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Study of the Text, Chapter 7, XI. The State of Grace, P 3

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 3

3 Consider the kingdom you have made and judge its worth fairly. Is it worthy to be a home for a child of God? Does it protect his peace and shine love upon him? Does it keep his heart untouched by fear, and allow him to give always, without any sense of loss? Does it teach him that this giving is his joy, and that God Himself thanks him for his giving? That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, any more than you can make yourself. It has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing. Yet when they deny Him they do not know this, because they deny themselves everything. You who could give the Love of God to everything you see and touch and remember, are literally denying Heaven to yourself.

This is another reminder of what Jesus tells us in other places in the Course; we but do this to ourselves. We were created by God from God, and so have everything. Our natural environment was created for us and is in God. But we are choosing to experience something different, which is OK with God, but our choice to have an experience unlike God is painful.

We made the choice. This world and everything happening in it is our own doing. As long as we continue to make this choice, which we do minute by minute, we will deny our true Selves. I cannot experience myself as small and lacking, as pain filled and suffering, as lonely and deprived, and still know I am Divine, lack nothing and could never suffer.

The moment my full memory of the Kingdom returns, the story of time and space disappears. There are only two environments from which to choose; there is Heaven and there is here. They are diametrically opposed and cannot exist, even in our mind, in the same instant. How extremely odd it is that we must be coaxed back into Heaven. We are being offered the opportunity to come out of our present state of amnesia and remember who we are and what we are and where we are. This is not being done against our will. We want this.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 2. 6-23-14

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 2
2 Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is not in a state of grace, he is out of his natural environment and does not function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment that he has made. He therefore cannot adapt to it, nor can he adapt it to him. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is with God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond anything he can make.

Being with God is the only state that is natural to us and the only state in which we will not experience strain. I thought about the idea of strain and I realized that this was true. I strain to be happy, seeking more money, satisfying relationships, a better body. It is incredible the amount of time and effort I have put into these things in the past hoping something would make me happy.

The sentence that says it all for me is: “There is no point in trying.” This is where I am right now. There is no point in trying to make myself happy through earning more money or going on another diet or getting people to like me. None of this makes me happy. I might get a brief sense of satisfaction, but then I think of something else I believe I need and happiness bursts like a soap bubble when you try to catch it.

So I surrender. I surrender not in the sense of giving up, but I surrender to grace. I will still earn money and ask for guidance in my relationships. I will still watch what I eat and take vitamins and maybe I will even exercise this body if I absolutely have to. But I will not look to these things for happiness. They will just be things I do, not the answer to my quest for peace and joy and love.

It takes a lot of vigilance to notice when I have reverted to being in charge of my happiness through manipulating the world. It is all I have known while in the illusion and I do it unless I deliberately choose not to. I have been doing a lot of computer work the last few days and my hand has started hurting when I type.

The thought in my mind is that I am not happy because my hand hurts. Then the ego mind starts looking for solutions, and this leads to looking for targets onto which I can project the blame for my predicament. The situation gets complicated really fast and impossible to solve to my satisfaction. Just this one small thing causes life here to be a strain, and my day has hardly begun.

I ask Holy Spirit how to see this differently. He reminds me that there is no point in trying to use the world to be happy and no point in trying to manipulate the world to make myself happy. It will just increase the strain. Instead, He directs me toward my purpose. I remember that there is no pain.

I remember that it is not the Will of God that I suffer and so I cannot suffer. (As I type this, the pain in my hand increases exponentially and I see my resistance, but as soon as I see it, I let it go and the pain fades away.) This is my purpose, to use the world to allow the world to be undone. There is an environment in which I can live without strain, but to return to that environment, I must first give up the one I made to take its place.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 1. 6-20-14

XI. The State of Grace, Paragraph 1
1 The Holy Spirit will always guide you truly, because your joy is His. This is His Will for everyone because He speaks for the Kingdom of God, which is joy. Following Him is therefore the easiest thing in the world, and the only thing that is easy, because it is not of the world. It is therefore natural. The world goes against your nature, being out of accord with God’s laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in everything. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By demonstrating to yourself there is no order of difficulty in miracles, you will convince yourself that, in your natural state, there is no difficulty at all because it is a state of grace.

Ah, I begin to see why miracles are important. It is through miracles that I express love and it is through accepting that there is no order of difficulty in miracles, I convince myself that in my natural state of grace, there is no difficulty at all. Following Holy Spirit is easy and the only thing that is easy because He speaks for the Kingdom of God and so is not of this insane world.

When I was new to this, my thought was that it sure seems hard to follow the Holy Spirit. It seemed to take great vigilance and it often seemed, at least at first, to go against my own desires and my own safety. Something in me wanted to follow Spirit, and something in me warned me against this urge. But slowly, over time, I have more and more often turned away from the voice of doom, and followed the Holy Spirit. The results have proven to me that I can trust the Voice for God.

I have also learned through the experience of breaking free of the ego’s hold on my mind that it really is easy to follow Spirit. The Holy Spirit is consistent and gentle, and always leads me to joy and peace. The ego, on the other hand, is so erratic and unreliable that I never know where I will end up when I follow it. It’s hard for me to believe I have wasted so much time listening to its counsel when it has so often guided me down the path of confusion and pain.

The Holy Spirit wants only joy for me and knows how to lead me to joy. The ego is not interested in joy. It wants to win. It wants to be right. Clearly, it has no idea how to achieve even these little goals, and when it does manage to win or to be right, the price is often steep, and there is little satisfaction, and no joy.

I want joy. I know that the only way to achieve joy is to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I notice in my life effects that do not come from following that guidance and realize I have slipped back into ego. I may not have a clear indication of when or how this happened and I have learned not to be too concerned about it. 

Figuring out how it happened is often the way ego entangles me and distracts me from what is important. I simply ask for healing and trust that if there is something I need to be aware of, it will be shown to me. As I turn more often from ego to Holy Spirit, my trust in my Guide grows, and the ease of following Spirit becomes obvious.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X.The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 8. 6-19-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 8
8 Miracles are in accord with the Will of God, Whose Will you do not know because you are confused about what you will. This means that you are confused about what you are. If you are God’s Will and do not accept His Will, you are denying joy. The miracle is therefore a lesson in what joy is. Being a lesson in sharing it is a lesson in love, which is joy. Every miracle is thus a lesson in truth, and by offering truth you are learning the difference between pain and joy.

Jesus says that I am confused about what I am, and that is true for sure! I am confused about my will which I think is different than the Will of God. Since I am the Will of God, this leaves me confused about what I am. God’s Will is joy and love and peace. Because I think I can have a will that is different from God, I deny myself joy and love and peace.

As I allow my mind to be healed, the truth returns to me. This is a miracle. Actually, this is THE miracle from which all true effects extend. As I am healed and I begin to remember what I am, I naturally share what I know, and this sharing is love and love is joy. Through the miracle of a healed mind, the difference between pain and joy which was once obscure to me now becomes clear.

I used to think that pleasure was deciding for myself what I am. I used to think pleasure was successfully defending my right to be different from my brothers and from God, which meant that I must defend against them so that I could maintain my own separate will. I can remember feeling a surge of adrenaline when I seemed to win against another, and believing that was joy. But it was just adrenalin after all, and when it receded all I had left was my fear and guilt.

I still get confused about what I am, and think that it makes me happy to decide on a personal will, but I soon remember that this can’t be right. I cannot overcome what I am, which is the Will of God. No matter how sick or tired I make the body, I have proved nothing. I am not the body. I am the Son of God, His holy Will. No matter how impoverished I seem to be, I change nothing because I was created with everything and I cannot overcome God’s Will that I be everything.

Through the miracle I have discovered that I don’t want to overcome God’s Will. I was created in love and truth and joy and that is all I am. As I accept the miracle of a healed mind, I accept that I am as I was created and I rejoice in that truth! If I become confused today, I ask for the Atonement. I want to remember only what is true.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 7. 6-18-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 6
7 Even the relinquishment of your false decision-making prerogative, which the ego guards so jealously, is not accomplished by your wish. It was accomplished for you by the Will of God, Who has not left you comfortless. His Voice will teach you how to distinguish between pain and joy, and will lead you out of the confusion you have made. There is no confusion in the mind of a Son of God, whose will must be the Will of the Father, because the Father’s Will is His Son.

Repeatedly, we are being told that we did not create ourselves, and do not have the power to do so. In this way only, we are different from God. Because we did not create ourselves, we cannot be anything that is not God. There is a clear difference between making and creating, and a clear difference between what is real and what is believed.

I seem to suffer from the confusion in my mind. This confusion is something I made and because I made it, I believe it. Because I believe it, it is true for me. But it is not truth.  There is no confusion in the mind of God’s Son because there is no confusion in God. I can pretend to be confused and convince myself that I am, but I cannot be confused because there is no confusion in the mind.

I remember the first time I read the first two sentences of this paragraph. I felt tremendous resistance to the idea that my decision-making prerogative is not accomplished by my wish. I felt frightened, actually, like the big bad god was only playing with me, pretending to let me decide on things but was going to crush me under his will when he got bored with me.

Through the slow but steady healing of my mind I understand enough now to know that there is no separation between the Son and the Father. We share the same Will. The only will that is endangered is the ego will, which is not actually a will, but a wish. The ego is screaming and jumping up and down at the thought that I might not be interested in playing it’s game of deciding which illusion I like best. But interestingly enough, I can barely hear it’s antics.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 6. 6-17-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 6
6 The Holy Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as you are. God Himself trusts you, and therefore your trustworthiness is beyond question. It will always remain beyond question, however much you may question it. I said before that you are the Will of God. His Will is not an idle wish, and your identification with His Will is not optional, since it is what you are. Sharing His Will with me is not really open to choice, though it may seem to be. The whole separation lies in this error. The only way out of the error is to decide that you do not have to decide anything. Everything has been given you by God’s decision. That is His Will, and you cannot undo it.

I feel like a fool as I sit here asking to wake up, trying to align my will with God’s Will. I spend the day looking at false thoughts in my mind and letting go of the belief in guilt, and asking for Christ’s Vision as I interact with my brothers. And all the time, this is done. I am asking for what is already mine. It could not be otherwise because it is the Will of God. My confusion lies in the belief that I have a will separate from the Will of God, that there could ever exist anything that is not the Will of God, and that I have somehow undone His Will.

Here is what I think right now. I keep asking for what I already have because this is the way I convince myself I don’t have it. This is just another ego strategy for keeping the illusion going. It has occurred to me lately that I can’t believe I still entertain ego thinking when even as I do it, I know it can’t be right.

I can’t believe I get sick when I know that the body cannot sicken and die unless that is my desire. I know this is true. And yet, I choose sickness, and craziest of all, I go to the doctor or take medicine even though I know that the cause is in my mind, not in the body. I know that I chose the sickness and I know that the medicine is not the cure, and still I pretend I can’t stop getting sick and I pretend the medicine helps.

I know that we cannot return our full awareness to the Kingdom with guilt in our mind. I do not doubt this for a moment. But then I turn around and project blame on some hapless person just dreaming their dream, or I decide I am just so guilty for something I thought or something I did years ago that now I have to be depressed about it. I do this, and at the same time, I know it’s crazy.

When I was a child I would play at being a princess and while I was doing this I believed I was that princess. I was so caught up in the story, the world around me ceased to exist. The little girl I was didn’t exist for me. But no matter how long I played this game, and how completely lost in the play I was, nothing changed. I pretended to be a princess and in my mind I was a princess. But no amount of pretending changed who I was, and I didn’t have to do anything to restore me to the little girl I was. I just stopped pretending to be something else.

That is all that is happening now. I am pretending to be something I am not. And now I am pretending I can’t stop, that there is something else I must do to fix this. I know this is the ego mind that resists waking from the dream. I know that I am not lost or condemned. I know that I do not have a will separate from God.

I know that this separation idea is all done and complete, and always has been. I am not confused. There is nothing for me to decide on, and nothing for me to do other than to accept that there is only God’s Will and I am part of it. I will wake up when I stop pretending that I can’t.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 5. 6-16-14

X. The Confusion of Pain and Joy, Paragraph 5
5 The Holy Spirit always sides with you and with your strength. As long as you avoid His guidance in any way, you want to be weak. Yet weakness is frightening. What else, then, can this decision mean except that you want to be fearful? The Holy Spirit never asks for sacrifice, but the ego always does. When you are confused about this distinction in motivation, it can only be due to projection. Projection is a confusion in motivation, and given this confusion, trust becomes impossible. No one gladly obeys a guide he does not trust, but this does not mean that the guide is untrustworthy. In this case, it always means that the follower is. However, this, too, is merely a matter of his own belief. Believing that he can betray, he believes that everything can betray him. Yet this is only because he has elected to follow false guidance. Unable to follow this guidance without fear, he associates fear with guidance, and refuses to follow any guidance at all. If the result of this decision is confusion, this is hardly surprising.

I can understand why it is that we want to be weak. We used our strength to do the impossible and in doing so we have become convinced that we have attacked God. It seems our strength has betrayed us and left us fearful and guilty. Now we just want to keep our head down. If we think our guilt is noticed, we want to point God toward someone else. Being weak and frightened seems to be a better option than being strong and allowing that strength to lead us into more trouble. It seems that being week is better than being found out by God.

Since we believe that we betrayed God and over and over we betray our brother, we naturally believe everything is betraying us. Certainly when we follow the ego, we are betrayed. The ego, that little chatter box in our head, is constantly guiding us to do things that wind up getting us even deeper into trouble. It constantly warns us of trouble and encourages us to defend ourselves.

Here is an example. I wanted to spend more time with my daughter. The ego advised me to be careful about that. It went something like this: She has her own life, and if you impose too much, she will start to avoid you. She is very kind and will spend time with you but will come to resent you. She already has to give time to her father who is very needy, a good mother wouldn’t add to her burden. If she spends Saturday with her dad and Sunday with you, when will she have any time to herself?

So I seldom called to ask for her company and she stopped calling me. The ego congratulated me on being strong and independent. Then the ego said that she was selfish and thoughtless for not calling me. The ego said that she didn’t love me or respect me, and that must mean I was not a good mother and started reminding me of all the things I did wrong. Then the ego pointed out that she was ungrateful for all I did for her. It was her fault I felt like this.

At this point, realizing that I had been following an insane guide, I shook off the ego and asked Spirit what I should do. I immediately picked up the phone and started a conversation with my daughter. As it turned out, she was feeling abandoned by me, and was hurt by this. When I tried to explain my reasoning, she wasn’t going for it. Since ten we have moved past this and now enjoy each other’s company nearly every week.

Here is the thing, we have been choosing ego as our guide and since ego is an unreliable guide, we have come to distrust all guides. The only reason this whole situation with my daughter did not spin completely out of control is that I have been slowly learning that I can trust the Holy Spirit to be my Guide. When I realized what I was doing and turned to Him for help, He guided me to approach the situation in love rather than from fear. I stopped thinking about how I could defend myself to how I could love my daughter and myself.

Like many other things in life, betrayal is just a thought in the mind. It is a belief and it is a false belief. It started with the belief we betrayed God when we decided to see what separation would feel like. Now that we believed in betrayal, we began to see it everywhere. Betrayal is not real, but we believe it is and what we believe is real to us. Since we made betrayal, we now must allow it to be undone for us, along with the other things we decided to believe, like guilt, fear, suffering and death.

Just as I did with the situation with my daughter, we must step out in faith, going against the ego belief in fear and guilt, and trust the Holy Spirit will not betray us. If we will do that, if we will turn to Him for guidance, He will teach us that He is trustworthy and will not lead us astray. He will lead us to let go of our belief in betrayal, and all the other lies we learned from listening to ego. We only have to take the first tentative step toward Him and He will leap to our assistance! He will prove Himself a good and reliable Guide.

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