Together, We Light the Way

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Lesson 210

I choose the joy of God instead of pain.

I was able to see this in my mind before I even began my lesson this morning. I was sitting at the computer thinking how much I have enjoyed my weekend and being home and I felt a sense of dread at having to leave next week to get back on the road with my job. Immediately I brought that thought to the Holy Spirit within and was gently reminded that I was not unhappy to be leaving and was not happy because I was home.

It is very easy to fall back into the habit of thinking that the world influences my feelings. I am grateful for the reminder that only my thoughts influence me because I don’t live in the world, but rather the world lives in me. Total responsibility is the beginning of the path out of pain and into joy. It feels heavy only when I am reluctant to accept it. Once I remember that responsibility is my way out, I am eager to accept it and to get on with it.

I have been doing this for a long time and am very happy with the changes that I have allowed in my mind. I am more vigilant today than I ever have been because I have practiced vigilance every day. At first it felt like a burden, but success is a wonderful motivator and now I am simply grateful to do it. It is hard for me to believe that such a simple thing as noticing the thoughts unlike what God would think and then being willing to have them changed is all that I need do. But apparently this is true. My life used to be a painful experience with brief moments of happiness. I had learned to exist on distraction and to call it happiness. This is no state for the Son of God to be in.

As I do this work I find that I experience success and feel so good I can hardly believe it. This is my motivation to continue when it seems difficult. Then I will be back in the muck of ego thinking and be in pain. This was always hard for me to accept. I felt like there was something wrong with me and that if every time I was lifted up I simply fell back down that I would never get any place. This weekend a friend talked about the path as hills and valleys. She said that this is a necessary part of the journey.

When we do the work we wind up on the mountain top, but that doesn’t mean we are through. We then have to go back down to do more work, to allow more stuff to surface and be healed. This was really a helpful analogy for me. I went back and looked at some of the encouraging thoughts I received from my Higher Self, and realized this is what I was being told. I was worried because it seemed that I had fallen and actually I had simply surrendered to the process and was doing exactly what I was supposed to.

Holy Spirit, more and more I am beginning to realize that once I put my foot on the path home, everything in my life became exactly perfect for that purpose. I suppose it always was, but before my path was not purposeful and so I failed to recognize the perfection. I am grateful for it all.

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