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Study of Text, Chapter 11: Introduction, P 4. 8-4-15

Introduction, P 4

4 My brother, you are part of God and part of me. When you have at last looked at the ego’s foundation without shrinking you will also have looked upon ours. I come to you from our Father to offer you everything again. Do not refuse it in order to keep a dark cornerstone hidden, for its protection will not save you. I give you the lamp and I will go with you. You will not take this journey alone. I will lead you to your true Father, Who hath need of you, as I have. Will you not answer the call of love with joy?

Journal
“Oh, Jesus, I love you so much! Thank you, thank you!”

Jesus has given us the lamp and goes with us; we are not alone in this journey. Oh my gosh! I want to walk that path with him. I want to go home. I will shine that light on every dark corner of the mind, and do so gladly. I ask that I be shone any dark thought that I have been hiding from myself. One of them came up recently and I wrote about it this morning in my Daily Lesson journal.  Here is a link if you are interested. http://tinyurl.com/nbl6juj

I used to be nervous about asking for dark thoughts indiscriminately, because I was afraid I would be overwhelmed. I have come to fully trust Holy Spirit, though, and so I am not afraid to ask. He will give me exactly what is right for me now, and will never lead me to look at something I am not ready for. Also, I have experienced this looking business enough to know that I will come out of it unscathed, and very likely, healed.

There is the belief that I must keep my dark thoughts hidden to protect myself. Just as I have thoughts I don’t want you to see, I have darker thoughts I don’t want even myself to see, much less, God. This is ridiculous, of course, as “my” thoughts are the thoughts in the one mind. There are no private thoughts. And could there be something unknown to the Holy Spirit? Really, I hid only from my own self, and that self is only pretending not to know what is there.

Jesus is telling us that we don’t need to be afraid of the thoughts in the mind, no matter how dark they might be. My experience has been that looking at them with the Holy Spirit dispels the fear and guilt associated with the thoughts. They often become laughable after my mind is healed, and sometimes I cannot even bring them to mind. It seems that when the thought is removed from the mind, it is truly gone. If I remember the thought at all, it has no meaning to me, no charge. It is like I am remembering something I read about some character in a book.

So I encourage us all to take Jesus up on his offer. Let him give us the lamp and walk with us through this process of looking with the Holy Spirit at every dark corner of the mind. We all know what happens to darkness when the light comes on. When the light is focused on all that is in the mind, it will reveal to us our Father and our relationship with Him. We will see that, truly, there is only God and we are in Him. This will no longer be an idea, a lofty concept, but will be our experience. Can you imagine!

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: Introduction, P 3. 8-3-15

Introduction, P 3
3 You make by projection, but God creates by extension. The cornerstone of God’s creation is you, for His thought system is light. Remember the Rays that are there unseen. The more you approach the center of His thought system, the clearer the light becomes. The closer you come to the foundation of the ego’s thought system, the darker and more obscure becomes the way. Yet even the little spark in your mind is enough to lighten it. Bring this light fearlessly with you, and bravely hold it up to the foundation of the ego’s thought system. Be willing to judge it with perfect honesty. Open the dark cornerstone of terror on which it rests, and bring it out into the light. There you will see that it rested on meaninglessness, and that everything of which you have been afraid was based on nothing.

Journal
Jesus tells us that we must look at our dark thoughts with the Holy Spirit before they can be removed, and in this paragraph he explains it in a different way. He says that the ego thought system is dark, while God’s thought system is light. The closer we get to the center of His thought system, the clearer the light becomes, and the closer we get to the ego system, the darker and more obscure becomes the way.
But, while the Great Rays may be unseen, we do have a little spark in our mind, and it is enough. We can approach the darkness in our minds with confidence as we hold this light to the ego’s dark foundation. I am reminded of the song that says, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.” So what does this look like in my life?

I woke up in the night with a bad headache. I lay there watching my thoughts about this. I moved toward the ego and thought how often this happens, and how often I have other pains and misery in the body. I thought how often I have tried to see this differently and yet, here it is again. I felt discouraged by the whole thing. I wondered what it all means and thought I should just get up and take an aspirin, and what difference does it make anyway.

Then I shined my little light on these dark thoughts and I waited for the light to show me what the darkness had hidden. I began to notice A Course in Miracles playing on my iPod. As I listened, I felt soothed and then encouraged by the words I was hearing. The headache receded to the background and no longer felt important. Again, I thought about getting an aspirin, but decided to wait to see if I really needed it. I fell back to sleep listening to Jesus’ words.

I woke up happy, the confusion and darkness of the ego thought system shined away. I sit here now writing about this and feeling waves of peace and joy flowing through me. I didn’t need a lot of words or explanations last night. I just needed to experience the Light of God shining in me, and that was enough to know everything else was meaningless.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: Introduction, P 2. 7-31-15

Introduction, P 2
2 Yet what would you say to someone who believed this question really involves conflict? If you made the ego, how can the ego have made you? The authority problem is still the only source of conflict, because the ego was made out of the wish of God’s Son to father Him. The ego, then, is nothing more than a delusional system in which you made your own father. Make no mistake about this. It sounds insane when it is stated with perfect honesty, but the ego never looks on what it does with perfect honesty. Yet that is its insane premise, which is carefully hidden in the dark cornerstone of its thought system. And either the ego, which you made, is your father, or its whole thought system will not stand.

Journal
“The ego, then, is nothing more than a delusional system in which you made your own father. Make no mistake about this.” Ugh. Here it is again. I made a thought system, a delusional thought system, so that I could make my own father. My first thought is to remind myself this is not cause for guilt. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my friends and I would play at being a family. One of us would be the mother and one the father and the rest would be the children. It was play and it was innocent. My actual mother was not hurt by my play, nor was she angry that for awhile, I usurped her role. Nor is God upset with us for our play.

In another place in the Course, Jesus talks about us taking a detour into fear and guilt, and that is what we did. We made a decision not to laugh and we took our decision to replace our Father very seriously. Thus, fear and guilt were made and experienced. This, necessarily led to projection, and to amnesia. Now Jesus is helping us to understand that the ego is the system that allowed us to replace our Father, with one of our own making.

But now we had a quandary. How can the ego be the maker of us when we made the ego? We seem to have many conflicts in our life, but this authority problem is the source of all conflict, and the conflicts we are aware of are just reflections of that one conflict, just different forms of the same problem. All conflict, all problems, are corrected as we accept that the ego is only a delusional thought system, that we made this thought system to be our father, that this is impossible and meaningless, and that we are through playing and that it can easily be undone as we acknowledge God as our Father.

The solution is so simple and I really think that I am ready for the solution. But then I notice how quickly I turn to the ego for my answers. I want to lose weight so I look for a good diet that will make this happen as quickly as possible. This is asking the ego for an answer.  My friend tells me about being sick and there is an urge to tell her about an article I read about a good way to get well quick. This is asking the ego for answer. I see an article about saving for retirement and I feel stupid because I never thought to make those plans. That decision that I am stupid is the answer the ego gave me when I asked.

My Father has answers to my problems, too, loving answers, but to hear His answers, I must stop asking for and listening to the answers from the ego. This is not hard, but it does take consistent vigilance. I pay attention to what I am doing, and I give my willingness to be corrected when I forget and turn to the ego as if it is my father. I stop kidding myself that the ego could actually be my father when I am the one that made the ego.

I remind myself that not only do I have a Father, but my Father is Love and so can only love me. I read, I study, I do the Lessons, and all of this brings me to the one thing that actually heals my mind; it brings me to desire. I realize that I desire to acknowledge God as my only Father. As my desire for God becomes whole, the ego thought fades from my mind.

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Study of Text, Chapter 11: Introduction, P 1. 7-30-15

Chapter 11: God or the Ego
Introduction
1 Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence on both sides fairly, you will realize this must be true. Neither God nor the ego proposes a partial thought system. Each is internally consistent, but they are diametrically opposed in all respects so that partial allegiance is impossible. Remember, too, that their results are as different as their foundations, and their fundamentally irreconcilable natures cannot be reconciled by vacillations between them. Nothing alive is Fatherless, for life is creation. Therefore, your decision is always an answer to the question, “Who is my father?” And you will be faithful to the father you choose.

Journal
Holy cow! Am I choosing the ego to be my father? This is crazy! I pray to God as my Father, but I see that I also pray to the ego as well. This happens when I feel sick and look to the ego for an answer. I ask the ego what caused this sickness and what I should do about it. The ego says that I caught it from someone, making them, not just separate from me, but guilty for giving me their sickness.

The ego says I must go to the doctor who is separate from, and above me. The ego says the doctor will be my savior and I must listen to and obey him. The ego says I need medicine and the medicine will be my savior. The ego says I should not listen to the Holy Spirit who says that the illness is not in the body but in the mind, because if I listen to this crazy stuff I will get sicker and sicker and my punishment for my foolishness will be death.

When I acknowledge God as my Father and pray to Him, I am shown that the problem is not something that happened in the world, but is a mistaken belief within my mind. I am told that I am very holy, that I am powerful, that I made my own problem and with my permission this wrong minded thinking will be corrected. All I am told points to my true nature as an extension of God. It points to my power and my perfection, and my innocence. It points away from fear and guilt. It points to the unity of all things, and our unity with God.

I understand both systems and I now accept that this is true. The only problem I have is that I am still trying to use both systems, and as they are diametrically opposed, my mind is conflicted. Conflict causes suffering. In conflict there is no resolution and so I am sick and I am healed and I am sick again. This applies to all areas of life. My relationships, my finances, my health, all suffer from conflicted beliefs, from my desire to live in both worlds.

The solution is simple and obvious. The ego is insane and not sustainable. The ego is suffering. I am learning that the ego is not my father, and in fact I am the maker of the ego. I guess you could say that I parented the ego. It is crazy that I should listen to the ego as if it had power over me, rather than the other way around. As the maker of the ego, I can choose to reject it as an interesting experiment, but one which fell short of the expected results. Clearly it is time to let it go.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: V. The Denial of God, P 14. 7-28-15

V. The Denial of God, P 14
14 Arrogance is the denial of love, because love shares and arrogance withholds. As long as both appear to you to be desirable the concept of choice, which is not of God, will remain with you. While this is not true in eternity it is true in time, so that while time lasts in your mind there will be choices. Time itself is your choice. If you would remember eternity, you must look only on the eternal. If you allow yourself to become preoccupied with the temporal, you are living in time. As always, your choice is determined by what you value. Time and eternity cannot both be real, because they contradict each other. If you will accept only what is timeless as real, you will begin to understand eternity and make it yours.

Journal
Yesterday went pretty well. We had our Monday meeting and I wondered if I had forgiven all the drama inherent in these meetings lately. I guess I have, at least to a great deal, as everything went pretty smoothly. As the day went on, I noticed friction between parties, but I just watched my mind and chose not to take part of it.

On my way home, I was listening to a book as I drove, and I kept getting distracted from what was being read by attack thoughts in my mind. It was kind of funny in a way. I had one attack thought after another directed at the people at work. It was like, suddenly, I let the dog off his leash and he was running wild.

For a few minutes, I was focused on hearing my story and kept bring my mind back to it. Then I stopped myself, turned off the story and looked at these thoughts. As I paid attention to my feelings I realized the real problem was that I was dreading going to work this week in this extreme heat, and that I was projecting my unhappiness with the situation onto my co-workers.

I knew immediately that I was not interested in this, and released it all to the Holy Spirit. It all happened very quickly and I was back in peace, listening to my story. Forgiveness is easy when that is what you really want. I wanted peace more than I wanted to feel sorry for myself, and more than I wanted to blame anyone and so it was just done.

I got to the place where I wanted peace more than I wanted the ego drama of the day by making that choice over and over. While I still get entangled in a drama from time to time, I usually choose to focus on Reality rather than on the illusion. I can believe only one or the other in any moment, so the more I believe the truth, the easier it is for me to make that choice.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: V. The Denial of God, P 13. 7-25-15

V. The Denial of God, P13
13 Do not perceive anything God did not create or you are denying Him. His is the only Fatherhood, and it is yours only because He has given it to you. Your gifts to yourself are meaningless, but your gifts to your creations are like His, because they are given in His Name. That is why your creations are as real as His. Yet the real Fatherhood must be acknowledged if the real Son is to be known. You believe that the sick things you have made are your real creations, because you believe that the sick images you perceive are the sons of God. Only if you accept the Fatherhood of `God will you have anything, because His Fatherhood gave you everything. That is why to deny Him is to deny yourself.

Journal
As I read this I wondered how I could perceive nothing God did not create, and then I realized I was thinking of perceive as “see.” I could not imagine how I could look around with my eyes and see only the real. Of course that makes no sense, because the eyes show me only the ephemeral and what is real is eternal. The eyes show me only illusions.

Obviously, Jesus is telling me not to believe what I see, not to believe it is real and valuable, and something I would long for and give to myself. I will still need a house and a car and money, or at least something that passes for these things, depending on my circumstances. But they are not gifts to myself. I used to long for a special car, a special house, a lot of money, and now I expect to receive all that I need. If I don’t have it I must not need it.

Jesus says that I believe the sick things I have made are my creations, and while this is true I will not remember my real creations. The thought given me as I read this passage is to return to Lesson 325,  “All things I think I see reflect ideas.” The world is filled with images of the ideas in my mind. I think I want something and I make an image of it and project it outward and value it.

This is where the idea of positive thinking and The Secret come from. We have made an image of a world and then we go another step and try to make an image from within that world. I think that as we recall some vague memory of how we made this world, we try to duplicate it, and we “discover” that what we want very much, we tend to get.

The problem with this idea is that we have many ideas in our mind. We have the idea of love and joy and happiness, and we also have the idea of guilt and fear, suffering and death. On both levels, as the maker of our experience, and as the conscious manipulator of that experience, we make images from a grab bag of beliefs and thoughts.

We don’t understand anything and we don’t know what anything is for. How could we be surprised at the resultant mess? It is at this point that we pretend it all just showed up and we don’t know where it came from. We pretend that we are just victims of circumstance and of unkind and sometimes vicious people. We give away our identity and with it our power and hide in the closet afraid to come out, afraid that the Creator of Reality is offended by our dream world.

We need not be afraid to acknowledge our Father. He is no more offended by our fanciful play than we are offended by our children as, when in play, they pretend to be something they are not. And we must acknowledge our Father if we are to remember who we are, if we are to reclaim the memory of our power and our place within Him.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: V. The Denial of God, P 12. 7-24-15

V. The Denial of God, P12
12 If God knows His children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive them as guilty. If God knows His children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere. If God knows His children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed. All of these illusions, and the many other forms that blasphemy may take, are refusals to accept creation as it is. If God created His Son perfect, that is how you must learn to see him to learn of his reality. And as part of the Sonship, that is how you must see yourself to learn of yours.

Journal
I haven’t taken part in traditional religion in so long that I had to look up blasphemy to remember what is typically meant by the word. This is what I found.

Blasphemy is the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God, to religious or holy persons or things, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable.

In this paragraph, Jesus is telling us what truly constitutes blasphemy. When we see anything that is not in alignment with what God creates, and believe what we see, this is blasphemy. While I was looking up the religious definition of blasphemy, I saw that some religions take this idea very seriously, indeed, even calling it a religious crime. Jesus tells us that it is blasphemy to deny God, but He does not tell us that we are guilty for doing so. We are just confused and our confusion is hurting us, so he wants us to see what we are doing so we can change our minds.

At first it seems the impossible is being asked of us. We are to see no suffering, no depression, neither in others or ourselves. How the heck are we supposed to do that? Everywhere you look someone is suffering. I remind myself that when Jesus says we are not to see, what he means is we are not to perceive. We are not to look at apparent suffering, believe what we see and thus strengthen the belief in suffering for all of us.

Sometimes this is easy to correct. I see in the news that people have died in a fire. I say a prayer that they will transition gently, and their loved ones will know the comfort and love of God in this difficult time. I know that it seems bad, especially to all involved, but I know it is all right, that everyone involved is innocent and deeply loved by God. I know that what is happening is not real. I know that when someone “dies” the only thing that has changed is that they have ceased to animate this body with their awareness and that it has been placed elsewhere.

When a friend or family member dies, it feels different to me. It is harder to remember the truth. I feel shock and grief. The truth did not cease to be the truth; it is just harder for me to remember the truth. The emotions seem to temporarily overwhelm what I know to be true. It helps sometimes to have others, who are not so directly involved, to remember the truth for me. This strengthens my own ability to remember.

Always, however I feel when I see and believe what is not truth, I ask for the Atonement. I ask that the Holy Spirit correct my thinking, that He give me a different way to see the situation. He never fails to fulfill his function, and even when I have to return again and again for correction, He is always there, always ready to heal at the slightest invitation from me.

When someone is suffering, if I see their suffering as real and as justified I am not helping them. I am just making it worse for all of us as I make it real within the mind. But if I see that they are suffering without believing in their suffering or in the reality of the situation, I can be helpful. I can strengthen the light within their mind, with the light in my mind.

Just because the woes of the world have no reality, doesn’t mean we should fail to respond to a need. I send my condolences, I give a hug, I cry with my friend, I become the quiet listener. I can ask Holy Spirit if there is some way I can be helpful. He might ask me to do something, or to say something that encourages and lets them know they are loved and cared for. I could even be the answer to their prayer.

Taking these actions doesn’t mean that I am joining them in the error of believing in the problem. It means that I have compassion for their confusion because I have suffered the same confusion. It means I love them and care for them, just as God loves and cares for me even though He does not believe in my problems.

Today, Holy Spirit, help me to be aware of what I am giving my faith to. I want the peace of God and I cannot have that if I perceive suffering to be real. I open my mind to You, and ask that You remove those thoughts that justify the belief in what could never be true because it stands outside creation. Help me to do that for myself and for everyone else you send my way. Thank you.

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