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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 8. 12-26-16

X. RELEASE FROM GUILT, P 8
8 Now it is given you to heal and teach, to make what will be now. As yet it is not now. The Son of God believes that he is lost in guilt, alone in a dark world where pain is pressing everywhere upon him from without. When he has looked within and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves him. And it will seem incredible that he ever thought his Father loved him not, and looked upon him as condemned. The moment that you realize guilt is insane, wholly unjustified and wholly without reason, you will not fear to look upon the Atonement and accept it wholly.

Journal
Jesus is both acknowledging that we are not now living what is true, and he tells us, again, how it is that we can live the truth. We are suffering because we believe in guilt. It is that simple. When we decide to believe him and understand that guilt is not real, we will not be afraid to look within and find the Atonement and we will accept it wholly.

Right now Jesus says that we are lost in guilt, alone in a dark world where pain is pressing everywhere upon us from without. I had that experience yesterday. I was with family and it was mostly a peaceful and loving day, but there was one situation that was painful. There is a family member who I worry about, and there was some subtle friction there. Later when I was alone I felt the unease intensely.

Looking at it today, I realize that I lacked faith in my brother. I judged him and found him guilty. Guilt led to fear and that was the cause of my disturbance. The belief that his behavior could lead to something bad (projecting the past onto the present and thus assuring that the future does not change) was painful. It felt like I did nothing to deserve this and it wasn’t fair that I was suffering. (Beware of the temptation to see yourself unfairly treated.) My dark thoughts were painful and the pain seemed to come from the other person. (If only he would act differently, I could be happy.)

Two things happened here that made the situation seem oppressive; one is that the solution seemed to be that the other person had to change and nothing I said or did could affect that change. This left me feeling helpless and a victim. The other is that in seeing the other person as guilty reinforced the belief in guilt in my mind. This made me afraid to look within to find the Atonement and so, again, I seemed to be without a solution.

The saving grace is that I have been working on letting go of the belief in guilt. Throughout the unhappy experience I was watching for true thoughts in my mind and I found many. This kept me from fully accepting what the ego mind was offering. One thing I did that was very helpful is that I remembered Jesus saying in the Course that I can share my burdensome experiences with him and he would help me. So this is what I did. I let the emotion out, and as I cried I talked to him about how this felt. That did help a lot and opened me to more help.

Another thing that happened is that I have asked the Holy Spirit to use my sleep time to heal my mind. Evidently he did that. I woke up this morning feeling much better and I had a true thought bubble up to the surface. Upon awakening I had not thought about the situation with the family member, so I was surprised by this thought. The only thing happening right now is that he is not living the life I want him to live. I had to laugh at that. Why should he do that? Why would I think that was necessary?

The ego never gives up on guilt, though. I began to think about how depressing it is that I could go a whole day worrying and judging. I began to think that I am very far from awakening, and not the teacher of God that I profess I want to be. I started to think how much help I am given and that I am guilty for not doing better. The ego just loves the drama of all this as it waffles from “poor me” to “shame on me.” It would love to spend another day sad and discouraged.

Thinking these kinds of thoughts is like standing in quicksand. It just sucks me down into depression, and the more I struggle against it, the faster it does its guilty work. But if I sit still in the wake of the ego storm, just resting my mind in God, I feel the ego-induced emotions wash over me. I hear the ego self-judgment and fear thoughts, but it all passes and I find myself free of the muck. Then I give my willingness to the Holy Spirit to look within for the Atonement and let it do it’s beautiful healing work as I lay one false belief after another onto the altar to be undone. After that it easy for me to say no to the ego thoughts that try to once again get my attention.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 7. 12-23-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 7

7 The Holy Spirit does not keep illusions in your mind to frighten you, and show them to you fearfully to demonstrate what He has saved you from. What He has saved you from is gone. Give no reality to guilt, and see no reason for it. The Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do, and has always done so. He has seen separation, but knows of union. He teaches healing, but He also knows of creation. He would have you see and teach as He does, and through Him. Yet what He knows you do not know, though it is yours.

Journal
I often visualize the Holy Spirit as a bridge, with one side in the world and the other side in Reality. He sees what I believe but he knows the truth, and it is his function to teach me, to heal me, to undo the wrong minded beliefs in my mind, and lead me to the truth. He will do this through me, too, so that I can help my brothers as well.

Jesus says that what the Holy Spirit saves me from is gone. I have seen this happen many times. I will be struggling with an ego belief, suffering terribly, seemingly unable to let it go. When finally I have reached my limit and turn to Him with a sincere desire to be at peace, He heals me instantly. Often when this happens it as if the thought had never been in my mind.
Sometimes I can’t even remember the thought. If I do remember it, the
thought has so little charge that I laugh at myself for ever taking it seriously.

“Give no reality to guilt, and see no reason for it.”

This is a sentence I should have tattooed on me so I can refer to it all day, every day. Learning to believe this has been my focus for over a year now. Guilt is what keeps the illusion going, and is the cause of all suffering. It is the reason we are not having a happy dream. It is the reason the body gets sick. It is the cause of our unhappiness. When I started my practice of letting go of guilt, I did it one guilt thought at a time. Then over the last year or so, I have noticed guilt thoughts and simply asked that I be healed of the belief in guilt itself.

When I am thinking with my right mind I can’t imagine ever going back to the belief in guilt. Then something happens and I see the need for guilt and I pick it back up. The need for guilt stems from the fear of God. Just yesterday I had the thought that something a relative said was unkind and selfish. This was an expression of my belief in his guilt. When I looked at the thought he was guilty, I realized that it was covering up the belief that I was guilty of the same thing.

Until that moment, I had hidden that from myself. The real reason for the guilt placed on another or on myself is the often, unacknowledged belief that God holds my evil deeds against me. So either I fear my thoughts and bury them deeply in my mind, or I project them onto someone else in the hopes that God will condemn the other and not notice my own culpability.

What I have actually done is reinforced a belief that is not true for a reason that could never be true. God’s only judgment of me is that I am still as He created me. God did not create guilt so guilt cannot exist in me or anyone else. I have nothing to fear from God and so no reason to cling to guilt. As I became open to healing, I let the Holy Spirit do His job. I let go of the idea that this relative was guilty, and asked again to be relieved of the belief in guilt. That constricted and destructive feeling of guilt melted away.

I saw that both my relative and myself were simply confused and afraid, and the unkind thoughts were believed because we thought we needed to defend from an imagined danger. We were both looking at false images projected from minds that believed in guilt. This insane loop of guilt felt in the mind and projected outward as stories in our lives can and will be broken. Yesterday, I got the chance to weaken that chain.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 6. 12-21-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 6

6 As long as you believe that guilt is justified in any way, in anyone, whatever he may do, you will not look within, where you would always find Atonement. The end of guilt will never come as long as you believe there is a reason for it. For you must learn that guilt is always totally insane, and has no reason. The Holy Spirit seeks not to dispel reality. If guilt were real, Atonement would not be. The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, not to establish them as real and then forgive them.

Journal
“The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, not to establish them as real and then forgive them.”
Every time I hold a grievance I am establishing an illusion as real. When I do this, forgiveness becomes very difficult. A number of years ago I had a grievance against my in-laws and I was miserable in my grievance. I tried and tried to let it go and nothing seemed to work. It took me literally years to get free of that grievance. At that time I didn’t understand what the problem was. Now I can see that I had made the grievance real in my mind. I absolutely believed that they were guilty, and then I tried to forgive them. I have since learned that this never works.

Over the years since that time I have had other opportunities to look at this ego tendency to judge someone as guilty and then try to forgive them. It is painful every time. I had many learning opportunities when I was working, with my bosses, with co-workers, with customers and competitors, with uncomfortable situations. Each time I worked with this idea I gained more clarity about the way forgiveness works. I gained more certainty that there was only one way to forgive, and that is through accepting the Atonement.

The Atonement was placed in me to dispel illusions. It is always available to me, and to take advantage of it I need only to accept it. I don’t have to figure out a way to forgive, not myself and not others. I don’t have to do anything about the person or the situation. My only responsibility is to accept the healing of the Atonement. No matter how real the attack seems, how certain the guilt appears in the story, the Atonement simply finds the Son of God innocent. It sees everything else as an illusion and therefore meaningless. So it doesn’t matter what they do because what they do is an illusion.

Now that I have accepted the Atonement for that situation with my in-laws, it is clear to me why I struggled for so long, and why I felt like I was justified in my judgment of them. I felt attacked and deep in my subconscious mind was the belief that they were right in their judgment of me. At that time, I was unable to look within. I was too afraid that they somehow knew the darkness hidden in me, and that if I looked that is what I would find. So I had to keep my eye on them instead. Making them guilty was my way of avoiding the self-condemnation I felt. I remember slinging guilt onto everyone involved, hoping it would stick to some of them and leave my own culpability unexamined.

All of that misery, and for what? As it turned out, guilt isn’t real anyway. There is not guilt in me, and therefore no need to displace guilt onto someone else. There is no reason for guilt, no value in it. I still see guilt where it does not exist, but now I know that I am mistaken. I know that guilt is only an illusion as are the stories that represent guilt. Nowadays when I notice guilt thoughts I am pretty quick to accept the Atonement instead. I see the belief in my mind that someone is guilty, then I talk to the Holy Spirit about it and release it to Him. I accept the Atonement and allow the belief to dissipate as my mind settles into peace.

What I am especially vigilant for is guilt disguised as something else. For instance, when my son was in trouble I felt sorry for him and I felt afraid for him. I called this love, but it was really guilt. That is the tricky part, where ego tries to slip guilt into the situation by calling it something else. “That poor man,” is the same thing as “That guilty man.” And, “What is going to happen to that poor man?” is the same thing as “What is going to happen to that guilty man?”

My son is not guilty of anything. He is simply playing out his illusory story of separation. I am playing my part in his story. It is not a matter of right or wrong. It is simply not true, not real. It can be difficult for us to disengage from the story when the story plays on our fear and our guilt, but we can do it. I saw that in my own life. I saw that as I was able to distance myself just a little, just enough to remember that there is another way to see, I was able to ask for help. I was then able to ask for the Atonement, and to be comforted and brought to peace. Through true forgiveness my part in our story became more helpful because it was coming from a peaceful place in my mind.

The question is never going to be, “Can I forgive what the person has done?” It is always going to be, “Can I accept the Atonement in this situation and realize that we are all innocent?”

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 5. 12-20-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 5

5 Determine, then, to be not as you were. Use no relationship to hold you to the past, but with each one each day be born again. A minute, even less, will be enough to free you from the past, and give your mind in peace over to the Atonement. When everyone is welcome to you as you would have yourself be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. For you will have accepted the Atonement, which shone within you all the while you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and see it.

Journal
Christmas is a good time to look at these relationships and to notice when and how I am holding myself to the past through holding my family to their past. On Christmas I will be with my children and their families. My prayer will be to receive help and guidance to see them as they are, not as I thought they were. Jesus is telling us that it is not hard to do this. He says it will take a minute, even less, to be freed from the past. I can do this.

Every other year, everything happened at my house so I would be very busy and distracted as I got things prepared and played the hostess. This year it is going to happen at my daughter’s house, so I am free to observe and to decide and to accept the Atonement each time I notice that I am holding onto the past. As often happens when I make a decision for God, all things fall into place so that I can best use the opportunity. Even knowing this, I am in awe at the perfection of this situation, how everything is arranged for my good.

Another thing I read in this paragraph that touched me deeply is this: “When everyone is welcome to you as you would have yourself be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you.” I learn that there is no guilt in me by accepting that there is no guilt in my brothers. I am told by Jesus that God loves me unconditionally. God looks at me and He sees only what He created, not the dream character I made. I want to do that. I want to see my brother only as he was created. I want to know that the body I see with my body’s eyes is an illusion and meaningless. “God, please show me what You see.”

When I do this, when I look past the illusory body/personality, I will see innocence and perfection, because that is what is within each of us. No matter how deeply we bury it, our true nature, our Self, remains unaffected by the ego thoughts and beliefs. Jesus says it this way: “For you will have accepted the Atonement, which shone within you all the while you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and see it.” The Atonement has always been in us, just denied. As we accept it, we Awaken to our true nature, to love and peace and joy, because that is what we are. The way to the Atonement is through our brothers, so I am motivated to ask for the Atonement the next time I think I see a spot of guilt anywhere.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 4. 12-19-16

X. RELEASE FROM GUILT, P 4
4 When you maintain that you are guilty but the source of your guilt lies in the past, you are not looking inward. The past is not in you. Your weird associations to it have no meaning in the present. Yet you let them stand between you and your brothers, with whom you find no real relationships at all. Can you expect to use your brothers as a means to “solve” the past, and still to see them as they really are? Salvation is not found by those who use their brothers to resolve problems that are not there. You wanted not salvation in the past. Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to find salvation now?

Journal

I immediately thought of my oldest daughter, Sheryl. I have memories from her childhood that pop up into my mind that used to cause me extreme distress. Some of those memories still carry a sharp sting. I have spent her whole life trying to somehow make up for my mistakes as a mother, to somehow atone for my sins. And so I used that relationship as a way to solve the past. And all along, all she has done is love me. And, weirdly, her present love has not seemed as meaningful to me as my imagined sins. If I keep maintaining that past relationship with Sheryl, I will never have a present relationship with her.

Even as I write this (and I know that what Jesus says is true) I hear the ego mind dredging up old stories and insisting I can’t just pretend they didn’t happen. The ego mind says that they make me guilty and unworthy of her love. This is how the ego maintains the illusion, carrying the past into the present and assuring the future remains the same. This is the purpose of guilt, to keep the story going through blocking actual relationships. It stands like an impenetrable wall between our brothers and us, preventing union. There! Separation is assured and the ego gets to exist in the mind another day. Jesus is helping us to understand it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a simple way out.

“You wanted not salvation in the past. Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to find salvation now?”

I had a strange reaction to this. I don’t know how to express my feelings. I guess I felt silly. All this drama, all the tears and the frustration, the years of guilt and atoning, and Jesus reduces my angst to “idle wishes”? I also felt resistance from the ego mind to this idea. And maybe that is why I felt confused. I have prayed for release from the belief in guilt and when I am offered that release, I don’t want it. I don’t want to be wrong? Maybe. If Jesus is right that my worry and regret were over idle wishes, then did I waste my life agonizing over my sins? How could something so painful and persistent be reduced to idle wishes? Is this a joke?

And yet, as I think of this I feel a lightening in my mind, a burden lifted, a darkness dissipated. I will accept this extraordinary gift! I go back to the two sentences and I realize something else. Jesus is saying that in the past I had an idle wish to be guilty, and guilt precludes salvation, so I had an idle wish to remain outside salvation. Guilt was the way I assured this wish would be granted. Now I want salvation. I have experienced separation and I am through with it and want to return to my natural and true state as the divine being that I am. Jesus is just pointing out the obvious to me. If guilt is how I maintained the illusion, then keeping that idle wish in my mind will prevent me from achieving my new goal, which is to awaken from the dream of separation. It is just an idle wish, nothing more, nothing real or strong or immovable, just an idle wish. How could something so insubstantial stop me from accepting salvation?

Whooo! I’m feeling so light that I might float away!

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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