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Manual for Teachers, Gentleness, P 2. 3-20-20

IV. Gentleness P 2
2 Therefore, God’s teachers are wholly gentle. They need the strength of gentleness, for it is in this that the function of salvation becomes easy. To those who would do harm, it is impossible. To those to whom harm has no meaning, it is merely natural. What choice but this has meaning to the sane? Who chooses hell when he perceives a way to Heaven? And who would choose the weakness that must come from harm in place of the unfailing, all-encompassing and limitless strength of gentleness? The might of God’s teachers lies in their gentleness, for they have understood their evil thoughts came neither from God’s Son nor his Creator. Thus did they join their thoughts with Him Who is their Source. And so their will, which always was His Own, is free to be itself.

I was just re-reading A Thousand Names for Joy by Byron Katie. She was talking about being invited to an area of the world that was considered dangerous and her friends were trying to talk her out of going. She went anyway and this is what she said about it.

“I am free to walk anywhere in the world, with anyone, at any time. I can’t project danger. There are no limitations to where I go. … A clear mind is beautiful and sees only its own reflection.”

This perfectly explains to me what Jesus means when he says that a teacher of God cannot harm nor be harmed. The world we see is a reflection of our beliefs. It is a perfect reflection. If there is no belief in harm in our mind, there will be no projection of that belief. The danger we think we face does not come from the world, but from the beliefs we hold in our mind which are then seen within the world.

Lesson 152 says,
1 No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is .

I create the danger that terrifies me. It is important for me to understand this dynamic. I will believe that I cannot afford to be harmless if I think the world is dangerous and I am in constant danger of attack. But once I understand that I am the source of the world I see, then I stop blaming everyone else and become willing to allow my mind to be healed. Then I will be like Katie; I will have nothing to fear because there is nothing in my mind to project fearful images. I will then be harmless in all ways all the time.

Jesus gives us a helpful hint when he says that harm is the outcome of judgment. Judgment is me deciding what is acceptable and what isn’t, what is good and what is bad. As soon as I do this, I have created the potential for harm. If my friend acts in a way that I judge as unacceptable, I will be tempted to correct and thus I have caused harm.

Even if I don’t actually say anything the thought itself, when believed is teaching me to doubt her and thus myself. It is reinforcing in the mind as a whole the idea of doubt, and of course it is reinforcing the separation belief. I would be causing harm and in that moment,  I would not be a teacher of God.

If I recognize the desire to judge as an ego impulse and instead ask the Holy Spirit how I should see this, I immediately break the cycle and become harmless. Then if there is anything to say or do it will be helpful because it is not the ego that is choosing the words.

The might of God’s teachers lies in their gentleness, for they have understood their evil thoughts came neither from God’s Son nor his Creator. Thus did they join their thoughts with Him Who is their Source. And so their will, which always was His Own, is free to be itself.

Letting go of the desire to judge and returning my mind to my Source is the way I free myself to be my Self, and thus become harmless.

March 20, 2020
Right now with the world being in upheaval because of the Coronavirus, it is more important than ever to be gentle in all ways. It is equally important to recognize that our thoughts are powerful and all of them produce form on some level, so we must be vigilant for what we feel and think. Let us not add more darkness to the mind but be the light of the world. We are here now because we chose to be here. We have a purpose. Let us live that purpose. The Holy Spirit is in our mind and will guide and heal us as we go if we ask for that. Let us not dwell in fear but in love.

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Manual for Teachers, Gentleness. 3-10-20

IV. Gentleness
1 Harm is impossible for God’s teachers. They can neither harm nor be harmed. Harm is the outcome of judgment. It is the dishonest act that follows a dishonest thought. It is a verdict of guilt upon a brother, and therefore on oneself. It is the end of peace and the denial of learning. It demonstrates the absence of God’s curriculum, and its replacement by insanity. No teacher of God but must learn,-and fairly early in his training,-that harmfulness completely obliterates his function from his awareness. It will make him confused, fearful, angry and suspicious. It will make the Holy Spirit’s lessons impossible to learn. Nor can God’s Teacher be heard at all, except by those who realize that harm can actually achieve nothing. No gain can come of it. 

It has taken me a long time to reach the point where I cannot be harmed. I used to feel the sting of attack when someone confronted me. That is something that has fallen away now. I have no desire to harm either and if I think I have done so, I am quick to notice and to make amends if that is appropriate. Either way, I am quick to forgive myself. Guilt is never helpful.

There is more than one way to be harmful. Judgment of any kind is harmful, judging myself or someone else, saying it aloud or just feeling it. Losing patience with someone or thinking they should do better is harmful to both parties, the one who is impatient and the one who is targeted. If I were to lack patience or trust in anyone I was working with, I would fail to be helpful, and I would lose my peace. I would no longer be teaching for God.

As Jesus says: No teacher of God but must learn, -and fairly early in his training, -that harmfulness completely obliterates his function from his awareness. I am here to be truly helpful so it makes no sense to do something that is going to make that impossible. Not to mention, It will make the Holy Spirit’s lessons impossible to learn. The teacher of God is here to learn as much as to teach.

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Let’s Break That Contract!

This is something I wrote about in a Pathways of Light course I am taking with a friend.

What is key to me in this section is that we signed a contract with each other to keep amnesia in place, to never look with innocence on anything, and to keep the fear of God and each other in place. Now, in order to exit from this insane world, we must break that agreement. We do this by forgiving it. What we have not forgiven, we fear, so we forgive our brothers and we will not be afraid to join with them. And in forgiving them, we forgive ourselves and so we undo that fear. This is essential because we must go together to God and because we cannot take fear into God.

Here is what I wrote as my RFD for the day.

Today, I will make no decisions with the ego-mind.

One of the Pathways of Light courses that I am doing with mind healing partners is centered around the Obstacles to Peace section of the Course. I forgot just how important this section is. I just finished reading this.

“The dedication to death and to its sovereignty is but the solemn vow, the promise made in secret to the ego never to lift this veil, not to approach it nor even to suspect it is there. This is the secret bargain made with the ego to keep what lies beyond the veil forever blotted out and unremembered. Here is your promise never to allow union to call you out of separation; the great amnesia in which the memory of God seems quite forgotten; the cleavage of you Self from you;-the fear of God, the final step in your dissociation.”

Well, we are breaking that contract, aren’t we? We who are studying the Course and who have dedicated our lives to undoing the ego, have taken the first step, and maybe many steps toward lifting the veil. The way we are doing this is through forgiveness. It is the only way to do it. The lifting of the veil must be done in union and union cannot occur where there is fear and guilt.

“But first, lift up your eyes and look on your brother in innocence born of complete forgiveness of his illusions, and through the eyes of faith that sees the not.”

He tells us that we fear God because we fear our brother and that no one reaches love with fear beside him. He says this:

“Brother, you need forgiveness of your brother, for you will share in madness or in Heaven together. And you will raise your eyes in faith together, or not at all.”

The course I am taking right now is called Remembering to Choose Peace, and one of the things it says in summary of this section is this:

“Jesus wants us to understand that we will receive the gift of innocence we give our brother. When we join together with our brother instead of separating, we are able to go beyond the darkest veil – the fear of God. We are asked to watch very carefully how we are seeing our brother – through the eyes of guilt or innocence, because we will always give as we receive and receive as we give.”

This is why I had to forgive my illusions of the character, Donald Trump (please insert the name of whoever triggers you here). His character represents the ego in a way that made me turn away from him and that can only be because I recognize within myself what I see in him that scares me. And yet, I cannot be redeemed if I hold him guilty. As long as I keep him guilty, I cannot enter the presence of God.

So every day, I look at his picture and I read the things he has done today. I watch my thoughts and my feelings and I offer the Holy Spirit each one that is not forgiving so that both Donald and I can be free. I truly understand that I cannot be free if he is not free. This is why loving Donald Trump is part of my plan for the day every day.

The only thing that interferes with this love is unforgiven illusions of him. So that is part of my plan for the day as well. Let me forgive my illusions of him, for surely, it is the Christ I look upon and I will not be blinded to that.

I will make no decisions with my ego-mind and I will have the day God wants for me.

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Manual for Teachers, Tolerance. 2-22-20

III. Tolerance
1 God’s teachers do not judge. To judge is to be dishonest, for to judge is to assume a position you do not have. Judgment without self-deception is impossible. Judgment implies that you have been deceived in your brothers. How, then, could you not have been deceived in yourself? Judgment implies a lack of trust, and trust remains the bedrock of the teacher of God’s whole thought system. Let this be lost, and all his learning goes. Without judgment are all things equally acceptable, for who could judge otherwise? Without judgment are all men brothers, for who is there who stands apart? Judgment destroys honesty and shatters trust. No teacher of God can judge and hope to learn.

As far as I can see the ego has two favorite activities, thinking and judging. The mind will think and it will judge, but I don’t have to listen to the first or believe the second. I remain very vigilant for judgment and as soon as I notice the judgment, I ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind.

When I first started to do this I felt very anxious when I would find judgments in my mind. This is self-defeating because I was judging myself for judging. Slowly, with the Holy Spirit’s help, I let go of that kind of circular thinking. Now I am happy to see the judgment because I know what to do with it.

I asked Holy Spirit what He would have me know about this. He gave me the thought that I would continue to judge as long as I was interested in my judgments. I saw that I could let go of judging more quickly if I did not encourage the judgmental thoughts by giving my attention to them. In the beginning years of my practice, I would think about whether it was true or not. I would think about why I had that judgment and what I could do to avoid judging in the future. But none of that is necessary and I learned that all I needed to know about judgment is that I wasn’t interested.

I do still have judgmental thoughts but not all the time anymore. My disinterest in them and my refusal to accept these thoughts seem to have discouraged them. When it does happen, I don’t worry about it, I just let those thoughts go. One thing I have learned in recent years is that judgment can be subtle. Of course, I recognize the thought that someone should be different than they are as a judgment. But I have not yet made everything acceptable.

Something that has helped me with that is a process by Michael Langford called the Loving All Method. This method asks us to love everything just as it is. This doesn’t mean that I would not change something if that was appropriate, but that I would love it while it was happening. An example he gives is that he loves that the vase is falling, and he loves that he catches it before it hits the floor. Using this method has helped me in my practice to accept all things just as they are without judging them.

Without judgment are all things equally acceptable, for who could judge otherwise?

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Text Chapter 20.III.9. 2-22-20

T-20.III.9. Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and emaciated, weak and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember not the light, do not leap up in joy the instant they are made free. 2 It takes a while for them to understand what freedom is. 3 You groped but feebly in the dust and found your brother’s hand, uncertain whether to let it go or to take hold on life so long forgotten. 4 Strengthen your hold and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies. 5 He seemed to be crucified beside you. 6 And yet his holiness remained untouched and perfect, and with him beside you, you shall this day enter with him to Paradise, and know the peace of God.

We have imprisoned ourselves within our own mind’s hallucinations for so long that it takes time to adjust to the truth. ACIM is so helpful in this adjustment process both in the Text which gives us a foundation for this new understanding, and in the Workbook as the daily lessons redirect our thinking without demanding more of us than we are able to give at this point.

I am reminded of the Ark story in the Old Testament. The animals went into the safety of the ark two by two. This is a metaphor for our passage back Home. We take our brothers hand and travel this path two by two. At first, it may seem doubtful that we can do this and even more doubtful our brother can do it. We look with the body’s eyes and we judge with the ego mind and find him wanting. But as we move forward in trust, we learn to see differently and his true visage becomes more apparent to us and we move forward in confidence.

Who is this mysterious brother with whom we walk? It is whoever is before us in the moment. There is no one special; each one we meet on our path home is equally God’s beloved Son and our brother seeking for the way home alongside of us. I will not allow myself to be distracted by the character they are playing in this particular story.

I will not let the sadness or even the awfulness of the story distract me from its perfection. Our chosen stories hold all we need to awaken. They do not reflect our truth, only the mistaken thoughts in the mind. Together we release those beliefs and with their passing the real world is revealed.

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From Specialness to Holiness

This is something I am learning from 905: Special Relationships vs Holy Relationships

What I am learning about moving from specialness to holiness.

The main thing I have learned about moving from specialness to holiness is that we are all special and no one is less than or more than. When we believe that we are special in a way that is different from others, or when we make someone else special in a positive or negative way, we intensify the sense of being separate from God. We become more entangled with the separation stories and it is harder for us to leave them behind.

The way out of this is to become willing to see ourselves and our brothers as we truly are rather than as the ego sees us all. Our willingness for vision will assure that we receive it. The only thing standing between us and that gift is our desire to keep separation intact. We do this by placing value on our grievances and by insisting that guilt is real. We cannot remember who we are as long as we still believe in sin, not our own or anyone else’s.

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Manual for Teachers, Honesty, P 2. 2-20-20

II. Honesty, P 2
2 The peace of mind which the advanced teachers of God experience is largely due to their perfect honesty. It is only the wish to deceive that makes for war. No one at one with himself can even conceive of conflict. Conflict is the inevitable result of self-deception, and self-deception is dishonesty. There is no challenge to a teacher of God. Challenge implies doubt, and the trust on which God’s teachers rest secure makes doubt impossible. Therefore they can only succeed. In this, as in all things, they are honest. They can only succeed, because they never do their will alone. They choose for all mankind; for all the world and all things in it; for the unchanging and unchangeable beyond appearances; and for the Son of God and his Creator. How could they not succeed? They choose in perfect honesty, sure of their choice as of themselves.
 
What jumped out at me is the sentence that said;

No one at one with himself can even conceive of conflict.

The reason this caught my attention is that it perfectly describes our state in this illusion. Not only is everything we see in a state of separation, we see ourselves in a state of separation. The ego personification of Myron is just a gathering of disparate pieces brought together to appear as one. But what is different cannot be one.

As an example of what this means, I thought of all the ways I used to describe the personality Myron.
She was honest.
She was dishonest.
She was sad.
She was happy.
She was kind.
She was cruel.
She was forgiving.
She would hold onto grievances.

Everything in that short list was true and everything in it conflicts with something else. And each of those has a host of beliefs behind them, each bolstered with their own stories to make them seem more real. Now, most of this has resolved itself, though occasionally some conflicting belief still shows up temporarily.

For instance, I might notice I feel sad and so my mind starts scrambling for a story to explain the sadness. When that happens now, I ask the Holy Spirit what this is for and what He wants me to know about it. Sometimes there is nothing to look at, just the ego trying to interest me in a bit of drama, in which case, I choose peace and everything goes back to being fine. But it wasn’t always like that.

In the past, it might have gone like this. I would suddenly realize my son hadn’t called me in two weeks. I believed he needed to call me regularly and I would feel unloved when he didn’t. I would think of reasons he didn’t call me and eventually get to the one where I was not a good mother and now I think I am worthless.

If I felt bad enough the mind would start scrambling to find someplace else to put the blame and I would get a good story going about what a sorry son he is to ignore me after all I’ve done for him. It’s funny if looked at with openness, but not so funny if believed. Conflict is painful. It is suffering.

The solution was to disown all that is not truly Me. As I laid aside the beliefs that make the many facets of my little self, what is left is Self and without all the incongruent aspects within my mind I am at peace, and this is the honesty Jesus is talking about.

As I laid aside all that is not love knowing it cannot be me, then what is left is only love. From within this state when my son calls me, I love it. When he doesn’t call me, I love it. There is nothing but love because that is what I am and all I am, so there is nothing to experience but love. That is honesty.

© 2020, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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