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Study of Text, C 14: II. The Happy Learner, P 3. 2-14-17

II. The Happy Learner, P 3

3 All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that all this is not true. To those unhappy learners who would teach themselves nothing, and delude themselves into believing that it is not nothing, the Holy Spirit says, with steadfast quietness:

The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there. Let Me make the one distinction for you that you cannot make, but need to learn. Your faith in nothing is deceiving you. Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs. You will find no deception there, but only the simple truth. And you will love it because you will understand it.

Journal

There should be an asterisk or something beside this paragraph, some special statement that says, “Pay attention now, you are about to learn the secret to life eternal.” A Course in Miracles turns the illusion we think of as life right on its head. It pulls the rug from under us. And yet, it does it so gently that it takes awhile to truly sink in.

What we are remembering as we do this work is that truth is true and what we are experiencing here is not that! The truth is true and our present experience of life is not true. It is not real and it is not actually happening. He then tells us that we cannot on our own distinguish the truth from the experience, but that the Holy Spirit can do that for us, and we can learn from Him. All He needs is our faith in Him.

Jesus also reassures us that this will be a happy event. He says that where we are being taken is into our true mind and it is very holy and that it is there we will find the simple truth. He also says that we will love it because we will understand it. The Holy Spirit speaks the truth to us consistently and constantly, and sometimes we let ourselves hear it. As we listen more often, the mind is healed of its insanity.

In lesson 45, Jesus says this.

“You think with the Mind of God. Therefore you share your thoughts with Him, as He shares His with you. They are the same thoughts, because they are thought by the same Mind.”

I read this and all I can think is to ask Jesus, “What am I?” I cannot be anything I ever identified with in the past, at least in the past experience of this life. And yet, he tells us over and over how very holy we are, how powerful, how beautiful. He tells us that we are in the Mind of God and that God is in our mind, that we think with the same Mind. How can I read this without crying? I can’t. How can I know this is true without His help? I can’t. But with His help I can learn it.

In the past and sometimes even now I tell Him that I am a body in pain, that I am sad, that I feel beleaguered by all around me and the circumstances of this life. I tell Him I am afraid and oh so very guilty. He, in turn, understands I believe this but simply knows it is not true. He answers each fear, each mistaken belief with the same steadfast reminder that the truth is true and only the truth is true, and what I believe is not true. He keeps turning my attention to my holiness, to my glorious reality.

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Study of Text, C 14: II. The Happy Learner, P 2. 2-13-17

II. The Happy Learner, P 2

2 The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you are elsewhere, begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that truth is true. This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the only one. Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds. Consider all the distortions you have made of nothing; all the strange forms and feelings and actions and reactions that you have woven out of it. Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth, and nothing are you less inclined to listen to. The contrast between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, yet you do not see it. The simple and the obvious are not apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns because of them.

Journal

What I used to believe every day of my life, and to a lesser degree still do. I am a body and am separate from other bodies. I have certain needs and goals and they are different from the needs and goals of others. There is a limit to what is available and I am in competition for that limited supply. I need, I need, I need, because I think I lack. I am small and vulnerable and very fragile. I am alone. I am going to suffer in my life, and my only hope is to suffer less. My life is dedicated to that purpose of less suffering. In the end, no matter what I do, I am going to die. God is to be cajoled and begged and manipulated into giving me what I want. God might say no and so God is to be hated and feared.

What I am learning now to be the truth. I am spirit. This body I use does not exist anywhere but in my mind. I am very holy because God is in my mind. There is absolutely nothing my holiness cannot do. I can believe anything I want to believe and while I believe it, it is true for me. If what I believe is not the truth I will suffer as if it is the truth. My mind is the most powerful force in the universe and absolutely decides my experience. Do I have a pain in my neck? If so it is because I saw some value in having that pain and decided on it. Being free of that pain is as simple as deciding I have no use for it. Everything in the world I see is there because I chose for it to be there and all that is missing is missing because I chose for it not to be there. I am one with all that is. There is nothing outside of me. There is no one and no thing that exists anywhere but in the mind. I love God and He loves me. This is the truth and only the truth is true.

Or put more simply: I am the Son of God, exactly as I was created and nothing has or could change that. Everything else does not exist.

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Study of Text, C 14: II. The Happy Learner, P 1. 2-9-17

II. The Happy Learner, P 1

1 The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is happiness. This has so confused you that you have undertaken to learn to do what you can never do, believing that unless you learn it you will not be happy. You do not realize that the foundation on which this most peculiar learning goal depends means absolutely nothing. Yet it may still make sense to you. Have faith in nothing and you will find the “treasure” that you seek. Yet you will add another burden to your already burdened mind. You will believe that nothing is of value, and will value it. A little piece of glass, a speck of dust, a body or a war are one to you. For if you value one thing made of nothing, you have believed that nothing can be precious, and that you can learn how to make the untrue true.

Journal

The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner. That doesn’t sound too hard, and yet, Jesus says that we who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that we are miserable and not happy. So he is saying both that we are miserable and that we don’t even realize it. I had to think about that a bit. Is it true? Well, it is not as true as it used to be, for sure. But I can remember it being very true.

I can remember when I was a teenager that I was most happy when there was some drama or other going on in my life. I kinda got into that Myron as sad and abused image. I liked the attention and I found it a role I could play easily. So when I had the chance to play it up, I took full advantage of it and it made me weirdly happy.

I also remember when I was married the first time. The marriage was reaching its first (and pretty much last) challenge, and looking back I see that once again I liked the drama and feeling sorry for Myron. I wrote these long sad, pitiful entries into a journal. Later when I went back and read some of them I was actually embarrassed enough at my immaturity and ridiculous display that I threw the journal away. But at that time, my misery was something I valued and in that weird way it made me happy.

There were many other examples, but I eventually matured and stopped seeking happiness through misery. Well at least it got less blatant, and eventually, more subtle. So do I still do that? I guess I must because here I am, still dreaming of a world where misery is always right around the corner, seemingly waiting to surprise me with an attack. We know though that nothing is in our world without our consent, so I must be making myself miserable. Therefore I must be still confused about the difference between misery and happiness. Now that is beyond weird considering what I know now.

The good news is that I am now aware that there is a difference between misery and happiness. That is a good thing because the Holy Spirit needs that contrast to help me see differently. So I bring misery into my life now, but since I have had some mind healing I know what happiness feels like, and I don’t enjoy misery anymore, or at least I more quickly notice that I’m not happy. This contrast between misery and happiness has taught me to quickly return my mind to God. It has created a distaste for drama and for feeling mistreated, and especially for feeling like a victim.

Jesus is also telling us that we are still looking to the world to find value. We do this when we bring unhappiness into our life and then try to change the circumstances to make things better. In the interim period when I was still learning not to value misery, I still spent a lot of time trying to make my world nicer. I collected neat things. I was unhappy when I didn’t have a nice car. I fretted endlessly about money and things. Then when I started getting these things, I felt personal pride at their acquisition and since I thought I was personally responsible, I was miserable because I might not be able to keep them.

Then there is the spiritual ego that took pride in my progress on this path. But that was just as much a dead end as taking pride in acquiring things. I was never enough, never good enough, always just not there yet. I bemoaned my errors and lack of progress and though I didn’t realize it, this was the same behavior as I had in my early life. Poor Myron, she works so hard on her spiritual path and yet she just can’t quite make it. Failing was my misery, but also my happiness. It kept me in the world, kept my story going, and at the same time let me feel pious because I was such a dedicated seeker.

Now what I can see is that I still hold onto guilt and guilt is the cause of all misery. I know that guilt is not real and that I don’t have to keep it, and yet I do. So there must still be the thought that it has some value to me, even though I know that doesn’t make sense and I can hardly believe it is true of me. But here I am.

The difference now is that I am letting guilt and fear go. I am dedicated to this. I am very aware of the contrast between misery and true happiness. I have little patience for unhappiness and I act much more quickly now when I become confused about that. I will not continue to make the untrue true any longer than absolutely necessary, nor will I judge myself for the process I seem to be going through. This is real progress.

One more thought about this. I have been doing the holiness lessons and I love them. This time through, they are more helpful than ever before because I believe them more than ever before. So in one of the practices with them I noticed that I had a lot of pain in my knee. I must have hurt it somehow. I said that in this situation with the pain in my knee, there is nothing my holiness cannot do. I said that my holiness blesses this knee situation. I said that in this belief in pain and the desire for it, there is nothing my holiness cannot do.

Then I felt uneasy because nothing seemed to be happening, but I also know that Jesus is never wrong. So I stayed with it. What I realized yesterday is that the aching knee is of my own making and I make it to prove that the truth is not true and I better just stay where I am. Since the pain is an illusion, I can just disregard it. I kept the belief in my holiness to the forefront of my mind. Today, there is only a twinge in the knee. So strange that I must still talk myself out of misery. It must be that I still get confused and think that misery is happiness. But I also know this isn’t true.

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Study of Text, C 14: I. The Conditions of Learning, P 5. 2-7-17

I. The Conditions of Learning, P 5

5 The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching by showing you what you can never learn. His message is not indirect, but He must introduce the simple truth into a thought system which has become so twisted and so complex you cannot see that it means nothing. He merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. But you who cannot undo what you have made, nor escape the heavy burden of its dullness that lies upon your mind, cannot see through it. It deceives you, because you chose to deceive yourself. Those who choose to be deceived will merely attack direct approaches, because they seem to encroach upon deception and strike at it.

Journal

We probably started with a simple idea, something like, “I wonder what it would be like to not be Divine?” And as that idea unfolded it became the twisted and complex thought system that Jesus is talking about. He makes it clear that we chose this and that part of choosing it was to forget we chose it. He says that we remembered not to laugh.

In other words, if we did not choose to deliberately forget that we made this up, then we would not believe in it, but would laugh at it. We wanted the experience and to have the experience we had to suspend reality and forget it wasn’t real. That was a deliberate choice. But there is a failsafe in place, the Holy Spirit, which is in our minds waiting for the signal that we are ready to wake up from this dream.

I try to remember back before I found A Course in Miracles. All the stuff that happened in my life, no matter how crazy or how painful was just “life” as I had come to know it. I prayed for help with life, but it never occurred to me that I could pray for help to extricate myself from this life. Mostly, I just tried to get better at dealing with it.

Now I understand from A Course in Miracles that this thing I think of as living is not real. This experience I am having is not life, but a twisted dream of life. This happened as the Course taught me to recognize the ego in my mind, to see the contrast between choosing to listen to the ego and choosing to listen to the Holy Spirit.

Once we learn what the ego is and how we made it, then learn to contrast it with our true nature, we make a decision as to what we want. I have decided that I am ready to wake up from this dream, and so each time I recognize that I am making decisions with the ego I turn to the Holy Spirit instead. At my request, the Holy Spirit is healing my mind and returning me to my natural state as part of God.

The question we often ask is why, if we made the ego, we need help to undo it. The ego twists that question into if life was so great with God, why did we leave it. First, we did not choose to leave God, we just chose to have an interesting and different experience. We remain in God even while we dream of these stories of being outside God.

The reason we need help waking up is because of the decision we made to forget where the ego came from. It was the decision to remember not to laugh at the whole insane idea and to take it very seriously that keeps us from the clarity we need to undo the ego.

That is why we have the Holy Spirit Who is never confused. Jesus says that He merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. (This is what he taught me to do. I choose to ignore the story and look at the lesson it has, and when I choose to disregard appearances and know the truth instead.)His perfect clarity allows Him to see the truth about us and being in our mind, we are able to see the truth about ourselves. We cannot learn this on our own, but we can choose to know it and the Holy Spirit will teach us what we want to know. Desire is everything.

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Study of Text, C 14: I. The Conditions of Learning, P 4. 2-6-17

I. The Conditions of Learning, P 4

4 Any direction that would lead you where the Holy Spirit leads you not, goes nowhere. Anything you deny that He knows to be true you have denied yourself, and He must therefore teach you not to deny it. Undoing is indirect, as doing is. You were created only to create, neither to see nor do. These are but indirect expressions of the will to live, which has been blocked by the capricious and unholy whim of death and murder that your Father does not share with you. You have set yourself the task of sharing what cannot be shared. And while you think it possible to learn to do this, you will not believe all that is possible to learn to do.

Journal
Jesus talks about direct and indirect expressions. Seeing and doing are indirect expressions of the will to live. That is a strange thought because seeing and doing are all we remember and all that seems to make up life. Even if someone is blind and so cannot see with the body’s eyes, they can perceive which is another way of seeing.

I see people and places and things and do stuff with them and there. I crave the things I see, to hold them and own them. I perceive what they all mean to me and my perception is different than yours and even mine is not stable. I can change my mind in a minute about what it means. Now I love it, now I hate it.

What I see, what it means, and what I do with it; that makes up my life as I know it. And yet, Jesus says that this is an indirect expression of the will to live. So there must be a direct expression. What could that be? Perhaps being rather than doing? But what would that look like? I cannot envision that.

Jesus says that I was created to create, not to see or do. Even that has little meaning to me. I can relate to making, but making is just more doing.  Jesus also says that what I deny, I deny myself. So I deny the ability to create and therefore I cannot create. Instead I try to create indirectly through making.

We made this world. Then within the world we make things, discover things, do things. All of this is indirect attempts at creating, and it leaves us empty because it denies us our heritage which is direct creation. We can and will regain what we have blocked. So let me shift my focus. Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will teach us not to deny it. This will be indirect, too.

He says that we must follow Holy Spirit rather than ego because ego will only take you to the indirect experience where we worship death rather than life. Here is what I see as I read this paragraph. When I place my focus on ego, I live a shadow life. It is a pale copy of Life. It is indirect living.

In this imitation of living I make rather than create, and I become something that dies rather than the eternal being that I am. I suffer in pain and sickness rather than existing in eternal bliss. I am meant to share all with all, but instead I set myself the impossible task of sharing what I made, that is, death and destruction.

And thus I have set myself up for failure and I teach myself I lack in a way that cannot be filled. Only the Holy Spirit can help me out of this conundrum where I made the unbelievable and then believed in it. I can depend on the Holy Spirit to do this. He will not fail me. I only need to turn to Him with a sincere desire to be shown.

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Study of Text, C 14: I. The Conditions of Learning, P 3. 2-3-17

I. The Conditions of Learning, P 3

3 Seeing is always outward. Were your thoughts wholly of you, the thought system you made would be forever dark. The thoughts the mind of God’s Son projects or extends have all the power that he gives to them. The thoughts he shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made are his beliefs. And it is these, and not the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love. They will not be taken from him. But they can be given up by him, for the Source of their undoing is in him. There is nothing in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane and leads to nothing. Yet in him who made this insane logic there is One Who knows it leads to nothing, for He knows everything.

Journal
Jesus is explaining to us that the world we made does have its own logic but it is logic that leads us nowhere. He also helps us to understand that we believe in what we made and we are choosing to defend it. If that were all we had to go on, then what we made would remain true to us and we would be stuck with it forever. But because we have the Truth in our mind, the Holy Spirit Who knows everything, we have a way out of our self made world.

I was talking to someone this morning who is a Republican and a staunch supporter of Trump. He explained that he does not agree with everything Donald Trump does, but he had to vote for him. His religious beliefs do not allow him to vote for anyone who would promote abortion or same sex marriage. I could have pointed out some things that I suspect this person is concerned about now that the election is over and action is being taken.

I could let his fears give me this little opening and maybe convince him to see things my way. As I noticed these thoughts in my mind, I mentally stepped back. Even as we spoke, I opened my mind to Love. It was a bright light in my mind that exposed the fear there. Fear wants company. It wants others to join it. It wants to be right. It wants to win.

Pausing for that moment gave me the chance to choose love rather than fear. I let him talk. When his fear started to express itself, I helped him to see that his only job is to accept the Atonement for himself. Not in those words exactly, but in a way that he could understand. I reminded him that bodies can die but he cannot because he is not a body, he is spirit. Though we have very different religious views, this was something he could understand and accept.

The situation this morning is an example of what Jesus is telling us. The ego mind wants divisiveness. It wants fear and guilt, and it wants to be right. I saw that in my mind and I rejected it. I asked, instead, for another way to see, and the Truth in my mind came forward at my request. In that moment I was a miracle worker.

Principles of Miracles, P 26
26 Miracles represent freedom from fear. “Atoning” means “undoing.” The undoing of fear is an essential part of the atonement value of miracles.

I could have stayed with the fear and my friend and I could have battled to see who could find the most fearful thoughts and for whose perception was “right.” But by the grace of God, I had a moment of sanity and chose to Atone and so for that moment at least, I freed us both from fear.

It was also that indirect proof that Jesus is telling us about. I proved that I was blessed by blessing this brother of mine with love rather than fear. I brought us both to a place of peace and the peace of God is the only goal we need have.

The peace of God is everything I want. The peace of God is 
my one goal; the aim of all my living here, the end I seek, 
my purpose and my function and my life, while I abide 
where I am not at home. Lesson 205

And that peace is to be found within, not without. Within is where God placed our certain way home, right next to the dream we scripted, right next to where It was needed. As it says in this paragraph, God will not take our dream from us, but we will choose to give it up. This morning I made that choice, and may I continue to do so from now on. Thank you, God, for placing the Source of undoing in my mind.

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Study of Text, C 14: I. The Conditions of Learning, P 2. 2-2-17

I. The Conditions of Learning, P 2

2 Indirect proof of truth is needed in a world made of denial and without direction. You will perceive the need for this if you realize that to deny is the decision not to know. The logic of the world must therefore lead to nothing, for its goal is nothing. If you decide to have and give and be nothing except a dream, you must direct your thoughts unto oblivion. And if you have and give and are everything, and all this has been denied, your thought system is closed off and wholly separated from the truth. This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream is sacred to you. That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream.

Journal

This paragraph made me cry, first for the insanity of it, then that my Creator placed the Holy Spirit in me where I placed the dream. My way out is assured. We made the world we see and we hold it dear regardless of the pain and suffering that is its effect. We made it in such a way that we could believe in it and so it seems very real to us.

We made it from our thoughts and it is in allowing those thoughts to be changed that we will extricate ourselves from the dream as we are ready. But because of the power of our thoughts, this dream is not just precious to us, it is logical and seems to make sense and so even as we begin to awaken from it, it is very confusing.

The ego mind argues against awakening using its insane logic to keep us engaged in the stories. Holy Spirit is helping us to see that logical or not, it leads to nothing. At first when I began to study A Course in Miracles, I believed what I was reading, but I did not practice it all the time. When I did practice it, I did so only partially. There would be circumstances that I held apart from my practice.

For instance, I held some grievances that I justified and would not let go. I would say that it was impossible, that I was trying and couldn’t, but that is never true. If we keep an idea it is because we want that idea. We believe it holds some value for us and we cannot afford to let it go. Somewhere along the line as I became more committed to this path, I let go of the idea that I couldn’t and simply accepted I didn’t want to. Then I was ready to want the change. I have never released a grievance that I regretted losing.

It took me a long time to fully accept what Jesus is telling us here. This world and the thoughts that made it are completely insane. There is no part of it that is wholly sane. Every ego thought in my mind is affected by this confused and hurtful perception. Now that I understand this, I don’t have any thoughts I am not willing to question.

I still get confused at times because instead of being the observer and staying detached, I get caught up in the story itself. But even in my confusion I know what I want. I want the peace of God and having that one invariable goal is like having an anchor that keeps me from drifting too far afield. I always, sooner or later, come back to my only goal. I no longer question the insanity of the world we made, nor do I pretend I have no control. This is making a huge difference.

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