Together, We Light the Way

Click link to go to:
Together We Light the Way Index

Gentle Healing Journal Day 20 10-3-18

Journal for Day 20
LESSON 20
I am determined to see.

“What you desire you will see. Such is the real law of cause and effect as it operates in the world.”

Absolutely everything I do as I practice A Course in Miracles, including this lesson, is to open my mind to what I really want and to decide to have it. This is so very simple and while it used to feel very hard at times, it now feels much easier. I might get bogged down in an ego story for a little while, but I have so many ways to bring me back to sanity that the insanity is brief for the most part.

I now recognize the ego and I know that the ego can be the cause of my distress or it can be the way out of my distress. It is up to me. If there is an ego thought in my mind, I can accept it as if I have no choice and suffer for believing it. Or I can deny what is clearly not true regardless of the apparent effects of that belief and watch everything change.

I recognize that I want to be happy and I want to be free. I used to be confused about that to the point that I didn’t recognize happiness or freedom. I believed that competitive little ego self of mine when it said that being right and winning was happiness. I believed it when it said that making decisions on my own was freedom.

I have so much more confidence in my ability to choose again what I want, and in the power of my thoughts to bring me joy as easily as it has brought me pain. I have much more confidence in myself as God created me than I used to. While it is not complete confidence, it is enough to sweep me forward on this path and make my way smoother and easier.

I don’t see today’s practice as a burden. I look forward to it because I am determined to see. I want to open my spiritual eye and see the world in a different light. I want never to close it to the truth again. In a moment of confusion yesterday, I asked for help in seeing and I received my answer. I am awakening, no doubt about it, and I am helping others to awaken.
I am a teacher of God. Whatever thoughts deny this can only be meaningless and of no interest to me. I am determined to see the truth.

PS: A couple of days ago I awoke to pain in my lower back. That is the illusion. The truth is that pain is not real. For these two days I have been thinking as if pain could be real, but as I read this lesson again, I am reminded that I am determined to see. I see that for whatever reason, I have projected an image of pain, and I see that I am now unwilling to believe in that image. Whether the pain disappears from my mind or not, I am free of the belief that it is now or ever has been real. Thank you, Holy Spirit.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Gentle Healing Journal Day 19 10-2-18

Journal for Day 19
LESSON 19
I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.

With the very first thought that came to mind, I had two immediate and strong responses. The first was that this thought is creating effects and I am experiencing them. Is this something I want to sustain? Do I want these effects in my life? I already knew that my experiences come from my thoughts, but looking at the thoughts one at a time like this made this idea real in a different way.

I was aware of the emotional response to that thought and I could see what it was going to do to my life if I continued to believe it. The ego mind didn’t see a way out of believing it, but Spirit reminded me that it was just a thought. Thought has power only if I believe it and choose to keep it. I can just as easily accept the opposite thought as true. This is what I did.

The second response was the realization that this thought if believed would produce effects that would touch all of the Sonship. Jesus was right when he said it seems to carry with it an enormous sense of responsibility. That was exactly what it felt like to me. But, while it is a responsibility, it is also an opportunity.

When I notice a dark thought in my mind, I have a choice to make. I can keep that thought and continue to believe it, and thus empower it, or I can use this opportunity to enlighten not just my mind, but also our shared mind. This is my purpose, after all, and I can choose to be glad of it just as easily as choosing to feel burdened by it.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Gentle Healing Journal Day 18 10-1-18

Journal for Day 18
LESSON 18
I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.

“Today’s idea does not refer to what you see as much as to how you see it. Therefore, the exercises for today emphasize this aspect of your perception.”

We project the world we see and then we decide what it means. We often share our projections. We are in agreement about the world we see on the whole. We agree on the sky and stars and planets. We agree on the landscape in general. So when we look at the world our eyes show us and believe it is real, we reinforce for all of us the belief in these agreed upon illusions. We keep all of us in thrall to the ego. When we accept that the world is part of our hallucination, we loosen the hold the ego has on the mind and thus we bring all of us closer to freedom.

Jesus says this: “Christ-controlled miracles are part of the Atonement. But Christ-guidance is personal and leads to personal salvation.”

Here is what I think about this expressed as an example. For a while after Trump was elected, I held him in contempt, and this caused me to lose my peace and forget my purpose.

When I could no longer tolerate the lack of peace, I asked for correction. I asked for another way to see this situation and this man. Because I was wholehearted in my desire for peace, the shift in thinking was immediate and I was again at peace. I began to pray for my brother rather than curse him. This guidance I received was for my personal salvation.

But it does not end there. When I was in contempt, I was feeding contempt into the Consciousness and strengthening hatred within the Sonship. When I chose healing instead, I began to feed love and peace into the Sonship. In both cases, the Sonship (all of us) was affected by my choice. Whoever was receptive to the belief in hatred was influenced by that choice. Whoever was receptive to awakening was influenced by my healed thoughts. So I was never alone in the experiencing the effects of my seeing.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Gentle Healing Journal Day 17 9-28-18

Journal for Day 17
LESSON 17
I see no neutral things.

“It is always the thought that comes first, despite the temptation to believe that it is the other way around.”

Here is what I used to think. I would look at my computer and have thoughts like this.
I’m so happy to have this computer.
I like my MAC so much more than any PC I’ve ever owned.
I hope nothing ever happens to it.
I wonder if I should extend my warranty.

Clearly, I am not seeing a neutral computer. In the past, I believed that I saw the computer and then had thoughts about it. But that’s not the way it works. I have thoughts about the computer and then I see it and how I see it depends on my thoughts.

The first computer I ever had sat in a box for 6 months while I got over my uneasiness. I was afraid to take it out because I didn’t know anything about it or how to use it or even what it could do. Obviously, the computer was not frightening of itself. I gave it that meaning with my thoughts. It was just an inanimate neutral piece of plastic and metal and glass until I had thoughts about it.

My computer sits on a desk. The desk is just pieces of wood hammered together and stained a color. It has no meaning other than the meaning my thoughts give it. The reason it is not neutral to me is that my thoughts about it are not neutral. The desk did not have meaning and then I noticed the meaning.

My thoughts came first and I projected those thoughts onto the desk and gave it meaning and now it is not neutral. I tried to have neutral thoughts about the desk and couldn’t. I perceive the desk in a certain way, but the perception was not created by the desk, but by my thoughts about desks. Why is it important for me to understand this?

I have a person in my life who gets on my nerves. The thought in my mind was that she has an irritating personality. But that cannot be the reason because that would mean that perception had no cause and was itself the cause of reality. That cannot be right because some people like her very much. Sometimes, I like her, myself. Could reality be so variable?

It makes more sense to realize that what I see in this person comes from my thoughts, and clearly, my thoughts are not neutral when I think of her. If I want to perceive this person differently, I can do a root cause inquiry to discover what it is in me that is being triggered so that I can let that thought go. Without that thought, my perception of this person will change. What this lesson tells me is that the world is made from thought and thought is not neutral.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Gentle Healing Journal Day 16 9-27-18

Journal for Day 16
LESSON 16
I have no neutral thoughts.

“Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact.”

Could Jesus be any clearer than this? We have a thought (believed) and this thought along with others like it, manifest as the world we see. Another way to say this is that the thoughts are projected onto the screen we call the world. Our thoughts matter whether they are true or not. True thoughts create in their own likeness and false thoughts make theirs.

For the last 16 years, I have consistently watched my thoughts and asked for healing as I became aware of the dark ones. I accepted healing where and when I could. I learned to do this from practicing what I learned in Inner Healing by Dan Joseph. Why did I do this? Because there is only one way to peace and that is through changing our thoughts. Our thoughts got us here and our thoughts keep us here or release us.

“Besides your recognizing that thoughts are never idle, salvation requires that you also recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war; either love or fear. A neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible.”

I remember what Regina said about the Creative Principle. *Do I want to feed Consciousness with true thoughts or with untrue thoughts? It is not a small thing to choose peace and love. No matter what thought comes from Consciousness, no matter how dark the thought, I have a choice about what I do with it. Will I empower it with my belief and send it back in to return to me another time and to affect others as well? Or will I rob it of power by refusing to invest it with my belief? I will do one or the other. It is up to me.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Gentle Healing Journal Day 15. 9-25-18

Journal for Day 15
LESSON 15
My thoughts are images that I have made.

What an extraordinary lesson this is! First, it tells us that we don’t really think, we just think we think. Then it tells us that the reason we believe our thoughts is because we make images of them that convince us the thoughts are real and meaningful. What are those images? They are the world we see with our eyes.

We call it seeing, but really, the eyes are just image makers. We tell our eyes what it is we want to see and our eyes report that image back to us and we say to ourselves, “It must be true because I see it with my eyes.” Nifty trick, I guess. Lesson 325 is the sister lesson to this one and explains the mechanics of this process step by step.

There is real vision, a way that we can “see” without the eyes and that vision will show us what our holy mind wants to see. When this starts to occur we may have light episodes in which we see haloes of light around objects. I never have, myself, but I have spoken to people who have had that experience.

When I did this exercise, I realized that I could do it all day. I have no discomfort with recognizing that each thing I look on is an image I have made. I thoroughly believe this. On the other hand, when something seems to be affecting me, a sickness in my body or hearing that my child is hurt, that kind of thing, I slip back into the illusion and for a while, it may feel very real to me. This is the reason I practice this lesson so that when the world starts to feel real, I will remember the truth.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Gentle Healing Journal Day 14. 9-24-18

Journal for Day 14
LESSON 14
God did not create a meaningless world.

Two things stood out to me. My mind was conflicted as I did this lesson. I felt relief as I reminded myself that some of my favorite horrors do not exist because God did not create them and therefore, they are meaningless. The conflict is that while it is a relief to be reminded of the truth, I see that I don’t completely believe the truth. When I thought of certain things, I felt an emotional reaction that can occur only when we believe something. But of course, if I did not see any horrors in this world, I wouldn’t need this work anymore.
But then, I acknowledged an irritant I had glossed over in my initial reading of the lesson. There was this sentence: “The idea for today is another step in learning to let go the thoughts that you have written on the world, and see the Word of God in their place.” This is the whole point, of course. I want to let go of the thought of the world; I really do. This would truly be salvation.

But it is this phrase, “and see the Word of God in their place,” that bothers me. It annoys me. I want to say to Jesus, “Why not just come out and say what you mean?” What is the Word of God that will take their place? What does that even mean? Tell me something that will make sense to me, that will motivate me, that will give me something I can believe in to take the place of what I currently think.

Instead, we are being asked to step out of the boat and walk over water to where Jesus stands. And, if I am to be perfectly honest, that pisses me off. It feels like he could do better than that and is just choosing to be cryptic. And yes, I know that this is the ego mind wanting the answer to be something that fits into its own paradigm. (Sigh) So, I release my judgment to the Holy Spirit and ask for a different way to see this.

NTI
Romans 7
Chapter 7 is perfect for me to read right now. I met someone at the prison whose story evoked pity for him and for his mother who was visiting him. He was a young man who made a mistake. That mistake means he will spend his entire adult life in prison. He didn’t even do anything to deliberately hurt anyone. He was partying with a prostitute and gave her some drugs that she was probably happy to get. She overdosed on the drugs and so he was held responsible for her death. And now, prison for life. And his mother has to endure this with him. Because I am a mother who finds the idea of something like this happening to her and to her son unendurable, my heart breaks for them both and for me as well.

I am so happy to be reminded that the world is not real and these bodies and these stories are not real. I am happy to remember that we chose this experience and there was a deliberate reason for doing so. No one is a victim here. Everyone is having the experience that they want. When I get emotionally involved in a story the Holy Spirit helps me by sending me symbols of Light. Jesus is one of those symbols. This book is one, and A Course in Miracles is another. My fellow students and teachers are symbols that help my mind to return to truth. Even a visit to a prison is one when willingness lets me see through the visible manifestation to the gift within. I am so grateful.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Page 37 of 264 pages ‹ First  < 35 36 37 38 39 >  Last ›

<< Back to main page of Together, We Light the Way

Has this page been helpful to you?
Your contribution to support this site is greatly appreciated. To make a tax deductible contribution with a credit/debit card, click here.
Click here to donate from your PayPal account.
Or send a check to Pathways of Light, 12530 Lions Chase Court, Huntley, IL 60142.