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Holy Spirit, Be With Me Today

Holy Spirit, I ask that you be with me all day today, helping me to keep my focus on what is true. When I allow my mind to wander into illusions of what might have been, or what I fear is to come, please remind me of the moment I am in now and that this is the only moment there is. It is in only this moment that I can choose again.

As I go through my day acting and reacting, please help me to bring my attention to my lesson understanding that the body and the world are just the classroom for the lesson. I often forget that this is true and begin to act as if the purpose of life is to change the classroom. Help me to keep the purpose of life clearly in the forefront of my mind.

When I stand before my brother I often see the body and its actions and errors. Please help me to see the light that stands behind this dark vision so that I may learn to see the light within myself. I will be mindful of the judgments I make of my brother’s behaviors and I ask that you correct my thinking so that I don’t foolishly believe my brother is his behavior any more than he is his body.

Holy Spirit, it is so easy for me to forget that the body and personality associated with Myron is just a story of separation, and that I can watch this story to help me remember the truth about who I am. Please help me to remember to step back from this dream figure and notice what she does and says rather than thinking I need to control what she does and says. I am tired of trying to fix the dream, and long to awaken from it, but at the same time, it calls to me and tempts me to once again enter it fully. I cannot do that because I no longer fully believe in the illusion, and yet cannot fully release it. Please help me as I learn to detach from the dream.

This morning it is quiet and easy to feel Your ever present help. I can rest in You, and feel deep gratitude for that rest. As others join me in today’s story I become distracted and feel like I have lost my contact with You. Please help me to see that this is not possible. Help me learn to rise above the battleground and to be aware of You within me all during the day no matter who joins me or what dramas distract me. Help me to see the dramas as lessons rather than distractions.

Amen.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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There is No Love But God’s

What does this lesson mean to me?
Because the world is the thought of separation, it tries to splinter even love, making it into different kinds, bestowed on some and not others, withheld where we don’t see it as deserved. If we could do this to love then we would have destroyed love because love is complete and cannot be changed or divided or withheld. It simply is.

This splintered and destroyed shadow of love that we claim as our own is not the love that is God. But love remains, unchanged and unharmed by our silly dreams, and waits for our acceptance. We only need make a place for it in our lives and it will fill us with its light and beauty, bringing an undisturbed state of peace and joy with it.

How can I apply this to my life right now?
I will make a place for love in my mind by clearing the clutter of my unloving thoughts. Of course I cannot clean house unless I can see what needs to be cleared away. So I will watch my thoughts closely and look for the ones that are not love. If I judge or withhold love or imagine that one person is more special than another then I have tried to make of love something it is not. I will bring those thoughts to the Holy Spirit and ask Him how I could see it differently.

My message from Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit, I understand the concept of love being equal, and in fact, I understand that it isn’t love if it is not equal in all ways and at all times. But I don’t understand how to do this. I have to say in all honesty that I love my kids more than someone else’s. I cannot seem to undo that feeling. And of course, that is just one example of how I fail to truly love. Could you please help me to understand how I am supposed to do this?

Myron, you distort love when you use it to fill your perceived needs. Your only true need is to remember that you are not separated from God and so are not separated from Love. Because you perceive yourself as lacking God’s love you continue to seek for love outside of God and outside of yourself. You are seeking in a place that does not exist and so you are never going to succeed.

You think you love your children more than other children because they seem to be filling your needs in a way others do not. You want to feel needed and appreciated and cared for and they seem to do that for you. You call this love and because they are giving it to you, your children are very important to you. You return the favor and make them feel like they are special to you and so you hope to sustain the feeling of being loved. It is an unholy bargain conceived out of a sense of lack.

Do not try to change how you feel or how you act. These are merely the effects and not the cause. Go to the thought that you could be separate from God, that you could fail to be worthy of His love, and that His love is something that can be changed or contained, withdrawn or withheld. Go to the thought that you can make of love what you will and that your creation will fulfill your needs. Go to the thought that you are so guilty that you dare not ask for God’s love to return to your awareness. These are the thoughts you need to look at with Me and that you need to give Me. I will take them from you and give you the thoughts of God to take their place.

My message to Holy Spirit
I must believe You when You tell me that I am using the word love to mean fulfillment of my needs because when you said that I responded with a fierce protectiveness. I felt a need to defend my strategy, as if You planned to strip me of what little love I am allowed. I know this is not true and not what You want to do, but on another level it is what I expect and fear. Thank you for helping me to see this.

I am reminded that God never asks for sacrifice, so I must be wrong to think that You are asking me to give up the love of my children. I know this is crazy. You are asking me to trust You to give me something better. I can almost laugh at this. I imagine myself a homeless woman clinging desperately to the card board box I have been sleeping in because someone is offering to trade it for a house. The card board box may not be much but it is all I know and I am being asked to trust the promise of something better but first give away all you have. That is what it feels like.

Myron, your defenses go even deeper than you realize. To accept the endless unchanging love of God is to reject the ego altogether. It is to let go of the idea of being separate, unique, different, which means deciding against being your own creator. Accepting the love of God is accepting wholeness and oneness. But you looked at your fear and you spoke it aloud and you are still here and nothing bad happened. That is the first step.

What I am asking you to consider is that accepting God’s love is not going to destroy you. You will not cease to exist if you bring your mind back to the Oneness that you are. I am asking you to hold My hand and walk through your fear with Me by your side.

Ok, Holy Spirit. I give this my willingness. I ask You to join Your willingness to mine and strengthen it.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Down the Rabbit Hole - Again

You know how you can have one of those days when, spiritually, you are just on a high? I was having one of those days. I had asked the Holy Spirit for a new way to see something that morning and had received an answer.  I had shifted from a problem to the answer, not through thinking, but through grace. I asked and it was given, and I was flying! Just in joy and peace.

I was driving down the road having visited a customer and on my way to see another. The customer I was planning to see next had a problem I was going to have to work out. It was, potentially, a serious situation depending on how things went. As I was thinking about how to handle this I had several thoughts really fast. I thought that this customer was putting a damper on my mood. I thought that if I did not do this right I was going to be in trouble with my boss. I thought how unfair that was and how much I resented him for putting so much pressure on me in a situation over which I had little control. I thought how I wish that I was home writing an article or talking to a student.

All of those thoughts took only a few seconds and I might not have paid much attention to them ordinarily. Just ego monkey chatter, the random firing of neurons that goes on all the time. The reason I noticed this day is because suddenly I was no longer feeling happy and peaceful. It was the change in my feelings that caught my attention. Since feelings always follow from thoughts I went back over the thoughts I just listed to see what changed my mood.

I began to see that it was like I had been walking on clouds and suddenly I fell into a hole. My immediate thought was Alice falling into the rabbit hole. Now I was following strange roads which were leading me deeper and deeper into a fantasy world of danger, fear, doubts, and blame. How did I get here? How could it happen so quickly? More importantly, how do I get out of this hole? And then suddenly, I was out! Just like that, I was out. I laughed to think of how easy it is to fall into ego stories and at the same time, it can be just as easy to let them go if that is what I really want to do.

I started paying really close attention to my feelings and my thoughts the rest of the day. Each time I realized that I had once again fallen into a rabbit hole, I looked around at the landscape to see what got me in there. Something that became very clear to me is that noticing quickly where I am and making a different decision is a lot easier than wandering through the illusory landscape for a while before I decide I want out. The longer I stay in the illusion the harder it is to find my way out.

If I stay in the story long enough it starts to feel so real and so compelling that it is difficult to let go of it. After awhile I become lost, and confused. I think vaguely of extricating myself but something else in the illusion grabs me, or I am hooked by the certainty that someone is wrong and must be punished, or at least admit their culpability. Or I begin to enjoy that little surge of adrenaline I get when I feel righteous and decide to enjoy it while it lasts.

There are so many distractions and so many hooks in this fantasy land. It is just one drama after another, and when I am no longer able to sustain the rush I get from feeling like I’m right, and the drama loses its glamour, I look around and wonder what to do now. It must be what one feels coming off a bender. Where am I, what happened? I feel a sense of shame and guilt and fear that I’m stuck. If I have stayed long enough and gotten too hooked into the story I might doubt my self worth and think I don’t deserve Holy Spirit’s help – again. Do you know that feeling?

No matter what ego thoughts are racing through my mind, the only way out is to want out. I have to want out of the hole more than I want to stay in it. That’s all there is to it. I become very aware of what I am thinking, I ask the Holy Spirit to help me see it differently, I allow that change, and poof! I’m out. I practiced this all day long and it got easier and easier. In fact by the end of the day I was no longer falling in the hole, I was standing over it and noticing it without any temptation to fall into the story at all.

I enjoy finding these little visual aids to help me go quickly from the story to the truth. Now when I become tempted to believe in an ego story I just picture Alice falling down the rabbit hole and this takes me right through the process of deciding differently.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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What is it?

I have had a rash for a couple of days now. It is on my right arm and around the waist on my left side. It is not horribly itchy but annoying and last night it was painful. I figured the pain was the result of being constantly irritated by my waistband on my pants. Then I thought about someone I know who had shingles and I wondered. So I googled shingles and learned very little except that it is usually on one side of the body. Uh, oh. It can also be painful. I looked for pictures of both shingles and poison ivy. They looked too much the same for me tell for sure. So I got out my pendulum and held it next to the affected area and it moved freely so I thought it couldn’t be anything so serious as shingles. But still, it was on one side and it was painful.

Finally I got dressed for bed and as I am laying there I realized that it doesn’t matter what this is. First, I didn’t get it from anything outside me. I chose this. I may have used the poison ivy plant to get the desired effect, but I cannot have anything in my life that I don’t want. So I looked at the rash again and thought what a grand rash it is. I loved myself for my creative ability and called it good.

Then I thought about the timing. Just recently I have been moving toward another shift and yesterday I made the commitment toward it. When I am threatening the ego thought system I often (on an unconscious level) set up something to bring myself back to its “reality” and the most compelling way to do this is to make the body sick. I checked in with myself and saw that it was not working. I don’t feel like a body. This is happening to the body, but I recognize what is going on and I see that I have not grabbed hold of that total identity with body that sometimes happens when the ego is saying, “see, you feel that? you are a body.) Yay for me!

Then I felt a gentle thought in my mind. It said “allow all things”.  So that is what I did. I accepted the rash and knew that it is what it is. I sprayed it down with some benedryl spray and went to sleep. I still have a rash, but I don’t have fear, doubt, and anxiety.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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I Am Not the Victim of the World I See

I am not a victim of the world I see is a familiar lesson. I have been studying this lesson for a very long time. Over the years I have peeled that onion until I am nearly to its core. I understand that I call to me everything that makes up my life. There is no one to blame and I waste my time looking for the guilty party. I also understand that my experience of my life is a choice. Never is the experience of it outside my ability to choose. There are no exceptions to either one of these facts.

I have also been practicing this lesson so I am generally willing to be fully aware of what I am choosing. Victimization is so pervasive in the ego thought system that I have not yet been able to move completely out of it, but I tend to notice when I am in it. I can then give my willingness to seeing the situation differently and so become stronger in my belief that I am never a victim of the world.

Sometimes victimization is not so obvious and I have to be very alert to its more subtle forms. Once I begin to look, however, it shows itself. For instance, this morning I checked my bank account to see if my commission check was in it yet. Since I get paid commissions on my accounts and they vary from month to month, I never know how much money I will make. Generally it is within a certain range, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. About once a year it is much lower than usual because it is affected by the seasons as well as other things.

This month turned out to be a small commission month. It is always a shock to see such a small check deposited in my account, and it brings up for me my fears of not being able to support myself, my belief in lack. At first I just felt the unease and move on since it is not going to devastate me, but then I realized that not to look at this with the Holy Spirit would be a lost opportunity. So once again I am able to look at my belief that I am a victim of the world I see. I think I can only be happy if I make a certain amount of money so I believe my happiness is dependent on my paycheck. I think I am safe only if I am financially secure and so am victim to the world of finances. I think that I am worthy only if I am successful in my job and the measure of success is the size of my commission check, and so when it is small I feel less than.

Whew! It is amazing how thoroughly I still believe in victimization. No matter how much I reason with myself that this is just one month out of twelve and that I still have enough money and will not starve or even be truly uncomfortable, I still feel like a victim. And my ego mind starts frantically searching for the responsible party. I notice uncharitable thoughts about my competitors and customers who quit buying. I notice thoughts about my boss and my company that are wild attempts to find them responsible. I even notice angry thoughts toward the people I owe money to as if my discomfort is their fault for wanting their money. In my fearful mind I see mother nature as working against me. I sell chemicals for water treatment and this rainy month has meant far less water used and so far less chemicals used.

At one time I would have felt the panic, looked for someone to blame and focused my attention there. Now I just notice what is going on in the ego mind. I notice the fear, the blame, projections, and anything else that pops up. I notice it and ask the Holy Spirit to show me another way to see. I notice and become willing to allow all of it. I notice and am willing to accept the situation just as it is. This is a very different way to be.

It is as if the thoughts and feelings wash over me and then drain away. I feel the emotions, but at the same time, I am watching and witnessing and that part of my mind is not involved in the emotional reaction. That part of my mind knows that I called to myself with my beliefs and desires exactly the circumstances I am experiencing. It also knows that seeing the situation as a problem and fearful was just a decision I made and is not the only decision available to me. The witness knows that this is a neutral event and that all of those emotions stem from my decision to give value to certain ideas and beliefs, including the belief that I protect myself when I make someone else to blame or when I give my energy to controlling the situation.

I get to decide how I want to be in this situation. I can stay in fear and see myself as victim to the world, or I can use this moment to remember the truth. And in fact, just noticing what is happening is helping me to wake up to the truth. This noticing is breaking the old cycle of thinking, and allowing new thought patterns to emerge. My day is filled with opportunities to do this and each one is a blessing if I care to use it as such.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Healing the Past

Here is something interesting that happened yesterday. I started the day by spending a couple hours on the phone with my mind healing partner, Loretta and she gave me an idea. She was talking about how time is an illusion and that everything is happening at once. I know this is true and is the reason why it does not matter when we forgive. I have often “gone back in time” to forgive. I had a wonderful experience doing this with my mother. She has Alzheimer and doesn’t know me anymore, but mind to mind we had a forgiveness session about something that happened when I was a thoughtless young woman. I felt the release of the past and it was a beautiful thing.

So why not expand this process? I have been thinking about my children a lot because of writing my book on the subject of raising children. This is what I did. I started with my oldest son, Scott. I remembered myself carrying him in my womb and I returned my attention to how I felt at that time. I then allowed the Love that is God to flow through me to that child in my womb. I had no plan as to what was supposed to happen when I did this because, as Loretta pointed out, Love knows what to do. It knows what is needed.

I imagined myself a clear conduit that simply allows Love to flow through it unencumbered by egoic needs. It was a very lovely experience. Then I thought about a time when he was very young. We were visiting with a friend of mine who had children. All the kids were playing and we adults were talking. I decided to go to the store for something and got in the car to leave.

As I was driving away, I glanced at the rear view mirror and saw that child running as hard as he could to catch up with me. I felt a flash of guilt and then immediately projected it onto him. I thought, “Couldn’t I even go to the store without that child?” I stopped for him and told him that I was coming right back and he could stay and play but, of course, he wouldn’t let go of me. My guilt could not let me look at how badly I had scared him, so I became angry.

My idea was to send Love to Scott at this time in his life to heal what I was unable to cope with as a young woman. What I discovered is that I could not do it because I was still so caught up in the guilt of the moment. I had never forgiven myself for that moment and so my guilt and need to be forgiven was clogging up the conduit. So instead of directing Love to Scott, I directed it to that young inexperienced mom that I used to be. At first I didn’t feel anything, and when I asked Holy Spirit what to do, He gave me the idea that I needed to return in feeling to that moment.

I really didn’t want to do that. It was not my best moment and I felt ashamed. But the idea of being able to forgive and to heal both Scott and myself motivated me to do this. I went right back to that time and felt everything as if it were happening right now. The difference is that I was also the compassionate watcher.

I felt all the emotions, the fear of not knowing how to be a mom, the guilt at doing so badly at the job, and I saw the moment when I chose the ego solution of projection. I felt all the anger and frustration of being a mother and saw it as the child’s fault. I sent Love to that young woman and in sending Love, I forgave her in my mind. The shame I felt before was replaced by compassion. It was a very emotional moment.

Once I had cleared that old grievance against myself I was able to direct Love to Scott. It flowed freely and this time the tears were tears of joy. I continued doing this process for awhile using different times in Scott’s life when memory suggested it would be appropriate. It makes a great five minute Christ meditation. Healing in this way feels like expressing myself as Christ. I did a lot of self forgiveness as well, a lot of releasing of the past. I am going to do more.

I wondered if it made any difference to the Scott I know now, and once that would have been a big thing to me because of the guilt I was carrying around about how I raised him. But without that guilt which had melted away with the forgiveness I was able to hear the Holy Spirit assure me that the gift of healing was waiting for Scott. He would accept it when he was ready.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Denial

Yesterday I was studying The Way of Mastery with a friend and we were talking about denial. So many times as Course students we fall into the trap of denying what we know is not ultimate truth. I know that personality is not ultimately real and who I am so when someone is talking about a book on personality types I shy away thinking it is just reinforcing the ego thought system. This is really just the ego joining me in my spiritual study bringing fear into it. But I like most students have done this sort of thing. I get sick and I say I can’t really be sick because I am not a body and Course students don’t believe in sickness. Well, ultimately I am not a body but right now I am having the experience of a body and that body might be sick. Anyway, I woke up with some clarity about that this morning and sent my friend an email with my thoughts. I am pasting that email here.

Thinking about our talk yesterday I wanted to add that there is a distinct difference in being aware of the personality that I have chosen to experience, and believing that I am that personality. Tom Hanks played a mob killer and he did it very well because he allowed himself to get into the role. He felt the way a killer feels, he acted like one, for awhile he immersed himself in the role and became that killer. But when he was through with the role, he shrugged all those feeling off and went on as himself until he took up another role. If he had felt guilty for playing that role and refused to fully be the killer he would not be a good actor. And acting like a killer did not make him a killer.

This is precisely what is happening to me. I am immersed in the character, Myron. I am doing this because I want to. I chose this character out of my perfect freedom. I am not afraid of playing this character and not in denial about the personality or anything else about the character including having a body with all the experiences that come with having a body. If the body is sick I am not going to feel guilty for being sick. If Myron is experiencing emotional upset I am not going to feel guilty or deny the emotional upset but go through the feelings.

I am learning something from this experience of being a personality or of being sick.I am learning what it means to be separate and I am deciding if I want to continue in this state. I would rob myself of this learning situation if I denied I was having it. When I am through with this part I will remove my attention from the character and like a soap opera character, Myron will be killed off or pass away in some suitably dramatic means. And I will go on as I was created, probably choosing another character to play or maybe watching myself in a repeat performance if I need to.

The important thing for me to remember is that I am not the character, Myron, and am unaffected by this brief performance. I remain as I was created. When I choose to remember this all the time, I will be an awakened Christ. I can choose to walk the earth as an awakened Christ, perfectly aware of my true identity and aware of everyone else’s. Then I won’t be fooled by all the other players. When they play the part of jerk, it won’t make me angry because I will know they are just playing a part and doing the same thing I did; using it to wake up. Won’t that be cool!

I was a little out of it yesterday and couldn’t get my mind around what I wanted to say. Probably because I was distracted by the plumbers and I realized later that day that I had forgotten to take my estrogen. My lead character is very dependent on magical means to stay sane. This is a helpful bit because I get to see what that form of separation creates and the evidence against separation piles up. It’s all rather funny when I think about it. Then I get caught up in the story again and forget it is funny.

© 2008, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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