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Study of Text, Chapter 13: Introduction, P 2. 5-9-16

INTRODUCTION, P2
2 The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God’s Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end. The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws that seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds seem to be trapped in their brain, and its powers to decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and are no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel.

Journal
I don’t need to be convinced that the world is pretty awful. At its best, the world is still cruel because it always holds the threat of loss. When I love and feel loved, when I am at peace, when I am happy, I know that it will not last. Something will happen to undo this moment of respite from loss. So there is not a single moment of perfect love and perfect peace, when happiness is complete.

This world of uncertainty and loss is the result of guilt. It began when we accepted guilt into our mind, and thus separation began. I notice that Jesus says it began when we accepted guilt. So that means, guilt was not inevitable. We had a tiny mad idea, but was that the cause of our unhappiness? Or was it that the idea of separation brought with it the belief in guilt, and we accepted the belief as real? Isn’t that what we do now each time we choose to believe in guilt?

The world we see cannot be sustained without our moment by moment decision to keep it in place. We are deciding continuously for the world, and we do this by deciding continuously for guilt. When I think that I should not have said or done something, this is me deciding for guilt. Regret is past guilt held onto. Fear is guilt projected into the future. Someone else’s guilt is my guilt projected in an effort to be free of it.

When I read the news and think what a cruel act by someone, or when I judge a politician, or when I think that things should be different than they are, this is me deciding for guilt. What I am implying, even if I don’t use the words, is that the someone who acted cruelly is guilty for doing so, the politician is guilty for his policies, that the circumstances of my life are guilty for making me unhappy, and so they need to change.

Even when I think that it would be so good if my children would accept A Course in Miracles like I did, this is actually me saying they are guilty for not choosing what I think they should choose. I am implying that I would be happy if only they did what I want them to do, and that they do not make that choice makes them guilty for my unhappiness. In my mind, I or someone or even some circumstance is always guilty.

I was looking at a fence I paid to have constructed. I saw a flaw in the work, and I thought that the man who put it up for me should have done better. I thought that he was guilty of doing less than he promised. I felt foolish for hiring him. I thought I was guilty of bad judgment. I wondered if I made a mistake in choosing to spend my money in this way. Am I guilty for making a snap decision that I might come to regret?

And thus, the world I see continues to exist in my mind. As long as I continue to accept guilt as real and meaningful, pain and suffering and death will continue to exist for me. But there is a way out of the prison of guilt that I have designed for myself. My salvation is the Atonement. Just as I was free to accept guilt, I am free to accept the Atonement, and when I do I will have undone the separation.

I seem to accept the Atonement for this guilty thought or that guilty thought. I say to myself, I accept the Atonement in this situation. But there must come a time when all these acceptances lead to transfer of learning. Then I will know that guilt is not real, and I will know that there is only innocence. I will accept the Atonement and the world I see will be undone, and the real world will be revealed to me.

I cannot have the peace of God if I accept guilt into my mind, and I really believe that the peace of God is everything I want. Then the idea of guilt enters my mind, and obviously I think that keeping guilt alive is more important to me than the peace of God. I sometimes despair of this ever occurring for me. When I start to feel discouraged I think of others who have succeeded in awakening from this dream and I feel encouraged to keep making the choice for love.

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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, Chapter 13: The Guiltless World, Introduction, P 1. 5-5-16

Chapter 13: THE GUILTLESS WORLD
Introduction, P1

1 If you did not feel guilty you could not attack, for condemnation is the root of attack. It is the judgment of one mind by another as unworthy of love and deserving of punishment. But herein lies the split. For the mind that judges perceives itself as separate from the mind being judged, believing that by punishing another, it will escape punishment. All this is but the delusional attempt of the mind to deny itself, and escape the penalty of denial. It is not an attempt to relinquish denial, but to hold on to it. For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane.

Journal
I don’t think that I am the only one that has at some point questioned why it is that I have so thoroughly forgotten who I am and cannot remember my Father at all. When I wonder about that the ego warns that there is probably a good reason, and asserts that I am so evil that I dare not look within to find myself. When I doubt that I am all that evil, the ego quickly points out all my faults and reminds me of past behaviors of which I am not proud. It seems best not to look too deeply.

Then it warns that maybe I am hiding from my Father because I know He will condemn me for my evil. All we have to do is read the Old Testament to see how man has projected his fear onto God and sees God as vengeful, punishing and pretty scary. The ego says it’s best to leave well enough alone. Then it suggests solutions to this problem through projection, pointing the finger at someone else so I go unnoticed in my guilt.

And that is the real problem, guilt. I believe in guilt and from that one belief comes unworthiness, condemnation, punishment, fear, the need to be separate, and insanity. I feel guilty, and this makes me feel unworthy of love, and fearful of punishment. Ego’s solution of projection makes me believe that God is part of all this as I project the belief in guilt onto Him. Then I believe He is the ultimate source of punishment. I made of myself something with little resemblance to creation and then I reimagined God so that He was like me. Insanity.

Guilt has made so much fear in my mind that I see enemies everywhere I look, and thus I attack and defend against everyone and everything. I attack boldly and I attack in secret, sometimes so secret I don’t even tell myself I am attacking. I attack myself and I attack others. I even attack God. I feel like I must be in a constant state of defense because when someone attacks they expect to be attacked in return. There is a solution to this madness, and that is to understand that guilt is not real, and no one is actually guilty. There is no reason to attack and no one we need to

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Study of Text, Chapter 12, VII.The Attraction of Love for Love, P 8. 5-4-16

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 8
8 The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see. Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it. Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception. And as you look upon it you will remember that it was always so. Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly. Redeemed perception is easily translated into knowledge, for only perception is capable of error and perception has never been. Being corrected it gives place to knowledge, which is forever the only reality. The Atonement is but the way back to what was never lost. Your Father could not cease to love His Son.

Journal
We made the world we see, and when we are ready to let it go, God will give us the real world. All that we believe is real now will become invisible. Pain, suffering, guilt, fear, anger, jealousy, death, all will be invisible to us. The real world becomes visible to us as we accept correction of our perceptions. Our perception will be perfect so we will see perfectly, and redeemed perception is easily translated into knowledge.

As Jesus says in other parts of the Course, while we believe in the world, that is, while we believe in the ego, we strive for corrected perception, true perception. Once that is done, perception gives way to knowledge, and this is the return to God. Jesus wants us to understand that God was never lost to us because god would never cease to love us.

We think we have lost our place in Heaven because we don’t remember it, and we don’t see it. It is invisible to us, not because it is gone or because we are absent to it, but because we have blinded ourselves to it. Through accepting the Atonement we will open our eyes and see what has always been real. When we see reality, the illusion will not be seen.

It is helpful to know this, to be told that nothing is lost to us and that God still loves us. But it is necessary that we do the work that is needed to have our eyes opened. We must accept the Atonement. When I think about this I see it as choosing God over ego. I might use all sorts of processes to get myself to that point, but in the end, I simply decide for God.

This decision must be absolute for the ego to be undone, and so far I am still struggling with that decision. I know, it’s crazy, right? It would seem that the answer is obvious. Who wouldn’t trade in this painful existence for a blissful existence with no pain and suffering, with eternal life, where nothing is ever lost or lacking? Evidently, me. But every time I struggle through a situation, no matter how difficult it seems at the time, I come out of it changed. I have more clarity. My perception is closer to reality. I am closer than before to making that final choice for God.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 7. 5-3-16

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 7
7 Yet it does not matter how much distance you have tried to interpose between your awareness and truth. God’s Son can be seen because his vision is shared. The Holy Spirit looks upon him, and sees nothing else in you. What is invisible to you is perfect in His sight, and encompasses all of it. He has remembered you because He forgot not the Father. You looked upon the unreal and found despair. Yet by seeking the unreal, what else could you find? The unreal world is a thing of despair, for it can never be. And you who share God’s Being with Him could never be content without reality. What God did not give you has no power over you, and the attraction of love for love remains irresistible. For it is the function of love to unite all things unto itself, and to hold all things together by extending its wholeness.

Journal
My reality can never be lost to me because the Holy Spirit holds that vision. He looks at me and sees only God’s Son. I want that vision badly. I want to think of myself and know I am only God’s Son and nothing else. I want to look on everyone else and see only God’s Son. The reason I have this desire is that I am, in truth, Love.

I am an extension of Love and Love is all that I am. As Jesus tells us, the attraction of love for love is irresistible. It is my function, as love, to unite all things to itself and to hold all things together. Therefore, I long to know myself and everyone else as love, to know Oneness. This is why A Course in Miracles is so attractive to me, and why it is that when I picked it up I kept reading. I kept reading even as I wondered why it was that I believed every word in it. Certainly there was no logical (ego) reason to do so.

And even though I believed it then, and even though I practice it continuously now, it still feels like it is slow-going, and sometimes it feels impossible to me. When it starts to feel impossible it is because I have endowed the ego with power it does not have. My mind is conflicted as I choose to move toward God and at the same time refuse to relinquish some old belief that is not truth. Conflict causes suffering and so I can get discouraged.

One reason I get discouraged is that I seem to be fighting myself. It’s hard to see a winner in that scenario. Another reason I get discouraged is that the inner conflict is not always apparent. When I don’t acknowledge that my problem is myself, I think it is real. I think that the problem occurs in the world and that I absolutely must do something about it. The problem can take on frightening dimensions when this happens, and seem to overwhelm me.

Sometimes, even when I finally let it go, I still get ego thoughts that I can’t just pretend the problem doesn’t exist. Then I feel a twinge of fear in my gut and I have to decide if I want to follow it to inevitable misery or turn away from it. The ego fear thoughts can be compelling. It seems to make so much more sense that the problem is not just going to go away, that I must do something.

But no matter what is going on in my story, and no matter how often I get pulled into the drama of it, nowadays, I always hear the Voice that tells me that this is not real. It might seem like a faint whisper next to the frantic warnings of the ego, but it is there, and that Voice has its own attraction. It is the attraction of love for love.

That attraction is very compelling, not in the frantic way of the ego, but in the clarity and certainty of its message. God’s Voice calls to the divinity in me, that is me. I may have disowned that divinity, but I have not destroyed it. So I answer. I do this again and again and it gets easier and I answer more confidently and I accept the truth more quickly. This is how I wake up, maybe slowly, but gently and inevitably.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 12: VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 6. 5-2-16

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 6
6 Son of God, be not content with nothing! What is not real cannot be seen and has no value. God could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son receive it. You were redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him. Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it. Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is healed. You have made invisible the only truth that this world holds. Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing. By making nothing real to you, you have seen it. But it is not there. And Christ is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourself.

Journal

From the Daily Mail

The world you see around you is nothing but an illusion.
That’s according to cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman who claims we’re being tricked into believing our own reality.
He believes that what we are seeing around us is simply a façade that guides our way around a far more complex and hidden matrix.

Galileo once wrote: ‘I think that tastes, odors, colours, and so on reside in consciousness.

‘Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be annihilated.’

And Hoffman says, in some ways, he agrees with this statement.

‘Neuroscientists tell us that they are creating, in real time, all the shapes, objects, colours, and motions that we see,’ he said in a Ted Talk.

‘It feels like we’re just taking a snapshot of this room the way it is, but in fact, we’re constructing everything that we see.

‘We don’t construct the whole world at once. We construct what we need in the moment.’

This is exactly what we are doing. And what we see is actually in our minds. Through projection we give it the illusion of being “out there” but it goes nowhere because there is nowhere to go. We decide to see the impossible (separation) and so we do. But it seems we cannot believe in what we made, and at the same time see what is real.

Through the study and practice of A Course in Miracles, we are learning that this is what is happening, that we are through with the world we made up, and that we are ready to see what is real.

Jesus is telling us something very simple. He is saying that we see it because we value it. So in order to see reality, we only need to decide that the illusion of separation is not valuable to us, and we can let it go. Then what has always been there, but invisible to us because we wanted to see something else instead, will be made visible again.

Jesus has used the idea of a veil to help us understand. He said there is a thin veil between what we see and what is actually there. Have you ever peeked behind the veil? I have. I just haven’t made a permanent decision to recognize the veil is an illusion, too. I’m working on it though. I stay aware of the illusions I am most attached to and give my willingness to see through them to what is actually true.

I have done this one little idea at a time, but I think I am ready to let go some big chunks of the illusion. It feels hard sometimes because I become afraid. I’m not sure what it is I am afraid of; sometimes I think it is the fear itself. But I never stop giving it my attention and all the willingness I can.

I never make an exception. I might take awhile in letting go of an illusion, but I never refuse to try. There is no grievance, no false idea that I will refuse to confront. I will succeed, of course, because as Jesus says, I was redeemed the instant I thought I had deserted God.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 12, VIII.the Attraction of Love for Love, P 5. 4-28-16

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 5
5 You have but to ask for this memory, and you will remember. Yet the memory of God cannot shine in a mind that has obliterated it and wants to keep it so. For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remember, and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality. You who cannot even control yourself should hardly aspire to control the universe. But look upon what you have made of it, and rejoice that it is not so.

Journal
First Jesus tells us that we can have the memory of God simply by asking for it. Then he explains why we don’t have it. We obliterated that memory and we want to keep things the way they are. We want to keep our separate-self story going. We want to be that self and tell ourselves that we made this world and we control it.

That is what this is all about. I am Myron for better and for worse. I even take some kind of perverse pleasure in the worst, vying with my brothers to be more screwed up than them. Don’t try to tell me how perfect I am, I will just argue for my shortcomings, all the while trying to keep the world in balance as I secretly imagine that I am at least better than you.

I behold my kingdom and I strive daily to maintain this kingdom, to keep it going, to keep the drama and the comedy and the tragedies alive and active. Just ask me and I will tell you how to fix your problems and how the politicians should be doing their jobs. I will tell you the best way to deal with morning sickness and why it is we have more cancer now than in the past.

It doesn’t deter me at all that my advice changes by the day and sometimes by the hour. It doesn’t shake my belief that I am in control to see the whole world going to hell in a handbasket. I have a problem? I judge the problem and then I find solutions. You have a problem? I’ll do the same thing for you. Are you spiritual? My spiritual ego has the words to make my advice sound spiritual.

Everyone is my enemy but forewarned is forearmed, and I have many defenses at my disposal. I have spent my life collecting these defenses and learning how to wield them to best advantage. A sharp word here, a pretended humbleness there. I learned how to run away, how to divorce myself from my problems, how to hide from them and how to put them away and pretend they don’t exist. I learned very well, too well, how to project them onto someone else in an effort to be rid of them. I have learned to pretend that they are then gone.

All the world is a projection of yesterday and all the days before it. All the problems as I perceive them are past problems I have projected onto today. All the solutions are past solutions formed to look like something new and projected onto today. We know this deep inside and justify it by saying things like we need to study history so we don’t repeat it. Then we repeat it.

I am going to stop doing all this. I am going to stop using the ego mind to judge each situation and then, based that judgment, deciding what the solution must be. I am practicing doing it differently. Now I am asking the Holy Spirit to judge the situation first, and based on that judgment, I am allowing His solution to show itself to me.

I have begun to believe that in my defenselessness my safety lies. I am learning that when I defend myself I increase my fear. When my fear is greater, my defenses seem every more important. I feel like I need to defend against all this fear, and the belief in this fear calls for new and ever more elaborate defenses. And on and on the endless cycle goes. But I have invited in a higher power to overturn the ego’s regime and I am learning to look at the fears without defense and let them be undone for me.

I am learning to notice when my mind is in the past and then resting it in God. This is a baby step toward freedom from the illusion of separation and control, but it seems to be necessary that I start here. I cannot surrender this insane belief I can control the world until I stop bringing the past into the present, thus insuring the future will remain equally insane. I want a new, fresh present moment, and I want to be aware of it. So I have to get my head out of my… past.

I am becoming convinced that the world I made is not worth saving, that it has no value at all. I am becoming convinced that the self I made is worthless as well. All of it is without meaning of any kind, and completely without value. I am slowly and gently letting it go. What will the world look like without fear and guilt projected onto it? What will I look like without Myron projected onto me? How will I live in the world while I remain here? Who will I be, and how will I feel if not like Myron?

I don’t know the answer to these questions but I want to find out.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 12, VIII.thew Attraction of Love for Love, P 4. 4-27-16

VIII. The Attraction of Love for Love, P 4

4 Because of your Father’s Love you can never forget Him, for no one can forget what God Himself placed in his memory. You can deny it, but you cannot lose it. A Voice will answer every question you ask, and a vision will correct the perception of everything you see. For what you have made invisible is the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only Answer. God would reunite you with yourself, and did not abandon you in your distress. You are waiting only for Him, and do not know it. Yet His memory shines in your mind and cannot be obliterated. It is no more past than future, being forever always.

Journal
The reason I cannot fail to return to reality is that the truth is in my mind where God placed it, and it cannot be obliterated. It is not God’s Will that it be unavailable to me. This feels very encouraging to me when I get caught up in the ego thinking and become confused. I can feel lost and helpless when this happens. But I know I can find my way back so I never feel hopeless. Sorry, Mulder. The truth is not out there; it is within.

I understand now that my every question and my every desire is answered. Sometimes I don’t recognize it as such, but that is because I become confused about the question. My desire is happiness and peace, and when I misjudge the situation, I might ask for something that will bring me distress. Here is an example.

I saw something that made me think that I had lost a customer. I was very upset and I kept thinking about what this would mean to me, the lost income, and the lost status. I thought about how unfair this was because I had done such a good job for this customer. I felt upset and discouraged. I did not feel like God’s precious child, loved and cherished and safe.

I felt this way because I had judged the situation. I saw something that made me think I probably lost a customer. Then I asked the ego to advise me as to what that meant. The ego’s judgment was that I was being unfairly treated, and that I was endangered by this customer. I was a victim to his unfairness. Because of my judgment of the situation, my question was, how do I defend myself? And of course, the ego has a lot of solutions that only make matters worse and that make me feel even more vulnerable.

Seeing this, I cancelled out that judgment. I said that I did not have a question after all, because I forgot what to decide. Then I decided differently. I chose to ask the Holy Spirit for His judgment instead. I made Him my adviser in this situation, rather than the ego. I completely surrendered the entire situation and all my thoughts about it to my Guide. The first thing that happened was that I felt peaceful about it.

Then I realized I needed to release the idea that I am unfairly treated and that I am a victim. What happened simply happened, and it is not bad or good. I don’t know what to do about it, if anything, but I am open in case there are directions for me to follow. I notice the ego trying to get my attention by offering me those I might blame, but in my surrender, I lost interest in defending myself. Without defense, my fear began to fall away.

My answer seems to be that I should do nothing. This is an answer that would have seemed woefully inadequate if I was still judging the situation with the ego. Now it seems to make perfect since. There is nothing for me to do right now and so I will not do anything. Will I save this account? I don’t know. When it is time to act, I will do so as guided.

I am content with that answer because I know something now that I was blind to when I was listening to ego. Keeping this person as a customer is not my goal. Being his savior is. I am his savior as I see him for the perfect divine self he is, and as I love him without expectations. As I accept my part as savior of the world, I am saved as well. I am at peace and it is a peace that cannot be disturbed by outward appearances.