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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VII.The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 2. 5-2-14

VII. The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 2

2 When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an opportunity to bless him. His need is yours. You need the blessing you can offer him. There is no way for you to have it except by giving it. This is the law of God, and it has no exceptions. What you deny you lack, not because it is lacking, but because you have denied it in another and are therefore not aware of it in yourself. Every response you make is determined by what you think you are, and what you want to be is what you think you are. What you want to be, then, must determine every response you make.

I love the clear and easy stuff from the Course, which is what we have here. When my brother acts insanely (attacks) I have an opportunity to bless him. I need to bless him because I need the blessing myself, and giving it is the only way I can receive it. That is so clear and so unequivocal. He emphasizes that by saying: “This is the law of God, and it has no exceptions.”

No matter what my brother does or says, he is asking for my blessing whether he understands this or not, and he probably doesn’t. If he is attacking it is because he is afraid and feeling defensive. He thinks he must protect himself, and asking for a blessing is the furthest thing from his mind. Therefore, it is up to me, being the saner one at the time, to understand what he needs and give it to him. 

How do I bless him? What does that look like? The form changes according to circumstances, but the content remains love. It can be as simple as a smile, or a nod of understanding. I can say to an angry brother that I can see how upset he is. I can give him my attention. When someone is grieving, I can hug her and offer my condolences.

Even if the attack is directed at me, I can be defenseless and I can ask the Holy Spirit what response is most loving in this situation. Here is an example. I wrote something and shared it on a forum. Someone reading it attacked the content. I felt the attack as if it were personal and asked the Holy Spirit to heal my mind.

From that place of clarity I realized that my words had triggered something in the other person and I felt compassion because I know how that feels. I thanked the person for sharing her thoughts and feelings. Sometimes it might be more appropriate to just let it be. What is never helpful is to argue or become defensive.

What I give, I receive and I don’t need to teach myself defensiveness. I already know that posture too well. What I want is to teach forgiveness and innocence because that is what I most need to learn. I let what I want to be determine my response.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VII.The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 1,Continued. 5-1-14

VII. The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 1 Continued
1 Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother you will feel deprived, because denial is as total as love. It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part. Nor is it possible to love it totally at times. You cannot be totally committed sometimes. Denial has no power in itself, but you can give it the power of your mind, whose power is without limit. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone for you. Reality cannot be partly appreciated. That is why denying any part of it means you have lost the awareness of all of it. Yet denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as well as negatively. Used negatively it will be destructive, because it will be used for attack. But in the service of the Holy Spirit, it can help you recognize part of reality, and thus appreciate all of it. Mind is too powerful to be subject to exclusion. You will never be able to exclude yourself from your thoughts.

This is what I want to contemplate today:

“Denial has no power in itself, but you can give it the power of your mind, whose power is without limit. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone for you.”

Again and again in the Course Jesus reminds us of the power of our mind. Here he says it is unlimited. This is so hard for us to comprehend. We have denied this power so thoroughly that we can’t say no to chocolate, or we procrastinate to the point we cause our self grief and think there is nothing we can do about it. We fall in and out of love and hurt each other and it seems just to happen to us. We feel like we have no power over our lives at all. And yet, Jesus says we have unlimited power. So we must be doing this to ourselves.

We are talking about the power of denial, specifically. We are told that denial has no power of itself, but the unlimited power of our mind lends it power, so much so that what we deny is no longer true for us. If we deny reality, then reality is gone. At least it is gone from our awareness, just as we desired. That is why we can live as if we have no control over what we eat, that we cannot help being addicts, that we just stumble into and out of relationships and don’t know how it happened.

We do all of this to ourselves and then we deny any knowledge of how it happened and through the power of our minds we believe the lie. It becomes true for us and we are left helpless victims of circumstance. It’s the craziest thing! As insane as this is, backing out of it is no simple thing. We must overcome our own desire and choose to see differently.

We must first understand how it could have happened and then accept that, weak as we seem, we must actually be powerful beyond limit. We must put aside our fear of this power and embrace the idea as something we love and want. That is all we have to do because the rest is done for us, but lord knows, that’s enough.

This would be impossible if we did not have so much help. We accomplish this one step at a time, and I find it very helpful to take the step of realizing that, “Reality cannot be partly appreciated.” Knowing this I have stopped believing that I can love some and hate others and still know Reality. I no longer believe that I can forgive some and hold others imprisoned in my grievances, or that I can hurt someone without hurting myself.

Knowing this one thing helped me to see that awakening is possible after all. There is nothing to decide other than that all of God’s creation belongs to Him. If I want to remember the Kingdom and know myself beside Him there, I must appreciate, equally, all that He created. Nothing can be left out, nothing can be seen as less than, and nothing can be seen as condemned. All must be forgiven and accepted. You cannot get any simpler than that.

I don’t give my blessing begrudgingly anymore. I want my brothers to be innocent, because I understand now that I am only as innocent as they are. I wholeheartedly want them forgiven because their forgiveness is my forgiveness. I am learning to use the unlimited power of my mind to return myself to sanity and to make myself ready for our return to God.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VII.The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 1. 4-30-14

VII. The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 1

1 Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother you will feel deprived, because denial is as total as love. It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part. Nor is it possible to love it totally at times. You cannot be totally committed sometimes. Denial has no power in itself, but you can give it the power of your mind, whose power is without limit. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone for you. Reality cannot be partly appreciated. That is why denying any part of it means you have lost the awareness of all of it. Yet denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as well as negatively. Used negatively it will be destructive, because it will be used for attack. But in the service of the Holy Spirit, it can help you recognize part of reality, and thus appreciate all of it. Mind is too powerful to be subject to exclusion. You will never be able to exclude yourself from your thoughts.

There are three things that stand out to me in this paragraph. First there is the sentence, “You cannot be totally committed sometimes.” I think that this sentence is responsible, more than any other, for changing my attitude toward the work we do on this path. I realized at once that my commitment, my dedication, my devotion must be complete. A Course in Miracles is not something I can do when I am in the mood. Forgiveness is not something I do for some and not for others. I must be totally committed all the time or I am not committed at all.

When I divorced my last husband I realized that my commitment to forgiveness means that I cannot throw a relationship away and just start over with someone else. All relationships must be healed, and so I did that. I forgave him and I forgave myself. It took me thirteen years to know that this relationship was completely healed, but that doesn’t matter. Forgiveness is the right use of time.

I may not be quick to forgive, but I always forgive. I understand the purpose of relationships. I know what I am to do with them. If someone at work gets on my nerves, I ask for the Atonement in that situation. If a customer upsets me or a situation with the customer triggers fear in me, I know what to do with that. I ask for the Atonement in that situation and I accept the Atonement. There might be action to take for the story’s sake, but the purpose is forgiveness.

If I experience guilt, that is if I see myself as guilty or someone else as guilty, my purpose is to forgive this. There are no exceptions. No one stands guilty and outside God, and this is what I am teaching myself, and through teaching guiltlessness I am learning that guilt has never existed except in my mind. It is a belief that I made real for myself through the power of my belief.

As I learn to make no exceptions to forgiveness, I am being released from the belief in guilt. Every time I make an exception, every time I believe that some action or thought is unforgivable, whether in myself or someone else, I reinforce the belief in guilt. This is why I must be totally committed all the time. Otherwise I will spend my time dancing back and forth between belief and disbelief, getting nowhere.
Fear is another false belief that I have made very real for myself. My commitment is to back out of that belief. The Holy Spirit does this for me, but only with my permission. As I cling to some particular fear that feels more real to me than another, I keep fear itself in place. It doesn’t matter what form the fear takes. It could be a fear of heights, a fear of poverty, a fear of relationships; it is just fear appearing as a story in my life and so they are all the same, and the solution is the same.

I accept the Atonement in each seemingly different problem. Through accepting that the solution to each problem is the same regardless of the form it takes, I teach myself that there is only one problem. I also teach myself that there is a solution and that I can and will accept the solution. This lesson is not learned if I make exceptions, so I must be totally committed all the time.

I may come back to this paragraph tomorrow.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VI.From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 13. 4-29-14

VI. From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 13

13 In this depressing state the Holy Spirit reminds you gently that you are sad because you are not fulfilling your function as co-creator with God, and are therefore depriving yourself of joy. This is not God’s choice but yours. If your mind could be out of accord with God’s, you would be willing without meaning. Yet because God’s Will is unchangeable, no conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirit’s perfectly consistent teaching. Creation, not separation, is your will because it is God’s, and nothing that opposes this means anything at all. Being a perfect accomplishment, the Sonship can only accomplish perfectly, extending the joy in which it was created, and identifying itself with both its Creator and its creations, knowing They are One.

Our sadness, our guilt, fear, anger, all the emotions we experience, seems to be in reaction to something that is happening in our lives. The truth is that our “lives” are the projection of our beliefs. The belief comes first, then the story that seems to explain the belief. So when I am sad it is not because I feel lonely that no one is visiting me or calling me. I believe that I can be alone and I quickly make a story of being alone which explains the feeling to me. Then the ego says, “Oh, that’s why I am sad.” In this way I keep myself from knowing that I am sad because I am not fulfilling my function as co-creator with God.

The next time I feel sad, I am going to remind myself that there is no story to explain that sadness. There is only one reason I am sad. I long to be my Self. I miss God and I miss my real Life. All the sad stories in the illusion are just reflections of that one thing. I want to return to my place as co-creator with God. I will remind myself that I am making up all these stories. The truth is very simple. There is God, there is His creation, the Sonship, and there are my creations, and They are One. All of this other stuff that seems to exist is just part of a dream of separation and will disappear as soon as I am through with it.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VI.From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 12. 4-28-14

VI. From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 12

12 Allowing insanity to enter your mind means that you have not judged sanity as wholly desirable. If you want something else you will make something else, but because it is something else, it will attack your thought system and divide your allegiance. You cannot create in this divided state, and you must be vigilant against this divided state because only peace can be extended. Your divided mind is blocking the extension of the Kingdom, and its extension is your joy. If you do not extend the Kingdom, you are not thinking with your Creator and creating as He created.

I want to be one with my Creator. I want to create as He creates. I want to think as He thinks. I want to be joyful as He is joyful. I want to be peaceful as He is peaceful. I can have all of this, but only from a state of mind that is conducive to this and the only state of mind from which this is possible is one of wholeness.

I can have something else because of the power of my mind. It cannot be real, but I can have it and it will appear real for me. But if I do have it, it will keep me from having what I truly want. Wanting something else disrupts the oneness of mind from which all things God are extended and so through my desire for something different, I have deprived myself of everything worth having.

The solution to this quandary is in my mind. The Holy Spirit will correct all my errors and return my mind to Wholeness if I want Him to do so. Just as I had to want something else for it to be manifested, I must want wholeness for me to become aware that I have it, that I am it. If I say I want wholeness but am unwilling to meet its conditions, then I don’t really want it.

An example of this process in action would look like this. I am annoyed with a man at work. I have projected onto him and judged my projections. This decision has strengthened my belief in, and need for, separation. I cannot know wholeness because I think I need separation and my desire for it made it seem real to me. I keep this in place through what I decide is justified anger.

I notice that my decisions in this matter cost me my peace and I decide I want peace more than I want judgment and anger. I ask the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking and heal my mind. Suddenly I see what happened, what it was in myself that needed healing and that I chose to project rather than to face.

In withdrawing my projections from this man and allowing them to be healed, I have brought my mind into alignment with truth. I am able to experience unity with this brother of mine rather than separation. I am reminded of wholeness and my desire for a permanent state of wholeness increases. I continue this process and with each choice for wholeness, I become more willing for wholeness, and more certain that sanity is wholly desired.

© 2014, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VI.From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 11. 4-25-14

VI. From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 11

11 Perceived without your part in it, God’s creation is seen as weak, and those who see themselves as weakened do attack. The attack must be blind, however, because there is nothing to attack. Therefore they make up images, perceive them as unworthy and attack them for their unworthiness. That is all the world of the ego is. Nothing. It has no meaning. It does not exist. Do not try to understand it because, if you do, you are believing that it can be understood and is therefore capable of being appreciated and loved. That would justify its existence, which cannot be justified. You cannot make the meaningless meaningful. This can only be an insane attempt.

Oh man! This brings a lot of clarity to what we see as the world. In an attempt to experience separation from God, we perceived ourselves as no longer whole since we thought we were no longer part of God. Simply being separate rather than whole made it seem as if we were weak, and feeling weak we felt defensive and so felt the need to attack.

But what could we attack? Now we had to “make up images, perceive them as unworthy and attack them for their unworthiness.” Voila, separate bodies! How perfect is that? We have these bodies that are weak and vulnerable, and will ultimately die and decay. These bodies interact in painful and cruel ways.

Even in good intentions they hurt each other. They have twisted the idea of love until it barely resembles itself. Because they were made out of fear, they are fearful. How else to see these images except as unworthy. All made up. All serving the purpose of giving us something to defend against because we made ourselves feel weak.

Jesus then warns us not to try to understand the world we made, not to appreciate or love it, because we don’t want to justify it. It is meaningless, and we cannot make it meaningful. That’s why we are still here, we keep trying to find meaning where there is none. We keep trying to justify our existence as egos.

We are not that. We are not bodies. We are not weak and vulnerable. We are not fearful and guilty. We are not hateful and we have no need to defend ourselves, and nothing to defend against. We are simply confused. However, if we continue trying to understand and improve the illusion, this insane world we imagined, we will continue to think that this is exactly what we are.

We could have reason to love and appreciate the world, or to hate the world, only if the world were meaningful and it is not. This is why I don’t pray for a better, more loveable world, but rather I pray that I awake from the dream of the world. I dream that I live in this hellish expression of confusion and fear, then I dream that I die from it. Then I pop back in and dream that this time I will have a better “life” and then I dream I die. It is an endless cycle of nothing happening.

If I did not believe in it this whole thing would be funny, but as Jesus tells us in the Course, what I believe in is real for me, so it is more tragic than funny. But thank God, it is never real. I can wake up from the dream of life and the dream of death. Thank God, I am still as I was created, and my real life has not ceased because part of my mind is involved in this insane dream.

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Study of the Text, Chapter 7: VI.From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 10. 4-24-14

VI. From Vigilance to Peace, Paragraph 10

10 You can be perceived with meaning only by the Holy Spirit because your being is the knowledge of God. Any belief you accept apart from this will obscure God’s Voice in you, and will therefore obscure God to you. Unless you perceive His creation truly you cannot know the Creator, since God and His creation are not separate. The oneness of the Creator and the creation is your wholeness, your sanity and your limitless power. This limitless power is God’s gift to you, because it is what you are. If you dissociate your mind from it you are perceiving the most powerful force in the universe as if it were weak, because you do not believe you are part of it.

God created me like Himself, with limitless power. Limitless power! I had to read this paragraph over and over. I just wasn’t understanding it and of course that means I just didn’t believe it because it is not hard to understand. I was created one with God and that oneness is my wholeness, my sanity, my limitless power. The reason I had trouble with this paragraph is that I have dissociated myself from this truth.

This means that I am pretending to be separate from God and from my power. I am pretending that this is even possible. I am pretending that it is possible to perceive the most powerful force in the universe as if it is weak. It is the only way I could have this separation experience. Now that I am waking up from this nightmare, I am beginning to remember some things about my Self.

Right now my experience includes pain, both physical and emotional. This pain seems to prove that I have no power, and yet Jesus says that I have limitless power. He has made it clear that I return to my natural state by letting go of what I taught myself in order to experience separation. I do this by becoming aware of my thought errors and agreeing to have them corrected.

It seems very simple but as I sit here in pain, it seems impossible. I would be discouraged except that I have done this before. It always seems hard when I sit on the fence, teetering toward ego, then toward spirit, putting off the inevitable decision. I will, in the end, choose God because of who I am, because perception is not knowledge and because I am known.

The Holy Spirit provides all the help I need to make the decision to fall into God. I have the Course. I have teachers and guides and angels. I have mighty companions. I have books and prayers and processes. I have experienced success in the past and these successes have built one on another until I am almost convinced that I am what I am.

So I sit here in pain and I know the pain is not real. The pain in my body is not real and the pain in my heart is not real. It can’t be real because it is not part of God and I am in God no matter what my crazy dream tells me. How can I absolutely know this and still experience the opposite? It is because I still see value in pain.

This morning I was guided to listen to a guided meditation by Nouk Sanchez. It reminded me that there is no pain or sickness or loss that is greater than the power of God. This gift was just another way that the Holy Spirit is helping me to remember the truth and to remind me that I want the truth. My desire for an experience other than reality is the only cause of my pain, and the decision to choose otherwise is the only cure.

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