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Study of Text, Chapter 10: IV. The Denial of God, P 11.7-23-15

V. The Denial of God, P 11
11 Out of your gifts to Him the Kingdom will be restored to His Son. His Son removed himself from His gift by refusing to accept what had been created for him, and what he had created in the Name of his Father. Heaven waits for his return, for it was created as the dwelling place of God’s Son. You are not at home anywhere else, or in any other condition. Do not deny yourself the joy that was created for you for the misery you have made for yourself. God has given you the means for undoing what you have made. Listen, and you will learn how to remember what you are.

Journal
The way I am learning to remember what I am right now is by becoming more aware of the attack thoughts in my mind, and asking the Holy Spirit to remove them for me. It is amazing how many they are and how many forms they take. I see that I have attack thoughts directed to others. For instance, I might feel sorry for someone and that is an attack thought. It says that they stand outside the Kingdom.

If I think I need to correct someone or give them advice, that is an attack thought that says they are not capable of finding their own path, which is not true. I was listening to Byron Katie this morning. She was saying that she never gives advice, and for this very reason. When her kids ask her what they should do, she tells them she doesn’t know. She might tell them what she has done in similar circumstances. But she trusts them to find their path, just as she did.

Of course sometimes my attack is more overt. I become angry and defensive and this is an attack. I feel like someone is treating me unfairly and this is an attack on them, too. It is an attack on myself as well. When I think I am a victim to someone else, I have attacked myself. I attack myself every time I feel unworthy or fearful or guilty. I have made the choice to see myself outside the Kingdom all over again, just as I did in that tiny mad moment in which I detoured into fear in guilt and dreamed up this bit of hell I call the world.

It can be very uncomfortable looking at these attack thoughts and taking responsibility for them. It is tiring and sometimes discouraging, but it is what we must all do if we want to be free of them. Yesterday, I did the work and sometimes I cried in sheer frustration that I cling so tightly to these defenses. But I did the work. Today, I will continue it. I want a clear mind, a free mind, a happy mind. I am happy to face what my attack thoughts try to hide, to see that I am not a victim and I am never unfairly treated. I am ready to accept the Atonement for this. It is worth all the effort that is required of me to do this.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: V. The Denial of God, P 10. 7-21-15

V. The Denial of God, P 10
10 You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God, in His Love, would not have it so. Yet He would not interfere with you, because He would not know His Son if he were not free. To interfere with you would be to attack Himself, and God is not insane. When you deny Him you are insane. Would you have Him share your insanity? God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. That was the condition of His Son’s creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. To know that is sanity. To deny it is insanity. God gave Himself to you in your creation, and His gifts are eternal. Would you deny yourself to Him?

Journal
I used to think that if God really loved me, He would just wake me up, pull me from this dream and take me home. This thought was a fear thought, fear that I was trapped here and couldn’t get out on my own. I was frustrated and feeling like a victim of the world I made, and even a victim of my own stubborn denial. It seemed cruel that He would leave me stuck here when it would be so easy for Him to save me.

I can see how I used to mirror that thought in my behavior with other people. I would see them acting in a way that was self-destructive and I would try to save them from themselves. I used to think A Course in Miracles was for everyone and for them right now, and I would try to make them see this was true… for their own good. ~smile~ My behavior was just a reflection of my own fear that I couldn’t wake up on my own, and I needed someone (God) to do it for me. Maybe I was showing God how He should be waking me up.

When I tried to fix others I was saying that I didn’t trust them and didn’t believe in them, and that they are not free. And this was a reflection of how I felt about myself. God does not interfere in us because we are free. He does believe in us and He does trust us. He knows we are trustworthy and free because He created us like Himself. To think we are less than free, less than perfect, would be to think He is less than free and perfect and that would mean God is insane. He is not. We, however, are.

It is insane for a Divine being such as we are, to think we are helplessly trapped in an illusion of our own making. The mind that made this elaborate illusion is capable of using that same power to disentangle from it. God is not afraid for us, and so we should not be afraid either. God does want us to remain as He created us and so we will, and that means we are perfectly safe.

We are, however, suffering from the belief that we are not safe, that we are not wholly perfect and perfectly free. And as Jesus has pointed out, what we believe is true for us. Not true in reality, but true in our mind, so in our mind we suffer. God would not have us suffer, and so He calls us to Him. He calls us out of our insanity. We are reminded that, “God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. That was the condition of His Son’s creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God.” I will remember this today, and I will return to sanity.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: V. The Denial of God, P 9. 7-20-15

V. The Denial of God, P 9
9 Only the eternal can be loved, for love does not die. What is of God is His forever, and you are of God. Would He allow Himself to suffer? And would He offer His Son anything that is not acceptable to Him? If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. Yet to do this you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgement of your Father is the acknowledgement of yourself as you are. Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him you bring sin, pain and suffering into your own mind because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also deny what it creates because it is free.

Journal
When I read the sentence that says what is of God is His forever, and you are of God, I just cried. I cried from relief and from joy. I am His forever. I cannot suffer or be in pain. I cannot die. I cannot be or do or feel what is foreign to God. It’s kind of funny to think this is possible. I think of my child being born as a horse or an orange tree. Not possible, right? I cannot be anything unlike God because I am of Him.

So where did this story of Myron come from? Here I am in a body, feeling body things, experiencing separation. None of these things are what I must be and what I am. One thing that I am is powerful, because my Father is powerful. So with this power I dream of things that cannot be, and I imagine I am in this dream. But the same power that made this possible also makes it possible for me to wake up from the dream.

How do I stay in the dream? I continue to use my power to make stories that are different than God. I pretend they are real and so I become my own creator. At least in my mind, I am my own creator, and I am in charge of what I see, what I experience. I even give myself un-super powers and become small and weak, fragile and destined to death. Pretty interesting choices for an all-powerful, eternal being.

How do I wake up from the dream? I lose interest in it. I stop playing around with un-creation, and I acknowledge my Father as my Creator. When I feel small and weak, I remember God does not create small and weak. I must be dreaming. When I feel sick I remember that God does not create sickness. When I think of death, I remember God creates only the eternal. This is how I wake up. This is how I return to using my power for true creation.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: V. The Denial of God, P 8. 7-17-15

V. The Denial of God, P 8
8 Do not look to the god of sickness for healing but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgement of Him. When you acknowledge Him you will know that He has never ceased to acknowledge you, and that in His acknowledgement of you lies your being. You are not sick and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do. Remember, though, that to do this is blasphemy, for it means that you are looking without love on God and His creation, from which He cannot be separated.

Journal
This paragraph has a passage that I keep on my remember board and that I use often.

“You are not sick and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do.”

When I feel sick, I remind myself that Jesus says I am not sick; I am just confused about what I am. When I forget my true nature and think I am sick, lonely, afraid, or guilty, I am turning my back on God. When I think that my brother is guilty, I am turning my back on God. When I turn from the reality of creation, I am turning from God.

Jesus has told us that sickness is a defense against God. When I am sick in body, in relationships, in finances, in emotions or in any area of my life, I have made a deliberate choice to defend against God. I am using sickness to keep out my awareness of God’s love for me and my love for Him. Through A Course in Miracles, I am remembering that I chose this, and deciding that I don’t want it anymore. I am learning how to ask for and accept healing.

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

V. The Denial of God, P 7
7 Your Father has not denied you. He does not retaliate, but He does call to you to return. When you think He has not answered your call, you have not answered His. He calls to you from every part of the Sonship, because of His Love for His Son. If you hear His message He has answered you, and you will learn of Him if you hear aright. The Love of God is in everything He created, for His Son is everywhere. Look with peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing into your heart in gratitude for your gift to Him.

Journal
God has not denied me, and He isn’t upset that I used denial of Him in my game of separation. He just wants me to come home now, and I am learning that this is what I want, too. His Voice speaks to me all through the day and I listen and sometimes I don’t. That I am not listening does not mean He has failed to answer. His answer will always be some form of love that I can understand. Over time, I have learned that this does not have to be in some concrete experience, though often it is. I am learning to recognize and accept love that is not attached to anything.

While I still need form in order to understand His Answer, it is given to me, because God wants me to recognize His Love. Jesus tells us that the Love of God is in everything He created, for His Son is everywhere.  All I need to do to receive this love is to look with peace upon my brothers. I have an unlimited number of opportunities to do this, from smiling at a stranger, to pausing in traffic to let someone merge in front of me, to overlooking an attack and recognizing it as a call for love.

When I am at peace with my brothers, I experience the love of God to the degree I am able to accept it. Guilt is a wall that I have erected between myself and love, but in being at peace with my brothers, I am relinquishing the belief in guilt and so relinquishing the need for that wall. As it comes down I am bathed in the love of God. It puts a whole other perspective on the desire to judge my brothers.  The high cost of judgment is seen when I realize what I give up when I do this.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: V. The Denial of God, P6. 7-14-15

V. The Denial of God, P 6
6 Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken. Yet this can be corrected and God will help you, knowing that you could not sin against Him. You denied Him because you loved Him, knowing that if you recognized your love for Him, you could not deny Him. Your denial of Him therefore means that you love Him, and that you know He loves you. Remember that what you deny you must have once known. And if you accept denial, you can accept its undoing.

Journal
This is a short paragraph, but very helpful. I have not sinned, but have only been mistaken. Every sinful thing I have ever done is just a symbol, a reflection, of the one sin that I believe in. I believe that I denied God, turned my back on Him, and so, changed Him. That is the sin that keeps me in the illusion, afraid to leave it no matter how painful it becomes. Jesus is telling us that we don’t have to be afraid of this imagined sin. He says that we could not have sinned against God.

This sentence intrigued me: “You denied Him because you loved Him, knowing that if you recognized your love for Him, you could not deny Him.” Here is the thought that came to me as I read this. In order to have the experience of not-God, or separation, we had to deny God. If we did not, our love for God would have made pretending to be separate from Him impossible.

In the eons of time since this tiny mad idea took form and we took a detour into fear and guilt, we have forgotten the original intention. Now we are afraid of our denial, thinking we accomplished the impossible and truly affected God. This is the mistaken idea that we are holding onto, and it is the belief that keeps us in the dream, afraid to wake up.

But the truth is in our mind, and God calls to us to awaken. We can hear that call, and in fact, we have heard it. That is the reason we were led to this Course and the reason we keep at it even when it seems hard. We have heard the call and it has awakened an ancient memory that remains in our mind. We are remembering that we love God and that He loves us.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: V. The Denial of God, P5. 7-13-15

V. The Denial of God, P 5
5 I said before that of yourself you can do nothing, but you are not of yourself. If you were, what you have made would be true, and you could never escape. It is because you did not make yourself that you need be troubled over nothing. Your gods are nothing, because your Father did not create them. You cannot make creators who are unlike your Creator, any more than He could have created a Son who was unlike Him. If creation is sharing, it cannot create what is unlike itself. It can share only what it is. Depression is isolation, and so it could not have been created.

Journal
Oh my! What a relief it is to know that none of this is real. I believe something that isn’t true and from that belief I project a representative image of that untrue belief and that is all that has happened. It is not real because I cannot create something that is unlike Creation. Creation is sharing and God created me through sharing Himself, so I am like God. I can only create through sharing myself, and so my creations must be like God. Anything else is just an illusion, a dream of something different.

In my desire to experience myself as something different than I am, I made up the idea of different gods so that I could mimic creation. The god of depression is one of them and now I can pretend to be created in the image of the god of depression. I think about something sad or difficult or fearful and I feel depressed. But it is a false feeling because it was sourced by a false god. This is nothing for me to be concerned about because nothing actually happened.

God is not alone and it is His nature to create through sharing. Depression is isolation, and so it could not have been created. In truth, I can only feel joy and peace and love because that is what I am. And thank God, I cannot be anything else. When I feel depressed, I am only confused. I cannot do anything about the confusion alone, but I am not alone. The Holy Spirit will correct my mistakes, as I am willing to relinquish them to Him.

This is going to be a very hectic week for me with long hours, because it is conference week. I think of all that I have to do, and how tired I am every year at this time, and I feel depressed. But I am only temporarily discouraged because through my study of the Course I have discovered that I am not bound by the laws of my false god.

I have discovered that I can experience these things without feeling discouraged and depressed. Bowing down to this false god is simply a choice I make and I can make a different choice. With the Holy Spirit’s help I can relinquish the belief that depression is real. Today’s Lesson says that I place the future in the Hands of God. This is a statement that leads out of confusion and into Reality. I make that choice today. I turn from the false gods I made to the God of Creation and I put everything in His Hands.

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