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Gentle Healing Lesson 171, Text, Manual for Teachers. 10-24-19

Lesson 171
God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

1 (151) All things are echoes of the Voice for God.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

2 (152) The power of decision is my own.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

I was guided to look at the power of decision again and was further guided to review how it is I make decisions. This is from Rules for Decisions in Chapter 30.

Paragraph 14 on page 628 of the Text popped out at me. It says, ” We said you can begin a happy day with the determination not to make decisions by yourself. This seems to be a real decision in itself. And yet, you cannot make decisions by yourself. The only question really is with what you choose to make them. That is really all. The first rule, then, is not coercion, but a simple statement of a simple fact. You will not make decisions by yourself whatever you decide. For they are made with idols or with God. And you ask help of anti-Christ or Christ, and which you choose will join you and tell you what to do.”

And paragraph 16 on page 628 popped out at me too. It says, “The second rule as well is but a fact. For you and your advisor must agree on what you want before it can occur. It is but this agreement that permits all things to happen. Nothing can be caused without some form of union, be it with a dream of judgment or the Voice for God. Decisions cause results because they are not made in isolation. They are made by you and your adviser, for yourself and for the world as well. The day you want you offer to the world, for it will be what you have asked for, and will reinforce the rule of your adviser in the world. Whose kingdom is the world for you today? What kind of day will you decide to have?”

The lesson tells us in no uncertain terms and with no comprise that whatever is in our lives is there because we decided on it. In the Text he is explaining how we make the decision. We make it in union, either with the ego or the Holy Spirit. There is no other option. We do not make decisions on our own no matter what we tell ourselves to the contrary.

Here is an example. How is it that loss shows up in my life? Who would want that? Who would decide for loss? We did. We decided to show up as bodies that die. We then decided that when someone’s body dies, it means they die and we will suffer their loss. On two levels we made that decision, on the level of manifestation and on the level of interpretation. Neither death nor loss are in God, so we must have made those decisions with the ego.

Text
X. the Time of Rebirth, P 9
9 You will not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego, for it keeps no bargains and would leave you nothing. Nor can you be partial host to it. You must choose between total freedom and total bondage, for there are no alternatives but these. You have tried many compromises in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one decision you must make. And yet it is the recognition of the decision, just as it is, that makes the decision so easy. Salvation is simple, being of God, and therefore very easy to understand. Do not try to project it from you and see it outside yourself. In you are both the question and the answer; the demand for sacrifice and the peace of God.

Journal
This decision to be part ego and a part spirit has never worked and is not ever going to work. We live an illusion of a life and we suffer. We tell ourselves that when we die, then we will be spirit but then we wind up back here trying again and suffering again. We try all sorts of compromises. We become religious and at least once a week for an hour or so we give ourselves to God. Or spiritual, and we spend at least some of our time as seekers without ever really becoming a finder. All to keep from making a decision for God. But nothing we do brings us perfect joy or unending peace, and we wind up suffering after all.

What are we clinging to? What is so valuable that we cannot bear to give it up? What are we so afraid of? I think there is nothing to be afraid of but it is the fear that this is not true that keeps us sitting on this uncomfortable fence. We say we are afraid of God, but I wonder about that. Perhaps the real fear is in giving up what we made to take His place. We have convinced ourselves that this separate self with its endless stories is what we are and that to give it up would be annihilation.

We are afraid that we would be asked to give up our very life and everything that makes us what we are. But what we would actually be giving up is what we are not, so that we could embrace what We are. We are going to have to eventually get off that fence and choose reality. Why not sooner than later? Why continue to suffer when we could be living in continuous bliss? There is no compromise in this. We must choose and we will, in the end, choose God. So, again, why wait?

Manual for Teachers
2. WHO ARE THEIR PUPILS?

1 Certain pupils have been assigned to each of God’s teachers, and they will begin to look for him as soon as he has answered the Call. They were chosen for him because the form of the universal curriculum that he will teach is best for them in view of their level of understanding. His pupils have been waiting for him, for his coming is certain. Again, it is only a matter of time. Once he has chosen to fulfill his role, they are ready to fulfill theirs. Time waits on his choice, but not on whom he will serve. When he is ready to learn, the opportunities to teach will be provided for him. 

I find it very comforting to know that as a teacher of God, my students are being sent to me. I need do nothing to find them. It’s not up to me to decide if they are ready for what I offer. I don’t have to worry that I won’t have what they need. If they have been sent to me, I can be sure that we are perfectly matched for a learning/teaching situation.

Again, Jesus reminds us that as we teach we learn when he says, “When he is ready to learn, the opportunities to teach will be provided for him.”  My experience has proven this to me. I am very grateful to each and every teaching/learning opportunity that is given to me.

Since I was ordained, I have had numerous students and opportunities to teach, but Holy Spirit began sending me students before I even knew I had answered a call or even that there was a call to answer. They would come right out of the blue.

My spiritual life had slowly begun to expand outside the perimeters of traditional religion. Holy Spirit started me off slowly by sending some simple books my way. One of the first I read was a book about Edgar Cayce. That was pretty radical stuff for me back then. It was important because it was a gentle way for me to begin to consider that things are not always what they seem.

Then a book about life after life came my way and I opened to even more to possibilities. I had just finished reading this book when I received my first teaching opportunity, or at least the first one that I was aware of. I was driving a taxicab in Houston, Texas at the time. When my fare got into the cab that morning he was at first quiet, then struck up a conversation, and immediately began telling me about a near-death experience he had. It was strange, almost like he was just waiting for the chance to tell me about this.

This man, whose name I never got, had surgery some time back and “died” on the table. They revived him and he had a very vivid memory of his death experience. When he finished telling me about it, he confessed that he had never shared this experience with anyone because he was afraid of being judged. There was only one book out about this kind of thing at that time and it was not as accepted as it is now. He asked me what I thought about what happened to him and what did I think it meant.

I told him about the book I had just finished and suggested he get hold of a copy. I told him I believed him and I don’t know if I said much of anything else, but he left my cab more relieved than when he got in, and he now had a resource that could help him learn more if he wanted to. I was just a bit astounded by the whole thing. Why did he tell me that? How was it that I was one of the few people he would speak to that day that would understand?

At the time this happened, I didn’t know about the Holy Spirit. I didn’t know about being a teacher of God, or that once we put our foot on this path opportunities would unfold before us without our effort. I did feel wonder that it happened and gratitude that somehow, I managed to be helpful. I felt a deep satisfaction that only in retrospect did I understand. It seemed a small teaching, but he needed the only thing I could give him, and so it was perfect.

The second teaching opportunity came within a year or so, and I had joined a Unity church by this time and was a tiny bit less clueless than before. I was working in an ad agency and a man came in to look over our stock and started a conversation with me. He quickly began telling me things about his life and I knew he wanted me to help him figure it out.

I didn’t have a clue what to say, but something in me caused me to ask God for words. I think I was very helpful to him. If he was surprised, I was even more surprised. I had never had the experience of teaching myself as I taught someone else. I didn’t know where the words came from, well, from God of course, but I didn’t know, up until that moment, that this could happen.

We don’t need to think about how we are going to be used and we don’t need to understand anything that happens. We just need to show up with a willingness to be used by the Holy Spirit.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Lesson 170, Text, Manual for Teachers. 10-20-19

LESSON 170
There is no cruelty in God and none in me.

Jesus begins by telling us that attack is an attempt to hurt and this is always true, whatever our justifications. We tell ourselves that we are just defending against harm when we attack, but Jesus says that this is cruelty and thus we believe that to be cruel is to be safe. I thought of an example to test this idea. I have attacked in the past. I will use my ex-husband as an example.

I didn’t feel like he put his family first, and so I felt unsafe with him. I would defend myself by using guilt and shame to change his behavior thinking that if he understood the harm he was doing to us and ultimately to himself, then he would change. Because I was so caught up in my story of victimhood, I failed to see that he was not the problem and that I could simply change my perception of the situation and restore peace to my mind.

I really believed that he was the problem and the solution was to attack him. I did not see that I had made changing him my salvation, the idol I was worshipping. It was a cruel and relentless god that I was bowing to and nothing good came from it. I only felt guiltier myself and he became more stubborn in his determination to live as he chose to live.

Attacking him and making him my enemy left me feeling afraid and vulnerable because who can attack can also be attacked. It increased my belief that I could both love and hate and this is not possible. Either love is real or hate is real. They cannot both be true and these opposing ideas were a continuing war in my mind. My failure to forgive demanded constant justification and so the war escalated. And having an enemy seemed to prove separation was real. The lack of peace in my home was a reflection of the lack of peace in my mind.

“For fear becomes your safety and protector of your peace, to which you turn for solace and escape from doubts about your strength, and hope of rest in dreamless quiet.”

The way this was manifested in my marriage was that I projected onto our relationship this belief that fear is my salvation and attack is my defense. Now my husband was my enemy and I had to protect myself through attack. It seemed that to lower my defenses in the name of love was to bare my neck to the sword, so to speak. If love demanded this of me, then love must be my enemy.

Jesus says we need to look at this dynamic and that it might seem fearful to us to do so, but it will also be our time of release. I did do this finally and having waited until I was divorced to do so, made it a little easier. I had some distance to give the illusion of safety, and there was not the constant reinforcement of the perceived need to defend.

Because we worked at the same job, there was just enough interaction to help me see the mistaken thoughts in my mind without overwhelming me. Probably now, with this success and others, I would be able to heal without divorcing myself from the problem, but at that time, it was a necessary component of healing.

My marriage and my divorce were only symbols of the one problem, as are all facets of the illusion. The deeper meaning the marriage symbolized was my war with God. God, Who is Love, is seen as enemy and is feared. All fear in the world is a reflection of the fear of God. We have the belief that fear protects from what would hurt us and so fear becomes salvation in our mind, and love which would strip us of the protection is now seen as the enemy.

But just as I learned that I could see my relationship with Greg differently and come to love him without fear of that love, so can I do the same with God. I think I have divorced God just as I divorced Greg even though ideas cannot actually leave their source. I pretend I am separate from God just as I pretended that the idea of relationship with Greg would be separate from me through divorce, and that I could make separation real through assigning error to an other I see as outside me.

I was able to overcome the belief I could sever my relationship with Greg simply by moving my body away from his body. And so I will overcome that same belief in my relationship with God, that pretending to be in a body that exists outside God actually accomplishes separation. Ideas leave not their source and love is not fear. These are truth, and there are no opposites to truth.

Text
X. the Time of Rebirth, P 8
8 You think that everyone outside yourself demands your sacrifice, but you do not see that only you demand sacrifice, and only of yourself. Yet the demand of sacrifice is so savage and so fearful that you cannot accept it where it is. The real price of not accepting this has been so great that you have given God away rather than look at it. For if God would demand total sacrifice of you, it seems safer to project Him outward and away from you, and not be host to Him. To Him you ascribed the ego’s treachery, inviting it to take His place to protect you from Him. And you do not recognize that it is what you invited in that would destroy you, and does demand total sacrifice of you. No partial sacrifice will appease this savage guest, for it is an invader who but seems to offer kindness, but always to make the sacrifice complete.

Journal
You think that everyone outside yourself demands your sacrifice, but you do not see that only you demand sacrifice, and only of yourself.

What is the sacrifice I demand of myself? I demand the sacrifice of God and of Self. In choosing this experience of separation and clinging to the ego mind, I sacrifice the memory of What I am and of my relationship to my Creator. Within the story, I sacrifice happiness, and health. My efforts to place the blame elsewhere only succeed in causing further self-sacrifice.

For if God would demand total sacrifice of you, it seems safer to project Him outward and away from you, and not be host to Him.

The ego does, indeed, demand total sacrifice. It would leave you without recourse to suffering and death. But in our confused state, we think that it is God that demands total sacrifice of us. No wonder there is such a strong fear of God and no wonder we try to push Him away and see Him as separate and outside of us. We are holding the real enemy close and pushing away Love.

I’m trying to think how all of this applies to my life. When I awakened, any belief in the world I had left was gone. I know, no think or believe, but know that this world and the experience of the world that I seem to be involved with is an illusion. It is imagination. I know for a fact that it feels real only because we decided to make it feel real.

I also discovered that this shift did not cost me anything. I didn’t sacrifice anything to God in order to be where I am now in my experience. The ego is a stalker, though. Like a boyfriend who will not accept that the relationship is over, the ego follows me around trying to entice me back into some of our old behaviors.

For instance, the ego says I should worry about someone I love. It says that worry is a sign of love and not to worry is weird. I see myself looking at that idea but I can’t go back there. I know too much, now. This is the kind of ego belief I had to sacrifice in order to be happy.

I had to give up making decisions with the ego and I had to relinquish making others guilty, even making myself guilty had to be sacrificed. The ego insists that I need these things and that they are being taken away from me. The ego says that I will miss them. But thus far, I haven’t found that to be true.

I like the trade-off. Instead of fear and guilt, I have peace and happiness. Instead of death, I have Life. Instead of competition and loneliness, I have love. That doesn’t feel like a sacrifice to me. And the Holy Spirit is helping me to see the bits that I have not released yet so that I can be entirely free.

WHO ARE GOD’S TEACHERS? P3 & 4
3 There is a course for every teacher of God. The form of the course varies greatly. So do the particular teaching aids involved. But the content of the course never changes. Its central theme is always, “God’s Son is guiltless, and in his innocence is his salvation.” It can be taught by actions or thoughts; in words or soundlessly; in any language or in no language; in any place or time or manner. It does not matter who the teacher was before he heard the Call. He has become a savior by his answering. He has seen someone else as himself. He has therefore found his own salvation and the salvation of the world. In his rebirth is the world reborn.

4 This is a manual for a special curriculum, intended for teachers of a special form of the universal course. There are many thousands of other forms, all with the same outcome. They merely save time. Yet it is time alone that winds on wearily, and the world is very tired now. It is old and worn and without hope. There was never a question of outcome, for what can change the Will of God? But time, with its illusions of change and death, wears out the world and all things in it. Yet time has an ending, and it is this that the teachers of God are appointed to bring about. For time is in their hands. Such was their choice, and it is given them.

Here is what I have learned so far about being a teacher of God.

His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else’s.

Everyone is called but few answer at this time though everyone will answer eventually.

There is a course for everyone and they vary greatly but this one teaching doesn’t change:  “God’s Son is guiltless, and in his innocence is his salvation.”

It doesn’t matter who the teacher was before his call.

We teach in many ways, with words or without words. The path for each person is very specific.

A Course in Miracles is a special form of a universal course. There are thousands of paths all designed to save time because the world is weary and we have caused ourselves much suffering.

There was never a question of outcome, for what can change the Will of God?

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Lesson 169, Text, Manual for Teachers. 10-11-19

LESSON 169
By grace I live. By grace I am released.

Yesterday, I contemplated grace as a gift of God that is always available to me. Today, I am contemplating that grace is past learning and yet the goal of learning. It is in learning that I don’t want anything in my mind that threatens my choice for peace and in practicing releasing such thoughts that I prepare for grace and am able to accept it. Jesus says that grace not only comes to the mind thus prepared for it, he says that it becomes inevitable instantly.

I feel the rightness of the statement that grace is acceptance of the Love of God within a world of seeming hate and fear. How else could we ever see this world as Love if it were not for the grace of God. My eyes certainly don’t show me the Love of God. My ego mind isn’t even interested in looking for the Love of God. But as I have released many mistaken ideas, I have learned to desire the peace of God above all else and in many little ways I am beginning to see something else, or at least the shadow of something else in this world.

I have opened my mind and heart to the call to waken and I am no longer shut tight against God’s Voice. I realize that no matter what I think I know about the world, about my spiritual nature, about God, I am wrong, and I am OK with that. In fact, I am quite comfortable with the I don’t know mind. I am given ideas that are helpful to me in the moment, and I hold those thoughts loosely knowing that they will shift and expand into something that is helpful in the next moment. Neither idea is right or wrong, just helpful until I am ready for something else.

I have always thought that when someone has their awakening moment and they are able to see the world differently, that is the result of grace. The learning and practicing made way for grace. Like Regina, my experience has been a slow and gradual movement toward awakening. But the moment the entire Sonship awakens, I think that is when God leans to us and takes the final step. And that is what grace is inevitably bringing us to.

I know the world is not ready for the final Awakening in which we experience the revelation of the Father and Son as one. But, from time to time, I questioned why it was that I had not experienced my personal awakening within the world. Jesus says this about the timing:

“We have perhaps appeared to contradict our statement that the revelation of the Father and the Son as one has been already set. But we have also said the mind determines when that time will be, and has determined it. And yet we urge you to bear witness to the Word of God to hasten the experience of truth, and speed its advent into every mind that recognizes truth’s effects on you.”

Did anyone find that helpful? Yeah, me either. Haha. Anyway, I think he is referring to the last step that is taken by God and not to our individual journeys.

The next several paragraphs in this lesson are so inspirational to me that I don’t know how to talk about them. I can’t say it any better than Jesus did. I think I know that God Is and all things are encompassed by God. This means, of course, that we are all encompassed by God right now, and it means that we are God, not as the ego human self we pretend to be, but we, in perfect union with each other and with God, are God.

This union of Father and Son is not part of what we are learning here. It isn’t about salvation, forgiveness, Christ’s Vision, or even awakening in the world. This final step is beyond any of that and it is beyond any experience we try to hasten. But, our awakening within this world through true forgiveness, this is something we evidently can hasten. At least, we can help each other awaken and we can relieve suffering while still in the dream state as we practice forgiveness.

Now, here is something interesting.
“All learning was already in His Mind, accomplished and complete. He recognized all that time holds, and gave it to all minds that each one might determine, from a point where time was ended, when it is released to revelation and eternity. We have repeated several times before that you but make a journey that is done.
For oneness must be here. Whatever time the mind has set for revelation is entirely irrelevant to what must be a constant state, forever as it always was; forever to remain as it is now. We merely take the part assigned long since, and fully recognized as perfectly fulfilled by Him Who wrote salvation’s script in His Creator’s Name, and in the Name of His Creator’s Son.”

Jesus says that we can’t really understand this and so there is no sense in talking about it further. All that it says to me is that nothing has really happened and that I am perfectly safe regardless of how I seem to suffer. I already accept that is script and all other scripts I have lived and may yet live are ancient history even though I seem to be living them now. It helps me to know this.

When I have done something I regret and start to feel guilty for it, what I understand is that I am simply playing out a script and that script was written by us and that I am experiencing this because I want to do so. I volunteered for this experience. What this does for me is to take me above the battleground so that I can be aware of the lesson it holds for me rather than getting lost in the experience itself. This hastened my awakening within the world. I wanted this because it will ends my suffering while I remain and because it is preparing the Sonship for the grace of revelation.

Now Jesus is telling us something that is perfectly understandable and is relevant right now. He says,
“Suffice it, then, that you have work to do to play your part. The ending must remain obscure to you until your part is done. It does not matter. For your part is still what all the rest depends on. As you take the role assigned to you, salvation comes a little nearer each uncertain heart that does not beat as yet in tune with God.”

I get very emotional when I read things like that. I have a part to play and my part is essential and especially that last phrase that tells me my role is going to bring salvation nearer to each uncertain heart that does not beat as yet in tune with God. That brings tears to my eyes and touches me deeply.

As has been true for me now for many years, I play my part by forgiving the world I see. And now I ask for the final gift, grace. Grace provides an experience that is between Heaven and time. This sentence was helpful to me: “What is the face of Christ but his who went a moment into timelessness, and brought a clear reflection of the unity he felt an instant back to bless the world?”  Alisha did that for me. So did Regina and Cate. Others have as well. I am eternally grateful to them because they showed me it could be done. If each person who awakened left the world at that point, who would witness to the truth for us who have not yet joined them?

Regina’s Tips
This is the part of Regina’s tips that I found especially helpful.

“Suffice it, then, that you have work to do to play your part. The ending must remain obscure to you until your part is done.”

What is our part? Preparing ourselves to accept awakening. Let that be our only concern. It is the ego that becomes over-concerned with finding ways to be helpful. Helpfulness occurs naturally as we prepare ourselves for awakening.

So then, our part is this:
~ self-inquiry, which is inquiring into the ego thought system in order to see its ideas are not true and in order to see we are not the false-self, which is made through identification with thought.
~ Self-inquiry, which is glimpsing awareness many times throughout the day & spending more concentrated time in awareness-watching-awareness meditation
~ surrender, which is discerning between intuition and ego, and then following intuition instead of ego.

Manual for Teachers
WHO ARE GOD’S TEACHERS? P2
2. They come from all over the world. They come from all religions and from no religion. They are the ones who have answered. The Call is universal. It goes on all the time everywhere. It calls for teachers to speak for It and redeem the world. Many hear It, but few will answer. Yet it is all a matter of time. Everyone will answer in the end, but the end can be a long, long way off. It is because of this that the plan of the teachers was established. Their function is to save time. Each one begins as a single light, but with the Call at its center it is a light that cannot be limited. And each one saves a thousand years of time as the world judges it. To the Call Itself time has no meaning.

There is a universal Call for the teachers of God. That means it goes out to all, not just to ACIM students. Everyone gets this call, but not many choose to answer at this time, though all will eventually answer. In the meantime, within the illusion (where we think we are), time drags on and with it, suffering. So, in order to speed things along and avoid some of this pain, we are given a plan for the teachers. Jesus is pretty clear about time saved. He says that each of us will save a thousand years.

I personally became tired of the world as I saw it. This is obviously true, or I would not have accepted the call. I became tired of conflict, tired of drama, and tired of suffering. I became very tired of the instability we experience in time. There is no permanence, nothing to depend on. No matter how happy I might be in any moment, there is the sure knowledge that soon, I will be unhappy. There is another way to experience the world and I became determined to find it.

This plan of Atonement is one of the things that makes A Course in Miracles different from other paths. It is designed as a time saver. A single light in a mind and a teacher of God begins her service to the Sonship. And because that light cannot be limited, that teacher extends the light to others and each of them extends the light to more of us and it goes on and on with many more being awakened. This is how we will make our way back to paradise, to the real world and then to God.

Text
T-15.X. the Time of Rebirth, P 7
7 How fearful, then, has God become to you, and how great a sacrifice do you believe His Love demands! For total love would demand total sacrifice. And so the ego seems to demand less of you than God, and of the two is judged as the lesser of two evils, one to be feared a little, perhaps, but the other to be destroyed. For you see love as destructive, and your only question is who is to be destroyed, you or another? You seek to answer this question in your special relationships, in which you seem to be both destroyer and destroyed in part, but able to be neither completely. And this you think saves you from God, Whose total Love would completely destroy you.

Journal
I see how true it is that through the perspective of the special relationship, love seems to ask for sacrifice. Even in the relationship with my children, I could see the demand for sacrifice from both parties. Sometimes my children ask me to sacrifice my time and my effort on their behalf, and do so in the expectation that because I love them, I will gladly give what they want. I see that I ask for their sacrifice as well. I expect them to give me their concern, their respect, and to do for me what I can’t do for myself.

So, is it any surprise that we would think of God in terms of sacrifice since God is Love Itself, and how frightening this makes Him. When reading about the higher stages of awakening, we are told that ultimately we give up our very self and if one still values the self, this seems like the greatest sacrifice of all. Rather than thinking of it as a loss of self, I prefer to think of it as gaining God.

In reading The Path to No-Self by Bernadette Roberts she has this to say about her experience.

“The major change affected in this Night (Passive Night of the Spirit) is that our initial, deepest sense of being is replaced by the indescribable sense of God’s being, so that God and self are indistinguishable in our singular sense of being. We might describe this change as a movement from the I-thou consciousness to ta simple and singular We consciousness.”

This is the experience of a no-ego is quite amazing and wonderful, but it is not the end. Bernadette goes further and reaches the next state which is no-self. In giving up the self altogether, she says that before there was an I that saw with God, saw God; now “…wherein God is no longer known relative to the self, but instead is known as He is in Himself – known as He knows Himself.” Or put another way, “the Eye seeing Itself.” Can you imagine? Me either.

So, I use the information that Bernadette so generously shares with us to calm the disquiet the ego instills at the idea of its demise. Then I go back to doing what it is that I am to do right now, learning to live life from a place of love rather than fear. Those incredible heights that Bernadette Roberts reached were not her doing. These are steps that God takes on our behalf and we can be assured that when it happens we will be ready for it.

What I understand now in this place on the path where I find myself, is that I have nothing to fear from God. He is not the insane expression of ego-love that has left me wary and cautious. He is not going to ever ask me to sacrifice anything real. What I give up is nothing disguised as something.

That nothing is what I used to think of as my self. And, I still do but not as much as I used to. I no longer guard this self against God in the same way that I did in the past. And where I see myself doing so, I am willing and ready to accept the Atonement and release my hold on ego-self, and even on my higher Self when the time comes.

© 2019, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Lesson 168, Text, Manual for Teachers. 10-7-19

LESSON 168
Your grace is given me. I claim it now.

God loves us and will love us forever. He gives us His grace and it is ours as soon as we acknowledge it.

“And memory of Him awakens in the mind that asks the means of Him whereby its sleep is done.”

This is what we are doing as we study A Course in Miracles. We are asking how it is we can wake up. The Voice for God answers us through this Course and through any other path that we take. He answers us in our dreams and in our waking hours. We only have to ask. I think that sometimes I have failed to hear the answer because I was asking the wrong question and so I did not recognize the relevance of His answer. Sometimes I don’t recognize the answer because it was not the one I wanted to hear. Sometimes it is because I am listening to my thinking mind instead.

Today we ask of God the gift He has most carefully preserved within our hearts, waiting to be acknowledged. This the gift by which God leans to us and lifts us up, taking salvation’s final step Himself. All steps but this we learn, instructed by His Voice. But finally He comes Himself, and takes us in His Arms and sweeps away the cobwebs of our sleep. His gift of grace is more than just an answer. It restores all memories the sleeping mind forgot; all certainty of what Love’s meaning is.

The study and practice of A Course in Miracles is not going to awaken me, this is done through the Grace of God. What the study and practice of ACIM does for me is to prepare my mind for grace. It is to clear away the ego thinking enough so that I am fully willing to accept this precious gift of God. Grace offers us the complete restoration of our mind. There will be no more fear, no more guilt, no more confusion, pain, or suffering. We will know our Self and thus know our unity in God.

“Our faith lies in the Giver, not our own acceptance.”

This is very good news, indeed. Even my acceptance is fully supported. I used to think that it was going to take forever for me to wake up because I was inconsistent in my work and there just seemed to be so much within my mind that needed to be healed. I would ask for guidance and then I would not accept that guidance. How would I ever awaken? But Jesus says that I don’t have to my faith in myself. I can trust the Giver. I know that I have faith in the Holy Spirit. Now I will extend that trust to know that He will find means to give me what I need to lay down my mistakes and accept grace. I am reminded now of a line from a song by Bob Marley.

“Don’t worry about a thing, every little thing is gonna be alright”

Regina’s Tips
Regina shares an interview with Steve Ford in which he describes his awakening experience. You may want to read it. I know that not everyone has the same experience, but the point I got from it was there needs to be a sincere desire and then God leans to us and lifts us up. This is what the lesson is telling us.

Regina says: As Steve points out, it may not work if we ask today for God’s grace of awakening, because it may be the ego that is asking. If one feels completely ready for the death of the ego, the time is right. If the ego wants awakening for itself, the time is not right.

So, what do we do with today’s lesson? My recommendation is a day of deep contemplation and sincere prayer. …Get as deep into your sincere heart as you can today, and pray the prayers that are sincere for you.

Text
X. the Time of Rebirth, P 6
6 As host to the ego, you believe that you can give all your guilt away whenever you want, and thereby purchase peace. And the payment does not seem to be yours. While it is obvious that the ego does demand payment it never seems to be demanding it of you. You are unwilling to recognize that the ego, which you invited, is treacherous only to those who think they are its host. The ego will never let you perceive this, since this recognition would make it homeless. For when the recognition dawns clearly, you will not be deceived by any form the ego takes to protect itself from your sight. Each form will be recognized as but a cover for the one idea that hides behind them all; that love demands sacrifice, and is therefore inseparable from attack and fear. And that guilt is the price of love, which must be paid by fear.


Journal

In the last paragraph, I looked at how we have entangled love with fear, guilt, and sacrifice. This paragraph is asking us to look at the ego as the cause of this confusion. We have guilt in our mind, both conscious and unconscious and the ego offers us a way to avoid looking at it. We project the guilt onto someone else and the ego mind insists this is a viable solution. It absolutely doesn’t want us to know this doesn’t work.

The ego wants us to think we need it because if we discover that it is unnecessary and even destructive to us, we will not continue to host it. We invited the ego into our minds and it is up to us to choose differently. The way we do this is to question the ego thoughts by looking at them with our right minds. It is really simple to do this. Everything is either love or fear and if the thought we have is not love we can look at it with the Holy Spirit and decide if we really want to keep it.

We have made it easy to look at our thoughts by making them images that are seen and felt. Remember Lesson 15?

My thoughts are images I have made.

It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing. 2 You think you think them, and so you think you see them. 3 This is how your “seeing” was made. 4 This is the function you have given your body’s eyes. 5 It is not seeing. 6 It is image making. 7 It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions.

So, here are our thoughts, appearing as images so that we can look at them and see what it feels like to believe these thoughts and see the effects of our beliefs. Here is an example of how this worked for me in the past.

Toward the end of my marriage, I began to see my husband as the cause of my unhappiness. The ego part of my mind was always eager to project the cause of my misery onto him. When I looked with the ego at the relationship, I saw ample proof that he was the problem. It all seemed so obvious to me. It was right there in front of my eyes.

Later when I began to heal that relationship, I asked the Holy Spirit to look at it with me. I was reminded that what was before my eyes were illusions. These images were really a projection of my beliefs. If he seemed to attack me with his behavior, it was because I felt guilty and accepted the ego’s solution of projection. I wanted to see him as guilty to relieve my own guilt.

When I withdrew my projection and accepted correction, my image changed. I saw him as simply living his script as it was written and I recognized there is no guilt in this. I was doing the same thing. Our scripts are the images of the beliefs we came to undo. How could either of us be guilty for this? With no need to rid myself of guilt, there was no need to make him guilty.

Doing this with my thoughts for many years has healed my mind. I still have a few thoughts that try to return, and I deal with them as I have in the past. But I am no longer willing to host the ego. Sure, it is still there because I am still here, but I pay little attention to it other than to stay vigilant for beliefs that still hook me even momentarily. The ego is now my servant rather than the other way around.

Manual for Teachers
Chapter 1. WHO ARE GOD’S TEACHERS?
1 A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else’s. Once he has done that, his road is established and his direction is sure. A light has entered the darkness. It may be a single light, but that is enough. He has entered an agreement with God even if he does not yet believe in Him. He has become a bringer of salvation. He has become a teacher of God.

How interesting this is! To be a teacher of God, I only have to make a deliberate choice in which I don’t see my interests as apart from someone else’s. I don’t have to do this all the time nor do I even need to be aware of the choice. Just that I did it once, ignited the light in my mind. I think of this as being the spark of truth that lit up and made itself known in some small way. Or I could see this as the Holy Spirit Who is now alerted to my readiness to be guided Home.

Jesus also says that when this happened, I entered an agreement with God and this would be true even if I did not yet believe in Him. I have always believed in God so that part didn’t apply to me. I misunderstood Him and sometimes I was angry with Him, and always a bit afraid of Him, but I always believed. But I find myself wondering when was the first time that I made a deliberate choice in which I don’t see my interests as apart from someone else’s.

Whenever it was without knowing it in my conscious mind, I had placed my feet on the path to be a bringer of salvation. That idea when first read frightened me. What a responsibility that is! I didn’t feel like a good student much less a good teacher, and now I was to be a bringer of salvation? Well, the thing is, once a single light is ignited in the mind, it begins to burn ever brighter and with more light, there is less darkness and the ego fears and insecurities are burnt away. I realized at some point that this is not the little ego me Jesus talks about. The Holy Spirit did all the heavy lifting and in doing so awakened me. He only needed my permission and that moment of choice was the permission He was waiting for.

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Gentle Healing Lesson 167, Text, Manual for Teachers. 9-30-19

LESSON 167
There is one life, and that I share with God.

“There is no death because what God created shares His Life. There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist. There is no death because the Father and the Son are one.”

“All sorrow, loss, anxiety and suffering and pain, even a little sigh of weariness, a slight discomfort or the merest frown, acknowledge death. And thus deny you live.”

“Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator. It is the belief conditions change, emotions alternate because of causes you cannot control, you did not make, and you can never change. It is the fixed belief ideas can leave their source, and take on qualities the source does not contain, becoming different from their own origin, apart from it in kind as well as distance, time and form.”

“Death cannot come from life. Ideas remain united to their source.”

What all this is telling me so far is that death in all its forms cannot be real because I have not separated from my Source and I cannot be different than my Source. So, if I think I am sick or suffering in any way, I must be dreaming because it cannot happen. The solution to death and the effects of believing in death, is to remember who I am and where I exist. Once again, all ideas of suffering are the result of not believing that I am as I was created. God is Life and therefore so am I and Life cannot be death. As Jesus says, “As they were born, so will they then give birth. And where they come from, there will they return.”

“The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist, because it has no source. For mind creates all things that are, and cannot give them attributes it lacks, nor change its own eternal, mindful state. It cannot make the physical. What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep.”

This paragraph is very important. It is from reading this that I realized that not only am I not this body, I am not in this body. I am dreaming of bodies. This changes everything. It is the reason that very often now I can be at peace even when the dream has taken on a nightmarish quality. I can often watch while people I love seem to suffer and not be afraid for them. They are safe because they are among the Sons of God and danger does not exist in them. Yes, I am still a mind asleep and sometimes I get caught in the dream and forget the truth, but I also have periods of time now when the dream is lucid and I understand what is happening. Jesus says that mind is mind, awake or sleeping. I am not what I seem to make while I believe I sleep.

“God creates only mind awake.”

What this means is that I cannot create a mind asleep because I can only create as God creates. He did not give me mind asleep and so I cannot create mind asleep. He did not create death and so I cannot die or live death thoughts. I can only dream these things. And then Jesus says something else interesting. He says:

“Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly, but yet within themselves, for they are everywhere.”

This give me an inkling of what we are. I am among the Thoughts of God. I have the power to extend forever changelessly. I am everywhere. Holy cow! When something like this comes into my awareness, I feel my heart expand and love overcome me. Sometimes it leaks out of me as tears of joy and I think I remember something of this though I cannot envision it. But it also scares me just a little and the fear closes off my heart. It’s OK, though, because it always comes back.

“It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was.”

And this passage evokes tears of relief and gratitude and I know this is true. I don’t remember it but I have absolutely no doubt that it is true and I long to return to that awakened state.

Regina’s Tips
Today’s workbook lesson defines death as an idea, and nothing more. It says this idea “underlies all feelings that are not supremely happy.” That is because happiness is a natural characteristic of life aware of itself. Whenever we are not supremely happy, our attention is distracted from our truth as life.

Let’s practice in this way today. Whenever you notice that you are not happy, take these steps:
1 – Look briefly to get some clarity regarding the specific feeling of unhappiness. (e.g., In the example above, the unhappiness was specifically a feeling of loss.)

2 – Look at the specific feeling, and notice it is a form of the wish for something different. You might ask yourself, “Do I think I would be happier if this was different than it is?” If the answer is yes, it is the wish for something different.

3 – Shift your attention to notice and appreciate awareness-life-presence for a few moments. During this time, let go of your thoughts about the situation related to your unhappiness. Give full, restful attention to noticing awareness-life-presence as it is.

4 – Next, look with reason to see if the specific feeling of unhappiness is a fact that was noticed in awareness-life-presence or just a thought in the mind. (For example, if the feeling is rejection, is there any rejection found in awareness-life-presence or is awareness-life-presence the same as it always is? If the specific feeling is guilt, is there any guilt found in awareness-life-presence? Etcetera.)

5 – With the recognition that there was no affect on awareness-life-presence, say to yourself, “There is one life, and that I share with God.”

Text
X. the Time of Rebirth, P 5
T-15.X.5. It is not necessary to follow fear through all the circuitous routes by which it burrows underground and hides in darkness, to emerge in forms quite different from what it is. 2 Yet it is necessary to examine each one as long as you would retain the principle that governs all of them. 3 When you are willing to regard them, not as separate, but as different manifestations of the same idea, and one you do not want, they go together. 4 The idea is simply this: You believe it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God. 5 This is the choice you think you have, and the decision you believe that you must make. 6 You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact that sacrifice gets nothing. 7 Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. 8 Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice. 9 And it is this that you must look upon; sacrifice is attack, not love. 10 If you would accept but this one idea, your fear of love would vanish. 11 Guilt cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. 12 For if there is sacrifice, someone must pay and someone must get. 13 And the only question that remains is how much is the price, and for getting what.

Journal
What I understand now about fear is that no matter what form it takes, it is just the belief in fear. I still look at the forms as they show up in my life, but I don’t try to figure anything out. I used to try to see where that fear started. Was it when I was a child or maybe in a past life something happened that planted that fear in my mind? But now, I know that doesn’t matter.

The only time the belief in fear can be healed is right now and it is not done through therapy or understanding of the fear. It is done as I realize that fear is not real and is just a sensation in my body that occurs with the belief in it. Situations might trigger fear, but the fear was already there or there would be nothing to trigger. I have to decide to believe the truth, and that truth is that no matter what happens in the story, I am safe because I am innocent. I am as God created me.

4 The idea is simply this: You believe it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God.
This is why we don’t feel safe. We believe that God is not on our side, that he wants sacrifice from us. I can remember as a child trying to bargain with God. I would make outlandish promises to him if he would do some good thing for me. I believed that he did not particularly want me to have a good thing, either because he was not especially interested in my wellbeing or because I was not deserving of it.

Perhaps that is why I started studying the Course. Maybe there was still some of that frightened little girl in me that thought all this work was the sacrifice God wants of me in order to give me a good and happy life. But to be happy I had to grow up. I had to realize that the study of the Course was not to placate an uncaring or angry God; it was to mature my mind and to show me how I was hurting myself so I could stop. God has never wanted my sacrifice.

7 Sacrifice is so essential to your thought system that salvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. 8 Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love without sacrifice.
I could read that God loves me all day but if I believe that love and sacrifice go together, I would never be able to trust God because I could not trust love and God is Love. I grew up with this confusion as did we all. I experienced it in Catholic school and I experienced it at home. The implication I got in both environments was that sacrifice was a commodity that I could trade for love.

My parents often used either fear or guilt to control my behavior. If I was a good girl, I was loved. I understand that kind of parenting. It comes from fear, but fear teaches fear and guilt teaches guilt and it all calls for sacrifice. When I was married sacrifice was an assumption of love. I did things he liked and he loved me. He did things I liked and I loved him.

We each had to sacrifice what we wanted in order to please the other. If the balance was disturbed so was the relationship. This kind of relationship is fear-based and this kind of tradeoff is not love. It is attack. 10 If you would accept but this one idea, your fear of love would vanish.

How can we love one another when there is so much sacrifice, fear, and guilt in our relationships? How can we even know what love is when we have added these unnecessary beliefs to love? We must let these ideas die a natural death as we do our forgiveness work and learn to give love for love’s sake instead of using our relationships as a way to get.

12 For if there is sacrifice, someone must pay and someone must get. 13 And the only question that remains is how much is the price, and for getting what.

Manual for Teachers
Introduction, Paragraph 4

4 This is inevitable. There is no escape from it. How could it be otherwise? Everyone who follows the world’s curriculum, and everyone here does follow it until he changes his mind, teaches solely to convince himself that he is what he is not. Herein is the purpose of the world. What else, then, would its curriculum be? Into this hopeless and closed learning situation, which teaches nothing but despair and death, God sends His teachers. And as they teach His lessons of joy and hope, their learning finally becomes complete.

What a relief it is to read in paragraph 4 that there is a way to break the cycle of teaching what is the cause of our suffering.
Into this hopeless and closed learning situation, which teaches nothing but despair and death, God sends His teachers.
Helen, through her willingness to do the work given her and thereby bringing A Course in Miracles into the world, is an outstanding example of this. Regina Dawn Akers, Nouk Sanchez, and others are examples of this. As I have studied and practiced the Course, I have accepted that my role is one of teacher, and so I am an example of this.

We all are teachers of God as we allow our mind to be healed, and to the degree to which we allow that healing. All of us reading this are at least sometimes teaching for God because our mind is at least partially healed through our practice and our willingness. And as we teach, in whatever way our curriculum leads us, our healing becomes more and more complete.

I want to be a more consistent teacher for God and so I am going to keep my reminder handy: My every word, thought and deed is teaching me and everyone else. Is this what I want to teach? I am going to be especially vigilant to notice what I am actually teaching others and myself.
It is not really hard to do this. Are my words and my thoughts congruent? Am I saying that I am at peace while I try to smother the anxiety I feel as I think time is slipping away from me? (I’m laughing because I couldn’t immediately think of an example or how to say this and so I asked
Holy Spirit for something, and I was surprised by that last sentence. Evidently, I had been hiding this from myself.)

So, let me rephrase that. Are my words and thoughts and feelings congruent? My feelings will often help me become aware of the belief that is the source of the thoughts, words, and actions. My words are not always the measure of what I am teaching myself. Holy Spirit, please help me stay aware of the beliefs that are driving my life so that I can ask for healing where needed.

I will remember my gratitude today that as I teach my lessons of joy and hope my learning is becoming complete. Thank you, God.

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Gentle Healing Lesson 165.  9-29-19

I skipped this lesson so I am making up for it now.
LESSON 165

Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.

Journal
“The Thought of God created you. It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from it an instant. It belongs to you. By it you live. It is your Source of life, holding you one with it, and everything is one with you because it left you not. The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. Eternity and everlasting life shine in your mind, because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you.”

I know that the Thought of God is not just me thinking about God. It is the Creative Force that is Life. I could not have lost that or I would not live. It remains with me even in my dreams of separation. All the things that the Thought of God gives me, care, protection, happiness and love, are still there for me and if that is not my experience it is because I have turned away from them. My attention is on the ego’s gifts of pain, suffering and death. As I have released more and more of the ego beliefs, my experience is closer to my reality.

“Sureness is not required to receive what only your acceptance can bestow.”

It’s a good thing this is true. When I started asking for healing, I was not entirely certain I wanted it. I wanted to be free of the effects of choosing ego, but I sometimes still wanted to feel like a victim or unfairly treated. I often wanted to keep pointing at my brother as the guilty one so as to obscure my part. But that I asked, meant that I was answered. And, as I was able, I accepted the answer even if I had to do so a little at a time.

“Ask with desire.”

When I first began this journey, I asked out of desperation for a better life. It took a while before that asking changed to one of true desire. Now my heart longs for the memory of Self and the memory of the oneness of God. Now the answers come quicker and I embrace them faster and more completely.

“Now is all doubting past, the journey’s end made certain, and salvation given you. Now is Christ’s power in your mind, to heal as you were healed. For now you are among the saviors of the world.”

This isn’t 100% true for me 100% of the time, but it is truer for me than it ever has been, and true enough for me to know that the journey’s end is imminent. Abundance dwells in me and what deprivation is left in my mind is being undone even now as I write about this. It cannot cut me off from God’s sustaining Love.

“We count on God, and not upon ourselves, to give us certainty. And in His Name we practice as His Word directs we do. His sureness lies beyond our every doubt. His Love remains beyond our every fear. The Thought of Him is still beyond all dreams and in our minds, according to His Will.”

Regina’s Tips

Today’s workbook lesson encourages us to practice with hope, because hope counteracts doubt.

What if we replaced every thought of doubt with a thought of hope? For example, we could replace, “I do not want truth enough” with “I must want truth more than I think, because spirituality is an ongoing focus in my life.”

Which do you think benefits the purpose of awakening more: negative thoughts of doubt or positive thoughts of hope? Which do you think benefits the ego more?

Let’s do two things today:

1 – Pay particular attention to discover the thoughts of doubt that you listen to. Look at those thoughts with reason, meaning notice that those thoughts serve the ego and discourage spiritual aspiration. Look for reasonable thoughts of hope to replace them with, thoughts that encourage you instead of discouraging you.

2 – Continue to notice awareness-life-presence. Throughout the day, each time you remember, take a moment to notice that you are aware and you exist. Even when you are distracted from awareness-life-presence by doubt, you are still aware and you still exist. Doubt does not change the truth; it only denies it.

My Thoughts

One of my common doubt thoughts was that I do not practice well enough or long enough to realize truth. That is no longer true for me. I have noticed the Holy Spirit’s nudge from time to time to give more time to meditation. It feels more like a strong desire to meditate or just an awareness that I am not as happy when I don’t give time for meditation. It is not that same feeling of dread that I used to have when I thought I was slacking off and my laziness or inability to do this right was going to keep me in hell. I am grateful for these gentle reminders.

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Gentle Healing Lesson 166, Manual for Teachers, Text.  9-26-19

LESSON 166
I am entrusted with the gifts of God.

God has given us everything. The reason we are not aware of His gifts is because we do not see that our will is one with His. We made a world of our own with a separate will. The world is not real and neither is separate will.  “…but every mind that looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators; or in one, himself alone. But never in one God.”

While we believe in our own separate will and while we prefer it to our true will which is one with God’s Will, we will believe that accepting God’s gifts will be capitulation. It would be a denial of the little self. And so we suffer and think the suffering is a small price to pay to preserve the world we made.

We are so confused. We are afraid to give up the world we know for the world that is our Home but is no longer in our conscious memory. We think we want to be human because we have forgotten what it is like to be Divine Beings. But even in this amnesiac state in which we find ourselves, God goes with us. We are lost in our own senseless wandering mind, but not lost to God who knows us and loves us.

No matter how tragic the story and now much we seem to suffer, we remain as we were created, we remain eternal and perfect. We are literally choosing to replace reality with this imagined world. We defend against Heaven and refuse to see the evidence that proves we are not what God created.

Here is something I wrote a short time ago. I said that I must be closer to awakening, to accepting the truth. I say this because I utter the truth such as I am as God created me. I am an eternal and divine being. I am in God and of God right now. And this time when I remind myself of the truth, I feel a frisson of fear pass through me. It’s hard to put into words. Maybe like, how could that be? What would that be like? I feel a desire to remain small because I know smallness and I don’t know greatness. After the fear passes, I smile because I am not interested. I know that shudder of fear is the ego and I am not the ego.

That fear passed and I became ready for the Christ to help me perceive my Self and to know my Self. I laugh at the perception of myself as small and insignificant, as fearful and guilty. I now know that I am not this body image and this sad little story. I know what is not true about me and I am letting the memory of what is true come in its own time. I simply stay open and receptive and trusting.

“God’s Will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His Will. There was a need He did not understand, to which He gave an Answer. That is all. And you who have this Answer given you have need no more of anything but this.”

People often wonder how it is that God could not know of our plan to lose our Self and choose an alien will with which to do this. If we are in God, and God is in us, then how could He not know about our life here and our fears and guilt? I like to remember that God does not believe, God knows and what He knows is eternal and unchangeable. If God knew of the world then the world would be eternal and unchangeable. Not something to wish for, is it?

I don’t know God the Father, and so I cannot know the actual answer to that question of how it is that we can be part of God and yet He not be aware of the world we made. The closest I can come is to think of our experience here as a dream. I am in God and part of the mind is dreaming. God knows that the dream is interrupting our communication and thus interrupting our joy and peace,  and so He placed His Voice within us so that we could awaken when we were ready. His Voice is the answer to our suffering.

“The gifts you have are not for you alone.”

The Voice for God is bringing us back to an awakened state so that we can remember who we are. But as we receive this call to awaken, we must also share it. We must learn to give. We become the teachers of God who help our brothers awaken with us. And how do we do that?

“Teach them by showing them the happiness that comes to those who feel the touch of Christ, and recognize God’s gifts. Let sorrow not tempt you to be unfaithful to your trust”

This is my commitment and I live up to it as much as I am able. When I fall short of being the living proof of what Christ’s touch can offer everyone, I correct my course and continue to walk the path. He has shared His joy with me and now my job is to share it with the world. That is my mission.

Regina’s Tips
NTI teaches that the ego began with the wish for something different than what is. Because that is the basis of the ego, that is a key element of the ego thought system. If you pay attention to your mind, you will see that this idea shows up in one form or another multiple times each day.

Today we will shift our attention from unhappiness to happiness, from the wish for something different to appreciation for the magnificent treasure that is always present.

Each time you notice the wish for something different in your mind today, pause. Shift your attention to awareness-life-presence, and spend a few moments appreciating it. Be as vigilant in this practice as you can be. I say this, because the wish for something different is a strong habit; it could occur many times during the day without you noticing it.

For example, the wish for something different may show up as the wish for more time to get things done, or as the wish for fewer things to do. It may show up as the wish for less traffic or a shorter line at the grocery store. It may show up as the wish that someone around you were different than he/she is. It may show up as the wish that you were different or that your body was different. It may show up as the wish that the world was different than it is.

Pay attention today for the wish for something different in whatever way it shows up in your thoughts, and then shift attention to notice the treasure. Let yourself feel appreciation for awareness-life-presence. Follow that by slowly saying to yourself, “I am entrusted with the gifts of God.”

My Thoughts
My mind is focused today on choosing to remember and love through my highest Self and to see myself as God the Son. It is also focused on my responsibility to share what I am given through the way I live my life. It has taken me a minute to shift my mind to another way to do this. I can also focus my awareness on the mind that wants to think things should be different.

I see the value in changing my mind about that. Thinking things should be different in my life is a reflection of the original tiny mad idea in which I wanted reality to change. So in a sense, my wish for something to be different is the same as the original wish I had for things to be different. Every day is Groundhog Day, and though the form is different, the basis of the form is the same, let today be different than reality.

So today, I will pay special attention to the desire for things to be different. I started out feeling a little frazzled so I stopped to examine my thoughts. I saw that I felt like Monday’s are too full and that I would not have time to get everything done. So, I wanted that to be different. I let that thought go by deciding that today is perfect as it is and I will get done what I get done. Interestingly enough, everything is getting done that I had planned and I am at peace while it is all happening. It just took a simple change of mind.

Text
X. The Time of Rebirth, P 4
4 It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make the time of Christ be now. It is possible to do this all at once because there is but one shift in perception that is necessary, for you made but one mistake. It seems like many, but it is all the same. For though the ego takes many forms, it is always the same idea. What is not love is always fear, and nothing else.

Journal
I know that Jesus is right when he says that it is in our power to make the time of Christ to be now. I also know that I couldn’t do that all at once, not that it wasn’t possible but that I couldn’t do it. From a new perspective, I see how simple it really is. I recognize now that when I felt guilty for some parental error it was no different than when I felt guilty for an angry word, or that I seemed never to learn. That guilt is no different than if I had been a dangerous pedophile or a murderer. In our world of differences, there seems to be many kinds of guilt and some seem worse and some seem to hold greater importance. But that is not true. Guilt is guilt no matter what form it takes.

This same idea holds true for any other form of fear. Fear of heights is no different than fear that I will be late for the show. No matter how different it feels to me, it is just fear. Anger is another form of fear and anger that it is raining on the day I wanted to walk outside is no different than anger that a marriage failed or someone stole from me. If it is not love, it is fear.

I make a choice for Christ each time I reject the belief in fear in whatever form it takes in the moment. That is what I did and it brought me to the place I am now. It is possible to skip all the little steps I took to get to this place, but I didn’t do it that way. From this present perspective this kind of makes me laugh at how much time it took me to recognize what was right in front of me all along.

How much less painful it would have been to simply accept that if it wasn’t love it was fear and then decide I wasn’t interested in the fear. If I refuse to accept fear the only thing left is love.

Manual for Teachers
Introduction P 3
M-in.3. The curriculum you set up is therefore determined exclusively by what you think you are, and what you believe the relationship of others is to you. 2 In the formal teaching situation, these questions may be totally unrelated to what you think you are teaching. 3 Yet it is impossible not to use the content of any situation on behalf of what you really teach, and therefore really learn. 4 To this the verbal content of your teaching is quite irrelevant. 5 It may coincide with it, or it may not. 6 It is the teaching underlying what you say that teaches you. 7 Teaching but reinforces what you believe about yourself. 8 Its fundamental purpose is to diminish self-doubt. 9 This does not mean that the self you are trying to protect is real. 10 But it does mean that the self you think is real is what you teach.

I see that I am always teaching what I think I am, what I believe about myself and what I believe about you in relation to me. What I say may not be congruent with what I believe, but that will do nothing to change what I believe. This self I teach, and through teaching, constantly reinforce, may not be real, but if it is what I teach it becomes very real to me.

Here is an example, as I understand this. For a long time, I believed that I was a victim of the world I see. Because this was the belief in my mind, this was the interpretation I gave everything that happened to me. For instance, I did not know how to mother my first two children and did not do it well. I felt deeply ashamed and guilty, and I told myself that this was not my fault.

This was the story I told myself. My mother was a poor role model, so I was a victim of my circumstances, and of her failure as a mother. I needed to reinforce this story if I was going to believe it and convince others it was true, so I found a therapist who told me the same story. And I collected friends who were willing to witness to my victimization.

To appear even more innocent (to myself and others) I added martyr to my image as I made excuses for my mom, “she was just doing the best she could” stories. But though my words seemed charitable, they had nothing to do with what I believed, so what I was really teaching was that I was a victim, and she was guilty of victimizing me, but I was a charitable person so I was going to “forgive” her. Of course, this is not true forgiveness but rather “forgiveness to destroy”.

All the time I thought I was protecting (or maybe hiding) this image of myself through projecting blame; I was teaching victimization and learning victimization. And so, many victim stories followed. I was building this image of myself as a helpless victim with layers and layers of stories of being victimized. I often said I did not want to be a victim, and as I learned some psychology, I used different words that sounded good, but those words were hollow because I believed I was a victim and so this is what I taught.

And of course, every victim needs a victimizer so I collected those as well, and reinforced through my relationships with them that they were victimizers. What a sad and self-defeating cycle this is, and yet it is the cycle we all live in one form or another until we choose differently through choosing a different teacher. Now that I have chosen a different Teacher, my life is different so I am teaching differently.

My life doesn’t teach victimization because I can’t imagine ever again believing in victimization. The idea feels absurd to me now. My teaching in this is congruent with my beliefs and actions and so that teaching is the same in a formal situation that it is in what my life teaches. I recently let go of the belief in guilt and because this is recent, guilt thoughts still show up sometimes and my actions and words are not as free of guilt as they will be soon.

It is like I have cleaned my house, but once in a while, I notice something out of place or cobwebs I had missed, dust bunnies under the couch. I simply clean them away and enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. It is like that with guilt thoughts for me. A simple cleaning up of any fragments of the old belief. So, I am not yet teaching innocence perfectly, but will be as this process continues. As I teach myself that I am no longer interested in guilt, I teach others the same thing, and as I teach them, I reinforce the lesson for me.

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