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Study of Text, C 14: IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 5. 6-21-17

IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 5
5 In this world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the Holiness of your Creator shines forth from you to all around you. You can reflect Heaven here. Yet no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God’s reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection of Himself can be perceived upon it.

Journal
I love the spotless mirror image. I can see my errors as smudges rather than sins. Guilt is a smudge on the mirror, as is fear and grievances. These are the images of the false gods that dim the mirror that Jesus is talking about. Because I want a clear mind that can reflect God, the Holy Spirit is helping me by bringing to my attention the smudges that need to be wiped clean.

Nowadays, when I become aware of a smudge, I get to work on it right away. I thank the Holy Spirit for bringing it to my attention, and then I use a process to help me get to the bottom of it and to ultimately forgive myself for my confusion. I sometimes use the Rules for Decision process. I also use Root Cause Inquiry, especially if I suspect that I don’t really know the true cause of the upset. This process has proven invaluable to me. Regina Dawn Akers has this process written out step by step with excellent explanations and suggestions. If you are interested you can find it on her website. Root cause inquiry link:

#4 at http://reginadawnakers.com/another-dozen-classics/

However I choose to do this, I do it as quickly as possible. I want to be free. I want a clear mind. I want to reflect God and I want to know God.

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Study of Text, C 14: IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 4. 6-19-17

IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 4
4 In the temple, Holiness waits quietly for the return of them that love it. The Presence knows they will return to purity and to grace. The graciousness of God will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss with the immortal assurance of their Father’s Love. There, fear of death will be replaced with joy of life. For God is Life, and they abide in Life. Life is as holy as the Holiness by which it was created. The Presence of Holiness lives in everything that lives, for Holiness created life, and leaves not what It created holy as Itself.

Journal
We are holy because we were created by Holiness. That will never change. Holiness waits for our return and will welcome us when that occurs. All the effects of our illusion will disappear, fear of death being replaced by the joy of life. No more pain and loss. There is nothing we must do to attain this.

Our part is to simply release the beliefs that keep us from accepting our inheritance. It is like this. Suppose you found out you have a very wealthy relative and if you go to meet him, you will share in his wealth. You would never have another need in your life. But you have no memory of meeting this man. You are told that you walked away from him and struck out on your own.

There would be some fear about him. Who is he? Why would he want me back if I left him? Why did I leave him to begin with? Also, where this man lives things are different than they are here, a lot different. You are told that you will have to change your ways in order to live in this apparent paradise.

You would have to change a lot of things like there are many emotions you will never have again. There is no war or strife in that land and so you will have to give up all the defenses you have had to keep yourself safe. This place sounds too good to be true and so do you really want to go there unarmed?

Your skill and your intelligence are completely superfluous. Everything you have ever learned will be meaningless. The money you spent your life earning and saving is useless. The relationships you so carefully built, finding just the right people to meet your needs, and who also wanted what you had to offer, the careful balancing act to keep them everyone feeling safe and deserving of the love, all lost.

In this place, everyone is equal to everyone else and everyone is loved in the same way.  And everyone is welcomed, even the man who hurt you, and the parent who abandoned you, and there will be no separation, one from another. There will be no consequences for the pain they caused you. No justice or vengeance, just forgiveness without regard for the degree of assault.

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Study of Text, C 14: IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 3. 6-15-17

IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 3
3 Merely by being what it is, does truth release you from everything that it is not. The Atonement is so gentle you need but whisper to it, and all its power will rush to your assistance and support. You are not frail with God beside you. Yet without Him you are nothing. The Atonement offers you God. The gift that you refused is held by Him in you. The Holy Spirit holds it there for you. God has not left His altar, though His worshippers placed other gods upon it. The temple still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it is Holiness.

Journal
The Atonement is the great Undoing, the plan for Salvation, God’s Answer. What stands out to me in this paragraph is that the Atonement offers me God. I had to sit with that thought for awhile, and just let the tears flow. The Atonement is for me, it’s power rushes in at my whispered call, and it offers me God. I am humbled at God’s gift.

How do I call for the Atonement? I see that I am confused and I want to be healed, and I am answered. I sometimes express my desire for help more strongly and I say that I accept the Atonement in a difficult situation. I say that I want correction, I ask that my mind be healed, I just call out for help, however, I express my desire for the Atonement, I am answered. All the power of the Atonement is given me.

I am OK. I am safe. I dream of challenges, of pain and of suffering, and even of death, but God has not been overpowered by my fantasies. He remains on His altar, unaffected by the idols I place there. I am holy because I am His temple and where He dwells is holy. No matter what is going on in my story, this is His promise; I remain as He created me.

I know all this is true because I have put it to the test. I have called on the Atonement and I have been answered. Sometimes I accept the answer immediately and whole-heartedly. Sometimes I have asked and then defended against the answer, but it waits patiently for my acceptance. I struggle with the fear and guilt that keeps me imprisoned in my misery, but always, in the end, I turn to His Answer, and it is always there.

I have wondered many times why it feels so hard sometimes to simply accept the Atonement. I have decided that it is my grim determination to have a special identity that causes all my suffering. I could simply call for help to wake up and be answered, but I don’t, at least I don’t accept help right away.

I “forget” that I have this help, and I “forget” that I have the power of God at my disposal. I forget because I don’t want to remember. But I am changing my mind about that. Each time I overcome the ego desire to exist apart, I am stronger in my resolve to awaken. This, too, is His answer to my call for support and assistance. I am so grateful.

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Study of Text, C 14: IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 2. 6-14-17

Two upcoming events: I am presenting an afternoon workshop in New Orleans Unity Church this coming Saturday, 1:00-5:30. July 14-16, I will be presenting a three-day workshop in Portland OR. If you are interested in details of either workshop, let me know.

IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 2
2 Bringing the ego to God is but to bring error to truth, where it stands corrected because it is the opposite of what it meets. It is undone because the contradiction can no longer stand. How long can contradiction stand when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in light is not attacked. It merely vanishes because it is not true. Different realities are meaningless, for reality must be one. It cannot change with time or mood or chance. Its changelessness is what makes it real. This cannot be undone. Undoing is for unreality. And this reality will do for you.


Journal
Reading this paragraph, I immediately compared what Jesus is saying to my experience of bringing my thoughts to the Holy Spirit. When I look at my thinking with Him, the Holy Spirit does not attack it. As we look together, the feeling the ego thought evoked simply goes away. For instance, when I was feeling stressed by my concern for a friend, I asked Holy Spirit to look at it with me.

As I sat there in silence for a few minutes, I remembered that I don’t have any way of judging this situation with my friend. I don’t know what he is trying to undo. I don’t know what he is gaining from this experience. I don’t have enough information to judge on my own. So I asked the Holy Spirit to judge with me, rather than depending on my ego mind to do it.

I felt the anxiety melting away as peace took its place. The belief that my friend is vulnerable and weak could not stand up to the truth that he is as God created Him. How could I doubt the Son of God? I remembered that my friend is not this story he is experiencing and that he is safe in God as are we all. I felt my trust in him returning; I felt my trust in us all returning.

It is really very simple. I bring a thought of anger to the Holy Spirit where it meets love and the anger simply dissolves in the face of this ultimate truth. I bring fear and it is met by love and the fear fades away. I bring uncertainty and doubt to the Holy Spirit, and the certainty of love is so powerful that doubt cannot continue in the truth’s holy presence. Truth doesn’t defend itself, in fact, it does nothing except to exist, and since there is only one reality, what is not truth does not exist. When what is not true is brought to that reality, it becomes obvious that it is not real.

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Study of Text, C 14: IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 1. 6-12-17

IX. The Reflection of Holiness, P 1
1 The Atonement does not make holy. You were created holy. It merely brings unholiness to holiness; or what you made to what you are. Bringing illusion to truth, or the ego to God, is the Holy Spirit’s only function. Keep not your making from your Father, for hiding it has cost you knowledge of Him and of yourself. The knowledge is safe, but where is your safety apart from it? The making of time to take the place of timelessness lay in the decision to be not as you are. Thus truth was made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion. And the past, too, was changed and interposed between what always was and now. The past that you remember never was, and represents only the denial of what always was.

Journal
The Atonement is simple. We bring what we made to God. His Light will shine away the darkness. This is the Holy Spirit’s only function. He will not fail in it. We must not hide our dark thoughts, or hold any back. When we do this, the cost is knowledge of God and ourselves. What did we make? We made the whole world and our separate self-identity. Why would we want to keep something we made away from God? We are ashamed, afraid, and we value it.

When we understand that everything is an idea, we see how simple it is to bring what we made to God. We thought up the separation idea and now we bring the separation thoughts to the Holy Spirit and He corrects them. We are God’s Son, free of all limits. That means we are free to make anything we want, so we have nothing to be ashamed of. God is pure Love and only Love, therefore we have nothing to fear. God only loves us because there is nothing but love in God.

Do we still value our world and our identity? Perhaps so, but when examined closely, we can see that we valued falsely. There is nothing in the world that lasts. Even the very planet we live on is going to end. Our relationships, no matter how sweet, contain elements of fear and guilt, and inevitably, we lose those we love. Love itself is twisted and soured because, as we understand it, it is not whole, not unconditional and universal.

Our self-identity is unsatisfying. No matter how we try to perfect our bodies and our personalities, we are fighting a losing battle. The body never reaches the perfection we desire. In the end, it gets old and dies, that is, if we are lucky. It gets sick and dies sometimes, and sometimes long before it is old. As for our personalities, we seem to be stuck with pre-programming and can only try to improve upon it.

The world itself is chaotic and unpredictable. Wars and man’s inhumanity to man seems to know no bounds. Natural disasters occur and there is nothing to do to prepare for or prevent many of them. Recovery is the best we can hope for. Remind me again why it is that we think we need to defend the world we made and the separate self we treasure so dearly?

Even in the little world of my life, there is competition and therefore war. There are suffering and death. I planted a small garden this year and it is growing very well. But I am in competition for the vegetables growing there. I compete with the bugs, with fungus and with critters who share my yard, the squirrels, and birds. I try to find repellents rather than poisons, but it is a constant battleground in my garden. Hardly paradise, is it?

There is something else beyond what we made, something pure and beautiful, and completely dependable. In the real world, there is no sickness, no loss, no suffering, or death. In God, there is life everlasting, perfection, and wholeness. There is love, pure and eternal. It is all ours, our Eden. We are divine beings, creations of Love.

We have nothing to fear from God, and nothing of value to hold onto here. We can take our place in Heaven simply by desiring to do so, and we know the simple steps that extricate us from our illusions. Let us choose salvation today by noticing the thoughts that keep the illusion in place, and bringing those thoughts to God. This is how we forgive and this is how we save the world from what we made of it. When this work is done the world will disappear as we find ourselves in eternal bliss within God.

© 2017, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 5. 6-9-17

The Holy Meeting Place, P 4
5 The link with which the Father joins Himself to those He gives the power to create can never be dissolved. Heaven itself is union with all of creation, and with its one Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God for you. Lay no gifts other than this upon your altars, for nothing can coexist with it. Here your little offerings are brought together with the gift of God, and only what is worthy of the Father will be accepted by the Son, for whom it is intended. To whom God gives Himself, He is given. Your little gifts will vanish on the altar, where He has placed His Own.

Journal

A strange thing happened when I read this. I had a clear thought that I am in union with God and all creation and that I create through the power given me by God. I am a creator as God is a Creator. I don’t know, this was meaningful to me in a way that has never happened before. I saw the whole world fall away and everything that I think I am went with it and it scared me.

It all happened in a nanosecond, and I was surprised by it. I guess the biggest surprise was that I felt fear at the thought. That was, of course, the ego self that had the fear reaction. It prefers to think of itself as small and inadequate.  It is afraid of the idea of that kind of power. That part of the mind has reason to fear power.

Look how much suffering has occurred with the misuse of power, eons of suffering, a whole world of suffering. The ego believes it is better to stay small than to take responsibility for what has been done, and far better to stay small than to assume responsibility for its own power. Safer, it thinks, to deny it is doing anything at all. Fortunately, I know too much to bury my head in the sand anymore, and while there is fear, there is also acceptance. Evidently, there is that bit of conflicting desires, still, but not forever.

How does the ego mind manage to stay so deeply in denial and why do I allow it? Well, the why is clear. I am afraid of what has been done in the name of exploration, of discovery, of innocent curiosity. The answer to this is that nothing has actually been done, and I am both innocent and safe. I am slowly coming around to this truth, but obviously, I still do not entirely believe that my dream is not reality.

The first part of that question, how do I do it, how do I keep the illusion going, is also clear to me. Instead of accepting God’s gift of union and creation, which scare me, I accept the ego’s gifts of self-identity. I tell myself it is a gift of great value and I spend lifetime after lifetime trying to make those gifts more valuable through improving them and adding to them.

In this life story, I am mother and grandmother. I have been a successful worker and wage earner. I am teacher and preacher and author. I am respected and appreciated. I have spent a lifetime developing these gifts, improving on them and convincing myself they matter. Am I supposed to just throw this all away now that I have achieved so much I was trying for? Could it be I have spent lifetime after lifetime valuing what has no value?

Everything that is part of how I describe myself or think of myself is a gift of ego to take the place of my true identity. Here is what I know about my identity as taught me by Jesus. I am spirit. I am eternal. I am invulnerable. I am divine. I am part of God, in God, like God. I am a creator as God is a creator. I am pure love. My mind is so vast that it holds the universe. I am fearless. I am whole, complete and unassailable. I am beautiful. I am holy. None of this is questionable and it is true for eternity. So which do I want to identify with, the ego gifts I have been offered, or the truth of what I am?

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Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 4. 6-7-17

VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 4
4 There is no substitute for truth. And truth will make this plain to you as you are brought into the place where you must meet with truth. And there you must be led, through gentle understanding which can lead you nowhere else. Where God is, there are you. Such is the truth. Nothing can change the knowledge, given you by God, into unknowingness. Everything God created knows its Creator. For this is how creation is accomplished by the Creator and by His creations. In the holy meeting place are joined the Father and His creations, and the creations of His Son with Them together. There is one link that joins Them all together, holding Them in the oneness out of which creation happens.

Journal
Where is this holy meeting place where I remember the knowledge given me by God, and where I meet with God and His creations, and the Son’s creations? Where is this I meet and see that we are joined together as one? This can only be in the mind. I am mind, and I can be no other place so it must be possible for me to reach this holy meeting place. How could it not, if the place is in me?

Lesson 158 tells us this.

What has been given you? The knowledge that you are a mind, in Mind and purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid, because you were created out of love. Nor have you left your Source, remaining as you were created. This was given you as knowledge which you cannot lose. It was given as well to every living thing, for by that knowledge only does it live.

It also tells us that this is an experience and cannot be learned or taught. It is given us, and here in the Text, Jesus is telling us that we can reach this experience. Lesson 158 goes on to tell us that there is something we can learn and that is Christ Vision. We learn Christ Vision as we give up our grievances.

So I do this. I release all grievances as I become aware of them. I clear the way to knowledge. It is there, and must be there, but I remain unaware of it until I have done my part. Once I make the decision to release my grievances, I sit in silence and allow healing to occur in my mind, and I wait for the experience of joining to be revealed to me.

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