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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: IV.The Gift of Freedom, Paragraph 5. 9-1-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom P 5
5 Healing reflects our joint will. This is obvious when you consider what healing is for. Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome. Separation is overcome by union. It cannot be overcome by separating. The decision to unite must be unequivocal, or the mind itself is divided and not whole. Your mind is the means by which you determine your own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. My decision cannot overcome yours, because yours is as powerful as mine. If it were not so the Sons of God would be unequal. All things are possible through our joint decision, but mine alone cannot help you. Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. I cannot will what God does not will. I can offer my strength to make yours invincible, but I cannot oppose your decision without competing with it and thereby violating God’s Will for you.

I am glad that Jesus reminds us that healing is the way the separation is overcome, and that separation is overcome by union. In other words, we must unite. We unite with our brothers and we unite our will with God’s Will. Sometimes this is done in a single prayer. When I am angry with someone, I ask that my mind be healed of this wrong-minded belief. In this prayer I am asking that the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence be removed from my mind. This joins me with God. At the same time it makes it possible for me to join with my brother, which joins my will with God’s Will.

For this to be effective, my uniting must be unequivocal. If I am forgiving my brother (forgiving my projections onto him) I must do so with no caveats. Here is an example. In the past I have held a grievance against a fellow worker. When I became uncomfortable with my judgments, I asked that my mind be healed. I really wanted to be free of my discomfort, but I didn’t want to let him off the hook. I wanted him to change. There was no real joining intended in that request.

Then I finally reached the point that when I said I wanted to be free of my judgment, I meant it, but when he did something else, I saw his behavior this time as different than it was before, so I went right back to judging and to my own discomfort. I had to recognize that these were just different forms of the same problem and I let go of them so that I could be at peace. Every time I see him now, I ask the Holy Spirit if there is forgiveness to be done. I want our joining, and the only way I can have it is if my desire is unequivocal, no exceptions.

And that is just the one person. I cannot enter the presence of God if I attack His Son. This, too must be an unequivocal decision on my part. I must be willing to give up judging everyone including myself. That seems like a tall order sometimes, but it is my only real choice. Nothing else will restore my mind to God; nothing else will return my will to God’s Will. Nothing else will heal.

Jesus tells us that our mind is the means by which we determine our own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. Returning to God is simply a matter of deciding to do so. But again, the decision must be unequivocal. This means I must decide against anything that would keep me in the illusion. That is why I ask for mind healing all day long. It is the reason I ask the Holy Spirit to remove from my mind the thought that is blocking my return.

Only I can decide for God, this cannot be done for me. Once I make that decision, the Holy Spirit becomes the mechanism that makes it possible. But only after I decide. Jesus says he cannot overpower our will because it is not God’s Will that we be forced into peace and happiness. It is always going to be our choice. It would seem like an easy choice and I have often thought I made that choice only to discover there was still something I wanted more than Heaven.

What helped me get this far is that I have so much help. Jesus offers me his strength to make mine invincible. He says he I can imagine holding his hand and then he assured me this would be no idle fantasy. He said he is with me always. He says he will help me or he will wait until I am ready for his help. The Holy Spirit responds quickly and fully to my slightest invitation. I have unseen help and present help. How could I fail except it be my decision to do so.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: IV.The Gift of Freedom, Paragraph 4. 8-29-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom P 4
4 Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? For unless you do, you will not receive it. If you want to have it of me, you must give it. Healing does not come from anyone else. You must accept guidance from within. The guidance must be what you want, or it will be meaningless to you. That is why healing is a collaborative venture. I can tell you what to do, but you must collaborate by believing that I know what you should do. Only then will your mind choose to follow me. Without this choice you could not be healed because you would have decided against healing, and this rejection of my decision for you makes healing impossible.

These are the ideas that stand out to me in this paragraph. If I want peace, I must want it equally for everyone else. That idea is more important than I first thought. There is still a tendency in my mind to see others as separate from me. For instance, when I read about someone in town getting robbed, I feel empathy for them and the one who did the robbing. I pray for their peace of mind. I pray that my mind be healed of the beliefs that create that kind of thinking.

When I read about someone being hurt in another country, I don’t experience the same degree of empathy. They seem far away and I don’t relate to their lives. And yet, they are part of me. And, no matter how different on the surface, they want the same things I want. They want to be happy. They want peace. In other words, they want salvation, just as I do.

I ask that my mind be healed of the belief that I am separate in any way from anything I see. We are all part of the One Self, and what I want for any part of the Sonship, I want for all of it, or I don’t want it for myself. And if I don’t want it for myself and everyone else, then I will not have it. Peace is not forced on me. I must want it in order to have it. To have peace I must want it and I must give it.

The next idea, which is related, is that I must accept Guidance from within. I must ask the Holy Spirit to guide me so that I can both recognize and desire peace. For such a long time I thought peace was something I had to steal from someone else. For me to gain, often I saw it as necessary that someone else lose.

I obviously didn’t know what peace was and I had to learn. The Holy Spirit has helped me with that. When I am not at peace, I ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of wrong-minded thinking. I would ask that He remove from my mind the thoughts that were blocking my peace. I must truly want the healing or I will not understand the guidance when I receive it.

That brings us to the next idea, one we have been touching on. Healing is a collaborative venture. This is my part: I must want the healing more than I want the problem. I must ask for the healing and be willing to accept it. The Holy Spirit then does His part and heals my mind. He removes from my mind all that blocks the healing. This works every time as long as I am doing my part.

Where it can get clogged up is when I want to feel better and I want to be at peace, but I also want to hold onto my grievance, my fear or my guilt. In this case, I might want peace, but I am not meeting its conditions, and so I don’t really want it. What I want is my problem without the consequences, and of course this is not a real request. To receive the answer to the prayer for peace, I must truly want peace above all else. Then it is mine.

I have learned to trust the Holy Spirit. He knows what it is that I need to be happy. He knows me much better than I do. I accept His judgment and lay aside all I thought I knew and then the healing is done. As long as I believe I know what I need, my mind will not accept His Answer. I won’t even understand the guidance. It won’t make sense to me. But as soon as I decide that I don’t know anything except that I want peace for myself and everyone else, it is done. It is always up to me.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 5,VII. The Decision for God, P 6. 8-28-14

VII. The Decision for God, P6
6 Decision cannot be difficult. This is obvious, if you realize that you must already have decided not to be wholly joyous if that is how you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that you actively decided wrongly, but can as actively decide otherwise. Be very firm with yourself in this, and keep yourself fully aware that the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless within you because God placed it there. Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace. Say this to yourself as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:
I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise. I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace. I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him. I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me.

This prayer is the foundation of my spiritual practice. It is the way I return my mind to God as He gave it to me, the way I remove what was added. The Answer to this prayer is in my mind. It always responds to a sincere desire to be healed, and the healing occurs. I say that I remove what has been added, but the way I do that is to desire that it be removed. The actual removal is accomplished through the Holy Spirit That was given to us for this purpose.

I have been thinking about retirement a lot lately, maybe because I turn 65 tomorrow. I have this thought that I need to get my house paid for so that I can afford to retire so I have been looking at ways I can accomplish this. There is nothing wrong with doing this, especially if it is guidance of how to do something that needs to be done.

Where I wander off the path is when I allow the ego to entice me into obsessing over it and moving into fear. We are the Sons of God and there is no fear in us, but we can believe there is much to fear and it seems to be so. This is what has been happening to me. I have gone from something that started off as a simple thought in the mind and has ended up being a source of fear.

This morning I am going to use the power of my decision to accept the Atonement in this situation. This is the way Jesus wants me to use my illusion to allow it to be undone for me. The Atonement is his plan for our salvation and if I am going to use this book as my guide to awakening, then I must make use of the Atonement principle. Anyway, it is easy and effective and nothing else I have tried even works.

“I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.” I decided to think thoughts that are not true and that is why I am not at peace. I didn’t lose my peace somewhere like a misplaced book, I lost it on purpose. I actively decided against it through choosing to believe what is not true. I have not lost my peace because I am in danger of living on the streets or of working many more years than I want.

I am anxious because I chose to believe I am victim to the situation in which I find myself rather than the maker of it. Nor is anyone at work, or anyone I help financially responsible for this situation. I am completely responsible for everything I see. If something is wrong, then my thinking must be wrong because that is the source of my world as I see it. If I am not at peace, it must be that I have decided wrongly. I have chosen to think with ego rather than with God.

“I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.” Since the problem is a result of my own decision, then the solution is to think differently. This is the most valuable lesson I ever learned. In the past I always tried to find someone or something else to blame. All my attention was fixed on preserving my false innocence through projecting blame.

All the time I really was innocent, but failed to see it because I believed I was guilty. Guilt has no place in this, and without guilt the process is simple and goes without a hitch. Now I understand the difference between guilt and responsibility, I gladly accept responsibility so that I can do something about my error and know that I am free. I decided wrongly when I decided that I am unhappy because of circumstances and the people who are to blame for these circumstances.

“I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.” The reason this is hard to do is because I tend to forget the goal. I start to think that the goal is to pay off my house and to retire. The goal is peace. The reason I want to pay off my house is because I think that will bring me peace. The reason I want to retire is because I think I must in order to feel peaceful.

But I am wrong about that. I must decide for God rather than for ego if I want peace. I must let go of those ego beliefs and trust that God does have my best interests at heart and that He knows better than I do what it is that will bring me peace and joy. I must surrender my own plan and accept His.

“I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.” There is no reason for guilt because nothing has really happened. I have made a wrong decision and if I let the Holy Spirit undo it there will be no consequences to that wrong decision. Nothing in this world is real and so nothing matters except as I give it value, and then it matters to me, but is still not real.

After suffering from my mistaken thoughts for so long, it is hard to believe the answer was so simple, but past experience has proven it is so. I have decided to listen to the ego mind with its false reasoning, and to believe what I thought. Now I ask the Holy Spirit to remove those thoughts from my mind. I am not at all concerned with the ego belief that someone, either me or someone else, must be guilty. Guilt is irrelevant. I can afford to ignore that thought and simply allow myself to be at peace and happy, and I have the means to do that.

“I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me.” Holy Spirit, please remove these false thoughts from my mind. Choose for God for me. I am ready to be accept the Atonement and to be at peace.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 8: IV.The Gift of Freedom, Paragraph 3. 8-27-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom P3
3 You were in darkness until God’s Will was done completely by any part of the Sonship. When this was done, it was perfectly accomplished by all. How else could it be perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to unite the will of the Sonship with the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father’s Will myself. This is the awareness I came to give you, and your problem in accepting it is the problem of this world. Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I am the salvation of the world. The world must therefore despise and reject me, because the world is the belief that love is impossible. If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are denying the world and accepting God. My will is His, and your decision to hear me is the decision to hear His Voice and abide in His Will. As God sent me to you so will I send you to others. And I will go to them with you, so we can teach them peace and union.

I don’t know why exactly, but this paragraph makes me cry when I read it. I think my reaction is one of gratitude. I feel so grateful to Jesus for what he did for us all. I am still choosing some silly grievance or another over salvation and I have the advantage of Jesus having already accomplished salvation, then sending me this Course to help me accept his gift. How did he do it? How did he come to be aware of the Father’s Will for himself? I can’t imagine.

But I do have help, lots of it, and I must be able to do this because I am like Jesus. I do my part the best I can. I notice those silly grievances and let them go as quickly as I am able. I decide against them. I decide for God. Really, this is all I have to do to complete my part. I accept the Atonement for all wrong minded thinking that I notice, mine or anyone else’s. This is the plan Jesus set out for us so we could join him in rejecting the world, which is accepting salvation.

I reject the world each time I reject guilt and fear, and in rejecting the world, I save the world. All of my life I felt lost because I couldn’t see a purpose to my life. I thought everyone else had a purpose because they seemed content, and I seemed the only one who’s life had no meaning. Then I found A Course in Miracles and I knew this was my purpose. I was to join Jesus in saving the world. So when I read the last two sentences I really cried.

“As God sent me to you so will I send you to others. And I will go to them with you, so we can teach them peace and union.”

I am joining with Jesus for the purpose of releasing the world of the separation idea, the belief that love is impossible. I am accepting my part as I allow the Holy Spirit to undo what I did, to remove from my mind the belief in guilt and fear. I am doing my part as I allow Jesus to send me to others. He knows where he needs me and what he needs me to say and do and be. I just have to follow and I am learning to do that without resistance. And, thank God, he goes with me and teaches through me as I get my ego out of the way.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 5 IV, The Decision for God,Paragraph 4. 8-26-14

VII. The Decision for God, P4
4 But the time is now. You have not been asked to work out the plan of salvation yourself because, as I told you before, the remedy could not be of your making. God Himself gave you the perfect Correction for everything you made that is not in accord with His holy Will. I am making His plan perfectly explicit to you, and will also tell you of your part in it, and how urgent it is to fulfil it. God weeps at the “sacrifice” of His children who believe they are lost to Him.

The time is now for me! If you are reading this book and you haven’t tossed it aside by this time, the time is now for you, too. It is time to wake up, time to lay aside the dream of separation and embrace our true Self. We have sacrificed our joy and peace for far too long, and it is time to let all that go. I have been asking very frequently for some days now to be reminded of what I am.

When I feel sad or fearful, when I am angry or upset in any way, to any degree, I ask again, “What am I?” I am ready to know. The ego mind that loves its stories and doesn’t want to give them up resists this change in direction. I am assaulted by fearful thoughts and distracting situations, but as this happens I meet each one with the question, “What am I?”

I am spirit. I am a divine being. I am His Son. How can I be subject to the ego fears and guilt? How can I be subject to sickness, pain or suffering of any kind? I remind myself of the passage in Lesson 190 that says I dominate everything I see. I dominate physical pain and mental anguish. I dominate the little distractions and the big ones. As I realize that my holy self cannot be assaulted from without, I see the harmlessness in all these things.

Having realized their harmlessness, I ponder what Jesus said next in Lesson 190, that what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness. I open my heart and mind to understand this more fully. I think that every word in A Course in Miracles is meaningful and important, and I have been doing this long enough to realize that my understanding deepens as my desire to awaken overtakes my fear of awakening. As this happens I really want to understand and it is like a light coming on and illuminating the words.

I was reminded of something as I wondered about all things I see becoming a source of innocence. I woke up at 3:48 this morning. I was expecting to wake up at 5:00 or later and so I lay there for a few minutes expecting to go back to sleep, but that didn’t happen. For awhile my mind was conflicted as the ego insisted on its way. It has definite ideas about what I need as far as sleep goes. But I dominate all things I see and I see that it is now nearly 4:00 and I am awake.

I let go of the idea that lack of sleep is the enemy I must fight. I let go of the idea that my body is the decision maker and dominates my mind. I remember what I am. The idea of sleep deprivation ceases to be the boogeyman I thought it was and it appears harmless to me now. I realized how nice it would be this morning to have so much time to commune with Spirit and to write.

I see that this idea of not enough sleep that has always haunted me and caused anxiety and seemed to drain my energy was just a thought in a confused mind. It is really innocent. Ha! That is it! That is how the things I see are innocent. They do not cause my unhappiness. I cause that, and because I caused it, I can stop causing it. I don’t quite get the holy part, but I will stay open to understanding.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 8 IV, The Gift of Freedom,Paragraph 2. 8-25-14

IV. The Gift of Freedom P2
2 I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation, maintained by fear of the same loneliness that is its illusion. I said that I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. That is why I am the light of the world. If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, the loneliness is gone. You cannot maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are not alone. My purpose, then, is still to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of what it is. Light does not attack darkness, but it does shine it away. If my light goes with you everywhere, you shine it away with me. The light becomes ours, and you cannot abide in darkness any more than darkness can abide wherever you go. The remembrance of me is the remembrance of yourself, and of Him Who sent me to you.

This is a world of pretense. I pretend to be alone. I pretend to be afraid and lonely. I pretend to dwell in darkness. I do this through pushing away the light and the love and the peace that are everything and everywhere. I stare out of sightless eyes and behold a world bereft of God. I make a god of darkness and give it the dark attributes I have come to identify with, and he becomes vengeful and punishing. I have done this for so long that I believe what I have pretended is there and forgotten the reality of all that is.

It is not necessary that I keep doing this. The veil I have pulled over reality is thin and insubstantial. The light that Jesus brought into the world will penetrate it easily and I can have this light. It is here for me. I simply change my mind. I had decided for darkness and the play of images on that dark screen. Now I decide for light to show me the real world. I ask for light to shine away the darkness in my mind and then I carry that light everywhere I go. So now I am the light of the world along with Jesus.

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study of the Text, Chapter 5, VII> The Decision for God,Paragraph 2. 8-22-14

VII. The Decision for God, P 2
2 There have been many healers who did not heal themselves. They have not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not whole. Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer heals himself, he cannot believe that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. He has not learned that every mind God created is equally worthy of being healed because God created it whole. You are merely asked to return to God the mind as He created it. He asks you only for what He gave, knowing that this giving will heal you. Sanity is wholeness, and the sanity of your brothers is yours.

I’m ready to heal the sick, to move mountains and to raise the dead. How about you? All of those things seem easy when you realize what you are. As you realize what you are, all things become harmless and are easily set aside. But I see that all things must become one thing. I must see not only my own wholeness, and my own sanity, but also my brother’s as well. I must see there is no gap between me and my brother. This is hard if I still see either of us as a body, but once I realize what I am, I will have no problem at all.

Yesterday, I practiced remembering what I am. It made for a very peaceful and happy day. But toward the end of the day, the weather got bad with thunderstorms and I got a headache. My first thought was that the change in weather was the cause. This used to be what I believed and the weather and headache combination seemed to prove I was right.

The ego always speaks first so that was my first thought. But I don’t believe that anymore. I know that the headache/weather connection has nothing to do with cause. It is simply the effect of the belief that I hold in my mind. I choose a headache (I’m sure the ego was getting desperate to undo all the healing that has been occurring lately) and then I use the device of weather changes as cause to make the headache seem reasonable and outside me.

If the body can get sick without my mind being involved the ego can use this as proof that I am a victim and thus not part of God. It was a good plan. Every time the weather changed like this I got a headache and so the consistency of it was enough to convince me of the connection. The ego mind is sick, but not without power and cleverness.

It’s not working anymore. I am onto the whole thing and am letting go of the idea that the world happens without my consent. So I went back to my study for the day and remembered that it is me who has the power to dominate all things I see by merely recognizing what I am. As I perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept my holy will as theirs.

I looked at the headache in this new light. I am spirit, divine being, Son of God, and as such, I dominate all things. This includes the body and sickness and pain. I dominate them by remembering what I am and in remembering, the headache is seen as harmless rather than a threat to my newfound understanding, and harmless rather than painful and outside my control. I reminded myself that in its harmlessness the headache (body/pain) will accept my holy will as their its. The body must respond to my mind; whether my mind is sick or healed, the body must respond to it.

It was interesting to watch. I would remind myself of the truth and the headache would subside, then it would return. I continued the practice and after awhile I was tired of the pain and thought about giving in to a magical solution and taking an aspirin. But really, while I did want to do this, I also was having fun. I wanted to see what could be done with merely changing my desire.

Could I effect a permanent change in the condition of the body just that quickly? I have no doubt that someday I would be able to do that and more, but why not now? I asked Jesus to help me understand his teachings and I asked him to help me accept them. The pain subsided more quickly and easily and eventually it went away all together. I guess I practiced for about an hour or so. I don’t know for sure because it was awhile before I realized the pain was gone for good.

This morning I got the chance to up the stakes on my practice. My son called me with bad news. He had surgery recently on his back and had hoped for relief from the chronic pain he has suffered for years now. It doesn’t seem to be happening and now he seems to have re-injured it. All of this bad news has caused him to be very depressed.

I love him so much and want only that he be happy. I also know that his story of pain and suffering is not real. He is still as God created him. He is master of his universe. But that is not his experience and the experience he is having is really painful. I felt his deep discouragement as we spoke and I wanted so much to do something, but what can I do?

I find that it is harder, somehow, to know the truth for him, that is, that he is not his body either, and that he is the cause of his universe as much as I am the cause of mine. Because he has no interest in approaching this from a spiritual point of view, it is easy for me to think that he has no recourse and must suffer. I have had to overcome my own lack of faith to be helpful for him in any way.

That I am still seeing an order of difficulty in miracles, means that my mind is not healed and so I must step back from trying to heal until I accept my own healing. This is what I have been doing this morning since I talked to him. My prayer this morning began with the reminder that I am not what I seem. I am not the body; I am spirit. I dominate all things and in seeing their harmlessness, they bow to my holy will. Now my prayer is also this: Toby is not his body; he is spirit. He dominates all things and as he sees their harmlessness they will bow to his holy will.

As I write this I am reconsidering. All things I see must bow to my holy will. As I see Toby’s body manifestations as the illusions they are and know they are harmless because they are illusions, they must bow to my holy will. How is that any different than accepting the Atonement on his behalf, something Jesus has told us we can and must do? I think this is the prayer I will hold in my heart today. If this speaks to your heart, I invite you to join me in this holy endeavor. We are meant to be healers, and we are meant to remember healing through joining in healing.

Today’s prayer: Because of what we are, we dominate all things. Knowing what we are, we see these manifestations as the harmless illusions they are whether they occur in ourselves or in another. And so they must bow to our holy will. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray.

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