Realizing God's Will Is Oneness

Recapturing My Treasure

When I was a little girl, I lived in Morgantown, West Virginia with my family.  My father’s parents owned a little farm outside of town that I visited often.  I remember wandering over the cow pastures for hours on end.  I was a curious child and loved to explore.  The only fear I knew was of insects and other crawly creatures.  My grandmother had a large vegtable garden and every morning in the summer she would go out to pick bugs and worms off her vegtables and put them in a little can of kerosene that she carried.  She was a true organic gardner before there was such a term.  In order to keep me from wandering off while she was busy gardening, she would put me on a kitchen stool with an umbrella to shade me in the middle of the garden, knowing that I would not get down because I would have to walk through the buggy garden.  There I sat stupified by my fear and in awe of my grandmother’s courage as I saw it.  Naturally, we talked about my unfounded fear and my grandmother did her best to help me see things differently.  I can only say that she was not terribly successful regarding “curing” me.  Still, I didn’t see this fear as being me,  it was just something that was there, but partly outside of me.

When I was five years old in 1950, I came to know powerful fear.  I was to start school and had to take the city bus across town to get there.  My mother could not take me every day because she had to care for younger brothers and sisters, plus in those days my parents had no second car.  My mother taught me to use the bus system and even at those tender years, they exhibited great confidence in my ability to handle the circumstances quite well.  I expressed my great fear but to no avail, my mother went with me the first few days but then I was on my own.  Of course, I did my “duty” the best I could, and eventually I was emboldened to wander even farther than I ever previously did, whether in town or on the farm.  However this fear was different for it seemed that even though I overcame it in one sense because I had to fight it and move forward, it didn’t seem separate from me.

When I read the Course’s statement that my body is a learning device, not a lesson, I try to retrace the steps of my life to determine where I first remember feeling really caught by fear that changed me. I always come back to this time when I was very young and these formative experiences.  Sometimes in our earliest life events we can see how ego mind intrudes on our innocence and grips us with an iron hand of fear.  Our body is no longer a learning device to explore the world around us, no longer simply a tool to learn from experiences.  Ego is not satisfied with anything less than mind numbing fear and hard lessons of body discomfort.  Ego crushes our body with fear so that we cannot separate from it easily.  We now mistakenly think the fear is us.  We embody fear.

When I review those simple days of long ago,  I remember the carefree attitude of my early youth.  I remember feeling so connected to something good as I wandered about the countryside.  I had no worries or gripping fears.  I simply was.  I learned from where I was and what I was doing.  It was all good.  As I grew older I became attached to fears and everything became a lesson to do well, an endless series of questions about doing or being anything good enough.  I forgot that my life, my body, is a learning device, and that learning is a good in itself.  Everything is good enough to learn from because it is simply there for our learning.

Today, more and more, I try to recapture that attitude of being a carefree learner, free to wander the journey of life with all its seeming fears and travails, as well as delights, with the same same sense of ease and peace.  More and more I try not to “make” things hard for myself, not to “make” lessons that seem insurmountable and overwhelming.  Each instance is an opportunity to learn from, nothing more.  Each instance is a chance to see love at work in my life, not fear.  I wish I could say that I never felt fear anymore, but that is not true.  But, now when I feel fear I can see it more outside of myself as I used to do long ago.  It is not me but it is there to learn from.  It has only been in the past five years, since really digging into ACIM work, that I have been able to give up fighting my fears and to more peacefully learn from them what they have to teach.  As I do this they dissolve more and more.  I no longer need to physically wander to feel free.  I can be free in my mind.  My grandmother, I am sure, is so proud.

© 2004-2011, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Feeling Part of the One Mind

Today in meditation I felt as if I were a bubble among an ocean of bubbles, all extending endlessly.  All bubbles were a part of God.  God surrounded us, yet was within us.  We recognized God in each other and we were comforted.  We were safe and secure, leaving all to God.  Only God knew of the total extension of Himself.  We were merely part of the Extension and we were supremely happy in this.  The part of ourself that projected ego images was infinitesimally small, so insignificant as to be nothing, and all that came from it was nothing.  We kept extending in joy and happiness, part of God’s Will, with no will of our own to do anything else.  We were content, and yet energized with Life itself.

I was surprised at how comfortable it was being in the mass of bubbles.  No one was squeezed.  There was no chaos, no confllict, no tension, no crowding.  There was only total joy in recognizing God all around us.  God energized the whole and everything of God was available to all. 

The Extension was endless, but there was no concern for time or boundaries.  We were not aware of any.  We left the Extension to God’s care.  We were simply happy to be a part of it, continually thankful that we were.  There was great peace in this.  There was nothing else.  We were swept along in the flow of God’s Love.  We formed the One Extension.  We were of One Mind in this, and all of the same purpose, to be God’s Will, God’s Love.  We were content to go wherever that took us for we moved in waves of energy.  We were living energy.  It was sort of a pinkish red colored light that sometimes seemed like ribbons of light.

We were content to be what we were because it was of God.  There was no thought to be anything different because we didn’t know what that would be for us and we wanted only to be part of God.  That was our only thought, that we were a part of God.  There was a great satisfaction in this.  There was a great peace in being surrounded by the same thought and purpose with no worry or concern that something other than Love could impact us.  We knew only Love and there was no fear.  We knew only God’s Love and its constancy.  We were totally fulfilled.  Ther were no beginnings and endings, only Love.  There was no thought that Love could not be present, for that was unthinkable.  We had only the thoughts of God in our awareness.  We wanted nothing other than this.

As I sit with these feelings, I feel comforted with awareness that Life in the One Mind can be truly blissful.  I can begin to look around me for the comfort of God’s Love because it makes no difference where I think I find myself.  It is there, it is always there.  Everywhere I am surrounded by the same thought and the same purpose, God’s Love and God’s Will.  I only think I can’t experience it, but I can.  I can choose to accept reality and deny false images of separation and conflict.  I can choose to flow with God’s Will, since I am anyway, instead of making images that oppose reality.  I can choose to watch my ego mind with objectivity and gently remind myself that its all illusion that I see in the physical world.  I can choose to be in the reality of Love.  Today, I can now see better the value of this choice because it brings me closer to the joy and peace of reality, and I am grateful.  Amen.

© 2004-2011, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Let Us Be Candles For One Another

Sometimes I am so caught up seeing my projections and forgiving them, that I don’t always remember to see the Love Light shining for my encouragement.  However, there is so much inspiration, so many miracles, to be shared from the One Mind that it cannot all be given to one human mind.  So let us be candles for one another and see the gift of Light in persons around us when all we may really want to do is sit alone in front of a candle and pray for an answer from Holy Spirit.  The answer may present itself in quite unusual ways of shared experience. 

Sometimes at my ACIM discussion group, members have wonderful experiences to share.  Certainly, on this Pathways of Light forum there is sharing of great wisdom to encourage all readers to continue walking the path toward awakening.  Many times synchronistic events occur that show us great clues to our subconscious thinking process that needs to be healed.  When we share our inspiration and miracles with others, we can be candles of Light for them.  When we with humililty take the time to listen carefully to the Holy Spirit speaking through our brother or sister, we allow them to be candles of Light for us.  This is a great gift that we give each other because we are acknowledging our One Mind and One Presence.  There is great healing in this because we are reminded to keep ourselves miracle- minded, or in a constant state of willingness to see miracles.

All we have to do is be willling and ready to see and hear, and Holy Spirit will grant us vision and understanding.  This is unmistakable.  It is more than a promise - it our right as a Son of God.  When one of us experiences a miracle, we all share in it.  We can be candles for each other, sharing and reflecting the Light we see, encouraging each other to keep at our Course work everyday.  We must practice seeing with Holy Spirit eyes every day to overcome ego vision.  Every once in awhile, because we are miracle-ready, miracles will be seen.  After all, this is a course in miracles, isn’t it?  I now believe in miracles in a different way.  I see their greater reality as encouragers to continue walking the path toward awakening because it is really happening.  The concepts and lessons of ACIM aren’t just presenting us with a happier more peaceful life.  Although that’s great in itself, many other paths can achieve that same result.  ACIM is helping us to awaken in a direct and certain way and awakening to reality is everything.

Miracles seem to open port holes of awareness in the mind to new and higher levels of understanding, different levels of reality.  We see everything in a new way.  We practice our lessons in a new way.  We see more and are more aware and are much quicker to come to forgiveness.  We know the Christ Light lives and that it encourages us with its loving reality.  When something real happens to one us us, it happens to all of us.  Not only are we encouraged to remain miracle-ready, but we are also healed by its presence.  This is especially notable when the experience is shared.

Sometimes we are reluctant to share personal miracles, for whatever reason, and there are many.  However, in the sharing of our Light experiences, we are all guided and encouraged by the Holy Spirit.  That is, if we are willing to see and hear the wisdom that is shared.  Maybe that is why many are reluctant to share, because they feel no one will really listen and see the beauty of the experience.  But miracles are meant to be shared because they are symbols of living wholeness.

And so, today, let us share our experience of Holy Spirit at work in the world and in our lives.  Let us be happy for one another that such experiences happen.  Instead of wondering if someone else is trying harder or further along the spiritual path because they speak of such experiences, let us rejoice that they are possible.  Let us share in the healing and see a bigger picture at work.  And if we are experiencing miracles in our lives, don’t let ego fear hold us back from sharing what was meant for all because it came from the All. 

In gratitude that all things are possible and that we can share these possibilities, let us be candles of Love and Light for one another.

© 2004-2011, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Finding the Meaning with Holy Spirit

Have you ever lost anything you thought was important or special?  Well, I have lost some things that brought painful memories to me.

When I graduated from law school I had a party for my family.  I had returned to college at age 40 to complete my undergraduate degree because I had dropped out of college at 19, after my first year.  Completing college took me 5 years, then I spent 3 years at law school.  Naturally, a party was in order.  My husband gave me a wonderful gift - a pair of pearl and diamond earrings.  It was a gift of love and pride in my hard work and accomplishment.  I treasured them for sentimental reasons and, of course, they were beautiful.

One day several years later, after a business trip, I thought I had placed them in my jewelry box, but I hadn’t.  Somehow they were lost at my office, where I had stopped on my way home.    I don’t know how or where exactly it happened, but the earrings were lost I felt devastated and I didn’t know how to tell my husband, Mike, but I did.  When he told me how much he had paid for them, I felt really bad.  I felt more than grief, I felt guilt.

In coming to terms with this loss over these many years later, I believed it was simply a lesson in letting go of attachment to material posssessions or special relationships.  Whenever the memory of the earrings came into my mind I would focus on the idea that things are not important and that it was a reminder to me to focus on this lesson.  However, I still felt grief at the loss because I still had a sentimental attachment to the gift and I still felt a little guilty about that.  Looking at the memory was always painful, but when it came to mind I always tried to focus on the lesson of non-attachment.

I have been reading The Disappearance of the Universe, a book by Gary Renard that many of you know about.  It has really helped me to think about Course principles in a new way and understand them better.  In my wake-up prayer this morning, those earrings came to mind.  Only this time I could see that these earrings were a projection of my story about separation from God.  I made up a story that a prized and loved thing of beauty was lost forever and no amount of longing could bring it back home.  In essence, I made up a story about what ego thinks about itself being lost and projected it into this life of Barbara.  On top of of the ego story about being lost forever, there was guilt.  The guilt I felt at having lost them forever, and the guilt I projected onto my husband.  For you see, after losing those earrings, he has only given me costume jewelry since then.  I had some resentment about this.  I projected onto him that part of the ego story that God punishes those that think they are lost.

How I could have not seen this before astounds me.  It all seems so simple now.  I can forgive myself for this projection and see the ego story for what it is, simply another device to keep me feeling separated.  Thinking about non-attachment to a material object was helpful, but that idea was not truly healing.  Now that I have opened my mind to the meaning of Holy Spirit, I believe the healing really begins.  Now there is no more guilt.  Now there is only forgiveness for myself and for my husband.  The whole circumstance was just a story, just an obstacle to the awareness of Love.  There weren’t any earrings to lose. 

Healing the mind comes one circumstance at a time.  It makes no difference if the story involves something of greater or lesser value.  If the earrings had been very inexpensive, I probably would have forgotten their loss long ago, but because they were pricey it added to the guilt.  Sometimes we write the story so that the memory gets our attention with a jolt.  These are the stories that we most need to look at even though they may be the most painful.  And maybe because they are the most painful, we can gain even greater relief from looking at them with Holy Spirit to receive a higher perspective.  Holy Spirit’s perspective brings peace, the ego explanation only brings more pain.

Why does insight come on one day and not another, I can’t say.  It just does.  Maybe some days we listen better and are more ready to hear and understand; maybe some days we aren’t.  It seems that our obligation is just to trust and be as open as we can to looking at seemingly painful memories without the judgment we have given it previously, to let them come naked, without meaning, and look at them.  Yes, it takes trust that some better understanding will come.  Holy Spirit is always ready to give that better understanding to us when we are exactly ready.  We help ourselves be ready by being open to seeing our projection stories in a new way, and forgiving ourselves for having them.

This healing has helped me to trust more and to be more aware that the story of loss is the same no matter what is thought to be lost.  The truth is that there is nothing to be lost.  Everything is found in God and my story cannot change that no matter how I write it.  Now when seeming loss occurs, it will be for me an opportunity to reaffirm that I am not lost and never have been, so guilt is a silly response to a silly story.  I am whole in God and I cannot lose parts of Self.  In my story I lost something of great material value, but I have found a meaning with Holy Spirt that is invaluable to me.  In gratitude I share this healing with those whom it may help to see their ego story of loss as just one more illusion to lose with Holy Spirit.

© 2004-2011, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Sleepless in Wisconsin

Another sleepless night.  My body seems to run in cycles of sleep, sometimes I sleep, sometimes sleep doesn’t come.  There is a part of my mind that complains and whines about the insomnia; this part feel sorry for itself and compares levels of sleep with others who sleep every night.  This part wants to place great importance on the body and its meaasure of tiredness.  If I pay attention to this voice too long I feel guilty for not sleeping, knowing that its my split mind that causes this, and I feel even more tired.  How tiresome!

Its times like these that I return to the first and basic ACIM lessons about meaning.  I don’t know the meaning of anything.  Everything has the meaning I give it.  I need to let go of applying meaning from the ego mind.  I have learned to rely on a Pathways of Light statement in the Opening Preparation we read before focusing on any course work, which in essence says that I am willing to look at circumstances and events in my life as showing me where there is still a need to heal my mind.  I turn it over to Holy Spirit.

I surely know that of myself I can do nothing to help this situation.  God knows I have tried to fix this at times and angrily not tried at other times.  I am in a process of learning to let go of it and forgive myself for having it.  It sometimes does little good to say that there really is no groggy body, no headache, no tiredness, that it is really nothing.  After all, it seems so real, and it continues.  Sometimes, some situation require turning to Holy Spirit over and over, letting go of attachment to what I think would be best.  I am learning to accept what is.  Sometimes we just don’t understand the meaning of chronic body conditions, whether it seems to be disease, pain, cravings, or whatever the body seems to be demanding.  Sometimes its hard not of obsess or attach great significance to bodily discomfort.  But obsessing never helps and keeps us focused on wrong-mindedness, that part of mind that thinks its separate from God.

When the going gets rough for me, I know I can choose what to focus on.  I know I can choose to practice the lessons and principles in ACIM.  It is not always easy to practice these and to learn from them, to let go of the call from body over and over and focus on listening to the Voice for God.  Anyone who has seemed to live in chronic pain knows that turning it over is a constant practice.  We don’t know the meaning for we consciously wouldn’t choose pain.  Somewhere in the subconscious mind that thinks its separate from God, that part has chosen to project a body with certain conditions.  Just knowing this helps me.  I may or may not know the meaning.  But I do know that Holy Spirit knows the meaning and will speak to me in a way that I can understand right where I am.

All I need is my willingness to listen, and willingness to let go of what I think I see or feel.  And the Course says that I only need to be willing to do this for an instant.  I like to be in willingness because I know there is no further obligation on my part.  When I give it, whatever “it” is, to Holy Spirit I have done it all.  There is nothing else I need do.  I trust that all is as it should be.  I can rest.  I can be at peace regardless of what the body seems to be.  I can be at peace with seeming grogginess, tiredness, headache, knowing its not really me.  The sensation still seems to be there and I ‘m not required to say that I seem to feel differently or “better.”  I just let go of any meaning the body gives it.  The body cannot fix the body.  The ego mind cannot fix the body.  Holy Spirit shows me there is something more and that body is not so important after all because its nothing but a projection from my “sick” mind. 

ACIM promises me that I truly cannot be this “sick” mind.  I trust Holy Spirit to show me the way.  I have discovered that I can trust Holy Spirit through practicing the lessons of ACIM.  Discovering that trust made all the difference in my life.  I now trust that peace is possible in any circumstance or situation if I focus on Holy Spirit and not on body.  Today I choose to focus on Holy Spirit.

© 2004-2011, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

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