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Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 3. 6-6-17

VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 3
3 Let your mind wander not through darkened corridors, away from light’s center. You and your brother may choose to lead yourselves astray, but you can be brought together only by the Guide appointed for you. He will surely lead you to where God and His Son await your recognition. They are joined in giving you the gift of oneness, before which all separation vanishes. Unite with what you are. You cannot join with anything except reality. God’s glory and His Son’s belong to you in truth. They have no opposite, and nothing else can you bestow upon yourself.

Journal
I want to return to the recognition of my Self, to awaken to my Oneness with God. Jesus is telling me three things in this paragraph to help me do this. He indicates that it is done in union with my brothers because the Son of God is all of us together. So I know that it is very important that I give up all grievances. Obviously, holding grievances will prevent me from returning to my Self because they prevent me from being in union with my One Whole Self.

A second thing he tells me is that I must not let my mind wander into the darkness, away from the light. I do this when I judge and believe in guilt, which of course, leads to grievances. In fact, what I am starting to notice is that Jesus talks to us about judgment, guilt, fear, anger, hatred, jealousy, grievances and all the ego effects, but really, they are all the same thing.

I can use the word guilt, and within that idea are all the other effects of listening to ego. I believe in guilt, which makes me afraid. I judge others and this makes me feel guilty and thus afraid. I am angry with someone and this triggers guilt, which leads to fear. It is all the same. Jesus uses the word forgiveness and it is the same as healing, accepting the Atonement, seeing it differently, and undoing. In fact, the longer I study A Course in Miracles, the simpler it becomes.

I think I am separate from God and from my brothers, and because I believe this, it appears to be true to me. I suffer the consequences of this belief until I am ready to awaken from it. Then I am led to the experiences that show me something else is available and that I want it. I see that my life is not at random and that I have done this to myself, but that it can be undone.

This leads to the third thing that Jesus is telling us in this paragraph. The way I return to the awareness of my Divinity and my Unity is through the Holy Spirit. As I look with the Holy Spirit rather than the ego mind, all is forgiven, I am healed, it is undone, and I see it differently. It is done for me, and the only way I get there is through Him. I dreamed of a different existence and then I wake up to what remains untouched and unaffected by my illusions. This is, literally, all that is happening.

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Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 2. 6-5-17

VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 2
2 He shares it still, for you. Everything that promises otherwise, great or small, however much or little valued, He will replace with the one promise given unto Him to lay upon the altar to your Father and His Son. No altar stands to God without His Son. And nothing brought there that is not equally worthy of Both, but will be replaced by gifts wholly acceptable to Father and to Son. Can you offer guilt to God? You cannot, then, offer it to His Son. For they are not apart, and gifts to One are offered to the Other. You know not God because you know not this. And yet you do know God and also this. All this is safe within you, where the Holy Spirit shines. He shines not in division, but in the meeting place where God, united with His Son, speaks to His Son through Him. Communication between what cannot be divided cannot cease. The holy meeting place of the un-separated Father and His Son lies in the Holy Spirit and in you. All interference in the communication that God Himself wills with His Son is quite impossible here. Unbroken and uninterrupted love flows constantly between the Father and the Son, as Both would have it be. And so it is.

Journal
My life as I experience it now is a dichotomy. I am a woman, a body, a personality; I am spirit. I am guilty; I am innocent. I love, I hate. I do not know what I am, and I know very well what I am. There is what I think of myself and then there is what is true about me. What I think about myself is mine alone and cannot be shared. What I think about myself I cannot offer to God.

But there is a place in me that is real, an altar where I meet my Brother and where I meet God. In this meeting place, there is no separation, no interference. There is unbroken and uninterrupted love flowing between Father and Son.  The Holy Spirit keeps this place within me. I can visit it in my meditation and sometimes in my dreams, but how do I stay there?

Jesus makes it clear that I cannot dwell in God alone. I must join with my brothers because there is no Self alone. Jesus simplifies this by telling me that I must not offer to my brothers what I would not offer to God. I cannot offer my brother resentment or anger, not fear and not jealousy because these are not offerings fit for God, and my brothers are in no way separate from God.

Another way to think of this is to realize that I cannot enter the Kingdom (God) if I attack His Son. Obviously, His Son is of His Kingdom and to attack Him is to attack God. Each time I see that I am offering my brother something unworthy of God I remember the stakes. Is guilt so important to me, so necessary to my sense of self that I am willing to forfeit Heaven in order to preserve guilt? Is guilt so important to me that I would renounce God rather than to relinquish it?

We are a Thought in the Mind of God, and thoughts leave not their source. There is no way we can be separated from God, but we can be lost to the memory of where we are and what we are. The pain of thinking we are separated from God is as hideous as being lost to God, thus this elaborate ego deception we maintain to hide from our loss.

Who could face such a thing day in and day out without going mad? And all along, we remain God’s holy child, safe and whole and perfect as He created us, only dreaming of self-destruction. Wake up! Wake up! Wake up to Reality. Remember that it is only in defenselessness that your safety lies. Stop striking out in fear and anger at your brothers and start reaching out in love and acceptance. This is the miracle that will awaken us all.

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Study of Text, C 14: VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 1. 6-5-17

VIII. The Holy Meeting Place, P 1
1 In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you, and the power He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All this lies hidden in every darkened place, shrouded in guilt and in the dark denial of innocence. Behind the dark doors you have closed lies nothing, because nothing can obscure the gift of God. It is the closing of the doors that interferes with recognition of the power of God that shines in you. Banish not power from your mind, but let all that would hide your glory be brought to the judgment of the Holy Spirit, and there undone. Whom He would save for glory is saved for it. He has promised the Father that through Him you would be released from littleness to glory. To what He promised God He is wholly faithful, for He shares with God the promise that was given Him to share with you.

Journal
The Holy Spirit has a job to do, and He will not fail. His promise is that He will awaken us to our glory and He is faithful to His pledge. As each of us becomes ready to let go of the ego separation idea, the Holy Spirit directs and guides and heals. How could we fail when we have this certain help? As we accept His help, our awareness of reality is restored.
The only thing that stands between us and the power and glory bestowed on us in our creation is a system of beliefs that allowed us to have this experience. Now that we are ready to awaken from this dream state, the Holy Spirit looks with us at these beliefs and shines the light of truth on them. Their illusory nature becomes so apparent that we withdraw our belief and lose interest in them. The world of separation dissolves, and we see the love and innocence that has always been there.

The way this worked for me and many others, I am sure, is that I began to pay attention to my thoughts. I gradually accepted that they were powerful whether they were real thoughts or not. This new way of perceiving the power of my thoughts pointed to a self that was different than the vulnerable and weak person I had thought myself to be. I had not known that I had such power.

From this more enlightened understanding, I let the Holy Spirit guide me to other truths, and I began to consider the possibility that I was not the guilty person I had believed I was. It made sense to me that I could not change what God created unchangeable, and so I started accepting the Holy Spirit’s offer to heal my mind of the belief that my assumed guilt could be real and permanent.

After some time, I surrendered my mind to the Holy Spirit without reservation. I knew I wanted to remember who I am and so asked what was to be done next, and I did it to the best of my ability. Not to say this was quick or easy, but it did remain simple. The Holy Spirit would point me to a thought that needed to be seen. I would look at it, feel the repercussions of believing it, and then decide to let my mind be corrected by Him. Slowly but steadily, the Holy Spirit and I uncovered enough of the untrue thoughts to let light shine in my darkened mind.

My mind is no longer dark with ego thinking. I still have some shadows and dark corners to explore with the Holy Spirit. But no matter how real the ego story seems to get, I never completely believe it, and I am always willing to be enlightened. There is no hard work rebuilding what I lost because I never lost it. It remains a simple matter of removing what I am no longer interested in believing, and God gave me His Holy Spirit to be sure I had all the help I needed. Thank you, God. I love you, God.

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Study of Text, C 14: VII. Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit, P 7. 5-31-17

VII. Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit, P 7

7 Joining with Him in seeing is the way in which you learn to share with Him the interpretation of perception that leads to knowledge. You cannot see alone. Sharing perception with Him Whom God has given you teaches you how to recognize what you see. It is the recognition that nothing you see means anything alone. Seeing with Him will show you that all meaning, including yours, comes not from double vision, but from the gentle fusing of everything into one meaning, one emotion and one purpose. God has one purpose which He shares with you. The single vision which the Holy Spirit offers you will bring this oneness to your mind with clarity and brightness so intense you could not wish, for all the world, not to accept what God would have you have. Behold your will, accepting it as His, with all His Love as yours. All honor to you through Him, and through Him unto God.

Journal
Cate Grieves has awakened to the truth and her perception is true. She often says that though her eyes continue to show her what we all see, her mind sees only God. My lesson for today says that all things are echoes of the Voice for God. As our minds are healed we will see only God, and we will hear only the Voice for God.

I am not yet awakened, but I have done this at least; I have begun to see one purpose in all things. The purpose is to see everything come together in perfect oneness. It is the lesson that nothing I see means anything alone, that meaning comes from seeing together. How does this work? Here is an example from my life.

For the last few days, I have been asking sincerely that my mind be healed of all grievances. As a result, many of them that I didn’t even know I was holding have come into my conscious mind for me to look at with the Holy Spirit and to have them healed for me. It is not always pleasant work, this looking and feeling, but it meets my purpose. I have learned that while the grievances seem to be different, their shared purpose of healing the mind makes them all the same.

In the past, I thought the grievances were about assaults on a personal self.  I now see the grievances in whatever form they may take as having one purpose, one meaning, and one emotion as I use them to see that I have no personal self to save. My salvation lies in this discovery. All things are the Voice for God as He uses them to show me that I am one with all.

I join with the Holy Spirit as we look at my mind together and experience my emotions together. As I do this over and over with the same wonderful results, that is, my mind is healing of the belief in separation, I realize that all things are a lesson in joining. And I come to know that there is no separation. Joining with the Holy Spirit teaches me that I am joined with all things and that all things are one with God. I have not quite reached the happy conclusion of my practice, but I see it. It is a light at the end of a short tunnel.

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Study of Text, C 14: VII. Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit, P 6. 5-29-17

VII. Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit, P 6
6 The Holy Spirit asks of you but this; bring to Him every secret you have locked away from Him. Open every door to Him, and bid Him enter the darkness and lighten it away. At your request He enters gladly. He brings the light to darkness if you make the darkness open to Him. But what you hide He cannot look upon. He sees for you, and unless you look with Him He cannot see. The vision of Christ is not for Him alone, but for Him with you. Bring, therefore, all your dark and secret thoughts to Him, and look upon them with Him. He holds the light, and you the darkness. They cannot coexist when both of you together look on them. His judgment must prevail, and He will give it to you as you join your perception to His.

Journal
Clearly, if we would like to have a healed mind there are only two things we need to do. We need to expose all our dark thoughts to the Holy Spirit, hiding nothing from Him. And we must look at them with Him. This is all. It seems our part in this process is very limited. If we are willing to do this without exception, we will experience true perception, and true perception will allow us to awaken to a happy dream and to help others awaken as well.

When I think about this it seems like I am willing to surrender all dark thoughts and to do it now! And I am, but every once in a while I come across thoughts that seem so confused I cannot look with Holy Spirit. I can’t seem to unravel my thinking enough to do this simple step. Each time this happens, I work through the issue, asking Holy Spirit for greater clarity. Each time, what I discover is that I was hiding the truth because I didn’t want to give it up.

When this happens it is always because I think there is some value in holding onto a particular belief. For instance, sometimes I think I need a guilt thought because I need someone besides me to be guilty. Guilt confuses and frightens, and so keeps the mind clouded. The ego could not long hold my attention if my mind were clear. That is why my work now is to allow Holy Spirit to clear my mind. The light of Heaven will shine away the darkness of the ego’s confused thinking.

There are ways I can tell that I am hiding something from myself and the Holy Spirit. Sickness is one of those ways. If I hold onto a dark thought long enough, I wind up projecting my unconscious guilt onto the image that is my body. Sometimes it is sadness, or anger, or fear that alert me, sometimes just a lump in my throat. When I see that I must be confused again, I do what it takes to get to the bottom of it.

Sometimes I use a Byron Katie worksheet to unravel my thinking. Sometimes I do root cause inquiry. Sometimes, I just tell Holy Spirit that I am willing to look at the problem with Him, and I want to do it now. I tell Him that the ego is afraid of this, but I am not the ego and I want this done. However, I do it, I always eventually do the work, and nowadays I do it quickly. I like a clear mind. I like being free of ego thinking.

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Study of Text, C 14: VII. Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit, P 5. 5-24-17

VII. Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit, P 5

5 Light cannot enter darkness when a mind believes in darkness, and will not let it go. Truth does not struggle against ignorance, and love does not attack fear. What needs no protection does not defend itself. Defense is of your making. God knows it not. The Holy Spirit uses defenses on behalf of truth only because you made them against it. His perception of them, according to His purpose, merely changes them into a call for what you have attacked with them. Defenses, like everything you made, must be gently turned to your own good, translated by the Holy Spirit from means of self-destruction to means of preservation and release. His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. Therefore, to Him it is so easy that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you. Do not delay in your return to peace by wondering how He can fulfill what God has given Him to do. Leave that to Him Who knows. You are not asked to do mighty tasks yourself. You are merely asked to do the little He suggests you do, trusting Him only to the small extent of believing that, if He asks it, you can do it. You will see how easily all that He asks can be accomplished.

Journal

The Holy Spirit uses all we made that hurts us. He turns it into something that will help return us to our right mind. The way we use defense it is destructive. It blocks our awareness of truth. Given to the Holy Spirit, it becomes protective of the truth. This shift is impossible for us to do, but easy for the Holy Spirit. In fact, it was done the moment the task was given Him. We do have a part in it, which is the willingness and desire to be healed. Acceptance is our part.

Even that little bit can seem difficult. We have put great value in our own little kingdom and there is a reluctance to relinquish it. We put great value in defense and it seems scary to lay down our arms. The part of the mind that enjoys the stories and that wants to keep the self- identity it made up, is adamant in resisting the Holy Spirit. But there is so much waiting for us outside this illusion. Our reality is glorious and living that reality is bliss.

It would seem a simple, self-evident choice. So why don’t we just make it? The problem is twofold. First, we don’t remember our reality and so it feels like we are asked to sacrifice what we are for something that is just a vague promise. We are asked to accept on blind faith what we don’t remember. The answer to this problem is in our mind. As we begin to surrender to the Holy Spirit and do the little asked of us, the truth that has never left us is revealed.

The second part of the problem is that we don’t think we can do this. It seems too hard, too scary. We are asked to let go of everything that we know and every defense we have in faith that we will be saved. It is like we are being asked to step off the cliff in the promise that we will not, after all, fall to our death.

Even as we begin to do what it is asked, dismantling the belief system that blocks the truth, it seems like an endless task. Every time we remove a brick from that wall there is another to be removed. The answer to this problem is simple. We work at the task of removing the bricks one at a time, and this gives the Holy Spirit permission to heal our mind. We can’t wake ourselves up, but we can signal our willingness to be awakened by doing the simple tasks asked of us. Holy Spirit does the hard work, and for Him, it is not hard.

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Study of Text, C 14: VII. Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit, P 4. 5-23-17

VII. Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit, P 4

4 Our emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable to the desirable; what you do not want to what you do. You will realize that salvation must come to you this way, if you consider what dissociation is. Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief which cannot coexist are both maintained. If they are brought together, their joint acceptance becomes impossible. But if one is kept in darkness from the other, their separation seems to keep them both alive and equal in their reality. Their joining thus becomes the source of fear, for if they meet, acceptance must be withdrawn from one of them. You cannot have them both, for each denies the other. Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each in a separate place can be endowed with firm belief. Bring them together, and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. One will go, because the other is seen in the same place.

Journal

This paragraph is very helpful in understanding why we must look at our thoughts and bring them to the Holy Spirit. It also explains why we exist in a nearly constant state of mostly unacknowledged anxiety. We believe in two realities and these realities are in no way compatible, and yet, we try to maintain a firm belief in both. It is a wonder we can function in this insanity.

Imagine that you believe the sky is green. You also believe the sky is blue. You believe that 1+1=2, and your belief that 1+1=3 is just a firmly fixed in your mind. This is what is happening to us all the time. We believe in our Divinity, that we are love as is our Creator. We believe in our innocence and our perfection and our oneness. At the same time, we have an equally strong belief in our guilt, in fear and hatred. We believe we are limited and vulnerable. We believe in projection as defense. How can we believe in both of these pictures of our self at the same time?

We maintain the two visions through dissociation. We keep them apart. When we believe in our ego self, we keep our true self in the closet with the door firmly closed. Like most people, for most of my life dissociation was so thorough that I acknowledged my ego-self most of the time and ignored the true self. This did not obliterate my true self, but through dissociation, I kept the knowledge of my true self hidden. With A Course in Miracles, I began to acknowledge both and eventually, my true self began to take precedence in my mind.

I did this by deliberately bringing the two visions together and looking at them both. This forced me to see they were incompatible and forced me to decide between them. This is the purpose of looking at a belief and then asking the Holy Spirit for another way to see it. The other way is the vision I had ignored up until that time. When the Holy Spirit brought it out of hiding and showed it to me, I was able to see clearly that the ego choice was not ever going to make me happy. Thus the choice for truth was inevitable.

It sounds like it would be very simple and straightforward, and that I would choose the truth once and for all. But what I noticed right away is that I had given a great deal of value to the ego way of thinking. It was not always so straight-forward and not always clear, and a lot of time it was frightening to think of letting the old way go. That voice in my head kept warning me that defense was necessary, and all this talk of love and invulnerability was nonsense and was going to get me hurt. So it took awhile but now I am delighted to find the hidden false beliefs lurking around in my mind. I am happy to bring them to the truth so I can make a decision for God, which is a decision for my true self and for happiness.

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