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Gentle Healing Journal Day 29 10-17-18

Journal for Day 29
LESSON 29
God is in everything I see.

I really understand image making now. Since God is in everything I see, obviously, when I look with my eyes, I don’t see anything as it exists. Jesus tells us this often in the Course. He says that my thoughts are images I have made. He says that we didn’t give the eyes the function of seeing.  “It is image making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions.”

So I don’t see anything real with my eyes. I see images I make to represent the thoughts in my mind, the things I believe. I have this physical thing going on right now. What does this image of a malfunctioning body represent to me? Perhaps, it represents the belief that I am a body, or that I am destructible, vulnerable, fragile.

As I accept what Jesus has been telling us for the last 29 days, I can look at this situation differently. I understand that the body is just an image itself and that any experience it has must be a hallucination. Just part of the image that represents these beliefs and that the beliefs can be questioned.

If I drew a Picasso like image of my face with strange angles and colors, this would not mean I look like that. I would know that this was just an image that represented some thoughts in my mind. The world I see is no different. It is a strange image of strange and untrue beliefs. Doing these lessons is helping me to question what I see and thus to question the beliefs the images represent.

Ultimately, in my questioning, I am opening my mind to vision.  I repeat yesterday’s desire. Above all else, I want to see what is really there. As I allow my beliefs to be corrected and my mind to be purified, this will happen as it has happened to others like Regina and Cate and Byron Katie and John Mark Stroud and Michael Langford, and Alisha, and Jan Frazier and many others that I don’t know. If it can happen for anyone, it can happen for everyone because we are one.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 28 10-16-18

Journal for Day 28
LESSON 28
Above all else I want to see things differently.

“You see a lot of separate things about you, which really means you are not seeing at all.”

Well, there’s a clue for you. Haha. I definitely see lots of different things, so clearly, I am not seeing at all. As Jesus says, I am only image making. My thoughts are images I have made. I have thought for a long time now that all is light or energy that coalesces until it is dense enough to appear as something that I want to see with my eyes.

I know this is just a concept, a thought in the mind that wants very much to actually see, but it is given some weight now by George yesterday. He said that he actually asked a Tibetan lama what an enlightened person sees when he looks at a cup. He said that the person would see “only energy.” So maybe I have been right about that, but I don’t want to be right, I want to see the essence of things, what is actually there. Above all else, I want to see.

And what does it mean to see? Will I see with this body’s eyes this keyboard as it actually is? Or will I see with my mind, with my spiritual eye, what it actually is? When I asked Cate Grieves about this, she said that she sees the world as we made it when she looks with her eyes, though even that sight is getting thinner. What she sees with her mind is something else altogether. She sees nothing as separate from anything else and everything as part of her. Oh, I really do want to see above all else. But of course, I don’t really or I would already. But I want to want this above all else.

So what I must do is withdraw my preconceived ideas about the keyboard. I must not bind its meaning to my tiny experience of this keyboard. I must not limit it to my little personal thoughts. I am so sure that I know about this keyboard. Can I let that all go? It seems impossible and yet, Jesus said he would not ask me to do anything I could not do. And what will I get for my effort? For one thing, “It has something to show you; something beautiful and clean and of infinite value, full of happiness and hope.” Oh my God, what a thought!

Really, all I am being asked to do is to withdraw my judgment from this keyboard; but not just judgment as I usually think of judgment. This is judgment that goes beyond whether it is a good keyboard or a bad keyboard, a judgment of whether it is ascetically pleasing or if it is easy to use or has convenient options. No, this is judgment at its fundamental core.

I am judging its meaning and I am committing to withdraw that judgment; to admit I have no idea what this keyboard is any more than I know what anything is. Evidently, I still have a belief that I need this world I made to have meaning. But, I also have a belief that I am wrong about that. I have a belief that I no longer care about the world I see and that I want more than anything else to relinquish all value I have ever placed in it. I am willing for this and I will surrender to that desire.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 27 10-15-18

Journal for Day 27
LESSON 27
Above all else I want to see.

Above all else I want to see what is real. I want to see what the world is made of and how we constructed it. I want to see what it was supposed to be like before the detour into fear and guilt. I want to see what bodies look like when seeing them without using the body’s eyes. I want to see what it looks like to be one within One.

Above all else, I want to see us as God’s perfect and beautiful creation. I want to see each person I meet without the taint of guilt. I want to see them as if they had just been created out of Godness, untouched by anything not God. I want to see every person as they truly are, and I want to perceive my own perfection as well.

Above all else, I want to see how guilt could never ever have touched me, not in any of my many lives. I want to see the pristine innocence of all of creation. I am not a body; I want to see what it is that I am. I want my perception of all that is to be clear and unmarred by an illusory past or a projected future.

Imagine! What am I, God? I want to remember. I want to see. I am determined to see. Above all else I want to see.
I took a chance today and talked to someone who is not familiar with these ideas. As part of an ongoing conversation, I suggested that what I seem to be is not what I am. I said that I am created by God like Himself. I think she was still with me so far. I said that God would not have created me to be so fallible, so weak and vulnerable, so mortal. She was still with me though her expression shifted a bit toward confusion, but in for a penny, in for a pound.

I told her that either this body and its story are not what God created, or God is insane. We both agreed that probably God is not insane. So, I told her, this body and its story must not be who I am. She is with me again now, seeing the logic. I then told her that my job is to shed everything about me that is not like God and then the real me will be revealed. Some of the confusion cleared and a little light came on behind her eyes. We both agreed that revealing our true nature was possible and a whole lot easier than having to somehow become like God. Above all else I am determined to see the real me, the me that is like God.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Journal Day 26 10-14-18

Journal for Day 26
LESSON 26
My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability.

“And what would have effects through you must also have effects on you.”

All attack begins in my mind; it begins with the belief in attack. If I believe in attack as valuable, I will attack others in defense of myself. However, it is the belief in attack that makes me think I need defense, so even though it may appear as if the attack began outside me, it did not. It began in my mind that held the belief in attack and valued that belief.

“Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so.”

If I want to be free of attack, it is essential that I accept the premise that attack begins and ends in the mind. I remember a story about Byron Katie. She was asked to do The Work in a country that was considered unstable and dangerous. Her friends were afraid for her and tried to talk her out of going. Katie had no fear because she knew that there was no harm in her so no harm could come to her.

This is freedom. And it is possible for all of us because it is our natural state. However, nearly all of us have a strong sense of vulnerability. Even as I have come to believe what Jesus says about this, that the vulnerability is not a fact but something we taught ourselves to believe, I still have attack thoughts. It takes great vigilance and determination to undo this kind of thinking.

This morning, I am waiting for a call from my doctor about my lab reports. I wonder what they will say and what that will mean for me. So this is one of the ideas I am practicing with. I am afraid they will indicate the necessity for surgery. I am equally afraid they will be inconclusive and leave me without a solution.

To be clear, I am not frantic or obsessed with this, but the idea is in my mind and is attacking my sense of invulnerability. One of the results is that I notice a tendency to project my unease onto the doctor’s office. If they would get back to me as they should have already, the mystery would be solved and I would feel calmer about it.

And yet, are the lab results necessary to my peace of mind? As Katie might suggest, “I want the lab reports to give me peace of mind? Why not cut out the middleman and give it to myself. Peace of mind is not dependent on anything happening, but on my decision to have it. It becomes clear that my upset is in my mind and so is the solution.

If I don’t hear something today, I will call the doctor’s office in case someone dropped the ball. But the outcome, one way or another is not the point. The point is that I am attacking my invulnerability with my attack thoughts. Whether I am attacking my peace of mind or I am attacking the doctor, it is all the same. Attack leaves me feeling vulnerable.

Additional thoughts
I used this example not because there is anything wrong with taking care of the body, but that I have been anxious to hear what the tests showed, and anxiety is an attack on my invulnerability. It says that I am at risk, that I am not safe.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Journal Day 25 10-12-18

Journal for Day 25
LESSON 25

I do not know what anything is for.

The sentence that stands out to me in this lesson is that everything is in my own best interests. There was a time when I argued that point. How could being sexually abused as a child be in my own best interests? How could being sick and losing loved ones be in my own best interests? How could being impoverished be in my best interest?

I know now that the argument was not about any of those things, but rather that I simply did not want to give up the idea that I could finally discover a way to change the world so that it was kinder and gentler to me. I just hated the idea that not only was it impossible for me to change certain things but that on a different level, I was responsible for all that I experience. That desire to reject my responsibility extended to rejecting that I would have to change my thoughts if I wanted the world to be different, and it wasn’t going to happen tomorrow.

Once, I faced these objections and let them go, I looked at the fact that I judged all things according to how they affected my personal interests. I let that go, too as I realized that there is not actually a personal self in the sense that I perceived it. All things affect all aspects of the Sonship.

The Holy Spirit sees everything as either true or not true, whereas, the ego sees everything as either good or bad. So there was another area that I had to learn to see as the Holy Spirit sees. I had to learn that concepts are unimportant because nothing we think we know is absolute truth, it is only either helpful or not helpful.

As my mind has been purified a great deal, and as these ideas have been settled in my mind, it has become easy to see that everything is in my own best interests. If I care to use all situations for my awakening, I see that they are either helpful or not, true or not. I see that the personal story of Myron is really more of a parable than anything else and so it is a way to see what yet needs to be healed in the mind.

Yes, it does seem like there is a personal awakening going on here along with the awakening of the Sonship as a whole. And that is a good place to work from. It is the reason that Jesus tells us later that our only function is to accept the Atonement for ourselves. But as we each accept the Atonement, it is being accepted within the Consciousness of which we are all a part, and the Consciousness is being healed.

So as we each let go of the idea of personal interests and personal goals, and accept that our only goal is the peace of God, Awakening occurs on both levels. And everything that occurs within these interesting stories of life as a human brings us closer to that Awakening if that is our goal. If one is not yet ready to think about awakening, the life stories are helpful anyway as they bring each person closer to the day that they will be ready. There is, after all, a limit to how much pain we can withstand before we start looking for a better way. So everything really is in our best interests.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Gentle Healing Journal Day 24 10-10-18

Journal for Day 24
LESSON 24
I do not perceive my own best interests.

I don’t perceive my own best interests. In order to accept what Jesus is telling me, I must accept the premise on which it is based. The reason I don’t perceive my own best interests is that I make that determination based on my perception of the situation and my perception is wrong.

Since I have experienced being completely wrong about what things mean, and have experienced this often, I am fully willing to accept that premise. Of course, the ego wants to hedge its bet and argue that sometimes I know what a thing means and what it is for. At one time, I would have been in agreement with ego, but I know better now. The one thing I know for sure is that I don’t want the ego directing my life.

If I am using my thinking mind, that is, the ego part of the mind, then I do not know anything. Here is what I have experienced. I am continually making decisions based either on what the thinking mind tells me or I am making decisions based on what comes through my holy mind. It can be something very simple, such as what I should do next.

Yesterday, I had some free time and I was trying to decide how to use it. If I was using the form of this lesson, here is what it would have looked like. In this situation involving this free time, I would like to get some more writing done, I would like to watch TV, I would like to meditate, I would like to read my current book, I would like to work on my 4th step.

I stood there in the middle of the room considering each possibility and discarding some of them for various reasons and having trouble coming to a conclusion. Then the thought came into my mind that I don’t have to decide with my thinking mind. I asked the question of my Inner Guide, what should I do next and I waited a moment. I felt to go to Walmart.

There were a couple of things I needed, but the reason seemed to be that I needed to get out of the house and I needed to walk. This came to me in snippets of thought, but it felt so right that I picked up my keys and went without giving it any thought. I am teaching myself to check in with Inner Guidance rather than making decisions with the ego mind. This particular decision may not seem earth shattering, but it is another opportunity to do this practice.

Here is one of the situations that I used this for this morning’s practice.
In this situation in which I am uneasy about what my lab work said, I would like the doctor to call me today and let me know, I would like the lab work to give a definitive answer to my problem, I would like the lab work to point to the solution, I would like the lab work to come back negative, I would like to get the surgery and get it over, I would like the surgery to correct the problem, I would like to be rid of the symptoms listed and other symptoms not listed, I would like to just let the problem be healed in the mind that thought it and keeps it going by continuing to think it.

But the thing is, I don’t perceive my own best interests in this situation. I know that I don’t, so wishing for anything is kind of silly. Even just wanting it to be over may not be in my own best interests. Sometimes we take a circuitous path to get to our destination because there are lessons to learn on the way. Don’t want to miss any of those lessons just to get things done and over. I think I am just going to allow, accept and trust and so let my mind return to peace.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 23 10-9-18

Journal for Day 23
LESSON 23
I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.

This is one of the lessons I live by, one that I consider essential to my awakening. To say that I give up attack thoughts is the same as saying that I will hold no grievances and that I will make no one guilty, including myself. It is the return to innocence and the return to peace. I woke up at 3:00 this morning and when I tried to go back to sleep, the ego mind thought this would be a good time to review all fears in my mind, the old ones I thought were gone as well as the recent ones.

Just because a fear thought shows up doesn’t mean I still believe it, but if it causes me distress, I am not done with it. Sometimes I can just look at an old thought and ignore it and sometimes I can see that it is still relevant to me today and I can change my mind about that. Last night, the thoughts were coming so fast and so hard that I couldn’t use my usual process.

What I did instead was to look for the opposite and true thought and I started trying to place my focus there. That helped but did not end the barrage of thoughts. I finally used a guided meditation and doing that helped to break the cycle of thinking. I went back to sleep and when I woke up the whole thing felt ridiculous to me.

There are some ideas in this lesson that I am paying attention to.

“The idea for today contains the only way out of fear that will ever succeed.”

This is why I treasure this lesson. It is the only way out of fear. Nothing else will work. It is simple and straightforward. I only need to be aware of what is an attack thought. It would seem that this is easy to spot but I realize that sometimes we don’t recognize a thought as being an attack. Jesus mentions some of them in the book, In the World but Not of It.

Judgments are attacks.
Examples of the ego’s judgments disguised as questions or observations:
He sure likes to eat! (implying he eats too much)
I don’t understand why she does that. (implying her behavior is abnormal or strange)
What is going on with that? (implying something is silly or stupid)
He’s being so nice today. (implying that is unusual)
I like these examples because it reminds me that there are many ways to attack without seeming to be doing that. It helps me to be honest in my vigilance.

“There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect.”

The world is an effect of our thoughts. As Jesus says, all thought produces form at some level. So thinking the change needs to occur in the world is like believing I need to fix my lipstick smudge by smoothing it out on the mirror. It won’t work. What can change the world is to change what caused it. This is why I am vigilant in my thinking. What am I thinking and what effect does this thinking cause. Change the cause and the effect automatically changes.

“The idea for today introduces the thought that you are not trapped in the world you see because its cause can be changed.“

We are never the victim of the world. We are the maker of the world and we can change what we made. Here is the way it is done.
Step 1. The cause must be identified. We must realize what it is that we believe that caused the effect we are seeing in the world.
Step 2. We must let that belief go. This can feel hard if we still think it has value. When we decide that we don’t know what is valuable but we do know that we want to be free of our hallucination, we gladly surrender to purification and we let that belief go, trusting it is the right thing to do to achieve our goal of freedom.
Step 3. Let it be replaced. This is the only step that is not our responsibility. I can help myself stay the course by focusing on the truth. What this does is it keeps me from falling back into the ego beliefs. But, “our images have already been replaced. By taking the first two steps, we will see that this is so.” What we seek is already within us, or put another way, Heaven is within.

© 2018, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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