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Study of Text, C 15: V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 2. 1-10-18

V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 2
2 The past is the ego’s chief learning device, for it is in the past that you learned to define your own needs and acquire methods for meeting them on your own terms. We have said that to limit love to part of the Sonship is to bring guilt into your relationships, and thus make them unreal. If you seek to separate out certain aspects of the totality and look to them to meet your imagined needs, you are attempting to use separation to save you. How, then, could guilt not enter? For separation is the source of guilt, and to appeal to it for salvation is to believe you are alone. To be alone is to be guilty. For to experience yourself as alone is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to attack reality.

Journal
The past is the ego’s chief learning device. I easily see how that is true. As a child, probably as a baby, I learned that having my parent’s attention was vital and felt good. I learned that people in my family were more important than other people. I can remember my mom instructing us to take care of each other and stand up for each other, to defend family. I also learned what was required of me to keep my family’s loyalty and goodwill. Friends began to take on significance in my life as I entered school, and I learned that it was important to be part of a group. I learned what it takes to keep them loyal as well.

These things and more I learned as a child and they carried over into all my future relationships. Relationships became alliances and were more about survival than love; at least they were more about getting my needs met than about love. This is not to say that there was no love involved in the relationships. I love my children and I love my ex-husbands and my friends. But there was a strong need in these relationships and neediness is not love, and I have discovered that love becomes obscured by neediness.

All relationships defined by neediness are special. If someone loses their child, I feel compassion for them, but if I were to lose my child, I would feel like the world ended. I love lots of people, but I love my family more. This seems natural and normal to us because we pretty much all feel the same way. We all grew up learning the importance of family and that family is special and essential to us. If not, we transfer that need to others, friends or partners, our pets. But, special relationships are a source of guilt.

The reason this is so is that it is separation. I separate out the people in my life and designate which ones are most important to me and so which I love more. I learn which ones I need to meet my needs. I decide which ones matter the most. I decide which ones are against me, and therefore, are undeserving of my love. This separating out increases the guilt in my mind because it is an attack on God’s Wholeness. It makes me feel guilty and afraid even though I may not really know why or even that it is happening. It might just feel like low-level anxiety running in the background.

I have tried to love everyone the same and trying doesn’t seem to do the trick. I think that what I have to do is to notice when I don’t love someone and let the Holy Spirit work with my mind to heal it. I also think it helps a lot that I have reached a level of healing that allows me to desire love more than I ever have before. I am also more willing to love unconditionally and to love without exception. So my true desire to be the love I was created is coming forward. This desire is permission for the Holy Spirit to heal my mind.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Manual for Teachers: 5.HOW IS HEALING ACCOMPLISHED? I.The Perceived Purpose of Sickness, P 1. 1-9-18

5. HOW IS HEALING ACCOMPLISHED?
1 Healing involves an understanding of what the illusion of sickness is for. Healing is impossible without this.

I. The Perceived Purpose of Sickness, P 1
1 Healing is accomplished the instant the sufferer no longer sees any value in pain. Who would choose suffering unless he thought it brought him something, and something of value to him? He must think it is a small price to pay for something of greater worth. For sickness is an election; a decision. It is the choice of weakness, in the mistaken conviction that it is strength. When this occurs, real strength is seen as threat and health as danger. Sickness is a method, conceived in madness, for placing God’s Son on his Father’s throne. God is seen as outside, fierce and powerful, eager to keep all power for Himself. Only by His death can He be conquered by His Son.

Journal
This is so crazy! Don’t get me wrong; I absolutely believe that this is what is happening. But it is crazy. First, I choose sickness, I decide for it. And if that is not crazy enough, the reasoning behind this choice proves insanity. I think I am in competition for the throne. I think that I need to depose my Creator and take His place. No wonder I am afraid of God.

And how am I going to do this? I am going to get sick, suffer and then die. Ha! Take that, God! And you can’t stop me. My choice for sickness is now seen as strength that gets me what I want, and health as dangerous as it keeps me enslaved to God. I’m also going to bang my head on the floor and hold my breath until I turn blue or until you admit defeat and die, God. Jeez.

Well, I am not as insane as I used to be. I can see this and see the absurdity of it. I have suffered for my folly, and I want to stop. I have even gotten in touch with my love of God, though I occasionally let myself become aware of my fear of God. Still, I am beginning to heal mentally, and so I am interested in healing in all other ways including physically.

So I accept the fact that sickness is a choice I make. Until that fact is accepted, there is little I can do to turn this behavior around. I would still keep getting sick and thinking that it just happened to me, and how unfair it all is. I have had proof that sickness is a choice, lots of proof, and yet I still fall back on the idea that sickness has value. It is just an old way of thinking, a bad habit that I need to break.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 15: V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 1. 1-8-18

V. The Holy Instant and Special Relationships, P 1
1 The holy instant is the Holy Spirit’s most useful learning device for teaching you love’s meaning. For its purpose is to suspend judgment entirely. Judgment always rests on the past, for past experience is the basis on which you judge. Judgment becomes impossible without the past, for without it you do not understand anything. You would make no attempt to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not understand what anything means. You are afraid of this because you believe that without the ego, all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love.

Journal
This is a perfect paragraph for me this morning as I am doing the lessons again and am on Lesson 8, “My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.” Because of this practice, I am keenly aware of this phenomenon. A few moments ago, I noticed my tub was slow to drain, and immediately, I had a cascade of thoughts about this, which led me to make a decision about calling the plumber this morning. I had worry thoughts, anger thoughts, and resentment thoughts.

Here are some of the thoughts I had. The plumbers were supposed to have come out already and given me an estimate on fixing this problem once and for all and they didn’t. Now I might have to get them out to unclog things before they do the job. I already paid them $500.00 last month to come out repeatedly and maybe this is going to start all over again this month. What if the cost for the job is more than I have? Should I try a different plumbing company?

All of these are judgments and all of them are a preoccupation with the past. And I can’t have peace of mind and have these judgments. I notice that it is hard for me to take my mind off of possible scenarios, all of which are based on past thoughts and all of which are judgments. But I want the holy instant, and I know that worry and irritability are not going to get that for me. I know that nothing good is going to come from dwelling on past thoughts and getting irritated because I am not getting my way.

So I am looking at this paragraph carefully. Jesus says that the holy instant is the Holy Spirit’s most useful learning device for teaching you love’s meaning. Ok. I want this and I am willing to do what is required in order to have it. Jesus says that in order to have it, I must suspend judgment entirely and that judgment rests on past experience. That was how I judged, looking at what happened before and letting that experience guide my thoughts about the present.

So, I will let go of all thoughts about my past experience with this plumbing problem. I will empty my mind of those thoughts and begin with a blank slate. Right now, what is happening? Nothing. What might happen? I don’t know. If something happens with my plumbing what will I do about it? I don’t know. What I feel right now is peace. The ego doesn’t like this and keeps suggesting possibilities, but I keep turning away from that.

I have done this before, where I let go of deciding for myself and it has worked out very well. It flies in the face of what we think of as common sense, and the ego mind becomes frantic to find solutions. But I have seen that it is possible to stay calm and unaffected by the ego mind. I have had experiences where the solution fell easily into my mind at the moment I needed it.

I don’t know what all of these plumbing problems mean, and I am not using my ego mind to figure it out. Jesus says that I am afraid to let go of past thoughts and to let go of ego thinking about the problem because I believe that without the ego, all would be chaos. Oh yes, that is exactly what the ego mind thinks. But Jesus assures me that without the ego all would be love. I am willing to trust my elder brother on this.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Manual for Teachers: X. Open-Mindedness, P 3. 1-5-18

X. Open-Mindedness, P 3
3 You may have noticed that the list of attributes of God’s teachers does not include things that are the Son of God’s inheritance. Terms like love, sinlessness, perfection, knowledge and eternal truth do not appear in this context. They would be most inappropriate here. What God has given is so far beyond our curriculum that learning but disappears in its presence. Yet while its presence is obscured, the focus properly belongs on the curriculum. It is the function of God’s teachers to bring true learning to the world. Properly speaking it is unlearning that they bring, for that is “true learning” in the world. It is given to the teachers of God to bring the glad tidings of complete forgiveness to the world. Blessed indeed are they, for they are the bringers of salvation.

Journal

I can accurately say that I am sinless and perfect and already awakened, and while that is all true, it may not be the most helpful thing in the moment. I am here in this fantasy because regardless of how true those attributes are I don’t really believe them. I am wrong about that but as Jesus says, what I believe is true for me.

Right now the focus properly belongs on the curriculum of forgiveness, that is, the undoing of all that I do believe right now. This is my part in bringing salvation to me and to all the world. Then, I can say with complete honesty that I am sinless and perfect and awakened, only there will be no reason to say it because there will be no thought of a possible opposite.

Unlearning is our goal now and it is pretty simple to tell what needs to be unlearned. I only need to notice what is going on in the world to see that there is unlearning to be done and to notice my reaction to what I see to know my part in the unlearning process. If I have an emotional response to what I see then I have something to forgive.

If I am wishing I had done better in the past there is forgiveness work to be done. If I am worried about something that might happen there is forgiveness work to be done. If I am sad or depressed, if I am angry or fearful or if I feel guilty, then there is forgiveness work to be done. These emotional responses to specific incidences point to unforgiveness and let me know that I still have some belief that needs to be undone.

This work is “true learning” in the world. Once this is done or rather undone, the truth will be revealed. It does not need our help and we do not need to learn anything about the truth. The truth did not go anywhere because we chose to believe something else. As soon as we unlearn the false the truth is simply apparent.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 15: IV. Practicing the Holy Instant, P 9, 1-4-18

IV. Practicing the Holy Instant, P 9
9 The necessary condition for the holy instant does not require that you have no thoughts that are not pure. But it does require that you have none that you would keep. Innocence is not of your making. It is given you the instant you would have it. Atonement would not be if there were no need for it. You will not be able to accept perfect communication as long as you would hide it from yourself. For what you would hide is hidden from you. In your practice, then, try only to be vigilant against deception, and seek not to protect the thoughts you would keep to yourself. Let the Holy Spirit’s purity shine them away, and bring all your awareness to the readiness for purity He offers you. Thus will He make you ready to acknowledge that you are host to God, and hostage to no one and to nothing.

Journal

There are two important messages in this paragraph. This is the first.

The necessary condition for the holy instant does not require that you have no thoughts that are not pure. But it does require that you have none that you would keep.

As long as my mind is split, and if I still see myself as part of this illusion, then my mind is split, I will have thoughts that are not pure. That is to be expected. My part in this is to be willing to let them go. I must notice when I am deliberately defending them from the Holy Spirit. One way we do this is to pretend that we are not aware of some of these untrue thoughts. We hide them from ourselves.

I have been practicing mind-watching for a long time now. I have gotten to be pretty proficient at noticing thoughts and letting them be corrected. Because of this practice, I am a lot more peaceful than I used to be. What I am discovering as I make a fearless and searching moral inventory of myself is that I have some beliefs that needed to be seen. Since these beliefs are in my mind and therefore available to me, it must be that I was hiding it even from myself. Ah well, as Jesus says, there would be no Atonement if there was not a need for it.

Here is the second important idea in this lesson.

Innocence is not of your making.

I don’t have to do anything to become innocent. I am that, already. There is absolutely nothing I can do to destroy my innocence, though I can act and think in a way that keeps it from my awareness. I only need to be vigilant for all in my mind that is not innocence and allow it to be purified.

This very act of hiding thoughts that I would keep to myself breaks communication. Without full communication with the Holy Spirit, I feel orphaned though I may not be consciously aware of why I feel that way. I used to be so thoroughly caught up in my story that most of my efforts were directed toward improving the story; even my spiritual work was for that purpose.

What I came to realize is that my life is not about my life. It is about using this life to undo the illusion altogether. Now I understand why I do this work. I do it so that I can finally return my full awareness to God. A Course in Miracles offers us only one thing, forgiveness. But, as Jesus says, that is enough. I search out the hidden places in my mind and let the light of purity shine them away and this is forgiveness. It will lead me past forgiveness and into God.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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