Together, We Light the Way

Click link to go to:
Together We Light the Way Index

Study of Text, Chapter 11: I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 6. 8-13-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 6

6 God has given you a place in His Mind that is yours forever. Yet you can keep it only by giving it, as it was given you. Could you be alone there, when it was given you because God did not will to be alone? God’s Mind cannot be lessened. It can only be increased, for everything He creates has the function of creating. Love does not limit, and what it creates is not limited. To give without limit is God’s Will for you, because only this can bring you the joy that is His and that He wills to share with you. Your love is as boundless as His because it is His.

Journal
Jesus tells us that we have a place in the Mind of God that is ours forever, but a condition of keeping that place is to give it, as it was given us. We are creators and we are meant to increase the Mind of God through creation. We are without limits because Love is without limits, and thus we are to share in this way to know the joy of our boundless love.

What a picture this is! I am in God forever, creating forever, loving and joyful forever! There are no limits on Self and no limits on love. With no body made to limit and separate, there is nothing to fear, no sickness, suffering or death. Without an “other,” there is no one to push away and no reason to and no place to push him. In God all have all, so there is nothing to be jealous of, no reason for resentment, no feelings of rejection, abandonment, loss or lack.

Of course I examine my life and I see that this is not happening. In making this world of illusion, I have not created, that is I have not increased the Mind of God. This is not a world of limitless sharing and limitless love. In my desire to experience something else, I have tried to freeze love into forms I call bodies and other objects that are separate from each other, thus arresting creation at these artificial boundaries.

I have tried to limit the limitless. I have tried to lessen God. I do this again and again all day long. I see a homeless person and instead of recognizing God in this one, I see him as less than in so many ways, and different than me; please God, different than me. I see a beautiful and wealthy person and I fail to see God, and I fail to recognize this one is me, playing the beautiful and wealthy woman. Instead, I see only differences and feel only less than.

Where is the wholeness, the boundless love, the joy of creation in this thing I have made, and that I renew every day, every minute of the day? Where is God in this, where is Love? Yet, even here in this dream of not-God, I can choose to perceive differently and thus bring our sleeping mind closer to Awakening, closer to God and my place in God.
As I do this, as I allow more and more healing, I begin to feel something that is not a dream, or at least is a dream of something not a dream. As I see this homeless man, my mind expands to include him, to know him as the light hidden within those rags, in that stench. I know that light because that light remains in my mind as well. As our lights merge, our minds are enlightened.

If you saw us on the street you would never know that a miracle had occurred, but my heart feels it, and I never again feel quite the same degree of separation as I did before. There is a crack now in wall of isolation I have built between me and not-me that can never be sealed again. I find it easier and even joyful to continue this practice, to continue to allow the light in my mind to find the light in minds all around me.

This is how I find my way back to God, to Love, to creation, to my eternal place in the Mind of God. I notice someone near me and I think to myself, “There I am.” I open my heart and mind to this one, no barriers, no defenses, just the joy of reunion. I have, in the past, prayed and prayed for union, for Christ Vision, for forgiveness. All along, there was nothing for me to do except open to Love and let it in. I only needed to stop defending separation and just desire wholeness.

Holy Spirit, I love the thought of spending the day reuniting with my selves. As I go to work, see customers, drive in heavy traffic, and face all the other forms of separation we have put into place, please help me to remember my purpose. Help me to remember what you have shown me this morning. Please heal the mind that imagines separation. This is the experience I asked for but now I long for love and for union and I long for God.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of Text, Chapter 11: I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 5. 8-12-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 5

5 The laws of the universe do not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for you. If you believe you are absent from God, you will believe that He is absent from you. Infinity is meaningless without you, and you are meaningless without God. There is no end to God and His Son, for we are the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you yours. See His creations as His Son, for yours were created in honour of Him. The universe of love does not stop because you do not see it, nor have your closed eyes lost the ability to see. Look upon the glory of His creation, and you will learn what God has kept for you.

Journal
I had to wait until I was through crying before I could write anything. I cried in joy and in sadness, joy that this is true and sadness that I cannot remember this. We are the universe, God and I and my creations; we are the universe of love. Oh my God, I long to remember this, to feel it, to know it. And from what Jesus says, this must be pretty simple since the universe of love does not stop just because I can’t see it, and my closed eyes have not lost the ability to see.

Everything real is still there and operating as usual. God still exists, and we still are in God and part of God. Our creations still exist and still love us. We have closed our eyes and imagined a world that is not love and are pretending it is real, pretending so well that we believe in our own illusion. How different this world of ours will look when we accept the truth and wake up, first within the world, and then from the world. And awakening from the world we will find ourselves back in God’s loving embrace, back with our creations, back in the universe of love. We will discover we never left except in our imagination.

When I read this phrase, “See His creations as His Son” I thought about something that has been occurring to me more and more often. I will see someone, a stranger maybe, and though the first impulse might be to judge, I am also aware of something else. I have the thought, “That is me standing there,” and with that realization comes a rush of love. It doesn’t stay, yet, but it was real for a moment. I think I am beginning to accept that we, the many of us, are one. I know I have said this and I have thought this, but now it has found a home in my mind and I am beginning to believe this. As I begin to see everyone as my self, I am getting closer to the memory of Love that is still in my mind.

(There is a YouTube video that has always touched me deeply and that I go back and listen to over and over. I didn’t know exactly why, but I think it is because it reminded me that I am part of the universe and the universe is in me.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g4d-rnhuSg)

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of Text, Chapter 11: I: The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 4. 8-11-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 4

4 Waiting is possible only in time, but time has no meaning. You who made delay can leave time behind simply by recognizing that neither beginnings nor endings were created by the Eternal, Who placed no limits on His creation or upon those who create like Him. You do not know this simply because you have tried to limit what He created, and so you believe that all creation is limited. How, then, could you know your creations, having denied infinity?

Journal
I still feel like I am waiting to forgive, to be peaceful, to wake up. It feels like there is this time lag between choosing chaos and choosing peace in whatever form the chaos is taking. It feels like I approach the veil, even peak behind it, and then I wait, thinking, “I’m not there yet.” I say that I live in God, but it feels like I live in time.

Lately, I have discovered the thought that now is the time. I don’t look at it too closely because what if it is not true. Or what if it is true. And yet, when else could one awaken except, now. What other time is there, really? God is eternal and therefore so am I. God is all there is, and so there is only eternity, and in eternity there is no time, no beginning, no ending.

What I have done within my mind is that I have tried to make eternity into something else. I have transformed formlessness into form, and placed gaps of nothing between the forms so that now it appears that there is separation between them. I have imagined it began and then it ends and then I have imagined little gaps between one event and another and called it time. And now one moment is separate from another moment, or so it seems. I have used the power of God to distort creation, to place limits where there is only limitlessness. I then called it reality and believed in it.

Now I wonder why I cannot remember my Creator or my creations. My mind is not so profoundly split as it once was, and I have begun to see through my illusions, and still, here I am.  But I am choosing peace and in choosing peace I am making a silent place in my mind, a place where I can meet my God.

I am learning to meet each confused thought, each chaotic moment in my life with the desire for the peace of God. Sometimes it feels like I am gritting my teeth as I insist that my mind belongs to God not the ego. But I know that will pass with “time” and I will be begin to meet each false thought with peace and it will feel joyful rather than a struggle. I know this is true because it is already beginning to happen.

The hardest part of this process has been that I could not believe that all I need to do to have peace is to choose peace. The ego mind fights this idea and calls it impossible. I will be upset about something and the ego wants to stay in that story, be angry about it, to feel unfairly treated, to fix it. I want only to disregard the story as irrelevant, and to choose peace.

It sometimes feels like Myron is struggling with the Angel of Peace, fighting for the right to remain in her righteous anger. I watch, and I feel the turmoil as if it is real and important. I ask the Holy Spirit to heal this rift in my mind, to remove these insane thoughts. Sometimes I ask to see the belief that is being played out here.

If I follow the belief to its origin, it always takes me to the same place. I think I accomplished the impossible. I made time and space and now there is a gap between Love and me that is too big to cross. And alone it is, but I am not alone. The Holy Spirit is my bridge and Jesus is my companion. Each time I use It to cross into peace, the imagined gap closes a bit more.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of Text, Chapter 11: I: The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 3. 8-10-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 3

3 If you were not part of God, His Will would not be unified. Is this conceivable? Can part of His Mind contain nothing? If your place in His Mind cannot be filled by anyone except you, and your filling it was your creation, without you there would be an empty place in God’s Mind. Extension cannot be blocked, and it has no voids. It continues forever, however much it is denied. Your denial of its reality may arrest it in time, but not in eternity. That is why your creations have not ceased to be extended, and why so much is waiting for your return.

Journal
God created me, and what He creates remains part of Him. I am an idea in the Mind of God, and ideas leave not their Source. The whole reason for making the idea of time and space was so that I could pretend to be someplace else for awhile, but that is all that happened. I am pretending that I can be outside God even though there is no outside God. I am pretending to be here for a awhile even though there is only eternity.

This illusion I made provides me with a mental landscape to play out impossible ideas within my mind. While this is happening, Reality remains unchanged. There is no empty place in God where I used to be. God has not stopped extending me, and I have not stopped extending my creations. Everything is as it always was and always will be. In fact, “was” and “will be” are meaningless words outside the illusion of time.

So much is waiting for my return and I long for my return as well. That is why I was drawn to A Course in Miracles, and why I am vigilant in my practice of all it offers me. I long for Home, for eternity, for God. I have been allowing the Holy Spirit to slowly back me out of this illusion so that I can know that my return was always accomplished. How loving is our Father that He would have my return to sanity be so gentle, and yet completely inevitable.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

The Peace of God is Everything I Want

There is no peace except the peace of God.

On Aug 3, I read this from Cate Grieves who has used the Course to Awaken in the world, and to achieve the peace of God:

“What I came to see was that if I desired anything in this world—even the smallest thing - just for an instant—I lost the peace. The most subtlest of an idea that my happiness could lie in something in this world—took me out of it.
The desire for the peace of God has to be our ONLY desire. Here is the answer—no compromise is possible in this. Lesson 185. I am here to say that this is possible. I’m not extra ordinary. I’m not special. I just didn’t compromise.”

Oh my gosh! Suddenly I saw the light! I saw that this is the answer for me. From Lesson 185, “I want the peace of God. To say these words is nothing. But to mean these words is everything.” And, “No one can mean these words and not be healed.” Then I looked again at what Cate said. She said that if she desired anything in the world, she lost her peace. And she said she wasn’t special or extra ordinary, just that she didn’t compromise. I knew, absolutely knew, that this is right and that I can and must do this.

So for the last few days I have been watching my mind with interest as I see what I have valued more than I valued the peace of God. I also wanted to see how it is that wanting something in the world moved me out of the peace of God. Here are some of the things I noticed.

I was in peace until I passed a mirror and had the thought that I really have to lose some weight. Just like that I was no longer at peace. That thought was followed by many others. I wondered what to do about my body, and what it means that I am having so much trouble losing weight. I started thinking about what I ate that day that I shouldn’t have. In that moment in which I decided that I need to lose weight, my body identity, the image I present to the world and that I think of as me, became what is important to me. I was no longer at peace.

Another time, I was at peace when the thought came to me that I wish my son would call me or that I could visit him. Then I felt sad and lonely and my mind thought up a special relationship story about this and was off and running. I had been happy and at peace, and I had a simple thought of missing my son. I didn’t think how much I love my son, which would not have disturbed my peace, and would have, in fact, brought me more joy. Instead, I thought he should be here with me, that I would be happier if he were here. I wanted the world to be different so I could be happy, and in that thought, I was no longer in peace.

I had pain and I remembered that pain is a choice. Jesus tells us this in many ways. In Chapter 8, The Body as Means or End, he says this.

“Sickness is a way of demonstrating that you can be hurt. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance. The ego uses this as its best argument for your need for its guidance. It dictates endless prescriptions for avoiding catastrophic outcomes.”

I was using pain to avoid knowing I am an eternal and Divine Being, the Son of God. I was using pain to keep myself in the illusion and bound to the ego. I was using pain to avoid the peace of God. Is that insane?

I have to work outside a lot and it has been very hot the last few days. While I thought about that and felt like I needed it to be cooler or I needed to not be working in the heat, I was miserable. I could not sustain the peace of God, because my mind kept going back to how drained I was, or how the high humidity felt like trying to breathe hot water. I wanted the world to be different. I chose something other than the peace of God.

But in each of these circumstances, I chose again. I remembered Lesson 185. I remembered that, “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.” I know from years of doing this work, that I cannot simply say that I am not going to think certain thoughts and they stop. But I know that if I want these thoughts to be removed from my mind, they will be. The Holy Spirit responds to our slightest desire for healing. So this is what I did.

I saw that when these stray thoughts came into my mind, and I found myself wanting something besides peace, I immediately lost that wonderful, joyful peace. I reminded myself that the peace of God is everything I want. I asked the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of the belief that anything else can make me happy. I didn’t try to stop missing my son. I asked for healing, and I began to anticipate that healing. I am watching my mind and my feelings to see what it is like to feel only love for him and no need at all.

I didn’t try to stop caring about how I look. I just started watching for a change, not knowing what that would look like, but anticipating a way to see this that does not leave me feeling guilty and afraid. I anticipate feeling free! How that occurs or what it looks like is not my business. My desire for this healing is my part, the rest is for the Holy Spirit, and He does not need my help.

Yesterday the heat index where I was working was 102. I was fine. I was hot, but I was not suffering. I was at peace. It is going to be that high and higher all next week. I am at peace with that. I am not worried about it and I have no reason to dread it. I don’t feel like calling my family or friends and asking them to commiserate with me. I don’t feel like finding somewhere to place blame. I am at peace.

I spent the last few days watching my mind going back to the painful but familiar way of seeing the world as something to change in order to be happy, to seeing in the world something I need. But now I see that the peace of God really is everything I need. Though I hear the ego mind trying to pull me back into the illusion of need, and I notice the thoughts that there are some things that are not easily dismissed, I will happily continue this practice. Like Cate, I will not compromise. I love this!

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of Text, Chapter 11, I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 2. 8-6-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 2

2 To be alone is to be separated from infinity, but how can this be if infinity has no end? No one can be beyond the limitless, because what has no limits must be everywhere. There are no beginnings and no endings in God, Whose universe is Himself. Can you exclude yourself from the universe, or from God Who is the universe? I and my Father are one with you, for you are part of Us. Do you really believe that part of God can be missing or lost to Him?

Journal
Jesus is appealing to my common sense. God is the universe, and has no limits. I am of God and in God, so I am the universe and I am limitless. There are no beginnings or endings in God and so God always was and always will be and therefore I always was and always will be. Can I undo this? Do I really believe that is possible?
What is this that seems to be happening to me and all around me? This does not appear to be God. It is not eternal and limitless. Did I actually succeed in destroying Reality and setting up my own world and my own rules? If that were true then I really did destroy God and my guilt and fear are justified. And yet, can I really believe that I have the power and will to do that?

This is the error we make, this belief that we are something outside God and that we have power separate from God. We are told that of ourselves we can do nothing, but through God all things are possible. So what I have done is nothing. I did it through the power that is God, but I did it of myself so I did nothing. I dreamed I did something. I made an illusion of something. But I did nothing, and so the fear and guilt are not justified, because nothing happened.

This nothing I am experiencing as if it is something, feels amazingly real because it is a real experience, but it is not Reality. However, the feeling of it, is what confuses me, and makes me think I have done this thing. I like to think of it like this. I (the Son) extended myself into an illusion of reality and am experiencing it as if it were reality. Can you imagine that? Can you see it in your mind?

I extend myself into the illusion. It is as if I am watching the best 3-D movie ever, and have the additional ability to put myself into one of the characters, to extend my being, my awareness, into that character. Now the movie is even more astounding, more realistic. In fact it is so realistic that I am lost in the character and the action and the story. But I cannot stay lost in it because that would be insanity and I am in God Who is not insane.

What is happening now for me, and for you, is that I am waking up from this dream story, and I am withdrawing my awareness from this character I am playing… from all the characters I have played and all the stories I have experienced. It is perfect that I do this, and perfectly natural. It is the only natural thing I have done since I started this, eons ago, and yet, not eons, since there is no beginning and no ending in God.

From within the story, timelessness and eternity are not understandable, but the story is not in eternity so it is coming to an end. I don’t need to understand how all this occurred or even what it all means in order to wake up from it. I only need to accept it is possible (and I think that is why Holy Spirit gives me these metaphors; he is helping me to understand and accept just enough to allow a gentle awakening.) When I am submerged in the story, Reality seems like a dream, but as I emerge, even a little, I glimpse a possibility of my true Self, and start to understand that I do not live in this story, but in eternity.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of Text, Chapter 11: I: The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 1. 8-5-15

I. The Gifts of Fatherhood, P 1

1 You have learned your need of healing. Would you bring anything else to the Sonship, recognizing your need of healing for yourself? For in this lies the beginning of the return to knowledge; the foundation on which God will help build again the thought system you share with Him. Not one stone you place upon it but will be blessed by Him, for you will be restoring the holy dwelling place of His Son, where He wills His Son to be and where he is. In whatever part of the mind of God’s Son you restore this reality, you restore it to yourself. You dwell in the Mind of God with your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone.

Journal
Jesus is right; I know I need healing. I know that my mind is sick with ego thoughts and beliefs, and I know I want to be healed. This desire for healing is all I want to bring to the Sonship. If I notice that I think someone else is guilty, I don’t want to bring this belief in guilt to the Sonship, but rather I will bring the desire that this thought in my mind be healed. If I believe in my brother’s sickness, this belief is not what I want to bring to the Sonship. Let me, instead, remember that sickness of the body is a projection of an untrue belief. It is not God’s Will, therefore, it is not real.

Let each untrue thought that I find in my mind be healed. And I know that it doesn’t matter where in the Sonship the thought is acted upon, each thought of which I am aware is my responsibility. When I read about a crime, I pray for the healing of my mind. I pray for the part of my mind that believes salvation lies in attack. When I am told of a brother living in poverty, I pray for the healing of the part of the mind that believes that God Son lacks anything.

This is what I am to do as my part in the restoration of the thought system I share with God. I dwell, with my brother, in God, but I have made a thought system that puts us outside each other and outside God. As I lose my desire for that thought system, it is undone for me. My part in this is to choose differently, and allow the mind to be healed and the thought system I share with God to be rebuilt for me. This is God’s Will and it is my will, too.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Page 116 of 264 pages ‹ First  < 114 115 116 117 118 >  Last ›

<< Back to main page of Together, We Light the Way

Has this page been helpful to you?
Your contribution to support this site is greatly appreciated. To make a tax deductible contribution with a credit/debit card, click here.
Click here to donate from your PayPal account.
Or send a check to Pathways of Light, 12530 Lions Chase Court, Huntley, IL 60142.