Miracles News

January-March, 2011

Deciding for Holy Spirit

by Rev. Ken Gorman

Only Love is Real… So what does that mean? I have one of those plastic wrist bands with this written on it (that I got from Shanti Christo). So does my 13 year old daughter. I was guided to tell her not to take it off until she understands what it means. Wow, what a tall order… Recently her PE teacher challenged her and wanted her to remove it, but she successfully refused… She knows this is a key lesson somehow and in doing that, her faith teaches me.

Only Love is Real… This is the same to me as realizing that we are already Christ or, as a cross reference, in Buddhism they would say we have Buddha nature inherently. So this is where we begin, from our inherent Nature. The rest was a mistake, but one we were allowed to make, as we have free will.

So we start from Where we are and What we are. In this awareness, there is no place to go, nothing to accumulate, no sins to be corrected, etc. To me, this is totally in alignment with the first page of the Course, which states that the goal is simply to remove the blocks to the awareness of Love’s Presence. It does not talk about our inherit Nature needing to change. All of the instruction is around miracles, which are really just a change in perception and, in the end, that we are not these bodies but one with God so the changes in perception are leading us to that awareness.

So, this is easy, right? It does not seem easy as we are overwhelmed by a combination of our habitual mind grinding out this reality we so cling to and being obsessed with fear. We can have lessons like lesson 11, ‘My Meaningless Thoughts are Showing Me a Meaningless World.’ Yet how many of my ‘thoughts’ as well as the world these thoughts showed me did I take seriously today? You almost have to laugh and cry at the same time.

I believe there is no hope in our habitual, fear-driven, thinking world. We have been at this for hundreds of lifetimes and will be at it for thousands more if we continue down this track — never finding what we are looking for, which is to remember that we were Christ the whole time.

However, we are Christ and there is hope. We have the power to create as God does through Intention. We can decide that we want only the Kingdom and there is a Guide who will answer us. At Pathways of Light we generally refer to this Guide as the Holy Spirit. As we have free will, we must consciously and deliberately choose for this Guide over the habitual, fearful mind that we normally operate with. No one, not even Jesus, can do this for us. Otherwise we would be victims to something else and not what God created us to be.

For myself, as a student of A Course in Miracles and being a follower of Jeshua and that lineage (I found it very freeing to admit to myself that this was my calling), the best I can do is to follow the instruction in the Manual for Teachers in “How Should the Teacher of God Spend His Day?” It encourages me to spend time with God each morning and evening and to trust Holy Spirit with every decision.

I also find taking five minutes once an hour, reading the Course as much as I can, and also participating in study groups and working with students is very helpful. I have really come to understand that teaching as we perceive it is learning and also giving. And there is also the ego-dreaded ‘Rules for Decision’ section which I have vowed to implement one day. 😉

Being of service, in the end, is all there is left to do. Maybe someday I will be able to take this wrist band off that says ‘Only Love is Real’ because I really get it. Until then, I will enjoy the journey with all my friends in the Pathways of Light and ACIM community.

Rev. Ken Gorman is a Pathways of Light minister living in San Francisco, California.

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