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Study of Text, Chapter 13:Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 8. 5-25-16

I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 8

8 You are invulnerable because you are guiltless. You can hold on to the past only through guilt. For guilt establishes that you will be punished for what you have done, and thus depends on one-dimensional time, proceeding from past to future. No one who believes this can understand what “always” means, and therefore guilt must deprive you of the appreciation of eternity. You are immortal because you are eternal, and “always” must be now. Guilt, then, is a way of holding past and future in your mind to ensure the ego’s continuity. For if what has been will be punished, the ego’s continuity is guaranteed. Yet the guarantee of your continuity is God’s, not the ego’s. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant.

Journal
Jesus has told us that guilt is the cause of all sickness, and now he tells us that we are invulnerable because we are guiltless, and also that guilt is the reason we made time. If we are to be punished for our sins, and we will believe this if we believe in guilt, then the punishment is to come and therefore a linear time-line is needed.

But we are immortal because we are eternal. So there cannot be time, though we will not really understand this if we keep our belief in guilt. I used to think that eternal meant time would continue forever, but that is not it all. Eternal is not something that continues in the since that it goes on year after year and never ends. Eternal is now, and now is constant. It goes nowhere and never changes.

Sometimes I try to experience now as if I didn’t believe in time. I let go of thinking and just exist in this now moment with no thought as to the next moment and no retreat into a past. I am not very good at this and it never lasts long, but it is a peaceful exercise. Trying to accept timelessness is very hard. My mind is solidly fixed in time. So what I am doing instead is letting go of guilt and this is leading me to let go of the belief in guilt. Without guilt there will be no need for time.

There are two owners of the company where I work. One of them is my brother and he is over sales and marketing. I like working for him and appreciate his forward thinking as well as his knowledge. The other boss is over operations and his approach is very different, but they make a good balance and everything has been mostly fine. Until tomorrow. Then my brother is retiring and I will be under the other boss.

I had no idea that Paul was retiring this soon and it came as a shock when he made his announcement. I immediately went into fear and have had a hard time extricating myself. What I notice in this situation is that the fear (and subsequent blame and judgment) is based on a non-existent future. I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. I have no idea what the next moment will bring. So why should I be afraid?

This morning I was sitting outside on my patio. The birds were singing to me and the weather was still pleasant. It was a lovely way to begin my day. As I sat there drinking my coffee, I decided on the day I would have. I asked for help in this decision, and I thought that I wanted today to be guilt free and that I would be fearless no matter what the circumstances were.

As I sat there thinking appreciating this decision and feeling thankful for the guidance, I imagined for a moment that I was guiltless, and so was everyone else. I imagined that this moment was the only one. I saw that I was completely at peace. The moment was perfect, nothing was wrong, I was happy.

Then I had the thought that I wish Paul had waited just a few more months to retire. This was the same thing as saying he was guilty of retiring too soon and causing me problems. The spell was broken. I was back in time and no longer at peace. Guilt put me back in time and I lost all appreciation for immortality and eternity, and therefore of peace.

It seemed sad to me at the time, but now contemplating it, I see how lucky I am. I understand this paragraph perfectly because I watched it happen. I had a few moments of timelessness and sold it for a grievance. But having seen how this happens, I am ready to let go of the guilt associated with this change and this brings me much closer to being willing to give up guilt altogether.

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Study of Text, Chapter 13:Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 7. 5-24-16

I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 7

7 As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you, you will realize that there is no journey, but only an awakening. The Son of God, who sleepeth not, has kept faith with his Father for you. There is no road to travel on, and no time to travel through. For God waits not for His Son in time, being forever unwilling to be without him. And so it has always been. Let the holiness of God’s Son shine away the cloud of guilt that darkens your mind, and by accepting his purity as yours, learn of him that it is yours.

Journal
I really am ok. I am safe and I am untouched by the illusion of life without God. I am with God now because it is His Will. There is no world, no time, no betrayal or sin. None of this is real and none of it is happening. There is a dark cloud of guilt that keeps me confused and blind, and believing in the dream as if it were really occurring, as if my dreams could overcome reality.

The cloud of guilt feels very real to those of us under its influence, but I trust that it is as insubstantial as all clouds. When I am flying I can see the clouds out the window of the plane. They don’t stop the plane or slow it down. I see us moving through them as if they were not there. The cloud of guilt is the same as the clouds outside the plane. It has no power to stop us from awakening or even from slowing us down.

I pray every day to see my guiltlessness as I see my brothers as guiltless. Some days I do very well. It seems so easy I think that it has been done and cannot imagine that I will ever again believe in guilt. But then something happens and I feel guilty or think that someone else is guilty, and the clouds seem to take on a solidity that is hard to get through and impossible to move. Imagine if your pilot refused to go through clouds because he thought they would stop the plane. When I stay stuck in guilt because I believe the guilt is real, this is what I am doing, I’m refusing to fly, refusing to continue this imagined journey. Sigh.

But at least I know this cannot be true. I must be mistaken and I know that I am fully supported as I go through the process of letting that belief go. If nothing else, even in my most difficult moments, I am filled with gratitude for A Course in Miracles. I cannot imagine doing this without the Course. I know other people awaken while on other paths, but for me, my help comes from Jesus through his course. No matter how difficult it might seem to forgive the grievance of the moment, I know that it can be done and that I will do it. Thank you, Brother. I am so deeply grateful.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 13:Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 6. 5-23-16

I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 6

6 When you have accepted the Atonement for yourself, you will realize there is no guilt in God’s Son. And only as you look upon him as guiltless can you understand his oneness. For the idea of guilt brings a belief in condemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity. You can condemn only yourself, and by so doing you cannot know that you are God’s Son. You have denied the condition of his being, which is his perfect blamelessness. Out of love he was created, and in love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the Love of his Father.

Journal
Out of love I was created and out of love I abide. This is true regardless of the dream state that seems to be my life. But my experience is not one of love, at least not all the time yet. It can be, though, as I allow the idea of guilt to be removed from my mind, I begin to live the happy dream in anticipation of the end of the dream.

What I know now is the difference between love and fear, and I know that I can decide against fear when I choose to. Here is something I wrote in my Daily Lesson journal this morning.

“This morning as I let my mind settle into the choices I would make, I realized that what I want is that the day continues just as it is now. I feel happy and peaceful, and deeply in love with God. What else could I want for my day? I am overwhelmed with gratitude. What happened to that sense of loss I experienced last night at the thought of leaving the weekend behind? I made a different decision as I used a different advisor. I let go of what I thought the world needs to be and let the Holy Spirit show me what it can be.”

For awhile this morning that deep peace and love of God pervaded my very being. Then I was looking at a picture on Facebook and I had an instant of judgment. It wasn’t even a fully formed thought, just a feeling of judgment, and the peace vaporized, just like that. I felt a moment of panic as I realized what had happened to my peace. I traded it for judgment. I cannot judge a brother and be at peace, nor retain the state of perfect love.

Once I thought about it, I knew what had happened and what to do about it. I had, without conscious awareness, chosen to ask the ego to help me decide what that picture meant. From there I decide what can be done about it. In this case, I had quickly decided who was to blame, and was relieved that it was not my problem and I could ignore it. Separation, and then more separation.

Then I made a different choice, a different decision, using the Holy Spirit as my advisor. I canceled my original question by remembering that I forgot to decide with Spirit. I asked Him to interpret the picture for me and I stepped back in my mind and waited for His correction, knowing I wanted a new way to see this. I felt the conflict melt away and the peace return.

It seemed such a little thing, this quick judgment of a picture on Facebook. How important could it be? But there is no hierarchy of illusions. All wrong minded thinking, whether it seems big or little to me, cause lack of peace and lack of peace is as complete as is peace. This process of using the rules for decision is taking time and patience, but this is what time is for, this is what the world is for. I am literally undoing the ego in my mind.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 13, I.Guiltnessness and Invulnerability, P 5. 5-20-16

I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 5

5 You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless. He has always sought his guiltlessness, and he has found it. For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made, and the way to find release is not denied him. Being in him, he has found it. When he finds it is only a matter of time, and time is but an illusion. For the Son of God is guiltless now, and the brightness of his purity shines untouched forever in God’s Mind. God’s Son will always be as he was created. Deny your world and judge him not, for his eternal guiltlessness is in the Mind of his Father, and protects him forever.

Journal
This paragraph is making it very clear that the Son of God is guiltless and will discover this for himself. He will discover his innocence because it is in his mind right now. He is innocent right now, and is only waiting for him to know this. And it is also clear that the Son of God is me, is you, is everyone together. But to know we are the Son of God, we must know ourselves as one and as guiltless.

Yesterday I was judging someone and finding him guilty. For a moment I was convinced of his guilt. I had all the proof. But then I remembered that if this one is guilty, then I am guilty because we are not separate. I am not free until he is free. So I asked the Holy Spirit to show me what I was blocking with my attention focused on appearances. Suddenly I was free of the guilt. It was just gone. Thank you, Holy Spirit.

This is not the first time I have rejected the ego’s interpretation of events, and asked the Holy Spirit to look with me. And having practiced this for awhile now, I realize that it is quick and easy if I catch it right away. However, if I get mesmerized by my dream story, it becomes harder to let the judgment go. So I stay vigilant for those grievances, and Holy Spirit and I deal with them right away.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 13, I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 4. 5-18-16

I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 4

4 The journey the Son of God has set himself is useless indeed, but the journey on which his Father sets him is one of release and joy. The Father is not cruel, and His Son cannot hurt himself. The retaliation that he fears and that he sees will never touch him, for although he believes in it the Holy Spirit knows it is not true. The Holy Spirit stands at the end of time, where you must be because He is with you. He has already undone everything unworthy of the Son of God, for such was His mission, given Him by God. And what God gives has always been.

Journal
Man, this is good news and strange news at the same time. This journey through time is an illusion. We are already at the end of time. We have already been judged innocent. We are already abundant, loved, and safe; we have already overcome sickness, suffering and death. Or did any of it ever, even for an instant, touch us, except in our imaginations?

However, we set ourselves on this quest and so we must think we are on it, and that we must achieve our goal. We were given the Holy Spirit to help us do this. The Holy Spirit is the holder of the truth, and the Undoer of all insane ideas in the mind, and of the ego mind itself. Once we have slain the dragon and saved the day, we will discover we made up the dragon and the day had been saved the moment it was perceived as in danger.

Even though nothing is happening, it must happen because we chose it. In order to extricate ourselves from this dream, we must choose to awaken. That, really, is all there is to it. The desire to continue dreaming is the only dragon in this quest, and awakening the Son from the dream is how we save the day. We do it through forgiveness and acceptance. We surrender our armor and our sword and allow ourselves to be led from our sad little story and into eternity where we reside in the peace of God.

Everything we do toward that purpose is really just an undoing. I imagine it this way. I have awakened to the truth that there is a dream from which to awaken, and so I have turned around on my path and am walking back the way I came. As I do so, all that I have imagined I did is being undone. So I look at what I see there, the judgments and grievances, the sickness and suffering, the fear and the guilt. I ask my Guide to help me let go of these beliefs, and to see they were never the truth, but just stories within my story. I am changing nothing but my mind, but it must be changed.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 13:Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 3. 5-17-16

I. GUILTLESSNESS AND INVULNERABILITY, P 3
3 As you look upon yourself and judge what you do honestly, you may be tempted to wonder how you can be guiltless. Yet consider this: You are not guiltless in time, but in eternity. You have “sinned” in the past, but there is no past. Always has no direction. Time seems to go in one direction, but when you reach its end it will roll up like a long carpet spread along the past behind you, and will disappear. As long as you believe the Son of God is guilty you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to death. And the journey will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it is.

Journal
This idea of timelessness is hard for me to understand. I am so mired in time, that I cannot really imagine timelessness even though Jesus assures me that this is the truth. The idea of the carpet is really helpful. As long as I believe in guilt, I walk along this imaginary carpet of time, believing that it is leading me to death. When I let go of the belief in guilt, the carpet of time rolls up and disappears.

I am on this endless journey through time and time doesn’t exist. My mind boggles when I think of it this way. What is really helpful is that I am given a way for the journey through time to end even if I don’t fully understand or accept timelessness. I let go of the belief in guilt and it is done. The ego insists on guilt, and justifies this insistence by pointing out all the evil that I have done and others have done.

The Holy Spirit answers that idea with the assurance that what happened in the past does not exist because the past does not exist. If I hurt someone in this instant, a breath later, less than a breath later, that action is past and it is no more. I can keep the error real only if I insist that guilt is real. Insisting that guilt is real, I am insisting that time is real also, because I cannot have one without the other. I let go of guilt and time goes with it and I have only eternity. In eternity there is only innocence.
I had a situation where I was absolutely sure my boss was upset with me. I worried and fretted over it. I projected my feelings onto him, certain he was guilty of treating me unfairly and was responsible for my upset. I built this story up to monumental proportions and it occupied my mind all day long. I alternately felt guilty and then saw him as the guilty party. I was miserable.

Then I heard something that made me realize that I was completely wrong. My boss wasn’t upset with me at all. The entire scenario came from a misunderstood remark and was meaningless. It had no reality at all. While I was focused on the false belief that was all I could see or imagine. When I accepted it was false, it disappeared. Right now I have the memory of it having happened, but I couldn’t tell you anything about the details. It folded up like that carpet of time and disappeared because I lost interest in it.

If we keep staring at our guilt, nourishing it with our belief and our attention, it will remain as if true and it will drag us through misery, pain and to death. If, on the other hand, we notice the guilty thoughts and feelings, remember that guilt can never be true no matter what the appearance, the Holy Spirit will heal our mind. Then, like my story of the angry boss, it will roll up and disappear. Eternity is our home, not time. Eternity is the guiltless moment in which we exist until we change our mind and return to guilt.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 13:Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 2. 5-16-16

I. Guiltlessness and Invulnerability, P 2

2 In the strange world that you have made the Son of God has sinned. How could you see him, then? By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt that you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego has no life, and God’s Son is without guilt.


Journal
There is no guilt in God’s Son. Without guilt there is no ego. When I believe in guilt, I cannot see God’s Son. What I see instead is sin and guilt, and the need for retribution. When I allow the idea of guilt to be undone in my mind, the ego falls away and I experience what is commonly called an awakening. I am no longer dreaming about sin and guilt, pain, suffering and punishment. I am no longer dreaming about retribution and death. I am no longer dreaming about separation. I am awake to the truth and I see everything and everyone in its purity. I see everyone as part of my self.

What do I have to do to undo the ego and regain the memory of innocence and oneness? I must desire this above all things I currently believe. I am achieving this as I look at what I believe now and decide for God instead. I begin it by recognizing guilt in all its forms. I feel guilty if I don’t love someone completely, if I judge, if I gossip or am angry. Even if I don’t feel like I am guilty, there is a place in my mind that remembers the truth and so there is unconscious guilt. The source of all forms of guilt is the belief that I have betrayed God.

Jesus says that there are only two emotions, love and fear. It is equally true to say there is only love and guilt, because fear and guilt are so closely related. Fear causes guilt and guilt causes fear. So when I feel fearful, I automatically look for guilt. If I am ever afraid I must believe that I am guilty of something, or simply guilty. Otherwise there would be no call for fear. The guiltless cannot be afraid.

Guilt also shows up as a projection. I project the guilt I think is mine onto others. That is the purpose of others, as they are someplace to put my guilt, someone I can point to in my fear of God, and say, “There is the guilty one. Don’t look at me, look at them.” No matter how justified I might feel about seeing the guilt in someone, the guilt belongs to me because it is in my mind, and that is where it must be undone. We make up the most elaborate and convincing stories to justify our projections of guilt, but that doesn’t make them true.

Another way this shows up is in our situations. We think that something shouldn’t be happening, that it is too scary or too sad. We lose our job or someone we love dies, and we think it is not fair. Jesus said that we should beware of the desire to see ourselves unfairly treated, because it is just another form of guilt. The world is guilty for being what it is, and I must be guilty or I wouldn’t be its victim. Learning to spot the belief in guilt is necessary so that we can change our minds and let Holy Spirit heal us.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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