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May-August, 2024

Gifts and Miracles

by Rev. Joyce Peebles, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

We have traditions in which gifts are often given. God has gifts as does the ego. The ego’s gifts include such things as anger, depression, conflict, and pain. The only way to get the ego’s gifts are to choose them.

The Holy Spirit’s gifts are peace, love, and joy. The only way to experience them is to choose them. If you decide you don’t like your choice, you can choose again. The problem is you choose based on what you value at the moment. Who would not choose love, peace, and joy?

Everybody who wants to be right maintains that they are this ego body and that the world is real. Furthermore, they want to believe they are not responsible for their misery, someone else is to blame. Guilt is valued. To get the gifts of the Holy Spirit, you must decide that only innocence and love are real, everything else is not.

You recognize your willingness to do this by what you see projected from your mind every day. Are your projections showing you only love or calls for love? Do you think someone, or some situation needs to change or be fixed? Do you believe you would be happier if someone outside of you was different? No doubt the ego body would temporarily be happier, but the gifts of the Holy Spirit are only recognized when you believe you are not the ego body.

A couple of decades ago when I first became a student of A Course in Miracles, I went quickly over the first 20 lessons. They seemed so short, and I spent very little time on them. For example, lesson two says, “ I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me.” Today I am still reminding myself that this is true. I am learning that nothing outside of my mind has any power over me. All conflict occurs in my mind and everything I see in the world is a picture of an inward condition.

Lesson 5 is, “I am never upset for the reason I think.” The key to understanding these lessons is willingness. This lesson tells us there are no small upsets. They are all equally disturbing to my peace of Mind.

I am grateful for the teacher who recently explained this lesson further. In summary, she told me the moment I forget who I really am, I forget who my brother is.

Cultivate the awareness that you either have peace or you do not. There is no peace when I have judged another as guilty.

A miracle occurs when I recognize the truth. I cannot have a little bit of love. You either love or you don’t. In the illusion an event appears to happen, but it never happened.

Constantly remember nobody is guilty, and I am giving everything all the meaning it has for me.

I also appreciate what someone else shared, “When your heart is set on waking up, everything becomes easier.”

I am so grateful for the help of others in the Sonship who are studying and struggling too.

The ego believes that what the body’s eyes see really exists, and that someone out there is trying to take advantage of me or treat me unfairly. The Holy Spirit helps me to see that what I am seeing in you is a projection of what I really see in me.

The Holy Spirit has one gift the ego can never offer; it is the miracle. A miracle is a change in perception whereby we take back our projected thoughts. It is a decision that I no longer want to perceive mySelf as guilty of rejecting love, a realization that I have done this faulty thinking to mySelf and now decide to reverse it.

Guilt gradually disappears as I stop attacking myself and others. You do not give up the ego/body/story. You understand you do not want it because of what it represents and the suffering that goes with it. There is no sacrifice involved when you see the choice is for love and peace.

A major stepping stone in the attainment of a miracle is recognizing that giving and receiving are the same. You can only give to yourself, whether it is attack or love. That “someone out there” I see is me. Reality is we are all connected and only the love that binds us is real.

There are some things you have no control over. You are Love and Light, a Spirit.

You can hallucinate, dream, fantasize all you want, yet this fact cannot be changed. No matter how much you or someone else has screwed things up, the reality is that it did not happen. You simply fell asleep and had a nightmare.

Neither do you have control over the fact that you are going to wake up from the nightmare.

You can delay it, but it is going to happen. You are not going to be allowed to suffer forever. The only choice you have is how long you delay.

The world is going to end for you because you will no longer have any use for it. God did not make a meaningless world, you did. It disappears when you no longer want it.

A miracle happens when you realize you have this kind of power.

Another thing you have no control over is that this dream will not be remembered at all. The people, wars, etc. you obsessed over, you have no choice, none of it will you remember when you wake from the dream.

The world disappears because you know you made it up. It was only a thought in your mind. Ask yourself: Why suffer so much while in the dream before you are fully awake? It has no lasting value or effects.

“Loss is not lost when properly perceived. Pain is impossible. There is no grief with any cause at all. And suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream.” (W-pII.284.1:1-4)

I remember reading this years ago and thinking this cannot be true. Look at the rest of the lesson. “This is the truth, at first to be said and then repeated many times; and next to the accepted as but partly true, with many reservations. Then to be considered seriously more and more, and finally accepted as the truth.” (1:5-6)

I am now ready to believe these words. I am grateful for all the help I have received. I do suffer less as I have been willing to put aside my fearful thoughts.

Everything has all been a learning opportunity. Gratitude is gradually taking the place of suffering.

© 2024, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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