Together, We Light the Way

Click link to go to:
Together We Light the Way Index

Study of the Text 8-6-13

IV. This Need Not Be Paragraph 5
8-6-13

5 When you feel guilty, remember that the ego has indeed violated the laws of God, but you have not. Leave the “sins” of the ego to me. That is what Atonement is for. But until you change your mind about those whom your ego has hurt, the Atonement cannot release you. While you feel guilty your ego is in command, because only the ego can experience guilt. This need not be.

Earlier in the Text, Jesus said that I could entrust my ego to him, and now he is telling me to leave the “sins” of the ego to him. This is why he made the Atonement, to wipe out the sins of the ego. I’m reminded of when I was Catholic and every week I would go to confession. The idea of confession is that you tell the priest what you did wrong, he gives you a little punishment to Atone for your wrong doing, and after its complete you leave knowing you are alright with God again.

The Atonement process is a little different though. I tell the Holy Spirit what it is that I think I did wrong and He tells me nothing happened and that I am still innocent. As I become open to forgiveness without blame, guilt or punishment, and as I begin to truly want to change my mind about this, it is done.

I’ll make a little confession now. I hated going to confession. Even though they were relatively minor in nature, I dreaded laying out all my sins to the priest. I hated being judged and I felt small and sinful every time. I felt so much relief at it being over that I gladly did my penance, and I did feel some relief to know that I was once again sinless. The priest always ended the session with the words, “Go and sin no more,” and I felt guilty because I knew I would sin again, and hopeless because I would never live up to that admonition. I felt like a fraud accepting my forgiveness.

That is where the Atonement is different. I am not going to the Holy Spirit with a behavior and telling Him I am sorry I did it and want to be forgiven for my sin. I am talking to Him about my behavior and asking Him to show me what it is I believe that caused me to act like that. Then I am asking Him to correct my thinking and heal my mind so that the incorrect thought will no longer inform my behavior.

The Holy Spirit offers me the healing I want. If I want the grievance more than I want to be at peace, more than I want to awaken, that desire creates a block that prevents the correction from taking place. If I don’t really want the healing yet, it waits for me until I change my mind. There is no sense of being judged and there is no penance because I was already innocent when I called on His help. The ego does sin, but I am not the ego and that is what I am ultimately learning through this healing process. That is why the Atonement doesn’t correct behavior but heals the mind that thinks it is that behavior.

The Holy Spirit is not wiping out my sins, He is wiping out the belief I could sin. I cannot accept this correction if I am attached to my grievance. As long as I still project onto the one I have a grievance against, the Holy Spirit cannot show me I am guiltless. My desire to make the other guilty holds the belief in guilt in place and keeps me from believing in the truth of innocence. As long as I feel guilty I know that I have not accepted the Atonement, but I also know that it is mine when I am ready for it.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text 8-5-13

IV. This Need Not Be Paragraphs 3,4
8-5-13
3 When you are sad, know this need not be. Depression comes from a sense of being deprived of something you want and do not have. Remember that you are deprived of nothing except by your own decisions, and then decide otherwise.

I used to be depressed pretty much all the time, but A Course in Miracles changed that for me. The more I practiced the Course the less I experienced depression until one day I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I was depressed. Once in a while I will suddenly feel sad or mentally tired, but when I do I realize that I have made a choice for sadness and I ask for help.

Here is what I discovered about sadness. I don’t get rid of it by trying to not think sad thoughts. I get rid of it by realizing that I am deliberately choosing to think sad thoughts and then asking the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of the belief that those thoughts could be true. The result is often immediate, and if it is not I know that I still find some value in my belief and I ask for clarity.

In every case I see that I feel deprived. I think I need something I don’t have. For instance, maybe I feel lonely and think I need someone to be with me. I am one with all there is. How could I feel alone? Alone is a word, a state of being, a feeling that I made up. It is not possible for me to be alone. To feel alone requires that I suspend reality. Loneliness is not something that just happens to me, it requires my active participation. In order to feel lonely, I must decide to feel lonely and then I must be vigilant against the truth in order to have that experience.

All that is required to stop feeling lonely is to no longer want that feeling. Having made that choice a number of times I am very familiar with the process and something I noticed is that the more I do it the more aware I am of the any resistance to letting it go. I have seen my mind argue for the loneliness. Now that I have seen my resistance I understand that I did, after all, make the choice for sadness. Once seen, it is easier to choose differently.

4 When you are anxious, realize that anxiety comes from the capriciousness of the ego, and know this need not be. You can be as vigilant against the ego’s dictates as for them.

Anxiety is a choice I still make, and more often than I do for sadness. But like sadness, anxiety requires my full cooperation. First I have to leave the present. Anxiety occurs when mentally I am in the past or in the future. If I am thinking about the past I go over my old stories and try to rewrite them. It is like the past wasn’t bad enough the first time and I have to go back and relive it. It’s like self-torture. This could only happen because I want it to.

When I dwell mentally in the future I imagine possible stories that I could write. It seems they all lead to anxiety, even when they start off as pleasant stories. For instance, I used to fantasize about winning the lottery and imagine what I would do with all that money. Inevitably I would run into trouble in my stories. I would become anxious about how I would divide it up and what if I squandered it or what if my wealth changed my relationships with my family. There was often an uncomfortable element to those fantasies.

I have a workshop to present in Arkansas later this month. Sometimes when I think about the workshop I feel anxious. What if I don’t do a good job? What if something goes wrong? The ego mind starts thinking of ways to prevent disaster. I should stop what I am doing and make plans, prepare talks, whatever it can think of to fix this problem. In actuality there is no problem, but if I stay with the ego thinking, I will believe in the problem and will be very uncomfortable no matter what I decide to do.

The ego mind is always going to create stories that bring us discomfort because its stories are always about separation so they are based on fear and fueled by guilt. But they are all just stories. Nothing is happening. Yet the ego cannot let the mind be still because it is afraid that in the stillness we will discover the truth about the ego and make that final choice for reality. So it keeps the stories coming. When I notice that I am feeling anxiety, I do the same thing I have done for sadness. I realize that I am choosing anxiety and make another choice. I ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind of the beliefs that are driving the anxiety.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text 8-2-13

IV. This Need Not Be Paragraph 2 Part 2
8-2-13
2 I have said that you cannot change your mind by changing your behavior, but I have also said, and many times, that you can change your mind. When your mood tells you that you have chosen wrongly, and this is so whenever you are not joyous, then know this need not be. In every case you have thought wrongly about some brother God created, and are perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass. Think honestly what you have thought that God would not have thought, and what you have not thought that God would have you think. Search sincerely for what you have done and left undone accordingly, and then change your mind to think with God’s. This may seem hard to do, but it is much easier than trying to think against it. Your mind is one with God’s. Denying this and thinking otherwise has held your ego together, but has literally split your mind. As a loving brother I am deeply concerned with your mind, and urge you to follow my example as you look at yourself and at your brother, and see in both the glorious creations of a glorious Father.

As Jesus has already told us, and will tell us many times in the Course, it is our mind that must be changed. He is really emphasizing this now, telling us that because he loves us he is deeply concerned with our mind. Another thing that he tells us all through the Course is that we must see both our self and our brother differently, and as one. We are all glorious creations!

Last night I spoke to a group of people who had a problem they wanted me to solve or to at least give them good advice on how to solve it. I felt very competent to do this and I knew that we both shared the same intent. As a sales person I used to think that my job was to convince people to buy my product and I measured success and failure against that scale. This is not true anymore. Now I know that my job is to be helpful in whatever way I can.

So when I got to the Board meeting I felt very happy to be there. They had a problem and they needed more information and I had information and wanted to help them solve their problem. It felt like joining. I understand that solving their problem will not help us wake up, but coming together with a shared intent, will. The answer to separation is joining and the form joining takes is irrelevant. 

When I left I felt good for both of us. I felt love for them and felt like I had been helpful. But the ego mind was all over the place. It kept replaying the meeting over and over and then it started critiquing it and making judgments. Soon it led to concerns and doubts and even fear. It all happened very quickly and while I saw it happening, I seemed helpless to stop it.

My joy and my peace were gone as soon as I started paying attention to the ego thinking. I brought my mind back to sanity over and over as I reminded myself that I had one purpose and that was to be helpful so I succeeded. I reminded myself that getting a sale is not my purpose and that waking up is. I asked myself what it is that I am thinking that God would not think, and what I was failing to think that God would think. I examined my thoughts carefully as I made this evaluation and it helped me to see more clearly.

These and other reminders helped but I had the thought that it should not be so hard to do this. I felt like I should be able to move out of this conflicted thinking more easily and with less suffering. It could not be God’s Will that I suffer in order to wake up, so I must be doing this with the ego. It was then that I had one of those remarkable moments when I was given a thought that clearly did not come from my own thinking mind. I was pointed to gratitude.

As soon as I accepted this direction gratitude welled up in me. I allowed myself to bathe in that feeling and to enjoy the gratitude. I encouraged the feeling of gratitude as I began thanking God for His help. As soon as I did this I noticed how good it felt and how peaceful I became. So every time the ego would try to distract me with more worry thoughts, I returned to gratitude. I fell asleep last night with a smile on my face.

It is up to me to change my mind, but I am never alone in this. I have help outside the closed system of ego thinking which will just run me in endless depressing circles if I let it. I decide that I don’t want to remain confused and I surrender to my Helper, and whatever I need to help me change my mind is provided. I don’t have to figure it out on my own or do something to deserve it. I just have to want it. I have to want to awaken more than I want anything else. 

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text 8-1-13

IV. This Need Not Be Paragraph 2
8-1-13
2 I have said that you cannot change your mind by changing your behavior, but I have also said, and many times, that you can change your mind. When your mood tells you that you have chosen wrongly, and this is so whenever you are not joyous, then know this need not be. In every case you have thought wrongly about some brother God created, and are perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass. Think honestly what you have thought that God would not have thought, and what you have not thought that God would have you think. Search sincerely for what you have done and left undone accordingly, and then change your mind to think with God’s. This may seem hard to do, but it is much easier than trying to think against it. Your mind is one with God’s. Denying this and thinking otherwise has held your ego together, but has literally split your mind. As a loving brother I am deeply concerned with your mind, and urge you to follow my example as you look at yourself and at your brother, and see in both the glorious creations of a glorious Father.

Oh, there is lots of good stuff in this paragraph! Jesus has already established that it is not the world that we need to change but out mind. This is emphasized when he says we cannot change our mind by changing our behavior. Here is an example I can think of. Even after I divorced my husband he was still very much a part of my life as my children’s father and because we worked together at the same company. So I still had to deal with him and many of the same issues I had hoped to escape through the divorce.

I soon realized that you can divorce a partner, but not the relationship and I did eventually do the work to heal that relationship. In doing so, I tried treating him like the child of God he is, but inevitably, my true feelings would surface and an argument or harsh words would be the result. What happened to change this situation is that through doing the vigilant work of mind watching and asking for the Atonement in this situation, I eventually began to really want that healing and so accepted the Atonement.

I changed my mind about that man and realized that he is the Son of God. Now I was not acting like he was God’s child, but I knew he was that holy one, and there were no more slip ups. I knew this had to be done because I was not happy when I was around him and when I thought of him or remembered situations from the past. I would become angry or sad, and often guilty. Jesus says to watch our mood and when it is not joyous then know this need not be.

Jesus says that if I am experiencing feelings that are not joyous then I need to search my mind for dark thoughts about my brother. My experience has been that this means I have found someone guilty, and I believe my judgment. Sometimes it is me and sometimes it is someone else. At first I didn’t always recognize the dark thoughts for what they were. This happened when my sister in law was sick and I was worried.

Worrying about my sister in law when she was sick, at first glance, seems like love, but I learned that it is not really love, but an attack. I believed in her sickness which means I was attacking her invulnerability. This is a different way to think and has taken some practice on my part just to be aware of what I am doing. Now I see that she believes in her sickness and I still believe in it sometimes, but I also know that we can change our mind. I work on keeping an eye on my thoughts so that I will know when I need to ask for help. I accept the Atonement for myself in this situation, and I ask for the Atonement on her behalf as well.

I think I will come back to this paragraph tomorrow and ask for more clarity. I feel very grateful for what Jesus has given us and for Holy Spirit’s help in understanding.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text 7-31-13

IV. This Need Not Be
7-31-13
1 If you cannot hear the Voice for God, it is because you do not choose to listen. That you do listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings and your behavior. Yet this is what you want. This is what you are fighting to keep, and what you are vigilant to save. Your mind is filled with schemes to save the face of your ego, and you do not seek the face of Christ. The glass in which the ego seeks to see its face is dark indeed. How can it maintain the trick of its existence except with mirrors? But where you look to find yourself is up to you.

Where do I look to find myself? There are only two places to look. I look to ego or I look to Spirit. How do I know where I have looked? My life shows me proof of where I looked. Everything in my life is a testament to the voice I listen to. Some days I am at peace with everything no matter what is going on. Some days I feel joy bubble up through me and into my world no matter what is happening around me. Those are the days (sometimes the moments) that I am listening to the Voice for God.

Other times I am afraid or angry, guilty and fearful. Some days I spend finding fault and someone to blame. Some days I seem to manufacture problems out of thin air where only moments before there was nothing to be concerned about. Sometimes I laugh at my problems and accept the Holy Spirit’s help without hesitation, but sometimes I cling to them and cherish them and share them with anyone who will listen. These are the times I am listening to the ego voice.

There are no other voices to hear, no other places to look to find myself. Just these two. So it is simple to know how I got to this place of happiness and peace, and just as simple to know how I got to the dark place of pain, suffering and death. When I am holding a grievance or making a judgment I don’t tell myself that I am choosing death, but that is what I am doing. There is no compromise in that. Every hateful thought is a choice for death. Every fearful and guilty thought is a choice for death.

We did not come here to learn about death. We already know about death. We came here to learn to live! We can’t live if we are continually choosing death. This experience we are having and that we call life is just a dream of life, not the real thing. I wonder if it even has anything at all in common with Life. The way out of this dream seems to be to back out of it the way we came into it.

Each time I notice a thought that stems from an ego belief, I become willing to be corrected. I accept the Atonement for that belief. See, I am stepping backwards, undoing the ego as I go. I am guided through this process by the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God. He directs my steps, strengthens and comforts me. He speaks to me all through the day. Am I listening? I can only hear one voice at a time. In each moment I choose the voice I would hear.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text 7-30-13

III. Love Without Conflict, Paragraph 10
7-30-13
10 The calm being of God’s Kingdom, which in your sane mind is perfectly conscious, is ruthlessly banished from the part of the mind the ego rules. The ego is desperate because it opposes literally invincible odds, whether you are asleep or awake. Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to protect your ego, and how little to protect your right mind. Who but the insane would undertake to believe what is not true, and then protect this belief at the cost of truth?

I have learned to be very vigilant for ego thoughts and to ask for healing. And this is good. It has been very helpful in undoing the ego. It is what Jesus asks us to do. Sometimes, though, it starts to feel like I am fighting a formidable enemy, especially when I am letting go of some deeply held and cherished belief. Lately I have been letting go of the belief that overeating is a sin for which I must be punished by getting fat.

It took a lot of vigilant mind watching even to get to the place where I could admit that this is what I am doing. Jesus reminds us that the body is not the altar of truth. The problem is never actually in the body, and nor is the solution. The ego does not have the answer. I know this, but for this issue it seems that I have made an exception. Now I am ready to recognize what I have done and let it go. I am ready to stop protecting my ego and protect my right mind instead.

This switch in thinking is taking me longer than I ever would have thought. It feels frustrating at times, and even scary. I seem to be very invested in the belief that I need the body to reflect accurately my sinfulness or my sinlessness and that this is decided by my will power in resisting cake. Ok, there, I exposed the ego reasoning in all its silliness. With all my vigilance, I have still failed to banish this ridiculous notion from my mind, and thus the feeling that I am fighting a mighty enemy.

But, in my mind is the commitment to accept the Atonement in this situation and to be healed. This morning as I was again considering this problem, I asked Holy Spirit for help today to see it differently. I felt peace flow over me and I was reminded to surrender. I had the thought to open my arms wide as a reflection of my heart opening, to stand in total surrender to God’s Love and let it heal my mind.

Then I read today’s paragraph and I was so touched by the first few words; “The calm being of God…” which comforted me because they so closely echoed Holy Spirit’s message to me this morning. The calm being of God’s Kingdom is in my mind all of the time. It is there even when I fight to keep its awareness from my mind. It is there even when I am in a desperate struggle within myself. I am not fighting a strong enemy in the ego. I am fighting fiercely to ignore the truth. This is a battle I will lose and in losing it, I will win.

“Holy Spirit, I surrender my mind to You. I surrender my battle to You. I lay down my arms in trust that You love me and want only my good and that You know what that good is. I open my heart and I invite God’s Love to flow through me, healing me. Thank you.”

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Study of the Text 7-29-13

III. Love Without Conflict, Paragraph 9
7-29-13
9 In your own mind, though denied by the ego, is the declaration of your release. God has given you everything. This one fact means the ego does not exist, and this makes it profoundly afraid. In the ego’s language, “to have” and “to be” are different, but they are identical to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit knows that you both have everything and are everything. Any distinction in this respect is meaningful only when the idea of “getting,” which implies a lack, has already been accepted. That is why we make no distinction between having the Kingdom of God and being the Kingdom of God.

It is hard for me to grasp that I have everything because I am everything. First, I believe that I lack some things. In this story of Myron I lack the ability to carry a tune. I lack physical beauty. I lack the ability to remember things even as well as I used to and my memory was never all that good even when I was young. Speaking of youth, I lack that, too. I lack the ability to comprehend math easily. I’m not as smart as some people and not as rich. I am not even as good of a Course student as some others.

This list seems to prove that I have not been given everything and that I lack many things. What I am learning to accept is that none of the above is true. That person is an illusion, just a projection of a cluster of beliefs, none of which is true. Myron is just a picture of what I believe about myself, not the truth of it. In actuality I am everything. I am all there is. There is nothing for me to gain because I am that. I am abundance and beauty and perfection. I will not go to Heaven, or gain Heaven; I am Heaven.

Because the ego mind does not want to cease to exist it seeks desperately to convince me that it is preposterous to believe I am as God created me, and that I am like God, in God, a part of God. It tries to convince me that it created me and so I am like ego, when actually I made the ego. I want to believe the ego because I just don’t feel worthy of God and I fear Him. So instead of identifying with God, I identify with ego and believe in lack and loss.

The ego’s fear of not existing is the reason it has so many laws. It says that the body needs a certain amount of sleep and if it doesn’t get it then I will be tired and listless and if it this goes on too long, there will be dire consequences. Studies have been done and articles written. Sleep deficit, the researchers say is a real thing and dangerous to the health.  Sleep deprivation is used as torture. 

I bought it, because I believed in every law we made up to defend against the truth and establish the ego as real. My whole life revolved around the conflict of getting enough sleep and still having time to commune with the Holy Spirit before work. But finally I questioned that law. In the Course Jesus says that time is not real and so I decided that his word was more likely to be true than the ego’s law. I began to sleep as much as I slept and to trust that it was enough and to give time to the Holy Spirit and trust that it was adequate.

Guess what! So far so good! I am fine with however much sleep I get. Eight hours is fine. Six hours is equally fine. I forget all day long that I should be tired when I don’t have enough sleep and so I am not tired. I watch in amazement as time stretches like an elastic band to accommodate my writing. I will write and write and then look at the clock and only a couple of minutes have passed. I laugh out loud at the miracle.

This has happened so often that you would think I never worry about sleep or time anymore, but it is an old and long honored law of the ego and I seem reluctant to release it completely from my mind. Now, however, I see the thought in my mind and dismiss it most of the time, or at least, eventually.

It is very important, these little morning miracles, because they are teaching me that I made up the laws and I can dismiss them because they are not real laws like the laws of God. As I learn not to believe in and live by the ego’s laws, I become willing to believe in the Laws of God. For instance, I start to believe that He created me like Himself and that cannot change.

Another thing that has changed is the way I pray. I don’t pray for specifics. When my bank account started going down at an alarming rate this month, I didn’t pray for more money. Instead I prayed for my mind to be healed of a belief in lack and loss. Praying for more money would have implied that I am less than whole and this is not what I want to teach myself anymore. I am ready to know that I have everything, and accepting this as true will reveal that there is no such thing as lack and loss. I have everything. I am everything. Where is there room for the concept of lack and loss in that picture?

I can hide from my reality but I can’t change it, and pretending to be ego, while painful, is not a permanent condition. Ego is not real and I am. Ego will disappear when I no longer believe in it and I am eternal. Right now, I am slowly letting go of the idea of ego and learning to accept my reality. I could just change my mind and be done with the ego, but there is still fear in my mind, so I take it a step at a time.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this article.

Printable Page

Page 184 of 268 pages ‹ First  < 182 183 184 185 186 >  Last ›

<< Back to main page of Together, We Light the Way

Has this page been helpful to you?
Your contribution to support this site is greatly appreciated. To make a tax deductible contribution with a credit/debit card, click here.
Click here to donate from your PayPal account.
Or send a check to Pathways of Light, 12530 Lions Chase Court, Huntley, IL 60142.