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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://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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!

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://dev.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

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