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Gentle Healing Journal Day 22 10-8-18

Journal for Day 22
LESSON 22
What I see is a form of vengeance.

This lesson describes the horrific cycle of attack and defend and how it perpetuates the illusion. If I hold attack thoughts in my mind, then I will perceive a world as attacking me. If I let attack thoughts just slide through my mind without giving them power through my belief in them, I will perceive the world differently.

I used to be very confused about how to perceive sickness. When I got sick enough that going to the doctor was necessary, I felt guilty, like I was betraying Jesus by not accepting healing of the body through mind healing. I felt like a failure. So when I did go to the doctor it was as if he were the symbol of my failure and so I did what humans tend to do, I projected my guilt onto him, and so attacked him. Mostly in my mind, but I did attack.

And, of course, I didn’t receive the help I went for, or if I did, I didn’t feel good about it. I often thought that he was not a good doctor, when all along, I was not a good patient. Later, I matured in my understanding of the Course and I no longer felt wrong for going to the doctor. I just thought of the doctor as my partner in the healing of this body. I worked on healing my mind and he worked on healing my body, and I accepted both healings to the degree I was able.

What happened is that I started finding my way to doctors that I liked and appreciated, doctors who seemed always to have my best interests at heart and appeared to be very competent at their jobs. All of this occurred because I made a decision to disrupt the cycle of attack and defend. I no longer had any desire to take vengeance on myself for “seemingly” betraying Jesus with my sick body, and so I no longer experienced vengeance from the medical community in the form of poor or mediocre doctors.

This is the way all attack thoughts work. If we believe we are being attacked and that attack in return is justified, our life becomes a war zone with no peace in sight. It happens in relationships the same way. When I was married, I held my husband’s behavior against him and felt justified in defending myself.

The very fact that I thought I needed defense increased my belief in an unsafe relationship, and so of course I believed that more defense was needed. It was a crazy self-perpetuating cycle. Eventually, I had to ask for another way to see because even divorce did not relieve the distress. Deciding that I was done with vengeance and done with suffering, and deciding that I was willing to do whatever it took to be at peace is what broke that cycle.

What I think, I see
Here is how Regina starts her discourse on the cycle of seeing and believing.
It is simple: Mind decides an idea is valuable or meaningful, and through this decision that idea becomes manifest in some way. When it is manifest, it is experienced. If mind decides the experience has importance or meaning, it seems real. Once an idea is experienced as real, it is like a mesmerizing spell that mind ignorantly believes and the spell continues as real.

To wake up from this cycle, one must choose to step outside of the spell-continuance process. One may step out at the level of mental idea or one may step out at the level of manifest experience. Either way, the step out process is the same. One must see that the idea or experience is not meaningful. One must not give it value or importance. One must return to the constant spiritual practice of Self-inquiry and Self-watching.

Here is what I read in ACIM in Lesson 325. It is very similar, I think.
1 This is salvation’s keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own. ...

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 21 10-7-18

Journal for Day 21
LESSON 21
I am determined to see things differently.

“You will become increasingly aware that a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury.”

This is one of those statements in the Course that changed everything for me. Before this, I believed that there were degrees of anger. I still sometimes say that I am annoyed or irritated, but that desire to mitigate the rage is always followed by the awareness that I am kidding myself. Sometimes, I am blessed with the actual undisguised rage. It will just rise up in me and let me see it. It is a blessing because it takes me out of denial and I understand how destructive it is, and I become certain that I have no desire to keep it.

I thought I would have a hard time finding anger. I seldom get angry anymore, I thought. But Jesus said to “Remember that you do not really recognize what arouses anger in you, and nothing that you believe in this connection means anything.” As I opened myself to guidance in this, and became willing to see whatever needs to be seen, it became clear that I do have unacknowledged anger. Shoot, it even makes me angry that I have this work to do, that I had been fooling myself about this. But I am determined to see this differently.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 20 10-3-18

Journal for Day 20
LESSON 20
I am determined to see.

“What you desire you will see. Such is the real law of cause and effect as it operates in the world.”

Absolutely everything I do as I practice A Course in Miracles, including this lesson, is to open my mind to what I really want and to decide to have it. This is so very simple and while it used to feel very hard at times, it now feels much easier. I might get bogged down in an ego story for a little while, but I have so many ways to bring me back to sanity that the insanity is brief for the most part.

I now recognize the ego and I know that the ego can be the cause of my distress or it can be the way out of my distress. It is up to me. If there is an ego thought in my mind, I can accept it as if I have no choice and suffer for believing it. Or I can deny what is clearly not true regardless of the apparent effects of that belief and watch everything change.

I recognize that I want to be happy and I want to be free. I used to be confused about that to the point that I didn’t recognize happiness or freedom. I believed that competitive little ego self of mine when it said that being right and winning was happiness. I believed it when it said that making decisions on my own was freedom.

I have so much more confidence in my ability to choose again what I want, and in the power of my thoughts to bring me joy as easily as it has brought me pain. I have much more confidence in myself as God created me than I used to. While it is not complete confidence, it is enough to sweep me forward on this path and make my way smoother and easier.

I don’t see today’s practice as a burden. I look forward to it because I am determined to see. I want to open my spiritual eye and see the world in a different light. I want never to close it to the truth again. In a moment of confusion yesterday, I asked for help in seeing and I received my answer. I am awakening, no doubt about it, and I am helping others to awaken.
I am a teacher of God. Whatever thoughts deny this can only be meaningless and of no interest to me. I am determined to see the truth.

PS: A couple of days ago I awoke to pain in my lower back. That is the illusion. The truth is that pain is not real. For these two days I have been thinking as if pain could be real, but as I read this lesson again, I am reminded that I am determined to see. I see that for whatever reason, I have projected an image of pain, and I see that I am now unwilling to believe in that image. Whether the pain disappears from my mind or not, I am free of the belief that it is now or ever has been real. Thank you, Holy Spirit.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 19 10-2-18

Journal for Day 19
LESSON 19
I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.

With the very first thought that came to mind, I had two immediate and strong responses. The first was that this thought is creating effects and I am experiencing them. Is this something I want to sustain? Do I want these effects in my life? I already knew that my experiences come from my thoughts, but looking at the thoughts one at a time like this made this idea real in a different way.

I was aware of the emotional response to that thought and I could see what it was going to do to my life if I continued to believe it. The ego mind didn’t see a way out of believing it, but Spirit reminded me that it was just a thought. Thought has power only if I believe it and choose to keep it. I can just as easily accept the opposite thought as true. This is what I did.

The second response was the realization that this thought if believed would produce effects that would touch all of the Sonship. Jesus was right when he said it seems to carry with it an enormous sense of responsibility. That was exactly what it felt like to me. But, while it is a responsibility, it is also an opportunity.

When I notice a dark thought in my mind, I have a choice to make. I can keep that thought and continue to believe it, and thus empower it, or I can use this opportunity to enlighten not just my mind, but also our shared mind. This is my purpose, after all, and I can choose to be glad of it just as easily as choosing to feel burdened by it.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 18 10-1-18

Journal for Day 18
LESSON 18
I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.

“Today’s idea does not refer to what you see as much as to how you see it. Therefore, the exercises for today emphasize this aspect of your perception.”

We project the world we see and then we decide what it means. We often share our projections. We are in agreement about the world we see on the whole. We agree on the sky and stars and planets. We agree on the landscape in general. So when we look at the world our eyes show us and believe it is real, we reinforce for all of us the belief in these agreed upon illusions. We keep all of us in thrall to the ego. When we accept that the world is part of our hallucination, we loosen the hold the ego has on the mind and thus we bring all of us closer to freedom.

Jesus says this: “Christ-controlled miracles are part of the Atonement. But Christ-guidance is personal and leads to personal salvation.”

Here is what I think about this expressed as an example. For a while after Trump was elected, I held him in contempt, and this caused me to lose my peace and forget my purpose.

When I could no longer tolerate the lack of peace, I asked for correction. I asked for another way to see this situation and this man. Because I was wholehearted in my desire for peace, the shift in thinking was immediate and I was again at peace. I began to pray for my brother rather than curse him. This guidance I received was for my personal salvation.

But it does not end there. When I was in contempt, I was feeding contempt into the Consciousness and strengthening hatred within the Sonship. When I chose healing instead, I began to feed love and peace into the Sonship. In both cases, the Sonship (all of us) was affected by my choice. Whoever was receptive to the belief in hatred was influenced by that choice. Whoever was receptive to awakening was influenced by my healed thoughts. So I was never alone in the experiencing the effects of my seeing.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 17 9-28-18

Journal for Day 17
LESSON 17
I see no neutral things.

“It is always the thought that comes first, despite the temptation to believe that it is the other way around.”

Here is what I used to think. I would look at my computer and have thoughts like this.
I’m so happy to have this computer.
I like my MAC so much more than any PC I’ve ever owned.
I hope nothing ever happens to it.
I wonder if I should extend my warranty.

Clearly, I am not seeing a neutral computer. In the past, I believed that I saw the computer and then had thoughts about it. But that’s not the way it works. I have thoughts about the computer and then I see it and how I see it depends on my thoughts.

The first computer I ever had sat in a box for 6 months while I got over my uneasiness. I was afraid to take it out because I didn’t know anything about it or how to use it or even what it could do. Obviously, the computer was not frightening of itself. I gave it that meaning with my thoughts. It was just an inanimate neutral piece of plastic and metal and glass until I had thoughts about it.

My computer sits on a desk. The desk is just pieces of wood hammered together and stained a color. It has no meaning other than the meaning my thoughts give it. The reason it is not neutral to me is that my thoughts about it are not neutral. The desk did not have meaning and then I noticed the meaning.

My thoughts came first and I projected those thoughts onto the desk and gave it meaning and now it is not neutral. I tried to have neutral thoughts about the desk and couldn’t. I perceive the desk in a certain way, but the perception was not created by the desk, but by my thoughts about desks. Why is it important for me to understand this?

I have a person in my life who gets on my nerves. The thought in my mind was that she has an irritating personality. But that cannot be the reason because that would mean that perception had no cause and was itself the cause of reality. That cannot be right because some people like her very much. Sometimes, I like her, myself. Could reality be so variable?

It makes more sense to realize that what I see in this person comes from my thoughts, and clearly, my thoughts are not neutral when I think of her. If I want to perceive this person differently, I can do a root cause inquiry to discover what it is in me that is being triggered so that I can let that thought go. Without that thought, my perception of this person will change. What this lesson tells me is that the world is made from thought and thought is not neutral.

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Gentle Healing Journal Day 16 9-27-18

Journal for Day 16
LESSON 16
I have no neutral thoughts.

“Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact.”

Could Jesus be any clearer than this? We have a thought (believed) and this thought along with others like it, manifest as the world we see. Another way to say this is that the thoughts are projected onto the screen we call the world. Our thoughts matter whether they are true or not. True thoughts create in their own likeness and false thoughts make theirs.

For the last 16 years, I have consistently watched my thoughts and asked for healing as I became aware of the dark ones. I accepted healing where and when I could. I learned to do this from practicing what I learned in Inner Healing by Dan Joseph. Why did I do this? Because there is only one way to peace and that is through changing our thoughts. Our thoughts got us here and our thoughts keep us here or release us.

“Besides your recognizing that thoughts are never idle, salvation requires that you also recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war; either love or fear. A neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible.”

I remember what Regina said about the Creative Principle. *Do I want to feed Consciousness with true thoughts or with untrue thoughts? It is not a small thing to choose peace and love. No matter what thought comes from Consciousness, no matter how dark the thought, I have a choice about what I do with it. Will I empower it with my belief and send it back in to return to me another time and to affect others as well? Or will I rob it of power by refusing to invest it with my belief? I will do one or the other. It is up to me.

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