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Study of Manual for Teachers 3-15-12

Day 75
3 Once this confusion has occurred, it becomes impossible for the mind to understand that all the “pleasures” of the world are nothing. But what a sacrifice,-and it is sacrifice indeed!-all this entails. Now has the mind condemned itself to seek without finding; to be forever dissatisfied and discontented; to know not what it really wants to find. Who can escape this self-condemnation? Only through God’s Word could this be possible. For self-condemnation is a decision about identity, and no one doubts what he believes he is. He can doubt all things, but never this.

An example of a “pleasure” that I have valued and allowed to define me is the special relationship. The only enduring special relationship I have ever had is with my children. Even though I had considered myself a failure in many ways as a mom, my children persist in loving me and thinking well of me; I think even liking me. And yet, I have never felt secure in these relationships and since I value them above all else, I have gone to great lengths to keep them in place.

As I look at these relationships with the Holy Spirit I see that I have used bribery, sacrifice, martyrdom, guilt and fear to bind my children to them. I remember when my youngest child graduated from college and moved away, I felt bereft, adrift and anxious. When a very short time later he needed my financial assistance I remember the flood of relief that came over me. That was my first clue that something was seriously sick in this relationship. But it would be a long time before I was able to look at my thoughts without judgment and allow the Holy Spirit to help me see what was going on.

Because I believed that I could not be happy without the special relationships in my life, I condemned myself to misery. Special relationships are inherently guilt driven and destined to fail. What will not fail is the certainty that if I continue to hold onto the specialness in a relationship I will never experience real love, and if I don’t know Love, I will not know my Self. I fully understand the fear of letting go of special love because it seems to be all that I have ever known and yet, holding onto the specialness is what prevents me from knowing Love.

I have grasped these relationships so tightly and for so long that it has taken me a very long time to let them go. I am still letting go, but now it is easier because I see that the specialness I thought was precious was actually painful. It defined me in ways that diminished me, and in my desperation to hold onto it, I tried to teach those I loved that they were needy too. Specialness defines me as separate from others, and holds that belief in place. I believed in this definition of myself until I began to accept the Word of God through His Voice. I am letting go of my definition of my self and accepting His definition instead.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 3-14-12

Day 74
2 It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give. What can the sacrifice of nothing mean? It cannot mean that you have less because of it. There is no sacrifice in the world’s terms that does not involve the body. Think a while about what the world calls sacrifice. Power, fame, money, physical pleasure; who is the “hero” to whom all these things belong? Could they mean anything except to a body? Yet a body cannot evaluate. By seeking after such things the mind associates itself with the body, obscuring its Identity and losing sight of what it really is.

In this paragraph Jesus points out that it is only the body that receives the “gifts” of the world. In the story from the point of view of Myron, she is our hero. Over the course of her life so far she has accumulated very little, really, but she is very protective of her little kingdom. She has special relationships with her children, which she jealously guards and is ever on alert in case something should disturb the delicate balance that holds them bound to her.

She has a good job that pays well which requires diligent effort to maintain lest the enemy steal her customers or the company realize she is not indispensable to them. Hardly an hour goes by that she does not have a plan in action to protect that bit of her kingdom.

She has a relatively healthy body to carry her through the rest of her life but it is proving to be something of a disappointment as it is giving into the pull of gravity and is showing signs of aging. It is useful still, but every look in the mirror is a reminder of its fragility and its ultimate demise.

Who is it that makes these evaluations? It cannot be the body itself, so it must be the mind and as Jesus points out, this is the real problem. By placing value in the destructible, the weak and the vulnerable, our hero has identified herself with these qualities, and therefore has forgotten who she is.

The more absorbed she becomes in maintaining her fragile kingdom the more obscure her reality becomes to her and the greater the feeling of sacrifice at the thought of its loss. She is the bag lady, living in a box under the bridge, afraid to go asleep because something might happen to her she own treasures if she fails to guard them closely, never realizing that it is all worthless anyway.

Myron, you’re confused, honey. You’ve placed such great value in all the wrong things. Wake up, sweet lady! Wake up and let go of this worthless and distracting illusion. You cannot imagine the joy and the peace that await you. You can walk away from your false kingdom, and all you need do is lose interest in it. You will lose nothing of any value and will walk into your Self.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 3-13-12

Day 73
13. WHAT IS THE REAL MEANING OF SACRIFICE?

1 Although in truth the term sacrifice is altogether meaningless, it does have meaning in the world. Like all things in the world, its meaning is temporary and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it. Now its real meaning is a lesson. Like all lessons it is an illusion, for in reality there is nothing to learn. Yet this illusion must be replaced by a corrective device; another illusion that replaces the first, so both can finally disappear. The first illusion, which must be displaced before another thought system can take hold, is that it is a sacrifice to give up the things of this world. What could this be but an illusion, since this world itself is nothing more than that?

I am accustomed now to the idea that Jesus replaces an unhelpful illusion with an illusion that is closer to truth because it helps me to make the leap. He has explained that to me when he talked about the difference between perception and true perception. Both are perception and therefore not truth, but true perception is as close as I will get while I still believe I am what I am not. Now he is going to use its real meaning as a lesson, and then explains that a lesson can’t be truth because in reality there is nothing to learn.

I appreciate that Jesus takes every opportunity to remind me that I am before and beyond what I mistakenly believe about myself. These explanations help me to remember that these corrective devices, while not ultimate truth, are useful to bring me forward enough that I can finally breach the divide I have created in my mind. This final step, Jesus tells us, is taken by God, who then lifts us up.

I visualize Jesus bringing me up, step by step, to an altar where I stand without fear or doubt before my God, and all that seemed to be dissolves before the Light and I gladly disappear into that Light and finally know my Self as All that I Am. This is my story of the return to God. It is just a story, but the mind seems to want a story so I give it one. In the moment of Truth, my story will disappear with all the useful and useless stories alike.

To understand that sacrifice is not asked of me, I must first give up the false idea that the world offers me anything I want. If I think I want its meager offerings, I will think of its loss as a sacrifice, and will be unwilling to accept another thought system. I wish I could say that I saw the sense in this since after all, the world is an illusion and so how valuable could it be, but, alas, I have stubbornly clung to the good and bad with equal tenacity.

The Holy Spirit understands this and so has gently led me through a step-by-step process. Its like He picks up something in the world and says do you want this? Would you like to know what it symbolizes for you? Do you think it is more precious than Life, than Love, than pure unending, blissful joy? If I decide that I would rather have that illusion than to have the memory of my Divinity, then He simply waits patiently for me to change my mind.

I would like to say that good sense brings me back to Him for another look, but its usually pain that prompts this reappraisal. The illusion that has been hardest for me to see as useless is special relationships, especially the ones with my children. I had a death grip on that illusion, and I have had to experience that pain many time to become willing to even acknowledge that there might be something else. 

The Holy Spirit has spent all of this lifetime helping me to see that pain is not love. Once I was willing to accept that what I thought of as love was an illusion I became more willing to let it go, trusting that there was something to take its place. Have you ever seen a baby’s confusion when his hands each hold a toy and you offer him another? He wants the new toy, but his hands are full, and he doesn’t want to let go of what he has. Eventually, he puts one down so that he can accept another. That is me with my special relationships.

The Holy Spirit hold out Love, and my hands are full of my substitute for love and I have been afraid to let go of what I have for the hope of something else. What I have is not making me happy, but I do have it. I am finally learning to loosen my grip and tentatively lay aside what I have clung to for so long, but I don’t set it too far away, because I am still uncertain. I still believe that maybe it will be a sacrifice to give up this illusion. The Holy Spirit is infinite Patience. He knows that I will finally see that it is no sacrifice to give up illusions, and so He waits for me.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 3-12-12

Day 72
6 Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. God’s teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God’s teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God’s teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs.

There are three things in this paragraph that stand out to me. First that I am fully aware of the choices I make and their consequences. Second that my function is to be aware that I am dreaming. And third that only Oneness heals.

The one that really surprised me is that all choices are made consciously and with full awareness of the consequences. I have accepted that on some level I knew and understood what I was doing as I made choices, but I’m getting a different picture of this now. It seems that I am fully aware when I decide on a thing, and then I am hiding my culpability from myself. It makes even more sense now, to realize that I must take 100% responsibility for everything.

My function is to be the observer of the dream, to be aware it is a dream. I have been practicing this for awhile now and I can do it some, then I slip back into being fully involved in the dream. It seemed that this just happened, and yet, in light of what Jesus is telling me, I deliberately choose to give my full attention to the dream character, and to forget I am actually the dreamer.

When I go to sleep at night I have all kinds of crazy dreams that I seem to have no control over. And yet, I have had a number of instances in which my dreaming became lucid. I made a deliberate choice to change a dream right in the middle of it. I have also had times when I would be in a dream and then said, “This is a dream.”

I think this new “ability” to have some control of my dreams at night is a reflection of my willingness to accept responsibility for my dream state during the day, and this section of the Teacher’s Manual is encouraging me to accept full responsibility.

Those times when I am simply watching the show without involvement in the drama are pretty rare right now, but there are many times that I remind myself that this is what’s happening and take a deliberate step back. This is how I practice so that I will be willing to more often be the observer. Its kind of like putting my toe in the water to test the temperature, and then occasionally I decide to dive right in, only to surface again and climb back out.

I must be insane to want to lose myself in the story like this. It so often goes from mildly interesting to very upsetting, and eventually to nightmarish. It might be an interesting story to observe but its often painful to experience, and sometimes unbearably so. And yet, I have made a deliberate choice to be the character rather than to watch the character, and I make that choice again and again in every moment.

Something that has been happening for me is that a lot of old guilt stories have been coming up for my healing. They arise as painful memories into my awareness. Its very unpleasant and I want to push against them, and yet, I know that I asked for this. The confusion is extending the process longer than necessary and making it more painful than it needs to be.

I asked Holy Spirit for help, and He whispered into my heart that I should surrender to the process. I don’t know how to do that, but I am willing. Can I watch Myron suffer all the while knowing that it is an illusion of suffering by an illusory figure in the dream? Would it hurt less? Would it be done sooner? Is doing this from the point of view of the character keeping me in this purgatory of memory without the relief of healing?

When I think of surrender I equate it with a willingness to suffer more and so I push against it again, and yet I know that these errors must come up in order to be healed and this is actually my decision. Its like encouraging a splinter try to rise to the surface of my finger so it can be extracted. I want to stop squeezing because it hurts, and yet leaving it in is painful too.

What I really want is to see this from the viewpoint of the observer. This is my function. It is the way I remember that it is all illusion and that I am One with All That Is. Then I see there never was a splinter or a finger or pain and suffering. Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. 

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 3-11-12

Day 71
5 The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body’s condition. Yet the teacher of God does not make this decision alone. To do that would be to give the body another purpose from the one that keeps it holy. God’s Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is. He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him.

This is very simple. If I use my body for attack it will become sick and die. It is strange how often I choose attack, especially now that I am fully aware of the consequences. I was trying to think of the last time I attacked someone when I realized that my thoughts count. Uh oh. Seriously, since attack leads to suffering and death, I am amazed that my body has held up for this long. I have this casual litany of attack going through my mind nearly continually.

Every time I make someone separate in my mind, I have attacked him. I see someone walk by and my mind judges their body, their fashion sense, their posture… whatever catches my eye. I have seen this person as separate and this is an attack. It is an attack on them, and an attack on myself.

If I am alone, my mind dredges up old grievances to replay. This is an attack. I often think that I would be happier if circumstances were different. This is an attack. I compare myself unfavorably to someone else. This is an attack. I behave in self-destructive ways, and this is an attack.

I could get depressed thinking of how many ways I attack and the unlikelihood of me changing all of them. But the Holy Spirit has told me many times that it is not necessary to be concerned about the many different forms. All those forms of attack are the result in a mistaken belief. It is only the belief that I will have to change.

And the belief is beginning to change. When I notice I am judging someone it feels bad. I don’t want that thought in my mind. I often realize that I don’t believe that thought. Other changes indicate to me that my vigilance and my willingness have made a difference. For instance, I was with someone that I have judged in the past and that I have felt separate from, and when by chance our eyes met, I felt gladness and gratitude swell up in my heart. Nothing said or done created this feeling; it was grace alone and had nothing to do with the ego.

Without attack the body would be perfectly healthy and would not suffer or die, but would simply be laid aside when no longer needed. This is an amazing statement. The Course has said that death is a decision I make and I see that this is true. As I choose attack as a way of life, I am choosing a slow death. When I choose oneness instead of attack, the body cannot die or suffer. Both are decisions I make.

I has been slowly coming, but I now realize that everything that happens to the body is the result of a choice I have made, a belief that I hold. All sickness, pain, suffering are the result of believing in separation, and separation is an attack on myself. I know that I have moved from an intellectual understanding of this idea to a deeper knowing, because when I feel suffering in the body I don’t look for an outside cause, but go immediately to the mind as cause.

And if, out of habit I think for awhile that a germ or a virus or an accident got me, I quickly remember the absurdity of this idea; as if the germ, the virus or the accident could come into play without my decision that they do so. These seeming agents of suffering and death are merely attack taking form within my dream of separation. When separation is no longer desired, what use will I have for agents of death?

The other statement that is important to me is that while setting the body aside is a decision I make, it is not one that I make alone, because the idea of alone is an attack, as it is a return to the idea of separation. It is with the Holy Spirit that this decision is made. Of course it is! I am learning to ask the Holy Spirit for His guidance in all things as let go of the false identity of ego. When my lessons are done, and there is no longer any use for the body, the Holy Spirit will guide me to that decision as well. Nothing could be more perfect.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 3-10-12

Day 70
4 Yet what makes God’s teachers is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body. As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body’s function is but to let God’s Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer messages that are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of their Source. From this understanding will come the recognition, in this new teacher of God, of what the body’s purpose really is; the only use there really is for it. This lesson is enough to let the thought of unity come in, and what is one is recognized as one. The teachers of God appear to share the illusion of separation, but because of what they use the body for, they do not believe in the illusion despite appearances. 

For a long time after I found the Course, I was confused about how I was to feel about the body. I understood that my body was not real, because it was not created by God, but was made as an illusion of my self. Because this understanding was mostly just a concept with no real acceptance as truth, I didn’t know how to think of the body.

I would wonder if its not real then should I stop taking care of it? Am I believing in the body if I give it vitamins? Am I making the illusion more real to me if I take it to the doctor or give it medicine? Should I treat it with unconcern, or with contempt?

After all, the body is the home of the ego and represents my desire to be separate from God. If I give the body too much thought would I be compounding the original error? The unacknowledged but pervasive thought seemed to be that if I separated myself in all ways from the body then maybe God would see that I was no longer serious about being separate from Him and I would be safe from His anger and allowed to return home.

I am learning to see things differently. I don’t have complete clarity, but I feel more comfortable about the body now that I feel more comfortable about its use. The body is not a symbol of sin unless I see it that way. We made illusions (including the body) to allow us to try on an idea, but we are not guilty for that. If we are not guilty for our foray into the idea of separation, then the body is not an object of guilt either.

Whatever we made to express separation, the Holy Spirit will use to bring us home if that is our choice. The body is no different. In this paragraph Jesus is helping me to understand this. He is asking me to use the body to allow communication from Source to pass from my mouth to your ear. My experience has been that this communication can be in the form of writing, or speaking. It can be formal as it is right now, or it can be a kind word to a frightened brother.

When someone is telling me about a fearful situation in their lives, I can tell them about one of my fearful situations, which I am certain is worse than theirs. This is the ego’s idea of communication. Or I can tell them that I understand, but isn’t it a blessing that appearances do not prove that the truth is not true, and I can suggest a different way to see. This is the proper use of the body. If people attack me with their words, I can defend myself and maybe attack them in return. Or I can understand their fear and love them anyway.

The proper use of the body for a true communication devise comes from full surrender. The ego cannot be part of the communication no matter how well meaning I am, or how spiritual I sound. The thinking mind will want to decide, based on my spiritual studies, what needs to be said, but this is not true communication.

To the degree that I let go of the ego desire to speak, and surrender my body to Christ, the perfect words are given me to speak. Sometimes what I say is puzzling to me, because I don’t understand why these words are helpful. I am learning to trust the process, and do my best not to question in retrospect, nor try to waste time wondering why I said what I said and what it all means. That’s just the ego-thinking mind trying to reestablish its dominance.

I am not consistent in surrendering the body for the Holy Spirit’s use, but I do it as often as I think to. This effort helps me do it more often. When I say something that is truly helpful it is not because I am a good student of the Course, or because I am more advanced than another person. It is because I have surrendered the body for that purpose, and allowed the Voice for God to speak through me. (The ego doesn’t like these words and thinks this is arrogance, but how can full surrender be anything but humility.)

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Manual for Teachers 3-9-12

Day 69
3 Why is the illusion of many necessary? Only because reality is not understandable to the deluded. Only very few can hear God’s Voice at all, and even they cannot communicate His messages directly through the Spirit which gave them. They need a medium through which communication becomes possible to those who do not realize that they are spirit. A body they can see. A voice they understand and listen to, without the fear that truth would encounter in them. Do not forget that truth can come only where it is welcomed without fear. So do God’s teachers need a body, for their unity could not be recognized directly.

I can understand that we need to hear the words from a voice that appears to be in the dream with us. I hear the Voice for God in my mind daily and yet, at times I still have trouble crediting it. I sometimes have trouble discerning which is His Voice and which is my own ego voice. When I think about that, its funny. How could I mistake the ego for God? And usually when I gain clarity I see that it was not that the two voices were so similar I could not tell them apart, but that I favored the ego story and didn’t want it to be wrong.

When I discovered the writings of Eckert Tolle I was very excited because it was my first encounter with a present day awakened being. It was confirmation that as hard as it seems to me, maybe it really is possible. The first time I read A Thousand Names for Joy and realized that Byron Katie is awakened, my heart swelled with joy because not only is she living now, but she is a woman and so I related to her in a more immediate way. She is a woman who had a real story full of drama and mistakes just like me, and yet, she did awaken.

These people are helpful also because they speak my language and have similar backgrounds. I can understand them, and feel our paths are not so different that I can’t possibly go where they went. Jesus lived a real life, too, but it was so long ago and has been changed through time to make him seem too special for me to relate to. So while I love him and appreciate him, I cannot think of him as just one of us. (What is that song, “What if God were just one us…”)?

I think we need different voices speaking to us of the truth, and speaking in different ways. What I can understand and relate to might not be useful to another person. Even though they are saying the same thing, they are saying it in different ways and that is helpful. My friend, Alisha, has found her path with the help of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Sonja is finding help through Joel Goldsmith. Lisa is inspired by Mooji (who also touches me). The truth seems to be coming through in many ways, but it is still the one truth coming through the one awakened mind. It only appears different.

And do we have to be fully and permanently awakened to be a teacher of God? Obviously not since Jesus has told us that the way to awaken is to teach what we want to learn. It seems from the story of her life and the people who knew her that Helen was certain of her purpose only when she was scribing the Course. Regina is not awakened as far as I know, and yet she has been my principle teacher for a long time now. She allowed NTI and The Teachings of Inner Ramana to come through her, and when she did she was in her one purpose.

I teach truth when my mind is clear, that is when I know my purpose and all other imagined purposes have fallen away. Probably we all are teachers of that order sometimes, and what we are doing now is learning to stay in that truth more and more so that we can be the teachers of God we are meant to be. 

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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