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Study of Text, C 15: VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God, P 1. 2-9-18

VI. The Holy Instant and the Laws of God
1 It is impossible to use one relationship at the expense of another and not to suffer guilt. And it is equally impossible to condemn part of a relationship and find peace within it. Under the Holy Spirit’s teaching all relationships are seen as total commitments, yet they do not conflict with one another in any way. Perfect faith in each one, for its ability to satisfy you completely, arises only from perfect faith in yourself. And this you cannot have while guilt remains. And there will be guilt as long as you accept the possibility, and cherish it, that you can make a brother into what he is not, because you would have him so.

Journal
It is impossible to use one relationship at the expense of another and not to suffer guilt.
I’m not sure how this works. Perhaps Jesus is talking about leaving a relationship because another seems like it would be better. Sometimes relationships fall away naturally, and sometimes it is necessary to leave a relationship, but this idea that the problem is his or hers and the solution is a different his or her, is never going to work. When I have a problem in a relationship, I look within for the source of that problem, so that I can allow my mind to be healed.

Or maybe taking sides in relationships, using a friend to reinforce your side of an argument with another friend. I used to do that. When I failed to forgive a grievance, I had to justify that failure and so I would gather friends who would agree with me. This would help me shore up my side of the story and that made it easier to go on pretending that I was innocent and the other person was guilty. After a while, I realized that I just felt guiltier and eventually learned to look within for the problem and solve it there.

Maybe it could mean playing favorites, preferring one relationship over another. I used to think that preferring one relationship over another was perfectly normal and unavoidable, that I would just naturally like being with some people more than others. What I have discovered is that I can actually enjoy each relationship equally if I give that relationship to the Holy Spirit. As more false beliefs are corrected, I have fewer preferences, and I tend to enjoy each person because I am not projecting on them like I used to.

And it is equally impossible to condemn part of a relationship and find peace within it.
This took a long time for me to learn. At first, I had no idea it was even a problem. It never occurred to me that I could love and accept all of the relationship. When I was married to an alcoholic, I loved many things about that relationship, but his drinking was something I could not love. That certainly made sense to me. Who would love that?

But what if I could have loved all of the relationship? If I loved completely without exception, my actions and reactions would have been different. I would not have doubted this Son of God. I would not have resented him. He would have felt only unconditional love coming from me. I wonder how different the relationship might have been if this was the case? Maybe my unconditional love might have been the support he needed to make a new choice for his life. But for sure, I know that there is no peace in conflict.

Under the Holy Spirit’s teaching all relationships are seen as total commitments, yet they do not conflict with one another in any way.
I now have friends with all sorts of personalities and beliefs, and these friendships take different forms, but none of them conflict. I can be with them one at a time and what we do and how we interact will be different. I can be with several of them all at once and enjoy the differences without choosing to favor one or the other. There was a time when I couldn’t do that. The change is that I give my relationships to the Holy Spirit now. The specialness is being removed for me and the relationships just naturally transform as I transform.

Perfect faith in each one, for its ability to satisfy you completely, arises only from perfect faith in yourself.
I don’t have perfect faith in my relationships because I don’t have perfect faith in myself. But I also know that this is changing. As I write about this, I am examining my relationships and myself. I am noticing how different they are now than they used to be and I see that this change correlates with changes within myself. I am becoming more certain of myself as I release more ego and thus identify more closely with my true self.

And this you cannot have while guilt remains. And there will be guilt as long as you accept the possibility, and cherish it, that you can make a brother into what he is not, because you would have him so.
And there you go; guilt raises its ugly head again. So much of my inner work revolves around guilt. Why do I not have perfect relationships? It is because I don’t have perfect faith in my brothers and sisters. And why is that? It is because I don’t have faith in me. And why is that? Because I believe I am guilty. In this particular situation, the guilt is taking the form of wanting my brother to be something that I would prefer.

I want to change this. I want to let go of preferences. I choose to become fully accepting of all things. Instead of judging circumstances and people (including myself) I choose to simply accept it all as it is. If something or someone seems to be out of alignment with God’s creation, then let me love it back into alignment rather than trying to manipulate and change for the purpose of making myself more comfortable in my judgments. With the Holy Spirit’s guidance and help, I can do this. I know I can because I have done it. I am learning to make that choice every time. I am learning to master that decision.

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Manual for Teachers: 6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 2. 2-8-18

6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 2
2 Healing will always stand aside when it would be seen as threat. The instant it is welcome it is there. Where healing has been given it will be received. And what is time before the gifts of God? We have referred many times in the text to the storehouse of treasures laid up equally for the giver and the receiver of God’s gifts. Not one is lost, for they can but increase. No teacher of God should feel disappointed if he has offered healing and it does not appear to have been received. It is not up to him to judge when his gift should be accepted. Let him be certain it has been received, and trust that it will be accepted when it is recognized as a blessing and not a curse.

Journal
Here are the two sentences that are most meaningful to me.

Healing will always stand aside when it would be seen as threat.

We have already talked about some of the ways that healing can be seen as a threat. When we choose sickness, and sickness is always a choice, we do so for a reason. We see some value in sickness and that value outweighs the pain and suffering that is part of sickness. It outweighs the final result, which is death. So having sickness suddenly taken from us can be jarring and unwelcome. Jesus says that when healing is unwelcome, it will wait until it is no longer seen as a threat.

Let him be certain it has been received, and trust that it will be accepted when it is recognized as a blessing and not a curse.
So if we pray for someone’s healing and it does not seem to occur that our prayer is answered, we need not be concerned. The healing as been received. Knowing that this is true, we can wait patiently for the person to accept it, knowing that acceptance will come in perfect timing as the person can do so without fear. Our function is to extend love (healing) and then we are done. It is not our function to judge that healing or the patient’s acceptance.

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Study of Text, C 15: V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 11. 2-7-18

V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 11
11 Think you that you can judge the Self of God? God has created It beyond judgment, out of His need to extend His Love. With love in you, you have no need except to extend it. In the holy instant there is no conflict of needs, for there is only one. For the holy instant reaches to eternity, and to the Mind of God. And it is only there love has meaning, and only there can it be understood.

Journal
I am the Self of God. I had never thought of it in that way. He created me beyond judgment and since I am the same consciousness as are my brothers and sisters, they are the Self of God as well, and as well beyond judgment.  As I accept that this is true and judgment falls away, as surely it must if I am always looking at the Self of God, only love will be left and the extension of love will be my only need. As God needed to extend Himself, so do I need to extend the love that I am.

Do I think I need my child to call me? Do I think I need my friend to answer my text? Do I think I need respect, admiration or anything else from my brothers and sisters? Of course, I do not. If I think I need these things I must be confused. I have only one need and that is to extend my self as love. How peaceful is my mind when there is no conflict.

The holy instant in which I extend only love reaches into eternity and to the Mind of God. I feel the truth of this as I write it. I cannot access a memory of this, and yet, I know it is there because I feel it. When I have decided to release all that is not love, then I will be in that holy instant and I will finally understand love.

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Manual for Teachers: 6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 1. 2-6-18

6. IS HEALING CERTAIN? P 1
1 Healing is always certain. It is impossible to let illusions be brought to truth and keep the illusions. Truth demonstrates illusions have no value. The teacher of God has seen the correction of his errors in the mind of the patient, recognizing it for what it is. Having accepted the Atonement for himself, he has also accepted it for the patient. Yet what if the patient uses sickness as a way of life, believing healing is the way to death? When this is so, a sudden healing might precipitate intense depression, and a sense of loss so deep that the patient might even try to destroy himself. Having nothing to live for, he may ask for death. Healing must wait, for his protection.

Journal
The first thing we learn from this paragraph is that healing is always certain. Then it reminds us of what healing is. “Having accepted the Atonement for himself, he has also accepted it for the patient.”  If I see someone as sick, I ask what is it in me that reflects this error. I remember Dr. Hew Lin who healed mental patients by reading their charts and healing in his mind what he saw there.

Then Jesus answers the question that most of us have struggled with. If I, as a teacher of God, have accepted the Atonement for myself on behalf of my brother, why is he still sick? The answer is that it might be worse for the patient to be healed than to remain sick. Jesus talks about the patient using sickness as a way of life and if that way is lost to him, he might fall into an intense depression and a sense of loss. It could lead him to death because he thinks he has nothing to live for.

That seems hard to believe so I asked for an example and I remembered someone who had lung cancer. This was the last of several debilitating diseases she had suffered in her life. Sickness was a way of life for her. She had a sincere religious belief that she suffered for God. She offered all her suffering to Him. She thought that was what God wanted of her and so she gave him that.

I wonder how she would have reacted if all sickness had suddenly been taken from her. Probably at first she would have called it a miracle and been happy. But, Jesus says that guilt is the cause of sickness and if someone was healed but did not feel forgiven, would that produce fear in her mind? And if that person truly believed in sacrifice as a way of life, what would she have to live for without anything to sacrifice? I suppose I could see that fear of healing would keep healing at bay.

I don’t think that this kind of thinking is conscious. We don’t tell ourselves that we are so guilty that we must be punished with pain and sickness. We might tell ourselves that our pain and suffering has a purpose and that God loves us for it. We might tell ourselves that punishing ourselves will abate God’s wrath. I am sure we don’t tell ourselves that without sickness we have nothing to live for, but all of this is occurring. We but do this to ourselves is true in every situation.

I thought of another person who was dying from COPD. She had smoked all her life and felt guilty for it. She believed that she was getting what she deserved. She thought she wanted to be healed and she manifested a way for this to happen. And yet, she seemed at every turn to refuse the gift of health until she died anyway. It looked to me like she insisted on dying. It was a strange thing to watch. Reading this section of the Course helped me to understand. If you don’t think you deserve to live, then living becomes a threat.

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Study of Text, C 15: V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 10. 2-5-18

V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 1
10 All your relationships are blessed in the holy instant, because the blessing is not limited. In the holy instant the Sonship gains as one, and united in your blessing it becomes one to you. The meaning of love is the meaning God gave to it. Give to it any meaning apart from His, and it is impossible to understand it. God loves every brother as He loves you; neither less nor more. He needs them all equally, and so do you. In time, you have been told to offer miracles as I direct, and let the Holy Spirit bring to you those who are seeking you. Yet in the holy instant you unite directly with God, and all your brothers join in Christ. Those who are joined in Christ are in no way separate. For Christ is the Self the Sonship shares, as God shares His Self with Christ.

Journal
All your relationships are blessed in the holy instant, because the blessing is not limited.

The holy instant is outside time. It is a moment in which a new choice is made, a choice for love rather than fear. In the holy instant we know each other and so love each other. We join with each other and with God. All relationships change because the one Self remembered.

This is different than what we do within time. Within time, we don’t know our oneness and so we don’t know love. In time, we need miracles and the Holy Spirit brings into our lives those who need the miracle we have to offer and who can benefit from it. We open our hearts to love and our minds to him and we channel the miracles that heal us all.

In the holy instant, this is no longer needed. Outside of time, there is nothing to heal. There is no one who has more and no one who has less. There is nothing lacking. In the holy instant, we understand the meaning of love. We join directly with God and with all our brothers in Christ.

We can only imagine this while we are still in time, or maybe, we will be graced with revelation and have some brief experience of pure love. That is really something, but it does not last. Here, our focus is on healing, on helping each other to remember. And while this is happening, we seem to heal our relationships one at a time. But, you know, each time I heal a relationship, all of my relationships benefit, so I do get a taste of what it is like to have no limits on my blessings.

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Manual for Teachers: III. The Function of the Teacher of God, P 3. 2-2-18

III. The Function of the Teacher of God, P 3
3 Not once do the advanced teachers of God consider the forms of sickness in which their brother believes. To do this is to forget that all of them have the same purpose, and therefore are not really different. They seek for God’s Voice in this brother who would so deceive himself as to believe God’s Son can suffer. And they remind him that he did not make himself, and must remain as God created him. They recognize illusions can have no effect. The truth in their minds reaches out to the truth in the minds of their brothers, so that illusions are not reinforced. They are thus brought to truth; truth is not brought to them. So are they dispelled, not by the will of another, but by the One Will with itself. And this is the function of God’s teachers; to see no will as separate from their own, nor theirs as separate from God’s.

Journal
What a great paragraph! First, we are reminded that there is no difference between the forms the sickness might take. One is not harder to heal than another. The reason this is so is that they all share one purpose. I am reminded of the question, “What is it for?” This is all that matters, not the form itself.

Then Jesus expands on what he has said before about how to be helpful. The teacher of God understands that the problem is in the mind not the body. They know that this one has forgotten who he is or he could not be sick. The teacher of God knows that we are always just as God created us and anything else is an illusion and that the effects of illusions are illusions as well. How could it be that one illusion is more real than another illusion? That’s just funny.

So we help by allowing the truth in our mind to reach out to the truth in our brother’s mind. In this way, the illusion is not reinforced. In this way the illusion is brought to the truth so that it can be dispelled, not by my will overcoming another’s but through the power of God in us. This is our function, to see the teacher’s my will is joined with the patient’s will, which is joined with God’s Will.

Here is how this looks in my mind. I have someone on my prayer list who needs a job. I hold her in my mind and I see her perfection expressed as a skill set that someone else needs. I see her and the perfect company being magnetically drawn to each other. I see her joyfully joining with that company and the people working there, each to the other’s benefit. It is such a happy picture that I love thinking about it. It is love finding its way to love, expressing itself in the way most useful at this time and in this place.

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Study of Text, C 15: V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 9. 2-1-18

V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 9
9 God knows you now. He remembers nothing, having always known you exactly as He knows you now. The holy instant reflects His knowing by bringing all perception out of the past, thus removing the frame of reference you have built by which to judge your brothers. Once this is gone, the Holy Spirit substitutes His frame of reference for it. His frame of reference is simply God. The Holy Spirit’s timelessness lies only here. For in the holy instant, free of the past, you see that love is in you, and you have no need to look without and snatch love guiltily from where you thought it was.

Journal

This is simple. How is it that I have a holy relationship instead of a special relationship? I give the past to the Holy Spirit and accept myself as God knows me now. Since God knows me as I am, as the Love of which I was created, and I accept His judgment of me as my own, I know myself as love. Now, where is the need to “find” love? Do I need someone to love me if love is already in me?

This leaves me free to be in a relationship that is free of neediness. I love and want nothing in return. I love because love is natural and joyful. There will be no strings attached, no secret bargains in the relationship. When I first began to understand how special relationships work, I was dismayed at my own part in this.

Even the little things we take for granted in a relationship. For instance the thought I might have of a friend: He will be there for me when I need him. How about, I will be there for myself when I need it. Then I can just enjoy the love I have for him regardless of any response he might like to make or not make.

Have you ever had one of those days where you just felt battered by the world and you thought, “Let me just get home to that special one, and he will make me feel better.” Then you get home and he is not there. Or he is there but doesn’t seem to have an interest in your day, or doesn’t understand what you need. Or you get there and all he wants to do is talk about his problems.

Expectations unmet, secret bargains not lived up to, needs not met by the one you chose to meet them, love not given and received. Yet, is that love at all?  Maybe love seems lost because the interpretation of love is so strange that we no longer know what love is. What if, instead, we choose to see love where it is?

It is within us because that is where God placed it, or rather perhaps it would be more accurate to say that as an extension of Love, you are love. That is the love we each really seek. If we keep looking for it outside ourselves, we are never going to find it. Accept God’s decision about ourselves and we will have no need to look without and snatch love guiltily from where we thought it was.

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