into the illusion. It is a big responsibility, but it is simple and easy to make the right choice.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Journal Day 32 10-22-18

Journal for Day 32
LESSON 32
I have invented the world I see.

“I have invented this situation as I see it.”

If my mind should stray to the ego thought that I am a victim, I remind myself of the truth that I have invented this situation as I see it. I am the scriptwriter of my story. I have an appointment at a hospital in Houston next week. They will be running some tests and then the next day I will see the doctor to talk about surgery.

If all of this were taking place here in the area where I live, it would be no big deal to me. But driving to and in Houston, the expense of staying at a hotel for at least two nights, maneuvering through this huge hospital, well, I find I am dreading all of this. I could see myself as a victim but then I remember that I have invented this situation as I see it.

I, as part of the Sonship, made this world, and I decided to participate in it. I come to a particular incarnation with a specific purpose that will help me to awaken and thus help the Sonship to awaken. So regardless of whether the story seems to be interesting or happy or painful, whether I seem to be following my heart or letting the ego make my decisions, I am accomplishing my purpose.

Within the story, which at this time includes this trip to the hospital, I have another decision to make. How will I choose to perceive this situation? Will I decide that I hate the whole idea and that I am a victim? If that is the case, I will learn from it but it will be pretty uncomfortable for me.

Or will I accept this part of the story with the same enthusiasm I accept other parts that are more to my liking? In that case I will still learn from it, but I will do so without suffering, and I will learn more quickly the lesson it contains because I will not be conflicted in my purpose. Either way, it is my choice and no one is making me feel what I feel.

The only thing that could make it feel like a victim is my decision to feel like that. I’m glad that I no longer see value in being a victim so that I don’t hold onto those feelings anymore. The moment I decided that this is going to be interesting and maybe fun, any feeling of victimhood just fell away. See, I invent the situation as I experience it by how I choose to see it and it is just that easy.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 31 10-19-18

Journal for Day 31
LESSON 31
I am not the victim of the world I see.

“Remind yourself that you are making a declaration of independence in the name of your own freedom. And in your freedom lies the freedom of the world.”

Thinking of myself as a victim is maybe the only thing in the Course that I have completely released. Yes, the thoughts of victimhood show up at times, but there is no moment in which I believe it. The first time I read this lesson, I recognized it as the lesson I could not afford to overlook. I recognized that it was the lesson that I came here to learn. There would be others, of course, but I knew this one was for me, was a great part of my purpose in this incarnation.

I began the process of letting it go right away. It took years of vigilance before it was thoroughly accepted. Now, the very idea that I could be a victim feels absurd to me. I am the creator of my little personal story here. If something is in it, or someone is in it, I am responsible for that appearance. How could I also be a victim to it? See Lesson 152: The power of decision is my own.

“No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is.”

Where is the victimhood in that? When something occurs that doesn’t add to my joy and my peace, I don’t look for who is guilty. I just look at my reaction to it and look for the root cause of that reaction. Then, I let that belief go. It is sometimes almost instantaneous, this healing. Sometimes it takes a little while, but mostly the belief that someone is guilty slides right on through my mind like it was coated with Teflon. That is the way it is when you give up a belief.
Victim? I don’t see no stinkin’ victim. ~smile~

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Journal Day 30 10-18-18

Journal for Day 30
LESSON 30

God is in everything I see because God is in my mind.

“Today we are trying to use a new kind of “projection.” We are not attempting to get rid of what we do not like by seeing it outside. Instead, we are trying to see in the world what is in our minds, and what we want to recognize is there. Thus, we are trying to join with what we see, rather than keeping it apart from us. That is the fundamental difference between vision and the way you see.”

Our mind is split, that’s for sure. We have in our mind the idea of separation that we call ego. We think we want to be special in a way that is different from God and from each other. We think we want something God has not given us. On the other hand, we don’t want the inevitable results of that thought, the anger, and fear, the guilt, the pain and suffering, and death. We think to solve this problem by projecting the unwanted parts of our separation idea and see them as being outside our mind where we pretend they have nothing to do with us. This projection is the world we see.

We made the body’s eyes for the purpose of obscuring the truth. We use them to make images of the untrue thoughts in our mind and then “seeing” them projected outward, we can convince ourselves that this ugliness is not in us but in others, in the world. We have done this for so long that we now believe our eyes so completely that we never question what they show us. We simply believe it because we see it. But just because we have believed something to be true for a long time does not make it true. It just makes us deluded.

We would be trapped in this hell of our own making if that were the only thing in our mind, but it is not. We have another Idea in our mind. It is the Idea of God and as we do this study and this practice, this Idea grows brighter and stronger and begins to make itself known because it is our will that this happen. Now we begin to see images that represent this Idea being projected outward, not to be rid of It, but to see It. It is our growing will to see that part of our mind in order to encourage recognition that God is in our mind.

We have buried the truth under illusions for so long we can barely recall the real thing.  All this work that we do, all the lessons and the practice and the processes are uncovering our true nature, and as we project what we find there we experience vision. This is a seeing that does not involve the eyes, though we do see images more representative of this thinking. It is a knowing that is not found in the brain though we may process the knowing in that way so it is understandable to us while we are here. What we inevitably come to accept is that the whole world we see with our eyes does not exist at all.

We have been very slowly evolving in this direction, but with the celestial speed-up that is occurring at this time, some of us have begun to consciously undo the world we made. We do this as we look at specific images and question them. We question that suffering and death are inevitable. We question that attack is necessary and effective. We question that fear protects us and that grievances are unavoidable. We question it with the Holy Spirit and then we let these thoughts go. We are uncovering our true self, and as we do so, we project what we find and see how that looks.

My experience of this has turned the world upside down. At first, it was disconcerting and I wasn’t sure this whole thing was a good idea. But I was compelled to continue and now when I look back on the world as I used to see it, I can hardly believe the difference. I used to live in a very scary world, a world without many redeeming qualities, and a world that was crushing the joy right out of me. That world is mostly gone now, not all together yet, but enough of it is gone that I have peace and joy more than not. God is not in everything I see yet, but It will be because now I never doubt that God is in my mind and what I see and experience comes from my mind.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Journal Day 29 10-17-18

Journal for Day 29
LESSON 29
God is in everything I see.

I really understand image making now. Since God is in everything I see, obviously, when I look with my eyes, I don’t see anything as it exists. Jesus tells us this often in the Course. He says that my thoughts are images I have made. He says that we didn’t give the eyes the function of seeing.  “It is image making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions.”

So I don’t see anything real with my eyes. I see images I make to represent the thoughts in my mind, the things I believe. I have this physical thing going on right now. What does this image of a malfunctioning body represent to me? Perhaps, it represents the belief that I am a body, or that I am destructible, vulnerable, fragile.

As I accept what Jesus has been telling us for the last 29 days, I can look at this situation differently. I understand that the body is just an image itself and that any experience it has must be a hallucination. Just part of the image that represents these beliefs and that the beliefs can be questioned.

If I drew a Picasso like image of my face with strange angles and colors, this would not mean I look like that. I would know that this was just an image that represented some thoughts in my mind. The world I see is no different. It is a strange image of strange and untrue beliefs. Doing these lessons is helping me to question what I see and thus to question the beliefs the images represent.

Ultimately, in my questioning, I am opening my mind to vision.  I repeat yesterday’s desire. Above all else, I want to see what is really there. As I allow my beliefs to be corrected and my mind to be purified, this will happen as it has happened to others like Regina and Cate and Byron Katie and John Mark Stroud and Michael Langford, and Alisha, and Jan Frazier and many others that I don’t know. If it can happen for anyone, it can happen for everyone because we are one.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 28 10-16-18

Journal for Day 28
LESSON 28
Above all else I want to see things differently.

“You see a lot of separate things about you, which really means you are not seeing at all.”

Well, there’s a clue for you. Haha. I definitely see lots of different things, so clearly, I am not seeing at all. As Jesus says, I am only image making. My thoughts are images I have made. I have thought for a long time now that all is light or energy that coalesces until it is dense enough to appear as something that I want to see with my eyes.

I know this is just a concept, a thought in the mind that wants very much to actually see, but it is given some weight now by George yesterday. He said that he actually asked a Tibetan lama what an enlightened person sees when he looks at a cup. He said that the person would see “only energy.” So maybe I have been right about that, but I don’t want to be right, I want to see the essence of things, what is actually there. Above all else, I want to see.

And what does it mean to see? Will I see with this body’s eyes this keyboard as it actually is? Or will I see with my mind, with my spiritual eye, what it actually is? When I asked Cate Grieves about this, she said that she sees the world as we made it when she looks with her eyes, though even that sight is getting thinner. What she sees with her mind is something else altogether. She sees nothing as separate from anything else and everything as part of her. Oh, I really do want to see above all else. But of course, I don’t really or I would already. But I want to want this above all else.

So what I must do is withdraw my preconceived ideas about the keyboard. I must not bind its meaning to my tiny experience of this keyboard. I must not limit it to my little personal thoughts. I am so sure that I know about this keyboard. Can I let that all go? It seems impossible and yet, Jesus said he would not ask me to do anything I could not do. And what will I get for my effort? For one thing, “It has something to show you; something beautiful and clean and of infinite value, full of happiness and hope.” Oh my God, what a thought!

Really, all I am being asked to do is to withdraw my judgment from this keyboard; but not just judgment as I usually think of judgment. This is judgment that goes beyond whether it is a good keyboard or a bad keyboard, a judgment of whether it is ascetically pleasing or if it is easy to use or has convenient options. No, this is judgment at its fundamental core.

I am judging its meaning and I am committing to withdraw that judgment; to admit I have no idea what this keyboard is any more than I know what anything is. Evidently, I still have a belief that I need this world I made to have meaning. But, I also have a belief that I am wrong about that. I have a belief that I no longer care about the world I see and that I want more than anything else to relinquish all value I have ever placed in it. I am willing for this and I will surrender to that desire.

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