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Study of Text, Chapter 10, II. The Decision to Forget, P 6. 5-21-15

II. The Decision to Forget, P 6
6 If you realized the complete havoc this makes of your peace of mind you could not make such an insane decision. You make it only because you still believe it can get you something you want. It follows, then, that you want something other than peace of mind, but you have not considered what it must be. Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear, if you will only look at it. By deciding against your reality, you have made yourself vigilant against God and His Kingdom. And it is this vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Him.

Journal
I have created a closed cycle that keeps me in the illusion. I made a decision to experience myself as separate from God and His Kingdom and to keep this impossibility believable I must be vigilant against truth. I must dedicate myself to keeping reality from my awareness. How very hard that must be! As it turns out, the necessity of guarding against God is what causes fear of God.

I imagine it this way. I wanted to experience something entirely impossible and so I walled off a part of the mind. I made a room with a door that I could close. Now I have a place where reality cannot intrude and I am able to have the experience I want as long as I am careful to keep that door closed and to guard against reality coming into my imaginary room, which will happen the moment I stop guarding against it.

And thus the endless cycle. I must of necessity, keep reality at bay, or I cannot have this experience. This requires that I be vigilant against God and this very act of vigilance against God makes me afraid of God. See how perfectly I set this up? See how the use of guilt and fear keep the illusion in place?

How to get free of this closed cycle is the question. This was planned for, too. We might be curious creators playing in the field of infinite possibilities, but we are not powerful enough to actually undo Reality, nor would we want to. No, we have an exit strategy. We have the Truth in our mind waiting for us to call upon it. We also have the plan to help us remember our desire to awaken and to gently guide us through the process. For us, this plan is laid out in A Course in Miracles.

I love how my study of the Text often coincides with my study of the Lessons. This morning in the Lessons Jesus was talking to us about how our mind holds only what we think with God. Before I wrote in my journal about this, I asked him to help me understand what he was saying. This is what I got. Notice how perfectly it fits in with this paragraph in the Course.

From Introduction to Review IV.

Jesus says that this review is preparing us for the second part of learning how the truth can be applied. It is getting us ready for what comes next. I like the sound of that. It feels like graduating to the next level in school, this anticipation of what comes next. Because everything so far has turned my thought system completely upside down, it at first seemed hard.

But really, all I am learning is that I am not the body and personality that I thought I was. This is not my life. And these are not even my thoughts that I seem to think all day long. What Jesus wants me to focus on now is that none of this could be true because my mind holds only what I think with God. So if I seem to be thinking something that is clearly not what I would think with God, then I must not be thinking at all.

It doesn’t seem reasonable at first because I have given so much weight to this mind chatter, and I have told myself that the ego mind I made up is just as real as the mind I share with God. But in reality, the ego mind that is filled with false thoughts is not real. It is just a construct made for the purpose of experiencing something that is not possible.

My real mind holds only what I think with God. Clearly, this is my salvation. Yes, I have a made up mind, a construct to allow the separation idea to play out, but I also have the mind I share with God, which is my true mind. They are both within me and that means I can become aware of my true mind any time I want to.

What is it that is blocking my awareness? Guilt, fear and all its variants are what stands between me and the state of Heaven, of knowing the Mind of God. How do I remove those blocks? I remove them by understanding that they are not real and so it is possible to be free of them, and by wanting to be free. Then the Holy Spirit removes them for me. It is simple and straight forward, however difficult it might seem.

Guilt feeds on itself and creates fear which can paralyze. The ego mind makes it seem so terribly hard, so complicated. And yet, I don’t have to do anything to return to my God. I don’t have to learn to think differently. I don’t have to get rid of the ego thoughts.  I only have to desire to remember, because in actuality, my mind holds only what I think with God.

The return is not about doing anything to be what I am. It is simply a matter of turning away from the belief that the dream is real, and that I want to keep dreaming it. In that moment, reality comes rushing in and I am that I am. I look forward to this review, to sitting in quiet and allowing the Word of God to do its healing work in my mind.

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Study of Text, Chapter 10, II. The Decision to Forget, P 1. 5-13-15

II. The Decision to Forget, P 5
5 All attack is Self attack. It cannot be anything else. Arising from your own decision not to be what you are, it is an attack on your identification. Attack is thus the way in which your identification is lost, because when you attack, you must have forgotten what you are. And if your reality is God’s, when you attack you are not remembering Him. This is not because He is gone, but because you are actively choosing not to remember Him.

Journal
I have understood and accepted that when I attack someone, anyone, I am attacking myself. I know this is true because I feel the loss of peace and I experience fear, because when I attack I am teaching myself that I can be attacked. But what Jesus is saying here is a little different. He is saying that when I attack I attack my Self. All attack teaches me that I am something I am not. It obscures my reality because I am doing something that is completely outside my reality.

Further, he says that this is a deliberate choice. I lose all sense of my identity when I attack and I do this because I want to forget who I am, so I can be something else. I accept this as well. I do understand now that I am not this body/personality that I have so closely identified with. I understand that I wanted to have this experience and so I did. I choose to forget this and then I choose to remember it. Back and forth, now, as I begin to awaken.

Ultimately, Jesus is explaining that the real loss for us is that in choosing to forget our true identity we are choosing to forget God. We are, in reality, an extension of God. Our reality is the same as God’s and so to have a different experience, to know ourselves as less than divine, we must forget not only our identity, but we must forget God’s as well.

It is a little scary to realize that I deliberately chose to forget God, and that every moment I choose to see myself as a body, as separate, I am doing it again. As Jesus has told us before, we did not destroy God or lose God, we just chose to not be aware of God, so we are not guilty. But when we deliberately forget God, we become afraid of God, not because he is scary, but because we forgot Him.

The ego mind argues that I didn’t forget God, that I think of God a lot and pray to Him. But I don’t remember God. I don’t remember His nature. I don’t remember what it feels like to be part of Him, and so I don’t remember my own nature or what it feels like to be my Self. I am beginning to long for that memory to return to me. That has to be a good thing.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: II. The Decision to Forget, P 4. 5-19-15

II. The Decision to Forget, 4
4 When you attack, you are denying yourself. You are specifically teaching yourself that you are not what you are. Your denial of reality precludes the acceptance of God’s gift, because you have accepted something else in its place. If you understand that this is always an attack on truth, and truth is God, you will realize why it is always fearful. If you further recognize that you are part of God, you will understand why it is that you always attack yourself first.

Journal
If I attack someone it is because I feel threatened. As I am in truth, I cannot be threatened. I am Spirit, the Son of God, invulnerable and perfectly safe. No harm has ever come to me and cannot ever come to me. But when I forget what I am and start thinking with the ego mind, I feel vulnerable, weak and frail, because I am identified first and foremost with the body. I feel threated by everything, because the body seems open to attack by everything.

When I feel threatened, I want to defend myself and so I attack. The two, attack and defense, are always seen together. Even if I feel attacked and don’t say or do anything, the thought of attack, the belief in attack, is in my mind, and that thought keeps me in a dark place. It creates guilt in my mind and with guilt comes fear. This is not what I am and as long as I believe it is, I will block the truth and deny myself the gifts of God.

Yesterday I worked at the office and there was some strife between employees. I was not involved in it, but I could not avoid hearing the attacks and counter attacks. I saw this dynamic that I am learning about today being played out.  I noticed that after awhile I was feeling stressed. I began to resent this intrusion on my peace, and that resentment is an attack.

I saw what I was doing right away. I saw that I was making them guilty for how I felt. I am very familiar with this ego tactic and so I asked that my mind be healed. I asked for peace and to have peace I must be willing to let go of what it is that is blocking the peace. It was kind of funny the way Holy Spirit helped me.

I received a phone call from a student who started the conversation by saying what she really wanted was peace. We had a long conversation about how to do this. We also talked about the necessity of letting go of the blocks to peace, if peace is what we really want. It is not possible to have both peace and that which blocks peace.

We talked about how asking for peace but keeping the blocks in place isn’t going to work.  We discussed processes that would help in changing her mind, so that she could let go of the need for people in her life to be what she thought she needed them to be. We ended the conversation with a reminder that reading and talking about these truths will inspire us but will not heal us. For that we have to use what we receive from the words.

After we had hung up I was going over the conversation in my mind. It felt pretty complete and I thought it would be helpful. Then I had to laugh because I saw that the words I said to her were my answer from Holy Spirit. My peace cannot be taken from me by anyone else. If I am feeling stressed by someone else’s situation, that is something that happened in my mind and it is my mind that must be healed.

The thought that my peace depends on my environment being peaceful is wrong. Peace would not be worth much if it were so fragile, and dependent on others. I had thought that my coworkers were attacking my peace, but that thought was an attack on them because it said they were guilty.

It was also an attack on myself because it said that I was threatened and vulnerable to that threat. Feeling threatened and vulnerable attacked my reality. It left me believing that I am not my holy Self, but rather the frightened and guilty body the ego believes in. I saw that no one was threatening my peace. I was threatening myself, and I easily returned to peace with that realization.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter10: II. The Decision to Forget, P 3. 5-18-15

II. The Decision to Forget
3 To remember is merely to restore to your mind what is already there. You do not make what you remember; you merely accept again what is already there, but was rejected. The ability to accept truth in this world is the perceptual counterpart of creating in the Kingdom. God will do His part if you will do yours, and His return in exchange for yours is the exchange of knowledge for perception. Nothing is beyond His Will for you. But signify your will to remember Him, and behold! He will give you everything but for the asking.

Journal
Evidently, just saying I am willing to remember is not the same thing as being willing to remember. If that were so, I would be doing this work from a whole other place. As I watch my mind I see what it is that I am choosing instead of God. This morning I had thoughts about not wanting to go to work. I spent many minutes rewriting history as I imagined a confrontation and this time I seemed to win.

I worried about my weight for awhile. I thought about something smart I did and congratulated myself for it. I imagined ways I could tell that story and in each way I just got smarter and smarter. There was a lot of other nonsense as well, including my lifetime favorite; I’ve got to hurry, I’m running out of time.

When my mind got especially busy I finally noticed and reminded myself that I was using the ego mind to think. I chose to use the God-Mind instead. I watched as the mind slowed and I felt peace take the place of the mindless chatter. I looked at the time and saw that I had time to write this, after all. I asked Spirit to guide me at work today, to help me be the love that I am meant to be.

I stepped away from the desire to make things happen, to choose what is important and what isn’t, to defend myself. I stepped into love and trust and peace. It was simple and seamless. It is a perfect way to start the day because I have made a decision for God that will serve as a constant reminder of what I want and how to achieve it. I did my part. I chose God and the Holy Spirit did His part and showed me what was there all along, peace, love, happiness, and that it is mine for the asking.

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Study of Text, Chapter10: II. The Decision to Forget, P 2. 5-14-15

II. The Decision to Forget
2 Yet to give up the dissociation of reality brings more than merely lack of fear. In this decision lie joy and peace and the glory of creation. Offer the Holy Spirit only your willingness to remember, for He retains the knowledge of God and of yourself for you, waiting for your acceptance. Give up gladly everything that would stand in the way of your remembering, for God is in your memory. His Voice will tell you that you are part of Him when you are willing to remember Him and know your own reality again. Let nothing in this world delay your remembering of Him, for in this remembering is the knowledge of yourself.

Journal
The memory of God is in my mind and waiting for me to accept it into my awareness. The only thing that prevents that from happening is that I want something else instead. We are so steeped in separation thinking that it is hard for us to understand wholeness. God is Whole and Complete. There is nothing in God except God. So in order for me to know God, I must put aside the desire to know something that is not God.

Since there is nothing except God, I am actually putting away nothing, but if I value it I will not put it away. I have these special relationships that I think are valuable, but in God nothing is special. Everything is equal in importance because everything is equal in reality. I am reading a book called “Lunch with Buddha.” In it the teacher helps his student understand a different kind of love than he presently knows.

He tells him that within his precious daughter there is a jewel and this is something he can accept, because he sees that jewel. He knows the reality of the perfection that she is. He points this out in each of his special relationships. Then he explains that the same jewel is in each person and that he can learn to see it there, so that his love for everyone is the same as his love for his children. (Mostly my words, but that was the concept.)

This is what I want. I want to see each person with the same vision I see my children. No matter what they do or say, I know they are wonderful. I know they are perfect beneath their behavior. Their behavior is an illusion based on false beliefs and has nothing to do with who they are. It is insignificant next to their reality.

If they behave badly, I disregard it, and continue to see only the love that they are. Now that I have become very good at this, I am learning to see others in the same way. This is one of the ways that I am removing the blocks that keep me from remembering God and remembering my Self.

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Study of Text, Chapter 10, II. The Decision to Forget, P 1. 5-13-15

II. The Decision to Forget
1 Unless you first know something you cannot dissociate it. Knowledge must precede dissociation, so that dissociation is nothing more than a decision to forget. What has been forgotten then appears to be fearful, but only because the dissociation is an attack on truth. You are fearful because you have forgotten. And you have replaced your knowledge by an awareness of dreams because you are afraid of your dissociation, not of what you have dissociated. When what you have dissociated is accepted, it ceases to be fearful.

Journal
I don’t think about it often, but once in awhile I have the disturbing thought that maybe I chose to be something else because I didn’t like what I was. I think, “Why would I have left Heaven if Heaven is wonderful?” I don’t let myself dwell on this too much because it feels a little scary to me. Now it seems that Jesus is confronting this idea. He is also explaining why I have this mostly unacknowledged fear.

He is telling me that I am afraid, not of what I have dissociated, but that I did dissociate in the first place. I decided to forget what I am and where I am, and that decision scared me. It is frightening to me because it is an attack on the truth. This is a relief because it means I don’t have to be afraid of what I forgot. I am not really afraid of my true nature, and thankfully, I am not really afraid of God.

In my fear, I replaced the truth with illusions and that is where I am now, dreaming of something to distract me from my unease. But I can stop any time I want to. I don’t have to keep up this distracting story because there is nothing to fear. This is why Jesus spends so much time in the Course reassuring us that God loves us and that we love Him. I chose to forget and now I must choose to remember. As Jesus talks to us about our true nature and the nature of God, I feel a memory beginning to make itself known to me.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of Text, Chapter 10: THE IDOLS OF SICKNESS, I. At Home in God, P 4. 5-12-15

I. At Home in God P 4
4 You will remember everything the instant you desire it wholly, for if to desire wholly is to create, you will have willed away the separation, returning your mind simultaneously to your Creator and your creations. Knowing them you will have no wish to sleep, but only the desire to waken and be glad. Dreams will be impossible because you will want only truth, and being at last your will, it will be yours.

Journal
I feel like saying, “the trick is,” to desire to be at Home in God you have to desire it wholly. Of course it is not a trick, it is simply necessary. I cannot be at Home in God if I am not the same as God. I cannot keep anger, fear, guilt, sadness, blame, suffering and death and expect to be in God. These are not God and so they cannot be in God. I must leave them behind to return to God.

It would not seem to be such a difficult choice and yet, here I am with my grievances. Everyone in my life, even those most “special” to me, the ones I claim to love more than myself, become repositories for my guilt. I could easily release guilt and fear as well, but I hold onto it as if it is my very salvation. I have whittled this stuff down as I have looked at it with Spirit, but I have not released it entirely, and I cannot enter the Kingdom with even a very little of what is not God.

Today, as I write this, my lesson is, “I loose the world from all I think it is.” This lesson tells me that there is no world. The world I think I see is just an out-picturing of my desires. It is a great big theater that is always showing, The World According to Myron.” I re-write the script as my mind is healed because the world is nowhere except in my mind.

It is nothing except my thoughts and my thoughts change when I change my mind about the source of those thoughts. When I choose to think with the ego mind I will have an ego experience. I cannot bring the ego into the Kingdom, so I remain in the world I made up until I change my mind. When I decide to think the thoughts I think with God, my dream becomes a happy dream and the world reflects that change until it disappears.

It is all up to me. It is my dream and I must decide the direction that dream will take. As I change my mind, the dream changes and it is better. But do I want a better dream? Or do I want the Kingdom? Do I want to return to eternal bliss and to full creation, or do I want to play around in the muck some more? If I choose to relinquish the ego mind completely, in that very moment, I will remember everything! It is just that simple.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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