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Study of Text, Chapter 12.VI.The Vision of Christ, P 2. 3-9-16

VI. The Vision of Christ, P 2

2 The Holy Spirit is your strength because He knows nothing but the spirit as you. He is perfectly aware that you do not know yourself, and perfectly aware of how to teach you to remember what you are. Because He loves you, He will gladly teach you what He loves, for He wills to share it. Remembering you always, He cannot let you forget your worth. For the Father never ceases to remind Him of His Son, and He never ceases to remind His Son of the Father. God is in your memory because of Him. You chose to forget your Father but you do not really want to do so, and therefore you can decide otherwise. As it was my decision, so is it yours.

Journal
In Lesson 70 Jesus says we are our own salvation and nothing outside us saves us. The Holy Spirit is not outside us. He is part of us, in our mind to help us remember the truth of our nature, and with us forever to protect our holy mind. He is the memory of God and the memory of us, what we are as part of God. He knows we have forgotten our Self, but He only knows us as we are.

God is the source of the Holy Spirit’s knowing and the Holy Spirit is the source of our knowing. We chose forgetfulness, but through the Holy Spirit we will choose awakening to the truth. Jesus has done this already, and so it is done for us as we are all one. All that is left is for us to accept our awakening.

Jesus gave us A Course in Miracles to help us understand that there is nothing in the illusion worth keeping, that we want to wake up from this dream, that it is safe to do so, and that we can do so. All we have to do is follow his simple instructions and as our mind heals, we naturally change our minds and choose God. There is nothing we need do to be what we are, and we have unlimited help to do what must be undone in order to remember our Divinity.

It seems so simple to do this work and so inevitable that I will awaken, I wonder how it is that I keep returning my mind to my ego story. I see I must still believe it has some value to me. I was reading something I wrote awhile back and laughed because it made clear why I think I need the ego. Here is what I said.

“All along I have a true will, the will I share with God. It sits alongside the small personal will that I have been listening to. I can reclaim my true will by simply desiring to do so. Sometimes I think that I have done this, and I feel such joy and peace you wouldn’t believe. I cannot imagine why I ever wanted a separate will.

Then I return to my separate made-up self and again I am enthralled with the idea that I need it. I think I need to defend myself against a co-worker and I cannot use God’s Will to attack so I pick up my little self will again. Or I think that I need to look different, or I need more money, or I believe I am guilty, and God’s Will does not recognize any of this as true, so I turn to the little will. It brings me proof that I am right to be afraid and offers me lifetimes of advice that has never met a single one of these needs.”

Ha ha! Why do I keep falling for this? Well, today is a new day, a clean slate. I am willing to look at whatever shows up in my mind that I still believe and think I need. Holy Spirit, I ask for your constant guidance today. Look with me at all these silly thoughts and correct them for me. I want only the truth. I want no defense, no attack, no guilt to remain in my mind. I want to feel safe and to feel loved. May I be always attuned to your loving and protective presence. Thank you.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Myron Jones.

Study of Text, Chapter 12: VI. The Vision of Christ, P 1. 3-8-16

VI. The Vision of Christ
1 The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you cannot lose your soul and there is no gain in the world, for of itself it profits nothing. To invest without profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost to you is enormous. For this investment costs you the world’s reality by denying yours, and gives you nothing in return. You cannot sell your soul, but you can sell your awareness of it. You cannot perceive your soul, but you will not know it while you perceive something else as more valuable.

Journal
I was reviewing Section III, The Investment in Reality, which talks about the real world. It says that we made the world we see by projecting ego thoughts from our mind. It also talks about the real world. Here again, Jesus is talking about the real world, or as he says here, “the world’s reality.” If I made the world I see with my ego thoughts, I can make a real world with the thoughts I think with God.

Yesterday I was annoyed with everything at work. Because my thoughts have both power and consequences, I made an anxious, unpleasant world. I sold my soul, so to speak, and got nothing good in return. As the day went on and I realized what I was doing, I withdrew my projections and accepted responsibility for my own experience. Peace returned. My powerful, consequential thoughts added to reality rather than to illusion.

Yesterday is just an example of how I have made a world so completely unlike reality and also an example of how I can undo that world. The world we see is a reflection of our thoughts. To change the world, we must change our thoughts. As Jesus tells us elsewhere in the Course, it is a matter of motivation. As I have given my ego thoughts to the Holy Spirit to be healed and thus have seen how different the world can be, I am highly motivated to continue this process.

Right now the world is unstable for me. I sometimes see the world as a frightening, vengeful place. But as my mind has healed, I have also seen a safe world that loves me and supports me. The only thing that changed is my mind. What kind of world do you think we will see when all of us have experienced this change of mind?

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: V. The Sane Curriculum, P 9. 3-7-16

V. The Sane Curriculum, P 9
9 Your learning potential, properly understood, is limitless because it will lead you to God. You can teach the way to Him and learn it, if you follow the Teacher Who knows the way to Him and understands His curriculum for learning it. The curriculum is totally unambiguous, because the goal is not divided and the means and the end are in complete accord. You need offer only undivided attention. Everything else will be given you. For you really want to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the decision of God’s Son. His learning is as unlimited as he is.

Journal
Of myself I can do nothing, but I am not of myself. I am of God and I have His Voice to lead me out of this interesting and awful story. I can teach as I learn and learn as I teach as long as I use my Guide, listen to His Voice and give Him my thoughts to be purified, corrected and sometimes just removed. There is no limit to my potential and I will follow my teacher to God.

I know this is true. I know the ego mind is a confused jumble of untrue thoughts. I know I am rapidly loosing interest in what it thinks it knows. I am very good at being vigilant for my thoughts, and always sooner rather than later, I will ask for healing. What is there left for me to do? I see a couple of ideas that I still need to practice.

I know that it is absolutely necessary that I have only one goal. As long as there are two goals in my mind, I am maintaining the split that is the ego. I know this but I still need to practice it. It is entirely too easy for me to pick up another goal and believe it is important, maybe even necessary. So this is something the Holy Spirit is helping me to be vigilant for. As soon as I see I have done this, I change my mind. This is my practice.

The other idea that needs my practice is that I divide my attention. I still listen to the ego sometimes rather than Spirit. Again, this is something that I am willing to let go. It seems harder for some reason. The ego mind chatters incessantly and eventually it chatters on about something that interests me. But I am learning to disregard it.

What seems to be helping me in this is to relax and allow and trust. I relax around my errors, I allow them to be healed and I trust that I am doing this and will succeed in spite of what are sometimes appearances to the contrary. Sometimes I want to question the Holy Spirit as to why I am not given more help.

The reason for this lack of trust is because I get constricted around my seeming failures and start to believe in them more than I believe in my Self. When this happens I realize that I am not being singular in my teacher or my goal. I relax again, quiet my mind, and wait for the comfort and the guidance that always comes.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12: V. The Sane Curriculum, P 8. 3-4-16

V. The Sane Curriculum, P 8
8 You who have tried to learn what you do not want should take heart, for although the curriculum you set yourself is depressing indeed, it is merely ridiculous if you look at it. Is it possible that the way to achieve a goal is not to attain it? Resign now as your own teacher. This resignation will not lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourself, and of the learning outcomes that have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor understand, you will become an excellent learner and an excellent teacher. But it is not so yet, and will not be so until the whole learning situation as you have set it up is reversed.

Journal
Our mind is split between God and ego, and as we use ego mind we are unable to learn or teach, because the ego mind has an absolute rule, that is, to seek and not find. So whatever I try to learn through the ego will inevitably fail, as will my efforts to teach. The part of my mind that is God can and will succeed in teaching and learning because it is not conflicted in its goal. All that is needed from me to be a successful learner and a successful teacher is that I listen to God only. With practice I have learned that I can do this, and doing it has taught me that I want to do it.

As part of my practice of learning to listen to only the God part of my mind, I have become very good at being vigilant for my thoughts. Yesterday, I was very aware of how the ego attempts to keep my attention and thus perpetuate the separation idea. First it gives me a problem. It attempts to disrupt the peace of my mind with either a possible future problem, or a regretful past.

If I am interested, that is if this thought triggers a belief in my mind, I think there is really a problem that needs to be solved. Then the ego attempts to give me a solution to the problem. The solution will not work, of course, because the problem is the goal, not the solution. This plays over and over in the mind. I have no idea if I can stop the ego attempts, but I can stop believing in them. I can stop listening to the ego by listening to the Holy Spirit instead.

I didn’t sleep much last night and the ego started in with the “problem of not much sleep” before I even got out of bed. Then it started in with solutions for this problem. I asked Holy Spirit what He would have me do with this, and the answer was to simply experience today without judging it. So when I have felt sleepy or foggy this morning, I have just sat back and enjoyed the feeling. It is not a problem unless I listen to the ego make it a problem.

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Study of Text, Chapter 12, V.The Sane Curriculum, P 7. 3-3-16

V. The Sane Curriculum, P 7

7 I have said that the ego’s rule is, “Seek and do not find.” Translated into curricular terms this means, “Try to learn but do not succeed.” The result of this curriculum goal is obvious. Every legitimate teaching aid, every real instruction, and every sensible guide to learning will be misinterpreted, since they are all for facilitating the learning this strange curriculum is against. If you are trying to learn how not to learn, and the aim of your teaching is to defeat itself, what can you expect but confusion? Such a curriculum does not make sense. This attempt at “learning” has so weakened your mind that you cannot love, for the curriculum you have chosen is against love, and amounts to a course in how to attack yourself. A supplementary goal in this curriculum is learning how not to overcome the split that makes its primary aim believable. And you will not overcome the split in this curriculum, for all your learning will be on its behalf. Yet your mind speaks against your learning as your learning speaks against your mind, and so you fight against all learning and succeed, for that is what you want. But perhaps you do not realize, even yet, that there is something you want to learn, and that you can learn it because it is your choice to do so.

Journal
When I read this I cried in frustration. It sounded like gibberish to me. I cried out to Jesus asking him what it means to me. Yesterday I spent the day going back and forth between my teachers, first feeling frustrated and angry, then asking the Holy Spirit to heal my mind and feeling peaceful, then back again to ego. I felt so discouraged with the whole thing and wondered if I could ever end this war in my mind. It didn’t feel like it could happen. By the end of the day I felt better, but some of that discouragement was left over in my mind this morning.

I don’t know why the ego is so strong in my mind right now. Maybe that part of my mind is afraid of the end. This morning it didn’t want to understand the meaning behind these words. It wanted to think that peace is impossible and that even if I understand the concepts, I can’t put them to work. It wants to believe that I am still the separated self and that isn’t going to change. What is the ego mind working so hard to hide from me? What does it not want me to remember?

Here is what comes into my mind when I ask that question. The ego doesn’t want me to recover the memory of being God, of choosing to have this experience, of everything I experience being something I want to experience, and something I chose. It cannot stop the flow of memories, but it can slow them down as it gets my attention with some drama or the other and I start to feel afraid or guilty because I believe the ego interpretation of it.

But what if everything that happens to me is perfect because it is helping me to wake up? What if all these dramas and fearful thoughts and even the things that I feel guilty about are what I am using to wake myself up. Battling my ego self over and over was frustrating, but in the end I chose God. When I got to the hotel I thought about the day and realized how often Spirit had helped me to see more clearly, how just the right thought entered my mind at just the right moment. At one point I felt such a strong desire to listen to a particular section of the Course while I was driving, and a little later when the ego was trying to bring me back into its story again, the words I had listened to helped me to see through the ego.

All of the things I thought and felt yesterday, while very uncomfortable, were actually helping me. I was given many opportunities to see what I don’t want to experience anymore, and many opportunities to make a different choice and to see that the choice is mine, always. How can I call that a failure? I had a necessary and important experience yesterday and today I go forward with more certainty than before.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 12: V. The Sane Curriculum, P 6. 3-1-16

V. The Sane Curriculum, P 6
6 You do not know the meaning of love, and that is your handicap. Do not attempt to teach yourself what you do not understand, and do not try to set up curriculum goals where yours have clearly failed. Your learning goal has been not to learn, and this cannot lead to successful learning. You cannot transfer what you have not learned, and the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure. Would you ask those who have failed to learn what learning aids are for? They do not know. If they could interpret the aids correctly, they would have learned from them.

Journal
Jesus continues to impress on us that we cannot teach ourselves. If you have been a good student of the ego, and a good student of the world, this can be a hard pill to swallow. I was a good student in most subjects, and took pride in that. What I did not excel in, I avoided so that I wouldn’t feel bad about myself.

Now what I have learned is that none of this matters. None of it means anything. It is all just more story, more illusion. I have found it useful to learn to communicate in words and to write. There are other things that have been necessary to learn in order to be in this dream. But what matters, what does have meaning, I can only learn through the Holy Spirit.

This is one lesson I have learned and fully accept. I know the difference between having an intellectual understanding of concepts, and knowing these things so that they are no longer concepts but reality. And I fully accept that this process requires my cooperation, but not my effort. I can read A Course in Miracles all day long, and listen to it all night long, and it will not become real to me for all that work.

What I can do is ask the Holy Spirit to show me what He wants me to know about each situation. I ask Him to heal my mind of the false thoughts I still hold. I do not accept as true any concept I have learned on my own until I have questioned it with the Holy Spirit. I ask Him to teach me what is true and what is false, and then I ask Him to remove from my mind what is not true.

When I notice I am making plans on my own, that I am making decisions without Him, I change my mind. I know this will only bring me more confusion if I keep doing it. I pay attention to my feelings and when I am not happy I know there is a thought that needs to be healed, and ask Holy Spirit for that healing.

Yesterday I was listening to a co-worker complain about the company. I noticed that I agreed with what he was saying, though I could see that he was trying to solve this problem on his own and as a result, he was feeling hopeless. That was the part I did not agree with. I know that with the Holy Spirit nothing is hopeless. Because of the conflict in my own mind, I asked Holy Spirit what to say to this man.

At first, I was doing good, stepping back, waiting for the words to say, but eventually, I started feeling like he was dragging me down to where he was. Later I took this thought to Holy Spirit. He told me that no one could drag me down. What happens is that my own beliefs, some of which I am unaware on a conscious level, get triggered. It was my own buried beliefs and fears that I was reacting to, not my co-worker.

Here is another thing Holy Spirit showed me. I thought I was disturbed by the situation. But the situation merely reflected the disturbance in my mind. In other words, fear, doubt and uncertainty were in my mind. Then the dissatisfaction and subsequent fear of what was going on in the company unfolded as this story of me and my co-worker having this talk.

The belief in the mind always comes first, then the situation. I was not afraid of what was happening at work, what was happening at work was the inevitable effect of my fear. Thank you, Holy Spirit. This is not something I could have taught myself. Even if I understood the concept, I cannot teach myself to know this in my heart. I cannot transfer this knowledge so that I know it in every circumstance of which I am aware. I gratefully retire as my own teacher and accept you as my teacher.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 12: V. The Sane Curriculum, P 5. 2-29-16

Chapter 12: V. The Sane Curriculum, P 5
5 You have learning handicaps in a very literal sense. There are areas in your learning skills that are so impaired that you can progress only under constant, clear-cut direction, provided by a Teacher Who can transcend your limited resources. He becomes your Resource because of yourself you cannot learn. The learning situation in which you placed yourself is impossible, and in this situation you clearly require a special Teacher and a special curriculum. Poor learners are not good choices as teachers, either for themselves or for anyone else. You would hardly turn to them to establish the curriculum by which they can escape from their limitations. If they understood what is beyond them, they would not be handicapped.

Journal
If you have a problem with math, don’t come to me. I can add and subtract and multiply, but beyond that, I have few skills. I would be a poor teacher of math. If you don’t understand algebra or geometry, you need a special teacher with a specific curriculum. And I assure you, if you are as lost in higher mathematics as I am, without a math teacher and without a curriculum designed for this special thing, you are going to be lost. You would not be able to teach yourself.

I did so badly in algebra when I was in school, that one time after I was grown, I decided to try it again. I went to the library and checked out a book written for math simpletons, like me. I did better with this special curriculum than I did in school, but without the right teacher, there was only so far I could go with it.

When it comes to love, I need a special teacher, even more so than I do in math. I have little understanding of what love really is. A Course in Miracles has provided me with a special curriculum, and the Holy Spirit is my Teacher. With this help I am beginning to recognize what is not love, and that is the foundation I was missing.

Here are a couple things that I have learned that help me recognize what love is not. It is not love when I yearn to be with someone because I feel empty. That is using the person, not loving them. It is not love when think that I am incomplete, that is neediness and it too leads to using. It is not love when I comfort someone who is grieving because that person’s grief makes me uncomfortable.

Here is something I have learned about love through my Teacher. Love isn’t something I find in someone else, and it is not something I can lose. I have learned that Love is what I am and so I don’t need someone else to provide it, nor can I lose it. And something else I learned is that in order to know the love that I am, I must share it. It is not something I get, but it is something I give, and it is something I recognize in the giving.

ACIM is a good curriculum, and the Holy Spirit is a good and faithful Teacher. I understand that I can progress only under constant, clear-cut direction, and I get this direction from Him. I choose to follow His Guidance and not turn to the ego mind that knows nothing. I have learned that much at least.

© 2016, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.