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Study of Text, Chapter 12: !. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit, P 4. 12-24-15

I. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit, P 4

4 There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing all calls for help as exactly what they are except your own imagined need to attack. It is only this that makes you willing to engage in endless “battles” with reality, in which you deny the reality of the need for healing by making it unreal. You would not do this except for your unwillingness to accept reality as it is, and which you therefore withhold from yourself.

Journal
When someone thinks they are attacking me, I don’t have to see it that way. Suppose I fail to do something at work and my boss reprimands me for that. I could see it as an attack, thinking that I have lost value in his view, that maybe I could get fired. I could imagine my image has value, and it has been threatened and I need to defend it. Or I can see he might be right and ask what I can do to correct the problem.

What determines my response to a perceived attack? It is never about what actually happened, nor is it about the other person. My response is always a reflection of my view of reality. In reality I cannot be attacked. I am Love and perfect and part of God. I am invulnerable. When I see myself as attacked and in need of defense, I have questioned reality and decided against it. I have convinced myself I am something I could never be, and that thing is vulnerable and weak, and so, in need of constant defense.

When I accept my reality, I lose my need to defend. I simply hear what is being said as love or a call for love, and, whichever it is, I answer with love. If my boss is unhappy with my performance, either he is giving me valuable information I can use to correct the problem, or he is projecting his fear onto me. Either way, I know what to do.

I had noticed a knee jerk reaction to any criticism my boss made of me and, often after I reacted, I would realize that there was absolutely no reason to defend myself. I asked the Holy Spirit to help me with this. I didn’t need to analyze it; I just turned the situation over and expected correction.

The other day, my boss stood by my door for a moment as I was typing out a letter. Then he said, “After all these years, you would think you could type a little faster.” Immediately I laughed and replied that the worst part is not only do I type slowly, but I type badly. This was a complete turnaround from the way I used to react to his comments. I didn’t change my behavior, just my mind. I chose to see love and that is what I saw. I am teaching myself to recognize reality.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: !. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit, P 3. 12-23-15

I. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit, P 3

3 There is but one interpretation of motivation that makes any sense. And because it is the Holy Spirit’s judgment it requires no effort at all on your part. Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes. Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a brother’s plea for help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it to him, for this and only this is what he is asking for. Offer him anything else, and you are assuming the right to attack his reality by interpreting it as you see fit. Perhaps the danger of this to your own mind is not yet fully apparent. If you believe that an appeal for help is something else you will react to something else. Your response will therefore be inappropriate to reality as it is, but not to your perception of it.

Journal
This is one of my favorite paragraphs in the Text. I felt the truth in it from my first reading, though I did not understand or accept it to the degree that I do now. “Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes.” These are words to live by, and truly, I do try to live by them. I don’t always succeed at first, but I always get there eventually.

I want to see my brother as Christ. I want to recognize that his behavior is not a reflection of who he is, but only a reflection of the confusion in his mind. I want always to recognize that bad behavior is a call for love and that is all the meaning I want to give it. Like me, this brother of mine longs for love, but doesn’t really remember how to get it or even that this is his goal. To the degree I can remember my purpose, I can remember for him, and so offer him the miracle of healing.

“No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it to him, for this and only this is what he is asking for.” No matter what his seeming offense, the request is for love and love is the only appropriate response. It helps to remember that there are only two emotions, love and fear. So when someone is rude or insulting, when they seem to betray, or act in hateful ways, they are only expressing the fear they feel, and they feel fear because they don’t know they are loved. Love is what they are asking for and so how could I offer them anything else?

If I react in defense of myself it is only because I have forgotten that I am loved, and my defense is a call for love. I don’t have to wait for someone to recognize it as such and give me the love I am calling for. I can accept the healing the Holy Spirit holds out to me and know myself as the Love I am. Today’s lesson says “Behold his sinlessness, and be you healed.” If I react to my brother’s error, I will be as confused as he. But, as I see my brother sinless, I will be healed.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: !. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit, P 2. 12-22-15

I. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit, P 2

2 The analysis of ego motivation is very complicated, very obscuring, and never without your own ego involvement. The whole process represents a clear-cut attempt to demonstrate your own ability to understand what you perceive. This is shown by the fact that you react to your interpretations as if they were correct. You may then control your reactions behaviorally, but not emotionally. This would obviously be a split or an attack on the integrity of your mind, pitting one level within it against another.

Journal
I am very aware of this ego process. Here is an example. I have a conversation with someone at work and it becomes heated. I think about what happened and I try to figure out why I said what I did and why they responded in the way they did. The ego interprets the conversation from both sides, and I believe what I think about it.

I reason that I now understand the motivations and so I attempt to correct the situation by controlling my reactions. Because there was not healing of the mind, and because I was still using the ego to solve the problem as I saw it, I may be able to control my reactions behaviorally, but not emotionally.

Two problems I anticipate are that the emotions will bubble out at some point. Maybe not right away, but eventually. At least that has been my experience. Jesus talks about the second, very serious problem; I have split my mind, pitting one level against another. This is an attack on the integrity of my mind. On an unconscious level this must be creating extreme unease. On a conscious level I am conflicted because I am doing what I don’t really want to do.

My experience has been that being aware of this mental process, I can stop it by asking for the Holy Spirit’s interpretation instead of the ego’s interpretation. This is very simple and easy to do and can occur in an instant, right in the middle of whatever chaos my unhealed mind has created. I also notice that I am becoming intolerant of lack of peace, so I really want to know the truth.

My sincere desire for healing can turn the situation around instantly. Or I can forget that I must give up conflict for all time, and I can stubbornly insist that the ego has the answer I want. It is entirely up to me. I am learning that the whole process represents a clear-cut attempt to demonstrate my own ability to understand what I perceive, and this is a lost cause with suffering the inevitable outcome. The more vigilant I become for this kind of self-deception, the easier it is to make the better choice.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: !. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit, P 1. 12-21-15

Chapter 12: THE HOLY SPIRIT’S CURRICULUM

I. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit
1 You have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is very simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have to make it real because it is not true. But truth is real in its own right, and to believe in truth you do not have to do anything. Understand that you do not respond to anything directly, but to your interpretation of it. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response. That is why analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to you. If you decide that someone is really trying to attack you or desert you or enslave you, you will respond as if he had actually done so, having made his error real to you. To interpret error is to give it power, and having done this you will overlook truth.

Journal
This idea of not making the error real is very simple once I accept that I never respond to anything directly, but only to my interpretation of it. That is why I often ask the Holy Spirit to interpret for me, especially when I feel upset in some way. When I ask Holy Spirit for an interpretation, I am asking for the simple truth that was always there, right beneath the layer of ego interpretation.

When this becomes something I don’t understand it is because I don’t want it. I have seen some value in keeping the ego interpretation. Sometimes this desire to decide for myself what something means confuses the issue to the point that I really can’t see the problem, much less the answer. But again, the solution is the Holy Spirit, the truth that is still in my mind, even when it is clouded over with the dark thoughts of ego.

Here is an example. I was shopping and the clerk was very unhelpful. In fact she was rude. I had some thoughts about this. I thought that if I treated my customers like she was treating me, I wouldn’t have any. I thought that she should be doing some other job if she didn’t like hers. I wondered if it was me that she was responding to. I began to think about how I looked and how I was dressed, and I started to feel inadequate.

Why doesn’t she want to wait on me? I began to feel judged and attacked. All of this happened very quickly, and very quickly I was able to see that I was listening to the ego interpretation of this person and her behavior. I asked that my mind be healed of the desire to see myself attacked, and I asked the Holy Spirit what He saw in this situation.

The ego interpretation fell away and I could only smile on this sister of mine. I know how it feels to be confused about reality and so to suffer unhappiness, so I felt compassionate instead of defensive. I no longer saw myself as lacking and so I no longer saw her behavior as a personal attack on me. In fact I had to laugh at myself for ever taking it personally.

In fact, as I let my mind be healed, I saw her light, and even the compassion I had felt before began to fall away. My confusion isn’t my reality and for the moments that I knew this about myself, I knew it about her. There was nothing that needed my compassion. I would very much like to live this way all the time, but I notice that, without vigilance, I still fall back into the ego.

However, this must end and so I continue my practice and try to be patient with myself, realizing it is only the ego interpretation of my progress that causes me to feel impatient. When I feel discouraged that I am not always enlightened, I am making the error real. The ego interpretation of this thought leads me to feelings of hopelessness.

There must still be something in me that wants to be the seeker and not the finder. Instead of being upset about this, I can simply notice it and be glad I did. Now I can ask for help to see this differently. Without the ego interpretation, it is just a thought I had, an idea I believed in and something to be released. Without this hopeless belief, there is only peace and so there is nothing for me to do but bask in it.

As I look back on what happened, not with the clerk (that was an easy one) but with the feeling that I should be further along, that I should be awake by now, I became aware of how I got from despair to peace. I began by noticing the upset and I knew I didn’t want it. At first I asked and asked for my mind to be healed. I asked out of fear and desperation. I tried all sorts of spiritual ideas, mantras and prayers and positive thoughts.

I felt desperate because I couldn’t seem to do this. Then I began writing about it in this journal and Jesus talked to me through my writing. He had me see how impatient I was and how my impatience was driving me toward discouragement, and how it was making the error real. He showed me how I was trying to use the ego to undo the ego, and I saw that I needed to stop trying to make things happen and just let them happen. So I stopped trying to change anything and I just let it be.

I let the fear be. I let the discouragement be. I let the feelings of hopelessness be. My mind became quiet in that moment, and still, and I was in peace. Evidently, all I had to do was stop trying to do it myself and allow it to be done. Writing these final paragraphs I see that I have to keep returning to my writing on the problem because I can remember I had a problem, but I cannot remember what it felt like. That is the miracle of a healed mind, a problem, once healed is removed from the mind.

Thank you, Jesus, for your demonstration. This is a lesson I won’t soon forget.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VIII: The Problem and the Answer, P 15. 12-18-15

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 15
15 Would you not exchange your fears for truth, if the exchange is yours for the asking? For if God is not deceived in you, you can be deceived only in yourself. Yet you can learn the truth about yourself from the Holy Spirit, Who will teach you that, as part of God, deceit in you is impossible. When you perceive yourself without deceit, you will accept the real world in place of the false one you have made. And then your Father will lean down to you and take the last step for you, by raising you unto Himself.

Journal
I have an image I have made that I think of as “me.” It is described by all the words I use after “I am.” I am a woman, a mother, a sales person, a minister. I am the very many concepts that are part of that description. I am one who has fought depression many years of her life, one who has been scarred by events in her past, one who is not good with money and so has certain experiences and can expect more of the same.

This image is many layered and very complex, and seems to be the “me” I present to the world, and the image I think of as myself, and so I seem to feel a need to defend it. The only reason I still have any of these ideas of self in my mind is because I defend them against change, as if defending this image is my salvation.

What Jesus wants me to know is that I defend nothing.  These are just thoughts, they are not what I am. When I believe any of them, even the very nice ones, the thoughtful and kind image, the loving and generous image, I am deceived in myself. None of it is me. I can stop defending this image because I am something else and when I stop defending the false idea of “me” the Holy Spirit will reveal my true self to me.

I need to know my true self before I can return to God. If God were to lean down toward me now I cannot imagine my reaction. “I am unworthy” is such a strong belief in my mind that the idea of being raised unto God is more frightening than appealing. So I practice what I am learning in A Course in Miracles. I open my mind and heart to the Holy Spirit and invite Him to teach me my true nature. I am being prepared for that last step.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11, VIII.The Problem and the Answer, P1 4. 12-17-15

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 14

14 You, my child, are afraid of your brothers and of your Father and of yourself. But you are merely deceived in them. Ask what they are of the Teacher of Reality, and hearing His answer, you too will laugh at your fears and replace them with peace. For fear lies not in reality, but in the minds of children who do not understand reality. It is only their lack of understanding that frightens them, and when they learn to perceive truly they are not afraid. And because of this they will ask for truth again when they are frightened. It is not the reality of your brothers or your Father or yourself that frightens you. You do not know what they are, and so you perceive them as ghosts and monsters and dragons. Ask what their reality is from the One Who knows it, and He will tell you what they are. For you do not understand them, and because you are deceived by what you see you need reality to dispel your fears.

Journal
Jesus says I am afraid of my brothers, of my Father and of myself because I don’t know who they are. As I remember that there are only two emotions, love and fear, I know that my anger, jealousy, guilt and other negative emotions are really only different forms that fear takes. I am not afraid of them because of what they are, but because I misunderstand what they are. I am wrong about them if I feel anything but joy when I think of them, but that can be corrected.

The problem lies in who I ask for clarity. If I ask the ego, I will get a fearful answer. If I ask the Teacher of Reality, I will remember who they are and I will rejoice in that knowledge. My experience of this is that I receive the truth about our identity and I am so happy. Then I back away from that truth and asking the ego, I find I am again judging and so suffering. But as I continue this practice I lose interest in the ego judgment and I find it easier to ignore it when I hear it.

My guidance right now is to ask, “Who am I?” I am to do this regardless of where I see the error. If I think my brother is wrong, I ask the Holy Spirit, “Who am I?” As I remember who I am, I know my brother’s true identity.

“The idea that there is some “other” to want, to need, to resent, to hate, to fear, or any “other” onto whom I could project guilt is burnt away in the light of purpose. Everyone is my brother/my self. Everything is in me. How can I be angry or fearful or guilty when I realize that every one and every thing is me?” http://tinyurl.com/nbspa3y

This is why I need only heal my mind. I am the world, my brother, and I am what my Father is. As I know that I am innocent, I know that all else is innocent. This is what the Holy Spirit is teaching me. The ego is pushing hard against this, and while I hear the ego, I refuse to believe it.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: VIII: The Problem and the Answer, P 13. 12-15-15

VIII. The Problem and the Answer, P 13

13 Children perceive frightening ghosts and monsters and dragons, and they are terrified. Yet if they ask someone they trust for the meaning of what they perceive, and are willing to let their own interpretations go in favor of reality, their fear goes with them. When a child is helped to translate his “ghost” into a curtain, his “monster” into a shadow, and his “dragon” into a dream he is no longer afraid, and laughs happily at his own fear.

Journal
I would become as a child and allow my frightening dreams to be re-interpreted for me by the Holy Spirit. I would not argue with His interpretation, nor doubt it. I would but accept it in complete trust that He knows what I have forgotten. It seems too often that I hear the ego first, and sometimes still believe what I hear. When this happens I have tried to follow ego’s instructions as a solution to my problem and this only kept me in the problem. Now I choose to practice listening to Holy Spirit daily until my first choice becomes Holy Spirit rather than ego.

I still believe in fear and guilt, but I am willing to let those beliefs be healed. I do this through practice. All day, every day, I practice vigilance and I practice choosing again. I ask for the Atonement and I accept it as best as I can. Each effort on my part increases my willingness. This is the best use of time until finally we release the idea of time. The best use of the stories is to let them be seen differently until the mind is healed of guilt and fear. And then the stories change to stories of love, until they are finally released completely.

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