Together, We Light the Way

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I Seek My Freedom As I Allow My Brother His

T-20.III.9. Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and emaciated, weak and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember not the light, do not leap up in joy the instant they are made free. 2 It takes a while for them to understand what freedom is. 3 You groped but feebly in the dust and found your brother’s hand, uncertain whether to let it go or to take hold on life so long forgotten. 4 Strengthen your hold and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies. 5 He seemed to be crucified beside you. 6 And yet his holiness remained untouched and perfect, and with him beside you, you shall this day enter with him to Paradise, and know the peace of God.

We have imprisoned ourselves within our own minds’ hallucinations for so long that it takes time to adjust to the truth. ACIM is so helpful in this adjustment process, both in the Text, which gives us a foundation for this new understanding, and in the Workbook, where the daily lessons redirect our thinking without demanding more of us than we are able to give at this point.

I am reminded of the Ark story in the Old Testament. The animals went into the safety of the ark two by two. This is a metaphor for our passage back Home. We take our brother’s hand and travel this path two by two. At first, it may seem doubtful that we can do this, and even more doubtful our brother can do it. We look with the body’s eyes and we judge with the ego mind and find him wanting. But as we move forward in trust, we learn to see differently, and his true visage becomes more apparent to us, and we move forward in confidence.

Who is this mysterious brother with whom we walk? It is whoever is before us at the moment. There is no one special; each one we meet on our path home is equally God’s beloved Son and our brother seeking the way home alongside us. I will not let myself be distracted by the character they are playing in this story.

I will not let the sadness or even the awfulness of the story distract me from its perfection. Our chosen stories hold all we need to awaken. They do not reflect our truth, only the mistaken thoughts in the mind. Together we release those beliefs and with their passing the real world is revealed.

© 2024, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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What Is Next, Holy Spirit?

The following is from my journal from a few years back. The answer to my question changed the way I think

Holy Spirit, what would be helpful right now in taking my next step in awakening to the truth?

Sweet Myron, you are doing exceedingly good work, and it would help if you would remember that. The thoughts that you are not doing enough or doing it wrong are coming from the split mind. You tell everyone who will listen that they should not listen to the ego and should not judge themselves based on this made-up character. Take this advice to heart and accept that it is equally true for you.

You don’t have to spend every waking moment “working” at this. You don’t have anything to prove and no one to impress. We are not assessing your every move and judging your sincerity. No one is keeping score, honey. We are grateful to you and love you very much.

We know you feel guilty for not working harder at meditation, and while it would be good for you to become quiet as often as you can so that you can feel our presence and feel your own presence, you are not guilty of failing to do so. When you practice meditation, don’t make such a big deal of it. Don’t time yourself, and don’t set expectations. Just think of it as visiting with us for a while, just sitting with us and keeping us company.

Thank you, Holy Spirit.

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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God’s Perfection Is All I Want to See

I remember a time when I was at my daughter’s house helping her clean and take care of the baby as she recovered from a C-Section. Twice while I was there, she spoke sharply to me about something. I completely disregarded her tone and her words. I spoke gently, and I remained patient.  The moments passed, and her upset dissolved into nothing. It would have been very different if I had decided to take offense. I might have challenged her. I might have held it in and been miserable in my secret resentment. But I didn’t, and I am so grateful to A Course in Miracles, which has been so helpful to me. It was just one of the healing moments when I learned to look with forgiving eyes on the world.

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Now There Is More Light

One night, I went to bed feeling upset about a disturbing situation. I took an Ambien to put myself to sleep because I could not stop the thoughts from going round and round and I was just tired. I woke up around 3AM and it was clear that going back to sleep was not working for me. I listened to a meditation tape and when I finally got to a place where my mind was silent, I joined with God. It was just that simple thought but I felt absolutely peaceful.

I woke up feeling very good, and the distress of the night before was over. I could still see the same things going on and they are still not good, but I was no longer being reactive. I was back to watching my thoughts and feelings, and turning them over to Spirit. I really wanted to use that difficult time to undo the ego in the mind. I wanted to feel Love’s Presence regardless of what was happening. It felt good to be back on track. It was many such choices that brought me to where I am now. I was walking through the dark to get to the light and I keep doing that. Now the dark is not so dark and there is more light and I am so very grateful.

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Changing My Mind About the Reality of Illusions

This morning I read a news blurb in which it was reported that a news station received leaked emails that seemed to indicate that a governor was misreporting the Covid 19 cases in his state. It seemed that he was skewering the numbers to present the picture he wanted to be true. Later that day, the same reporter said that the original story had been debunked. The leaked report had originally been misinterpreted.

This is like my mind. I see or hear something and using the ego part of the mind, I accept the misinterpretation and become upset. I’ve learned, though, that if I am asking the ego for an interpretation I suffer. So, when I feel upset or have any negative reaction. I know to ask the Holy Spirit to give me another way to see it so that I return to peace.

In the story this morning after the news reporter corrected his original story, a talking head gave his opinion. He said that we don’t really know what the real story is. Since we do know what the real story is, clearly this man had an agenda and wanted to sway people to his way of thinking. He was deliberately sowing distrust and dissension.

This kind of thing happens in my mind sometimes, too. I give the situation to the Holy Spirit to interpret for me and His interpretation makes perfect sense and I am at peace. Then the ego, my own personal talking head, pipes up defending its agenda without regard to the truth. I hear its arguments for dissension, suspicion, doubt and fear.

My job with the news report is to decide what I want to believe. Does it make more sense that the reporter was correcting a false understanding which would mitigate any false judgments I had made, or do I want to cling to the false story. I can choose to believe the talking head because he is saying what I want to be true rather than what is actually true because I had a bias that could only be upheld by the original story.

This is what happens in my mind when I have listened to the ego and believe it. Maybe I still believe I need someplace to project guilt. Maybe I think my fear justifies my judgments and so I hold onto them. But I have learned the ego’s agenda will never make me feel less guilty no matter how often I convince myself I am right. I’ve learned to trust the Holy Spirit to report only the truth and the truth sets me free.

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Judgment by Me Is Impossible.

When I make the world real, I am battling with God’s Idea of Who I AM and where I am.

Every time I attempt to judge, I am at war with God. The Creator created me and when I judge what and who I am, I am, in essence, creating myself. I am saying that I am no longer as God created me, but have made of myself something I prefer. It is pure insanity. I can only be as God created me.

So, if I identify with the body and the body is sick, this is my way of saying I am something that can be sick. I am something that can die. This cannot be true because God does not create unlike Itself and God does not have a body that can be sick and God is not insane and therefore could not choose sickness, and God is eternal and cannot know death.

I cannot have something that God does not have. This is why Jesus tells us in the Course that sickness is a defense against the truth. My feeble attempts to prove I am a creature of my own design through making the body sick, is one of the ways I battle God for supremacy. Or I might use the sick body as a way of punishing myself before God can do it to me. I judge myself guilty and then I take God’s prerogative as my own and punish myself. I think I am my own savior.

If I judge someone else, I am again at war with God, in the same way I did when I judged myself. If I judge what I should do and where and when, I again am at war with God. I have a choice, I can decide for myself with the ego mind, or I can decide with the Holy Spirit. The first pits me against the Truth, the latter aligns my mind with Truth.

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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The Unraveling of Beliefs

I was putting ice in my glass and pouring in water, and I reminded myself that there is no glass, there is no ice, there is no water and no body to hydrate. I have been doing this for a few days now and am forming the habit of reminding myself of the truth frequently. And now I am reminding myself that there is no time or space either. The idea of the world is unraveling in my mind.

I had the thought that I wish I was in New Orleans this morning, waking up at my son’s house to the sounds of a marching jazz band out the window. There seems to be much space between me and this tableau. I can even measure it in miles. I can measure it in time as well, and so I am separated not only in distance but in time. If I left right now, I would get there in time for some festivities, but not in time to experience the moment he shared with me this morning in a text message.

But you know what? I did experience it, because it was never a distance away, and it was never a different time. It was always only in the mind and nowhere else, and there is no time or distance in the mind, only a false thought that was so foreign and upsetting to us that we flung it out and pretended that idea was somewhere else. And we pretended that we live in that somewhere else, and now parts of ourself are separated from us by that imagined belief. And it feels sad and lonely.

© 2023, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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