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Study of the Text 3-5-13

3-5-13
2 I cannot let you leave your mind unguarded, or you will not be able to help me. Miracle working entails a full realization of the power of thought in order to avoid miscreation. Otherwise a miracle will be necessary to set the mind itself straight, a circular process that would not foster the time collapse for which the miracle was intended. The miracle worker must have genuine respect for true cause and effect as a necessary condition for the miracle to occur.

Again, Jesus emphasizes that it is our thoughts that cause the effect (the world) and it is our thoughts that initiate the miracle (the undoing of the world). As I watch my thoughts and ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind, I see how true this is. I notice something happening in my mind that is obviously ego thinking and I realize that the resultant fear and guilt are caused by these thoughts.

When I decide I want to have the belief behind those thoughts healed, it all goes away as if it had never happened and I return to peace. Sometimes when the thoughts have been especially virulent, and have caused a lot of fear in my mind, I am absolutely amazed at the process. It feels like magic and yet, it is the opposite of magic.

I no longer doubt that the problem is in my mind, but at one time I still had trouble seeing how this could be true at certain times. I looked at the effects as proof that the problem was real, instead of seeing that the thought produced the effect. I just couldn’t make the jump from believing the story to understanding that I was the maker of the story.

During this period I found The Work (Byron Katie) to be very helpful. Through this work I learned to question my thoughts and not to believe them simply because they were in my mind. I learned, through turning them around, that these thoughts did not have a fixed meaning and that I could see them differently and when I did, I would have a different experience of them. It is still helpful to me when my mind becomes confused. That one question, “is it true?” is often enough to snap me back to reality.

When I was ready, I realized that what I was reading in the Course was telling me the same thing, but it was telling me more. Learning to see the situation differently was a step in the right direction, but it was only a step. Jesus wants us to understand how very powerful the mind is. It not only determines how we experience things, but it determines what we experience. We make this world up with our thoughts. That’s a little scary, isn’t it? That’s why we hide this power from ourselves. It scares us because of what we have done with our thoughts.

We can make a different choice from the ones that make up the world of pain, suffering and death. The mind that made this can make other things as well, and eventually will remember Itself and stop making up stories and return to true creation. Each of us reading, studying and practicing the Course right now is in the process of doing this. We are in the process of waking up to our truth. We will practice on the dream world we made and when we have brought that world into alignment with truth, we will enjoy it a bit and then let it go. Then we will return to our true vocation, which is creating alongside God.

The way all of this happens is through the simple process of watching our minds for the errors in our thinking and accepting correction. Because we are confused about reality we need help with this. We cannot undo the ego from within the ego, so we have been given the Holy Spirit Who works from outside the ego. His function is to undo what we have made. He will respond to our slightest invitation to do so. As we watch the seeming magic of pain and suffering dissolve into peace and joy, we become more and more motivated to ask for His help. And our world begins to transform.

Holy Spirit, I would not forget my function today. I would remember my single purpose as I guard my thoughts and ask that you heal my mind. 

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 3-4-13

3-4-13
VII. Cause and Effect
1 You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful. I have already indicated that you cannot ask me to release you from fear. I know it does not exist, but you do not. If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is. I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully enough. You may feel that at this point it would take a miracle to enable you to do this, which is perfectly true. You are not used to miracle-minded thinking, but you can be trained to think that way. All miracle workers need that kind of training.

I am glad we are starting this section talking about fear again. It really does feel very hard to let go of fear. Jesus recognizes that we will find this hard and maybe even think it is impossible. He says that we think it would take a miracle and that we would be right. But that is what we are doing here. We are learning to become miracle minded.

He is also reiterating that our minds are very powerful and that our thoughts make the world we see. Another way to say this is that our world is the effect of the thoughts we hold and believe. Jesus knows that we want him to just wipe our mind’s clear of the fear, but he can’t do that. He cannot interfere with cause and effect. And certainly he does not want us to believe that our mind is powerless because this is not true.

However, Jesus does not leave us on our own to figure this out. He tells us what to do about the fear. We learn to watch our minds carefully for thoughts that are not true. These untrue thoughts are the cause of every fearful situation we experience in this life. When we notice a thought that is not true, we then allow that thought to be corrected.

Could it really be that simple? Yes, it is. It requires vigilance and willingness, but it is simple. When it is not easy, it is only because we do not truly want it.  I have noticed that sometimes I want to be free of the fearful feelings, but I do not want to let go of the belief that has caused those feeling to rise in me.

Often, I don’t even understand my convoluted thinking about it. I don’t know exactly what thought it is that I am holding onto so tightly, or why. That does not matter. Why bother trying to understand the meaningless? When I am in fear it is because I am thinking and believing something that is not of God.

I ask the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking, to heal my mind, to undo what I have done. I ask for the miracle and because I ask, and to the degree I really want it, this is what I receive. I may not be absolutely certain I am ready to give up that belief and if I am not, the thoughts will return and I will have to begin again. But that’s OK. I simply continue the process until I am fully convinced that I want to believe only the thoughts I think with God.

Now I will share with you the reason I am glad Jesus is talking about fear with us this morning. I woke up happy and in gratitude. I feel thankful for all the ways I am learning to be a miracle worker, and for the healing that is taking place in my mind. I am letting go of fear and guilt and I am learning that I want to make my life available to the Holy Spirit for His use. I am learning that all of these things are what I truly want. I am highly motivated to do this work.

As I was making my coffee I had a thought about my younger son. It was not a thought with words, but just a thought that was more of a feeling. If I put it into words, it would be something like this. What if something really bad happened to him? What if he died? I felt fear grip me. My stomach clinched and my jaw tightened.

Where do these thoughts come from? It didn’t feel like I asked for it and yet, there it was. What am I supposed to do with it? Trying not to think about it just makes it appear bigger in my mind. Deliberately entertaining the thought allows the ego to come up with reasons this could happen, and to imagine how it would feel. I don’t want to try to suppress the thought because I can’t. I don’t want to indulge the thought because it just makes it worse.

So I question the thought. I evaluate it for the truth. This feeling of dread and fear, is it from God? Is God fear? Did God create me like Himself, and if He did, did He create me fearful? If God created me fearful then He would have to be fearful and that makes no sense. This is not a thought of God and so is not a true thought.

I know this is not truth and I know that I don’t want to make anymore untrue effects. I want to undo the illusion, not go deeper into it. The world I see is the effect of my thoughts. If I want to see a different world I must think different thoughts. I already know that from within the dream I cannot control my thoughts, but I also know that I have access to help outside the dream.

I have the Holy Spirit and can ask Him to correct my thinking for me. He can heal my mind, and He will do so at the slightest invitation. So I invite Him into my mind and ask that He undo what I have done this morning. I ask for the miracle of a healed mind. All that is required of me now is that I accept the healing.

I notice the ego thoughts being thrown at me, and they are fear thoughts to pull me back into the story. The ego reasons that being released from fear does not protect my son from death. It accuses me of leaving him to suffer just so I feel better for the moment and warns me that if I do this I will suffer even more later. As if worrying about him would prevent something, anything, from happening. But I am no longer interested in the ego’s rants. The miracle has healed my mind. I am free.

I am, again, happy and grateful. Thank You, God. I love You, God.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 3-1-13

3-1-13
9 Everyone experiences fear. Yet it would take very little right thinking to realize why fear occurs. Few appreciate the real power of the mind, and no one remains fully aware of it all the time. However, if you hope to spare yourself from fear there are some things you must realize, and realize fully. The mind is very powerful, and never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge that can literally move mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is arrogant, but that is not the real reason you do not believe it. You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them. This may allay awareness of the guilt, but at the cost of perceiving the mind as impotent. If you believe that what you think is ineffectual you may cease to be afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it. There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level.

From the moment I read this the first time, back in 1981, I was stunned. I had been attending a Unity Church and they emphasize the power of your thoughts so it was not a new idea. But this paragraph is so uncompromising. I had been learning that my thoughts matter, but I had never been willing to accept this level of effect. It was a long time before I truly embraced these words from Jesus. I can still slide into forgetfulness when I am not thinking about it.

Jesus says that our thoughts when believed can literally move mountains. Literally? Really? That is so hard to imagine, and yet, why would he say it if it were not true. He also says that there are no idle thoughts and that all thinking produces form at some level. When I first read those two sentences I felt a surge of adrenal all through my body. It was, frankly, frightening to think of all my thoughts having effect.

Through Unity I had learned that my thoughts could influence my life. That seemed big enough, but now I was learning that all my thoughts, even the idle ones I hardly even noticed, were producing form. I didn’t understand (and still don’t) what Jesus means when he says form is produced at “some level.” Evidently, there is more happening than meets the body’s eye.

It is this passage in the Course, more than any other, that influenced me to begin watching my mind and allowing my thoughts to be corrected. If my thoughts are powerful (and Jesus says they are) then I need to be more mindful of where I let my mind wander. I need to be very mindful. I also understand what he means when he says we are afraid of our thoughts.

Many of the thoughts in my mind trigger guilt when I think about them. I certainly don’t want to think about some of them producing form at any level. Since I have no choice about that because it is simply true that my thoughts are very powerful, I want to allow the Holy Spirit to heal my mind. I want my thoughts to be as close to truth as possible.

Two very important things I have learned through the practice of mind watching are these. First, if I am going to insist on being mindful of my thoughts, then the ego is going to say I am guilty for them. If I fall for that, then I will feel really bad about myself and this is not bringing me closer to God. Guilt is not Love. At the very least, feeling guilty when I notice a mistaken thought will discourage me from looking.

When I first started mind watching it felt very hard. Obviously, when I think about it, there is nothing hard about noticing thoughts that are not love and then asking the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking. What could be simpler? And yet it felt hard. The reason it was hard is that I judged myself and felt guilty for my thoughts. The guilt made me afraid of my own thoughts. This is why I had so many unacknowledged thoughts. I just thought of it as “idle” chatter that didn’t matter which felt better than the guilt. I was very wrong about that.

When I stopped judging myself for my thoughts, the process of mind watching did actually become easy. I seldom feel guilty for thoughts now, and when I do, I notice what has happened and give that to the Holy Spirit as well. I realize now that the thoughts are not personal. They are shared by all of us. No one has original thoughts.

We don’t make the thoughts up. They just seem to be floating around and suddenly we notice one and become interested in it. Then we think, “That is my thought.” The fact is, the person next to us could be looking at the very same thought and thinking it is theirs.  Now, instead of feeling guilty because I have noticed a mistaken thought in my mind, I feel happy to have found it and to have this chance to let it be healed. I do this, not just for myself, but for all of us. Without guilt, it is simple and painless.

The other thing that makes it feel hard to mind watch is the mistaken belief that it is my job to stop thinking untrue thoughts. This is a very painful error, because I cannot stop thinking anything. The harder I try the more I think it. I have tried replacing one thought with a different, truer thought, and that didn’t work either. The reason it doesn’t work is that it is not my job to heal the mind. It is only my job to desire healing.

I notice the thought that is not love, and then I ask the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking and heal my mind. That is my part. When I try to do more, I just suffer because I am trying to do something that can’t be done.  Since I have learned those two things, that I am innocent regardless of the thoughts I find in my mind, and that it is not my job to heal the mind, but only to desire healing, this whole mind watching practice is so much easier.

Jesus says that even our idle thinking produces form. So with all the years of practice you might wonder if I have noticed a difference in my life. In other words, have I noticed the effect of a more healed mind in my life? Yes! Absolutely! I am so much more peaceful and happy than I used to be. I am never depressed anymore. (This coming from someone who spent most of her life depressed) My life is just easier.

Another thing I have noticed, is that when I do entertain ego thoughts, I experience the effect of those thoughts much more quickly. And conversely, when I notice something in my life that is not a reflection of love, I immediately realize I must be holding onto and believing untrue thoughts, and I ask the Holy Spirit to help me see differently. It’s all very quick now, almost automatic. Seldom do I have trouble letting go of thoughts anymore.

A really nice consequence of all this mind watching is that letting go of the ego thoughts has resulted in a much quieter mind. I don’t experience a silent mind or an empty mind, yet, but it is much quieter. This is very pleasant, and now when the ego mind starts its chatter I am quick to notice. It seems crazy that for all of my life I hardly noticed the chatter and just tolerated it.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 2-28-13

2-28-13
8 I have emphasized that the miracle, or the expression of Atonement, is always a sign of respect from the worthy to the worthy. The recognition of this worth is re-established by the Atonement. It is obvious, then, that when you are afraid, you have placed yourself in a position where you need Atonement. You have done something loveless, having chosen without love. This is precisely the situation for which the Atonement was offered. The need for the remedy inspired its establishment. As long as you recognize only the need for the remedy, you will remain fearful. However, as soon as you accept the remedy, you have abolished the fear. This is how true healing occurs.

That last sentence, this is how true healing occurs, really grabbed me. I went back and read the paragraph several times and asked Jesus to help me see what he wants me to see as I did so.
The first phrase I looked at said … the miracle, or the expression of Atonement…. This is a good reminder of what I have learned earlier in the text. The miracle is the experience I have when I accept the Atonement. It is a miracle because it is a true change in my thinking and is done outside the illusion. In other words, as Myron, I did not get to this change through my own thinking. I may have used my thinking mind to get to the place I was willing to be healed, but the healing was not my doing. 

Jesus then says that the miracle is always a sign of respect from the worthy to the worthy. There is a hotel I like to stay at, and the clerk has always been kind of taciturn. I respect her desire not to be chatty, but I have always spoken to her and been friendly. I noticed that even though she doesn’t appear especially friendly, she always remembers my name and goes out of her way to put me in a room she knows I will like.

Yesterday when I checked in, she told me that she was going to be on duty for twelve hours and maybe longer. That was the first personal information she had ever shared with me. Normally, she just did her job and did it well, but barely spoke at all. I sympathized with the long hours and started to walk away. Then she told me that she has children at home who need her and how it makes her feel to be away from them for such a long time.

She went on to tell me about her relationship with them. It was a very touching story and I was surprised by her desire to share like this. I listened until someone else came in and needed her attention.  As I walked to my room I thought about what a difficult situation she was in. She needed the job to take care of her kids, but the long hours were keeping her from being the mother she wanted to be. I prayed for a perfect resolution to her situation.

I prayed in confidence knowing that this woman was sent to me for this purpose.  I prayed knowing that the prayer would be answered. As God’s Son I am worthy of being heard, and as God’s Son she is worthy of the miracle. I was not praying for her from a belief that she needed someone more spiritual to pray for her. I absolutely know that this opportunity to offer a miracle is as much a blessing to me as it is to her.

I know that she does not stand below me, but beside me.  It was not pity that provoked the desire for a miracle, but respect. This situation was a blessing to me because it reminded me of our worth and of our relationship as equal parts of the Sonship. I received a miracle because I offered a miracle. The miracle occurs because of this joining.

We are also reminded in this paragraph that when we choose against love, we choose fear, and we need a miracle to re-establish our truth. In truth we cannot be without love and fear has no place in our holy minds, but we cannot remember that when we ask for something different. The first part of the correction process is always going to be a recognition that we did, indeed, ask for the problem.

Whatever is happening in my life in every moment occurs because of a choice I made. If the moment is not peaceful, joyful, and loving, it is because I chose without love. Before anything can be done to reverse this, I first have to acknowledge that I did it to myself. As long as I project the cause onto the world, I continue to choose without love and the problem remains in place, and I continue to live in fear.

It is not enough, however, to recognize the problem and to acknowledge that I but did it to myself.  This is a vital step, but it is not enough. Acknowledging the fear will not take me out of the fear. I must then be willing to accept the correction. The Holy Spirit will not take from me what I want to keep. You might wonder that I would want what causes me so much suffering. But here is an example of what happens.

Yesterday I thought about something I had done in the past that still triggers shame in me. This happened a couple of times before I thought to look at it. The shame is hard to bear and I didn’t want it. Up to the moment when the memory surfaced I was very happy and content. Then I thought about the past occurrence and immediately felt awful. In that moment I chose lovelessly and so I was in fear.

The fear is that I will never be free of this shame, and will continue to suffer for it forever, that it happened in the past and there is nothing to be done about it. This is not true, of course, but that is the underlying and often unacknowledged fear. There is unconscious fear as well, and it goes all the way back to the belief that God is really mad at me and I am forever condemned. Of course, in the moment, I wasn’t thinking about all that, and it was just about some bad behavior from my past.

I acknowledged that I was feeling shame and that it was because I had chosen against love. I chose to see myself as less than and this is not choosing love. For awhile this is where it stayed. I ran the scenario over and over in my mind and the ego picked it apart, first offering absolution in the form of projection, then jerking the rug from under me as it pointed out that making others guilty is a sin, too. That ego is very good at guilt.

Because of my study and practice this did not go on overly long. I was able to remember that the next part of the forgiveness process is to allow the mind to be healed. I resisted this, too, for awhile. Why would I resist healing? Isn’t that what I was asking for? Actually, at first I was not really asking for healing.

I was asking for the suffering to be relieved. I really didn’t have a lot of interest in letting the core belief in unworthiness be healed.  When I realized the problem, I became willing to accept the Atonement in this situation, and all the angst about the past simply dissolved away. But before that could happen, I had to be willing to let go of the problem, not just the effect which was suffering. Then I had to be willing to accept the Atonement. As soon as I did, everything about it changed, and I was in peace again. Just as Jesus promised in this paragraph, this is how true healing occurs.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 2-27-13

2-27-13
7 The first corrective step in undoing the error is to know first that the conflict is an expression of fear. Say to yourself that you must somehow have chosen not to love, or the fear could not have arisen. Then the whole process of correction becomes nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps in the larger process of accepting the Atonement as the remedy. These steps may be summarized in this way:

Know first that this is fear.
Fear arises from lack of love.
The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love.
Perfect love is the Atonement.

In the past when I read this paragraph I recognized that it must be very important, but I just didn’t see why. It didn’t have any great meaning for me, or catch my imagination as many of the passages do. I didn’t get that “aha” moment when I read it. It was just words. I didn’t worry about it too much because there is so much in the Course that was helpful that I could just move on to something else.

But now that I am doing this work with the Text, I was faced with the task of writing about this paragraph and was flummoxed. Once again, I read it and couldn’t think of anything to say about it. So I asked the Holy Spirit to help me. I asked Him to show me the meaning that is intended and to give me words to share.

What happened next is that I felt overwhelming love and gratitude toward Jesus. I started thanking him for his words and everything he has done for us, and telling him how much I love him. There was so much love and gratitude in my heart that I cried. And when I read this paragraph again I felt it. My heart felt a deep longing to accept the Atonement.

That is what happened and how it felt. But I am still flummoxed, not because I don’t understand it or it lacks meaning for me, but because I don’t know how to say in some other way that it contains all meaning. It seems so perfect, just as it is. When I say to myself that, “I accept the Atonement for myself,” I cry again in gratitude and love.

How can I use this in my life today? Typically, there are many moments in the day when there is conflict in my mind. Many of them are so familiar that I hardly notice them. Some, I fail to see as conflict. Others, I push away. But I am learning that I want to notice these conflicted thoughts so that I can ask for healing, so that I can accept the Atonement.

The first step in this process, once I have noticed the conflict, is to realize it is fear. I have so many names for fear, and I think the reason for all these other names is so that I don’t have to admit to myself how fearful I am. I’m reading a novel about a woman who has to face a lot of fear in her life. She has to face down fear of love, fear of relationships, fear that takes the form of killers and all sorts of monsters. When she feels afraid it makes her less effective and so instead she turns the fear into anger. This makes her feel more powerful.

Maybe this is one of the reasons we find other words for our fear. We call it anger and channel the fear into something that feels less debilitating. It gives us a feeling of control, or at least makes us feel less vulnerable. Hatred is another word and emotion we use to express our fear differently. Instead of feeling afraid of being unloved, for example, we project (that is, throw out of us) the feeling onto someone or something else and say we hate it instead. We are just trying to cope with our fear.

It does not work. Manipulating fear in our minds to make it look like something else does not heal the fear. Fighting what we fear does not work. Hating what we fear does not work. Only love heals fear. This is what Jesus is telling me in this paragraph. He is encouraging me to stop trying to pretend that fear is something else. Then he wants me to withdraw my projections, bring them back into my self, and let them be healed.

If I feel any emotion that is not love, it is fear. If I am fearful it is because somehow I did not love. Jesus is not asking me to figure out how this happened, or what I did or said or felt that was not love. He does not seem to care about the form the error has taken. He is not asking that I know how to feel love instead of the conflict. He is asking only that I recognize that I have failed to love and that I be willing to have this error corrected. He is not asking me to do, but to accept.

The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love, and Jesus does not ask me to understand perfect love, only to be willing to accept it. It is not possible to understand perfect love with the thinking mind, but I can be willing to accept it. Letting go of the need to understand is part of the acceptance. When I think that the truth needs my understanding, it is an expression of my need to assert my own separate will, and this in itself will create fear because it feels like I am opposing God.

All I need to know is that perfect love is the Atonement. Each time today that I notice I am in conflict, I will realize that this is fear and that fear occurs because I have somehow failed to love. This is just an error, and it is an error I no longer believe I need. If fear is lack of love, then the solution is perfect love (which is the Atonement). I accept the Atonement for myself.

Thank you, God, that your solution is not as convoluted as my errors. ~smile~

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 2-26-13

2-26-13
6 It is possible to reach a state in which you bring your mind under my guidance without conscious effort, but this implies a willingness that you have not developed as yet. The Holy Spirit cannot ask more than you are willing to do. The strength to do comes from your undivided decision. There is no strain in doing God’s Will as soon as you recognize that it is also your own. The lesson here is quite simple, but particularly apt to be overlooked. I will therefore repeat it, urging you to listen. Only your mind can produce fear. It does so whenever it is conflicted in what it wants, producing inevitable strain because wanting and doing are discordant. This can be corrected only by accepting a unified goal.

When I have been in fear (which for most of my life was a familiar feeling) it has felt very real and very much outside my control. It seemed to be caused by something outside me, and it seemed that unless I could control the thing that caused the fear then I was in danger. If I was afraid of heights then I must stay on flat ground.

If I was afraid of relationships then I must avoid them or at least put up a wall between me and the other person so that I would not get too close. If I was afraid of poverty, then I must find a good job and work very hard and impress my boss so he would value me and I would never be fired.

There is a problem with all this careful planning of life. It seems that it is impossible to control life and just as I get a handle on one issue, another blows up in my face. In seemed that avoiding heights would be easy since I live in a really flat state, but then I get the best job I had ever had, and it turns out to be constructing a very high building. I wind up many feet above the ground walking on rebar so I see all the way down between feet. And I make too much money to quit. This is so typical of the ego world, desire and fear colliding and leaving me with no “safe” choice.

All of life is like this, protecting and defending only to be undone by my very efforts, and the sense of failure just intensifying the fear. There are too many goals and they often contradict each other. It feels like nothing ever gets done, that I run around in the same fruitless circle all my life, constantly trying to build my walls and control the uncontrollable. The best I could achieve was temporary success and even then there was the fear that inevitably my house of cards would come tumbling down.

One of the most important things I have learned as a student of the Course is that I have one goal, one purpose in life. My goal is to return my mind to God. I begin by acknowledging my oneness with my brother and this leads me accepting my place in the Son of God. My short cut to saying all this is, “My goal is to awaken.” I want to stop dreaming and start living. I want to awaken from this dream of separation.

Having one unified goal, it becomes simple to make decisions. Do I want to earn more money? Is that my goal? Or do I want to wake up? It does not mean I cannot earn more money and wake up, but it does mean that I cannot have two goals and expect to be at peace. I cannot have two goals and still have a unified goal.

Making more money will not wake me up, so my goal remains that I want to awaken. I leave the care and support of the body to the Holy Spirit Who knows what to do with it, and I give my mind to Him to heal. I still do things with and for the body, but it is just what must be done and what I do with it is not my purpose.

The only time I feel afraid about money is when I forget my single purpose and take on another purpose. The work on my new house is almost finished and in looking at the bill for this work, I felt panicked. It was much higher than I ever expected. I started going through my bank accounts and listing all my other bills and obligations and the more I did it the more fearful I became.

I started out with the goal of seeing how to fit the cost of the remodeling and repairing the house into my budget. Then there was the goal of planning for future work on it and so I needed to save for that. Then I remembered that I am going to have to buy a new car in one or two years at most and maybe any day now, since my present car has so many miles on it. So I have to save for that, too.

Then the ego reminded me of all the possible problems that require a monetary solution that could come up in the future, health problems for example. Even with careful planning I cannot foresee what might be required to remain solvent. No wonder I felt fearful. My goal had become to control the uncontrollable.

And in that goal I had many other goals, some of them conflicting with the others. The idea of restricting my spending to the degree that would be necessary to meet some of these goals was disheartening. I was very conflicted as I wanted to meet one goal but didn’t want to give up another goal to do so. I don’t understand how I used to live like this all the time. It is awful.

Fortunately, I remembered that I have only one purpose here. It is not to remain financially solvent; it is to awaken. The ego screams at me to be sensible. It says I cannot just go all metaphysical on this, and that I need a concrete plan and contingencies. But I have had years of practice watching my mind for ego thoughts and bringing them to the Holy Spirit for healing. I know what to do with these thoughts, and I know that my one unified goal is to awaken from this dream.

I asked the Holy Spirit what He would have me do now, and I followed His guidance in trust. Will I wind up losing this home I just bought because I spent too much money on the repairs? I don’t know. That is not my business. My one unified purpose is to wake up and I do that by using everything in my life as a classroom and by making the Holy Spirit my only Teacher. I am at peace because I have one goal. I am doing what I am guided to do as I listen to that one Teacher, and my mind remains unconflicted so there is no fear in doing so.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 2-25-13

2-25-13
5 Fear is always a sign of strain, arising whenever what you want conflicts with what you do. This situation arises in two ways: First, you can choose to do conflicting things, either simultaneously or successively. This produces conflicted behavior, which is intolerable to you because the part of the mind that wants to do something else is outraged. Second, you can behave as you think you should, but without entirely wanting to do so. This produces consistent behavior, but entails great strain. In both cases, the mind and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in a situation in which you are doing what you do not wholly want to do. This arouses a sense of coercion that usually produces rage, and projection is likely to follow. Whenever there is fear, it is because you have not made up your mind. Your mind is therefore split, and your behavior inevitably becomes erratic. Correcting at the behavioral level can shift the error from the first to the second type, but will not obliterate the fear.

This explanation of fear arising from a split mind is very helpful to me. I can easily see how this happens in my life. The sentence that sums it up for me is this.

Whenever there is fear, it is because you have not made up your mind.

Jesus says that one way this can occur is when I decide to do two things, either at the same time or one after the other. Here is an example of how I have done this. A long time ago I decided that insomnia is a maddening condition resulting in suffering, and therefore it should be avoided at whatever costs. Recently, through guidance from Holy Spirit, I decided that to use insomnia as a classroom for teaching myself that the body is not creative and so insomnia is in my mind, not my body.

Both thoughts were in my mind. There was the thought that I should always arrange my schedule to be in bed by a certain time, and if that didn’t work, I should always have Ambien on hand to assure a good night’s sleep. There was also the thought that the body is not creative and so insomnia is a projection of a separation belief, and so the solution is to allow that belief to be healed in my mind.

These two decisions led to two different behaviors. Sometimes I would choose to believe that the body or the environment was the cause of my problem getting to sleep or staying asleep. When this happened I would want to take a pill. Other times I would choose to believe that this was a great time to practice the truth, that insomnia is a projection from the mind and pills are magical solutions, not real solutions. Then I would not take the pill, or delay taking it as I gave my willingness to allow the mind to be healed of the belief that the body is creative.

Because I held both decisions in my mind at the same time, my behavior reflected this conflict; sometimes I would act on one decision and sometimes on the other. No matter which I chose, I felt conflicted and this triggered fear because no matter what I did, I did not altogether want to do it. Jesus says that the part of the mind that wants to do something else is outraged.

I didn’t feel the rage because I was putting a lid on it and calling it frustration. But frustration is anger pretending to be something more socially acceptable, so I have to cop to anger. And since anger is just rage with a veil pulled over it, I guess I may as well say it. I was enraged. And since all emotion is either fear or love and this was not love, the rage was an expression of fear.

When I was trying to believe both ideas at the same time I was torn between the two, acting on first one then the other. The conflicted behavior was intolerable and caused outrage in whichever part of the mind didn’t get its way. And when I chose to not take the Ambien, and to work with the mistaken thought, this was a strain because I didn’t entirely want to do it. Because I didn’t wholly want this practice I felt coerced and this was intolerable as well. Either way, I was in fear because I had not made up my mind.

It was an uncomfortable period of time as I continued the practice in spite of the fear. That in between place, where I know the Holy Spirit is right and at the same time I also believe I am right, is always uncomfortable. Persistence in the face of resistance has always helped me stick with it until I push through to the other side.

This did not mean that I forced my behavior, which would have produced more consistency in my behavior, but would not have reduced the fear. I was simply consistent in noticing the thoughts and asking for correction regardless of the decision I went with. As my practice proved to me that the body is not creative, I naturally began to drop my desire to act as if I was the victim of outside forces. This brought a lightness and joy to my practice because I was much less conflicted.

© 2013, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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