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Study of Text, Chapter 11: II: The Invitation to Healing, P 2. 8-29-15

II. The Invitation to Healing, P 2
2 Healing thus becomes a lesson in understanding; and the more you practice it the better teacher and learner you become. If you have denied truth, what better witnesses to its reality could you have than those who have been healed by it? But be sure to count yourself among them, for in your willingness to join them is your healing accomplished. Every miracle that you accomplish speaks to you of the Fatherhood of God. Every healing thought that you accept, either from your brother or in your own mind, teaches you that you are God’s Son. In every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God’s Fatherhood and of your Sonship.

Journal
Jesus says that the more I practice healing, the better teacher and learner I become. I do this in two ways. First, I learn from those who have gone before me. I think of the teachers I have followed and my heart swells in gratitude! There are some I followed consistently and over a period of time, and some who have inspired me from time to time. They are all equal in teaching, whether they helped me once, or many times.

I read what they say and am inspired, but that is not enough. I must use what they say in order for it to be helpful to me. I must use it and let it become what I do and think and become. Regina Dawn Akers has been helpful to me many, many times, but one that comes to me often is this. When I was in the middle of a virtual storm, a hurricane, and at the same time in an ego storm, I reached out to her.

She told me to let the storm pass. That is what storms do. I have used that advice often. I sit through the ego storm in patience and certainty that Holy Spirit is sitting with me and that healing is taking place. As a result, I am not fearful when I am in one of these storms. I know it will pass and when it does, I will be washed clean of the thoughts that caused it, and this changed perception is a miracle.

Recently I read some postings by Cate Grieves in which she talked about not compromising. She woke up through A Course in Miracles and she said that she did it because she refused to compromise. Every wrong-minded thought goes to Spirit for healing, no compromise in that. This has become my mantra as well. No compromise.

I have had a problem with a co-worker from time to time. In the past I have struggled with these relationships, not wanting to give up being right and holding tight to the belief that I am being unfairly treated. It has taken way too much suffering to get my attention in a way that led to healing.

 

Now I am fully involved in accepting the peace of God as my one goal. I refuse to compromise on that. I don’t care what proof the ego brings me that the other person is wrong; I only want the peace of God. If the ego brings me proof that my financial situation is deteriorating, I feel the echo of old beliefs and start to worry. Then I remember that the peace of God is everything I want. No compromise.

 

So I am both following others, accepting the gifts of their own healings. and I am practicing what I am learning and making it mine. Each changed perception is a healing that reminds me that God is my Father and I am His Son. I am very cognizant now that every hurtful thought leads me away from remembering who I am.

 

I sit in the stormy thoughts of darkness knowing that it will pass and with it, the damage those thoughts caused. I remember that looking at the thoughts with the Holy Spirit and asking for healing is my part, and I do not compromise on that. I allow the healing and in doing so I accept the Atonement for myself, which is my only function.

 

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Chapter 11: II. The Invitation to Healing, P 1. 8-26-15

II. The Invitation to Healing, P1
1 If sickness is separation, the decision to heal and to be healed is the first step toward recognizing what you truly want. Every attack is a step away from this, and every healing thought brings it closer. The Son of God has both Father and Son, because he is both Father and Son. To unite having and being is to unite your will with His, for He wills you Himself. And you will yourself to Him because, in your perfect understanding of Him, you know there is but one Will. Yet when you attack any part of God and His Kingdom your understanding is not perfect, and what you really want is therefore lost to you.

Journal
This beginning paragraph is so important that I want to take it slowly and really look at it. “Jesus, please give me clarity as I read.”

“If sickness is separation”
Right away Jesus is telling us that sickness is separation. I think I am separate from God, from my brothers, from every other living form in the world. I even see separation within myself as I perceive myself as both spirit and body, both good and bad, both holy and condemned.  Clearly, everyone who is having this experience believes in separation and so sickness is inevitable until we change our minds.

“the decision to heal and to be healed is the first step toward recognizing what you truly want.”
We made a decision to experience separation, the consequence of which is sickness.  The first step to undoing these consequences is to make a different decision. We can now decide to heal and to be healed. We may make this decision because we are tired of sickness, but it is the first step toward recognizing what it is we truly want.  We want more than to be less miserable, less lonely, less poor, less ill; that is to be less sick. In choosing to heal and be healed we will recognize what it is we really want.

“Every attack is a step away from this, and every healing thought brings it closer.”
Another important statement for those of us who are ready to Awaken from the dream of separation; attack is going to take us away from what we truly want.  Every attack thought moves us away from healing. On the other hand, every healing thought brings us closer. Here are a couple of examples.

I was annoyed with someone at work on Friday and regretted having to work in that atmosphere. That was an attack thought. Yesterday, I noticed that I forgot to write on my calendar the time of an appointment and felt upset with myself. That was an attack thought. I noticed the feelings that came up when I had these thoughts, and I realized I had just chosen separation again as I attacked, first a brother and then myself for the error I made.

I see myself here in this body because I chose separation as an experience I wanted to have; for the last two days, I have made that same choice again. I made it when I thought I would be happier if I didn’t have to go to work tomorrow, and when I thought I was an idiot for not being better at keeping track of things. Both times were an attack, and led me deeper into the illusion, into sickness.

Each time I noticed how I felt when I attacked, I realized the attack cost me my peace of mind, and I made a different choice, a choice for healing. I released the thoughts of separation and attack to the Holy Spirit and I asked for healing. It is not God’s Will that I suffer sickness of the mind, and so I need only relinquish the ego desire for a separate will and accept that God’s Will is truly my will, in order to be healed. My mind then returns to peace. And now I am closer to what I truly desire.

“The Son of God has both Father and Son, because he is both Father and Son.”
Jesus keeps telling us that we are an extension of God, that this is the way God creates, this extending of Himself. He also has told us that God gave all of Himself to us in our creation. Still, when I read something like this sentence, I recoil from it. That reaction is the ego mind that cannot, and does not, believe I am so exalted. It believes that this is blasphemy and it’s fear is increased at the thought.

But I am not the ego. I am God’s Son and I am in God, and part of God. I have both Father and Son in me and so I am both Father and Son, because having and being are the same in truth. The me that wanted to skip over that sentence is the separated self, the ego. The me that is willing to embrace it is the part of the mind that retains an ancient memory of being that. It is not a separated self, but part of a Whole. It is part of the Family of God.

“To unite having and being is to unite your will with His, for He wills you Himself.”
“Jesus, I have trouble with this sentence. Please help my understanding and my acceptance.” I have developed a certain comfort level with thinking of myself as living in God and being part of God, but I have trouble making that leap to being God. Here I am told that I am to unite having and being because that is to unite my will with His.

I understand and accept that I must do this, that I must unite my will with God’s Will.
It is essential that I give up this separate will I made for myself and accept that it was an awesome, if somewhat screwy, experiment and now it is time for it to end. I can only have one will and that is the same Will God has.

The problem I have is that I have never really understood how having and being are the same, and certainly not in this case. But now, I seem to have been brought to a new understanding of having and being as the same. I have the same will as God, and so I am the same as God. That is saying that having and being is the same thing.

I am also reminded that the only difference between God and His Son is that God came first and that creation goes only in one direction. God created me and I create by continuing this process, but I cannot create God. Other than that, there is no separation and no difference between God and me. Could that possibly be true? It must be. He willed me Himself.

“And you will yourself to Him because, in your perfect understanding of Him, you know there is but one Will.”
I am far from a perfect understanding of God, but I must have some memory of this buried deeply beneath the layers of confusion that make up the self I think of as Myron. I must have that memory, because when I read this line, I cried. My unclouded mind longs for this. I want to remember what it is like to be unburdened by the separate will, and to just rest in the peace and joy that is our one Will. “I will myself to You, and you Will Yourself to me. How can I not know my Self?  How can I not know You, my Father?”

“Yet when you attack any part of God and His Kingdom your understanding is not perfect, and what you really want is therefore lost to you.”
The motivation to give up attack is very strong. I want to know Self and I want to know God and I want to know I both have and I am that. I cannot know this if I attack any part of God and His Kingdom. As soon as I attack, I lose my understanding of both God and Self. Could I possibly attack anyone if I knew they were part of my self? Could I attack myself if I knew I was part of God? I see how attack increases my confusion about my identity.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 11: I: The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 11. 8-21-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 11

11 You are asked to trust the Holy Spirit only because He speaks for you. He is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He shares His Will with you; He does not thrust it upon you. Always remember that what He gives He keeps, so that nothing He gives can contradict Him. You who share His life must share it to know it, for sharing is knowing. Blessed are you who learn that to hear the Will of your Father is to know your own. For it is your will to be like Him, Whose Will it is that it be so. God’s Will is that His Son be one, and united with Him in His Oneness. That is why healing is the beginning of the recognition that your will is His.

Journal

God shares His Will with me; he does not thrust it upon me. What a different vision of God we are given, than is the one we typically learn about in traditional religion. This is a God of peace and joy, a God of sharing. I want to know the Will of God because I want to know this God of Love. And I want to know my own will and my own Self. If I share the Will of God, then knowing my true will is the same as knowing God, and knowing the Will of God will teach me what I am.

I have been given the way back to God. It is the Holy Spirit, which was placed in my mind for that purpose. His function is to speak God’s Word to me, to guide me, to comfort me, and to heal my mind. All that is needed from me is that I desire to have this. Nothing is thrust upon me, not even my happiness.

This day, I pray for guidance and I pray for the Word of God to be given me. I open my heart and my mind to this. Today’s lesson says this:

Lesson 233
I give my life to God to guide today.
Father, I give You all my thoughts today. I would have none of mine. In place of them, give me Your Own. I give You all my acts as well, that I may do Your Will instead of seeking goals which cannot be obtained, and wasting time in vain imaginings. Today I come to You. I will step back and merely follow You. Be You the Guide, and I the follower who questions not the wisdom of the Infinite, nor Love whose tenderness I cannot comprehend, but which is yet Your perfect gift to me.

Today we have one Guide to lead us on. And as we walk together, we will give this day to Him with no reserve at all. This is His day. And so it is a day of countless gifts and mercies unto us.

What a perfect lesson this is for me today. I give my thoughts to Him, and I accept His perfect gift to me. This is His day and it is a day of countless gifts and mercies. Thank you, God. I love you, God.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 11: I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 10.8-19-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 10

10 You cannot be happy unless you do what you will truly, and you cannot change this because it is immutable. It is immutable by God’s Will and yours, for otherwise His Will would not be extended. You are afraid to know God’s Will, because you believe it is not yours. This belief is your whole sickness and your whole fear. Every symptom of sickness and fear arises here, because this is the belief that makes you want not to know. Believing this you hide in darkness, denying that the light is in you.

Journal
I can be happy only if I accept that my true will is the same as God’s Will. Denial of this is what causes all sickness, all fear and all suffering. Let me be specific here. Denial of my true will is where cancer and strokes and heart attacks come from. It is where sick relationships, and poverty and all forms of unkindness come from. All of these things are simply projections of images we make to express the beliefs in in our mind, and the belief behind all beliefs is that we have a will separate from and different from God’s Will.

The healing of all forms of suffering is in accepting God as our creator and ourselves as an extension of all He is. It comes from accepting that we have only one true will and that it is the Will of God. It heals all things because it is not God’s Will that suffering exist in any form, and so suffering cannot exist.

Suffering seems to exist because we insist on believing in a will that is not God’s Will. We can continue to do this as long as we can stand it, but it is completely unnecessary that we do so. It is true that nothing is real in the world and that nothing is actually happening. But as long as we believe in the world, suffering will be real to us. All suffering falls away as we withdraw our belief in it, and we do that by withdrawing our belief in a will that allows suffering.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 11: I: The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 9. 8-18-15

I.  The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 9
9 The projection of the ego makes it appear as if God’s Will is outside yourself, and therefore not yours. In this interpretation it seems possible for God’s Will and yours to conflict. God, then, may seem to demand of you what you do not want to give, and thus deprive you of what you want. Would God, Who wants only your will, be capable of this? Your will is His life, which He has given to you. Even in time you cannot live apart from Him. Sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but cannot die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son’s will for himself. God’s Son cannot will death for himself because His Father is Life, and His Son is like Him. Creation is your will because it is His.

Journal
I was thinking just this weekend of how I used to be afraid to turn over to God certain areas of my life. Here is an example. I would worry and fret over my youngest son because he was very sick for awhile, and still has a lot of pain from a back injury. When I think that I need my son to be well, I am no longer at peace.

I have made a choice for the peace of God and have said that the peace of God is everything I want. When I become anxious for my son, I have changed my mind and said that the peace of God is not everything I want, I also want my son to be well. I have discovered that wanting anything in the world catapults me out of peace. Either the peace of God is everything I want or it is not. Need and peace are opposites and I cannot have them both at the same time.

I thought about this and I realized that I felt a need to worry about my son. Was I afraid to turn him over to the care of God? If so, then I must think that God and I have different wills, and that God’s Will for my son is contrary to my will for him. This clearly cannot be right. God wills only love and happiness for us all. God is Love, could Love ever will for suffering?

The very idea of not worrying about my son seemed so strange to me. It was like my constant worry was all that stood between him and suffering. And yet, my worry brought no protection to my son, and no healing. As I began to let go of the idea that I needed anything from my son in order to be at peace, I returned to my dedicated purpose of choosing peace. I returned to trust.

As my mind cleared I realized that worry is like a negative prayer. It was like praying that my son would fulfill my expectations of pain and suffering. I began true prayer in which I remembered the truth instead. I remembered that he is God’s Son and He has the Holy Spirit in his mind just as I do. He will be led to the truth just as I am being led to the truth. I began to trust him, and I began to realize I don’t need him to be anything for me. His existence is gift enough.

I use this example because it was the hardest thing I have ever done. Seeing it from this side it is obvious that my neediness only got in the way of my relationship with my son. My worry only robbed me of peace. It was an expression of my belief that I have a will different than the Will of God.

I don’t know where my son’s story is going to take him, but I am certain that it will provide him with the opportunity to awaken. I am certain that he shares the Will of God, and his story will help him discover this. I will help him as I continue to know that this is true while he is still confused about it. There is unshakable peace in the recognition that God is not my enemy, that we share the same will.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 11: I: The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 8. 8-17-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 8

8 Yet what you will you do not know. This is not strange when you realize that to deny is to “not know.” God’s Will is that you are His Son. By denying this you deny your own will, and therefore do not know what it is. You must ask what God’s Will is in everything, because it is yours. You do not know what it is, but the Holy Spirit remembers it for you. Ask Him, therefore, what God’s Will is for you, and He will tell you yours. It cannot be too often repeated that you do not know it. Whenever what the Holy Spirit tells you appears to be coercive, it is only because you have not recognized your will.

Journal
This paragraph makes perfect sense to me. God created us by extending Himself, so that we are exactly as God is. There is a passage in the Course that says God gave us all of Himself. This being true, we share His power, His creative ability, His Being, and His Will. God’s will is my will. I have become confused about this because I made a different will so that I could have a different experience. But that is not my true will, only a device to allow an experience.

The Holy Spirit remembers my true will for me and holds it in my mind so that I can have access to it when I am ready. Now that I am ready to awaken from this dream of separation and return to Reality, I ask the Holy Spirit what God’s Will is for me. When I first started doing this I was conflicted. The ego mind, that I was still very identified with, felt this request was coercive and it balked at the idea of giving up its own will in favor of another will.

Now I understand that I am not the ego, and I identify more with my spirit than this foreign thought system, so I don’t resist as hard or as often as I used to. Often I accept God’s Will completely and joyfully, and I have never once regretted that decision. On the other hand, the ego will has brought me pain and suffering nearly every time. I’m a slow learner, but I do learn. I want God’s Will and I want to recognize it as my own. This is the all-important step I must take. Now I am mastering that choice each time I feel some reluctance to give up a false belief. It is work, but it is good work.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: I: The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 7. 8-14-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 7

7 Could any part of God be without His Love, and could any part of His Love be contained? God is your heritage, because His one gift is Himself. How can you give except like Him if you would know His gift to you? Give, then, without limit and without end, to learn how much He has given you. Your ability to accept Him depends on your willingness to give as He gives. Your fatherhood and your Father are one. God wills to create, and your will is His. It follows, then, that you will to create, since your will follows from His. And being an extension of His Will, yours must be the same.

Journal
To know what God gives me, I must give as He gives, without limit and without end. What must I give? God is Love and this is what He gives, so this is what I must give. In other places in the Course, Jesus tells us that sharing and communication are the closest we come to creation and to love in the world. How do I do this? How do I share and communicate endlessly and without limit?

The first thing that comes to mind is that I share and communicate only in union. If I treat someone as if they are separate from me, with separate interests and separate goals, I will automatically be in competition with them. This is not sharing, and not communication. For instance, if I look on a customer as someone who needs to remain my customer to insure my income, I am not sharing or communicating; I am using him to fulfill my needs.

I might tell myself that I am going to be the best vendor ever and he is lucky to have me working for his interests, but the truth is while we share some goals and that works out for both of us, we are not in full communication. He wants something from me and I want something from him. That is not shared goals, but competing goals. I am not unlimited in my sharing.

I don’t think that I can actually share and communicate fully and completely without limits as long as I believe that there is this gap that exists between each of us. The fact that we are using these bodies to promote that belief doesn’t help us remember our union. But neither does it make it impossible to remember we are one. I know this is true because, though I have not succeeded in knowing we are one all the time, I have done it sometimes. If I can know what we are sometimes I can know it always.

So I practice it. I ask the Holy Spirit to look with me at my relationships. I ask Him to look with me at this customer I am talking to and to help me to see him truly. I do the same with all relationships, my relationships with my children, my friends, my coworkers; they are all the same relationship, because we are all one Family of God, one mind.

As I have become more and more open to His answer, I notice that where I used to feel needful in a relationship, now I feel loving. This is much closer to giving without limits. I am not consistent in this, not yet. But it is getting better and easier and I see how much happier and peaceful I am when I do succeed in giving fully, needing nothing in return. It is such a sweet thing, this giving as my Father gives. It is a gift of fatherhood, and I claim it now, as my Father, in His unlimited love, would have me do. And when I have accepted it fully, I will be very close to creating as God creates.

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