I. The Invitation to the Holy Spirit
9-23-13
1 Healing is a thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and lets God go out into them and through them. Only the healed mind can experience revelation with lasting effect, because revelation is an experience of pure joy. If you do not choose to be wholly joyous, your mind cannot have what it does not choose to be. Remember that spirit knows no difference between having and being. The higher mind thinks according to the laws spirit obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God. To spirit getting is meaningless and giving is all. Having everything, spirit holds everything by giving it, and thus creates as the Father created. While this kind of thinking is totally alien to having things, even to the lower mind it is quite comprehensible in connection with ideas. If you share a physical possession, you do divide its ownership. If you share an idea, however, you do not lessen it. All of it is still yours although all of it has been given away. Further, if the one to whom you give it accepts it as his, he reinforces it in your mind and thus increases it. If you can accept the concept that the world is one of ideas, the whole belief in the false association the ego makes between giving and losing is gone.
I see two ideas in this paragraph that speak to me. First is the recurring idea that it is in joining that we wake up. Jesus tells us later in the Text that we cannot enter God’s presence if we attack His Son, not the brother standing next to us, or ourselves. He tells us in another place that every encounter with a brother has the potential to be holy. He says that separation is the problem and joining is the solution. Over and over he tells us that our happiness, our peace and our return to God is dependent on joining with our brother and in making no exceptions to this. No one is to be left out. No one is to stand outside forgiveness in our minds.
In this paragraph Jesus is telling us that joining is the same as healing and that joining is the way we allow God to flow between us, and joining is the way we experience joy. He is also saying that joining is the way we experience lasting revelation since joining equals joy and revelation is an experience of pure joy. This really makes me want to be aware of those times when I am judging someone so that I can choose again. Judgment separates and so takes me to the other end of the spectrum from where I want to be.
The other thing I want to consider is the relationship between giving and receiving. Jesus points out that we think giving and receiving are different because we think in terms of form. When someone needs money if I have it I will give it. Here is how I used to do it. I would see how much they need and then look into my bank account to see how much of that I can afford to give. This is the way we generally give.
As my mind heals and I get a grip on the metaphysics of the Course, I begin to understand that everything is just an idea. The money in my bank account is just an idea in my mind that has been projected outward so I can see what it looks like and experience it in a different way. The money, the bank, my body, everything is just an idea. If that understanding were complete, then how would that change the way I give?
You can’t really give away an idea in the way you give away your money. If I give you my money it isn’t there anymore. But if I give you an idea I still have the idea. If you accept the idea that I give as true, that idea is stronger in my mind as well. So in giving the idea to you I not only didn’t lose the idea, I actually gained in the giving. Now let me relate that to giving away money. If I understand that money is just a projection of an idea, then I could give away money with impunity, knowing that I can’t give away the source of the money. The source of the money, the idea, remains in my mind where it continues to be projected.
So lets say I believe that everything is an idea because it says so in the Course. But I am still afraid to put it to the test because what if there is a catch someplace. What if I have to do something to make this my experience, and I don’t know what that is? What if I believe it, yet doubt it? That is a familiar experience for me. Nearly everything I have learned from the Course started out as a possibility, not a certainty. I practiced what I learned until it became a certainty.
So here I am in that in between place. I believe everything is an idea except when I don’t. What do I do about giving? And how do I get all the way from the belief in loss to the thought that getting is meaningless and giving is all? Someone needs money. I open my checkbook to see how much money I can afford to give. I write a check for what seems right to me. I really want a healed mind and so as I do this, I ask Holy Spirit to heal my mind of the belief in lack and loss.
I do this until one day I realize that I didn’t check my bank account first. I just asked Spirit what he would have me do, and if I feel the prompt to give, I ask how much. I have shifted a bit through the desire and willingness to heal. There is more belief in my mind that giving is not loss because everything is an idea and you cannot diminish an idea through giving it away.
If the guidance were to give all that I have, I would get the chance to see how much I believe this. But what I have noticed in my practice is that Holy Spirit never asks me to step into a place that I am not ready to go. I am where I am through a gentle step by step process. I can absolutely trust Holy Spirit. Through this practice and my willingness to be healed I am learning that Jesus is right, as I can accept the concept that the world is one of ideas, the whole belief in the false association the ego makes between giving and losing goes away.
A last thought: I was looking at my desk and thinking, that cup is not real. It is a thought, an idea. If I were to give it away, I could think it again and it would appear. But this would not be the ego mind doing this because the ego does not create, it can only make. The ego could replace the cup by buying another or if it was feeling creative and had the equipment it could form one from clay and bake it in a kiln. But spirit through Myron, without the obstruction of doubt and fear, could simply replace the idea of a cup with a thought of another cup. It would seem like a miracle if a cup appeared, but the miracle would be the mind healed of doubt and fear. Never the less, the cup would appear.
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