Realizing God's Will Is Oneness

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.

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