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A Reflection of Ideas. Part 2

A Reflection of Ideas. Part 2

This is salvation’s keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own. From insane wishes comes an insane world. From judgment comes a world condemned. And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world comes forth, with mercy for the holy Son of God, to offer him a kindly home where he can rest a while before he journeys on, and help his brothers walk ahead with him, and find the way to Heaven and to God. Lesson 325

First I understand how I make the world I see.

It is a reflection of a process in my mind.
It starts with a desire.
I make an image of that desire. I judge it valuable. I seek to find it.
I project it outward. I look upon it. I decide it is real and I guard it as my own.

I also see that, just as these insane thoughts make an insane world, forgiveness makes a gentle world. I can change the world I see when I change my thoughts. So I am continually creating the world I see.

Knowing this, I started using these ideas. The first thing I did was to begin looking at things differently. I would look at a lamp and the thought in my mind was that this thing is a lamp. I would change that to, “This is an image I have made that I call lamp.” I did this often during the day to help me shift my thinking about the things I see.

The next thing I did was to change the way I see circumstances in my life. The old way of viewing these circumstances went like this. I would have a headache and the ego mind would think of why my head hurts. I would think about the weather, what stress I am under, or if I had enough sleep. I would nervously wonder if this was the beginning of a migraine, and start thinking of possible triggers.

Now, when I noticed something like this, I would stop the process and shift my perspective. I would remember that this headache is an image I have made. It is not real and it did not begin in the world, but began in my mind, and remains in my mind with the rest of the world I have made. I would then ask to see the original desire that sourced the image of Myron with a headache. It is this desire that will point me to the belief that needs to be healed.

I saw the desire to prove the body is real. That desire was coupled with the desire to prove the body is stronger than the mind through making an image of Myron helpless against a migraine. I saw that sometimes the desire was to ground Myron in the illusion by making an image of her running around looking endlessly for solutions to the migraine problem. This, of course, led me to a deeper desire, which was to keep the illusion in place and the ego self strong in the mind.

In order for all of this to be effective as a believable story that keeps the mind engaged so as not to remember it is only a story, it must be consistent. It doesn’t have to make perfect sense, but it must be logical and coherent. So each time I make an image of a headache, I make that image something believable and something that makes sense to the story.

I make certain triggers, like not enough sleep makes the head hurt. I do this often, and soon, the idea that not enough sleep causes a headache is so fixed in the mind that it seems like an undeniable fact. Now it is harder than ever to refute. That I found a trigger for the headache reinforces that the headache is real and is something separate from my will, and that I must battle it with all my resources.

When, after every effort on my part, I still get headaches, I have proven to myself that I am victim to the body. I have convinced myself that I get headaches and there is nothing I can do about it. I am a frail and weak body and each headache brings to doubt the words I read in the Course that tell me I am God’s Holy Son.

But now that I understand the process, now that I understand why it is that this world I see represents my every wish, I am not fooled by my images. I ask to be shown the original desire, and the belief that desire represents. I have seen how this desire is keeping me in the dream, and is hurting me. I ask that my mind be healed.

Seeing it all so clearly has helped me to truly desire something else. Now that I see what I don’t want, I am asking the Holy Spirit to remove from my mind those beliefs and the desires that source the images I make. And I am learning to make images from the desire to awaken. I will share some other examples later, because I notice that in true ego fashion the mind wants to separate out and make this true for some things, but confuse other things and make it seem like there are exceptions. There aren’t.

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A Reflection of Ideas, Part 1

I am interrupting my study of Chapter 9 to share with you something that has occurred through my study.

For a long time now I have accepted that I am 100% responsible for my life, and then I realized I was 100% responsible for the world. I understand that if I am aware of something, it is there because I desire it to be there. I can find endless quotes from all the sections of the Course that tell me I do this to myself. For a long time, even though I knew it must be true, I was resistant to it because it made me feel guilty to think about it. As I began to let go of the belief that guilt is real I could see that responsibility did not imply guilt, and then I started receiving more clarity.

Lesson 152 has long been one of my favorite lessons, even when I was still resisting the idea. In part this is what it says:

1 No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is.

This is so very clear, and yet I still insisted that someone did it to me, or I am just a victim. I think one of the reasons I could not fully accept it even though I believed it must be true, is that I could not understand how this could be true. I couldn’t understand how I made it happen. There have always been circumstances over which I seemed to have no control. How could they be my responsibility?

Recently, I read Lesson 325 and everything changed for me.

LESSON 325
All things I think I see reflect ideas.
1 This is salvation’s keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own. From insane wishes comes an insane world. From judgment comes a world condemned. And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world comes forth, with mercy for the holy Son of God, to offer him a kindly home where he can rest a while before he journeys on, and help his brothers walk ahead with him, and find the way to Heaven and to God.

Finally, I understand how I made the world I see.

I have read this lesson many times, but this time I was ready to accept the full meaning. Immediately, when I read the first phrase, “This is salvation’s keynote” I stopped. What? Did I read that right? How is it I never noticed that important statement. If you look up synonyms for key note you will find these words: important, crucial, major, essential, central. This lesson is evidently important, no, crucial to salvation.

What I read next explained to me how it is that I made this world and that I am continuing to make it every moment of every day. Everything starts with a thought in my mind, something I believe I want.

“What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want.”

So the first step to making the world I see is to have an idea of something that seems desirable to me. I might start with the idea that I want to win. I want to be the best at what I do. That means I want to overcome my brothers, to beat them, to prove I am better than them.

The next step is this:  “From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find.”

So I have an idea of what I want and now I make up an image of the thing I desire. Perhaps that image is something like this. The coworker sitting at the table with me disagrees with my assessment of a situation. I know I am right and I tell everyone at the table why I am right and he is wrong. I use all the facts at my disposal. He has to see my point as does everyone else and so my foe is vanquished. I win!

Now comes the next step: “These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own.”

So now I have a clear image of something I desire and think is valuable. I now prove to myself that my desire to win is fulfilled as I project that image outward and it becomes a situation in the life of Myron. The body’s senses seem to prove that I win as I see and hear the confrontation through Myron. That whole episode with the coworker was an image I have made.

To assure myself that I have actually proven my worth through defeating my opponent, I make that image so real and so believable that it is hard to deny. Even knowing what I now know, I experience so much emotion and my image of the coworker is very reactive so that adds to the experience of it. The ego mind argues that I was right and he was wrong and if I didn’t make that clear, there would be consequences.

How could I not argue the point? I was clearly saving myself and the company from his ignorance. It all feels and looks so real, and I feel so justified in what I did. The ego declares me the winner, no, the hero who saved the day. I didn’t make this situation, the ego mind says, I just reacted to a situation that the coworker caused.

Once I have reached that third stage where I project the desired image, I can easily convince myself that I am only reacting to a situation in the world. I now believe that I have to do something about a very real situation in a real world. I have completely hidden from my mind that I made the situation and that it could not have occurred unless I desired that it do so. I have hidden from my awareness that I had a desire, made an image that expressed that desire, and then projected it outward where I could use it to experience my desire.

“From insane wishes comes an insane world. From judgment comes a world condemned.”

The solution to this insane world is to realize that my wishes are insane. Since I read this lesson, I have used it to help me see differently. It is like a fog has lifted and suddenly everything is seen in sharp relief. Next time, I will write about how I am using this lesson and why it has changed everything.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of the Atonement, P 5. 12-3-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 5
5 I have emphasized many times that the Holy Spirit will never call upon you to sacrifice anything. But if you ask the sacrifice of reality of yourself, the Holy Spirit must remind you that this is not God’s Will because it is not yours. There is no difference between your will and God’s. If you did not have a split mind, you would recognize that willing is salvation because it is communication.

I’m going to consider the idea of willing is communication when I look at the next paragraph where Jesus says more about it. Right now my mind is focused on the idea of sacrifice and the idea of my will and God’s Will being the same.

I have always thought that God was asking me to sacrifice. This has been going on all my life. Sacrificing for God was strongly emphasized when I was a Catholic, not that I needed any encouragement to believe in sacrifice, but through Catholicism sacrifice became confused with love of God in my mind. In reality, sacrifice is related not to love of God, but to the fear of God.

Slowly, through the study of ACIM, I have learned that God does not want my sacrifice. The idea of sacrifice is a sticky mess in my mind though, and I still notice the belief cropping up so it is still there, though not as strongly believed as before, and denied as truth when I notice it. If God wanted my sacrifice, He would not be Love.

The belief that is hardest to release is the belief the Holy Spirit is asking me to sacrifice the world and my own self in order to be saved. The confusion occurs because, while He does encourage me to give up the world and the ego self, He is also teaching me that this is no sacrifice, and up until now I just wasn’t buying it. There was still this corner of my mind where insanity reigns, and I think it is better to rule the asylum than to be one with God. Well, it is still there but it is a shrinking space.

In this part of the mind, the ego insists that with just a little more time the world can be improved upon and I will finally get what I want. No matter that it has been saying this for eons, and no matter that it can’t articulate exactly what it is I want or how that task will be accomplished. The ego mind is insistent that giving up on the separation idea is loss.

As a concept, I have already given up on the separation idea, and now I am just looking at the many forms of the idea in my mind and life, and realizing that I don’t want it anymore. I am learning through contrast that it is no sacrifice to let it all go. I have been doing this a thought at a time, a situation at a time, a relationship at a time, but the lesson is being generalized and I am much closer to letting go of the idea that I am ever being asked to sacrifice. I am finally realizing that there is nothing here worth keeping so how could it be that letting it go would be a sacrifice.

Which brings me naturally to the next idea; God’s Will is my will. We share the same will, God and I. This separate ego will is a toy I have played with, not what I am. I am one with God and so I am one with His Will. That is the only will I have, and as I let go of the belief I am being asked to sacrifice my own will for God’s, I become more eager for the truth.

I have become less protective of the ego will, and more willing to accept my own true will. Now the idea of my will being overcome by God’s Will no longer frightens me because I realize that is not what is happening. I am, instead, simply returning to my own will, which is returning to God’s Will. I’m still allowing this to be untangled in my mind, but it will go faster now that I am no longer afraid of it.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of the Atonement, P 4. 12-2-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 4
4 You have imprisoned your will beyond your own awareness, where it remains, but cannot help you. When I said that the Holy Spirit’s function is to sort out the true from the false in your mind, I meant that He has the power to look into what you have hidden and recognize the Will of God there. His recognition of this Will can make it real to you because He is in your mind, and therefore He is your reality. If, then, His perception of your mind brings its reality to you, He is helping you to remember what you are. The only source of fear in this process is what you think you will lose. Yet it is only what the Holy Spirit sees that you can possibly have.

Oh my! Do you see what Jesus is saying here? In my mind is the truth, in my mind is my true will, the Will of God, and as I am willing to accept His help, the Holy Spirit looks with me and I see it, too. Because the Holy Spirit is in my mind, I become aware of my true will which is the Will of God. The only thing standing between my awareness of the truth and the separated will of ego is the fear that knowing my self is a loss.

When I think of salvation in these terms, it all seems so simple and so accessible. I hear the Voice for God very clearly and I hear it every day so I am convinced that the Holy Spirit is in my mind. Now Jesus is telling me that all He has to do to bring me to full awareness is to look into what I have hidden and recognize the Will of God there. It feels so close and so possible when I think of this. I’ve cried three times just writing this.

So this is what has been happening in my practice! I look at the thoughts and feelings that seem to make up my life and I invite the Holy Spirit to look with me. To the degree I am willing to be known, the Holy Spirit finds God there and shows It to me. I feel like a blind woman whose sight is beginning to return. Or maybe like an insane person who is coming out of her psychosis.

I have been doing exactly what I need to be doing, and I never gave thought to the miracle that is occurring. It was just a practice, and yes, it was changing everything so it was the best practice in the world, but never did I realize the true significance of that practice. It just seemed too simple to be this important.

Now the immediate ego reaction to this is to find someone to make guilty. As the rush of discovery begins to fade, the ego mind starts asking what is wrong with me? What am I waiting for? It begins to insert doubt. It starts saying that if it was really this easy, I would already be awake. Or I must not be worthy or I would already be awake. And I’m guilty for being unworthy. I am unwilling to buy into its party line, so it agrees that this can be done and someday if I keep at it, I will wake up. Same old, same old.

I am so on fire with this new understanding that I am not even interested enough to listen to the ego this morning! Look into my mind, Holy Spirit, look with me at the ego beliefs there. Show me the Will of God that is also my will. What have I got to lose? Life as I know it? That is a loss I am willing to incur, if it is a loss at all.

Here are the objections my ego self has. I am afraid I will give up reading my novels, and that I will never find out what happens next on Blue Bloods. I will never again have a normal relationship with my kids because there will be no specialness in it. They won’t feel loved by me. What else is the little self afraid of, Holy Spirit?

What if my whole life changes and I feel lost and I don’t know my place in the world? I don’t know what to expect and I am afraid when I don’t know and don’t understand and have no control. My head begins to hurt as I think about this. Holy Spirit, look with me at these thoughts and find God in them. I am showing you my thoughts, and I am waiting for you to show me the Will of God in me. Show me that the Will of God is my will. What am I? Show me the truth in my mind.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of the Atonement, P 3. 12-1-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 3
3 If you do not know what your reality is, why would you be so sure that it is fearful? The association of truth and fear, which would be highly artificial at most, is particularly inappropriate in the minds of those who do not know what truth is. All this could mean is that you are arbitrarily associating something beyond your awareness with something you do not want. It is evident, then, that you are judging something of which you are totally unaware. You have set up this strange situation so that it is impossible to escape from it without a Guide Who does know what your reality is. The purpose of this Guide is merely to remind you of what you want. He is not attempting to force an alien will upon you. He is merely making every possible effort, within the limits you impose on Him, to re-establish your own will in your awareness.

I would like to argue that I am ready for reality, to know the truth of what I am, to accept my own will in my awareness, and yet, it seems that I am not. I still sometimes cling to the ego will as if my own holy will were something to be avoided, to fear and to defend myself against. I can say this, though. I am no longer completely opposed to accepting reality. In fact, I am far more open to the truth than I ever have been.

It seems that this is all that the Holy Spirit needs from me. He simply needs me to allow Him to reestablish my own will in my awareness. I say this is what I want, but then I stop Him. My reality is that I am one with all my brothers, but when I get too close to that memory I choose to imagine a brother is my enemy.

I make an image of this desire and insert it in the life of Myron. Suddenly there is a story of betrayal and I am all into that story, hiding from myself that I chose it and put it there. Instead I get all confused, and spend time trying to see it differently, feeling victimized because it all seems so unfair, feeling discouraged because it all seems so hard.

I might ask how this is better than it ever was before, but you see, I know what I am doing. I might spend some time in confusion because I am afraid to admit my culpability, or because I simply don’t want to admit it,  but I know. I know it in my heart of hearts, and pretty quickly, I know it in my aware mind. I am learning not to fight this, but to relax into it and I’m learning not to judge it, just to be aware of it and remember that I don’t value the “right” to be a weak and miserable victim anymore.

I really am coming to my senses. I really am deciding for God more and more often. As I make this choice more often I become comfortable with it and my resistance is falling away. Something I have noticed is that I used to be totally focused on vigilantly watching my mind, learning to discern the ego thoughts from my true thoughts.

I used to be very focused on developing my will to see differently and to allow the Holy Spirit access to my mind. Now I don’t feel that hyper vigilance in the same way. I know that I want to wake up, and I am just learning to master that decision. There is no way I could back out of this now. I could never go back to ignorance. I could never want to.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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study of the Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of the Atonement, P 2. 11-28-14

I. The Acceptance of Reality, P 2
2 Your will is not the ego’s, and that is why the ego is against you. What seems to be the fear of God is really the fear of your own reality. It is impossible to learn anything consistently in a state of panic. If the purpose of this course is to help you remember what you are, and if you believe that what you are is fearful, then it must follow that you will not learn this course. Yet the reason for the course is that you do not know what you are.

“What am I?” is the question I ask the Holy Spirit frequently. I ask it whenever it comes into my mind. I especially ask this question when I feel trapped in my own beliefs. I have experienced some major shifts recently, and the ego response has been very strong. It can be very discouraging to move forward only to meet that wall of resistance.

It was helpful this morning to find a quote from Mooji on Facebook. This is what it said:

Very often, when you are guided into the direct experience of the Self
the mind rises up for its biggest fight.
But just stay put and feel the turbulence without identifying personally. 
You are likely to get annoyed with this advice as you are still inclined to protect your relationship with the mind, but try and follow my pointing and just observe with detachment.
Now is the time where you must discern what is the mind and what is You.
What is so disturbed? What is rebelling so much?
Is this your true Self? 
At this point, many give up, because the mind becomes unbearable. 
It rebels more on this path than on any other path, because on other paths the mind is included not threatened. 
But do you want to be spiritual or free?
~ Mooji
24th of November, 2014

The ego mind will fight against awakening. When I identify too closely to the ego, I forget that its thoughts and feelings are not mine. Then I become confused. Of course I become confused! It is like being two people at once, and the two people are completely opposed. I wake up with the thought that I give this day to Holy Spirit, and that thought is immediately followed by a feeling of anxiety for the coming day.

I reject the second feeling as being ego resistance to surrender. It is the ego demanding its right to make plans and decisions, and to decide what everything means. But “I” seem to be having the thoughts and the feelings and so I become discouraged.  This continues until my mind is muddled and I start to believe the ego “proof” that I am just kidding myself that I am awakening. And back and forth I go in this insane attempt to find peace in a split mind.

I pull myself out of this with the question, “What am I?” I want to know. I really want to know. I want to know my Self. I want to remember what it is to be in God and part of God, to be so completely loved that nothing can touch the certainty of love. I want this more than I want to be the director of my little kingdom of separation. While the ego insists that I am wasting my time and that I should just give up, at least for this life time, I just keep asking, “What am I?” I am not that obstinate and frightened voice of ego, that’s for sure.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 9, I. The Acceptance of the Atonement, P 1. 11-26-14

Chapter 9: THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE ATONEMENT

I. The Acceptance of Reality
1 Fear of the Will of God is one of the strangest beliefs the human mind has ever made. It could not possibly have occurred unless the mind were already profoundly split, making it possible for it to be afraid of what it really is. Reality cannot “threaten” anything except illusions, since reality can only uphold truth. The very fact that the Will of God, which is what you are, is perceived as fearful, demonstrates that you are afraid of what you are. It is not, then, the Will of God of which you are afraid, but yours.

The words here are very clear. I am the will of God and so to be afraid of the Will of God is really to be afraid of my own will. The confusion occurs because I still identify with ego, and the ego mind would rather incur what it thinks of as the wrath of God than to relinquish its hold on the idea of a separate will. It recognizes that to know what it truly is would end its tenuous hold on this illusory separate will.

While there is still some identity with ego, I am awakening to my true self. I am remembering what I am. My desire for that memory is growing stronger each day. It is the craziest thing to have these two voices in my mind and to be fully aware of both. When this first started happening I experienced the conflict more acutely than when I didn’t know what was going on, and it seemed things were getting worse. Over time I learned to trust the process. I then moved through the conflict to greater awareness of the truth and so to a more peaceful place.

I stayed there for awhile, and then I began to feel like I had lost it all. What seems to be happening is that I am returning to the confused mind to allow more unconscious guilt and fear to be uncovered and undone. It is not as hard now because I understand what is happening, though sometimes I get caught up in the ego story and temporarily lose my detachment. Then I become discouraged by what looks like a loss of what I had gained, but I always receive help when I ask.

It appears to be very important now that I am open to the true thoughts in my mind, and that I allow my focus to remain there as much as possible. I am not afraid of the ego thoughts I find in my mind, but I notice the tendency to be discouraged and to feel like giving up. That’s laughable when I think about it.

What would I give up, to? How would I not know the truth now that I know it? It is a ridiculous notion and so I know it is just another ego strategy to maintain the separate will. When I start feeling frustrated, I ask the question, “What am I?” This question tends to break the circular thinking of the ego. Sometimes I receive thoughts from Holy Spirit when I ask this and sometimes I receive the peace of God. But however it comes, I am reassured that I am the Will of God and there is nothing else I could be. This is true in spite of what my confusion seems to tell me.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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