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July - Sept. 2021

Miracles News, July - Sept. 2021

 

 

Let ourselves
bloom
in the Light
of God’s Love 

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July-September, 2021

A Healed Mind Is a Quiet Mind

by Rev. Myron, Jones, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

Do you realize that the ego must set you on a journey which cannot but lead to a sense of futility and depression? To seek and not to find is hardly joyous. Is this the promise you would keep? The Holy Spirit offers you another promise, and one that will lead to joy. For His promise is always, “Seek and you will find,” and under His guidance you cannot be defeated. His is the journey to accomplishment, and the goal He sets before you He will give you. For He will never deceive God’s Son whom He loves with the Love of the Father. (ACIM, T-12.IV.4:1-7)

Perhaps like me, you thought you could not really depend on the Bible quote, “Seek and ye shall find.” Years of seeking had brought me very little in the way of peace and happiness. I didn’t see where it brought me any closer to God, either. Now I know why. It was because I was asking the ego to show me the way. I was seeking happiness through the ego, and the ego’s directive is to seek and do not find.

Once I began to study the Course, all of that turned around. I was seeking through the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit loves me with the Love of the Father. The Holy Spirit wants me to find and so makes it possible for me to do so and actually assures that I will do so. Through the study of the Course, I learned how to ask and was given the process that would bring me the peace and happiness I longed for.

I learned that the blocks to Love are the ego thoughts in my mind. I believe insane things and those beliefs show up as insane thoughts. I learned that I could look at those thoughts with the Holy Spirit, and in so doing I would realize their impact on me and would become willing to let them go. Once my willingness was strong, the Holy Spirit could remove them from my mind. Without so much of the insanity of ego thinking, I became happier and more peaceful.

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July-September, 2021

Another Step Out of the Closet

by Rev. Larry Glenz, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

I have recently completed my work on my website: larryglenz.com. I felt guided to do this, but it has been difficult for me to tell people that it even exists.

Although I enjoy being an Ordained Ministerial Counselor (O.M.C.) for Pathways of Light over the past 11 years, I have remained “in the closet” about my ministry to much of my family and friends with whom I have had the longest relationships. We just don’t talk about it.

My past identity for most people has been as a history teacher, athletic coach, and part-time bartender. Although I remain a volunteer assistant coach, my pursuits in life have greatly changed since my retirement 11 years ago.

My website is about my ministry of which I feel passionate. I love to think of myself as one of God’s teachers. A Course in Miracles encourages me to do that. But to those people who have known me the longest, I speak of it rarely or not at all.

Yet I most certainly have gone public. I have written a book, many articles, officiated weddings, spoken publically as a reverend for Pathways and made videos explaining my passion for being a minister of God.

But I never speak of this with my only brother, Mike. My closet friends either don’t know or understand very little about this important aspect of my life.

But now I have a website. It’s all out there. I recently felt encouraged by Spirit to tell my son, Matt. He checked it out and noted with a smile that my life has certainly changed over the past decade.

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July-September, 2021

God’s Personal Servant

by Rev. Barbara Goodman Siegel, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

God’s Personal Servant is your GPS. It goes by different names: the Holy Spirit, Higher Holy Self, Jesus, intuition, etc. You can call it Charlie if you want, it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that the name you call it resonates with you. God gave us a Personal Servant to guide us back to Him and like any good servant, it doesn’t intrude unless it is asked. Our GPS can never give us wrong directions as its destination was preset by its Creator.

When we our lost, we feel fear. That fear takes many forms: depression, anxiety, even anger. When we feel this fear, it is a warning to stop, ask, and listen to what direction our GPS, our Personal Servant given to us by God, tells us to correct to.

Many of us don’t even know we have a GPS, and for many of us who do know, we have not been willing to listen. We prefer to get out the maps that we, our friends, teachers, family, religion, culture, political party, and society have made for us.

“I’d rather do it myself,” we think. Then, we get lost and rather than asking our GPS for direction, we pull out another one of our maps. We can be very stubborn and very proud.

“Certainly I can do this! It can’t be that hard. Look at all the maps I have” we tell ourselves. And round and round we go.

For some of us, it isn’t until we find ourselves in the middle of nowhere and filled with fear that we finally realize all our maps are incorrect.

Then, if we are lucky, we meet a teacher who says to us: “My dear, you have an inner GPS system that will always tell you what direction to go in. You have to listen carefully because its voice is soft and you may not hear it over your conditioned habit to listen to your own booming voice telling you to follow your well-worn maps. You have to get very still and be very present and willing to hear its gentle, soft voice.”

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July-September, 2021

Letting Go of Defending Myself

by Rev. Kelly Lewis, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

I make what I believe I need to defend myself against! And, I can let it go! Voila!

It is now 12 years that I have been in recovery from alcoholism. I have had minimal urges to drink, and when I have had them, I can quickly remind myself why I don’t want to go back to that life of suffering.  However, I can also say that I have not had much exposure to alcohol, so I have not had to “test” myself to see how I would feel about it being “in my face.” 

This was mostly a natural occurrence due to changing the people I associate with, rather than a resistance to being around it.  I simply stopped spending any time with people who drink alcohol, not because I didn’t think I could handle it or because I judged them, but just because I didn’t think I had anything in common with “drinkers” anymore.

However, I recently had a friend ask me to come to her house to spend an evening with a bunch of her friends, and she literally called the get together “wine night.”  Wine was my FAVORITE.  I felt highly anxious at her request, suddenly fearing the difficulty of wanting and resisting alcohol. But at the same time I felt Spirit nudging me to go, to push myself in this way, to maybe make some new friends and to also to be able to “shine my light.”

I should also mention that I have never been much of a “group person,” unless it has been in a spiritual setting. I am an introvert and thrive with deep one on one conversations with people, but when in a group (outside of spiritual settings) I have historically had a tendency to feel overwhelmed and despondent with what I had always felt to be “shallow talk.”

Needless to say, while Spirit was nudging me to go, my ego mind was saying “NOOO!” But hesitatingly, I went. Before leaving though, I spent time in prayer and meditation, praying that Spirit would guide my thoughts and words and that I would remember to just be LOVE.

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July-September, 2021

The Heart of the Matter

by Rev. Mary Lenihan, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

I remember the words in my book, Pause for Inspiration in the midst of everyday life, “Where does your heart go to rest?” My heart has been busy lately, so I am not sure much resting has been going on. Our Pause nonprofit commitments and daily operations are a lot. I really miss writing so I am glad to be writing this now. I feel I need to simply reflect on how life has been going without having to think about what to write about; so, I thank you ahead of time for being with me in this. 

Ego — the divisiveness in me — makes sure that my heart doesn’t rest. Thankfully I take myself through The Pause Practice daily. However, I went through a period of time in which I received guidance but didn’t follow. Sound familiar? About two years ago I had been rushing around doing so much for so long that it was as if my heart finally said, “That’s it, we’re shutting her down!” This manifested one Sunday morning by way of a panic attack that occurred while in church; I literally thought I was dying. I had a near death experience in 2009 which I call a “Reunion in Heaven.” This one however, came on suddenly, intensely and scared the death out me! I used The Pause Practice and the panic left. My Nearest, Dearest and Truest Self was trying to get my attention because I had not been paying attention. This got my attention for a moment, but then my ego mind convinced me that I couldn’t stop, “There’s too much to do!” Keeping my ego mind schedule in place!

The result of this was that I had a second panic attack months later, multiple health scares and a couple of months after that I began having constant anxiety, trouble catching my breath, and crying spells on the kitchen floor out of nowhere. I began feeling very depressed and on a downward spiral. It was as if my Nearest, Dearest and Truest Self in me was wrestling me to the ground saying, “No more, let me help you.” Our True Self really does love us, but we can be so afraid of simply letting LOVE, love us. I must have been ready to receive LOVE; I must have been ready to let go of my plans or none of this would have happened. Why did I need to receive LOVE? Because I was feeling very alone but trying not to feel alone. The separation felt very real and I feared I would never feel whole again. Then, I realized that I was grieving.

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July-September, 2021

Awakening to God’s Peace

by Cate Grieves, Group Leader of A Course in Miracles, Artist & Writer

During the years of 2013 and 2014, I dedicated every moment of every day to watching my mind so I could identify all the beliefs, resentments and grievances that were keeping me from experiencing The Peace of God. My intention and devotion was to “undo the ego,” by using the teachings of A Course in Miracles.

For the first few months, I found that I needed to develop a deeper quietness of mind so I could hear my Guide. I started to write down answers I was receiving from the Holy Spirit. I really wanted and desired a peaceful relationship with everyone. I was tired of my old ways of relating and was ready to become a full-time student and have the Holy Spirit as my Teacher.

During those two years I worked as a full-time accountant in a busy real estate office. After two years, my mind awakened to the Love of God. This lightly proves that you don’t need to leave your job, your family or where you live to awaken to holiness. All you need is the readiness to start, willingness to offer everything over to be healed and a dedication to staying the course, no matter what levels of fear or terror the ego thoughts bring up.

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July-September, 2021

Hearing Holy Spirit’s Voice

by Rev. Joyce Peebles, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

Our salvation, or waking up to our true Identity, is dependent upon hearing the Voice of the Holy Spirit.  Yet very few people are able to discern this Voice.  Since it is essential, how do you hear it? 

A Course in Miracles tells us we always get what we really want. A lot of you are already screaming, “No I don’t!” Actually, you do. You are the writer of your life’s script. On some level, be it unconscious sometimes, you are experiencing what you really want.
I love what Earl Purdy says, “The most dishonest thing I can say is I am not responsible for what I see.” When you are not hearing the Voice of the Holy Spirit, it is because you do not want to. Period.

Believing we are this body, we have bought into the idea that what the ego says is true, mainly that it is real. This voice always speaks first, is loud and familiar.  The Holy Spirit’s Voice is soft, gentle and tells us the opposite of the ego’s voice.

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July-September, 2021

Forgiveness Is a Gift to Myself

by Rev. Dan Strodl, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

For most of my life, I lived in a world of fear, anxiety and separation. I couldn’t go through the day without resentment towards someone or something. The ego was alive and thriving. I didn’t know what peace was. I knew something was wrong. Could this be what my life was for?

When I found A Course in Miracles, I knew there was something there for me. I was ready to nurture my spiritual side. Forgiveness is a major theme in the Course, but it took a while for me to understand what that meant. I always thought forgiveness was about letting another person off the hook. But, now, I see forgiveness is about letting myself off the hook.

“What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?” (W-pI.122.1:1-6)

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July-September, 2021

What Does Healing Look Like to You?

by Rev. Peggy Rivera, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

I have recently given some thought to what other people’s expectations of healing are, and I wondered if people think of healing as purely about the physical body, or if mental emotional healing is enough. I think many times the perception of healing expectations is mostly about the physical. And there is nothing wrong with wanting our body to be healed.

After all the Course says God made us perfect and so I for one want to be perfect. But it also says in the Course that all healing is in the mind. When it is the mind that thinks it can be sick, then the mind is sick. So, our perception of what the body is for and what our true Self is needs correction.

During the process, if we need to take medicine or some other physical treatment, we should do that. Jesus said that alternative treatments contribute to magical thinking but fear is the greatest obstacle to healing so it is better to find comfort in physical means than to perpetuate fear.

In Text 2.IV.5:1 Jesus said, “The children of God are entitled to the perfect comfort that comes from perfect trust. Until they achieve this, they waste themselves and their true creative powers on useless attempts to make themselves more comfortable by inappropriate means.” (T-2.III.5:1)

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July-September, 2021

There Must Be Another Way!

by Rev. Barbara Adams, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

As a child and teenager, when I would to go to Confession at my hometown church, I would first do a mental inventory. I’d try to figure out how I had sinned so that when I knelt down in that dark box and waited for the male figure on the other side to slide open the little door, I’d have something to say.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned. It’s been (x) weeks since my last Confession. Father, I… (This is where I had to list all of my sins.)

I’d say something like: “I lied to my mother three times and I disobeyed her twice.” I totally made up these “sins” so that I’d have something to say!

Part and parcel of the experience was the ever-present scent of candles burning within the sacred space, which the devout had lit in hopes of having their intentions being put on the fast-track to the heavens. The smell of hundreds of little flickering lights had seeped behind the curtain to, I’m sure, remind me that I was in a holy place and that I’d better be good!

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July-September, 2021

Thanksgiving Declaration

by Rev. Maria Kingsley, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

I Am the Change
which I’ve been looking for.

I Am the Healing
which I’ve been asking for.

I Am the Abundance
which I’ve prayed for.

I Am the Love
I’ve been calling for.

I Am the Ease
with which I had hoped
to walk through life.

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July-September, 2021

Growing In My Faith

by Rev. Georgeann Medved, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

I grow in faith by exercising my faith, my mind, my body and my love for others and my love for my Creator. My Creator remains faithful to me always.

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July-September, 2021

Invitation Prayer

by Rev. Michael Atkins, Ordained Ministrial Counselor

Love, which is our Creator,
and the Source of all Life,
we give welcome this day.

We ask that you bless each of us
with full awareness of the
thoughts we share with You
and let the Light you offer us
shine away the dream of darkness.

May the memory of Your Love
come and help us to
forgive our misperceptions
of an imaginary fear
as we, together as One,
respond to your Spirit’s invitation
to open wide the doors to Christ.

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